aMMusing

(c) Bado (Guy Badeaux), Le Droit, www.cyberpresse.ca/droit/

This political cartoon has got to the best at encapsulating the U.S. election this coming Tuesday. Those Americans who support Bush often cite their belief that he is clear about where he is taking their country (À la “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” manner), whereas they see Kerry as being undecisive — a “flip flopper.” On the other hand, those who support Kerry consider his ability to see shades of grey to be an asset, and Bush’s either/or-ism a liability. While I agree that the “liberals’” propensity towards overly nuanced analyses can overemphasize process over action, I also think that weighty issues such as those America (and indeed “The West”) is facing cannot be reduced to simple dichotomies.

Friday’s release of the latest bin Laden video was certainly a zinger, although there’s no way of knowing how it’ll play in the mind of the electorate on Tuesday, which I predict as many others will be one very messy affair. Imagine the shame that’s probably being felt in the States as a result of this election being monitored by international observers from such beacons of democracy as Zambia and Nicaragua! (See story) But whatever the outcome — even a clearer than expected majority one way or the other on Tuesday — the cleavage in American politics will remain. Indeed, no matter who wins, we can expect the losing side to accuse the winning side of stealing the election, as well as four more years of bitter (and destablizing) divisions.

Side notes
¤ I wish Nader would have fuckin’ stayed out of the running. If we accept his claim that he is not doing it to favour Bush (which I believe he isn’t), then obviously he’s only doing it for himself and not for the Americans he proclaims wanting to protect along with their freedom. While polls show he’s not likely to be as big a factor as he was in the 2000 election, he could still be the spoiler.

¤ Funny how red is used to depict Republican states and blue for Democratic states. It’s precisely the opposite in Canada (conservative = blue and liberal = red).

¤ I get queasy each day when I visit this site because polls show that the numbers are always shifting. This only reinforces my belief this election is going to be a mess.

¤ Clearly the U.S. is big on decentralization, even when it doesn’t work. Especially after the 2000 election, isn’t it obvious that elections shouldn’t be run by states and, in turn, counties? And what about those jurisdictions using voting machines that leave no paper trail! Christ on a stick! Is it really impossible to make those machines work like ATMs?

Hiker and his partner Bello lost The Beautiful Samson last Tuesday.

Samson was possibly my favorite dog in the whole wide world. Gentle and very distinguished, I would call him The Senator (in the Canadian sense) since it just seemed to suit him.

“You’re certainly right about Samson’s gentle nature,” Hiker just wrote to me. “Everyone who met him seemed to fall for him. His presence alone provided me with a sense of peace that is truly undescribable and it’s terribly difficult to adjust to the loss.”

Samson was having a nice romp in the backyard with his canine roommate Kaizer when suddenly he fell limp — “possibly a heart attack or a ruptured tumour,” Hiker explained. He died naturally shortly after getting to the vet’s. But all who fell for his charm will long remember him.

Well, it took just a little bit over 24 hours, but I got a response to my cranky missive. I’m not satisfied with the response, but I’m not going to engage in a useless and meaningless exchange.

From: Mike Agent 1234 at [Telco] Member Services
To: Maurice
Subject: Re: Less Marketing, More Action
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 16:09:30 -0300

Hello Maurice ,

Thank you for writing. We regret to hear that you do not wish to receive [our] Newsletter and find is to be “a mindless market target”. However please keep in mind that a majority of our customers enjoy our newsletter and wish to receive it. [Ed.: Oh, bite me! Although I don't have any hard evidence, I seriously doubt that "a majority of ... customers enjoy" the newsletter. Furthermore, I didn't call the newsletter "a mindless market target"; I claimed that Member Services view so-called members that way.]

The [...] Newsletter is sent out to all of our customers, and is simply a way to communicate and inform our customers of events, new products, promotions and a variety of other information that is of use to most of our customers. All [Telco] internet customers receive the [...] newsletter unless they unsubscribe to it. [Ed.: That is precisely my point about PIPEDA: Telco, I believe, is in breach of it. Customers should be given the opportunity to opt in and NOT be opted in by default. Unfortunately, I haven't the time to file a complaint with Telco's privacy officer, but I verily believe I would have a case.]

