Tattoos

I wonder if anyone IRL has gotten a tattoo of the Dark Mark? There's no reason for a Muggle to perceive it as a cool thing to have a tattoo of, but people do all kinds of weird things.

"You will someday"

Most childfree people have, at one time or another, had the following exchange:

Childfree: "No, I'm not having children, I'm childfree"
Interlocutor: "You will someday."

An idea just to make the whole situation more entertaining: if your interlocutor is of the opposite sex, take it as a threat. Recoil, hide, refuse to be alone with them, etc.

The 10th anniversary of the relationship that has had the greatest effect on my life

Ten years ago, I got my very own internet access for the first time. (Yes, I'm saying the internet has had a greater effect on my life than mi cielito, because without the internet I would never have met mi cielito).

What astounds me in retrospect is how small it all was back then.

The very first thing I did the very first time I dialed up was go to Yahoo (there being no Google at the time) and do a search for Monty Python. I forget how many results I got (a few pages worth), but I know that I managed to read site Yahoo turned up for Monty Python, in its entiretey, within a few weeks. Yes, in a few weeks I had managed to read every single word that was written on the Web about Monty Python.

In the online communities I visited, I read every posting. Every single one. And it was perfectly acceptable to email just anyone on the sole basis that you'd read their site or one of their web postings.

I looked up Square One Television, a childhood favourite; I found no sign that it had ever existed. Now there are 500 Google results for "Square One Television", and another 50,000 for "Square One TV".

There was a time when I self-taught myself all the HTML in the world, and that was enough to build a serviceable Web page. (My lack of design abilities was still a problem, but I had the technical skills down.) I still know HTML, but I'd probably have to take a course to get my overall skill set to a point where I could make Web pages that will stand up to 2007.

*Sigh*, the good old days...

I wish I could write back to Dear Abby's correspondents

In today's Dear Abby, readers give advice in reply to a previous letter from a young woman who was receiving unwanted attention from her male colleagues. I really wish I could ask the writer of this one letter for clarification:

Before complaining to the management about sexual harassment as you suggested, "Plain Jane" might take a careful look at herself. Is she dressing inappropriately for the workplace (low neckline, exposed midriff, short skirts)? Does she smile too much?Is there candy on her desk, encouraging co-workers to stop and chat? "Jane" might ask a trusted older working woman friend or relative to look over her wardrobe or share other hints.

I would love to get her to elaborate on the "smiling too much" concept. How much smiling is too much? How do you tell? Personally, when I smile at my co-workers, it's a natural smile - I haven't faked a smile since I worked in customer service. So if your natural smiling in reaction to context has you "smiling too much", how do you deliberately not smile without looking like you're being deliberately mean?

Silly things Harry Kim says in "The Haunting of Deck Twelve"

1. To a mess hall full of people, when an emergency begins to occur: "I want everyone to report to their stations until we figure out what's going on!" But these people are off duty, that's why they're in the mess hall! We know that Starfleet vessels operate on rotating shifts, so if all these people report to their stations, their stations will all be occupied by someone else!

2. To a frightened crewman in a dark hallway: "Trust me, there are no aliens roaming the corridors." Um, yeah...Vulcans, Klingons, Talaxians, Bolians, a handful of Borg drones...it's a Federation starship! Actually, since the crewman in question is a Bajoran, HARRY is an alien to her.

Just saying no

When we think of why being a grownup rocks, we tend to think of things we can do even though our parents don't want us to. But another thing that rocks about being a grownup is that when our parents do want us to do something and we don't want to, we can just say no.

When you're a kid, if your parents offer you some specific food, you can't just say no thanks. They try to get you to eat it anyway, they make up all these rules like you have to eat ten peas before you leave the table or you have to drink a glass of milk before you can have some juice or if you don't eat it now you have to eat it for breakfast tomorrow morning. If you're going outside, they can make you wear snowpants, and you can't just say "I won't be needing snowpants, we'll be skipping and they'll just get in the way." If they think you need to practice your piano before you watch TV, you can't just say "Actually the one show I really want to watch is on now, so I'll watch it now and practice my piano after."

