Jan 08 2012
I have not been paying much attention to the Republican Presidential primaries happening south of the border because it’s none of my business and because I can’t bear to witness such wholesale human stupidity. On the other hand, as Pierre Trudeau told the National Press Club in Washington DC in 1969, living next to the [...]
Sep 28 2011
I once worked in an office environment that was a vast array of cubicles, and every cubicle had a name plate to identify the cube’s inhabitant. There were two kinds of name plates available; one type was a free-standing A-frame of the type you see on executive desks that say “The Buck Stops Here” and [...]
Aug 24 2011
Don’t get me wrong; I love the Opus card. It has made using public transit in Montreal a lot easier, at least in terms of buying and using tickets and passes. The single, rechargable “chip” card makes a lot of sense, and I’ve had no real problems with it. Well, except for what I’m about [...]
May 18 2010
Microsoft has never been known to be particularly good at designing software, particularly from a usability point of view. Sure, they try, but every new “improved usability” trick they reveal ends up being a kludge that most people hate. I am constantly swearing at Microsoft Word and Outlook because of their stupid designs and incomprehensibly [...]
Apr 30 2010
Let me begin this small rant by stating that I’ve been a hardcore fan of CBC Radio since before most of you were born. It’s not just the lack of advertising (which can make listening to commercial radio — especially in the morning — downright torturous) that makes me a fan. It’s the high standard [...]
Feb 04 2010
Quick quiz: what is a “Samaritan?” If you answered “a person who selflessly does a good deed,” you are wrong. A Samaritan is simply a person from Samaria, a mountainous region of the Holy Land between Judea and Galilee — more or less what we now call the West Bank of Israel. The ancient Samaritans [...]
Dec 30 2009
No, this is not a review of commercial, over-the-counter, factory-made salad dressings. Rather, it is a chance for me to get something off my chest, to prove something, and perhaps even exorcise an old demon. It has to do with Kraft salad dressings. When I was a kid, we didn’t eat a lot of salad [...]
