tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72249542024-03-07T00:34:03.797-05:00Tales from a GrouchI am angry at the world for not living up to its potential.RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.comBlogger412125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-28461355959715298942019-09-01T11:30:00.000-04:002019-09-01T11:30:03.147-04:00It's not always about YouI make a point of not doing that thing when you talk in the second person when you're actually talking about yourself.<br />
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See what I did there?<br />
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If you didn't, be careful reading on because you might start seeing it a lot. Many people don't notice it when they hear it, much less out of their own mouths.<br />
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I remember when I first encountered this. It was in French class in about grade two, and the teacher was telling us about the different pronouns: je, tu, il/elle/on... "on". He had to explain to us the meaning of "on", the third person singular, which is common in French but obscure in English.<br />
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In English, the equivalent would be "one"; specifically, the third definition under the heading "pronoun" on Oxford's online definition of "<a href="https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/one" target="_blank">one</a>" (as in "one does not simply walk into Mordor"). Our French teacher tried describing this to us, but many of us seven year olds hadn't yet encountered it in English (or at least not that we'd recognized).<br />
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So he tried again, describing the generic "you". "you know how some people will say 'you always have to look both ways before crossing the street'" and I thought (particularly after having just been told that "tu" is for the second person) that that was such a peculiar way of saying things. Also, no, I hadn't encountered that either.<br />
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Clearly, I eventually caught on to the meaning of "one" and its distinctness from "you", as one does (or as <i>you</i> do), and I never let go of that feeling that said that this was a strange and unnecessary way of using "you" when there's a perfectly unambiguous alternative.<br />
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I don't remember when I started noticing people using the generic "you"; likely after I was exposed to Orwell's wonderfully succinct treatise <a href="http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/" target="_blank">Politics and the English Language</a> in high school. And it was probably not so much when it was used as a replacement for "one"—which makes sense in context—as when the speaker bastardizes even the generic "you" in order to refer to their own behaviour.<br />
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I had a colleague who did it all the time. In a one-on-one conversation, she would be telling an anecdote and she'd say "So I do that thing where you always check your phone when getting on the bus..." instead of simply saying "I always check my phone when getting on the bus...". This would derail my train of thought, even though it was often an aside to her main point (e.g. "...and I realized this morning when I got on the bus that I forgot my phone at home"). Not only does she change from first person to second person in the middle of the sentence, but she's also describing—to me, in the point of view that refers to me—something that I don't do myself.<br />
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I'm sure there's something psychological about it, and I have a few theories:<br />
- because you're describing something you do regularly you fall back on phrasing used for generic activities<br />
- you'd feel awkward saying "I eat breakfast every morning" when the listener might get the impression you think you're the only one who does this common activity<br />
- you don't want to say "I put milk on my oatmeal" in case the other person <i>doesn't</i> do it too, so you describe it as a general behaviour to normalize it, hopefully averting a conversation about whether or not it's normal to put milk on porridge.<br />
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Of course, the first two are situations where you could use "one", the pronoun specifically designed for this situation, and you were just too lazy to do so. The third situation reflects a lack of confidence—and it could even be aggressive!<br />
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Imagine you're in an office setting and a colleague is telling you an anecdote about chewing gum. In introducing the topic they describe "that thing where you chew gum really loudly in public..." You realize that <i>you </i>chew gum in the office, and maybe it's actually annoying your colleagues and this is their way of pointing it out to you. Forget the rest of their anecdote, you're not listening any more. Instead you're getting self-conscious. Is your loud gum-chewing so notorious around the office that your colleague can mention it so offhandedly? You didn't think you chewed your gum loudly... sorry, what was that last bit?<br />
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"... and then spit it out onto the sidewalk?" Oh, it wasn't about me. What a relief!<br />
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It can also be deliberately passive-aggressive by normalizing something that the listener <i>should </i>do, thus putting them down if they happen not to: "you know how you're not supposed to put two spaces after a period anymore because we no longer type in fixed-width fonts? Well anyway, I got a resume today where he put <i>three!</i>" (Some people still do put two spaces after a period, and yes, I'm calling it out!)<br />
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Orally, one's intonation can usually distinguish between the general "you know how you have two ears" and the specific "you know how <i>you </i>always leave the toilet seat up," but telling these apart can be harder in print. This has only gotten worse as people tend to write more the way they speak, but without the added contextual cues that come with spoken language.<br />
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There are other situations where the pronoun is dropped altogether. Sue Sherring did it a lot when she wrote for the Ottawa Sun, before it merged with the Citizen and she subsequently left. I didn't have to go far to find an example on her blog, in <a href="https://www.susansherring.ca/wp/2019/08/29/i-love-rabbi-bulka/" target="_blank">the most recent post</a>. This is the full paragraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Simply can’t think of a more appropriate name for a park honouring Rabbi Bulka."</blockquote>
Clearly in from the context, including that it's her personal blog, the pronoun would be "I". Regardless of that, both "you" or "one" would also fit in here and mean the same thing. But you can imagine situations where it's really not clear whether she's talking about herself or the article's subject (and you'll have to imagine them because I can't find any at the moment, even though I thought I had collected or emailed myself some samples that I can't find).<br />
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While this is sloppy style for a print newspaper, I've found myself having dropped the subject in jotted notes, which are by their nature somewhat sloppy. Later, I'd have difficulty figuring out whether, when I wrote "sent email", I meant that <i>I</i> sent an email to the person or <i>they </i>sent one to me. Sometimes during the slow parts of a meeting I'll reread the notes I've taken so far and I'll catch these while the context is still fresh in my mind, and squeeze in some clarifying additions.<br />
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Once at a summer camp, we had oatmeal for breakfast, and the toppings were making their rounds on the table. Brown sugar, for sure. The kid next to me put milk over his oatmeal (as I was accustomed to doing myself) and passed the milk jug to me. As I started to tilt the jug over my bowl, one of the other children called him out: "you put <i>milk</i> on your <i>oatmeal</i>?!?" and before a drop fell out I deftly moved the milk jug over to my empty glass, lest I repeat the apparent faux pas.<br />
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In retrospect, I could have defended him, but peer pressure is such a powerful thing when one is a child at a summer camp.<br />
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I suppose I could have replied, "yeah. You know how you put milk on oatmeal?"<br />
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- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-59854845998240542612016-01-23T21:13:00.005-05:002016-01-24T00:17:38.020-05:00RG's workshop: Record crateI have an old wooden crate that is the perfect size for holding records, but unfortunately with garage sales and whatnot, one crate is no longer enough to hold my record, ahem, "collection". <br />
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It occurred to me last year that I could make my crate own out of the LADE boards that come from bed slats, and which are so useful for many projects, including the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2010/11/rgs-workshop-90-minute-glove-rack.html">90-minute glove rack</a> and the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2016/01/rgs-workshop-vicetray-eventually-maybe.html#longthingsholder">long things holder</a> I briefly mentioned in my last post. I took photos during the process and I'm finally getting around to posting about it.<br />
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It starts with isolating the wooden slats from the cloth straps that are stapled into them to keep them together while in use as a bed. First I separate the cloth from the slat by grabbing it with needle-nose pliers and rotating them. <br />
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Sometimes the staple comes out with the cloth, otherwise it just sort of bulges. This usually gives enough room to clamp some locking pliers onto the staple and rotate the pliers to remove the staple nice and cleanly:<br />
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Here's the schematic I drew for myself after figuring out how to get the various pieces I needed from 26" long Lade boards in order to get a crate that is roughly the same dimensions as my antique one, i.e. 17.5" by 9" and tall enough to hold 12" records.<br />
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I marked the boards for the 9" slats that go on the ends of the crate. The longer component is for the side and bottom slats, and they're screwed on the outside so they can vary slightly, but the 9" ones are screwed on their ends so need to be a consistent length. (You can also see the first draft of my figuring out)<br />
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Here I'm cutting the pieces with a mini handheld circular saw I bought. This is the only power tool I've bought (I inherited my drill and not counting the Dremel or heat gun) and though I'm more comfortable using hand tools since that's what I used growing up, being able to cut a board in two seconds with very little effort is very useful.<br />
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Cutting the boards lengthwise is even harder with a hand saw (and I've done it before for the side pieces on my <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2011/07/rgs-workshop-rgs-laptop-box.html">laptop box</a>). Since the circular saw has a plate that would bump into any clamps I tried to use on the lengthwise cut, I screwed the board onto a longer, sacrificial board from underneath and clamped that one down.<br />
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The lengthwise-cut pieces form the corner bits that hold everything together. Here I've tied (using the straps pulled off of the Lade boards) the end pieces to the corner bits to mock them up and see how well things will fit together.<br />
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Another reason I needed to mock it up was to see how I wanted to arrange the slats. In my diagram I had a hole cut out of the end boards, but I realized that I could just omit the second-highest board and the top board naturally becomes a handle.<br />
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Here I'm lining up the screws in the corner bit to match up with the end pieces (I'm too impatient to bother with glue and still wasn't sure how or if everything might come together). The screw heads will be covered over later by the long side slats. I had already screwed the other end together, and because it's used wood that is slightly warped, I needed to clamp two boards onto this end to make them straight for inserting. In retrospect, the screws for the lowest end slat should have been higher up in order to allow more room for the ones that will be screwed in from the bottom for the bottom slats.<br />
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Edit: After posting this blog entry, I discovered a photo of a second crate I had started to build which I had forgotten. I pre-drilled this set of holes in the pieces before making the linear cut to assemble the corner bits. Unfortunately, I didn't think to have the holes for the bottom piece a bit higher. You can see how the pieces are screwed to a longer board that I can clamp down during the long cut (I had removed the top piece for this photo to show how they were both attached). After going back to verify that I hadn't finished a second one, I found the piece still there, waiting to be sliced in half. I might actually dismantle it again and pre-drill the diagonal holes for the long side pieces too before cutting it.<br />
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Here are the first two bottom slats being affixed to the assembled ends. The alignment was a bit off, but nothing a little forcing can't fix. I offset the screws that attach to the corner bits so as not to conflict with the screws I'd just inserted, before I realized that I'd also need to drill holes through where these screws go for the side slats! I don't remember exactly how I addressed this (and I'm not going to empty it out now and turn it upside down), but it's not the end of the world.<br />
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Here's the side view, after attaching all the bottom boards. The slat at the bottom of the picture is the top slat and I installed it first to make the ends square. It's screwed from the inside to keep the outside clean. You can see how I've pre-drilled the holes for the remaining side slats on the opposite side. These screws on the inside are exposed (albeit only if you're looking in the box) so I used brass coloured screws.<br />
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The next time I assemble one of these crates, I would not only drill the holes in the corner bits before assembling the crate, but I would drill the holes for the long side slats at an angle so it's easier to screw them on.<br />
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Due to a miscalculation, I hadn't cut quite enough slats for the long sides, and by the time I finished I didn't want to bother cutting any more. Three is enough to hold the crate together and the contents in. One pair of screws is visible on the corner bits, but I don't particularly care. I also ended up with two extra 9" pieces, which were useful to have around <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2016/01/rgs-workshop-vicetray-eventually-maybe.html">for a future project</a>.<br />
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I had intended, but forgot, to have the uppermost long side slats be raised by the width of a board, so that when these crates are stacked the bottom slats of the upper one are nestled into the side slats of the one below. I can do that for the next one to go under this one. It doesn't really make a difference for stacking my antique crate on top of this one.<br />
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Lade boards come in different widths and lengths, so if you're not trying to match the dimensions of a preexisting crate, you can play around with the sizes. You can see here that there's lots of room in all three dimensions to play around. Since the end pieces and the long bottom/side pieces are cut from the same board, you can make the box a bit narrower in one dimension to be wider in the other. <br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-urUilYljf7ieCiW0RnuqlGoerhh-AlmCvkdFOzN-G6fIvSkxfwao6EyJDOariYQ1Qlai6ECKJSFQfbdUXZk05hW6nwIeOPt56eb7WIdWEIwuwz7439M8ZNbP1aCRs6QPuR_m0A/s1600/record+crate+%252810%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-urUilYljf7ieCiW0RnuqlGoerhh-AlmCvkdFOzN-G6fIvSkxfwao6EyJDOariYQ1Qlai6ECKJSFQfbdUXZk05hW6nwIeOPt56eb7WIdWEIwuwz7439M8ZNbP1aCRs6QPuR_m0A/s400/record+crate+%252810%2529.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
This is important for ensuring that the narrow dimension is a multiple of the width of the slats, so there are no gaps in the bottom. I hadn't factored that into my measurements and ended up having to put a thin board in the bottom because I had some gaps, which are a hazard when you're using the crate to carry narrow objects like record sleeves!<br />
<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, I'm really happy with how this turned out. I could paint it, but this suits me fine since the boards have already been treated by our fine friends at IKEA (a store which I hope never to have the misfortune to visit in person as long as I can still find their products secondhand at the curb).<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-26279032559946977702016-01-18T02:18:00.003-05:002016-01-23T14:37:13.063-05:00RG's Workshop: The Vicetray (eventually... maybe...)<em>[Before I begin, I should note that as a Canadian, Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences#vice_vise" target="_blank">informs</a> me that Canadians use the US spelling of "vise" instead of the UK spelling "vice", which was my first instinct. I've used "vise" throughout, except in the header where it makes a good pun on "icetray".]</em><br />
<br />
Due to the limited amount of space in my kitchen, I stack my large dinner bowls on top of my dinner plates in the cupboard in order to conserve it. My bowls are heavy ceramic ones (nice ones, sturdy... I found them on the curbside ages ago along with some matching breakfast plates), so it requires a bit of effort when I want to grab a dinner plate out of the cupboard. If all five of the bowls are clean and put away, I have to actually take them out and put them down on an available surface (itself a challenge) and then get a plate, because the bowls are too heavy to lift with one hand (there are some other logistical difficulties involving contortions and stretching that also drive this requirement).<br />
<br />
Lately, I've been toying with the idea of suspending the bowls above the plates somehow, allowing free access to the plates beneath. Unfortunately, the easy solution is off the table (or out of the cupboard). I can't simply put a table-like tray over the plates to hold the bolws, because there's not quite enough vertical clearance for that. Instead, I'll need to suspend the bowls slightly with some sort of cradle mechanism holding them from the sides, either from above or from below. This would allow just enough space for me to slide the plates underneath. How exactly this will work will take some thought.<br />
<br />
Off I went to my workshop with the pile of plates and bowls to do some figuring and measuring.<br />
<br />
On the way to the workshop (this is a trip taken on foot, I should mention, through two rooms. I don't have like a basement or giant shed full of power tools. My workshop is barely larger than a closet, and much less tidy), I stopped at the bedroom and put the plates and bowls down because I figured I should make sure there's a destination surface for them in the workshop.<br />
<br />
Once in the workshop, I saw that my workbench was covered in sawdust from the last project, and various screws, bolts, and other knick-knacks that got relegated there from other parts of the house. Before brushing the sawdust off the workbench, I filed away the screws and bolts into the appropriate containers, tucked the bolt cutters back into their home, and started putting the hand tools back onto the pegboard. <br />
<br />
My wire brush, however, didn't appear to have a home on the pegboard. In keeping with the mindset of the day, I figured I should make one. Usually I use coat hanger wire but I didn't have any scraps of that handy. What I did have, though, was a broken election sign metal stake, whose wire was the perfect thickness for pegboard holes, almost a quarter inch in diameter. I retrieved my bolt cutters from where I had just put them away, and cut off a chunk of wire.<br />
<br />
If you've ever bent your own pegboard hook, you'll know that the end that goes into the pegboard has two nearly 90 degree bends very close together, maybe a quarter inch apart. If you've worked much with wire, you'll know that a quarter inch is ridiculously hard to bend accurately at such small distances with hand tools. I knew this, but tried anyway. <br />
<br />
I was able to bend the end the tool hooks onto, but the pegboard end was stumping me. I have a <a href="http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?c=&cat=1,43456,43407,32012&p=32012" target="_blank">wire-bending tool</a> from Lee Valley, but the part of the wire I needed to grab on to was still to short.<br />
<br />
I thought maybe it would work if I hammered a flathead screwdriver onto the wire with two things on either side of it, but that just resulted in other stuff jumping off my workbench from the hammering. I'd need a stronger tool. Hey, I've got a vise! I'll use that.<br />
