Hank Young, country-and-western musician from Halifax turned Gladstone Hotel character-at-large, died of a stroke this past weekend at the age of 68. I first met him at the Gladstone during its grungy pre-renovation days at its karaoke night, where he was known for his rendition of Hey Good Lookin’. When the hotel underwent its transformation from fleabag to boutique, the management made him the operator of its antique elevator and his enthusiasm made him the hotel’s unofficial historian and tour guide.
In addition to his better-known work at the Gladstone, Hank also did a fair bit of community work. He opened a centre to help teenage kids off the street, volunteered at a program to feed the homeless and advocated for his neighbours at City Hall.
Hank always had a smile for anyone who passed by and a hearty “Hey, Accordion Man!” whenever I dropped in. He was one of Parkdale’s finest characters-at-large, and the neighbourhood was a little bit better thanks to his presence.
R.I.P., Hank.
Accordion City is often referred to as the most multicultural city in North America, if not the whole planet, and we generally get along. If we ever decide that we need a city anthem, I would recommend that we simply adopt Deuce Poppi’s My White Friends:
[Attention Carson T. Foster and Wil McLean! You need to get the karaoke version of this song!]
While going out for brunch with our friends Liz and Keith and their kids on Roncesvalles, I saw these signs promoting Kennel Cafe’s services. If you never played Dungeons and Dragons, the jokes are totally meaningless, but if you have, they’re pretty amusing:
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The “High-Brow/Low-Brow” Chart
I don’t know when this chart classifying the spectrum of tastes from high-brow to low-brow was created, but the graphic style puts it sometime in the “Mad Men” era of the late 1950s and early 1960s. You can click the chart to see it at full size:
I took a couple of columns from the chart and turned them into an enlarged version, shown below. The columns show “high-brow”, “upper middle-brow”, “lower middle-brow” and “low-brow” tastes in clothes, entertainment and drinks.
Some thoughts on these columns from the chart:
- I’ve worked at a good number of places where coming to work in a t-shirt and jeans was perfectly acceptable. If you showed up in what the chart calls the “low-brow town outfit” you’d have been asked “Hey, why so dressed up?”
- The present-day analogue of “Western movies” is most likely “action films”.
- Beer can be pretty high-brow these days.
Someone needs to recompile this chart for the present day.
To celebrate the release of Windows 7, Japanese Burger King franchises are offering a Windows 7 Whopper with 7 patties, selling for 777 Yen (CAD$8.92 as of this writing), available only for the next 7 days. I have no idea why they’re not doing this on this side of the Pacific; I’m sure it would be a big hit:
According to Julie from ObjectSharp, the Japanese text after “13cm” says “American-size buns”.
[Thanks to Ian Irving for pointing this to me!]
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy.
I bought a fuzzy “Cat in the Hat”-style raver hat with a Canadian flag pattern on a whim earlier this year, thinking that I’d probably find a pretty good use for it some day. That day, it turns out, was yesterday, where I turned it into what I believe was yesterday’s only Steve Ballmer photo-op with a non-management Microsoft Canada employee:
Photo by Barnaby Jeans.
Yesterday was a busy day at the Harbour Castle Convention Centre, where we had an all-day Steve Ballmer-rama. In the morning, Steve keynoted an event showcasing Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 for the media, key customers and partners. This was followed by an employees-only “town hall” where Steve did a short presentation followed by a Q&A session. On a whim similar to the one that led me to buy it, I took the hat (along with the accordion) along with me.
Following a suggestion from my co-worker Damir, I arrived very early for the town hall, grabbed a seat by the stage and donned the hat. When Steve made his appearance, he did so in classic Ballmer style, running and whooping, high-fiving people as he made his way to the stage. As soon as he saw me, he yelled “Hey!”, put the hat on and posed with me for the photo above.
I’d made a decent splash at Microsoft in my first year, and I’d been wondering if I could match it in my second, which began on Monday. This isn’t a bad start.