And in this week’s justice kerfuffle, Sault Ste. Marie is the place, a nondescript courtroom is the setting, and 10 suspects in a drug trafficking charge are the lucky winners. An undercover cop from out of town couldn’t make the first day of the trial on account of a minor little detail we like to call a wedding. The Crown–district attorney, for you US types–tried to push it back for that reason. Instead, the judge tossed it. Yep, you read it here first, folks. According to our justice system, you have no personal life. No, not even if the personal life was planned first. Yeah, you just shove that wedding back a day or two and get your ass into court like right now. Wonder if someone should maybe send this judge a memo–sorry, not even in criminal-friendly Ontario does it work that way, but thanks for playing.
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Work life balance? Not really.
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Another study states the obvious: banning texting while driving doesn’t work.
How many different institutions are going to come up with things like this before governments get the hint? Yeah, I’m looking at you too, Dalton Mcguinty. A Verginia-based organization examined collision claims and accident paterns in several states, both with and without laws against texting while driving, starting before states began instituting these laws. And, surprising hopefully no one with a clue, they stumbled upon the fact that these laws don’t actually do anything. In 3 out of the 4 states they surveyed who have anti-text laws in place, the number of claims actually increased after passing these laws, and the usual collision paterns didn’t change a whole lot when compared to states who didn’t institute these laws.
What I’d be curious to know is what these people thought legislating common sense was actually going to accomplish besides nothing. Particularly when this particular common sense legislation can’t exactly be easy to enforce. Seriously, I can’t even see and it doesn’t take me long to dash off a quick text to whoever. It’d probably take someone who could see even less time than that–thus, the evidence would kind of be long gone before anyone who felt like playing the good samaritan could actually get the attention of the nearest policeman. Yes, we know driving and texting isn’t safe. At least, anyone with even a slight grasp of the obvious knows. But they still do it anyway. They’ll still do it if, God forbid, either the Canadian or US federal government gets around to making it an offense–strictly because of the lack of ability to actually enforce it. The article gets it right pointing out it’s not new laws that are going to change this kinda thing, but rather, social adjustment and education. Now, if only someone would socially adjust and educate Dalton Mcguinty, and apparently a few US governors. Hey, one can always dream.
Update: This Techdirt article does more explaining of my point than me. And they’re better at it. So go read them.
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Maple Leafs 5, Sabres 4.
Another night, another game, another replay on LeafsTV. I should really stop doing that. Yes, even if watching Phill Kessel bury two in the net is awesome. It’s just as awesome live. And I’d of seen it live if I wasn’t broken in the sleep department–but that got an entry of its very own already this month. Still, live or no, replay or no, it was wicked nifty cool. Which, after the Flyers, wasn’t hard to do. Now, just keep this up ’til next week, can you? No? Yeah, didn’t think so. I tried.
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Another win for WordPress. Like it needs it.
I’ve been using WordPress since I brought the blog back to life from its previous incarnation over on LiveJournal. Mostly because it’s extremely good at what it does and, well, what it doesn’t do you can usually convince it to with minimal headache. I did check out windows Live Spaces quite a while ago, mostly because I used to read a blog or two over there–they subsequently are no longer updated; go figure. Problem was, Microsoft did almost nothing right from the perspective of accessibility/useability. And even less right from the perspective of features people might actually want to use. And, now, according to TechCrunch, they’re taking it out back and shooting it. They’re giving users of the service 6 months to decide what they want to do with their content, including having the option to migrate it over to the hosted version of WordPress, WordPress.com, but in 6 months, Windows Live Spaces will die. Can’t say I’ll miss Spaces, but thanks for the help wordpress doesn’t really need, in any case. Now if Blogger would just do that we’d be in business.
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Just the kind of subliminal messaging I don’t need. Damn you, ThinkGeek.
