[tags]logitech wireless mouse, montreal canadiens, ottawa senators, battlestar galactica, spring, constantines, kensington heights, income tax return[/tags]
There is no doubt in my mind that ePass, the Government of Canada’s online services website, is the worst online application ever constructed. I am willing to bet that it cost millions of dollars to build and has never once been glanced at by anyone with even a passing interest in usability. I am by any measure a very proficient online user, but this web site simply confounds me with its dysfunction. On top of all the circular navigation and absurdly verbose pages, I cannot sign in because, even answering half a dozen security questions, I have to wait for a piece of paper to show up in the mail with an access code. Only then can I sign in, and change my address, so that I may NetFile my taxes.
So fuck you, ePass. You are the most ridiculous waste of my tax dollars that ever there was.
[tags]epass, netfile[/tags]
18 months ago, after our trip to the Rockies, I uploaded a ton of pictures to my Flickr account. Probably around a thousand, in fact, because…well, it’s the Rockies and you take pictures. However, I knew that most sane people wouldn’t look at 1,000 pictures taken by someone else, so I always planned to create a “best pictures” Flickr set. I used that approach when we came back from France.
Today, in between work and school and knocking items off the to-do list, I finally picked my favourite 27 pictures and put them in a new set. View the slideshow here to see the ones that really stuck with me.
[tags]rockies, flickr[/tags]
Via Beyond Robson (the Vancouver equivalent of BlogTO) I read this story today:
Google Gives All SF Homeless Free Voicemail
Google has made an announcement that could help hundreds of homeless people in San Francisco get back on their feet. Every single homeless person in the city will be given a life-long phone number and voicemail, should they choose to accept it, NBC11’s Lisa Bernard said.
More details here at Google’s blog. Google does this using GrandCentral, a technology they acquired a while back. I’ve played around with it some, and my brother’s a big fan.
Anyway, I’m sure some people will read this and laugh/sneer, saying “Don’t you think there’re things that homeless people need more than voicemail?” Well, yeah, of course there are, but Google can’t provide those things directly, so it’s doing this. Good for them.
By the way, $5 says this came out of a 20% time idea.
[tags]google, grandcentral, homeless, san francisco, project homeless connect[/tags]
I really hope Microsoft is able to buy Yahoo, ’cause Microhoo really is one of best words ever invented.
[tags]microsoft, yahoo, microhoo[/tags]
It’s a cold one out there. The inner harbour is now frozen up; the S-curve you can see in the ice is cut by the Ward’s Island ferry.
.:.
It’s been a lazy long weekend thus far. Last night we watched a movie — The Prestige (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which we both quite enjoyed — and this morning’s been all about catching up on light errands while Nellie and the boys sleep in. This afternoon I think the plan is to hit Canadian Tire, do some shopping and maybe see a movie on the way home, then watch some NBA skills competition. I have to get as much stuff done today as I can because tomorrow will be taken up by reading marketing and doing work, and Monday will be taken up by me laying on my ass and doing my damndest to clear the PVR.
.:.
Here’s why I like the interwebs, and specifically Flickr: yesterday I got an email from someone organizing an environmental forum in Alberta, and she wanted to use a picture we took on our 2006 Rockies trip. Not sure why; it was a fairly unimpressive picture. Still, I told her to go ahead.
Today I got an email from someone who’s seen the pictures we’ve taken out our windows, some of which show a construction site just to our east. He recognized the site, and said his daughter bought a condo there. He asked if I would mind taking the occasional picture of the site so that they could see the building’s progress. I remember wishing we had someone to do that with our site, so I created a Flickr set for him and agreed to post a picture a month. Hey, it’s no skin off my back and it gives his daughter a vantage point she couldn’t possibly get otherwise, so why not?
I feel all warm and digitally fuzzy.
[tags]toronto harbour, the prestige, family day ontario, flickr, vu condominiums[/tags]
Yesterday my brother was supposed to be in town for dinner, but fate prevented him from reaching Toronto in time, so Nellie and I just went ahead and had dinner at the same place. Screw valentine’s day; ’tis a crock.
Much more important to us are the days immediately before and after V-Day; Feb 13 is the anniversary of the day we got engaged (which Nellie refers to as engage-iversary) and Feb 15, the anniversary of the day we adopted the cats (which, naturally, she refers to as cat-iversary). Of course, there’s another wonderful day coming up on Monday: our new holiday. Thank you Dalton McGuinty.
One more Valentine’s-related tidbit: I’m guessing NBC re-aired last year’s V-Day episode of 30 Rock, ’cause yesterday my blog was flooded with hits for the phrase “Happy Valentimes!!”
.:.
Let’s see, what’s in the news today? Hmm…US primaries…campus gunman…Pentagon to shoot down satellite…baseball hea…wait, what?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon plans to shoot down a disabled U.S. spy satellite before it enters the atmosphere to prevent a potentially deadly leak of toxic gas from the vehicle’s fuel tank, officials said on Thursday. [via Reuters]
Yeah, I don’t see how anything could go wrong with that.
.:.
Toshiba: bring out your dead.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has decided to exclusively sell high-definition DVDs in the Blu-ray format, dealing what could be a crippling blow to the rival HD DVD technology backed by Toshiba Corp. [via MSNBC]
Seriously where’s my Blu-Ray Children Of Men?
