LIFE : My Valentines

There's no lady in my life right now, but I am lucky enough to have more than a few ladies to wish a very happy Valentines Day to.

So whether you're a teenager, a young lady, a (ahem) more mature lady or. one of my elders, have yourself the very best of special days with your special one.

INTERNET: Do NOT CLICK On ANY Link in Comments

[Due to Google Blogger's COMPLETE and UTTER FAILURE to stop the SPAMMING COMMENTER KEVIN aka KEVIN21, all postings from now on will start with this preface. Do NOT click on ANY LINK found in the comment section of this blog. No matter how innocuous the link MIGHT appear to be, it is MOST LIKELY SPAM or a link to MALWARE]

Now, I'm about to erupt. I might (Oh, hell, WILL) be resorting to foul language and/or analogues. And I'm going to make several guesses as to the parentage of the person spamming this blog that might be ... stomach-churning. If that will upset you, please do not read any further. The import of THIS posting is to indicate that you should never click on a link in my comments section. DO NOT DO THIS. If we ignore this little rodent from Asia, it might slither away on it's trail of slime and never be seen here again. Or it might change names like it does its skin and come back under different guises. Just follow policy and ignore this moral-free fatherless misanthrope.

Awhile back, I suddenly found myself popular with a fellow Google Blogger who goes by the name of Kevin. Sometimes, just for fun, he uses a number (it should be 666, the son of a beast). In each case, he links to sales for products. No names needed. They are popular names and there is NO REASON ON EARTH for you to click on them. You will NOT be getting name brand products at crazy prices. You will be exposing you and your computer to all manner of bad things. AND, if I find out you did it, you have NO IDEA what depths of ridicule I will heap upon you. THEN, I will withdraw any and all of my services helping you. FOREVER.

At any rate, this white-bread named tapeworm's sphincter runs a blog devoted to Newport Cigarettes. The rest of the site reveals his origins in the Far East. I'm not savvy enough to discern the calligraphy as being Chinese or Japanese, although I DO believe it is NOT Korean.

I tried to contact Google to do something about his commenting spam. All I wanted was to stop him from spamming MY blog. As you know, I don't give the tiniest bit of care to what happens to everybody else. This blog is all about me. I wanted the &*^$(#^&$ moron out of my life. Google's response? I'll let you know if I ever hear from them.

Technically, I COULD ignore Kev, the burro's patootie, since I've long since filtered out his attempts to fill my gmail mailbox with his gruel-like drivel, but I'm not mature enough to just let things that actually don't affect me, slide. It infuriates me to no end that the BEST I can do is to send any alerts that this pusillanimous slime from the bottom of a dung beetle comments on directly to the gmail trashcan without even seeing them. (I'm copied on every comment made in the blog)

There was a suggestion from Jerry Pournelle, MOSTLY in jest, years ago that instead of paying huge sums collectively to spam-filtering companies and anti-virus/malware sellers that we take a TENTH of that collected treasure and hire a hitman squad. He suggested at the time that we use Cubans. I think North Koreans might be the choice du jour. At any rate, put a bounty of the heads of these dipstick nimrods and let our little band of better internet makers solve the issue. Guarantee video'd executions of spastic spammers would make the feel-good section of every local nightly news TV broadcast. There would be the shootings, the roasting in gasoline-fuelled conflagrations, the beheadings, the throwing of schmucks into a pit of vipers ... I could go on and on with how I'd arrange the daily dance of delight. The spam issue would be dead ... literally ... in about a year's time. The savings world-wide would be HUGE.

Now, my new policy/suggestion does carry some unfortunate side effects. A nice guy like Lee Goldberg who might pass by and comment on a review, might include a link to his website. Which is www.leegoldberg.com, if you are wondering. BUT, the policy is STILL in place for the good guys. NO CLICKING ON LINKS IN THE COMMENTS. Sorry about that Lee. It also means innocent people looking to help in the posting about renting cars in Brampton last November shouldn't bother leaving links. NO CLICKING. Period!

So Kevin, IF YOU CAN READ THIS, go away. Head for hell where you belong. Nobody's going to click on your miserable little links to loserville. You toad. Stop wasting your time and mine. Just DIE, DIE, DIE. And if you would be so kind, please have your surviving half-siblings send me a copy of the obit.

