I just don’t get it. We had the lead. No, sorry. We ruled the goddamn ice. For half the game. And then we pretty well dumped it. 3 sweet goals in the first, including two Kessels. So what in the bloody hell just happened? We gave up a goal in the second. And 4, count ’em, 4 in the third. What? Even on our worst night we didn’t do that. Seriously. I missed much of the game, but was able to figure out roughly why it is we managed to, um, not hold a lead–his name is toskala. Stop the season; I want off.
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Canucks 5, Maple Leafs 3.
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Devils 5, Maple Leafs 4.
We had a lead. For about a minute ten, we had a lead. And then we sucked. We were tied for a very small part of the game. Briefly at 1, and then again in the third at 4. Overtime killed us again. You know, it’s a strange thing I’ve noticed recently. I’m not even disappointed anymore when we lose. I think I’m kind of used to it. And that, um, scares me.
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Suddenly, I’m very glad these guys didn’t hire me.
About 6 or 7 months ago, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Convergys, an outsourcing company who at the time was handling a contract for AT&T. I didn’t end up taking the opportunity, however, on account of they were very up front about having absolutely no plans for doing, pretty much, anything I’d need them to do in order for me to work there. Like, for instance, installing a screenreader so I can actually use their computers. About that long ago, I stopped thinking about them. And on Tuesday, the office where I would have been working tossed all but a hundred of its employees. Suddenly, I’m actually kind of glad we parted company after our initial conversation. Otherwise I might very well still be exactly where I am right now. Except maybe on employment insurance. Thanks but no thanks–did that dance already. Oh, and as for where those jobs ended up going? You guessed it–overseas. On the up side, at least we’re helping their recovery.
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Doing the firefox thing. Finally.
I have absolutely no browser loyalty, whatsoever. I guess I haven’t had it for quite a few years now. For the most part, I’d use Internet Explorer–mostly because it was the default choice when I’d click on something and I didn’t particularly feel like changing it. But I kept Firefox around anyway, for those few occasions where something would come up that IE just wouldn’t play nice with. Or, more recently, in the event I came across a site employing CAPTCHA technology, which sadly neither browser’s come up with a built-in answer for yet. Recently though, meaning just this afternoon, I’ve decided it’s been a while since I did any real major playing with firefox. They’ve made a hell of a lot of improvements, or so the various sites who take note of such things have said, and I wanted to see for myself. So, as of right now and for at least the next couple days, IE gets kicked to the curb in favour of the open source alternative. It may only be a couple days–I haven’t quite decided yet. So far, it does seem to be running a little better on this machine, so it might stick around for longer than that. If nothing else, it’s a temporary break from staring at IE all day. Yeah, I know, you people who’ve been using it forever already can laugh now. I never said I was quick to change.
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iPad? iWon’t.
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.
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Life has decided I can’t do laundry.
Unless I’d like to devote half my small amount of spending money to cab fair, laundromat fairs and replacing half the supplies I don’t get back from the said laundromat, apparently. At the beginning of the year, I discovered this building’s dryers rather suck when it comes to actually, you know, drying. But in order to find that out, it required I first take 25 minutes to convince it that it wanted to take my money. After a long conversation that involved the temporary use of my mail key to complete payment, and actually force the thing to accept my money, I discovered I’d of been better off not bothering. Getting my clothes roughly equivalent to dry would cost just about twice what it cost me to wash the things. Instead, after having a very short conversation with the landlord, I decided my parents wanted to see me more often anyway. Now they had a reason.
And, because technological screw-ups always happen in at least twos, while not hearing back from the landlord on the building’s machines, my parents’ washing machine decided to take a permanent vacation. So now it’s temporarily laundromat or nothing for all of us, at least until their replacements get there–fortunately it shouldn’t be more than 3 days. Or, in corporate speak, whenever they get around to it. They say bad things happen in threes. well, I just ran out of laundry things to go break. Any guesses what’s next?
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Exam day.
