Edmonton Eskimos Plummet Into Playoffs

I hate to say I told you so - and it pains me to say this, but I predicted at the beginning of the season that the Edmonton Eskimos would probably not make the playoffs this year. While they have a good team on paper I said the same thing about them that I say about most of my family members...there's just something not right over there...

They had moments of excellence this season but tanked in the last few weeks. Last weekend they were beaten by the Roughriders 55 to 9 in a bizarre game that set some kind of humiliation record. The Eskimos have not been beaten that badly since before the Mulroney era.

However, through the bizarre playoff format of the CFL the Eskimos will make the playoffs and all they had to do was plummet into last place in the Western division.

Through the cross-over rule the Edmonton Eskimos can claim third place in the Eastern Division because there are two teams over there that are actually worse than them. So Edmonton will play Winnipeg in the Eastern semi-final this weekend in Winnipeg.

If you're a hard-core Esks fan, here's your fantasy scenario. The Eskimos beat Winnipeg on the weekend, then beat Montreal in the Eastern final. (Stop laughing I'm not done yet). Then they will play the Grey Cup game against the Calgary Stampeders and will win by 1 point. The collective all at once eye rolling of several million Canadians will cause the Earth to shift on its axis and put an end to Global Warming.

Only in the CFL could the Edmonton Eskimos become the Eastern Division champions.

Later it will be revealed that the magic feel good story of the year was caused by an impassioned speech by the Edmonton Coach about a little boy who was dying of cancer and who's last wish was to see the Eskimos win the cup.

Later it will be revealed that the story was completely fabricated and the Eskimos will be stripped of their Grey Cup win. Through an unforeseen loophole in the CFL constitution the Cup will be awarded to Hamilton. Commonwealth Stadium will be accidentally demolished by a contractor with the wrong address and the league will declare bankruptcy. Pinball Clemons will become Prime Minister.

The remaining six teams will be saved at the last minute by being folded into the B Division of the Luxembourg Intermediate Potato Grower's League.

You see, if you believe that the Eskimos will get anywhere near the Grey Cup in 2008 you probably can be convinced of anything. Please recommend this post

Arthur Kent: You Picked the Wrong Party

Arthur Kent is an angry man. The former news anchor and Calgary based journalist wants to sue Don Martin for defamation because of Martin's articles during Alberta's last provincial election. Martin's articles appear in the Calgary Herald and the National Post, and usually amount to little more than empty headed cheer leading for conservative politicians.

Kent ran in the Calgary Currie riding against Liberal Dave Taylor, a former radio talk show host and the incumbent. I remember thinking that the race between those two would be quite close and interesting. They're both smart guys with a lot of media experience. However, Kent ran a really poor campaign and lost the election.

I remember the article Martin wrote. He referred to Kent as a dud, playing on his nickname as the Scud Stud. So now Kent blames Martin for hurting his chances in the election by picking on him in a vapid smear piece.

I still think Kent is a smart guy and he nailed it at his press conference announcing his law suit, as paraphrased by Fast Forward:

At the news conference where he announced his latest lawsuit, Kent also had harsh words for his former boss, Premier Ed Stelmach. The Conservative leadership, Kent says, is “militantly adverse” to change and is surrounded by a “patronage web” of lobbyists and corporate sponsors that make it difficult for new voices in the party to be heard.

That's probably the best summation of Ed & Company you will ever see. Memorize it.

I think its fairly obvious what happened. I mean aside from a principled person running for an unprincipled party. He was a high profile candidate but not part of the Tory inner circle. So they hung him out to dry. Insecurity and fear of outsiders I presume.

Ed to Don: Well done. Thanks a bunch. Please recommend this post

Who's Your Mommy

"Mommy has a juice box for you in the car. Just try to be quiet until mommy finishes talking to the real americans."

Please recommend this post

Wives of Alberta: Heads Up

With the Edmonton Eskimos, Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers all playing tonight the beautiful women of Alberta will probably be on their own.

Not only that, apparently there's a big Promise Keepers rally on that weird channel. This could turn out to be a most joyless and possible primitive evening.

My advice would be to get a nice bottle of wine, dress up all Sarah Palin and head out with some friends. Ok maybe leave out the Sarah Palin thing. I don't even know why I would say such a thing.

Have a good night, and remember, this is one of those nights when you can do absolutely anything you want and it won't even remotely be noticed. Please recommend this post

Prominent Blogger Attacked By Liberals

Prominent conservative and iconic blogger Robert McBean was attacked early saturday morning by a group of violent liberals. Mr. McBean was waiting for the 402 bus on the corner of Northmount and Northland when he was set on by the gang.

According to the Royal Varsity Constabulary Mr. McBean was held down and a copy of a novel was attached to his face using a large and powerful c-clamp.

By 10:00 am a literary expert was on the scene and assisted the police in identifying the novel as Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut.

A spokesman for the Royal Constabulary indicated that they so far have no leads in this hateful crime. The spokesman urged Mr. Vonnegut to come forward as he likely has information related to the crime. The spokesman also warned the public about the violent nature of urban liberal gangs. Said the spokesman:

They sip their lattes and have little secretive reading clubs and before you know it stuff like this starts happening.

By noon Mr. McBean was being examined by one of the finest Neurosurgeons at the famed Varsity Spa and Neurological Institute. Dr. Nigel Kittybitty von Von said the removal of the c-clamp could be days away because it is compressing on one of the most delicate parts of the brain known as the Obladioblada.

Mr. McBean remains sedated but in good spirits.

A spokesman for Mr. McBean indicated that he would be unlikely to reprise his role as Troy Bolton in Thursdays benefit performance of High School Musical. Please recommend this post

Friday Night With Iris

Iris Dement sings one of her best songs Let the Mystery Be:


Please recommend this post

Weekend Sports Predictin(g)

With Calgary and Edmonton's sports teams in action this weekend I thought I would offer some predictions so you can bet appropriately.

Friday: Calgary Stampeders at Hamilton Tiger Cats

Tough call. Hamilton has only won 3 games this year. If Calgary wins they will secure first place in the West. On the one hand I'd like to see Calgary finish first so they can have their lunch eaten in the Western Final in Calgary. I like that sort of thing. On the other hand I think Hamilton can beat Calgary. That would be cool to. I think Hamilton will win.

Saturday: Edmonton Oilers at Vancouver Canucks

Oilers will win barely. It will be a dirty violent game.


Saturday: Edmonton Eskimos at Saskatchewan Roughrider

I don't really see the Eskimos winning. They will get the crossover spot in the East and make a quiet exit. Will seek new coach in off season.


Saturday: Calgary Flames at Phoenix Coyotes

Phoenix will win. Don't bet against Gretzky. Calgary media bragging about flames indicates an imminent loss.

Sunday: Sloth vs Gluttony.

Have to give this one to gluttony, but it will be close. Sloth won't go down easy. The win will set up a nice re-match between Gluttony and Lust. Please recommend this post

Alberta Children and Youth Services a Mess

The Calgary Herald is calling for the resignation of Janis Tarchuk, Alberta's Minister of Children and Youth Services. Yes, you read that correctly, the Calgary Herald calling for the resignation of an Alberta Tory cabinet minister. I would have to say this is probably the first time this has ever happened. Usually they defend them.

Alberta Children and Youth services has been in a mess for many years. Rachel Notley obtained the departments quarterly reports (for internal use only) through an Access to information request. The fact that she actually got the reports was really astonishing. Someone wasn't paying attention. Usually the way it works in Alberta is the Government asks for a 50 million dollar photocopying fee or some other deterrent. Neither the Liberals or the NDP have a lot of research money to pay for these searches.

The Annual reports for the last 3 years were all tabled on the morning of the recent federal election, October 14, 2008. Apparently there are some major differences between the interal quarterly reports and the sunshiny cheerful external annual reports.

The interim reports paint a picture of a department that is not meeting the needs of children and youth who are in danger from their parents or other unacceptable circumstances.

According to today's Calgary Herald editorial:

Two separate issues are at the fore. One is the shortage of care facilities for children, as revealed by the quarterly internal reports which the NDP obtained. Non-aggressive children were housed with others labelled as sexually acting-out or aggressive. Sexually abused children were returned to parents who questioned whether the abuse was real. Children were placed with caregivers on whom inadequate background checks were done. Children were forced to remain among others who allegedly sexually abused them. Some children were left in situations where all the adults involved knew and agreed that their needs weren't being met.

