If you’re going to be in Accordion City tomorrow night — Saturday, August 5th — we’ll be chilling out with Dave (who’s here from Chicago) on the patio of the Green Room (296 Brunswick, the entrance is in the alley just south of Bloor) starting around 9 p.m.
Category: It Happened to Me
Categories
T-Shirts and Squishy Cows
Why Your Squishy Cow Hasn’t Arrived Yet
You may remember that a little while back, I offered to send a Tucows squishy cow to anyone who asked for one. Due to popular demand, I had to set a cut-off date after which you couldn’t request one.
It’s a couple of weeks later, and you might be wondering why your squishy cow hasn’t arrived yet. That’s because I’m still awaiting a shipment of squishy cows. They’re coming soon, but in the meantime, I must ask that those of you who got the “just a quick note to let you know that your squishy cow is on the way” email from me be patient — as soon as I get my shipment of cows, I’ll put yours in the mail.
For those of you who missed your chance to request one, don’t worry: we will have more squishy cow giveaways.
A Tour of the Tucows Stash
In the meantime, I thought I’d show you this video I put together [21MB QuickTime], in which I go through the Tucows swag in our storage room and explain why you haven’t got your Squishy Cow yet. They’re coming soon, we promise!
Yesterday, we took Dave, who’s visiting from Chicago, to his favourite restaurant in our neighbourhood: The Yellow Griffin (2202 Bloor Street West, just east of Runnymede). It looks like a typical High Park/Bloor West Village/Swansea faux-Brit pub, but it distinguishes itself with its menu of burgers. They offer 35 sets of toppings, from the traditional cheddar cheese to Stilton and walnuts to mango chutney and tandoori yogurt sauce to scallions, peanuts and kung pao sauce to peanut butter. If you don’t want beef, you can ask to change your burger to ground lamb or turkey, a chicken burger, pork escalope or veggie. I’ve only had the beef burgers, but they cook them just right. There’s also a good choice of sides, from the expected fries and onion rings to my favourite, the breaded green beans, served with a choice of mayonnaise-based dipping sauces, such as curry, garlic and mango-pineapple.
The Yellow Griffin’s major problem is that the service is erratic. When it’s good, it’s passable, and when it’s bad, it’s rather like restaurants in the “before” state on Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Last night, it was closer to the latter, with the waitstaff in a state of mild confusion and the kitchen slow to crank out the food (the place doesn’t have more than a dozen tables). When we first took our table, we saw the credit card receipt of the previous patrons, who’d put “0” on the tip line, and based on last night’s service, I understand completely. It’s a shame the service is so bad when the burgers are quite good.
It also has the minor problem of not quite feeling like a local place. I can’t put my finger on it, but the “feel” of the place just doesn’t make any sort of concession to the neighbourhood surrounding it: it might as well be a ground floor pub in an office building downtown or in an industrial park in the ‘burbs. Even the Timothy’s coffee chain just down the street has a more local feel (for starters, they display works by local artists on their walls).
The wide array of burgers, sides and dips are the place’s saving grace; if it weren’t for them, the Griffin would’ve been trounced by the places across the street — Sharkey’s, The Swan and Firkin and especially Dr. Generosity, who in my opinion make a better burger and have great food, great service and feel like they’re part of the neighbourhood. If they could get the place renovated — perhaps an appearance on Restaurant Makeover — and retrain or replace the waitstaff, they’d have a winner on their hands.
For more about the Yellow Griffin, here’s the Toronto Life writeup, and here’s a Now magazine blurb.
Categories
Welcome, Dave!
Dave at Kensington Market during his first visit here in November 2004.
This weekend, Dave, an old friend of Wendy’s and one of the “bridesmaids” at our wedding will be here for a visit. Welcome, Dave!
We’ll be catching Spamalot with Maria on Friday night, doing something fun and social on Saturday (drop me a line if you want to come along) and hitting a special Kickass Karaoke on Sunday — it’s a farewell party for Postmodern Sass, who’s off to a new job in San Jose.
“Organizers call the ‘un-conferences’,” says the teaser line for the article titled “This one time…at BarCamp…”, “with no PowerPoint, unpaid guest speakers and lots of audience participation. Find out how they’re spreading across Canada, and beyond.”
So begins an article over at IT Business that features an interview with some of us involved with Toronto BarCamp and DemoCamp activities: David Crow, Jay Goldman, Bryce Johnson and Yours Truly. We did a phone interview with the article’s author, Grant Buckler, last Tuesday before DemoCamp 8.
I thought I’d already blogged it, but I hadn’t: my friend John Bristowe, developer evangelist for Microsoft and brother of Ashley Bristowe, whom I met fourteen years ago at Crazy Go Nuts University, interviewed me for his podcast, Developer Night in Canada. We talked about DemoCamp, BarCamp and the development of the Toronto tech scene, and you can catch the podcast on his blog.
John, my apologies for not blogging this sooner!
A slightly doctored image of John the Evangelist.
For the past three years, I’ve held the title of “Technical Community Development Coordinator”. It was meant to be an interim title for use while the job was being defined. While it does have some nifty features — it’s the longest title in the company and abbreviates to TC/DC, which I’ve milked for its resemblance to the band name AC/DC — it doesn’t quite adequately explain what I do.
The title “Technical Evangelist” is more suitable. It’s well-understood in our circles, since it’s had a long history (going back to the 1980s, which is ages ago in this industry) and a noble pedigree, having been started by Guy Kawasaki when he was at Apple, and continued by respected techie statesmen like Don Box and Robert Scoble. It even has a Wikipedia entry.
Yesterday, Boss Ken asked me if I wanted to switch titles, and after having given it some thought, I said yes. So henceforth my title shall be Technical Evangelist. Can ah have an Ay-men, bruthas and sistas?!