Living in virtual reality

I don’t need to leave my apartment any more: all I want to know about the world, I can learn from my spam. Here’s some recent subject headers:

Singing next to the police station isn’t a lot of fun
The photographer dislikes talking
Castro up and talking in new Cuban video
Pentagon halts sales of F-14 parts
Now or later, up to you
New, fresh and optimistic symbol
‘Kidnap plot’ behind terror raid
Second witness contradicts Libby
Four die in gas station blast | Video Video
Joe’s girlfriend is not practicing skiing in London
Opera star, underwear tossing:Nope
Shootings kill sheriff’s wife, deputy, two suspects
That we can do without
US Airways told to cut out some alcohol sales
Basic choice Fish

Now that I think of it, some of these sound like sample phrases from a language instruction audiotape: “The photographer dislikes talking.” “Il photographer ha antipatia per la comunicazione.” (I love Babel Fish.)

I couldn’t resist linking to this: the Globe has an article about author Michael Keren, who claims “[I]ndividuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world.” Well, I happen to disagree with Mr. Keren. And so does my giant invisible rabbit best friend, Mr. Pookie.

Random disorganized thoughts

I have not much to offer in the way of coherence today. It’s been a long day, and I still have traces of The Cold That Wouldn’t Die – the gift that just keeps on giving and giving.

There were two separate door-to-door salespersons going around my building this evening. One wanted to offer me three free magazines as part of some promotional deal or other. When he asked me whether I read magazines, I saw a way out: I said no. (I actually don’t, at least not much.) The second salesperson was offering an alternative electricity plan, or something. I’m not sure. He showed me a sample bill, and guaranteed my rates wouldn’t go up. Or maybe not. I was pretty sure I didn’t want whatever it was.

My worst fears, in no particular order: death, being trapped in an enclosed space, drowning, poisonous snakes, any height I am at risk of falling off of, wearing out my welcome. Especially this last. I would rather hide away from the human race than go where I am not wanted.

I guess I’m officially middle-aged now: my hair is starting to go more and more gray. I swear it’s like time-lapse photography. If this keeps up, I’ll have to get a new driver’s licence, as I won’t look like my picture any more.

According to the CBC, Stephen Harper was less than supportive of the Kyoto Agreement when he was the leader of the former Canadian Alliance. In 2002, he wrote a letter that included the following: “Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.” Gosh!

A weighty problem

Recently, Discover magazine posted an article entitled 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Obesity. Here’s a couple of the most startling ones:

• In 2000, airlines spent $275 million on 350 million additional gallons of fuel to compensate for the weight of the passengers they were flying. (And it’s not like people have gotten thinner in the meantime.)
• The average weight of Americans increased by 8.5 pounds in the 1990s.
• In 2004, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration increased its estimate of the weight of the average American male from 170 pounds to 184.
• Hardee’s, a food chain in the eastern U.S., offers a Monster Thickburger, which is 1420 calories and contains 107 grams of fat. (According to their nutrition guide, their ordinary Thickburger is a mere 850 calories, with 57 grams of fat.)

The conventional definition of whether you are overweight or not is the Body Mass Index (BMI) measurement. And I’ve got to say that it’s a tough taskmaster. I’m a little over 6′2″ and weigh about 200 pounds; I don’t look fat or even close to it. (Of course, you have to not pay attention to my Middle-Aged Waistline.) But, according to the BMI, I’m overweight – I would have to slim down to 194 pounds to make it into their “normal weight” range. If I list myself as 6′3″ – only a slight exaggeration – I’m allowed to bulk up to 199 pounds.

According to a daily calorie requirement calculator I found on the net, someone my size who is exercising lightly should consume 2519.4 calories a day. Being a big person means that it’s easier for me to maintain my weight than it is for a smaller person – according to this, I could consume roughly 1.7 Monster Thickburgers without gaining weight. Of course, I would consume enough fat to stop up my arteries and eventually my heart, but I wouldn’t be a fat corpse.

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that my metabolism has slowed down. Until I was about 27, I could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. When I was in university, and on a meal plan that allowed me to eat as much as I wanted, I once had something like 11 grilled cheese sandwiches in one sitting. (Now, my alma mater doesn’t offer unlimited food, possibly for precisely that reason.) And I used to order spaghetti and lasagna for dinner. Now, I have to be much more careful than that.

