You Look Great in White

[I wrote this October 16, as I was flying back to BC from Ottawa.]

Have I ever told you that white is your colour? I know you're a smartass, and that you're going to say that white is a shade. And you'd be right. So shut up. That's not the game we're playing today. Really, though, you look great in white. I think it's because you're so glum and monotonous most of the time, and white just brightens you right up. It makes me forget that usually the very site of you makes me cry.

At least we're not dating, You. If I had to wait as long for someone was dating as I do for you every time we see each other, I'd have gone insane by now. Fortunately, though, we don't see each other that often. Just a couple times a year. And it's always a matter of convenience.... I'm sorry, but I don't want to lie. You always seem to be on my way to someplace I actually what to be, and I just end up dropping in.

It snowed today in Calgary. Flying in from above, Calgary always looks so grey and non-descript, like their idea of æsthetics was to coat every building and street and piece of land with a inch-thick layer of tar sand from a little further north. Today, it was white, and felt so new and clean.

Since my connection was two hours, I decided I would re-clear security. I went outside and felt the brisk wind in my hair, and let the flurries (it could hardly be called snow) fall on my face, and it was glorious. The first snowfall of the season is always one of my favourite times of the year. In Vancouver, I'll likely not get it for weeks or months, if at all this year.

In Real Time, I'm off to make my connection to Victoria now. This will actually get posted in Victoria thanks to the magic of the Internet. Toodley-doo!

[Ok, that's a lie. Internet service in Victoria was lacking like a rock lacks gentle softness. Or like I lack tact.]

[Ok, that's a lie too. The part about Internet service. Not the part about me being a tactless buffoon. I was just a forgetful buffoon as well, and forgot to post it.]

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On the Access Conference and Life in the Westin

For those of you who may not have known, I've been in Ottawa since this Wednesday morning for the Access conference, an annual, Canadian-organized but cosmpolitan gathering of library technology wonks and their friends and well-wishers. As always, the organizers put on a great program. This was my third Access conference, a trend which I hope to continue. So far, I have attended these three conferences as the employee of three different employers, the South Shore Regional Library (Halifax), Okanagan College (Edmonton), and the BC Public Library Services Branch (this year in Ottawa), thanks to assistance from the British Columbia Library Association. This is a trend which I hope not to continue.

Next year's conference is taking place in Victoria, a scant hour from where I live, and a scant(er?) thirty seconds from where my job is officially supposed to be located. This probably means that I will be involved in organizing it somehow. As Cameron Metcalfe said today, when comparing organizing Access to being married, "not a vow you should expect me to renew".

Anyway, last night I went for supper at McDonald's across the street from the Westin. Being the conference venue, that was where I stayed. Now let me tell you, the Westin is divine. The beds had to be made of clouds. And the pillows, bundles of gentle kisses wrapped in the purest silk.

...

No? Was that imagery too terrifyingly creepy for you?

Anyway, four of these Bless'd Pillows resting atop a spring-loaded box of Providence. So you get the picture. Woot. :-D

Now where was I? McDonald's. Right. So, McDonald's is across the street on rue Wellington, and I decided I wanted to look at other places first. Possibly because of the filthy zoo inside, and the teenaged couple outside screaming at each other. Overheard: "Don't you get that you hurt me when you keep getting f**ked up like that?"

I walked a little way down the street. Someone asked me for a quarter, and I saw a drug deal go down right in front of me, so I decided to turn around, and that McDonald's wouldn't be the worst choice I could make that day.

The ultimate point was, it got me thinking. Sitting on my Bless'd Pillows, covered in the Duvet Sacré that my money belongs in better places. That having been said, I refuse on principle to give money to panhandlers, because I'm afraid it might be feeding a drug habit. The exception to this rule is when I feel physically threatened, and will do it to get out to "safety".

Is this principle, though, or greed? Does it only become principle when I start tithing to charity and trying to make a difference in other ways? Am I a bad person for crossing the street and making my trip longer when I see a panhandler, just so I can avoid having to say no, and feeling guilty? Is my guilt justified? Do I ask too many pointless questions, without offering concrete (if poorly-conceived solutions)? Et cetera.

