Les Bonnes Choses

This'll likely be my last post for the month of August, which will put me over the entry counts for the last two months. Not bad, considering that my family and I moved our household to a different country at the beginning of the month.

I was just about to jump over here from Facebook to write an entry when I saw the following ad text in the right hand ad column:

How Do I Look Mom
This is what Alex said about going to school. In Kenya, kids in high school must pay tuition, buy textbooks & uniform. Help a student.

Are my standards for ad copy too high? Or is 'spam' an official English dialect?

Now, on to the original point of my entry. This evening, Amy was hosting a going away party for one of the grad students. Unfortunately, Amy's music collection isn't very awesome. I feel Marc let her down in that respect. No worry though. I live ninety seconds away (no exaggeration) and have the most amazing collection of pop, alternative, electronica and baroque music on a portable hard drive. Amy had lent us a sauce pan when we arrived in town, so brought that with me when I returned as well. On my return, I noticed that there was a furniture store with a delivery entrance off of the alley way to Amy's apartment. As I am looking for bunk beds, I decided to check out the sale that they were having. Let's now imagine what the blog entry for the store owner might look like...

So the Sunday sale is winding down, and I'm just finishing tagging a sectional when some weirdo walks in from the alley carrying a pot -- like for cooking and stuff. Most normal people use the front door, so I immediately thought something was up. I asked him if I could help him, and he said he was looking for beds. And I thought, "Oh my God. Is this guy going to try and camp out here? He's got a pot. If he asks where the stoves are, I am calling the cops."

I was just reading this article on Wired about translating the electrical signals to the hand into the resultant handwriting. And then I noticed that writing with any of my fingers in the air would result in the same "handwriting" as pretending I was holding a pen. That might not seem especially strange until you consider that the instructions to your pinky finger to write your autograph would be quite different from those to your index finger guiding a pen to do the same thing. So it's like the instructions are reverse-engineered from the product. I don't know if anyone else who reads this is going to find this to be an interesting observation, though I can think of a few people who might. For everyone else, Jen posted a google maps link the other day to some busted grow-ops* in London, so maybe you might want to come back later and re-read this post.

*I'm not sure whether 2 plants found at the house on Emery St. qualifies as a grow-op. I mean, was the owner of the plants just getting his feet wet in this exciting new field? Or was he just really bad at growing plants?

What the hell is this?
I'm sorry, the anarchists are right. The whole system is a do-over. Put me and a team of engineers in charge. I'll even throw in healthcare for free. I'm serious about the engineers thing. I've talked about this at length with John. It might not be popular, but an engineered government would be damn efficient. Unsurprisingly, a google of "open source government" just shows how various public institutions are using Linux instead of Windows. I was kind of hoping that there was some project going on at Harvard or something, where a bunch of students were drafting the most awesome constitution ever.

I'm writing this post from the basement of the Northwestern Memorial hospital CAMRI center. All the scanning for the day is done, and we're just waiting for the data DVD for our last participant to be finalized. Today's lesson: DVDs do not need to be finalized.

So I'm anxious to get home so I can call Mom & Dad's. Everyone is over there for Grammy's 84th birthday. I haven't spoken to Grammy since about a month before I left for Chi-town, so I'd like to be able to wish her a happy birthday. Because of the time zone difference, I'm concerned about my ability to call before she gets whisked back home for bed.

A few days ago, I was complaining about the way that life begins with a Social Security number down here. You can't do anything without it, and just about everybody asks for it (though with the exception of your employer and banks, both of whom pay you money, your are not obliged to give it out to anybody). Thus, millions of Americans trust their key piece of identification in the hands of minimum wage employees every day. So there's a certain amount of schadenfreude that I experience when I read that the chairman of the fed was a victim of identity theft. It's not quite irony, because Ben Bernake doesn't administer the Social Security office, but it's kind of poetic nonetheless.

You know, there are methods, known to cryptographers, of devising sets of numbers, one publicly known and the other private, that might be useful in this sort of situation, Using something like RSA would require an overhaul of how SSNs are administered, but maybe the savings might be worth it.

I've been having problems these last few days with Thunderbird + GMail. I started forwarding all my email to GMail back in January, mostly because I anticipated losing my UWO email account, but also because the inbox quota was much much larger than I could ever get at UWO. And at NU, they allow only a paltry 100 MB of email in your inbox -- I suspect someone in the IT department got one of those Far Side 365-day Desk calendars back in '98,left it at a particularly topical comic, and now everyone in the department thinks it's pre-Y2K. Then maybe one year at GenCon, the system administrator who owns the calendar will run off with some cosplay chick and the school will hire someone who is aware that a 100 MB quota is not appropriate.

