Andy Grove, Intel giant, has died

Sad news from the world of technology: Andy Grove, the former President, CEO and Chairman of Intel, has passed away at the age of 79.

He may not be a familiar name to most, but in the tech space, he was - and always will be - a rock star. He was the one who led the company's shift into microprocessors, and most of the computers we use today owe much to the architectures and technologies developed on his watch.

If you used any technology today, as I have done to share word of his passing, I hope you'll pause for a moment and think of him, and all those he led, who made it possible.

https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/andrew-s-grove-1936-2016/

On Einstein's Theory of Human Stupidity

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
Albert Einstein

I made the mistake of scrolling through my social media feeds this morning. Somehow, Einstein's words seem especially appropriate as I wish I could un-read what I've already read.

I'm guessing human stupidity was around long before Twitter (10 years-old tomorrow) and Facebook and their ilk came along. But it seems like it's so much more visible today as a result. Bummer that.

On giving thanks for the velo

"Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity."
Lord Charles Beresford

I seem to be in a bike-focused mood this weekend, so please forgive me for posting quickly and running out the door. The road awaits, and I've got a few kms to log before the rain moves in.

I hope you're able to hit your proverbial road today, as well. Whatever you're up to, may it be fun, fulfilling, and safe.

Update - 4:10 pm: I'm back from being beaten up by 40 km/h winds. Despite spitting rain and a route that had a lot more uphills and downs, I managed to add another 30.26 km to the tally. Ridiculous? Sure. But holy cow did it feel good.

Where I get back on the bike

Where the rubber hits the road
London, ON
March 2016

The weather's been glorious for much of the week, so as the weekend approached, I found myself staring at the pink Specialized bike that's been parked in the living room for months - my wife is infinitely patient and lovely, and she puts up with my weird cyclist-parking habits - and thinking that it was time to roll it out and give it a workout.

The obligatory cycling selfie

So today dawned warm and greyish, and that was good enough to get it out of the house, give it a bit of a cleaning and tweaking and see if I remembered how to ride the thing.

Fortunately, my gyroscopic memory remains intact, and I managed to spin for 26.8 km without incident. I didn't set any speed records, but that wasn't really the point in the first place. Instead, I returned home with a grin on my face and a determination to make this cycling season count more than the last couple of years have. Since my little, ah, incident (here, if you're just joining us), I've admittedly been more than a little afraid to get on and ride. If we're being brutally honest, I've been a wimp, using any excuse in the book to stay out of the saddle.

I'm posting this today to remind myself, on those days when I'm [this close] to making another excuse to not take the bike, that cycling to me was in the not-too-distant past way more than a means of getting around town. It was my culture, my identity, and my passion. And it will be again, fear be damned.

For the record, I parked my wheels in the garage when I was done. My wife deserves a bike-free living room.

Your turn: Do you ride? Where will your bike take you this year?

Thematic Photographic 368 - Night

The lights are on, but nobody's home
London, ON
February 2016

There's never enough time in the world to do the things we want to do. Between running the daily minutiae of life and then recovering from said minutiae in anticipation of the next anticipated wave of minutiae, free time is a precious commodity.

We always tell ourselves we'll do X whenever we have a little bit of extra time. But that extra time never materializes. And X, whatever that may be, doesn't get done.

So my solution is simple: Change up our perception of extra time, or free time. It isn't a gloriously long two-week vacation. Or even a leisurely Sunday afternoon. Think shorter moments. Think in-between moments, when you're moving from one piece of minutiae to another.

This picture is a result of one of those in-between moments. As I walked across the Western University campus, from the parking lot to where the Little Man was attending a party, I slowed my pace and shot whatever I could. It was an icy cold winter's night, and I had the wrong camera for the job. But I shot anyway because that X thing I'd been meaning to get done was calling me.

I call this photography on the run, and if you haven't tried it, you're missing out on a whole lotta fun.

We may not be able to slow the universe down, but I'm pretty sure we can all be trying just a little bit harder to make moments along the way. They don't have to be spectacular. They just have to...be. Take the time.

