Saturday night, a friend and I were gearing up for a night of dancing.  She was over for a couple of drinks before we walked over to the club.  As we arrived at the door, I reached for my wallet to discover it was missing.  At some point during the 5-block walk from my place to the club, it slipped out of my pocket.  Damnit.  We traced our steps back in search of it, which took us through one of the sketchiest parts of town with tents of addicts pushing heroine through their veins.  I thought for certain that my wallet was found and its contents used to purchase a few 10-rocks while my i.d. was being sold for a final hit.  I went back up to our place to grab my passport and put it in a purse this time.  I was really annoyed with myself for being ridiculously stupid for putting my wallet in the barely-there, tiny pocket on the front of my jeans.  The wallet managed to inch its way out on the walk over.  I figured I must have lost it right away, so it might be in the hallways, the courtyard or worse, tent-alley.  Despite the stupidity, I managed to have a really good time dancing the night away.

When I arrived back home, Neil was already sleeping.  I was waiting for my friend to text message me that she was home and I noticed a blinking red light on our answering machine.  The message was from a neighbour on the 3rd floor explaining that he had found my wallet and had taken it up to his place for safe-keeping.  WOW!  Awesome!  Ecstatically, I woke Neil up to tell him the good news, he mumbled a few words and fell right back to sleep.  I went to sleep a very happy person.

There is a website that will analyze the content of a blog to determine whether or not the blog is written by a male or a female. Or course, being the curious little monkey that I am, I typed my website address into their entry field for the results. Their AI determined that my site was 65% male. Odd. A bit surprised by the result, I typed Neil’s website address into their entry field for his results. Their AI determined that Neil’s site was 57% female with the added detail that Neil’s site was “quite gender neutral”. I don’t know what to say about the incorrect results. I would like to know more information on their AI; it doesn’t seem so intelligent to me.

Gender Analyzer uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman. Behind the scene, a text classifier hosted over at uClassify.com has been trained on blogs written by men and women. In our lab it seems to works pretty well, we want to see how it performs on the web! We hope you like it!

The sacrifices made by our armed forces, their families and their friends. This day is particularly close to my heart and fears with a sister and brother-in-law both in the military. My sister just came home from her second tour in Afghanistan this September just as her husband trains for his third tour. Unfortunately, many others didn’t make it home this September, including a close friend of theirs. I might not support the political motivations that continue to threaten our troops, but I certainly support the troops, their families and their friends; I certainly don’t have the courage or determination to do their jobs.

Especially, when enjoying it mid-afternoon on a sunny, warm walk home after leaving the office early as a result of a power outage, on the eve of a statutory holiday. Shortly after 2:00pm, there was a loud POP outside my office window and a powering down of the lights and computers around the office. I was surprised that the three boxes under my desk were still running, as were the three monitors atop my desk. My office mate lost her power and sporadically many others along the dark hallways. I looked out across the back alley to the windows of the medical building as they mirrored my same quizzical expression backdropped by darkened computer screens and fading rooms. I suspected a block-wide outage and congregated with the rest of my colleagues in the lunch room. Our lunch room is particularly bright with its angled roof of glass and tall ceilings. I unfolded a paper and sat back to enjoy the daily news while others took hold of the foosball rods for a friendly game of mini-footie, or coaching an avid learner as he twist about on a Rubik’s Cube. Several minutes later, the CEO gathered the rest of the office to explain that it is unlikely that the power will return before 3:00pm, that we were welcomed to leave for the rest of the afternoon. As kind as that sounds, it is not without the expectation that lost time is expected to be made up. I will inquire about the lost power tomorrow to learn about its return and make up for any lost time AFTER that

Today could be a day that goes down in history as Americans line-up at the polls. I hope for an Obama win, but I’m not convinced that Americans won’t make the same mistake of voting in another Republican. Bush for two terms is evidence enough. Any predictions out there?