Hollow Bean approaches once again, and this year there’s a cute li’l Jack-o-lantern in my window to greet the hordes of children that come to ring my bell and get loot.
See? Ain’t he cute? And look, the picture’s full of “mysterious orbs”, too. Must be a flock of ghosts, visiting each other, getting into the Hollow Bean spirit.
Or maybe it’s just the snow that was falling all day long.
Have a happy and safe Hollow Bean, everyone.
Granted, the garden didn’t produce much in the way of fruit, but at least I didn’t have to weed all that often.
So today I did my civic duty™ and voted in the local mayoral election. I wasn’t alone, either; according to the local access channel (which is the only channel actually covering the local election, since it was also election day in the capital and around the province), there was almost a 40% voter turnout. I have no idea if that’s high, low, or meh.
Anyways. I cast my ballot, went and got flang about (this being a judo night), went to Tim Horton’s and got interviewed re: the election in the parking lot, and then came home. Hoping to find some info, I traipsed over to the local newspaper’s website, and got this:
Brandonsun.com will be down for maintenance until Thursday Morning (October 26th). Sorry for the inconvience.
What? What kind of fool kills the website for the only paper in town on election night? Crap.
But they’re on the local access channel, like I said, so at least I now know that the incumbent has a walloping 63% of the vote, with about 25% of the polls reporting. So it doesn’t look like any of the members of the so-called three-handcuff circus* will be getting in…
The coverage of the election reminded me this evening of one of my pet grammatical peeves. Bear with me; this may seem pedantic. (Well, actually, it is pedantic. But this is my blog, so I’ll do what I like.)
Now, ever since Microsoft added the so-called “Smart” Quotes to Word, their word processor, I’ve always gone in, found the setting in Tools->Options, and disabled them. Why? Because they’re stupid, that’s why.
“Smart” Quotes work fine in the context they’re intended: wrapping a word or phrase in matching quotes. The problem comes in when you try to use them in a contraction like ’tis or ’06 (when you’re so lazy you’d rather type ’06 instead of 2006).
So let’s say, for instance, that you want to have a big, huge header on your TV screen that says “ELECTION ’06″. Here’s what it should look like:
ELECTION ’06
Here’s what it looks like on CTV:
ELECTION ‘06
Note the apostrophe. If you can’t see the difference, you’re insufficiently uptight about grammar. Sometimes I’m amazed I ever went on dates.
___________________
* We’ve got three out of six mayoral candidates who have history with the law. One was convicted of fraud about 15 years ago, served his time, and is now trying to get his conviction overturned; one went to court today on various charges; and a third goes to court on October 30th for his part in an alleged assault on another candidate. I tell you, at least it ain’t boring.
Not the best first date ever, thought Monica. I don’t think he’s said two words to me all day, he’s pretty weak since I’m doing all the pulling here, and his cologne smells an awful lot like varnish.
Still, he does dress like a pirate…
Flickrblogging on Technorati
Flickrblogging explained–join the fun!
I like finding that people who write code have a sense of humour:
This lets you specify which characters are permitted within your URLs. When someone tries to submit a URL with disallowed characters they will get a warning message.
As a security measure you are STRONGLY encouraged to restrict URLs to as few characters as possible. By default only these are allowed: a-z 0-9~%.:_-
Leave blank to allow all characters — but only if you are insane.
Well, it made me laugh.
There’s a general election coming up in town, meaning that signs adorn lawns and medians everywhere you look, covered with pithy sayings like “It’s Time for a Change!” and “Vote [NAME GOES HERE] for [POSITION GOES HERE]“.
Back when I lived in residence, in my salad days at the university, there was a bylaw on the books that I rather liked. In an election, any candidate whose signs were still up by midnight on the night before the vote was disqualified. Now there was a lot about rez elections that I wouldn’t want to carry over into the realm of–shall we say–grown-up politics*, but I have always, always liked that rule.
“Hmmm, the votes are in, and the mayor-elect is John Smith. Too bad he’s still got eight hundred signs up all over the city. Oh well. Who came in second? Lord Voldemort? Are you sure? Check again. All right, all right. Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democracy simply does not work.”
And I know that a lot–probably a majority–of the signs in question are not put up by the candidate. But if you really support your candidate, you can take down the signs you put up for him or her, right? Right?
I thought so.
_______________________
* Things like ballot-box stuffing and voter intimidation, for instance. Not that that sort of thing doesn’t happen in grown-up politics; I just wish it didn’t.
I’ve been tagged!
List five truths. Five things that are on your mind. Good, bad, it matters not. Lift some weight off.
Then pick five people to do the same.
Craig. Doug. Gabriele. Clark. And you, whoever you are.
If you don’t have a blog, you can reply in the comments.
More from Salyx:
Sometimes Igraine would have to go down the axis to the ship’s engine room, where the walking dead worked, men and women so riddled with cancer that they didn’t bother to pretend anymore that they’d survive. They had a ghastly humor down there, a gallows humor, and one of them had set up a spherical force-field and filled it with water, just to see it glow with blue Cerenkov radiation. Igraine hated having to go to the engine room, hated seeing the thin, crowlike engineers, sprouting dark tumors and coughing out blood and teeth, raining hair. She’d go in, hand them the flow corrections she’d calculated, and flee, hating herself for her fear.
…it went well.
That’s my brown belt. I now hold the rank of ikkyu, which means “first grade”. My next belt will be a black one.
I’ve been doing judo for eight full years–this is my ninth year–and I feel rather proud of myself right now.
