The Chicken and the Egg

There's an article by John C. Dvorak about how the media has a pro-Apple Computers Bias. I find this interesting in a lot of ways, probably because I've always wished I could make the switch back to a Mac. But you know what's really interesting about all this? Dvorak says "With 90 percent of the mainstream (computer) writers being Mac users, what would you expect?" He takes it from the point of view that mainstream writers happen to use Macs. I know lots of aspiring writers, though (although I don't know anyone who wants to write computer articles other than me). And none of us use Macs. So, what I'm taking away from this article isn't that mainstream writers have a Pro-Apple bias. Rather, if I'm going to be a successful writer, I'm going to have to get a Mac. Dvorak just put the egg before the chicken. Or vice versa, depending on which way you see it.

appalling

Okay, relevant had a link to this, and they called it the "most offensive Christian product" they'd ever seen. I'd have to agree... my only reluctance is that I'm trying to figure out if it's some big parody or joke or something. But if it is a joke... not a great joke. Anyway... talk about ridiculous.

a cry for help

Now playing: Amos and Andrew on TBS... samuel l jackson and nic cage... it's actually slightly funny. in a lame sort of way.

Okay, A brief note on punctuation. I may have already said this, but I'm going to say it again. Let me explain why. I work with self-publishing authors. Self publishing is a pretty ambiguous field. On the one hand, sometimes self published books do great and are great. Several really great authors started out by independently publishing their first book. On the other hand, sometimes self published books are horrible. That is just fact-of-matter. The same is true in the traditional publishing field. But in the traditional publishing field--usually--some editing is foisted upon every book. Thankfully, there are good companies in the independent publishing arena that are beginning to bring editorial quality to this arena, but that isn't at all my point...

My point is actually that I've gotten to work with quite the cross-section of people. I've worked with doctors and with people for whom English is a second language. And you know what? (Hahaha, I commited a sentence fragment as I tried to wax eloquent about editorial labour.) ...Know what? Everyone has at least one punctuation issue. Everyone. Seriously, I'm talking, like, 100%. My personal favourite is that sometimes I have a hard time remembering that you don't put a comma in a compound predicate. I hate that.

Right now, I want to address the issue of punctuation and quotation marks. I'm reading stuff, and people write:

So Luke said, "Hey buddy, I'll be in town next week".

or

So Luke said, "Hey buddy, I'll be in town next week", but I'm not going to be here.

The fact is, both of those sentences are wrong. Commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks. At least, in North America. And also, there might be an exception in writing on legal issues. But that's it. Any other time...any style: prose, poetry, whatever...any other genre: fiction, biography, whatever... Inside the quotation mark! So the preceding sentences should be:

So Luke said, "Hey buddy, I'll be in town next week."

and

So Luke said, "Hey buddy, I'll be in town next week," but I'm not going to be here.

When it comes to question marks and exclamation marks, it depends on whether the punctuation belongs to the quote or to your sentence. For example:

I called him dumb, and he yelled "I'm the smartest person ever!"

compared to

I was shocked to find out that there were "63 murders per 100,000 people in Columbia in 2003"!

and

He asked "Who was the smartest person ever?"

compared to

Can you believe that there were "63 murders per 100,000 people in Columbia in 2003"?

So, there's your punctuation lesson for the day. As a parting shot, triple exclamation marks don't emphasize things any more than a single exclamation mark. It's just plain gratuitous. Straight up.

cities and accents

now playing: the updog commercial from kelseys. My fiance used this joke on me once, and seeing it in a commercial made me laugh quite a bit.

I was talking with a guy tonight who is from Belleville. And he works for a major fuel company. I am constantly surprised about the stuff you find going on around little towns like belleville. They fabricate oil wells in Belleville. There are several fuel companies in Belleville. There are call centers for dell computers, hewlett packard, t-mobile, sears, and various other companies in Belleville. There is a big building industry in belleville, and a lot of truck drivers too. All that to say that modern economies are fascinating. You really can do just about anything--manufacturing / service wise--anywhere you want and find someone who will buy it from you. and ship it across to where they need it, even.

And then, accents. I realized tonight that as much as I love being Canadian and having a Canadian accent, I'd trade it for a cool european/african accent in a second. I don't even know why, except I'd sound way cooler and people would listen to me with ease... and yeah, I'd be all about that.

So, that's it for me. What a useless, shallow post. :-)

if I were a drinking man

The internet can be a funny, odd place. I've often thought that there is room for awesome Christian Web sites--well designed, with good content and perhaps even a forum setup for feedback and discussion. I remember well the day in my first year of college when I happened upon a little web site called Antithesis. I went to school the following day and told everyone I bumped into about it. I won't link to it, cause it's gone now, but for a while it truly was the happening place to be. And while there is plenty of discussion on various blogs as to the changes that occurred prior to antithesis and its affiliate companies shutting down, I lost track before any of that happened. All my memories of Antithesis involved being challenged and made to think. For that I am thankful. If I were a drinking man, I'd propose a toast to Antithesis, Discerning Reader, and the whole Christian Counter Culture family of sites. I guess the baton is waiting to be picked up somewhere... there are plenty of good blogs in the world, but not a lot of thematic, thought provoking Web sites that are magazine-like, but more profound. Anyway, Antithesis, here's looking at you kid. Rest in Peace.

what a day

Dear Friends,

Today is a memorable day for two reason.

First of all, today is the first time that I have managed to see hockey since the lock out. Yes, sports fan, in the background I can hear Pittsburgh at Ottawa… I haven’t seen that Crosby kid yet, but I’m excited. He was excellent for Team Canada in the World Juniors, so I like him already. Hockey is back… and if everyone was even ¼ as excited as I am, hockey would be the new football.

The second reason is slightly sadder… you see, today for the first time, the Mazda became a killer. I mean, I’ve killed bugs and stuff before, but today… well… I was driving back from the doctor’s office, and I was coming up the road to work. All of the sudden, from under the bushes, a l’il groundhog, let’s call him l’il brudder, ran out. I tried to avoid, but he basically gave’r right for my tire. So, he got smoked. There’s something sad about anything dying… and the poor little guy definitely died. I had some help from the guy behind me with moving him off the road, but… shoot, I just felt bad. So, the mazda is a killer. And I am an accomplice.

and that was my day.

God and Hurricanes

Allow me to preface the following by saying, it's interesting to see the varying reactions to natural disasters. Also, allow me to tip my hat to Sam at Adagio County for the link to the Piper article. Not only is he really cool, he's also gonna be related to me one day.


Here's an article by Dr. Tony Campolo.

and, here's a quote:

"Perhaps we would do well to listen to the likes of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who contends that God is not really as powerful as we have claimed. Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures does it say that God is omnipotent. Kushner points out that omnipotence is a Greek philosophical concept, but it is not in his Bible. Instead, the Hebrew Bible contends that God is mighty. That means that God is a greater force in the universe than all the other forces combined."

and an article by Dr. John Piper.

and, here's a quote from him (replying to a NPR Senior News Analyst):

"Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Shall the pot say to the Potter, 'This is an unintelligent way to show your justice and your power? Come, Maker of heaven and earth, sit at my feet—I have lived 89 years and have gotten much wisdom—and I will teach you—the eternal God—how to govern the universe?'

No. Rather let us put our hands on our mouths and weep both for the perishing and for ourselves who will soon follow. Whatever judgment has fallen, it is we who deserve it—all of us. And whatever mercy is mingled with judgment in New Orleans neither we nor they deserve."

Hmm.

a concert

now playing: Notre Dame 14 \ Michigan 3. 4th quarter, 14:19 to go. My fiancee is en route to go see our team play live. Lucky... speaking of napoleon dynamite... check out the Utah State Fair page for 8 ads Napoleon and Pedro did for them. Sweet! The real question is, why didn't Idaho think of that?

So, this week I have been quite sick. I missed three days of work. I still haven't recovered. In the midst of all that, Derek Webb came to Canada on Tuesday. He apparently has been to Canada one other time, years and years ago, with Caedmons where they crossed at Niagara Falls, drove for 20 minutes, played a show, drove back across the border and that was that. There was no way I was going to miss the chance to see him in the True North Strong and Free. Especially not when tickets were only $10. Remember that fact... cause all of you will wish you had gone by the time we get done here...

So, we got to tyndale an hour and a half early. Matty went and found a bunch of people he knew, whilest I, with the rest of the crew, went for a walk. We got back at around 7:25. They opened the doors at 7:30, and we were amongst the first in. Funny fact: no one wanted to sit front row. So, for 10 bucks a ticket, we got to sit front row at a derek webb concert. There ended up being maybe 200 people... It was totally phenomenal. He played every song I would've listed if you said "Andrew, if you ever got to hear Derek Webb live, what songs would you most want him to play?" Except maybe Take to the World from She Must and Shall Go Free. But everythng else. It was awesome. I was going to post pictures, but blogger is not cooperating. I'm a little frustrated, but I can at least look at the pictures.

So, final summary: Derek Webb live is like hanging out in someone's livingroom while they play some songs and talk about stuff that is heavy on their hearts. He was very honest and sincere, and plays like a phenom. One dude... one guitar... one phenomenal concert.

for your ears

HOLY COW!!!!

Click here to read what I'm freaking out about.

who's going to come? $10!!! Just 10 bucks. Wahoo... for the past 5 weeks, this has been listed as a private show... now it finally looks like it's open to the public. Holy cow. I'm so excited.

for your brain

The Christian "Movement" seems a lot of times to be best described as pendulum swings... take the works / grace pendulum: the Reformation marks a drastic swing from an over-emphasis on works. But then, some might say that the cheap grace and quasi-universalism the church delves into today is a result of the over-correction of the reformation.

Mark Noll writes a neat little opinion peice about another pendulum that's swinging away (thanks to CT blog).

... swing low, sweet pendulum... coming forth to... wait a minute.

a phenomenal couple of weeks

now playing: video killed the radio star. I'm feeling historic. Drinking hot chocolate too...

Wow. So, what a fantastic couple of weeks. It's just been good, you know? Getting engaged? Yeah, I recommend that. Hanging out with someone fantastic who you also happen to be supremely comfortable around? Yeah, I recommend that. All in all, I'm... well, to quote the great Carter Duryea, "You know I'm psyched."

Anyone else been watching the price of gasoline? Hahaha... Darn it, I'm laughing at my own jokes. Experiencing shock as I drive past the gas pump has become an everyday experience (note, the preceding sentence was brought to you by an extreme desire to use the word everyday. Otherwise, it would've read "I've gotten used to experiencing shock every day as I drive past the gas pump." But, everyday is so seldomly used properly that I had to do it. YES!). The other night, I was watching TV (which does not cost $1.03 a litre) and saw some news dude (yeah, pretty sure that was his title) driving a car on vegetable oil. And I had to ask myself: "Andrew, do you think this means that there's a renewable resource we can use to run combustion engines on?" Of course, the easy answer was "No, that couldn't be."
Cause if that was true, wouldn't we all be running vehicles on the renewable resource, instead of the non-renewable one that costs an arm and a leg? I think so. Think about how much easier it'd be to drive down the cost of fuel... Plant another corn field! Plant olives... plant nerds... plant something oily. Gosh. So, moral of the story is, I'm investing in corn futures... the market is going to be huge by 2040, I'm sure of it. And, to any of my friends who might work for car dealerships (There didn't used to be any like that, but now there's at least one)... where's my vegetable oil car?
Meanwhile, I gotta go get some gasoline... wow... only 98.3 today!

just the most important link of my entire life...

click here... no really... GO.

Must See

Okay, not much to say except go and watch this: Lego Starwars... pretty well the coolest ever.

a tim hortons economy

My Fellow Canadians:

I appear before you tonight to address a dire situation. Recently, we've watched as our economy has been imperilled by competeing factors: the cost of crude oil going up seems to devalue our dollar. Fluctuating world currency markets seems to devalue our dollar. Heck, Martha Stewart Entertainment seems to devalue our dollar. But, I bet that Martha herself likes Canadian money, cause think of all the pretty crafts she can do with it... all those great colours. But, I digress...

Today we face an economic challenge that is incomparable. As much as we Canadians appreciate crude oil, world currencies and Martha, there is one item that I believe serves as the bedrock of our society; one item that, with every shift in its cost, threatens to crumble the very foundation that this great country is built on.

That's right: Tim Hortons coffee. Now, we've all been through rounds of Tim Horton's inflation before. The most recent one I recall was when the large went from 1.29 to 1.35. Man, that bugged me for a while: but then I realized they were really just keeping the penny that always annoyed me, plus a five cent service charge for storing the penny. Anyway, our markets re-aligned, and we survived that scare.

Unfortunately, today we are faced with another round of inflation. This time it won't hit you when you buy that double-double (yes, that is a word -- it made it into the dictionary this year!), instead it'll hit you when you buy a canister of the good stuff to brew at home. You see, until recently, you could buy a small can (13 oz) for $4.49. You could also opt to go big -- a 39 oz -- for 11.49. That's a savings of six cents an ounce! Unfortunately, Tim Hortons in conjunction with their retail partners (A&P in this buyer's case) have decided to lay the smack down on bulk buyers. No more do you save when you purchase the larger canister... in fact, purchasing the same amount of coffee in the smaller canister saves you two cents over all.

The impact of price gouging like this is dangerous and obvious: as the cost of coffee goes up, the value of our dollar plummets. If Tim Horton and Dave Thomas were around, would they let their chain run the Canadian economy into the ground? I think not. It's time for us to stand up, united in Canadian pride, and say "No more price gouging on my coffee!"

This has been a public service announcement. My name is Andrew Mackay, and I endorsed this message.

observations from chilling with my nephews

now playing: clifford the big red dog.

just a quick observation: cartoon characters never (or almost never) have to brush their teeth. Clifford's owner just woke up several days in a row, and went right to hanging out with her friends. No brushing of teeth, whatsoever.

It'd be cool to be a cartoon charater. Or... maybe not.

and a week later...

now playing: the derek webb girl songs. what a great playlist. good for when you're missing someone.

Well folks, I've had a pretty long, great couple of weeks. Sit back and relax, I'm going to tell you all about it!


Rebecca came to visit on the 20th of June. I was pretty excited to see her. She came up with her parents, who are family friends and hadn't seen my parents in 4 or 5 years. It was good to all be together. We got to see some old friends who were passing through (Betsy and Laurie, from ESD where my parents were missionaries for 8 years), and generally to hang out a lot. There was even an attempt at a trivial pursuit game, which -- to be honest -- Rebecca and I were losing. Big time.





Anyway, Rebecca's parents left on friday, and Rebecca stayed an extra week. We started out that time by going to Peterborough to hang out with some friends.

To our left, we have Luke and Matt with Rebecca. It was the first time Rebecca met Luke, and the first time she'd seen Matt in a LONG time. Luke had just come back from Europe, and every story started out with "So, we were walking the streets of Munich..." or "We were in Berlin and..." Yeah, SHUT UP!!! ;-) Anyway, it was pretty hilarious.



So, then we went to Caleb and Megan's wedding. It was gorgeous! Well done guys... it was pretty darn cool. In addition to the fact that Caleb and Megan got hitched, and we got to see that, Rebecca got to meet a lot of my friends (she's detailed it on her blog, you can check that out). It was a blast, and it was super cool too. You know, it's pretty neat when two parts of your world merge and everything works out great. I really enjoyed getting to introduce Rebecca to everyone. She's pretty cool, and I'm pretty happy that she seems to like hanging out with me.


I lucked out, and I got to take a couple of half days off work. We got to do touristy / date-y things... We went to Bloomfield (in Prince Edward County... the only Island County) one day, ate ice cream at slickers (which is fantastic... highly recommended), and took pictures of funny things. Yep, like Dead People's Stuff Antiques. How funny is that? Prince Edward County is great - there's like a MILLION bed and breakfasts, which I'm sure are good for something, and lots of little chicky shops - which I wasn't forced to enter on this trip. Lucky! We stopped on the way home at Zwicks park right on the bay of Quinte, it was awful pretty. We looked at water,


played in the park, and did silly stuff like that. It was great. Then, a couple of days later, we started a bit of a minigolf tournament that -- I hope -- will continue for many years to come. I won the game we played in Ontario. Not by a lot, but I won it. I was pretty proud.

Anyway, on Canada day we woke up early to drive down to West Virginia. We lost two hours at the border (if you ever want to hear a funny-ish story, ask me about the jamaican guy who was running between cars with me on the way to the bathrooms). Then, we got lost for about an hour when I got us lost in Erie, PA. We never did find Mercyhurst college - but I'm sure we will one day. And when we do, many ridiculous pictures will result.


So, we got to West Virginia Friday night. West Virginia is a pretty state (see picture to the right). As we pulled up Rebecca's driveway, I heard a funny noise in the car, and as I backed in, it was loud... but we figured that "it was probably nothing." We went out Saturday morning to play round two of the mini golf tournament. (yeah, I lost this time, big time. Really big. If Rebecca's short game hadn't fallen apart on the last few holes, I think she would've won by 12 strokes. As it was, it was a 5 or 6 stroke victory. She also beat me at p'diddle on the way from Ontario to West Virginia... I can't win, seriously.)

Anyway, we got home after eating some lunch (at a restaurant where the entire staff welcomes every guest to come through the door) and I decided (owing to the very loud noises every time the car turned) that I'd let someone smarter than me look at the car. Rebecca's dad took the car out for a drive and to a mechanic friend of his to check out. Turns out the coil over the strut was broken. And of course, by the time we figured that out on Saturday the parts places were closed. So, repairs were going to have to wait out the long weekend. I got to spend extra time with Rebecca. What an awesome deal! We did stuff with her family, celebrated the fourth of July, and generally just had a blast. I even golfed (real golf) for the first time ever. It was a blast... even if I did awfully. I guess I need some practise. Also, Rebecca and I WON a round of Trivial Pursuit. Are you impressed? I sure am.

And oh yeah, we even got to see some fireworks. Anyway, on the morning of the fifth, we went down to the ford dealership to hopefully by the part - turns out, there's a "campaign" on for that part (I think campaign is a polite term for recall), and they fixed it for free. So, an extra few days with my girl, the chance to hang out with her family, and a car repair for free. I really got the best deal possible.

Oh, but when I got home, the mazda had a flat. Meh. You win some, you lose some. That was pretty winsome. :-)

Anyway, this has been your "where the heck has andymack been" update. Pretty soon, I'll blog about some metaphysical things just to make sure you're all entertained. For now, thank you, you're beautiful, good night!

from West Virginia

now playing: the sound of birds singing, and the whirring of my girlfriend's laptop's hard drive.

I'm sitting in the living room of Rebecca's house. We drove most of the day yesterday to get here, and now, having slept quite well, I am ready to face another day. It seems like a beautiful morning out -- kinda foggy, not too hot, like I said the birds are singing, and I'm in West Virginia. It's a very beautiful place. The drive down yesterday proved that fact. Just a gorgeous state. Of course, with all the mountains, and a speed limit of 70 mph, and the intermittent-at-best guard rails, well... the driving feels more adventurous than it is. Also, for those of you who wonder, it's more fun to do the trip in the summer than in the winter. Guaranteed.

The past couple of weeks have been great. Rebecca and I have gone to weddings, gone to movies, gone to places I've never been (searching for ice cream in bloomfield, for example), and in general, hung out. It's been a lot of fun, primarily because the company has been so good. I won't lie to you, long distance relationships can be challenging at times, but man, it makes you appreciate the time you get together a lot more.

So I'm going to close with that I think. The trip has been good. The trip back will hopefully go well as well. I'll talk at you guys again soon.

musings

Now playing: the tail end of brainstew by green day. Speaking of whom, I found a great remix of boulevard of broken dreams and wonderwall by oasis. The songs are fairly identical. It makes me laugh. That's playing now.

So, it's been a little while, eh? Yeah, I guess. A little. Happy father's day to the dads out there. Especially mine. i love you man.

What can I tell you? Matt came down for the weekend, that was pretty darn cool. I miss him a lot, and hope his summer at Elim Lodge is great.

I'm pretty wicked excited right now - Rebecca is coming to visit. Someone (I don't remember who... Matt Cook?) told me that I don't blog about her enough. Rebecca is my (insert favorite relationship word here), and she's from pretty far away (that's the only way I can find anyone to put up with me.) Anyway, she's coming to visit with her parents, and i can't wait. It'll be good to see her and good to hang out.

