A cautionary iTunes tale (perhaps usefully illustrative)

About a year ago Bruce alerted me to the existence of the Audioengine W3 Wireless Audio Adaptor, conceptually the very thing I'd been looking for. The price was right, so I found a seller in Ontario and bought one.
The W3 consists of two parts: one you plug into a USB port on your computer, the other is connected to the amplifier of your stereo system. It turns your computer into an excellent, high-fidelity, wireless music server.
To get our extensive CD collection into the (160 gig) small iMac in a “lossless” format (ALAC, a proprietary Apple format) I bought a 1TB external drive, connected iTunes to it, and started processing CDs. I was at the time not very familiar with iTunes, but did know that it functioned with “playlists”, so reasoned that if I turned every CD into a playlist and identified each playlist with the number in the catalogue I've been keeping forever, I'd have the equivalent of our entire CD library literally at my fingertips.
And that's actually how it turned out.
Better yet, Sandy's iPad and iPhone could be made to control the entire system remotely, which is spectacular and even useful... but that's not what this post is about.
What it is about is how I managed to screw up a perfectly competent, functioning system, and what I discovered while restoring it. (Which, as you will see, I haven't completed yet, and won't, for weeks.)

The saga started when I was assembling some music files that I wanted to send. I'd noticed iTunes had an export function, so I thought: why not get iTunes to export those files?
Having done that, I discovered that I'd actually exported the playlists rather than the music, but before I'd properly processed this fact, I'd managed to corrupt the file. Still don't know how.
I cursed myself for not getting around to backing up the iMac's files, especially as Time Machine makes this dead simple, and all our other computers are backed up.
However, that meant re-doing the entire playlist file, a significant undertaking.
Next day I was already into the “B”s when I thought I should probably attach an external hard drive and fire up Time Machine.
Unfortunately, there are only 3 USB ports on the iMac, and all of them were in use.
Fortunately, we have a powered USB desktop hub, with 4 extra ports.
Unfortunately, it popped out of the computer's port while I was fiddling with the back of the computer, plugging and unplugging, while the iTunes external drive was attached.
That drive subsequently disappeared from its place on the desktop.
Disk Utility revealed that the drive was corrupted, and needed re-formatting.
You cannot reformat without erasing the contents, and for obvious reasons I did not want to process nearly 500 gigs worth of music files over again.
Annoying, but no particular problem, I thought: the music files were backed up on our system's Network Attached Storage, a small server available to all our computers.
I checked: while that NAS had many music files on it (and works quite well as a music server, but has limitations) in total it contained fewer than 300 gig, whereas the defective drive used 465 gig. 
Clearly, there was something wrong, and I wasn't prepared to risk losing even more files.
Time to try the Mac's Disk Utility's “recover” function: 5 hours later my latent suspicions were confirmed; all that was recovered was the defective disk, so no joy.
I decided I had to buy a recovery program for Mac.
Once installed, it ground away for over 12 hours -- happily mostly at night -- but did recover the music files.
So I reformatted the original music disk, got the computer to copy the recovered files onto it, and 5 hours later reconnected it to iTunes, then added the files to its library.
I started on re-creating the playlists, and instantly discovered that, according to the iTunes library, I now had two copies of every track, one functional and the other not. While that information didn't take up much room, it would make creating every playlist a nightmare.
So I trashed all the iTunes files (except for those recordings bought from the iTunes store, which appear automatically) and started over, connecting the disk to iTunes, then adding the files on it to the library.

And that's where I am at present. Time Machine is going to spend the next few hours backing everything up, and then I get to create some playlists...

