It’s been a little over a week before my last day at IBM. I was frankly blown away by the good-bye that I got from coworkers that Friday. We all went out to a Thai feast in Burnaby (and by Thai feast, I mean it just kept coming and coming until we started giggling as each dish was brought to the table; Pad Thai? Sure, Crispy Fish with sauce? Why not!? More Stir-Fried Vegetables? Of course!)

I packed up my desk (I had spent over a week moving books and toys from it to home in half a dozen trips). It was a strange time, with my time alloted to the project over, and work still needing to be done the project I’ve been working on. I hope that I haven’t left too much hanging; Some of it was dependent on details of features that had not been defined yet, but where I had to leave wireframes (which are essentially diagrams of how screens should look and what should be on them and where) partially finished, I tried to make it clear how they could be completed. I said many good-byes to friends and colleagues, and drove home from Burnaby, a little dazed (hey, it was probably all that food at lunch).

On Saturday, we decided to play tourist all over again. We went to the open house of CityTV and took a station tour, meeting most of the crew of Breakfast Television (which I must confess, we’re not regular viewers of, but it was fun, nevertheless). I won a CityTV Umbrella, and we got some Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream at the end of the tour. I like the station; It’s small and has a lot of personality, and they run Jeopardy each evening (and also carry Reaper, which is a lot of fun and another series filmed here).

Saturday Night, I went to the ticket office at the Orpheum just before the Symphony Concert, and got a last-minute seat for the concert (only $15!). I heard the VSO play one of my favourite pieces, Prokofiev’s Third Symphony. I love it because it’s mostly loud and fast, and almost never lets up. In particular, the third movement is some of the wildest and most vivid music that Prokofiev ever wrote, and much of the drama of the piece is due to the fact that it’s taken from his opera ‘The Flaming Angel’, which chronicles a young nun’s psychotic breakdown and pursuit of a man she believes is an angel, complete with an on-stage exorcism and chase through the streets. Not your usual opera fare, and certainly not your usual Symphony. The orchestra did a fine job, but I suspect that it was too racy for the crowd, who didn’t give it as much of a standing ovation as they did for the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto in the first half. Ah, when will they stop doing this?! Once again, people, when every performance gets a standing ovation, it ceases to mean anything!

The rest of the weekend was a bit quieter, but things picked up again today, with a job interview. I’m not going to write more about that until things settle down either way. Pam also has a lead on a contract, so it’s probable that the free time between engagements for both of us is probably going to come to an end soon.

Tomorrow evening is a special SIGCHI event: the film designer Syd Mead (who was responsible for the revolutionary sets and scenery of Blade Runner) will be in town speaking, followed by a screening of the final cut of the movie.

Posted: May 13th, 2008 under Movies, Music, Tech, Television.
Comments: 2

Never has there been a better musical metaphor for the disaster of the Bush Presidency than this audio clip from the visit of the Pope Benedict XVI to the White House on April 16th. Thanks to my hero, Tom Allen of the CBC (who will be tragically let go this fall, much to my agony, but enough about that for the time being), his sharp ears picked up this amazing fiasco of Hail to the Chief:

Here’s the quote from Tom Allen’s Junk Drawer:

Here’s the musical event Charles Ives waited for his entire life. On April 16, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House. Two musical groups were there to welcome him - the Herald Trumpets from the US Army Band, and the President’s Own Marine Band. The President, not surprisingly, was there, too. Protocol says that any time the President of the United States turns up in an official role, the band has to play “Hail to the Chief.” As you hear from the clip, protocol apparently doesn’t say they have to play it in just one key. The story is that one group came to rehearsal and the other didn’t, so they ended up, at the big moment, playing the same piece in different keys. I’ve received, predictably, contradictory reports of which group, the Army or the Marines, fired in the wrong direction, but the result was a direct hit for music fans who like their military bands on the experimental side. It’s fantastic!

I found out this morning that it was because one of the groups was a ‘civilian’ group. This was the musical equivalent of ‘friendly fire’ between American troops and Military contractors.

