I rarely get headaches, but today I've got one. I stayed up late last night to watch the Amazing Race two-hour special episode (Rob, I realize you are in a race but you could have at least stopped and asked if everyone is ok! You idjit.) and went to bed an hour later than usual.
To make matters worse I had a very unpleasant meeting this morning, and came back into work to face three phone messages, 6 emails, and a horde of idiots. Grrrrrr.
Somehow, someway, this has got to be Andrew's fault.
I don't mean to scare you but there is something you should know. Pay attention now.
Kids know about sex younger and younger every year.
Kids as young as 10 years old are participating in sexual acts such as oral sex.
The information these kids may have could be incorrect, putting them at risk for STDs as well as emotional distress. We need to educate and prepare our children so they have a better chance at making the right decisions. Ignoring the facts or trying to protect them only makes things worse.
For example, from Canoe:
Questions raised about modern sex-ed
FREDERICTON (CP) -- A new sex education program in New Brunswick, which includes such topics as masturbation, orgasm and oral sex, has raised new questions about the place of the birds and the bees in the modern classroom.
A growing number of parents are demanding removal of the new curriculum.
Talking about these subjects is important. Ignoring them is dangerous.
"This curriculum is an assault on the children of New Brunswick," says Dr. Carolyn Barry, a physician in the Fredericton area and mother of six children.
"Children are 10 and 11 when they start this program in Grade 6, and they are being presented with concepts of oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, oral-anal sex. It absolutely contravenes our community standards."
In Grade 6 kids are already starting to experiment. They should be prepared with information so they know the consequences of what they are doing.
Barry and other parents who have expressed their outrage at public meetings around the province say the new sex-ed curriculum will create a more sexually permissive, anything-goes society.
"It will change the culture of New Brunswick," she says.
Cultures change all the time, and our society creates a sexually permissive, anything-goes atmosphere. Watch TV lately? Kids need to know the facts to go along with the visual and audio suggestiveness.
Some parents say they want a program that talks more about abstinence.
Maybe these parents should talk more about abstinence at home with their kids. Schools teach information, parents and families should teach morals.
Also, concerns were raised about the adequacy of sex-ed programs in Prince Edward Island schools following the recent trial of a male high school athlete who was given oral sex by 12- and 13-year-old girls.
The trial revealed the girls were part of a group of middle school students who routinely performed oral sex on high school boys, most of them elite athletes.
"It's everywhere," one of the girls testified in court. "It's not really a big deal. It's just casual."
Sandra Byers, chairwoman of the Psychology Department at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, says incidents like the child oral sex ring in P.E.I. should set off alarms in schools and homes.
She says children in Grades 6, 7 and 8 are not only talking about sex, they're starting to experiment.
"We do not have a choice between kids having no information and correct information," she says. "The choice is between them having incorrect information and correct information."
Byers says the programs have to be explicit and detailed, or kids will think activities like oral sex and anal sex do not meet the criteria for "real sex."
"If we are not explicit about those behaviours, I fear that students will make the assumption there is no risk with those behaviours," Byers says.
Emphasis mine. Our children are not growing up in the world we grew up in. Wake up and smell the coffee people, and make sure your children are prepared and equipped to make the right choices.
I have successfully manoeuvred the company around another crisis! I expect accolades and monetary rewards will quickly be coming my way!
*waits*
*looks around*
Sigh. Another depressing day in Realityville.
I was raised in a mostly relapsed Catholic home so when I married into an Evangelical Christian family it was definitely a different world for me. Over the years I have had opportunity to look at issues from a different perspective that is often misunderstood or portrayed poorly in mainstream media.
To me, the foundation of the Christian belief is not the Bible but rather the people teaching from the Bible are divinely inspired, guided by the hand of God, led by the Holy Spirit. Every position on issues taken by the Christian is based on this faith that they are being led by God through his preachers and church leaders. This has a two fold effect: internally there is not much room for debate and dissension, and externally "everyone else" is not being led by God at best or being led by Satan at worst.
When faced by a secular community (atheists, agnostics) who wish to keep religion out of public schools and government, the Christian community sees it not as keeping church and state separated but instead sees it as a religion versus religion struggle (egged on by their leaders) and in this context empowers them to fight on as they believe wholeheartedly that they are the side of "good" against the agents of "evil" (knowingly or not). They cannot morally back down from this struggle because to do so would be to let evil win and no good person would willingly let such a thing happen.
