Here in North America, we eat our politicians raw, with a bit of sauce on the side. Doesn’t matter what level of government, or what the stripe, we know far too much about them before, during and after the electoral process. Pity it doesn’t stop my neighbours from electing idiots to powerful positions, but that’s for another time.
posted in politics | Comments Off on The horses are in the starting gates | 269 words
I guess I’d not paid enough attention. While in the hardware store last evening, I decided to replace the electrical plug that was mangled in a recent industrial/agricultural/domestic accident. Given that the plugs were in bins right beside me, colour-coded (if black and yellow can be considered as sufficient choices) and priced within my budget, I grabbed a pair of generic plugs (rather than sockets) and headed to the checkout. The scanned price was higher than I’d remembered, but the girl assured me that people often mixed up the contents of the bins. I now owned two 20 Amp connectors, suitable for use by the amateur home repairman.
posted in technology | Comments Off on Just a simple plug | 309 words
“He jests at scars that never felt a wound”. Wait, that must be me. Back when I memorized the line during a high school English class (actually, it took more than one class, because the whole text was of low relevance to me in those halcyon times), I didn’t realize that it would finally be useful, four decades later. Today the news made it all clear.
posted in computing | Comments Off on An outage by any other name would smell as sweet | 254 words
There are certain events that will enter into our cultural baggage. The moments that we will drag out for years (a lifetime) to come. Last night, for better or worse, will be one of them.
posted in media, travel | Comments Off on A night for the history book | 359 words
I should know better, at my age. There are no real Boxing Day bargains, especially when the prices are published for all to see. For days now, the intrepid shoppers have been planning their strategies, armed with fast cars and cell phones. I am no more than a witness without much money.
posted in economy, Wx | Comments Off on Fear of a stampede | 515 words
Soon. Soon the city of Quebec will celebrate its 400th birthday. The oldest continuously settled (by Europeans) city in North America, if we don’t quibble over the revisionist history of Jamestown. A capital of a region. A great city, ready to party likes it’s been four centuries, already.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Objects may be closer than they appear | 169 words
Today was a pretty ordinary day for life in this new century. The day began with a videoconference over IP that linked the nine English school boards up. For the first time ever. I guess nobody felt the need to do such a thing before, because it didn’t involve any new toys, and it didn’t require anyone to spend hours in setup. It just worked. The one odd note was that while I was linking our conference room, someone in the Montreal room said “I know you; we used to work together about twenty years ago”. Which we had. The medium, not the message, because people have been running into people for a long time now; just not by videoconference. Those innovative souls at Skype today made all outgoing phone calls in North America (Skpye calls, not ALL calls) free until next year. Financially very innovative; a company that had almost free stuff making it even more almost free. I can feel the fearful shivers of Bell from here… So, I called my sister just to talk using my computer. Again, the medium, not the message. I do talk to most of my sisters from time to time; the others are around, somewhere, just not in the same communication space as me. Maybe this even more free dimension will have an effect there, too. I guess that I’ll just have to become more verbal/more verbose. Too many tools and not enough incentives. Too many ways and means and not enough projects. I still don’t videoconference with friends and family, although there’s enough hardware around that I’m running out of reasons.
posted in technology | Comments Off on The medium not the message | 270 words
Today I took the time to install “Ruby On Rails” which has received a lot of press recently in the web development circles I pretend to frequent. After following a number of recipe pages and creating another MySQL instance, something ran… I guess the next problem will be to figure out what I did. It appears that the Ruby server has to be running for any of it to work, so until I find the script again all is safe. The ease with which the stuff ran is usually inversely proportional (another of those terms I learned in university) to something else. How clear and limpid are the waters in the data pool.
posted in computing | Comments Off on Mysterious codes | 188 words
