In the days of Windows and only Windows, the usual routine was find a bug, hit report a problem, kick back and maybe someone would get around to eventually, if you asked really really nice and forked over a hundred, maybe possibly fixing it. If they weren’t busy sucking back a beer or something. There was no real two-way exchange of information, per say–they either fixed it and you didn’t know about it until later, or they ignored it and you didn’t know about it until later if at all. Flash forward to the last week or so.

As I make no secret of, I power this site on WordPress plus about 20 wickedly handy plugins to take care of everything from statistics to adjusting things so folks who come across a 4-year-old link that no longer works can still find the entry they’re looking for at its new location. It was that latter redirect plugin that decided at one point to give me issues. For the record and those curious, if you want something similar for your own site the plugin is Smart 404, and it only works–to my knowledge, anyway–on WordPress. Now, before my year or two of experimenting with that other blogging platform, I had this site running under a different piece of software. That piece of software, still in development, took care of my needs back then with the exception of the whole comment spam thing–but the way it handled links in general was just different enough that when I set this up, and included the old entries from my first attempt at a blog, those links promptly broke. Not horribly, just a slight enough change that Apache threw a page not found error.

WordPress in general is very good about redirecting things within its own isolated environment to where you want to go. So, for example, if you were to go to http://www.the-jdh.com/index.php?post=123, it would redirect you to the appropriate post automatically–and to the appropriate, much more readable URL of that post–with no coaxing from me whatsoever. Kind of wicked nifty cool in an “I’m a lazy tech geek” kind of way. The problem is, there’s no native functionality for redirecting other links, not created by WordPress, to their appropriate wordpress equivalent. Enter the redirection plugin, Smart 404.

When I set it up to do what it was intended to do, though, I ran into another, slightly frustrating, problem. If you were to go to http://www.the-jdh.com/year/month/date/some_post.html, which was the old link structure on the blog, even with the plugin in place you’d get a 404 instead of being redirected to http://www.the-jdh.com/year/month/some-post/, which is one of WordPress’s default structures. Now, if we were talking closed source projects here, I’d of just switched to something else that did a similar thing–I’d have a better chance of seeing the problem fixed, and sooner, by doing that. But instead, it started out entirely in public comments on the blog of the developer of the offending plugin.

The actual conversation was, were it to happen over IM instead of blog comments, very short yet still very effective.

I posted a couple comments over there, pretty much explaining what happens when someone references one of the old, non-working links, and what according to the plugin documentation is supposed to happen. After running a real quick test to get access to exactly what it was the plugin was trying to do, the conversation effectively turned very quickly to something like this.
Dev: Okay, try this line of code and let me know if it breaks.
Me: *copy, paste* Okay, looks like it doesn’t explode. And hey, it does what it’s supposed to now. Who knew?
Him: Awesome. *throws it into CVS*
Me: Hey look, new version. And there’s the fix I tested. Awesome squared.

Yeah, it was literally that easy. And a very awesome reason for why sometimes, being able to actually see the program’s inner workings is a very good thing–you get to escentially debug and test a patch for your own problems, rather than waiting on the software’s tech support department–if they have one–to get around to communicating with the developers, who may or may not then get around to actually diagnosing and fixing the problem. The open source community as a whole gets major props for that. And major props to the Smart 404 developer for being nearly as quick to implement solutions to problems as his users are at finding problems to fix. And huge props to WordPress, because–really, do I need a reason? Now excuse me while I go consider for the thousandth time learning PHP or something.

Disclaimer: This entry may be offensive to the religiously sensative. I only wrote it; you chose to read it. You have been warned.

I used to see it only on rare occasions, but the more time I spend watching and interacting with the community, the more a patern sticks out that kind of has me at least somewhat scratching my head. There are an aweful lot of blind folks out there who’ve decided to fall into religion. Of the religions out there, the most common one for folks to fall into, at least in my experience, has been Christianity–and not just the absent belief in God, but often times some of the strictest definitions of Christianity.

Some were very likely raised on it, and would have very likely fallen into it whether they were blind or not as a result–there’s an entire sub-entry on that subject I’ll get into when I’ve got a little more brain power. But a surprising number seem to fall into it later in life, and usually fall hard as a result. I sometimes wonder what prompts people to suddenly flip that switch on in their brain that throws them into ultraconservative mode. I’m not sure it’s a particular type of personality or what have you that does it, per say. The more level-headed usually end up being for some reason or another nudged in that general direction by someone/something either known or not to them, whereas folks with less balanced personalities tend to make the decision to do so at the drop of a hat–there are several dozen examples of folks well-known for doing things that most Christians would be convinced they’d be on a fast track to hell for doing, who have suddenly had a change of heart, and overnight seemed to switch off that other lifestyle/persona, and switched on the lifestyle/persona who would have probably sat in a room with their previous one and been more than happy to spend 20 minutes on exactly how many levels of wrong and in exactly how many ways that lifestyle was. And there are still some who, quite probably out of not knowing exactly what they’re trying to accomplish, seem to float somewhere between the two–one minute they’re a Christian, and the next they’re into the whole bondage thing or what have you that, once again, their Christian side would probably want to slap out of them. Twice.

It probably doesn’t help a whole lot when you consider that Christianity in particular, though I suspect other religions as well, regularly refer to blindness as just a part of the evil that God will wash away if you’d just let him–the phrase “Was blind, but now I see” comes to mind. In my view, no one reinforces the viewpoint of blindness being somehow bad/wrong/evil/whatever better than a large portion of Christianity. I can see folks who are uncomfortable/unhappy/disenchanted/whatever about being blind gravitating to it for that, possibly–the thought that if they try hard enough to believe/pray/do all the things a good Christian’s supposed to do, they might possibly regain–or, in some cases, gain–their sight. According to the bible that’s how it’s supposed to work, right?

Is being blind, even having been born so, such a life-altering experience that your only option in most cases is to cling to the first thing that offers to “cure” you, or is there more to it than that? And what about the people who, while they say they’re perfectly comfortable being blind, still cling to a faith who escentially dictates that by virtue of not having a working pair of eyes, they are somehow less equal at best, sick at worst, and the ideal beneficiary of some other honest Christian’s cherrity in either case? What draws them to the church? What keeps them there?

