Les Bonnes Choses

Has my last post got you down? Well then this little vignette from my life is for you! Yesterday we went to the Brookfield Zoo. We bought a family membership late last year, and we want to make sure we get our money's worth. Getting there was a challenge because the heavy rains in the area lead to some localized flooding (thanks Make for the tip), and some of the roads in the area of the zoo were submerged (as was part of the wolf habitat). All in all, it was a good day, and I got to touch a manta ray. I drew the line, however, at paying an extra $2 to feed the damn things.

The day did go long, however, and Jude was ready to leave by the time we passed by the pachyderms. It was only the promise of a carousel ride that kept him interested in staying any longer. By this point in the day, we had long missed the Sunday evening mass, though Jude rode on a mantis in the carousel that he said was praying for something, so that's practically the same thing.

And when we got home, the good people at the Backyard BBQ Shop had assembled and delivered my new BBQ, purchased that morning -- a purchase precipitated by the Friday night power outage that left dinner half-cooked, and drove us from our house to spend the night at Amy's. Never again! It's grilled veggies and steaks from now until the end of August!

This post is more of a public awareness thing than anything else, and mostly relevant only to a small but important cross-section of the people who might read this blog -- namely the people who like to run computer programs that come with that irritating dongle copy protection scheme (cough - E-Prime - ahem).

According to this article I just read, it is now legal to circumvent this technology if, say, you're flashing your dongle around in public and someone gets alarmed, and kicks your dongle, rendering it impotent. The article says that congress now

[Allows] computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

Of course, "cannot" might be the key phrase here, and can be interpreted in many ways. For example, I cannot go on an Alaskan cruise. Not because the salty sea air will kill me, but because I haven't got any disposable income to speak of.



So there you go. I don't know if this is good news for more than a handful of people I know, but if I've made anyone's day, I've done my job.

Update: This shady site that is under constructions [sic] lists quite a few computer programs that use dongles that they support, should you be kicked in the dongle. Though iTunes doesn't show up in a quick survey of the software listed, which suggests that I won't have won over any more of the kool kids with this uber-dorky post, it was nonetheless fun to use the word dongle in a sentence.

The following exchange just occurred. First of all, it was based on the following Sesame Street skit that Jude likes to play (the clip begins with an old-skool animation):

Okay, so now that we're on the same page, here's how it went down. I swear I am not making this up, and this was totally unrehearsed:

Jude (just finishing eating his poached egg): Dad, say "I one the egg."
Me: I one the egg.
Jude: I two the egg.
Me: I three the egg.
Jude: I four the egg.
Me: I five the egg.
Jude: I six the egg.
Me: I seven the egg.
Jude: I ate the egg. Now say, "was it tasty?"
Me: Was it tasty?
Jude: Yes. Now say, "that was a good yolk".
Me: ... that was awesome.

Moms and dads, when you have your television hooked up to a media center computer hooked up to the series of tubes that make up the interwebs, you're liberated from the insipid drudgery that often makes up children's programming, but also more able to inadvertently expose your kids to programming that may shape your impressionable kids in ways you may have not foreseen.

For example, Katy Perry's California Gurls video: bad idea. It might seem innocuous, especially given the Candyland theme, but that's more than offset by the fact that Ms. Perry looks the way she does in that video. It's also arguable that 4 years of age is too young for a Glee obsession. In fact, my oldest son is generally enthralled by any music video related production. He had a fit the other day, likely attributable to being overtired, but precipitated by his inability to actually live in a particular music video (it was hard not to laugh in response to his concern).



There's also a particular clip from a program called Man vs. Food that Jude repeatedly requests involving a suicide wing challenge. This gave me the idea to make chicken wings for dinner sometime in the next week or so. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon a link this morning to making chicken wings in the oven that turn out just like deep fried wings. I may try it out, though that means I won't be able to make wings before Monday at the earliest.

Dear Rogers, if there were a single reason to not want to move back to Ontario, you would be it. You are the reason that the acronym DIAF has come into relatively common usage.

