Boxing Day Already?

I was out doing some last minute holiday shopping today, and already there are signs posted promoting Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is a Canadian tradition, held the day after Christmas Day, as a discount day, when stores slash prices to get rid of all their excess stock that didn’t sell prior to the Christmas shopping rush. Although Boxing Day was traditionally only one day – December 26 – for some time now, it has often been celebrated for a whole week by retailers. This way, they can have a week-long sale.

I remember the stories when I was a kid you’d hear about on the news, about people lining up in front of stores over night, so they were guaranteed first dibs on anything on sale on Boxing Day. People would sleep in tents, on sleeping bags, on the sidewalk, waiting for the doors to open. The lines would be huge, often stretching around the corner, and down several city blocks.

These days, I’ve always avoided Boxing Day sales – the deals may be great, but the atmosphere isn’t. Maybe it’s the specific class of people that go out of their way to save a couple of bucks off of something they may never have needed in the first place, or maybe it’s just our society in general – but Boxing Day shoppers are rude.

They push through you as if you don’t exist. If someone accidentally steps on your toes, the person who did the stepping either ignores you, or blames you for being in the way. There have been numerous reports in the past of fights, stabbings, even all out riots, as hoards of people cram into malls and other stores, all vying for the few bargains that line the shelves.

At this time of year, it isn’t unusual to see signs in stores promoting the Boxing Day sales to come. But what is unusual, probably because of the recession we are in, is to be promoting Boxing Day sales on now.

That’s exactly what I saw, as I did some last minute shopping. Lots of stores claiming their prices have already been slashed.

Christmas is the most important time of the year for most retail stores. This is the time of the year where they make the majority of their sales – if they don’t make enough sales, come the late winter or early spring, they will be out of business. So during a recession, it makes sense for these stores to try whatever they can, to ensure their survival.

Though these early savings have also brought out the beasts which savagely shop during Boxing Day. Although I was just browsing, taking my time, trying to find ideas for add-ons to my gifts, I was pushed, prodded and pulled through the crowds by these animals.

And animals is what they really are – because human beings have manners – and these individuals certainly lacked those.

People don’t push, poke and prod, they don’t shove and they certainly don’t walk right through you, as if you weren’t there. That is the behaviour of barn yard animals, or worse, wild boars.

Maybe Boxing Day is the equivalent to feeding time for the lower class boars that celebrate Boxing Day – and all those red price tags cause them to get antsy and charge?

Maybe we should change the name from Boxing Day to Fight Day, or Wild Boar Day, or even just call it F*cking After Christmas Sale Day – because that’s how I felt during this so-called pre-Boxing Day.

I hope those wild boars which brushed right through me as if I wasn’t there got the savings they were after, because I’d hate to see them – and worse their attitudes – if they hadn’t.

War on Wal-Mart Worthless

There is a war being fought right here in Canada and the States. There are no guns, no anti-tank mines, and no one – as far as I know – has died.

It is a war against one of the largest retail giants in the world – Wal-Mart.

Those against the mighty retail box store chain, claim that when Wal-Mart moves into an area, all the other retail outlets either go out of business, or are forced to cut prices so low, they just can’t make a profit and they too will eventually die out.

They claim Wal-Mart mistreats their employees, discriminates against women and minorities, and won’t let them form labour unions to ensure they are treated with respect.

I think this war is worthless.

I have never worked for Wal-Mart and I don’t know anyone who does. Though I’ve been a customer of the mega-retail giant for some time.

If anything really is dangerous about Wal-Mart, is that shopping there is highly addictive. Because they have so much of the things I want or need, and the prices are always exceptional, I always end up coming out of the store with far more than I had originally intended too. I may go in thinking – THINKING – I just need item X, but I often come out with items X, Y and Z.

Maybe it’s just a show, but all the Wal-Mart employees I’ve encountered in my many visits seem happy and good natured.

Being the person that says: “welcome to Wal-Mart” isn’t the most glamorous job in the world, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that it doesn’t pay like a that either. Though that’s one of the biggest complaints about Wal-Mart – that they pay their staff minimum wage, and don’t treat their employees with much respect.

Retail jobs in general don’t pay much more than minimum wage – most people who do work these jobs are those still in high school, or those without any education whatsoever.

One of the anti-Wal-Mart ads I saw in the States shows an employee on one side, and the CEO and President of the company on the other. It shows his salary, and poses the question to this employee – how long will it take her working at Wal-Mart to earn the same salary as the CEO?

The answer was over 1,000-years – which made the employee cry.

Though this was a clear manipulation of emotions and tactics, similar to what you’d see in a political campaign full of smearing and name calling – which makes sense, because those who created the ad are former political campaign directors for some major U.S. political figures.

Very rarely do the employees ever come close to earning what the CEO earns – the day the guy working the mail room starts making what I do, it is time to look for another line of work.

No one holds a gun to your head telling you where to work. If you don’t like where you work, can’t earn enough to support yourself or do want to make as much as the top executives – change your life. Go out and get a better education, a better job, a better income.

Don’t attack the people that did hire you just because they pay you the lowest of the low. You knew what the wages were when you applied for the job. You knew what the job was – or should have – before applying to do it.

I’ve worked for many companies over the years, and I know the good from the bad. If Wal-Mart really was mistreating people to the extent these anti-Wal-Mart nut bars claim, there would be far fewer Wal-Marts, because there would be far fewer people willing to work at them.

Now if we could only lure those so hell-bent against Wal-Mart to use their protest skills somewhere needed – like ending this nonsense about bailing out the auto sector, or even ending the so-called collation government take-over planned in the New Year. That would be time well spent on a worthwhile cause.

If the Sole Shines Through

Unless you’ve been under a rock the past few days, you know about the protestor throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush.

In most Arab nations, it is considered the greatest insult of all to reveal the bottom of your shoes. By throwing his shoes, he wasn’t just taking aim at a major world leader, he was expressing his deep displeasure with the American involvement in his country.

The so-called War on Terror is the biggest joke. Bush and anyone supporting the initial invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are actually the real terrorists. Both wars were supposed to be witch hunts, finding the ultimate terrorist, Bin Laden.

Bin Laden still hasn’t turned up – though he’s probably living comfortably right under the American’s nose, yet both Iraq and Afghanistan are nations in crisis. The infrastructure of both countries doesn’t exist, poverty runs rampant, and there are so many different factions all attacking each other, peace may never exist.

The United Nations originally refused to support the War on Terror – they saw it for what it really was. Just another excuse for an American leader to bully and terrorize another part of the world, to claim their natural resources in the pursuit of global domination.

Whoa – global domination?

Yeppers – we’ve seen the American’s trying to run the world many times, just using different weasel words. The Cold War, between the good white hat wearing Americans promoting democracy and so-called freedom, versus the evil black hat wearing Soviet Union, and their communistic rule. Actually, any time the Americans claim there are fighting the good fight to banish communism from the globe, has been a disguise towards global domination.

Who the hell has the right to tell another part of the world how to function?
We may not always agree with another political system, but who are we to judge?

Obviously, the man who threw his shoes didn’t agree with Bush and the American way. He simply threw his shoes, he didn’t go out and nuke another country, destroying the lives of those living there.

But wherever the Americans go, they disrupt the lives of everyone along the way. The United Nations has sent many teams – including many Canadian soldiers – to Afghanistan to bring about order. This mission has cost the lives of over 100 Canadian soldiers, and is essentially nothing more than a mass clean-up effort, to repair the damage left by the Americans.

There are still American forces in Afghanistan, but only a handful – most of the American forces have been redeployed to Iraq, where war continues to brew in yet another American-made mess.

Throwing one’s shoes may not stop the American’s – but it does draw them under a very large microscope.

Everyone around the world, has seen the humorous footage of one of the most powerful leaders on earth, ducking and evading a pair of shoes.

As Bush leaves office and Obama takes control, maybe things will change for the better. After all, the last thing Obama wants is global attention focused on him ducking and evading a pair of shoes thrown at him.

Watch What You Give and Get

China is back in the news, as a country poisoning our people. Another recall has emerged, for several toys made in the Asian country, containing toxic substances.

Last year, toys, pet food and more recently, even milk from China were all contaminated with deadly materials.

I personally always avoid anything made from that country. I’m sure China is a nice place to visit, but their lack of care for quality sends red alert signals through my veins. And it should through yours too.

Our government is comprised of politicians too pussy-whipped to take a stand on protecting us from products made in China. There was a proposed law on the books, Prime Minister Stephen Harper even said he’d put through the legislation as soon as possible. But, as with many things politicians say, nothing actually happened.

Now that the government is on vacation – some may say that since Harper took office it has been on permanent vacation – any hopes of having greater regulations in place to protect consumers from dangerous products from third-world countries may just be that – hope.

So, it is up to you and me to police ourselves. We must take matters into our own hands, and just stop buying anything which may kill either ourselves or those we care about.

It isn’t easy – you’d be surprised at how much crap a third-world country can churn out. Just about everything is made in China these days. Which may in some cases going without.