The Minister replied to the allegations with the usual stuff about how the issues were not presented properly or something like that. The Premier insists the Minister is not going anywhere and that she is a paragon of child loving virtue.

One thing I'm confused about is that if the reports were filed 3 years late, then why does the Minister say that many of the accusations are not substantiated. Do I understand that to mean that it takes three years to figure out if a child is being sexually assaulted or not?

There will be no resignation. Ms. Tarchuk stares into the camera with her dull Sarah Palin expression knowing she is protected from any kind of accountability. Now that I think about it, I really can't ever remember a Alberta Tory cabinet minister being fired for anything. Please recommend this post

Not Really Funny, More Sad

Yesterday in the Calgary Sun:

Calgarians can take some comfort in the fact a known gangster ordered deported from Canada -- four years ago! -- isn't wandering free on the streets.

But that's only because Tran Trong Nghi Nguyen, also known as Jackie Tran and Nghia Trong Nguyen-Tran, hasn't been able to post two $10,000 bonds.

Maybe that's because he can't get hold of a cellphone in the Calgary Remand Centre, where he's been held since Jan. 10.

More likely, it is because money put up for bond must be accompanied by proof it was obtained by legitimate means.

Today according CBC Calgary:

A convicted drug trafficker and known gang member ordered deported four years ago is free in Calgary on $20,000 bond as his appeal process drags on.

Tran Trong Nghi Nguyen, 26, who goes by the name Jackie Tran, has been appealing an order to deport him from Canada since 2004. He was freed from custody on Tuesday.

...

The money must be proven to have come from legitimate means, and paid by a bonds person who meets guidelines set out by the Canada Border Services Agency.

In a way it is kind of funny, but not really given the potential for violence from this individual. A little tip to the Calgary Sun that every hockey coach already knows...if you taunt the other team they'll probably come back at you harder just to make you eat your words...The best thing journalists can do for me is to just tell me the facts of a case. Spare me the self-serving true detective rhetoric. It gives me a headache and probably makes things worse.

Yes, four years is probably an unreasonable amount of time to execute a deportation order. I'm in favor of deportation of bad people if they've been given appropriate opportunity to defend themselves and an appropriate opportunity for appeal.

The broader ironies are worth noting. The law and order Premier of Alberta refused the Mayor of Calgary's request for $25M to strengthen the Calgary Police Gang Unit. The requested amount was less than 1/1000th of the last budget overage.

Read the Sun, vote Tory, live in constant fear. Please recommend this post

Robert Saviano: The New Salman Rushdie

From the Telegraph...

Italy's notorious Camorra mafia plans to assassinate an investigative journalist who wrote a best-selling book about the criminal organisation's murderous activities, police have been told.

The Naples-based mafia has allegedly ordered a hit on Roberto Saviano and his 24-hour police protection squad "by Christmas", according to the testimony of a former mafia member turned police collaborator.

I get so tired of reading about yet another writer or artist who has a death threat over his or her head because some violence based group can't handle what they wrote.

Robert Saviano, an Italian author wrote a book called Gomorrah in 2006 that became a best seller in Italy, and was translated into many languages. It has now been made into a film which may well win an Oscar.

One wonders why they want him dead before Christmas. Probably the boys want some time off so they can bond with their families and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

PEN is an organization that advocates on behalf of authors all over the world who are persecuted or threatened because of their peaceful freedom of expression. Thankfully, PEN is taking an interest in the Saviano case. The more eyes that are on this the better. The Canadian division of Pen is here.

Aside: I noticed many of the sillier news outlets places this story in their novelty or odd news section. You would think that editors would know better than to regard the life of a fellow journalist in such low esteem. Please recommend this post

Calgary West 2008 Vote Count

As you can see from the above graphic the contest in Calgary West was not even close. The results are very similar to the 2006 results. Although the non-Conservative vote was split between four parties this time their totals did not exceed the Conservative vote. In the last two elections the Conservative vote exceeded the sum of all other parties by a wide margin.

The real story in these numbers is that about 4500 less people voted in 2008 than in 2006. It surprised me that the bulk of this drop off was in the incumbent (Conservative) vote. The second biggest loss of vote was for the NDP, losing 1500 votes from 2006. This was also a surprise since the NDP appear to be emerging as the second place party in Alberta.

There's no way around thinking that many conservative voters just stayed home. Also the Liberal pre-election claim that Greens and NDP voters were moving over to the Liberals does not seem to be seen in these numbers. In fact the Liberals bled 1100 votes and dropped their share.

There's really no good news here if you are an anyone but Anders voter. The four non-Conservative parties in Calgary West show no signs of coalescing into a viable challenger. Please recommend this post

Post Election Babble FromThree Premiers

Three Canadian premiers have made comments on the results of the October 14 federal election.

1. Ed Stelmach® wants two things from Harper. First, harmonize the Alberta and Ottawa policies on Greenhouse gas emissions. Basically this means reducing what little interest the federal government has to the lowest common denominator of Alberta. Stelmach is alarmed that Harper is not doing as little as he is. Second, Stelmach does not want the Federal Government to interfere in the shipment of raw bitumen out of Alberta. The Federal Government has expressed the idea of not allowing the export of raw bitumen to places where there is a poor policy on curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Presumably Alberta would be prohibited from exporting bitumen to itself. Aside from the numerous environmental issues, shipping raw bitumen out of Alberta ships Albertans jobs with it. Both Ed Stelmach® and Stephen Harper avoid this issue.

2. Gordon Campell weighs in with to tell us that Stephen Harper's missing majority is the fault of Separatists in Quebec. And that's important because...? On the surface it seems like kind of a silly thing to say, but it is just a variation on the old Reform Party theme of how those Ontario folks are stupid and ruining our lives by voting for the Liberal Party. I don't care how other people vote. The Bloc Quebecois is a recognized federal party. I could care less if some fellow Canadian is a separatist. Stop blaming people for their freedom of conscience. Stop blaming people for how they vote. (Insert your own impaired driving joke here.)

3. Danny Williams wants to kiss and make up with Stephen Harper. The Conservatives lost all three seats in NL and more importantly their popular vote dropped by 20 points from the 2006 election. If I were a NL voter I definitely would not have let my premier tell me who not to vote for. I might be a little confused now that the hate on is officially over. What exactly was that all about? I look forward to a picture of those two hugging on the cover of the National Post. Seeing conservative politicians doing man on man affection is always an uplifting event for me. Please recommend this post

Alberta's Founding Fathers & Other Craziness

I'm currently reading a great book, Alberta Premier's of the Twentieth Century (published by the University of Regina press), edited by Bradford Rennie. For a history lover like myself this is one of those books that's hard to put down. (Reviewer's pun). The book proceeds in chronological order from the early Liberal Premiers Rutherford, Sifton and Stewart, through to the final essay on Ralph Klein. The essay on Klein was kind of mediocre because Klein was still in office at the time of writing. I suppose they were afraid if they said anything bad Rod Love would come over and kill their puppy or something.

The authors have a diverse background, but most of them are academics. Mark Lisac who once wrote for the Edmonton Journal wrote the chapter on Donald Ross Getty.

It's hard for me to say which chapter I liked the most. There isn't a single premier who isn't interesting to read about. This is one of the few books that I keep reading over and over again.

If I have to pick, my favourite chapters are on William Aberhart, Harry Strom, and Peter Lougheed. I also enjoyed the chapter on Getty.

Aberthart's theological views were atypical and seem odd now. He was basically a fundamentalist who believed in dispensationalism, the secret existence of the Antichrist in the current age, and the imminent rapturing up of God's elect. (i.e. Social Credit supporters) Aberhart also believed that the only acceptable version of the Bible was the King James Version. These types of beliefs were not uncommon in the 1930's and they are not even uncommon today. Aberhard and Manning were unable to distinguish between religious views and public policy. Both Aberhard and Manning gave weekly sermons from the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute.

This chapter also has a lengthy discussion about the Social Credit movement. It seem that for a long period of time no one really knew what Social Credit meant. Aberhart was not that bright and was repeatedly taken advantage of by charlatans.

