Post your router recommendations here

I am looking into buying a router for the purpose of connecting two computers to my (Rogers) cable modem at the same time. I intend to connect them by ethernet, not wi-fi. I have no objection to the router being wi-fi capable, but I'd like the option of disabling its wi-fi so I don't have to worry about securing a wi-fi network that I don't even need. I don't anticipate needing to connect more than two computers at once.

I'm asking about routers because that's what the internet tells me I need to connect two computers to the cable modem at once, but if you know of another, better way to do it, please let me know.

Also, if there's a particular router that you recommend not using, I'd appreciate knowing that as well.

Anonymous comments welcome.

Poll: how old were you when you first learned about abortion?

How old were you when you first learned that abortion is a thing that exists, and in what context did you learn about it?

I'm asking because I've heard stories of people (especially, but not limited to, catholic school teachers), both in the present day and when my peers were kids, lecturing kids about the evils of abortion when the kids were at an age when I myself hadn't yet even heard of abortion, and I find myself wondering if these lectures would end up teaching the kids that it's even an option.

I don't remember exactly when I first learned about it.  I know it wasn't specifically mentioned in the sex ed I received from my parents or my schools, and I can extrapolate from what I know of my learning curve that it wasn't in my sex ed book.

I learned how pregnancy happens around the age of 8 or 9, I reached menarche at 10, and I learned (on a theoretical level, fortunately) that rape exists at 10 as well.  So, starting at the age of 10, I had a quietly ever-present fear of being forced to gestate my rapist's baby, and hadn't the slightest clue that pregnancies could be terminated.  (I was thinking solely in terms of a rapist because I was still years away from being able to even imagine wanting to have sex voluntarily, even in a distant and hypothetical future.)

Several years later, I read something (I don't remember if it was an article or a work of fiction) where a girl who was pregnant thought that if she skipped rope for hours and hours, she'd have a miscarriage.  (I don't remember if she actually tried it or if it actually worked.)  This was my first exposure to the idea that miscarriage could be induced.  I was relieved to learn that such a thing might be remotely possible, and started brainstorming other ways to force myself to miscarry so I wouldn't have to gestate my rapist's baby.  I considered the possibility of simply stopping eating and drinking, thinking that if it didn't cause a miscarriage it would at least kill me, and, by extension, also gave some thought to suicide as a solution.  I was probably under the age of 16 when this happened, because I don't remember looking up ways to induce miscarriage on the internet and I'm pretty sure I would have if I'd had internet access at the time.

I became aware of the existence of abortion, as a medical procedure, sometime before the end of high school.  Weirdly, I don't remember any single moment of relief at the realization that you can just go somewhere and get it done professionally. There was a time when I knew it existed but didn't know the details of the laws governing its accessibility (I remember mentally debating whether it would be more effective to tell the doctor that I would commit suicide if I couldn't have an abortion or to actually attempt suicide, completely unaware that you don't need to convince them of that particular level of desperation) but I figured it out by the time I was in university.

All of which is to say that if, in middle school or early high school, someone had lectured me about the evils of abortion, they would have been teaching me that it is possible to end a pregnancy and that it is possible to do so with a proper medical procedure.  And if someone had taken my child or teenage self to an abortion clinic to protest, they would have taught me "This is where you can go to get an abortion."  It's likely this information is more accessible to the youth of today, but some of the stories I heard that inspired this post were about people who were older than me, who surely would have learned a thing or two about how to get an abortion if lectured on the evils of doing so in Grade 6.

What about you?  When and how did you learn that abortion exists?  If people had lectured your young teenage self on the evils of abortion, would they have been teaching you about its existence?

Teach me about self-cleaning ovens

I only recently noticed (after living here for five years) that my oven is self-cleaning.  And just the other day I spilled a significant amount of food in it (turns out "bake uncovered" doesn't mean "bake covered"!)  So I'm considering using the self-cleaning feature.

Anything I should know?  I know that it heats the oven up really hot until the spilled food apparently just flakes right off or something.  Do I need to supervise it?  Does it get smelly?  Any does or don'ts?

Teach me how to make my taskbar behave

I'm using Windows 7, and I have a few of my most commonly-used programs "pinned" to my taskbar, just to the right of the Start button.

