/life/sabbatical/Depart
I had arranged for my visa paperwork to be sent to my parents' place — I'd go there for thanksgiving, and maybe we'd drive down that weekend, or maybe I'd bring it back to Ottawa with me. Either way, the key was to try to be in Ottawa for the Tuesday night election results to roll in, and then to get back to New York on Wednesday, to start work on Thursday.
My papers didn't arrive on Friday. When the London office opened on Monday morning, I got a tracking number which said it would be delivered on that day by 17:30. Not bad, I hoped: I'd be able to catch, at worst, the overnight bus to Ottawa, and be in the office for election day. But 17:00, then 17:30 came and went. I called the London office of the courier company, and they said it was maybe misrouted. By Tuesday morning, it turned out it had gone to Windsor instead of Orillia and would take another day.
After much scrambling, I decided to redirect the package to Ottawa, to get ahold of a high-quality scan of the original, and then to bus my butt to Ottawa. I'd get there just in time for the election night party, and then try my luck at the border crossing the next day. One of my friends-from-Finland who now lives in Ottawa with her fella has family in Binghamton, NY, so she was going to take me across the border and visit family. Good deal for all, assuming the border crossing was seamless.
The election night party was...well, we lost our only seat, didn't come really close anywhere, and increased our vote by less than 50%. The party was still fun, but there was certainly a degree of deflation. However, some further analysis gives a pretty good impression...not the success discontinuity that I had come to hope for, but strong steady gains. I think we left around 3am, and I finally made it to bed by 4am. At 7:30, alarm clocks started going off; by 8:15 I was out the door to head to Avis to get our rental car. We took care of that, picked up my stuff, and rolled out.
Fingers crossed, we got to the border. I have only done one land-border crossing in my adult life, and I've never applied for a US visa, so I only had a rough idea of how it would go down. Basically, you talk to the normal border guard, he gives you a yellow piece of paper with your plate numbers on it, and you pull off and go into an office. By then, they have your car keys, your passports, and one (of three) copies of the visa paperwork, so you're pretty stuck. They took my paperwork, and mostly just disappeared, popping out to ask a few questions, then to collect a once-in-a-lifetime 500USD "fraud charge," (presumably you have to pay it again if you are trying to use a different identity. ha.) and to take my fingerprints on the fancy scanner machine. They were friendly and efficient and clear about how the visa worked. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience, having braced for the worst.
From there, we drove on to Binghamton, I boxed up my bike and repacked my stuff (it was pretty hastily and hungoverly packed) and I caught a bus onwards to New York.
(Note that this marks the end of my sabbatical; if you've got a sabbatical-specific RSS subscription, it will end here; consider the general feed.)
New Albums from the Gallery
/life/sabbatical/Asthma and Bogus Surveys
A combination of a precipitous drop in exercise, decreased dietary quality, stress, a cold, and an encounter with fresh oil paint seems to have exacerbated my asthma over the last week. I had a minor cease-up this morning, so decided to get a script for some tasty tasty salbutamol (aka Ventolin). I went to one clinic, but it looked like it was going to take about two hours, so I went to another in the same chain 'cause they allegedly had a five minute wait (hah!).
Anyway, when I finally got to sit in a room, they asked me to fill out a survey. "Meh, sure, I have nothing else to do." Name, address, home phone, hmm..this isn't very anonymous.
"Which of the following applies to you?" Aha! The survey proper!
"I am concerned with excessive hair growth and would like to have it removed." Umm. no. next.
"I would like to diminish the appearance of vertical lines on my lips." Hmm. I don't even know which way my lip-lines run.
"I would like to enhance the size of my lips." This survey is very focused on my lips.
Five more bullets, and then "I have no cosmetic concerns." Yeah.
How bogus.
/life/sabbatical/Onward Journey
I took a ring with two keys on it, spun it off my keychain, and placed it on the countertop. I picked up two shoulder bags and two canvas bags, closed the door behind me, and left. Two couches and a foam mattress sat on the downstairs patio along with a couple bags of magazines — the last remnants of a flurry of freecycling. (The result was good: less than two "supplementary" large garbage bags of waste from two years of living.)
I often wish I had a timelapse photo of my keychain: a solitary bicycle key through highschool, the long UW-branded lanyard from first year that I spun around incessantly; the various sets of housekeys, eventually attached to my pocket knife, and then its progressive decay from an unforgiving life in my pocket; periods, like now, when there's a chaos of loaned keys from places where I'm staying; and still, brief times where the only key is for a bike lock...somehow these changes uniquely represent the transactional points in life.
I'm on a bus now, to Ottawa, back to the election campaign. In about two weeks, I'm going with my stuff to NYC, and then popping back up to finish off the campaign. Then begins my onward journey, on October 15th, to New York, for real. To the United States, a place I once thought I'd never work. To Google, and a new project and a new team. To a city absorbing the collapse of a major industry. To a country on the brink of a potentially game-changing election. To live in the same town as my sister for the first time in nearly ten years.
