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  • because I didn’t have enough excuse to contemplate getting back in front of a piano.

    written by

    james

    My Twitter people are trying to tell me something, apparently. Scrolling through it today, I saw quite a few postings of piano related things–some from Youtube, some from I don’t even know where else. Because, you know, this occasionally thinking that maybe I should actually dust off the piano sitting in the living room isn’t getting me anywhere. Well, okay, not entirely true. It’s getting me places. Just not very many actually, you know, good places. So, uh, thanks for the push, Twitter. Or something. I now think piano will be this year’s newyears resolution. Because apparently the fact that it was my resolution from 2 years ago is not, in fact, relevant in any way, shape or form. So what brought this one? Well, here, have a video. Then remind me in 2013 that I said I’d actually get back into it. I might listen. sorry, if you’re reading this via RSS or email. You’ll have to click over to the site to see the video. It’s a technology thinggy.

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  • The dog phobia days of apartment living.

    written by

    james

    I’m a huge dog person. Always have been. I grew up with and around them, raised and trained one of my own from 6 weeks, and now am raising a second with May–who also happens to be a huge dog person. So this apartment building was, in that respect, a perfect fit for us. Very relaxed pet policy, and no shortage of places to take the pups for walks or other reasons. The people? Could use some relaxing.

    I took Lacey on one of those afore mentioned walks for other reasons yesterday, and both leaving and coming into the building, I must have ran into at least 6 people who have a decidedly very large issue with my admittedly a little hyper, but ultimately harmless, dog. There’s a family with a rather large dog issue on this floor–actually, pretty much across from the elevators. Which, escentially, means especially in the mornings, we try and time our taking the pups out to avoid them. Because not doing so produces a reaction not entirely dissimilar to one you’d see on, say, Nightmare On Elm Street. If the dog even looks in their direction, they wig out. Backing away, occasionally screaming, and generally proving that not every grown adult is physically capable of actually acting like a grown adult. Also somewhat amusing in that even if I make the dog sit, the very act of whichever dog I’m walking doing exactly that prompts them to hit the cieling. If they and we are destined for the same elevator, I’m expected to hold the dog back until they get on the elevator, and–if they can get away with it–to wait for the next one. I’ve decidedly been doing a significant amount less of that, however, simply because–hey, pet friendly building. Dog who’s most deadly weapon is occasionally her morning breath. Chill.

    While that’s the most consistent example, it’s not the most recent–or the most amusing. As I said earlier, I ran into a few while taking Lacey on one of our little walks yesterday. One of them was already on the elevator when it got to my floor, and it was heading for ground level already. We got on, as we normally do, and this lady backs herself into the corner of the elevator opposite where we are. She stands there, sounding like she’s about to burst into tears right there on the spot, while I make sure this particular elevator is, actually, going to drop me off where I need to be dropped off. It was, which only confirmed she was going my way. So logic would dictate since we’re only another 5 floors up that she just stay put, right? Of course if she did that, there wouldn’t be a need for mockery–so we’ll just leave our logic at the door, kay? Kay.

    No sooner am I away from the door and getting Lacey into a don’t you dare move because I’m not extracting your nose from the door position, then does this ladey make a run for it. Out the door and across the hall just before the door’s about to close. Pretty sure she didn’t actually go into the apartment across the hall with the rest of the phobia clan, as we were just heading downwards when the elevator next to us opened. So she very likely ended up on the main floor at the same time as me and the dog for about 5 seconds anyway. Objective, failed.

    Now, I get that people have their reasons for being afraid of dogs. Even to the point of going out of their way to avoid them. I don’t question that–hell, to each their own, I say. But here’s the thing. You live in a building with over a hundred other people. Quite a few of them, if our occasional nosing around the building is any indication, are dog owners. Said dogs, unless they can fit in the palm of your hand, will likely need to be making regular trips outside. That, unfortunately, means you’re likely going to be sharing some common ground, at least temporarily, with something that goes woof. Knowing this as you likely, hopefully, do, why would you 1: act all surprised/shocked/horified/traumatised every single time a dog gets within 20 feet of you, and 2: put yourself in a situation, in this case a building, that pretty much guarantees 1 is going to happen with some degree of regularity? And why would you, having put yourself in that situation and knowing precisely what that situation is, expect the people with the dogs to go out of their way to make sure you’re not put in that situation?

