No – seriously. Of all 100+ channels of digital cable bliss that are beamed into my living room, why is it the Food channel that keeps me glued to the couch? It’s gotten silly, really. I’ve even been caught watching the Naked Chef, rather than flipping to the 70’s porn channel, or the hedonistic travel show channel. Nope. Night after night it’s good old 43 that’s keeping me glued.

Consider the Iron Chef. This is a television show that could qualify as an Olympic sport. Sure – there may be those in the crowd who would have trouble considering Chen Kenichi an athlete, but folks —ping pong? Besides, that guy Ohta that runs around is enough athlete for all of us. Have you ever heard someone more excited about food preparation?

“Fukui-san! I have verified it – it is indeed a cream sauce!”

If nothing else, the Iron Chef folks should get an Emmy for their dubbing. That show is better dubbed than any foreign film I’ve ever seen. And that includes Greystoke.

So what is the addictive nature of the Food Network? Am I just a sukka for pukka tukka? Well, yeah, but that’s not the whole story. Like just about any other channel, there’s good, and there’s bad. Five minutes of Chef Rob Weenie, for instance, is enough to make you wish Big Brother was still on. Dude. We’re not birds. Try making food that isn’t served on a saucer.

Iron Chef. Naked Chef. Nigella Bites. Good Eats. What do these shows have in common that keeps me coming back? What’s the magic quality that keeps me glued to the set, while Canadian-made shows, Emeril, and Bobby Flay drive me to watch Star Trek reruns?

Two things. First, the good ones feel real. These shows don’t wimp out and use pre-chopped bowls of ingredients, or the old into-one-oven-and-out-of-the-other trick. “Sure you cooked that Flan. Whatever, pal. You’ve got Betty Crocker in the back room, don’t you?” These shows feature real-seeming people making real-seeming food.

Second, these shows know that I have a seven-second attention span. Good Eats is basically Bill Nye Makes Dinner. Give me a soundtrack. Give me cut-scenes. Don’t leave the camera in one place for too long. Start with real life, sure, but then edit the hell out of it. If Survivor has taught us anything, it’s that even the dullest schlepp can be made to look interesting with good editing. Wiggle that camera. Talk to me like I’m there. Remember that I have 106 other channels to choose from.

But the best part of all? Once the really addictive shows are over, and Chef Rob Weenie once again fills the screen, I turn the infernal boob tube off, and head into the kitchen to test out my new-found knowledge.

See? I knew Canadian Shows were good for something.

The service was in the early afternoon in Ponoka, where Great Grandfather had lived, and it was first time I had ever seen a man of the stature of my grandfather cry. My grandmother put her arms around him, and we all felt better for it.

After the service there was a bit of a reception, with roast beef sandwiches and other buffet fare. The hockey game was in the Forum, so it was scheduled to start before people had finished visiting at the reception hall. Understandingly, my father drove me back to the motel in time for the game. Ponoka is deep in Edmonton Oiler territory, but I curiously found myself watching the game with a Habs fan my own age, some lost relative from a distant branch of the family.

When a game is as significant as this one was, it’s a little trying to have your foe cheering right beside you.

Game On

The game was as tightly played as any I have watched, and I remember a few scattered highlights. Hakan Loob handled the puck with an understated deftness throughout game, most notably on the penalty kill. I can clearly picture Lanny McDonald’s legs pumping back and forth as he caught a pass coming out of the box after serving a goaltender penalty. I remember the shot on Roy, but not the goal, and I will never forget the look of amazed ecstasy on McDonald’s face when the red light came on. I recall the feeling of profound, determined relief when Gilmour put away what would become the game winner. And I remember Jim Peplinsky and Tim Hunter, the two assistant captains, waiting by the gate in their undershirts as the final seconds wound down. They weren’t dressed for the game, to make room for Lanny and Jiri Hrdina.

My parents and relatives, who stopped in to watch the second period, but had left again to eat supper, picked me up to head back to Calgary as the locker room celebrations wound down. When their car pulled up to the front of the motel, I hit the handle to pop open the screen door, and raised both arms outward to the sight of the warm, setting sun.

The cars on Highway 2 south honked all the way back to Calgary.

Date: Saturday, September 29, 2001
From: Randy Wooding <randywooding@yahoo.com>
Subject: Your Letter to President G.W.Bush

This e-mail is written in correct authentication to inform you that I recieved [sic] a copy of your letter to the President of the United States of America. Mr.Spence [sic], it is very important first and foremost to exercise “common sense” and use “practical reliable information” when deploying a letter to such a prominent leader such as the President.

Your grammar is clearly compared to that of a freshman in High School, punctuality is aweful [sic]. Do you really think someone in Washington D.C. will read and take your letter seriously? You must be kidding and you have really wasted time and energy.

Therefore, I warn you now, I hold great power and authority in the United States and other nations abroad, and will seek to find you if you continue such behavior. I will not tolerate such activities that you originate. Furthermore a copy of this e-mail and letter you sent will be forwarded to local authorities and the FBI.

Sincerely,

R.Wooding

Well we couldn’t very well not respond to that, could we?

Date: Saturday, September29, 2001
From: Evan Spence <espence@pintday.org>
Subject: Re: Your Letter to President G.W.Bush

Howdy, young man!

Thank you for your response to my letter. Or more specifically, to the copy of my letter on pintday.org, which contains my email address. The World Wide Weeb is all about good, honest communication between individuals like us.

I’m sorry about the punctuality of the letter: I wasn’t really prepared to write about the events on the day of the tragedy, and this last week was the very next time I took the Pint Day podium. The two week lag could not really be helped, but under normal circumstances I am quite punctual.

Oh! Since you brought up the subject of grammar, you should know that when addressing a Canadian you should use the correct spelling of behaviour.

If you hear back from your Federal Bureau of Investigation, could you please send me a copy of the case number? I will be sure to include it in any further correspondence. I might also put it on pintday.org so everyone can see it!

I am also forwarding a copy of your email and this response to Kjell Wooding, my partner at the mighty pd.o. He was as impressed as I was that someone was actually reading the site. To ensure optimal processing of any additional issues you may have, please be sure to quote your Pint Day reference tracking number. Your number is: ONE.

Are you related to Kjell Wooding? I am sure he would like to know. He does not have any brothers that he knows of. Or maybe that is presumptious of me, because Randy can sometimes be a girl’s name. Please don’t be offended, I just don’t know! That’s another pretty good thing about the Internet: anonymity.

Speaking of which, maybe I am a freshman in high school. Yes?

Yours truly,

Evan Spence

Kjell smells blood:

Date: Sunday, September 30, 2001
From: Kjell Wooding <kjell@pintday.org>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Your Letter to President G.W.Bush

“Your grammar is clearly compared to that of a freshman in High School, punctuality is aweful.”

At the pd.o, we strive for the highest levels of grammatical and syntactic correctness. As a result, your complaint was forwarded to our editorial department. In return, they had the following to say:

—— cut here ——

Dear Mr. Wooding:

This e-mail is written in correct authentication to…

We are unsure to which authentication you are referring.

“…inform you that I recieved a copy of your letter to the President of the United States of America.”

“Received” is spelled incorrectly (“I” before “E”, except after “C”)

“Mr.Spence, it is very important first and foremost to…”

There should be a space between “Mr.” and “Spence”. Furthermore, “first and foremost” should be offset with commas, or moved to the start of the sentence.

“exercise “common sense” and use “practical reliable information” when deploying a letter to such a…”

“Deploying” is not the correct word here.

“…prominent leader such as the President.”

The word “such” may be safely omitted from this sentence.

“Your grammar is clearly compared to that of a freshman in High School, punctuality is aweful. Do you…”

This is a comma splice, and “awful” is spelled incorrectly.

“…really think someone in Washington D.C. will read and…”

There is a comma in “Washington, D.C.”

“…take your letter seriously? You must be kidding and you have really wasted time and energy.”

The last sentence is a run on. It should really be split into two.

“I will not tolerate such activities that you originate.”

This would be better stated: “such activities originated by you.”

“Futhermore a copy of this e-mail and letter you sent will be forwarded to local authorities and the FBI.”

You have omitted the word “the” both before the phrase “letter you sent” and “local authorities.”

And finally:

“Therefore, I warn you now, I hold great power and authority in the United States and other nations abroad, and will seek to find you if you continue such behavior.”

We are unsure as to which behaviour you are referring. If you are referring to grammar, then we can but leave you with the immortal words of Phoebe, from the sitcom Friends:

“Hello Kettle? This is Pot. You’re Black.”

Sincerely,

The pd.o editorial staff.

Wait! It gets better!

Date: Monday, October 1, 2001
From: Randy Wooding <randywooding@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Your Letter to President G.W.Bush

Mr. Spence,

This is not a [sic] english [sic] class. I do however know how to write a letter, but this is my private e-mail and have let my guards [sic] down. You mentioned being a freshman in High School and refering [sic]to me as “young man” i [sic] am offended. I am well over in seniority. When you get to my status in life you need to understand that i [sic] really can’t authenticate every letter. When something comes from me it is of an original authentication. You at this time would have no idea what that is because you are not in the international banking sector.

To further advise you, I apologize for offending the way of spelling behavior. I am an American, so there should be any additional conflict there. Being a Vice President of a bank and dealing with international banking operations I must be careful what comes across here. I am closely working with and being monitored with the FBI and other government agencies. I also sent them a copy of the letter and you should be happy to know you pose no threat. If so, trust me we would have found you by now.

I am of no relationship to the other “Wooding” you may know.

Just make sure you and your organization is remote from this site or my address.

R. Wooding

After we picked ourselves up off the floor, we decided that we could quite easily turn our mailbag into this week’s content. Maybe we could even fluff it up with a little bait:

Date: Saturday, October 6, 2001
From: Evan Spence <espence@pintday.org>
Subject: Re: Randy Wooding Re: Fwd: Re: Your Letter to President G.W.Bush

Howdy, Yoda:

Mr. Banker Wooding sir, you will be happy to know that the staff at the pd.o were greatly relieved to hear that we “pose no threat”. I have often said that we are perfectly harmless.

A little while after reading your last letter. I got to wondering about your relationship with the FBI. Is this a red phone type of relationship? Are there scenarios out there where someone at the Pentagon would jump up and say “Holy cow! Get Randy Wooding!”

No, I’m serious Mr. Banker Wooding. Why is the FBI in the pocket of an alleged international banker? Or perhaps more correctly, why would a banker be in the pay of the FBI?

Just what exactly is wrong with America, Mr. Banker Wooding sir? It’s scary. And it’s catching on in Canada. Why, just this week another survey suggested a quarter of the Canadian population wouldn’t mind if police routinely listened to their phone conversations. One quarter, Mr. Banker Wooding!

This deterioration of will to defend civil liberties is just ridiculous, and quite frankly, I wonder if your sudden appearance on the scene isn’t somehow complicit. It’s almost as if this was the enabling event the spooks were looking for.

But I don’t think I’ll follow that thought to its chilling conclusion, Mr. Banker Wooding. It’s too soon, and I would get yelled at.

Also, when did the banks start using Yahoo for their email? No, never mind. This must be your personal correspondence. But then does that mean your first letter was just for kicks and giggles? If so, it was a great success. We had a good long giggle here at the pd.o.

Yes, sir. It’s a good thing that this is not English class. In the early nineties I tutored an English-as-Second-Language student in University. Perhaps English is your second language? Perhaps I could offer the same service to you. I am cheap. Let me know. We could e-mail.

Perhaps I am in [the international banking sector], yes?

Oh, just one more thing, Mr. Banker Wooding sir: All your base are belong to us.

Yours truly,

Evan Spence

And the reply? After thinking for several months that we had scared him off, our man Yoda suddenly popped back into our lives.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, recall that, at the time, the domain names you were capable of purchasing from your favourite internet registrar were as follows:

• dot-com, which everyone knows, loves, and wishes they had.

• dot-org, a curious catchall for personal domains, open source projects, blogs, nonprofit societies, domain squatters, and even the occasional honest-to-goodness organization.

• dot-net, which no-one really has a good use for. If it gets used, it’s only because the equivalent dot-com and dot-org addresses are already taken, or the domain squatter’s ransom is just too darn high. dot-net is the domain name equivalent of sloppy seconds.

Since it seemed a little silly to develop a wonderful electronic infrastructure capable of withstanding war, backhoes, and the latest Microsoft Outlook virus, and then gave the whole thing one tiny little namespace to draw upon, ICANN finally decided to do something about it. After almost five years of careful consideration, we now have the chance to make some sense out of the internet namespace mess. The answer to all of our woes is (drumroll please)—

dot-museum.

(Well honestly — what did you expect would happen when you left the internet namespace in the hands of a committee? I’ve written on committees before, and that was just a shareholder agreement. Siccing one loose on the internet infrastructure is just plain reckless.)

In fact, dot-museum is just one cornerstone of a seven part plan. The rest of it reads something like:

dot-aero, dot-coop, dot-name, dot-pro, dot-biz, and dot-info

Maybe I have a different view of the internet from where I’m sitting, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t the museums and co-ops that are filling up the internet namespace. As I see it, today’s clogged dot-com namespace is full of two things: Corporations, and Porn.

Since ICANN is clearly incapable of accepting this fact, I’ve decided to create a new namespace committee. This will be a committee of one. I’m going to call it: THEYCANNT.

The THEYCANNT Proposal

The mission of THEYCANNT is to design an internet infrastructure that actually caters to the people who use it. As such, I propose to scrap the seven new TLDs and start again. Dot-info wasn’t a bad idea, but the rest of them are so awful, I’ve decided to erase all memory of the experience. In lieu, I offer you the following eight domains:

Let’s start with the corporations. THEYCANNT has come up with the following, admittedly radical proposal:

dot-inc, dot-ltd, dot-llc, and dot-gmbh.

I realize it’s uncool to have your

URL

coca-cola.ltd, warner-brothers.inc, and siemens.gmbh will be able to pull it off.

As for the porn, I’ll take a wild stab:

dot-xxx

Be honest here. People want to find porn. Porn sites want to be found. Giving them a TLD to play with is not only obvious, it’s good for everyone, including the school systems. (Hint: filter by TLD.)

Is that it? Not quite. There are a few types of content that probably deserve a TLD as well:

dot-promo

I am sick of seeing movie promo sites with an estimated lifespan of six weeks polluting out namespace. Do you still visit batmanforever.com regularly? Did you ever? Case in point.

dot-nipple

Actually, this one is completely ridiculous. Still, THEYCANNT would hazard to wager that if it went live, the dot-nipple namespace would be far more populated than the internet-saving dot-museum.

And finally, the most radical TLD of all:

dot-local

This isn’t really intended to be a TLD at all. It’s just a piece of your network configuration that lets you map to any extension whatsoever. Live in Calgary? Set

.local = .calgary.ab.ca

Now when I visit www.gov.local, I’ll get something useful. Mom and Pop businesses can now buy a domain name that doesn’t pollute the global namespace, without fear of people mistyping their URL. Honestly, does Lakeview Bakery really intend to sell muffins to somebody in New Jersey? If I want to know if I can buy a loaf of rice bread at 9:30pm on a Thursday, however, organicbaking.local is the site for me.

So thanks ICANN, for your internet-saving proposal. I think I’m going to stick with my committee of one, however. In the meantime, I have a dot-nipple domain to purchase.

Attention: George W. Bush,
President, United States of America

Howdy, Mr. President

Unless you have very eclectic web browsing habits, you won’t know me. I’m Evan Spence, and I co-author the weekly rant site, pintday.org. [I didn’t vote for you] last year, but I didn’t vote for the other guy either: I’m Canadian. Since I already know lots about you from A&E, we can dispense with that half of the introduction.

The events of two Tuesdays ago have inspired me to write you this letter. I would normally have approached a more local source of leadership, but in Canada there is none. you’ve met M. Chretien, so you know what I mean.

Boy, people sure can be mean, can’t they, Mr. President? As far as seminal, jaw-dropping, gee-gosh-why-did-they-have-to-do-that events go, September 11 was as mean as I have ever seen. (I am 28.) And why did someone have to go ahead and do that?

Normally I would sigh at the news and say “How random.” (You really have to know me to understand.) But this was really very bad. Way too bad. I already mentioned that I thought it was mean.

Now I see a lot of stars and stripes on the TV. I guess this is to build support for a unified effort to be mean right back to those people, or to that guy. There’s talk on TV about having the belly to do what’s necessary. Frankly, I don’t see why stomachs have been singled out, because there are bound to be a great deal of body parts involved if this escalates into a contest to see who can be the meanest to the most people all at once.

But don’t worry your belly, Mr. President, because I have an answer for you, and that’s why I wrote. There’s even an added bonus at the end to make sure you read it all the way through.

My plan is called The Pint Day Guide to Averting Terrorism in America and Elsewhere, Including Canada. It’s made available under the GNU Free Documentation License, so you can go ahead and use its text whenever you like. It’s free!

First, to appease your military leaders and CNN, go get Mr. Osama Bin Laden’s belly. You have lots of very expensive and very pointy weapons, so there’s no doubt in my mind that you can do this. Go get him! When you have him, you will have to find some space for him in your overcrowded judicial system. I would recommend dropping the case against Dmitri Sklyarov to make room. (Seems sort of trivial now anyway, doesn’t it?) The next part should be easy. It’s just the O.J. Simpson circus court show again. Only—and this is very important—the verdict is guilty. Although it might seem unfair to be suggesting a, er, marsupial court, it’s important to remember, Mr. President, that the purpose here isn’t justice, it’s to sate American bloodlust. So it is super critical that, if you don’t have the evidence at hand, to find it with all due expediency, if you know what I mean Mr. President. Remember: guilty! After that it’s a simple matter of—well gosh, you’re a Texan, Mr. President. You know what to do.

Second, and this is the really clever part of The Pint Day Guide To Averting Terrorism in America and Elsewhere, Including Canada. You write a letter to every American who is overseas on official state business, or serving abroad in the armed forces, or is representing the USA in some multinational organization or is participating in some world body for the furtherance of some worthy cause. It goes out to any American working for national interests in an international arena. This includes the NATO boys, the Balkan peace-keeper boys and the federal aid worker boys. And the girls.

Here is what the letter will say:

Come on home. The world is all grown up, and can take care of itself. Good work, now please get your behinds back to Albuquerque.

Love, W.

Naturally, you will want to adjust it for official use, such as by writing it on official White House stationary. Also, don’t close your embassies. Sometimes Americans lose their passports. You need your embassies.

So from then on, other countries will be responsible for fighting their own wars, patrolling their own boundaries, overthrowing their own tyrants, and just otherwise getting by without America being there to hold their hand.

Now to be very clear, Mr. President, part two of the plan is not optional. It’s the part that gives the supporters of terror a reason to stop wanting to be mean to you. You can’t just go ahead and do part one if you’re not going to follow through with part two. If you make a martyr out of Mr. Bin Laden but continue to put your thumb in the Israeli or the Iraqi or the Somali pudding, these people are just going to get meaner in more creative ways.

Just this morning I heard that crop dusters have been grounded, and the National Guard has been mobilized to protect the water supply in Massachusetts. Before this catastrophe, I didn’t even know what a box cutter was. In fact, I’m still a little unsure. Regardless, I’m now not allowed to take sharp things onto planes. I assume all in flight meals be soup from here on out.

Pilots want to carry hand guns.

I’m going to say that one again for emphasis. Pilots want to carry hand guns.

Mr. President, where do you think this will end?

Well, we could play that game all day. But I think the important thing is to put the Pint Day two-step plan into action as soon as presidentially possible. First, find your scapegoat or culprit and kill him on network TV. Then, bring all the boys and girls back home.

This isn’t giving the meanies what they want. This is simply forgetting a whole lot of international muck that you and I don’t really care about anyway. I know you agree with me Mr. President, since you’ve already taken positive steps in this direction by ditching the Kyoto Protocol and getting out of that terrible racism or anti-racism conference. Good start!

Oh, I mentioned a bonus earlier. Here it is: you save a pile of jack. Dish out some more tax cuts like you want and kick start the economy that way. What a totally circular plan!

Those are my ideas, Mr. President. I hope you like them. If you need a little more convincing, please be sure to check out what Harry Browne has to say. And unlike me, he’s a great American.

To be frank, I hadn’t realized exactly how tall the World Trade Center towers were in proportion to the surrounding cityscape until I saw them coming down. They sure were big. And I sure do feel bad about that, just like I feel bad about watching 3,000 people die on television. But honestly, Mr. President, I would feel much worse if this was just another story about the erosion of liberty.

Yours truly,
Evan Spence

Response

I never received anything on White House stationary, but I did get an hilarious set of posturing emails. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Randy Wooding.

Remember the good old days of the internet boom? Last year? Let’s say you were shopping for an electronic whatsit. You could visit a number of opinion sites to get an idea of the quality of the whatsit you were looking for. You could visit a comparison shopping site to get whatsit quotes from 36 different vendors. You could hit 15 different auction sites to check out the used whatsit market. There was probably even a whatsitwatch.com for you to get the latest whatsit news. You could then pick the vendor of your choice, order the whatsit, and have it at your door within two days.

Now you’re lucky to find an electronic whatsit for sale, period.

This is a real complaint. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been searching for a laptop. Whenever I googled for someone to sell me a laptop, I ran into the same two things, over and over:

1. All gone. Domain owned by a porn site, or
2. Purchased by direct competitor.

So after many hours of searching, and many unclosable pop-up windows later (Is that even possible? With a stapler? Yecch.), I found two. Yep, count’em: two sites. In both cases? Server errors. No kidding. Sorry, can’t sell you anything. There’s a syntax error in our shopping cart script.

With the big boom over, there’s actually quite a few good web developers out there. These companies might consider hiring one or two.

To add to the irony of my new, new economy experience, while I was doing my purchase research, I received six—count’em six—pieces of SPAM telling me all about the great new top-level domains that will be available next month.

New top-level domains, eh? Great idea. Except we really don’t even need the ones we’ve got now. Last time I did the math, we were only twelve mergers away from AOL/Time Warner owning the entire Internet. What will the URL be, I wonder. http://www.com?

But that’s a rant for another day.

The new, new economy, is like the old economy, but now you’re not allowed to make anything useful out of the internet.

I’m going to go drive to the computer store now.

Dear Alexa:

Howdy. Please allow me to make my own introduction. I am Evan Spence, and my wife and I just moved from Calgary to Halifax.

After a torturous, 5,500-kilometre trek over six days and more than 60 hours on the road, I was surprised to find I already had mail awaiting my arrival. You had sent me, via the Queen’s bulk post, a copy of your Summer 2001 Report, in which you describe what you have been doing with your summer as the Honourable Member of Parliament for the riding of Halifax, and as national leader of the New Democratic Party. Thank you!

In your report you also describe some of your ongoing ideas and your commitment to Canadians in general, and Haligonians in particular. I sure do like that word, Haligonians.

First and most obviously, Ontario is too darn big. We drove like mad until 11:00 PM one day, and didn’t make it any further east than Sault Saint-Marie. Talk about frustrating! After that it was another long day just to get to Ottawa. Madness! It previously took us only part of a day to get through Manitoba, and Saskatchewan was also only a single day haul. I simply can’t understand why we allow Ontario to consume more than its fair share of our Trans-Canadian driving experience.

So in the name of fairness I am proposing that we break up Ontario into at least three provinces. Like this: We take that whole Toronto-Golden-Horseshoe mess and call that Ontario. They think they’re all of Ontario anyway, so that will work nicely. The rest we split in two somewhere, maybe near North Bay. We can name those provinces pretty much anything we want, although I would propose nothing reminiscent of Ontario, since the objective here is to lessen the amount of driving in that province.

Maybe we could use modern high-tech-sounding names, like Decepticon or Deep Woods 9. If we were to follow the Canadian Football League’s naming conventions, we could call the half containing Ottawa Sask Atchewan.

The additional benefit to splitting up Ontario would be the immediate push toward Senate reform from the newly minted—and marginalized—Mini-’tarios. You remember senate reform, right? Seems like no one talks much about it anymore.

Second, your report points out that unnamed corporations are trying to drain lakes in Ontario (Deep Woods 9?) and Newfoundland, and divert at least one river in BC for the purposes of supplying fresh water to the U.S. You call for a national ban on all bulk water exports.

I think that with a little better description of the style and execution of these proposed bulk water exports, you and your party would probably come to agree that this could be a great thing for all of Canada.

I say that we should go ahead and commit to large water deals, with pipelines, contracts, and firm delivery — the whole kit and caboodle. But the key is this: we will only bulk ship water in little, green, 20-cL, labelled, capped bottles. Like Perrier, but smaller.

The pipelines can be equipped with those ridiculous roller rails you used to see in mid-century Alberta liquor stores, or any cold beer store in Ontario today.

Just picture it:

“Need to water the desert outside Vegas? Sure we can help. How many palettes can I put you down for?”

Boy! What an opportunity for any provincial jurisdiction enlightened enough to see the importance of properly managing the constitutionally-defined provincial control of their natural resources in such an inspired, far-reaching fashion. Perhaps as leader of the national New Democratic Party, you could mention this to your provincial counterparts.

Those are my first few ideas since arriving in your federal riding. I will let you digest them before I present any more. I do have quite a few more, but right now they mostly centre on the balance of transfer payments, and people (including me) pooping in Halifax Harbour.

I suppose I can’t expect too much of your support, as I’m sure you’re quite busy with party renewal, and with being on TV all the time. And also you’re not even my MP. But I thought you and I could find some common ground on a few things, such as the clean air, soil and water you mentioned in your Summer 2001 Report, as well as knocking Ontario down a couple of notches.

Enjoy your fall sitting of the legislature, and good luck bringing your Haligonian issues into the national spotlight in Ottawa, Sask Atchewan.

What if an alligator pops up through the floor…

At this point, the attendee would realize that they had just asked an alligator question.

Where is this leading? The following are bullet points from our minutes of a Codetalker Communications shareholder-agreement meeting. These are admittedly excerpts, but isn’t it hard to believe Codetalker isn’t one of the Fortune 500 now?

1. Death and dismemberment
2. Phillipines — Six wives
3. Kjell sells his desk
4. Chris declared insane
5. Sex changes?
6. Can I still vote if I clobber Evan’s mom?

What’s the lesson? Committees are a good way to achieve fairness and compromise. You keep compromising until everyone is equally unhappy.

What to do When Your Sysadmin Quits

The loss of a systems administrator is a serious thing. System administrators typically have root-level access to your corporate networking environment. This puts you and your organization in a difficult position when they announce their departure. The following guidelines will help you through this difficult decision.

1. Never trust a departing sysadmin. Though they may have provided the company with years of loyal service, a departing systems administrator can be like a wounded predator. Expect and plan for the worst.
2. Never let a departing sysadmin clean up after himself. Once he gives notice, terminate his access to all systems immediately. This will minimize the potential damage to your company and your systems. You may want to go as far as to escort him from the building immediately. Any personal effects left behind can be boxed up and left for pickup at a later date. If you don’t trust the ex-sysadmin inside the building, arrange for meeting at a neutral location, such as at the loading dock, behind the dumpster.
3. Change all system account passwords. Since it is often difficult to tell which accounts the sysadmin may have had access to, err on the side of caution and change them all.
4. Do not let the sysadmin speak directly with his replacement(s). Insist that all communication take place through a trusted third party. This will provide an audit trail if he decides to make the transition difficult or legal action is later required.
5. Keep a close eye on corporate property, especially software licenses and computer hardware. These items can easily go missing, so a timely audit of existing assets is essential. Review expense reports and ensure that all expensed items are turned in before his departure, even ones for which you have no use. These are all company assets, after all.
6. Give your staff some warning. Review the situation, and ensure they are on the lookout for unethical or illegal behavior. You may also wish to do the same for any business associates with whom he may have had contact. You can not be too careful here. Remember, your sysadmin had root-level access to your corporate computing environment. The opportunities for mischief are virtually limitless. Do not worry about the reputation of your sysadmin. Your company’s best interests come first. Remember: it’s not slander if you think it could be true.
7. Forward the system administrator’s mail to a trusted employee. You should feel no obligation to offer any kind of mail forwarding on behalf of the sysadmin. Corporate email accounts should only be used for business purposes, so any personal mail that is inadvertantly read is not a concern. If you feel obligated to offer some kind of email forwarding, ensure that a copy of the forwarded mails are retained for auditing purposes. This is perfectly legitimate and legal, and you are under no onus to inform the ex-sysadmin that this is occurring.
8. Bring in the professionals. Have an external auditor review and certify that your systems are free of malicious code, or back-doors. Review all firewall rules, and audit all user accounts. Remove all VPN tunnels, trust relationships, and public-key certificates. Replace all server binaries with clean ones, in case of Trojan. Perform back-ups of critical systems in the event that a malicious incident does occur. Document all vulnerabilities found, and report any discoveries to the proper authorities. Do not involve the sysadmin in these discussions. It is up to the authorities to discover whether the vulnerabilities are malicious or accidental, and the ex-sysadmin’s reputation is no longer of concern to you.

The loss of a sysadmin is a difficult situation for any company. Through careful planning, healthy paranoia, and rigorous attention to detail, the potential damage to your business can be kept to a minimum. Be strong and do not falter. If you follow these guidelines, you’ll be well on your way to a smooth transition.

Fortunately, since Microsoft’s grammar checker doesn’t know the difference, neither will most of our readers. Assuming we even have readers, that is, which is easy to do if you pretend that the 80 to 100 hits a day we’re taking aren’t all Code Red variants.

Back to my epitaph. Or perhaps it’s an elegy. I suppose it could be both, if I had a modicum of poetry in my soul. I do have the sense to stop rambling before it becomes a eulogy, but only just barely.

Evan Spence, Pint Day Saint, co-founder, and all-round good guy is leaving the building. After more than five decituesdays, he is taking his ball and heading East to do his Master’s degree. This embodies a certain irony, as East was once the dirtiest of the Pint Day four-letter words—in the same phylum as Work, “JAWZ,” and Electricity Deregulation Deathmarch.

To paraphrase quite liberally from the Bard: Horacio baby, this sucks.

Not that I believe for a second that he should be doing any differently. If there’s anything Evan is suited for, it is architecture. My formative elementary school years (and many cubic meters of Lego) taught me as much. It’s just that dammit, this leaves a rather grotesque opening in my weekly sanity schedule.

Sure, it’s a little selfish, but after ten years of buffering the doldrums of everyday employment with philosophical ponderings, technological titterings, sporting segues, and biased, [unabashed bitching], change is going to be a little hard to take — and we all know the official pd.o stance on change: it’s like eating kittens; just plain wrong, and no-one should do it, ever.

I suppose I have to offer a little bit of leeway here. After all, It was me that, 10 years ago, left our fine city for the other coast. In my defense, that one was sort of expected—mandated, even—by the great gods of undergraduate studies, and their underlings, the high school guidance councellors. “Thou shouldst go to University, ” they proclaimed, “And thou shouldst leave home to do it.”

We listened, but perhaps my Circle-K Coffee Club caffeine intake propelled me a bit further than expected.

Though the official record shows our acquaintance dating back to the fifth of grades, these past ten years have had the most substance. Through corporations, Kubbernutzes, marriage, mortgages, the workforce and websites, we’ve managed to pound through without serious damage to ourselves or our fraternity. That’s quite an accomplishment. I have to wonder if it would have been possible without our Tuesday institution. Wait, check that — I’m sure we could have muddled through without the ol’ Pint Day, but would we have wanted to?

So thanks Ev, for the last 17 or so years of friendship. I’m sure there will be more — It’ll just have to take a different seat in a different pub for a while.

Addendum, 2005: He came back.

It happened like this. Somewhere along the line, a software company somewhere decided it didn’t like the fair use provisions that copyright law were placing on it. Under plain-old copyright law, users were renting, reverse engineering, backing up, and publishing benchmark information about the software products that they purchased. Even worse, the software company was in danger of being held accountable for defects and design flaws in their software products.

To address the unreasonable rights afforded by the intellectual property law, the software world brought us this great concept: the software license. Can’t control what your customers are doing with the items you sold them? Stop giving them anything tangible. Simply lend it to them for a while.

The Software Product is owned by Argblarg Corporation or its suppliers and is protected by copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT IS LICENSED, NOT SOLD.

What a cute trick. Not only does it entirely circumvent any benefit that traditional IP laws have extended the public in exchange for a limited monopoly (such as fair use). It also gives each and every IP owner the opportunity to play God, assigning whatever inane and banal terms he, she, or it feel like requiring.

Try this one:

You may not disclose the results of any benchmark tests of the software to any third party without Argblarg’s prior written approval.

So you can use this product, but you can’t tell anyone if it sucks. This clause isn’t limited to a single vendor, either. The No Benchmarking clause included with just about every major vendor’s database software, for example. And you wonder why the computer magazines all folded.

And this one:

IF YOU BREAK THE SEAL OR OTHERWISE OPEN THE PACKAGE CONTAINING THE SOFTWARE PROGRAM MEDIA OR BY INSTALLING THE SOFTWARE, YOU ARE, BY THAT ACT, ACKNOWLEDGING THAT YOU HAVE READ THIS AGREEMENT, UNDERSTAND IT AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY ITS TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

That’s fine, except the text of the license is on the CD, inside the sealed envelope.

ADDITIONAL LIMITATIONS. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software Product, except to the extent such foregoing restriction is expressly prohibited by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation. You may not rent, lease, lend, or transfer the Software Product. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of either the Server Software or Client Software to any third party without Argblarg Corporation’s prior written approval.

Now, get creative with the licensing terms, and you can own all sorts of IP that you didn’t pay to develop. Here’s a good one, from the now-defunct ArsDigita: By looking at this source code, you agree to ship any closely similar re-implementations, including those using similar or derived algorithms, data models, or page flows.

Software, however, is just the beginning; genetic material is the new IP.
Farmers, for example, no longer buy seed. They purchase a one-year license. Want to use any of the seeds collected in the following harvest? Sorry, they’re not yours. Pay up, or return the seeds. So what if you grew them? They contain Monsanto’s DNA, or a derivative therein.

Books and music are the obvious next choices. Buy a CD? No way. Purchase a six month license. Want to whistle the tune after that, you have to pay to pucker.

Looked under the hood of your Ford Explorer? Your license agreement says you assign any closely similar re-implementations back to Ford. Don’t even think about working in the Auto industry. Who needs patents when you have licenses?

In fact, who needs IP laws at all? Licenses grant you more rights than you could ever have under those pesky copyright and patent laws, without any of the irritating concessions. Limited monopoly? Nope. Licenses are perpetual. Fair use? Sorry, you gave that away when you clicked on the button.

By the way, by reading this document, you consent to the terms of my license. I’ll expect your first-born in the mail soon.

UBC was my first-but-one choice of school, which meant I could dispense with almost all the other applications. The only other response that was important was from Dalhousie, my number one choice.

(Family and socioeconomic reasons are behind this ranking. It has little to do with the relevant merits of either UBC or Dal, which are well beyond the scope of this article.)

Now the situation in which I found myself struck me as very interesting. The first letter of acceptance set the scenario, and the second letter of either acceptance or rejection would resolve it. This was analogous to the quantum mechanics thought experiment, Schrödinger’s Cat. Here’s what I mean:

In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger postulated that if you were to enclose a cat in a box with an atomic particle, a container of prussic acid (HCN), and a device that can detect the state of the atomic particle and trigger the release of the acid, you would prove a bizarre relationship between the ideas of classical and quantum physics.

In a given amount of time, the atomic particle must have a 50% chance of decaying. If it decays, the detection device releases the prussic acid, and the cat is poisoned. If the particle doesn’t decay, the cat lives.

This experiment exploits the chance-like nature of atomic particles, as described in quantum physics. For example, we cannot determine the location of an electron, because we alter its position by hitting it with the particle sent to detect it. So we describe the state of particles in terms of chance: An electron is likely in a particular orbit. (Inferring the location of the electron by other means is also beyond the scope of both this article and your humble correspondent.)

For Schrödinger’s experiment, it is equally likely that the atom has or has not decayed, and this uncertainty, or wave function, of the particle is further transferred to the cat. Until such time as we observe the contents of the box, and by thus doing collapse the wave function of the particle, the cat cannot be said to be either dead or alive. When we take a look, the probabilities are resolved, and so is the cat. This experiment endeavours to demonstrate that the wave function of an object will remain suspended in a position of all possible states until that object is observed.

What of architecture schools?

After receiving the acceptance of UBC, there was only one other possibility: Dalhousie. I was in an experiment with two possible outcomes. Either I would be accepted by Dal, and I would move my family to the east coast, or I would be rejected, and we would move west.

So until that letter showed up at my door and I opened it to collapse the waves of probability, I was caught in a state of inaction between the coasts. When I conceived of the possible futures converging from that unopened letter, a part of me had some sympathy for Schrödinger’s poor cat.

My Dalhousie acceptance arrived in the unexpected form of an email.

You never can tell.

But who is this guy really? What makes him go? And how do you get on dealing with him?

Well, do you have problem out in user land? Is your software frozen or your hardware hung? Is your data corrupt or your network slow? Is your vendor being a pain? What about training? All of this stuff is in the online jurisdiction of your systems support pro. So if you run into trouble, he’s there to help.

Busy? No problem, because he’s flexible. He can come in early to solve your problems without disturbing your workday. Or “Maybe I’ll get you to come back at lunch” usually works. And don’t forget the conveniently late scheduled outage windows — convenient for you, that is. That way he can boot the servers, recompile the kernel, jiggle the knob or whatever he does back there without disturbing your busy schedule. We know it’s hard for you to fit time in your day between status meetings, 1½ hour lunches, and sending rude email attachments to your buddies at the next company over.

And talk about convenient! He’ll always come to see you since he doesn’t really have a work space of his own. He lives in the server room, with those machines he loves. One phone call is all it takes. Or maybe a phone call and a few gentle voice mail reminders.

Working late? Month end? Arbitrary deadline? Give him a buzz on his cell, or his pager, or call him at home. Hell, call him late at work and leave a message saying “I hope you’re still in,” or better yet “I need this before 8:00 tomorrow. Hope you get this.”