As for the issue you are having with Spam, we cannot filter out all Spam. Spam that is filtered out arrives in large numbers, it would be impossible to target the spam that arrivers is smaller number intended for specific email addresses. [Ed.: The point Mike seems to be missing is that Telco did have, prior to the strike, efficient server-side spam filters. I recognize that no such filter is bullet proof and that spammers are extremely creative in finding ways to evade filters, but that is why the filters have to be updated regularly. The number of spam messages I receive daily from my other addresses combined, all hosted with Hosting Matters and using Spam Assassin, is far lesser than my single Telco address. MT-related comment spams are the only exception, and that's something I'm prepared to accept if I persist on not upgrading MT but still want to leave comments open.]

You can configure your email client to filter your email so that messages containing certain words or email addresses are deleted before you see them. This will not stop the email from being sent, but you will not see it on your computer. [Ed.: Not acceptable. It's not that I don't want to see the spam messages; it's that I want them weeded out as much as possible at the server level so that I don't have to download them.] Be careful when using this feature. If you are too specific with the filtering criteria, you may delete messages that you did not intend to delete. [Ed.: That can also be a problem with server-side filters.] For information on setting up mail filters in your email program, refer to your program’s help files under Message Filters or Message Rules or visit the following websites:

For Netscape Communicator
For Outlook Express

Please note that this process is not supported by the helpdesk. This information is provided for use at your discretion only. [Ed.: I'm also aware, and I accept, that Telco does not support the e-mail program I use, namely Eudora. It still doesn't change the fact you've missed my point.]

I hope that I was able to help. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again at any time. [Ed.: No, you were of no help whatsoever. But I won't be wasting my time with you since it's clearly not going to go anywhere.]

Kind regards,
Mike

I must have gotten out the wrong side of the bed this morning, for I just fired off this message to my ISP in response to their online newsletter which came in today.

From: Maurice
To: [Telco] Member Services
Subject: Less Marketing, More Action
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:07:00 -0300

Good day,

I’m getting rather annoyed with [Telco]‘s “Member Services.” Why? Because it seems to view me, a so-called “member,” as a mindless market target who waits to receive with baited breath the next issue of your online newsletter, from which I’ve gleefully unsubscribed today. I’m pretty sure that unless I took leave of my senses at one point, I did not voluntarily subscribe to receive such tripe, and if I did, I doubt I would have asked it to be sent as a HTML-formatted e-mail message — unless that’s the only form in which you publish the darned thing. If the only reason I have been added to your distribution list is, as I suspect, the fact that I use [Telco] as my high-speed ISP, then I fear [Telco] may be crossing the line as far as Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is concerned, as such a distribution list should be an “opt-in” and not the other way around.

But even more annoying than that is how there seems to be time to produce a useless marketing brochure when there needs to be action taken to curve the amount of spam I receive at my [telco] address. [Telco] used to have a decent server-side filter that cut most of it out. But the effectiveness of such filters is contingent on their being updated regularly on the server. I could understand why it wasn’t being updated during the lengthy strike that plagued [Telco] this year, but the strike has ended more than a month ago and clearly this VALUABLE SERVICE has not been updated yet. I have even sent, shortly after the strike concluded, a suggestion that it be done as soon as possible. I got no response whatsover to this suggestion, yet today I received yet another issue of that newsletter/tripe that pretends that [Telco] is the best thing since sliced bread.

A bit less marketing and a bit more action, people! Updating spam filters is a valuable service. A marketing newsletter is not.

Unlike some people, I don’t like the wind. The sound of it makes me nervous for some odd reason. So I remember not being at all surprised when I learned that there’s a tiny place in Saskatchewan — I don’t remember its name, so I’ll call it Pancake, SK — where there’s always some wind. Always. Sometimes maybe just a tiny breeze, but wind nonetheless. And in that place in Saskatchewan, the rate of suicide per capita is off the scale compared to the national average.

The relentless wind, quite literally, pushes people there over the bend. Not that there’s such a thing as a bend in Pancake, SK.

