Les Bonnes Choses

Crap. My train of thought left without me. I got sidetracked when I logged in to my blogger account and was met with the opportunity to connect my blog to my google+ account. This seemed attractive, on one hand, because, much as I want google+ to be a viable alternative (or companion) to Zuckerberg et al.'s service, I have so far found google+ to be largely irrelevant because of the large divide between the pool of people I know well and the people who appear on google+ (and who post anything).

One advantage to connecting my blog with my google+ account is that my blog posts could automatically be published there, allowing me to contribute to the relevance of the service, in my own little way. One disadvantage is that it completely strips away at any anonymity I may have here. If one tried, I am certain they could identify me, but it would at least take a modicum of effort. I try not to be an ass online, but neither do I limit my discussion to observations on the weather. Typically, I accuse some party or another of being foolish (sometimes I am the foolish party). Consequently, I may offend some fool or another from time-to-time. There is a claim that North America was founded on the good old fashioned protestant work ethic. Similarly, there seems to be a stronger libertarian mood these days, which suggests to me that a substantial segment of the population believes that outcomes should be tied to merit, at least to some degree. Nonetheless, we should all recognize that we still find people holding positions for which they are utterly unqualified, and doing things that decrease the fulfillment we may otherwise experience in our lives. Though potential may be heritable, capability is not. So, every time some doofus gets a free ride in life because his dad was able to pony up the tuition to a good school in order to maintain the family dynasty -- I've concluded that the system may in fact be rigged to ensure that the greatest power is concentrated among those least capable of wielding it. I am reminded of how nobility worked in centuries past, and how families maintained their status through inbreeding, thereby ensuring that the oldest and most noble houses were most likely to produce an heir unnaturally preoccupied with counting butterflies. I am sure you can appreciate how, unless I radically change my writing style, this poses a problem for me, at least in the short term as I continue to look for more permantent employment. But alas, apart from my popular series detailing the creation of my 3D Catan set, I don't really have any interesting hobbies about which to write. So for the time being (read: until some outfit deigns to interview me), I'm afraid google+ is going to have to go it alone.

I received a catalog of sorts in the post today. Crutchfield is the store's name, and they appear to specialize in electronics -- in other words, this catalog should be to grown-up me what was the back half of the Consumers Distributing catalog to 9-year-old He-Man-collecting me. Why, back in the day, I could spend hours looking at the crazy playsets and toys. As a child, I had, in retrospect, an odd understanding of money. For no particular reason, I was tracking the Canadian/US dollar exchange rate for about a year between 1984 and 1985. I wasn't involved in any FOREX trading, so my drive probably had something to do with a mashup between patriotism and achieving a high-score. But I don't think my appreciation of what constitutes an unreasonably expensive gift was unique. I'd wager the ability to detect outliers develops pretty early, so a $120 toy in a genre of $4 action figures sort of stands out.

These catalog-browsing skills do me no good with the Crutchfield catalog. Here's a representative page:

How much are these fancy television sets? I have no idea. I do, however, know how much they are not. And so the catalog sits, unopened, on my coffee table.

A long-time subscriber alerted me today to a CNN story about NATO and the Taliban taking the war off the battlefield and on to Twitter. The story has some sample exchanges, but I was surprised to find neither side brought out the heavy artillery.

I suppose if Motocross racing was a passion of yours, the item for sale on Craigslist might give you a bit of an edge on some of the more challenging tracks:

But otherwise ...

Young men between the ages of 18 and 31 are targets because of the large amount of time they spend online every week, said Ms. Hargrove, director of consumer solutions for Symantec.
Known as the “millennium males,” they spend more than 49 hours online a week, she said.

So it's bill paying day. I noticed my cable bill was slightly higher this month than in months past. The culprit? Check out the addition on my $10 retention discount.

I contacted the retention department and ask why they only want to retain me half as much as they did last month. Fortunately, the web-based support chat allows a transcript to be retained:

Rep: I do see here that you have the Retention discount.

Rep: This discount is already ending this Nov 22, 2011.

Rep: That is why for cycle Nov 7 to Dec 6 bill, you get only $5.33 discount (covers Nov 7 to Nov 22 only).

Me: I see. So after November 22, there's no longer any interest in retaining me?

Rep: After November 22, the retention discount already expires.

Rep: We can modify/change your current services if you wanted to keep more or less the same monthly rate after the discount expires.

Rep: We surely want to keep you as our loyal customer, sir.

What you can't see here is the 2 minute gap between my last question and the rep's response. Poor bastard. I'm sure I sideswiped him with that doozy. At the end of the day, my $10 discount was replaced by a $30 discount for the next six months, with no change to my services. I'm pretty sure I have to tone down my snarkiness when I write rebuttal letters, but it can be a useful trait from time to time.

I'm writing again today about the #OCCUPY protests. I'm a visitor to the country in which I am currently living, here entirely at their pleasure. I'm also currently looking for a job. As soon as I hit the "Publish" link, my ideas will be out there in the wild for all to see -- including officials who have the power to decide whether to allow me in the country, and including people who might be on a hiring committee. For this reason, I feel it prudent to begin by stating that I do not endorse the #OCCUPY movement, nor have I been in contact with its organizers. I am similarly uninvolved with the communist party.

So, I was reading today about various Occupy protest sites that have been directed to be dismantled, citing health and safety issues and the recent attraction of these sites to certain undesirable elements -- thieves and drug users:

On Saturday, Occupy Portland protesters dismantled large sections of their encampment, but dozens of tents remained after midnight.
Mayor Sam Adams ordered the camp shut down, citing unhealthy conditions and the encampment’s attraction of drug users and thieves.

Globe and Mail, November 13, 2011

The Occupy Boston movement has entered its second month in downtown Boston. It has been relatively peaceful thus far. However, a drug danger may be putting the movement in jeopardy.

WHDH-Boston November 7, 2011

The credit crisis appears to have sobered up Wall Street in more ways than one. A review of drug-test data compiled by drug testing firm Sterling Infosystems Inc., shows that cocaine is losing its favor among investment professionals. What drug is their choice? Marijuana.

Among existing employees, psychologists and counselors said that drug abuse has not slackened. Some even said it is peaking, exacerbated by the credit crisis and the volatile and tenuous recovery that has ensued.

Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011

In all fairness, it's inaccurate to portray these poor souls as a bunch of coke-heads. For one thing, bankers and financiers are way down the list in this report. Or, at least they were in 2007, before everything went south. I'd be interested to see a more recent set of statistics.

Still, as my title suggests, there's more than one camp of thieves and drug users on Wall Street, but only one of them is in danger of being broken up. The other one is too big to fail, I guess.

I think the weather would have eventually lead to this outcome anyways, but a few cities (including my hometown) have decided enough is enough, and that it's time for the #OCCUPY protesters to move on. They've made their point, and it's "time to move on", says Toronto mayor Rob "Pottymouth" Ford, winner of the Worst Person in the World award for the week of October 28, 2011 (a remarkable accomplishment because Kim Jong Il was still alive and well as of that date).

Granted, I imagine it must be hard for all the people living and working around these protest sites to have to see these protesters day in and day out. After a few weeks, I'm sure it gets tiring, irksome and depressing.