Previously, when I'd open one of these programs, it the pinned icon would disappear.  It would kind of turn into the active taskbar button.

However, this hasn't been happening lately.  Now, the icons continue to appear next to the start button in addition to the taskbar buttons.

Here's a screenshot of my taskbar:

I have Firefox, Sims and iTunes open, and the buttons for those programs appear to the right of the pinned icons.  Previously, the pinned icons would have turned into buttons, so the icons and the buttons would not both have been present at once.

How do I make it go back to the way it was before, or what can I google to find it out?  What's the proper name of this icons turning into buttons phenomenon?

Post your Sitemeter alternatives here

My Sitemeter hasn't been working for weeks, my email to them hasn't been answered, and I can't find any status information.  So I've decided it's time for an alternative.

I'm looking for not just a hit counter, but something that gives me link and search engine referrals.  Anyone have any recommendations?

Tell me about PC Financial

I'm considering switching to PC Financial. Does anyone have any first-hand experience with them? Pros and cons? Reasons not to switch? Anonymous comments welcome. Comments from people monitoring for social media mentions of PC Financial will be interpreted as reasons not to switch.

Teach me about the Canadian Forces drug plan

Reading this article, the following description of a drug program the Canadian Forces is considering cutting struck me as odd:

Within government, officials have expressed concern for years about the rising cost of the wildly popular Viagra program, which saw members limited to six of the little blue pills a month — at a cost of between $15 and $22 per pill.

The article gives the impression that the Canadian Forces have a Viagra program that is separate from their ordinary drug plan.  Is this actually the case, or are the numbers quoted above just what happens when you apply the ordinary drug plan to Viagra?

In any case, I think it's inappropriate for Viagra (or any other drug) to get special treatment.  It shouldn't have a special program, it shouldn't be specifically cut back.  Choices of specific medications should be between doctor and patient, and drug plans should cover what the doctor prescribes.  To prioritize or pick on specific drugs because they make someone's inner 12-year-old snicker makes you no better than Arizona. 

Mnemonic wanted

Does anyone know a mnemonic for correctly identifying when to use "consist of" and when to use "consist in"?

I know the theoretical difference between the two.  "Consist of" is "to be made up of"; "consist in" is "to have as its main or essential part".  The problem is that every single time I try to apply that logic to a sentence, including the sentences used by credible reference books as examples for "consist in", my logic comes up with "the meaning there is clearly "to be made up of", therefore the correct answer is "consist of."

Anyone know any tricks for landing on the right answer when you're at a philosophical impasse?

Teach me about the internal logic of Catholic school dress codes

Thursday was a day to break records and rules. With the temperature in the GTA within a smidgen of an all-time high, students at St. Mary Catholic Secondary School were excited to wear shorts on one of the few days of the year they could ditch their uniforms.

But around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, vice-principal Paul Perron’s voice crackled from the speakers: no shorts, no khakis and no ankle socks on Thursday.

The article focuses on the shorts ban and the hypocrisy and asshattery of banning shorts on a civvies day when it's going to be hot out, but I'm more interested in why on earth they'd ban khakis and ankle socks. Within the school's internal logic, what on earth would their reason be for banning khakis or ankle socks?

Khakis are conservative, non-trendy long pants that are maybe a shade dressier than jeans, and in fact many schools and other organizations include khakis as part of their uniforms. I'm not even sure if teenagers today would wear khakis unless they're trying to dress more grownup. (They were trendy when I was a teenager, but now even my peers don't wear them that much and I feel a bit frumpy and out of it when I wear them.)

The kind of socks being worn are utterly irrelevant if you're already wearing long pants (which they must be, given the prohibition on shorts), so I cannot fathom why the administration even thought of this.

I'm not saying the shorts ban is reasonable, but it's not an uncommon rule for a dress code so, apart from the act of declaring a civvies day and then giving it a dress code, it doesn't particularly surprise me. But the ban on khakis and ankle socks completely baffles me and I can't even begin to speculate what their intention is. Any ideas?

Question for people outside of Canada

Does the URL in your address bar appear as impstrump.blogspot.com or impstrump.blogspot.ca? Lately, blogspot.com seems to be redirecting to blogspot.ca, and I'm not sure if it's because my blog's location settings are set for Canada or because my ISP is located in Canada (in other words, because I'm writing from Canada or because I'm reading from Canada.)

