A True Story From One Of My Jobs

Hey, kids! It's time for another True Story From One Of My Jobs!

My office has just announced a friendly competition to encourage employee fitness. It's reportedly modelled after a game show - sorry, "reality show" - called The Biggest Loser. (Incidentally, if you really want to upset people who take TV way too seriously, refer to people appearing on American Idol as "game show contestants" - which they are.)

Here's the plan: participation is completely voluntary (which, as with any self-improvement initiative, means that those most in need of it won't take part). Participants weigh themselves periodically. Anybody who has gained weight kicks a dollar per pound into the pot. Whoever loses the most weight over the duration of the game takes all. Or possibly takes half, with the rest going to charity - that's usually how they work these things, to their credit. Having little interest in that section of the rules, I didn't read them too closely.

The funny part is that these rules incentivize some rather antisocial behaviour. You see, there are two complementary paths to victory. You can try to lose as much weight as possible yourself, but to maximize your winnings and increase your chances of victory, you should also encourage your co-workers to gain weight.

I foresee lots of saboteurs putting cheesecakes and pies on display with big cheerful "Help Yourself!" signs. This pleases me. I may not need to take lunch with me for a while.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the CN tower, as seen from the building where a friend of mine works. (That friend has threatened to begin a blog of his own, so I have to use up his pictures before he gets a chance to start using them.)

Spotting Silliness

Here's a real easy way to spot someone being silly when discussing theology or moral issues: when they use the phrase, "Well, the God that I believe in....", they're usually being silly.

The "Well" is important, as is the emphasis on the "I". It's debatable whether the word "God" as used in the sentence should be capitalized. One could contend that the "God" cited is most often imaginary and therefore not deserving of capitalization. However, the speaker usually doesn't understand that. They think they're speaking of something more-or-less real and unique, so I'll respect their intentions and capitalize.

See, the problem with saying the telltale phrase is that it really doesn't matter what kind of God you believe in. As soon as you think that God's nature is determined by your beliefs, then you do not believe in the objectively real God who created and sustains the universe. He is not altered by your changing whims. Believing in a God who wants nothing more for you than to pursue your own happiness, no matter how selfish or destructive that pursuit may be, is much like believing in a force of gravity that makes things float gently to the ground. Believe it all you like, but it does not change the reality of what will happen if you step off a high roof.

Interestingly enough, you rarely hear this phrase coming from someone who has placed their faith in the God of the Bible. The phrase is almost always trotted out to whinily defend behaviour that not so long ago would have been recognized as foolish or immoral by even those who considered themselves progressive secularists of their day.

I believe in God, but He is not "the God that I believe in." He is simply God, and will remain so whether I continue to believe or not.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of me, beyond the catalogue's edge.

Manufacturing Controversy

There's a bit of a stir being raised over censorship of an online search engine run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. They receive funding from the U.S. federal government, who aren't big fans of promoting abortion.

To be on the safe side, the administrators of this website decided to block search results for the term "abortion". Of course, most places reporting this are panicking over it, calling it government censorship, even though these administrators were in no way required or ordered to take this step.

From the first time I heard about this, I thought it was a setup. It was all a publicity stunt, meant to make the public sympathise with these poor folks who run the website, being bullied around by the big bad government censor and show, once again, that Republicans and pro-lifers are bad, mean people. That's why the media have been all over this, and why it's gotten such play in the blogosphere.

It doesn't even make sense to say that blocking the search term "abortion" would be done to appease pro-lifers. If some shadowy government figure had tried to force this blocking, I'd be opposed to it. The word "abortion" is also included in pro-life concepts like "abortion alternatives", "abortion limits", etc. To even suggest that we want the term excised from the public vernacular is silly.

Hey, guess what? Looks like my hunch was right! I love it when that happens!

The administrators overreacted to someone not liking a couple of articles, took a hissy fit, and yanked out the search results like a seven year-old stomping off with their baseball.

Of course, the question now is whether the media (including bloggers) will be as quick to report this part of the story.

(Cue the sound of chirping crickets.)

Oh, and just to get out in front of the silly liberal argument that the American federal government still censors people by way of the the Mexico City Policy (explanation linked to above if you look carefully) - there's a difference between saying "You aren't allowed to say this" and "Say whatever you want, but I'm not going to pay you for it." Leftists have trouble with that distinction because they think that other people should pay for whatever they want, and refusing to do so is mean.

We've all seen toddlers throwing tantrums in stores, demanding that Mommy and Daddy buy them something; a liberal is someone who just never grew out of that phase.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a toy bird and chip cans.

Walking Dead #48 Review

Warning: Here There Be Some Fairly Vague Possible Spoilers. If you care about that, go read it first. This post will still be here when you get back. There will also be discussion of the book in general, not just this latest issue.

I've been reading comics for three decades or so, and I just read one of the best: Walking Dead #48 by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. It was the final part of a six-part storyline called "No One Is Safe", and it lived up to that title in spectacular fashion.