Senate of Canada: an incremental improvement

The Senate of Canada needs to be abolished. Of this I have no doubt.
Furthermore, that is the long-held position of the NDP, one of the principal reasons I support that party.
But the NDP has an Achilles' heel on this subject: no senators plus, to paraphrase Otto von Bismark's tested observation, “politics is the art of the possible.”
Those two facts should make party spokesmen and commentators pause before ripping the Liberals and Justin Trudeau for removing 32 Liberal-appointed  senators from the Liberal caucus.
Here's why:
NDPers spouting the party line that the Liberal initiative doesn't address the real issue are not incorrect, but do overlook the fact that, given the requirements of Canada's Constitution, we're unlikely to see the end of the Senate in our lifetime. Getting the agreement of seven provinces representing at least 50% of the population is simply too steep a mountain to climb, and short of revolution, there are no other options.
So abolition simply isn't going to happen, at least, not in any foreseeable future, not even with a majority NDP government. (I love Thomas Mulcair's assertion that, as prime Minister, he wouldn't appoint a single senator. But does anyone believe the NDP would be in power long enough to empty the Senate?)
This implies that, if we are to be relevant on this issue, we need to put some water in our wine and think reformation instead.
Of course Conservatives are also talking reformation, but their favourite reform involves an elected Senate, which would not only perpetuate an already dysfunctional institution, but also give it added legitimacy. It might even prove to be effective, thus giving the Reformers who morphed into the Conservatives two of their three “E”s.
But why would anyone support a Senate with real power and legitimacy in which the Atlantic provinces would have more seats than the entire western half of the country?
I trust the NDP to oppose an elected Senate even more vigorously than it opposes what we have.
(Odds are they won't have to: the Supreme Court is likely to point out that such a change would require a change in the Constitution, which makes an elected Senate just as unlikely as an abolished Senate.)
Which leaves what the Liberals have just done.
Their shot at reform is unlikely to make much immediate difference and is not without its problems. Removing Liberal senators from caucus doesn't stop them from being Liberals or voting as their Liberal brethern in the House do. Nor does it stop them from being unelected. It doesn't even stop them from forming their own Liberal caucus in the Senate. But it does cut the ties between the Liberal Party leader's office and the Senate, and I don't see how any New Democrat could argue that's a bad thing, especially given the relationship between our Prime Minister's office and the Senate.
Besides, if Trudeau really does get to institute his proposal of changing how Senators are chosen, over time the Senate's partisanship really will be diminished.
Again, I don't see why that's not an improvement over what we have presently.
Even if it's far from the ideal.
Frankly, I'd be more impressed with my party if its spokesmen weren't so blinded by Justin Trudeau's rise in the polls that they can't acknowledge an impressive, if incremental, first step.

Warning: potentially boring...

 ...at least, unless you're one of those fortunate people who have the time to spend hours (and sometimes days!) messing with computers.
As I am.
Anyway, on to the latest computer saga, revealed through (a somewhat modifed) email correspondence with a friend who is also my Linux guru:

I have a DVD that I wish to duplicate for several complex reasons involving the fact that we have too many computers featuring too many operating systems at our house. 
So I go looking for K9copy, which I've always used before, and find it unavailable in any of the Linux repositories. I subsequently find it online, but then discover I will have to "compile" the file, which is well beyond what I think I'm able to do. 
On reading the on-line forums, I discover that K3b will also serve, but there's a problem: the resulting .iso file is 7.7 gig, and my blank disks are 4.7, which is of course why K9copy (which shrinks as it extracts and then writes files)  has been so useful in the past.
I suppose I could shrink the file using DVD95, but that has created problems in the past and I'd still have to write the resulting file to a blank DVD.
Clearly, I'm meant to not copy DVDs.
On the other hand, today one can purchase two 16-gig flash drives for a mere $20, tax included.

I send, and carry on, expecting to just drop the .iso files onto the virtual flash drive now mounted on my desktop. And the saga continues in the next email, an hour or so later..:

I'd forgotten that FAT32 files (which is how most usb flash drives are initially formatted) max out at 4 gig. So I reformatted one drive to NTFS, which Linux will format and Mac will read. However, according to Dr. Google, Mac won't write to it.
So I thought I'd format the other on the Mac. Disk Utility offered several versions of "Mac OS extended (journalled)". I know from past experience that doesn't work in Linux. It also offered something called ex-FAT, which, again according to Dr. Google, does. Except that this requires installing a new repository in Linux, and when I tried to do that, my terminal assured me that such a repository could not be found.
Apparently it is possible to shut off journalling in Mac OS, but I don't know what the consequences would be so I'm not going there.
In any case, I do have the two .iso files installed on Sandy's iMac, and I do have them on a 16 Gig NTFS-formatted drive.
And I learned a bunch of stuff, some of it even useful.

That email had just been sent when I received:

Interesting. Back on 2013-04-27, in reply to my question about whether you could play (with VLC) .iso files made with K9Copy, you wrote:

K9copy seems to have disappeared from the repositories. So I used K3b
to create the iso, then DVD95 converter to create a burnable file,
then DiskCreator to burn the disk, which the VLC Media Player played
without issue. I'd prefer K9copy, but there you are.