Your turn: Take a picture that suggests, evokes or otherwise reflects this week's theme, night, and share it on your blog or website. Leave a comment here letting folks know where to find it. Visit other participants and feel free to pull in others, as well, because a busy Thematic is more fun than a quiet one. Head here for more background on how this works. And please accept our thanks - it's all about your vision, after all.

News through an ancient lens

Film and video
London, ON
February 2016
For more Thematic data, head here

The mechanics of journalism have always been tightly influenced by the evolution of technology. Newspapers have evolved from manual typewriters and ink-stained hot type to electronic workflows and vanishing printing presses. The typical radio studio of 2016 - now filled with flat-screens, social media and enough bandwidth to launch a space mission - is barely recognizable to anyone who came of age spinning vinyl and taking requests by phone. Likewise, television has evolved from film to video and now digital.

We'll leave the macro-economies of the Internet and its often frightening impact on the business of journalism for another day, but suffice to say the online/mobile/social wave of change will similarly leave the media space virtually unrecognizable within a few short years. Assuming it even survives in any recognizable form at all.

Which is why when I come across old data types like these - 40-year-old film and a 25-year-old video camera - I have to pause and wonder how they pulled it off with such seemingly ancient, ponderous and expensive technology. Today's video journalists shoot digitally, edit in the field on iPads and upload from wherever they can get the strongest signal. I can't even begin to imagine what it would have been like to shoot on film (sparingly, lest you bust the budget) and then have to build in enough time to drive back to the newsroom, get it developed, then edit it all together.

I realize the journalists of tomorrow will look at our tablets and smartphones with an identical sense of wonder. And assuming the industry survives in some form into the distant future, I hope every generation has the opportunity to look back and be thankful to have the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. Because anything that advances the storytelling state-of-the-art deserves to be remembered fondly by those who tell the stories in the first place.

On loss, light, and Steinbeck's final work

"It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."
John Steinbeck
The Winter of Our Discontent

I didn't appreciate Steinbeck as much in high school, when I first studied his work, as I do now. Another sign of the inevitable creep of time, I suppose. And yet here I find myself slowly nodding in agreement: I'd rather have and lose than never have in the first place.

That's just nuts

I have no explanation for this photo of peanuts beyond the simple fact that not everything needs an explanation. Life is short, and I'd hate to think I had missed an opportunity to be happily frivolous.

The question, then, is how are YOU are going to be happily frivolous, as well? Do tell...

Data from outer space

Safe travels, Commander Kelly
London, ON
March 2016
For more data-infused goodness, head here

The other day, I sat in the cozy comfort of my home office and watched the utterly surreal sight you see here of three spaceman helping three other spaceman get into their spaceship.

A few hours later, their Soyuz craft departed the International Space Station and fired its rockets to lose  286 mph of velocity and drop the far side of its orbit deep into the atmosphere. Not long thereafter, said Soyuz plunged through the atmosphere, trailing superhot plasma in its wake, and then the ship settled safely into a rocket-assisted landing on the Kazakh steppe. After almost a year in orbit, U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and his fellow #YearInSpace cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko as well as Sergey Volkov, were finally back on the planet.

As routine as these flights seem to have become, I still - and likely always will - view them as nothing short of unreal. The building blocks of establishing human life on another planet are being built right here, right now, and we get to watch it in breathtaking HD from the comfort of home.

In a sense, the screen grab you see here is just data. Pixels on a screen. A video like so many others that we'll watch today and every day. But this data is special. It came 320 km above our heads, from a ship flying at 28,000 km/h through the most hostile environment humans have ever dared explore. It's been massaged and shared just so, through an impossibly complex global network that's existed in its current form for fewer years than most of us have been alive. And it finally makes it into our homes, and allows us witness history.

We live in an incredible age. Moments like this remind me of the need to stop what we're doing every once in a while and drink in the wonder of it all.

On the flip side of sorrow

"Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Yin. Yang. How do you know what happiness feels like without having experienced its polar opposite first?

Facebook's new emojis go beyond the "Like"

After months of testing, Facebook took the wraps off of its new "Reactions" emojis this week, and as expected the Internet melted down.

Users have complained for years that "Like" wasn't always an appropriate way to express non-verbal emotion - for example, when your friend's pet just died or she lost her job. So Facebook has finally expanded the list of emojis available to users. In addition to the traditional Like, users can now click on a Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry emoji. too.

