A Canadian Cooking Tradition

The leaves are changing colors, the temperature is getting colder, and winter is almost here. But I’m still out BBQing my meals.

I love to BBQ and despite the cold weather, I still enjoy a nice BBQed steak, burger, chicken or other such entre.

Granted, you don’t have the family and friends sitting with you outside on patio chairs, enjoying the hot, lazy days of summer.

Instead, I find myself alone, huddled by the heat of the grill, flipping the burgers, while my guests enjoy the cozy warmer climate inside.

They’ll never learn the joy of BBQing sitting inside, watching TV, while I enjoy the sizzle of the meat, the sensuous smoke in my eyes, and the satisfaction of braving a Canadian climate to put good food on the table.

I guess I do prefer summer over winter – the weather is more pleasant, there is more to do outside, and the women’s skirts get shorter.

But one thing remains, regardless of whether there is snow on the ground or green fields afoot. I will continue to BBQ.

BBQing is more than just a way to cook, it is a passion. The food tastes different when made in an oven. It also is so much easier in the oven.

When I make a steak in the oven, I just leave it in their for an hour, come back, and it is done.

But a steak on the grill involves work. You have to watch it carefully so it doesn’t get over done on one side, you have to carefully season it, so that the spices don’t burn, and you have to constantly drink beer while BBQing.

Drink beer?

Hey, it is the BBQing man’s prerogative to drink beer while BBQing. Drinking beer while BBQing is as Canadian as – well – as Canadian as hockey, the beaver, and Don Cherry.

Drinking a nice, refreshing cold beer while BBQing is as Canadian as going to Tim’s and grabbing some bits.

Pass me a cold one – I’m going out to check on the meat.

Age Be Gone! Long Live the Nothing Look

I was flipping around the tube the other day and came across Joan Rivers on the Shopping Channel.

Joan Rivers was hawking her latest perfumes, but something caught my eye – her face.

Her face looked like – well that’s just it – it didn’t look like a face. It sort of reminded me of what someone might look like, if you took the eraser tool in PhotoShop and erased out all the features which make a face look like a face.

There were no wrinkles, no indentations, no nothing. Joan River’s face was completely featureless.

Now Joan Rivers will be the first to tell you that she’s had plastic surgery. She jokes about it all the time and has for a number of years.

But I guess too much of a good thing really is bad for you, because after all of these years of facelifts and whatever else Joan has had done – now she looks more alien than human.

Sound familiar?

Remember the once black now mauve Michael Jackson. He too has had things done – so much so he hardly resembles pictures taken of him in his heyday.

Michael Jackson and Joan Rivers look alien to the human race. They don’t look like us humans, but it is because of human technology they look the way they do.

Scary and sad to think how far people will go these days to improve things which you shouldn’t.

The one thing that is certain in life is the constant march of time. We all age – from the second we pop out of the womb, to the time we finish decomposing in the grave.

Having cosmetic surgery to slow the aging process doesn’t work – because you can’t stop time. You can make yourself look younger, but only to a point.

Joan Rivers and Michael Jackson – and probably others too – have long passed that point. Now, thanks to pushing the envelope of plastic surgery, they no longer look their age. But they also don’t look like human beings either.

I’d rather look like an old person, than a personless person. Because we are a society of people, and if you don’t look like a person, you just don’t fit in.

Achoo! It’s That Time of Year Again

As the cold weather rolls in, so too do the colds we catch.

Although there is no cure for the common cold, we have a strong way to curb the spread of one of the most common viruses around – the flu.

There is a shot you can get for the flu – commonly called the flu shot (real inventive with the name). The flu shot is composed of three or four strains of what the World Health Organization (WHO) has calculated to be the most likely forms of the disease.

Although you still can get the flu, even after having a flu shot, it is a good idea to get the flu shot.

By getting the flu shot, you significantly lower your chances of getting the flu. Also, if you did get a flu shot and still get the flu, chances are you won’t get as sick, as you would have if you never had the shot in the first place.

Here in Canada, many Canadian provinces provide free flu shots to all residents – all you need is to show your valid provincial health card, roll up your sleeve and don’t mind the prick.

Every year I get the flu shot, because it just makes sense. I haven’t had the flu in years – probably because I get the flu shot every year. I still occasionally catch colds – but very rarely.

As colds and flu become stronger each year, it is really important to protect yourself from the things we can, today. Super bugs are developing, due to our societies over-reliance on anti-bacterial products, antibiotics, and by consuming food products which really aren’t wise for the human population (that’s how SARS started in China).

As we continue to eliminate bacteria and viruses through the use of chemicals, these diseases continue to evolve and develop their own anti-bodies to these chemicals.

Although it is wise to use an anti-bacterial soap, that’s part of the problem. The more we use these soaps, and other anti-bacterial products, the more the current germs evolve into stronger, more resistant strains.

The same can be said for colds and flu and antibiotics. The more antibiotics we use, the more resistant these disease become.

Also, by consuming things which just don’t jive with our bodies, is another way we are slowly creating an impending doom.

SARS started because someone ate a wild cat – a cat of all things – with a virus. The virus is only generally found in cats, but it morphed upon enter the human host when consumed. This virus mutated into one of the world’s most deadly viruses for people.

Getting a flu shot won’t necessarily keep you from catching the flu – but it may keep you alive should another pandemic breakout, because some moron in some third-world country decides to eat something he shouldn’t.

Sometimes Even the Loudest Clowns Are Nothing More Than Scared Sheep

Last Thursday I wrote about how they finally fired the marketing director at work. She had blown her budget two-years in a row, and continually alienated and confused those that had to work with her, at her lack of professionalism.

Today she was back in the office.

Earlier in the day, one of the people on her team had said she was just talking to someone with the same name of the former marketing director.

“It’s nice to have lunch with a former boss,” I commented to her.

She told me she hadn’t had lunch with her ex-boss, but had run into a co-worker with the same name.

Still, I was thinking the ex would make an appearance.

And I was right.

The former marketing director came into the office sharply after 5pm – which isn’t unlike her usual working hour routine (one of probably many they let her go).

I wasn’t so much surprised as shocked. She even let herself in, and took up her seat in what was her old office.

Firing at this company, I’m thinking, doesn’t mean much.

I know the marketing manager was close friends with the marketing director. They had worked together previously, and were good friends.

But there is a more sinister reason the marketing director was back in town.

My hunch is, the marketing manager knows she can’t handle the gig all by herself, seeing as she barely worked at it when she had her friend to chum around with.

So, the marketing manager probably invited the marketing director back to clean up her office – and seek advice as to how to go about doing the job she should already know how to do.

Although a clown may wear many outfits, when the clown is a scared sheep you can see right through all the face paint and red noses.

Still, inviting the former employee back is not only a further demonstration as to just how poorly the department functions, it’s a sad statement on the company’s own hiring, firing and security policies.

At most companies, once you are no longer on the payroll, they immediately take away any keys, pass cards, and other access points to the office. They change all your passwords, and someone on staff – ON STAFF – goes through your files to see what is what and ensure nothing gets lost.

Once you are no longer on the payroll, you don’t just stroll right in, sit at your old desk, and act like nothing has happened.

That’s just like walking into a stranger’s home, and re-arranging the furniture. Oh you may have lived in that home before, but it’s not yours anymore. And you can’t just go about moving someone else’s things.

The whole point of having keys to the office, pass cards, passwords and file cabinets with locks is to keep non-employees out.

Could you imagine what would happen, if a former Coke A Cola employee, now working for Pepsi, simply was allowed to walk into his former workplace and steal the secret recipe?

What if an ex-employee has a grudge against the company which let them go? Is it safe to let that person free and unrestricted access?

What?

You’ve never heard the term “postal?”

I think tomorrow I’ll file a complaint with Human Resources about this. I don’t feel safe with ex-employees wondering in and out, just like the rest of us who are supposed to be there. I don’t think the higher-ups should either.

A New Marketing Generation

I love having digital cable – over 500 channels of nothing.

Kidding aside, I actually do enjoy the benefits of having a digital cable package. I get all the movie channels, onDemand channels which allow me to stop, start, pause and rewind movies and shows with ease, and superior picture and sound.

