Month: May 2008

May 14th is Buy Everything Day, right?

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Well, aren’t we just the happy little consumers. Nellie could no longer resist the urge to buy an iMac and ordered one this evening. I managed to resist the urge to pre-order one of those teeny little Asus eee PCs. I’ve wanted a small, portable laptop for travelling, TIFFblogging, and so on. These things seem to fit the bill, so I’ll grab one closer to our Rockies trip. Oh, and I damn near ordered a new desktop tonight too.

Also, for the condo, we ordered a small filing cabinet and an air purifier for the bedroom. To help with the flooring we’ll eventually order a humidifier. I don’t want to, but the construction people are telling us it’s necessary.

[tags]rampant consumerism, imac, asus eee pc, air purifier[/tags]

I can has inspiration?

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I have to pick a topic for my term paper. We’ve been told to do this early, so all the good ones aren’t gone, but my brain still thinks it’s in the grace period between courses where it can shut off and concentrate on naught but NBA playoffs and snickerdoodles. Maybe y’all can help? Here’s the direction the prof gave us:

Any topic in the area of strategic leadership and change is potentially acceptable for the paper. I suggest you pick a topic: (1) of personal interest and whose mastery is likely to make a positive difference to your career; (2) for which academic research material is accessible in reasonable quantity (perhaps through our library); and (3) narrow enough to be do-able within imposed time and space limitations. Acceptable topics include, but are not limited to:

  • alternative cost leadership (or differentiation) approaches and their performance implications in your industry;
  • alternative customer-centric strategies and their implications for your company’s performance;
  • personnel diversity, organisation strategy, and organisation performance;
  • reward systems, behaviours, and organisation performance;
  • dimensions and performance implications of the your company’s organisation culture;
  • why and how your company should become a better learning organisation;
  • alternative large-scale change strategies and their implications for your company.

Any ideas? The only one I’ve had so far involved distilling and bottling my monstrous apathy and releasing it into the water supply of our competitors, but the ROI on that…not good.

[tags]mba, term paper, strategy[/tags]

"nothing is happening! its so boring"

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From Torontoist: Vanity’s Fair. I don’t know David Topping (though LinkedIn keeps telling me I should) but anyone who starts a story this way must be a decent guy:

Canada’s talented children have gone unexploited for far too long, an injustice that Universal Music has finally seen fit to remedy.

According to Hollywood Reporter, the label has “joined the search for Canada’s version of Miley Cyrus,” and, with YTV, has created a new TV talent competition called The Instant Star, designed for children 15 and under. The winner gets a record contract, fame, and, presumably, a shot at pubescence.

I, for one, feel that Canada could really do without a Miley Cyrus. Hannah Montana, though…we need us one of those.

I’d like to say that was the most disturbing TV-related thing I saw/read today, but…well, WIVB (a CBS affiliate in Buffalo, NY) pretty much wins. Poor Nellie just wanted to watch How I Met Your Mother, but WIVB was busy showing 2.5 hours of some wackadoo with a pistol sitting on a bridge. I was amazed to hear that families had come from all around town, sitting on the grass, waiting to see said wackadoo shoot someone (or be shot himself). It was also entertaining to read the [ahem] coverage on their website, rife as it was with spelling errors (click the image on the right for more detail) and amateurish reporting. To wit: “Apparently, one of the police sharp shooters took a shot of the gentleman and police have pulled the guy from the vehicle.”

What was really disturbing was the breathless excitement of the reporters. I’ve never gotten this fascination the American news media has with any kind of criminal possessed of a license and set of keys. If this guy had never gotten in a car, had instead just hung out on his front lawn with a .38, no one would notice. OK, well, the cops might notice, but the news media wouldn’t have choppers circling overhead while Burt the janitor updates the web site. However, because this guy gets in a car, news anchors instantly go from six to midnight as visions of white Broncos dance in their heads. In no time at all, Janitor Burt had created a banner ad pointing to live streaming video of the standoff and a Google Map showing the location. He’d also uploaded a pile of amateur pictures and opened up the comments, which range from “this is absolutely ridiculous, this guy is charging his phone. if i miss How I met your Mother I am going to be super pissed at this guy” to “Shoot the white trash in the croch”.

What’s the emoticon for “the human race is doomed” again?

[tags]torontoist, the instant star, miley cyrus, wivb buffalo, how i met your mother[/tags]

The treadmill analogy feels pretty apt right now

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Whenever I go for a run I crank up the speed and sprint for the last 60 seconds or so before my cooldown, so that my heart rate stays up for longer than if I just held the flat pace. I was too tired to run this morning, but I wound up having the same feeling later on today.

This morning (whilst waiting for my LAN connection to be fixed) I went through the requirements of my final course…25-page paper, a couple of 5-page assignments, weekly analysis on discussion topics and about 1,000 pages of reading. Over the summer, no less. So much for a nice, gentle send-off from the MBA program.

Time to sprint.

[tags]mba[/tags]

BluBlockers anyone?

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I’ve gotten a couple of hits from people Googling whether President Roslin’s character was wearing a Q-Ray bracelet on Battlestar Galactica last week. Yes, kids, I saw it too. Not sure what the significance is; maybe they’re pointing out that even fictional humans on TV can be duped by marketing and superstition.

[tags]q-ray bracelet, president roslin, battlestar galactica, bsg[/tags]

"If God was a city planner he would not put a playground next to a sewage system!"

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Today my objective was to laugh at a movie screen. I think I accomplished that.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was better than I thought it would be. Funny in that same combination of crude and clever as The 40-Year-Old Virgin. We both laughed a lot. By the way: Mila Kunis…girlfriend du jour.

