Facebook down!

It seems that Twitter, Facebook and Livejournal are all down. I need to make a pointless comment, so here it is: I had nice cake today. That is all.

Unreasonable expectations

There is a story all over the news here. See this story for some more details, but basically RCMP put two female prisoners in the same cell, and they had an "intimate encounter" which lasted between 30 and 60 minutes. The guards watched via CC-TV and did not stop it.

There is no hint, so far, that the "encounter" was non-consensual, so I'm assuming this wasn't rape. Everyone knows, or should know, that the jail cells are monitored by CC-TV, so both women knew they were being watched. Either they wanted to put on a show, or they didn't care.

In this situation, does anyone really expect the police officers to stop them? These are young guys and girls, in a culture where machismo is a basic job requirement (even for the women). I know they are supposed to stop any inappropriate behaviour, but I can see them taking a "no harm, no foul" attitude. Kind of like getting free coffee might be technically an improper gift (a bribe), but really, nobody objects because no police officer is going to give someone preferential treatment because of a free coffee.

As it turns out, one of the women is HIV positive, and had not informed the other woman, so that was technically an assault. But the police did not know this, so I don't think they can be faulted for not acting on knowledge they didn't have.

iHate the iPad

The more I use this iPad, the less I like it. Apple's "I'm too sexy for a user manual" attitude, and the generally feature-poor applications make for a nice experience for the first few minutes, but things really only go downhill after the first impression. I started out at "like", and am now down to "tolerate". Soon I may just put it aside until someone ports Android to it and I can have some decent apps.

Can you believe that you SHAKE the revive for undo? And there is no way to create mail folders In the email app. And no multiprocessing. The hardware may be sexy, but the software is straight out of 1995.

Vacation blog: day 2, or 3 or whatver.

I've lost count of the days. It's Friday. I guess the vacation started on Monday, so this is day 5.

I saw the "Peatbog Faeries" (http://www.peatbogfaeries.com/) last night (Thursday). When I heard them I thought "can only be called "Celtic fusion", and that's what they describe themselves as. They have a tenor sax, a trombone, a big fancy drum set, an electric bass, an electric lead guitar, a person alternating between playing the bagpipes and some flute instrument), an electric fiddle, and a keyboard.

There was a bit of space between the audience and stage, and the audience members wasted no time filling that space and dancing. There were two memorable dancers. The first was youngish (mid-20s, maybe) who lept up and started to dance as soon as the music started. She started with very Celtic style (back ramrod straight, arms alternating between being clasped behind her and held elbows out in front of her, and feet going a mile-a-minute). Then started to relax and go all over the place (as appropriate for the music, which also started celtic and went all over the place). As soon as the band stopped to speak after the first song, she interrupted the speaker to tell everyone that that "that guy" (pointing to the trombonist) "is really great". I didn't hear exactly what else she said. The band's spokesman (flutist/bagpipes guy) agreed that he was quite a musician. After listening for a bit, I agreed. He was smooth as butter on velvet. To stretch the metaphor, he's like the butter in the pound cake, where the fiddler and flutist are the icing. Yes, the icing is good and gets lots of attention, but you can have a great cake without icing. Try making a poundcake without butter, and you just get a lump of sugar and flour. At least, that's what I assume happens. I've never tried it. Anyway, he added a really solid and slippery smooth backing sound to the band, and I'm glad that the cute dancer-girl singled him out for special attention, because he deserved it. Much as I enjoyed the fiddler's theatrics, I was also anticipating that extra buttery goodness when I saw him pick up his trombone each time in the songs. Also, I was a bit hungry, which may explain why I was obsessed with butter.

Why is is that bands always try to get the audience to clap out the beat? Can't they find their own beat? If not, can they just hire a better drummer? Why do we have to do all the work?

There was also an older woman dancing. She had what appears to be prematurely grey hair, in that her hair appeared completely grey, but she looked under 70 (for a woman, that's premature). She danced like she was 20, however. Actually, she put the 20 year olds to shame. She unabashed, and danced with her legs, hips, back, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers. All joints of her body were moving in different directions, in perfect sync. She was also completely uninhibited in her (quite unique) dance style. She was so much in her own world with the music I thought maybe LSD or some other reality-enhancing substance was in use, but she was also moving quickly and well coordinated, which (I think) many drugs interfere with. I really don't know. This is BC, so it's quite possible.

Today I drove into town to get a haircut, get the mail, pick up some fancy pilot clothes for Robyn, and get my new iPad. OK, I drove into town to get my new iPad, and while I was there I also did a few other things. The iPad is OK, but I'm not an apple fan yet (I'm blogging this from my linux netbook, for example).

Vacation blog: day 2

Today, I successfully got both "wabyn.net" and "flyingstart.ca" back online. In addition, I had a cookie, a "grande" latte, a bag of chips and two glasses of wine for lunch. I only got 2/3 of the way through today's trashy book, because of the time spent dealing with ISPs and internets.

Vacation blog: day 1

Today, I read a trashy novel, and ate ice cream. Now I shall nap.

Edited to add: "The Night Shift" (not porn, just formulaic trashy mystery adventure with a romance subplot) and "Cookies and Cream" ice cream. The nap lasted about 20 minutes, on the couch.

Skateboarding

Last weekend I was riding my motorcycle up Cypress bowl road. For those who don't know this road, it is a fairly narrow, twisty mountain road heading up to a ski hill. It has a 60 km/h speed limit, which is almost reasonable given the hairpin switchback turns and general twistiness of it.

I was heading up the mountain at around 59.9 km/h (of course), when I drove past two people heading downhill at what appeared to be well more than my speed, on skateboards. They were wearing full motorcycling leathers and a full-face helmet (in fact, they may have been better protected against road rash than I was), but still: they were going well over the speed limit on a twisty mountain road, on a skateboard. That is to say, on two skateboards (one each).

I couldn't help but think about the 180-degree switchback which I had needed to slow down to about 35 or so to get around, and about the fairly small parking area and viewpoint on the outside of the switchback, and what I presume was sheer cliffs at the end of the parking lot.

I continued on my way up (I couldn't safely turn around, even if I had turned on a dime, I wasn't about to catch up, and what would I have done had I caught up anyway?), then turned around. On the way back down (also at 59.9 km/h, of course), I noticed both of them walking around in the parking area, so I guess my concern was misplaced.

Needless to say, I didn't pass anyone holding up traffic, but it is a fairly deserted road (I think I saw only four or five other vehicles on the road that trip).