Les Bonnes Choses

Road Rage

2012-01-10T16:38:00.002-06:00

The holidays have ended for most by now. Mine were sort of extended when my family came back with me for the new year. I returned just this afternoon from driving them back home and received a final gift of the season: a brush with road rage. I was coming off the I-55 junction, where it meets up with Lake Shore Drive, right at Chicago's Field Stadium. I try to maintain a constant distance between myself and the car in front of me, which I believe to be prudent, as the abrupt reduction of this distance to zero is a leading cause of accidents. The car in front of me braked. I braked in response. I assume the car behind me braked, but the driver was not very pleased with this chain of events, as, in addition to braking, she honked her horn at me. A moment later, she passed me on the left. Now, cars were braking because traffic along this stretch is controlled by several stop lights, many of which are wont to turn red. Thus, no sooner than she passed me than all lanes came to a stop. The light was red. And so it was that I came to a stop along side this woman's car as she presumably captured a look of bewilderment on my face to see her awkwardly pointing her DLSR camera over the rear passenger window at me. And when I was right alongside her, she continued to snap photos of me. I rolled down my window to explain to her that one cannot go faster than the car in front, but she would hear none of it (for her window remained rolled up). Thus, I didn't even get the satisfaction of explaining myself, not that not plowing into the car in front of me should demand an explanation.

At first I was quite bothered by this. To some degree, I still am, though the edge was dulled somewhat when I was mulling over the title of this blog entry. My first thought was to entitle it Cr*** Bit**, but it was then it occurred to me that the woman might actually have a DSM-qualified problem. I mean, she had a camera at the ready within seconds of passing me. Is this habitual? Whether it is, or she found it while fumbling through her camera bag while driving on a freeway, neither possibility seems the mark of someone particularly rational, nor particularly good at driving. Maybe she was irritated with me because she nearly plowed into my back end while taking a photograph of the previous driver who irked her.

So now that I have written about it, I am mostly over the ordeal. I wholeheartedly encourage you to google "a**hole Canadian driver" or something like that. Who knows? Maybe this woman intends to shame me by posting my perplexed picture on the internet or something. If you do come across my picture, do let me know so I can use it as my facebook profile picture. My only regret is having neither the resources nor the quick wit to have hastily scrawled "Will you marry me?" on a whiteboard. It would give me some satisfaction to think I might cause her to stroke out when she reviewed the photos on her flash card, thereby getting one crazy driver off the road.

Rain on your wedding day

2012-01-09T19:00:00.001-06:00

I subscribe to both Netflix services: streaming video (which has replaced cable) and the 1 DVD service, which is more than enough to accommodate the very slow trickle of new releases I find worth watching. I often resort to adding old favourites to fill in the long gaps in between worthwhile new releases -- for example, Unbreakable, which even ranks among my wife's favourites.

The disk arrived in the mail last week and, well...

I am leaving the comments section open to accommodate the flame war that may now proceed as to whether this qualifies as irony.

Freenuptials

2012-01-04T20:18:00.001-06:00

I just read to my delight that the honourable Peter Mackay, Canadian Defense Minister, wed former Miss Canada World Nazanin Afshin-Jam. Though I'm quite happy for the couple, I couldn't help but wonder whether he went with the traditional wedding limo, or planned to call the reception dinner a military exercise so the blissful couple could be whisked away to the carribean on a CF-18. Passenger jets are for suckers.

Key Change

2012-01-04T17:57:00.002-06:00

A little less than three weeks ago, I packed up for my holidays, tucking my office keys into a pouch in my extremely pockety Prism U backpack. I had forgotten about them until this morning, as I was leaving for work. I found them before leaving the house. I did not have them when I got to my office door. Thinking this was yet another case of absent-minded organization, I figured I had left them on a counter at home. When I got home, I found this not to be the case. I retraced my path to the shuttle bus stop and found my carabiner key chain on the ground in the middle of the parking lot.

So, I admit this perhaps isn't the most amazing story ever, but it seemed really triumphant at the time, because I was in a really, really sour mood until I found my keys.

Still feel this entry a little lacking? Okay, let me sweeten the pot a little by sharing a billion dollar idea I had last night. I know many people are not very keen on genetically modified organisms, but I think those people will change their tune when they consider how awesome it would be if some entrepreneurial spirit released a swarm of bees altered to inject you with Botox. Crow's feet got you down? Throw a few rocks at the hive up in the tree and wait for the magic to happen! You're welcome!

Cuneiform

2012-01-02T20:11:00.000-06:00

Little known fact: Before Moses brought down the ten commandments from Mount Sinai, his first challenge was to select an appropriate tablet. The usual depiction of Moses bearing two tablets illustrates that he was ultimately unable to decide between iOS and Android.

I received an Android tablet this Christmas. It wasn't anything especially fancy, which is fine, because I hadn't yet researched the hell out of it, and indeed wasn't even sure I wanted a tablet computer. I kind of did. But I kind of also want a jet pack and mutant healing factor, so ...

Though it's a little underpowered for some of the fancier business that the kids are doing these days (I was unable to play a Netflix stream on it, for example), it does play video off the external MicroSD card just fine. And after installing the Aldiko eBook reader app, the device now essentially functions as a Kindle with movies and Angry Birds. I now also have an opinion on the Android Market (versus Apple's App Store), which I found somewhat difficult to navigate -- partly because of the peculiarities of my device, but also because it contains many, many apps written for Asian markets, with no means of filtering them. I have, however, found Amazon apps to be a fine venue for filling up the storage on my device.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now

2011-12-31T10:06:00.000-06:00

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.

Process of Elimination

2011-12-14T17:06:00.001-06:00

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.

USS Flagg, originally retailed for $109.99

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.

The Pen Is Mightier

2011-12-08T20:10:00.001-06:00

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.

Unfair Advantage

2011-12-08T17:10:00.001-06:00

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 ...

... To Coin a Phrase

2011-12-07T21:16:00.001-06:00

I agree with the central thesis of this article over a the Globe and Mail: crime targeting wireless devices is only going to increase over time. But I did take exception to this:

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.

No they're not. Nobody in the history of ever calls this demographic the millenium males. According to Wikipedia, the term Generation X was coined by Robert Capa. For whatever reason, it stuck. Ms. Hargrove thought she smelled the opportunity to similarly shape the zeitgeist, when in fact she probably smelled something she should have scraped off the bottom of her shoe. I know I'm probably sounding petty, but this sort of manufactured reality is what gives us the Kardashians. Besides, the alliteration really bothered me.

The New Deal

2011-11-19T16:05:00.001-06:00

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.

... But At Least They Wear Suits

2011-11-13T09:58:00.001-06:00

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

This struck me as funny because I knew it would take me less than 30 seconds on Google to find stories like:

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.

An Inconvenient Booth

2011-11-09T21:24:00.002-06:00

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.

Business Acumen

2011-10-27T10:53:00.000-05:00

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.

Waste Not Want Not - Wherein I Describe Tasty Austerity Measures

2011-10-26T21:22:00.003-05:00

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.

Not just fat. EXfat!

2011-10-18T17:06:00.001-05:00

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.

You're Doing it Wrong

2011-10-11T20:18:00.000-05:00

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?"

- Someone for whom we sincerely hope the procedure works.

DIY

2011-10-10T21:25:00.001-05:00

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.

Value System

2011-10-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

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.

Jet Set

2011-09-30T15:24:00.001-05:00

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.

Mockery

2011-09-20T17:40:00.001-05:00

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.

American Shopper

2011-09-17T21:26:00.000-05:00

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.

Solve for P.

2011-09-13T09:05:00.000-05:00

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?

Brain Candy

2011-09-12T10:06:00.004-05:00

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.

Catch-22

2011-09-07T18:38:00.003-05:00

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.

Working Smarter, Not Harder

2011-08-31T19:48:00.007-05:00

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.

Good Bacteria

2011-08-29T11:48:00.002-05:00

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.

Electric Avenue

2011-08-22T22:53:00.003-05:00

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).

Shot Down

2011-08-18T15:52:00.003-05:00

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.

Athleticism

2011-08-09T10:45:00.003-05:00

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.

Vacuum Cleaners Protect Against Vampires

2011-08-04T19:52:00.004-05:00

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.

It's Not You, It's Me

2011-08-02T16:59:00.003-05:00

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.

Send Us Your Uninformed Reckons

2011-07-31T21:58:00.006-05:00

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.

Social Networks

2011-07-25T12:00:00.001-05:00

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.

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.

We Interrupt This Broadcast

2011-07-22T19:24:00.002-05:00

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).

Chaos

2011-07-15T14:44:00.003-05:00

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.

Zeitgeist

2011-07-03T11:34:00.007-05:00

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.

Some Good Old-Fashioned McCarthyism

2011-06-22T15:15:00.007-05:00

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?

Lady Drivers

2011-06-17T17:43:00.002-05:00

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?

There's Something About an Aqua Velva Man

2011-06-10T16:00:00.003-05:00

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.

7337 H@xx0rz

2011-06-07T19:40:00.006-05:00

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.

