A small achievement

I got my electricity bill on Friday, and discovered that, somehow, I have become more energy-efficient:

• My July 2007 reading was 438 kWh consumed; July 2006 was 480 kWh. (This is for two months.)
• The May 2007 reading was 406 kWh; May 2007 was 449.

The only things I can think of that I am doing differently are:

• I’m using energy-efficient light bulbs instead of the old-style incandescent bulbs.
• I unplug my VCR when I’m not using it.

That’s pretty much it. I’m not sure how this translates into a 10% saving. But I’m willing to take credit for it.

Worst. Scammer. Ever.

I got this in my email just now (all errors theirs):

You are receiving this message, due to you protection, Our Online Technical Security Service Foreign IP Spy recently detected that your online account was recently logged on from am 67.120.175.197 without am International Access Code (I.A.C) and from an unregistered computer, which was not verified by the Our Online Service Department.

If you last logged in you online account on Tuesday July 24th 2007, by the time 5:42 am from an Foreign Ip their is no need for you to panic, but if you did log in your account on the above Date and Time, kindly take 2-3 minute of your online banking experince to verify and register your computer now to avoid identity theft, your protection is our future medal.

It concludes with this:

Because email is not a secure form of communication, please do not reply to this email.
Notice: You can acess your account from a foreign IP or country by getting am (I.A.C) International Access Code, by contacting our local brances close to you.

Attention, hackers: phishing scams work better when you use correct spelling and grammar!

Second Cup is hazardous to your health

So I went to a Second Cup in the Annex tonight to write, since I was at loose ends. (I do not always lead an exciting life.) I bought a hot apple cider so that I could sit at a table outdoors. They served it at a temperature so hot that I literally could not hold it for more than a second or two, even with the protective cardboard padding around the cup.

When I told the counter person this, he put the cup inside a second cup (aha! hence the name!) . This made it possible to hold the container for a few seconds. I could manage to carry the cup to my table without burning the skin off my hand, provided I transferred the cup from one hand to the other frequently, and held the cup at its very rim.

But this was a difficult undertaking because the cup had also been filled to the very top. Had any of its contents been spilled while I carried the cup, hand to hand, to my table, I would likely have been very severely scalded. It took all of my motor skills to successfully manage not to do this. I don’t think I ever want to order an apple cider again.

A friend of mine forwarded a message from the Toronto Humane Society – apparently, they’re full to bursting with lost or unwanted pets. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

You’ve helped the animals in the past. Please help them again right now. If you’ve been considering adopting a new pet, don’t delay. Do it today. Do it this weekend. If you know anyone – friends, relatives, neighbours – who are thinking about sharing their life with a new dog, cat or rabbit, tell them to come to the THS immediately.

We need to find homes for at least 200 cats and 50 dogs this weekend. Each and every one of these animals is an innocent creature put at risk for the simple crime of being homeless. Help the animals. Act now.

(For the record, I can’t adopt a pet: I’m allergic to dogs and cats.)

Damn, they’re persistent

I have call display, which means I don’t ever have to deal with telemarketers. But it also means that some telemarketers are persistent: when I don’t answer the phone, they keep trying.

During the last couple of days, I’ve gotten a bunch of calls from a newspaper call centre and from a 1-866 number. Here are the call times for each:

Newspaper call centre:
July 17, 12:41 p.m.
July 17, 5:50 p.m.
July 18, 9:53 a.m.
July 18, 4:27 p.m.
July 18, 6:34 p.m.

1-866 number:
July 17, 2:57 p.m.
July 18, 10:15 a.m.
July 18, 3:39 p.m.
July 18, 7:20 p.m.

I’m willing to outwait them as long as necessary, but I hope that some poor minimum-wage earner isn’t being forced to keep calling me until I answer. Or, worse still, isn’t going to get paid until he checks everybody off his list.

The American dollar is sinking like a rock

Recently, I renewed my subscription to Mechapixel, a cool web site where people create strange and wonderful images with Photoshop and talk about all sorts of interesting stuff. The site is in the United States, so I have to pay in U.S. dollars.

