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.

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.

Only in England does something like this come up. And, only in Canada does it actually make headlines. And, only on this blog will it be mocked. A 23-year-old from London, while walking his dog, decided just because the dog wanted a walk doesn’t mean he had to. London’s legal system felt otherwise.

Prosecutors said Paul Railton was spotted driving at low speed along a country lane in December, holding his dog’s leash through the car window as the animal trotted alongside.

Railton pleaded guilty Monday to not being in proper control of a vehicle. His lawyer, Paul Donoghue, said 23-year-old Railton acknowledged “it was a silly thing to do and there was an element of laziness” while exercising his lurcher, a type of crossbred sighthound.

Yes, I’m lazy. Sometimes, too lazy. Way, way too lazy. But even I’m not quite *that* lazy. Even if they actually wanted to give me a lisence. Say, can he also be charged with being a contender for 2010’s moron of the year?

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.

A 67-year-old guy, supposedly receiving old age benefits in Calgary, Alberta, has apparently made an attempt to rob a bank. Armed with, of all things, a fork. Clearly, someone should be talking to our government about maybe increasing how much he’s getting paid from the Canada Pension Plan. He could use the money. So could I, but I’m too lazy to find a bank to hold up. Or a fork to do it with.

I don’t get a chance to check my email very often while I’m over at my parents’ place, where I’ve been since yesterday. But, I did get a chance to check it tonight. And this little surprise, from they who host this blog, was waiting for me. Now, keep in mind, the service they’re offering? I’ve been using it since October or November or so.

Hey again James!

Last week we again sent you an email inviting you to try our still-new
DreamHost PS (Private Servers) and/or our DreamHost PS MySQL service!
But again it looks like you never checked it out at:

http://www.dreamhostps.com/

Nor did you choose to sign up by visiting:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

Well, it’s hard for us to understand how you couldn’t give it a shot for
just $10/month (66% off). But not impossible for us to believe. What’s
IMPOSSIBLE for us to believe is if you don’t take advantage of this, our
final and greatest offer!

$10/month off.. forever. That’s 100MB free.. meaning you can get your
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* You get your own PROTECTED system resources for improved stability!
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* You get increased performance via lighttpd, nginx and PHP caching!
* You can scale your resources on the fly, and reboot your own PS!
* It’s currently only +$10/month for every 100MB of memory. ($10 off!)
* It’s a completely seamless transition from our regular shared hosting!

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Now, this is really our final final offer. And, it expires one week from
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Thanks one final time,
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P.S. If you’d prefer not to be notified by email in the future should
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page here:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact

And select to not receive “DreamHost Promotions” anymore!

I giggled a little. I snickered. And then, I wrote this reply.

Folks,
 
I’m already signed up with your PS plan. Not that I don’t want to keep receiving discount offers, but I only need one and well, I have it. Can I still have
the discount, though?

Think I’ll get it? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. But maybe they’ll update their database to stop trying to sell it to me. Since, you know, I bought it the first time.

Update: I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong.

Hello,

Thanks for writing in! I went ahead and increased your subsidy from $5 to
$10. That gives you 66% off (if you allocate 150mb of memory at
$15/month).

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Thanks!
Dan G =]

–
DreamHost Support Team + support@dreamhost.com

Sometimes, I really love this web host. Also, gotta respect the root access.

There’s a very good, and very logical, reason why it is I never bother to do something as simple as make plans. Something almost always manages to show up to make things work significantly less than well. Like two days ago for example. The original plan, that is the plan we walked to the car with in our heads that morning, was to take a trip to Ottawa for dad’s doctor’s appointment, then maybe grab a little lunch and head home. After we finished with dad’s appointment, the plan changed to maybe grab lunch, then swing by Costco and then home. And by the time we got to the point where we’d have to make up our minds, the plan became a trip to the casino, then Costco, then home. We managed the trip to the casino.