I’ve always maintained one of my chief reasons for not buying an iPhone, aside from the walled garden that is Apple, is its lack of a physical keyboard. I’m not a fan of carrying any more than I absolutely have to–this includes such things as an extra keyboard for the sole purpose of not wanting to throw my phone across the room in frustration. So I’ve been staying as far away from anything potentially iPhone related as I possibly can to avoid such episodes of frustration. I’ve been doing pretty good at it too, dammit. Then along comes ThinkGeek, with an iPhone case that includes a bluetooth keyboard. No more carrying around extra pieces of hardware. No more major excuses for not buying an iPhone–well, except the whole walled garden thing but I can possibly be convinced to overlook that. And no actual money for iPhone or case. Damn you, ThinkGeek. This is exactly not the kind of subliminal messaging I need.
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Strike 1: Ottawa goes on the back burner. But, I get an accessibility thing to sort.
And we all know I like tormenting things until they agree to be accessible. Or developers until they agree to make things that way. I wrote a while back I was trying to get my foot in the door with Davis and Henderson, a financial services company by the looks of it with an office in Ottawa. After going last week without much in the way of an actual response, I finally got one this morning. Or rather, I called and pried one out of the HR contact I’ve been trying to deal with. What it boils down to from where I sit is blindness technology doesn’t play nice with their choice of phone technology. This, naturally, from supposedly the mouth of the guy or guys who’re supposedly trying to convince the two to play nice together. And filtered through at least two people I’m aware of, so something probably got lost in translation.
HR chicky wasn’t exactly very forthcoming with the details, even on a non-technical level, except to say the phone system they use is a Cisco one–I’m assuming that includes whatever softphone application(s) they’re using, but that’s a guess on my part. The only thing I pulled out of her was the screenreader won’t work with it–which, yeah, I got when she told me they were having problems with it. I nudged her in the direction of putting me in touch with the person or persons behind the attempt to get things to play nice with each other, and I get the impression she’s going to at least make the attempt to filter my contact info up the chain to where it needs to go. I’m not holding my breath on it getting anywhere, naturally, but if it doesn’t I’m not entirely sure I can justifiably be pissed at her. Which, at end of day, means for the immediate future any plans I had on a return to Ottawa are kind of going in that other direction. But, I now have what I might call a halfway attempt at an accessibility project to work on. Assuming the phone rings between now and before I forget I ever had any dealing with the company in question. Now to wait until later this week, when I can give a few friendly shoves in the right direction to the other employment project I’ve got cooking. And maybe, barring complications, apply a liberal amount of education to an Ottawa company. I should hang out and not do much more often–productivity happens that way.
Update: That didn’t take long. My HR contact’s supervisor just called and seems not quite opposed to the idea of me working with them on this. Thus slightly increasing the chances I’ll actually get to speak with someone who’s involved in the process. This should be wicked interesting, if nothing else. Small progress is, after all, still small progress. Particularly considering I’m apparently not the first person to try and apply there in my current situation. We shall see what happens.
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This news story practically mocks itself.
It should surprise no one that it came out of Texas. Guy tries to rob a bank, gets caught. Police start suspecting it might have been an inside job. Discover not only was it an inside job, but a very stupidly executed one. One of the tellers who works–okay, worked–at that bank was exchanging text messages with the would-be robber before it went down. And apparently, this isn’t the first time–the guy doing the robbing is apparently suspected in one at another bank as well. That bank was, apparently, robbed at the same time the same teller was still working there. I can’t even bring myself to snark at this one. This is just too easy. Besides, the linked article pretty much says it for me. Still, I LOLed. Hard.
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It’s a Monday. It’s early. I want a refund.
I think I’m attempting to break my sleep schedule in a whole new way. It used to be by 5:00 in the morning I’m contemplating going to bed. Now? I ended up doing so at a semi-reasonable hour last night–and promptly woke up at 5:00 in the morning instead. More normal-ish? Certainly. More favourable? Not in the slightest. Hey, if the sun’s not up yet when I’m considering moving, I shouldn’t be considering moving. Even if I have phone calls that need to be placed and/or received–none of which I can do at 5:00 in the morning anyway. Bright side: at least I’m up. Yeah, that’ll have to work. Now where’s my coffee?
