Archive - Oct 2003

I plugged my camera in last night with the intention of pulling off pictures from Bryce's rugby game and my friend Brian's bachelor party . Well, much to my surprise I found photos that I'd taken a few weeks back and had forgotten to post.

Grrr... So we've set back the clock in accordance to the rules of Daylight Savings Time. You know, for the most part I don't mind it, but I must say, it is slightly depressing to come out of work at 5pm and find a dark night surrounding you.

Not only that, but as per usual, any slight change in environment causes Ottawa drivers to slow down to a snails pace. Today, it was the fact that there wasn't a sun in the sky when the majority of people went home from work. Later this year the inevitable first snow fall will nearly stop drivers in their tracks - and this is a city that's proud of its ability to live through the winter.

Isn't Daylight Savings antiquated anyway?

Well, I spent this past weekend celebrating another friend who is about to get married... Brian Whiten is a friend of mine from highschool and he's about to get married. His bachelor party was Friday night in Toronto, so I was down there for the weekend. It was good to see him, my friends Bill and Rick, and a friend from a long time ago, Shannon Sarginson.

Well, this weekend is Oktoberfest! I'm heading down to Burlington this evening, have a meeting in Hamilton tomorrow at noon, then it's off to K-W for my first Oktoberfest experience. There are a tonne of people going down from Ottawa, alas, I've forgotten my camera. Oh well.

BBC - Holiday - 50 Things

Pretty amazing list of things... at least one of which in the near future won't be do-able...

I was reading this article, Yahoo! News - Yahoo Profit Rises, Increases Guidance, and came across this paragraph.

"For the fourth quarter, Yahoo forecast operating income before depreciation and amortization of $130 million to $150 million and revenue excluding certain costs of $462 million to $502 million. Analysts surveyed by Reuters Research had expected OIBDA of $120.1 million on revenue of $372 million."

Now, I'm stuck trying to figure out what OIBDA is... (It stands for Operating Income Before Depreciation & Amortization) I've read a lot of SEC reports and never seen this term. I like Yahoo! and all, but why have they introduced this new term... arggh... didn't we just get people to realize what a farce EBITDA was? How does this differ?

So I just read this article from The Register How does Skype get through Firewalls and NAT Routers?, and I'm wondering whether a system that uses Supernodes is really P2P.

I was thinking a little while back about things my kids won't have any first-hand knowledge of. Here's a bit of a list from my perspective... feel free to offer any ideas up, I know there has to be more.