Archive for August, 2006
I’m sitting down to meet with Kirk and the executive team from HB (so I’m dressed fairly well) and I grab a bottle of water. Unfortunately I didn’t notice that the bottle was half filled with ice (as the refrigerator is set too cold) and as I open it, it erupts in a geyser of water that throws more than half of the bottle of water on me. Literally I had puddles of water on me and everyone is just looking at me with a shocked look. All I say is “that was unexpected” and go to the bathroom to clean up. It seems that even when I try to be, the conventional director of software development I am not.
August 31st, 2006
I’ve worked on improving the IOSP website since it hasn’t been updated in two years. I did some tweaking in mediawiki and got a reasonable site up and running really quickly, including a neat integration with Google maps. Hopefully it works well enough as Brad wants some crazy things that doesn’t work well conceptually as a website…. but I guess we’ll see what can be done.
August 29th, 2006
Dad turned 63 today. Karen picked out a nice book for him (Marley and Me) that I thought was brilliant — it’s about a man and his dog that’s nothing but trouble (much like Dad and Solomon). We also sent them the horrible African dolls that we were unable to have them take when they were here last and the shirt he left behind. Sounds like he had a reasonably good day, but nothing overly eventful.
August 27th, 2006
Went back down to the busker fest today. Got a call from Al on my cell phone telling me that one of the guys doing an art installation knew me and was from Alberta. Not too many people that could be, so I went up onto the parkade to talk to them and it turns out it was Adrian, Laryssa and Siobhan! Monica was there with them and we had a bit of a fight performer reunion and talked about what was going on… needless to say I was surprised that Adrian and Laryssa were there. Adrian was rigging Laryssa and Siobhan who walked down the wall of the 7 story parkade and hung there throwing little messages down below to the people passing by. We got on great (glad that FDC didn’t cause issues between us) and decided to get together for dinner. Karen, Monica, Siobhan, Adrian and Laryssa managed to squeeze a nice dinner in at Salute (catered to Laryssa’s gluten free diet) before they had to go back and do the evening show of the festival. I was really thrilled to get together with them and it sounds like we might all get together in Banff at the end of the year.
August 26th, 2006
Went to Lucy’s for dinner tonight since we thought we might go wander around Buskers. Had a fish salad (caesar salad with seafood) — it was weird… I don’t recommend it. Fish on a salad just doesn’t belong. Walked over to the busker festival and ran into Polly and Al and had a bit of a chat. Will probably go back tomorrow to actually see the busker acts after having lunch with Polly and Karen (yay).
August 25th, 2006
Continued work on the HB acquisition… so busy and so many meetings. That, coupled wth work on product releases, SAP, Microsoft and Oracle partnerships means that I have just too much to do. It’s been getting me down a bit as I feel a lot overwhelmed.
August 24th, 2006
Ok, so something happened recently in the world of mother nature. I wake up and my allergies are so bad that my sinuses are clogged and my eyes sealed shut. Overnight something has happened to dramatically increase the amount of pollen and I’m not reacting well to it. Guess I have to start on my medication again so that I’ll be able to breath by faire time. I never had allergies until I moved down to pollution central in southern Ontario, makes you wonder what is happening to this world.
August 22nd, 2006
Yay! Ron and Shanmei are married! It was a very nice day in Rockwood and a beautiful outdoor wedding followed up by a great lunch in the pavillion overlooking the water. Ron and Shanmei looked styling, especially when the switched up to their traditional Chinese formal wear. Overall it was fantastic ceremony and it is great that Ron and Shanmei found each other, it makes Karen and I very happy for them both.
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August 20th, 2006
It’s been a long journey from when I first heard about this movie. I was angry, frustrated and unhappy that such a movie got green-lighted… seriously, COME ON! But something changed as it became more and more popular on the internet and it morphed from a crap movie into a movie that promised to be entertaining. It cost $33M to make and at last weekend count, it has made $28M (which is impressive for such a bad concept movie). The day started with going to the website and signing up to send personalized phone messages from Jackson where he talks smack and says to drop what you’re doing and go see the movie. A band of 11 of us went out for dinner and then to the opening night showing of SoaP. The theatre wasn’t 100% full, but it was quite packed as we settled down to watch this film. The energy was up and people were rowdy, cheering when the title came up on the screen. It was definitely “entertaining” but not very good. I definitely give it a solid 7 out of 10, and there are a lot more movies that I have enjoyed much less. The crowd was interacting with the movies shouting out “liar” when someone said it was safe on the plane and the entire theatre shouting Sam Jackson’s best line of the movie in unison at the climax. Snakes on a Plane is a movie worth seeing ONLY in the theatre and ONLY with a large number of people.
August 18th, 2006
Brett mentioned something today about me taking more responsibility and stepping up into even more of a leadership role for the R&D tasks. He doesn’t have time to do as much of that and I’ve been doing most of the activities around it anyway. Might mean a title change for me in October (which again would be crazy) but we’ll see if it’s just idle promises… I’m doing the job anyway as usual.
August 17th, 2006
Yay! My second trip to Germany was called off (much to the chagrin of the people who are going to talk strategy and needed my input) because I have other more crucial partner meetings that Kirk wants me at. I still am ending up calling Germany at the end of each day talking with the people who went so that I’m in the loop with ongoing discussions.
August 16th, 2006
Karen, Elinore, Al and I went out for dinner to celebrate his birthday tonight. We went to Kennedy’s which was fun and Elinore let me drive her fancy Cadillac.
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August 13th, 2006
Fight rehearsals are finally seriously underway, much later than usual (due to my exhaustive travel). Nicole is really making a go of it with vendors, although we seem to not have told her much information about how to actually do her job. Glenn and her had me over for lunch in Baden on Saturday to go through the undocumented “exceptions” to the whole vendor process.
August 13th, 2006
The week at Microsoft has been pretty good. The hotel we picked (Marriott) was fairly close to both downtown (walkable) and Microsoft (a quick jump across 520) although I found traffic variable enough to be between 20m and 2.5h to work. Last night Karen and I saw some Seattle improv that was pretty entertaining, a themed show called Time Quest, a neat way to do long form. Flew back today, but we left early for the airport because the world had gone crazy. Another terror plot was foiled with many people being arrested in the UK, so security has gone through the roof. We had to throw out all our aerosol deodorants and hairsprays and we just checked everything because we figured it would be easier. Overall it was a pretty easy trip home considering, although we’ll have to get Karen a CANPASS since it could have saved us about a 45m wait in customs.
August 11th, 2006
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