Boonacky

iSad

2011-10-06T10:39:00.002-05:00

The Web has been abuzz since yesterday evening with news about the death of Steve Jobs on October 5th, 2011. I didn't even know the guy personally, yet I am sad. You have to admire a guy who helped start a company out of a garage, put the "personal" into personal computers, made the mouse an integral part of our computing lives with the introduction of the Macintosh, and, most importantly, when everyone thought that Apple was done for, turned it into a super-awesomely sexy brand with slick-looking, coveted products. That has got to be talent and vision.

When I was younger, I always rolled my eyes at Apple products. Having grown up an a DOS/Windows-based household, the Apple computers seemed weird and annoying. What was up with those menus that disappeared if you let go of the mouse button? And for the love of FSM, what was up with the one-button mouse? Fast-forward a few years, before PDAs became popular, I remember when Apple launched its ill-fated Newton. It was totally ahead of its time, but fell flat on its face. Still, it was a trailblazer of sorts. We looked at the Newton with much awe, confusion, and perhaps some laughter back then, but nobody was laughing when the Palm devices became popular, and we were most certainly more than happy to wait in line for iPhones and iPads.

Apple didn't invent the mouse, but it popularized the mouse with the Mac. (And then even moreso with Windows.) Apple didn't invent the MP3 player, but it pretty much "iPod" synonymous with "MP3 player". (I dare you to think of another MP3 player brand/model that does that.) And most importantly, it did what I seriously thought was impossible - got people to PAY for music, even when it was readily (and easily) available for free from P2P sites. And in my opinion, spawned a whole online content industry. I wonder if the likes of Netflix would be around had it not been for Apple.

Apple products are annoyingly proprietary. That was a huge turn-off, and certainly a big reason why the IBM computers and IBM clones made Windows, not the Apple OS the go-to operating system of the past few decades. And then Apple did it again with the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. Android phones have a larger market share than iPhones because Google licenses its OS to a bunch of cell phone makers. Still, iPad and iPhone owners like me keep flocking back to Apple. I forgive you (*grumble grumble*) not incorporating Flash into iOS. I forgive you for your annoying touch keyboard (I seriously much preferred the BlackBerry keyboard for thumb-typing). I forgive you because of your integration with content. Apps, phone, and media all in one devices seriously kicks ass. Sorry, Android. You're not there yet.

In the interest of this sounding too much like an ad for Apple, I think I'll stop here. The point I was trying to make in this post is that Apple puts out some very cool products, makes them look awesome, and integrates them very well. All this thanks to the genius of Steve Jobs. My generation has practically grown up alongside Apple, and it's sad to see such an important and influential figure go. I hope to see many other figures who are as visionary and influential as Steve Jobs.

Douchery 101

2011-06-16T09:29:00.003-05:00

Take a good look at this photo below.

Looks like a war zone, doesn't it? Except that it isn't. It's the aftermath of the riots that took place in Vancouver after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins. So let me get this straight. A hockey team loses a big game and there are RIOTS? You have got to be kidding me. I think these guys need a dose of reality, because they are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.

I would've expected this type of scene from a country where people are fighting for a true cause. Like, oh, I don't know...the people in Libya and Syria, perhaps? People who are putting their lives on the line, fighting for freedom from their oppressive regimes. Regimes that have no issues gunning down their fellow countrymen to silence dissent. Just to hold on to power. So they can live in their fancy palaces and spend money on fancy cars, planes, vacations, clothes and whatever other wonders they can afford with state funds while the general population lives in oppressed misery.

Meanwhile, back in Canada, where we have healthcare, welfare, jobs, a fairly stable banking system, and most importantly, a democracy (kind of - let's ignore the big white elephant called Harper for now) people are taking to the streets in protest over a godforsaken hockey game. Classy guys. Really classy. Glad to see that our country is full of people who obviously have their priorities straight.

Maybe we should fly those rioters down to Libya or Syria so they get a real taste of what mayhem and loss are all about.

DBA WTF

2011-02-24T12:12:00.002-05:00

I have had some very frustrating dealings with server infrastructure people, and I'm pretty sure that my blood pressure has skyrocketed lately. Today was no exception. Today, I sent an e-mail to our dev DBA to find out the size of our DB log files to figure out how much space to allocate for production. Here's more or less how it went:

Attempt #1
Me: What's the size of the log files for DB instance ABC?
Reply: The log files are fine.

Attempt #2
Me: Yes, but how big are they?
Reply: Unlimited, as long as you have enough disk space

Attempt #3
Me: Yes, but I need to know their current size.
Reply: What database?

Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!

PS: I did finally find out the size, but not before I nearly pulled out my hair over this. These things shouldn't be so hard...

Where Were You When?

2011-02-11T11:35:00.002-05:00

Today was one of those "Where were you when?" moments. In case you live in a cave and were unaware, today is the day that Hosni Mubarak stepped down as Egyptian president. So where was I? I was sitting at my desk at work, writing an e-mail (I seem to spend half my day doing that these days), on a typical Toronto Friday morning in February, when I got a text from my husband telling me the news (he working from home with the TV on while we had workers at our house replacing the hot water heater - that's a whole other story).

I'm not Egyptian. I'm not Arab. I'm not Middle-Eastern. But I'm giddy with excitement. I'm giddy because the people have spoken. They have protested for a good couple of weeks, fed up with his policies and his regime. Sure, the guy has tried to hang onto power until the bitter end, but the people have prevailed. That is friggin' awesome. This will send ripples through the world, but especially through the Middle East, and the West. Oh, the West. The self-righteous West with their talk of democracy and free speech. The same West who was responsible for installing dictators after being responsible for ousting democratically-elected leaders who were actually doing good for their respective countries. Argentina, Chile, and Iran come to mind. But that's another story. If you want to know more, I encourage you to read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. I finished that book fuming at my seeming ignorance.

Now I know that this is not a total win. After all, according to the article, "Vice President Omar Suleiman said a military council would run the affairs of the Arab world’s most populous nation. A free and fair presidential election has been promised for September." Okay, so the military will take charge until September. But do we have any guarantees that they will relinquish power when the time comes? We know the old saying, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." I hope that this isn't the case and that those elections happen in September and that the country enters a new era of prosperity and freedom.

I don't know what the future will bring, but today makes me hopeful. Very hopeful. That people do have a voice and they CAN make themselves heard and make their country's politicians hear them. We in Canada should take a lesson from the brave people of Egypt. They weren't happy and they complained. Peacefully. And they got their point across. They were tired of letting their "leaders" push them around. We should do the same. Our politicians don't seem to work for us anymore, and hey, last time I checked, they are employed by us. Why aren't they more accountable.

