I've been seeing these bumper magnets a lot lately, and they confuse me. I'm not being sarcastic. I'm honestly confused and I need input.



Yes, it's misleadingly worded*, but that's not the issue. My question is: why? And how?

Is it asking for political or emotional support? There was never a vote to go to war. There is no referendum planned about whether or not to stay in Afghanistan. The Liberals were in power when we went to war, and the Conservatives are in power now, and we're still at war. Since my opinion about it isn't being solicited, what difference will my support of it make? Nobody's asking me, so why does the magnet care what I think?

Is it looking for financial support? I suppose the Canadian military could probably use some. However, there's no call for donations that I'm aware of. There's certainly a call for recruits, but "join the army!" doesn't seem to be the message that the bumper magnet is trying to convey. Unless it is and it's just bad at it. I don't know.

I'm asking seriously. If you have one of these magnets, what are you trying to get me to do? Please explain.

---

* I do support our troops. By which I mean, the literal men and women who are fighting. They have my strong and sincere wish that they return home safely, where they will be much less likely to be shot, or be put at risk by land mines, or get friendily fired upon by Americans. (Yes, that's inflammatory but, listen, America: enthusiasm is great but it's also important to aim.)

Everyone wants the troops to live, and return home safely. The only difference between me and the driver of this car is that I want them to return home tomorrow. While it's possible that there are some sickos in this country who wish the troops bodily harm, I assume that they are statistically negligible, and not worth wearing bumper magnets about.

Therefore, what this bumper magnet means to say is not Support Our Troops, but actually Support The Army, or more generally Support War. I don't, but to that extent I understand the magnet's message. But not, as I've written above, why it's making it.

At 10 am MST this morning I, and ten thousand of my very close friends, crashed a website.

The plan was for each of the five of us to pick a hotel and attempt to reserve a room. Three of us were going for the Westin Horton Plaza, Lisa wanted the place across the street from the convention centre, and Joel was to pick whatever other hotel appealed to him.

Michael had said that he planned to phone rather than use the Intertron. I warned him that there were a finite number of human beings to talk to and he'd probably be better off with the computers who could, in theory, handle more traffic than the call centre.

The site was already started to limp along when I first began to reload it, waiting for the starting gun. When the reservations opened up, I hit an initial snag because the Westin wasn't offering con rates from Tuesday through Tuesday, when we intended to fly. I didn't discover that on page one of the reservations site, though. I discovered that after getting to page two, and I then had to go back to page one, change the date it was quibbling about, get to page two again, discover that in the meantime Sunday had filled up as well, go to page one a third time, gain page two's tacit but reluctant approval, and continue to page three to book the reservation I'd finally managed to claim.

Page three contains a fair, but not unreasonable, amount of graphics, and several fields for user's name, address, country, etc., just like on any website. I have no idea what else page three would normally contain because that's as much as would ever load. I imagine a Submit button of some kind would have appeared, eventually, but the most I ever got was a Microsoft VBScript error.

Lisa had the same problem. It took a really long time before Kyle got onto the site at all.

And Michael, blessedly, blessedly, completely ignored my advice, called them on the phone, and got a reservation.

Which is a miracle but also pisses me off. The idea that a roomful of people with headsets functions more reliably and efficiently than a webserver is anathema to me. I always prefer Internet to Phone, and Computer to Human, which is a policy that works staggeringly well at my bank, where the human tellers cannot understand putting X amount of a given cheque into account A and Y amount (the remainder) into account B.

Well, at least we have somewhere to sleep in San Diego. I guess that's what's important.

We decided to go with Telus ADSL in the new house, because our Shaw service in the apartment was not great. When you're on cable interwob, you tend to share your tube with other subscribers who live near you. In an apartment complex that can be a lot of people. Which meant that it was great so long as we didn't want to use it between 6 and 8 pm.

Lisa had liked her Telus ADSL in her Kensington apartment, so we decided to switch back to that. The account's in her name and so she called them on Sunday night and got it activated. The CSR on the other end walked her through setting it up, and sent the Terms of Use to her, which she clicked OK on because it was super long and she was on the phone and who reads those anyway? And then the intertron was turned on and everything was fine.

