So if the New Democrats took an unprecedentedly huge share of the votes–for once in their history, actually benefiting from first-past-the-post, rather than consistently taking a far smaller share of seats relative to the popular vote cast…

And if the Conservatives managed not to benefit from this at all either, winning another minority government…

And if the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois voted for a motion of non-confidence…

And if Governor General David Johnston doesn’t dissolve Parliament, forcing another election–which, as viceroy, (stupid monarchy) he’s perfectly entitled to do…

…then Johnston would have to turn to the newly anointed leader of the Official Opposition and ask him if he was up for giving it a go. And if the answer was yes, as it almost certainly would be, then with a third of the seats, a quarter of the popular vote, and the leadership of the Liberal and Conservative parties more appalled than ever imagined possible…

Then this guy would become Canada’s next prime minister:

Credit: Scott Rogers

As entertaining as that would be, and while it’d be great for galvanizing Liberal and Conservative support for abolishing first-past-the-post, an important question remains: can we actually trust those polls?

Maybe.

The CBC posted an article on the issues facing pollsters today: chiefly, that the average Canadian has neither time nor desire to talk to pollsters on the phone. This, of course, is countered somewhat by the typically Canadian instinct to not actually hang up when asked if we can spare a half hour of our time, but still, the fact is:

But for the purposes of their polling, researchers are obliged to assume that the 15 per cent of callers who agree to spend 20 minutes talking to them are representative of the 85 per cent who are too busy or whatever to participate or who never pick up at all because they can identify a pollster through Caller ID.

(Emphasis added for my own amusement.)

Still, editorial snafu that may be, it’s pretty accurate given what I presume about these folks who do not under any circumstances want to respond. A Freudian slip of the word processor?

One thing is certain: the typical respondent is not the typical Canadian. How different they may be is another matter.

PS: Vote. Seriously.

Since Apple added their super-convenient Time Machine app to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, I’d been meaning to get around to using it. A year later, I bought a simple external USB drive, a Western Digital MyPassport. Easy. Tiny. USB-powered.²

So I finally made it to the counter to pay for the thing. No, I hadn’t shopped there before. Would I like to sign up for the Best Buy blah blah card thing? I sure would! And I proceeded to do so. Take that, people behind me in line.

“Oh, my email address? Certainly. It’s ‘catherine’…”

*tap tap tap*

“at”

*tap tap tap*

“catherine–”

*DELETE DELETE DELETE*

“Uh…no. I mean, yes, my name is Catherine. You spelled that correctly. My email address is Catherine at CatherineWinters.com.”

*tap tap tap*

“Catherine with a ‘C’.”

And so on and so forth. So that was pretty fun.

Protip: Once Best Buy security agrees not to call the police if you promise never to set foot in the store again, you can partition your external drive as half Time Machine and half storage, formatting it for convenience’s sake as NTFS, not MacOSX-native HFS+. The NTFS 3G driver for OSX allows you to both read and write NTFS-formatted drives, and you’ll still be able to connect to Windows PCs should need arise.

If you do this, however, you have to be really careful about ejecting the stupid thing properly. If any files get damaged, you’ll lose write access to the NTFS partition and the resulting error message will in no way be helpful. If you suddenly find that you can’t write to an NTFS-formatted disk, plug the thing into a Windows PC and run chkdsk on it to fix the errors.

Congratulations, I just saved you three hours of Googling.

Next Time: In Case of Fire.

1. Yeah, you know that time that your computer died and you lost everything and you said, “next time, I’m going to do regular backups” and then you didn’t? I’m marginally smarter than you.
2. Unfortunately, my 5-year-old Dell 24″ monitor has a crappy, crappy USB hub that causes my MacBook Pro to kernel panic whenever Time Machine starts–Windows users: that’s the OSX version of a bluescreen. There’s an app for that. So I lose a USB port; no hub for you, WD My Passport! This is actually a good reason to use Firewire, come to think of it.

