I’m not by any means a religious person. My parents say I’m Christian, but I haven’t practiced since I was much too young to do so willingly. Ironically enough, it’s been about that long since they’ve entered a church for anything other than a wedding or funeral too. Sadly, this is a pretty good explanation as to why.

A highschool in Rome actually did something rare for a state-run institution–it came up with an actual brilliant idea. Vending machines that sell condoms, and for cheaper than those which you’d have to drop by the drug store to get your hands on. One would think this to be a good thing–kids that age are probably doing it anyway, might as well minimize the risks, right? Apparently, not if you’re a member of the Roman church. Or, for that matter, its still far too church-oriented government.

The newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference said Thursday that sex was being reduced to “mere physical exercise.” The newspaper, L’Avvenire, lamented that young people these days have no spiritual guidance on sexuality, and that educators are more concerned with “the health and hygiene consequences of sex” than its moral implications.

Good God, they’re fussing about their health! Quick, lock them in confession–yesterday! Now, before someone jumps on me for supposedly saying “to hell with morality”, I somehow doubt that’s going to be the first thing on some kid’s list of worries if they discover, through the experimentation just about everyone was doing in one way, shape or form in highschool–yeah, you, don’t say you weren’t–that they have HIV or some other health complication. Or, as happens far too frequently–yes, even in Rome, there’s a pregnancy involved. Please. You have kids sneaking off to dark places to smoke a joint, and that’s actually against non-religious laws. You have kids hanging out in the woods with various things of an alcoholic nature, in spite of the fact underaged drinking is also against non-religious laws–except in Europe. You’re not going to prevent them from doing the bed sheat tango over some moral or spiritual obligation to keep it zipped or face eternal damnation–particularly if, as is becoming more and more common in North America at least, they’re increasingly more likely to laugh it off as the empty threat it is.

They’re going to drink. They’re probably going to smoke–if for no other reason than just to say they’ve tried it. And if you cram otherworldly reasons why they shouldn’t down their throats, they’re just going to do it and not tell you. And then you have two problems to deal with.

By all means, talk about it with your kids. Tell them why they should really think about maybe not getting naked at 16. Just please, for sanity’s sake, leave the bloody bible out of the conversation. And in the meantime, don’t shit all over a highschool looking to provide those of them who’re just gonna do it anyway with a way to at the very least lesen their risks. Or, better yet, buy them the condoms yourself if it’s that much a concern. You can’t force people to make what you believe to be the right decisions. No, not even your kids. But if you’d spend less time worrying about which direction they’ll be heading in the afterlife and more time lessening their chances of falling flat on their faces from a mistake in their present life, you might actually learn you also don’t have to. Oh, and do both yourselves and your kids a favour while you’re at it. Tell the Italian Bishops’ Conference where they can shove their moral and spiritual guidance. It hasn’t been working well enough for them to be worrying about throwing it at everyone else.

I spent almost 4 years in Ottawa, on the third floor of a three-story building you couldn’t get into without buzzing in, or having a key for the front door–this on top of the key you had for your apartment. Jessica’s building in Rochester takes it a step further, needing a key to get into the building, a key to get onto your floor, and a key to get into your apartment. This building in Petawawa? You have a key to get into your apartment. Well, actually you have two, but who’s counting? And this building gets something the other two I mentioned don’t seem to get–or at least, they get very rarely if at all. Folks coming around marketting their own electricity initiatives.

I get an average of one of these people knocking on my door on a weekly basis. And, of course, not being able to know who’s there until I open the door, I take a chance it might not be someone trying to sell me something. And every time I’ve done so, it’s been any number of situations from people who’d just like to see my hydro bill, to people who just want to tell me about the green initiatives their particular company/organization/what have you is offering. To one offer I’ve received asking if I’d be interested in locking in my hydro and/or gas prices for 5 years. And every time, my response is the same–I point at the door leading out of the building, with a polite suggestion that they go that way.