I get so many channels, and choices it can take a while to figure out what I want to watch.

Sometimes I just surf the channels and onDemand items to see what peaks my interest. As I was surfing through some of the onDemand stuff, I came across an interesting section – station promos.

This section had commercials promoting all the additional channels I could get – everything from DejaVU oldies, to ByteTV for men, to Discovery Civilization and Fox News.

It was interesting browsing some of these – because I do get some of these but never watch ‘em simply because I don’t know anything about them.

But there was a more business-evil reason to provide these station promos – marketing.

It used to be, the way the cable companies suckered you into paying for more channels was they’d give you a free preview of the additional channels for a limited time. The theory being, you’d get hooked on some shows on these channels, and when the free preview period ended, you’d want to continue watching the shows enough to pay for the channels.

They still dole out the free previews – right now I get Teletoon Retro on free preview. Teletoon Retro shows all the cartoons I grew up with – The Bugs Bunny and Tweetie Show, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby Doo and one of my favourites from my youth – Fat Albert. Hey hey hey!

But now, the cable companies have learned a new way to market to a new generation – an onDemand generation.

With all the onDemand channels, it is easy to just put up some commercials onDemand, and sit back and watch the money roll into the cable company’s pockets.

I was watching some of these promo channels and thought it might be nice to get these channels too. I almost picked up the phone and placed my order.

But then it occurred to me that I still get over 500 channels, and although my mother tells me I’m a bright boy, I can’t possibly watch all those channels at once.

I sometimes don’t even know what channels I do receive, simply because I get so many. I’ll click onto a channel, wondering what it is and discover for myself a new world of entertainment.

I guess that’s also why I like digital cable – sometimes the journey is just as exciting as the shows on the air.

Though one thing has been bugging me – this whole notion that the cartoons I grew up on are “retro.” You know you’re old when they call something you grew up with “retro.”

Now I feel old.

The Start of Healing

I’ve complained far and wide on this blog about the inadequacies within the marketing team where I work.

The marketing director and marketing manager usually come in late, leave early, and not much gets accomplished. Things that do get done are completed by an outside agency, so it appears that those in the marketing team don’t know what they are doing.

The marketing team blew their budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars last year and this year, mainly because they need to use an outside agency to do their jobs for them.

For months, there has been talk, complaints and questions as to why those in charge haven’t taken any steps to fix a deepening hole in the company – marketing.

Today the executives listened. They fired the marketing director. It happened so fast, I was shocked and relieved all at the same time.

It is always sad when someone you know loses their job. Even if that someone lost their job for blatantly failing to do the very job they were hired to do.

However, it is a good step and a promising step for the team, department and the company.

For the team, although in shambles with more questions than answers now, once the initial shock of the firing wears off, it will be better. Now the team can re-build and re-evaluate its goals, and how it goes about achieving those goals.

The department, many of whom – myself included – outside of the marketing team had long lost faith in the marketing team, and the marketing team’s leaders. Every time it came down to working with marketing on any level, many would cringe and sigh – knowing it would entail excuse after excuse for not having anything to support the project. Scheduling meetings was next to impossible, as the marketing director and marketing manager never around. And when they were around, they would always come up with every reason in the book to not meet with you.

Hopefully, the degraded reputation of the marketing team will improve throughout the company. Many throughout all levels and departments saw the marketing team as a joke, or worse, a cancer or blemish on an otherwise fine organization to work for. Hopefully this will change.

The marketing manager is now in charge of the team, and she’s someone I still have questions about. She’s not very “corporate” in her behaviour, and she’s one of the reasons the team has suffered in the past. This firing can be a wake-up call for her to get her butt in gear and make things work – or maybe it is a set-up to see how long it takes before she completely mismanages the team, to get her out.

Either way, today’s firing was a step in the right direction.

Workout Eye Mavens and the Search for the Screaming Thigh Sweats

I love working out – I could easily workout every day, but that’s not good for you. I love the feeling of the “burn” as my muscles work extra hard pumping iron. I enjoy counting down the minutes on an eclipse machine – feeling extra special for going the distance.

And I enjoy the scenery as it enjoys me.

Women and men sometimes dress to impress at the gym. Often you see muscle bound guys like me in tight muscle-hugging t-shirts. Women love to show it off too – often wearing tight Spandex thingies, showing off their tight little bods.

I sometimes think people go to the gym just to meet people. I see men all the time flirting with women, women teasing men with long stares, followed by bold stretches showing off their curve appeal.

I get the occasional puppy dog too – women that are so enamoured with you, they will follow you around the gym like a little lost dog.

These horny members of the other sex, typically will try to workout either right next to me, or as close to me as possible, often mirroring whatever it is I am doing.

Today, I was lucky to have a puppy dog follow me around. I felt like a celebrity with my own Paparazzi. Imagine, an attractive woman tailing me – me – yeah ME !!!

Wild.

The puppy dog came around after my warm-up. I had began my abdominal routine – today I did some leg raises, then I did some work with the medicine ball.

The puppy dog placed her mat on the floor right next to mine. And she began doing some stretches. She did what a lot of women seem to do – she started staring at me, only to look away the second I happened to look her way (but not before letting me see her checking me out).

Why do women do this?

I know women are just trying to get the man to make the first move. But I like the way us guys work a room – we just go up and start talking to someone we like. If the conversation has good vibes, great – if not, hey move on.

Women on the other hand can play this look and run game all day long – it drives me nuts. I like women that are direct and actually willing to talk to a guy, rather than stare, turn and run.

I was focusing on my workout, so I paid little attention to this puppy dog. So, she began to do the same exercises as me.

I’ve seen this a zillion times – do as the one you want does and he’ll be attracted to you like a bug to a light.

Although imitation is a great form of flattery, and I’m always amazed when women start playing their puppy dog love games of intent with me – again I wish women would just say something.

This puppy dog was trying to keep up with me and my never-ending leg raises, while she probably would have been in less pain and agony had she just opened up her mouth and said something.

“Do those leg raises work?” would be a great conversation starter.

Or even better: “Can you show me how to do those?” as this gets me involved not just in the conversation, but in her.

But instead, this puppy dog just huffed and puffed her way through leg raises. And it’s pretty hard to get to know someone when you’re so out of breath, you can’t talk.

I finished my abdominal routine and left the room – heading where I always go next – the weight room.

Maybe this puppy dog lost interest, or simply couldn’t move, because I didn’t see her for quite a while. Then she suddenly re-appeared while I was in the middle of a cardio routine on a treadmill.

I was doing a hill routine on the treadmill, and all of a sudden there she was on the treadmill next to me.

Well, maybe this time – I thought – she’d open her pie hole long enough to say something.

She smiled at me, I smiled back – and went back to working out.

Sometimes, people do the strangest things to get your attention. This puppy dog did almost everything imaginable – and some things I’d never imagine – to get my attention.

She started coughing a few times. Dropped her towel and it went flying off the back of the treadmill – she had to go get it. She spilled her water, then she dropped it and it and the water bottle went everywhere. She’d stop her treadmill and then start it up again.

“Excuse me?” a voice said.

I turned, hey – she was talking to me!

Imagine that – she actually took the initiative to start a conversation.

“Do you no how late the gym is open?” she asked, blushing all the while.

This is why she’s probably single. If you’re going to ask someone a question – someone you’re interested in – then it should be a question which can involve a lot of dialogue. Ask me about me, what I like to do, how often I workout, who I think makes the best burgers – anything but a simple, straight quick to answer-type question.

“I think the gym is open until midnight,” I responded. What else could I say? That’s all she asked. Though I seriously doubt she’d be working out until midnight – she was having trouble keeping up with me as it was, and I certainly wasn’t staying past the witching hour.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

There was a long awkward silence, for quite a while.

Then I heard: “I see you here all the time, you come here often, don’t you?”

The puppy dog had finally started to talk to me!

I was amazed – usually these women do everything to get my attention, but actual conversation – wow. I was impressed.

We talked for a bit, but this woman left it too late too long – my treadmill beeped workout complete and I was done. We talked for a bit as I towelled down, then I left.

All in all – this woman probably spent the better half of two-hours tailing me, trying to get my attention, but only actually spoke with me for less than five-minutes (she started to really talk to me once my cool down had begun.)

