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  • And sometimes, politicians and their staff amuse me.

    written by

    james

    Could also have been titled: This is precisely the snark I was looking for.

    I mock politicians and the folks they hire on a semi-regular basis. On the blog, on Twitter, in person, you name it. But every so often, I have to give them their due. It’s a little late–and by a little I mean pretty much half a year, but I just got round to reading and doing something about this. Someone, apparently with a hugely awesome amount of time on their hands, actually petitioned the US government to build a death star for national defense. That self-same person got over 30000 other people with awesomely huge amounts of time on their hands to sign it. The result? The White House was legally required–this was before they raised that requirement to 100000–to respond to that petition. And respond, they did. Oh good lord did they ever.

    OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO
    Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.

    This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For

    By Paul Shawcross

    The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

    .The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
    .The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
    .Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship? However, look carefully and you’ll notice something already floating in the sky – that’s no Moon, it’s a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that’s helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts – American, Russian, and Canadian – living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We’ve also got two robot science labs – one wielding a laser – roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

    Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo – and soon, crew – to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.

    Even though the United States doesn’t have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we’ve got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we’re building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.

    We don’t have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke’s arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

    We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White Housescience fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country’s future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.

    If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star’s power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

    Paul Shawcross is Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget

    You know, if they’d put the money they’re sinking into things like the NSA into stuff like this instead, we might actually have something here. And to think–the only folks who may or may not have been mocked to write this thing are, well, the folks what gave that petition legs in the first place. Now, if they’d just get on with providing federal funding for the development of a replicator a la Star Trek, good things just might happen. Like the ability to download a pizza. Hey–I’d download a pizza.

  • At least the NSA knows where its info is. Human Resources Canada? Not so much.

    written by

    james

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware the NSA’s having a heart attack over Edward Snowden and what he’s already handed over to reporters–nevermind what he could still hand over to reporters now that they and the UK have stepped things up a knotch. Whether you agree with Snowden or the NSA, at least you can give the NSA that they know exactly where their info is, who’s got access to it, and what they’re doing with it. Our federal human resources regulators, on the other hand? They know it’s out there somewhere.

    A lost USB key may have potentially exposed the personal information of about five thousand canadians.

    An employee at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada lost the memory device back in November.

    The department says there’s no hard evidence that the USB stick had been used for any fraudulent purposes.

    The federal privacy watchdog is investigating.

    Personally I’d almost rather it be our version of the Snowden soap opera, but hey, whatever works. Of note, though, I don’t see anyone standing up to charge the former owner of that USB key with aiding the enemy, or any other brand of treason under the sun. I do have to guess someone’s officially got a new job by now, however. Hopefully not working for RBC.

  • Nap time, mommy. Daughter’s got Facebook to check.

    written by

    james

    Let this be a lesson for those of you with kids old enough to pull something like this off. If your kid is volunteering to run off and pick up milkshakes for the family, and you’ve just enforced a “no internets by 10:00 PM” rule, you might want to give serious thought to sending them with an escort. You might also want to give thought to that escort maybe not being your daughter’s friend, whom you’ve decided to let stay the night at your place. Failure to do either of the above might, just might, lead to an unfortunate series of events. And drugged milkshakes. And did I mention kids on the intertubes at well past their cutoff?

    Police say, however, that one of the girls had parents with rules. As The Sacramento Bee describes it, the Internet was shut down at 10 p.m. every night at one of the girls’ houses.

    Yes, 10 p.m. That’s at least 30 minutes before you can expect to hear the latest about whether Janice made out with Todd, the stoner from Vacaville.

    So the allegation goes that one of the girls, aged 15, volunteered to pick up milkshakes at a local dining establishment.

    When the parents began to sip and slurp, they allegedly found that these shakes tasted somewhat odd — “grainy” was one word the police reported.

    This might have been because one of their ingredients was a prescription sleep aid.

    Still, the parents drank enough to fall asleep. They woke up at 1 a.m. and felt rougher than postbender.

    One might be tempted to ask why a 15-year-old can be trusted to go for milkshakes at 10:00 PM but not be online, where even at 10:00 AM she can get into all manner of naughty naughty if she’s so inclined. One might also be tempted to ask why a 15-year-old, trusted enough to be online at night or not, is going out for milkshakes at 10:00 PM. If that one is you, you are not going to turn out like these parents. But you might still want to keep an extra close eye on your teenager tonight. Especially if you’ve just taken them away from the internets. Meanwhile, somebody might wanna sit these kids down and have about 4 words with them. Drugs are bad, mm’kay?

  • Is this thing on? … And other asorted bits.

    written by

    james

    So I meant to do this thing more often and yada, yada, yada. Now I’ve got a nifty little empty where most of July’s random bits of I have no idea what should be and absolutely nothing to put there–except, well, more random bits of I have no idea what. Story of my life. And a play on a thing in a game I started not really playing–but that’s another entry, if I can ever remember to get to writing it.

