Monthly Archives: August 2007

| Fun, Montreal

Water Fight Part 2: Sunday at 1

Back by popular demand, the second edition of Montreal’s Largest Water Fight is tomorrow (Sunday) at 1 p.m. at Angrignon Park (by the lake just outside the metro station).

Facebook lists 150 confirmed guests, which probably means it’ll get about 75 or so. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be cooler and dryer than today, but still warm and humid.

If you didn’t make it to the last one, check out the pictures on Flickr or Facebook to see what’s in store.

Me at Montreal’s Largest Water Fight

If I can look this sexy after being bombarded by water, chances are you can look better.

A few tips from someone who didn’t think before the first one:

  1. Bring a small watertight sandwich bag to put your wallet and cellphone in so they don’t get soaked. Keep anything you don’t really need at home.
  2. Consider bringing a spare pair of shoes (or do it in sandals), as well as dry clothes in a watertight plastic bag unless you want to go home soaking (which isn’t necessarily a bad idea)
  3. Test your weapons before heading down
  4. Remember that this is dirty lake water being shot at you, not clean tap water. Act accordingly, and don’t drink it.
  5. If you’re buying a gun last-minute, Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart (both are a short bus trip away from the Angrignon Metro on the 106) have cheap Chinese Super-Soaker knockoffs for about $20.
| Business, My articles, West Island

GoJIT: “There was a loss”

This Week in Me features an interview with Serge Duchaine of GoJIT, the Dorval-based transportation company which lost a lawsuit last month and was ordered to pay over $118,000 to a St. Tite company for $90,000 of lost cowboy boots.

Doing the interview, I learned something interesting about standard practices in the industry (emphasis mine):

Gazette: Why did you offer only $6,000 in compensation for $90,000 of lost merchandise?

Duchaine: When you don’t insure goods, you’re automatically insured for $2 per pound. All the rates are based on the value you’re carrying. So the guy says: “It’s not enough, I’d like to protect all our merchandise.” There’s an insurance fee that every transport company has in the industry. More than 95 per cent of clients take a calculated risk. It doesn’t happen enough for them to buy this coverage. If someone says they want more protection, they have to buy it from an insurance company.

Ironically, it’s GoJIT which had insurance in this case: liability insurance. So the insurance company, which would have to foot the bill, is appealing the decision.

Still, it would be nice to know how 88 boxes on six palettes, over 100 square feet of warehouse floor space, just disappeared without a trace.

| Blogosphere, Media, Web design

TQS needs to learn web programming

I just tried to subscribe to the one blog on TQS’s website, that of Jean-Michel Vanasse. Unfortunately, I can’t, because the RSS feed for his blog is malformed.

It looks like the problem is with their advertising system. They’re adding ads as items within the feed (bound to annoy some people, but something we could live with). Unfortunately, they’re not escaping the ampersands (&), which is causing problems for any feed reader expecting valid XML.

Odd that they would not have noticed this. Anyone want to take bets on how long it’ll take them to fix it?

UPDATE: If you guessed “four days”, give yourself a cookie.

| Blogosphere, On the Net

All blog but no bite

Some local bloggers are flogging what’s called “Blog Action Day“, where on one day (Oct. 15), every blog around the world features a post on a particular subject (in this case, the environment).

This may shock and amaze you, but I’m taking a somewhat cynical view of this.

First of all, it’s not like the environment needs to have awareness raised about it. It’s the cause célèbre du jour, for crying out loud. It’s like trying to raise awareness of Facebook.

Secondly, it’s kind of gimmicky. Like that Live Earth concert that was more about music than the environment. I have a feeling this will be more about bloggers than the environment.

It’s well-intentioned, and I wish them well, but I just don’t see it doing anything concrete to help the environment.

| Blogosphere, Montreal, Navel-gazing, Video

I like to blog during the summer

Laurent has put up video from the August Yulblog where he went around asking people what their favourite summer activity was. (He’s been making the questions easier each month since people have had trouble answering — he threatened to make next month’s question “what’s your favourite colour” if people were still having trouble)

Of course, what you’re looking for is at 1:49: Me.

Me at Yulblog

I got at least one comment that I wasn’t recognizable from the nose up in that tiny photo at the top of my blog, so here you go. That’s what I look like.

Ladies, the line starts here.

| In the news, Public transit

McGill metro evacuated after structural fears

It’s not just overpasses. The McGill metro was evacuated this afternoon after work on the de Maisonneuve bike path apparently caused a leak into The Bay next door and that led to the discovery of a large crack in the ceiling.

(The media is describing this as everything from a “crack” to a “depression” to a “cave-in”, but have settled on “crack” and “threat of collapse”)

Service on the green line is shut down between Berri and Atwater Lionel-Groulx. Alternative bus service is being setup (Eastbound on Ste. Catherine, Westbound on René-Lévesque), but during rush-hour with a major artery closed it’s probably faster to walk across downtown. Trains have been added to the Orange Line to help compensate.

The metro is expected to reopen on Monday if there’s no risk of collapse of the tunnel.

Blork was there. LCN has a video report.

| In the news

Andrée Boucher dead at 70

Andrée Boucher, mayor of Quebec City, just died of a sudden heart attack.

It’s sad, especially because Quebec City is planning its 400th birthday next year, something she was heavily involved with.

Coverage:

| Media

Stop inventing anglicized names

A disturbing trend (well, disturbing to anal-retentive copy editors anyway) has been developing in the anglophone media, of directly translating the names of Quebec-based organizations whose names have no English translation, and treating those translations as proper names. The Gazette invented the “Montreal Transit Commission” as its name for the Société de transport de Montréal (STM). The Chronicle calls it the “Montreal Transport Society“. Canadian Press calls the Sûreté du Québec the “Quebec Provincial Police” or “QPP”.

Most anglophone media in Quebec tend to use the French names, since their viewers and readers tend to be at least functionally bilingual. For media outside Quebec who must translate into English, please use a generic name for the organization (meaning lowercase) so people don’t get the mistaken impression that you’re using their actual name.

Let’s end the confusion. Stop playing Language God.