Technical troubles at home? Bring them to our man. He especially appreciates the types of problems that involve technology he doesn’t support at work. Variety, right? It’s good to give him a break from the tedium of getting his job done during normal work hours. He’s also a good source of below cost, hard-to-get software. Good for those situations such as “Our 14 year old was removing files to make room for a game, now the OS won’t boot.” If he gives you a crazy look with his weak, bloodshot eyes, you might need to grease the wheels a bit. The offer of a “home cooked meal” is usually sufficient: he can’t cook. Never mind that he has no clue whether you or your spouse can either. He’d love to burn up his weeknight off to meet your kids and smell your house.

Need results right away? Try a physical threat like “I’m going to wring your Goddamn neck,” because he’s use to taking full responsibility for the inter-operability, health and well-being of software he didn’t write, hardware he didn’t spec, a topology he didn’t create, multiple competing standards that no vendor fully supported, business functions that were never completely understood, an implementation in which he was never involved, staffing by individuals he didn’t select, management by castoffs who never wanted the responsibility, a lowest bid supplier chosen by a formulaic purchasing clone, rogue systems from disgruntled departments, sloppy kludges by wayward do-it-yourselfers, a vendor with exclusively self serving interests, recklessly irresponsible third party techs, restricted budgets, short circuited testing, nonexistent end user training, glacial desktop refresh programs, absent executive buy-in, expectations he can’t manage, problems he can’t replicate, preconceptions he can’t change, political games he can’t see, historical departmental wrongs he can’t right, personality conflicts he can’t resolve, and miracles he can’t conjure. He’s a service provider, and a cost centre. He lives to serve. Doubly so if he’s a consultant. So corporeal threats usually light a pretty good fire.

Grab him before he has his coffee, or while he still has on his jacket in the morning. Or grab him in the elevator, while he’s totally captive. “When are these fucking computers going to work like they’re supposed to?” would be a good way to lead into the conversation. (Don’t mention that it’s been three weeks since you properly shut down your PC.) Also, you can wait until he’s eating his lunch at what passes for his desk. Ask him if he minds being interrupted while he eats, and then continue regardless of the answer. (Sometimes the tedium makes him cranky. Break it up for him.)

At the end of the day, when you’re done all your work and you’ve cleaned up your desk, pop him a question just as he’s going out the door.

Show him you can speak his language. Pepper your conversations, messages and emails with meaningless gems such as “you’re getting down into the guts of the computer,” when he fires up that Start Menu gizmo, or “I’ll let you work your magic,” just before he re-enables your network account by flipping off the caps lock. Throw in phrases you’ve gleaned from the media like “upside down and in the ditch on the information superhighway,” when you’re describing an email glitch.

Actually, just be sure to use the term “information superhighway” lots.

Quite the guy, our man.

Do you like the way he takes the shortest route to the door when he leaves, and can’t make eye contact with any of the users along his way, for fear of triggering a “before you go” lead into “why’s my computer so slow,” or “can you help me with my corporate communications mail merge?”

Lucky for the health of the company he can do everyone’s job for them. He’s a self-taught pseudo-expert in drafting, geophysics, petroleum economics, desktop publishing, reliability centred maintenance, production accounting, gas marketing, regulatory affairs, geology, mapping, electric deregulation, land management, work-flow analysis, telecommunications, facilities maintenance, data processing, production engineering, media relations, copy writing, design, layout, translation, syntax, grammar, materials management, inventory, procurement, requests for proposal, interviewing, project management, financial analysis, capacity planning, environmental protection, lighting, building maintenance, and feng shui. Among others.

Everything working fine? Great, it’s about time. But why can’t you do this trivial and useless (but neat-o keen) thing you can do at home on Windows 98? This is also the time for you developers out there to pile on. Try “I need this non-standard tool because its’ the only tool I know,” and “At the last place I worked, we were allowed to do this ridiculous and dangerous but convenient-for-me thing.”

Notice how he stays close to the city on weekends so his pager will still work? What commitment! Notice how even when he’s not wearing the pager his hip still twitches, as though he can feel its phantom presence vibrating there. What commitment!

He can deal with the pressure of supporting as few as six and as many as several hundred users, occasionally singlehandedly, but more often with someone with a freshly minted MCSE certificate who’s never seen a command prompt, and can’t type anyway. Never mind that he supports your entire enterprise, he’ll do it all on the cheap, because he’s young. Bonus! (The home cooked meals go a long way too, remember?)

But if he’s a consultant, be sure to rub him with how high his rate is, even though he doesn’t see anywhere near that much. He’s grown accustomed to shouldering the expectations of performance and professionalism that come with the territory, but on a lesser wage.

He’s the dude that shows up anyway, and answers your phone call, even when every fibre of his body is crying out to leave the accursed receiver in the cradle. But he picks it up anyway. And his query is invariably “How can I help?” Regardless of circumstances, history or personality, he wants you to be able to do your job. And that’s all he wants. Honest.

And he can do all that: He can restore your network access, refresh your database, plug you into that temporary store, upgrade your RAM, clean your keyboard, install that legit bit of software (or that illicit one in a pinch), grant you access to the mainframe host, hot up your network port (and move your furniture to do so), configure your protocol stack, twiddle your user configurable options, increase your bit depth, optimize your boot sequence, show you the keyboard shortcut, upgrade your OS, drop an analogue line into your quad, set up your new hardware, do the dog and pony show, swap out your motherboard, grab you a shiny new IP, throw in a SCSI card, burn a quick CD for you, restore from tape, wait on the vendor’s help line, diagnose your dialup, kill your rogue process, jump start your printer queue, bulk load your data, OCR your legal document, teach you how to do it, resurrect that undead server, encrypt your mail, break your forgotten password, create your network profile, assign you to whichever departmental groups you need, reroute your emergency print job, read, write, create, erase, break out, drop to shell, net use, net share, net logon, upgrade the fleet, disinfect the network, spec and order your gear, fix your interrupt conflict, resolve your Ethernet collisions, triage your deprecated system, revamp your systems standard, install your expensive mission sensitive enterprise suite, drill down, hup, format, restore, move, ncopy, spare you from tedium with whichever scripting language is at hand, cascade, upgrade, upgrade, and upgrade again until the vendor gets it right, hot patch and cold boot, synchronize, redundantly array, mirror, store off site, rewire, patch, route, re-route, block, deny all, setuid, chmod, chown, pipe, match your regular expression, download, decommission, stress test, benchmark, map back, diagram, certify, beta, register, instantiate, integrate, replicate, emulate, VPN, tunnel, switch your port, sniff your traffic, audit, log, roll out, mock up, prepare your AV equipment, ghost to template, quick restore, fast copy, clear your cache, populate your table, recreate your index, execute your procedure, drop your constraints, shore up your table space, optimize your query, write your triggers, apply your primary key, standardize your desktops, model your data, map your process, swap your processors, add a hard drive, attach a peripheral, chase out the defect, diagnose the fault (tolerate the fault), tension your tape, secure your source, validate your identity, watermark, hexedit, chomp your linefeeds, send as binary, recompile, reconcile, recreate the error, eliminate unnecessary complexity, terminate with extreme prejudice, monitor performance, document, diagram, illustrate, summarize, un-install, manage tasks, remove bottlenecks, cluster, pipeline, go to the mat for hard won principles and technical elegance, truth and beauty, and then compromise it all for a usable workaround that keeps you running for another day. And so he can go home at night.

In short, he shakes the holy root over your entire wired domain.

He’s driven, inexplicably.

He loves these infernal machines.

He’s committed. (We mentioned that.)

This is why he’s on this Big Blue and Apple-][e-monochrome-screen-coloured planet.

And who is this guy, your systems support pro?

He ain’t me, babe.

He ain’t me.

Note: All of the above comments appearing quotes have actually been said to me at one time or another. The one about the 14-year old deleting files was while I was at home on Christmas Day, for my first day off in over five weeks.

They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist
— Martin Niemoller, “First they came…”

On July 16, 2001, Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested after giving a talk at DefCon on e-book security. Dmitry worked for a Russian company called ElcomSoft that distributed software capable of removing the copy protection on e-books. Among other things, this allows visually impaired computer users to purchase an e-book and use it with a text-to-speech reader. Under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, however, this software makes Dmitry a hardened criminal.

