Today marks the 100th edition of the PodCacher podcast!  (In fact, they’ve produced more than 100 podcasts when you include the Midweek Micro podcast, but those are typically numbered .1 (eg: this week’s will be 100.1).) I’ve been listening to Sonny and Sandy since the very early days of the podcast and the quality of their podcasts have improved steadily.  They have interviews with various geocachers and stories of both their exploits as cachers and listeners who send in their stories.  I even had the privilege to do the intro for one of their shows in the fall. 🙂

Congratulations guys!

The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 included a section that amended the Uniform Time Act to have daylight saving time start in March rather than April, effective 11 March 2007. Ignoring the fact that it probably will not result in any significant energy savings, in my opinion, it poses some technical challenges for people and companies who have computers. (I’ll write about the energy savings aspect later!)

Though I’ve been running Linux for more than 15 years, I have never given much thought to how the operating system handles timezones. It was all rather blackboxish and just worked. The change in daylight saving time means that it’s suddenly not going to work properly. Fortunately, an article in eWeek addressing this issue caught my eye today. It referenced a Linux-Watch article that had very good instructions for Linux sysadmins.

In a nutshell, Linux (and most other *NIX operating systems) uses a set of files, located in /usr/share/zoneinfo on most systems, that define timezones in excrutiating detail from days of old to the end of the current epoch in 2038. These files are compiled using a tool called zic from text files that have the rules in them. Diehards will probably modify these files by hand to reflect the change for 2007, while the rest of us will go to ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ to download the most recent files.

Before downloading anything, however, you want to check to see if your system is perhaps already aware of the change.

The file /etc/localtime typically holds the timezone information. My old 2.2.34 Slackware system had this as a symbolic link pointing to /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern (because I live in Ottawa), while my Fedora Core 2 system had a copy of the Eastern file in /etc/localtime. Presumably the Fedora system copied the file from /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern as part of the installation process.

To see what’s in the file and determine whether you need to make a change, use the zdump command.

[root@seedling tzdata]# zdump -v /etc/localtime |grep 2007
/etc/localtime Sun Apr 1 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Apr 1 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Apr 1 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Apr 1 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Oct 28 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Oct 28 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Oct 28 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000

As you can see, my daylight saving time was set to start at 07:00:00 UTC on April 1st this year. As daylight saving time kicks in on March 11th, this means I need to modify the file.

I then went to ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/ and downloaded tzdata2007c.tar.gz and put it in /root/tzdata (you’ll need to create that directory first). Once there, I untar’d it.

Using the zic command, I compiled the new timezone files that applied to me thusly:

[root@seedling tzdata]# zic -d zoneinfo northamerica

This created a zoneinfo directory in my /root/tzdata directory containing compiled versions of the rules. I moved these into /usr/share/zoneinfo using the following command:

[root@seedling tzdata]# cp -vr –reply=yes * /usr/share/zoneinfo

NB: you may not need the –reply=yes depending on your shell settings. seedling is used primarily as my Asterisk server and DHCP server so I don’t spend much time on it and thus haven’t made non-interative my default for cp.

Because seedling, my Fedora Core 2 system, had a static file rather than a symbolic link, I replaced the file with a symbolic link to /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern file. This makes it easier to manage and means that if daylight saving time is switched back to April that I won’t have to worry about forgetting to update /etc/localtime.

[root@seedling tzdata]# mv localtime localtime.ORIG;ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Canada/Eastern localtime

Backups of crucial files are always important, and you can see that I saved the original file just in case it’s needed.

You can confirm that the new daylight saving time start and end dates have taken effect using the zdump command:

[root@seedling etc]# zdump -v /etc/localtime|grep 2007
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 05:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 06:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000

As you can see, the dates now reflect March rather than April. If you remove the grep, you’ll see the dates from days of old to the end of the epoch in 2038.

Obviously, if you’re following these instructions and you don’t live in Canada’s Eastern timezone, you’ll want to select a more appropriate file.

If you’re from eastern Ontario, chances are fair that you’ve heard that the Hershey’s plant in Smiths Falls is going to be closed by the parent company, which is based in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Besides making chocolates and candies in Smiths Falls, the Hershey’s plant is the second largest employer in town, employing 500 people. Not only will the closure of the plant result in the loss of these jobs, there will be secondary loses felt by the local companies that supply ingredients, packaging and transportation services to the plant. And then there’s the tourism benefit to the town. Over the years, I have visited the factory on a number of occasions to buy things from the factory store. Usually, I’ll stop in town to buy gas or something to eat, too. With the closure of the factory, trips like mine will be lost so the tourism revenues will be decreased.

As happens often in towns with large employers there are some families that derive 100% of their income from the factory. In Smiths Falls, 54 couples will find themselves without a source of income as a result of the plant closure. Thus, another result of the closure will probably be an increase in the use of welfare services. Some people might even have to leave town altogether to find work elsewhere.

The closure will be particularly hard on Smiths Falls because it’s going to be followed up by the largest employer in Smiths Falls, Rideau Regional Centre, who employees 800 people, closing its doors sometime in 2008. And, of course, there are some families of Hershey workers who have family members that work for Rideau Regional, so the town is going to be devasted over the next few years.

Dairy Farmers of Ontario, the marketing group representing Ontario dairy farmers, reported recently that they supply 39 million litres of milk (1.5% of the 2.6 billion litres produced in Ontario every year) to the factory in Smiths Falls. The factory pays a highly discounted rate of 30 cents/litre and apparently have never raised cost as an issue with the DFO. If they move some of the operations to Mexico, as some people think will happen, it’s unlikely that they’ll get a better milk price. Because DFO pools all the milk produced by its members, the losses will be distributed evenly to all the milk producers so no local farmers will suddenly find themselves with milk they can’t sell.