A conversation was had among friends a few weeks ago that really started me thinking about that aspect of this entry. A girl who lives a ways out of the city for her own reasons has to rely on people in her church group to help her with doing her grocery shopping. These people don’t necessarily approve of the way she eats and/or in general keeps herself, and make no bones about trying to change her mind–forcefully, where possible. This includes things like offering to take her for groceries, on the condition that said groceries do not include dog food in the hopes that she’ll get rid of her dogs and move into the city, or the purchase of supposedly healthier products because they don’t approve of her usual choices, in spite of the fact the offending healthier products just so happen to be products she’s apparently alergic to. Yet she stays there, and still goes to that church, and still goes with that group for her groceries in spite of that.

On a more personal level, and one that seems to back up the perception that at worst you’re viewed as sick, on one of my very first few trips down here, Jessica and I were coming back to her apartment from somewhere and we were stopped on the street. A nice, apparently young lady asked us if we knew where a particular church was–the name escapes me at the moment. Not being Christian or having had any other reason to be in or near that church, we didn’t, and told her as much. Then, without missing a beat, she responds, “Well, our service is at 9. You should come–God will heal you.”. When she left, Jess and I stood there and just looked at each other for a minute or two with that “Bwuh?” expression on both our faces, before continuing home. I think the exact words that came out of my mouth when we’d cleared earshot were “Do we need healing?”. Someone clearly thought we did–and that’s probably far less surprising than it should be.

It’s things like that, among several others–but this entry’s already a mile long, that make me wonder just what it is blind people in particular see in it, and why so many, even if they were never really brought up around it, seem to be drawn–or, if you’d prefer, run screaming–towards it. Is there something mixed in with all this other crap that I’m just not seeing? Do people actually like a lot of this other crap? Is it something else entirely that I just plain won’t understand on account of not being one with the collective? I’ve spent years trying to wrap my head around it and only succeed in wrapping it around a headache. Is there some connection here between blindness and faith, or is it just blind faith? Inquiring minds want to know.

I was originally planning to leave Rochester a little over 2 weeks ago due to potential school things. Those potential school things ended up falling through, so I got to stay for the rest of the month. I was due to leave this past saturday, on account of I have a potential job prospect–albeit not one I’m overly enthused about, but a job (more on that in another entry). For reasons of convenience–mostly that of the folks who will be my ride from the bus station, that date’s been pushed back. So now, in order to take a stab at securing myself something resembling gainful employment, I officially pack up and depart for the other side of the great divide tonight, for a tomorrow noonish arival. Which, I won’t deny, doesn’t hurt my feelings in the slightest–it’s potentially a win for me, and later Jess, either way this thing goes.

Going back means I can start the ball rolling and get me employment, which escentially makes me more able to aford to come down here more often and later bring her up to Canada on a more permanent basis. If it ends up falling through the cracks, I won’t end up with the employment, but I’ll have more free time–if not necessarily the money–to spend with, or at the very least keeping in close contact with, the fiance. Which is beneficial for several dozen other reasons. From where I sit, I can’t really go wrong.

If rules are made to be broken, then plans are made to be changed. And these ones have been changing since I left Pembroke in July. And you’ll probably never hear me complain.

I may have spent the last 3 days playing catch-up on what happened over the weekend, but the weekend was still far worth it. It was pretty well back to back cellebrating of one thing or another–first with a belated wedding shower for a couple friends of ours on Saturday, which I think went about as well as I expected considering the collection of people there, and then on Sunday with a birthday cellebration for one of said friends–equally as awesome, in spite of the fact I apparently butted heads with a few folks over trivial stuff but oh well.

Saturday consisted of a huge bunch of us getting together for dinner and talking, with some variety of music or another in the background. Then Jess and I went back to stay with the guests of honour and their family overnight so we could be there for her birthday in the morning. There was a bondfire and more conversation when we got to the house, then the lot of us pretty much went one after the other for the nearest bed and promptly fell into it.

Sunday was pretty low key, though that may or may not have had more to do with the fact her mother stuffed us all to the point I know at least I was considering just rolling away from the table than it did with the weather, which had apparently decided to pick that morning to be nasty at us. We sat around for most of the day, and I finally had an opportunity to introduce Jess to an Adam Sandler movie she hadn’t yet actually seen. The house got busy later on, when several more of their relatives dropped in with birthday wishes, and some stuck around for the dinner they’d planned–which, I think, was only slightly bigger than the breakfast we had that morning. More conversation, more attempts at humour on all sides, and I got a couple snorts out of people with, of all things, a simple ring tone I snagged forever ago from the brother thing. Then it was the typical birthday stuff–opening of cards/gifts, singing happy birthday, cake, ice cream, all the usual shananigans. When that was taken care of, we started to all get back to what served as our usual routines. We were naturally among the last to leave, and ended up hitching a ride with the birthday girl and her husband on account of her mother had offered to drag us home. Got back here, flaked out for a few minutes, and eventually, crashed.

Monday was equally low key, what with the fact we hadn’t actually had a day to just not do much of anything all weekend–it was fun, but that many people gets to messing with your head, even if you’re me. So we sat around being zombies all day. Then came the catching up on pretty much the last 4-5 days of current events in the news, tech and blogging worlds–then it was off we went to pick up right where we left off.

If I had to pick a weekend to not have to be anywhere, this past weekend would have definitely been it. As it turned out, I think all told everyone who was there had a reasonably good time. And with this weekend seeming to be pretty well cut and dry, as much as I’d rather forget my way back to Canada sometimes, if I had to leave, I’d almost prefer it to be on a weekend like this next one. In the meantime, since this weekend hasn’t happened yet, I’m going to go back to my daily routine and pretend I don’t have to go anywhere. Because, hey, it worked before.

Last year, I had an opportunity to take a shot at participating in a survey for the general accessibility of certain features of then current cell phone models. If I’m not mistaken, it focused almost entirely on the ability to make payments for certain things via your cell phone, among other things. My name was on the list for that, though for one reason or another I never actually got in to participate fully–too bad, as they were offering to pay me for my time.

