/

This is the symbol you have been using your whole life as a date separator (2008/04/29), a fraction indicator (1/2), for phrases like and/or, a division sign (2/4 = 0.5) and, most recently, URLs. Slashes are important. Resist the urge to call them forward slashes. There is only one that matters, and it is a slash.

This is a backslash:

\

You probably have no idea what this is for. Nor should you. Mathematicians sometimes use it to indicate set difference. Scientific writers use it in their TeX markup. Microsoft chose it to be the path separator in filenames. If you are not writing scientific literature or implementing CIFS filesystems, ban the word backslash from your vocabulary now.

Most importantly, for the love of baby Jebus, do not get on my radio and start reading out URLs like this:

Visit us a h-t-t-p-colon-backslash-backslash-w-w-w-dot…

First, it’s not a backslash. You may as well be calling it a semicolon or an asterisk.

Second, please stop saying h-t-t-p-colon. We know. The browser knows. Let it go.

Finally, and this is a plea to the nerds in the room, please stop using www in every freakin’ web address. You can usually get along without it.

Don’t believe me? Go up to the location bar in your browser right now and type this: pintday.org. No www. No http://. Just type it. I’ll wait.

There. Isn’t that better?

Next week’s lesson: adverbs—use them proper.

¹ Okay. Technically it’s a solidus.

To whom it may concern:

Over the past several years I have been saving some money for the purpose of purchasing some pottery. I recently decided that the smallish bills gradually accumulating in their unspecified location in my sock drawer were a pretty bad store of value, considering the length of time it was taking me to stash money away, and my inaction in actually buying the pot. I decided to turn the cash into something that would preserve value over time, namely ounces of silver.

One fine Tuesday afternoon past, I made a jaunty trip along Second Street to your downtown Bank of Nova Scotia—Canada’s (self-appointed) Bullion Bank—where I knew there was a bullion counter.

After a hardly insignificant wait in front of the sneeze-proof glass shield, I was attended to by a man in his early twenties. I asked to buy a quantity of silver bars, which, after confirmation and negotiation over what form factors of silver he had in stock, I changed to single silver ounces.

Twentysomething man futzed in the back for a while, and conferred with the other twentysomething man I normally see working at the counter. Eventually, he pulled out the carbon form, requested two pieces of ID and fumbled a portion of the ounces I requested onto the counter. He then quoted me a price for them fully $2.60 per ounce higher than the price posted on the digital board behind his head, which brought the price of an ounce of bullion to the same approximate price as a Canadian Silver Maple Leaf Coin.

I stopped him in mid calculation, and demanded to know why the price was so off kelter.

“That was this morning’s price. The price is updated every thirty seconds.”

“You mean to tell me that silver jumped $2.60 this morning?“

“Yes. That’s the market price.”

“(Unbelieving) Okay, I’ll wait until that corrects itself later in the week. (While departing.) Out of curiosity, what is the current price of Silver Leafs?”

After some quiet fumbling, twentysomething man told me $21.70, just fifty cents higher than the price of the bullion.

“Pardon me? What happened to the spread between bullion and coins?”

“Those are just the market prices that are constantly updated.”

(Other twentysomething man from behind his desk.) “That’s just the price.”

“Then sell me the coins instead, if you’re discounting them that much.”

And he did. I bought a lesser quantity of the Silver Maple Leafs (because of their price premium). Directly I returned to work, I looked up the spot price of silver on the Kitco website, and without surprise discovered that there was no spectacular movement in the price of silver that morning.

So why am I writing this?

Kind Scotiabank people, I have two recommendations.

First, advise your staff not to roll their eyes and exchange knowing glances with each other when a customer is at their teller, asking pertinent and justifiable questions.

Second, if you are serious about being Canada’s bullion bank, and you must staff your precious metals counters with boobs, please ensure the boobs know something about the bullion they are selling.

The rest of the series is here.

Then one day, some jerk recorded his stuff, and started selling it on the Internet, at a discount.

Michael Moulton sued the jerk for copyright violation, and everyone lived happily ever after.

A cute story, to be true, but not particularly original in the world of Rock ‘n Roll. The only thing is, Michael Moulton isn’t a rock star—he’s an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida;his works aren’t singles—they’re Lecture Notes; and his fans aren’t fans—they’re University students.

