Matt Goyer: Muses

Webnoize is running a story entitled 'OpenNap Server Operators Challenge Canadian Copyright Law' and the teaser is (you have to pay to read the full story (or email me)):

Refusing to disable a web server that enables copyrighted music file sharing, two Ontario college students hope to inspire debate in Canada over how the government should handle online copyright reform...

My favorite line of the article is this Brian Robertson quote:

If our legal people didn't think there was copyright protection in that area, we wouldn't have sent the letter in the first place.

I beg you to find a reference to any Canadian law in their letter to us.

The article also refers to Canada's third world like copyright laws, and the fact that Canada has the highest per-capita use of file-swapping services.

The funny thing is that when the reporter called I just spouted off like I normally do and didn't actually think they were going to run a story.. But they did since one of the New York guys mentioned it during our meeting.

Brad asks 'What dumb things do your parents want you to do?'. Where do I begin!?

Buy the family's used Neon when it was in fact at one time mine
Stop drinking so much when I don't drink much
To never ever indulge in recreational drugs. Yummy E.
To post better photos of them (you'll have to send me one Dani.)
To save for taxes and/or buy the Neon instead of buying digital cameras

We watched Volunteers yesterday. It was weird. Hey! We should put that video we did in Grade 11 online! (Who has a copy still?)

Both Brad and Tracy weighed in our new online registration system. Don't even get me started on how backwards Canada's most innovative university really is. Okay a quick list:

No 802.11b wireless network when Western has one
Can't pay my tution online when I can at UofManitoba
Can't view my transcript online when you can everywhere else
We have iMac labs
You have to use Telnet to use the co-op access system (thankfully I'm not in co-op).

Langeman pointed me to Save Your Site from Spambots which I'll be reading after work.

Time to get back to the long afternoon stretch when I'm at my most productive during a 9-5 day. I think though I'm actually most productive in the 6pm-2am slot but that wouldn't fit with the schedules of my roommates and girlfriend.

Last note, I've received lots of positive emails after posting our CRIA response to Pho. Seems like everyone wants someone to stick it to the man. Especially now that Napster has a deadline and Napster abandons .MP3 for .NAP.

Rate my Professors @UW. Wow! I've gotta work so I'll more fully comment on this this evening. (Thanks to Nat for the link)

Gotta get some work done so reviews and photos from the BNL concert (w/the new camera) will have to wait.

Re: Permalinks. You can link to each day, just look at the format for the calendar. You can also permalink to each entry. I'll try to fix things up so that it posts a handy link for you all (the old site had permalinks.. how did they disappear??)

Toronto just lost the 2008 Olympic bid to Beijing. I don't care too much because who knows where I will be 7 years from now. But really how many people will be executed from now till Beijing hosts the Olympics? Maeve's pretty distraught that it's gone to a dictatorship. Which dictatorship will get it next? Cuba?

Dutch company offers vibrators to customers who buy mobile handsets.

So about yesterday's non-entry..

See we went out to a show and on the subway on the way home Natalie started to look for her key which turns out wasn't in her purse. Maeve and I also did not have keys. This meant that yes, all our keys were in our locked apartment while we were not. Once back at the apartment we tailgated in and checked out the sign on the super's door which reads 'locked out?' which we had all seen but hadn't read. Basically the bottom line was that they could let us in but were under no obligation to do so! Now this super wasn't on duty but the one in the other building, 40 Alexander, was. So we went over there, tried his buzz up which told us that if it was 'an emergency' we were to knock on his door (first we had to wait to tailgate in). Is it an emergency being locked out of your apartment? 'Specially when they're under no obligation to let you back in?

While Natalie waited for someone to let her in the building I went to the Mariott to discover it was $140/night! Not good. But in the meantime Natalie had woken up the super and they were on their way to letting us in. On the way he told us that the locksmith they recommend for when you get locked out costs $130 for 'emergency' service!

It's interesting that losing a key could prove to be more expensive then losing your cell phone.

So that was our adventure.

Prior to it we had gone to see a Douglas Coupland play adapted from his book Life After God with Angie and her friends. The play was okay but aimed at people 10 years our senior (the real gen-x'ers). After the play we went to the Victory Cafe for a pitcher then to a sushi place for some raw fish (check out Sticky Rice).

Now it's back to work. And why hasn't Jonathan posted anything lately!?

Some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) are online. I never really thought about the amount of questions the weblog generated till today when I actually reflected upon it and noticed I got 4 today. Email me if you have any (or just want to spam me).

My camera is on it's way from Alberta. It was a bit of an ordeal since I had to fax them and I have neither a printer or a fax machine here (I do have a scanner) and neither Natalie, Aimee, or Mark could assist me.

