Archive for the 'GTA' Category

Update (May 6/09): I used 12 megs of data while in the States. Without the US Roaming package at the rate of $30/meg my total would have been $360!! With US Roaming plan $10/month + $1/meg = $22.

I’m heading to the States this weekend (I live in Toronto) and got a bit paranoid about what my roaming data (3G) charges would amount to. A quick look on the Rogers website confirmed my fears: $0.03/kb or $30/mb! That’s madness! I heard from a few people that Rogers had a US Roaming Package of some sort. I tried looking for it on the Rogers website, but couldn’t find it anywhere. I then somehow thought to search (on the Rogers website) for ‘Roaming’ and this appeared:

US Data Roaming Add-On – $10.00
Buy the $10/month U.S Data Roaming Add-On and then pay only $1/MB ($0.001 per KB) while roaming in the U.S

I called Rogers and had them add the package to my plan. You can remove it at anytime and only be charged for the month you used. Keep in mind this plan only covers data. Regardless if you have a text-messaging plan in Canada, in the States it’s $0.60 per text message. I don’t even want to know what voice + roaming would hit.

Update July 17: The Mississauga Walk was a great success, we raised just under $30,000 for ALS Ontario and Canada.

I was working from home one day last summer, when I saw a powerful commercial on TSN trying to raise awareness for Lou Gehrig’s Disease or ALS. The commercial had such a strong impact on me, that I began researching into this terrible disease and the devastating impacts it has on the person and their loved ones. I eventually made my way to the ALS Ontario website and saw that there were Walks for ALS to raise money and awareness for the disease.

I noticed that there wasn’t a Mississauga Walk and sent an email to ALS Ontario suggesting they consider creating one. At the time they weren’t thinking in that direction and told me if they do decide to, they’d let me know. Sure enough in October I got an email asking if I would be interested in helping form a group who would organize this event. I quickly agreed and we got started working towards a June event day.

Our walk will be held Saturday June 7th 2008 at J.C. Saddington Park right by Lakeshore and Hurontario.

View Larger Map

We are currently looking for people to form teams and begin raising money for the event. If your interested in helping a great cause, please sign up. This was the commercial I was referring to above:

There is also a second great commercial that was in rotation:

Isn’t racism and hate already a big problem in our society? Do we really want our children growing up in schools were all the kids around them are exactly the same race and religion? In a surprising and somewhat depressing statement, John Tory (the conservative MPP leader) has said if elected he would give public funding to faith based schools. The elections are October 10th 2007. I know many of you despise McGuinty, but the sad reality is that both leaders have no grasp on reality and only seek to satisfy their own personal agendas. Is it time to start looking at Hampton?

It’s interesting how Tory even believes that funding for faith based schools even exists. With all the cuts that are happening, wouldn’t the money be better severed improving our existing infrastructure? I guess I’m surprised that he didn’t see the backlash that would occur by taking this stance. On the other hand, I know that the Greek Patriarch of Canada is telling us to vote Conservative cause he wants to push his Greek Schools and I hear radio advertisements on 680 news supporting faith based schools by the Jewish Congress of Canada.

The argument of funding catholic schools is a good one, but I believe we first need to stabilize our existing structure before we can start rationing what little money we have already. Furthermore, I really feel raising the future generation of children in schools were everyone is the same race and religion can’t be positive, irrespective of what the catholic’s have.

Clio-maria has a good post on this topic.
I started a Facebook group about this.

Update (July 27/07): They were very strict on using a camera anywhere on the course. I managed to sneak a couple videos, here’s Mike Weir on the 1st hole taking his 2nd shot. It was great to have Mike Weir and Vijay Singh in the same pairing, but its too bad John Daly pulled out.

A friend is volunteering at the Canadian Open this year at Angus Glen and offered me a free day pass for Thursday/Friday. I can’t go Thursday, but Friday I’m going to head down from 11am to about 2pm. The likes of Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia and Phil Mickelson won’t be attending this year, but there’s still going to be some big names including Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Mark Calcavecchia and more.

It must have been hard to get big names to commit to the Canadian Open, especially with the British Open just last week. Luckily the organizers pulled out all the stops and actually chartered a private jet to fly players from the British Open to Toronto.

A host of the top names in golf were shuttled by private jet from Scotland to Canada on Sunday night in order to compete in the Canadian Open which begins on Thursday. The Royal Canadian Golf Association (RCGA), organisers of this week’s Canadian Open, chartered a luxury airplane to fly over 20 golfers and their guests to Toronto from Edinburgh immediately after the Open Championship ended.

I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures.