Yesterday was a very productive day. I’m not talking I got in a lot of programming productive, I’m not talking I reoganized my room and cleaned it productive, I’m not even talking I spent 10 hours jobhunting and got a job productive. I’m talking about making an impact on the whole damn planet productive.

(I actually type this post up yesterday when it was all still fresh but stupid Blogger—yeah you heard my Blogger, I know you’re watching Big Brother ;D—wiped out the whole thing when I pressed the wrong key and I lost it all. Since it was really late I was in no mood to retype the whole thing so I decided I’d just do it again today which truned out to be a good idea.)

First of all, I fixed a leak in the kitchen sink, I pulled out all the crap under the sink, cleaned it out, and killed the mold—by yelling at it and kicking it square in the n’uts. Next, my mother had asked for some help with her baked goods. She had made some "candies"—if you can use such a provincial and pedestrian term to label the things my mother makes—for some people and wanted some help preparing them. So I separated, cupped, and wrapped a few dozen of those things which has has yet to name. Finally I sorted, organized, and entered a bunch of tapes.

Next came a big part of the day. Last week, Rockstargames released Grand Theft Auto 2 for free as a download just in time for Christmas. It has been extremely difficult to get it but unlike almost everyone else in the world, I managed to get it yesterday. I wanted to help out but there’s a clause on the download page saying not to mirror it. After some study I decided that the block was their original intention but things have changed sufficiently since then that they would not doubt appreciate a little help, after all there’s plenty of mirrors of GTA1. I decided to help spread the copy I got to some people. I created a torrent and put in my eMule share. Before long I had a dozen people downloading it from me in eMule. Once it was sufficiently uploaded to those people, I pulled the plug. As for BitTorrent, I got a few bites and finished it up for them before pulling out. I checked today and found that they are already spreading on their own. I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, I mean it IS the Internet. I’ve seen a couple of other sources that are just getting off the ground, but I guess I may be solely responsible for originally helping to releive the stress on R* servers and helping them spread this, especially since yesterday morning when I checked, the file was nowhere to be seen anywhere until after I let the cat out of the bag. I was a little worried about the clause but I figure, if they were harvesting email addresses, then they are in trouble and it’s not big deal since they are not getting any addresses anyway because it doesn’t work. If they are NOT harvesting, then I help to prevent, or rather reduce people’s initial reactions of gratitude from turning to resentment. I did it for Rockstargame’s own good as much as anyone else’s.

Later last night, I contributed a bunch of entries to TVTome; entries that I was particularly proud of for their astuteness. I was particularlly proud of one contribution. A person had asked in the forums about a song that was played in an episode of Malcolm in the Middle. A second person also wanted to know, and I myself was anxious to find out since the song was really great. I had already tried to find out but came up empty. Seeing that others also wanted to know, I checked again and this time I got a hit. I found out that it is called Holla! by the Baha Men. I posted the answer in the forum for them and in the main page. I got a copy of the song but having a need to sing along—I love fast music—I looked for lyrics. Unfotunately, I found that there was not a single place on the whole Internet that contained the lyrics for the song. I resisted a bit but quickly gave in to temptation and took it upon myself to transcribe the lyrics. A surprisingly short time later I had the complete lyrics—although I still had a few little changes to make. I then submitted them to several places. Yes, if you find lyrics to Baha Men’s Holla!, then it’s 99.99999999999999999% likely that it’s mine. 😀

