What a long strange trip it's been...

I'm .......

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:58:32 GMT

.... Knot, ready for winter.

:P

The end of the iron kitty....

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:07:47 GMT

In other news.....

OTTAWA (AFP) - "Thatcher has died," read the short text message that kicked off a brief diplomatic flurry among members of Canada's parliament and their advisors at a black tie dinner this week, said local media Thursday.

Upon learning the "news" via mobile or Blackberry at a soiree honoring Canadian military families Tuesday, some 2,000 shocked Conservatives, said to revere the Iron Lady of British politics, and their advisors reportedly huddled to discuss a reaction.

The prime minister's office called Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street to confirm that Margaret Thatcher had indeed passed away -- baffling British officials, CanWest News Service said.

It turned out the message was sent by Canadian Transport Minister John Baird from his home in Toronto to a person at the gala dinner to say his beloved 16-year-old gray tabby cat, named for Margaret Thatcher, 84, had died.

The recipient then forwarded it to others.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office was not immediately available for comment.

Too many jokes to make about that posting.... not enough time to make them all.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:21:50 GMT

Damn, that flu shot really works! Managed to finally get the kids innoculated on Thursday, and by Saturday Jake had the flu!

Who do I call to complain about Holly still being healthy?

Oh, and I notice that I missed posting halloween photos besides the pumpkins.

The original plan was that Jake was going as Jason Vorhees, and Holly wanted to be Freddie Kruger. Our own little cadre of murderous mayhem. That was the operating assumption until we got the costume store and Holly decided that she wanted to exert a little authority instead.

OK. Officer Cutie-Pie can arrest Jason...that still works!

Until the day before when Jake decided that he didn't want to be a maniacal killer after all.

Instead.... he aspires to be a bum.

We're soooooooooooooooo proud with his high aspirations! lol.

OK, well cops do like to beat up on the homeless, and it meant I got to wear the Jason mask. So it all worked out.

And, as the added bonus, my good wife never noticed where I'd put the bag of tootsie rolls, so I got my fair quota of candy too!

Went and visited Dad yesterday before he heads south for the season. His absences seem to get longer and longer each year.

Can't say as I blame him either.

This year's pumpkin crop

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:13:41 GMT

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!!!

It's been a while since the GreenBelt surprised me.

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:00:44 GMT

I've been wandering in the woods my whole life. Some of my earliest standout memories are treks through the bush at the cottage. Discovering wild strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and once - a skunk.

Ottawa, as a semi-planned city (yes - they planned to make it this dull!), was designed with a ring of greenspace around it to limit it's growth. We call it the greenbelt. Many others call it 'that unneccessary forest which means that my house is situated a mile further from my office than it needs to be!'

Of course, what we all tend to forget is that this greenspace wasn't always what it is today. There were a ton of expropriations when it was created in order to fill in some gaps. It also, in many instances, can best be described as "the forest around the big-assed swamp that no-one wanted to build on anyway!"

But every now and then you find those surprises in the bush. Most times it's sighting some rarer bird, plant, or anmal, but on rare occassions it is things that left there and were long forgotten.

For example, in the 70s someone stumbled across the ruins of an old industrial lime kiln deep in the bush between two bogs. It has since been stabilized and a marked trail leads you in.

And on Friday, I had my own little moment.

It was a gorgeous day under golden, late afternoon light. And I was a little ahead on my commute when I saw the light filtering though the trees along the road. I had to stop...

It's a place I've stopped at so many times. The place where the bulk of my morning-frosty-fall-leaves pictures have been taken for several years now. But I'm not sure that I've ever stopped there on the way home. And this time, I wandered up the deer trail a little further. Up over the rise to see what lay ahead.

The first thing that appeared was the fence. Old, decrepit, and collapsed. An old farm fence with sections of log, and sections of cleared stone reminiscent of the way the Irish build stone fences from the rocks cleared from the farm.

Well, a fence has to go somewhere right?

And sure enough, it did!

A clearing opened up, at the edge of which the remenants of an old out-building stood. The roof long gone. The walls only partially standing. The joints of the logs well-crafted.

Going past the struture, it turned out that an engineered stone wall provided it with a level foundation.

And beyond, into the woods, a much larger structure inside which an old woodstove rusted alone.

For all of my life, these woods have been a place to wander and seek joy in nature.

But sometime long before, it was someone's home, and someone's livelihood in an era when that life would have been harsh and backbreaking.

A change of season....

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:26:44 GMT

Well, I guess it's time to put the final nail in summer.

It's done!

