rant and rave

This is where ranting and raving occurs. Venting. Blowing things out of proportion. That kind of thing.

ain’t nothin’ left t’ do ‘cept complain ’bout nothin’

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Oh my goodness.  I read various articles that pop up on by Firefox browser start page.  They catch my eye, and off I go into the never-never land of short reads.  I enjoy most of them, and some of them I just abandon half-way through.  However, there is one that I just have to comment on.

Pocket worthy Stories to fuel your mind.

It’s time to talk about “It’s”

It’s overused. It’s lazy. It’s something that should be stopped.

The Outline – Leah Finnegan

It seems to me that the writer (writer?) of this article has lost his / her mind.  At least with navel-gazers, they’re picking apart imaginary parts of their own selves.  But this writer … <sigh>  Have we nothing more to fix these days without trying to fix imaginary problems?  Has this writer been in quarantine too long?

reprieve in the long hours

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After finishing college and taking a couple stabs at finding my ‘ideal’ workplace, which took a year and a half, I think I found a place I belong, at least for now, at CE.  (Or, rather, T found it for me on Kijiji and emailed it to me.)  I’ve been working since late Nov. 2019, learning as I go.

Read more

an important difference (or, let me in, just don’t follow me)

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I submitted this to the Washington Post.

I recently tried to view one of your pages (https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/suffering-from-bad-knees-some-look-for-alternatives-to-surgery/2019/11/15/d286d862-dfd7-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab) but was transferred to another page requesting to disable my web browser’s ad-block (https://www.washingtonpost.com/steps-for-disabling-firefoxs-native-adblocker/2018/05/21/fb95bf4e-5d37-11e8-b2b8-08a538d9dbd6_story.html). I have apps on my browser to disable tracking, not ads. I do not mind ads. I believe that a free internet requires ads. However, I do not wish to be tracked. I am happy to view your ads without being tracked. I do not know how to separate the two. Firefox, Ghostery, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Privacy Badger, and others all seem to do both simultaneously. Can you offer a method of unblocking ads without disabling tracking blocks? I would welcome this.

I wonder if anyone is listening.

to SIN or not to SIN

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Good gravy.  I’ve been contacted four times in the past 24 hours by a machine claiming to be from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.  The recording states that my Social Insurance Number has been compromised.  Good gravy!  How gullible do you think I am?  Here’s an announcement from the actual OPC.  Don’t be fooled, people!  Hang up!

when things go wrong (aka cursed server)

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I drove to Rosedale, BC to take care of Father’s house, as I told everyone.  However, on the second day that I was gone, my server crashed.  <AAAAAH!>  Every time I leave, something happens to the computer!  I phoned Floyd to help out.  I guided him through various steps to get it running again.  No go.  I needed the server to update to everyone how things are going there on lesjohnston.ca and here, to post things for sale, to upload pics to share with various people, etc, but the server just would not work.  I got back into town yesterday evening, about three weeks later, and worked on the server.  It’s now running again.  Piece of crap.  It’s cursed.  It only crashes and refuses to restart when I leave town.

virus and backup

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There are a few entries missing from the Ongoing Letter because the server caught a virus.  Actually, I made a mistake and opened up an FTP service on it without encryption.  I thought, “No one will ever know there’s an FTP site here.”  Stupid.  Within a week, a virus showed up.  I had to reinstate a backup from about two weeks ago.  So, students and others, if your web page is not up-to-date, please let me know.  Those of you who posted something on your own page, “Sorry!”  You’ll have to re-post.  Better to be virus-free than to screw around with patching up an infected server.

Korean age

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Holy cow.  Amazing.  I thought it would never happen.  (Still might not.)
South Korea mulls ending arcane age system to match rest of world

Believe it or not, the phrases “happy birthday” and “how old are you?” are unrelated in South Korean culture.  They’re completely separated concepts.  So, when an English (that is to say, ESL) book links age and birthday together, Korean kids are confused.  

Yet, if I were to buy a car made June 2, 2018, it would be one year old.  On the other hand, a Korean baby born on the same day would be three!  Go figure.

I think a question to drive the point home is, “How long have you been alive?”

But does this mean we all have to start calculating our age from conception?  Now there’s something I don’t want.

If you stick with the Korean age system, don’t blame anyone if they laugh hysterically when you say your newborn is two years old.

I say, pick a standard and go with it. 

older

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It used to be that everyone my age was older than me.  That is, until this accident.  Now I’m really slow, or have been since the crash.  Whiplash is an unforgiving thing.  If I should meet the guy who drove his van into my car, I’d kick him in the ass.  My back aches, and my neck is constantly stiff and sore.  The good news is that my headache is finally clearing up.  I go for physiotherapy twice a week.  It apparently will last about 90 days before it clears up.  I look forward to it.

replant, and plough no more

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The Guardian reports that we’re seriously boned unless we change our ways … now.

‘It’s a groundswell’: the farmers fighting to save the Earth’s soil

I planted native southern Alberta wildflowers near the house this spring instead of watering and expecting green grass to grow there.  It’s supposed to be conducive to the lives of birds, bees, butterflies, and or course beauty.

Yes, I bought a larger van, but you have to remember that the embodied energy needed to invest into a new vehicle is quite serious – the fuel equivalent to somewhere around 130,000km of driving.  I didn’t even get that far in seven years in the Kia Soul.

I plugged in my little electric foot scooter today.  It costs – and I don’t care if you don’t believe me – I’ve done the research and calculations – about $1.00 of electricity to go about 1000km on this.  Of course, I can’t carry lumber or a family or suitcases and cannot drive in winter.  But it serves its purpose.

And of course there’s my favourite – my bicycle.  But my physiotherapist is frowning on using it just yet.  The bonehead to T-boned my car made sure of that.

complete crap

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This is amazing.  People are weird.  I switched from a plastic garbage bag in my home office space to a paper bag.  I don’t dump grease, spit, coffee, or any other liquid in it.  Never have.  But people feel compelled to carry plastic around with them anyway.  Aren’t there enough doo-doo bags out there?  You’d think that people would have wax coated paper by now.  “I don’t wanna cut down trees!”  Okay, then don’t.  Use recycled paper.  “Recycling’s not the answer!  Reducing is the answer!”  Okay, then get a smaller dog.  Besides, waxed paper can degrade, and so can poop.  Don’t like paraffin (fake wax from petrochemicals)?  Then walk quickly home with your poop.

Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?

The issue is that people don’t want to change their habits.  Back when I was a kid, my mother used a paper grocery bag for garbage with a couple of newspaper sheets at the bottom and stapled an old newspaper to the top of it when full.  Nothing leaked.  All good.