That's the point. It's a protest, not a parade. Protests aren't supposed to be 'convenient' or make you feel comfortable. Carrots are more expensive than sticks. If you can't afford carrots, sticks are all you've got to work with. A protest (or a union strike, for that matter) is a stick. I'm surprised how many people have not figured this out yet. They're there to make a point. They will stay there until they feel they've been heard. When "the man" comes in and roughs them up and tells them to go away, that kind of reinforces the sense of alienation these people are protesting. So far, they've generally been met with dismissiveness. You want them to go away? Listen to them and do something about it. That's how these things work.

I was reading this article on the Globe and Mail this morning to give my eyes something to do as I drank my tea. In it, Warner Bros explains their rationale for withholding new releases from rental companies: they want to provide an incentive for buying the damn things. Their understanding of purchasing behaviour has lead them to conclude that some segment of the population wants very much to see a new release immediately. The only reason they don't satisfy this need by purchasing the movie, WB logic goes, is that the movie is also available as a rental. $5 rental versus $25 purchase? No brainer. By withholding rentals for 28 days, that market segment will be forced to purchase the movie rather than rent it.

Nevermind the obvious workaround that Netflix took, which was to just buy the damn movie at BestBuy -- no doubt a calculated risk as the extra cost of the retail disk might be offset by additional subscriptions gained by being the only rental company providing these new releases. This market segment -- the one comprised of movie aficionados -- let's imagine they're a sizable lot and worth fighting over. The problem is, they're cheap by definition. It's built in to WB's basic assumptions behind their decision to withhold providing rental disks: the only reason they'd buy the movie is that it's not available for rent at a lower price. Now take away the option to rent. Know what's even cheaper than renting? So does this market segment. In fact, if this group so highly values getting a movie the day it's released, imagine how they feel about having a movie the week before it's released.

Well played, WB. I'm going to put a sell rating on Time-Warner (TWX:New York). I'm also going to suggest that its board members get the hell out of the 1% because they clearly have not earned it.

I've been listening to NPR news for the last 2 hours while I worked away in the kitchen, so it was hard to avoid writing such a topical title.

I've picked up a new hobby in the last month or so: running everything in the produce aisle through Lola's (my mother-in-law) abandoned juicer. I had seen a documentary (or perhaps it was a very cleverly-done infomercial) featuring some Aussie driving around the United States on a 60-day juice-only diet. Surely you've experienced television-induced food cravings? I think that's what happened. Good thing I wasn't watching Supersize Me. Or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The next weekend when I was visiting, Lola happened to mention she was planning on getting rid of her juicer, virtually unused because of the trouble required to clean it. Within the week, I was running all kinds of crap through that thing.

I like to go to the Oakton Market for groceries --especially produce -- because it's a very atypical grocery store (and much cheaper than the local grocery store). For one thing, the produce area occupies about a third of the store, and it has all kinds of random stuff you don't see elsewhere. This is related to the other characteristic I find interesting: the interior aisles are are basically organized by ethnicity. Greeks and Russians look on different shelves (and likely different aisles) to find something to spread on toast. The dedication to serving diverse ethnicities means that more obscure foodstuffs are a little more prominent. I don't know how I'd prepare a sheep's head, but I know where to get one. The last time I was there, loading up my cart with produce to run through the juicer, I bought some ground lamb (which I've seen at more conventional grocery stores, but can be harder to find). It was an impulse buy. I don't know if it's necessarily healthier than ground beef, but it seemed like an interesting change of pace. That left me with a problem of cooking it in such a way that didn't mask it.

John suggested shepherd's pie, in which North Americans normally use ground beef, which as he pointed out, doesn't make a damn bit of sense: It's called shepherd's pie, not cowherder's pie. This brings me back to the juicer, which you probably thought was a very convoluted and unnecessary way to introduce the grocery store until this point. When you run stuff through the juicer, you get juice (obviously), and the pulp, from which the juice is separated. The juice you drink, but what do you do with the pulp? I hate wasting stuff. Some types of pulp lend themselves well with recipes: Juice a carrot and use the pulp for carrot cake. Peel and core an apple before you juice it and you're left with applesauce. This evening I decided the leftover beet, tomato, carrot and celery pulp would work well in my shepherd's pie along with some peas and corn. To be extra different, I topped my shepherd's pie with mashed potato/celery root which I cooked in the inaugural use of my new pressure cooker.

I won't go to the trouble of posting a recipe because vegetable pulp from a juicer requires some kitchen equipment that people don't really need (mine was free, after all), nor is mechanical mastication critical to the success of the meal. But if I may provide a quick sketch of a tasty shepherd's pie: 500g of lamb, browned in a skillet with ground rosemary, black pepper and salt, to which you add in a square casserole pan diced (or even splattered) vegetables such as carrots, beets, peas and corn, and which you top with a creamy mash of potatoes and possibly other white mashable vegetables such as celery root, turnip, parsnip or cauliflower. It was tasty, and having a wide assortment of vegetables probably makes it a good way to hit your vitamin quota across the board.

This is for my own benefit, in case I have to do this again. It seems the Facebook blog importer has crapped out again for the last several weeks anyways. See my disclaimer at the bottom. You are excused from reading further.

I got exfat support on my Ubuntu 10.04 PC today by first:

Adding the exfat package from here
Then adding automount support as described here

Why would anyone want to do this? exfat is a filesystem that's increasingly the default on external media. It supports large files, which is more important now than, say, 10 years ago. Consequently, it's supported by Windows 7, OS X and (with a little work) Linux. Since I use all 3 of these OSes, I needed a filesystem for my external hard drives that can be recognized by all of my computers (I found the free NTFS mounter for OS X to be sometimes buggy - I'm pretty sure it was once responsible for the loss of the contents of my external drive).

Anyways, that is all. If you read this far, you must have been googling exfat and linux or something like that. Or else you're Ryan, Marc or John. Or maybe you're just having problems sleeping. Sorry about that. It happens to me too.

I pass by an obscene number of billboards during my commute from Ontario to Illinois. Few are noteworthy or memorable. I mean, there's the Lion's Den ADULT SUPERSTORE at exits 105, 18 and somewhere else. I'm not sure why that series of billboards sticks out. I think it might be a combination of the CAPS LOCK, and that it seems like you're never more than an hour from one of their fine showrooms. I've never been, if that's what you're thinking. Pervert.

There are some individual billboards that stand out, however. More than just navigational landmarks, they've become almost like friends. The round bologna billboard reassures me I didn't miss the turn-off on to the 69 southbound. I'm much more willing to give bologna another try as a result. There's a dental surgeon somewhere near Flint. I can't remember his name, but I sure as hell remember his face. Imagine if Vincent Price had decided to become a dentist. He promises your dental work will be painless. Judging by the mug on the billboard, it's because his dental work is done after you've been killed and served with a side of potatoes, and involves removing your teeth so it will be harder to identify your skeleton.

And finally, today I took in a little more of a billboard for a vasectomy clinic -- I want to say it's near Owosso, or maybe Oshtemo? I think it starts with an 'O'. It's a pretty busy billboard. They get their basic message across despite the clutter with a pretty clear graphic of a sperm cell with a red circle and line running through it. No sperm, see? But if you read more carefully, you're in for a treat. They have a promotion: treat one side and the other side is free! I can see how this maybe makes sense for laser eyesight correction. Many people, myself included, have one eye that's worse than the other. Conceivably, one might have just one eye that needs correction. Or maybe get just one eye corrected and wear a contact in the other eye while they save up for a second round of surgery. Now, I don't want to have to explain this because one or both of us might end up embarrassed, but the idea of maybe treating only one side doesn't translate very well to vasectomies.

