Elderly driver dies after car hits house

A woman in her seventies died Wednesday after her car struck a house in the Blossom park neighbourhood.

There is too much of this past-tense, verbs-being-applied-to-impersonal-nouns bullshit in news writing. Nobody ever assigns blame any more. The car struck the house, oil was spilled, a woman died of knife wounds – like its the fault of the inanimate objects in all these cases.

Are news organizations so desperate to cover their asses and not offend anyone that they’ll remove the heart and soul from the interesting news they’re trying to report, and replace it with boring, flat, featureless pap that will neverless get the facts across in the least-suable style possible?

This lady didn’t die because a car hit a house. She died because she had a heart attack while at the wheel, lost control of her automobile, and crashed her car into someone’s home.

Okay, rather, I figured I’d have the fortitude to resist writing such a post, but I at least figured I’d want to.

But see, I got laid off earlier today and frankly, I’m not upset at all.

I’m not upset with the company – I wish them the very best. They have some neat technology and if it pans out (and it looks like it will), then they’re going to clobber the marketplace. I’m not upset with anyone left behind – these things are usually as hard on them as they are on those that got laid off, and everyone still working there is good people that I just don’t wish this on. And I’m not upset with the management either – they were faced with a tough decision. They’d cut every non-staff expense they could (we watched and noticed and were grateful), but this economy is brutal and people are loathe to commit to purchasing decisions, which affects their bottom line.

And it’s not like I’m going to be in dire straights or anything. Since I was laid off, I can get EI for Quite Some Time, or even better, Ontario offers a Self-Employment Grant that you can get if you’re otherwise eligible for EI. Since I wanted more time to work on Bill On Site, then this may actually work out to my benefit.

Ultimately, I’m choosing not to think of this as a setback, but rather as a hell of an opportunity.

So it occurs to me that I have a lot of friends who don’t live in the same city as me and don’t know nuthin’ about how my life’s been going. In the interest of bringing everyone to the same page, here goes.

My dang toe

I went to Terra’s cottage a few weekends ago and tried to lean on water. I know how this sounds. There’s nothing I can say in my defense except that I was drunk at the time. This is never a defense though, and indeed in this case, it’s less of a defense and more of a reason. An awesome reason.

You see, the simple fact that I was at the cottage was cause enough to get drunk, but that particular evening had a certain layer of awesome drizzled on top. Awesome that can only come from your friends all pooling together an absurd amount of money and buying me some crazily expensive cigars and some 30-year-old scotch.

Grant me some credit – while I did crack the bottle that night, we didn’t kill it. Hell, most of it remains here with me, awaiting a future awesome event. But we did have some, and alcohol begets more alcohol… which begets an attempt to lean on water.

Getting back to that. So here I am, leaning out over the lake, about to put my hand down on the watery surface before me, when I realize that what I expect to be a rock is actually H20. I scramble backwards, nearly pitch headfirst in to the lake, and consider myself lucky that I got off with just weirdly twisting my toe. It stings like a bitch, but it doesn’t hurt to flex it. All is well.

I headed back to the sauna and camped out in there for a bit, warming up (it was cold down by the lake), then headed back to the awesome poker game we were having. (Why awesome? Because I was on-fire unstoppable, that’s why.) My toe continued to hurt, but I ignored it. Shortly after, I went back into the sauna to warm up again, when I decided to check out my foot.

Press – squish – press – squish. Yep. That was blood. You see, I hadn’t trimmed my toenails in a bit, and mine had caught on the rocks when I was scrabbling for purchase just scant moments ago. It lifted. It got RUINED, I tell you.

Already-too-long-story short, I drank plenty of whiskey that night (though not the 30 – I had been lucky enough to bring a backup bottle for just such an occasion), took plenty of Tylenol the next day, and visited emerg as soon as we returned. They told me to keep it bandaged, take a prescrip of antibiotics and that yes I would lose it, just not yet.

I haven’t yet, and it’s basically healed now. It’s a mostly pink-and-healthy looking toe, if you ignore the fact that the toenail looks a little whiter than the other (this is because it’s not pressed directly against the skin beneath). I’m back to wearing socks again, which is awesome. I love socks.

My dang Xbox 360

I am awful about technology. I simply cannot resist its siren’s lure, though I have done better in this thing than so many others. I have lusted after an XBox 360 since I moved to Ottawa (last year, for those who only peripherally know me, yet – for reasons unknown – read my blog), and have just recently relented and purchased it. And GTA IV. And a hi-def TV.

And then ran RIGHT THE FUCK OUT AND GOT RENTER’S INSURANCE. Seriously, the very next Monday.

I’m loving the thing though – it can do so many nifty little tricks. For instance, playing game demos on it is just a joy. None of the bullshit you have to go through on the computer, with finding a decent download site, waiting in line, downloading, unpacking, installing, possibly updating drivers, and the finding out the dang thing doesn’t work with your particular chipset/mobo/graphics card combination. On Live, you just download the demo, it goes in the background, it tells you when it’s done, and it’s straight-up ready to play. I LOVE that.

And I installed TVersity on my computer, so I can stream video straight to my 360 to play on my new TV. So rather than watch Band of Brothers on my lil’ 19″ on my room, I can watch it on my big, bright 32″ in the living room.

And when Lich King is released? I’m playing it in the living room on my TV. Hells YES I’m a nerd. But then, I do what I love and I love what I do.

My dang forgetfulness

Speaking of what I do, I have been doing something A project, if you will.

You see, I forget things. It is my great weakness. Specifically, I forget dates. WELL NO MORE. I have written a little application in which I can store these dates. It then produces a newsfeed I can add to my newsreader that I check nearly constantly throughout the day. And no longer shall I be completely oblivious as holidays, birthdays, and Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19, BTW, that’s today) slip quietly by.

Wanna see?

ComingUp

While the joke is funny, it also has something to say about the people involved. They’re morons. I mean, they got there, clearly read the sign on the front of the place, and still went inside, sat down amongst all the screaming children, and ordered something with a rediculous name.

You may be wondering just why I’m rambling on about this. Well, it’s because it’s relevant to something that happened today. Dreamhost accidentally charged all of their customers for the next year in advance. Yeah, that’s right. $7,500,000 USD charged by mistake. I mean, I know I’ve screwed up at work before, but never to the tune of 7.5 million, you know?

Now, if you check in the comments replying to that entry, the number one complaint is that Josh Jones blogged about the incident in his usual, jokey tone. Sure, there are a few people who complain that this can have very real, very drastic financial impact on people (although mostly they’re wrong), but most people are insisting that an incident of this magnitude requires that Dreamhost instantly become a serious company that does serious business and makes no jokes at all.

Get real!

Sure, Dreamhost is not without its problems, but a) they always resolve them, b) always let me know exactly what happened, and c) always maintain a light tone. They have always done this in the past. Always. It’s yet another reason in the long list of why I freaking love them as hosts.

Now, to the people that don’t like this, I say: nuts! Dreamhost isn’t a serious company. They’re a light-hearted company. If you signed up expecting an Internet-Is-Serious-Business company, well maybe Dreamhost isn’t for you. Dreamhost is sure to see plenty of cancelled accounts due to this, and in a large part I don’t blame them. Billing is not an area you can fuck up without expecting huge reprecussions. I don’t wish a single account loss on the fine (and much chargrinned) folks at Dreamhost, but to all those morons who are leaving because they expect the guys at Dreamhost to be anything but the guys at Dreamhost: don’t let the door hit you on the way out!