Category: Journal

No-Candidates Meeting

I totally fail.

Or somebody does.

I was hunting everywhere last week and over the weekend to try to figure out when the stupid all-candidates meeting was for my riding. I figured people just haven’t gotten around to organizing it yet and it would emerge in due course. Then I got a couple items in the feed this morning telling me that [the damn thing was yesterday](http://news.therecord.com/sections/Election2008/article/419561). Poop.

(I also missed my chance to pick up the [Sontaran Stratem Set](http://doctorwhotoys.net/sontaranset.htm) yesterday, not that that’s terribly relevant to the discussion. Epic fail all ’round for me, though).

From the [reports](http://yappadingding.blogspot.com/2008/09/k-w-riding-all-candidates-meeting.html), though, I probably wouldn’t have got a seat, which means Ellen and I almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to stay. This sounds like a shoddy, half-assed excuse for a democratic exercise if you ask me.

Even if a candidate knocked on my door, I almost certainly wouldn’t be there. Those things are useless to me. I need stuff like these meetings to figure out who these people are to make any sort of useful decision.

Video from the event, though, will be broadcast on [Rogers TV](http://www.rogerstv.com/option.asp?lid=12&rid=54&sid=2964) over the next week, if I can figure out how to see it without cable TV.

If you happen to live in one of the other ridings in the region, your meeting is upcoming. [Check the Rogers site for dates and times](http://www.rogerstv.com/option.asp?lid=12&rid=54&sid=2964).

Maybe there’ll be another meeting (probably revolving around some special interest or other) in the coming weeks.

Warning: potty humour

Hey, remember the definitive [Penny Arcade comic on Twitter](http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/). Yeah.

Well, apparently [Jack Layton has a Twitter account too](http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/09/11/jack-layton-teaches-us-an-important-lesson-in-online-security/).

(Given there’s no corroboration anywhere, I’m betting that’s a photoshop job, but it’s still funny).

Ugh, Election

While I’m happy that a raft of shitty Conservative legislation dies on the floor today (copyright reform bill C-61 included), I’m not entirely thrilled at the prospect an election.

Rather than ranting, I thought it might be useful to outline my algorithm for choosing a candidate to vote for. It’s hand-tweaked, but it has served me well for a few elections now. It goes something like this:

def vote(Candidates):

    voteFor = nobody

    # If there are any super-awesome candidates,
    # vote for the best one.

    for candidate in Candidates:

        if isSuperAwesome(candidate):
            if candidate > voteFor:
                voteFor = candidate

    if voteFor != nobody:
        return voteFor


    # Otherwise, run through the list of parties in
    # order or personal preference, excluding
    # Conservatives.

    for party in ['Liberal', 'Green', 'NDP']:

        if not totallySucks(Candidates[party]):
            return Candidates[party]

    # Otherwise, stay home.
    # TODO: should I have a fall-back to vote for
    # a mediocre indepentant?  Not that it matters
    # at this point...

    return nobody

If you can’t read Python, I apologize. Just read the comments (the bits after the #s) and you should be okay.

I have reasons for all the decision points, but I think, if you’ve been following long enough, you may already have a decent idea what they are. I like to think I follow a healthy mix of strategic voting and ideology. And I won’t vote for a candidate that totally sucks on principle, no matter what their party affiliation is.

I’ll make myself go through the candidates and talk about them at some point in the next month and a bit.

My poor, neglected blog

I’ve got four or five drafts saved where I started writing something but never got around to finishing and posting. I should focus on trying to post more, shorter things, trying to avoid indulging my tendencies to ramble, because then I just lose interest and wander off. Anyway, I’m starting again, so I’d better just resort to bullets.

