Category: Me

"You'll need a snorkel to breathe underneath the pile of groupies that will sack you."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My wife sent me this link titled How to totally fake being a geek (which I assume she found through some sort of google search that scours the web for any mention of Buffy The Vampire Slayer). I’m glad it’s tongue-in-cheek, ’cause I’d hate to think that knowing Assembler is the ne plus ultra of geekiness. Why? Because I know Assembler. At least, I knew it. At least, a I knew a little bit. When I first moved here my job was mainframe programming; don’t ask me why, ’cause I had no programming experience.

It was tough to learn, since writing Assembler is what I imagine it’s like to talk to a retarded robot, but from then on every other programming language seemed like a treat. The first time I tried COBOL I was ecstatic because it could do, you know, math like a human. It was like when my brothers and I learned to drive; we didn’t learn on a car, or on any automatic…we learned on the 2-ton stick-shift farm truck. Once you can work with that, a Ford Tempo’s a pussycat.

That said, it’s been so long since my foot’s touched a clutch, it’d probably be pretty comical to watch me try.

[tags]geekery, buffy, assembler, cobol[/tags]

How hot is it?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It’s hotter than Satan’s asscrack out there. I’ve only felt humidity like this once before: in New Orleans.

It’s days like this I pine for dear old Nova Scotia. Dear old moderate, damp Nova Scotia.

.:.

So yes, there is a plan underway for us to become vegetarians. We plan to ease into it slowly, over the next few months, and by the new year hopefully we’ll be fully veggie (though Nellie plans to eat fish; I haven’t yet decided whether or not I will) and not sliding down a slope of protein deficiency.

On making these plans, it occurs to me that I will have become, in my father’s eyes, a vegetarian atheist Upper Canadian banker. It remains to be seen whether or not he’ll let me in the house. If he does, I believe it will be just to assert his dominance at cribbage.

[tags]humidity, vegetarianism, cribbage[/tags]

Bacchanalia

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Haven’t…blogged…in…48 hours…must…catch…up…

Friday night five of us went out to a dinner organized by my lovely wife: we two, CBGB and T-Bone. It’s appropriate that T-Bone accompanied us that night; dinner was at The Fifth Grill (formerly just The Fifth, the top-notch Fench restaurant that started the Toronto careers of Didier Leroy and Marc Thuet, among others) and the menu item of choice was steak. We were meant to have a drink on the terrace, but it was blindingly hot outside, so the only place we could find a breeze was the smoking section. This simply was not on, so we took to our table a bit early.

After that, it becomes a blur of meat and wine; I had grilled tiger shrimp to start (others got mushroom ravioli and the tuna ceviche), and I went big on the steak: the 18 oz Delmonico. That’s a ribeye on the bone, and the chef’s opinion was that the bone counted for at least 2 of those ounces, while I would estimate that the fattier cut accounted for at least another ounce of waste, so I justified it to myself as a 15 oz steak. CBGB both got the New York strip, T-Bone got the bison ribeye and Nellie got the Filet Migon; while the flavour of my steak was excellent (thank you marbling!), GB and I had a bit of Nellie’s filet and agreed that the texture was impeccable. We were also allowed a choice of toppings on the steaks (I abstained, but others got scallops, shrimp and foie gras) and sauces (we had one of pretty much everything, but my favourite was the brandy peppercorn).

Did I mention our plan to becomes vegetarians?

Anyway, dessert was next; we took our time, imploring our stomachs to digest faster and make some room. CB and Nellie split a cheese plate, while T-Bone and I split the roasted hazelnut dacquoise with praline ice cream (GB got one for himself; he still had room for it, having found the willpower to stop eating his steak). It was good, but not great; however, they had written — very expertly, I might add — “Happy Birthday” on the plate in chocolate (it’s my birthday today, and was T-Bone’s birthday yesterday) and our server somehow snuck up the piano player and had him sing to us.

After all that food, I was ready for hibernation, so we took the back elevator down to the street…which was filled to overflowing with club-goers. We said our goodbyes and jumped on the subway.

.:.

Yesterday was a bit more low-key: CBGB came by post-karate and we popped over to the patio at The Pilot; thankfully the beer was cold, ’cause even in the shade it was microwave-hot. We sweated a while, bought some cookies from The Dessert Lady, got CB an icy drink from Starbucks and walked over to the Cumberland Theatre where we watched An Inconvenient Truth (imdb | rotten tomatoes). It’s less a movie or documentary, and more a very well-done Powerpoint presentation; I consider myself reasonably well-informed about the environment, so there wasn’t too much new for me, but Gore did manage to present it in a very compelling way. Hopefully a few folks will see it for whom it’s news.

After the movie we all lounged around our place for a bit before calling the Biryani House (the small one around the corner, not the fancy one at Wellesley) for some Indian food, and scarfed it down as we watched a few episodes of Arrested Development. It was a fun day with them. As Nellie and I were pretty wiped we just watched a movie — Derailed (imdb | rotten tomatoes) — after they left and fell asleep.

.:.

Speaking of food: I’m liking the new Chowhound design…especially the RSS feed for Ontario (which seems to mostly be Toronto)

.:.