This differing frame of context between the secular and the religious will ensure continued conflict for a long time, and I believe it is not out of the question that United States will become more of a theocracy in the future as the religious side gains strength in the struggle. In the U.S. science and secularism are under seige and I hope Canada can avoid the same fate.
Read this:
I was remiss before, but it's worth quoting the salient parts of this Tyler Cowen post: The purpose of our blogging is to circulate ideas that are new, or at least new to us and perhaps to you. But every...
Let's re-iterate: "Torture is morally wrong".
Got that yet?
I was out of the office this morning and came back to the busiest day this week. Egads. I've got a busy weekend planned too. Tomorrow we are going to the In-Laws for Easter dinner, Saturday to my parent's place for Easter dinner, and then back home. Sunday we leave again to go to Kim's godchild's birthday party.
By Monday I should be ready to rest. Except Monday is usually my busiest work day. Sigh.
I am continuing my reading into Intro to Moral Philosophy and have reached the chapter on Utilitarianism. Reading through it I promptly started nodding my head and thought, "Yes, that sounds a lot like me." I was particularly familiar with Act Utilitarianism and I suspect that I fall into that category.
That being said, I haven't gotten to the next and later chapters about other moral philosophies so it is quiet possible that I fall into another category. But right now I would say that I'm an Act Utilitarian.
A thought has occurred to me that I might change my philosophy after reading about other ones, so I'll be sure to keep you all posted.
National Geographic: Hogzilla Exists
ALAPAHA, Ga. (AP) - A team of National Geographic experts has confirmed south Georgia's monster hog, known to locals as Hogzilla, was indeed real - and really, really big.
They also noted the super swine didn't quite live up to the 450-kilogram, four-metre hype generated when Hogzilla was caught on a farm last summer and photographed hanging from a backhoe.
Donning biohazard suits to exhume the behemoth's smelly remains, the experts estimated Hogzilla was probably only 2.2 to 2.4 metres long, and weighed about 350 kilograms.
(Via Canoe)
That's a big freaking pig.
Over at Voice in the Wilderness:
Billmon shows how David Horowitz is bringing to America all the wonderful benefits of Mao's Cultural Revolution.
A lot of things happening in America concern me right now. The attack on the faculties of American universities is another such issue, and while its easy to take anything in bits and pieces and compare it to something else and make them look closely related when in fact they are hardly near the same, I still get a chill up my spine about what the future holds for our friends south of the border.
I've followed the Terri Schiavo case in the U.S. with mild curiosity and thought about the issues involved. On one hand, I can understand the desire for people to want to die with dignity and the desire of her husband to put what is left of Terri out of her misery. At the same time I can understand why the parents want to keep her alive as long as possible regardless of what chances the doctors says she has. Personally, I believe that we never have the right to end the life of another but that if they choose death with a clear mind than we should grant that wish. We should never end a life because it has become inconvenient to us or we would not want "to live like that". That seems shallow and selfish. If someone can no longer communicate their wishes to us then we are obliged to act on the safe side and assume they want to live.
But that's not why I'm posting. Regardless of what I feel the fact is that Terri's husband has gone through the courts and received approval to act as he feels is necessary even though it is against the wishes of her parents. He has acted in a lawful manner and one assumes he is acting in good faith.
However, one has to question what the Congress and President are doing in this debate, passing resolutions all willy-nilly to block the law of the land. This to me is disturbing as it basically says that following the laws and the courts is not good enough if you are doing something that they do not agree with. That's dictatorship, not democracy.
And that's scary.
It was a quiet weekend in Carleton Place for Kim and I. A bit of a break from the usual hustle and bustle of the weekends and we enjoyed it. We watched movies on Friday night; Alfie which sucked donkey balls in my ever-so-humble opinion, and Flight of the Phoenix which was mildly entertaining but only when compared to the former.
Saturday night Kim and I broke out Lord of the Rings Risk and played it using basic Risk rules. Kim won, but my male ego insists I add "because I let her." Its my blog and I'll say what I want to. Sunday afternoon the Father in law came up for a visit since the Mother in law was visiting family in Belleville all weekend. We had a quiet visit with him and went out to dinner at Swiss Chalet. I overate by ordering chicken and rib combo but it was sooooo worth it. Up until this morning's weigh in of course. Ouch.
Overall I'm still losing weight, down to 212.5 lbs this morning. I was down to 211.5 lbs in the middle of last week, but the weekend was not kind to my efforts. Nine weeks to go to my anniversary and 12.5 lbs to go until my goal of 200 lbs by then. I'm going to have to step up the exercise and get moving to hit that target. No more late Sunday meals! Of course, this coming holiday weekend is going to be tough. I better stock up on veggies and C2.
At Pharyngula I hear this horror story:
No, that's not a science museum
Imax theaters in science museums are rejecting films that mention evolution.
Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.
*stunned silence*
You've. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me.
New plan: let's all go protest at a local Church that they shouldn't be allowed to propagate lies about the age of the Earth. See if we can get them change their preachings inside the Church. Yeah, that'll fly.... like a cement pig.
I've said before that I want religion out of public schools, right? Well, add public Science Museums to that list.
Yesterday was quiet.
Too quiet.
I suspect Monday will be hell in that case.
My manager has been on vacation all this week, so while things were crazy early on in the week they seemed to have settled down yesterday and so far today. Which means he's going to come back rested and eager to go on a tear and I'm often first on his line of sight. Or is that path of destruction?
Ah well, I'll prepare as best I can and enjoy the quiet that remains.
UPDATE: No sooner had I posted that the world came crashing in. All the work earlier in the week had failed utterly and made me look like a big honking fool. Sigh.
Restating my Views on Pollution and Global Warming
My views on pollution and global warming obviously need restating. I took an off-the-cuff pot shot at the science of global warming the other day, and since then I've received some questioning comments from Declan, and a snarky email from someone who was none-to-impressed with my stance.
While I differ from Andrew's position in that I think humans are contributing to Global Warming (although I'm undecided about the amount of impact), I think this post is an excellent read and that he holds a valid position.
Let's work on getting pollution and the definitive impacts of human kind under control.
From Canoe:
Senate Approves Alaska Oil Drilling
WASHINGTON (AP) - Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President George W. Bush.
I'm opposed to drilling in the refuge, I think we should be working harder to improve conservation of oil instead of drilling for more of it in environmentally sensitive areas. This crap about not being disruptive to wildlife? Yeah right, human beings have proven so adept at that so far. (Please note: sarcasm intended).
We're in the 21st century! Where's my (affordable) electric cars and solar-powered homes? They should be the rule by now, not the exception.
(Hat Tip: Murky View)
I used my pre-taxed income, and included my bonus. Without my bonus I'm down to 185,565,218 richest person. My wife, bless her heart, is 802,173,351 richest person. I feel like I'm slumming it! Darn gold-diggers.
I've been sitting on this post for a long time because its very personal and strikes to the core of my being. But I think its important and should be discussed.
You do not know the meaning of the word addiction until you have seen what it looks like in the face of a loved one. You do not know the horror that can be visited upon a family when something like alcohol takes over until you have seen it up close and personal.
Growing up my maternal grandparents became alcoholics and for about a decade or more their addiction caused untold heartache and pain among my parents and uncles and aunts. When drunk my grandparents became different people, sometimes overly friendly, other times mean and hateful. My family tried interventions, confrontations, threats, nothing would work. They would get on the wagon for a bit and fall back off.
Part of their problem was that they were both retired and bored. Living in the country, no close friends nearby, it was easy to slip into the booze to make the day go by faster. The farm was paid for, so they had disposable income to drive into town, stop at the LCBO, pick up a mickey, and down it in the afternoon. I remember getting off the bus after school and walking up the long driveway thinking to myself, "Please, please don't be drunk today. And if they are drunk, please, please, PLEASE be asleep!" They never abused me or anything, but when drunk they tended to get very emotional and wanted hugs to make them feel that I loved them. But they frightened me with their slurring voices and angry tones with each other and I hated being around them when they were drunk. I loved them to death when they were sober, but they were different scary people when drunk.
They would hide bottles of booze from the rest of the family. One time I saw where my grandpa hid one of his bottles and I poured it out when he wasn't looking. He was mad at me but I didn't regret it. As a ten year old I came to hate alcohol and the stores that sold it. I fantasized about blowing them all up across Ontario so my grandparent's couldn't get anymore. When I turned 17 my parent's offered me some drink at a party saying that they preferred I started learning how to drink responsibly when they were around. I refused to touch the stuff, still don't to this day. No beer, no liquor, not for me. Fucking stuff ruined a good part of my childhood, no way was I going to give it the satisfaction.
Eventually my grandparents got too old to drive into town very often. Reliant on others for transportation they couldn't make the booze runs whenever they wanted and the torture died down, the family recovered, and the last decade of my grandparent's life was one of happiness and peace.