Since my webserver runs off of what is not really a static IP, I have to update my DNS settings every time the router gets turned off, or my ISP (whichever one it is at the time) decides to rotate my IP, or whatever. It hasn't been a big deal. Takes about 5 hours to propagate.

Except now I get a message saying "the server has stopped responding" when I attempt to go to mikeintosh.net. People who send me an e-mail get the same message. But I can connect to the webpage and the mail server when I'm at home, connected through Telus. So I did some searching, and found this page:

TELUS has introduced a number of security measures to the ADSL network to help provide you with a safe, enjoyable Internet experience. These measures will help reduce the risk of virus infection to your PC, reduce spam in your e-mail, and increase network integrity.

NOTE: These security measures do not apply to static IP subscribers.

These security measures include:

1. The blocking of the following ports to inbound traffic. This helps to secure your PC from virus and hacker activity, as well as spam.
* TCP 21 (ftp)
* TCP 25 (smtp)
* TCP 80 (www)
* TCP 110 (pop3)
* TCP 6667 (ircd)
* TCP/UDP 135-139 (dcom and netbios)
* TCP/UDP 443 (ssl)
* TCP/UDP 445 (ms-ds)
* TCP/UDP 1433-1434 (ms-sql)

They're lying. They're lying through their asses. Yes, blocking ports prevents port-scanning, which is necessary for most of you since Windows ships with open ports. ("Why does it do that?" Lisa asked me. "Because it's stupid," I told her.) But it doesn't stop spam--Telus users get the same e-mail as all other users, unless you go in and turn server-side spam scanning on.

What it does is prevent people like me from having their own webservers because it uses too much bandwidth. What it says is "Hi there! We're only going to sell you HALF the Internet. We don't want to sell you THAT part. But we'll charge you the same! And we'll hide it in our Terms of Service and hope you don't notice."

So now my e-mail doesn't work. And it isn't going to work for a year, because we signed a contract for that long. I don't know what to do about it.

I joined the calgarians community in good faith, believing that it would be an excellent venue for people who live in Calgary to inform other people who live in Calgary about things. In Calgary.

For the most part it is. But long have I lived under a curse: as soon as I join things, they get super retarded. No, not simply because I am in them.

Here's an example:

hey guys, it's summer time so i take out the old bicycle.. and what do you know, the seat is damaged from wear+tear and weather. where can i find a replacement seat for cheap (but a good seat)? what kind of dollars are we talking about?

Okay, Chim-Chim, the greatest conduit for information ever devised by the hand of man is a foot and a half in front of your face and you need me to tell you to type CALGARY BIKE STORE into frigging Google?

This post demonstrates the first of the two pillars of retarded calgarians posts: "I Have No Money." One infers that the author, desperate, penniless and alone, and likely pursued by wolves, has ducked into an Internet cafe to ask for the help of his fellow man. He has not the money to pay for the computer use necessary to carry out a lengthy Google search for his bicycle seat--all he can do is to post his question to an LJ community and hope for salvation. Pray for him. Pray for his seatless bicycle.

While you do that, gaze upon the face of evil:

I need a new job. I currently work as a forklift driver in a flooring products warehouse. It sucks beyond belief. I've been trying to find something new (and by new, I mean that pays more than a whopping 10.50 an hour) lately, but haven't had a ton of free time. I've skimmed the job bank a few times, but not much goin on in there. Does anyone know anywhere hiring (please don't tell me to drive around looking for help wanted signs, don't have the time, nor do I drive)? Looking for something that pays decently is all. Any ideas?

Calgary, being The Land From Whence Oil Comes, is experiencing an employment boom. Calgary's unemployment rate is 3.4 percent, which I have to assume accounts for the crazy people living by the river. You cannot, and I am only somewhat making this up, go into Tim Horton's for an iced cap without them wanting you to work there. They have enormous painted windows that say NOW HIRING! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD COULD YOU JUST PUSH A RAG AROUND SOME TABLES? WE'RE DYING IN HERE. Businesses rent large neon-lettered signs to put beside roads to let drivers know that they're hiring, and in most cases have even stopped beating their employees.

That's not why this post is retarded. Well, not entirely.

This post demonstrates the second pillar of retarded calgarians posts: "I Don't Drive." It's not a sin not to drive. I didn't drive for years. If more people didn't drive, maybe the air wouldn't turn yellow when there's an inversion. The thing is, using a combination of Calgary's more-than-passable transit system and one's own brain, it's perfectly possible to get nearly anywhere. I know; I've done it. Guess which part is lacking for this guy.