So thank you, people of Egypt. But an even bigger thank you to the people of Tunisia, who set the example and inspiration to the people of Egypt. You are all brave and bold, and you have shown us that people CAN have a united voice that can do some good in this world.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

2010-11-04T08:21:00.003-05:00

I cringed when I heard that the Republicans (namely Tea Party nutbags) took control of the House in the US Mid-Term elections this part Tuesday. Mind you, it wasn't terribly surprising. Most Americans are dissatisfied with the job that Obama was doing to remedy the US' economic woes. Many Americans are against government intervention on things like healthcare and bailouts. Many Americans back the Tea Party because the Tea Party promises a return to the US' constitutional roots. You know, the whole "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" bit. That's all well and good, but let's consider a few points here.

Socialism is Not a Four-Letter Word
Americans are scared to death of Socialism. I'm pretty sure that they're more scared of Socialism than they are of Satan. Seriously. Must be some sort of Cold War PTSD or something. And the fact that they think that Communism = Socialism. News flash: they are not the same.

So, armed with the fact that Americans believe that Socialism is bad, they view stuff like healthcare reform to be a bad thing. Of course. That mean 'ole government meddling in your affairs telling you how to go about your healthcare. Shame on them. Newsflash: the government is actually trying to help you by improving your quality of life so that those douchebag health insurance companies don't try to screw you in every way imaginable. Oh, wait...you view that as a bad thing? Well, excuse me. I thought that was a good thing.

The Economy
Back in the '90s, Bill Clinton famously said, "It's the economy, stupid", during this 1992 presidential election campaign. Well, it's still the economy, isn't it? Now, more than ever, especially with this recession that's been hanging around like a stubborn wart. And why not? I saw a segment on Sixty Minutes a couple of weeks ago that talked about university-educated people in Silicon Valley who had been laid off from their jobs for 2 or more years, and were having a hell of a time finding a job in their field. Wasn't the whole point of going to university being that it guarantee that we got and kept good jobs? It's pretty scary, when you think about it.

Intersection
It occurred to me yesterday that the Tea Party supporters who are so desperately want to return to their country's roots are missing something. The problem is not with the government actually caring enough to reform healthcare, or for bailing out banks and the auto sector (not that I agree with the latter, but for other reasons), or for trying to stimulate the economy. The real problem is with the free-market capitalists. And guess what? Republicans loooooooooove free-market capitalism.

(Aside: I highly recommend that you read Naomi Klein's book, Shock Doctrine. It details how this whole "laissez-faire" approach to economics - i.e. free-market economics - has done nothing but hurt the common person (i.e. the vast majority), and fill the pockets of the rich with more money (a teeny minority). It's very insightful and while I read it, it made me downright angry. I wanted to hurl the book at a few politicians.)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. As far as I'm concerned, free-market capitalism is to blame for all this crap that we're experiencing around outsourcing/exporting jobs to countries with lower rates. Readers of this blog know that it is no secret that I despise outsourcing and that I don't believe that it works (quality being the #1 issue). Not to mention the fact that it a) turns IT jobs into a commodity (which they aren't) and b) takes jobs away from people. Tell me: if most IT jobs are being outsourced to the likes of India, and most manufacturing are being exported to Mexico, China, India, and its cheap labor cousin countries around the world, how does one expect the jobless rate to actually go down? It's not like there will be any jobs left for the middle-class folks. IT. MAKES. NO. SENSE.

So, my dear neighbors from the south, to think that your president can turn a crappy economic situation (which is being manipulated by Big Business and their buddies the Lobbyists) around in 18 months, you have got to be joking. Really? Poor guy! He inherited a sh!t pile. Quit blaming him for wanting to improve your quality of life with healthcare reform and quit blaming him for not being able to wave a magic wand to make things better. And most importantly, read the goddamned news for a change an inform yourselves. By ignorantly listening to the nonsensical crap of the Tea Party morons/psychos, you are flushing your country down the toilet. I hope you don't mind the smell of sewage.

Democracy Prevails, I Guess

2010-10-26T07:31:00.002-05:00

I'm all for democracy and all, but I really have to question the mental sanity of the voting public sometimes. Last night, Toronto elected Rob Ford, who as far as I can tell is a right-wing nut job hell bent on destroying the city. His election message was clear: stop unnecessary spending. So to do that he talked about doing things like cutting the number of city councilors in half and eliminating certain city taxes.

Before I delve a bit further, let's get some things straight. I'm not a fan of paying taxes any more than the next guy is. And I am certainly not a fan of paying taxes when I don't know where my tax money is being applied. The latter is obviously a big issue in politics, and the public is certainly tired of misspent tax dollars on useless state trips (hello, Governor General...what exactly do you do?). At the same time, people have to realize that in order to have certain social services, like say, healthcare, public schools, community centers, libraries, garbage pickup, police, and fire fighters, we need to pay taxes. That's just the harsh reality of it. These services don't come free. The people working in these areas don't work for free. These are their jobs. They make actual money for a living to be able to do things like eat and live in some type of housing.

So back to Rob Ford. First of all, people voted for him because they wanted change - the "anything but what we've got right now" mentality. That's all well and good if he happens to be better than what we had with David Miller. Sure, people were pissed over the garbage strike. I was too. But my dear voting public, please, for the love of god, why don't you seek to better understand a candidate's platform rather than just voting for the exact opposite of what you have in office now? That type of move is impulsive and uninformed, and will ultimately screw you over in the end.

Take the Harper government, for example. His government was voted in because people were pissed at the Liberals for the sponsorship scandal. Hey, don't get me wrong - I wasn't too pleased about the sponsorship scandal either. But folks, look who you voted in? A tar-sands-loving, UN-hating, environment-hating, controlling, big-business-loving nutjob. You didn't punish the Liberals. You punished the country! And twice, for that matter, because you seem to think that the Harper government was doing an okay enough job to elect them to a second minority government. Honestly people. Honestly...

And while we're on that topic, let's take a look at our neighbors down south. This Tea Party movement is just baffling me. I mean, basically all of the hillbillies in the US (which apparently is most of the population) have rallied together around these guys, because they're not happy with what Obama has been doing on the economy. (The funny part is that they're pissed at the traditional Republicans too, but that's actually kind of scary because these guys make the Republicans look normal.) Newsflash here: it took the Bush White House 8 years to destroy the American Economy. Do you honestly think that Obama and his cronies are going to be able to fix it in 2 years? Seriously? Where did you learn math, anyway? Unfortunately, people are unemployed, some homeless, and barely able to get by. When that happens, they'll grab onto the first thing that gives them hope, even if it's the wrong thing.