So, the next time you see a TV show or movie depicting an alcoholic and how they suddenly decide to become sober, symbolically pouring the last of the booze out, let me tell you that life is not like that. Its a pale shadow of the years of pain leading to that moment and that the pouring of the booze is never the first step to recovery. Its the first step toward maybe having a hope of a recovery years down the road. Once you have seen the devil of addiction looking out from the face of someone you love, then you will understand. I hope you never have to experience that moment.
Netscape browser attempts a comeback
By ANICK JESDANUNNEW YORK (AP) -- The once-mighty Netscape browser is attempting a comeback.
How, you ask? Simple. By combining the best elements of its two leading rivals.
Netscape is out with a test release of version 8.0, and the new browser is nothing like its recent predecessors, which were mostly about fixing bugs and playing catch-up.
I used Netscape before it fell behind IE and stopped being a reasonable choice, so I fondly read this article and gave them a silent "Go get 'em!". But I'm a Firefox man now. You should be too.
Via Voice in the Wilderness:
The pieces have been quietly falling into place for some time now, and with the pending release of a report prepared by a trinational commission which urges the creation of a common security perimeter and unified trading bloc around North America.
Read the whole thing.
From Jay Currie:
Looking to Form
[...]The great slug of the Liberal Party will simply ooze into power on momentum and the sheer idiocy of Ontario voters (and more than a few dummies out here.)[...]
Two things:
1) More people voted conservative in Ontario last federal election than there are people in Alberta. (I know Jay is not in Alberta)
2) Maybe Ontario voters collectively were right. Ever since the election the Conservatives have not shown themselves to be all that ready for power yet, in my opinion.
3)Labelling Ontario voters as "idiots" is hardly helpful to your cause. They voted mostly for Liberals for many different reasons. Find the reasons and address them, don't dismiss them as stupid or you simply confirm what many Ontarian's suspect: those in the west care only about the issues of the west.
(Yes, I know Ontarians have been guilty of political navel-gazing in the past or even today. But if you want to build a nation-wide coalition, you don't tell the biggest part of that coalition that their concerns are second rate or unimportant.)
We had the kids up for the weekend (3 kids, aged 7, 6, and 5) and went to Disney On Ice on Saturday. The kids had a good time and I admit it was very visually entertaining but there was a lot of signing and dancing and not much in the way of stories or skits which is my preference. But hey, it wasn't for my benefit that we went.
Also on Saturday we went and bought 3 dwarf hamsters for Kim's daycare playroom. Damn if the things aren't cute as all that. The lizards immediately launched a protest against warmblooded housepets, led as usual by the agitator Willow. Fortunately they were pacified by the appearance of new crickets and all was well again. As for the hamsters, they all look identical (3 sisters) so we called them Mocha, Mocha, and Mocha. I figured it was better to call them all the same thing than to piss them off by calling them the wrong name.
Sunday was a lazy around the house day with the kids, playing some games and just generally relaxing. Both Kim and I did not sleep well so it was nice to not have to go anywhere.
Monday was hell at work for both me and Kim. The kids mother called late Sunday saying she couldn't pick them up and if it was ok for them to stay another night, so Kim had the three kids and 2 daycare kids all day! She loves them but it was crazy. My work a few people are off due to March Break and the rest left in control are all mad. Once again management has agreed to a delivery date with the customers without checking with the developers and their schedules. So once again work will be pushed aside in order to do something rushed so we will be behind our regular schedules. Freaking madness I tell you.
Last night the kids were gone and both Kim and I needed time to decompress. She watched 3 hours of TV while I played three hours of Rome: Total War (god, that game rocks!).
Have you seen the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit magazine last month? They had a section with their models sporting bodypaint "swimsuits". That's right, it looks like she's wearing a swimsuit but really she's buck naked, strategically positioned so the legs obscure the groin. From a distance these ladies look like they are wearing the usual barely-there bikinis but in reality its just paint.
Whatever. The SI annual swimsuit issue has been like soft porn for years so this side-step is hardly all that surprising. To me, its not a big deal. However, I raise my eyebrows at the wisdom of one co-worker who decided to put a SI swimsuit calendar on his wall of those body-paint swimsuit models. Look, your office or not buddy, those are really naked breasts and anyone who looks closely enough will realize that. (As an aside, I think that regular swimsuit calendars or screensavers are unacceptable in a professional work environment.)
I wonder if it'll make it through the whole year or if he'll be asked to take it down.
