Oh, dear. What does Carpal Tunnel Syndrome feel like?

[UPDATE – added 25 minutes later]
It turns out I only ache when I’m doing boring or unpleasant work.

Imagine a website where you could:

• find out the current ski conditions
• find any business in your province
• see all properties up for sale on a map
• contact anyone in your government
• download the provincial budget (and the previous three years of budgets)
• find anything and everything you could possibly want to know about the election including live results
• easily find every single accommodation, campground, festival or event, restaurant, or tour in the province
• find useful and up-to-date weather info including a chart of the temperature over the last 24-hours
• watch the Province House live
• view every single Provincial Statute
• see where everything in your province is on a map

Then imagine that it’s all easy to find and navigate, quick to load, and resists the temptation of self-indulgent multimedia.

If you are lucky enough to live on Prince Edward Island then you already have a website like this: www.gov.pe.ca. “Website architecture and construction by Reinvented Inc. for the Government of Prince Edward Island, Canada”. I build websites and I fancy myself a fine critic of effective sites. This one is insanely great.

Thanks to some pervasive media campaigns (most significantly that of Mothers Against Drunk Driving) our generation has done a pretty good job of stigmatizing drunk driving. You’ll still encounter a few nuts and jackasses that insist they’re “<drunkspeak>ok to drive</drunkspeak>” but in general it’s understood that driving drunk is really stupid.

Having grown up with tag-lines like ‘Friends don’t let friends drink and drive’ burned into my subconscious I find it very odd to hear an oldie-olson¹ talk about how drunk driving was common when they were growing up. This is the same generation that claims they didn’t know smoking was bad for you².

This got me thinking: Old people are stupid and I am smart.

Upon further thinking, this premise seemed somewhat unlikely. Then it dawned on me: What do I do that that is so stupid it will make my kids wonder how we even managed to reproduce? The answer: Sleep deprived driving.

Having just gotten back from an all night drive to Halifax and back to deliver a “friend a co-worker” to the airport on his trip to New Zealand (the bastard), I can attest to the stupidity of driving while over-tired. Fortunately I had a fellow aov author to share the driving duties.

Bottom line is, driving while over tired is really stupid³.

Amazing! A former writer for Letterman marched into a dot-com company’s offices, claimed a desk and started ‘working’. He was there for three weeks before he got busted. Then he wrote about his stunt for The New Yorker.

That is art. TheStandard.com tells the rest of the story.

What is it about non-profit and bureaucratic organizations that possesses them to get mugs, pens, pads, and t-shirts branded with their logo. Admittedly, I have an inordinately large collection of mugs. In my defense, however, I didn’t pay for any of them. They just appear.

The Four Neighborhoods Community Health Centre is a good example of a typical mug producing organization. They are an organization that provides supplemental health care to the local residents to take the strain off the hospital (at least that’s what I think they do, don’t take my word for it). This sounds good enough to me. My question: Where the hell do mugs come in to the picture?

The best I can figure is that when people are put on committees and don’t know what to do, this is when it happens: “Oh, I know, let’s get mugs!”. The world continues to mystify me.

Jezebel’s Mirror is a collection of photographs people have taken of themselves projected on various reflective surfi.

This site made me wonder why I don’t have a digital camera. Not sure. I’ll get back to you on that one.

Spend a few minutes perusing. It’s surprisingly interesting. Also, you can submit a photo of your own.

What follows is from the cover of an actual magazine that is produced, I think, by the Government of New Brunswick.

“Exports are running hot
Ecommerce is way cool”

It concerns me that someone could actually write that. I can only hope that it was either a joke or an accident, but I fear it was neither. But maybe I shouldn’t be so negative. Maybe I should try to “¢ash in on e¢ommerce”.

From TheRegister.co.uk:

1. Talk to people for chrissakes. Don’t live your life through the sodding TV. Go and meet up with mates or stay at home and talk with your family – and talk about something other than the TV. How about hopes/aspirations/feelings?
    
2. Buying things will NOT make you happy. Honestly. Spend the money on activities or things you’ve always wanted to do. That is what money is for, don’t you remember?
    
3. A job is something you do to give you a focus and purpose in life. It also provides money which pays for your home and food and supports your family. The rest can then be used to make your life outside work more enjoyable (see point 2).
    
4. Stop bloody whingeing all the time. No one likes moaners. And we just don’t care if you’re stressed or not – we’re not you. So what’s the point? Just get on and do it. And stop trying to find other things that you can blame for the fact that you’re a whingeing, boring, overworked bastard.

Read the rest of the article »

In the event that you become a billionaire it is important to be prepared. Being disgustingly rich isn’t all fun and games. There are responsabilities. You will need an original set of billionaire eccentricities. Mine are as follows:

• I will wear a new pair of socks every day. Maybe I can work out some kind of deal where I give yesterdays socks away for charity auction like Michael Jordan does with his shoes.
• I will start a large-scale media campaign (including magazine ads, billboards, radio ads, and TV ads) to destigmatize masturbation. It’ll be like NBC’s The More You Know featuring big name stars. If you ever see a MASTURBATION IS OK
  bumper sticker, you can rest assure that I have found wealth.

Email me (steven@actsofvolition.com) and let me know what your billionare eccentricities.