2010 – Growth and Grind

Sorry ladies, I’m taken

It’s very exciting to say, “My fiancée and I…” or “This is Dana, my fiancée.” I wanted to capture the story of our engagement because, I think, it’s a great story:

To start, I knew that I loved Dana after only three months of us being together. I knew that I wanted to marry her after being together for less than a year. What I didn’t know was when or how to propose. When we went to see Dave Matthews Band over the September 2010 long weekend, a few of our friends were sure we’d come back engaged. Not so.

Giving Thanks

Coming back into the office after the Thanksgiving long weekend, conversations tend to center around how your weekend was, how much turkey you ate, and whose family event was the biggest circus. I found myself repeatedly saying that I had a very busy weekend, I ate no turkey (sacrilege!), and, even though it was busy, the time spent with my family and friends was great. If I reflect on this weekend, and the past year in general, I can’t point to a single instance where my family and friends haven’t been there to share good times or help me through difficult ones.

Introducing the Choother

I like kids, honestly I do. But, after listening to my neighbour’s children howl, cry, and whine through their open windows while I was working in my backyard, I’ve had enough and need to take action. I figure one of two things is going to happen: either I’m going to knock on my neighbour’s door and dole out a lesson on good parenting with my Two-by-Four of Learning, or I’ll focus my energy into coming up with a creative solution to an age-old problem. And so, after consulting the Criminal Code of Canada, I am pleased to introduce the child soother or “Choother.”

Bathing: No Longer Just for Nobles

In today’s society, we have many modern technologies: cellphones, the Internet, meat-flavoured alternatives, artificial turf, and – my personal favourites – running water and deodorant. While the concept of running water and deodorant may not be new to most people in Canadian society, it remains a mystery to some of those who are either newly-arrived or wilfully-ignorant. Possibly both.

Communication: How much, how often, and to whom?

I wrote this as a discussion starter on LinkedIn and figured I might as well put it here, with a few minor edits and expansion on ideas:

With small, short-term projects involving and/or affecting a limited number of stakeholders, communication of progress and change is fairly straight-forward. If communication takes a bit of a backseat chances are you can remedy that with a quick email or phonecall. However, with large, long-term projects like a core systems replacement, communication has to be aimed at different groups with varying levels of detail and possibly at different intervals.

Why Technology Should Not Drive Business Change

I’ve seen instances where a Business will look to replace its legacy systems but falls short in terms of properly articulating why this is desired. When you talk to stakeholders, the drivers that tend to emerge are that the systems are old, aren’t flexible enough, and/or aren’t able to be maintained for much longer. These are all valid reasons but fail to address the underlying motive behind replacing legacy systems: the Business is looking to change and can’t do that given its current technical constraints.

Wisdom comes from being old, right?

On Thursday, May 13, 2010, I had all four of my wisdom teeth extracted. Fortunately, all were straight and erupted through the gum (as opposed to impacting other teeth and buried) which meant I only required local freezing instead of being put under. Good work, wisdom teeth, you saved me a thousand dollars in the process of costing me nine hundred.