Just because I spent a month out of the country doesn’t mean I didn’t find things to blog about. Or mock. Or snicker at. Yeah, it’s been a hell of a busy month. And, once I got back through the door of this apartment, my first thought was “holy shit busy”. It’s apparently been busy for the readers, too. Here’s what folks found interesting in the month of August, courtesy Google Analytics.

• For some, the time for things to break is on a Thursday. For others, it’s the entire month of August. Apparently, I fall into the latter category. Near breakage, outright breakage, fake breakage, and oh yeah, beyond my control breakage–if it could break, it probably did. Or tried to. And I summarized most of it.
• Just when you thought it was safe to take off your mask. Not even 36 hours after H1N1 was declared dead, they up and invented a new superbug. And hey, it’s already going global. Yeah, you guys can probably guess my opinion on it. But in case you can’t, there it is in link form.
• As Canadian as fiddle fest on a labour day weekend–which, by the way, is coming up next weekend if you’re in the area, and nearly as unknown to folks south of the border, Great Big Sea. I wrote about them here, and included a sample video. Really, they’re awesome and must be checked out. Like, now-ish.
• Twitter is awesome. No, seriously. If you don’t have an account, get one. Also, now-ish. But that having been said, not every thought I have makes it that far. Usually because it loses its context by the time I get around to glancing at Twitter–like tonight, for example. I posted a sampling of them here. I’ll probably do a similar post again later. Or maybe just update that one. I dunno.
• And making a comeback on the popular posts list, what the hell, Ottawa? I still can’t wrap my head around why they forked over more assistance for convergys than they did when the Dell office went splat. And hey, five months later, apparently I’m not the only one. And I still don’t have any more of a clue.

Holy freaking busy. And I do mean busy. For a small sampling of what I mean, have a look through previous posts. Or, wait until the popular posts for this month gets tossed up. In the meantime, here’s what caught people’s attention in July–a surprisingly way less busy-ish month, considering.

• Right on queue, when I was thinking about possibly finding some way to bypass the US only limitations and at least try out Netflix, they go out and bring it to Canada. Well, sort of. About goddamn time we get something folks on this side of the border already have.
• All the busy in the world doesn’t quite make up for the first week of July, part of it was spent with Jessica. It was during that week that she became my fiance. And she’s not managed to run screaming yet.
• I effectively and officially started the ball rolling on the whole getting me into college thing around the middle of July. Naturally at that point I had no idea that ball was going to try and roll right over top of me, but it got started then. And even that took some twisting of arms.
• I have a nasty habbit of screwing up my sleep schedule completely beyond recognission. Sometimes, it ends up resulting in 4:00 wake-up calls. And most of the time it ends up not actually staying stable, even in its screwed up state, for very long. Gotta love the flexible routine–except when it’s way, way too flexible.
• And in slightly mock-worthy news, Sarah Palin has a thing for occasionally inventing new words, then claiming it’s because everyone else is doing it. I harass her for it as often as I can, much to the dismay of many I’m sure. But, hey, considering the couple months I’ve been having, even minor amusement/mockery can be good.

Okay, so not as entertaining as some of the other lists. What do you want for the middle of summer? Now, back I go to the land of oh my god busy.

Always up for a party, we ended the month–and began this one–with several smaller ones. If you’re not in a party mood and aren’t up for the whole Canada day thing, sit back with something cold and have a look at what people nearly as bored as me found of interest this month, as always, courtesy of Google Analytics.

• The line about being a geek in training isn’t exactly an inaccurate one. So when Linode cellebrated its birthday, of course I took advantage of what they were offering. It also reawakened the age old migration debate–and generated some interest among people wondering if they should, and how to do it. In answer to the first question, yes. In answer to the second? If you know, drop me a line.
• Local politicians are a tiny bit idiotic at times. Specificly with regards the new copyright bill being pushed through in Canada’s parliament. I’ve tried offering them a clue by four. My new favourite to target with it is minister Tony Clement. Sadly, I’m still failing. Oh well, maybe his replacement will catch on.
• It had to happen sometime, or so I’ve been told. It happened last Saturday. It was posted about on Tuesday. I ended up engaged, just in case you missed the half a dozen announcements we’ve been tossing out.
• And, because it wouldn’t be my blog without at least two techy entries, here’s your second. Twitter’s reply and conversation tracking features are good, but could benefit from some improvement. I have an idea how that could happen, not that I expect it to go anywhere. It’d still be wicked awesome if it did, though.
• And making a return to the popular posts list, my attempt to beat an answer out of Ontario’s government re: the current situation with the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) is generating a little more interest. After trying to get answers from folks and getting absolutely nowhere, I resorted to a couple somewhat strongly worded open letters to the premier, and leaders of all 3 major provincial parties. The first one’s over here.