And this isn't just for disciplinary things. If your parents stop for ice cream but you don't want any ice cream, you can't just say no thanks, you have them try to convince you and you have to keep saying no and it's this whole big thing. If your friend invites you over to play and your parents think it's a good idea but you don't want to, you can't just say "Maybe later, I'm not up to it right now," to your friend - you have to justify the whole thing to your parents. If they offer to go play catch with you, under the impression that they're doing you a favour by doing something they think is fun for you, but you'd rather finish your book because you just got to the good part, you can't just say "No thanks, I want to finish my book." They try to coerce you and convince you and maybe they make a rule that you have to go play outside for at least an hour before you can come back in and finish your book.

When you're a kid, every single time you want to say no to your parents, you have to justify it, you have to discuss it, you have to get them to agree, you have to go through this Whole Big Thing. But as an adult, you can just say no. You can even manage to just say no thanks, because you know you're not going to have to go through the Whole Big Thing so your no doesn't have to be that forceful.

When you think about it, it really is remarkably liberating to not have to justify your every little preference, instead just quietly going about your life the way you want to. It saves so much time and energy!

Injustice!

A 5-year-old girl fended for herself for days while home alone with the body of her mother, who apparently succumbed to bacterial meningitis, authorities said.
...
[The girl] was examined at a hospital and is in the temporary custody of the state human services department, agency spokeswoman Karen Stock said Tuesday. The dog was taken to an animal-rescue organization.

So her mother dies, she's alone with the body for days, she's now an orphan, and on top of everything else they take her dog away??? I wonder if they couldn't find a foster home that would take both the kid and the dog, or if they didn't try at all? She really should get to keep her dog after all she's been through!

How to keep Google Groups from freezing in IE 6

Ever since Google Groups updated, it's been freezing for me in IE 6 (and malheureusement I don't have the option of using another browser at work). I accidentally figured out a workaround.

Open Google Groups in a maximized window. Open another IE window but don't maximize it (i.e. click on the little two-box "restore" icon on the top right.)

When you click on a link in Google Groups, immediately switch over to the non-maximized IE, then switch back to Google Groups. In my experience, the Google Groups window will display normally.

For some reason, this doesn't work if the second IE window is maximized, and it doesn't work if you just wait for Gooogle Groups to load. I have no idea why.

Petition

A petition against female genital mutiliation. Available in French only. (Pétition contre les mutilations génitales féminines).

Pour celles et ceux d'entre vous qui peuvent lire le français, veuillez cliquer, lire, et signer si vous le jugez approprié. Moi, je le juge approprié.

Fitting into culture

I've recently noticed a convergence of commentary on how it's important for immigrants to make an effort to fit into the culture of their new home. But I find myself wondering if this really is important. After all, there's nowhere nearly as much emphasis on making people who were born in the geographical area in question fit into the culture. I can think of cases where, yes, certain cultural values could cause a major clash. But I can think of many more examples where if the behaviour in question were being done by someone who's ethnically or culturally unmarked, it would be considered at most an eccentricity.

Many of my personal values are completely different from prevailing societal values. There may well be no one else in the world who shares my exact same set of values. From my idea of what constitutes respectful behaviour to my classification of sex acts, from my rituals surrounding charitable donations to my reasoning behind my position on abortion, from what I would do if I won the lottery to what I would do if I lost my job, I'm sure at least some of these things are different from what you'd think in the same situation, and almost all of them are different from the cultural norm. But I don't hear anyone calling for me to adapt the values of the mainstream. Because I was born here? Because of the pallor of my skin? Because of my comically generic name? I can't tell you why. But it does make me think that cultural assimilation isn't really that important.

Beware of AutoCorrect

The word I am attempting to type: succinct
The typo I accidentally make: succincg
Word's AutoCorrect of said typo: sucking
The result: a sentence implying that people should make sure their presentations suck.

Open Letter to HM Queen Elizabeth II, HRH Prince Charles, and HRH Prince William

Dear Current and Future Monarchs:

Apparently Justin Trudeau considering running for MP. I'm sure this means that eventually, someday, he will aspire to be Prime Minister of Canada. If this ever should happen, whichever one of you is reigning at the time must find some way to do a pirouette behind him.

Parking etiquette question

Some of the moving companies I'm looking into do in-home estimates, where they come and look at all my stuff and tell me from there how much they expect it to cost.

My question for any urban drivers reading this: am I expected to provide the estimate guy with parking?

My building has underground guest parking. Guests need to be let in with a building key, which means I'd have to escort them, which is perfectly normal for people who are actually my guests, but weird for someone I've just met. There is limited free one-hour parking on my street, but more often than not it's all full. There are some Green P lots in the area, but you have to pay for those.