Oh, and I'm writing this from atop a concrete fence structure outside the National Gallery, overlooking the Peace Tower. Swag. No open wireless in this part of town though. Still friggin' swag.

I'm back.

(Addendum: Wedding bells are ringing. Not mine, though! Nosiree! But there's a huge church right across from the National Gallery. All of a sudden, the bells started ringing, and this huge wedding party just come out and formed immediately into this picture-shaped group, like they'd been praciticing it for months. Remarkable.)

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They Must Have Been Republican

Last week, I got to go to Oregon for fun and amusement. And work. The Code4Lib conference at Oregon State University in the sleepy town of Corvallis, population 53,000. It was an excellent conference, and I brought back a lot of neat ideas about:

• improving the catalogue


• pushing services out to users


• the future of the Integrated Library System (and it's not looking good)


• why new standards are good, but new library standards are bad


• why libraries insist on reinventing the wheel (a hard job) when lots of good wheels already exist, and our time would be better spent inventing a bolt that meant we could use existing wheels (an easier job) and taking the newly-found extra time to pay attention to things we've ignored


• beer, and that librarians seem to love it

Lots of people in the library blogosphere (particularly Art Rhyno and Peter Binkley who I happen to read regularly) can talk about these ideas in a way more intelligent way than I can. Maybe when I grow up, I can be like them.

My amusing anecdote comes courtesy of our always delightful and well-armed friends at Customs and Border Protection, a division of the USCIS. They asked me my reason for going to the States, and I explained I was going to a conference for people working in library technology, and I handed them the conference information form.

Code4Lib is a loosely structured camp/conference for library technologists to commune, gather/create/share ideas and software, be inspired, and forge collaborations, said the form. "Loosely structured? Commune?", the gentlemen with the rubber gloves opined. "You can tell this thing is in Corvallis."

Oregon, as you may not be aware is a hotbed of American liberalism, the likes of which is seen in few other states. For example, Oregon is the only state which permits physician-assisted suicide. Said Stephen Colbert, when talking about the odds of the Seattle Seahawks losing the Superbowl (pretty good), it's "not that Seattle doesn't have guts: it's sandwiched dangerously between two Canadas. Canada Canada and Oregon, California's Canada. Now, save your letters, Oregon; I don't read anything written on birch bark." I'm pretty sure they were Republican.

Also, Americans can be dumb. I present to you, faithful readers, for your amusement, The American Fueling Experience.

100% Gasoline. For seriously.

Back with more real opinions and thoughts about stuff soon. :-)

On Mission

Mission is not a small word.

Don't get me wrong. Phonetically, it only has two syllables. In this sense, it is a much smaller word than, say, onomatopoetically, or pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or even, syllable. These words, tounge-tying as they may be, express not horrifically exciting, or broad, or significant concepts [though you might disagree if you're a fictional coal miner afflicted with pneumonoult...]

Mission is not a small word. A mission can be a journey or a quest, sometimes military, of some significance. A mission statement is a statement of beliefs which one will follow, a credo, a motto, a set of guiding principles. Mission is the name of several places, including towns in British Columbia (in the Fraser Valley, near Abbotsford), South Dakota and Texas.

I live in an area of Kelowna called the Mission. It's an almost exclusively residential area, with reasonably sized (for a city) lots, green space, foliage, beautiful mountain views, schools and not a lot of traffic. The specific area I'm in seems to have been built in the 1970s, and not renovated for modernity's sake since then. As a result, my apartment is in a house with a stucco'd exterior, and the inside is covered with enough dark wood panelling to heat this place for an entire winter.