Edit, 3 days later: I fail epically at HTML. Also, I fail at noticing my HTML related failures. I should stop doing that.

Not even officially summer yet and I’ve had to keep the remote to my AC close by. This isn’t pretty. If you’re sweating it out like I am, here’s a nifty little way to keep semi-cool. crack open something cold–I recommend a bottle of rum–and have a look at what folks were interested in last month, as always, courtesy Google Analytics.

• The “piracy is evil” camp got a bunch of renewed memberships this month, in the form of our new copyright legislation and its supporters. I wonder what for, and point out the obvious. As long as the pirates offer a better service than the legal alternatives, piracy wins. And no, I don’t lose sleep at night.
• Administrative bodies absolutely hate making things headache free. Noteably when it comes to certain highschool transcripts. I guess 1995 was a good year–folks are surprisingly still stuck there, at least technologically.
• Earlier in the month, Ottawa and area received a gift from the phone companies in the form of a new area code. It only took them 4+ years since they enacted ten-digit dialing.
• Humidity? Here? Nah. Can’t be. If you’re me, you’re probably about ready to call it quits on this whole overly sticky thing already–and it’s only June. And if you’re Xup, you’re probably crazy enough to actually like it. I’m sorry.
• Speaking of Xup, a debate over on her blog a bit ago left me with an essay in my head, and I’m way too nice to stick the whole thing on her blog in a comment. It got dropped here instead. I keep forgetting to do my follow-up post to this one. Maybe today at some point. Or tomorrow. See? Told you lazy is bad for me.

It’s been one piece of news after another the last few weeks, some of which weren’t spent in the relative safety of my non-secure apartment building. Still, I found the time in the last few days of April to get one last blog in. So, here, have a late compilation of last month’s interesting reads, according to people who read this thing and Google Analytics.

• Back in March, I challenged the government of Ontario to actually talk to us common folk about what they’re planning on doing for people on welfare and/or ODSP. The premier sent me back a form letter, and I pasted both here.
• Convergys closed its doors in the middle of last month. They’re being given a leg up by city and provincial governments, at last check. Possibly even the federal government. My opinion on that is here, but summarized, where was this 2 years ago?
• Speaking of the provincial government, let’s continue the theme. An attempt to throw sex education at grade 3 students didn’t go over very well in the province–hence Dalton McGuinty’s rather quick retreat within a day or two of it making headlines. It didn’t go over well here, either.
• And, because themes are meant to eventually be broken, that’s exactly what we’re going to do here. Speaking of broken, Canada is dangerously close to breaking braille. At least if the rumours are true–I still haven’t heard one way or the other. Anyone feel like offering something factual? Google’s got nothin’.
• Again with the brokenness of things, this time from a tech perspective. I’m still a user of LiveJournal. In the sense that this blog cross-posts to LJ, and I’ve hacked something together to read my friends list via RSS feeds. It wasn’t easy. And, it’s rather quite well documented–including what I eventually decided to do to kind of make it work. So far, it seems to be working.

Hey now. More productive than I thought. Who knew? There is promise in this.

Also: There will undoubtedly be a celebratory hockey post in the next few days, barring a disaster. Montreal isn’t doing so hot. Thank, freaking, God. Yes, unrelated. You’ll live.

Update: Clearly, I fail at HTML and spelling. Tonight, I cannot brain. Fixed. Now, stay pretty, goddammit.

As anyone who’s been following my ramblings for a while knows, I’m a recent and still in progress convert away from LiveJournal. To this day, I still blog on that site as Arinoch, though now it’s more a duplication of the content you’d usually find on this site. One of my big reasons for skipping out on LJ is the lack of control over what you actually have the ability to do with your blog. But, a slightly more important one–to me, anyway–was the lack of an ability to actually see who bothers to read the thing. Until recently, they had absolutely no means of statistical tracking. Which, admittedly, isn’t the primary reason I do this, but sometimes it comes in handy. They tried to correct that minor malfunction with their own, internal analysiss tool, called “My stats”. It was barely useful for more than to see how many of your “friends” continued to check up on you every 20 minutes. So now, they’ve taken the next logical step and gone with the use of Google Analytics instead, giving you the option to get as detailed or not a look at your blog as you please.