Never, in a million, billion, kajillion years

2011-05-31T18:31:00.004-05:00

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!

Darwin...

2011-05-29T21:16:00.002-05:00

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.

Twitter Style Pasta

2011-05-20T17:14:00.005-05:00

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.

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.

Frikkin' Fricatives

2011-05-15T14:33:00.007-05:00

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.

Thanks for the update

2011-05-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

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.

That face

2011-05-08T20:39:00.008-05:00

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.

Don't Judge Me

2011-05-05T18:42:00.003-05:00

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.

Shredded

2011-04-29T22:57:00.005-05:00

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.

Un P'tit Update

2011-04-13T21:35:00.002-05:00

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.

Electile Dysfunction

2011-04-12T20:04:00.001-05:00

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.

Not Just Crazy. Ayn Rand Crazy.

2011-04-10T22:54:00.002-05:00

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.

Financial Planning

2011-04-06T10:26:00.003-05:00

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.

Verboten

2011-04-05T09:51:00.002-05:00

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.

Epic - Epilogue

2011-04-01T00:01:00.006-05:00

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.

Man Cold

2011-03-24T14:49:00.003-05:00

I have a cold. A Man Cold.

The most debilitating part of it seems to have passed, though my sense of taste was briefly impaired last night when a bag of baby carrots started to taste like Thrills gum.

The one upside is that, while gathering materials for this short entry, I have learned why Thrills gum tastes the way it does. Doesn't explain the carrots, though. I still have about a pound of carrots to eat before the Saturday best before date. I'll not detail the outcome of that feat, however.

Inept Bureaucracy Update:
On Christine's recommendation, I went to the Wal-Green's to get Sudafed because that stuff is apparently pretty good at alleviating cold symptoms. Unfortunately, it's also pretty good at being a key component in Meth, and is therefore a controlled substance. It has to be purchased over the counter, and requires presentation of some form of ID. This information goes into some sort of haphazardly designed system, almost certainly easily circumvented by people who produce drugs, and is intended to prevent individuals from purchasing an excessive quantity of the product within a prescribed time period. As I have never before purchased Sudafed, I was surprised to find that I have already exceeded my allotment after presenting my Ontario driver's license. DeVry boasts a high placement rate after graduation; we now know where: Designing critical infrastructure. Who the hell failed to imagine that a non-US-citizen might have a head cold?

Like water for chocolate. Or bowling for dollars. Or ...

2011-03-19T20:42:00.007-05:00

The family visited the Brookfield Zoo yesterday afternoon, squeezing every last bit of utility out of our membership before our it expired. I'm sure we've gotten our money's worth out of it. It's been a good teaching tool for Jude, and Asher adores animals, though he seems most fascinated with the squirrels, robins and chickadees that roam the park (and most urban yards) freely.

Still, this is the first visit we've made to the park since Asher started talking. For the first time, he's been able to express his thoughts on the zoo. Take for example the following conversations:

At the rhinoceros house
Me: What's the rhinoceros doing?
Asher: Walking!
Me: Why is he walking?
Asher: Poop!
Me: He's walking for poop?
Asher: Yah!

At the wild horses
Me: What are the horses doing?
Asher: Walking!
Me: Why?
Asher: Poop!
Me: The horses are walking for poop?
Asher: Yah!

At the aardvark house
Me: Asher, the aardvark is walking!
Asher: Poop!
Me: Of course. The aardvark is walking for poop.

I know, I know. I have no idea. But I do note that the aardvark had just pooped, so maybe there's something about toilet training that cuts an important connection we have with animals. Maybe toddlers in diapers are like little animal whisperers, in their own gastrointestinal way.

Nanny State

2011-03-18T11:56:00.004-05:00

I'm back in the saddle, again to mock the bureaucracy that has been put on this earth to make my life hell and give a steady income to people with no discernible talent or ability to reason.

Today's vignette comes courtesy of the Ceeb (of course). An older couple running a B&B who also happen to have a bunch of egg-laying chickens are closing up shop. The government wants them to buy eggs from the market rather than do the environmentally and economically prudent thing, which would be to just take the eggs from the hens in their own back yard.

Joe Bradley, manager of environmental health for the Department of Health, said the main issue with eggs that aren't federally inspected is the risk of salmonella contamination.

"The problem is that there's the potential for handling a contaminated product," said Bradley.

"You contaminate your hands, and the hands aren't washed. A food preparation surface may be contaminated."

If I understand this correctly, Mr. Bradley's concern appears to rest on the possibility that handling the eggs and not washing up properly could result in cross-contamination when preparing other foods. But then again, the same can be said if you don't wash up properly after using the toilet (which I see with alarming frequency). The logical conclusion to Mr. Bradley's line of reasoning therefore would be to also require B&B owners to have their anuses federally inspected, to avoid E. coli contamination. While he's at it, he should have his head federally inspected for E. coli because it seems to be firmly lodged in his own rectum.

On having a blog and getting free swag

2011-03-15T23:00:00.000-05:00

Ah, so that was an exciting diversion, non?

Unfortunately, there's nothing particularly comical in the news this week, as the destruction that has befallen Japan is presently dwarfing the havoc wreaked at the hands of people with a dangerous amount of power (for many people in government, the deciding vote on which shared appetizer to order is a dangerous amount of power). And I certainly can't go making light of the tragedy in Japan because that would put my negotiations with Aflac in peril.

Perhaps I could casually endorse an etsy store, in a bid to extort some free swag? A friend of mine who has an online store was recently targeted with just such a bid by somebody with a Twitter account and acute megalomania. Assuming she reads this, I'll encourage her to send along her admirer's Twitter account handle in the comments so we can all reciprocate the gesture. Might I suggest the #dumbass hashtag?

So, uh, Viv, I don't suppose you have any spare QR Code cufflinks laying around, do you?

Epic - Part V

2011-03-10T22:42:00.009-06:00

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Tonight I was going to play a game of Settlers of Catan, but somebody bailed. So instead, Brett (who is in town for a conference) and I played the card game version of the game. I know, you're probably quite surprised that there is a card game version, and that I have it. Don't hold your breath for me to make my own version of that game, though.

I'm not the first person to work on a 3D Settlers of Catan board. I thought my version was a little pricey, but Mayfair Games has their own official board, made of similar materials, and for twice as much as what I spent on materials to make mine. And my version has two stunning innovations: Not only can they be flipped upside down and shuffled, but you may have noticed I have holes in the sides of my tiles. That's for the magnets that are going to keep my tiles together.

These teeny magnets were the smallest I could find, and have a pull strength of 0.7 pounds -- just enough pull to keep the tiles together. Assuming you didn't flunk out of kindergarten science, you'll know that magnets have polarity: opposite poles attract. I was too lazy* to do the math, but it turns out that when all the tiles have magnets of alternating polarity around their edges, they pull themselves together quite nicely. If you try this, you'll want to do it with a clear head. That's because if you screw up the magnets, some of your tiles will repel, and that is not what we're going for. I recommend coming up with a foolproof system. I was unable to do so; you can infer from that what you will.

For the first bunch of tiles, I used a hot glue gun to set the magnets. Having completed a basic set, I would in retrospect recommend using epoxy putty instead, if you are going to magnetize the tiles.

The decorating step was a fun bit of artistry. This was where I got to go overboard, as I had promised. I had vowed to go all diorama ninja on the tiles, and picked up everything I needed for landscaping in one little box at Michael's. As for paints, some Krylon primer, and black paint for plastic, and some matte clear sealer took care of my inhalants. The detailed painting was done using some $0.99 acrylic paints (this is the brand I used) from WalMart. You could spend about five times as much for craft paint at a hobby shop, but after 25 years of painting small things with small brushes, I don't think there's any justification for it.

Whether you just want to paint the tiles or texture them is up to you, of course. It's your project. I'm sure it's possible to go even more nuts than I did. But hey, look how it turned out!

Dig the sheep in the pasture. They are happy sheep. You can see how I handled the ports below. They fit into the water tiles. Here's the board after setting up the inaugural game. Gill won. Probably why she bailed.

*Truthfully, I wouldn't know where to start if I wanted to make a formal geometric proof, very much like the situation I faced in my final exam in Discrete Math ten years ago. The memory still haunts me.

This concludes the series detailing the construction of a DIY 3D Settlers of Catan board. Feel free to stick around for more entertaining stories!

Get Back to Work

2011-03-10T11:38:00.002-06:00

I have made this my new home page. Hopefully this will kick my productivity up a notch.

Update: It's only been 12 hours, but so far the results are promising. I had a really productive day. If you count the computer program that I am waiting to finish, I'm still working!

Epic - Part IV: The Search for Spock

2011-03-08T13:44:00.003-06:00

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

We're in the home stretch, and it won't be long before I return my efforts to critiquing authority figures, people with too much hubris, and "the system" in general.

So I cunningly crafted my molds. I found the next step rather fun and exciting, though whether it was because I was seeing the transformation of a vague idea into physical form, or because I didn't have adequate ventilation while working with solvents I cannot say for certain. The plastic resin comes in two parts to be mixed equally. Wanting to be as precise as possible without contaminating my cookware, I obtained some 30ml oral medication syringes from a pet store to measure out the materials.