Assistant Professor Michael Moulton is suing a note-taking company for publishing notes taken during his University lectures. In other words, Michael Moulton is claiming notes taken during his lectures are derivative works of his intellectual property. And here I thought University Professors were supposed to be teaching. It turns out, they’re performing.

And that’s where I get annoyed. Isn’t the whole point of having a lecture to teach people? Isn’t the point of taking notes to aid in that process. Do we really care what the source material is if the students are actually learning?

Michael, if your performances are really that good, why isn’t anyone showing up to take their own notes? If it’s such valuable intellectual property, why does MIT give it away for free?

If we continue down this path, university professors will soon start suing each other for basing their Calculus-I lectures on other peoples’ work (Newton’s estate, take note). Pretty soon, nobody will be teaching at all—we’ll all be renting our university educations from Netflix.

If I never extend a warranty on any big ticket item that I ever buy, then over the long term—my entire life—I will save money.

I know this to be true, because if it were not, the warranties would not be for sale in the first place.

Over a large sample size, a company makes money by selling extended warranties in quantities greater than the expected failure rate of their product. If the product failed at a greater rate than that covered by revenues from extra warranties, the endeavour would lose money, but only for as long as it would take the company to realize the problem and adjust the pricing of their extended cover to account for this.

So, on average, if I never extend a warranty on anything I buy, I will never contribute to any company’s cynical little side business.

I will lose out occasionally. A few weeks ago I shelled out $350 (20-oz. silver) to the repair man (Appliance Doctor, recommended) to lay hands upon my three-year old fridge (Amana, not recommended). The extended warranty I refused three years ago would have covered it, but I ust mentally drew that amount out of the funds saved from not buying the additional cover for my camera, my washing machine, my dishwasher, my Mac, and so on.

Speaking of the Mac, those AppleCare guys just won’t take logic for an answer. Last month I had to beat one off with a stick, even after I had patiently explained all of the above to him.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to be covered if something went wrong with your Mac?”

Fallacious. I could just as easily ask:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if nothing went wrong with my Mac, and I could still have the money that would have been wasted on uneconomical insurance?”

(Why would anyone argue so strenuously for extended warranty coverage anyway? Answer: commission.)

If I knew someone who worked for Apple—Nick, I’m looking in your direction—I could ask him to assault the next AppleCare guy he sees, then ask him:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you hadn’t just gotten kicked in the junk?”

Insurance is for catastrophic losses I can’t afford to pay for myself. Appliances and consumer electronics never fall into that category.

Never extend a warranty.

In other news, Pint Day just published its 366th rant. Bring on the Daily Retro Rant!

(Grandpa, what’s a foot?)

It’s funny, though—I can already hear myself talking like a Grandpa. I suspect it will sound a little like this:

When I was a boy, we had adverbs. Sentences just don’t sound right when they’re ended so sudden.

When I was a boy, we used to read things out of books. There were even huge stores full of them. Some days, we would spend the whole afternoon in there, drinking coffee and leafing through pages. Then one day they took all the chairs away, and told us to buy more, or get out of the store. We all left.

When I was a boy, we had to read paper maps to know where to go. Every time we went someplace new, your grandma and I would have a little argument about which way we should have turned. If we got lost, we would have to ask someone for directions. I lost three future grandmas that way.

When I was a boy, clocks were mechanical. They had little hands that moved from left to right. It took 12 hours for the hands to go all the way around. We even had little ones that you wore on your wrist. If you forgot to wind one up, it stopped, and you didn’t know what time it was anymore.

When I was a boy, we used to get paper mail delivered to our door every day. We used to get things called magazines, and fliers. Bills came on paper back then. Sometimes, we would even get paper letters written by friends!

When I was a boy, bands recorded music into collections called albums. They were big, colorful things that you kept on a shelf. When you wanted to listen to something, you actually had to take it off the shelf and put it into a machine called a player.

When I was a boy, they had just invented computers. We didn’t have an internet, so every computer was separate from every other computer. Some of them looked like big keyboards attached to a cabinet. Others were huge beige boxes that you would hide under the desk. They made lots of noise, and couldn’t hear or speak.

My grandkids are never going to believe me.

Am I unique?

• I have ripped all of my CDs to digital.
• I keep my music library in the only location that makes sense: on a networked external hard drive, attached to a wireless ethernet hub.
• I drink the Kool-Aid, so the hub is an Airport Extreme, the digital format is Apple Lossless, and the ripping tool is a pretty little MacBook.
• The size of the library is on the order of magnitude of 250GB.
• My stereo is in my front room, housed tidily by itself in a bit of purpose-built custom millwork.
• My Airport Extreme is in my unused third bedroom (nominally referred to as the office)
• My laptop is wherever I am, usually in the side room.
• My TV is also in the side room.

