I should have probably taken the events of last weekend as a hint that this wasn’t going to be as event free a travel year as I’m used to. Shane had to push his departure date ahead a week to deal with a whole new brand of stupid that’s, naturally, since been squished underfoot. That meant we got the pleasure of throwing together departure plans on 24 hours notice–doable, but it took creativity. On the saturday afternoon, he left Petawawa destined for Boston with his suitcase, and a backpack full of technological wonders. On Saturday night, he left Montreal destined for Boston without the afore mentioned technical wonders and little to no chance of ever actually getting them back–for the record, I think we’ve kind of declared them a lost cause. The process quickly got underway to start the replacing of the afore mentioned technological wonders. And as I was packing to leave for my own trip, that process was pretty much everything but complete. So I thought it should go smoothely from here on out. Then I got to Rochester and someone thought it’d be cute to tease me into thinking otherwise.

As I said in the previous entry, I showed up in Rochester an hour and a half late. Took a cab from the station to the apartment, where Jessica met me at the door to the building with cab money–the thing about having 80 million things to do is almost always, at least one won’t get done. I had time to pass her change off to her, and when I turned back to see if the trunk of the cab was open so I could snatch my suitcase, there was no cab and there was no suitcase. We had a pretty good idea which company the driver belonged to, and were pretty sure it wasn’t entirely intentional–that’s yet another trip related entry for when I have slightly more brain juice. So we called that company, and pretty much got no help from the dispatcher. Not figuring on giving up, the next day we called a few of the direct numbers for drivers we could dig up online. Say one thing for Rochester, there’s no shortage of cabs, be they independant or otherwise. We got a few possibles, and a few nos. The possibles eventually turned out to be very easily ruled out, but this is where it gets interesting. Every single one of the drivers we spoke to directly knew someone, or could point us in a direction of someone who did. Even if the driver was a possibility we found out didn’t have my clothes, the conversation never ended there–it was almost always “Well, I know this guy and here’s his number, see if he’s got it.”, or my second favourite, “I don’t remember driving you, but I know these 6 guys. Let me call them and I’ll get back to you.”. You don’t see a lot of that anymore, anywhere. So that the cab drivers around here were actually willing to do that was freaking amazing.

We eventually called the original cab company back and got a dispatcher that was a little more helpful. And, wouldn’t you know, we’d been right since the morning of my arival. So I got my stuff back within a couple hours of those phone calls. Meanwhile, the other drivers were keeping a lookout and while I didn’t end up hearing anything back from them, I’m pretty sure if it was still out there, I probably would have. It just amazes me how even in a city the size of Rochester, you can see stuff like this going on–and all it takes to start it is one phone call to the right driver.

So now, Shane’s getting stuff to replace what was lost, and I got my original stuff back. But I couldn’t help but laugh while all this was going on–not 2 days before I was meant to leave for Rochester, either Jessica or I had made the comment about at least Shane got to Boston with his clothes. And of course, that night, I very nearly didn’t get inside this apartment with mine. Murphy’s law hard at work, kids. Playing with your mind since the mythical day of rest.

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The big thing that seems to be the default reaction if you live in Ottawa and don’t know something is to call 211. That also seems to be the default response if, as people have a tendancy to do in Ottawa, you simply want someone to bitch to because x isn’t happening the way you’d like it to. Glorious. Unless you were the poor bastard who got slapped with having to take the call. Suddenly, you were doing everything from listening to locals cry because OC Transpo was 10 minutes late to playing city phone book while listening to the locals cry because OC Transpo was 10 minutes late. And my guess is it doesn’t pay very well. And now, they’ve expanded to the valley. Pembroke. And Renfrew. And those little hicktowns in between. All getting a free call and bitch line. I can only imagine. No, wait–I really don’t want to. I do, however, feel even more sorry for the poor bastards taking the calls. Hope they have a love for long conversations–it’s a local rule a phone conversation can’t be less than half an hour. In 4 words, lots of coffee. Now.

