April 23, 2021
I can’t say I’m feeling particularly well today… but, on the flipside, it’s never felt so good to not feel so good. Hit me with the side-effects… I’m happy to have them! Headache, sore arm, zero energy, random little pains. It’s all good.
Here’s what’s not so good… if I told you the average C19 hospitalizations in B.C. over the last 5 weeks have looked like this:
Five weeks ago: 425
Four weeks ago: 441
Three weeks ago: 456
Two weeks ago: 483
A week ago: 502
… you’d say jeez… that’s not good. And it’s not… but what’s worse is that those aren’t weekly averages; they’re the daily numbers going back five days.
Let’s rewrite the day-over-day growth as a percentage, leading up to yesterday:
4/18 – 4/19: 3.8%
4/19 – 4/20: 3.4%
4/20 – 4/21: 5.9%
4/21 – 4/22: 3.9%
The average of that is 4.3%, but let’s just call it 4%.
At this pace, here’s how many hospital beds would be needed by these dates:
4/26: 611
4/30: 715
5/07: 940
5/14: 1,237
Fortunately, that’s unlikely to happen… but there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t have if things had remained unchecked. If people wonder why “senseless” restrictions get imposed, it’s precisely to avoid scenarios like this.
From the time a case is diagnosed to the time they make it to hospital, it’s about 10 to 14 days. Accordingly, the alarming numbers above are a reflection of that really bad stretch in the second week of April, and things have improved slightly since. Numbers have come off a bit, and today saw a 3.2% *drop* in hospitalizations… but both hospitalizations and ICU numbers are near all-time highs.
The travel restrictions imposed today raise lots of questions… and I would suggest everyone simply drop any questions that contains the words “technically speaking”. It would take a lot longer than the length of these restrictions (to the end of the May long-weekend) to come up with rules and wording that everyone would agree with. So, forget the wording… and just think about the spirit of what’s trying to be achieved here – which is to not spread cases from region to region, hot-spot to hot-spot. And when you don’t know where those regions or hot-spots are likely to pop-up, you mitigate for all of them.
I totally agree with the intent of these measures because it’s not hard to see the evolution of these numbers, and something needs to be done… but I do wonder how effective they’ll be. We will not have militant checkpoints and rogue cops. We will simply have, as usual, things being left up to us. I guess we’ll see how that pans out. Other words I really don’t want to hear one day are… “If only we’d…”
April 22, 2021
What a beautiful day… to get vaccinated. Though, technically, any day you manage to get vaccinated is a beautiful one.
So… finally. It was my turn.
At the start of this thing, I optimistically agreed with the 12-18 month guesses, as opposed to the 2-3 year pessimists… and I landed right at 13 months.
How does it feel? Perfectly fine for the moment. Not even a sore arm… but if my reaction to the Shingrix vaccine is any indication, I may be in for a rough couple of days.
But that’s not the correct “How does it feel?” answer.
The correct one talks about profound gratitude… to the countless people, brains, hard work and perseverance that led to this. What’s the big deal, a little shot in the arm… the whole event taking less than 2 minutes?
The big deal, of course, is everything that led up to that moment… and the bigger deal is the implications for me and for everyone around me that lead from it. My chances of getting really sick or dying from C19 are near zero. My chances of getting sick at all, even a mild case, have gone down dramatically. And if I do catch a mild case, so what. Most people don’t care about catching a cold; you expect it every year. A few days of discomfort, and that’s it. And that’s how it’ll be with this… the next time I have the sniffles, it might be C19. Probably the rest of my life, every time I catch a mild cold, I’ll wonder. But won’t really care.
For now… relief. Every moment of every day is the beginning of the rest of your life… but we all have those moments where the impact hits hard; the day of your high-school graduation when you’re handed your diploma on stage. Or the day you hear “You’re hired.” Or the day you bring your kid home from the hospital, and there he or she is, a few days old, still strapped into the car-seat… staring at you, with a look in their eyes: “Now what?”
