My Life is A Drama Free Zone

Every so often, Mike will post some nifty little trick or tool he uses that makes doing X, Y or Z about a hundred times easier than some would argue it has to be–thanks for the Google Analytics pointer, by the way. So it surprised the hell out of me when he wrote this post at the beginning of the month about having to deal with comment spam. And, I had to wonder. How in the hell does a guy who’s been blogging on one platform for longer than I’ve been blogging on 3 deal with it?

In his defense, he uses Movable type, which has okay–though definitely not great–spam catching and destroying abilities. But it needs a *lot* of manual intervension to do it. Part of the reason I got fed up and switched to LiveJournal for a couple years, and then eventually to WordPres–the self-hosted version. They too used to require by default a hell of a lot of manual intervension in the spam department.

Now, though, since I’m not exactly sure which version, they make use of the Akizmet plugin for catching and either holding or deleting spam before it gets posted to the blog. Since making use of this plugin, and granted the blog’s only been around for about 3 months or so, I’ve only ever had perhaps two spam comments make themselves known in this little corner of the intertubes. For comparison’s sake, there are currently 34 comments waiting for me to boot them out of the spam queue, and a total of 129 that were caught altogether by the plugin. Compare that with my old MT blog, now sadly very very neglected and collecting plenty of spam on really old entries. In its prime, on that blog, I’d spend probably an hour a day picking spam comments out of my entries and tossing them in the pile to be later set on fire. I’d of given my first born for an Akizmet-like plugin for use on that platform. And, of course, now that I’m no longer using MT, I learn they have one. If I knew then what I know now, and all that stuff.

Movable Type made me hate spam. Wordpres made me kill it. And Akizmet’s to blame. I’m 3 months virtually spam free, and so far, I’m lovin’ it.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

A goodly portion of my TV watching, at least that which doesn’t consist of hockey or baseball, is done on CTV. Usually, its Ottawa station–particularly since they were nice enough to kill news broadcasts from Ottawa’s local A Channel station.

Their Ottawa newsroom caught fire overnight last night, resulting in the temporary loss of use of that building and the possibly permanent loss of 30+ years of news and video archives. Definitely, it resulted in the permanent loss of at least 2.5 million dollars worth of computer and video technology. They get to provide their news updates during tonight’s football game–which starts in 4 minutes for anyone curious enough to watch-from the parking lot of their former headquarters. Tonight’s local update at 11:30, however, will ironically enough come from the A Channel building–the first newscast from that building since March of last year.

If you get any of your news from CTV in the Ottawa or Pembroke area, or even if you just want to help out, keep an eye pealed–there will probably be ways and means for you to do so. If you’re a Max Keeping fan and happen to have something from his time with CTV, you’re encouraged to help replace everything he’s lost in the fire this close to his retirement–info for doing so is in the article’s comments section. CTV, and the news I’ve gotten semi-used to watching from there, will probably never be the same. CTV Ottawa is dead, long live CTV Ottawa.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I was watching the local CTV Ottawa station last night, and they must have devoted about 10 minutes to just how bad it’d be if the Leafs were the ones to put a stop to Ottawa’s 11-game winning streak. And after that newscast, that’s precisely what they did. Giguere was awesome in net, not that it would have made a whole lot of difference if we’d gone with the monster instead-the awesome was happening in front of him anyway. Kessel nearly managed himself a hat trick I don’t know how many times. Schenn managed to double his season total of 2 goals in one night. And Phaneuf, well, he’s Dion Phaneuf. What the hell more do you want? Ottawa’s owned us for the better part of the last couple years. Last night? We owned them.

Last time

We hadn’t played them since before Christmas, at which point the margin was closer, but we still managed to win. I think that very well might have been the last time I thought we might be playing consistently. I still have my doubts if we are, but I’m trying very hard now to actually find that caring thing I used to do. Instead, I only find anticipation of Monday. When, as is the rule, the other shoe will probably drop. Welcome to Leafs Nation 2010, Dion. Hope your golf swing’s as good as your slapshot.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I don’t get a chance to check my email very often while I’m over at my parents’ place, where I’ve been since yesterday. But, I did get a chance to check it tonight. And this little surprise, from they who host this blog, was waiting for me. Now, keep in mind, the service they’re offering? I’ve been using it since October or November or so.

Hey again James!

Last week we again sent you an email inviting you to try our still-new
DreamHost PS (Private Servers) and/or our DreamHost PS MySQL service!
But again it looks like you never checked it out at:

http://www.dreamhostps.com/

Nor did you choose to sign up by visiting:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

Well, it’s hard for us to understand how you couldn’t give it a shot for
just $10/month (66% off). But not impossible for us to believe. What’s
IMPOSSIBLE for us to believe is if you don’t take advantage of this, our
final and greatest offer!

$10/month off.. forever. That’s 100MB free.. meaning you can get your
very own Private Server with 150MB of ram for just FIVE dollars a month!
Awooooooga!

The main advantages of DreamHost PS are:

* You get full ROOT access .. complete control to run whatever you’d like!
* You get your own PROTECTED system resources for improved stability!
* You get included unlimited live chat support!
* You get increased performance via lighttpd, nginx and PHP caching!
* You can scale your resources on the fly, and reboot your own PS!
* It’s currently only +$10/month for every 100MB of memory. ($10 off!)
* It’s a completely seamless transition from our regular shared hosting!

You can also sign up for DreamHost PS MySQL, which is just like PS but
for your databases. If you get both PS and PS MySQL, you get another 20%
off both, forever!

Now, this is really our final final offer. And, it expires one week from
today (by 2010-02-13) .. sign up and we’ll be able to provision you
ASAP!

Thanks one final time,
The Happy DreamHost Evite Team!

P.S. If you’d prefer not to be notified by email in the future should
you be given any more invitations, please visit our contact preferences
page here:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact

And select to not receive “DreamHost Promotions” anymore!

I giggled a little. I snickered. And then, I wrote this reply.

Folks,
 
I’m already signed up with your PS plan. Not that I don’t want to keep receiving discount offers, but I only need one and well, I have it. Can I still have
the discount, though?

Think I’ll get it? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. But maybe they’ll update their database to stop trying to sell it to me. Since, you know, I bought it the first time.

Update: I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong.

Hello,

Thanks for writing in! I went ahead and increased your subsidy from $5 to
$10. That gives you 66% off (if you allocate 150mb of memory at
$15/month).

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thanks!
Dan G =]

–
DreamHost Support Team + support@dreamhost.com

Sometimes, I really love this web host. Also, gotta respect the root access.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

The Leafs being up 4 nothing in the second against Ottawa reminded me, I’m a lot closer to the game than I often times realize. Just how close, though? If we’re all connected by at most 6 degrees of separation as I’ve been told, I’m connected by 2. My cousin plays for a AA level minor league team, the Upper Ottawa Valley Aces. They recently managed the semi-finals at the International Silver Stick tournament. I heard a rumor, though my google skills do not appear to prove it, that he may have also been called up to the Ottawa 67’s at one point. Growing up, I always wondered what it’d be like to actually have a relative in the NHL–even if I haven’t personally seen that relative since before he could walk. Now, I might just get a chance to know. Just here’s hoping he doesn’t become a Senator.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

How in the 7 levels of hell did that happen? Three, yes three, awesomely sweet goals in the second period against yet another olympic goaltender–one playing for team Canada next week, of all things–and we go and give it up. Through most of the game we pretty well owned. I mean, really and solidly owned. Last 4 minutes of the third, and the Devils just got cheap. Hell, for the last couple minutes of the game they played 5 forwards, for crying out loud. There’s not such thing as a bad forward on that team, so you stick 5 out there and we have problems. The 6th they threw on in the last minute didn’t help us either. Ah well, that’s life in Leafs nation. At least we didn’t suck this time.