Hey Angie! :P

Oh, and someone complained about the white background. Is it really too white??

A new vice: Getting addicted to on-line auctions (via The Globe). Now if only I could get people so addicted to my (money making websites) that it'd cause relationships to fail and cities to fall.

Darryl pointed me to a rant he wrote on Spam: Spam, Spam, And (You Guessed It) More Spam. His proposed solution is sending back a bounce message. One of my friends Keith does that but I think the problem is that for the most part spammers are abusing open relays in which case they probably don't take note of the bounces. What we need is a reverse p2p spammer. It'd search out some valid contact info in the spam like a URL, email, or phone and then notify all 10 million of you buddies who procede to spam them the hell back.

This was also my first time on Darryl's personal site. Of course it shouldn't surprise me that he has his own vanity dot.com (instead of www.myownfunkylittlecorneroftheweb.com) because he's just like I am and probably more so than I realized.

He does the cottage thing, wakeboards, is a dot.com fanatic, big pho follower, but what most surprised me the most is that he wants a 29er. Well Darryl if you ever do find your 29er and need skipper (you're probably a skipper though) give me a call. I've been drooling over the 49er and 29er ever since they've been introduced. I'd also settle for an International 14.

I'm going to start a frequently asked questions list. So send your questions in.

The other day I posted my @transpose.com email on this page. It's never been posted anywhere before and low and behold today I received spam for both it and mgoyer@fairtunes.com.

Now the other day John raised the point of 'imagine if 50% of the time you answered the phone it was a telemarketer'. Or even 75% of the time. You'd good stark raving mad and stop answering the phone and society would revolt. Now why doesn't that happen with email? Our contact@fairtunes.com receives about 5 spams for every legitimate email. It's out of control!

CmdrTaco once suggested that we charge to receive spam. $1/spam. Or something akin to postage for paper spam. That way the average person would be making about $200/month. That'd be enough to cover our co-lo fees!

Actually there's some e-gold thing out there that gave you an email address except you'd only receive an email if someone paid you a set amount in gold first. Would you pay a penny to email me so that I would never get spam again? I doubt it. But then we could setup some arrangement so that I'd just refund the money to you.. Hmmmm.

BTW, I hate forwards.

So my last pay cheque was a real cheque so I go to the bank (the Royal) today, wait in line FOREVER and then the lady tells me that there is a 25 day hold on USD cheques. I should have asked if that was business days.

Now I do all my banking (business&personal) with this bank and have banked with them since I was like 5 and they have to hold my money for 25 days? And yet I can drop a cheque of in a bank machine and withdraw the money immediately. Did I mention I HATE BANKS?

Doc has a nice fuzzy story about paying for other people's blogs. I wish I could host everyone's weblogs for free (Nic's been the last to inquire about blogs) but unfortunately I can't. Some people have 'free' Tomato accounts but we have to re-coup our monthly bill somehow and so we must charge. We are reasonable and the service is usually prompt. Just don't expect 5 nine's reliability :).

The neatest thing about PriceSCAN is their price graphs. Check out a graph of a generic 256MB simm. At one point it's up to $1000US and now it's $29.99US. Makes one wonder why the price of memory at co-managed facilites such as RackSpace haven't dropped accordingly.

Tech nuggets:

Tim pointed me to this new search engine called Vivisimo which 'does results clustering'. Check me out.

Rob pointed me MusicBox which lets you stream songs from Freenet. I couldn't get it to work. Rumor has it the new Freenet release will fix things up?

Our work server at Verio was rebooted two days ago and lost it's 200 days of uptime because their data center lost it's 'commercial power' and it took 20 minutes to get the generator (manually) online during which time they maxed out their battery back up units. You'd think they'd just tell us this instead of me having to email and call complaining that our server had been rebooted. But rest assured. They're working with their vendors 'to insure that this problem does not reoccur'. ..I know it's just a development server but come on, this is Verio!

I'm back from the dead!

Have I gone a whole week without blogging? Wow. That is hardcore. Though it must prove that I'm not addicted like I thought I was.