Here is another person who knows not of either Google or the Yellow Pages. Did you know the Yellow Pages are even online now, so that you don't have to lift the heavy book? Poor dear.

I hate you.

The sad part is, he's right. It probably has been asked a million times. Why nobody posts "How about fucking Google?" I do not know.

I want to stress that these examples all came from last month; I've been flipping back through the community, sifting for examples, as I write this. Other posts stretch backward through time, a chain of people with enough time on their hands to post, but not enough to think.

The last straw came on Thursday:

I am craving a Jones soda right now. Bad things will happen if I do not get my hands on one. :P Is there any to be found in TD Square?

I don't know the answer to this, offhand. But let's imagine: what if I were in TD Square and I wanted a Jones Cream Soda? Both of those things happen fairly regularly, though not necessarily in tandem. What would I do? TD Square is an office tower, in which the lower four floors are commercial space: I probably could rule out any Jones being in the office spaces, except for inside the break-room fridges, which would be too time-consuming to search. Okay, that leaves the mall area. Probably no pop to be had in Reitman's, or Battery World, or any of the shops that do not actually sell food. That leaves Shoppers Drug Mart, the pretzel place, and the food court level. I could check those. Or, I could post on a community and hope that complete strangers will spoon-feed me information. Oh yeah--I know what I'm doing!

I'm defriending the goddamn thing. That's what I'm doing.

Whilst drawing on Thursday, I told Kyle and Lisa that I'd had about enough of idiots wanting me to do their thinking for them.

"You should post to it before you leave," Lisa said.

Nah. I'm not a troll, and nothing would be gained by starting a flame war.

"Oh!" she said. "What you should do is, start posting stupid questions to it, like I need to find 144 tube socks in a hurry! I don't have a lot of money to spend. Preferably in the NW."

Close to transit because I don't drive, I added. Or! I need a canoe big enough to move a body. I don't want to move a body in it, that's just the size I need. Needs to be cheap, and in the NW, and close to transit because I don't drive.

"And! You should start with I only have $100 to spend, and keep lowering the figure for every post as you run out of money."

"Dude," Kyle said, "now you have to do that." Which means, I'm dared to.

"You could do it under a fake journal," Lisa suggested.

No, I said, I'll post about it in my journal first, so if people wonder why I'm posting stupid shit and track my name back, they'll get the joke.

The next day Lisa instant-messaged me to ask if I was behind this jewel: Looking for some place in Calgary where I can purchase several (10-20) adult-sized straw hats cheaply ($2 each would be ideal).

Of course I wasn't.

Yet.

I just e-mailed this to littermaid.com. I tried to use their website contact form, but conveniently that comes back with a server error.

I am extremely displeased with this product. After three months of use, my LitterMaid Pro stopped retracting its rake--10 minutes after my cat used it, the Pro would rake the waste into the waste receptacle and then stop there, with the rake holding the receptacle open. This actually caused more odor than a normal, non-automatic litter box would have.

I had to keep an ear out for the LitterMaid's sound so that I could manually flip its switch. Generally several flips (or banging on the top of the unit) would be required to make the Pro retract the rake. Again, this meant that the LitterMaid required more effort for a worse result than a normal box of litter would have. Today I gave up on the LitterMaid and replaced it with my cat's normal box. I would chalk it up to one of life's bad experiences, if not for the complete waste of quite a lot of money--the LitterMaid Pro cost $200 CDN at PetCetera.

I would appreciate being contacted as soon as possible to rectify this.

Looking the LitterMaid up on Amazon.com shows that lots of people think it's ass--something I should have looked up before buying it. Live and learn, I guess.

It's mutual.

Remember that new phone number I posted? Um, forget it. I'm purolatoring my phone back to Rogers today because it has a small hardware malfunction: the button that tells the phone whether it's open or not is made of soft plastic and is slightly sticky, which means that when I open the phone it hangs up on whoever's calling. It's been doing it for a while, reliably hanging up on TD's insurance-selling teledrones--which is pretty enjoyable actually--but yesterday when it hung up on Jason I decided, fuck it.

