And the song that goes with it. I’m kind of, well okay really, fond of Irish/folk music. A certain type, though. Can’t be the slow-ish type you’ll occasionally hear. Victoria occasionally tosses this or that random track on Twitter for her own amusement. And, uh, sometimes, I think, just to explicitly stick a song or two in my head. You can catch up with her over here, but only after you request to follow her–the girl’s a protected one. After you’ve clicked, come back and hit play. Readers of the RSS or email variety will need to click over to the site to have a listen. sorry about that. They don’t let me stick a flash player on those platforms. but hey, I like to know you’re reading anyway. Now, then. Have a song. Meanwhile, I need to go empty my head.
[audio:Irish_Rover.mp3]-
Victoria is to blame for this post.
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texting while driving goes from illegal, to confusing and illegal, in California.
Texting while driving is one of those things I’ve ranted on here about before. Namely, yes you’re probably stupid for doing it, but not as stupid as the ones making it illegal. Mostly, because you can’t actually legislate common sense. but, also, because really, the idiots more likely to not pay attention to the road because they’re texting or talking on the phone are the same idiots who won’t pay attention to the road because they’re talking to the guy or girl beside them, or flipping stations on the radio, or, hell, just being an outright tool–and we’ve yet to outlaw those things. But now, in California, they’ve decided just making it illegal isn’t good enough. So they’ve made it confusing as hell instead.
Now, it’s legal to text while driving–if, and only if, the texting while driving is done completely hands free. Meaning dictation software is perfectly okay. Which, yeah, okay, makes sense. So you could use, for example, Siri to send a text to your girlfriend to have her meet you outside because you’re a block away, right? Well, uh, rather, um, no not really.
On Friday, after much head-scratching and acknowledging nobody in Miller’s office owns a Siri-equipped iPhone 4S, the assemblyman’s aides concluded it will still be illegal to use your actual phone to text behind the wheel — even by speaking the message directly into Siri.
The California Highway Patrol confirms that just the act of turning on the phone or selecting the phone’s hands-free text app, like pushing the Siri button or Google apps on Android phones, is enough to warrant flashing lights in your rearview mirror and a $100-plus ticket. The same thing goes for using your phone to read texts.
“The phone can’t be in your hands,” said CHP spokeswoman Jaime Coffee. “Hands-free is the key.”
So it’s now legal to text someone as long as you do it hands free in California. But the act of slapping the phone in hands free mode (activating Siri) so you can actually send that hands free text? Yeah, pull over. There really aughta be a law against tools in the legislature.
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In which my girlfriend, which I do have, tries to walk off with my guidedog. Which I don’t have.
People say the most absolutely randomest of things. Usually at the most oddly weird of times. For anyone who actually knows us, May has a guidedog. Had one for years. Long before she’s met me. I’ve never had one. Haven’t figured I wanted/needed one. what I do has worked since, well, I started doing it. And, well, if it ain’t broke, I don’t necessarily feel up to fixing it (*). And that leads us to a thinggy that just out of nowhere said hello while busing it home.
We’re nearly to our stop, and May goes to get up. I’m staying put temporarily, because there’s a few people between me and where I need to be and well, fighting to get through them on a moving vehicle just doesn’t happen. So the lady across from me decides May’s just the absolute meanest person to walk the planet. She’s supremely concerned about me, and insisting to me that May just got up and walked off with my dog. I actually had to briefly argue with this woman that no, in fact, the dog who’s leash is in May’s hand, who’s at May’s heal on the way off the bus, does not belong to me.
she knew I was blind–I’m going to assume because of the cane, but that’s a guess. Did she, like, completely skip over the fact May was also? Is that what happened? Because May got up and headed for the door, and the cane didn’t come out. Or, uh, something. I honestly have absolutely no idea.
Little known fact for the reader types in and around the Ottawa area. There are quite a few folks who rely on guidedogs. For those that do, they’re awesome–the dog in this conversation is just more awesome than the rest. But not every blind bloke in Ottawa has or wants a dog. Not every blind bloke with a dog in Ottawa takes that dog with them wherever they go–May’s left hers at home a few times and took the cane, just on account of it’s less complicated, sometimes faster, and there’s just some places you don’t need to be taking your dog–like, say, the pet store to get food (talk about your massive source of distraction, and you can’t even really correct for that). And for the love of chese, if one blind bloke gets up and heads for the exit with a dog in tow, chances are pretty good the dog belongs to the blind bloke in question. Especially if they’re with me. Who, again, doesn’t have one. Follow? Awesome. Somebody wanna see that weird bus lady gets this?
(*): I do, on occasion, modify that expression in such a way that it now says “if it ain’t broke, tweek it ’til it is”. But that usually applies to geeky things. And some people’s brains, but you’ll have that.
