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...

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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.

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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.

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(*) 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.

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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).

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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.

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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).

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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).

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Geek Technique in the NY Times

Here is a neat story in the NY Times about pair-programming. This is a technique for software development that has come to the fore in the last 5-10 years or so. Alas, not everywhere uses it, as it controversial to managers and some developers (everyone is terrified by it, at first). We use it at my current gig, though not exclusively.

This quote from the article sums it up nicely, especially if you consider that software was once finished, printed out, and then reviewed by a team in a boardroom, looking for bugs:

Consider the game “Where’s Waldo,” in which a cartoon character is hidden in an intricate design. Most people can eventually find Waldo after poring over the drawing. Similarly, when programmers check code for errors, it takes time to examine the logic and find mistakes.

Now imagine if someone sat next to the artist from the very beginning. Obviously, the onlooker should be able to find Waldo more easily. The character would stand out.

Big Day at the Ballgame

If you are in St Louis, this might be interesting: Jim G's wife, Anne, will be throwing out the first pitch at the Cards-Cubs game on Friday night!

She is a teacher and won a major prize last year for her efforts. Part of the recognition is throwing out the pitch. She has known about it for months, and from what I hear, has been practicing. (I have been urging her to throw a 'slurve' but no word on her mechanics.)

For those not into baseball, this is quite a peach: the Cardinals - Cubs rivalry is huge, and so it will easily be a sell-out at the stadium and high on TV ratings.

Good luck, Anne!

Hedging the Food Gamble

Many readers know T (from AZ-IL-MO-CO) and her parents.

Her father made the news with this hedge bet (click here). As someone who hates waiting in line, I love it!

The photo is probably feigned irritation. He is a hilarious, funny man with a great smile and outlook (not unlike his offspring).

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The Maritimes Win Again

Readers will recall that my coworker, B, had a daughter who was married on PEI in Sept 08.

This year, a coworker named C, went to the Maritimes with her husband for a wedding anniversary. She consulted with me (and B) on places to go.

We both recommended Cape Breton. I'm always a little nervous to push PEI, but B wasn't shy. B especially suggested a meal at Inn at Fortune Bay, which hosted the wedding.

Well, C and her man had lovely weather and were blown away. Upon her return, she exclaimed that the Maritimes "just has to be the prettiest place in the whole world". They did love Cape Breton and PEI. I think they found the Inn to be a bit stuffy compared to the B&B's, but they had a good time.

I enjoyed the photos they brought back. It was good to see good red soil, the way God intended. In Ontario and elsewhere in North America, the soil looks sickly to me.

CC

ps. Interestingly, C didn't really understand the differences in locales. She assumed that I had been to Cape Breton many times, since it is so close. I think I've been there twice!

pps. Weird fact... A few people in St Louis call PEI by the name "Prince Edward". e.g. "When was the last time you were back to Prince Edward?"

I guess many people call an island by its first name, but this is highly weird for me because no one in the Maritimes would ever say that. It is either the full name, "The Island", or most commonly, "PEI".

In Recognition

I'm a bit behind on all the news, but wanted to echo some news on my father. Last week, he was invited to Government House and presented with the Firefighter's Exemplary Service Medal. This was in honour of 28 years of service with a local fire department.

Along with many other fine people, he sacrificed a lot during those years. Imagine getting out of bed at 3 am in the dead of winter because someone's house is on fire. Or losing a Sunday afternoon of R&R because a farmer let a grass fire get out of control. It was like that all the time.

Though not as dramatic, Dad kept the books for years, and fixed a lot of stuff up at the venerable fire hall.

Congrats, Dad!

Postcards

I received 2 postcards from Action Girl and Super Girl (protagonists on Binky's blog).

I was utterly delighted!

In other news, I met 2 babies that are new to the gang in St Louis. Adorable...

Finally, a military helicopter landed (part of a planned PR event) in a field next to work on Friday. It was very cool. If you are interested in pics, send me an email.

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