Which is why it scares me when I see a younger person carrying extra weight. If someone is overweight when they’re 17 or 22, they’re likely to be even heavier as they get older. If obesity is becoming a problem, it might become even more of a problem a few years from now.

Selling conservatism

The Globe and Mail reports that the federal Conservative party is about to launch a new series of television ads. These spots apparently mock Stéphane Dion and his party’s record on the environment. These ads will appear in prime time, and at least one will be broadcast during the Super Bowl.

According to the Globe, the Tories apparently have more money than they are allowed to spend during an election campaign, which is why they’re spending it now. They have more cash than any of the other Canadian political parties.

Needless to say, there have been a lot of comments on the Globe’s web site about the Tories’ decision. One thing that one commenter pointed out was that some of the official Government of Canada web sites have been redesigned to have more Tory blue in them. For example, the Prime Minister’s official web site now has quite a lot of blue in it. And it is using the same slogan (“Getting Things Done For All Of Us”) as the Conservative Party’s web site.

The Government of Canada main page doesn’t quite go so far. It has a blue background, but it’s a muted blue, and the maple leaf and many of the headings are in official Canadian red. I suppose that you have to sympathize a bit with the Tories on this: it’s not their fault that red is both one of the colours of the Canadian flag and the principal colour associated with their political opponents.

But the Tories’ on-line web presence illustrates one of the things that bother me about their government: they seem to play dirtier than their opponents, and they spend a great deal of time badmouthing them. For example: their web site currently has the headline “Sponsorship Scandal: Dion Flipflops (Again)”, and shows an animated image of Dion switching from facing left to facing right and back again. (Compare this to the Liberal site, whose headline is “Liberal Team Looks To The Future”.) As a voter, I want to know what the government is planning on doing, not what they think of the other guys.

Because the Tories seem to be spending all their time attacking their opponents or carefully crafting their own optics, I sometimes get the impression that, deep down, the Tories think that most Canadians don’t really want what they’re offering. Perhaps one of the following is true:

• The Tories believe that their policies are the legislative equivalent of cod-liver oil: it’s good for you, even if you don’t like it.
• The Tories are serving the interests of their own political constituencies (choose one or more of the following: Albertans, the oil patch, social conservatives, rural Canadians) at the expense of others.

I don’t know whether either of the above is true. All I know is that I’d be happier with the Tories if they were running on their record.

(Edit: Rob Pettapiece, in his blog, points out that the Canadian government’s official apology to Maher Arar sneaks in a shot at the former Liberal government. As Rob puts it: was this necessary?)

Manzilla! and climate change

As usual, my daily ration of spam includes messages from eager overseas sellers of assorted pharmaceuticals. One message offers to sell me Vixxagra, Vaxxlium, Cixxalis (ask your docxxtor!), Xaxxnax, or Amxxbien. At reasonable prixxces, too, no doubt. All I have to do is give them my credxxit card number, thus giving them the opportunity to commit lots of fraxxud. What could be more fair than that?

And then there’s this:

Manzilla! Size does matter! You seen this on TV!

Yes! Manzilla! The giant, er, member that threatens the unsuspecting population of Tokyo!

The Globe and Mail is devoting a large chunk of today’s paper to articles on climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is about to release its latest report, which will state, in no uncertain terms, that there’s a lot of warming going on and that we humans are mostly responsible for it.

And people are realizing this: according to the Globe’s article, 26 percent of the people who responded to a recent poll listed the environment as their number one concern. The figure for last May was 3 percent. The same article states that a majority of respondents “would be willing to pay more for fuel-efficient cars, reduce the amount they fly, cut the amount they drive in half, and have the economy grow at ‘a significantly slower rate’ to help clean up the environment.”

For me, the biggest change I have to make to be more environment-friendly would be to use fewer non-recyclable items. I love to eat takeout food – I don’t like to cook – and most of it comes in non-recyclable plastic packages. I did find out that Toronto allows residents of multi-unit buildings to recycle cereal boxes, paper and junk mail, and milk cartons; these were things I didn’t know could be recycled. You can now also mix all your recyclables together – they’ll sort it out for you.

Maybe I can find takeout places that serve food in recyclable containers. Hopefully, that will be possible. I’d like to leave a smaller footprint, if I can.

Over and over and over again

So I’m at home, still battling this [extremely unpleasant string of unbelievably foul words deleted] cold. And I’m watching basketball. I watch basketball a lot, which means I see the same commercials again and again.

