What's wrong with the world?

Music: XP8 - Angel and the Beast

There have been a few tragic and saddened news articles floating around lateley that have really gotten to me. You know the ones where people die before its their time, or innocent by-standers that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time while some hoodlum tries to seek "revenge" by being stupid. 

The stories themselves make me sad for the simple fact that I can't imagine what I would do if that happened to me or someone that I really cared about. I wouldn't know what to do with myself, or how to handle that situation.

Then there was this story, http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/02/16/nb-oromocto-accident.html#articlecomments, an off-duty police office and his two children, both under the age of 5 die in an accident because of the weather conditions. Completely tragic.

At the bottom of the article, the site allows any one who has registered to post comments about the story. And in this case, most people were leaving stories and memories of the officer who had died. Then there are a few of the inconsiderate people out there who have to voice their opinion about the situation because they are right and enjoy their own voice.

You'll see a barrage of people, who are trying to mourne the loss of a friend and loved one getting angry and defensive because of this person.

I'll summarize what they wrote: "This officer wasn't on duty, he didn't die for his country or his service. Why is this news? This doesn't deserve the attention that its been gettings."

Who writes that kind of thing after someone has died. Are they that miserable that they need to try and fault something like this based on sheer nonsense. 

I still can't get over what they wrote, and its been a few hours since I've read that. I just don't get people.

Pure Wanderings

Music: Skinny Puppy - Sparkless

Did you ever have a moment in your day where it made you so incredibly angry and yet you have no idea why it even happened in the first place? 

Let me explain:

I have a friend, lets call them N, whom I have grown to admire and respect for their sure determination in life and how they manage to get everything done that they need to.  I have another "friend", whom I wouldn't call a friend any more for reasons that I will try to explain without sounding too pompus, lets call them F.

My wife at one point in time has been close to both of these people, N more recently and has developed more of a friendship than she's had with F. The problem started when F began to have her baby, which was around the same time that we were trying to have one. 

F got jealous that our doctor was more willing to help us in anyway she could without having to refer us to a specialist as the wait time in our area for a person who isn't pregnant is close to 2 years. This pissed of F to no end as they had been waiting 2 years for their appointment when they had gotten pregnant. That's the first part.

After the baby arrived things had almost come back to normal between them and they would frequently make plans to go somewhere together so that she could meet their new arrival. Weeks would go by, plans would be made, but at the last minute F would cancel saying something had come up. 

At the time, we were living about 6 houses away from where I worked. One of the days which F had cancelled on she had gone to work to show off the baby like all new mothers do, and mentioned that she would go see my wife on her way home. She never did show up. Over the next severval months F would frequently visit the office and never stop by to say hello to me, maybe F felt guilty about cancelling plans on my wife? Probably not, F is too selfious for that. 

Lets bring this back to the current issue at hand. N is getting married soon, and in light of the new friendship has designated my wife as her honorary maid of honour, since she's not having one and we had a wedding exactly like the one that she wants. 

Yesterday, it turns out that F had almost invited herself to go along wedding dress shopping. With the line, "Amanda knows me."

Who invites themselves along to something like that after knowing them for only 3 days? 

Should I tell N about this, and say that they're not really friends? Should I keep it a secret and just stew on it? I don't want to mention anything and ruin what I have already established with N. 

**My personal issue with F is that I was to go into business with Mr. F, but it turns out that he wasn't interested in sharing any of the work with me, just on using and licensing the software I was building to make his life easier. F*ck that.

House

Music: Caustic - The Bible, The Bottle, The Bomb (Beta Virus Mix)

I'm sucking at this again. I think I need a job where I can play more freely on the internet without fear that IT isn't tracking every keystroke that I make. Thats a story for another day when I'm not typing on my computer at work. (IT rocks!) [kiss ass.]

I would like to appologize for not updating and for not commenting but it seems to be one of those trends thats going around. If find that over time, 90% of the blogs that I start reading go into a sort of hiatus and people seem to fall of the face of the planet. I'm down to 2 blogs that update on a regular basis and I read each of those everyday in my feed reader. 

Today marks the 2nd morning in our new house. We actually moved in 4 days ahead of schedule because of an unexpected visit from some family with a truck and trailer. They didn't have much to move other than the furniture as we put 200km on the car carting stuff back and forth from the apartment to the house. 

Its so nice to wake up in a place that you can finally call your own, its a really great feeling that I don't think I will ever get tired of. The best part about all of this is that we can start buying things for the house and start a life of our own without having to pay some skeezy guy money to live in a rat hole. (Though our last place really wasn't that bad.)

We've already gotten a new shower head, a new light fixture for the kitchen, switched all of the lights to energy efficient ones (there's a panel of 6 lights in the bathroom above the mirror, its the equivilent of 480 Watts of light but only uses 100W).

We even manged to have our first pet incident. In the 2nd bedroom closet there is a panel missing by some of the pipes but was covered over with a piece of plywood that didn't quite cover the hole. The new hold is about 4 feet up in the air. We had some totes in the closet which proved to be the right height for her. Needless to say she jumped down into the hole to see what was around, the hole has piping that runs from the hotwater tank, through the bathroom to the kitchen. We found her at the other end of the house by the hotwater tank. Cats are just crazy.

WTFriday

Who lets this happen?

Seriously? Asshole shouldn't be allowed to have kids.

How is it that someone can have a child but some people are deemed unfit to own a dog?


In other news:

Fraudsters in other countries are abusing the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) new national do not call list.

This list is similar to that of what is found in the USA, a person registers and a telemarketer is not allowed to call you. Simple. Instead of allowing telemarketers to have easy access to the list, the CRTC decided that they'd sell it to them. Instead of checking credentials, they sell it to anyone.