Last time

Different story 3 days ago in Toronto. We played just as well, and actually managed to nail the two points. Plus, we shut them out. Of course we also had Giguere in net. Not that that might have helped us last night, but hey, the media’s gotta have something to blame.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I promised myself I wouldn’t do much in the way of political blogging on this site, mostly because it probably ends up being popular with all of maybe 2 people who read. But this one I just couldn’t resist. Stephen Harper is now second in popularity to an onion ring. Rumor has it it will run in the next election on a platform of more Burger King for everyone. Can you tell I’m bored?

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

All the news reports say we won. Even the commentators while I watched last night confirmed it. Mike confirmed it from the third row at the ACC–lucky bastard. So I guess we did. I should be excited. Or, at least surprised. I’m not. In fact, I’m not really anything. As I wrote on Sunday, all I can do is shrug.

Last time

A completely different team barely lost the last trip around that block on Saturday. By then, I’d pretty much already lost that lovin’ feeling for my badly beaten team. Sadly, I haven’t gotten it back yet. Even more sadly, I don’t even care.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Jessica and I got to talking a couple days ago, and we somehow got on the topic of old-ish commercials. Particularly, that early 90’s or so commercial for coffee crisp. Turns out, she’s never seen it. Ever. For my part, I forgot how it went. Fortunately, the internet knows all. So, because I’ll occasionally do the nostalgia thing, and because in its own way, it’s semi-amusing, I give you the 1990’s, in a commercial. Wanna see? Just hit play.
 

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Over the few months leading up to the Christmas holidays, the original cordless phone set I had for the apartment–one of those older two-handset jobs–was really starting to let go of, like, everything. I had one who’s battery might last 30 minutes, and another who’s battery might last 30 seconds. My parents, who bought me those phones a few years ago, had the exact same ones–and were having at around the same time the exact same problem. I can’t even remember what model they were, but turns out they were pretty well crap. They were promptly replaced in both households by phones made by Panasonic instead. We got our hands on one of those digital answering systems–the phones, 3 of them for my place this time, come with their own built-in answering machine so you’re not paying someone for voicemail. I didn’t exactly plan to use that, but it’s nice to know they have that option.

We got them set up, and were introduced to a rather neat little surprise. It seems, though we didn’t know this at the time, the handsets in use at my parents’ place come with the option to have call Id information read out to you via text to speech built into the individual handsets. Now, granted, you can’t use the same method for being able to go back through your history of missed calls, but this is perhaps the second model of phone I’ve actually seen it implemented on–the first, a corded model several years ago, quite frankly made me want to pitch it out the window. And the thing wasn’t even mine. Naturally mine didn’t come with that option, but it was still nice to see some of them did.

I have no idea if Panasonic is actually starting to consciously make their equipment just that much more accessible, or if it’s another example of a measure of convenience just so happening to double as something you can use without requiring the ability to actually see your phone. The naive part of me would like to think the former, but here in the real world, it’s more than likely the latter. Still, it’s a nice touch for a phone system. I wouldn’t mind seeing this end up becoming a trend for other manufacturers. For the curious, here’s one of the models with talking call ID on Amazon. I wonder if it’s too late for an exchange…

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

January’s been an interesting/exciting/entertaining month, to be sure. Definitely more entertaining than I figured it could be, what with mom’s unplanned trip to the hospital and all–she’s very well recovered now, by the way. Other folks found things interesting in January, too. Have some highlights.

• Every geek should have a netbook. It’s a rule or something. They’re smaller, lighter, cheaper, and damn near as powerful as your average laptop nowadays. Not to mention they can probably take a hell of a beating. Still, to say I don’t have my reasons for not owning one would be a lie. I like my machines to last for, say, more than a year.
• Mom’s unexpected trip to the hospital started at a casino in Quebec. And promptly lasted over 3 days. Most of that time was spent waiting to figure out whether or not she’d need surgery. Fortunately, the surgery she did need was hardly anything major and her recovery was quick.
• I like the theoretical idea of the iPad. I don’t like its design on quite a few levels. No multitasking? On a portable computer? Really?
• I get all kinds of spam in my inbox. Some of it is just plain moronic. And some of that, even, still fools people. I wonder just how many username/password combinations this one actually got out of people.
• If I’m ever in the market for a new machine, someone please remind me about this post. I refuse to look at it right now, on the grounds that it may distract me from writing. But I still want those machines. Apparently, so do a few other people.

might be inclined to say there was a fair bit of at least semi-useful to someone content posted in January. Except this would be my blog, and I very rarely post anything semi-useful here–so I know better. Still, it’s an interestingly nice thought. Now, back to posting bits of randomness that constitutes my life in a nutshell. The content may improve, but don’t count on it.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Just about everyone who watches this kinda thing’s been reporting that as of the beginning of March, Google’s officially going to shut down IE 6 support for its services. You’re strongly encouraged–well, by them anyway–to use that as an opportunity to give their new web browser a try. IE 6.0 hasn’t been supported directly by very many for quite a while–since the initial release of IE 7, really. Microsoft almost immediately dropped support for it, and now more and more sites are cropping up that strongly recommend you upgrade. If you’re a frequent user of Gmail and company, if only because your performance will benefit hugely from it, I’d strongly recommend you either consider installing IE 7 or 8, or even do what I recently did and give Firefox a shot. It’s good for your health. Or, at least, Google says it is.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

We saw it coming from a mile away. Especially after losing 6 in a row and very much being at risk of doing worse than North Carolina. These are potentially huge trades that very much change the overall look, at least on the face of it, of the Team. And yet, it’s just another article to appear in my RSS reader.

Away goes half our forward lineup, with Mayers, stajan and Hagman getting airmailed to Calgary. On the up side, we get a defenseman that’s actually capable of doing something with the puck besides throw it away. We lost Ian White in that trade too, but he didn’t do much last night besides give the damn puck away anyway. In return, the unlikely happened. We actually got someone who could possibly be a good match with Caberle–hello, Dion Phaneuf. Could it possibly be that we might actually have something that calls itself a hockey team now? Again, all I can do is shrug.

In related news, Toronto ditches Deadweight Vesa for J.S. giguere and a pencil to be named later. It cost us Blake, too, but oh well. Hopefully we still have someone who we can stick with the thrill, or it’s gonna be painful. Oh, wait. We’re Leafs fans. We’re used to painful.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I just don’t get it. We had the lead. No, sorry. We ruled the goddamn ice. For half the game. And then we pretty well dumped it. 3 sweet goals in the first, including two Kessels. So what in the bloody hell just happened? We gave up a goal in the second. And 4, count ‘em, 4 in the third. What? Even on our worst night we didn’t do that. Seriously. I missed much of the game, but was able to figure out roughly why it is we managed to, um, not hold a lead–his name is toskala. Stop the season; I want off.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

We had a lead. For about a minute ten, we had a lead. And then we sucked. We were tied for a very small part of the game. Briefly at 1, and then again in the third at 4. Overtime killed us again. You know, it’s a strange thing I’ve noticed recently. I’m not even disappointed anymore when we lose. I think I’m kind of used to it. And that, um, scares me.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