I don’t understand women. But hey, maybe this puppy dog will have better luck approaching her next victim. . .

Hands Off My Undies

I was doing my laundry this past weekend – not an uncommon thing. When I went down to the laundry room to switch over my washed clothes from the washer to the dryer, I had found some trailer park trash person had moved my whites for me.

I had three loads of laundry this weekend – two color loads and one whites. There was a kid sitting atop the machine with my whites in it. I told him I needed to get in there to move my clothes out.

He pointed to a dryer and said they were in there. I told him they were not – they were in the machine he was sitting on. I couldn’t believe anyone would touch someone else’s personal stuff, without their permission – especially their underwear and other unmentionables.

The kid – about 10 – tells me his mom moved it over. The dryer wasn’t on. The good lady – we’ll just call her trailer park mom for short – had taken the liberty of moving my unmentionables to a dryer, without turning it on.

Had the kid not been there, I wouldn’t know where my clothes had gone. As clothes do not routinely walk by themselves.

I told the kid as I went to move my clothes to the dryer which I had already put a load into, good thing his mom wasn’t there, or I’d kill her.

I probably would too. I’d easily kill some complete stranger for touching my personal stuff – they deserve death – or worse – if there is anything worse than death.

Had trailer park mom not been able to find a parking spot, would it be alright for her to break into someone’s car to push it out of the way?

Worse off than what trailer park mom did, was the lesson she was teaching her impressionable young kid – who she conscripted into taking the blame by waiting in the laundry room. Though I bet if I had taken much longer, the kid would be gone, and I’d be left wondering where my undies went.

There seem to be a more bad parents these days than good ones. Good parents teach their kids right from wrong – not how to wrong someone.

Trailer park mom wronged me, by moving my things without even asking me. She probably does this on a routine basis, and the poor kid ends up taking the brunt of everyone his mom wrong’s anger.

If I ever find out who that kids mom is, I think – no I KNOW – I’ll just have to fix her wagon. Trailer park or not – this ain’t Jerry Springer.

If I catch her moving someone’s clothes – I’ll give her more than a lesson in life. I’ll destroy all her clothes. Maybe take them out and toss them in the garbage. That would be a suitable solution.

She’d panic, looking for her clothes in all the machines – only they aren’t there. They are gone! Go out and buy some new clothes trailer park mom – Jerry’s calling.

No One At Work? Must Be A Long Weekend

I work at one of the oddest places I’ve ever worked at. The people are very friendly – everyone is super nice. But for a company that’s been around since the 1960s, it certainly has a lot of issues. Issues which make me wonder how it has survived so long.

Most of the people have been around forever. The average person has been at the company for over 10-years – some have been around for over 20-years.

Not bad – in a day when job security is non-existent, it is good to know once you get a job here you’ll never have to find another one.

Though those who have been here the longest also demonstrate another oddity. Laziness.

Last Friday, we had a turkey lunch to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was the Friday before the long-weekend, where we eat turkeys, get stuffed with stuffing and watch really cheezie movies on the tube.

During this Thanksgiving lunch, management gave out long-time service awards for those with the company for many, many years.

They gave out gifts to those who had been with the company for five, ten, fifteen and twenty or more years.

Those with five and ten-year awards came up and accepted their gifts. Those that were at the company for 15 or more years, were named, but not to be found. All of ‘em had either called in sick, taken a personal day, or were on holidays!

All things – good and bad – stem from the top down. When a company’s leaders demonstrate good traits, those traits are often picked up on by the rest of the company’s employees. So too, are the bad traits – like apathy, laziness, and a general desire to appear busy and hard at work, but just appearing so – without doing any real work.

My office is where a lot of managers offices are – I’m in an elite group – lucky me.

This Friday, as with most Fridays – especially those before a long weekend – none of the managers were around. One of these managers was actually a vice-president – and surprisingly, he too wasn’t around.

Well, not surprisingly – all things stem from the top down. If the boss doesn’t have to come in on Friday – why should I?

The interesting thing about all of this, is a good number of the executives and managers in other departments did attend the turkey lunch. The company president was there too – he accepted an award himself, for being with the company for five years.

But then, just as the lunch was over, the president grabbed his stuff, and hit the road. Some of the other executives followed suite – if he doesn’t have to be here, why should I?

Then, some of the employees filed out too – if my boss isn’t here – why am I?

It makes it hard for those of us that have work to do – which should be everyone at work because that’s what work is – to do the work.

When no one is around, or people get up and leave early, and you realize you’re one of just a handful of people in the office, you wonder if you’re being taken advantage of. You feel that you’re being given everyone’s workload, so that they can goof off and enjoy life, while you work your ass off.

I left just after five o’clock that Friday – as I leave every working day. But I’m struggling with whether or not I should do the right thing and do my work next long weekend – or take the day off?

On the one hand, it is wrong to just be lazy and give out some dopy excuse to get out of work. On the other hand, if management can do it – why can’t I?

Watchin The Sparks Fly

I love high-rise living. Aside from having the best view in the city, and never having to worry about someone scaling the wall and breaking and entering, I see Mother Nature live.

I can see the storms as they sweep across the city, or even better – I enjoy watching the lightening as it crashes through the universe.

Today I got to see a neat light show. A lightening storm was whipping across the city and I had front row seats. It is pretty cool to watch enough electricity to power a good chunk of the city streak across the sky.

The shear fear factor is pretty cool too – sometimes it catches you off guard and you jump as the lightening bolt whizzes past.

Lightening is caused by the collision of high pressure and low pressure systems in our atmosphere. The lightening is Mother Nature’s way of releasing the high pressure and raising the low pressure, until both pressure systems are balanced. The lightening itself is actually a by-product of this equalization of pressures.

As the two pressure systems (fronts) are mixing and balancing, static energy is given off. This static energy builds up inside those funky vapor bodies known as clouds. When there is too much static energy, eventually it spurts out in the form of a lightening bolt.

This pressure change can cause more than sparks to fly – people react too. As the pressure systems collide, people that suffer migraines and other serious headaches often feel a headache coming on. Pressure changes in the atmosphere can cause people sensitive to pressure to get a headache.

As the pressure is released through the ensuing lightening storm, those affected by pressure changes will feel better too – as their headache weakens and goes away.

I’m lucky, I don’t suffer headaches due to pressure changes. This way, I can do the nutty things that I do during an electrical storm – like going out on my high-rise balcony and watching the lightening strike.

I know it is relatively safe, as there are lightening rods on the roof of my building. There is the slight chance that I’d get fried by a bolt of lightening, if for some reason the lightening was attracted more to me than the lightening rods on the roof.

But seeing as I don’t have much metal on or in me, that is a very slim chance.

And nothing beats the thrill of a good lightening storm.

Breaking New Ground with a Twig

About a week ago at work, they upgraded the phone system. They expanded the call center by increasing the number of lines going into the call center – and everywhere else in the company.

Yesterday, our telephones were dead. We could make internal calls, but no one could call in and we couldn’t call out to the world.

Our operations department informed us that they knew about the problem and were working on it with the telephone companies involved.

This was annoying at first, but then became a real problem whenever I tried to do any of the simple things I typically do in a day.

I had to use my personal cell phone for most of the day – though I’m sure the company will compensate me for my cost.

The real problem occurred around 3:00pm – we had a very important conference call and WebEx with managers of all the branches from across Canada. This conference call could not be re-scheduled, as it was announcing some important changes to the way we do business.

And – go figure – it is hard to have a conference call when you don’t have a phone line to do it on.

The phones went dead around 10:30 or 11:00am, and actually remained down until after 5:00pm – we went a whole business day without the basic necessity of being able to reach out and touch someone.

Might as well have had a twig to write notes in the sand. Or maybe we should have got some Styrofoam cups and string, and created our own working version of a telephone network.

I could see it now – papers everywhere as people trip over twine weaving and winding throughout the office. Others giggling as they listen in on personal calls. Spilled coffee everywhere, as people forget what the Styrofoam cups are for and they attempt to use them to actually drink from. . .