I've also noticed that, for a city of its size, Kelowna has an inordinate number of churches, a large number of them highly conservative theologically, and extremely evangelical in practice. A result is a truly amazing number of religious schools: Catholic, Lutheran, Pentecostal (the Kelowna "Christian" School, as though the rest of the church-run schools aren't, I suppose), and so on. I wonder if this trend of evangelism has a historical basis in Kelowna's founding. If Kelowna's early years saw developed focused in what is now the downtown, a particularly eager group of Christians, perhaps, set out to take God's message to the (then) more rural, unchurched areas, and thus started the Okanagan Mission. I don't know if that's true, but it seems plausible.

These observations were drawn together by my experience travelling to Kelowna from Nova Scotia; six days in a car travelling across New England, Ontario, the US Midwest, Saskatchewan and Alberta. I was struck by the pervasiveness of radio in the United States.

Let us consider, for example, a typical Canadian conurbation (one of my new favourite words). I'm going to use Pictou County, in Nova Scotia: New Glasgow, Stellarton, Trenton, Westville, and for kicks, the slightly distant Pictou town, total population around 35 000. I could just as easily use the cities of Vernon or Penticton here in British Columbia, which are similar in size. Pictou County has one local radio station, CKEC, and a CBC transmitter. Compare that with Minot, a city of 36 000 in northwestern North Dakota, which has ten radio stations, several of them locally originating, and six of them self-describing as "Christian radio".

This is not something isolated to small Minot. Driving on Interstate highways, far away (for the most part) from large cities, one is exposed to mainly AM radio, which propogates over greater distances. The majority of stations I was able to receive were either Christian radio or conservative talk radio. Sadly, I don't think I heard Air America Radio once. Several of the programs I listened to really disturbed me. One was a program extolling the virtues of (I swear I am not making this up) Christian financial planning.

In one call, the hosts advised a man to quit the part-time job which helped him to support his family. The reason: he was selling beer at the local stadium at sporting events, and this wasn't Christian. Sure, his family might not be able to eat. Sure, he wasn't having any himself. But God has a plan; he'll provide. What absolute "God has a plan for you; it's just not this, because you'll obviously be damned forever, because we think the Bible says so" Calvinist crap. I think. I really need to read more theology. Then I'd know whether it's Calvinist or not.

The other thing that really bothered me was a letter from the mother of a three-year old, who wrote (ostensibly for the three-year old — yes, really) about how she loved witnessing (that's a friendly word for evangelizing) people by handing out Christian-themed pamphlets to people while in a grocery store, because, seriously, who's going to be mean and turn down a three-year old girl? It bothers me because the girl can't possibly understand the Message (capitalized for the evangelicals who are reading) she's sharing. At best, she understands that Jesus was born in a church filled with hay and cows on Christmas Day, and that church is where she goes to play in the Nursery on Sunday.

Coming up next: pictures (I hope!), and a possible crisis of faith.

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Edmonton'd!

I'm off to Edmonton tonight for this year's iteration of the Access conference. I may blog while I'm there (depending on availability of Internet access, but more than likely, it will just be me whining about barely understanding the latest library technology.

I'll be back Thursday.

In the meantime, enjoy this beautiful scenery, and the poor bugger who stood between it and the camera.

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"I'm Off to Start Something New..."

Those were the last words I said, in person, to my parents.

When I last wrote, I was just about to go to Saint John for a job interview with the School of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John. They were looking for a Systems Administrator, and apparently they thought I would be an adequate candidate. Shortly thereafter, on my birthday, I was to be skirted away on an aeroplane to Kelowna, British Columbia, for a 48-hour whirlwind tour of Kelowna, British Columbia (24 of those hours spent in the air or at airports) accompanied by a job interview at Okanagan College, where they were looking for a Coordinator, Library Computing Systems.

The short version of the story is that about two weeks later, I was offered the position in Saint John. Suddently, I was faced with the not-small task of deciding whether to:

• stay where I was, with an incredible group of co-workers, a job I enjoyed immensely, and free (if not cozy) accommodations surrounded by people I love (more or less)


• leave my home province, and the world of public libraries to re-enter academia, albeit as a tech monkey, not a member of the grad-student (or even undergraduate) intelligentsia, and replace that now-typical slate of conditions with a list of relative unknowns, in a city where I knew one person (an ex-girlfriend)

No small task, you say.