Imagine if an episode of Friends showed the titular friends sitting around, saying lots of cute sentences beginning with "Could I be any more...?" when suddenly masked robbers broke down the door, and everybody except Lisa Kudrow wound up shot in the head during a home invasion.

That's about what just happened, in terms of the cast (if not in the juxtaposition of tone - The Walking Dead is many things, but not cute). Kirkman has left himself a nearly clean slate, taking out characters that normal dramatic convention would have protected, and there's absolutely no telling what will happen to the characters left standing.

Since I just used a TV show to illustrate a point, this is as good a time as any to go on a little digression. The letters page often includes fans urging Kirkman to pursue a TV adaptation of the series. It would need to be on cable, and if HBO ever does it, I'd have a reason to sign back up (the finales of Six Feet Under and The Sopranos also marked the end of my interest in cable). Kirkman seems protective enough of his creative integrity that I doubt he'd be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to get onto a network, even if a network was crazy enough to try to water the show down enough for broadcast. (I can't remember offhand whether there's ever been any nudity in the book - quite possibly - but there's some rough language, and the violence is beyond Quentin Tarantino's nightmares.)

However, Kirkman would be in a bit of a bind, at least from the perspective of hardcore geeks like that guy I keep seeing in the mirror. For us to be satisfied with an adaptation, it would have to follow the source material - the comic - fairly closely. It wouldn't have to be as close as 300, where the comic essentially served as the movie's storyboards, but at least the major plot beats and characterizations would have to line up or the show would, in the eyes of fans of the comic, suffer greatly in comparison.

The problem here is that if the show was at least moderately successful, becoming at least a cult hit, then the mainstream entertainment media would be very interested in reporting any "scoops" about upcoming developments. Following the comic would mean that it would only take one entertainment "reporter" who could read something more complex than TV Guide - and there must be one of them out there somewhere - to completely spoil the show's events far in advance.

Just to get out in front of the retort that slavishly following the comic didn't hurt the popularity of 300 any by giving away future events: a two hour self-contained movie is a completely different proposition from an ongoing serial.

Unfortunately for me, if Kirkman's smart, though, and I think he is, he won't worry about appeasing the fanboys by adapting the comics with no new twists. It pains me to say so, but we just aren't a big enough audience to worry about. According to the sales charts at The Beat (I inexplicably can't stop reading the sales charts each month, although I've been out of the comics business for almost ten years), The Walking Dead normally sells in the ballpark of 22000 copies of each issue. I'm just a shade too lazy to look up sales figures on the trade paperback collections (my preferred format), but even if we get really optimistic and say that the trades sell a little more than the individual issues, that only brings us to around 50000 people reading the comics. Of those, probably - maybe hopefully - only a fraction are actually fanboyish enough to care about this issue.

50000 people is far too low a number to worry about offending by straying from the source material. Even if the decimal point were to move a couple of spots to the right, it still probably wouldn't matter. So the smart money is on Kirkman making whatever changes he thinks will work (note: not changes that suit-wearing, note-giving imbeciles with titles containing the words "vice president", "executive", or "in charge of" think will work). Besides, we fanboys will deal with it if it means getting a Walking Dead series off the ground. We complain and moan and write indignant blog posts, but we always buy our tickets and "collectible" spinoff merchandise.

That said, and with the full promise that a Walking Dead series would be the first real "appointment TV" show for me since The Sopranos ended, I don't quite get the mentality that a movie or TV adaptation somehow gives more legitimacy to a comic. I often simply don't care about the adaptations. I was the biggest Spider-Man fan you've ever heard of for many years, but I didn't really care about the first movie and haven't bothered watching either of the sequels. Comics can stand on their own as a creative medium as well as novels or movies.

On to the comic at hand: The Walking Dead #48, now on sale at every good comic shop.

Last issue ended (as is Kirkman's wont) on a cliffhanger. The prison where our protagonists have set up homestead was under siege by a makeshift army led by a psychotic (a fellow known as the Governor, one of the nastiest villains ever to grace the printed page). Rick, the book's main protagonist since its first issue, ran to find his wife and children to try to get them to cover. He turned a corner to find his wife Lori kneeling, their newborn daughter in her arms, with someone holding a shotgun to the back of her head. The image was staged so that we readers did not see who was holding the gun.

That cliffhanger is resolved, frankly a bit limply, within the first couple of pages of this new issue. What happens is perfectly logical, but I still felt it was a bit of a letdown after the shock of that last page (which wasn't a complete surprise - an image of Lori holding the baby with a gun to her head was actually used as the cover of #47).

From there, though, things get shocking and brutal. This issue is one gutpunch after another as our protagonists have their final - and I do mean final - showdown with the Governor's townspeople. There are some very emotional moments of real humanity interspersed with (and sometimes brought about as a direct result of) horrible, graphically rendered violence. This sort of material does not glorify violence in any way. Quite the opposite - by holding it up to the light, it exposes how awful it truly is. The Governor did something absolutely shocking back in issue #46 (that issue's cover should give you an idea) that would no doubt get him on Al-Queda's Christmas card list (hey, see what I just did there?), but should serve to remind the readers that there are actually people in the world who do things like this given the chance, and coddling them is not at all wise.