We did have our conference call and WebEx – though the solution wasn’t the best. Our IT guys are miracle workers, and they managed to find us an old analogue, cordless phone from which we took turns passing around, to participate in the conference call.

The phone – probably a good ten-years-old – had a fairly decent speaker, so we could hear everyone else on the call. Though when talking on it, you had to hold it several inches away from your face, so that you didn’t get blasted by the speaker.

Our Internet was not fully functional either – and so we had to make do with whatever jury-rigged solution IT gave us.

Whatever they did, it worked, but it was still embarrassing and awkward working for a company that couldn’t make a simple phone call.

Technology fails, that’s just a part of life. But to be without the most basic of technologies for an entire business day is mind-numbing. And a telephone is pretty basic – almost everyone has a phone, some have three or more of them.

Maybe next time technology fails, I’ll go for a nice long walk. So far, the sky has never fallen. Yet.

Parental Control -- Or Lack of It

On Myspace and Facebook, I see a lot of people post cute pictures of their kids. They have their whole family albums up online – for cousins, aunts, uncles – even grandma to see.

Problem is, everyone else online – which is over two-thirds of the global population – can see these pictures too.

What’s wrong with that?

Well, not too much – in an ideal world. Fact is, we live in a world where everyone has to watch their backs.

Online predators, stalkers, and child molesters just so happen to be able to access the Internet, just as you and me.

So, although it might seem like a relatively safe and harmless thing to post pictures of your kids online – it’s actually one of the dumbest, hair-brained ideas any parent can have.

You might as well hang a placard around your kid’s neck saying “take me – I’m yours.”

I don’t date single moms – no offence to those readin’ this blog – I just don’t want kids in my life at this point and time. But I did go out on a handful of dates with single moms eons ago, before I realized becoming an “instant daddy” wasn’t for me.

Back then, the smart single moms never mentioned anything about their dates to their kids. They never brought out pictures of their kids on the first couple of dates – they drew a strict line in the sand between their dating life and their family life.

At first, I thought it was odd that these parents wouldn’t talk about their kids. All parents our proud of their kids, and will talk non-stop about their little one’s accomplishments.

But after reading about all the abductions, the luring and then seeing pictures of whole families on the very public Internet – I finally understand why these single moms wouldn’t talk about their kids.

Unless you become serious with someone – really serious and see that person over a course of several months often – or more – than it makes no sense to complicate a kid’s life by introducing a complete stranger into it.

It is also safer – although that hot babe seemed pretty sharp at the gym, once you get to know her on a date, you may realize she’s thick as a two-by-four and just as dull. Going out with someone for the first little while doesn’t really get you inside a person’s mind-space.

Until you have been able to really dig deep into another person’s mind-space, you shouldn’t be posting your kids pictures on Myspace, Facebook, or any of the other online social networking sites.

Actually, you probably should never post pictures of your kids online – if you really want to share with someone, just show them the pictures in your wallet. Or send emails with the pictures to those who you know very well.

If Grandma can figure out Facebook, she’ll probably be able to see your kids smiling faces in an email message directed specifically to her.

Parents that blindly place their kids photos online, aren’t very good parents, because they are violating the one thing that all good parents do – protecting their kids from the evils of the world.

Don’t be a bad parent – keep your kids pictures offline.

The Tale of the Cracked Plates

This time of the month there are always people coming and going in my building. Towards the end of the month and the beginning of the next month, new people move in and others move out. It is the nature of high-rise living, as most contracts start or end on the first or thirtieth of the month.

There are wise people, that plan their move ahead of time. They go out and get as many boxes as they can, to ensure all their belongings will arrive at their next destination. They hire professional movers, to do all the hard stuff, so all they have to do is coordinate where things go, and make sure nothing gets broken.

Then, there are the nutbars that go out of their way to do it the wrong way ‘round. Like today – as I was doing errands today, I ran into a Chinese family moving out of the building. Nothing – NOTHING – was boxed, packed or even tied together. They were loading and unloading the elevators with everything as it was in their home – I saw stacked plates and dishes, rolls of toilet paper, toys were scattered everywhere – what a mess!

Obviously, this family had not planned their move – or if they had they hadn’t planned it well. I’d like to place a bet on how long those dishes and plates last before they get cracked and broken.

I’ve seen others pack their lives in garbage bags – which may be better than nothing, still provides little to no protection.

The family moving today, were not only risking damaging or loss of their possessions, they were holding up life for others in the building. They hadn’t booked an elevator for service use through the building management office (which they should have) and so they were using all the elevators to move their bits and pieces of a scattered life. They simply tossed everything into the elevator, and then tossed it out into the main floor hallway.

It was like walking through a wasteland – a garbage dump.

It also slowed down the movement of people – including me – in and out of the building, as you had to catch an empty elevator or else you’d never get down or up.

I hope the family that was moving today ends up with lots of damage to their stuff – it’ll teach them that maybe next time, it won’t cost so much to get some boxes. You can actually get boxes free from the liquor store, and many other stores will gladly give you free boxes – they have lots from all their regular shipments.

People that don’t plan, plan to fail. Good luck to those nutbars – they need it.

Conspiracy Theories on the Home Team

This summer, when I was at a summer fair and approached a competing company’s booth, I sort of expected the cold shoulder.

Well, actually I didn’t expect it – that’s what I got. I wasn’t spying or looking to cause trouble, I just wanted to say ‘hi’ and see how they found the fair.

But the cold shoulder is what I got – they hushed up real quick once I opened my mouth.

It is one thing to get the cold shoulder from a competitor, it is quite another to get it from a co-worker where you work.

Supposedly we all work on the same team at work. Usually the goal of any employee is to help out his or her fellow employee – you’re all working to keep the company competitive, profitable and enjoyable for you and your colleagues.

So when I approached someone in marketing for information about a program I’m working on for another project, it surprised me at how fast the doors of information were suddenly thrust closed in my face.

Marketing again!

Another horror story from the depths of hell at my office, more commonly referred to as the marketing team.

I should preface this story of woe with a caveat – I was talking with a co-worker in the compliance department and she needed the same information that I needed. I mentioned that to the marketing person I was talking with, and that’s when she suddenly went brain dead about all that I needed to know.

Usually when you mention anything to do with compliance and someone has a mental crash, you just know they are up to no good.

Marketing has a nasty habit of no good deeds. They have over-spent their budget not once, but twice in a row. They leave everything to the utmost last minute. And despite all the money they spend, and all the money the marketing executives make, they don’t feel confident in their own knowledge and wisdom in their area. So they continue to over-spend their budget hiring the largest and most expensive advertising agencies in the free world to do the job which they should be doing themselves.

PHEW!

Sorry – I vented – but I feel slightly better now. I’d feel even better if the marketing team was fired and replaced with a competent, friendly bunch of people that actually knew what they were supposed to know and act on that knowledge.

In a perfect world perhaps, but not mine.

Anyway – back to the tale of marketing misfits and how they snubbed me and my colleagues.

I asked for the most basic, primitive even, of information – exactly the same types of information we give to our sales force. I’m designing training materials for the sales force on these initiatives of marketing.

The marketing person told me to go talk to the marketing director for that – knowing full well that the marketing director never provides anyone with anything. We’re not sure if it is because she doesn’t know where it is, or if she is covering up another fudged budget, which will cause our poor Chief Financial Officer to go into convulsions of rage, and despair.

See, for some strange bizarre reason, as publicly incompetent as our marketing team is to everyone else in the company, the executives have not taken any action to rectify the problem.

We had one person who’d been with the company 17-years just get up and leave, because she couldn’t stand working in the marketing collective.

I hear grumblings from other people that have to deal with them about their impending departure too. And those that don’t have to work with them, just complain about them and shake their heads in disgust.

Must be a sweet deal they have concocted in marketing – over-spend, don’t do any real work for yourself, never work with anyone not in marketing, piss off the entire company, but still – somehow – keep your job.

I wish the marketing misfits went to work for the competition. At least then, when they snubbed me, it would make sense. But to snub someone at the very same company – oh yeah – they are up to no good.

Right.

That’s it – that’s why they don’t have any information to provide. They don’t want to get caught doing no good.

But wait a second – they do nothing good all the time (in fact always) yet they still have jobs. So why are they suddenly afraid to get caught?

