When I say “Junior” to James Bond, I’m not talking about the second Daniel Craig-bearing James Bond movie that just came out today, which I just saw at midnight this morning. However. I’m not here to talk about Quantum of Solace - I’m here to talk about James Bond Jr, Bond’s 17 year old nephew who has the streaks of a special agent slash hero. Yes, his name is James Bond Jr. Have you ever heard of him? Maybe, maybe not.

James Bond Jr. is a tv show that aired across the United States and Canada in 1991~1992. It was an old-school cartoon. I’m not talking about Family Guy style cartoon - this was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles type of a cartoon, strictly for kids. With the release of the second “new” 007 movie, I thought I’d pay tribute to the old tv show that I grew up on as a kid. I used to love this old show.

Michael Kwan is looking for cases where we’ve done something charitable for those in need. Well, I have a charitable act that I do very often that helps many many sides of our society.

You see, I’m not the average North American - privileged from birth, full of empathy and sympathy, trying to be self-righteous by doing small insignificant deeds of good that only makes the doer feel good while it does not fix the problem. I’m a very realistic person who sees things for the truth rather than idealism. I don’t believe in basics or minimums that are guaranteed by default, and I believe in Darwinism. Even the right to survive is, technically and truthfully, not a guarantee. We have won it as a society, and we also need to sustain it as individuals.

When you decide to cross the street at night wearing a black jacket, you are gambling with your right to life. When you decide to go to war with Iraq, you are forcefully taking away the right to life from innocent Iraqi civilians. In an ideal world, everybody has the right to live. But who said these rights are guaranteed? I don’t understand how these standards somehow became a philosophy. These standards we set are merely artificial human attempts at achieving a higher goal, but really, there’s no law in physics that grants us any kind of rights whatsoever.

When you ditch out on a job and decide to shoot up on heroine, eventually you will lose your right to an income. When you lose right to an income, you lose your rights to food, shelter. You’ll also lose the right to heroine, since money will be scarce. Eventually you will lose rights to live. You will die on the streets. Unless. We encounter the idiots who decide to give petty change to these people, feed them in soup kitchens, so as to grant them the right to food and heroine that rightfully should be taken away from them. It only makes the problem worse.

Some people might be saying at this point, “In some cases, it’s not their fault. They have mental illnesses.” or something of the sort. Once again, going back to the very basics of physics - nothing is guaranteed. Unfortunately some are born without adequate ability to survive. If they have rich parents who are willing to lend them the right to carry on, great. If they found some other talent through which they can obtain the right to live, great (paralympians, for example). If not, who the hell says that we as society should guarantee them basic rights just because they’re human beings? It’s all man-made, and merely an opinion. It’s not a golden standard, unfortunately.

When a homeless person asks me for change, my response is “No. Get a job.” If you are incapable of getting a job, REGARDLESS of whose fault it is, then you lose rights to money, and in consequence, you lose your rights to food, shelter, and ultimately, survival.

You see, if you give these guys change, they’ll carry on for another day. Buy cheap food, and cheap drugs. That doesn’t solve the problem. The only thing it might do is make you feel like a nice smug person who is generous and all. But it doesn’t really help anything in the long run.

I’m a more charitable person than those donating soups and change to the drug-addicted homeless people in downtown and the eastside (I live in Vancouver by the way). Because I encourage them to learn how to fish, so they can find their own rights, rather than borrow rights from others on a daily basis. We as society, thanks to our ancestors, have created this magnificent world of opportunity and wealth. If you can’t grasp even a tiny bit of it, too bad. Darwinism says you will just perish away and nobody will remember you. It’s cold, it’s sad, but it’s the truth.

Just to make things clear - I donate for other charitable causes that involve childrens charities, as well as international charities for Africa and what not. Their economy and way of life has been raided by the influence of Western civilization, the global economy and the currency exchange system that enslaves some of the poorest nations. This is a fact I cannot change because I’m not that powerful. To offset the fact that the wealths I enjoy are trickled down wealths from the global economy that leeches from the poor 3rd world countries and piles it up in the hands of North Americans, I donate for those causes. I just don’t give a single fucking penny to homeless people in Vancouver.

With advancement in mobile email technology in iPhones, Blackberries, and of course, laptops, the world of emails is evolving too. And Google is definitely on top of things, once again. Nearly a year ago my company, Synchronous Design & Marketing, switched to the Google Apps platform for our email and collaboration. We have not looked back since, and the productivity and accessibility is simply amazing.

Most hosting companies do not provide an IMAP platform, and the most common email method is POP3. Even worse, a lot of small businesses opt to simply forward their corporate emails to their hotmail or gmail accounts and reply from those addresses. The downside of using POP3 on your hosting server is that webmail access is often cumbersome and awkward (using CUBE mail or Squirrel Mail etc.) and if you have several computers, you have to delete emails or mark them as read emails on multiple platforms, and that includes your handhelds. With an IMAP platform, however if you read the email on your computer, it will be marked as read on your iPhone as well as your webmail platform.