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Carin over at the Vomit Comet already laid good into Canada Post for this one, but since I’m procrastinating with this whole packing thing anyway and a little backup never hurt anyone, they get a friendly little reminder from me.

In December, I decided I had 30 seconds between the other 80 million things I was trying to get done that last week or two before Christmas to actually fire off some cards to family and a couple friends. You’d think an effort that’d take a grand total of 30 seconds, right? Last year, yes. The year before, definitely. This year? Yeah, no. What should have taken 30 seconds instead turned into a moment of temporary oh shit.

As part of their move to supposedly “improve the customer service experience”, Canada post had at some point late last year decided it might be fun to go all touchscreen, all the time. Their reason for doing so? It’s a requirement to deal with the new chip-equipped debbit cards. Much like Carin in her experience, postal chick and I went a round or two over that one. Not only could they have easily gone with another, more accessible model, but–in my case in particular–the unit I was staring at was stuck to the counter, which was roughly chest height for me (I’m 5’11 or so). Which meant, in simple terms, not only could the blind/low vision not do anything whatsoever with it, but lord help anyone who came rolling on up in a wheelchair. I’d of loved to see just how the local post office was going to handle that one. They weren’t doing a whole lot to handle this one, in any event.

Lucky for me, as you quite literally can’t get to 90% of what’s available in this town without wheels, I just so happened to have a pair of eyes handy. Equally lucky for me, they’re eyes I actually don’t mind knowing my PIN–hey, sometimes stuff has to get done and I’m busy. But I’d of been in much the same boat Carin was otherwise. And the explanation of such to the postal employee? Prompted the much anticipated and not at all favourable–for her–standard responses of, “You’ll just have to make sure you bring someone with you, I guess.”, and, “Well, there’s an ATM not far from here. We still accept cash.”.

As if she didn’t probably already figure she maybe shouldn’t have said that–I probably should give her a tiny benefit of doubt, here–she got a good dose of education from both myself, and my wheels. There was no actual reply, and we went on business as usual.

On my return home, I’d put together a little something and sent it via Canada Post’s less than well-organized website into, what I’m going to guess, is their customer feedback black hole. As of yet I haven’t heard or seen anything resembling a response, and when the roommate and I went to fill out a money order for the apartment that wasn’t (more on that in another entry, if I remember), things hadn’t changed. Of course, anyone who’s done this dance knows exactly what comes next–a longer letter. Which will more than likely get dropped on someone once I touch down in Rochester. And hey, this time, I’ll have a month to go find regulations with which to beat postal people around a bit. One would suspect I had too much fun doing this. And yeah, they’d be right.

The moral of the story? for the love of cheese, get with the accessibility program already. You’re a federal agency, bound by federal laws. This includes federal accessibility laws–which, I’ll admit, the actual government’s having a hell of a time following but that issue’s already been beaten to death on every blog but this one. Get your shit in order. Or, hell, better yet, hire me and Carin–we’ll do it for you. I expect this from the private sector–rant on that coming probably when I hit Rochester. After all, they don’t make much money off us blind folks. But really? Canada Post? They don’t make much money, period. Let’s half some equal playing field up in here, and maybe they’ll make a little more. In the meantimie, where’d I put my regulations?

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I’ve been dabbling in the more involved server admin business for the past while. One of the things we’ve been experimenting with for the better part of a month is the firewall provided by ConfigServer. It’s halfway decent for what it does, as long as you’re not trying to do anything too involved–like, say, get certain functionality native to WordPress to actually, you know, work. Like, for example, trackback/pingback functionality. So, since we had absolutely nothing else planned whatsoever tonight–hi, oh my god cold, we figured we’d either fix CSF or break Shane‘s blog. Turns out we did neither.

