Blessed by the Potato

I got my thesis back from the printers!

It’s so weird how unreal it seems — I was able to grasp that the masters was finally done up until I picked up the actual printed proof, and now it all seems so unreal again. I would have thought holding the book in my hands would have the opposite effect.

I’m not very impressed by the super-expensive “thesis paper” they printed it on — it’s thinner than my resume cotton bond paper that was cheaper to get from Staples. Of course, that didn’t have the weird water mark on it. Plus, all the pages stick together along the bottom edge, so I have to be really careful about turning them. Now, I have to find a free spot on my shelf to keep it, because sitting here on the floor probably isn’t going to work for me in the long run.

I just got a call from a credit card company. Miraculously, I have been pre-selected for a mastercard… the exact same one I already have (from the same bank).

It got me thinking to just how ridiculous some spam is these days. To get past spam filters, many spam messages are complete gibberish, many beyond even the extent of leetspeak. Just randomly generated garbage and an URL. Does that actually work? I would have figured the diminishing returns of spamming, despite how cheap it is, would have long ago made it unprofitable… and that’s for messages that actually make sense. Who follows a link in a piece of random gibberish that’s obviously spam and then actually buys something off that website? Sometimes I wonder if there are some slow companies around “investing” in “direct, online marketing” and not realizing that it’s just spam that won’t do a damned thing for them. Then the contracted spammers just need to show that they sent so many millions of emails, without caring about what’s in the message at all, just that it was delivered (since they probably know that their scam has turned 180 degrees now…).

Recently, Netbug has been having a lot of trouble with spammers hitting the comments section of his blog (I’m glad they didn’t follow his links here!). I read on Boing Boing today about even more baffling forms of spam — random, meaningless automated comments that don’t even have a link to a site selling something. There’s some interesting theories out there about why these spam for the sake of spam messages are going out: perhaps they’re trying to build goodwill for an alias or IP in the filters by posting seemingly legit messages before starting the real spam campaign; perhaps it’s a spy network leaving coded messages for each other; but the most interesting one was that perhaps there’s a computer network out there, somewhere, that’s just on the verge of consciousness. A nascent AI. And maybe it’s trying to communicate with us, maybe learning the language slowly, naturally by trial-and-error. And of course, since spam is the most prevalent type of communication it sees crossing the ether, that’s what it tries to mimic first. A new intelligence, trying to communicate with us the best way it knows how: through random, trashy, spam.

Hmm.

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: a non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

Today is International Towel Day. There’s been some controversy over when the date should be, since May 25th doesn’t have a whole lot of significance on its own (it’s a Thursday this year, but isn’t usually; it’s not related to 42 in any way, nor is it the actual date of DNA’s birth or death). However, I think that an essentially random date is perhaps just as fitting.

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

I got my car back this morning (7 am, ugh). When I was cleaning it up, I found a ton of clues that the cops just don’t care about (I know no one was hurt, so they’re not exactly putting their best man on the case, but you’d think they’d bag some evidence just in case they caught someone else red-handed and wanted to pin this on them, too).

First off, there was a razor blade left on the passenger side. It was one of the 1″ wide disposable construction tool type razors, with 3 overlapping fingerprints clearly on it. I know 3 overlapping isn’t as good as 1 clear one, but you’d think the cops would take what they could get. As I mentioned before, there were McDonald’s wrappers and a cup in the back seat and on the floor on the passenger’s side. There were towels in there, though I’m not sure if they came from my bag of towels in the trunk that was on it’s way to the humane society that was ripped apart, or if they were the thief’s towels. Underneath, there was a brown button (the kind with no holes through it that sew on from an attachment on the back) and half a brick. The driver’s side door had a partial and very muddy boot print on the inside. The stereo when I got it was off, but as soon as I turned it on it was set to level 18 (full blast, essentially) with no CD inside (my CD had been taken and/or thrown out the window).

I know I’m not a cop, and I care a little bit more than not at all, but to me that sort of says “hey, this car was stolen and used to rob a house in a new subdivision, or one that was being renovated.” Sure, it could be that the brick wasn’t from a construction site that night (it could have been used as a hammer to drive out the door lock before the car ever left my lot), and the mud could be from some drug haven by the river, and the whole thing was just for a joy ride and to be destructive… But who steals an old Honda Accord for a joy ride?

Also, the repair shop or locksmith stole my vicegrips (they were there when I got my stuff out of the car).

I’ve been very aprehensive about the upcoming conference in Cancun. The hotel where it’s supposed to be at was ravaged by hurricane Wilma, and wasn’t going to open until a month before the conference (from over 7 months before the conference was to start, that’s a lot of time for something to get delayed). The hotel where all the students are staying is owned by the same company and is sited next door, and wasn’t scheduled to reopen until two weeks before the conference started, and even then under “limited services” (I was thinking no room service, others suggested no air conditioning — ouch!). Given all this craziness and uncertainty, I’m surprised we didn’t end up getting a better rate.