It doesn't do it all the time, though. Certainly not when Rogers personnel are looking at it.

( Read more... )

I watched my first full episode of Veronica Mars last night, mostly because I've heard it touted as "the new Buffy." It's not. It's nothing like Buffy, save that the heroine is blonde. And a heroine.

It's much more like the new Smallville, if you made Smallville all about Chloe and took out the Kryptonite mutants. These two changes would improve Smallville greatly, of course, but that's not the point.

The point is: why does a show have to be "the new" anything? During Veronica, in between the thirty-two replays of the Dairy Queen Moolatte commercial about Muffin the dead cat (and I can't think of much that would make a Moolatte less appetizing than watching a man orally grope, horselike, for a straw that's just out of reach) CTV showed commercials for Ghost Whisperer, a show featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt helping restless ghosts return the overdue library books they never returned in life. Simultaneously, then: the new Medium and the new low.

I never get tired of "medium" puns.

( Read more... )

People in Edmonton are frickin' crazy, I often say.

I run into this on a professional basis far more than I do on a personal one. So it's possible that on an interpersonal level, Edmontonians are the same as anyone, and it's only at their jobs that they lose their damn minds. But somehow I doubt it.

I have run into a lot of instances where Edmontonians seem to slip a cog when they sit down at their desks, and here's today's.

At work we strongly prefer art be sent to us in vector format. Preferably Illustrator, though I'll take CorelDraw, and I've been known to mine through PDFs for things. Illustrator's better for our purposes, as Illustrator art can be edited, resized and colour separated far more easily than Photoshop art. Any professional art person would know this.

Non-professionals send me Photoshop art because they don't know any better. And Illustrator's tricky. I'm good-natured about tracing it out; I'm just happy when it doesn't show up in Word. Or Publisher.

This morning I received two TIFFs from someone in Edmonton who at least claims to be a professional. The front is a haze of blurred text (which is going to look even more hazy and blurry on a shirt) that pretty much had to be in Photoshop. The back was an arrangement of text that shouldn't ever have been created in Photoshop--not by anyone who knows what they're doing.

Still: not a big deal. I do this all day.

I e-mailed him:

I received your files for the --------------; thanks. What fonts did you use for the back? I'll be rebuilding it in Illustrator and it would save me hunting for them.

A normal person would then reply with the names of the fonts. And possibly a query as to what the hell I was talking about, if they didn't happen to understand it. Again, a professional production person SHOULD understand it. However, he sent back:

Why are you rebuilding this file?

It can output and printed in the same fashion as the front.

This was my intent, I do not see a need to rebuild.

We ship tiffs often for t-shirt art and they are not rebuilt.

Do you need higher resolution?

Let me know.

Why do I care what you do often, dude? Does it matter that you make the same mistake a lot? --And it appears that the font choice is a secret. Fine: I flipped through my Large Binder Of Fonts (something ATM Deluxe on OS 9 used to do, that I sorely miss in OS X's Font Book) and determined that they were Eviscerate and GenXCrumble. In the interests of explaining myself, I replied:

I need a vectored EPS. Otherwise the image will halftone, which we really try to avoid. That's why I rebuild bitmap images in Illustrator. (Obviously that isn't possible for the front.)

At the time I sent the message, I was already halfway through the rebuild, but diplomacy prevented me from adding "I found the fonts on my own and am already halfway through it. Thanks for the help, dipstick."

Said dipstick wrote back:

Seeing that it is all a solid black output, how much 1/2 toning will take place?

I would rather not rebuild, and the client would like to avoid being charged for it.

Okay, for one thing, the fonts are still apparently a closely-guarded secret. Second, I certainly don't want HIM to rebuild it, and who said anything about a charge? Third, why do I have to persuade someone who does not print shirts that I know how shirts are printed?

Since I'd finished the trace and I don't need anything from this idiot anymore, happily I am free to not reply to his e-mail at all.

I deal with a lot of art-monkeys at our various suppliers. Sometimes they want me to send them files in Freehand 5 or as a 300 dpi JPEG or something, and when that happens I send that. I don't dig in my heels and argue with them about how they do their jobs, and demand that they explain to me why they use the software they use. (Unless it's mister_sable and his spot-colour-ignoring, no-same-colour-selecting clearly-inferior CorelDraw.) After all, maybe they know something I don't! Besides, I try to be professional.