To which I replied:

Damn. So I've been here before, and had forgotten the particulars.
Oh well, as I mentioned, USB flash drives have come down in price phenomenally, so I really no longer need to make DVDs for this purpose.

Letter to Honourable John Duncan

Dear Mr Duncan,

As a long-time BC Coast MP, and as a member of the Cabinet charged with deciding whether to permit Enbridge's plans to ship dilbit from Kitimat by enormous tanker to proceed, you are uniquely qualified to educate your fellow MPs on the subject.
I therefore ask you, on behalf of your electors, to speak up for us, our interests, and the coast where we are privileged to live.
As you well know, this issue crosses party lines for those of us living on the BC coast: we know that oil tankers in the unusually-hazardous waters of Hecate Strait and the Douglas Channel are potentially a recipe for the destruction of our way of life and economy, not to even mention the semi-pristine environment we currently enjoy.
You have undoubtedly seen the Jack Knox column in today's Times-Colonist. I draw your attention particularly to a portion of it where he nails the issue:

Here in B.C. — at least on the coast — the tale is told differently, and it has little to do with wanting more money or being anti-industry or anti-oil; most of us drive cars and know we need to get the fuel from somewhere. Nor is the story about global warming, or whether or not the oilsands are dirty, or even about the pipelines themselves. It’s about what happens to the oil after it hits salt water.
Simply put, people fear that adding 220 supertankers a year to the snotty waters of B.C.’s inner coast would be rolling the dice on another Exxon Valdez.   

I urge you, as a person of influence in your government and as our MP,  to make representations on this issue to the MPs from other parts of Canada who may not understand the depth of our opposition to Enbridge's plans, and to truly represent us, as you have promised to do so often in the past.
Yours very sincerely,

Dealing with: an embarrassment of mayors

Municipal voting results too frequently reward people who do not represent the majority of electors. The consequence can be a mayor frequently at loggerheads with his council, sometimes fatally. Some examples:
     Item: In Montreal just under 40% of registered electors vote. Denis Coderre becomes mayor of Montreal with 32% of the votes. There are 11 candidates; the top 4 get nearly 97% of them.
(Coderre, in spite of his narrow win, may yet prove to be a superb mayor. If that turns out to be the case, lucky Montreal! But the new mayor’s "Equipe Coderre" controls only a minority of seats, and it would be at least useful if he had a more solid claim on legitimacy.)
     Item: In Toronto Rob Ford won 47.11%. Since his win two years ago he’s done everything required to trash his reputation, yet could win the next mayoralty assuming his ‘base’ holds and enough people run against him to split the opposition vote.
     Item: In Campbell River’s last municipal election 30% of potential electors cast a ballot. Walter Jakeway, who then had no record in municipal politics, won with 37.79% over two former councillors, who got 37.25% and 16.93% respectively. Jakeway’s term has been less-than-impressive, but he has his fans and could win again if enough people run against him.

In each of these — and, frankly, the majority of mayoral elections in Canada — when there are a number of strong candidates and the vote is consequently split, the results frequently frustrate the actual wishes of the electorate.
Of course this also happens in provincial and federal elections (i.e. Team Harper winning only 39.6% of the vote, but achieving a majority government, largely because of three strong parties). That one, however appears impossible to resolve at present. Municipal politics, less influenced by party politics, should be easier to fix.

And I think there is a fix. It’s called the “Preferential Ballot”, and it’s used in elections in many (usually English-speaking) countries. 
To see how it works in a Canadian context, we could look at recent nominating conventions of the NDP and the Liberals, which both used a hybrid version suitable for voting by mail and in convention. Or we could look at BC in1952, when a more cumbersome version elected the WAC Bennett Social Credit government that lasted some 30 years. (That government wouldn’t have lasted nearly that long if the Socreds hadn’t dumped the preferential ballot as soon as they could!)
Here’s how it works for NDP Leadership conventions: Those attending Convention vote in the usual way. The home-based elector fills in a ballot, indicating at least a first choice and a second and even a third if desired. If a candidate scores over 50% on the first count, it’s all over. If no one does, the lowest-polling candidate(s) fall out. The Convention delegates vote again and the mailed/internet ballots showing them as first choice are recounted for second choice. And so on, until one of the candidates achieves 50% plus 1.
In municipal elections we already vote on a scanned ballot so, in these days of the computer, the count would be almost as instantaneous as at present.
I think there’s a good chance many of our municipalities would run better. At the very least, mayors would be able to claim they legitimately represent the majority.
It might even dull some voter cynicism, and encourage some of the currently-uninterested to exercise their franchise.
Which is democracy as it should be.

