I'm writing this again on a Monday, which did not get off to a good start at all - more about that next week.
May 4 - Voices and MMO's
Dom DeLuise passed away today, at the not-so-old age of 76 years. His voice was instantly recognizable in the many animated works he was a part of, my favourite of which was The Secret of Nimh, where he was perfectly cast as the bumbling crow Jeremy. He was even the voice of Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs, one of Mel Brook's crazy-yet-classic films. Having such a distinctive voice is a blessing, for the most part, though today flexibility is the watchword. Being able to create dozens( or more )of unique voices is the best thing for a voice actor, as it makes him or her extremely attractive to a studio: for the cost of one actor, they can get numerous voices in one package!
I've spoken about MMO's before, and the 'net is full of stories( however suspect )about how utterly engrossing they can be. While nobody wants to see someone with an addictive personality fall too deeply under the spell of anything, be it game, TV, or food, combining all three addictions into one is a Bad Thing in my view.
Enter the WoWpod: a self-contained World of Warcraft isolation experience. In other words, you no longer have to take toilet or food breaks while playing, and so risk having your WoW avatar die while you are away from the keyboard. This is the worst kind of invention: one that pretends to 'solve' a problem while in effect creating and perpetuating the problems of addictive personalities. While the South Park WoW episode was intensely funny( due to WoW's creators, Blizzard, contributing some Machinima animation )the WoWpod repels me completely... what next? Cutting off your legs, since you won't need to move from pod ever again?
May 5 - Rumour Has it.
I spent the day auditing another branch, which went rather quickly. Being familiar with audits from previous years still didn't prepare me for the sheer amount of paperwork it still involves. But, it was a pleasant change from standing at the counter for the same amount of time... and I didn't serve a single customer! Which reminds me...
Though I've mentioned them previously, it still bothers me sometimes when I get those inevitable 'Dire Warning!' emails from family and friends. While I appreciate the sentiment, in that they are trying to warn as many people as possible, in 99% of the cases the emails are simple self-propagating forms of spam: hoaxes that use social engineering to make endless rounds of people's email inboxes.
Take for example, this email I received this week( note the CAPS ):
*snip* and this one too:
THIS IS NO JOKE ( gee, that ALWAYS makes me take things seriously... )
Really, the BEST thing you can do for your friends and family is to check one of THESE sites FIRST, before you forward on anything like the above emails:
- Snopes.com - Hoax-Slayer.com - Scamtypes.com
Each of the above sites contains a searchable listing of most every kind of internet fraud, scam and hoax that has made its way around the internet, sometimes even having a history of HOW the things have changed over the years. In the case of the 'Simon' hoax, it's been around since... 1998!!!
May 6 - On Marriage
Call me old-fashioned, but I worry about marriage. Not in my particular case per se, but the idea and the institution in general. With divorce rates hovering around 50% these days and marriage rates declining, one has to wonder how lasting "Until death do us part" really is in the hearts of modern newlyweds. Not to mention the legal ramifications of it all... going halfsies on worldly goods stinks when separation and worse looms.
What is marriage, exactly? With that question in mind, I've perused various sites, done searches and thunk real hard on the subject... to come up with a whole lot of opinions, and a few facts. Marriage is commitment, it is compromise and it is confusing at times. It is a bond, a breakwater for stormy times and a beacon to guide others when it works. It is a hedge against dying alone, or for living alone in uncertain times, taking the sting from sorrow and brightening the smile from good fortune. It is the rock for family, the safe place from which a home develops and children grow into adults. Hopefully good ones, if the marriage is strong and the family is well-adjusted... or just patient.
Yet, for all that, I look around and see fewer people around me bearing golden rings - myself included. Does the modern age of casual sex, shifting commitments and uncertain economics mean that marriage, on rocky shoals since the swinging sixties, is doomed to die a slow death?
Or does the pervasive fear of dying alone mean that it will remain with us for the foreseeable future?
May 7 - Protect yourself!
An article from yesterday's paper is good news for the local economy here in Victoria: apparently building permits are on the rise again. The City of Langford did something here recently to help too: it waived fees for building permits in an effort to stimulate the economy locally, though there are quite a few projects underway at the moment all around town.
An ongoing thing for me at work is educating customers about ID Fraud, and even my co-workers. For such a devastatingly widespread and growing crime, few people actually know what to do to protect themselves from becoming victims. Similar to my mention about social engineering emails above, the best way to fight is to educate yourself.
