Head up Billy Buddy

I'm going to start this one with a joke:

Q: How do you tell an extroverted engineer?
A: An extroverted engineer will look at your shoes instead of his own

I'm guilty of this. Walking down the street I don't look at other people's faces, I look at them as just things to be avoided in a real-life sort of frogger game. A game to figure out the best way through the crowd. But I always notice people's shoes because apparently that's the height I'm looking at. I'm really conscience of this now because people have to wave for me to see them. Not a little wave of the hand, more like a "don't drive into Tokyo because Godzilla is attacking" sort of wave. That or they crouch so that their face is more where my eye level is, somewhere around knee level...

I feel that I should be interacting with people more, but I just find it exhausting. I need my hidden corner of quite time to recharge, and that's what I make my walks alone to be - recharging.

Simple things

It was funny last night. Visiting Karen we brought a set of nesting cups (among other things) as a belated new baby present. The nested cups generated discussion about the Tower of Hanoi, which lead to someone (non-computer) playing it with the cups and coasters, which lead to pulling a text book off the wall to try and remember the formula, to us discussing that we never saw a "tower" while we were in Hanoi.

I find it a bit funny that I never put 2 and 2 together when we were in H‡ Nội. I think that the vendors are missing out - I so would have bought a "tower of Hanoi" game while we were there. Ah well.

Stupid drivers

I can't believe how stupid people are. What causes you to feel so self-righteous that you feel it's okay to hit a stopped bike? Especially after you had just hit them while you drove by? I guess that the driver of a white ford with license BEPT 819 here in Ottawa knows what that feels like. Do they hit cars that stop in front of them in traffic? I guess only they and their body shop knows.

Depending on the weather and where Laura is going to, I commute by bike, car or bus and I'm always conscious of the "others". The person with the less mass will always lose, but that doesn't make them the loser in the interaction. - as the video shows.

This just makes me mad. I hope that the driver gets charged and convicted for this senseless act of aggression and danger. How many times does this kind of thing happen without a camera?

I'm sorry they are not here right now

My standard filter for suspected telemarketers when they ask for "Mr. [butchering wife's maiden / my surname]" is to reply "They are not here right now, can I take a message". Yes, I lie to people who cold call me. I'm okay with that, I really am.

Lately I've been following up with "and what is this in regards to?" to try and flush them out. Most of the time they just reply with "I'll call back later".

Time to change tactics.

I think that I'll start with trying to figure out what it's about on the off chance it's a legit call. They sometimes happen. I think that I'm going to answer with "I'll see if they are available if you let me know what this is this is in regards to". The only thing is that this seems to open the conversation too much. Maybe I should just stick with my standard, and if they don't want to leave a message I'll just ask them not to call again. I could go with the classic "Who's calling please?"

The next step should be a phone system that checks a whitelist of incoming numbers, and if it's not on that list, it goes directly to voicemail. Then of course does voice to text and emails me the result. Ah, one day.

Photos from my iPhone

For some reason I can't seem to remember how to get photos off my iphone easily. Yes, you can use iPhoto and "everything work magically" but I don't use iPhoto (at this point). I'm old school: I like dealing with the files myself.

Yes, I *could* just upload them directly to flickr, but then I am not sure which ones are backed up in more than one place. It's also nice to be able to see them on a larger screen to tell if they are crap.

So, with the idea of being able to find it in a timely manner, I can easily get photos from my iphone to mac using Image Capture.

Update: Frack. It seems when when you use image capture to get the photos it does not copy over the gps latitude / longitude position in the exif metadata. Booo! I guess I'm going to just upload directly from my phone and then pull them back onto my computer. Or I'll have to move to using iPhoto (assuming that works).

Something Canadian...

There is something distinctly Canadian about the sound of mittens clapping. It warms my heart to hear that muffled womp womp womp sound.