To my onward journey.
/life/sabbatical/Credit Card Fraud
Yesterday I looked over my credit card, and noticed a charge I didn't recognize. A few phone calls later and it turned out someone had been using my card to buy wireless time in Toronto.
One of the merchants (who will rename nameless) erred somewhat in giving me the details of the purchaser — probably a violation of their privacy policy, notwithstanding the fraud — which included a phone number one digit off from mine (the phone is currently off), an email address @live.com, and an address that turns out to be a bike shop in Toronto.
Visa was prompt and effective, even promising to investigate the oldest fraudulent charge which was over three months ago. I'm surprised that they got away with it; it seems like the fact that they used a name, email and phone number that weren't mine would enable Visa to shut down that purchase, if the merchants were sharing that information.
The whole thing reminded me of this YouTube clip:
/life/sabbatical/A (Novel?) Pure CSS Image Rollover Technique
CSS:
a.rollover { background: no-repeat -9999px -9999px; display: block; }
a.rollover:hover { background: no-repeat top left; }
a.rollover:hover img { visibility: hidden; }
HTML:
<a class="rollover" style="background-image:url('blog-roll.png')" href="/blog">
<img border="0" alt="blog" src="blog.png"/>
</a>
This is a variant on other techniques I found. By setting the a tag to be a block-level element, it gets the size of the contained image; by setting the background by offsetting it, you get preload; by setting the foreground but using visibility:hidden (as opposed to display:none) it keeps its size. You also get a single point of truth for the button: image, rollver image and alt tag are all in the same place. Finally, this works everywhere I tested it (Safari 3.1.2; Firefox 2 and 3; IE6 and 7).
There are a few gotchas: don't be lazy and set background instead of background-image in the style tag, because that sets the other background CSS back to the default, specifically repeat:repeat. The images need to be the same size, pretty much. If you haven't cleared borders around images, they might be a problem, too.
I dunno if this is actually novel, but I didn't see it as I looked around. The (IMO less natural and more fiddly) technique of using a single image and changing the offset seems to be more popular.
/life/sabbatical/Bell Canada Sucks -- I'm leaving!
I called Bell a few days ago to cancel my cell phone plan. It was a twelve (12) month contract, and I'm pretty sure there was a 30 day cancellation period. After the identity verification, the conversation went roughly like this:
Me: I'd like to cancel my cell phone plan.
Her: When would you like cancel it?
Me: Ideally, September 30th, but if it has to be at the end of a billing period, then September 19th or whatever it is.
Her: Okay. We can do it for September 30th. That's after your contract period, so you should call back on September 19th.
Me: I believe I'm required to give 30 days' notice, and since there aren't thirty days after the end of my contract, I'm not sure that will work.
Her: What day do you want to cancel?
Me: September 30th if I can, but the 19th is fine.
Her: Okay, well, for the 19th, here will be a fee for cancelling early.
Me: I don't understand. It was a twelve month contract, I'd like to cancel it after 12 months.
Her: Yes, there's a fee of $100 because you're future-dating the cancellation during the contract period, so you're terminating during the contract.
Me: Can you explain that to me? I just want to terminate my contract at the end of it.
Her: Yes, so there's a fee for cancelling early.
Me: That can't be; you can't charge me an early cancellation fee for ending a twelve month contract after twelve months. Is that really what you're trying to do?
Her: Yes, there's a cancelation fee for that.
Me: Okay, can I speak with your supervisor please?
It was the fastest and fiercest I've ever gotten angry with a telephone person, partly because I saw it all coming, and I'm generally ticked at the horrible customer service and pricing and market manipulation in telecomms in Canada.
It took a couple minutes, and then the same voice came back:
Her: Sir?
Me: Yes.
Her: Okay, it looks like we can go ahead and do that for you.
Me: Oh, great! So cancelling Sep 19, and no fees?
Her: Yes. Can I ask why you're cancelling?
Me: I'm leaving the country.
Her: Oh, forever?
Me: Well, for a while.
Her: Okay, you will be disconnected on September 19th. Anything else I ca--
Me: Great, thanks. That's all, then.
Her: Good bye.
Weird. What happened while I was on hold? My best guess is she played back some of the call for the supervisor. My tone was extremely curt, and I had said "you can't charge me an early cancellation fee for ending a twelve month contract after twelve months" with great conviction, mostly 'cause I felt..err..great conviction.
It really seems like they were just fishing for me to go along with another month or whatever. The transcript above is actually substantially less ambiguous than the original conversation.
This all stems from the fact that I'll be moving to New York in late September. I'm going back to Google after a reasonably successful leave. Canada's my ultimate home, and I think Toronto in particular, so I'll be back often to say h'lo.