Political letters: May and Duncan

MP Elizabeth May wrote today, as she does from time-to-time.
Usually I'm not moved to action by such letters,  recognizing  them for the fundraising efforts they regularly are.
However, this one raised a very important point, pointing to continuing manipulation of the rules of the House of Commons by the Conservative Government, which make it difficult for her to do her job. She identified this rule change as "a motion to require that members, who are either independent or are members of recognized parties with fewer than 12 MPs, submit amendments to committee 48 hours prior to the start of clause by clause consideration of any bill" and demonstrated this was clearly aimed at her interventions in the past.
She further noted that the "Conservative approach, of rejecting any and all amendments while simultaneously abbreviating debate opportunities, is a perversion of the parliamentary process. It is a new and hyper-partisan approach to the legislative process."
And then, as expected, came the request to add my name and email address to a petition...appeals to fill Green Party coffers guaranteed to follow.
That said, I think she's right to be both offended and worried. And she's right that her privilege in the House is ultimately our privilege.
So I wrote a reply:

Ms May:
I am persuaded by your explanation of how the rights of individual MPs are being abridged by the governing Conservatives.
However, I will not put my name on a petition on the letterhead of the Green Party of Canada, as I do not support that party, either federally or provincially.
I will, however, write to John Duncan, my MP, and will add a copy to the Prime Minister and the Minister of State for Democratic Reform.
Sincerely,

And followed that with a letter to my MP:

Dear Minister Duncan,
I have just received a letter from Elizabeth May, MP, detailing the latest roadblock your party has put in her way, making it difficult for her to be an effective Member of Parliament.
She writes, "The Conservative approach, of rejecting any and all amendments while simultaneously abbreviating debate opportunities, is a perversion of the parliamentary process. It is a new and hyper-partisan approach to the legislative process."
Although I am not a supporter of her party, her arguments and examples make sense to me, as I would hope they make sense to you. As you served many years as an Opposition MP, I would hope that you would abhor anything that frustrates the job of such MPs, on the grounds that her Vancouver Island constituents deserve an effective voice just as much as your Vancouver Island constituents.
And I would hope you speak up accordingly.
Yours very sincerely,

Just the latest anti-democratic initiative from a government that claims the following:

Canada's commitment to open government is part of the federal government's efforts to foster greater openness and accountability, to provide Canadians with more opportunities to learn about and participate in government, to drive innovation and economic opportunities for all Canadians and, at the same time, create a more cost effective, efficient and responsive government.

The Ryder

The news has hardly broken, and already I'm fed up with the hand-wringing reporting.
Apparently Ryder Hesjedal was introduced to EPO doping by Danish cyclist and team-mate Michael Rasmussen.  In 2003.
This is news? Maybe in 2003 it would have been, but in 2013?
Does the fact that he may have doped in 2003, when he was an unknown mountain-biker trying to make the Canadian team, automatically mean we must assume he doped for the Giro d'Italia in 2012?
I'd be astonished if Hesjedal had been able to resist in 2003, when the testing was either non-existent or lax, and literally all competitive cyclists were either doping or not winning, and equally astonished if he hadn't been able to resist in 2012, when everybody suspected the top riders.
In fact, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be talking about this at all today if he hadn't doped in 2003, because almost none of us would know his name now!

(Reminds me of that scene in "The Greatest Story Ever Told", where the louche guy pretending to be the Devil is talking to Max von Sydow, who is pretending to be Jesus of Nazareth. The Devil, from his cave high up the mountain points out all the lands below, and tells Jesus all will be his, if only he changes Teams.
Jesus refuses.
But we all know how that turned out.)

Oct 31: I admire the way Hesjedal got out in front of this story.  The flak-catchers for the Unsavoury Mayor et al could benefit from taking note.
Not that the two cases are in any way comperable.