My point is, people these days seem to be voting on anger, hatred, desperation, and plain impulse. They are not stopping to think about what the candidates are really about. They hear a few key words that are music to their ears and they're hooked, without actually being properly informed. And then they vote for people hell bent on screwing over the general public. And the people who didn't vote are just as bad too. You had a chance to voice your opinion, but you chose not to, and therefore you put the fate of your city in a small percentage of the population. Shame on you.

But alas, democracy has prevailed in the end, hasn't it? After all, people did vote for Ford out of their own free will. I am worried about the next four years. I am worried for our public transit. I am worried for our city services. I don't trust this guy at all. At the same time, what can I do when the people have spoken?

Best Facebook Status

2010-10-25T10:13:00.002-05:00

Best Facebook status of the day posted by a university classmate of mine:

The Fax Machine

2010-09-20T11:33:00.004-05:00

I had to send a fax last week. It should have been a two-minute process, but instead it took me 20 minutes. I hate fax machines. I don't know how to use them, and I don't want to know how to use them. I really wish that they would just go away. But they won't. They refuse to.

Sure, they were neat and new in the '80s. (Aside: just watch someone will post a "Well, actually, they were invented in the 1960s, so neener neener, get your facts straight, blah blah blah." comment. Well, S.U.C.K. I.T.) But now? Now they're just annoying. Here are some of my fax pet peeves:

1. Orientation.
I never know if I'm supposed to put the document in face-up or face-down. No matter what, I'll always screw it up.

2. Dialing
This should be simple, but some fax machines are set up so that you have to dial 9 to get out. Some are not. Some require you to dial 8 to dial a long-distance number. Some do not. On the odd occasion, the dialing instructions are posted on the machine so that I actually know what to do, but then I screw up the number and don't know how to clear the number from the selection. Arrrrrrrgh!!!

3. Confirmation
The fax machine at my workplace doesn't print a confirmation page. My manager said that there's a way to do so, but I think you need a PhD to figure out how to do that. So all I can take comfort in is that if it makes that crackling modem-y sound, I'm about 80% sure that it went through. Still even when a confirmation page is printed, I'm still not confident that it actually went through. So I make sure that the recipient confirms that he/she actually got my fax.

4. Cover Page
If I'm sending a fax over to someone I don't know (e.g. insurance agent), then I have to include a fax cover page. I never know how to set these things up. I usually just print the one out from one of the Microsoft Word templates. But the template doesn't come pre-loaded in Word at work, so I have to hunt around the Microsoft site for the template. (Aside: I have no idea as to why I keep having to re-download that template to MS Word.) As I fill out the template, I never know if I'm filling it out right. I pray (in the atheist figurative sense) that I haven't committed some fax faux-pas by filling out the fax cover sheet incorrectly. I often picture the fax recipient laughing at my fax, because I ended up doing something wrong.

Fax machine, oh fax machine, you are, unfortunately, a necessary E.V.I.L. I hate you with all my heart, and I wish you'd go away, but what did I do a couple of years ago? I bought an all-in-one printer with a fax. Because you know what? I still fax things on occasion, and I have found out that hard way that when you can't fax something from your workplace, it's nice to have to send those pesky faxes from home on a weekend, rather than have to hunt around for one at Kinko's or Business Depot on a weekend. Nice, but sucky at the same time.

Not-So-Private Privacy

2010-08-04T08:13:00.004-05:00

This morning on CBC's Metro Morning, I heard a story (MP3 of the podcast) about how there was a privacy breach within the University Health Network (UHN) here in Toronto. Basically a USB flash drive was stolen from an employee's purse, containing the health records of about 700 patients. The host of Metro Morning had the Ontario Privacy Commissioner on the show, to comment on the incident, and a few things struck me as really really bad:

1. The Ontario Privacy Commissioner only heard about this privacy breach because Metro Morning contacted her to talk about the story.

I have one word for that: OUCH. Her office is clearly not doing its job properly if she has to find out about this breach from a freaking media outlet. Also, the UHN is being irresponsible by not reporting this to the Privacy Commissioner. I hope that both UHN officials and the Privacy Commissioner's office are seriously reprimanded for this.

2. At the beginning of the show, Matt Galloway, the host of Metro Morning, played a clip from the Privacy Commissioner talking on the show after a privacy breach last year, saying how they put tougher measures in place to prevent such things from happening.

HA! I guess you hired the wrong consulting company to fix that problem for you.

3. After losing face from items 1 and 2, she started talking about how people must be more careful when they put data on USB drives and how they must be sure to encrypt their data when placing data on said USB drives.

While I agree that people should be careful when putting data on USB drives, let's face it. Some people are idiots and don't think when they put data on a flash drive. We basically need an idiot-proof system here. I work at the type of place where losing critical data has very dire consequences. As a result, our IT staff have put measures in place to ensure that data are automatically encrypted on a USB flash drive in case some dumb-ass decides to put sensitive data on a USB flash drive. So clearly there are very effective ways to prevent such privacy breaches. Which makes me wonder who the hell was put in charge of security. That person should be fired for suggesting a crappy solution.

Foot-in-Mouth Disease

2010-07-20T08:30:00.002-05:00

Boonacky is now on Twitter. Hurray! And through the magic of technology, you can see my Tweets and my blog posts all on the same page. Unless you read this blog via a feed reader. Then you'll have to add the Twitter feed in separately. Ain't technology grand?

Now, if you know me, you'll also know that I was once against Twitter. (And at the time erroneously referred to the act of using Twitter as "twitting".) Which means you're probably laughing. Or making some sort of snarky comment along the lines of me being a hypocrite. So yes, this can be filed under "foot-in-mouth", with many more such moments coming your way, I'm sure. If you're wondering what in hell possessed me to create a Twitter account, the answer is simple. I can post to Twitter a heck of a lot more often than I can post to this blog. That and the posts of way shorter. Don't worry though; I'll still keep up with the blog, so please keep coming back!

Stupid Consultants

2010-07-13T23:19:00.001-05:00

We have a consultant working on one of our projects at work. When I was a consultant, I always thought that our clients were retards. Now that I'm on the client side, I tend to think that consultants are retards. Just can't win!

