Category: It Happened to Me

On January 11th, I wrote about how FindProfit.com had listed my employer, Tucows, Inc. as one of its Top Five Internet Stock Picks for 2005. One of the main points of its analysis what that 2005 might be a breakout year for Tucows.

In response, an anonymous reader asked in the comments:

If I didn’t know better, I’d say this was a trick question posed by

Tucows’ Legal department to see if I’d leak insider information. Nice

try, ambulance-chasers!

But seriously: rather than speak about what Tucows is doing to justify

the breakout, let me very concisely say what I am doing as Tucows’

Technical Community Development Coordinator, a one-man task force

within the Research and Innovation Department with a fair bit of

autonomy, influence and chutzpah:

Just watch the Tucows blogs I write — The Farm and IndieGameDev — for some of the results.

As I write this, the official site for the 2005 Bloggies is down, so I’ll simply quote the entry from Rannie “Photojunkie” Turingan’s blog:

Rannie’s right — all the blogs nominated for Best Canadian Blog are

solid choices. To borrow (and edit slightly) a quote from an episode of  The Simpsons: “Congratulations!

You’re all winners!”

To borrow (and edit slightly) the Simpsons quote that follows the

quote above: “But in another, more accurate, sense…I am the winner!”

But seriously, folks: as soon as the Bloggies site is back online, I’d rather you votecd The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century for Best Canadian Blog!

Perhaps I shall bribe you with the continuation of the Best Date Ever story…

I hereby declare today “Muy Muy Rapido Tuesday,”

a day during which I shall start the process of clearing out

the backlog of thing I’ve been meaning to write, responses I owe some

readers and articles I have promised for a long, long time. As the name suggests, expect lots of short, quick posts today.

Hope you enjoy it!

I spent the weekend visiting my fiancee in Boston, where a good two feet or so of snow fell this weekend.

Between the tons of snow and high winds, Logan Airport was shut down

for a full 29 hours. Only one runway was open this morning, resulting

in the cancellation of my 6:10 a.m. flight back to Accordion City.

I’m currently entering this article near the Continental Presidents’ Club located in the walkway joining Logan’s Terminals B and C. While Logan’s official wi-fi is something in the neighbourhood fo $10/day, the Presidents’ Club wi-fi is wide open and free of charge. I’m stickin’ it to The Man!

A quick summary of this weekend:

• Got a quick chance to say hello to Joel “Joel on Software” Spolsky during his lunch at Movenpick Marche before my flight to Boston.
• Experienced a last-minute pull-up on final approach into Logan. A plane was being a little slow in taking off from the runway on which we were about to land.
• Grilled mahi-mahi with mango at the Summer Shack with Wendy
• Meeting face-to-face with internet friends Suw “Chocolate and Vodka” Charman (who came over from the UK) and Chris “crw” Whipple
• Lunch with a Nobel Prize winner! Betsy Devine invited Suw, Chris, Wendy and me to lunch at her place, where we met her husband, Frank Wilczek, winner of a real Nobel Prize (the 2004 Prize for Physics, not that fakety-fake economics prize). Frank, it turns out, is also an accordion player (as most staggeringly intelligent people are). I played a couple of accordion numbers for them — Suw shot video and posted them on her blog.
• My Boston Ritual: a meal at Legal Seafood with Wendy.
• Hung out at Clery’s with local friends, who came in spite of the coming blizzard.
• Headed home from Clery’s during the start of said blizzard. It was fun watching Suw’s reactions to it all as Wendy drove through the storm — Brits don’t see snow like this! I volunteered my honed-in-Canada blizzard driving skills, but Wendy, tough New Englander that she is, didn’t need it.
• Walked Suw and Chris to the bus stop the next afternoon through the aftermath of the storm. The storm seemed to have brought out the friendliness in everyone; everyone we passed said “hello” with a smile, in spite of all the shovelling or trudging they were doing.
• A quiet Sunday night with Wendy, in which we made dinner and I finally watched Better Off Dead, a movie I’ve been meaning to see for decades.
• Lunch at the Bugaboo Creek Steakhouse, a “Canadian-themed” restaurant that’s about as Canadian as the Outback Steakhouse is Australian. Still, the decor does remind me of my friend Liz’ parents’ lodge up north, or the Drake Hotel restaurant in Canmore, Alberta. The audio-animatronic bison could use a couple of lessons to sound a more like a rural Canadian. Not once did it say “give ‘er!”

Just yesterday alone, 2,251 people (or, more accurately, 2,251 computers at

unique internet addresses) went directly to the permalink for my entry,

Sexy Beast,

which features an 80’s-era Bill Gates striking poses reminiscent of

LavaLife personal ads on his desk. (I still have my doubts as to whether the

photos are genuine).

Dan Dickinson came up with the caption

for the second photo, “640K of this action should be good enough for

anybody”. If you have any other caption ideas, please post them in the

comments!