Mike Duffy's corner

The Canadian Senate, that bastion of pork-barrel privilege, is threatening to suspend, without pay, or benefits, or recourse, Senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and Patrick Brazeau, all Stephen Harper appointees.
Or, constitutionally-more-correctly, they were recent appointments by the Queen of Canada in Council, which for practical purposes means much the same thing.
They are, to various degrees, contesting this, although all the available evidence so far is that they are guilty of fairly outrageous piggery, even by the slippery standards of the Canadian Senate.
Therefore it is somewhat to my surprise that I find myself in Mike Duffy's corner.
Also Pamela Wallin's. Maybe even Patrick Brazeau's, although that's going to require rather more effort.
That doesn't mean I'm making an argument in favour of keeping the Senate as it is; quite the contrary: I'm a committed abolitionist.
Anyway, a status-quo Senate is not what's on offer, and what the senators are proposing wouldn't improve the Senate. Rather, what they propose to do would render it even more useless than it already is.
Imagine a Senate with a majority of hyper-partisan appointees in the mould of Duffy and Wallin who had the power to silence those inconvenient senators who didn't agree with that majority. Could anything be more redundant? The whole point of senators being appointed is that they cannot be silenced, unless, in the words of the Wikipedia entry, "…he or she fails to attend the Senate for two consecutive parliamentary sessions. Furthermore, senators lose their seats if they are found guilty of treason, an indictable offence, or any "infamous crime"; are declared bankrupt or insolvent; or cease to be qualified." None of the three the Senate proposes to suspend fit those criteria at present, and even if they did, it shouldn't be up to their fellow-senators to discipline them. Once appointed, any senator who continues to clear that low threshold is in until he or she either quits or turns 75.
That's the law, in spite of the fact that Stephen Harper extracted promises of resignation after 8 years from some present members.
So the Senate has no right to render them ineffective in the senate context, no matter how many orders or entreaties they get from the Prime Minister's office. Only the Queen or Her representative in Canada can sign those papers.
What I particularly appreciate about all this is that Stephen Harper came into office on promises to "reform" the Senate, on promises to make it more relevant. So far he has delivered only a partisan atrocity, an embarrassment of flag-waving Conservative cheerleaders even less relevant than the mostly-irrelevant Liberal majorities that preceded them.
So I'm with Mike, Pam, and maybe even Patrick: long may they be burrs under the Conservative saddle, long may they remind Mr Harper of why his nasty brand of politics is often corrosive, and long may they remind us why we'd be better off without not just them, but the entire institution.

A BC education: the reality

Number 2 daughter is going to UBC in the fall, to do her professional year.
These days that's not something I'd normally recommend: it's an expensive program, and the chance of landing a job in a reasonable time at the end is remote.
Except that she's English-French bilingual, and consequently almost guaranteed a public-school job in French Immersion when she has completed.
If she still wants it by then, having experienced the reality.
It's ironic that as she's taking steps to enter the profession, her brother-in-law (we'll call him Eric), married to our eldest, a French Immersion specialist, is taking steps to leave it.
Eric is in his mid-30's with a degree in physics and math, subjects he taught in the International Baccalaureate program at two International Schools. He returned to Canada four years ago, armed with the reputation and paperwork of a highly-effective, motivating, and motivated teacher, who also coached.
Neither he nor our daughter could get an interview in Campbell River that summer.
So they settled in Victoria, on the grounds that there were three school districts in the region, so chances of a job appeared better there than elsewhere on the Island.
Our daughter was interviewed over the summer and was on the Victoria Teacher On Call list when school started. She was in a job by mid-November, replacing a colleague on maternity leave, and hasn't looked back since.
Eric, on the other hand, couldn't get even an interview in Victoria, although everyone acknowledged that the district was seriously short of math and physics specialists. Apparently Victoria already had more TOCs on the list than the union was comfortable with. Fortunately, he eventually fluked into an interview in one of the other districts, and slowly started to gain BC experience and seniority.
He's had at least a part-time job in that district ever since the first year, but has taught his own subjects only occasionally: most semesters he's ended up mostly dealing with students who haven't completed their science and math courses in previous semesters.
And, of course, he coaches.
This semester he finally got to teach physics, replacing a colleague who was trying something else.
Then a couple of weeks ago he was advised once again to apply for a very-part-time job that had been posted for next fall, and they'd try to fill it up over the summer. He knew that meant more course-completion.
But Eric's not a special education teacher. He doesn't feel qualified, and finds the job both frustrating and soul-destroying.
Happily for him, he has options outside the school system, and he's going back to college to explore them.
He's not the only one who is frustrated: his principal expressed dismay that he couldn't place Eric more appropriately, and that he's about to lose a real asset to the school, a teacher who has qualifications and skills the school really needs. But the financial situation is such that the district cannot plan appropriately for next academic year, and seniority governs whom he can place where. His hands are tied.
And that's why I wouldn't recommend a professional year for most people.
Not in BC, anyway.