Kirkman, like Romero (who Kirkman frequently cites in the letters pages as a huge influence and inspiration) before him, is far more interested in what a zombie apocalypse does to its survivors than in the zombies themselves. The primary conflict in these stories is always between humans, not living versus undead. The zombies are always there in the background, though, as a looming threat, and when the prison fence gets compromised by the Governor's tank, they swarm inside to get their, um, licks in as well.

A lot of the good guys don't make it, some of whom will be surprises to anyone used to conventional horror movies. Then, just as we realize we're approaching the end of the issue, we get an image that may be more horrifying than any other we've seen in this book to date, and that's saying a lot. Two more characters are lost (yes, two - there's been some online debate as to whether one of them might have survived, but Kirkman has unequivocally stated on a least one message board that she did not), and those few who remain are left completely shell-shocked.

We seem to get a brief denouement as the survivors take stock of what has happened and begin to grasp the enormity of their loss. Then, in a powerful full-page illustration that ends the issue, we see that the crisis may not be quite over. I don't know whether Kirkman and Adlard meant to convey an imminent threat or just show them in the background, but the zombies on the last page seem to be getting a little close to our shattered protagonists. Next issue may open up with a calmer aftermath, leaving us to presume that the survivors were able to move on without significant opposition, or it may pick up right there on the hill outside the prison, with (maybe) yet another close escape.

This may have been the best issue yet of a consistently excellent series. There's no way to know where Kirkman is taking us next, but I fully intend to be along for the ride. I only wish that the "No One Is Safe" trade paperback would come out next week so I could add it to my bookshelf - I'll definitely want to pick it up whenever it does appear.

Most powerful dialogue from the book: "They - - They didn't - -". Trust me, in the context of the scene, it's devastating. Strong runners-up, with expletives deleted because this is a family blog: "Look at what you made me do! Just ****ing LOOK!" and "I just - - I killed that boy...I killed him."


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the cover of The Walking Dead #48. Go read it (after reading at least issues 43-47, of course):

An Unfortunate Choice Of Words

Canada has recently seen a few incidents of controversial taser use by police. In true Canadian fashion, our national response has been to hold inquiries and generate reports (as opposed to actually doing anything). A major report on taser use from the RCMP came back with so much crucial information redacted as to make it virtually meaningless, which has stirred another round of controversy. (If people don't get satisfaction from these reports, we may have to pull out all the stops and appoint a commission!)

In an attempt to quell that controversy and put people's minds at ease, well... this got said (emphasis mine):

Insp. Troy Lightfoot, who helps oversee RCMP Taser use, would not speculate on why the reporting changes were made. But he stressed there are still ways to monitor stun guns and other uses of force.

"I can tell you that there are many accountability systems in place with regards to police actions. You have the courts, you have coroners' inquests, you have a multitude of oversight bodies.''

It's a huge relief to know that if I'm tasered to death by a police officer, the coroner's inquest will lead to my killer receiving a stern reprimand.

I strongly suspect that a lot of Insp. Lightfoot's recent conversations have featured someone saying "Troy! Not helping!"


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the appliances I use to keep my upper and lower cupboards separated. Before I bought the microwave, I was frequently awakened by the racket of those cupboards slamming together. It was worth every penny.

Amish Paradise

Hey, kids! It's time for another True Story From One Of My Jobs!

Sometimes I get to take a moment's entertainment in my dronelike office job.

Today I had to write a letter in response to correspondence from a client. An Amish client, as it turns out. I dealt with his particular situation in the main body of the letter, then copy-and-pasted my company's standard customer service letter boilerplate as the last paragraph, as is policy for every one of these letters we send out.

The last paragraph pretty much says, "For more info, call our toll-free number or go to our website."

Yep, I got to tell an Amish guy that if he's got any more questions, he can just go look us up on the Internet.


Does telling an Amish person to go check out a website make me a jerk, or is it just a symptom of the pre-existing condition?


(Oh, and now I'm going to have to find out if Amish people use the Internet. If I don't do some research on it, it's going to bother me.)


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a rug.

April Foolishness Day

Another month, another "special day" that I don't care about.

Actually, April 1 does interest me in one way: it lets me know which magazines and websites I should stop reading. I have nothing against jokes, whether presented on April 1 or another date. Some "April Fool's" jokes are quite clever and amusing. However, a very important note: the jokes must be clearly identifiable. Put an "April Fool's!" at the end, or present something that's so clearly satire that any remotely informed reader will know it's a joke (and would recognize it as such on any other day).

Too many people think that "joke" is a synonym for "lie". They think that saying (or printing) something that's plausible, but completely untrue, is acceptable because of which calendar page just got turned up. They're incorrect.

As an example, I just Googled the phrases "McCain drops out", "Clinton drops out", and "Obama drops out." Many of the search results were speculative discussion ("What happens if Clinton drops out of the race?"). A depressing number, though, were pages presented as breaking news. Guess what date was on those pages.