Didn't get out as much as I'd have liked, and time is definitely running out on autumn. It was one of those years where we went from comfortable heat to sub-freezing in about a week, and that week was filled with rain.

Still, as always nature puts on a heck of an end-of-season show.

Dear Nobel Committee...

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:51:56 GMT

Dear Nobel Committee...

Are you shitting me?

Look - nothing personal. Love you. Love your work. Love that Obama dude. I mean, really - was an active booster for him and was there to celebrate his big moment. HAve the highest regard for the man, and the best hopes for his tenure as Prez.

But the Peace Prize?

Now?

For WHAT?!

Fancy rhetoric above and beyond the call of duty?

I love the guy and think that he might manage to inspire enough people to make a difference in this world. And I know that compared to the last guy living on Pensylvania Avenue he looks like MLK, JFK, Mother Theresa, and Ghandi all rolled into one! And maybe that swayed you a bit.

But the Peace Prize? Already?

Sorry - but this sort of "grand gesture" just cheapens it. It's like the Peoples Choice award instead of the Oscars.

Look - I hope that Obama lives up to it and that in seven years we think to ourselves - "yeah, he earned that sucker".

But now?

Sorry dudes. I know it's a convenient location but you have to STOP having you committee meetings in Amsterdam.

'nough said.

It's coming....

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 03:17:18 GMT

too damn many leaves starting to look like this:

I guess summer is over.

Quotable Quote:

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:33:37 GMT

"We should have a party because I'm an awesome swinger!"

--Mikayla, age 4, thrilled that she managed to get the swing to go back and forth under her own power without pushes from an adult.

The only response I could come up with at the moment?

"Your mom will be sooooooooo proud!"

Oh, and forget not ye scurvy rats that today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

The people of Parliament Hill

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:59:25 GMT

People-watching can be a full-time leisure activity in a tourist town. If you wanted to set yourself a project like ... say ...pictures of people taking pictures - well you could get that done in an hour. So, you could try and be more specific. Like... pictures of people taking pictures while also drinking a cup of Timmies coffee!

You get the basic, awkward, "dear god don't spill it on the camera" grip...

And then there are the far more inventive ways to coordinate the two activities....

And just what are these Timmies-drinking photographers shooting?

Well, come along and take a look.....

Maybe it's the the large group chanting "All hail Stephen Harper". Or was that "YMCA"?

Or maybe it was just yoga on the west lawn of the Hill.

On the east lawn, Parliamentary staffers practice pummelling opposition constituents for the upcoming election using a small red ball as a target.

Up on the steps, the socialist-in-chief is yammering on. This is the guy who is (according to King Stevie) a super-evil-propper-up-of-even-more-evil-Iggy if he votes with the Liberals, but a super-good politician looking out for the people if he votes with the Conservatives.

And yes, I DID try and get the word "Stop" right next to him. I'm just mean that way.

Meanwhile, down by the flame you find the clergyman with the pole up his ass. I thought it an apt shot of a guy standing there every day with a photo of the aborted fetus and hatefull placards about the gay community.

And finally, you just can't have political shennanigans without giving dishonourable mention to Peta. I dunno though, I miss the good old days when they used to protest with nekkid women. Still - there's something about large furry-suit wearing people that just screams out for a good clubbing.

I blame Barney for that.

Other that - I'm sick. We're all sick. The germ-factory known as School must have started again.....

Downtown again....

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:23:54 GMT

OK, so I've had a couple of weeks to start wandering around centertown again, and I guess I'll start with some virtual tourism for the rest of you. Unlike that capital to our immediate south, most of our halls of power are still fully accessible to the public. Want to wander into the Supreme Court? Go ahead. Indeed most lunches you will find a soccer game going on it's front lawn.

So let's get started....

This statue sits directly opposite the Court. And, just like the real homeless, most people seem to walk right past it without noticing. The real homeless are there too, of course....

Veritas (Truth) is one of the two main statues on the front of the court building. It is placed looking up at Parliament in a pose that, to me anyway, speaks of a great suspicion of finding Truth anywhere in the vicinity. I can't say as I blame her for feeling that way....

Can't particularly say that I blame this warrior for his viewpoint on justice either....

Historically speaking, he has every reason to look down upon it. So they put a much more modernly armed settler just around the corner to keep an eye on him.

Behind the court lies a forgotten lookout over the river that almost noone ever bothers visiting as it isn't quite as nice as the one behind PArliament. Indeed there are deserted little park spaces around many of the buildings along Wellington.

It makes for a nice private place to enjoy one of the last few days that still feel like summer.

More tomorrow....

What? again?

