AOL are you listening?

   You know, the most disturbing thing about the ordeal Armand has gone through is not the fact that AOL made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes, it's called being human.
   It's not even the apparent inability to get the journal back, although that sounds awfully fishy to me. Anybody who has spent a little while working with computers knows that the delete command doesn't actually delete anything. It just tells the File Allocation Table to make that space available for future use. The data stored there isn't actually erased until something else is written over top of it, and that doesn't happen right away. The computer industry coined the term, "undelete." Ignoring that, AOL has huge back-up servers where copies of every piece of user data is kept against the possibility of a massive, catastrophic failure of their primary servers. Armand's journal is still stored somewhere in the bowels of the leviathan that is AOL. If he pushes hard enough, he'll get it all back. (Armand, try the national newspapers).
   No, the most disturbing thing about the whole situation is the way the journal was deleted without any communication with the user. Without any process allowing the user to argue his case. "Oops, we made a mistake. Oh well, you still lose." That is unacceptable from a company the size of AOL.
   What should have happened is this: the user should have received an email notifying him he was in contravention of the Terms Of Service agreement, and giving him a set period of time to rectify the contravention. Or, in the case of Armand, to reply, saying, "what contravention?" That e-mail should have been sent to the screen name responsible for the problem, and the master screen name of the account.
   If this set period of time, perhaps three to five business days, passed without reply or correction on the part of the user, the journal should have been copied to a back-up server specifically dedicated to these kinds of issues. That way, the journal could be taken down, but still be available for restoration should the user reply eventually, and the situation be rectified in the future. Now, AOL should not have to wait forever for the user to reply, but I don't think thirty days is an unreasonable period of time to wait. What if the userhas gone on vacation, and isn't checking his e-mail? What if the user's own computer failed, preventing him from accessing the Internet? There are any number of legitimate reasons why a user might not reply within three to five days.
   I have no problem with AOL weilding the big stick on people who willingly and knowingly break the rules. People who store porn on thier ftp space, or use their journals to promote hatred and discrimination should be dealt with swiftly and strongly. But a user whose journal is reported for a link to something that another user finds offensive cannot just be pulled without a significant amount of deliberation. To me, Armands story says that someone who works for AOL didn't want to spend the time reading through his journal looking for a reported offense. Someone couldn't be bothered, and just pulled the plug, instead of actually doing their job. And that has to never happen again.
   AOL, are you listening?

Archiving my journal

   After reading Armand's tale of woe about his journal being deleted for an imaginary TOS violation, I decided it was about time to start archiving my older entries. Even without alleged hackers or inept ISP employees, the world is a capricious place. Servers can crash in the most outrageously catastrophic ways. Stuff can be lost. Stuff is lost. Important stuff. Every day. Here's what I'm doing.

   I went back to my very first entry. I clicked and dragged to highlight the entire entry, including the title and date, but not including the headers or footers. If I wanted, I could have included the comments, but I decided not to. Then, at the top left of the AOL window, I clicked where it says Edit, and from the resulting drop down menu I clicked on Copy. This copied the highlighted text to my Windows clipboard, where it will be held until I copy something else, or turn off the computer.
   I then went back to the top left of my AOL window, clicked on File, and from that drop down menu, I hovered my mouse over the word New, and from the sub menu that showed up, I clicked on Text Document. That caused a small text window to open, with the title "Untitled" in, of all places, the Title Bar. Left clicking in the text area, I ran my pointer down the list and clicked on Paste. What do you think happened? Yes! My journal entry appeared in the text window.
   Next, I went back up to that popular spot: the top left corner of the AOL window, and clicked on File again. This time, I selected from the drop down menu Save As... Another little box popped up. This one was the save window. In the spot where it says File Name, I typed a file name. Fancy that! I made it something that would be relevant to reconstructing the journal later. I used the date of the original entry.
   Now, before I clicked on the Save button, I made sure I was saving to a good location; somewhere I could easily find the entries again. In this case, I created a new folder called Archived journal entries. Then I clicked save.
   Next step: move along to the next entry, and do it all over again. Yes, it is time consuming, but worth it, if your journal entries are valuable to you.

   Now, here's an interesting thing that I only just discovered today. The AOL text document is a format called .rtf. That stands for Rich Text File, which is text with some basic html formatting included. What that means, is that if you have any graphics or pictures in an entry, they get saved right along with the words. You will see that another folder, called files, is created, and the pictures are saved there. As long as you don't move that folder, when you use AOL to open that text document, you will see the graphics in your entry as well. Cool!
   After I get a substantial number of entries saved, I will put them on a CD for true archival storage.

Alternative medicine that is ineffective is not harmless.

via Skeptico.

