Rare Sports Post: Before there was "Linsanity" there was "Vinsanity"
Yessiirr!!!
via Brother Jesse Blog by Brother Jesse on 3/16/12
Yessiirr!!!
Skilled Trades & Technology are on the rise.
 Globe and Mail | Booming Fort McMurray's college is at a crossroads Globe and Mail And when they train, it's increasingly as skilled labourers – no area of study in Alberta is growing faster than trades and technology. One week ago, Keyano (Cree for “sharing”) cut 20 positions, including the chair and half the faculty of its small ... |
Bigger sometimes is better.
Last year, nearly half a million completed Dropbox‘s very first “Dropquest.” This time, designer Jon Ying and engineer Rajeev Nayak say they “honestly don’t know” how many people will participate, but with the company’s rapid growth, it’s a safe bet that the number will be bigger.
Nayak describes Dropquest as “a gift to our users.” It’s an online scavenger hunt where you solve logic puzzles while also learning about Dropbox’s key features. Everyone who finishes gets 1 extra gigabyte of free storage, and there are other prizes for the players who finish first — the grand prize winner will get a Dropbox employee hoodie, a Dropbox Hack Week T-shirt, a drawing signed by the entire Dropbox team, an invitation to write the next Dropquest, and a 100 gigabytes of free storage for life.
It sounds like you’re going to have to work for that free storage, however — the game is designed to take 12 hours to complete. That’s about how long it was supposed to take last year, too, but someone finished in three hours. This year, it’s longer and more challenging, thanks to additional, harder puzzles, but Ying and Nayak admit there’s still some debate about exactly how long it will take. Puzzles aren’t the only new feature: There’s also a post-apocalyptic science fictional storyline.
Dropquest is a product of the company’s Hack Week in March, where employees can work on whatever they want. This year, one week wasn’t enough to complete the game, so Ying and Nayak say they’ve continued working on-and-off on the game in the two months since.
The contest starts at 10am Pacific time and will be online for three weeks — but don’t be late if you want one of the big prizes. You can read more about Dropquest here and play the game here (the second link goes live at 10).
Published On Sat Feb 11 2012
Nivell Stachan, 35, has gone from being a music technician and producer to selling furnaces and air conditioners door to door on commission.
RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR
For door-to-door salesman Nivell Strachan, the math is simple.
If he doesn’t make a sale, he doesn’t eat.
The 35-year-old home-heating and cooling-systems agent can sometimes smooth-talk a homeowner into buying a furnace, water heater and air conditioner — and pocket a cool $650 commission.
But that doesn’t happen very often in the winter, even when it is unusually mild, he says.
On balance, he figures he earns about $350 a week, or about $15,000 a year after taxes.
It doesn’t go very far after paying rent, utility bills and his student loan.
“I try not to be late on rent,” he says. “But sometimes it’s unavoidable.”
The only time he can afford to go out is when he works as a DJ for a party. But usually he is too tired after walking the streets all day.
After high school, Strachan took out a $7,000 student loan to enroll in a one-year program in music industry marketing. That led to a two-year apprenticeship with a recording company in Los Angeles, where he honed his salesmanship skills.
But the company went bankrupt three years ago, and Strachan’s music career fizzled.
He landed the door-to-door sales job a year ago after working in a warehouse and a call centre.
It is a hard way to make a living. But the way Strachan sees it, 20 per cent of homeowners are interested, 20 per cent are not and all the rest could go either way, depending on your approach. The possibility of making that sale propels him.
“You are always selling yourself,” he says with a smile. “You are building a relationship. It is all about word of mouth.”
When he is not pounding the pavement for sales, Strachan uses his sales acumen to reach out to local businesses as part of a community development project organized by a non-profit agency.
More affordable housing and transit would make a difference in his life, he says. More support for entrepreneurs to create job opportunities for people like him would help too, he adds.
“Knowing you can lay down at night comfortable and knowing you can get where you are going would be two less things to worry about.”
It seems as if the "right to privacy" is no right at all these days.
Kim Hyung-Suk has been busy these past few months. An attorney based out of Seoul, he gained a bit of notoriety for being the first person to receive a cash settlement from Apple for the iPhone’s location-tracking tendencies. He also announced that he and his law firm, Mirae Law, would be looking into the possibility of filing a class-action suit against Apple. According to a report from Bloomberg, with 27,000 Korean complainants on board, that suit was filed today.
Credit where credit is due, Kim Hyung-Suk certainly has a sense of humor. The website set up by his firm last July to reach out to potential plaintiffs greets visitors with an ironic spin on Apple’s language: “Finally. The real action against Apple. Now available here.“
Mr. Hyung-Suk’s original payout was 1 million won (roughly $930), and the firm is seeking that same reward for each of the 27,000 affected customers. This news comes hot on the heels of news that Apple was being fined 3 million ($2,808) won by the Korea Communications Commission for collecting location data even when users disabled all the pertinent features. If this keeps up, Apple may soon be looking at paying out some serious money in compensation.
Should Apple settle in this suit, the rough total in compensation paid out would be the Korean equivalent of over $25 million. Given that Kim Hyung-Suk successfully got his piece of the pie, Apple may be looking at some serious legal maneuvers to try and get the suit dismissed. In fairness, with over $76 billion in their domestic coffers, the settlement costs would be a proverbial drop in the bucket. Still, expect to see Apple put up a concerted defense against the suit in coming weeks.
Toronto Rocks!
When moving to a new country it always helps to know the rules of the game before you start.
What made this video go viral, get removed by YouTube for “inappropriate content” and then get reinstated less than 24 hrs later?
