Still Brown

The title of this post comes from a comment on Facebook. Binky told me his daughter (5 years old?) said that I cannot be 40 today as I am "still brown". We believe she means the hair.

She's right. (Though I do have flecks of silver in my goatee, which may be the only attribute I have in common with Brad Pitt.)

Anyway, the comment made me laugh out loud. She is a sweetie, even if she does think I grew up in the United States (nothing wrong that -- if you did).

40. Vic is anticipating, with justification, some brooding blog post that intersects age, wisdom, and national identity. Sounds like work to me. Granted, it is definitely a toned down birthday, with wretched weather (November Rain indeed), but I think I have everything in perspective.

I'm really lucky and blessed. So far, so good.

CC

ps. I must say the 'party' over on Facebook has been enjoyable. I've had birthday wishes from many corners. Elsewhere, I've received some email and a massive, heart-warming card blitz from my Mom's side of the family. Some of them had glitter, but we forgive.

Where Are Islanders?

Check out this great idea by the CBC! I'm not on there yet, but will have to snap a pic.

Naturally, the Maritime area is a bit flooded with virtual pins on the map.

CC

ps. The pic in Chicago is the Old Abby, a ferry that ran from PEI to NB for years and years. Many readers of this blog have been on it. It is now the club-house for the Chicago Yacht Club.

Superbugs

This is an interesting piece on microbiology and superbugs.

It is especially interesting for me, because at my client gig, we talk about these bugs all the time. The device is used to identify and treat these infections.

I don't work on the actual biological computations (this is somewhat painful, given that I won math and biology awards in high school; don't get me started on French fluency), so I'm not doing any true science per se. However, our staff microbiologists talk about these things all the time. This is our domain, in every sense of the word.

Staph. Aureus is like an old friend, in a weird way. And extended-spectrum beta-lactamase -- well, that's just fun! MRSA is not, though, that's for sure.

CC

Remembrances

I don't have a lot of words this year for November 11th.

I'd simply like to say that I am eternally grateful that I will (hopefully) not face war. I will (hopefully) be buried on Prince Edward Island.

In addition to my perennial link to Flanders Fields, I invite readers to read the series of postings over on Binky's blog. It sure puts things in perspective.

CC

Unseasonably Pleasant

It is 9 pm in November and I have the windows open! Today was a balmy 78 F, and had people raving all day. Very sunny.... In fact, a local website says it is 70 F now.

The seniors back home would approve. To an individual, the elderly hate winter with a passion. If you have experienced a real winter, you know why.

CC

Wikipedia And Forty-Fives

I am routinely astounded by Wikipedia. Here is the latest installment.

Back home, trump card games are popular. The two big ones are Auction and Forty-Fives. Both use a trump-scheme (card ranking) that is, simply put: insane. I remember being in the hospital at age 11(ish) and having my father teach me the scheme. (As an example, from the top down: 5 of trump, Jack of trump, Ace of Hearts, Ace of trump, and so on... i.e. You really want the 5.)

Since I left the Maritimes, I have never met anyone who was familiar with this crazy setup. I have often wondered about its origin.

Well, Wikipedia to the rescue. Even though Auction has a different description, the background on Forty-Fives (click here) is amazingly accurate.

The history is impressive:

Forty-Fives is a descendant of the Irish game Spoil_Five, which in turn is a descendant of a game that King James VI of Scotland popularized in the 17th century called Maw. Maw was first seen being played in 1511 and the earliest written rules come from 1576 Scotland.

Neat stuff!

ps. Our version of Auction uses the same trump-scheme as that of Forty-Fives.

It was a dark and stormy night

Check out this fantastic post over at The Cupcake Project.

Devilishly creative! I know the cast and I imagine they had a blast with this...

CC

Green in Autumn

Here is a fun fact... I haven't run the heat yet in the new apartment. I did run some A/C in the summer but so far, no heat.

This is pretty easy lately, as the weather is nice. It was cooler a couple of weeks ago (low 60s F in the apt in the morning), but I have a monster down-filled quilt that is a prized possession. It is fantastic.

My electric bill for September was possibly the lowest I have ever had. We'll see how long this can go.

CC

Today

Happy Birthday to dear friend and CC reader/critic: Vic!

He is the big 4-0h today... Back home, there were 2 photos in The Guardian that showed his various hair styles over the years. When I called this morning, the household was busily preparing for a gala afternoon. I'm sure a good time was had by all!

