Strange time of year!

I was at Blue Mountain (a southern Ontario ski resort) this past weekend, and it was kind of strange to look one direction and see people skiing, look another direction see people playing golf, and look a third direction and see people sitting by the pool (I think it was actually open, and people were actually swimming!).

I will say that despite recognizing that the whole ski village thing is contrived and nothing more than poorly veiled marketing... I still found it a nice atmosphere. It probably helps that I had never been to any ski resort before, I could see how it would lose any charm after another visit or two. I guess I'm just highly susceptible to that kind of artificial atmospheric manipulation.

Adverise to me, and I'll buy it!

-KDH

Adam Lew

For those of you who might be interested, Karen had her baby this morning at 7:17 AM, weighing in at 7 lbs 1 oz. Everyone is doing well. Aparently they arrived at the hospital around 6AM, so from the sounds of it, it was a fairly straightforward delivery.

woohoo

-KDH

Ben and Jerry reduce productivity in local businesses

Yesterday, as you may or may not know, Ben and Jerry's (should it be Ben's and Jerry's? or is it "Ben and Jerry"'s?) was giving away free ice cream. By free, I mean that it didn't cost any money, but you did have to line up (which at some points during the day looked like it was a couple hundred people long). A group of about 12 people from my workplace decided to go for some of this "free" ice cream (I followed along out of curiousity, of course, and because I was waiting for a long running script to complete). On the way there, I found myself wondering how much this expedition was going to cost our employer in lost wages.

Using the rough (and perhaps conservative) assumptions that the average salary of the group was about $0.50/minute (about 60K) and guessing that this would take about 40 minutes round trip, I figured it would cost about 12 * 40 * 0.50 = $240. In the end, we got there and decided the line was just too long, so we pretty much just walked back to the office. The round trip took at least 10 minutes, so it still ended up costing the company $60 (with which they could have just bought us a bunch of ice cream to consume in the office.

I know this is fraught with troublesome assumptions such as: some of the people may have stayed later than they normally would to make up the lost time (I don't think that would be the case here), or people will be more productive if they have a break like this (probably true with the 10 minute break, maybe not worth it with a 40 minute break), or even that it wouldn't have taken 40 minutes... maybe not... but probably close.

I'm sure that many of the businesses in the area fell victim to this cut in productivity, all due to Ben and Jerry.

By the way, I made it back before my script had finished running!

-KDH

Generation Gap

The generation gap I refer to is, in this case, a geographical one. Susanna and I have not had parents for the last 3 months (at least not on this continent), but that is all about to end. Susanna's parents get back this evening and my parents get back early this week... there goes our freedom. We'll be back to having curfews and having to do our homework before we go out to play. You know what they say: all good things must come to an end.

Seriously though, it will be nice to have our parents back, and will probably make our next couple weeks fairly busy catching up with them and hearing about their trips and seeing the pictures that go along with them.

Broken String

After a long period of post titles with punctuation marks, my post previous to this one failed to have one. I don't have the heart to go through the logs and see how long the string was.

On the bright side, I now have a string of titles without punctuation marks! Hooray for silver linings.

-KDH

Good-bye Recent Comments

As quickly as they appeared, they are gone. I decided that I liked the template view better for now... so until I figure out how to add stuff within the template framework, or decide to go back to the default and re-add the stuff I've added already, this is it.

-KDH

Hello Recent Comments!

I'd like to officially welcome the recent comments section of the blog. While most you my readers may not care, it is a simple way for me no to lose track of comments made without having to scroll through my whole blog and try to remember how many comments each one had previously to determine whether or not there is a new comment lurking behind the link.

-KDH

To Google Map or not to Google Map?

I thought about copying Gina (again) in a way, putting a Google map of my daily commute as a link on this blog. But I was struck that this is a completely public forum, and that is probably more information than I would want to post about myself (where I live, where I work). I'm sure that if someone wanted to find out such information about me, they probably could do it fairly easily, without having to be too resourceful. Nonetheless, it seems to be tempting fate by posting it such that no work is necessary to get the information.

the moral of the story is: if you really want to know more details about my commute, you'll have to get in touch with me personally.

-KDH

What would that sound like?

On my way home from work yestereday, I passed a store that sells only books... on tape! And I noticed the display in the window: an atlas. Certainly they don't have that book on tape.

The big Easter lie!

I checked this morning, and Alex (our bunny) had not laid any chocolate eggs... they may have looked chocolate, but take my word for it, they were not!

Maybe I should stick to basketball!!!

...not that I'm particularly good at basketball... but I feel like I'm getting quite atrocious at volleyball. It's mostly that my hitting is particluarly bad, so much so, that last night I decided after hitting about 10 either into the net or way out the back (that's 0-for-10) that I would just dump the ball whenever I was set. My passing and setting were probably about the same as usual, that is to say, lazy and inconsistent... but my hitting was atrocious.

I was never a particularly good hitter when I played consistently in high school... I was mostly there because I was tall and was sort of average all around... but tall. But my hitting has been slowly getting worse and worse over time, which I think is probably attributable to two main factors. First, I don't play regularly, and when I do play, we never do drills or hitting line, so I don't really get any rapid repetition that I think is good for maintaining and improving this type of skill. And second, that I'm probably 50 pounds heavier than I was in high school, so I just don't jump as high over the net (frankly, I really barely jump at all).