Each piece was approximately 25ml, so allowing for waste, I measured out 26ml of each component to cast two pieces at a time. Later on, I got up to casting three tiles at once, though because the chemical reaction that causes the resin to harden begins immediately, and it takes some time to carefully pour the resin into the molds, I wouldn't advise being more ambitious than that.

The resin was the colour and consistency of table syrup, but quickly becomes cloudy and then fully opaque -- about the colour that my teeth will soon become because of the amount of tea that I drink. After about five minutes, the tiles can be removed. Rinse and repeat.

I do not literally mean to rinse the mold. It's a figure of speech.

I did not cast all 100+ pieces in one sitting. I understood from my reading that the molds need a rest to cool down (the chemical reaction within the resin generates heat). Instead, I made perhaps a dozen at a sitting. Generally, my casting sessions would end at that point in the evening when Ghandi and Queen Victoria finished their tea and suggested I crack open the window a little bit.

Shocking

2011-03-07T17:38:00.003-06:00

I could either mention this here, or as a status update, but I just got my electricity bill for the last month, and need to try to remember my usage for the last month ... so I can keep doing it. I hope I don't have to follow up next month with a story about ComEd fixing a clerical error, but my daily usage went from 24.5 kWh on the last billing cycle (and 23.4 all of last year) to 1.7 kWh on this one. Of my $17.45 electricity bill for the month, only $13 of it is flat standard fees and taxes. I'm sorry I can't spin this into an entertaining account (because it's my electricity bill), but -- wow. In my narrow view of life, this counts as good stuff, so I choose to mention it here.

Post script: I don't count this as my blog entry for the period. I still have more harrowing tales of board game making with which to regale you.

Epic - Part Three: In Like a Lion

2011-03-05T15:20:00.008-06:00

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

And so my story crosses over into March. If you're playing along at home, you're sitting there with a bunch of prototypes ready to multiply them like so many loaves and fishes. It turns out it's easier than it might look at first.

I researched the heck out of the mold-making process, and found a handy website run by Alumilite, a company based out of Kalamazoo that sells plastic casting materials. After a fair amount of research (I discovered them back in the fall but didn't buy the materials until January) I decided on their Quick Set silicone rubber (for the molds) and their Alumilite Regular urethane plastic resin (for making the tiles). Here's the tricky part: how much did I need?

High school math to the rescue (stay in school, kids). They have volume calculators on their website, though they only calculate volumes for squares and cylinders. I wouldn't care for them much anyways because they were all in imperial units, which are crap. I had done some displacement measurements on my prototypes and found they all came in at about 25 ml. By my count, I needed to make 110 tiles, so the most cost-effective option was the 1 gallon jugs of resin, which would yield over 200 such tiles. The silicone rubber purchase was more difficult, though I went with the 5 lb tub to ensure I'd have plenty. It turns out I used too much rubber in my initial molds anyways (and then accidentally melted them) so it was just as well that I bought that much.

Making a 1-piece mold involves placing your prototype in a cylinder (people often use PVC pipe) or box, and then pouring liquid silicone over top of it. After the silicone sets, because it is naturally nonstick, you can remove your prototype from the mold and remove the mold from the cylinder. You just need to make sure that you pour an adequate amount of silicone in your and place the template that the walls of the mold are thick enough (a half-inch or about 15 mm between the edges of your prototype and the walls of the cylinder or box and covering your prototype is fine).

I first used as a mold box a Crisco container from which I had removed the bottom using a can opener. Its diameter and the formula for the volume of a cylinder of a height equal to 15mm higher than the thickness of my tile was used to calculate how much silicone I would need for each mold (and can be used to estimate the amount of silicone rubber to purchase).

Mixing up the silicone was my least favourite part of the whole project. It has a similar consistency and smell to white glue or perhaps latex paint, and makes a mess. I didn't wear gloves, but often wish I had. It doesn't stick to anything after it sets, but the same can't be said for its component ingredients.

After mixing up the silicone, I set my prototype in the middle of a base (in this case, the lid of the Crisco container), fixing it in place with dabs from a hot glue gun.

Sealing the container over the upside down lid, I then poured the liquid silicone over the prototype, and jiggled the container for a minute or so to try to coax bubbles to the surface (bubbles and air pockets in your mold are not desirable).

Eight or more hours later, you've got a mold!

Flip your mold box over, remove the base and then carefully remove the mold from the mold box and finally remove the template piece from the mold.

In the end, I decided that three different types of molds would suffice. I'm sorry today's installment wasn't even notable in its geekiness. A necessary evil, I'm afraid, if I am ever to get to the chilling conclusion to my tale.

Epic - Part deux: Channeling Bob Ross

2011-02-25T17:40:00.008-06:00

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The prototype pieces were what the molds were going to replicate, so it stood to reason that I should spend some time trying to get them right, right? Between last summer and January, I made several versions of the same tiles out of Sculpey modeling clay. The stuff has the familiar texture of plasticine, out of which I made many, many dinosaurs in first and second grade. It doesn't dry out, and when you're satisfied with your creation, you bake it for a few minutes to harden it. I tried a number of approaches, including hexagonal cookie cutters (only an approximately regular hexagon, it seems) and sculpting the tile features before baking it. In the end, what seemed to work best was to just bake flat hexagons and get some use out of my Dremel tool.

Using the cookie cutters and a rolling pin, I rolled out three hexagons, baked them, inscribed a regular hexagon from a template that I had created in Adobe Illustrator, and then trimmed the edges so I had 3 (more or less) perfect hexagons to work with. I then inscribed a smaller hexagon which was to mark the edges of the area I would excavate from each hex to create the tile features.

Here's how the first of my prototypes turned out, along with the dremel bits I used to sculpt it.

Incidentally, I learned that organic shapes are criminally easy to sculpt. I should have anticipated that based on my exposure to Bob Ross' landscape painting program on PBS.

What? Who's Bob Ross?

Yeah, that's Bob Ross.

Epic - Part 1 (f'reals)

2011-02-24T14:28:00.008-06:00

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Right. So here's the plan: I wanted 3-dimensional tiles with two properties: first, despite being 3-dimensional, they need to be practically indistinguishable when flipped upside down because our favourite Seafarer's scenario reveals tiles as you explore, and if you know what the next tile is ahead of time, that kind of wrecks it all. Second, the tiles need to stick together. A jostled game board was obviously problematic enough for later editions to include the frame that I found didn't serve its role adequately.

The closest existing product I could find on the internet was unfortunately too expensive (this objection turned out to be ironic) and used double-sided tiles, so I elected to make my own.

I figured that if I excavated the landscape out of a thick hexagon, leaving a lip around the outside, I would get my 3D terrain with a wide enough edge for the other game pieces, and be unable to identify an upside down hex. As for how to interlock the tiles, I solved that problem at Christmas, while standing on Jack and Katie's doorway: magnets.

So the plan was to make prototypes for each type of tile out of modeling clay, make molds, cast the tiles out of epoxy resin, and then go completely overboard painting and decorating the damn things. How overboard did I plan on going? Remember that product I mentioned earlier on? The reason I could investigate the product was because I have been known to occasion the stores that carry them. They often look like this:

Photo Credit: Nikolas Morse (nobody I have ever met)

Now, I have never been to one of these events, nor have I ever made a landscaped gaming table. However, I have made dioramas for grade school science and history, model stages in high school drama, and have been to the railroad exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Industry many, many times. I was hoping that the relative mainstream popularity of the game, and a sufficient degree of panache would mitigate the degree to which this project would make me seem like a dork.

Fortunately, I have already been to prom, so really, I had nothing to lose.

Epic - Prologue

2011-02-23T18:56:00.006-06:00

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

So I better deliver on that series of entries I promised, or risk a mass exodus of my readership on the order of the Secret Vatican Archive stampede of '09, when two monks left the library within fifteen minutes of each other.

Cue the flashback special effects.

It was back in the mid aughts. I can't be any more specific than that, though I think Scott and Antoinette were in the middle of a race to complete their dissertations. I remember that much the social psychology lounge was where I first caught wind of a game called Settlers of Catan. Months later, Scott came over, as did the bunnies, and I played my first game of this classic board game. If you're not familiar with the game, it basically consists of a board ("the island") made of 19 hexagonal cardboard tiles that are typically shuffled to generate a random configuration each time you play.

Had it stopped there, I wouldn't have anything to write about here. Over time, we picked up the various expansion sets that add various rules and strategies to the basic game. They also added a cardboard frame that fits together like a puzzle to keep the board intact in case it gets disturbed, and some alternative cardboard pieces that replace some of the tiles if you are playing the older version of the game that we have. It always bugged me that the frame pieces had a bit of a warp to them, so they weren't that effective at keeping the board together. And we had one of the cardboard pieces chewed on by a dog one evening.