My question is, how am I supposed to enjoy my digital music library on my stereo?

I do not want:

• An extra computer turned on all the time.
• A computer monitor cluttering up the millwork in the side room.
• To have to control my front room stereo via the TV in the side room.

I make my living as a designer. The solution has to be functionally transparent, low key, and beautiful.

My research has yielded all of two possibilities:

1. A Sonos ZonePlayer and remote
2. Slim Device’s Squeezbox

The problem with the first is price. An un-amped ZonePlayer 80 plus the requisite remote cost approximately US$800. (That’s over ¾-ounce of gold, to give a devaluation-proof valuation.)

The problem with the second is the requisite server, which adds the price of a Mac Mini to the equation, and brings the total to the better part of an ounce of gold as well.

I would be happy to be told by Apple that—like with everything they sell—I should be doing it the Apple way, but all their media solutions involve clicking and dragging files to discreet devices for playing or viewing. To Apple, every device is an iPod, and is treated as such.

Is there no demand for a simple device that can read music from a networked source, and allow simple navigation of same, without having to cohabit televisions, computers and stereos?

Phooey. I’m waiting.

I can’t help it. It was a decision my parents made, and I haven’t yet got around to correcting it—you know, because of digital video.

I had thought that being Canadian was the next best thing to being American—we have the same stores, the same products, the same movie release dates, and, for the moment, the same dollar.

Then I bought my Apple TV, and was reminded what it’s like to be a second-class video citizen.

It’s not like “second-class” is new to me, especially where video is concerned. Officially, Canada just got Tivo 3 months ago. I guess I just expected more from Apple—I was expecting them to change the rules.

The Apple TV is a cute little device, capable of delivering your audio, video, and (with more difficulty than I would like), your photos onto an HDTV. I bought one, despite the fact that I don’t actually have an HDTV. (Canada hasn’t really bought into that whole HDTV thing yet. We have the TVs, yes, but the content is, shall-we-say, lacking.) What I do have is way too many LCDs lying around, one of which was immediately repurposed to the Apple TV via a HDMI-DVI cable.

I thought it would be a happy little combination. “I have videos, it will play them,” I thought.

I thought wrong.

First, the damn thing doesn’t play DIVX. Yes, I know I can hack it to do so—hell, I did hack it to do so—but why doesn’t it do so out of the box? iPods play MP3s, after all, so why wouldn’t the video equivalent play the video equivalent? And yes, there are legitimate DIVXs out there, especially for those of us who can’t handle watching 10 minutes of promos just to get our DVD player to display the freakin’ main menu.

Rip. Save. Watch without crap.

Of course, I was hoping the DIVX issue would become moot, given the cool new movie rental feature that Apple has been touting. Unfortunately, there’s no such feature in Canada. Sure, theatrical releases happen simultaneously in the US and Canada—as do DVD releases. But as far as iTunes is concerned, there are no movie rentals to be had here. No real TV shows to buy either. (Seriously? Corner Gas? That’s it?)

Of course, there’s ways around that, too—especially if you happen to be taking a trip to the states. But here’s the kicker. Even if you “rent” your movies from the US iTunes store, in glorious low-def, for watching on your glorious low-def LCD display, you are informed of the following:

“This content requires HDCP for playback. HDCP isn’t supported by your HDMI connection. Use the component video connection to watch this content.”

Suck it Jesus-TV. I’m gonna go to the store and rent something.

The results were exactly as expected: a landslide for the incumbents, with 83 of 83 seats going to Big Government candidates.

While Big Government won a clear majority, it did not win the popular vote, as only 943,013 votes were cast for its support, as opposed to the 1,352,304 votes that were not.

Yes, I’m calling this a plurality: 58.7% of eligible voters decided not to vote for any of the four Big Government parties, and instead made their voices heard by withholding their support for any of Stelmach’s, Taft’s, Mason’s, and Hinman’s big spending platforms. I’m proud to say I’m one of this principled majority.

Many editorials have been written and voiced proclaiming Big Government to be in tune with Albertans. Big Media nonsense. Until candidates start presenting what the majority of Albertans want—smaller government, lower taxes, and greater freedom—then an increasing majority will be casting their vote for the only candidates that reflect their views: no one.