For $50 you can buy a copy of the do not call list for Toronto which has 600,000 telephone numbers on it from people in Europe and the US trying to trick people out of their money.


(Maybe this will be a new thing on here.)

Funny story

This is a little rant about the project that I have been working on for the past little while, the same project that sent me to Asia twice last year. I am not working on it much any more because it was a complete and total disorganized disaster. The people in charge here have been working on the project by themselves with it closely tucked into their shirt.

This is how bad it was. When I was in Asia one of the clients asked me a question about the requirements for a single module. I looked at her and scratched my head because I did not even know what that module was and what it was responsible for. Thats how bad it was.

Back to the present. Its January 9th, the project "super visor" (I prefer to call him the "ruiner") came up with a list of things that needed to be done by the 15th and given to the client which would close off this portion and allow the company to get paid. [Have I mentioned that because the "ruiner" is not allowing anyone else to help out on some parts the project is already 7 months late?] Which is fine, whatever. It was 4 business days that they gave us to work on things. On the list were about 22 items. I had 5 items that I needed to do. There was some programming and some reports that I needed to create/fix and then give to the client. Which is fine, I had created about 12 reports for the client already so I was familiar with what needed to be done and the software.

I worked my ass off doing all of the things that I had on the list and getting them done. Hell, I even finished by morning of the 14th.

We had a meeting yesterday to go over everything. It was the 21st and there are still 11 items on the list that aren't even started! Like wtf? How does that happen? Here I was working hard for nothing. How can the company be satisfied with the way this project is going when nothing gets done at all? We promise the client something and then don't deliver? Its no wonder the guy who is over there now has called/emailed the boss with complaints from the clients because nothing is as its supposed to be.

The best point of all. This isn't really our fault. Well not completely. This project is based upon a features document which outlines all of the components of the project, it should have never been signed. When the project was awarded, they didn't really know what they wanted. They only knew that they wanted a system to help streamline their business processes.

Fine.

They have a webmapping component. The document states that they required the ability to print from the web both graphical and textual information on A4 paper. Great. It already does that. Now that they've had time to think about it, they want the web mapping to print based on a template and started yelling for that. If they had of told us 6 months ago about this, then it would be different.

Do you know how hard it is to complete something when someone keeps giving you new stuff to add on top of it?

What would happen if...

Music: Silverchair - Young Modern

Canada or the United States adopted the same concept that the Isle of Man is proposing for their citizens. As some background the Isle is in the English Channel halfway between England and Ireland, its self-governing, has its own taxes, flag, anthem, etc.

The government there has been in negotiations with the big 5 (or 4) record labels to see if they can work something out. Their goal is to charge their 80,000 residents a blanket tax every year in exchange... for unlimited downloading. 

Thats right, they want to legalize file-sharing sites for music in the country with a blanket tax. Now before you start thinking, remember that in Canada there has been a tax/surcharge on every single piece of blank media on the market. This includes blank VHS tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, and even some MP3 players. This money then goes to the record labels as payment for people who tape things off the radio and television (since thats piracy or something).

What if the USA adopted this policy?

Think about it for a minute. There is about 300 million people in the country. (I'm estimating) If the government charged everyone $2 in a "internet tax", the government would be able to give the record companies $600 MILLION dollars a year to help offset the cost of what they're "losing" for not thinking proactively and getting stuck in old technology (re: American automakers). Think of the trouble this would save.

What if I don't download songs? So. The RIAA has successfully sued people who don't own computers so that doesn't matter.

What happens if more people start downloading music? The RIAA needs a swift kick in the ass to get on the band wagon that people want to own the music they buy and not just rent it.

What about the artists, do they get any money? No. The artists make on average a nickle or dime on every $20 CD sold. Most multiplatinum sellers don't care, they make their money from touring and merchandise. (Kid Rock did an interview in Canada in the 90s and they asked him about downloading, his response (summarized): "I'm rich, why should I care?")

I personally think it would be a great idea. I'd willingly pay for that.

Now if only the government would step in and tell the cable company to stop charging me $90 just so I can watch 16 HD channels...

Sources: here, here, here, and everywhere

More on the island here.

F*cking Cold

Music: Modest Mouse - Float On

Its bloody fucking cold out today. Like -34 degrees Celsius  (which is -29 for my American friends). Thats cold enough to give you frost bite within 2 or 3 minutes of over exposure. Don't forget about the windchill too, that makes it even fucking colder!

Get this, in the Arctic today is SEVEN degrees outside, in the fucking arctic. How the hell does that happen? The arctic is a thousand miles north of here and its bloody warmer up there than here. 

To make matters worse I went to work today wearing a short sleeve shirt. Normally I'm the kind of person who wears shorts around the house in the winter because I'm just a perfect temperature, I'm shivering at work right now because I'm just that cold. Its really not a good day to do just about anything.

I feel bad for the cats at home, I hope I left them some heat on today, I'm sure the heat will kick in enough for them to stay warm, they do like to cuddle though.

On a side note, and a bit of good news to get back in from the cold. We're buying a house.

A real, house. Well, a mini-home (what some people to the south call a trailer, but it doesn't have wheels so it really doesn't make sense). Regardless, my wife's friend got offered a job a month ago in another province and needs to sell her home quickly, so she's giving us an amazing deal on it. 

We're really stoked to be finally done renting and throwing money in someone else's pocket. We've been doing that for years now, and we've got nothing to show for it, apart from empty pockets. We take possession the first of February and will spend a week cleaning and moving boxes before taking the furniture and beds to officially move in. 

We're really surprised that we can get this house since our old mortgage lady, who we'll refer to as C1 kept telling us that we had too much debt for our income. We went to see a new lady and everything was perfect regarding our debt, it really didn't make much sense how we can go to one extreme to another with everything like that.

Woo! Now to build a fire under my desk to keep warm.