As the renovations took place over the winter, we got semi-regular updates about the progress, which stopped about two months ago. The first hotel (the one hosting the actual talks) was supposed to open last week, but we still haven’t heard any word from them. I just checked the website, and its opening has been pushed back to June 1st. The student hotel’s opening date (yep, the one I’m staying at) has been pushed to June 14 — but I’m arriving June 11!

I’ve sent an email to the conference organizers to see what the deal is; I really hope it’s cancelled. I actually shelled out for travel insurance this time around, and am really dreading moving closer to the equator in June.

Well, I’ve seen lawns toilet papered before, but this is ridiculous:

My building recently upgraded the toilets, and that was the pile made after a single day of renovations (I think it took them 5 days total). I thought they were going to continue to pile on toilets in some kind of monument to the porcelain gods, but on the second day they brought in dumpsters instead.

I don’t particularly care for the new toilets: they work well enough, but the flush lever is way around on the side and halfway down, almost as though they were trying to hide it from you in the dark. They were also installed a few inches from the wall, and have a slightly convex top, so it’s rather difficult to use the toilet tank as a makeshift shelf (our old toilets had a flat lid with a raised lip and were flush with the wall, perfect for battery-powered nightlights, kleenex boxes, and whatever else might need to be put there). Of course, what I’m most concerned about is that my landlords will use this as an excuse to jack my rents in January. Considering they did this as a cost-saving measure (they’re water-saving toilets; new showerheads went in too, and the building pays for the water), it seems like the perfectly sneaky way to screw me later on.

Naturally, I threw the original notice (containing the water-saving motivation) in the garbage as part of my crazy post-thesis apartment clean-up. My place still has a little ways to go yet, but I’ve cleaned up so much it’s almost unbelievable. After snaking my way through piles of paper on the ground, I seem to suddenly have this giant expanse of usable floor space that I just don’t know what to do with.

I still don’t know exactly when I’ll have my car back. After I get it back, I’m going to have to clean it. Wayfare made a good point: I should probably just pay someone to clean it, since cleaning up the mess of the person who stole my car would probably be somewhat psychologically devastating. Anybody know of a good place to go? A chain of some sort would probably be best, since I don’t want to leave the mess there for a week until I get back to Toronto…

Ben’s right, my post did deserve more profanity! I just hadn’t had a chance to see my car to see exactly what those fuckers did to it, so it hadn’t really sunk home yet. I took a few pictures with my camera phone, I’ll see if I can get them on here.

But basically, they just trashed the inside (as you’d expect from someone with so little respect for someone else’s property that they’d break in and steal it). Both front seats have been damaged with puncture marks. The ashtray was torn out (presumably to get at the $45 emergency gas money I keep kept there). The glove compartment was emptied. They had McDonald’s and threw the wrappers and cups all over the backseat. They took my bag full of towels from the trunk and ripped it apart (what, thinking I kept my laptop in a bag full of towels or something?). I keep a tub of road salt in the trunk for emergencies — that was dumped all over the trunk, and then my windshield washer fluid likewise opened and dumped on that to make a congealed salty wreck of my trunk. The poker set was stolen (but the frisbee, thankfully, was not).

Just what the fuck!!?!?!

Edit: The radio was left. Also, about the timing: I left my apartment around 12:30 yesterday, and saw the car was gone — the cops called my parents at 12:47 (just a few minutes before I got back upstairs after talking to my landlord).

Update: Here’s a picture of the broken ignition.

Also, I’m not sure how far the car was actually driven. I thought I filled up in Toronto before coming back to London, which would have left me with about a half a tank of gas — it was sitting at 1/4 full in the lot there, with 380 km on the trip meter (I reset it when I fill up, and I think it should have been at around 300 km when it was stolen). So, that could have been a fair bit of driving with a lot of idling; an outcome that would fit well with my supervisor’s scenario of the car being stolen to commit a few robberies and then being dumped.

I just had another golden idea that I’m going to give away for free: elevator shelves.

How often have you seen someone stumbling into an elevator with their arms full of bags or a box? Quite often, we’ll try to precariously balance our stuff on the handrail to take a bit of the load off as the elevator moves us up or down. Well, what if there was a shelf in the elevator that could fold down (the first thing that comes to mind are the baby changing tables in restrooms)?

Well, I just got a report that my car has been stolen and recovered by the police with the ignition ripped out. I’m waiting for the case officer to call me back so I can get the details…

Not even a week after graduating, too.

Edit: so it was stolen and taken for a joyride then dumped. They towed it to the exact opposite end of the city from me (south of the 401 — my dad figures they get paid by the km for towing), so I’m not even going to bother shelling out $60 in cab fares to go look at it first, I’m just having it towed for repairs.