After piloting the new emojis in Ireland, Span and Chile, they've been rolled out globally on both the Facebook.com website and in its mobile apps. You'll want to update your mobile app to take advantage of the new capability.

Using them is fairly simple: Just long-press over the bottom of a post on mobile (or hover over it with your mouse on a desktop browser.) A panel with the six emoji options pops up. Select the one you want and voila, you're done! Notifications throughout Facebook have been updated to reflect the number of "Reactions" to a given post, and Facebook displays how many of each a given update has received.

On the surface this seems like a simple extension of the Likes that we've been using for a few years. But behind the scenes, there's a longer-term plan.

Facebook says it "counts" all of the new emojis as Likes. For now. But that doesn't mean that over time it won't start tracking them individually - and then using that knowledge to more closely target ads and other marketing. The fact that Likes (and Wows, and Angry, and...) exist off of Facebook, on partner sites, gives Facebook another powerful avenue to collect user data.

That data is lucrative, and these new emoji are little more than a long-term data play. That's smart business, and we should never be under the illusion that Facebook is doing this to be nice. Facebook is always focused on growing audience, deepening engagement and selling the results to advertisers.

With this firmly in mind, this is another brilliant move by the company to keep us in its world for more time, and to interact with it, and each other, more profoundly.

Thematic Photographic 367 - Data

Look it up
London, ON
January 2016

A long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, we didn't have computers. Or Google. Or smartphones. Or anything remotely electronic, connected or wireless. Or even wired. Man, the bad old days were pretty boring.

Databases were made of paper, and they took up huge swaths of office floorspace. The bigger and taller they were, the more impressive they seemed. Or so that's what we were led to believe.

The tech revolution has, of course, rendered file cabinets, file cards and other forms of physical data management as obsolete as the secretaries and office clerks who once mastered them. Today's databases are virtual, intelligent, blindingly fast and so much more capable.

All well and good, but they don't invite you to explore history like the old paper-based methods once did. Or, still do. Like this card-based system that once served as a catalog of televised video content. Once a staple of local television, I don't think this particular database has been added to in years. Still, I often pause as I walk past and flip through a page or two to remind myself that data once looked and felt very different. No command prompt or blinking cursor will ever be as inviting as these dusty, manual-typewritten pages.

Your turn: This week's Thematic theme is data. There are oh so many ways you can make this real, and I can't wait to see how you interpret it. As always, take a picture that evokes the theme and share it to your website or blog. Leave a comment here letting everyone know where to find it. Visit other participants, and feel free to share additional themed photos through the rest of the week. If you'd like to learn more about how Thematic works, click here. Otherwise, have fun shooting and sharing!
   

TV's next chapter: Pick and play comes to Canada

If you're Canadian, then mark tomorrow, March 1st, on your calendar. That's the day when Canadian cable and satellite distributors are required by the national broadcast regulator to make $25 entry-level packages - so-called "Skinny Basic" - available to subscribers.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) ruled last year that television service providers would have to make the low-cost packages available no later than March 1, 2016. By December of this year, consumers who want more than just the basic package of local and regional stations, public interest channels, education outlets and community channels and services will be able to subscribe to additional channels a la carte as well as via small, affordable packages. If you're happy with what you're already subscribed to, you'll be able to keep that, as well: No one's being forced to change anything.

Leading up to tomorrow's deadline, the cable and satellite distributors were somewhat low-key about these changes, largely because a mass migration of subscribers to cheaper packages could potentially have a significant impact to their bottom line. Bell quietly updated its offerings over the weekend, while Rogers had its plans leaked on Reddit last week.

If you're expecting a massive discount, however, keep dreaming, as the availability of less expensive entry-level offerings won't necessarily lower consumers' bills. If you have a taste for steak when it comes to your TV choices - say, specialty movie networks and sports packages - then don't expect to suddenly be paying hamburger prices. As always, good entertainment will cost you.

And there could be other costs, as well. Removing the protective coverage of bundling - along with its guaranteed revenue streams for normally low-demand channels which would otherwise have difficulty selling themselves to a mass audience in a completely free market - could force the price of individual channels up, in some cases significantly. It could also result in a number of more niche-focused channels going dark. Either way, we must be careful what we wish for, because when we get it, it may not be everything we had originally hoped.

