Obstructions

I've mentioned my love affair with grammar in the past, and how it got me through my high school English courses. I do, however, have a weakness when it comes certain types of punctuation. There were about a dozen rules for the comma that I could never get straight, and, while I would normally do quite well on grammar quizzes, I barely passed the one on the comma. I'm pretty sure that I'm consistently breaking at least one on of the comma rules in my thesis, though if I leave them out, my supervisor tells me to put them back in. At least I'm being consistent. The punctuation that mystifies me the most, however, is the semi-colon. The rules for its usage are fairly simple. It is to be used to join two sentences that are closely related, perhaps in place of a conjunction. It is also used as a sort of "super comma", used in place of a comma when the things normally separated by commas contain commas themselevs. I have rarely, if ever, seen a semi-colon used in this way. As for the first rule, I am sure that I have seen them used in this way, but any of attempts of my own to do so have been foiled by my editor. Though they appear in my thesis, none of them were put there by me.

------

Lament for/Ode to a semi-colon

Is there a curse on
The semi-colon?
It seems Chesterton
Is the only one
allowed to have fun
w' that punctuation

You're only supposed to do that on a bike!

Last night, a somewhat unusual thing happened while I was walking home. I was crossing an intersection with the light (which is unusual for Kingston pedestrian traffic). As I was crossing, a car pulled into the intersection "against" the light. The light was red for her, and she was stopped for a moment before she pulled into the intersection. I slowed my pace, hoping the presence of a pedestrian in her path would make her realize that it wasn't her turn to go yet. It didn't. She looked at me like I was confused, and once I had gotten out of her way, she just kept on going. Right now, you're probably thinking, "Randy, when the lights are flashing on the police car, you're supposed to wait for it to go." There were too many rust spots, and not enough flashing lights for this to be a police car. Also, there were too many crazy looking old ladies driving.

I've almost done it a few times myself in the past, though. But I have never even gone far enough into the intersection to get in the way of pedestrians trying to use the crosswalk (in one of those rare Kingston moments when someone can't get through the intersection before the light turns green). Usually when it happened it was when I'd been biking a lot. When I'm on my bike, as with walking, I don't often bother waiting for the light to turn green. I just wait until the cars have cleared. When I would get in my car, my cycling instincts would still be in play. The worst that happened was when I was making a left hand turn one time, and almost cut off a cyclist who was going straight. I did wait for the light to turn green though. So did the cyclist, and it was almost his downfall.

Embedding Beef

A few of the blogs that I frequent occasionally embed youtube videos on their blogs. The astute Idiot Strings regular will notice that I have never done so. This is in part due to laziness. You'll notice I don't do much hyperlinking either. Though the primary reason that I haven't embedded any youtube videos is that my experience with embedded youtube is almost invariably bad. When I watch them, they almost never load fast enough to view them in realtime. The videos seem to get downloaded in chunks, but each chunk is usually finished playing before the next one gets downloaded, making for a choppy youtube experience.

If I want to watch the video smoothly, I can either let it play through once in choppy mode, and then watch it again once it's been fully downloaded, or else get the url (which can be obtained via the menu in the embedded youtube window) and go directly to youtube and watch it there. Neither of this options are that terribly inconvenient, though it does often result in my not watching the video. Also, having to do so defeats the point of embedded youtube videos, don't you think? It ceases to be an advantage to embed a video when I the viewer has to do more work than I would have if a good old fashioned hyperlink had been used.

Does anyone else have this problem?

It's not my connection, since when I view the videos on the youtube website, the whole video downloads in seconds, and there are no problems.

Minty, Not So Fresh

When I was a kid, I was always excited to get a "horse quarter", one of
the quarters issued in 1973 to commemorate the centennial of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, in my change. A lesser thrill, though a thrill
nonetheless, was when I would get one of a few other coins with
something other than their usual reverse, most
of which were issued at Canada's centennial in 1967, or one of the 12
sided nickels (1942-1963). Basically anything that stuck out from the
standard issue was of interest to me.

Since 1992, however, the Royal Canadian Mint seems to have gotten a bit
carried away. In that year, they issued a set of 12 circulation coins,
one for each province or territory, to commemorate Canada's
sesquicentennial, or 125 year anniversary. I did enjoy collecting these
coins, though it seemed a bit strange to me at the time to celebrate 125
years (less strange than, say, 137 years, mind you). Perhaps the board
of the Mint concluded that Canada would cease to be an independent
country in the face of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement or the then
upcoming North American Free Trade Agreement which superseded it, and
they thought that they should celebrate an anniversary while they could.
Who knows?

They were mostly inactive until the turn of the millennium when they
issued 24 quarters, one for each month of 1999 and 2000. I'm not sure if
striking a series of coins was what Prince had in mind when he said he
was gonna party like it's 1999. I guess fun is relative though. Some of
the designs I like. Others are corny, and a few are downright hideous in
my opinion. I managed to collect them all, though I did it mainly for
the sake of completeness, and not so much because I enjoyed the designs.
It did take me at least until late 2002, and probably as late as Winter
of 2003, before I ever saw the January 1999 coin, which was the last coin
I needed to complete the set. I got two of them not too far apart from
each other, and haven't seen one since.

Nothing special was produced in 2001, but from 2002 to 2006, there were 8
different commemorative quarters introduced (not to mention the various
special pennies, nickels, and dimes, loonies, and toonies).

About a month or so ago, I received in my change yet another variety of
quarter. On taking a closer look, I saw that coin was commemorating the
2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I think this was the point where I
concluded that the Mint has become just a bit too obsessive in producing
commemorative coins (I had been on the verge of concluding this for at
least a year now). Up until this point, the coins they've issued have
celebrated anniversaries, like centennials, or else were related to
current events, like remembrance day. But this time, they've issued a
series of coins in recognition of something that's happening 3 years from
now, and really isn't all that special in comparison (recognizing those
who served and died in various wars, finding a cure for breast cancer,
vs. an amateur athletic competition). Now if a series of coins is to be
produced before the actual year of the event, then I suppose that this is
the year to do it. Last year was too soon after the 2006 Winter
Olympics. If they were introduced next year, they would interfere with
the 2008 Summer Olympics, and I'm sure that they've got something planned
for that too. 2009, only one year before, is not soon enough. So 2007
would be the year, if any, to issue the coins. But I just don't get why
they thought it necessary to introduce a series of coins in advance of
the games at all. I know that they're going to be in Canada this time,
but, as entertaining as they are and as cool as that is, they're not that
important in the grand scheme of things. Adding the small logo for the
Vancouver Olympics to the regular circulation coins is enough. Strike
the usual Olympic loony that gets issued during the games, and put out
the funky quarters at the same time as that.

I shouldn't be too hard on the Mint, though. I'm just as obsessive about
collecting the coins as they are about making them, and these will be no
exception.

Saturday Night Lyrics

In honour of the NHL playoffs that I'm not watching, I'm offering up some hockey related content.

A humourous addition to Stompin' Tom's well known Hockey Song due to Tim Hus and performed by Corb Lund.

Well goodness me,
Fox TV
where did you get your sight?
Can't you keep track,
the puck is black
that's why the ice is white.

And that big red glare,
that you see up there,
well we've seen that for years
Heaven sakes,
all it takes
is a couple dozen beers!

----

The Hockey Monkey
By the Zambonis

all the scientists are running around
looking for the monkey but he can't be found
cause he's down by the pond playing hockey with the kids

and all the mothers are running around
looking for their children but they can't be found
cause they're down by the pond playing hockey with the monkey

and its 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaa

national guard is running around
looking for the monkey but he can't be found
cause he's down by the pond playin hockey with the kids

and all the teachers are running around
looking for the children but they can't be found
cause their down by the pond playin hockey with the monkey

and its 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaa

it's 1..2..3.. the kids love the monkey and
4..5..6.. the monkey's got a hockey stick
7..8..9.. havin a good time yeaaaaaaaaa

Oh Yeah

Jono or Janice reminded me last night that I had promised to post on my Victoria day lunch time entertainment. So here goes.

I was sitting on the balcony, quietly eating my lunch when a car was pulled over by the police. It took a while before the police officer got out of his car to talk to the driver. When he finally did, there was no other traffic on the road for a few seconds, and we could hear a little bit of what the officer and the driver were talking about. It sounded to us like the driver had changed his mind at the last which resulted in an unconventional manoeuvre, catching the attention of the officer. After talking with the driver for a minute or two, he went back to the cruiser. A little while after that, another officer showed up. Eventually, the two officers asked the man to get out of his car, handcuffed the man, and the first officer took him to his car. The second police officer then searched the now handcuffed man's vehicle. Something tells me he was up to more than unconventional manoeuvres. For most of this time traffic was fairly steady, and the noise from the cars drowned out what the police officers were saying, so we had no idea why the driver was handcuffed and taken away. There was a moment where we could hear that he was concerned about the fate of his car. Perhaps he was hoping that if he showed enough concern, they'd let him drive his car home, and then they could arrest him later instead.

