Even though we have enough for half a scale, I’m not sure this is a good use of our cats [via]. It seems rather cruel.
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2006.
Tags: Cats, musical-instruments, piano
I’ve vowed never to see another Eddie Griffin movie ever again. It’s not like I’ve seen many of his movies but after seeing this one on Sunday night I think I can safely say that he is dead to me. I’ll defer to Mr. Cranky’s review:
[E]very joke under the sun comes at the audience and almost none of them stick to the wall. All one really needs to do is a microanalysis of Grant’s last name: Funkerdoder. Is it really that much funnier than “Focker”? The answer is no, but it’s precisely the type of joke this movie pummels moviegoers with until they’re beaten into a kind of obliviousness. The jokes aren’t funny. The tone never changes. “Date Movie” is like an air raid siren of bad comedy, a film best described as “deafeningly unfunny.”
There isn’t much more that I can add to that.
Tags: date-movie, eddie-griffin, Movies, mr-cranky, reviews
Part of my new role is setting the expectations for my team over the next 6 months. I did that this morning; this new role is going to require a lot more talking on my part. Everyone seems to be satisfied with their list of expectations over the next few months. I’m instituting a few process changes to make my job and their jobs a little easier and more interesting (hopefully). We’ll see how the next few months pan out.
Tags: expectations, management
Tags: csr, customer-service, human, operator, telephone
This is really a terrible tragedy. It happened not too far from our house on Friday night. I can’t imagine what kind of person would deliberately try and strike a mounted officer.
Tags: brigadier, horses, mounted-officers, Toronto
It’s strange and tragic that the officer who shot Dudley George was killed over the weekend in a car accident in Eastern Ontario. He was scheduled to testity at the inquiry in the next few weeks. Now the family won’t be able to get all of their questions answered.
Tags: dudley-george, inquiry, ipperwash
It’s a good thing we live in the age of information. After last week’s passing of the law banning abortion in South Dakota, a blog posted a manual for the women of South Dakota to do it themselves. It’s not quite the same procedure as described in Vera Drake because techniques and instruments have evolved in 50 years. It’s heartening to read about people having a choice and that just because legislation has been proposed doesn’t mean that they’re out of options. [via]
Tags: abortion, legislation, manual, procedure, south-dakota, vera-drake
Each and every morning when I get up I do a roll call of our cat population in the house. I need to make sure that they’re all accounted for. I do the same thing when I come home from work and I’m the first one in. I’m probably just scared because of prior events.
These are some funny ads from Volkswagen. Deutschland represent!
Tags: advertising, Cars, commercials, deutschland, unpimp-my-ride, volkswagen
A gay cowboy’s top 10 movies of 2005. There are some surprises on there!
Tags: brokeback-mountain, Movies, rent
Malcolm Gladwell now has a blog. Subscribed!
Tags: blogs, malcolm-gladwell
Marcy was talking about how we’re part of the MTV Generation and how the people who grew up just after us are known as the “i” (little I) generation. We’re actually on the cusp of that generation since we were born in 1979. She wanted to be part of that but instead we’re lumped in with MTV. In fact she said that she didn’t even get MTV so we’re on the cusp of that too. We’re a cusp of a cusp.
We’re bicuspid.
Take the TTC subway station names and create anagrams from them. You’ll get something like this [via]. Hopefully this map lasts longer than the London Underground one.
This could be the real start of a new battle on abortion. The traditional exceptions won’t apply either. If passed it’ll be outright illegal unless the woman is in perilous health. [via]
Tags: abortion, Health, roe-v.-wade, south-dakota
How many states allow a resident to marry a cousin? From the answer:
Laws against “kissin’ cousin” marriages stem from fear that the progeny of such unions have a much higher chance of being afflicted with birth defects and/or winding up on the “Jerry Springer Show.”
At least they have a sense of humour when answering these questions.
Tags: cousins, jerry-springer, Marriage
I’ll come right out and say it. Yes I’m disappointed that the men’s hockey team lost yesterday. However I’m more proud about the 4 medals we won yesterday than disappointed about the loss. We have 18 medals! That’s a record for us. All of the news reports seem to be focusing on the loss. It’s true that hockey is our national sport (or rather one of them), it’s not the end of the world that we don’t win a medal. It’s one game and there were only two outcomes. On top of that, past performances could not have dictated the result. I’m not sure why but this whole thing bothers me.
James Koole has a similar tone in his post - “Granted hockey is a big deal, but it’s not the only reason I’m watching, you know. How about showing me some speed skating or skiing live now and then?”
I’ve worked very hard for this:
I am pleased to announce the promotion of Matt Clements to development manager from technical team lead effectively immediately. In his new role, Matt will be responsible for the management of the development team, the planning of application releases as well as ensuring we have in place a solid software development process. Please join me in congratulating Matt and wishing him all the best in his new position.
A year and a half working here and I’m definitely on my way. Things are looking up.
Tags: Career, development-manager, promotion
There’s a grassroots campaign to get Richard Dean Anderson on the Hollywood Walk of Fame [via]. I have to say though that the “official” website linked in the article there really isn’t an official one. There’s a big disclaimer at the bottom of the page saying that no one has authorized the site.
New Orleans newspaper honoured for reporting. They did an astounding job during Katrina. I was refreshing their blog very frequently during those days.
Tags: awards, hurricane-katrina, journalism, katrina, new-orleans, times-picayune
For some reason I always like to bop my head to the Fidelity Investments commercial that’s on television these days. I can’t remember exactly which fund they’re advertising which I guess means that the ad isn’t terribly effective though I will always remember that it’s an ad for Fidelity. It has some really catchy music so I can’t help but groove to it.
Tags: advertising, commercials, dancing, fidelity, Music, Television
I was looking at my Last.fm’s RSS feed and found the description at the top to be rather humourous. You may remember my post on their service last week.
Anyway here’s what they say in the feed:
This is an RSS feed designed to be read by a computer. Which you aren’t.
What’s an RSS Feed?
RSS feeds allow you to soar above fields of data, much in the way a great eagle soars above mountain ranges, except without the endangered species designation…
It’s a nice use of XSLT.
Tags: eagle, endangered-species, last.fm, rss-feed, xslt
The author of one of The Atlantic Monthly’s most popular articles receives a followup interview [via]. Prepare for a united front of introverts.