Flash forward to yesterday. I get an email while I’m going through finding political morons to mock, inviting me to another focus group with the option of also or instead doing a survey by mail. Like the last one, the focus group will be held in Ottawa by the Neil Squire Society. Like the last one, it’s focus is on the ability for the visually or otherwise disabled to make use of certain aspects of cell phones–in this case, the ability and ease of use when it comes to obtaining emergency services via cell phone.

The only difference between this one and last year’s is I’m not currently actually living in Ottawa–not yet, anyway. So getting to the actual focus group could require some creative effort. Still, much like the last one if it comes up, I fully intend to be there. Blame my interest in most if not all things accessible. And, hey, they offered me money last time. I’m not stupid.

I got a random call from my father while I was down here, with the probably fourty millionth tech question the family’s posed to me since I turned geek. Only this one with a twist. It would appear my parents, who haven’t even looked at a gaming system since I was probably 13, just grabbed themselves a Nintendo Wii. His question? How to hook it up to the network I threw together for them. Why? They thought it’d be fun to browse the web on their TV. Ladies and gentlemen, I suspect the birth of a glorified PC. For the record? I’m so not fixing this one.

So I’ve been on the US side of the border for nearly two weeks now, and busy as all get out for most of it. Part of the busy was spending the majority of this past friday evening at the Rochester public market. We were planning to check that out anyway, Jess and I, since she’d only been there maybe once before me, and of course I hadn’t been there yet. So i cruised by where she was getting off work, picked her and Kyle–who conveniently also hadn’t been there yet–up, met Heather over there and we crashed it for a few hours. And in doing so, were treated to a free performance by Donna the Buffalo. Apparently, both Kyle and Heather have heard/seen this group live before, which left both Jess and I to experience it for the first time. Hell of an experience, really.

From right around the first or second song, I had a feeling it’d be a pretty damn near wicked awesome performance. Of course, anyone who can perform “Ring of Fire” and not completely kill it deserves at least a shot at not making me cringe. I didn’t cringe. Instead, I find myself rather unsurprisingly in the category of those who highly approve. I don’t think any of my partners in crime were entirely all that surprised by it either–I’m looking at you, Heather.

They only played for an hour and a half, give or take–a lot less time than I thought they’d get, but apparently the organizers decided to do the headliner thing first. Still, it was long enough for me to decide when I do return to the cooler side, I’m gonna have me some downloading. Because I don’t have some downloading right now, have a video instead. Not Friday’s performance, but a performance. I approve by this. And if you find yourself not approving, evaluate your musical tastes. Right now. Enough said.

As much as I bitch about small-town life, and the Pembroke/Petawawa area is actually surprisingly small, sometimes it has its awesomely cool points. Like this kid, who’s up for a CCMA in September. He’s not only done solo work, but has played with several well-known groups/singers. The kicker? My mother used to work with his sister. Hang on a second–I need to reset the nifty meter. In a way, I sort of indirectly–yeah, very indirectly–know this guy. Awesome.

I have a long and complicated history with Windows XP’s service pack 3. Mostly, it consists of me installing it and it doing all manner of bad things to the machine it’s installed on–like, for instance, being partially responsible for the temporary breakage of an internet connection. Recently though, I’ve noticed a slightly disturbing trend. Machines older than mine and less stable than mine are taking SP3 with little to no problem and even less headache. And I’ve personally seen it installed on one with plenty of other problems of its own–hello, less than stable IE 8. So there was definitely something out to get me–now I had proof.

After exiling SP3 from my machine for being pretty much a complete and total failure, I’d also a while later gone ahead and got rid of Eset’s Smart Security product for a whole host of other, unrelated reasons I’ll get around to posting at some point in the maybe not too distant future. That fixed a few dozen other slightly irritating, but not ultimately hindering, problems. After seeing SP3 crop up on some of these machines and ultimately not cause mass amounts of destruction, I decided just before I came down here to install it again on mine. I took that opportunity to test IE 8 out on a non-frankenputer as well, but I’ll save that for when I figure out what about the offending machine is making it break. And, surprise of surprises, it didn’t result in extreme amounts of bloodshed, or physical damage to the computer.

So, after much of the getting pissed with Microsoft for making yet more work for me, and after confirming not once, but five times that SP3 did not, in fact, break me severely on install, I officially withdraw any cursing, swearing, or overall snarkish remarks directed at Microsoft on its behalf. Instead, I shall officially aim those remarks at Eset/Nod32, and add them to the 50 billion others I’ve had plenty of time to prepare and direct at the offending antivirus manufacturer. But don’t worry, Microsoft still has much for me to snark about–I still have to figure out in exactly how many pieces they’ve managed to break .net framework on this machine, which may or may not warrant a separate entry. But SP3, at least so far, is not as evil as it looked a few months ago. Good job, MS. Now fix your framework, goddammit.

Calling the last week or so busy would probably be an insult to busy weeks everywhere, but in a lot of ways, that’s exactly what it was. After the assessment of doom, I took it easy the rest of monday and did absolutely nothing. I needed the relaxation for the rest of the week. Tuesday night was pretty much the start of insanity. Small, relatively contained, but insanity.

Somehow, my nephew managed to be 10 months old without my knowing it. Which means if there’s something he could possibly get his hands on, he’s probably already done so. On tuesday, I went to give the mother a hand with minding him plus the two dogs. Fortunately for both of us, when I got there he was in bed and sleeping. Not fortunately for either one of us, by 7:00 the next morning he was up and ready to go, no questions asked. And go he did–all over the place whether we wanted to chase him there or not. We took him in to see the grandparents, and he was no less energetic when we got him there. This continued pretty much all day, with the exception of maybe an hour in the afternoon when we managed to actually convince him that it wasn’t, in fact, dangerous to his health to actually spend some time immobile for a few minutes. Right up until I think it might have been 9:00 or so, it was pretty nearly non-stop. We even took him for a short walk that afternoon–mostly because we could use the break, and then he’d pretty much just go where we pushed him. By the time we finally got him down for the night, we were more than ready to fall into bed shortly behind him. And, well, we did. And got just enough sleep that the 6:30 wake-up call he’d had in mind for thursday wasn’t quite as painful as I expected. As you could probably guess, most of thursday was spent–yep, doing the exact same thing. And taking turns trying to convince him to go down for a nap so we could get things done around the house that needed to get done–that to do list tends to get pretty long when the majority of your attention’s focused on one very adoreable, but very exhausting, kid. Of course, that didn’t actually end up happening; although between the two of us I think we might have managed to scratch one or two things off that list. Kevin dropped in to kidnap him back at about noonish or so, which gave us just enough time to try clearing off the rest of that list before we hit the floor from simple lack of energy. I don’t even remember most of what happened the rest of thursday beyond the usual routine, which is almost a safe bet for any day that isn’t overly filled with chaos. Of course, the couple days I just managed to survive meant I was pretty much a zombie for most of friday. I slept like the dead thursday night, and was the walking dead pretty well up until friday night.

