How the other half lives

I’m working near Yonge and Eglinton at the moment, and after work I took a walk south and west, into the Forest Hill neighbourhood. (If you’re not familiar with Toronto: this is one of the wealthiest districts in the city.) It had been a while since I’d been there, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of some of the houses.

I don’t envy other people’s wealth; I’m not especially rich at present, but I figure that’s my own damn fault. But I was wondering, as I walked by these enormous mansions: what do those people do with all those rooms? What do they use them all for?

I’ve been Coudaled

Coudal Partners is a design and advertising studio based out of Chicago. Today, they are featuring a link to my ghost signs pages on their web site.

Since their link was published, I’ve gotten more traffic on my signs pages, which I recently moved to the Yahoo GeoCities space that Rogers provided for me. (I moved my ghost signs there because GeoCities doesn’t support PHP, and those pages are just about the only ones I have that don’t require it.) Traffic has become heavy enough that my GeoCities site is giving me “bandwidth exceeded” messages when I go there.

Mind you, GeoCities’ limit is apparently so low that it doesn’t take that many users to overload my page. It might be as low as two or three an hour, if my math is correct. So it’s not like everybody in Chicago is suddenly checking out my photos.

I have always wondered: what happens when some poor unsuspecting user puts up a bunch of photos on his or her site, some very popular site links to it, and the site’s web host begins serving up gigabytes of data? Could this poor user be stuck with a large unexpected bill for web access?

This is why I moved most of my photos to Flickr a few months back – I didn’t want to have to pay for a sudden download spike. I don’t feel comfortable taking that risk.

Good things and bad things

I haven’t wanted to write much lately. It’s November, which is when I get the blahs.

Good thing: I got a letter from Revenue Canada, and it wasn’t a demand for more money – it was a Statement Of Interim Payments, informing me that my GST installment payments were up to date. The relief I felt when I discovered that I didn’t owe them anything can only be matched by the feeling you get when you find your keys after thinking that you lost them.

Bad thing: people who board subway trains and then stand in the doorway while trying to decide where to stand or sit. Umm… we’re all trying to get in behind you, sir.

Bad thing #2: The Adobe Acrobat Professional update software. It is forcing me to download one point release at a time, and demands a reboot after each release. I’m one reboot down, and two reboots to go.

Bad thing #3: November.

The sounds… of pain

A while back, I ran across Nad Shot, which is a blog about comics featuring men getting kicked in the ‘nads. You’d think this would get boring after a while, but it never does: there are so many ways to depict a boot to the groin.

Here, for your reading pleasure, are the words that have been used to describe a nad shot, going back as far as October 10th of this year. Note that these sound effects describe the shot itself, not the recipient’s reaction to it.

WHUD!
PHHT
PLATCH
SKLONSH
FUMP
WHUTCH
FAM!
WHACK
KRRENNNGG
KLUD
KRUNCH!
FOOM
CRUNCH!
WUMP!
SWUP!
KRNCHH
KRUUNK
BAWOOM!
WHUD (this time without the exclamation point)
BLAMP!
SHTUCKK
TUMP

Of these, I think my favourite is FAM – as in, he’s probably not going to be starting one after being on the receiving end of that.

My airplane is freshly waxed

I saw this ad on my Google mail this morning:

Never Wax Your Airplane – [url deleted] – NASA Technology Makes Waxes Obsolete. Amazing Shine! $69.95

Two thoughts:

• How many people have their own airplane? And, of these people, how many of them are looking to keep their planes shiny at lower cost?
• “Waxing the airplane” sounds like a new synonym for, well, self-gratification, if you get my drift.

Two things caught my attention on Sunday. The first happened when I went out to breakfast. A man sitting at the table behind me complained to the waitress about his omelette. He had asked for a two-egg omelette, and was miffed because the omelette contained three eggs. The waitress explained that their eggs were fairly small (true), so their three-egg omelette was roughly equivalent to a normal two-egg omelette. This logic did not sway our man: he said that he wanted only two eggs, not three, and why couldn’t he get what he wanted, for chrissake? The long-suffering waitperson offered to have the cook prepare a two-egg omelette, but the man said that he didn’t have time for that, and generally acted huffy and displeased. I thought, why not just eat two-thirds of the omelette, for crying out loud? And I wondered: if this man has so much difficulty coping with the concept of an omelette not being manufactured to his precise specifications, how could he possibly handle greater adversities in life? He seems crippled by his sense of entitlement.

The other thing that caught my attention happened on the University subway at about 9:30 in the evening on Sunday. The car I was in was almost empty. At the far end, a much older man, clearly suffering from the long-term effects of years of excessive drinking, was lurching about. Then, he spotted an empty plastic shopping bag and some loose pieces of paper lying on the floor. With great difficulty, he bent over to pick up the bag and the papers, and proceeded to stuff the papers into the bag. This was hard for him to do, but he finally managed it. Then, he threw the bag away with great force and sank back into his seat, mumbling to himself. I thought: I have no idea what life will be like for me when I grow old, but I hope it turns out better than that.