I received a grand total of one such offer while living in Ottawa. And they were stupid enough to try pitching that offer to me over the intercom system the building has. They, of course, got hung up on. I don’t have that option here, so to get rid of them, they first have to be effectively standing on my doorstep. I swear, just as soon as I can twist a governmental arm far enough back that it decides it’d be in its best interest to increase disability payments–or just as soon as I can get myself hired again, whichever comes first, my next move will be back to a secure building. Ideally I’d much rather see that type of marketting made illegal, but since that’s not very likely to happen, I’ll take my secure building. Besides, there’s something to be said for having a little warning when you’re getting company–welcome or not. Gives me time to hide my porn magazines. Er, wait, I didn’t say that.

Admittedly, my ability to be politically correct is practically nonexistent. No, I don’t go around dropping n-bombs every 20 seconds, but I haven’t rewritten a large part of my vocabulary to take into account some tiny fraction of the town I live in–who’s population isn’t all that large anyway–might be offended either. And I have no plans to. I also have no plans to do any kind of supporting the latest gem to come out of Ottawa’s parliament.

In yesterday’s throne speech, it was suggested that Canada’s national anthem needs a tiny bit of reworking. Um, what? Specificly, the part that says “all our sons command”. Again, um, what? Now our very own anthem isn’t gender-neutral enough? There’s accomodation and then there’s just overkill. That, well, is just overkill.

It’s been a complete non-issue for as long as I can remember, in spite of the fact we’ve had multiple governments with their own ideas on gender neutrality come in and screw up the country in their own ways. It’s been pretty much exactly the same in that respect, too. Except in the last decade or two it’s been forced bilingual all across Canada, except maybe in Quebec–do they even still sing that one? And now, after it’d been played about 50 billion times during the olympics, there’s talk of rewriting it for gender-neutral purposes. Someone wanna tell them drugs are bad for you?

Hey, if we’re going to rewrite the thing anyway, here’s a thought. Let’s remove or modify that whole “God keep our land” section while we’re at it. Don’t want to offend the non-Christian folks either. Or, you know, we could leave well enough alone and be happy with not having to sing “God save the queen”. I would vote for that option, too. It’s the national anthem–as much a part of Canada as hockey and beer. Don’t mess with it.

I get that not everyone’s going to agree with the olympics. I get that there’s probably not going to be anything short of a small miracle that’ll change their mind. And I get that even if their mind changed, they’d more than likely still insist the olympics be paid for by someone else who isn’t them–while they enjoy the benefits thereof, of course. That’s fine. That’s cool. Wonderful, even. That’s their right. This isn’t. Way to go, morons. You’ve just successfully punished people who probably had little to do with the games, short of maybe going to watch. Yeah, you’ve definitely made your point. Now kindly go to hell.

I finally got a chance to sit down this morning and check my email, after making several dozen laps outside with the dogs–sometimes, house sitting’s quite inconvenient. When I opened my email this morning, a nifty little gift was sitting there waiting for me. In the form of an email from the People Bank, one of the temp agencies I threw an application in with in the early stages of last year. I initially thought it might be a long awaited job opportunity. Or another interview. Or something of that kind of goodness. It would, after all, be the first such opportunity any of those agencies actually contacted me with in, like, ever. Nope, guess again. It was an email asking me if I was still looking for work, still busily unemployed, and still wofully unskilled for any of their 6 degree required positions. Naturally, I am in all 3 categories. So I told them as much.

But now, I just have one small, minor little question. I applied with this particular company in, I believe, February or March of last year–possibly a little earlier. They hadn’t contacted me with anything more than an introductory interview in that time. A year plus later, and I get a standard “Are you still available?” form letter. Meanwhile, at least three jobs have probably passed through that company that I could easily do in my sleep. Their reasoning? They want a current resume. Why? To upgrade my skills. Um. My skills, and resume, haven’t changed. So, um, what?
I like the concept behind temp agencies. But, I’m learning, the actual interactions with temp agencies? I could probably do without.

After yesterday’s launch of Apple’s iPad, everything from Twitter to several of my RSS feeds just blew up. I’m still wondering why, aside from the fact it’s an apple launch event. I mean, not that it doesn’t have its fanpeople, but I don’t see it doing what Apple’s hoping it will in its current form. This is going to get long-winded; you might want to make sure you’ve got a minute to browse.