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:04:32 GMT

Gee, it almost feels like whole year since the last election.

Must be time to do it all over again.....

"So? How's the new job going Mike?"

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:36:51 GMT

Well gee, it's been a whole day now, so - ummm - dunno! Ton of reading to do to catch up on things....looks interesting thus far at least.

As to the office? Well, if it were any further west in the downtown core it would fall off the escarpment into the Lebreton Flats - which means nothing to anyone outside of Ottawa I know - but there it is.

On the bright side, that means choices. Turn east from the building and I'm in the heart of the city in two blocks. Turn west and I'm along the western parkway in one.

Pics of the tall buildings will come, but a quick 20-minute stroll yesterday morning before my first day turned up the following...

First, I'm a whole block from Ottawa's largest grafitti wall. I'll be there... lots!

After all, where else can you see the battle between Optimus Prime vs The Garbage Can?

Go a block west, and you hit the pumphouse - part of the city waterworks and home of the Ottawa River Runners kayak training facility in the outflow.

I'm sure I'll find some good action shots there - especially as they host the occasional competition.

Follow the path from the pumphouse under the Parkway, and five minutes later you're on Victoria Island.

A bit further and I've got the War museum, and from there it's a reasonable hike to the stone sculptures in the river. Too far for a noon walk, but along the commute home if I choose that route.

Going into downtown is a whole other scenario, and I'll get to that too. The beauty of the way west is the lack of streetlights to interrupt your pace. But if I'm going to be downtown I couldn't ask for a better location from a walking perspective. Urban or natural - depending on the mood.

Now if I can only get a handle on a reasonably priced parking pass close to work- I'll be good!

Winds of change...

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:41:44 GMT

There is something bittersweet about leaving an office that has been your home for a few years. It's like that last look around a house or apartment when you move out. You're leaving for a reason, but the memories remain.

And I'll miss my favourite spot along the river, The fallen tree which has served as my picnic bench on more occassions than I can count - overlooking the secluded little inlet where most of my shots of herons, muskrat, turtles, and water lilies these past few years were taken.

But it is time to go.

3 Days 'n Counting...

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:44:04 GMT

Went for what might be a last stroll along the river yesterday lunch. It hit me then how much I'd miss my mini-vacations in the wild that this location offered me.

I'll miss the winos and the wildlife. The cyclists and the schizophrenics. The ducks and the discarded condoms.

I'll even miss the sex....

"Oh yeah baby! Work it good....."

Yep, I'll miss this place.

And over there lies Ottawa....

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:39:44 GMT

For some time now I've wanted to take the time to do a panoramic out my office window. And for some time now, I haven't. Until the thought occurred to me that I wouldn't have this view much longer, it was one of those thing that got pushed off to the mythical land of "later".

But with the project winding down, it was time to start shopping the resume around again, and I pretty quickly got a bite. So it's out with the old and in with the new starting August 24th. Back downtown - finally!

I'm going to miss the river alongside the building to walk along at lunch.

I'm going to miss the ease of access from this location to several of my favourite shooting spots for noon getaways.

And I'm especially going to miss working with a number of the people here - some good friends, some excellent professionals, some just entertaining, and some all three.

I'm not going to miss having to commute all the way across the city to get to work.

I'm not going to miss having only a handfull of options within walking distance for good food.

I'm not going to miss the elevators in this building which occassionally decide not to deliver you to your destination.

I'm proud of what we managed to accomplish here as a team. It was, without doubt, the biggest and most critical data warehouse that I ever expect to be associated with in my life. And dammit - we did it, and it is far more than just a knotch in my C.V. It was a great learning experience too, and I hope that I get to work with many of these people again. People that rise to meet the challenge, find innovative ways to overcome obstacles, and who are damned fun to work with.

I will count myself fortunate if I get as much professional satisfaction out of the next contract.

And I am sure going to miss this view!

If you click through you can get to the original 6000pixel wide image (warning - BIG file). I wish Flickr would let you annotate the images at full size so I could point out a lot of the places you've already seen up close in my LJ. What you are seeing is all of downtown Ottawa taken from east of centertown shooting west. Everything is in that shot from Parliament, to the University of Ottawa, to the Soviet Embassy that this building was erected to spy on, to my Dad's condo, my favourite cemetary, city hall, and even all the way up to Gatineau Park where my favourite waterfalls lie.

It's all there in that one picture - if you know where to find it.

Days of rest

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:03:56 GMT

In an absolute rarity for me for a few months now, I actually had a weekend where I did not have one iota of time logged into the office. A three-day weekend at that!

Did I take that time to do anything constructive? Hell no!