This doesn't really compare to what happened on Thanksgiving weekend a few years ago, though. I had taken two people back with me from Kingston, and just dropped them off at their houses. One of them lived in Dundas, a small town at the just west of Hamilton, and the other lived on the eastern end. I had to do a lot of city driving (simply going to my own house involved almost exclusively highway driving), and it seemed like I was catching every light red. Not only that, but after I had dropped off the second of the two passengers, I was a bit disoriented and started driving the wrong direction at first, making it take even longer to get home. I had become impatient. There was one more traffic light to get through before my street, and it went from green to yellow sooner than I wanted it to. There was plenty of time for me to stop, but I was tired of stopping for red lights, and decided that I would go for it anyway. I cut it close. If the light wasn't red when the front of the car entered the intersection, it was by the time the whole car did. Just as I had cleared the intersection, I saw the flashing lights of police cars up ahead. "That was fast," I thought to myself. I got further and realized that that they were at my street. "How do they know where I live?" Once I reached my street, I saw that the cars were blocking off my street. It was obvious then that they weren't there to ticket me for running a red light. I drove to the next street to take a different route in, only to find out that that route had also been blocked off too. I didn't really have any other options that wouldn't have been a major hassle, so I parked my car and walked home (it was only a block away). On my way I tried to get information from the officer that was blocking the street. He wasn't going to give me anything, and seemed annoyed that I even asked. As I got closer to my house, I saw at least four more police cars, a news crew, and a girl leaving her house trying to cover her face and yelling at everyone to leave her alone. I still couldn't tell what was going on, but it was happening right next to my house. My parents had gone away that weekend, and my brother was the only one home. He was half asleep. I asked him if he knew what was going on. It was clear that he was annoyed, but he didn't seem to be aware that anything had even happened. After a while, a police officer knocked on my door trying to find out if I knew anything. I explained that I had just got home and that my brother was sleeping and didn't know anymore than I did. He asked for the birth dates of some family members for some reason and requested permission to check out our back yard. As far as I knew, we weren't break any laws back there, so I said okay. Somewhere in the conversation, I tried to get the police officer to tell me a bit about what had happened, but he wouldn't tell my anything either. I finally got to find out when the news came on. Somebody had shot my neighbour.

While we were a bit shocked that something like that could happen so close to our house, it was probably the least shocking place that it could have happened. They had been bringing down the property value from day one. For the most part, they didn't do anything that was obviously illegal, but they were very noisy and requests by us and the neighbours to keep it down weren't simply ignored, but rather were laughed at. We were always a little suspicious, though, that something else might have been going on that was less obvious.

As mentioned, my parents were away that weekend, so they weren't witness to any of this, but the news did reach them eventually. It turned out that the shooter's name and my brother's name were very similar, though not the same. When they heard this, they thought that somehow my brother might be involved. They called home to make sure that he wasn't.

A week later, in church, one of the members announced that her son had been arrested.
Can you guess what for?

As it turned out, this woman's son was scheduled to be a witness at a drug trial, and someone had threatened her. It seemed that we were right to suspect that our neighbours were up to something besides making a lot of noise. The story, as I've heard it, is that he went over there to talk. When our neigbour saw the gun, he turned to run away. The shooter, who up to that point had merely been a gun holder, panicked and shot our neighbour. The wounds weren't life threatening, so the guys still alive somewhere. I don't know what happened to the rest of the people who live in that house, but it was very quite there for a long time afterwards. My mom moved out the following July (she had been planning on moving before all this happened), though it appears that she just can't escape the crime.

Monkey See Monkey Do

I meant to write a little something about my thoughts on the NHL playoffs a while ago. The usual suspects get the blame for the absence of such a post. The Stanley Cup finals begin tomorrow, so it's now or never, despite that fact that I should be working on the last remaining suspect.

I usually root for the Leafs, but they weren't in the playoffs this year. The only team that I was cheering for this time around was Calgary, and they had almost been knocked out of the playoffs in the first round before I even noticed that the playoffs had started (blame that on the usual suspects too).

I managed to catch a good part of one game on the last Thursday in April while I was sitting at the bar on my friend's last day at work. The sound was off, and the only commentary came through some questionable closed captioning. Detroit was playing. I don't remember who they were playing against, San Jose maybe, nor whether they won or lost. If I searched the archives I could find out, but I don't care that much. I spend a lot of time living in the past, and barring anything else, the team that was around when I was a child gets my support (if they both were, the team that was around when my dad was a child gets my support). But Detroit is the team that beat Calgary in the first round, which provided me an "anything else". Consequently, I was consumed by ambivalence.

The next thing I remember is that the Ottawa Senators were facing the Buffalo Sabres. At this point, you might think the obvious answer is to cheer for the Canadian team. Patriotism and all that. I picked Buffalo. Why? Simple answer. The same year that Ottawa put in a bid for an NHL team, Hamilton did too. Only one Canadian city got a team. How can I cheer for the other city? Call it sour grapes if you will, it's still my reason. Add to the mix the fact that I've typically supported the Leafs, and Ottawa is just that annoying other team from Ontario, there really isn't any reason to support them. Besides, Buffalo's just a hop, skip, and a jump from Hamilton. Ottawa's not.

Unfortunately, Buffalo lost, and so Ottawa's heading into the finals. In the past, I've always enjoyed watching them do well enough to advance, only to get beaten by the Leafs in the next round (every time). Of course that didn't happen this year. It was nice of Toronto to throw the season so that the Sens could have a chance at the Cup, don't you think? They're facing Anaheim, a team which barely exists in my mind (a recent addition to the NHL, in one of the warmest parts of the continent, named after a fictitious team in a children's movie. No thanks!). I can't screw up the will to care that much about whether or not they win, even if it means that Ottawa loses. So, rather than making a choice between a healthy antipathy and a rock solid apathy, what can I say? May the worst team lose!

M & Ms, & M from M & M

Two reviews via my sister Melanie.

A short review of the movie Shrek 3:

"We went to see Shrek III last night. It was O.K. but the critics were right........it is not nearly as good as the first two."

A more favourable review of the Shrek M&Ms:

"So this brings me to answering your question about the M & Ms.............. Meaghan has not been even close to well enough to eat chocolate till yesterday so the girls finally got to try them last night. They must have liked them because they are all gone and I didn't get a single one!!! Meaghan would only eat the red ones though!! :)"

Overheard

First Guy: I was watching American Idol last night and somebody
mentioned John Locke. My friend was like "Who's John Locke? Isn't he a
magician?" I was like "I can't believe that you don't know who John Locke
is!"

Second Guy: Oh my God. Has he been living under a rock? We learned
about him in, like, grade 9.

Girl: Your friend doesn't like me now because I made fun of him for not
knowing who John Locke was.

First Guy: So what did Locke do?

Second Guy: I'm not really sure.

First Guy: Me neither.

Girl: ...

A Snapshot of my Weekend

[Please forgive any stylistic, grammatical, or factual errors. I just spent about twice as long writing this as I had intended, and don't feel like proofreading carefully.]

Just returned from Victoria day weekend back home.

My weekend adventures began on Thursday evening, even though I didn't actually leave for the H-bomb until Friday. On a typical trip home, I'll take passengers. I had a call from one potential passenger who had a rather large piece of luggage, and she wanted to know if it would fit in my rather small car. I was pretty sure that it would, but she asked me to drop by her place to see for sure if it would fit. My usual evening activity these days consists of sitting in Coffee and Company for about as long as it takes to drink two large coffees. For those of you who know my issues with sleep, yes, this practice is having its usual effect, but at this point, I'm not at liberty to care. Given this effect, I was eager to get there as soon as possible, so I drove to my potential client's place so as to spend as little time as possible on this. Plus, if I wasn't sure whether the luggage would fit, I'd have my car there to check it out directly. This wasn't necessary. I could see just by looking that the fit would be no problem. After settling some details with the passenger, I left for the coffee shop in my car. Now fast forward to 2:00 Friday afternoon. I was in a meeting with my supervisor, and, as usual, not always focusing on what he was talking about, when it dawned on me that when I had left the night before, I walked home. My car had been sitting out all night. When I realized this, it appeared to David that I had an insight of some kind, and what an insight at that. How disappointed he must have been when he found out that I did not, and that I was thinking about something entiriely nonmathematical. The meeting ended, perhaps too soon because of this realization, and I left to check on my car. It was still where I had left it. Had I done that on a Wednesday night, however, who knows what would have happened? Parking is not allowed from 1 am to 7 am on Thursday mornings, or something silly like that. I then ran home, picked up my car keys, ran back, drove my car back to my place, and packed.

The ride home was, for the most part, uneventful. I dropped off one passenger in the bustling metropolis of Ajax (population 90,000. Looks even smaller on a map.), and then another in Richmond Hill.

It's a good thing I remembered to bring the key to my mom's building this time (forgot last time), as I didn't get home until about 1:30. I would have hated to have to get her up at that time to let me in.

Saturday morning was mostly lazy. I didn't get out of bed until around 10, and sat around drinking coffee for most of the morning, until I got a phone call from a Kingston friend who I haven't had time to talk to lately, and spent an hour on the phone with him (I do recognize the irony, or "irony" as the case may be, of not having time to talk to a Kingston friend until I'm out of Kingston). I then lazed around until about 4:30-5:00 when my brother showed up. We entertained our mother, and each other, joking around and whatnot until about midnight when he left. (My brother and I have similar enough senses of humour that we can make each other laugh (what? you mean there are two of us?), yet different enough that it's not annoying.) Part of the time we spent sitting on my mom's balcony watching neighbourhood fireworks. Backyard fireworks seem to have come a long way since I was a kid, or even since I was in my mid-twenties, and most of them consisted of coloured flaming projectiles shooting more or less straight up into the air, possibly accompanied by a loud bang (which is fun for some reason). Some of the fireworks that we saw Saturday night were like that, but there were a bunch that looked like the more professional variety that the city might get, except at a smaller scale. I was impressed.