Pint Day won’t be around for the next provincial election, but it says here that the principled nonvoting majority will by then have swollen to over 60% of eligible voters. I’ll be among them, enjoying a beer at home on polling night, doing what I can to improve the lives of my loved ones, and doing nothing that might be interpreted as lending support to Big Government.

I hope you seriously consider doing likewise.

Of course, we’re gearing up for an election here, too, but our political leaders just don’t seem committed to the idea of being electable.

Take, for instance, Stephen Harper’s hair. I’m certainly not going to go as far as to say that Stephen Harper is a fashionista—in fact, he seems to have the uncanny ability to make everything he wears look as if he borrowed it from his older brother—but his hair takes “I don’t care” to a whole new level. I’m not saying he needs to go all Javier Bardem to win the election, but he could at least make an effort.

Actually, the Javier Bardem hairdo might actually work.

In fact, the conservatives have a long history of failing to commit to things—metrification comes to mind here. Though we canadians claim to employ the metric system, this illusion is quickly dispelled by asking our height, buying our groceries, or renovating our homes. We half-assed it, like we half-ass everything.

So, the next time you kick back to enjoy a beer, sit back and think about all the half-assedness that is surrounding you. And, if you’re out of beer, wander to your de-regulated-point-of-sale-yet-still-wholesaled-by-the-government-and-not-allowed-in-grocery-stores Alberta beer seller and stock up. Sure, it’s not as convenient as buying beer south of the border, but going with full deregulation would be decidedly committal, and hence totally un-canadian.

I’ll drink to that.

As one who grew up with—in order—a fish, a hamster, a replacement hamster, a turtle and a step-turtle, I don’t have the environmental immunities upon which all dog lovers depend.

Dog hair is the shiboleth that distinguishes dog owners from those of us that just like to say “Nice doggy. Down. Off! Off!” Dog hair is pervasive and migratory. While it starts happily anchored to the posterior of your best pal, it eventually makes its way across the carpet and laminate to find itself uniformly distributed across all manner of clothes, towels, furniture and belongings. Within scant hours of a dog being let into a house, its hair will have hopped a ride on the closest doghairferry (solar fleece) into a vehicle, on to colonize the far reaches of the planet.

Dog owners understand—along with slobber and the occasional tangle with doggy bile—it’s all part of the package. Dog hair is the badge.

Me? Not a fan, but that hardly matters because I don’t own a dog, and my wife’s allergies happily preclude the possibility. I don’t have to vacuum the stuff, or pick it off my jacket. I don’t have to floss it out of my food, or lint brush it out of my car’s upholstery. I don’t have to look at it when I pop the top off the shampoo…. You get the idea of what I think of its pervasiveness.

In short, I’ve always enjoyed living in a doghair-free house.

Then we bought this carpet:

For one weekend, living with a cheap, open-loop wool carpet was like having Marmaduke for a pet. If Marmaduke was undergoing chemotherapy.

At the end of the weekend I rolled up the carpet and stuffed it back into its plastic wrapper for return, while my wife patiently extracted the orange hairballs from our daughter’s fists and feet.

We spent the balance of the evening with Swiffa and upright in the—as all dog owners know—quixotic quest to eliminate the furballs from our floors.

I’m not so smug anymore.

Every morning, as soon as the sun comes up, you go at it again. This is resort property for God’s sake. We’re on holiday. Don’t you know we’re paying hundreds of dollars a week for this place?

In a few hours, I’ll be up and out the door. I’ll be out on the beach (or in the water). Can’t you just wait until then? Can’t you wait until I’m snorkelling, or surfing, or hanging out at the pool? Can’t you wait until I’m biking, hiking, or exploring a cave? Can’t you even wait until I’ve had my morning coffee?

It’s common decency—you see me up every night; you see the pitchers of margaritas flowing. You know I want to sleep in. And yet, every day, at the first hint of sunshine, you’re up. For the next two hours (hours!) you’re at it relentlessly. Give it a rest! Give me a rest!

Gods, you’re at it again. Have you no shame? Have you no sense of decency? Why are you doing this to me?

Stupid birds….

The story starts with a month-old Blackberry Pearl that wouldn’t charge. The reason is obvious: the pins inside the mini-USB connector are mashed. Apparently, the act of plugging and unplugging the USB charge cable from its mating port is dangerous operation, requiring care, attention to detail, and possibly even prayer. It does not matter that the very purpose of a “connector” is to be either connected-to, or disconnected-from. This connector is a connector-no-more, and the important question is a simple one: is this repair covered by warranty?