Anyway, during this meeting, we were discussing high-level delivery timelines with the consultant, and she mentioned that she had a January 1st go-live date in mind. I rolled my eyes. Typical consultant. They think that nobody has a life and they dream up these ridiculous go-live dates during statutory holidays. Hey lady, some of us have lives and actually don't work on stat holidays. Douche.

Filed Under Gross

2010-07-09T12:09:00.003-05:00

As if Spam wasn't bad enough, some weirdo decided to come up with this idea. No, your eyes don't deceive you; it IS in fact a sandwich-in-a-can. Not that I would EVER EVER EVER eat this stuff, but I can *kind of* (big stretch here) get the peanut butter and jam sandwiches. But the BBQ chicken sandwich? Seriously? How can that even taste remotely good??? One word: eeeeeeeeeeeeew.

A Lesson in Grammar

2010-05-12T11:07:00.002-05:00

I am a total nut when it comes to spelling and grammar. It's probably because of the summers spent with my mom drilling my sister and me on spelling and grammar. I'm sure it also has to do with the fact that my dad is a perfectionist and will not tolerate bad spelling and grammar. Needless to say, I am better than the average bear when it comes to grammar. This means that seeing grammatical errors makes me want to cringe.

I realize that I am neither the first nor the last to write a blog post about spelling and grammar pet peeves, but I've been wanting to do this for years, so THERE.

1. "Without further adieu"
FYI, it's ado, not adieu. Adieu means "good-bye" in French. If you don't believe me, look here.

2. "It's" and "Its"
It's = it is (contraction)
Its = belonging to it (possessive)

3. "Their", "There", and "They're"
Their = belonging to them
There = a place
They're = they are (contraction)

4. "I" versus "Me"
We are taught at school that "me" is a no-no. For example, we don't say, "Me and my friend went to the movies," or "My friend and me went to the movies". Instead, we say, "My friend and I went to the movies". That is correct. But then there's a variation of this rule which confuses the living crap out of people.

So you end up with, "Here's a photo of Mildred and I standing in front of the Great Wall". It should instead be, "Here's a photo of Mildred and me standing in front of the Great Wall". People are so freaked out about using "me" in the sentence that they end up with a grammatically-awkward and grammatically-incorrect sentence. Fortunately, there is help for you! The rule is pretty simple: when saying a sentence which involves you and another person, remove the other person from the sentence. Does the sentence make sense if you use "I" or "me"?

Our sentence, "Here's a photo of I standing in front of the Great Wall" suddenly makes no sense. It sounds much better with "me" in lieu of "I", doesn't it? Similarly, "I went to the movies." makes a hell of a lot more sense than "Me went to the movies."

5. "Advice" and "Advise"
Advice is a noun. As in, you give someone advice. Advise is a verb. This means that you advise them on something. So you should say, "Please advise", not "Please advice". The funny thing is that if you were to write "Please advise" in MS Word, it would try to correct you with "Please advice". Just goes to show that you shouldn't trust a grammar-checker.

6. Never start a sentence with "So", "But", "Because", "However", "Or", etc.
As I write this, I am fully aware of the fact that I do it too. The difference, however, is that I'm aware of it, and do it on purpose so that my prose sounds a little more conversational. Most people do this because they just don't know any better. If you need to "start" a sentence with one of these words, they should actually follow a semicolon, rather than a period. While we're at it, here's how to properly use a semi-colon.

7. Comma Splices
I hate comma splices. People over-use commas like there's no tomorrow. If there's a hard stop in your sentence, don't go throwing commas around like confetti at a New Year's Eve party. Commas are used for lists and pauses (it's kind of like taking a breath). If you're an excessive comma user, here's a piece of advice for you. Read your sentence, and replace your commas with periods (please don't do this for lists). It will probably work about 90% of the time.

8. "The Point is Mute"
Newsflash: the point is moot, not mute. If you're gonna use a funny word, please, for the love of god, learn how to spell it. Über-cringe.

9. "Maybe" or "Mabey"
I used to see this a lot when I was in high school. Kids just could not spell "maybe". Here's an easy way to remember. Maybe = "may" + "be". Easy as pi.

10. "Congradulations"
This one totally makes me cringe. People can spell this word in its short form: "congrats", but when they try to spell the big, long, word, the "t" suddenly becomes a "d". It's "congratulations", not "congradulations".

11. Plural Form
I don't get why people have so much trouble with the plural form. It's pretty simple. If you have more than one of something, you add an "s". You do NOT, however, add an apostrophe followed by an "s". That, my friends, is the possessive form.

Therefore: "I bought myself a ton of T-shirt's." is WRONG WRONG WRONG
The correct form should be: "I bought myself a ton of T-shirts."

12. The Decade
This is a common goof. People often refer to the '90s as the 90's. Writing "90's" means that it belongs to 90 (i.e. possessive), which is WRONG.

Delimiters on Special Today!

2010-04-30T21:36:00.001-05:00

Today at work, I ran a report for one of the business analysts on my
team who didn't have access to our production system. The report can
return output in HTML, Excel, PDF, and CSV. He wanted it as a CSV. I
quickly ran the report and e-mailed it to him. About 5 minutes later,
I got an e-mail back from him asking if I could re-generate the CSV
file, since the one I gave him was comma-delimited, and he was
expecting tab-delimited content. I wouldn't have been scratching my
head except for the fact that CSV stands for comma-separated values. I
rest my case.

________________
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Forty Days of Bitching

2010-04-05T13:04:00.004-05:00

Another Easter has come and gone, and with it, marks the end of Lent. In case you need a refresher, Lent is a 40-day period in Catholic tradition that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Sunday. Many devout Catholics will give stuff up for Lent. I thought it was because of the whole story of Jesus being in the desert for 40 days, being tempted by Satan, but according to this Wikipedia article, it seems that I was wrong. Either that or I skimmed the article and did a crappy job of reading it (sorry). At any rate, the types of things that people give up for Lent include (but are obviously not limited to) chocolate, sex, coffee, and drinking. I even know of a friend of Facebook who gave up using her Blackberry for Lent. Uh, whatever.

Well, thank goodness that Lent is over, because I am sick and tired of people on Facebook talking about what they gave up for Lent and how hard it was for them. Boo frickity hoo. Nobody forced you to give anything up; you did it out of your own free will. So please, spare me the bitching and moaning about how you can't live without coffee and how you won't make it to 40 days. If you can't live without coffee, then drink some, for the love of god, but stop complaining!!!