   I have never visited Orac's blog before. I was directed there today in time to help spread a very valuable piece of information. Alternative medicine that is ineffective is not harmless. Orac says it at least four times, but it bears repeating again and again. Alternative medicine that is ineffective is not harmless. Go read Orac's story about The Orange Man.
   I am reminded of  Lisa Melman, whose story we were told in the ABC News Primetime Live special on faith healer "John of God." Lisa Melman is a Johannesburg, South Africa woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has eshewed surgery and chemotherapy in favour of a visit to the Brazilian village of  Abadiania, where she underwent a "visible surgery." This "healer," John of God, who is not a medical doctor, took a pair of four inch, gauze tipped, steel forceps, dipped them in what he called holy water, shoved them all the way up her nostril and twisted them violently. She left bleeding. When she got back to Johannesburg, her doctor informed her that her breast cancer had not gone away due to something being stuck up her nose, and urged her again to consider surgery. She declined again. She will probably return to Abadiania. She will almost certainly die long before her time.
   So once again, everybody repeat after Orac: alternative medicine that is ineffective is not harmless. It doesn't matter whether it is prayer, therapeutic touch, reiki, crystal therapy, or homeopathy. Alternative medicine that is ineffective is not harmless.

Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed

   The family and I are planning a trip to Italy for late summer. Three weeks in late August/early September will be spent visiting the wife's relatives in rural Sicily. To this end, I have been working on passport applications for all three of us.
   In order to, hopefully, avoid spending days standing in lines at a government office, I am doing as much preparatory work online as possible. The government of Canada website has an online passport application form generator that asks you to enter all of your information, and then prints out a passport application for you, already filled out and ready to be signed. At least that's the idea.
   I know it works, because I have already done it once for my own passport application. Now I want to do the same thing for my wife's app. And let me tell you something. The government of Canada website can kiss my ass. I have never had a more frustrating experience with a website before. It is excruciatingly slow. I click on the link I want to open, then I go make myself a coffee, read some e-mail, play some solitaire, cut my toenails, dust my antique camera collection... Every five minutes or so, I check back in to see if the new page has loaded.
   When it finally does, half of the graphics are little red Xs, which makes figuring out where to click next somewhat of a guessing game. I finally gave up and selected the option of printing out the blank forms, and filling them in myself. Ha!
   The online form feature wouldn't work with my Mozilla Firefox browser originally, so I had to use IE, which I hate because it cost me hours of time reloading Windows after my system became hopelessly infested with spyware several months ago. But opening and downloading the blank .pdf documents wouldn't work in IE, and I had to go back to Firefox for that.
   I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money the government spent on developing this website, but couldn't they have spent some of that on actual usability testing? I'm beginning to think I would have saved more time if I had gone down to the passport office and stood in line.

Who's scruffy lookin'?

   I will commonly call Matthew or Shadow by fanciful nicknames. Very early on, Shadow became "Chooch," much to the amusement of my Italian-Canadian wife. Nicknames for Matthew are often simply the first gibberish word to come out of my mouth, with 'head' tacked on to the end of them: geeble-head, kurtch-head, fniggle-head, etc. I never accost my wife with this verbal absurdity. I'm not stupid.
   This morning, as Matthew was leaving for school, we were playing with Shadow for a few minutes. As we finished up, I said to the dog, "OK, that's it, Chupacabra."
   "Dad, that's me!" Matthew objected.
   I looked at him quizically, "you're a chupacabra?"
   He nodded.
   "OK," I asked, "let me get this straight. You are an evil, goat-sucking alien?"
   "Well," he replied, "I'm not an alien."

Weekend assignment

Weekend Assignment #54: Tell us all a single piece of wisdom you've learned from personal life experience. It can be a small thing, it can be a big thing, a simple tip or trick or the most important thing you've ever learned from life. But whatever it is, you should be able to state it in one sentence. That way people will remember it easier.

Extra Credit: Tell us: Would you have listened to your own bit of advice as a teenager? Be honest, now.

   I haven't participated in John's Weekend assignment very regularly over the last several weeks. Not that I had any objection to the assignments themselves, perish the thought. I have simply not been in an overly creative frame of mind recently. This week's directive, however, prompted me to jump to my keyboard and bang away like a statistically improbable monkey. You see, I very clearly remember the most valuable piece of advice I ever received.
   Eleven years ago, I was a very new father. As is, I'm sure, not uncommon, I was experiencing a considerable amount of trepidation at the prospect of raising a child. I had confided in a co-worker, who had two children of his own, some of my reservations about handling a squirming and squalling little bundle of joy, when he hit me with a basic truism.

   "Don't worry," he said. "They bounce."