There wasn’t too much in there that they could have stolen (and who knows, it might still be full of my junk). My poker set, my jacket, my sunglasses, the stereo & CDs, the tools and pump, and the irreplacable fabric frisbee. I hope that’s still in the trunk…

Today there was a vote on campus today about whether or not graduate students who don’t have teaching assistantships (namely, research assistants) should unionize. I was tired, busy, and completely torn on the issue, so I ended up abstaining.

On the one hand, I liked the idea of forming a union. Graduate students are some of the brightest people coming out of their bachelor degrees (at least academically, since we obviously have no common sense), and spend years — the prime years — of their lives toiling away in research making less than minimum wage. A union might be able to get us some human decency and a pay raise.

However, I also appreciate that the university doesn’t have a whole ton of money kicking around for grad students (and actually recently instituted the minimum stipend support); likewise, research grants only stretch so far — our whole R&D system is predicated on the essentially volunteer efforts of the grad student army. I doubt a union would get much in the way of salary then, though I still hold some hope for a better dental plan and some perks like paid maternity leave and perhaps an injunction against our supervisors saying that they expect us to be in the lab 50+ hours a week, because research isn’t like a regular job.

Even then, I just don’t see an RA union having much teeth: the research we do goes into our thesis, that’s our lives, not our jobs. A job action (which is what’s usually needed to squeeze anything approaching even the rate of inflation out of the university) wouldn’t be well attended — who wants to put their whole lives on hold? So many of us cut our budgets so close to the bone (or even have to rack up student debts for the years living away from home), that even with strike pay a prolonged strike would run the very real risk of not getting the rent paid.

With all that, unions have their down sides too. For starters, what if they tried to equalize the pay for all grad students? Right now, science students have it slightly better than arts or social science students (partly because of the dangerous environments we do our research in, partly due to having funding agencies with slightly deeper pockets). If a union brought everyone to the same level, it’s possible I’d be shooting myself in the foot. Union bureaucracy is well-known, and not usually for the best (whether it’s mandatory advertising and competition for positions, or setting limits about what non-union vs union members can do, and of course, rewarding seniority above any other form of merit).

A memo was sent around:

To: Academic and Administrative Leaders
Date: May 15, 2006
From: Jane O’Brien, AVP, Human Resources;
Subject: Graduate Research Assistants - Certification Vote

I am writing to let you know the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) has made an application to the Ontario Labour Relations Board to unionize Graduate Research Assistants on our campus. This memo provides some information concerning union legislation, Western’s position on PSAC’s application, and an important vote that is happening tomorrow, May 16.

First, under the Ontario Labour Relations Act, only individuals who are determined by the Ontario Labour Relations Board to be employees of an employer can be unionized. At Western, Graduate Research Assistants have never been considered to be employees of the University. For example, the funds Graduate Research Assistants receive are not considered employment income, and are therefore not subject to income tax deductions and deductions for CPP and EI. [emphasis mine, because it’s not true]

Western’s position is that Graduate Research Assistantships are a mechanism to help graduate students academically and financially with the completion of their research associated with their graduate studies. For this reason, the University has asked the Labour Board to dismiss PSAC’s application to represent Graduate Research Assistants. The Board will rule on this request in due course.

However, in the interim, the Labour Board has ordered a vote to be held tomorrow, May 16, 2006 between 10:00 am and 5:00 pm in Michael’s Garden, Room 3320, Somerville House. All Graduate Research Assistants will be eligible to vote and the outcome will determine whether they will be certified as a union under PSAC. The University is encouraging all Graduate Research Assistants to participate in this important vote to ensure their voice is heard.

That’s also contributing to my inclination to just abstain from this vote. Why bother going all the way out there to vote if there’s a good chance it will be determined that we’re not employees after all. Personally, I think we are (while we are here to learn, the vast majority of our day-to-day time is spent working on our own, producing intellectual property or learning on our own without active instruction). However, I can see that the university has a good case here, seeing as how after tuition we make much less than minimum wage, which would probably be illegal if we were employees — though on paper we do make the cut thanks to them paying us enough for tuition then taking it right back. Which is something I’ve always considered a little dubious considering how few classes we take, and how we have to maintain continuous enrollment for all three terms. It just seems like administrative waste to have us pay the tuition then get it right back in stipends/scholarships (except for the few students like me who go over the alloted time for their degree or whose average drops below 78 and have to pay it out of pocket).

I also wonder about some of their statements regarding us not being employees — because we do get knocked for CPP & EI. They don’t take tax off, but that’s only because our income is so low they know we’ll just get it all back at the end of the year anyway (and we can ask to have the tax taken off if we’re afraid other sources of income will put us over and we’d have to pay).

Anyway, as I’m posting this the vote is long since over, so I’ll be keeping an eye on things to see how they go. It could be interesting.