If the ideal solution has lighting vary with the amount of traffic, perhaps the highways should be an integrated system with wires sensing traffic and sensors measuring ambient light so as to produce a target amount of illumination, mostly regardless of the time of day. And if the lights are cut from 100% to 50% in a single step, it's going to be a little startling for anyone on the road. Hopefully they'll design a system intelligent enough to reduce the power gradually.

Politicians are always attempting to be experts at everything. This failure is magnified when they start talking about the Internet, because on the Internet, everyone's an expert.

Right?

As a phone, it's fine.

As a smartphone, it's not fine at all -- the net connection can be awesome one minute, and non-existent the next. The good news is that the battery that initially required recharging daily is now up to lasting two days, which I can live with.

This is on a three year contract with another two years to run. I'll probably get an Android phone when this contract expires, but who knows what the marketplace will look like by then.

There are hydroelectric dams at Niagara, nuclear plants in Pickering, and windmills here and there, so my power comes from a variety of sources.

I also have a smart meter (http://www.torontohydro.com/sites/electricsystem/residential/smartmeters/Pages/SmartMetersFAQs.aspx#whatarethetimeofuseratesgoingtobe) which means that I'm careful to schedule my heavy usage (dishwasher, washer and dryer) on the off-peak times.

I consider September first to be the beginning of the year -- summer's lazy days are over, and now it's cooler and time to buckle down and get back to work.

That's not to day I don't enjoy the official New Year's Day when we start a new year, but it's a week after Christmas; some people are still celebrating that holiday by eating, drinking, vacationing, doing mad purchasing and so forth. From a weather point of view (in Toronto, anyway), December 31 still pretty much feels like January 1.

Kudos for Comcast for finally getting the ball rolling on IPv6. A /128 address gets their foot in the door, and as their post says, they can expand it later.

I signed up for OKCupid in November of last year. Getting back into the dating game was quite weird after two failed marriages.

Yep, I met a few duds, but I also met some very attractive, very intelligent, sexy women. I met my girlfriend of six months on the site -- I think she contacted me first, but I'm not sure.

Here's the key: BE YOURSELF.

[] Offer an honest portrait of yourself.
[] Upload pictures where people can get a good look at you (so, duh, no sunglasses, no pictures of scenery with you a little splotch in the far left corner). They should be recent, and they should show you enjoying yourself. They could be conversation starters.
[] If you find someone fascinating, drop them a line; if they respond, great. If they don't, move on.
[] If the conversation remains at the 'small talk' level, it's your option, but I'd say move on.
[] A neutral location is a great place to meet for the first time. I like Starbucks because they have nice chairs, a variety of nice drinks and they don't hustle you out the door after ten minutes. Chat. Did I mention BE YOURSELF?
[] If you both discover that you've been talking for 45 minutes, that's good. If you're struggling to keep the conversation alive after five minutes, that's good -- it's not happening. Move on.
[] I took two women to shoot pool because it's something I enjoy. They both had a blast. Don't try to manufacture some 'event'; do something fun, something you want to do.

And no, I'm not some twenty-something living in his Mom's basement. I own my house, and I finished university thirty years ago.

Been with pair Networks (pair.com) for over ten years. They're probably not the cheapest, as other folks have been saying, but they are rock solid, and they provide great customer service. I met some of the pair guys when they were at YAPC in Toronto in 2003. Very nice.

No, the servers don't run Linux, they use FreeBSD, but it's absolutely solid, and they're progressive about upgrading their machines and their network. Highly recommended.