Overaccessibility

First thing, from a me viewpoint, and from the viewpoint of a member of the blindness community. There is, believe it or not, such thing as too much accessibility. Way too much accessibility. And I think Apple’s trying to reach that level. I was rather politely informed today that I’m being ripped off if I buy a netbook over an iPad, because I won’t be getting the spacial info from a netbook that a touchscreen can give. I’m still waiting to be educated on a down side to that. When I’m working on a blog post, or doing just about anything else I’d usually do on a daily basis, I’m not worrying about where things are on the screen. Quite frankly, I could care less where they are–it’s whether or not I can get to them that matters. I really don’t care if there’s a row of links or menu options scrolling down the right hand side of my screen. If I can get to them, open them, use them, and get rid of them, that’s all that matters. When focusing on accessibility, the interface should still keep its sense of overall functionality. Having to physically look for where it is they’ve positioned an icon, menu option, button or window is, to me, not functional.

Useability

We could nitpick about just how far accessibility should go all day, but that’s by far not the only reason I don’t see myself owning or using an iPad in the near future, if at all. I’m a huge useability freak. More than I am an accessibility freak–although, in most cases, useability ends up equaling to accessibility. Part of useability is being able to easily move from one application to another, without having to back out of one, flip through a few icons to find another, and wait for it to open. You need to be able to multitask–don’t even ask how many applications I have open right now. Just don’t. The iPad is running a modified version of the iPhone’s OS. Which–you guessed it–means no multitasking. Suddenly, we’ve entered a slightly more modern version of 1999. People don’t have more than one or two programs open, if that. Or so Apple says, anyway. If this is designed to be a portable personal computer, though, and if Apple’s expecting it to be used for anything moderately heavy on productivity, we need multitasking. There’s plenty of agreement that it would have been very useful were it implemented for the iPhone. It only makes sense, and I dare say a lot of sense, that it would be even more useful for the iPad. So why are we still not seeing it? Were I in the market for a smaller machine to cart with me across the border or something, that might be a dealbreaker. Quick startup? Great. Awesome. Long-ish battery life? Bonus. Touch screen? Okay, I might be able to get used to that. Maybe. No multitasking? See ya. Next?

Hardware

Even with the lack of multitasking support, which one can only hope will be remedied in a future version, the device itself might somehow still have some promise. At least until you take a look at its specs, at which point that promise kind of gets up and walks out. There’s no ethernet port–believe it or not, there are places where wifi and/or cell coverage, if you want to pay the $130 or so extra for that feature, is unavailable. But you may still have access to plug in. Except, um, you don’t. There are no USB ports, except for the Apple-provided adapters. Which means you can’t connect it to your external HD if you happen to have one. No SD card slot either, meaning the only way to pull anything off the 64 GB flash drive in the machine would be to hook it to your computer, and do it through iTunes. And, yes, all of 64 GB of diskspace on the actual machine itself–a stock sub-$300 netbook can easily have 160 GB of space, albeit not flash memory. I don’t work like that. apple just basicly decided I can’t use most of what at some point I will probably be using at least once. And they put all of this in a package that weighs just slightly less than your typical netbook, with a battery that lasts roughly equally as long as most models nowadays–particularly when you factor in that you only ever actually get about 70% of the advertised battery life. Suddenly, that sub-$300 netbook’s looking a little more attractive.

Phylosiphy

All that aside, there’s one area of Apple’s operation that I don’t know that I’d ever agree with when it comes to its products. That being, from the instant you purchase an iPod, or an iPhone, or now an iPad, you’re effectively asking Apple’s permission to do anything with it. Want to install a program? Alright, but only if Apple says its okay–or you want to risk breaking your warranty and jailbreaking. On its technical specifications page (link is above), it even lists an iTunes store account as a requirement for the iPad. It’s been said that you’re almost renting your hardware from Apple, not having a whole lot of actual controll over what ends up being done with it. And indeed, with most if not all content needing to come from the app store unless you feel like jailbreaking, I can see where that perception would come from. And I can agree with it. If I buy a computer, even a small portable computer like that one, I want to be able to take it home, throw on a few programs I use regularly and already have handy–and not have to pay for more than one copy of them, since I already have them and all–and go about my business. I can’t do that with the iPad. And if Apple decides, as it’s done before, to change its mind and remove an app from the store? Well, now I’m pretty well out of luck until such time as I can be bothered to jailbreak. There’s a tiny bit of a problem here with that.