Does forcing children to give to charity really make them grow up to be charitable?

There's a parenting technique where people force their children to give to charity in an attempt to teach them the value of charity. For example, they might require the kid to put aside a certain portion of their allowance for charitable donations, or they might make a rule that the kid isn't allowed to get presents at their birthday party and instead the guests should make a contribution to a charity.

I wonder if this actually makes the kids grow up to be charitable?

Any attempts my parents made to force me into charitable behaviour just made me resentful. The one with the strongest emotional impact was one time when my parents decided we needed to donate a toy to a xmas toy drive. The toy drive collection was at the credit union, so they drove us and the toy there and then told me and my sister to put the toy in the collection box. All the credit union ladies watched us and went "Awwww!" I had no idea why they were doing this, but it made me feel objectified and humiliated (although I didn't know those words yet.) It also made me wary of any parent-instigated attempts at charitable donations, because I felt (although I couldn't articulate this yet) that my parents actually wanted me to do it so that they could be smug (although I didn't know the word yet) that their children are being charitable. This was also a strong contributing factor to my current practice of only donating anonymously.

I wonder how it worked out for other people. Did your parents try to force you to be charitable? Did it work? Did anything else they did end up actually making your charitable?

Post your facial mask recommendations here

For years, I've been using Bioré's self-heating pore mask. It helps clean my pores, tighten up my wrinkles, encourages any festering cystic acne to come to the surface, and generally makes my skin look and feel better.

But they discontinued it about a year ago. I bought every single box I could find, and now I'm down to my last box.

Can anyone recommend another product that does the same thing?

Causes I would like to get involved in

1. Sufficient and reliable funding for all medical research

Many charity fundraisers are raising money for research into various diseases. Our first thought when we hear this is that it's a good cause. But why is such vital medical research dependent on charity? There should be a better way to make sure that all medical research gets the funding it needs without having to resort to begging or be dependent on the kindness of strangers.

2. Replace property tax with income tax

As I've blogged about before, property tax is silly because it does not directly reflect ability to pay. I know that municipalities use it because that's what the law limits them to, but I think it would serve us all far better if property tax were eliminated and replaced with an income tax at the municipal level.

However, I don't know how to make either of these things happen. Does anyone know of any organizations that are already working on these issues?

Garbage chute poll

Please answer in the comments: which side of the building is your garbage chute on? I welcome multiple answers if you can remember from previous buildings you've lived in as well.

This question came up when I was taking out the garbage today and started pondering why the garbage chute is always on the east side. And I came up with a really good explanation too: the prevailing winds are from the west, so having the chute on the east reduces the incidence of that annoying phenomenon where the wind whistles up the garbage chute.

Then I realized that I don't actually know if the chute is always on the east. I've only lived in two buildings with garbage chutes, both of which had a north-south main hallway. In my old building, the service/freight driveway that garbage trucks would have to use was on the east side of the building (and could not have been positioned any other way. In my current building, it's actually on the west side and there's a bit of a convoluted system to get the garbage from the garbage room to the truck area.

So I'm trying to figure out whether I've spotted a pattern or this is just a coincidence. Please contribute your data points.

Teach me how to burn .avi to DVD

Has anyone out there successfully burned an .avi file to a DVD so it can be played in a DVD player? If so, what exactly did you do? Windows DVD player says it can do it but it doesn't work (it reads the resulting DVD as blank)

The internet has entirely too many suggestions and they're all different, so I'm looking for first-hand experience. Has anyone out there done this successfully?

Let's brainstorm ways to vote effectively while ignorant

The most common reason I hear for people not voting is ignorance. They don't feel familiar enough with the issues or the overall situation, but they aren't about to accept spin or partisan statements at face value. This is actually the reason behind the one time I chose not to vote. The 2000 municipal election happened just weeks after I'd moved to Toronto, and I didn't feel like I had any objective sense of the political environment. If, hypothetically (because I forget what the actual issues were), one candidate said that TTC service is woefully inadequate and needs to be improved regardless of the cost, and another candidate had said that the city was in dire financial straits and we need to cut back on TTC service to survive, I could not have determined which one was true because I'd only been there a couple of weeks and was still excited by the novelty of a subway. Even a thorough reading of the platforms and media coverage wouldn't have led me to be able to make a fully-informed vote.