Stay posted – maybe I’ll be able to do the dance of joy on the FORMER marketing manager’s desk. . .

All the News . . . But WAIT . . . Oh . . . That's Not It!

How come in this fine city of mine, with no less than five twenty-four-hour news channels, when you see something going on which is really big, and you rush to one of these channels, they have nothing on it?

This has happened twice in the past week to me. I saw them close down a whole stretch of highway, and there were red, white, blue and orange flashing lights as far as the eye could see. Clearly something big was going on – but I couldn’t see it all. So I turned on the local twenty-four-hour news channels, watched and listened for at least 45-minutes – but nothing was ever said.

When the blackout occurred at my work, we noticed the whole street was dark, and there were fire trucks, police cars, and hydro crews everywhere. An ambulance left the scene with lights and siren – clearly taking away someone involved in a horrible accident.

When I got home, what did I do?

I ran to the tube, turned on the local twenty-four-hour news channel and watched to see what was going on.

Again, NOTHING! ZIP! Not even a little blurb in those really annoying scrollers that practically yell out at you as you’re trying to watch the cluttered screen.

What good is a twenty-four-hour news channel, if you can’t get news off of the thing?

Now I know a lot happens in a day, but back when I was a journalist, news was stuff that actually mattered to people. News was happening too people in your local community. News was about the people, places and things which affected you.

These days, whenever Britney Spears gets caught doing something stupid, that’s news.

WHY?

Will it actually ever affect YOU?

If Britney Spears doesn’t wear panties and decides to spread her legs showing herself to the world – how on earth will that affect you?

But when something happens that causes all the offices, including yours, to send you and all the employees home – like the blackout at my work – that does affect you. Aside from getting to go home early, all those companies – including the one ya work for – lost business that day. There will be missed meetings, projects that need to get extended, angry customers to deal with – these things appear to have more of an impact on us than whether or not Britney Spears is wearing panties.

Still, the news media and their never ending quest for content to fill their twenty-four-hour news stations seems to find lots of stuff to put on there.

Problem is, most of it is irrelevant crap that really has no impact on those forced to watch it.

We tune into these channels for insight into the world around us, but instead we are fed puff pieces that just don’t deserve the oxygen used to voice them.

It’s a sad day, when you see news with your own two eyes, yet all the local stations cover some slutty celebrity and her decision to wear or not to wear underwear.

I think the broadcast regulators are the real villains behind all of this – they regulate and license the twenty-four-hour news stations.

As a requirement of having a broadcast license, each television station must provide the types of content described in its licensing agreement.

I don’t know what the lawyers in the television news business are smoking, but it must be pretty good stuff if their licenses provide for content which is meaningless, pointless, sexually charged, and potentially offensive.

I would hope that the regulators have clauses which tell the twenty-four-hour news channels to carry interesting, informative journalistically sound pieces, which have meaning and worth to the viewer.

But who am I kidding – the regulators probably get off watching clips – or is that clits – of Britney Spears imitating Sharon Stone’s infamous leg uncross.

The Power of None

The power went out at work today. These things occasionally happen, and when it does, all joy breaks loose.

No – not hell – joy.

People love an excuse to not work and still be paid. It’s like winning the lottery. As soon as the power went out, you could feel the sense of relief and “energy” in the air.

I have a laptop at work, so the power failure affected part of my job, not all of it. I could continue on working away on my laptop until the battery died. I wouldn’t be able to access my email, or anything on the network, because those go down instantly the power fails. But my hands could easily type away locally on my work laptop.

But they didn’t.

There was too much going on around the office to work. Everyone was gathering in groups, discussing anything and everything – except work.

Power failures are like recess, you look forward to when they come, you enjoy goofing off and hanging with your friends, and you dread when they end.

But this power failure didn’t last your typical 10-15-minutes or less. It was over an hour before the company decided to let everyone go. Not everyone has a laptop – actually most don’t – and without lights, even with a laptop it is hard to see what you are doing.

The blackout also caused quite a scare for our computer geeks. We all have electronic pass cards which allow or deny us access to the rooms which we require to do our jobs. The server room, where all the computers are that run the network, is only accessible to those in the Information Technology (IT) department. My job requires a functioning network, but as I don’t maintain the network (thankfully) I don’t need to access the server room.

The server room lock mechanism failed during the power failure, and so it does what it is programmed to do – keep everyone out. None of the IT personnel could get into the server room.

“Get a crow bar,” one of them said.

Oh boy!

Breaking and entering our own computer lab.

Eventually they got into the server room, I don’t know how – maybe they did use a crow bar.

Our customers are probably affected too. As the entire call center is computerized, the entire staff was let go early today.

So, anyone calling the call center won’t get through. They may not even get a voice message telling them the system is down and to call back another time. Imagine calling some company you pay big bucks to and nothing happens?

We’ll have a lot of frustrated customers to deal with tomorrow – or rather the call center will. Luckily, I don’t have to deal with that.

While I was waiting around for the lights to come on, I decided to go to the bathroom. No lights, it was pitch black – I got as far as just behind the second door and decided I’ll hold it in.

I didn’t want to pee on the wall, or worse – myself.

The emergency lights lasted only so long, and so aside from the light coming in from the windows, it was dark like coal throughout the office – including the bathrooms.

The stairwell was also pitch black, so Human Resources was escorting everyone down and out of the building in groups of 15 with flashlights.

I’ve worked at other companies where the lights have gone out and it is always the same thing – fun times, no work – just like recess – yippie!

I think I’ll buy a flashlight for the office – so that next time I can go pee during my extended recess.

Gold Teeth, Baggy Pants and Pimp Shoes

I’m no fashion guru, but even I know how to dress myself – or maybe not.

There seems to be a fashion trend going on, which just doesn’t make any sense to me.

Gold teeth, baggy pants which hang so low the guys have to pull ‘em up all the time, and neon colored pimp shoes.

I saw one guy wearing this outfit. His pants were so baggy, he had trouble walking, because every step they kept sagging lower and lower. I thought maybe he was dressed up for Halloween – but that’s not for another month.

What’s with fashion trends today?

You figure being in fashion wouldn’t just look nice, but be somewhat practical.

But how can gold teeth be practical? Baggy pants aren’t practical – unless you don’t mind walking like your pants don’t fit and have to keep pulling them up with every other step.

When I was younger, I’m sure we had outfits that the older people of the time thought were outrageous. When I was a teenager, balloon pants were pretty big. But so too were a good ‘ol staple which is still popular – blue jeans and a t-shirt.

These days, it seems anything goes, even if it makes you look like a misfit. And too me, someone wearing pants twelve sizes too big, pimp shoes and a smile of gold teeth is as big a misfit as they come.

I wonder what these people do when they grow up and out of their gold teeth phase? Do they go back to their dentist and ask for their original teeth back?

It’s why I never got any tattoos. When you’re young it might be cool to have a tattoo on your arm or shoulder. But one day, you could be a grandfather, and it would seem odd being a grandfather with a tattoo. Especially if you put on weight – that once pretty cool tattoo would be all stretched and not look like much more than abstract art – if that.

And these pants that don’t fit, they expose us to plumber’s butt. Oh – I’m sorry, butt cleavage. That’s the “in” term these days for it. Showing your ass in public is okay I guess – though when I was a kid, I remember the girls would get into trouble for wearing things too off the shoulder. But showing your ass is okay. Go figure.

Butt cleavage may impress dogs and other wild life – but it doesn’t impress me. So pull up your pants and get some regular clothes.

Boxing for Fun and Someone Else's Profit

I went to another boxing class today at the gym. I really enjoy the class and it is an awesome workout – I really feel my muscles working during the session.

The trainer is really knowledgeable and has a great personality. The people in the class are friendly and it really is a blast to be a part of.

But today, the trainer was pushing his services a little too much. First he was offering for sale high-end boxing gloves.

“You can get cheaper ones at Wal-Mart for about $45,” he said. “But these – these are the good ones, you can’t buy these there.”

He tells me his gloves sell for $85, that’s almost double what you’d pay at Wal-Mart.

“You don’t have to buy my gloves to take the class,” he confesses. “But you’d be better off because then you’d have your own pair of professional gloves protecting your most valuable investment – your hands.”

