World Peace, Angry Penguins, and Miracles

Dennis Julien

2008-05-05T08:07:00.003-04:00

Last Monday, a guy I used to hang around with, but who I haven't seen in a couple of years, passed away. I was a regular reader of Dennis' blog (dennis.ca - see my list of links), and have always been amazed at his incredible photography. I think his site is down now, which is a shame.

Several years ago, we shared a room in Vegas when a bunch of us went down - the excuse that time was a double bachelor party...though the guys have never needed a reason. It was on that trip that I got to know him better than the few years we worked together.

Back home in Ottawa, he told me about the day his sister died. I don't think I will ever forget it. I don't know if he ever told anyone else, though I am sure he did. He asked that I not mention it, so it's not like it ever came up in general conversation.

The story was heart-wrenching, and I think he told it because he had to. I remember mentioning that he should write it down, perhaps post it on his blog. He said he might, one day. I don't know if he ever posted something about it on some other blog he might have had, or perhaps he has it written down somewhere, but never had the strength to publish it.

So most of us will remember Dennis as the big guy sitting at the Morley, beer in hand, cracking jokes and defending the Leafs. We will remember him as incredibly smart, and a fantastic photographer...and if I recall, a terrible gambler (hey, he rooted for the Leafs!).

I will also remember him as a guy who told me about his most painful moment...about every emotion he experienced on that day, and how it still affected him. Before that, he was just one of the guys, someone I knew through work, and the Vegas trip. After that story, though, he became...well...Dennis.

Cheers, buddy.

Stuff

2008-04-28T09:51:00.002-04:00

Just a short-story (somewhat dated) I wrote a while ago...hope the 2 or 3 readers of my blog enjoy it :)
*******************************

I remember everything like it was yesterday. Well, actually, it was yesterday. I figured I had better write this all down before I forgot most of it...or all of it. It was cold out, below freezing. The frost clung tightly to every metal post and window pane in town. Odd for mid-July, I thought. Damn strange really, and not the least convenient since I had prepared for a lovely summer day by hastily donning my swimming trunks and a t-shirt, and had already began walking to the beach. I was halfway there before I realised that the reason I was shaking was NOT due to an adrenaline rush of anticipatory excitement. And, besides, my legs had turned a bland shade of puce-blue.

Now, usually I'm not one to complain. I mean, weather does as weather does, and any attempt to truly predict it is futile at best, but this was more than a little annoying. To whom should I have directed my complaints? The government could be blamed for a lot of things, but the weather was outside of their jurisdiction (fortunately, since that meant they were unable to tax it). The only person I thought could be held liable was God Himself, or Herself depending on your political-correctness.

So I hauled my shivering tukus over to my local RC church, whereupon I began berating the nearest religious icon for a most annoying bout of unseasonable weather.

“Okay God!” I said, rather presumptuously I thought. “Okay. I know You have got to be busy with running the entire universe and all, but I think You had better give some thought to the weather down here. Things are going haywire! Hot and sunny one second, freezing cold the next. Hey, I’m on holidays PAL!” By now my voice had risen to an almost deafening whisper, and since my courage was bolstered by the fact that I hadn’t been turned into a pillar of salt or zapped by a bolt of lightning, I began to speak even louder. “So..so...I think you had better get Yer butt down here and fix a few things before I get angry!”

A Priest, overhearing me, began to, in turn, berate me for my altogether sacrilegious and blasphemous display. When I surreptitiously pointed out the startling weather by grabbing the Priest by the front of his robes and slamming his head outside an open window, the Priest took one look outside, excused himself and stepped out the main church doors. Roughly three seconds later the Priest returned, a look of mixed disbelief and consternation on his face, and began whispering some unpriestly comments to the religious icon he had just accused me of practising heresy upon.

Figuring that a necessary scolding of the powers-that-be was well under way, by a source much better designed than I for such an undertaking, I hightailed my now warm patooties back to my apartment for a quick change of clothes. Several minutes later, winter boots and all, I proceeded out my front door once more right into a heat wave of noticeably more July-like conditions. By now I was becoming slightly bemused, as had several of my neighbours, some of which stood statue-still outside dressed in a hybrid combination of beach wear and ski suits.

I promptly retreated back into my abode, stripped naked, and sat my bare butt down in front of the television, determined to hear the official version of the events taking place; however, The Weather Network was a scene of uncontrolled chaos. Three weatherpersons had hanged themselves in desperation and the crew was playing chicken with the cameras. While somewhat amusing, I was determined to discover the wherefores, howtos and suchwhys about the recent, transitory weather patterns that plagued my otherwise dull and uninteresting life. I flipped it over to the All Religion Channel, to get a spiritual perspective only to be presented with another chaotic sight.

A Catholic Priest was quite busily defending himself with a candlestick while an old, bearded rabbi circled him warily. In the background, a Muslim smiled craftily, waiting for a chance to jump in. It seemed that each faction had accused the other of being the cause of this calamitous climate - something to do with the blasphemy of unbelievers. Just as the Catholic priest gained the upper hand by ramming the candlestick into the unprotected eye of the rabbi, a stray bolt of lightning turned the three combatants into crispy tots where they stood. The All Religion Channel, of course, cut immediately to a commercial for Depends undergarments.

CBC Newsworld was covering a press conference by the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, who were demanding more federal funding and whining that this was all a white-male plot designed to usurp the rightful control of females over the world. In the background, one of the gray-suited, gray-haired feminists could be seen giving a salutary “Sieg Heil”.

So then I figured that CNN would be the best choice, but discovered them still covering the Impeachment Trial of William Jefferson Clinton, 3142 day. Unfortunately, the Senate was slow to realize that Bill Clinton hadn’t been President for several years, and that, in fact, he had died not long after after his second term ended, after Hillary beat the crap out of him. His daughter, Chelsea had long since changed her name and was working as a professional Roller Derby queen/stripper named Monica Lewd-insky.

At that point, my phone rang, and I reached over to answer it.

