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It Happened to Me Slice of Life

Slice of Life: I See That Steamworks Carries My Favourite Magazine

steamworks_jugs

Steamworks’ Gastown pub, located right by Vancouver’s waterfront, is falling distance from the Fairmont Waterfront hotel, which is where I usually stay when I’m flying in for business. They brew some tasty beer and serve great pub fare and in my experience the service goes above and beyond what you’d normally expect.

A couple of nights ago, I got rather, er, beerlarious at Steamworks and in the process managed to leave my camera there, along with its case. Luckily for me:

  • I keep a business card in my camera case
  • I set the “startup screen” on my camera to be a photo of a piece of paper on which I wrote my name, phone number and email address.

Steamworks left a message on my phone informing me that they found the camera and that I could pick it up when they opened the next day. The camera was assigned to me by Microsoft, and they saved me some hassle and the embarrassment of losing company property, so I must thank the fine people at Steamworks for finding it and letting me know! You’re definitely getting return business from me.

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It Happened to Me Slice of Life

Slice of Life: Happy New Underwear Day!

Seen outside Smart Mouth Cafe in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood:

Chalkboard sign outside Smart Mouth Cafe: "Welcome! It's new underwear day! Well, new to us."

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Life Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Kanye West Wants You to Go to FailCamp!

failcamp_kanye

That’s right, you want to join FailCamp Toronto 3, the celebration of FAIL taking place on Tuesday, September 29th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre! Take it from Kanye, you don’t want to miss this event. For more details, see the FailCamp event page and my earlier article on FailCamp Toronto 3.

Categories
Life The Current Situation

R.I.P. Patrick Swa – Kanye! Get Outta There!

Kanye West in front of picture of Patrick Swayze: "Yo Patrick, I'm really happy for you, I'll let you finish but Michael Jackson had one of the best deaths of all time."

R.I.P. Patrick Swayze. (In case you don’t get the Kanye West joke, here’s the backstory.)

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Uncategorized

Slice of Life: Striking the “Charlie’s Angels” Pose with Netbooks

Yesterday, while setting up for the TechDays conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre, my co-workers Rick Claus (pictured below on the left with the red netbook) and Rodney Buike (pictured below on the right with the blue netbook) and I couldn’t resist playing around with the Dell netbooks that we were using to do PowerPoint donkey-work. John Bristowe, who was doing the photography, suggested striking a Charlie’s Angels-style pose and we were only too happy to oblige:

Rick Claus, Joey deVilla and Rodney Buike strike the "Charlie's Angels" pose with Dell netbooks Click the photo to see it at full size.

Categories
Geek Life Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

FailCamp Toronto 3: September 29th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre

FailCamp Toronto 3 / Tuesday, September 29, 2009 / Metro Toronto Convention Centre

That’s right, we’re holding another FailCamp in Toronto! Mark Tuesday, September 29th on your calendar and be prepared to share you best/worst stories of FAIL, impress the judges in our “Panel of Fail” and win big prizes!

Here’s what the event is all about, as taken directly from FailCamp Toronto 3’s event page:

The pictures of Sean Connery in his ridiculous costume from Zardoz can only mean one thing: it’s time for another FailCamp!

FailCamp is a celebration of failure. It’s about sharing your tales of epic fail and the lessons you learned from them. It’s about learning not to view failure as defeat, but as a learning opportunity and stepping stone to success. It’s about taking away the fear of failure and learning to take a chance, think big and achieve what you thought you couldn’t.

We’ll start with some stories of historical failure: some you’ve read in the history books, and some culled from our own personal histories — the wisdom of fail through the ages. Then we’ll turn the microphone on you, inviting you to share your greatest stories of failure, challenging you to entertain the audience and even win prizes if our "Panel of Fail" deems your failure or the lessons derived from it to be the best of the bunch. The more embarassing, hilarious and educational your story, the better! Where else can you win big by losing big?

Joey deVilla (Microsoft, DemoCamp, accordion trouble-making) and John Bristowe (Microsoft) will host the event, encouraging you to confess your failures while sharing their own. FailCamp alumni Meghann Millard (Unspace, RubyFringe, FutureRuby) and Justin Kozuch (Refresh Events) and others will be the Panel of Fail whom you must impress in order to win prizes.

FailCamp takes place on Tuesday, September 29th at 7:00 p.m. at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (255 Front Street West, between John and Simcoe Streets). Admission is free — all you have to do is register to attend, and make sure you bring your best story of fail! It’ll be full of win!

Categories
It Happened to Me Slice of Life Work

Slice of Life: Working Away at the Smart Mouth Cafe

Rick Claus working at the bar at the front of the Smart Mouth Cafe, Gastown, Vancouver.

My co-worker Rick Claus (that’s him in the photo above) and I have spent the morning working on the final preparations for Microsoft Canada’s TechDays Vancouver conference at the Smart Mouth Cafe in Vancouver’s Gastown neighbourhood. It’s a rather nice place the work, the staff are friendly, the coffee’s pretty good, and the bar at the front offers a nice view of the street.