Don and Maggie Thompson, editors of the Comics Buyer's Guide when I was a kid, had a very strict No-April-Fool's-Jokes policy for all their contributors. They felt it would damage the credibility of their magazine if, for even one issue, they knowingly printed lies. They were absolutely right.

If you feel justified in lying just because it's April 1st, then you are a liar. As much as you may want to rationalize otherwise, that fact won't change when the sun comes up on April 2nd.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the Winnie The Pooh starring vehicle Does It Float (closeup detail of front cover, number 5 in a series).

Reading Log - Lewis & The States

Since this blog is largely self-indulgent autobiography anyway, I'm allowing it to take the place, for this entry at least, of my old reading logs. As I mentioned way back in one of my first entries, I've started to maintain reading logs several times over the years. So far, I've maintained this blog longer than all of those efforts put together.

I'm not even considering trying to mention all the magazines, newspapers, online essays, etc., that I read. I'd spend so much time listing them that I'd have to cut back drastically on the actual reading, thereby largely defeating the purpose. One of these days I intend to start talking about what websites I read on a daily basis and make links to them; that'll give a pretty good indication about my online reading anyway.

I'm also not going to point out my daily Bible reading (which I don't always do daily - I often miss a day or two, then catch up). Suffice it to say that I'm following the Bible in a Year schedule from the Our Daily Bread devotionals, published by Radio Bible Class. Each day's devotional, along with the readings for the day, are available by clicking here. I prefer the printed, pocket-sized devotionals, but reading it online will certainly do in a pinch.

Right now, I have three books on the go (counting one that I just finished today). First up, a nice all-in-one edition of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I ordered it from Christianbook.com not long ago; the link is to the actual edition I have. I'm reading it as Lewis intended, in a way: by reading it aloud to my son, usually at a rate of a chapter each evening. Tonight we finished chapter 2 of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (which I think of as book two).

Earlier today I finished The Arrow Book of States by Margaret Ronan, 1964 edition. It's a very light overview, giving two pages per American state with a small map, a few historical notes, and some trivia on each state. Clearly meant for schoolchildren of its day, that's exactly how I wound up with it. It has the name of one of my uncles (who would have been a preteen in 1964) written on the inside front cover, and my Mom's (who was a couple of years younger) written on the back. It was one of the books I took from my grandparents' house after they died in the late 1990s. The items of any value or use were divided up among the family, and most of the rest was loaded into boxes and trash bags and hauled off to the dump when the house was cleaned out. All I really wanted was one framed picture that belonged to my grandfather - it now hangs in my computer room, just a few feet away from me right now.

I took the books largely because no one else wanted them, and I hate to see books thrown away. Most of the books held no sentimental value to me (my memories of my grandfather revolve more around traipsing through the woods or fishing with him, not sitting around reading), but I still like to take a look over the collection (I still haven't integrated most of their books into my bookshelves) from time to time and pick one out.

I enjoy trivia collections, so although U.S. states aren't a subject that holds a great deal of interest for me, the book was worth reading. If I ever try out for Jeopardy I'll go over it again. Their frequent Americentric categories would definitely be a weak point for me as a contestant.

Finally, I'm on a second pass, this time highlighting, underlining, and otherwise marking up passages, through another C.S. Lewis title, Miracles. I generally read good theology books twice. Once just for the sake of reading, to take in the author's ideas. If the book is good enough, then I make the second pass, highlighter in hand. Lewis' books (at least the nonfiction) always get the second pass (although, truth be told, I haven't read very many of them yet).

My eventual intention (which may wind up languishing forever on that "maybe someday" list that will no doubt be a mile long when my empty shell of a body is laid to rest) is to use this blog in part to record and elaborate on my notes from such books. I intend to use Lewis as a springboard for many of my Sunday school classes in the future, and my notes will probably wind up serving as a curriculum outline of sorts.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the Winnie The Pooh starring vehicle Does It Float (closeup detail of front cover, number 4 in a series). And some of a finger.

The Complacency Prayer

I'm sure pretty much everyone reading this is familiar with one version or another of The Serenity Prayer. As originally written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, it began:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

It's more popularly paraphrased in popular culture these days as:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

This is the version used by Alcoholics Anonymous, and is a favourite subject for needlepoint and ceramics enthusiasts. If you go take a look around your local gift shop or Christian bookstore, you can probably find it plastered on a wide variety of tacky "decorative" knickknacks.

With all due respect to Mr. Niebuhr, I've never liked this prayer. I'm sure most people have never really given a moment's thought to what that prayer is really saying, but if we did, we'd see that it would be better titled The Complacency Prayer.

I don't ever want "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." That's just an easy excuse for not bothering to even try to improve anything. I don't often side with Bruce Cockburn over Reinhold Neibuhr, but I'd much rather see people choosing to "kick at the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight."

