Over the last couple of months I’ve found that likely 95% of what I send out to the world travels via Twitter – mostly links, connections, forwarded items of note – and the occasional oh so clever comment.

All of which is my way of saying that for the foreseeable future you find me much more on Twitter, and much less on RSS.

Transparency: In the day, when I was doing the hiring, I always was upfront about compensation, and about the job itself.   If you won’t say exactly what the job entails, what it pays, and what your expectations are you’re likely wasting my time, and your own as you filter through stacks of resumes that don’t fit.  In other words, if you only pay $8 and hour, say so up front.

Transparency, Craiglist:  If you list no company name, no phone number, no real e-mail address, then most people assume you’re a scammer or identity thief - and not without good reason.  That’s why you get messages that say “Tell me who you are and I’ll send you a resume.”  Take that as a sign of intelligence and encourage them.

Courtesy: Yes you should respond to everyone who applies, even if it’s just a bulk e-mail saying “The job has been filled.”  It only takes five minutes, and it just the polite thing to do.

Follow-up e-mails: Yup, I’ll pepper you with follow-ups specifically because you aren’t telling me the job is filled.

Legality, SIN numbers: It’s still the law in Canada that you aren’t allowed to demand my Social Insurance Number until after you’ve hired me.  Yes, I’m talking to you U-Haul.  Even though I’ll go to great pains to avoid annoying possible employers, I will complain if you refuse my application on these grounds.

Legality, contracting: It started in the construction trades, and now it’s everywhere.  No-one is an employee any more, they’re “contractors,” or piece work employees.   No benefits, no paid vacation or stat holidays, no protection under labour laws.  Yup, that’s the mark of great employer.

Be open to new ideas and people: Guess what – it’s possible to be old enough that employers won’t even consider you.  It’s still possible to be of the wrong gender.  It’s still possible that you might think I’m over-qualified.

I’ll tell you what – I can walk into your job and do it today, not after a month of training.  Yes I’m at school part time upgrading my skills, but that doesn’t stop me from being a great employee, or even better a long term one.  If anything it shows that I’m serious, intelligent, and committed.

Instead of looking for the reasons to not hire me, how about looking for the reasons why you should?

Let me see….

Environmentalists don’t like us burning coal, oil, or natural gas.  The choice for everything is electric, whether cars, stoves, or guitars.  Electricity is clean, it’s instantaneous. It’s quiet.  It doesn’t have a tailpipe.

Problem is, all that electricity has to come from somewhere.

No-one wants to burn coal to make electricity, cause it pollutes.  Except Alberta of course.

No-one wants to have a nuclear generating station to make electricity, cause it will make us glow in the dark. Except Ontario of course.

Although everyone wants wind energy, no-one wants windmills to be anywhere near where they live, either because of imagined noise or because, well, it’s near where I live.

And of course everyone wants solar energy, except again not with big solar farms where they live, and not if the mining and manufacturing associated with solar panels is nearby.

All of this explains why hydro dams have always been pretty popular. They’re relatively non-intrusive to the populations who need power most (e.g. urban).  Aside from flooding they’re relatively clean and don’t generate much waste.  Because they tend to be located in remote locations they don’t make noise that keeps people awake at night.

Plus they can be big.  In power generation bigger is better and more efficient.  There’s room for redundancy – a good thing when the lights go out in February.

Still, the same people who don’t want oil, gas, coal, nuclear, or nearby wind or solar power generation also don’t want a hydro dam.

“We don’t need it now!” they shout, ignoring the likelihood that as Peak Oil sets in, people will use more electricity, not less, and when the dam comes on line in ten years it’ll save our bacon.

“Besides,” they cry, “People just have to get used to getting by with less!”

Less of the server farms that generate the Facebook groups they use to build support for their cause?

Less of those quiet, clean electric cars? Less of those clean but annoying fluorescent bulbs? Less of the $550 juicers that they use to create their healthy, locally raised breakfast?  Less of the non-diesel trolleys and trains that they use to get to and from work while their car sits at home?

No, none of those.  The folks who are rallying against Site C are among the group that doesn’t want anything available to anyone else unless they have personally approved of it, and who will never, ever come up with a positive, realistic alternative.

A little research tells me that Bill C-32: An Act to amend the Tobacco Act will regulate little cigars and blunt wraps, as well as various flavourings which are apparently popular with young smokers.

The debate surrounding this bill basically swings between those who see these products as targeting young people, tobacco companies who fear going out of business as a result of these restrictions, and those who fear that regulating the sale of tobacco will somehow infringe on our obligations under international trade treaties.

Seeing this sign immediately carried me back to my earliest days as a smoker.  In late high school drink meant Baby Duck, Lonesome Charlie, and Lemon Gin.  Smoking meant Colts.

Colts* are a loathsome little cigarillo with a plastic tip like a small cigarette holder.  What made them appealing to beginning smokers was their claim to be “wine dipped.”  What that actually meant was they were impregnated with a noxious fruity flavouring that seemed good at at the time, but which would likely turn my stomach today.

Why did I start smoking? Probably for the same reason every other person does.

Once during a serious discussion of anti-smoking initiatives aimed at young people the more mature among us were interrupted by a twenty year old smoker who said, “All of this anti-smoking propaganda will never work.”

We asked why, despite knowing all of the health risks, kids still started smoking.

“That’s easy,” he said with a smile, “cause smoking is cool!”

* Now a product of Scandinavian Tobacco Group Canada

Cheap, Chinese plywood.  It saves a few bucks per sheet – until you start using it.

First warning: the guy at the lumber store warns to be real careful if you sand it.  The top veneer is very, very thin.

Second warning: whenever you cut it the edges splinter badly.  Not big healthy splinters, but tiny little skinny ones the size of a needle.

Final warning: At the first sign if moisture it starts to delaminate.  By moisture I mean “paint.” By delaminate I mean bubbles.  Bubbles in the veneer.

So you have plywood that can’t be cut, and can’t be painted.

Did I mention that it’s cheap Chinese plywood?

The irony of course is that this plywood is likely made from whole logs shipped to China, turned into plywood, then shipped back to Canada.  The actual wood probably was cut not more than 500 miles from Vancouver.

The fact that you can ship raw logs 8000 kilometres, process it, ship it back another 8000 kilometers, and still sell it for less than BC made plywood tells me one thing.  The mill workers in China are being paid rock bottom zero wages, have little or no safety or job security, and probably are party to some pretty egregious pollution.

We may have mills shutting down every other week in BC, and unemployment that’s still high, but damned of we don’t have a great market for raw logs!

Of course the ideal boost to our economy would be to bring over a boatload of $3 a day Chinese workers to harvest the trees as well!  Then we could get another buck off the price of our plywood!

1) The Olympics will wind up costing more than anyone is prepared to admit.  My guess is the true bottom line will be about a billion more than we’ve been told. (UPDATE: Wow, that was fast.)  VANOC fans will continue to say “The Skytrain and Sea to Sky upgrades aren’t really Olympic expenses” at the same time that they continue to say “You wouldn’t have the The Skytrain and Sea to Sky upgrades if we didn’t have the Olympics.”

2) Stephen Harper will continue to run this country. Probably into the ground.  This is 50% because people will keep voting for him, and 50% because the Liberals and NDP are too cowardly to actually bring down his government.  Besides, Harper doesn’t even respect the Supreme Court of Canada, so even if they pulled off a non-confidence vote he’d just refuse to leave.

3) The Economy will continue to get worse, not better, at least for anyone who actually works for a living.  Too many countries are on the edge of economic collapse.  Too many people are two paycheques away from defaulting on mortgages that are predicated on really low variable rates.  In BC there will be a homegrown post-Olympic slump that will be amplified by the HST and spending cuts.

