- The Magrath Chamber of Commerce
- Duane Thomson, President (Keyline Publishing) organized and responsible for posters and printing
- Arlen Bennett, Vice-President (Magrath Pharmacy) for helping organize, permitting his staff time off to organize, and keeping his store open late for the event
- Roger Davies, Secretary (ssdirect.com) for maintaining the website, booking tables and overseeing set up and take down of same.
- Jay Mackenzie, Past-President (Roosters) for the Gingerbread Contest fundraiser and keeping Roosters open extra late that night, and his staff
- Ross/Julia Moore, Treasurer (Canadian Security Systems) for keeping track of all our monies
- Chamber members who help support this event
- Shannon Sabey, Tannis Beazer and helpers promoting the upcoming Gala Event
- Our main street merchants who hosted tables: ATB, Keyline, Coop, Magrath Dental, 1st Choice and SASH and all the main street businesses and organizations who stayed open late for this event - and thanks for all the treats!
- All our table vendors who helped fill all the venues
- The Town of Magrath
- Council, Admin and Staff - for preparing the giant kiddie treat bags and getting Santa and the Mayor there ..
- Mayor Barnett for attending and leading us through the Tree Lighting ceremonies - keep hold of that big red button ..
- Santa (you've lost weight) for spending all night meeting and greeting our kidlings
- Fire Dept staff for the bonfire and hot chocolate
- Wayne Quinton for getting us access to the ice arena tables
- Town Crew for putting up the lights and blocking off the roads for us that night
- Magrathites
- Sam Yamamoto and the Magrath Band for performing and leading Mayor Barnett and Santa into the tree lighting ceremonies.
- The Magrath Library, Museum, Seniors, SASH, Susan's Place and Winks all stayed open late or had their own special events running this night as well
- Westwind News for covering our event in their 4 Dec issue.
- Kudos to all the gingerbread makers who made entries into Roosters contest for judging and auction -with proceeds raised going toward Pals of the Pool. I understand in commercial division the 1st Place went to Leisel Quinton and 2nd Place awarded to Magrath Pharmacy .. but how do you judge all those beautiful entries?
- Everyone who braved the cold and made the event fun and exciting!
- Any else I missed
For some strange reason, many very annoying and questionable programs are getting by your antivirus program and infecting your windows computer. Programs are running in the background, slowing you down, possibly spying on your personal and financial activity, tracking what you look at and buy on the internet, popping up warnings or attempting downloads, tricking you into phoning Dave aka Apu in some far away computer compound to fix you computer woes for you, for such a reasonable fee. Hmm
With all the recent news coverage for this kind of thing, you would think these scenarios would be decreasing, but you would be wrong. I get calls weekly from trusting duped computer users, often seniors, who have let some official sounding 'microsoft' or other external user into their computer and let them mess with their innards, or who have purchased some random security program online to fix whatever is slowing their trusty old computer to a standstill. Some program pops up and stops them from doing what they normally do on their computer and then another program (often the same one messing with them) promises to fix it all for a small fee. They receive random phishing calls from Mr Internet that their computer needs immediate attention They pay the crooks by credit card or even send cash by Western Union, exposing themselves to further damage financially. Who can you trust? Probably not them ..
Is your anti-virus program installed and up to date? Sometimes not, but even if so, many threats still manage to get installed onto your system anyway. How? They trick you into clicking OK via sneaky popups, official looking upgrade offers, extra value added downloads along with other programs or games, or sometime by other malware programs. The reset your search engines, make themselves the internet start or search pages, install themselves as toolbars. Why aren't they blocked by those Anti-virus programs? Good question! Why indeed? If I was a conspiracy theorist ..
Don't pay Apu to do this for you. Hire me! or do it yourself. Not all annoying intrusive headache causing programs on your computer are considered to be viruses - and that is all most anti-virus programs look for (self-replicating programs). You also need anti-malware (both not one or the other) programs to get you computer and sanity back.
Stay tuned .. this is what I use. <but first I have to run to my day job - I'm late>
OK - I'm back!
There, that should feel much better now. /rdd
Is your anti-virus program installed and up to date? Sometimes not, but even if so, many threats still manage to get installed onto your system anyway. How? They trick you into clicking OK via sneaky popups, official looking upgrade offers, extra value added downloads along with other programs or games, or sometime by other malware programs. The reset your search engines, make themselves the internet start or search pages, install themselves as toolbars. Why aren't they blocked by those Anti-virus programs? Good question! Why indeed? If I was a conspiracy theorist ..
Don't pay Apu to do this for you. Hire me! or do it yourself. Not all annoying intrusive headache causing programs on your computer are considered to be viruses - and that is all most anti-virus programs look for (self-replicating programs). You also need anti-malware (both not one or the other) programs to get you computer and sanity back.
Stay tuned .. this is what I use. <but first I have to run to my day job - I'm late>
OK - I'm back!
There, that should feel much better now. /rdd