Random Wanderings and Wonderings
I wrote a while ago about a chair carved out of a tree stump (and its subsequent demise), but it has nothing on this bit of stump art in Peterborough, a pair of dolphins leaping out of the yard. According to Google Street View, the dolphins were hidden inside this tree (in the shadows, at the front of the pickup truck) just three years ago, in August 2009.
Back in January, I wrote about a story appearing on the Star‘s website that was silently updated after it was originally posted so that the new article said exactly the opposite of the original article. The Star‘s public editor responded to my complaint in her column, stating that allowing such silent story changes is “not the view of reputable news organizations that understand the vital importance of credibility.”
I’ve since noticed a number of similar silent changes on the Star‘s website, but none as egregious as yesterday afternoon’s story about Jason Kenney apologizing (or not) for calling a provincial minister an “asshole” in an email. Here was the headline as posted in the afternoon:
The original story said that Kenney had no intention of apologizing and included a quote from a Kenney spokesperson who dismissed the insult, saying that it wasn’t important to comment on every email that Kenney sends (presumably because apologizing to everyone Kenney calls an asshole would be a full-time job).
Shortly afterward, the story and headline were both updated while still posted under the original link:
The new story indicated that Kenney had indeed apologized and the dismissive quote from the spokesperson was nowhere to be seen. This isn’t a mere revision, it’s revisionism.
So here’s my problem: if a story changes after you post it to your website, you should either clearly state in the article that the story has progressed from what was earlier published, or (better) post a separate article with a note in the first article pointing to the new one. Sure, go ahead and fix minor spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in-line. But simply updating a story to this extent without acknowledging it is, well, not the sign of a “reputable news organization.” Another complaint to the public editor is on the way.
Sign #1: FREE! Sign #2: If you left this here, please remove! Leave it in front of your own property, not other people's!
My regular readers know that I love a good sign, especially when there’s some well-deserved snark involved. And this snark is wholly deserved. Oh sure, leaving a chair at the curb for a garbage picker is the best kind of recycling, but I’ve got to agree with this homeowner who wrote this sign: keep your freecycling at your own curb, people. Now if I could just find someone to nail a turd bag to this chair and someone else to pronounce it fit for dog pee, you’d have the best of my neighbourhood signs in a single location.
This is my new Presto card:
It’s much more convenient than the old 10-trip tickets I used to get for my occasional travels on GO Transit: it fits in my wallet, it can be purchased in advance and used for any random trip rather than a fixed route between two specific end points, won’t expire when fares change, and uses card readers that are far less finicky than the old ticket readers. I bought and first used it for the Toronto-Newcastle portion of my trip to the cottage a couple of weekends ago and think it’s great.[1] I look forward to being able to use my Presto card on the TTC. I love tokens and all, but seriously, it’s the 21st century already.
This, on the other hand, is the agreement I apparently entered into when I first used the card:
It’s a full page of impenetrable legalese written in virtually unreadable 5-point text. Some say that government should operate more like a business[2], but I don’t think that foisting indecipherable and unenforceable standard form contracts onto people is quite what they have in mind. I’m not really sure why they need all of this just to let me hop on a train. Still, I’ll take Presto over a 10-trip ticket any time.
[1] As an IT guy, I could poke holes in some of the customer-facing issues that betray back-end limitations, but that’s a post for another day.
[2] People who think that government should be run like a business understand neither government nor business.
People of a certain age will remember Bargain Harold’s department stores, which went bankrupt in 1991. More than twenty years later, the name still appears on the façade of the West Rouge Plaza at the corner of Island Road and Friendship Avenue (no kidding) in Scarborough:
I didn’t have a Bargain Harold’s in my neighbourhood when I was growing up, but we did have Kresge and Woolworth, along with Bi-Way and Consumers Distributing not too far away. Zellers arrived later, replacing the local Eaton’s. Here are some random discoveries you make on the first page of a Google search for “Bargain Harold’s”: the founder, Harold Kamin, died two years ago; the Urban Dictionary says that a Bargain Harold is, well, pretty similar to every other definition in the Urban Dictionary; and this commercial:
I’m not sure this is what the city had in mind when it embarked on a project to add second rings to existing post and ring racks as a “temporary fix” six(!) years ago.