The key is working together as a population – if everyone in the country just says no to anything produced in China, eventually companies will stop farming off their production to that third-world country.

Maybe they will actually wake up, and realize that although it is cheaper to pay people in some other country to build their products, if no one in this country is purchasing those products because of where they are made, they will eventually bring production – and jobs – back to our country.

I remember a long time ago, I worked for a software company which at the time, started sending out some of our development to a third-party company in India. Instead of paying software developers here about $60/hour, they were able to pay $8/hour for the same job.

Problem was, all the software that came back from the Indian programmers was flawed. It either didn’t work at all, or it would have major crashes when interacting with other applications – or even just on it’s own. Everything had to be checked and sent back and forth between our development teams and the one in India just to get anything to work.

What was supposed to be a cost savings measure actually turned out to cost the company more, because it took longer to get products to market. Because of the software delays, the company lost customers and eventually went out of business.

Not all companies using cheap Chinese labour will go belly-up, nor will all suffer.
I am always surprised by how low prices often wins out over quality. Near me, there is a shopping mall with mostly dollar-type stores. These stores sell things made pretty much everywhere but North America, for bargain basement prices.

You can buy a pack of four light bulbs at one for one dollar – though I bet they’d last no longer than one night, if that. They sell supposedly brand name products too – I saw a bottle of Tide laundry detergent at one, going for a couple of bucks. I read the label and found it was made in Sri Lanka and had a production date of July 2004 – over four years ago. Wonder if it would actually clean my clothes?

I’ve got to this mall early, to get a hot chocolate and a muffin on my way to work, and surprisingly, people line up to get into these dollar stores.
Bargain hunting is fun, but at what cost?

The cost of having to replace a couple of light bulbs that burned out the next day? The cost of buying new clothes after a laundry detergent destroys them? The cost of a person’s life, after consuming something toxic?

Don’t buy anything made in China – or other third-world countries. Unless of course, you just don’t care about yourself, or those around you.

Keep the Cash -- Take Up Walking

Looks like the biggest industry in North America is about to go belly-up, as it falls victim to the recession – or so says those in charge of the auto industry.
In actual fact, the auto industry – which employs millions of people across North America for General Motors, Chrysler and Ford – is just as much to blame for its problems, as any other business is when it doesn’t make the cut.

As gas prices continued to increase, you’d figure the so-called “Big Three” automakers would have started producing more fuel efficient and even more alternative energy-driven vehicles. But as the oil and gas industry is in bed with the auto industry, neither saw the writing on the wall.

As oil tycoons continued to artificially increase the price of their products, driving up the costs to run the big, gas hogging vehicles being made and marketed in North America, those buying new vehicles turned to the foreign automakers, with their fuel efficient and hybrid-powered vehicles.

It wasn’t until after Toyota and Honda had already sold millions of hybrid vehicles in North America, and American-made auto sales slumped that the Big Three even considered jumping into the hybrid market.

The greatest irony, now that more people are doing whatever they can to cut expenses in this global economic mess, the Big Three automakers are forced to wake up and realize they are just as likely to go out of business, as the mom and pop shops down the road. Public transit use is up in major cities across North America, as people drive less to save more. Oil and gas prices have fallen sharply, as the need for the product has fallen so much so, even the evil oil tycoons can’t fake a need to force an increase. And people just aren’t buying big, gas guzzling vehicles anymore.

General Motors is threatening to close all of its auto making plants for January and part of February to stay alive. Ford and Chrysler have yet to announce how they too will threaten the world with massive unemployment, unless governments bail them out of their own sloppy mess.

It isn’t the business of government to interfere in the nature of private business. No one wants to lose their job, and the more people unemployed, the longer and harder this recession will last. However, even if governments don’t finance the auto sector, eventually things will get better.

The world won’t stop spinning and people won’t suddenly be stranded, unable to travel from point A to B. The world may be absent General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, but so be it. Tax dollars shouldn’t be used to pay for some private corporations mismanagement.

If and when the Big Three do go out of business, it may very well create other industries which are more environmentally sustainable, and finally force the evil oil tycoons out of business as well. There are many other ways to get around – electricity, solar, wind, and who can forget about our own two feet?

General Motors has already created a fully electric car, but they quietly killed the project because it was so successful. That’s right, they buried their success, so that we’d still be dependent upon the oil and gas industry to power the world.
Any company which hides its successes to fuel a dependency on a product is no different than a drug dealer pushing drugs on his customers, to keep them hooked. General Motors is like the pimp that gives you the occasional freebie, so that you go into withdrawal and eventually pay through the nose to acquire more ass.

Only the real ass in this scenario are the suits and ties pimping the North American auto market, and their just as trailer-trashy cousins, who run the oil and gas sector in the Middle East.

I for one hope they all go out of business, because then, finally, we will be free to explore alternatives to fossil fuels, by looking at ways to not just power our vehicles, but our homes, our businesses – our world – which are not only environmentally sustainable, and more cost effective, but also won’t lead us down the road to other dependencies.

Retards Have All the Guts

I was taking our wondrous public transit system today, and it was busy with the usual suspects – business travellers, kids playing hooky from school, seniors out for their daily coffee, shoppers getting holiday gifts and me.

At one stop, a retard – I’m politically correct sorry, I mean handi. . . uh that’s been banned by the language police too . . . slow . . . hey . . . retard is just another word for slow . . . so retard it is – got on.

You could tell he was “developmentally challenged” – AKA slow or retarded. He sat right up front in the spots reserved for people with disabilities. Then he began wandering around, stopping to chat to any pretty lady who didn’t have time to make a mad dash out of there.

For someone without all his marbles, he had good taste. He only went up and started chatting with the good looking women, from what I could see. He even snubbed one woman who didn’t make his grade, as he budded in between her and her better looking friend.

Maybe you have to be retarded to have guts. Being a successfully single guy, I know it takes a lot of guts to go up and try and make nice nice with members of the opposite sex at venues where this sort of pick-up behaviour is expected, like a bar, club or party. But out in public, trapped on a public transit system, during one of its busy times, isn’t one of those common pick-up venues. And people usually aren’t in the mood to just start a conversation with a complete stranger.

Some of the women this guy went up to ignored him, but surprisingly, many actually talked to him. Maybe next time I see a hot babe that I just wanna get to know, I should play the retarded card?

Then again, I didn’t see anyone giving out their numbers, and he didn’t leave with anyone, so more likely they were just being kind and sympathetic.

Still, kudos to this kid for bravery. I’ve often found myself tongue-tied and shy when I catch an attractive woman checking me out, and trying to initiate something by a look or a stare. This guy didn’t even have the green light signal from any of these women, yet he went up and just started babbling and they started listening, and talking.

There is that old adage you have nothing to lose, and you’ll never know unless you try. But with all the news reports about violence in our streets, you’d figure most people would run away from a stranger’s advances in a situation which isn’t usually a social spot.

I would have thought that most of these women would have seen a person who obviously had some mental challenges, approaching them, and make up some excuse to get away, or even just leave without any reason, other than to make an escape.

But the retard, in all his slurred speech, awkward movements, and even more awkward approaches to meeting a mate, at least got those potential mates talking. And that in of itself, was a pretty amazing thing to see.

What Would You Ask Your Potential Manager?

Job interviews don’t really give you a chance to ask your potential manager a lot about how they manage – you don’t want to come off half-cocked and sounding like an arrogant know-it-all.

But when you are hiring a manager, you can really put them in the hot seat.
Here are some of the questions I ask when I hire anyone who is going to be taking care of my staff. Listen long and loud – some of these may be unconventional, but then, if I’m going to put you in charge of the most valuable people in the company – the workers – you’d better be able to give me the answers I want to hear.

How do you manage yourself?
May sound silly at first, but it isn’t – it is based in logical practicality. To be a good leader, you have to set the example, and if you can’t make it to your own meetings on time, I don’t want you. Self management is about being “employee number one” – being the model employee – doing what you say, and showing how to do the right thing. It is about dressing the right way, talking the right way, performing the right way, and above all, walking the talk – leading a team by setting the perfect example.

What’s the most unexpected thing that has ever happened, and what did you do?
Being able to handle the unexpected is to be expected. If you can’t think quick on your feet, you’ll be on your back when I toss you out the door. Management is more than just budgets and timelines, it’s all about people. Everyone has their own lives in and outside of work, and life isn’t always routine. To be a manager on my team, you’d better be able to handle surprises.

How much do you know about those who report directly to you?
I don’t want to hire potential stalkers, but as I said before, management is all about people. To be an exceptional manager, you need to be personable, and get to know your team. You need to know the names of their significant others, and their children’s names, and ages (if they have them). What they do when they aren’t working – for fun, or just because. Why? See next question.

How often do connect with your staff and how?
This is a bit of a loaded question. Often, potential wanna-be managers instantly assume I’m asking them how they talk about work with their staff. What I’m really looking for is how often they connect with their staff on a social or personal level. How often do they take the time to just chat about their kid’s, their significant other, or some other non-work related thing, in an attempt to open up and get similar information back from those they work with. By sharing stories about the things going on in our lives outside the office, we learn that we are all really alike in some ways and different in others. We learn how to accept ideas and values which may be different then our own, and we can base our working relationships on pseudo-quasi friendship, by sharing similarities. So when a colleague calls saying they are going to be late because they had to rush their kid’s forgotten lunch to school, you understand and empathize with them, rather than chewing them out.