While I was in recovery, and probably while I was less than conscious, Meka was doing her thing for the karaoke world championships. She’d made it to the state finals as of friday, and was competing there saturday night. My origional intent was to watch the event online, but technical difficulties–for once, not on my end–quickly put the breaks on that notion. I would learn later on that night that I ended up missing an awesome performance, giving her second place and a spot at the regional competition in August.

Yesterday was more time of the familial variety, with a meetup for breakfast then another run into the grandparents’ to kill a couple hours. Then it was back to taking it relatively easy for the evening.

This morning, I got my hands on the audio portion of Meka’s performances. And, with her permission, once she makes them available in video form on Youtube, they’ll make their way here. Now, I go chase after a couple dogs while the mother unit makes her way to work. She had a job interview this morning–glad one of us still gets those, so I’ve been over here since about 10:30. And will probably still be here at about 9:30 tonight. It’s gonna be a long ass day.

Busy or not, this week’s been surprisingly educational. A small sampling of things I learned, in list format. Because, really, who doesn’t like lists?

• Just because the kid’s not walking yet does not, in fact, mean he’s easy to catch.
• Or slow down.
• Or stop.
• Or keep track of if you’re not right behind him.
• When they decide they are not going down for a nap, you are not putting them there.
• Nor are you going to trick them into going for one. Don’t even try it.
• This includes playing with him even while he’s within an inch of falling asleep. He knows.
• This also includes his grandma sneaking off to the kitchen while his uncle plays with him even though he’s an inch from falling asleep. Again, he knows.
• This also includes his grandma sneaking off to the kitchen after he’s already asleep. I still can’t wrap my head around how, but he knows.
• I am apparently not the only one with a periodically screwed up sleep schedule. By the way, kid? This whole 6:30 thing is not healthy.
• The face kids that age make when you let them sample your coke? Awesome. Sorry, no video–I didn’t have my cell phone handy right then.
• Discovered by the nephew at breakfast: your food is good, but someone else’s food is always better.
• Yes, a 10-month-old can, in fact, get on top of your end table if he wants to bad enough.
• Or pull something off it.
• Or pull out the end table’s drawer if you aren’t presently leaning against it.
• Rules are meant to be broken. And gates that block off stairs to prevent infant head trauma are meant to be opened.
• Related: The fact you’ve just wedged the afore mentioned gate against the wall so you’d practically need a sledgehammer to remove it? That’s not discouragement. That’s a challenge.
• The second worst possible thing you could ever do is say no. The worst possible thing is mean it.
• Of course, he’ll probably do it anyway.
• Twice, just because you said no.
• And once more just for spite, I swear.
• 10 months old is not too young to start messing with people’s heads. Either that or this kid’s wickedly gifted.
• If and when I ever get around to having one, I’m investing in a goddamn leash. At least.

This month’s conservative conspiracy features the scrapping of the mandatory filling out of the long form census, to be replaced by an entirely voluntary filling out of same–my personal second choice, only to getting rid of the census entirely in all forms. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a conservative conspiracy without various media outlets and statistics organizations–most of which probably have their own methods for obtaining exactly the same information–calling it one. So what makes this a conservative conspiracy? the US already did it. And many of the reasons for the decision to at least give it a try? Yep, much the same as the anti-census reasons up here–mostly to do with privacy, etc. And the result?

Statistics Canada has said it can’t quite predict what the impact on the data will be, but the United States experiment might be instructive.

When a percentage of Americans were given the choice of filling out the national survey, the mail-back response rate dropped by a third.

And as some in Canada have warned about the impact on the long census, the response rates among certain groups became too low for reliable information. For example, the proportion of completed surveys dropped to about 20 per cent for blacks and Hispanics.

If folks are given a choice whether or not to fill out a government survey, they might actually decide not to–particularly if the offending survey asks questions that both they already have the answer to and aren’t really any of their business even if they didn’t. Who knew? And of course, because it was tried and they didn’t get a result they liked in the US, and they had the nerve to do so while George Bush was still in office, it gets branded a US/Canadian conservative conspiracy. Now, admittedly, I have absolutely no idea how information collection works in the US, but being as I go through at least the minimum every year, I’m quite familiar with how it works in Canada–or, at least, how it works for someone in my current position.

• Your current location for purposes of demographics is registered on just about every piece of municipal, provincial and federal paperwork you’ve ever in your life had to fill out.
• Your aboriginal status, where applicable, is registered–if you so choose–when you file your income taxes.
• That status is additionally registered if you choose to apply for your aboriginal status card.
• Your disability, if any, is registered–also at your choosing–when you file your income taxes.
• Additionally, at least in Ontario, you are registered as having a disability if you apply for and are accepted into the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).
• In either case re: disability, medical proof must be documented with the overseeing government body before the appropriate forms–be they income tax or ODSP application–are signed off on by the ones doing the processing (I had a personal run-in with this catch a couple years ago).
• The government, through the Canada Revenue Agency, can usually–unless you’re doing something to try and sneak a little more money into your bank account and a little less into the government’s–get a pretty decent handle on your employment history, income history, duration of employment, how long you spent on employment insurance, how long you spent on any disability pensions/social assistance/welfare programs, how long you spent not doing much of anything (technically, even if your income is 0 you should still be filing taxes).
• Your race/ethnicity is also registered upon the issuing of a birth certificate, and presumedly when you’re filling out paperwork for immigrating to Canada, though considering the government is now looking at reviewing its hiring practices probably after this incident (Look out; it’s another conservative conspiracy!) involving someone being denied the chance to apply due to not being aboriginal or a member of a visible minority, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that’s probably not going to be quite as relevant.