Conclusion

What it offers, as limitting as it is, is somewhat promising. I’d consider buying one, if we could just navigate a way around what it doesn’t and likely won’t offer in future. The apple loyalists will brand it as the way we’ll use computers tomorrow. Okay, I can buy that. But I’ll still be using my external hard drives tomorrow. I’ll still have need for ethernet capability tomorrow. And I most definitely won’t be coughing up $30/month to be able to use the internet on my computer without wifi–Rogers already charges me for a data plan I barely use but still have to pay for. If, as they say, we’ll be using computers in this fashion in the future, I’d better still be able to do all of that. Otherwise, go on ahead. Come back to the present when you’re bored. I’m not going anywhere.

Not that it should really be a surprise to anyone, but apparently it is. Facebook made some pretty significant-sounding changes to their privacy settings about a month ago, further highlighting why it is I go through phases of avoiding the site. Michael Arrington, over at Tech Crunch, puts it pretty much in perspective. His message, more or less: chill out already. And, quite simply, it’s a message I happen to agree with, for reasons not too dissimilar from those mentioned in the post. The most obvious of those reasons though hasn’t been quite blatantly enough stated yet, so I’ll just go right ahead and do that.

Privacy, especially on the internet, is pretty much a myth. That goes for blogging sites, social networking sites, emails, you name it. If it’s been sent to the internet, by you or by someone else, you might as well consider it no longer private. And the same holds true for Facebook, even before it made those changes to privacy settings that resulted in things being slightly more public than before. So this concept of there having been any real means of security online is a little misguided. A non-Facebook example, but an example that could just as easily have applied to Facebook, will help the explanation.

LiveJournal has an option to restrict the contents of your hosted blog to only select people, authorized by you, to read. Now, ignoring whether or not I agree with their method for determining exactly how folks are authorized to read your content, this was their version of semi-privacy–it’s not immediately search engine accessible, but people you know or want to get to know still have access to read, comment, and otherwise do what they will with your restricted content. Including pass it off to someone who didn’t originally have access to the said restricted content. Or copy it from your own, restricted blog, and post it elsewhere–likely where a search engine or other curious individuals can easily get their hands on it. There just went that sense of privacy. It’s the same way with email. You may be sending an email back and forth to one person, expecting them to keep it between the two of you. But who’s to say they’re not adding an address to the BCC field? Or forwarding the email to someone else? And if the conversation happens to be taking place on a mailing list, pretty good chance it’s being archived–which probably means it’s now searchable by non-members.

Back to Facebook for a slightly more relevant example. You’re at a party, and a less than flattering picture of you is taken. Not something you’d post to Facebook, but something that you’d probably laugh about with a few of the people who were at that party. The person who snapped the picture, though? He has no problem posting it to Facebook. And the next morning, he does just that. Now, you and those select few people who might have been at the party can still laugh at the picture. But so can everyone who happens to be “friends” with the person who posted the picture. Not all of which you may actually know–or, for that matter, want to be able to see the picture. Again, there just went that sense of privacy.

In that respect, and keeping that in mind, Facebook’s privacy changes don’t really amount to a whole hell of a lot of actual news. The rules of the game don’t change–just the default settings. You still really have no more or less security now than you did a month ago. And the same old advice applies just as much now as it did 6 months ago. If you don’t want it to go public, don’t give it to the internet. That includes Facebook. Don’t decide to just throw it up there and then whine when someone you wanted to keep it away from just so happens to see it. If you didn’t want it seen by an undetermined amount of people, you wouldn’t have posted it to a place where it could be seen by an undetermined amount of people. And if you did so in spite of you’re not wanting to, then I dare say it’s your own fault, and hardly the fault of whatever system or service you happened to be using at the time. The internet is by no means a private place, whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, whichever. Get used to it.

Sometimes, my mother and I have the strangest and most irritating conversations known to man. We had one such conversation that left me very much scratching my head in all sorts of confusion during a coffee run that got cut short yesterday morning. Within walking distance of my apartment, there’s a Tim Hortons location. I haven’t been here and organized enough yet to actually figure out how to get there from here without getting myself killed. But, it’s still been on my plans to do so. I brought that up with the mother over coffee at the said Tim Hortons location, initially on our way to maybe accomplish other tasks–although at the moment, it escapes me just what those other tasks might have been.

