Author: Dan Dickinson

No word on any buggy whips

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While talking to my dad today (he turns 65 today — happy birthday Dad!) we were chatting about what’s going on at the farm right now. He’d planned to start planting today but it rained, so they stuck to indoor work. One of the things he did was work on cleaning out the old farmhouse, which is being renovated. The house is over 150 years old, so he found some interesting stuff in there, including — get this — a tool to make musket balls.

I know any Europeans reading this are probably thinking, “150 years old…big deal.” However, when you’re rummaging through a house that was built before your country was even officially a country and you find a working tool that goes with a freaking musket, I’d contend that’s still a little surprising.

[tags]musket ball[/tags]

"Um yeah, Satan's Camaro? It's stalking me!"

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Given that it’s been a relatively lazy long weekend so far, we’ve watched a couple of movies.

Transformers (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a pretty acceptable little action movie. Flashy and dumb like all Michael Bay films, but the special effects were amazing and we actually laughed quite a few times…especially at Shia LaBeouf’s parents. Stupid, but fun.

The Lives Of Others (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was juuuuuust about the polar opposite of Transformers. Not at all flashy or fast-paced, but a scary study of life in East Germany in the 1980s. Well, scary but…uplifting somehow. Or reassuring. Or just slightly less scary. Anyway, it was very good…though not good enough to steal the best Foreign Language Film Oscar away from Pan’s Labyrinth, in my opinion. Still, I’d recommend it.

[tags]transformers, the lives of others[/tags]

Apparently I angered the fickle weather gods

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Today: not so nice. Downright rotten, in fact. Nellie and I just got soaked (despite having umbrellas and waterproof jackets) walking from Queen Street down to King, and then sloshed home after buying some shelves and lamps at InDesign.

The reason we were out in the first place was to have brunch with CBGB and parents-of-CB at Barrio, which was very tasty, and now we’re back just in time to watch Canada/Russia play for the gold medal. After that we’ll continue to clean & rearrange the condo as we started doing last night, which I like to do…change is as good as a rest and all that. If I can just make it the rest of the day without going back out into the rain I’ll be a happy man.

[tags]indesign, barrio, iihf world hockey championships[/tags]

Sunny! Breezy! Pleasant!

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Nice day so far. We slept in until about 10:00 (following yet another delicious, spur-of-the-moment dinner at Fieramosca last night), had a bit of breakfast and watched last night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica (gripping! exciting! sing-songy!) on the couch. The morning’s rain cleared off shortly after that, and off we went.

And whooooooeee, is it ever nice out there. Sunny and warm, but with a nice breeze too. We had lunch on the patio at the Jason George (well; I had lunch; Nellie’d already eaten her leftover pasta) and it almost got a little too warm. Also: when is smoking going to be banned on patios in Toronto? Whenever it is, it can’t come soon enough.

After lunch we walked along Front Street to Staples to pick up a filing cabinet (the one we ordered earlier in the week having been canceled for lack of stock). We checked out the eee PC laptop (tiny! adorable! sufficient!) that I want to get, but didn’t buy one, just getting a small desk/cabinet combo for Nellie. We brought that home and went back out to enjoy the day a bit more. Now Nellie’s happily putting together her new furniture and looking forward to dinner. See, I made the mistake of reading out the new beers on tap at C’est What (courtesy of Bartowel news) and once she heard “Church-Key Cranberry Wheat” her mind was made up.

[tags]fieramosca, battlestar galactica, jason george, staples, eee pc, c’est what, bartowel, church key cranberry wheat[/tags]

My July has a theme

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I settled on a topic for my term paper, and it’s been approved. I landed on “How eliminating organizational barriers around IT will benefit [my company]’s strategy and operational efficiency.” Basically, how to spur innovation and shrink product development by removing the artificial barrier between the “business” and “technology” parts of big organizations.

I’ve started to grab some articles related to it and stick them in del.icio.us, but I won’t work on it for a while. Basically I’ve set aside the whole month of July, right after we get back from the Rockies, to work on it.

Goddamn, I’m going to enjoy finishing this thing.

[tags]mba, term paper[/tags]

Miscellany

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Wondering what the whole subprime mortgage crisis is about? This American Life does a great job of explaining it in a 60-minute podcast. [via Brijit]

From the CBC: Einstein letter dismissing God sells for $330,000 US. This letter was initially expected to fetch between $12,000 and $16,000. Apparently Atheists have some disposable cash. [duh…see yesterday’s post]

West Virginia…I don’t even know what to say here. Watch this clip (or this clip if you’re in the US). The insanity starts around the 2:30 mark.

[tags]this american life, subprime mortgage crisis, einstein letter, west virginia primary, racism[/tags]

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]