My citizenship application is on its way to Nova Scotia. Soon I will be able to travel among you completely undetected. Mwahahaha.

Ah, it sure is nice being able to sit on the balcony with a cold beer and a belly full of steak. Wireless Intenet access and a box of oatmeal raisin cookies don't hurt, either.

I visited BC the week before last. I forgot to pack my camera, though it turned out later that it was sitting at the bottom of my backpack the whole time. I'm a little puzzled that the heightened security screening at the airports didn't pick it up. They make you remove all electronic devices and turn them on, plus they swab laptops for some kind of chemical analysis (me: "if you don't mind me asking, what are you checking for anyway?" security guy: "chemical analysis" me: "oooh kaaaay"). The one time they could have done something useful for me, they completely let me down. So I don't have any pictures yet.

We stayed in Victoria most of the time. There was a day trip to Saltspring Island, which is pretty heart-warming if you like hippies. We visited a potter's studio, but he wasn't there when we arrived. However, there were plenty of pieces on display outside, along with a cash box and a sign telling us to help ourselves and leave money in the box. There were even credit card slips with a friendly reminder to date and sign them.

We ventured over to Vancouver on Sunday evening. It was raining. We toured around town all day on Monday. It rained some more. We met up with Ben, Beth, and Orion for drinks that night while it was still raining. On Tuesday morning, in the rain, we decided to head back to Victoria where we rented scooters. As it turns out, scooters are pretty fun. They're like motorcycles training wheels.

Hmm. I can hear the people upstairs cleaning their grill.

I got back from my trip to BC to find 3 or 4 messages on my answering machine from someone named Sherri Pall calling about a "business matter" without any details. I get my share of email spam, so I just assumed it was some telemarketing scam and deleted the messages. She kept calling without elaborating at all, so I finally called back today out of curiosity. Turns out it's some collection agency. I moved to a new apartment last September and apparently forgot to update my address with Alberta Healthcare. So now the collection agency wants my new address and billing information to bring my account up to date.

I don't doubt that this is the way things normally work in the real world, but I was shocked at the insecurity in the system. Basically, someone calls me out of the blue, doesn't identify themselves or provide any means of authentication, and wants me to hand over a bunch of personal information and pay them money.

me: "So, is there any way for me to verify that you're actually a collection agency? No offense, but you just called me out of the blue and are asking for my personal information."
Sherri: "Did you go through reception when you called?"
me: "Yes."
Sherri: "Well, how did the receptionist answer the phone?"
me: "Uh, I could answer the phone like that."

So I said I'd call Alberta Healthcare and ask them about it. I asked her if I could just pay Alberta Healthcare directly (since I can do that through my online banking account instead of arranging some alternate arrangement with this unknown organization) and she said no, I would have to pay the collection agency. When I called ABHC, they said I certainly could pay my account directly. I asked why they didn't just call me instead of hiring a collection agency, since they have my phone number on file. "We don't have the staff or the budget for that," I was told. I'm no high-ranking government budgetary analyst, but wouldn't it be much cheaper to try the phone number on file before hiring a collection agency? Idiots.

I visited Community Natural Foods Hippy Co-op (possibly not the correct name) in Calgary last weekend and noticed the following on a brochure for some fancy bottled water.

Penta® water is the world's only patented water. What's so special about it? The water molecules in Penta are arranged in small, stable clusters - different from other waters where the molecules bond with their neighbors to form large clusters that are often too large to efficiently enter your cells.

They also have an excellent web site with even more sciencetastic literature. Those nasty hydrogen bonds!

Well, it looks like the sandwidhes were fine. I wish I hadn't eaten so many, though.

Today's activites include a riveting experiment with RAIDframe. Hooray.

Turns out a friend's employer has one of those lame email filter systems that blocks him from getting messages that contain naughty words. He gets a notice that a message was blocked, but he doesn't get to read it. Sucks to be him.

We got a bunch of meat and cheese sandwiches for a meeting yesterday afternoon. Are the leftover ones still safe to eat? I'll know soon enough.