   At first, it seemed like a rather flippant thing to say, but underneath, there was wisdom in the words. I took them to heart, and have always attempted to parent with a mind to the underlying adaptability of children. Yes, they don't like to have their routines disrupted, and no you shouldn't do it too often, but if you do, they'll adapt remarkably quickly to whatever new routine you establish. And, if all you do is worry about it, they'll pick up on that, too.
   A couple of years later, I received a second, good piece of advice. My parents were visiting for dinner. Matthew came up to me and asked if he could have...something. I don't even remember what it was. I don't know if I even paid any attention to what it was at the time. I simply said, "no."
   My Mother simply said, "why not?"
  I thought about it for a moment, and couldn't think of any good reason. So I gave him...whatever it was. From that time forward, when he has asked me for something, I have always tried to think about it before I answered. Sometimes, the answer was still no. But, if it was, there was a reason.
   Would I have listened to any of that advice as a teen? Parenting advice? As a teen? Are you nuts?

When you're smiling

   McCain foods has a television commercial currently airing for their Fun Spuds Smiles which shows cute children running around, playing, laughing, and joyfully eating McCain processed food products. In the background, a classic song plays, first popularised by Louis Armstrong in 1929:

When you're smiling, when you're smiling
The whole world smiles with you
When you're laughing, when you're laughing
The sun comes shining through

   Also sung throughout the years by such notables as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Billie Holiday, it's a pleasing little ditty that perfectly reflects the emotion McCain wants you to feel while thinking about their products. Except...
   Being a Canadian of a certain age, I cannot hear that song without thinking of beer. As far back as I can remember, the song When You're Smiling was used in television commercials for Labatt Blue. Many in the industry consider it to have been the single most successful advertising campaign in Canadian television history. So, when I see the commercial for McCain Smiles, I think of Labatt Blue. I can't help it. 
   Perhaps McCain thought that enough time had passed. It is possible they thought nobody would make the connection. Maybe whoever is in charge of their advertising is too darn young to remember. I just cannot bring myself to believe that they would have used that song if they knew the immediate associations it would produce in virtually any Canadian over the age of 35, or so.

Click here to hear Louis Armstrong perform When You're Smiling.

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

   I can't remember where I found this. It may have been The Pond (<~sorry, AOL only link), or it may have come to me in an e-mail. It is one of the few things I have managed to preserve through three separate computer meltdowns. I think it's almost as good as the original.

HAMLET'S CAT

To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question.
Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains on those who roam abroad,

Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell.

To sit, to stare
Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt.

To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household's petty plagues,
The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butlers broom,
The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten?

Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbours yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?

Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold ofdecision.


   Also, I updated the (almost) 100 things about me page today.

MC you better look over your shoulder

   What do Hip Hop, Heavy Metal, Punk, and Dancehall Reggae have in common? Nothing... until now.

   What you are hearing is Skindred: four lads from The UK who are turning the music indutry on its ear. (As this is no longer the lead entry here, I have disabled the auto play feature for the music. Click to hear Nobody, by Skindred) Citing influences as diverse as Guns 'n' Roses, Green Day, The Clash, Bad Company, The Police, System of a Down, Elvis Costello, The Wailers, and Jimi Hendrix, these guys are tearing up the United States, touring with bands like Papa Roach, Sevendust, and Korn. 
   Nobody, the first single from their debut album, Babylon, has captured my imagination recently. Every time it comes on the satellite digital music station I listen to, I crank it up to eleven. I'm sure the neighbours think I'm insane. And I may be. I know I've gone crazy looking through record stores unsuccessfully for the album. Today I found out it wasn't even released in Canada until March 29th. At least I should be able to find it now.
   To hear a cool (and less heavy metal) dancehall version of this song, visit the Skindred website. They call what they do "Ragga Metal," and it just may be the next big thing. Of course, I've been listening to Big Sugar for years, who blended Dub Reggae and Classic Guitar Rock successfully. A Canadian band, no less, and it's a damn shame they're gone.
   Yes, I know. For those of you who are techno fans, the only thing in the world worth listening to is ACTIVATE! Go ahead, knock yourselves out.

   We now return control of your computer to you.

The poop marshes

   Remember that scene in The Two Towers where Gollum is leading Frodo and Sam through the dead marshes, and they can see faces under that water? The other day I was walking the dog over at the local farm property everyone uses as an off-leash dog park, and I was reminded of Frodo looking down at those faces just below the surface. 
   The snow had melted from about half of the field. The other half, where most people had walked all winter, was a large expanse of hard packed ice about four inches thick. Every four or five feet was a small circular pot hole melted in the surface of the ice with a dog turd in it, covered with water. These were not new dog turds, rather they had been preserved under the ice for the entire winter. As we walked farther, and the ice pot holes increased in frequency, it became difficult to pick a safe path through them. One had to carefully avoid them lest they attach themselves to one's boot in a kind of attack of the undead poop. I could only pray that if I slipped, and fell into the morass of fecundity, my dog would be able to pull me out, mumbling something like, "don't follow the smells!" 
   Eliot could have written, "April is the cruelest month, breeding dog turds from the dead ground."

   Then again, maybe he couldn't.