<br />
I got my vise out of its hiding spot, pushed aside anything I hadn't yet tidied off the workbench and swept away the sawdust to have a clean surface on which to put the vise.<br />
<br />
My first choice of things to clamp the wire into was the cavity on my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineman%27s_pliers" target="_blank" title="I didn't know they were called that either, until I looked it up. I just called them pliers.">Lineman's pliers</a>, the one opposite the space where the wire cutters are. But that just pushed the wrench open. Also it was too big.<br />
<br />
I realized that my <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_wrench" target="_blank" title="I just know them as wrench, so I had to look this one up, too.">combination wrenches</a> have a circular opening at one end and I had a variety of sizes to choose from. Using one of the pegs from the wire-bending set, I stuck the wire, the wrench, and the peg into the vise, and clamped. I was worried that the crimping on the wire would cause it to snap, but it bent perfectly!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaATC18edAPrm-BV6-0cdnaKkLojz1KTpls35FpF7PfUlN8wQWH-dsKjd071gOljJGIUqjAoYN4LHsaemLzr6nE3YM-cauAlzHTT3B9SJO5te3HJsd_nZS_fq3NrtOhud6661_yw/s1600/visetray+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaATC18edAPrm-BV6-0cdnaKkLojz1KTpls35FpF7PfUlN8wQWH-dsKjd071gOljJGIUqjAoYN4LHsaemLzr6nE3YM-cauAlzHTT3B9SJO5te3HJsd_nZS_fq3NrtOhud6661_yw/s400/visetray+%25281%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br />
While I was at it, I made a second pegboard hook too, since I had the right equipment out. I rearranged a few of the things on my pegboard, and somehow ended up using both of the newly-made hooks for other things. So I put the wire brush on a hook that was probably available before I started with all the wire-bending.<br />
<br />
Never mind, that was done, I could continue with tidying the workbench to start working on the bowl thing. Oh, but the vise!<br />
<br />
I keep the vise on the floor, under a shelving unit in a particular gap that isn't useful for much anything else than storing a vise. (In a proper workshop, I'd keep it mounted to the workbench) But vises being heavy, it's a struggle to push it underneath there, particularly without scratching the hardwood floor. I'd been thinking for a while about some sort of trolley mechanism to allow me to slide it in and out from under the gap so I would only have to lift it vertically.<br />
<br />
My brain went crunching, and I sketched out a diagram of how that might work. A wheeled tray for something that heavy is bound to leave marks on the floor. But a drawer mechanism with a couple of flat boards should work nicely... <br />
<br />
I went into my box of miscellaneous bits of furniture to find some rails and trays. The only flat style tray (which you mount sandwiched between the two flat surfaces) was a full-extension drawer mechanism, which I'd rather save for something else. But I did have the rails salvaged from a keyboard tray. Wrapped around the rails was a baggie with the four recessed mounting screws that came off whatever piece of curbside furniture I scrounged it from. Good foresight on my part, if I say so myself.<br />
<br />
I found two boards of roughly similar size to try to mock it up on as a proof of concept. I didn't want to go to all the trouble of building the thing (and putting holes in the boards) if it wasn't going to function well.<br />
<br />
The thing with keyboard trays, though, is that they aren't well suited to mocking up. They are mounted to the bottom of the moving part, and the stationary parts are mounted to the sides of the enclosed area, so I can't simply put the board on top of the rails and see how well it slides, because the bottom of the board is lower than the rails and rubs on the table. Not only that, but only one of the sides has an enclosed channel; the left side rail can come straight out (presumably to make it easier to install and adjust). <br />
<br />
I found some short screws and hastily screwed the rails onto the moving board, without even bothering to drill holes for them. This wasn't enough; the channels also have to be mounted to something so the moving board can be suspended from it. I disassembled a set of blocks I had built for some other purpose that didn't work anymore to get two short boards from it and I screwed the channels onto them. <br />
<br />
Still, though, I couldn't mock it up. I tried resting the two sides on the workbench and installing the moving board between them. I had to hold the sides together to keep the thing from falling off, but when I did that I squeezed it and couldn't tell if it was running smoothly.<br />
<br />
I managed to find a piece of hardwood (scavenged from a 1970's government-issue wooden desk that my landlord left on the curb) which was the perfect width for the job, and with some metal L brackets and screws (also a curbside find), attached the sides to the hardwood bottom. Bending the L brackets slightly allowed me to 'fine tune' the adjustment of the rails, and it worked great!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90_HBUAoKVtJHO08yyRxyIDoYWTZyA4V_y_Mf43vENZbD7XYpdQ0tPIVMqLgrlpNF0OCHmlXKG_Eomy_iMnYVvoYhJt4eSVh_VqoXjnufxHCIqI4RzzNYwGQIXoIHRMAhtQ4QOA/s1600/visetray+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90_HBUAoKVtJHO08yyRxyIDoYWTZyA4V_y_Mf43vENZbD7XYpdQ0tPIVMqLgrlpNF0OCHmlXKG_Eomy_iMnYVvoYhJt4eSVh_VqoXjnufxHCIqI4RzzNYwGQIXoIHRMAhtQ4QOA/s400/visetray+%25283%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Okay, so much for the mockup, but I realized that in trying to mock it up to see if the mechanism worked, I had actually built the thing. Unfortunately, I had not carefully considered the relative arrangement of the top and bottom pieces in so doing. They lined up nicely. Too nicely. My initial design had a support sticking out from the front end of the top piece so that the whole mechanism doesn't just tip over when fully extended with a heavy vise on top of it.<br />
<br />
But then I realized that I could just screw on a small block to the front to achieve the same result (with a perfectly-sized block coming from the aforementioned disassembled previous project). Voilà, like so:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4v67wQkBS54RAfwcFcnGplh-qOCnpI0tpg-bXSxOjExzWyKGi9Wnoes_Owkd2DLV8HTWTwqSb-C7NnNd01sosT2gfI49CAqCEslRmRU0op88VntN4wKW07XsgfcFubFwv5Gc3g/s1600/visetray+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4v67wQkBS54RAfwcFcnGplh-qOCnpI0tpg-bXSxOjExzWyKGi9Wnoes_Owkd2DLV8HTWTwqSb-C7NnNd01sosT2gfI49CAqCEslRmRU0op88VntN4wKW07XsgfcFubFwv5Gc3g/s400/visetray+%25282%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br />
You'll note, however, that the top surface of the board is lower than the non-sliding channels, and the vise is wider than the top board. Luckily, the top board was scavenged from a discarded BEKVÄM kitchen cart, which, despite the one broken part on the one I found on the curb and disassembled for parts, has great <a href="http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30240348/" target="_blank">birch</a> components. More luckily, the BEKVÄM has two identical panels of this size. Without even screwing it on, I just rested the second piece on top and that worked perfectly. The top of the moving board was now higher than the non-moving parts.<br />
<br />
Here's the tray resting in the gap under the storage unit:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfyPvx9LzoewuNLGb2N0C0pPxYldApb9mPUCe2sM9kworx81WmRKD9JpLJtfxqUQguYXr843NxjfgVVUcJm3ldlxUt9j6TMOPt3jPheO1OKx7kksehi0daqVsxVNtndaZYwBHinQ/s1600/visetray+%25284%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfyPvx9LzoewuNLGb2N0C0pPxYldApb9mPUCe2sM9kworx81WmRKD9JpLJtfxqUQguYXr843NxjfgVVUcJm3ldlxUt9j6TMOPt3jPheO1OKx7kksehi0daqVsxVNtndaZYwBHinQ/s400/visetray+%25284%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<a name="longthingsholder"></a>I had to find a way to keep the whole thing from dragging out under the friction caused by the weight of the vise (and, let's be honest, a lazy alignment of the rails). I looked at the setup for a while, considered various complicated options including lining the base with bike innertube rubber or somehow attaching it to the legs of the storage unit, but then realized all I had to do was stick a hollow metal rod behind the storage unit's legs to hold the base back. I grabbed an appropriately sized rod from my container for long skinny things (which I built a couple years ago out of LADE bed boards, featured previously in <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2010/11/rgs-workshop-90-minute-glove-rack.html"><em>the 90-minute glove rack</em></a>):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4TJh1avKdQLvYlILhXVd3c9kJTx6k2iA7EtEmiQVt2y8N1jZs_uR10hUwzdwIrxgmIldOqikCwrtzZlL53MOuR75Ko2O3YOO5VusOW2uLdDQp_OVaR6j4LlX2dzLe5plGCe-ZYg/s1600/holder-for-long-skinny-things.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4TJh1avKdQLvYlILhXVd3c9kJTx6k2iA7EtEmiQVt2y8N1jZs_uR10hUwzdwIrxgmIldOqikCwrtzZlL53MOuR75Ko2O3YOO5VusOW2uLdDQp_OVaR6j4LlX2dzLe5plGCe-ZYg/s400/holder-for-long-skinny-things.jpg" /></a></div><br />
All that was left was to put some felt padding on the base of the end that sticks out, so it doesn't scratch the floor. Not wanting to go to the trouble of getting my felt from my crafts bin in the closet (or, more specifically, having to put it away afterward) or figure out what kind of glue I'd need to adhere it to the wood (although in retrospect I think I have some self-adhesive furniture-bottom felt padding in my workbench drawer...), I instead used a scrap of old t-shirt cloth that I'd been using as a rag. <br />
<br />
Even more lazily, when the twist tie I moved off the workbench in the initial round of tidying that I thought would be long enough turned out not to be, I just used some metal wire to hold the cloth on. Since the vise tray is going in the workshop, you know, it doesn't have to look pretty! (And immediately after putting the other tools away I found a different twist tie I had also moved aside in the initial round of tidying, which was, as I had suspected, long enough!)<br />
<br />
Anyhow, here's the cloth padding on end of the upturned tray:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Su4U3-qpHzG_OBMdyD-sufieQ3uXsWkTfDgvISKsMx4INBgnpolZskOO1zH3_hWH3rkksQYTdWAlsSIISxYdkbLwDyNpR-t7zJXUksEIACQbVrUY51eMSHXsLDtLCyQwsJXMQw/s1600/visetray+%25285%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-Su4U3-qpHzG_OBMdyD-sufieQ3uXsWkTfDgvISKsMx4INBgnpolZskOO1zH3_hWH3rkksQYTdWAlsSIISxYdkbLwDyNpR-t7zJXUksEIACQbVrUY51eMSHXsLDtLCyQwsJXMQw/s400/visetray+%25285%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br />
And final testing... just enough clearance. Works great! I thought about putting some sort of handle on the device to give me something to grab a hold of. I considered the four remaining loops from the bracket used in my <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2010/03/realgrouchys-workshop-bicycle-handlebar.html">bicycle handlebar clipboard mount</a>, but couldn't think of a quick and easy way to attach it that didn't involve drilling (since it was now just past 10pm).<br />
<br />
As it happens, the problem solved itself because I discovered that the vise happens to make for its own handle. Not bad, eh, for a contraption built without having to saw any wood and using only previously-scavenged items that I had lying around in my workshop?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-8BhBHoLPv25xM6JElQrfWirHu3_CZLDrClz7WNNbzvjweldhepU7R0DSDS_y_dVbV-kITWyKFthBovG88Lrp2gkFIUs9kEtWfLBbjKcC-aVirmjVc3B83TJ70Uk8ZFWW1zlnDg/s1600/visetray+%25287%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-8BhBHoLPv25xM6JElQrfWirHu3_CZLDrClz7WNNbzvjweldhepU7R0DSDS_y_dVbV-kITWyKFthBovG88Lrp2gkFIUs9kEtWfLBbjKcC-aVirmjVc3B83TJ70Uk8ZFWW1zlnDg/s400/visetray+%25287%2529.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaZkNbKWS01913VxdvcpfQeOGg2jUWYenNIVd2Dcir6B4aloyqc1d-kKWJSsUSwHwoMXAM2XnXDW338YSOdIcr2KHdsgl72uoD4I0pwcv47xSxI3CE86fSYcrrUbuzfAO4TI8A6w/s1600/visetray+%25288%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaZkNbKWS01913VxdvcpfQeOGg2jUWYenNIVd2Dcir6B4aloyqc1d-kKWJSsUSwHwoMXAM2XnXDW338YSOdIcr2KHdsgl72uoD4I0pwcv47xSxI3CE86fSYcrrUbuzfAO4TI8A6w/s400/visetray+%25288%2529.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Finally, with the vise tray built, I could start working on the plate thing! What was that again?<br />
<br />
I put the stack of plates and bowls on the workbench, stared at it for a while, held some boards up next to it in various orientations, took a couple of measurements, made a rough sketch, and then put the dishes back in the kitchen cupboard. <br />
<br />
I no longer have the energy to do that tonight. Maybe some other time when I'm trying to do some other project I can let myself get sidetracked into building the bowl cradle instead. <br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-31080075365737027392015-12-14T17:42:00.002-05:002015-12-14T17:43:34.068-05:00How convoluted can a tech support system be?I was recently tasked with upgrading the software licenses on one of the products we use at the office—I won't use the real name, but let's call it "Vim"—to a version that works with the latest version of OSX. While a less detail-oriented person might buy one key outright and slap it onto as many computers as one could get away with, I prefer the high road where my employer isn't exposed to liability, and instead chose to upgrade (less cost) existing licenses that would become redundant. <br />
<br />
The process should be reasonably simple. Vim's website has a portal that tracks all of the licenses I've purchased in the past, and when I go to their store website to purchase upgrade licenses, it requires me to log in and select which previous-version licenses I want to upgrade to.<br />
<br />
Assuming all of my previous licenses were properly registered (which by today they were after a bit of work a couple of months ago), this upgrade purchase is straightforward enough. In and of itself, this worked fine for me.<br />
<br />
After making the purchase, I am taken to a receipt page that makes reference to the fact that I've used a credit card, though it only says the total and nowhere does it actually say "paid". I printed it out anyway and hope it's sufficient to serve as a 'receipt' for our accounting department.<br />
<br />
The important part, though, is the confirmation e-mail I then received. This looks like a typical invoice, with a listing of what I've purchased, subtotal, etc. There's a column for the product name, a column for the download button, a column for the license key, and price, and quantity.<br />
<br />
The only thing is, there was only one line, with one license key and a quantity of 4. <br />
<br />
<br />
This is where things started to break down. Some frustration:<br />
<br />
For a normal software product, this would be fine. You'd use the license key they sent you and install it on up to four computers. <br />
<br />
But I knew something was up. I had learned in a previous encounter with "Vim" that they do not have volume licensing or bulk licenses. So why did they just send me a license key with a quantity of 4?<br />
<br />
My curiosity got the better of me, and I logged back in to the Vim portal and saw that the license key from the confirmation e-mail wasn't listed among my keys. <br />
<br />
The customer support person I was talking with on the phone during much of this process was never able to tell me what the deal is with that code, other than telling me that it isn't a valid license key when I forwarded it.<br />
<br />
Luckily, I don't rely solely on Vim's license key portal to track my licenses; I also use a custom-built license key database, which enables me to quickly notice that some of the licenses now in my portal weren't there before.<br />
<br />
<br />
More frustration:<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, there was an "alert" in the Vim license key portal which I would never have seen unless I went back in to the portal (which, seeing the license key in the e-mail, why would I?). The alert told me that three license keys had been generated for my recent order, and it listed the license keys. None of these were the same as the one in my e-mail.<br />
<br />
Back in the license key portal, I was able to track down these three, as well as a fourth license key that was new (which also wasn't the one I received in the e-mail). I went back to my e-mail to see if there was something I missed. <br />
<br />
"Sure enough, there was fine print in the confirmation e-mail that indicated that this was a temporary license key and four new keys would be generated in my license portal" is what you'd expect to read next, but alas this was not the case. Not only did the confirmation message give no indication that this was not the license key associated with my purchase, but there was also no separate e-mail to inform me that these new keys were created.<br />
<br />
Having found my license keys, I decided to stop digging and quit while I was ahead. After verifying that my license portal did indeed show four (not three) new license keys that were purchased today which didn't show up in my own database, I concluded my call with the customer support person.<br />
<br />
<br />
I had already wasted enough time by this point, but being the altruistic guy that I am, not wishing this situation on anyone else (especially one who might unwittingly try to install the license on multiple computers), I found the website feedback form on Vim's website and sent in my feedback and suggestions on how they can improve their messaging. (Imagine finding that you've installed this license key on various computers and after a while they stop working because it was the wrong license key and you have to track all those installations down!)<br />
<br />
<br />
As is usual with such customer support encounters, I received an e-mail from my Indian correspondent advising me that the ticket was now closed and I could forward the ticket-closed e-mail to the licensing e-mail address for the company.<br />
<br />
Which I did. <br />
<br />
I copied and pasted my website feedback and sent it to the e-mail address cited in the e-mail from the customer support person.<br />
<br />
<br />
More frustration:<br />
<br />
Then I got an e-mail saying that that account didn't exist. I triple checked that I spelled the address exactly the way as it was given to me. <br />
<br />
I decided then to reply to the customer support person and advise that the licensing e-mail address did not work.<br />
<br />
<br />
More frustration:<br />
<br />
After replying to the customer support person, I received an automated response indicating that I was replying to a closed support ticket, and therefore my e-mail would not be accepted. I could log in to a support portal (which may or may not be the same as the licensing portal) to find my support ticket and reopen it. Or I could contact them by phone.<br />
<br />
<br />
At this point, I'd done as much as I had the patience for to try to give Vim some feedback on improving their customer communications. After all, by this point, I was trying to submit feedback to someone about a broken feedback mechanism to which they had directed me in order for me to give feedback on another feedback mechanism. <br />
<br />
With this amount of Catch-22s, the only thing my feedback could possibly do is give more ideas to the evil twin of Douglas Adams—who must have designed these systems—to adjust any part of the process that wasn't sufficiently frustrating.<br />
<br />
My initial feedback did, as far as I know, make it through their website feedback form, and I can only hope that it isn't used against me.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-42306627677381823822014-07-26T16:45:00.000-04:002014-07-26T16:45:29.370-04:00The summer blahsI'm morally opposed to the common advice that you shouldn't shop for groceries on an empty stomach. When I'm at the grocery store, if I'm hungry I'll buy all the things I <i>will </i>want when I'm back at home and crave something. It's a win-win system.<br />
<br />
But lately, I've been in a bit of a dip. There have been many things pressing for my attention, both at home and at work, including a number of distractions that seem to be the easiest to attend to. Given all the things that are vying for my time, eating is one of the ones that has fallen far down the list. <br />
<br />
I've written before about <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2010/01/interesting-video-on-motivation-and.html">forgetting to eat</a>, but that's primarily about when I'm engrossed in a task and lose track of time. This is a bit different. Eating has fallen from a reward to a chore (in which I rarely find myself engrossed). In other words, it's gone from "ooh, I can't wait until the next time I eat at..." to "what, I have to eat <i>again</i>? But I just did that yesterday!"<br />
<br />
I know that if I don't floss often enough, I'll get cavities, but that doesn't mean I'm keen on <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-dentist-spells-guilt-with-tea.html">flossing</a>. It takes a conscious effort to remember to do it. That's how I feel about eating right now. "Sigh, I guess I'll go out for lunch before I pass out or get a headache." Or, "I'm meeting someone for dinner in three hours, I should grab some lunch soon."<br />
<br />
And then, once I've decided to go eat <i>something</i>, I can't decide what (well, not <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2009/07/yogourt-rant.html">yogourt</a>). I work in downtown Ottawa and there are plenty of great places to grab lunch, but nothing really sticks out in my mind as "hey, I like going there! How about I just go there!" particularly not among healthier options. It doesn't help that I'm a picky eater who doesn't like most things that make food "interesting" (spices, curry, tomatoes, mushrooms and more...), and that food I do like doesn't like me (the many many things derived from dairy, because they put cheese in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYKAm08SQRU" target="_blank"><i>everything</i></a>).<br />
