The Olympics are racist and fascist. I think there is a misunderstanding here. The Olympics aren't racist or fascist, but the places that they occur can be. It's unfortunate and true that these things happen in the world. However - when the Olympics were happening in Beijing, there was a lot of coverage about the Human Rights situation there. People protested sending the (then but apparently not now) economically beneficial Olympics to a country with so many Human Rights violations, but a lot of people learned an awful lot about the general state of China from those Olympics.

The Government doesn't own British Columbia. I can't even address this point without seeming callous, but here it is: Canada was colonized. It happened hundreds of years ago.

These Olympics are causing Ecological problems. This is the most valid point on the list. I almost think it should be the only point on the list. It is the thing which certainly gives me the most pause in my support for the Olympics - I lovingly recall the drive to Whistler, and I understand that it has changed drastically.

Homelessness goes up / Criminalization of the Poor. The huge economic downturn that lasted until approximately January 20, 2009 probably accounts for increased homelessness. All I'll say otherwise is that drug rehabilitation is a solution to this problem; more housing isn't.

Disappearing Poor Women /Increased Police activity. It is a tough question: increased security or less police? While I agree that the extra security sucks (I would pick less police) it's almost a necessity because of large scale protest groups whose protests can be violent. That said, this is the second item on the list that I feel is a valid argument; when is giving up freedoms acceptable?

Sheer cost! $6,000,000,000! Wow, that's a ton of money. I think the real cost is actually closer to $2 billion though. The other $4 billion went directly to things that improved the infrastructure of the city of Vancouver, independent of the Olympics. While it is true that they were necessary for the successful bid for the games, that $4 billion should have been spent either way. $2 billion is still a ton of money. I guess the economic question is whether it is worth $2 billion to host the world.

Olympic Corruption robs the Olympics of its meaning. If you have to point out that this is an issue, then it is not an issue. The majority of people love the Olympics, and forget the bumps along the way.

Corporate Investment (is bad). I am not hugely in favour of corporations. I'm actually moderately socialist. But the money that we spend on things has to have an origin. Corporate Investment leads to economic tie-ins, which leads to "dramatic, record-breaking increases in these industries". Of course, there is an environmental impact, but that's already been addressed in another point. Yes, some of the companies that sponsor the olympics do other things that aren't good, but does that mean we shouldn't take their money? If taking their money means that they will in turn make money from the olympics, doesn't that begin to negate the point about spending money?

A final note on No2010; the first item up right now as I'm writing is an article on vandalism in Guelph, in solidarity with people against the olympics. When people protest they should understand that there are things that support your point of view, and there are things that make you look crazy and undermine what you are doing; sabotaging a bank in Guelph is not going to attract people to your cause, but will make people angry at what you are protesting. Most of the time, passive, non-destructive protests will win out over more aggressive forms of protest. If you feel that you need to be more active and more destructive (which I do not condone or suggest) you have to do so in such a way that people will remain sympathetic to your cause instead of hoping that you're all arrested for making their lives harder. (further examination of the front page of No2010 shows many violent protests that have been staged. The place is full of crazy)

Why Yes2010?

Like I said, I support the Olympics. It costs money to host them, but it is money that is making the entire world a better place. The spirit of clean competition still exists, and it's an amazing opportunity for all the athletes to improve themselves. It's the best way to get grass roots support for sports, in almost every country that participates. Support for sport is important! Sports are never going to end world hunger, or cure diseases, but that doesn't mean they have no utility in our world. How we live and how we play are important - it's things like sports, art and music that are the reasons that we live. Without these things - what I think of as the better parts of life - we aren't living; we're existing. On top of that, how we learn to play has an influence on how we learn - if there's one thing I've learned from being married to a speech pathologist, it's that learning is something that we do all the time, and learning within the contexts of sports and games is important for development. Laying down the groundwork for amateur sports in a third world country won't feed the people, but it gives them opportunities that they otherwise would not have.