    I can be accomodating. I can, out of respect, minimise the dog’s interaction with you–yes, even if the said interaction would usually be limited to trying to lick you to death anyway. what I cannot do, or rather will not do, is shift my entire routine–and the dog’s with it–so as to avoid you even having to tolerate that minimal or nonexistent interaction between you and dog. I have a problem with 10-year-olds that think it’s funny to send random elevators to just about every floor in the building–especially if one of those elevators happens to be requested to take me somewhere, like to ground level with a dog that needs out–but I’m not going to insist you keep your kid on a short leash until I’m safely on the main floor. to do that would be absolutely ridiculous, and I’d expect no less than half a dozen people to call me on it for that very reason. People’s reactions, in this building at least, to having to breathe the same air as a dog for as long as it takes to drop a few floors are equally ridiculous. You are in a pet friendly building. That means there are pets. Probably lots of them. If you don’t approve of this, then pick a less pet friendly building. Your right not to be traumatised does not trump my right to do as I please freely, with or without something firry attached to my wrist. You do have the right not to be offended, but please, don’t be offended somewhere else. There are things that need doing and you’re kind of in the way.

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  • Useless Sack of Bull, or why USB is of the devil.

    written by

    james

    I pretty much live on USB. Have for half an age. Kind of a requirement with about 90% of what I do. I have 3 external drives, all of them USB. I have an admitedly not used printer. That’s USB. The keyboard is USB. The mouse, if I’d gotten it back from the former roommate before he started being a tool, is also USB. The new wireless card (more on that below) is USB. Oh and I have an iPhone. that’s USB if anything useful needs to happen. Basicly, USB runs my life. Which is awesome, squared. At least until it decides to stop working. Which brings us to today–well, yesterday now.

    I got my hands on a wireless N card a bit over a year ago, since the card this machine came with was trying real hard to head maybe in a that-a-way type direction. When I got the card, the N wireless standard was still fairly new–so new it was still considered experimental. The card did what it was supposed to, for the most part. But recently, especially when doing fairly network intensive things like copying files from one system to the other, I started pushing the card’s limits. And it started pushing back. Dropping connections, sometimes not actually picking the connection back up, and once requiring a restart to actually fix the thing–I’m somewhat blaming windows for that last one. Productivity doesn’t really get to happen if you have to check every so often to make sure your system didn’t drop your productivity on the floor halfway through. So yesterday, since May and I wanted breakfast anyway, we figured we’d bounce off a restaurant and land at Staples. So we did, and I grabbed a USB wireless card. I’m getting a little low on ports, as is she, so we grabbed a couple hubs to go with–nothing fancy, just your basic 4-port jobs. Brought them back home, then figured we’d relax a bit before I started setting things up. It was only gonna take a few minutes, but it didn’t need to get done right away–most of the intensive stuff could wait a couple hours. So I put it off until yesterday afternoon, then decided I’d take the couple minutes I’d need to actually get things set up. It was gonna be quick and easy. Slap the hub in place, slap the card in the hub, install both, go on about my day. Yeah, about that.

    The USB hub installed no problem, once I figured out what the hell the extra cable was for. The card? That took a little convincing. Well, and a CD–really, who the hell packs driver software on a CD anymore, D-link? But then the fun popped in and said hi. The instalation of either card or hub, or both, caused one of my external drives to hit the deck. It was recognised, but you couldn’t actually *do* anything with it without getting permission and I/O errors up the wazu. Weirdness squared, since nothing I’d done went anywhere near the drive that gave me the fit. Oh well, you’ll have that. So figuring what was just your typical Windows wonkyness, I hit the restart button. Hey, they aren’t kidding that 90% of problems with Windows can be solved, at least temporarily, by a restart. This one slid itself neatly into the 10% that couldn’t.