According to ConfigServer’s software, which I have taken to not trusting after our most recent discovery, inbound trafic on all the ports we needed to be open was possible. As was outbound. Except for that tiny little part wherein it sort of wasn’t. That lead to some pretty interesting problems in the neighbourhood of him actually being able to receive trackbacks/pingbacks. Since blogging in general, and WordPress in particular, is primarily focused on the whole community/conversation element of it all, that posed a very small problem. We fiddled off and on with it for a few weeks, and eventually for reasons of trying to scrape together a few dollars, we decided to start the process of migrating him away from that server and to my arangement over here. After breaking things in that department in all kinds of new and interesting–not to mention very very creative–ways, we thought we’d play with seeing if that fixes the outstanding issue of tracking back. Hence, if you hadn’t figured it out, the test post from earlier. And wouldn’t you know, the damn thing up and proved us both idiots. First try, it did exactly what it was supposed to. The only *really* major difference? The server the problem blog’s on isn’t running ConfigServer’s firewall–and won’t be, if I can possibly get away with it. Aside from that? Same server configuration, more or less, with a few extra mostly irrelevant bells and whistles I don’t actually use but hey, they’re cool.

The moral of the storry: If you’re running ConfigServer’s firewall, look for alternatives. If you’re not, keep it that way. It’s bad for you. Stay very, very far away from that program–particularly if you, or anyone you’re hosting/maintaining the server for, plans on running a WordPress blog. They just do not like each other and I think the relationship’s pretty irreparable. Now, the search begins for alternatives.

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some of you may have been following the developing story about the Recording Industry Asociation of America (RIAA) trying to convince ISP’s to implement a sort of 3-strikes policy that would see people the RIAA believes were involved in downloading music kicked off the internet. They’ve been threatening that for two years or more, and at a few points, it looked like they might have had some pretty intense backing to implement it. Then the ISP’s chimed in. Suddenly, the RIAA found itself summarily flipped off.

It’s been a little over two years since the RIAA dropped its strategy of suing music fans for sharing files online — a strategy that was an unequivocal disaster for the record labels. Of course, when the news came out, the RIAA suggested that the reason they had done so was because of a backroom deal with various ISPs to implement three strikes plans. And yet, here we are, two years later with no major ISP having put in place such a policy. Greg Sandoval has been following this story closely, and his contacts at most of the major ISPs indicate no interest in putting in place such policies, and a widespread recognition that the ISPs have enough lobbying clout to push back on the RIAA if necessary.

And why would they? Nothing quite says screw the customer like kicking them offline because they may, or may not, have been involved in downloading music. Particularly when the may or may not relies almost entirely on whether or not the RIAA’s getting a little suspicious–which they’ve been doing way too often, and way too easy, lately. Don’t look now, RIAA folks. But I think you’ve just struck out.

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From the department of IT Security 101, courtesy the Peterborough Catholic district School Board, comes this real life lesson of what happens when you don’t tripple check your security. you end up hacked by one of your own students.

John Mackle, education director at the Peterborough Victoria Northumberland and Clarington Catholic District School Board, said the Grade 8 pupil at St. Anne’s School in Peterborough’s north end found his way — via his laptop, a piece of downloaded software and the board’s internal network — into a board file server containing provincewide test results.

“To be honest, I don’t know that he would have understood what he was seeing,” Mackle said.

“The information that he was able to see wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to him.”

Mackle said the incident occurred when the server in question, which isn’t located at the school, was turned back on after undergoing a service upgrade.

“We normally have two levels of security,” Mackle said. “In this case, level 1 was turned back on, but level 2 was not. This allowed the boy to gain access.”

Security for all servers has been upgraded in the wake of the incident, he added.

By “upgraded”, does he mean “reenabled”? And, really, just what kind of security do they over at the Peterborough school board consider to be level 1? Inquiring minds want to know. If the system was secured, the kid shouldn’t have been able to access it. On second thought, I’ve come to understand the school board’s definition of secured and the rest of the world’s definition are usually two pretty different things. If given enough time to work at it, most school board security systems–at least up here–could probably be compromised with a minimal amount of effort, if someone with a problem with that school or the board really wanted to.