I was quoted in a piece by Christopher Reynolds for the Toronto Star, Bell’s TV Starter package is now only $25 — but will anyone want it?

I also discussed it with Marci Ien on CTV's Canada AM earlier this morning. Here's the link to the interview. Here's another one because, you know, redundancy.

The CTV National News included a clip in a report by Richard Madan. Video here. CTV London ran a clip in its 6 p.m. newscast, as part of a report by Sean Irvine. Newscast video here. Report video here.

Your turn: Have you cut the chord to cable or satellite? What does the future of TV look like in your house?

Apple blinks on Error 53

Earlier this month, I shared the story of Apple's Error 53 problem, where thousands of iPhone and iPad owners had their devices "bricked" - in other words, turned into useless doorstoppers - after they had their broken screens replaced at non-Apple-authorized repair shops, and then upgraded to iOS9. Disgruntled owners were considering legal action against the tech giant in both the U.S. and UK.

Well, those lawsuits may have to wait a while, because Apple has had a change of heart. Following a wave of online anger over the company's position. Apple introduced an update to iOS - version 9.2.1 - that fixes the affected devices. It also released a statement to the influential tech blog, TechCrunch:

"Some customers’ devices are showing ‘Connect to iTunes’ after attempting an iOS update or a restore from iTunes on a Mac or PC. This reports as an Error 53 in iTunes and appears when a device fails a security test. This test was designed to check whether Touch ID works properly before the device leaves the factory. 

Today, Apple released a software update that allows customers who have encountered this error message to successfully restore their device using iTunes on a Mac or PC. 

We apologize for any inconvenience, this was designed to be a factory test and was not intended to affect customers. Customers who paid for an out-of-warranty replacement of their device based on this issue should contact AppleCare about a reimbursement."

The company says affected users must apply the iOS 9.2.1 update by physically connecting it to a computer with iTunes. Wireless updates will not work in this case. So if you don't normally tether your device to a computer, you'll have to grab a cable and find a library.

The only other caveat is the TouchID login-with-your-fingerprint capability will not be re-enabled on devices that have third-party screens/home buttons. But at least Apple's offering users a way out, which is light-years ahead of where it was when this story first broke.

Now, if only it could extricate itself from the FBI/privacy/San Bernardino investigation mess just as easily. I'll keep following that one. Watch this space for more.

The Montreal Canadiens learn a hard Twitter lesson

Disclosure: I'm originally from Montreal, and I root for the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. I wouldn't call myself a superfan or anything remotely approaching that level of commitment - I'd rather play a sport than watch it - but when you grow up in a city that's home to such a storied franchise, it's hard to let go even after you move away.

But enough about me. Why am I sharing my deepest and darkest hockey fandom secret? Because my beloved Habs had a rough time on Twitter last week. Come with me and I'll explain:

The team wanted to do something nice for their fans to mark the 1 millionth follower to their Twitter account, @CanadiensMTL. So they tweeted their fans to let them know if they tweeted the hashtag #CanadiensMTL1M, they would receive an autotweet in response, complete with a picture of a Habs jersey with their customized Twitter handle.

Unfortunately, the process was automated, and before long, trolls from racist and profanity-laden Twitter accounts - including @ILoveISIS and some we can't even talk about on a family-friendly blog - began sharing the resulting Habs jersey pics online.

As background, there are lots of Twitter accounts set up by trolls that monitor Twitter for this kind of thing, and will automatically respond to hashtag-based contests with the intent of reaching a wider audience with their unique form of bile. Machine talking to machine: It's quite the modern twist on online vandalism.

There are indeed filters to keep “bad” words out and prevent them from being retweeted, but the trolls easily get around the filters by changing a letter here or a letter there, or substituting the occasional number in - i.e. a 3 instead of an E, or a 1 instead of an I. It’s a huge risk of automation, and the Habs simply didn’t anticipate it. The mortified Canadiens hockey club soon shut the campaign down, but not before the damage had gone viral. The team later apologized.

Interestingly, the same thing happened to the New England Patriots a year ago November. You'd think professional sports teams would do more due diligence before launching Twitter campaigns like this, but you'd be sadly mistaken.