    I brought the machine back up, went to call up the problem drive. “Windows can’t find l:”. Wait wait what? Oh no you didn’t. “My Computer” tells me nope, that drive ain’t showing up. Different letter, maybe? Windows develops amnesia sometimes. Nope, that doesn’t do it either. Alright, let’s drop into device manager and see what ate itself. Oh, well that’s cool. Where my external drive should be, there’s an “Unknown Device” staring at me instead. Oh and hey look. Uninstalling it and reinstalling it? Still an unknown device. And Windows ever so helpfully informs me that a USB device attached to this computer has malfunctioned and could not be recognised. Where’s my vodka, again?

    I fought with that for several hours. Then, when I thought the system might be in the process of unscrewing itself–it was taking longer than usual to restart, which it usually does if it’s attempting to self-correct, I took the opportunity to throw myself into bed for a couple hours and allow my brain to recover from its partially liquified state. Should not have done that, for the system, it done fooled me. It came up just fine. I could, again, sort of see that there was a device there. But it was still an unknown device. Well hey. It’s something, just not what I’d call progress. So, alright, whichever. USB sometimes has its preferences. That’s fine.

    I’d shuffled things around in the back of the machine so I’d have room to put the hub without killing me, and that required shuffling the drive over a port. That could have possibly screwed things up. Okay, we can fix that. Yank the hub, stick it in one of the vacant ports in the front of the machine. Move the drive back to where it used to be. Hey look–I have a drive again. We’re in the clear, finally. That only took far too long. So I started to set things up the way I had them before. That meant queuing up the several downloads I have going in the background. So I did that. “This drive has been removed. Please reattach the drive.” Oh really.

    turns out, universal plug and play means you must reorganize everything, if you’re going to reorganize anything–clearly, this is what they meant by “play”. That’s what my computer was trying to tell me, when it decided this time I didn’t have a j: drive. I most certainly do have a j: drive, but my fixing of the l: problem made everything go pair shaped. Oh, and Windows decided I didn’t have an SD card reader either–fair enough, since I never used the thing anyway. Like the first drive did before, both of these showed up as unknown devices when looking. Well, hell. I didn’t want sleep anyway. I did want caffeine, though. And vodka. Definitely vodka. So it was do this dance again and see what turns up. Exactly how I invisioned spending my first 24 hours with new hardware.

    Once again, into device manager. Once again, play the uninstall reinstall game. For the sake of the card reader, it was also hit up Dell’s website for drivers, just in case a simple reinstall fixes its wagon–it didn’t. Well bloody hell. And the drive in question didn’t move once during the entire arangement of getting everything else to work. Windows just decided it wasn’t gonna play. Oh, and it was *that* drive’s turn to have malfunctioned and not be recognised. this is getting hella old, Microsoft.

    Again, do the poking around, figure out where it’s brokoen. Again, curse when the thing that’s broken won’t fix when you shove it into place. So, I did the next best thing. I pulled *that* drive out of the port it had been sitting in since that drive existed, and slapped it into the USB hub alongside the wireless card. And didn’t the damn thing spin up, be recognised and do anything I damn well please like it’d spent its entire life exactly like that. “Show you what’s in your downloads directory? Sure. Here you go.” “Hold very still while your torrent client re-checks every single goddamn file I have because my disappearance threw it for a loop? Whatever you say, boss.” Yeah, screw you, ya something something something.

    So now I have 3 working USB drives again. Plus the working USB hub and wireless card I wanted to have in the first damn place. Still don’t have a working SD card reader, but I’ll worry about that if and when I need to. I’ll probably do a system restore at some point if only to see if that puts it in a position to maybe self-correct and undo the mass confusion, but as for right now? The damn thing works, I’m braindead, and I think there’s a sub or two calling my name. Oh, and the next time somebody tells me USB is extremely easy to work with, I won’t be held responsible for any pain caused to any USB stick regions.