Tags: interviews, introverts, the-atlantic-monthly
Almost a year ago I posted about the release of a new movie by Richard Linklater. It’s an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel A Scanner Darkly (novel info). Via Kottke’s remainder links I discovered the latest trailer for the film (Quicktime link). The movie comes out July 7th. I really want to see this.
Tags: a-scanner-darkly, quicktime, richard-linklater, trailer
Our newest printer here at the office (some Minolta model) seems to be rather polite and civilized. The paper tray ran out of paper so it’s providing a nice warning about the status and urges someone to “Replenish paper”. That sounds nice.
I admit, I own the winning ticket. You can send my $124.1 million lump sum at any time.
Tags: lottery, Money, powerball, winning-ticket
Eating cinammon buns with cream cheese icing for breakfast makes for a rather messy experience. I certainly can’t continue to do work while I’m eating them because the keyboard/mouse will get iced. So I have to pause my workday in order to give myself enough sustenance to last until lunchtime. Considering the alternatives it’s probably a worthwhile tradeoff.
Tags: breakfast, cinammon-buns, Food, icing, messy
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but almost literally a 2-minute walk away from our house we have this view:
I went walking around with the camera tripod I got from my parents for my birthday. It was pretty cold but I figured that my body could use some acclimation to the elements. All around the Bluffs here (Scarborough Bluffs that is – better link here) there are little parklets that give you a fantastic view of the lake (Lake Ontario that is). Most of the parklets have some rather obvious signs. Also a lot of streets in the area must notify the drivers that there is no access to the Bluffs.
I really like these two shots – one and two. They look better at the larger sizes rather than the thumbnail. I think this little area is going to provide me with some fantastic shots in the summer time. I can’t wait.
You can see the rest of the shots from my photowalk in this Flickr set.
Tags: Cameras, lake-ontario, parklets, photos, scarborough, scarborough-bluffs, Toronto
It’s really interesting (to me at least) that DVDs offer a substantially better picture/sound experience than VHS tapes but yet they’re far less tolerant of errors. When there’s a scratch on a DVD it will seriously compromise the video playback to the point where you could end up with a fragmented, jolting movie that makes it very difficult to follow. Compare this with tapes where if there’s a problem with the tape it could get fuzzy (in which case auto-tracking could kick in) but you could still make out the picture. I realize the underlying technology is completely different and the laser is reading a tremendous amount of information on each spin of the disc but that doesn’t mean it isn’t annoying to watch a scratched DVD.
Tags: dvd, fault-tolerance, scratch, vhs
This man needs some serious help (the text may offend some) [via]
Tags: bizarre, contracts, Marriage, the-smoking-gun
Last night while we were waiting in line one of the other businesses in the plaza had this posted in their window:
Wanted experienced bookepper
waitress, chief/cook. Apply within.
I wonder how many work skills chiefs share with cooks.
Tags: job-openings, Kitchener-Waterloo, stampede-corral, waiting
Please disregard what I said earlier this week about winter not being that bad. After tonight I have a new appreciation (or rather a renewed appreciation) for how cold winter can be. Minus twenty-seven with the windchill can indeed test the limits of the body when it’s not used to those conditions. If it weren’t forthose pesky fire codes it wouldn’t have been that bad because then we could have been inside quicker where it was warm. It was a fun time despite the cold though.
Even pumping gas back here in Toronto was almost more than I could handle cold-wise. I’m getting weather soft.
Tags: amanda, cold, gas, Kitchener-Waterloo, party, stampede-corral, Toronto, winter
My word this is funny. It’s a “Trendspotting” segment on The Daily Show focusing on MySpace and other social networking sites [via].
Update: Here’s another link to the video.
Tags: myspace, the-daily-show, trendspotting
“Presumed consent” organ donation. About a year ago there was a big special on Metro Morning about organ donation in the province and how low our donation rate is and how many people are waiting desperately for organs. It’ll be interesting to see if this private members bill makes its way into legislation.
Tags: CBC, metro-morning, organ-donation
A handy tool [via].
The past 24 hours have been really chaotic weather-wise. Yesterday morning we had snow with a freezing rain mix. Then it warmed slightly during the day turning into rain. When I left work it was back to freezing rain/sleet (very fun to walk in). Late last night we had a thunder and lightning storm and fog. That was pretty strange to see. The lightning looked like it was right outside the window. This morning it was 6 degrees on the plus side. An hour later it was -6 degrees. The wind came in from the north and created a flash freeze situation (always fun for driving into work). The wind almost prevented me from walking up the stairs to our building but fortunately I prevailed. The rest of the day is going to be very cold.
Tags: freezing-rain, lightning, rain, sleet, snow, thunder-storm, Weather, wind, winter
This site had a minor outage this morning. It seems that between 7 and 8 AM the site was completely unavailable. When I brought this site back online I switched to a hosted solution with Dreamhost. It’s laughably inexpensive per month and they provide some great utilities to manage your domain. A lot of popular server software is available as a one-click install.
Anyway this morning I noticed the site was down so I used the panel to ask for support. They were able to verify that the site was down and within 15 minutes it was up again. It’s pretty great service if you ask me (I don’t care if you do or not). This site is hardly critical but it is nice to have it online on a regular basis.
An event transpired this morning that almost never occurs.
There was maybe one time during the 5 years that I was at the University of Waterloo where the university was closed. I was on coop term at the time so I didn’t even get to experience it first-hand.
The University of Waterloo is closed today (Thursday) following the lead of the local public school board, because of bad weather and risky driving. Classes are cancelled, and assignment deadlines postponed for a day. Students should check with their instructors about revised dates for midterm exams. Most staff members have the day off.
We were scheduled to do coop interviews today too but fortunately I was able to caution the guys doing the interviews from leaving; I told them to check with the university first. It’s a good thing I did too because otherwise they would have driven all the way to Waterloo and discovered that the university is closed.
Tags: closed, university-of-waterloo, UW, Weather, winter
No not the Peanuts character (call me Chuck). I’m a big fan of peppermint tea in the afternoons of late. It’s a refreshing taste and it’s very pleasant to drink. Plus it doesn’t contain any caffeine (at least the one I drink here at work doesn’t). I usually alternate between this kind of tea and green tea in the afternoon. It cleanses the palate.
Tags: charlie-brown, green-tea, peanuts, peppermint-patty, peppermint-tea, tea
I read The Daily everyday. It’s Statistics Canada’s daily press release (hence the name) about the new studies coming out of that organization. One of the items that piqued my interest was the study about our trade in beer. Yes they do track these kinds of things.