On Sunday my mom and I were invited to my cousin's house by my ex-girlfriend's little sister [1]. While there, I met two relatives (second cousins) whose existence I was only vaguely aware of until that day, while my mom got caught up with her niece (earlier referred to as my cousin) who I don't think she had seen in quite some time.

When we got home around 5:00, there was a message waiting on the answering machine from my brother-in-law, and a voicemail on my cell from my sister-in-law. I called back my brother-in-law first. He invited us to come over for a campfire. I then returned my sister-in-law's call. My brother (different brother) answered. I told him the unfortunate news that we had been invited to my sister's and brother-in-law's place, and that therefore I would not be able to grace him with my company. There was some weeping, and then, once he got over it, we chatted for a while about nothing in particular, until he had to go. Shortly after, my mom and I left for my sister's house. Once there, I talked to my sister for a bit while my mom talked to my brother-in-law until my mom came to talk to my sister and I went to talk to my brother-in-law and get started on the fire (tag team or something like that).

I was asked to take a picture of my mom and my sister framed by two bleading heart bushes (plants, flowers, shrubs?). My sister told me that these bleeding hearts were made from cuttings off of one of my mom's bleading hearts, which was made from a cutting off of the bleading hearts from my Aunt Shirley, who passed away almost 10 years ago, which was made from a cutting off of the bleading hearts from my grandmother, who died when I was 7. I've got a hoya with the same story, but it doesn't look quite as nice. These facts make these plants extra special to both of us [2]. The rest of the evening was a simple affair, sitting around the campfire, roasting hotdogs and eating fresh cantaloupe, watermelon, and other fruits.

I had every intention this morning of getting to some work on my thesis. I certainly got up in time to do it, but instead I decided to call my sister (different sister). While I was on the phone, her younger daughter pleaded with her to get off the phone for no particular reason except that something might come up while my sister was on the phone that could only be properly attended to if my sister was off the phone. The purpose of my call was to inform my sister that, the next time her kids went to grandma's (their grandma) house, there was a package of Shrek themed M&M's waiting for them. That took an hour and half. Hopefully my niece will forgive the long phone call when she gets the M&M's.

After that I packed, ate lunch [3], managed to finish off the index of notation for my thesis (as a bonus, I got the list of figures and list of tables done too, though each of those involved only one line of ``code''). Around 5:00 I brought most of my stuff to the car, and then ate dinner when I got back. For most of the day, I had anticipated a call from anybody who happened to read my ad for a ride from Toronto to Kingston, but in the end nobody called [4]. So I only had one passenger on the way back. Truth be told, though, I didn't mind one bit.

[1] To be honest, I just said it that way for dramatic effect, or some such thing. It was so long ago that we dated it seems strange to refer to her as anything but a friend, and her little sister is all growed up now and deserves to be recognized as a friend independent of the relationship of her older sister to me. For added dramatic effect, I'll mention that there is a third sister who is getting married to one of my cousin's sons in less than two months. This third sister is responsible for introducing this relative to me. Apparently this relative also has a similar sense of humour to me (what? you mean there are three of us?)

[2] Anybody who talks to me for a little while will realize that horticulture is an important theme in my family. Each one of my siblings and myself have at one point or another worked in horticulture (not too special, actually, since we're Dutch, and the Dutch seem to run that business in the Hamilton area, aside from a handful of Italian operations), and my older sister and older brother both still do. It's often a topic of conversation in our family, even among the not-so-green thumbs. For that reason, to me, and I think moreso to my sister, these plants are one of the most important heirlooms, even though the original plants from which the cuttings were made are no longer around.

[3] While I was eating lunch, a rather noteworthy event occured on the road in front of my mom's apartment, but that is fodder for another blog post on another day. Remind me in a week if nothing appears on the matter.

[4] When I got back, however, my inbox was loaded with emails asking about a ride from Toronto to Kingston. Too bad I was netless the whole weekend. Well. Maybe not.

Down to Earth

For most living beings, to bite the dust is not a good thing.

For earthworms, however, it's a different story.

Signs from God?

This morning in church, the pastor mentioned that he had bought some fiddleheads, but didn't know what to do with them and asked for suggestions. I've only ever cooked with fiddleheads once before, but the results were quite pleasing. I told him about the recipe, and now I'm telling you.

I made it back in February with the Blogless Erica. Fiddleheads weren't in season then, and we used frozen, but they are now. So if you think it sounds good and you might want to make it, make it now (now being around the middle of May, for anybody who happens to be reading the archives in the future). Frozen is still good, but if you can use fresh, why wouldn't you?

The recipe is below.

First a few comments about how we made it. We used powdered turmeric, rather than fresh. Instead of chopping the shallots, ginger, and garlic, and putting them in a blender, we used a microplane (I would have called it a grater, but the package says microplane) and hand grated them. If you don't have either, but want to make the recipe, I should point out that it's cheaper to buy a good microplane than it is to buy a bad blender (well, probably), and, all things considered, the difference in effort between the two methods is not that great, so buy a microplane and save your money until you can buy a good blender (or don't buy one at all, if that suits you). If you read the directions below, you will see that using a blender may even be extra complicated if the ingredients don't behave well, so even if you have one, it might better to just use the microplane anyway. If you don't have one, this recipe is a good excuse for buying that microplane you've always wanted but couldn't justify purchasing. Erica's technique for grating the shallots is to leave the root end on to use as a sort of handle. The recipe calls for 3-10 Thai chillis. I believe that we only used 3. This was a satisfying level of spiciness for me, though I could easily have tolerated more. We substituted tamarind paste for asam gelugor, and used regular salt instead of Kosher salt.

This recipe marked a quite a lot of firsts for me. I had never used shrimp, shallots, asam gelugor, fiddleheads, Thai chillis, or coconut milk before. Shallot seems to be a tad ambiguous (only a tad, though). The shallots referred to here are like small red onions with offsets (when I mention shallots, many people, including the pastor, don't seem to know what they are, and some guess that it's some sort of seafood. possibly they are thinking of scallops). The shrimp in this recipe tasted better to me than any shrimp that I had ever eaten at a restaurant. There were quite a lot of brands of coconut milk brands at the store, and I wasn't sure which one to buy (Erica bought it when we made it, but I bought some myself later), however in another cookbook it says that "the heavy, oily quality of some cheaper brands will literally destroy your recipe," so it may be better to opt for the pricier option if you're not sure.

If you can't find some of the ingredients below at your usual grocery store, you should be able to find them at an Asian grocer. The Asian grocers nearby here have a wider selection of coconut milk than the other grocery stores, and a friend who bought hers at Loblaws complained of a greasy after-texture in her mouth (which she blamed on the preservatives, though according to the above, it could have been due to the cheap quality), so I would recommend buying that specific item at the Asian grocer, even if your regular grocery store does stock it.

The spice paste below is quite versatile. Even though I haven't made this specific recipe since, I've made similar things using a variant of the chilli paste that also turned out quite well. For example, I used mushrooms, zucchini, and chicken (chopped up) instead of fiddleheads and shrimp, substituting milk and/or yogourt for coconut milk, using crushed chillis (Sambal Oelek) instead of Thai chillis, or adding sweet soy sauce (Kecap Manis). Also, I haven't bothered with Asam gelugor or any of its substitutes. That's because I forgot about that ingredient until today when I reread the recipe. I wouldn't recommend simply substituting these things and following the directions below, however. For example, the mushrooms and zucchini need to be sauteed at some stage.

Fern Curry with Shrimp
Source: Cradle of Flavor by James Oseland
(The book is on sale at Amazon.ca right now. Follow the link. This is one of many interesting looking recipes in the book. I haven't bought it yet, but it's on my wish list.)

2.5 cups (about 11 ounces/310 grams) fresh or frozen fiddlehead ferns

For the Flavouring Paste

3 shallots (about 25 ounces/70 grams total), coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, coarsely chopped
1 piece fresh or thawed, frozen turmeric, 1 inch long, peeled and coarsely chopped (about 1 teaspoon), or 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 piece fresh ginger, 2 inches long, peeled and thinly sliced against the grain (about 2 tablespoons)
3 to 15 fresh green or red Thai chillis, stemmed and coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 piece asam gelugor
1 stem fresh lemon basil, Thai basil, or Italian basil
7 ounces (200 grams) medium sized shrimp in the shell, preferably with heads intact (10 to 15 shrimp)
1.5 cups (12 fluid ounces/375 mL) unsweetened coconut milk.
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

1. To clean fresh fiddleheads, use kitchen shears or a sharp paring knife to snip off the bottom 1/4 inch of the stem jutting out from the centre coil of each fern. Next, remove as much of the light brown, paper-thin sheath from each fiddlehead as possible. (This paper sheath protects the fiddleheads from insects and cold weather as they unfurl; much of it is naturally discarded by the time they're harvested, but some tenacious bits, which are unpleasant to eat, may remain.)

2. Rinse and drain the fresh fiddleheads in at least 3 changes of cold water. Fill a 3-quart saucepan with water to a depth of 3 inches and bring it to a vigourous oil over high heat. Add the fiddleheads and boil for 3 to 4 minutes. Drain the fiddleheads into a colander and run cold water over them to halt the cooking. Drain them once more and set aside. If using frozen fiddleheads, blanch them for a few seconds in vigorously boiling water, drain them into a colander, and rinse with cold running water to halt the cooling. Drain again and set aside.

3. To make the flavouring paste, place the shallots, garlic, turmeric, ginger, and chillis in a small food processor. Pulse until you have a smooth paste the consistency of creamy mashed potatoes, with no visible pieces or chunks of shallot or garlic. If the paste won't puree properly and repeatedly creeps up the side of the processor instead of grinding, add up to 2 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon at a time, periodically turning the processor off and scraping the unground portions down toward the blade.

4. Rinse and dry the 3-quart saucepan, add the oil, and place over medium-low heat. Test to see if the oil is the right temperature by adding a pinch of the ground paste. The paste should sizzle slightly around the edges, not fry aggressively or sit motionless. When the oil is ready, add all the paste and sauté, stirring as needed to prevent scorching, until the garlic and shallots no longer smell raw and the paste begins to separate from the oil, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the asam gelugor and basil, if using, and the shrimp, stirring well to combine. Raise the heat slightly and cook until the shrimp turn pink, about two minutes.

5. Add 1/2 cup of the coconut milk, all of the water, and the fiddleheads and stir well to combine. Raise the heat slightly and bring the coconut milk to a gentle simmer. Immediately reduce the heat a bit and continue to cook, stirring often, until the fiddleheads are fork-tender but not mushy, about ten minutes. They should be deep forest green, not spring green, by the time they're finished cooking. Add the salt and sugar and stir to combine.

6. Stir in the remaining 1 cup coconut milk and then raise the heat slightly. Bring the mixture to a gentle simmer, stirring constantly, until the coconut milk is heated through, about two minutes. Remove the basil stem and asam gelugor, if used. Taste once more for salt, and add a pinch if needed.

7. Transfer to a serving dish. Set the curry aside to rest for 10 to 15 minutes or longer before eating, which will allow the flavours to intensify and mingle.

Out of the frying pan...

It's been a while. I'm sorry.

Conference preparations and teaching got in the way of regular blogging for most of this past term. It also got in the way of the more important (to me at least) activity of thesis editing. Once I got back from the conference, I took a few days to catch my breath. I didn't do much of anything important, aside from tying up the last loose end with my course, between the time that I got back to the time I posted about the conference. The next day, I started getting ready to move and working on the thesis.

Everything aside from a few odds and ends was moved out on 29th of April. I picked up the the odds and ends the next day when I went back to help (now former) housemate number 1 clean up the old place--(now former) housemate number 2 had packed and left a few days earlier--and deliver a carload of her stuff to their new place that the movers, who were already behind schedule when they arrived, didn't have time to deliver. By the time that was done, I barely had enough strength left to lift my fingers to type.

The boxes were mostly left unmoved during the first week in my new place, except to find this or that item that I happened to need, since most of that week was spent working on the thesis, either making corrections or discussing them with my supervisor. Needless to say, after spending that much time thinking about corrections and typing them into the computer, the ideal break-time activity was not sitting at my computer thinking about and typing up blog posts. Besides that, blogging is usually a spontaneous activity, writing posts when things come to mind. There isn't much room for that to happen when my thoughts are focused on my thesis.

On top of moving and editing, I was asked a few weeks ago to give a talk. I couldn't think of an excuse on the spot, so I had to give a talk in the Queen's/RMC discrete math seminar on Thursday. Most of the talk was spent discussing known results, so preparing the talk wasn't difficult, but it was still quite time consuming, and it was yet another thing to do amidst being quite busy already. My supervisor said that it went well, which I take to mean that it went well.

Instead of handwriting the corrections onto a paper copy of Chapters 4, as my supervisor has done so far for Chapters 0-3, he made a nonpaper copy of the file and typed his own corrections to that file. So today the roles were reversed, and I spent the evening reading his corrected version of my file and making my own corrections to his work. It's the first day in about two weeks where a substantial part of the day was not spent typing, so here I am blogging... about why I haven't been blogging.

Hopefully soon I can get back to blogging about things other what I've been up to lately.

Less is more

"How would you like it?" she asked.
"Shorter," I said.
"Clippers?"
"Yes."

Simplest instructions ever. Best haircut ever.

Observation

iPods are never on sale. Never. At least not the Nanos or the Shuffles. Of all the different stores that I've seen selling them, the Nanos are always $169.99, and the Shuffles are always $89.99. Always.

99 Red Balloons

This past weekend, I went to the conference in Tucson that I had anounced a while ago.

My biggest worry about the whole thing, once I had secured my passport, was getting there. This turned out to be not much of an issue. That is not to say that it wasn't. It just turns out that it was no worse than the most common triggers of the dreaded effect. There was a moment in the ascent where the plane seemed to suddenly but briefly drop in altitude, which caused some discomfort, and things were fine until the plane began to descend in Phoenix four hours later. Here, it was definitely worse than at the beginning, but still not as unbearable as I had been expecting. The worst case seemed to be on the return trip from Tucson to Phoenix. Aside from this, the whole travelling portion trip went off without a hitch. I would have preferred not to leave at 2:00 am from Kingston, but no luggage was lost, there were no problems with tickets or customs, and all flights left on time. I was warned about problems with the ears popping, or not popping. I can't remember what exactly was supposed to cause the problems that never happened. As we changed altitude, I could certainly feel that there was a pressure difference building up, but it was nowhere close to uncomfortable. On may way out of the airport, I was also lucky enough to run into a friend who was waiting for his dad at the airport. Or rather, he was lucky enough for me to run into him. It was around 8:00 pm when I met him, and his dad's flight was supposed to arrive around 5:00 pm. I talked to him for at least a half an hour before he saw his dad.

The conference was good, but much lower key than I was expecting. All but one of the talks that I went to were those in the Special Session on Graph Theory and Combinatorics. Most of them were well presented and interesting, though they were quick. I'm used to going seeing one hour talks in seminars, whereas these talks were only twenty minutes each [1]. I haven't had much luck with Power Point (or related formats) talks, especially in math, though the ones given here were mostly well done. The one talk that I did go to outside of the special session was the second of three by invited speakers. The talk was not in my research area, and went from zero to incomprehensible in 60 seconds. I left after about 10 minutes, and I wasn't the first. Apparently the first talk by an invited speaker wasn't much better. We all decided not to go to the third. I had a chance to speak with most of the people who came to the session on graph theory and combinatorics, and, based on what I overheard from Saturday night's dinner conversation, I've now met pretty much every graph theorist and combinatorialist in the western United States. Yep. All ten of them.

I wish that I could have stayed in Tucson longer. I don't know how much longer, but longer. Looking out the window of my sixth floor hotel room, I could see mountains (real mountains, not Hamilton mountains) in almost every direction. The same would be true had my room been at the front instead of the back the hotel. If I had more time, I would have like to explore at least one of these mountains. The city seemed rather large in terms of area, though most of that consisted of low density housing, commercial, etc. There were very few highrise towers. I don't know if this has to do with the fact that such things are hard to build in the desert, or if it has do with the fact that sand is not a proctected species, and so sprawl isn't an issue. Most of the houses were, I think, stucco, or something that looks like stucco, or something that looks like what I think stucco looks like. Whatever it is, they looked a lot like stereotypical Mexican houses (the ones you see in TV shows, movies, etc.), which isn't surprising, since Tucson is only 60 miles from Mexico. Besides this, there were quite a lot of red brick houses. Most houses didn't have grass lawns, but rather sandy lots dotted by various sorts of cacti, or else trees that a Canadian would only have in potted form, and kept inside, such as palm trees (I think). The downtown, where most of the few highrise towers are located, was unimpressive, and, like my hometown of Hamilton, the area near the university (of Arizona) was more impressive and looked more like what you would expect (or hope) the downtown of a city to look like. The university campus was attractive. The University of Arizona is as enthusiastic about its red brick as Queen's is of its limestone. Perhaps moreso, since, unlike Queen's, they seem to have escaped the 60's lust for cold and forboding concrete structures. This was about as much of an impression of the city as I could get without use of a car.

Some other things:

• I finally understand the phrase "It's a dry heat." I've heard this phrase many times, but I've never actually experienced one. It was 27 C on the Sunday. I spent about an hour and a half walking around in direct sunlight, I barely broke a sweat, and never once did it feel uncomfortable. None of those things would be true on a 27 C day in Southern Ontario. Being in Toronto for no more than 10 minutes, I could already feel the higher levels of humidity.
• Among the weirdest things that I saw in Tucson was a firefighting supply store, I suppose in case anyone wants to start up their own firefighting company. Of course, fire departments need to get their supplies from somewhere, but I wouldn't expect to find them being sold amidst shops selling hemp and incense.
• Tucson has a brew pub. Partial answer to "How much longer could I have stayed in Tucson?": Long enough to be able to sample each of their potent potables (to borrow a phrase from Kingston's brew pub). The pub had an automatic 18% gratuity for parties of 10 or more, which we were. This was a tad grating to me. My tips almost always fall into the 15-20% range, and this would have been no exception. But when you're forced to pay a gratuity, it's not a gratuity, but rather a fee for having been waited on. I hear this is common in Europe.
  