Just about the time we were ready to make our way to the car to head to Costco–we even already had our jackets on and everything, mom started feeling this extreme sharp pain. Now, her pain threshold’s nearly as high as mine, so when it’s bad enough that she can barely move nevermind talk, it’d probably drive most people to either scream or break things. She could barely do either when we started for the car. We very nearly called an ambulance, except we were in Quebec and none of us could speak french overly well. We got her to the emergency room of one of the hospitals in Ottawa. And then the waiting started. And continued. And kept on continuing.

By 8:30, she’d managed only to get as far as urgent care. She’d been triaged, and… that’s about where it stopped. When I finally left at about quarter to 9, she was still sitting there. I headed to Trish’s place to grab a few hours sleep, banking on them not doing much with her overnight. Dad stuck around, banking on not getting much sleep overnight. We were both right.

At 3:00 yesterday morning, they finally got around to admitting her. They were operating on the same suspicion she was–it was a result of some kind of infection, which was producing rather painful levels of swelling. They ran bloodwork, which seemed to confirm it. Then she got to wait some more for them to get around to doing the ultrasound. That happened at about 9 yesterday morning. By then, they’d had her hooked up to an IV for antibiotics and were talking about the likelyhood of a DNC to try and remove any of the remaining swelling or scar tissue that might have been hanging around causing her additional problems. She was pain free, and we suspect infection free, when I dropped in to see her last night on the way here to dog sit and get things ready to mom sit. They hadn’t done the surgery yet, but they still had her on the antibiotics.

I got back here at about midnight, by which time it was pretty much decided she’d be going into surgery at some point today. I, along with pretty much the rest of our family, kept close to the phone for any kind of semi-significant change to the current situation.

At roughly 7:00 or so tonight, that change happened. I got the call first from my grandmother, and then from my dad, letting me know they were taking her into surgery. Apparently, the operation itself takes less time than the prep and recovery do, so we figure they’ll be able to release her before midnight tonight. Whether or not they will is another story entirely, but they’ll be able to. At the absolute latest, barring any random and unforeseen complications, she’ll be home tomorrow. As of right now, though, I have a fairly huge house and two overly affectionate dogs to myself. Anyone want an overly affectionate dog?

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.

Equally sadly, whoever created it is probably hoping some stupid sysadmin will get a hold of it and actually believe it. Surprisingly, there are sysadmins out there who’re that stupid–I did tech support for a few of them.

From: spam@email.address.removed
Date: Sat 02/01/2010 10:01 AM
To: my@email.address.removed
Subject: WEBMAIL UPGRADE

–
Dear Webmail User,
We are really sorry for the inconvenience we are making you pass through,we are having problem with our database due to our recent upgrade and we can not find your data. Please we need to rectify this problem before the next 24-hours if not, you may not be able to send or receive email with your e-mail address.

Please provide your account details below so we can rectify this problem as soon as possible:
USER NAME:
PASSWORD:
COUNTRY:
NOTE: Your data and information will not be tampered or interfered with, We’ll just record your data back into our database and send you a new confirmation alphanumerical password that will only be valid during this period and can be changed after this process.
Please respond to this notice to enable us provide you better online services.

Dear spamvertising asshole. I don’t use webmail except in emergencies. And my provider, when it works, actually has a clue. And can form proper english sentences. Please do you and me a favour and die in a grease fire. No love, a very unimpressed geek.

PS: You fail epically at life. Computer user’s license revoked.

How many times have you heard this scenario? Kid does something stupid/irresponsible/that the parents simply have told him not to do, parents get pissed off, and decide to revoke some privelege or another. Kid threatens to call the police. In my family growing up, there was always a snarky response that went along with it. In a family in Illinois, it had a completely different response. The kid ended up not meeting a whole lot of actual resistance, and went about the business of promptly calling 911 after his parents removed his XBox priveleges–quite probably due to the fact he was playing that as opposed to cleaning his room.