That's my mini update for now, i guess. Now I can say that I updated my blog. Peace!

thoughts and stuff

now playing: video killed the radio star / the buggles.

So, for the past 24 hours, I've watched the fallout from the Mac/Intel deal. I'm kind of embarassed—a long time Mac-vocate, I had to be alerted to the deal by my buddy gurr a day after it occured. Sheesh. But, seriously though. In a year, we'll be able to buy macs that run on intel processors (obviously, the term mactel will come into colloquial usage or something). I think I'm excited, except that now the whole XBox360 and PS3 use PowerPC technology thing is pretty well irrelevant. Still though, the possibilities of Mac on Intel are pretty cool, and I for one say "go for it!" But, I also say "Yeah, i won't be upgrading until I can get a Mac on Intel." Up til recently, I thought a MacMini would be a good idea. But, why do it now when i can wait a year-ish, and get a MacMinIntel? For you non-nerds, this is the equivalent of Superman deciding to accept Robin as his sidekick. It's pretty wild.

In other news, read this article cause it's good (thanks to Adagio County Independent.)

All right, I'm done for now. Go play a guitar or something!

brown shoes and paper cuts, oh my!

now playing: goldie's last day by the late, great pfr

hello blogosphere! It's Tuesday. Wait, no, it's monday night. I just got done working a little OT (which is a lot like a hockey game, but less exciting). Today as I was on the phone discussing our company and what we offer, I managed to give myself THE WORST PAPER CUT, EVER!!!! No word of a lie. It actually hurt quite significantly. It went like this: "Yeah, hard cover is an option but *pause while Andrew thinks of words he'd like to say* sorry... yeah, hard cover is an option but..." It was quite humorous - much akin to the time that I stapled my finger while selling a pair of cell phones. That time, i was way manlier (probably cause there was a 50 dollar commission in it for me)—I actually completed the sale (while the lady was like... "Is there a staple in your finger?") before I took the staple out.

A pair of brown shoes can be a man's best friend. Comfortable brown shoes are even more likely to acheive that status. I spent the last two months searching for brown shoes that would fit. Sound ridiculous? Yeah, well... it is. Everytime a freak like me goes to look for shoes, it's a bit of a laborious process. When you're a 13-14w, it's hard to figure out just precisely what fits. In the last two months, i've tried on a pair of vans 13s (way too small), a pair of walmart 13W (way too small), several pairs of payless 14s (some too small, some too ugly). Finally on Saturday I saw two pairs of brown "old man" shoes (the very best kind!). They had both a 14w and a 13. Obviously, since up til this point my experience had been heavy in the "too small, freak" vein, I tried the 14w first. For once, I felt like a normal person: they were huge. Positively, absolutely too big. It was awesome. Luckily the 13s fit.

Okay, so the men out there are going "why is he rambling about buying shoes? Is this andymack's blog? Did I get the address wrong?" I feel like my shoe buying experience has mirrored the downfall of customer-oriented sales environments. It used to be that people in stores wanted to help you. They would go out of their way. In all my time shopping for shoes in the past 2 months (probably 4 hours total - and I'm not a shopper, i prefer to go in, grab what I need, and book it) I have found one helpful employee. I think his name was Chad. When I told Chad that I was looking for shoes, he actually got my size and went "in the back" (aside - what does it mean when they say "let me check in the back"? I wonder what's really back there) to find the two pairs they had at that size in the entire store. Juxtapose that experience with the girls at payless... no word of a lie, this is how the pitch went:

her: "Is there anything I can help you with today?"
me: "Yeah, I'm looking for shoes, and I need them in an abnormally large size like a 14."
her: "Wow, that's too bad." *walks away*

What the heck? Isn't she getting paid to help me buy shoes? Isn't it about the consumer? So, while I'm glad about my brown shoes, they really are a sign of the end of western civilization as we know it... retail isn't about the consumer any more. I guess I'll just take my brown shoes and walk.

what about that nut from the observer... Frank something... you know, the one who's in love with his typewriter?