    I’m starting to get back into things I used to do somewhat regularly, including that whole school thing. Or rather, chasing people around with regards that whole school thing. It seems if one wants to take an online class in geekery from a school explicitly set up for teaching that material to the visually impaired, the door’s wide open. If you instead want to take that self-same course, regulated by the self-same company, but at a local college and still in a somewhat accessible format, step 1 is build your own door. It’s what a geek gets for wanting to actually be out of the house a while to get shit done, but you’ll have that. So I’ve got emails in with people, who’ve got their own emails in with people, who’re having a meeting or two with other people, who’ve got emails in with other people, and yada yada where’s my vodka. It’s kind of fun, if you don’t mind the occasional migraine. I’m used to it, so whichever. Just educate me already.

    On top of that, I’m still tossing stones into the job market just to see what hits. So far, I’ve gotten a handful of automated “thanks for your application” emails, and… That appears to be about it. Well that was productive. I’d probably get a little farther if I had something to toss on a resume that was a little more recent than, say, 2008. Which I’m working on. Also: see above.

    I’ve been back and forth to Pembroke a handful of times over the last while. And Pembroke’s come to me a few times, which is always nice. Still not even close to used to living in this house, and I’ve been here since the end of freaking January. The fact that I haven’t actually lived in a two-story house since I was in highschool might have a vague kind of something to do with it. And the fact it belongs to me–well, in about as much as a thing you pay rent on belongs to you–might be something else. I’m used to apartments. Namely, the ones in which you can throw a rock from the front door and, if aimed right, can hit your footboard. Which was every apartment I’ve ever actually paid rent on up until about last year, so this is a thing that needs adjusting to. On the bright side, it doesn’t toss me for a loop quite as much when I end up spending a couple days at mom’s. My only complaint with this place is it doesn’t come with AC. Of course the fact we’re not paying extra for heat easily cancels out that complaint, particularly in about mid-February when the very thought of going outside is enough to make you wrap the blankets around you and forget you had plans for the day. It’s a nice place, and I don’t see me leaving it any time soon, but good lord does it take getting used to. Apparently it also takes an age to properly furnish, but you’ll have that. It’s not like we’ve got a use just yet for the rooms with nothing in them anyway, so this works. Related: I have my entertainment room! Now just to add the entertainment.

    Other things have happened that I could have probably mocked, but then promptly forgot I was going to. Let’s see. List format? Why, sure.

    • Remember all that talk from Toronto on how this was the year for the Bluejays, and they were heading for at the very least a .500 season, if not some postseason activity? Remember how they tossed all this money into a rebuild during the offseason, got a bunch of people with decent to good numbers, stuck them on the team and said “Go own the damn field”? Remember how in May people were saying it’s too early to write the team off yet? Yeah. Is it still too early?
    • Dear 16-year-old me. For reasons of integrity, dismiss any and all thoughts of entering politics. Better yet, add any and all thoughts of entering politics to your personal blacklist. And for crying in the sink get back to figuring out where the school network’s single point of failure actually was. Hint: you were close when you traced the connection to a router in the basement. Hey–it could be worth something someday. And by something, I mean probably more than $90000 from Harper’s chief of staff.
    • I now have positive confirmation. It’s not other people’s children I have a problem with. It’s other people. There’s an entry on that floating around amidst a tangled wire or two. I’ll go find it and get back to you.
    • The more I read, the more I’m convinced not actually moving to the US when I was being told things were much more stable/flexible than they are up here was probably the smartest decision I ever made. Well, okay, second smartest. The smartest has me right where I’m at now. The more that slides across my desk, the more convinced I am that the US constitution, by both major players, is just a thing they toss out to shush the masses. And they say our government’s whacked.
    • Related to the last, but still somewhat separate. The NSA’s still lying, still spying, and still lying about spying. And every word of this blog post has probably just been copied to that datacenter they’ve got going on in Utah. Hope yall enjoy the read, folks. Do drop by and say hello once in a while, yeah?

    So that’s life and mockery if you’re me. Now. Where’d I put the essay I was working on for those college professorial types?