The chapter on Harry Strom was interesting and he comes across as a decent and honest man who didn't like party politics very much and didn't realize until too late that Social Credit was over. The transition from Strom to Lougheed reads like it was the birth of modern Alberta. More recent comparisons of Ed Stelmach® to Harry Strom are more of an insult to Strom than to Stelmach.

If you find Alberta politics confusing, as I always have, you should read this book.

SBN 0889771510 Please recommend this post

Starbucks on the Decline

There I am - well at least my right arm - displaying the receipt I received from my last trip to Starbucks. The receipt, documenting the purchase of ONE Caffè Latte Grande, was measured and found to be 52 centimeters in length.

Starbucks spends a lot of time talking about how they are environmentally responsible but I really wonder when I get a 52 cm receipt. I keep finding new and better definitions or irony without even trying. I laughed when I realized that the lengthy receipt had an overly verbose invitation to fill out a web based customer satisfaction survey. If a tree falls in the forest...hey, how do you feel about us?

A week later I went to the Starbucks by my house (Northland and Northmount) and had a negative experience. I've had a few negative experiences there but I always thought the staff was good at trying hard to make things right when there was a problem. Not this time. The story was kind of messy and I stood there waiting for someone to take my order for a good 5-10 minutes. No one acknowledged me being there. One cashier was counting money and the store manager was sitting behind me coaching a new employee on the corporate virtues of creating a positive experience for the customer. There goes that irony alarm again. It was kind of like I was in a bad episode of the Office.

This was kind of irritating, but not the end of the world. Worse things happen in life I suppose. But i did decide to go to their website and fill out the survey. The survey was encoded with the number off the reciept so they would know the time and date and location to match to my responses.

I gave them a fairly low review on all the questions because they were specifically asking about this particular visit. I checked all the boxed about contacting me and gave them my email and phone numbers. That was 6 months ago. No response from them and I haven't been back to any Starbucks since.

I figure if I take time to give a business my feedback and encourage them to follow up with me on a negative experience, the very least they could do is thank me for the feedback. In most cases customers don't ever tell you whats wrong, they just never return and bad mouth you to their peers.

If this store's management is any indication, this could explain why Starbuck's stock prices have been trending downward for over a year now.

In the first few pages of the Starbuck's employee guide they emphasize their main goal of creating a positive experience for the customer. But they can't create a positive experience unless the employees buy into it and its a positive experience for them as well. This doesn't happen when a business is understaffed or the managers are obtuse.

Sometimes when you have an overly complicated business model and some ethereal ideas that are not clicking with the employees it might be better to go back to basic and simple ideas about customer service. Please recommend this post

Help Wanted: Layout editor

see more pwn and owned pictures

Who does the layouts over there at the Sun? I've always wondered that. This type of cover is fairly typical of their tabloidish low intellect style I think.

I was a little shocked when I saw this fubar by the Toronto Star a while back. Editors don't always have control over how ad rotators work and what ads end up next to what story. But they should...





Sun front page image is courtesy of one of my favorite blogs Failblog.org. Please recommend this post

Keeping the South in Calgary West

I've driven by this house in Calgary West many times and always wondered why they fly this flag. I'm not sure if it is a Confederacy flag, or just a state flag of Alabama or one of the Carolina's. I'm not up on my flags.

This is the third such flag I've seen around my area. Another is frequently seen on the aerial of a car that I see often and another in the large window of a basement suite over by North Hill Mall.

I find it puzzling and I can make no assertions about why these people fly these flags. My mind wanders and stresses under the weight of the possibilities.

One has to bite one's tongue with the Lee Richardson jokes swirling around in my tiny brain. Please recommend this post

Mr Pinsent, with all due respect...

From the Canadian Press:

MONTREAL – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's promise to reverse plans to scrap tax credits for productions deemed offensive to Canadian viewers came as a pleasant surprise Tuesday to those in the film and television business and a major blow to the religious right.

"The arts community I think can almost relax and unpack their bags," actor Gordon Pinsent said in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press.

Pinsent said he never would have expected such a change of heart from the Conservatives and wonders whether it means Harper may be open to other new ideas.

And magic fairies will fly out of my butt. And Charles McVety will be put in a straight jacket and fed-exed on a slow boat to outer Mongolia.

Right....

Grow up Mr. Pinsent. Don't you know that Stephen Harper is a compulsive liar. In spite of all the respect you've earned as one of Canada's greatest actors you sound like a child who is overjoyed when his father tells him he won't beat him anymore.

Unpack your bags my ass. Please recommend this post

Calgary West: Stare into the Abyss

According to the National Post/Canwest:

CALGARY - Controversial Conservative incumbent Rob Anders' political views are again coming under fire, as a local lawyer and humanitarian says Mr. Anders told her he believes Canadian diplomacy and humanitarian work should focus on changing outsiders' language to English and faith to Christianity.

Where have I heard that line before...Oh yeah, it was Ann Coulter expressing a noble thought about killing Muslim leaders and forcing their citizens to convert to Christianity.'

The comments that Anders made were corroborated by two people who were present and one assumes that the National Post verified the basic facts, even though it is quite odd for them to eat one of their own children like this. Anything for a buck.

Sadly, when I read stuff like this I'm just not shocked anymore. This is no longer about Rob Anders it is about the voters of Calgary West. You all seriously need some therapy or something. Electing this person 4 times in a row is inexcusable. You can no longer claim ignorance. Now it is down to willing complicity with pure moral degradation.

And no I don't want to hear about the National Energy Program. Thanks anyway. Please recommend this post

Edmonton PD Issues Amber Alert

The Edmonton police issued an Amber alert this morning for a seven year old girl who was abducted in north east Edmonton.

Edmonton Journal has full details and descriptions here.

Lets hope for a speedy and positive outcome.

Update 4:30pm MST. According to Canadian Press:

EDMONTON — A seven-year-old girl who was the subject of an Amber Alert after police said she was abducted from a northside Edmonton park was abandoned by a man in a gas station after an alert attendant noticed her crying...

Please recommend this post

Stephen Harper is Mike Harris. (Old News)

The Liberals just released a video claiming Stephen Harper plagiarized Mike Harris in recent speeches. The video shows two short snippets of Harris speaking followed by Harper saying pretty much the same thing. Check it out for yourself and see what you think.

I think the claim of plagiarism kind of weak, and I wish the Liberals would not waste their time on stuff like this. It is not uncommon for boiler plate phrasing to be recycled in political content. I don't think the problem here is plagiarism even though this kind of mimicry is certainly a sign of a weak and lazy thinker.

The real problem is that Stephen Harper is a lousy thinker with lousy ideas, ideas that appear to be lifted from other poor thinkers. If our Prime Minister elect opens his mouth and Mike Harris or John Howard starts talking its not a problem with plagiarism, it means we've lost or national soul and identity.

Its really about the Liberal Party at this late stage of the election. In the 1993 election the Progressive Conservatives dropped over 160 seats. The Liberals don't have that many seats to lose but they could easily lose half of what they hold now while retaining roughly the same popular vote. That's the wonderful thing about our archaic vote counting system. Am I cheering you up?

So as an undecided voter the Liberals need to convince me why i should vote for them and not for another non-conservative party. Or why I shouldn't just stay home on election day. They can do this by talking about ideas and visions and take a pass on the next plagiarism incident. (There will be more).

Now lets all hold hands and sing Waltzing Matilda. Not everything that comes from Australia is silly like John Howard.

Take Eric Bogle for example...

Please recommend this post

Calgary West Candidates

Meet your candidates for the federal riding of Calgary West...



Jennifer Pollock (upper left) ran in the last federal election and was a public school trustee.

Teale Phelps-Bondaroff (upper right) is a University of Calgary Student representing the NDP. Teale also ran in the 2006 election. He was the only candidate who showed up at my door.

Randal Weeks (bottom left) works in Calgary's Oil & Gas sector and is representing the Green Party. I believe he is running for the first time.

If I missed any candidates I'm sorry, please update me in the comments.

Candidates sites for further info:

Jennifer Pollock
Teale Phelps Bondaroff
Randall Weeks
Vote out Anders
Vote out Anders on FaceBook

I was sitting in a public place writing this. Two seniors sitting across from me were going through their stock investments and talking about what they wanted to invest in. They didn't seem to be too happy. Then they looked at the stock prices for Maple Leaf Foods. Some snark broke out.