Surely, there are more practical solutions than the one I eventually acted on. However, if I concluded my story by trying to embellish how I totally sniped an ebay auction for replacement pieces, I would have failed you. Sure, either way, by the time I end my story, you're going to conclude I'm a total geek. But baby, I'm going to earn it.

So as time permits, I'm going to detail in glorious technicolour how I made a 3D Settlers of Catan set. If you know nothing about the game and feel like following along, you should check out that link (here is the wikipedia entry) so that the next few posts make a bit of sense.

Surfer Dude

2011-02-21T21:15:00.007-06:00

I don't even like water sports. In fact the one time I tried water skiing, I managed to get a water jet from an outboard motor funneled directly into my trachea. No, I'm referring to the weather system carrying a winter storm on which I rode from Illinois to Ontario all day Sunday, like I was surfing the crest of a wave of snow squalls. What can be as little as a six hour drive took me ten in my 2001 Ford Focus. I had the good sense to put snow tires on my car, but I was still uneasy with changing lanes -- even when the other lane was identifiable, I would have still had to contend with that ridge of snow that always forms between lanes and causes you to lose traction when you cross it.

Most of the cars on the road were driving with appropriate caution - at about half the posted speed limit. Those that weren't: I suppose those were among the couple of dozen cars I saw in the ditches. Still, every now and again, I would get passed by a large truck, kicking up snow and blanketing me and my tiny car. I kept thinking of this ad, which must hold the record for the ad campaign with the longest run:

In case you're wondering, Mac sends in for a FREE book, gets buff and assaults the guy who kicked sand at him (probably the previous summer, because you can't put on that much bulk in a season). Then he's hailed as hero of the beach. There's probably a counter-ad campaign in a law journal where a dumb jock gets socked in the face but he doesn't know how to file a lawsuit. Man, I wish I had my tablet with me. That would be an awesome spoof. Any takers?

Teaser

2011-02-14T23:10:00.002-06:00

And how has everyone enjoyed their Valentine's day? Yeah, me neither. The day itself wasn't particularly bad, save for that I'm 600km from my loved ones. On the other hand, at least I have loved ones. Nothing worse than being single, self-conscious or even despondent of the fact, and then having your nose rubbed in it once each year. So that some card companies have another reason to ply their wares, and the de Beers diamond cartel get their yearly fix. Learning that the traditional association of diamonds with romantic advances and eternal affection was a fabrication of 20th century marketers only amplified my cynicism. I never liked the day to begin with, even in grade school, as obliging children to give and receiving tokens of affection to classmates they don't even particularly like is not as effective at fostering community as optimistic teachers and parents might think.

Obviously I did not spend my day doing anything romantic -- or at least, out of the ordinary, given that one could construe a video chat with my family, who I love very much, to be in the spirit of the day, if not in the common fashion. So what DID I do with my day? Mostly, I felt like I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. I did make a pasta sauce to enjoy for a nice (non-romantic) dinner with Gillian, and then promptly returned home to return to my recent preoccupation, and reason for my sparse updates these last few weeks. I can't say more because it is my intention to make it the topic of several blog posts in the near future in a series that will leave no question as to where I stand in the geek spectrum.

...But we make up for it in volume

2011-02-07T19:44:00.001-06:00

Jude, Nana and I returned to Chicago via Amtrak yesterday, and I have now almost exhausted all possible modes of travel between my hometown and Chicago. I am still investigating whether I can charter either a boat or submarine to travel up the Thames to get out to the great lakes. It's too far to canoe. All-in-all, if you can afford the time, it's not a bad way to go. It takes a bit longer than driving the distance, door-to-door, but considering I didn't have to pay attention to the road and had a splitting headache the whole trip, it beats driving, all else being equal.

One thing that was not equal was the fares I paid for the tickets. I had to buy Jude and Nana's round-trip tickets separate from my one-way ticket on the Amtrak website, owing to limitations on their interface design. It wasn't until I printed up both sets of tickets the night before that I noticed the fares. My mom's regular adult fare: $42. My AAA Adult fare: $47.70. Unfortunately, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for my apparent -$5.70 discount, which was that, although purchased 5 minutes apart, as seats get snapped up, the price of the remaining seats also increases. I kind of would rather have been the victim of a bizarre pricing scheme than a shopping cart limitation and the laws of supply and demand.

Snow Removal Etiquette

2011-02-04T09:20:00.005-06:00

We got dumped on here in Chicago this week. That left us with quite a bit of snow that still has not been dealt with. Considering that we're next to a lake, I find it quite perplexing that Evanston doesn't run sidewalk plows, instead relying on people to handle their own snow removal. As I live near a Metra station, a good number of people use the sidewalk in front of my house. In the morning, they come in droves toward the station, and in the evening, they pass by in the opposite direction. Thus, I was obliged to clear the sidewalk in front of my house promptly after Tuesday's blizzard. That I live on a corner lot required me to clear a metric butt-load of snow. In general, I live in a well-to-do neighbourhood, though I would consider myself adequate-to-do at best. Most neighbours who do not have landscapers to remove their snow for them at least have snow blowers. I have neither. Now, when the snow stopped falling from the sky, a second, ground-level blizzard started as my neighbours came out in force with their snow-blowers roaring. Most of the people on my street do not have driveways in front of their houses, so the snow-removal effort was largely focused on clearing out the sidewalks: a path fifty feet long by the width of a snowblower. Five minutes. I was envious, but that's not what I'm here to write about.

Now many people, after making short work of their driveways will turn their machines on the snow piles of less fortunate neighbours. In my old neighbourhood, for example, I had two neighbours who would practically fight over who would get to end the back-breaking shoveling Rebecca and I would have to do in order to get our car out of the seldom-plowed cul-de-sac. I had no such problem this week. And that would be okay, except that one of my neighbours showed just enough goodwill to plow up to my property line.

Did you run out of gas, or goodwill?

News Brief

2011-01-31T22:37:00.003-06:00

I'll keep this short -- I have to, because you might be a Canadian reading this in a month's time when the CRTC's ruling kicks in, leveling the playing field so that the country's major internet service providers can finally compete with the small market providers who are obliged to lease the lines running into your house from the big ISPs. Why this arrangement? Well, can you imagine if signing up for service from a different company required them to dig up the road leading out of your subdivision to run some cable into your basement? Right. So they're stuck with the lines owned by the big companies that were laid down when your neighbourhood was but a collection of plots. Up until now, the little guys competed on the basis of price, typically offering unlimited downloading for a fairly low price. That's pretty much their only option, because they don't have control over the network and therefore can't compete on service. But now, these smaller ISPs are compelled to offer the same metered usage plans offered by the big companies from whom they lease the lines over which they would like to provide your service. Now they do get a 15 percent wholesale discount, which means they pay $0.85 to lease $1 of bandwidth from Rogers/Bell/Your Regional 700lb gorilla. The problem is, those 15 cents? That represents the profit margin for these guys. If they want to compete on price, it comes right out of those fifteen cents. So unless I am missing something, the CRTC has effectively imposed a maximum profit margin for small ISPs.

In general, the more of something you use, the more you have to pay for it. And on that level, usage-based pricing makes sense. The 700lb gorillas all offer plans with meager bandwidth quotas; if you use more than your quota, you have to pay more. That would be reasonable, except the overage fees can be pretty high. Rogers, for example charges up to $5/GB for their lowest tier service (their highest tier service, incidentally, caps out at 175GB/mo for $100, which is about 66% of the monthly quota I enjoy with Comcast for which I pay less than half as much). If you subscribe to their highest tier, they will only charge you $0.50/GB for going over your limit. I tried to find information about what the actual cost is for Rogers to send 1GB of data to your house, but it turns out that these companies treat this information as a trade secret. Where's wikileaks when you need them?

If we assume that Rogers is at least breaking even at $0.50/GB (I've read estimates that the actual cost is more like $0.03), then the $5/GB they charge their lowest tier customers is a 1000% profit. How come they're not capped at a fifteen percent profit margin like the little guys?

Risk

2011-01-26T09:56:00.002-06:00

I was thinking about gambling, and gambling addictions on my bus ride this morning. Not because I've got a gambling problem, mind you. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am extremely risk averse, and consequently, gambling has absolutely no appeal to me. I have absolutely no interest in ever setting foot in Vegas.

But there are others who quite enjoy gambling - playing cards, going to casinos, et cetera. Some do it responsibly, and budget for it as a form of entertainment. They could spend $300 to go bungee jumping, but instead blow it at a night at a casino instead. Being risk averse, I think that's actually the lesser of two evils.

However, some people are "problem gamblers": they gamble compulsively, often going into considerable debt. I'll preface this line of thinking by admitting I have done absolutely no actual research on the topic. But I think the problem with gambling addiction is that whatever changes to your brain chemistry happen with the thrill of winning, it's like a narcotic to this group of people, whereas for someone like me, the most salient aspect of gambling is the inevitable experience of losing. Because we all know that the odds are stacked in favour of the house. So it seems that problem gamblers have a problem because they don't seem to be reacting appropriately in the face of repeatedly losing. What I was wondering is this: would someone be a problem gambler if they rarely lost?