There’s the cell phone commercial in which a young man and woman try to say “I love you” on the phone, but aren’t sure whether they are getting through to each other. There’s a brief moment of awkward silence: does he/she still love me? I’d like to think that their relationship would be strong enough to survive one bout of bad cellphone reception, but you never know. Hey, I’m that insecure, so I suppose other people are too.

And then there’s the toothpaste commercial featuring Brooke Shields and her daughter, which is on over and over and over again. I’m not sure why they think that the average basketball fan is that much into toothpaste. Or cute, googly babies. Or Brooke Shields. She doesn’t look bad in denim, but still.

And Dennis Hull and his wife have lost a lot of unwanted pounds using a weight-loss program. Good for them, and it’s good to see that Dennis can now remove his 1972 Team Canada ring from his finger if he wants to. I suppose it makes sense to show this one a lot: the average sports fan is likely to be a couch potato and probably could use a weight-loss program.

One final commercial that comes up often is for Tim Horton’s. Now, this seems to be a logical connection: basketball fans are likely to be donut eaters. But the ad is for a berry explosion. Berry explosion? What the?

Today, Metafilter featured a link to the Ultimate Table Hockey Experience. Oooh! Me want!

So you want to be a technical writer

I earn (what could laughably be called) my living as a technical writer, and I thought I’d share a few things I’ve learned about the trade.

The hardest part is getting the information. Technical writing is more than just sitting at a word processor and cranking out paragraphs. You have to go out there and get information from people. And these people are usually very busy; talking to technical writers ranks slightly below going to the water cooler on most people’s list of priorities.

Usually, you have to physically travel to the other person’s desk to get the information you need. People almost invariably ignore email. A polite, friendly, but persistent approach is usually the most effective.

The second-hardest part is understanding and organizing the information. After all, if it wasn’t complicated and hard to understand, they’d have an administrative assistant write it up for half your salary.

Sometimes, not knowing anything about a subject is very handy for a technical writer. After all, your readers aren’t going to know anything about the subject when they start reading. What you need to know to understand the subject is what they need to know, too. And you can figure out the order in which they need to know it.

The writing is the easiest part. Okay, there are some rules you have to remember – active voice good, passive voice bad; be task-oriented whenever possible – but the actual writing isn’t that hard if you’ve organized everything beforehand. You don’t need a fancy vocabulary to be a technical writer – your readers aren’t necessarily going to understand big words, so you shouldn’t use them.

Check your ego at the door. For the most part, people don’t want to see any evidence of personality in their technical documents. Reading documentation is like visiting the dentist – they want to get in, get it done, and get out as quickly as possible. (That’s one of the reasons why I write a blog and other things – I want to be able to rock and roll a little in my spare time.)

It’s not done until your manager says it’s done. Any document you write – no matter how complete it seems to you – is not complete until everybody with clout has agreed that it’s complete. All other versions of the document are drafts. Always be prepared to rewrite.

Get to know the developers. They’re the ones who have the information you need; you can’t function without them. They’ll also be the first to know if your product changes: if your organization is dysfunctional, this may be the only way that you’ll find out whether your documents need to be updated.

Always keep the document as complete as possible. It’s a bad idea to put “TBD” in a section, or notes to yourself (“Dave, fix this”) in a document. Just leave the incomplete sections out until you get to them. Here’s why: some senior manager may suddenly want the latest version of the document to give to an unexpected client, and he or she will want a “complete” version.

Do the screen snaps last. The look of the application you are documenting will always change about 11 times at the last minute. You don’t want to have to do the same work 11 times.

Sometimes, you have to suck it up. Technical writers have to ask people dumb questions; it’s part of our job. And some of these people are going to talk down a bit to you when they answer the questions. After all, they are Code Gods, and all of this is perfectly obvious to them. Just nod, smile, and write down what they tell you. Comfort yourself by realizing this: while you can’t do their jobs, they can’t do yours either.

People probably won’t read what you write. Many people don’t bother reading the manuals. They just go ahead and try the product. If you’re looking for fame, this isn’t the profession for you.

And a couple of notes for anyone who employs technical writers and happens to be reading this:

Please, please show up for your meetings. Because technical writers are low on the food chain, managers and developers often blow off meetings with writers in favour of more productive activities, such as toenail clipping. We have schedules too, goddamn it; help us meet them.

For the love of God, don’t ask us to take notes at meetings. Just don’t. Okay?