Democratically elected governments are kind of like parents - parents of a large, unruly brood of kids that constantly bicker. Take a developmental psychology class, and you will learn that there a number of parenting styles, though they generally boil down to four main styles. I'm not sure what style the current Canadian federal government is closest to because they don't seem to behave consistently. Or perhaps it's because there is no parenting style described by selectively listening to one child over another. In one of the latest political rows, the Canadian government is scrapping the long-form census. I won't get into what sort of information is collected in this one, but it should suffice to say that it provides quite a bit of information that is both very useful in making informed policy decisions, and quite valuable to research and industry alike, most notably because it is impossible to collect such a large, representative sample of information any other way because law compels recipients to provide it. Also note that, unlike phone surveys, the odds of being selected to complete this survey are one in five, and you are not obliged to carry the survey out while your dinner gets cold.



So here's the thing: Tony Clement, under the direction of Eh Steve, is scrapping the long form census. Why? Reportedly because a number of tinfoil hat wearing Canadians objected to the invasion of their privacy. Never mind that the aggregated data is anonymous. Never mind that without the data, deciding where to direct taxpayer money will be essentially a crap shoot (or, more likely, directed by whichever lobby group ponies up the most cash). Never mind that anyone with any knowledge about how statistics should be collected thinks that this is a boneheaded move.

This is where government and parenting meet. When you're serving up broccoli for dinner and one of your kids complains that they don't like vegetables, do you: a) switch to an all-hotdog diet? or b) tell them that they will sit at the table until they have either finished every gee-dee piece of broccoli on their plate or they fall asleep in their mashed potatoes? The answer, of course, is b, because kids don't know shit about anything, and shouldn't be making dietary decisions for the family. So why the hell is so much weight being given to the same paranoid segment of the population that believes that the moon landing was filmed on a sound stage?

This is a short one. I'm watching a program on Discovery Channel called Man Woman Wild. Holy crap. The wikipedia people should update their entry on douche, because I don't see Mykel Hawke's (seriously? I'm pretty sure he cribbed that name from a G.I. Joe action figure) picture anywhere on the page. Look, I'll go on record as saying that I hold a dim view on women's studies as an academic pursuit (mostly based on what I have seen decorating the doors in university departments, or reports I have heard from intrepid males and females alike who have taken the odd course to fill out their timetables), and I am only being slightly flippant when I say it would be nice if I could bitch about life and call it a special topics course, but if I have any feminist sympathies at all, this dude brings them out. But don't take my word for it -- you can watch clips from the show and decide for yourself. Every time he calls his wife "babe", it's like biting tin foil. I don't think his survival skills are going to be much help when his wife puts arsenic in his coffee.

I've put a fair amount of mileage on the car this summer, most notably in the last two weeks when we visited London for a wedding, and I came back for work on a Monday only to return the following Saturday to retrieve the family. In the past, I was generally able to listen to what I wanted only when everyone else was asleep. But then I threatened to drive off during a pee break, so that changed things real quick. I'm kidding, of course. I could never get my way that easily. What actually changed things was Jude's recent obsession with Glee. And fortunately, many of the songs that have been featured in that show also appear in my music collection. What this all means is that I now spend much less of my time listening to the Pixar Cars soundtrack. And because Jude's favourite Glee episode is Episode 20: Theatricality, featuring tracks by Lady Gaga and Kiss, my most recent return trip contained 89% more dance party.

One thing I have noticed, crossing between the two countries as often as I do, is the difference in how patriotism is manifested. It seems to me, in the trying times in which we live, that US patriotism has been dialed up to 11, where, I dare say, it crosses over into jingoism. Take, for example, a rear window decal I saw displayed in countless pickup trucks:

Something about this imagery rubs me the wrong way. Thinking on the matter a little bit, I don't think that it's the flag that bugs me - it's kind of like an icon, and in any case, if flags bothered me that much, I'd have a stroke during the olympics. No, I think it's the whole package: the undulation, the eagle -- it's over the top. Part of it might be the association with rednecks: I've never seen one of these things on a minivan; just pick-up trucks (not that every pickup truck owner is a redneck, but the gun rack is kind of a giveaway). And don't confuse my aversion to a general anti-American sentiment. I like (non-Republican) Americans just fine. The design would look stupid, no matter what nationality. Take, for example the Canadian equivalent:



Yes, that looks stupid. A tasteful sense of aesthetics doesn't care if your national emblem has feathers.

