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  • There’s a special place in hell reserved for you, sir. Right this way.

    written by

    james

    Further proof that blind does not, in fact, mean an easy target, just in case folks are keeping track of things like this. A guy in Windsor, Ontario, walked into apartments belonging to two blind people while they were occupied–one was in the bathroom, for crying out loud–and proceeded to steal from them. His first victim, the one who was in the bathroom, reported her glasses and some jewellery missing to the police, and said she got at least a partial look at the guy doing it on his way out–so, okay, she wasn’t totally blind, but still. The second was kind of an act of stupid on both their parts–the victim was apparently asleep, with his door unlocked. The guy leaving woke him up when the door closed, at which point he discovered his wallet and cell phone missing. When police found him, they called the missing cell phone, still turned on and in his pocket. Can we say busted by ring tone?

    Needless to say he’s not doing so hot right now. Still, the fact this guy was specificly targetting blind people–yeah, even if he had some incredibly horrible luck with the ones he picked–puts him in his own, special little category. There’s blind folks out there who, for lack of a better way to put it, don’t have the observational skills or the mental capacity to put it all together if something like that should happen to them. Which I get the impression was what this guy was expecting. I should know–I went to school with a few of them. He could have easily walked in on one of those type, plucked up whatever he was interested in, turned around and left without even breaking a sweat. If anyone noticed at all, by the time they did he’d probably have already done whatever he was going to do with what he stole and realisticly, finding him at that point would be a little more than difficult. These two just happened to be part of a shrinking minority, so he was escentially screwed from the second he opened the first victim’s door. Still, for someone who’d try something like that, regardless to his chances of actually pulling it off without the victim either reporting him or just outright kicking his ass, it takes a special kind of character. There’s a special place in hell for that kind of character, if you believe in such things. Personally, if such places do exist, he’s got himself a first class reservation. Here’s hoping he likes the view.

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  • And to some, stirring up shit comes natural.

    written by

    james

    Boston Massachusetts is home to a surprising amount of WTF. Like this lady, who took it upon herself to temporarily put on her shit disturber cap for the purposes of law enforcement. She believed a guy to be speeding and, having been walking her dog when it happened, decided to draw the offending individual’s attention to that fact by nailing him in the face with dog crap. Well, she succeeded–it got his attention. She now faces quite a pretty number of charges, including disorderly conduct and at least one property damage related charge. A word of advice. Next time, just call 911.

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  • This guy needed proof he wasn’t fit to drive. He got it.

    written by

    james

    And probably got plenty of time to reflect on it while he sobered up. Woodstock, Ontario isn’t the drunk capital of the world, but this guy’s an example of why it could be. Rather than come to the realization on his own that he wasn’t anywhere near sober enough to drive, he decided to give it a try. He didn’t get very far, though, before getting himself into an accident–and picking right then to finally give in and call a cab. Unfortunately for him, the accident had at least one witness, who called the police. They, then, called every cab company in the area until they figured out which one he called. Stopping the cab before it reached its destination, the guy was subsequently arrested. I’m guessing he discovered himself diverted to the tank for the night–on his own dime. But, hey, at least he called himself a cab.

  • Twitter’s almost as everywhere as Google. Now they’re both on your TV.

    written by

    james

    You may or may not be aware Google’s coming up with its own TV platform. As is Apple, but that’s not been surprising since they pretty much came out with their own version of nearly everything else. What you may not know, though, is on your TV is precisely where Twitter would like to be. And, thanks to Google’s new and yet to actually be released platform, it will be. Welcome to the future, folks. You can sit on the coutch, munch on a bag of chips, suck on a beer and flip between the first game of the NHL regular season and the world series, and tweet that you’re sitting on your coutch, munching on a bag of chips, sucking on a beer and flipping between the first game of the NHL regular season and the world series–from the very same remote control. Now if that’s not convenience I don’t know what is. Note to self: move the computer out of the living room–it’s just been replaced by the TV.

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  • Test driving: Clicky stats engine.

    written by

    james

    I have no problem admitting I’m a bit of a stat nut. Not so much to the point where I do this explicitly to see how many thousands of people come pouring in when I post something, but since I’m doing it, and since it’s publicly available, I might as well get curious re: who takes an interest, from where, in what exactly and for how long. I have equally no problem admitting I’m kind of a sucker for RSS feeds. In fact, I already have. So when you take both of these, slap them together, you get a project I have to play with.

    So, enter yet another stats related experiment. I test drove, and eventually ended up, sticking with Statcounter for realtime statistics gathering–I even hooked Jessica up with it not long ago. For the broader perspective, like watching collectively what’s gaining or losing strength, I stick with Google Analytics. But I’ve been curious about ways to minimise the number of places I have to look to get a decent idea of how active things are getting. Since I already live in my RSS reader of choice most of the day anyway–some of that which is mock worthy comes from there, after all, and since I’m not the type to refresh the stats page every 10 minutes just in case someone happens to drop by, when I came across something that would let me slap certain collective stats into an RSS feed, I figured why the hell not. So I signed up yesterday afternoon with Clicky, a realtime statistics engine a la Statcounter that gives me that kind of access.