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Surprises

This week, after a local conference, I hung out with "the cool kids"; i.e. some of the speakers and organizers. In conversation at a local bar, 3 new acquaintances and I were talking about Twitter. My compadres started raving about a certain Twitter feed with fake-geek headlines.

I think they knew the author was one of us at the bar, but weren't sure who it was. When I stated it was me, they were generous with sincere praise. A nice surprise to end the week.

It will never make money, and it has been slow to grow, but I may be onto something here. If the "big leagues" are The Onion and Colbert's "The Word", then my goal is to have some fine triple-A baseball: not pro level, but pretty darn good.

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Crossroads

I don't like ambiguous, diary-like posts but, as a writer -- as a person -- sometimes one needs to hammer one out.

I have several ideas, but no inclination to sort them into a coherent narrative.

I guess the gist is this:

• Despite a sarcastic sense of humor, I am generally a "people pleaser" with a healthy fear of failure. Within the structure of school, this worked to my advantage. I am fine-tuned to respond to the risk/rewards within that setting.
  
• Because of the above, I worked very hard to get to a certain place in my career. However, long outside of academia, I haven't had structure in a long time. I'm doing 'ok' now, but I don't feel as though I am doing 'excellent', in part because there is no feedback mechanism.
  
• One potential venture could provide direct feedback, and could provide income: public speaking.
  
• I have a maniacal love/hate relationship with public speaking. As described elsewhere, results range from euphoria to brooding. The euphoria is absolutely a drug: if I received it 2 out of 10 times, it would be worth it. (Except for the total blow-ups, which are truly devastating).
• The tragic rub is that my international situation can make things complicated: there is one "milestone" with respect to immigration that would certainly help. As part of crafting a career within structure, it would be a no-brainer. However, it involves national identity, emotion, and commitment. These ingredients form a toxic soup of indecision that flies in the face of everything I have tried to build.

The upshot is that I may have opportunities to advance my career (*), but (a) I don't have a sense of structure to motivate me, and (b) there is some red-tape that has me in abject paralysis.

Given the work that I've put in this far, this is classified as a bummer.

CC

(*) I fully realize that "advance my career" may be equivalent to "feed my seemingly insatiable vanity".

Update

The big news here is that my client has moved us to a new building. Though tiny in the grand scheme of things, it has wreaked havoc on daily life and my usual routines.

The good news is that the commute is almost the same distance, and I'm still within lunching distance of Jim G. (I wish I was within lunch distance of Fred and Stacey!) Also the building is quite "green" and very bright and airy. Not a bad spot.

The minor bad news is that I share a cube with a friend of mine, which means I have nowhere to "hole up" during lunch. I am surprisingly introverted at lunch. However, we are in the big building now so when I do choose to dine in the big cafeteria, the social opportunities are outstanding.

CC

Charity Event

I recently discovered an organization called Coders 4 Charities. In various cities, they host weekends dedicated to helping non-profit organizations build software. It is sort of like Habitat for Humanity, only for their IT department.

I'm signed on for an event starting this Friday evening/weekend. We will be broken into teams; each is assigned to a charity.

I'm looking forward to it, but a bit apprehensive. Techies are notoriously opinionated. This will be far more free-form than using pre-fab housing, so we'll see if we can all pull in one direction. Also, I've been assigned to a team that is going to work with Microsoft technology: very much a weakness of mine.

We'll see how it goes! I'm cautiously optimistic, and grateful for the chance to give something back. I have been thinking a lot lately of doing something along these lines (more in a subsequent post).

CC

Congrats to my sister

My sister was recently promoted to manager at the famous bookstore back home. From her stories of work, especially the insane holiday rush, she really helps keep the place on the tracks, so it is great to hear of her recognition.

Congrats, Colleen!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home in Canada!

Per tradition, I invite readers to peruse the Wikipedia article on Thanksgiving.

I ask readers world-wide to reflect today and give thanks. We are all very fortunate to be here, both in time and geography. Perhaps in 2309, our time will seem primitive but I think living in an industrialized country in 2009 is fantastic.

Twitter Update

Aside from CC, I have a couple of other online ventures. Long time readers will know that my latest venture is a Twitter feed that features absurd, comic headlines, geared for an audience of geeks and software developers.

