Police arrived on scene, just blocks from Florence’s Mayfair-area home. They found him conscious but unable to communicate and with a severe head injury, Voisard said. None of his belongings appear to have been stolen.

I would guess it was either a gang initiation (i.e. go beat up some random person and you’re in our club) or just a purely random stoned/drunk/whatever assault. Whatever the reason, it isn’t right.

Eddie Vedder Sings Bruce Springsteen’s ‘My City of Ruins’ at Kennedy Center Honours

There’s a blood red circle
on the cold dark ground
and the rain is falling down
The church doors blown open
I can hear the organ’s song
But the congregation’s gone

My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Now the sweet veils of mercy
drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner
like scattered leaves
The boarded up windows
The hustlers and thieves
While my brother’s down on his knees

My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Come on rise up!
Come on rise up!

Now there’s tears on the pillow
darling where we slept
and you took my heart when you left
without your sweet kiss
my soul is lost, my friend
Now tell me how do I begin again?

My city’s in ruins
My city’s in ruins

Now with these hands
I pray Lord
with these hands
for the strength Lord
with these hands
for the faith Lord
with these hands
I pray Lord
with these hands
for the strength Lord
with these hands
for the faith Lord
with these hands

Come on rise up!
Come on rise up!
Rise up

Once upon a time I had a first-world problem, luckily I had a first-world product that increases my dependancy on technology, removes my need to consult other humans and deepens my handicap of extreme-laziness. My friends were thoroughly impressed.

Via here via here via here.

Whew. That’s a lot of via’s. This would be a lot easier on Tumblr.

A chief virtue of digital books is said to be their economical size—they take up no space at all!—but even a megabyte seems bulky compared to what can be conveyed in the few cubic feet of a bookshelf. What other vessel is able to hold with such precision, intricacy, and economy, all the facets of your life: that you bake bread, vacationed in China, fetishize Melville, aspire to read Shakespeare, have coped with loss, and still tote around a copy of The Missing Piece as a totem of your childhood. And what by contrast can a Kindle tell you about yourself or say to those who visit your house? All it offers is blithe reassurance that there is progress in the world, and that you are a part of it.

Via The Millions.com via everythinginthesky.com

…stopped me and asked me if I had a jerry can. He said he was from a reserve up north, out of gas, his wife was expecting and their car was stuck on Idylwyld.

Told me that everyone he met in Saskatoon had been rude to him up until that point and that I was the friendliest person he’d come across. Said that he even offered to put up his cell phone for colateral at the gas station in order to get some gas but they refused. Asked me if I would buy his Iphone in exchange for some gas money…

So just make sure you’re letting friends know what’s going on so they don’t get bit by these guys (or same guy?). If you’ve got other stories, please leave them at the original post so they’re all in one place.

I’ve turned comments off on this entry.

In my groggy, sleepy headed state I stumbled down the stairs and went to his door. Only there was no noise coming from his room.

Bang! Bang! Bang

The banging persisted. And now I could hear a voice attached to the banging.

Hey! Open the door. I don’t want to cause no trouble. I just want to sleep. Hurry up.

I peeked out our back door and saw a guy, obviously blitzed out of his tree, standing in our doorway barely standing up.

“You’ve got the wrong house” I said to him through the door. He said he didn’t care, he just wanted to sleep. I told him a few more times that he was at the wrong house and that he couldn’t come sleep here but he persisted in banging and asking to be let in.

We decided to call the police because I didn’t really want to deal with some drunk dude in my house. While I was on the phone with the police the drunk dude decided he would lay down on our back porch to rest. As I gave our address and described him to the police he continued to mumble random things about wanting to go to sleep and not wanting to fight anybody.

When the police arrived they gave him a visual look over and decided that they definitely didn’t want to be touching this guy and so they told him they were going to bring an ambulance in to check him over. While waiting for the ambulance to arrive the police continued trying to figure out who he was, where he lived and where he came from.

As best as I could figure out from his “answers” to the police:

• He’s 24 (but that could be wrong because it was the 24th of Feb yesterday)
• It was his birthday
• His friend’s took him out drinking
• Some guys wanted to fight him but he didn’t want no fight
• He wouldn’t fight with the police or paramedics even if they punched him in the face he wouldn’t fight back.

Sweet friends who take a guy out drinking and then ditch him somewhere besides his home and leave him to get picked up by the police. I was impressed that they sent him in the ambulance and that they didn’t just throw him in the back of the police car to sober up. He obviously stunk quite a bit because the cops kept taking steps back from him and waving their hands in front of their face as they tried to get him to the ambulance.

Just a bit of excitement for the night. Hopefully that’s the first and last time that’s happened to us.

Direct link to video

I’m not going to stand on some high horse and say that I’ve never done it – but call a spade a spade. You’re breaking the law. It doesn’t matter if it’s annoying/frustrating/easy to do/etc. You’re breaking the law. Here’s a few in case you’re not aware:

• Install software that you don’t have a license for. But I have a copy of Windows on my old machine that I sold to a friend and kept the CD so why I can’t I just install it?? Waaaaah! I’m going to stick my fingers in my ears and put my head in the sand. I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!
• Walk into 7-11, take an Oh Henry bar and put it in your pocket and leave without paying for it.

Acknowledge that what you’re doing is wrong. Own up to it and make an attempt to do right the next time.

I should get conned more often.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

He told me he had locked his keys in his car, his two kids were over at a cousin’s house (who is only 9 years old!) and that he just needed to use the phone to call his wife who worked at University Hospital to see what he should do. He lived just down the street at an address near ours and he had remembered his wife saying she knew one of the people on the corner.