If the Olympics had not happened in Canada this year, they would have happened elsewhere - they are an inevitability. The fact that they happened in Canada means that we had control over most aspects of how the development happened. I believe that Canada is the best nation in the world - as a subsection of that belief, I think that we probably did less environmental damage during our hosting of the games than just about any other country would have, given the same situation. Other countries would have reaped the benefits of corporate sponsorship, and that corporate sponsorship could have been far more environmentally damaging.

Overall, I think that the No2010 campaign is a specious, short sighted, and selfish. Many of the arguments don't make sense. Many of the ones that do make sense aren't realistic. And the whole idea of spending money more wisely on Canadian programmes shows a lack of interest in the world.

Well, I'm still at the point where our graphic designer does much better work than me, but I'm improving, and most of it is due to brush sets. I think in the last 5 days I've downloaded almost 70 of them, and although I've since thrown out at least 40 of those sets, it's amazing what difference custom brushes make to designers. I never knew. I was a design brush virgin. But NO MORE!

Look for more in this space soon.

I'm also working on a nifty little widget to let you select which stylesheet design you want to display in your browser. I'm retooling the HTML in XHTML 1.1 Strict and I think I should be able to back-port the current and old CSS to display nicely, though it'll take a little bit of extra work. My main challenge and motivation here is this: I've designed the HTML to be agnostic of how things look and I'm trying to avoid any kludgy hacks to get things displaying right. I know I'm not the world's best graphics designer, but once again all graphics will have been drawn and created by me.

Working on an update to security to get things fixed. Not sure how this happened.

I got a question from Nick, who asks why I've given up on Livejournal and moved to my own blog. I haven't given up on Livejournal; I just don't have that much time to write these days. I have been reading more than I've been writing on either. But the reason that this blog gets updated more than any of the other blogs I contribute to is that the content here is in a place that I consider to be owned by me; that is, I have complete control over anything that I need to do, be it about look, feel, code, where pictures go. I just plain like writing here better than in Livejournal as well - not sure why. I guess Livejournal has become mostly an aggregator for me to read about my friends and not a place to talk about myself.

On the other hand, I'm planning on doing a bit of work so that I can post directly to this blog using VI, and if that works, then I can probably make it so that Livejournal basically just mirrors the content that I have here. That's the long term plan.

The Customer is Frequently Not Right.

It's kind of a simple thing to say, and it directly contradicts that saying that we're all familiar with and mostly don't like, but it's a simple truth that we all know, deep down. Because Customers are People and People are frequently wrong. I know. I'm a person. I'm wrong a lot. Like the other day, I was playing a game with my family and I misinterpreted one of the rules. We read as a group and clarified. Or another time when I decided that I would try something called Sushi Pizza - I figured that two things I loved would be great when combined. Wrong. Or this other time when I thought that the cold that I had wasn't anything major, but I went to the doctor and she told me that I was really sick.

That last one is the one I want to focus on.

In that particular situation, I was a the Customer and the Doctor was the Contractor / Employee (I'll stick with Contractor for the purpose of saving myself typing time). I, the Customer, did not really know how to deal with a particular problem so I went to someone else who did - I Contracted that person, in fact, to help me out. I thought that I had a minor cold, and the doctor didn't and gave me a bunch of medication. I, the Customer, was wrong. "But," you might say, "that's not a generalize-able situation! The doctor has a specialized service / knowledge!" That is the case about any producer / consumer, contractor / client, employee / customer relationship, though, and it's an important thing to think about. You go to a producer / contractor / employee to get a particular good or service that you either decline to or cannot provide for yourself. In most cases, it is "cannot"; the customer is not able to provide for themselves the particular thing that they require.

Here is where I am frequently puzzled - if the customer does not have the ability to create the good or perform the service, why are they likely correct about it? The producer / contractor / employee is the one who knows more about their particular product. And if they're good at what they'll do, they'll share the knowledge with the customer.