I laid in bed with my wife watching old movies. I hung out in the back yard with the kids on the waterslide. I did a bare minimum of household chores under the assumption that as long as we all had clean undies and relatively regular meals - the rest would work itself out.

And it did.

I'd almost forgotten what it means to have time off - even as short as it was.

Stormy weather...

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:14:58 GMT

It has rained every day but six so far this month, and the average highs have actually been a degree cooler than what we had in June. Indeed, it has rained so much that the river is right back up to late spring levels. The lawns love it. The wildlife loves it. The people? Not so much....

Tried to catch a long-exposure shot of the wild grasses blowing in one of the storms last week, but between the wind shaking the car and my trying to hand-hold the long exposure - I couldn't get the shot I wanted. Still, I decided that I liked the result anyway...

Traditionally this would be Jake's week off camping with my Dad, but this year's got cancelled due to Dad's health. He came by a week or so ago to take Jake for a swim, and as I watched him steadying himself as he headed down the porch steps it struck me hard that for the first time ever I would have described my father as looking frail.

It is just one of any number of things this year that are bothering me on the age front this summer.

The fact that it was the 25th anniversary of my high-school graduation. Not that I went - after all, I didn't go to the actual graduation way back then either.

The fact that, catching myself totally by surprise in the changeroom mirror when I took the kids swimming, I suddenly realized how much I now greatly resemble the standard flabby-sized middle-aged Dads that overpopulated the beaches in our youth.

The dull ache in my lower back that just seems to be there - all the time.

And as I watched Jake and his friend T playing the "studiously ignore them whilst keeping a close eye on them" game with two girls from their class who were also at the pool, it struck me that I had truly jumped to that "old" generation that will be the target of the kids jokes and ire for the next decade or so. They'll be the vibrant, energetic young men and women discovering all of life's rich pageant as if it were something new. I'll be the impossible authority figure who makes rules that hold them back and knows absolutely nothing. My Dad will be the frail old dude who seems to matter a whole lot to Dad but is really slow and boring to hang out with - except that they are forced to from time to time.

Well, isn't that an optimistic spin on my immediate future?

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:44:12 GMT

The tears of a child...

...have no better cure than a mother's kiss.

Made it through the first weekend of babysitting the project in production, although we had to back up to the beginning and restart it all Sunday afternoon. A little matter of one piece of code deleting a few million pieces of data before another bit of code was done with it. Yeah, those sorts of dumb-assed errors always pop up in projects this big, but always still seem to make you feel like a dumbass when you have to report them up the chain of command.

Still, besides that little glitch things have gone pretty smoothly - enough so that I took yesterday off to make up for working both days on the weekend.

After all - it's summer dammit! Working ANY day should be verboten at this time of year.

D-Day minus 1

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:36:58 GMT

And, upon reflection, I should have just stayed in bed....

Not a lot to do today but catch up on documentation changes, and wait for the hammer to drop.

Got the metrics from our last pass through the copy of production data. It took 5 days, 6 hours, and 41 minutes to process through the initial load and 50 days of subsequent changes. That on a dedicated box with no other competing processes sucking up resources. When we go live we will have the initial load plus over 70 days of subsequent changes to catch up on on a system where the resources are definitely NOT all just for us.

And guess who is on call 24/7 for the duration?

D-Day minus 2

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:37:35 GMT

I'm not saying that senior management IS aprehensive about the big chunk of code that we're deploying on Friday. Then again, I'm NOT saying that they aren't.

All I'm saying is that the last one I ran into in a status meeting resembled this:

A Public Service Announcement

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:54:55 GMT

If anyone has seen our summer, please tell it that we love it, we miss it, and that we want it to come home to us.

Thanks.

Only in Canada.....

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:10:45 GMT

In other parts of the world, airliners hit birds and land on fish (well, assuming that any fish actually survive in the Hudson). In Canada we cut out the middle-bird and hit the fish directly before landing at the airport. It's far less disruptive for the passengers that way....

In its report for June 30, NAV Canada, the agency in charge of air-traffic control, noted WestJet flight WS-551 from Hamilton to Calgary had experienced a rare mid-air collision. The big bird had brought down a perch.

Remains of the 1.5-lb. swimmer were found on the airport tarmac.

The NAV Canada report stated "this is the first recorded fish incursion in the history of the Calgary International Airport."

Also found were the remains of an osprey -- believed to have had the fish in its clutches when struck by the Boeing.

~*~*~*~*~

In other parts of the world, people lucky enough to get off on a technicality are smart enough to leave well enough alone. In Canada, people who get the evidence of their grow-op tossed try to sue for damages.