Let this be a lesson for aspiring IT people. Secure your shit. Twice. And for the love of chese, if you’ve got a system installed, tripple check that it comes up when the server you’re trying to protect does. I should not have to point that out.

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Every couple days if you’re paying attention, you hear some story or another about a record label in either the US or Canada gearing up to sue a bunch of people for supposed copyright infringement for daring to download and/or do whatever they please with the music of whoever the victimised artist is this month. The lawsuits usually amount to somewhere in the neighbourhood of millions of dollars in supposed damages. And sometimes, they actually get people to pay them. So imagine the surprise on the faces of some record label execs when a copyright lawsuit on behalf of several artists comes across their desk, to the tune of $6000000000. No, scratch that. Don’t imagine.

We’ve noted the irony of the fact that the largest copyright system supporters are frequently found to infringe whenever possible. One of the most amazing examples of this concerned the major record labels, who for years were directly infringing on the copyrights of various artists, by putting their songs on compilations and mixes without first getting permission as is required by the law. Instead, the labels would put those artists on a “pending list,” but they rarely seemed to get around to taking them off that “pending list” and paying them. After years of trying to get the labels to pay up, a lawsuit was finally filed, where the artists pointed out that the labels could be on the hook for $6 billion. Kind of amusing to see the ridiculously large infringement penalties thrown back at the labels. After some negotiation, it appears that the labels have agreed to settle the case for $45 million and they’re also promising to make sure that artists on the pending list will get paid in a reasonable amount of time. Now, can we finally stop pretending that the major record labels ever have the best interests of the artists in mind?

RIAA/CRIA: looking out for number 1, where number 1 = anyone not actually involved in creating music, since its foundation. And yet folks wonder why people are starting to lean more towards supporting artists by attending concerts/other such events that don’t actually involve giving money to the record labels. And why certain artists are starting to lean away from the major labels and, in some cases, starting their own. Now how long before a press release or something shows up that says the major labels are still looking out for their artists? I’m betting not very.

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Even if the cellebrity in question could probably benefit from spending a little more time in daddy’s shadow. Just ask Josh Holly how that worked out for him, assuming you can get a hold of him. He admitted to having hacked Miley Cyrus’s MySpace profile as well as her Gmail account. He’s subsequently been arrested on unrelated creditcard charges. Way to paint a bullzai on your forehead, Josh. No word as of yet whether or not he’s been charged with anything related to the hacking offenses, if they’re even true, but I’ve got $20 saying the charges he’s on the hook for will make up for it. Perhaps next time, he’ll reconsider getting into the advertising business.

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After a certain point, you’re kind of expected to come up with excuses a little better than “the dog ate it” for why you didn’t get your homework done. Or why you didn’t do/fill out/submit the required paperwork for x. That didn’t occur to 22-year-old Michael Macleod, apparently. After being pulled over for going 96 KPH in a 70 zone, after previously being disqualified from driving for failing a breath test, he thought it might be wise to cover his ass. And, having been put on the spot, told the officer who stopped him the dog ate his wallet. And, because he didn’t do a fine enough job screwing himself over already, he gave the officer the name and birthday of someone he knew. That person, upon receiving the speeding ticket in the mail and recognising the license plate, was quick to call police. Michael Macleod won’t be driving for the next two years, if he still possesses more than half a functioning brain cell. Perhaps having missed jail time by a hair will provide him a little insentive to actually keep that in mind. On the other hand, you’d think losing his license 3 months earlier would have been a clue. Okay, second thought, we might be hearing from him again. Good job, Michael. Dust off that brain cell a little more often–it’s good for you, or so I hear.

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Good idea: sticking to the company line when agreeing to testify against a guy who’s been fired from that company. Yes, even when the company line is they aren’t, officially, your employer due to a somewhat convoluted arangement of sales/mergers/subsidiaries/whatever.

Bad idea: repeating the company line of $company isn’t actually your employer while keeping $company on your LinkedIn profile.

A guy sued Harrah’s, claiming he was fired in an age discrimination suit. In an effort to get out of it, Harrah’s claimed it never really employed the guy. Instead, it noted that he had been employed by the Grand, which was then bought by a subsidiary of Harrah’s, and thus it was the subsidiary who should be considered the employer for the sake of the lawsuit.

The problem with lawsuits like this is they usually end up blowing up in your face. The primary witness in the case, identified in the linked article only as Hirsch, could probably tell you about that. When he was presented with the LinkedIn profile indicating Harah’s as his employer, he proceed to deny the profile actually belonged to him–in spite having varified the information asociated with it already. Needless to say, I think Harah’s just lost that lawsuit good and fair like. Bet they won’t try that more than twice.

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A British Columbia man, feeling he wasn’t getting seen by local ER staffers fast enough, decided to take matters into his own hands. Since part of the wait time between arival and being seen involves getting the patient through the emergency room door, he thought he’d be nice about it and solve part of that problem. So, after expressing his displeasure at being made to wait, he left the ER and got into his vehicle. Then he came back. In his vehicle. And there was no more emergency room door. There was also no more need for him to wait–the local police were more than happy to take him somewhere to get looked at. I guess you could say everybody wins. Except this guy–I don’t think he’s got a license at the moment.

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I could write a small novel on the WTF that is the US’s Transport Security Administration(TSA), but the truth is it probably wouldn’t even come close to scratching the surface. Besides, the most recent TSA admission courtesy of Techdirt sort of does it for me.

While the TSA is still fighting as hard as possible to be able to either see you naked or touch your private parts, apparently it hasn’t spent that much time actually figuring out how to look for people carrying weapons onto planes. A few folks have sent in this ABC story about a man who boarded a plane with a loaded handgun that had been in his carry-on bag. The guy noted that he normally carries the gun in his bag, but takes it out before traveling — he just forgot to do so and was pretty spooked when he realized he had the gun on him (he reported the incident to the TSA upon landing).

But even more scary than that is the article notes that the TSA admits that it’s really bad at finding weapons, saying that the “failure rate” of tests is reaching 70% at some major airports and at some airports “every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners.” So, while scanners are looking at or touching your crotch, they’re apparently not bothering to look for guns. Comforting.

And yet, we’re supposed to just trust the scanners. Yeah, no. Sorry. I’m still sticking with Greyhound, thanks. Now not only do the terrorists know they’ve spooked you, but they also know you still suck at doing what you’re supposed to be getting paid for. Is this why millitary inteligence is considered an oxymoron? Methinks yes. Oh well, at least they’re finally admitting it. Small progress and all that.

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Remember David Abitbol? Sure you do. He’s the nutbar from Quebec who’s currently the proud owner of 2010′s nutter of the year award, after insisting he required several firearms and several more rounds of ammunition because he was being stalked by elves. Yeah, you remember him now. Apparently, he’s not just loony crazy–he’s apparently also loony disturbing. Now, on top of his various gun related offenses–and probably the recommendation of extensive psychiatric care, he’s also being charged with producing porn.

Crown prosecutor Steeve Lariviere said investigators probing Abitbol’s computer found evidence that warranted the additional charges.

“The police officers discovered new evidence that permits us to believe that the accused, between January 2010 and until his arrest, produced material that can be considered child pornography,” Lariviere said.

No, sir, I don’t think they’ll be letting you near a computer any time soon. But hey, you probably don’t need one where you’re going.

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An elderly woman was going through her things after the death of her husband, apparently preparing for a garage sale. She accidentally came across a book taken from a local library in 1936, when she and her husband were first married. Surprisingly, the library the book was taken from is apparently still open, but even more surprisingly, the woman brought the book back, and offered to pay the late fees. How much? Over $2700 worth. The library declined that offer, saying they were glad to have that book back. They did, however, accept a donation from the woman a few days later. Now that’s what I call clearing your conscience.