So to catch everyone up:

Went to Winnipeg on Friday with Nat (2 hr flight)
Drove to the lake (2 hr drive)
Saturday chilled at Echo Bay (my mom's & our cottage). Weather was sunny, cool, and windy.
Sunday chilled at Austin Lake (my dad's cottage). We went swimming because his lake is much warmer than ours.
Monday chilled back at our place.
Monday night: Mom gets run over by motor boat
- She calls from the neighbours for us to come over in the car.
- We drive over.
- We're taken to the dock and told to get the motorboat which has our dog in it in the other bay
- Aimee drives while I 'Navy Seal' from the borrowed boat into our boat which is going in circles with Pintail (our dog) at the helm (it was a very dangerous stunt but way cool).
- I drop Pintail off at our place. Rip back to neighbours.
- Find one soaking wet mother with a towel and frozen corn pressed to her head.
- We swing by our place get warm clothes.
- Natalie, my mom, and I rip off to Kenora's hospital
- We drop mom off and go for dinner.
- We got tired of waiting and went to see Tomb Raider while mom dies a slow death in the under-funded emergency ward
- We pick up mom whom the doctor believes is very lucky to be alive.
- She got 10 stitches on her head where presumably the prop nicked her.
Tuesday we go canoeing and burn ourselves (finally) in the hot sun.
Wednesday it's back to Toronto bright and early

The TalkTV thing sucked. I really hate being a webcam guest. I know they enjoy the novelty value of it but really. Ugh.

I went and visited Henry's and Downtown Camera today. The people at Henry's were better. The bad news is that the Canon A20 that I had my eye on doesn't come with rechargable batteries which means the price just jumped from $300 to $350 (all prices USD unless otherwise noted). The guy really recommended the Canon S110 Digital Elph which is absolutely tiny and comes with batteries. It also has a toy video mode and with 8 meg of flash memory you'll probably get all of a second of video. SO.... Big decisions. Or there's the Kodak Dx3500 at $249. But he cautioned against that one since Kodak doesn't actually make their own cameras. But Cisco doesn't make their own routers. AHH! Digital camera hell. The only consoling factor is that the Canons have a high re-sale value. So the cost of ownership if you sell after a year is probably around $200cdn, which isn't bad at all.

As a birthday present (it's coming up!) you can all buy me flash memory for whatever camera I get.

Warning: I'm heading to the lake (Little Echo Bay on Lake of the Woods) for the weekend with Natalie. Won't be back till Wednesday.

The team is also expecting a working prototype by end of next week / early week after.. !!

Just got an email from PayPal, the bank that isn't officially a bank but sucks just like one. They're changing their rate structure again. Basically their rate is the same as our Visa one through Moneris. Isn't that ironic.

Should I be insulted or flatered that TalkTV just called me up to be a 'webcam correspondent' for tonight's show? Email me or join the chat at 6pm EST and weigh in then.

Other guests include Jon Katz who recently wrote, the rise and fall of the geeks for Shift (which I picked up Tuesday night after the movie we tried to go to was full). Jon Katz is also very well known for his columns on Slashdot.

Like the article the other day which pointed out 9 types of math students I would hope that there are many types of geeks. Me being more of the sociable / well adjusted type who just happens to use computers for more than just suffering the web and emailing (I really meant surfing, but maybe we do 'suffer' the web).

Jonathan *THE* Glam King is now online at Viva Glam King. The page is still pretty lame (if anyone could help fix that graphic so that it doesn't look like shit please do) but hopefully he'll be filling us in on his european adventure which began Monday. We got word that he arrived safetly and quickly met up with some fellow UW'ers to get high with in Amsterdam (because what else would you do in Amsterdam? :) ).

I started a work weblog. Unfortunately it's not publicly available and will be very boring (not that work is boring but just that sometimes it is (unless you're really into learning about using java to process http uploads)).

And rumor has it Angie wants to get something going. So here's the deal. $10/month and we'll hook you up with some weblog space on our nice little friendly server named Tomato.

I should really comment on the comments of the other UW'ers but it's late and I really don't think it deserves comment.

Aimee emailed to remind me that the house back home in Winnipeg where it's been 30c does not have air conditioning and that I should 'quit [my] freaking whining!!!!'. Thanks Aimee for putting me in my place, but I'm all hot and sweaty! (Natalie is telling me it was 32c not 25c. (And that I seem like a wimp. ('No take that out, I'm like your editor. No !! No, Matt!! I'm looking you out of the room!' (whose weblog is this anyway!))

Ugh! Now I'm in trouble because I didn't put the clothes in a pile when people looked at the apartment on 2 minutes notice today.. Sshesh! And our cleanaholic roommate Maeve is doing the dishes. She's kind of like my old roommate Rob (30 something, architect, typically left work really late (like 2am)) who did the dishes when he came home at 2am before going to bed even though he never ate at home.

Ah my boring life. Relish in how un-boring your life now seems after reading the above.

I'm in digital camera hell. First, can I afford it? Then is it 1 megapixel or 2? 8megs of memory? Do I really need optical zoom? Kodak? HP? Fuji?

