One question I also expect them to ask is how I watched TV without having my computer in front of me, firing off notes through Twitter, Facebook, or whatever social media network will be in vogue in 5-8 years from now. I’ll look at their cute, adorable little faces, and tell them as seriously as I can: There was a time when we watched TV on our own. We went to sporting events in small groups, we went shopping without telling everyone what we were doing, and we could vanish for hours on end without anyone knowing where we were.

The idea that we exist solely as individuals is rapidly becoming extinct.

I’ll freely admit that I’m on the leading (okay, okay, obsessive) edge when it comes to Twittering et al. I’ve been broadcasting status updates (in one form or another) for a couple of years, in frequencies varying from every few days to every few seconds — those of you following me during the 2010 Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey gold medal game or during last night’s Oscars know what I mean. That means I’m not only keenly aware of the potential these services offer, but also the potential impact.

Let me rewind a couple of weeks to the start of the Olympics on 12 February. While most of you watching the opening ceremonies might have had a word or two between you, there were a few of us (I’ll estimate at least a few thousand) who were offering up our views as the show proceeded. In real-time. Publicly. You could track the entire thing under hashtags, or even by following a few people.

As the Olympics proceeded, the effect only continued to grow. For me, it was a way of communicating — and to some degree, even participating — with the games through friends who were actually there. (Of particular note is Canada’s unofficial Lucky Charm, my friend Katrina, who was present for no less than two gold medal wins.) It was a real-time feedback, and a way for me to feel that I wasn’t just trapped here in Calgary, unable to witness it for myself.

And lest we forget the Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey gold medal game between the USA and Canada. All epic-ness of the game aside (I stand by my statement that the game is the Summit Series of my generation), the game probably produced the largest amount of Twitter and Facebook traffic from Canada this year (and that includes all events yet-to-come). You almost didn’t have to watch the game on TV (although, really, it was one of the best-ever hockey games) — follow a few people, and you almost got the play-by-play, along with healthy doses of (periodically profane) comments about plays, shots on goal, and so forth. The only thing that would have made it better is if Don Cherry were tweeting it.

Which, interestingly enough, was what happened last night on the Oscars. Except it wasn’t Don Cherry, it was Roger Ebert. Though not nearly as copious with comments as I had expected (he was live-blogging as well, which I didn’t have access to), events were still punctuated with exceptionally-timely thoughts, all backed-up with his decades of experience in the industry.

Okay, so what does this all mean?

I didn’t watch alone. I might have been alone in the room, in front of my TV, but my network of friends and contacts kept me company. For years, people had talked about interactive TV as being a major shift in the industry, but to virtually no fruition. The act of side-conversation might not be the interactive we all had in mind, but imagine the joy of side-discussions (and even trash-talking) with people who have the same interest, without the ugliness of having to pack everyone into a small room at once.

I don’t see this ending soon, either. While I don’t watch a lot of TV (I generally avoid everything except MythBusters and Dirty Jobs), this sort of thing would definitely play out for regular sporting events (hockey, football, basketball, and even — dare I say it? — golf), reality shows like Survivor and Big Brother, soap operas, and similar genres that tend to collect an obsessive and conversational bunch (imagine if Star Trek: The Next Generation or the rebooted Battlestar Galactica came out now).

And, of course, this goes beyond televised events. People in the stands of the game, people following poker tournaments, people watching parades, let alone people broadcasting the latest disaster (follow the #temblor hashtag sometime — the USGS does).

This is the promise of social media, folks. We always thought it was just about bringing people together. In reality, it’s about keeping us from feeling alone.

These two weeks will be both interminably long, and over instantly. There’s just so much to do before you come home with us, and I can’t wait until you’re there. You’ll be welcomed immediately by your sister, The Monkey, by Asia the cat, and your Grandpa, who’s eagerly awaiting his next grandchild. Your second cousin — currently only known as “Baby T” — might be here by then.

Only time will tell.

Like your sister, I have such high hopes for you, and I’ll try not to turn them into expectations. Monkey blazed the path, to some degree, so Mommy and I aren’t walking in totally blind to your needs, but you’ll have to forgive us if we’re sometimes a little slow — it’s been a while since we’ve had to take care of an infant. I’m sure it’ll come back to us quickly, though.

I wonder how much you’ll be like Monkey, and how you’ll be different. Will you cry a lot? Will you sleep? Will you have lots of hair? Will you have trouble teething? How soon will you be crawling or walking? How will you adapt to being in different time zones?

There are times I wish I could predict the months (and years) to come, to try and avoid the pain that comes with growing and learning. But there are also the times that I’m immensely happy that I can’t, making each and every day a discovery. Every day we will see you learn something new, do something different. That keeps me from feeling old, because it reminds me just how much of a joy it is to be a parent. Something I hope you get a chance to experience yourself … many years from now.

So rest up, dear Choo Choo. You’ll need your energy for that first day. It’ll be big, it’ll be loud, it’ll be bright. Once the shock wears off, and you’re cuddled up with Mommy, you’ll realise that you’re safe and the only thing you’ll need to do (at least for a while), is eat, sleep, be utterly adorable, and be adored.

And pee and poo, but that takes some getting used to…

Almost right away, we missed some things, though most of that was due to the roughly 40 degree Celsius shift in temperature. Other things soon made themselves known, each time with the all-too-familiar pang of loss and regret.

But like when we moved down to Costa Rica, this is just something we’ll have to get used to.

Now just to be clear, there are two parts to this: things I miss, and things that I should miss but don’t (at least, not yet). I’m splitting it up this way just to avoid some of the obvious questions that are bound to appear. C’mon, I know you guys a little bit, y’know…

Things I Miss

Fresh fruit

As I’d mentioned a few times before, Costa Rica has fresh fruit. I know that sounds like an utterly silly statement, but unless you’ve been to a tropical country, you have no concept what fresh fruit is really like. None. Even the best organic produce you get at your local hippie market doesn’t hold a sniff to the stuff I got at the farmer’s markets in Costa Rica. The “reject” bananas (the “good” ones are all exported) were sweeter and lusher than any banana I’ve ever had here, the strawberries were worth killing over, and the papayas so good that I might never be able to eat them again (seriously).

Unbelievable greenery

I live in Calgary, where it barely rains. We get a nice green spring, but usually by mid-July everything’s starting to dry out. When fall hits, the primary colour is brown. We get white in the winter, at least when the snow is covering the aforementioned brownness.In Costa Rica, it’s green. Always. Everywhere. Even on the tops of volcanoes, it’s green. There’s no effort for it to be green — that’s just the way it is. It happens naturally. No additives, no preservatives. It’s overwhelmingly green. There’s no comparison for the green. And now that brown has fully set in up here, I find myself missing it more than ever.

Volcanoes (but not earthquakes)

Speaking of volcanoes, I’ve had a thing for geology since I was a kid, and love seeing volcanoes. Especially at a distance (the active ones, any way). I’ve been fortunate to see a few volcanoes, notably in Hawaii, but also in Costa Rica (and went up Poas just a couple of days before a 6.2 earthquake levelled a nearby town). There aren’t any decent volcanoes in Canada, all of them are either dormant or entirely extinct.

Speaking of earthquakes, I rather like Calgary. It’s extremely stable. Not necessary free of tremors, but far enough to avoid anything nasty. I like that.

Price includes taxes

One pet peeve I always had with the North American pricing system was that the price you see is rarely the price you pay. Taxes are thrown on top, and usually service fees on that, too.

In Costa Rica, IVI (the tax) is rolled into everything, including your restaurant menu prices (divided into two columns). There’s no question what something costs, even if the price is in $USD (which it sometimes is, depending on how deep you’ve dived into tourist areas). I miss that kind of transparency.

Sun in the morning

Although it bugged me at the time, I now officially miss sun in the morning. The sun is still rising here, and when my alarm goes off it’s still dark. It’s something I came to appreciate a lot, as it really made things much nicer. That said, I’m going to be very happy for the late evening sun come June…

Not wearing pants

Costa Rica, duh, is warm. So I rarely ever wore pants — shorts were my mainstay for a year and a half. I hate wearing pants. I hate wearing shoes (instead of sandals). And I really, really, really hate wearing socks.

Monkeys (and wildlife in general)

No, I’m not saying I don’t like seeing deer, or moose, or anything else common in our northern tracts. But I do miss seeing wild parakeets, vibrantly colourful birds, and especially the monkeys roaming the treetops. There’s nothing like monkeys up here, save for zoos.

Driving with the window down … all year

I only realised this last weekend, but man I miss driving with the window down! You can’t do that up here when it’s 20 below! (Well, I suppose you could, but then you’re just asking for trouble.) There’s nothing like being able to go down a street at any time of the day or night, with the window down. That kind of fresh air is just amazing.

Dos Piños (and ice cream)

Dos Piños is the major dairy producer in Costa Rica, and makes pretty much everything that you can make from milk. Of particular note were their ice cream products. I don’t know what it is, but Costa Rican ice cream (Dos Piños and Pops, at least that I found) is fantastic. It’s wonderfully creamy, and not filled with a lot of crap (which seems common in North American ice creams). It got to the point where I was having one a day, on walks with Jason and Ed.

Batidos

A “batido” is (more or less) a blended fruit drink. Not with ice — just fruit, mixed with either water or milk. (Milk was my favourite version.) I know I can make them here with whatever fruit I get my hands on, but as you already know (from my first item), it’s just not the same without fresh Costa Rican fruit. I liked batidos for the fact that it was fruit, it was tasty, and often filling. It was a great alternative to syrupy drinks, or even a coffee if I wasn’t in the mood.

You’re from Canada? So am I!!

This one sounds silly, but it’s true — there’s nothing like finding a fellow Canuck (or insert your own nationality, I’m sure the same is true of other countries) when you’re abroad. I’ve been fortunate to have this happen in a few places, and even made some friends that way. It’s not to say that I can’t make friends with my fellow Canucks up here, but meeting someone abroad and sharing your experiences is very different than striking up a conversation while on a bus.