"I was wondering, if I come in for a treatment, could my buddy Dan come in for the second treatment?"

I was just thinking how I'm a DIY kind of guy. Part of it has to do with my personality (I like to be self-sufficient), but there's also a pride thing -- or at the very least a storyteller thing to it. It's nice, after all, to say, "yeah, this deck, my brother-in-law and I built it over a couple of weekends two summers ago. It would have been built in one weekend but I stepped on a rusty nail and had to go to emerge' and get a tetanus shot in the arse." If you don't do it yourself, your story is going to be much shorter: "yeah, this deck, I paid a guy named Hank $3500 to build it last summer. I saw his butt crack every day for a week."

So I guess maybe for me DIY means I get to talk about my own butt instead of someone else's. But the look on some people's faces when I do is very telling, so I think it's definitely worth the effort. Plus the pride thing, of course.

The thing about print is that it's often hard to identify irony or sarcasm. That's why emoticons were invented. Unfortunately, The Globe and Mail does not include smileys in its style guide. I am consequently having difficulty with today's question, "Can you get a decent watch for less than $1000?". Is this question being asked with a straight face? There's no :P at the end of the headline. You know, I remember there was this one time when discussions such as this were taken seriously. It was right before a sudden uptick in the production rate of guillotines in France.

There's  been a fair amount of hulabaloo lately regarding some entitled people and their jet-setting ways. In a nutshell: the Canadian people collectively own some expensive pieces of military flying machinery. They have been used to ferry around Chief of Defense Staff, General Walter Natynczyk and the Minister of Defense, Peter MacKay all over the place, including to and from their vacations.

You know that fantasy you have as you sit in a traffic jam on the 400 series highways on your way to the cottage? The one where your car has some James Bond wings that convert it into a VTOL aircraft, and you take off, leaving the slow procession of cars behind? These guys are living it.

To their credit (I think), these guys are mostly using these aircraft in the course of carrying out their jobs -- or at least, they are when they're en route to a repatriation ceremony for a fallen soldier. Another argument is that the aircraft and pilot are being paid for anyways: pilots need to maintain their skill by flying these aircraft regularly, thus we're paying for them to be in the air one way or another, whether the pilot is bringing Mr. MacKay back to his cottage, or flying loop-the-loops over Saskatoon.

That argument, however, is a red-herring, propped up only by virtue of the fact that nobody has been quite able to articulate what seems to be 'wrong' with the situation. Here's the problem as I see it: It's not that several hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer dollars have been spent flying these airplanes -- the money apparently was going to be spent anyways. I think what's really wrong here is that these dollars have been spent to the exclusive benefit of these two apparently extraordinarily important individuals. Perhaps the families of the fallen soldiers are happy that Mr. MacKay takes time out of his holidays to honour their loved ones, but I don't suppose he offered them a lift? (The answer: no, implied by this government web page, if families of the dead want to be at the repatriation ceremony, they're getting there on their own dime).

So, sure, I'm happy these clowns are doing their bit to make sure to optimize the use of our national resources. But in all fairness, maybe they should give someone else a turn.

Hi, and welcome back to our program. In recent months, some of Canada's public institutions have been under the microscope, facing cuts from the sitting Conservative Harper government.

Someone involved in that episode could probably benefit from a good read through of Sun Tzu, or maybe Machiavelli. I'm pretty sure one of them would have advised making sure your victory was complete. The CBC is staffed by writers. Not all of them are great, mind you, but they aren't all without skill. And some might have an axe to grind:

Feds hire 'cuts' consultant at $90,000 a day

I get the distinct feeling that someone was being mocked.

And in the last few hours of my thirty-mumble-mumble year, I'm going to talk about the economy -- namely, how I stimulated it today. It may have been chance, or it may have been the combination of black tea and Sudafed for my allergies, but I felt quite energized today. Good thing too, as I was working in the basement of a hospital for an 8-hour day that finished with an experimental participant with ADHD. An aside: I used to be an ADHD skeptic. I still think it's overdiagnosed. But by-golly I tell you, the kids that do have it: they're a lot of work.

So my day ended and, finding myself downtown Chicago, I decided to go to the Lego Store in the Watertower Mall. I had never been, though I had often seen tourists and shoppers carrying the tell-tale shopping bags that hinted at its existence, like so many maps to ancient Inca gold.

(I now think perhaps I'm hopped up on Sudafed).

Jude's birthday is coming up, and after sharing with him the disappointment of not having enough red lego bricks to make a Cars 2 Mac truck, I wanted to remedy that. One of the joys, for me, of having boys is that I can look forward to years of fanciful Lego creations. It's likely that, with their pedigree, my boys are going to take it that extra step and motorize their creations in future science fairs or first year engineering, but for now it's all about artistic expression. The thrill of walking into a room of pure creative potential was indescribable. I can say that with confidence because this is the fifth time I've edited this paragraph, and just gave up. Even though Lego products have shifted towards almost exclusively themed boxed sets, with specialized pieces for making specific projects, I still think they foster creativity and imagination. Especially when the project instructions get lost. Then there's one project you can always fall back on: build a fleet of spaceships.

Having spent money on Jude (Don't worry. He doesn't read my blog), I decided to treat myself to a new pair of Club Shoes. Club Shoes? Back in 2004, I was in Chicago for a conference with Pat, Ray and Coco -- my lab mates at the time. I did not have anything that resembled a business-casual appropriate shoe. I felt very self-conscious about this because my departmental position as area fashionista was in jeopardy. So the second day of the conference, the group of us did some recon for a store near our hotel that might sell shoes. One blustery walk later, I was the proud owner of a new pair of black shoes -- shoes that looked rather like those worn by the rest of my party. Hence: club shoes. I am happy to say those shoes served me well these last 7 years, but it is time to move on.

Farewell, old club shoes! May my feet be so well shod 7 years hence!

That last bit I should have done in pentambic iambeter.

I am SO taking Sudafed again tomorrow.

My parent's lawyer once told me I'd make a good lawyer. I know a few, and think they're a smart bunch, which I can appreciate. The problem is their work falls within the scope of the legal system, which unfortunately has been largely engineered by people who don't quite think things all the way through.

Here's today's intellectual property law example (in a nutshell, the company owning the copyright to The Hurt Locker are going to strike down upon file sharers with great vengeance and furious anger, just as soon as they find out who they all are).

This might not seem to be a problem until you consider how peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing works. Let's construct a toy example, assuming the copyright holder's accusation at face value: each time a person shares their intellectual property, they are deprived of revenue corresponding to its retail value (this is debatable for a number of reasons). Suppose we have 100 people making available a copy of The Hurt Locker using a P2P client. When I use P2P to download a file, my client finds out who is making the file available, and downloads the file, 1 chunk at a time, from everyone who has chunks to offer. Suppose I am the only person on the internet interested in downloading The Hurt Locker. My computer connects to 100 seeding computers and downloads chunks from each of them until I have the whole movie. There are now 101 copies of The Hurt Locker on the internet. But each of the 100 people from whom I downloaded the movie are assessed damages equal to the retail value of 1 copy of the movie. Net loss for Voltage Pictures, LLC: $27 (today's list price on Amazon.com). Claimed damages: $2700.

