Adopting/Supporting A Child

Many months ago (this must have been almost a year ago now), I saw the movie, About Schmidt. Besides being a good movie, it featured the main character (Jack Nicholson), supporting a child through some agency. The movie centered a lot around his letters to Ndugu and how he descibed the events that transpired to the young boy a world away.

This movie got me thinking about adopting/supporting a child who needed it. Of course I realize that this is something of a cop out in that I'm throwing my money at a problem to take the guilt away, but I think I am learning something from this. And I fully intend to do other good things so that I don't have to feel guilty.

Anyway, I went through a long process of trying to figure out which agency I would go through. I ended up deciding on Plan Canada (formely Foster Parents Plan), mostly because they were non-political and non-religious – in short, they were just there for the communities and their well being. They have no hidden agenda. Their website also claims that roughly 80% of the money they get goes to “programs benefitting children and families”, 11% goes to “public education and fundraising” and 9% goes to administration.

So I sent my application in over the internet. Plan allows you to choose which region of the world your child comes from, but I let that open because I thought that it wouldn't be fair to support a child based on their geography – something that they don't have a choice over. A few weeks later I got the information in the mail, including a picture of my boy. His name is Phichit and he lives in Thailand. We have exchanged a couple of letters back and forth and I have several pictures of him (and I sent him a picture of me). One day I hope to visit Thailand and to meet him in person. Perhaps I will get money one day to do this. I certainly hope so because it would be nice to actually make a personal connection instead of just sending the money. But if you're unable to go somewhere to help people, something like this would be a small step towards making the world a better place.

A Couch Potato's Dream

This week marks the one time of the year when the three major sports teams that I follow are all playing. Yes, that's right, the baseball season is about to begin and the hockey and basketball seasons are coming to a close. Could this be the first year that all three of Toronto's sports teams make the playoffs in their repsective leagues?

For starters, the Raptors seem to have a playoff spot locked up, with the only question being: will they be seeded fourth, third, or – less likely – second. After taking care of Washington and Miami (the two teams they are fighting with for that third spot) this week, it looks good that Toronto will have a fairly high seeding come playoff time. They have 10 games left and are 3 games behind 2^nd place Cleveland and 6 games back of 1^st place Detroit (who they play twice). I am particularly impressed with Anthony Parker. The Raptors did not fare so well when he was out with an ankle sprain. He's not a big scoring guy, but he's a team player (as are most of the Raptors) and he is one of the major reasons for the team's successes this year.

The Leafs are not so much a lock. They are right in the think of the playoff hunt. As of this writing, they are one point out of eighth with one more game to play than the eigth place Monteal Canadiens. As my friend Rich tells me, it will likely come down to the final game of the season when Toronto and Montreal face off in Toronto. No doubt that game will be well watched throughout the 401 corridor. It would be nice for them to get in as I will no doubt hear it from all the Canuck bandwagon jumpers out here in B.C. who are all have all become born again hockey fans after a season in which the Canucks failed to make the playoffs.

The third team - the Blue Jays - hasn't played a single game yet this year, but they look to have a good chance. After last year's 2^nd place finish in their division (albeit 10 games back of the Yankees and 8 games back of the wildcard winner.), they have made some upgrades (Frank Thomas) and gotten rid of some problems (Ted Lilly – incidentally I was at the game when he and Manager John Gibbons allegedly exchanged fisticuffs in the tunnel to the dugout). Last year started bringing back feelings of '92 and '93, so I hope they can build from that.

I check all of my sports scores at Yahoo Sports. There are many other sites including the NHL site, the NBA site and the MLB site.

Which Foods Are Good For Me?

This is often a question we ask ourselves when we're trying to be healthy. Often we have to search for advice. Sure we have Canada's Food Guide, but even though it was recently revamped, it is still short on details. And it doesn't really explain the benefits of the foods we eat.