I've read review after review on Amazon and Epinions. The Kodak DX3500 is one I'm looking at. I really like the Canon cameras but they're way too pricey.

All I know is that I refuse to pay more than $500 for one. I don't understand why we don't have good $200 ones yet!? I think $200 is my general price point. If Blackberries, MP3 players, video capture boards were all $200 I'd easily have one of each.

At least I know which MP3 player I'll be getting: Archos 6000. Funny that I haven't bought it yet. But I don't really go out much so why do I really *need* it? I can probably put off buying it till the fall when I'll have a car to drive in.. Which hopefully by then the 20 gig will have dropped in price.

In order to stem the flood of incoming emails.. I was mistaken when I said Jonathan was going to be gone for six months. I really meant six weeks. See the music here was that LOUD.

Check out Rafi's Pride account (the cop car story is the best and screams Rafi get a digital camera!). Maeve still can't believe that we had never met before Saturday night but I don't. I've often gotten together with people I met on the web (now that can be mis-construed). Rafi even suggested we have a Waterloo blog party. Now that could be fun, but what would we talk about? We already know all about each others lives.

Natalie pointed me to mathNEWS's feature on Advanced Boy Watching which breaks down UW Mathies into nine boy types. I just asked her which one I am. She said Boy type four. I'll let you find out what that one is yourself :). I of course disagree and believe I'm a type nine. ..In general I don't read mathNEWS because it sucks and is geared towards Boy Type Ten (note: doesn't actually exist on the list). What is a type ten? They're the kind that run for Mathsoc office, have visited the comfy lounge more than once, and raise their hand in class to ask annoying leading questions that they know the answer to.

It's finally quiet here! The streets are still pretty dirty but they got all the stages outta here pretty quick in the dead of the night. The air conditioner is still not fixed.. UGH!

Quick blog! Rafi was just over for a quick drink (well a whole bottle actually) before heading out to 'The Barn'. Ah! I should of got a webcam photo of all the action (he brought two friends and we have 3 friends over). See, I need a digital cam. This week I'll do the research and we'll pick one up shortly.. It will cost like $500 though. Ugh.

Back to partying! Aimee, wish you were here! But last night and this morning and afternoon we've been sick. Maeve brought the sickness to our house and it's spread to us all. My throat is sore and my world spinning but we're partying hard none-the-less. So we're grumpy and sick between the partying.

Aimee if you can come the weekend of the 13th, you can come to Melissa Ferrick with us, which will be GOOD.

Quick break from the festivites. (Full story later).

Ashley MacIsaac was just on stage and this guy like jumped up and started hugging him and Ashley went N-U-T-S and started kicking the guy and chasing him with his fiddle (/violin?) and bow! In like 30 seconds the show was over and the DJ was on. Conclusion: Ashley is a cry-baby diva who flips out on stage. And the whole thing was VERY intense.

Hawksley Workman was before cry-baby and ROCKED. VERY GOOD. I thought Tegan and Sara were chatty on stage but Hawksley Workman was out of control. He talked about anything and everything. He's so far been the highlight of this fun packed day.

Just talked to Rafi on the cell and he's making his way down to our pad to party it up. Never met him before, should be interesting!

I'm dying to add pictures and videos to this weblog. I'd also like to mobilize it and with GPRS now here it shouldn't be long.

I think adding a digital camera to the mix is the first step. I would love to have one right now in the middle of all the color of Pride. But I'd also like to add video. I checked out some dual still and video cameras but the video end is always rather budget (low resolution, no sound, very short capture time). It seems like the best plan is to buy a digital camera, and then when I want to add video get a video capture card like the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon ($429! (might be cheaper to smuggle one up through the US)) and just a plain old camcorder. We used to have a family camcorder but something broke but I think I could use it as a webcam with the ATI AIW. The AIW also allows you to do fun stuff like watch, capture, then trade TV shows.

But I'd also like a Blackberry for 24/7 email connectivity (I'd also be able to (text) blog with it!) and I'll be needing a new desktop for the fall. Lots of tech expenditures.. And I have to buy that Neon from my sister. Hmmmm.. Lottery ticket anyone?

The music started pumping at around noon today and is still going strong.

We just got back from the Dyke Parade which certainly was entertaining to say the least! The parade of course featured lots and lots of women. There weren't any floats. Just some pickup trucks blaring music with women hanging all over them, some dressed, some not. Lots of banners too. From 'jewish ottawa lesbians' to 'pride and pregnant'.