Now, I'd wager most people would think twice about going out on a business dinner, paying $27 for a meal, but filing an expense claim for $2700. That would be fraud, right?

I can't say I'm especially surprised about the finding that fast-paced cartoons aren't exactly the best fodder for growing minds. Even if it turns out that this isn't replicable or generalizable, I'm happy to use it for the time being to justify banning the inane tripe they feed kids -- at least in my presence. I know a number of talented people in the animation industry, and I'm sure a little part of them dies when they either see or are forced to contribute towards this stuff. But even if you ban Spongebob and its ilk in your house, there's still one problem: The main issue in the study isn't the asinine plot featured in these programs; it's the low attention-span being bred by all the scene changes. I don't suppose you've noticed, but television programming is peppered with commercial interruptions featuring 30 to 60 second spots. All the more reason to PVR your favourite programs, or hell, cancel your cable and wait for it to show up on DVD or the torrent. While you're waiting, maybe read a book or something.

Speaking of ads and cartoons, you may not have had the pleasure of comics in your childhood. I didn't either, for the most part, but I did see one every now and again. One thing that stood out for me were the ads for Hostess products.



I was simultaneously perplexed and amused when Rebecca came home after an evening of shopping with her sister, equipped with a nearly full sample of Hostess snack products, from Twinkies to Snowballs to fruit pies. It was her sister's idea, I am told (ironic, because she's in a university food and nutrition program). I had never seen these products in 3-dimensions. Because of context, they fell in the same category as Sea Monkeys and Charles Atlas body-building mail-order products.

Now, I'm not going to judge her -- okay, scratch that. I did judge her. But she agreed: it was an idea that need never be revisited. Those things were vile.

Instructions on the bottle of Life-brand nasal spray for "fast acting relief of nasal congestion":
Spray firmly 2 to 3 times into each nostril. Breathe deeply.

Tell me if you see a problem here.

That's all I got today. I'm tired and I don't use Twitter. Sue me.

A column in the Globe and Mail caught my eye for absurdity today, for it was entitled, "How can I work 'smarter' rather than 'harder'?". It reminded me of the old stand-by, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it."

It seems to me, if you have to ask how to work smarter, you might want to consider a different line of work, because the one you're in probably isn't going to end well for you.

I just stumbled across this article on Wired, based on a recent article in Nature, the journal to which Gill and I aspire to be published in the near future. In it, the article briefly discusses the overuse of antibiotics, which is widely believed to be responsible for the proliferation of drug-resistance among various nasties.

I've alluded in the past to random ideas I've had that, despite their naivete, turned out to be pretty good -- good enough that others who have also had them have gone on to make something out of them. For example, after I learned how viruses work, I thought, "hey, that would be a good way to screw around with cancer cells" (1998).

Okay, so, aside from religious fundamentalists, we're all pretty much up-to-speed on the concept of survival of the fittest, right? That's how those nasty buggers came about in the first place. We keep making conditions that promote the survival of only those organisms that survive antibiotics. So what if, instead of disinfecting our hospitals, we infected the hell out of them? Like, with the old-school lame versions of those superbugs? Bugs that compete for the same resources. It would be like flooding the market with cheap knockoffs. In my head, at least, it seems just so crazy, it just might work.

Today was the kind of day where, unfortunately, a blog topic happened to me. I use the term, unfortunate, because you will usually find me writing about the asinine and the ridiculous.

Back in the spring, a switch in my kitchen suffered a mechanical failure. This switch independently controlled the lights and rotation of the ceiling fan; the button that operated the lights would no longer depress, leaving the lights permanently off. There are other light sources in the kitchen, so it wasn't a big deal, but I meant to try to fix the problem myself because I'm a DIY kind of guy.

Eventually, I got around to buying a replacement switch from the hardware store. The switch it replaced had several connection points along each side -- many more than the three on the replacement switch. I have no idea how the original circuit worked (though I took photographs of the broken switch in situ for reference) but it seemed that no configuration with the replacement switch would restore the original functionality. The best I could achieve was a switch that shut the power off to a wall in the adjacent room, but still did not toggle the ceiling fan light. The fan itself still worked.

Having made things slightly worse (now my entertainment unit could be shut off accidentally with the flick of a switch), I decided to get the landlord to call in a professional. Or, rather, "professional".

The first time the guy came out, I could not be there, so I left the note below, detailing the general state of things. Read it, and try to think like an electrician for a moment. Or, if you find yourself unable to role-play an electrician, maybe you'll have better luck thinking like a detective:



Now, from what I have written, do you suppose the affected switch might have something to do with the outlets in the next room? Might you want to verify that fixing the fan light did not disable power to the living room?

If you said 'yes' to these questions, congratulations! You have the natural makings of an electrician.

Sadly, the electrician who rewired the light switch does not.

While I made things slightly worse by putting the adjacent room on a switch (which could at least be left on), the electrician managed to make things much worse by cutting the power to the room entirely. On top of that, only the single most out-of-the way kitchen outlet is electrified, so without the aid of an extension cord, neither tea nor toast are possible.

The second visit from this electrician happened today, called in to restore power to the dead outlets. Again, I was out, but I left a comprehensive map of what outlets were not functioning and which ones were. I had hoped this would suffice. My hopes were dashed. Though the living room again has power flowing to it, the kitchen outlets, marked non-functional on my map, are still dead.

I have texted Matt, the property manager who not only feels terribly about this, but also has to drag himself out here each time to let the electrician in. I will perhaps update my entry when the story reaches it's thrilling conclusion. But first, I will make some tea, because I'm experiencing caffeine de-teas (DTs).

I received a call from a telephone solicitor the other night. Ostensibly a wrong number, it went something like this:

Telemarketer: Hi, Mr. mumble-mumble?
Me: I beg your pardon?
TM: Mr. mumble something not my name
Me: I'm sorry, you have the wrong number.
TM: Well, can I just ask you, have you thought about upgrading your education?
Me: No, not really. I'm about as educated as you can get.
TM: Well, we offer a number of programs that can enhance your current ...
Me: No, I really don't think you can offer me any more education. I have a Ph D. They don't make anything that goes higher than that.
TM: (incredulously) You have a Ph D.
Me: Yes. Goodbye.

I'm almost certain he didn't believe me, but man, that felt really good.

I've heard about Steve Williams twice (1, 2)in the sporting news now -- two more times than I believe are merited. I'm sure I'm betraying my golfing ignorance when I suggest that the guy who lugs around a bag of clubs is to the successful career of a pro golfer as the guy who pumps gas is to the successful career of a NASCAR driver. Or perhaps even less-so, because maybe the guy who pumps gas has to be especially quick and precise about it. The caddy just has to not pass out in the sun.

I did really well on the analogical reasoning section on my GRE, so I think you should trust me on this one.

Okay, I'll admit that none of the folklore supports this statement. The other problem with my hypothesis is that vampires -- at least of the undead variety -- don't exist (but I welcome a flamewar with any weirdo who wishes to dispute this). Nonetheless, I feel strongly that any arbitrary statement should be supported by at least one hit on google, which, until now, has not been the case for my thesis statement.