<br />
My nocturnal lifestyle doesn't help. My workday is time-shifted so I can avoid morning and afternoon rush hours, as well as the lunch rush. Before the Mayflower closed I enjoyed eating lunch there, where I could take an entire booth to myself in the early afternoon instead of cramming into a tiny seat at noon with everyone else. (Side note: I miss the Mayflower! A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OC_Transpo#mediaviewer/File:Oc5001.JPG" target="_blank">photo</a> I took from there was the main image on the Wikipedia entry for OC Transpo for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OC_Transpo&direction=next&oldid=314219250" target="_blank">over</a> three <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OC_Transpo&oldid=519861124" target="_blank">years</a>) Similarly for fast-food places: when you only have a limited time for lunch, why take it at a time where you'll have to spend much of it waiting in line?<br />
<br />
The downside to this is that lots of lunch options dry up after a certain time in the afternoon, and similar problems exist for late night dining. Maybe if I had a lunch buddy I'd be more adventurous.<br />
<br />
I avoid cooking mainly because when I do cook it's hard for me to start early enough to be done eating at a reasonable hour. The time I spend cooking can be spent catching up on other errands that I can't outsource to any of zillions of local establishments.<br />
<br />
Also, I'm very fickle about what I eat. I am fortunate that I can afford to eat out for most meals, and that's important because I never know in advance what I <i>want</i> to eat. If I were to put a frozen item in the fridge in the morning to defrost it for dinner that night, I wouldn't see it again until days or weeks later, when its colonists make first contact with me declaring their shelf of the fridge to be an independent republic. <br />
<br />
This indecision has been worsened with my recent lack of interest in food, since I don't even have last-minute cravings to pounce on. I remember incredulously seeing "lack of interest in food" in a list of symptoms for something at some point, and now I know what it means (hm, come to think of it I wonder if it's a side effect of my <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2012/06/my-optometrist-says-i-cant-lift-heavy.html">pills</a>...). In his <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/transcript" target="_blank">2006 Ted Talk</a>, Sir Ken Robinson talked derisively about how intellectuals consider their bodies as mere vessels to carry around their heads, and I have to admit that's a paradigm that fits me. My body will only cooperate with me if I give it food, and my brain wants to spend as little time and energy as possible doing so unless it's fun so let's just get it out of the way and read a newspaper or watch the latest Daily Show episode so I don't have to pay attention to the fact that I'm eating.<br />
<br />
Which takes me back to grocery shopping.<br />
<br />
I was at the supermarket the other day, and I did have few items on my shopping list so I wouldn't forget them. But when it came to picking out food to eat for the coming week (mostly prepared meals, since I try to buy produce from smaller shops instead of the big stores), I wasn't interested in any of it. I had a vague sense that I had bought certain items before and enjoyed them, but couldn't at all gauge whether I'd be likely to want to eat any particular one in the coming week. <br />
<br />
You think shopping for groceries on an <i>empty stomach</i> is bad? Try doing it when you're not interested in food at all!<br />
<br />
(And yes, I do give generously to the <a href="http://ottawafoodbank.ca/" target="_blank">food bank</a>. Hunger is a terrible thing.)<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-80930176945979440522014-03-27T21:25:00.000-04:002014-03-27T21:25:27.181-04:00Internet radio goes to shitI received a notification from Last.fm that they were killing their streaming radio service as of the end of April (for which I was paying a whopping $3/month). The notification was actually very useful, with clear links to useful pages such as how to cancel the auto-renewal on my subscription, etc.<br />
<br />
They have a beta version of their new player, which I tried... briefly. It appears to embed Youtube videos of copyrighted songs into a player, ads and all. One of these ads was over 2 minutes long, which doesn't work for me because I like to go into another room and let the songs play, with my cursor over the "skip song" button if I don't feel like listening to one. Yes, you can click to skip the ad after five seconds, but then I'd have to fiddle with the cursor and that's not worth a paid service.<br />
<br />
Also, the sound quality sucks. I'm not talking a snooty "mp3s have compressed audio and you don't get the same experience" type thing. This sounded like they were running the audio through a telephone line and recording it on a wax cylinder.<br />
<br />
So time to find a new online radio service.<br />
<br />
I looked around at a few. There are a couple that don't work in Canada.<br />
<br />
I'd heard the name Grooveshark thrown around and I'd thought I'd check it out. Naturally, to do this, I typed "Grooveshark.com" into my browser and got to their homepage.<br />
<br />
The homepage appears to be the service itself. No introductory text or even a brief description of what type of service it is. Just a bunch of buttons and click-draggy things and tools for using it. After a few seconds of staring at the incomprehensible interface looking for a link for "About", "What is Grooveshark?", or "Start here" (of which there isn't), my screen was greyed out and replaced with a "you have flash disabled" warning that I couldn't dismiss without closing the page.<br />
<br />
Eventually, I made my way to the help page, of which there were no useful options either to describing what the service is. The closest I could find was "how to use the service after setting up your account." Why the hell should I set up an account if I don't even know whether this service even remotely resembles what I want??<br />
<br />
I know what you're thinking: JFGI. Go to the Wikipedia entry for Grooveshark.<br />
<br />
But do I really want to use a service that can't even describe itself (or at lest can't be bothered to)?<br />
<br />
As a courtesy, I thought I'd let them know that their website does a shit-poor job of turning interested visitors into users and customers, through a support form on their help section (I think I filed it under "bug report"):<br />
<blockquote>
Looking for replacements for <a href="http://last.fm/" target="_blank">last.fm</a>
and someone sent me to Grooveshark. Trying to figure out what it is or
how it works but there's no "about" or description anywhere, not even on
the help page. wth? (Not to mention that I couldn't even look around at
it because I couldn't dismiss the "flash player blocked" popup).<br /><br />Could Grooveshark serve as a replacement for my needs? Maybe, but I'll never know!</blockquote>
<br />
Perhaps not the clearest, but I think I got the point across. <br />
<br />
To their credit, they responded relatively quickly, but that's about the only credit they'll get. The response itself was so spectacularly obtuse I feel compelled to share it with you:<br />
<blockquote>
Hello. Thank you so much for your patience and please accept my sincere
apologies for the inconvenience. Will you please complete the steps
below in Internet Explorer OR test Grooveshark from a different web
browser (preferably Google Chrome <a href="https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/" target="_blank">https://www.google.com/intl/<wbr></wbr>en/chrome/browser/</a>)?<br /><br />**Please note the steps below will reset IE to default settings. Your bookmarks, extensions, plugins will be removed.**<br /><br />1. Open Internet Explorer<br />2. Go to <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737" target="_blank">http://support.microsoft.com/<wbr></wbr>kb/923737</a><br />3. Follow the instructions on the page<br /><br />Here's the Getting Started Help article for Grooveshark as well.<br /><br /><a href="http://help.grooveshark.com/customer/portal/topics/287-getting-started/articles" target="_blank">http://help.grooveshark.com/<wbr></wbr>customer/portal/topics/287-<wbr></wbr>getting-started/articles</a><br /><br />Please let me know how it goes. I would like to help.</blockquote>
So to sum up:<br />
<ul>
<li>I asked them for a general description of their service (or more specifically, I pointed out that they do not make such a description easy to find)</li>
<li>They sent me instructions to wipe my Internet Explorer (which obviously wasn't the browser I was attempting to use because it doesn't even have the ability to block Flash!)</li>
</ul>
<br />I don't know why I even try sometimes.<br />
<br />
Oh, and if I've given Grooveshark a pass, where am I now? I'm looking at Deezer. Haven't looked hard yet (I still have a month of last.fm left), but it's got a clear yet unobtrusive "What is Deezer" link on the sticky bar, and the description one finds there is clear and clean.RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-53134568191148790402014-01-03T03:28:00.000-05:002014-01-11T18:27:08.752-05:00Have your Google Analytics stats fell since Blogger started the country code TLD redirect?<i>[Edit: This did not work. Now my analytics are showing even fewer results. Apparently you're supposed to enter the code in Blogger under Settings > Other > Analytics Web Property ID. We'll see if that recaptures both the .com and .ca traffic...] </i><br />
<br />
A couple years ago, Blogger started redirecting all of their users' blogs from blogname.blogspot.com to blogname.blogspot.xx, where xx is the country code top-level domain (TLD) for the country that the user blogs from.<br />
<br />
I noticed this at the time and was skeptical that this wouldn't have unintended consequences, but I didn't particularly care because at the end of the day I'd rather have a .ca blog address anyway (though I could certainly see issues for people who blog while abroad or blogs published by various international collaborators). Other people did care and they <a href="http://techably.com/stop-blogger-redirection-to-country-specific-domain-cctld/6422/">found ways around the redirect</a>.<br />
<br />
But tonight while checking my blog stats, I noticed something strange. My stats had been down for the last couple years, and this is normal given how godawfully rarely I post, and how minimally relevant my posts tend to be. I also figured that when Google Analytics fucked up their interface and got rid of the old dashboard that gave me the most useful information all in one place, they also fucked around with whether pageviews or visits or visitors was the key statistic, and how this was counted.<br />
<br />
It turns out that my skepticism was indeed accurate: it was only counting hits on realgrouchy.blogspot.com, and missing most of the visitors who are coming to realgrouchy.blogspot.ca!<br />
<br />
Observe:<br />
<br />
In Blogger's built-in stats, it says I had 846 pageviews in December 2013:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2TI1kMWC5oBhobd5P0tFcI_e5kUKHpOo8emVMVbdEitJUrG4voZYLqQ_GLRA6IN0q0pn0Tu3krjQKrGQ29BXBIHFN2K1yjR9PdEcdm3Sxn_-xVFEFf_m1TKFu0M8TNfsx0F6Pnw/s1600/Blogger+Tales+from+a+Grouch+-+Overview+stats+-+2014-01-03+024123.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2TI1kMWC5oBhobd5P0tFcI_e5kUKHpOo8emVMVbdEitJUrG4voZYLqQ_GLRA6IN0q0pn0Tu3krjQKrGQ29BXBIHFN2K1yjR9PdEcdm3Sxn_-xVFEFf_m1TKFu0M8TNfsx0F6Pnw/s400/Blogger+Tales+from+a+Grouch+-+Overview+stats+-+2014-01-03+024123.bmp" height="311" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Meanwhile in Google Analytics, only 146 pageviews were reported for that month, less than 20% of the traffic that Blogger was getting! And it should know, since it was serving up the pages!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMddFZl_OtRIFWJJKGD0_l8bi8XpSlUo5hqaQw9Z6hjzFL_cyTFdpl6TH5PF6Ai5fOYygGVuQf6lvoIj10AWwSK_mSYk5Sq8nVONCyqjjymF-Q5TIuUnIRLtUCh1AFHaGnXGFxlQ/s1600/Google+Analytics+-+Tales+from+a+Grouch+-+2014-01-03+024456.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMddFZl_OtRIFWJJKGD0_l8bi8XpSlUo5hqaQw9Z6hjzFL_cyTFdpl6TH5PF6Ai5fOYygGVuQf6lvoIj10AWwSK_mSYk5Sq8nVONCyqjjymF-Q5TIuUnIRLtUCh1AFHaGnXGFxlQ/s400/Google+Analytics+-+Tales+from+a+Grouch+-+2014-01-03+024456.bmp" height="311" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The fix is not difficult, but it's also not the most obvious. It also isn't retroactive. In Google Analytics, click on the Admin button at the top right, select the relevant 'property' (i.e. your blog), and select "tracking info". Then turn on "Multiple top-level domains of [blogname]." The multiple subdomain option will also turn on automatically if it isn't already. The code in the text area below will change:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi965YxzbwH2eYcvqG3HN1UZNpwMRsV96cTZzawx94Ff-NpgPEa24VML4tpdF-RCNY8dV3H_1x_Sn5IPvkGg9qo8W1emGV2eN-r5og9W5n_EgHCgtX0YloIifZ-WFWkz4mzREoKBA/s1600/Blogger+Tales+from+a+Grouch+-+Template+-+2014-01-03+025851.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi965YxzbwH2eYcvqG3HN1UZNpwMRsV96cTZzawx94Ff-NpgPEa24VML4tpdF-RCNY8dV3H_1x_Sn5IPvkGg9qo8W1emGV2eN-r5og9W5n_EgHCgtX0YloIifZ-WFWkz4mzREoKBA/s400/Blogger+Tales+from+a+Grouch+-+Template+-+2014-01-03+025851.bmp" height="318" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Then go into your Blogger admin page, click on the Template settings, open the HTML view and replace the old Google Analytics code with your new code. One of the articles I skimmed over while looking for solutions suggested you should put it in the <head> tag because the script might not get run if it's at the end of the page body and there are other scripts that mess with visitors' browsers. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6UhNe6Q_z2Udc8ZsZLjE_WwtsCnnh2SZytVX3z6_GEmYbOQ4qeF5OOtqZpm649YFdNhrQU8JEov1h6xfF5s9CIJgGZD_XP-QyNk5HxjSo-pXZZeGEbdWDn4KLwAtFAIrjUsI0_A/s1600/Google+Analytics+-+Tales+from+a+Grouch+2014-01-03+024720.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6UhNe6Q_z2Udc8ZsZLjE_WwtsCnnh2SZytVX3z6_GEmYbOQ4qeF5OOtqZpm649YFdNhrQU8JEov1h6xfF5s9CIJgGZD_XP-QyNk5HxjSo-pXZZeGEbdWDn4KLwAtFAIrjUsI0_A/s400/Google+Analytics+-+Tales+from+a+Grouch+2014-01-03+024720.bmp" height="310" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I couldn't find any articles that specifically identified the Blogger problem and connected it to this solution, which is why I'm blogging this now, even if it is a couple years late. However, I won't necessarily be able to tell if doing so increases my blog traffic because I should be expecting an increase anyway after this fix. I guess I'll just do it for the good of humanity. <br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-48520545169003352182013-12-26T16:50:00.000-05:002013-12-26T16:50:25.397-05:00Hiding in the FedEx logo is something you might not have noticed...No, not the arrow between the E and the x. Everyone knows about that. Can you see what the other thing is?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_K4lq7gH0jQwJV0XzQZNqbYM-jPomNWgvgaIzjQr8BQUSFCj28fAOy0IAG5Ezqrzp42pRZU7D56GVM9NJq8VeLvUTL1BRwtBoZnwjgxgNAeKXyJAhjt2hYmXcm5YH7j0OL9JuYg/s1600/fedexex.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_K4lq7gH0jQwJV0XzQZNqbYM-jPomNWgvgaIzjQr8BQUSFCj28fAOy0IAG5Ezqrzp42pRZU7D56GVM9NJq8VeLvUTL1BRwtBoZnwjgxgNAeKXyJAhjt2hYmXcm5YH7j0OL9JuYg/s400/fedexex.JPG" /></a></div>
<br />
It's that FedEx is short for "Federal Express", but some marketing idiot figured it would be good to add another "Express" on to the end for good measure. I guess this is for the division of Federal Express that actually is Express and the other trucks all say 'FedEx / Eventually".<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-25150026115456149102013-11-08T01:17:00.000-05:002013-11-08T01:17:20.998-05:00One big CFL scamSorry football fans (and critics), this is about Coompact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, not the Canadian Football League.<br />
<br />
I think I've documented previously that I can be obsessive about things. (In ironic contradiction to that claim, I'm not going to bother linking to an illustrative previous blog post.) I also like having some sort of validation (even anecdotal) of claims I make or causes I defend. That is to say, I am a critical thinker.<br />
<br />
In this vein, I didn't vigorously defend the little mercury buggers when a certain friend of mine, the kind who, on principle, doesn't use a green bin, told me that he switched back to incandescent bulbs after trying a set of CFLs.<br />
<br />
He told me he tried CFL bulbs once but it didn't last nearly as long as it was promised to last, so he switched back to incandescents. For those of you just joining this decade, compact fluorescent lightbulbs are those little curly bulbs that are supposed to provide the same amount of light for about a quarter of the electricity, thus saving you more money than the much higher cost than traditional incandescent light bulbs.<br />
<br />
Like a good little environmentalist sycophant, I use the bulbs and generally go along with the groupthink that they're better. (There are various arguments about the mercury contained in the bulbs vs the amount of mercury released in the generation of electricity for the less efficient incandescents, but since I don't have air conditioning I like that they don't put off as much heat)<br />
<br />
For the record, my friend also complained that they took longer to get to turn on (and, subsequently, to get to full brightness). I no longer notice this myself (i.e. I've gotten used to it) but I must admit that it does take a second or so for the lights to come on.<br />
<br />
But about the price, I wanted to contradict my friend, and tell him that the lights are rated for many years, so he must have gotten a dud. And the bulbs have gotten better since he would have tried them. But I wanted to be able to say this with the confident knowledge that my own experiences with the things were consistent with this claim.<br />
<br />
This was a problem.<br />
<br />
Sure, one remembers generally replaces the lights in one's house, but given how long they last, who can really say with confidence how long any particular one lasts?<br />
<br />
This guy, that's who.<br />
<br />
For the last couple years, I've been writing in fine-tip Sharpie the date of purchase and installation on my lightbulbs, and hanging on to the packaging (which is necessary anyway because I need a way to stockpile the old bulbs, since I don't get anywhere near any place that takes returns of these things, even though there are plenty of places that sell them)<br />
<br />
Lo and behold, tonight I replaced a bulb in my bedroom ceiling fixture, and written on the bulb was "purchased 2012-10-28 Home Hardware Glebe, installed same". It was from a Sylvania 3-pack of 100-watt equivalents, and the other two bulbs were still fresh in the package in my closet. Incidentally, to my friend's point, the packaging has a little "Instant On" sticker.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsx0ok2d1AS3qM1YR3OezgtJwe3zPn9oiXxhYarLvKwnk5PaFqEgWrsEWcrKo7OqXhe7brfZp4PIsjpbrd3sNvs0bJS1WGFcuCAeImuIpA8YsZLpPuH9HUaCAJFoPQkzaDtWpz-A/s1600/IMG_00000299.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsx0ok2d1AS3qM1YR3OezgtJwe3zPn9oiXxhYarLvKwnk5PaFqEgWrsEWcrKo7OqXhe7brfZp4PIsjpbrd3sNvs0bJS1WGFcuCAeImuIpA8YsZLpPuH9HUaCAJFoPQkzaDtWpz-A/s400/IMG_00000299.jpg" /></a></div><br />
My bulb's usage did not have any of the contraindications: no "dimmer, electronic timer or photocell, illuminated switch, totally enclosed recessed luminaires, or where directly exposed to the weather". So, being just barely a year old, it died well before it's 9-year warranty. The fine print on that is based on "normal household usage in accordance with package and bulb directions", which is to say an average of 3 hours a day, 7 days a week.<br />
<br />
I figure I use my bedroom light for more than 3 hours a day, but I'm pretty confident I don't use it for 27 hours a day, which is what would be needed to reach the bulb's 10,000 hour lifespan.<br />
<br />
So okay, the bulb died and the warranty obviously applies. So where do I get my replacement? Turn back to the fine print on the side of the box: "if this bulb does not last for the time period guaranteed...return bulb, proof of purchase, register receipt and your name and address to OSRAM SYLVANIA Inc, 435 E. Washington St., Winchester, KY 40391-2298. OSRAM SYLVANIA will replace the bulb. This replacement is the sole remedy available, and LIABILITY FOR DIRECT, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES IS HEREBY EXPRESSLY EXCLUDED [except in states where we're not allowed to exclude it]..." (all-caps original)<br />
<br />
So for a set of three bulbs I bought for $14.99 plus tax, I'm going to have to spend how much to ship the bulb to fucking KENTUCKY?!? And that's just the first bulb; if I only use the other two one after the other, I'll have to wait another two years at the current rate to get through them to send all three back together. I mean, if I send in the proof of purchase etc with only the first bulb, I won't be able to get replacements when the other two die prematurely. But what if the other two bulbs last 4 years each? Then by the time I ship them back the warranty period will have been over, despite each bulb lasting less than half its expected lifetime.<br />
<br />