Finally, to answer everyone's favourite question. I didn't bring you anything. Don't take it personally, though. I didn't even bring myself anything.

[1] I'm told by one of my colleagues at RMC that this was long for a conference talk.

Thanks.... I think

"I get such eloquent responses from you when you are teased...it's hard to resist."

Quote of the Day

"The fact that in a patient the right ear is the larger, but the left eye is the larger, is readily understood by direct comparison, but would be not at all obvious in terms of the third or fifth moment about the nose." Edmond A. Murphy, Skewness and Asymmetry of Distributions.

I'm a freak...

...or a one of a kind. That sounds better. Or. Less bad.

I leave for my conference a week from today.

It will be the first time that I've ever flown. I'm a bit nervous. Not so much about the fact that I'll be flying. It's the descent. Ever since I was a kid, going down hills in a car was a cause of discomfort. I'm told by my mom that, as a kid, even going down stairs fast was too much. I'm always a bit wary of elevators (except the one in the math department here, which so slow that it's often barely faster than taking the stairs). Most amusement park rides are out. Even "the swings" (which is usually known as the Yo-yo). It's a rather simple ride. Swings go around in a circle, tilted so that the axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the ground. I went on this ride figuring, "Hey. This looks pretty simple. Doubt that it will cause the usual reaction." I was wrong. Some of the more advanced rides, involving multiple axes of rotation are likely out (even if they rotate parallel to the ground). I've subjected myself to the tilt-a-whirl a few times. But it wasn't really fun. There are other rides that I will never touch again. I've been on a rollercoaster twice. Once to see if I could handle it, and a second time to show a friend, who was the one who pushed me to see if I could handle it the first time, why I never wanted to go on one again.

It's hard to describe the feeling to someone else. It's something like how my stomach feels when I'm nervous or anxious, but not quite the same, and much more intense. Butterflies. Losing my stomach. People ask me if it's motion sickness (indeed, reports say that I was rather pale after my second rollercoaster experience). No. Not even close, aside from the reported paleness. There isn't even a hint of nausea.

Depending on the intensity my reaction varies. In a car or on an elevator, I don't think you'd notice. So far nobody has. I might take a quick, slightly voiced, breath inwards, but that's it. The worst reactions came from the roller coaster and one fair ride called the Scrambler. They both involved a lot of kicking and, hmm..., ?loud moaning?. In the case of the Scrambler, I was yelling at the ride operator to stop the ride. I got the same reaction from a ride that was similar to the Scrambler (and that I went on before my attempt at the Scrambler), but by the end it wasn't much worse than in a car. The ?loud moaning? only lasted the first two or three times around. I went on the tilt-a-whirl as many times as I did, because the reaction was at least bearable, if unpleasant. I thought that if I went on it enough times, I would desensitize myself. No such luck.

I was describing this to someone recently, who was asking about my thoughts about flying for the first time. He suspected that I was not the only one to suffer from this reaction, and that a doctor would know more and be able to recommend something. I was hoping he would be right. Earlier today, on his advice, I went to the doctor and described, in fewer words than I have used here, what I thought could be a problem with flying (or landing, to be precise). She had never heard of anything like it before. The best she could come up with was that it was something to do with anxiety. But the feeling comes whether I'm expecting the rapid descent or not.

Usually it's nice to know that you're unique. But in this case, I'd rather be like everyone else. Heck, I'd even settle for being like someone else.

Idiot Strings

Upon finding my blog (ie. being ordered by me to read it) most people ask "What are idiot strings?"

I can't blame them for not knowing. When I used idiot strings, I didn't have a name for them, and it was long after I used them that I learned that that's what they are called.

So what are they? They're the strings that are threaded through the sleeves of your winter jacket and tied to your mittens so that you don't lose them. (I'm not an expert on parenting, but I imagine it's probably best not to call them idiot strings to your kids).

It's probably a good thing that I had them. Even still, at least once per year, I would lose my mittens if I didn't have a friend around to act as virtual idiot strings. Not only that, but it seems that I could use them for a few other day-to-day items. She with whom I am in most regular contact knows that my pen frequently goes missing, sometimes for days at a time. Just this morning, I got a knock on the door informing me that my keys were still in door to my apartment, and the front office staff in the math department recognize the "I've locked myself out of the office again" look.

According to my dictionary (Canadian Oxford), "idiot string" is a Canadian term, even though few Canadians seem to actually know what they are, and before my blog became the online hit that it is (averaging 11 page loads and 7 unique visitors per day! w00t! Take that google, microsoft network, and yahoo!) googling for idiot strings brought you to a bunch of sites all of which seemed to be located in the US. Hooray for national self-misconceptions! (I think we can be pretty sure that "toque" will always be ours though.)

Meanwhile, nobody on the internet seems to know what idiot handles are. You get a prize if you can (a) give the correct definition of idiot handle and (b) find an internet site where the term is used correctly.

What's old is "New"

The Conservative Government has been referring to itself as Canada's "New" Government in all sorts of press releases since they were elected. After a year it's getting a bit old.

Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Loyola Hearn thinks so too.

I do find it a bit amusing, though, that the Honourable Member himself is from "New"foundland and Labrador, which has had that name for, well, at least a year by now.

Hat Tip

"I'm sorry, but you have the wrong number....

...You are looking for Randy. This is Randy's student card."

It took me about 4 years to memorize my student number. Though this past September, after enjoying the privilege of not needing to reach into my pocket for my student card for about a year, I got a phone number that (a) starts out with the same three numbers as my student number and (b) uses only one number that my student number doesn't (though the numbers are not in the same order, disregarding some nonsense about cyclic permutations. I'd say something about Hamming distance, but those who would understand what I mean are probably already thinking it.).

Now, when I give out my phone number, I'm not sure whether I'm giving them my student number or my phone number, and also it takes me quite a while to remember my student number with a significant degree of confidence before I say it out loud.

The mind ends in more ways than one.

The Art of Compromise

I went to Canadian Tire today to buy some sort of oil additive for my car. While I was looking I came across one product whose directions said "add 25ml for every 50 litres of gas". The markings on the side of the bottle, however, were in ounces.

When Independence is a Solution to Everything...

...it's a solution to nothing.

Four Blind Men and an Elephant.

"I think I misrepresent myself to everyone, because so many people have different, and often opposite, perceptions of me," said Randy.

Never Saw that One Coming

"I broke up with you because you're normal."

I has a passport!

As title says.

Rawr!

Yikes!

The Quebec election results are in. The Liberals get 48 seats, the ADQ 41, and the PQ 36. I'm surprised to see Dumont's ADQ with 41 seats, considering that they only had 5 in the last provincial parliament. I had expected, based on no expertise whatsover aside from a poll I glanced at a few weeks ago, that the Liberals would have a strong minority. The ADQ would have enough seats, low 20s perhaps, to make up an informal coalition of sorts with the Liberals. It's good to see the separatist PQ with so few seats. Apparently it's one of their worst showings since their first election. Haven't quite figured out what Dumont's stance on the role of Quebec in federation is, aside from a sense that it's a compromise between federalism and separatism. We won't ask to let us leave, but we hope you'll treat us as if we have. Something like that. The word autonomy is used quite a lot. Spain has a lot of autonomous regions. So many in fact, I wonder if the Spanish president isn't just the mayor of Madrid, but with a fancy title. I've learned a fair bit over the last few years about federalism across the globe, and realized that there are many more models besides the Canadian one, which isn't really inspiring and tends towards a unitary state rather than a federation. So maybe Dumont's ideas deserve a look.

Well, it's getting late so that, though incomplete, is all that I will say for now. Better informed but equally useless analysis and opinion can be found in the pages of our print media.

Techneurotic

I just visited Technorati, a search engine for up to date (up to minute?) information on what's going on in the blogosphere, among other blog related data.

A certain name kept popping up, so I decided to try and figure out what all the fuss was about. After all, if he's that popular, why don't I know about him, right? I search for the name and followed a link to a blog post titled "God hates Technorati"[1], which eventually led to the website of the man whose name keeps popping up.

I visited the blog of the man himself. The guy, a pastor, made a personal decision not to visit Techorati for the benefit of his own well-being. He didn't slight the service itself. He didn't tell me, nor you, nor the members of his congregation not to use the service. He just felt like he would be better off not reading the feedback about his work that he obtained through the Technorati service.

But somehow this shot him up to number 1 for Technorati keywords (he was at number 2 when I checked).

A bit touchy about our blog search engine, are we?

[1] "God Hates Technorati" is a very misleading title in my opinion. The pastor certainly didn't say anything even close to "God hates Technorati" in his original post. He didn't even say "God is meh about Technorati". In fact, I don't think he even suggests that God is aware of Technorati. Searching his blog yields 3 or 4 posts, one containing his original decision, and the rest responding to his subsequent fame. Given the controversy that ensued over the last church group to obtain fame with a "God Hates ..." type slogan, I think the title is quite over the top as well.

----
I have intentionally avoided naming the man at the centre of the controversy and linking to any blog posts on the matter, since I don't want to participate in the silliness. Search Technorati if you really wanna know.

The Cult I Joined

Sometime ago I joined a cult, popular amongst university students, known as facebook.

"Wait!" you protest, "That's not a cult, it's an online social networking tool!"