We haven't done a good job of protecting and helping our seniors but this has not been an issue in this election so far.

I wanted to go over and ask them how that life long Tory voting thing was working out for them. Can I interest you in some income trusts? How about some tainted meat?
Need to borrow some money for an eye exam?

Of course there are many more issues that will be ignored, and many voices will be drowned out by the noise machines.

Leonard Cohen says it best:

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Yes, they will hear from me. Please recommend this post

Happy (Belated) Easter

I forgot to wish everyone a happy easter this year. I was very pre-occupied and didn't notice the Easter holiday go by. All those heavy themes of torture, death, resurrection, sin, and redemption were just a bit too heavy for me this year.

If I were 20 years younger there's a chance I might be emo, but I've always thought of myself as really quite masculine. It occurred to me that emo kids will have a bit of a problem with Easter given all the heavy themes. Not to mention the constant jokes about eating bunnies.

As luck would have it I found this video on YouTube which may help some of you cope.

(My nieces are all pretty emo, but not my nephews.)

Please recommend this post

Samsung Monitor Hung Up

Note: there are 6 images in this post. Might take a while to load completely.

In a previous post i wrote about my Samsung monitor developing a fatal and incurable tilt forward. I did not have a very good picture at that time but this next image taken from a side view shows just how much this monitor is tilting. (Usually in Alberta things lean to the right then fall over.)



Not to be one to accept bad designs I went to Future Shop and purchased a Vanguard VM-11 Computer Monitor Table Mount. These are a much better solution for mounting a flat screen TV or computer monitors and this one cost around $25. The next picture shows the base mount which clamps to the back edge of your desk. Notice the small hole in the front. The instructions said to screw the mount to the desk and they supplied a large wood screw. I'm not into screwing things to desks. I figure the whole point of the clamp mount was so you could move it around. It reminded me of an old P.D.Q. Bach joke about nailing one foot to the floor so he could dance to Chopin.



The next photo shows what the mounting arm looks like. The square bracket bolts to the back of the monitor and the other end goes in the desk mount. There is an industry standard for the positions of the mounting screws so this should work with almost all flat scree monitors.

It is made of an aluminum alloy. Strong and light. Sexy.




The next photo shows how the bracket bolts to the back of the monitor. Of course you have to remove the original stand first. Samsung was fairly confident in weight vs. gravity and only used 2 screws. The Vanguard mount used 4 screws. I went and bought some of those self locking washers to keep the screws from working themselves out. This is referred to in the business as perpetual motion unscrewing syndrome. (See Ford Truck complaint web sites.)

Don't over-tighten the bolts. The monitor end has the cheapest threads ever and I was worried I might strip them. (Google will have a hoot with these keywords.)



The monitor finally mounted is pictured below. As an added bonus I recovered a whole bunch of desk space under the monitor. I like the illusion that the monitor is just kind of free floating in the air. It reminded me (for some strange reason) of the scene in Dune where Sting was floating around in the air.



Pictured below is the original Samsung mounting stand. We consign this piece of equipment to the large dust heap of poorly designed things. Along side the Ford Pinto, DBase III, Windows ME, the Ariane 5 Flight 501 satellite launcher, and a host of other icky things that were designed or built late in the afternoon on a Friday.




Update: Fixed blogger's broken links to the images and a few grammar and spelling issues. Please recommend this post

Oilers: Three Points Out

If you're an Edmonton Oilers fan don't cry in your beer just yet.

In my previous post on the Oilers Playoff hopes, which I considered slim, I noted that the Oilers would probably require 95 points to make the playoffs.

The cutoff of 95 points was a reasonable estimation. Last year the Calgary flames finished in the 8th playoff spot with 96 points. The year before that it was the Edmonton Oilers with 95 points. But this year I'm not sure it will be that high.

As of today the Oilers do not have enough available points left to reach 95 points, and anyway they probably won't win all of their remaining games.

However, they are 3 points back of the final playoff spot with six games remaining. They could finish as high as 93 points, and they could still finish as high as 6th place.

Behold, the standings:



The shaded column is the number of points.


The bottom 3 playoff spots (6,7,8) could be won by any one of the six teams in positions 6 through 11.

But its really really a long shot for the Oilers I think.

If the Oilers did finish in 8th spot they would play the Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the playoffs.

Detroit fans are probably already becoming incontinent at the thought of playing a high flying team of devil-may-care rookies. Please recommend this post

Samsung Broke My Heart

I bought a Samsung SyncMaster 205BW flat screen monitor. It was well priced and I like everything about it. Good color, brightness, and a digital port.

But there's a bit of a design flaw in it. As you can tell (somewhat) from the bad photograph, the monitor is tilting forward more and more as time goes on. The connection hub that supports the screen does not swivel up and down. All the monitor's weight is pushing down on some small metal rails that appear to be made of of some soft metal like aluminum or an aluminum alloy.

This is the second monitor. I had to return the first one because these metal railings snapped leaving the monitor basically unusable.

Now I know better than to try to bend it back into an upright position. So I'm trying to think of a solution. This problem has been noticed by others and you can find many blog and forum postings.

From what I've read Samsung is not being helpful and wont admit that its a design flaw. Instead they choose to tell consumers that they abused the product. I also had a hard time returning the original monitor to Office Depot because they were hiding behind some warranty technicalities. And then they tried to up sell me which was sort of annoying. In the meantime I was dead in the water because this was my only monitor. (Don't get me started on the Toshiba notebook that died a horrible death.)

It seems to me a good idea for Samsung just to admit that this was just a really bad design. A couple of little pieces of soft metal obviously cannot hold a fairly heavy screen in an upright position. At the very least they could offer some kind of work around. (There is a viagra joke in here just dying to get out.)

Its too bad because I've bought a lot of Samsung products and have never had any problems. I even met one of the Samsung sales reps at Memory Express and he gave me a nice pen. He seemed like a nice man, but right about now I'd like to ball kick him even though I know its not his fault.

I apologize for my messy desk in the photo. Those M&Ms are not mine. Please recommend this post

Another Calgary Book Store Closes

My favourite independent bookstore in Calgary is closing. McNally Robinson on 8th avenue, aka Stephen Avenue Mall will be closing within the next few months, citing increasing costs and insufficient sales.

The lack of sales is a mystery to me. Within a few square blocks there are at least 10,000 office workers, many of whom work in technical professions. Additionally they have a separate division that provides hard to find engineering and scientific books.

After 5Pm the corporate people go home and the street is replaced with a different crowd who probably don't place reading high on their priorities.

MR has one of the best selection of technical books of any store, even rivaling Chapters Indigo. But there's probably not good money in these types of books. Books on computer technologies are expensive to produce and sell low volumes. No one will get rich writing, publishing or selling a book detailing the UNIX grep command.

I once saw a complete multi-volume copy of the BC electrical code which amused me no end.

And you could not stump their staff either. I know I tried several times. They always knew the book and how to get it.

They have several other stores, in Winnipeg, Saskatoon and New York. They are opening a new store in Winnipeg this year. So its not like they're going out of business, they're just leaving Calgary.

So whats wrong with Calgary, and Alberta in general? Independent publishers are apparently leaving in droves and the independent books stores are barely hanging on.

This is the third independent book seller in Calgary that I've become addicted to that has had to close its doors after only a few years.

McNally Robinson Website Please recommend this post

Reading Writing

I updated my MySpace profile for the what you read section, which is as far as I can tell mostly underused on MySpace because they're all a bunch of hoodlums selling cannibis. I'm sorry that was uncalled for.

I didn't realize how difficult it was to write a short descriptive blip about what you've read and what you like to read.

Here's the work in progress that I know will be edited about a 100 more times before I stop obsessing about it:

Favorite reading so far: C.S. Lewis Surprised By Joy, Catch 22, Anything by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., especially Slaughterhouse 5, anything by Graham Greene, especially The Quiet American. The Book of Psalms. The Imitation of Christ. The Entire Shakespeare body but especially the cross-dressing comedies (And no i'm not into cross-dressing). Any kind of Poetry, but especially the romantic poets, T.S. Eliot and the War poets of ww1. Canadian Poets: Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton, P.K Page and Anne Michaels. I like Naomi Klein's political writing as well, even when she infuriates me which is what a good writer does. I loved William Buckley Jr's weekly columns even though I never agreed with a single one of his ideas. He was a beautiful gifted writer he was just on the wrong side.