I’d love to have been the dispatcher for that call. Especially when he called specificly to ask if that was within his parents’ rights. And then, promptly hung up. So, the dispatcher sent the police to his address, where he was promptly owned. Not only was he informed the parents were well within their rights, but he was also advised that it might perhaps possibly be wiser to maybe consider listening to them. My money’s on the kid behaving just a little bit better now. If only temporarily. Or at least, now the parents will have some more creative threats for the kid if he doesn’t.

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.

If things get approved within the halls of Health Canada, I have a suspicious feeling we’ll be hearing a lot of folks saying that. And they actually won’t be bullshitting this time. Health Canada’s considering making it mandatory that anti-cancer drugs, assuming those even exist in the first place, be added to bags of chips. Ignoring the fact there are a hell of a lot better ways to medicate folks against cancer, um, someone wanna clue me in on exactly what that’s supposed to accomplish beyond making the severely anti-medication folks reconsider what snack foods they buy? My brain stopped processing after I read that. For the record, the article in question’s on the CTV website if folks want to take a look. I think I need help wrapping my head around this concept. Or maybe I just need food. Well, at least I can test one of those theories.

In 2008, OC Transpo drivers went on strike, effectively shutting much of the city down, during two of the most demanding months of the year–specificly, November and December. OC Transpo management doesn’t want a repeat of such a thing. So, as an attempt to counter any future strike activity, OC Transpo will risk locking out the unionized drivers and mechanics as a negotiation tactic. Thus, effectively, shutting down much of the city. Someone do explain? Please? The logic behind that just completely and totally escapes me. Either way, the bus system comes to a screaming hault. Either way, folks end up not being able to get to work, do their shopping, or otherwise do the things that need doing. And, drivers and mechanics who’re affected still get strike pay. So what’s this here supposed to prevent, again? Someone wanna maybe straighten that out for me? I think I skipped that class in highschool. And college.

I’m not sure if this is normal for Ukraine, but it’s WTF-worthy in Canada. A chemistry student, mistaking an explosive powder for citric acid, dipped his bubble gum into it. And then, quite promptly, blew half his face off. I’m all for trying new and unusual things from time to time, but I don’t know that I’d of been one to add a little citric flavouring to the thing. That he wasn’t paying all that close attention when he was doing it? I see a darwin award in the not too distant future.

It’s great that you’re coming out with a new, in-house and online equivalent to your on demand option available through your cable services. It’s even greater that you’re extending the option of using it to customers of any Rogers service. But you might want to, maybe, give not screwing over your customers a try if you’re actually planning to do that.

We’re already Rogers customers. We’re already paying, a lot of times way too freaking much, for Rogers services–up until October or so, for me, that included cable. If you’re going to grant us free access to your on demand service online, don’t then go back and decide that it still counts against our bandwidth caps (*). It’s *your* service, on *your* network. For which you’re still getting a *lot* of our money. More so if they’re also paying for TV from you. That’s enough. You’ve just guaranteed I won’t be playing with the new Rogers on Demand online anytime soon. And if I were a Rogers customer still for anything beyond my cell phone–you guys *are* the only ones right now that offer accessible phones that won’t absolutely kill my bank account–you’d be guaranteeing, since it would count against my bandwidth cap anyway, that I would continue my current means of obtaining my television viewing. No love, your local former customer tech geek.

PS: Thank you for not automatically assuming your wireless customers want to pay a monthly charge for *this* service, as well.

(*) Rogers is apparently not going to lift the bandwidth limitations on your internet service if you’re with them and accessing their on demand feature. I don’t get it either, but that’s Rogers. That’s also why I’m with TekSavvy.