Such are the claims made by facebook, but I fear that claims do not make reality, and the reality is that facebook is a cult. What is the basis for such an assertion? What evidence do I have to support this accusation?

Exhibit A: Weird behaviour. I have a friend with whom my communication is almost exclusively through facebook. He knows my email, he knows my phone number, he's on my msn, but he only writes messages to me on my facebook "Wall". Why is this strange? Any of these other forms of communication are vastly more efficient, but communication through our respective facebook walls adds an extra layer of inneficiency to the communication process. Not only do I have to open a browser to read the email that tells me that someone has posted on my wall, I then have to log in to facebook to read the message.

Exhibit B: More weird behaviour. In the last two weeks, I have been looking for a place to sublet for the summer. I looked at one place that, in the end, I decided not to sublet. I sent an email to the current tenant to inform her that that I would not be subletting from her. It turns out that she is also a member of this cult. No more than a day later, I received an email telling me that she has added me as a friend on facebook. Within minutes of approving her as a facebook friend, she sent me a message telling me "alrite, but it's really hard to get summer sublet stuff done...but thanks for let me know!" Normal behaviour would be replying to my email directly. This is not normal. It is weird.

Only a cult could be responsible for such unusual forms of communication.

Exhibit C: Characteristic of many cults is unusual sexual behaviour. In facebook, this takes the form of "poking". The creator of facebook claims not to have a purpose for poking, but all facebook users know what he had in mind when he cooked up that feature. Why else would there be a facebook group called "Enough with the poking. Let's just have sex."? Zuckerberg, you dirty bird!

Exhibit D: You can leave any time you want, but would you mind telling us why? Have you ever tried leaving facebook? Your friends won't let you. A few have managed to break free, most only temporarily.

Exhibit E: Friends. Every day, I am informed by facebook that buddy and wasisname are now friends with the other fellers. I distrust any organzation that makes such liberal use of the word "friend".

Exhibit F: Aggressive recruitment tactics. Facebook will scour the contacts lists in all of your email accounts and encourage you to send facebook requests to all of your contacts who aren't already on facebook.

Exhibit G: Loss of individuality. See exhibit A. Your thoughts are no longer your own, but belong collectively to your "friends" (see exhibit E).

Exhibit H: Demands total devotion. See exhibit A and B. You must abandon all old forms of communication, and transmit messages only through facebook. You must only use your email account to receive notifications from facebook. All other responsibilities fall by the wayside as people become evermore consumed by facebook. You can see people's frustration with this when they create groups with titles encouraging facebook to do non-family-friendly things to itself because they're trying to do homework (such groups are only allowed to exist to create the illusion that dissent is allowed).

So there you have it folks. Rock solid evidence that facebook is a cult. Stay away while you still can!

Canada Farm

Offered because it has been subtly suggested that I do so, and without comment.
Lorne's and Danny's thoughts on the new equalization scheme can be summarized thus:
"We all should be equalized. Some of us should be more equalized than others."

Update: Up until yesterday, the focus was on what Saskatchewan's and Newfoundland's Premiers thought about it. Now it appears that the whole country's in on it.

Passport Absolutionals[1]

Yesterday, or perhaps two days ago if I do not write this fast enough, I made the trek to Ottawa for a second time. Even though I knew that the lineups were going to be shorter and didn't need to leave as early, I decided to leave early anyway, in order to accomodate a passenger, who would cover at least part of the gas expenses. At 6:28 I was scrambling to be out of the apartment by 6:30, when I received a phone call from my passenger telling me the she misread the time (due to daylight savings) and was not ready yet. She estimated she would need at least another hour to pack. So about an hour later, I left to pick her up. I waited in my car for about 15 minutes until I decided eventually to go knock on the door. It was another 15 minutes before she was ready, so it was around 8:00, the time I had originally planned to leave, before we got on the road.

As with last week, the traffic was pretty good, though there were more cars on the road this time around, unsurprisingly. The traffic was more consistent on the 417 than last week, though slower on average. This reminds me of the rule that we learned in driving lessons... right lane is fer drivin', left lane is fer passin'. This is one of those things that makes sense in theory, but rarely pans out in practice, and when it does, it really doesn't matter what lane you drive in. I don't recall ever being told what to do when there are more than 2 lanes, as in the case of the 417, where there are 4 for most of the length that I drove on. What are the right and left lanes? I see that most drivers pick the rightmost lane, which is fine and makes the most sense when they're near their exit, but they seem to stay put despite the fact that the average speed has slowed to lower than the speed limit, while the average speed in the centre and left lanes is higher [2]. Yeah, it can get a bit dicey when my exit is coming up, but I like to spend as much of my time as possible in any lane that allows me to drive at least the speed limit.

This week I chose to park in the underground parking of the C.D. Howe Building (the building that holds the passport offices). The hourly rate is quite a bit steeper than that of last week's parking lot, but I paid less ($6.00), since customers pay when they leave based on how long they stayed.

For some odd reason, my passenger decided to wait out the whole passport business with me. It was nice, since she offered to get me a coffee and a muffin, which she paid for (in the end, she also paid more for gas than I was expecting too), while I went to get in line. The lineup was quite a bit longer this week than last week, but still nothing compared to what it was reported to be like last week. The people standing in front of me and behind me were much more talkative than those from last week, and quite agreeable too, which made the time go faster. We were standing in line for at least an hour and a half, but it felt like no more than a half an hour. As with last week, once I got into the passport office, because I had filled out my forms online, I was served very quickly. Lucky for me too. Unlike last week, the chairs were all taken, and I had to stand. This time everything went through. I noticed the passport agent filling in one entry on the application that I must have forgotten to fill out myself, though this did not turn out to be a problem. Five minutes or so and I was out.

My passenger then offered to serve me some lunch at her sister's place. I wouldn't make that offer to anyone on the first day that I met them [3], but she was at least harmless enough that it was worth the risk for free food.

After I finished lunch I called a friend that I made some somewhat open ended plans with the previous week. They weren't as open as I had taken them to be. I got her voicemail, left a message, waited around for a while in case she called back, and then left Ottawa.

Some other things to mention:

• It's not what you know, it's who happens to be standing two spots in front of you at the passport office. While I was waiting in line, it came up that I was almost finish a Ph.D. The man two spots ahead of me overheard this and asked me what in, and if it was related to computer science. I responded that it was math, but in an area with a lot in common with computer science. He gave me his business card and told me to send him my CV when I'm finished.
• If you're applying for a passport during a busy time, fill in your application online if you can. I know I said this last week, but I'm saying it again this week. I was in and out in about five minutes, while those who didn't fill in online had another wait of up to an hour and a half.
• You can learn as much, if not more, from the Passport Canada employee standing just outside the door of the offices (he has an official title, though I don't recall what it is at the moment) by overhearing what he says to other people. Many of the questions I had before I went were answered by him while I was waiting in line. The guy must have a lot of patience. He always seemed rather calm. I'm sure he spends most of the day answering the same set of questions over and over again. I'd be tempted to punch the third person to ask a question that had already been asked twice.
• Expect nothing and you will never be dissappointed.
• It's 11:20 at night and I feel like a coffee. I think I'll pass.
• Speaking of Coffee. I won a coffee with roll up the rim from a coffee that I bought on the way home. It's only my third cup this year too. Beats last year, where I must have had 15 or 16 cups of coffee before I got a winning cup. If that happened this year, you could have counted on an angry post with the title "Roll up the Rim to Whine". I'm sad that this title has to get stuck at the bottom of a post, but I'm not going to wait until the next string of bad roll up the rim luck happens before I use it. So here it is.
• I need the passport so that I can go to Tucson (Arizona, not to be confused with Tuscany Italy *sigh*) for a conference. I didn't realize that I had neglected to mention this until my sister pointed it out to me in an email.
• Despite the fact that this time around I actually finished what I went to Ottawa to do, I got a potential lead on a job, got a chunk of my gas paid for, and won a coffee, I think I had a better time last week than this week.
  
• I should hyperlink my footnotes.
• This post hasn't been thouroughly proofread, but I'm posting it anyway so that I get it in before midnight.
  

[1] Absolutionals is not a word according to the worldmind.

[2] There's a quote from the movie Driving Miss Daisy, when Miss Daisy says something like "Just because the speed limit is 30 miles per hour doesn't mean you have to drive that fast" that seems fitting here. The worldmind doesn't know it, or I'm not asking nicely enough.

[3] To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I've ever made that offer.

Can I has Cheezburger?

I can has Cheezburger!

LOL!

hat tip to Bound by Gravity.

EDST May be Handy

He asked the guy,
"Have you got the knife?"
He caught my eye.
I fear for my life.

----

It kills the mood to have to explains one's art. Nevertheless, I feel that I must offer some explaination about the preceding masterpiece, lest I cause undue worry amongst my readers.

The first three lines are based on a true story involving me.

The last line is pure nonsense.

Hamster, Squirrel, or other Rodent?

Daylight savings time starts today in the U.S. and most of Canada.

I use my cell phone as an alarm clock and I had trusted that its clock phone would adjust automatically, as it had when daylight savings time ended last year, and as it had done with my previous cell phone. Also, in time and date settings of the phone I had selected "adjust automatically".

However, it didn't adjust, and I woke up an hour late.