About 6 or 7 months ago, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Convergys, an outsourcing company who at the time was handling a contract for AT&T. I didn’t end up taking the opportunity, however, on account of they were very up front about having absolutely no plans for doing, pretty much, anything I’d need them to do in order for me to work there. Like, for instance, installing a screenreader so I can actually use their computers. About that long ago, I stopped thinking about them. And on Tuesday, the office where I would have been working tossed all but a hundred of its employees. Suddenly, I’m actually kind of glad we parted company after our initial conversation. Otherwise I might very well still be exactly where I am right now. Except maybe on employment insurance. Thanks but no thanks–did that dance already. Oh, and as for where those jobs ended up going? You guessed it–overseas. On the up side, at least we’re helping their recovery.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I have absolutely no browser loyalty, whatsoever. I guess I haven’t had it for quite a few years now. For the most part, I’d use Internet Explorer–mostly because it was the default choice when I’d click on something and I didn’t particularly feel like changing it. But I kept Firefox around anyway, for those few occasions where something would come up that IE just wouldn’t play nice with. Or, more recently, in the event I came across a site employing CAPTCHA technology, which sadly neither browser’s come up with a built-in answer for yet. Recently though, meaning just this afternoon, I’ve decided it’s been a while since I did any real major playing with firefox. They’ve made a hell of a lot of improvements, or so the various sites who take note of such things have said, and I wanted to see for myself. So, as of right now and for at least the next couple days, IE gets kicked to the curb in favour of the open source alternative. It may only be a couple days–I haven’t quite decided yet. So far, it does seem to be running a little better on this machine, so it might stick around for longer than that. If nothing else, it’s a temporary break from staring at IE all day. Yeah, I know, you people who’ve been using it forever already can laugh now. I never said I was quick to change.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

After yesterday’s launch of Apple’s iPad, everything from Twitter to several of my RSS feeds just blew up. I’m still wondering why, aside from the fact it’s an apple launch event. I mean, not that it doesn’t have its fanpeople, but I don’t see it doing what Apple’s hoping it will in its current form. This is going to get long-winded; you might want to make sure you’ve got a minute to browse.

Overaccessibility

First thing, from a me viewpoint, and from the viewpoint of a member of the blindness community. There is, believe it or not, such thing as too much accessibility. Way too much accessibility. And I think Apple’s trying to reach that level. I was rather politely informed today that I’m being ripped off if I buy a netbook over an iPad, because I won’t be getting the spacial info from a netbook that a touchscreen can give. I’m still waiting to be educated on a down side to that. When I’m working on a blog post, or doing just about anything else I’d usually do on a daily basis, I’m not worrying about where things are on the screen. Quite frankly, I could care less where they are–it’s whether or not I can get to them that matters. I really don’t care if there’s a row of links or menu options scrolling down the right hand side of my screen. If I can get to them, open them, use them, and get rid of them, that’s all that matters. When focusing on accessibility, the interface should still keep its sense of overall functionality. Having to physically look for where it is they’ve positioned an icon, menu option, button or window is, to me, not functional.

Useability

We could nitpick about just how far accessibility should go all day, but that’s by far not the only reason I don’t see myself owning or using an iPad in the near future, if at all. I’m a huge useability freak. More than I am an accessibility freak–although, in most cases, useability ends up equaling to accessibility. Part of useability is being able to easily move from one application to another, without having to back out of one, flip through a few icons to find another, and wait for it to open. You need to be able to multitask–don’t even ask how many applications I have open right now. Just don’t. The iPad is running a modified version of the iPhone’s OS. Which–you guessed it–means no multitasking. Suddenly, we’ve entered a slightly more modern version of 1999. People don’t have more than one or two programs open, if that. Or so Apple says, anyway. If this is designed to be a portable personal computer, though, and if Apple’s expecting it to be used for anything moderately heavy on productivity, we need multitasking. There’s plenty of agreement that it would have been very useful were it implemented for the iPhone. It only makes sense, and I dare say a lot of sense, that it would be even more useful for the iPad. So why are we still not seeing it? Were I in the market for a smaller machine to cart with me across the border or something, that might be a dealbreaker. Quick startup? Great. Awesome. Long-ish battery life? Bonus. Touch screen? Okay, I might be able to get used to that. Maybe. No multitasking? See ya. Next?

Hardware

Even with the lack of multitasking support, which one can only hope will be remedied in a future version, the device itself might somehow still have some promise. At least until you take a look at its specs, at which point that promise kind of gets up and walks out. There’s no ethernet port–believe it or not, there are places where wifi and/or cell coverage, if you want to pay the $130 or so extra for that feature, is unavailable. But you may still have access to plug in. Except, um, you don’t. There are no USB ports, except for the Apple-provided adapters. Which means you can’t connect it to your external HD if you happen to have one. No SD card slot either, meaning the only way to pull anything off the 64 GB flash drive in the machine would be to hook it to your computer, and do it through iTunes. And, yes, all of 64 GB of diskspace on the actual machine itself–a stock sub-$300 netbook can easily have 160 GB of space, albeit not flash memory. I don’t work like that. apple just basicly decided I can’t use most of what at some point I will probably be using at least once. And they put all of this in a package that weighs just slightly less than your typical netbook, with a battery that lasts roughly equally as long as most models nowadays–particularly when you factor in that you only ever actually get about 70% of the advertised battery life. Suddenly, that sub-$300 netbook’s looking a little more attractive.

Phylosiphy

All that aside, there’s one area of Apple’s operation that I don’t know that I’d ever agree with when it comes to its products. That being, from the instant you purchase an iPod, or an iPhone, or now an iPad, you’re effectively asking Apple’s permission to do anything with it. Want to install a program? Alright, but only if Apple says its okay–or you want to risk breaking your warranty and jailbreaking. On its technical specifications page (link is above), it even lists an iTunes store account as a requirement for the iPad. It’s been said that you’re almost renting your hardware from Apple, not having a whole lot of actual controll over what ends up being done with it. And indeed, with most if not all content needing to come from the app store unless you feel like jailbreaking, I can see where that perception would come from. And I can agree with it. If I buy a computer, even a small portable computer like that one, I want to be able to take it home, throw on a few programs I use regularly and already have handy–and not have to pay for more than one copy of them, since I already have them and all–and go about my business. I can’t do that with the iPad. And if Apple decides, as it’s done before, to change its mind and remove an app from the store? Well, now I’m pretty well out of luck until such time as I can be bothered to jailbreak. There’s a tiny bit of a problem here with that.

Conclusion

What it offers, as limitting as it is, is somewhat promising. I’d consider buying one, if we could just navigate a way around what it doesn’t and likely won’t offer in future. The apple loyalists will brand it as the way we’ll use computers tomorrow. Okay, I can buy that. But I’ll still be using my external hard drives tomorrow. I’ll still have need for ethernet capability tomorrow. And I most definitely won’t be coughing up $30/month to be able to use the internet on my computer without wifi–Rogers already charges me for a data plan I barely use but still have to pay for. If, as they say, we’ll be using computers in this fashion in the future, I’d better still be able to do all of that. Otherwise, go on ahead. Come back to the present when you’re bored. I’m not going anywhere.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Unless I’d like to devote half my small amount of spending money to cab fair, laundromat fairs and replacing half the supplies I don’t get back from the said laundromat, apparently. At the beginning of the year, I discovered this building’s dryers rather suck when it comes to actually, you know, drying. But in order to find that out, it required I first take 25 minutes to convince it that it wanted to take my money. After a long conversation that involved the temporary use of my mail key to complete payment, and actually force the thing to accept my money, I discovered I’d of been better off not bothering. Getting my clothes roughly equivalent to dry would cost just about twice what it cost me to wash the things. Instead, after having a very short conversation with the landlord, I decided my parents wanted to see me more often anyway. Now they had a reason.