I can tell you one thing I ended up not being thankful for when I woke up this morning after last night’s festivities. I staggered out to the computer, and went through my various news sources, coming up on this bit of disturbing news. It would appear, much to the dismay of just about anyone who’s had any experience with the downloading of torrents over the last… oh, 4 or 5 years or so, Mininova picked yesterday to close its doors to all but legitimately uploaded torrents. Which, as it turns out, rules out just about everything now on my list of things to be downloaded. Fortunately, if you follow the guys over at EZTV, they’ve already moved everything you might be looking for to alternate downloading sources. Which means, at least that illegally downloaded content will remain online. Now, to just hold out a little longer in the hopes that Demonoid makes a reappearance. Rest in piece, Mininova. We’re gonna miss you.

And I’ve been known to get some pretty decent random, and stupid, emails. I got this one last Wednesday.

From: spam@email.address.removed
Date: Wed 11/18/2009 10:12 AM
to: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: RE: SHIPMENT AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED

Head Office Branch
Plot 84, Ajose Adeogun Street
Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.

RE:YOUR PAYMENT NOTIFICATION
From:Dr Paul Smith.
Remittance Manager.
Zenith Bank Of Nigeria.
Attention:Beneficiary

This is to officially inform you that we have verified your contact file presently in our database, as regards your African Union (AU)solidarity fund that was awarded to you upon been one of the lucky Beneficiary in its last draw on the 9th of November 2009.
This award is funded by the African Union( AU) so as to strengthen tires between Africa and the rest of the world with particular reference to Nigeria.
We have discovered you have not received your payment due to your lack of co-operation and not fulfilling the obligations giving to you in respect to your contract payment.
Secondly, you are hereby advised to stop dealing with some non-officials in the bank as this is an illegal act and will have to stop if you so wish to receive your payment immediately. After the board meeting held at our headquarters, we have resolved in finding a solution to this problem, and as you may know, we have arranged your payment through our SWIFT CARD PAYMENT CENTRE in Europe, America,Africa and Asia Pacific, which is the instruction given by our president, ALAHAJI USMAN AMIR YARADUA (GCFR) Federal Republic of Nigeria.

This card center will send you an ATM CARD which you will use to withdraw your money totaling to a tune of $7.000.000.00 (Seven Million Dollars) in an ATM MACHINE in any part of the world, but the maximum is ($2,000) per transaction. So, if you like to receive your fund this way,reply to this office immediately for the issuing of your (ATM) CARD with the below Information.

(1) Name:
(2) Address:
(3) Phone:
(4) Age:

Alternatively, you can come down to the header address to claim your fund with the original notification mail that will be sent to you shortly.
We shall be expecting to receive your information you have to stop any further communication with anybody or office apart from this office of the presidency.
On this regards, do not hesitate to contact me for more details and direction, and also please do update me with any new development.
Thanks for your co-operation.

Best Regards,

Dr Paul Smith
Remittance Manager
Zenith Bank Of Nigeria.

Note: Because of impostors, we hereby issue you with our code of conduct, which is (202) so you have to indicate this code when contacting or emailing this CARD CENTER and remember that there is a $100 charges for openning your non-residence and we would advise you not to reply to these e-mail if you do not have the said fee for openning your non-residence account.

Were this email actually legitimate, and were I actually entitled to any amount of money, and were it in fact due to be coming to me ASAP from some overseas establishment, I doubt they’d be sending me a poorly written email about it. But, since neither of those “if”s appear to be true, and the email in question looks as though a 4th grader had a crack at writing it, it gets the spammer stupidity award for November, 2009. Sometimes, 419 scams amuse the royal hell out of me. But just sometimes.

Also: If anyone *does* actually want to send me 7 million dollars, I won’t say no. Just don’t tell me via email.

This doesn’t exactly make me warm up to the idea of having police officers in schools, for any reason. An Ottawa police officer, now suspended with pay, is being brought up on child abuse charges. Well, actually, more like 4 counts of assault–and 2 of them with a weapon, but they might as well amount to child abuse. Considering the children in question were in his own family and all. And he was dealing with the public on a regular basis? Sometimes, the city scares me.