Yeah, now what… well, here’s what. For me, the beginning of the end of worrying about getting seriously ill from this thing. It’s actually a pretty wonderful feeling, though tempered by the fact that the kids who stared at me from that car seat so many years ago are themselves not yet vaccinated. But we’re getting there… every day is one day closer to the end of this thing for all of us… and that day, which will also be a beautiful day, can’t come soon enough.
April 21, 2021
Finding a pharmacy that’s dishing out AstraZeneca is very hit-and-miss. If you’re fortunate enough to call up and find one that’s got vaccine and is booking appointments, please feel free to share the info here in the comments. Even though that info may be stale 10 minutes later, there are a lot of people looking… and they’ll be happy to take a chance. If you’re trying to find a place, feel free to check these comments as often as you like. Facebook doesn’t mind you refreshing this page every 10 seconds.
In the meantime, there’s a bit of confusion with respect to where you’ll be allowed to travel after Friday, once some temporary restrictions kick in. Essential travel is ok, but if you just want to go somewhere for fun, can you? And, if so, where can you go?
To simplify things, I’ve come up with a very simple formula that lets you know where you can travel. If you’re in Metro Vancouver, simply do this:
a. Take the first number of your postal code
b. Multiply it by 3
c. Add 3
d. Multiply it by 3 again
e. Whatever number you’re at now, add up all the digits in it
f. Look that number up on the list below. That’s where you can go:
1. Victoria
2. Kelowna
3. Nanaimo
4. Kamloops
5. Prince George
6. Vernon
7. Courtenay
8. Campbell River
9. Stay at home
10. Port Alberni
11. Fort St. John
12. Cranbrook
13. Terrace
14. Salmon Arm
15. Powell River
16. Quesnel
17. Prince Rupert
18. Williams Lake
19. Kitimat
20. Oliver
See… not so complicated. Easy-peasy-travel-easy.
April 20, 2021
Yesterday’s vaccine announcement – the one where now, anyone 40+ can go and get the AstraZeneca vaccine – wasn’t entirely unexpected… and some intelligent, forward-thinking people, earlier in the day, booked themselves appointments. At worst, you cancel it if you don’t ultimately qualify… and, if you do qualify at the end of the day, great.
I wasn’t one of those people, so by the time I started browsing London Drugs and Shoppers and other big pharmacies, all appointments were solidly booked. That being said, being resourceful meant getting on the phone and calling little pharmacies – the mom-and-pop shops that aren’t part of the provincial system and/or don’t have online booking. It took a while… but, finally… success. Booked for Thursday!
In the meantime, I’m on numerous waiting lists… Shoppers, LD, the provincial system. I guess the thing to do would be to remove myself from those lists (*after* Thursday, of course…), but I think I’ll stay on them. Not because I’ll show up to any of those appointments… and it’ll be easy to say “No thanks” when the email or text comes in… but because I’m genuinely curious to see when I’ll actually sift to the top.
The truth is, the system shouldn’t actually work this way. There should be exactly one list, and if you didn’t know any better, you still might think there is… the big provincial list that’s a bit confusing; the one where anyone can register any time, but you’re told to wait till it’s your turn to register. And where registering only means you’re now on the long waiting list, till your cohort comes up.
But there’s more than one list. Shoppers has one. London Drugs has one. Ostensibly, the provincial system should feed into that, but this pandemic will long be over by the time that integration would ever take place.
That part of the system is broken, but what’s not broken is the demand. As obscure as it is to figure out how to book an appointment, it’s not like pharmacies are dealing with overflowing fridges of vaccine. It’s getting into arms as fast as it’s showing up. As long as that keeps up, great. We keep hearing that we’ll all have one shot at least by July 1st… and, at this pace, perhaps that’ll turn out to be true.
With parallel lines of vaccine deployment and demand still ahead of supply, the important part of it is happening. It’s not entirely fair, but I’ll put out there what I did to a lot of people yesterday: If you’re having problem trying to find a pharmacy to give you the shot, send me a PM and I’ll happily give you the contact details of the place I found. The one where me, my cousin, and several friends will all be visiting on Thursday. I am so looking forward to it.