How do you connect with staff?
Again, I don’t want to hear about how wonderful you are at booking meetings, and how accurate your minute taking is. I want to know how you get your staff to open up with you on a social or personal level. You can’t just go up to all of your staff, and start asking them about their significant others, the names and ages of their kids, and where they live – they’d get scared and quite rightly think you’re not playing with a full deck of cards. The best managers, are exceptional people people.

How many have you lost under your command?
I often start this question off with a story, about how military leaders are often judged by how many soldiers have been sent to their deaths under their leadership – obviously, the fewer deaths, the better the leader. Then I ask them how many people have quit under their leadership? Granted, not everyone will have left because of their leadership – or lack of leadership – there are many reasons why people leave a company. But a sign of a good manager, just like a military leader, is the one with the fewest casualties. Good managers can retain and keep good employees, even under some of the most undesirable circumstances. I’ve been in places where the budgets were small, the resources limited, and the opportunities few and far between, yet people had been working there forever – because those running the place were exceptional coaches, mentors and leaders.

Who is the most important member of your team and why?
Anyone who actually identifies any one individual or group as the most important team member is automatically disqualified from ever being a manager for me. This is a trick question – there is no “I” in team – no one is more important than anyone else. And even if you have the largest team in the company under your beck and call, your team is no more or less important than any other team or department in the company. The best managers know the importance of getting all teams to work together.

Managed Gift Giving

I participate in the annual gift giving of the holidays. And whoever says it is better to give than receive, is probably lying – it is always better to receive.

Though I’ve learned the secret to getting what you want, and ensuring you give what others want too. I call it managed gift giving, and it is really easy to do.
All I do, is I create separate lists of the things I want or need for those who typically give me gifts every year – like my immediate family and friends. Then, I ask those same people what exactly they want or need, and make my own list of things for them, based on their responses.

I’ve tried to get others to give me lists, and for the most part, they either forget, or say they never can figure out what they want. That’s why I just ask people what they want or need. It is easier for me to get them thinking about what they want by talking with them, rather than leaving them to create their own lists.

Though I always create my own lists and give them out to others. This way, I don’t have to take anything back, or worse, do the dreaded re-gifting thing.

Re-gifting is always dangerous, because any gift you didn’t value enough to give away, may easily end up back in the hands of the very same person who gave you the gift in the first place! It’s true – if you don’t value a gift enough to keep it, you probably will forget who gave it to you in the first place, unless of course, it really was an awful gift.

You might be thinking now, that by giving a list of potential gifts ruins any chance of a surprise. Right?

Wrong!

I make a list of possible gifts, and tell those I give these things to they don’t have to get anything or everything off the list, it’s just a guide post, to give them ideas about the types of things I’m looking for. Though, because shopping for someone else can be quite tedious and not always easy, most people will stick to the list. And because I don’t know what on the list they will give me, it is always a surprise.

Though sometimes I can’t surprise everyone on my holiday gift giving list. Sometimes, people don’t give me enough to go on, so I have to get the one or two items which they mention, and that means they know pretty much what I’m giving them. I like it when people give me a long list of stuff – a list too long for me to get everything on. This way, I can really surprise them.

Managing gift giving is the best way to give gifts – and not just during the holidays. When birthdays and other events happen throughout the year where gifts are required, I always ask people what they want or need. This way, they get what they want, rather than me having to try and figure it out.

And this also means I never give the worst gift of all – money or gift cards. Giving a gift card or money says to the person you’re giving the gift to that you really don’t care about them. It shows that you really don’t know that person well enough to be giving a gift in the first place.

Though I suppose asking someone what they want takes out some of the guesswork too, but at least there aren’t any nasty surprises.

I shouldn’t get polka dot underwear, or some weird funky furry steering wheel cover or something, because people know what I want or need – just as I know what they want or need too.

Managed gift giving works – try it this year.

Me and My Guilty PVR

A few months ago, I upgraded my digital cable to one of those fancy-smancy packages, completed with a High Definition Personal Video Recorder – AKA a PVR.

These things are awesome – I can pause, stop and rewind live broadcasts. I can also record about 90-minutes of television, so that I can watch it at another time. Essentially, the PVR is a special kind of digital cable box, one with three digital cable receivers in it and a large hard drive to record shows. The digital receivers allow it to constantly record live shows, while you watch other shows, or to simply play back recorded shows.

Previously, I’d just do the time-shifting thing. I’d catch any programs I missed on another station in a different time zone. I still do that – it’s cool to watch American channels and see the American commercials. Americans have a different sense of humour than us Canucks, and it plays out in their commercials.

But I now suffer what may be a new disease of modern technology – Guilty PVR. I record so many shows on a regular basis, that I have accumulated quite the list on my PVR. So much so, that I often feel guilty about deleting anything, without first watching it.

Sounds silly, but you figure, if I set the thing to record it in the first place, then I must have originally wanted to watch it. And that’s true, just some things – particularly news and current affairs shows – are more interesting closer to the actual events they surround.

Though I also “PVR” many Star Trek shows, and lots of shows off of the Discovery Channel – Discovery rocks. I record movies off the movie network, shows off of Showtime – like Californication, and stuff off HBO. I really enjoy some of the old stuff off of Déjà Vu too, remember Bizarre with John Byner – classic.

Still, I’m so busy during the work week, I don’t get to watch all that I “PVRed” so come the weekend, my PVR is practically burping full. So much so, that I feel the need to sit in front of the television all day, watching nothing else but show after show after . . .

Eventually, my eyes gloss over, my fingers grow numb from the remote, and I decide enough is enough, and I toss the whole PVR out the window . . .

Or so I think sometimes. What usually happens is I watch some stuff off the PVR, and then go on with my life – as the PVR blinks “Recording.”

Oh no – now it’s filling up again!

How the Annual Dinner Affects Your Work

As the holidays approach, people toss away their corporate casual business wear, in favour of something less corporate. It is the much anticipated – or hated depending on your point of view – annual holiday party.

I’ve been to my fair share of these annual events over the years, for various companies. Some companies go all out and have mega-events, where they rent out huge banquet halls, have fancy caterers, serving formal multi-course meals. Other companies, have little to nothing to ring in the holiday season, opting for pay-as-you-go pub night.

A few times, I’ve been to these things, where the pub is open bar – meaning you can drink your career away if you aren’t really all that mindful.

One of my clients this year is going for the pay-as-you-go cheap night at the local watering hole.

I prefer those big swanky catered affairs, in those ritzy banquet halls. This is the one time of the year where everyone can get together in a non-business environment. And it is the one time of the year where companies show how much value they really place on you and your colleagues.

In this era of economic doom and gloom, the annual holiday feast has been sacrificed at many places. Although understandable, it says something about the devaluation of the common employee by his or her employers.

Employers love to brag about how everyone loves to work for them. Some I’ve been to even boast about how they’ve made someone’s top employer’s list. But what really says to an employee that you value him or her, isn’t some slogan created by some human resources staffer with too much time on his or her hands – it is the way the company actually treats their staff.

Companies that provide the necessary resources for their staff to do their jobs are on the right path. But providing those extra nice-to-have resources for their staff to not only do their jobs, but to experiment and try new things are even better. Just about everyone needs a computer and software these days to do their jobs – but when a company provides the fastest computers, and the latest cutting-edge software, that’s a sign the company really values it’s staff.

Companies that give the basic statutory holidays and that’s all don’t care much about their staff. But those that give additional vacation time, and even take non-statutory holidays off really show their employees their value. Work must get done, but working until you burn out isn’t a good way to motivate employees to show up. I’ve worked for companies where they not only give you the statutory holiday, but the day before and the day after that holiday off – not a bad perk.

Other nice perks – all those dreaded corporate functions. They can be a pain, and there are some people at the office you just don’t want to see outside the office. But companies that provide these to their employees are showing their love – so to speak.

Without these corporate functions – like the annual holiday party – we’d simply be drones, showing up when needed, doing our jobs and then going home. There is more to work than just doing it – there are all the interactions with all those other workers. As a species, we are social animals. So it makes sense that we have social functions within our work environments – otherwise, we’re liable to show our least favourable animalistic tendencies. And I hate it when that happens.

Too Many Women

When I was in university, I took a sociology course on modern civilizations. It was one of those elective courses, which was a lot of fun, and helped give me a broader education. Or so they tell me.

One of the interesting theories back then, has apparently come true.

Back then, a group of academics said one day, we’d have too many women. For as long as we’ve had bean counters, people have kept track of global populations, birth and death rates, and other statistically-based human growth-rates.

The too many women theory, says, based on an increase in female birth rates and a decline in male birth rates, coupled with an increase in the number of births overall, eventually, women will out number men by ten to one. That means, in a room of ten people, statistically speaking, only one of those individuals would be a dude.