Like, duh

My post earlier this week was incorrect: it turns out that the Toronto Star’s website does support RSS feeds – you just have to click on a link or two to find them.

I’m spoiled: I’m used to seeing the RSS link right there on the main page.

My Google dependency

Lately, I’ve become worried that I am growing too dependent on Google.

For instance, I now do most of my web surfing through Google Reader’s RSS feed aggregator. I’ve become so dependent on this aggregator that I tend not to visit sites that don’t offer RSS feeds; I haven’t read the online version of the Toronto Star in quite a while, as I would have to go to the trouble of actually typing in its URL or clicking on its bookmark link. That’s too much work.

Item number two: Google Calendar is a convenient way to keep track of my appointments; it’s much better than my old method, which was a piece of paper located in a strategic location near my computer. (I apologize, again, to the friend of mine whose party I missed in my pre-Google days because I thought it was on a Sunday afternoon instead of a Saturday afternoon.) Apparently, Google Calendar can send reminders directly to my cellphone; I say “apparently” because I just set that up, and haven’t had any appointments yet that I needed to be reminded about. (My life is not very exciting.)

Number three: Google Earth is just a cool application. I can start from a big picture of the earth, and zoom into a picture of my neighbourhood. Or anywhere. Yowza. Given my travel budget (currently set at roughly $0), this is the only way I can see any of the world, let alone all of it.

And last but not least: I’ve just set up my existing email address to redirect to Google Mail. To do this, I created a gmail account, set my email address to forward to gmail, and specified that gmail is to send messages as if from my existing address. To the outside world, my email hasn’t changed, but now I access everything from Google.

There are some obvious advantages to living in Google’s world. For one thing, I can now access my email from any web browser that is hooked up to the Internet. I can also access it from my cellphone, if I want to (though reading and writing on that little screen is something of a pain). And I’m not likely to run out of space any time soon: when I uploaded my saved email, it consumed about 160 MB of space. Google is currently offering me 4739 MB, and the number keeps going up: in the last two weeks or so, I’ve been given more disk space than I am currently using. (I started with 4518 MB. I track it every day, just for fun.)

So, yay Google. Lots of cool features, and you’ve got to like the price (namely, free). But I’m wondering: what’s the downside? (I’m a pessimist, or perhaps a realist, by nature; there’s always a downside.) For one thing, what if Google crashes unexpectedly? Google’s server farms would make a great place for a terrorist attack; I assume (and hope) that their data is distributed, and in multiple locations. What if there’s a huge power failure? To be honest, I’m not too concerned about Google meltdown; Google is probably far more reliable than my computer, which is nearly five years old and is showing extreme signs of wear and tear. My C: drive will likely crash and burn before Google does.

But I’m also wondering: what’s in this for them? I assume that Google isn’t offering us all of these goodies out of the goodness of their collective hearts. Are they interested in data mining, for example? What sort of statistical studies will they be able to perform – or want to be able to perform – once they get hold of huge quantities of email, calendar appointments, and browsing preferences? Will they sell this information to others, or are they doing it now? (Sudden thought: if Google ever joins forces with Facebook, somebody somewhere is going to know everything about everybody everywhere.)

Or perhaps it’s all about the ads. Google applications are smart enough to display ads that are related to the email content you are viewing, which means that they can offer advertisers a niche-specific market for their services. Sometimes, this tailored advertising can border on the surreal. For example: somebody sent me a joke today in which Barbie was prominently featured; when I opened the joke, this one-line ad appeared at the top of my screen:

My Twinn® Dolls – www.MyTwinn.com – The just-like-me doll created to look like your daughter’s twin!

Dear God, that creeps me out. The idea that someone’s daughter would want to play with a doll that looks just like her is weird enough. But the idea of a daughter captured in doll form, frozen at one stage of life forever… that’s freaky in the extreme. But I digress.

I guess what Google gets out of all of this, besides targeted ad revenue and the chance to make money from data harvesting, is lots and lots of customers. Getting a little bit of money from a whole lot of people is always a good way to become rich. And I still like them better than I like Microsoft.

By the way, here’s the Barbie joke. Note: a woman sent this to me. No man could ever get away with telling this joke.

One day, a father got out of work and on his way home he suddenly remembered that it was his daughter’s birthday. He pulled over to a toy shop and asked the saleslady, “How much for one of those Barbies in the display window?”

The saleslady answered, “Which one do you mean, sir? We have: Work Out Barbie for $19.95, Shopping Barbie for $19.95, Beach Barbie for $19.95, Disco Barbie for $19.95, Ballerina Barbie for $19.95, Astronaut Barbie for $19.95, Skater Barbie for $19.95, and Divorced Barbie for $265.95.”

The amazed father asked: “It’s what?! Why is the Divorced Barbie $265.95 and the others only $19.95?”

