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Marda Loop Justice Film Festival
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 1544
This weekend past I took the children to the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival. On Friday night, just me and the boy (the girl at a Brownies sleepover), we went to see "Sand and Sorrow" - a documentary narrated by George Clooney on the civil war in Darfur. OK, informative, but not a great documentary.
On Saturday we attended 2 more - one a CBC documentary on the Alberta Tarsands, incredibly boring. Television brought to the big screen, but I wanted the boy to see it. Our "local" ethical commitment. And then one on Chernobyl - a very well paced, informative and enlightening documentary on the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 in the Ukraine. An enjoyable film, which more than made up for the afternoon's presentation.
For those of you not familiar, the Film Festival is used to highlight topical social issues both in the world at large, and nearer to home in our communities. The format is a selected film is shown, then followed by a brief (3 or 4 question) discussion with "experts" present on the issues raised in the film. The "real" discussion is held in the lobby afterwards. Overall the films are chosen to overlap themes - for example the Saturday film on the Tar Sands raises the possibility of a Nuclear Power plant in Alberta's north to fuel the tar sands, and the following film on Chernobyl explores what happens when Nuclear Power goes wrong. This was my/our first time attending.
The festival was modestly well attended, slightly more than half full, good for the event, but a disinterested showing for a city of a million people. Noteworthy was the fact that in the last 2 films we saw we recognized most of the audience as people who were at the previous film(s), so one might generalize that those interested in social issues are very interested. Probably we should have stayed and chatted with some of them in the lobby afterwards to learn more, but 3 documentaries in a weekend was enough punishment for the boy...
Tuesday, November 18th 2008 10:40 AM
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Who's Your ISP?
- Hits: 1924
It's 10:40 when the installer shows up. I feel kind of foolish, the internet now working and all, he's friendly enough and shows me the modem stats online, no problems there, then goes and checks the outside of the house. He finds a couple of faulty connectors - one at the house, one on the line, and my problems are solved.
He notes what an "Interesting" place I have. I get this when I have people over, mostly plumbers and maintenance people. "Interesting" here is a euphamism for "What a lot of mis-matched rubbish....do you ever clean?", but I'm tired of apologizing, even if I were Martha Stewart the kids would tear it apart in a weekend, and life's too short to be spent vacuuming and dusting. A bit of maintenance wouldn't hurt, but that's a habit I have yet to acquire.
But my router isn't coming back online. Probably I'm doing something wrong, but for some reason it's broadcasting well, but not picking up an IP from the modem. There may be a problem there, I'll have to do a full hard reset, there's not time today to waste troubleshooting trivial things. The internet's working, and that's what counts. Now back to work.
Tuesday, November 18th 2008 7:00 AM
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Who's Your ISP?
- Hits: 2002
And the modem is back online. The installer hasn't yet showed up, not due until 9:00-11:00, it was offline all day yesterday, until midnight when I went to bed. So this morning when I got up I checked, hope against hope, and it was working. I've kept the morning free and will wait for the installer, this is far too inconvenient to consider solved. But there's something about having him/her come here when it's working that rather undermines the point of it not working, hopefully they believe me....
Monday, November 17, 2008 - 10:00 AM
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Who's Your ISP?
- Hits: 1925
And I'm completely offline. Once again I run through the process reseting my modem, bypassing router, no luck. So I again call Shaw, 1-1-2-2, and quickly am connected to another helpful Analyst. We run through the process of trying to reset modem, several times, nothing brings it back online. I suspect there's an issue with the cable outside, it's snowed, the connection I've always suspected is bad. But I say nothing, last time the installer showed up he pooh-poohed the idea. My signal was just fine, he said.
So after several resets we can't bring the modem back online, the router is now obviously not the problem. She books me a service call for the next day, 9-11:00 AM slot. And I have the unafforded luxury of a computer free day....
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