But do you know how much it costs to ship things to the U.S.? I'm guessing somewhere between five and ten bucks at the slowest, cheapest rate. And then what? I'll get another bulb that will last a year, and for thirty bucks I'd have three bulbs plus three replacements that lasted for a combined total of 6 years when each one was supposed to last for nine?<br />
<br />
I think my skeptical friend may be on to something, since thirty bucks could buy many many years' worth of incandescents (or would have, had Dalton McGuinty not banned them).<br />
<br />
So let's summarize:<br />
- bulbs don't last anywhere near warranty<br />
- it costs as much or more to claim warranty as to just buy new bulbs<br />
- BlackBerry's autoreplace changes correctly-spelled words for no reason<br />
- you're not supposed to throw them out due to mercury, but there's you can't take spent ones back to where you bought them (for places downtown, at least)<br />
- I'm still going to be using them<br />
<br />
That last one is for two reasons: one, the heat factor. Two, they're still cheaper.<br />
<br />
As five bucks a pop, if we assume 3 hours a day 7 days a week, and if we assume 5 cents a Kilowatt-hour, these 23-watt "100-watt equivalent" bulbs save me $4.21 per year over incandescents. Factor in the fact that I likely use it more than 3 hours a day and 5 cents a kWh is the rate before your hydro bill gets more than doubled by fees and taxes, it still saves me money.<br />
<br />
So then the only unresolved question is, how do I punish Sylvania for this? I've already spent an hour writing this blog post, so that could be $20 or so of my own time. Why not go all out and play into their game. Here are some ideas:<br />
<br />
- send the bulb in a bubble envelope so it will most likely arrive broken when they open the package<br />
- waste at least as much of their time on the phone and responding to emails so their payroll costs match what I paid<br />
- send by UPS with paperwork that triggers UPS to charge the recipient the fixed customs fee of $40<br />
- hire a lawyer to sue them for $15 (hm... or a class-action...)<br />
- send Sylvania a Canadian football<br />
<br />
Ah, but this is all a pipe dream. Truth is, just like those weasels gambled, I don't really care to do anything about it, over a five-dollar-a-year investment in lightbulbs.<br />
<br />
Except blog about it.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-57051107708765548052013-08-23T18:13:00.000-04:002013-08-23T18:13:00.804-04:00On the economics of leftovers: it's probably better not toAt the end of dinner last night in a Chinese restaurant, there was the inevitable discussion about who will take home the leftovers. <br />
<br />
As with other elements of <a href="http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Bistromathics" target="_blank" title="Summary of Bistromathics, as originally described by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series">bistromathics</a>, this can be awkward, indeterminate, and occasionally testy. If not handled sensitively, everyone--including the person who takes the leftovers--can end up feeling worse off.<br />
<br />
So for the question, "who takes home the leftovers," we are presented with a prisoner's-dilemma matrix of outcomes. Except the central assumption of the prisoner's dilemma is that everyone has the same goal: that a smaller prison sentence is better than a longer one. With leftovers, it isn't a given that each person will consider it to be a benefit to bring home more leftovers than fewer. For example, a vegetarian will not be interested if the leftovers contain meat. Or a <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2010/03/leftover-monster.html">monster</a>.<br />
<br />
At least the nature of Chinese restaurants simplifies the options by separating each dish into its own leftover container, so taking home a vegetarian dish doesn't necessitate taking home all the other dishes, including the meat ones. But it does add complications. With containerized leftovers, the question now must be broken down from "who takes the leftovers" to "who takes <i>which</i> leftovers?". In effect, the question gets multiplied by the number of dishes: "Who takes the chop suey," "who takes the fried rice," "who takes the fried tofu," "who takes the bird's nest?" <br />
<br />
The other complicating factor is that some people would prefer not to take any leftovers home. So the question of "who takes home which leftovers" is further broken down into "who <i>wants</i> to take home which leftovers?"<br />
<br />
The problem we encountered last night, despite being a small group with only one vegetarian, was that the vegetarian was interested in taking home the vegetarian dish, but nobody was particularly keen on taking home any of the rest. It eventually got narrowed down to whether I or another person was going to take home the non-vegetarian dishes. The other person had a regular lunch on Fridays, so they wouldn't be taking it in for lunch today. My fridge is generally where leftovers go to die.<br />
<br />
So for both of us, the desire factor was low. We've already asked for it to be packaged, so <i>somebody's</i> got to take it. The question has at this point devolved again from "who wants to take home the remaining leftovers" (answer: nobody) to "to whom will the remaining leftovers be assigned for the purpose of being taken home?" In other words, who doesn't want them least?<br />
<br />
Probability to the rescue!<br />
<br />
I tend not to like labels, or categorizing things into black and white. Everything is probabilistic. Will I die tomorrow? I can't say no, but the probability is very, very low.<br />
<br />
And one last assumption that had been hovering over the conversation was that whoever took the food home would eat it. So I offered up the fact that there's about a 50% chance of the leftovers being eaten if I took them home. I knew this and this was factoring it into my decision, but it was not known to the remainder of the group.<br />
<br />
All of a sudden, this cemented the decision. My competitor for the leftovers didn't particularly <i>want</i> them, but if they brought them home the leftovers would get eaten (convenient, since this happened to also be the person who paid for the meal). <br />
<br />
The central goal of leftovers is to not let the already-prepared food go to waste. A 100% chance that they will be eaten versus a 50% chance that they will be eaten makes the decision much easier.<br />
<br />
Were it not for that, we might still be at the table wringing our wrists about who would take them home. At least we'd have something to eat.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-37182094444384373362013-07-24T01:28:00.002-04:002013-07-24T01:29:29.791-04:00My mother's maiden name was PhilI'm one of those people whose last name is the same as his mother's 'maiden' name. I'm also one of those people who, because of this, decides against using his mother's maiden name as a 'security' question. Especially when something as important as my bank account is involved.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, Scotiabank is one of those companies that thinks that, in today's world of everybody splattering their biographies across the internet, one's mother's maiden name is a secret that can only be transmitted through the vault door at Fort Knox with an umbilical cord.<br />
<br />
Some time ago, I changed what I had listed at my bank for "mother's maiden name" to something else. Damned if I know what I put. So every time I call up the bank, I have to explain this so they can skip over to another set of somewhat obtrusive questions (including "employer", of which I have multiple). Invariably, they don't care because as far as they're concerned, they have to ask me a question and I have to answer it, and they needn't concern themselves with the degree of difficulty of this question or the degree of security afforded by this.<br />
<br />
But today, I was trying to buy something online when I was presented with a "Verified by Visa" confirmation screen—ostensibly for my bank—which required me to enter my "mother's maiden name". I tried a couple things but it didn't work. There was no 'back' button so I could pay instead with PayPal, so I had to close the window. When I called up the company to see if the purchase went through, they informed me that the response from VbV wasn't even necessary unless I had set it up with my bank.<br />
<br />
Naturally, I went to my bank website to see if I could find out whether I'd set up Verified by Visa. I didn't realize that I was on my 'new' Windows 8 laptop (which I've since relegated to secondary status under the old, reliable Windows XP beast which it had been intended to replace), and I mustn't have logged into my bank account from that computer before, because it asked me for another security question. <br />
<br />
Damned if I knew that one, either. Let's look at the list of security questions available (from which one must pick three, and subsequently all three of which must be answered correctly if one is logging in for the first time on a new computer, or on a public computer). Remember, a good <i>security</i> question is one that is easy for you to understand and difficult for an identity thief to figure out. Most of these fail:<br />
<br />
<option value="P7A4C75BB">These ones are easy demographic ones that in many cases can be found by looking the person up:</option><br />
<option value="N67CB334E"><i>In what year did you graduate from high school?</i></option><br />
<option value="P3EDAC3B6"><i>What is or was the name of the town your grandmother lived in?</i></option><br />
<option value="N40BA20C3"><i>What is the first name of your oldest nephew?</i></option><br />
<option value="N1AA96BCC"><i>What is the first name of your oldest niece?</i></option><br />
<option value="N5DB37C21"><i>What is the name of your oldest cousin?</i></option><br />
<option value="N06B67EA9"><i>What is your best friend's first name?</i></option><br />
<option value="P15496614"><i>What is your paternal grandfather's first name?</i></option><br />
<i>Where did you go on your honeymoon?</i><br />
<i>What was the name of your elementary school?</i><br />
<i>What was the name of the street on which you grew up?</i><br />
Obviously, some of those might be obscure questions for some people, but the ones that aren't mindnumbingly obvious are, by definition, difficult for the user to remember also (the obvious ones would be like the BFF one talks to and about all the time on social media or the high school graduation year in one's Facebook timeline or LinkedIn profile). For example, I have two grandmothers (as I'm sure most do), both of whom are still alive. If I used that question, when I go to answer it, would I remember which grandmother I chose? And would I have chosen the town she grew up in, the town she lived in when I was a child, or the town she lives in now? Will I spell it right?<br />
<br />
My paternal grandfather's first name isn't so easy either. He went by an English name, a French name, and a a nickname, and the French one had an accent. When I try to remember what I put in there, do I remember the name I called him, or since banking is formal business, did I use his formal first name?<br />
<br />
My cousins span two generations. Did I pick the oldest of all my cousins or of my more familiar younger group of cousins? Did I put only their first name or full name? <br />
<br />
And as for elementary school and growing-up street, I went to at least three different elementary schools; I'm sure many people grew up living on many different streets. Or maybe someone's parents still live on that street where there's only one school nearby. Either way, it's either hard for me to remember or easy for a hacker to figure out.<br />
<br />
The rest of the questions are even more wishy-washy:<br />
<i>What is the name of your first employer?</i><i>What was the first name of your first manager?</i><br />
<option value="P7A4C75BB"><i>As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?</i></option><br />
<i>What is the last name of your favorite teacher in elementary school?</i><br />
<i>What is the name of your first pet?</i><br />
<i>What is your favorite hobby?</i><option value="N0958EBE0"><i>What is your favorite movie?</i></option><br />
<option value="P3A11E923"><i>What is your favorite vacation destination?</i></option><br />
<i>What was the name of your first girlfriend/boyfriend?</i><br />
I once applied for a summer job with the Ottawa Police when I was in university. I was told to list every.single.employer on the job application, and not wanting to lie to the Police, I did. My first one was a paper route. Actually, it was a flyer route. My first 'manager' was a lady who met me once at her suburban house to tell me how to do the job and whom I never saw or heard from again. The HR person at the police service told me that I was a stellar candidate but my references didn't check out because this lady whose name I had to dig through innumerable boxes of files to find didn't remember working with me. (That taught me the dual lesson of the importance of lying to the police and lying on job applications. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever gotten a job I applied for, except for a really rotten one...)<br />
<br />
So when it's months after I set these security questions and I'm trying to remember the answer, did I put my first.job.ever or my first 'real' job? These are the types of questions I don't have to contemplate when updating my LinkedIn profile because I don't goddamn have one.<br />
<br />
'Favourite movie' is one of the questions I remember Blogger asking me nine years ago when I set up my account, in order to put in my public profile (go figure, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692">it's still there</a>). I remember this because it got me thinking, "what a stupid fucking question is that?" <br />
<br />
Please tell me I'm not alone, and that most people don't have a single favourite movie, book, hobby, etc. that hasn't changed in decades. If you have one dominant hobby, like knitting, it'd be easy for you to remember, but chances are you talk about it a lot and maybe you have a <a href="http://www.knitnut.net/" target="_blank">blog about knitting</a>, so it would be dead easy for an identity thief to figure out also, so you wouldn't really want to use it as a <i>security</i> question. Or maybe, a year from now, you forgot that you set up your security question when you were in your <a href="http://www.knitnut.net/2013/07/the-little-wedding-that-grew/" target="_blank">quilting phase</a> and can't figure out why "knitting" doesn't work when you try to type it in.<br />
<br />
Oh, by the way, Scotiabank the Canadian banking company: in Canada, it's spelled "favourite".<br />
<br />
In fact, the only one question of that batch I can think of that is fairly definitive and that's "What did you want to be when you grew up?" It's definitive because I became that. But damned if I can remember a year from now if I typed "curmudgeonly old man" or "grumpy curmudgeon" or simply "get off my lawn".<br />
<br />
In fact, I think I asked them to put something akin to "get off my lawn" as the answer to "mother's maiden name" and thought it was pretty clever except that I've forgotten which kin I aput it to.<br />
<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
Another flaw of these security questions is how they're presented. If you primarily use one computer to access your online banking, and that computer is your personal one, and you don't have your browser configured to kill all cookies on exit, then you can set it to remember you so you don't have to answer the security questions each time. The problem is, when it <i>does</i> come time to answer these questions (say, because you had to reinstall your browser, or you got a new computer, or you're checking in from a wireless café), you don't remember which of the decisions you made in <i>how</i> you answered these questions because you haven't had to answer them in so long because it was disabled on the primary computer from which you access it.<br />
<br />
This is a feature, not a bug, according to the call centre agent who reset my login
tonight. She suggested that setting it to not ask me the questions again on
this one computer would mean that I wouldn't encounter the questions
again, and the implication was that I wouldn't have to worry about remembering the answers to the 'secret questions' at a. I guess the script Scotiabank gave her was written by someone who doesn't understand the philosophy of cloud computing (or Internet banking, for that matter) where you can access stuff from different computers. <br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
I don't think the bank really cares about security, it just wants to have a cloak of plausible deniability in the event of fraud. I mean, who's to blame if my account gets compromised? If I went to my home branch (which evidently isn't the one I thought it was, though the phone rep wouldn't tell me which one it was) and asked them to change my "mother's maiden name" to my mother's actual maiden name—even though it's not the least bit of a security question for me—would they blame me for using security questions that are too easy if my account got compromised? Or maybe I would be protected so long as I've checked all the boxes. Not that I care. Even if the bank is responsible and reimbursed me for wrongful expenses, I would be the one who'd have to suffer the fallout from having his identity stolen, credit likely damaged, and the paranoia (or worse, the reality) that the thief might have used it to infiltrate other areas of my life.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
I did have a security scare once. Long story short, it got me worried that my Google/Gmail account had been compromised. I discovered that Google has a feature whereby you can get it to send a six-digit number to your cellphone via text message whenever you log in, and you must enter this number into the login page before it lets you in. It can also send you the number via a phone call. As backups, it has alternate phone numbers and you can get a set of single-use codes in the event you don't have access to your cell phone. You can tell it not to do this on 'trusted' computers (you'll still need your password to log in).<br />
<br />
Not only is this a very secure method of protecting your log in, but it also is a built-in way of telling if someone else is trying to log in to your account (it will certainly tell you they've got your password!). Not only is it secure, but it also doesn't require me to answer a bunch of silly questions. <br />
<br />
Twitter recently enabled a similar feature, though it doesn't have the voice call or backup codes options, and naturally the first time I tried logging in to Twitter from another computer I was behind an impenetrable wall of steel and concrete, thereby missing the text message.<br />
<br />
Why can't the bank do this?<br />
<br />
Whenever I'm conducting a transaction at an unfamiliar retail store with my credit or debit card, I'm always worried about the security of my card. Is this a real card reader charging me 9.95 for the large pho or is it a dummy reader that's set up to record my card number and PIN? Sometimes I deliberately enter the wrong PIN the first time to make sure it rejects the bad code.<br />
<br />
I am horrified by the 'paypass' credit cards where you just have to tap it and it takes up to $30 out of your account without having to so much as press a button, much less enter a code.<br />
<br />
It would be much more reassuring if, each time my credit card was authenticated, I got a text message with the amount and store name.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I'll have to put up with the bank's ridiculous security theatre. I think I'll tell them my mother's name was Phil.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-71767934881201742032013-05-12T16:53:00.001-04:002013-05-12T16:54:00.083-04:00Picasa wasn't meant for people.I got a new computer a couple weeks ago, taking the plunge from Windows XP to Windows 8 (which is another story in itself). One of the big things that worried me was my Picasa albums.<br />
<br />
The last time I tried transferring to a Windows 7 (sic) computer, Picasa's albums would only restore on the new computer if the filename (including folder structure) was exactly the same, and Windows 7/8 doesn't let you name folders the same way as in XP. In other words, when it opened the album listing, it looked for the photo in the given directory, and promptly removed the photo from the album when it couldn't find it in the non-existent folder.<br />
<br />
Luckily, since that time, Picasa for Windows has changed the way it handles albums so that it stores album data in the photo, or in a hidden file in the photo's folder (sic). This meant that my albums were restored. Not only that, but they managed to somehow list many of my photos twice. Which is better than not at all.<br />
<br />
But the People albums photos are a different matter. I guess Picasa is meant for people who primarily take photos of other people, whereas mine, for the most part, aren't. I don't want to connect my photos with my Gmail account contacts or my (non-existent) Google plus account. Nevertheless, a while back (before Google plus even existed) I had spent a considerable amount of time putting nametags on people in many of my photos, diligently looking up the names of people I recognized but whose names I didn't remember, etc. As I added more photos, I'd occasionally add nametags to those photos also. This way, I could at least remember these people's names long after I forget who they are. (I also hate inheriting albums full of unannotated photos of people I don't know.)<br />
<br />