Ministry of Silly Walks

2011-01-23T23:24:00.005-06:00

It's my bedtime. Often, that involves randomly thrashing about the internet to see if there is any kernel around which I can throw my interest and delay my sleep. That's what my bookmarks are for. Naturally, I have an eclectic set of bookmarks, virtually none of which being a means of finding what team won whatever game was played on a particular evening. Rather, I have sites such as Nature bookmarked. Because there's not really much to think about after a game is done (at least, not if you didn't actually play in it). Somebody won. Somebody lost. And either you're thrilled about Green Bay going on to the Superbowl, or you're not. So I turn to science websites. Okay, so stories involving polymers are dullsville. But you're bound to find at least one scientific discovery that is actually comical. Like this one.

Granted, the authors weren't trying to be funny. But if you like Monty Python, the connection is irresistible. Check it out. And be sure to watch the video, but imagine the computer graphic is John Cleese.

Cloistered

2011-01-18T17:07:00.004-06:00

I had a very enjoyable grownup weekend, and the contagion that had infiltrated my body was good enough to wait until I had dropped Rebecca off at the airport on Sunday noon before it began to suck the very life out of me. Lacking the energy to do anything much, and in consideration of both the health of my coworkers, and of vanity for not wanting to appear as some kind of revenant in public, I stayed in all day yesterday. I didn't even venture to the door step to fetch the mail. It wasn't until around 10 pm last night that I realized that, with nobody to talk to and not much to say, I hadn't spoken a single word in over 24 hours. I reviewed my day from a third-person perspective, and thought it reminiscent of the first half of Castaway, in which it was Tom Hanks' character's lack of dialogue that really set the atmosphere for the movie.

You know how sometimes you'll hear, "Oh, he just likes to talk to hear the sound of his own voice". I bet that on some level that's partly true of everyone, because silence gets kind of weird after awhile.

New Material

2011-01-15T22:36:00.003-06:00

It's been four days since my last post (which was practically Twitter-ready), so I've been feeling I should probably put something up. Without anything in particular to say, I'd go back and flesh out a saved draft, but alas, the most recent note I had jotted down made absolutely no sense to me. Regardless of how bizarre my thoughts may come across in this blog, I should at least be able to decipher them, so it's probably for the best that I sent it to the bit bucket.

So I am home this evening, waiting for my wife to return. She's getting a two-fer, as she gets both quality time with me sans-enfants, and I left her with the girls after dinner, purchases in hand, to see Wicked.

So what's a man to do when his wife is out on the town, when his wife is normally out of town? The freedom is almost paralyzing.

Contradiction

2011-01-11T11:48:00.002-06:00

From a CBC article concerning compelling public marriage officials to marry same-sex couples, one of whom has threatened to resign:

"I have no objection to gays getting married. My only objection is forcing me into doing it."

...um, so you do object then.

Systems Analyst Required

2011-01-05T13:22:00.003-06:00

Ever see a resume for someone calling themselves a systems analyst and wonder, what does that mean, exactly? I do, or rather, I did until just now, when I realized that it implies some kind of analysis of a system, which is actually sort of what I do. From Wikipedia,

[A] system (from Latin systēma, in turn from Greek σύστημα systēma, "whole compounded of several parts or members, system", literary "composition") is a set of interacting or interdependent system components forming an integrated whole.

So even within your own body you've got your circulatory system, your nervous system, etc. And I guess that means someone like me who studies those things would be a systems analyst. Outside your body there's all sorts of other systems, some of the most complex being social systems. Here's the interesting dynamic that prompted this entry:

States seek to deny birthright citizenship to children of illegal immigrants

Lawmakers in Georgia and other states complain illegal immigrants are committing crimes in their communities and competing for public benefits and jobs.

Being a systems analyst, I feel compelled to point out, as others have done, two points: First, the jobs that these immigrants are willing to do are ones that US citizens refuse to do (many would prefer to earn the same amount of money through welfare - I wish I had a reference, and vaguely remember some socially conscious comedian like Bill Maher pulling a stunt demonstrating this). Second: if you're not legally able to work, and your kids aren't legally able to work, but you'd rather not go back to TJ and get shot up in a turf war, will you a) engage in criminal activity because gangs don't ask for your green card, or b) ... well, there is no option b, is there?

So, yeah, systems analyst. I used to think it was a euphemism for corporate dead-weight. Now I realize we need more of them.

It's the End of the World as We Know It ... And I Feel Fine

2011-01-01T12:51:00.003-06:00

Happy New Year!

I don't know of any particular doomsday prophesy calling for the Apocalypse on 01/01/2011, and so you may not fully appreciate the relief you might otherwise have felt to find the sun rising as usual this morning.

A few days ago, Jude asked me an innocent-seeming question at bedtime. I can't remember the exact wording, but I thought it had something to do with the end of the day. He wanted to know about a day where the sun doesn't come up. I explained to him about the days getting shorter, and how at the North Pole where Santa lives and the South Pole where penguins live, the sun doesn't come up at all during some of the year. He followed up with a question about the sun burning out, to which I replied that the sun will eventually burn out, but not for a very very long time, after we're gone.

I had thought at the time that this second question was a sort of shift in topic, but I suddenly realized yesterday that this was what he was interested in the whole time. You see, he asked again, en route to the museum, about "the end of days", when the sun burns out. No idea where he heard about "The End of Days", but it appears he was under the impression that the last day on the calendar marked the end of days -- after which time the sun would burn out and the world would grow cold and dark. And I appreciated at that time just how well adjusted Jude seemed to be in the face of Armageddon.

You Can't Win if You Don't Play

2010-12-21T21:46:00.003-06:00

So I got a megadose of Canadiana on the tellie this evening. How It's Made, a program produced in Canada, was interrupted by a commercial for a contest associated with two great Canadian institutions: Canadian Tire and Tim Hortons. The contest details? Purchase some Canadian Tire Craftsman brand tools and enter to win a chance to join the 2011 Heritage Classic build team. Let me clarify. Buy some tools and, if you're lucky, you can get shipped out to Calgary in the middle of winter so you can build a hockey rink.

I am holding off purchase of a Kenmore sewing machine until the spring, when Sears will fly one lucky owner to Sri Lanka to make hoodies for The Gap.

Aspirations

2010-12-16T17:19:00.008-06:00

The bar for celebrity has been set rather low these days.

I was standing in the Barnes & Noble passing time among the bargain books and new releases when I noticed the magazine rack. Perfect. In the few minutes I had, I could get caught up with the specs on the most recent computer components, find out the names of the latest teen crushes I should be making fun of, and be able to identify the cars I'll see on the road next year. The Barnes & Noble magazine rack doesn't sell books. It sells the future. And it was there that I caught a glimpse of what this world is coming to, and it's not pretty.

Spoiler: I'm about to pass judgment on people I have never met.

When I was a little kid, I liked to watch Entertainment Tonight. By the time I reached eighth grade however, my paradox detector had developed, and I could no longer stomach a television show about people that were celebrities because they were on a television show about celebrities. Say what you will about John Tesh's smooth adult contemporary style, I gained respect for him when he stopped sharing the screen with Mary Hart's mannequin smile to focus on his music career, such that it is.

So like the kingmakers of yore, media outlets can find the silver lining in any sort of screw-up, so long as it can hold people's attention for 26 half-hour episodes, and mine it for all it's worth. I can't see how giving away a free ride in life to douchebags and fall-down-drunks from New Jersey, or to teenage moms can possibly go wrong.

Banana Swap

2010-12-10T17:22:00.007-06:00

Bananas are a peculiar fruit. Or are they a fruit? I'm not sure. I think so. One thing that's funny about them is that the trees that supply the bananas we eat don't grow from seeds. We bred the seeds out of the fruit generations ago, so you can only get a banana tree by taking a cutting from an existing banana tree.

Another funny thing about them? As they ripen, bananas begin a bright green, start to yellow, and then develop brown freckles that grow until the entire banana is chocolate brown. And for most people, bananas are palatable during only one of these brief stages. The problem is, you're either waiting or gorging because they're only edible for 10 minutes. Amy and Gill like their bananas yellow with a hint of green; to me, they taste like chalk. It isn't until they are yellow and just starting to take on freckles, ready for the girls to toss in the bin, that I'd eat them. And then there's Szeto, who I know will would eat a banana after it has turned black. But what if it were easier to coordinate your banana purchase with a line of friends who would happily take your overripe bananas off your hand?

I present the next big thing in social networking: bananaswap.com

Of course, I was taking quite a risk when I typed the domain name into my browser to see if it had been taken. Once you see something on the internet, you can't un-see it. It turns out someone beat me to the name, though it appears they sell furniture. I don't get the connection at all. Hopefully nobody else does either, and the company will go out of business so I can get the domain name for pennies on the dollar. In the meantime, if you're looking for something to do with your overripe bananas, I recommend using them in hot chocolate:

Bananaswap Hot Chocolate
5 oz. milk
1 oz. dark chocolate
pinch cayenne
1/2 overripe banana

If you know anything about me, you will know I made those measurements up.

