Les Bonnes Choses

Yesterday was the birthday of an old friend of mine, Chris Hayes. He was my next door neighbour during my formative years living on Beechbank Crescent, in what I now recognize to be a somewhat ghetto part of London, albeit not nearly as ghetto as other areas, including the one in which I now live. Chris was one of my best friends for ages, and we used to do all kinds of funny stuff: for example, between the two of us, we tormented the hell out of Vivian by constantly morphing nicknames for her as we all walked home from school (Vivian also lived on Beechbank, as did my wife, Rebecca). However, I believe some of our finest work was done as songwriters. I must have come up with a few dozen little ditties as I grew up, with such hits as "Thanks to Mooshie", "Three Eyes", "Ooh, Banana" (I came up with that one walking home with Martin in 8th grade). But perhaps the most offensive song would be "Hey Kid, You're Ugly", and it goes a little something like this:

Have you ever had a kid say, "Hey Kid! You're Ugly" to you?
Well, here's your big chance kid: Hey kid! You're ugly!

Unfortunately, I lack the requisite skills to write down the tune, but if you want to hear it one day, perhaps to pass on to your kids for their walk home from school, just let me know and I'd be happy to teach it to you.

I already emailed my sisters about this little episode, but it's funny enough to share with the general public.

Jude is currently at the stage in his English language development where he repeats the last word that he hears when you speak to him. He's also still working on his pronunciation, though there's a few words that he says (e.g., "herbs") that Carolyn finds hysterical, and probably hopes he never changes.

Anyways, that's the introduction to the present story, which takes place two nights ago. The setting: our car, on the way home after picking him up from Nana's house. We were playing Track 9 from Blue Moo, called Big Band Sound. And so begins the following scene:

[Music plays]: I want the Jazz, pizazz, the razzmatazz, I want that Big - Band - Sound
Rebecca: We want the razzmatazz, Jude!
Jude: Ass.
Rebecca: Razzma-TAZZ
Jude: Ass.
Rebecca: ...

The other day, after reading a little bit about bill C-61, the US-style copyright bill that basically strips any right you may think you have concerning any form of media you can imagine, I dropped the Liberal industry critic, Sukh Dhaliwal, a line. Oh, and I CC'd Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe, because I basically told the honourable member Mr. Dhaliwal that the Liberal party needs to grow a pair and actually do their job for a change. Since the last election, and even before that, actually, the Liberals have been voting along with the Conservatives on pretty much anything of consequence out of fear of triggering an election. Basically, Mr. Harper has made them his bitch. I'm not sure if Mr. Dion was aware of this, but some of us have noticed. I suppose he could count on the general public being a bunch of absent-minded morons who don't keep track of these things, but that would be a rather offensive position to take. So, I suppose the alternative is that the Liberals are off in their own little world. I'm not sure if that's any better.


Doesn't this guy look trustworthy? I think so.

Anyways, Jack Layton, or at least an agent who reads his email, replied today. Unsurprisingly, the NDP will be voting against bill C-61, which has some elements that are impractical to enforce (such as the provision that would make it illegal for you to back up one of your DVDs to some other format to watch on your iPod), and some that are frighteningly easy to enforce (such as the provision that would allow your iPod to be confiscated at the airport if some agent suspected that it might contain illegally obtained media). How pissed would I be if some jackass took my laptop on my way to a conference based on a hunch? So, yeah, don't worry about triggering an election, because there are many people out there who would not hold it against you.

Today has been a big day in the Psychology Department: Amy and Sarah D successfully passed their defense against the dark arts and got their owls. For my part, I've been running like gangbusters what I hope to be my final experiment, and just checked the data for the first 20 people who participated. So far, it's exactly what I was hoping for, so that bodes well. I also got a ping reply from Scott Veenvliet, who sent links to some photos of his relatively new (6 mo. at this time) daughter, Casey. This is of particular relevance because his daughter has been permanently branded as the spawn of a nerd because she has been outfitted with a onesie that I found particularly amusing (though I never did pick one up for Jude):



I love it.

So to recap: Amy is on her way to leaving UWO with great honour (though Sarah is still stuck here, I'm afraid), I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for my ticket to doctoral goodness, and old friends are alive and well.

I was just filtering through my emails when I came across one that Amy had sent me that contained a link to the Cognitive Science Society website. Amy's got my back, so she has been sending me links to, and descriptions of potential postdoc positions. I had apparently not yet bookmarked the one at the Cognitive Science Society website, which is just as well because, in trying to find it, I discovered that the URL was no longer valid because the site has undergone some revision. On one hand, this is good, because it is now prettier than it was before the revision. On the other hand, the timing could have been better because I borrowed many of the design elements from the old website when I did the conference website for the CogSci08 conference. Not because I'm an unoriginal hack, mind you, but rather because I think continuity is important in maintaining the coherence of a website. That reusing graphical elements and even entire page templates makes your job easier is gravy. Anyways, all this is to say that I wish that the prettier CSS page was in place earlier so that I could have mirrored prettier graphical elements. I'm all about the pretty. Just ask my wife. She's pretty. Ka-Chow!

This just in: it looks like I will be simultaneously teaching and developing the former Psychology 282 (stats and research methods) course next year. Shoutouts go to Joan for finding herself in a scheduling bind that could only be solved by me doing both jobs.