To say I was skeptical of some aspects of the conference beforehand would be a terrible, terrible understatement. On the ride up with former coworker Jnet:
Her: “So are you recovered from your flu?” [Swine flu, I swear.]
Me: “I guess, yeah… I’m still not very hungry.“
Her: “Well, you’ll have lots of good vegetarian cooking at Cortes.“
Me: “…Whaaah? Awwww.”

I know! Fortunately, said vegetarian cooking turned out to be delicious and, contrary to our hosts’ warning, I didn’t totally fart the entire time. Upon leaving Cortes, Jnet and I immediately went to a Wendy’s in Campbell River, but that’s neither here nor there. It was good, trust me.

Now, I’m not a super-huggy person, and there was a bit more hugging than I’m used to, which is honestly saying a lot, coming from the Vancouver social media scene. There was also a substantially greater-than-usual amount of talking about ambitions and goals and feelings and things. On the other hand, there were parts I was really interested in, such as answering the question, “is it possible to create a new medium and use it for artistic purposes without the first few years of its existence being used expressly to discuss that medium?” (See photography, cave painting, the web, Twitter, etc.) The answer: maybe?

Despite my skepticism, it turned out that there were parts that proved extremely valuable to me. Incredibly, these were the parts that involved tackling issues and feelings! And talking about them! If the words “coaching circle” make you wrinkle your nose in pain, you’re experiencing more or less the same sort of anticipation as I was beforehand.

And yet, the coaching circle was extremely helpful after all. Of course, there were still parts of Media that Matters that I was perhaps a little too much of a cynical prude to enjoy.

So I got back and decided I needed to make some changes. So I’m trying new things this summer. First of all, as mentioned in my last post, my knees have finally recovered enough for me to get places with my exercise regimen. (I think my problem with the stationary bike is that I get bored and always have a sneaking suspicion that I’m accomplishing less than I ought to be. I might end up buying a trainer for my bike, since there’s plenty on Craigslist, but actually using it without feeling like I’m just screwing around, that will be the challenge.)

So, exercise. What else?

• Writing more. Theoretically.
• Actually building a bicycle instead of just buying one.
• Knitting classes at Three Bags Full on Main Street. I’ve never knit before.
• Going to more art shows. More barbeques. More events.
• Quitting my job and going to art school.

Oh yeah. That last one. I’m entering Langara College’s Fine Arts program in September, then transferring to Emily Carr to finish up my undergrad. So that’s new too.

From the Social Signal blog:

If you work at the intersection of technology and community-building, we hope you’ll join us for the March gathering of Social Tech Brewing’s Vancouver chapter. Social Tech Brewing brings together folks from social media, nonprofit organizations, community service, social activism, social ventures and technology to share ideas — and beer!

Beer! Virtual worlds! Community-building! It’s got it all! If that sounds like your mug of beer, you should join us!

From 7–8 PM, we’ll be at WorkSpace at 21 Water St. (See Google Maps)
Afterwards, we’ll be moving across the street to Six Acres.

See the blog post at SocialSignal.com for more or RSVP here!

* You know, like that Second Life thing.

Huh. Why is it? That can’t be the cheapest design for a building in wartime.
A short getting-out-of-bed-instead-of-sleeping later, I was much more knowledgeable about mid-20th-Century civil planning projects than I had been before.

From Wikipedia:

Its unusual shape results from the fact that its originally intended site, Arlington Farms, fronted on Arlington Ridge Road and the Arlington Memorial Bridge approach, which intersected at an angle of approximately 108 degrees (the angle of a regular pentagon). President Franklin D. Roosevelt had it constructed at its current location because he didn’t want the new building to obstruct the view of Washington, D.C. from Arlington Cemetery.

In fact, Arlington Ridge Road no longer exists, its route now mostly replaced by Eisenhower Drive, which winds through an expanded Arlington National Cemetery and terminates near the original site. The Pentagon was constructed as planned, just somewhat south of its intended location.