Furthermore, even if I truly cannot do anything about a situation myself, there's Someone who can. The idea of just giving up and "accepting" things runs counter to Luke 18:1-8. There is always something you can do about a bad situation: pray. Thinking that serenity to accept things that we cannot change ourselves is not a virtue. It is a lack of faith, and a slap in the face to the One who told us to keep praying.

It also makes a mockery of Philippians 4:13. For those of you who don't know that passage offhand and don't feel like clicking the link, here's a hint: it does not say "I can do some things through Christ who strengthens me, and I'd like some serenity to accept the things I can't."

The other two lines of the prayer, as popularly circulated (there's more to it, but I'll stick with the part that everybody's great aunt has on her kitchen wall) are much less troublesome. Courage to change the things I can - sure. Wisdom to tell what I can change - that's also fine, but only if the alternative to "what I can change" (because God allows and empowers me to do so - I can do nothing on my own) is "what God can change, so I should be praying about".

May I, and may you, never be cursed with the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the Winnie The Pooh starring vehicle Does It Float (closeup detail of front cover, number 3 in a series).

Apologies In Advance For The Image

I often wonder when (or whether) the concepts of self-control and personal responsibility enter the minds of pro-abortionists. A recent conference at the University of Massachusetts (gee, I never would have expected rampant leftism to come from there) provides a terrific example. It's truly amazing how some people render themselves resistant to parody by being such ludicrous buffoons on their own that it's hard to top the reality.

At the conference, one of the speakers (she has a name, but I'm not bothering with it. Many of her organization's victims never even get named.) "asked the commission to improve access to abortion. She said that lower-income women who are working and do not qualify for Medicare funding sometimes cannot afford abortions or contraception."

I have a solution to their problem. How much does it cost for a tube of Crazy Glue and a cork?


Another amusing point, from the tail end of the linked article: "The hearing at UMass was the only one scheduled this year in Western Massachusetts. After last year's hearing drew a small turnout, the Everywoman's Center asked the commission to repeat the event."

Translation: very few people cared enough about the lunacy pushed at the conference to show up, so the moonbats whined for a do-over. They got one, no doubt at university (read: public) expense. When no one cares about this one either, they'll probably whine for another. Why am I guessing that the conference organizers all supported Gore in 2000?


Thanks to the good folks at American Life League for reporting this story in one of their newsletters. When it comes to life issues, it's far more important to change minds than change laws. Pointing out the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the pro-abortion position is a good start.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the Winnie The Pooh starring vehicle Does It Float (closeup detail of front cover, number 2 in a series).

Estimating Canine Time Of Death

This is Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me, but I think the above title is funnier.

This comes from a recent conversation I was involved in where we somehow got onto the topic of our dogs that had died. Pretty much everybody has at least a story or two about a dog they used to have, even if it was when they were a child, which is no longer around.

I have a few such stories, at least one of which I eventually intend to tell in some detail here. I'll skip right to the point of this entry, though.


Me: "We came home from church one day and the dog was dead on the floor. She must have died right after we left, because she was already cool."

Them: (Raised eyebrow)

Me: "What? It's not like I checked her internal temperature."

Them: (Eyebrow moving a bit higher)

Me (realizing I could have fun with this, which I generally interpret as a mandate): "Although I suppose I could have. The equipment is right there in pretty much every kitchen. You just need one of those thermometers you use to see if the turkey's done."

Them: (Eyebrow now well on its way to the back of their head)

Me: "If the needle doesn't move, that dog's been dead for a while."

Them: (Walking away, uttering vow to avoid me in the future)


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the Winnie The Pooh starring vehicle Does It Float (closeup detail of front cover, number 1 in a series).

Why I Don't Watch "Lost"

I don't watch Lost because it didn't hold my interest the first time, when it was called Gilligan's Island.


Postscript: While I was thinking of writing this (yes, I actually put thought into it), I decided to check a few facts on the Internet, which has long since replaced TV as my time-waster of choice. Through a perfectly logical but long and possibly weird chain of related topics, I wound up on Wikipedia reading about obscure Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters.

Did you know that Scooby-Dum only appeared four times, not counting Laff-A-Lympics? That seems unbelievable. I'm sure I spent more time with him in the late seventies than with some members of my immediate family.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of the cover of the Winnie The Pooh starring vehicle Does It Float.

This Too Will Change When I Am King

A man in New Brunswick was sentenced today for five years in prison for killing two people while driving drunk - a young married couple, whose two children were in the car with them but thankfully survived the crash.

Five years for snuffing out two lives and creating two orphans.

To add even more insult to the horrendous injury, he was actually convicted on two separate counts of whatever the charge is for getting sauced and killing somebody, plus a bunch of lesser charges. However, the judge in his cruelty (or perhaps the legislature in theirs, I really don't care) decreed that the sentences were to be served concurrently.

"Concurrently" is apparently a legal term meaning "anything past the first one's free, so if you're going to do it, do it big."

Presumably the judge has had occasion to address the children of this couple at some point. I wonder which of their parents' lives he explained to them didn't matter? Did this man get to kill their Mom with no penalty whatsoever, or was it Dad's life that was worthless?