And, because technological screw-ups always happen in at least twos, while not hearing back from the landlord on the building’s machines, my parents’ washing machine decided to take a permanent vacation. So now it’s temporarily laundromat or nothing for all of us, at least until their replacements get there–fortunately it shouldn’t be more than 3 days. Or, in corporate speak, whenever they get around to it. They say bad things happen in threes. well, I just ran out of laundry things to go break. Any guesses what’s next?

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Roughly 12 hours from now, Jess will more than likely be a good way through taking her exam for the New York state boards, and that much closer to being a licensed massage therapist in that state. She’s pulled I don’t even know how many 13-hour days over the last year plus, and that’s not counting the hours she’s spent studying, writing papers, stressing, or doing some combination of all of the above. She’s come close to burning out, but managed somehow to keep it together long enough to finish the course. And now she’s one final examination away from having exactly what she wants. I don’t know that you’ll have time to see this before your exam, but if you do, best of luck to you. I’d be there if I could, but you’re being thought of either way. You were awesome in class, so I have on good authority, and you’ll be awesome during this exam. Look out Rochester, I hear she’s good with her hands.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

It was recommended to me a few times, primarily by Jessica, that I maybe want to consider checking out a political satire group, Capitol Steps. So out of random curiosity, I downloaded a few of their albums. And have been listening ever since.

Mostly, they do the US politics, which well, yeah, there’s plenty to mock there. But they’ve taken a few stabs at this side of the border too. Everyone’s favourite province to pick on gets a special mention a time or two–hello, Quebec. Especially around the time when they were holding their vote for separation. The awesomeness is surprising. Now, if I can just figure out who it was who did “Let’s Bomb Iraq”. Probably these guys–it’s their kind of thing. Now then. Back to seeing if Beyond Satire has been updated in a month or three.

Edit: I was right, it’s them. Oddly enough, when I heard this the first time I didn’t even know the group existed. I’m awesome. Or maybe not.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

At least it was an attempt at being a game. Going into the second period we had it tied at 1. Of course, that didn’t last very long–by the end of the third, we’d given up a lead to the Kings and tied it up again. And then we kind of tried to make it interesting in the third, but well, it ended up just hurting. Somehow we managed putting a third in the net, which would have been awesome if they hadn’t already put 3 more there. Way the season goes, Leafs fans. Right down the crapper. At least we have Brian Burke. Right? Right? … Right? Anybody?

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Of course, that realization didn’t quite hit me until Sunday, when I finally decided I’d stop procrastinating and go through some of what I pulled off my laptop’s HD last June before I whiped it and installed Linux. And the things I managed to avoid deleting since I bought the thing in 2004 or 2005 actually manage to scare me. Most noteably things that I forgot I was even involved in.

I’ve been hugely into role playing for a number of years. Since highschool, really. Most of my early creations, though, ended up lost between here and there when the first laptop I owned decided it would rather spectacularly break. Physically. Of course, it was a toshiba so that was kind of expected. But I kept, or tried to keep, logs of as much of the old days of RP as I could. Mostly as something to refer back to should a situation come up where I needed to.

One of my adventures in RP was a medieval style MUD, or multi-user-dimension/dungeon/whatever you want to call it, called Eternal Struggle. I played a variety of characters on that game–anything from the somewhat helpful healer to the cold blooded killer with absolutely no problem pinning you to the wall with your own knife. And he’d give you a pleasant little smile while he did it. Reading back through some of those logs, I reminded myself just how much of an asshole I can be. Sometimes, I surprise the hell out of me.

I play a couple of characters in a Star Trek game, too. Star Trek: A Call to Duty, to be accurate. One of those I’ve had going on since 2006. I forgot about some of the awesome RP I’ve been involved in with that one as well, including a sort of special event RP that went on for a couple months, where I got to hang out with and torment the hell out of a few people I didn’t used to talk to until then. One of these days I’ll get around to posting some of the stuff. But right now, I’ll just say, 4 years later looking back at some of these thinggies, I crack me up.

Sometimes, procrastination is a good thing. At least, it is when it comes to me. I’m kind of thankful I haven’t yet gone through and hit the delete key on about 90% of this stuff. Now, if I can just remember to put them somewhere where I can find half this stuff again. Eh, I’ll do it later.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I always get this sick feeling in my stomach whenever we play a team that might actually have the slightest chance at maybe being halfway decent. I have no idea why. Well okay, I do have an idea why, I just don’t want to talk about that right now. Instead, I’ll just resign myself to the fact that that’s the reason we did absolutely nothing productive last night. I mean, yes, we got 39 shots on net. But we got nothin’. Not even a penalty shot that could be reversed and made into an opposing team goal. Instead, we’ve won an impressive 1 game on this road trip we’re on, and come home more battered and bruised than when we left. Sound like the story of our lives as Leafs fans yet? I thought so.

Last time

Compare last night’s game with 2 and a half weeks ago, when we actually won by a slim margin. Huge difference in performance and outcome. I mean, it was a win, and it was barely so, but I was expecting it to be another round of oh my god do we ever suck. Instead, we were treated to a surprising dose of oh my god we might only be craptastic. Nope, we definitely suck. Thanks for reminding me. Now, back to waiting for a team we can beat consistently.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I think we might have forgotten how to play again. At least for about 4 minutes in the third period. We had the game. Had it. Right up until a stupid penalty and our craptastical penalty kill had a chance to suck. It was tied when the third managed to close out. Overtime, we usually do slightly better in. Usually. But then we don’t usually take stupid too many men on the ice calls either. Not even 30 seconds left in the game, not even 10 seconds left in the game, and they throw one in on a power play that shouldn’t have happened. And they wonder why it is we place bets on who’ll do worse than them. My uncle, while we were out for coffee last night, seemed surprised we were in second last. My response? At least we’re not in last.

Last time

We played a little better in November, of course that was the we could actually play consistently. Managing 4 3 I actually sort of considered the possibility that we might have then been turning around after an ultra crappy start. I’d like to point out, just for the record, I was mistaken. Stick a fork in this team… I think we’re done.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Because not everyone’s going to be absolutely in love with this whole RSS thing, and because, as I’ve been discovering lately, RSS doesn’t necessarily translate to easy access, I’ve finally decided to start with the implementing something that might make things just a little bit more… well, readable for everyone. So now, thanks to my finally getting around to getting off my rear and doing something about it, and thanks to Feedburner making it just slightly less than painless, WTN by email is born. I have no idea how much breakage will be involved, and how much borderline insanity will be the result, but it’s here. You can find the subscription form in the sidebar. Now if I can just figure out how to keep the rest of it from blowing up in my face, I’ll be miles happy.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I used to at least make an attempt to watch American idol every couple weeks. Mostly because I was living at home and we only had 2 working TV’s, both of which would usually be in use, but a small part of me found something about the show fascinating. It wasn’t necessarily any of the actual talent–there haven’t been all that many that I’ve seen that made me want to pick up the phone and repeatedly call in to vote, or clear my schedule the next week to see if they ended up bombing out or if they made it into the top fifty million. I thought it might have been the overall hillarity of some of these people who somehow got the judges to believe they could sing, only to have themselves booted when someone outside the actual broadcast could make the decision. Then, I figured it was the general amusement I got out of listening to people who thought they really really could sing, only to discover–not entirely too unexpectedly–they really really couldn’t. Nope, wrong again.