Thank you for reading.

SPORTS: Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Amongst the many nicknames I've had foisted on me, one of them is 'Stats.' I'm not ashamed of that sobriquet, but I have to admit, I do feel Stats are the worst of the degrees of lying. A post over at the Wages of Win Journal seems to get half the story straight. It blames a lot of the current woes of the Toronto Raptors on DeMar Derozan. And I agree with the writers of the piece.

But some of the other factoids in the article don't hold up to the eye test. In fact, the long-running evaluation of Andrea Bargnani as the worst player in the NBA has long rankled. True, last year, I stepped off the Bargnani Bandwagon and stopped hoping for all-stardom. But at his worst, Bargnani was an NBA starter. He wasn't particularly awesome on defence, but was, and is, a better one-on-one defender than Chris Bosh, for example. His problem was help defence, an idea he never seemed to grasp.

Until this year.

And suddenly, when healthy, Bargnani was playing at an all-star level. Sure, the stats gurus still found ways to mark him down, WITHOUT seeing him actually play. Can't remember Chris Sheridan EVER nominating a Raptor game as the Game of the Night to watch. I'd wager that the folks who regularly denigrate Bargnani see him play less than five times a year. And it wouldn't surprise me if they hadn't seen Bargnani in action at all.

With Bargnani, the Raptors have played at almost a .500 level. That's PLAYOFF good in the woeful East. Without him, the club has placed it's life in the hands of Derozan, who's fumbled it with inaccurate shooting, tepid driving and a level of fumble-fingered dribbling that rivals the most cement-handed centres in the league. Outside of one glorious three-point shooting night and the lane-driving tour-de-force in New Jersey and Derozan has been awful all season long. And even in the Jersey game, he kept missing free throws, an annoying trait to any basketball purist.

So, the writers are right on spotlighting the puerile performance we've almost come to expect from Derozan this year. The article got in the usual jabs at Bargnani, who's numbers are above-average, not that you'd know it from the text. And the article highlighted Jose Calderon, Amir Johnson and Ed Davis as the only Raptors worthy of an NBA uniform.

Calderon is my favourite Raptor. Has been for years. I normally brook no bitching from basketball no-nothings about the pass-happy Spaniard. And he was pretty good through, oh, about the first three weeks of the season. But somewhere in the first Bargnani absence, he got tired. And has been awfully tired since then. His turnover rate, one of the best amongst NBA guards has risen dramatically. He's also getting some of HIS turnovers charged to others because, well, he's JOSE CALDERON, and he doesn't turn the ball over. His shooting has become something to be worried about. But he's actually doing better under Dwane Casey's defensive scheme than he did under Sam Mitchell and Jay Triano. So he's still a plus, especially when compared to the alternatives ... Jerryd Bayless, Anthony Carter and Gary Forbes. Bayless now stands revealed indisputably as an under-sized two-guard and it's time to stop this PG nonsense when talking about him. Carter is no longer NBA worthy and Forbes is just a Bayless in an earlier stage of trying to fake it at the point. To their credit, Bayless and Forbes try hard and seem like good guys. Not NBA point guards though.

Amir Johnson started the season with a pretty good run for ten games. Since then, he has been awful to horrible. His bread-and-butter pick and roll needs a side-dish of three-point threats, or a single threat (Bargnani) to be effective. No Bargnani and Amir seems to be unable to re-jig successfully. It seems he takes his offence back on 'D' too. As a result, I can't believe that the stats haven't given all of his plus value back from the first ten games AND then some. In the past 36 hours, it's been revealed that Amir is going through some personal issues. I hope, fervently, that they resolve themselves for this giant bear of a guy, one of the nicest basketball players I have ever met. But at his current level of play, Amir Johnson would never even get on the floor for about two-thirds of the NBA.

Which brings me to the real eye test of the stats mavens. Ed Davis. He's been Amir Johnson bad ALL BLEEPIN' YEAR. He's clueless on defence often enough that you wish he could IMPROVE to 'Bargnani of yore' bad. He does block shots off the ball, which have to be disproportionately represented in the stats and he collars enough rebounds given the plentiful opportunities to ALMOST average more than Bargnani. But his shooting range is still only Reggie Evans deep. Everybody who knows me knows I hated the Davis draft pick. I wanted Patrick Patterson and maintain that Patterson, who isn't exactly lighting up Houston's stat sheets, would have been a far better fit for Toronto. Still do.