Canada’s trade surplus in beer with the United States has expanded significantly in recent years as Canadian beer producers have made inroads into the US market, according to a new report.
It’s true; you can find quite a few Canadian beers in the U.S. now. Our surplus is up to $265 million.
Here’s a surprising fact:
Beer is by far the most popular alcoholic beverage among Canadian consumers. However, beer drinkers are increasingly swinging more and more to imported brands to quench their thirst.
Sarcasm intended. We have to watch out for competitors though:
[B]eer from Mexico has been virtually gushing into Canada. In 2000, Mexico replaced the United States as Canada’s leading source of imported beer in terms of value.
You can see the beer gushing at the border. Sometimes you have to wait for quite a while until the row of beer bottles makes it way through customs.
Tags: beer, canada, Economy, mexico, statistics-canada, statscan, surplus, united-states
At last we have the book of Genesis expressed in rap songs [via].
Today is Flag Day here in Canada. Make sure you fly it proudly and high. The Prime Minister is participating in the ceremony today in Ottawa. From the Wikipedia article on our Flag Day:
At the very first Flag Day ceremony in Hull, Quebec, Prime minister Jean Chretien’s speech was drowned out by a group of demonstrators upset by proposed cuts in the unemployment insurance legislation. Mr. Chretien left the stage and while walking through the crowd he encountered Bill Clennett, one of the demonstrators who was shouting, “Chretien, au chômage”. Mr. Chretien grabbed Mr. Clennett by the neck and pushed him aside. Chrétien was criticized for this incident, which came to be dubbed the “Shawinigan Handshake“.
Numerous Canadians feel that National Flag of Canada Day should be declared a national statutory holiday, as there is a long period early in the year (between New Year’s Day and Good Friday) without any holidays.
I’m one of those people who would like a holiday in February. I can do without one of course but it is a long break between New Year’s and Good Friday especially in years like this one where Easter isn’t until April. That’s a long stretch of time.
As for the Shawinigan Handshake incident? That’s just another difference between our leaders and the ones in other countries. Our leader can walk into a crowd and grab a protester by the neck. Other leaders would get someone else to do these types of things.
Tags: canada, easter, flag-day, good-friday, holidays, jean-chretien, new-years-day, shawinigan-handshake
We got our monthly supply of coffee here at work this week. One of the new flavours/roasts is called “Eclipse Blend”. It’s a dark roast which I tend to like though the darker the roast the more bitter the coffee. I figured that it was an appropriate coffee for me to drink; not because I’m a bitter man but for the geeky reason that I use Eclipse at work. What’s a better way to honour this fantastic platform than drinking its namesake coffee? I can’t think of a more suitable tribute.
One of my favourite parts of February and March is the fact that each day the sun rises a little earlier and sets a little later. When I leave the house at 7 now it’s already getting lighter. Today the sun rises at 7:17 and sets at 17:47. That means that both my trips to and from work are still in daylight (nearly). In a few more weeks it’ll be totally in daylight until we move back into daylight savings time. This means only one thing – spring is on its way.
It certainly has been more winter-like over the last few weeks; the warm days of January seem a distant memory but I’m not really complaining about the weather. Since it’s already February and only now is it getting cold it’s not as bad as it could be. November through April coldness is depressing. February through April coldness is not as depressing. Sure it’s still depressing trudging through snow (not that I’ve had to do that yet) and yelling at the wind to stop (I’ve done this) but it could be worse. It’s a “glass half-full” mentality. It works for me.
On Saturday Marcy and I went downtown to meet up with Kristin, Andrew and Lonnie. We had a great (albeit short) time together. We went to Maggie’s Cafe and Catering for a sumptuous brunch. Then we took the streetcar down to the Eaton Centre. It was really nice spending time with them; we haven’t seen Andrew and Kristin since last July on our way out east and we haven’t seen Lonnie since late May of last year I think. It’s been that long. We’re going to have to try and see him more often because living in the same city there’s really no excuse except being busy. We’ll be seeing Andrew and Kristin again this weekend at Amanda’s birthday party. Maybe sometime in March or April we’ll make our way to Montreal again. It’s been too long.
The picture above was taken while we were waiting at Union Station. I took a few more and created a Flickr set.
Tags: amanda, andrew, flickr, friends, kristin, lonnie, maggies-cafe-and-catering, photos, Toronto, union-station
Happy Valentine’s Day to Marcy. My wife. My friend. My love.
Tags: friend, love, valentines-day, wife
I’d been waiting all evening for The Daily Show’s reaction to this story. It was just too easy a target, too ripe a plum, too good a shot to pass up. It was well worth the wait.
Advice for parents: “Don’t let your children go hunting with Dick Cheney. He’ll shoot them in the face.”
A re-enactment of what happened: Duck hunt.
They then had their “Vice Presidential Firearms Mishap Expert” Rob Corddry on talking about how Dick Cheney was reacting to all of this. He stands by his decision.
Then everything went black because The Comedy Network (which airs The Daily Show up here in Canada) decided to go to commercial. I guess they have a skeleton crew on this late and don’t even bother to notice whether or not the show they’re carrying the feed for is still on-air or off. Marvelous work there at The Comedy Network.
Tags: dick-cheney, duck-hunt, harry-whittington, jon-stewart, quails, shot, the-comedy-network, the-daily-show
The past couple of days have displayed a really strange character during my trips around town. It looks like the number seven (7) and it has appeared as the first digit of the gas prices at stations near our house. I can’t think that this is a possible placement of such a digit because gas has to be at least 80 cents per litre right? Someone should contact the authorities and mention that there are gas stations selling gasoline (or petroleum distillate if you like) at rock-bottom prices. What is this world coming to if we’re not getting gouged on gasoline prices?
Tags: gas-stations, gasoline, gouging, prices, Toronto
One of the things that you have to be comfortable with when you take public transit is giving up control over how fast you’ll get to your destination and the route that you take to get there. You’re not driving the bus; you can’t really affect how the driver drives so you just have to sit back and try and relax. This can be challenging sometimes.
Today’s trip home was one of those times. The bus was making fairly good progress I thought (since I didn’t have my phone I couldn’t really check the time). Then we got to Bermondsey. The driver stopped the bus, put on the hazard lights, and went into the gas station to use the restroom. There wasn’t much that we could do except wait. And wait. Finally the driver came back and we were on our way. This particular driver tended to drift within our lane which is ok (though not ideal) when you’re driving a car but when you have a whole bus drifting around it tends to feel like you’re really in for some trouble. Fortunately I’m not on that bus for too long.
