Port Alberni – The Youngest Place on Vancouver Island?

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Lots of news out there today about the Census data. If you’re wondering about Port Alberni, linked are the goods from Stats Can:

Duncan, Courtenay and Campbell River are pretty similar to us age wise, but compared to our closest neighbours in Parksville, Qualicum and the NRD, we’re practically a ‘Yutes’ Only Zone! :)

Pt Alberni: Kids -3.2% Working -1.1%; Over 65 +12.6% Over 80 +9.6%Total: +1.1%
Media Age: 46.6

Qualicum: Kids -22.0%; Working -6.1%; Over 65 +17.5% Over 80 +34.6% Total: +2.2%
Media Age: 63.9

Parksville: Kids -3.4%; Working +4.6%; Over 65 +20.3% Over 80 +23.6% Total: +8.9%
Media Age: 58.2

Nanaimo: Kids 0.0%; Working +5.3%; Over 65 +16.6% Over 80 +20.1% Total: +6.5%
Media Age: 44.8

Ladysmith: Kids -8.8%; Working +5.3%; Over 65 +16.1% Over 80 +7.8% Total: +5.0%
Media Age: 48.3

Duncan: Kids -2.3%; Working +2.5%; Over 65 +18.1% Over 80 +19.3% Total: +4.5%
Media Age: 52.3

Courtenay: Kids -4.3%; Working +7.0%; Over 65 +30.8% Over 80 +41.6% Total: +9.5%
Media Age: 46.5

Campbell R: Kids -3.3%; Working +2.4%; Over 65 +32.2% Over 80 +30.8% Total: +5.5%
Media Age: 45.3

Courtenay/Campbell River are pretty similar to us age wise. Nanaimo and Courtenay is where the major growth is but Nanaimo is the only place where the number of kids didn’t fall, in fact, it stayed exactly the same!

For the much broader areas of the Regional Districts the distinction isn’t nearly as great and the ACRD actually ends up with the most kids lost but still a much lower uptake of seniors and the over 80s. The kid boom in Nanaimo is swallowed by the grey wave in the rest of the Nanaimo Regional District and the Comox Valley also had a huge influx of seniors. Our region is most similar to the Cowichan Valley. Notice at the bottom I put the stats for Victoria. While they certainly have their share I think it’s safe to say Victoria has lost its mantle of dominion of the ‘nearly-dead’ but certainly maintains the ‘newly-wed’ (concentrated mostly in the boom-town of Langford and the West Shore).

Notice though that the ACRD and the Capital Regional District have the closest median age near 45. While the three East Island Regional Districts all have ages in the around 48. Campbell River and the North Island (Mount Waddington) have a remarkably young median age, perhaps due to a disproportionate amount of First Nations reserves (purely speculation on my part), but a very rapidly aging population.

ACRD: Kids -6.4%; Working -0.1%; Over 65 15.9%; Over 80 14.8%; Total 1.3%
Median Age: 45.1

Nanaimo RD: Kids -4.0%; Working 3.8%; Over 65 18.5%; Over 80 21.2%; Total 5.7%
Median Age: 49.3

Comox Valley RD: Kids -4.5%; Working 4.3%; Over 65 25.8%; Over 80 26.2%; Total 6.8%
Median Age: 48.3

Cowichan Valley: Kids -4.5%; Working 3.4%; Over 65 16.5%; Over 80 14.9%; Total 4.4%
Median Age: 47.2

Mt Waddington: Kids -6.9%; Working -4.1%; Over 65 34.7%; Over 80 46.4%; Total -1.2%
Median Age: 41.8

Capital: Kids -2.8%; Working 4.7%; Over 65 8.3%; Over 80 1.5%; Total 4.3%
Median Age: 44.8

IPad work on WiFi but not Virgin 3G… Call Virgin

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So a couple months back (conveniently right before the new iPad(tm) was released) my iPad 2 suddenly refused to connect to the Internet with 3G.

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Everything worked on Wifi but on 3G, even with 4 ‘bars’ showing, nothing could access the Internet. Not Safari, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, not a single app could use the Internet while on 3G.

