Category: Random Musings

Hello, sorry for the late post. Had Easter dinner with the family. Largely enjoyable fare; turkey and such… and then I went to bed with a stomach ache… which, to be fair, was already a thing due to something I may have eaten the day before. And there’s a plumbing issue that needs to be resolved on Tuesday, so that’s fun.

Was going to do a video update today, but decided not to bother. Not in the mood and it’s a bit late. The video schedule on the State of The Blog should be up to date, though. Or we could change it again… maybe.

Reviews resume tomorrow via regular schedule.

Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-ceo-michael-rousseau-retires-9.7146886

On a more serious note, Air Canada CEO Michael Rosseau has announced plans to retire at the end of the year.

I’m assuming you’ve heard about the tragedy in LaGardia Airport with the Air Canada plane that crashed into a fire truck and cost the lives to its two pilots. Air Canada is a Canadian company based out of Montreal, which is in the province of Quebec. Canada has two official languages; English and French. When the CEO came out to express his condolences, he did so in English only. One of the pilots was Quebecois. The French speaking community, naturally, threw a fit and asked for his head. He delivered a written apology. Not good enough. Off with his head… and so he plans to step down later this year.

Naturally, prayers and wishes to the families of Antoine Forest and Mackenzie Gunther in this trying time.

I honestly wish that more effort was made in celebrating the lives of two pilots who went above and beyond the call of duty to keep their passengers safe… only to be overshadowed by what I feel are somewhat petty language issues. Every time I hear OLEF giving a notice to someone’s Instagram or a bad with Irish decorations, I roll my eyes and grimace. The morons running this government have no time to fix their potholes or fund their medical sectors to procure more top of the line equipment to deal with their sick, but they’ve no problems spending money on spies to see who’s speaking acceptable levels of French at their places of work.

With that said, Michael Rosseau had a previous language-related controversy back in 2021 that also involved him speaking no lick of French in his statement and people cried foul. He said he’d do better and stuck around, but now five years later and despite taking French immersion classes, he still couldn’t muster a few quick words in French… and he runs a major airline based out of a province whose only official language is French and anyone who doesn’t speak French deserves to die or something. Someone in that position, who’s getting paid loads of money to run that expansive business in Canada and can’t speak a lick of French… I’m sorry, but why is this guy allowed to be CEO?

It’s one thing if you’re a lowly worker down the food chain and you only speak a little of one or the other. It’s another thing when you’re the head of a national corporation and fluency in both official languages of Canada is not only required, but should be expected, especially if you have to issue a statement regarding prevailing circumstances. I’ve got nothing against the man personally; I’m sure he’s a swell guy, but him being piefaced over not speaking French five years ago and then doing so again despite claims to have taken courses… yeah, I can say that I’m more francophone that this guy is, and my French is just good enough to get by, but not enough for me to run Air Canada.

Moral of the story; if you’re gonna apply for a job and it requires fluency in both English and French, you’d better be fluent in both English and French.

I’ll post something happier later.

Noting the weather forecast up here after a bunch of snow hit, Friday is looking a bit warmer, Saturday hits us with showers, and Sunday goes into a deep freeze… and we’ll be a week away from Daylight Savings, which always a fun time, he lied.

Health-wise, I’ve been better. Got a bit more sleep this week, which is nice. I’ve even gone to bed before midnight, which is rare for me these days since I often take unwanted hours-long naps during the evening… fine for the weekend when I want to burn midnight oil on personal projects. Not so fine when you want, you know, sleep. The dog is better at sleeping than I am and she often gets spooked with all sorts of weird noises. Not all bad, I suppose.

In other news, it looks like Peace Keepers is going to be another evening upload tomorrow, as there’s a couple extra bits of footage I need to grab before putting aside the Switch for other projects. That Ataribox needs a bit of love.

I never watch the Super Bowl. I’m not a football fan. Never cared for football unless it was Tecmo Bowl back in the 90s and that was a brief sling before moving on and never looking back. The only reason I would consider watch would be for the commercials, but once I’ve learned that Canadian broadcasting rights and laws and whatnots prevent us from watching the commercials people actually want to watch, what was even the point?