[tags]valentine’s day, family day ontario, disabled satellite, hd-dvd, blu-ray[/tags]
The good: our fancy-pants Harmony 880 remote arrived today. Actually, it arrived last Tuesday, but the security desk downstairs somehow forgot to tell us. They do that a lot. Anyway, we fetched it tonight and I’ve spent my few remaining active brain cells figuring how to use it. Still working out the bugs but I think I’ve got it. For Nellie and I it’ll be sweet to only have one remote instead of wrangling 4 or 5; for visiting parents it’ll be nice to just press one button that says “Watch TV” or whatever.
The bad: no two ways about it, I’m sick. I am siiii-iiiick. I stayed home from work today and basically tried to figure out the optimal angle at which to lie down to a) minimize my headache, and b) maximize drainage from my sinus cavity. All the Tylenol cold & cough in the world didn’t make much difference; I’m hoping the mug of neo-citran cooling in front of me knocks me out. I need sleep.
The sacred: all I could do today was lie on the couch and watch a movie (higher brain functions: not present) so I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a documentary about the little-known cult folk singer. I knew a little bit about him from the buzz surrounding the film (which screened at TIFF a couple of years ago) and I know my brother was very affected by seeing him live, but that was it. I actually didn’t even know about the whole Kurt Cobain t-shirt thing. Watching the film was only marginally easier than listening to him sing; in both situations this man’s demons are on display for the whole world to see.
The profane: we also watched a documentary tonight (thank you writer’s strike!) called Fuck (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Yes, you read that right. Fuck. It is, predictably, an inspection of why the word is considered so naughty. It spends a bit of time on the origin of the word (hint: it’s not an acronym, despite what you’ve been told), looks at the history of its use in comedy and show business (starting, naturally, with Lenny Bruce), touches on what it means to first amendment rights and eventually becomes a discussion of conservative hysteria and hypocrisy (or at least that’s how it seemed to me; I’m sure to a conservative it seemed like a discussion of how liberalism is sending America into the toilet at Mach 3). While it was interesting subject matter, and it had a few laughs (especially from Billy Connolly and Bill Maher) the documentary tried much too hard to be cute and edgy at the same time. Not bad, but not great. And vertainly not for the faint of heart; the film takes pride in the fact that, were it to be aired unedited on American television, they would be fined $280 million dollars by the FCC.
[tags]harmony remote control, sinus cold, the devil and daniel johnston, fuck documentary[/tags]
I installed Flock over the weekend, and so far I’m liking it. I had a quick look at earlier versions and didn’t think much of it, but this release candidate for v1.0 is pretty good. The integration with Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube (among others) is great. The biggest downside so far is that I miss all the Firefox extensions…AdBlock, better downloaders, etc. Hopefully someone develops more extensions for Flock soon; I’d like to keep using it.
.:.
There’s a giant billboard that I see every day on my walk home. It’s an advertisement for a book. The title is “Think Big and Kick Ass.” The author is one Donald Trump, but his name is displayed simply as “Trump.” Sorry…”TRUMP.” The cover picture is TRUMP yelling at somebody, or something. Presumably he was in mid ass-kick when the picture was taken. Perhaps he was kicking the photographers ass. Perhaps TRUMP was thinking big, and devising a plot to kick the ass of every photographer in the world.
Anyway, all I can think every day as I pass this billboard is that an obnoxious muppet with all the money in the world is still just an obnoxious muppet. Sorry…MUPPET.
.:.
Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in. I’d all but given up on Heroes; lo and behold they bring in my girlfriend du jour, Kristen Bell. So much for not watching.
[tags]flock, donald trump, think big, kick ass, heroes, kristen bell, girlfriend du jour[/tags]
I think that if I were to win the lottery I’d still want to work. I’d go crazy if I didn’t. I mean, I’d take a few months off and do whatever, but I’d take a nice relaxing job. Probably part-time. Maybe at a book store, a small classic one like Nicholas Hoare where the floors squeak.
What would your lottery job be? Would you have one at all?
.:.
Speaking of books, a new one called The Top 100 Canadian Albums lists…well, I’m pretty sure you don’t need my help here. The Toronto Star lists the first twenty, and I don’t have much to argue with. It’s pretty hard to dispute Neil Young‘s Harvest at #1, and they include some albums — Music From Big Pink, Fully Completely, Funeral, Moving Pictures, Whale Music — that, while less obvious, are completely deserving of inclusion. Even Bryan Adams wasn’t completely horrid back then.
.:.
The old commerce building at Dalhousie, where I spent four years of my life, is being demolished. Sitting in the dank basement case rooms, walking up the rickety stairs, dashing through the waterfall that fell through the seam between the buildings when it rained, rolling across the uneven computer lab floor…ah, what fun. Cough, cough…
.:.
7 months ago I mocked people who used Twitter, having tried it and not thought much of it. Today I fired it up again, as much as an outlet as anything else. If anyone’s on (other than those of you I’m already following) let me know. I’m LtDan.
Most of my readership is now scratching their head, wondering what unholy nerdquest I’m on about now…
[tags]lottery job, nicholas hoare, top canadian albums, neil young, dalhousie university, twitter[/tags]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 