My god, What on earth are you doing here?
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Well it happened... Canada as usual (last go around was 1981) lost out to the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports
The US Dept of Commerce has capitulated to the request of these 20 and issued a whopping 29% average tariff on softwood lumber imports to the US. Despite the outcrys from the US home builders who back Canada. The Ministry of Forests (BC Government)has a few pages of information on this dispute as well. The CBC (Canadian Brodcasting Corporation) wrote up a pretty good article about The deal of course this these effects are reported only for the coast the other 90% of the province isn't covered but, that's what I'm here for to give you the view from the sticks!
A little bit of background... Here is the objectives of the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports. I'll try to go through these objectives from my point of view.
Ok first sentence... there is no subsidy, perhaps in the first round 81 I could see it sorta... as there was not nearly enough replanting compared to the amounts harvested; however, this has changed dramatically in the last 20 years at least 120% (guesstimate based on what I see firsthand) of the area harvested is now replanted. I can only wonder at the US replanting rates, hmm replant that 1000 year old redwood. While in Canada worst case would be replant that 500 year old douglas fir. The majority of timber harvested in this area is lodgepole pine avg age 50-150 yrs old. Second sentence... Now it is true that 95% of timberlands are crown owned... mind you that is under dispute with native land claims but that is a huge different ball of wax. give timber to mills below market price hmm now that statement is pretty inflammatory. Just how do you define a market price? When you own all the timber, I'm sure you can charge yourself a exorbitant amount of money for the timber... mill it in you own mill (for the cost of transportation and harvesting to your mill) and create a huge paper value for the market price of the timber. The question is?? is this a true market value for the timber!? haha doubtful. The next sentence is just plain bs. Mills produce lumber, just like the US ones do. The last sentence comes down to efficiency... the US mills are not world class period. Tour any Canadian mill (still operating) you will find state of the art machinery with high recovery ie very little waste. So when the commodity (lumber) prices are down, only the efficient mills can still produce lumber in a cost effective manner.
Ok first sentence... there is no subsidy. second - fourth sentence The US lumber is owned by the mill owners... their cost of timber $0. nuff said. Last sentence better upgrade those (US) mills to half assed state of the art and you would actually compete. I wonder why no links to those studies quoted?
So now like the last go around 20 years ago we (Canada) has to go appeal this decsion to NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and WTO (World Trade Association) accusing the US of non compliance. Canada won last time and probably will again this time; however; in the meantime 10's of thousands of jobs will disapper in the years it is going to take to win this appeal. I hope this community survives as it is strictly a one industry town, lumber. As a side note for all those people against the cutting down of old growth forests look here.
There was a fascinating interview today on the tube, it's online too. ROB (Report on Business) TV Channel interviewed Al Rosen, Chairman, Al Rosen & Associates. They were talking about the Enron and the lack of proper accounting principles being applied. The conversation eventually evolved to companies of Canada and it's GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). Apparently Canada's accounting is very lax. An example was given, defer development costs, now according to Canadian GAAP this money that you use for research can be classified as an asset! Contrast that to the US where it must be an expense. Al stated that eventually this asset would have to be expensed but not for several years... this skewers what the balance sheet of the corporation really looks like at the present. Many of Canada's premier companies use this sort of technique or others like it. A couple of the names mentioned were Bombardier, Celestica. The question came up of could Canada have a Enron? Rosen, "We've had a few, the Alberta banks collapse in the 80's. Next one could be tommorrow." I find this rather disconcerting. :(
*Chuckle* this from the local rag Caledonia Courier Week of March 6
A note for those who don't remember... the baseball diamond is the red diamond behind the High school, the pipeline rd is the dividing rd between the Reservation and Town limits, distance between the two... approx 1/2 - 3/4 Km. I'd say a convoluted article looks like trying to get those quotes in there... glad blogging doesn't care :)
It seems there must be a # of clusters limit in fat32 (Win 98) somewhere around 1.5 Million as my new 44Gig partition has 1.3 Million clusters using 32k for each cluster. Ouch lots of hard drive space wasted there as every file must occupy a minimum of 1 cluster so that 1k note to yourself of blog urls is actually taking up 32k of space (although the size is reported as 1k) wasting 31k of space, nother example if you have a 33k file that file takes 2 clusters to store using 64k of drive space and wasting 31k. Sigh my old 12 gig has about 1.5 million clusters at 8k cluster sizes. I'm glad I didn't partition the whole drive for 98 or I probably would have wound up with 64k cluster sizes, eep probably wasting a minimum 40% of the drive (if I ever filled it), quick math 40% of 80 gig, ouch 32 gig wasted. I'm curious if NTFS has this same cluster limit... I know it normally has 4k cluster sizes... perhaps this is the reason for my 4 gig NTFS partition rather than the 32 gig I wanted?
A little more testing has lead to a minor discovery. I always wondered what the bytes used was. Ex open Explorer or My Computer and right click on a directory (file folder), select properties from the pop up menu gives you size of directory and bytes used... bytes used IS how much hard drive space the directory and subdirectories of it are using. Ex make a new folder copy a 1k file there then right click on the directory that will show you how big the file is 1k and how big your cluster sizes are 4k, 8k, 16k, 32k so on, or how much room that 1k file is using on your hard drive.
The trials and tribulations of adding a new hard drive and deciding on OS es to install. Well that nice new 80 gig drive I bought in Jan and have looked at several times thinking "I really should install that" finally got the better of me. My poor computer... PII 350 with 256Mb and 3 Hard Drives a 4 gig drive c, 12 Gig Drive d and 4 gig SCSI drive e are dwarfed by this behemoth.