Fan of Sun Penalized By Teacher by Brodie Fenlon
The Sun won't shine at a private Catholic school in King City, Ontario, where a Grade 10 student was docked 22% off her history assignment for using clippings from this newspaper -- deemed "non-reputable" by her teacher. Jessica Bolzicco, 16, an honour roll student with an 87% grade average at St. Thomas of Villanova College, said her teacher cut the grade on her current affairs assignment from an 87% to a 65% because she used the Toronto Sun as her source. Students were asked to bring in three clippings from "newspapers of repute."
[snip]
Principal Paul Paradiso admitted the Sun has a good reputation for news coverage but fails from a "moral point of view" due to its SUNshine Girl and Boy. (The SUNshine Boy has not appeared in the paper since last September.)
"If a kid came in with an article from Playboy or something like that, we would be questioning that as well," he said, noting teachers have a right to limit students' sources.
Look, I know people don't take the Sun newspapers as seriously as others like the Grope and Flail and National Bore but this is just moronic. The Sun chain has a certain editorial bent that many find disagreeable but to label it "non-reputable" is pretty pathetic and it is going too far when the teacher choose to dock the student's assignment because of the teacher's personal opinion.
Catholic School teacher, whoever you are, congrats: you are the Moron of the Week.
The more powerful the Christian right gets in the world the more scared I get. From Timmy the G at Voice in the Wilderness:
The great journalist Bill Moyers delivers a riveting and disturbing article in the New York Review of Books on the doomsday beliefs of large sect of U.S. fundamentalist Christians and that group's growing influence in the Bush administration.
[snip]
Scherer came upon a high school history book, America's Providential History, which is used in fundamentalist circles. Students are told that "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie…that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." The Christian, however, "knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth.... While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people
I've experienced this attitude in my father in law. "Conservation is not required because God gave the world's resources for us to govern and use. We're supposed to cut down all the trees as we see fit."
Ok, now you're scaring me. The U.S. needs a good old fashioned Science Renaissance.
I borrowed an Introduction to Moral Philosophy textbook from Andrew and started reading it last weekend. At first I felt my eyes start to glaze over but then I would think, "Andrew knows this stuff and I don't" and I would become alert again. Competitiveness can be such a useful tool at times.
Now that I'm firmly in the first chapter and starting to get a hang of the terms, I find myself enjoying it a little bit. Its definitely a book you have to think about while you read. The most interesting part so far was the section on Moral Disagreements where an author proposed that disagreements or moral positions could not be resolved because we had no measuring stick of comparing end results of the positions. (I apologize in advance for mangling the concepts. This stuff is very foreign to my existence and experience.)
I gave me a new insight into why our politics often seems so hopeless at finding consensus, or rather it put into words what I subconsciously suspected: people disagree because they live in different worlds (morally relatively speaking).
Anyway, its all far more in depth and intense than what I was expecting, but at least I'm learning something.
Must be quiz and test day. Here's a Personality Disorder Test (hat tip: Pharynugla)
Disorder | Rating
Paranoid: Low
Schizoid: Low
Schizotypal: Moderate
Antisocial: Low
Borderline: Low
Histrionic: High
Narcissistic: Moderate
Avoidant: Moderate
Dependent: Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive: Moderate
URL of the test: http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv
Just to give you an idea how professional the test is, one question was "Are you obsessive-compulsive? Yes/No". I wanted to click on a button that said, "you tell me!" LOL
Anyway, I mostly agree with the results, although I prefer "passionate" to "histrionic".
(Thanks to Ben through Andrew for the test.) You scored 93% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 66% Expert! Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok CupidYou have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.
What do you get when you combine a group of American college students, a sinkhole, rabid armadillos, sporadic gunfire and giant Africanized cockroaches? Well, it is not the latest B-horror movie that goes straight to DVD. It turns out to be one of the most bizarre roommate issues to occur at Texas A&M University.
(Hat tip Pharyngula)
Beijing turns up heat By Eric Margolis
But this latest threat reflects a sharp rise in nationalist feeling among Chinese -- and for the first time, China's growing military power gives it the capability to seriously threaten Taiwan.
China is deploying a fleet of new landing craft for a cross-strait invasion of Taiwan. It's surface and submarine forces have been significantly strengthened.
China's air force is flying potent Russian Sukhoi-27 attack aircraft with air refuelling capability, and introducing new F8 fighters using advanced technology.