My friends

Last, but probably most importantly, I miss my friends. The people I knew well, who I worked with, the ones who lived near me, the ones who shared in the experience, the people who asked how I was and were a significant part of my life, and especially the ones so kind as to drive me to and from work every day. I feel exceedingly distant from them now, not just in distance, but because I might never see some of them ever again.

Things I Don’t Miss (Yet)

Now you’re probably wondering why some things didn’t appear in that list. Well, there are a few things that I don’t miss, at least not yet.

The heat

I have never liked the heat, at least not for long periods of time. Once in a while, for a couple of hours, I can hack. Even full days are a bit much for me, and dragging that out into weeks? HA! Not a chance. Strange as it sounds, I’ll take the cold over the heat any day.Just so long as I can visit the heat once in a while…

The constant temperatures in the valley

The Central Valley in Costa Rica is consistent in the way you can’t even imagine. 27 degrees Celsius is the daily high, and 15 degrees is the daily low. Every day. Every. Single. Day. (It does vary a little bit from time to time, but the mode is pretty much 27/15.)

Now, I know what you’re thinking: that sounds heavenly! You never have to stare at weather forecasts! But you also never get to see seasons like we do up here. I missed fall and spring (and especially winter). You can handle only so much perfection before you start to go a little wonky, lemme tell ya.

The beaches

I know, I know, again you’re thinking I’m totally batty (and maybe I am). But I don’t really miss the beaches. That’s not to say I don’t like beaches — I love ‘em! But going to the beach was never trivial, and involved far more effort than I care to think about. So much so that, well, now I look back and I think that while I’m glad to have gone, I don’t really have any burning desire to visit another one anytime soon.

The beer

Okay, first off, I loved Imperial. Truly. But Costa Rica has a limited selection of beer, and about half of them are pretty darn close to the same thing with a different label. Up here, I can lose hours staring at a beer menu (yes, there is such a thing as a beer menu), or standing in the refrigerated room at any of the billion-or-so liquor stores in Calgary, trying to decide what to try next. That’s a level of selection I missed dearly while I was in Costa Rica, and am very happy to have it back.

The coffee

Before you freak out, there’s a really simple reason why I don’t miss Costa Rica coffee: we brought a lot of it back home with us. When we run out? Well, that’s another blog post…

Or rather, that’s how simple the process should be. But as we’re finding, things rarely seem to go the way we want them to. In fact, as of yesterday, we’re pretty much at the opposite end of the spectrum of “wants”. All of this is because of a “new” finding that almost displaces the anti-K issue as being an issue.

It all started when our newest sonographer, Jennifer (we hadn’t seen her before), happened to ask a question: Has anyone talked to us about a low-lying placenta? The answer, as always, is “no”. Now what exactly had Jennifer move to the next step, I have no real idea. Every other time we were asked, everyone just seemed to move on in life. Jennifer must’ve seen this as a bad thing, ‘cuz next thing we know, she goes for the internal probe to check from the inside.

That simple action may very well have saved Choo Choo’s life.

As we would find out talking with Dr. Pollard (the same doctor we’d seen last week), Jennifer had spotted something amiss. (Yes, folks, those technicians working the ultrasound, x-ray, and/or MRI aren’t just trained monkeys — they know what they’re doing very well, and do know the difference between “good” and “bad”.) It turned out that the internal probe had caught something that every other exam Alex had gone through — from Costa Rica right up to the first two exams in Canada — missed the fact that her placenta is lying overtop of her cervix.

There may be a few of you giving that statement the blank stare, so let me elaborate. The placenta normally grows somewhere away from the cervix, keeping the exit clear of obstruction. When the placenta grows overtop of the cervix, you have a problem: if the placenta comes out first during childbirth, there can be massive bleeding (‘cuz it’s not supposed to come out first), and then the baby’s supply of oxygen is cut off.

Yeah, not good.

The discovery of the placenta’s position comes with a significant amount of irony (if this is, in fact, the right term): if it hadn’t been for the seriousness of the anti-K problem, we’d never have known that the placenta was in the wrong place. It was a bit of a shock to Alex and I, and we are beside ourselves trying to comprehend the chain of discoveries and events that have led us to this point. (There’s a few other things we were told to avoid, which thankfully we’d never done — but could just have easily been doing had we’d followed the same pattern as with Monkey’s gestation.) Needless to say, we already hold Jennifer in the highest of opinions.

Okay, so what does all of this mean? It’s a Go To Surgery card — do not have labour, do not get to deliver at home. Our original plan was a natural home birth, with a midwife (whom we will continue to use until after Choo Choo is born, as she will handle the post-partum issues). Now we’re scheduled for a c-section in the hospital, probably with a who’s-who of medical titles in the room to make sure everything goes well.

We managed to get in to see an obstetrician almost right after the ultrasound appointment (though I had to retrieve Monkey from our friend’s place, and missed most of the obstetrician appointment), and booked the date and time for the c-section. Choo Choo will enter our world on the morning of 18 March, if all goes according to plan. Just over two weeks.

Hopefully, this is the last little shock we’ll face. (Alex commented that the only thing she could think of at this point was that all the sonographers got Choo Choo’s sex wrong.)

I’m running out of fingers to cross, and it’s making typing really, really hard.

I must, in true Canadian form, say “I’m sorry”. I doubted. All I could see was fault, all I could see was mediocrity, all I could see was the world laughing at our attempts to be more than our humble selves. I thought that Vancouver was the wrong place to hold the Winter Olympics (having lived there a couple of years, I know how finicky the weather can be).

And I wasn’t alone. Thanks to media mainstays, such as The Guardian and the Denver Post, and CTV’s frequently slipshod and amateurish approach, there was little reason for me to think otherwise.

I find myself, now at the end, relieved to be wrong, and fiercely proud to be a repatriated Canadian.

The Own The Podium program had me enraged. It was meant to increase the chances of medal wins — to the point where we had the most medals. Not only was it arrogance beyond our Canadian norm, I found that the program sponsored only those who were in medal contention — and abandoned the rest. Considering we’re a socialist country, it seems a very un-Canadian setup. (And can someone tell me, please, why on earth the Men’s Hockey team received Own The Podium funding? It just seems odd to support millionaires who already have significant amounts of training and coaching resources.)

Then came the the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili mere hours before the cauldron was lit. (And no, Tom Clark, CTV did not need to show footage of the fatal run to “tell the full story”. That was utter pandering to sensationalist news coverage. You want to be better than CBC? You’d better act like you are, first.) The pall cast over the opening felt almost suffocating.

The opening ceremonies themselves were filled with a host of flubs: lip syncing (seriously, we are unable to trust our biggest performers to perform in public?), slight delays (starting even with the snowboarder not coming down on cue), and mechanical failures (erectile dysfunction, anyone?). Problems seemed to continue past the hutzpah, with broken ice resurfacing machines, and an ill-timed rampage by ill-tempted and extremely short-sighted rioters. The press ate us alive.

Our lauded best, held on pedestals for months, were put to the test. But the gold we were promised didn’t come. Our speedskaters failed to place, and our former moguls world champion could only garner a silver. And admit it, Canada, for a little while, you doubted, too. Had we put too much pressure on our athletes? Did we expect too much? Maybe where I failed was not to recognise it as a beginning of something bigger.

The next day — less than 24 hours after our first disappointment — things started to change. Someone I’d never heard of, suddenly appeared on top. After almost 34 years of waiting, Alexandre Bilodeau had won Canada’s first gold medal at home. For a moment, the country stood and cheered! We would walk away with something, at least. We would feel like we’ve achieved. Maybe — just maybe — it was enough to take away our collective dread. Or at least mine.

But the medals were still slow to come. It was two days before another gold from Maelle Ricker. Five days into the games, we had a mere five medals. Our hubris was an embarrassment. Our medals, though appreciated, would stand more as an example of an effort not carried to fruition.

And then something happened that we didn’t expect. It caught me by surprise, as I know it caught many others. A word that is rarely used in Canada, because of the imagery of our neighbours to the south that it usually invokes: Patriotism. Not a fevered adherence to dogma, but a feeling of national pride the likes of which have not been since I was barely two months old. We all suddenly noticed that you can’t spell “Canada” without “can”. And we did.

For me, it was the evening of the men’s skeleton finals, 19 February. Canada had already won another gold in speed skating, but it was Jon Montgomery’s victory that seemed to spark something in me. He is not your typical Canadian — he is brasher, bolder, more outspoken, and not afraid to do things in public that the rest of us would feel the urge to poo-poo as “not proper”. His primal scream of victory was the first cry, followed shortly after by a tremendous leap to the top of the podium at the sliding centre; he carried the entire nation with him in that moment. This time, I didn’t look back down. I — like you, Canada — looked forward.

I started to believe.

(And yes, I even started to like that “I Believe” song. Probably because after watching enough coverage, you don’t really have much choice.)

We started the second week with seven medals. Forecasts still placed us well into the 20s. Even with all of our victories in preliminary curling and hockey, it just didn’t seem possible. But funny thing about believing — you worry less about failing, and you don’t want to get left behind.

Our games started with difficult stories: the disappointment of silver, the struggle in speed skating, and seemingly random disqualifications. The stories had changed. The commentators seemed to take on the energy not just of the crowds, but of the athletes themselves. The stories covered the brotherly dedication, the triumphant (and periodically beer-fuelled) victory marches, impromptu parades, double medals, first wins in new sports, and the sweetheart skaters who not only stole the gold but also the hearts of millions.

But no story could exceed that of Joannie Rochette.

I’m no figure skater — I can’t even skate, really. Growing up, though, I watched a lot of figure skating as a result of watching TV with my mom, a former skater herself, and still an adamant lover of the sport. So, in some small way, I am periodically attracted to it. It was with great fortune that I caught her performance, only days after learning her mother had suddenly died.

I couldn’t tell you how well she actually skated — I’m no judge — but I can tell you that on that night, Joannie embodied the strength and courage of an Olympian, producing her best possible performance, allowing herself tears only after she was done, to the sound of a thunderous standing ovation. Her medal may have only been a bronze, but as a local paper emblazoned on its headline: it was as good as gold to us.