Posted: April 29th, 2008 under Music, Politics, US.
Comments: 5

This morning I awoke to some incredible (and I mean this in the true sense of the word; I can scarcely believe it) news:

Rogers Issues Statement on the Apple iPhone

TORONTO, April 29 /CNW/ - Ted Rogers, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rogers Communications Inc. today issued the following statement:
We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.

About Rogers Communications Inc.
Rogers Communications is a diversified Canadian communications and media
company. We are engaged in wireless voice and data communications services
through Wireless, Canada’s largest wireless provider and the operator of the
country’s only Global System for Mobile Communications (”GSM”) based network.
Through Cable and Telecom we are one of Canada’s largest providers of cable
television, cable telephony and high-speed Internet access, and are also a
full-service, facilities-based telecommunications alternative to the
traditional telephone companies. Through Media, we are engaged in radio and
television broadcasting, televised shopping, magazines and trade publications,
and sports entertainment. We are publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange
(TSX: RCI.A and RCI.B), and on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: RCI). For
further information about the Rogers group of companies, please visit
www.rogers.com.

Yes folks, Hell has officially frozen over.

But wait… let’s see: “later this year” could mean anything between April 30th to December 31st. So the longest I’ll have to wait will be 8 months. I guess that’s good news. I have to admit, this did look like an April Fool’s posting that is 28 days too late.

At the very least, we’ll see an end to the hand-wringing and cries of Why does Apple hate Canada? on so many of the web sites here.

Posted: April 29th, 2008 under Canada, Tech.
Comments: 7

That does it. From now on, I stop trying to do this myself and get an accountant.

When we lived in Boston, we had a complicated tax situation. I was frequently working as a consultant, and worked with an accountant who knew us like family, but eventually left the business (Genevieve, wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope you’re happy) to make sure that I could make the right deductions, amortize the depreciation of equipment purchases, and figure out when it was best to pay estimated tax vs. go nearly broke in late April.

I though that after we moved to Canada it would get simpler, and up until this past year, it was. I had mostly income from one employer, and we didn’t do much in the way of retirement investing (hey, when you don’t have much income from a previous year, you can’t sock much away in an RRSP - what used to be a 401K for us). There was no notion of a joint return here and the forms even looked a little simpler, I think.

In 2007, that all changed, and I should have realized this fact a while back, but procrastination of tax prep is something I’ve done all my life. When you’re a self-employed person and keeping your money in your account as long as possible is your goal, filing taxes early never makes much sense, unless you prefer the pleasure of not scrambling on April 14th (the tax deadline day for the US) . So, after 7 or so hours of agony, I’ve decided that it is just too damned hard to do my own return any more. I used some software, TaxTron - which was pretty hard to use, but which did the calculations, but the questions were still cryptic (CNIC? QPP/CPP pensionable earnings? Cotisations de l’employé au RPC? Huh?). I’m probably going to file an amended return for this past year’s mess after May 1, and for sure next year it will be under the careful guidance of a CGA (That’s what a CPA became after the move). I’ve learned my lesson. Now, if I could only get my Sunday refunded back to me, since I worked yesterday, albeit for the last time for a while. So much for a Spring weekend.

Posted: April 27th, 2008 under Canada, Life.
Comments: 4

It’s been a while, since I wrote here, and that’s partly because I was often too tired in the evening after work to write anything. I’m recovering from a nasty illness that was fairly painful and at the worst point a little tiring, but now I’m nearly back to normal.

This past Saturday, Pam and I took a little picnic to the beach. We packed the car with food, folding chairs and a picnic blanket/tarp. While it was a little chilly, Locarno beach, the mountains and the city all made for a beautiful view:

Later, we went to a housewarming for my friend Tanya, who has gotten a great place on the opposite shore of False Creek from us (we joked that we could probably wave at each other across the water). While it took a little while for us to locate her new place, it did give us the chance to see a little more of the city as dusk began to fall.

It was a break from the stress of work, but that stress is probably going to let up fairly soon. It looks very likely that my contract at IBM will be ending next month, and I’ll be free to relax a little before I am working full-time once again. May is a great month to have some time to enjoy Vancouver, when it is the ‘city of the senses’ rather than the intellect, as I often have written here. A few more days like this past Saturday will definitely be something to look forward to.

Posted: April 14th, 2008 under Life, Tech, Vancouver.
Comments: 1