Pretty slick sales pitch. I asked him jokingly if he took credit cards, and he made a joke about having to swipe it in his ass.

I laughed – figuring he’d say something like that.

He’s got a great personality, which is important in having a trainer. I don’t take the boxing class to learn to box professionally – at my age, I’m too old to enter any sport professionally. I take the boxing class because it is fun, an excellent way to burn off stress, and a very good physical workout.

After the class, the trainer begins his pushing again. He tells me I’d get more out of the class if I signed up for some one-on-one sessions. I have had one-on-one sessions with personal trainers before – many years ago when I first started working out.

If you spend most of your time eating, working and sleeping, and suddenly decide to join a gym and drop a few pounds – then a personal trainer is an excellent idea. They will help you learn how to do something you’ve never done before – workout safely and efficiently. They will also motivate you and get you started into a routine.

But if you’re like me, and you have been working out for a number of years, you have your own routines and you know how to do things safely – then you really don’t need to pay extra for a personal trainer. It would be nice to have, but so would a private jet. Can you afford your own private jet?

Me neither.

So I declined this trainer’s first push to sign up for personal training sessions.

“I can only give so much advice during class on form and technique,” he offers. “In class I have to focus on everyone, so I can’t spend time on each individual’s training.”

I understand that – and I expect that. I don’t want him or any other trainer to single me out in a class and provide one-on-one coaching. That would just be weird.

I told him I’d think about it.

I enjoy chatting with this trainer – and he does provide excellent training. But I’m not really looking at entering boxing professionally, so a prodigy I am not.

And if I could afford my own private jet – I’d settle for that over a personal trainer. I’ve already done the personal training thing. At the time I needed a personal trainer and I enjoyed his company and advice.

These days, I enjoy working out for me and my needs.

I just hope I can continue to enjoy the boxing class without having to listen to more sales pitches for products and services. I don’t go to the gym to buy anything – I go for me.

Who’s More Dangerous – Those In the Know Or Those That Know Not?

No one likes a know-it-all. These people seem to have an answer for everything – though it is questionable whether or not their answers are right.

Sometimes playing dumb is best – because then you learn more than you had if you gave your two-cents. When I was a journalist many eons ago, one of the tricks we’d have in our proverbial journalistic judo kimonos was to play it dumb with a know-it-all source. The know-it-all source would just keep babbling away, and eventually we’d get more than enough information to write the story.

This trick also worked on those that didn’t want to talk to the media – out of fear, guilt or whatever nutty reasons people have for keeping out of the press. When you played dumb with someone that you knew more then you led on about, often they would confirm the information simply out of pity for your fake lack of knowledge.

I remember how this trick worked exceptionally well when a politician was known for using the town’s credit cards at a seedy strip club. By playing dumb, eventually the bozo said that many people on council used their town credit cards for personal use – I myself may have indulged in a little something here or there – he said.

Got ya!

Then there are situations where really not knowing any better can be bad – very bad.

I was at the gym today doing my usual body-building heart pumping workout, when I saw a new face, doing strange and dangerous things.

At first this stranger hopped on the eclipse machine next to me. She looked like she didn’t have a clue how to operate it – she just stood there staring blankly at the controls.

“You have to move to turn it on,” I explained. “Start walking.”

She did and a look of relief came over her as the display lit up and gave her some basic instructions on starting.

She wasn’t on that machine for more than 15-seconds, but had somehow managed to put it in the fastest setting. She was flinging about on it like a wild bore in a China shop. It was painful to watch, and could have been quite dangerous – she not only can pull muscles, loosen joints, and cause other damage to her body, she could also have fallen off. Falling off at that speed would be bad – as the machine wouldn’t stop right away and she’d probably get hit with one of the moving parts. She could have easily fallen onto the person next to her – which happened to be me! – and then we’d both go down and risk injury.

I looked at her and told it is okay to start slow and work up to a speed which you feel comfortable at. She looked at the controls and eventually figured out how to slow it down.

As I did my workout, this new face at the gym appeared again. This time she was attempting to hang upside down from the stretch bars on the wall.

I’ve seen some people do this, and for those that know what they are doing, it is okay. I think there are safer and easier ways to stretch your torso – like standing straight and tall, and reaching straight up – but hey, some people like to do things the hard way.

This new face obviously didn’t know how to do things the easy way or the hard way. She managed to get her foot stuck in the bars, while one foot came loose, and she fell and if it wasn’t for her head to break her fall . . .

Actually she was lucky – she landed on her ass. It could have easily been her head and that would be bad.

She sat their, shocked and probably quite embarrassed.

One of the trainers rushed over to see if she was okay. She said she was fine and they started talking about how she could sign up for personal training lessons – to familiarize herself with the equipment.

I hope she signs up – she’s a danger to herself and others around her – because she is someone who knows not the ways of working out safely.

But she does know something – how to fall off the stretch bars. Maybe I should ask her to teach me, so that I don’t land on my head . . .

Okay -- So Maybe I'm Not a Computer Geek After All

I’ve always had a talent for anything high tech – or so I thought.

Recently my own laptop has been acting slow. I did what anyone with some techno-know-how would do – I ran a complete virus and spyware scan.

Often the cause of computer slowdowns these days is thanks in large part to hackers trying to gain access to the system.

No viruses, spyware, adware or any other malicious code found.

Hmmm. . . what could have caused programs like PhotoShop which usually run no problem, to seemingly crash?

I put my IT hat on and started working out what the problem could be.

The it hit me – fonts. Recently I went crazy with a massive font install. I thought – hey you can never have too many fonts. Right? WRONG.

As it turns out, the more fonts on your system, the longer it takes applications which use these different fonts to load them. PhotoShop displays the actual font face in the fonts list – to do this it has to load the fonts first. This makes it load slower – a LOT slower – if you have or say – a few thousand fonts.

D’oh!

So now I am painstakingly going through all my fonts, to see which ones I like and will keep and which ones I probably would never have at all.

As I installed a few thousand fonts – hey I thought having The Simpson’s font among others, would be cool – this process is going to take me a month or so to do. It’s not like I have nothing else to do all day and night than go over fonts – so my spare time will be filled with filtering fonts.

Oh joy.

Maybe I can find an application which will do this for me?

On second thought – I’ll just do it myself. No need to make another techno-blunder.

Broken Promises and Kissing Babies

We’re in the midst of a provincial election here, so you know all the politicians involved are out making “the rounds.”

The rounds is what the news media often refers to as photo opportunities – shaking hands, kissing babies and standing behind some fancy podium making promises which will most likely be broken and forgotten.

The two opposition parties are running campaign commercials attacking the current party in power’s broken promises.

I laughed when I first saw this – then shook my head.

It is an old and common form of attack during an election. And it is the easiest and cheapest method too.

All politicians – ALL POLITICIANS – did I say ALL POLITICIANS make promises which they either know they will not keep, or they truly want to keep, but because life happens, they eventually don’t.

So, because all politicians break their election promises to a degree, it is a cop out to attack each other on this front.

Why not raise issues which really matter to people instead? Oh wait – maybe you just don’t have any idea as to what the people really want?

That’s why politicians attack each other’s previous commitments – because they don’t have the wisdom, the insight, the forethought and the drive to go out and really find out what us voters want.

Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians actually came to your door asking for more than just your vote and to put an election sign on your front lawn?

Imagine a politician actually caring what YOU – the eligible voter really wants?

But then again, since all politicians break their promises, you’d probably never see whatever you wanted anyways. It would end up just another election issue, which falls through the cracks once the government gets under way.

And pollsters try to figure out why voter turnout keeps dropping to appalling levels. Maybe if the pollsters actually listened to the crap that comes out of there media-over-handled political-wanna-be-leaders, and then watched the fallout after the election was long gone – maybe we’d have some serious change.

And change is what we really need. We need more than issues that don’t affect people en-mass as much as the politicians tell us. We need more than broken campaign promises which fall through only to resurface as campaign issues during the next election.

We need a better system for doing governance in this country.

Kissing babies and shaking hands might have worked in years gone-bye – but it won’t make the world rotate in today’s high-tech, over-populated, under-funded world.

