There’s always been an implicit promise of freedom in going away to university, but this is the first time I can recall where it’s been used as an actual selling point.
I don’t think that this campaign is a good idea. Algoma’s got some things going for it – as a techie, I’m aware of their $6 million technology wing and game development courses. I think that any good qualities that Algoma may have are tarnished by these ads’ “Live the dream — No curfews! Dress like a skank!” message. In trying to hit 18 or 19 year-olds yearning to break free from their parents where they live, they’re cheapening the school’s image and the value of an Algoma degree.
TechDays, Microsoft’s cross-Canada conference for developers and IT pros took a break in October, but returns in November to complete its tour of the five remaining cities. As leader of one of the conference tracks it means that I’ll be on the road, hitting these five cities over the next couple of months:
Halifax: November 2nd and 3rd
Calgary: November 17th and 18th
Montreal: December 2nd and 3rd
Ottawa: December 9th and 10th
Winnipeg: December 15th and 16th
If you’re a programmer or IT pro who works with Microsoft tools and technologies or is thinking about doing so, you’d do well to check out TechDays. You can find out more at the TechDays site, or you can always drop me a line.
If you’re in Halifax and would like to catch up, I’ll be holding a Coffee and Code at Just Us Cafe (1678 Barrington) on Wednesday, November 4th from 2 to 6 p.m. Come by, have a coffee and a chat!
I’ll be landing in Halifax this weekend, and chances are I might be looking to do something on Saturday night…
Hank Young, country-and-western musician from Halifax turned Gladstone Hotel character-at-large, died of a stroke this past weekend at the age of 68. I first met him at the Gladstone during its grungy pre-renovation days at its karaoke night, where he was known for his rendition of Hey Good Lookin’. When the hotel underwent its transformation from fleabag to boutique, the management made him the operator of its antique elevator and his enthusiasm made him the hotel’s unofficial historian and tour guide.
In addition to his better-known work at the Gladstone, Hank also did a fair bit of community work. He opened a centre to help teenage kids off the street, volunteered at a program to feed the homeless and advocated for his neighbours at City Hall.
Hank always had a smile for anyone who passed by and a hearty “Hey, Accordion Man!” whenever I dropped in. He was one of Parkdale’s finest characters-at-large, and the neighbourhood was a little bit better thanks to his presence.
Accordion City is often referred to as the most multicultural city in North America, if not the whole planet, and we generally get along. If we ever decide that we need a city anthem, I would recommend that we simply adopt Deuce Poppi’s My White Friends:
[Attention Carson T. Foster and Wil McLean! You need to get the karaoke version of this song!]
While going out for brunch with our friends Liz and Keith and their kids on Roncesvalles, I saw these signs promoting Kennel Cafe’s services. If you never played Dungeons and Dragons, the jokes are totally meaningless, but if you have, they’re pretty amusing:
I don’t know when this chart classifying the spectrum of tastes from high-brow to low-brow was createded, but the graphic style puts it sometime in the “Mad Men” era of the late 1950s and early 1960s. You can click the chart to see it at full size:
Click the chart to see it at full size.
I took a couple of columns from the chart and turned them into an enlarged version, shown below. The columns show “high-brow”, “upper middle-brow”, “lower middle-brow” and “low-brow” tastes in clothes, entertainment and drinks.
Some thoughts on these columns from the chart:
I’ve worked at a good number of place where coming to work in a t-shirt and jeans was perfectly acceptable. If you showed up in what the chart calls the “low-brow town outfit” you’d have been asked “Hey, why so dressed up?”
The present-day analogue of “Western movies” is most likely “action films”.
Beer can be pretty high-brow these days.
Someone needs to recompile this chart for the present day.
I bought a fuzzy “Cat in the Hat”-style raver hat with a Canadian flag pattern on a whim earlier this year, thinking that I’d probably find a pretty good use for it some day. That day, it turns out, was yesterday, where I turned it into what I believe was yesterday’s only Steve Ballmer photo-op with a non-management Microsoft Canada employee:
Photo by Barnaby Jeans.
Yesterday was a busy day at the Harbour Castle Convention Centre, where we had an all-day Steve Ballmer-rama. In the morning, Steve keynoted an event showcasing Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 for the media, key customers and partners. This was followed by an employees-only “town hall” where Steve did a short presentation followed by a Q&A session. On a whim similar to the one that led me to buy it, I took the hat (along with the accordion) along with me.
Following a suggestion from my co-worker Damir, I arrived very early for the town hall, grabbed a seat by the stage and donned the hat. When Steve made his appearance, he did so in classic Ballmer style, running and whooping, high-fiving people as he made his way to the stage. As soon as he saw me, he yelled “Hey!”, put the hat on and posed with me for the photo above.
I’d made a decent splash at Microsoft in my first year, and I’d been wondering if I could match it in my second, which began on Monday. This isn’t a bad start.
The official launch of Windows 7 doesn’t happen until tomorrow, but we’re having a big launch event with Steve Ballmer today in Toronto! I’ll be blogging and tweeting all day from the launch venue – Toronto’s Harbour Castle Westin Convention Centre.
Back in high school, after reading Space-Time and Beyond for the umpteenth time and drinking one too many zombies with my friend Henry, we came up with a theory:
In the infinite set of universes, there had to exist a particular universe in which the events in our lives were being watched as a TV show.
We then made a solemn vow to live the kind of life that got high ratings.
Photo by Barnaby Jeans.
Click the photo to see it at full size. Photo courtesy of 