Is parking a basic hospitality like offering a chair to sit in or a glass of water, or is it a business expense that he's responsible for?

Puppies!

If you haven't seen this yet, you must go look: Daily Puppy.

I know, I know, I say every dog I find is the cutest dog ever. But the puppies on Daily Puppy are so adorable that they often make my eyes well up with tears at their sheer adorableness.

Boring grownup stuff

The problem with arranging a move is that there's so much boring grownup stuff involved. I have to call people and get estimates for stuff and write cheques and watch my bank account balance and sign things. I've used the word "insurance" more in the past week than in the rest of my life combined! Don't get me wrong, I'd still rather be an adult than a child (I watched whatever I wanted on TV today! And now I'm playing computer games while drinking wine!) but this high density of boring grownup stuff is kind of getting me down.

This makes me glad I'm childfree and carfree. People with children and cars have to worry about stuff like this ALL THE TIME! Cars are giant resourcesucks, and with children you have to be doubley extra super-duper careful about EVERYTHING!

Maybe that's why those Kids Today people take childlessness as one of the signs of not being a grownup - because it affords you time to think about stuff other than boring grownup stuff.

Things They Should Invent: unwanted bottle drop-off point

With the new bottle deposit return system, I'm not going to take my bottles back to the Beer Store, because it's out of my way and a few cents isn't worth the trip to me. However, some of my local homeless do seem to think it's worth the trip, as I see them scavenging through my building's recycle dumpsters. But dumpster-diving is rather undignified, so it occurred to me that I might help out a bit by leaving my bottles in a bag outside the dumpster. But this is rather inconsiderate of my neighbours - it would be a mess if everyone kept leaving stuff outside the dumpsters.

What we really need is a central point where people who are too lazy to take their bottles back can just leave them behind - not in a dumpster, just in a small, civilized box - and someone who does have the need or initiative to go all the way to the Beer Store can take them and collect the deposit.

Police, fire, amubulance?

Last night while I was waiting for sleep to overcome me, I heard a strange noise outside. For a brief second I thought it meant someone was climbing the side of my building. Of course, that is impossible for anyone but Peter Parker. But the thought crossed my mind nevertheless.

Then I found myself thinking about what I'd do if someone was, in fact, climbing the side of the building. I'd call 911, of course. The thing is, according to what few 911 transcripts I've read, a 911 call starts with the operator asking if you need police, fire, or ambulance.

So what do you say if someone is climbing up the side of your building? You need the police because you have a would-be intruder. You need the fire department to get him down. And you need an ambulance for when he falls.

No wonder people think our urban 21-century lives are unnecessarily complicated!

Things They Should Invent: centralized directory of people's new email addresses

For my primary personal email address, I use the address that came with my ISP. It has been serving me well for the past four years, but when I move in a couple of months I'm going to have to use a different ISP, so I'll lose my primary email address. I will, of course, email everyone I correspond with to inform them of my new emaill address (no, I haven't decided what it will be yet), but if I miss someone - say, someone I went to university with, or someone who wants to hire me - they'll be SOL. Since I haven't made myself terribly googleable using my real name or my primary email address, I'll be very difficult to find. I don't mind anyone who knows my old address knowing my new address, but they might not be able to find me, and I have no way of knowing who might be looking for me.

I'd like to see a website that is specifically designed for the sole purpose of informing the world of email address changes. When you have to change your email address, you enter your old email address and your new email address in a form. You don't have to enter any other information if you don't want to. Then if someone comes looking for you, they just enter your old email address, and the website will give them your new email address. If they know the old address, they can get the new one with no difficulty. If they don't know the old address, they can't find you by searching by your name or anything, unless you set it up that way. Simple, straightforward, solves a lot of problems. But it will only work if there's only one centralized site, which, really, is the problem with many online things.

712-429-0268

I just got this call. I picked up and a recording said "Hi, this is Rachel from cardholder services, this is your last chance to reduce your interest rate." I then had the option of pressing 1 to reduce my interest rate. This is clearly a scam, not the least of which because I have three credit cards and she didn't identify which one she was with. So I did a *69 and got 712-429-0268. The internet tells me that this is in Iowa, which makes me certain this is a scam. My credit cards are Canadian! The thing I don't know is whether I need to report this, and if so to whom. I looked at the Phonebusters website, but they seem to be all about helping you if the scam succeeded.