You can start by reading this excellent article at C|Net about the subject, as it covers all the basics and has some scary stats to boot about the exponential growth of ID Fraud over the last decade. There is also a ton of useful information at the SafeCanada.ca website, which goes into useful detail about how to recognize such things as phishing and how to protect yourself and your family. Another good site for the basics is PhoneBusters.ca, a site operated by the RCMP and one that I give out regularly to customers when I feel they need to contact someone about possible fraud - very useful!
May 8 - Long Fridays
Today was an early day for me: part of renting with other folks is accommodating their needs, and in this case, my mom needed to hold a meeting for her Newcomer's Club at 9:30am today. So, I headed out WAY too early for work( 3 hours, actually )to go explore the Millstream shopping area. Specifically, I headed to the Starbuck's there to spend some time with Chai tea and complimentary internet. Big mistake: this particular Steebs was small, crowded and antiseptically decorated, the first such I have seen - it made me feel like I was walking into a McDonald's that had run out halfway through a meager decorating budget. Unwilling to spend a few hours listening to the blasting roar of beans being ground next to my head in the only available chair, I went outside on the patio under grey skies to briefly surf, as long as my tea remained hot to ward off the chill in the air. I will say this much: large patio sizes do not make up for staring at four lanes of traffic, mixed with screaming ambulances and diesel-chugging construction vehicles. About as ugly a morning out as I can recall.
Thankfully, I had backup: at 10am I went over to Future Shop, just across the parking lot, to escape traffic noise and warm myself up a bit. Mistake number 2: I found a few things on sale I had been looking for, including Season 4 of Stargate: Atlantis. Of course, it wasn't that easy... pulling out my shiny rarely-used Future Shop card to take advantage of 90-days no payments, I was flummoxed when it was declined. Three phone calls and twenty patient minutes later, their customer service rep told me that my address had been recorded incorrectly when I called in February, causing some promotional mail to be returned and making the account go into suspension - despite continued payments on my Xmas 2007 TV purchase and several calls since then to the same line about said payments, each time confirming my new address! *sigh* Suffice to say, I was about as impressed as when I usually call Telus, who also have yet to manage to get things right two calls in a row. When I told the cashier that, we both shared a laugh, as Telus' customer service is a running joke in B.C. - just like the weather, it is a great conversational starter out here, much like the old "So how about those Jays?" back in the nineties.
After straightening that out, I went across the road to Serious Coffee for their version of a chai tea, relaxing inside a corner window with a great view of the parking lot and Milestone's, which is advertising their "Celebrate Date Night every Wednesday, 2 dine for $50.00" ... not so good a deal. Sadly, the Serious Coffee free internet and my laptop decided to disagree on how to shake hands, so I spent the time instead writing up some further notes on my NWN project, and detailing my morning in this day's entry - amazing how much you can write about a few hour's travails, for good and bad.
May 9 - Failure?
Overall, a pleasant day at work: the open-concept design of the branch means I spend a good deal of my time seated in the back, instead of standing at the counter. Not much change in that from the Fort St location, really, but the slower store means I can spend more time sitting down at a stretch. Which is good, as I have a lot of paperwork and numbers to work through each day... the lot of managers everywhere, I suppose.
While surfing in the evening, I came across a curious phrase: "Failed at life." This reminded me somewhat of failing saving throw rolls in gaming, so I looked a little further into it, and found not too few entries on the subject, though what message FailedAtLife.com is trying to convey is... questionable.
I spent the few hours before midnight browsing through thousands of family photos, looking for just the right ones to finish off my Mother's Day project. Luckily, I found a few misplaced directories that contained the vacation photos I was looking for and so was able to complete the project just shy of 1am. Whew!
May 10 - Mama's Day Dazzling
With the addition of the much better photos found last night, my Mother's Day gift was in far better shape this morning than earlier in the week. I presented the slideshow to my parents just after breakfast, using the USB key function of my LG TV - popped in the USB stick, selected Slideshow from the menu, keyed up the background music( Enya, of course )and ran it. My mom really enjoyed it, as I had captioned the photos, and my dad had tears in his eyes by the end - he's an old softie, really.