Indeed.

A week later, after having determined it was necessary to "start something new", I received a call one evening at around 7:30, announcing that I was also being offered the position in Kelowna. A nearly identical situation, except that the job would keep me working in a library setting, though I would now ostensibly be in management (at 24!). Oh, and also, the job would be in Kelowna, British Columbia, some 6000 kilometres from home, where I know nobody, except two taxicab drivers, a checkin guy at the Ramada Lodge Hotel, and a handful of librarians and library paraprofessionals (total interaction time: 3 person-hours).

Resignations were tendered. There were parties and dinners and barbeques and gifts and hugs and tears, and on Monday, September 26, I set off with a packed Toyota and a wallet full of plastic, for Yarmouth and the CAT Ferry, on my journey, across two nations, that would take me into new, unexplored lands, and reunite me one more time with some old friends.

It is now accomplished. I am in Kelowna. I have started my job. I have living room furniture (free!), a dining room table (cheap!), a bed (transported from Coquitlam), and as of this weekend, a mattress (comfy). While I am established here, this is only a "home away from home". I am a Maritimer, born, raised, and educated. I will always be one.

This is only a waypoint on my journey.

I will come home again.

Coming soon (really): how soon I could actually be home.
Coming soon (also): reminiscences of a journey through strange and beautiful lands, as seen through my eyes, a digital camera and (mainly) AM radio.
Coming soon (hopefully): high-speed Internet at home (now T + 10 days without), so I don't have to come into work in the evenings to write here.

Oh! And times here are now in Pacific Time — Daylight Savings or Standard, whatever flavour happens to be the order of the day.

Addendum [the next day]: When I moved back to my old server (had to return the "new" one), ImageMagick moved. Again. So you couldn't comment. Again. At least some things never change.... Thanks to my old colleague J. Adam for pointing the problem out.

In Niagara Falls, Ontario...

As some of you may know, last week I travelled to, and returned from Ontario's beautiful (and usually warmer) Niagara region. It was an opportunity to see the incredible Niagara Falls in the White of Winter, as well as lots of other reasons I'll get into Real Soon Now, I hope.

Pictures very pretty, though. You should go look at them. ;-)

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Vacation Update, Part Four (Ontario, Ohio and the Rest)

In the great tradition of blogging, I'm now finishing up discussion of my exciting adventure.... Well, at least it was exciting two months ago. You know, when it happened.

I arrived on or around September 4 in the bustling metropolis of Ottawa, and enjoyed one night and two days in the company of MEAT and teh Lauren, exploring the byways of the National Capital Region - and forty degrees warmer than the last time, too!

From there, it was on to Toronto, this time, not through an ice storm, to the luxurious Indian Line Campground. It's the closest campground to downtown Toronto (if such a concept exists), located a twenty-minute drive away from the city core, nestled off Finch Avenue, just west of Highway 427, and minutes north of Pearson International Airport. Now way back in the summer of 1998, our family stayed there for a vacation. It was an interesting place, with train tracks bordering the tenting area of the campground, and a single, young sapling providing the only air of wilderness camping in the place. :-P

Yet, six years later, I felt the need to go back. Had someone, in a fit of 2AM train whistle-inspired rage, taken a brick of C4 plastic explosive and blown up the train track? Had the young saplings grown to provide something resembling shade? Could you still hear planes taking off from Pearson? These questions quickly took to the back burner, as I discovered, while setting up the tent, that I left my tent poles in Maine, three days earlier.