And speaking of looking forward, we are in the midst of the third wave, so no need to keep looking at first and second wave info… the graphs below are all current and concise as to what’s been going on since March 10th… and also looking forward, below those are vaccination graphs. It’s nice, for once, to look at exponentially-growing graphs that convey good news. To hell with flattening the curve; these ones we want getting steep as soon as possible. And, to be honest, they’re looking pretty good.
April 19, 2021
The “Presidency” of Augusto Pinochet in Chile lasted until early 1990. But you can’t really call him a President, because the Republic of Chile never actually democratically elected him into power.
So… in other words, when I was living there in 1987/1988, life under a military dictatorship was in full swing. It meant that a lot of the civil liberties we take for granted here in Canada simply didn’t exist. But other things, that we do take for granted *not* to exist… did. Such as… checkpoints.
Whenever you run into a checkpoint here… 99.9% of the time it’s to sniff out DUIs. The checkpoints are strategically placed so that if you find yourself heading into one, there’s no escape. Just over the hill on the Granville St. bridge, southbound – heading out of downtown on a Saturday night – is a good example.
And as you approach it, you will feel one of two things. If you’ve been drinking, dread. Fear. A complete freakout. And now you get to pay the steep price for making the poor decisions that put you in this situation.
Or, you haven’t been drinking, and you feel a mix of relief and indignation. Relief that you get to have a brief and friendly chat with the cop before you’re on your merry way… and a bit of indignation. How *dare* they stomp on my civil rights. Who do they think they are. I should be free to drive wherever I want. This is a free country. I should be able to do whatever I want.
We’ve been hearing a lot of those sentences recently, in a very different context… but these two different contexts will be merging a bit on the near future, much to the horror of civil libertarians.
Living under a military dictatorship kept you on edge. Every single time I went through one of those checkpoints… and, might I add, they not only popped-up unexpectedly, but many were semi-permanent. Imagine a checkpoint in the middle of the Lion’s Gate Bridge. In both directions… License and registration and insurance, please. Why isn’t this car in your name. Why are you going downtown. Who do you know on the north shore. How often do you travel this route.
That would be a permanent checkpoint… a little hut in the middle of the bridge, manned by a solider 24/7. Except it wasn’t 24/7… just to mess with you, sometimes the hut was empty and you could just go through. Just to mess you with and keep you on edge.
But usually, it was manned… so, you’d jump through the hoops; you let them execute their little power trip, you acquiesce to their bullshit. And unless you’re actually up to no good, you’re unlikely to have a problem. I was asked a lot of stupid questions… “Where’d you get that car radio?” “Canada? Is that one of those little states way up north?” but it was never more than a few questions before “Have a nice day”.
I’ve been back to Chile many times post-1990, and all of those checkpoints are gone… but the little huts are still there. And I drive by them now and think… what was the point of that. Seriously, what was the point.
Well, the point was that they wanted to keep you in fear. They wanted to constantly remind you… don’t forget who’s in charge. We control you. Don’t, for a minute, think you’re free.
It took a radical change in government to get rid of that but, rest assured, the right-wing military junta of Augusto Pinochet had zero in common with today’s NDP government of John Horgan… something to remember when people start screaming about today’s announcements… that for several weeks, travel restrictions… where you simply shouldn’t leave your local area. And you may run into a checkpoint. It’s temporary and it makes sense, but, oh boy… here comes the screaming and yelling from the freedom/liberty crowd.
I don’t expect to get pulled over at any checkpoint because I don’t expect to be transiting from home any time soon… but in a warped way, I’d look forward to it… because I wouldn’t be able to not compare it to my experiences from 30 years ago… the difference between slowly pulling up to a young, potentially itchy-trigger-fingered solider armed with a loaded semi-automatic weapon… and some VPD or RCMP cop whose only job in this context is to try to keep people safe. I’d look at today’s checkpoint and realize that the cop is on my side, that this is temporary, that this is necessary… and resign myself to the fact that we put ourselves in this situation.