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  • In which stuff happens everywhere but here. And I’m not complaining.

    written by

    james

    Well. If this isn’t a less than stellar summer to be going off and making travel plans. Out west, Alberta’s still cleaning up, rebuilding, and generally doing all manner of cursing after major flooding said hello a couple weeks ago. Then last night, toronto and parts of New York got a slamming–folks coming home from places found themselves spending the night in an Ottawa airport while Toronto dried off. Meanwhile in Quebec, a cargo train carrying oil caught fire and pretty much leveled the area within a couple blocks of the tracks if I’m reading things right. While all the while here in Ottawa the most we’ve had to worry about is the 5% chance we’ll get wet–and, as I said on Twitter last night when the Toronto thing was a thing, if that was supposed to be our forecast, no thank you please. Ordinarily, I’d be a little bit annoyed at the fact there were construction vehicles doing varying kinds of something constructive outside my front window. But ordinarily, I wouldn’t be surrounded by much more eventful things than construction vehicles. This is clearly becoming the summer in which stuff happens everywhere but here. And this is not me complaining. Though I might consider being satisfied with just a little of what dumped on Toronto last night.

  • Hell hath no fury like an insurance company misinformed.

    written by

    james

    Things I didn’t know: Manitoba’s car insurance is government run. More things I didn’t know: Manitoba’s government-run car insurance company can mysteriously and based on no actual confirmation accidentally declare you dead. A mighty fine way of getting out of work, or paying your taxes, or showing up for jury duty. But if you’re George Johannesen and intending to take a trip stateside, being dead can tend to have a rather cancelling effect.

    The paperwork he received from MPI last week was addressed to “The Estate of George Johannesen” and informed him his drivers’ license had been cancelled the previous month. Since then, he’s apparently been driving without a valid license.

    For a dead guy, that wouldn’t pose a problem. But Johannesen is still very much alive.

    His enhanced drivers’ license also allowed him to enter the U.S. He won’t be able to make it down there now — he was thinking he might visit during the holidays.

    Bright side: if ever he wanted to make damn sure his employer meant what they said with regards death benefits…

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  • Silly cyclist; bikes are for roads.

    written by

    james

    I can neither drive nor safely and independently bike from A to B, so for the longest time the cycling debate that shows up every so often here in Ottawa hasn’t caught my attention for the simple fact of it can’t and didn’t involve me. A couple folks on bikes wanted to change that yesterday, it would appear.

    So I’m waiting for a bus to go get a couple things done before May took off out of the country last night, and a couple folks on bikes decided the road was much too busy for their tastes. So up on the sidewalk they went. The first one was at least moderately inteligent enough to put that stupid bell some of them have to some halfway decent use, so I was able to get across the sidewalk and out of his way. And yet, he still came within a couple inches of taking me out. The second was a while later, and I think at a different bus stop, but I can’t entirely be sure–after spending the majority of the day running around like a headless chicken, the minor details tend to sort of run together like a bad paint job. He didn’t give any actual warning, but I still managed to pick up on his arival and subsequently managed to just miss the thing’s handlebars coming from the opposite direction. Meanwhile there was maybe one or two cars on the road at the time, and they weren’t in much of a hurry to get anywhere–and were doing it on the opposite side of the road to boot.

    So both these fools decided to sidewalk it because they could, and nearly got themselves clotheslined because they could. Because I’m the curious sort, on the way back we ended up being passed by a third cyclist. This one I at least knew he was coming before I had to duck and cover, but also interesting was this one actually stayed his ass on the road. It was in the same general area as one of the other bikes from the trip earlier, so that ruled out my admittedly not well tested theory that the road wasn’t suitable there for biking. Which left the only other option being the two that played chicken with me figured cycling laws were for chumps. No, my environmentally active friend, cycling laws are for cyclists. And bikes are for roads. Try and remember that the next time some guy standing at a bus stop considers clotheslining you for trying to make the pedestrian life much more interesting than it really needs to be. That is, after all, what we have OC Transpo for. Of course I suppose next time I could just clothesline me a sidewalk chicken. That might prove slightly more educational.

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  • Because who needs building codes, anyway?

    written by

    james

    Beautiful thing about those there developing countries. Development isn’t just restricted to their economy. their regulations are also up for negotiation. So if you play the right cards and/or know the right people, you can get in on the ground floor of even that platform. What does that mean? Well, lack of common sense is perfectly excuseable, for one. It becomes perfectly fine to say you didn’t know you needed fire exits. Or even a decent sprinkler system. I mean–everything will take care of itself, right? People know how they got in–they can get out just as well. Well, except for when the 3 extra floors you probably shouldn’t have built come back to bite them, but who’s counting? Clearly not the two Bangladeshi business owners and one from Brazil who figured this was an awesome idea. I wonder who a guy’s gotta sleep with to land a gig like that. I could use the money. Building codes? So 90’s.

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  • Guest Submission: New Worlds Ateraan attends the ACB convention

    written by

    james

    Have you ever read a book and wondered what it would be like to play one of the characters?

    This year at the ACB convention you can learn about the text only online role playing game known as New Worlds Ateraan.

    This high adventure, fantasy role playing game is based on the book The Light of the Path and staff members from New Worlds Ateraan will host a seminar on Monday and Tuesday evening.