After using Picasa for a while on this new computer, somehow the people albums caught my eye, and a lot of "person" albums came up that were called "<unknown person="">". Each of these contained a handful of photos of people I do know, who had their own "people" album already. Some contain four or five photos of the person I know and a couple of other headshots of people I don't. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why these photos are like this; most of them aren't in albums or folders I've uploaded (and I haven't yet logged in on Picasa with the new computer), so it's not a permissions thing with my Google account...</unknown><br />
<br />
After a brief search online, it looks like there's no fixing this, except the hard way: re-naming the people, which I started to do. Tangent:<br />
<br />
(It is very difficult to bulk-rename people who are tagged in a Picasa album. You can select them and right-click and select "Move to People Album..." and then a list pops out of the context menu of people, but you can't search this list and the scrolling arrow is horrendously slow. Another way is to go into each photo, find the person in the photo, click on their head and type in their name. The least difficult way is to scroll the left bar to the people album for the desired person and drag the selected photos onto it. But there is no way to simply right click, or click somewhere, and type the name of the person you want to reassign these headshots to.)<br />
<br />
Once you're done reassigning these people, you have to individually delete the empty people albums for "<unnamed person="">". In my case, a few dozen of these. You can't bulk-select them, and it doesn't prompt you to delete them when they are empty. Meanwhile, they clutter up the People album listing (at least they're at the bottom). </unnamed><br />
<br />
Then there's the whole part about "long after I forget who they are". The official Picasa solution of "you'll have to re-tag all these people" breaks down. I tag the people to remind me who they are. If I'm going to re-tag them, I need the nametag to tell me who they are. For example, there is a Citizen photographer in one of my photos whom I had apparently tagged. This is handy, because I can never remember which of them is which. This is why I tagged him. I presume I cross-referenced the Ottawa Citizen's photos of the event at the time and added his name. I can't re-tag him because I don't remember which of the Citizen's three or four regular photographers he is.<br />
<br />
Luckily, I still have my old laptop and I haven't deleted my data off of it yet. (In fact, I still have all but my first computer, each of which in various states of preservation)<br />
<br />
But of all the stupid things, holy gee! It's things like this that make me paranoid of changing computers, and when changing computers, of changing operating systems. The Windows XP to Windows 8 transition is manageable enough, but damned if I'm going to try switching over to Google Chrome! <br />
<br />
I've still got a Windows XP install disc. Maybe I'll try installing that on the new machine and seeing if it doesn't blow up.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-82708860805320637712013-04-16T02:35:00.003-04:002013-04-16T02:35:40.627-04:00Homeopathy weak.Apparently it's Homeopathy Week. I learned this from Ars Technica, of all places.<br />
<br />
They're reprinting an <a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/the-pseudoscience-behind-homeopathy/" title="Diluting the scientific method: Ars looks at homeopathy (again)">extensive review of homeopathy from 2007</a>.<br />
<br />
I recall an incident where a friend of mine, who generally avoids silly stuff like religion and professional sports, remarking that his allergies were a lot better after he switched medications from his old homeopathic one. I kinda thought it was a joke, but it wasn't. When I tried to point out to him how plainly obvious it is that homeopathy is bunk, another friend chimed in, expressing skepticism, if not outright distrust, of modern, "conventional" medicine.<br />
<br />
This really surprised me, because this other friend was even more sciencey. I would have assumed he'd at least know how homeopathy is meant to work. <br />
<br />
That's why the Ars Technica article is great. It's a long read spanning 3 pages, but worth it. The article pokes away so much at the theories behind homeopathy that there's nothing but holes left. It doesn't just go over how homeopathy is an affront to modern medicine, but also how it's an affront to the scientific method, peer review, chemistry, physics, and mathematics. Not to mention the obvious casualty: logic. I'm not going to try to summarize the article or describe homeopathy, just <a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/the-pseudoscience-behind-homeopathy/" title="Diluting the scientific method: Ars looks at homeopathy (again)">read the article</a>. <br />
<br />
I was rather disappointed to read, on page 4 of the April 2013 edition of <a href="http://www.ottawa-woman.com/" target="_blank">Ottawa Woman magazine</a> (whose issues and articles appear to require Flash and defy linking), an article called "Homeopathy during labour and birth". I won't do a detailed breakdown of all the parts of the article which offend me (<a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2008/12/dont-ask-homeopath-if-you-need-haircut.html">been there, done that</a>), in part because I'm not exactly the target audience. Suffice it to say that she gives a lot of advice that sounds to me like euphemisms for "placebo effect from such-and-such homeopathic mixture will make the mother feel better."<br />
<br />
Okay, I don't want to go through the whole thing, but the passage that triggered my visceral cringing reflex (aside from the initial one I get at the sight of the word "homeopathy"), was "Some mothers will give birth not only with a midwife and a doula, but also with a hypnotherapist, acupuncturist, or a homeopath." It's good to hear that witch doctors, blood letters and phrenologists are not currently fashionable for childbirth (I have nothing against midwives or doulas, to be clear). It was only on a subsequent reading that I noticed this immediately follows the first paragraph, in which the author talks about how childbirth is a simple affair that can easily be cluttered with too many medical practitioners.<br />
<br />
But I have to wonder how demeaning it is that a magazine feels it needs to promote such vacuous hoo-haw in order to consider itself a magazine that caters to women. I'll leave you to consider the implications of this suggestion.<br />
<br />
The last point I wanted to make about homeopathy in this rant is that people often point to Health Canada's regulation of homeopathic remedies as an endorsement of homeopathy by Health Canada. It is not. Much as I'd like to say that the regulations are clear, <a href="http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/prodnatur/legislation/docs/hm_label-etiquet_mh-eng.php" target="_blank">they're at least understandable</a>. And if you've got a cursory understanding in the field, you'll know what to look for. <br />
<br />
A homeopathic remedy (which, to my dismay, can legally be called a "homeopathic medicine") must describe the 'active' ingredient, and must be at a potency of at least 12CH. If you haven't read up yet on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions">homeopathic dilutions</a> (Wikipedia), "potency" in the homeopathic world refers to how diluted it is. The higher the number, the more the ingredient has been diluted. From Wikipedia: "the greatest dilution that is reasonably likely to contain <i>one molecule of the original substance</i><b> </b>is 12C, if starting from 1 mole of original substance." <br />
<br />
In other words, Health Canada's regulations are designed to ensure that there is no more than one molecule of the 'active' ingredient per 6x10<sup>23</sup> molecules of solvent (usually water). It's there to make sure it doesn't have any of the active ingredient in it (which is fine with the homeopaths, as they prefer to rely on the water's "memory") so that in case the active ingredient is toxic, at least the remedy won't do you any harm. Helpfully, Health Canada also requires the remedies to be labelled with a statement like "Consult a health care practitioner if symptoms persist or worsen", which is always good advice when administering a placebo.<br />
<br />
So Health Canada will ensure that it's safe to take the stuff. As for efficacy, the <a href="http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/prodnatur/legislation/docs/ehmg-nprh-eng.php#a7_4">Evidence for Homeopathic Medicines</a> document from Health Canada states that, when a use is specified for the drug (i.e. "this is a dilution of bovine faeces, which is used in treating gullibility" as opposed to just "this is a dilution of bovine faeces"), the targeted condition—which cannot be one of the many major conditions listed in <a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/F-27/page-14.html#h-19">Schedule A of the <i>Food and Drugs Act</i></a>—must be effective based on one of various standards published by the Homeopathy industry. So Health Canada doesn't have any standards on making claims that homeopathic mixtures are <i>effective</i> at treating anything, so long as the homeopaths agree on it.<br />
<br />
A certain skepticism of the medical community is healthy (no pun intended). I've even <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2009/11/fight-panic-get-flingol.html">been known to myself</a>. But it needs to be productive skepticism, like asking for evidence of the efficacy of something (as I did in my cryptic entry about the H1N1 vaccine linked in the previous sentence). The reaction my friend gave me when I called homeopathy out was not skepticism of conventional medicine, but pure distrust of it. If it were skepticism, I presume he'd have investigated the evidence for homeopathy's effectiveness instead of merely embracing it as an alternative to the thing he distrusts.<br />
<br />
It is important to keep in mind that homeopathy originates before conventional medicine as we know it existed. Conventional medicine wasn't based on the scientific method, it was based on what was done to treat things in the past. You know, stuff like mercury, blood letting, and so on. Contrasted against that, doing nothing (which can be done very elaborately through homeopathy) usually yielded better results. <br />
<br />
Unfortunately, now it's homeopathy that is acting based on an unchanged, unproven process, while conventional medicine has grown up. And homeopathy defenders, ironically, claim that as a benefit.<br />
<br />
I'd go on, or at least go over this blog entry a couple times to strengthen the phrasing, if not the arguments, and maybe stick in something about how other quasi-medical people get grouped in—often willingly—with homeopaths, but it's getting late and my laptop's battery dying. <br />
<br />
So unfortunately, I'll have to leave this blog entry like Homeopathy Week: weak.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-82261196030639753422013-04-13T14:16:00.001-04:002013-04-13T14:16:21.798-04:00If it weren't for Star Trek, I might not be yelling at my computer.Because it's usually disguised as the present, it's easy to forget that we live in the future. Every now and then when I encounter a new unexpected piece of technology conveniently replacing a simple task, I'm momentarily reminded of this: Doors that open when you walk near them. Lights that turn on in a room when you walk into it. Locks are controlled by digital keypads. You can enter, use, and leave the washroom without touching anything but the toilet seat and the stream of water and soap. Many of these technologies have been around for a long time on an industrial scale, but they're now readily accessible on a consumer scale too.<br />
<br />
And then, every now and then when the technology breaks down, I forget it again. It's easy to not contemplate the future when you're preoccupied with trying to simply open a door or turn on a light. Silly RG, they don't yell at technology in the future!<br />
<br />
Other things from science fiction programs of yore are also available: modern PDAs, tablets and laptops far outpace anything Star Trek imagined in their respective form factors, and the combinations of things you can do with them have tremendous potential. Skype and FaceTime let you have live video conversations on demand with ease, and you don't have to have a console monkey in the room to put it up on the screen for you (I presume; I don't like user-facing webcams myself).<br />
<br />
Even the famed communicator, which lets Captain Picard reach anyone he likes by tapping a button on his chest, is here: Apple iPhone 5 users have their very powerful and quasi-sentient "Siri". I don't use an iPhone, but I've had this function on my Blackberry for as long as I've owned one: I simply press and hold the button on my headset and tell it a phone number or the name of one of my contacts. My old Nokia brick phone prior to that even let me record up to 20 sound bites to associate with voice-dialing contacts. <br />
<br />
I even rented a car recently which didn't have a key. There was just a fob I had to carry around, and the car knew I was near it and unlocked the doors for me. It knew I was inside the car to enable the "start" button that I pressed to start the ignition. These features were so unexpected they had to be explained to me by the clerk, and it took me even longer to figure out how to turn the lights on once it got dark, long after I'd left the lot. (It'll be interesting to see scrap heaps ten years from now filled with cars where 99% of the electronics and machinery still work but an out-of-production patent-protected fingernail-size part prevents the computer from letting you turn on the steering wheel.)<br />
<br />
But science fiction's impact on our relationship with technology does more than just drive new ideas and foster automated convenience. I think it also drives our frustrations with technology, too.<br />
<br />
Think about it. When you think about technology on the Enterprise, you think about how it works, right? What about when it doesn't work?<br />
<br />
There are plenty of examples of futuristic technology not working on TV, sure. But when it does break, you usually know why (even if the character might not). If the cause is not something obvious like a catastrophic power loss, it's usually something nefarious. Someone has locked a control panel, or a villain has short-circuited the turbolift, or Moriarty has reprogrammed the holodeck. Sometimes there's some energy-based lifeforce that's screwing with all the systems in the ship that only creates the subtlest of symptoms. And even then, the characters usually have a workaround readily available, because unlike your journey through the doorway, the TV plot must go on.<br />
<br />
How often have you watched science fiction and something went wrong for unknown, unexplained, and relatively benign reasons? In other words, because it simply isn't working properly? Not often, I'd say. There's no such thing as an idiopathic TV tech malfunction; everything happens for a reason—usually a malicious reason—and if you don't know already what that reason is when the character encounters the problem, you'll probably find out by the end of the episode.<br />
<br />
So then think about your own experiences with technology. I, for one, couldn't tell you how many times in a week I go to do something with a computer, or my phone, or some other gadget, and it refuses to behave itself. I know how it's <i>supposed </i>to work and I've gotten it to work a hundred times before, but it won't do it this time. I spend hours trying to figure out what the problem is, trying workarounds, reinstalling things, only to eventually give up.<br />
<br />
It still has power and is configured the same as when I last used it. It's responding to all my <i>other</i> commands. But it's not doing this one thing that I want it to do now. There must be a reason for the holdup, a malicious force at play, I just haven't figured out what force that is. I <i>know </i>there must be something because that's what I'm trained to believe by years of watching science fiction TV. Well, nobody else has been using my computer, and there are no supernatural forces at play.<br />
<br />
Therefore it's the computer itself that must be the malicious actor trying to keep me from doing what I want. Occasionally one can blame the manufacturer or software designer, but neither of them are in the room and it's hard to curse at someone when you don't know their name. It's convenient enough, on the other hand, to blame the computer. All the other variables are controlled, which leaves the computer as the only thing that can change what's happening with my computer.<br />
<br />
So after a frustrating few hours, wasted, trying to get my futuristic gadgets to perform my benign chores, I forget that we "live in the future". I forget that breakdowns of technology are only malicious on TV for plot reasons.<br />
<br />
And I forget that people in the future don't yell at their computers.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-26707002792456365512013-02-24T23:47:00.000-05:002013-02-24T23:47:12.250-05:00The Cursive ConspiracyThere was a small <a href="http://www.ottawacitizen.com/writing+wall+cursive/7998607/story.html" target="_blank">media blip</a> about cursive writing recently. Namely, that cursive writing might go the way of the Canadian penny, in that schoolteachers won't be required to teach it in Ontario. And like the penny, <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2012/03/war-on-penny-mission-accomplished.html">good riddance</a>. Even better, educators are finding that proper typing is a more useful skill, and I wholeheartedly agree.<br />
<br />
When I went through school, we were told a number of things about handwriting. We were not told that it was important because it was part of the curriculum (the word 'curriculum' had likely not entered my vocabulary yet, not to mention the bureaucratic environment from which it originates) but because it was a skill we children would need later in life. We were told the same thing a few years further in about the importance of writing in pen instead of pencil.<br />
<br />
For example, I distinctly remember being told in elementary school that we'd have to get used to writing in pen, in cursive, because we'd be required to use it in middle school. Which was true enough--it was--except that middle school required us to follow the same convention <i>only </i>insofar as the same warning applied, this time one tier up looking on to high school.<br />
<br />
Then the cracks started to show in the plan. Here's a sample of my notes from a high school English class:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBqyAXbWDv0zr-e8ksgHZwfibN3yHsqe2SscH_uWsRakJM0odLI3m-JeY32lCpQwv76roXHtyxkppDn8IT7jSUDcWn34JUErukhwXcgBvtdDv06yjRQKmZa2cPmN8GtP4fQPm6Q/s1600/highschoolwriting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHBqyAXbWDv0zr-e8ksgHZwfibN3yHsqe2SscH_uWsRakJM0odLI3m-JeY32lCpQwv76roXHtyxkppDn8IT7jSUDcWn34JUErukhwXcgBvtdDv06yjRQKmZa2cPmN8GtP4fQPm6Q/s400/highschoolwriting.jpg" width="328" /></a></div>
<br />
This one was in pen, but it sure isn't cursive. In fact, it doesn't look much like print, either. The illegibility suggests
that our high school teachers didn't really give a fuck how we wrote (which, sadly,
seems to still be the case). None of my other surviving papers from high school were in cursive, either (though admittedly, most of the samples were from math and science classes, where print--and pencil--prevailed). Nevertheless, I seem to recall (and this might be apocryphal) a teacher telling us that we could print if we wanted to, but warned us that we'd be required in university/college/life to write in cursive.<br />
<br />
In university, they <i>really </i>didn't give a fuck (the feeling was mutual). In fact, they distinctly <i>discouraged </i>us from writing in cursive on our written exams because it was so difficult for them to read the writing of these young adults who had been habituated into writing in cursive for school assignments but never properly disciplined in its use. (As for spelling and grammar, I agonized through the mandatory courses therein at university because they were teaching what was obvious to me. These basic lessons had long been ingrained in those of us who had endured the classes of our high school's old-school crone, who--bless her heart--would berate the hell out of you if you didn't heed her lessons on the nuances of English grammar.)<br />
<br />
<br />
I recently discovered some old notebooks from early elementary school. My second grade teacher required us to write a diary and hand it in. She would then write some comment in it. And, as my friend observed reading through them, I wrote responses to her comments, often rather deadpan.<br />
<br />
It's actually quite neat to find this, because it's a record with specific dates of where I've been. When going through the cache of school notebooks that contained this Grade 2 diary, I discarded a few which had no dates. I suppose it doesn't really matter what the date was in this case, but now in the
information age we like our precision, which is included tacitly with
each electronic snippet we produce. With e-mails and electronic agendas and date-stamped photos, etc., if for some odd reason
I wanted to know what I was doing on a specific day in the last handful
of years, I have ways of finding out. On handwritten notes, I now write the date obsessively, even writing the date of an annotation of an earlier, dated, note (sometimes I'll even write on an undated note a date wherein I speculate the date of the original note). I refer to older documents often enough that it annoys the hell out of me when I find something undated, because usually when I'm doing so it's to establish a chronology. The dates in this old diary were likely a teacher requirement rather than a habit of my own, but it is nice to have them nevertheless.<br />