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was…well, ridiculous. Neither Nellie or I thought it was very good, but then again neither of us liked the original the first time we saw it either. I chuckled a couple of times, but that was about it.

[tags]forgetting sarah marshall, harold, kumar, guantanamo bay[/tags]

"Water and cemeteries… pretty safe bets."

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Second straight night of decent sleep. It’s like I’m on vacation.

Last night all we did was watch Mr. Brooks (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I actually kind of liked. The ratings weren’t great, but I thought it was an entertaining (if grisly) story. Kevin Costner and William Hurt were both (ha ha) really good, and Demi Moore didn’t bug me like she usually does, so…yeah. Not bad at all.

It’s been a lazy Sunday so far. Kind of gray and cold outside so we stayed in for the morning, watching some TV, cleaning up, etc. I think we may go see another movie this afternoon. Maybe two movies. Damn, I love these quiet periods between courses…

[tags]mr. brooks[/tags]

"Give me a Scotch. I'm starving."

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Nine hours of sleep was just what the doctor ordered, even if it did mean going to bed like lame old people around 11:00. Still, after the week that was and stuffing ourselves with beer and pasta at Smokeless Joe, we didn’t have a lot of energy.

This morning, though, I was well awake. After catching up on email & feeds I grabbed some bagels from St. Urbain, some pretzels from the farmer’s market and a cappuccino for Nellie in the hopes of luring her out of the bed. Not long after that we quit the condo in search of goods & services. We struck out on the household stuff (we need a filing cabinet, a humidifier and an air purifier, but the selection at Staples/Canadian Tire was lacking) but picked up some other stuff…hiking shoes for Nellie, sunglasses & jeans for me. Dropping those off at home, and loving the weather, we set out to find a patio.

The Jason George was packed, so we tried the Flatiron & Firkin instead. We sat down on the warm, sunny patio and ordered a beer. It did not suck (to wit: I actually said “This does not suck.”) to sit in the sunshine and drink a Rickard’s white. Then things started to go wrong: the sun went behind the clouds, which cooled things off. Then the wind came up, which made it downright chilly. Then our food arrived, but not the calamari appetizer we’d ordered. We ate our meal quickly; it got so cold Nellie actually had to switch seats and hide behind the wall to stay out of the wind. After we finished our meals (my veggie burger was awful, by the way…it was like a giant piece of carrot pressed into a hockey puck) the calamari showed up. I would have been more annoyed except that it was piping hot, and I was cold, so you do the math. I scarfed it and we got the bill…then waited around forever for the server to bring us our change. I wanted to leave a crap tip; Nellie would not allow it. No balls, that girl.

However, we would not let a little cold or bad service ruin our day. Stopping back at the apartment to get changed, we found a showtime for Iron Man (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the new theatre at Yonge & Dundas and took off. First of all, the theatre: it was our first time (it only opened a month or so ago) and…wow. Seats: comfy, reclining and plentiful. Screens: fracking ginormous. Dizzying combination of screaming teenagers and spinning lights making the Paramount Scotiabank theatre so nauseating: absent. I think we have a winner. Iron Man was, as promised, very good. Certainly one of the best superhero movies to date, if not the best. Go see. Fun for the whole family.

After that we just had a little time for a walk, then back home to relax a bit, make dinner and watch another movie. More on that tomorrow. For now…more sleep.

[tags]iron man, flatiron and firkin[/tags]

In which the word "halcyon" enters my head

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In spite of having the day off, I got up at 8:00. Or rather, I was forced to get up, since our cleaning service comes at 9:00 on Fridays. I considered transplanting myself to the den and putting up a “keep out” sign on the door so I could keep sleeping, but this seemed silly and impractical, cleaning not being the quietest of activities.

I showered and went out for some breakfast at Fran’s, then walked down to Church & Front where I sipped hot chocolate and read my book at the Second Cup. A little after 10:00 I walked over to Nicholas Hoare and spent an hour perusing, finally settling on The Angel Riots by Ibi Kaslik. I needed a new book as I just this morning finished A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, which has been sitting on my shelf for…8 years, maybe? I have tons of non-fiction I want to buy, but I’ve found I’m less interested in them as long as I’m also reading a textbook.

My plans for the rest of the day involve catching up on work email & news feeds, tidying up a bit and possibly tormenting the cats. I’m starting to dig the idea of a 4-day work week.

[tags]fran’s, second cup, nicholas hoare, ibi kaslik[/tags]

No, not that CSI

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There are some things I know about myself. One of them is that I simply cannot survive in a club. The music, the translucent people…all hideous.

Why was I even in a club? Well, let me back up: after finishing the exam today we had a ceremony at our corporate headquarters this evening, the first graduation ceremony of two, and most of us went out to celebrate afterwards. I’d never heard of the Brant House; having seen it I wouldn’t have picked it, but I’m not most people, and most people seemed to like it. Put it this way: any place that offers bottle service, and attracts people who would want bottle service, is outside of my wheelhouse.

I stayed long enough to be respectable (i.e., not a pussy) and then fled to safety of my home where I could guarantee the percentage of real people (my wife = 1/1) and control the music that was played. In this case, “Million Star Hotel” by The Constantines: low enough not to wake my wife, but loud enough to expunge all the disco blather and Def Leppard remixes from my head. I scarfed down some food as soon as I got home (dinner was disappointing; at least my friend Russ gave me half his fries) and now I’m typing this, reveling in the knowledge that I don’t have to go to work tomorrow.

Oh, and I’m now officially a Fellow of the ICB (or CSI, or whatever it’s called now) as well as a silver medalist. Imagine my excitement.

[tags]mba, brant house, icb, constantines[/tags]