Actually, my beef isn't really with Lent per se. My beef is with religious tradition in general (ANY religious tradition). When we are born, most of us take up the religious faith of our parents. I was born into a Roman Catholic family, and therefore I was raised as a Catholic, having been baptized and had my first communion per the traditions of the Catholic faith. Catholicism, compared to Protestantism, for example, is VERY VERY focused on tradition. Devout Catholics, for example, will not eat meat on Fridays. Catholic mass is huge on tradition (I'm not sure that tradition is the right word here, but I can't think of a better one right now). My husband, a Protestant, attended Christmas Midnight Mass with me once (I was dragged), and was quite surprised by how we had to stand up, sit down, and kneel at various points throughout the mass. And then there are the various things that are recited. I've been to mass a number of times in my youth, and I still don't know all the stuff that's recited. But I think that even the people who DO know what's being recited are just saying the words. I'll go out on a limb and say that I think this applies to 90% of Catholic churchgoers. I say that because in the recent times that I attended (ahem...was dragged to) mass, most of the people looked totally unenthused about what they were saying. It was just pure regurgitation.

So back to my original point. We are born into our parents' faiths. We are immersed in their religion. We are often (though not always) taught to accept their faith and its accompanying traditions as the only way of doing things. Questioning the faith is not really encouraged, even though are parents and/or teachers/schools/workplaces can make us aware we are made aware of other faiths. After all, most of us don't live in isolated communities and will at some point be exposed to other religions. Hell, I even took world religions in my Catholic high school (I was already an atheist by then).

And questioning faith doesn't necessarily have to be all about questioning the existence of god or Jesus or any of that stuff. It can even include questioning traditions. What does it mean to follow the rules of Kosher, or to eat Halal meat, or to eat fish on Fridays? What does it mean for women to cover their hair with a wig in the traditional Jewish faith or with a scarf in Muslim faith? If god is supposed to be this benevolent, omniscient, omnipresent being who created humans in his (or her) image, then what will it matter what food we eat or what we wear? (Okay, I'm not saying to skank it up here.) I don't think god will love you any more or any less for it. And if such a god did judge us that way, then I think we have bigger problems on our hands.

Phone Hatred

2010-03-02T08:26:00.003-05:00

I hate talking on the phone. In fact, I try to avoid it at all costs. I just find phone conversations awkward. I never know how long to keep up a phone conversation. And I HATE awkward silences. So much so that I will over-share or make a joke, just to keep the conversation going. And I never know how to end the conversations, either. There never seems to be a good time. So then my phone conversations tend to drag on and on until the person on the other end ultimately ends the conversation, at which point I'm kicking myself for letting the conversation go on longer than it should have. Yup, I hate phones.

I'm definitely more of an IM and e-mail person. If you disappear in the middle of an IM, the other person won't take offense. They just assume that you were multi-tasking anyway. I, for one, don't log onto my computer just to chat anymore. I'm usually on doing something else, and I just happen to have my chat clients on, in case someone wants to reach me. Another thing about IM and e-mail is that you don't have to answer uncomfortable questions. If you don't like a question being asked of you, you can just ignore it, or change the subject. Much harder to do while on the phone.

At any rate, I found this little cartoon on The Oatmeal a few weeks back which completely captured my disdain for the telephone, so I thought I'd share it: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/phone. Enjoy!

When Things Get Dumber

2010-03-01T15:56:00.004-05:00

Just when you thought that things couldn't get any dumber, THIS comes up.

In a nutshell, this article talks about a "...proposed Utah law that would open women who suffer a miscarriage to possible criminal prosecution and life imprisonment has enraged feminists and civil rights activists across the United States." This proposal came about because some dumb-assed pregnant 17-year-old girl in Utah paid a fellow idiot $150 to physically assault her when she was 7 months pregnant because she wanted a miscarriage. The kid, by the way, was born, and was later put up for adoption. Thank goodness. Can you imagine having that 17-year-old girl for a mother? WTF? Anyway, the paid assailant was imprisoned, but the "mother" was not, because there was technically no law that could punish her for her heinous act.

So after that, some dumb-assed conservative nutbag thought it was a good idea to propose a law whereby a woman's "reckless" (slipping on the ice and falling? allowing yourself to get beaten up by your abusive spouse?) behavior leading to miscarriage could lead to criminal prosecution. WOW. As if women don't have a hard enough time dealing with miscarriages, without having to worry about whether or not they'll face criminal prosecution because they miscarried. So the Americans are the first ones to complain about how countries following Muslim law such as Syria and Iran have no respect for womens' rights. Look no further than your own backyard, my friends.

Glad I'm Not the Only One...

2010-02-02T10:05:00.003-05:00

As luck would have it, someone on my Facebook friends list posted this link up today: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_suck. What a coincidence that it would come in the heels of yesterday's Facebook rant!

The Novelty Wears Off

2010-02-01T09:55:00.002-05:00

I've been on Facebook since the summer of 2007. Before then, I resisted joining because it seemed like just another one of those things to which one becomes addicted, on top of the already-addictive instant-messaging, and gaming, to name a few. (For the record, I am NOT and never will be a gamer.) But my 10-year high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to know what had happened to my graduating class, 99% of whom I hadn't seen or spoken to since graduating. So I caved and joined. To my dismay, it turned out that my high school reunion ended up being organized on Facebook, and by the time I joined, I had missed the reunion by about 5 days. Phooey.

Still, I was able to add a bunch of people from high school onto my friends list and even managed to reconnect with some of them (i.e. exchange the occasional message). It was fun to see what had happened to everyone, and shocking to realize that like me, many were married, and some even had kids already. It was shocking because up until Facebook came along, I still remembered all of these people as they were when they were 18 or 19. Now, these people were in their last 20s, some looking older, some looking fatter, and some looking balder. For others, it seemed like time had stopped.

Facebook was a total savior when I was on maternity leave. I couldn't log onto my computer at home too often, but I did have Facebook installed on my Blackberry, and I checked it often to keep in touch with the outside world so that I didn't die of boredom. My moms' group was also on Facebook, and all meeting invites were sent from there, so it was a great way to stay in touch.

But now, 3 years into using Facebook, the novelty is wearing off. I'm sick of getting invitations for Farkle, FarmVille, MobWars, Mafia Wars, Circle of Moms, and whatever other stupid annoying Facebook app is out there, taking my personal information without my permission. Which is why I don't have any Facebook apps. I'm sick of reading some peoples' status updates, because it's the same old, same old.