Thus began furtive attempts to prop up my tent using the single pole I had for my rainfly -- which didn't come with the tent, though its poles did -- and culminating in my sleeping in the car. All this happened, of course, under the watchful eye of the Peel Regional Police, who circled through the campground all night. I'm sure they thought me drunk off my rocker. Also, the ground here is made of stainless steel, and my tent pegs only of lightweight aluminum. They didn't stand a chance. :-|

Following this, I spent a quick day in Waterloo and Hamilton, dropping some stuff off at Shannon's, and visiting Steph for a while. We attempted to enjoy some of the charms of Niagara Falls, but it was quite busy, our timing was disastrous, and we ended up leaving, having caught only a glimpse of the Falls themselves. :-(

After returning Steph to Hamilton, I left promptly for Windsor/Detroit, and the Ambassador Bridge. I learned that people at Windsor Tim Horton's restaurants don't understand the difference between coffee and hot chocolate, that Detroit is a very, very dirty city, and that in some places, like the privately maintained Ambassador Bridge, charge tolls ($4.00 Canadian!) to cross into the United States.

Upon crossing, I drove for a bit, discovered that I hated Michigan, got tired, and slept (in the car again) at a truck stop in Toledo, Ohio. My goal, here: to find a postcard saying nothing but the words:

Holy, Toledo!

...

I was unsuccessful.

Continuing toward home, I passed through:

• Cleveland, which I thought was a very nice city


• northern Pennsylvania, along the coast of Lake Erie, which was also quite nice, though I didn't get off I-90 'cept for gas


• upstate New York, through Buffalo and Rochester to Syracuse, Schenectady and Albany, down I-87 to Hudson, NY


• through western and northern Massachusetts, including Worcester and Springfield


• into southern New Hampshire, through the small town of Seabrook, through to the border with Maine

where, having driven for nearly twenty-one hours since that last break at Toledo, I pulled over near Kittery, Maine, at a rest stop and took a nap.

A few short hours later, it was off to Winthrop to retrieve my errant tent poles, and be on my way home. All in all, a good trip. I have pictures, but they're all analogue, and my scanner is non-existent. I'll scan 'em eventually - the good ones, anyway.

Here endeth the trip. Sorry it took so long.

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Vacation Update, Part Three (Vermont)

There is no Governor Howard Dean. There is no State of Vermont. There is no nineteenth third part to this vacation series of blogs. Sorry.

Vacation Update, Part Two (New Hampshire)

As though Maine weren't fun enough all by itself.

So there we were, sitting in Maine, behaving ourselves and being generally polite little Canadians, when all the other New England states start to taunt us. Come visit now, they say, or Deleware's getting a One of our other brilliant new ideas was to attempt a tour of a Ben and Jerry's ice cream plant. Now, as you might expect, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream (Vermont's Finest™) is actually made in Vermont.

Now, quick history lesson. Vermont is a bastian of independant thought and creative government in the United States. It's brought us such people as former president Calvin Coolidge, America's last great, lost, hope, Howard Dean, and Rep. Bernard Sanders, the only socialist politician to ever hold office in the United States. For those of you who slept through your PoliSci intro class, the word socialist is best defomed as Not George W. Bush.

Back to Vermont, though. Vermont, I discovered, is a lot like the speed of light. One can travel as close to it as they like, but to actually get there requires an infinite amount of energy (time). So after trouping toward this statistical impossibililty for several hours, and reaching the New Hampshire border doing so, we thought it wise to give up on our foolish adventure, and turn south through the beautiful mountains of the Granite State. Our ultimate destination: the Mall of New Hampshire, in beautiful Manchester, and immediately following that, a meandering drive to the Massachusetts border, only to immediately return to New Hampshire, to the Wendy's restaurant in the border town of Seabrook, bringing us to this trip's note of sadness. Chili-cheese nachoes: only in Canada.

Pity. Also, Wal-Mart is closed here.

Other New Hampshire highlights: the absolutely beautiful scenery of the Franconia region, the frequent highway-side tax-free liquor and lottery ticket stores (or as I dubbed them, Vice Centers -- I counted six), and mind-numbingly awkward hour-long trip to Victoria's Secretin Manchester, where comfortable, proper-fitting, well-made underwear, also tax free, was purchased for all. Except you.

All things considered, a good day, but nowhere near as much fun as Maine.

