Blessed by the Potato

On the radio we heard an announcement that someone had lost their dog. Listeners were urged to call in with any news, and that they would be put in touch with the dog’s owners…

PEI is just that quaint :)

At a gas station/convenience store in Hampton (“Me & The Missus”) I got an ice cream cone with 3 very large scoops of very good ADL-brand ice cream for $3. There was so much ice cream on my cone that the cone actually snapped off, and my ice cream went on the ground. I always recommend ice cream on PEI if you’re going to visit, as there are a number of different places with their own home-made recipes. Cows has grown up to be quite the phenomenon out there, and their ice cream is pretty good; second only, perhaps, to the wonderful smell of freshly-made waffle cones when you walk in (especially if you’re walking in from the stench of the North River). Though they’re probably more famous for their T-shirts these days. The last time I got ice cream in Ontario, I think a half-scoop kiddie cone went for $3 (I couldn’t say exactly, since I got an $8 bannana split).

Of course, most other things are more expensive out there. Gas, for example, was almost 20 cents/litre cheaper back here. They have regulated gas prices now, so you never have to worry about the price being jacked up on you out of nowhere: there’s usually 24-hours notice of any price change. It also means that there are no differences in pricing between stations. I’ve noticed a lot of stations have closed since the last time I was out there, and I have to wonder how much of their business might have depended on getting into price wars with local stations (or, on screwing people by jacking the prices up at random). Of course, it could be because gas has gotten so much more expensive, and I saw a lot fewer cars in general, and an especially marked decline in the number of pickup trucks and SUVs: people seem to be content with their compacts. This, of course, from a province that can get several feet of snow in a single night in the winter and actually features a fair bit of dirt road and off-road driving in every day life. I wonder what they know that Ontarians don’t…

Speaking of cars, the police have found mine finally. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but it sounds like the same thing as last time: ignition damage, door lock damage, and to salt the wounds, $250 for towing & impound.

Things have been pretty quiet out here on PEI, as I would have hoped. I’ve spent a lot of time visiting family and dealing with the slow dial-up connection, and the end of the trip is already looking pretty close…

We went to my aunt’s house for dinner on Saturday, and the directions we got were pretty funny. “Drive past the blue goose [a restaurant], then up a hill. Look for a beige house with newish siding, then turn left. There should be a sign with a seagull on it.” We were laughing in the car thinking there was no way directions like that would properly lead us to a place I’ve only been once or twice before, 20 minutes away… but sure enough we got there no problem, and had to laugh more: those were perfectly adequate directions for PEI!

While there, a big storm rolled up and knocked the power out for a few hours (the power goes out at least once every trip). Right before the lightning hit, we saw a waterspout forming out on the straight. It never got much taller than in the pictures (so the water never joined the clouds), but this one was pretty wide! It’s hard to get an idea of scale from the pictures, but I’d have to guess it was about 300 m across.

We also saw a bald eagle, picture below to come later (probably). My uncle’s camera rocks, by the way.

Still no word on my car, which unfortunately means it’s probably gone for good. I’ll see how life is around London without a car for a few weeks while I look for a new(ish) one. In the meantime, I’ll just have to continue to lob curses and obscenities at the thief, and hope that they get bilateral kidney stones before they can steal another.

PS: is anyone planning on driving from Toronto -> London or points beyond (Windsor?) this weekend? My cat’s being taken care of in Toronto while I’m on vacation, and she can stay there a bit longer if she has to, but I’d prefer to have her back in London with me…

I noticed that over the last few months I’ve gotten a lot more spam coming through to all my addresses. I was kind of annoyed since I got the same messages a few times after I already plunked one version in my quarantine, so the filters weren’t learning too quickly… but what was stranger that a lot of it was getting by the filters because it wasn’t even trying to sell anything. Some of them didn’t even have links. I thought it was really strange and figured that there was a malfunctioning spambot out there somewhere, or that someone was just sociopathic and liked to clog up the tubes with spam just for the love of making strangers angry. I’ve seen a few other neat theories on this out there, such as a semi-sentient artificial intelligence attempting to communicate with us by using spam — the most common form of communication on the internet (even before Chuck Norris jokes).

Just tonight I saw an even better theory: that the weird snippets of somewhat-normal looking text with no links is being sent around to de-train spam filters. They are messages that are quite similar to normal messages, so they slip through the filters as they stand. If you use those messages to train your net, then the odds are good you’ll increase your false positive rate, and possibly become fed up with your filters and start lowering your threshold, allowing more marketing spam through…

Spammers can be so evil.

My car’s been stolen again! The police haven’t recovered it yet, and I’m waiting for them to call back to make a full report… but the MO is exactly the same: another stolen car was dumped in front of my place, and mine was stolen. I hope the fuckers actually investigate it this time (or better yet, catch the bastard before he dumps it).

This time my poker set wasn’t in it, but my beloved frisbee was, as well as some pop that was too heavy to carry up on Monday night. At least there’s no salt to dump.

I briefly thought about GPS locators and flame throwers and all that jazz after the last time, but now I’m considering it more seriously. Heck, even something low-tech along the lines of a photo-ID bumper sticker. A picture of me saying “Hi, I’m [Potato], and this is my Honda. If you see anyone else driving this car, call the police.” It might get my car keyed a bit more once people know it’s mine (after I start teaching, that is), but it might be worth it.

My landlord scolded me for not getting a Club, and it was really dumb, too. I actually went to Canadian Tire to pick one up, and the Canadian Tire by my place had closed down and moved out without notice. I completely forgot to try again at another store. Man do I feel dumb.

Bats seem to be everywhere these days, particularly for the people in my office at work. I saw one in a used bookstore this weekend, just chilling in the mystery section.

Perhaps because I had bats on the mind, I was astonished to see a new-to-me John Grisham title: The Brethren. I immediately thought “Cool! Vampire Lawyers!” and picked it up. However, reading the back of the book, I found out that unfortunately he’s using the word brethren in a decidedly non-vampirish way: instead referring to a brotherhood or association of professionals… kind of like the actual definition of the word. Go figure.

I was a little disappointed at that (and I’ve found Grisham getting pretty dull lately, so he really should consider that vampire lawyer idea). Then I had to sit around and wonder how it was that I automatically think of an underground (often literally) society of conspiratorial vampires whenever I see the word “brethren”.