BenVimes

There are lots of reasons for women to keep their maiden name. In the case of my wife, she had two good ones:

1. She didn't want to become disassociated from her scientific publications.

2. She didn't want to complicate or redo any immigration paperwork.

That I will never enjoy the taste of wine.

I figured out I would never like coffee in my teens, and had the same realization about beer in my 20s.

But it wasn't until this year, in my mid-thirties, that I finally accepted that I don't like the taste of wine and probably never will. After years of trying the full spectrum of wines, I had to admit that it wasn't the "notes" that were turning me off, nor was it a problem with the quality of the wine. It was the fundamental "wine-ness" that I disliked, the same as I don't like the "beer-ness" of beer or the "coffee-ness" of coffee.

I dunno, I didn't have much of a problem with them unless my hands were wet. Occasionally couldn't make the triple-tap work, and maybe some issues with accidentally adjusting the volume. I found the "push and hold to play notifications" function to be super reliable, though.

Meanwhile, Google's like, "We're removing the ability to silently check your notifications using your Pixel Buds. You have to use the voice command now. No, we don't care that you primarily use them in public spaces. And we really don't care that our voice recognition has a 15% success rate."

The emotional part of my brain is telling me to buy this ASAP, because the N64 was such a formative part of my adolescence.

The logical part of my brain is reminding me of all my other nostalgia-fueled purchases that subsequently failed to spark the joy of youth.

I think that was Kent Hovind, not Ken Ham.

Nah, just the sad message of "Pretty please love me (because we sunk a bunch of money into this)."

One of the things I initially liked about Pixels was that I could uninstall/disable a lot of the proprietary garbage that would be mandatory on other phones. But now it looks like Google is abandoning that flexibility in favour of shoehorning Gemini into everything.

My only interaction with Gemini so far was telling it to kick rocks when it sent me an unsolicited text message. I also barely use Assistant to begin with. So once my current phone dies, I guess I'll have to find something new.

Here's the story.

The actual monetary loss to Air Canada (known affectionately as Fuckstick Flights Inc.) was insignificant, but the PR was bad.

Then again, I can't remember the last time AC had positive press. Before that they forced a guy with cerebral palsy to drag himself off the plane.

I grew up in southern Ontario, and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure this out. I heard the acronym daily as my parents listened to CFRB, but it didn't click until I was almost 20.

Furthermore, there is an option to destroy the special "gift" if you can resist accepting it. However, all you get for doing so is a few brief lines from the Emperor. Your companions don't seem to notice, and there isn't even an quest log update.

I'll fully admit to being completely ignorant about voting the first time I did it. I was politically disengaged for moody teenager reasons, but my parents forced me to go to the polling station anyway. I didn't care to vote for any of the candidates, but was also worried that I would get in trouble if I spoiled my ballot because I hadn't paid attention in civics (again, for moody teenager reasons).