http://www.ioptout.ca/

I’ve always hated telemarketing calls. The Government of Canada is supposedly implementing a “Do Not Call” registry. I say supposedly because turtles move faster, and the proposed registry has holes – for instance political parties are exempted. Curious that.

Dr. Michael Geist has decided to do something about this. He set up a web site, http://www.ioptout.ca/ where Canadians can sign up to opt out from telemarketing calls, using the Canadian Privacy Legislation to also target those who were exempted from the Federal Do Not Call Registry. I signed up today, as soon as I found out about it.

For an further background I’d suggest checking out Dr. Geist’s blog at http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/blogsection/0/125/ and also check out a blog posting by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at http://blog.privcom.gc.ca/index.php/2008/03/28/ioptout/. Both the Globe and Mail (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080328.wroptoutticker28/BNStory/Technology/home/) and the CBC (http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/03/28/tech-telemarketing.html) have articles on the initiative.

Windows

You know I knew I was pissed off at Windows. Heck, that’s why I bought a Mac. But I’d forgotten how pissed of I really was. I decided to clean out my disk pile – I was thinking of installing Windows 98 under Virtual Box, and I knew that my Windows 98 CDs were in the pile somewhere. Some of the CDs in the pile were blanks (most of which were unlabeled) so I checked them all out. Over 70 CDs (and a couple of DVDs) were Linux install disks! Over 70. Sheesh.

Drugs are sooooo much fun

What it works out to is that if I take enough of my pain killers to handle the pain, I’m pretty dopey. If I don’t, can’t think straight as I hurt to much. So it’s a lose/lose proposition. I just came back in from a 5 minute walk with the dog, and I was ready to chop my leg off at the hip. Up until I went out with the dog, it hadn’t been to bad. 5 minutes on my feet, and wham!

Between the drugs and the pain I haven’t been able to sleep, and missed the last two days of work. Hopefully I’ll get some decent sleep tonight, and be able to get in tomorrow.

Besides that I’ve been watching Heather working on the FKO quilt. She has an immense amount of patience, and an ability to work on a fine level that I admire. Whoever gets the quilt in the auction is getting one beautiful piece of work.

Cult of Mac – Cult of IPod

Everyone has heard of Bit Torrent. Everyone has heard the RIAA and the MPAA fulminating against it. And then there’s No Starch Press. They’ve released on The Pirate Bay, a Bit Torrent site, two books by Leander Kahney, an editor at Wired Magazine called “Cult of Mac” and “Cult of IPod.” Since I have both a Mac and an IPod, I decided to download the torrents and read them. I’m on the first chapter of “Cult of Mac”, and really enjoying it, I just about fell off the couch when I read about the guy who bought a new Sony Vaio laptop, and immediately stuck an Apple sticker on it.

I thought that a lot of you might enjoy these books, so here are links to the Torrent files:

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4071799/Cult_of_Mac_by_Leander_Kahney

http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4071788/Cult_of_iPod_by_Leander_Kahney

Have fun.

Decisions

I’m not doing FilKONtario this year. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and it’s just not practical. There’s just too much walking at the hotel, and not enough places where I can sit comfortably. Heather suggested that I just park myself in the main function space, but the chairs in there aren’t comfortable. If I get to the point where I need to get to something comfortable, i.e. lie down, the rooms are way across the hotel, and inconvenient to get to.

So Heather and Vicky are going, I’m staying at home.

Ahh, you gotta love radiation

Or rather you’ve gotta love Mythbusters. Tonight they are submitting Cockroaches to high levels of radiation to find out if the myth about cockroaches surviving a nuclear war are real. They did tests at:

0 Rads – control group
1,000 Rads
10,000 Rads
100,000 Rads

They used two other species of insects, flour beetles, and fruit flies were also used, and the number of deaths were tracked over 30 days, checking in 15 and 30 day increments. Flour Beetles out survived the cockroaches! Yeah! Cockroaches won’t inherit the Earth if there is a nuclear war.

Writer's Block: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Don’t celebrate it, not Irish. Now I know a lot of people who are, and will celebrate it, and I suspect there will be a lot of hangovers tomorrow…

Hot times in Ohio

For those of you in Ohio, you should check out this story:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/17/ohio-voting-machines-declared

It’s about voting machine problems. Isn’t it wonderful – I’m in Ontario, found this link to this story on Groklaw, followed it to The Inquirer (which is in England), and it’s about voting machines in Ohio, the home of OVFF!

Thank god for the Internet – what else would we do for entertainment?

And of course I’m doing this while watching Mythbusters, where they are doing something with Wodka.

Pain, pain, pain

Last Wednesday I saw the pain doctor. Result is I’m now on Ocycontin, which I am told is known as hillbilly heroin. It is helping a bit, provided that I don’t do anything. The doctor also perscribed me break through pills. Percoset. Now I was on Percoset when I had my wrist surgery, and at that time it killed the pain. It also put me to sleep. This time round it does help – but it doesn’t kill the pain. This may give you an idea of how bad the pain is.

Problem is that both make me sleepy. This is not good.

Gary Gygax

Gary Gygax. Now there’s a name I have not heard for a long time.

Got home from work today, and Heather told me he’d passed away. For those few who don’t know, Gary was one of the people responsible for the massive popularity of Role Playing Games – in fact his gaming group invented the genre. Gary had many faults. Some of the modules he personally wrote we horrible. But some of the were astounding.

I can still remember the first time I played. I was at a Toronto Con, may have been Alpha Draconis, meet a couple of people who were talking about it, and a blond woman invited us up to her hotel room to play, and I had a great time. I don’t know who it was (though when I mentioned this to Lloyd Penney a couple of years ago he suggested that it was Tanya Huff) but I thank her for taking the time to take us newbies into a strange and wonderful place.

I still like playing, unfortunately time to play becomes increasingly difficult to find. Oh well – maybe after I retire…

On a final note – I was running the a campaign, and one of the players was this cute lady with an english accent. Heather and I married 7 months later,  and have been together ever since.