And this report, from the department of I Can't Fathom It Done Any Other Way is courtesy of the auditing company responsible for verifying the status of dependents claimed by Northwestern employees in their benefits packages. I understand the motivation behind the audit, but you'd think the company hired to carry out the audit might have a better handle on the manner in which may appear the various forms the documentation for which they asked. Verification of my children, for example, required the submission of long-form copies of their birth certificates. Period. Fine and well if your jurisdiction has long-form birth certificates. The one in which mine were born does not. And so they could not be verified -- at least, not without a phone call to the company during which I had to remind myself that the person with whom I was speaking was not the short-sighted idiot to whom my irritation should be directed. Assuming that Northwestern - an organization with enough foreign employees to warrant an International Office - paid for the service, you'd think the company they hired would have the wherewithal to apprehend that children are very often born outside the United States.

I normally think of The Globe and Mail as being a slightly more high-brow sort of newspaper. After all, I can't tell you how many times I've opened up the pages to see a multi-million dollar house featured in its pages, and rarely does the Drive automotive section review anything but the sort of car you might find in the driveway of a medical specialist or financial broker. When I became a regular visitor to their online presence, I thus found it rather incongruous to see discussion questions at the end of most of their stories -- questions like, "Do you think minimum prison terms should be raised?" following a story about some incorrigible convict re-offending after being released. CBC.ca has long allowed readers to comment on their stories, and I have often been pulled into reading the train wrecks that take place there. It wasn't until recently that they re-vamped the commenting system to allow comments to be easily hidden that I could avoid the temptation. Incidentally, their commenting system is still broken, as submissions go into moderator limbo unless you've posted a sufficient number of comments. In other words, they've filtered out the run-of-the-mill idiots, and now only allow blathering idiots to post.

They must have changed things around at the Globe and Mail, as at the end of this story, where I was expecting to read "Is 29 too young be a grandparent? Are young parents more in-tune with their kids?" they seem to have done away with their discussion question, and thus provide the uninformed with absolutely no guidance at all.

The title of this post? That's a reference to this clip from That Mitchell and Webb Look.



That pretty much sums up what I think about people sometimes. It's unfortunate. I fear it might also be a sign I'm a bit of a jerk.

Update: The Globe and Mail are back to their hard-hitting questions. Should one can of soup be considered one serving? I would agree without hesitation! Because if the Eurozone countries should -- wait, soup? Nevermind.

Wow! Some weekend, hey? This year I've experienced some pretty extreme weather in Chicago, from snowmageddon to record heat and associated storms bringing flooding, knocking over grand trees and taking my power out with them.

And then there's Amy Winehouse.

Police have said the cause of her death is being treated as "unexplained," and have said speculation that she might have suffered an overdose is "inappropriate."

They're right, of course. It could have been a grizzly attack.

So, now that I'm "on vacation", I'm continuing a post I started a couple days ago. And because I'm so meta, I wanted to write about how the process of barfing up one's half-digested thoughts has become complicated. I have no thoughts about Twitter, as I have never used it, but I do make use of Facebook, LinkedIn and now Google+ (sort of).

Facebook

The grand-daddy of social networking sites. Or maybe not grand-daddy. Maybe a great-uncle whose extensive collection of Norman Rockwell prints leaves you feeling just a little uncomfortable. I don't mind facebook so much, except they seem to step into some kind of a privacy issue every other month. That, and those bloody apps that -- sorry if you've been inviting me to play them with you -- I block as a matter of course. 9 times out of 10, I'm just on there in the mood to be a smartarse.

LinkedIn

One thing that keeps my smartarsery in check on Facebook is that I'm associated with "respectable" people on there. LinkedIn seems to be the place to maintain those connections. It doesn't seem to be possible to post pictures there, which is just as well, as I think photos are responsible for 99% of the hilarity that ensues on social networking sites. And in general, commentary I see on LinkedIn is very professionally directed. It's been interesting to see some of my former colleagues issue statements about topics and using jargon I would never have expected to hear from them just a couple of years ago.

Google+

Holy crap, Google, what are you trying to do to me here? I'm still trying to work out what, if any, role Google+ might play. I know some people are drawn to Google+ because it's not Facebook; some of them have abandoned Facebook accounts. But for those who are already heavily invested in Facebook, playing with the new kid on the block requires a doubling of effort.




I see this in terms of duplicating material published to Facebook, and in trying to make sense of the structure and concepts they use in their implementation of a social network. Given the culture at Google ("do no evil"), my gut feeling is that Google is going to end up with a platform that I would tend to prefer. Unfortunately, that leaves me somewhat ambivalent at the moment.

I'm not ready to push out my next thought, but I just wanted to mention that people like this kick ass (link goes to story about daring good samaritans).

A lag of twelve days is easily accounted for:
I'm at a conference in Florida during what appears to be a heat wave. Near as I can tell, if you don't like baking by a poolside or surfing, this is not the place for you. St Pete Beach, the community in which this conference is being held, has an odd geography. It basically looks like a paved sandbar:


View Larger Map

The A on the map marks where I am staying. The conference hotel is about 1.5 miles to the south. I hear the walk along the beach is okay, when the sun isn't beating down. I wouldn't know. 30 minutes in this sun would probably kill me.

So a week or so before this conference, I was making preparations so that things would go smoothly in my absence. Unfortunately, in the days leading up to the conference, things started to go decidedly UNsmoothly. A fierce but short-lived storm blew through my neighbourhood, knocking down trees and branches and severing power lines. We were without power for three days. Unless Gill went on a binge shopping trip, we're also now without food. That, incidentally is a second reason I didn't update recently. I recall having a couple of topical ideas about which to write, but with no means to publish them, I have since forgotten them.

July first and fourth mark the dates that Canada and the United States respectively told their contemporary reigning English monarchs that they had things pretty much under control. So happy Sod-Off England weekend to all!

As I drove around today, I heard an ad on the radio that struck a chord. It was for the Airmiles rewards program. The theme was things that are awesome. The example was getting carded at the age of 37. It was a little close to home for me. I am approaching the age where I was of legal drinking age when people who are now of legal drinking age were born. In some jurisdictions, I am already there. Nonetheless, I continue to get carded when I go to the local grocery store. Signs posted there indicate I should expect to be carded if I look under 25. Twenty-five happened quite some time ago for me, and is now just a fond but vague memory of living in an apartment storage-closet in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood. That I continue to get carded suggests to me either an inability to think critically, or else an inability to discriminate a fifteen year age differential. Both of these, I think, qualify as a real handicap. I refuse to believe I look youthful enough to just possibly be less than 21 years of age. If so, that might speak to how perception of age may have undergone a recalibration to account for sun damage and air-borne pollutants.

I could brush this off as a flattering mistake, were it not so much bloody trouble. The local store requires government-issued identification. American states count as governments. Canadian provinces often do not, it seems. The first time I had this problem, there was a big to-do, involving the summoning of the store manager. Next time, I was told, I should bring my Canadian passport, which is inconvenient (it doesn't fit in my wallet), makes me nervous (losing it would be a disaster), and bothers the hell out of me (just on principle). My Ontario driver's license would be satisfactory identification to the Chicago police, were I to be pulled over. The local grocery store, on the other hand, fancies themselves a branch of the Department of Homeland Security. As if a grocery clerk is any more expert on Canadian passports than they are on Ontario driver's licenses. If I wasn't afraid of running afoul of a number of laws, I'd have a bogus passport done up just to prove a point. I suppose I could just as easily make my point by asking the cashier what colour my passport should be, and what should be on the cover, but they don't get paid enough to deal with my crap.

