Who am I kidding.

I know I have nothing to say. That's a line from something by either King Missile or John S. Hall. It's also on a t-shirt that Lindsay made for me which is awesome. Sometimes I get ideas that I think would be good things to write about, but then I forget them. Those ideas never make there way here. Because I forgot what they are. So instead of writing good things, I spew randomness at the 'world' with reckless abandon. I doesn't matter too much though, it's not as though this is the most popular blog in the 'sphere. I could write about space aliens, government conspiracies, miracles, my vast wealth, or any number of fictional things and the impact I make would barely be a ripple in the vast ocean of misinformation on the Internet.

I'm sure that there are space aliens out there somewhere, though I doubt that a human or any other creature on earth has ever seen one. It's not likely that they ever will either. Actually, if you think about it the right way, we -- human beings -- are space aliens. After all, we are creatures of this planet who have the ability to leave. We can actually go into space in our own special little vehichles. That's awesome. Of course, we can't go very far. We're quite dependent on the resources that we have on Earth, and we don't really have a good way of getting those things elsewhere. Liquid water is particularly necessary, but as far as we can tell, it's not readily available on our nearby neighbours in this solar system.

I can imagine that if we ever found life on another planet (or life-supporting object in the universe), we humans would probably call it alien, even if we are the ones invading it's space... ha ha "space," "aliens".... get it?

Anyways, like I was saying, the government would probably totally cover it up if a space program ever found intelligent life on another planet, because clearly most people in the world would totally freak out at the idea. Alien cults would take over as the most popular religion, Jesus wouldn't be white anymore! He'd be green, and that's just too un-American. Not that I'm an American, I'm Canadian, but Canada would probably follow the USofA's lead in this type of circumstance.

Here is a youtube video:

Happy Monkey!

Okay, so the folks at the Apple apple store were quite friendly, I signed in early just in case they could help me out before my actual appointment and spent a good half an hour wandering around looking at all of the Mac toys. Lindsay was there hanging out with me so it wasn't completely boring.

My appointed time rolls up and I get introduced to a black-shirted fellow whose name I can't recall. I show him the cracked screen and explain what happened. No bullshitting, it fell out of my pocket and I let him know. No warranty, oh well. So how much does it cost to repair the screen on a32 GB iPod touch (third generation)? About half as much as buying a brand new iPod. I'm kind of hesitant at this point, trying to decide if it would be worth it and if I can afford to put that money towards a new device... possibly upgraded to 64 GB!

The "Genius" notices my hesitancy and decides to explain my options a little bit better. They are as follows: I can repair the device for $162.00, or I can trade in the device for a %10 discount on a different iPod, or I can get a case with a screen cover and just keep using my broken toy. Well, option three is out right away! I barely had to think about that. Option two is more tempting though! %10 off of a 64 GB iPod would be a $42.90 drop. I explain to the "Genius" that I'm still hesitant because I could always try to repair the thing on my own, just the cost of parts, void warranty, and risk of bricking the thing.

Then he tells me, "Oh, no we don't replace the screen, we replace the whole iPod for that price!"

Done. That was the fastest "repair" I've ever experienced.

Clarity

There was a post yesterday afternoon at Pharyngula, it linked to  a video statement by Richard Dawkins about "New" Atheists and clarity. I think that's just wonderful. It startles me that there are people who take this kind of clarity, this honesty, as hostility. I don't think that there can be any sort of productive discussions on a matter if one side is going to get all butt-hurt as soon as the other party states its position. I can't even compare it to shooting a messenger who bears bad news; It's more like shooting the messenger before he can even speak.

"The King of Europa sends this mess-"*BLAM!

Personal Space

It seems as though the people of Calgary have lost their sense of personal space. At least, when it comes to public transit. There should be weight sensors in all of the trains that prevent the train from moving if there is too much weight in any one car. Then they should set the maximum weight to the average of half as many people they usually fit into the thing. For christ's sake, it's almost like they want transit to be hateful, smelly and uncomfortable. I'm tempted to stand uncomfortably close to people when the train is empty... just to make a point, but I fear it would be lost on most. Also it would be awkward and I probably would never actually have the courage to do it.

It's nice to think about though.

Plagiarist

Lindsay has been doing a lot of reading lately about plagiarism. It's a serious concern for artists I would imagine. Perhaps my views on software piracy relate here, people justify software theft by saying that it's just 1's and 0's on the Internet. Well a book is just ink stains on paper, should I be allowed to scan a best selling novel and sell it for my own profit? A painting is just pigment on a medium, can I copy Pablo Picasso's work and sell it as my own?

Computers are a strange beast. They contain so much stuff, but there's really nothing about that stuff which can be identified or differentiated from the computer its self. So when I install a program on my computer it essentially becomes a part of the defining characteristics of "my computer". This is why proprietary software companies deliver an End User License Agreement (EULA) with the software. Almost every EULA says essentially that you don't own the software that you've just purchased, you only have the right to use this software in a specific way.

That may be a part of the problem with Software and Piracy. EULA's aren't necessarily recognized as binding, and certainly not on a global level. I'm sure if the logistics could be sorted out we would have to sign a proper contract before buying any new programs for our computers. Software developers don't really have much in the way of legal protection yet for the tools that they work very hard to produce, so instead we get Digital Rights Management (DRM) and watchdog groups like the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

It's too bad that people think that they deserve something for nothing, but they do. Until a time when people can be trusted not to steal, there will always need to be people willing to help prevent theft and organizations that can help report it.

There's a new ad campain on the block.

And it's full of hooey!

