General

Scrambles in British Columbia

The other day I came to the realization that it had been almost twelve years since I started my post-secondary education at the University of Calgary. I guess it shouldn’t have come as that big of a surprise since I recently received my Canadian Forces Decoration from the Army (given after 12 years of service), and I joined the Army Reserves just before heading to UCalgary.

The shock of a decade gone by made me stop and wonder where some of the people that I’ve met have ended up. And one of the persons I started thinking about was Matt Gunn, a friend of mine who I met while living in residence at the University of Calgary. Matt and I used to boulder a bit together and he introduced me to climbing, but ultimately Matt was an extreme outdoor adventurer whereas I was a young Trooper in the Reserves. That meant that while I was out freezing in the Wainwright training area in whatever vehicles happened to be running, Matt was backcountry hiking or skiing.

It didn’t take me long to track down Matt. He’s made quite a name for himself out in British Columbia and has written a couple of books. If you’re looking for hikes around Inveremere, where he grew up, without reading it, I can definitely recommend his book ”Hikes Around Invermere and the Columbia Valley.” Matt’s working as a teacher so you should probably go out and buy his books so he can support his backcountry habits. I think I’ll email him and try and get an “old friend” discount. That aside, if you are looking for some good scambles or hikes in Western Canada, Matt is the guy to ask.
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Scottish-Australian-Canadian

On Friday night I attended the Immigrants of Distinction Awards, a gala event celebrating the outstanding achievements of immigrants in the Calgary community. It was a great event and as promised, the winners of the awards had done great things since arriving in Canada, both for themselves and for the community.

But throughout the night there was a lot of mentioning of hyphenated nationalities. That’s what I call it when you mash two or more nationalities together. My mother is from Australia, my Dad is Canadian and my Dad’s family moved from Scotland around the turn of the century. So I’m half Australian and half Canadian but my hyphenated nationality could be Scottish-Australian-Canadian. I guess I could just shorten it and call myself an Australian-Canadian (or is it Canadian-Australian?). But whatever I choose to refer to myself as doesn’t mean I’m not proud of my heritage – I still cheer for Canada in the World Cup and cheer for Australia in any cricket matches I watch.

But I think that by using a hyphenated nationality, you are making your life harder than you need to. To me, it’s as if being Canadian (or Australian) isn’t good enough, that you need to further differentiate yourself. But why differentiate? Quebec has done that for the last hundred years and all it’s done is made the rest of Canada resent Quebec and it’s desire to be “special”. Don’t get me wrong, I like Quebec and I have a bunch of friends in Montreal. But anyone who tells me that they are special Canadians because they’re from Quebec gets the thumbs down from me.

The same goes for the all of the “special” hyphenated nationalities. Love and be proud of your heritage, because it’s made you the person you are. But I think that you’re either a Canadian or you’re not. If a hyphenated nationality means that you’re a Canadian deserving of special treatment, then does that make me just a “normal” Canadian? Because that sounds like something I might end up resenting.

And if Canada does continue to go down the hyphenated nationality road, then Heaven help my children who will be known as Scottish-Australian-Polish-Ukrainian-Canadians (or if I can convince my wife to move, they’ll be Scottish-Canadian-Polish-Ukrainian-Australians).
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April Fools

These days, April Fools is a joke. Actually it’s always been a “joke” but you really have to look hard to find something that’s more creative then “your shoelace is undone”.

Once again, Slashdot takes the cake as lamest April Fools attempt. Every year on April 1st, Slashdot posts a multitude of silly story headlines which are obviously fake; especially after you’ve seen the other 400 stupid headlines they’ve posted. A typical headline is something like “U.N. Decides to Shut Down Internet Permanently” which then links to some other site which has made the story up. Bah. What’s so funny or creative about this? There are already several websites, such as The Onion, that do this every day and they do it so much funnier.

What today really should be about is catching people off guard, and doing it in a creative, yet non-malicious way. The two best examples of creativeness this year (at least in Calgary) came from radio stations. The first example was CJSW, the University of Calgary’s campus radio station pretended to be a hard rock station called ”The Cobra” and tricked hundreds of people. The second joke was courtesy of Standard Broadcasting, who apparently switched the feeds for C-JAY and The Vibe so that listeners tuned to 92.1 expecting to hear C-JAY instead heard the Vibe, and vice-versa.
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First Spam

This morning I got three spam emails and they were my first. No, they aren’t the first ever (since I’ve now received over 13,000 spam emails via various email accounts) but they are the first spam emails I’ve received in my zymeta.com inbox since I started working at Zymeta, well over a year ago.

I hope that this trend of fewer spam emails will continue, especially if we start seeing more companies adopting the Sender Policy Framework.
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Canadian Money Tracker

There’s an article in this week’s Vue Magazine about me and my money tracking website, Canadian Money Tracker.
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Protection Services???

This morning as I crossed my fingers for a winning ”RRRoll Up The Rim” cup at the Tim Hortons, I saw what looked to be a member of the Calgary Police Service. Because the line up wandered out the door, I couldn’t see the shoulder flash but if all you got was a quick glance, you would likely assume this was someone from CPS.

There has been a disturbing trend over the last few years for anyone associated with “security” to dress like actual police officers. What bothers me about this is that the police have enough to worry about without people questioning whether or not they are the real deal. The CPS unifrm should command immediate respect, not hesitation due to confusion.

I’m not sure if the push for the uniform change has come from the security people or from management or both, but whatever the case, I’m sure the justification is that “people don’t respect security people”. While that might be the reasoning, changing your uniform is not going to change anything. The minute I see the shoulder flash on your facade you will command as much respect and credibility from me as you did before. Take note; actions speak louder than words. Or in this case, actions speak louder than your clothing.

And the guy in the lineup at Tim’s? His shoulder flash read “Protection Services; Calgary Health Region”. Come on. Why not just call it like it is? You’re a security guard dressed to look like a police officer. What’s next? The bouncers at bars perhaps? I don’t see why not. Even “Campus Security” at the University of Calgary are dressed like CPS members. So wrong. And I didn’t even win anything on my Tim Hortons cup.
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3900 square feet of floating fun

I am trying to organize a houseboating trip in the Shuswaps late this summer. So I was checking out Twin Anchors website and discovered the latest addition to their fleet: the CruiseCraft V. What makes this boat amazing is that it’s 3900 square feet. It has room to sleep twenty-four, 3 full bathrooms, TVs in all the staterooms and an entertainment centre that puts most people’s home systems to shame. And did I mention the two waterslides. Nice.

Of course, it also costs almost $7000 to rent it for 3 nights during the peak summer period.
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blogging about what you don't know

It’s pretty funny how you can blog about a subject (in this case, Netscape 8), even though the first seven words in the blog are ”I haven’t tried the Netscape beta yet”. And while the author might be an expert on IE (or a member of the IE development team for that matter), it’s sorta like talking about a new beer, without having tasted it, but based on previous beer drinking experience, most of which probably happened while past the point of coherent thought.
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CensorZilla

Here’s another gem I discovered late this evening over on JWZ’s site. For someone who used to be so dedicated to a company it’s amusing how far he’s slid down the other side.
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