Just to make the point absolutely clear, concurrent sentencing is a travesty and needs to be abolished. It rewards criminals for being more successful in their crime, makes a mockery of the justice system, and devalues victims. Unless they happen to be the first, of course.


Enough rambling. Here's an old picture of my computer room. It doesn't look much like this anymore.

Kodak Easyshare 5100 Speed Test

One more quick note about my new Kodak Easyshare 5100 printer, because someone asked me about this aspect of its performance.

I've timed several full-colour, 300-dpi scans to JPG, and they consistently take between 18 and 19 seconds from start to finish (from pressing the button to start the scan to seeing the JPG on the screen). Not a rigourous scientific experiment by any means, but enough to give you an idea if you're interested in that sort of specification.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my kitchen table. The only reasonable explanation for the bright, indistinct shape on the left is that we were visited by a paranormal entity, perhaps an errant member of the Heavenly Host. Catholics, do not, I repeat, do not begin organizing pilgrimages to my house.

Another Reason Why People Don't Talk To Me

Hey, Kids! It's time for Another Reason People Don't Talk To Me!

On one particular day, a friend was telling me about her mother's devout Catholicism. Her Mom is apparently an extremely frequent churchgoer. In my friend's words, for her Mom it's "Mass every Sunday morning, mass every Sunday night, mass every Wednesday night, mass every Saturday."

My response: "Wow. With all that mass she must have a lot of inertia."


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of my kitchen table, with spooky shadows.

Begging For A Lightning Bolt

Just a short update today. Well, and one quick, possibly blasphemous joke. We'll get to that.

A couple of days ago I started working on what I thought would be a relatively short straightforward entry, but it's spiralled out of control. Looks like it's going to make my Christmas and Easter rant look short and extemporaneous. I don't have an ETA on its completion at this point; I'll probably do a couple of shorter, easier ones instead while I work on it.

We gratefully subcontracted parental duties out to my parents for a couple of days, so on Saturday (yesterday) I slept in, visited my friends at Crave Manga to pick up some Magic: The Gathering cards (I haven't gotten to actually play a game in a very long time, but there's hope on the horizon - more on that another time), shovelled the driveway some more, went shopping as quickly as possible, then went to my parents' place for dinner, bringing the offspring back home afterwards.

Sunday (today) we started the day with an Easter egg hunt, ate breakfast at church (where we had seven baptisms and eight new members voted in), then dinner with my wife's parents.

I have to go back to work on Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm hoping to not even leave the house tomorrow.


On to the joke. That's why you paid your cover charge, after all.


Mark 6:3 tells us that Jesus was a carpenter. Do you suppose he ever hit his thumb with a hammer and took his own name in vain?


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of mast rigging.

A True Story From One Of My Jobs

Hey, kids! It's time for another True Story From One Of My Jobs!

This story goes back to my days in tech support. Fortunately, I did not have to support the general public. I worked for a large organization, and was internal support for one large building and its staff.

As in most offices, everyone who worked in this building used a computer all day, every day. You'd think that they'd all have some basic computer literacy - in fact, it was usually listed as a requirement and sometimes tested during the hiring process - but that proved not to be the case. I remember once speaking to an employee who had absolutely no idea what to do when confronted with a computer that had been turned off for some reason. When I told her to just turn it back on, she didn't know how. I tried to explain that she only needed to push the big round button on the front - she couldn't find it. I finally had to go to her desk and push the big round button for her. "Oh, that button!" (Our PCs had only the power button and a very small eject button, right on the CD-ROM tray, on their front panels.)

She's not the subject of today's story. Today's story is a short play in three acts, about another lady who reported having trouble with her mouse. She couldn't be more specific, so I went and had a look, and it seemed fine. As was my custom, I opened up the bottom and cleaned the rollers, but there wasn't much else I could do with it. (Anybody else out there remember having to clean mouse rollers? It made my job a whole lot easier when my office finally went to optical mice, about three years after everyone else in the world.)

I asked her to let me know if it gave her any more trouble. It did, almost immediately. Again, she couldn't tell me what the problems were or demonstrate them, so I took the easy way out and replaced her mouse. Thus endeth Act One.

This brings up a trade secret that I'll reveal for non-tech staff: when your office techs replace a mouse / keyboard / etc. like that, they're giving you the last one that was complained about but with which they couldn't find any problem. And that "bad" one of yours will just be given to the next person who reports a nonspecific, non-reproducible problem. 99% of the time, the recipient is thrilled with their "new" equipment, even though the last user swore it was defective.

Act Two came a few days later, when the same user reported that her new mouse "would not go straight across the screen." I was intrigued. I first asked her to explain. "When I try to move the mouse" - by which she meant the onscreen cursor - "straight across the screen, it won't go. It curves down."

I had to go check this out. I went to her desk and asked her to demonstrate. She anchored the heel of her palm firmly against her desk, held the mouse with her fingertips, and pivoted her hand, leaving the heel down against the desk. Sure enough, the cursor moved in an arc. "See?!?"

