the flying squirrel

I just noticed the other day that The Record wasn’t forcing you to buy their full newspaper subscription when you didn’t actually want any paper. (You could generously donate your unwanted newsprint to local schools, if you wanted).

I was getting the Record in paper form for a while. The amount of paper they ship to your door over the course of a week is staggering. It nearly doubled the volume of trash I was leaving by the curb. I didn’t want that. Neither did I want to pay $14/month just to access a website.

When they put the paper behind a pay wall, I was pretty perturbed, so there was no way I was going for that deal anyway. They’ve since lowered the wall a bit, allowing you to view today’s news for free. No archive access, though. However, you can get access to archives and PDF versions of the paper for about $3/month.

Now $3/month is getting into the range I’m willing to spend on a web page. I donated $2/month to b3ta for years just because I liked the work they were doing. I’m currently donating to TWiT for much the same reason. I can drop a similar amount on the local rag without feeling too bad about it, even if I don’t always agree with the editorial stance.

So I put in my online subscription request this morning. About four hours later, I got an email stating the following:

Thank you for your email. To subscribe to the Record Insider please contact our > Circulation department at 519-894-3000 to provide your credit card information.

God, I hate telephones. On second thought, I’m not going to subscribe to The Record today.

I know eCommerce is kinda hard (even if it’s been around for more than a decade), but haven’t these people heard of Paypal? Honestly.

I’m back from Ad Astra. It was awesome. I am very tired. I’ll deal with that shortly.

Before I do, though… I’d been pointing out the number of blog posts that Cory Doctorow, a guest at the con, was writing to Boing Boing as he was at the con. It was amazing. He whipped off nine posts over one hour on Saturday morning alone. While he was at a con.

I think I may have gotten a chance to see some of the process in action.

I’d followed Dawn up to her panel on classic movie monsters. Cory was in the audience. He was participating in the discussion, being sure to catch any bits of ephemera that might have popped up in the conversation. Like where the classic movie house was that was showing Godzilla movies. Stuff like that.

During most of the panel, though he had his laptop open, and he was feverishly typing. Unless I’ve got the PST->EST timezone conversion wrong, I’m pretty sure he was writing about a Canadian kid who’s been detained by immigration authorities in the US. While he was attending a panel. A panel in which he was at least somewhat attentive and engaged. More engaged than I was, at least.

The man is a machine, I swear. I am in awe of his blogging prowess.

I’m a little disappointed I missed the chance to see him get drunk at the bar.

The roads out there are stupid. There’s no way I’m going to risk trying to get to Ad Astra tonight.

So I miss the party again this year. And I can’t deliver xio’s stuff. But this way both I and my car both survive to con another day.

Seriously. I was crawling at 30kph all the way along my normally five minute drive home. I had to do the pumping brake thing to stop at the only red light. Lord knows what the 401 is like right now. It’s just not worth it.