Finally

Most of my attention over the last couple of months was directed at completing the recording of our second CD – In the Clouds by the Big Sky Gliders. There is nothing like a deadline to focus your attention and when the fellow who records us announced he was moving to the coast, it was all hands on deck to finish all the recording and mixing. It all seems a little anti-climatic now, but we had a couple of weeks of long sessions to complete everything. But it is done – over a year from to start to finish and around 100 hours of actual studio time to get the finished product.

The new recording by the Big Sky Gliders

We don’t have the physical copies yet as I am still working to complete the artwork, but you can listen to the new recording at www.bigskygliders.bandcamp.com.

Have a listen and we hope you enjoy the fruits of our labours.

Design Flaw

There is an informal bocce league at my workplace. Teams play most lunch hours. The shot below is two of my colleagues carrying their bocce set. It has wheels but they fell off with such regularity, it was easier for two people to just carry the entire rig. Not exactly the intended use.

Carrying the bocce balls so the wheels on the cart don’t fall off.

Intuitive … not

One of the interesting things about working in a large organization – be it industry, government or academia – is the absurdities you run across from time to time.

I have had to go into my benefits plan to change one of the categories and halfway through the process was greeted by this screen:

 

It took me a second to read the screen and realize what it said. Since obviously the process was not going well, I phoned our benefits people for help. We walked through the screens together and when we got to the ‘cancel’ screen, I asked about it. The reply was, “oh yes, you are not the first person to comment”. However, it would appear the magic number of people commenting has not been reached, so the screen shall remain. Cue the face palm.

The scariest thought … this makes sense to someone!

Complements

I try to offer a positive response when I receive good service. It’s funny how sometimes even a complement can be misconstrued.

A couple of years ago, my daughter’s laptop developed an issue and had to be sent away for a warranty repair. The computer company (starts with H, ends with P) was very accommodating. There was no argument about the issue. They sent us a prepaid box to pack the laptop in and gave us instructions on mailing through UPS. I took the box to our nearest UPS depot around noon on a Monday. The repair shop was in North Bay, Ontario (pretty well across the country) and I expected to see the computer back in a week or so.

Much to our surprise, the repaired computer arrived back at the house on Wednesday morning – it hadn’t been gone more than 48 hours! I was impressed with the level of service so I went on to the company website to look for a feedback form. I found something that said, “Talk to the President”, so I filled out the form and thanked them for the great service.

A couple of days later I got a phone call from HP Customer Service. They were following up on my feedback – the first thing the person on the phone asked; “was your concern dealt with appropriately?” I told the person that I didn’t have a problem – I just wanted to tell them that I really appreciated the prompt service and they should be congratulated. There was a silence and then the person said, “Oh sorry, we don’t get many complements – we just wanted to be sure there wasn’t a problem”. Hmmm.

Last month, we went out to a family restaurant for breakfast since we had managed to get some of the far flung members of the family together. The food was good and when the server came by to remove the plates, she asked how everything was.  I replied that I thought the meal was great and the omelette was particularly good. She looked at me and in a surprised voice said “Really!?!”

This was not exactly the response I had anticipated and I said that she sounded surprised. She replied that she had never had an omelette and then went about packing up the rest of our dishes. After she left, that was worthy of a face palm. She should probably never consider a career in marketing.

Maybe this world would be a little better off if people showed appreciation for the extraordinary instead of expecting that as the norm.

Aging

As in the previous post, I seem to be reflecting on aging a bit these days. I was watching the documentary, “Monty Python – Almost the Truth”, and Terry Gilliam had a wonderful observation about aging and Monty Python getting back together again. I tried to search for the quote but having failed in my quest, I did find another that I particularly liked. In part, because I have noticed that people my age, especially males, seem to be getting less tolerant as we put on the years. I find it offensive when people share material they find on the internet that is either racist, homophobic, misogynistic, or just plain gross. And it seems to be from people who, in the past, were much more open. It is sad in many ways.

This little recipe for aging is, in my opinion, is something to aspire to as we grow older.

“Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:

Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.

Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples’ affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.

Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.

Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains — they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.

I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn’t agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.

Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint — it is so hard to live with some of them — but a harsh old person is one of the devil’s masterpieces.

Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so.

