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Mike Folka is running for New Westminster City Council. He answered my questions. Thank you for answering! I’m sure voters will find your answers… illuminating.

I shouldn’t have to say that this is all satire. :–)

Supporting and growing local businesses will help keep jobs in New Westminster, grow our tax base, provide opportunity for New Westminster citizens to live and work in New Westminster, and bring more people to our fair city. A wide range of businesses is also good for a city, as it diversifies the tax base and does not make us reliant upon any one industry. As mayor, what will you do to bring more Save On Foods grocery stores to New Westminster?

Mike Folka: If I elected, I promise to give Save on Foods a special tax exemption in the hopes of encouraging more Save On Foods stores to move into the city. Save On Foods are a vital cornerstone to any livable community and any future development will be built around that philosophy. I hope to have a Save On Foods on every block by the time my 4 year term is complete.

The Bailey Bridge was a source of contention between New Westminster and Coquitlam in 2014. As mayor, what will you do to piss off Coquitlam in 2015?

Mike Folka: My hope, if elected, is to update the welcome signs on the New Westminster-Coquitlam border to read “Welcome to New Westminster. Aren’t you glad you’re no longer in stupid, smelly Coquitlam?”. I would also personally call the Mayor of Coquitlam severals times at home between the hours of 3am-4am and immediately hang up no less than 4 times a week.

Fallen leaves from trees are a menace to the walkability of New Westminster, creating slippery sidewalks and clogging our storm drains. What will you do to rid New Westminster of this scourge? Patrick Johnstone, you’re ineligible to answer this question because we all know you love the trees. Okay, here, if you want to answer a question for #3 here goes: If you love trees so much why don’t you marry one?

Mike Folka: For too long the citizens and businesses of our city have had to carry the tax burden while trees have been given a free ride. This must stop. I believe it is time for the trees to finally start pulling their weight and, if elected, I promise to institute a tree tax, to be paid by the trees, within the first 30 days of being on council. This tax will be used to deal with all leaf and leaf-related clean up. Any tree caught not paying the tax will be punched in its leafy face by me.

Without using Google, what are the eleven neighbourhoods of New Westminster? Yeah, eleven. I had no idea there were that many. Don’t forget Connaught Heights, everybody forgets them. At least they have a SkyTrain station! Okay, what are the other ten neighbourhoods of New Westminster?

Mike Folka: Ok. I’m actually doing this without cheating. Pretty sure I’ve got this one so here we go:

• Uptown
• Downtown
• Sapperton
• Kelvin
• Glenbrooke North
• Glenbrooke South
• Queensborough
• Brow of the Hill
• Victory Heights
• Moody Park

Editor’s note: This one is kind of a trick question because there isn’t really any good definition of what a “neighbourhood of New Westminster” is. You can go off of the Residents’ Associations which doesn’t list Uptown or Glenbrook South as neighbourhoods. Then again I think I’d probably answer Uptown as well, but it’s kind of nestled between Brow of the Hill and Queen’s Park (which Mike missed!).

Speaking of the neighbourhoods of New Westminster, which is your favourite and why is it Sapperton?

Mike Folka: That’s easy. If we break down the word Sapperton we get “sap” and “perton”. Sap is used to make maple syrup which is delicious. And “perton” is in no way offensive whatsoever. Therefore, Sapperton is both delicious and inoffensive. What’s not to like about that?

Why have none of you developed your websites with Of Desks, one of New Westminster’s finest web design and development companies? (Oh man more free press for Of Desks!)

Mike Folka: Because we’re running a fiscally responsible campaign over here at Team Folka and therefore can’t afford to hire professionals. The guy we could afford to hire barely knew how to turn on a computer and was willing to be paid in expired coupons. We were very appreciative.

Lorrie Williams is currently a councillor for the City of New Westminster. She is running for re-election in November 2014, and I won’t be voting for her.

There’s an intersection in New Westminster that is dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists. Since 2011 there have been various attempts to make the intersection more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists, and in 2014 the city’s Engineering Department provided a report describing all of the possibilities for doing so. It’s a long report, full of pictures and maps and all of the things that everybody could ever think of to change the intersection.

The report recommended cutting a three-metre section out of a wall, and re-routing pedestrian traffic through that. In conjunction with realigning the crosswalk, this would make pedestrians more visible to drivers turning right.

The recommendation was voted down by Council in May 2014.

Lorrie Williams had this to say:

I don’t want to see any of the wall taken down, thank you very much.

She also suggested agreed with Betty MacIntosh’s idea of putting up a blinking sign to warn drivers. (Edit: I originally stated that Councillor Williams suggested the blinking sign idea. I’ve been made aware that Councillor MacIntosh originally made this suggestion and that Councillor Williams agreed with it.)

Here are the two reasons why I’m not voting for Lorrie Williams:

1. She put preservation of a heritage wall above pedestrian and cyclist safety.
2. She rejected three years of hard work by experts in the field with an incredibly off-the-cuff and dismissive non-solution.

Patrick Johnstone (who is also running for City Council) summed up #2 the best:

With all due respect, does the Councilor seriously think that through three years of engineering staff time, committee meetings by at least three City committees (two who are dedicated to discussing accessible transportation issues), and the hours spent by the team of professional traffic consultants hired to develop and assess the best alternatives – IT NEVER OCCURRED TO THEM TO SEE IF ADDING A FREAKING FLASHING LIGHT WOULD WORK!?!

The arrogance expressed by Lorrie Williams in thinking she might know more about traffic safety than professionals and experts who live and breathe traffic safety, that’s why she lost my vote.

The Have I Been Pwned website lets you check your email address against a large number of data breaches. If it’s in there, then your email address and probably some form of your password are out there to the public, all ready for nefarious use.

And security researchers all say that you shouldn’t re-use passwords, because that’s unsafe precisely because of these data breaches. Wouldn’t it be nice to be warned that your email address or username has been compromised, and then you’d get some kind of warning to not re-use a password? The ideal time for this is when you’re picking a new password for your account, right?

If the site you’re logging in to is built with AngularJS then I have the thing for you! Well, for whoever built the website, at least:

It’s a simple AngularJS directive that checks against the HIBP database!

I’ve put up a very simple example of it here for you to try out as an end-user.

After a pretty long hiatus, Bad Baby Names are back! To be honest, I got a little bored of all of the bad baby names that the Hawaii Tribune Herald kept serving up. You can only make so many jokes about too many Y’s or girls named Madison before they start getting stale. But this week’s list had a name that I just couldn’t pass up.

See, normally I get a link to the list of births emailed to me every week (thank you If This Then That!), and it puts the first two names in the body of the email. The first name in the list spurred this post (don’t worry, we’ll get to it) but it turns out that there are a couple of non-standard Bad Baby Names that deserve mention.

First, Spartacus. That’s a hell of a name to live up to, and I only hope his classmates help him out when he throws spitballs in class.

Second, along the same lines as Spartacus, comes little Ronilla-Cleopatra. Watch out for asps, little one! It’s lucky you’ll be growing up in snake-free Hawaii.

And the reason behind the Bad Baby Name rejuvenation: Princessleia. The only way this little girl’s name could get any better is if her middle name were Organa. Then the force would truly be with this girl.

Of course, seven minutes before Chris tweeted this:

…but I didn’t see it until just now. Co-creators of ‘smail’?