Signs from an election

When the campaign started in North Island I mentioned to my son that, judging from the signs, it looked to be all Claire Trevena in Campbell River, except for some empty lots.  He said, "That's not surprising. It's embarrassing to be a BCLiberal these days."
That didn't change for about two weeks, but shortly after the "debate" we started to see the occasional Facey lawn sign, and by the end of the campaign there were quite a few. Even so, the Trevena signs, all on private property, still outnumbered them about 5 to 1.
But it was an indication that things were going to be tighter than we could have predicted earlier in the campaign, and in the end the signs didn't even tell an accurate story:
Claire's margin of victory was down somewhat from last time,  50.7% for Claire (BCNDP), versus 42.16% for Facey (BCLiberal), and 7.14% for Bray (Conservative).
Once again, Campbell River went BCLiberal by a small margin.
Tellingly, Claire won big in the communities of the north and on the islands.

So what happened? I believe it's a different story in Campbell River than it is in the rest of the constituency.

Campbell River: I like the theory that what happend here is another manifestation of the "10-second Socred" phenomenon, a blast from the '50s and '60s, when we could never figure out why the between-elections-unpopular WAC Bennett was always re-elected with a majority, and why, once the election had passed, one could never find anyone who had voted for his party.
Apparently, in this election even the pipe dreams of the BCLiberal platform were more a more comfortable fit for many voters than the NDP promise of "Change for the better, one practical step at a time". This in spite of the still-unresolved BC Rail scandal, the HST debacle, the fantasy balanced budget, the culture of cronyism... and we could go on and on.
But there was more to it than that. The BCLiberal campaign slimed NDP leader Adrian Dix so vigorously that, by the end, BCLiberal partisans had no trouble publicly associating him with fraud. Some of that stuck.  In a similar vein, the Facey campaign distorted Claire's record and positions so thoroughly in its advertising that her advocacy for a Campbell River hospital morphed into a claim that the new hospital would be shelved if an NDP government was returned. Her work for the BBC turned into a "she's not from here" meme, and Catalyst closing the Elk Falls pulp mill magically became her fault. I don't think the print advertising to this effect made much of a difference, especially after the front-page story in the Courier-Islander that quoted Claire accusing Nick Facey of lying, but local radio ads on this theme, run just before the election, certainly changed some votes.
I wrote a Letter to the Editor of the Campbell River Mirror after the last Facey ad they published:  
As one of his former teachers, I'm pleased that Mr. Facey "thoroughly benefited" from the education he received in Campbell River.
However, it appears that he didn't always pay attention: I'll bet not one of his Social Studies teachers ever said to him, "It's fine to distort the record of a political opponent for political gain." He acquired that idea on his own.
In case he just missed the lesson, he should know that disagreement is is the lifeblood of democracy, but distortion is disrespectful of the system, and inevitably leads to cynicism and less participation.
Surely he isn't in favour of either!
It would have come out just after the election; unfortunately, they chose not to publish it.

Rest of the constituency: The story there is Claire's personal and ongoing relationships with the communities. Voters in the north know that Claire has really worked on their economic issues, like the Port Alice mill. The First Nations know from experience they have Claire's ear. And they really worry about the environment, about oil tankers, and climate change, and salmon, and the reckless attitude the BCLiberals have towards almost any development. 
That, and the voters there know Claire, who has represented them well for 8 years. By contrast, Facey was and is Campbell River, and so are almost all of his supporters.

And that's why Claire beat Facey by just over 2000 votes.

As for the provincial results... I predict it will be a long time before any party in BC will again treat BC voters like the rational adults we all claim we are.  Sad, really.