Hey da Google, stop creeping my email!

So da Google has totally started creeping my email, and I don't like it.

I know that they have been basing ad choice on email content for some time, but this seemed somewhat passive and easy to ignore.

Recently the have stepped up the creep factor.

Tonight I was sending an email when I encountered a dialog box. The box wanted to know if I had intended to include attachments with my message (I had not). It then went on to say that I was being asked this question because I had used the phrase "I have included" in my message.

Holy crap da Google, at least let me send my messages before you start creeping my email. Now I feel as though I need to watch myself even when preparing my message, which isn't a particularly pleasant feeling. (The best/worst part of this is that da Google already knows that I have written this and criticized it - hopefully they will place conciliatory ads in my inbox).

A Few Quick Notes 122

-For the past few days we have been making up for the lack of rain we had in September. Skies have been generally overcast with intermittent rain.

-The heaters have been turned on in my building. This means that even with windows open I am uncomfortably hot. I wonder if we live in a building that heats at a uniform level all year, or if the level of heating is adjusted to outside temperatures.

-Moments ago I bought our apartment’s first plant, a basil plant. Hopefully in the coming weeks and months we can develop this trend, though I have no idea where this or any other plant might go. And as I like my plants to either bare fruit or be edible my options are more limited.

-As of a day or two ago McGill has changed there email service in such a way that no longer allows me to import my messages to my Gmail inbox. The reason is supposedly security. A more reasonable explanation might be that things were to easy before, students should need to work to access any ‘official’ communication.

-Tonight is another work night. Fortunately I should be able to punch out early and have a few drinks with the library school types, or at least those that are still there at 10:30 or so.

A Few Quick Notes 69

-Another winter’s day in Montreal. Though it wasn’t all that cold during the better part of the day, the temperature has now started to drop. According to Environment Canada it is supposed to go as low as -24 with a windchill of -38. I am hoping that it will have warmed up a little by the time I have to head out for class at 8:40. This development also calls into question Nithum’s prediction that winter was on its way out and that spring was here.

-Next week will be a pretty brutal week for assignments. I have two due on Monday (for a total of 65% of the course mark), one due on Wednesday, and one due on Friday. The only one that I am looking forward to writing is the one for Wednesday.

-In preparing for Wednesday’s assignment I have had to read a few articles about the nature of bibliography. I seem to have fallen into the typical trap, just viewing bibliography as a listing of books. It seems that there is so much more to the field, and that this is actually seem in a derogatory way by some bibliographers.

One of the more complex areas of study is called critical or analytical bibliography. Much of the work in this field has to do with analyzing printing techniques and styles to determine the order in which various editions were printed, and by whom. Even though this sounds pretty impressive I don’t think it is for me, I think I will stick with enumerative bibliography, or the listing of books (of course by books I mean a wide range of textual materials).

-I need to do some laundry.

-Several days ago it came to my attention that Gmail has launched a new service. It seems that now one can access other email accounts in one’s Gmail account. Just this weekend I managed to have Gmail import my McGill email account. This has been quite nice, and was easy to set up. The only downside is that there seems to be a delay between the time the message is received by McGill and the time it becomes available in Gmail. A message that I received a few minutes ago seemed to have been delayed for about 47 minutes.

-For the past few days I seem to have had some kind of cold. It seems that many people in that I know in Montreal are currently suffering from a similar illness. The strange thing is that it seems to have remained stagnant for the past few days, not really getting very bad, but also not really getting any better.