And to keep you updated on her, she wasn’t on the bus today. I was a little disappointed actually. I was looking forward to her rants-under-her-breath.
Tags: bus-drivers, Commuting, drifting, It Happened To Me, restroom-breaks, Toronto, ttc
I’ve bookmarked this video on YouTube which discusses the failures of the American education system over the last 30 years. It’s called “Stupid in America” and I’m definitely going to have to watch this sometime soon. I got this link via Darren. I’ve heard some interesting (I use the term loosely) ideas about education recently and it seems like the Canadian education system is about a generation behind the Americans in terms of new ideas so if we were to follow the same course then this could be us in 20 years.
Tags: canada, documentary, education, education-system, united-states, video
About once a month I tend to forget my cellphone at home. I’m not sure why this happens; I take it with me all of the time and it’s a pretty solid part of my routine. I guess it’s when my routine is altered slightly that I forget it. This morning I put my cellphone on the kitchen counter to pick up some change from the bedroom and I forgot it. It’s still there waiting for me and since it wasn’t in its usual place (by the telephone) it was left behind. I hope it wasn’t too lonely today.
Tags: cellphones, forgotten, routines
I think the title of this post should read: Teach a cat any tricks because it’s near-impossible to teach them anything that they don’t feel like doing themselves.
Tags: Cats, handshakes, tricks
I’m eating some of Marcy’s fabulous homemade vegetable soup for lunch today. Let me tell you – the VSI ratio on this soup (that’s vegetables per square inch in case you didn’t know) is extremely high. It would be tough to pack any more in so at least I’ll be assured of having my vegetable servings for today. It’s so plentiful that I doubt that I’ll need to eat much else before I go home for dinner.
Tags: Food, home-cooking, lunch, vegetable-soup
Fourth in the series:
Who draws the water and boils it? Who spoons the leaves from the tin, and places them in the pot? Who lifts the kettle and pours? Who waits? Who fills the cup? Who drinks the tea?
– The Minster of Leaves
That’s definitely one to ponder.
Hmm. A user visiting my site from Gillette’s network space. I wonder which article they were looking at. Perhaps it was this one about the Gillette Fusion. I saw a new ad for this product last night and it’s even more over-the-top than the last one. It talks about combining a revolutionary technical breakthrough with what I remember to be “a great idea” to create this super-razor.
At least they’re offering both the manual and powered versions at the same time with this razor so that we don’t have to go through the “it’s a revolutionary concept in shaving” marketing material in a year or two when really the only change is that they added a small battery.
The hyperbole slays me.
Tags: advertising, fusion, gillette, hyperbole, mach-3
HOWTO fold a fitted sheet [via]. That’s one laundry item that I’m really not very good at folding.
Tags: fitted-sheet, folding, howto, laundry
I had to bring in my own coffee this morning. The coffee maker here at work (the one that no one fills) broke down yesterday and they’re replacing it today so between yesterday at noon and today at whenever there is no coffee available in the office. People either have to bring in their own coffee or purchase one downstairs. “The horrors” I know; I’m thinking the same thing. Hopefully by later today the risks associated with a lack of coffee in an office will have abated.
Anyway so I brought my own coffee today and to make sure that it was ready by the time I had to leave the house I actually prepped it last night before going to bed and then turned it on when I got up. I’m using my new coffee mug that I got from the cats for my birthday. Yes you read that correctly. They also gave me some Cadbury Creme Eggs. I’ll have to eat those up soon and possibly get some for a certain someone that I know also likes these treats.
Update (8:40 AM): It’s too bad that the coffee that I made isn’t very good. I’ll have to look at my formula again.
Tags: cadbury-creme-egg, coffee, coffee-machine
This is a courageous stating of one’s principles. They needed stating over the furor caused by this news event this week. I wonder what the consequences of the meeting with the Prime Minister will be. It’s refreshing to see an MP state his views so plainly for everyone to see and read. That same openness seems to be lacking from my own MP’s online presence.
My only selfish wish is that Garth publishes a full-content feed of his blog.
Tags: canada, david-emerson, garth-turner, Politics, tom-wappel
I’m subscribed to a few of the Google products/services blogs. One of them is the Google Talk one. The newest entry talks about the release of Google’s Desktop Search version 3.0 (causing some privacy concerns).
In any case I usually don’t read who posts the entries on the Google blogs because I didn’t think that I knew anyone who worked there besides Rob. Today though I happened to look and noticed that the name of the poster is John Abd-El-Malek. He was in my class at the University of Waterloo. He’s now a software engineer at Google. Not to be outdone, his brother is pursuing his Ph.D at Carnegie Mellon. And he’s not the only one I know doing their Ph.D. It’s great to see my classmates doing so well. We were a very smart bunch. The reunion in 2008 will be interesting.
Tags: abd-el-malek, alumni, blogs, google, google-desktop-search, google-talk, university-of-waterloo, UW
I know it’s old news but the facts compiled at Chuck Norris Facts are awesome. Ninja awesome. Now you can get any fact put on your own t-shirt.
Chuck Norris can divide by zero.
Tags: chuck-norris, chuck-norris-facts, divide-by-zero, ninja, t-shirt, Television
I disapprove of this use of my charitable dollars. How many people really think that they’re picking up “Canadian Red Cross” health packs when they’re playing a video game? I really don’t understand how this harms their image. Does that symbol ever mean anything but health? Likely not. And yet they feel justified in suing. Litigation certainly does seem to be out of control sometimes.
Tags: canadian-red-cross, health-packs, litigation, video-games
Darren wrote about his Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness yesterday in reference to some of the images being in the IT Crowd show mentioned on Boing Boing among other places (which I must download and watch). I’d been to the Hall before and so I passed the link around at work and someone found this entry entitled “Feline Abuse”. I’m really not sure what they’re advocating in there. One of the frames has the person explicitly stepping on the cat’s tail in order to pour powder on them (hopefully it’s not the same can of poison in the previous frame). Also I don’t think that vacuuming a cat would work. They don’t tend to like the vacuum and holding a cat down is next-to-impossible. I guess if you happen to be able to accomplish this then your cat will be all pretty and sitting nicely at the end. That sounds pretty reasonable. Our cats would definitely put up with that kind of treatment.