It’s more serious than many people realize, but that’s counteracted by the measures already in place which *are* having a positive effect… and warmer weather, and vaccines. The outcome of this collision course is approaching… do we go the Israel route or the Ontario route in the near future?
Well, let’s look at the Chile route. Way ahead on vaccinations, and fully locked up… because they took that freedom and abused the hell out of it and things went from being under control to totally messed up. That’s what can happen. That’s what might happen here if strict and sudden measures weren’t put in place. So ironic that checkpoints in Chile might have prevented their full-on lockdown.
Around here… may I say… temporary. Can I repeat… temporary. As in – what we need to do today, so that we don’t all have to be doing this forever. I’m pretty sure we can do this for just a few short weeks.
I sure hope so. Otherwise, it won’t be short and it won’t be weeks.
April 18, 2021
I will update the data and graphs when I get home… but, for the moment… I am out enjoying the sunshine.
On that note…I’m not a huge fan of seeing my words being twisted into something I didn’t say… so I guess I’ll take another brief moment on yet another gorgeous day to yet again clarify something I’ve been saying for the better part of a year. Here it is again:
First of all, something I’ve been saying and dealing with and venting about seems to be this unbelievably incredibly annoying way of trying to discuss things with people who refuse to see anything other than in terms of right/wrong, black/white, “with us or against us”. I’ve written endlessly about having to explain things to certain people over and over again, because the minute one little thing doesn’t agree with what they think, everything else must be wrong.
This is not how the world works.
Let’s break this down into tiny little digestible bits so that there’s zero confusion about what I’m trying to say.
I am certainly not advocating staying inside, locked up in a tiny room with no windows, watching your mental health and that of your family deteriorate into a puddle of despair. It’s beautiful and sunny. Blue skies and fresh air. Go outside and soak in the vitamin D. It’s what I’m doing right now. It’s good for you. Wear sunscreen if you’re going to be out there a long time.
It seems, however, and this is the part that a lot of people don’t seem to want to understand… that then going down to the beach and sitting without masks in close proximity with hundreds of other strangers singing and partying about freedom and kumbaya… is not even remotely close to finding a quiet spot, just you and your group of up to 10, far away from others, not risking propagating infection from your bubble to someone else’s.
Some people want to hear just enough to suit their narrative, and that’s it.
“So yes, go outside and…”
Weeee!!! PARTY!!!! WooHoo!!!!
“No, that’s not what anyone said.”
“You said we could go outside and so we do and now you’re saying we can’t and freedom and you’re a liar and freedom and who needs masks and vaccines are bullshit and freedom and Mark Donnelly and freedom and f!@# masks and vaccines don’t work anyway and what about that restaurant on Cornwall and freedom and masks prevent oxygen and that gym in Kelowna and freedom and it’s a hoax and freedom and big brother and social distancing is bullshit and it’s just a flu and freedom and…”
Yeah, you know what, I keep getting accused of propagating a narrative that’s trying to limit your freedoms. This comes mostly from a group of people who don’t have much clarity with respect to what freedom actually is because they’ve never faced a reality where actual freedom has been at stake.
Being told to act responsibly is not an infringement of your freedoms. It’s simply part of you being a cooperative part of society so that everyone, including you, can benefit from the effects of the greater good that all of us have the power to bestow.
Most people know what that means. Some are incapable of understanding. And some… simply don’t care.
April 17, 2021
Gosh darn, what a beautiful day… what am I doing sitting in front of a computer typing this out, when I could be at Kits beach partying it up with 10,000 other people?
Sarcasm aside, I was down there on my bike yesterday, and it was pretty packed. I can only imagine what it looks like today. This grand collision course of “Who gives a crap” vs. vaccinations… will find its resolution in the not-too-distant future. The equally loud “they’re not doing enough!” vs. “they’re doing too much!” is something policy makers must get used to over time. Since nobody will ever be happy, if you have two equally unhappy groups, that’s about as good as it’s going to get.