The Premier of Ontario has apparently spoken to the CEO of Hershey’s to see if there’s anything the province can do to convince the company to leave the plant open. From what was reported on CBC radio, the discussion doesn’t appear to have made a difference.

It’s puzzling that the factory will close given that it does turn a profit. According to CBC, the closure is part of a global restructuring program that will see the loss of 1500 jobs worldwide.

An online petition has been set up to try to convince the company to change its mind. It can be found at http://www.petitiononline.com/hershsf/petition.html. I encourage you to sign it, if for no other reason than the one a co-worker who lives in Smiths Falls put forward: “who doesn’t like cheap chocolate?”

For most of the last 24 hours, I have been without network access at home. Calls to my ISP go into their phone queue system, which tells me that it there is a network problem their technicians are “diligently working to repair” before telling me that it can’t connect me right now because all their reps are with other clients and then hanging up.

It appears that the block of network addresses that my IP address belongs to is no longer being announced to the world, meaning that I can fling packets into the ether and though they might get to the destination, the destination system doesn’t know how to connect back to my address.

This means that I’ve had to make alternative arrangements to transfer my voice over IP (VoIP) phone stuff to a server that’s not on my ISP’s network, so if you’ve called and left me a message, I’ll get back to you next time I check my voicemail.

Update: As of Sunday morning at about 02:43:47, my Internet connection is working. 02:43:47 is the first log entry in Pinetree’s sendmail logs and it happens to be a piece of spam. (Anyone surprised it was spam?)

I just want to take a moment to wish everyone a safe, prosperous and happy 2007!

Like most years, 2006 had its ups and downs. The “ups” include starting a new job at Statistics Canada, spending more time at the cottage in the summer than I have in several years, doing more geocaching and getting back into amateur radio. The “downs” include becoming single again and still not doing enough diving (a complaint from my 2005 summary).

Still, overall 2006 was a very good year and I’m looking forward to 2007!

Today, Ottawa City Council voted 13:11 to scrap both the original and modified light rail transit plans. Instead, Ottawa can look forward to claims by the consortium that was going to build the new O-Train of between $250 million and $300 million. And that’s on top of $65 million that was spent developing the plan. (For the record, I had absolutely no problems with the money spent on developing the plan when it was going to come to fruition.)

Great.

So, Ottawa remains the only city of the five largest cities in Canada that doesn’t have some form of rail transit. To meet the short-term transit demands, more buses are going to have to be pressed into service on roads that are already at, near or even over capacity. More buses means more road congestion which means more vehicles idling, resulting in more greenhouse gas emissions. More vehicles on the road means more wear-and-tear on the roads, so expect more cracks and potholes.

And you cannot convince me that this wasn’t very orchestrated quite some time in advance by our mayor and his cronies. This outcome is great because Larry can blame two other levels of government for the failure of the LRT plan, which he opposed in the first place, even though the whole situation was brought on when he asked his friend, John Baird, to usurp the prerogative of the then City Council and put every thing on hold under after he was elected mayor. When the plan was modified a couple of weeks ago, he did a 180 degree turn and supported the modified plan by breaking a tied vote. Subsequently, both the Province of Ontario and the federal government expressed concerns about the modified plan and indicated they wouldn’t be able to assess the modifications by a critical deadline in the contract. The Province of Ontario sent a letter today confirming that the funding would be provided if the original plan were approved and presumably the federal government would honour its committment similarly.

Instead, we’re looking at possibly more than a quarter of a billion dollars in claims. That combined with Larry’s pledge of 0% increases means that Ottawa’s probably going to be a fairly unpleasant place to live for the next few years. You can already see hints of things to come in the 2007 Budget Directions Report on the agenda of today’s Council meeting:

1. That Council approve the development of a Draft Operating Budget for 2007 for all tax-supported services (excluding Ottawa Police Services), that includes:

a. The cost of maintaining current programs at current service levels;
b. The cost of providing provincially mandated and cost-shared programs;
c. The costs associated with growth in population or infrastructure that is operated and maintained by the City;
d. The costs of enhanced services as directed by Council through reports and directions received throughout the year;
e. An increase equivalent to 1% of taxation for the contribution to capital used to fund the strategic initiatives category of capital;
f. An increase to user fees at either the percentage increase in the cost of providing the program or service, or as directed through Council-approved policy;
g. A reasonable estimate of assessment growth from new properties added to the tax base;
h. Deferring a 2007 increase to the corporate efficiency target to 2008; and
i. No increase in taxation.

2. That the difference between the expenditures and revenues added to the 2007 Draft Operating Budget identified in Recommendation 1, be eliminated through the use of the following strategies:

a. Deferral of service enhancements that have not yet been implemented;
b. Use provincial gas tax revenues to the extent possible to offset increases in the cost of transit;
c. Use debt where possible, instead of contributions to capital, to fund the capital program;
d. Incorporate and pursue the cost-sharing shortfall with the provincial government;
e. Identify and incorporate any other one-time sources of funding;
f. Increase user fees and charges by more than that identified in Direction 1f; and
g. Identify program reductions.

I’ve highlighted a couple of items that caught my eye and confirmed my fears about having Larry O’Brien as mayor. Basically, it seems like we can expect reductions in services and disproportionate increases to user fees. And, we’re going to take on (more) debt.

Thanks a lot, Larry.

Today, I headed out at lunch and fulfilled my societal obligation and cast my votes in the municipal elections in Ottawa. The only real uncertainty was how to cast my vote for the ward representative. The incumbent, Shawn Little, chose not to run for re-election, so that left the field open. After perusing the candidates’ websites over the last while and even asking them a couple of questions, I was able to make my decision.

Like many of my friends, I firmly believe that if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain.