Well I guess that's what you get for trying to shove things up your stylus hole.

Isn't it more like breaking a button on your shirt and then tearing your suit apart before you find the spare button on the inside of the shirt?

I meant to say: Why can't you just buy another wacom?

Why can't you buy another wacom? They're really cheap now, maybe less then $200 bucks. From what you claim you sound like you are making decent wage to afford this. I'm sure if you ask nicely your company can write it off as an expense. Plus the new graphire has more functionality then the one you and me use.

hooray! We're in the google top ten for the searches "clever name" and "clever names"

I'm thinking maybe you guys can't appreciate the awesome-ness of my last post, so let me put it into relative terms of awesome-mess that maybe closer to your scope of understanding:

Imagine you have one last class to pass to get your degree at the UofA, and the only thing that's stopping you from passing that class is not getting your essay handed in tomorrow, but you're up late working on it and all of a sudden your keyboard stops functioning. Now you have a half-finished essay that needs to get done but you can't find anything to do it with. You tear apart your house looking for another keyboard but can't find one and know that all the stores are closed so you can't buy one. It's fucking useless. You open your computer hoping maybe there's just some loose connections that went wrong, but while you're jiggling stuff around (like an idiot) you break your soundcard right in half!!!! You are PISSED, but this essay still needs to get done or the last 4 years of work have been for naught!!! In a last fit of desperation you take apart your keyboard hoping to fix it... only to find that there's a perfectly-good keyboard jammed under the circuit-board of your broken one (bizarre, I know)!!! You plug it in, it works, you finish your essay, and the day is saved!

Sure, maybe you gotta buy a whole new soundcard, but big deal right? YOU FOUND A FUCKING KEYBOARD INSIDE A KEYBOARD!!!!

That is essentially what happened to me and what I tried to explain in that last post. See how fucking mind-boggling of a scenario that is??? SO WEIRD.

man, I lost my fucking nib out of my tablet's stylus, and I was sooo pissed because I couldn't use my pen!!! So I tried using the end of paperclips and shit because I don't have time to order a new nib and wait around for it to show up... I have fucking work to do NOW.

Unfortunately, all the things I jammed up the hole of the stylus to use as a nib only ended up making the side-button broken and I heard something rattling inside. And then somehow I accidentally busted the pen open, and the little metal rattling thing-a-ma-jig fell out. But then I couldn't get the pen back together without breaking the circuit board inside of it and the eraser was getting stuck. And then I cracked the plastic casing of the pen. So now I'm like REALLY REALLY REALLY pissed. I basically broke every last piece of my tablet's pen and I'm livid with rage. But then I take apart some of the circuitry that attaches to the eraser end of the pen and I see a familiar looking piece of white plastic in the middle of all the wires. I figure my pen's busted enough as it is, so I chance it and pull the little end of the plastic part with my teeth (not enough of it was sticking out to grip with my fingers). AND SURE ENOUGH, it's a fucking extra nib!!!! JAMMED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CIRCUIT BOARD AND WIRES OF MY PEN (which your warranty is voided if you open). I look at it and it's a brand NEW fucking nib! It's not the old one because it's in perfect shape and the old one I lost is all worn down. Somehow I stuff everything back in the pen and the plastic casing back together (even though it's cracked) and somehow it stays together. I insert the nib into the end AND IT FITS.

THE ERASER IS BROKEN, THE BUTTONS WON'T CLICK, BUT I FOUND A HIDDEN NIB IN MY FUCKING PEN AND AT LEAST I CAN DRAW SHIT AGAIN!!!!!!!


In the meantime I better look at ordering a new stylus because I fucked mine up completely... but at least it has the one remaining functionality that allows me to do work with it. Even though destroying my pen is going to cost me a lot more than the few cents I would have spent to buy a new nib, I can't help but feel validated in knowing that I discovered a hidden nib within the hardware and saved myself the downtime I would've otherwise spent in waiting for the replacement nib to arrive in the mail.

I FUCKING TRIUMPH AGAIN!!!! AGAINST ALL ODDS BITCHES, I FIND THE THING I NEED IN A PLACE IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE!!!!

Who cares what they do in quebec anyway??? They're fuckin racists! I fuckin hate french!

Here's a curious morsel of information gleaned from the informational repository known as wikipedia:

"When [Ryan] Smyth was a child, he accompanied former Edmonton Oilers teammate Ray Whitney as a stick boy for the team. While Smyth was in the rink parking lot, Edmonton Oiler player Glenn Anderson accidentally ran him over with his car."


hahahahahaha... fuckin Glenn Anderson!!!!

This may end up a bit garbled, but here goes.

Declaring, positively, your community's valuing equality and, as a corollary, women's rights, is not a negative thing. (Superfluous perhaps -- especially at the municipal level -- but generally an admirable sentiment.)

Forbidding, explicitly, acts which are already covered by the Criminal Code, and choosing acts that are perhaps associated with certain immigrant populations, I think, is going too far. (And let's be clear, nothing changes legally with this legislation.)

The point about having a positive idea of the values that, as a society, we hold is one well taken. Obviously inclusiveness can be taken too far (i.e. the "are we intolerant if we don't tolerate intolerance" argument). And, naturally, we don't accept certain acts (stoning, burning alive, throwing acid) against anyone -- women and men.

On the other hand, based on what you've written about there, alison, doesn't seem to be a positive declaration of a community's values. It isn't that the legislation forbids violence against women full-stop, but rather particular forms of violence against women. We aren't enshrining into law equality between the genders but equality in certain activities. (Would 'equal-pay-for-equal-work' make it into Herouxville's bylaws; or federal law, for that matter?) The declaration is being made on a pick-and-choose basis, making it seem less a principled stand and more a veiled attack on a group with a perceived difference in values.

(I'll put aside the poll in Quebec, because I'm not sure exactly what was asked, and what definition of 'racist' was used.)

The upshot, though, is ultimately the balance between community values and religious/traditional values. I was going to write that we've already declared (as shown in the decisions on Sharia Law and on the kirpan in schools) that religious freedoms extend as far as public safety and legal statute, but that seems to be a circular argument -- public safety and the law are determined by community values.

So I'm not sure how far is too far. Maybe that's okay, though. If we don't have a hard and fast rule, maybe we are forced to reconsider these issues on a regular basis. (Such as, for example, when people apply to use Sharia as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism, or when a town passes legislation like this.)

okay, so i have a question for you all:

how far is too far? ... in the race to be politically correct and/or culturally respectable, how far can you go before you've gone too far?

in this news story Herouxville, Quebec has formalised legislation forbidding people from "ston[ing] women to death in public, burn[ing] them alive or throw[ing] acid on them" is that so bad? or is it only bad because they've directed it at "Immigrants wishing to live in" the town?

is it bad to have a "declaration, which makes clear women are allowed to drive, vote, dance, write checks, dress how they want, work and own property?" ... in a country that currently recognises that women are persons and equal in the eyes of the law etc.? Have they gone too far by making it so obvious?

The councillor who brought this motion forward said the following: "We invite people from all nationalities, all languages, all sexual orientations, whatever, to come live with us, but we want them to know ahead of time how we live," is that unfair? i mean, the point of Canada was for people to escape persecution elsewhere, so oughtn't we to let everyone know they can't persecute people here either?

The article went on to mention that a recent poll found that 59% of Quebecers harboured some kind of racist feelings. but if we were to all look at ourselves, don't we all hold prejudices of some sort? it's part of being human... we discriminate... the same function that allows us to prefer bananas to oranges has led us to prefer some people to other people... i doubt that the rest of Canada is truly any different, and i'd be willing to bet that the number is actually higher than 59%. but so what? Canada is not a utopia, we're just trying to make it more civil and symbiotic, and what's wrong with helping it along?

it just... it bothers me a little bit that, at times, we've (our generation) grown up with this idea of multiculturalism and cultural acceptance, and that we can't make broad, sweeping statements about our own lifestyle here in Canada...

surely the Herouxville people went too far: "regulations say girls and boys can exercise together and people should only be allowed to cover their faces at Halloween. Children must not take weapons to school, it adds, although the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled that Sikh boys have the right to carry ceremonial daggers" in some regards (i'm not going to say what's right or wrong about making a personal choice to wear a veil), but how far could they have gone before people were outraged? i mean, in all honesty, (aside from the religious reasons as stated above) i'm happy to know that children are not allowed to take weapons to school, kids are dangerous enough with their own two hands... and i'm happy to know that the stoning, immolation and acid burning are not tolerable activities (though it would be best to extend that to both sexes and to personal uses of those activities as well...)

i guess my question, aside from "how far is too far" is simply, how do we make things more symbiotic? how can we live with the western cultural ideas of equality of the sexes, hetero- and homosexual marriages etc. while also encouraging every cultural group and religious organisation to flourish? and where do we draw the line when those two butt heads? to which side to we defer?

... just some early wednesday morning thinking for ya! (or it would've been if the university's internet hadn't crapped out on me... so i saved it for when i got home)