The thing to remember about my mother, and sometimes even I forget this, is she’s overly paranoid. She’s not quite at the level where she’ll wrap her house in something with some degree of protective coating or something at the slightest hint of a viral outbreak in town, but she’s reached the level where she gets a little jittery when I contemplate doing something as adventurous as taking the city bus in Ottawa. She gets a little anxious when I consider taking one of my cross-border trips–although she’d never admit it without some arm twisting.

So, when I mentioned in passing maybe getting around to actually figuring out how to get from A to B, I could tell right off it was defensive mom to the rescue. I thought she’d want to do her usual playing 20 questions about how I planned to do that, who I’d call, and would I be reachable in the process–she’s big on insisting I be available, even when it’s rather inconvenient for me to do so. Instead, and without blinking, she very calmly, and very casually suggested I should first investigate getting a guide dog before doing so. When I asked why she thought so, her answer just about floored me. Apparently, the dog will know if a car’s trying to cross in front of me, or is stopped in my way, and physically prevent me from crossing in that particular area. Because, you know, I wouldn’t be able to tell judging by the sound of the extremely not quiet engine that there was a quickly moving object about to take my face off were I to step into the street right about now.

Now, I have nothing against people who currently have, or have had, guide dogs. Clearly, it works for you. Or at least, at one time it did. It doesn’t for me. My reasoning is actually quite detailed, and will probably get an entry of its own up here at some point, but suffice it to say I get along far better by way of the cane than I would by way of the guide dog. And, in fact, am probably more likely to actually pay attention to things, simply because I won’t have much of a choice. Really though, I prefer that method of travel and am used to it, it hasn’t broken on me yet, so I don’t particularly feel the need to go messing with it. It’s not like one of my computers, or other pieces of recently tinkered with technology–I don’t particularly favour playing around with it until something goes sideways.

My mother knows this, and yet still she decided I needed a guide dog before learning a route to a coffee shop in a relatively small town. Ignoring the fact I’ve navigated Canada’s capital by way of the cane for a year and a half and nothing on my person shattered or otherwise stopped functioning. I think I can manage to maneuver my way a block and a half or whatever it is to fill my coffee needs without killing myself.

Needless to say, she was reminded of why I haven’t bothered and don’t plan to bother with getting a guide dog. And, as conversations like that often do, it kind of ended at about that point. I still don’t think she quite gets it, and she probably won’t. But I don’t generally like to overcomplicate things, really. For the kind of thing I was talking about, just in passing initially, a guide dog would definitely be overcomplicating things. I’ll probably go ahead and arange to figure out where I’m going and how to get where I need to be. She’ll probably have her miniature freakout session. Things will be just as they’ve always been. And I’ll hope to God we don’t have that particular conversation for a while. Once would be enough for me, thanks.

I heard a nasty little rumor last night while I was busy not caring that today marks the start of a new decade. Half an hour later, they were saying the decade starts next year at this time. Now, though, they’re all kinds of confused and not sure when it’s supposed to start. And me, personally? I’m wondering what the hell it matters. It’s just another year at the end of the day. Or should I say at the end of the party. You’re still going to wake up after the new years day hangover and return to your usual routine with the usual results. The only real difference is exactly how long the hangover really lasts. So I have to ask, does it really make a hell of a difference whether this or next January 1st is the beginning of a new decade? No, I didn’t think so. So, whether or not your decade starts today, may your hangover not last until tomorrow. And if you’re going to insist the decade starts today, do it over there. And you folks who say it starts next year, other side of the room please. There’s far more important things to start a civil war over. Like the price of coffee. Or why in the hell Surviver is still allowed to air. Let’s leave the calendar out of it, hmm?

