December 2004

Inspired by this post, I present to you the alphabetical list of sites on my machine here at work:

• a – Amazon.com (I often look up books)


• b – Bloglines.com (I spend a lot of time on this site)


• c – CBC News (Canadian content)


• d – Voxeo Documentation (a work project)


• e – ESPN (sports fix)


• f – Gallery 2 Nightly Builds (I update daily)


• g – GMail (my primary Webmail)


• h – Hotmail (I still check this)


• i – InStyle (don’t ask)


• j – Jakarta Project (we use Java at work)


• k – kottke.org (I like Jason’s posts)


• l – Livejournal (My other blog)


• m – Mozilla.org (home of my favourite browser)


• n – Google News (my browser’s start page)


• o – Oseao (Home of a radio show)


• p – PlaNIT (Andrew’s company’s blog portal)


• q – Quad City Times (I guess I read a recent story here)


• r – My sweet exile ((r)amanda’s fabulous story depot)


• s – Salon (a favourite site)


• t – Everything Is In/Flux (my site of course!)


• u – United House Front (a cool DJ collective)


• v – Vanity Fair (again, don’t ask)


• w – Environment Canada’s weather page (need my weather!)


• x – nothing!


• y – Yahoo! (for occasional searches)


• z – Zip.ca (the Canadian NetFlix equivalent)

So there we go. I would imagine that the list of sites at home is similar but not entirely the same. Perhaps I will repeat this post with the changes.

So it seems that the next Harry Potter book will be released July 16th. You can already pre-order it on Amazon (currently sitting at #51) for $19.99. The title? Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’m sure it’ll be the highest-selling one yet. I’ve heard that booksellers bemoaned the fact that there wasn’t a Harry Potter release this year. It’s interesting that they’ve become so dependent on the high-selling books. It’s also sad that the industry is so blockbuster-driven. Dan Brown has a new book out early next year and I’m sure the publishers are licking their lips in anticipation.

That said, I’m sure that I’ll be one of the first to buy the new book come July.

Some things have surprised me about our new apartment building. Other things have disappointed me.

One of the things that surprised me is the parking lot ramp. We have underground parking and there’s a very steep ramp down into it. When we first saw the building I was worried what that ramp would be like in the winter time. This couldn’t be tested until we first had snow. The day I stayed home a couple of weeks ago I discovered that the ramps were heated and therefore didn’t accumulate any snow or ice. This is a very good thing. Really, it makes sense that it’s designed this way because I can’t imagine how much of a pain it would be to try and go up and down an icy ramp.

The laundry facilities in this building are far better than the old building. They have a lot of washing machines and even more dryers (the other building had 8 of each). One key difference is that the dryers actually dry our clothes (what a concept!). Plus you can add 10 minutes of drying time at a time which is good when your towels are still a little damp but you don’t want to have a whole other hour of dryer time.

It’s not all milk and honey around the building though. There’s the security problem I mentioned on Friday. There isn’t much visitor parking out front. The stairwways are a little creepy.

Now we have to worry if our heat in the apartment will work or not. Yesterday morning the power to the whole building went out which on a day when you have -35C windchill is not a positive development. Marcy called Toronto Hydro and they didn’t even know about the problem. They fixed the problem but the apartment was still very cold. Fortunately during my last school term I had purchased a space heater. It wasn’t of much use to us then because the wiring in our house was so poor that we couldn’t have the heater running without blowing the breakers in the entire house. The heater was quite useful yesterday and last night though. It seems that the radiators in the apartment are on low or not on at all because I couldn’t feel much heat coming from them. The space heater is useful but only in one place at a time – it’s not like that one heater can heat our big apartment. We moved it into the bedroom last night and kept the door closed to trap the heat. It worked quite well but the rest of the apartment was pretty cold this morning. If the heat doesn’t come back on we’re going to have to press our superintendent and/or building manager to act quickly. I’m sure there are other people in the building with the same problem; I know that a family on our floor had to have their heaters repaired yesterday (they have horrendous luck with their apartment) and they can’t be the only ones. Having no heat in the winter time is a scary proposition.