Tags: Cats, feline-abuse, hall-of-technical-documentation-weirdness, it-crowd, vacuum
One of the neat things about Jabber is that you can be online multiple times at the time same. I noticed on Pandion that the resource when I’m using Google Talk is “Talk.v” plus a string of characters whereas when I’m using Gmail it’s “gmail.” plus a string of characters. I can choose which instance of myself and the message will only go to that resource. Unfortunately it doesn’t show the keyboard activity in the chat windows but that’s hardly a major feature. It’s more of a incrementally useful thing to me as I can determine if the conversation is active or not.
One other neat feature is being able to go “off the record”. Basically this means that the chat history won’t be saved (which itself is a new feature in Google Talk – the history gets sent to your Gmail account). I guess if you’re talking about something that you don’t want to save for later (for whatever reason) then you can mark it as such and the other person gets a visual indication of your settings. Of course if you’re not talking with someone with a Google account (like me) then this setting won’t work; my client saves the chat histories anyway. So be forewarned that “off the record” doesn’t apply to conversations with me. I’m secretly archiving all of these personal conversations for use in my tell-all book in 2009.
Tags: chat, gmail, google-talk, jabber, off-the-record, pandion
I was mistaken yesterday when I talked about the TTC fares going up by 10 cents. Well, I was only partially wrong actually. It seems that the price of tokens and tickets will go up by 10 cents but the cash fare will go up by 25 cents (Toronto Star story). Also the price of the Metropass, unaffected by last year’s hike, will be going up by 1 dollar. For me this is going to be an extra $2 per month in commuting costs assuming that I continue to get a ride in the mornings. It’s not an unreasonable amount to increase the fares by. The only condition that I make (as if I have the power to impose these conditions!) is that the service continue to improve. With sprawl continuing unabated (well almost) the last thing that I want to see is our transit system to deteriorate to the point of obsolescence. I don’t want to feel like the system is unusable and yet I have no other option but to use it. That won’t be a good situation for anyone in Toronto.
Tags: bus-tickets, Commuting, fares, metropass, ten-cents, Toronto, ttc, twenty-five-cents
You can now chat with your Google Talk contacts through Gmail itself. You can read about the details here and this story has been all over the Internet for the last couple of days. I’m not sure how useful this will be for me especially since I recently switched to using Jabber but it looks like a neat application of Javascript and HTML. You can have the chat windows inside Gmail or you can pop them out into their own window.
People have spent the time to dig (not digg) into the Javascript source code and have some thoughts at some upcoming features that might be introduced into Gmail. If one thing holds true it’s that people are always anxious to dissect and analyze every new Google offering. It’s like trying to read tea leaves.
This week’s Fifth Estate should garner a lot of attention I think. It has to do with Brian Mulroney and the Airbus scandal that came to light more than a decade ago. I caught a bit of the episode but I’ll have to go back and watch their online bits. Andrew Coyne has some good background material. I’ll also have to check them out.
Tags: airbus, CBC, expose, fifth-estate, mulroney, Politics, scandal
I agree with Warren. This is the letter of the year (so far). PDF link.
Tags: Cars, Humour, law, speeding, violations
Via Darren Barefoot I discovered the ACME Humble Pie company. They delivery pies as gifts to anyone across Canada. Not only that but they are meant to be apology pies. That’s a gift that I can get behind. If you want to apologize to me, please send me a pie. I’ll be happy to accept it. That doesn’t guarantee that I’ll that I’ll accept your apology but the pie I’m sure will be tasty.
I agree with Darren on their website though. It’s hardly the most usable place I’ve visited recently.
Tags: acme-humble-pie, apologies, gifts, pie
A humourous attempt at making a homebrew, USB-compatible cat repellent.
Tags: cat-repellent, Cats, hacks, usb
Last year it was ten whole cents. It looks like this year will be more of the same:
The Toronto Transit Commission is expected to raise fares by 10 cents at a special budget meeting Wednesday. The fare hike would come in response to a $16.5-million shortfall as the commission grapples with rising transit costs. It would increase the cost of tokens to $2.10, while the cash fare would go up to $2.60. The price of a monthly pass, currently $98.75, is expected to remain unchanged. There had been suggestions that the TTC could raise fares by as much as 20 cents, but commission chair Howard Moscoe said that such a large increase was unlikely. The TTC has already rejected proposals to cut routes or increase crowding in order to save money.
I like the current fare prices because it’s an even amount. It’s easy to accumulate if you happen to not have a bus ticket – $2 and 2 quarters. Now I’ll need a little more when I don’t have a bus ticket. Of course I could always ensure that I have a bus ticket with me but sometimes I’m forgetful.
Edit (2:47 PM): BlogTO has a good idea for concrete, visible improvements in service in return for this fare hike.
Tags: bus-tickets, Commuting, fares, ten-cents, Toronto, ttc
I call him my coughing friend. In the office here there is another business that shares our floor. The walls aren’t especially thick so when someone speaks very loudly I can hear them. The person who is closest to my desk on their side coughs a lot. It’s a pretty regular cough. Sometimes he’s out of the office for a few days at a time but I know when he’s back because the coughing returns. It doesn’t bother me because most of the time I don’t even hear it.
Tags: coughing, coughing-friend, Health, The Office
Via BoingBoing I found these stunning aerial shots of Mexico City taken by a helicopter pilot. The housing complexes are incredible.
Tags: aerial, helicopter, mexico-city, photographs, Pictures
Do you remember my trip companion from last week? Well yesterday made two Mondays in a row that we shared our trip home.
Let me tell you – she’s one angry, impatient lady. I stood near her on the bus and each stop we went to she muttered under the breath urging the bus to hurry up. Then when we were waiting at Warden station she was swearing and cursing and carrying on about how late she was and how that bus had better hurry up. This was also under her breath. When we got off the bus she practically ran towards the movie rental store to return her movies (I believe The Legend of Zorro was one of them) while I walked down the street towards home.
She has the same attitude towards commuting that I had when I was 16. I was so impatient whenever other people got on or off of the bus; I too would mutter under my breath cursing each and every person who delayed my arrival. It’s like that when you’re used to driving and you have to rely on the bus driver to get you to your destination. I haven’t seen her other days so maybe on Mondays she has to commute to wherever she’s going.
We’ll see if we get a third strike next Monday.