Yes, I had to explain that she was moving her hand in a curve, and that she'd get better results by lifting the heel of her palm from the desk. She was very pleased with this solution.

Her happiness didn't last long. Act Three came within a very few days.

She reported that her new mouse (from Act One) "broke" a database program that our staff all used. When she entered a client's file number in the search field, the file would not come up. This obviously had nothing to do with her new mouse, but I humoured her and went to see if I could identify her actual problem ("ability to humour" should be listed as a requirement in any tech support job description).

She was adamant that the new mouse was the problem. Her program had worked before getting a new mouse, and now it didn't. I asked her to demonstrate. She picked up a client's file from her desk, and proceeded to type the file number incorrectly into the search field, missing a digit. Note that this process did not involve even touching her mouse. When after several seconds the program reported that it could not locate the file she requested, she turned to me triumphantly. "See?!? That new mouse doesn't work!"


Enough rambling. Here's another picture of those Beatles dolls my wife crocheted for me, this time displaying John's front and George's back.

Responsible Firearm Ownership

Today's entry is brought to you by this horrible story on CNN. Executive summary: a woman called 911 because someone was breaking into her house, and as the 911 operator listened, the intruders got in and murdered the caller.

This reminds me of two bumper-sticker-type slogans. Yes, bumper sticker slogans are simplistic, but sometimes there's a lot of wisdom to be found at the end of a late-model sedan. I'm guessing that this poor woman's family are feeling the truth of these ideas today.

First up: When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

Second: Saying you don't need a gun because you have the police is like saying that you don't need a toothbrush because you have a dentist.

I used to be a good liberal on the issue of guns, back before I learned what "critical thinking" meant. In my squandered youth, I even subscribed to Rolling Stone magazine, and happily lapped up whatever leftist drivel they doled out.

Of course I thought guns were bad. Rolling Stone, and most other media, told me they were. A gun killed John Lennon, so all guns must be evil. (There are at least two major logical errors in that last sentence - one in the premise, one in the conclusion. Identifying them is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Of course, my self-inflicted socialist media diet also taught me that anyone who claimed membership in, or even any sympathy with, the NRA was automatically a homicidal lunatic. I made plenty of fun of their "guns don't kill people - people kill people" rhetoric, usually by replying, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will accidentally shoot their own children."

I can't say when or why I changed my view. I attribute it to simply growing up. John Hawkins from Right Wing News has defined liberalism as "childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues". That pretty much sums up my youthful position on firearms, and hopefully explains the change.

I hadn't even realized it happened until one day I was visiting someone in his office in a police station. He had a couple of firearms out, and several rounds of ammunition were openly visible in the room. He was working with the firearms as we chatted. As he handled one of the guns, he looked at me and, indicating the firearm in his hand, asked, "This doesn't bother you, does it?"

I replied, "Nope. The only time somebody having a gun makes me nervous is if the same person would make me nervous even without the gun."

I all but felt the light coming on as I realized that what I had just said was pretty much the same idea as the aforementioned NRA slogan.

These days I quite like firearms. I'm a big proponent of self-defense and responsible firearms ownership, and fully agree with the "bumper stickers" at the top of this article. I want the good guys to be armed, and preferably given carry permits (open and/or concealed). If the lady in the linked article at the top had spent her time steadying her aim of a large-calibre handgun (you don't want a small one for home defense - not enough stopping power) instead of dialing 911 (and probably waiting on hold), the story might have had a much happier ending.

Oddly enough, I don't actually have any firearms in my home at this time. This is because I don't feel that small children and firearms are a particularly good mix, and right now I'd much rather have the small children around. My four-year-old son can find ways to be dangerous with Silly String, so even a remote possibility that he might get his hands on an honest-to-goodness firearm is out of the question.

I've also become very familiar with Canada's firearms laws, and (here's where I lose the NRA and its Canadian fans again) I don't think they're that bad. Sure, they're inefficiently administered, but the actual ideas of firearms licensing and registration are sound. (Canada's firearms laws also have a nasty racist streak in them that I may address some other time.)

I used to agree with the standard Canadian firearm enthusiast's belief that licensing was acceptable but registration was unnecessary and needlessly intrusive. A friend argued it with me and changed my mind (see, it is possible). If we had licensing but no registration, there would be nothing preventing (well, maybe we should say "discouraging" - laws never prevent any action, they only provide for penalties that will hopefully be deterrents) me, as a licensed individual, from going to the gun shop, picking out something nice and nasty, then handing it off to Joe Gangbanger down the road who would never in a million years be approved for a licence. Remember, no registration means no record of the sale to me and no record of me giving the gun to ol' Killy Joe, and so no way for me to wind up sharing a cell with Joe like I should in this scenario.

There. Now that I've probably alienated everyone on any side of the firearms control debate, my driveway needs shovelling again. Oh, for a cannon large enough to just blow the snowdrifts away....


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of two of the Beatles dolls my wife crocheted for me (John's back, George's front).