• Safe & Secure: Beware of Airbag Thefts


• Smart Motorist – Auto Theft – How To Reduce Your Risk


• LockItt (unlikely to be of any use)


• Auto Theft Journal Volume 10


• Police: Insurance fraud is behind airbag thefts


• Salvaged and stolen airbags


• Airbags hot item among U.S. car thieves


• What You Need to Know About Car Theft Today & How to Protect Your Vehicle

I’m quite angry this morning. Why? Some idiot broke into our new car and ripped out the air bags. Nothing else was taken (that we could tell). Fortunately they didn’t damage the door but they ripped open the steering wheel and the glove compartment to get at the two airbags. Grr. Marcy took my car to work this morning while I called the police to file a report. They said there’s not much that they can do but at least we have it on record and we can contact our insurance company to get it repaired. I just hope this doesn’t affect our rates too much. It’s so hard to deal with someone who has shown such disregard for your personal space. They tore apart plastic, threw it in the backseat and tore out their gold – the airbags. Driving to work this morning in the Accord, I noticed how much I miss the horn. Since the horn is on top of the driver’s-side airbag it’s now missing so when I press down where the horn should be I end up touching wires and metal. Fun times when you have an idiot cut you off on the DVP. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to get the car repaired before the end of the year but it might have to wait until January for the insurance to kick in. That’s something we’ll have to look into. Certainly not a great start to the weekend.

I can sympathize with this post (or more accurately the author of said post). I’ve discovered that I have been suffering the Digital Photo Effect with my music for well over a year now. I have not added (or deleted for that matter) any MP3s from my music collection since last June. I’m fairly certain that there are albums and whole artists in my collection (it’s pretty big) that I have never listened to. I never put it as such but the ramifications are definitely valid (photo-specific references replaced with music-specific ones):

1. I feel behind all the time.


2. Because there is so much to consume, I don’t enjoy each individual photo as much as I did when they were physical prints. I click through fast.


3. Because of 1 and 2, sometimes I don’t even bother.

I’m sure there’s a lot of good (even great) music that I’ve missed out on over the last year and a half but I honestly can’t find the energy to go and obtain it. I often go back to either listening to radio shows (Gilles Peterson Worldwide, Off The Deep End or The Higher Ground) or old favourite albums. I’m listening to Akufen in honour of the linked post right now.

I suppose the Digital Photo Effect has also taken hold with my photos as well. Since we’ve moved I haven’t had much time for photography. Most of that is probably due to being busy but maybe a part of it is that I don’t have as much interest in taking pictures right now. Perhaps that will change once the holiday vacation starts next week. I’ll have to revisit this topic.

On Monday night I had a mini-migraine. It was pretty bad. I don’t know if you’ve seen that Advil Liquigel Migraine medicine commercial where the lady tries to turn off all lights and sounds in her environment but that was kind of like what I wanted to do. Unfortunately though the migraine started ramping up while I was still at work so I had a 30+ minute drive to deal with before I could lay down in the dark. Luckily for me the drive wasn’t too bad; I flipped the mirror into night mode and tried not to stare into any headlights. I was home within 30 minutes. I laid down for about 30-40 minutes before dinner and then I took it easy for the rest of the night. The migraine was better but was still lurking around the corners of my brain.

This wasn’t a full-blown migraine. I’ve had only 2 of those in my life. I was nauseous and completely immobilised for several hours because of them. At least I could still eat and move around with this mini-migraine on Monday night. I’m not sure what caused this one but if I had to guess I’d say it was the weather change between Monday and Tuesday – warmish to quite cold. That kind of pressure differential can play a big part on my brain.

I think that I should buy some migraine-specific headache medicine though just in case another one of these episodes were to occur (and they probably will). Just so that I can keep functioning through the day I think it would be worth the price.

An interesting article by Joel. Pricing things, particularly software, is an extremely inexact artform. If it were formulaic then there would be such thing as bad sales.

My car seems to be running smooth as silk after yesterday’s repairs. The engine temperature stayed at a comfortable level all through the drive home and back to work this morning. Everything seems to be good in the world of my car.

Well I took my car in this morning and 2+ hours later I had it back again. I had the radiator flushed and filled and the oil changed. They tell me that the radiator fins are a little green and bent in some places but that it should last me at least another year. I’ll likely get it changed before the summer heat hits. When I drove back to work it seemed to be driving at a much more stable temperature. The real test will be tonight when I drive home.

The secret codes of drugstores [via].

I think this nicely summarizes my feelings these days:

A slippery slope that isn’t

If we were to pass a law stating that anyone with blue eyes is forbidden to marry his or her sibling, but everyone else can, we’d have a minority rights issue on our hands. We’d be discriminating against a particular group based on a physical characteristic. But if we pass a law stating that no one can marry his or her sibling, whatever else it might be it’s not discrimination because the law applies equally to everyone. Preventing gays from marrying discriminates against a group because of sexual orientation. It’s a minority rights issue. But the argument that allowing gays to marry is some kind of slippery slope that leads to polygamous marriages, incestuous marriages and the possibility that the weird guy on the next block will claim the right to marry his pet parrot Polly is bogus. It’s not the same thing. So just cut it out.

