According to a commercial I keep seeing, if I get my car insurance from a certain provider (which I don't) and install their phone app, it will automatically detect if I'm in a collision and presumably dispatch help. Very nice of them. And what other information are they gathering and reporting?
(In general: if you need to submit claims so often that a phone app would be a significant convenience, you're about to be declared an uninsurable risk).

Enjoying a, um, rustic evening in Kanata.

Is there some recent rule of etiquette (unknown to us boomers) that it's rude to ring the doorbell? We keep getting people coming to pick up giveaway stuff, who knock quietly, or send FB messages(!), when there's a nice illuminated button right there, installed for the express purpose of alerting us to the fact that they're here!

Yesterday I got a beg letter from the Ontario NDP, wanting $$ for the upcoming election. Today I got a similar one from the Ontario Greens. Apparently, #CanadaPost is still backed up. (We also got a card mailed from the US, postmarked Feb 7).

This week in #Enshittification of technology: My tablet (Lenovo Android) updated last night (OK, needs to do that every so often) and this morning there was a notification from the "AppManager" about "Completing your tablet setup" (something like that). It wouldn't let me just swipe it away, so I tapped it, and it said it was finding "recommended apps" to install, the result being a list of a dozen or so games and shopping apps. There is no way in HELL I'm allowing this garbageware on my device, but there was no "refuse" option, only "install". I went back to the home screen, but the notification was still there, still undismissable. Eventually, I managed to find a place where I could disable notifications from AppManager, which made it go away. I don't know if this #spambot was put there by Lenovo or Android support, but it's fucking sleazy and outright coercive.
I can't find anything about this online.

From this AM's Costo run:
1) Bought two bottles of Quebec cider, because we're boycotting Florida OJ until some sort of sanity returns.
2) Overheard in passing: "Do we need more Corona? No, wait, that's American..."
#BoycottAmerica #BuyCanadian

A couple of PSAs:
1) If you smell something while you're running a portable heater, *investigate it*. Note: do not assume the trouble is in the immediate vicinity of the heater. This outlet was about four meters away, in another room -- but on the same circuit, and electrically upstream of where the heater was plugged in.
2) If you have an older house, consider replacing the first outlet on the circuit with an AFCI model, on any circuit supplying bedrooms. (I believe newer houses have AFCIs at the breaker panel, but I don't know when the code was changed -- after 1981, anyway).

Last rose of the year. It survived the frost the other night, so I clipped it and brought it inside.