Some people, it seems, post status updates every hour, telling people what they ate, where they're going, why they're still awake, why they're going to sleep. Then you get the people who post status updates about how happy they are. Great that you're happy, but if you're going out of your way to say that you're happy, are you REALLY that happy, or are you just putting up a front? And finally, there are people who post stuff about how crappy their lives are. Dude, I'm sorry you're going through a rough patch, but you don't have to tell the whole freaking world about it. My biggest status update pet peeve, however, is when you get some annoying person who posts a status update that begins or ends with "paste this into your status". And I won't even go into the annoying bra color thing from a few weeks ago.

And you know what? I'm guilty of it too. When I was on mat-leave, 90% of my status updates were about my kid. I'd even post status updates about my kid's poohs, for crying out loud. I sometimes go through my day thinking, "Hey, this would be a hilarious status update." I went through a few rough patches where I posted grumpy updates. I'll bet you that people who read those status updates just kind of rolled their eyes and went on to the next status update. I sometimes even post multiple status updates in a day too. But you know what? I'm running out of witty things to say, and quite frankly, I'll bet that most people don't even care, just as I don't really care about what other people post in their status.

People who join a bunch of groups on Facebook also annoy me. For example, there's a group about people against the prorogation of the Canadian parliament. I am 100% completely against the prorogation as well, but I didn't join the group. What's the point? Nothing ever seems to come out of them anyway. And yes, it sounds defeatist and passive, but my point is that most people who join these groups want to state their position, but they don't really want to do anything about it. If you really care, join a real cause and do some real work for that cause. Don't join a group on Facebook just to act like you care. To be fair, there are people who join these Facebook groups and who are actively involved in their causes. Hats off to them. It's the rest of the posers that piss me off.

Oh, Facebook...you and I have such a love-hate relationship. You allow me to check out people who I haven't seen or spoken to in ages, and yet, many resident Facebookies annoy the crap out of me. And yet, I log on every day to see what's going on, just to see what those people whose status updates annoy me so much have to say. And for me to roll my eyes when I read said updates. Will I ever leave Facebook? Who knows. What I do know is that it will continue to annoy me as long as I log on.

The O-Word

2010-01-26T08:19:00.003-05:00

Information Technology in North America is going to the dogs. Once upon a time, getting a computer science or computer engineering degree actually meant something. Then everyone and their brother thought they could be a software developer by taking some course at some crappy community college. And then it got worse. Some companies (like one of my former employers) believed that they could train any person with half a brain to do development. All of a sudden, we had people who had NO BUSINESS writing code, let alone touching a computer become developers. "Don't worry," they were told. "It just a stepping-stone." What the hell?

I have an engineering degree. I have spent my entire career in IT, including all of my summers as a university student. I've seen good code at work. I've seen bad code cause near catastrophes. I've seen my fair share of mismanaged IT projects (99% of them). So forgive me for thinking that treating development as a "stepping stone" is absolutely absurd. Development is a craft. Good code is like composing a great symphony or painting a masterpiece. When done properly, it can be elegant, efficient, and maintainable.

Unfortunately, the corporate higher-ups think of development as a commodity. Several years ago, in my consulting days, I remember a client saying that, "Anyone can develop. It's the business analysts who do the REAL work." I really really really wanted to call BS on him. In fact, I'm still kicking myself for not having said anything. Don't get me wrong. Business analysts do important work. They gather requirements and produce functional designs. Their work is the input for our work. But developers take those functional designs and turn it into a deliverable. Whether it's an online bookstore or some batch process that updates inventory at the end of the day. Developers produce the ultimate deliverable. So no matter how good the analysis and requirements phase is, if you don't have a good development team on board, your project is doomed for failure.

And yet, almost every IT project that I've been on seems to be doomed for failure because management sets it up for failure through one or all of the following: understaffing, compressed timelines, and my favorite one of all: outsourcing. Yes, the O-word.

IT outsourcing invaded the North American market in 2002 or 2003, if I recall correctly. I was pretty outraged then. As a young developer, it appeared that my job was being taken away by Indian developers. We were told not to worry. Leave the drudge work to the offshore developers. That way, onshore resources could focus on management skills. Sounded like a recipe for disaster. And it was. And is. And yet, the model continues to flourish.

Offshore resources are stealing our jobs, and not only that, because of the ridiculous time difference, we must also accommodate to their schedule. What the hell is up with that. Why is it that some dude who is stealing work for me is forcing me to be on a conference call at 7am? Just so he doesn't have to be in the office past 7pm? If they work for us, then they should keep our hours.

Anyone who has worked directly with offshore resources will tell you the following:

1. Offshore resources are typically crappy developers. And why is that? Because the jobs are plenty, people are plenty, and their rates are CHEAP. So cheap that it is still worthwhile to hire a bunch of crappy developers, have them develop a crappy system, and then have them fix it over and over until it (sort of) works than hire a good team of onshore resources.

2. Offshore resources are like automatons. I agree that when a technical design reaches the hands of a developer, it should be pretty sound. Newsflash: even great developers can make bad design decisions that aren't caught until someone actually sits down and starts coding. It happens to the best if us. It even happened to me recently. So if you've got some offshore code monkey writing code based on a design that makes no sense and doesn't question it, then you end up stuck with a bad product.

3. Bad offshore development is always covered up. Executives are so gung-ho on making their huge margins on offshore development that they will do almost anything to keep this bad model going. This includes having onshore resources ultimately having to fix the really bad offshore code. And worse yet, management never admits to the client that they had to bring in onshore resources to fix the bad offshore code.

So on the outside, it looks like a successful model because the product gets built and the margins are beefy. As a result, the model that should have gone the way of the dodo is flourishing. And expanding. I've heard from friends that it's not just the development jobs being outsourced. Now, even business analyst and software architecture jobs are being outsourced too. Pretty soon, we'll be left with no IT jobs to speak of. And then what? All I can hope for is that the outsourcing goes so far that even upper-management jobs get outsourced, sending unemployment soaring to new heights, so that IT jobs can finally be returned to where they belong: onshore.

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde

2009-12-18T15:27:00.003-05:00

After all the time that I'd put in to converting all of my computers at home to Linux machines, I had to cave. I had to set up a native Windows machine. And not just ANY native Windows machine - a VISTA machine.