Heat your milk up on the stove in your double-boiler. Go do something like tag a bunch of MP3 files, and then when you remember you were in the middle of making hot-chocolate, your milk should be the right temperature. Break the chocolate in to small chunks (chocolate chips already are small chunks), and whisk until melted into the milk.

Add a pinch of cayenne because all the cool kids add cayenne to chocolate these days. It's very hip. And tasty. Finally, drop in your half banana. You have a stick blender, right? You really need one. Use it to blend the banana into the cocoa. It also goes all frothy, which is a plus.

Serve.

I don't know why recipes often include that instruction. Like you're going to make a meal and then leave it in the casserole pan to rot.

Enjoy your vitamin fortified hot beverage. And if you literally use "a pinch" of cayenne, do not -- DO NOT -- rub your eyes unless you want to look like a G20 protester on Bill Blair's watch.

The Power of Truthiness

2010-12-09T18:30:00.003-06:00

Did anyone else read about the recent territorial dispute in Latin America? You can read more on The Ceeb, but just so you don't have to go off-site, I present the Cole's Notes version of the story: There's a land dispute between two Latin American countries in which an error in Google Maps borders resulted in Nicaragua crossing over into Costa Rica.

When I read that, I thought, "Wow, that's alot of power." Sure, I trust Google Maps for live traffic updates, but for coordinating military movements and establishing political boundaries?

I guess Stephen Colbert was on to something when he brought Truthiness into the vernacular.

I took this photo on the way in to work one morning.

So, given all this power that Google apparently has, is there any reason they shouldn't use it to usher in a new age of peace and prosperity? Reunification of North and South Korea? A new Palestinian state? Bypass diplomacy altogether and just update Google's world map.

If anyone has any problem with it, Google can always threaten them with the "bomb you back to the stone age" cliche.

Cooking for the truly lazy

2010-12-04T14:42:00.002-06:00

Following the November 20 tailgating party at my place, there were 4 lonely bottles of Bud Light sitting by the back door. And being that not only am I from Canada, but my taste in beers is snobby by even Canadian standards, they remain there, now covered in Chicago's first snowfall of this winter season. However, I am also frugal, or at least try not to be wasteful (which is why they remained there), so I decided to investigate whether beer might work in some kind of potato soup. My standard procedure is to google the ingredients: if "potato beer soup" returns any hits, then I assume that it works well enough to merit a recipe, and have a recipe for reference, should I need any guidance. Fortunately, I have made potato soup several times with my trusty stick blender. Recipes generally seem to call for either baked potatoes, from which you subsequently scoop out the flesh from the skins, or else cubed peeled potatoes which are boiled in the stock. I say to hell with all that effort. By simply prefixing your recipe with the word "rustic", you can just toss some scrubbed and cubed potatoes into the stock, skins and all.

Rustic Milwaukee Potato Soup
2 Potatoes that you can't be bothered to peel
16 oz. Unsalted Chicken Broth
1/2 c. Cheddar Cheese
1 bottle of beer you don't really want to drink
Salt, pepper, rosemary to taste

Wash and cut the potatoes into large (1-inch) cubes, and drop them into a large saucepan. Add the chicken broth, salt, pepper and rosemary. Bring to a boil. Let simmer for enough time to finish a project you started in Photoshop. Add grated cheese and beer. Use your stick blender. Feel the power.

Loaded potato bonus: add sour cream and bacon bits. Instead of sour cream, I used some french onion chip dip that I was also not planning on eating. I think it may have been left over from that same tailgating party. I really got a lot of mileage out of that party. I also added some liquid smoke because I add that stuff to everything. I think I might be addicted to sulphides.

Brazen

2010-12-01T17:54:00.003-06:00

E-Commerce is brilliant. At one point, it paid my tuition. You can find most anything you want on sites like Amazon, and pay less than you would in most stores. Sure, you can't try anything on, but if your sizing options are S-M-L, or you're buying something like a book or electronics, that hardly matters. The only real downside I can see is that you generally can't ask questions about your purchase. Of course, if you would otherwise be shopping at a large chain store, I would argue that the staff there aren't likely to be much more helpful (ever wander the aisles in Home Depot looking for help? The commercials depict a small army ready to assist in any way. What a fiction). No, if you want customer service, go shop at a small independently owned store. The local Ace Hardware has got to be one of my favourite places on earth.

So today, I fell down the rabbit hole, after reading up on ram drives. What that is, and why I was reading about it is not important (if you must know, this is what it is, and I was reading about them because I'm easily distracted when involved in drudgery). Anyways, I found myself following a link to an e-commerce website selling RAM disk software:

Note the URL (http://goldoemsoftware.com/legal-software/etc.). Naturally, I had to ask whether there was a corresponding directory where they showcased their illegal offerings:

Particularly amusing to me is the juxtaposition of the software titles alongside the logos of the copyright holders with whom they apparently are proud partners.

WWJD

2010-11-30T17:12:00.004-06:00

A quickie from effamy? Two can play that game. Except this one has been in the works since this past weekend. I just didn't feel like typing it out in the car on my iPhone.

This weekend, Asher was baptized along with his youngest cousin, in what appears to have been a vain effort to drive the devil out of the baby. During the baptism, you are promising to instill good Christian values in your child. Some people go the extra mile and also instill the bad Christian values, like telling them that gays are an abomination, for example. But I'm lazy, so I just do the bare minimum, which means taking advantage of teaching opportunities when they present themselves. Like Saturday morning, for example. One of Jude's cousins is, for lack of a better word, bossy. And when she doesn't get her way, she gets quite sullen. I don't remember what order it was with which her playmates weren't complying, but the noncompliance resulted in her declaring that she "doesn't like them anymore."

I was in the room, listening to this all transpire, and thought, WWJD? Turn the other cheek of course. "Jude," I said, "when someone tells you they don't like you, tell them ``that's okay, I like you anyways´´," which is how the two of them replied to their sullen and now verbally neutered playmate. I like subtle. Zealotry and blowing up infidels has no place in civilized society. If you really want to get under someone's skin, try passive-aggressiveness. It's what Jesus would do.

Red Tape

2010-11-23T18:02:00.003-06:00

I'm back from Psychonomics 2010, which was much different from conferences of yore: Many of the usual suspects were conspicuously absent; I was unable to find a store within walking distance (liberally defined) that sold shirts; and I gave my first big conference talk. It was nice to visit with the old chums, however, and dinner with Albert at the House of Meat the night before my talk showed me I could slip into the role of a professional academic.

As for the talk itself, it went quite well. In usual fashion, I was calm up until about 90 seconds before I was to step up to the podium, but my heart stopped racing after the first slide, and the rest proceeded without difficulty. I was a little disappointed that hardly anyone in the crowd threw their underwear on to the stage, but was later reassured by a veteran speaker that it is not customary to do so.

So I am now halfway through a very abbreviated work week, and am just now getting to taking care of a number of matters that I have been putting off forever. Since September, the television has been on for about 6 hours, cumulatively, and I have been meaning to cancel the cable to save a bit of money for most of that time. I encountered little resistance when I called, but didn't believe the customer service representative when she said she had "never hear *that* one before" when I told her it was because I didn't watch TV. Even if it weren't true, it seems that would be the excuse I would make up if I wanted to cancel the cable. I took care of some other business, but decided that writing about it would probably expose me to some sort of fraud. So instead, I'll just talk about how it's very curious that the last 4 digits of my social security number, 858-43-2020, relate in numerology to my mother's maiden name, Lipschitz.

When this room is a-rockin'

2010-11-18T23:16:00.004-06:00

St. Louis. Gateway to the West. Why am I up late at a hotel in St. Louis on a Friday night? A couple of reasons. I just finished practicing a talk I am going to give tomorrow at the Psychonomics conference where I hope to find members of several hiring committees sneaking in a freebie job talk. Not that I would have been sleeping anyways. At around 4:30 this afternoon, I stopped by a Starbucks and ordered a large black tea. With some help from the store manager, a genuinely bemused barista eventually handed me a piping hot cup that required two cardboard sleeves, and was thus too hot to drink immediately. It wasn't until 10 minutes later when I realized it had steeped more than long enough that I took the lid off to find two large tea bags, each more than enough to brew an entire pot of tea.

The caffeine hit certainly got me through the rest of the day, but I hope it doesn't keep me up all night. I think I may be coming down, however. A couple of hours ago, I may have acted on my idea to put socks on some of my colleague's doorknobs.

Hold on, my phone's buzzing

2010-11-11T18:07:00.006-06:00

Okay, it's not that often that a blog-complete thought just drops on my lap like this. Usually they percolate for a few days, during which time they get pushed aside and sometimes forgotten altogether, leading to week-long lapses. Thank goodness for psychological researchers, on whom you can usually count to do something bizarre. In this case, it was a study on mind wandering about which I read just now on The Ceeb.

In their study, the researchers used an iPhone app, one of the few I apparently haven't downloaded, to track people's mind wandering at random intervals. That's fine and well. Kudos to them for being tech savvy (though not so hardcore as to hack the Half-Life game engine).