4) China will get mean and say “Excuse me, but we hold most of your national debt, and we produce damned near everything that you need to keep your economy going.  It’s payback time.”

5) All of the above will make it less than great time to be visible minority or immigrant in Canada.  Quebec’s treatment of Muslim women is just the beginning. Can Alberta be far behind?  Suddenly we’ll hear a lot less of how generous Canadians are, and a lot more about what makes a “real” Canadian.

Although this is being painted as David and Goliath battle between big bad corporate Amazon and the poor little Mom and Pop independent bookstores, I have to think that the real push to halt Amazon is coming from Chapters\Indigo.

You know, the company that pre-Amazon decimated local bookstores?

If you buy books you’re likely a little confused right now because Amazon.ca has been selling books in Canada for years.  As did Amazon.com before it.

What Amazon wasn’t allowed to do was actually warehouse and distribute books from within Canada.  Everything that they sold us was shipped from the US via Canada Post.

Of course that didn’t prevent them from offering .ca customers better selection than Ch’Indigo, better prices than Ch’Indigo, and faster delivery than Ch’Indigo.  You see, because of their near monopoly in Canada, Ch’Indigo just didn’t give a damn.

So I’m rooting for Amazon.com!  I want to give them even more of my business!

And those independent bookstores?  I’m all for Mom, Apple Pie, and the local bookstore, but realistically most of them are an anachronism. Unless a store can find a very specific niche it just doesn’t make sense to try to keep them all in business.

Yes they’re friendly, yes they’re quaint, and yes they can be pleasant to browse, but really the small general interest bookstore is about as relevant as the record stores that have all but disappeared, the neighbourhood groceries that are gone, and filling stations with people to pump your gas.

Instead of worrying about how to keep a dying retail sector alive, let’s put our money into publishers of books and magazines – the people who really keep our writers alive.

A while back we were in Vancouver for The Eastside Culture Crawl, a great and large open studio event that stretches from the Downtown Eastside all the way to Commercial drive.

Although there honestly wasn’t a lot that really thrilled us, I was delighted to find the “installation” pictured.

These fantastic clear plastic platform shoes were situated half way across a set of railway tracks on an overhead pedestrian walkway between Raymur Street and the end of Keefer Street.

I have no idea whether this was an intentional installation, or whether the graffiti was related to it, or whether somewhere in Strathcona a drag queen is crying her eyes out at having lost her shoes, but it was lovely.

Ever wonder how those big numbers get onto the grass at football games?

It’s really pretty simple: they’re spray-painted on using big honkin’ stencils.

It’s all pretty low-tech, involving one guy who drives the paint sprayer on a golf cart, one who sprays the paint, and two that pick up the stencils and move them to the next location.

The real challenge is that the CFL guys want the lines and number placed within inches – on a 110 yard long football field.   Trust me, there’s nothing more annoying than trying to remove and repaint lines a half hour before game time.

That, and realizing that one of the arrows points the wrong way.

I have accepted that all government advertising is actually pre-election bumph for the party in power, but really the Conservatives have taken things a large step further than anyone before them.

This time of the year one of the fixtures of Canadian life are boxes of income tax returns at the post office. Always in the corner, always on the floor, but always there.  (I’ll ignore pointing out that there are in fact damn few actual Post Offices left in Canada. Instead your mail services and delivery are handled by minimum wage clerks at corner stores and drug stores in what are euphemistically called “Retail Outlets.”)

In the past these boxes had exciting labels like “Your 2008 Tax Returns are here!”

This year though the Tory economic mantras have taken over, with each box stamped in Green “Real Tax Cuts at Your Fingertips.”

My first reading of that was actually ”Real Paper Cuts on your Fingertips.”

When that made no sense I looked closer, and realized that Harper’s people had slapped Tory election advertising on the boxes!

Needless to say, the last people who will benefit from any of Harper’s “Tax Cuts” are those who are likely to be preparing their own tax returns.