<br />One particular entry, dated February 24 (no relation), ninteen-mumble-mumble, is illustrative of both. I had written it in cursive, which I suspect was at the encouragement of the teacher. It was in pencil, not pen, but we did a lot of erasing and correcting in those early days. It tells the story of a grand fort my friend and I had built at his place.<br />
<br />
To this day, I remember quite a few details about this event: one of my parents drove me over to his house, which was in the Glebe (the significance of which was unapparent to me at the time). I went up to the door, and his mother answered. My friend wasn't in yet, she said, but I could wait for him. In fact, I think he was building a fort and I was to wait for him inside while he finished up. Perhaps we did work on the fort, since I don't remember much of what happened between arriving, looking at some toys and discussing them but not playing with them, and being picked up to leave. Okay, so maybe I don't remember so much, but the event as a whole I certainly remember, and it is nice to have this contemporary documentation of it.<br />
<br />
Discovering the journal entry, decades later, it reads out succinctly as "On such-and-such date, I went to so-and-so's house and we dug out a fort [stet]." The teacher commented on how it was a good idea to visit a friend, and I replied coldly beneath her comment, "it was his [idea]." That's at least consistent with my recollection that he had started the fort long before I arrived. Perhaps I should have elaborated further, but it's too late now.<br />
<br />
I also illustrated the diary entry with diagrams of the fort, once in plan view from above, and again in close up (I made a lot of blank pages which I called "drawings" of snow in elementary school).<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2-t8zdPRgZtGJh8bNANS0iKFsAPdweaOv6HONMZbYVONu5FzxsGVbnyFd1qzLvmJlMgBpYvrUlIxcWZGByinBWI746FUrc1z93XRmcBPFXGKb1vFMQ43MNmcwxzic7IdXfHidg/s1600/diaryentry-cursivewriting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2-t8zdPRgZtGJh8bNANS0iKFsAPdweaOv6HONMZbYVONu5FzxsGVbnyFd1qzLvmJlMgBpYvrUlIxcWZGByinBWI746FUrc1z93XRmcBPFXGKb1vFMQ43MNmcwxzic7IdXfHidg/s320/diaryentry-cursivewriting.jpg" width="257" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
But aside from the precise date and the minimalist banter, the big surprise was one that had eluded me for years. It was a clue staring me, staring all of my young colleagues, in the face: the cursive thing was a sham. For all the propaganda telling us we needed to write in cursive, my teacher's notes to me were in <i>print</i>!<br />
If only I had looked between the lines to see my teacher's misstep, paid attention not to what she said but what she did. All of that stress, all of that browbeating, all of those threats that we'd never make it in the real world if we didn't write in cursive. It was all a <i>lie</i>. The writing on the cake was in cursive <i>but the invoice for it was in print!</i><br />
<br />
Sigh.<br />
<br />
My handwriting still resembles the spaghetti in the high school example. I guess by high school I had determined the precise balance of just how messily I could write and still make out what it said. That way I can get down as much of a thought as possible before the rest escapes my mind. I can write clearly when I need to, by the way, although straight lines of text still elude me.<br />
<br />
Rather, I can <i>print </i>clearly, when I need to.Which isn't often. Cursive--I literally can't think of when I last used it, but probably not since before high school.<br />
<br />
So kids, if you're reading this at home, and teachers tell you you'll need to learn cursive, don't listen. Learn to print legibly and learn to type. And for god's sake, learn to spell: all the good jobs these days require good communication skills and no one like to hire people who can't spell.<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-28227100831608517492012-12-31T15:25:00.001-05:002012-12-31T15:31:24.136-05:00RG's Workshop: Mega fridge magnet (or: keeping up with the Scrimshaws)At last, some spare time in which to catch up on some overdue blog posts about stuff I've built...<br />
<br />
So a couple years back, David Scrimshaw shared an idea of his to use the large magnets from old speaker cabinets as <a href="http://davidscrimshaw.blogspot.ca/2009/03/uses-for-speaker-magnets-screwdriver.html">fridge magnets for holding drill bits</a>. <br />
<br />
Not long after this, I used a similar principle to make a fridge decoration, only I used the sleeve from a discarded baby shirt and tied the ends to make it look a bit like a giant cloth peppermint wrapper. I failed to take a photo of this, and I must have given it away because I can no longer find it on my fridge.<br />
<br />
But the curbside has since yielded more speakers, including a very large pair of cabinets earlier this year. I dismantled the cabinets and extracted just the speakers to bring them home (I also kept the screws that held them in, which were also of very good quality).<br />
<br />
To power a big speaker, you need a big magnet. Here it is on my fridge, with a Kryptonite U-lock for scale: <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTRt2ZYDgdZF67xnKKCzLIJKu0kt4nuepDb8MLCkq2aoMQF1DacpLTixNpI05O8PM5OI9Zx7RR-nCAG7M-69slX1ZZI-rn4Ko5hapvtLA7UYhvxCENkLsp8aRlbYhB9eKF8iHCbQ/s1600/mega-fridge-magnet1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTRt2ZYDgdZF67xnKKCzLIJKu0kt4nuepDb8MLCkq2aoMQF1DacpLTixNpI05O8PM5OI9Zx7RR-nCAG7M-69slX1ZZI-rn4Ko5hapvtLA7UYhvxCENkLsp8aRlbYhB9eKF8iHCbQ/s400/mega-fridge-magnet1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
It also holds tools, such as a hammer, chisel, wrench, screwdriver, and pliers:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4FQufLOYR1OHcg16EPT_ONLBPa8iFweyXT4xceYlYZ8QmdtbCpnNlmxQ9WiYmdgdp5aM3sZpkGoDJmROkNCaZdFlRG-zKoZ3TGXQLSkYV6crMgOOfuK2qqvIXScvOW9BE4byG2Q/s1600/mega-fridge-magnet2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4FQufLOYR1OHcg16EPT_ONLBPa8iFweyXT4xceYlYZ8QmdtbCpnNlmxQ9WiYmdgdp5aM3sZpkGoDJmROkNCaZdFlRG-zKoZ3TGXQLSkYV6crMgOOfuK2qqvIXScvOW9BE4byG2Q/s400/mega-fridge-magnet2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
I needed the U-lock back on my bike, but decorated it otherwise with tools and <a href="http://binderclips.ca">binder clips</a>. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGgzRRP4RfNwqBa1zxy_6eUNd8bW0cgD29K8X4-Ca0htEVkqg-8NlXcOdpYW1BQK07lL7clrWlpdeF-FahEThsf-g5fg6lVHnvBnWX6CvKHcR95Bdh3zdU0l30EE5ZhuSEekmp6w/s1600/mega-fridge-magnet3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGgzRRP4RfNwqBa1zxy_6eUNd8bW0cgD29K8X4-Ca0htEVkqg-8NlXcOdpYW1BQK07lL7clrWlpdeF-FahEThsf-g5fg6lVHnvBnWX6CvKHcR95Bdh3zdU0l30EE5ZhuSEekmp6w/s400/mega-fridge-magnet3.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br />
Tools, and a magnetic clip on the woodsaw which is holding a fortune cookie slip that reads, naturally, "others are drawn to your magnetic personality."<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-81846896891661357632012-11-23T00:02:00.002-05:002012-11-29T22:24:47.512-05:00The dentist spells "guilt" with a teaI had my biannual dental checkup today, or as I commented this afternoon, via Twitter:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-center">Just had my biannual interrogation and lecture--er, dentist appointment.<br />
— RealGrouchy (@RealGrouchy) <a data-datetime="2012-11-22T20:51:41+00:00" href="https://twitter.com/RealGrouchy/status/271717610817736704">November 22, 2012</a></blockquote><script charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
The lengthy explanation, common to all my medical rants, is summarized in the subsequent tweet:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-center"><p>Best part of a dentist appointment is when they pummel you with guilt right after you tell them you're on antidepressants.</p>— RealGrouchy (@RealGrouchy) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealGrouchy/status/271718448529297409" data-datetime="2012-11-22T20:55:01+00:00">November 22, 2012</a></blockquote><script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><br />
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The hygienist and I had established which medications I was on--a depressing enumeration in itself. These include the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2012/06/my-optometrist-says-i-cant-lift-heavy.html">eyedrops I take</a> due to a reaction to the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2011/02/im-on-new-drug-which-hopefully-does.html" title="and looking at the date on that post, I should probably check in with my G.P. and review those">antidepressants I take</a>. Also, the antidepressants. She asked me whether my asthma inhaler was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventolin">Ventolin</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salbutamol">salbutamol</a>. Do I know the dosage? Hell no! That's for the doctor and the pharmacist to figure out, I just take them. <br />
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Anyway, throughout the visit, the hygienist kept harping on about how every little thing I do in my life causes dental problems. She didn't dwell on her observation that I've been keeping better care of my teeth than at any previous visit, it was just constant questions and nagging 'tips'.<br />
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As an example, she asked if I drink either coffee or tea: <br />
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Yes, I drink tea. <br />
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"What kind? Black, green, herbal..." Black.<br />
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"With sugar?" Yes. <br />
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"How many teaspoonfuls?" I don't know, I pour the sugar from a thing; a fair amount, but you'll be pleased to know that I leave my tea weak so I don't have to sweeten it as much as a full dose.<br />
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"Fairly quickly or drawn out over a long period?" Usually over a 2-3 hour visit to the coffeeshop.<br />
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"Well you should try to drink it in a shorter period because the sugar breaks down in your mouth for as much as a half hour after every sip." And if I intersperse it with sips of water? "If you swish with the water after each sip, that will help slightly to balance the pH."<br />
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Curiously, she didn't bother to ask about the donut, icing-heavy carrot cake, or mostly-sugar cookie that I often eat (also slowly) with my tea, but I'm sure if I had told her about these should would have suggested which fork I should use for the carrot cake to minimize damage to my teeth.<br />
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"By the way," she added afterwards, "you should use a teaspoon to measure how much sugar you put in your tea." Yeah, thanks.<br />
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She also assumed that, like morning coffee addicts, I drink tea as an end in itself--hence the suggestion to drink it quickly. I don't. I do, however, enjoy (or at least prefer) going to the coffeeshop for a couple of hours where I can read the paper and get some work done in a quasi-social setting instead of alone at home where there are plenty of chores begging for my attention. My coffeeshop routine is a predictable, reliable way for me to unwind after a long day at the dentist.<br />
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And since I don't drink a coffeeshop's namesake drink, I order tea--which I only tolerate in would-you-like-some-tea-with-your-sugar dilutions. Again, I'm fairly particular about what I expect in a visit: if they don't have the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2IJdfxWtPM">right kind of tea</a>, or if the newspapers are gone, or if there are no seats left, it interrupts the predictable rhythm and can throw my mood right out of whack. <br />
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In essence, I don't go to the coffeeshop to drink tea, I drink tea to go to the coffeeshop. Because it is something I know makes me a happy Grouch. <br />
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As for the medications, it shouldn't be a very big leap of logic to infer that a person who is taking antidepressants does so due to some sort of behaviour disorder; in particular, one which might count low self-esteem as one of its symptoms. <br />
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In my case, I don't necessarily suffer from low self-esteem <i>per se</i>, but as described above I do sometimes require things to be <i><a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2009/07/yogourt-rant.html">just so</a></i> in order to avoid my fragile mood circuits from tripping a breaker (or worse, blowing a fuse).<br />
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<a name="helpfulsuggestion"></a>The tea interrogation was just one example of many similar lines of questioning about my tooth-brushing habits. Each little quiz was accompanied by a consortium of 'helpful' suggestions of how to restructure my life to put dental hygiene as the top priority (thankfully she didn't describe it this way). For example, she demonstrated in great detail a flossing technique suspiciously similar to the one I already use. (Ironically, she didn't ask me first about that.)<br />
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Dental hygiene as my top priority? Fuck you, my mood is my top priority, and you're souring it. If there's one health thing that I remember to do each day, it's taking my meds so I don't get withdrawal symptoms. And waking up on time. And <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2010/01/interesting-video-on-motivation-and.html">remembering to eat</a>. <br />
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The 'helpful suggestions' (which also, thankfully, was not a phrase she used), and various patronizing, loaded, questions reiterated throughout the visit, are each presumably intended to encourage a particular behavioural change. Floss more, floss better, brush before bedtime, use these stick things between your teeth, put less sugar in your tea, drink your tea faster, use this special toothpaste which has a high pH, and so on... I'm sure I missed some; perhaps I should have asked for an itemized receipt.<br />
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You've already told me that my teeth and gums are in better shape than they were before, but all these suggestions, and the condescending way you make them, do <i>*wonders*</i>, lady, for my self-esteem and mood. The easiest behavioural change to fix <i>that</i>? Well, that would be to convince myself that you're wrong and to start taking <i>worse</i> care of my teeth just to spite you. Or, more simply, I could stop going to the dentist. <br />
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You want <i>behaviour change</i>? Be careful what you wish for.<br />
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- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-54861050331321725532012-09-07T01:20:00.002-04:002012-09-07T01:23:58.749-04:00RG's workshop: Stereo system switchboardIt's been a while since I wrote anything on here, and even longer since I blogged about anything interesting. (Oh crap, I hate it when people start off their blog posts talking about how long it's been since they last blogged. You know what? Strike that first sentence. Let's try at this again.)<br /><br />I have a relatively small apartment, though it is big enough for me and my stuff. It has enough rooms, including one I use as <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/search/label/workshop">my workshop</a>. <br /><br />In the living room of my apartment, I have a stereo system. That is to say, there's a stereo device I <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/search/label/treasure">found on the curb somewhere</a>, through which I route the audio that accompanies the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2011/11/rgs-workshop-projector-and-screen-mount.html">projector screen</a> (among other uses). <br /><br />The stereo has two sources of external input, not including the radio/CD/cassette stuff built into it. These inputs consist of one end of an audio cable being plugged into the stereo unit's "AUX INPUT" jack, and the other end of the cable split, one path plugged into the turntable in the bedroom, the other connected to a long cable with a standard mini jack. I can plug the mini jack into my laptop or my Blackberry, and the cable is long enough--and my apartment small enough--that I can bring either device into any room of the house to 'remotely' control the audio. <br /><br />So for example, I can watch online TV in the kitchen with my laptop on the kitchen table and the audio going through the soundsystem back out to the speakers in the kitchen. I can also use my new Blackberry's FM tuner to listen to the radio (I only started listening to the radio again when I got the new Blackberry last week, and I've thus far tended to listen to the station that has all the ads for hearing aids and funeral service providers). The Blackberry (as with the iPod I <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2010/05/of-black-berries-and-poison-apples.html">briefly owned</a>) needs you to plug in the headphones to listen to the radio, because they act like the antenna, but the stereo jack works just as well.<br /><br /><br />Anyhow, the stereo sits under this desk which I did not find on the curb. I built it with my own two hands, and a screwdriver and hammer, according to the assembly instructions from the non-Swedish office supply store where I had bought it. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlAJ5pxu9r9cx7daZCEERL-zeaobknMvzL7U3Xs33mebG7wR5V1Vl3239jwl0GYMfkXzOTVC_2iNKc7ofoeAfxkHBUtHCeTdNa331h0xMXmXDkMDiRblI9RLlSVZawgJULHyFoQ/s1600/Construction+of+Orbit+desk+%25283%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlAJ5pxu9r9cx7daZCEERL-zeaobknMvzL7U3Xs33mebG7wR5V1Vl3239jwl0GYMfkXzOTVC_2iNKc7ofoeAfxkHBUtHCeTdNa331h0xMXmXDkMDiRblI9RLlSVZawgJULHyFoQ/s400/Construction+of+Orbit+desk+%25283%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785283829748675794" /></a>The stereo sits under the desk as does one pair of speakers. <br /><br />Another pair of speakers goes into the kitchen (which can extend into the bathroom if and when I see fit to have them do so), and as of very recently, a third pair is wired through the wall into the bedroom (which I can extend into the workshop, should I see fit to do that also).<br /><br />The thing is, I do not want all of the speakers to always be on. I only need the sound in the room(s) which I am occupying. So I need a switch system. <br /><br />I bought a basic audio switchbox from Radio Shack ("the Source" in modern parlance), which didn't really work. Even after I fixed some bad soldering inside it, there were issues with bleeding between the left and right channels. I also couldn't separately activate the left and right units of a pair of speakers.<br /><br />So I stuck with my previous scheme of a pair of Y adapters on the stereo output cables and plugged or unplugged the Y ends into the ends of the cables for the desired speakers, all of which I have patched into RCA jacks. I had had the jacks stuffed into the grooves of the CD holder under the desk top (circled in the above photo).<br /><br /><br />But this did not satisfy me. Functionally, it was not an elegant solution to have cables sticking through a grille. So I decided to build a switchboard (you digital-age kids might not know what a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_switchboard">manual switchboard</a> is, but they work very nicely).<br /><br />The first step was to build a panel that would fit into the space where the grille is. The grille is wedged between two columns that have holes corresponding to bumps on the edge of the plastic grille.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_uwNRn_H3xKSiVVMPuBwRUoQGXx466DfFktkNcvDqg_PlhZQtiuURO5VozzchaCZWJr2t_sNjsQVlziGn9ymwf5bZJ8-tKiY_SwdKZcEW8bQ6QKYLZlr-EYbMA2rQV52qhGrwHQ/s1600/switchboard2012+%25282%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_uwNRn_H3xKSiVVMPuBwRUoQGXx466DfFktkNcvDqg_PlhZQtiuURO5VozzchaCZWJr2t_sNjsQVlziGn9ymwf5bZJ8-tKiY_SwdKZcEW8bQ6QKYLZlr-EYbMA2rQV52qhGrwHQ/s400/switchboard2012+%25282%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785283822791875890" /></a>I first bent some paperclips into latches that I inserted into the edge of the thin plywood board at the same intervals as the bumps on the grille. There is a recess underneath them, which allows them to dip out of the way and spring back up to latch the board into place (like on a door). They are tapered so that when you push the board up, they are pushed by the edge of the hole in the cylinder into the recess in the board, releasing the board. <br /><br />I'd seen this trick done online somewhere months or years ago, but don't remember where. It was probably from a project documented by <a href="http://cockeyed.com/body.html">Rob Cockerham</a> or <a href="http://www.woodgears.ca">Matthias Wandel</a>.<br /><br />Anyhow, it works, and I can put the board into the space, and remove it when I need to by pushing up to release the latches.