Female emersed in dihyrdogen-oxide
Karen, Sue-Anne, Sean and I went to see Lady in the Water tonight. It was not a bad movie, but I preferred his other movies more. Rotton Tomatoes has a little heavy review of it.
2 comments July 30th, 2006
Archive for July, 2006
It’s a wrap
Finished my obligations (fighting obviously) for Atlantis today. I have no idea how it will turn out, but I’m not expecting to be that impressed as it was done very quickly with 1 or 2 actual takes of any given thing, so it will probably look rushed and not well executed (exactly what it was). The difficult part for me was that I had to wear a “head” that made me look like a minotaur (mostly foam-core arts and crafts kinda stuff), so it was extremely uncomfortable and restricted my visibility (hence I was trying to be very careful of where I swung my mace) - I’m doubtful that it will achieve the effect he was looking for (it probably would have been fine for theatre, but not film close-ups), but I guess we’ll see when we get to the finished product.
1 comment July 29th, 2006
Ugh - Rehearsal time?
Sword practice for the faire is usually about now, but this year I have a significant wrinkle. I’m going to be out of the country for 15 days of the next 4 weeks (stupid work). It also means I must have -zero- obligations for the end of August through September otherwise it will fall apart completely. That means we will probably be doing HEAVY recap and of previous years (oop! the secret is out) and still likely be under-rehearsed, so don’t pay too close attention to this year’s fights.
2 comments July 27th, 2006
Time management
I just have too much work to do in a given day and because of that, things fall off the bottom of my list of priorities. I’m not just the only one, there are lots of others that I work with (inside the company and out) that tend to be a bottleneck for activities and there just isn’t enough time in the day for anyone anymore. I personally think that the problem is not 100% a people issue, but a significant part of the blame belongs with expectations of modern corporations that are beyond any one human’s capacity. I’ll keep plugging long, but I do need to work at trying to multitask and manage my time more effectively (or I need an admin person).
To give you an idea of my work life, check out my July calendar.
2 comments July 25th, 2006
Arduous acquisitions
Doing work related to buying a company is just tiring. Very surprisingly so — there just seems to be a massive amount of what I characterize as “heavy thinking” (just very draining, well thought out, critically important decisions being made). I’m glad there are people who really enjoy it, because I can’t handle the continuous 6am-10pm days anymore — at least I know who I should consult should there ever be a need for me to purchase a company.
Add comment July 24th, 2006
Trip to Seattle
I’m going to Microsoft in a few weeks for work, but this business trip will be different than any I’ve ever done! Karen is going to come with me – Yay! We arrive early and get to play in Seattle for a bit to see some of the city and surrounding area (I obviously have to interleave meetings during the day sadly) and we’re probably going to get together with Brett and Nu for dinner and smarties. Hopefully it won’t be the 30+ days of rain like it was the last time I was there.
Add comment July 23rd, 2006
Dr. John
Congrats to John as he is now “Dr. John Wilkinson” having completed all his studies in the field of philosophy (although the invite to his party caused some confusion, myself thinking it was actually spam from Nigeria). John and Mel celebrated his graduation this afternoon with a gathering at their house and it was really fun to see the both of them and to reconnect with all the ToTE people. It’s amazing that we’ve known such great people for so long (more than a decade even) and how much we have all changed during that time.
1 comment July 22nd, 2006
Magnus Opus
A long time ago, I helped out some guys in Toronto doing a film fight sequence. It was a pretty wacky scene - a barely clothed guy walked in slow motion while 6 of us fought each other with weapons until we were all down. When Karen and I actually saw the movie, we both thought it was actually pretty good and that it might even win some film festival awards. Now the whole thing is up on Google Video (my section is at about 38m in, look for the blimp) and I recommend watching it (although it probably isn’t for everyone).