I’ve been using the same service on this site, after trying several things to see who would provide me with the more interesting stats–and, after consulting with one well-known expert in the field, Toronto Mike. And all I can say is it’s about goddamn time. If I hadn’t already switched from LJ, I’d probably reconsider doing so now. Particularly if they opened up what you could actually do with the blog you’re optionally paying them to host. Offering this, plus options for advertising on your own–hey, why should LJ-sponsored ads be the only option available–is a good start, though. Now keep it going. I may be tempted to not hang up completely.

What I’d like to see next? StatCounter support, for the realtime stats analytics doesn’t touch. Dunno why they don’t touch it, but oh well. Now, allow me to go play with this for a little.

Surprisingly, it’s been a fairly inactive/unproductive month. Very few jobs to look for, in spite of the whole theory that says the economy’s bouncing back, but plenty of time to spend with the girlfriend, the nephew, my now eliminated hockey team, and everyone else. I’ve even gotten a tiny bit political in my recently discovered free time. Here’s what folks found interesting in the month past, according to Google Analytics.

• Convergys closes this month. Earlier in March, the city offered to help catch the employees that company threw under the bus. I wrote about it, and wondered why we didn’t see that kind of help when Dell went sideways. I still wonder.
• The Ontario Disability Support Program, or ODSP, is right now the difference between my unemployed and apparently unhireable ass being in this apartment and on the street. In its current state, it’s not much of a difference. I called out the premier over it, to which I got a rather indifferent shrug of an email. I promptly called him again. Will it warrant another shrug?
• My second letter was only sent a few days ago, in response to this small handout being given to us by the ministry of social services. combine that with the few taxes, user fees etc we’re getting thrown at us of late, and you can probably see the direction the math’s heading.
• Folks are still taking an interest in the results of February’s olympics. Specificly, in Canada’s ice dancing gold metal. Yeah, I didn’t know ice dancing was an olympic sport either. Or that we had anyone competing in it. Shows what I know.
• I’ve always believed the world’s got way too much time on its hands. Or at least, too many timezones. One seems like a good number, at least to me. I made my case for it, but no one’s listening yet. Well, except Russia, who’s already killed two of its zones.

Yeah, this blog’s about as random as it gets. From politics, to sports, to random gripes about timezones. But, hey, someone keeps reading it besides me. Now, maybe I can get more than a shrug out of Dalton McGuinty this month. Anyone taking bets?

Slightly more activity than is usual snuck up on the blog in February. Not that there was a whole lot of activity here to begin with, so there’s your comparison. Here’s what folks have found interesting when they came my way.

• February was olympic month this year, and the resulting metal haull was kicked off in style by miss Jennifer Heil. There’s confirmation now we won’t be seeing her in future olympics. Hell of a way to go.
• This blog, and nearly everything else public-facing I’ve got my hands in, is hosted by DreamHost. Every so often, they’ll pull a very minor oopsy that leaves me kind of scratching my head. Or, in some cases, scoring a discount. Hey, not my fault I already bought what they were advertising.
• Everywhere you turn nowadays, seems something either made by or hosted by Google’s cropping up. First search, then email, then their own IM service, their own answer to MS Office online, their answer to Map Quest, you name it. I made a crack or two about Google being pretty much all over the place. And, almost as though they were just proving me right, they went out and bought Aardvark–a realtime search engine I’ve been known to use that actually forwards your questions onto other users who might have an answer. Hey, Google, I’m still sorry about that. Seriously.
• Skipping back to the olympics, because we do that, our record breaking amount of gold metals was contributed to by Maelle Ricker. I wrote about it a few minutes after it happened. And she’s still a popular–well, as popular as can be expected for a blog this size–search term.
• I live in either a very tiny city or a very large small town, depending on how you look at it. I still had no idea exactly how tiny, or how slow, we were–until I learned there are actually still places here–big places here–that don’t have DSL yet. Or cable. That they’re still stuck with dialup or nothing. That… scares me. Still.