Next year, the Raptors have to make a decision. Keeping Amir Johnson or Ed Davis. The team needs a three-man rotation and the addition of Jonas Valanciunas means one of Johnson or Davis should be traded for another asset. While they still have some value. And I know WHICH of the two I'd move. At least Amir has shown value IN the past.

The eye test and the stats disagree. Especially this year. One's lying and I know which one it is. So do you, if you've watched many Raptor games this year.

BOOKS: McGrave by Lee Goldberg

Lee Goldberg has answered one of my prayers. A new lawman-in-new-territory series.

As a youngster, I enjoyed the aw-shucks routine of Dennis Weaver as Marshall Sam McCloud, a Taos, NM lawman 'stuck' in New York City, seemingly there to bedevil NYC Chief of Detectives Peter B. Clifford and to befuddle every villain who mistook his easy-going demeanor for not being up to the task.  A decade later, I fell in love with Glynis Barber, just like Michael Brandon, who played brash NYC detective James Dempsey, temporarily assigned to London and a partnership with Barber's Harriet Makepeace, in the British-made Dempsey and Makepeace. Almost TWO decades later, the same basic NYC-to-London transfer was tried with Fox's late, very, very lamented Keen Eddie, as played by Mark Valley. Since it went off the air in 2004, the genre has been left awaiting a new shining example.

Enter Tidal Wave McGrave, a TV pilot turned into a novella by Goldberg, author of the Mr. Monk series starring the fictional TV detective and a host of other bemusing mysteries and the several stand-alone action thrillers. McGrave is everything I've been waiting for. The L.A. detective ends up across the pond, bringing American bravado to the streets of Berlin, Germany. And it makes me wish the pilot had gone ahead and become a series. Very much. I've already cast the parts of many of the key players, including Valley in the starring role of the destruction-prone McGrave. 

There's a pretty German detective and her teenage son (think Noa Tishby for the mom and any early teens kid from Disney TV) and a super-smart German baddie, scurrilous enough to kill a dog and smart enough to evoke memories of Alan Rickman in Die Hard. I like Alan Cumming for the part. The last main part is for the detective's boss, The Duke, who is obsessed with John Wayne. Somehow, I keep picturing Wayne Knight as the guy, but I'd search high and wide for anybody who could combine that Duke-fixation with John Banner's deadpan delivery from Hogan's Heroes. He's the real new character, a boss that highly endorses rather than endures, the stranger in town. Or, why not just employ Germany's hottest actors and actresses in roles other than Valley's? Goldberg has a LOT of experience working in the German TV and movie community.

The plot for McGrave involves high-tech robbers and lots of car chases and crashes. All very visual and very entertaining. McGrave is as rough and tumble as the best of the anti-heroes, racking up an impressive list of arrests and and an equally bewildering amount of property damage. In his last case in L.A., he stops a robbery at quite a price, including the death of his beloved dog. Plus, the bad guy I want Cummings to play escapes back to Germany, where he's also mid-way through yet another crime. McGrave heads to Berlin to stop the crook as much for his threat against McGrave's family as for his needing to close the case. He partners up with Maria and the two of them end up saving the day, while engaging in a car chase with a SmartForTwo car that would make Steve McQueen's ghost smile. Along the way he forges a bond with Maria's son Erich, dispensing some much-needed manly advice.

Now, this novella isn't perfect. You don't get much present tense writing these days and I wonder if it would have benefited from changing that. Also, this isn't Mr. Monk we are talking about. Goldberg's on record as enjoying taking off the straitjacket of writing for a PG13-rated audience with this work. And if a bit of foul language will stop you, then read no further. But it's not over the top, so I enjoyed it anyways. There's a fair bit of German sprinkled through the book (my actual first language, but long forgotten) and some admitted liberties taken with the Berlin geography which might, or might not, get in the way of any reader. But all of that is stylistic. The content makes this a first-rate, one-night read. For me it's a five-star implementation of a five-star idea.

Danke, Lee.

NOTE: The review is from an advance reader's copy provided by the author, which was titled Tidal Wave McGrave at the time. I believe that this novella is a Kindle exclusive at this time.