General social consensus is that everyone should vote. But if you feel like you aren't fully informed, maybe it isn't a good idea. What if you fall for some spin and vote wrong?

So let's brainstorm some ways that people can make good use of their vote if they're currently too ignorant to vote informedly. I have a few ideas, but I'm hoping you guys can help me come up with more.

1. Vote for your #1 issue. What one thing that falls under this level of government's jurisdiction has the greatest impact on you, personally? OR, what one issue that falls under this level of government's jurisdiction to you feel is most important at a societal level? Consider focusing on this issue, reading a variety of comment from a variety of sources until perhaps you feel you can read between the lines on this issue, and either voting for whoever will do the most good in this one area, or against whoever will do the most harm in this one area. Note: I do NOT recommend this approach if you don't have a #1 issue at this level of government and have to kind of stop and try to think of one.

2. Vote in support of someone you care about. Is someone you care about more affected by the outcome of the election than the average citizen? Do they work for, or in a field that falls under the immediate jurisdiction of, this level of government? Are they dependent on a program that falls under this level of government, or affected by the absence of a program that this level of government should be providing? Ask them how they think you should vote. I only recommend this approach if you care enough about this person that you genuinely don't mind putting aside your own needs in favour of theirs. Unless you are closely aligned on all political issues, it's possible that the party they recommend voting for won't be the same as you would have chosen on your own.

3. Vote for an individual candidate you like. Do you find any of the candidates in your riding particularly appealing? Maybe one of them is especially responsive to your questions. Maybe one of them makes you think "THAT's the kind of person we need in public office!" If this is the case, and you don't feel capable of voting on policy, consider voting for the individual. Two caveats for this method: 1) Read the candidate's platform (and, if they've held public office before, voting history) to make sure they're not unacceptable. 2) Try to talk to the other candidates and give them a chance to impress you too, so you don't vote for someone solely on the basis of having being the first to canvass you.

Those are all the ideas I have at the moment. Anyone have any more?

Teach me how to edit my blog template

This template I'm using is several years old, but I haven't been able to find a newer one I like. (Recommendations are welcome in the comments.) In the meantime, I'd like to make the centre column (the beige/tan bit where all the actual content is) wider, ideally a percentage of the browser width rather than fixed pixel width to accommodate a variety of resolutions.

If this is within your skill set, could you have a look at my source code and see which values I need to change?

I've already been playing around with the template code and edited anything that looks promising, but it all made matters worse. Ideas?

Teach me about sunrise times

Look at this chart of sunrise and sunset times in Toronto in December 2010.

The solstice is December 21, with 8h 55m 34s of daylight. Sunrise is at 7:48 AM and sunset is at 4:43 PM.

But then sunrise time keeps getting later. It's 7:49 on December 23, 7:50 on December 25, and 7:51 on December 29. In fact, it takes until January 17 for sunrise time to get back to being earlier than it was on the solstice.

And I just noticed the same goes for the sunset. It's 4:43 on the solstice, but it's earlier than that on the days leading up to the solstice, going as early as 4:40 between December 7 and 11.

Why is this?

Still trying to figure out the proper name for a hodd-d-d-d-d

If you don't know what I mean by a hodd-d-d-d-d, watch Eddie here, starting at about 4:30:



What is that thing actually called?


Update: The always-awesome @TravelMaus tells me that it's a carpet sweeper! I've been trying to figure that out for ages! (It's awfully hard to google when you don't know what it's called)

Teach me how to disinfect (or psychologically decontaminate) apples

I'm on the subway juggling my purse, book, and a number of shopping bags, one of which contains a gorgeous batch of farm-fresh Cortland apples (my very favourite!) from the very last farmer's market day of the year.

The train pulls into my stop, I stand up, and somehow a few of the apples spill out of my bag and start rolling around the subway floor.

Three or four extremely friendly, helpful, and well-intentioned people swoop into action, gather up all the dropped apples, and quickly put them back into my bag before the doors close.

So now my bag of the very last of the very best apples of the year contains some apples that have been on the floor of the subway. I don't want to eat the subway floor apples, but I don't even know which ones they are! (And they've probably all touched now!)

How can I disinfect apples that have been on the subway floor so they're safe to eat and not at all psychologically yucky?