Fortunately, the month of technical issues has also come to a very conclusive end with the month of February. Although, there’s still the pesky little issue of a laptop that doesn’t quite work the way it should. But, can’t have everything. There’s your look at what we did have in the month of February. I’d say hopefully March ends up a litle better, but I know better. STill, I’l keep blogging. Interested? Keep reading.

January’s been an interesting/exciting/entertaining month, to be sure. Definitely more entertaining than I figured it could be, what with mom’s unplanned trip to the hospital and all–she’s very well recovered now, by the way. Other folks found things interesting in January, too. Have some highlights.

• Every geek should have a netbook. It’s a rule or something. They’re smaller, lighter, cheaper, and damn near as powerful as your average laptop nowadays. Not to mention they can probably take a hell of a beating. Still, to say I don’t have my reasons for not owning one would be a lie. I like my machines to last for, say, more than a year.
• Mom’s unexpected trip to the hospital started at a casino in Quebec. And promptly lasted over 3 days. Most of that time was spent waiting to figure out whether or not she’d need surgery. Fortunately, the surgery she did need was hardly anything major and her recovery was quick.
• I like the theoretical idea of the iPad. I don’t like its design on quite a few levels. No multitasking? On a portable computer? Really?
• I get all kinds of spam in my inbox. Some of it is just plain moronic. And some of that, even, still fools people. I wonder just how many username/password combinations this one actually got out of people.
• If I’m ever in the market for a new machine, someone please remind me about this post. I refuse to look at it right now, on the grounds that it may distract me from writing. But I still want those machines. Apparently, so do a few other people.

might be inclined to say there was a fair bit of at least semi-useful to someone content posted in January. Except this would be my blog, and I very rarely post anything semi-useful here–so I know better. Still, it’s an interestingly nice thought. Now, back to posting bits of randomness that constitutes my life in a nutshell. The content may improve, but don’t count on it.

The month hasn’t been as active on here as they probably should be. I’ve been skipping back and forth across the border, plus with Christmas and all the preparation for that folks in general just haven’t been browsing as much. Still, those that did browse were quite interested in what I had to say this month.

• We’ve been having issues with our web host, DreamHost, a fair bit this year. I ranted about that, and actually got a possible decent recommendation out of it. Might be useful in the event I don’t feel like self-hosting everything I use.
• Folks in Rochester don’t do Thanksgiving quite like I’m used to. comparing the two was interesting in a few ways, and not something I thought to do before.
• Sometimes, relaxation comes in all sorts of odd forms. And sometimes, disability services–yes, even in Canada–try to screw folks over when they least need it done. Like, for example, all the time. I wrote about both.
• All kinds of things get said about us as Canadians. We’re overly polite. we’re fans of our beer and poutine. Hockey is to Canadians like Christianity is to the right wing of the political spectrum. And sometimes, we stumble across proof. It’s then that I get amused.
• Jessica’s birthday went off without a hitch. There was plenty planned for it, much done, and a post written particularly for that occasion.

It’s been an interesting month, for sure. And an interesting couple months since I started getting back into blogging. Hopefually that says a whole lot about 2010, and maybe I might actually find a point for this thing beyond random personal and sometimes trivial facts about stuff that doesn’t matter to anyone else but me. But until then, random personal trivialities it is. Stick around this month if you like. It might be fun.

On average of about once a month, I like to try and capture a snapshot of things of general interest people have been pointing to here. Mostly for my own curiosity, but also because sometimes if they find it interesting, they might not be the only ones. Since the thing’s only been online for a little less than a month, the interest level’s probably gonna be through the floor, but oh well, I’m doing it anyway.

Since the blog came back from the dead in the first week of November, 275 unique visitors ran across these posts, and probably pointed a friend or two to reading them.

• The truth behind the Canadian stereotypes
• On why I’m becoming a Linux convert
• Winter makes a drive-by of the Ottawa valley
• On Christmas shopping, and the brain damage that results

There you have it. Bits and pieces of my life, documented and found interesting by folks. Hopefully it’s as interesting a read as it was entertaining when I was doing it.

Disclaimer: statistics may not be accurate, as this doesn’t count those of you reading this on Livejournal, which for the moment I’m unable to track. Hey, LJ, if you’re reading this, fix that. Also. MY ability to spell, and my ability to actually remember to link to the posts in question, seem to have taken a vacation. Here’s hoping next month’s is better.