A southern Ontario woman suing Black's Photography over pictures of her marijuana plants will have to produce the photos in court. Agnieska Wojtanowska says Black's violated her Charter rights back in 2001 when a worker handed the photos over to police.

Drug charges were later dropped when the pictures were excluded as evidence because they were obtained without a search warrant.

The woman then sued Black's and the police for improper seizure of the photos. But she didn't want to produce them in a Kitchener, Ont. courtroom, citing privacy concerns.

Go ahead. Introduce them as evidence. Make them a voluntary part of the public record. See how long it takes for your charges to get reinstated.

Go ahead - I dare ya!

~*~*~*~*~

And, in other parts of the world, people actually wake up to have sex. Not here. It cuts into our naptime.....

'Sexsomnia,' like insulin, five-pin bowling and the term 'cougar,' is a Canadian discovery. I first heard about it at a sexuality conference in Guelph several years ago when Dr. Paul Fedoroff, a forensic psychiatrist in Ottawa presented research suggesting that stress, chronic sleeplessness, or alcohol or drug abuse may lead a person to engage in sexual behaviour while sound asleep.

The research, which Fedoroff completed with co-researchers Dr. Colin Shapiro and Dr. Nik Trajanovic of the University of Toronto first appeared in 1996 in a paper called 'Sexsomnia - A New Parasomnia?' that was published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in June 2003.

Now there's some medical research I'd be willing to sign up for!

And how was your week?

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:10:12 GMT

It's been one of those weeks.

You know - the sort of one where you bring your laptop home to get some work done over the weekend - but the hard-drive packs it in as soon as you boot it up.

So you raise a ticket to the support team on Monday and the guy comes up, pops in a new drive with their standard OS image and asks what other software you need installed. So you tell him and he promises to have it back to you the next day.

Which he does. It's there on the desk when you arrive the next morning!

There - but without, as it turns out, any single one of the critical software programs you needed (and asked for) installed. But hey - he DID manage not to fuck up Outlook.

So you spend Tuesday downloading and installing everything yourself because - well - fuck him, he had his chance. And my manager kinda wants me to be able to do my job.

Then you bring the laptop back home Tuesday night, only to discover that the guy hadn't installed your VPN credentials properly either.

Which you raise another ticket for on Wednesday morning.

Which still hasn't been resolved.

Because it turns out that the guy who is assigned the original ticket to fix your laptop Monday and (not) install your software - well he went on vacation Tuesday morning, but the re-opened ticket got assigned back to him anyway.

You actually have to argue with the support desk to get the ticket reassigned to someone who will actually be working at any time over the next three weeks.

I use the term "working" very loosely in this context.....

So you take a lunch-break with the intent of finding somewhere nice and quiet to rebuild your mental health before you become an honorary Postal Service employee... and think "Hey, five minutes up the road is the Governer General's rose garden." Perfect! It is always open to the public! Always!

Always ..... except, apparently, for that one time every 50 years or so when the Emperor of Japan drops by to plant a flippin' tree.

On that day there's a massive RCMP guy at the gate with an earpiece, dark shades, odd bulges under his jacket, and extreme shortage of interpersonal relationship skills.

So you sit in your car, think, and drive the two blocks over to old city hall. Fuck it - at least there's a bench or two along the river there where you can munch a sandwich in peace.

I've featured old city hall here before, but I don't think I've ever walked all of the way around it before. It is actually quite an interesting building - most especially for the various odd elements along the roofline.

Now, that isn't to say that I will ever feel all that good about the way the local taxpayers got soaked for the costs of an architectural gem that leaked, wasn't big enough, and got sold at a huge loss to the federal government in favour of an even more expensive new building which we are still paying for. No, it was a budgetary disaster.

But I DO like the building. There are constantly changing and interesting shadows, compositions, and reflections between the elements that make it look very different from every angle.

And it turned out to be just the mental health break I needed. Something totally distracting to focus my attentions on for a bit.

Still waiting on the VPN connectivity I need, but I guess you can't have everything..... :P

Summer is...

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:21:16 GMT

Summer is the simple joy of a morning coffee by the river watching the fishermen...

It is the sights and smells as new wildflowers come into bloom....

It is a cloud of butterflies rising around you as you walk through the wildflowers...

And it is the simple pleasure of finding a patch of wild strawberries to feast on as you go.

If you've never found them, I threw the dime in to show the scale. At most a centimeter across. They are tiny, but packed full of flavour.

Summer is, in short, getting to forget - if only for a half hour - that you have things to do and places to be.

It is an escape.