Yes, it's fine if you're a POP3 n00b who only uses one computer, or adores webmail, but that's not how I roll.

Oh yeah, I got off topic. I started off bitching about Thunderbird + GMail, and ended up bitching about the ridiculously small inbox quota at NU. My bad. Back to the original complaint, which I am documenting so that it pops up on google when someone queries for "Thunderbird freezes on GMail Loading Message", which shows that other people are also having this problem.

Update: the rather impractical workaround I have been using involves deleting the two gmail accounts in Thunderbird, and then re-adding them. Thunderbird is able to read the inbox (for awhile, at least) when it attempts to download the mailboxes for the "first" time. This information might be diagnostically useful.

I sprinted home on my bike this afternoon to find a certain envelope from the Social Security office in my mailbox. I looked at it, tears welling in my eyes, and said "you complete me," before jumping in the shower so that I would be ready for Amy's arrival with the Irish postdoc candidate we interviewed this afternoon. We took her to a quiet little restaurant nearby on the lab's dime, so I had the filet mignon, substituting the asparagus (eew) for broccoli. When it comes time to put in our $.02, I'll give her a thumbs up. I hope she works out, because that would mean that all four of the postdoctoral positions in the lab will be filled with foreigners, which amuses me.

My next task for the day will be to order a bunk bed, hoping the website is somewhat more functional than it was last night. And I expect to fall asleep after talking to Rebecca via Skype. Only 6 more days until she and the little smus return. I understand le petit monsieur is much different from when last I saw him, so I am very anxious to meet him again.

This morning started very early for me -- even earlier if you count the several times I awoke following persistent nightmares about some indestructible agent of death. So, relying primarily on my brain stem, I accompanied Amy, Jenni and Rachna to the downtown campus for a relatively abbreviated scanning session. We finished before 1 o'clock and Amy and Jenni were willing to accompany me to a children's furniture warehouse so I could look at bunk beds. I had checked out the public transportation route on google maps, but, well, just check out the google street view and tell me what you think about taking a stroll in this industrial ghetto.

By the time we finished up, we were pretty famished. In trying to locate a sushi restaurant we had passed earlier, we found ourselves in Greektown and settled on a restaurant there. Did you know that the earliest new testament manuscripts were written in Greek? Modern bibles contain many mistranslations or misinterpretations of the original text ('virgin', for example was used at the time to describe any unmarried woman). A lesser known mistranslation can be found in John 4:14. Whereas the modern text refers to an eternal spring of water welling up inside you, I believe the original greek text may have been referring to the gyros we had at lunch. I swear, I may never have to eat again.

I've got my mac mini hooked up to our TV and A/V receiver, letting me watch ill-gotten television programming, and, more importantly, get big sound out of my mp3 collection. Currently shuffling through my Top-Rated playlist (I am anal enough to go to the trouble of ranking my music), iTunes recently played a song off of The Cure's Disintegration album, and I was suddenly quite aware of being alone. Now, The Cure is not the most upbeat band in the world, but this album instills me with a particular sort of melancholy because I filled my parents' otherwise empty house with its tracks in the summer of 1991 when I took OAC Biology in summer school while the rest of the family went to the cottage (my choice).

Ten days ago, the rest of the family went back to London to spend the rest of August in more familiar territory while I got things in order. Not just the house, mind you. For those of you not keeping track, I've had quite a list of things to do in order to get on track here. For my family's sake, some of these things, such as this weekend's fMRI scan session downtown at CAMRI, involving both Amy and I, are probably best done during this time. In the future, I'll be doing scanning without Amy, leaving the possibility that she can keep Rebecca company if she's free.

Most nights have concluded with Rebecca calling me via Skype from her dad's laptop. As we both have webcams, it's been nice to be able to see and talk to each other. And I occasionally get a quick hello and silly grin from Jude, when he's not having a meltdown or fighting with his cousins. But at the end of the day, all I really want to be able to do is pick my little guys up and give them big hugs.

Fortunately, iTunes has now shuffled along to some insipid 90's dance music that reminds me of running the gauntlet of London dance bars in the summer of '95 -- not an especially glorious time, but fond memories nonetheless. So I'll finish up on this upbeat note, and perhaps practice the running man in the living room with the curtains drawn.