Blah, revisited

I got a copy of Louann Brizendine’s The Female Brain out of the library today, and found this fascinating statement:

Just as women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion while men have a small country road, men have O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex whereas women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes. That probably explains why 85 percent of twenty- to thirty-year old males think about sex every fifty-two seconds and women think about it once a day – or up to three or four times on their most fertile days.

Some comments:

• How did she come up with 52 seconds? That’s a startlingly precise figure. How does she know that it’s not 53 seconds, or perhaps 51?
• The 15 percent of young men who don’t think about sex every 52 seconds must feel rather bad about themselves after reading this passage.
• I feel sorry for anyone – man or woman – who only thinks about sex about four times a day at most. Thinking about sex is kind of fun.
• It’s cruel to use O’Hare Airport as a metaphor for sex. After all, everything arrives late there, and people are constantly rushing back and forth in a bad temper. (And the planes are often circling the airport waiting to land. I don’t know if I want to take that metaphor any further, thank you.)
• Small country road? Okay, Ms. Brizendine, you may be right, but I’m driving one badass car down that road.

Speaking of emotions: for some reason, I’m really kind of down today. It might be winter, or that it’s Day 6 of my cold, or that I’m in the middle of the work week, or all of the above.

One thing I’ve noticed about being down is that my brain starts sending me false information: I become convinced, for instance, that many of my friends and all of my casual acquaintances – including any women I am even remotely interested in – really can’t stand me but are just being too polite to say so. I’ve learned to tune this out – especially when events prove that my pessimistic assumptions are wrong. But it does mean that it’s hard to sort out what is actually happening in the real world. After all, if you can’t trust the data coming from your brain, how do you make correct decisions?

Reading the small print of the service manual

I’m battling a headache right now – it’s Day 5 of my latest cold – so this will be a short entry.

I’m just starting to read U2 by U2, and found this from Bono:

Your nature is a hard thing to change; it takes time. One of the extraordinary transferences that happen in your spiritual life is not that your character flaws go away but they start to work for you. A negative becomes a positive: you’ve a big mouth: you end up a singer. You’re insecure: you end up a performer who needs applause.

And:

That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting of a computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet.

As I see it, this is one of the few advantages of growing older: I’ve started figuring out a little bit more about how my thought processes function. This means that, hopefully, I am causing less harm to self and others, and maybe I can possibly make the world and other people slightly better off for having me around. At least, I can hope.

Blasts from the past

Recently, when looking through old backup CDs, I found a backup of my personal website from 1999. Besides having a home page that is now extremely embarrassing to look at, it had some collections of links. Most of these links are long gone now, but a few are still active.

So here are some links to pages that have been around since before the new millennium started:

• The Institute for Official Cheer has long been one of my favourite sites. It’s a collection of old advertisements, comic books, postcards, and other unusual stuff from the past.
• The Butt Page is now a page about rectal foreign bodies.
• Entropy Gradient Reversals is still around, but it doesn’t look like it’s been updated since 1999.
• The Critiques of Libertarianism page is still going strong: it’s celebrating its 10th anniversary.
• Canadian Commentary still exists, but has not been updated since 2004.
• The Fill-Out Form That Doesn’t Do Anything is still there.
• Computer Stupidities is a collection of dumb things people have said to technical support representatives.
• Project:Denny’s is a mission to visit every Denny’s restaurant in the world. It was still active as of May 2006.
• Totally Useless Office Skills is a way to ensure that you will never be named Employee of the Month.
• Here’s a collection of viola jokes. (Viola players are not the most highly respected members of symphony orchestras.)
• The Illustrated Guide to Breaking Your Computer has been around since 1996.
• Seven Wonders is a collection of interesting web sites.
• The Bartleby Library is a collection of online books.
• Banned Books Online is an online repository of books that have been banned in one jurisdiction or another, such as Ulysses.
• Suck.com is still online, but hasn’t been updated since 2001.
• Strikethree.com is a baseball-related page based out of Seattle.

Some domain names have become transmogrified since 1999:

• amused.com used to be the Center for the Easily Amused, but is now a commercial enterprise, I think: it’s only got a home page and a privacy policy.
• standonguard.com, which used to be the home page for Canadian World Domination, is now a collection of links to home security products.
• meat.com used to host the Netscape Hall of Shame, and is now a collection of links to sites where you can buy meat. It reminds readers, “Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak.”