Crossblogging

Once again, I've decided to put in my two cents at someone else's blog. In the interest of laziness efficiency, I'll post it here as well.

The post was at Cassy Fiano's blog. I read it fairly often anyway, because Cassy is very insightful, intelligent, and well-spoken. I got to this particular entry by way of Conservative Grapevine, a roundup of interesting conservative links that's well worth at least skimming daily. Just to bring the lineage full circle, I first found out about Conservative Grapevine from one of my favourite pages, Right Wing News - where Cassy Fiano is a frequent guest writer.

Anyway, she wrote a good post about how to behave in restaurants. I posted the following comment; you can read the original article, with all the comments, by clicking here.

I like most of what you've written here, because most of it boils down to two principles: remember that your server is a human being, worthy of respect, and treat them accordingly; and remember that your server does not have total control over all aspects of the restaurant.

However, I have to take issue with one of your points - the one about tipping. Quoting excerpts: "When you pay your bill, don't forget to tip well. Here's something that people who don't tip well must not know: servers only get paid about $3.00 an hour....you need to tip an absolute minimum of 15%....Servers have bills to pay just like everyone else. We have to pay rent, buy food and gas, pay for electric and water bills... just like everyone else in the world. And perhaps most people don't know this, but your tips are our main source of income."

That's not the customer's fault. If a server can't make a living on the hourly wage that they're paid, then they should be looking for another line of work, not expecting customers to make up the difference. Cashiers in the retail sector aren't paid well either, but I've never heard a department store cashier arguing that they should get tips on that basis, and I'd laugh at them if I ever did.

I used to work in a restaurant, back in the kitchen. I got the same (minimum) hourly wage as the servers, but no tips. I know some restaurants operate differently, and backline staff get a share in tips, but not all of them. None of us back in the kitchen thought we were entitled to tips, or owed them in any sense. Our bills were our own problem. If they outweighed what we were making, then it was time to move on, and I for one did.

I'm feeling some cognitive dissonance here, because despite what you might have expected from reading the above, I do tip whenever I eat in a restaurant, and reasonably well (minimum 10%, usually considerably higher). Now that I think about it, by tipping we are - I am - distorting the free market. We're subsidizing the wages of servers, so restaurant owners can afford to offer submarket wages ("The hourly wage is low, but you'll make more than that in tips").

Paying a high enough salary to attract and retain employees should always be the employer's problem, not the customer's. If servers are forced to rely on tips to pay their bills, then they should refuse to work for the offered wages and move on. Restaurant owners would quickly realize that they need to raise wages (and perhaps prices - but if customers are effectively forced by social pressure to tip, then there's really no difference to them whether the 10% is added to the menu price or paid out after the meal as a tip).

Being a server is a fine job for someone who needs a position with flexible hours and no specific skill requirements - say, students. There comes a point, though, where people should be setting their vocational sights a little higher, or moving on to do something else with their life. Waiting tables should be seen as a job for now, not a career for later.

Sigh.

I'm going to continue to tip, but now the cognitive dissonance is going to make my head hurt every time.

Enough rambling. Here's a picture of a forearm.

A True Story From One Of My Jobs

Hey, kids, it's time for a True Story From One Of My Jobs!

For this one we go back to the days when I worked in a comic shop. My shop was the only one in our city; the next nearest ones were in Moncton, a larger city a couple of hours drive away (that matters for purposes of this story).

On this particular day, a boy, age in the very low double digits, was in the shop. His mom was there as well, waiting patiently while he browsed. Nothing unusual about that, but things took a bit of an odd turn after he selected what he wanted (the Bone Volume 1: Out From Boneville trade paperback - an excellent choice). Mom brought it over to the counter, and things got weird.

She said, "We're going to take this - he'll pay for it next time he's in." Not a question, but a statement.

I told Mom, being as meek and polite as I could, that that would not be a workable arrangement.

She began protesting. "But you know him! He's in here all the time!"

First up, in the words of my favourite line ever from Newsradio, "Even if what you're saying is true, then I still don't care." Even my regulars didn't take merchandise home without paying for it. I kept that thought to myself, though, and went to the second thought that occurred to me.

"I do recognize him. I think he's been in here a couple of times before, but I don't even know his name."

"But he's in here all the time!"

My store was small, and pretty much a one-man show in those days. If he had been in more than a couple of times, I would have known him. He hadn't, and I didn't. I apologized to Mom for the inconvenience (How Canadian is that? She apparently doesn't get the "store" concept, and I'm the one apologizing), but stood firm.

She got huffy. She stomped over to the shelf where the book had been, put it back, and said loudly to her son, "Come on, let's go! We're going to Moncton next week, and we'll get it there!"

I couldn't resist. As she stormed for the door in self-righteous indignation, her son sheepishly following, I said, "Ma'am? None of the stores there will let you take it without paying either."

The boy was in several more times over the following months. He picked up an occasional comic here and there, but never became a real regular. I never saw Mom again.


Enough rambling. Here's a picture of fingertips.