* My sister got married a couple weeks ago. One of the drafts was all about that. Ellen and I took some [pictures](http://picasaweb.google.com/dscassel/ErinSWedding). It was lovely, and I think I’ll leave it at that, lest I start rambling.
* I’m sad that [Dell Canada isn’t shipping the Inspiron Mini with Ubuntu](http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9?c=ca&l=en&s=dhs&ref=homepg).
* I have [way too many Doctor Who toys](http://picasaweb.google.com/dscassel/Toys2008?authkey=opnNxkncRaE#5242954687098024690). I’ve been on a bit of a binge since Polaris, and I think I may be able to start cutting back now. Having to find places to put things is a good way to discourage hording instincts.
* Tomatoes! My garden managed to produce lots. We went to a heritage plant sale, and I got some Super Sweets (which produced lots), some Amish Paste (which I’m freezing for sauce) and a mystery tomato (which I think was a [Pink Brandywine](http://www.victoryseeds.com/information/craig_brandywine.html), but I only got one decent tomato out of it… weird slimy things got the few other promising tomatoes before I could. I did get a couple really good BLTs out of the one, though).
* Gonna sow some grass seed today. Looks like it’s gonna rain a lot this week.
* I’ve been working late a lot lately. I’ve got a hard deadline to make, and we’re pulling back the scope quite a bit, but it’s still going to be a challenge to get something that works and works well by the end of the year, even if it doesn’t sing and dance as much as we’d hoped it would. This is a bummer, but it’s kinda part of the job. I had to sacrifice a couple vacation days, which I’m not horrendously pleased about.
* I’d go into details, but you know… work stuff. And that would be rambling.
* I started going to the gym a while ago with Holly and Stela. It’s not quite as structured as the old gym routine, but it’s more fun to go with people. This gym is quite a bit cheaper, too.
* We finally (finally!) got a [Spirit of the Century](http://www.evilhat.com/home/?page_id=103) game off the ground. I ran three sessions comprising an adventure before handing GM duties off to Eric. That’ll give me a chance to come up with something else (and play a bit too, since I do like playing more than GMing). Fantastic game, and minimal prep required, which is good, since I don’t have many hours to plot out adventures.
* I visited with Matt when I was home for the wedding and he gave me a big stack of RPG books to look through. Still haven’t spent much time with them. Not that I’m actively *looking* for game systems, but having run a moderately successful game gives me delusions that I might be able to pull off other games. This is sure to be folly.
* I still haven’t said a lot about switching to Ubuntu, have I? I think that might be one of the drafts.
* I also have to do a post about MP3 players sometime.
* I really need to clean this place up.
* I’ve been biking a lot more too. I ended up more or less repeating my [adventure](http://flyingsquirrel.ca/squirrel/archive.php?article=46) from seven years ago, and discovered that the Grand River Trail is still really annoying to bike on, even if it is a bit more finished. I was going to go for a ride this morning, but ended up wasting time around the house. Which is good too. I could use the downtime.
* [Kittyhawk](http://www.sgvy.com/) is releasing all of her comics on a convenient USB key. Including The Jar, which was the best comic ever and has been sadly absent from the Internets. I bought one. I think what sold me was the “Amiga support coming Fall 1992!” line on the packaging.
* How many bullets are we up to? 16?
* It’s been a while…
* Ellen is awesome. I just wanted to say that.
* I bought new glasses. First time in almost 10 years. Hopefully my eye care coverage will help lessen the sting a bit. Still! I’ve desperately needed new glasses for a while, so this is a good thing. My old glasses are being held together with a bit of string.
* I have a bunch of new podcasts I’m listening too. I should post about them too.
* [I’m on Twitter](http://twitter.com/flying_squirrel) now, posting far more frequently than I’m posting here. I really want to get that script together that posts all the stuff I post here.
* I’m on Facebook too, but whatever.
* After various hardware failures earlier this year, I’m finally getting my office back in working order so that maybe I can work from home or something. I bought a nice 24″ widescreen monitor, which is pretty awesome. Next big thing is probably going to be a decent chair. There’s [a local company](http://www.prestigebusinessinteriors.com/products.htm) that sells Herman Miller chairs, and I might have to go check out their show room. All the chairs I own kinda suck. Particularly with my persistent ice-related back issues.
* Happy Birthday, Holly. :D
* 25 bullets? That might be a record. I think I’d probably better stop. Nobody’s gonna read much more than this anyway.

World’s Greatest Detective

(This isn’t really a spoiler:) The Dark Knight has a useless, throw-away scene where Batman extracts a brick from a wall with a bullet-hole in it, takes it back to his Bat Lab and does a bunch of ridiculous CSI bullshit where he re-assembles the shattered bullet with computer imagery so he can glean a fingerprint from when the shooter pushed the round into the clip.

This is a stupid waste of time, of course, but then I thought about it and realized that it *is* one of the few things in any of the Batman movies that establishes Batman as “[The World’s Greatest Detective](http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/imageviewer.asp?ean=9781596871151).” ‘Cuz mostly he just punches people.

It got me wondering, though, if Batman had any serious competitors for World’s Greatest Detective nowadays. So I went on Google and came up with a list:

* Sherlock Holmes (of course, although he might be disqualified by being dead).
* Batman
* L from [Death Note](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=6592)

Those three win pretty handily in the Google estimation. There are some other contenders for the title:

* Inspector Clouseau (surely this is debatable).
* Hercule Poirot
* [Daryl Zero](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Effect)
* [Detective Conan](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=454)
* [Elvis Cole](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Cole)
* Dick Tracy
* [Sherlock Hemlock](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7l5AGcaGQg) :D
* [Shamrock Bones](http://users.cwnet.com/xephyr/rich/dzone/hoozoo/shamrock.html)
* [Herlock Sholmes](http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/images/1587154641/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=52033011&s=english-books) (although Ellen says Arsene Lupin was a pretty good detective himself…)
* Nero Wolf
* [Supersleuth®](http://www.supersleuth.tv/site-usa/USA-home.html)
* [Big Max](http://www.amazon.ca/Big-Max-Kin-Platt/dp/0064440060)
* [Jay J Armes](http://www.amazon.com/Jay-J-Armes-Investigator-Successful/dp/0025032003)

…and I could go on…