And from one of the comments:

I think the point that’s evading everyone is this:

Marriage is not rooted in any one religious set of beliefs. As soon as it was opened up for heathens like myself to get married (not belonging, not wanting to belong to, any organized religion), THAT was the only this ’slippery slope’ argument would be even considered valid. The fact that straight people outside of (because it’s obvious, and easy) the Christian religion can get legally married without protest from the Pope (or anyone else, really), means that the Christian faith has given up all rights to the concept of marriage (at least in Canada). So we’ve been on this ’slippery slope’ for GENERATIONS now, and we’re not all evil yet.

The commenter makes a good point – you can’t claim something as religiously sacrosanct when you allow people who have no religious persuasion to engage in this practice. The Slippery Slope is not only an argument technique, it’s also a fallacy.

It’s not fun being afraid to drive your car. Since it started getting cold I’ve been having some temperature problems with my car. Last night was kind of scary because the temperature went way beyond what it’s normally at but at the same time it was nowhere close to being in a dangerous situation. Also the car was shuddering a couple of times yesterday. I’m taking it into a garage this morning so hopefully these problems can be resolved.

It’s funny because with traffic for example you want things to change, hopefully for the better. You’re stuck in traffic everyday and the one day when everything is clear you quietly rejoice. The same isn’t true with cars. You want everything to keep working exactly as it has been for the past X days. You don’t want change because change usually means for the worse particularly when you have an older car. Too often we don’t pay enough attention to our cars and when they inevitably fail you then realize how important it is to look after these pieces of machinery.

I know I’ve been lax about keeping my car in tip top running order. I’ve put almost 100,000 km on it since February 2003, a good chunk of which was this year leading up to the wedding. If I want to have this car last as long as possible I need to start taking better care of it.

I haven’t had much comment spam recently mainly due to the robust safeguards I’ve installed on this server. This morning though there were a few and they were interesting in their content. All linked to gambling sites but to try and get through the filters they use choice language. Here are some of the award winners:

• He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.


• Modern science disclaims any intention of understanding the hidden nature of things; its philosophy condemns any such endeavour as vague, misleading and altogether unscientific….But I refuse to heed this warning. I agree that the process of understanding leads beyond – indeed far beyond – what a strict empiricism regards as the domain of legitimate knowledge; but I reject such an empiricism. If consistently applied, it would discredit any knowledge whatever and it can be upheld only by allowing it to remain inconsistent. It is permitted this inconsistency because its ruthless mutilation of human experience lends it such a high reputation for scientific severity, that its prestige overrides the defensiveness of its own foundations. Our acknowledgement of understanding as a valid form of knowing will go a long way towards liberating our minds from this violent and inefficient despotism.


• One of the most constant characteristics of beliefs is their intolerance. The stronger the belief, the greater its intolerance. Men dominated by a certitude cannot tolerate those who do not accept it.


• False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.


• From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed towards that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that.

I guess that the comment spam scripts have access to Bartlett’s Famous Quotations.

Now that I don’t walk to work I have to be doubly (even triply) sure that I have remembered to complete all tasks before leaving for work in the morning. Backtracking and completing these tasks (e.g. putting tonight’s dinner meat back in the fridge) is not so easy once you’re already on the road. It took me an extra 25 minutes this morning. I’m going to endeavour to try to attempt to not forget future tasks before leaving in the morning.

It really is getting close to winter – it’s as dark as night almost outside and it’s just past 4:30. It’s depressing. The alarm goes off in the morning when it’s still dark and I get home after it gets dark (if it even gets light during the day). I saw some full-spectrum lightbulbs at Rona yesterday. I’m thinking of getting some for the apartment. I need some sunshine and I don’t think I’ll be able to work remotely from Aruba anytime soon.

Today started off pretty great but I’ve progressively felt worse as the day has worn on.

I had the greatest sleep in a long time last night. Maybe it’s because we changed the sheets (the others were new and we haven’t washed them yet) or maybe it’s the new duvet cover we bought on Friday or maybe it’s the fact I didn’t have any cats sleeping on my legs but I slept right through until the alarm rang this morning. It was glorious.