COMPUTERS: Scummy Soul-Sucking Scamming SOB's

I know SOME of you need to put food on your table. But before resorting to telemarketing try everything else. EVERYTHING else. And, if you are telemarketing an actual scam rather than something with some semblance of value, then don't. DO NOT DO IT. If you believe in Karma and re-incarnation (and some of the people who do this probably do), then you are coming back as a cockroach or a flea on a Republican's backside. And soon.

There's a new scam out there that started, by my quick research, just before Christmas and is apparently still going strong. YOU get a phone call from somebody, usually with an accent from someplace other than this continent, and the caller informs you your computer is sending his/her company information. AND you most certainly don't want that. The helpful person will walk you through verifying the info-leaky computer. In fact, he'll PROVE it's communicating them by telling you a specific UNIQUE IDENTIFIER that you will be able to find once he/she gets you to type CMD ASSOC into your computer. Like the card trick with the picked card in the middle of the second column, it's a TRICK.

Do it with another computer and you'll see the same UNIQUE ID. If you aren't running a Windows PC computer, of course, the scammer will have struck out. But that's why they have rapid re-dial on their phones. Time to move on to the next potential victim.

I don't know what happens after that. In fact, I only know about the Unique ID part of the script because when I checked out 425-998-1533 at WhoCallsMe.com, one of the zillion or so reports about this bunch of Karma-begotten sub-humans, I found one guy who strung the slimy scammer along long enough to get the script.

The reason I went digging for this was, of course, because the simpletons called my Dad, who handled the situation perfectly. He refused to do anything with them and asked for their phone number to call them back when he had the time, laughing as he asked. The sap at the other end of the line hung up, knowing the jig was up. Then Dad called me to make sure.

Here's what I told him. "Software companies DO NOT CARE about you. They will NOT SPEND THE MONEY pro-actively phoning you to help you out. That COSTS MONEY and companies have limited charity budgets as is. EVEN when there is some sort of recall, the company will advertise it and hope YOU DON'T GET IN TOUCH. It's like warranties that they hope you won't convert or gift certificates they hope you lose before cashing in. At best, they'll send you a letter or an email, something mass producible and cheap. Paying for one-on-one help. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN."

"Now, if you want to have some fun and keep them talking on their dime, go ahead. Want to shout and holler obscenities, go for it. Want to just hang up on them, go ahead. That's what I do. But for this PARTICULAR scam, I wait beside my phone with my VERY LOUD, PIERCING referee's whistle. Cruel? Yeah. Overkill? Maybe. Taking advantage of living by myself? Oh, yeah!"

Oh, and I'm not all that sanguine about hardware companies calling either.

Just in case you decide you need money sooooo badly that you take it for trying to scam me with some story about software or hardware. Better hope the random dialer doesn't pop out my name and number. 'Cuz you know what's coming...

TWEEEETTTTTT!!!!

LIFE: Tree's Up!

It is a testament to my conniving ways that, once again, I have a Christmas Tree worth bragging about in my living room. And it took me all of 30 seconds to add the finishing touch, the angel atop the tree. The rest of the work? All done by the junior members of my extended family.

The Christmas Tree Raising Ceremony was a bit special this year in that A.J. rejoined the Movie Mob for the first time since 2008. He's turning 18 in about six weeks and getting a bit smarter each year. Sooner or later, he's going to realize that he and his workmates do all the raising part, while I sit back and steal all the thunder with my angel at the end of a grasping stick routine. Still it was awfully nice to have him back.

His sister, Angela, is the ringleader of what is left of the Movie Mob, which over the years has included about nine different kids at various times. In the early years, I had to bribe the young'uns with food and a movie to do all the work, come Tree Raising Ceremony time. These days, the actually believe it's fun and no bribes necessary. Heck, Angela even roped in her best friend Megan a few years back and the newest member of the Mob finished her fourth tree Thursday night.

Each year, each kid got money to buy a single ornament. And from the first three has grown a tree regularly festooned with all kinds of interesting balls and baubles, from tiny little fake lights (NO electricity allowed near my tree) to gigantic ornaments that could double for a disco ball in a pinch. That one hides the 'hole' that makes itself evident in my artificial tree. Throw on a bunch of hand-made ornaments that date back to the turn of the century and the first tree, some strings of beads and festive, feathery boas plus the re-introduction of tinsel this year and you get a tree that is ALMOST completely full.