When I renewed today, the Canada/U.S. exchange rate was 1 Canadian dollar = 0.933799 U.S. dollars. At the start of April, 2007, when I last renewed, the exchange rate was 1 Canadian dollar = 0.842931 U.S. dollars. This means that the Canadian dollar has gained 10% against the Yankee buck in less than three months. Whoa.

Transit geekery

I found some web sites this morning that are eye candy for transit geeks: Transit Toronto and Mike’s Transit Stop. Both of these sites contain lots of images of old TTC route maps.

Some of the old maps are fascinating: the May, 1964 map shows what has to be the shortest TTC route in history. The Gerrard 38 bus ran on Gerrard Street from Main to Bingham, which is a distance of ten blocks, or less than three-quarters of a mile. It would take about 15 minutes, tops, to walk the entire length of the route. That driver must have been bored to tears by his job.

Transit lovers, or riders, should also check out Steve Munro’s web site and the TTC’s route schedules page.

Dear Emplyee (sic)

Got this in my email yesterday:

Dear Emplyee,

Our International Corporation has a variety of high-paid positions available at the moment. We are proud to offer you an interesting, respectable position in a field of Financial Services. If you are a honest, responsible and hard-working person we would be glad to do business with you.

Our company is a respectable international organization. We believe that the success of our company depends on maintaining high standards of business conduct, integrity, safety, quality and respect for people and the environment in everything we do.

We are working honestly. We will never ask you to pay or invest something. You work – we pay for the result. We will never ask you to provide us with your private information such as credit card number or your bank requisites.

There are no geographical limits for our employees. People from all over the world are welcomed. No degree is required in order to join us. We value educated people very much but we believe that there are a lot of perspective persons without any degree. We have position for everyone.

Most of people who is working as our local representative for 2-3 years has embodied all their financial dreams in a reality. They know that working with us is a right way to acheive the financial success.

Okay, they’re honest, and they don’t want my bank requisites. But what do they do?

Yesterday was a sad day: Ed Mirvish is dead.

A little tip for sex spammers

I got this in my email just now:

Hello! I am tired today. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at [email deleted] only. Wanna see some pictures of me?

The problem: the email message was from “Emerson Brown”. Hint: if you want to increase traffic from lonely guys (and, presumably, do nefarious things to their computers), make up a woman’s name for the email header. You’re welcome.

Conservatism and democracy

One of the things I like least about our current sitting Prime Minister is that he tends to act as a lone wolf, not bothering to consult with others before making his decisions. The latest example of this was reported in the Globe today: apparently, Mr. Harper is planning on making announcements in Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia without even notifying their provincial premiers that he is planning on dropping by. Presumably, this lack of notification is because the premiers are feuding with the federal government over resource revenues.

This is not the first time that Harper has acted without consulting with other stakeholders, the electorate, or anybody else. And I wonder: why do conservatives tend to dislike consultation? Why does democracy seem to annoy our Prime Minister?

I thought of one possible answer yesterday. Fiscal and social conservatives probably don’t trust the people very much. Without a restraining hand to stop them, the reasoning goes, people would give themselves all kinds of goodies that Canada can’t afford to pay for. So they have to be kept from doing this. In this view, the prime minister serves as a responsible parent, giving the people what is best for them, even if it is not what they want.

The problem, of course, is that the “responsible” parent might not be all that responsible, or might have an agenda of his own.

The back of beyond

Today, I got a spam message with the subject: “Improve Your Front Teeth Without Embarrassment”. The text padding with this message included the definitions of the following words: contradistinction, ululate, crapulous (which is to be sick from excessive drinking), parvenu, manse, uxorious, megalomania, verdant, and Ides.

The Ides of a month (as in “beware the Ides of March”) is, according to my spam, the fifteenth day of March, May, July and October, and the thirteenth day of every other month. (Wikipedia confirms this.)

The message also included the following, which reads like free verse poetry to me:

Multiple Intelligences Inventory – a snapshot in time of an individual’s perceived MI preferences
They can also become skillfull designers and layout artist.
people and the Earth in shitty positions eg. poverty are in
The back of beyond

(By the way, I would have trouble improving my front teeth, with or without embarrassment: I lost them when I was 12, thanks to a softball accident.)