I caught an advertisement on the Food Network on my lunch break today. It was pretty short and sweet. A 30-something man ponders aloud about the effectiveness of prayer. He breifly mentions that prayers for "big" things seem to not be answered. Overall it stays pretty vague.

At the end of the spot I am prompted to visit PrayBig.ca, which I of course, do. Apparently there's a new book on the market. This book claims to teach people how to pray. For small donation I too can have this knowledge! They suggest $11.00

Digging deeper into the lovely website of the Crossroads Family of Ministries I find these anti-choice, and sexually repressive wonders.

Pretty typical as far as christianity is concerned. The book may be worth a quick glance, but I won't be sending any money.

Much ado about ethics.

My sister and my girlfriend have recently blogged on the subject of ethics. Particularly regarding the fashion industries questionable ones, such as the use of sweat shop labour, or the over-sexualization of products.

I try to be aware of my choices in that I would like to avoid supporting sweatshop labour, I don't want to have slavery on my conscience. I'm also fairly disgusted by the blatant pornogrifying of products. We all know that sex sells, and I don't really care if an advertisement attempts to make a product sexy, but when the advertisement goes too far and ignores the product in favour of the sex we stop having an ad and start having sexism.

Everyone has a different views on ethics and morals. Most of the time those different views line up somewhat. Rape is bad, murder is bad, it's obvious right? Well it should be. If we ignore all of the "unlesses" (i.e. "unless God said to...", "unless my government tells me to...") ethics are fairly universal. They're an extension of our evolution as a species. What I find interesting is how those ethics seem to fade in importance the further away the affected person is. If there were a sweatshop in Edmonton it would be, on average, more disturbing to Albertans than it would be to people from Quebec. Human rights violations in Mexico seem to distub Canadians more than genocide in Darfur. Most of us think that we are above such things, but I think that if we are to be honest with ourselves we have to admit that we are more strongly affected by ethics violations the closer they are to home.

That makes a little bit of sense, if I were equally disturbed by all of the worlds evil, I would never leave my room. I would be in a constant state of despair. Life would be a horrible, terrible, depressing affliction. I would probably want to end it.

The fact that I can internally diminish the significance of something not close to me does not give me the right to externally devalue the bad things that happen in the world. That would be a violation of my moral code. I don't take personally the abuses that sweatshop workers endure, but I don't pretend that the workers don't either. I wont say that I don't own any sweatshop produced products, because honestly I don't know. I probably do. I will say that I do intentionally avoid products from companies that are known to employ unethical practices.

Ahhh!

I moved my computer into the living room today and attached it to the television screen, I also dug up my wireless keyboard and mouse. I may have to do this more often. 

I'm a little proud of my computer, it's the first one that I built from scratch using all new and actually decent parts. I've got an Antec 900 tower, a Gigabyte EP45-DS3L Motherboard, an Intel E8400 Core 2 Duo processor @ 3.00 GHz , 8 GB of PC8500 Kingston HyperX RAM, and an EVGA nVidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics card. It's big and lovely, and a pain to haul up and down stairs. I have a few laptops as well, I should sell two of them... I could probably get a couple hundred dollars. 

Lindsay and I were watching old episodes of CBC's Marketplace on line yesterday and there was one called “Gouged by Geeks” it was all about how on site technical service companies often do not employ technicians who are actually skilled. Of ten companies that were called, only three were able to correctly identify correctly a problem RAM stick in a bait computer. Most of them claimed that a different part was at fault, then proceeded to try to sell the “client” a whole new computer. A certain squad of geeks stood out as the worst as far as sending a salesperson rather than a technician to the house call. A company that sends nerds to your site stood out as having probably the worst service of all that we are shown, the fellow diagnosed the wrong part as failed so badly that I could scarcely believe it, then proceeded to copy all of the clients personal data to his laptop without asking permission. I was quite disgusted by the whole affair.

It actually made me feel kind of good about the company that I work for. I may not know the skills of all of our techs. But I work there, and I know that I wouldn't have misdiagnosed the problem.

Do you know where your food comes from?

I have no idea. Well, that's not entirely true. For the last year-ish I've been paying more attention to what I eat. I realized early on that I actually give a shit about the quality of food that I consume. The "happiness" of the animal seems to directly relate to how good it tastes. Pasture finished steaks seem more tender, more... "steaky" than the factory farmed equivalent. Free range, organic eggy-weggs are tastier than the cheap ones with neon yellow yolks.

Did you know that carrots are actually incredibly sweet? The last time Lindsay and I got standard supermarket produce the veggies all tasted like freaking cardboard in comparison. Flavours from the Farmers Market are over all, more intense, more yummy, and more happy.

Also, more expensive to be sure! But I don't think that it's prohibitively so. We still manage to eat healthy and sufficiently on around $100 a week. Give or take, depending on what's on the meal plan.

I think a big reason that people don't go for the organic, free range, hippy dippy, granola crunching, yuppie food is that they're nervous about it. At least, that was the case for me. I simply assumed that the cheap, mass produced, crap that I'd always been buying was all that I could afford. I assumed that the flavours in organics couldn't be so much better that what the super store could come up with. I was afraid to take the plunge and change. I didn't want to interrupt the status quo. I know better now. Switching to happy food didn't disrupt anything. I've simple switched supermarkets to one where I can chat with the supplier. Where I know that the people running the place care as much about the product as they do about the purchaser, not the purchaser and the profit like other places seem to.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being elitist. Maybe the improvement in quality is some sort of placebo effect that I'm getting from the additional cost of organics. Either way, I still think I'm getting the better end of the bargain.