For years now, I’ve been watching slowly less and less TV. At least, watching less of it actually *on* my television. Before, say, in about 2003 or so, I used to watch just about everything I wanted to on TV–you didn’t use to have a whole lot of other choice. I mean, you could download every single episode of every single series you were keeping up with, one episode at a time, but it usually took for bloody ever, and often times they weren’t exactly of very decent quality. Plus, I was in college, and the college network had a nasty little habbit of randomly crapping out–sometimes for a couple hours at a time, so that made doing anything that required a constant net connection a little tiny bit challenging.

Flash forward 6 years or so. Now, with the growing popularity of torrenting technology, plus increasingly faster connections, downloading entire seasons of series becomes a whole lot easier–I’m downloading the first 7 seasons of CSI Miami as I write this. Add to that, you can pretty much pay I think it’s like $5 or so, if that, to somewhere like iTunes and have access to download entire seasons that way. And there’s still the old fashion method of downloading one episode at a time over your more traditional filesharing clients–Bear Share comes to mind–although many of the same issues of old usually pop their heads up when that’s tried. And, if that isn’t good enough and you want to keep things on the still semi-legal, many of the more popular shows are usually available online, streamed directly from the originating station/network’s website–for exactly free. Of course, if desperation sets in there’s always Youtube if nothing else.

So what’s the point? Lately, I’ve been keeping track of exactly how much actual TV I watch on TV, and the amount is really quite surprising. Consider it like this. At the moment, my TV’s turned off. It may stay turned off until 7:30 tonight, when the hockey game comes on. It may get turned on maybe an hour and a half earlier for local news, assuming I decide I can’t get just as much information online throughout the day. And it will probably be turned off again after tonight’s hockey game–unless my Leafs display their usual amount of suckitude, at which point it may be turned off halfway through said game. That routine will likely continue, until approximately April 5th or so, at which point the baseball season will start, and my TV will be on long enough to watch that. I don’t usually watch Star Trek, CSI, or any of my other shows on TV anymore, unless they happen to be on at someone else’s place while I’m over. I don’t watch American Idol, or So You Think You Can Dance, so I’m not missing a whole lot by not catching up on who got kicked/voted/bought off or whatever on those series. So really, my TV watching peaks at perhaps, at most, maybe 5 hours a week–all of it sports broadcasts you can’t download, or stream without usually paying for it anyway.

I was reading earlier this morning about the so-called TV tax hearings being held in Ottawa between the broadcasters and the cable companies. During yesterday’s hearings, CTV, one of Canada’s major broadcasting companies, escentially told the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that if cable companies don’t start paying for the privelege of transmitting their signals–which, roughly translated, means if we don’t start paying up for the privelege of receiving their signals, they will either start blocking US programming or pull their signals off any carriers who don’t want to pay for it. Which, to me, means I’ll lose my local news. Which I get online anyway. Hockey Night in Canada is streamed online, so if I have to, I can watch it there for far less than I’m paying for the privelege to watch it on a CBC channel as it is. Rogers and Bell Canada own two of the major broadcasting channels my sports programs show up on outside of HNIC–Sportsnet and TSN, respectively, so I doubt they’ll be pulling their own channels off the various networks. And, since I get my US programming fix via Torrents, directly from the originating US networks’ websites, or when I’m over at someone else’s place, I don’t miss much by having it blocked by CTV.

So what are we missing again? Broadcasters want compensation from the cable companies, who will take said compensation from us, for… exactly what? So we have the option to watch our local news on TV as opposed to getting it from any number of newspapers, either online or in paper copy? So we can watch the same shows on TV, occasionally interupted by commercials, that we can either buy from iTunes or download from Mininova without, or that we can watch with different commercials by tuning in the originating US network? If the choice is between that and paying more for the privelege of being able to watch the same, limited number of programs I actually still watch on TV, I see a cancelation in my not too distant future.