Last evening, while I was Skyping with Rebecca, my obnoxious doorbell (it plays the Westminster Chimes) rang. I went to the door to find a couple of Jehova's Witn - er, I mean, AT&T representatives who were trying to drum up some sales in the neighbourhood. Apparently, with the recent upgrades to their network in the neighbourhood, they can offer me a package comparable to the one I have with Comcast.

At this point, you may be asking yourself why would I bother going to the trouble of switching providers to get the exact same thing? Well, for one thing, AT&T has a more a la carte offering. I can, for example, get the package that includes only 100 versus 200 cable channels (there are only about half a dozen channels included in the 200 channel package that we would watch anyways, and all of the favourites, such as the Food Network,and Discovery are in both packages). There's the arguable advantage of AT&T's DSL (not shared) line versus Comcast's cable (shared) line. Comcast has also gotten a bad rep for bandwidth throttling. We don't really watch alot of movies (mostly because most of what Hollywood puts out is not worth seeing once, let alone twice), and my retro music tastes guarantee that I'm not going to be downloading much music (if I like it, I probably already have it), but I like to stay current with each passing season of Good Eats, and Linux distributions are best gotten through bittorrent (a legal and legitimate use, I might add). Finally, there is this issue of my first Comcast bill for $295, for what I expected to be a $119/month service.

Quoi? Venez encore une fois?

Hidden fees and installation charges inflated that price like a clown with a bicycle pump. And some balloons. The clown: he's inflating balloons with the pump, you see. To make balloon animals.

Anyways, the point is, that sort of crap doesn't sit right with me. Installation fees came to $130. They don't exactly go out of their way to highlight that in their advertising, or indeed, even when ordering their service. They even gave me a wireless router, inferior to the one I already own, and charged me $2 to rent it for the month. I can't say I'm even really satisfied with the installation. Because we don't own the house, I couldn't authorize the cable guy to actually route the cable to a useful spot in the house as that would likely entail putting a hole in a wall or ceiling. Consequently, all of the Comcast equipment is connected to a rather awkwardly run length of cable across the fireplace mantle to an only marginally more acceptable location that is still across the house from our PCs. Someone less familiar with computers than I would be at a loss for getting this particular computer networked.

So, I did some research on AT&T's offerings, and if I can be assured that: 1) The $129 I was quoted will be final charge on each and every bill they send me, and 2) they can do a better job locating their equipment than could the Comcast people, then I will consider jumping ship. I had initially raised the objection that I was in a 1 year contract with Comcast, but was then told that they can't use contracts, and in any case, the $75 early termination fee that I would be charged would be more than defrayed by the $100 incentive for signing up.

This was a pretty long post which also closely approximates the amount of time I spent at the door while Rebecca looked on at my frozen Skype image, wondering whether I had been shot. When I returned, I explained what had just transpired and reminded her that we got this place in a quiet upper-middle-class neighbourhood so that our delicate non-gun-toting central Canadian sensibilities would not be offended*.

*The Western provinces, they like their guns. They also like Steven Harper.

It's no fun /
Bein' an illegal alien
     -"Illegal Alien", Genesis

In the paperwork that NU sent me back in July was a welcome letter that included the admonishment to check in with the International Office within the first thirty days of my arrival. I'm here on a J-1 visa with a DS-2019 form, and failure to check in wth the school will result in the expiry of my visa, and my becoming persona non-grata. Thirty days is a pretty big window of time, so checking in with them didn't seem too terribly urgent.

Except that it is.

You see, the Social Security Number is ubiquitous here, at least, for most things involving money: opening a bank account, getting on payroll, applying for a credit card, getting accounts with utilities and service providers -- all of these ask for a SSN. Some of these can be gotten without one, but only by jumping through hoops and often by also providing a security deposit. Others, such as the very important task of getting on payroll, cannot be done without a SSN. So immediately after checking in at the International Office last Thursday, I made my way to the Social Security office. It was a relatively pleasant experience, as, besides myself and the staff, the place was empty. I took a number ticket which, because the place was empty, was immediately called up, making the process of taking a number seem somewhat silly. I went up to the counter and the woman at the desk asked for my documentation. She started keying in the information but had to stop about two minutes into the process. Whatever happens by visiting the International Office was not yet reflected in the government system. Having to abort the application, the woman handed me back my documentation and SSN application and told me to ask back at the International Office how long it would be before the information would appear in the system so I would know when it would be safe to reapply. I wrote an email to the appropriate contact, explained the situation, asked about the expected delay, and also suggested that future revisions of the welcome letter explicity state that checking in with the International Office was a prerequisite for applying for a SSN.