The too many women theory has come true – women out number men significantly in the global population, particularly in the first world.

As a young kid in university hearing this theory, my first reaction was one of excitement and joy. Being a single guy, in a room full of mostly women, doesn’t sound like a bad thing at all.

But when one sex significantly outnumbers the other, things change dramatically for the negative in our society.

We’ve already seen an increase in the number of single mothers. In a world where there are more women then men, both sexes become more promiscuous, and the traditional family unit breaks down. There is even an alarming trend among young teenage girls, who want to have kids, and be single moms – because they see it as “the thing” to do.

In the workplace, men find it harder to find work. Although it is public policy and in law not to discriminate based on sex – part of being human is just that. We unconsciously hire those who look like us, talk like us, and share the same values and beliefs we do. This is one of the many reasons why men dominated the workforce prior to the sexual revolution in the 1970’s, and why women dominate the workforce today.

We can see this in terms of the economy too – watch TV and you’ll see most of the ads have more women in them than men. Advertisers know where their income comes from – they see that more women are making the global economic wheels turn, and so they specifically target their ads at them.

The hardest hit segment of the population, are women with traditional family values. Here, you’ll find women who won’t start a family, until they have been in a long-term relationship with a man, who they know will always be there. As there are fewer men available to all the women, there will be a large number of women in this group that will never find a “life partner” and as such, never have a family. As most of us have traditional family values, this will impact our future as a race.

That means eventually birth rates will fall significantly, as there will be a large segment of the female population that will never have the opportunity to have children, simply because they couldn’t find a mate. Unless the numbers of men and women starts to balance out, eventually, either our values will have to change, or we will simply become extinct as a species.

Those Big Babies Have Done It Again

Children often need to be disciplined when they act out of line. That’s how they learn to be productive members of society – by their parent’s telling them right from wrong.

How come our federal politicians don’t know how to properly behave and to be productive members of society?

Just a few months ago, our “leader” – if you can call Prime Minister Stephen Harper that – called an early election, on the basis that his government was unable to work with the other political parties. He said the house of parliament had broken down and the only way to ensure a good government for Canadians, would be to have an election.

By calling an election prior to his mandate, Prime Minister Harper claimed he’d achieve a workable government.

Nothing changed in that federal election – we got the same leader and the same leaders of the opposing parties. And now the opposing forces are joining sides, in a bid to oust the government, so they can play “leader.”

Problem is, running one of the largest nation’s on earth – or any nation for that matter – is not child’s play. It’s not like playing Lego’s and it certainly isn’t anything like street hockey.

Though the way our federal politicians are acting -- more like children that need a spanking than adults that ought to know better – it might serve them well to be placed in the penalty box.

We don’t usually get to pick and choose who we work with, and in many cases even who we work for. Often, you just have to deal with the uniqueness of each person, as best you can. By crossing your arms, and taking up the stand that you just won’t work with that person or group of people at all, is no different than a child, refusing to be nice to another kid in school.

That’s one of life’s lessons we are supposed to learn at a young age. But if appears are federally elected representatives either haven’t learned that lesson – as that is exactly what they are doing.

Prior to the election, it was our “leader,” Prime Minster Stephen Harper claiming he simply couldn’t work with the other political parties. Now, in what appears a way of those other political parties at getting back at the Prime Minister, they are claiming the exact same thing about Prime Minister Harper and his party.

They are trying to end parliament early, so they can force a no confidence vote – and presumably another federal election – in the New Year.

Just how many federal elections must we go through, before these children learn to grow up, and work together?

Federal elections are not only time consuming and cost a lot of money, they also take away the primary role of the government, which is to govern. While our federal politicians are running across the country, banging on doors and kissing babies in an attempt to win your vote, there is no business going on within government.

Although it is normal and expected that the government’s business be placed on hold during an election, what isn’t normal nor expected is to constantly have elections.

This constant disruption to governing is unacceptable – especially when the sole reason is a childish act of not willing to work with those you have to work with, to get the job done.

What? Nothing? Nobody? Nadda?

Today, I saw a kid wearing a t-shirt with “I love only Me” on it. I didn’t know how truthful some stranger’s t-shirt would be today.

I arrived at the office at my usual time, and after several hours, hadn’t seen anyone else on my team. Others were around, but none from my team. This is odd, because usually, I’ll get an email or voice mail from anyone not able to come in. But nothing was in my inbox from my absent team. I had got many other emails, so I know the thing was working.

I checked at reception, no one knew where these people were either – in fact they were going to ask me the same thing!

I checked with Human Resources, and they hadn’t heard anything either. Never know, maybe they just got up and quit.

I’ve often thought about storming into some big shot’s office, smile, and then saying: “f*ck you I quit!” and then storming out of there.

Maybe my thoughts were contagious?

Human Resources was just as mystified as I was.

I sent out some emails, and within the next hour or so, I had my answers. One person was working from home, the other, her daughter had a bad cold, so she was playing nurse-maid to her.

Thanks for keeping me informed team. I would have preferred some story about someone quitting on the spot, or even a horrific tale of some car crash – anything is better than: “whoops, sorry, forgot to mention it.”

They didn’t forget to mention it – they didn’t tell anyone. And that usually means they were just slacking off. When someone decides to work for home, they usually are in touch with the office through email and the occasional phone call – they are still “working” – in theory anyways.

I’ve always had my doubts about those who profess to the joys of working from home. Most people I’ve had the displeasure of working with who subscribe to this practice, seem to end up with more work on their desks after working from home, simply because nothing really got done while at home. It’s so easy to flick on the TV and tell yourself you’ll get started after the show. But then, before you know it, it’s already four in the afternoon, and you’re still watching Oprah.

Then there’s my other well meaning colleague, who’s daughter fell ill. Whenever I’m sick, and can’t make it in, I email the team to let everyone know where I am. I’ve been in situations where it really pains me to sit in front of the computer – the glare from the screen just adds to the pounding in my head. Yet, somehow, I manage to hammer out a quick email alerting my staff why I won’t be in.

So, if a sick person on their deathbed can type out an email, surely someone who isn’t sick, merely taking care of someone who is sick, that person should be more than capable of sending out an email message.

But when people are just avoiding work, they tend to avoid making contact. People who are hiding from the truth, seldom open up willingly.

Which is why I wish the stories I received back from my email inquiries were more horrific. At least those would be more believable, and more entertaining.

Where’s Ms. Manners When You Need Her?

Some people just don’t have any manners – none whatsoever. Maybe their mothers were wild boars, or some other barnyard animal, because they certainly act like wildlife.

I was in a food court the other day, and although there was a line, people were ignoring it. When it was my turn at the cashier, the person behind me simply handed the cashier his receipt, and paid for his meal. I was shocked.

Then some woman practically pushes me out of the way, while I was paying for my food, as she reached across in front of me to grab some paper napkins.

I’m not Mrs. Manners, but even I know that behaviour is rude. Not too mention awkward and uncomfortable, because in both situations, I was in the middle of complete strangers.

Good manners can go a long way. If the woman simply said excuse me, and asked if she could grab some napkins, I’d be more than happy to move aside. I may even reach over and get them for her myself.

But instead, people these days just do whatever they feel, without thinking about those around them.

We live in a society of “I’s” instead of one of “us.”

Is it any wonder why road rage is on the rise, or that it even exists. When I was a kid, road rage didn’t exist. There always was some bone head who would cut people off, tailgate, or do some other dangerous and downright mean driving manoeuvre. But you never heard about anyone actually getting out of their car and pounding the crap out of someone. Never heard of someone trying to drive someone off the road, or shoot at them, or any of the many things that people do these days.

If people simply remembered that there are others out in the world, besides them, then maybe we’d all be able to get along all that better.

Sleepy Spider or Caught in a Lie?

The federal government recently announced that many of the promises made in the just-as-recent federal election a few months ago, are not going to happen, now that we’re in an economic crisis.

The federal election was just a few weeks ago, and we were in just the very same economic mess as we are now – the only difference is – well wait a sec – there is no difference.

Even the candidates in the American election were talking about what’d they would do to fix the broken wheels of the economy, and the American election ran several more months longer – and began much earlier – than the Canadian election.

So, how come Canadian politicians didn’t “know” about the economic situation when they were making all those big spending promises?

This is just another example of why society has lost faith in politicians. Lies, deceptions, and far worse – playing dumb – are the acts by our politicos which make professional cynics of us all.

Yes, the “recession” word is just starting to be used in an official capacity, but the economy has been brutally painful for some time now. Certainly prior to the American federal election, which started prior to the Canadian one.

The economy was one of the big issues in the past federal election – and when we went to the polls, we were supposedly electing someone on their promises to make things work.

But all those promises were just words in the air, or so it appears, as the federal government is pulling out from many of those promises, claiming they just didn’t know any better.

Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister, but you were the prime minister before the election, and you knew the economy was slumping. Unless you aren’t doing your job – then maybe we should ask for your resignation?