I think Natalie wants me to talk about 'the nipples'. I also think that she doesn't think I will because of the 'blatant editorial censorship' being practised by the editorial team here (more on that later). Anyhow. Yes there were some top less women. And I'll admit that there was less than I thought there'd be. (Visions of a street filled with naked women danced through my mind days leading up to the event). And yes the top-less women were very much 'normal' and not your plasticy perky airbrushed Maxim girl that we've been raised on. Yes it's true, the women of the 'real world' do not all resemble the women of our hollywood/mtv/prime time/dirty magazine world. (This sort of sounds like I've never seen a normal/real girl naked before :) ). It's sad that we even live in a world where women going topless is a blog-worthy event. If I can go topless then so should they! (Note: I have never gone out topless).

Last night was pretty low key. Jonathan and I went to 'The Garage', a little hole in the wall, for sandwiches then later in the evening the gang all went out to the block party literally just outside our bedroom window. It however closed down at 11pm because of the various noise laws. But our street and the surrounding ones (like Church) are all blocked off filled with throngs of people in all manner of dress cruising around.

I wish I had a digital camera so I could show you just how close this party is to our place :). I think I'll do a sketch and post in a few minutes. Should be interesting!

The best part about 'all this' is the diversity. You get to see the whole range and begin to realize that not all gay people are young, hip, urban trendsetters. Not surprisingly a lot of them look 'normal'! (Shocker I know). (But the girls do believe that gay men are hotter than straight men.) The educational aspect of last night was seeing guys who could pass as my dad getting all groovy just like the young guys. They're drinking beer in their khakis and polo's just like they walked out of some tower on Bay Street and getting all groovy just like the younger guys in muscle shirts and styled hair. The same was true of the dyke march today. You see people who could easily be your sister or your mother. Or even your grandmother. But I do have a hard time imagining my mom on one of those Harley's all decked out in leather.

..I once had this pin that read 'Someone you love is gay' (it's how I picked up Jonathan in Math136 :) ). And it's true. Statistically chances are very high someone you love is gay and yet we still live in a very unaccepting world. I'm thinking of some of my Grebel friends who wouldn't be caught dead living in Boystown or hanging out during pride. They believe all these people (myself included as I'm living in sin) are going to hell. I think though they'll find heaven is a lonely boring place without us all.

I don't know if I'm making sense because I'm just rambling on. Oh well!

It's Pride weekend.
We live in 'Boystown'.

There is now a beer garden literally 50 feet away from our 4th story bedroom window. It is now only 4:18pm and they've just turned the music on. It's so loud I can feel it in my chair here at my desk. I've sinced turned off my media player. I think it's going to be a long loud weekend of P-A-R-T-Y-I-N-G.

But first I have two more hours of coding.

Following in the foot steps of Johnny Deep using his 16 year old daughter to sell Aimster, AOL who is suing Aimster is using 12 year old Brittney Cleary to push their service offerings. Here's the opening lyrics to her song, 'I.M. ME', bound to make AOL millions,

Let's meet at the same time
Same place
Send your jpeg, I wanna see your face
Girlfriend, send an I.M.

I bought my family The Goyers.ca (nothing up yet) so that they could get email addresses there since the ISP they were previously at was recently bought out and subsequently shut down. However Aimee thinks Aimee@TheGoyers.ca is too cheesey so she opted for a Fairtunes address instead.

Speaking of that ISP (Pangea) back in the day when the university was the only ISP in town Pangea was born and I was one of the original dialup beta testers at 2400bps which meant I got free Internet instead of paying $1/hour for MBNet. Now those were the days!

My mom just bought an old school 1991 Volvo 240 Wagon with 85,000km (picture but hers is a 'light metallic blue'). Definitely an upgrade from her 1987 740.

And rumor has it Aimee is looking at ditching the Neon for a 1992 Pathfinder (picture, I don't know what color).

From the emails and convos I've received everyone says the Volvo would be cool but that I should be practical and go with the Neon.

I'm on a role with the code so I must get back to it, but I'd also like to note that I received my first pay check in just under a year! Yeah, who's the hardcore dot-commer :) (that's right it was almost a year ago that I quit my job at IBM to start Fairtunes with Johno) So time to start paying off all the credit cards (2), credit lines (1), margin account (1) (stupid Nortel), lawyers bill (1?), Internet cable bill, cell bill, and Natalie (rent :) ).