A part of good customer service is trying to find the points at which the customer is not right and to correct them. My doctor, for instance, corrected my assumption that I had a cold. A good lingerie salesperson would point out that their customer is wearing the incorrect bra size. A good web developer might tell you, "No, we're not going to put all the styles in-line". And after all of these mistakes are pointed out, they will come up with the right solution and you should listen to them. You should listen because, if they're successful, they know more about what they're doing than you do, and a large part of what you are paying for is the knowledge that they have accrued over the time that person has spent in their chosen vocation.

The customer is frequently wrong. That's why they're the customer.

Item the first, for your examination: I am ill. Not well. Sick. Though, to be fair, I'm much improved from yesterday and many yesterdays before then. I have a chest cold. It's a really unfriendly one that makes me feel like crap. I've been coughing up multi-coloured sputum for a week.

Sorry for the imagery.

Item the second: we have but one baby seat for the two cars that my partner and I own. This morning, the baby seat happens to be in her car, which means I have no baby seats. I am the one who needs the baby seat, however, since I am the one who typically picks up and drops off the baby. This is easily solved through generous application of one Sean Yo who is awesome and has a baby similar to my own. He came by and drove us to the day care, and thence drove himself to work, leaving me at the day care. I am not complaining about this fact - I am extolling Sean's virtue of even being able to drive me and the wee one to day care. But, I was stuck.

Item the third: I started walking through the snow and cold and blowing wind and yuckness. I planned on making my way to the Bullring at the University of Guelph (I hope I'm not spoiling the end if I tell you I'm there right now) where there is hot coffee and delicious breakfast sandwiches to be had. On my way there, I went down a longish flight of stairs.

Longish stairs. Down them. Unfortunately not on my feet.

Yes, that's correct; I fell down the stairs. It sucked. I was lucky - my trip downwards was spent mostly on my behind, which is now, like my pride, somewhat bruised. My back is also a little bit hurt-y (not terribly so) and I have been advised by friends that ANL that I should sue the University of Guelph.

I plan on not doing so. But considering it makes me chuckle.

Item the fourth, the redeemer: I am sitting in the Bullring having a delicious coffee, waiting for my friends to arrive, enjoying the warmth and the view. I love the University of Guelph.

Now all I have to do is find some decent way to get home that doesn't involve Guelph Transit (I object to their horrendous service) or a taxi (I don't want to pay that much) or running up to my mom's work and borrowing her car (I don't want to steal her car for the day - that's just not cool).

Oh, and my sandwich is ready, so... goodbye for now, Constant Reader.

Directly to the south of us, there's a Mabel, who is 94 and lives alone. She's very active, has lots of guests, enjoys gardening, and is just generally very nice. She's delightful to talk to and is just generally impressive. I hope I'm half so active when I make it to her age. Come to that, I hope I make it to her age.

To our north, we have Basil and Evelyn, our younger neighbours. They're both mid-80s, with 21 grandchildren. Bas and Ev were the first people on the street that I met, and we're already quite close. They're just such good people - Bas is one of those guys who can and will talk about anything for hours, and I've wiled away many the warmer evening sitting on their porch drinking beers with them. They're also very active - Bas does more yardwork than most people half or even a quarter of his age. Again, delightful people that I think are amazing.

The last neighbour I'd like to talk to is one directly across the street from us, Earl. The most notable thing about Earl, other than his sense of humour (he told me that he married his wife 57 years ago because her dad owned a golf course and a buick, and how could he do better than that? She laughed and batted him on the arm), is the fact that today, after 6 inches of snow, he came over and used his snow blower on my driveway. I feel kind of guilty that an 85 year old man came over and cleaned my driveway - isn't that something I'm supposed to do for other people - but it is most definitely appreciated. We're planning on making them some cookies and taking them over there later.

What a great neighbourhood!