“Hello” I said, not surprisingly.

“Hello, this is the operator, I have a long distance call from Acturus Prime Central Commander Poof’lie, will you accept the charges?”, intoned the voice of the operator. Now, normally, I would assume that I was the brunt of a weird joke from one of my equally weird friends and would hang up the phone, but given the rather odd events of the day, I decided that I had better accept this call.

“Er...yes, okay. I will accept the charges. Thank you operator.” I answered. There was a momentary click, a mumble from the operator, and then a voice boomed through the speaker of my phone.

“EARTHLING! WE ARE IN ORBIT AROUND YOUR EARTH AND ARE EVEN NOW CONTROLLING YOUR WEATHER. SURRENDER TO US OR WE WILL ANNIHILATE YOU!” Unfortunately, I only heard the word EARTHLING, actually, just part of the word…the “ER” sound. The volume of the voice was such that I was sent rocketing across the room only to crash into my mural of jungle cats. After the ringing in my ear, and the spinning of the room, stopped , I picked up the phone to hear....

“...Hello...hello...pitiful earthling? Are you there? We apologize for the volume, we have now since turned it down. We are waiting patiently for your surrender.”

I was a slightly bemused by the proceedings and still hadn’t fully recovered from being turned into a wall-hanging, but attempted to respond anyways.

“YEAH, I HEAR YA. BUT I THINK YOU’VE GOT THE WRONG NUMBER. MAYBE YOU SHOULD TRY THE PRIME MINISTER OR SOMEONE LIKE THAT.” I yelled. I had to wait several seconds before I could hear someone, or something, shuffle itself off of a floor and return to the phone.

“Oh, sorry about that” The alien said “Would you happen to have this prime minister person’s number?”

“Um...no. Not quite. But you could try directory assistance at 411. They could probably help you out.” With that, the self-proclaimed Central Commander mumbled a few quick apologies, and sullenly hung up.

Suddenly, I felt in need of a very long, hot bath. In a surreal state of consternation, I shuffled myself over to the bathroom. Roughly twenty minutes later I was able to figure out the knobs and run myself a bath. My jumbled mind had finally settled down to something at least approximating hysteria, and I was just about to tootsie-test the steaming bath water, when the phone rang yet again.

Cursing the gods who toyed with me constantly, I went to the phone, noticing in passing through a window that the weather had seemed to turn back into winter.

“Hello?!” I said, curtly and with definite authority.

“Umm...hello...earthling? This is Acturus Prime Central Commander Poof’lie. Umm..earthling, I hate to bother you again, but I seem to be unable to reach this prime minister person. The being you call directory assistance was singularily unable to provide me with any assistance. Perhaps I could impose upon you yet again?” The being asked somewhat sweetly.

“Why should I help you?” I asked. “You want to take over my planet and subjugate the billions of inhabitants, turning them into your personal slaves.”

“Yes, I guess that’s true...however, we could make it...um...excuse me...did you say Billions?”

“Er..yeah...the population of the Earth is something like 5 Billion or so. Why?” I asked.

“Excuse me for a moment” With that, the being seemed to put down whatever it had been speaking into, and barked a series of outlandishly gutteral commands to what I could only assume was a subordinate. I heard a few thumps, a pitiful squeek, and after a few seconds Central Commander Poof’lie returned to the phone...or whatever.

“Umm..Earthling...we wish to offer our gravest apologies. It appears that the late former First Class Planet Examiner Perf’ril made a slight error estimating the population of your planet. His excuse was that he couldn’t imagine a paltry, little backwater marble of a planet harbouring that many semi-intelligent inhabitants, and thus arbitrarily took off a few zeros from his calculations...well...five zeros, actually. We...umm..well...we are unprepared at this time to continue with the planned invasion of your Earth. Please, disregard the preceeding comments...in fact, disregard the entire conversation. Thank you for your aid. Good-bye.”

With that, he/it hung up. I only remembered to hang up the phone several hours later when my hand cramped up and the blood drained from it. It took several more minutes to actually pry my stiffened claw from the receiver. After that I poured myself a stiff drink, flipped on the tube, and hummed along with the opening theme of The Simpsons….

The End.

Political-correctness stoops to new low

2008-04-15T08:18:00.003-04:00

News from about a week ago, but just getting to blogging about it now. An 8-year old boy in Westminster, Colorado was suspended from school for 3 days for sniffing a SHARPIE. That's right. He liked the smell of the pen and sniffed it, and the teacher told the principal, who then suspended him. For sniffing...a sharpie.

This from the article:

Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.

"I don't know whether it would be possible for a real overachiever to figure out a way to get high off them," Lavonas said. "But in regular use, it's just not something that's going to happen."

"If you went to Costco and bought 50 bags of Sharpies and did something to them, maybe there's a way to get creative and make it happen," Lavonas said.

Adams County School District 50 leaders were unfazed by the poison control center's medical opinion.

"Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, 'Wow, that's a very serious marker,'" Benisch said.

Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.

"We've purged every permanent marker there is in this building," he said.

Behold the face of stupidity bordering on pure fucking bureaucratic evil, one Chris Benisch:

Probably small-dicked and picked on most of his life, Benisch more than likely became a teacher, then principal, so he could mold the minds of children and hold power for once in his soon-to-be-an-internet-laughingstock life. If I was a parent of a child in his school, I would either be demanding this fuck nuts resignation or outright firing. At the very least, I would kick his fat ass in the parking lot.

Ottawa Senators and Mediocrity

2008-04-09T09:49:00.003-04:00

I occasionally check out and contribute to a website called Hockey Trade Rumors (careful, there are a lot of popups if you are using IE6/7...and they spell Rumours that way, not me :) ). Back on February 26th, after the NHL trade deadline, I commented on a thread and wrote:

My prediction is a 7th seed going into the playoffs and a quick exit in the 1st round. I don't see this team pulling together and rising above their current mediocrity to avoid this fate.