Putting all this together is the Google Apps solution. This is how you activate Google Apps.

1. Visit https://www.google.com/a/.
2. Sign up for either the free or the Premium edition, as it fits you. You need to have a domain, or sign up for a domain on the spot.
3. Verify domain ownership.
4. Configure your MX record on your domain (this is through your web hosting company).
5. Configure your computer, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.

Using the Google Apps platform, your Mail Exchange record (MX Record) is updated so that all emails are routed go ghs.google.com, or a similar address. The emails are hosted on the Gmail platform, BUT using your domain natively. So even though you are on the gmail platform, you are still natively sending emails from your own company domain.

Using this set-up, you can have IMAP access to your emails from all devices, as well as advanced gmail access if you need webmail access while you’re on the road. As a matter of fact, I find myself often using the gmail platform on my portal at http://portal.synchronous.ca (you won’t be able to log in - you must be an employee) rather than Mail on my Macbook Pro. It’s fast, easy to use, well organized, and clean.

Other benefits of using Google Apps as your email and collaboration solutions are these:

• You get a calendar on the Google Apps platform which can be shared (or not shared) between employees, and synchronized to your desktop calendar (such as Outlook, or iCal)
• You get the Google Docs platform, on which you can do word processing, spreadsheets, and more. No more confusion on who has the most recent file of that proposal document. You work on it together online. And the functions are so robust, you won’t miss Microsoft Word or Pages.
• SalesForce is the most popular CRM solution on the market, and Google and Salesforce are partners. They offer an integrated CRM/Google Apps solution that integrate seamlessly with each other. Visit http://www.salesforce.com/googleapps/ for more details.

Using the Google Apps platform, we have achieved ease of use, time saving, easy collaboration and data sharing, better synchronization, and most of all, relaxation. It just works.

Today, October 14th is the day of the Canadian Federal Elections. Please go and vote. It is a privilege, an honour, and a responsibility as a citizen of Canada to go vote in the elections to make sure your voice is heard.

Many of you are already aware that I am a Liberal Party supporter, and I support them mainly based on their foreign policies, as well as tax regulations. The Conservative Party has robbed us by reducing one tax and increasing another one. The Conservative Party is also too much in line with aggressive partisan politics of the Republican Party down south.

Many Canadians are supporting a vote that will get the Partisan Harper government out - meaning, they are supporting voters to vote for whichever candidate has a better chance of defeating the Conservative candidate in the riding.

www.voteforenvironment.ca is one of the most prominent websites that promote the anti-Conservative vote. Essentially, these people (and myself) feel that getting the Conservative Government out by any means is a better way to ensure Canada experiences a balanced growth in a peaceful and respectful manner.

But. My opinions are my opinions, and as a staunch supporter of true democracy, I invite you to vote for whoever you wish to vote. Better to vote than to not vote, honestly.

7DayBuzz is probably one of the coolest new blogs out there that I found. It’s new, it’s fresh, and the contents are very diverse and interesting - the diversity reminds me of JohnChow.com. The owners’ names are Tom and Kim Sawyer (no, there’s no Huckleberry Finn on the editors board), and they are a nice couple who live in the Southern Neighbour, USA. In case you did not realize, I am Canadian.

7DayBuzz has a rule that resounds in its name - they will update every day, if not more!!! That’s more than I can say about my own blog, unfortunately. And did I mention the diversity of content already? There’s something for everybody. Here’s some takes on the more interesting posts that they’ve had recently.

Vaccinations: What To Do (or Not Do) - We all acknowledge Vaccination as something we do as a given. But some say that vaccines can cause autism, aspergers, and other disabilities and anomalies. The official recommendation is that children are to receive more than 2 dozen vaccinations, and then there’s the question of what side effects it may have! Read for yourself, and pitch an opinion.

Is America Ready for a Black President? - Let’s say you’re a democrat who supports Clinton (not Bill), and Obama (the potential Black President) wins the nomination for the Presidential Election. Would you rather vote for John McCain to prevent a black man from becoming the US president? Sounds crazy eh? Well, at least by Canadian standards, this is complete bigotry and would not be tolerated in many places, but hey, we never had slavery - USA did, and apparently, some people feel that way! They’d rather vote for a Republican candidate in order to stop a black man from becoming president. Get the scoop!

The Messiah’s Disciples and Their Behavior Towards One Another (MATT 18:1-35) - Redefine a “child” through biblical teachings and meanings. I hear many of you saying “well I’m not religious so…” Here’s the thing about the Bible, the Koran, and other scriptures - even if you are not religious, there’s things in the scripture that can be used as universal learning material, not to mention give you a good education in anthropology and culture.

Yes, as you can see, the diversity of posts are astonishing, and it’s one of those places where you can hang out, chat, sometimes get into a heated debate/argument over politics, and have fun.