Still has lots of places for my various Montreal Canadiens themed ornaments, a yearly gift from A.J. and Angela's parents. The final result is perfect.

You'll have to take my word. Just look at the grins on the faces of, respectively from left to right, Angela, Megan and A.J.

Last year, the tree stayed up until almost Easter, awaiting all the various members of my family to beat a path to my door and see it. Until then, I saw no reason to take it down. I'm hoping that it can come down a little quicker this year. But if it makes to Easter or even my mid-summer birthday, so what?

It really is a pretty sight.

INTERNET: The Cure For Ego

Just noticed, the most page views I've had for a blog posting. The winner? The quick test for seeing if a posting widget worked. In other words, the most visits were for a post where I said nothing. Considered me deflated.

LIFE: Rusting Away in Margaritaville

Sorry about the title. It should have been Rusting Away in My Driveway. But you're here, so you might as well know, I've given up my car. More or less.

The Saturn I've driven throughout this century is now parked in my driveway, tucked out of sight up against the kitchen window. I no longer am insured to drive the car and the only reason I haven't sold it  (or scrapped it, which my father has stumped for, for about half of this century), is that I might just bring it out of retirement in the spring, throw a few bucks into it and see if I can nurse it along for another couple of years. Assuming The Experiment fails.

I have been thinking of going no-car for at least two years. The economics of it has been close. But not close enough to not have a car for when the mood--or an emergency--strikes me. After all, I'm the guy who normally shops for groceries at 4 am. Amazingly few lines at the checkout stand at that time of the morning. Against that, the bread isn't always bountiful or fresh. And you can't buy lottery tickets. Oops, that last one was supposed to go into the Pro column.

In reality, I've been known to leave the house as few as one time a month. That's to fetch money from clients and put it into the bank. Inevitably to be followed by a little food shopping. In February, at least the last three, I've managed to not leave the Cave at all in two of them. The other? Had a doctor's appointment on the 28th. I'm not a Travellin' Man.

What really tipped the scales in favour of trying The Experiment was finding out that the daily rental cost from Enterprise would be a LOT less than the hundred bucks I thought it would be. The range I will be paying for a small car will be $50-$63 per day. A three-day weekend for $123, tax and insurance in, would be doable in rare cases (like, say, Christmas shopping in December, if I hadn't already finished my shopping for this year). And even those prices are subject to some change downward. Ed Hills tells me my trusty Visa credit card might get me out of the $23 insurance cost. I'll be investigating. But for right now, I'm assuming the costs I've outlined above.

For taxi rides, it's seven bucks each way to my doctor's, eight bucks to the City Centre Mall and $15 to my main client. So, if it's just to get there and back, I can keep THOSE trips down to a financially feasible outlay.

Against THOSE costs, I won't be paying my insurance, which rose 17 percent this year to around $114 a month. I live in Brampton, apparently the worst city for driving in all of Canada (have these insurers ever visited Montreal?). So, if they (they being the guaranteed profit-making insurance companies) don't get you one year, they get you the next. Don't know anybody who hasn't been dinged above 15 percent in at least one of the last two years. They seem to do it in odd years to me, even years to Patrick's family, for example. In my case, I haven't asked anything of my insurance company in more than 30 years. And the car I'm driving isn't worth much more than scrap. So naturally, they assume I should pay them another $200 next year for doing it again. Ahhhh, no. You will also notice that JUST the insurance payment saved means I have two Enterprise days pre-paid.

Now, factor in the license plate renewal, my own private yearly experience in hell. I've had ALL kinds of issues with license renewals and not having to do them next summer and every summer after that? Priceless. But for now, let's just attach a hundred dollar bill in fees and time spent to my savings. Emission tests for the car were due in 2012. Time and money adds up to one Enterprise day there too.

Which brings me to repairs. I have been going to Lew at All About Imports for a few years from now. He's a jewel. An honest mechanic who appreciates the dollars I contribute to his daughter's college fund, but won't take a dime he doesn't work for or have to. He had the Saturn in for pre-winter service in early October, with instructions to do the breaks, which felt a bit mushy, too. I knew I was going to have to eat the better part of five bills.