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I have the good fortune, or not–depending on your perspective, to be in posession of a creditcard. Up until last week, the card worked pretty well flawlessly for anything from ordering pizza to paying the occasional bill online, in the event I’m too damn inpatient and/or lazy to bother with the slightly more traditional internet banking transfer. However, the last week or so, it’s decided to rather summarily flip me off. Randomly, it decided the CVV code I was using since I got the card–I only got the thing maybe last year or the year before–the code I’ve been using to make 90% of those purchases was no longer as valid as it was 5 minutes before I decided to use it. So I’ve been going through a pretty interesting little roundabout dance with Royal Bank, also known as them what issued my card. Their system, as much as they won’t actually admit it, appears to have ate my CVV code. This is more of a record of what’s going on for my own purposes, and well, in the event some other poor fool winds up with a similar problem. As things happen, I’ll probably come back to this post. My 7 days of fail started pretty much exactly a week ago. In list format, because. Lazy.

• After much arm twisting, teeth pulling, and generally screaming at folks, I got the fundage to purchase the screenreader I need from Frontier Computing
• Called them up and, after a bit of phone dancing, landed the purchase $1100 and some change later
• Fast forward to last Friday, we’re trying to throw money at things down on that other side of the border, requiring I change the address on the card temporarily to a US one–a thing I’ve done a few times before
• Change the address, go to make the payment, get declined due to CVV issues
• CVV is correct, and was entered multiple times by both myself and Shane just to be on the damn sure side
• Call up the bank, WTF at them for a few minutes, get told the CVV’s correct–well, yes, I had a feeling–and to call the merchant
• Rather than beat our heads against that right then, we try throwing a payment in the general direction of AT&T
• Once again, incorrect CVV, once again, we call the bank, once again, CVV is correct
• Make that payment to AT&T via a telephone rep, who *didn’t* ask for the CVV, and it goes through no problem
• Try to find a payment for our first attempted US payment over the phone, no luck
• Try online again, get summarily flipped off, call the bank and, yep, everything’s correct–it’s the merchant’s fault
• Switch back to the Canadian address, and we decide to finally find a use for one of my Tim Hortons gift cards–why in the hell I had two of them, I’ll never know–so it gets handed off to Shane, and we try to throw a few dollars at it via the card
• Once again, we get summarily flipped off because of the CVV, and once again, RBC blames the merchant–this is the third one who’s flipped us off re: the CVV, so now I’m a little less open to that possibility than I was before
• Saturday, we escentially get into hockey mode–which, of course, means pizza, which means ordering via creditcard on account of the bank machine’s over there and we’re not
• That, of course, goes through no problem–of course, they also don’t ask for the CVV either (Hey, I thought they should; not doing so was their idea.)
• Monday, we find out we have approximately 4 days to get paperwork into government offices, and not exactly world’s likeliest chance at being able to physically deliver it to the offending office–sometimes, not being able to drive and living in a small town gets to sucking hardcore
• We decide on a whim, since most if not all of what’s needed is available online, we’ll pull it to the local machine, sign up for a fax number (hello, MyFax), and fire it off to the office that way
• Assuming, since we know it can’t be the merchants all at once having issues it must be RBC that’s broken, and hoping against hope they’ve fixed it, we give signing up for it a try–and, once again, are summarily flipped off
• Now, I’m about irritated and decide screw it I’m going to bed–this was kind of squeezed in between and around various phone and other exchanges with people who generally couldn’t seem to find their way to a clue
• I give MyFax a try again several hours later, no go, Idaho–so again, decide to put it on the back burner until I figure out where the problem’s hiding out
• Rogers, in its infinite wisdom, decides to then pick this morning as the absolute perfect time to decide the money I threw in their general direction isn’t getting to them fast enough, so they flip the switch what puts an end to our phone service
• Not thinking, because why would I want to do that at 5:00 in the morning, I decide–hey, James, let’s just take care of what they say you owe them now and when their money catches up to them, they can just count that towards your next bill
• Of course, the broken that is my creditcard escapes me at this point, so I call in, go through the routine, get summarily flipped off again thanks to bad CVV
• Once again, call the bank, go a few rounds with the phone rep, who promptly blames the merchant–also, once again
• Walk all over this rep, then summarily flip him off
• Take a break from dealing with this, call Rogers directly, apply the appropriate clue that says they will get their money when I have it and not a minute before, then take care of some highly unrelated business before tackling this again
• Call back to RBC, get a rep who’s first response isn’t quite so much to blame the merchant or, for that matter, RBC’s second favourite thing to blame throughout this issue–me
• He does, at least, confirm no, the $1100 and change purchase didn’t likely set off alarms that, in simplest of terms, broke my card
• Go a round or two with him, he also confirms the CVV does what it’s supposed to, decides something about the card’s dead–no, really?
• Sends me out a replacement card, different card number, different CVV, same lovely little creditcard balance–but at least I got a shiny new interest rate out of it

