Les Bonnes Choses

I've got a few hours left of 2009 in the eastern timezone - just enough time to labour over a final blog post of the year. I know, the shoddy editing may have lead you to believe I can just crank these things off, but you should see the stuff that didn't make the cut [garbage in, garbage out - your shoddy editor].

Let me start by saying that I don't yet know the topic about which I'm about to write. So let's see where my keyboard takes me, starting with the obvious: The new year is a time to reflect back on the previous year, which brought many big changes: new baby, new job, new house in a new city, new friends. Same old rash though. I really thought that would have cleared up by now. Speaking of old rashes, I see Harper is still up to the same nonsense as this time last year. I gotta hand it to the guy though, he is a really good politician. Dude has a minority government and he's baiting the opposition into calling for an election. He's a master. [rim shot]. Seriously though, he's getting sh*t done. It may be the devil's work, but if you represent less than a third of the population but are making the remaining two thirds of the population your bitch, you are good at what you do.

Come to think of it, isn't that how capitalism works? Anyways, I wish that power could be channeled for the forces of good. Maybe then some of those "radical" ideas being floated around South of the border could actually get somewhere without being watered down to the point of ineffectuality.

Hmmph. Political proto-rant, eh? Whodathunk?

No Hulu. Can't buy mp3s from Amazon. No academic pricing offers online from Lenovo. Why do we get the shaft up here in Canada? I had no idea that getting in at a .edu institution was going to be so lucrative - I can use my VPN connection to Northwestern to access all those verboten electronic resources while in Canada. And my .edu email account just let me purchase a Thinkpad X301 loaded up with MS Orfice and 64-bit Windows 7 Professional for under $2K, all in, saving me $1K. I hope this doesn't count as a taxable benefit. Ooh, taxes. I wonder if I can claim this. The prospect of filing taxes in two countries this spring makes me quite anxious. If any of my readers has any advice or reassuring words, please comment.

And for those of you who have been following my journey, I was able to use my Bank of America Visa debit card, which will get me another 2% cash back. I'll have to drop a line to Capital One and tell them I have everything under control, no thanks to them.

I doubt anyone will be reading this anytime really soon, but I have a spare moment as I digest dinner, so, hey, why not blog, right?

I'm thrilled with my haul this Decemberween, having added to my collection of cooking gear and games. As of the time of this writing, however, there is one item on my wish list just to the right of this post, and I didn't get it. This conclusively proves that my family either doesn't believe me, or else doesn't read my blog.

We played the Santa card to the hilt this year, and Jude has been a "listening boy" for a greater proportion of the last month than usual. And as far as he knows, whereas he got his Rusty and Dusty cars from Santa on Christmas Eve for being a listening boy, his cousins got nothing from Santa. It's not often you get a chance to show your child an example of getting stiffed by Santa. That's powerful. No wonder parents have been so willing to blatantly lie to their children about the jolly old elf for so many generations.

A week ago tomorrow, I picked up my 3 year old Lenovo X60 notebook, which I had sent in for repairs just 9 days before the warranty was set to expire on it. A week ago Saturday, I walked away from the table after Skyping with Heather with the gee-dee microphone still clipped to my shirt, sending the thing off the table and on to the tile floor beneath. Its been a little off ever since, and the Page Up button no longer works. So now I'm shopping for another notebook. In truth, the timing isn't all that bad, as the reason the extended warranty had run out was because I feel that 3 years is a reasonable lifespan for a notebook; after that point, it's hard to tell whether your computer is acting screwy because it's become misconfigured, the hardware is malfunctioning, or it just isn't up to running some crazy-ass software that you need to run in order to read your client's bloody email attachments.

As I am still affiliated with an academic institution, I qualify for academic pricing, so I was shopping around at the Lenovo site. I may have picked out the notebook that will see me through my next round of job talks and conference presentations. The insurance payout from my written off motorcycle means I could even buy it with cash in hand. The catch: you can't buy over the internet with cash in hand; you need a credit card. I have a credit card -- two in fact. However, one is from a Canadian lender, and the other has a paltry $500 credit limit. If I use the Canadian card, I lose money on the exchange rate when I make the purchase, and then again when I convert US dollars back to Canadian to pay it off. Screw that. I contacted Capital One to see if I could make a big lump sum payment upfront so that I would have a large credit showing on my account. To my surprise, they wrote back to tell me that, even if the credit showing on my account equals or exceeds the cost of the purchase, making a purchase that goes over my $500 credit limit will still entail me exceeding my credit limit, and bring on all the financial fire and brimstone that goes along with that.

I'm posting this on the internet because I'd like it to be documented forevermore that Capital One is run by people with rather poor business acumen. Somewhere along the way, they have forgotten the point of a credit limit, which is to manage the risk they are willing to assume in lending money. Credit lenders get a slice of every transaction made with their cards. My credit limit is preventing me from making a purchase that would earn the company maybe twenty or thirty dollars. By suggesting I put a credit on my account, I have proposed a way that they can earn that commission without assuming any risk whatsoever. It is literally only upside for them. And they don't want anything to do with it. So, I'm doing the electronic age equivalent of shouting from the mountaintops! Come, google search bots. Index my account, and let it show up in the shareholders reports and competitor's due diligence reports.