Today was also very productive. My mother needed a few things so we went to some places this afternoon. We looked everywhere for some Chia Cat Grass but could not find ANY Chia product anywhere, let alone the newer Cat Grass. Luckily we found a little planter of already grown cat grass at Loblaws. The best part of today however was that there were ads for two deep fryers. There was a Rival deep fryer at $40 and a Moulinex deep fryer at $40. Now you might say, go with the Moulinex, it’s a known name and you would normally be true. This time however is no different, in fact the Rival is regular price whereas the Moulinex is half price, it’s normally $80, the average price for a deep fryer ($80-$90). The choice was clear. There was however a little snag. At the register it rang up as $80. My mother pointed it out in the flyer to which the cashier pointed out the "1 Day Only Sale: Dec.26" header which was practically unreadable since it wasn’t even text, but rather a big graphic with the "1" so big and red that it blends into the background so that you cannot even see it. Dejected, we left to my surprise since my mother almost never gives up like that; I guess she must have been anxious to find the cat grass. Things turned around in the car though when I mentioned that the price tag on the shelf still says $40. We went back and checked. Sure enough the price tag that was affixed to the little plastic thing stuck on the shelf not only said "Moulinex deep fryer: 1/2 price: $40", but it also said "sale ends Dec.31". If that wasn’t great enough, there was another tag beneath, on the shelf itself that said the exact same thing. I was busting; we were right so much so that I wanted to really stick it to them—especially the cashier who had been so smug—and rub it in. We took the deep fryer to the customer service desk to be rung up, the woman there got $80, my mother took her to see the shelf, they came back and she rung it up for $40 but not before tearing both tags off of the shelf, a little peaved. If we had managed to get the deep fryer for $40 two days ago it would have been nice enough and we would have been happy, but knowing that we got such a great deal after the sale when we shouldn’t have, and that we were right, and that they were wrong, and that they practically cheated with their unreadable flyer, and that we conquered, it just made it so much more sweet.

I also learned something about myself. At the end of the day I was so happy that I figured out that it’s not what I’m doing specifically that makes me happy as long as I’m being productive, creative, and accomplishing something worthwhile.

Yes, a very productive two days. We got some things, I learned some things, I impacted the whole world.

I was testing my Internet connection just now and ended up at a Microsoft mouse web page. It was about their horizontal scroll technology. Basically it is a mouse with a scoll wheel where the scroll wheel can be pushed left and right to scroll horizontally as well as scrolling vertically by rolling the wheel. I watched a little demo for it and was bemused by their actions.

Horizontal scroll wheel movement is not new. In fact many years ago I saw an ad for a mouse that actually had TWO scroll wheels in it; one to scroll vertically and one to scroll horizontally. Unfortunately the horizontal scroll wheel was mounted vertically beside—and shifted slightly down from—the other one.

The thing that I cannot figure out is why they keep using wheels. If people want to be able to scroll in all directions with their mouse then why does someone not step up and take the wheel out altogether and replace it with a small trackball? That would be one heck of a useful input device; A MOUSE WITH A BUILT IN TRACKBALL. You could then do all kinds of crazy things. Of course there is always the fact that with a trackball it is difficult to scroll perfectly in line like it is hard to move the mouse perfectly to the left or up or down or to the right. I’m sure however that with the right programming this would not be a problem and that there are in fact some of these already out there. However, Logitech needs to get around to doing it to get others to see the light.

I have been lite light—hehe—on the computer recently. The past week or so I have been busy with a bunch of stuff that has kept me away from the computer and the Internet and thus news—although I don’t care for news anyway. Today however I was getting ready to do some work but in a split second decided to check a news site for the heck of it and was taken aback with what I saw. I read that Suprnova—and several others—had been indefinitely closed and could not believe my eyes. I was shocked the same way I was when Sharereactor died. The magnitude of the news was overwhelming. This in itself however was not a problem, well at least not in terms of killing my night. The problem was that it fired up my need for information and quickly spawned over a couple of dozen browser windows. Two hours later I had finally managed to close all the browsers—of course I had to read the information in it first—and was left with a few things.

First of all I was left with a yearning to do what Prince Roy Bates of Sealand did and find an abandoned island, claim it as my own, and create a new country. Then again I’m too busy and too lazy to do all the work that would no doubt be needed to create a nation, but I suppose I could call it a “project”.