Tags: Commuting, companion, impatience, It Happened To Me, legend-of-zorro, monday, Movies, Toronto, ttc
Now with their own website! [via]
Tags: blogs, Humour, Politics, shadow-cabinet
Via Spacing, I find this humourous video about Queen West here in Toronto. The comments are almost as funny as the video.
Tags: hipsters, queen-west, spacing, Toronto, videos
Via Stipe I read about an attempt to make the Garfield comic strip a surrealist one. You could argue it makes the strip a better one.
Tags: comic-strips, garfield, Humour, surrealism
Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker this week deals with power law problems. Essentially it entails targeting specific solutions at the hard-core offenders in order to see huge improvements in the problem. [via]
Tags: malcolm-gladwell, new-yorker, power-law
I’ve decided to revisit using Jabber as my main IM. If you happen to use Jabber you can add me at matt@theinflux.com. Also if you’re using Google Talk you can add me at the same address since Google Talk now supports other Jabber servers connecting to their clients. I’ve chosen to go with Pandion as my Jabber client. It’s pretty great so far. If I find any annoyances I’ll be sure to post them here.
Tags: google-talk, jabber, pandion
Not to be outdone by the hype surrounding IE7, it seems that the Mozilla group will be releasing the first alpha of Firefox 2 this Friday. Looking at the release plan, it seems that it’ll be ready for final release this June. I’ll likely be trying out the betas when they come out in a few weeks. Firefox will remain my browser until there is a major change in the features available in competing browsers.
Tags: alpha, beta, browsers, Firefox, internet-explorer
Well to contrast with yesterday’s positive subway story, here’s one from this morning that isn’t so positive:
A section of the Yonge subway line was temporarily shut down Tuesday morning after eight TTC workers were overcome by fumes at the Eglinton station.
In place of trains, the Toronto Transit Commission began the morning rush hour with buses running in place of the subway between York Mills and Bloor. Bus service was cancelled out of the Eglinton station, which was completely closed as fire crews investigated the source of the fumes. Full service resumed shortly before 8 a.m. The workers were doing maintenance work when they fell ill. All eight were taken to hospital.
Hopefully those workers are ok. That is one hazardous job cleaning those subway tunnels; the ventilation is hardly ideal.
Also I think that having to take a shuttle bus instead of the subway would be particularly cramped. I would imagine that it would be worse than the normal bus routes but it’s only temporary.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been trying out 30 Boxes. I said in that post that I couldn’t get the site to work in Firefox at home but that it worked ok here at work. Last night I tried the site again and found that I still couldn’t get it to work in Firefox. I’m not sure what is going wrong at home; I don’t have any crazy extensions installed but I do know that it doesn’t work. I haven’t seen any similar problems on their support forums so I’m not sure what I should do. I guess I could just suck it up and use IE but that’s hardly a good longterm solution for me. If I find some time maybe I’ll post on the forum to see if there’s anything that I’m doing that is causing it not to work.
Tags: 30-boxes, Firefox, ie, internet-explorer, support-forums
Via Andrew Coyne I noticed how easily it is these days to create a new blog.
Remove Emerson.
Elect Emerson.
Perhaps they’re even run by the same people. There are some choice quotations on that post by Andrew. It’s unlikely that anyone will make them stick however. People seem to have short memories.
Tags: cabinet, canada, conservatives, david-emerson, liberals, Politics
This is a great story [via]:
A woman is recovering in hospital after giving birth on a downtown subway platform during rush hour this morning.
The woman was riding the Yonge subway southbound towards Wellesley Station with her husband and two children when she began to give birth.
She exited the subway at Wellesley and gave birth on the platform with the help of passersby who also called 911.
The mother and baby were taken by ambulance to St. Michael’s Hospital. Both are doing fine.
At least Wellesley isn’t too far from the hospital.
Tags: Commuting, hospital, pregnancy, subway, Toronto, ttc, wellesley
I can’t see out of the window. It’s going to be a none-too-fun commute home. I hope Marcy got home ok.
I hadn’t considered the impact of a change in government would have on the National Archives [via].
Tags: canada, data, election, national-archives
I posted last year about a plugin for Wordpress that allowed me to integrate my Creative Commons license with the blog. Well with me upgrading to Wordpress 2.0 (and then 2.0.1) after having lost most of my entries, it was time for me to redisplay this license information on the site because I think it’s extremely important to have an open copyright system.
I decided to use this new plugin called the Creative Commons Configurator. It made it remarkably easy to integrate. I just had to choose my license, copy the RDF into the plugin’s options page and then choose where I wanted to have it displayed. I choose three places: in the header so that bots can read it when spidering this site, in my RSS feed and also on a single post page so that when you’re viewing one post you can see what the rights are.
This is the license that I choose to go with. It’s the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Canada license. It’s great that they have regionally-targeted licenses now. The work of the Creative Commons group is one that I heartily endorse. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be licensing my work in this way.
Tags: canada, cc, common-content, copyright, creative-commons, license, plugins, rss, wordpress
Tags: 2005, awards, vapourware, wired
Yesterday I was able to sign up to be a beta tester for 30 boxes which is a new online calendaring site. I first read about it on Matt’s site and since then the buzz leading up to the public beta this past weekend has been deafening. Just look here and you’ll know what I mean. I tried it last night at home and found that it didn’t work quite as well with my installation of Firefox and I actually had to use IE to be able to enter new calendar items. Fortunately though when I got to work this morning I was able to use Firefox with the site without any difficulties. You can see my profile page here. I’m going to try and put the HTML/Javascript badge on the sidebar here to see how it looks. They have a lot of neat features planned like custom feeds based on tags/dates/whatever as well as an API for developers to leverage. They added iCal/ICS support over the weekend so that people can download their 30 boxes calendar into their desktop calendar applications (Outlook, Mozilla Calendar, whatever). Interoperability is key.
It’ll be interesting to see if this site becomes what Flickr has become for photos. There is a lot of competition for online calendars already.
Tags: 30-boxes, beta, calendars, Firefox, flickr, ical, ics, internet-explorer
Another great essay from the Tilting at Windmills group. This one deals with Iran.
Via AKMA I learned that The Onion has opened up their archives. You can now link to any old article. This is fantastic news. Building a firewall around your archives will only isolate yourself in this interdependent, interconnected world. Information needs to be free.
