When Words Collide, Day 2
The last time I went to a conference was over a decade ago: Drupalcon in May 2016. And no, I don’t count the the Calgary Expo. For me, conferences are about being exposed to new ideas and learning techniques (along …
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2026th
2026s
Entries
27 items
Ontario 2026 - Old friends, dishwashers, and home
More weird dreams than I care to think about (I’m sure some of them would make interesting manga, but as a novel they’d be unworkable) kept me from decent sleep. Today was our last day in Ontario and we …
Ontario 2026 - Touring St. Thomas
The bed was hard. The girls slept terribly on possibly the worst pull-out couch, ever. After failing to get the Krupp machine in our room to work, Monkey and let Alex and Choo Choo sleep a bit more and stole away to the …
Ontario 2026 - A Service in St. Thomas
The thunderstorm started at 5am. Cathy’s dog, Hennessey, got me up not long after. Dogs generally aren’t fans of loud noises and this dog isn’t a fan of thunderstorms. I knew then it was going to be a …
Ontario 2026 - Gardens and Tiramisu
Well, Toronto got canned. I was woken by a text from Asinkwe saying she wasn’t able to make lunch. After some discussion, we opted to skip going back into downtown Toronto. After helping Cathy replace a lock on her …
Ontario 2026 - Visiting with Friends and Family
One of the things I’m terrible at when coming to Oakville is visiting with friends. It’s not that I don’t want to visit with anyone else, it’s often that I don’t have enough time available …
Ontario 2026 - It was a rainy day...
It was a rainy day in Oakville when my cousin Raoul… Wait. I don’t have a cousin Raoul. We all slept in, even Cathy, who’s famously up early, and Tori, who didn’t have an 8:30 shift at the pool. …
The Problem with GO Transit
GO Transit has a major problem: the prices. Actually, it’s a bigger problem than that, so let me start there: Too many people. In the last 15 years, the Greater Toronto Area has grown by at least 1.2 million …
Ontario 2026 - Louis Tomlinson and the Blue Jays
From the outset, today’s plans were always going to be a big dodgy. Although we had a definitively hard schedule for 6pm, the rest was to be made up as we went. Obviously, we’ve been to Toronto before. Alex …
Ontario 2026 - Happy Birthday to Me!
Happy birthday to me! Things got off to a bit of a slow start, as I started to wake up around 4 or 5, for reasons I don’t understand. I was tired and awake at the same time. It was rough. I managed to eke a bit …
Ontario 2026 - Cider and Niagara Falls
Forest fires in Northern Ontario have dropped a lot of smoke over Southern Ontario. The sun is nothing more than a pale red disc in the sky. It’s still hot, humidity sky-high. It’s a good reason to leave …
Ontario 2026 - The trouble with rental agencies
It’s been a long time since I was excited to fly. I don’t think I’ll ever recapture the novelty of flying when I was a kid – and goodness knows the airlines will never be like that again – …
Why I Use AI
Let me start with one critical point: I am NOT an Artificial Intelligence evangelist. We clear? Got it? Good. Moving on… I use AI. I am an AI user. I leverage AI in (not quite) my daily activities to address the …
Outplacement in Technology, Part 1
Part of my severance is outplacement services, which I am genuinely thankful for, if for no other reason than I haven’t been without work for quite a long time. And as happens to all of us, I’ve gotten older, …
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Lawyers and Severance
Let me make one thing very clear: I am not a fan of lawyers. In my experience, they use up precious funds to provide vacuous information. It’s never a full recommendation (eg. “you should do X”), …
Layoffs at ChangeMakers
You’re being let go, your department’s being downsized, you’re part of an outplacement, we’re going in a different direction, we’re not picking up your option… - Emperor Kuzco and …
What About Ceyx?
Janice had a cat. I say “had” because she is no longer with us. But the cat remains. His name is Ceyx. It’s pronounced “KAY-ix”. It’s the name from a minor Greek myth, apparently. …
Packing up a life
How full is a life well-lived? Can it be judged by the things it collects? Books. Trinkets. Pets. Paintings. Clothes. Boxes. Dust. When life turns to dust, what then? The packing begins. Life is messy unorganized random …
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Monkey Goes to Japan
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. - Bilbo Baggins, Fellowship of the Ring …
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AI is a wrench
Well, it’s vise grips for pliers, and pliers for a wrench A wrench for a hammer, hammer’s everything else It just don’t seem to make much difference I sure do like him but he’s hard on equipment …
Obituary for Janice Aicken (neé Campbell)
One of the challenges when someone dies is having to prepare an obituary. Being a writer and story-teller, I felt compelled to put together one for Janice. It’s too wordy and would never be used in a newspaper. But …
Janice Aicken, 1943-2026
Today, my mother-in-law, Janice Aicken, died. Janice has been unwell for months … years, really. But the last four months have been especially hard, a result of illness that brought forth the underlying issues. …
Happy 16th Birthday, Choo Choo!
When you were younger, it was so much easier to see the changes from one year to the next. But in the last couple of years, the only significant changes are … well, hair colour. I wouldn’t say you’re …
My first public book reading
I gotta start off with a disclaimer: Despite all my aspirations otherwise, I am not a professional writer. (At least, not yet. Maybe. One day.) But I do have a novel! Books from new/unknown authors very rarely sell …
January is the saddest month
I’m watching the crews in the plaza out in front of Brookfield Plaza take down the Christmas tree decorations. In an hour, it’ll be an empty space once again. It’s a metaphor for January, really: the …
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New Years Tea, 2026
It’s that time of year again, and we’re off for Afternoon Tea, somewhere. That was the first of our challenges: where. Don’t get me wrong, going to Banff is wonderful and it’s a tradition …
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2025, A Year In Review
The 2020s keep on burning like a bad dumpster fire. It’s hard to find the highs when we saw the disturbing rise of fascism in the former home of democracy, authoritarianism rising in Alberta (with several uses of …