A Secret to Employment Success -- Shhhh

I’m very lucky to have the tools I require to do my job well – for the most part.

At work, I have one of the newest Dell laptops in the company, with a good sized hard drive, an average amount of memory, and most of the software I need to do my job.

But today I find myself at home working, because I don’t have a DVD burner at work. Actually, none of the computers at the office have a DVD burner. I have a CD Burner on my computer at the office, and it can play DVDs but not burn them.

So, here I sit, burning en mass 35 DVDs for our Branch Managers.

I don’t mind doing this – I actually have the day off, so this is my way of doing my part.

Actually, through my years in the working world, I have learned a very valuable lesson – one which will get you the gig when the competition is very stiff.

Less is more.

It really is.

I’ve worked at smaller companies, and even some larger ones, that didn’t have the money to go out and purchase every thing to do the job in the best way possible. This forces you to use whatever the company does have, to do the work – and still make it look like you had the best tools to do the best job.

I’m a big fan of the Adobe suite of software applications. The best tool to work with images and photos is PhotoShop. The most effective way to distribute a document which others can comment on but not change is in Adobe PDF. Even Dreamweaver – which I use to make stunning web pages is now part of Adobe – they bought out Macromedia over a year ago.

Still, I’ve had to the primitive, clunky and not very practical Paint program which comes free with Windows at some places, simply because they couldn’t afford anything better.

On my home computer, I have SnagIT – an exceptional screen capture program. At work, I just use the built-in key combination of Windows to capture a screen. Not as efficient, and you can’t capture the mouse pointer if you wanted too – but it gets the job done.

By being forced to use whatever tools you have at your disposal, you learn to adopt quickly and efficiently to any office. But more importantly, you learn how to use all the tools – from the most advanced to the most basic.

This makes you far more valuable to any office – because not only can you do the job regardless of the tools you have, but for others in the office who don’t have those tools, you can show them how to do things for themselves.

Essentially, you become an expert in all software areas in your field. People in other departments and teams are constantly coming up to me, asking for help with Word, PhotoShop, or asking how to capture a screen image without any screen capture software.

Managers looking to hire people that know this will instantly pick up on it during an interview and give you brownie points.

SO, my advice to anyone looking for work – and I know many out there are – is learn how to do with and without. Practice doing your thing – be it graphic design, writing, layout, video editing, website creation – whatever – practice using the latest and most common applications out there. But also practice doing your thing with the least effective tools too – ones which some companies may be stuck with simply because they don’t have big software budgets.

You’ll have an edge others won’t – and that will better your chances of landing a job in a very tough job market.

What Would You Do If You Had Two New Years?

I recently received a card from my mom, reminding me that I enjoy the benefits of two new years.

No, she wasn’t drunk, stoned or in any other way intoxicated. I am Jewish, and tonight marks the start of our new year – Rosh Hashanah.

My mom’s card got me thinking – are their benefits to having to go through new year’s twice?

I do have tomorrow and Friday off from work – I suppose an extended long weekend is a big plus. When I was in university, there were so many other Jewish students, the school had a holiday on the Jewish High Holidays (which includes the New Year).

I always thought it was nice to enjoy the extra holidays – and they are so close to the Labor Day weekend, it is like a mini extension of summer.

But people tend to make their biggest mistakes at New Year’s.

They make silly new year resolutions, which even they know they cannot keep. I’m still struggling with my resolution from some time ago, to become taller, darker and even handsomer – if handsomer is a word.

But alas, I am still just me.

Around the Xmas break and New Year’s, there are more drunk drivers on the roads than at other times.

Also around New Year’s, the cost of a stamp along with various other government services routinely goes up.

We tend to reflect on our year just past, on the good the bad and the ugly. But for some reason only the bad and ugly last in our memories clear as day.

Radio stations traditionally play the top zillion songs all week, hitting the number one song somewhere between “Happy” and New Year.”

And guaranteed somewhere, some couple proudly holds up the first baby of the new year. Hopefully they had better reasons than just that for conceiving the little guy, otherwise next year they’ll be in divorce court.

Pink Champaign. New Year’s is the only time a man can drink pink Champaign without looking like he plays for the same team.

So, are two new year’s better than one?

Let me sip from my pink Champaign and get back to you on that.

Happy New Year!

How Not to Exit Gracefully

A couple of weeks ago, one of the people in the marketing department where I work resigned.

Now, they say there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. She did it in the wrong way.

Always exit an office, a date, hell even a meal with mom – gracefully.

This person was pissed – fuming pissed – at the marketing manager and she wasn’t afraid to let the whole world know in her letter of resignation.

I understand her frustrations – anyone who has read my blog regularly knows the marketing team not exactly playing with a full deck of cards.

I’m actually surprised no one has resigned before under the current management – as the team lacks leadership, motivation and professionalism in a big way.

Still, when leaving an organization, you don’t want to burn your bridges or do it without having something else to fall back on.

The person who resigned had been with the company for over 17-years. That’s a long time, but pretty common at the company where I’m at. Many got their first gig out of high school with this company and just have never been elsewhere.

It shows longevity and job stability, but it also leads to a certain lack of awareness one can only get by moving around the job market.

Also, staying a long time looks good on a resume – shows you are dedicated and loyal. Staying too long though is bad – looks like you lack the drive to take your career into your own hands, and shows that although you maybe able to do the job, you probably aren’t up on the latest trends in the industry.

In a way, this lack of professional experience shows in the way the person resigned from the company. She did it via email, on a Friday, after five o’clock, long after all the managers – including hers – had gone for the day.

Even though I’ve never been employed by one employer 17-years – nor would I want to be – I would never resign in an email.

Emails are not personal – and this is one of those things you should do face-to-face. But there is more to it than that. If you are so frustrated with your gig that you’re resigning, writing an email is dangerous. We tend to write from the hip in front of the computer – saying whatever is on our minds.

Unlike a Word document, once you hit “Send” that email is already in the hands of the person or people you’ve sent it too. You can recall an email, but that doesn’t usually work, as email servers are faster than you can flinch your finger over the “Recall” button.

That’s probably what happened in this case. The person was having a rough day with little to no support from her team. But that’s the marketing team’s way – like I said, they lack a certain level of professionalism.

In a furry of anger, this person blamed her manager for all her troubles. She blamed human resources for not responding to her needs. And worse yet, she blamed the company president and CEO for ignoring her constant requests for help in dealing with the issue.

Now, I haven’t been at the company 17-years, but even I can see that regardless of how poorly the marketing team works, management has turned a blind eye on ‘em. Marketing has blown their budgets twice in as many years, and no one has been fired, shuffled off to a lesser post, or in any other way punished or reprimanded. Obviously, whatever marketing does, regardless of whether or not it is actually good for the company, marketing does.

The higher-ups obviously know all of this – they are the ones allowing it to happen. They probably have something to do with it. Maybe the marketing executives are related to the president and CEO? Maybe the marketing executives are all buddy buddy outside the office – who knows?

The point is blaming the highest levels in the company for your departure isn’t going to change anything – except maybe that nice reference you’d expect after 17-years of working there. After 17-years of working at one place, you’d better get a good reference, otherwise you are really in the dog house.

Think this person will get a nice letter of recommendation, or can leave her manager’s name as a reference.

I doubt it – not the way she resigned. Imagine working for one employer all your working life, and then, suddenly out of work, unable to use that very same employer as a reference.

Here’s a rope, go hang yourself – it’ll be less painful than looking for work.

My Sniffle Snuffle Free Day

As summer draws to a close, allergy suffers like me can finally breath free, sans medication.

Every spring, as my nose starts to run, my eyes water and itch and my breathing becomes all the harder, I run to the local pharmacy and stock up on anti-histamines. The local pharmacy is always ready – just as allergy season approaches, they jack up the price of these anti-histamines.

All summer long I’m popping pills, so that I don’t look like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Around this time of year, I can usually stop the anti-histamines and be drug-free. Problem is, I never know exactly when Mother Nature’s schedule will ‘fit in’ with my allergies.

I know, I could wait until we have frost, but that might not be until October, or even November. So, I go a day or two without anti-histamines. I sniffle, I snuffle and I look like I’m either sick, or constantly crying.

Then I pop some more pills, and magically I’m back to normal. Only to have to try the whole process again, until that one faithful day comes, when I’m off the drugs and sniffle snuffle free.

Or so that used to be the case. Then global warming kicked in and ruined the celebration of my first sniffle snuffle free day.

I celebrated that sniffle snuffle free day a week ago. I went off my anti-histamines and was okay – no itchy watery eyes, no runny nose and hey – I could breathe!

But today the sniffles are back, the eyes are watery and I do have some trouble breathing.

See, with global warming, the planet’s natural cycles have all been thrown out of whack. We’re seeing unusually high temperatures this time of year, which is causing plants to continue producing spores, longer than they normally do.

It’s those spores which ACHOO – excuse me – BLOWS NOSE – it’s those spores which cause us allergy suffers so much agony.

So, allergy suffers like me, may stop our medications, only to have to go back on them suddenly, simply because the planet is a couple of degrees hotter than it was a decade or so ago.

They say you’re not supposed to mix alcohol with any sort of medication. Though the next time I celebrate a sniffle snuffle free day, I think I’ll celebrate with a bottle of Champaign – because I hope that’s the last sniffle snuffle day I have until the spring.

Hey, if I’m wrong, just means I get more Champaign

Guess there are some fringe benefits to this global warming thing after all.

Stomping Out Made in China Crap

The Chinese are known for many great things. There is the Great Wall of China, the beauty of their traditional dragon dances, and who can resist fortune cookies?

But lately, there has been a lot of product recalls – all made in China.

Everything from toothpaste, toys, dog food, even cell phone cover plates has been recalled because of health and safety issues. These issues are a direct result of cheap labor costs – which is why big name brand name companies like Mattel have been going to the far East for their manufacturing.

Cheaper labor costs in China make it more cost effective for companies to have their products manufactured in China, shipped to North America, and then sold. Or at least that is how it was – with all these recalls, it probably costs more to do business with China. Imagine all the money lost in recalling the thousands upon thousands of products.

Problem is, often these recalls don’t come into effect until the products have been in our hot little hands for enough time to cause some serious damage.

Hundreds of dogs and cats died across North America before the pet food was recalled. A dog or a cat is not a person, but when they are a member of your family, their death is felt just as deeply.

What happens if and when people do start to die because of the crap coming out of China’s factories?

How many people must die before someone takes some sort of action to stop it?

I don’t know about you, but I refuse to be one of those people who will die for some big name company too cheap to use quality North American labor practices.

Hard working, dedicated Canadians lose their jobs, so that some company executive can drive a Porsche. Meanwhile, those jobs that go to Chinese factory workers produce crap unsafe for sale in North America.

I will not die so someone else can drive a Porsche.

Nope.

I refuse to buy made in China crap. That’s what it really is – crap. It is actually worse than crap, but this is a somewhat family-friendly blog.

If I see “Made in China” or anything of similar nature on something, I’ll put it back where I found it. I won’t ever knowingly purchase made in China crap again.

Though there is so much stuff made in China these days, it is pretty hard to stop all products from getting in. I suppose I’ll just have to wing it and hope for the best.

But maybe, if enough of us boycott anything and everything made in China – maybe eventually the evil executives will learn.

Maybe – just maybe – they will stop in their fancy Porsches and realize that their bottom line is down.

DOWN.

Yeppers – squash the enemy. And when thy enemy has been squashed, stomp mightily upon him, screaming your victory cry. . .

Sorry, got caught up in a war movie on television.

But stomping out made in China products isn’t a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all.

How to Avoid the Monday Surprise

This past weekend was a nice, lazy, long summer weekend. The Labor Day weekend typically marks the end of summer and the end of summer vacations. People get back into their regular routines.

But it was a long weekend, so you’d figure nothing would happen at the office over the weekend – right? WRONG!

I occasionally check my work emails from home. It is nice to be able to see what I might need to deal with right away, and what can wait for a while. It is also good to be able to check my schedule and see if I have any meetings first thing – so that I know when to be at the office (we have flexible hours).

The problem with checking your work emails from home is once you look, you work. I may log onto my work emails thinking I’ll spend five minutes or less reading them. But then you get into responding, looking up information, writing a report – before you know it, that five minutes has turned into three or four hours.

So, I have been avoiding my work emails at home. But this past weekend I got hit big time with some work whammies which I would have been better prepared for, had I simply checked my work email.

The first whammy was the resignation of a long-time employee in the marketing department. Anyone who reads this blog often knows that the marketing department is mis-managed. They blew their budget last year AND this year, they never seem to be around when you need them, and although they often work from home, nothing ever seems to really get done.

The marketing executives are also quite loud, and not very “corporate.” Although they rarely spend a whole day in the office (usually they are in around one or two in the afternoon, and gone well before four o’clock), when they do come into the office, the make enough noise to ensure everyone in all the neighboring office buildings knows. They come in laughing, wailing, talking big and loud with booming voices more appropriate for a beer-swigging party than the cubicle confining office environment.

I’m surprised others haven’t resigned under their form of “management.”

Still, when someone has been with the company for many years (the person who resigned has been with the company for over 15 maybe 20-years), it is big news when they decide to call it quits.

It is even bigger news when that person resigns during a fire storm of furry caused by her bosses.

We send out a weekly newsletter to the whole company – all 100-plus staff and the almost 800-strong sales force. In the newsletter we issued last Friday, we ran a piece on a new marketing initiative.

We had never heard of this new marketing program, so we ran it by our vice-president. Our vice-president gave it the go-ahead, said it was fine.

I get a chewing out by the vice-president of compliance and finance, and the CFO for running the piece, because the marketing program had not been approved at an executive level!

The vice-president of compliance and finance and the CFO later apologized for their hastily written emails, as we had done what we should have done – checked with our executive – our vice-president.

Turns out, our vice-president just rubber stamps anything the marketing department throws him, without consulting the other executives.

Still, I would have known all of this as it was happening – over the weekend – instead of being broadsided by it bright and early Monday morning. All I had to do was check my email.

Oh well – so much for technology making life simple.

I’m off to check that work email.

Where's Jerry?

Today is Labor Day – the last long weekend of the summer. This has traditionally been known as the last day of summer – though summer doesn’t officially end for another three weeks.

When I was a kid, Labor Day meant getting ready for school. We’d go with my dad shopping for back to school supplies. I had a blast running up and down the isles with my brother and shopping cart, looking for paper, pens, markers, binders and all the other typical things you’d buy for school.

Labor Day also often involved going to friends and relative’s houses. We’d often be watching the Labor Day telethon for Muscular Dystrophy with Jerry Lewis at home, and wherever we went, that very same telethon was on television.

The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon was a sure sign that summer was about to come to an end. I remember seeing the ads on television weeks prior to it, and thinking to myself – no – summer can’t be over not yet!

They even had posters in the local Mac’s Milk – promoting Jerry and his kids.

The Jerry Lewis telethon used to have some big name celebrities to – Ed McMahon, Bob Hope, Brook Shields – I remember seeing Sammy Davis Jr. sing and dance too.

What ever happened to Jerry Lewis and his Labor Day telethon?

I was thinking about this today, as I haven’t seen it on the tube. Hadn’t seen any posters for it. Hadn’t heard or seen anything about it.

Turns out it is still on the air – but with all the other media in our lives, it has taken a very small spot in the back seat.

With our 500-plus channel universe, the Internet, computer games, and other distractions, people just don’t hear much about anyone thing anymore, unless a billion or more dollars is spent to hype it up.

Or some talentless celebrity with nothing but money and looks promotes it, then it is popular. If Paris Hilton or Britney Spears took time out of driving drunk, partying too hard, and showing what they don’t have on underneath their skimpy slutty outfits to promote good causes like telethons to raise money for disabled kids, then everyone would be watching Jerry Lewis and his kids.

But the world doesn’t rotate that way.

Jerry is on the air, and he’s got some celebs rooting for him. He’s got the usual cute kids in wheelchairs too. And there are always large donations made in person by fire fighters, police, the military and others.

It is nice to know Jerry and his kids are still at it. It just wouldn’t be Labor Day without Jerry and his kids.