So, those are the two big dogs in the fight, which can be summarized as “Follow the rules” and “Don’t follow the rules”. We’ve all seen the dogs fight, but you never see the bones themselves get involved; they just get tossed around and hope not to get destroyed by one side or the other. So, that’s most of us, whether we like it or not… the 5,000,000 little bones in a dogfight that has a month or two left before it becomes evident who’s coming out on top. But like I said yesterday, it might not be a case of winning… just a case of not losing.
With two sides and vastly different prevailing attitudes, that’s what you get… two sides that keep drifting further apart as the finish line gets closer.
In fact, speaking of bones… here’s what one might call a good bone-headed example… there’s martial arts gym in Kelowna that’s refusing to allow masks. Not a question of masks being optional, which, in a gym, is bad enough… but no… if you want to wear a mask, you’re not welcome.
Oh, but that’s not all. If you’re vaccinated, you’re not welcome at all. Yes, you read that correctly – if you have been vaccinated, you are not allowed in. But if you haven’t been, and agree to not wear a mask, come right in.
I can’t even bring myself to comment on that. It just loudly speaks for a voice that’s out there, and is surprisingly loud. I’m just hoping that voice belongs to the dog that ends up whimpering away.
On that note, time to go enjoy more sunshine and take the dog for a walk. Just not down to the beach.
April 16, 2021
Perhaps the biggest misconception I had with all of this is evident in the thoughts I was posting around this time last year… basically, “We’re all in this together and we’ll get through it together if we all stick together and do what we need to do, together.”
Haha… how ridiculously naïve.
This thing will end one day, but it certainly won’t be like I pictured it. No VE Day with people dancing in the streets and randomly hugging and kissing each other. No… just a lot of disparate groups, all of them grumbling about something different.
We will never hear the end from the naysayers… the anti-vaxx, anti-mask crowd. The ridiculously short-sighted people who want to question everything, as if that’s the right way to critically think. Question everything. Doctors, politicians, specialists, scientists… all of them are wrong. It’s difficult to piece together logical arguments where you can make it all fit together, because most of those people don’t agree with each other to begin with… but people try… and that’s where you get the real wing-nut opinions. They will grumble about it forever.
The crowd that’s been doing the right thing from day one… and finds themselves exactly where we were last year, if not a little worse… waiting for their vaccine, being careful, and watching reckless behaviour all around them. Their grumbling is more quiet, but evident.
The crowd that’s been vaccinated and now feels invincible and is screaming to open things up. What’s the delay? What’s the problem? I’m willing to take the risk! Let me in! Very loud grumbling.
The crowd that, for actual health reasons, can’t be vaccinated and is counting on herd immunity to keep them safe “in the wild”, now realizing that it may take years… or if it’ll ever even happen. They’re more quiet, but justifiably pissed off.
The heroes of the equation; not just the scientists who developed the vaccines, nor the countless researchers who, over decades, contributed placing pieces to the puzzle that was finally solved. Them too, but I mean the front-line workers who, for a year, have been putting themselves at risk to benefit the greater good; everyone mentioned in this paragraph has faced backlash from those in the paragraphs above; they could’ve done it better, sooner… or, shouldn’t have done it at all. Many are feeling underappreciated… and grumbling about it
The politicians, the leaders, elected or not… who certainly didn’t choose this, and who’ve been making the best decisions they can, faced with difficult choices that are bound to upset someone. Love them or hate them, let’s all appreciate that they’re in no-win situations. For every person that considers Dr. Henry a reluctant-but-capable hero, there’s someone issuing death threats. At some point, all of them have made a specific decision that someone found completely wrong. People grumble at that. The politicians grumble behind closed doors.