Amen”
― Margot Benary-Isbert

Age Perception

One of my co-workers celebrated his 30th birthday today. Some of our colleagues decided to highlight the achievement on his whiteboard with the diagram below. It was nice they included me in their calculations – I am on the yellow sticky below the board.

Celebrating my co-worker’s birthday … I am referenced on the yellow sticky below – click to enlarge.

Actually, I thought it was quite funny. Well played.

Close Encounter

The law of averages doesn’t look good for me. The last time I was in a vehicle crash was over 30 years ago. But I came close a couple of days ago.

I was stopped at a light at a downtown intersection. It was a three lane road and I was sitting in the far right lane. There was a semi on my left so I really couldn’t see in that direction. The light turned green for us and I started out. I just caught it in the corner of my eye but from the left a van was running the red. I hit the brakes as hard as I could and stopped. On recollection, the next instant was very calm. There was no fear, no panic – I just remember thinking, “I am going to get hit”. At that point, the van swerved around me and kept going. Even though it probably about 2 seconds, I could tell you that it was a later model, grey Chevy mini-van with a blue handicapped sticker hanging from the mirror. It was a very surreal experience – one that I don’t particularly want to repeat. I guess I just have to keep defying the odds.

As George Carlin used to point out; “Here’s a phrase that apparently the airlines simply made up: near miss. They say that if 2 planes almost collide, it’s a near miss. Bullshit, my friend. It’s a near hit! A collision is a near miss. [WHAM! CRUNCH!] “Look, they nearly missed!” “Yes, but not quite.”

Hibernation

We live in a cold part of the world. And this winter has been a bit colder than normal. We had a warm spell in January – it went above 0C for a few days and that seemed to lull people into a false sense of spring. On Groundhog Day, if there was a groundhog out and about, they did see their shadow. When a friend from eastern Canada asked what the state of the weather was on Groundhog Day, I said it had been cold and sunny. Oh, the groundhog saw his shadow … six more weeks of winter. We wish – six weeks would take us into mid-March – that would be early for us. We’ll take it – thank you very much.

February has been colder than normal. At the winter solstice, we get about seven hours of daylight. I know this is a lot by Arctic standards, but going to work and coming home in the dark is not particularly fun. So with the days getting longer but the weather staying cold, it just doesn’t seem fair. This past weekend was a great example. Woke up Sunday morning to clear, crisp skies with an air temperature around -30 C and for one hour at least, a wind chill of -39 C. For me, this was weather to hunker down indoors.

Which, in a roundabout manner, brings me to the subject of this post. I have an original Kindle (I have just ordered a paperwhite version) and I love it. Yes, I know the arguments about the tactile feel of a real book and I agree that the Kindle isn’t perfect. But it is portable and to be able to get a book anywhere (I have the 3G version) is amazing. So, I spent a lot of the weekend curled up with my latest book on the Kindle with my favourite tunes playing in the background. It is a relaxing way to spend time.

However, a couple of weeks ago I ran across articles in both the New York Times and the Atlantic about studies that show we, as a society, don’t read as much as we used to. While I know we have vast new ways of receiving information, it saddens me to think of not experiencing the pleasure of becoming immersed in a good read. A number of years ago a friend went to India for an extended stay and wrote a journal of his experiences. He called it, ‘Sipping from the Fire Hose’ and I was honoured when he asked me to edit and layout the final copy. It is an apt title and one of the reasons he chose it was that the experiences in India were so foreign and overwhelming that he could not fully comprehend what was happening in real time. It took laying out his thoughts and reflecting on the experiences for him to understand what he had seen. And that is what we seem to be doing on a daily basis with all the information being hurled at us from so many directions. For me, there are times I need to turn down the volume and reflect. It would seem that we are moving away from that paradigm. I am not sure that is a good thing. I see many times in my work where judgments are made without knowing the full context and taking time to consider consequences. Yes, you can have ‘paralysis by analysis’ but jumping to conclusions can be just as bad, if not worse. I don’t know if there is an answer to this, but immersing one’s self in a good read is a way to slow the world down and hopefully reduce some of the stress we place ourselves in. So maybe there was an upside to -30 last weekend.