But you were just re-hired, in a matter of speaking via your re-election, so nothing should really change your plans. Besides, you were in power during the start of this money mess, and you got elected again during the very same money mess – so quit your belly aching and start doing what you told us you would do.

Unless you overstated your qualifications? Many people these days tell little white lies on their resumes, hoping to just coast through their jobs. Is that your official game plan? Do you plan to just ride things out by hiding under a desk somewhere, until the coast is clear?

Canada used to be one of the greatest countries on the planet – we still do have lots to boast about. Though I’m starting to wonder how much longer that will last – with inept, lying scoundrels running the ranch, we’re going to suffer just as bad a fate as our dollars and cents.

The Longest Repair

Over a month ago, I took an old laptop to BestBuy to get repaired. It’s an old Gateway laptop – it was a great computer, and it really isn’t all that old – only a couple of years at most.

I figured, I’d give it to my dad, which would be a welcomed sight seeing as he’s using an old computer running Windows98. Yeppers, you read right, he’s using a computer which is probably over 10-years-old. When I go over an turn the thing on, you can walk the dog around the block several times, and it is still powering up.

BestBuy has yet to ever actually call me and let me know the status of the repair on this machine. I keep calling them – which isn’t good customer service at all. And to top it off, a month later, and the computer still hasn’t been fixed.

I’ve taken computers to BestBuy, and had their Geek Squad look after them before. Usually they are prompt, and reasonably priced.

But for whatever reason, this repair is taking too long, and I fear may be higher in cost than the initial estimate. Whenever there is a breakdown in communications, there usually are financial costs.

I know the system board has to be replaced on the laptop, and BestBuy tells me the system board is rare, and hard to find. That’s why it is taking so long.

But it would be nice if BestBuy actually called me every so often to tell me these things. So far, I’ve been the one calling them, to find out where and what have they done with my laptop.

It shouldn’t be up to the customer to keeping peace. That’s called customer service, and should be handled by the company that wants to keep their customers coming back.

Though I’m a technology geek, so I suppose I’ll always shop at BestBuy, even though I’m having a bit of a run around with them over a laptop’s service. Every time I go into a BestBuy, my eyes glaze over, and I start to salivate over the latest technological toys before me.

But I will think twice before dropping off one of those technological toys for service.

Oh No – Not Star Trek Too!

Being a writer-type I am always dismayed by the lack of creativity in the industry. Writing involves more than just stringing sentences together, it involves imagination.

That’s why I am so offended when I hear of the dreaded prequel.

Sequels are bad enough, but if done right, and not for too long, can be worthwhile ventures to continue a successful story of well established characters.
Prequels for the most part are just laziness. They did a prequel in Star Wars and now Star Trek is coming out with its own storyline, prior to the original show’s conception. The story line for the latest Star Trek movie occurs at Star Fleet Academy, where Kirk and Spock meet. This is long before they serve together aboard the starship Enterprise.

Problem is, when you have well established histories spanning decades of constantly moving forward storylines, creating something which is supposed to have taken place prior to these storylines blurs the line of reality, and throws out that history.

There are bound to be continuity errors in these prequels – there always are. It is impossible to catch all of them during production. But with the overzealous fan-base globally for Star Trek, just as happened with the Star Wars prequels, these will become big sore spots eventually.

I never got into the whole Star Wars phenomenon. But Star Trek – STAR TREK – that’s something I’ve followed since I was a little boy, lying on the rug on Sunday’s at my grandparent’s place, watching Kirk and Spock make Star Trek history.

And history is what this is all about. Writing a prequel is about coming up with a story based on an established history of events, one which should eventually lead up to those events. Problem is, it is human nature to spin the yarn, and come up with new events, which couldn’t possibly match exactly to the way things were before the prequel.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, or maybe I’m just an experienced writer, knowing full well what tragedies occur when stories of before, are written well in the after.
Either way, I am troubled by the whole notion of a prequel. Good things move forward, not backwards. Technology improves, and we as a race move improve too. Writing prequels is taking a step back, and so too, I fear, will the quality and continuity of the Star Trek universe.

Some cynics say all the great ideas ever created have already been created. I disagree – because the day we stop inventing new ways to do things, is the day we die.

I just hope the Star Trek universe doesn’t die because of a poorly written prequel.

Automotive Bailout My Butt

I can’t believe our federal government is still even talking with the automotive big bosses about bailing them out.

We’ve been in a recession for some time now – though economists are weak minded followers, unable to use the forbidden “R” word – AKA “Recession” – without a slap on the back from their employers.

Surely the automotive “big three” of General Motors, Chrysler and Ford had seen things coming for some time. If they weren’t so blinded by their own weak minded followers, they would have changed things up long ago, to prevent what has happened now.

Now, General Motors – GM – one of the world’s largest companies – is seriously considering bankruptcy, with Ford and the Chrysler Corp. bound to follow GM’s lead.

To stave off their creditors, GM and the other two giant’s of the automotive sector, are begging for a cash infusion from our federal government.
Granted, millions of people throughout North America depend on the big three automakers for their livelihood. The automotive sector is one of the largest employers in the world.

Problem is, governments really have no place in keeping companies afloat in a democratic, capitalistic society – which just so happens to be the one we’ve lived in faithfully since Canada and the States were founded many years ago.

We do live in a Darwinian social-state, so-to-speak, where companies fend for themselves in a fair market. Competition keeps prices fair – for the most part – and those that win produce the products and services we need and want, at the prices we are willing to pay.

Having a publicly funded government provide money to keep a business in business is just wrong – no matter how many people may lose their jobs.
The automakers outside of North America have suffered too, but they planned ahead, and although they haven’t made big profits, they certainly aren’t near death, like their North American counterparts.

While GM did everything it could to quash the electric car back in the 1990’s, Honda and Toyota worked feverishly to advance their technology around alternatively powered vehicles. It wasn’t until California imposed a law, forcing all automobile manufacturers to produce cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicles, that GM, Ford and Chrysler even blinked at the idea of hybrid gas and electric vehicles.

If GM goes belly up, so be it. When a business falters, it is no one’s fault but those of the brains behind the extinct organization. Maybe those now running GM will learn something from their failure, and go on to create a better, more viable company, which will succeed?

Or, if history repeats itself, as it often does, perhaps those at GM will just go on to create another mega-company, which will have a finite lifespan, only to beg for public funds once again.

That is of course, presuming our government makes the right decision not to interfere in the affairs of private business.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau once said, “the government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.” He said this during a controversy about people’s personal sexual preferences.

If Trudeau were alive today, he’d be wise to utter the same comment about government’s role in the business world – because just like sex, where and how we choose to work, is our choice, and our choice only.

Annual Event Brings Out Idiots Everywhere

Last night we had our very first real snowfall of the year. It was a great sight to see, nothing but all white falling from the sky, everything covered in a perfectly white blanket of snow.

When it snows, it actually is quieter than normal outside. This is because the snow acts like an insulator and absorbs sound waves. It also is usually warmer when it snows, than other days in the winter, as the temperature must increase slightly, to allow the snow to be released from the clouds.

With the first fall of snow – we got about five centimetres last night – certain events are bound to happen.

First, the media hypes everything up, as if this is the first time we’ve ever had a winter storm. They toss around metrological terms like Alberta Clipper, cold front, and jet stream like everyone knows what these are. On a rare day, instead of some tragic event in someone’s life, the weather leads the newscast.

The media hype is somewhat useful – we need to know how the weather will be the next day or two, so we can be prepared when we head out for our daily lives. Still, why do they babble about things no one but a real weather watcher cares about – like those jet streams, high and low pressure areas – all I want to know is what the weather will be like tomorrow. That’s it, that’s all, I don’t need anything more.

Then there are all the car crashes, road accidents and my favourite – people that hit non-moving, completely inanimate objects.

Anyone who hits something which didn’t have any way of actually getting in their way shouldn’t have a driver’s license. These are the kinds of people that are a danger to themselves and others once a windshield is placed in front of them.

Yes, snow and ice are slippery, and can make driving a bit more challenging. But seeing as this is Canada, and we get snow every year, there really is no excuse for hitting something like a tree, a rock or a house.

“The house just suddenly appeared there, there was nothing I could do!”

Yeah right – stay off the cheap drugs buddy!

Speaking of road incidents and the first annual snowfall, and going back to the initial point about the media – how come some people on the news seem to get off on all these road accidents?

Not to mention any names – Kevin Frankish at CityTV – shhh – but these voices of authority on the news seem to go completely giddy with every fender bender. The bigger the traffic pile up, the more excited they get.

Get a freakin’ life! There is so much more to the world, than watching a traffic camera and just hoping to catch someone’s car spinning out of control.

Though it is interesting to watch – I’ll admit that – it isn’t the only thing out there.

With the annual fall of snow season, comes the dreaded winter bundle-up. People packed tightly into large winter coats, toques, scarves, gloves and big winter boots.

Though I guess there were some who didn’t see the media hype on the evening news, or maybe they just are too young to care, and would rather be fashionable than warm and safe – I saw many young girls going to school in their short little skirts, some even wearing flip-flops!

I saw one of these poor young kids slip and fall on her butt on the ice. Judging by the big dent she left behind in the snow, I’m willing to bet she lost a lot more than her pride on that fall.

Maybe it was the snow’s fault – it couldn’t have been her lack of traction due to her flip flops? Naw, that’s just too easy an answer . . .

When Scientists Goof Big

As awesomely powerful as modern science is, when they goof, they goof big.

No one is perfect, but last year the ouchie I got didn’t do squat. I’m talking about the annual flu shot. Living in Canada, we’re lucky to have access to many medical wonders, absolutely free. We do have the best health care system in the world.

I get my flu shot every year – have been for many years now. It is important to not only prevent my nose from running, my eyes from watering and my body to ache, but I’m also doing good for society.

By getting our flu shots, we help keep the nasty flu bug at bay, instead of causing a national – or even international – plague. Scientists for years have been talking about the next big plague which will wipe out much of the human population, kill economies (as no one can go to work, or go out and buy products and services) and essentially ruin society as we know it.

Last year, despite getting my annual shot in the arm, I still got the flu. At the time, I thought it was a fluke.

But now I learn, that scientists goofed – big time.

Every year, scientists from around the world, work with the World Health Organization, to monitor the spread of flu bugs globally. They use their scientific powers of reason to predict which strains of the flu are spreading faster and further than any of the others. And every year, they use this information, to create the flu shot, used here in Canada, and everywhere else on the planet.

As this year’s flu shots clinics are gearing up – I got my shot a couple of weeks ago – we are now learning the horrible truth about the goof. Last year, these scientific minds got the wrong strains of flu virus in the flu shot. They actually admitted to it being a totally ineffective vaccine!

It’s the first time ever, that they have admitted this, which they had to do because of how the flu shot is created every year. Every year, the previous version of the flu shot is used as the basis for the new one.

This year, the scientists say, they have tossed out last years version, and redone it completely from scratch.

We all make mistakes, that’s part of being human. But as the spread of colds and flu becomes more common, thanks to the ease of international travel and a constantly more global economy, mistakes about vaccines could be the cause of the next global pandemic.

Scientists say every century, living populations go through a pandemic – it’s mother nature’s way of controlling the population of living things. The largest pandemic was one which wiped out most of Europe and part of the Americas in the 17th century.

Medical minds are working hard to try to prevent or at best, predict the next pandemic. Pandemics are tragic things, leading to tragic results. But what could be most tragic of all, would be a pandemic spread by the very people trying to prevent one from happening.

We’re very fortune last year’s flu shot didn’t do anything. It should have immunized people against the flu. But worst case scenario, it could have actually given people the dreaded virus it was invented to stop.

Let’s hope the scientists got it all right this year.

Nakedness or Just About

For those following my blog on a regular basis, you know I live in one of those posh high-end, high-security high rises above the clouds.

I’ve lived here a while, and I enjoy it. I love high rise living – I have the best view of the world, right from my windows and balcony.

When you live in a high rise, you see your neighbours more often than you do when you live in a fully detached house in the burbs. I’m always running into my neighbours whenever I go up or down the elevators, or any of the other common areas of the building.

That’s not always a bad thing, as it is good to know things about the people around you. Though sometimes I think I know too much.

I was waiting for the elevator to go down, and as I got on, there was one of my neighbours from the floor above (I live on the second highest floor). I’ve seen her many a time before and we always ask how the other is. But today, she was wearing not much more than just a bathrobe and slippers.

Now, she’s not an unattractive woman, but even if she were, the common areas aren’t exactly private areas where you can walk around sans clothes. Yes, we have security cameras everywhere, and you need a special high-tech toggle thing-a-ma-bop to get into the building. But do you really want people you don’t really know that well, to see what you don’t wear while at home?

This building is huge, there have to be at least a thousand people living here, given the number of floors and the number of units per floor. Then you consider, all the guests constantly coming and going to visit people who live here, pizza and other fast food delivery dudes stomping through, and you have a vast assortment of total strangers who really are totally strange to those who live here.

I don’t know about you, but when I order a pizza, I make sure I’m wearing pants so the pizza delivery guy doesn’t run away before delivering my pie.

The same should hold for traveling throughout the building. My neighbour was trying to get hold of someone in property management, as she was having a water leak somewhere. Maybe she was in the middle of a shower, and discovered her water woes, and that’s why she was just in a bathrobe and not much else.

Still, when I go down to the pool, I always toss on a shirt, and make sure I’m fully clothed as I go through the halls to get there. And I know property management is always around, unless she was literally swimming her way out the door, she should have had time to toss on some decent clothes.

Maybe she was hoping the building maintenance guys would see her in not much at all, and hurry on up to fix her plumbing (pun, sadly intended)?

All I know is living in a high rise above the clouds, definitely isn’t dull.

The Miracle of the Season – Or Maybe I’m Just Getting In Touch With My Female Side

Sometimes, when I’m feeling down or sad, I go shopping. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, real men don’t shop – that’s a chick thing, right?

Maybe it’s just another distraction, like going to the movies, reading a book, or surfing the net – but I go shopping. Mind you I don’t shop for clothes, I’ll usually go to the technology stores and salivate over the latest electronic gadgets and gizmos.

When I was in university, there was one very enticingly hot babe, all the guys wanted to date. Well, all the guys would swoon all over her, practically stopping traffic to get her attention. Being the slightly crazy over-achieve-type, I asked her out.

She was happy to go out with me – but on one condition. First, I’d have to get in touch with my female side. I asked her what exactly that meant, to which she just giggled, and walked away.

Days turned into weeks, and as she sat in front of me in class, occasionally she’d turn sharply to me, smile, and ask if I’d finally got in touch with my female side.

I’d smile back – who wouldn’t, one of the hottest girls in class flirting with little old moi? But I always came up with some excuse, or quick-witted comment, because I really didn’t know what it took to get in touch with my female side. I didn’t even know if I had a female side.

Eventually, we did go out. Maybe I managed to entice her with my quick-wit and dashing good looks, or more likely, she just finally gave up on getting me to sense something I wasn’t able to figure out at the time.

Maybe this whole shopping thing is part of that female side of me? I enjoy other things too – but shopping is one of the surest ways to get me out of a bad mood.

And by shopping, I mean SHOPPING. Real shopping, in real stores.

The internet makes it easy to shop, without actually really going anywhere. You can go to just about any store online these days, fill up your electronic shopping cart, type in your credit card information and with a couple of mouse-clicks, buy until your eyes are blurry and your fingers numb.

But that’s not really shopping! Real shopping involves going out into the stores, getting bumped and pushed around in the crowds, listening to the dreaded “mall music” and being approached by overzealous sales people, or being ignored by sales staff that really just don’t care.

Real shopping involves going out and investigating what is what. I do a lot of research online before I go to the stores. I’ll compare items, prices, brands and selection online. But I’ll still take my leisure ass-time as I browse the stores, because not everything in the store is online (and vice-versa).

To this day, I still don’t know what that babe of a girl meant by getting in touch with my female side, and I may never really know. For all I know, she didn’t mean anything by it, she was just flirting with me.

But if there is a way for a guy to get in touch with his female side – and presumably for a woman to get in touch with her male side – then at least I can say, I feel a little closer to figuring it out, as the holidays approach.

As the Christmas season sales fill stores with red and green balls, snow flakes, and jolly old men with red outfits, I’ll be hitting the stores, shopping more and more, wondering: Am I getting closer to touching my female side?

Obama -- The Next JFK?

Okay, I’ll admit it – while everyone was watching the American general elections on TV the other night, I wasn’t. Maybe I’m one of the few people on the planet that already knew the outcome, and didn’t feel the need to see it live.

I predicted many months ago that Obama would take the oval office. He’s the star candidate. He’s a far better speaker than McCain, has new-ish ideas that at least differ from the current administration, and because race is such a big thing south of the border, he’s got that in his favour too.

Obama’s skin color drew out a huge group of voters that don’t usually vote, because they don’t feel represented – mainly the visible minorities, especially the poorer ones. This alone almost guaranteed him a victory.

Though he is also very eloquent public speaker, able to sway people towards his way of doing things.

Is it just me, or was he trying to sound like Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech, with his own words last night?

Whoops! Guess ya caught me – I saw a bit of the American election on TV last night. Hey, it was in between commercials and . . .

I was right about my prediction that Obama would win – now I hope I’m not right about my next one. The way I see things, and yes they aren’t always right because I do wear glasses, Obama and John F. Kennedy are very similar.

JFK was an amazing public figure, brash, good looking, a true ladies man (he dated Marilyn Monroe, among other well known Hollywood babes), and he had some pretty new-ish ideas. Most of the country at the time fell in love with JFK, or at least fell in love from a political point of view. Everyone was JFK crazy – sort of like they were Pierre Elliot Trudeau crazy when that man was in charge of our nation.

But not everyone shared the love, and eventually JFK was shot dead.

I have a dream, but it’s more of a nightmare – that Obama will too experience the rush of emotions, and then also be shot dead.