I hate propaganda and things that insult my intelligence so I don't often read newspapers.

I journal a lot, stuff that no one will ever read. Its neurotic I know. I write on two blogs, one about technology and the other mostly about nonsense. I sometimes mix up the updates and confuse the readers. I write a lot of web content and technical docs for work but I enjoy it a lot so it doesn't seem like work.

By necessity I read a lot about technology, especially about software development. Fortunately there are a lot of good authors out there so its not as boring or dry as you might think.

I admit to being a geek. Guilty as charged.

I'd like to find a girlfriend who might read Shakespeare or some nice poetry to me while I lay (lie?) my head upon her lap. Not to much to ask is it?

Its only a start. Please recommend this post

Who Has Felt The Wind

I went out for a bike ride today, for the first time since December. It was warm and sunny out but there was this stiff cold wind coming from the east. It made a huge sucking noise. I hate the wind. I take it personally. It's worse when you're on the bike path beside the Bow River because the Bow is glacier fed and throws off a cold draft even in the height of summer.

I took a picture of the bow river as the sun was starting to go down over Pump Hill...



Then I slipped on a piece of ice and fell on my butt.

Election tomorrow. Get out and vote! History shows that apathy comes with a price. Please recommend this post

Childe Hassam Rocks

I was wandering around the mall on friday night and aside from finding one of those pot belly ceramic stoves that are pretty cool I went into an art shop and found one of my all time favourite paintings. This is called Boston Common by an American artist named Frederick Childe Hassam. He painted around the turn of the century and most of his paintings are outdoors scenes around Boston and New England. He is generally considered an impressionist. I'm an unimpressionist.

I don't really know why I like this painting so much, but its probably the ethereal light. On winter days when the sun goes down around 4 or 5 you get the most beautiful colors and sunsets.

All of my memories growing up in Edmonton are centered around winter and being outdoors doing things.

The sales girl was yummy really helpful and I saw a few good black enamel frames that would go well with this painting. A nice frame with glass, plus the poster will cost about $350.00 which I think is quite reasonable.

The only problem is I can't really afford this right now, even though I want it badly.

And then I read this Globe and Mail article about how more and more single women are buying homes and at an earlier age. I think this is the result of our economy doing well and the sisters doing it for themselves. Wasn't that a Pointer Sisters line?

Anyway, it occurred to me that there should be at least one single woman out there who likes me enough to forgo the purchase of the house for a bit and buy this painting for me. In exchange, I would be willing to let you hang it in your new house for a few months later on.

Don't rule it out right away. Lets go back and forth a bit. I'm sure we can work something out.

God loves a cheerful giver. Please recommend this post

Some Music and Stuff

I spent a frustrating amount of time trying to figure out which audio formats can be played on my Motorola Razr V3T. Reading some of the cel phone forums on the Internet it is clear there is a lot of dissatisfaction out there. One more reason why this whole mobile industry is a little cheesy. More on that some other time.

But I was able to get a bunch of new music loaded onto my phone. Some of the tracks won't play at all some play half way through then crash the player.

I got enough working to proudly make my list of favourite tracks of this week:

the mcdades - valley of a thousand tears/hotel de ville

I like the McDades. I saw them a long time ago playing in a bar before they were known.

terry jones - i'm so worried

I'm so worried about the fashions today. I don't think they're good for your feet, And I'm so worried about the shows on TV that sometimes they want to repeat.

the be good tanyas - nobody cares for me

leonard cohen - i can't forget

jenny allen - evangeline

mark heard - awake in the night time

This song is from the album Dry Bones Dance. He only made a few albums before dying too young. While it is considered Christian/Country its a bit different from any Christian or Country album you might hear. The lyrics are a bit too thought provoking to leave it in the Country bin.

the seekers - a world of our own

The Australian super-folk band of the 60's and 70's.

loreena mckennitt - santiago

kathleen edwards - old time sake

She's an acquired taste. Most of her songs have a unique perspective.

stephen fearing - like every other morning

blue rodeo - holding on

tanita tikaram - stop listening

What else am I listening to...

I've got The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins on audio. I'm halfway through and finding it quite interesting. Does atheism irritate God?

I have Verdi's Rigoletto featuring the late Pavarotti. On the CD cover he looks about 12 years old. I bet in his prime he shagged every single one of the leading Sopranos. (Oh, Robert that's a horrible horrible thing to say.) It's the only opera whose plot I even remotely understand: Guy has daughter. Skeezy other guy wants daughter. Dad gets even. There are some tragic turns of events although some people find them comical. Probably hockey fans. People yell and scream and die unexpectedly. As in most Operas the characters see how badly they're going to get screwed at least 3 hours ahead of time and even sing about it, but still act shocked.

My worst fear is that I'll turn into an atheist who's addicted to Opera. Please, help me help myself. Only you can stop this outcome.

I have the latest Lily Allen CD because my friend told me it was delightful, lighthearted British pop. And it is. Every song made me smile especially the one about her little brother Alfie...



From Opera to Lily Allen. I think my jorb here is done. Please recommend this post

Stelmach's Ad Hominems

Last Thursday's leadership debate was the only time you will get to see the Alberta party leaders debate. Provincial elections are usually very short, especially in Alberta where they're really sort of a formality. No insult intended to the hard working opposition parties, but the system is kind of skewed.

The remainder of the time you'll just get to hear them re-iterate their talking points in highly controlled settings. In other words, it will be one way conversations. Mr. Stelmach, for example, was quoted extensively and unfettered in the Sunday Sun today. He was probably speaking to Rick Bell from his special Premier's-Office-To-The-Calgary-Sun-Editorial-Ass-Kissers hot line.

I often wonder if the evolution of the Web and other social technologies will eventually turn politics around so that there is more of a true dialogue and more accountability.

Some random thoughts on the debate from Thursday night:

1. We were only about 30 minutes into the debate before Mr. Stelmach responded to a criticism by blaming a former Liberal Prime Minister. That must be some kind of record for restraint. I'm sure he wanted to get that lick in much sooner.
   



2. No one really one or lost the debate, but Mr. Stelmach barely survived. He didn't particularly impress me as being smart, articulate or as having any grasp on basic realities.
   
   
3. I thought Paul Hinman was a very good communicator even though I didn't buy into anything he had to say. He was far more polished than I expected. His ideas about making Hospitals compete with each other was confusing and sounded like Fraser Institute boiler plate. I read some other bloggers that were a little insulted by his subtle suggestions about family structure and the economy. They read it as women should stay home. I definitely felt his social agenda was bubbling beneath the surface. I think all the leaders were totally afraid to go into social issues.
   
   
4. I was hoping we could get through at least on Alberta election without someone saying that you can't fix the health care system by throwing more money at it. It is a dull and weak minded cliché and does not clarify any particular issue. If I had a nickel for every time an Alberta conservative said that you can't fix the health care system by throwing more money at the problem I would have a huge pile of nickels. But the amount would be probably less than the amount of money they've been throwing at the problem. They usually don't do their talking points and it was nice to see the Alberta Liberals and the NDP call them on it.


5. Mr. Stelmach called the Liberals and the NDP socialists. Instead of answering a question it's better to channel Joseph McCarthy. Aside from being an illiterate and childish comment it was pretty ironic. Mr. Stelmach has been a part of one of the most interventionist governments in Alberta's history. For example, they rejected public auto insurance, but then intervened with a massive bureaucracy to set rates, and now the have to spend millions of dollars appealling the strike down of their stupid restriction on civil awards for accident victims. Seriously, how dumb would a goverment have to be to reach into the future and handcuff the civil courts. And don't get us started on electrical deregulation, bill 40, and the general drift towards bigger, less efficient and more controlling government, and a thick layer of very expensive cronyism. Sure, waste a bunch more of my money while calling everyone else socialists and bragging about what it means to be a "conservative".
   



6. Aside from that, I thought the debate was too long. I would have preferred that if they take questions they take them unprepared from audience members, rather than pre-discussed quesions from media people. For example, Nirmal Naidoo ask Brian Mason how much money it would cost to fix the health care system. This wasn't really a question but just a short editorial from CICT-TV.


