I’ve commented before on how the news is mostly distant and without context. One Dead, Three Hurt in California Shooting. Shooting in N.S. town leads police on high-speed chase of suspect. Blah, blah, blah. When something hits closer to home, it will knock me on my ass, but I am unable to mourn the deaths of strangers when all I see is a 15 second video clip.

That said, I can remember a few isolated cases where the TV news really shook me. Vegging on the couch one afternoon, flicking randomly through the channels, an odd pattern formed. Every station started to show the same video feed. For the next half hour I watched, live, as armed FBI agents ushered students from a school in which two gunmen were still stalking. I couldn’t tune it out. It was sickening. I had to turn it off. The strange feeling I had that day, that I was seen something I shouldn’t, has stayed with me.

More recently, four junior-high-school kids were killed in a bus accident in New Brunswick. I sympathized with the survivors. Even now, I am uncomfortable thinking of the horror these kids must be going through.

There’s nothing unusual about being upset my school shootings and tragic accidents, but these two cases are some of the only ones I can ever remember having any impact on me at all. Most news to me is noise. A fire kills a family in Boston, a plane crash kills a celebrity. I could care less. I’ve got plenty to worry about with the people I actually know.

My point? Not sure. Just wondering aloud about selective news sympathy. Why is it that I can watch most news without blinking, however horrifying, while a select few stories keep me up at night?

A random collection of interesting things:

• Nasa scientists are going to attempt to fly an 11-pound model airplane across the Atlantic using the Global Positioning System (via Slashdot).
  
• If you are like me, you know very little about Canada’s 1970 ‘October Crisis‘ and you’ll benefit from the CBC’s look into the time the Canadian Government called on the War Measures Act.
• It’s been out for a while now, but a recent listen to The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner by Ben Folds Five (who are apparently no longer together) blew me away. I sat down with the record as a moderate Ben Folds Fan having heard only the single and listen from start to finish. I listened to every word (not common for a first time listen). It is a sad and powerful album.

This odd blurb greeted me on the home page of Amazon.com today. See it in context »

I can’t promise that your life will be any better if you don’t watch TV, but I think I can absolutely guarantee that it won’t be any worse than it is now. Its TV Turnoff Week kids.

An earlier debate here on aov (which happened mostly via email since it was pre-replies) was inconclusive about the shame of watching TV. Although it did indicate that TV Turnoff Week would be a lot harder for some than for others.

No matter how many times I upgrade a piece of software only to find that the latest version is no better, or is worse than the previous versions, I still feel the need to upgrade. Even if I’m perfectly happy with a piece of software I’ve been using successfully for a long time, as soon as a newer version comes out, I lose it. I can’t help but imagine all the bugs I’m living with now (whether I run into them or not) that have been fixed in a newer version.

The problem started at an early age. My parents had to upgrade my Packard Bell from 2MB to 6MB of RAM after I spent all of my savings ($99) on Central Point Software’s PC Tools only to find out it wouldn’t run on 2MB of ram. RAM cost $100/MB those days (I have a similar sob story about spending all my cash on a telescope that turned out to suck in grade four, but it doesn’t have anything to do with upgrade anxiety, so I’ll save it for a rainier day).

The problem began to affect my relationships and work as it worsened in the years that followed. It started with a two page spread screen shot of what was then called Chicago (eventually renamed Windows 95 for release) in Windows Magazine. I ogled those pages. I yearned for universal drag-n-drop, the task bar, to run my cursor over those chiselled 3D bevels. I paid $49.95 US for a copy of the Windows 95 beta preview version. It came on 35 3.5″ disks (seriously, I didn’t have a CDROM drive). My system and it’s now paltry 6MB of RAM absolutely crawled under its weight, but it didn’t matter. I had the latest.

Microsoft knows my kind. They pander to my addiction. Their Windows Update feature of my Windows 2000 Professional pops up a little icon in the corner of my screen every time an update of some kind becomes available. Even now, running Windows 2000 (and quite pleased with it), I am tortured by a co-worker who has secured a copy of Windows XP (the unfortunately monikered follow-up to Win2k).

I am a compulsive upgrader. Cost, quality, and reason are irrelevant to me when it comes to upgrades. This very article is stored in SQL Server 7 database when SQL Server 2000 has been out for months. I know very little about databases, and even less about the discrepancies between SQL versions, yet it kills me to run anything less than the absolute latest release (or even better, a beta of the next version).

I know I’m not alone. There must be other compulsive upgraders out there. Maybe it’s not software. Maybe it’s hardware, CDs, clothes. Share with me people.

There is a scene in The Great Outdoors where John Candy is waterskiing. Desperate to stop, he screams at the driver of the boat (Dan Aykroyd). “You bastard, You bastard!” Aykroyd thinks he’s saying “Go Faster, Go Faster!” and fun and folly ensue.

I had an eerily similar and equally frightening experience last night. Friends were helping me tow my sick Toyota to the mechanic. Needless to say, there were miscommunications.

If you claim to have seen a yellow ’78 Volvo wagon towing a sick Toyota by 10 feet of rope* at 70Km/h down North River Road, then I have no idea what you are talking about.

Whether you think the space race was the logical next step in exploration or a complete waste of resources, you have do give this guy some serious credit.