America is an oddball place. On one hand, it has some of the most influential people in the world, from politicians, actors, singers, songwriters, sports stars, academics and others. Yet on the other hand, it also has some of the craziest, nutbars, often with outdated notions of the way things ought to be.

All it takes is one nutbar with a weapon and the “bam” can easily be taken out of Obama. Sure, security is a better than it was way back in JFKs day, but that hasn’t stopped others from taking swipes at American celebrities.

American President Ronald Reagan was shot in the 1980s (and lived), and authorities have already broken up a group of people plotting to assassinate Obama – and he hasn’t even set foot in his new White House.

I really hope I am wrong, but given the far greater racial tensions in the States than up here in Canada, and the fact that being America’s first black president puts him under a very large microscope, I fear I am going to be right about this prediction as well.

When Cockroaches Out Rank You

I’ve been struggling with one of my recent clients for quite some time. Typically, when I do an on-site contract, all materials and resources necessary to do the work are provided by the client. This makes sense, as that’s one of the main reasons to work on-site.

These materials and resources include the very basic – such as a cubicle or office to work out of – to the just as valued but more role specific – such as specific computer hardware and software.

I’ve been working on site at one particular client for almost two whole months, and they have been exceptionally slow in providing me with the things I need to do the job for which they hired me. It isn’t uncommon to have to wait a few hours, maybe a day to for a new client to get setup.

But it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I finally got a computer. That’s right – a computer. And being in the writing and design business, it is kind of hard to do my job without one.

I just got an office too around the same time period – more than a month into my contract. Up until that point, I dutifully followed my naïve, pathetic excuse of a manager around the office like a little lost puppy, as she asked people who was away on vacation or ill. If I was lucky, I’d get a cubicle, if not, I’d get stuck working my manager’s desk, with her along for the ride.

I still haven’t got any software to do my work either – and my two-month mark on this contract is fast approaching. I have the basic MS-Office programs, but they expect me to create animated avatars, interactive online eLearning courses, and other wondrous things, which requires far more advanced technology.

And I think that’s what kills me the most about this gig – they aren’t fulfilling their responsibilities in providing me with the resources to do the job, yet they still demand that I fulfill mine. I’ve asked for more time, and the tools they keep promising to give me, but they constantly give me a song and dance.

Maybe I should have been a cockroach.

Today, one of my colleagues spotted one lonely cockroach in the office. Within an hour or two, someone had arrived from to spray some sort of anti-cockroach gel.
Cockroaches aren’t pretty, and can be pretty nasty. But, I find it deeply disturbing that one small bug gets an immediate reaction, yet the new hire still is sitting in a corner, fretting about an approaching deadline, which he can’t meet, because no one has bothered to order the software he needs to do his job.

I’ve been exceptionally patient – the longest I’ve ever had to wait for a computer and a desk to do an on-site contract prior to this fiasco was three-hours. In just over a week, it’ll be two-months – and I’d bet easy money that if I do hold out that long, they still will be playing these games.

And that is what it appears to be – a game – at least to them. They apologize for the delay, act all cute and make up every excuse possible. They tell me they’ve ordered the software, then when it doesn’t arrive, they tell me they forgot to send it – duh! They say that they are waiting for the corporate credit card to clear, or they blame someone else. All the while they keep harassing me, pestering me, to ensure I still do my job.

How I’m supposed to do my job is still unclear to me. It’s like asking a bricklayer to brick a house, but hiding the bricks on him.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll go in dressed like a cockroach?

The Infamous Canadian Ceiling

One of the ironic tragedies of being Canadian is the constantly propagated myth that you have to go to the United States to make it in this world.

This has long been the way it is thought to be in everything from big business, to the arts and everything in between. From the Alanis Morrisett and the Bare Naked Ladies, to Jim Carey, there are still even disputes about which side of the border Alexander Graham Bell originated from – Canadians aren’t recognized for their abilities until they make it in the States.

That’s probably why the American election is generating way more buzz up here, than our very own Canadian election did. Not that there are any Canadians running for the oval office, but if there were, they’d probably still not be supported by us – we tend to like to stick it to ourselves.

When the Canadian election was in full swing, and you’d ask someone about “the election” automatically they thought you were talking about the one going on in the States. Even after saying you were talking about our election, many were still stumped: “we have an election going on here?”

Sure, American politics has gone more Hollywood with every election. I remember when U.S. President Bill Clinton wore dark sun glasses, and played the theme from The Pink Panther on David Letterman. And everyone is still talking about Sara Pallin’s appearance on Saturday Night Live – which is really sad, because the woman isn’t attractive, intelligent or entertaining.

Canadian politicians do the late night Canadian comedy shows too – Prime Minister Jean Chretien has appeared on This Hour Has 22 Minutes and the Royal Canadian Air Farce. Prime Minister Paul Martin appeared on The Mercer Report with Rick Mercer, and former leader of the Reform Party, Preston Manning appeared on The Royal Canadian Air Farce.

Still, these events don’t generate nearly as much interest as when Barak Obauma appeared on David Letterman, why?

I blame our Canadian ceiling myth. It’s a myth which only carries weight, so long as we Canadians continue to allow it to function. If we stopped believing that the only way to make it anywhere, is to go to the States, then, and only then, we’d have terminated this horrible myth.

Going to the States opens up another economic market to peddle merchandize too, but it doesn’t change a person’s ability to do their job. If I went to the States for a job, I’d still be going with the exact same skills and abilities as I had when I was doing the job on this side of the 49th parallel.

That’s why it is a myth – it is all in our heads. Talent is talent, no matter where it is, or goes.

But changing attitudes, that’s the hard part. We have to stop believing in the myth, and start believing in ourselves, and then, one day, American’s will be watching Canadian elections just as intently as we watch theirs.

Why The World Needs Another Hero

What do. John A. MacDonald. John F. Kennedy, and Winston Churchill have in common? Aside from all being former leaders of their respective nations – Canada, the USA and Great Britain – they were all exceptional heroes.

Real heroes – not the like Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman. Although comic book heroes have their place, real heroes like MacDonald, Kennedy and Churchill accomplish really great things.

They motivate people to change, to become better than they are, and to improve the world around them.

Throughout history, we’ve seen living examples of real heroes, and not all of them politicians. Princess Dianna was one – always striving to save the world, despite enormous pressures from a British Royalty that really didn’t care about anything but themselves. Steven Spielberg may be considered a hero of sorts, by showing us who and what we are, through his films.

But none of the heroes of today, has even come close to what MacDonald, Kennedy or Churchill in terms of heroic acts.

MacDonald was one of Canada’s founding Prime Ministers, shaping the very fabric of the country as he wrote policies which created the very notion of what it means to be Canadian. Kennedy was an exceptional orator, and had an imagination which put a man on the moon, and averted an atomic war with Cuba. Another powerful presence, Churchill led the British through tough economic times, and on to Victory Day after the war.

Our society has changed much since those early years – some good, some bad changes. Much of the negative changes in our society stem from the lack of any real heroes. Real heroes give of themselves so much, we can’t but want to fall in line, and assist.

Would you really follow Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on anything he’s got going on? How about US President George W. Bush?

I certainly wouldn’t consider any of our current world leaders and other celebrities heroes. Most celebrities these days are strictly candy coating – they look all sweet on the outside, but they really aren’t good for you.

As technology improves, making it even easier to destroy each other, to watch each other, to get in each other’s way, we really need a hero to guide us. We need someone to motivate, to encourage, to mentor and above all else, lead by example.

That’s what real heroes do – they show us that although they may go through tough times too, they are more than willing to make the sacrifices necessary for the greater good.

Until another hero surfaces, there will never be a greater good.

Once in a While Microsloth Gets it Right

For those regular readers of this blog, you know my disdain for Microsoft’s products. We are forced to use ‘em, because they are the ones which come shipped with our computers fresh from the store.

Usually, Microsloth uses you and me to fix their buggy software – they release their products full of issues, and as we complain, they resolve them and issue patches and fixes.

Today I finally got around to upgrading my MS-Office 2003 to MS-Office 2007. I haven’t been using the software long enough to discover any bugs – but I’m sure I will. However, so far, I am very impressed with a lot of the new gizmos they’ve tossed into this package.

They have considered usability for a change, and made the whole string of applications (Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, Access, etc.) more slick and easier to use. As I type this in Word, I can see how many words I have typed up to this point (168 for the curious). This functionality has always been in Word, but usually you have to go up to the toolbar, and add the option. This looks built-in to the bottom info bar – clever.

I also like the use of big icons to clearly show you what is what. Gone are the old days of having to squint at teeny-tiny icons, eventually having to hover over them to see the pop-up bubble help descriptions.

Maybe this was Bill Gates last true test of fate – getting at least one software application released without major fatal flaws?

Though Office 2008 has been out for a while and Office 2009 will no doubt come out soon too, so my “new” upgrade to 2007 has already gone through a slew of updates and fixes. After the install today, Windows Update downloaded over 300MBs of updates for Office 2007.