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KlhLWNze1vfeUQZ9Qs5LYKCVWRKwQaRgB__djcMQL_1xqRUfw2oC6iKI906rcDigo7QM_HCFzjV_6TP4wJl8qcqGXE52p-T9NFgM-vT9aB5ZK3emrovWKfHJFR-tq4-nbrQydg/s1600/switchboard2012+%25284%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KlhLWNze1vfeUQZ9Qs5LYKCVWRKwQaRgB__djcMQL_1xqRUfw2oC6iKI906rcDigo7QM_HCFzjV_6TP4wJl8qcqGXE52p-T9NFgM-vT9aB5ZK3emrovWKfHJFR-tq4-nbrQydg/s400/switchboard2012+%25284%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785283817279971554" /></a>The next step was to cut holes for the RCA jacks on the ends of the speaker wires. I needed to get the jack through the board, but I also wanted it to be snug so I could push the Y connector into it without the plug just falling through the board. <br /><br />To accomplish this, I settled on a keyhole-type shape, with two round holes connected by a channel. One hole was larger than the RCA jack, allowing me to stick it through, and the other was slightly smaller, allowing it to be held snug. The holes were connected by a channel that is wide enough for the cable to pass through. (on the right below is my first attempt, which used a hole that was too small)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjihA6raUxAihsP6tyfBDEn0dj7pKZ8LRgheLwAu5MsHcAGENLAyympA0QDY_QYuqn1OC4IcbqQgxMks7iewDx5WslzSlox4IhSYRAwpwyJbaFEXmYEVSLQvNNfRPvRAOPuTL1MAA/s1600/switchboard2012+%25286%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjihA6raUxAihsP6tyfBDEn0dj7pKZ8LRgheLwAu5MsHcAGENLAyympA0QDY_QYuqn1OC4IcbqQgxMks7iewDx5WslzSlox4IhSYRAwpwyJbaFEXmYEVSLQvNNfRPvRAOPuTL1MAA/s400/switchboard2012+%25286%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785282700180519890" /></a>After cutting the holes for the four stets of speakers (kitchen, living room, bedroom, and a spare set of holes for future expansion), I painted it black to match the piece of the desk it was replacing. The only black paint I had were a couple of cans of spray paint I found one bountiful day of <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/search/label/treasure">treasure hunting</a> (a.k.a. curb shopping, dumpster diving, etc.):<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlBhi2t-GK_FXQG1SbL-yjZAWuPkENjrhfMU16TTYcNAgW-O_h17zLbWkOugKGCNb0O8FX1vgGkArkvX6FlBGlgwUlPyfPyH7K5FUq8tLRMhkb5bywXruRz5JeoGX9NmSJfHBZqA/s1600/treasure-find-spray-paint.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlBhi2t-GK_FXQG1SbL-yjZAWuPkENjrhfMU16TTYcNAgW-O_h17zLbWkOugKGCNb0O8FX1vgGkArkvX6FlBGlgwUlPyfPyH7K5FUq8tLRMhkb5bywXruRz5JeoGX9NmSJfHBZqA/s400/treasure-find-spray-paint.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785296360284051810" /></a>My only previous experience using spray paint was indoors, and resulted in everything in the room, including plenty of electronics, being covered with a yellow dust. Thankfully, this room was in somebody else's house, and the electronics were theirs, as was the bright idea of spray painting indoors.<br /><br />To alleviate this problem, I taped together some newspaper pages into a cube, put the board inside, reached in with the can of spray paint and sprayed it as best as I could with the cube closed. I let the dust settle a bit and reapplied the parts that I missed (the cube filled with spray dust, completely obscuring the workpiece so you couldn't see if you had gotten it all). <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKQnumEULy8asdkFfHl1jNFdRaYvr2WtOua3iublV8pT4Mo2i0YWwaXCw84i2iWHbuP1pO-DGxiLLGWG5VC8D3mV7UlGTzNbpuUfyHjfu6u5qmHXSzFBuSa4j-Tpb6rpvpeZUk7w/s1600/switchboard2012.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKQnumEULy8asdkFfHl1jNFdRaYvr2WtOua3iublV8pT4Mo2i0YWwaXCw84i2iWHbuP1pO-DGxiLLGWG5VC8D3mV7UlGTzNbpuUfyHjfu6u5qmHXSzFBuSa4j-Tpb6rpvpeZUk7w/s400/switchboard2012.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785282683567611058" /></a>The paint job worked well enough for me, for something that would most of the time be in the shadows under the desk top anyway.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe9Wx1zOF0wCQ7zppMSl8rO8WL9g_h7DIG94YqLoRljznOfRoN_uP5cnfbEHu4gZXzMIcGA3IM6bdIQNlPzyfttzlvtOuDh0uQZQmo6wKLxa8dIHu5JnEumBMkEZiKiKzJ8M2G5w/s1600/switchboard2012+%252813%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe9Wx1zOF0wCQ7zppMSl8rO8WL9g_h7DIG94YqLoRljznOfRoN_uP5cnfbEHu4gZXzMIcGA3IM6bdIQNlPzyfttzlvtOuDh0uQZQmo6wKLxa8dIHu5JnEumBMkEZiKiKzJ8M2G5w/s400/switchboard2012+%252813%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785282690403086114" /></a>The only remaining issue was that the jacks sometimes pulled out of the board when disconnecting the switch cables. This was fixed with that quintessential desktop accessory, the trusty <a href="http://www.binderclips.ca">binder clip</a>.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBIKP7PXVGiQTqKxbi_Btic-iplbIJ_U_SpWDs6BnB1aZWynBdi0zOouysAWXdc7tXh50eIe-qhqI9qvLVuLF9U4SxNfjHGnBWFErXQcUvn49XzQ_LKpoPXaP6B7Ku4wej9BOe_A/s1600/switchboard2012+%252810%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBIKP7PXVGiQTqKxbi_Btic-iplbIJ_U_SpWDs6BnB1aZWynBdi0zOouysAWXdc7tXh50eIe-qhqI9qvLVuLF9U4SxNfjHGnBWFErXQcUvn49XzQ_LKpoPXaP6B7Ku4wej9BOe_A/s400/switchboard2012+%252810%2529.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5785282672631137394" /></a>Normally at this point in the blog post I'd go back and review it to make sure it makes sense and doesn't drone on too long, but I'm too tired and I might forget to come back to it if I leave it to another day. <br /><br />I've built (and photographed the construction of) other things since I last blogged, and I'll maybe hopefully eventually probably get around to blogging those also.<br /><br />- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-55269375651876912642012-06-08T22:59:00.001-04:002012-06-08T22:59:11.914-04:00My optometrist says I can't lift heavy weightsYesterday I had my biennial eye exam. I've been wearing glasses since gradeschool so this was a fairly routine procedure: first the technician sticks your face into a machine and tells you to keep your eye open for so long it would tear up even if you <i>didn't</i> know she was about to blow a puff of air into your eye (which you do know because she tells you it will). Then she shoves your face into another machine that takes a picture of the inside of your eye. Then she sits you in a chair where you cover one eye and asks you to read the same lines of characters over and over again, and you wrestle with the question of whether you can actually <i>see</i> the characters or you just <em>remember</em> them from the last eye exam two years ago and the six times in a row you just read it with various combinations of eye coverings. The doctor then takes over, asks you if you prefer #1 or #2 a lot while you look through a device that you hope nobody will photograph you at, tells you whether there has been any change in your prescription, and the rest is paperwork.<br />
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Of course, the doctor also asks you if there was anything you wanted to raise. Generally a formality, in my case, whatever type of doctor I'm visiting, I usually have a couple of things to mention. I'm sensitive. And obsessive. I notice things. And I have no clue whether this is simply something that "normal" people are expected to experience.<br />
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For example, two days prior I noticed some crazy <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002778/" target="_blank">floater</a> action in my eyes. I was in a relatively dark room with windows looking out to the bright sunset, and as I shifted my eyes, it looked as though someone was twitching a snowglobe full of wet rice noodles in front of my eyes, the mass of noodles slowly following the direction of movement. I figured this was probably normal and just due to the odd angle of the sunlight traveling through my eye fluid.<br />
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I've had other issues with my eyes also. In addition to the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2011/12/bless-this-mess.html">counterproductive productivity side-effect</a> of the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2011/02/im-on-new-drug-which-hopefully-does.html">antidepressant I've been on</a> for the last year and a half is that it makes my eyes itchy. The itchiness makes me blink a lot and rub my eyes, which leads to more problems. It hasn't been to bad lately, which suggests that maybe just being aware of my eyes is what starts the cycle, and I've been too busy and distracted to be aware of them.<br />
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Between my G.P. and my optometrist, the best guess was that the itchiness was an allergic reaction to the antidepressants. So they put me on some prescription antihistamine eyedrops (which only work if you take them twice a day regularly because they're <a href="http://www.webmd.com/allergies/antihistamines-1">preventative</a>). The allergy eye drops, however, made my eyes too dry, and I was advised to use some over-the-counter moisturizing eye drops.<br />
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To recap: the moisturizing drops are to counter the effects of the allergy eyedrops, which in turn counter the effects of the antidepressants, which in turn helps with my various <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2011/02/im-on-new-drug-which-hopefully-does.html">aforementioned ambiguous psychological issues</a>. <br />
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Given the ambiguity and interconnection of the problems, symptoms and treatments, none of which have a black-and-white diagnosis, I've taken to ascribing any issue with my eyes that comes up to: taking one of these drugs, forgetting to take one, stress, lack of sleep, sweat dripping into my eyes in the heat, rubbing my eyes after making contact with a furry animal, or some benign cause of another nature that could happen to anybody. Whatever the cause, I figure that any given symptoms I encounter would probably not happen if I were simply more diligent in with the eyedrop regimen. All to deal with mood issues.<br />
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With this in mind, I mentioned the floaters to the doctor anyway, and patiently went along for the ride as he made a more thorough inspection of my eyes, waiting for him to reassure me that it was nothing to be worried about. Such is how these things go when I bring this type of thing up at the end of a doctor visit. <br />
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"The good news," he said, "is that the reason you only noticed it two days ago is because the symptoms only started two days ago."<br />
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<em>What do you mean good news? What's the bad news?</em><br />
<br />
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He showed me on the computer the photo of the inside of my eye (projected onto a 3D wireframe model of an eyeball no less!), and pointed to a blotch in an obscure corner of it (I assume he already planned to look into this but asked me if I had issues before launching into the investigation to avoid prompting me). Even without the image from the previous appointment as a comparison, it was obvious to the casual observer that this was not a normal thing. The other eye didn't have one.<br />
<br />
I was informed that this blotch was where a section of my retina has detached from its supporting layers, causing a pocket where fluid had worked its way in behind the retina. Left unchecked, it could cause the rest of the retina to rip away from the back of my eye, causing potentially-irreversible blindness. <br />
<br />
So the symptoms were not due to emotional detachment but retinal detachment. Go figure.<br />
<br />
This type of issue, the doctor told me, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002022/" target="_blank">needs to be addressed ASAP</a>. As in, call the doctor the same day you see it, and get it checked within 48 hours and fixed within the week. <br />
<br />
It was a spectacular coincidence that the symptoms had appeared just two days before my eye exam, because I probably wouldn't have done anything about it otherwise. It's entirely possible that the problem wouldn't get any worse if I didn't do anything, but treatment is pretty straightforward at this stage, and very intrusive if it gets a lot worse.<br />
<br />
<br />
The fix involves going to a specialist to confirm the diagnosis and, assuming the specialist does so, getting lasers fired into your eye to burn off the fluid and/or reattach the retina.<br />
<br />
So after my appointment Thursday, I get a call on Friday morning to come in to see the specialist Saturday afternoon. You know something's serious when you get an appointment with a specialist for a Saturday afternoon less than two days away.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I'm to contact my doctor immediately if one of a few symptoms occur, and I'm to avoid heavy lifting. Forty pounds was about the limit.<br />
<br />
<em>Damn,</em> I thought. <em>My left pannier is 15 pounds and my right pannier is 25 pounds. Exactly 40 pounds. I'm going to have to carry them back to my bike. And that's before I add tonight's groceries!</em> <br />
<br />
Seeing me doing this mental arithmetic, the doctor helpfully clarified that it's not like there would be a night-and-day difference between 39 lbs and 40. Somehow that helped.<br />
<br />
<br />
At least, I thought, it won't be as bad as when I had to bike to the General Hospital--twice--for a series of asthma tests initiated by <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.ca/2008/08/doctor-as-ringmaster.html">this visit to the doctor</a> (all to confirm that, yes, I did in fact still have asthma like I told them), because those tests came with an extra hour or so of waiting before the test to allow me to cool down from the bike ride to the hospital, lest it skew the results.<br />
<br />
"Actually..." said the doctor when I quipped about this to him. Actually what?<br />
<br />
Because my eyes would be dilated, it wouldn't be a good idea to bike home, especially since we won't know the degree of treatment required until the specialist has a look. <br />
<br />
<br />
Thankfully, when I whined about this on <a href="http://twitter.com/RealGrouchy">Twitter</a> this morning, fellow cyclist <a href="http://theincidentalcyclist.blogspot.ca/">Kate</a> came to my rescue.<br />
<br />
We'll see how it goes...<br />
<br />
- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-533051565568581282012-03-30T00:38:00.000-04:002012-03-30T00:38:46.578-04:00War on the penny: Mission accomplishedThe government announced in the budget that they'll be phasing out the penny after 2012. <br /><br />I was going to write a blog post declaring success in my <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2010/12/war-on-penny-take-prisoners.html">campaign to eliminate the penny by hoarding it</a>, but so damn many people are <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23penny">tweeting about it</a> (and not about the actual news in the budget) that I don't want to add too much to it. Instead I'll rant.<br /><br />Back when I wrote the post in December 2010, <a href="http://www.ottawasun.com/news/canada/2010/12/29/16701711.html">55% of Canadians supported ditching the penny</a>, which means that at least 15% of Canadians wanted to ditch the penny and weren't Conservative voters. I've seen panhandlers fish the pennies out of their cups and toss them on to the sidewalk, which leaves only penny-drive charities to cry and whine (who should have taken a hint from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_Dimes">march of dimes</a> in 1938.)<br /><br />Now that the news is out, people are getting the idea that prices will no longer end in anything but a 0 or a 5, which is stupid. Individual items will still have stupid prices like $14.97, and round-number prices will still be thwarted by prime-number tax rates. Only once the bill is totaled and tax is applied will the number be rounded--and even then only if you're paying cash.<br /><br />People also have it in their heads that the cruddy 1998 penny in their pocket would be worth something to somebody, some day. Check the <a href="http://coins.shop.ebay.ca/">eBay listings for currency</a> and think about it for a minute. People are selling brand new bills and coins from as recently as this year. Well, they're trying to. Brand new $50 polymer bills, launched earlier this month, can be yours for only <a href="http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Bank-Canada-50-Polymer-Bank-Note-GUNC-/130672376128?pt=Paper_Money&hash=item1e6cae3940">$59.55 plus $9 shipping</a>! Or walk into any bank and get one for $50.<br /><br />By sheer coincidence, last night I sorted through the old pennies I've been collecting (as well as the newer ones in good condition). I reopened my coin book after many years of neglect to discover that many of the pennies were corroding, especially the parts of the coins that were exposed to the air. I'm still going to hold on to them, but I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that they'd increase in value any faster than if I'd deposited them into a savings account.<br /><br />People are also selling old bills, like the old $1 bills. Not too many takers for those, so <a href="http://www.ebay.ca/sch/Small-Cents-/3389/i.html?_catref=1">imagine how popular your penny will be</a> (there are mint condition uncirculated pennies from the 1980s currently going for the grand price of a dollar). There's a <a href="http://www.ebay.ca/itm/1954-20-DOLLARS-BANK-CANADA-SUPERB-BEATTIE-RASMINSKY-/190656593334?pt=Paper_Money&hash=item2c6404bdb6">$20 bill form the 1954 series</a> that is currently bidding at $22.50 (plus $4 shipping). That's less than a quarter of a percent, simple interest, over 58 years (0.20% compounded). Compare that to <a href="http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/">inflation</a>, where $20 in 1954 would be worth $170 today.<br /><br />If you look at how the sales are going (also take a look at the different <a href="http://www.ebay.ca/sch/Twenty-Five-Cents-/3385/i.html?_catref=1">quarters</a> the Mint has made in the last decade), you'll notice that it doesn't matter whether a denomination was discontinued. What matters is if there's something special about it. That can mean scarcity, like this <a href="http://www.ebay.ca/itm/2012-5-Sterling-Silver-and-Niobium-Coin-Full-Wolfs-Moon-sold-out-NO-TAX-/320874347641?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_2&hash=item4ab599fc79">Silver and Niobium 2012 $5 commemorative coin</a>, or age. <br /><br />An old penny is an old penny whether or not pennies are still in circulation. And now that everyone's hoarding them because they're going to be out of circulation soon, they're not going to be scarce. Hell, there's only an hour left on this <a href="http://www.ebay.ca/itm/1958-Canadian-One-Cent-coin-beauty-/150785370306?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item231b8228c2">1958 penny in very good condition</a>. The penny was circulated, but there are no takers for the $1.99 price tag (plus $1 shipping). How much is your tarnished 2006 penny worth?<br /><br />To close off the rant, I'd like to take a swing at coin collectors. In theory, coin collecting is about ascribing added value to items that were used historically. Like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones">Yap stones</a>, as they age and pass from person to person they appreciate in value due to the richness of their history. In practice, the only coins that collectors give any significant value (aside from very old and very rare ones) are ones that have never been circulated, or proof coins weren't even ever intended for circulation! Or limited-edition collectible coins made of precious metals sold for much more than their material or face value. Like the ridiculous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP-34FsDtOg">replica of Samuel de Champlain's astrolabe</a> created for the sole purpose of being stashed in the space shuttle's cargo hold on a trip to the International Space Station, an inordinate amount of value is given to trinkets whose sole purpose is to imitate and detract from items with actual historical value.<br /><br />Having a coin collection for one's own amusement is fine, but the money that people put into it--and some people aim to get out of it--is just bonkers. <br /><br />After 2012, there will be no new pennies. Just as there will be never be any new 2011 pennies, or 2010 pennies, or 2009 pennies, and so on. There will still be millions of them, in people's closets and shelves and couches. The vast majority of them will still be worth only a hundredth of a dollar, even though they cost more than that to produce. It will still be illegal to melt it down for the materials.<br /><br />And it will still be fun to collect them, but fun is all it is. Don't buy into the delusion that you'll make a mint from the copper-plated coin you got in your change; it's still just a penny.<br /><br />- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-57307462068371953852012-02-06T18:01:00.000-05:002012-02-06T18:04:15.713-05:00Here's to 1000 more years!I've been using the moniker RealGrouchy online since at least 2003, and I didn't get the gmail account until 2005, but I consider the real RealGrouchy epoch to be when I started contributing to the interweboscape. This would be when I started contributing on Wikipedia, and that first contribution was on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiMoney&diff=prev&oldid=2361714">February 6, 2004</a>, exactly eight years ago.<br /><br />Eight years is scary. <a href="http://xkcd.com/647/">XKCD comic 647</a> scary:<br /><br /><div align="center"><a href="http://xkcd.com/647/"><img width="400" height="123" border="0" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/scary.png" /></a></div>Back then, Wikipedia only had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EnwikipediaGom.PNG">a quarter million articles in English</a>, whereas now it's approaching four million.<br /><br />I first learned about Wikipedia from an article in the Ottawa Citizen the day before. The article talks about how user-generated content engenders community, and other fine stuff that made me think "wow, this is cool! I want to do this!"<br /><br />I distinctly remember reading a similar article in the Citizen's Technology section a few months later that inspired me to start blogging, though I can't find it. I remember it talking about the "local blogging community", and I remember trying to find this "local blogging community". In what looks mighty foolish in retrospect, I did this by looking for other Blogger accounts that mentioned "Ottawa" in their location in the profile, and following their blogs. There was nothing particularly interesting.