Earlier this week, I was coding away furiously at the computer, while the little one was eating crackers and playing. I was somewhat paying attention to her but, for the most part, we were both just doing our own thing while waiting for Mommy to get home. The crackers were in a little green bowl, and she would ever-so-carefully retrieve one at a time and then eat it with gusto, declaring, "Monster bite!" This went well for the first half of the bowl, but then she managed to catch the edge with her finger and the whole thing went topsy-turvy onto the floor, spilling crackers everywhere. Her hand went up to her forehead, and she exclaimed, "Oh my goodness, Daddy! So messy!"

Last week, during breakfast, we were having our ritual breakfast of an incredible amount of yoghurt and some cereal. A quick aside: almost invariably, the first words that pass the mouth of my wee lass in the morning aren't, "Hello!" or "Good morning!" but instead are the monstrous exclamation, "YOGHURT! YOGHURT! YOGHURT!" This particular morning was no different, and she was eating cheerios along with her blueberry yoghurt. She had finished half of each of her servings and then came up with the remarkably genius idea of putting the yoghurt on the cheerios. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to taste as good as one might think. "I don't like it, Daddy," she told me. "No more, please. Want YOGHURRRRTT!" I told her that she would have to finish what she had before she got more yoghurt. She looked all hurt and repeated, "I don't like it, Daddy." I looked at her, stoic, and she realized that I was unbudgeable on this matter. She picked up the spoon, looking mightily unhappy and told me, "I eat it." Her lip curled with a small sneer, and she added epithetically, "Daddy."

Another time, Mommy and Daddy were curled up on the couch, probably folding clothes or something nearly as entertaining, when the little one came running out of the kitchen and exclaimed, "There's a kangaroo!" When asked the whereabouts of said kangaroo, she told us, "He's right there," and pointed to the hallway. It was made abundantly clear that it was an evil kangaroo and that he was chasing our tiny heroine. It ended up all right though - that night, the little one pulled my arms around her while reading a book and told me, "I'm safe!"

Just this week, we finally got rid of the crib and started the little one sleepign in a "big-girl bed." The presentation of the big-girl bed - it was a surprise for her, after a night away with her grandparents - was met with solid approval and dancing. Going to bed the first night proved to be a bit of a challenge, though. At one point, she got out of bed and started walking down the hallway. I took her back to bed, and then we had a bit of a talk. "Little one," I said. "You have to go to sleep in your bed, now. It's bed time." She looked at me unhappily, threw her arms up in the air and yelled, "AW, MAN!"

Now for a brief description of why things look the way they do:

I kept a simple 2 column design because I didn't want to introduce any real weirdness to the blog. I briefly considered an advertisement column, but I remembered that I don't get any money from ads anyways because nobody clicks on them, so I kept it simple. I moved the menu to the right hand side, because I want the focus to be on the content, not what is surrounding it. I wanted to keep black-on-white for text and background, but I felt that too much whitespace was a detriment in the old look, so I kept the whitespace to the content column. The background is a repeating open-source graphic that I changed fairly significantly to get looking right. I drew all of the other graphics by hand, which was difficult when you are as artistically moronic as I am, but I think they came out all right. The idea is kind of inspired by Mac OSX (yes, I know I sometimes complain about OSX - it's still pretty). The idea is to look like vaguely metallic windows. The logo is text on a motionless background, easily read by screen readers.

It's working remarkably well in a screen reader - I didn't have any significant issues jumping around from post to post. I'm pretty happy with how this is implemented and I'm also very happy with how little effort I had to put in to get it looking like this. I spent about 2 hours drawing the graphics and about 25 minutes implementing the look and feel. There are a few minor things that I need to still get working:

• The breadcrumbs ("this article posted in X and X")
• Extended menuing. I'm torn between flyout menuing and displaying different menus on drill-downs. More clicks vs. more clutter.
• Better ad placement. I am currently generating no revenue, but I don't really mind because I'm doing this for fun not profit. But I think that I could place the ads a little more strategically so that one-time visitors see them.