To recap—a foreign national enters the US to speak at a conference, and even though speech is a constitutionally protected activity (and speaking is all he is doing), he is arrested. He has participated in the development of a product that technically could be used to break a law—a product that was written and distributed in another country—a country where the product itself is perfectly legal.

Dmitry Sklyarov has effectively been arrested for speeding on the Interstate, because he was once seen doing 180 on the Autobahn.

If you are the owner of an e-book, it is within your fair use rights to make a copy, print it out, use quotations in scholarly work and so forth. Fifty years after the author’s death (in Canada, where I live and work), it is within your rights to strip all copy-protection entirely, as this work has fallen into the public domain. So long as you own the e-book, the fair use doctrine gives you the right to perform these actions—with or without using this particular software. So where is the crime?

In the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave, you can own a gun to protect yourself from neighbours and tyrannical governments, but you don’t dare string bits together. Those silly framers didn’t put software into the constitution.

Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian citizen, came to a conference in the United States of America to speak about e-book security, and was arrested.

First Amendment be damned. There’s copyright on the line.

Ah yes — we went on another walkabout tonight. This nightly ritual started as a seemingly simple hunt for an open bar. We were in town for a Hackathon, and none of us really knew our way around, so when we got thirsty, we would simply leave the hack room and walk rapidly in whatever direction our spider-senses told us must have beer. As we found ourselves further and further from civilization, we would query passing locals in friendly, foreign sounding ways, asking them where to find beer. Vague replies and gestures would follow, and we would take off in a new direction until we were told everything was closed.

A few nights ago however, the technique met with spectacular results. In the week leading up to Usenix, we had been hacking in a room at MIT, across the river. After several nights of trying, we came to the unfortunate conclusion that you can’t drink in Cambridge after 11pm, so we had a friendly local direct us to a train that would take us to Boston. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, it was a few minutes to close. Niklas took over.

“I am from Sweden, and I would like a beer,” he pronounced clearly.

The bouncer thought about it. It was a convincing argument. Looking carefully to both sides, he leaned a little closer, saying softly, “Go down that alley. Second door on the left.”

Curious, we did. Upon entering the unmarked door, we found ourselves in a lively, after-hours pub. Hardly believing our fortune, we loaded up on libations. Unfortunately, by the time morning rolled around, we had entirely forgotten the location of the wonderful unmarked door.

Since that night, our reputation for finding beer at odd hours had spread. Accordingly, the nightly quest for beer had taken on a new tack: find the after-hours bar. This is how we came to find ourselves wandering the streets of Boston, 40 minutes to close, with a gaggle of thirsty geeks in tow. They had complete faith in us. Odd, since our record was only about one in three.

Confidently, we set out from the hotel, picked a direction at random, and started marching.

15 minutes later, we hadn’t yet broken stride. Nor had we seen any kind of bar. The masses were getting nervous, yet we seemed confident, so they followed.

20 minutes elapsed. We passed the bar the world knows as Cheers — closed, of course. We paused to admire an especially large rat that was crossing the street. “Nice poodle” someone noted.

At the 25 minutes mark, we came across a bar. It wasn’t Boston’s friendliest, and it wasn’t the now-legendary after-hours, but it was still serving. We approached the front door, and the scowls of the bouncer seated there. In an attempt to drive us off, he demanded ID.

Bad move.

As the increasingly irritated bouncer hunted for birthdates in passports from a half-dozen different countries, the clock moved inexorably toward close. We began to doubt our decision to stop for the easy beer. At long last, however, we were through the door. Orders were placed and within minutes we found ourselves in possession of two Guinni each. Just then, the bell rang for last call.

We smiled. We had done it again.

The beers were consumed, and when the bar staff finally ejected us from the premises, it finally occurred to us that we didn’t actually have to walk everywhere in this strange town. Three minutes and five dollars later, the taxi delivered us back to the hotel. Most crashed. Three of us and a bottle of scotch remained.

And that’s how we got here.

I reach over to grab the bottle of scotch and realize that Mickey has passed out in his chair, one arm cradled around his Thinkpad, the other around the now-empty bottle. Niklas is still out cold. As I reach over to move the laptop to safety, Mickey shifts and pulls it closer. The Thinkpad isn’t going anywhere. Admiring his dedication, I leave him for the cleaning vultures and hope for the best. Anyway, the sun is up.

For 355 days of the year, they never miss an opportunity to film a grass-chewing, mesh-backed farmer complaining about the weather, and air it as western sentiment. My personal favourite came after Trudeau died—may he rot in hell—and Chretien was thinking of unilaterally renaming Mount Logan after him. CBC stopped by a truck stop and interviewed a fellow who suggested any steaming pile of prairie fertilizer could aptly be renamed Mount Trudeau. (Admittedly, that was actually western sentiment.)

For ten days in July however, just when Calgary is doing its best to live up to the sort of dust bowl hayseed aw-shucks yahoo image the Eastie loves to portray, we disappear from the media radar.

Stampede. I honestly think the national media’s embarrassed on our behalf.

That’s okay, we all go through it. When I was going through my awkward teenage years, I didn’t want to have much to do with the whole C-lazy-S scene. Picture overweight, middle-aged city boys squeezing into fashions last relevant in the Joe Clark administration, and all those old war horses dressing like young fillies. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert would be proud.

Many locals in Calgary don’t get it either. My coworker’s husband is disbelieving of the whole affair. Years ago, my own wife never let me go out in public wearing cowboy boots unless it was Stampede.

Yes it’s tacky. Yes it’s kitsch. Get over it. You’re not a teenager anymore. Who are you trying to impress? It’s Stampede and no one’s going to remember anyway.

And it’s fun, remember? Free food, free booze. Reckless truancy, irresponsible behaviour. Leave your reservations and your pager at home. Check out this visitor’s impressions:

Hit Calgary during the Stampede. A guy in a bar explained the Chuck Wagon races to me so I knew how to look at them when I saw them. A guy serving me pancakes in the street told me his vehicle was a chuck wagon. I danced in the street, too.

—Icono.Clast, San Francisco, June 6, 1994

Eastie media and apologists needn’t fear. On the following Monday morning, we’ll all rub our tired, sun bleached eyes, pull our suits and khakis out of the closet, and go back to doing $28 billion worth of oil patch business.

Yup. Need more rain.

First, and the most common reason to buy an SUV in Calgary, Alberta, is perceived prestige.

I remember the first time I had ever heard of the concept of an SUV as a token of prestige. As we often did on Tuesdays, a group of friends and I were discussing the pros and cons of various different vehicle makes. Naturally, these conversations made their way to the generally unattainable ranks of luxury vehicles. BMWs, Acuras and so forth. I distinctly remember hearing the phrase “For that price, you could buy a Ford Explorer.” I was very surprised. Why would you propose buying a Ford Explorer, when we were talking about hot, fast imports? Explorers seemed like tall stations wagons to me.

That was 1994, and it has long since become obvious that many people have chosen to spend on a Ford Explorer more than the purchase price of a Saab or an Audi. I suppose these monsters are considered prestigious simply because they’re so expensive. I didn’t get it then, and I won’t try to analyze it now.

The second, and slightly more insidious justification for purchasing an SUV is the twin-barrelled doozie of ride height and safety.

Since there are so many SUVs on the road, the argument in favour of their increased ride height is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their lumbering stance means it takes longer for traffic to clear turning lights, because it’s impossible to see around or over the vehicle to see whether the light is still green. The extra several inches of ride height means an SUV driver’s field of vision is at least equal to those around them. Somewhere around the tree tops. That driver’s visibility problem has been solved but it’s been passed on to the poor soul behind them. That’s a little like throwing trash over your fence into the neighbour’s yard.

Safety.