/life/sabbatical/Letter to Minister Prentice
I just fired this letter off to Jim Prentice, who tabled the rather vile Bill C-61 on Canadian copyright dereforms. I'm not sure if it's all properly addressed, but then I realized I really shouldn't have to care.
Hon. Minister,
As a Canadian citizen, I'm disappointed by the lack of balance in Bill C-61. The balance in copyright policy should be struck by governments, with strong provisions for fair dealing and personal use to maximize art and the enjoyment of art. Certainly, a "balance" should not be left to corporations shielded behind legal buttressing of so-called "digital locks".
When I buy a DVD, I should be able to format- and time-shift it, regardless of the existence of digital locks. To call this a "very technical issue" as you did in your interview with The Search Engine is disingenuous; this is a simple issue that will affect Canadians in their day-to-day lives. Indeed, since a truly effective digital restriction system would prevent the fair dealing that's inherent to the social balance of copyright law, it's unclear to me why they should even be permitted in Canada. These problems only scratch the surface of what's wrong with Bill C-61, but I'm surprised something so clearly out of balance was tabled in the House of Commons.
As an active citizen, I participated vocally in the last round of national copyright consultations, and I'm disappointed and distressed that the lessons learned then were ignored, and no further public consultation was held. I strongly support thriving art and culture in Canada, but I certainly don't believe this bill will serve small artists, nor does it serve consumers.
Sincerely,
Rob Ewaschuk
Toronto, ON
In other news, Toronto Pride Parade 2008 was super fun, World Wind Energy Conference 2008 was super learnful, Canada Day in Ottawa was a giant party of red and white and sunny green grass fields, I think our mouse is really actually gone, Trev, Krista and Phil visited from Dublin and it was good, and summer in Toronto is lovely.
/life/sabbatical/A Good Day
Yesterday was a good day. I spent two hours working with the local Green Party candidate on the permanently soon-to-launch new website, with great productivity in terms of deciding what content to put up, and where to draw the lines around duplicating the central Green Party website.
Then I got a call from Jesse and we had a good lunch at Fresh -- the Ninja Bowl has the tastiest preparation of tofu I've ever had.
Then I went into Pembina and did some actually-good work, which I'd been struggling to do this week. Then it turned out there were two events at the Center For Social Innovation, where Pembina has its office. The first was a "speed geek" event, where you went table to table for five minutes each, hearing about what people are doing. Then there was a free-beer party for a long-time Environmental Defence guy who was about to start his own legal practice.
The "Speed Geek" event was a fascinating examination of leverage. Jeff presented Borealis Offsets, who are doing tree-planting for carbon credits. They're selling
"80-year carbon", which means that they sell today carbon to be absorbed over the next 80 years (unless those trees
burn, or are eaten by pine beatles, or the land is illegally logged, or..) In the offsets biz, this is a pretty
unpopular practice from what I can tell, but they still seemed to be getting going and planting trees pretty cheaply.
He said they'd shift to one-year carbon as soon as it was cheap enough to do so; present voluntary carbon offset prices
are in the $6-$10 per tonne CO2e* range. He had an interesting argument that, since we were already over the 350ppm CO2 that we need to safely end up at, emissions-reductions credits were
bogus since we necessarily must do that anyway, and the only realcarbon credits are true net-sinks of carbon, not
just net-reductions.
Jenny was representing a large but informal network of youth workers and researchers. It reminded me how little I know about working with people who aren't colleagues or peers or customers or teachers, but children or youth or troubled people or the elderly. They seemed to be almost forming non-labour union, objecting to the repeated bogus "consultations" from the government that went nowhere - though that certainly wasn't a central message, it was clearly something she felt very strongly about.
But by far the most interesting group was Markets Initiative. In some sense, they were a free-marketers nightmare in terms of what they demonstrated. Essentially, 10 or so years ago, they walked into the paper industry, and asked paper mills why they weren't making more recycled paper and paper using sustainably harvested pulp, and the industry said there was no demand. They went to the publishers, and asked why they weren't buying, and the publishers said that it was a boutique product, and far too expensive. Markets Initiative got publishers to issue policies over a large (years) timescale about ramping up recycled paper usage, so the mills had a clear demand signal. They also got authors to sign on, requiring that their books be published on Ancient Forest Friendly (AFF) paper. That's a designation, not a certification, meaning (I think) that it's not monitored and audited as tightly, but they do depend on the Forest Stewardship Council for the certification of sustainable forests.
The acheivements of a small group of people in greasing a market effect were phenomenal, aided in no small part by the concentrated clout of the authors - Margaret Atwood, J. K. Rowling -- as opposed to the much more diffuse clout of the book-buying public. But, they basically had to do all of this work not-for-pay to get it to happen, acting as free environmental and business development consultants to smooth things along. To me, it's a testament to the amount of market inertia, especially where costs are basically totally externalized, even in the presence of strong signals. The most recent Harry Potter book was published on fully AFF paper in 22 countries, and the presses were halted in Finland by Rowling because they weren't using it. Cool!