So I called my provider, Virgin Mobile, who I must say are fantastic. I never wait more than a minute or two on hold for someone to answer and they are always polite and helpful.

Over many phone calls I went through all the steps:
Turn the 3G on/off in the settings
Fiddle with the address under APN settings
Reset/Reboot my iPad
restore the iPad in iTunes

I even got a new SIM card and eventually a new iPad! Nothing worked. Finally after I got the new iPad and it still didn’t work, they reset my account at Virgin and voila, working again.

And so it has been for a couple months, until last week when the same issue popped up: No 3G service.

Thankfully, having gone through it all before I went through all the steps before phoning Virgin (minus the restoring or buying a new SIM/iPad). When I did call them I told them about the previous issue, they looked it up, asked if I followed the same steps and then got their Tech to reset my account (the person says the techs basically turn it off, and back on).

It looks like in the intervening time, Virgin has become aware of this issue and they have a workaround ready, kudos to them.

A quick switch on/off of 3G with the Airplane Mode button on my iPad and it was again happy on 3G even before I hung up the phone.

So if you have this problem with Virgin (or possibly Bell since they use the same network) hopefully this helps.

Hidden File to fix Time Machine start errors

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(Update: so while this worked for a couple of days, it has now stopped working. Sigh) so sorry Internets, YMMV on this one!)

So I’ve had a Time Machine backup on my computer at home for a couple years. It’s never really worked ever since I got a dual-hard drive box setup with RAID. It would backup once and then give errors even though I could run it manually – once per reboot – if I rebooted and hit “Backup Now”. I’ve never had this problem on other systems with Time Machine, only this one. I just assumed it had something to do with the RAID in the hard drive and was content to initiate it manually.

Today I noticed in the logs (because I’m a big enough geek to look at the logs sometimes … “tail -fn 500 /var/log/system.log” can be fun to watch in the Terminal on rainy days) that there was a single error being generated from the hidden folder .fseventsd on the backup volume while the backup was happening.

Given that it was hidden, which generally means it is automatically regenerated when it is deleted without too much effect… I deleted it.

Lo-and-behold now it appears Time Machine is automatically starting itself up as it should without errors.

To lay it out more specifically:

Problem: After initial successful backup after a reboot Time Machine gives error when starting automatic backup. Workaround is to Turn Off Time Machine and initiate “Backup Now” manually after rebooting.

Operating System: MacOS X 10.6.8

Solution (Perhaps): In the Terminal go to your Backup Volume:

cd /Volumes/MyBackupVolume

List all of the files in the directory:

ls -la

You should see:
.fseventsd

Delete it. It’s actually a folder so you’ll need to apply it recursively:

rm -rf .fseventsd

Now reboot and turn on Time Machine and see what happens. It worked for me. Hope it works for you.

Teachers Should Obey The Law. They Should Walk Out

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BC Teachers are currently deciding whether they should challenge the government and walk out in defiance of Bill 22 and the fines it imposes.

I say, yes, they should. In fact they should not return until the Government agrees to repeal Bill 22 and fully comply with the Supreme Courts decision.

No action would so clearly show what they are actually railing against.

That is, an autocratic government that has under funded schools for decades and taken away fundamental, constitutional rights not only from the labour union to negotiate its own working conditions (class sizes, composition, etc) but that also threatens the fundamental right of every person and child to an education. It does this through lack of resources, and support and the encouragement of a two tier system where those who can afford it, put their kids in private school (where class sizes are often no more than 15 with no special needs children!) leaving those who can’t behind.

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How can it be breaking the law when the law itself (Bill 22) is breaking the law of the land (the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) as interpreted by the Supreme Court?

The Supreme Court, through the Charter, has final say on any Act of Parliament. That is the final check on our democracy, and that is what the BC Liberals have chosen to ignore.

Should our children not know the difference between right and wrong, especially when that difference is more complex than some might have you to believe?