Why do I bother to tolerate a show like American Idol, when I’d much rather be doing just about anything else? Because at least once in a season, usually only once, you get that one particular fool who figures him or herself to be god’s gift to anything musically inclined, and there’s just nothing you can say or do short of tranking them that’ll make them shut up about it. My major complaint with American Idol? It only happens maybe once in a season. So after I see it, I no longer have any real interest in watching. So I usually skip out.

Take tonight’s show, for example. I watched it only because it was on, my mother had the remote, and I’m mommy sitting. And, admittedly, because if the show completely sucks at everything else, I can at least snicker at some of the things that come out of Simon Cowell. It didn’t disappoint on either front tonight, but now that I have no real interest in watching next week, I can make do with what I saw.

Near the end of tonight’s show, we were treated to a very stoned-sounding dood who thought, though I have no idea why–other than the fact he very well might have been stoned, that he could actually carry a tune without a half ton truck. And he chose to demonstrate his unquestionable singing ability with Amazing Grace–not exactly world’s most popular, or best really, song to begin with. That was mistake number 1. Mistake number 2, though? Actually having the nerve to be surprised when all 3 judges pretty much simultaneously decided he redefined suckitude. Mistake number 3? Insisting they were wrong and offering to give them an encore. Whether they wanted to hear it or not. The gentleman’s reward? A personal escort outside. In handcuffs. Whether he wanted to or not.

Now, why in the hell doesn’t American Idol show more stuff like that? That’d make the show about 5 times more interesting to watch. Hell, I might even manage to last through to the finals if they happened to have someone up there who, upon receiving the impression they’re god’s gift to anyone with ears, got told to go pack. Maybe I’m just abnormal, but seeing a person get all uppity like that about a few million people who all think he should be flipping burgers instead of singing would be worth sitting through the rest of the crap. My problem with American Idol really is that simple. They pretty it up too much. That’s probably why you only see maybe 3 or 4 of the people who end up going home–the others, they figure, are probably too strung out at someone having the nerve to prick their ego. And thus, there goes any entertainment value for me. Don’t get me wrong, Idol’s an okay show, if there’s nothing else on and I’m desperate. But it could be so much better. And I might walk away from a show not feeling like taking a nap.

Dear Idol producers. If you happen to be seeing something similar to this here entry, take it under advisement. I have a problem with your show. It bores me to tears. Thank you.

Also, randomly tacked on side point: I still maintain Simon Cowell should consider a career in politics. We’d then at least know what we’re getting, even if we don’t all agree with or like the guy. More than we can say now.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Insanity has been the last few days, otherwise I might have remembered to post this Sunday or Monday. Maybe. Mom made it through the surgery just fine as expected, and came home Sunday night. The only problem was she didn’t know what exactly was done to her–the surgeon had apparently decided not to leave notes for anyone else so they could tell her the semi-important details. Like, for instance, what she was supposed to do for post-op care. Or, even more fun, whether or not she had stiches. She was ordered to do the generic things–take it easy, no heavy lifting, all that good stuff–for about a week or two, just in case. Somewhere between then and now, she decided she didn’t have stiches–she’s had that operation done before, so would know if stiches were in or not. So, obviously feelilng much better and much less sore than she’d expected, she was off to Ottawa today for another appointment to get some kind of funkyness removed from her hand. Her good luck ran out right about then–she is now the proud owner of hand stiches, and the proud recipient of a temporary handycap. So, I go back over to the mommy house tonight, just as soon as my ride shows up, and babysit for a day or two. Fortunately, when I left on Monday I left my stuff there, so packing only meant throwing clothes on. It’s only supposed to be for about 24 hours, but knowing how she works I may only be over there for 12. But, at least this time we know what they did. That’s always helpful.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

It was almost a good game. Almost. right up until the third. even Toskala looked kind of like an NHL goaltender. Then we started into our usual suckitude. We lead 2 0 after 1. They managed to tie it up in the second, but we hadn’t gotten completely outplayed yet. We saved that trick for the final frame. They put another two on us, leading 4 2. Well over halfway through the period, we somehow managed to get one back. Might have gotten them both, but in the last few minutes of the game a shot that had nothing but net waiting for it bounced off a Leafs player’s ass. And, of course, didn’t go anywhere near the bloody net. That’s the 2009-2010 season in a nutshell for us, folks. Of course, if we could actually stay awake during the third period we might not have needed to curse the fact that shot didn’t end up going in. I think I can count the good defensive plays on one hand. And offense? Well, not really. The bright spot was a stupid cross-checking penalty in the last minute of the game–which, of course, we couldn’t take advantage of. It’s nights like that when I ask myself why I turn on the game. But, goddammit, I’m Leafs fan. Almost diehard. Which, yes, means I get to sit there, watch a crappy game, then come online and bitch about the said crappy game. But, because I’m *almost* diehard, I can still find that little bit of realism here. And, realisticly? We suck.

Last time

we did better back in December, holding them to just 2 goals while we managed to sneak 5 past them. How we managed that I don’t really remember, if I ever knew at all. I don’t think I did. But whatever it is we had during that game, can we please go back and find it? It’d make me less likely to get drunk during the next one.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

The thrill did it again. Exactly what we’re paying him to do. Tied at 3, going into the third. Just over 5 minutes left, he blows one through to close it out. If I’d actually remembered to watch the whole game I’d have probably been surprised as hell. As it is, I’m still to this day trying to figure out why in the 7 levels of hell Nashville has a hockey team. But, they do. And we nailed them. Now if only that actually counted. Ah well, can’t have everything.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

And it didn’t even take me banging my head against Google Reader. I’ve been looking for something portable to replace my current favourite, an RSS plugin for Outlook 2003. Mostly because, on days like today when I’m not sitting in front of my computer, as much as I love being able to have direct access to my feeds in Outlook, it helps me all of not at all at the moment. And I might have found it–at least a temporary fix, until it breaks or I find something better.

The software, written in python and running on any OS that therefore supports the language–I have it on Linux at the moment, is just called Planet. It takes one or more RSS feeds, such as the feed from this very blog, and merges them into a single HTML file. The design looks not a whole lot different from most blogs–the entries are sorted latest first, by date, and optionally by feed, with individual headings indicating the start of a new segment. It looks incredibly customizeable, although I’ve not yet actually gotten much time to play with it–a disadvantage of all my current subscriptions being, as said before, on my computer at home which is precisely where I’m not.

All the HTML, XML, and other such files are built dynamicly every update from templates. Those templates contain the raw HTML or XML code, plus a few variables understood by the program for printing things such as the feed name, entry title, when it was posted, etc. The program itself can be scheduled to run via Linux’s crontab command, or the Mac OS equivalent. Or, if you’re insane enough to have managed to get python running on Windows, you can suffer even more brain damage and update it via the task scheduler. I wouldn’t recommend it-windows has a nasty little habit of breaking task scheduler, but it’s your brain.

The only thing that would make me not recommend it for non-techy users is absolutely no problem for me–entirely manual instalation and configuration. Everything from determining how long between checks for new content–enter the crontab utility–to the addition of new feeds absolutely must be done by hand. Personally, even though it’s not really a huge problem for me, I’d still have much rathered it give you the option of just tossing it an OPML file and letting it draw the feed info from that. But then, I also have well over 100 feeds to transfer over when I get the time. Still, for what it does it looks highly promising. And, it can always go away if and when I find something better. But for now, it beats what’s currently out there for hosted solutions (No, FeedMyInbox, I don’t want to pay you $16 for the privelege of being able to have you email all my feeds to me. Sorry.). So, I’ll give it a try for a bit and either really love it or tos it out the nearest window. In the meantime, I have back entries of feeds to go through when I get home anyway, so I can take my time with the moving everything over to the new software. And it’ll definitely take its time.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

As of about 11:30 last night, mom’s surgery was done with and she was doing well. Actually, in my father’s words she was going back to her room and straight to bed. Which, to me, means she’s just fine. They’ll find out today exactly what they found/did/things and when it is she’ll be going home. Again, though, they’ll probably end up releasing her today unless there’s some major funkyness going on. Not that the last 3 days haven’t been some major funkyness, but hey, everyone’s definition’s a little different.