Morgan is probably going to accuse me of wearing a tin-foil hat when I say this, but I find it suspiciously odd that I regularly have problems connecting to google -- and only google -- when I am at home. This wouldn't be so strange were it not for the fact that I can have one browser window open and unable to connect to www.google.ca, and at the same time have another browser connecting to google through the UWO proxy server (http://www.google.ca.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca:2048/). Not only am I unable to use google to search the web during this time, but I am also unable to sign in to gmail and write blog entries such as this one. Is there a good explanation for this? Because all I got is the fact that Rogers, who provides my internet access, is affiliated with Yahoo, who competes with google. When I can't use google to search the internet, where do I go? Yahoo?

Jude continues to grow up, and with that comes the end of nighttime daddy. Starting some time last week, when Jude would wake up in the middle of the night, I, instead of mommy, would go to his room to comfort him. This lets mommy get a better night's sleep. Me, I don't sleep well to begin with, so it doesn't seem to matter much. The first few nights, he was difficult. He has come to expect different types of comforting from each of us, and my role is as the guy who bounces him on an exercise ball, putting him to sleep, and strengthening my core and quad muscles simultaneously. Except 3am is not generally when I want to be working out. The first few nights of this, he was difficult. This is because he would fall asleep while I was bouncing him, but would wake up again either when putting him down, or shortly thereafter, and want to be bounced to sleep again. He would throw a fit when I refused, but it appears he has since come to learn that this gets him nowhere. So for the past couple of nights everyone has gotten a decent night's sleep.

Completely unrelated thought: I wonder how often people find themselves in a career path that they really didn't intend to follow and would rather not be in, but find themselves stuck because it's too late to go do something else.

Last week, I had ordered the final bits (the motherboard, for those who care) for my new computer. This was to fill the void left when the company from whom I bought the other bits (tigerdirect.ca) failed to notify me that the motherboard I had ordered from them was never going to arrive. That evening, I placed an order for a similar motherboard from another Canadian online computer bits store, directcanada.com, who had good prices and promised fast shipping. At the end of the order process, an email arrived instructing me to click some sort of link so I could receive a phone call with a verification PIN. At this point, it was late, and Jude was asleep so I decided not to go through this phone call step and to just go to bed. The next morning, I checked my order status to find it was not yet complete, and I took this to mean that it was still waiting for me to initiate the phone call step. I figured by this point, it might be just faster to by the item locally, so and after I went with Jenny to transfer over her gym membership, I went out and bought the critically missing computer piece. I spent the next day installing software and just after I got everything 'just so', the doorbell rings. Purolator. With the motherboard that I thought was in stasis. What the heck am I going to do with this thing? The motivation behind this blog entry is that after I contacted directcanada.com and explained the situation, I received an apology for the confusion and an offer to pay for the return shipping and refund the purchase. I decided that because I didn't get the screwing over that I anticipated, and because their shipping was so ridiculously fast, that I would favourably mention them in a public forum. I have no need for it now, but the next time I need to buy some computer bits, directcanada.com will probably be the first place I check.

Why all the hyperlinks? Blogger is owned by google. And hyperlinks factor in to (or at least, they did once upon a time) search engine rankings. So if someone googles directcanada.com, this should show up near the top. At least, that's my theory. And perhaps I can be faulted for having theories about search engine rankings.

I just fielded a call from a telemarketer - sort of. The phone number showed up as 555-444-3333, so clearly the caller was masking their phone number. So I picked up, expecting a sales pitch, and enthusiastically said, "Hello?" I usually feign enthusiasm when I answer telemarketer calls. I have no idea why. I think my mom does the same sort of thing, sounding almost offensively saccharine to overhear her end of the conversation. Instead of the sales pitch, the following conversation took place:

"Mr. Smith?"
"Sorry, you have the wrong number."
"I'm sorry. Thank you. "

As soon as the other end hung up, it occurred to me that this was far from the first time we have gotten phone calls for Mr. Smith, or similar John Doe names. Then I started wondering whether companies might deliberately make random calls to John Doe names, just to see if a number is dead or not. Or maybe to see whether someone is home? I don't know, it seems sorta fishy. Or phishy. Alternately, maybe it's just the result of people providing bogus information on signup forms. I find the most straightforward explanation, that our phone number used to belong to a Mr. Smith, to be just too boring.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I had ordered some bits online from TigerDirect.ca for a replacement computer. A few days after that, most of the bits arrived courtesy of UPS. The motherboard, tied with the CPU for the most critical component, however, was not in that shipment. A check of my order status online showed that the motherboard I had ordered was on backorder. So I waited. And waited. And then, just to be different, I waited some more. I had already seen that the product had been discontinued on their website, so I could see no details for that particular item. Finally, today, I called TigerDirect to find out what the status was. It turns out that, not only are they not selling any more of them, they aren't expecting to receive any more of them either. Nice of them to tell me. I ordered a different motherboard from a different company this evening. It wasn't really out of spite though - since I returned home this evening, the tigerdirect.ca and tigerdirect.com websites have been unreachable. Their loss.

And now, for something completely different, I must mention a movie that Alan and I watched a couple of weeks ago. It was called Shoot 'Em Up, and it was the most abysmally awful "action" movie I have ever seen. I went to rottentomatoes.com to get some details, and was appalled by the fact that it somehow garnered a 66% rating -- not good, by any stretch, but for comparison, Sex and the City (also awful, I'm sure) got a 53%, 27 Dresses got a 39%, and the Golden Compass got a 41%. I'm sure that the Golden Compass was a better movie than this. For one thing, it had a plot that made sense, and the character exposition wasn't nearly as contrived. And for another thing, the main character didn't have this schtick where he ate carrots all the time, and occasionally use them to kill people. The saving grace of this movie was that it was mercifully short, coming in at 89 minutes. That, and the fact that the movie was laugh-out-loud funny at many times, usually not intentionally.