My clearest memories my high school days have little to do with high school itself. I remember the days we skipped school, driving in my parents Saturn and listening to Poor Old Lu.

That’s not to say I didn’t leave high school having learned some valuable lessons. I had a few fantastic teachers. Still, the lessons I will really take with me through life came not from my teachers, but from my fellow students.

Today, I share a few of those timeless lessons that I can still remember from high school:

1. Don’t be nervous – nobody gives a shit about you.

   This astute observation came to be from the guy who sat next to me in French class. He wasn’t really a friend of mine, just some guy. It was that dreadful time of year when we all had to give two minute oral presentations to the class (two minutes – in French). Like most of my unfortunate classmates, I hadn’t yet had enough life experience to put the gravity of an event like this in its proper context. As far as I was concerned, it would be the end of my little world.

   My fear must have been apparent to those around me, because the guy next to me leaned over and said something like “easy buddy – nobody gives a shit about your speech”.

   He wasn’t trying to reassure me. On the contrary, his tone was so condescending and detached that it was clear he had little concern for my wellbeing. It was also clear that he sincerely believed this. He went on to explain, ‘Do you care about anyone else’s speech?’ No, I didn’t – not in the least. My nervous young mind slowly followed the logical steps to the inevitable conclusion: No one cared about my speech either – I was one a large group of insignificant nobodies – so relax.

2. Stuck at a party with orange cheezy stuff on your fingers with nothing to wipe them off in site? Use your socks.

   This advice wasn’t given directly to me. Rather, I overhead a guy in my class explaining his brilliant discovery to an eager and attentive audience from the surrounding desks.

   His logic went something like this: You can’t lick your fingers; it’s considered rude (apparently a big concern of this particular fellow) nor can you wipe them on your (visible) closing, as it would leave a big chemical-orange perma-stain.

   The solution was so elegantly simple that it had escaped all of us. Pull up your pants a bit, and wipe your hands on your socks. No one is the wiser.

   I’ve done this.

I’ve already confessed to being a web stats junkie. There has been no improvement in this area since my confession. Rather, as the statistics get more interesting, my addiction grows ever worse. In fact, my web stats have become one of my primary means of finding new and interesting websites. I let them find me. And, naturally, sites linking to aov tend to be cool and interesting.

Every few weeks over the last year, a few oddities gave crept into our referrer logs here at aov. Most peculiar, by far, is http://www.iaea.org or the International Atomic Energy Agency. To be clear, as far as I can tell, the IAEA has never actually had a link to Acts of Volition from their website. It appears, as is sometimes the case, that our web stats have been fooled into thinking that a website is sending visitors our way.

This happens occasionally (some javascript forwarding functions can cause it), but usually from sites that an aov reader visits regularly. Are any of you members of the International Atomic Energy Agency?

The International Atomic Energy Agency is apparently a wing of the United Nations that “serves as the global focal point for nuclear cooperation”. Acts of Volition is all about cooperation, but not so much about atomic energy. We prefer more photogenic energy sources in the hopes that we’ll end up better off than these guys.

If you’re interested in finding others who find us in some way notable, see this list of some of the most common referring pages to actsofvolition.com.

While at the local grocery store this evening I was struck by a peculiar sound. It was the sound of an old fashioned mechanical cash register. However, it did not ring out with the authenticity and high fidelity that only actual reality can provide (I’m afraid you have to specify which reality now). Rather, the cash register sound squawked out of tinny little computer speakers – dozens of them.

This particular grocery store has replaced its cash registers with computers and every time an item is scanned, they play this annoying cash register sound.

I understand the need for physical metaphors when dealing with software, but wouldn’t some other visual or less intrusive audio cue work just as well? I would think that one of the main advantages of computers over cash registers would be silent operation.

The only thing worst than ten cash registers banging away is ten computer speakers doing a poor job of reproducing the sound of ten cash registers banging away.

As I listened to CBC Radio on my drive in to work this morning, there was a lively and joyful discussion of the greatness and quirks of CBC veteran Peter Gzowski.

I had heard that he was seriously ill and was encouraged to hear them having such a pleasant discussion of his life and work. Then my co-worker who was riding with me to work informed me that Peter had died.

It was nice to hear such a joyful wake on the public radio. This is how mourning should take place.

Peter Gzowski is remembered at Reinvented.net.

Note the spelling of ‘honour’, after all, it is the Best Canadian Weblog category. Acts of Volition, so far humble by necessity, not by design, has been graced with a nomination for The Bloggies.

Nikolai Nolan’s 2002 Weblog Awards are a great way to discover new sites. I had never seen Loobylu before – beautiful. I was also glad to see DollarShort.org in the best-designed category (although I think Sylloge should be in there too).

If we win, I’m not going to tell Rob or Matt (they’ll never find out), and I’m going to use the prize money to buy another copy of Sam Brown’s Exploding Dog book. The best part about the Canadian category of the Bloggies is that the prize money ($20.02) which is intended simply as a token of appreciation, takes on significantly more value when converted to Canadian Funds. Thank you, internation industrial complex.

To the ‘little people’, you can expect to be thanked if we win. If not, better luck next year.

AOL Time Warner is apparently in negotiations to buy Red Hat – the closest thing Linux has to a corporate identity (original source: Washington Post – see related discussions at Slashdot and MetaFilter). It would be interesting to see how AOL/TW would handle having a stake in the success of Linux. AOL has long had a love/hate relationship with Microsoft and the ubiquitous Windows platform. They need it to succeed (so far at least). I suppose having the most promising underdog operating systems would be a nice compliment to having the most promising underdog web browser (Mozilla).

Red Hat has had a strong web presence since their purchase of web design firm Atomic Vision a few years ago. Atomic Vision was responsible for the original design of Cnet’s Download.com, one of the better design on the web at the time. For a while, Red Hat / Atomic Vision produced some great web work, including Red Hat’s own site (great logo) and the open source news site Wide Open News. Both sites have since deteriorated somewhat in quality but are still quite good and I get the impression that much of what was bought with Atomic Vision has since been laid off (see sob story).

It’s fascinating how the life’s work of large groups of people can get lost in the mix of mergers and acquisitions. I get the feeling AOL/TW doesn’t even know it owns ICQ or WinAmp (although, I died a little bit the day WinAmp started including an AOL icon as part of its installation). They seem completely unaware of their own participation in the development of the file swapping Gnutella service.

I wouldn’t expect AOL for Linux for Dummies next week. AOL/TW has been slow to leverage their technology takeovers so far. Netscape hasn’t done much at all (their still pushing Netscape 4.x even though the open source Mozilla project has produced a far superior browser). ICQ is still an odd ball next to AOL Instant Messenger. There are two possibilities here:

1. they are looking a little farther down the road for integration of these various entities and a return on these investments or;
2. they have no idea what they are doing.

Consumers are like electricity, they’ll take the path of least resistance. So far, this has generally been dictated by pre-installation and universal compatibility of the Windows and Internet Explorer platforms (that’s compatibility via monopoly, btw) and the Wal-Mart-style lowest common denominator approach taken by AOL.

Bill Gates has often said that in 30 years, Coca-Cola will still be on top, but Microsoft will not. I think he’s right, but I think they’ll be enjoying the next 25 years first.

Yesterday I learned about a suspicious connection (or a dark cloud gathering overhead) between a bacterium in Pasteurized milk and Crohn’s disease.

They haven’t proven anything, but if it is eventually proven to be true, I think it’s perfectly fair for a cow to give me a disease after I’ve eaten so many of thier brethren.