I have an answer for you. That answer is The World's Healthiest Foods. This website contains a wealth of knowledge which can help anyone eat well. The showcase of the site is it's WHFood List. This list contains all of the foods that fit a set of criteria as healthy foods, including that the food must be a whole food and that is must be widely available, affordable, and tasty. From this list, you can link to pages
which explain the benefits of each of these foods. This information is based on scientific and medical studies and does not make any claims it cannot back up. That list alone has helped me change my diet and has got me eating things I never thought I would eat.

The usefulness of the site does not end there. There are also over 100 recipes on the site among the many other helpful tips to eat healthy. You can also browse the foods by what nutrients they contain.

The site contains this blurb on who they are - the people who maintain the site - and why they exist:

The George Mateljan Foundation is a non-profit organization free of commercial influence, which provides this website for you free of charge. Our purpose is to provide you with unbiased scientific information about how nutrient-rich World's Healthiest Foods can promote vibrant health and energy and fit your personal needs and busy lifestyle

All in all, this site has helped me change my diet and I have never felt better – when I'm eating well that is. I would suggest checking this site. I am fairly certain they keep the information up to date and they list their sources at the end of every article or page.

Pimping Your Firefox Part I: Finding Cool New Sites

To my dismay, I've noticed most of my viewers do not use firefox as their web browser. I debated giving a long rant about why Firefox is better, but I thought showing you would be the best way (the teacher in me is thinking about how we all learn better by doing). If you don't yet have firefox, you can use this nifty link to get you started. Firefox is completely free (it's Open Source Software) and it is actually safer to use than Internet Explorer – sorry Mac users, I'm sure Safari and Opera are great, but I still think Firefox is better.

One of the things that makes Firefox so great is that there are hundreds of little “extensions” you can add to “pimp it up.” Today I am going to talk about two of themselves

The first is StumbleUpon. Once you download this extension and you make an account with StumbleUpon and the internet opens up for you. It works in several ways. One way is that you can rate sites (thumbs up or thumbs down). StumbleUpon keeps track of all the votes for and votes against to help recommend sites to others. It also keeps track of the sites you like and the sites you don't like. Another feature is that you can “tag” sites with different words. For example, this post could get the tag “Firefox” or “Computers.” You can similarly attach tags to yourself of things you like. This is where it gets neat. When you hit the “Stumble!” button, StumbleUpon takes you to a site that fits your preferences. It doesn't always get a site you'll like, but if you hit it often enough, you can find something that interests you.

The second extension came to me from my involvement in BzzAgent. This is a site that tells me about certain products or programs in exchange for me talking about them. The extension in question is free (as are all Firefox extensions) and it's called Me.dium. It works similarly but the interface is different. It opens up a sidebar and shows you sites floating around that are similar. It also has little people to show you which other Me.dium users are at those sites. You can make “friends” with Me.dium and is especially good when trying to share websites with your “friends.” In essence, Me.dium is for people who want to surf the web with someone else. You could use this for things such as shopping, planning a trip, or doing research. It sounds complicated, but once you see it, it makes much more sense. One thing I should also note is that it won't show other people sites that are password protected, and you can turn it off whenever you don't want people to see what site you're on (for whatever reason).

So this is just the first part of many where I'll tell you about great Firefox extensions in my bid to switch a few of you over. I hope you try out Firefox and you'll see why everyone is raving about it!

One of the Best Sites on the Internet

A few months ago, a friend and colleague of mine told me to check out a site called Lifehacker. I took his advice and I was blown away by what I found. Essentially, Lifehacker is a blog full of tips to help you with everything from making your computer work more for you to improving your socials skills. Every day, the authors of the blog add many posts. One feature that I have used profusely is their Dowload of the Day posts. Every day (and often more than once a day), the site profiles a small program that usually happens to be quite useful. For example, yesterday (March 28^th), one of their profiles was of a program that will allow computers that have wi-fi to link up to each other without any internet connections.

The site caters to both relative beginners to computer experts. They have many readers who comment on the posts and offer up more advice (if you're willing to read the comment threads). This is one of the sites that I check multiple times daily, and I would suggest that others check it. I have no doubt you'll find something helpful if you check it every once and a while.