I am a Sens fan, by the way.

When I wrote this, the Sens were still in 1st in the Eastern Conference. I later added:

The Sens have NOT played well since their 15-2 start. In fact, they are below .500 since that start.

At this rate, I will revise my prediction of a 7th place finish and actually predict them to be OUT of the playoffs altogether. This team has never shown the fortitude to pull out of slides...ever.

Ok. So I was ONE WIN wrong about this. In fact, had Carolina won, Ottawa would have been out of the playoffs altogether.

I bring this up because of the slew of articles decrying fans in Ottawa. In particular, Kelly Egan of the Ottawa Citizen wrote a column entitled: O Sens Army, where art thou?. He goes on to scold the fans who have seemingly deserted the team...fans who last year proudly stuck Sens flags out the windows of their cars in the thousands. He wonders "...whether the city has, under its pallid, bureaucratic exterior, a fickle heart." He later goes on to write:

In any professional sport, really, there is one champion; everyone else loses. Yet there are millions of fans. Why?

Because the plight of the fan is to make peace with losing. The fun part is to not look beyond one game, or even one period. Because sport and sport-watching, is the moment, not the end.

I would put it to Mr. Egan that the heart isn't fickle...it is both discerning and realistic. I didn't pick the Canadian's Men hockey team to win ANY medals at the last Olympics. Not because I wasn't a "fan", but because I understand that the team that was chosen was old and slow and couldn't compete at the Olympic level. I was right. Doesn't make me "fickle"...it makes me smart. I always wonder at the legion of fans of teams that do not have a chance at winning much, if anything. Take Major League Baseball, for instance. Why would "fans" of a terrible team (take the Detroit Tigers...as of this post, they are 0-7), teams that have no hope of ever winning because they cannot afford the astronomical salaries, bother going to or watching a game? What is the freaking point? The joy of the sport? Who likes to lose on a nearly constant basis? Well, except for fans of the Maple Leafs.

I must contradict Mr. Egan when he writes that "..sport and sport-watching, is the moment, not the end." It most certainly IS about the end, otherwise there is no point at all.

Government waste

2008-03-14T10:39:00.002-04:00

If you want further proof that government bureaucracies are incompetent and mishandle millions of dollars of tax payers' money, then read this:

As a consultant with the federal government, I design customized Help Desk and Asset Management solutions using an application called the Action Request System (aka Remedy ARS). Without getting technical, and in simple terms, it is a development environment that provides a layer on top of a database. Using this tool, I design forms and code to store information and process business rules. There are two approaches to providing a client with a solution: fully-customized or out-of-the-box. Fully customized applications can cost a lot in the short term, as the client has to pay for the development, from the ground up, of a full-fledged application. However, once developed, there are no licensing fees other than for the ARS layer which can be about $50,000 a year (including the licensing fees for the database). The out-of-the-box solution seemingly has one advantage, that is you can install it and work away. However, there are significant yearly licensing fees for the applications, broken into modules, as well as the ARS layer itself. These costs can be as high as $250,000 a year!

Fully-customized solutions can be problematic if there has been no proper development process. The application usually ends up looking like a patchwork of old, out-of-date code coupled with newer code...a series of bandage code holding it all together. However, every piece of it can be modified and cleaned up as per requirements, and an organization's business rules can be incorporated as they see fit. Some division needs a certain set of fields on this form to track specific asset data? No problem.

An out-of-the-box application is only grudgingly modifiable, the idea being that the client should follow the application's business rules, rather than the other way around...and heaven forbid if the organization wants to update to the latest version...any customized work will have to be reapplied, usually painfully.

But the out-of-the-box application can work if there is a proper business analysis performed and if every section of the organization buys into it. If not, it will be hell. This is where government bureaucracies have serious issues.

I have been developing in Remedy ARS since 1998. I have seen dozens of "solutions" and implementations. Some were abysmal failures...most middling so. The common element amongst the failures was the inability of the client to actually understand their role in the process. Governments are famous for this.

For example, a series of upper-level managers (Director Generals and Assistant Deputy Ministers) will sit in a room and discuss what they "need", without actually understanding the "need" since they are so far removed from people who actually DO the work, that their concept of "need" rarely translates into the needs of the department. What these managers need is something to make them feel that they are relevant. So, some smartasses come up with something called ITIL (The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of concepts and techniques for managing information technology (IT) infrastructure, development, and operations). This money making scheme...oops...I mean concept...was created, of course, by one of the most bureaucratized countries on Earth...the UK. ITIL is simply a common framework for IT management...it is supposed to be a starting point for managers to restructure they way they provide IT services to their clients. However, as with all things IT, it has become a buzzword which has excited managers. You say ITIL to a group of managers, and the collective saliva drooling from their mouths could create a new oasis in the Sahara.

Managers in the government love "shiny" things, and since they are not spending any of their own money directly, have no qualms about pissing it down the toilet. They will never be truly held accountable, so they don't care. Sales people know this, and will happily provide rigged demonstrations of their "products" (rigged in the sense that there is only a bit of data...so the application runs smoothly...and no one else is working on the app at the same time...which makes everything really, really quick). Then they flash some nice pie charts, a view fancy reports, some other useless bells-and-whistles, and they will have successfully distracted the managers who, at this point, only see the shiny things. One of the shiniest parts of the out-of-the-box solution from BMC (BMC Remedy IT Service Management 7.x: Application) is their CMDB (Configuration Management Database...from Wikipedia, Configuration Management (CM) is an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) IT Service Management (ITSM) process that tracks all of the individual Configuration Items (CI) in an IT system which may be as simple as a single server, or as complex as the entire IT department). A BMC technical rep gave a demo before which he mentioned that to successfully implement a CMDB, there should be months of business analysis. Roughly an hour later, a government manager asked when it could be installed. The BMC sales rep, also in the room, almost fainted he got a hard-on so quickly.

As a sop to proper business analysis, they are now paying some out of town firm $1000 a day to do a 21 day gap analysis. 21 days. Amazing.