It all began about a month or so ago, when I traded in my (formerly-) beloved BlackBerry for a shiny new iPhone. I could go on and tell you that I chucked the BlackBerry because I was sick and tired of the fact that the O/S kept crashing on me (which it did), or because my battery had gone psycho and kept draining for no reason, or that the same thing kept happening to my brand-new spare battery. I probably could've lived a bit longer with the BlackBerry. Ah, but there was the iPhone. Shiny and new. EVERYONE had one, and the fact that a) my BlackBerry was acting up, b) it wasn't a work BlackBerry, and c) it was an UNLOCKED BlackBerry so I could upgrade to an iPhone partway through my Rogers contract made it oh-so-tempting. So I caved and I got one. Actually, my husband and I "got each other" iPhones as early Christmas gifts.

I stayed up REALLY late for a few nights after I got my iPhone. I needed to get music from my iTunes library on there, and I needed to transfer all of my contacts (which I'd transferred out of the BB onto an Outlook data file) over. Since I had no more Windows machines, all of this happened via my Windows XP virtual machine running on Sun VirtualBox on an Ubuntu 9.05 host. I had set up iTunes to sync to my iPod before and it had worked, so I didn't think that I would have any issues. Never say never, right?

Issue number one happened when I (foolishly) decided to upgrade to the latest iPhone O/S. I say foolishly because a) it was a minor release, and b) I was attempting to do the upgrade off of a copy of iTunes running on a virtual machine. The end result was that a little over a day after getting my fancy new iPhone, it went from awesome toy to useless paperweight. And not even a very good paperweight, mind you, since it's fairly light. Fortunately, my husband's laptop still ran Windows natively and after fighting through crappy middle-of-the-night network connections (I hate Bell DSL), we managed to restore my phone to its out-of-the-box state. I think the reason why the upgrade failed on my machine is that iTunes did something funky whereby it connected and disconnected my iPhone. Because it was running on a VM, that meant that when iTunes disconnected the iPhone, the guest O/S unmounted the device and returned control to the host O/S. So as far as the VM was concerned, the iPhone went bye bye.

I then proceeded to plug it back onto my machine to re-sync contacts and music. The sync took FOREVER. Now, I hadn't done a full sync of my music library in a long time on my old iPod, but I didn't remember it taking this long. I mean, the thing ran overnight and it still wasn't done. After chatting with a hardware-savvy friend of mine, he informed me that USB over virtual machines are just plain slow, especially when you're on a single-core Pentium M processor. Well, that explains it. Still, I was willing to accept this über-slowness since I didn't plan on syncing my iPhone THAT often.

A couple of nights later, I was messing around on my computer and I decided to connect my iPhone. To my dismay, I found out that the Windows XP VM refused to recognize my iPhone. I tried it on my beefier desktop (Ubuntu 9.05 running a Vista Basic VM), and it finally worked after a few tries. My husband suggested that I might need to set up a native Windows machine if only to make using iTunes less painful. And he took that one step further and suggested that I set up a dual-boot machine, so that I could still keep my beloved Ubuntu.

I must admit that I was completely against the idea at first, but then I warmed up to it. After all, there are times when it's just easier to have the damned Windows machine around. And let's face it: VirtualBox is a great tool, but it's not perfect. So I embarked on my dual-boot journey. Now, I remember back in the day that setting up a dual-boot machine was a royal pain in the ass. But I did seem to remember from my last Ubuntu install that it seemed to support dual-booting out-of-the box. So I kept my fingers crossed and hoped that my memory wasn't failing me.

I decided to start with a Windows Vista install on my dual-core Dell desktop. I chose Vista only for a change of scenery. Besides, I'm REALLY hoping to get my hands on a cheap copy of Windows 7 and replace the Vista install. Since I'd set up my Ubuntu machine with a separate /home partition, I figured that I could just wipe the root Ubuntu partition, and install Vista on half of that. Great idea, but it didn't quite work out the way that I'd wanted it to.

When I went to install Vista, I found out much to my dismay that my root partition was a logical partition, and that the Vista install CD didn't like my /home partition was located. So I wiped everything clean, and partitioned out half of my 400GB HDD to Vista, and left the other half to Ubuntu, which I'd have to re-install from scratch.

Apart from the mess-up with the partitions, the Vista install went really well. Before long, I had iTunes installed and my sync time had increased DRAMATICALLY.

It would be another 3 weeks before I'd get around to re-installing Ubuntu. Installing Ubuntu alongside Vista was actually suprisingly easy. The installer recognized the fact that I had a Vista partition and even offered to import some of my profile settings (not that I had many). Since I didn't want to muck around with stuff, I didn't do any fancy partitioning. The install completed quickly, and voilà: I had a dual-boot machine! FYI - the dual-booting is handled by GRUB.

Still, I wasn't quite satisfied with the setup, since I hadn't gotten the Ubuntu partition quite the way I'd wanted it. Normally I have 3 partitions for my Linux installs: a root partition, a /home partition, and a swap partition. So I decided to re-install Ubuntu. When I went to re-install it, I found out that the Ubuntu installer had somehow INCREASED my Vista partition to a whopping 395GB, and only left 5GB for Ubuntu. So I had to go into the partition tool to fix things up. After that, I was good to go.

One final note. My original plan had been to give the Ubuntu machine and the Vista machine the same name since they were on the same physical box, but, as my husband pointed out, it's really like the computer had a dual-personality. So I've aptly named my split-personality machine Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. Can you tell which one is which?

I Hate Townhall Meetings

2009-12-11T11:53:00.001-05:00

I hate townhall meetings at work. They are long and boring, and quite
frankly, I have much better things to do. You know, like that work
thing?

A few weeks ago, we had a townhall meeting hosted by some big-shot VP.
We happened to be in the middle of a big crunch at work, and yet,
myanager told us that this meeting was mandatory. So basically attend
the meeting in the middle of a big crunch and potentially have to work
overtime for the time lost attending this stupid, useless meeting.
What gives?

And they ARE stupid and useless. A typical townhall meeting consists
of the following:
1. Overview of company strategy
2. Intro to new buzzwords that clearly gave thearketingfolks their
jollies
3. What's in the "pipeline"? (Empty promises, that's what.)
4. The state of the company (Just tell me whether or not I get to keep
my job.)
5. Q&A (For some strange reason, some people actually pay attention to
this hooey and feel compelled to further waste my time by sucking up -
I mean asking questions.)

Please pleas please, no more townhall meetings unless they involve a
catered lunch (but not those crappy sandwiches), and/or a game of
laser tag. Otherwise, just let me actually be productive and get my
work done.

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The I/T Status Meeting

2009-11-03T10:23:00.002-05:00

Below is a snippet of conversation from a status meeting that I was just in.