I’m not sure if it’s the impending weather change (very cold forecast for tomorrow) or what but I have a very bad headache right now. I’m finding it difficult to concentrate. Perhaps a walk is in order.

The next couple of weeks (until I take my Christmas-related break on the 23rd) will be very busy here. We’re trying to wrap up projects before the end of the year so that we can start new things in January. I have an important project to finish. Fortunately all signs are pointing to it being rather straightforward. It’s been two months here and I’m still loving it.

The CBC now has RSS feeds! Though not full-content feeds it’s still better than nothing. I’ve subscribed to a bunch of them though I’ll still visit the site regularly. The End-User License Agreement has some interesting clauses. If I don’t click through does that still mean that I agree to the agreement? That’s a murky area. All aboard the RSS bandwagon!

Google Suggest beta suggests search terms as you type [via]. This is pretty neat.

It’s Friday and I’m exhausted. I’ve only been at work for 3 of the days this week but it’s felt like I haven’t had any chance to catch my breath. Last night I woke up at 3 and spent almost an hour thinking about this problem vexing us at work. I think I may have solved it but that’s an hour’s sleep that I didn’t get last night. This weekend is going to be very busy – we have a lot of housework to do as well as a bunch of apartment-related and Christmas-related tasks to complete. Two more weeks and I get some time off. That’ll be nice.

Phil forwarded the Haiku Game that we played during my first day at Booksoft back in June, 2003. In the interest of archiving, I’ll present the output of our creative minds here. Any copyright complaints can be addressed to my lawyers. You can expect to find the usual guy-crassness below as well as a fine example of a wasted afternoon work-wise. It was fun while it lasted though. Read the rest of this entry »

Well I’m back at work for the first time this week. I have to catch up on the two days that I missed. I have a project to finish before the end of the quarter on top of all of the regular bugs to fix each week. Fun times at Don Mills High. Well at least I only have 3 days this week to work until it’s the weekend again. That’s a definite plus.

Looking at the DVP this morning from my chair here I notice that there’s an accident right outside the window. A car was trying to merge into the right-hand lane only there wasn’t enough room for him and the dump truck occupying the same space. A collision occurred, traffic is snarled and frustration abounds on the highway of love.

Today is a national day of remembrance (official page) for this event 15 years ago. It’s scary to think that men can feel so threatened by women (”feminists” in particular) that they go out and bring a gun to an institution of higher learning in the hopes that it will somehow improve their lives.

Today I’m working from home. A snowstorm blew through here around 8 AM this morning and caused a major headache for driving. I’m looking at the traffic cameras and it’s not pretty. Marcy’s also feeling pretty sick with a cold/ear infection so I want to be around to keep an eye on her. Fortunately I can work from home to a certain extent.

I’ve had a lot of wrong numbers since getting my new phone. Most of the calls are over as soon as I say “hello”. More than a few calls however seem to be from the same number. This morning I spoke with a guy who was looking for someone else and then he asked me if I owned a White Escalade. I said no and asked why? He said that he rents out White Escalades for movie shoots and the guy who he was trying to reach is listed as owning a White Escalade. I should have pretended that I had this nice, tricked-out Escalade with 24 speakers and the whirly rims ready to go. $2000 per day (I have no idea if that’s a good rate).

So the site has been unavailable to the outside world for the past couple of days, unless you knew my new IP address. I didn’t even know it yesterday since it changed while I was sleeping and I didn’t bother to confirm that it was still the same before I left for work. It isn’t like the old days when I can go home at lunch (walking the way there) and configure things at home and then make it back to work in a reasonable amount of time. Those days are long gone. I do have in mind a plan to avoid future DNS hiccups like this though or rather to make the outages shorter.

Thank goodness it’s Friday.

It seems that the IP address used by my home connection changed in the middle of the afternoon today. As a result, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to read this until the new DNS information has propagated around the Internet. It’s unfortunate when this happens but seeing as I’m hosting everything myself there’s little that I can do to avoid this kind of thing. When the router tries to renew, it’s out of its control what comes back. Being in Toronto where there are a higher number of Internet users (due to the increased population compared with Kitchener), it’s inevitable that someone else in the city/region will be trying to request an IP address at the same time.

Time for bed. Another day begins in 7 hours.

The current top headline on CBC News?

Canada urged to sign on to Bush’s crusade

Bush was in Halifax this morning to thank those in Atlantic Canada who helped out on September 11th handling the thousands of airline passengers who were rerouted while airspace in the U.S. was closed. Yes it was more than 3 years ago. But I suppose in an effort to “warm” relations he’s made this goodwill gesture.