Second, I was left with feeling of loss due to the closings of so many big hitters in the world of Internet piracy. Like many others who cannot afford to purchase things I rely on bootleg media which means finding them through these sites. Fortunately I did not panic like so many of the amateurs do. I have been around long enough to understand that if a desirable and successful technology goes down, a new and better one will soon pop up to take it’s place. I have seen piracy take many, many forms over the years and am not concerned.

When Napster died, many people freaked out but then eDonkey came along and people said woo. Then Sharereactor came along and people said woo hoo. Then Sharereactor died and people freaked out again. Next BitTorrent came out and people said HUH!? This is useless. Then Suprnova came around and people said HOLY COW! A few more torrent sites came along and people said this is awesome! Now that Suprnova and several of those torrent sites died people are again freaking out. So what are we to do? Nothing, just sit tight and hope that nothing—or rather not too many—big things that we really want gets released until the next alternative comes along.

Finally I was left with a feeling of sadness and anger. Sadness because I actually—choose to—feel a little bad for those greedy bastards like the MPAA and RIAA because when you look at the above paragraphs you realize that they are fighting a losing war. They keep hitting back and making a little progress but in the end the only win little battles but the war always stays in favor of the pirates by the very nature of the fight and the people on the two sides. The anger I felt was because of the timing. After looking through hundreds of posts by many dozens of people it seems that I am the only person who had any thoughts about how this recent strike is happening during the holidays/Christmas. It makes sense that they would want to shut them down to force people to go out and buy Christmas gifts instead of burning CDs of stuff but it also shows how greedy and heartless they are. Instead of being kind during the holidays they attack.

Nobody can say that they didn’t see any of this coming and yet we are all surprised when it happens nonetheless… interesting.

A few weeks ago I put up half a dozen ads around campus. They are for tutoring and I list about 20 courses that I can teach in Computer Science, Psychology, and Math. I waited paitiently for the first requests but nothing came. After almost three weeks, I got my first bite. Someone called asking for help with the 3rd (and final) CS305 assignment. After talking with him a bit about what exactly he needs help with I learned that he wanted me to write the whole thing for him, not just help him with it but do the entire thing myself and hand it to him so that he can hand it in. Obviously this is not good, I cannot do that on moral reasons but more importantly I cannot do it because I do not have access to the UNIX/Solaris machines in the computer labs on which the assignment must run. And, of course I cannot install UNIX on my own machine at home because it would require waaay too much work and time just to set up and get everything running, the assignment deadline would pass twice over before I could even start.

Anyway, I got a second bite a little later. This second person also wants help with the 3rd CS305 assignment. I’m currently reading through the relevant chapter in the text book to review the section since I took that course about five years ago. I doubt I will be able to help him though. I can help teach concepts for tests and stuff but assignments are not easy to help with.

No this isn’t about racist currency. It’s about cheapness and lies.
Recently Tim Hortons—Canada’s answer to Starbucks—began running a campaign advertising a new coin. Why would a coffee franchise advertise a coin? Because Tim Hortons designed the coin and got it passed as national legal tender and is now in circulation. The big deal about this coin is that it is according to the ads “the world’s first color coin”. It is a 25 cent piece (a quarter) that looks a lot like a previous quarter issued. It consists of a large maple leaf (surprise, surprise) with a banner below it with the word remember in both English and French. The center of the maple leaf is blocked out with a small circle within which is a red poppy outlined in black with a black center.

When I first heard about this I first thought “cool, a color coin” followed shortly by “what took so long?! it should be really easy to color the metal allowing all kinds of cool color coins” Then there was the whole issue about how Canada was the first to issue a color coin. That would normally be a reason for national pride (for those who are into that sort of thing), and no doubt it did fill some with a warm glow.

Unfortunately that glow was short lived. Upon closer inspection it turns out that the coin is not in fact color but rather colorED. That is, the red and black are merely paint. What’s worse is that the poppy is barely even engraved at all, there is a very light outline of the poppy in the smooth circle while it is the paint that makes it recognizable at all.