Did a few more hours of yardwork today, which seems to be becoming a Sunday Thing. The Yardworks manual mower does a nice job, though it still doesn't get the more flexible crabgrass, which gives the lawn a stubbly look soon fixed by the vicious application of a weed whacker. Take that, crabby!
I tried to get a new tech toy... er, necessary bit of video hardware to work, but with no success. The Dazzle Video Creator Plus was in the clearance bin at the local Future Schlock, for quite the discount - that should have been my first warning. When I got it home, I discovered why: the install DVD was missing. Not one to miss an opportunity, I managed to locate and install the Vista64 drivers for it, to at least get it working. Which is when I discovered that the drivers made it work, but the hardware choked on any combined video/audio signal. Despite installing three different video capture programs, the Dazzle could not provide a stable, steady signal and managed to turn any audio captured into an ear-searing screech like a dog whistle - not good. So back to the store it goes on Monday, darn it... and I still cannot get my old ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro to work capturing video again. Too outdated... though glowing, all the reviews on ATI's site are from 2003.
It's well into the afternoon now here on the 11th... time to work on other things. Like figuring out how to be in Niagara for August 2nd this year... Toods!
May 4 - Voices and MMO's
Dom DeLuise passed away today, at the not-so-old age of 76 years. His voice was instantly recognizable in the many animated works he was a part of, my favourite of which was The Secret of Nimh, where he was perfectly cast as the bumbling crow Jeremy. He was even the voice of Pizza the Hutt in Spaceballs, one of Mel Brook's crazy-yet-classic films. Having such a distinctive voice is a blessing, for the most part, though today flexibility is the watchword. Being able to create dozens( or more )of unique voices is the best thing for a voice actor, as it makes him or her extremely attractive to a studio: for the cost of one actor, they can get numerous voices in one package!
I've spoken about MMO's before, and the 'net is full of stories( however suspect )about how utterly engrossing they can be. While nobody wants to see someone with an addictive personality fall too deeply under the spell of anything, be it game, TV, or food, combining all three addictions into one is a Bad Thing in my view.
Enter the WoWpod: a self-contained World of Warcraft isolation experience. In other words, you no longer have to take toilet or food breaks while playing, and so risk having your WoW avatar die while you are away from the keyboard. This is the worst kind of invention: one that pretends to 'solve' a problem while in effect creating and perpetuating the problems of addictive personalities. While the South Park WoW episode was intensely funny( due to WoW's creators, Blizzard, contributing some Machinima animation )the WoWpod repels me completely... what next? Cutting off your legs, since you won't need to move from pod ever again?
May 5 - Rumour Has it.
I spent the day auditing another branch, which went rather quickly. Being familiar with audits from previous years still didn't prepare me for the sheer amount of paperwork it still involves. But, it was a pleasant change from standing at the counter for the same amount of time... and I didn't serve a single customer! Which reminds me...
Though I've mentioned them previously, it still bothers me sometimes when I get those inevitable 'Dire Warning!' emails from family and friends. While I appreciate the sentiment, in that they are trying to warn as many people as possible, in 99% of the cases the emails are simple self-propagating forms of spam: hoaxes that use social engineering to make endless rounds of people's email inboxes.
Take for example, this email I received this week( note the CAPS ):
IF A PERSON CALLED SIMON ASHTON ( SIMON25 at HOTMAIL.CO.UK ) CONTACTS YOU THROUGH EMAIL DON'T OPEN THE MESSAGE. DELETE IT BECAUSE HE IS A HACKER!!
TELL EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST BECAUSE IF SOMEBODY ON YOUR LIST ADDS HIM THEN YOU WILL GET HIM ON YOUR LIST. HE WILL FIGURE OUT YOUR ID COMPUTER ADDRESS, SO COPY AND PASTE THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE EVEN IF YOU DONT CARE FOR THEM AND FAST BECAUSE IF HE HACKS THEIR EMAIL HE HACKS YOUR MAIL TOO!!!!!...
*snip* and this one too:
THIS IS NO JOKE ( gee, that ALWAYS makes me take things seriously... )
Subject: 90# on your telephone.
You may want to pass this on to family or friends
( surprise, surprise... )
Re: 90# on your telephone.
I dialed '0' and asked the operator to confirm if this was correct, so please pass it on. ( again! )
I received a telephone call last evening from an individual identifying himself as a Telus Serviceman, who was conducting a test on the telephone-lines. He stated that to complete the test I should touch nine (9) and then zero(0 , followed by the pound sign (#), and then to hang up.
