The Observer's Log

Ontario 2026 - Old friends, dishwashers, and home

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 intentionally had nothing planned beyond repacking. Alex went off caching, trying to find the one that was supposedly in the trees in St. Mary’s Cemetery, but without success. I started looking through all the pictures I’ve taken over the last few days. Cathy went into the office for a meeting.

Ontario 2026 - Touring St. Thomas

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 Harbour Merchant Coffee Company – a small coffee shop – across the street. In addition to coffee, we each had a small breakfast sandwich.

The weather forecast said “mist”, but it was full drizzle bordering on light rain with a balmy 13 C temperature. I had brought only t-shirts and shorts. Only Monkey had the foresight to bring a jacket. Alex and Choo Choo were up and ready by the time we got back; we had to announce Harbour Merchant had no gluten-free bread, ixnaying it for breakfast. And, weirdly, “That Breakfast Place” didn’t open until 10am.

Ontario 2026 - A Service in St. Thomas

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 long day.

Today was the second event that we had to plan around on this vacation. Originally, the only event was the Louis Tomlinson concert. But after Janice died in April, we had to add her wishes to our agenda: an internment in St. Thomas.

Ontario 2026 - Gardens and Tiramisu

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 back door, we decided that the excursion of the day would be to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton.

Sorry, Burlington. For most of my life, I thought the Gardens were in Hamilton, because they’re on Hamilton Bay.

Ontario 2026 - Visiting with Friends and Family

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 in the area to do so. And there’s such a long list of people I should visit with that to do it properly could take a couple of weeks alone.

I opted to hit up Stuart and Theresa, largely as I haven’t seen them since 2015. To little surprise, they suggested dim sum.

Ontario 2026 - It was a rainy day...

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

It was due to rain. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to feel it, but there’s a literal sense in the air that it’s going to rain, and hard. Which it did, a few times, including a tornado warning.

Ontario 2026 - Louis Tomlinson and the Blue Jays

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 lived here when she went to school, I lived in Oakville for just under half my life. The girls only have memories from their two times in Toronto in 2015 and 2019; they’ve only barely seen Toronto, once from the CN Tower (and that’s the older memory), they’ve not even been on the subway.

The Problem with GO Transit

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 people. (Keep in mind that Canada’s entire population is only about 38 million.)

That’s upwards of 400,000 new homes. More roads. Way more cars.

And all those cars are highly visible on the roads. I’ve seen this for the last few visits to the GTA, where highways do not move quickly at all. They were bad in the 90s when I used to live here; now, they’re doubled in volume without a suitable doubling of capacity.

Ontario 2026 - Happy Birthday to Me!

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 more sleep until just before 7 when I finally peeled myself out of bed and went for the coffee I heard Cathy putting on.

Ontario 2026 - Cider and Niagara Falls

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 town.

Last night, after dinner, we toyed around with what to do. Our last vacation in Costa Rica was devoid of plans. That wasn’t so much by design as a lack of desire to overplan. And as it happened, it was a great vacation because we could just invent whatever it was we wanted to do.

Ontario 2026 - The trouble with rental agencies

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 – but I’ll take what I can get.

Today’s trip was Calgary to Toronto, to visit family. Families. Originally, this was just a trip to visit (mostly) with mine. I haven’t seen Cathy in over a year, and she’s had one hell of a year to deal with. I felt bad for not having seen her, so coming out was truly important to me. (Well, there’s also Choo Choo getting to see her favourite singer, Louis Tomlinson, in concert on the 17th.)

Why I Use AI

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 shortcomings in my own knowledge and experience.

We clear? Got it? Good. Moving on…

I am a former developer. I say that because I haven’t done any extensive development in years. I impart experience, I help direct solutions, I advise, I provide insights. But I don’t program. And that’s because my experience asks me to do things that is beyond the task of sitting down and plugging code to make something work. Don’t get me wrong, I can do it, I’m just not as good as developers who spend most of their day doing it.

Outplacement in Technology, Part 1

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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, which (apparently) makes me less employable.

The company decided to engage a service – Velvet Services – to help us. The first time I saw the name, the first thing that came to mind was “strip club”. (And if you’ve been reading this, you know my opinion on strip clubs.)