Naturally this is causing quite a bit of a stir. First of all it obviously does not count as a color coin and thus Canada’s status as the first is stripped. Second it is quite an embarrassment, as Jimmy would say I mean come on! Finally and arguably most importantly, it is like a slap in the face to the very veterans whom it is supposed to honor. They are up in arms about this and are trying to nag to whomever they can to complain and have this dealt with… but how? What could make up for this enormous faux pas?

Bah! Canada and Tim Hortons are in a lot of hot water now. On the bright side they can now make a whole bunch of coffee.

Three minutes ago I was sitting on the bus. For the second time this month I heard young people talking about what constitutes sex. Both times they were talking about whether or not anal sex counts as sex and in both cases the results came back the same, the girls decided it did not count as sex and the guys were happy either way.

Anal sex is not the only intimate physical act who’s status is in question; President of the United States of America William Jefferson Clinton’s libido and lack of will power set a problematic precedent. Oral sex is now even less often considered sex than anal sex is and thanks to its ease and the fact that it requires less time, privacy, and preparation it is even less so than ever.

It is interesting that these people who question whether an activity is sex or not seem to miss the fact that the word sex is part of the name. It sounds like a case of selective blindness to me, they only see what they want, what allows them to do what they want without conflict.

Some even go so far as to look up the word sex in the dictionary. They grab a dictionary, flip to SEX, are then directed to COPULATE, COITUS, or any number of synonyms, and invariably end up at INTERCOURSE. Once there, they are presented with a definition describing penis-in-vagina thrusting. They then conclude that because the activity in question is not penis-in-vagina thrusting, it is not intercourse, and therefore not sex. That’s quite a feat of logic and reasoning for someone who no doubt is not all that intelligent. Had they been intelligent, they would have realized that the dictionary started by Merriam Webster, Encyclopedia Britannica, or whom have you was created hundreds of years ago. Back then penis-in-vagina was the only kind of sex there was; that’s why that is the definition given. Other forms of sex were rare, private, and in fact secret at best. (If one has doubt about this, then one should do a little research on the Marquis de Sade.) If the dictionary founder had been informed of these other forms of sex where other body parts are inserted into other body parts, then they would no doubt first have been horrified and disgusted (presumably), and then when told that there are more than just one person in the world doing them would have expanded the definition to include them all.

If one has a doubt on if an activity is sex or not and is honestly interested in the answer rather than merely trying to justify messing around without guilt then it is easier to determine than one would be led to believe. If you can answer yes to more than one of these factors then the activity is indeed sex:

1. Are genitals involved?
2. Is there some sort of pleasure?
3. Is there some sort of orgasm?
4. Is there more physical rubbing than what would occur in a crowd or bus?
5. Is there nudity involved?
6. Is it private?
7. Are there bodily fluids/solids?

On top of this ask yourself, would you do this activity with your mother/father? sibling? son/daughter? grandparent? a random stranger? etc? If so, then either it is probably not really sex, or you are one sick s.o.b. 😀

I just saw a news article about a movement to convert remembrance Day (Memorial Day in America) to a national holiday. This came at a most interesting time because just this week I have been thinking the opposite, that they should get rid of it altogether. I mean what, are we supposed to observe it for all eternity?

Now before you infuriatingly yell at me let me explain. I believe that most if not all holidays and observances should be treated like food, they should be given expiry dates; here’s why.

There is a push now to make November 11th a full holiday which I assume means that nobody goes to work or school that day. November 11th commemorates an event that happened over 50 years ago. Recently September 11th has become notorious and is likely to draw similar efforts. There are also a couple of dozen other national and countless municipal holidays and observances. As time goes by there will no doubt be more events that will compel new holidays and if this keeps up one day we will wake up to find that not only are we not going to work or school that day but we haven’t for as long as we can remember. What I’m trying to say is that eventually the calendar which has a mere 365 days a year will be packed full of holidays and observances.