And I don't live in Edmonton.

Ring ring.

"Discount Travel Warehouse, Jennifer speaking, how may I help you?"

Hi, I'm looking to see if my replacement e-tickets are in. My phone number's ---.

(pause) "Okay, I'm showing here that one of your party called the airline directly to change the flight? Which takes it out of our hands. The airline has to e-mail the tickets, but I'm not showing that they've come in yet."

We didn't call the airline. We wouldn't know who to talk to. But the e-mailing doesn't fit with what I've been told. The last person I talked to was Cheryl, who ordered new tickets on July 4, and said that the airline would be couriering them, which generally takes about 24 hours. So I've been calling to find out if they've arrived.

But we didn't change the flight in the first place. You called one of my group over a month ago and asked if the flight could be changed--the original flight was cancelled or something, I don't know--and he agreed. You told him you'd call him back, which never happened. So I've been following up this past two weeks.

"They're digital tickets, they come over e-mail. But I don't see that they've arrived. I'll have to look into this. Are you at home right now?"

No, I'm at work. My work number should be in your file.

"I'd better take it anyway."

It's ---.

"I'll call you back."

[EDIT] Jennifer called me back. Which right there is Nature's Most Perfect Miracle.

"I'm having... trouble with the airline, and I thought I'd keep you abreast of the situation. I'm supposed to be able to log into their website and retrieve the reservation with the confirmation code, but it's not working. They say it doesn't work if you have antivirus or spam blocker on your computer."

Oh, so they say it's not working because you have antivirus protection on YOUR machine.

"Right. I mean, of course we do."

Is it something I could try? I'm on a Mac. I don't have antivirus protection. There are no Mac viruses.

"Oh! Yes, let me walk you through it..."

I get 'An error has occurred. Please see the explanation below for more information.'

"Yes, that's the same error."

Well, it isn't because of any virus protection. I'd say they're lying to you.

"I'll call them again and call you back."

Half an hour passes. She calls back.

"Okay, NOW they say it's because we're in CANADA. I've never SEEN this before. But the reservation manager's e-mailed me a text confirmation."

But we got e-tickets before, for the Las Vegas flight.

"That was through Fun Sun Travel. This is directly from America West."

Okay. Really what it comes down to is: when we show up at the America West gate, are they going to know who we are?

"Yes. You won't be able to do curb-check, but you wouldn't be able to on an international flight anyway--"

I don't know what that is.

"It's when you check in over the web. You would have to stand in line and tag your luggage."

That's fine.

"I can forward you the e-mail from America West. What e-mail address should I send it to?"

I spell it out.

Okay, I got it.

"Print that out and take it with you, that will get you through the gate. Please call back if you have any other questions or problems."

If I have any other problems, it'll be because I'm stuck at the airport. It'd be a bit late then.

"Well. Give us a call anyway."

I already knew what I was getting Lisa for her birfday: This. Since her birthday is Monday, July 18, and we'll be spending most of that day on airplanes, I decided to buy it early.

( A checkered reputation )

While I waited, I attempted to check the balance on my cellphone. Ten minutes of fevered shouting into the ass end of my handset only cemented my resolve to change providers as soon as we get back. My little five-year-old monochrome Nokia has stubbornly refused to die, but Fido's pay-as-you-go service has gone straight down the shitter since Rogers bought Fido.

The new voice-automated system isn't even the worst part of it. People who phone me get loooooong silences before they hear ringing; Dad got that yesterday. Sometimes they never hear ringing, and they get a garbled version of my voicemail. Often they get nothing. Lisa says that she gets something different every time she calls. And my outgoing calls often don't go through either.

I was loath to change my cellphone number since it's my only phone number, but it doesn't help anyone to have a phone at which nobody can contact me.

Strangely, Rogers looks like the best bet. Bell and Virgin are pretty new, and the more I can avoid giving any money to Telus, the happier I am. Lisa's been on Rogers pay-as-you-go since before she moved, and she likes their service fine.

Also: spanky MuchMusic flip phones. I've always wanted a flip phone, as it's the ideal combination of smallness in my pocket, largeness wrapped around my head, and not dialing random numbers when the keypad-lock fails, but they've always been out of fashion whenever I bought a cellphone. No longer! No longer indeed.