Forgetting that SUVs are trucks, and only have to comply with meagre truck safety regulations, the argument goes like this: “If I’m in an accident, I want to have size and momentum on my side.”

There are two sides to this justification. We all know that smaller cars perform poorly when crash tested against their more massive siblings. So if I make a mistake, and I hit you with my smaller car, you stand a much better chance of walking away unharmed. This seems fair, since it was my fault that we got in the wreck anyway. I get to deal with whatever injuries I might have sustained in my hatchback.

If, however, we happen to collide and you’re at fault, I’m still the one most likely to wind up with the injury, from your accident.

Your SUV may be loaded to the teeth with passive safety instruments, such as seat belts and air bags, but all of the more critical active safety features have their hands full just dealing with its massive bulk.

By stating safety as a primary reason to drive an SUV, you’re telling me that you don’t care whether you’re right or wrong, you’re going to win. Your mistake, my loss.

Tooling around in your Ford Excursion amounts to an act of aggression against smaller, less violent drivers. I’m sickened when I have to sit in traffic with deadly behemoths on either side of my practical, responsible, and peaceful compact.

Here’s to a US$200 barrel of oil. Screw you and your over dressed mini-van.

Being smart, or rather, having a smart wife, I put SPF 15 sun block on first thing in the morning. This was critical, because the sun blazed down all morning, and we absolutely roasted on the hill. It was perfect.

That night, when we hauled our bruised bodies back up to the hotel room in Canmore, I checked my face for damage. No vengeful rays had managed to penetrate my defences, so my face was still my natural of hue of white-and-freckles.

All, that is, except two D-shaped spots, high on either side of my forehead, where there was supposed to be hair.

Okay, this was a bit of a new thing for me.

My father’s side of the family seems to be a long line of baldies. Spence men seem to be well on their way to baldness by their mid twenties. Dad, however, has always had a pretty decent head of hair, and I never had any indication that something might be amiss. In fact, I’ve always had a lot of very plain, very straight hair. And besides, you get that from your mother’s side anyway, right? Grandpa Toma had hair on top right until the end.

So why the dual mini Dolby-shaped sun burns?

I honestly believe that the recent stress of my job (electric industry deregulation), and my personal life (wedding), caused some of my hair to fall out. I remember washing my hair the day after the wedding, and noticing several short strands stuck to my hand. I thought nothing of it, but it continued that way for the next week or so, until sometime in the middle of the honeymoon. I haven’t seen too many more strands left behind after shampooing, so this appears to have been a short lived exodus.

Now, however, I have to recognize that I have a forehead that is wider than that to which I have become accustomed to applying lotion.

Who would have thought this could happen to me?

The original tagline “…and $20,000 later,” referred to our then-estimate of how much money we had piled into the various Pint Day venues over the first 10 years. In hindsight, that number was probably low. The pd.o tips well.

For the scrolls then, here are the officially sanctioned Pint Day milestones:

Tuesday, June 18, 1991

The Genesis, Elephant and Castle

Kjell in his work boots, and Evan in his brogues. Who do you think got the better service?

Tuesday, January 7, 1992

Pint Day moves to the Unicorn

We had heard of a beer called One Horn, brewed by Big Rock exclusively for the Unicorn. Even though it was little more than watery Traditional, it was still a smash hit with us, and we drank it for some time before moving on to the delicious (and dangerous) McNally’s.

The Unicorn deserves special mention because of the many esteemed acquaintances we made during our six year stay: Tasha, Shelley, Alana, Jen and others. And of course, our first regular waitress, Michelle, who hated her job, and wasn’t very keen on us either. Two weeks after she vanished from the Unicorn, she appeared as a Sunshine girl in the local rag. It was the only time we ever saw her smile.

Tuesday, March 17, 1998

Pint Day leaves the Unicorn

Without fanfare or ceremony, one Tuesday we just didn’t show up at the Unicorn. It was perhaps an ignominious end to our long stay, but we felt that nothing more could be accomplished there. When we returned one Tuesday, many years later, the same shitty cover bands were still playing. Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the Unicorn later closed. The current reincarnation/namesake only shows up on our radar when we need free wifi while drinking downtown.

It’s entirely possible we left the Unicorn that day owing Jen $10. If so, it’ll be the only time we ever walked out on a bill. In our defense, we were really, really drunk.

Tuesday, March 24, 1998

The Barley Mill Interregnum

After escaping the dark reaches of the Unicorn, we let the sunlight get to our heads. For a time the atmosphere at the Barley Mill was great, but then they built the Sheraton next door, which cast a literal shadow on our evenings, and the service was always a little spotty. Not because the help wasn’t attentive, but because there was just too many people there. It couldn’t last.

Tuesday, May 5, 1998

pintday.org created

In a fit of ego-gratification we put the cherry on top of the Pint Day page, variously hosted at Ingenia West and the Codetalker offices, by registering our domain in the name of the Pint Day Saints. This became the second edition of the Pint Day page.

We don’t actually recall what happened to the first edition.

Tuesday, July 7, 1998

Pint Day moves to Crawdaddy’s

They opened a bar right beside our office building. What could we do?

For a while, Crawdaddy’s sported a postcard over the Bar, sent by one of the Pint Day Saints while on vacation in Bermuda. We may have been their only customers.

Tuesday, March 17, 1999

Pint Day comes home to the Ship & Anchor

It was Green Beer day, so were bound to end up there anyway. Still, it always should have been the Ship. We always wanted it to be the Ship. Sometimes these things just take a while.

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Sanctioned 500 Pint Days

At this point, it was starting to dawn on us that this bizarre ritual imbibement was amounting to our lives’ great work. How strange. To commemorate the occasion, the pd.o as you know it today was launched.

To conclude this gratuitous recollection of meaningless dates, let me remind you that it’s not the time, the place, or the company that is important. The Tuesday however, is non-negotiable. Drink a beer. You’ll thank us for it.

Pint Day CM is the last weekly pode in our now 400-strong serial.

We would say that our readers have made this all possible, but you haven’t. This was all us—Kjell’s willingness to continue to foot the bandwidth bill, Tashie’s stubborn ability to keep (mostly) running, and our combined, sometimes wavering, mostly maddening determination to pound out a rant, week after week, for eight years.

In our eight years of this gig, we had the support of our Third Beatle, Kev (May 2002–July 2006), for better than half of it, and for that we greatly thank him.

Also lightening the load were our sporadic contributors: Alan, Bighair, Il Pelicano, Coop, Tamara, Drew, Yoda, Monir-of-the-many-caps, and the amazing cast of Aberzombies lurking in the comment field of The Hard Sell. Thank you all.

Completeness requires the pd.o to run from PD D (500) to PD M (1000). Recognizing that Evan hasn’t written an actual rant for over two months, and Kjell has resorted to doodles on the bus ride home, we have now both come to accept that we just can’t continue like this.

Besides, how many more times could you possible stomach Evan saying government doesn’t work, or hear Kjell complain about intellectual property? You can pretty much fill in the blanks every Tuesday by now anyway.

There were high points: making the Wikipedia entry on Red Bull with our first comment-enabled post, or getting hauled into the Principal’s office, were some. There were low points—rants so bad they’re not even worth linking to. There were hellos, and far too many goodbyes. We’ve been silly. We’ve been serious. We have solved the world’s problems, and possibly caused some new ones. It’s been a super-swell run.

The site will remain. Next Tuesday we will begin the recycling of our past content, with the intent to freshen any broken links, to catch the spelling and grammar mistakes that our intern missed the first time, and occasionally rewrite the scribomaniacal wreck that passed for a trip to the pode. It might be tedious and self-indulgent, but that’s what the internet is for. You, dear sweet loyal reader, don’t get a vote.

Additionally, we reserve the right to fill those missing hundred pd.o slots whenever we feel the need. Stop by anytime.

The pd.o is dead. Long live the pd.o.