After the party dwindled, a fella I know from the Green Party and a CSI guy who works for Carbonzero and who is of asian descent talked about racism, multiculturalism, the subtle semantics of context in questions like "where are you from?", "where did you grow up?", "what's your ethnic background?" and whether (as I often think and hope) Canada, and especially Toronto, and especially the core, is finally entering a post-racist period, where your skin colour (though not where you grew up, or where you were educated) is finally becoming irrelevant.
In other, less world-altering news, I've found some time to work on Learning Cubes (formerly and maybe futurely known as pbrain, but all the good domains are taken), which is basically online collaborative flashcards for learning things that require brute memorization like languages.
* tonne CO2e means "tonne of Carbon Dioxide or equivalent"; since some gases like HCFCs are actually have a much more potent greenhouse effect than CO2, you can offset a tonne of CO2e for a much smaller amount of HCFCs. Either the IPCC or Kyoto (or both?) have conversion rates to use.
/life/sabbatical/Update and Morals
A friend sent me a link to a New York Times article called The Moral Instinct (free reg req'd.) Fairly interesting, though it contains one of my pet peeves:
On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says "yes."
Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge? Both dilemmas present you with the option of sacrificing one life to save five, and so, by the utilitarian standard of what would result in the greatest good for the greatest number, the two dilemmas are morally equivalent. But most people don't see it that way: though they would pull the switch in the first dilemma, they would not heave the fat man in the second. When pressed for a reason, they can't come up with anything coherent, though moral philosophers haven't had an easy time coming up with a relevant difference, either.
I hate these so-called utilitarian questions. I wouldn't throw the fat man, and I'll tell you why: it might not work. In fact, my aim with a fat man throwing off a bridge is less than 20% likely to work. Plus he might resist, and I might get hurt, or he might just slow me down until it's too late. Plus he might be about to discover the cure for cancer, or otherwise save lives (though that's true of the single man on the spur as well). There are so many practical distinctions between these so-called "moral equivalents", I don't understand how they're an accepted technique for experimentation. Even in the first one: is that really the only way you can intervene? Really? Are you sure none of the men know it's coming? I'm not sure I'd throw the switch even in that case, though I'd certainly try to do something. In fact, wouldn't the men hear the trolley coming and jump out of their way on their own?
My philosophy textbook had one about (as I recall -- it was old writing) someone saying they were going to kill 20 Indians unless you shot one of them yourself, then the other 19 could go free. Again: how do I know he's telling the truth? It certainly sounds implausible. If it's true for 20, it's true for 2, and if that happens, I'm doing half the "immoral work" for this mysteriously murderous man. I have no reason to believe him.
These are cases of over-analysis of an intuitive decision, without properly trying to understand the intuition.
In other news:
- Mouse: still there. Still only one, I think. We thought he was gone, but I've seen him recently. He either doesn't go into the trap, or can get back out again (I think the former, but I'm not sure.) I really don't want to get a sticky trap, but I might have to get the snappy kind. I sat one night trying to wait for him to come out, but that didn't work either.
- Pembina work: Good. Working on something substantial, doing some web work and some research and some good discussions.
- Ants (did I mention we had some ants?): seemingly gone.
- Clare's mum's visit: victorious.
- Trip to Montreal: great. better than I expected. weeeird modern dance thing. nice churches. fairly good food. looks like Europe.
/life/sabbatical/Visits, Kayaking, and a quarter of leave
I updated my Objectives for Leave with scores, comments, and the goals for next three months, most of which are carry-overs. Comments welcome. Especially on how to have more self-discipline. :-)
I tried to go kayaking with my friend Jeff. We got all packed up and ready to go, then drove up to Port Severn, unloaded, and got going. Three hours and about three kilometers later, our hands were cold (no gloves, but socks were making it livable) and the waves were picking up. We pulled into a little unsheltered nook to decide whether to continue. I pulled up alongside some rocks (shown at 0:16 in the movie) in a feet of stupidity, and then started getting pushed up onto them by the waves. It was all pretty scary, and I seemed to be getting pushed up higher with every wave. Eventually, I managed to figure out how to ride the waves down the rocks, instead of up, got myself off, paddled frantically to a more sane docking place. By the time I got there, Jeff was up and out of his kayak and on his way around to where I nearly tipped. It was pretty exciting and scary — tipping's never fun, and rocks and frigid water make it less so — but it all worked out in the end.
New photos are up from when I visited Halifax, and some random ones from around Toronto. I "lost" my camera (in the recycling pile, as it turned out) for while my whole famiy was gathered in Orillia, so no photos from that.