Would our children not benefit from seeing our teachers risk thousands of dollars in personal fines by walking out to show them that their education and rights are worth the risk.

And if we, the public, stand behind the teachers then those children will see that when the cause is just, and truly threatens our democratic and human rights, then it is worth a little pain because the government will listen, and will change, if only to preserve itself.

That means we as a public have a responsibility to support the teachers to the fullest extent possible. If we do not, we give government a free pass to trod on our rights and ignore our highest judges and courts.

If instead the BCTF chooses limited action like suspending all extra curricular activities, then it will have shown that it really is just about that 15% raise, and not much else. And that would be a far more tragic outcome.

People are dying around the world because their basic human rights have been denied to them for decades. Here, teachers have a chance to truly stand up for the rights that we all expect and perhaps have taken for granted while they are whittled away by a government that knows what it can get away with.

Stand up Teachers. For us, and for our children. I, and I believe most others, will stand with you.

*full disclosure: I am not a member of the BCTF or anyone else involved in this dispute. However, I am a public employee and a member of the faculty union at VIU which stood up against much the same attitude during a month long strike at VIU last year.

In Response: Rex Murphy and the Oilsands

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In a commentary in the National Post tonight Rex Murphy calls the Tar Sands “Canada’s great national project for the 21st century” and those who might deride those same Tar Sands and advocate for greener energies (like Dalton McGuinty) as, in as many words, naive hypocrites.

As much as I enjoy Mr. Murphys command of the English language, he is dead wrong in this respect.

First, no matter what you call them, the Tar Sands, or Oil Sands, are not oil resources. None of it is oil that can go to an actual refinery until it is either dug out of a mine and sent through a separator or literally melted out of the ground using copious amounts of Natural gas.

Shell Scothford Bitumen Upgrader


Then it must be sent to one of 5 bitumen upgraders where it is turned into “SynCrude” which only then is roughly equivalent to ‘heavy’ regular (with caveats) crude oil and can be sent to appropriate refineries and turned into gasoline for our cars.

He might not like the ‘dirty’ oil tag that Oil Sands has gotten, but the reality is, your standard Alberta Oil Derrick is spic-and-span compared to the Tar Sands both in terms of the CO2 intensity of the operation, and the devastation and population it wrecks on land, river, and air.

Second, there is nothng ’21st century’ about continue the practices of the 19th and 20th. There is nothing new and amazing about the Tar Sands. At best they are using technology (eg. SAGD, CCS) that was developed 40 years ago

Why Oil Prices are so High

This is not why gas prices are high

to create a fuel that we started burning in large quantities barely 100 years ago, and will likely begin reaching the limits of production of it within the next 10-15 years if not sooner.

It does not matter what you, or Rex Murphy, or Dalton McGuinty drives today. What matters is what we drive, and demand, and use, tomorrow and how little CO2 we can have it produce. That is the 21st century challenge.

Arctic sea ice volume anomaly from PIOMAS updated once a month.

Today, with an Arctic that is thinning at unprecedented rates and where Winnipeg is breaking high temperature records by a dozen degrees or more, the Tar Sands are a national scar and an international embarrassment.

I have ideas about what “Canada’s great national project for the 21st century” might be. (It might end up looking a lot like Canada’s great 19th century project) I hope that Mr. Murphy takes the time to investigate every single facet of what the Tar Sands means to Albertans, Canadians, and the World before he passes judgement again in the National Post.

#Oil Sand Crude Caveats: According to the Canadian Encyclopedia “Bitumen”:

The distillates obtained from the hydrocracker, the delayed coker and the fluid coker are good feedstock for a conventional refinery. However, such distillates are “live,” tending to polymerize and foul surfaces, and must be mildly hydrotreated before being pumped through pipelines to distant refineries. This mildly hydrotreated feedstock is called synthetic crude.

Note also that I did not mention “dilbit” in my post, which is, as the name implies, diluted Bitumen and is, I believe, a much more recent invention and is also far more corrosive and heavier than syncrude.

(Thank you to @andrew_leach for pointing out some inconsistencies)