The annoyed salesperson rolled her eyes, sighed, and answered: “Sir…, Divorced Barbie comes with: Ken’s car, Ken’s house, Ken’s boat, Ken’s furniture, Ken’s computer and… one of Ken’s friends.”

How far will my dollar travel?

I was curious: now that the Canadian dollar has gotten so valuable (or, more accurately, the American dollar has become so weak), is it actually worthwhile to shop for books online in the States?

As a test, I considered David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, a wonderful novel I read a while back that I’ve been thinking of buying. I decided to compare prices at various outlets to see whether Internet-based cross-border shopping is viable.

First, I checked the price at my local retail store. It was $24.95. Yikes.

Next, I looked at the price on amazon.ca. It was $15.72. That’s a lot better.

Then, I checked out Barnes and Noble, and amazon.com. Their prices were $13.45 and $10.17, respectively. When you factor in the exchange rate, that looks pretty cheap, right?

Not so fast. There’s an ugly little demon known as “shipping charges”. And they ain’t cheap. Barnes and Noble is charging $2.49 per book, plus $3.99 to ship the complete order. And amazon.com is worse: they demand $3.99 per item, plus $4.99 as a shipping charge for the complete order. Given that amazon.ca’s prices aren’t all that much higher, it looks like I wouldn’t be saving all that much money if I bought in the States and only bought a few books. Unless I drove to Buffalo or something – and, even then, you’ve got to pay for all that gas.

So, sadly, it looks like I won’t be trying to exploit the exchange rate any time soon. But I also won’t be buying books in Canadian bookstores, either – paying full list price is clearly insane.

Annoyances

A bunch of little things have annoyed me lately.

First: my web host doesn’t allow the deletion of non-empty directories from my web space. I can see why they put this safety precaution in place – so that people can’t accidentally delete an entire file structure with a couple of misclicks. But it’s really frustrating if you put any free software on your web site.

Here’s the deal: recently, I converted this blog to WordPress and put it up on my own web space. WordPress is wonderful software, and I’m very happy with it. But, a few days ago, they released an update containing important security fixes and etcetera. It doesn’t seem to be a point release: they’ve created a new copy of everything. Because their software is organized into a complex directory hierarchy, it would take me quite some time to migrate the whole thing over to my web site. I would have to painstakingly delete and copy one subdirectory at a time, which would probably take at least an hour. I could just blithely copy the whole thing over, overwriting when I had to, but that could leave obsolete files lying around.

So I only copied over the important things. The blog still seems to be working, but the software has stopped sending me notifications when people post comments, so I must have missed something significant. And who knows what else I broke? Sigh.

Annoyance #2: I like Facebook (especially Scrabulous, which has taken over my life), but I hate seeing notices such as this one:

14 of your friends have been invited to A REALLY COOL PARTY TO WHICH YOU HAVE NOT BEEN INVITED, YOU LOSER YOU, HA HA.

I’ve set my Preferences to show as few Events as possible on my home page, but they still come up every now and again. I hate that.

And, annoyance #3: does anyone know how to properly prevent and treat upper leg strains? I do a lot of walking and/or sitting in one position all day, and every now and again I strain one or more muscles in my upper leg when I overdo one or both of these things. These aren’t major injuries, but such an injury takes a long time to heal, as sitting down for any length of time aggravates it – and sitting down all day is how I earn my living. Sleep becomes difficult too, as lying down also aggravates the injury. I guess my problem is this: how do you heal an injury when normal resting postures make it worse?

Over and over again

Stephen Harper’s Tories are at it again: the Globe reported this morning that a new attack ad is about to hit the airwaves, reemphasizing their contention that Stephane Dion is not a leader.

Something that occurred to me: if someone other than Mr. Dion had been elected Liberal leader, he or she would probably be dealing with a lot of the same problems. There would still be the infighting that there is now, as people who supported one or more of the losing candidates would still be scheming to get ahead.

And the Tories would be spending enormous amounts of time and money attacking this other leader, whoever this person was. The wedge issues and talking points might be different, but the result would likely be the same. (For example: if Ignatieff had won, the attack ads would likely have focused on how much time he has spent out of the country.)

I have no idea whether Stephane Dion is decisive enough to be a good leader or a good prime minister. But, for the last several months, we have been all on the receiving end of a focused, carefully thought out campaign to plant this suggestion in our heads, over and over again: “Stephane Dion is not a leader.” “Stephane Dion is not a leader.” “Stephane Dion is not a leader.” “What I tell you three times is true.”

This is why politicians continually resort to attack ads: if enough mud is thrown, some of it will eventually stick. That seems to be how the human brain works. If the Tories’ attack psychologists are good enough at their jobs, we may wind up having no choice but to think that Mr. Dion isn’t a good leader.

Sometimes I wonder: how much time does Mr. Harper spend on this stuff, as opposed to governing the country? And how much of the Conservatives’ legislation is tailored to achieve maximum political effect, and how much is intended to benefit Canadians? What will Mr. Harper do if he obtains the majority he longs for?