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Guest Post: Ottawa vs. Petawawa SPCA
The following is a cross-post from the Awesome Wonky Lynx. Click over to her site for more, and potentially related. Or not. whichever.
Looking to adopt an animal? Want to add a new four legged friend to your household and thinking the SPCA is the best way to go?
Well, do not go through the SPCA in Ottawa they are more for talking you out of adopting than working with you to find that best match. They have a questionnaire you must fill out and they claim it’s only to get to know you and make sure you know what you’re looking for in a pet.
James and I have been trying to adopt a dog through the SPCA in Ottawa since the end of August and we’ve had nothing but fights with them. Any time we found a dog that would match us and call them about each dog they argued with us about how the dog wouldn’t fit in. For example, this dog loves to bark and wouldn’t be good for apartments, bu hey we told them time and time again that our apartment is cool with dogs and there’s loads of them around and they all bark including the one we already have.Example 2, this dog doesn’t do that well with kids, but hey, that’s ok too since right now we don’t have kids so it’s something that we can work on. That way in the future and the dog is a little older being around kids won’t matter. How about this one, this dog hasn’t been trained at all and you guys said you don’t want to do training. No no you nits, we said we are quite flexible when it comes to training depending on the dog.
So that questionnaire that is suppose to be just a guide line for the Ottawa SPCA, yeah, they lie. They use it to keep telling you no no no that won’t work. We’ll call you when a dog comes up or keep looking on the site and let us know when you see another one.
After doing that 6 times and getting the same results the Ottawa SPCA can go fly a kite.
Now, here’s the awesome thing. James and I are in Petawawa this weekend to do the whole Thanksgiving thing with the parents. We walked into the SPCA here this morning and found a very beautiful girl named Nova. We had a look at her, played with her a bit in the yard, got to know what she’s like and how she may act at first and that was that. On Sunday we take Noah to meet Nova and since I’m pretty sure all will go well there our new girl comes home with us then.
So once again if you’re looking to adopt a pet go anywhere but the SPCA in Ottawa.
Cat
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In which Ottawa’s taxi system takes a page from the obscure.
Because of, uh, the nature of me, occasionally taking cabs is kind of a fact of life. Particularly when talking about not knowing exactly where you’re going after you, for instance, get yourself off the bus and pick a random direction. So to avoid a migraine, it’s taxi time. May and I took that route when we decided an evening for dinner would be the thing to do. Getting to the restaurant, no problem whatsoever. Getting back, though? If ever there was a set perfectly fit for a taxi related soap opera, we were sitting in it.
We called for Blueline Taxi, as the usual routine goes. Made the arangements to get us home, and all was well. A car showed up, dropped someone off. We hopped in, fully intending on taking that car back to our place. And we very well would have, but then that would completely and totally have ruined our cab opera and well, we can’t have that.
We just started pulling out of the parking lot, and didn’t get more than maybe 5 feet into it, when another cab pulled in beside us. He rolled down his window, and that’s about when the drama started. A little background, for clarity’s sake. Apparently, there’s a law on the books–an actual, honest to goodness city bylaw–that allows a driver to charge another with stealing his fare. It comes complete with a $25 fine and has apparently been on the books for damn near on 50 years. Also note this is the first I’ve heard of it and, well, I’ve been around the city a few dozen times.
So both cars are now sitting in the parking lot, windows rolled down. The other driver, we’ll call him Tool, is just having a gay old time calling our driver, we’ll call him Clue, out for stealing his fare. He must have spent a good 5 minutes going on about how he was asigned our call and we had to go with him. We argued. Clue argued. Repeatedly. The vehicle we were sitting in showed up first, and that’s the one we were fine with taking. But Tool wouldn’t hear it. He kept repeating how Clue was stealing his fare and he’d be calling to complain about it, yada yada blah. Eventually, we ended up switching vehicles. Partly because it was just getting ridiculous and we were really hoping to be well on our way home by now, and partly because, hey, it’d shut Tool up. Or so we thought. This is why I’m not allowed to think, you see.
Most of the way home was taken up with much of the same argument. Him explaining, yet again, that he couldn’t let Clue take his fare, and how that was his call and we were supposed to have waited for him. We, again, explained that we didn’t give a rat’s ass which vehicle took us home. Clue showed up first, so that’s who got our money. Had Tool, you know, not been a tool and showed up first, he’d of gotten our money and there’d have been no issue whatsoever. And the circle repeats. Eventually, we decide this is just getting absolutely headache inducing. We drop it, pay the tool, get ourselves inside. I called and started things rolling in the complaints department, which eventually lead to me finding out about that obscure Ottawa bylaw.