A fierce storm blew through the area last night, with fallen branches downing a number of power lines. Crews are out on the street today, cleaning up some of the mess, as branches lay strewn about sidewalks and roadways. Just now, I witnessed a woman walking her dog. She paused momentarily as the golden retriever sniffed and then peed on a thick tree limb that had fallen on to the boulevard. Territory Fail.

That reminds me of something I witnessed not long ago, here in the heart of the good old US of A: Commies. Socialism at its worst.



You see that? That right there is a forestry crew tending to trees along my street. TREES! Those bastards don't even pay taxes, yet here they are getting free health care on MY dime! What's it to me if the oak tree down the street gets an infection? It's not in my yard. It shoulda taken better care of itself. Probably made some bad choices, and started drawing water from the storm drain or something like that. You know drugs get in that water, from when people flush unused medication down the drain? Probably a bunch of junkie trees. Good riddance, I say. I don't need my tax dollars keeping those junkie trees on the dole.

Anyways, my trees have been doing a good job looking after themselves. Yeah, they've been shedding twigs left and right lately, which Amy was good enough to help me get off my roof and out of my eaves-trough, but on the whole, they seem to be pulling their weight, and doing their job of keeping my house shaded and cool. So I'm not worried about one of them getting sick; besides, when did getting sick ever hurt anyone else?



I don't think my complaints are going to get anywhere. I have been thinking of writing to my local Tea Party candidate, to get him or her on-board. This could be a big election issue. I mean, what next? Making sure that people are healthy?

From the title, you might expect this to be a tongue-in-cheek misogynistic entry. So you should read this, keeping in mind my strong affection for irony and absurd paradoxes.

I heard on the radio today that the women in Saudi Arabia were contemplating a new wave of Middle-Eastern rebellion. You see, an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam sees is as inappropriate for women from getting behind the wheel of an automobile. This is understandably intolerable for these women, especially since gas in Saudi Arabia is less than $1 per gallon, so it must be like being a diabetic in Willy Wonka's factory. However, the women planned to protest by getting behind the wheel and driving around. Given that they are generally going to be unskilled drivers, does anyone else see a problem with putting thousands of Saudi women on the roads at the same time?

That was one helluva week. I'd like to say that it's over, but it's not, as I'll be cooped up in a basement tomorrow, scanning brains. Compared to the rest of my week, however, it'll be a walk in the park. I'm sure you're familiar with weeks like this, especially if you've had the post-secondary school experience of having two final exams and two term papers due the same week. I had no exams that I had to write, personally, but the student I was supervising did. This meant that her hectic schedule became my hectic schedule. To boot, my other student also had a deadline today.

So it was with great relief that I ended my work-day early today, having also submitted changes to the author proof to my manuscript, which, because of the rest of my schedule, I didn't begin until about 4 hours after the 24 hour deadline indicated in an email that I didn't get a chance to read.

Amy was good enough to give me a lift home, and I unlocked the door in eager anticipation of the chance to put my feet up, and perhaps video chat with my beautiful family. I still haven't put my feet up, nor have I called my family, because I had to first write this segue into what I found when I came home: an Aqua Velva Man. Or rather, the smell of one. I suppose it's better than the smell of chicken left to rot on the fridge (I may have blogged that story once). But to smell a department store musk in one's house when: 1) one has been out all day and 2) one doesn't use department store musk is rather strange.

I looked around the house for clues. No new insurance policies on the table. No for sale sign on the lawn. No retired golf buddies sipping scotch in a leather armchair. So that ruled out the three most likely candidate musk sources. I suppose it could have been the lingering scent of one of my house guests from last night, but I don't think so.

So maybe it's just me. I have had olfactory hallucinations before, so maybe I am joining the ranks of those weirdo synaesthetes. Or maybe it's just the week getting to me. Time to go put my feet up.

It's June, making now a good time to look back at the past school year and take stock of what my son has learned. From the Ontario Junior Kindergarten curriculum: not too much, though his penmanship has improved. That, however, could just as easily be attributable to the copying exercises his Lolo sets out for him and his cousins to keep them quiet on those days they don't have school. He has a precocious grasp of some concepts from physical, chemical and biological science as well as numbers (including the rudiments of binary, which I really must do something with), but here again, we can thank They Might Be Giants, rather than the school system.



So what has my son learned in school this year? For the most part, I'm not entirely sure, but I do know this: There is a computer in the classroom. Over the last 9 months, he has aligned himself with the morally ambiguous element in his classroom, and was preoccupied with figuring out his teacher's computer log-in and password, mentioning it almost every time I dropped him off at school.

Today I received a letter from the IRS. No! Wait! It was a good letter! It read something along the lines of:

We reviewed your tax forms and think you made a mistake. You paid us way too much in tax. Unless you disagree with us, expect a pile of cash to land in your bank account with a satisfying thud. If you would like to disagree with us...[instructions and mailing address follow]

Seriously?

My experience with the Canada Revenue Agency has been ... different. For starters, I don't think I have gone more than one year without one of my deductions being challenged (this year I have to submit my moving expense receipt). I've certainly never had the CRA tell me they owed ME money. And it's not because I've never been overtaxed either, because I'm pretty sure you can find one of my old blog entries describing how a phone call to the CRA to resolve their claim that I had a balance owing uncovered that they owed me several hundred dollars from the previous year. So I guess maybe in a perverted way, I did receive a letter that resulted in the Canadian government refunding me money, but only if you are open to very unconventional interpretations.

So that's one difference I have noticed between the two countries, perhaps rooted in America's historical roots in a tax revolt. But that's just a guess. And I suppose it could be worse: In Soviet Russia, the taxes refund YOU!

Ever get the feeling that this generation of kids is getting a really lame childhood experience? They are. And it's going to bite them in the asses. Now, I'm not advocating eugenics, but there's something to that saying about "whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger" (that's true to a point, though it's hard to argue an upside to getting maimed).

The other thing that kids don't get is all that awesome television programming for which we all have a deep sense of nostalgia. Why, just this weekend, I was having problems sleeping. Finding myself awake at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, I was thinking about tip-toeing downstairs to watch The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.



Classic.

Last week, Gill came over for some social interaction, as her roomie was off in the 'Peg buying a house or somesuch. I ordered a Homemade Pizza with my favourite fancy toppings: roma tomato, basil and prosciutto (my other favourite topping combination is pepperoni, bacon and green pepper). This isn't really germane to the story, but I just wanted to set the scene.

We watched The Social Network, which was a fair movie, though I don't think it was in the same league as The King's Speech. They definitely made Mark Zuckerberg out to be an ass; I found this to be an interesting observation, as I found his character to be similar in many respects to my inner monologue. Early in the movie, the Zuckerberg character is creating some kind of juvenile prank website over the course of an evening, and drunk-blogging about it as he goes along.

That's the inspiration of this blog entry. Except I'm not drunk, and I'm not making a prank website. Instead, I'm doing something much more practical: I'm making dinner, but don't really have a plan. Let's see how this turns out, shall we?

