Junk text

So I just got a text message from somebody in the 519 area code. It’s either text message spam or a horribly wrong number. Here’s the entire content of the message:

Babe send more photos

I’m reasonably certain I’m not this person’s target audience.

Cities and the environment

Recently (thanks to James Nicoll) I found a couple of links to articles that claim that cities are actually the most environmentally-friendly way humans can live:

• What have cities ever done for us? (Requires registration)
• NYC is the Greenest City in America

The second article states that the average resident of Manhattan consumes gasoline at a low rate not seen in most of America since the 1920s. Because the city has such high population density, and car traffic moves so slowly, public transit is the preferred means of travel: 82 percent of Manhattan residents travel to work by transit. And the city’s larger buildings are more energy-efficient because less space is exposed to the outside world, which makes them easier to heat and cool.

And, as the first article puts it:

Every time a person chooses to live in a city rather than a small town or a village, she is preserving the environment for the rest of us, contributing to the concentration of people needed to spur commercial and cultural innovation, and adding to the resilience of the economy that surrounds her.

(Adding my own data point: I live in Toronto, and haven’t owned a car since 2003. In fact, this year, I think I’ve only been in a car about half a dozen times at most.)

On the other hand: if you look back through history, you can see why cities have been unpopular. They contained factories that emitted foul-smelling gases; when I was a child, the intersection of the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway was particularly bad, and the entire Don Valley reeked of emissions from pulp and paper factories. And cities have also historically been breeding grounds for epidemics – recall the SARS scare from a few years back.

The not-so-good old days

This morning, I got an email from yet another of my career-related mailing lists. This contained an article called “How To Interview Like A Pro”, which contained the following piece of advice:

Smile often, and be yourself.

My first thought was, “Which of those do they want? I can’t do both at the same time.” Perhaps I’ve been too gloomy lately.

I was thinking today about how much the world has changed since I was younger. In some ways, of course, things are horribly worse: the planet is probably going to hell in a handbasket. Even if it isn’t, the economy is likely to go down the tubes. But some things are a lot better than they were when I was much younger:

• Dentistry. When I was 12, I fielded a softball with my mouth, and lost one of my two front teeth. I had to wear a tooth on a plastic plate until I was 18. Then, my local dentist shaved down the teeth on either side and cemented in a fake plastic tooth to fill the gap in my mouth. These days, a lost tooth can often be replaced by a dental implant.
• Banking machines and interbranch banking. When I was an undergrad, I once had to borrow ten bucks from my roommate to get home to Toronto. (I was going to school in Waterloo at the time.) I had several hundred dollars in my account in Toronto, but it would have taken several days to transfer it from Toronto to Waterloo.
• Specialized high schools. My nephew is now attending a high school for the arts in Toronto. When I was in high school, I don’t think they had such things. My only exposure to the arts was through a mandatory course in junior high school. I recall drawing patterns on a page and then painting them. I got a poor grade because my paints were too watery, so my colours wound up outside the lines.
• The sexes are more equal. We haven’t reached true gender equality yet, but we’re getting a lot closer. For example: it’s standard practice in textbooks now to use “he” and “she” interchangeably. As recently as the late 1970s, “he” was considered the only correct third-person singular pronoun. And “Ms.” is now pretty much universally accepted as an honorific. When my parents were young, women in university were often assumed to be trying to get their “M.R.S.” degree; now, there are more women in university than men.
• There are better medications for mental illness: scientists and doctors have a much clearer idea of how the brain works than they did as recently as twenty years ago.
• Ontario doesn’t censor films any more (at least as far as I know).
• Private phone conversations. A lot of teenagers have cell phones now, and those who don’t have phone jacks in their rooms, so they can talk on the phone in private. When I was growing up, we had one phone in the house. It was on the wall in the kitchen. If I wanted to talk on the phone, there was no way to do so without being overheard by my parents or my younger sisters. This made dating very difficult.

So there you go: life isn’t all bad these days. Now, let’s see if I can remember how to smile… you curve the lips upwards, right? Or is that a grimace?

I’ve always wondered

This will likely just prove I’m dumb, but I have to ask. Nowadays, when you go to a banking machine, you’ll likely see a sign reading “PROTECT YOUR PIN”, with that graphic of a hand shielding a 3×3 set of buttons. What I want to know: how can you adequately protect your PIN and type it in at the same time?

And I can’t help but think: if someone has their PIN stolen by an observant thief standing in line, the bank can now simply blame the customer for not providing sufficient PIN protection.

Something I have to get out of my system: the parenthetical comment in the book title One Magical Sunday (But Winning Isn’t Everything) really annoys me.

I’m inordinately proud of the following: I’ve gone over a month without using my credit card. (No 19.5% interest for you, Royal Bank. Not yours.)

Sorry – I’m tired and cranky. I’ve been battling a cold for a week, and spent an exciting evening doing laundry, paying bills, and tidying my apartment (thus upgrading it from “disaster area” to “extremely disorganized”). I’ll be brighter and more cheerful in my next post, I promise.

A question I never thought I’d ask

I was paying for a quart of milk at the grocery store and found an American quarter in my change. I asked the cashier, “Do you still accept American money at par?”

The weather was wonderful today, but weird and scary. It’s 25C as I write this, a little after 6 pm; according to the Environment Canada web site, this sets a new record for October 21st. And we’re going to have a day like this tomorrow, too.