I guess there are two ways to finish a marathon. We’re all familiar with the guy who’s never run one, trains his heart out, struggles… but makes it, and falls into the arms of his wife and kids at the finish line, tears of joy for all of them at the accomplishment. Yeah, that’s great, we’ve all seen that movie.
But there’s also the guy who trained really hard, as he does every year, trying to beat his personal best… he almost broke 4 hours that one year, and this time he knows he can do it. He pours his heart into it, but struggles nonetheless… and barely breaks 5 hours. He crosses the finish line, pissed off and upset, scoffs at the flowers and “Way to go dad!!” sign that his family is holding up.
“Let’s just get the hell out of here”, he says to them as he shepherds them into the car. To hell with this, he thinks. To hell with all of it and everyone involved.
I might sound like I’m grumbling myself… but I think that’s pretty much going to be it.
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June 1, 2021
We’ll get back to vaccines and pandemics and all of the related issues… tomorrow.
But tonight… the idea is to try to win $70 million in Lotto Max.
Figuring out lottery odds is pretty simple. Using factorial notation (where 4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1), when there are 49 numbers to choose from and you have to hit exactly the right 6 (like Lotto 6/49), the formula is ( 49! / (49-6)! x 6! ) – which is just under 14,000,000 to 1. When you add a 7th number in there, like for Lotto Max, the odds shoot up to over 80,000,000 to 1. So, they go from impossible to… impossible.
That being said, let’s take a crack at it; here’s what I did…
I wrote a little program that does a number of things:
– It reads in all of the historical draws (~4,000)
– It figures out how often every number (1-49) has come up in the last 10, 40, 100 and all-time draws
– It figures out, for each number, what other numbers are likeliest to come up together… based on those historical draws.
– It generates, and then scores, all 86,000,000 possible draws
That last step is a doozy… it generates every single potential draw of 7 numbers… from 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 to 43,44,45,46,47,48,49… and then, based on the history, assigns a “likelihood” score to it.
If anyone is interested in the source code or results of any of this, feel free to ask. For all the geeks out there, I’m especially proud of my function that generates all of those draws… it’s a recursive function that’s only 7 lines long.
Anyway, I think I’ve sunk enough time into this… now I’m going to sink some money into it and, like last time, I’m happy to share $5 million of my jackpot winnings with all of you. If you want a piece of it, just like this post.
Apologies ahead of time if we don’t win and, either way, back to normal tomorrow.
Unless we win. Then… things will be far from normal.
May 31, 2021
Well… that was a fun little contest. We will do it again in future for sure.
Shout-out to the two extremes…
The pessimist award goes to Lyn Garnier’s guess of 1,123.
The optimist award goes to Larry Lacoursiere’s guess of 362
Also, shout-outs to the “pretty-close” club:
Nicky Owers’ guess of 699 missed by 9
Denise Praill’s guess of 714 missed by 6
Cadence Jensen’s guess of 807 had all the right digits… backwards.
So… congrats to Andy Sellars – whose guess of 712 missed the actual 3-day total (258+238+212) of 708 by only 4.
To put these numbers in context… this is the best weekend we’ve had since October, and that linear descent continues to hold. I’m sure it’ll tail off eventually, at some point, but for now… it looks very good. If this continues, we’d be down to single-digit case counts by the third week of June. Who knows… all of this is certainly being helped by the fact that we just crossed a significant milestone… more than 3,000,000 B.C. individuals have had at least one dose.
Andy, well done! Please let me know your worthy charity of choice.
And the rest of you, sharpen your pencils and/or clear your spreadsheets; we’ll do it again next week.
May 30, 2021
The last little contest that I held was to guess where on earth, literally, that remnant Chinese rocket was going to hit. The result of that was no human deaths, but a $100 donation to a Search & Rescue team on the island.
Let’s do this again… with, this time, little chance of anyone getting clobbered by space junk.
You’ve heard me say for more than who-knows-how-many consecutive weekends… “No B.C. numbers to report, so we’ll wait for tomorrow…”
So… let’s make some good of it… here’s the contest:
Give me your best guess as to the total weekend numbers… new daily case counts for Saturday, Sunday and Monday combined… and, whoever is closest will win $100… donated, in their name, to their charity of choice.