"Maybe Telus didn't know," a friend protested.
"It's a pretty big company," I replied, "They should know."
"I just found out about it last week. Maybe they did too."
"Then Telus is a hamster."
"Huh?"
"Well, you know, Telus is a big company, and I know that big companies suck and all, but the only way that a company that big could be that dumb is if it's actually not a company but a rodent of some kind, like a hamster."
We then got into a debate about what kind of rodent Telus is.

The last candidate before the conversation ended was the capybara, though we never decided for sure that Telus is a capybara.

Whatever kind of rodent it is, however, it knew. It just didn't do anything about it.

As Promised

At 4:00 today, after a harrowing defeat in an online game of 7 hand poker, I left for the gym, and then went to Loblaws to go grocery shopping. I chose the worst possible route to drive to the gym. I hit every light red. I seriously could have walked faster. Driving to the Loblaws from the gym, however, went smoothly, and the parking lot was easier to navigate than usual. I was even lucky enough to get a drive through spot (technically there are no drive through spots, but that only matters on a road test). The walk from my car to the store was uneventful.

I usually follow a set route through the grocery store. This week was no exception. First I hit the produce section. I grabbed the usual apples and bananas. I wanted to visit the leafy green section, but passed the tomato section first, where I picked up three plum tomatoes. In the leafy green section, I looked around for the spinach. While I was looking, I came across something called "Mache", with a hat over the "a". The box said it's pronounced like "mosh". I don't believe the box. Maybe the box has another dialect of English in mind. Eventually I found the spinach. I've never bought fresh spinach before. The only thing I needed now was an onion. I picked a white onion. I usually pick white onions. It's easier to tell when they've been bruised or otherwise damaged. Sometimes I wonder, though, if I would be better served by one of my other onion options.

That was it for the produce section. Yet, something didn't feel right. It felt like I had forgotten something. I looked around, and looked at the little grocery list that I had written for myself. I had everything I needed. I moved on.

I picked up a loaf of bread, then headed for the meat section. I needed some chicken. I always feel like I'm getting hosed when I buy chicken at Loblaws. I suck it up, and figure that it would cost even more at A&P nearby[1].

I grabbed the smallest carton of cream that they sold. The recipe I'm using it for called for 1/4 of the amount that I bought. I guess I'll have cream in my coffee this week. I feel like such a spoiled brat.

Now it was time to buy yogourt. I ended up buying the cheapest stuff they had, which cost about half as much as everything else. Yeah, sure, it's No Name brand, but it's an ingredient in a recipe, and again I only needed a fraction of the amount that I bought. I won't be putting the extra in my coffee.

I bought a jar of jam. I thought I had enough jam for this week, but I wasn't sure, and I'm going to need it next week anyway, so I bought some. It was strawberry jam, by the way.

That was it for groceries.

In terms of the usual route through the grocery store, I finished rather early. Nevertheless, I proceeded through the remaining four aisles of my usual route, in case I had forgotten something. I did not see anything that I had forgotten, so I proceeded to check out.

There was only one checkout lane open other than the 8 items or less lane, and the lineup seemed rather long, so I decided to use one of the check yourself out machines. I think I would have spent less time in line at the one checkout lane, mainly because the product code for the plum tomatoes was nowhere to be found in the menu options, and I eventually needed the help of the attendant. The total cost of this week's groceries was $29.79.

The traffic on the trip home was not as smooth, in part due to the chosen route. This way used higher traffic streets, with more stoplights, although it's a more direct route. There was an especially bad (relative to Kingston) blockage at one point because someone decided to stop their car in the left lane of the road (the lane that I had chosen). Someone driving in the right lane decided to slow down to let me in, although this only became apparent after she had been driving slowly for a while. She probably would have saved us both time if she had just exercised her right of way, and made me wait until she had passed[2].

When I got home I realized that I had bought cracked wheat bread instead of whole wheat. I'll get over that. But I also noticed that the yogourt is fat free. What does that mean? Was it specially produced to have no fat, or is yogourt naturally fat free, like pretzels? Now I could be stuck with a much too large quantity of some low quality yogourt that has been made even worse by removing the fat. I also realized that I forgot to buy pasta. This could have been found somewhere in one of the last four aisles that I walked through without getting anything from them.

[1] Why don't I go to A&P if it's closer? Because I have a car, and I can go to Loblaws, and the prices are lower at Loblaws, and the selection is much better.

[2] Giving up your right of way to do somebody a favour usually has this effect, mainly because it's not clear to the intended recipient that a favour is being done until a fair amount of time has elapsed.

Passport Confessionals

At about 6:30 this morning I embarked on a trip to Ottawa to finish the application process for my passport. Traffic was smooth sailing, aside from wasting about 1 minute pulling into a gas station that hadn't opened yet (I was trying to get gas, of course) and a 5 minute traffic slow down on the 417 (my velocity never approached zero, which is enough to keep me satisfied in slow traffic, unlike driving through another unmentioned capital city located in Ontario).

After reading reports from as late as the beginning of this week that people were spending 4-5 hours lined up at the passport offices waiting to be served, I had planned to be standing or sitting in line until some time between 12:00 and 1:00 in the afternoon. When I arrived at the office, the lineup outside of the office seemed to be rather short. Everyone must be inside, I figured. As I got closer to the office, I found out that this was not the case, as most of the people were actually outside the office. All told, I don't think I spent more than an hour in line before I got to speak to a Passport Canada employee. Certainly no more than an hour and a half. Not bad, I thought. The employee looked at my application, made sure that I had the relevant documentation with me, gave me a number, and told me to have a seat in the chairs. I sat down, looked up, and realized that my number was next, looked down, looked up again, and saw that it was my turn already. It was going way better than I expected. I went to the appropriate wicket and handed the agent my application. She told me that the passport would be ready by April 4, more than two weeks before my travel date of April 20. Well this just keeps getting better and better. After reading and hearing the stories of other people who applied by mail months ago and still haven't received theirs, I thought that I would be lucky to get it on time, unless I forked out some extra dough. There was one last bit of information that needed to be entered into the computers, namely the info about my guarantor, which I had chosen to be my supervisor. And then... the computer made a beep. It was not a happy beep. It was a beep of disapproval. You see, my supervisor is a professor emeritus. Emeritus in university speak means retired. Retired folks don't qualify, perhaps on the basis that they might too senile to reliably identify the ones they are the guarantors for. You don't find this information on the application form, however. You have to go to the FAQs on the Passport Canada's website. It never crossed my mind to A that Q. It might have, if he weren't active (he still comes in to work most days). But if he weren't active, he wouldn't be my supervisor, and I wouldn't have asked him to be my guarantor. (Proving that it would not have crossed my mind under any circumstances. QED).

Now I need to find someone else to agree to be a guarantor for me. And make another trip.

I'm surprised at how angry I wasn't after all that. I'm not pleased. But I wasn't really angry. On my way there, I imagined myself cursing and swearing, if not out loud, then in my head, at some unfortunate agent as she told me that something was wrong, especially since I got up about two hours earlier than usual and assumed I would be tired and irritable. Yet I felt no such impulse. Perhaps it was the fact that everything else up to that point had proceeded better than expected, even though it amounted to nothing. Though I would have preferred for everything to go as expected, even if it would have meant a lot of unpleasantness simply because I don't feel like paying for gas to make the second trip. Then I wouldn't have to go back get a passport.

If I had wanted to, I could have left right away and been home by noon. Instead, I descended to the lowest level of the building containing the passport offices, found a Timothy's coffee stand, ordered the largest possible coffee they offered, sat down, drank my coffee, and tried to understand the relationship between the fractional chromatic number and the vector chromatic number. I didn't figure it out completely; the coffee ran out before I could. But I understand the relationship enough to satisfy myself for the time being. I don't think I would have totally figured it out anyway.

At some point before the coffee was done, I turned on my cell phone, which made more noise than I expected and attracted the attention of a young woman sitting nearby. I smiled, more out of embarrassment than anything else. After that, she seemed to be looking at me quite a lot. Perhaps she misinterpreted my smile.

When the coffee was done, 11ish, I guess, I took a stroll around Ottawa for about an hour and a half, then headed back to my car and drove home.

Some other things to mention:

• I needed to pay for the parking up front. I paid for much more parking time than I needed to. Part of the reason I didn't just leave right away. If I wanted to, I could have parked my car there until 6:00. Or, as the ticket said, until 18:00. Stupid 24 hours clocks. As I was leaving, someone else was pulling in. I gave her my parking slip. She gave me $3.00. It didn't pay for all of the extra time that I paid for, but it's $3.00 more than I was going to ask for.
  
• There are certain establishments in Ottawa that I've only ever read about. Upon seeing some of them for the first time, I realized that in my mind these places were virtually fictional. In fact, the people who write about the places, mostly journalists are also, in my mind, fictional characters who are written by real people. Anonymous people, but real.
  
• Timothy's coffee is celebrating its 30th year. 30 years! I hadn't even heard of this place until 3, maybe 4, years ago. What was it doing for the last 27, maybe 26, years? Why didn't I notice? The nominal similarity with another popular coffee chain is also curious.
• If you want your passport to be processed in a timely manner, use the online application process if you are eligible. Don't just download the pdf (I could link to this, but why would I?) of the application form that Passport Canada has on its website. Fill in the application online, etc. Doing this is why my passport was going to be ready so much more quickly than I expected. You have to submit in person, however, and there are other restrictions.
  