This is what will happen: after spending several hundred thousand dollars, if not millions when you take salaries into account, the application will be put into production. People will complain that it is too slow, especially those in missions, like some countries in Africa which still use 56K lines; tons of customizations will be made; the application will only be partially used, not at all justifying its expenses; and then the managers who perpetrated this fiasco will be reorganized out, suffering no penalty for their stupidity. The team responsible for maintaining the app will take all the shit. Then they will have to upgrade to the newest version of the application, since the old version will no longer be supported. They will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more to reapply the customizations...and the circle continues.

****************Update March 17, 2008****************
The consultant brought in to do the gap analysis is already 2 days behind the original time estimate of 21 days. He's been here for 4 days :)

Just let 'em die

2008-02-13T14:48:00.003-05:00

The more I hear and read about the US health care....um..."system(?)", the more I believe it is an exceptionally sound and viable model which should be adopted by the rest of the world. I mean, what other country has the balls to tell its middle class "Fuck you, you can't afford health insurance, you die. Too bad". That's some refreshing attitude to take towards the bulk of your citizenry. Soon, there will only be two classes of people in the US: the rich who can afford, well, anything; and the poor who exist on the largesse of the government through programs like medicaid and food stamps. Since the poor are much more easily controlled, this will allow the government to do what it wants, without fear of reprisal. The "unwashed masses" will be just that.

With most of what and how they think controlled by the media, Americans are unable to rationally resolve any issue that they face as a country. The media needs crime and wars to entice viewers, so no matter how ridiculous the claims made by government as a reason for going to war, for instance, they will be championed by the media because "It sells". Think I am being cynical? How many intrepid reporters delved into the reality of WMDs in Iraq? So, now that the media is so closely tied to the corrupt and incompetent governments which they were originally a check against, they will not report fairly on any issues to which the government is opposed. This includes health care, of course.

But, as far as Mr. and Mrs. Joe Average is concerned, as long as their televisions spew WWF and some evangelical bullcrap on a mostly daily basis, they don't care.

She Amazed Me redux

2008-02-07T14:54:00.000-05:00

This is a follow-up to my previous blog entry regarding the nonsensical song "She Amazed Me" from the Dilbert Blog.

This song was put together from random lyrics submitted by people from around the world. Okay, someone painstakingly went through the 600+ comments and pulled out what they felt were the best lyrics, and I can only assume that they were attempting to provide some sort of cohesiveness to the lyrics, but still..."She Amazed Me" has got to be the first OPEN SOURCE song in history. What does that say about songwriters? I mean, someone still had to put music to it, and that takes talent, but the actual words ...come on...you can stream crap together, put a catchy beat to it, and belt out a hit. This song isn't a hit (yet?), but would it be if it had been recorded by someone famous? I think it might be.

It's been a couple of weeks, and I am still getting a huge chuckle out of it.

She Amazed Me

2008-01-31T21:51:00.000-05:00

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, has a blog and recently asked his readers to participate in an experiment. His idea was to have "...nonsense lyrics that could be combined into a hit song, under the theory that many hit songs have nonsense lyrics, so writing them can't be that hard." Each poster was to have written two lines that sound profound but really weren't. I threw in a couple of nonsense lyrics myself.

In a follow-up blog entry, The Hit Song You Wrote, he mentioned that a German band by the name of Rivo Drei took the best of the lyrics and put them into a song which they recorded called "She Amazed Me".

She Amazed Me
------------------------

She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.
My heart heard a dream like ten thousand mittens.

A tear in her hand
She spread deja-vu all across the land.

br:
She spinned round and round with a frog in her ear
Whispering fountains and rocks she couldn't hear

ch:
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.

Too many times I have seen the thunder
Flashes of sound, soul-rending sunder

A letter colored blue...
Now the nine bells are ringin' and singin' it too

br:
She spinned round and round with a frog in her ear
Whispering fountains and rocks she couldn't hear

ch:
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.

br:
Little did she know they were coming too soon,
Both those kittens ran off to the moon

ch:
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
With splendid reprisal, she took to the sky.
My tear drops asunder. No shadow. No cry.
Apple core ostriches dancing like fairies.
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.

The interesting part, and this is entirely me tooting my own horn :), is that the band selected my two lines :) Just go to the first Dilbert entry I have linked to above (the word "experiment") and do a search for the word "thunder". :) Note the name in red underneath that entry....yay...it's me :)

AS I write this, there are about 300 google hits for this song :) The number has increased from 65 entries yesterday. Too funny.

Teenager learned her lesson?

2008-01-24T08:43:00.000-05:00

Interesting story out of Victoria, B.C. about a 15-year old girl who was tethered in a padded cell at a police station for four hours. On the surface, you might be disgusted by the image of a prone 15 year old girl lying, alone, in a padded cell:

Terrifying, isn't it? Or is it really? Let's analyse the story. First, she was drunk and causing a disturbance...

[the]...girl was drunk, swearing at officers, had to be forcibly removed from a police car, was kicking the door of the cell, and grabbed one officer on the arm.

. Here's a girl who is obviously out of control. The police found her stumbling around after being unable to enter her house because she had lost her key, which implies that her parents weren't home. Where were they? Who lets their 15 year old daughter out past midnight?

You can call the treatment at the hands of the police a bit cruel, but I guarantee she learned some sort of lesson. Now, of course, her parents might sue the police. Typical. Your daughter was stumbling drunk, abusive, out-of-control, but the police need to be sued. The parents should be charged with being incompetent...too bad there isn't such a law.