Natalie advised me not to blog drunk. But here goes. (I can already see my mom's email in my inbox when she reads this.. :) )

So yesterday I opened an USD bank account. It was a surprisingly quick process. I was in and out in 10 minutes. So today I go to Royal Bank.com to see if a wire transfer came through to my new account but alas it isn't being displayed on the screen. So I call the Royal Bank and the nice friendly operator tells me that well you see sir two of your accounts (my USD account and credit line) were opened from eastern branches and your card (plus primary bank account and credit cards) and other accounts are from western branches and while I (the operator) can see all your accounts, you cannot. Ugh. So everytime I want to transfer money from USD to CDN I have to call the 800 number. Hopefully next time I'm in the 'Peg I can setup a USD account that will appear. Or next time I'm in Waterloo I'll open a CDN dollar account and get a new 'eastern' client card. Like what kind of computer system do they have that the eastern system can't talk to the western system!? This is the year 2001!

Maybe the irony here is that today I was considering buying bank stock (after my debts are paid off of course) but yet I don't believe that any of our banks in Canada are doing a good job. But maybe that's a good sign to buy because there is so much obvious room for improvement.

Speaking of buying.. Someone wants to buy a domain name I registered in the winter.. Fairamp.com. I guess we're now accepting bids.

Oh and more bank rage. I've applied for a CIBC Aerogold card because I have a lot of Aeroplan points (like 25,000) and obviously want more instead of lame ass gift certs for The Bay which I currently receive. Anyhow. I applied but got denied since they couldn't find my credit history. Whatever. I have one so I called and they eventually decided I did have one and it was favourable but they needed proof of bleh bleh blah. So I faxed what they wanted. But alas no card has showed up in the mail so I called today and they said oh but this proof of address/phone number you sent in isn't acceptable for 'some irrational reason' so I sent in a new one (but why didn't they call saying it was unacceptable??). Hopefully we'll get this cleared up soon because really. Do they want my money or not?

That's my question for the Canadian banks out there. Do you want my money or not? I'm young with a lot of potential for big bucks. Don't piss me off.

A good example of not pissing me off was Rogers, my high speed Inet company, who had a service guy here by 11am today after my call last night at 7pm. They know the value of a customer. I wish the banks did too.

Aren't you glad the webcam is back on so you aren't seeing my knee anymore? I guess now you're seeing the floor since the webcam has plummeted from the desk to the floor (it really is indestructable). But more on the lack of webcam later (short story: it's because I'm ripping CDs on the webcam computer).

There's some car turnover going on in our family. Up for grabs are a Silver 1987 740 Volvo with ~300,000km (picture (not our actual car)) or a 1996 Highline Neon sedan (specs w/pic) with ~135,000km. The big question is which one do I want??

Volvo

The cool factor of driving a Volvo station
Thule bike racks
Roomy

Neon

Newer, less Km.
Cheap to repair
Thule trunk rack

Email if you have an opinion.

The UW Bulletin today has some info on co-op pay. UW co-op students may be paid as much as $938 a week, or as little as $300, depending on what faculty they're in and how much work experience they have had.. Now that's excluding the top and bottom 10% but those are the numbers I'd be most interested in :).

Evhead seems a little shocked to discover a six page article about him in the latest Shift when they didn't really interview him. But really journalists don't need to interview you anymore because they can just read your weblog. They also don't have to send a photographer down because your photos are already online ripe for the stealing (I.e. These two photos appeared in articles about me/Fairtunes. How embarrassing! At least let us recommend a photo to you).

Triumph of the Weblogs (from Release 1.0) (link scooped from Evhead). That article is recommended reading for all you new to the weblogging scene.

So my Internet is down. See we were getting free cable so the cable company cut it off today only they also cut off my high speed Internet connection as well.

So being compulsive person that I am I also have a Bell Sympatico high speed DSL modem laying around but I'm missing the software so I call up 310-SURF but all the options are 'buy high speed now' but I want 'support'. So I talk to the sales lady who transfers me to the support guy (sexist I know) who says I no longer exist and gives me some number that doesn't work to call. So I call back and talk to the sales lady who transfer me to the billing lady who confirms that I do not exist, would I like her to dig deeper and find out why?

No of course I would not like her to because she'll discover that Bell has never billed me for the 10 months of high speed I had with them prior to Rogers. So I inquire about shipping it back and she said they'd send me a box.

So score. Free high speed for 10 months. But! I have no high speed till Rogers comes tomorrow afternoon to reconnect me! Which will literally cost me hundreds of dollars in lost work time. Fortunately there are lots of 'free trials' out there. The one I'm on now is from VIF. I'll have to re-configure my home net tomorrow to feed off the dialup connection instead of the highspeed modem bank.

Ugh! High speed wows. Coincidently today was the day our school president and chairperson of The National Broadband Task Force released their final report on turning Canada into the high speed nation.