Luckily, I was suspicious, and I refused.
( duh - how many people actually get these kinds of random calls? )
Upon contacting the telephone company, I was informed that by pushing 90#, you are giving the requesting individual full access to your telephone line, which enables them to place long distance calls billed to your home phone number.
I was further informed that this scam has been originating from many of B.C's local Jails and Prisons.
( oh really? all those inmates with unmonitored phone lines in their cell blocks? )
DO NOT press 90# for ANYONE !
The GTE Security Department( no such thing )requested that I share this information with EVERYONE I KNOW.
( 3rd request to forward this email! )
After checking with Telus, they said it was true, so do not dial 90# for anyone!
PLEASE HIT THAT FORWARD BUTTON AND PASS THIS ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.( that's 4 times now ASKING to fwd the email! )
Vivian Thompson,
Crime & Fraud Prevention Coordinator,
District 5
South Surrey RCMP,
British Columbia.
( note the 'official' connection at the end here )
Really, the BEST thing you can do for your friends and family is to check one of THESE sites FIRST, before you forward on anything like the above emails:
- Snopes.com - Hoax-Slayer.com - Scamtypes.com
Each of the above sites contains a searchable listing of most every kind of internet fraud, scam and hoax that has made its way around the internet, sometimes even having a history of HOW the things have changed over the years. In the case of the 'Simon' hoax, it's been around since... 1998!!!
May 6 - On Marriage
Call me old-fashioned, but I worry about marriage. Not in my particular case per se, but the idea and the institution in general. With divorce rates hovering around 50% these days and marriage rates declining, one has to wonder how lasting "Until death do us part" really is in the hearts of modern newlyweds. Not to mention the legal ramifications of it all... going halfsies on worldly goods stinks when separation and worse looms.
What is marriage, exactly? With that question in mind, I've perused various sites, done searches and thunk real hard on the subject... to come up with a whole lot of opinions, and a few facts. Marriage is commitment, it is compromise and it is confusing at times. It is a bond, a breakwater for stormy times and a beacon to guide others when it works. It is a hedge against dying alone, or for living alone in uncertain times, taking the sting from sorrow and brightening the smile from good fortune. It is the rock for family, the safe place from which a home develops and children grow into adults. Hopefully good ones, if the marriage is strong and the family is well-adjusted... or just patient.
Yet, for all that, I look around and see fewer people around me bearing golden rings - myself included. Does the modern age of casual sex, shifting commitments and uncertain economics mean that marriage, on rocky shoals since the swinging sixties, is doomed to die a slow death?
Or does the pervasive fear of dying alone mean that it will remain with us for the foreseeable future?
May 7 - Protect yourself!
An article from yesterday's paper is good news for the local economy here in Victoria: apparently building permits are on the rise again. The City of Langford did something here recently to help too: it waived fees for building permits in an effort to stimulate the economy locally, though there are quite a few projects underway at the moment all around town.
An ongoing thing for me at work is educating customers about ID Fraud, and even my co-workers. For such a devastatingly widespread and growing crime, few people actually know what to do to protect themselves from becoming victims. Similar to my mention about social engineering emails above, the best way to fight is to educate yourself.
You can start by reading this excellent article at C|Net about the subject, as it covers all the basics and has some scary stats to boot about the exponential growth of ID Fraud over the last decade. There is also a ton of useful information at the SafeCanada.ca website, which goes into useful detail about how to recognize such things as phishing and how to protect yourself and your family. Another good site for the basics is PhoneBusters.ca, a site operated by the RCMP and one that I give out regularly to customers when I feel they need to contact someone about possible fraud - very useful!
May 8 - Long Fridays
Today was an early day for me: part of renting with other folks is accommodating their needs, and in this case, my mom needed to hold a meeting for her Newcomer's Club at 9:30am today. So, I headed out WAY too early for work( 3 hours, actually )to go explore the Millstream shopping area. Specifically, I headed to the Starbuck's there to spend some time with Chai tea and complimentary internet. Big mistake: this particular Steebs was small, crowded and antiseptically decorated, the first such I have seen - it made me feel like I was walking into a McDonald's that had run out halfway through a meager decorating budget. Unwilling to spend a few hours listening to the blasting roar of beans being ground next to my head in the only available chair, I went outside on the patio under grey skies to briefly surf, as long as my tea remained hot to ward off the chill in the air. I will say this much: large patio sizes do not make up for staring at four lanes of traffic, mixed with screaming ambulances and diesel-chugging construction vehicles. About as ugly a morning out as I can recall.
