Subway Time Machine

[sound of squirrel chattering]
(derisive tone)
"Are you training that squirrel?"

(cutesy-smarmy tone)
"Yeah. I was making some pulled pork and it takes about five hours so I thought I'd kill some time."

While I'm paraphrasing here, this is the gist of the latest radio ads put forth by Subway. 

Wait for it, there's another one!

[sound of impact wrench]
(derisive tone)
"Why are you taking your car apart? Are you a mechanic?"

(cutesy-smarmy voice)
"Not really. It's just that I was making pulled pork and it takes about five hours, so I thought I'd keep myself busy."

They weren't amusing the first time I'd heard them, and after the umpteenth dozen instance of exposure to them, I couldn't resist the urge to pull them apart so to speak: who exactly is the target audience of these ads?

A bastardization of real food.

Confession: I'm not slow-cooking pork while I write this piece.

Nor do I have any intention of ever putting a quick-make brand pulled pork sandwich anywhere near my mouth.

Presuming Subway invests a considerable amount of research capital into their advertising campaigns, I'm guessing they'd expect their marketing team to spend more time on their ad campaign than it takes to prepare a batch of pulled pork. Why then are these ads so insulting to anyone who's not incapable of occupying their time with useful pursuits for a mere span of five hours?

A friend of mine, a bit of a hobbyist cook, invited me over one Sunday to sample his first attempt at pulled pork. If memory serves, it was ready to go about twenty minutes after I'd arrived at his place around 3:00 PM. This tells me he must have started the timer around 11:00 AM after a half-hour or so of preparation: seasoning; dicing onions; preheating the cooker.

I'm guessing he didn't watch the pot the whole time, so pray-tell, what did he endeavour to do whilst the meat slowly simmered? I'm guessing it didn't involve Pavlovian seminars with woodland creatures or impromptu large-scale mechanical projects. The pork was fantastic, by the way.

"Why are you training that squirrel?"

"I'm not. The squirrel is training me, you jackass."

"Easy there pal. I thought you were making pulled pork? Isn't it ready yet?"

"Go grab your impatient self a pile of ratshit and reheated onions on a bun from the sandwich counter? Have 'em chuck some banana peppers on it to disguise the bland mediocrity. Seems more your style." 

The idea being, I suppose, is that Subway is selling us a time machine, and only Subway can defeat the whole impetus behind pulled pork. But pulled pork is not a dish that's intended to be quick. Why would the play-doh fun factory of fast food places even bother?

"Why are you dismantling your car? Are you a mechanic?"

"Mechanical engineer to be precise. What are you up to? Still working at the career in sandwich artistry?"

"Yeah. I thought you said we were having pulled pork?"

"I guess I should've told you. Real food involves more than a microwave and a pair of disposable gloves." 

What pulled pork should look like.

Is A Private Company in San Francisco Akin To A Crown Agency?

Personalized threats issued over online media are nothing new, and it's not my intent here to diminish their seriousness.

Obviously this jerk is incapable of appropriately articulating the nature of his frustration without resorting to verbal thuggery.

While many like me appreciate the willingness of some senior level politicians making themselves available online through popular social media platforms, since when did Twitter become an officially recognized extension of the Alberta legislature?

At the end of the day, a Tweet is simply a bundle of indexed zeroes and ones shuttled across the information superhighway, and ultimately processed, archived, and redistributed by a private company in San Francisco. Some politicians seem to regard these private entities as though they exist to serve their political aims.

So what's it going to be? Shall we begin to deem Tweets as official government correspondence? Do our politicians have so much faith in these private entities that they are willing to deem them an acceptably trustworthy representative of a crown agencies?

I'm no expert on such matters, so I can only hope someone more knowledgeable than myself can pick-up the torch, and begin to examine the legal relationship between Twitter, the Government of Canada, and Her Provinces. I'm guessing the little graphic depicting a check-mark inside a blue octagon beside some people's Twitter handle might carry legal assurances or implications, but at the end of the day, I don't believe there is any legally binding impetus for a company like Twitter to accurately regurgitate the words politicians submit to their platform. What I mean is, is that we all seem to take for granted Twitter's track record insofar. But what if one day you were to "Tweet" something like:

But it happens to appear to the outside world like this?

   

S-Pen Entry

I'm literally writing this entry -using the stylus that comes sheathed in the Galaxy Note 2.

I wanted to test the practicality of the interface, and I actually find it somewhat unsettling - how keenly and accurately the interpolator interprets my chicken-scratch after only having scrawled a few thousand words or so.

I don't think I'd be alone in suggesting there's no match for
the standard PC keyboard with a full compliment of keys - especially if you're endeavouring to input code. That being said, it also wouldn't surprise me if an app existed to facilitate the entry of more cryptic notation.

In conclusion, as someone who's relatively new to the world of tablet computing, I'll remark that I find inputting text via the S-Pen input preferable to the touch-screen keyboard method.

Disenfranchise The Poor

Continuing to allow the penniless to vote in Canadian elections serves no good purpose.

In order to become eligible to cast a ballot, a citizen should first satisfy at least one item in the following list of criteria:

1. Show a credit score of at least 720. 
2. Show proof of assets reflecting a combined net value exceeding CDN $50,000.
3. Show proof of earning potential exceeding a net total of $35,000 / year. 
4. Provide written permission granted by a spouse who satisfies any two of the above qualifiers.

For Most Intents & Purposes, Microsoft Windows Rocks

I'm not a computer scientist, but as a drinker who spends a great deal of time messing around with computers, I think it's safe to say I know a thing or two about operating systems. If you're anything like me, someone who derives a certain amount of gratification from solving tedious little puzzles, then I don't expect you'll get much from this article.

Imagine, if you will, a sea full of zeroes and ones... just kidding. I'll spare you my attempt to wax philosophical for now, but try to imagine your computer/tablet/phone/laptop without an operating system. It just sits there, waiting for an instruction. Its BIOS is probably performing hundreds of unseen checksum routines every few milliseconds to determine what states have changed since its last check:

"Am I 8K?"; "Is the CPU still OK?"; "Anything new plugged in?"; "If everything checks-out, I should start checking again from the top of the checklist! If not, I'd better mark it down!"


LINUX

How much does Linux cost? 

Time.

If my computer is running Linux, can I still do Facebook?

Yes. So long as you don't mind watching the embedded video content your friends share without the sound... at least until after your resident computer genius has spent a few hours poking around under the hood.

On my Linux Box, Audacity recognized/employed
my Roland device. The rest of the desktop shit didn't.

WINDOWS

How much does Windows cost?
About $100.

If my computer is running Windows, can I still do Facebook?

Yes.


SOLARIS

I'll have to get back to you on this one.


OS X
Call your Linux friend if you need serious help with it.