Okay, so all that aside, why a volunteer long census? Or, because I’d prefer this option, why scrap the census entirely? The answer to both questions is really pretty close to the same, and is actually two-fold. The first and, for me, most important answer is we’re simply not all willing to cough up information many people consider to be personal/private information–yes, even if in most cases the government escentially already has that information. Attached to that is, as mentioned above–although I can’t speak for anyone else, from my perspective I don’t see the need in repeatedly handing over the same information to which the government already has access through one department or another. The second answer is a little more simple than that–some of the questions asked really don’t make a whole lot of sense, anyway. What difference is it to the government how many bedrooms there are in the house? And who’s definition of ‘bedroom’ are we using–just because the house is built as a three-bedroom doesn’t actually mean they’re all being used as bedrooms. Are they considering a special subsidy for families with 4 people and only 2 bedrooms?

Let’s take the discussion a step further, and let’s assume the Harper government had moved instead to discard the census entirely, not unlike the current European trend. Would the same groups be up in arms demanding the decision be reversed? Even if, for instance, they’d taken a page out of Britain’s–or even Sweden’s playbook instead?

Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark all use registry-based systems to track citizens from birth to death.

While the Scandinavian countries use central registries and periodic surveys to collect data on the population, Britain is looking at cancelling its census outright after the next survey in 2011.

Britain has taken a census every 10 years since 1801 with an exception for 1941 during the Second World War. The decision in Britain is partly driven by budgetary concerns but also due to concerns over accuracy.

Rather than a national headcount, Britain is looking for ways to gather data from existing public and private databases.

Would the various organizations supposedly dependant on statistics revealed by the census be just as up in arms about an outright cancelation of the census, whether or not it was replaced with the approach taken in either Sweden or Britain? Why, or why not? If privacy was a concern, then I could see bringing in a system as detailed as that used in Norway posing an issue. But, were the census to hit the pavement next year and a system not unlike that proposed by Britain–gaining access to the exact same data, or close to it, from other public and private facilities–put in place instead, would there be this much opposition to it? What’s the difference, really?

While admittedly, I’d personally love to see an outright cancelation of the census, realisticly that’s not about to happen. Instead, I’m happy with the census–at least the long form–being made voluntary. If you don’t have a problem with filling it out, then by all means do so. I don’t have a problem with you filling it out either. But all 3 levels of government already demand I hand over most of this information to them in one or another way, shape or form. And I do so, with no argument whatsoever. The government should then not have the authority to 1: force me to provide, yet again, all the same information and then some to which they already have all the access they could possibly want/need, and 2: put me in jail for declining to provide the government with information to which they already have all the access they could possibly want/need. And if that means making the long form census voluntary, then yes, let’s have a voluntary long form. If the ideal number of people end up not filling it out, then let’s look for alternative sources for that information–the public and private sector both have plenty. And for crying out loud, let’s try and stop comparing everything that goes on up here to what went on, or is going on, in the US. That tactic hasn’t really worked since the 2006 election.

So. That math assessment I was worried about? Yeah, it sucked. Not quite as bad as I figured it would–just enough to confirm I am, in fact, every bit as weak in the area of algebra as I thought. Which, roughly translated, means I am virtually algebraically useless. Still, I didn’t do nearly as bad as I figured I would on it–the combined score was up into the tripple digits, at least, which was more than I was expecting. A passing score was 140 or higher, which I couldn’t touch–I clocked out with 117. Testing lady seemed semi-optimistic, though, even if she couldn’t tell me whether or not the score was considered still good enough to get me into the program–I apparently have to wait to hear from someone higher up the food chain on that one. Because you all know how much I enjoy waiting for other people to get around to giving me a simple yes or no.

On the positive side, the hard part’s over. Now, I forget the application process even exists until such time as my phone rings with a yes or no and I can figure out what I’m doing from that point forward. I mean, besides spending the next month and a half brushing up on anything and everything related to the exact opposite of what I was studying last week–hey, their study guide didn’t say anything about multilevel algebraic fractions; how was I supposed to know? In the meantime, that vodka? Yeah, that one. I’ll take a double.

I’ve always been slightly jealous of my US counterparts, mostly because of the fact they had access to Netflix for DVD rentals and whatnot. And then I discovered torrents, and my jealousy took a small vacation. Rogers tried to implement something similar, but I do believe they broke it in more than a few places. And now that I don’t have an immediate need for Netflix usage, it’s apparently coming to Canada. Of course, the article doesn’t give an actual date, but still. I think someone’s trying to give me yet more reason to ditch the satelite. If Netflix or someone else starts streaming hockey and/or baseball games and doesn’t charge a small fortune to do it, they may actually succeed. Hear that, Shaw Direct? You’re on notice.

Because I didn’t need a grade 12 math credit to graduate from highschool, I didn’t take one. Because I didn’t invision me ending up going to college to put on paper skills I’d taught myself in recent years, I wasn’t overly concerned about it. Oopsies. Now, I get to enjoy the result of that oversight. I spent today going through well over 100 algebra-related equasions, getting progressively more painful as I did so. I’m nowhere near finished, and will probably have to devote tomorrow morning to the awesome that is Google in order to wrap my head around stuff I’ve probably completely forgotten in the nearly 10 years since I even cracked open a math textbook. All for the sake of demonstrating on Monday I’m not, in fact, completely math useless. I sincerely hope the 45 hours that will be the math course that’s apparently part of this program are worth it. Otherwise, I see a generous glass of vodka in my future. Possibly more than one. Now, excuse me–I need to go fix my brain.

Or I guess heatwave week would be more appropriate, what with this apparently going to be the norm for a while. Nothing says welcome to a Canadian summer quite like stepping outside and getting slapped in the face with it. At 10:30 in the morning. And yet, there’s a nasty rumour floating around they’re calling for thunder storms.

Saturday, it was tolerably hot. Yesterday was irritatingly hot. Today is just plain OMG hot. And we aren’t cooling off any time soon. Happy heatwave day, Ottawa. May your AC not suffer a catastrophic failure. And may all your beer–if you’re a beer person–stay cold. You’ll need it.