For the first time in my life, I’m starting to seriously consider the Green Party.

Shoe finery automat

The other day, I got a spam message written in German for what looked to be an automatic shoe polisher:

Es gibt keinen einzigen Grund, auf einen Schuhputzautomaten zu verzichten!
Luxus zum unschlagbaren Preis! Spezialangebot!
Im Office, Hotel, Gastronomie oder privat.
Das besondere Geschenk!
Hier koennen Sie per Email bestellen
Saubere Schuhe gefallen jedem!

Profi Schuhputzautomat statt 499,-* nur noch 134,20 €

According to Babelfish, this translates as:

There is not one reason to do without a shoe finery automat! Luxury at the unbeatable price! Special offer! In the Office, hotel, catering trade or privately. The special gift! Here you can order clean shoes by email please everyone! Professional shoe finery automat instead of 499, – * only 134,20?

And here’s the list of features offered by the shoe finery automat:

• Robustes Gehaeuse aus pulverbeschichtetem Stahlblech (anthrazit)
• 3 Buersten; 2 Polierbuersten fuer helle und dunkele Schuhe und 1 Reinigungsbuerste fuer den groben Schmutz
• Nachfuellbarer Schuhputzmittelbehaelter 200ml mit Kugelventil
• Durchzugsstarker 120 Watt Induktions-Motor
• Komfortabler EIN/AUS-Fussschalter

This translates to:

• Durable housing from powder-coated steel sheet (anthracite coal)
• 3 brushes; 2 polishing brushes for bright and darken shoes and 1 (untranslated) for the rough dirt of
• Refillable shoe finery central containers 200ml with ball valve of
• Passage-strong 120 Watts induction motor of
• Comfortable a/from foot switches

On a totally unrelated topic: I can relate to this – Caring For Your Introvert. I’m like that guy: I need a lot of downtime to function.

The mighty Commuter Army

A travel tip for anyone visiting Toronto (or, for that matter, anyone living in Toronto): if you’re taking the subway during rush hour, always use the escalators whenever possible.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I think exercise is a good thing. (Except when you’re coming down with a cold. Grumble, bitch, complain.) But, during rush hour, there’s always hundreds of people leaving the train at each subway stop. If the escalator is going one way, they all have to take the stairs, and they’re only about two people wide.

If somebody takes the stairs when the escalator is an option, the two lines of people using the stairs have to collapse into one line to make room for the person going the other way. This means that dozens of people have to slow up, move over and wait. All this so that one person can expend maybe 14 calories by going up or down two flights of stairs.

Mind you, this rule does not apply at Broadview station. There, the evening rush crowds are so huge, they swarm over both the stairs and the escalator in a human wave of hundreds of people. Travelling down the stairs becomes impossible.

The coolest thing about the Broadview rush is if you know exactly what subway door matches up with the platform exit. Then, you can be the first one to the escalator, have it all to yourself, and look over your shoulder to see hundreds of people in your wake. You feel like the leader of a mighty Commuter Army.

Pot, kettle, black

Saw this on the CNN web site today:

The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine Moscow’s commitment to democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

“In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,” Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

“I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma,” said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.

This is why I virtually never read fiction – the real world is far more strange and interesting.

Oh, well

A followup to my previous post: as I suspected, I don’t get to keep the money.

Here’s the story: I’ve been paying GST by installments for 2007 for my technical writing business. It looks like two of my three installment payments were mistakenly credited to my 2006 GST records instead of my 2007 ones, so the government cut me a cheque for money that I’m not entitled to.

I had been putting my business number on the cheques, as I was supposed to – but, according to the exasperated person I talked with this afternoon, that isn’t enough. Apparently, the GST cheques and their accompanying forms are routed to separate departments. To ensure that a GST installment cheque is processed properly, I should:

• Put my GST number on the cheque
• Also specify the time period on the cheque
• Circle and highlight the GST number and time period, if possible

Apparently, this sort of thing happens all the time.

I now have pictures up, on my Flickr site, of the Gustav Mahler graffiti I’ve spotted. And, according to toronto.web.ca, there’s more of them in the East End.

Voting and an unexpected cheque

Today is voting day in Ontario. For some reason, I always feel good after I vote; I feel like I’ve exercised my civic duty, or something.

As usual, the process went very smoothly – I presented my registration card and my driver’s license, got my ballots, went behind the screen, wrote out my X’s, and was gone in less than ten minutes. No problem. Why do the Americans have so much trouble with this?

One unusual feature of this year’s voting process: every voter was required to state his or her name and address in front of the voting official. I’m not sure what that proves – if someone was impersonating another voter, and had their registration card and identification, I’m sure that he or she would also remember the name and address of the person being impersonated. The voting official seemed as bemused as I was by this new requirement.

It’s like salespeople who carefully scrutinize the signature on a charge slip to see whether it matches the signature on the credit card. I’m reasonably certain that most thieves who use a credit card fraudulently have taken a few minutes to study and practice the signature on the card before trying to use it.

So the Government of Canada has just sent me an unexpected cheque. They claim that it’s a refund for a GST overpayment. (I’m a contractor with a registered business number, which is why I pay GST.) But I just checked my records, and the amount that I think I paid is less than what they think I paid. And I can’t get through to their toll-free number to check their figures against mine. Argh. I don’t want to spend any of the money until I know that I won’t be having to give it back!