• 16:45 - What am I going to have for dinner? Everything's frozen. Crap. Seafood and chicken breasts defrost pretty quickly in running water. Both combine well with linguini. Let's go with the frozen scallops because I seldom have them (Rebecca hates them).


• 17:05 - So, scallops are defrosting. What goes with scallops? Bacon-wrapped scallops are tasty. And bacon is in a carbonara sauce, isn't it? I'll also need some kind of sauce or something...


• 17:30 - Basil, olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon and garlic. I have no idea if this is going to work with the bacon, but I've mixed up a thin paste with these ingredients. I plan on tossing the scallops in them and searing them in a cast-iron skillet on the BBQ so as not to stink up my house again.

Earlier in the week, I made seafood, and the house ended up smelling more like a wharf than I would have liked.


• I should have patted dry the scallops.


• 17:57 - Bacon has been cooking for the last 10 mins on the BBQ on the warming rack part where you normally put your charred hotdogs. I decided that I'll roast some veggies to go on the pasta. Went with grape tomatoes, orange pepper and garlic. Not sure if roasted garlic counts as a vegetable.


• 18:05 - Remember the charred hotdogs I just mentioned? It turns out that more than 10 minutes, even with indirect heat, will leave your bacon in about the same state. Bacon do-over. Resolve to be more vigilant. Eat the charred bacon anyways.


• 18:09 - Bacon cooking again. Scallops searing. Pasta cooking.


• 18:20 - Dinner is served.

Conclusion: garlic does not work well as a vegetable, even when roasted. Everything seems to pair well with bacon.

I was back in my hometown for Mother's day. My family regularly has Sunday dinner at my parents' house, and I often teledine via Skype. The time zone difference often means I am just thinking of preparing my dinner when the family sits down to eat, but otherwise, it's just like being there. Okay, not really. But it's what I've got, and it works in a pinch. Last Sunday, however, I was able to be there f'reals. In the last couple of months, Pretty has been bringing around a gentleman friend.

An aside: I don't recall ever experiencing this first-hand, but have you ever brought a significant other to a family function, and had your grandmother introduce them as your "friend"? You can tell by everyone's shift of gaze that it's a little awkward for everyone. Like, is grandma oblivious, or does she possess a wry sense of humour based on understatement? In the case of the former, perhaps you're going to have to check her into a home. In the case of the latter, you're horrified to consider that she's much more clever than you've given her credit for, is aware that you're just now considering checking her into a home, and is going to call her lawyer tomorrow to change her will.

Yeah, so Pretty has a gentleman friend. I'm pretty sure they're snogging. I asked where he was, expecting her to say that he's at his own mom's for mother's day. Instead she said that he's gone viking.

Pardon me?

Biking. He's gone biking.

Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Because one of those activities is socially acceptable. The other marks an unnatural interest in live action roleplaying. Unless you're filipino, in which case, the two activities are indistinguishable.

This is a delayed blast entry. I'm timing its publication for a few days from now so y'all don't have to go so long between witty observations.

I've spent the better part of this evening resetting my buddy Gill's Sony Vaio laptop to its factory condition. After four years, computers usually get pretty bunged up with crap, which is why I usually wipe mine clean every year (it also forces you to back up your important stuff, which is a good side effect). So over a few hours, I checked in on the progress bar to find it wasting probably an hour and a half restoring assinine software that I intended to delete at the first opportunity. Things like the AOL toolbar. Or Napster. Or some lame audio mixing software. Honestly. If someone buys a Sony laptop with the intention of doing some music editing, they probably have something specific in mind, and I doubt that it's a program that ships for free with the laptop.

What I find ironic is that computer vendors invariably ship computers preloaded with either Norton or Symantec antivirus software. It's ironic because one function of antivirus software is to prevent the automatic installation of crappy software that you don't want and will probably cause your computer to crash -- software very much like that that comes preloaded along with the antivirus software.

Just, okay, can someone please get any other photo of this woman, pictured here in what is clearly a webcam photo taken for a facebook profile with the background removed.



This is Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the newly-minted NDP representative from Berthier-Maskinongé who by all accounts has no business in parliament. But whatever. I'm just bothered by the fact that no other picture appears to exist for this woman, so anytime she is referenced in the news, you see this photo. Even a caricature from this winter's carnivale with Ms. Brosseau inexplicably wearing rollerskates and a touque would be a welcome change.

Sometimes I go for a spell where I have nothing to say; other times, I have so many half-formed topics swirling in my head that I don't know where to begin. This week was the case of the latter. To invent a cooking metaphor, you can't slow-cook a roast and bake a cake in the same oven. Sure, you can overextend the metaphor by arguing that you can still make a fine custard on the stove top while your roast cooks, but I don't know that a custard is the best choice to follow a roast. And what vegetables are we to serve with our meal anyways?

Where was I?

Oh yeah. So there was a royal wedding that I completely and deliberately missed, though I understand there was a hat in attendance that looked like a minor deity



I'm not going to talk about that. There was also an election in Canada. I'm not going to talk about that just yet either. Nor will I talk about the conclusion of the Bin Laden saga (other than to share Amy's linux joke about $> mv -rf /bin/laden /dev/null, which was totally funny, trust me.)

No, I just wanted a cathartic experience: I like -- no, I NEED -- something to drink with my meals. I don't like to drink milk, and I seldom drink alcohol, and neither are appropriate to bring to work in a lunch bag. So I often buy tetra-pack juice. And you know what I see when I go to the grocery store? An aisle full of juice box cartons decorated with cartoon characters and funny little faces made out of fruit. "It's not for me," I want to say at the check out, like I'm paying a cute cashier for a box of hemorrhoid ointment. I miss the bland yellow and black packaging of the No-Name brand, because I feel like I'm being blended into the same category as middle-aged men who buy comic books.

My goodness, April is almost finished. That means I still have tomorrow to file my Canadian taxes. I must say, the only thing better than having to do your taxes once per year, is having to do it twice.

That was sarcasm, in case you didn't notice.

In going through my documents in preparation for filing my taxes, I came across a decent pile of old tax-related papers that no longer needed to be kept. I decided to do the prudent thing, which was bury them in the park behind my house in a lead-lined box rigged with a cyanide canister.

That's what I decided, anyways. However it turned out to be much less feasible than simply shredding the whole mess of papers. Unfortunately, despite the relative infrequency with which I use it, my paper shredder has decided to show its age. It has three settings: off, reverse and automatic. Off is self-explanatory. The reverse setting is intended to remedy a paper jam. The automatic setting causes the shredding blades to rotate when an infra-red sensor detects that some paper has been inserted. I think the sensor is shot, as the other day the shredder failed to respond when I inserted a small stack of bank statements. I jiggled it, hoping in vain that, like a dim fish, wriggling bait would cause it to bite. I gave up, leaving the stack of paper in the slot. In the middle of the night, I almost peed the bed when I was startled awake by the sound of the shredder spontaneously shredding the bills. Though groggy, I had the presence of mind not to bother hunting around the house for an intruder: compulsive document shredding seemed an unlikely motivation for a home invasion. Even if it was a home invasion, an intruder who began by shredding old bank statements rather than ransacking the house for alcohol would probably be an interesting person to talk to.

I turned to google this evening to see if anyone else had solved the problem of a faulty paper detector. One industrious priest took apart his shredder and shorted the sensor wires so that it always signaled that paper was detected. It seemed like an interesting project, but before I could find a screwdriver, I had a flash of lazy insight. The shredder now sits inverted on its basket, and works like a charm on the 'reverse' setting.