I usually post one headline per day, and measure success on the number of "re-tweets". That is, the number of people that like the joke enough to echo it to their own circle of friends. Since April, I have averaged 2-3 re-tweets per day, with 6 being a relatively huge day. This has been disappointing as I spend a fair amount of mental energy on the headlines. (Though I'm happy to say I don't spend much time -- I don't write spoof articles; only headlines. It is delightfully light weight and very much a Twitter-style angle.)

Well. The Nobel Peace Prize is manna from heaven for joke writers everywhere, regardless of political affiliation. And so it was on Friday that I offered up a headline about Obama, emboldened with the award, re-opening a controversial debate within the Java community. (It isn't funny if you don't know the niche, but within the niche it works.)

The response has been a new record. The response has been 3 pages of re-tweets and dozens of new followers.

Interestingly, the tech debate is the same one that rocketed my sticker schtick into the blogoverse in 2007. Also, one of the key Twitter people is the same person that gave me some publicity for the stickers. (He was embroiled in the controversy. He had a well-thought out proposal that was shot down somewhat unfairly.) I don't know if he realized I'm behind both ventures. It is relatively easy to figure that out, but one would have to do some clicking around.

It's nice to finally get some action on that front.

High School

In person, I probably talk about this idea too often, but a favourite thought of mine was from a friend in grad school. He explained that we are often defined by the reaction we evoke in others, as much as our view of ourselves.

This may explain why it can be so difficult to attend reunions, etc. When you meet people who haven't seen you since you were 19, they react (in a subtle way) in accordance with your social position/personality/etc when you were 19. We are ultimately immersed in a soup of emotion, reactions, etc that challenge our hard-won sense of security and sense of self.

A friend of mine from The Island recently described a holiday function back in Dec 2008. As he put it, he was 'surrounded by A-listers' from high school. He did not enjoy the experience. He wasn't 'cool' back then and, understandably, didn't feel too 'cool' in the present (see above). He felt anxiety that he hadn't felt in years and years.

I just browsed some folks on the dreaded Facebook (oh you've done it too -- just peeking around, not 'friending' people) and somehow managed to trigger the same feeling, after stumbling on various crowds from high school and lower grades.

Seriously, my heart started racing! Though I have chosen a life of singleness, and routinely flaunt the absurdity of my life as comedy, I am quite comfortable with who I am, and most of my goals.

It is embarrassing to have been vaulted back into a more insecure time.

CC

Buzzard Pre-Flight Check

Jim G and I went for a run on Saturday. Neither of us were elegant or fast, though he has a better excuse, having suffered the motorbike wreck 10 months ago.

At about 9 am, we finished. The early fall air was still crisp and a bit dew-ey from the evening before. We looked up and saw a large buzzard perched in a tree. We watched it for awhile... and then it opened it wings and just hung out for 5-10 minutes.

We realized that it was drying its wings from the dew. One doesn't think of this word often for the species, but it was majestic.

Here is a similar pic of what we saw, though this is in North Carolina on a random Flickr account. It is the very same pose.

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Netflix Is Serious About Fun

Here is a great quote from this article on Netflix:

"When people connect with a movie, it really makes them happy, and that's fundamentally what we're trying to do," he says. "Today you love one out of three movies that you watch. If we can raise that to two out of three, we can completely transform the market and increase human happiness."

Alas, Netflix doesn't serve Canada, but for those in the US -- Netflix is one serious company. The amount of engineering that they put into their recommendation system is on par with Google's indexing algorithm, in that they hire PhDs in computer science and math, and go all out towards improving the system.

They famously offered a prize for a recommendation algorithm that could beat their stated benchmark (it has been awarded, and I'm sure that the winners could write a doctoral thesis on the work).

For years, I had no interest in Netflix, but having been on it for a couple of years, I really enjoy it. It is a convenient, cheap way to catch up on some great shows (I'm currently devouring The Big Bang Theory at every opportunity).

CC

Baseball Revisited

I didn't see the first-pitch by Ann G (wife of Jim G), but I heard about it from Jim and loved the story.

Recall that she was honoured with the first-pitch at a sellout Cards-Cubs game, as part of recognition for being Teacher of the Year in her district.

As it turned out, she completely hammed it up. After being announced, she used exaggerated motions to place the ball in her glove, and leaned into read the sign from the catcher. With a big shake of her head, she called off the first sign, which was echoed by the stadium announcer and delighted the crowd. She nodded to the second signal, and slinged one homeward.

Apparently the place just loved it. We are trying to locate some video (there is a clip but it is in an internal section of the school district's website).

CC