A round of drinks for all my friends! I just got another raise! This is my second salary increase in three months.

Alright, so it's a bit of a smaller increase this time around. My salary went up by about 0.06%, due to an adjustment reflecting an error in the way increases were processed at the end of the previous fiscal year. But what the heck. It's still something to celebrate! I mean come on -- I'm certainly not going to be bringing in raises on the basis of merit, so I might as well look forward to more bureaucratic mix-ups.

There's a payphone in my building, almost directly beneath my office. Recently, I noticed that the following advertisement was printed just over the phone:

No fading signals.
No dying batteries.
No embarrassing ringtones.

Bell payphones are the easy and affordable way to stay connected.

Obviously, a comparison is being made with cellphones. But does this advertising campaign made any sense whatsoever? Does Bell believe that clever advertising will successfully lure cellphone users over to payphones as an alternative? I guess I could understand the approach if there were a precedent, if they were finding that some cellphone users had abandoned them in favour of payphones, and wanted to attract more of that market. Of course, that's highly doubtful. Really, payphones and cellphones aren't even in competition; I believe they're used by different people, and for different reasons. They even say so themselves: "no embarrassing ringtones" emphasizes that you can't practically use a payphone to receive a call! I don't own a cellphone, but I can't deny that they're more functional, more practical, and arguably cheaper (depending on your phone habits) than payphones. And heck -- when they can be made smaller and lighter than a quarter, payphones will even lose the size/weight advantage.

I understand Bell's desire to keep payphones relevant despite the ubiquity of the cellphone. It just seems like they're not going about it in the right way. I don't know which market is most likely to be influenced by pro-payphone advertising, but it's certainly not the legions of people walking around yakking into thin air.

Spell-checkers are useful, but they're not a panacea. I tend to have pretty good spelling, so I almost never use one. I'd rather catch spelling errors via careful proofreading than by magic.

I mention this only because I couldn't pass up on recording a paragraph from a CNN article:

One masked militant read a stamen denouncing the actions by al-Zarqawi and his followers as hurtful to Iraq, particularly the kidnapping of foreigners.

I'm not sure exactly what's involved in reading a stamen. I assume it's a kind of fortune telling, akin to reading tea leaves in the bottom of a cup. I suppose you could try it in the comfort of your own home with some saffron.

The article continues:

The group has called for the killing of the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi if he doesn't leave Iraq.

Do you think they'll attack with pistils blazing?