Tags: archives, firewall, Humour, information, the-onion
God’s Senator. This is a fascinating Rolling Stone article about the senator from Kansas. I had no idea he had so much influence over policies. I first heard about him in the great book (one of my favourites from 2004) What’s the Matter With Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. This man is definitely someone that I want to keep an eye on. I have a feeling that he’s going to be playing an increasing role in how policy is decided in the United States. My only worry is that since he works in so much of the “Invisible Hand” type of politics, it may be very difficult to discern what exactly he is doing. I don’t mean to invoke the Great Right-Wing Conspiracy talks because I’m sure there are people on the left that wield equally frightening influence over policies and politics. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s an important lesson for everyone to learn.
Update (February 6th @ 5 PM): Jordon Cooper posts his own thoughts on the same article. It’s pretty much the same conclusion, it’s just following a different path to get there.
Tags: absolute-power, gods-senator, invisible-hand, kansas, Politics, rolling-stone, sam-brownback, senate, united-states, us
MacGyver (praised here) is going to be in a Super Bowl ad this Sunday [via]. You can watch it here. Since we can’t watch the ads here in Canada (Global’s licensing of the feed means that they put in their own ads) our only option is to watch them online or catch them on tv when they eventually make it to massmarket which for some of the one-off ones will be never. I’ll have to look at the other ads on that site later. In the meantime go Mac!
Tags: ads, canada, commercials, football, global, macgyver, nfl, richard-dean-anderson, super-bowl, Television, tv
We’re going to try and go to this (mentioned yesterday). Perhaps we’ll see you there. I brought my camera with me to work so there might even be pictures to speak of at a later date.
Update (10:25 PM) – I did something better with my time tonight. I went out for dinner with my wife and walked around downtown. That’s better than Peacebuilding anyday.
Tags: axworthy, camera, ignatieff, lloyd-axworthy, michael-ignatieff, peacebuilding, Pictures, Politics, rebel-sell, Toronto, u-of-t
Raptors trade Jalen Rose: report
They’re trading him for Antonio Davis. Yes, the same guy.
Tags: 2002, antonio-davis, basketball, jalen-rose, nba, raptors, Sports, Toronto
Motorist badly injured as concrete flung onto highway
Sometimes people make me feel really ill.
According to this CBC News story they are producting a sequel to Harry Potter (no surprise) and The Chronicles of Narnia. For Harry Potter it will be “The Order of the Phoenix” and for Narnia it’ll be “Prince Caspian“. The principle actors for each of the series are returning which is a good thing. They’re both scheduled for release in 2007. I’m looking forward to them.
Tags: CBC, chronicles-of-narnia, harry-potter, Movies, prince-caspian, sequels, the-order-of-the-phoenix
Today is a very wet day. It looks like the next few days will be wet ones. For today it’s rain but it looks like snow for tomorrow and Sunday. I think I remember what snow looks like but we’ll find out tomorrow if I’m right or not.
In any case I really got soaked this morning taking the garbage out to the curb (yes it’s another Garbage Friday today). It was very dark because of the cloud cover and since I had to meet my 7 AM deadline not just for the garbage but for my ride to work as well I had to be hasty. At the side of the house it’s very dark and there isn’t a lot of grass around to keep the mud from sliding into the walkway. Also since it’s an older property, the walkway isn’t exactly level and so there were huge puddles filled with some mud along my path. I had to go back and forth from the backyard to the curb 3 times and each time I ended up stepping in the deepest and thus wettest/muddiest puddles. The bottoms of my pants were pretty wet by the time I was done. I was cursing the whole time and it was a tie between me and Nature as to who was to blame for my predicament. It could have been far worse though; I could have slipped and fallen in the mud.
Tags: garbage-friday, rain, snow, Weather, winter
There are a couple of shows that Global carries that we watch. They’ve been advertising the fact that their main evening news program (in Ontario at least) is moving from 5:30 to 6. The commercial shows how hard-hitting their news can be and how it’ll bring some really useful information to its viewers. The thing that I remember most about Global’s evening news is that they were so proud of how early they carried it. It used to start at 5 and bring you the news first compared to the other networks. “You’ll hear it here first” is what they used to say. Now with even their national broadcast pushed back to 6:30 in Ontario, how much of a lead are they really going to have anymore over the other networks? Also with the prevalence of news sources on cable and online, does it really matter which news program is first? If I have timeshifting I could watch the National very early in the evening from the East Coast. There is rarely any news that is that pressing that I can’t wait until later in the evening or the next morning to learn about. I just don’t understand the emphasis on being the first. I’d be more concerned about being the best newscast.
Update (Sunday February 5th @ 10:10 PM): I just read James Koole’s post about the new Global redesign and he mentions that First National will now be on at 5:30 instead of 6:30. I think my point still stands about the fact that no matter when your newscast is airing, we live in a news world that offers new information on a constant basis. You have to move beyond just being the first to bring the news in the evening to being the best newscast period.
Tags: CBC, first, global, globaltv, kevin-newman, leslie-roberts, news, Television, the-national
I bought a muffin this morning for breakfast from the little deli downstairs. I’ve had them before and they’re pretty great but this morning I checked to see if they were open when I got into work (7:15) and found that they were indeed open. Seizing upon this opportunity, I bought a fresh, warm muffin. It must have been just out of the oven and boy does it smell good! I can’t wait to eat it.
Aside: I remember when you used to see Mmmuffins stores in every mall. Are they still in the malls? I honestly haven’t been to a mall in quite a while and when I am I don’t usually pay attention to the food stores so I really can’t say. I always used to look at their selection of muffins but I don’t recall ever actually purchasing one.
Update: It was a delicious (not del.icio.us) muffin!
You’d think that Gillette was coming out with a cure for cancer the way they’ve been hyping their New! 5-blade! Razor! It’s called the Gillette Fusion. They say in the commercial that it’s coming out on the 5th of February (Sunday – a good day for release of a new razor in my opinion). However Marcy and I were at the Shoppers Drugmart near our house on Tuesday and they had the display already set up and you could purchase it right then if you really felt like it. I took a look at it and the blades are really quite small and it doesn’t look that much different from the Mach 3 (also a Gillette product). With the smaller blades does that translate into a smoother shave resulting in a more sexy look and feel? Marketing says yes.
I just don’t think that people really care if their razor has 3 blades or 4 or 5 or 17. I think people would make fun of the hype rather than think it’s a good use of research.
Tags: fusion, gillette, hyperbole, mach-3, shoppers-drugmart
Just what is Peacebuilding?