Life is funny and surprising

2008-01-05T01:04:00.000-05:00

It's strange how life works. I mean, most of us live day-to-day with a belief that we have some purpose and direction. Even those of us who are not particularly focused seem to have goals, even if they might seem rather unambitious to others. But life has an odd way of throwing situations at us that force us to transform. The trick is to not try to fight things we do not have any hope of changing; to understand that life is like a river, and at times we are swept along the current. I know that sounds counter-productive. I know that there are tons of books out there written by people with purportedly more credentials than I that tell us we must always strive and fight for what we want. You know what, anyone who has actually LIVED understands that single-mindedness is ridiculous...and ultimately destructive. Those who do not learn to allow life to happen sometimes, are usually doomed to suffer a major shock when their world twists around them. Britney Spears is a perfect example. Life threw something at her she didn't expect, and to quote The Hives

Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick Tick … Boom!!

Yeah, yeah, yeah
I was right you were wrong
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Going, going you’re gone!
I saw you yesterday, waiting too much
Till it slipped through your hands
And then you stagger to your feet and out the door
‘Cause there’s no second chance!

Her ordeal is, of course, an example of a life gone awry. It isn't all doom and gloom. Sometimes life grants, not so much throws, you something unexpected that could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you. Oh, it can fundamentally change everything, and like any change, can have repercussions that cause you or people you care about some pain, but pain is not always a bad thing. It is how we deal with the pain that can be the problem.

Personally, I acknowledge that I have made stupid decisions and choices in my life. Some that have caused pain to me, and certainly others. But I believe I have learned from each and every one of them. If not, then I am not as smart as my ego has allowed me to think I am.

I think life has granted me something recently that might fundamentally shift my life. I am not sure what will happen, but I think I will just lay back in my boat, cradle my head in my hands as I stare upwards, and let the current take me where it will. I think I will enjoy the ride for once. Just in case, though, I better bring along a life jacket.

Google Blocking

2007-12-13T08:42:00.000-05:00

Some more ways to speed up your browsing...if you are using Firefox...if you are using IE (any version) you are either a moron or confined to it by your organization.

Using Firefox, and the AdBlock Plus and BlockSite addons, add the following to their list of filters:

http://*.googlesyndication.com/*
http://www.cliqin.com/*
https://ssl.google-analytics.com
https://ssl.google-analytics.com/*
www.google-analytics.com/*
http://www.facebook.com/beacon/*

Now, Google-Analytics adds a java script file called urchin.js into your temporary internet files folder. This script is used to by webmasters to track who visits their sites, from where, and what they are clicking on.

To further block this site, search for your Hosts file (usually found in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\ and add the following two lines:

# [Google Inc]
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com

Happy surfing.

A Different Christmas Poem

2007-12-04T12:12:00.000-05:00

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Private, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts..
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night."
"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at Vimy on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the streets of Arnheim ,
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But his wife sends me pictures, he's sure got a nice smile."
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, and the white .. the Canadian flag.

"I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life for my sister or brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."

"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife, daughters, or sons."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."

Speeding up your browsing

2007-12-04T10:20:00.000-05:00

I have been playing around with a few addons for Firefox and have two I can recommend which will go a long way to speed up and secure your web surfing.

Adblock Plus (also get Adblock Filterset.G Updater). Combined, these two will prevent most ads from cluttering up webpages, meaning they will take less time to load.

Also get BlockSite, with which you can list sites you want to block. I block www.google-analytics.com/* and http://www.facebook.com/beacon/*. Just make sure you turn off Enable Warnings in BlockSite's options, or you will get that annoying yellow bar at the top of your screen.

I find that blocking google-analytics speeds up web page access. I am starting to make a list of other non-essential websites which pages seem to link to on a constant basis....each one adding to their overall load times. Like www.cliqin.com/* (sorry Cardiogirl...your page loads much faster without it :) ).

So, when a web page loads, take a look at all the stuff being accessed (bottom left of your browser usually). Play around with adding these to BlockSite's list. Let me know :)

A couple of things I have learned

2007-11-17T18:17:00.000-05:00

A couple of things I have learned over the past 45 years.

One is to never, ever give a restaurant more than one chance. Ever. There are too many restaurants around to bother with one that gives crappy food and/or service. Take this evening, for instance. I went with my oldest son and niece to an East Indian restaurant called the Taj. We sat down and waited about 5 minutes before we were even given menus. We weren't asked if we wanted any drinks. Then another couple sat down, and the waiter took their orders BEFORE us. Nice, eh. We walked out, but not before I told the waiter (owner?) that we would never be back. The same thing happened at a Boston Pizza once. We stood at the front for about 10 minutes and not one employee came up to get us a table.

Another thing I learned is that no matter how terrible a government employee is, you can be damned sure he or she will never be fired. Short of killing someone, or perhaps raping a co-worker, a government employee has a job for life. Incompetence that would otherwise make a person unemployable in the private sector is grounds for a promotion in the government. Think I jest...guess again. The only way to get a useless waste of flesh out of a mission critical position is to get him an acting assignment or lateral transfer out of the area. Many employees who shift positions a lot in the government do so, not because they are so dynamic that they are in demand, but because they wear out their welcome and get moved along to be someone else's problem. There is one in my area right now. I have been there since 2005 and I have absolutely no clue what this guy does. At all. I couldn't even guess. I have heard that he has been given several different projects throughout the past few years, and has completed none. Of course, his lack of success is not his fault, according to him. It is the fault of everyone else. As is his butchering of the english language. Do you think he got to his position (CS-2 - would be a junior to intermediate programmer in the real world) because of his skill set or because he speaks a particular language that is under-represented in the IT sector? I'll give you 10 guesses.

Windows Vista...and the point is?

2007-11-05T14:36:00.000-05:00

Really...I have been waiting for THE reason(s) to move to Windows Vista. There haven't been any. Vista is a huge resource hog, requiring a huge amount of hard drive space, and RAM, to run (based on their minimum requirements!)

Microsoft itself has a list comparing Windows XP to Vista:

Find, fix, and share photos: Organize, edit, and share your favorite photos with family and friends using Windows Photo Gallery.

Er...okay. How is that any different than any number of 3rd party programs out there that do the same thing?

Find almost anything: Find documents, e-mail, photos, and more in a snap through Instant Search.