Truth be told, Sunday was a pretty bad day for me as a whole. Wasn’t feeling all that great in the morning and then I fell asleep around six-ish, only to wake up at one in the morning… which is depressing. I did a couple quick things late at night before heading back to bed for a couple more hours before getting on with my day.

For what it’s worth, I’m feeling fine. I haven’t been feeling that much pain as of late, which is nice. I’ve gained a couple pounds, which is not so nice. Other than that… eh, I guess it could have been worse. But I’d like it to be actually better for once. Would be nice.

Remember the good ol’ days when Youtube had a functional layout that wasn’t all that fancy, but it was nice and customizable… and then they turned it into a layout that was far less customizable and was ugly… and nowhere near as functional, but it looked like Facebook because Google wanted their own Facebook-like social site that just ended up in the graveyard like all their other failed experiments?

Good times.

So about a month or so ago, Youtube updated their video player… which, to be fair, is still the same functional thing that it’s always been… but the layout is a little less mouse friendly. Back then, I can hover over the volume button and use the wheel to control the volume. Can’t really do that now with the embedded version of the player, which kinda sucks. Also, I’m not a fan of the button layouts. Before everything was on the bottom and it was nice and convenient; now everything is all over the place and it sucks.

Hey, Youtube. Not everything has to resemble your ultra-shitty mobile app that functions about as well as a Disney Plus streamer. You can keep the vintage stuff that works well and people will adapt… or maybe take the vintage stuff on the desktop that actually WORKS and stick it on your mobile app shit so that I can tolerate using that pile of shit.

Again, to be fair, Youtube’s app on devices like Apple or Switch is a fair bit better than Netflix, Disney Plus… the list goes on.

I may have gone a bit too far in places…

I’ll be going now…

Later.

Hello, kids. This is your wayward old fart who writes silly, irrelevant things on this here web log as well as occasionally craft silly videos that a very minute number of people watch for some reason that causes me to question their very sanity before thanking them for their continued followings.

And I would like to drop in and let you all know that things may be looking bleak right about now, but there are plenty of things to be positive about. And no matter what happens, if you put your minds to it, you can do anything you want in life.

Yeah… yeah…

Unless Jay Leno wants to do it too…

How long before he takes over this space?

I guess if you’ve been following the news, you know about a certain campaign that took place in South America this weekend. I don’t need to tell you what; you either know it or you can easily look it up because that’s been the biggest news story this past weekend.

I make it a point not to touch on worldwide international affairs on this blog because the whole point of this thing is to be a fun little place where we occasionally celebrate things of interest and crap on terrible things in the name of good fun. I steer away from points of controversy because that’s not my wheelhouse and that anything I say would get mixed up with the white noise that usually passes as “discourse” on the various online circles that these things are usually discussed.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of not knowing what to say. Other times, it’s a matter of not wanting to stir a pot that’s been stirred way too much and has gotten too volatile as a result. But most of the time, it’s simple a matter of my feelings on these matters being none of your business.

I discuss serious issues with people during face to face conversations. I’m not wasting my time discussing these issues on a platform where any moron can come aboard, take your words, and warp them to mean something different than what you meant to say. I have no problem wasting words on silly things like bashing on bad showrunners of popular franchises or talking about trivial things because that’s the whole point of this whole deal in the first place; it’s to get away from that noise in the real world.

Yes, I’ve touched on real world stuff before, but those have been rare occasions where I felt I had some proper thoughts and fears to convey. Do I have feelings on this matter? Sure. Am I conflicted? Kinda. Are my feelings on the matter any of your business?  Absolutely not. There are some things that I am willing to share with the limited audience reading this blog or watching these videos, but when it comes to other things, those I keep close to my sleeve or I discuss with other people that I know and in person. This online white noise regarding any political affair is not something that I feel comfortable or even fully equipped to contribute to without any of it being lost in the shuffle or worse, construed to fit someone else’s false narrative.

If you want someone to use their platform to discuss real world issues or promote causes that are meaningful to them, you’ve got your pick of the litter elsewhere. But for me, personally, I’d rather use this space to discuss the trivial things that interest me and bring some levity to a place that desperately needs it. And if this whole affair does indeed escalate, chances are we won’t be around to discuss things online or sharing stupid memes to discuss our frustrations.

This will be my only word on the matter.