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My non-gamer parents prove me wrong. And this time, I’m not cringing.
Remember that Wii I predicted wouldn’t get much use, on account of neither of my parents are really that much into the whole gaming scene? And, since unless you’ve achieved uber geek status, not being a gamer probably demotes the Wii from gaming system to glorified PC with a TV hook-up? Yeah, I think I’m brave enough to say I was wrong. I actually found them a use for it that doesn’t involve Facebook from the sofa. Like, say, Netflix from the sofa. Yeah, I know–I haven’t decided yet if I’m keeping mine, and I’ve already pointed them at it. They watch a crap ton of movies–way more than I do, even when I do have company. And there’s at least one TV series available that was being eyed up quite nicely by my father, so it balances out.
Since I already have an account on there, while I was over there for supper anyway I took advantage of the frankenputer to show them the ropes. They even took a look at actually playing a movie while I was there–and, surprisingly, had nothing bad to say about what they saw. High praise from a couple who rarely meets a piece of technology they don’t curse at. And I thought that was strictly reserved for geek culture–clearly, I was misinformed. They aren’t overly huge fans of the fact if they want to actually use it on the Wii, they need to order the disk from Netflix. Then again, neither was I upon discovering this fact but that’s Nintendo for you. Still, considering it beats the royal hell out of what Shaw Direct so far as on-demand stuff goes, I don’t think they’re about to pitch too huge a fit. So yeah, I can admit to being proven wrong. And hey, you don’t see me complaining.
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God, I’m glad I don’t do this very often.
Only slightly less irritating than job hunting, and for completely different reasons entirely, is apartment hunting. Sadly, in my case, doing the one almost necessitates doing the other–see, and if Ottawa employers had just returned my phone calls we could have avoided that. If I go for the position who’s offer has just about everything to it but my signature, I’m going to end up needing to move closer than I am right now, strictly on the principle that my day’s pay would otherwise be going to transporting me to and from. Which leads me to a bit of random curiosity digging around today. And that promptly left me exactly where I was this morning.
To start, folks in Pembroke don’t advertise. At all. Unless one counts the occasional thinggy you’ll pull out of the local newspaper’s classified section. The ones that do advertise, like the one I went in to have a look at this afternoon, shouldn’t advertise. At all. It was a basement apartment, which literally was just the basement of–I’m pretty sure–someone’s house, turned into apartments (yes, plural). It had virtually no distinct living room/kitchen area to speak of, something that vaguely pretended to be a bedroom, and no closet space–what we thought was closet space turned out to actually be furnace storage space. And given I saw nothing in the place that would indicate I controled my own heat or whatever, my guess is the floor above me has it for the building. This is not how these things are supposed to work. Added on top of that, with utilities included it rang out to the tune of approximately $40 a month more than my rent right now, plus electricity, for this place–also a basement apartment, laid out much better than the one I looked at, with an actual living room and a distinct, if not exactly roomy, kitchen area. And heat I don’t need to knock on my upstairs neighbour’s door for.
I ran into similar problems in Ottawa, only with a twist–apartments in my new, post-layoff price range located not in the middle of nowhere amounted to little more than closets. My room when I went to college was bigger. I have a rule when I go apartment hunting. If I can throw something and hit my bed from the front door, it’s way too small. I could do it with a hundred percent accuracy in some of those places. Granted, if the potential job possibility in Ottawa ends up being something that doesn’t vaguely resemble nothing, that’ll be significantly less of an issue and I can safely look for something a step or two up from closet.
I’m very glad I don’t actually have to do this very often. Now, if I can just skip forward to the point when I don’t have to do this at all, that’d be awesome. Failing that, anyone have a spare paycheck they’re not using? Yeah, didn’t think so. So much for my master plan of getting rich by being lazy.