Author: Kim Siever

I live in Lethbridge with my spouse and 5 of our 6 children. I’m a writer, focusing on social issues and the occasional poem. My politics are radically left. I recently finished writing a book debunking several capitalism myths. My newest book writing project is on the labour history of Lethbridge.

I’m also dichotomally Mormon. And I’m a functional vegetarian: I have a blog post about that somewhere around here. My pronouns are he/him.

Uncategorized

GMail Mailing Lists and Groups

Post author By Kim Siever
Post date 20 October 2005
15 Comments on GMail Mailing Lists and Groups

Some of my readers are familiar with my post on GMail Folders that shows a workaround for the seemingly absent email folders that abound in other software.

I thought I would also post on how to create mailing lists (or mailing groups) in GMail. A mailing list is handy because you can specify a list in your message and the message will be sent to all the contacts in the group.

Create your mailing list or group

Open up each contact you want in the group and click “Edit contact information”.
Add the name of the group (e.g. “family”) in the “Notes” field and press “Save”.

Use your mailing list or group

Go to your Contacts page and search for the name of your group. This should bring up all those with the group name in their notes.
Click on the “All” link near the bottom of the page
Click the “Compose” button

VoilÃ ! A new email with all the contacts in your group.

General Meta

The Evolution of My Name

Most people take their current name for granted. These same people have probably never had their name changed. Many probably have assumed the same about my name: Kim Jason Joseph Benoit Siever. After all, if I, the holder of my name, can assume it, why shouldn’t others?

In reality, it’s not the case. While I may go by that name, legally it’s not my name. In fact, the earliest documentation I have of this name being recorded was when I was ordained an elder a month before my mission.

I first realised something was odd when I received my birth certificate in 1987 and saw that not only was “Benoit” not on it, but the other two middle names were in the other’s place.

Recently, I’ve been reviewing old documents and discovered that my name has gone through quite the roller coaster ride. Come share the ride.

That’s the inside front page of my baby book and it reads “Kim, Joe, Jason, Ben”. I am not sure of the date it was written, but it possible predates my baptism certificate (dated five days after my birth). If so, it is the earliest documentation I have for my name. The roller coaster starts there.

That’s from my Catholic baptism certificate. The baptism took place five days after I was born. Here my name is “Kim Joseph Jason Ben Siever”.

Here’s my birth certificate. It’s based on my baptismal certificate, and now every other legal identification is based off it. It reads “Kim Joseph Jason Siever”. For whatever reason, “Ben” was not included. My birth was registered the day after the baptism.

When I was five, my parents joined the Mormon church. I was blessed in the church nine months later. This is my blessing certificate and here my name is “Kim Jason Joseph Ben Siever”. This may be the first occurrence when “Jason” is put at the front, a precursor to my current name.

Within seven years, I took the last name of my step-father (who for all intents and purposes I consider my dad). I don’t recall when I started going by “Haysom”, but I believe I was around eight. Anyhow, that’s my deacon ordination certificate. I’m not sure where the “Benjamin” came from, but it’s the only occurrence I’ve seen of it.

Here’s my priest ordination certificate, where I am listed as “Kim Jason Joseph Ben Siever”. By the time I was sixteen, I needed to get a job. I couldn’t get a social insurance number under Haysom, since it was never legally changed. I started going by Siever again.

This is my certificate for when I was ordained an elder. I received it in October 1992, a month before my misison. It was the earliest official occurrence I have found where my name is as I use it now.

There you go. The roller coaster that is now my name. Legally, my name is Kim Joseph Jason Siever. That’s what’s on my birth certificate, my SIN, my driver’s license and so forth. Sometimes I bug Mary that we’re not even legally married since the name on our marriage certificate is different from that on my birth certificate.

Family

Aisling

Aisling Elisabeth Winter Siever was born today at 17:23 (MDT). Labour went well (about 6.5 hours) and Mama and baby are nursing contently.

More details to be posted on our family website.

General

Fired

Let’s say you run a company. Sales are down and profits are going down with them. It’s come to the point where you have to let go of an employee. You’ve narrowed it down to two. The first has been with the company longer than anyone else and has a larger salary. The second has been with the company for only a year and has a smaller salary. Everything else is equal.

Who would you fire?

General

Hot Peppers

I keep receiving visitiors coming to my sites looking for information on hot peppers. They look to see what makes hot pepper hot, which of the peppers are the hottest, and so forth. I thought I should make at least one post on the information. If I ever get around to it, maybe I’ll dedicate a site to hot peppers.