So far, we still have absolutely no freaking idea what made my card go sideways. RBC blames the people I’m giving the info to, or me for entering the wrong info. Everyone I give the info to blames the bank for not confirming it, or me for giving them the wrong info. The bank is able to varify my info, shooting holes in half of both their theories. And I still sit here confused. This thing, whatever it is, isn’t over yet–not, I suspect, by any means. The post will probably be added to as things develop. I should have the new card in about a week or so, and if it’s just as broken, RBC and me will go yet another round. Sometimes, I love banking breakage. Only not really.

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Somewhere within these two non-dairy product manufacturers, the memo that sayd they were non-dairy must have gotten lost in the mail. Or ignored. There’s now a recall on the affected products, on account of they contain milk.

Consumers with milk allergies who have used Probiophilus (with Natural Product Number 80016388 on the label) or Cultures de Yogourt 5 Milliards (NPN 80013135)
should immediately consult with their health-care practitioner regarding any further use of these products.

Consumers and health professionals wanting more information can contact Health Canada at             613-957-2991       or toll-free at             1-866-225-0709      .

In the meantime, it’s not just the consumers who need to learn to read the labels. Someone’s just been signed up for retraining.

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Just not any time in the immediate future. At least, I sure as hell hope not. Not until she goes back and revisits her history classes, anyway–do they even teach history up in Alaska? Did she even pay attention when they did? She forgot, right? Yeah, why else would she call North Korea the US’s ally? Psst, Sarah? Your ally’s that-a-way. Clearly, they don’t call her Failin’ Palin for nothin’, you betcha.

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So as can be expected in the valley that is Ottawa, it was minus too damn cold this morning. For the sake of a little twist, though, it was also minus too damn cold in the house. Apparently, at some point between the time I dragged my ass to bed at 2:30 and the time I regained consciousness 5 hours later, our furnace decided it would be really awesome if it went on strike. That kind of meant we got to do something we haven’t done much of in quite a while–I haulled in an armload or two of wood, and we kicked the woodstove into action. An hour later, we were once again just slightly less than vulnerable to the big freezy. Who says excitement doesn’t come to a small town?

Furnace repair dude’s supposed to show up eventually, meaning sometime between an hour from now and end of day. In the meantime, I’m all about the doing things the old fashion way. There’s just something about heating the house like that. Anyone who’s done it probably knows what I’m getting at.

Good Thursday, folks. Hopefully yours is less cold than ours at the moment.

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I’m a bit of a security freak. Okay, more than a bit. I was testing out a slight modification to see if I could cut down on the number of people trying to do bad things to the blog. In doing so, legitimate users may have been knocked off the site–as evidenced by the influx of email that followed that modification. Needless to say, if you were having trouble accessing the site, you shouldn’t be now. Meanwhile, time to go see what else I can find that does what it’s supposed to. Or find food, whichever comes first.

