Found this in the middle of last semester. A fun little story.

The "actual" Last Saskatchewan Pirates

PS: Impark is sure taking their corporate maze to a whole new level.

ismubarakstillpresident.com

I like this evil streak in you, Alison. The Impark gremlin in all of us must be nurtured.

Par: I shared your Impark story with my coworkers. They figured it probably cost Impark ~$30 to issue you that $1 cheque. If I were you, I'd go around putting toonies into machines all over town and calling/e-mailing them to get your refunds. But then again, I don't particularly like Impark and wouldn't mind seeing them lose some revenue to foolish internal processing activities.

Thanks P for the additional security links. I'll look in to them. This is great advice, I really appreciate it.

Al: Glad to hear that Marwencol is good. I'll see if Calgary's playing it any time soon. With my luck, they've already shown it and it's moved on to another city.

Shitty news on the Blue Bomber, though.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/

These two are good av programs as well.

Marwencol=awesome!

Catch it if you can.

Re: Douglas Adams and technology. I got the sense from Salmon of Doubt that he was a huge fan of gadgets, and especially of Macs, even though they often frustrated him. And, although he's sometimes a little overenthusiastic, in my mind Stephen Fry seems like a reasonable representation of Douglas Adams's thoughts about technology.

In short, he'd probably be giddy. But then again, everything that's happened since the iPhone came out probably would have made him giddy.

Also, re: the blue bomber: Boo.

On January 16th, I put a toonie in an Impark machine, looking to pay for $1.00 worth of parking. I, naturally, expected some change back.

Instead, I got a ticket telling me to call a number for my refund.

I called the number and was given an email address, which I emailed with the details of the incident.

On January 24th, they asked for my mailing address.

Today I received a cheque by regular mail (postage $0.59) from Impark.
A cheque for $1.00.

Brilliant.

Apparently the Blue bomber is lost in the phantom zone...

Or some people should look for another job.

Howdy!
Thanks for the suggestions, Tony.

Here's an interesting Wikipedia = Hitchhiker's Guide article.

My coworker tried out Google Translate. "Bonjour, je m'appelle Ian" came out as "Italian yellowpages". They still need to work on it. He's articulate.