Author: Joey deVilla

It can be revealed now: after five interesting, entertaining and challenging job interviews with the company, I landed a cool job at a spiffy Internet services company. You might have heard of them; they’re called Tucows.

Most people who’ve used the Internet for some time — myself included until earlier this year — think of Tucows as a site for downloading software, especially shareware. They got started that way, and that’s what jumps out at you when you visit their site: the software library. However, it turns out that Tucows’ bread and butter is providing tools and services for resellers. One way to look at it is from a home construction/renovation analogy: if you think of the people who provide internet services to you — your ISP or whoever hosts your Web site or provides you with an email address, your domain name registrar, the payment gateway for the site where you sell T-shirts with funny sayings online — as construction people or contractors, we’re Home Depot.

(Wait a minute…did I just use the “Royal We”? I did! Because I can! Hah!)

Tucows has been around since 1993, which is like being reincarnated three times in an industry where lots of players say “proudly serving you since six weeks ago!”.

I’m going to have a lot of fun and learn even more from my new boss Ross Rader (can I refer to you as “Boss Ross” in the blog, Ross?), who’s a really sweet guy and has probably forgotten more about the inner workings of the ‘Net that I will ever learn, and his boss — CEO Elliot Noss — who wins hands-down the title of “Most Influential CEO For Whom I’ve Worked”. When I mentioned on IRC to super-duper ‘Net mover-and-shaker Joi Ito that I’d just come from signing my employment contract at Elliot’s office, he got excited and talked about how super-cool he thought Elliot and Tucows were. In rock terms, this is like joining a band and then hearing Radiohead say “You just joined them?! Cool! We listen to them all the time in our tour bus and we love the lead singer!”

The position for which I was hired is a newly-created one, inspired partially by a visit by blogger, Big Idea Guy and Linux Journal editor Doc Searls, who came to town to visit with Elliot and the rest of the Tucows folks back in March . At the “blogflocking” Doc held after his Tucows meeting, I met up with Doc and a couple of Tucows guys — Darryl Green and Ross — and this, in combination with a hearty recommendation from Cory Doctorow led to the interviews which led to the job.

(Here’s a photo of Doc at the gathering, trying on my hat and accordion.)

My job position: I’m the go-to guy if you’re a technical person who wants help using Tucows’ tools. If we go back to the construction analogy again, if you’re a contractor or construction worker and Tucows is Home Depot, I’m the experienced construction guy who shows you how to use the tools, finds out what you need and get you something to help, and does the demonstrations on a popular TV show. I’m Bob Vila. Or maybe Tim Allen. Since the position is new, I get to play a very active part in defining my role, which I think will make the job even more fun.

(I promise not to define it as “hiding under his desk with a PlayStation 2 and a keg of beer and still expecting a paycheque every two weeks”.)

The only downside to the position is that the title is a little unwieldy: it’s Technical Community Development Coordinator. That’s sixteen — count ’em — sixteen syllables; one short of a haiku.

(My more pedantic friends will correct me and say that it’s a senryu, not a haiku.)

Thankfully, it shortens nicely to TC/DC, which is close enough to AC/DC to get all kinds of rock references, including a slogan for my job: “Nerdy Deeds Done Dirt Cheap!”

I start working there full-time on July 14th, which coincidentally is Bastille Day.

The past few weeks have been completely exhausting. I’ve been juggling work for three clients, invading the media (a live TV appearance, a shoot for an upcoming TV series and a radio interview) and facing the final two (of five) job interviews for a spiffy position at a spiffy Internet company (and yes, I signed the contract on Thursday). With all this and even more going on, something had to give, and unfortunately, it was the blogging.

Although the work ended just before 2:00 p.m. Friday, the blogging couldn’t resume just then, as I hopped into the CR-V and whisked myself off to Killaloe, Ontario along with my friends Paul, Lisa and Sven to participate in this year’s Om Festival. No computers, no Internet connection, no programming, no clients, no media appearances, no bosses, no nuthin’. I traded them in for my “beater” accordion, my flaming cowboy hat, my “Kenora Dinner Jacket”, open fires, outdoor raves and listening to Julia Butterfly Hill pontificate.