For as long as I can remember, every time we had the chance we’d pack up the family and head out to Pembroke’s waterfront in mid-August to get a halfway decent seat for whichever big name bands were playing. It was the Roadhammers once, Wide Mouth Mason, and there were probably a few others I can’t immediately remember. Often times, nights like that would be followed up by a Sunday afternoon browse through festival grounds to get a look at whatever it is we didn’t get to see on Friday or Saturday.

Sunday wasn’t a concert going day–mind you, that was largely because the performers they got in on Sundays were, well, often times local. And often times not very good. And since we’re talking Pembroke, we know they won’t be inclined to change that. Instead, because Sunday is a low attendance day, the city’s contemplating cancelling Sundays and starting the festival on Thursday instead.

Among the suggestions includes dropping the thinly attended Sunday program of the three-day festival, saving on the expense of hosting it, while concentrating on Thursday evening.

“Pembroke is not a Sunday “let’s go to the festival” community,” she said, as in the past four years the Sunday program never attracted more than 1,500 people, despite having attractions like April Verch, Fred Eaglesmith, Valdy and the Fiddling and Step Dance show.

By having the festival start on Thursday and wrap up Saturday, organizers can take advantage of the college crowd, who like to head out Thursdays to have fun. The large turnout of people to this year’s finale of the Ottawa Valley’s Got Talent contest, held at the waterfront amphitheatre Thursday evening, is testament to that idea.

Prior to the attending of any of the Sunday events, I hadn’t heard of most if not all of those. The only reason I have any interest in fiddling and/or step dancing is because I have a cousin who was, at one time, involved in it–and I don’t think I attended that Sunday on account of having to work anyway. So… um, no, they’re not about to go drawing in huge crowds if you’re roping them in for that. Keep the Sunday program, just… with better material. Maybe stick the talent show over there. I’d listen to that over a reappearance of April.

Out of random curiosity last year, I started to tinker with Linux on a local machine–specificly, a 5-year-old HP laptop that wasn’t really being used for a whole lot else. Not really being willing to bother considering what I could manage to lose and what I might want to keep–there was 4 years of crap on that laptop pre-install, I just pulled everything off that HD and onto this machine, and went about the business of installing Gentoo. I know, at least three of you are laughing at me for having made that decision. I like a challenge, okay? Since then, I’ve been playing, tweeking, updating, tweeking, and playing some more just to see how long it takes me to get everything working. Or, how long it takes me to break things so horribly it doesn’t even boot, whichever comes first.

There’s a point to this, I swear. The thing that drew me initially to Linux is the fact that it can run on damn near anything with the right amount of tweeking. And the people behind it actually encourage it. I mean, the fact that it’s free doesn’t hurt either but still. I can dig up an old Pentium II, hook it up, pray to god it has an ethernet port on the thing so I can plug it into the router, and probably find a current version of Linux that’ll run on it. Windows and Mac OS can’t really make that claim. Hell, the advent of Vista broke most machines that could have run XP just fine a couple years ago. And Apple’s been trying for, like, ever to find a way to restrict people to buying their hardware if you want their OS.

They’re trying it again, this time in the form of an update that apparently removes Intel Atom chipset support from the OS. While they point out it probably won’t take very long before someone comes up with a patch for it, they also sort of halfway gloss over the entire point as to why I won’t be buying a Mac anytime soon, against the multitude of advice that’ll no doubt be offered to me by Mac and Mac OS users alike. The OS can run on damn near any Intel chipset out there. And it even needs little to no modification to actually do so. You would think, since it means selling more copies of their OS, and since it means they can take even more market share away from Windows and Linux, they’d be all over it. Apparently you’d be wrong.

I don’t like being told what I’m allowed to do with something I already paid for. That’s why I don’t own an iPhone, and why once I’m more comfortable with Linux I’ll probably be switching from Windows entirely. If Apple’s going to insist that if I want to run their OS, whether I have space for it or not I absolutely must buy their hardware, I’ll stick to Linux, thanks. Or, if not Linux, someone who’s not trying to work against me.