Developers and poorly worded documentation

Today I found out that even reading the fine print doesn't always matter.  The developer for my area apparently has a thing against cedar trees and rather than list this type of tree in the list of unacceptable trees it assumes that every tree that looks like disallowed tree (a Juniper) will be recognized as not allowed.  I complained about this oversight and was provided with documentation from other areas saying that Junipers and Cedars are really just bushes.  I complained some more and was provided with a "well not much we can do" look. So now i have a week to find and plant a different type of tree and find a place to put my cedar, which can go in the yard but is not acceptable as my landscape tree.

Call in sick go to Jail

The above link is to a BBC story about a Police officer in the UK who repeatedly called in sick when his second job performing weddings conflicted with his police job. He has been sentenced to 9 months in jail for calling in sick when he was actually fine and working his second job. Let that be a lesson to you call in sick do hard time.

The Weather

Yeah that's right in great Canadian tradition I'm going to talk about the weather. It's often suggested that if the weather wasn't so bad or variable that Canadians would have nothing to talk about. People from other countries often can't understand our obsession with weather. In Japan stocks scroll across the bottom of peoples tv screens, in the US it's sports scores, here it's almost always weather. Here the weather has been very cold for the past month. but now it's going to change to +5 which will be really nice. however we can count on February to be a month of cold days. It's not really that we complain about the weather we just discuss it and talk about how we survived it like a group of old men at a bar sharing war stories. Statements like that's nothing you should have seen the pile of snow in my front yard are common and the oneupmanship can be crazy. However the long dark winter does make summer all that much better so that's at least one positive.

Excessive Idling Bylaw

So after months of work and public meetings the City of Edmonton finally got together an excessive idling bylaw. The bylaw has plans to limit idling to 3 minutes in temperatures above minus 10 and to use public reports to catch violators. However after some debate the city has decided that it will opt for education over enforcement and shelve the bylaw for the forseeable future. I guess we'll continue to see the parking lots full of empty vehicles all chugging away so that drivers don't have to get into a chilly car.

President Obama

Well I know it's a little late to be noting this, cause seriously you'd have to be living in a cave to not know this. Anyways Obama will become US president January 20th and it looks like Hillary Clinton will be his Secretary of State. It's a good choice for him as having Clinton as Secretary of State will keep disappointed Democrats happyish, and should help to deflect some criticism of Obamas lack of experience with foreign affairs. It will be interesting to see how Obama handles the current economic situation, it's certainly going to be tough to implement some of his plans but if he's sucessful at steering the country out of the recession then he may earn a place along with F.D.R. and other great leaders. However if the economic crisis deepens Obama may be blamed for not fixing something that he didn't break.

US Election.... FINALLY

Well the US election is finally upon us it won't be long before Obama is crowned as the new President of the US. It seems inevetable that he will win, Palin was a gamble for the Republicans that didn't pay off. Though looking at polls from last week anything could happen it will depend alot on who can get the voters out and wether there's any hanging chad or electronic voting booth problems. Fingers crossed that it's all over soon.