• I had visions of a on office that opened into the street and a lineup that spilled out into said street. The passport office is located inside the C.D. Howe building, in a portion of the building that resembles a small enclosed mall. My visions inspired me to dress warmly. This was unnecessary. Mind you I didn't overheat until I was driving home, and the sun was beating down on me while the heat was on. I turned down the heat and all was well. In any case, if I ever offer you advice based on one of my visions, it's probably not a good idea to follow it.
  
• I parked in a municipal lot. But the municipal parking lots are only part of the parking story. For example, the C.D. Howe building has underground parking. I wonder if this is the kind of parking lot where you pay when you leave, based on how long you've been there. If so, I'll park there next time to avoid paying for parking until 18:00 hours. It's also closer. Can't get any closer, really , unless I drive through the front doors, and then I've got other problems on my hands.
• Express highways have personalities.
• You get what you pay for/fill in warranty cards. I bought a car stereo last year with lots of features for little money. It seems to have a hard time playing CDs these days. I think it has something to do with the weather (it's worse when it's cold). It's still within the warranty period, but I didn't fill in the warranty card soon enough, so I can't get them to fix/replace it.
  

Well now. I've really gone on haven't I? I'll bet you're looking forward to tomorrow's blog post where I give a detailed run down of my trip to the grocery store. Don't worry though. I won't tell you about doing my laundry. That would be boring.

Exocomps

I've been working on getting my passport for the past couple of days. I'm in a bit of a tight spot and I wanted to contact Passport Canada directly to see what the best course of action is to get my passport on time. I called the only phone number I could find, and was met with nothing but a recorded voice message offering me menu options, none of which included talking to an operator. Picking some of these menu options only lead to more recorded voice messages, and still no option to talk to an operator. The important thing to get from all this is that, well, you can listen to recorded messages all you want, but it appears that you can't actually talk to anyone. So imagine my surprise when I called after hours and receive a different voice message telling me that their offices are now closed! Did the machine that dispenses recorded messages go home for the night?

Must you? Yes I must!

This is a portion of an email that I sent to my sister a while ago. She told me recently that she thought it was funny (I thought I was just solving a math problem). Maybe you will think it's funny too.

"The other day I got a phone call from a friend. The last 4 numbers
of her phone number are the same as yours. Even though it was a
Kingston number on the call display, I thought you were calling. Her
name is Larissa, but I heard Melissa. I wrote her the following email
in response, which you might also find amusing.

If x+Larissa=Melissa, what is x?

The last four digits of your phone number are 1234 [1].
The last four digits of my sister's phone number are 1234.
Thus, when I saw your number on my call display, I thought you were my sister.
My sister's name is Melanie.
Therefore, x=Melanie."

[1] Number changed to protect the identity of the phones involved.

Bavarians Would Not Be Pleased

I find this both intriguing and appalling.

Stop Rhyming! I mean it! [1]

What do you like better, Skippy or Kraft peanut butter?

[1] I recognize the quote may not be exact.

Got Mint?

Two people, a man and a woman. The man being taller by almost a foot. The woman about to stand on a footstool beside the man, but unsure of her footing.
"I'm not going to fall am I?" she asked.
"Only if you have bad balance," he said, "or I have bad breath."

Funny

Mathematician that I am, when faced with the fact that I needed to give credit in the form of a link to my food muse Erica, yet she didn't have a blog, I created a blog for such a purpose, aptly titled "The Blogless Erica".

Curious to see how much status a person without a blog could have on the internet, I decided to google The Blogless Erica and find out. Turns out there's only one other blogless Erica out there, who is, coincidentally, somebody else's food muse.

Linking Mathy Thoughts

What must be the most unusual reason for struggling with math that I've ever heard. Hat tip to Cosh.

What may or may not be a joke. Hat tip to the Blogless Erica.

What may replace trigonometry some day. Hat tip to myself.

Identity Crisis Part 2

"You're thoughtful." -- a paraphrase of quotes by two sisters.

I never thought that I wasn't thoughtful, but if you asked me what adjectives other people would use to describe me, I probably wouldn't have come up with "thoughtful".

Update: Crisis averted. See the comments to this post.

Seeing the Light

Teaching at RMC begins today (at 12:40 EST). I hear it could be time consuming. So blogging may be light for the next few months.

My First Time

My first experience with Wikivandalism (that wasn't pointed out by someone else):

"Everyone knows Edam is made backwards. They extract the cheese from the ball, they then need to separate it into all the bits that make cheese. Cheese is made by curdling milk using a combination of something called rennet (or rennet substitutes) and acidifcation. So, Edam is made by uncurdling the cheese to make milk and stuff. Bacteria are extracted to remove the flavours. Then, the milk is recurdled, new bacteria grow and it is put into a mould and re-waxed. Ta-da! Edam!"

So said the Wikipedia entry on Edam Cheese as of Friday January 4, 2007 at 11:28 pm.

Strangely it reads properly on friends' browsers.

Monday Afternoon Poetry

Poem for a passive-agressive partner

You're pretty when you smile
You're ugly when you don't
If you're smiling, I might kiss you
If you're frowning, then I won't.

Double Delight Oreo Mint 'n Cream: A Review

Today I bought a package of the cookies mentioned in the title.

They tasted good. However, when I tried to twist open the Oreo it did not go very smoothly. There was resistance. Then, suddenly, the icing half of the Oreo flew out of my hands and into the dirty sink, rendering the cookie inedible. This was disappointing. This particular variation of the brand does not live up to the level of quality that I have come to expect from that brand.

Mr. Christie, you made a bad cookie.

Cleared for Takeoff

The RMC math department secretary has told me to contact the instructor of the other section of the course that I had been asked to teach earlier. I assume this means I have passed the security clearance.

Quote of the Day

"In fact, after suffering the spectacle for decades of Canadians trying to make American films, we may have finally seen the obverse: these Americans have made a Canadian film -- quirky, tiny, and seen by nearly no one." -- Frank Moher

Update: Click the Frank Moher link to find out the name of the movie.

Identity Crisis

I have nearly completed a Ph.D. in mathematics. Throughout my enrolment in the program, I had thought that I was an aspiring algebraic graph theorist. I have recently been informed, however, that I am actually an aspiring qualitative matrix theorist.

I don't know who I am anymore.

With Headlines Like These, Who Needs Articles?

"He was naked, on crack and in alligator's mouth"

Back to the matter at hand

Not too long ago One More Epicycle asked what deep country was. I'm at loss myself. Googling for the phrase brings us back to the post in which the question was asked before we get anything close to an answer. As an adjective for country music, deep seems to be used primarily to describe The Be Good Tanyas. So things have come full circle. Deep country is what The Be Good Tanyas play. The Be Good Tanyas play deep country. Not very helpful. Call me crazy, but I hardly think that a band from urban Canada is going to define a type of country music, especially since much of the music on the CD of theirs that I own consists of covers and reinterpretations of traditional tunes.

A bit more sleuthing seems to indicate that deep country is "white man's gospel music". There's at least one song on Chinatown, which I own, that resembles gospel music to me. The Be Good Tanyas being white people, by this definition that song would qualify as deep country, so maybe this is what is meant. The term also seems to be used to describe country music that hasn't been corrupted by Nashville or at least is in an earlier stage of corruption[1]. This too would fit, but it's too vague of a description for me to think that that's what is meant when calling their music deep country.

Whatever was meant by deep country, it's got to be a better descriptor for their music than "like Led Zeppelin" as Conan O'Brien said. Owning one of their albums and having listened to it, I have no idea where he got that from.

Personllay, I'd prefer not to think of The Be Good Tanyas as country music at all, since I like them, but I don't like country.


[1] I really can't stand country music radio, metonymously known as Nashville, on the whole. Occasionally I hear something that doesn't make me want to change stations immediately. Lately though, I've come accross a fair amount of country music that I do like. It crossed my mind that my attitudes toward country music might be changing, so I tried to listen to country music radio or watch country music tv to test that possiblity. But no. I still can't stand it. It's not my attitudes that have changed. It's the music that I have access to. Thank you internet!

Rough Riders vs. Roughriders

People used to poke fun at the CFL because the league, with a meagre 9 teams, had 2 teams with almost the same name, differing only by space. Will people now poke fun at Canada for having our two major political parties being led by people with essentially the same first name in their respective languages?

Water water everywhere...

...how many drops to drink?

There's a common bit of wisdom floating around out there that we're supposed to drink about 8 cups of water per day. I've been skeptical about this wisdom ever since I tried to get those 8 cups one time and was required to leave my desk about 16 times. The 8 cups rule is often accompanied by a number of other dubious claims about water, such as that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated, or that water cures certain diseases and ailments .

It turns out that it's "wisdom" and not wisdom. The 8 cups rule is an exaggeration, and we get most of the water that we need from the food we eat. The rest of the claims have no scientific basis.

Snopes contains a great deal of information on other urban myths, and I'm not going to post on all of them. In my experience, however, the 8 cup rule and accompanying "wisdom" is rather pervasive. It even appears on the bulletin boards in the hallowed halls of academia, where at least some of us should know better.

Let the celebrations begin

Once again, a new month is upon us, so I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Month Day[1]. Well, everyone except you.

[1] I guess if I wanted to be consistent with the yearly event that inspired this monthly event, I should call it New Month's Day. But nobody likes pronouncing an "s" after a "th", and I've been calling it New Month Day for, well, months.