Incidentally, I don't think the woman that I emailed actually knows how long it takes for information to percolate through "the system", as she told me to reapply after 10 days, which happens to be the minimum waiting period before one can apply for a SSN (and presumably enough time for the Social Security office to receive whatever it is they are waiting for). I intend to go in again on Monday, figuring that my information must have been put into some database or another, so this is now an IT issue. Putting on my IT cap for a minute, all the databases involved probably get updated daily at night, or at least over a weekend when the offices involved are otherwise closed. I hope I'm right. I kind of need to get paid this month.

Bear with me ladies; you'll just have to accept what I'm about to say as gospel truth.

I've sported something approximating a goatee for about ten years. Genetics dictate that this is my only option, though it is compatible with my general facial hair philosophy. Sideburns, for example, should extend the scalp's hair; with a shaved head, sideburns look like an extension of ear hair, and you don't want to go there.

I have found I have a window during which time I find my own facial hair irritating. Generally, I clip my facial hair every three to four days, because I find that I am constantly able to feel it. After another few days, however, I become sufficiently accustomed to the feeling that I am no longer so aware of it. It is at this point that my options open up, and am just now considering goofing around with a good 70's style handlebar moustache for a few days.

The story so far: I booked a Wednesday 8-11am installation appointment with Comcast. 11 am came and went, with no technician. I called at 1 to ask WTF and the call center rep told us that a technician had come at 8:20 but nobody answered. That seemed strange because we have an obnoxiously loud doorbell and there were 4 adults in the house, at least two of which (Erin and I) are light sleepers (don't judge, we had arrived at 2:30 am, just 5 and a half hours earlier, following an 8 hour drive from London). However the rep also mentioned some additional information, specifically, that the second floor of the house had birch trim, that suggested a screw-up. Our house, you see, is a ranch-style house, and therefore HAS no second floor. A second appointment was booked, and, as you can surmise, we now have our Comcast services installed.

Now, when I initially contacted Comcast, they told me what my phone number would be, that is, once the service had been installed. Thereafter, contacting Comcast regarding our account involved providing the last 4 digits of the phone number, which I presume is used to look up the account information. I discovered this morning, upon hearing from my in-laws that their attempts to call us were unsuccessful, that our phone number was incorrectly relayed to me when I ordered the service; the last four digits were transposed from ABCC to ACBB. Fortunately, we have not yet given our number out to many people, though I still have to notify the movers yet again of a phone number change. I'm not sure if that explains the bungled installation attempt, though it also makes me wonder how they ever arrived at the correct address at all. I hope you do not find me writing an entry in a few months time about how we're paying for someone else's account and vice versa (unless, of course, it's to report that we're currently enjoying some kind of deluxe package for the price of the basic package).

We finally have the interwebs, phone and cable. But, look, it's been a really long day, I haven't had a decent night's sleep since Sunday, and it's almost midnight, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to go to bed. Still, I thought it would be mean to keep y'all waiting any longer to find out the stunning conclusion to last season's cliffhanger: I made it to Chicago in one piece. I am also even more convinced that the obnoxious behaviour by US customs and immigration officers was an explicit directive from the Bush/Cheney administration.

Just coming in from the car to resume the home stretch of house packing, I was listening to the CBC hourly news update. I'm pretty good with identifying voices, so when I heard the voice of announcer Mike Crawley, I was 99 percent sure that my months-long quest to identify the intense, angry weather announcer had come to an end. Now if only I could ID the spacey woman, I would be complete.

Okay, so here's a quickie because I'm in the middle of packing up the kitchen. My laptop sits here on the kitchen table, and I am rewarding myself for taping up a couple of boxes with a quick hit of Wired news. Back when our basement was still Cabbage Patch green, we had some buddies over - Graeme and Miranda, the Bunnies, Deanna and Daniel, if my memory serves me. We were playing some game or another, the general gist of which being to see how well you know your friends. One of the questions was, "What room in the house is [so and so]'s favourite?" Among the options were the bedroom and the kitchen. Fortunately, my teammates had the good sense to guess that my favourite room was the kitchen (I have a 2 young kids. The bedroom is just trouble waiting to happen.)

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that this story about a Wii cooking game caught my eye. I'm not really into the video games. Not because I think they're dumb, mind you, but rather because I know that they can become huge time sinks that I can't afford. Nonetheless, the genre of games available for the Wii make it progressively more appealing as time goes by.