Ranting and Roaring

• 7th wedding anniversary (Thursday past)
• Trinity-Anne’s 5th birthday (Saturday)
• first sailing regatta, the Shark Trillium at RCYC. We came 9th, which is OK (though anything top 12 will make me happy, but the goal to get top 5s)
• three days of patch testing
  • the Greatest Health Care System In The World made me wait 6 months to get the tests
  • on Monday, two hours of waiting for about 15 minutes of work
  • today, I was scheduled to be the first person there. I still had to wait 20 minutes because they could be bothered to open up. Grrrr.
  • I’m really really really stomach sick; I’m not sure if this is related to the patch testing but it happened at the same time. I’ve slept almost all of today. This made me miss DemoCamp last night.
• TTC wildcat strike on Monday. David Miller, the Greatest Mayor In The History Of All Cities That Ever Were And Ever Will Be is paying the workers who wouldn’t cross the picket lines. Why not? It’s not his money. The city is suing the union, but let’s see how half hearted that becomes if it will affect the November elections.

There’s (apparently) a Tornado Watch over much of southern Ontario today, or so The Weather Network tells us. The reason I looked there (and suspected something was up) was because the Environment Canada weather page is down.

Perhaps they should take a few machines away from that Green Lane/Global Warming crap and actually dedicate them to services that do Canadians some good.

A. Boring. List. Of. Features. A BLOF. There’s a nice quote in there too:

Apple (read Jobs) gets one thing right consistently. The marketing message is finely tuned to sell the consumer on the benefits, not the features, of the product.

CBC reports:

Heather Crowe, the long-time waitress who contracted lung cancer from second-hand smoke and waged an anti-smoking campaign, has died at the age of 61.

People got lung cancer long before smoking was around and they’ll get lung cancer long after they plant behavior-mod chips in our brains to stop us from engaging in anti-social behavior. Why did Crowe get cancer? We’ll never know. But you won’t find any clear scientific consensus that correlates second-hand smoking and lung cancer to the accepted level of proof required for other non-emotive fields.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty presented Crowe with an award named in her honour last December. The Heather Crowe Award will recognize the efforts of individuals and organizations in promoting a smoke-free Ontario.

By “promoting” they mean jamming it down your throat backed by a gun. Because if you’re right, why respect the rights of people who are wrong?

Funny, I scored pretty well the same as Andrea. I bet all my net buddies (except Al and Arthur) score about the same on this one.

Sociopath You are 100% Rational, 28% Extroverted, 71% Brutal, and 57% Arrogant.

You are the Sociopath! As a result of your cold, calculating rationality, your introversion (and ability to keep quiet), your brutality, and your arrogance, you would make a very cunning serial killer. You are confident and capable of social interaction, but you prefer the silence of dead bodies to the loud, twittering nitwits you normally encounter in your daily life. You care very little for the feelings of others, possibly because you are not a very emotional person. You are also very calculating and intelligent, making you a perfect criminal mastermind. Also, you are a very arrogant person, tending to see yourself as better than others, providing you with a strong ability to perceive others as weak little animals, so tiny and small. You take great pleasure in the misery of others, and there is nothing sweeter to you than the sweet glory of using someone else’s shattered failure to project yourself to success. Except sugar. That just may be sweeter. In short, your personality defect is the fact that you could easily be a sociopath, because you are calculating, unemotional, brutal, and arrogant. Please don’t kill me for writing mean things about you! I have a 101 mile-long knife! Don’t make me use it! To put it less negatively: 1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive. 2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted. 3. You are more BRUTAL than gentle. 4. You are more ARROGANT than humble. Compatibility: Your exact opposite is the Hippie. Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Spiteful Loner, the Smartass, and the Capitalist Pig. * * If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits. The other personality types: The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble. The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble. The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant. The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble. The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant. The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble. The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.

That’s what really makes this country work, the civic spirit of giving (þ Dust my Broom):

Kaleigh McNeil, 20, stood on a bus shelter and lifted her turquoise bra. “I had a major rush because the Oilers won and I just had to show all the people my (breasts),” she said.

I’m just impressed they can spell ”fascist”. (For those of you not in Toronto, context).

I’m getting ready to head down to Mesh right now but I thought I’d take a moment to introduce the first comercial website built on the BlogMatrix platform: Get Going Canada.

Things to note that are directly related to the BlogMatrix Platform:

• all the “destinations”, ads, notes on destinations and comments are all “blog” entries in the system, tagged to create relationships (i.e. the comment is approved/not approved and belongs to this destination)
• maps (+ province), maps (+ province + theme), maps (+ full-text search), maps (+ full-text search + themes), and maps (+ destination)
• it uses “structured blogging”—add-on form elements to “normal” blog posts—to specify additional information, such as geographic location and approval workflow, for the destintaion entries
• “facets”. What are facets? Well for example on this page see how it knows that there are no Food, Rocks or Structures destinations related to this search. That’s facets. It’s subtle but it really increases the usability of the site (and it’s moderately hard to do!). Read more about facets here and here.
• it’s multi-language
• admin-wise, to the people maintaining this site, it looks like a blog—we use tags to narrow down entries into their type (English + Comments + Not Approved, for example) so it’s simple—“blog easy”—to use
• lots of great sponsors for this product: Royal Bank, Esso, Hilton, Toyota, Delta and Fairmont Hotels.

We’ve also custom coded a lot of stuff in here, such as the contest, but this builds up upon parts of the product such as our e-mail management tools.

Plus Joanne and Trinity-Anne are flying to Florida, Mom’s here for Mother’s day and we’re delivering Get Going Canada for Wednesday all built on the BlogMatrix Platform. Much more on this too soon.

You bastards!

Bars needs women.

1. Joanne and I are thinking about buying a Vespa. Thoughts?
2. Does anyone have “Battle Without Honor or Humanity” by Tomoyasu Hotei from Kill Bill Vol. 1 as an MP3? I tried to buy it on iTunes; they don’t carry it.

We wouldn’t let Trinity-Anne play in the sprinkler today (new grass, too cold). This is what we get: