The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill before the Government of the United States of America that proposes — in a general sense — a series of rules and penalties in an effort to eradicate online piracy. At a high level, it certainly seems like a reasonable request. In fact, so reasonable that anyone not spending time reviewing the details of the bill might very well have missed some of the more draconian measures being implemented, allowing — in effect — individual companies to disable outright any website they believe to be infringing on copyright without right of trial, so long as said website has some dependency on US-based services (which a tremendous percentage of websites have).

In effect, a US company can shut down your otherwise legal operation because they’ve told their government that you’re the bad guy.

Sound unfair? It should. But this, dear reader, is also where things get more sinister.

The authors of this bill are members of the American government, but that’s not who is really driving it. The backers? Big media. Notably, the same companies who have been engaging in a futile, misguided, and often grossly misdirecting effort to have laws enacted to protect their business models. Companies represented by the RIAA and MPAA, and a host of old companies who don’t want to change.

They’re flailing, and failing. They’re unable to grasp the concept of digital media. They’re used to their physical world — one book to one person, one CD in one CD player, one VHS tape showing on one tube-based television set. The new world allows a single copy to be copied, cut, remixed, and displayed on millions of devices simultaneously. The media companies chime: “Show me the money.”

But instead of adapting, they cry foul. They cry piracy. They claim that they’re losing money hand-over-fist, and they will expire without the assistance of new laws. Yet, they’re not losing money. In fact, many of the music labels are making more than ever, largely in part to Apple, who strong-armed them into making music cheap, and — to absolutely no surprise to any armchair economist — removed the barrier to entry, and sold music in such quantities that the music industry was very likely saved from imminent death.

Hence, SOPA. And while the White House chosen to not sign the bill, there is no reason to believe it won’t be back in some other odious form.

Beyond the American government, I have reason to also fear this bill because of the efforts of my own government. The Canadian government has thrice shown to be spineless in its resistance to these same groups lobbying for ridiculous legislation in Canada that would put our own culture and identity as unwarranted in terms of content ownership. Our politicians, who had in decades previous been those who stand only for its own people, now show to be bowing to massive foreign conglomerates, leaving its own people to suffer as a result.

SOPA, and bills like it must fail. Because they are flawed in their consideration of evolution, because they fail to take digital commerce into account, and because they will unnecessarily bind our children into false agreements and behaviours that will haunt them their entire lives.

If you are an American, please write your congressperson. If you are Canadian, please write your MP. In either case, don’t let your government become party to Big Media’s insanity, don’t let our future be dictated by corporations. Learn more at AmericanCensorship.org.

Content yearns to be free. Not free as in ownership, but free as in freedom, free as in life. Let content live.

This last year was a big one for me in one major way: it was a redefinition of my professional existence. Since the end of 2009, I’ve transformed from a professional manager to a … hmm … well, my title (however formal it needs to be) is “Solutions Lead”, but that belies a lot of what I do every day, and just using “web developer” or “programmer” — even with a “Senior” prefix — completely understates the reality. This year was really about taking all the skills and knowledge I’d acquired as a leader, and merging that back into my day-to-day development practices.

And that, as the saying goes, was only the tip of the iceberg…

I did a LOT of work. I did so much, in fact, that my contracting business is gone. Doors closed, windows shut, lights off. Permanently. I had to make a very painful call to realise that I need to focus on the three most important things in my life: my family. (There’s three of them, in case you were wondering.) To focus on them means to remove all other distractions inasmuch as is possible, and still earn a paycheque along the way (helping to support said family, of course).

Add to that Alex’s return to work after nearly four years off as a Professional Mom, working evening shifts. That meant more time as a Professional Dad, whether I liked it or not. (And I like it, really. Except for dinner time. Suddenly, I have nothing but sympathy for my parents when I was a kid.) It’s adjustment, it’s growth.

As a result of all of this, many things suffered. My hobbies (what few I have) were shelved — even my desire to blog waned dramatically, with more than a couple of blogless months. My TV watching fell to an all-time low, and I can count on one hand the number of movies I saw in the theatre (coincidentally, also the number of movies I watched during the Christmas break at home through iTunes). My health has also been … unattended, with a noticeable increase in girth and an unhealthy increase in my beer consumption (since decreased, thankfully).

But if you were to ask me if I was “unhappy”, I’d have to say “no”. Every day, my kids remind me why I’m proud to be their dad. Every day, I get a challenge in my job. Every day, I enjoy life, even if it’s only for a few moments. To say I’m “unhappy” would be a disservice (if not an outright insult) to my daily existence, and those around me.

To that end, I can safety state that I’ve:

• Been into Banff National Park on a few occasions — both warm and cold — but nowhere near enough for my liking
• Picnicked as much as we could, but again nowhere near enough for what we could have done
• Enjoyed the first brew from Calgary’s new Village Brewery
• Did some renovation work in the kitchen (and planned more renovation work for this year)
• Retaught myself the fundamentals of being a (web) developer, and merged that with the skills and knowledge of a technology director
• Lamented as I saw Choo Choo seem to grow by leaps and bounds, going from my little baby girl to a walking, talking toddler
• Finally accepted the truth, and got glasses
• Came to understand my father in ways I never thought possible, and really wished that he could be here today to see how his son (kinda) grew up
• Accepted the reality that I will only ever be a father of two beautiful girls — there will never be a third offspring
• Watched in horror as Canada succumbed to fear mongering and elected a government that refuses to listen to its own people (a terrifyingly global trend in 2011)
• Mourned the loss of one of Canada’s best politicians since Pierre Trudeau, the Honourable Jack Layton
• Experienced my first general anesthesia to get my hernia repaired … boy, I do not want to go through that again!
• Drank way too much coffee (yes, folks, that is possible)
• Similarly, also drank too much beer (yes, also possible, though admittedly it tasted really good at the time)
• Launched more projects in one year than I had launched during my busiest five years (combined) at my previous company
• Took Monkey on the SUPER SECRET MONKEY SURPRISE — a short trip on CP 2816
• Took Monkey to the Stampede, and realised to my delight (or possible horror, not sure yet) that she loves rides, especially roller coasters
• Also got the Mother of All Headaches while at the Stampede…
• Travelled to Ontario to visit with my family
• Spent a lot of time swimming in the lake with Monkey and my nieces
• Rode another steam train in Huntsville
• Visited with some old and dear friends (especially Stuart and Therese)
• Celebrated Monkey’s 4th birthday, and Choo Choo’s first birthday
• Also rode on the Heritage Park steam train
• Travelled to Red Deer to see the Backyardigans live (oh, the things parents must do…)
• Travelled once again to the West Coast for post-Christmas and New Year’s celebrations

I’m sure there’s other stuff I did, but my blog was so light on content in 2011 that … well, I’m not sure. Sure, I can try to read Twitter, but I used that in lieu of my blog, so there’s a few thousand tweets I’d need to go over. That’s a little too much. So if I’m making any resolution this year, it’s to write more blog posts.

Thankfully, there’s a Fairmont hotel here, too, and the tradition continues fairly readily. So with enough advance notice, we reserved a space, and made arrangements to have the tradition carry on. The only question was who would be our guests this year?

Well, it’s not like we don’t know anyone in the Lower Mainland…

Last year we had (sadly) gone on without a guest, so this year we made an extra effort to have someone join us. Because the first year had been a(n old) friend of mine, we went with one of Alex’s friends, Sandra. They’ve known each other pretty much ever since Alex moved back to Calgary (and strongly believe — though as of yet proven definitively — that they’re distantly related), and it was a perfect chance to invite close friends (who also happen to have kids).

The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver is one of the mainstays of downtown Vancouver. I’d only ever been in it once before, ages ago, for a quick drink one evening. It shows its age a bit, I think, and is not quite as nice as the Banff Springs (in my opinion). But it was the only Fairmont hotel in town that did afternoon tea (there is another, but tea is not offered), and thus our best option.

(Okay, to be fair, our best option was to go to the Empress in Victoria — which had been my first hope — but the act of getting to Victoria was definitely much more convoluted and the potential guest list much shorter. One day, however, I will have my tea at the Empress!)

Our drive into Vancouver was one that filled me with excitement. I love Vancouver, I truly do. It’s taken me years to really appreciate the vibrance of the buildings, the communities, the myriad of curious shops, all blended with the water and the mountains. Near-13 years ago, when I left Vancouver, I swore I’d never return. Today, I find myself desperately trying to find a way to come back. (And I may — more on that, later…)

Going off of old memories, I turned our rented minivan (not my choice of vehicle, I should note, and I will never rent one again — I loathe these vehicles) off Highway 1 onto the Grandview Highway for the trip into the city. It took us past many of the small communities and lush, green parks that I’d remembered only poorly, and realised just how much I’d missed them. We turned down Kingsway and then onto Main St, before zigging across Terminal to Quebec (which turns into Expo Bvld, and then into Pacific Bvld), which I realised after a few moments wasn’t the way I’d planned to go (I’d actually meant to go on the Georgia viaduct).

The mistake, however, let me zip into Yaletown for a gander at where I’d spent two years living (part of) my life. It was where Radical Entertainment had been located, and I’d spent many hours of every day either in the office, or walking the areas around it coming to and from work, or going to lunch with co-workers. I knew I wouldn’t see the same neighbourhood, but I guess nothing really prepares you for the suddenness of seeing something that’s been evolving for nearly a decade. The last time I’d been there was to have a beer with my friend Greg, the day before our respective weddings (he was married the same day).

Then it was up Homer to Georgia, and the final task: find a place to park. And, more importantly, one I could get in with a minivan (easier said than done; parallel-parking that bastard was not something I wanted to attempt). It took nearly 10 minutes to find an underground lot at the Scotiabank Theatre building at Burrard and Smithe. We walked up Burrard to Robson, and — having noticed the advertisments while looking to park — went into the soon-to-be-closing HMV.

The HMV at the corner of Robson and Burrard was an icon. Three floors of heaven … at least for me, at the end of the 1990s, before Apple killed off the music stores. (That is not an attack on Apple, by the way. Apple was just the one who made it happen. Music stores’ death was a given the day the MP3 format was first used.) I remember the HMV from those days past as a place I could lose hours in: perusing the racks on the main and upper (half) floor, looking for things that would sound great, but usually to see what CDs were in the 2 for $20 bins. Downstairs was the massive DVD section; another massive use of my time (and money).

As we walked in the door, passing one of the clerks bearing massive signs on posts, held over their heads in “the end of the world is near”-style with “store closing – up to 70% off” emblazoned in massive letters, I couldn’t help feel a pang of remorse. I am one who has contributed to the loss of such stores. I lamented the closing of the massive 4-floor A&B Sound in downtown Vancouver (a building that remains empty to this day, surprisingly enough), despite being just as at fault for buying music online (though I freely admit at the time that I was still buying CDs in large quantities). I even commented to Monkey to look carefully, as she’ll not see another store like this again in her life. It is truly a dying breed.

We arrived at the Hotel Vancouver just before noon, and found ourselves the first to arrive in the lounge for tea. A set of five round tables had been moved into a long row, twelve chairs arranged around the row in preparation for our party. A large artificial tree, coated liberally with artificial snow, occupied a point in the centre of the room, next to our tables. The bar was to one side, the 12-foot arched windows into the alley entrance for valets and taxis to the other.

Nicole, (“Tia Nicole” to the kids, “Nikki” to just about everyone else) was the first to arrive, having survived her New Years Eve intact. Sandra and her brood arrived not long afterwards (although Amir was unable to attend, having been called into the hospital). Grandpa and Granny arrived a while later.

The tea was … well, perhaps a little disappointing, compared to how the Banff Springs delivers it. There, the tea is wheeled out to you so you may sniff at the loose tea before ordering. The view is unmatched, with looking down the Bow River valley. The food is served on china, using silver frames to separate the three levels of sandwiches and cakes. The Hotel Vancouver cannot match the view, sadly; the menus looked a little too tattered. And while the food was still high-quality, it just somehow seemed lacking. Perhaps I’m too spoiled from Banff?

The company, however, was welcome, and (thankfully) all of the kids were well-behaved. It was by far our largest gathering, and I was a little worried that it might get out of hand. But even the arrival of the harpist, who was immediately beset by all the kids (and Monkey desperately trying to pluck the strings in such a way that looked like she might rip them out of the frame) was tame, and we left without a single broken anything. (Well, maybe a resolution or two related to diet, but that’s not my problem…)

With Tia Nicole in tow, we braved HMV for a deal or three before heading out of downtown. Our trip back, however, was indirect, as Alex and I had a side trip we needed to do. Last night, after our New Year’s Eve dinner sans kidlets, we went driving out to Port Moody. To look at houses.

We’re thinking of moving to the west coast. We’re not sure when, but the move itself is an eventuality. The question is “where”. Alex would just as soon move in next door to her parents (okay, okay, slight exaggeration). Me? Houseboat on False Creek. As you can see, there’s a bit of a discrepancy we have to deal with. The last time Alex was out here (back in June, when I was mired in a week-long slog just before a site launch), she’d “discovered” Port Moody as a strong potential option. It’s on the West Coast Express line, fairly easy to get to Maple Ridge, and has one of the region’s hospitals. It’s also on the water, and the views there are really quite nice.

So last night we drove around a bit. What was out there? What was for sale, and could we even hope to afford anything? Would we even like it? With Christmas lights, the place does look very inviting, but the darkness (and it was dark!) obscures much. We had to come back in the daytime to get a better idea.

And the idea is … well, it’s looking good. We even found a house that we like (location especially), which lends credence to the thought. The hard part, really, is knowing “when”. That’ll come down to Alex finding a position that will work for her as a primary motivator — I’m a little easier to deal with, employment-wise.

But that’s for another year — I doubt it will be this one, or even next year. There is much that needs to happen, and many things we need to do between now and then. But we can start to think and plan.

Like for next year … where are we doing tea, and who’s coming?

That brings me to today, Christmas Day 2011. Today is another long, hard day in a long line of long, hard days. But not a bad day — certainly not bad. Just long, and by the end of it my head is spinning and I long for a day where I don’t have to do anything … despite knowing full well that were I actually to get such a day, I’d be bored outta my tree.

Such is the life of the working parent, I suppose…

The last couple of months have been filled in a near-insane level of activity, and almost no break whatsoever. Even when my most recent project delivered and my company closed down for the holidays, the gear just shifted into “Christmas preparation”. This went until last night, at about 11:45, when the last present had been stashed under the tree, and I could sit down and relax for a few moments before Alex got home from work (she doesn’t get off work until 23:30, and not home until midnight).

Barely six hours of sleep … and the mayhem began.

Today is the first Christmas where Monkey will remember the details, where she was excited about Santa Claus, where she knew exactly what she wanted, and we’d be in some serious trouble if the present didn’t come. (For the record, a Dora the Explorer singing guitar.) It was the first Christmas where we had to fend off children from running right to the Christmas tree. It was the first Christmas where I understood why my parents wanted to eat breakfast before a single present was unwrapped.

I think back to those earliest Christmases I can remember, and they are nothing but joyful. Oddly enough, I don’t remember fights with my sister, though I’m certain they happened. I remember wonderful things wrapped in colourful paper, hours spent in our basement (the tree was kept far from view while I was young), playing with new toys for hours more. I remember the trips to Mrs. Sinnott’s apartment for lunch, and afterwards the entire troupe would end up at our house for a massive, and very loud, dinner. Those years are long since past, never to return. I miss them greatly, but the memories haven’t faded.

It’s been 10 years since our last Christmas with dad. That, too, was a very happy Christmas. Although smaller, it was the day my brother-in-law formally proposed to my sister. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room … partly because Craig was stringing Cathy along with some rather inventively-labelled gifts. It was a tremendous meal, too. And it was as loud as any dinner I could remember previous.

Ten years later, I’m starting those same memories with my kids. While I suspect we’ll not have the same insanity around the dinner table that followed each and every Christmas at Gatestone Avenue, Alex and I have strived to make some traditions we hope to keep going. (Whether or not they get more boisterous remains to be seen.)

Today, while still in the midst of presents, we Skyped with some of the family back east — technical difficulties prevented full communication, along with small kids eating up parental patience and stamina on both ends. Tempers flared, tears rolled, and a few things were thrown. Mom then reminded me that Cathy and I had done precisely the same thing when we were kids (even I don’t remember it), and her recommendation was a deep breath and naps for everyone.

Two napped. The ones who needed them most (the extremely tired and the last-shift worker), did not.

Brunch was late in the morning, waiting for Grandma to arrive. Moulded pancakes with fruit salad and maple bacon. A decent meal, if a bit of a struggle (pancake moulds and I have a tepid relationship). Though significantly better than my dinner meal, which was a slow-cooked orange-cranberry turkey breast. The Sahara might be considered more moist. Alex was luckily spared, as she had to work.

That’s been the strangest part of this Christmas, not having Alex around all the time. She’s usually out of the house between 15:00 and 23:50 on the days she works, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, two of the hardest days of the year to not be at home. It’s been hard on everyone, but I feel particularly bad for Alex, having to miss the evening events. We had to skimp on Christmas dinner, possibly my single favourite meal of the year, because Alex wouldn’t be here. (Hence the horridly dry turkey breast.)

It’s time to start thinking about closing out the year, which we’ll do from the West Coast, and look towards the events of 2012. I’m looking forward to a good time.

Happy holidays, everyone!

So why now? Well, let’s go back to that second point. Today is my first anniversary of (full-time) work with Evans Hunt. While I had been kicking around here since January of last year, the full-time aspect is more recent, and in this case, also important…

…it’s Annual Review Day.

Unlike in my previous company, reviews here are very informal. Basically, you go to lunch with your department head (in my case, Allard) and one (or both) of the principals (Dan and Bill). You talk, you listen, you chat, you reminisce, and if it’s a particular bad review, I imagine you’d slink off to a bar following lunch and promptly get hammered…

After the requisite mock-disparaging comments, we engaged in what I would have (in my previous company) described as the single most glowing review I’ve ever received. And considering what I’ve done in the last 12 months, that is actually a point of note: I’ve gone from being a high-fallutin’ managerial-type who used to do real work and who spent most of his time in Outlook, to someone who was setting up web servers, writing XML parsing code, and pulling together disparate data feeds into a unified views. In short, getting shit done.

For the record, I highly value and appreciate Bill and Allard’s commentary and feedback. But I was suprised — if taken a bit aback — that there wasn’t much in the way of “constructive” feedback. In ye olde days, that was the list of things you should really “stop” doing, and start doing differently. The one that would stand out for most around here is my “passion” (I use the term loosely) towards the things I believe in. I tend to come across … well, kind of like Nicholas Cage in some of his more livid moments. But around here, it’s an asset.

There’s a point of comfort in that. I’m ancient in this business. I’m 39, and been doing this sort of work for nearly 17 years. If I haven’t done it myself, I’ve seen it and probably know someone who helped build it. I’ve gone from custom-build-everything to near-LEGO™ assembly of projects. I, like nearly everyone here at Evans Hunt, am a veteran. And veterans, as it happens, really have no time or patience for the crap that often occurs in our industry. Because we’ve dealt it. We’ve swam in it, in many cases, and somehow we’ve emerged, perhaps not smelling of flowers, but definitely not of the very effluence in which we felt we were drowning. So for a company to tolerate my idiosyncracities as a benefit (or at least tolerate it) is pretty significant in my books.

And yet, the lack of the kind of criticism I used to receive seemed … odd. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. I suppose, in part, it’s due to our size — we’re a small company, only about 36 people, so our fewer individualities tend to stand out better against the noise that comes from having many more personalities. We have to accept them, even encourage them, because that’s what makes things tick around here. Personalities go a long way to defining your working relationship with someone. Normally, I’d be getting input like “work better with project managers”, and “say ‘yes’ more often to designers” (that’s a paraphrase, by the way — the actual feedback was more along the lines of “constructive dialog”). Here? “Please, keep on being you.”

Chalk up another phrase to add to the “Ways To Make People Feel Awesome” list.

It’s been a long year here. We’ve done a lot, and there’s still a lot to do in the remaining two months. And that’s a good thing — better busy than bored, I say. And somewhere in all of that, maybe there’s room to push a bit more.

‘Cuz, really, I just don’t feel like I’m doing my job right until someone’s calling me names.

Unlike your other birthdays, I didn’t get to spend all of today with you. I had to go to work, so you spent most of the day with Mommy, and then with Grandma just before I got home. But in case you don’t remember today, Monkey, I hope you remembered yesterday.

That’s when we partied.

Okay, maybe not “partied” in the ways that you will in the years to come. (C’mon, you’re only four, for cryin’ out loud!) But you did have a party, with friends you met at school (and not kids that were invited because their parents are friends of Mommy and me), and some of the kids from the neighbourhood. It wasn’t huge — we topped out at maybe 5 kids running around all at once? (Well, 6 if you count me…)

We all got up early, as we had a lot of things to do before your friends arrived. Chocolate blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup. (Does it get any better?) Then you and I had to race out to run a couple of errands: take the rented hedge trimmer back, and then go get your Rapunzel-themed birthday cake from Safeway in Westhills (along with a few other commodities). Then it was a race back home.

Not 10 minutes after we got back, the castle arrived. You’ve been missing your bouncy castles, Monkey. Ever since the Calgary Farmer’s Market moved, you’ve not been getting your bouncy castle fix. Mommy agonized over it, but found one for you that fit rather nicely on the front lawn. You couldn’t wait to get inside.

Choo Choo, you had a little bounce, too, and despite a current inability to jump, I can already tell that you’re going to love these things.

The first guest to arrive was a special guest, Princess Kim, a woman from Mommy’s high school who does girls’ parties dressed as a princess. It really fit with the princess theme that we were drilling into everyone.

(A note to future dads who find that they are having girls: Yes, you will have to deal with dolls, and hair, and princesses, and painted nails, and all the things that will make you cringe in abject fear. Remember one detail: if it makes them happy, then it’s good. Because when the princesses are happy, you’re the King, baby.)

Next up was Camilla, followed soon by Nicole, both from your Spanish preschool. I’m still rather amazed that you don’t seem to have trouble at preschool, but you also seem to have no ability to speak it (yet for a while in Costa Rica, you spoke far more Spanish than English). The final guest was Sophia, the little girl from across the street whom you adore. I hope the two of you are friends for a long time to come.

You bounced, you ate cake at 11:00, you danced with Princess Kim (who also painted your nails, and attempted to do crafts with you), you bounced some more, you opened presents (our home has finally seen its first Barbie), and you bounced.

By noon, Camilla and Nicole were gone, and the bouncy castle saw the arrivals of Coen (the little boy from next door) and Zane (the boy from a few doors down), along with brief appearances from a couple of the other kids in the area. There was bouncing, and there was giggling and laughing, and there was me chasing people with the garden hose (hey, seemed like a good idea at the time).

After a small lunch of berries (fresh, of course), you and Choo Choo both passed out like lead weights. For a brief time, the echoing cacophony that had erupted throughout the yard vanished, and it was silent. It was glorious. And Mommy and I realised that, yes, we aren’t the only people in the neighbourhood who have to yell at their kids to get their attention…

You went for your final bounces just after 15:00, and waited right up until the last second before the man pulled the plug on the bouncy castle so he could pack it up and take it away. I felt sorry that it had to go, Monkey, I really did. I almost wish there were a way to get one in your room all the time.

Tonight, Grandma stayed for dinner, and we finished off your Rapunzel cake. We opened your presents (ah, who am I kidding? — you opened your presents … there was no “we” involved, here), and you stayed up late watching Kiki’s Delivery Service.

I hope you had a good birthday, honey. And I hope this is one you remember. Because I hope you remember it for a long, long time to come.

One such example is the recent OS X “Lion” release, hailed by Apple as the next coming of operating systems, and anyone foolish enough not to install it might as well ship themselves off to a leper colony. Of course, anyone who has done systems support in their life (i.e. me) knows that upgrading to any “new” OS just begs for things to go wrong.

Which is why I volunteered to be a guinea pig.

There’s more than enough people out there who’ve been complaining about the new features in Lion to make one stop and wonder if it’s safe to do a mass upgrade in an office comprised almost totally of MacBook Pros. All you need is one feature to not work to totally ruin your day.

Like, say, Time Machine, running against a Drobo-based file share. (Apparently, the Drobo FS has an issue with Lion; Drobo’s working on a firmware update as I speak.) When you depend on said service to ensure business continuity, it’s mildly important to have people go forward with due diligence.

That’s where I come in. “Due Diligence” is my middle name. (Y’know, right after “Benton”, “Danger”, “Jerk”, “Righteous Asshole”, and “Are You Going To Finish That?”) I wanted to make sure that within our gilded walls, we’d hear not a whine.

So last night, I finally managed to get Lion up and running, and today did the final run of initial tests. So far? No show-stopping issues (aside from the above-mentioned Time Machine — but we have a Time Capsule to handle that for now), and Lion does seem to behave a little nicer, all things considered.

My impressions? Allow me to share…

1. Lion is a pig to download. It’s more than 4 GB, and Apple’s servers run a lot slower with Lion than they do with the newest iTunes HD release.
2. Expect upwards of an hour to install. The installer suggests “about 33″ minutes when it starts, but I think Apple’s estimation algorithm was ripped out of Windows Explorer, ‘cuz it was wildly inaccurate, and even reverted 14 minutes at one point for no explicable reason. The “1 minute equals 4 minutes” timewarp is especially unsettling at nearly midnight, when all you want is to go to bed…
3. The Login screen (if you use it) is a little different, but not unsettlingly-so. It’s a little cleaner, and the “wake up” login is almost devoid of anything but the password box.
4. Almost everything has a slight animation. It’s unnecessary, really, but it’s also not annoying.
5. My name initially appeared in the top-right corner of the screen, on the menu bar. This was a quick-switcher to other users in the system (possibly because my user is also an administrator?). This is potentially handy when you have a system with multiple users, but I’m the sole user on my work lappy — I disabled that through the Users & Groups preferences.
6. Immediately, the Setup Assistant lets you know about the awe-inspiring new way your computer handles page scrolling … which is the exact opposite we’ve been doing it for the better part of two decades. (This is an example of how, as Brian X. Chen of Wired puts it — Lion is trying too hard to be iOS.) At least they tell you up-front.
7. My mouse cursor kept disappearing just above the Dock, and I’ve yet to understand why. It still worked — I could click on things — but I had a hell of a time guessing where it was. When I restarted Skitch, however, it reset whatever was wrong and my cursor came back.
8. CS5ServiceManager prompted me to install a Java runtime (really? JAVA? C’mon, Adobe!), which begs the question — did Apple remove the Java runtime from Lion?
9. Gestures, gestures, gestures. There’s a bunch of ‘em now, at least if you have the unipiece trackpads. And — to be honest — I like quite a few of them. Some of them are even supported on the Magic Mouse without any additional fiddling or software.

   But.On a single monitor, they’re fine. On a dual-monitor system, they make the secondary monitor change as well. I can understand this to a point, but it’s rather overkill. Not to mention that being able to see a list of numbers that you might be tabulating with the Dashboard calculator widget is suddenly a LOT harder to see.

10. Stickies finally actually scroll! Well, for me, anyway. Never did before, for whatever reason.
11. Mac Mail gets a fairly significant overhaul, not just visually but also in operation (there’s a database upgrade that can take a while if — like me — you’ve got a lot of mail). Make sure you do a Time Machine backup before you upgrade to Lion, folks!Mac Mail also gets a fairly significant UI change, and will (after install) present you with something very unfamiliar — though refreshingly handy. That said, if you absolutely cannot do without the “classic” interface, you can restore it through Mail > Preferences.
12. Mail’s new interface also — inexplicably — turns off the folders previously seen on the left side. Easy enough to turn back on, though.
13. Despite a few people saying that Flash and Air weren’t working on Lion, I have yet to notice any issues. Nor have I noticed the worrisomely “huge” increase in CPU usage (the only “huge” increases I’ve noticed have been in mdworker and mtmfs processes, which are OS X apps).
14. Spotlight, that handy search tool, is going to reindex your computer. You’ll know when it sounds like a jet plane is taking off next to you as your CPU goes crazy with the mdworker process. That said, once finished, the overall CPU load actually seems lower.
15. Mail, Contacts, and Calendars configuration in System Preferences seems like far less the bastard child of old, and more like real options. And if you’re like me and have a lot of accounts, this is a Good Thing™.
16. I’m torn on the “All My Files” pane that’s now in Finder. It’s quasi-handy, but it also hides reality. For example, finding pictures? Neat. The “Developer” section gloms files together from several projects, which is grossly misleading. It’s likely going to be disabled before the end of the day.
17. QuickTime Player now occupies the entire screen, and dominates the display when you’re playing back. Admittedly, not too big a deal when you’re watching a movie.

    But.It does this also on dual monitors, rendering the other monitor useless. Really? Steve, you wondrous jerk — what the hell?? What if I wanna watch a movie while I work? Not an option?!

18. Right after I finished Lion, I needed to download a new iTunes, too. Couldn’t be a part of the Lion install, guys? Really? I was already downloading over 4 GB — another 60 MB was a breaking point?
19.  Calendar now looks like we’ve reverted to the 90s; it resembles one of those giant pads that used to sit on office desks. Yeah. ‘Cuz that paradigm continues to live on and all. And there’s no way to turn that off, or choose something different? What is this, Microsoft?
20. “Full screen” mode for apps is … well, I’m not sure what to make of it yet. Handy? maybe. But I’m a windows freak — I have at least a couple dozen going at any time, so hiding all of them behind an impenetrable wall doesn’t strike me as “handy”.
21. The scrollbars for nearly any window are now disappearing tricks. Some windows have them always on, and some don’t. The latter are the trickier ones, since when you scroll the scrollbars appear, and shortly after you stop scrolling they vanish. Also, there’s no more little arrows to help nudge you little-by-little (useful on Excel spreadsheets, which are periodically hell to scroll with because of too-tall cells).
22. Apparently, documents will get “locked” 2 weeks after they’re edited. This is to support the Auto Save feature. I haven’t run into this yet (can’t wait; my entire dev repository will be a pain in the ass), but it apparently can be disabled through the Time Machine configuration.
23. For some reason, the Drobo FS won’t work with Lion’s Time Machine, as I mentioned earlier. Hopefully, this is the worst we see.
24. Finder moved the “Devices” list to the bottom of the left sidebar, which I find particularly irritating, since I use that list a lot more than I do “Favourites”. Nor can I change the order of those items.
25. Finder’s Path and Status bars are also turned off in Lion; they can be enabled through the View menu.
26. Under Snow Leopard, I could shift my Magic Mouse and the computer’s screen would light up. Now I have to click. Not sure if this is a setting or not — can’t seem to find one.
27. Air Drop is a neat feature, and seems to work fairly well. We have a network issue in-house that’s causing some hiccups, but a local test moved along the 4.3 GB XCode DMG in less than 10 minutes (which ain’t bad, considering the size).
28. Scrolling. Yes, the one most complained about. After installing, it’s set to “Natural”, which is the scroll you see on iOS — pull down on the screen, and the page goes down. (This was previously known as “inverted”.) I know people who love it, but it’s the first thing I changed. I might yet give it a try, but we’ll see…

So that’s what I’ve found so far. Overall, it’s stable, decent, and hasn’t given me an ounce of trouble. Ever app I’ve got (including Photoshop CS5, VMWare Fusion, Evernote, my LAMP stack, Office, and my plethora of dev tools) continue along like nothing ever happened.

Next up… the rest of the office!

I will freely admit that it wasn’t my “best” birthday, but it was definitely memorable (and positively so), which in the end is pretty much all you can ask for, right? Besides, it’s the last birthday before I get tagged with all those “other the hill” monikers. (Cathy, if you even think about pulling a lawn full of fake gravestones next year, you have no idea the wrath I shall drop on you for your 40th…)

It all started at 4:00am on Saturday morning…

That’s when Choo Choo woke up. Choo Choo has a nasty habit of waking up long before a “reasonable” hour, notably 8:00am, which after many late night for many weeks/months, is a significant improvement over, oh, anything before it. I managed to get her back down in her crib and back to sleep, and it looked like that might work. Which it did, for about 30 minutes or so. Up again.

I was up for good before 6:00am, although exactly what time it was, I couldn’t tell you. Nor can I tell you the exact details from when I got up until about 7:15 or so, which is when the Daily Battle of the Wills started again (in other words, when I tell Monkey that she needs to get dressed for the day), and I effectively ended up going back to bed to lie down from physical and mental exhaustion.

And this, dear reader, is where things at Casa del Sowrey went decidedly sideways. I (moronically) decreed that unless Monkey got changed, we were leaving her behind for breakfast (the plan was to go up to the Sunterra). It was a hollow threat, and I (wrongly) assumed it would motivate her to get dressed. Monkey slammed her door (yes, she’s only three — I’m installing bumpers before too long), and after being (rightly) admonished for my overbearing behaviour, I (idiotically) sulked off to my room and inadvertently slammed my door, too (swung the door too hard, got caught in the draft, I dunno, nor does it matter). I laid down, closed my eyes to stop the throbbing, and must have passed out, if only for a few minutes.

Alex, for her part, remained the calm centre of chaos, and (wisely) wrote the both of us off. She took Choo Choo and proceeded to breakfast, as neither Monkey nor I were really being cooperative, and it was wholly unfair to have Alex and Choo Choo go hungry because of our bad behaviour. I didn’t know that they’d left (having apparently passed out) until Monkey came in and woke me up because she was hungry (and actually dressed). I (still wrongly) assumed we were all going to Sunterra. I was then informed that Mommy had left. I was … well, still exhausted, and also a little stunned.

I went into a heavy funk. Be it due to my aforementioned exhaustion, or ego, or what-have-you, I felt a little put out. It didn’t help that I’d woken with a wicked sense of abandonment to begin with, but now I’d had an actual instance to back it up, too. I fed Monkey, and then started to wallow in self-pity (along with a couple of strong cups of coffee).

Okay, let me explain a little…

Some 10 years ago, I used to hang out with friends frequently (it didn’t help that I lived with one of my best friends, Chris, so we had guests almost constantly). Even after I moved into my own home, I still lived with a good friend, and did pretty much what I wanted when I wanted. I saw people, I went out, I had “fun”. (I use the quotes only to indicate the general term of “fun”, rather than imply some form of negative or sarcasm.) Even when Alex and I got married, there was still the sense of seeing friends and other people — Alex and I went out fairly frequently, so we never felt house-bound.

And then we had kids. And my friends got married. And moved away. Had kids of their own. And suddenly … I realised that despite all the people I knew, I felt very much alone.

That’s what hit me Saturday morning. Even though I had a loving family (we’ll ignore the whole 4:00am-10:00am window due to sheer irregular chaos), I felt like I was at the end of my line. I was the afterthought, the forgotten bottom rung on the ladder that no-one pays attention to until it breaks, the unimportant character who merely provides some iota of accessory plot development in a story. Pick your version of “insignificant”, I thought about it and threw myself a little Pity Party for One.

Why? I’ve had a bad sense of abandonment since I was a kid. I hated being left out of things. I’d hear about a great party that lots of people were invited to … but not me. Or was the last to be chosen for a baseball team. Or found out about a movie that friends went to without me, and wasn’t asked. And so on. I still have that problem, and I probably always will. I haven’t come to terms with it; I’ve become jaded, and even perhaps a bit bitter, too. But, it is what it is.

Now, maybe you can picture me being all bitter (stupidly so) and wanting to crawl back into bed and writing off my birthday entirely — I could and it was everything in my will to not actually do that. Leave it to the Monkey to improve the situation by changing the day’s schedule.

Alex and Monkey had spent the better part of a day making me a cake. (Alex had found a train-shape cake mould a couple of years ago, and I bore witness to it for the first time last year.) They’d baked it almost in secret (the mould was found in the sink, which tipped me off), and had taken it to the basement to decorate away from my prying eyes. To say that Monkey was excited about this cake is as much an understatement as saying that standing under Niagara Falls will get you a little damp. Alex referred to it as a “cake made with love”. And Monkey hauled it out at 10:30am because she simply couldn’t wait any longer for her Daddy to see it.

You couldn’t really recognise the train shape underneath the mashed, lumped, and smeared icing, or the zillions of candies and Bits ‘N Bites that encrusted the semi-circle of cake cars. The locomotive was green, and was proudly declared to be a manifestation of my favourite locomotive, CN 6060. Any critic would have regarded it at “hideous”. I looked at it, and immediately felt like an ass for feeling like ass. Sometimes, you need a kid to remind you that life is wonderful from nearly any angle.

The cake, for the record, was delicious. (Alex makes amazing baked goods. If I haven’t stated it before — though I’m sure I have — she makes my favourite cookies.) The fact that my family had gone to that extent for me really hit home the fact that no matter how bad I feel, they’re there for me. Always. It was definitely what I needed.

And my friends did come out for me — via the internet. (I think I might die without the awesomeness of social media, if for no other reason than for the plethora of birthday wishes.) From around the world, no less, which really makes it that much more awesome.

Although an original plan had us going out to Banff for a picnic (Parks Canada’s official 100th birthday party was also on Saturday), we opted for a nearer picnic at the park next to the primary school Monkey and Choo Choo will attend in the years to come. I made chicken sandwiches, cut some grapes, and grabbed some of the leftovers from the night before. Monkey wheeled her doll in her stroller, and we sat down to a wonderful little lunch.

One of the reasons we didn’t go to Banff was that we “had dinner plans”. This was another surprise Alex had lined up (have I mentioned that I like surprises?), and I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen. When Janice (aka Grandma) arrived, we ducked out and (mostly) walked up to LeVilla, a nicely upscale restaurant in the West Market Square not far from the house.

I hadn’t ever actually planned on going to LeVilla, although Alex had assumed I did. Why? Well, last weekend — the only time we managed to do the Stampede pancake breakfast this year — LeVilla (wisely) distributed cards to everyone waiting in line. I pocketed it, not having any particular plan at the time, except possibly to follow up on it. Alex took it as “boy, would I ever like to eat there!” and looked into it. By happy circumstance, it was the best possible thing to happen.

Neither Alex or I can remember exactly the last time we had an adult meal at a nice restaurant without having to cut spaghetti for one of the kids. We suspect it was at Bacchus, which was a fairly nice restaurant in Santa Ana, a few kilometre from our condo in Costa Rica. I think it was either for Mother’s Day, or for Alex’s birthday. But it was one of the only times in recent memory. This meal was not only outstanding (seriously — Calgarians, check it out, you won’t be disappointed), it was worth every penny of the much-higher-than-we-normally-pay price.

My meal was prime rib. Although a little more done than I would have preferred (I like mine rare), I cannot remember the last time I had such an excellent piece of roasted beef, and Dad, I can finally say after many, many years that I’ve found a yorkshire pudding to rival yours. My slab was huge, I definitely ate too much, and it was worth every little twinge of mild discomfort.

Alex told me that she had hoped to pull off a three-event evening, starting with dinner, and ending with a trip out to the nightly fireworks at the Stampede (or more importantly, to see the fireworks near the Stampede). Mini-golf had been her goal for the middle event, but a fairly central mini-golf doesn’t seem to exist in Calgary, and going a long distance wasn’t really desirable. Bowling was a consideration, but eventually we just decided to take our time getting to the fireworks.

We got to Inglewood around 8:30 — easily two and a half hours before the fireworks would begin. So we drove through and around Inglewood, mostly just to see what was there (neither of us had really looked much beyond 9th Ave). Then we drove up into Ramsay to find a place to park.

The city had (wisely) cordoned off the streets on Scotsman’s Hill/Bluff (not sure what the correct name is) to residents only, so the streets wouldn’t be completely jammed with Stampeding crowds (there’s a handy set of stairs that go right into the grounds). We had to walk from a few blocks away, and up a fairly steep hill to get to the park. We were early enough that benches were still vacant, and the sun was setting behind the downtown core.

I always forget how nice a view it is from there, and really need to remind myself to go up there more often. We strolled over to a bench, sat down, and laid on the bug spray as thickly as we could. (We knew from a similar sojourn many years earlier that the mosquitos up there are near-epic in concentrations.) Then we sat down to wait.

Alex and I haven’t had such long sustained conversations in ages, without having been interrupted by our kids, anyway. There were, however, kids aplenty to offer distractions. Such as a pair of girls (I estimate at 5 and 8, respectively) who were operating a truly wonderful lemonade stand across the street from the park. They loudly and proudly announced their business and offered it readily to whomever was in need of refreshment. I simply couldn’t resist.

It’s the little things like that — the lemonade stand, and the great chat I’d had with the kids mother — which remind me why parts of Calgary are truly great. Give me the “inner city” any day — the vibrance of the communities remind me that it’s not just about having a roof over your head to sleep, it’s about being around your neighbours.

I snapped picture after picture as the sun set behind the downtown core. I don’t remember the last sunset Alex and I watched, although I’m willing to bet it was when we were living in Costa Rica (the fantastic sunsets were nearly daily). The clouds overhead created fantastic orange ripples, and a bright yellow glow seemed to burst from behind the Calgary Tower.

The Grandstand Show started, and we listened to the music in the distance, watching the tease of sporadic fireworks that accentuated the show. As the hour crept closer and closer to 23:00, more and more people began to arrive at the park. Kids in the pyjamas, couples with blankets, people with their pets, and even a guy with his bike who had clearly been fishing out cans and bottles from the garbage bins sat down to wait for the show.

Finally, the show hit its finale, and the lights went out to witness the pyrotechnic spectacle.

I love fireworks. I love the artistry that goes into them — not just the construction of a big shell, but the arrangement of a variety of them into a single segment of flashes and streams and bangs and thuds. I remember when we were kids, Dad would take us out on the lake to watch the Benson and Hedges Symphony of Fire at Ontario Place. We’d listen to the choreographed show over the radio, which played the music to which the fireworks danced. Although there was no music at the Stampede (really, I can’t figure why not), the show was nevertheless stupendous.

The fireworks were divided into three sequences (or so I heard), but we left shortly after the first one ended. The mosquitoes were bad, and it was late (we were tired). As it turned out, it was a good plan, since the sky was filling with its own flashes, which turned to heavy rain, hail, severe claps of thunder, which led to (we think) a short blackout in Mission. Not bad for one day…

Today, the Sunday, was pretty good, too. Choo Choo finally slept in a bit, and although Monkey and her were a bit loud in the morning, both Alex and I got some much-needed rest. Pancakes, then a bit of play time. We visited with our newest neighbours next door, who are reaching the end of a major renovation (they bought the house in March) and we’re still getting to know them. Monkey plays with their kids, ages 7 and 3, and I had gone over to retrieve her for lunch … and stayed for nearly 90 minutes chatting.

I love this neighbourhood. I wasn’t originally thrilled about moving here — I wanted to be closer to downtown, admittedly — but having such awesome people around really makes it hard to not want to know everyone.

Their kids came over after dinner, and we all played in the basement. I found out their daughter — the 7 year old — has a devious streak in her. (She tried, almost successfully, to cram an icepack down my shirt.)

So now I sit at my kitchen table, looking at the events of two days. Alex says I’ve been sighing a lot as I write this. I think it’s a good thing — they’re the moments that remind me that, yes, life may be periodically difficult, but it is those little moments that make it matter.

Thank you, my family, for making this a great weekend. Thank you for caring, for making me feel special, and being there for me every day. I love you all.

Not bad for only a little over 48 hours, eh?

It started Friday morning, which was Stampede Parade Day. The Calgary Stampede Parade is one of the largest in the world (I’ve heard it’s second, but have yet to hear what’s first, or the conditions under which that define its size), and has been a tradition in Calgary for close to a century. Now that you’re nearly four, it seemed like a good idea to take you to the parade so you could see it yourself, and not drive me insane by having a total loss of focus.

There’s only one catch with seeing the parade: you have to either have bench seating (acquired in advance, usually with paid tickets), or you get there early to get anywhere near a decent place to sit. Rather foolishly, I thought we had plenty of time leaving at 6:35am.

The lines had formed much earlier that morning (the people we sat next to — you remember them, right? They had the little white dog named “Cookie”? — arrived at 6:30 that morning and said all the front-line seats were long gone), and we were met with a sea of people as we crossed under the bridge into downtown.

My other grandiose plan was to stop at McDonald’s for breakfast, since we hadn’t the time to eat before we left the house. That line was equally as bad, and it meant that we either ate, or suffered through poor seating. Given the time we’d have to wait, I felt the the latter was more important. We had at least brought you some snacks, Monkey, so you wouldn’t be starving. I would have to go without…

We found a place, next to a wooden fence at the edge of the massive Impark lots on the south side of 9th Ave., that offered a fairly decent view of the route, and was not totally blocked by the scads of folding chairs that everyone else had (next time, I’ll remember to bring real chairs). And there we sat down and waited for something — well, anything — to happen.

It dawned on me rather suddenly that I had been sitting in almost the same place some 10 years earlier with Auntie Cathy and Uncle Craig (before they got married) to watch my first Stampede parade. I wouldn’t have imagined that 10 years later I’d be watching the Parade with my own daughter on my knee.

William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge — the future king of the United Kingdom and his wife (I’m not sure if she’ll be a “Queen” or a “Princess Consort” at that point) had been in Canada for the last couple of weeks on a whirlwind tour of the country (supposedly a “honeymoon” — Mommy and I have had some pretty whirlwind-type trips, but nothing that hectic), and were going to see the Stampede Parade, too. And before the Parade started, they would do a pass through the Parade route, themselves … in reverse. [Insert joke about driving on the wrong side of the road here.]

By 8:40, we were already fairly tired of waiting (and my ass already bruised from the hard ground and stones I had to sit on — you sat on me, I should add), but we were rewarded by the Royal Drive By (albeit far faster than anyone would have desired, and it was difficult to actually see the Royals — Kate was on our side of the car). Pretty much everyone clapped and cheered.

We didn’t really see much for another hour. Given our place on the route, that wasn’t entirely surprising, but it did seem a bit much, all things considered. Marching bands, clowns, and lots and lots and lots of horses. And a guy riding a bull (memories of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, indeed!). Our Mayor, Naheed Nenshi, rode a horse, too and seemed quite happy to do so. We saw Rick Hanson, who was the Parade Marshall for 2011 — he drove himself (hey, he drove himself around the world — a paltry couple of kilometres is nothing for him, right?). The biggest cheers were for the Canadian Armed Forces, notably the Army — almost everyone stood and cheered loudly for them. (One day, I’ll explain why, Monkey. That’s a very long topic, and pretty much entirely another blog post.) The quietest moments were when our faithful Ministers of Parliament drove past — the “Honourable” Rob Anders was met with embarrassed silence (guess what, Calgary, you aren’t allowed to be embarrassed — you voted for him, remember?).

Mommy met us at the Safeway downtown where we ran into two friends of mine: Evelyn, who I worked with for many years; and a childhood friend of mine, Neil, who also lives in Calgary. You then went home, and I went to work.

Yesterday, we went for our first (and possibly only) free pancake breakfast. The pancake breakfast is a tradition that has existed in Calgary for almost as long as the Stampede itself. It’s so rooted in tradition that when someone actually charges for a breakfast (and the money doesn’t go directly to charity), they get the stinkeye from just about everyone. People take their free breakfasts around here pretty seriously.

The Stampede Caravan runs a very efficient and very tight ship when it comes to pancakes. You, Choo Choo, and I walked up to the Sunterra, where the Caravan had set up their event. (We had gone last year, too, but I’m not sure if you remember that at all.) By the time we arrived, the parking lot was packed with people waiting for pancakes — they hadn’t yet started flipping them.) You declared you wanted to see the animals first, which seemed like a good idea, since we had to wait anyway.

Butterfield Acres was also there, just like last year, with pony rides and their portable petting zoo. Chicks, bunnies, goats, and lambs. You shrieked in eagerness, then raced in to give out hay to the goats, pet the bunnies, and be reminded several times not to pick up the chicks. (Choo Choo, you petted the lambs, which you loved, and the goats. You couldn’t really reach the bunnies, and we weren’t allowed to pick them up.)

Despite the several-hundred person-long line, it took a mere 15 minutes to get our pancakes. (Like I said, the Stampede Caravan runs a very efficient operation. They set the standard for how it should be done.) Your pancake, thanks to one very nice cook, was shaped like Mickey Mouse. We got our pancakes, found a curb to sit down, and dug in. Even Choo Choo inhaled her pancakes.

Afterwards, we went over to the pony ride, which I had promised. Just as you got into line to get on a pony, Erin and her friend arrived (which I had known about, but forgotten about). You love riding ponies, I’ve noticed — a far cry from the day we tried to get you on a pony in La Sabana Park in San José, when you cried in terror at the idea. It’s just a shame that you couldn’t go around more than once, though, and had to come out.

We went shopping for dinner afterwards, and “helped” by picking out chocolate milk, and deciding that we needed to take a pie as well (which you summarily dropped on the floor, forcing my hand to purchase it). Although you wrecked the pie (actually, a 9″ creme brulée), the Sunterra manager very kindly swapped it with a new one, reinforcing the reason why I prefer to shop there.

This morning, we were all going to go to the Stampede itself. It was Family Day at the Stampede, meaning there was free entrance to the park before 9:00, and a pancake breakfast for the first 20,000 people. You would think we could do that…

Choo Choo was against us, however, and woke up several times last night without going back to sleep. Eventually Mommy decided to stay up with her, letting you and I get a little more sleep. But I woke later than I’d wanted to, and Mommy was too tired to go (she has to work until midnight tonight), so it ended up being just you and me, and we didn’t get to the park until just after 8:00 … and about 1 minute after they ran out of tickets for the pancakes. Once again, Daddy was going hungry.

It also appeared that the Stampede hadn’t really opened yet, either. Most of the exhibits didn’t open until 9:00, with a number not opening until 10:00. That left us with … well, not to much to do. Thankfully, Mommy had the foresight to have me bring you something good to eat (although the Stampede has lots of food, most of it is … well, not exactly healthy). Down went an apple sauce, banana, and a heck of a lot of grapes. And you were still hungry.

We wandered through the BMO Centre and the Corral looking for the kids midway — something I thought would be a little easier for you to handle. Immediately, I felt nostalgic for the days when I was about your age, and my parents took me to the Canadian National Exhibition (“The EX” or the “CNE”) in Toronto. It was always the last hurrah of the summer, and the clown-faced logo of Conklin Shows is something I’ll not likely ever forget — something you’ll likely never know, either, since Conklin sold out to North American Midway Entertainment. It’s really not quite the same thing.

We picked up 12 tickets, which I figured would be good for three rides. I didn’t know what you’d like yet, and felt buying too much was a bad idea. First stop? The carousel. I know you love carousels — you’ve been on several, now — and you asked quickly for the “horsie ride”. Although not nearly as nice as the one in Heritage Park (a vintage machine that is infinitely more attractive, at least during the day) or the one at the zoo (zoo animals being a major plus), you loved being on it just the same.

Then, to my surprise, you asked to go on the “boat ride”. The “Rockin’ Tug” is a kid-friendly version of the classic Swinging (Pirate) Ship ride, except it sits on rails rather than being suspended from a massive hinge. And, unlike its larger sibling, the tug actually spins around.

I thought you’d chicken out. Really. Maybe I had a lower expectation, Monkey, given some of the things you’d said you wanted to do and changed your mind at the last second; or maybe I was even extending some of my fears from when I was your age. But you not only eager climbed up, you virtually stunned me by cheering and screaming “wheeeee!” the entire time. You’re hooked.

After that, we tried to get into SuperDogs. I emphasize “tried”, because the line to buy tickets (I wasn’t even aware that SuperDogs even needed tickets — my memory had always been that of a walk-in event) was almost as long as the line for pancakes.

So we had some of Those Little Donuts instead. Infinitely yummier, if you ask me.

We tried to find a petting zoo in the agricultural area. You’d think for an agricultural-based event, there’d be more kid-friendly things. But there was no petting area that we could see, no pig races, nothing even remotely fun for the kids. Just an endless stream of horses (even you got tired of them all), a few cows (surprisingly few for an agricultural-based event), and a bunch of miniature donkeys. We went back for rides, and got sidetracked by kettle corn (and for good reason).

We went back for another round on the carousel, and again went to the Rockin’ Tug. By this point, my lack of coffee/lack of real food/subjection to the extremely loud and annoying squeaky horns that every little kid seemed to have/lack of coffee (hey, trust me, it’s that serious) had finally caused a near epic-level headache to form. I couldn’t wear my hat, and having you on my shoulders was causing intense throbbing. I wasn’t sure we’d even survive a trip on the Wacky Worm without me losing what little not-really-lunch I had.  But you loved it — I remember being totally terrified of my first rollercoaster — and I got off with my dignity intact.

And then we had to go home. My head was threatening to explode. As it stands, I had to take two strong pills and crawl into bed for about 45 minutes before I could function again. “Next time”, I say now, knowing that I’m probably deluding myself.

I hope you had fun, kiddo. And Choo Choo, next year you’ll get a chance to go and have fun, too. But maybe during the week — this going on “Family Day” just equates to a little too much torture, methinks.

The sun was getting low in the sky, and the horizon was nearly completely obscured by haze (likely due to the city drying out from a few days of light-to-heavy rain). The shadows cast through the downtown were fantastic, the trees (most of which now have leaves) and the fields of grass were bright green, and light glinted off the glass of a hundred skyscrapers.

And I realised — almost surprisingly — that from way up there, Calgary really does look quite beautiful.

It seems like a weird statement, so let me elaborate. Like with over 95% of Calgary’s population, I’m not usually afforded a high-level view of Calgary — all I ever see is the dirt and chaos present at the ground level, where the work is being done. It’s messy, things don’t always go right, and I sometimes find myself wanting to scream at brick walls (screaming at actual people would have the same overall effect) for things to get better. Progress is hard to see, and my little corner(s) of Calgary seem just as ugly and insignificant as they always do.

From on high (a bit of a joke, admittedly, since there are plenty of buildings much higher than Calgary Tower, now), it’s very different. Calgary looks different. The choking dust of construction is harder to see, the traffic mayhem isn’t as prevalent (it was also 20:45 on Saturday evening), and even the barebones of The Bow building (Encana’s new headquarters, still under construction) have a certain industrial appeal.

Yep, there’s a business angle to this, too. “The Big Picture” is one that is often used, as is “Forest for the Trees”. It’s the same principle — at a low enough point, you can’t see the larger collection. You’re in the proverbial weeds, dealing with the problems that need to be solved. It’s ugly and often frustrating work, and down there it’s almost impossible to see how things will get any better.

I think that’s why it’s necessary for everyone — not just management — to take those necessary steps backwards/upwards to see what they’re doing contributes to the whole. To see what’s going on, how everyone’s tasks feed into a larger entity. Especially in cases where there are dozens or hundreds of people involved, those on the ground need to witness for themselves what else is going on around them.

Why? Two reasons, I think. First: understanding. People get tired, people get complacent, and often people end up getting angry because they can’t see past where they are. Knowing how others are doing, and how their own personal work may affect others can help focus tasks more effectively. Second: job satisfaction. Similar in nature, yes, but a separate effect — it’s almost surprising how much someone can feel that much better knowing how even a seemingly menial task can achieve a milestone.

For me, right now, I can safely say that it’s easy for me to see the big picture at Evans Hunt. My project teams are less than 10 people in total, and often under 5. It’s very easy to take a step back and see what’s going on. Heck, I rarely even need to get out of my seat for that!

In former lives, it was much more difficult, and I remember the struggle to see what was happening around me, let alone across the company. And I know I wasn’t the only one in that situation — the gossip and rumours (however accurate) often spawned around a need to fill in the missing gaps.

So I offer this to you, dear readers: if you feel stuck, struggling to understand, maybe even lost, take time to find the highest possible observation deck in your town or city (most have something). Plan to go there about an hour or so before sunset, and take the time to look around. Look at the buildings you pass every day, look towards your home (even if you can’t see it), find the place you work. Look for the things that you see each and every day and tend not to give them a second (or even first) thought. See how different they look from up above.

Reflect on that perspective — it’s an important one. On the next work day, see if you can find something similar in your daily life. Talk to a manager, to an executive (if you can), other people in other departments. Try to recreate that sense of wholeness that you felt looking down from above. Understand not only how you play your part, but also how everyone else factors in as well.

Maybe then, things won’t seem so haphazard and chaotic.

This year, we’d resolved to get you on that train, Monkey. And … well, we did try. But apparently we’d waited too long (trying to coordinate with other parents) and … well, we blew it. This year, like last, probably all you’d have done is stood and watched as other kids got to ride the train.

But, thanks to a fluke chance, you got to ride something those other kids didn’t even know about…

There are things you’re just starting to understand about your Old Man (that would be me), Monkey. One of them is that Daddy loves trains. And that Daddy will — if given the chance — go to long lengths to do train-related things. Like last year’s little chase of CP 2816 through the mountains, or the model train show (although we couldn’t go this year, as it was the same weekend that I was recovering from surgery).

Virtually the day after we realised that there was no way we were going to get tickets to ride Thomas, my friend Graham sent me a message that CP 2816 was exiting it’s winter maintenance for a shakedown run out to Carseland and back (about 80 kilometres, there and back). It was supposed to be a Canadian Pacific Railways employee-only event, but Graham has a little sway with a few people and very graciously secured two tickets for us.

And thus was born the Super Secret Monkey Surprise.

It was thus created for two reasons. First, I didn’t want to tell you in case some plan changed. It’s a weird situation when it actually makes more sense to surprise you rather than to let you know about something fun that might not happen. Second, you were coming down with something nasty (and particularly on Thursday night and Friday morning, you were really, really, really sick) and taking you out on Saturday might not have been the wisest of moves. But, once Dr. Mom had given her approval, you and I set out for our little adventure.

You kept calling it the “Super Duper Monkey Surprise”, which you were keen to recount to anyone who’d listen. You rambled on and on until we got to the Royal Canadian Pacific offices on 9th Ave. downtown, where we entered and went through a side door into the Pavilion, which is a mostly glass-enclosed space that houses Canadian Pacific Railways’ fleet of vintage parlour cars used on the RCP train.

No sooner had we entered the Pavilion itself than you asked if we could ride the train — you’d figured that part out. As if on cue, that’s when CP 2816 pulled into the siding outside, steaming away as its bell clanged.

You were anxious, amidst a bit of coughing. You wanted to go on the ride, even though I’m sure you weren’t really sure what to expect. It’d been a long time since you’d been on a train (I’m pretty sure it was when we were in Scotland two years ago), and aside from Heritage Park, you’d never been on a big train pulled by a steam locomotive.

We hopped on, and immediately went forward, finding seats as close to the steam locomotive as we could. (There was a baggage car, generator car, tool car, the 1900 and 1400 F-unit diesel assists between us and CP 2816, so it wasn’t like we could hear it really clearly.) The passenger cars are all vintage, with giant comfy seats and enough legroom to host a concert. It’s what rail travel used to be, and I (for one) greatly lament its loss in favour of cramped automobiles.

Soon, the train slowly began to back up, and you got very excited to be moving. We had to back up quite a ways down the line (the siding is in part of the staging yard that allows the huge freight trains to line up to arrive and exit from Calgary westwards) before we could join up with the main line. Then, we started moving forwards.

I can’t really remember the last time I rode behind a steam locomotive on main line rail. I was probably around 5 or 6, and it was most likely behind CN 6060 when it still ran steam excursions out to Niagara Falls. (I suppose you could consider CP 2860 when it was running North Vancouver to Squamish as well, but BC Rail was only a Class II railway at the time.) Only CP 2816 and the odd run of CP 2860 ever go on main line rail these days.

It took a while for us to wind our way through the rail yards that stretch from downtown Calgary out to just past Ogden in the east. From there, the train picked up a bit of speed before passing through CP’s intermodal yard. After that, we were off!

And so were you. You didn’t want to sit anymore. You wanted to get up and walk around. This is another reason I love trains — you can do that. Just try wandering on an airplane. You get weird looks. And Monkey, you don’t sit still, so really, a train is the best thing for you. And you saw just about every window and vestibule on the the train. Several times.

We arrived at Carseland in about 45 minutes. In fact, it wasn’t even Carseland proper — it was a wye just to the west of Carseland that also services the Agrium fertilizer plant. It was more than long enough to “turn” the entire train. And, thankfully, it was also dry enough for us to get off and look around a bit … which, of course, means running up to the head end to get pictures with the steam locomotive.

Take that, Thomas!

It was quite windy that day (it’s been quite windy for a few days, actually), and you wanted to get back on the train before too long. That gave you time to have more of your snacks and drink some more water, before resuming your incessant pacing up and down the train. I had to get you to stop for a while until the train moved again, so everyone could get on without running into you.

On the way back, you made friends with another little girl, and the two of you (and the girl’s little sister, I believe) hung out in the vestibules, going from one stool to another to peer over the high doors. You never really seemed to mind your hair blowing in the wind, or the periodic shifting of the cars as the train rolled down the tracks.

Although I don’t think you were quite as bummed as I was when the trip was all over. But you definitely said that it was fun, and how you wanted to do it again.

I’m pretty sure we will.

That’s where analytics packages come in handy. They can tell you who is visiting your site, where they’re from, what browser they’re using, their navigation path, search terms, etc. From a metrics perspective, it’s indispensable information. And there’s a lot of packages that’ll help you get all that.

But only one of them will get you into Google’s search index almost instantly.

Okay, let’s back up a sec. Going back a few years, one of the things I did frequently was work on search engine optimisation. I’d spend hours — days, even — writing code in specific ways so that it would be equally accessible to a search engine’s spider (such as Google) as it would to any normal human. But, most importantly, when the search engine read it, that without having human knowledge, it could categorise that information accordingly.

We regularly had to tell clients that significant changes to their sites (especially site redesigns) could take weeks, even more than a month, to show up in search engine indices. This was always a troubling point, as clients were often worried about making sure important information was indexed as soon as possible.

Today, my team launched a new website for our client, Big Rock Brewery. It was one we’d planned for a while, making sure the site was carefully built, and all the appropriate 301 redirects were in place to assist with the inevitable ranking shift due to URL changes.

Now, knowing how Google et al behaved in the past, one would think that I wouldn’t spend any time peering at Google’s results to see what had already changed, wouldn’t you? Well, maybe my old self would. My current self, however, is just too darned curious.

Imagine my shock when I saw, within less than two hours from seeing the first hits to the new site (which was on a completely different server), I saw the new URLs and even whole new pages showing up in Google’s index. Complete index, too, I might add — copy and description already in place.

“Stunned” doesn’t quite cut it. It’s almost as if the world had changed.

Naturally, being curious, I wanted to know why. So I pestered some colleagues of mine who deal with the search aspect a lot more than I do. Their thought? It’s Google Analytics.

Now, without actually peering under the hood (‘cuz even long-time Googlers don’t get that kind of privilege), I can only surmise that each hit from Google Analytics is being translated into an index request at Google’s end, which is then verified by a separate spider request (which obtains the copy and meta tags). I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but that seems pretty reasonable at a basic level.

I’d read somewhere a while back that Google chewed through something like 20 petabytes of data per day. (After some poking around, it looks like that was circa 2008, by the way.) During that time, it took a while for a simple change to appear. Now? It might as well be 20 petabytes an hour, or Google’s gone through some really significant changes in the indexing algorithms.

Frankly, I think it’s a double-edged situation. It’s a boon to those of us who plan releases, because we know it’ll get indexed pretty quickly. But it’s also a danger — one wrong move, and Google will have your mistake indexed before you know it.

Adding to all of this are, new to this run, a number of social media-style services all helping to add “information” (and likely being more like more noise to the signal) to help people align themselves with the political party of choice. I came across one, recently, and suddenly realised that despite the fact we have five major political parties vying for seats, they’re really only divided two ways.

Which means you either vote Conservative, or you don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating voting Conservative. Frankly, I have serious misgivings of how they’ve been running things the last few years, and I would very much like them deposed from the throne. The reason I say you either vote one way or the other really boils down to a graphic presented by the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship at McGill University, the CBC/Radio Canada, and the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto.

It’s part of a service they created called Vote Compass, and it strives to help people understand our political parties. It’s important, because some of the parties are awfully darn hard to differentiate in a meaningful way. With some of the issues, it’s quite easy to see which party you should look towards. But with others, it’s more like splitting hairs. That’s why the service ends up providing 35 questions (30 general ones, 3 regarding the parties’ leaders, and 2 about the parties themselves), which ultimately determine what your best political party would be.

And that’s really the key thing — your local candidate, regardless of how awesome they are, ultimately contributes a seat to the overall picture, allowing a party to rule. Your individual candidate, unless they become a Cabinet Minister, is little more than a hand raised during votes and can only hope to offer changes via private member’s bills. Remember, your party has already chosen its leader, and the one leading the winning party automatically becomes prime minister. (On a cynical note, I also strongly believe that anyone voting Conservative is therefore directly a supporter of Stephen Harper.)

At the end of your questions, Vote Compass produces … well, a compass, showing you which way you lean, politically-speaking. Mine (currently) looks like this:

(The checkmark is me, incidentally. Yes, I’m socialist. I believe very strongly in Canada’s history of helping others, including ourselves.)

See the split? See how the Conservatives are in one corner, and the other four parties are up in the other? (Given, the Liberals are much more centre, but still…) This is what I mean by “you’re either voting Conservative, or you’re not”.

“But,” you say, “that’s not true! I vote for my non-Conservative party! What’s wrong with that?”

Allow me to rephrase my point slightly, then. You either cast a vote for the Conservatives, or you cast your vote against them into a diluted pool.

This has also been my primary gripe with the “ABC” campaign (“Anyone/Anything But Conservative“) that has been popular in parts of Canada since the 2008 federal election. Sure, don’t vote Conservative … but now you’re spreading out a vote amongst (up to) four other parties, reducing the potential power of those votes so much that…

…drum roll, please…

…you end up with minority governments. Two of them so far, as a matter of fact, and from what I’ve seen, we’re likely looking at a third. Which means another call for a coalition government, which will likely be nearly as useless with all the in-fighting.

This is one of those few times when I look to the American two-party system and admire its simplicity. You go one way or the other. (‘Course, really, they’re all the same, just one tends to more open and honest about liking guns than the other.)

What I would like is for one of the other four parties to stand out from the others, and really make themselves out to be a strong contender to the Conservatives. Although the NDP seems to be gaining some serious ground this time out, they’ll have to do something about the Prairies if they hope to make a serious run. Which, really, leaves the Liberals who don’t look to have recovered from Chrétien’s era (nor show any signs of such).

Or better still, have organisations/movements like ABC pick a party. Just one. Please. The message should be “don’t vote Conservative, vote for …” so long as it’s focused. Lack of focus equals lack of success. That’s about as simple a rule as it gets, however it gets applied: in school, in business, how my kids clean up their toys. Focus, please.

T minus 9 days. I actually fear for my country.

But if you’ve read by blog, you know that the jumping castle is no more, and Mike the Balloon Tycoon is no longer a figure at the market. Many things have changed, actually, all of them affecting the market we once knew and loved. It’s definitely not the same market anymore, and rings more of The Forks in Winnipeg, or Granville Island in Vancouver.

I can’t yet say if it’s a step up or down, but it’s definitely a step forward.

Unlike the old site, which was a 1940′s military warehouse, the new market is an expanded end of an industrial complex, conveniently placed next to a shooting range. We’d seen the plans for the new market many times as the Calgary Farmer’s Market executive advertised the new space in hopes of bringing over as many existing clients as possible. It was likely a necessary thing, since the old market was the only decent market on the west side of town, and the West side folk have to be encouraged to drive into the East beyond visiting IKEA (which, conveniently, isn’t too far away from the new market).

Normally, we went to the market on Saturdays to have breakfast, and do a little shopping (and let Monkey burn off steam in the no-longer-present jumping castle). But today being Good Friday, it was a convenient chance for us to visit on a weekday. Apparently, along with half of the rest of the city…

When we got to the light at 71st Ave SE at 8:45 this morning, all we saw were cars. First thought: they didn’t allow for nearly enough parking. That was something the old site had in spades, thanks to the massive gravel parking lots that were likely leftover from previous warehouses. The new market has only side streets, and a limited lot. I will not be surprised to hear this is the single biggest complaint of the new market’s location.

The cars worried us for two reasons: 1) it meant that, in previous experience, getting in and getting a table so we could get breakfast would be hard, even if 2) we could find a place to park.

Thankfully (in a matter of speaking), we soon realised that a significant proportion of the cars were actually going to The Shooting Zone, the shooting range right next door to the market. (Monkey would later ask what the “bangs” were. She has yet to comprehend the concept of a gun.) There was a sale, and the double-whammy effect was a bit more than I think either organisation had expected.

The market was just opening, and not many people had arrived yet. First impressions being the important ones, we were immediately impressed with the appearance. The ceilings were lower (but not claustrophobic), the stalls spaced well enough to get around easily (especially with strollers), and it looked much more polished than the old market (hence my allusions to both The Forks and Granville Island).

We did a slow clockwise circuit, eventually arriving at the Fratello Analog Cafe stand. The lineup was already formed, and since we knew the Colombians (who ran the excellent Tutti Frutti booth at the old market) had opted not to go to the new market, we needed to find a new favourite coffee place. The Fratello stand is massive and exceedingly well-equipped with well-trained staff.

Well, “well-trained” is a bit subjective, and something I have to apply to nearly every booth at the new market. Simple reality, it was the opening week (as I mentioned, the market actually opened yesterday), and everyone was still learning the ropes. Today was the first official “flood” day, and it was readily apparent that the all-important “flow” was still being learned (and re-learned, in some cases). Every booth we visited had the same problem, and it amazed me the level of indignance some people showed at the slower-than-preferred (by everyone, especially the staff) service. Sometimes, I think pissy people need to be ejected to the back of the line every time until they learn some respect and patience.

Anyway, Fratello want to be to coffee what auteurs are to film. There is nothing but stylistic perfection, right down to even wanting a simple drip coffee. The Colombians, I felt, served a fantastic cup of coffee that was dispensed from a large thermos (frequently seen in many otherwise-fine coffee shops). Fratello thinks this is not an ideal way to get a fresh cup, so each “drip” cup is poured with hot water through freshly-ground coffee directly into the cup. (For the record, this is similar to how I make my coffee, but I steep mine before filtering through a Costa Rican coffee-sock.) For showmanship, it’s very nice. For expediency, it’s extremely slow. One guy next to me was nothing but contained rage about the time to get his coffee, and marched off without even getting a lid. One suggestion to Fratello — recognise that people want coffee, and not necessarily artisan coffee. Buy a thermos or two. You’ll sell more, if only by getting returning regulars. Respect the regulars, and you’ll increase business.

The Food Court area is now more segregated from the rest of the market, and tucked into the corner is where Mike would have gone had he stayed. Instead, they’ve erected a jungle gym for the kids to play around it. It’s not very large, so kid collisions rise almost geometrically to the number of minutes the market’s been open that day. The number of screams seemed to double every ten minutes. But it was empty enough when we got there for Monkey to have a run-around and blow off a bit of steam.

A Ladybug Pastries also opted to not make the transition, which surprised me. Given that they had a three-stall layout in the old market (and most certainly one of the nicest), I fully expected them to move over as well. But our favourite crepes, regardless of the high cost, were not to be found. We instead tried a new(er) place run by the same people who operate L’Epicerie on Macleod Trail just south of downtown. Whereas the folks who run A Ladybug are from Belgium, the proprietors of L’Epicerie are from Brittany. The crepes are decidedly more French. Alex was not a big fan, although I do like the ham and cheese and egg.

The food court area has easily twice as many tables, and many of them are more family-sized, eschewing the massive eight-person round tables that made getting a seat at the old market so difficult. (Note to the Market executive: parents would like to see booster seats. Could you not have brought those over from the old market?) The ceiling is high, there’s a massive glass wall at the south end, and even a double gas fireplace in the centre for those really chilly winter days. It’s more mall-like, yes, but not so finished that it looks totally recumbent.

Many of the old favourites did carry over to the market, and have continued with their work as before. I was happy to see Simply Good Eats, Shef’s Fiery Kitchen, Shanghai Fine Food, Margarita’s and 2 Greek Gals continue to sell breakfast. The Cherry Pit, Innisfail Grower’s Co-op, the various colonies, Wayne’s Bagels, Gull Valley, and Saskatoon Berry Farm also came. TotaliTea and the awesome Silk Road Spices also have continued to be present. You’d have to be blind to miss Simple Simon. Mysteriously absent is the old market’s summertime anchor, Walker’s (they held no less than four stalls and were the place to get fruits and vegetables), and I’m personally miffed to see that Sunworks seemingly has vanished — where the heck am I gonna get my Thanksgiving turkeys, now?

By the time we left, the market was jammed, making it very difficult to get around. I am able to pass this off as opening-day curiousity, and it will eventually slide into regulars. Outside, people were having extreme difficulty finding a place to park, and I imagine The Shooting Zone is going to have more than a little trouble with market-goers using up their valuable members-only parking stalls.

It’s good to the see the market open again. It’s clear that some effort has been placed on making sure there’s a good mix of vendors, and attention has been paid to retain at least some of the old anchors to keep things familiar. I’m curious as to the loss of some of the old vendors, especially the ones I liked and frequented, and I imagine the inclusion of some vendors led to the departure (or non-signing) of others (Hoven Farms out, Silver Sage in; Walker’s gone, replaced with Soutu Farms).

Will it succeed? Of course it will — for the same reasons the old market succeeded: it offered a higher quality of selection and service without the kvitch common to other markets like Crossroads (sorry, Crossroads, but you know what I mean). Will it be a “farmer’s” market? Therein lies the question — that aspect may have permanently changed, now with more emphasis on ready-made items, and less on the raw materials that farmer’s markets have historically been associated with. But it will be appealing to a significant proportion of Calgarians.

As for my family, we will see. In terms of family-friendliness, the Calgary Farmer’s Market is likely to remain high in our books. The tripling of the distance to get to it is a downside, but even the old market was well beyond walking distance. After things settle, we’ll see how they go.

I should point out that until Friday, I had not really known pain. My previous experiences had been limited to bonks of the head (one of which has left a noticeable scar) plus a few nasty scrapes. And with one exception (which led to stitches in my nose), every injury was resolved with a simple bandage.

Now I understand why “keeping up on your meds” is so key during recovery.

Because this was Day Surgery, I was kicked out of the hospital at the first earliest convenience, which happened to coincide with when Alex could conveniently return to pick me up. As a result, I was the last patient to leave Day Surgery (there was one other, remaining overnight).

I suppose recovering at home is far more preferable to staying in the hospital. There’s no nurses getting you up every few hours, no roommate in severe coughing fits, no all-room pages, and so forth. It’s your own bed, your own bathroom, your own environment. There’s a comfort to that. It also makes me wonder just how far a) our medical technology has progressed, allowing people to go home almost immediately after surgery, or b) how little our healthcare system can support overnighters, and therefore force us out as soon as possible (the “revolving door medicine” issue). I suspect it’s a bit of both.

I passed out in bed not long after getting home, hugging Monkey and Choo Choo (Monkey being especially doting on her poor, owie’d daddy), and downing 8-10 unsalted Premium Plus crackers and a popsicle — the only real food I’d had in almost 24 hours. I waited long enough to pop another Percocet tablet, and laid down.

Now I would like to say that I had envisioned having a good sleep after that. Why, I have no idea. In retrospect, it was such a naive belief as to compare it to the relative innocence of my kids. I was up four times that night, either due to the meds having worn off, the need to pee (my water intake must be pushing my hydration point well past the “safe” limit), or simply because my lower back felt like it was doing to implode. Nausea was also a common factor, which I’m not sure should be attributed to the anesthesia, the meds, the pain, or a weird combination of all three. The only time I did get sick did seem to help much more than should be allowed for the minute volume of ejecta.

Getting in and out of bed was just short of hell. There was no easy way to achieve a vertical stance. Swinging my legs out left me in a partial-vertical/mostly-horizontal state that required either an overhead handle to pull myself up (which we sadly are lacking in our bedroom ceiling), or stomach muscles capable of pulling my upper half into at least a sitting position. Given the broken nature of my muscles, I had to resort to a completely haphazard form of rolling to my left, a partial clockwise rotation to force my feet of the edge of the bed, then pushing myself to sitting (all the while breathing sharply from the pain), and then pushing myself up to standing (thankfully, we have a high bed). The act of climbing back in bed made only slightly more simple as a result of lifting my feet (Alex helping with my left leg, as the aforementioned broken muscles were not cooperating) and sliding in.

Suffice to say, Alex and I were up frequently throughout that first night. I could not be more thankful to have someone with me — I shudder to think of how awkward and difficult this would have been if I were still single.

The next morning — which I take only as the point at where the ambient light in my room was more than the nightly minimum — I ached myself up to quickly down a Tylenol 3 (for which Alex had so graciously filled a prescription) and try to move around a bit.

One of the things in the literature you’re handed before being discharged from surgery is about the absolute need to get back to “normal activities” (with a few notable exceptions) as quickly as possible, provided you don’t push yourself. (In other words, if you do physical labour, you’re going to be a while; programmers shouldn’t have too much trouble.) In short: walking. The key is to walk as soon as possible so your body doesn’t try to heal itself “badly”.

Problem: it was snowing. Again. We’ve seen more freshly-fallen snow in April than we have in the previous three months, combined. The thought of slipping on said new snow pretty much kiboshed my external sojourns, and left me doing laps around our kitchen island until the ache was something akin to a burning ember crammed midway between my hip and my [Insert your own preference for terminology to male reproductive apparatus here] and pressed down on with a 10 lb weight. That’s what’s kept me, for the most part, in a prone position in bed, watching a marathon of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations.

My food, at least on Day 1, was kept to crackers, water, ginger ale (to combat nausea), half a can of chicken soup, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, and a fairly steady stream of pills. Hardly fulfilling, but in the interests of keeping my stool generation to a minimum (remember: groin injury + cut abdominal muscles) seemed prudent. Not to mention anything heavier might bring on more nausea.

Last night, I slept with more pillows, and considerably more soundly. Having not taken any other medication during the night, I woke up notably more pained than I had several hours earlier. A top-up of Percocet seemed to help, as would a fresh ibuprofen intake a couple of hours later. A couple of cups of strong coffee also did wonders, and was a welcome change from water and ginger ale.

I’m also finding that I’m not as much of a wimp as I had thought — this isn’t nearly as painful as I had imagined. I’m finding that I’m also listening to my body more clearly — when it tells me not to do something, I’m damn well listening. It means I don’t sit on the floor (it’s painful to get up), I don’t lean strongly to grab something (I go over to it), and picking up anything heavier than my laptop is a strong “no”.

Today was better than yesterday, but still tiring. I’m not going to try to go into the office tomorrow, even though this is a launch week for a project, and I need to ramp up on my next major project. Timing is everything, and there is never a good time for surgery. Hopefully, though, Tuesday will be my luckier day.

Until then, I’m staying on top of the meds, and snoozing when needed. Which, it also seems, is right now…

It wasn’t a procedure that I was particularly looking forward to — the thought of surgery was more than a little frightening — but I’m sure I’ll be glad to have had.

Y’know, once all this pain subsides…

I called Rockyview General Hospital on Thursday afternoon to get my scheduled time. Surgery was at 12:15, and I needed to be there for 9:15. Basically, an entire workday having my bowels forced back into place.

No, really. That’s the procedure. Hernias form as a result of a break in the intestinal wall. Eventually, part of the intestine works its way through, causing the discomfort. Hernias don’t heal on their own — you either use a pad to keep things in place, or you get surgery to patch the hole.

The patch literally looks like a piece of screening from a screen door. It gets inserted and the muscles weave into it, creating the barrier. The screen is permanent. Does that make me a cyborg, I wonder?

Alex met me at Admissions. She started at Rockyview two weeks ago, returning to work after over three and a half years of kids and Costa Rica. It was actually weird to see her in scrubs again. She boasted about having Vietnamese for lunch with iced coffee. My nearly 12-hour empty stomach growled, and my head was going into full-tilt caffeine withdrawal.

We scooted over to Day Surgery, where I began my long waiting process with about a dozen others, and their friends/spouses (Alex had to back to work). I sat and read Cryptonomicon until my name was called, about an hour later.

The nurse took me to a change area, where I doffed my skivvies for hospital-issue attire. It was a little tight, and severely lacking on the fashionable approach, but the pant and extra top would at least keep me from freezing while I continued to wait.

My headache was approaching epic levels. Suddenly, those six daily cups of coffee really didn’t seem like such a great idea. I couldn’t read my book any longer — my head hurt so much I couldn’t focus. I resorted to rubbing my head and the back of my neck to help ease the pain and pass the time.

When my name was finally called, I was ushered to a toilet, removed the pajama bottoms and the cloak (keeping the ever-open gown on, of course), and trundled off to the operating area on a gurney. Once there, I rolled over on my side and declared I would nap while waiting for the doctor to show up.

A kindly nurse appeared and asked if I would like another warmed blanket, which was greeted with enthusiasm (seriously, why are hospitals always so darn cold??). A couple of minutes later, Dr. Steve Martin appeared. (Once again, I lamented the fact that he does not have an arrow through his head.). He talked to me for about two minutes, marked on my left groin with a ballpoint pen where he’d make the incision, then headed off to get ready to cut me open.

Barely 30 seconds later, the nurse appeared to deal with all the paperwork and formalities. While she was chatting, Alex appeared (having snuck away just long enough for a quick chat). The nurse vanished, replaced almost immediately (it was starting to look like a surgical assembly line) with whom I felt was the single most important person I would meet that day — the anesthesiologist.

I had a choice: local, or general. There are pros and cons to both (which he outlined fairly well without horrid detail), and I tried to state my local and general fears. In my world, I’d prefer to lose feeling due to my own actions, however ill-enacted they may be.

Alex said “see you later” as the nurse reappeared to take me into the operating room. It was intimidating, and for once TV and movies lived up to the promise: featureless, two massive lights over the table, machines that went “BING”, and people in surgical gowns. The nurse had told me that I was to announce myself and what procedure I was to have. It came out like this:

“My name is Geoff, and I’m having a left hernia. No, strike that. I have a left hernia and I want to get rid of it.”

I moved to the operating table and was set upon by the nurse and the anesthesiologist (who immediately asked if I’d made any decision yet), my arms put onto rests at the side. My right arm got the blood pressure cuff, the left arm — notably my hand — turned into a pincushion as the anesthesiologist struggled to find a vein.

Have I mentioned how much I hate needles?

Finally, a decision on my pain-killing was made. I’d asked all sorts of questions about risks (e.g. not waking up again), but in the end, the real decision was alertness. With a local, I’d be awake and wondering what was going on — I’m too curious for my own good. And with that, an oxygen mask was put over my mouth and nose, and an intense burning burst into my hand.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do…

It was like if you were watching a movie, and there’s a cut to a different scene. There was no fade to black — the memory just stopped.

“Take a couple of deep breaths, please,” said a voice next to me. I was in recovery, absolutely no sense of passed time. “Deep breaths, please. You need to up your oxygen. We’ll get a mask if we need to.” It almost sounded like a threat.

I dunno if it’s me or the machine, but I’m always under the limit. I was breathing pretty shallow, and my oxygen level was clocking in at 89. A couple of deep breaths later, it was 99. All was well.

I was trucked back to Day Surgery to complete my recovery before discharge. I needed anti-nauseant and was given Percosets to dull the pain. The only thing I needed to do before I could leave was pee — something that required me to drink a fair amount of liquid in advance. The nursing staff kept my in good shape, and immediately called Alex to let her know I was okay.

“Hi, Diagnostic Imaging? Can I speak with Alex the x-ray tech? Hi, this is Day Surgery. Your husband is alive. Feel free to come by whenever.”

Alex was there barely two minutes later.

I “power napped” (nurse’s words) for the next couple of hours. I had to get another round of anti-nauseant, which dragged things out a bit. When Alex’s shift was over, I wasn’t quite ready to go home, so she ducked home to feed the kids. I resumed napping.

I finally left the hospital around 7, and went home. It was good to get home, although I was a little afraid of being tackled by Monkey. Thankfully, she was extremely careful, a gentle cuteness that I’d never witnessed before.

It’s been Gravol and T3s since, and moving around is difficult. Recovery takes a few days, but hopefully I’ll be moving around more easily soon. And eating. And coffee.

The biggest problem is not really the number of people — it’s the time councillors need to connect with them all, while still doing the job for which they were elected. In a physical sense, it’s nearly impossible. Some have turned to the internet to help bridge the gap, using technology to connect.

Allow me to show you an example, which I experienced today…

While waiting for one of my software commits to complete, I took a few minutes to read my news feeds. One article, which caught me more than a little off-guard, was a note about radioactive particles from the Japanese Fukushima reactor appearing in Vancouver’s water supply. It was surprising as no-one had really expected that to happen, and moreso because the levels were a lot higher than I would have imagined.

My first thought was how that would affect the water supply in Vancouver, especially towards children (it’s already an issue in parts of Japan, and BC has already had a scare that led to a run on iodine tablets). My second thought was: the rain on this side of the Rocky Mountains often comes in from the Vancouver area.

Now I — as a regular, ordinary citizen of Canada’s fourth largest city — would likely have to spend quite some time to find out where to start to see if that problem had arrived here. But I’m not “regular” — I’m highly connected. And not in the “I know people way”, I mean by the internet. And I follow my ward’s alderman, John Mar, on Twitter. Who better to find out if Calgary’s at risk than one of Calgary’s tooth-and-nail fighters?

I started with the simple question:

Knowing that John’s a busy guy (he regularly tweets his activities; which I gotta say, it’s a very handy way of knowing what your elected representative is up to without having to call them on a regular basis), I didn’t expect an immediate response. Heck, I’d have been happy with a simple “yes/no” answer. I got John’s response just a few minutes later:

Okay, first off, in any service-based organisation — public or private — immediate (or at least near-immediate) response — even if it’s “we’ll get back to you” — is necessary to instill confidence. Lack of response breeds doubt, and especially with government, makes people think things are being done behind closed doors. In an era where we demand transparency, acknowledgement of a request is the killer app.

It took a little while — still less time than it would have taken me, I’m sure — but I got my answer:

There you go — we were safe. And you feel a lot more secure with an answer from a public figure than you do from a city bureaucrat. But John’s answer got me to thinking: a) Iodine 131 is probably not regularly tested for in water supplies (why would it be?), and b) that’s a fairly recent test. Which led me to wonder if it might be an ongoing test for the foreseeable future:

John’s response, interestingly enough, I mostly expected:

Now, it’s very easy to dismiss that as “well, that’s not answer” … and you’d be right, especially if you’re concerned about this sort of thing (which I am). But, where John does not fail, he followed up (unprompted) with this:

So, net result, at least so far as Calgary’s water is concerned: we’re okay. But that’s actually the lesser part of the story. The more important, I think, is that I got an answer to a pressing question over Twitter (not waiting on phones), and directly from my elected official.

As an interesting aside, John actually left Twitter early last December, after he received a fair amount of abuse from people who didn’t think he was tweeting enough. It was a loss for us who followed, since he had been a valuable source of information on the regular goings-on in city council. Thankfully, John returned to Twitter about two months later.

It’s a tough gig, being a public figure on Twitter. There are a lot of demands from the informed and uninformed alike, and people’s patience online is about a tenth of what it is in person (and politeness can sink to a hundredth or less). Somehow, people seem to forget that Twitter is an outlet, not a full-time job. John, so far, has done an admirable job of balancing the act, and remains (in my view) the best of Calgary’s city council in using Twitter is a communications tool.

So go on, ask me if I feel my councillor is out of touch. I dare ya.

Even before we moved back to Canada (Alex knowing she was pregnant), she had started to plan her return to work. She wanted to do her job again, not just because it’s something she’d spent many years training for, and not just because it helps the family income-wise. It’s also a value aspect — anyone who’s had a job feels a certain amount of ownership and responsibility about what they do.

And besides, it gives her a chance to get away from the kids…

(Okay, I jest on that last one. Well, a bit — there is some truth to it. But it was a major consideration, too — what do we do with the kids? They had to go into daycare if this was going to work.)

Today, Alex completed her first week of paid, non-mom/non-house work in almost four years. This was a week that I was actually dreading for quite some time; I feared the chaos. Monkey has become quite the handful at times (especially with Alex and I), and Choo Choo’s now walking and in a very clingy stage where she refuses to let go.

Frankly, I expected this week to be abject hell. I expected that we’d have to order dinner almost every night, the kids would be confused as hell and downright unmanageable, that there’d be tonnes of stress, and I’d be wanting to sleep at the office. That’s what I expected.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Kicker is, I forgot to actually hope — I just planned, but not remotely as well as Alex did. She planned our meals, made sure dinners were made in advance, arranged for the daycare for the kids (I dropped off in the morning, she picked up in the afternoon; Alex’s mom will come on Fridays), and so forth. I probably worried more about myself than anything else; Alex had handled it all.

So here we are, end of that first epic week, and Alex was happy each and every day. No missed buses, no late starts, no tears except for when I handed Choo Choo over to the daycare (on her first day, there was an intense grabbing combined with something that sounded like JEZZUSCHRIPESDADWHATTHEHELLAREYOUDOING?! and a small river of cascading down her pudgy face. Monkey, on the other hand, disappeared almost instantly. I only knew she was in the daycare because I heard: “I found a doll!”

Alex, to her vast credit, made it look almost effortless, like it was a recipe she’d made dozens of time and rolled it out with no more effort than scrambling an egg. For someone who hadn’t turned an hour in a few years, it looked beyond old hat.

If nothing else, it’s a chance to remember that no matter how well you think you know someone, they can still surprise you. I’m proud of you hon, you continue to amaze me.

I was told at the time that it could “take a year” until I could get it fixed, but if I was willing to do things more ad hoc, they’d put me on a call list. On the call list I went … and I waited. I finally got called about a month ago, which put me in surgery on 17 March — the day before Choo Choo’s 1st birthday. Recovering from surgery on such an important day was simply something I wasn’t willing to do, so I passed. Last week, they called again.

On 15 April, I’ll get to experience surgery for the first time, ever. And I gotta tell ya, I’m more than a bit apprehensive.

Yeah, okay, call me a “pansy” if you have to (Alex has several times, already; she can back that up with vast amounts of personal experience), but I’m not particularly thrilled with the prospect of surgery. Yes, I want to have surgery — I really don’t want this damn hernia anymore — but I’m also mildly afraid of it.

It’s the anesthetic, really. Sure, you can look at it as “insta-sleep” (and there’s certainly an appealing part to that). It’s not the passing out part that I’m worried about — it’s the waking up again. I’ve known people who … well, didn’t.

It’s one of those moments when you realise that you’re not truly invulnerable anymore, and you’re facing potential mortality in a way you hadn’t previously thought about in any great quantity. And by “you”, I do of course mean “myself”.

So, one week. It’s a day surgery, so I’ll be home that night. But I won’t be able to do much at first, and I can’t pick up my kids for at least two weeks, and as much as a month (I believe). We shall see, I guess.

Wheeeeee.

Already, the various political parties are … well, failing. I’m rather stunned how fast that happened, actually. You’d think they’d actually try to get out a message first, but they stooped to mud-slinging pretty much out of the gate. Yeah, real positive way to foster respect and attract voters, folks…

So I feel that, as a Canadian with some significant sense of civic duty (and certainly more than enough know-it-all-ism), I need to offer up some suggestions to our so-called “leaders” (read: I choose not to lay insults as they are neither interesting nor constructive) if they have any hope of inspiring Canadians to vote for them … if at all.

Let’s start with the New Democratic Party…

So far, to be honest, I haven’t heard much out of you. Not here in the west, anyway. Yes, you need to acknowledge that we exist. Hate to break it to you, but if you have any hope of beating out either the Conservatives or the Liberals for a seat, you need to be seen. Guess whose ads I’ve yet to see plastered all over TV? I had to Google them, Jack. That required action: a vested interest. You want an audience? You’ll need to go to them. Maybe all the pick-up trucks scare you off? I don’t know. But I do know this: First basic rule of marketing — unless you’re highly visible, you won’t be remembered.

Checking out your website is kind of informational, but you’re stooping to attacking your opponents right away. Your message? A little hard to see past the oh-so-thinly veiled attack on Ignatieff. (Look, if you want to question something he may or may not have done, get some facts. Nothing kills off a campaign run like a damn good scandal. A mere question will go unanswered, and will not sway anyone.)

And the bit about more doctors and nurses? Hey, great, that’s awesome! What about the people who support the doctors and nurses? What about the hospitals for them to work in? And can you provide the details on how you’re going to prevent new grads from going elsewhere (like the States)? A few details will help prove that these are more than words. Remember, most Canadians will not shlep down to the local candidate to have a discussion. The internet will help, but only if your message is complete enough to convince someone beyond a simple belief.

And for the love of pete, can someone in your IT group make sure that your website works for both “ndp.ca” and “www.ndp.ca”? That’s a pretty low bar, and you’re tripping over it…

Next up, the Liberals.

Iggy, can you actually go a day without saying the word “Harper”? I don’t think you can. I’m actually beginning to fear that you have no actual message at all, other than to oppose the Conservatives. I’m not kidding — on your website alone, there are over 6,400 mentions of “Harper”! Exactly whose side are you on?

You talk about Accountability on your website. How about some examples? Goodness knows that your BFF has offered you countless examples upon which you can found your statements. But despite being the only party willing to post your policy points — you skimp over the details like a cheap restaurant that uses watered down tomato sauce and passes it off as pasta al fresco.

Or how about your digital policy? You offer up a mere three paragraphs, and nothing else? Have you not paid a single shred of attention to all the C-32 and UBB nonsense? Might I remind the lauded Liberals that there are many Canadians who have a very vested interest in what plans you say you have, and would likely keenly vote if they made sense. Cough, cough. You might also want to chat with Mr. Nenshi…

Here’s a free I’ll throw you: “a Liberal government will not allow corporations and/or regulatory agencies to restrict Canadians access to critical resources through uninformed and/or falsified statements regarding resource use, either as a result of profit or security” as a broad statement, backed up by a list of proposed bills you intend to introduce to Parliament in your first 100 days. Just saying.

Oh, and Iggy, if your party is going to hold up Laurier, Pearson, and Trudeau as the models for Liberal leadership, you might want to consider finding your own identity so we can pick you out of the noise.

As for the Conservatives…

I’ve seen your ads. They’re wonderful, truly. They’re masterful of propagating the fear that right-leaning political groups love to instill in the populace. There’s nothing quite like creating an identity of evil for you to gain trust. (Hey, it worked in the church — nothing like the Devil to steer you straight, right?)

Here’s a thought: you’ve gone two elections without winning a majority. (With me so far? Good.) See a problem? Here’s a hint: it’s not that you didn’t win a majority. Let me spell it out: your tactics haven’t changed — it’s still about fear. The way I see it, you’re not going to get much further, as you’ve scared all you can. It might have worked a couple of years ago when the economy was going through the grinder, but since we’re on the recovery and things are generally looking decent … well, you haven’t really got much, do you? Another problem: highly-educated people tend not to frighten easily. You want the rest of us to vote for you? You’d better come up with something more intelligent than mere propaganda.

Speaking of which, I went to your website to look for what you’re bringing to the table. The only thing under “Policy”? The 2011 Budget. That’s your policy? Nothing about Aboriginal rights? Nothing about the Environment? Not even Corporation support (which, we know, you do so very, very well)? You’re not really offering much, here. Your tax cuts aren’t offering much, either, since they don’t really fit the bill of Canadians’ needs. Yes, we do need more doctors … but we don’t need billion-dollar warplanes. Subtle hint.

Yes, I know I’m missing out on the other parties out there: The Bloc Québécois (hint: give a crap about just one person not from Quebec), The Green Party (you need to distance yourself a bit more from the granola crowd), and a retinue of other parties — all of whom have a ways yet to go. All have a similar problem: appealing to the masses. Canadians, as a whole, are generally accepting, but historically-speaking, generally only vote for Conservative (right) or Liberal (centre). You don’t fit into those mentalities, you’re effectively fringe, at least at the federal level.

So, to those who are leading the charge into our electoral fray, can we please dispense with the bull? Can we drop the mud, please, and actually have a real dialogue? It would be nice to know that there is more to our political system than mere bitching.