Does that count as a citation?

Anyways, here's the Bonnes Choses-ready passage that caught my eye:

The real-time data showed that on average, people reported that their minds were wandering 46.9 per cent of time, and no less than 30 per cent of the time during every activity except making love.

Ahem. Excuse me? The only way I can see that statistic being collected would be for participants in their study to have engaged in coitus interruptus to answer their damn iPhones. I mean, people actually did! And while the Catholic Church might approve of this method of birth control, I can't imagine participants were adequately remunerated, even if the authors gave away the damn iPhones to go with their app. Plus, now the participants are stuck with AT&T contracts. I think the Harvard IRB is going to hear about this.

PSA - Sheep Edition

2010-11-10T12:57:00.005-06:00

I know that a number of people prefer to read these posts as they are imported on Facebook, rather than wait for the monthly print edition to hit the newsstands. What? your local newsstand doesn't carry Les Bonnes Choses? Be sure to let them know that you will take your business elsewhere until you see the Les Bonnes Choses masthead beside the New Yorker.

But back to the story at hand: A number of popular websites, including Facebook, have a security flaw whereby a thirteen year old with a laptop using a freely downloadable Firefox plug-in can snag the file that says "I am so-and-so, and I am logged into Facebook", and pretend to be you. Not only can this be done, apparently it already has. Why is this bad? Have you ever written a drunken email? Allowing a 13 year old boy to post to your friends walls on your behalf would be, like, a kajillion times worse. And it's not just the 13 year old boys you have to worry about either; it's the girls too. Imagine how tedious it would have to be to have to explain to thirty friends that, no, you do not really 'like' Justin Bieber or the Twilight Series. So especially if you are in a public location, do not use a wireless connection to check out your Facebook page.

There is one upside, though. If you do actually drunkenly reveal your appreciation of Justin Bieber's music late one night, and have regrets the next morning, you now have plausible deniability to fall back on.

Addendum: Hotmail has this same security flaw at this time, though gmail thankfully does not.

Threat Level ... um, what colour goes with this?

2010-11-05T21:28:00.006-05:00

So, in case you haven't heard, some guy boarded a Canada-bound Air Canada plane in Hong Kong wearing about 5 hours of special effects makeup:

Part way through the flight, the passenger, appearing as the elderly Caucasian male pictured on the right, went to the bathroom and emerged as the young Asian male pictured on the left. Though they did not realize their normal coffee had been replaced with Folgers crystals, other passengers did notice that the elderly man in seat 5F was replaced by a drift racer.

So, I look forward to the next time I go through airport security when, in addition to displaying my liquids and gels, opening up and turning on my laptop and removing my shoes, I'm going to have to demonstrate that my face is attached.

Olfactory Fatigue

2010-11-02T20:02:00.004-05:00

I've mused on this before, but the sense of smell is kind of wacky. They say that smells are one of the most powerful triggers for digging up old memories, so it might not just be coincidental that the olfactory bulb (the brain part that does the smelling) is wired right up to the amygdala (one of the brain parts that does the emotion). I speak very loosely, of course, but this isn't Nature Neuroscience, so whatever. One of the funny things about your sense of smell (including the part of smell that we refer to as taste) is that it's rather gullible. Go grab yourself an orange Crush. Go on, now have a sip. Mmmmmmm, orangey. Now go dig through your rotting bin of good intentions you call a vegetable crisper, find and peel yourself an orange and try wedge. They don't taste a damn bit alike, do they?

You know what else doesn't smell like its label? Ocean Mist. On the way back from the airport, I sat in a taxi cab run by some dude who was apparently excessively conscious about maintaining a no-B-O cabbie public image. Hanging from the mirror was an Ocean Mist air freshener. On the back of the seat behind my head was another air freshener. And piped in from the front seat was some flexible hose with a plastic tube drilled with hose that seemed to deliver a fan-driven payload of Ocean Mist. I've never lived near the ocean, but I've been to Yarmouth in the fog, and I live about a 10 minute walk from one of the Great Lakes. Whatever trick they pulled to make everyone think that Dimetapp tastes like grapes, my nose is not buying it. You want ocean mist? Puree a bucket of wet seaweed and a small flounder and throw it in front of a box fan. There's your ocean mist. That air freshener? It smelled like someone stuffed a LUSH franchise up my nose. How bad was it? My shirt still smelled like air freshener at the end of the day. And I had been wearing a zipped up jacket in the cab.

V1@GR@

2010-10-28T21:11:00.006-05:00

A case of mistaken identity caused me to lose two cloth shopping bags this morning at the Howard St. Target. It must have happened some time in the dairy section, where I was getting yogurt. Now that I think of it, that's exactly when it happened. I had grabbed two 4-packs of Activia yogurt, put them in my basket, and then noticed that one of them had an expiry date of Saturday. So I went back to the dairy case to get yogurt that didn't expire until mid-November. And on I went with my shopping until I got to the checkout, where I found a couple of peculiar items in my basket, and my cloth bags were nowhere to be found. I kind of felt violated. I blame the other shopper because it's easy. Look, I just did it.

I didn't put much of my shopping away until I got home from work, which was late because I attended a talk and stayed after to (try to) speak to the speaker. I'm not very good at hijacking conversations. I can, but think I come off like an ass when I do, so I just wait politely for the perfect segue. Perfect segues almost never come, unless you can engineer them. Like the one I have just engineered to bridge to the next topic, where I talk about a conversation that I had with a grad student when walking back to my office following the talk.

We were talking about how academic job applications are quite a mish-mash. Some positions are at old-skools, and they want you to send a ream of paper in an oversized envelope plastered with postage stamps. Other schools use 3rd party or in-house websites to manage the submission of your application materials. And finally, some positions require you to email a bunch of pdfs to a department secretary. This might seem like a big leap from the surface mail application, as it is theoretically instantaneous, and costs nothing for postage and paper. It is not without its drawbacks however. I discovered that when a vigilant secretary emailed me to ask whether I had emailed any other materials beside the CV (an academic resume) I had updated and re-sent to reflect a recent upgrade of my awesomeness. I had.

The job ad requested the usual CV, research statement, and scholarly writing samples (i.e., journal articles). Together, these documents weigh in at maybe about 3.5 MB. Some IT departments have strict policies about what can and cannot be sent by emails. UWO, for example, won't let anything pass that has a .exe or .zip extension. I will note they also have an email help section on the IT department website describing how to circumvent this restriction by asking the sender to change the file extension, and causing me to facepalm.

Another common restriction is a filesize limit. Emails exceeding a certain size are just dropped. I suspect this is what happened in my case, and perhaps the case of other applicants to this job, because the secretary reported having a problem receiving emails lately. Now, as I related this story, this grad student and I began to wonder how hard it must be to get a job for a biochemistry student coming out of the lab that invented Viagra. I mean, wouldn't all of their resumes get flagged as junk mail?

Significant Academic Achievements:
Developed a method to INCREASE the LONGEVITY and POTENCY of the VIAGRA drug by INJECTING the non-medicinal substrate with a HARDENING agent.

SpamAssassin Score: 867.4

Food Pyramid

2010-10-27T17:38:00.004-05:00

This evening, I am having a rather spartan meal. Though I like to cook, I don't like having to decide what to cook, especially because I don't live in a grocery store, and am therefore constrained by what I happen to have on-hand and what needs to be used up (see also my recent entry on freezer-burned entrees). This evening, when I came home to face my kitchen dread, I noticed a couple of bags of pita chips on the table (presumably left by Jerome et al) from last weekend's homecoming tailgate party. The only correct thing to do with pita chips is to dip them in hummus.

I've got the ingredients for hummus covered several times over, probably as a result of some OCD grocery shopping. I first made it some number of years back for some small gathering of the usual suspects, following a random recipe off the internet. I still call up a random recipe, but that's mostly to get a rough idea of the proportions, so I don't end up making a thick salad dressing by adding too much oil, for example. The recipe to which I have linked is a good starting point, but you'll be quite happy with the results if you also add cumin and paprika (smoked paprika is especially tasty). Combined with pita chips, and some raw vegetables that will rot in my fridge if I don't use them when I remember them, that's a tasty meal.

Now, lest anyone be concerned about my welfare, I should note that I had a hearty breakfast and had 2 cups of chili for lunch. Arguably, people have their meals backwards when they have a piece of toast and coffee for breakfast to fuel the first half of their day, followed by medium lunch to get them through to a relatively large dinner, just a few hours before they go to bed. Unless you're a sleep-powerwalker, those dinner rolls are going right to your bum.

Plus, I still have a stash of jerky.