The fact that countries like Canada and the United States have never openly endorsed full independence for the democratic nation of Taiwan because it did not want to offend the dictatorship of China is a huge sore spot for me. Although I take everything Mr. Margolis says with a large grain of salt, if he is even half correct than I am deeply disturbed that Taiwan's sovereignty is being threatened and that an invasion may occur.
This is the place where the U.S. military should be ready to fight and defend, not some oil-laden country in the Mideast.
I'm a big fan of Shogun: Total War and the sequel Medieval: Total War so when I saw Rome: Total War come out recently I asked for it for my birthday. I loaded it into my computer on the weekend and I was blow away. It has the same overall concept of the previous two games but with massive interface and game play improvements. I've only dabbled in the tutorial for a few hours but already I'm thinking this game is my new all-time favourite.
I kept thinking, "This is the game Masters of Orion III should have been."
This summer I've made plans with Andrew to start playing tennis once a week to help get in shape as part of the weight loss. I grew up playing a lot of tennis and really enjoyed it. The past few years I've been too out of shape to play without risking heart attack or heat stroke but since I've lost a total of 40 pounds (as of today, booya!) I figured it was perfect time to pick up the sport I love so much.
I've been getting excited since March rolled around (despite the constant snowing, freaking country) and Saturday night I decided to stretch while waiting for Kim to get ready for bed.
Big mistake.
Apparently muscles not used in centuries don't like a sudden light stretch because Sunday I wasn't walking. In fact I was more waddling as the muscles of my inner thighs communicated what they thought to me by being very sore and stiff. I suddenly felt very old and out of shape, and hence I returned with bravado:
"Well you know what thighs? Get used to it!"
Nothing like threatening body parts to get your week started.
Anyway, I was feeling very proactive on the exercise front with my 2 minute stretching routine before bed when Andrew lays this one on me: "I'm going to resume 1hr runs with the dog every evening once it thaws. I did that for a month in the fall[.]"
Damn him! He's planning to escalate the Get-Body-In-Shape-For-Tennis arms race! I must quickly make provisions to counter this threat because suddenly stretching doesn't seem like enough.
Its easy to see how things like this get out of control.
There is a lot of posting going on around the Canadian blogs about the murders of the RCMP officers. People want to know how this could happen of course, but there are a lot of people using this event to say "See? This validates my argument!" in relation to a horde of issues like marijuana decriminalization, gun registries, RCMP effectiveness, etc.
There will be time for debate and action later.
With the scanty details we have so far doing anything besides asking questions and mourning for those lost is pointless and wasteful. And as a result, disrespectful.
So let's have everyone wait and see what the facts and circumstances were before we use this for a political purpose.
Its a horrible tragedy that those four RCMP officers were killed yesterday. My heart goes out to their families.
After a good night's sleep my manager returned to normal yesterday and had a reasonable discussion with me and others over the events of Tuesday. The end result is that I've been given the task of "cat herding" another team that has been seriously derelict in their duties. In exchange my own duties have been given second priority. Basically, I've been given some power to go along with the responsibility.
For the next month I'm going to be pushing the body hard so to speak, so posting will be erratic. I'll try to make up for it with more evening blogging.
As a side note I reference my "dark days in Toronto" in my last post. I figured this would be a good time to elaborate.
I graduated from Carleton University in the summer of 1998 with a Bachelor of Computer Science degree and 20 months of co-op experience. Unfortunately, around this time the programming language Java was hot and I had no experience with it. In fact, almost all my experience was with a language called Smalltalk that had basically died over the previous year or two while I was finishing up school. I was never an earlier adopter (I'm still not) so I graduated and found myself pretty much obsolete.
I looked for work but found nothing in Ottawa. I expanded my search criteria and found a position that wanted a Smalltalk developer in the north end of Toronto. I took it and my wife and I moved to Barrie where I could commute to Toronto everyday for two and a half years. The first year was easy, but I developed new skills and took on more responsibility and by the second year I was a senior developer in a very small programming shop. I had a lot of tasks per day and a lot of people depending on me at any one moment. Around the end of the second year it literally got to the point where I was ready to have a breakdown because, to put it simply, there was too much to do and it was all "High" priority. They finally started hiring more staff.
But besides working 9 hour days for 5 days a week, part of the darkness of that time came from having no friends or family. We made a couple of friends in Barrie, but for the most part my wife and I were alone. All the people I worked with were about a decade older than I was, and all my friends from school were still back in Ottawa. In the beginning of 2001, I started looking for new work in my old neighbourhood and I was fortunate to get hired quickly. It was the best move of my life despite getting laid off seven months later and going through a very hard time of unemployment.
