The Muslim threat?

Recent events both in the middle east and here at home would have one immediately shouting a call to arms against the growing Muslim threat against our country.

In Iraq we have seen the beheading of Christians and other groups of innocents who do not agree with ISIS and their view of Sharia law. Anyone who stands in their way of creating a new Islamic state are quickly dealt with, often in the form of death.

More disturbing have been the attacks here at home on our own soil and the few that thankfully police and CSIS have stopped. Seeing a soldier standing guard being shot and then our sacred Parliament buildings being violated brings any Canadians blood to boil.

But lets reflect on all of this for a moment.

First off it is a breakaway group who have radicalized the Muslim faith, that are producing and inciting these attacks. These thugs are even killing fellow Muslims who follow peace and not their version of Islam. In their perverted beliefs they think it is the end of time, and they must create a Muslim state of pure believers (their version of the Quran) that will survive the ultimate end game of Armageddon.

Over reaction is something else we must be careful not to do. Just look at the Federal Governments attempt to vilify the Muslim faith by trying to ban the Niqab. One can argue if women do actually wear these face veils voluntarily or if men force them to do so. But it certainly is not our governments place to pass laws on women's clothing.

So lets be careful not to paint all Muslims with the same brush. Most are peace loving and god fearing people. They must work to fix their disenchanted youth, which are the ones becoming radicalized and heading off to make trouble.

 In this I am confident our police and other agencies through good intelligence will continue to protect us from those few who see glory in hurting others.

Self Employment Part two

In my last segment I concentrated on getting people interested in coding. Well I think I will continue in that direction with some more information.

First though I will revisit the other opportunities that exist for those of use wishing to look at self employment as a means of financial income and independence.

Taking a hobby or interests and turning it into a profitable business is always a great choice. After all you will like what your doing and look forward to getting up every morning.

Some people have taken baking and cooking likes and turned them into self employment opportunities. Have a great cupcake recipe? Turn it into a online business. Sell and ship from your home your fresh baked goods. Or you could rent a spot every Sunday at the local flea market.

Do you have a trade? Tired of working for someone else? Well turn your experience into a private business where you both boss and employee. Once again all you need to do is set yourself up online and wait for the emails or phone calls to come.

Notice how in both my examples I suggest for the self employment opportunity to set themselves up online. This is where the other growing opportunity presents itself. Every successful entrepreneur needs a good website to market their business and give people a way to reach them.

So learning to code can put you in the position to create these websites for other people from the comfort of your home, and the financial rewards can be great. The first step is to find an easy and fun way to learn. I still suggest the first step should be going to Codecademy where you can learn HTML and CSS the two main languages for making websites.

Codecademy has easy step by step learning modules that will show you your work as you proceed and take the time to explain what you are doing and why. This is also a helpful forum should you get stuck on a lesson and need feedback from your peers.

The site also has a small website building environment which is free to use and is great for testing out what you have learned and start to build you very own website.

Once you are comfortable with everything within the Codecademy site, you will want to venture out on your own and use an editor to create your own full multipage sites. Some of these are free and others cost a monthly fee. The best free editor I have found and still use today is Notepad ++ 
It has great features including many ad ons which help make your coding easier and faster. I highly recommend it.

With this editor you can create websites for fun and profit. So get coding today and find your new way to self employment from the comfort of your home computer!

Gas Prices Part Deux

When I last wrote about gas prices, the price for a barrel of oil was just under $100 and gas prices were fluctuating all over the place.

Today the price has plummeted to $69 a barrel yet gas prices for the most part in Canada have remained stable and high. In the GTA we on average pay about $1.13 per litre, while in Detroit USA, they only pay .87 cents per litre!? Once again Canadians are getting gouged at the pumps.

We (the world) are currently over producing 1 Billion barrels of oil a day. Yes, that's right, a day. Oil producing countries are all fighting for market share, which has led to an abundance of oil and hence gasoline. So the consumer markets in most parts of the world are adjusting to the supply and demand equation, except Canada.

Why can't Canadians get passionate about being ripped off the way we get about a hockey game. When our team loses two in a row, we boo, throw our team sweaters on the ice and beer at the team bench. We get timid though when companies or the government continue to rip us off. The government for sure is asking for the prices to stay high as they collect the 5% GST tax from every fill up. If prices fall as they should, they are out million of dollars of revenue. This is especially true of the federal government who has promised to balance the books next year, which just happens to be an election year here in Canada. The finance minister must be shacking in his boots as I know they projected revenue on Oil staying above $80 a barrel. Now he must tell the Prime Minister not to make to many tax credit promises as they don't have the money!