Superfans

2010-10-25T18:31:00.004-05:00

It's taken 4 years, but my first fan mail came at the end of last week:

Normally, a high-profile celebrity like me would be wary of an unsolicited packaged in the mail. But I'm not like other celebrities. I'm a down-to-earth kind of guy. I put on my pants one leg at a time, except on those lazy weekend afternoons, where I just can't be bothered to wear pants. But I was wearing pants when I went out to the mailbox, in case you were wondering. I opened up the package to find one of the best foodstuffs ever:

Jerky. If ever there was an upside to survivalist living, it's living off salty, dessicated strips of animal flesh, not much different from the chicken nugget that fell beneath your driver's seat last April. For some reason, I like the stuff. So does my eldest son. The younger one doesn't yet have enough teeth for jerky, but I wager he'll like it too, especially since he shares my taste for black licorice, and that stuff smells like a tire fire.

As I was planning out this blog entry after work, I naturally decided it would be appropriate to eat a strip or two. And because my dinner was still on the stove, I started to snack on some mixed nuts. I'm pretty sure I've now exceeded my salt intake for the day. The first clue was that I am now exerting osmotic pressure on the groundwater beneath the house. I'm leaving puddles everywhere I step.

Okay, I have a confession to make. I embellished a bit. I am not actually leaving puddles on the floor. And the jerky that arrived in the mail came not from a crazy fan, but instead from Rebecca's cousin and her husband. But it was a very generous gesture on their part, and I have convinced myself that my blogging had something to do with it. So I shall go to the post office tomorrow and set up a PO Box, should anyone else out there want to send me jerky.

Making a tasty purse out of some unidentifiable animal's ear

2010-10-18T18:14:00.004-05:00

There's a division of labour in our house -- or, at least, there was when I had Rebecca with whom to divide the labour. Generally speaking, Rebecca handled the grocery shopping. In retrospect, somewhat odd, given that I was the one who generally turned the groceries into meals, but appropriate given my general disinterest in leaving the house to go shopping. Those grocery delivery services were invented for people like me: highly functional shut-ins. So it should be unsurprising that I have been rooting through the freezer like a pig hunting for truffles so I can delay the inevitable trip to the grocery store as long as possible. Unfortunately, I have picked all the low-hanging fruit (that is, the entree-qualifying items not hidden by bags of frozen berries), leaving me to find forgotten freezer bags of unidentified slightly freezer-burned meat.

So the other day I decided to wing what is probably my favourite dinner on the Cheesecake Factory menu: tuna tataki salad. An interesting side note: cilantro features prominently in this dish, as prepared at the Cheesecake Factory. I hate cilantro. The smell of it makes me slightly nauseous. It is to my great consternation that pretty much every dish served at Cheesecake Factory, with the possible exception of most of their cheesecakes, use cilantro. But the taste for cilantro is apparently genetically determined, so it's not like I'm just being difficult. In fact, in some of the reading I did for a paper I am working on, I learned that people's tastes differ because their chemical receptors for the flavour carrying molecules are physically different. As a fairly close analog, people generally take for granted that a red crayon out of the Crayola box looks the same to everyone, though that is not the case (for colour-blind people, for example). If you're a picky eater tired about getting flack about not eating your quiche (egg + cheese + spinach = gag), science is here to the rescue.

Um, yeah, so back to the story at hand. The tuna tataki salad at Cheesecake Factory is so good that, even with the cilantro (which I scrape off), it's probably my favourite thing on the menu. So naturally, when I found a freezer burned slab of formerly sushi-grade tuna at the back of the freezer, I figured I may as well trim off the dried out bits and give it a whirl. Half-way through preparing it, I decided to see if I could find a recipe to see if I was on the right track (I was, but I hadn't guessed that lime figured into it). And dammit, did it ever turn out good.

Now, tomorrow is the Northwestern Homecoming parade, which will include NU alum Stephanie Marsh -- an impossibly white actress who I kind of sort of recognized. I wouldn't normally care, as I don't watch TV much anymore. However of more interest is the fact that Ms. Marsh's husband, Iron Chef Bobby Flay will be in attendance. I'm holding out hope that his ulterior motive was to come here to challenge me to a throwdown after the parade. And if the challenge is to make a freezer-burned entree, he is totally going to get pwned.

Giddinerdun

2010-10-17T10:51:00.007-05:00

Gill has me exclaiming "Brilliant" all the time, often with a disconnect between the subject of the statement (that which is purported to be brilliant) and the subject's objective characteristics. As I first noticed the rather liberal use of the word in the Harry Potter series (often with the modifier bloody), I must assume that it's a British Isles thing, so maybe I'm just getting back to my roots.

My home media center, based around a Mac Mini, is objectively bloody brilliant, especially when paired with a free app downloaded from the iTunes store that lets me use my i-device as a remote controller for iTunes, effectively letting me fill my otherwise desolate house with whatever music strikes my fancy (I also overuse fancy, but that's the result of a linguistic feedback loop between myself and Jude, with John providing a repeater signal). This is exactly what I am doing now, as I tend to the household chores that I have been neglecting over the last three weeks. I'm not really sure what to do about the mess of leaves all over the property. I don't have a rake. Neither do most of my neighbours, I would wager, as I live in a neighbourhood where everyone and their dog has a small brigade of Mexican workers come once a week and tend to their properties. I'm just one white dude. How can I compete with that? At least I can vacuum like nobody's business -- or could, until I misplaced one of the attachments, which I suppose I should go find now, because I'm not giddinganythingdun as I sit here blogging.

Phoning it in

2010-10-14T09:55:00.006-05:00

This is brilliant. I'm on a bus¹. Just going into work now because I had to get some groceries in order to fulfill my lab treats duty tomorrow, and haven't shopped in weeks. At the checkout at Dominick's, the cashiers read your name off the receipt and wish you a good day. Nice sentiment but I sometimes wish they wouldn't bother. "Have a nice day, Mr. Mc...hmmmghhnmg" she said, her voice trailing off. I'd really like to be privy to how her mind dealt with that scenario.

He looks normal enough. Let's hope he's a Smith.
"Have a good day Mr..."

Let's see here ... Mc ... oh sh**. I can only do McDonalds and McGregors. Maybe if I mumble the last part he'll think he just didn't hear me properly.
"Mc hmmmghhnmg"

Okay, now finish strong. I can get past this!
"Would you like help with getting your bags to your car?"

Aw goddammit, this next guy has a turban. I'm going to need a drink on my lunch break.

¹I did a substantial amount of editing on my desktop computer once I got to work because, brilliant as it is, typing on an iPhone is really frickin' tedious.

Back in the saddle...

2010-10-12T21:48:00.004-05:00

That title works on so many levels. I've been up for 19 hours now, having woken up at 4:00(EDT) with a sinus headache brought on by my head cold readying to exit my body via my nose. For that reason, I'm kind of ambivalent about runny noses: on one hand, they're damn irritating; on the other hand, they invariably seem to signal the end of the plague of the day. Unfortunately, the runny nose hit full steam as I was driving through Gary, Indiana at around 9:30, and there was nary a Kleenex to be found. The truly observant reader will have done a double-take just then. "He woke up in the Eastern time zone. Isn't Gary, IN in the Central time zone?" Aye, there's the rub. As my aunt observed, I have become an extreme commuter, having woke up in London, ON and made it in to work in Chicago, IL before noon. Unfortunately, even at my right-brainiest, I cannot come up with a way to spin that sort of protestant work ethic on to my academic resume.

I do lots of inventing when I am engaged in monotony. I can't tell you how many lawn and gardening related inventions I have come up with while cutting the grass over the years. Look for a better bum cushion to hit the shelves in the next 18 months.

The hiccup that I was experiencing with the Facebook blog import appears to have resolved itself since last week. But you should still consider visiting the original site because the imported version strips out some of the formatting as well as some embedded content, like youtube videos.

Speaking of which, if you haven't seen this yet, this is the most wonderful piece of comedy ever:

See, unless you go to the original site, you have no idea what the heck I am on about.

Let them eat cake

2010-10-07T17:56:00.003-05:00

A few years back, I wrote this blog entry (the previous incarnation of this blog).

Four years have passed, but some things have not changed: it's still the Canadian thanksgiving long weekend, so there's food. Even more than usual, because there will be multiple birthday celebrations and Make's wedding is tomorrow. They have cake at those, right? So, the 5 day forecast looks something like cake, cake, cake, cake and leftovers (probably including leftover cake).

I think I gained 5 pounds just writing that. That's alot of sugar, which we know to be bad for you. Like cigarettes, right? That reminds me of a funny thing I saw yesterday on the Chicago television station. There was a commercial where a woman is walking down the soft drink aisle of the grocery store, complaining that the government is proposing slapping a tax on soft drinks, sports drinks, et cetera -- basically the sorts of beverages that list high fructose corn syrup second only to water on the list of ingredients. And, according to the copy that the woman was reading, "government shouldn't be telling Americans what they should be putting in their grocery carts" (the commercial also implied it was just a money grab, so I'm getting mixed messages). Now, you can take it as a given that I disagree with their position. But what struck me as funny was that the very next commercial was for a website that moms can go to for parenting advice -- including, I would assume, advice about how to raise healthy children.

So, just to be clear, Americans have no problem with any random idiot telling them how to run their lives, so long as that idiot is not an elected official. So my question is, are Americans hypocrites, or is the electoral system set up to elect a sample of the population that is more idiotic than the national average?