Thankfully, I had backup: at 10am I went over to Future Shop, just across the parking lot, to escape traffic noise and warm myself up a bit. Mistake number 2: I found a few things on sale I had been looking for, including Season 4 of Stargate: Atlantis. Of course, it wasn't that easy... pulling out my shiny rarely-used Future Shop card to take advantage of 90-days no payments, I was flummoxed when it was declined. Three phone calls and twenty patient minutes later, their customer service rep told me that my address had been recorded incorrectly when I called in February, causing some promotional mail to be returned and making the account go into suspension - despite continued payments on my Xmas 2007 TV purchase and several calls since then to the same line about said payments, each time confirming my new address! *sigh* Suffice to say, I was about as impressed as when I usually call Telus, who also have yet to manage to get things right two calls in a row. When I told the cashier that, we both shared a laugh, as Telus' customer service is a running joke in B.C. - just like the weather, it is a great conversational starter out here, much like the old "So how about those Jays?" back in the nineties.
After straightening that out, I went across the road to Serious Coffee for their version of a chai tea, relaxing inside a corner window with a great view of the parking lot and Milestone's, which is advertising their "Celebrate Date Night every Wednesday, 2 dine for $50.00" ... not so good a deal. Sadly, the Serious Coffee free internet and my laptop decided to disagree on how to shake hands, so I spent the time instead writing up some further notes on my NWN project, and detailing my morning in this day's entry - amazing how much you can write about a few hour's travails, for good and bad.
May 9 - Failure?
Overall, a pleasant day at work: the open-concept design of the branch means I spend a good deal of my time seated in the back, instead of standing at the counter. Not much change in that from the Fort St location, really, but the slower store means I can spend more time sitting down at a stretch. Which is good, as I have a lot of paperwork and numbers to work through each day... the lot of managers everywhere, I suppose.
While surfing in the evening, I came across a curious phrase: "Failed at life." This reminded me somewhat of failing saving throw rolls in gaming, so I looked a little further into it, and found not too few entries on the subject, though what message FailedAtLife.com is trying to convey is... questionable.
I spent the few hours before midnight browsing through thousands of family photos, looking for just the right ones to finish off my Mother's Day project. Luckily, I found a few misplaced directories that contained the vacation photos I was looking for and so was able to complete the project just shy of 1am. Whew!
May 10 - Mama's Day Dazzling
With the addition of the much better photos found last night, my Mother's Day gift was in far better shape this morning than earlier in the week. I presented the slideshow to my parents just after breakfast, using the USB key function of my LG TV - popped in the USB stick, selected Slideshow from the menu, keyed up the background music( Enya, of course )and ran it. My mom really enjoyed it, as I had captioned the photos, and my dad had tears in his eyes by the end - he's an old softie, really.
Did a few more hours of yardwork today, which seems to be becoming a Sunday Thing. The Yardworks manual mower does a nice job, though it still doesn't get the more flexible crabgrass, which gives the lawn a stubbly look soon fixed by the vicious application of a weed whacker. Take that, crabby!
I tried to get a new tech toy... er, necessary bit of video hardware to work, but with no success. The Dazzle Video Creator Plus was in the clearance bin at the local Future Schlock, for quite the discount - that should have been my first warning. When I got it home, I discovered why: the install DVD was missing. Not one to miss an opportunity, I managed to locate and install the Vista64 drivers for it, to at least get it working. Which is when I discovered that the drivers made it work, but the hardware choked on any combined video/audio signal. Despite installing three different video capture programs, the Dazzle could not provide a stable, steady signal and managed to turn any audio captured into an ear-searing screech like a dog whistle - not good. So back to the store it goes on Monday, darn it... and I still cannot get my old ATI All-in-Wonder 9800 Pro to work capturing video again. Too outdated... though glowing, all the reviews on ATI's site are from 2003.
It's well into the afternoon now here on the 11th... time to work on other things. Like figuring out how to be in Niagara for August 2nd this year... Toods!