    Like statcounter, and to an extent Google Analytics, it shows you where people are coming from, where they’re going on your site, and what if anything they searched for to get there. Unlike Statcounter, but more like Google Analytics, it lets you drill down to get more detailed access to the specifics of a particular user, including–I’m gathering based on what I’ve seen so far–what they’ve accessed on your site in previous visits, since Clicky started tracking. Unlike either of the two, it supposedly still manages to keep track of certain things in the event folks show up with javascript disabled. And, also unlike either of the two, it gives you the option of not so much as lookiing at their website should you decide not to–by letting you keep track of, in my opinion anyway, the important things in individualised RSS feeds. I’ve only been playing with it for less than 24 hours, but so far, I’m liking what I’m seeing. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say it’ll replace either or both of my stats packages I currently use, but at the very least, it’s a nifty little distraction. We’ll find out soon enough if I’m still distracted by it. In the meantime, time to go find something mock worthy.

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  • Maple Leafs 4, Red Wings 2.

    written by

    james

    Yes, I know this game was on Saturday. See any number of entries on this thing re: screwed up sleep schedule. In the meantime, I managed to catch it on replay yesterday–that’s kind of like the real thing, right? Help me out, here. We didn’t suck, in any case. We weren’t exactly overly on top of things, but we didn’t suck–and for a change, didn’t give up a lead all game that I saw. We lead 2 1 after a period, and they didn’t manage to get their second until midway through the third. And hey, we didn’t take any moronic penalties. That’s the end of the preseason, which means it’s about this time now that I get to start beginning and/or ending these entries with strings of nearly incoherent cursing. In light of that inevitability, the season kicks off for real on Thursday. I’ll just be securing my booze supply for then–I’ll probably need it.

  • Random observations: In death series.

    written by

    james

    In list format, because I’m just smashing these things together while one of the books are playing. And, for the record, Salvation In death? All of these observations rolled into one nifty little package.

    • Eve Dallas is one hell of a snarky, sarcastic, bitchy bitch. I’d have a beer with her if she wasn’t fictional.
    • Her husband’s very nearly as snarky sarcastic. Not quite as–Eve’s the main character, after all. But hey, if she was to wind up in a coma or something, the series might very well do just fine without her–so long as he didn’t end up in a coma right next to her.
    • Some of the witnesses in this series? To call them airheads would be an insult to airheads everywhere.
    • Some of the recurring supporting characters? See my commentary re: witnesses.
    • The only female character who doesn’t have legs up to her very nice boobs is, once again, Eve. Who doesn’t even have the very nice boobs.
    • Bright side: she’s got some pretty wicked social issues. Watching her work through them is kind of interesting.
    • Holy royal hell. Just how many different and overly exagerated sexual positions can two people physically get tangled up in? Is she a bloody featherweight or something?
    • Again with the flying cars. So 1960’s. At least these ones have GPS and autopilot. Now when can I drive one?

  • Introducing Access Canada.

    written by

    james

    There are all kinds of accessibility-related conversations going on all over the freaking place, be they for the blind, the wheelchair-bound, the deaf, what have you. Regardless to the disability, we all have one important thing in common–when it comes to doing most if not all of what we’d like to do completely independantly, opportunities for it suck royally. When it comes to finding solutions, we’re usually all split off into our own little corners to discuss what might be best for our particular group. That’s why I’m aiming at starting a discussion list, which could hopefully morph into something a little more constructive, to attempt to address those problems in one near central location.

    Hence, Access Canada was born only a few hours ago. From the wheelchair-bound senior to the teenager just now learning braille, there’s always at least one answer to the common question–how do we make life work for me? If you’ve got an interest in the conversation, and an interest in discussing not just what has to be done but how we, as the ones affected, can start doing it, then I’d strongly encourage you to investigate and subscribe to the Access Canada mailing list. You can find info and subscription instructions here. And, of course, if you have any questions about the list, either leave a comment here or let me know privately, and I’ll do what I can to answer. There’s a ton of conversation to be had out there on this, with probably a lot more mutual ground than most people realize. So let’s have it. What have we got to lose besides the time it takes to write an email?

  • This email is either very creative, or very moronic. … Or both.

    written by

    james

    Leave it to a spammer to be sort of halfway to clever. And all the way to just plain, er, dumb.

    From: MR.JOHN [online250731@telkomsa.net]
    Sent: Sun 03/10/2010 11:32 AM
    To: undisclosed-recipients:

    I have a very good information to pass over to you contact me as soon as possible with the information below:

    E-mail:oxfam_08@yahoo.gr

    Waiting for your swift response.

    Regards,

    Mr.John

    I’m trying to decide if people actually fall for emails like this. I’m also trying to decide if people actually expect it. But I think most of all I’m trying not to bust a gut laughing. I’ve seen a lot of random spam–comments, emails, mentions on Twitter, IMs, you name it. This is probably the most obvious of all of them. Sadly, I’m reminded almost constantly of what I’m way too used to saying to other people–they wouldn’t pull crap like this if some poor sap didn’t respond. In which case, I really and seriously do pity the fool.

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  • End of season mumblings: Jose Bautista’s on steroids.

    written by

    james

    Okay, so maybe he’s not. I don’t really know. But over the last month or so, he’s pretty much exploded–in the form of a team record piercing home run performance. And you know someone’s gonna ask the question in the offseason if they haven’t already. They asked it of Barry Bonds after his performance–and, yes, he apparently was, they asked it of Mark McGuire after his performance–I don’t remember if he was or not, honestly, so yeah they’ll probably ask it of Bautista. Whether he was or not, it was a twice awesome run. And, while it’d be wicked cool if he did it without the roids, I can’t say I’ll be overly surprised when they ask if the answer’s yes. And who knows, maybe my record for actually watching the game will improve next year because of it. Hey, it could happen. In the meantime, playoffs or no, it was a hell of a run. And the team as a whole didn’t suck this year either. There’s hope for Toronto sports teams yet.

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