From ABC News:

Comedian Stephen Colbert's White House bid seemed to end even before it began.

Last week, the South Carolina Democratic Executive Council rejected Colbert's application to be on the primary ballot in a 13-3 vote; Colbert did not apply to appear on the state GOP primary ballot — with its $35,000 filing fee.

In a statement today, Colbert said, "Although I lost by the slimmest margin in presidential election history — only 10 votes — I have chosen not to put the country through another agonizing Supreme Court battle. It is time for the nation to heal." 

Here's the disquieting thing about his "campaign":

Colbert's coverage of his campaign was sponsored by Doritos.

One could read arguments, by those on the conservative side of the spectrum, that Colbert was simply trying to point out the absurdities of U.S. political campaign finance laws. Others might see Colbert's actions as trying to help Doritos move some product. Which, if true, would be cheesy.

I bought a new computer from Dell. It's in Toronto, but I've yet to see it.

When I got home from work on Friday, a note on my door from Purolator told me they had been there, but there was no little old me.

I phoned the company and asked for a redelivery attempt to be made on Monday.

From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. today, I wait (Purolator generously allows itself a 10-hour window for delivery).

At 1:12 p.m., I phone the company to see what's what. They tell me nothing, other than they have until 6 p.m. to deliver the two boxes.

As of 6:01 p.m., no delivery.

I phone Purolator. The "customer service professional" tells me the driver has rescheduled the delivery for tomorrow (Tuesday) -- and furthermore, that the decision was messaged in at 5:30 p.m.

Wow. They can do that -- just decide to not deliver something when they said they would and not tell the customer?

"So I'm going to have to blow off another day waiting for you people?!?!" was my response.

The guy asked me if I wanted to pick it up. I said yes, given that Purolator appears to be completely unreliable.

So here's my hike for tomorrow:

I will be avoiding Purolator in the future where possible. If it can't provide more predictibility and reliability as to when something can arrive, what good is Purolator as a courier?

Update

I check with Purolator before I head out. My computer is roaming Toronto somewhere in a Purolator truck.

Despite my having specifically asked for the computer to be left at the depot, the driver took it. The Purolator "customer service professional" explained that he didn't have time to deliver it yesterday, so he left it on the truck.

I pointed out that I had specifically asked for it to be left at the depot. Her attitude was that I could pick it up later today or whenever.

Purolator seems to think its customers exist to meet its needs.

Postscript

The driver showed up -- predictably, as I was just returning home from an errand. I had left a note saying I would be back at 4:40 p.m., which is when I showed up.

"They don't like us to wait around," he said.

"I waited for 10 hours yesterday," I shot back.

He was surprised to hear that no one showed up on Monday (he said my area is part of his regular turf, but he was off Friday and Monday) and then surprised me by saying 'sorry' -- and appearing to mean it.

Now that's a customer service professional.

From the NYT:

In a showdown this afternoon between the government and the news media, hundreds of journalists and printers at the Jang Group, Pakistan’s largest media group, confronted the police and officials from the government’s press information department at the offices of Awam, the afternoon newspaper in Karachi.

The government officials ordered the newspaper’s editor, Nazeer Leghari, not to print a supplement, and the police threatened to close down the plant, according to a statement issued by the Jang Group. When the newspaper’s management refused to obey, the officials withdrew, the statement said.

Here's a Nov. 4 Committee to Protect Journalists news release on the media crackdown in Pakistan since the declaration of emergency rule.

You had to know this day was coming, given the budget issues at the BBC.

Anyway, here's a note from Steve Hermann, editor of the BBC News website, as posted to The Editors blog:

Richard Sambrook, the BBC’s Director of Global News, outlined the reasons for this move here – and, as he explained, these are basically about funding the BBC’s public service journalism for our international online audience.

In editorial terms the journalists will not be involved in any of the dealing with advertisers or with the scheduling of the ads. There’s an "editorial guardian" - paid for by BBC Worldwide, our commercial partners - who will help assess possible ad campaigns and give guidance on what might produce a conflict of interests, clash with our own editorial values or in any way compromise our journalism. If he sees any campaign, or individual ad, as potentially unsuitable then it won’t run. Journalists, guided by him, will have the ability to prevent ads appearing, for example, on sensitive or distressing stories.

Frankly, it's a very small price to pay to support an outstanding global news resource. The Beeb is a site I would willingly subscribe to.

As an aside, I was at a CAJ panel discussion sometime in the late 1990s that featured Lloyd Robertson, CTV's longtime news anchor, and Peter Mansbridge, his CBC counterpart.

"I never thought I'd see the day there would be ads on The National," Mansbridge said, shaking his head grimly.

"We'll take them!" Robertson quipped. :)

From a Globe and Mail profile of someone named Tila Tequila, a MySpace pheenom who has had a reality show debut recently on MTV:

The mainstream press have heralded Ms. Tequila's arrival with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. “When exactly in the Warholian arc of fame did we arrive at a point where we create celebrities of people so little accomplished that they make Paris Hilton look like Marie Curie?” worried a New York Times critic last week.

There's some other good stuff in the Oct. 28 NYT piece by Guy Trebay:

Montreal lawyer Hubert Lacroix, reports Robert Fife, CTV's Ottawa bureau chief.

Lacroix is a senior lawyer with Strikeman Elliot and once served as CEO of Telemedia.

Laxcroix's mandate is to get control of the CBC's costs.

The Crown corporation receives a subsidy of $1.1B from taxpayers and ran a net operating deficit of $69 million in 2006-’07. according to its annual report.

From a CMG news release:

“We know little about Mr. Lacroix, except that he’s said to be a good corporate lawyer,” says Lise Lareau, president of the CMG. “We would welcome the opportunity to get to know him better and to share with him our views about the future of the public broadcaster.”

InsideTheCBC reports that Lacroix did some sports commentary for Radio-Canada in the 1980s.

From AP via CTV.ca:

Engineers at Google Inc. are working to resolve a problem on the company's Google News site that has resulted in some photos and news stories being mismatched.

Searches conducted on Google News on Friday occasionally returned photos from Reuters Group PLC that didn't match the stories they were listed next to, such as a shot of bunches of vegetables that appeared alongside a story about a Japanese merger firm.

Another story listed on Google News' top business stories had a Reuters photo of a guitarist next to a Wall Street Journal story about Sprint Nextel considering changes to a wireless Internet service plan.

Google's news pages are automated and use computer coding, or algorithms, to select and display stories. Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker said its algorithms appeared to be mismatching some material, but the problem appeared to be mainly with photos from Reuters.

The Beeb's Natalia Antelava on the quest of Alisher Saipov to provide actual journalism to the people of Uzbekistan -- something that probably got him killed.