To help you guess a little, here are the last several Sat-Sun-Mon totals:
May 22,23,24: 974
May 15,16,17: 1,360
May 8,9,10: 1,759
May 1,2,3: 2,174
Before that: 2,729
That’s a good-looking trend; may it continue.
Fire off your guesses and good luck – contest entries will be accepted till noon tomorrow.
May 29, 2021
OK… the bad news is we didn’t win 65 million dollars. The good news is that nobody else did either, so we get to take another crack at it… this time, with a few more days to grind through the numbers and some new ideas… which might lower the chances from one in 33 million to something a little more reasonable. To put that in context, your chances of getting a blood clot from a C19 vaccine are about 100x greater… and those chances are exceedingly remote already… to the extent that your chances of getting hit by lightning in your lifetime are 200x greater than a C19-vaccine blood clot. Yeah, you read that right. Still worried?
For those assuring me there’s no rational way to predict the lottery, you’re almost certainly right, but I don’t mind telling you what I’m trying to do here… which is to find some tangible edge, if it exists.
For example… let’s briefly talk about Roulette; the casino game where there’s a wheel, with the numbers 1 to 36 on it, as well as a zero, and often (in the American version), a double-zero. Except for the zeroes, half the numbers are red, the other half black. Half are even, half are odd. Half are 1-18, half are 19-36. If you bet a dollar on any of those, you’ll double your money if you’re right. But if you want to win the real money, you have to bet on numbers straight up… where a 37-1 chance pays 35-1.
Here’s an unusual talent of mine; if you give me any number on an American roulette wheel, I can instantly give you the three numbers to either side of it. Like, 32…? 5 7 11 17 20 22 32… and I can bet them all straight-up in about two seconds. I realize this is less impressive in writing; when this is all over, let’s head to the casino and I’ll show you how to win at roulette… maybe.
The maybe has to do with whether the wheel, at that moment, is truly random or not… and usually it is. But, once in a while, especially near the end of a long day, it may be a bit off. A bit of humidity is slowing down part of it, or … [Continue Reading]
May 28, 2021
What you read here is often thought up while I’m lost in thought, riding my bike… and today, I started by thinking about this crazy anti-vaxxer who decided to drive her car through a vaccination tent set-up in a parking lot in Tennessee. Fortunately, nobody was hurt… but there were plenty of near-misses. I was pondering from which angle to approach that – and there are many – and was specifically thinking about how some people are just assholes, plain and simple… and while having that illuminating thought, the following happened…
I was cycling on the seawall, near English Bay, heading west… somewhere between the Burrard Bridge and Cactus Club… it’s a nice stretch of road between BB and CC these days – a whole street lane dedicated for bikes. As such, there is plenty of room for two-way bike traffic… and what I saw was a guy on a bike, coming towards me. There was also a Canada Goose sitting on the street, right next to the curb. This guy had plenty of room to go by… enough room that he had to make an extra effort to stick out his right leg and kick the bird as he went by. This happened about 20 feet in front of me. The goose wasn’t seriously hurt… it just squawked and fluttered a bit. But I slammed on the brakes and yelled after him… I guess what one would call a declarative sentence – like “Have a nice day!” – except that’s not what I said. He barely slowed down and didn’t look back; just held up one solitary finger as he rode off into the distance. Seriously, what an asshole.
I resumed my ride now trying to figure out where the overlap of assholes might fit into what I have to say; what does a psycho-anti-vaxxer have in common with a guy who kicks an innocent bird for no reason?
The quick conclusion I came to is that I’ve already wasted enough time thinking about these pieces of crap… so we’ll leave it at that.
Moments later, I saw a sign that announced that tonight’s Lotto Max is up to $65 million… so I started thinking about how I might analyze previous draws, and try to use that to predict future ones. Turns … [Continue Reading]