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]

"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]