John, I want to sign up for the 'Maeve Bi-Weekly Inner-Lesbian Album Club' where new music just arrives on my computer. Don't we all!

Oh. And I need a decent name for this blog. Brad's Midnight Inferno, Tracy's is Mayhaps, Rafi's is Shaitaani, and Nick's is Succaland. I need something hip and cool and less ego-centric then Matt Goyer.com. Suggestions welcome.

Ah! I was blogging and Internet Explorer crashed and I just lost everything! I HATE MICROSOFT.

So time to recreate what I was writing hmmmm.. This has happened to me before in a different context. Once when I was in Calcutta, India I had a bag stolen. It was a bag which had a journal that I filled with 4 months of writings. I was VERY upset and still am about that. I tried actually re-wrote most of it. The re-creation and the 2 months after it are sitting on a bookshelf back home. Hopefully safe and sound.

Well I started the 'lost entry' off with a reflection on Rafi's thoughts that he blogs for himself. I thought I did too then reflected and realized that I blog for not only myself, but also my family in Winnipeg, my friends in Waterloo like Langeman, my girlfriend and my 31 one other daily visitors. Feel free to drop me a line (matt@mattgoyer.com) and let me know who you are because my multi-national research firm is getting pretty costly for these small studies.

AH I'm still mad I lost what I had before.

So yesterday was Ani. Being the one in the apartment with a flexible schedule (people somehow assume that if you work from home then you don't really work) I was assigned the duty of lining up early so that we would have a prime position. Being the dutiful roommate that I am I lined up at 1:15 at Historic Fort York in the middle of an industrial wasteland. Upon arriving I was concerned I might be at the wrong spot since there was no line to be seen. There were some other people there and they re-assured me that they had just been instructed to start the line exactly where we were standing. Over the next half hour people emerge from cars and mini-vans to form the beginning of the line. I was 8th in line when everything shaked out.

In line I meet Jen, Jen, and Lindsay there with tickets that Jen's parents had given them for her birthday. They had skipped school to line up. I almost meet a couple hard core groupies. One girl who was seventeen had already seen Ani 9 times this year! These were the people who showed up at 7am or camped over in their mini-van ensuring they were there before the security detail arrived.

Not much to say about waiting in line. We talked, played cards, I read, and we even ordered pizza. Maeve arrived at 3pm, and Natalie somewhere around 4pm and John and Jen I think around 6pm. By the time the gates opened at 6pm what had once been seven people in front of me had ballooned to upwards of 20.

Random tid-bit. We were just standing around and I swear Tyler Stewart of the Barenaked Ladies (he's the one standing in the photo) biked out of 'the compound' and said hey to me as he passed. That makes him the second 'lady' we've spotted in TO.

Once in Natalie secured us a spot just off center in the front row. A prime position. Of course there was still two hours of waiting, which meant two more hours of brutal exposure to the unrelentless sun. Lots of water and an advil later I was doing okay.

The opening act was Sekou Sundiata whose guitar guy had a cell phone on his belt. What need is there for a cell phone when you're in the middle of a concert!?

At 9 was the moment we had all been waiting for (me of course waiting the longest). With our prime front row position Ani was truely amazing. Of course our complaint was that her setlist (warning: not yet posted at that link) was remarkably similar to her Guelph setlist. Even though it was a different tour it seemed to be the same as the last.

We all agree that we'd like her to play more of her old stuff but the theory is that since the addition of Julie the keyboardist she's unable to do as much 'girl and a guitar' material. Of course now she was two horn guys, a bass, a drummer, and Julie.

But we can't complain. We love Ani. She even had this great rant about the big Hyundai billboard that glowed in the background. Turns out she used to have a Hyundai and the reverse broke.

After the show we suffered through our post-Ani depression at 'The Green Room' an 'underground' bar.

Oh yes. Tomorrow is Ani. Seeing as no one else here has a flexible schedule I am the designated person to line up seven hours before the show starts. Should you care to take my place I'll compensate you at the rate of $10/hour. Give me a call if you're interested in 7 hours of 'work' tomorrow.

Following up on yesterday's posting,... Free Jenna! from the Economist (courtesy of Wesley).

Of course, defenders of the current drinking laws argue that they have saved thousands of lives. But if raising the drinking age to 21 makes the roads so much safer, why not raise the age to 31? Or 51? Or ban alcohol altogether? After all, it worked so well in the 1920s.

Congratulations! You have been admitted to Honours Computer Science.

That's what I got in my mail box today. It should in fact read:

Congratulations! We've caught on to the fact that you've been taking Computer Science courses when in fact you're not in the Computer Science program. By now being admitted to Honours Computer Science (without asking to be admitted!) you have the honour of paying $1000 more a year!