Most of us Canadians never made it to the games, though I know more than a few who were there, who witnessed gold first-hand. The closest I ever got was my home in southwest Calgary, where I subjected my family to my growing obsession, cheering on my country in its quest for gold, to the point where Alex and I taught the Monkey to chant: “CA-NA-DA!” as loudly as she could. We all watched, we all cheered, we all hoped, and we all cried.

And we achieved. We achieved records the likes of which exceeded our expectations. Even with Own The Podium’s lofty goals, most of us never expected to set a record for the most number of gold medals won in a Winter Olympics. We might not have owned the entire podium, but we took the step that mattered the most to us: the top.

The top was capped with our national games: curling and hockey. Men’s curling gold, a three-time victory for the women’s hockey team, and a rematch against our oldest nemesis, the United States. It was joked many times by many people that the men’s hockey final would effectively close the entire country for the three hours the game would be played. I suspect the joke was not far off. The game would prove to be something special, especially to those born after the early 1970s — it would become my generation’s Summit Series, the game that we watched with extreme anticipation, desperately wanting that gold back in our hands.

Vancouver did something to Canada that few would have predicted, even with our previous experience with Calgary and Montreal. For a few weeks, Vancouver brought together our country — six timezones and a hugely diverse culture (yes, Canada, we are not just one group; we thrive in our multiculturalism, even if we can’t always recognise it). Not just in representation, but in anticipation and celebration. We broke out of our Canadian mould — we stopped thinking we’d stop short, that we’d choke right at the key moments — and we started to live the dream.

The media has suggested that maybe we’ll break out from our mould permanently, and be more like our cousins to the south. But we won’t. That’s not us. That’s not Canadian. These games are over, and we’ll return to our Canadian ways. But we won’t shrink away, we won’t forget what happened. We’ve gotten stronger; we’ve learned. We’ve learned how to perform, that success isn’t just a dream — it’s a reality. That we can compete head-to-head with the best the world has to show us, and not be just “that nice country”. We’re now that country: a tough competitor, a fierce opponent. The ones everyone else has to beat.

And it would be nice if we could get our legends back. Mr. Orser, are there not Canadians you can train? Can our curling coaches consider teaching our up-and-comers, rather than guide our competitors? And can we please treat all our athletes with some form of equality? If nothing else, these games proved that underdogs can achieve what no-one expects.

We’ll freely admit we had things that didn’t go perfectly. Massive events aren’t perfect — the best you can hope for is to mitigate the troubles. So, yes Mr. Kiszla, we had a few problems — I assure you that your lauded Denver games will have their own headaches that will made you cringe. And Mr. Donegan? I’ve heard better whining from my two-year old when her cereal ends up a bit soggy. Rather than suggesting you return to the golf courses you seem to understand so much better, I suggest you join London’s Olympic Committee and become personally responsible for London’s success. Because we’ll be watching. Closely.

Oh, and one more thing, Mr. Kiszla, about the trash talk? After listening to American bragging for so long, you have no idea how wonderful it is to say: It’s still our game. I believe it will remain that way for a long time to come.

While Monkey went to hang out with our friend Rebecca, Alex and I headed back over to EFW for her appointment, and for the news on Choo Choo’s progress. Although it’s been only five days since our last appointment, there was hope that there would also be improvement.

How do I spell relief? U-l-t-r-a-s-o-u-n-d.

The sonographer was a master of the machine, and quickly blitzed through most of the up-front “pictures”. It also helped that Choo Choo hadn’t woken up yet, so she was stationary (unlike last week). The sonographer actually had to poke Choo Choo several times to get her to start “breathing” (keep in mind, it’s nothing but amniotic fluid right now), which helped get some of the last of the main internal pictures.

The final pictures came from the doppler on blood flow through the brain. Once again, we saw red, which indicated high rate of flow. It was a moment when I hoped that the red came no matter what the situation, and that the machine’s software keeps the blue-to-red scale, no matter what the child’s condition. On the bright side, Choo Choo seems to have rotated a bit, with her head more down. Five days ago she was happily transverse, which would raise more than an issue or two come delivery time. Thankfully, rotation seems to have arrived.

The sonographer was soon accompanied by one of the radiologists (I think, no-one actually states what they do when they enter the room, only that they need to do some pictures), and then finally by the senior radiologist / perinatologist / doctor-of-some-kind, who also did the doppler. All three of them got roughly the same values, but given the situation it’s good to have sanity checks — even a slightly wrong reading could have some pretty serious implications.

The count this week is about 1.35, which is an improvement for Choo Choo. As the doctor would explain, the Kell system can be really unpredictable, and without an actual test there is no real way to know with certainty what’s going on, and that test just isn’t a good idea at this stage of the pregnancy. But despite the improvement, the direction we received last week remains the same: the kid is coming at 37 weeks (unless things get worse, in which case it could come earlier), which is in four weeks.

Three more ultrasound appointments have been lined up over the next three weeks, and at each the same assessment will be handled: what’s Choo Choo’s condition, how are things going, and what’s the next step. Probably at the second one, we’ll be scheduling induction (or at least, that’s my sense of it).

So, in short: condition is stable (if not improved a bit), but still going to be an early birth.

A few years ago, the “hybrid” car was introduced, a shining new example of how to make vehicles more efficient, and spawned a new movement of environmentally-aware manufacturing. Today, Nissan stands ready to finally release the first mass-market all-electric vehicle, amping up the competition to become the centre of the environmentally-friendly transportation universe. I, for one, welcome the arrival of the electric car, long overdue from formal acceptance in North America. At the same time, however, I also curse its arrival because it doesn’t actually address a primary problem.

The electric car strives to perpetuate a bad idea: that we all need a car.

World War II changed the world in so many ways that it’s hard to keep track of them all. It ushered in our nuclear age, brought computers out of the closet and into our common perception, and brought about a new sense of prosperity and demand that the world had not previously witnessed — especially in North America.

The message was clear: prosperity through purchase. North Americans were told through the power of the media that they had to live the “American Dream”: own a large home in the suburbs, the newest appliances, fancy clothes, a television, and no home was complete without at least one car.

It was the car that became the shining star of the American household, and a symbol of freedom. No longer were you tied to others’ schedules — you were free to go where you wanted, when you wanted. The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 gave birth to the Interstate Highway System, and forever sealed the dream in the minds of Americans, and the neighbours to the north (because, let’s be honest, as much as we Canadians want to be different than America, we want to play with the same toys).

Long-distance travel changed. It was now about driving long distances in cars. It was driving into the city. It was driving to the local store. Drive-through restaurants, drive-in movies. Driving.

The automobile as we know it — an individualistic vessel of identity — encourages people to live away from their daily lives. Instead of living in tall buildings, we live in spacious suburbs. We thrive for neighbourhoods with only houses, and drive to expansive commercial malls. We want industry away from our little edens, and don’t want to our daily grind anywhere near our castles. When we have to go to other places, we want to do so on our terms.

All of this has come at an expense: fossil fuel consumption never seems to stem, nor does our energy use to allow us to live apart and at a distance. Our land use spirals, allowing some of our cities to resemble single-celled protozoa that expand to consume what’s near them. Calgary, in particular, has been listed as an “ecological disaster” on those very terms. I would be very curious to see a comparison with Manhattan, which I think it is likely the most efficient places in the world: over 27,000 people per square kilometre (most of them don’t own a car), hundreds of thousands commuting by public transit, and elevators use less energy than a refrigerator.

In our strive to achieve, we have forgotten the need to preserve.

Slowly, thanks to decades-long efforts and a few more mainstream mentions, the world is becoming attuned to alternative energy, with a notable focus on electric. It’s been a slow adoption, but the ever-present call to heed environmental changes and the need to act more responsibly has brought about mass demand for something beyond burning fossil fuels.

To be fair, there are three types of electric vehicles floating about. We have seen the parallel hybrids (Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius, to name a few), the very long overdue series hybrids (notably the Chevrolet Volt), and the pure electric (the failed EV1, and the up-and-coming Nissan Leaf). We have latched onto these vehicles as the saving graces for our obsession with the automobile. All of these have problems:

• Parallel hybrids are an awkward mish-mash of traditional gasoline power and electric power, where the gasoline half is still largely in control, and even the slightest press of the accelerator can throw off your mileage
• Series hybrids wisely disconnect the gasoline engine from the wheels and use it only to charge the battery when it starts to get low; diesel would be a far better choice for fossil power, though it is highly unpopular in North American-made passenger vehicles due to memories of the 1970s
• Pure electric vehicles try to come off as the greenest options, but conveniently side-step the question of power source — unless you obtain your electricity from solar or wind, you’re getting it from falling water or nuclear (slightly less green), or from burning fossil fuels (electric is cheaper, no question, but you’re still burning)

And none of them address the original fundamental problem: they all perpetuate the bad dream. All of them remind us that if we don’t own a car and a big house, live in a nice suburb, and drive wherever we like, that — somehow — we’re not successful.

Meanwhile, public transit withers. Yes, for all my bitching about my local public transit, I still find it a far preferable alternative to a car — at least when the public transit offering is well-handled. However, therein lies the problem — all over North America (which, really, is the biggest problem in the world), public transit organisations have to reduce service and inflate prices to keep themselves afloat. Long-distance train travel has gone from our primary form of inter-city travel to mere tourism. The long-distance bus services are now regarded as “last ditch” options when you can afford nothing else.

You think public transit is awful? It’s an inconvenience? Talk to the millions of people who float in and out of major cities on a daily basis through buses and trains. Talk to your average Londoner, who is fined if they try to drive their car into the core of the city. Talk to anyone living in Japan about the difficulty not only of owning a car, but trying to drive it. Public transit remains the best option for moving large numbers of people. And yes, it is rather easy to adapt to a known schedule and not have it wreck your life.

While one dream lives on, another one dies. The dream of a utopia where people live quietly and closely, where automobiles are rarely seen and heard. That dream started dying a long time ago, and save for a few dedicated efforts to preserve the utopia, there are few places in the world the car has not touched. The utopia will one day be merely a thought, a vague entry in our collective memory, passing into the distance like a car into the fog.

Alex didn’t sound her usual cheerful self. In fact, the tone of her voice that worried me almost immediately. She asked me: “Look up ‘anti-k’. What does it mean?” Google quickly plunged me into Wikipedia and a raft of pages filled with partial information and incomplete answers. “You need to get a blood test right away! We need to know if you’re K+.”

I can’t remember the last time I felt my blood run ice-cold.

I didn’t know what was going on. Was something I had done — something I had acquired? — put my child, and possibly even my wife at risk? Were we talking slight risk, or are we talking imminent danger? The message conveyed to us was one of urgency, which translates quite easily to “panic”. (A message, incidentally, common with many others we found across the internet.)

The truth is that K/anti-K is a reasonably rare condition. So when it does appear, it’s sometimes treated as a more of a dangerous situation than perhaps it needs to be. (Or at least, that’s my impression. The fact that we’re so far along in the pregnancy might contribute to that, too.) Not a lot of doctors are prepared for this situation, either — even a doctor who had delivered babies for over 30 years considered it something “not to worry about”.

Explanation time. The “K” represents the Kell antigen system, one of many such fun things that float around in human blood. On its own, it’s pretty much harmless. It’s only when it comes in contact with K-negative (K-) blood that you have a problem. People who are K- build up antibodies to the antigen — a perfectly normal human response.

But.

Things get complicated when you’re talking about an anti-K mother who is pregnant with a K+ child. The K antibodies have the ability to cross the placental barrier, and can attack the otherwise healthy red blood cells in the developing baby. The severity of the attack can lead to hemolytic disease of the newborn.

It works like this: The antibodies attack the K+ red blood cells, destroying them. (This is how the body fights infection, by the way. This is — unfortunately — the body fighting something it doesn’t need to fight.) This reduces the amount of hemoglobin in the baby’s blood, which also reduces the amount of dissolved oxygen. If the level of oxygen drops too far … well, let’s just say it’s not good, and not something you really want to think about as an expectant parent. In serious cases, doctors can perform an intrauterine transfusion, which involves putting a needle through the mother’s abdomen into the umbilical cord (all guided by an ultrasound; the baby is “paralyzed” to keep it from moving).

A lot of websites talk about titres (“tee-ters”), which measure the amount of antibodies in the blood, or suggest that you need to need to do an amniocentesis test. The problem is that the titres are meant to gauge concentrations, and the amount of the antibodies you have doesn’t matter — it’s that you have them at all. The amniocentesis test can only confirm whether or not the baby is K+ — it doesn’t actually solve the main problem. The simple reality is, if the baby is K+, you’re in for a lot of tests.

Which brings me back to us.

The last couple of weeks have been filled with a variety of tests, more reading on the internet than I want to acknowledge (even for me, it’s excessive), and questions to as many doctors as will listen. Most of it was more of the same thing: some fact, but not enough about what was happening to us, and we really, really, really needed to know if this meant anything at all.

The tests came back from the Canadian Blood Services lab in Edmonton: I’m K+, something that only 9% of humans possess. (Actually, both Big-K and Little-K, just to make things more interesting. And no, I don’t really know what that means.) Alex is “anti-K”, meaning she produces antibodies to ward off the K antigens. And while we don’t have a test to know with absolute certainty, it’s pretty much guaranteed that Monkey is also K+. During birth, Alex’s and Monkey’s blood mixed, causing Alex to generate antibodies against the K+ blood.

Yesterday, we went to the Maternal Fetal Medicine clinic at the EFW at the Foothills medical complex. Alex underwent a near hour-long ultrasound, drawn out mostly due to a perinatologist-in-training (getting backup from a well-trained sonographer) and a very mobile (hence, uncooperative) baby. Most of the ultrasound was measurement, checking size (the kid’s already clocking in at nearly 6 lbs).

It was the latter part of the exam that intrigued me — it was something I hadn’t seen before. The operators (including Dr. Greg Connors, the head perinatologist in Calgary) were doing a doppler test on blood flow in Choo Choo’s brain. At the time, it was intriguing to watch, though I didn’t really understand what was going on.

Afterwards, we met Dr. Connors in a consultation room. Alex commented that the room “looked like they bring people in to tell them bad news”. I still had hope that things weren’t that bad, given Choo Choo’s in utero activity (there are times that I swear I’m watching a scene out of Alien). Dr. Connors explained the situation extremely well, putting much of the questions to rest (I’ve summarised the technical stuff above, mixed with other things we’ve learned). The remaining question was: Is Choo Choo alright?

The blood flow is a test that almost entirely replaces amniocentesis (and has proven to be just as accurate). Research shows that the brain is very good at regulating its oxygen supply by altering the rate of blood flow — low oxygen level (as a result of low hemoglobin), higher rate of blood flow.

The scale of the flow, at least insofar as anti-K is concerned, ranges from 1.0 to 1.5: 1.0 is “normal”, and 1.5 is the point where you schedule a transfusion. Choo Choo is clocking in at 1.4. Basically, not in danger, but not out of the woods — right in the “monitor and review” range.

To top it off, we’re also in a pregnancy grey area: too late to do some procedures (such as amniocentesis), and too early to do induction. We have to wait.

Next week, we go back again, and test again. If the scale increases, we have to increase the frequency of ultrasound tests. If the scale decreases, we get to breathe a bit more. But no matter now it goes, Dr. Connors was clear: we’re having Choo Choo earlier than expected.

Sorry Darren and Jeannie, chances are we’ll beat you to the punch.

Yeah, I’m having a good laugh at this one, too! But since I am a Know-It-All, and someone asks, it’s really hard for me to say “I don’t know”. I mean, it’s not like I don’t have an opinion on it or something…

A Senior Developer is more than just a developer. They encompass several traits and abilities that make them very important to small and large projects alike. They are looked at as a skill centre, teacher, standards guru, and programmer all at the same time (often by different people). The catch is to ensure that a Senior Developer is anointed appropriately — bestowing a Senior designation without due diligence is just asking for trouble.

Hard Skill vs. Soft Skill

Okay, let’s get this elephant out of the way, first.

Any job, and I don’t care if it’s building video games or sewer maintenance, requires two key skills. The first is the “hard” skill — the one needed to actually perform the task at hand. Different jobs require different levels of hard skill, and some of them (such as, oh, brain surgery) require a lot more skill than others. The other key skill — “soft” — is what allows you to interact with others, to see yourself (with ego removed) for who and what you are, and assist you with your growth and education.

The former, for most people, is easy. The latter is the one that a lot of people fail at. You know those people: the jerks, the guys who yell at others, the people who “don’t listen”. Soft skills are hard to learn, and are almost always what hold people back.

And no, this is not a trivial point. Hard skills are needed to be able to manage the work, and soft skills are needed to manage the people. A failure on either is a failure of the whole.

Programming Omnipotence

A Senior Developer needs to have near god-like understanding of their given programming environment. This is because the Senior Developer is often the key resource for that environment, and the one people will look towards to set precedent, and ensure correct habits.

• Know (and often off the top of their heads) a dozen different ways to implement (and know which one is the best approach)
• Know the language’s methods, syntax, structure, parameterization, memory leaks, and looping methodologies without the need to regularly consult the documentation
• Know the best practices for development with authority
• Know when a framework is required, a nice-to-have, and when to avoid

And yes, I do expect some ego along with omnipotence — it goes pretty much hand-in-hand. To some degree, I also encourage it, because that Senior Developer should know more than I do about their given language, and I want them to express that knowledge.

Understand External Dependencies

In my world, technologies rarely live in their own. Just because you can reproduce a complicated Photoshop design into HTML, CSS, and JavaScript means nothing if you can’t get the design to work with the equally-complicated database.

The trick here is that I don’t need a Senior Front-End Developer (be they masters in Flash or HTML/CSS/JavaScript) to also juggle the backend processing tasks. But you’d better expect that I need that the developer understand the process for passing requests to the backend, and how to handle the backend’s results.

Similarly, I expect the Senior Applications Developer to know what sort of information he should expect (or need), the APIs or ASPs he can use to implement the solution (without having to write the entire thing by themselves), handle database requests (without necessarily doing the database work themselves), and the best way to return a result to the front-end.

Likewise, a Senior Database Developer shouldn’t care about the presentation of data, only the best way to organise it to provide optimal normalisation and long-term data management, the correct methods to store  and recall data (via stored procedures, views, queries, and so forth), and managing the database software’s operation.

This also assumes a more granular breakdown of tasks, and having the people available to handle said tasks. Naturally, smaller places will combine roles into a single person. Mind you, they might also eschew titles for simplicity.

Solutions Design

While a Senior Developer isn’t necessarily responsible for an entire implementation, I have the expectation that a Senior Developer can adequately specify the pieces of the puzzle for which they are responsible. Furthermore, they should know how those pieces break down (for assignment to others, if needed), the time it should take to develop those pieces, and ensure that the pieces will integrate.

Fair Communication

Rarely will a Senior Developer work on their own. Almost always, they need to work with others on their team: junior developers, project managers, and creative staff. All of these people require the same amount of respect, even though the messages will differ between them.

This is often a major failing point for people who think they are Senior Developers, but have not yet been granted the title by their company. Inability to communicate properly leads not only to breakdowns in communication, but can cause personalities to clash, further muddying the waters. Technical mastery means nothing if you’re a jerk to others — it means people won’t want to work with you.

People who fail at communication often believe the problem is not with themselves, but with others: “I told them what they needed, it’s not my fault if they didn’t listen.”  The real test is convincing someone else of what you want to do. The inability to convince someone else is not a fault with the other person, but yourself.

• Junior developers need a mentor: a resource and a teacher. Someone who will help more junior staff see mistakes and learn from them, who will help people with difficult problems, all the while not talking down to a weaker skill.
• Project managers require concise communication that does not involve a blizzard of jargon. Project managers rely on numbers: estimates, dates, times, milestones.
• Creative staff think in pictures and possibilities, whereas technical minds live for logic and limitation. They can live together very easily, so long as people keep an open mind and give each idea the respect that is due.

Consistency in Deliverables

A key trait amongst Senior Developers is consistency throughout their work. Opening three or four random projects reveals the same programming style, the same general approach, the same naming conventions. A Senior Developer influences these same traits amongst those on a team, ensuring the entire team’s deliverable contains similar consistency.

This is not to preclude change. A good Senior Developer is also a researcher, always looking for better ways to handle a given problem.

Accept Responsibility

With great power comes yadda yadda yadda — you know the story. Being a Senior Developer means taking on the responsibility for part (or all) of a project. You’re the one who’s being asked to deliver something, and possibly lead others in that delivery. Ultimately, if something goes awry, it’s you who made it that way.

“It wasn’t my fault” isn’t something you get to say anymore, even if you handed that task off to a junior developer. When your project manager / lead / boss comes knocking, you’re the one who has to stand up and explain what happened. It’s your neck officially on the line, and you’re the one who’ll be held accountable. (Incidentally, that applies for everyone else above you, too.)

Side-stepping responsibility and putting someone else into the firing line is not only disrespectful, it’s a guaranteed way to strip trustworthiness. One key aspect of responsibility is someone’s trust in you to handle something. Shirking responsibility is the same as saying: “you can’t trust me”.

Open-Mindedness

Finally, here’s where I’ll flip-flop a bit. Earlier up, I said I want a Senior Developer to be egotistic (to a degree) and tell me what they know. I still want that, but I also want to eat my cake, too. I won’t expect a Senior Developer to be immediately open to other ideas, but I do expect recognition. As the Senior Developer progresses to higher roles, open-mindedness becomes a significantly more important factor.

This also helps prepare the Senior Developer for one inevitability in life: even if you have all the chops, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get the meat.

A little over 2.5 years ago, we asked the same thing about your sister, Monkey. Mommy felt her moving around inside her, I could see and feel her kick. But we didn’t know her. We didn’t know what she’d look like, how she’d act, if she’d cry or laugh, when she’d walk, or even if she’d like us.

Now, we look Mommy’s wriggling belly, and we wonder: who will you be?

I think this is the best part of being a Dad — the part when I get to look at my children and see what is happening: how you grow, how you learn, the things you dpo and say. They all lead somewhere. It’s sort of like the saying:

It’s not the destination, but the journey that matters most.

I remember an old co-worker of mine, Mark James. Probably one of the smartest people I ever met. (Mind you, he worked in a group filled with amazingly smart people. I will always feel privileged to have worked with them.) We joked that when he had his first child — a girl — that he would write a program to mirror his daughter’s own development.

I’m sorry to say that I’m not that smart, Choo Choo. You can expect Mommy and I to record the major things in your life — birth, words, walking, running, school. You’ll never be at a loss to wonder what you were like as a child. You’ll be able to see it for yourself. (So don’t be surprised when you finally see the light, only to have a lens appear in front of you. It’ll only be me.)

But I wonder — where will you go? Who will you meet? What will you learn? Will you follow in your parent’s footsteps? Your sister’s? Or will you go your own way?

This I’m sure: you will be another wonder in my life. No matter how bad a day I have, I will always be happy to see you. I will try to be the last person you see before you sleep, and the first person you see in the morning. I probably won’t be the first person you see when you’re born, but listen closely — I’ll be there.

And I always will be.

You may be wondering: “Why ask those questions? Isn’t that obvious?” Therein lies the ultimate pit-trap of the Know-It-All — the question isn’t obvious, only the answer. And the answer is what a burgeoning Know-It-All will readily offer up to anyone within earshot, regardless of whether or the Know-It-All was asked or even if there was a question to begin with. It doesn’t matter if they’re actually right — it’s the urge to be right that drives them…

…and often drives everyone else around them crazy.

I know this, again, because I’m a Know-It-All. Or rather, a Know-It-All working towards Enlightenment. In that sense, you could consider Know-It-All-ism to be sort of like a martial art. The starting Know-It-All is a mere white belt, a novice to knowledge and ego, and can quite easily lead down the path of an ordinary person, learning and answering only when asked. It is when ego plays a part that the Know-It-All begins its fateful ride.

Witness the Know-It-All Curve. This is the progression of a Know-It-All from the beginning of knowledge, to its truest and holist form. It’s a rough road, spending a large portion of time in Ignorance, before trending into Wisdom. It’s not a one-way road, either, as it is possible — and very easy — for a Know-It-All to slide very quickly backwards.

I Know Nothing

At the beginning, a Know-It-All — and everyone, for that matter — literally knows nothing. They have yet to start on the path, and are beginning to learn. How they learn, to be honest, is somewhat irrelevant. Reading, watching, listening, or doing all have the same basic effect. The question is: who is guiding them? Know-It-Alls tend to breed Know-It-Alls. (Seriously, folks, fear for my children…)

I Know Something (#1)

The Know-It-All has in their possession some knowledge. It’s perhaps not much, and might be readily corrected by others. A Know-It-All could be stopped here and broken from the cycle. Quite often, however, the Know-It-All is allowed to continue by mere fact that no-one else recognises the danger.

I Know More Than You Do

Ego has firmly taken hold within the Know-It-All, and arrogance is starting to show. It doesn’t matter if the Know-It-All actually knows more than the other person, the perception is what is most important. Typically, the Know-It-All perceives itself as being correct and enforces that perception. At this point, almost always, the Know-It-All slips into a trough of egotism.

You’re Wrong

Pretty much at the bottom of the trough is where ego has overridden reason, and the Know-It-All can neither see nor do any wrong. (Particularly spectacular are when two Know-It-Alls at the same point of the path meet head-to-head.) These are the Know-It-Alls everyone hates, and the ones that tend to occupy most everyone’s perception of a Know-It-All. Statistically, this is likely where most Know-It-Alls reside, too. (I’d kill for actual numbers to back this up. But hey, I’m a Know-It-All, right?)

It takes a singular event for a Know-It-All’s world to be shifted. Typically, the Know-It-All, after steadfastly refusing to see otherwise, is proven painfully wrong. Perception changes…

Maybe You Know More Than I Do

Peerage is reestablished, often with someone who is not a Know-It-All, someone who looks at things more openly and can help mentor the Know-It-All out of Ignorance. But for this to happen, the Know-It-All has to recognise two things…

I Know Something (#2)

The first thing a Know-It-All has to recognise on its path to Wisdom is that it didn’t know as much as it thought it did, and that there is a huge breadth and depth of knowledge that still remains out of touch. If the Know-It-All fully grasps that point, then it leads to…

I Know Nothing

The first real step of Wisdom, common with many belief and study systems, is that a student truly knows nothing. This is a fundamental step, as it puts aside all previous beliefs, constructs, and preconceptions, and wipes the slate clean in preparation for a new education with new direction. It is a fundamental step that a Know-It-All must take to truly Know.

I Know Others Who Know More

Rule #1: There is always someone who knows more than you do. Always. Perhaps not in a given subject (there is always a subject matter expert who cannot be disputed), but you cannot be an expert in all things — that, so far, has eluded humanity. Knowing that there is someone else out there who might know more than you drives a Know-It-All (now reforming) to look others for knowledge, and establish their own perceptions in real fact.

I Know I Can Help, Even If I Don’t Know

A group of people working together, however, can establish a far greater set of knowledge than any one person can possess. “Putting heads together” might be old term, but it is also very correct. Different ideas, different perceptions, and different backgrounds often lead to a far more complete picture than any one person can produce.

I Know

The end of the path isn’t really the end — it’s more of a state of being. It’s knowing what you know, what you don’t know, and how to help others to know the same.

I propose April 1st be “IE6 Dies” Day. It’s time that IE6 be shown the door. But we’ll need help.

This isn’t the first time people have called for IE6 to go away. But previously, these were developer-led challenges, all of which met the same problem: we’re not the ones who get to make that decision. All a client needs to do is pull out a report from their stats engine to prove why they need it. (Or simply open their company-issued laptop to show the IT-mandated browser.) Going against this kind of weight, we’re lost.

We need to go the other way. Not to the browser makers (they’re on our side), but to the people offering services that people want to see. Want to punish a child? Take away its access to its toys.

We need to call out to the Big 3 search engines. Google, Bing, and Yahoo: Block access to IE6. And I don’t mean provide a subtle hint page, I mean block it entirely. With a big, bold page that says:

We’re sorry, but your browser is no longer supported. Please upgrade to one of the following [insert browser list here]. If necessary, please contact your IT department.

Google’s already on this path. Microsoft has encouraged upgrades to IE8. Yahoo hasn’t really said anything yet, but I imagine they’ve thought something similar. Take these three pages away, and you cut off a primary tool that millions of IE6 users go to daily. With these unavailable for no reason other than a browser update, it should help drive that final spike into the heart.

So why April 1? Well, there’s the obvious reason: IE6 has been “fooling” us for far too long, and it’s time that we prove that we’re not fooled any longer. But a bigger reason is time: Namely, give companies some warning. The upgrade cost can be significant, and companies need time to get things in place. Frankly, they’ve had enough, but a sudden stop without warning can cause some pretty major headaches. (I may be a jerk, but I’m not without sympathy for IT teams, having some good friends who do IT, and having enough IT to respect the problems they solve.)

I can’t do this alone. For this to work, we need as many people as possible to spread the message. Tweet/retweet this message as much as you can (please use the hashtag #ie6diesday, if possible). Send them this message:

Dear Search Provider,

Due to the on-going security and support problems with Internet Explorer 6, I would like to suggest that you consider April 1 “IE6 Dies Day”, and block IE6 from accessing your search engine. There are many other options and alternatives. http://bit.ly/bZTUej

Sincerely,

[Your name here]

Here’s some quick links to get you started!

• Yahoo: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/webmaster-01.html and http://www.ysearchblog.com/
• Google: http://www.google.com/support/contact/bin/request.py?bdpg=1&hl=en and http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
• Bing: https://feedback.discoverbing.com/default.aspx?productkey=bing

Spread the news. Let’s convince the search engines that it’s time for IE6 to die, once and for all.

I rushed inside, quickly descending to the room in the basement I’d rented (I was one of seven students in the house; four up, three down), and immediately went over to my phone, not removing my jacket. There was the familiar pulsing tone that said I had voicemail. It was my father. Dad never called me.  Mom would always call, then hand over to Dad. He was quiet, saying only to call home when I got in. The news was short.

Grandma had died.

My grandmother — my Dad’s mom — had not been well. She was in her late 80s (I think she was 87 at the time of her death), and like many people her age, some of the senses had waned over the years. Her vision had been a problem for a few years previous, such that she no longer drove and required a large magnifying glass to read. Unknownst to us, until my Aunt Ruth happened to find out by accident, Grandma’s sense of smell had also gone. Sour milk and a too-far-gone chicken breast were the last straw, and with much cajoling, Grandma finally had to give up her home of 60 years. It was hard on everyone.

Grandma moved into a retirement condominium in Oakville, about a 10 minute drive from our home. It was a nice place, and we tried to visit as often as we could. It was there I saw my Grandma on a warm September day, on my way up to Waterloo for my fall semester. It was my second semester in a row, having decided to do a full year at school to make up time for my discipline change, and subsequent delay in graduation.

I stayed about long enough to have a quick lunch with her, chat a bit, before I had to hit the road. I can’t remember what haste I was in to get back to Waterloo, and I’m sure now that I wasn’t as important as it was to have stayed longer. In hindsight, as is often the case with things or people that go away or are lost, you wish you’d spent more time. As I left, she handed me a can of pop, for the road, so I wouldn’t get thirsty. Little did I know that when I left, it would be the last time I would ever see her.

For some reason, I never got around to drinking the pop, a can of Our Compliments ginger ale. In fact, it inexplicably ended up sitting in my room, unopened, for months. Then word came that Grandma had an accident. She’d fallen, and broken her hip. She was moved to the hospital in Oakville, where she would remain under watch for weeks. Her condition never really improved, and she slowly slipped away. Among the regrets of my life is not having gone to see her. I’m sure I had excellent excuses, all of which now amount to nothing.

I don’t remember if I cried. If I did, there’s no way to know if it was at all influenced by my own illness. (I don’t even remember the continuation of the illness after my phone call with Dad.) But I was saddened by her passing. She had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. She had baked amazing Christmas cookies. We’d always gone to Grandma’s house for New Year’s dinner. She drank sherry, and ate those sugary fruit gels from Laura Secord. We’d play with my Dad’s old Dinky cars on her ornate rug, looking at a painting of two sailing ships over her fireplace. The painting, incidentally, now resides in my basement.

I didn’t go to my Grandma’s funeral. It was a hard decision for me to make. I had a project due the day after the funeral, and two classmates, Kim and Amber-Lynn, depending on me to help deliver it. I wore a black band on my arm (made of two black socks I tied together — it was all I had) all day.

But I didn’t open the can.

The can stayed unopened for over 14 years. It moved from Waterloo, to Oakville, to Vancouver, to Calgary. I displayed it prominently on shelves in my apartments. People would look at it, and wonder why it was on a shelf. But no-one ever tried to open it. Very few people even asked. (I suspect most of them thought I was just a slob.) But it was there, my memory in clear view. It stayed in storage for the year and a half we were in Costa Rica, and probably even longer prior to us moving (I’m not exactly sure when it went into storage, to be honest).

While unpacking our stuff over the last month and a half, I pulled it out and dusted it off. It felt only about half-full. But there were no holes, no leaks that I could see. So far as I could tell, the liquid inside had evaporated out. (I presume that’s possible?) Beside the can were piles of things to be donated, recycled, or outright thrown away. Things that had long pre-dated the can, and things that had carried a lot of sentimentality. I thought about the can’s prominence, what the can meant, and even the potential dangers it now presented to my family. I came to one conclusion:

It was time for the can to go.

One last picture. A pause, then I cracked it open (no fizz left), and emptied the contents. (Sorry, Grandma, but after over 14 years, I’m sure the contents would border on being unsafe for human consumption.) Then I took a last look, and recycled the can.

In the end, it’s not the can that mattered. It was who it represented. The physical manifestation of a memory doesn’t make the memory any stronger, or any more pertinent in my life. If nothing else, this entry helps me appreciate what she did for me, for my family. Her values, her sense of adventure, her stubbornness have all played significantly in my foundation, either directly from her or handed down through the family line.

So if you’re reading, Grandma, thank you. Thank you for the things you’ve done, and the things you’re yet to do. You’ve got some great-grandchildren who’ve yet to hear your tales, and will smile widely at the stories I have to tell.

I’m of the opinion: You’re only as old as you act. Namely, if act your age, you’ll feel old. Oh, sure, there’s a need for maturity and responsibility in our society. But, like all things, there’s a time and a place for all of that. And I think more people should just lighten up and be more immature. ‘Cuz frankly, it’s more fun.

This is something that, to some degree, I learned from my Nana.

Nana is my grandmother — my Mom’s mom. She’s my last living grandparent, and is one of those living embodiments of the Energizer Bunny. She might have slowed down more in recent years — she is 97, after all — but she gets around really well, still remembers quite a lot (even if she sometimes has trouble following a conversation), and has the same wit she’s had most of her life. Frankly, I hope I look as good and think as well as she does when I’m her age.

Equally important tonight was the fact that it brought her family together. It’s been a while since we packed into a room, and I hadn’t seen some of then since we went to Costa Rica — and my Uncle Dave and Aunt Alaine even longer than that. We even had a new addition — my cousin Pam’s newborn daughter, Sarah. The Monkey, of course, was utterly fascinated by the baby.

So happy birthday, Nana! This time next year, you’ll have two more great-grandchildren to faun over.

Greed kills innovation.

It’s short, it’s simple, it’s sure to raise the ire of a lot of people, but it’s also a major problem we’re seeing lately, especially in internet technologies. It’s a problem that’s dogged humanity for generations. And it’s getting worse.

It’s getting worse because of the pace of technology. There was a time, roughly my current lifetime ago, when there were only a handful of companies engaged in developing technology. They made hardware, wrote the software, and generally all of them hoped things would work.  People took ideas from one another, all hoping that they could make it into a better idea. Witness how Apple and Microsoft flourished on an idea from Xerox…

But things changed. Today, we look back on Xerox, and we think: You yutz! You should’ve sued Microsoft blind! Why? Because we all got greedy. It’s not about making things better, it’s about making money.

Patents Gone Wild! See them on the streets of Silicon Valley, beating up struggling entrepreneurs trying to make something good. Or in the Northwest, terrorising established companies for no valid reason. Bringing down entire corporate communications, regardless of impact. Not being able to display a video because the cost is too high.

My problem with all of this isn’t that it’s illegal — it’s not. A patent holder is allowed, by law, to defend their patent against encroachment. My problem is that it happens with increasingly dangerous frequency, often initiated by people who, frankly, have no business holding a patent.

The laws in North America have bred a two-tiered system: those who patent to protect their business, and those who license patents (and quite often end up in big name lawsuits). I know many people in the first group whose companies have pushed them to file patents, to ensure that their business is protected. And we’ve all seen the prolonged battles of the latter.

I fear we’re entering an era when innovation — real innovation, not incremental one-upmanship — will become stifled. The fear of lawsuit and the yawning chasm of bureaucracy needed to protect an idea will become roadblocks. People who might have done well on their own will look at the challenges and say: No, thanks.

Imagine if Steve Wozniak had said that. No, thanks, I don’t want to sell this computer kit to anyone. Or if Henry Ford had looked at his dream of consistently templated automobiles and thought: Who’s waiting around the corner with a lawyer? Page and Brin might have looked at Yahoo! and said: Y’know, what’s the point?

Maybe I’m too altruistic. Maybe because I’ve grown tired at seeing the petty bickering over hundreds of millions of dollars, while reading headlines about mass suffering around the world. Maybe it’s because we’re a decade behind having a viable electric car in widespread use anywhere in the world. Maybe I just want the frickin’ jetpack we’re all supposed to be using now.

Why so long? It’s been a number of things. First, I worked a lot, and too hard. It wore me down and I was almost always too tired to do things that we should have done. It’s a poor excuse, Monkey, and I’m sorry that it’s all I have to offer. Second, doing things in Costa Rica was always just that much harder than it really needed to be, at least when planning for us. You can only go to Arenal so many times, and getting to the coast never seemed to be as easy for us as it was for others. After a while, we planned all of our weekends, rather than letting one of us surprise the rest.

Needless to say, I wanted to change things up a bit.

We went to Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, and the home of the West Edmonton Mall. Once upon a time, long before you were born, West Edmonton Mall was the largest mall in the world. Now it’s only a measly #6 … though it’s still the largest in North America. We didn’t go to shop, though. You’re not a shopper. Not yet, anyway. We went there for the World Waterpark, which (depending on whom you ask) is the largest indoor waterpark in the world.

For that, we piled in the car Friday afternoon, and set our course … northwest. This is because one of the requirements of a Surprise Weekend is to keep the others guessing. Or at least, that’s how I do it. Mommy goes insane trying to get me to tell her where we’re going. It used to be cute, but I think the next time we go somewhere, I’ve got about 60 minutes of leeway before she punches me.

We took Stoney Trail, which is part of the new ring road that circles about 3/5 of Calgary, from Highway #1 in the west to Highway #2 in the north. (It was then that Mommy correctly guessed “Edmonton”, but I feigned ignorance — not a stretch for your father, I might add — for nearly three more hours.) From there, we drove to Airdrie, only for a quick stop at Tim Horton’s for a couple of steeped teas, a muffin, and a donut.

We didn’t stop again until we got to Red Deer, which was where we had dinner. It was one of those unplanned things in life that gets you an historic moment you’ll soon forget about, only to remember years later. In 1988, Calgary hosted the Winter Olympics (something, it seems, Calgarians never stop talking about). That winter, the Olympic flame journeyed all the way across the country, running through my hometown of Oakville — I still remember the flame being run down Lakeshore Road. Mommy saw the flame when it got to Calgary.

This year, Vancouver is hosting the Winter Olympics (sadly, we won’t be going), and the flame is making a long journey all around the country. On Friday, it ran through Red Deer, right in front of the Montana’s at the south end, which happened to be the place Mommy picked for us to eat. You and Mommy stayed inside, while I went out to watch the runner pass the torch to the next person. A short historic moment you won’t remember, and Mommy and I will likely forget until the next time we see it.

Once we hit the road again, I told Mommy where we were going. That allowed her to relax a bit. We drove through the darkness, the stars overhead, heading towards the distant glow of Edmonton. (Seriously, Edmonton, we could see you from Red Deer. You have a light pollution problem.) We drove along the new #216 highway through southwest Edmonton until turning off on Stoney Plain Drive, and found our Holiday Inn Express.

The room was nice, and we were all pooped from the long drive. Mommy, now nearly seven months pregnant, took one bed. You got stuck with me, Monkey. And while we’re on the subject, you are the most restless sleeper I’ve ever had the misfortune of sharing a bed with. You never stop moving around, and I can’t count the number of times you tried to sleep sideways, kicking me in the ribs. I’m amazed either of us got any sleep over the last two nights!

The next morning, we tramped downstairs to the breakfast buffet, before packing up and heading over to the mall. Shortly after arriving, Mommy got a call from her friend Sandra, and decided to go and visit while you and I went to the waterpark. But first, we wandered our way down to the entrance, passing the sea lion entertaining what appeared to be special guests, and watched the lemurs play in the their enclosure.

We managed to get our ticket from a nice couple who had gotten the tickets through work. At $10 off the cover price ($30), we couldn’t believe our luck! You and I got changed, and Mommy waited to see us at the viewing area. She commented that I should have left our backpack in the locker, so it wouldn’t get stolen. I didn’t think it was a problem, given all the other parents with their backpacks, bags, and strollers.

Our first stop was the Dolphin Pool, a kiddie pool that barely came to your waist, but had three small waterslides. You didn’t take much encouraging to go up the stairs and go down your first ever waterslide. You’d been on big slides before, and I think you thought these would be the same. But suddenly, your bum slipped out from under you, and you were whizzed down the slide into the water below. You were a little stunned, but you still got up giggling.

After a little bit, we went into the big pool — the one that looked like a beach, and had the waves. The last time you felt waves was last October when we’d gone to Playa Chiquita. Mommy and I still feel bad that we didn’t get to any more beaches after that, because that was the first time you really liked going to the beach. There’s no sand at World Waterpark, but you loved the waves.

As we headed back to the Dolphin Pool, I realised that Mommy was right — the bag should have stayed in the locker. It was gone, as was the towel we’d rented. I didn’t panic, but I was pretty annoyed. It wasn’t so much that my phone and credit card were in there, it was more that it had all of your diapers. That, and it really made me feel nothing but disgust for people who would take something in such a family environment.

We talked to the staff, and they said they would call security. They gave us an extra towel (you were shivering something fierce), and suggested that we also look around one more time. Thankfully, far away from where we’d originally placed our things, was the bag — towelless — sitting on the last chair of the back row of the deck chairs. Whether some “clever” thief had put it there in hopes we’d not look for it, or if some kid had moved it as a joke, I don’t know. But nothing was missing (insert a big PHEWF here). I called off the hounds, and immediately put the bag in the locker.

Back to the pool, we went over to an area known as Caribbean Cove, which is a large structure (I don’t know what else to call it) where you can climb, turn wheels, pull on ropes, lift handles, and generally just get utterly soaked. You didn’t like it quite as much the first time (more the second time), and we went back to the Dolphin Pool again.

After a while, I convinced you to go on a waterslide, the only one I could take you down with me. Sadly, my choice of bathing suit appeared to be really bad, because we got stuck a few times on the way down. You giggled and cheered “whee!” anyway. The waterslide seemed to pique your interest, though, and back at the Dolphin Pool, you happily ran up the waterslide stairs, slid down, and repeated until it was time to go.

It was almost 13:30 before we found a restaurant to eat at, and it was over an hour before we’d finished. (The service at Moxie’s, though apologetic, was borderline intolerably slow.) We headed out to the car, and back to the hotel so you could nap.

For dinner, we went to one of the most Canadian of restaurants: Swiss Chalet. Given you run-in with chicken at lunch, we opted to order you a kid’s pizza. Mommy had a salad, which I was tempted to copy, but I got suckered into one of my old favourites, the quarter chicken. The Chalet Sauce hasn’t changed since I was a kid … nor had the decor of that particular location, from what I could tell. Our server was beyond amazing, however, and was an utter joy.

You and I both reeked of chlorine, something you’re not familiar with, but thankfully a bath managed to get most of the stench off of you. I would have to wait until this morning’s shower to get the smell off of me. (That, and wrestle another night with you kicking me in the ribs.)

After breakfast this morning, we went back to the Mall (‘cuz, really, what else is there to do in Edmonton?), with the idea of going to Galaxyland. It’s an amusement park in the Mall (you’re going to find this hard to believe, but most malls don’t have rollercoasters), and has a play area exactly for kids your age. It’s only $6, and Mommy and I get to go in with you. And unlike everywhere else we’ve been, we get to climb with you, too (mostly because somethings are a bit too much for you at this age).

You went in the bouncy room, trudged through the ball pit, climbed up and down the padded levels. I took you way up high to go down one of the slides. At first, I thought I might just send you down on your own, but thankfully I had enough sense to go with you — the slide was very dark inside. You seemed unimpressed with it. Your second slide you did on your own, which was far less of a success — I heard the distinct down of squeaking skin, and you came down feet-first on your belly. You weren’t happy at all.

After a bit more playing, I took you on a small train that runs around Galaxyland. Despite being excited to go on, I think you were disappointed that you didn’t get to run the train. We went for lunch — you split a Mr. Sub sandwich with Mommy — and then hit the road for Calgary.

As we drove home — you slept all the way to Red Deer — I couldn’t help but stare wistfully at the flatness that surrounded us. Driving in Costa Rica, it was exceedingly rare to see a flat area, as the country is so mountainous. Even rarer are long stretches of straight road. But up here, you can look around for 360 degrees and see nothing but a straight horizon, the road you’re travelling on disappearing way off in the horizon in a dead-straight line. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed it.

It’s been a long weekend of fun, Monkey. I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be going back again, and I hope with each successive time, you enjoy it more and more. And hopefully, your sister will like going there, too.

In time, a phrase was born: The sun never sets on the British Empire. Great Britain’s influence extended far beyond its native shores, its power unquestionable. A few thrived under the colonial system, but the majority — the people living under colonial rule — were marginalised as being little more than the ignorant masses; significant numbers suffered horribly.

It’s really no wonder that the Empire collapsed under its own weight.

Flash forward now to our present, a world where corporations, not governments, run the world. Oh, sure, we see the laws passed by governments in the interests of its people, but it’s not the governments creating them. It’s lobbyists, working on behalf of the corporations. It’s the corporations funding political careers through donations (legal or otherwise). It’s the corporations funding large-scale advertising campaigns placing candidates more friendly to their needs into office.

It is these corporations directing the current colonialism: copyrights. Think of these not as the legalese that they are — instead, think of them as land claims, which were a significant part of the British Empire. A land claim meant you had title to earn money from people who worked your land, and the power to treat them however (un)fairly you wished. If anyone tried to take your land, you were obliged to defend it with as deadly force as you could muster.

Copyrights have been with us — and have been a controversial topic — ever since Thag copied Zog’s cave painting, and Zog hit Thag over the head with a rock. Interestingly, that form of retribution hasn’t changed much in the roughly 45,000 years since. It’s been a battle for recognition of ownership, of artistry, and for “what’s right”.

One of the biggest problems is that copyright enforcement hasn’t been particularly consistent over the years, either. Zog was lucky enough to avoid a complex judicial system. Until the early 1990s, we had to rely mostly on physical presence (namely, you had to buy an actual piece of art). Software copyrights existed, but were poorly enforced, even within large law-abiding corporations. The advance of technology broke the physical barrier, gave people the ability to access materials on their behalf … and shortly afterwards, gave corporations the ability to know who was breaking their rules.

We saw the first signs of the new colonialism at the turn of the 21st century, when one of the corporations — the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) — launched what would be come the first of many public and painful lawsuits. Metallica brought the battle into the public eye when they effectively offended the then-denizens of the internet, decrying the “fair use” belief held by many (the legality of said perspective notwithstanding). It was the first shot fired in the new independence, the first time that people showed to the world that they wanted things on their terms, not someone else’s.

The weapon wielded by groups like the RIAA and the MPAA (Motion Picture Assocation of America) was not a battle axe or a howitzer, but the Digital Millennium Copyright Act — the DCMA. This law, enacted in the United States of America, implemented two of the treaties agreed upon by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) in 1996. This is how we came to know DRM (Digital Rights Management). They used it to guilt us to not copy, and then slaughter us when we did. The corporations had found legitimacy for their battle through governments.

In theory, this should have worked entirely to the corporation’s wishes. Within their own borders, the laws were clear, and things went (mostly) according to plan. But they weren’t so effective in the international reality. Not all countries recognised, or even seemed to care, about other country’s laws — and certainly not about the ones that enforced copyrights. Governments were engaged again to help enforce the corporations’ will.

When you have to go up to the biggest kid in the schoolyard and ask for your toy back, all you can do is whine. I imagine “aw, come on!” was heard a lot when the United States asked China not to copy software, movies, or CDs. But China opted to give only a token of acceptance — sort of like giving back only one of the wheels from the Tonka truck. China can do that, because it owns a huge portion of the United States debt, and provides the United States with cheap imports.

Where were the WIPO and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in all of this? Someone’s got to run world court, right?

But the rules started changing. In the last two years, Canada had to improve its own copyright legislation, also based on DCMA, and driven by the industry — the corporations — and not by the people whom the government should represent. The sledgehammer just fell on Costa Rica: fix your copyrights, or the United States will stop importing sugar (note that coffee and bananas were excluded from the ban). Lo siento, Costa Rica, but CAFTA/TLC won’t help you here — remember, the United States wrote the core of it to benefit themselves.

Costa Rica and Canada are not alone. Dozens of countries are now working on ACTA — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement — a virtually secret pact designed to do only one thing: enforce a DCMA-like mandate worldwide. Governments don’t want to talk about it. The corporations? They’re smiling like buddhist cows.

Colonialism was best defined when the powerful centre took after its weaker neighbours and opponents. You either fought them, or you joined them. The colonists in all of this are us, the people. We’re the ones being handed the royal decrees without benefit of democracy, the ones getting taxation without representation. We’ll be the ones held in stockades, heads put on pikes, and held up as terrorists to the state (covering for the corporation).