He also took the opportunity to quote one of our longest-serving Prime Ministers, William Lyon Mackenzie King (born in Kitchener!).

[Bush] quoted King’s words directly: “We cannot defend our country and save our homes and families by waiting for our enemies to attack us. To remain on the defensive is the surest way to bring the war to Canada.”

The president added: “Mackenzie King was correct then and we must always remember his words today… There is only one way to deal with enemies who plot in secret and set out to murder the innocent and the unsuspecting. We must take the fight to them.”

King may have realized the necessity to go to war but he still didn’t officially declare war on Germany until September 10th, after Britain had already done so. It’s not like King went out and fought the war on his own days, months or years before anyone else. And let’s not forget that the U.S. didn’t officially enter World War II until 1941. The United States wasn’t exactly actively pursuing a campaign to get rid of the Nazis before that point. I have to give credit to Bush’s speechwriters for using King though; shows that they’re able to do a little bit of research.

We might as well criticize the U.N. while we’re at it:

Bush also took the opportunity to deliver a rebuke to the United Nations, and suggest it and other multinational institutions should be reformed.

“The objective of the UN and other institutions must be collective security, not endless debate,” said the American president. “For the sake of peace, when those bodies promise serious consequences, serious consequences must follow.”

Yes, global security is one of the goals of the U.N. charter but there are other goals in there as well like global human progress, human rights observations and having international cooperation for dealing with problems. There’s bound to be a debate on these issues and perhaps at times there is too much discussion but that doesn’t mean that we should abandon the United Nations model altogether. It has proven effective in a number of situations.

Christmas card

You can click the image for a larger version.

As seen as today’s Foxtrot (or en Espanol if you prefer).

Well the Ken Jennings era on Jeopardy! is indeed over. It wasn’t that much of a surprise and even if I didn’t have the heads-up that last night was the last episode, the television stations sure did let the cat out of the bag. CTV had a preview of their nightly news before Jeopardy! came on and they had a small clip of the final Final Jeopardy! results for Ken.

It was interesting watching the show knowing the eventual result. Of course there will be conspiracy theories that Ken wanted to lose but I wouldn’t give that much credence. It was curious that Alex asked Ken if he was going to quit his job as a computer programmer (he says no). I think it’s just coincidental though. I bet that Alex feels like a good friend has left though; him and Ken seemed to get along really well.

I agree with Anil that Sony TV (and their lawyers) was being very shortsighted by asking Jason to take down the audio clips from last night’s episode.

I looked at the Wikipedia article on Ken this morning and it’s very thorough! They list every single game, his total (per day and cumulative) and his opponents. The person who beat Ken, Nancy Zerg, has her own page now too.

From this news article:

Zerg needed an unusual display of Jennings fallibility to stay in the game. He twice answered wrong on Daily Double questions, which give contestants a chance to make a big wager and increase their lead.

Maybe that’s why he paused, ever so slightly, when asked in an interview Tuesday whether he had lost or been beaten. He then graciously gave Zerg credit. “I would have dwelt on it if I missed something that I knew or didn’t phrase it in the form of a question,” said Jennings, a computer software engineer from Salt Lake City. “It was a big relief to me that I lost to someone who played a better game than me.” Zerg, a former actress who lives in Ventura, Calif., psyched herself up before the game by repeating to herself: “Someone’s got to beat him sometime, it might as well be me.” Hanging out backstage with fellow contestants, she saw some Jennings opponents had essentially lost before the game. She heard one person say that it looked like he was playing for second, and another just wishing not to be humiliated. “I heard another one say, `It’s no great sin to lose to Ken Jennings,’ and they went in and lost Ken Jennings,” she said. “I thought, `That’s no way to play the game.”‘ … Jennings said he’d been thinking about walking away after some future milestone — 100 wins, perhaps, or $3 million or $4 million in winnings. He said there were about a dozen games where one reply made the difference between winning and losing. “The fact that they had all fallen my way was beginning to worry me,” he said, “because at some point the law of averages was going to kick in.” He wasn’t prepared for how much he’d miss the daily competition, though. “It didn’t really hit me that was going to be the hard part,” he said. “I thought the hard part would be the loss.”

I think I might take a break from watching Jeopardy! but we’ll see if that has any hold. Ken is writing a book and he’ll be back for next year’s Tournament of Champions so we’ll meet again then.