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I’m not exactly world’s biggest Sarah or Bristol Palin fan, but I don’t think I’d consider going quite this far. Upset at the fact Bristol Palin advanced to the finals of “Dancing With The Stars”, a Wisconsin man took matters into his own hands, and promptly put his TV out of his misery. Apparently, Bristol wasn’t exactly a very good dancer–she’s been getting consistently low scores, but because of the popularity of her mother, the public voted her through anyway. Instead of voting for Brandy, who apparently actually *could* dance. Ah, but I keep forgetting. The way things are shaping up politically if it’s got a trace of Sarah anywhere near it, it automatically classifies as godlike. Yeah, that must be it. Suddenly, I’m having a little trouble blaming this guy after all.

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Gotta give Kristina Ross a little credit for creativity. She managed to dream up the persona of a plastic surgeon, and then give at least two women in a Boise, Idaho bar a fake breast exam. There was only one very small problem. Well, okay, two. The fake name she borrowed? If there’s such a doctor named Berlyn Aussieahshowna in existence, she didn’t exist in Boise. Then there’s the small matter of the lack of a license on Kristina’s account. Okay, scratch that. Turns out that’s a big problem–one that carries jail time. All that just to play with another chick’s boobs. Clearly, it’s not just for guys anymore.

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Clearly, that does not make 10-year-old Kyle Roberts immune from being considered for jurry duty. At least, not according to the Ontario Government, who sent the automated notice to him, complete with mandatory form to determine qualification/eligibility to actually serve as a jurrer. Fortunately, two things worked in Kyle’s favour in this case–the kid has absolutely no interest whatsoever in the whole jurry duty thing, for obvious reasons, and the second question on that form asks if he’s over the age of 18. Strike two, you’re out. Now here’s hoping the kid doesn’t turn 18 before the government gets around to taking his name off that list. Let’s hear it for burocratic oopsies.

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Almost ironically, on perhaps the spookiest day of the year, the computer here at the parents’ place has decided to be on life support. After about half an hour of poking around with its software workings, I’ve come to one of two theories on just how borked the system actually is. Either the thing’s video card has died, or Windows forgot it had one. In either event, I get to turn the cell phone, in all its questionable reception glory, into a poor man’s netbook. Nifty, in an oh crap kind of way. I’ll go into more detail why I’m here once I have access to a proper keyboard, but for the next week, I get to either fix or kill the frankenputer. Hey, at least if HTML didn’t break, you’ll still see hockey posts. And whatever amuses me. Now, to go see if I can’t bring the frankenputer back from the dead.

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Neither the father nor son in this family dispute were identified. Nor do they need to be–it’s just as oopsish without that. A 10-year-old boy does pretty much what any 10-year-old boy would, and decides he doesn’t approve of the soup his father gave him for supper. For his troubles, the father escentially said eat what’s put in front of him. The kid’s answer? call the cops. Well, damn. When we were kids we only thought to get pissy and eventually end up in our rooms until we decided hey, maybe supper wasn’t so craptacular after all. Needless to say, he was appropriately informed–by dad and cop alike, even–that this is not, in fact, a reason to have the cops show up at your front door. And hey, would you look at that. This even went on in the same state as XBox kid from earlier this year. I’m thinking we need a state-wide education program on this stuff, y/n?

Thanks to Jessica for firing this story at my mailbox yesterday, actually. I was wondering if the January story was the exception to the rule.

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Bellvue, Washington was apparently not a safe place to attend an anger management class for one particular lady. Apparently, the class was watching a video of some sort, and one of the students, Faribah Maradiaga, didn’t approve of it. The as yet unnamed victim suggested maybe she at least give the video a chance, and received multiple stab wounds for her trouble. Of course, Maradiaga already has a pending assault charge against her–probably why she’s in that class to begin with, so when she tried saying the target of her as yet unmanaged anger started it, it didn’t go over very well. Rough guess, she failed the class. She may just be repeating it from jail.

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