I have this nasty little habbit of trying to find an up side to most situations–particularly situations that seem to centre around me and my current, shall we say, life related stresses. Jessica and I were actually talking about that during our all-night session of playing cards last night, and I’ve come to a sort of decision. This particular trait? Yeah, it pisses people off.

I always get questions from folks about what will I do if x, y and/or z happens, aren’t I worried about this thing, how do I handle that other thing. My typical answer to most of those particular questions? This is life. I have no control over it. Fussing around with it’s not gonna do anything more than give me a series of small heart attacks, so I just can’t see spending the time. Stuff doesn’t bother me like it does most people, probably for that very reason–I really can’t be bothered with it.

Yes, losing my job at Dell in 2008 kind of sucked. But a month later, I was in a relationship. Yeah, leaving Ottawa wasn’t exactly a highlight of my day. But, I’m close enough to do things like have a Christmas with my family with a minimal amount of inconvenience factor. Would I go back to Ottawa? Would I go back to working at Dell if they reopened and offered me my job back? Sure. But since that’s not exactly very likely, thinking about it and getting all uppity over it isn’t gonna do a damn thing. Instead, I’m trying to get my foot in the door at the local branch of Algonquin College. I’m still looking for work. I’m spending time with the nephew when I can. And I’m enjoying this new being engaged thing. That keeps me busy enough.

I could choose to have time to stress out about it. I could choose to make the time to consider the fact my bank account’s heading in the wrong direction. And I could probably make the time to have a small panic attack about it at least monthly. But why? Even if I did, I’m still unemployed. I’m still steadily getting slowly closer to broke. Flipping my lid over it won’t make me any less of either. Not flipping my lid over it won’t do it either, but it’s just so much easier–and, well, I’m lazy.

Much of people’s reactions are fairly predictable. They either don’t believe me, are confused for a few minutes, or end up getting irritated/pissed at me because this kinda thing doesn’t bother me. I can’t seem to wrap my head around why that is–although, granted, I also haven’t exactly been trying very hard. All I really know is I have absolutely no shortage of what I like to call realistic optimism. And, inexplicably, my positivity pisses people off. But, I’ve also come to another, slightly related decision just while writing this post. I won’t be finding or making the time to worry about that, either. Which, also, may end up pissing someone off. In a couple words, oh well.

Folks will be aware Jess has been here since Saturday. what many aren’t aware of, at least until now, is what happened within 24 hours of her arival. More specifically, it became very official that she’d be stuck with me for about as close to forever as she could tolerate. On saturday afternoon, I officially asked her to marry me. And, surprising everyone except the two of us, she said yes. Effective as of then, we’re officially one step closer to that fateful dive off the deep end.

We haven’t set a date yet, but at least now we can start more seriously talking about it. The majority of the week thus far has escentially been mostly made up of doing just that–I had no idea just how many people actually end up getting told these things. So far, we’ve made and received quite a few phone calls on it, not to mention sharing the news in person. By the time she goes back she’ll probably be sick and tired of talking about it–just in time for the folks she hasn’t told yet to catch sight of the ring.

I had the ring picked out a couple weeks in advance, a bit before she finally purchased the ticket. I wanted it to be a surprise not just to her, but to family/friends on both sides of the equasion. So I was pretty much doing everything in secret at that point. That was probably the hardest part–talking to her and avoiding saying what I really wanted to say when she asked if anything eventful happened that day. But, shocking the hell out of me, I actually somehow managed to do exactly that. And keep it quiet amongst the non-immediate family–something ordinarily nearly impossible to do on account of info travels fasater than a wild fire in california on a bad day.

The rest of the week thus far was pretty low key, in comparison. Had a barbecue on sunday at the parentals’ place, for a combination of cellebrating all three month-end birthdays–mine, my mom’s, and the sister-in-law’s. The engagement became officially official there, when the parents, brother and sister-in-law all got a chance to gawk at the ring. And I was cautioned away from making the same mistake my brother did. Fortunately, that particular mistake can’t be duplicated so I’m safe in that department. Yesterday was equally low key–we stuck around the apartment, flaked out, enjoyed various degrees of lazy, had pizza brought in from the local place of awesome, cracked open the vodka and had our own, personal type engagement party. That lasted until 7:00 this morning, before we grabbed 4 hours’ sleep. the rest of the day, dead as it is, leads us to the announcement here.

This is something I know we’ve both been wanting for a while, so the decision to do it over the weekend was probably the easiest decision I’ve ever had to make. I suspect the rest of this week will probably be devoted to spreading the news even more so–hint: it’s up on Facebook if anyone’s interested. I suspect the next couple weeks, at least for her anyway, are going to consist of telling everyone else back home who hasn’t already heard yet. And thhe foreseeable future? It will probably consist of marriage/wedding plans. As for right now? I still have some evening time to spend. And I think I’ll spend it trying to get a little more used to this whole newly engaged thing. On the bright side, we already know the family approves. On the not so bright side, the poor girl may end up suffering further brain damage as a result. But, she’ll survive. Either that or we’ll be taking up refuge in someone’s basement until the insanity passes. Whatever this ride ends up doing, it’s gonna be a hell of a lot of fun. At least, it’d better be. I demand it.

We felt this while out investing in things of a grocery related nature. Apparently, the center of the earthquake was about 50 KM northeast of Ottawa–in other words, right in between Ottawa and Pembroke. We didn’t feel a whole lot–kind of like the mall we were in just sort of twitched a little. Windows were rattling, but nothing went flying or anything. We very nearly considered just getting the hell out of the mall. We were surrounded by glass, with concrete cielings, so if it was anything more major than that, the parking lot would have been a hundred times safer.

There’s a rumor floating around that it was felt as far down as Detroit, and into New England. Toronto’s supposedly had several evacuations as a result–as has Ottawa, according to the linked article. Twitter’s alive with speculation of at least one aftershock, but if there are any, they didn’t reach us up here.

We survived the earthquake intact and relatively as sane as we were before. The most exciting part was convincing some of the folks around us that yes, you did, in fact, just witness an earthquake. Spending three years on Vancouver Island has its advantages. Who says you never find anything exciting while running a simple arrand?

