You need to be ingenious to be Canadian

I'm from "down south". In Canadian-speak that means I am from the US. I (proudly) became a Canadian citizen a coupla years ago, so I am both us and them.

There are things I love about Canada, when compared to the US, and vice verse. Mostly it's a wash, with two big exceptions (and no, I am not talking about health care--though I could go on and on about the pros and cons of both systems). Canada wins hands down when it comes to civil rights, marriage, yada yada for people in same sex relationships. Canada loses big time when it comes to access to technology.

In Alberta, any two people can form what is called, in legalise, an interdependent relationship, and have all the rights (and responsibilities) of married people. If you decide to get married, the Government of Canada does not care what you wear between your legs.

It seems so simple.

Now, wouldn't you think that a country that figured out how to just do it, when it comes to civil rights would be able to figure out how to approve/make possible a Canadian version of Google Checkout? And wouldn't you think that they would figure out a way to make texting between people in different countries happen without huge fees attached?

But, noooooooo....not here, not when we have substandard Canadian services to protect.

This is where the ingenious part comes in.

I have to root my phone in order to buy paid apps from the Android Marketplace because it would be a horror for Google Checkout not to be fully bilingual. A French one and an English one simply will not do, even if a vendor can work around our non-standard bank routing numbers. I have to use Twitter to text my US friends unless I want to send Rogers 25 cents for every message I send.

Shopping on line from Canada, sure; let me tell you about the two bras that had $60 worth of delivery charges and import duties added on, or the small boxes of Red Hots that took nine weeks to get here because each box had to be opened and examined by the government. The Made-In-Canada solution to this is to drive for five hours and cross the border once or twice a year, spend a few nights in a US motel, and pick up the things I have had Amazon deliver to me there.

When I applied to immigrate to Canada, I had to prove that my marriage to a Canadian was legit and he had to sign an agreement to be responsible for my well being once I got here. What they should have done is make sure I was obsessed enough to figure out how to use digital technology here.

Old phone numbers never die and related rantings

My last cell phone actually belonged to my employer. So, when I got a new phone a few weeks ago, I also got a new number. Actually, I got some fellow's recycled number. I don't think he used the phone for (gasp) talking very much. He does though appear to have been a texting fool. And mebbe not a very nice person. The folks who continue to text him/me/us sure seem pissed/peeved/feisty.

I reply in a very standard way, "I'm guessing that you didn't really mean to send this to a 57 year old married woman named Noodles. It appears that your target has moved on and gotten a new number." I'm thinking it will die down soon.

OTOH, the woman who has a Gmail account very like my own has been going strong since 2004. Now, I understand why someone with the same name as mine would want my Gmail address. And I try to be sympathetic, after all, I would not want to be forced to append a "1" to my very nice name either. However, it's been almost six years and she needs to suck it up and stop signing up for mailing lists, bulletin boards, and newsletters using my address.

And it's not just commercial mail. I have gotten mail from her co-workers, her friends, and her family. I know where she vacations and what she got her husband for Christmas in 2006. When I get her personal mail I either write back to the sender and let them know there has been a mix-up, or forward the mail to her myself.

You'd think that after all these years, she'd write back, but nope, nada, zilch, nothing. I'm betting she really screws up her text messages. Fortunately, that's not my problem.

The scary circus

Yesterday afternoon, when I heard about the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, the first thing that popped into my head was that it was propitious timing for Mark Sanford. Finally, the pundits of the broadcast journalists' 24 hour news cycle would move on.

As I watched the news over the past few days, I was repulsed by the glee with which what should have been very personal pain was being exploited. I understand that his being MIA from his duties as governor is newsworthy, even important. I also understand that the discovery that it was related to an adulterous relationship had to be reported. What I saw on TV though was something else. It was the transformation of something newsworthy into circus entertainment. The fact that this was done by making public stolen private emails, and no one seemed to give a damn about the privacy issues, horrified me.

It was heartening to see that at least one other person noticed. From Lee Siegel blogging in The Daily Beast:

"Why the total silence with regard to the violation of Sanford’s privacy? Surely it has to do with our new Twitter and Facebook culture. Private life has been turned into public performance; people retail their privacy to win popularity, acclaim, and perhaps commercial profit. The media’s uncritical euphoria over social networks—look how Twitter is liberating Iran and China!—is turning the invasion of privacy into a cultural style. Yet this contemporary dream of freedom looks a lot like a previous generation’s nightmare of surveillance."

And then we die

The fellow with the scary hands is holding a 35,000 year old flute. That makes it the oldest instrument ever discovered. I find it comforting to think about some early human in the Ach Valley of southern Germany spending part of his or her day making music.

I also am overwhelmed by the sense of how transitory my own time on earth is. I somehow doubt that a woman living in the future will see a picture of my PC or flat screen TV and wonder about my life or be comforted by the flow of time and the connections we have with each other.

The article about the discovery of the flute points out that when this flute was made and used, people were still gnawing the raw meat off of bones. It doesn't seem all that important because I can sense the connection between us that the flute represents. Perhaps that woman from the future will have that same sense of me.

Homework

I'm taking an on-line class. It meets every other Wednesday night in a chat room and we have reading and written assignments associated with each chat. I'm finding it a good fit with my learning style. The course content isn't actually new to me, but going over the material in an organised way is helpful. It's easy to overlook the basics and the course is helping ground me (again).

One of my classmates said that the written assignments take him about 30 minutes. They take me several hours. I would blame it on the noodles, but he is barely passing and I am doing really well.

Jimmy Do Wrong Wrong

My agency is downtown. Most of what we do here involves trying to help people who are homeless or struggle with addiction or have garnered a psych diagnosis (or all three). The soup kitchen is next door to us.

One of the signs of summer is that the city has decided to patrol our street corner more regularly. What that translates into is having two RCMP officers (both pseudonymously named "Jimmy") walk up and down the street arresting people for loitering and searching them for drugs and paraphernalia. They write them $250 tickets for loitering and arrest them for the drug related shtuff.

People who loiter don't have $250 in my world. The tickets later turn into warrants, which then result in people being picked up for those. Then they spend 30 days in remand because they can't pay the fine, which by now has doubled. I'd love to know how much is spent on this whole process. I'm betting a housing subsidy costs less.

My new phone

I bought a new cell phone. It's an amazing piece of Android goodness made somewhat craptastic by the limitations built into all things digital by the Government of Canada. This does not matter as I have not given the phone number to anyone but my family and my boss and I am almost never more than a room away from a real computer.

I could have bought one of those phones with big buttons and an operator that puts new numbers into the phone for you. Instead, I sync with the cloud and proselytize for IMAP over POP on phone forums.

My brain is full of noodles

Years ago, when I started my first blog, I was filled with a sense of purpose. Not this time. Nope. I'm just going to blog. I have so little to say these days, that I should probably twitter instead, but I am too old and my brain is full of noodles.