Late last January, I wrote about this new ventilation system that was installed directly above my apartment. And I wondered back then if I would get used to it, if it was to become my “new normal.” Well, it’s been 9 months now, and the blasted thing actually gets turned off automatically from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily. But I’m still not, and never will be, used to it.

The fan is driving me over the bend. And while I know that the stress I’m under due to my work is the main reason why I’m feeling so damn tired these days, I’m now convinced that the fan is an irritant. When it turns itself off for the night, I immediately feel myself relaxing a little bit.

Just to give you an idea of magnitude, as the beast is obviously not exceeding acceptable decibel values… I would compare it to living directly below a laundry room where 3 dryers and 3 washers are running non-stop for 16 hours each day. But the problem is that what’s separating me from the fan is 6 inches of void and two planks of wood, not a roof made of sturdier material. On some days, things rattle in here; I’ve even had to permanently stick crunched up empty packs of cigarettes between some windows to stop the rattling.

It won’t happen tomorrow or next week, but this is a deal breaker for me and I’ll have to move out. I’ll be celebrating 10 years in the same apartment on Feb. 1, 2005, and since I hate moving so much, I assumed I’d stay here as long as I’m in Halifax. The only thing that’s holding me back right now is the rent. It’s as cheap as I’ll ever get in Halifax and, really, the most I can afford right now. One possibility I’ll look into, though, is co-op housing, of which there is a lot in this city. I know other freelancers in town who have followed that route and it’s sensible for people whose income is so intimately linked to the receivables folder. Knowing exactly when the next payday will be is the only thing I envy salaried people — that, and the benefits.

The fan just turned itself off for the night.

It is blessedly quiet in here, just as it used to be once upon a time. The only sound I hear is the quiet humming of the computer and the clicking sound from my keyboard as I type. And right now I’m thinking about how I really must try to fall asleep before the Fan from Hell comes back in service for another day.

Oh, how I miss this silence!

I got really, really, REALLY excited about something today, but then when I stopped for a second and reflected on what I found so exciting, I realized that I desperately need to get a life. Yes, alas, I’ve become work and very little else.

But, regardless, can I tell you what got me all excited? Pleeease?! Can I, can I, can I?

Ah, thank you for indulging me.

As you might guess, it’s about TextStyleM again. It always seems to be these days. I’ve been working like a fiend on a particularly complicated module, using one of my client’s site as the base. But I’ve been noticing for quite some time that the site in question is rather slow. Thinking it might be because of another, unrelated complicated module installed on that site, I took a closer look at a long-ago-completed routine and noticed that I could make TextStyleM skip an itineration if the requested page view involves the unrelated complicated module. I did so and it helped …but only a bit and not for very long.

Then I decided I should try to run the complicated module I’m currently building on another site and it just flew, so that narrowed it down to it not being the culprit. After that I happened to be poking around yet another client’s site and realized that it, too, while not as bad as the first client’s, has been getting a little sluggish lately. But before pondering that situation too deeply, I had the brilliant idea of disabling the two complicated modules on the first site …and that’s when the plot thickened: There was no appreciable difference in performance.

All my clients’ sites are currently on the same server, yet some run fast while others don’t. Could it be a problem with the database? Could it be that TextStyleM tries to decode its markup language more often than I think it is? Could it be….

And then, as I was thinking aloud with BeeGoddessM at the other end of the line, something stared back at me on the screen. In fact, two things.

If you used TextStyleM and wanted to have an image appear on a given page, you would look up the image in the database (perhaps upload it first) and answer a few simple questions on how you wished the image to appear. Your answers to those simple questions would lead TextStyleM to generate a code, ready to be copied-and-pasted to the text you’re editing. Then, when someone views the page on the site, TextStyleM would decode the markup you generated and plunk the image there instead.