I invited him in to use our phone and he called his wife. She was on a shift and couldn’t leave so they figured he should call a tow truck to come and break into his truck and get his keys. He asked me for a phone book to look up a tow truck company. Which I gave to him.

Starting to wonder…

He called and tried to see if they would come, unlock his truck and drive him to his wife at the hospital who had money to pay the $40 for the tow truck. The tow truck company, unsurprisingly, wouldn’t do it. So he said he was going to walk to the hospital (about a 25 minute walk one way) to get money from his wife and then meet the tow truck back at his place.

At this point, now 20 minutes or so since he first rang our doorbell, we were still slightly skeptical but at the same time you think that he’s gone through a lot of time/effort to try and scam us. If I had locked my keys in the car and my kid(s) were out somewhere I probably wouldn’t have my facts completely straight either.

And so he had me hooked.

You can see where this is headed. I started looking through my wallet for some money and grabbed some cash from my wife’s purse and saying that he didn’t have to walk all the way to the hospital and back – we could loan him the money and he could pay us back the next day when he got it all sorted.

He thanked us profusely… said he had just moved here from North Battleford and that they were worried about the big city and how unfriendly it could be. Said they were still driving back on Sundays to church in North Battleford because they hadn’t found anything closer. Said that we had restored his faith in people, etc.

One day goes by with no money in the mailbox. No worries.

Two days go by with no money. Hmmm…

Three days go by. I’m convinced we were had. And now, three days too late, I’m trying to remember what he looked like and figure out what numbers he actually did dial from our phone.

We’d been conned by a very convincing con man.

Just so you don’t think I’m a complete idiot, there were more minor details in his tale of woe that I’ve left out for length. And hindsight is exactly as they say it is: annoying.

We’ve since heard from two other friends who got bit by the same guy with the same basic story – only it happened to them over 3 months before he got us. So in an attempt to keep this guy from getting someone else, please spread this around Saskatoon.

We haven’t called the police yet, but we will. Obviously there’s nothing they can do but at least they’ll be aware of it. Leave a comment if you’ve been had by this guy or know of someone else who has. He’s obviously living in Saskatoon and hitting multiple houses. So far I’m aware of him working in the Caswell Hill/Mayfair areas.

All I’m hoping is that there’s some tough biker dude out there who hears about this guy and then shortly after Mr. Con Sawyer comes to Biker-Dude-With-No-Neck’s door with his sad story only to realize half way through his schpeel that Dude-With-No-Neck is on to him and is about to introduce his face to the floor.

Mmmm…. happy thoughts that help me sleep at night.

To wrap up this sad tale – it hasn’t dampened my desire to help those around me. I will continue to err on the side of naivety and give the person asking me for help the benefit of the doubt. Even if 1 out of 3 people I attempt to help don’t really need it, that’s not my concern. I believe I’m asked to just give and not to judge the poor.

But that’s just me.

“That guy always forgets to clean out his coffee cup!”

Typically the response is a sign put up in the lunch room with 14 pixel font (comic sans preferred) stating

“Could everyone please clean out their coffee cups at the end of the day? Thanks. Mngmt.”

For a few days everyone, including the original guywhowouldn’tcleanouthiscoffeecup, dutifully clean out their cups.

After a week though Mr. Guywhowouldn’tcleanouthiscoffeecup goes back to his old ways and doesn’t clean out his coffee cup.

A meeting of the Admin staff is called and it’s agreed that:

• The font probably wasn’t large enough on the original sign. Up it to 20 pixels this time.
• And maybe instead of making it a question mark at the end it should be an exclamation point.
• Oh. And if we could put some clip art of a coffee cup so people know what we’re talking about.

Sign is posted. Everyone follows through for a few days. Mr. Guywho’ssostupidandstillwon’tcleanouthiscoffeecup starts to falter after a few days. And we’re back to where we started. Larger font sizes and fancier clip art. Maybe you have to put a quarter in a jar if you leave a dirty coffee cup. Oh, and this time let’s send out an email to the staff reminding them of the coffee cup policy.

Etc.

Rather than just going and talking to Mr. Guywhowouldn’tcleanouthiscoffeecup directly and dealing with him in person we try and enforce the rules by, in effect, punishing everybody. Which ends up helping nobody.

We see this all around us and just accept it with varying degrees of frustration. The whole software industry (particularly on the Windows site of things) is full of copy protection aimed at stopping the few who pirate by punishing the masses that don’t. The same thing goes on in digital music where because of the fear of the few pirates everyone else has to jump through hoops to get the music they’ve paid for play on the devices of their choice.

I’m sure there’s plenty of real world examples but I know of one that I continually am frustrated by. The 7-11 near me has a “pay before you pump” policy due to, presumably, people pumping their cars full of gas and then leaving before paying. So when I go get gas I’m inconvenienced due to the sins of a few. I find it incredibly frustrating to be assumed to be guilty until I’m proven innocent – but even when I am innocent there’s no reward for me when I go back to my 7-11. As a result I avoid going to this 7-11 for gas even though it’s less than 2 blocks from my house. And when I do go I only get enough gas to get me through the day until I’m somewhere else and can fill up.

Do any recent policies/decisions you’ve made result in the many being punished for the actions of the few? Is there any way you could change it so that you reward the people for good behaviour instead of lumping them in with the bad apples?

Note: The fictional story in this post is not intended to represent any particular individual. I don’t have any issues with anyone not cleaning their coffee cup. Seriously.