According to this bylaw, if you call a cab, you are actually supposed to wait for the vehicle specificly asigned to you to come and collect you, whether it takes 15 minutes or half an hour. Anyone else who collects you, whether they offer or you ask (for the record, we asked), opens them up to a charge of stealing the asigned driver’s fare. That charge can hit a driver for $25. Or, in simpler terms, more than what either driver was going to get paid for taking us home in the first damn place. I’d say I’m switching companies effective, uh, immediately, but since this is apparently an Ottawa thing, that won’t make much difference. But the way Tool handled himself, let’s just say switching companies still crossed my mind. And all because of a very obscure, little known and apparently little enforced city bylaw from 50 years ago. Okay, that, and a highly unprofessional tool.
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From your favourite geek, happy thanksgiving.
Up here in the land of not so much ice and snow, thanksgiving is cellebrated, uh, well, rather, this weekend. This monday, actually–but we’re doing it early-ish. It’s a thing May still has yet to get used to. You know, kind of like when I had a reason to need to get used to the US thanksgiving being close enough to kiss Christmas. If, like us, you’re cellebrating thanksgiving this weekend, have a good one. And, do remember two very key things. First, there can never, ever, ever be too much pumpkin pie. And second, I get dibs. Enjoy the weekend! Geekyness returns on Sunday or Monday. first up: Ottawa’s taxi laws need a swift kick.
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In which many a college network crumbles before me. Or maybe just Algonquin’s.
So I made vague mutterings about maybe going back to school. In a sense, I did. I went with May over to Algonquin College a couple weeks ago so she could get a couple things done. Since I’d have some time to kill, I took the laptop with me. Largely because she made the mistake of telling me she could receive email, but the network wouldn’t let her send. Come to find out, at least I believe, all the common mail ports are, shall we say, firewalled. Somewhat successfully, I might add. But, and this is where anyone who knows me should be paying close attention, I had a little over an hour and a half to myself. An hour and a half, with an unfamiliar network, wireless access, and one hell of a powerful portable unit with which to play chicken. This can only end not so well.
So I took that portable unit, that wireless network access, that little over an hour and a half, and I did something useful. I prodded my own server looking for open ports. Not open ports on the server, per say, just the network. Ended up getting the college slapped on the block list in the process, but hey, that was fixable when I got home–note to self: try and find the damned IP first, whitelist the thing, then port scan your server to death. Kay? Kay. But I found me an open port. Two of them, actually. And I was already using one. So when I got back to the apartment, I–uh, first, um, unblocked the college (oopsies), then fired the mail server up on the open port I wasn’t using. Odds are, now, if one does it right, mail sends while one is at the college. I’ll need to get back there at some point and play.
Firewalls are awesome. But here’s the thing about them. There’s ports they don’t necessarily block, simply because doing so would pretty much break students’ access to potential external, uh, educational materials. One of those ports is HTTP port 8080. Now, here’s the thing about this server. This server doesn’t run anything on port 8080. As in, nothing. As in, no thank you please. Or rather, it didn’t until a few minutes after I got home. Now, in complete violation of probably a couple standards and definitely in complete violation of one college firewall, the mail server listens on port 8080 as well as the usual mail ports. And a couple others, but I’ll keep those to myself and the people who actually need ’em, lest some Algonquin IT type person with a Google adiction accidentally finds this thing.
Sending mail from on campus, for those times wherein somebody with access to the server, or me, needs to send email while on campus, can now, legally, happen. Perhaps not Algonquin’s definition of legally, but hey–I’m looking at getting into one of their geek courses. Of course I’m going to flex my geek on their network beforehand. Why not? Besides. I didn’t need that port anyway.
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Australia’s stay smart online program isn’t very smart offline.
I’m not completely sure what the Stay Smart Online program is exactly supposed to do for Australians who sign up for it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to end with those citizens’ personal details ending up on a DVD somewhere between here and the postal ether. I’m also pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to end up in the hands of a contractor idiotic enough to 1: back up that information on a DVD and 2: send said DVD through the mail in the first damn place. But, both happened. And now what I’m guessing is supposed to be an attempt at an internet safety system is officially a whole lot less safe. Bright side, because I love a good silver lining: at least the passwords were encripted?
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The US gets a DNKL, of sorts. Because the DNCL works so well.
somebody in the US apparently has a sense of humour. In direct response to a published national kill list, an online do not kill list has been set up. The American public can register to, in theory, avoid being killed by drone strikes. By the american public, I’m going to assume the article means the portion of the American public that actually has any reason to be, you know, in the general area of drone strikes. Of course, this has 6 layers of satire written all over it. In the event these people actually aren’t joking, though, I think someone aughta tell ’em the DNCL called. They want some of their fail back.
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The google is reading my mind again.
I know, I know, I gotta stop with the posting of really freakin’ old search terms. But this is what happens when I haven’t done this in, let’s say, a small age and 3 quarters. At least this one isn’t ODSP related. Take the small comfort already.
Jun 12 7:24pm: fuck this job market
Oh, how many times I’ve said that. How very many times I’ve said that. And how very many times it’s fucked me right back. But, hey, at least we had fun.