Do you really need to constantly search for files? Really? I might do this about once a month...even then, the Search function in XP is fine. Regular users probably store everything in their My Documents folder anyways...how hard is that to search?

Turn any room into a media room: Manage and enjoy digital photos, music, TV shows, and movies in your living room with Windows Media Center.

Well...XP has this already, but how many people out there actually do this? I know of maybe two, and I believe they both use the XBox to do that, not their PCs.

Play the way you want: Easily install, organize, and play games using Windows Game Explorer.

Interesting, I must admit. Overkill though.

Make movie magic: Retain high-definition quality as you capture, edit, and publish movies from a video camcorder with Windows Movie Maker. NOTE: the HD part only works with the Premium editions.

Now, really...this is a main selling feature? The ability to make a fucking movie. Come on. Buy a Mac if you want to do that. Jesus.

There are other comparisons, mostly in the security area and things like Parental Controls. But is the cost worth all of this?

Upgrade Costs are as follows:
Home Basic is $129, Home Premium is $179, the Ultimate is $299

To purchase the full version:
Home Basic is $259, Home Premium is $299, and the Ultimate is $499!

Many of the features they tout aren't even available on the Home Basic edition. In fact, most of their security and backup features are only available on the over-priced Ultimate version.

This is insane, given the fact that you will have to shell out more bucks for Vista-compatible hardware (many older devices are NOT compatible), the cost of "upgrading" to Vista makes the whole process worthless. Why bother? You would end up with a slower PC with more "hidden" controls (i.e. difficult to figure out how to change settings...MS wants you to run things THEIR way, not YOUR way).

Too many idiots have already gone to Vista. They should have their heads examined.

Gonna shop in the States

2007-10-30T20:21:00.001-04:00

Well...the Canadian dollar just hit 104.92 cents US! I have already ordered things from online, US sources, meaning I have saved approximately 4 cents on the dollar. Plus the simple fact that things are STILL CHEAPER IN THE US! For instance, a couple of months ago I purchased a pocket book. The back cover lists the following: $7.99 US/$11.99 Cdn! If I purchased this book in the States it would cost me about $7.60 Canadian...a savings of more than 4 bucks.

So...with Christmas coming up, I am going to take a trip (whether by car or by internet) to the States to shop. If I spend $500 on Christmas gifts I can still save $24 just on the exchange, not to mention the already built-in cheaper prices.

Other people are doing the same thing, and Canada Post can't handle the increase in mail traffic.

Sharon Budnarchuk, co-owner of the independent Audrey's Books in Edmonton, said she is selling U.S. books at the lower American rate until Dec. 31. She hopes the move will help Audrey's keep its customers.

"We were starting to worry because of what was going on at the store where our customers were looking at every price and leaving it saying, 'We are going to look around.' We know exactly what that meant. They were going online," she said.

"They tell us, 'This is not fair. Our dollar is worth more.' Consumers have had enough."

Heh. Screw retailers. Viva free trade.

Would this be wrong?

2007-10-29T12:09:00.000-04:00

I was reminded of a conversation I had with someone several months ago regarding hiring practices as they pertain to gender.

I mentioned that if I were looking for someone to take charge of a large multi-million (or billion) dollar project, one that would take an estimated 1-2 years to complete, I would not hire a woman of child-rearing age unless I knew she intended not to have children. Sounds terrible, right? The PC section of your brain is now in overdrive? To be fair, I wouldn't hire a man if I knew he was planning to take a year or so off in the middle of the project for any reason (paternity leave, sabbatical, etc.). I would need someone for the length of the project. That simple. However, the minute you mention "woman" and "pregnant" and "not hire her" in the same sentence, all hell usually breaks loose.

The same goes for a position which requires a lot of expensive training. Why would I train someone as a fighter pilot (which could cost a few million bucks depending on the complexity of the aircraft) only to have (nay, expect) that person to leave for a year, or more, once training is complete? You could replace "fighter pilot" with "firefighter" or "police officer". Same question applies.

On the subject of firefighters, too many times I have read about the double-fitness standard that is being used to have a more "gender-balanced" firefighting force. Excuse me? When I am stuck in a burning building and need a firefighter to carry me down several flights of stairs, I want to see a big, burly guy who can bench press a pickup instead of a 5 foot 4 inch woman who only had to pass a dumbed-downed, simplified fitness test. Sorry...I know it sounds sexist, but Jesus. I weigh over 200 lbs fer crissakes. And yes, there are women strong enough to pass the regular test, I am sure, but these would be few and far between.

It seems that common sense has been left by the wayside in the quest of "gender equality". So much so that any discussion of the qualification of a candidate for any position cannot use gender, when in point of fact it should be a consideration.

BlogRush and hardcore porn!

2007-10-22T08:06:00.001-04:00

A couple of months ago, I signed up for Blog Rush, a free service that markets itself as "The fastest and easiest way to instantly drive a flood of targeted readers to your blog...absolutely free". Sounds nifty, doesn't it? I heard about it through a post in September by Kate over at Electric Venom. Less than a month later she dumped them. She hadn't noticed any traffic increase at all.

I had forgotten all about BlogRush until this morning when I received an email from them stating that my BlogRush account had been rendered inactive because my blog "did not pass [their] Quality Review criteria". Not that I really cared one way or the other, but I am curious as to what criteria upon which I failed. Here is their complete list:

BlogRush Quality Guidelines:

- The blog contains unique, quality content that provides opinions, insights, and/or recommended resources that provide value to readers of the blog. Articles, videos, public domain works, press releases, and content written by others are okay to be used on the blog, but the ratio of unique content should far outweigh content from other sources.

- The blog should be updated on a regular basis (at least several times a month) and should not just go a few months between posts.

- The blog should already contain at least 10-12 quality posts. New blogs with very little content will not be accepted.

- The blog's primary contain must be in English. BlogRush is currently not available for non-English blogs.

- The blog should not contain an excessive amount of advertising and links and very little actual content. The focus of the blog should be quality content.