Yes even in the every day pricing of gas, it gets political. The provinces too are worried as they collect hefty taxes on our gas for their revenue as well.

Politics be dammed! We need the price break at the pumps. Just think how much of those saving could go to buying more Christmas gifts this year. Such spending would be real help to our economy. Or of course we could use it more wisely and pay down any personal debt.

Show us the money!!!!

Self employment?

For many Canadians who are struggling to find work for many various reasons, the prospect of self employment is an attractive one.

I have been looking to self employment as a way to secure income, as finding employment in my current field is unattainable.

The trouble is finding what your skill sets are and are they transferable into self employment framework. If you are skilled in the trades, making the shift to being your own boss is not that difficult. You can run your business from your home and go onsite to your customers to perform the work. The set up costs are minimal.

But what if you do not have a skilled trade to switch into your own business. Can you learn something new? Take a hobby and turn it into income? Some people have taken hobbies such as baking or sports memorabilia collection into a self employment opportunity. Using EBay or other such entities to buy and sell their collections on, with the focus on making a profit. Others have turned their cooking skills into a brick and mortar business, from which they sell their goods. These are all good formats, but some of us do not have transferable hobbies which can be turned into a business. So what are we to do?

Coding! Yes it is a growing field with many opportunities.

So how does one start, especially if you have been out of school for some time now. Well thankfully there are some free websites which are educational based and offer easy to follow courses to learn the different languages of code. Codecademy is one of the best free sites to learn how to code. It's courses assume you are a beginner and walks you thru slowly all the steps for the various languages which are used to create websites and more.

While I am still learning some new languages, I have enough under my belt that I am using a text editor outside of Codecademy that I am using to write my first website which could be posted to the internet. With this tool I will be able to build sites for others for a small fee. A great start!

So look at your skill sets, give it some thought. And if coding catches your imagination then start your journey today and I will guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Gas- Todays forcast

We have all spent years turning on the TV or radio to get the weather forecast for tomorrow. Even easier to do now with the Internet. But times have changed and now more changeable then the weather is the price of gas. So newscasts now give you the current price of gas and any knowledge of change to the price which may be coming overnight. Heck, there are websites solely dedicated to giving you the price of gas for the coming days. Just like the weather.

So what is with all the fluctuation. Up 2 cents a litre today and then 3 more the next, only to drop 6 cents 5 days later. Meanwhile the price of oil is currently stable and staying below that benchmark of $100 a barrel. Sometimes the excuse is on possible loss production due to golf of Mexico hurricanes, or European "stability". What does Europe's issues have to do with the price of gas in Canada? We have the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world. Yes that is right. More then those middle eastern countries who live prosperous lives and pay about 3 cents a litre for their gas.

Now all this gets one thinking. With all that oil, why is our gas so expensive. Even more then the United States. With the conversion, we are paying about $6 a gallon. Yet they almost riot in the US when it goes over four dollars a gallon. Here we just say oh well, what can you do. Maybe Canadian empathy is why we pay so much for gas. I mean its true we export all of our oil to the US and then have to buy it from Venezuela at world prices. Slightly crazy, but that's what we do. We are even in the process of selling several of our oil companies to the Chinese. With China now the 2nd largest manufacturer in the world, you know their not buying the companies to produce fuel for Canada. It will be all going across the sea, leaving us once again buying foreign oil to get our gas.

So you may want to add a gas website to your favourites or download an app to your phone. For today's gas prices will not be the same tomorrow.

Made in North America

So as the Conservative Party and current Federal Government, gets ready to  hurt our farmers by eliminating the Wheat Board, now they want to reduce our safety standards.

In the name of quicker border crossing for commercial goods, the government is preparing legislation which would reduce Canada's higher food safety standards down to the level of the US. By doing this they claim our food we sell can cross into the US faster and visa versa for US imports. But are we really ready to settle for less safe food?

In a time when we in Canada have even seen Listera outbreaks and other food recalls, the number of people getting sick has never been near the levels they see south of the border. There where the food safety levels are less to help the big corportations, not protect the consumer, about 20% of food sold there would not be for sale here in Canada.

Did you know that in the US they can add vitamins to common cereal and then call it health food. No such lies can currently happen here in Canada, but if Mr. Harper has his way, such things will be able to occur. He will be sitting down soon with the US President and begin discussing a 32 point plant to change the food safey to a lower standard for Canadians.

So as our Prime Ministers continues his quest to make us the 51st state, Canadians will get sick, be mislead by product labels, and our product will proudly boust "Made in North America".