That’s the magic of storing information in a relational database. In databasing, I seldom use “SELECT * FROM tablename” statements. Instead, I try to be as specific as possible. But when I created the site-side of TextStyleM‘s image function, the wide-open, unlimited query above had little to no impact on performance. But the problem is that, since that time, I’ve added a few calls to PHP functions within the loop that fetches the results of the query in order to check if the image files mentioned in the database really do exist. So that first “problem” site, for which TextStyleM keeps track of well over 400 images, the script has been calling a certain PHP function once and sometimes twice for each of the images listed in the database, which wasn’t necessary for a single page view. Performance didn’t suffer when a site had only 20 images or so, but 400+ images? I’d be out of breath, too!

Fortunately, it took me maybe 30 minutes to implement a solution, and boys oh boys is it EVER a solution! Now the number of images on a site has no impact on the speed at which pages are served up. Every one of my TextStyleM-driven site is much faster now, although the speed difference is certainly most noticeable on that first “trouble” site. The solution?

One conditional statement:

if ($found = preg_match_all(‘/\{[I|i][M|m][G|g]\s+(\d+)\s+/’, $TCoded_text, $match)) {

followed by a remarkably short foreach loop to create a WHERE statement that selects only the images required on the page.

THAT’S THE CATCH! Your eyes are glazing over as you’re reading this. I can hear your very polite “That’s excellent, Maurice!” yet I can imagine you shaking your head and really thinking, “This guy’s really weird.” And while all this is going on, I’m as excited as if I’d been the one who’d figured out that E = mc².

Hence the only conclusion possible: I need to grab a life …soon!

I told you that I drove up to Moncton for the day on September 16, which would have been my father’s 79th birthday. Well, it looks like I’ll be going back up for October 28, which is my mother’s 76th birthday. With my sister.

Indeed, my sister called a little while back to suggest that she could fly from Ottawa to Halifax on the evening of the 27th and we could drive together from the airport to Moncton to be with Mom for her first birthday in 53 years without Dad. My sister has a one-way ticket for Moncton-Ottawa that she has to use by March 2005. It was to be her return ticket after spending two weeks in Moncton while Dad was hospitalized. She was supposed to go back on March 13th; Dad died on the 12th. So she had to get another return ticket instead and keep the “old” one for another time.

With any luck, the weather will cooperate. My sister’s idea is that it would be nice if we could go on a drive — perhaps to Fundy National Park — and finish the day at a nice restaurant. Mom’s a really good sport and she’s very easy to entertain, so I think she’ll like this idea.

She’s doing very well, by the way …all things considered. Already she accepted my sister’s invitation to spend Christmas in Ottawa, which is a stroke of genius on my sister’s part. Not only is it good that Mom won’t be in Moncton for this first Christmas, but also it’ll give her the kind of Christmas she likes. What she likes at Christmas is to see kids opening their gifts; my 12-year-old nephew, my sister’s boy, is the only “kid” left since all but one of my nieces are young adults now. The one concession that’ll likely have to occur is that my sister will have to go to midnight mass. She categorically doesn’t do the “church thing” and wouldn’t do it if she were visiting in Moncton. So I wonder if they’ll all end up going for this once. I hope so…

I’ve always been reticent to disclose too much about how my business is doing. I just think it’s not a good idea. There’s too much at stake in letting everyone know one way or the other.

But I feel like disclosing a little bit right now.

Progress on TextStyleM, or what I should rightly call My Life’s Work, has been phenomenal this year but especially since late spring. Of course, there are so many more modules that need to be added, my head spins just thinking about them all. But I’m getting signals telling me that, so far, I’ve managed to create a product that’s more than “just good.” Among those signals:

• I landed a new client this week, beating out several other bids for the project; and
• the more I look at TextStyleM the more it’s striking me as tight.

The first signal should be readily understandable to any outsider. I think the clincher of my CMS, which the demo site probably helped to illustrate in this case, is that it’s difficult to screw up a website with it and that it doesn’t require technical know-how (like basic HTML). But, for me, perhaps the nicest thing about landing this contract is that the organization actually hired a technical consultant to vet the bids, so unlike any other bid I’ve submitted, this one was considered a contender by one of my peers. It’s a test I’m glad to note I have passed.