7. I couldn't help think of that Stealers Wheel song:
   
   

   Clowns to the left of me,
   Jokers to the right, here I am,
   Stuck in the middle with you.
   

   
   
   Maybe Kevin Taft should use that as a campaign song.
   
   

Please recommend this post

Oilers vs Canucks

Saturday Night - Edmonton Oilers vs. Vancouver Canucks.

Who are you picking?

I don't want to make any predictions because it usually jinxes the Oilers. But, Oilers are playing good now and Canucks are not.

I'm willing to make small wagers with anyone. We could bet little children. But they would have to be young enough so that they would never know they were won in a bet.

And now the Oilers are required to win 78% of their remaining points to make the playoffs. This is a slight improvement but still no realistic.


Update: Canucks 4 Oilers 2. This puts the Oilers magic win ratio at .818 to make the playoffs. Those Sedin twins are such (insert word that Jane Fonda used). Please recommend this post

Canadian F-Word Blog Awards

I just cast my votes in the Canadian F-Word Blogger Awards. "F" in this case refers to feminism and not the other F word. There are a lot of blogs there that I have never heard of and hope to take a look at soon. I'm glad to see this part of the blog world alive and well, if only because it really pisses off a lot of people. These bloggers need some kudos thrown their way because they put up with quite a bit of verbal abuse merely because of believing in some simple ideas about life and gender. Please recommend this post

They Don't Get Marketing

I was amused to receive this email spam from the Princeton Premier Registry:

It is my pleasure to inform you that you are being considered for inclusion into the 2008-2009 Princeton Premier Business Leaders and Professionals "Honors Edition" section of the Registry.

The 2008-2009 edition of the Registry will include biographies of the world's most accomplished individuals. Recognition of this kind is an honor shared by thousands of executives and professionals throughout the world each year. Inclusion is considered by many as the single highest mark of achievement.

Upon final confirmation, you will be listed among other accomplished individuals in the Princeton Premier Registry.

For accuracy and publication deadlines, please complete your application form and return it to us within five business day

I recognized right away that was something skeezy. Like others who received this email and blogged about it, I laughed because I've never done anything in my life even remotely that would merit such an apparently prestigious invitation. Like all crappy marketing, it appeals to raw vanity and assumes basic stupidity.

Of course it is not really an invitation and you are not being considered for anything. The link leads to a web page where you give up all your personal information, and then God only knows what happens to it. According to other accounts I've read a pushy obnoxious person phones you and tries to sign you up on the directory for $500 or so.

The sign up form is routed through an email company called Results Mail (http://www.resultsmail.com). They have an unsubscribe button but I always wonder whether clicking on such a button is really safe or not.

The spam technique is fairly simplistic and most people will see through it. What really interests me is why companies think behavior like this will work. The instant these emails start rolling out people start blogging about it or posting their suspicions in forums. If you're in marketing you ignore this phenomena at your own peril. It's a new world now. If you're a douche-bag millions of people will know about it almost immediately.

Check out two examples of bloggers who wrote about this email before I did:

al6400
Rose Desrochers

Note the large number of comments in each of these posts. Please recommend this post

Obligatory Celebrity Obit

Roy Scheider died this week and the predictable pre-written obits were run. Apparently he was very sick and repeated calls to the Olson twins didn't help. TorStar ran this studio still from Jaws. Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw are hunting a ginormous huge shark...which is why they're looking up at the sky. SKY SHARK! Maybe there was a witch writing something bad about Richard Dreyfuss in the sky. Or the camera was just at a bad angle.

Most of the Obituaries I read claimed that Jaws was his best movie and cited the famous line, you're going to need a bigger boat. There were a lot of good lines in that movie not to mention Richard Dreyfuss over-acting and Robert Shaw's horrible Scots accent. In my opinion, the Shark wasn't nearly mean enough. I didn't really like Jaws. And generally I enjoyed all the cheesy disaster movies of the 70's. They should have had Shelly Winters in Jaws, swimming across the bay, crying and kvetching.

I thought Scheider was a much better actor in 2010. This was Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001 A Space Odyssey. 2010 was not directed by Stanley Kubrick, so even though the novel is very good the movie sequel was not. In spite of that Scheider was good in this movie. They tried to imitate the feel of the original by having a lot of very esoteric dialog. The dialog in that movie was jaw droppingly retarded. Scheider pulled it off though, but always had kind of a smirk on his face, kind of like Shatner in Star Trek. You know the look: O for God's sake this is so ridiculous, but the kids do need college. Humor me. I did Shakespeare, remember that.

Good actors in bad movies is the Hollywood success story. Lets not mess with it. Please recommend this post

Oilers Playoff Hopes or Neurotic Math

Its the middle of February. Its the time of year Edmonton Oilers fans start working themselves into a frenzy about whether the team will make the playoffs or not.

With Horkoff, Torres and Souray all out for the rest of the year, the odds are not good for a playoff spot.

And then there's the math. They did the math on the Radio the other morning and assumed that the cutoff for making the playoffs would be a minimum of 95 points. I think it will be higher this year because of overall improvement of the teams in the conference. Maybe this year you will need 100 points.

But for sake of argument, if the cutoff is 95 points, and the oilers have 24 games remaining, they will need to get 80% of the remaining potential points. Of course this ratio changes on a day to day basis. If they go on a winning streak, they might get within reach.

The Oilers do have one incentive to finish as high as possible. The lower they finish the higher their draft pick, but its a pick which goes to Anaheim. This is because of the terms of the Penner trade and the free agency of Teemu Selanne's moustache.

Daryl Katz will have some difficult decisions to make this summer about management and general top level strategy. Most Oilers fans live in kind of a bubble, they don't really think anything is wrong with the coaching or the management. Katz has a different business philosophy than the EIG, and will be able to make decisions much easier and quicker. I think next year results will be much more important. Please recommend this post

Yahoo Answers: Ball Kicking

A remorseful but illiterate mother writes Yahoo for an answer:

My daughter amy whos(sic) 12yrs old told me her older cousins was(sic) beating her up, So out of anger i teached(sic) her to kick them where it hurts, That was six months ago. Now my friends son told her that she kicked him afew(sic) times and she had one of her friends over and right infront(sic) of me she kicked him in groin over the remote.... i punished her and told her "You only kick a boy there if hes(sic) hitting you or your(sic) in danger",

Or...If your a competent Nuclear power expert and your boss fires you because you're smarter than him and he has an ego and command-and-control problem, and seems to like to humiliate smart women.

Or...If someone wants to sue you because you merely registered a domain name and that boy is mad at you because he lost track of his personality® and thinks it's your fault.

Or...If you're a Saskatchewan RoughRider fan and your coach gets you your first Grey Cup since the Crimean War and now he's buggering off to Mississippi.

Or...Because you're a Saskatchewan RoughRider fan and your GM has the worst possible hair cut ever and it makes you want to kick him in the balls.

Or...If you see a blogger who is unusually stupid and vacant and he writes something stupid and vacant about Charles Darwin promoting genocide. Kick him twice.

Or...If you got that popular new Wii game called Kicking People In The Balls. But remember: Playing the Wii game is not a substitute for really kicking people in the balls.

Or...You come across someone who thinks it would be cool to have Al Qaida blow up a Canadian Politician visiting Afghanistan, which as you know is chock a block with people wanting to blow people up. Maybe this person doesn't have balls. Kick them anyway, its OK.

Or...You see someone clutching a stupid book they just bought and yammering on and on about Liberal Fascism. Kick them until they stop.

Or any other reason that suits you. As long as you think its ok, its probably ok.

Feel free to contribute to the discussion. Who would you kick in the balls if you had the chance?



Disclaimer: This is satire. We are not advocating kicking men in the balls. If you kick a man in the balls it's your responsibility. Mostly it's against the law, but check with your local law enforcement agency.
Please recommend this post

Java and Weather Hyperbole

I spent all morning writing a Java exam, and the rest of the day rehabbing what was left of my brain. It was three hours long and practically killed me. I'm here to tell about it only by the grace of God. Atheist, sneer if you must, but I claim a miracle of severe ardor and bitter survival.

It started last night when the weather reports looked bad, real bad. They kept piling adjective on adjective. Blowing snow, drifting snow, swirling snow, drifting blowing swirling snow. Wind chill factors. Faces freezing in less than a minuet. How was I to know it was all hyperbole?