I got in from Tuesday night games session with the ladies at Amy's about 20 minutes ago. It ended earlier than usual as it immediately followed dinner, whereas we normally have to wait until the children are bathed and put to bed. I could have stayed later, I suppose, to help Amy dye Gill's hair, but in my mind, dying one's hair is best kept as a none-too-subtle brush-off, rather than an evening's entertainment for a tough guy like me. The rain had broken, so I took the opportunity to walk home (which indeed I had planned to do anyways before Gill phoned on her way to drive over). Much of the US and Canada is scorching hot this week, and here is no exception, so it was nice to have a chance to walk in the cool, albeit muggy, twilight. I had seen fireflies on just one or two occasions before moving here, and never in such numbers, so it was quite novel to see flickering lights appear to cascade before me as I walked down the dimly lit sidewalk -- it looked like what the movies have lead me to believe it would look like if a wizard had just enchanted the street.

This is where a photograph would go, if only I had Rebecca's camera handy.

So just before I left, we were talking about coin collections. Not in the numismatist sense, but in the emptying your pockets at the end of the day for weeks on end kind of way. I'd like to bring them to the bank, but it's hard to get them in nice, tight rolls. You can buy those pre-formed coin wraps, but that just doesn't sit right: once I spend my money on the coin wraps, what do I have to wrap? For the same reason, I will never buy myself a wallet.

I was reading through London's local rag yesterday when I came across one of several stories about the HST, which came into effect in Ontario on July 1. Mostly I just wanted to comment on the math. First off, I'll go on the record as being ambivalent, or mildly supportive of the tax, which, unlike the provincial sales tax it obsoletes, is a value-added-tax. First off, it's a consumption tax -- a tax on buying crap. And frankly, I think we could stand to buy less crap. What that also means is that businesses can recover tax on materials, which they could not do with the PST. If I built furniture prior to July 1 with $50 of lumber, I'd pay 8%, or $4 at the lumber store. Unless I want to pay for the tax for you, I'd then have to price the end product as though the materials were worth $54, with the additional $4 being taxed yet again when I sold you the furniture. The effective tax rate on the materials is over 16% when the materials change hands just once, meaning that the $50 of lumber costs $58.32, even if my labour was free. With the HST, I can claim the tax I paid on the lumber, and, in theory, not tack on that extra $4 tax that I had to pay. Where it gets dodgy is that, well, people are jerks, and if all my customers are used to paying $230.52 for a chair ($50 materials + $4 PST + $150 labour + $26.52 GST/PST) why drop the price when I can just leave it as-is, or increase it and blame the greedy government and their blasted HST?

Oh, and the article to which I linked? As you can see, I had my calculator handy because knowing what you're talking about in this case involves some basic math skills. Unfortunately, the LFP, their affiliates, and rednecks at gas stations need to revisit 5th grade:

He was admittedly in no hurry to fill up at 104.4 cents per litre. A day earlier, he could have done so for about $75, but thanks to the HST, he estimated a tank of gas would easily cost him upwards of $100.

For a tank of gas to cost $75 one day, and "upwards of $100" the next, the price of gas would have had to increase by 33% (75 * 1.33 = 100) overnight. The HST in Ontario is 13%. Even if gasoline was not subject to any tax on June 30 (it was subject to 5% GST), that still leaves Mr. Mouthpiece with 20% of his bitching to explain. So yeah, McGuinty is a bit of a tool. But if you're finding yourself paying more for everything, you're barking up the wrong tree.

Also for the record, I do think the coverage on the taxable items has a few holes: I don't think necessities should be taxed, and the arbitrary $400K cutoff for "luxury" homes is total crap because that kind of cash will go pretty far in St. Thomas, where you get 25% more life (and vagrants), but get you a shack in some parts of Toronto.