Monty Python

Humour (and yes, that is the proper spelling) is subjective. I grew up in a household that appreciated dry British humour. In fact, it was my father who suggested we what the first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus after seeing an ad in TV Guide. The first sketch I recall was that of the flying sheep – I was hooked, and so were most of my friends. It was smart, quick, absurd and most of all – silly. There was a regular discussion about the week’s episode and lines of Python dialogue quickly became part of our regular lexicon. When the CBC failed to pick up one of the new series, we dashed off a 500+ name petition – that three of us spent several hours making up the names for.

Not only did we absorb everything Python, the show had some interesting unintended funny moments for us. When the first movie, And Now For Something Completely Different, came out, we went as a group to see it. As most of us had just passed the age where we could legally imbibe, we went for a few (or for some, more than a few) before the movie. We got to the theatre and settled in as the movie started when one of our group loudly announced that he had to go to the bathroom. We told him to go, but then he started to protest saying he would miss part of the movie. In the next instant he had come up with a solution. Movie theatres are sloped so he would just go down the aisle. On reflection, this did not seem to be the most appropriate action and we voiced our disapproval. Nevertheless, he started the process which then required three of us to drag him to the bathroom. All in the name of Python.

The second one I remember is going to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail with another group of friends. For some unknown reason, there was a short film in front of Python about these poor South Sea Islanders who were forced to leave their homes for a good part of the year to find food to feed their families. Absolutely the worst choice for a short before Holy Grail. The audience were laughing at all the serious bits and making snide comments about the plight of these poor people. It would have been a buzzkill of epic proportions if the audience had not been primed for Python. Before the feature started, one of the group offered to go and get snacks for all. We knew he had come back when we heard this loud call of ‘Albatross‘ as he was walking back down the aisle towards us. While he actually didn’t have any albatross, he did manage to sell most of the snacks to other patrons before he reached our seats – which of course necessitated another trip to the concession. Only at a Python flick.

Finally, I was at the university bookstore during my undergraduate years when I spotted a new Monty Python book on the shelves.

The Monty Python Bok

The first giggle was that book was spelled incorrectly. But the cover had dirty fingerprints on it so I started to go through the stock to find a clean one. Only to find that each book had the same fingerprints printed on the cover. Another funny – this is looking good. I took the book up to the front with several other books and gave them to the cashier. The elderly cashier went through each book and entered the price into the cash register until she got to the Python book. She stopped and said this is a library book – you don’t need to pay for this. I hadn’t noticed that there actually was a library card fixed to the inside front page – a library card that listed Sammy Davis Jr. and Margaret Thatcher as people who had borrowed the book.

The ‘library’ card

I thought she was joking so I laughed and said that, no I really did want to pay for it. She smiled back and insisted it was a library book and I didn’t have to pay for it. I think I realized at this point she was serious, so I insisted again that it was not a library book. Afterwards I figured out that the price sticker was white on white (this being before the days of bar codes) and she probably never saw it (you can see the sticker scars on the upper left part of the dust jacket). I tried one more time and again she told me I didn’t have to pay. At this point, the line was getting restless behind me and I figured I had given it three tries, so I agreed and put the book into my bag. It seemed a very appropriate way of acquiring a Python book.

And after all these years, Monty Python still makes me laugh – thanks boys!

A Little Mystery

Hobbits

I have lots of photos. I began shooting when I was about 11 and have been going ever since. I have about 900 on Flickr but there are thousands in boxes waiting to be scanned.

When we were in university in Southern Ontario in the early 70’s, we would go camping as a group on weekends. One of our favourite spots was Sandbanks Provincial Park near Belleville, Ontario. The shot above was taken in 1974 on one of our trips. My friends, Mike and Luke, are pretending to be hobbits – the joke is the vegetation is only about a foot high, but it was like a miniature forest and made for some interesting photo opportunities.

The interesting part is that I uploaded the shot to Flickr in November 2011. For quite a long time, the photo had a few views but nothing spectacular – until recently. Over the last several months, I have added about 400 views and average 4-8 views a day. I have no idea where the link is posted but some folks must like it. I had a similar experience about two years ago when one of my shots from the 1973 Canadian Grand Prix went viral – it was a photo of the first time a safety car had been used in a Grand Prix. The link to that one had been posted on a Turkish Formula 1 blog and in one day, I had over 400 views. Another shot from a trip back east was posted on Reddit and that one took off as well. But the hobbit shot – I have no idea. A friend once likened the Internet to letting something out into the wild – you never know where it will end up!