- The primary content of the blog should not be "scraped" content from other sources and/or script-generated pages for the sole purpose of search engine rank manipulation. The focus of the blog should be quality content.

- The blog's content (or advertising) should not contain any of the following types of content: hate, anti-racial, terrorism, drug-related, hacking, phishing, fraud, pornographic, nudity, warez, gambling, copyright infringement, obscene or disgusting material of any kind, or anything considered illegal.

Okay...so let's review...starting with guideline #2. I do publish several times a month, but I will admit not that often. So, perhaps it's this one?

I have no advertising links, nor scraped content from other sources.

I don't think my blog contains "...hate, anti-racial, terrorism, drug-related, hacking, phishing, fraud, pornographic, nudity, warez, gambling, copyright infringement, obscene or disgusting material of any kind, or anything considered illegal". But I have to tell you, THAT sounds like a fucking interesting blog. Wow. Could you imagine? All those vices in one blog would make for some wickedly funny reading, don't you think!? I mean, it may be revolting and disgusting, but WOW!

So I think my next post will be about a jewish hooker who's high on crack, naked, covered in shit, and playing a high stakes poker game against Al Qaeda suicide bombers, who raised funds for their explosives by selling pirated versions of Vista, enticing stupid people to give them their bank card PINs, selling fake Rolexes, and writing a shitload of bad checks. If she loses, she has to have sex with a group of small-dicked KKK members who will tattoo a swastika on her ass. If she wins, she gets to bomb Muslims back to the dark ages. Oh wait...that would be redundant.

Think that would be too offensive for BlogRush? I mean, I bet it would generate way more traffic than they do.

Too funny.

Post-surgery

2007-10-15T14:43:00.000-04:00

Well...

I had my laproscopic surgery on the 10th. In and out...no issues. The doctor also fixed up a slight umbilical hernia I had, which is great...but, of course, that is where I am experiencing the most discomfort (and bruising). I have never had surgery before (unless you count having my tonsils out when I was 5), so I have no idea if any of this is normal. They assure me it is. I assumed bruising...I didn't assume the odd shade of puce.

On another note, I am so glad I live in a country that pays for this. I cannot imagine how much this would have cost in the US.

Going through the surgery was relatively stress free, and I was in and out in less than 4 hours. It's the recovery combined with my ongoing house cleanup/renovations that is driving me nuts.

On Thursday, the guys came to install my gutter toppers and they did a great job. The n Friday, both the flooring and furnace guys showed up at the same time. My new bamboo floors were delivered and my new furnace and humidifier installed. Sweet. Except they forgot to restart the pilot on my water heater. So, here I am trying to squat down when I can barely move to re-light the pilot. It doesn't work ('natch). So I call the company from which I rent the water heater. They tell me that, yes, they can fix it, but the next appointment is not until 5:30-9:30PM on the FOLLOWING NIGHT! To me, renting a furnace means immediate repairs when needed. I told him that I would call them next week and get them to remove my water heater. Heh. That'll piss 'em off. Eventually, I got the thing started on my own (yay).

The next morning, the flooring guys return...they want to install the floors. Um...I specifically told them that they could NOT come that weekend...and there they were. 8:00 AM sharp. Nice.

Next steps: called 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come and clear some old crap out (sofa, old washer and dryer, etc.), get a quote on drywall repairs and painting, and then get the ducts clean. Sigh.

Angry Penguin

2007-10-09T15:30:00.001-04:00

Wow...two blog posts on the same day...look outside, quickly...pigs have GOT to be flying...

Swiped this pick from Terminally Incoherent. Too funny, given my blog name...gory though

Home Renovations and a potential Money Pit

2007-10-09T12:31:00.000-04:00

I own a house - I took ownership on Sept 14th. The house already had a new roof and all new windows, which is great, and a remodeled kitchen. It does, however, need new flooring throughout (even the aforementioned kitchen), a new interior paint job, and a new furnace (the current one being about 23 years old). I have budgeted about $23K for the work.

One of the prime attractions though was the size of the backyard and the huge gazebo with a natural gas fireplace and a hot tub! The backyard needed about $5K worth of cleanup since it was a proverbial jungle of weeds and shrubbery. Various animals have made their home there, include voles and a fairly ornery gopher I like to call Norman (gratz to anyone who gets THAT particular obscure reference). But the hot tub has a leak in the pipes that needs fixing...my hope is that it's a pipe at the pump and heater, else I am in trouble, since the rest of the pipes are inaccessible. Sigh. I don't think they can replace the hot tub as it would entail removing a gazebo wall. Double sigh. I can't imagine the cost involved. It would have to be in the 10s of thousands, for the new hot tub and the gazebo wall.

The gazebo has a trap door which, when opened, exposes the main pump/heater and associated pipes. THIS is where I hope to find the leak. First though is to clean up what else the trap door exposed. Namely, mice had made their home in the insulation surrounding the area, which means I have chewed up foam and some dead, dessicated mice. Fun, eh. I have to clean that up, reinsulate, and block access to more mice. THEN I can clean the tub (since it's filled with mice droppings amongst other dirt), then fill it. Hopefully, the leak is at the exposed pipes.

Now I know why I prefer buying a brand new house. It's actually less work :)

The end of PC Gaming?

2007-10-03T09:41:00.000-04:00

Since its release, 2kgames Bioshock has been dogged with a bit of controversy. The problem stems from the unannounced installation (stealth install) of a piece of DRM crap called SecuRom, which forces an online activation before you can play the game. Sounds fine, right? But wait, what if, in 5 years, you decide to play the game again and need to re-install your perfectly legitimate copy only to find that the online activation server is no longer operational? Well...you now have a $60 useless disc. As well, this software only allows 5 activations! If you reformat your harddrive, buy a new one, etc, and you use up the 5 activations...tough. You can't play the game.

