Fugu Talk

While watching Freaks and Geeks on DVD recently, all the references to drinking “pop” brought back a bit of nostalgia for the Midwest. I just say “soda” now, or more often, specifically a Coke, Pepsi, or occasionally a Jarritos. I wish, just once, I’d ordered a “tonic” in Boston, but never tried it. If you want to order carbonated beverages in a knowledgable manner around the country and around the world, check the Wikipedia article.

Coincidentally, I just found this can of Pepsi that I left in the freezer – it puts the “pop” in pop.

Amid all the television news stories on the economic crisis, I saw a report detailing the woes of Canadian carmakers, namely GM Canada, Ford Canada…apparently there are lower employee costs in a country that doesn’t rely on employer-sponsored healthcare. Aside from the competitive disadvantage imposed by the US healthcare system, another thought occurred to me – I’ve never heard anyone blame Canada for taking our jobs.

I remember way back in the 80′s when Gephardt was campaigning for the presidency and talking up the Japanese scare with auto unions, but I’ve never heard a peep about US auto jobs moving to Canada. Ross Perot warned of that sucking sound of jobs going south, not north. I’ve heard Lou Dobbs warn about terrorists, disease, criminals and job-stealers crossing the Mexican border but nothing about Canada (to be fair, I don’t watch angry white man shows much, so maybe I missed something). When EA shut down it’s Seattle office and opened up a new one in Vancouver, the only controversy there was the EA Spouse story, but game outsourcing to China is worth a Game Developer Magazine issue. When the first Mac factory was constructed in Ireland, the story was about how cutting-edge and automated that factory was, while stories about iPod manufacturing in China are about outsourcing to China (OK that’s Ireland, not Canada, but somehow Blame Ireland isn’t such a catchy blog title).

While aerospace jobs here in Huntington Beach moved to Arizona and a good portion of your favorite TV shows and movies are filmed not in Hollywood but in Canada (where they have rules requiring the hiring of Canadian actors, as I learned on the commentary of Slither), the Orange County  IT and programming mail lists I subscribed to were filled with whining about Indian programmers taking our jobs. One poster somehow ended with a lament that Mexicans were hard-working and friendly but didn’t value education. I could have rejoindered that’s what I thought about white people, but actually, a disproportionate number of my programming coworkers have been white people – Europeans and, you guessed it, Canadians.

I know there are a lot of protests and counter-arguments that can be made, and I’ve heard them all from the aforementioned mail lists, ranging from I’m not a racist to trends…yada yada…magnitude…yada yada…but all I ask is, if you’re hand-wringing about the Chinese and Indians and Mexicans, be fair and just once in a while, blame Canada.

I think I’ve finally got comments turned of on every article in this blog. Here are the final stats:

At the end of last week’s Lost episode, when the airline captain played by Jeff Fahey realized who was on his plane and calmly stated, “We’re not going to Guam, are we?”, I couldn’t help but think, he took that well.

I don’t like to use that phrase, even in my head, ever since I had a boss who liked to take employees into her office, note their personality and performance defects, then remark later “he took that well”, or “she took that well”. I guess that’s how you characterize suppressed burning resentment. Anyway, I always thought that was an odd thing to say in that context. Do muggers say, after a mugging, “he took that well?” Or after a mixed martial arts fight, I’ve never heard the winner comment in his post-victory interview, “he took that beating well”, or “he took that kick to the head well”. I could see one context where it’s appropriate – Animal House style fraternity hazing. Thank you, may I have another!

WordsEye Feature is now on the App Store. It displays a random scene created and “featured” on the WordsEye web site.

It’s passive entertainment, but I think it’s one of the more interesting apps I have on my iPod Touch. The images look great, and the source text scrolling by gives you an idea how they were created.

Here’s a case where a render bug actually renders a bug.

It is reminiscent of the first “actual” software bug, a moth found inside a computer.

I thought I might apply some strong filtering and create something like a Rorschach test. The result looks surprisingly not like a bug.

One drawback of year-round good weather here in Southern California is the year-round visitation of door-to-door salespeople. When I first moved here, it was a novelty to chat with a couple of teens sent out by their “church” to sell magazines. Over a decade later, it’s getting pretty old. In a fit of pique, after getting rousted off my sofa by representatives of the Orange County Register, I sent this email complaint (took a while – the complaint submission form didn’t work, so I had to try the direct email link, at the risk of ending up on a spam list).

 I know this complaint won’t have any effect, but please don’t send kids or young adults around knocking on doors pushing subscriptions, particularly in gated areas marked No Soliciting. Your representatives offered a free issue which would have been fine, but then they kept trying to get me to sign up for a subscription immediately – this is my day off after a long work week and I shouldn’t have to stand at my door repeatedly saying no and then getting a “you’re missing out, bud” at the end. This just guarantees that not only won’t I buy a subscription, I’ll make a point of not buying your paper off the rack. No wonder print journalism is dying.

To their credit, the OC Register responded the next day apologizing and saying they would forward my complaint to the head of contractor services. I’m sure they will then review their whole marketing strategy and it’s dependence on door-to-door salespeople (and consider why they share that space only with magazines and Girl Scout cookies), or perhaps institute a training program that inculcates ethical and courteous sales tactics. Or maybe not.

I confess I fibbed a bit in my complaint for effect. I didn’t have a really long week, Saturday isn’t really my day off, and I stopped buying the OC Register years ago after all those telemarketing calls (besides, the LA Times is a much better paper). And the last delivery guy was arrested for peeping in my complex, so I’m not in a hurry to hire his replacement.

The latest update to FuguMaze on the App Store features randomly selected wall textures. Maybe this will solve an atypical problem – the maze reconfiguration is so fast, users think they’re in the same maze over and over again. I can only think of one other user interface problem due to seemingly instantaneous performance – sometimes I hit the Get button on my mail reader more than once. I thought about putting in an artificial delay, but that seems hokey. Also tweaked the ambient light – I thought the first version was too light, the second was too dark, maybe this is just right…