The information below is adapted from Wikipedia.

What makes hot peppers hot?

The Scoville scale is a measure of the hotness of a chile pepper. These fruits of the Capsicum genus contain capsaicin, a chemical compound which stimulates heat-receptor nerve endings in the tongue, and the number of Scoville heat units (SHU) indicates the amount of capsaicin present. Many hot sauces use their Scoville rating in advertising as a selling point.

It is named after Wilbur Scoville, who developed the Scoville Organoleptic Test in 1912. As originally devised, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until the ‘heat’ is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable even undiluted. Conversely, the hottest chiles, such as habaneros, have a rating of 300,000 or more, indicating that their extract has to be diluted 300,000-fold before the capsaicin present is undetectable. 15 Scoville units is equivalent to one part capsaicin per million. The greatest weakness of the Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because it relies on human subjectivity.

Later analytical developments such as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) (also known as the “Gillett Method”) have now enabled the Scoville rating to be determined by direct measurement of capsaicin rather than sensory methods.

How hot are hot peppers?

855,000	Naga Jolokia pepper (reported & disputed)
350,000–580,000	Red Savina habanero (Guinness Book of Records)
100,000–350,000	Habanero chile
100,000–325,000	Scotch bonnet
100,000–225,000	Birds eye pepper
100,000–200,000	Jamaican hot pepper
100,000–125,000	Carolina cayenne pepper
95,000–110,000	Bahamian pepper
85,000–115,000	Tabiche pepper
50,000–100,000	Thai pepper
50,000–100,000	Chiltepin pepper
40,000–58,000	Piquin pepper
40,000–50,000	Super chile pepper
40,000–50,000	Santaka pepper
30,000–50,000	Cayenne pepper
30,000–50,000	Tabasco pepper
15,000–30,000	de Arbol pepper
12,000–30,000	Manzano pepper, AjÃ
5,000–23,000	Serrano pepper
5,000–10,000	Hot wax pepper
5,000–10,000	Chipotle
2,500–8,000	JalapeÃ±o
2,500–8,000	Santaka pepper
2,500–5,000	Guajilla pepper
1,500–2500	Rocotilla pepper
1,000–2,000	Pasilla pepper
1,000–2,000	Ancho pepper
1,000–2,000	Poblano pepper
700–1,000	Coronado pepper
500–2500	Anaheim pepper
500–1,000	New Mexico pepper
500–700	Santa Fe Grande pepper
100–500	Pepperoncini pepper
100–500	Pimento
0	Sweet bell pepper

Browsers

IE7 Beta 1

Dean, the guy responsible for IE7, announced yesterday that Windows Vista (and concurrently IE7) Beta 1 has been released.

After reading the IE7 Technology Overview, I am please to see some of the new features that will be available in the new version of IE.

tabbed browsing
better user interface
proactive security notifications (for phishing, non-secure sites, etc)
alpha channel PNG support
better CSS support
RSS feed detection, subscription and viewing
built-in, customisable search tool
and so on

I won’t be switching from Firefox when it comes out, but it is good to know that IE is being brought to the same level as other browsers now. Hopefully, I’ll finally be able to design a website and not have to worry about testing it in different browsers.

The Beta 1 has been released to only MSDN subscribers and a small group of pre-selected testers. Beta 2, according to the documentation Dean provided in his post, will be available publicly.

A lot of commentators on Dean’s post are whining about the decision for Microsoft to go with a private testing for the first beta, but they’re all blowing smoke. They didn’t even read the information Dean posted, and got up in arms about something which is really irrelevant. They’re just a bunch of selfish children.

UPDATE: If you don’t want to take me seriously, at least listen to what Molly has to say.

Google

Google Maps Hybrid

Google recently implemented a new feature on their maps page that allows users to overlay roads on satellite images. Just click on the “Hybrid” button next to the “Satellite” button on the maps. It seems to be more accurate than swtichign between the two old views.

Google

Google Currency

Google now offers currency conversion among its calculator features. For example, the current exchange from one Canadian dollar to US dollars is 81.07 cents.

General

The Mighty Hercules

I came across this RealAudio file of an episode of the The Mighty Hercules cartoon.

That sure brings back memories.

Google

GMail RSS

I just realised today that GMail has an RSS feed. It seems it only works on unread messages in the inbox, however. No read messages and no archived new messages.