Today — my actual birthday — been a nice one as well. Nellie took me to brunch on the patio at The Duke, bought me some gifts and is now busy in the kitchen making me a cake. How good is my life? 😀

[tags]fifth grill, didier, thuet, dessert lady, an inconvenient truth, biryani house, arrested development, chowhound, kickass wife[/tags]

Man, that would be the easiest lawn in the world to mow…

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Via Yes But No But Yes: the British (actors who starred in The Office) are coming (to the US version…for an episode…some time next season).

.:.

I find this guy in a lawn-filled wheel both amusing and nostalgic (as you can see straight down Spring Garden Road in Halifax in the picture). Cool social commentary, and a shout-out (yeah, I said “shout-out”) to my alma mater too.

.:.

Finally, Toronto Life has RSS feeds (most importantly for their food and wine blogs). I bitched about the lack of feeds back in May, but someone from TL informed me via the comments section that the feeds would soon appear…et voila, here they are.

[tags]the office, grass-lined wheel, dalhousie, halifax, toronto life[/tags]

Vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

What’s a humid Sunday after a night of fitful sleep good for? Movies! We watched two yesterday:

The Squid And The Whale (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was good, but I don’t know if it was 94%-on-Rotten-Tomatoes good. It was actually one of those rare movies that I wish was longer; they could’ve spent another 15-20 minutes pushing through those stories and I wouldn’t have minded. There’s no doubt about it: those parents screwed those kids up in ways that only two highly-educated neurotic egotists could.

Lord Of War (imdb | rotten tomatoes) seemed to have a weird theatrical release; it got almost no advance marketing but still did $24 million on what seemed to me like just a few screens, but that still seemed odd given the presence of Nicholas Cage in the lead role. I liked the movie, but it never quite seemed to make me feel quite as bad as I think Andrew Niccol wanted me to. He hit the macro discomfort level (pointing out that most arms dealing is done by the five permanent members of the UN security council), but didn’t effectively hit the micro level: no one I cared about really seemed to experience any personal loss because of their actions. Still, it’s worth watching.

.:.

More and more at work I’ve become interested in marketing…of sorts. I still view traditional marketing as this morbid evil, but my job has become less about using technology to deliver our company’s services and more about reinterpreting what those services should be; technology is simply becoming the standard method of delivery. Attending the mesh conference, reading Cluetrain, taking that recent marketing course (and shaking my head with disgust through nearly the whole thing), regular conversations with my boss (who also gets it), daily articles showing up in my feed reader about social marketing, blogs, wikis, podcasts, pinko marketing…and on and on. I feel like there’s real change to be had here, but I never fancied myself a marketing kind of guy. I was a guy who could straddle the line between technology and business — having decent background in both — but marketing never seemed to be a real (or honorable) aspect of business.

But is marketing changing? Or is the change that’s coming something bigger than marketing, something big enough to fundamentally change the way companies operate? Well…probably not, but things could get more interesting as they get more transparent, but I sometimes find myself wanting to lead that change.

I just don’t know if I could stand the hypocrisy. God…next I could be saying that I want to go into sales…

[tags]squid and the whale, lord of war, social marketing, cluetrain, pinko marketing[/tags]

Je suis fatigue.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My wife just told me I haven’t been posting much lately. I guess it’s ’cause I’m busy. And tired. I can tell the tired bit ’cause this morning, when she got up to go to the gym, I didn’t wake up at all. Normally I’m a very light sleeper and wake up at the slightest bit of noise, but this morning I was dead to the world — slept through her alarm, through her getting ready, through the cats being pains in the ass…everything. That tells me that I must be exhausted, and no wonder; usually after a course I take the weekend (if not the entire next week) to recuperate, but this time I had the laptop on from morning to night working on the paper that’s due Thursday. That’s almost done, but I’ve already started reading the next textbook because of how heavy the workload looks, so I haven’t had any break.
That’s to say nothing of trying to catch up on work after a week away.

I don’t mean to whine. Part of me kind of relishes tough situations like this, but I know that I’m no longer able to propel myself along on caffeine with no sleep for weeks on end like I could when I was at Delano. I just need a little rest. Friday evening can’t get here fast enough.

28.04%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Managed to squeeze in a little basketball after dinner. Just shooting around, all alone in the gym. No better way to relax.

Now, to do some work before heading over to the bar for the 3rd period of the hockey game. Go Oilers!!

[tags]mba, basketball, stanley cup finals, oilers, hurricanes[/tags]

If I had a band I'd call them The Supercells. Except that name's already kinda taken.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I have an unhealthy fascination with tornadoes. Actually, I’m interested in any disaster, but especially natural disasters, and especially especially tornadoes & thunderstorms. One of my favourite things as a kid was to watch storms roll off the bay and up the flats toward our farm…and that smell that would be in the air right before the rain started…man. Good times.

Anyway, that’s why I can tolerate shit movies like Twister and why I can spend hours watching cheesy TV shows like Stormchasers if I come across them on a Sunday afternoon. And it’s why pictures like these and these (found at c|net) make me drool.

Anybody for a trip to Kansas?

.:.

$5,000 is too much to pay for a personal scooter, even something as bitchin’ as a Segway, but with financing available…hmm…

.:.

The new Walkmen disc, “A Hundred Miles Off”, isn’t bad, but not great either. It’s certainly no Bows + Arrows, which was the second best album released in 2004. So sez I.

[tags]tornadoes, stormchasers, segway, walkmen, hundred miles off[/tags]