I lay awake all night worrying about the exam and the weather. I had no idea what all would be covered on the test because they didn't really give too much of that away.

Anyway, it turned out the weather was not as bad as they described it this morning. Cold yes and windy yes, but not wicked cold. This leads me to believe YOU CALGARIANS ARE A BUNCH OF PUSSIES. Sorry, but it had to be said. If you only knew what it was like growing up in Edmonton, scraping off a different frost bitten gangrene ridden appendage after every 2 block trip to school you might not complain so much.

The Java exam was not particularly difficult but it took the full three hours to complete with no time left over to review. I was really surprised that an exam about a programming language was so low tech. The exam was entirely written by hand. My friend who wrote an accounting exam same time as me had a computer based exam. He just sat in front of a computer clicking off multiple choice questions.

There were four problems that were of the type that required writing out a lot of Java code. I filled four double-sided sheets of paper. By the time I was done there was a big pile of eraser detritus and my left hand and wrist were limp. I never hand write anything anymore. I was definitely not used to that much writing. It is also very time consuming for the marker. You have to read everyone's handwriting and try and figure out of their answer is correct or not. I thought that was why we had compilers and text editors.

There was the usual trick question involving recursion and post-increment and pre-increment operators. I'll spare you the details because it is kind of geeky, except to say that it is very very subtle and tends to really confuse programmers. The post-increment and pre-increment operators are in almost all programming languages and most scripting languages. They tend to be a reliable source of bugs and misunderstandings. Anyway, I saw through the trickery.

Then there was another trick question about boolean logic. You had to know that an AND operator takes higher precedence than an OR operator. High school algebra really, but a common source of confusion. They try to trick you visually with the grouping of the terms and indentation.

There were a couple of minor questions I now know I bungled. My brain was considerate enough to inform me of this three hours after the exam was over but couldn't be bothered at the time from stopping my gaffs. Thanks brain, good to know you're such a reliable source of real time information. Please recommend this post

Provincial Election Already A Headache

There will be a Provincial Election in Alberta within the next couple of months. The PC Candidates are in motion with their signs up all over Calgary. And Ed Stelmach® is busy suing bloggers.

I got a flyer from Jennifer Diakiw. She is the PC Candidate hoping to replace Harry Chase here in Calgary Varsity and was Jim Dinning's campaign co-chair in the leadership race. She is the candidate at time of writing. It's possible Ed Stelmach® could convene another kangaroo court and take away her nomination.

I was quite happy that Mr. Chase won in the last election and he has been a very good MLA. I have come to believe that any positive change in this province will have to come from outside the current government. Like Harry Strom and the Social Credit Party in 1972 they have absolutely no grasp of what is going on. They are in the absurd position of being pilloried from all sides, left and right and middle.

In the last election there were about 200,000 PC registered voters who did not vote. This figure does not include people who vote PC but do not join the party. I see no evidence that Ed Stelmach® has re-motivated his party in any way. So I hope that Harry Chase will retain his seat. Do you have a better candidate?

I do have one question though. Since Jennifer Diakiw got an endorsement from former Varsity MLA Murray Smith I wonder how she feels about millions of dollars spent so Mr. Smith could go to cocktail parties in Washington and New York. How does that fit in with the slogans about principled conservatism?

In other rumors of interest it is unclear how the PC election strategy will manage the bitterness of Don Rickles Lyle Oberg. There are rumors that he will be a liability in the election campaign because he was forced out of his career as a cabinet member. If you can't read between the lines, a while back Oberg was told that he would not be in the cabinet of the next government. He then announced he would not be running in the upcoming election. Probably just a coincidence. I suppose we will have to hear all that self serving rhetoric about where the skeletons are.

In other election news, it is warm and sunny in Calgary and the temp is about 10 above. There is a wicked Margaret Hamilton like cold front blowing through tonight. I am not happy about this as I have to travel tomorrow morning. Just when I thought everything would be fine the radio played that stupid Jim Reeves song about that guy and his horse who die in the blizzard just five hundred yards from Mary Ann. Anyway, Jim and Dan, it wouldn't have mattered if you made it that extra five hundred yards, Mary Ann was out playing bingo. I love Jim Reeves. I'm sorry if you think thats weird. Please recommend this post

A Brief Message From Our Sponsor

Mr Harper you're the worst Prime Minister in my life time. Hang on a second... Oh, sorry, I forgot about Mulroney.

Mr. Harper you're the second worst Prime Minister in my life time. But take heart you're on pace to plunge wildly into first place.

And McGuinty you're looking a little obsequious don't you think. Who do you think you are Ed Stelmach® ?

Please recommend this post

Grammar Fussing

I'm obsessing again over grammar, spelling and general style. Hardly a day goes by when I don't spit some coffee at my monitor while reading something poorly formed. And it's not just bloggers, the MSM can quite easily use their thick style manuals as door stops as well. Listening to the Radio can be a hoot as well, especially at night when they put the B teams on.

Before I go any farther I should admit that I'm just as bad, given half a chance.

So here are my latest requests of things that you cease and desist in:

1. Use of the phrase in point of fact. This is meaningless chin dribbling gibberish. Stop it.

2. Use of then instead of than. Amy has bigger hair then Jenna.

3. Use of going forward. The other night the Edmonton Oilers won a hockey game in regulation for the first time in ages. After the game a reporter asked a player in a locker room scrum: ...how important is it to continue this kind of play going forward..." What a stupid question to begin with. What are you supposed to answer, well going forward we kind of want to lose a lot... Going forward, presumably in time, is sort of a basic assumption of reality that need not be constantly re-affirmed.

4. People who say or write ANN Rand instead of Ayn Rand. You're a pretty incompetent libertarian if you don't know her name. There probably is an Ann Rand somewhere. Pity her. Think of the hate mail.

5. Never start off an explanation with I personally believe. If you are using this phrase you are in semi-lucid companionship with Miss Teen USA South Carolina. You will need a good map to find your way out of that quagmire. Unless you use this phrase we will have to assume that you don't believe what you are saying.

6. Stop using any word that ends in ess, trix or ette. Poetess, Authoress, Seductress, Dominatrix. One of the charming things about French is that the gender of a noun has no connection whatsoever with its meaning. You should always keep people guessing when it comes to gender. Words that have fancy-smancy gender endings, especially of the feminizing kind, are hereby declared poor style.

7. Overuse of LOL. If you LOL me one more time I'm going to come over there and KYA. Besides, I know you're just being polite. I'm not all that funny.What would it take to have a kind of an internet counter-insurgency to get rid of the use of LOL? Who's with me?

8. Use of through instead of done. Through is mostly a preposition and is abused this way. Correct usage: I tried to walk through the glass wall at Second Cup instead of using the door. Therefore I'm done with them. I'm through with you should be I'm done with you. Writers make it worse by writing the homophonic[2]version: I'm threw with you, or the non-existant I'm thru with you, Or the IM version, Im thr w u which makes you look illiterate. By the way, its a mean thing to say to someone who probably loved you a lot.

9. Avoid use of the words literal or literally. As Ambrose Bierce[1] observed, they are

Often incorrectly used in support of exaggeration or violent metaphor."

Metaphors should never be violent. Not even uppity. Avoid phrases like Stephen Harper literally kicked the chair across the room. Even if it is true.

10. Irrelevant adjectives are distracting. According to the NHL web site,

Twenty years ago Ron Hextall became the first NHL goalie to physically score a goal."

The reader is tempted to believe that prior to this accomplishment all NHL goalies scored goals metaphysically or in some ethereal non-physical way.

I have more but I think I'll stop now in the interest of public safety.

[1] Ambrose Pierce appears courtesy of the A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults freely available at the Gutenburg Project. [2]A homophone is a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different meaning. People who use homophones are called homophonics, and are part of an agressive militant agenda.


Update: Reposted 11-Jan-2008 09:00 am MST. Original time stamp was incorrect.
Update: Fixed typo: it's not its. How embarassing. Please recommend this post

Kent Austin Leaving?

I was looking at my server logs the other day and trying to figure out why there was a moderate jump in traffic. The bump consisted of people from Mississippi and Arkansas googling "Kent Austin". I figured something was up, even though there was nothing in the news here.