Here's another kicker. If you are running Microsoft's Process Explorer (used to be called SysInternals Process Explorer) SecuRom won't allow you to START the game! Their response to a questions about this was:

'Process Explorer' has dumping capabilities as well as registry monitor / file monitor capabilities. This could be used to trace the behavior of SecuROM.

Therefore, we do not allow the game to start when this software is active.

We have no immediate plans to allow this software in the future.

Best regards,

SecuROM Support Team
SecuROM on the web: http://www.securom.com
or via e-mail: support@securom.com

Are you freaking kidding me?

I have never been a fan of any copy-protection scheme for software, even the "you must have disc 1 in the drive before you can play your game" kind. In fact, I recently purchased a copy of F.E.A.R. and once I installed it, I immediately downloaded a No-CD Crack, so I don't need to use the disc to play. Screw them. I paid for the game, and I don't want to have to keep putting the disc in the drive every time I start it up. I have done that for every game I have ever purchased (Morrowind, Oblivion, Prey, Doom, etc.) that required that kind of "copy-protection".

So...what will be the aftermath of 2kGames decision? I won't buy the game until they come out with a DRM-stripped version. Otherwise, bite me. Apparently, the same DRM is installed when you download the freaking DEMO! What a bunch of idiots.

If this continues, it will do 3 things...

1. I will stop playing PC games.
2. Since I won't be playing PC games, I won't need a Microsoft OS (XP or Vista) and will then have no reason NOT to switch to Linux.
3. Since I won't be playing PC games AND I won't be running a bloated Microsoft OS, I won't need to upgrade my PC as frequently.

So who is the winner here, other than me and the makers of Nintendo Wii and XBox 360 (which is, ironically, MS)?

Global Warming Stupidity

2007-09-27T10:51:00.000-04:00

Just read an interesting post on the Dilbert Blog on cognitive dissonance. In it, he mentions an interview Bill Maher did with Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg who has written a book called "Cool It". In typical bonehead fashion, Maher and his guests (Salman Rushdie, Rob Thomas (!?!?), and Jeanine Garofalo cut apart Lomborg's statements after Maher interviews him via satellite.

Maher starts off by baiting the author:

However…scientists, almost down the line, condemned your first book. And I noticed that on the blurbs on the back of your book, you don’t – you have two authors, an editor and an economics professor. If the scientists are not saying you’re cool, why should we believe anything you say about this?

Lomborg responds with:

Well, you should not believe what I say. You should believe what I’m actually quoting, namely, the U.N. Climate Panel. When we look at all these things that we’re talking about; for instance, climate change is real; it’s happening; and I’m trying to take us away from that very unproductive dichotomy of saying “It’s a hoax”/ “No, it’s a catastrophe.” It’s neither. It’s a problem.

And let me give you just one example. When we look, for instance, at temperatures rising, it means we’re going to see more heat deaths. That’s absolutely true, and everybody points that out. But, of course, with increasing temperatures, we’re also going to see fewer cold deaths, and we need to know both.

For instance, for Britain, it’s actually estimated that we’re going to see 2,000 more heat deaths in 2050. But 20,000 fewer cold deaths. It seems to me that we’re not going to make good judgments unless we know both things.

Take a look at the transcript, and you will see what I mean. Lomborg offers reasoned points, and Maher and company basically "pretend" to not understand...or they are really that stupid. You decide.

Essentially, Lomborg says "Yes, Global Warming is a problem, but it won't be the catastrophe everyone says. We need to do something about the problem, but at what cost?"

For example, if I could spend a 10th of the money being spent to combat global warming on anti-malaria programs I could save thousands of more lives. Lomborg says we should spend money on research and development of alternative fuel sources. Right now, the rich can afford the extremely expensive solar paneling and hybrid cars, but the poor can't. People in China and India can't. Those people (i.e. the large bulk of the world population) have to be given something they can use as an alternative before we can affect change, otherwise we are trying to empty a lake by using a thimble.

Global Warming is simply the Cause célèbre. The rich and famous will spout off about it, do documentaries on it, perform charity benefit concerts to "raise awareness" about it, and then the whole fad will fade away when the fickle stars move onto the next cause. I mean, Ethiopians are still starving, Africans are still dying of Aids, but those aren't "in" right now. Global Warming is "hot", to paraphrase Paris Hilton.

In any event, Bill Maher and friends need to be rudely awakened.

Snakes in a mouth

2007-09-20T12:45:00.001-04:00

Okay...quick...how many beers would you have to drink before you could put a rattlesnake head first into your mouth? 100...200?

Some guy in Oregon, admittedly a little tipsy on a 6-pack of American beer (which is, what, the equivalent of 2 Canadian beers in alcoholic content?), stuffed his pet rattlesnake into his mouth to amuse his friends....

There are two things wrong with the above sentence...one is putting a rattlesnake into your mouth...another is to have a pet rattlesnake to begin with!

He comments on his near death experience:

“It's actually kind of my own stupid fault,”

Er..."kind of"? Really? Just kind of?

I think this would have been better if this numbnuts ended up as a Darwin Award winner. With any luck, maybe he will be sterile.

Professional Sports are pointless

2007-09-20T08:21:00.000-04:00

The older I get, the less interested I am in any sort of professional sport. I was an avid baseball fan, but became disillusioned/disgusted with MLB when they screwed over the Montreal Expos in 1996 (when the season, and World Series, was canceled). Couple that with the bizarre league finances (the BENCH of the NY Yankees is more than the total payroll of many other teams), and why would anyone whose team has no hope of winning bother to watch?

The NBA is pathetic and dull. NFL football is filled with criminals..and I swear, if I see one more jiggy-dance in the end zone after a touchdown, I think I will throw something through my TV screen. Hockey is just tiring to watch in the regular season...wake me when the playoffs start.

Professional athletes are vastly overpaid, and I think society has to realize that idolizing these clowns is ridiculous. They play a game. That's it. A policeman, firefighter, or a teacher should make more than some semi-literate knob who gets millions simply because he can catch a football.