Roughly 12 hours from now, Jess will more than likely be a good way through taking her exam for the New York state boards, and that much closer to being a licensed massage therapist in that state. She’s pulled I don’t even know how many 13-hour days over the last year plus, and that’s not counting the hours she’s spent studying, writing papers, stressing, or doing some combination of all of the above. She’s come close to burning out, but managed somehow to keep it together long enough to finish the course. And now she’s one final examination away from having exactly what she wants. I don’t know that you’ll have time to see this before your exam, but if you do, best of luck to you. I’d be there if I could, but you’re being thought of either way. You were awesome in class, so I have on good authority, and you’ll be awesome during this exam. Look out Rochester, I hear she’s good with her hands.
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Jessica, I blame you.
It was recommended to me a few times, primarily by Jessica, that I maybe want to consider checking out a political satire group, Capitol Steps. So out of random curiosity, I downloaded a few of their albums. And have been listening ever since.
Mostly, they do the US politics, which well, yeah, there’s plenty to mock there. But they’ve taken a few stabs at this side of the border too. Everyone’s favourite province to pick on gets a special mention a time or two–hello, Quebec. Especially around the time when they were holding their vote for separation. The awesomeness is surprising. Now, if I can just figure out who it was who did “Let’s Bomb Iraq”. Probably these guys–it’s their kind of thing. Now then. Back to seeing if Beyond Satire has been updated in a month or three.
Edit: I was right, it’s them. Oddly enough, when I heard this the first time I didn’t even know the group existed. I’m awesome. Or maybe not.
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Kings 5, Maple Leafs 3.
At least it was an attempt at being a game. Going into the second period we had it tied at 1. Of course, that didn’t last very long–by the end of the third, we’d given up a lead to the Kings and tied it up again. And then we kind of tried to make it interesting in the third, but well, it ended up just hurting. Somehow we managed putting a third in the net, which would have been awesome if they hadn’t already put 3 more there. Way the season goes, Leafs fans. Right down the crapper. At least we have Brian Burke. Right? Right? … Right? Anybody?
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I keep way too much crap around for way too long.
Of course, that realization didn’t quite hit me until Sunday, when I finally decided I’d stop procrastinating and go through some of what I pulled off my laptop’s HD last June before I whiped it and installed Linux. And the things I managed to avoid deleting since I bought the thing in 2004 or 2005 actually manage to scare me. Most noteably things that I forgot I was even involved in.
I’ve been hugely into role playing for a number of years. Since highschool, really. Most of my early creations, though, ended up lost between here and there when the first laptop I owned decided it would rather spectacularly break. Physically. Of course, it was a toshiba so that was kind of expected. But I kept, or tried to keep, logs of as much of the old days of RP as I could. Mostly as something to refer back to should a situation come up where I needed to.
One of my adventures in RP was a medieval style MUD, or multi-user-dimension/dungeon/whatever you want to call it, called Eternal Struggle. I played a variety of characters on that game–anything from the somewhat helpful healer to the cold blooded killer with absolutely no problem pinning you to the wall with your own knife. And he’d give you a pleasant little smile while he did it. Reading back through some of those logs, I reminded myself just how much of an asshole I can be. Sometimes, I surprise the hell out of me.
I play a couple of characters in a Star Trek game, too. Star Trek: A Call to Duty, to be accurate. One of those I’ve had going on since 2006. I forgot about some of the awesome RP I’ve been involved in with that one as well, including a sort of special event RP that went on for a couple months, where I got to hang out with and torment the hell out of a few people I didn’t used to talk to until then. One of these days I’ll get around to posting some of the stuff. But right now, I’ll just say, 4 years later looking back at some of these thinggies, I crack me up.
Sometimes, procrastination is a good thing. At least, it is when it comes to me. I’m kind of thankful I haven’t yet gone through and hit the delete key on about 90% of this stuff. Now, if I can just remember to put them somewhere where I can find half this stuff again. Eh, I’ll do it later.