On art. And therapy.

"Art does not discriminate; there is no wrong nor right. Art allows us to be free, escape from hardship even for a short time. Art is therapy for the soul."
Matteo Charles

So please don't mind if I grab this camera over here and head out to make some more. Art as therapy. Who would have thought?

More importantly, who's with me?

Forgotten: Vertical AND Horizontal Hold

Firmly analog
London, ON
January 2016

We're often so busy keeping an eye on new and future technologies that we tend to forget about the stuff that's no longer with us. When things that were once staples of everyday life fall off the back of the modernist treadmill, they tend to do so not with a whimper, but rather in complete silence.

It often takes us years to realize they're gone - if we ever realize it at all.

Which brings me to the vertical hold control and its closely related and not-quite-as-famous sister, horizontal hold. We hardly knew you.

Your turn: Vanished technology...aaaaaand GO!

3 years on...

Three years ago today, my wife lost her mom. It's hard to believe it's been that long, as it still feels like yesterday, still feels unreal, still feels as if it's a bad dream from which we'll eventually wake up.

Sadly, it's no dream, and sadly there's no waking up from the stark reality of the person responsible for your being on this planet no longer being there with you. We all know that life isn't forever, but that doesn't make losing a parent any easier to accept.

I often read the obits from back home in Montreal. It's my strange way of staying connected to the place where I grew up and the people who made it what it was. I used to cringe at what people would write as messages of condolence. They seemed like cookie-cutter, cut-and-paste messages, designed more to check off a To Do list entry than really make a difference in the lives of those left behind.

But in the years since, I've somewhat softened my attitude. As much as the writer in me would like to critique the ridiculous banality of most condolence notices, I just can't. That's because there really are no words. And even the writers among us can never come up with the right combination of words and phrases. It's hard to know what to say. Words don't fix this, don't fill the void, and don't get us back to where we once were. They're powerless to actually do much of anything, yet they're often the only thing we have.

This isn't something you ever truly get over. You don't heal from it, and you never reach a point where you're "done" grieving. You learn to live within a radically altered reality, where questions remain unanswered and the myriad relationships left behind continue to evolve in different directions. Three years on, the crowds of people who packed the cemetery and shiva house have long since dissipated. The chaos of those first few days, where her not being there seemed beyond unreal, has long since settled into something very different. On the surface, it seems...normal. But we all know it isn't. There's an emptiness that never really goes away, a sense of incompleteness, that there could have, should have been more.

And you learn to connect more tightly to the important people around you. Because in the end all we have is time, and if my mother-in-law taught my wife one thing (she taught her many things, of course, but humor me while I clumsily make this point) it was to cherish family in all its forms, and to grab onto every opportunity to create moments that matter.

And every day I watch my wife and realize she learned her mother's lessons so incredibly well. She continues to make moments, continues to connect us, continues to revolve the lives of our family and friends around home and community - just like her mom taught her. We are who we are because of what's been passed down and carried forward. One life continues to imprint others long after it ends. Which, I guess, is ample validation of a life well lived.

I wish I had more than words to offer my wife, today and every day. But for now, words - and time - will have to do. I miss you, Mom.

Apple's Tim Cook to FBI: "Bite me."

There's a titanic battle shaping up between the world's largest tech company and the top law enforcement agency in the U.S. It's Apple vs. the FBI, and I'd suggest you make some popcorn and pull up a seat.

The issue: When Sayed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 co-workers in San Bernardino, California in December, he left behind an iPhone that authorities think might contain clues to the couple's motives and activities leading up to the massacre. Unfortunately for the FBI, the iPhone is locked by a four-digit PIN, and it has only ten tries before the device, as a security feature, bricks itself and becomes unrecoverable. The FBI has obtained a court order requiring Apple to provide a way in - a so-called "back door"

Apple says such a back door does not currently exist. The company, with enough engineering effort, can very well build such a back door (think of it as a master key.) But by handing the resulting technology over to the FBI, it puts end user security at great risk in the event that it falls into the wrong hands. Given how frequently USB drives and laptops loaded with private information are stolen from the trunks of parked cars, it's reasonable to question the FBI's assurances that it'll never be compromised. History suggests it will be.