Well, okay, so it was just one that I could actually apply to and not have me be severely underqualified, but still. This marks the first job application I actually submitted since–now, let me think–March of this year. Yep, in Ottawa, of all places, the market for people with my admittedly somewhat specialised skillset was actually dead for about 3 months. Technically, it’s still dead–the job’s a sales by phone gig at Home Depot, but still. It was more than I was staring at a week ago.

Now, I’ll be very surprised indeed if it actually results in employment prospects. If it does, Jessica will have officially become my good luck charm–the last potential interview I landed, I was hanging out at her place. If I land an interview here, she’ll be up here when I find out. But, more importantly, it will be the first actual interview I’ve had since late 2009. If we are, indeed, heading for that potential labour shortage that’s been talked about before, this could be an amazingly good sign. Or maybe I’m just hoping like hell I can get off ODSP soonishly before it makes me go broke. either’s not entirely invalid and both would be good for me. Either way, this is a start. I’ll take it.

This post on a tech blog I frequently read got me thinking, which is usually something dangerous more often than not. With the way people have been buying up lottery tickets lately, what would happen if instead of people getting pulled over and/or caught on camera just for speeding, what if the money from issued tickets actually went towards something semi-productive? Yes, I mean besides helping to pay for a get together conference the majority of Canada doesn’t actually give a damn about. Like, for example, the ticket money could be pooled together on either a provincial or national basis, and issued out in jackpot format every so often–not unlike the draw taking place tonight for the 6/49 in Ontario.

Basicly, if you haven’t been driving like an absolute crazed maniac worthy of landing yourself at the very least a hefty ticket and at the most time well wasted in jail, you’d qualify for the draw. And if you decided your foot gained weight the second you got behind the wheel, you’d still get the privelege of paying into that jackpot. Suddenly, I don’t think being pulled over or caught on camera would necessarily always be such a major ordeal at that point.

Regardless to what your opinion is on anything from advertising to who should pay to maintain the police services, I’ve yet to meet anyone who either hates getting free money or likes giving away their money–even if, and often especially if, they’re giving away their money because of something stupid that was entirely within their realm of control–like, say, speeding. If all people have to do in order to guarantee themselves at least a shot at a few thousand dollars is nothing short of behaving themselves, I suspect most people would probably be a little more mindful of the posted speed limit. I’d be equally inclined to think if most people knew their fine would be going straight into the pocket of some well-behaved driver instead of theirs, they’d probably be doing the same–or at least bitching about it a little more when the ticket came in the mail, which would hopefully clue them in just that little bit more.

I’m going to differ from the linked post, though, and say I think it should be run much like our lottery corporations are run–minus the OLG-style kerfuffle that took up a pretty huge chunk of last year’s headlines. They should take a percentage–a small percentage–of the ticket earnings, such that they could continue to maintain something resembling normal operations, while at the same time letting the rest build into the jackpot payout. Assuming current trends remain so far as number of tickets issued, even a small percentage would probably still be a nice little chunk of change. So even if it were 50/50, whoever ran the arangement would make a profit and there’d still be plenty left over to make some law-obeying driver very, very happy.

Now, because at least one person’s probably sitting there thinking socialism, I’ll explain why it’s not. It’s entirely user contributed–one of those user fees Quebec’s apparently getting fond of. If you’re not caught speeding, you aren’t paying into the system. If you are, then you are. Meanwhile, if you behave yourself long enough, there’s a chance you could make a tidy profit off those other morons who decided the speed limit was just a suggestion. Fewer speeders, smaller jackpot. Fewer times caught speeding, fewer trips to the bank to add to the size of that jackpot.

The way I see it, you pay to ride the bus in one way, shape or form. Same with the train. You pay to gain access to the gym–those of you that do it fairly close to regularly. Hell, in most grocery stores nowadays, you pay for the privelege of using a plastic bag. You don’t wanna pay for that bus trip, that train ticket, that gym membership, or that plastic bag? Fine; no one’s forcing you. But you don’t get to use it. Similarly, if you don’t wanna pay to go huge over the speed limit, fine; again, no one’s forcing you. Don’t speed. If laws took that kind of approach rather than the straight pull over, ticket, fine, see ya later approach, we might actually see people more inclined to behave themselves. especially if the odds are halfway decent.

Money talks. It always has, and unless we go all star Trek in the near future and it isn’t required, it probably always will. Someone waves free money at you, you’ll take it. Someone waves a bill at you, you’ll probably get pissed for about 5 minutes, then eventually, grudgingly, pay it–or not, if you like the whole legal battle scenario. I can’t see why that kind of arangement wouldn’t work for encouraging more actual legal behaviour. Anyone feel like coming up with reasons why it wouldn’t? I’m open.

Everyone knows about my love afair with Linux. Specificly, Gentoo. Unfortunately, it being a source-based distribution means escentially any system maintenance task–like, say, installing a new program or updating an existing one–is potentially going to be a bit of a memory hog. Hence why I started using Linode for a lot of my playing around work–they give me an environment I don’t need to worry about breaking, the tools with which to potentially break it, and a price tag that doesn’t end up breaking my wallet. And, as of yesterday, they’re handing out more memory with which to break things. Now, one of my VPS’s on Linode presently has more memory than my only VPS on DreamHost, for about the same price. Woopsies. You know what that means.

It’s once again time to consider tossing around that age old debate. To slowly move everything away from DH, or not to. That is the eternal question. I’ve been pretty happy with their overall performance for the last 5 years, moving from shared to now VPS hosting during that time–and, yes, branching out to Linode as it’s been needed. They’ve had a few network issues, and I’ve had to prod tech support in the rear end a time or two, but they’ve been decent. In comparison, I’ve almost never actually needed to talk with Linode’s tech support–most server related issues I can fix myself, and most hardware/network related issues they’re usually aware of before I am. Still, when needed, both DreamHost and Linode have been pretty quick with their assistance. Why do I still stick with DH? Simply put, the manually editing of Apache‘s configuration files. I’ve done it before, on a minor skale or two. Much more than that and I fear it may result in irreparable brain damage. Similarly, setting up and maintaining an email system is probably second most likely to give me brain damage–even if I do decide to go with Postfix and have a pretty semi-nifty solution to the general, day to day administering of things like creating new users, etc. I could, presumedly, just let Google Apps handle email, but there’s something to be said about actually being able to control a semi-important system like that myself. And, if I did move entirely self-hosted, I’d probably want that.