This large metal sculpture graces a front lawn between East Dodgeville and Peterborough.
Mid-afternoon on Saturday: The first ever Bells on Danforth ride pauses at Pape.
Early evening on Saturday: Lakeshore Road outside Newcastle.
Saturday was a day of contrasts and lots of fun bike riding. In the morning, I was helping to set up the skills course for the Ward 35 bike rodeo in Scarborough. By mid-afternoon, I was cycling to Queen’s Park very slowly with 90 other cyclists as part of the inaugural Bells on Danforth ride. And in the early evening, I was pedalling down a virtually deserted Lakeshore Road on Lake Ontario between Newcastle and Port Hope. After cycling out of Newcastle and before arriving on the main drag of Port Hope 90 minutes later, I encountered a scant eleven cars and three pedestrians—and none at all of either for a full 45-minute stretch. With the sun finally peeking out from the clouds for the last half hour of my ride, it was the perfect way to unwind from a long day of good cycling and lousy weather.
The inside of the tank on my new toilet has a QR code! How geeky is that? I had to stop the installation to wash up and grab my phone to see what this important message could possibly be. I felt like Ralphie with his new Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. It turns out to be a link to www.kohler.com/qrktank1, which redirects to a PDF with steps for troubleshooting flush problems. I’ll fully admit that I thought it was the stupidest location in the world for a QR code, but now I think it borders on brilliant: can you imagine a world full of parts labelled with QR codes that take you directly to the appropriate service manual? It ought to be mandatory. Of course, the real test will be whether the link remains active for the entire 20+ year lifetime of this toilet.
Barely a year ago, I wrote about my surprise at seeing QR codes on a politician’s campaign signs; now they’re so ubiquitous that they’re inside my toilet. Which, some would argue, is where politicians have always been anyway.
Painted lettering on the hydro poles lining the quiet country road whets your appetite as you approach: “Pies / Butter tarts” and an arrow pointing to deliciousness ahead.
A little farther along, a whirligig-topped sign advertises “Fresh Baked Pies” and “Just Tarts Tuesdays” with another arrow pointing across the street.
Turning across the street, you see the pie shop beside the road in all its grandeur:
To a downtowner, life seems a little different in the rural belt surrounding the city. Roads are quiet (and sometimes not even paved), vistas are grand, and payment is on the honour system. But you don’t have to travel far to get a taste of the country. You don’t even have to leave the city: this pie stand sits in front of a home on the Toronto side of Scarborough-Pickering Townline, which separates Toronto from Durham Region north of Finch Avenue.
Glenn started the pie stand about six years ago as a sideline when he began taking care of his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, at the house. She couldn’t be left alone and he was restless at the house all day long, so decided to start baking one day. Glenn bakes all of the pies and tarts himself but mostly uses his mother’s original recipes. The stand was named Mary’s Pies in her honour and started as just a table and sign in front of the house. “I can still remember the first one I sold.” And yes, that first customer still buys pies. Glenn built the stand later and keeps it open from “12:30–dark” 7 days a week.
There’s no staff and the counter is self-serve. You’ll find an assortment of fresh pies or tarts inside the stand on any given day, along with a simple payment jar to drop off $9 for each pie or $5 for a half-dozen tarts.
The honour payment system works out well. “People just freak out about the honour system,” but Glenn says that he’s never lost money from the jar. “Sometimes people come and, you know, they’re short a little bit and you find a little note in the jar there with some money and it says, ‘I was short such and such the other day and here’s the money.'” He adds, “People like to be trusted.” Still, some people won’t leave money in the jar and bring it up to the front door of the house instead. He does lose the occasional pie to kids but he shrugs it off, recalling his own youth. “We used to do it too, eh?”
Glenn sells up to 80 pies a week in his summer peak season along with a couple of dozen 6-packs of butter tarts on Just Tarts Tuesdays. He’ll bake to order and takes requests.
Can he see himself doing it for another six years? “I dunno, man,” he chuckles. “It is a lot of work. I’ll keep it going for a while…”