Archive for September, 2006
Today was really a great day. It started with Karen and I going to finally buy her new car… the Mazda3 and now we just have to wait for it to come in from another dealership. Right after we bought the car, we went to the bank and paid down the last of our debt on our line of credit… super super super super great that we’re at $0 now. Then Karen thought she might give me my birthday present early (cause we’re in NY for my birthday and it would be a problem at the border), so much to my surprise she handed me a watch (a Tissot titanium T-touch) that I had been looking at for a while. Apparently her and Craig and coordinated the purchase from Switzerland and were extra sneaky, so I wasn’t expecting it in the least. Lastly, such a great day rounded out with Sean, Shae, Karen and I going to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood which was a tear-enducing laugh fest. Improv at it’s best most definitely… they are amazing how quickly they are able to think.
September 30th, 2006
I might have done something stupid today — I accepted a promotion to be the VP of our R&D organization. I say stupid because only a naive person would think that the job will be fun or easy — in fact I sort of know how much crushing work it is because I’m in part already doing the job (guess it makes sense for me to officially get the title). I’m looking forward to the challenge and I hope I’m up for it — definitely flattered that my superiors think I am and I’ll have to make sure I do a good job or recommend someone else who can.
This leaves me with two delimmeas. The first, I’m 32 years old and a VP - what the hell am I going to be doing when I’m 45?!? Believe it or not, I’m worried about it. I’m at the stage most people used to get to when they were in their 40s, but I’m seriously ahead of schedule and not sure where it all goes from here. The second one, a much more serious problem, is that I had made a committment to cut my hair short again when they made me a VP. I made this statement six years ago thinking I would never have to act on it, or at least by the time I would have to, that the medieval faire would be complete. Now, I know that there are people out there that say that us computer boys really love our hair and have Samson complexes, but I do want to look fancy and medieval for the 10th anniversary of our faire and not go from looking like a medieval knight to looking like a business analyst in chainmail. I know that people are itching for me to cut my hair (and do some chairty raffle kind of thing to boot which I’m good with), but now that it comes to it, I’m just not sure of the timing of it all. I guess we’ll see how long I can stave off the scissors.
September 29th, 2006
Sounds like I’ll be at least in two places next week to meet people — Kingston and Tallahassee. The problem is that both suck to get to from Waterloo because there’s no direct way to get there. Kingston is so close, it’s almost worth the drive and Tallahasee is bad because there are no direct flights and the connections don’t synchronize up well. So most of my week next week is travel. I didn’t think I would hit super elite status by the end of the year, but I just might.
September 28th, 2006
Things came snapping back to reality and work life as soon as the faire was done — being off for 7 days is just difficult (in fact, I spent the first two days of vacation working about 12h each day). I have *SO* many things to accomplish — acquisition is full steam ahead and there is just unknown amounts of effort looming there around planning, strategy talks, team meet-and-greets, etc. I’ve got a few high-end customer calls to attend and prepare materials for, so that’s taking a large amount of time and then just my normal work activities of trying to get things approved, reviewed, fixed, purchased, implemented or whatever. Wow - it’s only Tuesday but the faire seems like it happened a long time ago. I guess it’s somewhat of a blessing that I can multitask reasonably well between things otherwise I would just be overwhelmed and sitting under my desk.
September 26th, 2006
We had a relaxing Sunday today - took back costumes and some theatre risers that we had used, general check-over clean-up of the park facilities — Shae found some nasty opened and half-used 4L can of cheese spread… remind me not to eat the medieval nachos next year. The party was as per usual a fun one with Ron starting it off showcasing his fantastic photos that he always takes. Dinner was good and then the usual giving of gifts. Overall, it was a great time. One thing I have to say about Chuck is that he runs a really great party and provides really good food which is always appreciated.
Some co-workers apparently said that they should try to find the RMF wrap party, but didn’t know where it would be because there aren’t any buildings big enough to host such a big Dungeons & Dragons game. Remind me to make sure they’re taken to the stocks next year.
