In addition to being Election Day in Ontario, today, October 6th, is also Mad Hatter Day, owing to the sign he wore on his hat: In this style 10/6.
In the spirit of the Mad Hatter, you’re supposed to use this day to celebrate silliness. So I suppose it’s appropriate that today is a provincial election day. Happy Mad Hatter Day, everyone!
It’s Provincial Election Day for Ontario today. If you’re eligible, go vote!
The results will be broadcast on those old-fashioned “television” devices, but you can bypass the stuffed-shirt talking heads and get the results directly from the Elections Ontario site wemakevotingeasy.ca.
It’s tempting to go with the same-old, same-old when travelling on business. You typically end up in a hotel somewhere near downtown, and these places are typically near the same chains no matter where you are: Starbucks, Subway and so on. While it’s nice to have the familiar within easy reach – and hey, the coffee and sandwich options were far worse before Starbucks and Subway – if you’re going to have the exact same things while away, why go at all?
My terribly early Friday morning flight to Milwaukee by way of O’Hare put me in my hotel shortly after ten. I had a lot of work to do before meeting with customers that afternoon, and the area I was in was all hotels, office buildings and malls, so lunch meant a run to some nearby food court to see if there was anything that was either:
That’s when I ran into this:
I’d only heard of frozen custard thanks to Alton Brown’s show, Feasting on Asphalt. As for “Butterburger”, something with a name like that had to be good. Here’s what I ended up ordering:
In the photo above, the thing to the left is the ever-recognizable Diet Coke. (Do you know why people drink Diet Coke? Because they’re fat and thirsty.)
On the right, a swiss-and-mushroom ButterBurger. It’s pretty good, a cut above your McDonald’s/Burger King/Wendy’s burger and the bread’s pretty nice. They say that they “lightly butter” the bun, but perhaps “lightly” means something different in Wisconsin. No matter: I love butter.
As for my side, those things in the middle are deep-friend cheese curds. That’s right: cheese curds, just like the ones we put on top of poutine, breaded and deep-fried. They were delicious, and we need to get some place to start serving them here.
Here’s an even crazier idea that came to me while enjoying my lunch: what if we made poutine with these babies instead of uncooked cheese curds? C’mon, Smoke’s, I know you can do this!
For dessert, I had the frozen custard flavour of the day: turtle, which was vanilla frozen custard with chocolate and caramel sauces and pecans. Frozen custard is a little richer-tasting because it’s made with eggs, and its texture is thicker since it has less air whipped into it than ice cream does. It’s good stuff, and I want more.
“You should be thankful you have a job!” used to be a reminder of the importance of gratitude. Unfortunately it’s all too often used as a thinly disguised version of “It’s because of you that I’m not already a millionaire” these days.
In the spirit of this new meaning, here’s a greeting card from someecards, the masters of “It’s funny because it’s true”:
And for those of you celebrating the High Holidays, here’s a reminder of the importance of networking!
(By the bye, this works just as well at church, the mosque, secret meetings of the Illuminati and the Toronto Techie Dim Sum, which will take place next week!)
As I write this, I’m in my room at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Milwaukee. I must commend this place for a nice touch: when you check in, they give you a warm chocolate chip cookie with your room key. It made for a lovely “second breakfast”.
I joined my friends Rachel and Scott at their send-off get-together at The Beaconsfield last night. Later today, they’ll fly off to their new home somewhere in the Vancouver exurbs, so in spite of my 6:15 flight this morning, I made sure to catch up with them. It was worth it, and I also got a chance to introduce them to Shameless Karaoke, run by my friend Wil McLean, at the Double Deuce Saloon. I think it became Jon Crowley’s new favourite karaoke spot last night.
An early flight means an early night, so I biked home and arrived at home just before midnight. On the way, I discovered one of the joys of urban biking: I saw a guy holding up his hand to hail a cab and on a whim, I “high-fived” him as I passed by.
I’d packed before I left for Rachel’s and Scott’s going-away party, so all I had to do was get some shut-eye. Aerofleet were at my front door at 4:30 a.m. and I was at the airport soon afterwards, feeling a little more chipper than I’d expected to be.
I was flying American Airlines, which meant Terminal 3. Back in the 1980s, when it was the new terminal and served the late great CP Air (and the developers said they’d put a Harrods in there real soon now), I thought it was fantastic. Now, it’s a glorified Greyhound station for flying buses.
There is no part of Pearson airport that has a greater “bus station” feeling than Gate B6, the dumping ground for passengers flying short-haul “puddle jumpers” to the U.S.. While checking in on FourSquare, I decided to take a photo of the crowd waiting for their flights (it’s the one above; click it to see it at full size). Just after taking the photo, I recognized the guy in the white T-shirt in the foreground: Tracy Morgan, with a small entourage, each one sporting an iPad.
Tracy would later see that the thing on my back was not a backback and actually an accordion. Upon seeing it, he said nothing, but made that Tracy Morgan “my mind refuses to comprehend the thing presented in front of me” face that he uses to great effect on 30 Rock.
I spent most of both flights – Toronto to O’Hare, then O’Hare to Milwaukee – fast asleep (and without the aid of a SkyMall travel pillow). The Toronto to O’Hare leg is about an hour and a quarter. The O’Hare-Milwaukee run normally takes 20 minutes, but with a broken toilet seat, we got sent back to the gate for repairs just as we were taxiing towards the runway. I didn’t care – I don’t have any Milwaukee appointments until 4 this afternoon and I was out like a light anyway.
By the bye, if you’re counting, this is the start of my 16th round-trip flight of 2011.
With about six hours of sleep under my belt, I landed in Milwaukee at 9:17 a.m. Central and was in my hotel room before 10, where I’m getting some work done before lunch, gym, more work and customer/partner meetups. Later tonight will be the start of the primary reason I’m here:
I’m here for BarCamp Milwaukee, the Milwaukee version of the unconference-style gathering for techies, creatives, entrepreneurs, new urbanism types and people who like to share ideas. I’m representing Shopify, who are part of the BarCamp Tour, a group of five startups who are sponsoring, participating in and helping out with BarCamps across North America.
The BarCamp Tour is organizing tonight’s pre-party, which takes place at an Irish pub called the Brocach. (Brocach is Gaelic for “badger den”, and when I hear that phrase, all I can think of is the story about that poor Gordon Ramsay lookalike.)
BarCamp will take place on Friday and Saturday at the coworking space Bucketworks, and I’ll fly back to Accordion City on Monday.
Standard operating procedure for the Accordion Guy.