Add comment July 22nd, 2006
Senior management fish
The higher up in our company I go, the more I seem to end up eating fish, something of which I am not so fond. As I go up the management chain, I seem to be having to go to more meetings involving executives and strategy sessions, analyst briefings, budgeting and so forth. All of these meetings get lunch and/or dinner for a working meal and almost always it is a fish related dish. I may be the first to recognize this correlation, but it is definitely there — I think it will ultimately conclude in the SNL sketch “how to order sushi like a CEO“.
Add comment July 21st, 2006
Sales; I want that job
I went to a sales meeting today. It seems to be tough work… 9:30-noon meetings, followed by lunch, then 1-4pm watching a Red Sox game (they won), then 4-5:30pm having an after game drink, then 5:30-8pm meetings again.
3 comments July 19th, 2006
Car shopping
Craig and I went mutual car shopping tonight (he needs one, and Karen and I are looking to replace the rust bucket). It was a reasonable time, we hit 3 different dealers (Mazda, Honda, Toyota) to see what there was. Karen was mostly looking for hatchbacks, so I wanted to see how the Mazda 3, the Honda Fit and the Toyota Yaris compared.
Mazda
The Mazda 3 seemed to be a really nice car, more of a mid-size as opposed to a compact economical car, so I’m not sure that was quite what we were trying for, but overall I liked it and Jim (our mechanic) said there aren’t many issues with them.
Honda
Next was Waterloo North Honda - that was a total bust, the guy was useless (and I told him that), didn’t want to sell a car and wasn’t interested in even talking to me, so we left with LESS information that you can find on their website. If we do buy a Honda, we probably won’t buy it there because they don’t deserve the business.
Toyota
In stunning contrast, the Toyota dealer was fantastic! He had comparison pricing for us to review while we were sitting in the cars within minutes of us expressing interest (definitely going back to test drive there).
Two interesting bits of information we noticed. One is that all new stereos in cars are embedded parts of the dashboard (i.e. you can’t remove them or change them if they break)… that’s not so important, but it is interesting. The second and more notable thing is that these compact economical cars have the same mileage numbers as the mid-size cars and cost the same or more! A fully loaded Yaris is about $25K not really any different than a mid-size Corolla and the same gas mileage for quite a bit less space – all of that is making us rethink what is important in a new car.
1 comment July 17th, 2006
Travian - Ages of Empires for the web
A short while ago, I started playing Travian, an online game in the vein of Age of Empires without the real-time piece and having no client to install. It seems not too bad, albeit very slow (in constrast with how those games usually work) and any thoughts of it “running in the background” without much management actually is a false assumption. You do have to monitor it and do various actions to make it worthwhile as everything seems to take an hour to complete. I’m not sure I enjoy this middle ground of game where it has none of the interest or excitement of a real-time online game and all of the delay of resource management of a turn based game (seems the worst of both worlds).
Add comment July 15th, 2006
Flight passes - finally something right
Air Canada flight passes are fantastic. Air Canada now allows you to buy bulk tickets in a blocks of 10 or 20 for different flight routes. I bought a block in February (at upper management’s recommendation) and have finished using up the first set, so now I bought a second block. Definitely a great way to travel, especially if you do short-haul flights regularly and at the last minute, the cost per flight is significantly lower on average and plus you are almost always upgraded to executive class. If you want more information on the flight pass bookings check aircanada.com here.
Add comment July 14th, 2006
Never do any work
Made the mistake just now of saying the word “work” (by accident, it’s 5am, so I’m easily confused) when talking to a customs agent. That prompted about 7 minutes of repeated questions and exploration of just what I do in my professional life (the answers he didn’t understand anyway) until grudgingly he let met through. Bottom line is don’t ever say that keyword to a border official, even if it is casual and not in reference to your actual job (for example, “I don’t really do much work”, “reading is too much like work” or “we irk’d someone when we were late” — might even avoid “you going to cook that in a wok”), it triggers them into all kinds of nasty behaviour. I’m travelling for meetings, always meetings, the unending and ambiguous meetings that I need to fly for. Customs might actually have something there since we all know meetings aren’t actually “werk”.
1 comment July 12th, 2006