(Cue left-of-centre friends say “Dude! Why didn’t you tell me you were going?!” and the right-of-centre friends saying “Sounds like a vacation…in Hell!“)

I (finally) got lots of sleep, partied my brains out and I’m sure I haven’t had such a marathon accordion-playing weekend since Burning Man 1999.

Things are considerably less crazy this week, which means that I’ll get to return to my regularly scheduled blogging. This week’s theme will be “catching up”, in which I’ll try to get rid of the backlog of stories: Canadian Idol, Worst Date Ever, The New Job, The W Network shoot, Kickass Karaoke, Om Festival and so on. It’ll be an interesting week on the blog.

I’ve seen a couple of posters for it in my neighbourhood: Top Gun, the Musical.

Thankfully, a closer look at the poster revealed that it’s a fringe festival spoof of musicals and movies that have been adapted into musicals. While it’s nothing new — The Simpsons have covered this pretty well with musical remakes of A Streetcar Named Desire and Planet of the Apes (I love the finale song, You’ll Never Make a Monkey Out of Me) — I just might have to catch this show.

You know, I’ll bet I could’ve written some of the tunes for this musical. Say, “Need for Speed (I Feel The)”, “I’ll Never Leave You, I’m Your Wingman” and the love theme, “Take Me To Bed Or Lose Me Forever.” Or these lyrics:

Goose: Top Gun school will be our finest hour…

Maverick: Quiet, Goose, it’s time to buzz the tower!

Lou Gossett Jr.: Hold on boys, that’s dangerous and illegal

Maverick and Goose: Wrong movie, Lou, you were in Iron Eagle!

Recommended Reading: other films of my youth

The best damned review of the movie Iron Eagle II ever.

IMDB page for Red Dawn. Wolveriiiiiines!

Nasty Gus and I were probably Molly Ringwald’s biggest fans, ev-ar.

Today’s Diesel Sweeties comic:

While walking down Queen Street West over the weekend, I’ve been approached by young teens no less than four times, saying that they liked the accordion performance on MuchMusic last Tuesday.

I almost didn’t notice one because he kept calling to me using “Sir,” which I never get called unless it’s immediately followed by “put your pants back on, and then put your hands where I can see them and don’t make any sudden moves.”

All of them said that they have a new-found respect for the accordion. Thank you, kids. You have impeccable taste.

Let’s see you do that, Mr. Justin Timberlake.

“Kickass Karaoke be leadin’ the pack / Carson Foster gettin’ ill like a heart attack!”

Yes, this Wednesday marks more mid-month madness with Toronto’s best Karaoke night, Kickass Karaoke, featuring your host, Mr. Carson T. Foster. Although a theft reduced Carson’s karaoke library to a scant few disks, the insurance money’s come through and the collection’s quite something these days. They even have a karaoke version of Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole!

If you’ve never been to Kickass Karaoke before, Carson’s just created a promotional video (in QuickTime format) that does a pretty good job of capturing the Kickass chaos. Watch the photo montage near the end of the video; you might see several shots of a certain accordion player whom you might find familiar.

That’s this Wednesday at that most notorious watering hole, the Bovine Sex Club, 542 Queen Street West (half a block east of Bathurst). Be there or be orthorhombic.

Not even a week has passed, and the Avril Lavigne appearance has already been remixed. Two of my former OpenCola coworkers — John Henson and Rich Williams — took the video of my accordion performance of Avril Lavigne’s Sk8r Boi, did some mad editing and dubbed it with 2 Live Crew’s Me So Horny (here are the clean lyrics, and here are the dirty ones). And it works!

The video just uses the intro and chorus, so it should be pretty safe for work, depending on where that is — your mileage may vary. It’s a 16 megabyte .WMV file (that’s a Windows Media Player format) and you can download it here (right-click on the link and choose “Save As…” or “Save Target As…”).

Me love it long time. Thanks, guys!