Still, Office 2007 makes up in large part for the Windows Vista mess-up. Vista should never have been released when it was. It wasn’t ready, and it was still full of many major bugs. Microsoft even admitted this in a sense, when they allowed people who bought new computers with the Windows Vista platform pre-installed to “downgrade” to Windows XP free of charge.

We the public, shouldn’t be the unpaid quality assurance team to Microsloth. And maybe they’ve finally learned that over there, because Office 2007 is a very big improvement over previous installs.

There weren’t any long, meaningless and horrid error messages, I didn’t get any missing file messages upon reboot, and when I opened the applications, they actually ran without crashing either themselves, or other applications.

Still, this is only day one of the new install – so anything can happen. But let’s hope Microsloth finally got this one right.

Packing it in and Up

When I was a kid, I always used gym bags to cart around my stuff. I’d stuff my school books, pens, papers, stinky gym shorts and probably right on top of that my lunch, into a big old gym bag.

I went through many gym bags over the years – they wear out, become frail and break. Or they just get plain nasty, all stinky and eventually my mom would complain about the smell.

These days, all the kids use backpacks. Backpacks are easier to, using your back to toss all your possessions on. This frees up your arms and hands, but I wonder what back problems today’s kids will have – or already have – from putting their lives on their backs?

I see little kids with enormous backpacks – often the backpacks are bigger than the kids! And these things look like they are overflowing, as they probably are.

Just as when I was their age, I’d stuff as much as I could cram into them, kids these days probably do the same.

The start of every school year is filled with media reports about the proper use of backpacks, but as the year progresses, those stories fade away and the backpacks become these giant back breakers.

I have a backpack even today, I use it for carting my laptops from place to place. But I don’t overload it, and I sure don’t jam in my stinky workout shorts into it!

Kids today have access to things we never had when I was growing up. Computers and the Internet have made great strides in developing the future leaders of tomorrow.

But backpacks probably have ensured that those future leaders will be more hunched over and in pain, than we ever are.

Well, I suppose someone has to keep the chiropractors in business.

Breaking News Is Not Always Broken

All the news that's fit to print but not necessarily. When I was a journalist many eons ago, all the news that was fit to print probably was. Back then news was actually news and when a newsflash was announced in big bold ominous letters on the screen -- it was really was breaking news.

These days when you see the words on the screen “breaking news,” more often than not they're just trying to get your attention.

Newsrooms in print, television and radio, are in the business of being in business. So, what this means is they make more money with more viewers, watchers and listeners. How do they get more people to watch? Easy, all they do is call something “breaking news” and figure you’re more likely to read, watch and listen.

But, sadly most of the time this so-called “breaking news” isn’t really anything more than just another news story. Sometimes, it may even be the big story of the day, or in some cases, just some government official giving a live press conference on some report which in a couple of months will all but be forgotten.

Being Canadian, I grew up on the CBC and Peter Mansbridge’s solid reporting style. I remember watching many real breaking news stories told by Mansbridge over the years. From the space shuttle Challenger explosion in the 1980’s, to the death of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in the 1990’s, to the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in the 2000’s. These all were legitimate, and real “breaking news” stories.

These days, I see the words “breaking news” tossed onto just about every newscast at least once, on everything from stories about some cat stuck in a tree, to stories about gas prices on the way up. None of these are what professionally trained journalists – such as myself – would call “breaking news.”

Nope, these are just poor attempts at getting more people to pay attention. Which says something awful about the news media today.

Back in the day, when I was a journalist, we never had to make up the news to get people to pay attention – if it was news, there were always people interested.

These days, journalists seem to have lost their sense of what is and is not news. They go out and cover everything and anything which happens, hoping that their editors will run it, and that you will be interested enough to read, watch and listen to it.

I don’t know who is at fault – the editors for hiring people that don’t know how to do their jobs, journalists for not knowing how to do their jobs, or journalism schools for not teaching journalists how to correctly do their jobs. All I know is what I see – and what I see disappoints me, frustrates me, and makes me wonder how I’m supposed to stay informed, when those trained to keep us in the know, don’t know.
Granted, we do live in a far different world than the one in which I was a journalist. When I was a young reporter, we only had a handful of major daily papers, television stations and satellite radio didn’t exist. The Internet was still just a dream, and everyone watched at least one late night newscast, read at least one daily paper, and then fell asleep to Johnny Carson on the “Tonight” show.

These days, we have far too many newspapers, more television stations than any one person could ever really watch in lifetime, and an Internet full of instant information from reliable and not-so-reliable sources.

I can see how understand how easy it is to fall into an informational overloaded burn out. But journalists – print, radio and television – are supposed to be able to filter through all the information, and make sense of it for you and I.

That is their job. Or at least, that was my job when I was a journalist, and I worked in television, radio and print, so pardon me while I toot my own horn – I really do know what their job is supposed to be.

I know if you don’t like what you read, hear or watch, you can easily just go elsewhere for your news. I can change the channel, turn off the radio, or even just stop reading the paper.

I can surf the net for the information, and try to find the real sources, and wade through the trashy sources.

But I shouldn’t have to do that – that is no different than me taking on a co-worker’s tasks, because that co-worker is incompetent and unable to do his or her job.

Maybe there lies the real problem – today’s news media is just incompetent when it comes to actually doing their job?

Winter Is Back

In case you’ve been in a cave recently, you’ll have seen the changes too. It is getting darker sooner, the leaves on the trees are changing color, and there are more leaves on the ground. And there is that bitter chill in the air.

Winter is back. Soon the snow will fall, the wind will pick up and it will be dark longer than it is light.

I’ve never been a big fan of winter. I am more of a summer person. I don’t like it too hot, but I prefer the warm summer breezes to the goose bump causing winter winds. I prefer sitting on my balcony watching the stars on a pleasant summer’s eve, than having to bundle up just to go out for dinner.

As great a country as we live in, Canada has the worst weather. I enjoy having four distinct seasons – many places on the globe don’t even have that. But for what it’s worth, I wish summer lasted longer.

Our summers seem to be getting shorter every year. This summer was pretty much a wash out, as it rained almost every day. We had the wettest summer on record, and we’ll probably have the wettest and coldest winter too.

Winter does have it’s perks. It is nice to go out and ski, or make a nice hot fire in the fire place, and winter is the season for hot chocolate.

But we seem to have longer winters than summers here. And winter is always such a dark season – looking forward to the February blahs anyone?

I think not!

We have to deal with big, heavy and bulky winter coats, mitts, hats and toques. Slush and mud, and watch you don’t slip and fall on the ice.

And we always – always – have that one or two major snow storms, which cause traffic chaos. I still can’t understand how anyone can forget how to drive in a winter snowstorm, when chances are they do it every year. Must be a Canadian thing.

Good thing we have Canadian beers to keep us warm – cheers.

Time to Watch the Leafs Fail

The Toronto Maple Leafs are amazing. They haven’t won the pinnacle of hockey – the Stanley Cup -- in over 40-years, yet they still draw sell-out crowds to their home games.

Most professional sports teams usually go out of business or are bought out by someone in some far off city or country elsewhere when they continuously lose, because the fans stop going to the games.

Not the Toronto Maple Leafs – nope. In keeping with the meaning of the word “fan” (it comes from the word “fanatical”) they continue to spend millions every year on tickets, jerseys, gloves, sticks, bobble heads, and other merchandise, all of which continues to fund the worst professional team ever.

If the fans weren’t so fanatical about their Toronto Maple Leafs, maybe they’d actually start to play professional level hockey and win a few trophies.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are owned by a teachers union, and those teachers are sure smart. They know they don’t have to do anything to keep fans coming back year after year. Most professional sport franchise owners have to spend millions on marketing and promotions, to ensure they fill the bleachers. Most professional sport franchise owners spend millions on the top athletes, so that the team as a chance to play professional-level games, and even has a shot at the playoffs.

Not the owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs. They don’t have to do anything to keep fans coming back, because the fans somehow just keep showing up for more of the same crappy results every year.

Oh, every year around this time of year, when the hockey season is fresh and new, there is always talk about how “this will be the year.”

But it never has been or will be “the year” the Leafs win the Stanley Cup. Not so long as the fans keep lining the owners pockets with wealth, without forcing them to spend.

The owners aren’t stupid – they know if people will continue to spend their hard earned cash on their losing team, they don’t have to spend their not so hard earned cash to attract people to their losing team.

Which is why I don’t go to Leafs games. I don’t buy Toronto Maple Leaf bobble heads, or other merchandise either. I’ve never really been a big hockey fan – my sport of choice is baseball – but even if I was a hockey fan, I wouldn’t spend money on the losing team.

Why cheer on someone when you know the outcome already?

But I suppose I’m just yelling into an empty void, because my one person protest won’t stop the masses of fans from continuously spending on the worst team ever.

And that is why the Toronto Maple Leafs will never win the Stanley Cup. Not because they don’t have the players (even though they don’t) nor because they don’t have the solid coaching (even though they don’t). The Toronto Maple Leafs will never win the Stanley Cup because the fans keep going to games.

So, if you’re a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and you actually want them to have a chance in your lifetime of winning Lord Stanley’s Cup, maybe you too should stop spending money on the team.