• Surface Pro 3 – Intel® Core™ i5 Processor, 128GB storage2 with 4GB RAM
• Windows 8.1 Pro
• Surface Pen – for the best writing and drawing experience on a tablet
• Surface Pro Type Cover (black) – designed exclusively for Surface Pro 3, the revolutionary click-in keyboard also protects your display
• Office 365 Personal – a 1 year subscription3 to the latest versions of the best-in-class applications that you know and love like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote
The cost to match that at Future shop is $1,240.24. – about $40 more.
Buying online is much more complicated at Future Shop. In store, Future Shop spends more time upselling you. And confusing you with complicated and seemingly random discounts IF you buy a warranty.
Bottom line: Shop Costco over Future Shop, if you can.
It is based on Chris Kyle’s autobiography American Sniper …
The film stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller …
I’ve enjoyed all the Clint Eastwood directed movies, so assumed I’d like this one.
I did. Most people do.
It wasn’t as good as Unforgiven (1992) or Million Dollar Baby (2004), but I’d recommend you see it. Unless you have an aversion to violent films.
American Sniper received positive response from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a “Certified Fresh” rating of 73%, based on 203 reviews from critics …
The highlight by far was Bradley Cooper. His performance is subtle and nuanced, unlike the movie which is very Eastwood. Too many cliche lines and story points.
It’s a Hollywood moviebased on a true story. Not a documentary.
I don’t find the criticism I’ve read at all valid.
(It is fair to point out that Kyle was inspired after terrorists from Yemen and Saudi Arabia attacked the USA. Yet he was sent instead to fight in Iraq. Saddam Hussein didn’t want anything to do with Bin Laden.)
War is Hell. I’m against war. I wish Kyle had stayed home. If he had been Canadian, he would have. Canada did not join in the coalition of the willing, one of the smartest decisions ever for my nation.
If you don’t like snipers. Don’t like war. Blame Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, not Chris Kyle. He was simply following the orders of his President.
American Sniper is as much an anti-war film as one glorifying war.
I did find it surprising that Eastwood included one scene: Kyle pointing an (unloaded) gun at his wife, in jest. And then setting the weapon carelessly on a ledge with his children in the room. To me it foreshadowed something was going to happen.
Perhaps that scene was in the script. But Eastwood didn’t change it. It seemed unlikely to me that a firearms expert like Chris Kyle would be so nonchalant with weapons in his family home.
__
I wasn’t surprised to learn that the real Chris Kyle suffered mentally. I wasn’t surprised to learn he had died from gun fire.
“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
If you spend enough time around firearms, you stand a higher percentage chance of accident, suicide or murder than if you don’t.
Eddie Ray Routh, then 25, shot and killed Chris Kyle, 38, and his friend Chad Littlefield on Feb. 2, 2013, at a shooting range in Erath County, Texas. Kyle often took veterans, such as Routh, out on shooting ranges to work with them and help them cope with PTSD and related problems.
I REALLY love setting the display to “Larger Text”, making everything larger on screen. Unfortunately some apps don’t fit on to that screen so I switch, now and again, back to the standard retina display.
New this Pro is very snappy.
I paid CDN$1406 (US$1132) including tax after a trade-in, an old computer that barely worked. It’s CDN$1599 new with 256GB flash memory. (Flash costs about $1/GB these days.)
The Yosemite operating system is a big improvement, especially Spotlight search.
Oklahoma police released a video Friday from the body camera of a cop who fatally shot a suspect earlier this month.
Muskogee Officer Chansey McMillin, responding to a domestic abuse complaint, approached 21-year-old Terrance Walker outside the Old Agency Baptist Church on Jan. 17, according to local media. (Reports were that Walker had threatened his girlfriend with a weapon.)
The video shows Walker run away and McMillin give chase. The suspect then stops to bend over and pick up something he has dropped in the street.
From the video, it is not clear what he is attempting to retrieve, but police say it was a loaded semiautomatic pistol.
McMillin fires five shots at Walker, who had set off running again, which strike and kill the young man …
I was tempted to jump to Microsoft after seeing the Surface 3 and Windows phones. But opted to buy a new MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch) with Yosemite. I’m half way through a 5 year project editing video in iMovie 11. I want to stick with the same simple software.
Loving the Pro. Especially the Retina monitor.
But if Microsoft HoloLens is one third as cool as this promo video, my next computer will be Windows.
The state is giving homeless people homes. It’s a solution that might sound too simple, but it’s working. The program, called “Housing First”, has origins in New York. Utah started its own pilot of the program in 2005 with 17 people. The state took them off the street and put them into housing for twenty-two months. After the state saw that all 17 people remained housed and stable during that time, the project was expanded. …
Housing First, which is distinct and separate from “rapid re-housing”, is a relatively recent innovation in human service programs and social policy regarding treatment of the homeless and is an alternative to a system of emergency shelter/transitional housing progressions.
Rather than moving homeless individuals through different “levels” of housing, known as the Continuum of Care, whereby each level moves them closer to “independent housing” (for example: from the streets to a public shelter, and from a public shelter to a transitional housing program, and from there to their own apartment in the community) Housing First moves the homeless individual or household immediately from the streets or homeless shelters into their own apartments.
Housing First approaches are based on the concept that a homeless individual or household’s first and primary need is to obtain stable housing, and that other issues that may affect the household can and should be addressed once housing is obtained. …
I’ve decided to stick with Apple for at least one more machine.
I’m getting close to the BUY date. So far, it looks much like my current laptop:
13″ Air – June 2013 or later with Haswell CPU. 256GB minimum. 8GB memory.
Refurbished I see it at CDN$1100. I’ll look for the best deal on an older model.
I wish the successor to Haswell, the Broadwell chip, was coming soon. But it looks to be mid-2015 at earliest. Apple might even wait for the Intel’s chip after that, code named Skylake.
The ELF is a solar and pedal hybrid vehicle powered by you and the sun.
“The most efficient vehicle on the planet”, it is a revolution in transportation and gets the equivalent of 1800 MPG.
Hand built in the USA, the ELF is legally a bicycle, so it can travel on bike paths, park on sidewalks and requires no gas, license, registration or insurance. It can travel up to 20 mph on electric power only and up to 30 mph when combined with pedaling. It can hold more than a dozen bags of groceries and can handle an amazing 350 lb. payload. …
10. Tie between Louie (FX) and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO).
9. Homeland (Showtime). “I think it bounced back this year after a bad previous season.”
8. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central).
7. For the last time on my list, The Colbert Report (Comedy Central).
6. True Detective (HBO).
5. Fargo (FX).
4. The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (PBS).
3. The Walking Dead (AMC).
2. Justified (FX), which is about to come back for its final season. “I think this is one of the most underrated shows on television, and it has one last chance to close its book and get some acclaim.”
1. The Good Wife (CBS). “They have the deepest roster of really strong regulars and guest stars. … What I love about the show is that everyone’s motives are always suspect.”
(MSF) or Doctors Without Borders, is a French-founded (now international and federal) humanitarian-aid non-governmental organization and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, best known for its projects in war-torn regions and developing countries facing endemic diseases. …
In 2007 over 26,000, mostly local, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, logistical experts, water and sanitation engineers and administrators provided medical aid in over 60 countries. These doctors and nurses decided to volunteer their time to solve issues of world health. Private donors provide about 80% of the organization’s funding, while governmental and corporate donations provide the rest, giving MSF an annual budget of approximately US$400 million. …
A friend just bought a Surface Pro 3 at Costco. Not Future Shop.
Rick McCharles 