WHAT: Public Conversation with Michael Ignatieff and Lloyd Axworthy
DATES: Friday February 3rd, 2006
LOCATION: Great Hall of Hart House, University of Toronto, St. George Campus
TIME: 7:00pm – 9:30pm
This might be something to check out. Marcy gave me Axworthy’s book for my birthday. It looks like an interesting read.
Tags: axworthy, ignatieff, lloyd-axworthy, michael-ignatieff, peacebuilding, Politics, rebel-sell, Toronto, u-of-t
On Tuesday night Marcy and I went to see Capote which as I mentioned earlier that day was the only film out of the ones nominated for Best Picture that we had yet to see. It’s a fantastic movie. I didn’t really know much about Truman Capote except for a few handfuls of facts but it was incredible how well Philip Seymour Hoffman transformed himself into his character. Capote was certainly a conflicted man. If I were a wagering man then I would bet that Hoffman will win for Best Actor and as Drew says “And many years of Oscar wrongs will be righted.” Hopefully it comes to pass.
Tags: academy-awards, capote, Movies, oscars, philip-seymour-hoffman, truman-capote
We must band together and stop the terrible human-animal hybrids. I support the Bush plan of attack against these blasphemous creatures.
Tags: animal, bush, human, human-animal-hybrids, hybrids, sotu, state-of-the-union
Titanium Mountie
Canadarm face slapper
Ballistic beavernauts
120 mm maple-syrup mortar
Peacekeeping robot that attacks you by surprise
Bioengineered crazy lumberjack choppers
I’d like to see some of those robots.
Tags: beavernauts, canada, mcsweeneys, superweapons
Do you remember the turkey soup that I was talking about early last month? Well we’ve been eating one of the pies this week and it has been very tasty. Hooray for leftovers!
Tags: Food, leftovers, pie, turkey, turkey-pie
A member of our team returned to us today. She was off for a whole year for maternity leave. It must be scary to come back to a startup because a year in our company has meant a complete transformation; almost nothing is the same. Many of the people who were here when she was last here aren’t here anymore or have moved to completely new positions. Our client list has expanded tremendously and some of the old names are still on the wall but just aren’t around as clients anymore. Even her role will be very different because whereas before there was just her now it’s a whole team of people.
It’s like starting a new job but with a little bit of inside knowledge.
Tags: Life, maternity-leave, startup, The Office, Work
You may (or may not) have noticed that my archives have really been flushed out over the last few weeks. We lost all of the past entries here and when I came back online here I had to start from scratch again. I was disconcerted at first but then I remembered that Google had been visiting my site (noted here) and I had set my meta robots tag to index and follow links. I did a search for my site (old blog location) and noticed that there were quite a few results (over 1300) and that many of them were cached by Google (the same cache that was recently declared legal). All I had to do then was iterate through the results, visit the cached version of each result and copy the entry into this new installation. It took a lot of work and a lot of time but I think I managed to get about 95% of the entries back again which I’m pretty impressed with. There are still quite a few broken links in those old posts because they refer to other posts in the old blog location so I’ll have to go back and update them at some point but at least the base content is there. I’m currently in the process of importing my old Livejournal entries so that I’ll have all of my blog entries in one place. With Wordpress 2.0 I can backup the blog at any time so I’m going to start doing that just in case something catastrophic goes wrong. Sometimes it’s nice to have search engines crawling what you put online. I also could have used The Wayback Machine but it doesn’t seem to have much from my site. That’s not surprising considering how insignificant this site in the grand scheme of things.
Tags: archive.org, archives, blog, boing-boing, chang8ling, google, google-cache, livejournal, wayback-machine
U.S. troops in Iraq shoot at four Canadian diplomats. Encouraging news.
Via Spacing Wire, I was alerted to this guerilla ticketing effort that will be taking place downtown on Friday.
Attack #12 is a sprint operation based on Attack #10, which took place in Montreal in September 2005 and where nearly 350 “patrollers” recruited by ATSA issued some 10,000 statements of offence. These statements target oversize vehicles and the excessive fuel consumption asociated with them, excessive engine idling, remote engine starters and poorly maintained vehicles.
Individually numbered between 10,001 and 11,200 and in triplicate, these statements of offence will be:
- Handed out to all offending vehicles by our patroller citizens on Feb. 3rd between 5 and 7 p.m.
- Displayed at YYZ Artist’s Outlet as an interactive exhibit between 7 and 9 p.m.
- Presented to a politician responsible for the sustainable development of the Toronto community.
As an anti-fan of SUVs I like this effort but being aware of the realities of the city I don’t think the ticketed offenders will even notice or care that they have a fake ticket on their car. It’s encouraging to see projects such as these however if only to raise the public conscience a marginal amount.
Tags: atsa, attack-12, spacing-wire, suvs, Toronto
I just finished upgrading this blog to Wordpress 2.0.1 which was released last night. 114 bugs fixed in this release! From a cursory search a few days ago, I noticed that there have been some general and specific complaints about Wordpress 2.0 so hopefully those will be resolved now. It’s nice to see such a dedicated group of developers trying to improve an already-great product.
Side effects
February 9, 2006 in Commuting and Toronto by matt | 2 comments
Steve Munro weighs in on the fare hike the TTC will implement on April 1st. I just discovered his blog yesterday through Transit Toronto and James Bow (cross-posted).
He makes some very good points and I’d like to share my favourite bits here. It summaries in a more succinct and accurate way some of the thoughts I have expressed here before.
Check.
Check.
Check.
I love that line – “Passengers are an annoying side-effect of having a transit system.” That’s really true. Some of the best rides I’ve had commuting on the TTC have been the ones where a) it wasn’t crowded and b) we didn’t have to stop a lot. That usually only happens when I take the less-frequent and less-packed Bellamy route home. The opposite end of the spectrum is the Eglinton East bus route which as I’ve said many times on here can be very uncomfortable and usually is my least favourite time everyday. If I could have my own bus to myself, some days I think that would be ideal but then the transit advocate in me comes back and realizes how foolish that really is. Taking public transit can be ugly as a wart but it gets us where we need to be on most days and that’s the least we can expect of it. Sure there are problems with the system and there are many things that I’d like to see improved. That’s why I write about my experiences commuting. I want to add my voice to the public discourse on this subject. I just hope that somebody out there is listening to our concerns.
Tags: comments, fares, Toronto, ttc