Damn those sneaky CS Advisors! It was my plan to take all the same courses as CS majors (which is allowed if you meet certain pre-req's, which I do) and then switch to CS in my last term. Unfortunately they've restructured things which has foiled my plans. Why have they restructured? Primarily because too many people were dropping out of CS and not enough were applying because the bar was too high. But really what good is lowering the bar when the fundamental problem is a program which is too challenging (disclaimer: I don't find it too challenging but see how many would). Ah UWaterloo how I love thee.

I'm in pasta sauce hell. Question: I found an opened thing of sauce in the cupboard. Do you think it's still good? Or a potential hazard to our health?

Doc weighs in on the X10 pop-unders as does CNET News. I really want to know how many people actually buy those damn webcams after being assaulted by their advertisements? ..And you know that link I posted the other day to block the pop-under? I'm not convinced it works as I got an X10 ad today.

Natalie is working late tonight which doesn't sit right with me because I'm supposed to be the work-aholic. It's also very nice out. A perfect patio night. But cheap-ass-lonely-me will sit on my own patio instead of going to Wilde Oscars (Maeve is still at work too).

Today I was in QPopper hell trying to get TLS/SSL working. I don't understand why these mail people have such a hard time implementing it!

Sort of just realized how weird it is to be living in an apartment building. The concept of x 'living spaces' to a floor stacked for 'y' floors within z city blocks just blows my late afternoon, well really it's evening, mind. Think of all the drama within one city block! If we all had webcams there'd be no need for sitcoms. (I know I really should start streaming my cam, and buy a newer higher resolution one).

I never have any concept of how much pasta to cook for myself.

Gary reported that after taking the tests his son isn't colorblind just disinterested in colors. Weird eh.

I've been talking to my accountant trying to figure out how to minimize my tax situation. Doesn't look good! Through some weird twist I'll probably pay more in tax than my room mate will earn this summer. The only thing I'm not upset about is that my money won't be used to kill people as it would be if I lived in the States.

Now I'm only posting this because my girlfriend has the hots for Jenna. ...The First Twins.com. Everything you ever wanted to know and then some (including the $10mil Larry Flynt offer). There's even a countdown till they're 21.

Get over to Yahoo! Shopping and watch Britney and Justin on a shopping spree! I love how they display all the gear so I can buy it right as I watch the video. My life really hasn't been complete till this moment. And they even show a Pepsi commercial at the end! AH! No more work for me today. Just shop, shop, shop.

Just noticed that Plastic is now sporting a PayPal button on the top right hand side of the screen. Guess they're afraid of joining Suck and Feed at FuckedCompany.

Looks like everyone is on the voluntary payments band wagon. They've even enabled Freenet to hire a developer.

By the way, I hate PayPal but I'll save that rant for another day.

Ever wonder why my sites look so awful? It's because I'm colorblind (maybe you are too, take the test (fyi: I failed all the tests)). So if you want to see them as I see them check out Vischeck.

My mom is complaining about my spelling and grammar again. Little does she know that blogging is to journalism what survivor is to prime time TV. It's rough and ragged because it's real. But it sure would be nice if Radio had a spell checker :).

We've all seen the ad. I actually see it a few times a day. It's for the X10 wireless webcam. Perfect for home security. (But with all the hot models on the site we all know what's really for) Anyhow. You can now block the ad! Check out this link. Weird eh.

That was from Evhead. So is this funky t-shirt company called Threadless.

Dave heard today that there's Napster clones in Canada. Well what do you know. We actually run a Napster clone up here in Waterloo, Canada (just don't tell our ISP :) ). So I told him we're one of the bad guys. In order to help his readers connect up with us or anyone else I wrote him a quick and dirty guide to Napster clones. Go nuts (and use Fairtunes!)

SmartTags. First got pointed to an article in the WSJ, entitled, New Windows XP Feature Can Re-Edit Others' Sites and then they've been popping up ever since. Here's a Davenet piece on them. Here's a screenshot so you can see them in action.

Now the kicker is that this whole idea of SmartTags is something that my friend Tim Langeman has been ranting and raving about since about September. His idea is Open Reference. Of course anything with the prefix open is natuarally going to be better than anything the Big Behemoth can come up with. Unfortunately Tim doesn't have billions of dollars to persue his vision.

Jake's got an interesting take on whether McVeigh's execution should be broadcast:

In my humble opinion, people in this country who approve of the the death penalty, especially those who are close to the fence, might change their minds, if they were to witness the actual taking of a human life.