In lighter news, and news more relevant to me specificly, my first job application of 2010 was finally filed last night. It wasn’t anything overly earth shattering. Another customer service job with Rogers Communications, our equivalent of Comcast and AT&T combined. I’ve applied with them several dozen times already, although the last time they actually thought about getting me in for an interview, so we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I’m keeping my eye out and hoping like hel Ottawa gets a few more tech jobs. What with all the office closures and massive layoffs in the last year or two–Dell, the local outsourcing office of Sytel, and more recently the layoffs and eventual bankrupsy of Nortel–they could use a few dozen. HP has an office there, but if you’re not bilingual you’re not qualified, so we’ll just pretend like they don’t. In the meantime, it’s quarter past 5 and I should be sleeping. Will I? Hmmm. My money’s on probably not. Hello again, screwy schedule.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I figured the Flyers thing wouldn’t carry over against Washington. Even though we smacked them around twice before already, but apparently we were due. By all appearances–well, according to everything I could get my hands on re: that particular game anyway, we ended up pretty flat last night. Did they spend 12 hours in the emergency room too?

Last time

We doubled them up in December pretty good, ending up coming out on top in a 6 3 game. And we kept their new captain off the board that night as well, I believe. Can’t say that for last night. Oh well, what do you expect during a week when Toskala of all people actually gets–and earns–a shutout?

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I had to check that score twice. No, wait, three times. Really? There’s a 0 in the Flyers column? Against Toronto? No, sorry, against Toskala? For serious? Reality, meet fiction. That just doesn’t happen with this team. Now, if we were playing Carolina… wait, nevermind. That doesn’t happen with them either. It would be worth noting if I thought we’d do anything with it.

Last Time

We sucked last time we played them. Overly so. We looked more like a team deserving of the league’s basement–accurate, considering where we are in the standings. Definitely not worthy of a 4 0 win. Philadelphia must have all called in sick. Only explanation. Not that I’m complaining by any means…

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

There’s a very good, and very logical, reason why it is I never bother to do something as simple as make plans. Something almost always manages to show up to make things work significantly less than well. Like two days ago for example. The original plan, that is the plan we walked to the car with in our heads that morning, was to take a trip to Ottawa for dad’s doctor’s appointment, then maybe grab a little lunch and head home. After we finished with dad’s appointment, the plan changed to maybe grab lunch, then swing by Costco and then home. And by the time we got to the point where we’d have to make up our minds, the plan became a trip to the casino, then Costco, then home. We managed the trip to the casino.

Just about the time we were ready to make our way to the car to head to Costco–we even already had our jackets on and everything, mom started feeling this extreme sharp pain. Now, her pain threshold’s nearly as high as mine, so when it’s bad enough that she can barely move nevermind talk, it’d probably drive most people to either scream or break things. She could barely do either when we started for the car. We very nearly called an ambulance, except we were in Quebec and none of us could speak french overly well. We got her to the emergency room of one of the hospitals in Ottawa. And then the waiting started. And continued. And kept on continuing.

By 8:30, she’d managed only to get as far as urgent care. She’d been triaged, and… that’s about where it stopped. When I finally left at about quarter to 9, she was still sitting there. I headed to Trish’s place to grab a few hours sleep, banking on them not doing much with her overnight. Dad stuck around, banking on not getting much sleep overnight. We were both right.

At 3:00 yesterday morning, they finally got around to admitting her. They were operating on the same suspicion she was–it was a result of some kind of infection, which was producing rather painful levels of swelling. They ran bloodwork, which seemed to confirm it. Then she got to wait some more for them to get around to doing the ultrasound. That happened at about 9 yesterday morning. By then, they’d had her hooked up to an IV for antibiotics and were talking about the likelyhood of a DNC to try and remove any of the remaining swelling or scar tissue that might have been hanging around causing her additional problems. She was pain free, and we suspect infection free, when I dropped in to see her last night on the way here to dog sit and get things ready to mom sit. They hadn’t done the surgery yet, but they still had her on the antibiotics.

I got back here at about midnight, by which time it was pretty much decided she’d be going into surgery at some point today. I, along with pretty much the rest of our family, kept close to the phone for any kind of semi-significant change to the current situation.

At roughly 7:00 or so tonight, that change happened. I got the call first from my grandmother, and then from my dad, letting me know they were taking her into surgery. Apparently, the operation itself takes less time than the prep and recovery do, so we figure they’ll be able to release her before midnight tonight. Whether or not they will is another story entirely, but they’ll be able to. At the absolute latest, barring any random and unforeseen complications, she’ll be home tomorrow. As of right now, though, I have a fairly huge house and two overly affectionate dogs to myself. Anyone want an overly affectionate dog?

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

someone please tell me what happened? We had an awesome game going into the third. Absolutely awesome. Down 1 0 in the first, we came back to knot it up before the end of the period. We jumped ahead in the second, although that didn’t last all too long before Carolina tied it up again. Then the final 20 minutes showed up, and… I don’t think we did. We seemed like we were getting outplayed. And in the last 5 minutes of the game, they managed to get ahead of us. An empty-netter cieled it, not that it was needed. Damn shame, too–I do believe we managed nearly 50 shots on goal this time around, for what little good that did us. Happy 4-game losing streak, Leafs Nation!

Last time

We faired a little better in our last game againnt Carolina, losing 6 4. That was a hell of a game to be watching, for sure. I mean, this one was good except for the third, but that seemed to have more of the team I thought I’d see all year. Wonder what happened to them. Has anyone found them yet? Brian Burke would like to know.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Not that it should really be a surprise to anyone, but apparently it is. Facebook made some pretty significant-sounding changes to their privacy settings about a month ago, further highlighting why it is I go through phases of avoiding the site. Michael Arrington, over at Tech Crunch, puts it pretty much in perspective. His message, more or less: chill out already. And, quite simply, it’s a message I happen to agree with, for reasons not too dissimilar from those mentioned in the post. The most obvious of those reasons though hasn’t been quite blatantly enough stated yet, so I’ll just go right ahead and do that.

Privacy, especially on the internet, is pretty much a myth. That goes for blogging sites, social networking sites, emails, you name it. If it’s been sent to the internet, by you or by someone else, you might as well consider it no longer private. And the same holds true for Facebook, even before it made those changes to privacy settings that resulted in things being slightly more public than before. So this concept of there having been any real means of security online is a little misguided. A non-Facebook example, but an example that could just as easily have applied to Facebook, will help the explanation.

LiveJournal has an option to restrict the contents of your hosted blog to only select people, authorized by you, to read. Now, ignoring whether or not I agree with their method for determining exactly how folks are authorized to read your content, this was their version of semi-privacy–it’s not immediately search engine accessible, but people you know or want to get to know still have access to read, comment, and otherwise do what they will with your restricted content. Including pass it off to someone who didn’t originally have access to the said restricted content. Or copy it from your own, restricted blog, and post it elsewhere–likely where a search engine or other curious individuals can easily get their hands on it. There just went that sense of privacy. It’s the same way with email. You may be sending an email back and forth to one person, expecting them to keep it between the two of you. But who’s to say they’re not adding an address to the BCC field? Or forwarding the email to someone else? And if the conversation happens to be taking place on a mailing list, pretty good chance it’s being archived–which probably means it’s now searchable by non-members.