PM = Project Manager
DM = Development Manager
Dev = Developer

PM: Are we on track to complete the architecture document?

Dev: Well, kind of. I'm still a bit concerned about that extract, since we don't really know how it's happening.

DM: Why? It's just an arrow.

Recursion

2009-10-28T08:06:00.002-05:00

With the recent release of Windows 7, I was inspired to install it as a virtual machine on my Ubuntu laptop. I still have a copy of Windows 7 RC, so that's what I installed. I really can't quite bring myself to commit to blowing $200+ on a Windows O/S which won't even be the primary O/S on my system. Not only that, I need to make sure that it's actually worth running before I event commit to eventually dishing out the dough. If memory serves me right, Windows 7 RC should work on my computer until around March 2010, after which it will shut itself off after an hour, and then by around May 2010, it won't boot up anymore. Moral of the story: I still have time.

I got this great little portable 400GB HDD for my laptop a couple of months back. The great thing about it is that it's small and bus-powered. That means that I don't have to plug it into an A/C adapter to power it up; it's powered purely by my USB port. The downside to this is that when you run this on a laptop, it definitely drains your battery more quickly. That's small potatoes, because I've got a big beefy laptop battery, and I can keep all of my important files on this HDD and I can easily move from one computer to another (I've got 3 computers that I actually use). Win-win! At any rate, the whole point of this is that when I set up my Windows 7 RC VM (using Sun's VirtualBox), I decided to put the VM files on my external HDD.

I had managed to get Windows 7 installed and booted up, and decided to test USB connectivity. VirtualBox is a bit of a pain in the ass with USB connectivity if you don't know what you're doing. It took me several months (of trying on and off) to figure out how to get everything running just the way I wanted. Since I had my external HDD plugged in, I figured I'd test out USB connectivity with that device. As soon as I mounted the hard-drive, Windows 7 hung. I had to force a shutdown of the VM, and reboot. Once it rebooted, I tried again. It crashed again. I forced another shutdown.

What the hell was going on? I had installed a Windows 7 VM on another machine before (same setup), and it had worked just fine. I started to panic. And then it hit me. Of COURSE the VM was going to crap out. When you mount a USB device on a guest O/S (VM) using VirtualBox, it unmounts the same device on the host O/S (Ubuntu for me). The Windows 7 VM file was on my external HDD. As soon as I mounted the drive on Windows 7, Ubuntu no longer had access to it. This meant that VirtualBox no longer had access to it. If VirtualBox no longer had access to it, then it could no longer run the VM. Hence, the big-time crash. Total DUH moment here...

After the second attempt to mount the drive, it failed to mount even on Ubuntu. I unplugged it and plugged it back in several times, but to no avail. I don't know if this did the trick, but I tried mounting it on my husband's computer (Windows XP as the base O/S), which worked, so then I tried again on my machine and it mounted properly. Unfortunately, the VM file got corrupted, so I had to set up the Windows 7 VM from scratch (including re-installing the O/S). Fortunately, I hadn't really done much with the VM, so it was no biggie.

Moral of the story: watch what you're doing!!!

Hands-Free

2009-10-26T07:59:00.003-05:00

Today is the first day of Ontario's new cell-phone-use-in-the-car law. The law states that drivers cannot use cell phones or GPSs, and similar devices in the car. First of all, I can't believe that we need a law to dictate such common sense. The fact the people talk, and, even worse, TEXT while they drive is absolutely appalling. The act of driving itself may be a relatively easy thing (for most of us, anyway), but driving in public, with other cars, cyclists, pedestrians, animals (like deer, moose, and squirrels), and roadwork to worry about is an entirely different matter. Driving requires real concentration. Failing to fully concentrate on your driving can lead to accidents; sometimes with tragic consequences.

So you might think that I'd be happy with the new law. But I'm not, and it's for one simple reason. The law doesn't go far enough. The new law basically states that if you're going to use a cell phone while driving, you need to use a hands-free device (e.g. Bluetooth headset), and you can't dial your phone while holding it. You need to mount it or buy some sort of fancy gizmo that dials your phone for you. So basically the moral of the story is that you can still use your cell phone while driving. It's just the way that you use it that's different. Well, here's a newsflash for you: using a hands-free device to talk on your cell phone while driving is just as bad.

I am ashamed to admit that about 7 years ago, I used to talk on my cell phone while driving. I remember one time being on the highway at 100km/h when my cell phone rang. It was on the passenger seat, and I answered it while on a curve. I CRINGE when I think about that time. How dangerous! And that was just the act of answering the phone. Talking on the phone was just as distracting. I didn't give the road the attention that it needed. How completely irresponsible of me! When I got a hands-free set for my cell phone, it was no better. Yes, it was easier to answer the phone, but I was still talking on the phone. I was still distracted, even with both hands on the wheel. When you're on the phone, regardless of whether or not you have a hands-free set, the minute you pick up that phone, you are enthralled in that conversation.

I would like to point out that I did see the light 7 years ago, and I no longer talk on my cell phone while driving. I don't care how urgent the call is. It can wait. I can't tell you how many times I've been on conference calls with people who said that they were dialing in from the road. And I'm pretty sure that they were driving at the same time. The thought of it makes me cringe.

I remember taking a human factors class when I was in university, and I remember the professor saying that studies showed that it made no difference if you spoke on your phone using a hands-free device while driving. He said that talking on the phone while driving versus talking to a person in the passenger seat while driving are entirely different. If you encounter a problem on the road while driving, the person on the passenger seat sees it too, and the conversation stops abruptly so that the driver can deal with the problem. If you're having the same conversation on the cell phone, the person on the other end has no idea what's happening on the road, and oftentimes, the driver is too uncomfortable to tell the person on the other line to hold on for a second while he or she deals with the driving problem at hand.

While the stuff that my professor said makes perfect sense, I don't think it's JUST that. Talking is distracting. Even talking to a person on the passenger seat. It's too easy to get sucked into an interesting conversation and to pay less attention to the road. Hell, even the radio can be distracting if you listen to a good radio show (like the stuff on CBC Radio One). I suppose that in the greater scheme of things, however, talking on the cell phone while driving is still way more distracting.

So in the end, this new law seems like a half-assed attempt to solve a very serious problem. I guess the one good thing is that it at least stops the half-wits who text and drive at the same time. That is, until some company comes up with a big shiny panel that you can attach to your dashboard that interfaces with your phone and lets you check e-mails and send texts. And I'm pretty sure that that already exists...