Author: James McNally

I Am Not A Spammer

I just had something disturbing happen to me. I received about a dozen “failed” emails back. The problem was, I’d never sent them. Someone is sending spam using my domain name. If you have come to my site to complain, you’re looking for somebody else. In fact, so am I…

UPDATE: This is also happening to Brad.

The Kid Stays In The Picture

The Kid Stays In The Picture (2002) tells Robert Evans‘ own story of his rise and fall as the head of production at Paramount Pictures, which during his tenure, produced such classic films as Rosemary’s Baby, Harold and Maude, and The Godfather. Based on his autobiography, it’s a self-congratulatory, innovative, and fascinating look at a Hollywood insider. After a disastrous decade in the 1980s, including a drug bust and rumours linking him to a murder, Evans is producing again, most recently for the successful romantic comedy How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.

The best part of the film, shown during the end credits, is a 1976 clip of Dustin Hoffman doing a spot-on imitation of Evans. Hilarious.

Employment Insurance for Windows

Government services are usually designed to be accessible to everyone. The blind, the deaf, and the lame can all apply for employment insurance benefits in their own government-assisted way. But not Macintosh users. Here’s the message that greeted me when I tried to apply for my benefits online:

Q: Why is the EI on-line application not compatible with Macintosh computers at the present time?

A: Knowing that the vast majority of the Canadian public access the Internet using PC (not Macintosh) computers, our priority is to deliver our on-line services on the platform of choice for the majority of Canadians. In the shortest amount of time while being cost effective, the current EI on-line application was developed to support Windows-based versions of Internet Explorer. The versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape that run on Macintosh computers are quite different from those supported on a Windows platform and therefore process JavaScript and XML differently.

Does this strike anyone else as just plain wrong? I’d love to send them a nasty email…

The funny part is that in Canada all services have to be provided in French as well as English. English is obviously the “platform of choice” for most Canadians but that doesn’t mean that they don’t support the minority, even when it means absolutely indecipherable URLs that include BOTH the English and the French acronyms for government departments.