September 24th, 2006
Another year of super lucky weather control. It stopped raining for exactly the period of the medieval faire — stopped early in the morning before we got to the park and started again late in the evening. So, the day started very cloudy and overcast but we got moving right away… we got lots done the previous two setup days so we didn’t have much to do this morning other than deploy the straw and setup some tents and games. Some minor vandalism that the security guard actually CAUGHT! (must be a good year, as we never had good security). Bathrooms arrived on time and clean this year and everyone snapped to action on their remaining tasks (special thanks to Nicole and Glenn on the vendor control). The day started and the faire was underway… weather stayed gloomy for most of the morning, but thankfully still no rain. The gold group did a fantastic job at the year recaps and warming up the audience and our scenes were pretty good — fights were as they always are, minor issues but largely good. The weather got sunnier and the falcon guy wanted to fly his birds, so he did, but they flew away and he couldn’t get it back for a long time because they were heavily distracted by the large number of people. The second thing that was fun was the maypole guy got his ribbons twisted up and couldn’t untangle them, so he stopped doing the maypole — I sent Al over and he fixed that… if you ever do a festival, you need Al, he’s a brilliant site manager. Games ran well and our new additions (Maypole, Quintain and Hit a Knight) were well received, although looking at Ian at the end of the day, he and his crew were wiped from having so many kids attack them. Faire sped by and wrapped and we started breakdown a bit late (6:10) and being that we’re a week later, we were worried about the amount of time (sunset at 7:30). Well, magic must have really been with us, because with unprecidented speed the truck was loaded by 7:20 and we were offsite by 7:45. Storage was unloaded completely and we were at the restaurant by 9pm which was totally unbelieveable. All and all, the 9th year was a good year considering how it could have gone… numbers were down, about 3500-4000, but likely because of the weather — at the very least we are a go for next year and we plan on making it a big one.
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September 23rd, 2006
No problems with the park last night, everything was intact. We worked fairly hard today, got tents setup and areas roped off. Games got repaired and prepped, so we should be ready to deploy them at a wink. We saw 120 bales of straw arrive and it’s always fun to climb up on top and throw them off. We did a short cute dragon-in-the-jail rehearsal and all should be good there. Found out there will be no parking for us tomorrow as there are baseball games in the park beside us, but we’ll manage. The close of the day saw a bit of rain as we all jumped in our cars to leave. We got a lots done but skipped a few things for this year because they didn’t seem like they were worth the effort — had a few brainstorms for next year that will be jazzy. The weather is still taunting us and it seems like there may be a window of nice weather for us between the early morning thunderstorms and evening rain where it might actually be a good day. I don’t quite understand it all and there seems to be no predictability from the weather reports, but I guess we’ll have to take what we can get. Hopefully people don’t stay away. See you on the morrow — Huzzah!
September 22nd, 2006
Started doing setup today — record times for getting everything out of storage, good planning and strong help made it really work well. In the park, everything went very smoothly, got the centre ring all setup, some tents built and the security guard even arrived early. Weather forecast does not look good at all, and if we get rained out, we’re worried that we won’t have enough money to do a tenth year, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
September 21st, 2006
Sadly I didn’t spend nearly the requisite time today talking like a pirate. After all, it is international “Talk like a Pirate” day and we should all do our share. There just isn’t enough talking like pirates in normal life, although I have interviewed someone for a job dressed as a pirate (he never lets me forget that). To match the theme of the day, you should at least figure out your pirate name by taking the pirate quiz. Mine is Jack Rackham and, much to my enjoyment, Karen’s was *Captain* Mary Rackham — so I guess it’s just meant to be.
September 19th, 2006
I stopped in to Tim Horton’s today to get Karen some coffee while she was at work. As I am wont to do as I returned to my car to leave, I happened to say “have a good day” to the parking lot attendant. That was met with a “be careful of the bees!” stern warning from him, followed up with a “they’re angry now because of the shortages of pole-en”. I engage in some light conversation with him about how I too have noticed an unusual amount of bee activity and also am very concerned. I left with a hearty “keep clear of the bees” well wishing to him and hopped in my car and drove off. Very strange indeed.
September 18th, 2006
I started my vacation off today with a 4 hour meeting in Guelph going over acquisition data with my superiors… but, since it was very interesting stuff, it wasn’t such a hardship for me.
September 18th, 2006
Karen, myself and well everyone really are so tired right now — even falling asleep on the couch. We finished our dress rehearsal for the RMF today and had an extended fight rehearsal. Essentially we spent from 10am to 4pm in the park running the whole show. Overall, it was pretty good for a rehearsal, and we cleaned up quite a few areas that needed improving. As it usually goes, on the day of the faire it will likely be 200% better (for some reason), but I think in the end, everyone was quite happy with it. I was expecially impressed with the gold group and their recaps of previous years, especially the fun Ceili dance sequence that would occur at the end of each section. Now we just have to do the good weather voodoo and all should for Saturday.
September 17th, 2006
Because I was in Toronto for the last two days doing work and because I was essentially within 6 miles of my uncle and aunt, I figured I should at least TRY to drop in on them (much to my parent’s chagrin I’m notorious for not keeping in touch). I stupidly couldn’t find their house yesterday since I was on the wrong side of the 407, but tonight, I made it! Dropped in to visit aunt Merle and see how she was (lots of fun talking about Bruce and Blair) but had just missed uncle Bob who had flown that morning to visit my parents in Keewatin. Now that I’m back and forth to Toronto over the next little while, I’ll have to make sure I spend a bit of time visiting as I haven’t seen them for years.
September 15th, 2006
Shareholders approved the vote and it seems just a matter of paperwork now as Hummingbird will become part of Open Text. Should be a very busy October for both teams and I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to all the inbound workload through the fall.
September 15th, 2006
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