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  • In which WordPress 3.5 fixes menu accessibility. Sort of.

    written by

    james

    If you’ve jumped on the wordPress bandwagon recently, you know they’ve unleashed version 3.5 on the masses. You probably also know the huge thing they’re jumping all over is the improvements they’ve made to their media library. That is not, however, the huge thing I’m jumping all over. Since about version 3.3, users who have visual impairments and who use a variety of screenreading technologies have had a bit of difficulty, without the use of additional plugins, with accessing the various submenus WordPress has to offer. This is because, in 3.3, they’ve moved to a form of javascript flyout menus that are designed only to appear when the top level menu is hovered over with the mouse. Useful, until you run into someone who can’t use the mouse. Enter yours truely, and a few folks he’s hosting. And enter this little used dialogue on the WordPress bugtracker.

    I’ve kept an eye on it since 3.3, and it goes through phases where people will poke and prod at it, then leave it alone for a few months. Apparently, somebody poked and prodded at something else, or just didn’t nail the ticket with that prod, and now, things do what they’re supposed to. Well, mostly. On a clean install of WordPress, which I just so happened to bust out before upgrading this site, completely unmodified from the core platform, the menu links that gave me and others trouble in this ticket behave as expected. And hey look, the menus don’t play hide and seak until you do some fancy dancing with your screenreader of choice’s advanced features–a big plus, in my world. Bonus points for that, guys. So now, we switch to this site. Because if I’m gonna break a bunch of folks I’m hosting, I might as well break me first, yeah? Yeah. So I do. And guess what? Not quite perfect.

    The dashboard menus still do what they’re supposed to–that is, be damn well good and visible when they damn well need to be good and visible, without the afore mentioned dancing. But the top level links still don’t read like they’re supposed to without help. A tiny bit annoying, but can still be worked around–with the same workaround I’m already using because of what they broke in version 3.3. If you weren’t aboard the WordPress wagon when I was playing with this, let me introduce you to my new favourite plugin.

    OZH Admin Drop Down Menus is a plugin that forces your dashboard menus to stay visible, permanently. It has the side benefit, which is the only reason I’m still using it now, of giving the top level menu links a readable label. Since they improved that area of accessibility in 3.5, I wouldn’t suggest installing it on a new install–unless I just got lucky and it’s actually still largely broken. For on already running installs? Definitely continue to use this plugin. And if you need assistance making it more useable from an accessibility perspective, let me know and maybe we can work a little something out.

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  • In which I do absolutely nothing profound for 12/12/12 12:12.

    written by

    james

    So If you’re a nerd, kinda like me, you find today’s date somewhat amusing. I suppose the same thing goes for if you follow any one of the 80 million people who officially declared today “international sound check day”. So here’s the thing. In honour of today, and to celebrate the fact you’re not gonna see very many more dates like this, I did… absolutely freakin’ nothing. Okay, not entirely true. At 12:12 on 12/12/12, I was somewhere between asleep and awake. Probably more towards the asleep end of the spectrum. That’s how I celebrate most geeky dates like that, you see. Entertaining, yeah? I suppose I could make up for it by doing 12 shots of vodka tonight in 12 minutes, but I’m not allowed to operate heavy machinery after I’ve been drinking. Or the blog, for that matter. Or, uh, just about anything potentially breakable–lest it become slightly more breakable in my otherwise, er, somewhat steady hands. So instead, I’ll spend 5 seconds on google, and link you to a list of 12 songs with 12 in the title. And that, right there, would be my 12/12 contribution. sorry it’s not right at 12:12. Guess I’m just not that profound. Sue me.