Lawyers and Severance

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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”), it’s usually just options (eg. “you can do X or you can do Y”), and heaven forbid you end up in a situation where there’s no legal precedent.

Worse still: you end up in situations where you need to pay up front without any promise of actual result, or a sizeable percentage of the settlement (hence the multi-million dollar lawsuits). And don’t get me started on American lawsuits where there’s no penalty at all for people bringing scurrilous suits that almost never have hopes of winning but are filed to obtain out-of-court settlements.

Layoffs at ChangeMakers

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 Yzma, Emperor’s New Groove

I should have known something was up this morning when I got a meeting invite from our recently-hired CIO (with whom I’ve not had a single productive word) bearing the word “Update” and nothing else.

It was confirmed not long after when Mark asked if I had a similar meeting. His meeting was first, which only confirmed my suspicions. It was time for layoffs. And for the first time in my career, I was one of them.

What About Ceyx?

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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.

Janice decided to get the cat a while back (7-8 years?) because she’d had cats most of her life and really wanted something else to be in her lonely apartment. Which, truly, I can’t blame her. I’ve had a cat most of my life and I greatly notice when there’s no cat present.

Packing up a life

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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
hectic
tired.
Purposeful.

Boxes opened, examined.
Books reviewed, boxed.
Boxes put in boxes.
Memories trapped in cardboard.

The person is gone,
their echo sustained in belongings,
a multi-tonal, dissonant sound
only heard by those
packing up a life.

Monkey Goes to Japan

Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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

Perhaps one of my biggest regrets was not taking you to Japan. I’ve been there three times. I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert – not by a mile – but it would have been amazing to see Japan through your eyes.

AI is a wrench

Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 - Corb Lund, Hard on Equipment (Tool for the Job)

Corb Lund’s music is self-described as “agricultural tragic”, waxing poetic a lot on things that are more recognizable to a rancher than a technogeek. However, there are common themes – stubbornness of men, being neighbourly, the weather – that relate to nearly everyone. Hard on Equipment talks about That Guy – we all know one – who just forges ahead without thinking very hard.

Obituary for Janice Aicken (neé Campbell)

Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 I feel it’s still a story worth telling.

Janice Eleanor Aicken (nee Campbell) was born January 25th, 1943 in St. Thomas, Ontario. The eldest of four children, her family was raised in a Presbyterian farming community. In her teens, Janice began teaching, a cornerstone of her life’s purpose.

Janice Aicken, 1943-2026

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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. Eventually, they became just too much. Ultimately, she chose Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID).

It became a morning of “lasts”: A last sunrise. A last trip to the hospital. I brought her a last meal of lightly toasted bread and raspberry jam, with an oat milk cafe misto. We had last conversations, last reminisces. Last words.

Happy 16th Birthday, Choo Choo!

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 old, and you’re never going to stop changing, but … you’ve grown up.

No, this isn’t a sudden realization – you were 12 going on 20, remember? That hasn’t changed, either – you’re still wildly more intelligent than many of your peers, not to mention a sizeable population percentage that believes intelligence is a fault of personality.

My first public book reading

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 themselves, especially if you don’t have a publisher. Which I don’t. (Subtle hint for any publishers looking for new authors. Just sayin’…) That means you have to do your own self-promotion.

Now lest ye think “hey, Geoff’s been in marketing for ages, he’ll be great at this!”, I might offer/remind you that I wasn’t in this to make money. I was delighted to have sold a single book. (As it happens, I have a single review on Goodreads, and I haven’t a clue who it’s from.) I’ve sold a few more than that (30, I think?, not counting Kindle Unlimited reads). So if you were to ask me if I’m happy with the result, the answer is “yes”.

January is the saddest month

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 empty aftermath of Christmas. The celebrations, the lights, the shiny baubles, the pretty presents. It’s over. Reality swamps back in, flooding out the joy and cheer. Like returning from vacation, all that’s left is cold, harsh reality.

2025, A Year In Review

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

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 the Notwithstanding Clause for utterly invalid reasons), the protracted war in Ukraine not showing any signs of letting up, costs constantly rising (without any reasonable cost of living adjustments), and the next major tech bubble (Artificial Intelligence) threatening to burst, which could throw everything to pot.