Apple's response: CEO Tim Cook, in a posting to the Apple website, says if it complies with the court order to help the FBI break into the San Bernardino shooters’ iPhone, it will set a precedent for future cases like this. He calls the request “dangerous” and “chilling”. While company engineers complied with FBI requests in the days after the December attack, Cook says the current order - gain physical access to a locked iPhone - goes too far.

The FBI's defence: The bureau promises the tools - think of them as something like a master key for encrypted devices like the iPhone and iPad - won’t fall into the wrong hands. History suggests otherwise: hackers, crooks and thieves eventually get their hands on tools like this, and the never-ending cops-and-robbers battle goes on.

The context: All this comes just a couple of years after the big NSA scandal, where the government security agency was busted for wantonly snooping on a wide range of devices and networks owned/used by innocent civilians and companies. Tech companies were widely criticized for “rolling over” and simply handing over the keys to the kingdom. They denied being complicit in citizen-spying, but the perception has stuck, and Tim Cook’s stand in this case could at least be partially designed to show how Big Tech is not going to blindly follow government orders.

Apple is already receiving support from other major tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft. None of them wants to be seen as being "soft" in the eyes of consumers. In many respects, this has as much to do with PR as it does security.

As you can imagine, this has been the leading tech story of the week, and it has implications that extend well beyond the tech space, and well beyond America's borders. At issue: Big Government's Big Brother-like ability to track our every online move, and Big Technology's role in either allowing it to happen, or drawing a line in the sand.

We all want to be protected, but I'm guessing not at the expense of our personal freedoms. We all want to prevent the next terrorist attack, but not if it means sacrificing our privacy. Clearly, balance is needed.

Your turn: Where do you stand? Who's right? Wrong? Why? How does this get solved?

Update: I discussed this with CTV News Channel. Link here.

Error 53, and why Apple isn't getting a Christmas card this year

Another day, another Big Tech Company behaving badly. Come along for the ride, shall we?

Who this affects: Owners of relatively recent Apple iPhones and iPads that have the Touch ID fingerprint scanner/home button (iPhone 5s and newer, and iPad Air 2 and Mini 3 and newer.)

The problem: If you've broken your screen and had it repaired by a non-authorized repair shop, you'll want to pay attention. If the Touch ID component - which is part of the screen assembly - is not an Apple-authorized part, then the device will lock up with something called at Error 53 when it is later upgraded to iOS9. That's because iOS9 checks all the hardware, and if the Touch ID module isn't recognized, it deliberately locks the device as a security measure.

The real problem: Error 53 basically "bricks" the device, turning it into a very expensive - and useless - doorstopper. Data and apps are lost, and it cannot be recovered or reset. Users must buy a new device.

What it means: While Apple claims its policy is aimed at maximizing the security of its products - it essentially wants to make it difficult-to-impossible for the Touch ID sensor to be replaced by something less secure, that might allow hackers to gain access to the device - the cynic in me sees this as a huge cash grab.

The net effect will be to, ah, encourage iPhone and iPad owners to seek repairs from the Apple Store or similarly authorized repair outlets - which is more expensive and not always convenient or even possible for customers who live away from major urban centres.

It's as if Toyota, GM and Honda decided to "encourage" owners to bring their cars ONLY to the dealer by threatening to leave them stranded permanently by the side of the road with a destroyed engine if they dared get their oil changed by the friendly neighborhood mechanic. That kind of consumerist bullying wouldn't stand in the automotive industry, and it shouldn't stand here, either.

The issue has caused thousands of devices to be essentially destroyed - admittedly a relatively small number considering Apple sold 75 million iPhones last quarter. But already lawyers in the U.S. and the UK are gearing up to launch class action lawsuits against Apple.

In the meantime, if you have a relatively new iPhone or iPad and your screen breaks, be very careful about where you bring it to be fixed. Although it'll probably cost you more for an off-warranty repair, stick to an Apple Store or an Apple-authorized retailer or repair outlet, just to be safe. If you've already had your device repaired, you may want to hold off on upgrading to iOS9 until this whole mess is cleaned up.

Your turn: Does this tick you off as much as it ticks me off?