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  • Question, #Ottawa. What the hell happened to our 1500 winter warnings?

    written by

    james

    So coming on the end of November, we were still dealing with temperatures mostly above freezing. I mean sure, okay–there was that one minor little snow scare that made me go “oh shit where’s my portable shovel” a couple weeks ago, but for the most part, it’s been actually, you know, pleasant. Just at, or above, freezing–hell, we got as high as 17 degrees c week before last. Or was that last week? Whenever. Then yesterday, I woke up to ice on the sidewalk by our building and the threat of a snowpile by later last night/this morning. If what I’m reading’s anywhere near accurate, it’s a little more than a threat now–and a little more than snow. And Ottawa folks, here’s the kicker–it didn’t take for bloody ever this time.

    I’m used to Ottawa’s weather paterns. Or rather, I’m used to what they *should* be. You get about half a foot of snow, maybe a day or two of freezing rain, then by the weekend, about 80% of it goes melt and we sit above freezing for another week or so. This year? december came and so did the holy fuck it be a cold one. So who ran off with our 1500 warnings? Or better yet, who’s bloody idea was it to slap me in the face with snow on get things done day? Oh, and if that idea came from Texas, you’re fired.

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  • In which Klout gets to decide how valuable my skills are. Awesome. Now what the hell is Kloute?

    written by

    james

    this is an older post, but if it’s a trend, it’s a goofy one. Klout, which I so have never used–and will probably never use, is being used as a prerequisit for positions being filled by at least one company. While the ads the article references are filled, the point’s still extremely valid. Ask anyone what Klout is, and you’ll probably get a blank stare. Even Klout’s own website just calls it “the standard of influence”, but doesn’t quite answer the key question–who the hell’s standard of influence?

    The company mentioned in that article, Salesforce, was looking for applicants with a Klout score of at least 35. which is awesome. Or, well, not. You see, no one actually knows–beyond how many people are following you and how many people retweet you–how the hell a score like that’s calculated. And yet, at least one company wants to use that as a determination of–and this is a guess, here–how qualified you are to fill a position. I’d explain more, but this paragraph from that article does a better job.

    Just so you know, my Klout score is like 80 and I don’t know what it means. The hiring manager at Salesforce in that video above? 64. Does that make me smarter than him? More talented? Should I replace him? Should he be replaced by someone with a higher Klout score? NO! Of course not. Because it’s a worthless number.

    But, at least as of the time I was staring at this article, it’s a worthless number that may or may not contribute to someone’s future career. And that’s, well, rather funky. In a thanks but no thanks kinda way.

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  • frat parties just ain’t what they used to be.

    written by

    james

    God, we must have been the dullest college/university types ever growing up. You know, with dedicating the entire first week of school–or sometimes longer–to drinking, and the occasional initiation prank/hazing. Oh and let’s not forget the ACDC you could hear from halfway up the hall. That’s nothing these days. Alcohol enemas are in, now. Yes, okay, so maybe they blow you way past what would be considered the impaired driving limit. And sure, old Xander over there ended up in the hospital. But damn what a drunk he had on when he went! I mean, it could be worse, right? It’s not like he had himself a liquid nitrogen cocktail or anything. And hey, he kept his stomach. That’s a plus. Yeah. On second thought, blasting ACDC until the folks on the floor below me come knocking sounds like an epic idea. At least if I hit the emergency room, it’s for reasons that make sense–like I had my teeth knocked out for blasting ACDC. See? Boring.

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  • Why I should probably give up on Simply Hired.

    written by

    james

    Shortly after I lost my job at Dell, I jumped on to every job advertising bandwagon going. Canada’s Job Bank. Indeed. Eluta. Hell, even Kijiji. They used to land me quite a few halfway decent interviews. In recent months, though, at least some of them have gone quite down-hill. Which leads to ads not unlike, well, this one, from Simply Hired.

    Asdf at Gimpy (Ottawa, ON)

    I’m thinking it may be time for me to toss Simply Hired off to one side. In other, related news, does anyone need a geek?

