I live in a small town. Not small as in my next door neighbour knows the sister of the lady who taught my grade 3 class–although it might as well be, seeing as a couple doors down from me lives one of my elementary school teachers, but small. Small enough that, surprise of surprises–and I didn’t even know this, people are still getting excited about the prospect of high-speed, DSL internet being brought to their particular community. DSL. That thing I’ve been using for nearly 10 years. And folks are still today getting excited about having it. Scratch that, folks today still actually don’t have that particular option. I knew Pembroke and area was still catching up to everyone else, but I had no idea we were *this* behind the times. Paging the CRTC…
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I had no idea we were *this* behind the times.
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Hey, Google? I was kidding about that everywhere crack.
Really, I wasn’t serious. Honest. When I said you were all over the place, it was really intended to be an exageration. You didn’t have to go and get all social with your buying out of Aardvark just to prove a point. Really. And this whole getting into the broadband market, too? That’s just overkill. Really, I didn’t actually mean you were everywhere–you can stop trying to be now. Or at least bring that whole broadband thing to Canada. The CRTC could use a real life example of what we *should* have up here.
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I think I might have just found a decent use for AIM.
I very rarely, meaning almost never, use AOL’s instant messaging client, in spite of the fact it’s been sitting on my computer for the better part of a year. Probably longer than that. Mostly because, well, all the cool people use MSN. Except my family, apparently. In their defense, though, they are at least on Facebook–of course, that’s exactly where I rarely am.
Fortunately, for me anyway, I now-well, eventually anyway-will have even less of a reason to bother with the service. And more of a reason to stick with AIM. The next version of the program, which will hopefully be equally as stable, if not more so, as its current version, will supposedly include the ability to chat with people on Facebook via the AIM client. No, I’m not an overly huge fan of AOL–I’d of preferred it be MSN, but I’m not an overly huge fan of the Facebook website either. And since I still only go on there to play Mafia Wars, and I don’t even do that very often, I’ll take it. Who knows? Maybe MSN will do the same. Hey, one can dream.
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If you thought old age security was bad before, do not read this.
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.
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Dear temp agency. My status is confused.
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. -
Febuary’s word of the month: prorogue.
1. to discontinue a session of (the British Parliament or a similar body).
Also known as the double standard affect, if you happen to be a resident of Canada. How so? Explanation is below.
Stephen Harper shut down Canada’s parliament at the end of December–a parliament that would have both resumed on January 25th and been closed at the end of this week for the olympics anyway. And there was a shit storm about it. Anti-proroguers started a website, and a Facebook group against it. Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty prorogues the legislature, and… nope, not a peep. The legislature will resume after the olympics, he says, with a throne speech. The difference? A whole two or three weeks wherein not much would have been accomplished anyway. Well, except for a whole lot of yelling and screaming across the isle in the House of Commons. Which really, while it made for an awesome way to kill the afternoon watching, I’m doing just fine without. And CPAC’s programming isn’t suffering either.
Yes, I’m aware that first link is a CBC article. And yes, I’m aware they’ve kind of screwed up copyright royally, and wasted my tax dollars in the process. They can also shove it.
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Sharks 3, Maple Leafs 2.
We played quite well. I’d even go so far as to say we were awesome. Definitely the better out of the two teams. And we still gave it up. At least we waited until late in yet another third period before we lost all hope of winning. I’d say more, but I’ve run out of ways to say it. The 2010 Toronto Maple Leafs, even post trade, suck. If not at the game, then definitely at this whole winning thing. No, that will not make me start cheering for Ottawa. Even if I’d probably be able to watch more of their games.
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Virtually spam free, and lovin’ it.
Every so often, Mike will post some nifty little trick or tool he uses that makes doing X, Y or Z about a hundred times easier than some would argue it has to be–thanks for the Google Analytics pointer, by the way. So it surprised the hell out of me when he wrote this post at the beginning of the month about having to deal with comment spam. And, I had to wonder. How in the hell does a guy who’s been blogging on one platform for longer than I’ve been blogging on 3 deal with it?
In his defense, he uses Movable type, which has okay–though definitely not great–spam catching and destroying abilities. But it needs a *lot* of manual intervension to do it. Part of the reason I got fed up and switched to LiveJournal for a couple years, and then eventually to WordPres–the self-hosted version. They too used to require by default a hell of a lot of manual intervension in the spam department.
Now, though, since I’m not exactly sure which version, they make use of the Akizmet plugin for catching and either holding or deleting spam before it gets posted to the blog. Since making use of this plugin, and granted the blog’s only been around for about 3 months or so, I’ve only ever had perhaps two spam comments make themselves known in this little corner of the intertubes. For comparison’s sake, there are currently 34 comments waiting for me to boot them out of the spam queue, and a total of 129 that were caught altogether by the plugin. Compare that with my old MT blog, now sadly very very neglected and collecting plenty of spam on really old entries. In its prime, on that blog, I’d spend probably an hour a day picking spam comments out of my entries and tossing them in the pile to be later set on fire. I’d of given my first born for an Akizmet-like plugin for use on that platform. And, of course, now that I’m no longer using MT, I learn they have one. If I knew then what I know now, and all that stuff.
Movable Type made me hate spam. WordPress made me kill it. And Akizmet’s to blame. I’m 3 months virtually spam free, and so far, I’m lovin’ it.
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CTV Ottawa lights up. Literally.
A goodly portion of my TV watching, at least that which doesn’t consist of hockey or baseball, is done on CTV. Usually, its Ottawa station–particularly since they were nice enough to kill news broadcasts from Ottawa’s local A Channel station.
Their Ottawa newsroom caught fire overnight last night, resulting in the temporary loss of use of that building and the possibly permanent loss of 30+ years of news and video archives. Definitely, it resulted in the permanent loss of at least 2.5 million dollars worth of computer and video technology. They get to provide their news updates during tonight’s football game–which starts in 4 minutes for anyone curious enough to watch-from the parking lot of their former headquarters. Tonight’s local update at 11:30, however, will ironically enough come from the A Channel building–the first newscast from that building since March of last year.
If you get any of your news from CTV in the Ottawa or Pembroke area, or even if you just want to help out, keep an eye pealed–there will probably be ways and means for you to do so. If you’re a Max Keeping fan and happen to have something from his time with CTV, you’re encouraged to help replace everything he’s lost in the fire this close to his retirement–info for doing so is in the article’s comments section. CTV, and the news I’ve gotten semi-used to watching from there, will probably never be the same. CTV Ottawa is dead, long live CTV Ottawa.
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Maple Leafs 5, Senators 0.
I was watching the local CTV Ottawa station last night, and they must have devoted about 10 minutes to just how bad it’d be if the Leafs were the ones to put a stop to Ottawa’s 11-game winning streak. And after that newscast, that’s precisely what they did. Giguere was awesome in net, not that it would have made a whole lot of difference if we’d gone with the monster instead-the awesome was happening in front of him anyway. Kessel nearly managed himself a hat trick I don’t know how many times. Schenn managed to double his season total of 2 goals in one night. And Phaneuf, well, he’s Dion Phaneuf. What the hell more do you want? Ottawa’s owned us for the better part of the last couple years. Last night? We owned them.
Last time
We hadn’t played them since before Christmas, at which point the margin was closer, but we still managed to win. I think that very well might have been the last time I thought we might be playing consistently. I still have my doubts if we are, but I’m trying very hard now to actually find that caring thing I used to do. Instead, I only find anticipation of Monday. When, as is the rule, the other shoe will probably drop. Welcome to Leafs Nation 2010, Dion. Hope your golf swing’s as good as your slapshot.