Now lest anyone thing I’m against copyrights, I’m not. I respect the creativity needed to make something new, and the need for that artist is duly compensated for their efforts. But I’m against the inappropriate use of copyrights (and patents, for that matter). When copyrights are flaunted by corporations and not by the artist, it becomes a debate of what’s more important — stockholder dividends, or protecting the artist’s needs?

‘Cuz from what I’m seeing, another war for independence is coming. But this one will cross nearly every border, involve almost everyone, and probably install a new form of class structure in the process. Suddenly, that remote cabin in the mountains looks a lot more appealing…

You’re asleep right now, in your own room, on the mattress from one of our sofa beds. A month ago right now, you and we were standing in the immigration line, waiting to enter your country of origin, and go to your new home. I can’t say “home” the way Mommy and I say “home”, because for you, this isn’t your home. Costa Rica is more your home than here.

You still look at video of our condo in Santa Ana, and you ask when are we going home. Because that’s what you know more of. We left Canada when you weren’t even a year old. You learned to walk in Costa Rica, to swim, to talk. Almost all of your friends are in Costa Rica, you went to school there. You ask for “schoolday”, and talk about your teachers.

But you came a long way to be able to say these things, and have these memories.

When we left Canada in 2008, you didn’t really know what was going on. You’d already travelled quite well considering you weren’t even a year old, having seen a few cities in the UK, out to Vancouver to visit with your grandparents, and out to Toronto to see your aunt, uncle, and Nana. You seemed to take all of that travelling very well, something that I know made me very proud.

Even more so was how quickly you seemed to adjust to living in a tropical country. You had to sleep in a playpen for the first month or so, while you waited for your crib to arrive. You had only a few books, a couple of toys. What TV you watched was in a language you’d never heard before. The floors were cool and hard, not the warm comfort you had known.

But there were things you liked: a pool nearby you could splash in regularly, it was always warm so you never felt cold, it was always green and lush, and everyone who saw you seemed to fawn over you — you were a magnet for most of our first year in Costa Rica.

Your first word was “kitty”, which you’d learned to say before we left Canada. Your next words were in Costa Rica. You’d started to get your teeth in Canada, you got most of them in Costa Rica. You learned to use your Jolly Jumper here in our house in Calgary, but you took your first steps near the pool in Santa Ana. You met, but probably don’t remember, the children of some of Mommy and my friends. You made your own friends, all of whom spoke Spanish. You still call them by their names: Mimi, Fria, Nando.

You went to school. Your teacher, Ily, taught your class. She spoke to you in English and Spanish. After a while, you spoke some Spanish, too. “Agua”, “vamos”, “mono”. You still say “sí”, instead of “yes”. You still want to have “schoolday”. You probably wonder where your uniform went.

You saw jungles. You saw oceans. You saw beaches. You saw volcanoes. You ate fruit fresh from trees and vines. You played in sand and the sea, and romped in the rain. From the back of our Suzuki, Dave, you saw both coasts, and the highest points in between. You mimicked monkeys, saw sloths, followed frogs, bagged butterflies. You saw wonder in almost everything.

You even became an official temporary resident of Costa Rica. We have the documentation to prove it.

Mommy and I are feeling guilty about bringing you back. You were really starting to enjoy things in Costa Rica. You still think of it as home — you asked me that just the other day, when you saw a video of a beach and monkeys. As you’ve noticed, there are no monkeys here.

You’ve come a long way, Monkey. You’ve had a such a unique start, and I really hope you can remember this as you grow up. I hope you can remember the things you did and saw, the people you met. I hope you can retain some of your Spanish, and I hope it helps you learn other languages. I hope.

Truth be told, I had been planning my “goodbye” message for years. (As my dad used to say, if you’re going to do something, do it right.) If nothing else, it would have been fun to make: a video that would cover my time at CM, complete with a snazzy soundtrack, and some bogus story about going to teach at an all-girls school. But planning means nothing without execution, and I never got around to it. I’m sure I will come to regret that.

Some of you won’t have a clue about who the fark I am. Some of you know me all-too-well. No matter where you sit in the spectrum, do yourself a favour and look around at all the people sitting near you. They, and you, are the people who make up Critical Mass.

As many have said before me, it’s the people I will miss most.

It’s been said — often by the spouses of CMers — that Critical Mass is a cult. I don’t know if that’s really true anymore (I can’t honestly say — don’t forget I’ve been in Costa Rica for a year and a half), but it was certainly fact in my earlier years. We worked together, we ate together, we drank together, we played together, and in more than a few cases, we married and had kids together. You make your own decision on the definition.

In those years, I met (and drank with) a lot of amazing people. And if you’re reading this, you’re one of them. No matter what you think of me now, or what you believe I might think of you, here’s a little unvarnished truth: I admire you. I do, really. I admire you for any number of reasons, not the least of which would include your creativity, your logic, your passion, your leadership, your wisdom, your calmness, your insight, your humour, your kindness, your tolerance. This list could go on quite a lot longer, but hopefully you see where I’m coming from.

Yes, I like you. And I will miss you. All of you. I will miss seeing you daily (or at least weekly). I will miss the banter. I will miss the feeling of inclusion. I will miss the challenges, the victories, the discussions, and especially the arguments. I will miss the Bistro. I will miss the frontline of the front desk.

I miss it all already.

But change is inevitable in life. You can’t avoid it, you can’t cheat it. When change comes, the only thing you can do is embrace it and move with the beat — fighting change just incurs injury. My time to change coincided with my return to Canada, for better or for worse. Change is also chaotic, which is why I haven’t really had a chance to say anything. Better late than never, right?

So this is my chance to tell you, the best of luck in your future endeavours.

I also have to say “thank you”. When I started in April 2000, I was pretty green. I’d had some experience in my own projects, but I quickly learned that I had a lot to learn. And you were always willing to teach me, from every department, from every level. You gave me access to the best minds, and the opportunities to test those learnings and prove my own worth. You allowed me to take more responsibility, and allowed me to guide others as others had guided me.

I hope that whatever legacy I’ve left behind either helps, or is duly forgotten (there’s nothing like a roadblock to mess up your day). I hope that the friends I made over the years don’t mind me popping in every now and then to visit. And I hope I can make off with the mulligatawny soup recipe — that one is worth killing for.

And yes, I’ll still be watching. I want to see how my friends are doing, and see their successes. There’s no point in an award if there’s no-one to congratulate you on it, right?

Until when next we meet…

The year closed out on a more sombre note for me, in many ways. Much quieter, and I got to spend a lot of time with my family (which I cherish now, and cannot regret in anyway), but the future is a little less certain. I’m less concerned about that fact than I thought I would be, however.

On with the year that just was…

• Rang in the new year watching fireworks go off all over the Central Valley in Costa Rica (a spectacular sight, if you ever happen to be in Costa Rica at New Year’s)
• Had numerous run-ins with illness between The Monkey, myself, and Alex (and some far less pretty than others, lemme tell ya!)
• Experienced my first, bonafide, scare-the-crap-outta-me earthquake, measuring in at 6.2 at its epicentre
• In Costa Rica, travelled to:
  • Villa Blanca (Los Angeles Cloud Forest), three times
  • Arenal (for my very wet birthday)
  • Parque de Diversiones
  • Playa del Coco
  • Playa Hermosa
  • Playa Chiquita
  • Puerto Viejo
  • La Paz Waterfalls
• Had a few troubles with our trusty Suzuki, Dave, and spent more than a few bucks getting ‘em all fixed
• Managed to avoid becoming totally addicted to coffee, but still drank a lot of it
• Took pride in The Monkey starting school (yes, even though she wasn’t even 2 years old yet)
• Worked through the challenges of getting a startup business up and running; the stress took its toll on me and my family, and likely all lead to where I am at this very moment
• Travelled to Canada for a visa run, though it was originally planned as a family visit:
  • Barrie
  • Bolton
  • Oakville
  • And wee bit of Toronto (I had to go into the Toronto office) just for flavour
• Saw far too few sunsets on beaches
• Discovered great Indian food in Costa Rica
• Moved from our first apartment to a new apartment, after our condo management company couldn’t come to an agreement on a contract extension
• Got utterly screwed by the aforementioned condo management company, to the tune of about USD$1,500
• Celebrated 20 years of journalling/blogging with post #1,000 (total coincidence, I swear!)
• Did a Stampede-style breakfast for my co-workers
• Finally acquired my Temporary Residency visa … after realising that staying in Costa Rica long-term wasn’t an option for my family, and we’d decided to go home
• Waxed poetic on management and management style (perhaps too much so?)
• Cringed as The Monkey crossed into “The Terrible Twos” (which, thankfully, haven’t really been that bad)
• Finally snapped after running into a “Perfect Storm” of difficult project, dealing with the relocation company, organising the family, trying to sell the car, cancelling services, and making sure that what little money we had saved was properly moved out of the country before we left — I was an utter wreck at the end
• Ate far too many of our last meals in Costa Rica in a Denny’s
• Managed to survive the 19-hour ordeal of moving from Costa Rica; flying through Houston with a few bags, an irate cat in a bag, and a toddler hell-bent on doing her own thing; finally arriving in -18 degree weather in Calgary after 22:30 at night
• Moved back into a house we hadn’t seen in a year and a half, finding things we hadn’t seen in probably over three years
• Bought a 2006 Jetta TDI
• Critical Mass and I parted ways after about 9.75 years
• Landed a wonderful case of Benign Positional Vertigo on Boxing Day
• Realised that, yes, there are many things that Costa Rica has better than Canada … beyond the weather
• Rang in the new year year to come with a visit to the Calgary Zoo’s “Zoo Year’s Eve”, at -22 degrees Celsius

I’m missing easily a couple of months’ of detail in there, but the simple fact is that most of Q1 and Q2 last year were chaotic, busy, and stressful. I’m proud of what we all achieved, and I miss the people I left behind in Costa Rica. Time changes, and people have to change with them. As such, 2010 will be a year of change for me. I don’t see that as a bad thing, just that as with any human, change ain’t easy.

But change is exciting.