It’s a little bit harder for me to put the second signal into words. What I mean by “tight” is that when someone signs onto TextStyleM, there doesn’t seem to be that much to it on the surface. But there is. By poking around, one discovers that there are myriad ways to tweak the managed website, not to mention that it really is next to impossible to screw things up. The system “watches out” for all the pitfalls one can encounter when publishing a site on a Linux box (e.g., how spaces in file names can be problematic or how an uppercase A in a filename is not the same as a lowercase A). There are layers and layers of safeguards and helpers, yet all are transparent. For all the respect and admiration I have for MT, I like how there’s nothing as geeky as “Rebuld Site” in TextStyleM. I guess what I’m saying is that the system is, deceptively in a good way, a lot “smarter” than what meets the eye.

So, objectively, things seem pretty good. But because I’ve been stirring in so many pots since the spring — programming, managing and developing content for some clients, writing proposals, co-developing a series of ads, finishing up the writing of standard contracts (including licensing agreements and an official “Acceptable Use Policy”) — I haven’t had much time to seek out as many new clients as I would want. I have had several ideas recently, but now the time has come to push outwards more often and a little harder.

And I’d be lying if I told you I’m not scared. No, it’s not because I’m not confident in my product. Quite the contrary! Rather, it’s the thought of all the work that’ll represent on top of keeping my existing clients happy and further developing my script. Add to that the fact I’m feeling tired these days due to not having taken a decent vacation in years. Plus, currently — this is as detailed as I’m prepared to get — my return on the number of hours I work isn’t where I think it should be. My brother the accountant has long noticed this fact, but now the challenge I’m facing is finding the best way to grow when already I’m feeling that the slate is pretty full. THAT is what is frightening me most these days; it’s knowing that I must find the next ounce of energy — and the next one, and the next one — that will lead me to reaching my long-term goals.

Yet, do you want to know what’s slightly perverse in all of this? If someone were to suggest that I pack it in and find myself a “real job,” I’d likely projectile puke all over them.

That is simply not an option. The job or the puking…

I still don’t have cable TV. Therefore, I wasn’t able to watch last Thursday’s first U.S. presidential debate. Still, I have to say I’m pleased to hear and read that Bush did so poorly. And even funnier is to see those American right-wing apologists pissin’ their pants ’cause there’s clearly little redeeming in Bush’s performance.

This election shouldn’t be as close as it is. The Bush administration and Bush himself have so much trouble with something so simple, so fundamental, that it seems inconceivable that anyone would ascribe the word “honest” to that bunch. And that thing which is so simple and so fundamental is called “telling the truth.” While I’m not convinced that Kerry is above twisting the truth, I do think he wouldn’t be as incapable of dealing with it.

I just hope Kerry doesn’t become overly confident in the remaining two debates. From the bits I’ve seen and read, it’s clear to me he has managed to poke large holes in what was supposed to be Bush’s citadel in this election. While I’m not so foolish as to believe that there’ll be a Kerry landslide on Nov. 2, I do hold fast to that glimmer of hope: that, come Jan. 20, 2005, a new President of the United States will be sworn in, and the whole (rest of the) world will sigh a huge sigh of relief.

Workers at Aliant, Atlantic Canada’s regional phone company, were on strike from April 23 until about 10 days ago. My Internet Service Provider (ISP) is Aliant. Before the strike, the techies installed some kind of server-side spam killer which seemed to work quite well. But, due to the strike, it obviously hasn’t been updated in quite some time. I now receive some 30 to 40 spam messages every day — mostly pr0n-related — and well over 95 percent of them are coming through my telco account. While I’m sure there’s tons for the techies to catch up on now that they’re back to work, I still fired off a complaint/suggestion that they should make the updating of their spam killer a high priority. In the meantime, since hardly anyone sends me messages to that address, I have set Eudora to stop automatically checking for new mail on that account.

And speaking of spam, as much as I can’t comprehend the mindset of spammers, I REALLY can’t understand those who insist on spamming MT-powered blogs. Oh sure, I have the blacklist plugin and all, but several still manage to come through. But as annoying as they are, I’m still not prepared to upgrade to a newer version of MT. If it weren’t for the spamming of comments, MT is, as the Queen of Sheba‘s mother would say, “Good enough for the boys I go out with.”