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Vacation Update, Part One (Maine)

None of my pictures yet, I'm sorry to say. All analog, I'm afraid to say, and I haven't had any free time with a scanner yet. When I do, I promise you'll see la cr??me de la cr??me here. Branflakes Dot Not - you may not see it here first, or even the best, but you... will... eventually. Really.

I was lucky enough to spend another afternoon at Popham Beach State Park. The weather was absolutely magnificent; sunny and warm, with not a cloud in the sky. The water -- perilously icy, for some reason. Being Maine, that's to be expected, I guess. Regardless, Nancy was able to coax (bully) me into the water, though not enough for her satisfaction.

The astute among you may have noticed that the name of this webpage, never particularly static, has changed again. Two incarnations ago, this page was Branflakes' House of Pancakes, then it briefly became got branflakes? I suppose my reasons for playing with these names in the first place center around my insatiable punctuation fetish. That's right - a link for punctuation fetish. Bask in it, I tells ya.

Right. Now about this punctuation fetish name changing phenomenon, you notice I've now changed it back to the slightly modified punc International House of Branflakes. Because I've decided that question marks and apostrophes no longer get me off. :-P Also, I felt less guilty using a name that rips off the trademark of the International House of Pancakes, now that I've eaten there. Twice.

Oh, and did I mention? Delicious. Every staff person I've ever met is a completely a doll, including the burly kitchen staff (all men!), who were able to produce pancakes like nobody's business. Okay, so they were more... action figure-ish, I guess. But still, awesome. Go eat there. iHOB. Ummm... iHOP. Yeah.

Back from the realm of new traditions to old ones. Like Wal-Mart. Now in the United States, at least in large populated areas, Wal-Mart does this thing where they never close, so crazies can get their always low prices, you know, always. Crazies, like two sleep-deprived Canadians who like to get their beer in big-box superstores, and their cookies, all-American. With instant artery-clogging icing. You have never lived (or died, according to my description) without having inhaled one of these cookies. My. God.

Other highlights of Maine include my introduction to the world's best board game, Cranium, and Chinese food, available in those little boxes if you wanted them. Nancy and I opted out of boxes this time, though. Rah.

Coming up next time: that other state. Ummm... New Hampshire.

Hiatus Over

The vacation is ended. The Branflakes is returned.

Recall your search parties.

Vacational content to follow.

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On Hiatus

Not like you'd actually notice, but I'm leaving for vacation.... now. =)

I'll be back September 8, and might try to update if I find a hotspot somewhere on my route. Otherwise, I'll see you then.

If the need to reach me is urgent. The address is:

9025292783 [at] pcs [dot] rogers [dot] com.

See you all soon.

The K-W Report

This report is classified.

For more information, please contact the proprietor.

A Great Adventure

"...as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous, and dangerous, and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."
- John F. Kennedy

As you probably know if you're reading this, I'm not a person prone to taking risks, or to doing something without obscenely preplanning how it's going to work out. I guess it's safe to say that this weekend was an exception to my rules, then.

Two friends, two pillows, a blanket, and some food got piled into my car on about five minutes notice on Saturday night (around 7:30), and off we headed to PEI.

We arrived on the island at 12:01AM Sunday morning, and, having gottten approximately no sleep the night before, proceded to find a place to stay. We found one (for about an hour) in the guise of a parking lot at Slemon Park, just outside of Summerside, until the nice security guard woke us and told us we had to leave.

Ultimately, we found ourselves in a nice, but obscenely overpriced room at Keddy's Linkletter Inn and Convention Centre in downtown Summerside. The comfort of a bed (compared to a car seat) and the prospect of sleep (compared to "not sleep") more than nullified our thoughts as to the cost.

Sunday - the true adventure begins. Our goal - visit all seven Cows stores in Prince Edward Island.

Cap it off with a last minute dash to the seventh store (and our ride home) on the MV Confederation, and some really good chicken-fried rice at the Magic Wok restaurant in Charlottetown, and it made for a pretty h3lla-sw33t weekend.

Pictures to follow. Also expect more updates and less general page-assness in the relatively near future (that is, days or weeks, as compared to never).

Hep!