    Come to the seminar and you will learn how to become immersed in the world of Ateraan, a planet like earth where you walk among mystical creatures and live in an incredible country of fantastic magic and intrigue.

    The seminar will introduce screen reader usage, character interaction, and the best methods of role playing by your host, a professional film and theater actor.

    Now you can join hundreds of men and women characters like Neechi in an online adventure that becomes nearly real.

    Join us this year at the New Worlds Ateraan Seminar at the ACB convention.

    To see what a few other players have to say about the game look here.

    Cat

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  • Dear CPanel. You need to support Postfix. I’ll even ask nicely.

    written by

    james

    Since my former web host gave me the boot for fairly ridiculous reasons, I’ve had the pleasure of getting extremely familiar with a server and software of my very own. Part of the setup I’ve got going on now involves CPanel, which escentially lets me set up a website, email address, or any number of other things automatically inside of about 5 seconds as opposed to doing the configuring all manual like and probably contributing to my brain damage in the process. It actually isn’t too different from the control panel software the old host uses–except that they insist theirs is custom-made, but you’ll have that. There’s the occasional minor issue with the software, but over all they can be worked around or otherwise plain ignored if they aren’t already in the process of being fixed (see also: IPV6 eventually). I can’t say I love CPanel, but I’m fairly sure it wants me to. And it’s almost convinced me. Almost, except for one minor problem.

    I like to be able to tweak, adjust, reshuffle, arange, configure and otherwise mess with pretty much anything I can get my hands on. If it can be changed and not result in flatlining the server, I’m all over it like white on rice. For the most part, CPanel lets me do this thing and doesn’t complain too much. Try something funky with spam settings? Sure, here ya go. Shove an extra layer of security over web trafick? Let me help you with that. And if by some freak accident I completely bork the thing, I’m usually only about two commands away from tossing the breakage aside and restoring to a last known reasonably good configuration–thank christ, since one thing doing this on my own has shown me is I’m an absolute fail at storing my pieces of configuration files in 50 million places. But where CPanel’s limits show up isn’t necessarily in CPanel itself but rather in the software it chooses to support.

    Fast forward to my only real, niggling issue with CPanel. Hardly a dealbreaker, but it would definitely work towards making me a lot more open to not trying to roll my own. CPanel doesn’t handle email quite the way I’m used to it handling–even when I wasn’t hosting my own email. For starters, CPanel installs Exim as its mail transport agent (MTA). Now, don’t get me wrong–Exim’s good for what it does. I have no real complaints with Exim. I just can’t do anything overly useful with it without recompiling the source–something CPanel doesn’t do, and so if I were to attempt it, I’d probably be walked over as soon as the nightly updates ran. It’s not as flexible with logging as I’d prefer either, giving too much information in some areas and yet too little in others.

    I’d have much rathered if CPanel supported, either natively or otherwise, the use of Postfix for its mail relaying. I’ve started advocating for as much on their feature requests site in recent days. Based on what I know, the two are very similar. But for all their similarities, the way they handle is almost completely different–at least if you’re me. For starters, Postfix leaves more to the configuration files and less hardcoded so direct access to the source is required–again, useful given CPanel doesn’t compile its MTA and doesn’t give you the option of doing so. Additionally, Postfix is a more security-focused MTA, in the sense that it can be jailed/chrooted without breaking the rest of the system similar to how cPanel already gives you the option of locking individual users into a jailed environment so they can’t affect anything outside their own space. The ability for Postfix to drop priveleges doesn’t hurt its case any either. Postfix also tends to handle message delivery differently from Exim–generating a message for each individual address, rather than grouping messages addressed to more than one recipient into one bulk message. This has the added advantage of a single address that generates a temporary failure doesn’t cause the MTA to hold back on delivering that or any other message to anyone else who just so happens to be using the same mail destination–something that’s come up to very occasionally annoy me.

    I’m noticing as well that Exim, unlike Postfix, is relatively quiet when potential problems crop up. For instance, Postfix can be configured to send email on certain types of failure, not just to BCC you when the server itself generates a delivery status notification. So if Postfix is encountering a resource issue, let’s say it’s close to running out of diskspace, it can alert you by email. It can also log the details of an SMTP interaction for more involved diagnosing. For instance: figuring out at which point in the transaction is a connection falling apart, so I can better figure out what needs a good solid tweak in the nose to do what it’s told.

    I like CPanel well enough, now that I’m not improv learning it as I go–or having to fight with it to do what it aught to be doing pretty well out of the box. I’d like it even more if it supported the Postfix mail agent. And for that, I’d even be willing-ish to say please. Now if we could just skip right down to the part where all I have to do is flip a switch, we’ll be in business. Your move, CPanel.

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