This doesn't mean I'm an activist. Just crotchety.

Followup: I just wrote a letter via the Capital One message center asking why they don't like earning revenue and if they can recommend a product that would allow me to complete my transaction. Except I was maybe a little bit condescending.

My holidays begin tonight. Sort of. At the very least, I won't be in at work for the next few weeks, but as the department is pretty empty as it is with the students gone home for the holidays, I'm not going to be missing much. Just in time for the holidays, my mp3 player has frozen up on How Soon is Now, and I'm hoping that the battery runs down and that I can recharge it in time for when I leave the house tomorrow morning. I'd pop the battery out so that it has to reboot just like I do with my laptop when it goes all squirrely, however the the battery isn't accessible because the device has been designed to be disposable: by the time the Li-ion battery needs replacing, the thing will be obsolete. I know, it sucks that this is how things are made.

I took the long way home today because I had just missed a shuttle bus, and I calculated that it would take me just as long to walk home as to wait for the next shuttle. This way, I got a bit of exercise and investigated a few streets I don't normally walk down. Most interesting was this house, apparently a landmark house built in 1931, with really interesting oversized christmas tree ornaments:






I love the holiday season, when houses are decorated all festively for Christmas, or in anticipation of the Chanukah Smackdown Miracle, when Barrie Horrowitz brought the smackdown for one night, but there was enough smackdown to last for eight action-packed nights. You haven't seen anything until you've witnessed the awesome destruction wrought by a gefilte fish smuggled into the ring.

I've had a busy last few days. I wend downtown with Amy and Gill on Friday to pick up my laptop, which I had brought in for repairs just days before the extended warranty was set to expire. Now that they've fixed my LCD, I thought it might be wise to walk away from the table with a microphone still clipped to my sweater and pull the laptop off the table. Only a very minor break in the plastic case was observed, and the computer seems to be otherwise fine, though it appears as though it now sits at the BIOS splash screen indefinitely until I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL to continue with the booting up. I don't know if that's related, but it's a new "feature", and it's annoying.

I spent much of yesterday cleaning up the house (now that no new messes are being created), doing laundry (now that very little dirty laundry is being generated), and downloading music that has no right being in the iTunes collection of a 35 year old married male (now that very little respectable music is being created): songs by Beyonce, Black Eyed Peas, and Chris Brown. To follow that up, Amy and Gill came over to watch a chick flick. A dirty chick flick. The only thing missing from my day yesterday was that I didn't get my nails buffed and polished.

Today, I tried to make up for it by walking to the harware store, only to find it closed at 1:45, despite the sign indicating Sunday hours to be between 10:00 and 2:00. It was a good walk, however, and I got to check out the neighbourhood. Holy crap are there some nice houses. Had I brought my camera, I would have posted some photos. As it is, you can experience my walk on google maps streetview and see what I mean. I stopped in to talk to Comic Book Guy, just next door to the hardware store, but found him to be a little less Asperger's than the typical Comic Book Guy, whose scorn can only be avoided by being familiar with the six forms of Manga. (I just made that last part up. What I know of manga comes from watching Battle of the Planets AKA G-Force in 1979).
So I am now on the computer checking on the correctness of my intuition that smoked paprika would go well on salmon. Indeed, it seems that it will, though if you check out the steps included in the recipe, step four seems rather bizarre:

4. Roast the salmon in the oven for 10 minutes. Check for doneness, but find that it is not quite ready. Cook it for a few more minutes.

Can you imagine if all instructions directed you to screw up and then fix the problem?

• Open box. Take out printer


• Plug printer into computer. Get error message about not plugging in printer until drivers are installed.


• Unplug printer. Install drivers.


• Plug printer in again. Realize that you didn't insert the ink cartridges. Unplug printer...

After nearly four months here in Chicago, I got around to getting a cell phone -- or, rather, getting my existing cell phone to do something (incidentally, if you have a Motorola V360, a weekend, and alot of faith in me, I'll unlock your phone for you). I did a fair amount of reading of reviews on wireless providers because I like to turn every purchase over $20 into some kind of research project, and concluded that T-Mobile's pay as you go plan would probably be the best deal for my rather infrequent cell phone usag-- SPEAK OF THE DEVIL!!!

Why did I use that clever writer's convention to indicate an interruption? I'm glad you asked! First, it was because I'm a clever writer. Second, and more importantly, it's because something just happened that directly pertains to what I wanted to write about. I will preface this by solemnly swearing that I am not making this up: I just now received a phone call on my cell phone from some roofing company (at least, that's what I believe they sell, as their representatives pronounce their product "ruff") looking for a "Mrs. Max". It is the third such call that phone has received. Other misdirected messages include some texts that confirm the employment and job details for some guy who I believe was supposed to set up an auditorium (and is now presumably back on the unemployment line), a text about whether I received "the email", and a few calls from Capital One regarding a fantastic job opportunity.