<br /><br />I'd been writing Letters to the Editor in the Citizen for a few years, but over time the number of things printed in the paper that I wanted to write in and bitch about grew to a point where I knew most of them wouldn't be printed in order to leave space for others. Still wanting to share these opinions, I started my blog intending to publish my objections there instead.<br /><br />I don't think that worked so well, because the first few years of my blog posts were mostly about how little I was doing. Some were specifically empty, because I didn't realize at the time that you could back-date posts (or maybe you couldn't yet... I remember tagging didn't come along for another couple of years) and I wanted to have a few entries I could write over for more reference-style posts (which I never bothered to do, and now "pages" lets you do that, which I haven't used either).<br /><br />I know it sounds ironic, a person with the handle RealGrouchy going out in search of community, but there are rationalizations that I'll leave you to hypothesize. I'd picked the name some time prior as a handle for some online game, since RealGrouchy was one that was easily available (who would ever want to call themselves that!?). <br /><br />Through it all, I have written primarily for myself, in what I can imagine is sometimes agonizing detail for my readers (but details I nevertheless want to record for my own reference). When I have written for others, it is primarily so they can see how wonderfully awesome I am. I have also written about other year-increment milestones, such as my <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2009/06/mcdonalds-fiveniversary.html">McDonald's Fiveniversary</a> (still going strong), and my <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/search/label/holidays">annual holiday posts</a> on topics like Earth Hour and National Grouch Day.<br /><br />I've gotten a lot more busy in meatspace, doing things that I prefer to keep separate from here. But around me has grown a <a href="http://blogawa.ca/">local blogging community</a>, and some weeks I write more in the comments of others' blogs than I do in posts on my own. The persona of RealGrouchy grew, largely in the few years I spent on the <a href="http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=34&p=234#p234">XKCD forums</a>, starting as user number 48 on the forums, becoming a moderator, and gaining celebrity—and, following my retirement, legendary—status on a site that has had nearly 300,000 user registrations.<br /><br />But the more things change, the more things stay the same: I don't write so much about local issues as I'd originally planned, and instead write about stuff I've done or <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/search/label/workshop">made</a> with little reference to the outside world. I do still bitch about stuff, though I've developed a more subtle way of doing it. Not to mention more <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2012/01/grammar-nazis-triumph.html">socially productive</a> ways. I've also thought up many large projects that I never finished, and some I never even started.<br /><br />I'm proud that I did all this—with a couple rare exceptions that I try not to acknowledge—<a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2011/02/ken-gray-wants-you-to-stop-blogging.html">anonymously</a>. I wanted to link to a blog post picking apart Ken Gray's assault on anonymous bloggers, but I see that I never finished and published it. The gist of it is that he's a bigger coward <em>despite</em> using his real name than I am <em>because</em> I use a pseudonym. I've accomplished all this, made friends (many of whom I've subsequently met), been appointed to positions of power, and earned respect for my opinions, all without most of those people knowing what my name is. They know who I am, insofar as I present myself as RealGrouchy, and the identity of RealGrouchy is as strong as if I'd used my own name (and perhaps even stronger).<br /><br />I knew from the start that I wanted to be anonymous. I didn't have any particular reason to do so at the time, but I knew that if a good reason were to come along, I'd be unable to put the cat back in the bag. However, it has worked well. It is great at making you think twice before putting something in writing, because you have to think about whether a particular detail will give you away, or if you'll be unable to say something with your real name after you say it with the pseudonym. The challenge of walking this line can be fun.<br /><br />At the same time that writing under a pseudonym helps with restraint, it is also liberating, because I can say things that would be out of character for me, but are entirely in character for RealGrouchy. There are plenty of people who know RealGrouchy and have met the man behind him (and I thank them for keeping them separate). But for others, when you write as "RealGrouchy," they expect you to sound angry, and don't react as harshly when you are. After enough correspondence that people get to know RealGrouchy, it's nice to hear people say "you're not all that grouchy after all," because generally, mentally healthy people aren't all that grouchy.<br /><br />So there you have it. Eight years of RealGrouchy. Here's to the next binary millenium!<br /><br />- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-51587177468976613232012-01-31T18:46:00.011-05:002012-01-31T18:46:00.125-05:00In defence of Larry O'BrienHere I thought I'd retired the <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/search/label/O%27Brien">O'Brien tag</a> on this blog, but of course this can't be.<br /><br />When it was first confirmed that it was the real Larry O'Brien who had used a racial slur in a tweet about the U.S. primaries, my reaction was more fascination than upset.<br /><br />Back when people paid attention to him, he was known for saying really stupid things, and it was always fun to watch him fumble his way out of it. Fun, that's all there is. To suggest he is racist because he used one racial slur is like accusing someone of infanticide for making a dead baby joke.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOxXv96SaThndXvxpgu1cRO9dI99Z3wRIOSlB8dzJ1eUg1FNPCQPGVQIyVBdLsGLNQxy2XAgSOt8Nz-tvd0qaK_OZck7TBd2kAaFGWd_x6DQni_CHVafFCCguNzc2jyAuwZduAg/s1600-h/IMGP7490.JPG" title="file photo"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOxXv96SaThndXvxpgu1cRO9dI99Z3wRIOSlB8dzJ1eUg1FNPCQPGVQIyVBdLsGLNQxy2XAgSOt8Nz-tvd0qaK_OZck7TBd2kAaFGWd_x6DQni_CHVafFCCguNzc2jyAuwZduAg/s400/IMGP7490.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310579857431537698" border="0" /></a>As hilarious as it is to watch him weasel out of it ("I already talked to my Hispanic friends and apologized to them"). I can easily give him the benefit of the doubt. I was at a talk on a matter of fiscal policy and a twenty-something used the phrase "final solution" to describe the goal of addressing the issue. After the meeting, someone sent an e-mail around expressing concern that this person used this term without realizing that it was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/Final_Solution">Hitler's name for the Holocaust</a>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" title="click for the blog post that this comic came from" href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2010/01/honey-get-my-picket-sign.html"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 368px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgshJR_suswosrg3y1-3IcokG3B6CCQYMyt8Ur9dr4A3nCwcJCaOLJJEe2DaB7yIyMzNk3AISa5wecUfeUvUj1uotBaIpmDLpO7U8qMI8NCwz_iQw1E-qzDs486k_XMWmCFdpS4UQ/s400/2010-01-29-city-hall-censorshipbd400.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432387709736816898" border="0" /></a>Racial slurs are a bit different than a phrase like "Final Solution" which has a benign denotation, but the comparators are stronger in this analogy than the differences. In order to reasonably jump from "O'Brien is a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well" to "O'Brien is a racist" one would have to conclude that <em>what he said</em> was racist, not necessarily <em>how</em> he said it. Don't get me wrong, "spic" is a racist term, but if using the term makes you racist in any context, then I'm a racist for telling you that Larry used it. So context does matter, but many of the people criticizing him know little more of the situation than the fact that it included a nasty word. <span style="font-style: italic;">[Edit: to eat my own words, I wasn't aware of his comment about muslims until after writing up this blog post, which certainly puts more weight to epithets referencing O'Brien]</span> If you take that out of the equation, we already know he's a misguided twit who doesn't pick his words well, so what's the harm of another turd in his outhouse?<br /><br /><br />And that's why my take on this whole situation is somewhat blasé. He's not the Mayor anymore, and people only pay attention to him when he does something stupid, so really he's pretty harmless. And <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2009/08/larry-obrien-great-mayor-or-greatest.html">as I wrote about after his acquittal on charges of electoral shenanigans</a>, I'd far prefer him to be remembered for having been horribly incompetent as mayor of the capital of Canada than for some stupid thing he said after the world stopped caring about him.<br /><br />He even reinforced this (albeit inadvertently) in his <a href="http://www.ottawasun.com/videos/1424027680001">video confession to the Ottawa Sun</a> when he remarked at how smoothly City Hall was running now. Remember that he had never sat through a City Council meeting before running for Mayor—a key plank in his platform, not just an embarrassing truth—so he never learned that things were running alright <em>before</em> him also.<br /><br /><br />As I tweeted the other day, the real surprise to me is not that some people now think less of Larry O'Brien for using a racial slur, but that some people's opinion of him still had room to go down.<br /><br />- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-13943127214150675502012-01-28T22:14:00.002-05:002012-01-29T20:46:22.444-05:00Grammar Nazi's TriumphKettleman's Bagels has had a couple of unfortunate connections to stories in the media. There was the time that I caught them with <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2008/02/taxi-hands-bagel-no-thanks.html">taxi hands</a>, and more recently, some of their product was <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2012/01/21/bagel-recall.html">recalled</a> due to insufficient labeling. Of course, I still <em>go</em> there, because the bagels taste good.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk09F9YeP0I0WxvbJ0wWhD2yRx4NhPJfoUwqTZuspTwjLjGSh65KAkxHgrLOfyZXBFxHigBe8FPsiAWSaDTo_s7fyLxLZedMqwdJNsbelq1KWdlzwpwWzVuyfHn6TevRcCBEiLOg/s1600/Kettlemans_sign_outdoor.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk09F9YeP0I0WxvbJ0wWhD2yRx4NhPJfoUwqTZuspTwjLjGSh65KAkxHgrLOfyZXBFxHigBe8FPsiAWSaDTo_s7fyLxLZedMqwdJNsbelq1KWdlzwpwWzVuyfHn6TevRcCBEiLOg/s400/Kettlemans_sign_outdoor.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702882111263917922" /></a>But the thing that gets me most about Kettleman's is the motley signage. Lots of notes are scribbled in permanent marker on white paper, taped to various surfaces. And they all have apostrophes galore where they don't belong. <br /><br />They renovated their store this past fall, and redesigned their garbage bin to have a hole for recycling. A nice new container, with modern stylings. <br /><br />Then they slapped this onto it:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCRjkrM2ovJRW9SExUk2Ve1VZpYz7ockColYcxzVZIcqeoQoCy0Gmk3CluDOpQorDGrii6uC7zasIGNfduVxLctkF4OwlQFYMEBgJmohw1z7jELnEgJs3PgQZKKfxXdgYiNsjWqg/s1600/please_recycle+%25281%2529.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCRjkrM2ovJRW9SExUk2Ve1VZpYz7ockColYcxzVZIcqeoQoCy0Gmk3CluDOpQorDGrii6uC7zasIGNfduVxLctkF4OwlQFYMEBgJmohw1z7jELnEgJs3PgQZKKfxXdgYiNsjWqg/s400/please_recycle+%25281%2529.JPG" border="0" alt="paper sign with text reading Recycle Only glass + can's please." id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702870073233172642" /></a>"Recycle only / glass + can's please."<br /><br />Now, I'm easily perturbed by such miscarriages of punctuation as this. I also like a good challenge. The easy thing to do (aside from ignoring it) would be to scratch out the apostrophe, but that would just draw more attention to it and make it look uglier. It'd be sufficiently passive-aggresive, but clumsy. Also, not much of a challenge.<br /><br />I could also point out the typo to a staffperson, but nobody likes to feel patronized by being called out that way. (The store has a few signs where apostrophes were clearly added after the fact, so getting them to make a new handwritten sign would likely have little long-term effect). Generally with this type of thing you want to give the offender an 'out' so they learn what their error was while still saving face, pretending that they knew all along how it was supposed to be.<br /><br />I figured if I was going to fix this, I was going to fix it completely. No leaving the Kettleman's sign-scribblers to solving it halfway. I am a perfectionist, when I have the patience to see something through.<br /><br />My solution? I made this sign, with Kettleman's trademark red and yellow colours (mimicking the arched text of the word "BAGEL" on their outdoor sign). As an added flourish, I used the whitespace for a not-so-subtle plea for an end to apostrophe abuse:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-b6ye0zfZ-9dbUq6ItcX68Fi8D2hBEz4AcjuYrmtjnWtf_BPxeICekwfF3dJbOgXozBmDmP-rKM_vkboTSkukbFMlub5iwAW2doreQIyVZme89a-tmooP0-VeRj8ocS3yluHPw/s1600/please_recycle+%25282%2529.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ-b6ye0zfZ-9dbUq6ItcX68Fi8D2hBEz4AcjuYrmtjnWtf_BPxeICekwfF3dJbOgXozBmDmP-rKM_vkboTSkukbFMlub5iwAW2doreQIyVZme89a-tmooP0-VeRj8ocS3yluHPw/s400/please_recycle+%25282%2529.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702870065700139906" /></a>This isn't just a piece of paper, it's a big sticker. You see, when I took the picture of the sign in the first picture, what I was really after was the hole, using the pop can for scale. From there I could tell how big a curve I needed for a sign to fit neatly in.<br /><br />I've got a little device designed for cutting circles in paper (functionally equivalent to a compass with an X-Acto knife at the end), with which I scored the arced bottom edge of the sticker, and I used a straight edge and knife to score the sides.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhfBlT9Kv_WShXHb8ZTKM3oTAy_CEDTf81suTAtHYq6x6zwhLXkDPE6F8XtLdj2OsRSJhvYtSW0Dx8TMe8QM7RREEHtw1PR6ws-pNn0cgGiDxZ02kN1WFifjijezq7s2ptmHGWw/s1600/please_recycle+%25283%2529.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglhfBlT9Kv_WShXHb8ZTKM3oTAy_CEDTf81suTAtHYq6x6zwhLXkDPE6F8XtLdj2OsRSJhvYtSW0Dx8TMe8QM7RREEHtw1PR6ws-pNn0cgGiDxZ02kN1WFifjijezq7s2ptmHGWw/s400/please_recycle+%25283%2529.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702870057830027298" /></a>As for delivery, again, subtlety and minimalism is the rule of the day. <br /><br />Sure I could go there, tear off the taped sign and stick this thing on, but there are enough staff in the store that I'd probably get some questions. And the whole point of this exercise is to <em>avoid</em> directly confronting them about their bad grammar and terrible sense of signage style.<br /><br />So I did what any psychology-conscious trickster would do: I brought in a newspaper, read it during my visit, and left it there. Underneath the newspaper on the counter was the sign. Odds are, I gambled, that a staff person would be the one to put the newspaper away, and would see the sign.<br /><br />I told a few people about this plan, with various responses. One person was particularly incredulous that the plan would succeed, and suggested I should have just put the sticker on myself. But the next time I visited, lo and behold:<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-YY8hfHvxkWV72k7fJJiw_POTB_UZutnWZrHkL_ZF5fmn3YEGB9wqUjWy8f0J1duzwXvFD6W0mLcYRi_ppilIgSlTRznCzmdkKlcWJgPb-WUSp6PsT8oHXXhCT87rGkdAwoapdg/s1600/please_recycle.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-YY8hfHvxkWV72k7fJJiw_POTB_UZutnWZrHkL_ZF5fmn3YEGB9wqUjWy8f0J1duzwXvFD6W0mLcYRi_ppilIgSlTRznCzmdkKlcWJgPb-WUSp6PsT8oHXXhCT87rGkdAwoapdg/s400/please_recycle.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5702870058892554850" /></a>Now that's satisfying. The best part, aside from the perfect size and design, is that the plan involves the intervention of the target. That's the key to any successful practical joke. The requirement for conscious thought on the part of the mark changes things from a mere object to a <em>message</em>. <br /><br />And try to imagine what would be going through someone's mind: somebody, somewhere, went to the trouble of making this very specific sign for this very specific purpose, and just left it here. Who would have done that? What was their motivation? On its own, it's such an innocent sign that you can't deduce any reasoning from it.<br /><br />Unless they thought that some other manager had left it there, I'd like to believe that after a certain amount of head-scratching they gave up, shrugged, and thought to themselves, <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2010/10/error-friday-not-found.html">God thinks it's Friday</a>.<br /><br />The only kink in the plan--a very minor one--was that the offending sign had already been replaced with another paper-and-marker sign, <em>sans</em> erroneous mark of possession. Obviously someone had gotten the message through to them, making my little "stop abusing apostrophes" message redundant. In the interests of minimalism, I pulled that part of the sticker off, leaving just the "Recycling" sign. This left it with even less context, adding to the psychological aspect.<br /><br />This isn't the first time I pulled this kind of thing. One of these days I'll tell you about the prank I pulled at Bridgehead.<br /><br />Oh, and I should give a shout-out to Rob Cockerham of <a href="http://cockeyed.com">Cockeyed.com</a>, who does a lot of this kind of stuff (like the <a href="http://cockeyed.com/pranks/pie/pie.html">McDonald's drive-thru menu prank</a> and the <a href="http://cockeyed.com/pranks/menu/menu02.html">TGI Friday's Menu Prank</a>). <br /><br />Also, a shout-out to Elmaks (<a href="http://www.knitnut.net/2011/10/goodbye-elmaks/">RIP</a>), whose <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/swapbox">swap boxes</a> <a href="http://www.knitnut.net/2011/10/saying-goodbye-2/#comment-71320">helped me realize</a> that anything we can touch, we have the power to change. <br /><br />- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-10816898593040901682012-01-27T21:20:00.002-05:002012-01-27T21:26:21.615-05:00Whoring myself out some moreDespite being on <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2011/11/im-on-toilet-you-twit.html">Twitter</a> now (as <a href="http://twitter.com/RealGrouchy">@RealGrouchy</a>, of course), I still have very few followers, and don't really have much going on there. <br /><br />I guess that's really a success, since I don't particularly care for being social.<br /><br />Nevertheless, I am self-conscious--and to an extent, competitive--and having so few followers doesn't jive with my <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_%28South_Park%29#Plot">business plan</a>:<br /><blockquote>1. Get lots of Twitter followers<br />2. ???<br />3. Profit</blockquote>With so few followers on Twitter, I feel I need to do something to compensate. <br /><br />So I've put a Twitter feed in the sidebar of the blog. <br /><br />Watch me be a twit.<br /><br />- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7224954.post-2007781334171405112012-01-27T19:15:00.005-05:002012-01-27T19:29:24.955-05:00Other things washed away by the weatherI distinctly remember posting--or at least drafting--the annual <em>réprise</em> of my <a href="http://realgrouchy.blogspot.com/2011/02/ncc-faces-its-waterlude.html">Waterlude</a> logo a couple of weeks ago. I remember <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?q=waterlude">searching Google for "Waterlude"</a> and finding that post being the second result (strangely, now third), after a <a href="http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/local/article/774285--is-festival-facing-its-waterlude">MetroOttawa article using the same Napoleon reference on the same day as my blog post</a>. <br /><br />Still, my picture-perfect "Waterlude" sendup of the "Winterlude" logo is from a year prior. (And is still the first <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?q=waterlude&tbm=isch">Google Images search result for "Waterlude"</a>)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNKD1HPrvby_cmVDHZwuLd8kC5Hk0qigTERoECNfZoMnmWZMzuzZMDS0wnHMgNCS5BIYejVaSC47zkCOao6XyE6JOCAe-Qt-jo3FHsk5a6zY5J1qGzc_Y7qDUmQztGDCcU6cd9g/s1600-h/english-waterlude-logo-drop.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 398px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdNKD1HPrvby_cmVDHZwuLd8kC5Hk0qigTERoECNfZoMnmWZMzuzZMDS0wnHMgNCS5BIYejVaSC47zkCOao6XyE6JOCAe-Qt-jo3FHsk5a6zY5J1qGzc_Y7qDUmQztGDCcU6cd9g/s400/english-waterlude-logo-drop.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427079532587050002" /></a>I also remember that when I drafted the post, either the canal hadn't opened yet, or it had just opened, and because of this, I was having second thoughts about the timing of such a post. But I don't remember <em>deleting</em> it...<br /><br />My best guess is that I did post it, but that the rain and mild weather melted it away. What tragic irony.<br /><br />- RG>RealGrouchyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09531673943200546692noreply@blogger.com0