The above prediction is why I propose that when a new holiday is created, as part of the specifics an expiration date be specified. This would mean that it would be officially observed for a given amount of time after which it will be rescinded. Once it has expired it can continue to be observed privately although it would no longer qualify for holiday benefits like staying home.

Doing this would not only keep the calendar free from clutter but would also allow people to focus on contemporary issues and events. If we dwell on the past forever than we will start to lose sight of the present and future.

I understand that there are a few holidays that are excruciatingly special and ancient like Christmas. I also understand that getting rid of it would upset many people because then they would be left with one less day to receive presents. And even though technically it does not have any reason to be exempt, I’m sure it would have enough support to become so. You might think it would be acceptable to do this with a few select holidays but then we would eventually be in the same boat. Once enough events that are significant enough have occurred, we would have a calendar filled with exempt holidays. You could give Christmas a longer expiry date.

In case you were thinking that this “problem” that I have described is ludicrous and would not occur for many hundreds or even thousands of years, you have to stop and think a little bit. Shortsightedness is a deadly mistake. In the same news segment as the Remembrance Day piece was piece about how there is an eight nation report on how the polar ice caps are melting a LOT faster than anyone had ever anticipated. What’s worse is that we will not be able to repair the damage in time. It turns out that human beings have successfully managed to destroy the planet in less than 75 years. How? Shortsightedness. People thought “Meh, why should I inconvenience myself? The garbage won’t pile up too much for a long time, the ozone will survive a long time, the fuel will last a long time.

A long time is never as long as you think, hope, want, or need.

I watched The Haunting again this weekend. I originally watched it the way I watch most movies, on video. This time I watched it on television, TBS to be specific. I was extremely, but not surprisingly disappointed. They cut out a lot of it. They cut out several parts that involved violence including the part where Luke’s head gets bitten off by the giant lion’s-head fireplace flue and rolls onto the floor.

Of course as I said this was not surprising because as anyone who has watched TBS knows that it is a VERY sanitized network. They cut—or at the very least clean—any and all violence, nudity, course language, sexuality, and mature subject matter; you know, the things networks put in the warnings after commercials.

This however was not the worst/stupidest offence that TBS has committed. A while back they actually had the audacity to air Striptease. Striptease?! Really? I mean come one, would the Disney Channel air Pulp Fiction? No. There’s a reason that they wouldn’t air it, because it is not appropriate subject matter for their network. TBS however does not seem to understand that simple concept, well, either that or they are just bloody greedy and want to air anything they can. I really cannot understand what would posses someone to air an R rated movie on a channel where they do not even allow mildly course language. When you think about it however, you will realize that this occurs on TBS all of the time, they cut out a whole heck of a lot, how else do they manage to do 5+ minute commercial breaks? As you would expect the resulting movie ends up being a terrible amalgam of disjoint scenes and looking like it was made by some lobotomized cutter. I suppose nobody complained about them airing Striptease because later they got the balls—pun intended—to start airing Sex and the City. *I am rolling my eyes so hard right now I think I may now be permanently cross-eyed.*

TBS may be the worst but is far from the only network to do this. Last night I watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High on CityTV and was happy to see the classic pool scene. ;D It had it again on City today but this time the pool scene (and all nude scenes) were cut to crap, and by that I mean completely cut out; without the intervening scene, there was quite a disconnect between the now-adjacent scenes. Not only that but last night all the language and everything else was intact, but today they were all gone. What is the purpose of this? Give the adults the full monty so to speak at night, then present a watered down version for the children to enjoy during the day? Maybe it’s just me but that seems very bizarre. If some of it is not appropriate for children, then none of it is. If it’s an adult themed movie or show, then cutting it up will just piss off the grown ups.

There’s a few other examples that I may add at a later date, but for now my blood is boiling just thinking about these stupid people.

Networks should pick what they want to be and stick to that instead of taking stuff that doesn’t fit into their model and chop it bits until it does because what’s left will be worthless, trash, garbage, crap, *%!@$*#. Okay, I’m getting too mad at this point, that’s enough for now.