So, while I figure out if and/or when I should start this whole migrating to my own server thing, I fully intend to take complete advantage of the extra memory being dumped on me by one of my awesome hosts. Which means those folks I’m currently hosting on one of those servers? Yeah, I’m looking at you. You’re about to get a performance boost. Happy 7th birthday, Linode. Even if it is a day late and a dollar short.

I’ve been saying it for months. And, indeed, so have several others. Now, a Spannish court has effectively agreed with me (thanks, Techdirt). Since music, the written word, etc existed, people have been lending/sharing/finding ways to copy it. Predates the internet, predates CD’s, tapes etc, predates PVR’s. And yet, in 2010, the entertainment industry backed by governments is trying to say it’s always been illegal/a violation of copyright law/immoral/equivalent to breaking into a store and robbing it/the leading cause of death second only to cancer. everyone’s been saying we should be more like the US when it comes to piracy, copyright law, etc. Screw that–let’s be more like Spane. At least they recognise the difference between reselling a CD and copying it for a friend.

Note to US politicians: take your DMCA and hang yourselves with it. Then give me, the average consumer, a reason to buy as opposed to torrent.

A note to Canadian politicians: stop trying to please the US. We’re not the US. We do not answer to the US. And I’m certainly not going to support legislation that looks like it came from the US. Here, have a clue by four.

Every so often, I have such an idiot moment that it takes me forever to realise I was a complete moron. One of those moments happened, sadly enough, during the rebirth of the blog on this domain. For folks who’ve been keeping score, I’ve actually shifted blogging platforms twice–once from Movable Type to LiveJournal, and then from LiveJournal to WordPress. In all that time, while folks could always see the old blog over here, that left a gigantic hole on this site–one that quickly filled up with requests for pages that no longer existed. Enter the moronic that is me.

Being that I deal with computers, the interwebs, and things that make both tick on a regular basis, you’d think I’d of clued in on this a lot sooner than I did. Turns out–and I should have known this–search engines, other websites, random spambots etc don’t actually stop looking for a page just because said page stopped existing in 2008. Nor, for that matter, does anyone actually correct broken links it would appear. And, since until this morning I didn’t even have a clue how to go about doing that, they just kind of sat there returning the standard 404 request.

Fortunately, because the year I was on LiveJournal meant I wasn’t using this domain for it, there’s that much fewer posts I had to worry about correcting. That just left the 600 and change from the old MT install. Three hours on Google, various message boards, and other asorted sites later, I came across what I think might just be the almost right solution for that particular problem. After testing it on a handful of posts that I’ve been able to confirm were tossing back 404 errors, and finding them no longer doing so, I can safely say the blog now works entirely–or virtually so, if nothing else–the way I originally intended to.

The how and the why is semi-technical, though if anyone’s interested in the boring details I’ll be more than happy to elaborate. But, the short version goes something like this. Movable Type, for all its usefulness, had one huge drawback. It built static HTML files. Which, okay, made serving posts etc pretty much amazing. But once you got up to a certain amount of activity–the publishing of new posts and comments–the rebuilding of those static HTML files took about a hundred years. It also didn’t allow for a whole lot of flexibility in how you linked to those files. If you changed the post title and wanted to update the permalink to account for the change, MT didn’t give you much support for redirection to the new URL. You pretty much had to change it manually, then provide the redirection manually. Adding to the complication that is MT’s way of doing things, the directory structure it came up with was something like: http://www.the-jdh.com/2010/06/05/some_post_title_here.html . WordPress, on the other hand, goes more along the lines of: http://www.the-jdh.com/2010/06/some-post-title-here/ . Ignoring the arguments as to which one’s better than the other–I don’t really care to be honest, it presented a small problem post-migration. Problem solved.

A little addition in plugin form to WordPress, and the URL you request from the server suddenly serves a secondary purpose. It gets handled in this way.

• If the post and/or page requested exists, serve it as per normal.
• Failing that, scan the current list of posts/pages for a post who’s title matches the keywords available in the URL.
• If a matching post is located, redirect the browser to that post and hope that’s the one they were looking for.
• If nothing is found, return the standard 404 page as per usual and get on with the normal routine.
• If more than one option is found, then, optionally–meaning whenever I get around to implementing it–provide a list of suggested entries similar to what was detected in the URL.
• If none of those applies, then we have a bigger problem than I thought and I really should consider not tweeking the site while half a mile from no sleep.

Since nothing’s blown up at me during my testing, it’s a pretty safe bet things are at least 90% not broken. Or they’re clever about hiding their brokenness. Now, about that half a mile of sleep thing. Time to go fix that next.

When I was in highschool, I wrote an essay on those people I considered to be highly influencial Canadians. I don’t even remember exactly what the content of the essay was, and I’m not sure I even still have the original copy. One of the topics in question was hockey awesomeness personified, Gordie Howe. And why not? The man made most players today look like the kind you’d see in a rookie league. More than his share of Stanley cups, MVP nods, and still the model of comparison folks use when describing what could be the next great player in the league. Now, he’s not just the guy they call Mister Hockey–he’s an honorary doctor of law thanks to the university of Saskatchewan. I may not have the original essay, but I still remember the awesome that was doing the research on him. The awesome continues. Congratulations, doctor Hockey. You still rule.

There’s a study out that basicly says coffee doesn’t do much for regular drinkers of the stuff. Now, granted I don’t consider myself a regular–meaning daily–coffee drinker by any means–I get my caffeine from other sources if I need it, but I’m going to just kind of give this report a big fat no. I’m not a morning person by any stretch. Wasn’t before coffee, or other sources of caffeine, am not any more so after. But, if I’m going to be required awake and mobile before the sun’s up–believe it or not that has been known to happen, there will be coffee involved. That’s a rule. One of three things will happen. The world will wait until at least 10 to start turning, there will be coffee present should the world–and I–be required mobile prior to 10, or at least one individual–noteably the individual who decided to wake me–will probably die. I’m not a coffee/caffeine addict by the standard definition. I’ve gone several days without anything caffinated. But not before 10. Trust me, it’s for your own safety.