On our way back to Canada before Christmas, we did stumble across the required small amount of duh-worthy amusement that seems to find one or both of us on every trip. This in the form of an overly inquisitive and way too curious customs officer who decided, after establishing that Jessica would be visiting her boyfriend–me–in Canada, decided to ask her twice if she was planning to move there. And if she was sure she wasn’t. And every time, she reasured the officer in the same manner that no, there were no plans to randomly decide once she’s over here to just sort of stay put. At least not on this trip. After the interview was over and it was decided both of us were neither terrorists nor future immigrants–apparently they’re on the same list, now, we both had to ask. what would have happened if she’d said yes? The way customs person was going about her questioning you’d almost think a wrong answer to that particular set of questions would have had her haulled off the bus and questioned in more detail in one of those little dark rooms you’re only allowed to see when you’re in the deepest level of shit. I get security. I get paranoia. And I get amusing as hell. This, ms. customs lady person thing, was amusing as hell. Thanks for this. Oh, and by the way. The terrorists are in the next car over.

I get that you’ve yet to actually meet your quota for network failures this year. And, I get that you’re running out of time to do so. But that doesn’t mean you should, while I’m in the middle of doing something to this or any number of sites/features/services I run on the server, decide to randomly and partially crap out so everything but the site/service/feature I’m currently working on stays up. That’s a really really good way to piss a geek off. Now, if you’d like to stay up and actually working for more than 2 weeks, I might not feel so dirty paying you the $19 or so you ask me to pay on a monthly basis. Can we talk about maybe possibly doing that now? Or am I just gonna have to play baseball with a tech support person’s head? I can do that too, if necessary. And if stability doesn’t start becoming a priority here, it might just end up being necessary. I’d hate to have to contemplate moving… I just got things set up the way I like it, mostly. At least until next month.

For approximately 24 hours, I flirted with the prospect of maybe having something that vaguely resembled employment when I got back from Rochester. I received an email from what I assume is an HR person from the Canadian Automobile Asociation (CAA), specificly their north east Ontario branch, requesting an interview. I’d had one with them a bit over a month ago, which ended up going not entirely badly. I figured this would be about the same–possibly a little better, depending on whether or not they were considering it my second in the series of interviews they typically do pre hiring. Since she didn’t say, I assumed she didn’t but there was that possibility.

There was just one very small, minor, niggling little problem. I’m in Rochester until the 24th of the month. Not against my will in the slightest–one tends to be a lot more willing to do things like that when one’s significant other has a crapload of events coming up over the course of the next week or so. The problem arose when I brought that up to miss interview chick. She had her heart set on interviewing everyone, in person, this Friday. And she wanted to interview me, in person, this Friday. Not opposed to that, I told her I’d love to–but I’m out of the country so could we do it by phone instead? Apparently not. “I prefer to do interviews in person,” was her officially and formally written way of telling me it wasn’t really open for negotiation. She included a halfway attempt at appeasing me by offering to try and squeeze me in next week. I told her again, sure, but we’d have to do it over the phone. I got another diplomaticly written response this morning, which escentially translated to thanks but no thanks.

Folks, I’m not hard to work things around as long as I have adequate notice and am not in the middle of other, more important things. I’m not even opposed to shuffling things around so I might be able to fit some new engagement or priority in at near last minute–provided the shuffle won’t result in more of a headache than just leaving it alone. But for all my flexibility and ability to actually survive a schedule that changes more often than I change my socks, I still can’t appear to be in two places at once. If in the course of a conversation I inform you I can’t do what you want when you want due to unavoidable physical limitations–such as, for example, my inability to fly from here to Ottawa for the interview, that should not translate to my saying I’d be more than happy to rewrite a week of already made plans for the sake of what may amount to a 20-minute interview. If I can’t show up until the end of the month, I can’t show up until the end of the month. If there are alternatives, and I provide them, I’m no longer the reason things didn’t get accomplished if you then refuse said alternatives. I prefer to do my interviewing in person too. However, that wasn’t an option for this one. Inability or unwillingness to adapt on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. Now, then. Where’d I put my other applications?

The latter is obvious to anyone who’s actually using the service, but I’ll get to that momentarily. Jess and I spent the majority of this weekend thus far kicked back and relaxing. She graduates on Thursday, so we’re sort of trying to gear up for that. Also, because we haven’t really had a weekend where we can just sort of not do a whole lot of anything that often since I came down here. Friday was taken up largely with music, dancing, awesome food and a little alcohol. We turned the majority of her living room into a dance floor, and just had ourselves a slow dance or 4. We ordered from a new–to me, anyway–restaurant,