The answer is a little more complicated.

The first part of the answer requires a trip to the store it was purchased from—a store whose name you likely don’t know, since the cellphone giant operates entirely through authorized dealers. You make the trek, and ask the inevitable question: “Is this covered by warranty?”

You receive the expected reply: “I don’t know. All I can do is send it in.”

Next, you ask how a warranty claim works. You are informed that nobody actually repairs these phones. They are simply shipped to a warranty gnome somewhere in the bowels of Telusland. You are given a replacement phone, and are asked to give a credit card imprint. If, sometime in the foreseeable future, the warranty gnome deems your problem to be “physical damage, water damage, or other unwarranteed damages” then your credit card is charged, to the tune of $250.

If you are to ask whether “damage occuring via the simple act of plugging-in your phone” constitutes a “manafacturer’s defect,” or “physical damage,” you will once again be hearing the phrase “I don’t know. All I can do is send it in.”

Of course, if you could get an answer to your warranty question, then you would have some options:

• You could ask yourself it it is worth spending $250 on a phone you now know to be fragile.
• You could attempt to fix the phone yourself, knowing exactly what the problem is, and having no fear of voiding your nonexistent warranty.
• You could choose to spend your $250 on a phone elsewhere, to avoid having to go through this next time something happens.

Of course, you can’t do any of these. The warranty gnome does not talk to outsiders. He is reachable only via snail-mail, sent from the back room of a Telus Store, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Telus Corp. In short, your only choice is to plunk down your credit card, and cross your fingers.

At which point, you are told it will be 72 hours before a replacement phone is available.

And once you return to collect your replacement phone, you will be told that it was 72 business hours—9 days in human terms. You don’t believe this story, but it doesn’t matter.

And when you go back again, you will be told that you are likely receiving a “refurbished” phone—likely, one that experienced the very same build quality issue that brought you into warranty hell in the first place.

And you will go through all this like the daddy-long-legs does: painfully, and powerlessly, because there’s no escaping the sadistic giant.

Original Folk: Hello New Guy. Welcome to our club.

New Guy: Thank you, Original Folk. This is a swell club. I’m very glad you let me be a member.

OF: We’re a super little community.

NG: You are! In fact, you’re such a super group, I feel it would be a shame if someone were to come along and ruin it.

OF: Who would do that, New Guy?

NG: Just about anyone could. For instance, what if we don’t like his tie?

OF: We don’t understand.

NG: I like your ties, Original Folk. Don’t you like mine?

OF: We like your tie very much. In fact, it’s super. What does this have to do with our club?

NG: Anyone could come along and wear a tie we might not like. Where would we be then?

OF: We’re having trouble following the relevance of these things, but you seem to know what you’re talking about, and your tie is super.

NG: Exactly. We should write up a rule about ties.

OF: Will you do that for us?

NG: It is done.

OF: Super.

NG: Super.

Part 2

New Interloper: Hey folks! This is a super club.

Defender of the Faith (Formerly New Guy): Oh. Knit tie.

OF: Is that bad?

DF: Yes. New Interloper’s tie does not meet our guidelines.

NI: How so? It is a super tie.

DF: Maybe so, but it is a knit tie. Our guidelines state clearly that ties are to be rep ties.

NI: But he is not even wearing a tie.

DF: He has been grandfathered, and so is not subject to our guidelines.

NI: And he is wearing a bowtie.

DF: He is not a relevant precedent.

NI: Why is this happening?

DF: We wish to preserve the rep-tie traditions of our group.

NI: ¿The rep-tie traditions of your group of four, one of whom is open-collared, one of whom wears a bowtie, and one of whom has been a member for approximately two minutes before I arrived?

DF: Those are the rules.

NI: What can I do to fit in?

DF: You must change your tie, so you will look like what our guidelines require.

NI: So it’s the look, and not the knit aspect, per se?

DF: Well, no, not as such, per se.

NI: So if I were to Jiffy Marker on some diagonal stripes…

DF: That would be super. And could you trim up the bottom?

NI: How so?

DF: Rep ties come to a point. Yours is square. We can’t have that.

NI: Very well.

DF: Super.

NI: Super.

OF: Does anyone else feel queasy?