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  • I do believe college just quit me.

    written by

    james

    Or if nothing else, their disability department did. I’ve been working at getting myself situated so the geekness that is me can exist on paper with a minimal amount of fuss. Which, in turn, would hopefully result in somebody not paid by the government signing my more generous than present paycheck. All would have been absolutely awesome as well, except somebody somewhere who won’t speak up is dragging their feet.

    In September, I started the ball rolling with algonquin College to get me set up with the one and only course I didn’t end up actually taking in highschool. It was math, which on a good day is probably my worst subject–maybe second only to science, and only because it’s not science fiction. Everything was in place. The folks doing that course were about ready to bend over backwards to work with me. There was just one problem. You ever tried doing math on a computer with your eyes closed, listening to something electronic trying to explain fractions to you? Yeah, if you’d like brain damage, I’ll give you an hour or so to give that a shot. Go on. This’ll wait.

    I already knew exactly what was going to have to happen–they’d need to get their hands on materials from the course. No problem. Within a week of them knowing for sure I was taking this course, they had those materials. Step 2: get them into a format I could actually use. Huge problem. Still on-going problem. I could write a novel.

    As I said, it started in September. Step 1 was get me in for an assessment so they’d know where I placed. Awesome. I can do that. They were thinking I could do the assessment then start on October 15 of this year. Turns out no not quite–they ended up pushing me back to take the assessment on October 29, which meant I’d be starting on November 12. Still, not a huge deal, if the Center for Students with Disabilities was on top of things. So I ran with it. Did the assessment, got the results, knew where I was going, yada yada blah. Then it imploded.

    By the time a week passed since I did the assessment, the CSD had at least some of the materials I’d be needing. Not all of them, mind you, but it was a start. Problem. They still didn’t have the foggiest idea who’d be transcribing those materials for me. We’re into the first week of November, and they were still waiting on an answer to that question. So, naturally, they also couldn’t tell me when those same materials, in a format I could do something useful with, would be in my hands. Awesome. So I’m sitting here, occasionally prodding the college, and occasionally getting a “we’re still waiting” back. It’s next Monday. I have no texts. And I’m supposed to be starting this course. To say this is unpretty is a mild understatement. So I get a hold of the ones actually doing the math course, let them know the story. My start date’s officially on hold until the CSD eventually, uh, wakes up a little. I let the CSD know this, and–you guessed it–they still don’t have an ETA I can hand to anyone in charge of actually getting me into this course.

    Actually, they still don’t have much. And cruising into December, that remains the case. So after hearing absolutely nothing from the CSD for nearly a month, and the deadline for applying to the program I’m taking this course to try and get me into being in february, and with the CSD spending the next few weeks primarily–and rightly–concerned with aranging people’s end-of-semester exams, I knew there was no way I was getting anywhere near finishing this mess before I’d be able to start the program next year. So, eating the $10 I paid to apply to the upgrade program, I withdrew, citing CSD issues. That’s fine. I could deal with that. It was only $10, anyway. It more annoyed me than anything else–and it wasn’t even the fault of the ones running the course.

    So fast forward to the day before yesterday. I get an email from the CSD saying they were told I’d withdrawn, and they would continue to work on the materials for me in the event I changed my mind. Wanna know what they didn’t tell me? If anyone was even working on what I’d asked them to work on yet. Or, if not, then when. And when the materials I needed so I *could* change my mind would be ready. Or, really, much of anything. I responded to that email, escentially saying as much. And, again, telling them at this point, they were the only thing keeping me out of that course–and the delay in that department was largely administrative. Much as I had before, I got nothing back from the CSD. No appology for taking 4 months to pull their crap together, no indication their crap was even together, no ETA on when their crap would be together. I’m in the same boat with the CSD now as I was at the beginning of November, except now it doesn’t much matter.

    Granted it’d been a few years, but when I went to the college before, they were dipped in awesome. Even last year, according to sources, they were still pretty much the definition of awesome. This year, for whatever reason, I have no earthly idea what up and sucked out all that awesome. But in the span of 4 months, my college, or at least my college’s disability department, just quit me. And we didn’t even kiss goodbye.

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