With T-Mobile's prepaid service, I pay $.10 per minute for each call or sent text message, and $.05 for each received text. When I was signing up, I was asked what area code I wanted. Not having a preference, the T-Mobile rep gave me a (773) number because "it's the most popular" (it had never before occurred to me that area codes had such a rigid social structure). As misdirected calls have now eaten up twice as much of my phone balance as have calls that I have intentionally made, I now wonder at the wisdom of acquiescing. Incidentally, now that you know my area code (773), if you're willing to put in a little bit of effort, you can figure out the remaining 7 digits of my number, which I have obfuscated by decomposing it into its prime factors: 3² • 29 • 31 • 1,009.

I suppose I have just guaranteed that I will only get calls from a very peculiar segment of the population.

So it seems that the family flew into London under the wire in other respects too. Aside from the extensive commentary on the weather, the next biggest story concerned the TSA document leak. Now that "the terrorists" know what to look for, talk is that we can look forward to even longer "security" lines as the TSA redoubles their efforts at preventing terrorism. Irony is, if you consider the end goal of terrorism to be instilling fear in a population, it looks like Homeland Security and the TSA are doing a fine job all on their own. I mean, I sat in at a departmental colloquium not long ago, where the speaker (JPM will have to refresh my memory as to who it was) very convincingly demonstrated that you're not likely to spot a weapon in someone's luggage, even if you're hypervigilant because you've been told that you probably won't be able to find the gun pictured on the display. And anyways, these measures are always reactionary. Someone puts a bomb in their shoes? From now on, you have to take your shoes off at the security check point. Someone brings liquids onboard that could be combined to make a bomb in-flight? From now on, you cannot bring more than 100ml of a non-solid in your carry-on. This is cumulative, folks. Maybe someday someone will have explosive rivets in their jeans, and we'll be boarding the plane thirsty the next week in our socks and boxer-briefs. Smelling an opportunity, the airlines will provide hospital gowns at $10 a pop when we check our luggage for $15 a bag.

And, now that I've gotten myself on the no-fly list, I shall go eat my dinner. Porterhouse steak. Yum!

Rebecca called a couple of hours ago to let me know that she and the kids arrived in London. They must have left under the wire, as hundreds of flights out of Chicago were cancelled this afternoon, and the inbound snow storm was the lead-off news story this evening.

I don't know how to segue the weather into a funny story, so I'll just say that I'm relieved that my wife and my two best little guys had a good trip. I'll also wonder aloud why there aren't like airport bellhops or something. There was no way in hell Rebecca could have gotten from the Terminal 1 loading zone to the baggage check and then to the security screening by herself. Thus, we were obliged to park at Terminal 5 at the opposite end of the airport and make our way back to Terminal 1 together. Not that I minded, but it seems that someone is missing a good business opportunity here.

So, now that I just have my own mouth to feed, I have the particular tastes of fewer mouths to consider when it comes to preparing meals. Unfortunately, in anticipation of having just myself to feed, we have let our fridge empty. Looks like I'll be having mustard soup tonight.

The family flies back to London tomorrow afternoon, though most of our cargo comes with me in the car when I drive up exactly one week later. Living here in the land of plenty, some of our relatives have been availing themselves of our mailing address and ordering goods that do not ship outside of the contiguous 48 states. Hopefully douanes won't give me a rough time as I try to cross the border with Amazon's inventory in the trunk. In the next week, I'll be winding things down here, and maybe getting a bit more work done than is typical because I'm pretty low maintenance -- hell, one of the perks of a shaved head is that I only have to do my hair every four or five days or so.


I'll also be bringing along our Settlers of Catan game because Carolyn hates the game (though she has never played) and I want to see her stroke out when we tell her we've invited people over to her place to play it. We won't be staying with her the whole time; we'll be splitting our time between there, my in-laws, and we may spend our 7th anniversary (December 28) at the Idyllwild Inn, where we stayed on our wedding night. Unlike our wedding night, I expect I will not be running a high-grade fever and hallucinating that the room is on fire.

Now that Thanksgiving is done here, we move into that time of year where we are encouraged to want stuff. I don't really want stuff, or at least, not in such a way that I can't just lay down until the feeling passes. That makes gift giving problematic for those that care enough to feel the need to give me a gift. I've tried the obvious solution this past year, which was to just be such a big jerk so that nobody wants to have anything to do with me. But overcoming my innate lovableness is just impossible. So I've resigned myself to having to want stuff. This makes me a bit uncomfortable - not because composing a wish list violates some sort of higher moral code that I try to live by, but rather, because when I read a compilation of things I desire, I feel like a spaz. Eclectic doesn't begin to describe it.

One thing that isn't on my list is a Corvette. When I was much younger, it was the ultimate car. When I became old enough to drive, naturally, I could never afford one -- and still can't. And therein lays the crux of the matter: when it comes to luxury sports cars, by the time you can afford one, you look like an asshole if you're driving it. Seriously. Next time you pull up next to a new model 'Vette at a stop light, glance over at the driver. If he doesn't have a young blonde beside him and look like a spokesman for Just For Men, I'll eat my hat.