Of Paramount importance in reinstalling OS is not to lose my information. Easier said than done... lessee Outlook stores all my email in C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, Outlook Express stores email in C:\Windows\Application Data\Identities\{4F8F0780-4D25-11D5-8BA1-EE0748EE5C67}\Microsoft\Outlook Express, why the two well um I used to Netscape for mail but the 4.6 release of Navigator was so lame I switched to IE 5.0 hey guess what it doesn't have email built in.. damn so use Outlook Express hmm it doesn't like importing 100Mb of emails... use Outlook ahh ok have the email but it has so much extra crap that I don't want to see. Calendar, Journal pfft. So i've been using Express. So try to import E-mail from Express to Outlook no go... NICE. try exporting from Express to Outlook... no go, NICE (requires MAPI huh?) mutter. Maybe new Mozilla has email built in. Copy My Docs folder to drive d, uninstall all the games, apps... copy windows directories all 300+MB to drive d. (just in case I need that dll or ini file).
Check out the motherboard manufacturer's site and see a new bios is avail ahh cool "fixes computer hang for drives > 65 gig" ohh need that :) Make sure I have a startup disk that works, check...
Hmm now what do I want on this... 98,Xp,FreeBSD. 98 so my games and scanner work, Xp for the hell of it and FreeBSD cause I'm a geek, Gnu is good.
Well one fdisk, format... ouch! a painful 2hrs later, a multiboot system. hmm xp didn't do as I asked only formatted 4gb not 32... guess the quick format option changes that. On the plus side all my email is in Outlook now. That took a few hrs... 6 years of email hehe.
Poking around the windows dirs I found an interesting file in a hidden directory. c:\windows\applog file called Optlog.txt, defrag uses it when you select the move programs to start faster option.
Program Launch Optimization Log - Created Wed Feb 20 11:59:32 2002 Programs Eligible for Optimization: Ord Flag ProgName Uses LastExecDate Program Path 1 RUNDLL32 1455 2002.02.20 C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL32.EXE 2 NOTEPAD 808 2002.02.20 C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE 3 WINAMP 491 2002.02.17 C:\PROGRAM FILES\WINAMP\WINAMP.EXE 4 EXPLORER 435 2002.02.20 C:\WINDOWS\EXPLORER.EXE 5 NDETECT 330 2002.02.19 C:\NETSTUFF\ICQ\NDETECT.EXE 6 PSP 219 2002.02.19 C:\PROGRAM FILES\PAINT SHOP PRO\PSP.EXE 7 WORDPAD 180 2002.02.08 C:\PROGRAM FILES\ACCESSORIES\WORDPAD.EXE 8 RISKIT 166 2002.02.19 C:\GAMES\RISKIT\RISKIT.EXE 9 ZMUD 142 2002.02.19 C:\NETSTUFF\ZMUD\ZMUD.EXE 10 ICQ 127 2002.02.19 C:\NETSTUFF\ICQ\ICQ.EXE
Well I've spent the last couple weeks blogrollin' big time mostly via chris' links (and of course muddin' up to 107M now) tis a blast. I've decided that I enjoy reading what Chris Locke has to rant about, not so much the blog but the EGR Zine tis a blast. I also quite enjoyed reading The Cluetrain Manifesto. I especially found the bit in the first chapter expressing the origin of Rageboy quite enlightning, erudite pontification reigns. My opinion on the cluetrain flame war with Dvorak, everyone has or can have their very own soapbox now, guess John has nightmares involving dodo birds. Fucknozzle and I do remember a fuckerrific evening or two...chuckle.
Ah John Raulston Saul would love this one... DC Comics is suing the Wella shampoo company over the naming of their shampoo "Kryptonite" claiming patent infringement. pfft. The band Three doors down better look out lest corporate lawyers come knocking looking for royalty checks from the song "Kryptonite". Back to the issue at hand. Lessee use this pretty green shampoo and feel listless, tired, can't move... hmmm maybe the corporate honchos are fans of the villians, rethink the name? Wait maybe it's supposed to be a associative relationship like kryponite is to superman what superman is to shampoo hahaha! Yup that must be it :) apply a liberal dollop of this shampoo invigorate thy scalp and you too can feel like superman.
*grin* just thought of a good entrance/exit for my character on the mud. Enter "Ashes spends too much time bloggin." Exit "Ashes' bloggin leans <direction>."
Here's a thought on where some change is needed... the US has slapped a 19% tariff on softwood lumber exports from Canada to the US... Lumber mills are shutting down left right and center here in the northern British Columbia as it's simply too expensive to run. Upwards of 90% of the dimension lumber (ie. a 2x4 2x6... ) produced in BC is destined for the US. Now here's the problem, the big US buyers want the Canadian lumber because it is stronger than the US lumber due to the fact that we have seasons, the fibres are stronger more compressed. The US lumber producers are crying foul simply because demand for their wood isn't there so... create a tariff, all that is really going to happen is houses in the US will become more expensive by about 20%... do you want a 2x4 you can break by hand? Well not that bad but, Do you want your house built with this? Hurricane season approaches...
In a lighter vein... how pure are you? Me well i'm 41% pure.
Yay, no more messing with <table>, <tr>, <td> tags etc. Cascading Style Sheets (css) rock my world :) Gracias to Owen Briggs, glish.com, brainjar.com, tantek.com, alistapart.com and of course www.w3.org for making it all make sense.