It turns out that the Roughriders gave permission for Austin to interview for a coaching job with the University of Mississippi which is his alma mater. The gap in the coverage between Canada and Mississippi is kind of interesting. Obviously the media down there got the story whereas we did not. I always think it is better for organizations to be proactive about potentially bad news rather than letting the media write the story for you.

If Austin does leave it will probably be awkward timing because I think most of the CFL coaching vacancies have been filled. The annual CFL Chinese fire drill is all but over.

So who would they get as a replacement? Ned Flanders Tom Higgins is the only one I can think who is available, at least as someone with senior CFL coaching experience. Having Higgins coaching the Roughriders would probably generate some profanity ridden commentary in both Calgary and Regina. It would be entertaining. These two fan bases do not like each other.

The other question is how much do you attribute the Grey Cup win to the Coaching skills of Austin? I think he is a fantastic coach and I don't think they would have won it without him. It seems strange to me that he would choose to leave after one year. Maybe there is more to the story that we know right now.

So Riders fans, if Austin leaves will it be another decade or two before you have a parade?

Aside: I previously posted a joke about Austin walking on water. I thought it was funny. But you know what they say about people who laugh at their own jokes. Please recommend this post

Pope Big Oilers Fan

ring...ring...ring...click...This is big Pope B. I'm not at the Vatican right now because I'm out at the Drake. Just finished watching the Oilers lose. If this is a Cardinal or a Bishop come on out. If this is a member of the one true faith come on out. If this is Matty, Barby, Willy, Judy, Jenny or Sven, I know you're not Catholics, but come on out. If this is Mel Gibson, come on out but you have to shut up. If this is Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins or Philip Pullman come on out but you guys have to wear skirts. Please recommend this post

A Vortex of Hypocrisy and Shame

I was really saddened this week when I read about the death of 16 year old Aqsa Parvez, allegedly murdered by her father. I was having a bad week to begin with and events like this don't help any of us. To me it is purely a case of domestic abuse and not an issue of immigration, race or religion. Nonetheless, the blogospere swarmed on the story, and honestly I found a lot of the commentary quite disgusting.

Unfortunately this tragedy is being used as a wedge in the ongoing Islamophobia that our society has steadily descended into since September 11, 2001.

I grew up with a friend whom I'll call B. When we were children our fathers were good friends so we saw each other a lot. I don't know how our fathers met. B's father was a WWII Pow in Hong Kong and had life long health problems because of the starvation and torture he endured. After my father passed away I didn't see B nearly as much. B and myself and our families were remarkably alike. Born in the 60's, white protestants, United Church, Boy Scouts of Canda, parents who moved into the new suburbs of Edmonton to raise their new families, etc.

B's mom and my mom occasionally talked and I'd often hear about what he was up to. After high school he had a deep Christian experience and became active in a large Pentecostal church. Neither he nor his family were particularly religious as far as I can remember. Eventually he became a leader in the Church, married and started a family. As some point I lost track of him as he moved to BC.

Sometime in 2006 B was arrested and charged in suspicion of the murder of his 16 year old daughter. I couldn't have been more shocked and saddened by this news. Talk about the last thing you would expect to find out about someone you knew.

The murder did not make the national news. It made the news in the locality where it occurred and made the news in Edmonton, but only because they were from there. The story quickly fell off the media radar and is difficult to find references on the internet at all. I still don't know if B has been convicted and sentenced yet. Last bit of information was the judge sending him off for a Psych evaluation.

When this crime occurred there was not widespread swarming in the blogosphere. No one made broad sweeping hate filled comments about Pentecostals. No one demanded that B go back where he came from. No one blamed it on the fact that B refused to assimilate into our way of life. (An Orwellian term if there ever was one. ) No one cried moral outrage because Pentecostal leaders did not hold press conferences to denounce the crime.

I'm afraid I find this contrast slightly jarring and not particularly flattering to our attitudes. I grieve for an old friend and his family. And I grieve for another family that I do not know who in addition to all else, has to deal with media glare and tightly focused racism. Please recommend this post

Cockroaches Need to Pick It Up a Bit

I enjoy reading science articles, especially about insects. It seems that there were a lot of cockroach stories this week. Basically, if you're keeping score the cockroaches got their asses kicked. They're scoring low on the intelligent design check list.

1. Israeli scientists studied the predatory relationship between a certain species of wasp and a certain species of cockroach. Read this and be sure to watch the video, it's pure Tarantino. The wasp attacks the roach and when it gains control it injects a venom in the roach's brain which eliminates what little intelligence and free will the roach might have had, and leaves only the ability to drool and be led around. (Insert joke about niece's boyfriend.) The wasp then grabs the roach by its antennae and walks it like a dog on a leash back to waspville, where it's led compliantly down into the nest, aka God's waiting room. The roach becomes a living buffet for wasp larvae while everyone hums Piece of My Heart by Janis Joplin.

Wasps are predatory and they totally play dirty. I've read a number of articles about some of their tactics and they're just sick minded little goons. The scientists wanted to know how the wasps did this to the roach's brain. They reversed engineered the venom and figured out how it worked. It was a fine tuned chemical that blocked some signals to the brain but not others. To prove their theory they created an antidote which was able to restore the roach to full functionality. It was able to resume a fully productive live. Cockroach 911 rescue with William Shatner can't be far off. Since they have an antidote they now have a moral obligation to rescue the roaches.

2. Japanese scientists did basically the same thing to the Cockroach, except with a solid state backpack:

TOKYO - A big brown cockroach crawls across the table in the laboratory of Japan's most prestigious university. The researcher eyes it nervously, but he doesn't go for the bug spray. He grabs the remote. This is no ordinary under-the-refrigerator type bug. This roach has been surgically implanted with a micro-robotic backpack that allows researchers to control its movements. This is Robo-roach. "Insects can do many things that people can't, " said Assistant Professor Isao Shimoyama, head of the bio-robot research team at Tokyo University. "The potential applications of this work for mankind could be immense." Within a few years, Shimoyama says, electronically controlled insects carrying mini-cameras or other sensory devices could be used for a variety of sensitive missions - like crawling through earthquake rubble to search for victims, or slipping under doors on espionage surveillance.

Far-fetched as that might seem, the Japanese government has deemed the research credible enough to award $5 million to Shimoyama's micro-robotics team and biologists at Tsukuba University, a leading science center in central Japan. Money from the five-year grant started coming in this month, and young researchers are lining up for a slot on Shimoyama's team. (link)

Anytime a scientist talks about a great benifit to mankind run and hide. The Japanese scientists talk like they've forgotten the important lessons learned from their scrapes with Gojira and Mosura.

As if we don't have enough to worry about on this planet. I've seen enough Ridley Scott movies to know this has the potential to completely ruin our already doubtful future.

3. And then there's the Belgians. They studied the sociology of the Cockroach and built a robot cockroach that was able to emulate behaviours that made the real cockroachs accept them as part of the tribe. Kind of a big tent red tory blue tory thing going on there. No word on whether the scientists were German Belgians or French Belgians.

Researchers in Belgium infiltrated cockroach colonies with robots in order to study their group behavior. The robots didn’t look much like cockroaches, but the roaches didn’t mind as long as they smelled right. Not only were the robots accepted as fellow cockroaches, but they became leaders and influenced the groups’ behavior!

Once again you see the zombie like capitulation. Hey, lets put that guy in charge, the one that looks like a lego toy.

Neatoram.com is becoming one of my favourite sites.

All this leads to the usual speculations about evolution. The Cockroaches are going to have to pick it up a bit and evolve some defense mechanisms. They should be avoiding the wasps somehow, not to mention the Belgians and the Japanese. If scientists can develop an antidote to the wasp's stupidity shot then maybe the cockroach will evolve this. Since evolution is incurably slow this could take some time. There is evidence that some species grow bigger and stronger over time. A million years from now there could be some awfully big cockroaches running around. They will have some irrational hatred of wasps, Belgians and Japanese imprinted in their DNA. Humans will probably get smaller because we no longer have the need to fight or flee. H.G. Wells probably had it right in the last chapter of The Time Machine, except instead of really big crustaceans, they'll be really big cockroaches. And they'll be dumb and mad.

I hope I've scared some children. Please recommend this post