How Andre Boisclair Could Have Avoided Defeat

Winnipeg Jets Logo

Clearly, during the campaign, he should have promised to bring back the Quebec Nordiques.

Hey, the tactic might just work for the Manitoba Progressive Conservative party:

If the Progressive Conservatives are elected the next government of Manitoba, they will work to “bring back the Winnipeg Jets,” the party’s leader announced Monday.

“We need to increase Manitoba’s cool factor if we want our young people to stay,” he said. “The first step is to bring back the Jets.”

(link)

Even more intriguingly, the NDP have taken the Conservative promise seriously and are on the counterattack.

Within a few hours, the NDP had refined its message. The issue became which party would be most likely to bring the NHL back to Winnipeg.

“There’s one person who can do this: it’s Gary Doer,” said campaign co-chair Andrew Swan.

Will the NDP create a new crown corporation? Or will the Conservatives offer deep tax incentives to try and entice the Coyotes back home?

Only the Liberals aren’t biting.

“I would love to have the Winnipeg Jets back in Winnipeg, but this is putting the cart before the horse,” leader Jon Gerrard said in a release.

“It’s bad economics, it’s bad tax policy, it’s irresponsible, and it shows the Tories have absolutely no vision when it comes to a stronger economy or keeping people in Manitoba.”

Tellingly, though, the Manitoba Liberals remain in third place.

Hat tip to Right of Center Ice.


What Do I Do With Our Old Computer?
(Sung to the tune of “What Do We Do With a Drunken Sailor?)

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Anybody have any interest in a 1999, vintage lime green iMac?

I fondly remember arranging to get Erin this computer as a Christmas/welcome to Canada gift back in 1999, replacing her old Apple IIC. She needed a new computer in order to write, and her friends, Dan, my parents and I each contributed. Wayne and Marguerite picked out the computer and brought it with them on their trip to Canada. Erin was delighted, and it has provided years of yeoman service since.

Almost eight years of yeoman service, actually. Even though we upgraded the RAM, the thing still can only run version 10.0 of Mac OsX. Erin now has a 12 inch iBook and, more importantly, our work patterns have shifted in this house such that we no longer do a lot of work in our bedroom. Erin is thinking about turning it into something nice now that it no longer has to share use as an office.

I’ve also switched away from Primus DSL back to Rogers Cable for my Internet (long story, which I’ll supply at a later date). We still don’t have Rogers Cable TV, so we decided to store the cable modem and the wireless router downstairs where we work instead of in our bedroom. So, again, one more reason to get rid of the old iMac. Its use as an access point for the wireless router has been eliminated since I can simply snap on an ethernet cable between my MacBook and the router.

As the router is also showing signs of giving way, I thought about purchasing an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. At $199, that’s one expensive wireless router (the router I own, though old, was bought for half that amount, and many routers these days go for even less), but it has the advantage of working flawlessly with our Apple laptops, and allowing us to hook on a USB hard drive to back up our laptops wirelessly.

So I called Carbon Computing, the Apple reseller in town, and asked them for the trade in value of a lime green Apple iMac — the famous computer that started the whole Apple renaissance, after all. Surely it must have some collector’s value.

Sure it does. Exactly $10 worth.

Mind you, this is nothing to sneeze at. Somebody would be paying me $10 to keep this thing out of the trash. I’m pretty sure this thing is not allowed in the trash, so I’m willing to consider it.

But the iMac works perfectly fine, despite its antiquated software, and might be of use to somebody somewhere, perhaps some social service agency somewhere? Anyway, I’d appreciate any suggestions people might have in finding people who would find this piece of computing history useful.

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