On the previous post about elimination communication, Asher asked me to draw a rhinocerous. I obliged him (he really likes animals, in the kind of way that you might imagine someone that goes on to do field work in some tropical location might). Just to test him, I asked if the rhino was walking. "Yes," Asher replied. "Why is he walking?" I asked. "Poop," he replied.

I saw it coming a mile away, but found myself surprised nonetheless.

So tonight's the big leader's debate in Canada. If you've been governed by a tyrant for a period lasting more than three terms, see your polling station. This may be a symptom of apathy, a potentially quality-of-life threatening condition.

Courtesy of Vivien over the weekend comes this Toronto Star article about getting people to vote instead of complaining about being victimized. And it got me to thinking. Every September of my grad school career, we were expected to put together one or more application packages for scholarships or grants from various government funding agencies (the budgets for these agencies have since been cut in recent years). This application season was a pain in the ass. Most time consuming was the part where you had to write a detailed description of your research: where it's been and where you want to go with it. Despite being a pain in the ass, it was still a good exercise. Probably. At the very least, it required us to do some deep reflection.

For many of us, that was all we got out of the exercise, as diminishingly small numbers of applicants were actually awarded any money. That was quite a bit of work for government money that may or may not pan out. But then I was thinking, what value would we place on the government services we take for granted? Sure we pay taxes, but look at it this way: each year, we all get thousands of dollars of funding in the form of health care, education, social assistance, roads and sewers and fake lakes. And we get it all without having to write anything. Maybe we should change that, and incentivize voting. You need your driver's license renewed? Write a 250 word essay on who you voted for in the last election and why.

I found this last summer, and tucked it in for a day like today.

From the story, our intrepid traveller finished on the name "Ayn", from which we might guess that he lives in the US Southwest. How very considerate to draw a map to where the crazies live.

Courtesy of my friend Ryan, I started to read this Financial Post story this morning, with the following opening paragraph:

With more than 90 retired teachers over the age of 100 and receiving benefits, the problem for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is clear.

The problem to which they are referring, of course, is how to make 93 fatal medication interactions look like an accident. Clearly, teachers have been enjoying the good life for far too long if so many of them are making it past 100. You don't see the pension plan run for Nova Scotia coal miners running into this problem, do you? Assuming they don't die during a cave-in during their working years, you can pretty much count on black lung striking down most retired coal miners the moment they step on to the putting green for the first time.

At the same time, tonnes of dollars (that's metric tonnes of Canadian dollars, which at today's exchange rate works out to 1.144 tons of US dollars) are being sunk into removing such hazards as asbestos from our schools. I say we kill two birds with one stone. Save the money and leave the asbestos. Teachers need a little on-the-job danger; something that won't really kick in until they've finished paying into the system, but resolves quickly once they're ready to start collecting.

Today we enjoyed a relatively pleasant spring day here in the Chicago area -- or at least, some of us enjoyed it. Others, such as I, spent the day indoors being productive. In between the parade of meetings I had, I dialed in to my favourite news source to see what's what.

This story got my goat today. Aside from appearing undemocratic, the PC Party of Canada Harper government policy of turning away potential voters who actually want to get informed just reinforces the image of a party full of yes-men engaging in groupthink.

Despite the facade behind which I occassionally write, I don't actually have any delusions about my sphere of influence, so, aside from guaranteeing my ineligibility to attend any event held by the PC Party of Canada Harper party, there's little point in arguing why I find Mr. Harper to be the scariest despot never to wage war on his own people. Actually, scratch that last qualifier.

Speaking of hamburger...

I am back in top BBQ form this evening as I took advantage of the remains of the day to cook up one of my fantastic creations from last summer: Blue Cheeseburger with Bacon (with the blue cheese and bacon mixed into the patty). Today's improvement comes courtesy of Bobby Flay, who recommends indenting the middle of your patty so that it doesn't cook into that usual flying-saucer shaped meatball that homemade patties often do on the grill.

As you may have guessed, games are a passion of mine. What you might not know is how this love of games was fostered from a young age by my grandfather. When I was quite young, my grandfather taught me how to play chess. Naturally, I had little chance against him because of his years playing against really good Russian, Polish and Ukranian players during the war when he worked with the Polish resistance. Below is one of the few photos we have from that time in his life.


You would think that this would have been a great opportunity to become a fantastic chess player. Alas, it became apparent that I was too easily frustrated, or at the very least a sore loser. But my grandfather was a kind soul, and was always open to playing just about any game I would suggest after he checkmated me in six moves. We played just about everything. GO! The Game of Life, Scrabble, Operation, Dungeons and Dragons. Back in the early 80's, I had even brought a Star Wars game to a family picnic. Unfortunately, it only came with adult sized Storm Trooper costumes, so I was unable to play.


Over the years, I think my grandpa and I must have played just about every game you could possibly find at a flea market. Sometimes I'd win; sometimes grandpa would win; but we'd always have fun. Except the Tomb of Horrors. That module was brutal. I never forgave grandpa for killing off my paladin.


My grandpa lived a long and happy life, but sadly passed away during my college years. One thing I regret is that the Settlers of Catan game didn't come out until some years after he died. He would have absolutely loved that game. Not long ago, I fashioned my own Settlers of Catan set (chronicled in my Prologue, Part 1, Part 2 ,Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5). Having finished the project, I feel I have become quite expert at mold-making and casting, and recently decided I wanted to try something a little more advanced.

Because the resin initially mixes as a thin liquid, it is possible to add dry materials to the plastic. Sometimes people do this to add mass, or colour to the plastic. For example, I had considered casting replacement game pieces with iron filings mixed in to the resin so they would work with the magnetic tiles. On one rainy Sunday afternoon, however, I had a flash of inspiration: I was going to play games with my grandpa again.

The urn containing my grandpa's ashes sits over the mantle at my aunt Vera's house. As it happens, there was recently a baby shower there. Also as it happens, the 1 liter plastic bag they provide at airport security will easily fit a sufficiently-sized pill container with a screw-on lid. I carefully spooned out a modest amount of ash into the pill bottle, taking care not to disrespect grandpa by spilling his ashes on the floor.


Getting the ashes over the border turned out to be easier than I thought because ashes don't count as a liquid, and so the airport security people didn't even notice the pill container. The weekend after the baby shower, I set about casting my new custom grandpa game pieces.


The materials were pretty straight forward. I had my syringes for measuring out the resin components, and I set aside a bowl containing the ashes. Not pictured is the measuring spoon. I calculated how much resin would be required for a complete set of game pieces, and then roughly estimated the volume of ash that would be required in each batch of resin so that grandpa would be roughly equally distributed throughout the entire set.


After mixing up a test batch, I cast my first pieces. I didn't get the ash properly mixed in the resin on my first attempt. After casting a few pieces, I got the hang of it, and successfully mixed grandpa into four complete sets of plastic game pieces.


I have painted up one complete set, and plan to do two of the other three sets this weekend. I think I will leave one of the sets the natural colour of the resin because as you might be able to see from the pictures, the ash mixed in with the resin gives the pieces an interesting mottled appearance that I think actually looks rather nice. Plus, it's an interesting conversation piece.