Instead, he came to me with the news that the car was going to be a progressive money pit over the winter and into the spring. I should replace the calipers behind the breaks. The exhaust system, stem to stern, was looking frail and the service log book indicated I was already two years past the date the drive belt should be replaced. I could drive the car home as is, and park it. He and I'd talked over that possibility often enough in service visits over the last few years. Or he could do the brakes right then and there. Or, or, or... His reckoning was that after putting in the two thousand dollars, the ol' Saturn might get around two years before finally, truly, earning scrap-heap status. And he thought it was throwing good money after bad. His recommendation was a newer car, knowing that I've never bought an actual new car in my life.

So, I told him to pack it up and I'd drive it home as is. I knew my insurance was paid up until Remembrance Day. I wanted to extract the last bit of THAT money (well, the benefit of having spent that money, as required by law). And as I got closer to that day and investigated the possibility of doing without the car, I started to look at it as a day to just walk away. And I have.

Can I get by without a car at hand, rusting away in the driveway? I really think so. I might even be money in pocket, if I can rearrange those few times out and about, down to just one day a month. Shopper's Drug Mart, the beneficiaries of more than $300 a month in prescription bills, will deliver for free. Heck, they even call me these days, when I go a little long in renewing a prescription. I think I'm taking eight different kinds of pills daily. Patrick's wife Dawna has been doing Costco runs and asking me if I need anything for more than a year as it is. I was only maintaining my membership for McCain's French Fries and Heinz Ketchup, two of the most important food groups there are. I lament the passing of the availablity of the Kirkland Potato Chips. And other friends have volunteered to make milk and bread runs (Naturel Lactose Free 2% milk, Weight Watcher's White Bread).

I don't socialize much. When I do, it's because people have ignored the "UNWELCOME" mat at the front door and have come to see me. They apparently don't believe my good-bye sentiment, "Be A Stranger!" I spend my time reading, watching TV and using the computer for work and play. I actually have access through the internet to my clients' computers and, to be honest, clients like it when I stay away. A visit from me frequently brings work to a stop. I'm a bit of an attention hound. For bridge tournaments and the like, my partner of the day usually drives and I pay gas and parking. Works for them.

Ultimately, there will be yet other side benefits. Impulse control isn't one of my strongest suits. I know I dithered for 18 months before buying a tablet (which I love dearly). But generally, I'm a "See It, Buy It" kind of guy. Or a "I Feel Like Some Fast Food" guy. Not pizza, which can be delivered, but only enters the house when the Movie Gang is around. Nope, it's popcorn from Kernels. Or fries and a dog at my favourite local spot, Sonny's Drive-In. Then there is my total lack of control in front of a magazine rack. A magazine I can't partially (or fully) read on the internet is a rarity. And even when I do get one of those, I ready a small portion of it, browse through the rest and when finished, toss it onto the stack. And that stack fills two rooms and most of the basement in the house. Did I mention NO SELF CONTROL? If I'm right and can limit my excursions to one a month, I bet I could save upwards of another fifty bucks in simple lost opportunities to prove how weak my will is.

The single benefit that pleases my folks is that it cut down on my already meager time spent on the road. Less opportunities for kooks to kill me. In my last trip to my main client in the Saturn, I watched a car in front of me edge out into the left-hand turn lane, with blinkers indicated he was going to turn left. He then made a right-hand turn across two lanes of traffic and lived to tell about it because it was mid-afternoon and nobody was in the right lane and coming hard with the green light. On the way home, a somewhat similar situation saw a car go right THROUGH the red light I was sitting at, not even slowing the littlest bit to see if there was a crossing truck or whatever to blot out his (probably) besotted life. I actually caught up to the schmuck at the NEXT light. He couldn't speed on through that one because there cars in both lanes obeying, you know, the law. As soon as the light turned green, he started cutting in and out, risking a LOT of people's lives. I caught up to him AT THE NEXT RED LIGHT. This time, I turned off, not willing to engage in what had to be an incipient multi-car crash caused by this mental midget.

I've often said that the only benefit I could think of for getting rich was to be able to afford a chauffeur driven Humvee. These days, I'm not even sure that would be safe enough. No, it's better I let my car rust away in my version of Margaritaville.