I don't expect to be at the same level that I was in high school, I just expect to be not horrible. Basketball doesn't offer the same disappointment, not because I'm really any better, but rather because I was never any good. I didn't play at all in high school, and I didn't really ever play consistently until a few years ago when I started playing in an adult league... and in these leagues, it's mostly enough just to be tall. By contrast, the people I play volleyball with are all quite good.

I don't think I'll ever really quit volleyball, it's just very frustrating at times.

-KDH (I've been forgetting to sign my posts lately)

The internet is like CityTV.... it's Everywhere!

I have found myself hiding from the cold and blustery winds and ground-shy snow during this "Spring isn't here yet" reminder by having a warm tea in a greasy spoon diner at the corner of Elgin Mills Rd. and Bayview Av. in the "heart" of Richmond Hill (the diner is aptly named "Baymills Diner"). In any case, biding my time here waiting for a ride the rest of the way to volleyball with CP24 having given up all the morsels of information that I'm going to find interesting I wondered if I might find an internet connection here. I realized, that I could probably hook my laptop up to my blackberry and surf that way (or even just surf on the blackberry itself)... but that seemed like it would be too much work. So I simply searched to see if I could find any undefended wireless routers, lo and behold... there was one!

The signal wasn't very strong, but it was strong enough to surf... probably slightly better than dial up, but more than enough to do this blogging. Now, I might expect to be able to find a connection in a more dense neighbourhood (like down town... or frankly even at an intersection that had buildings on every corner). It's not like I'm in the middle of nowhere, but there isn't much here!

Anyway, you really can get internet access almost anywhere... and actually anywhere if you are willing to pay for it.

Another Family Blog!

I think I'm almost out of friends who have blogs to which I have not linked yet, so I will need to start to find a new source for material. Mark, Mark Thompson (he doesn't like it when people forget the "p" in his name) blogs about his family life in the Mino Family Blog. Mark is a friend who I met when I started singing barbershop music, we had an immediate bond as two of the very few men under 50 who were in the chorus at the time. Mark went to Japan with the Jet program to teach english, and while there, met his wife Junko (she was in one of his adult english classes). They live in a small-ish town in northern Japan with their two boys, Conan and Leif, where Mark now teaches english at a number of local schools on a permanent basis, and Junko works in the family business. Mark and Junko have come back to Canada several times to visit family and friends, so we have all had opportunities to meet both Conana and Leif.

One of the stories about Mark that I am often reminded of (every time I eat spicy food) revolves around the fact that Mark loves spicy food. While at Ryerson, he developed a particular fondness for a Thai restaurant called "The Salad King" where they measure the spicy heat of a dish by a number of chilis from 0 to 20 (of course "mild", "medium" and "hot" are all less than one chili). I think that Mark once got up to a 10, and I can still remember him talking about the ring of fire... it burns as it goes in, and as it comes out!

Speechless?

Karen's post on Gina's blog the other day got me thinking (it happens!) about how a blog, and perhaps informal text communication (be it text messaging, email, google chat) are expressed as speech would be expressed. In said example, Karen wrote that she was speechless and I wondered if there was a word that was more appropriate, a word that meant she had nothing to type (or write) instead of having nothing to say? There are plenty of other examples of this type use speech based words for writing based ideas: "so-and-so said on their blog", "things that I'm never quite sure if I can talk about or not" (from my very own blog, )

I realize that this is pedantic, and I don't mean to really imply that what she wrote is incorrect (because I don't think it is), rather, I think it's an interesting linguistic phenomenon. Is it just a question of informality? Would the author of a book use phrases like these? How about a editorial piece in a newspaper or magazine? Is it specific to the electronic medium?

I guess it just comes down "to say" really doesn't mean only "to convey through speech", it has many other meanings. I wonder how long ago it may have had a narrower meaning? Frankly, people hardly use "say" in it's literal context anymore... the use phrases such as "... and then he went `oh yeah`." and "... and she was like `Get out of my face!`" instead. I don't think I would ever write things that way (maybe I have... I'll have to scour my blog), but I do catch myself saying things like that every so often.

And that's all I have to say about that.

A 4-in-1 blog!

The newest member of the link list has arrived and it's a real bonus blog: you get 4 people for the price of one. The newest blog belongs to my friends Jesse and Pam, but is largely about their family (which includes Nathan, and the very recent addition Grace). You may notice that thier blog URL refers only to Nathan, this was simply poor planning, in my opinion... I think they were just too excited, as the blog was started only a few short weeks after Nathan was born. This blog marks the first one to which I am linking which include children (Karen and Dion are close, and perhaps some might consider Kristin childish... but not actually a child). Am I now in the part of my life where I'm linking to sites about my friends' kids? I must be in my Carlsberg years!

Anyway, Jesse and Pam and also now the people that I link to whom I have known the longest. I got to know Jesse well during the 8-day TTC strike of 1991, I had to get to school early for volleyball tryouts. My friend Tiee, who was in a bunch of my classes, didn't live far from me, so he suggested that we meet up and bike into school together, and he brought along his friend Jesse (and another guy... Wayne... I don't remember). So for that week-and-a-bit, we biked to and from school together. I got to know Pam through Jesse, because from around then until their son was born Pam was probably Jesse's favourite topic of converstaion (okay, probably a bit before he was actually born... but then Nathan was still inside Pam, so he was kind of talking about Pam).

Welcome Tsang family! (I don't think they are readers... so I don't expect a response)