Back to Facebook for a slightly more relevant example. You’re at a party, and a less than flattering picture of you is taken. Not something you’d post to Facebook, but something that you’d probably laugh about with a few of the people who were at that party. The person who snapped the picture, though? He has no problem posting it to Facebook. And the next morning, he does just that. Now, you and those select few people who might have been at the party can still laugh at the picture. But so can everyone who happens to be “friends” with the person who posted the picture. Not all of which you may actually know–or, for that matter, want to be able to see the picture. Again, there just went that sense of privacy.

In that respect, and keeping that in mind, Facebook’s privacy changes don’t really amount to a whole hell of a lot of actual news. The rules of the game don’t change–just the default settings. You still really have no more or less security now than you did a month ago. And the same old advice applies just as much now as it did 6 months ago. If you don’t want it to go public, don’t give it to the internet. That includes Facebook. Don’t decide to just throw it up there and then whine when someone you wanted to keep it away from just so happens to see it. If you didn’t want it seen by an undetermined amount of people, you wouldn’t have posted it to a place where it could be seen by an undetermined amount of people. And if you did so in spite of you’re not wanting to, then I dare say it’s your own fault, and hardly the fault of whatever system or service you happened to be using at the time. The internet is by no means a private place, whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, whichever. Get used to it.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

And, because you can probably figure out why on your own without elabouration, list format. Because it’s good.

• Sarah Palin joins up with Fox News? Who didn’t see that one coming from a mile away? Really.
• Simon Cowell to say goodbye after this season of Idol? I’m surprised he lasted this long. And considering there’s already tension between him and Paula’s new, non-musically inclined replacement, come on. You didn’t miss this did you?
• One child per family is going to end up being bad news for China, but who didn’t figure on that. By 2020, they’re projecting 24000000 single men. I wonder if Canada and the US would consider a woman shortage criteria for refugee status.
• And, the well duh award of 2010 goes to? Mark McGwire bulked up with the help of steroids during his record breaking year. And finally admits it. Not that the admission was required–he hasn’t come close to being that good since, and if he was naturally that good he’d of managed to pull it off. Nope, no surprises here.

If stuff gets any more obvious it’s probably going to put news reporters out of business. Which some would argue might not be a bad thing. Oh well, at least we’re not hearing about Stephen Harper and the non-parliament again. I’ll take it.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Before Google, we had Yahoo. And back then, Yahoo was pretty much just search. They came up with the idea for hosting email as well in the mid to late 90’s–around the same time as Hotmail was born. By then, Google was still just search. Flash forward 11 years or so, and they’re everywhere. I mean, granted Yahoo is trying to catch up, and after Microsoft’s purchase of Hotmail and the advent of its own MSN/Windows Live/Bing search engine, it’s trying to play catch-up too, but Google’s still got a hell of a head start.

Now, Google runs its usual search engine. It also probably hosts your email. It hosts at least part, if not all, of your IM conversation. And, with the advent of Google Voice for those lucky enough to be able to use it, it’s become your VoIP provider. They’ve even developed their own web browser, and two operating systems–one for computers, and one for cell phones. I’ve even heard rumours they may or may not be looking into selling electricity. And now, on top of that, they’ve gone and done something only Apple’s done to this point–come out with their own phone, running their own OS. Looking at the articles–and there are several–that pretty much trumpet the launch of what they’re calling the gPhone, also known as the Nexus 1, it just randomly occured to me. Sweet Jesus, Google’s bloody everywhere. And I wouldn’t trade that. After all, my monthly popular posts post is brought to you by Google Analytics. I’m of course still running a couple others, but, as always, that one’s pulling ahead. And why not? It’s got Google all over it. Just one more thing they weren’t doing 11 years ago.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I know, my birthday’s not until June, but if someone’s looking for things to buy, either of these would be absolutely awesome. Granted, this machine’s still going strong–and it’s running a dual core processor, but… still. At least 8 GB of memory. Seriously? For a budget computer? I mean, sure it comes with Windows 7 64-bit, but it’d take me all of a couple hours to whipe that off if I decide to and throw Linux on there instead. And with specs like that, without any sort of customization on my part? Sweet jesus that thing’d run like a dream. Okay, must stop looking. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

In 2008, the Dell office in Ottawa I was working at shut down, giving its employees a bit over a month’s notice. In early to mid 2009, my father’s job with a transport company went from under him as the company itself ended up being bought up. On Friday, my mother was informed as of the moment she was told, she no longer had a job at the local hardware store. And today, I got to learn my uncle, who’d been working at a local vehicle repair shop for at least the last year or two, also no longer has a job. All of these signs the recovery we’re being told is heading our way isn’t actually here yet. fortunately, there’ll always be a demand for mechanics, for technicians of a computer and otherwise variety, for truck drivers–my father’s already found himself a better job than he had. But when of all places, losses start to hit a small-ish city like Pembroke, you know there’s problems. And at times like this, I’m reminded of something I’ve said more than a few times, even before the recession. Economics suck. Plain and simple. And sometimes, they like to remind you they do.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

You just knew it was going to be a very bad night after the game should have been 2 1 Leafs. A shot went off the toronto goal post, and less than 15 seconds later, we drew a penalty shot. Or did we? Nope, say the on-ice officials. They say the post shot went in instead. And, due to some obscure rule about there not being allowed to be 2 goals on one stoppage of play, the penalty shot was pretty well kissed goodbye. We never saw a chance to equalize since. And we were even sort of actually trying this time. Not cool would be putting it rather… well, nicely.

Last time

we had better luck last time, coming out on top 4 3 and at least pretending like we could put together a winning routine. Of course, we couldn’t, but we tried to make it look like it anyway. Now, here’s hoping we can at least pretend to pull it together for Tuesday. We play the Hurricanes again, and so far… well, we’re not impressive against them, either. And yeah, as Mike already suggested, let’s just altogether stop playing Buffalo. That might help too.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Until about 2 minutes ago, I had no clue who Zach Jackson was, in spite of the fact the Jays apparently drafted him in the supplemental round in 2004. Woopsies. Apparently Cleveland’s decided to send him back. Not saying he’ll be our new Halladay, but hey, one more top round arm can’t hurt. I’m just sayin’. Now if we could just find some more offense.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Sometimes, my mother and I have the strangest and most irritating conversations known to man. We had one such conversation that left me very much scratching my head in all sorts of confusion during a coffee run that got cut short yesterday morning. Within walking distance of my apartment, there’s a Tim Hortons location. I haven’t been here and organized enough yet to actually figure out how to get there from here without getting myself killed. But, it’s still been on my plans to do so. I brought that up with the mother over coffee at the said Tim Hortons location, initially on our way to maybe accomplish other tasks–although at the moment, it escapes me just what those other tasks might have been.

The thing to remember about my mother, and sometimes even I forget this, is she’s overly paranoid. She’s not quite at the level where she’ll wrap her house in something with some degree of protective coating or something at the slightest hint of a viral outbreak in town, but she’s reached the level where she gets a little jittery when I contemplate doing something as adventurous as taking the city bus in Ottawa. She gets a little anxious when I consider taking one of my cross-border trips–although she’d never admit it without some arm twisting.

So, when I mentioned in passing maybe getting around to actually figuring out how to get from A to B, I could tell right off it was defensive mom to the rescue. I thought she’d want to do her usual playing 20 questions about how I planned to do that, who I’d call, and would I be reachable in the process–she’s big on insisting I be available, even when it’s rather inconvenient for me to do so. Instead, and without blinking, she very calmly, and very casually suggested I should first investigate getting a guide dog before doing so. When I asked why she thought so, her answer just about floored me. Apparently, the dog will know if a car’s trying to cross in front of me, or is stopped in my way, and physically prevent me from crossing in that particular area. Because, you know, I wouldn’t be able to tell judging by the sound of the extremely not quiet engine that there was a quickly moving object about to take my face off were I to step into the street right about now.

Now, I have nothing against people who currently have, or have had, guide dogs. Clearly, it works for you. Or at least, at one time it did. It doesn’t for me. My reasoning is actually quite detailed, and will probably get an entry of its own up here at some point, but suffice it to say I get along far better by way of the cane than I would by way of the guide dog. And, in fact, am probably more likely to actually pay attention to things, simply because I won’t have much of a choice. Really though, I prefer that method of travel and am used to it, it hasn’t broken on me yet, so I don’t particularly feel the need to go messing with it. It’s not like one of my computers, or other pieces of recently tinkered with technology–I don’t particularly favour playing around with it until something goes sideways.

My mother knows this, and yet still she decided I needed a guide dog before learning a route to a coffee shop in a relatively small town. Ignoring the fact I’ve navigated Canada’s capital by way of the cane for a year and a half and nothing on my person shattered or otherwise stopped functioning. I think I can manage to maneuver my way a block and a half or whatever it is to fill my coffee needs without killing myself.

Needless to say, she was reminded of why I haven’t bothered and don’t plan to bother with getting a guide dog. And, as conversations like that often do, it kind of ended at about that point. I still don’t think she quite gets it, and she probably won’t. But I don’t generally like to overcomplicate things, really. For the kind of thing I was talking about, just in passing initially, a guide dog would definitely be overcomplicating things. I’ll probably go ahead and arange to figure out where I’m going and how to get where I need to be. She’ll probably have her miniature freakout session. Things will be just as they’ve always been. And I’ll hope to God we don’t have that particular conversation for a while. Once would be enough for me, thanks.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

We’ve managed to put together a nice little losing streak. One we’re working our way through the first period of tonight’s game to try and extend. On the buffalo side of the rink it was ice, but I think on the Toronto side it mysteriously became quicksand. By the time I got bored and fell asleep, it was 2 0 halfway through the second period. It didn’t get a whole lot better–3 0 by end of period. We of course made it interesting in the third, but by then it was pretty well all over but the cheering. Guys, the game started at 7:30, not 9. Try and remember that for next time. Oh, and by the way, tonight’s game started at 7. Please show up to the rink now.

Last time

They beat us back in December by the same score. We played just about as well back there, too. Maybe slightly better, but not by much. I’m scratching my head trying to find a game we’ve actually won against them this year. If we have, and I doubt it, it was before the blog existed in its current form. We really should investigate fixing that at some point. Really.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve run out of things to say about our losses. We sucked. We weren’t shut out, but we still sucked. Philadelphia was all over us like nobody’s business. Some of those goals I don’t think we even tried to get in the way of. I never thought I’d say it, but I kind of miss the days of eddy. The good eddy, not the one we got stuck with the last year of his contract. Guys, I know I said we were used to losing. But I also said we’d like to win a few of these. Let’s try that, why don’t we.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

For the longest time while I was in school, highschool primarily, I’d always try to find something resembling an excuse to put off, avoid doing, or just plain forget about ever doing anything that vaguely resembled homework. Sure, eventually, most of it would get done anyway–not without the insistance of my parents, of course. But on a personal standpoint, I didn’t see a whole lot of point to it. You spend an hour or so in class beating a topic to death, and just when you think it can’t get any more beaten to death, the teacher throws an asignment at you that takes you an additional couple hours when you get home. And you usually don’t end up learning a whole lot more from the extra work than you did in class–or, at least, I didn’t. Now, rince and repeat the same procedure for every class you have the privelege of attending over the course of a semester. Head, meet pressure cooker. No wonder we threw small parties at the end of June.

Flash forward to my post-highschool life, and people are starting to clue into that fact. Particularly, the people running Prince of Wales Public School in Barrie Ontario, which conveniently enough is about half an hour from where I was living when I did the highschool thing. Last year, after some arm twisting, they managed to ban the asigning of homework. And, surprise of surprises, they’re noticing grades are actually going up.

“As a whole we found marks have started to go up, our Education Quality and Accountability Office data has improved since we started,” Jan Olson, the school’s principal said in an interview with CTV’s Canada AM.

He says there are also fewer behavioural issues as a result of the ban, and academic improvement was observed across the entire spectrum of students: wealthy and poor, special needs and gifted.

See, mom? I told you homework was bad for me.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Today turned out to be emergency “pick up crap I forgot I didn’t have” day. Convenient enough, seeing as it picked today to be several varieties of cold. Still, the trip wasn’t a total loss. I did manage to survive the insane crowds that apparently decided today was also the day to be crammed into every store from wall Mart to Food Basics, and everywhere in between. Standing in one of those stores–I think it might have been Wall Mart, I accidentally ran across a nifty song by a singer I hadn’t heard about until today. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it before, though. The song’s by Chris Daughtry, and is apparently a little over 3 years old. I’ve had the song in my head since I came home, so on random impulse, I yanked the album. If anyone wants it, fire a comment at me–it’s free, or as free as one can get it.

The song, called “Over You”, is also up on Youtube–although they were nice enough to turn off the embedding options, so you get a clicky clicky instead. Now, I just have two questions, one of which I’ll search out eventually. Which movie’s sound track does this song belong to? And, why did no one inform me of this? I feel cheated now.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

There’s a report out now that’s saying the rate of failure in netbooks within the first year is significantly higher than that of laptops and desktops. Now, not having actually owned a netbook I couldn’t even start to tell you if it’s accurate or not, but having owned 2 laptops and countless desktops, I can say my personal experiences with those are surprisingly positive. They all lasted past their first year, and I only had to replace my first laptop at the 4-year mark, or thereabouts, when it quite literally began to fall apart–it was a Toshiba, what do you expect? Other than that, though, I’ve had none of my machines to this point fail on me. Would that remain the same were I to buy a netbook? I haven’t a clue. But this isn’t exactly prompting me to go and find out.

SquareTrade, an independent US warranty provider, analyzed the failure rates of more than 30,000 laptops covered by its own warranties. It found that 5.8% of netbooks malfunctioned within the first year, compared to 4.7% for regular laptops and 4.2% for premium laptops costing more than $1,000.

Sounds like my best bet would just be to buy another laptop. So who wants to go shopping with me?

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.

Can we just duplicate this game and play that for the rest of the season? Seriously. Where was this team on Sunday? And the goals came from folks you wouldn’t expect them to come from this year on top of that. They play the Flyers tonight… oh, dear god I hope they show up. Been a while since we had a thing that called itself a winning streak.

Last time

We pulled this off before, at the end of November. And, I do believe, we were involved in something that called itself a winning streak then. At least, I’ll say we were. We still won’t make the top 10 when everything shuts down for the season, but hey, if last night means the start of something good, it might make things a little more interesting. Like I’d complain about interesting.

Originally published at Welcome to Nowhere. Please leave any comments there.