The Pilot Project

Buying a humidifer

2012-01-25T11:00:00.001-05:00

My initial message:

Hi Reliance,
Our house's air is dry and we'd like to have a humidifier installed. Our
house is 1,300 sq feet. Would you send me an email with a quote for the cost of
the unit, the cost of installation and the next day that you're available to
install it?
Thank you, Amanda
PS: If you call me I won't hire you. I would prefer an email

Their response:

Hello Amanda,
With regards to your email below, I have outlined the cost for our
General-Aire flow-thru humidifier. The installation date could be set as early
as next week, and there is no additional cost for the installation. For
your size of home you have two options, if you are at 1300 square feet without
hardwood flooring, you could go with the 12 gallon tank for $450+hst. In the
event that you do have hardwood flooring, we always recommend that you add an
additional 200-300 for the size of house, if that is the case, then you would
want to go with the next size up which is a 19 gallon tank for
$500+hst. All of my contact info is outlined below should you need to reach
me.
Thanks kindly,
PS – Your original email request is the best one I’ve seen this week, thanks for the smile.

Letter from Pilot

2011-11-26T18:40:00.003-05:00

Pilot has been at my parents all week. Here's another letter from him:

Dear Amanda,

Well it has been three days now and I do miss you very much. But, Grandma and Grandpa are very nice and are keeping me busy so the time goes by quickly.

I haven’t written you since the summer and I finally got some time to drop you a line.

Every morning Grandma asks me: “Ready to go get the mail?” Silly question, I am always ready for a walk. We walk out the lane to some small metal boxes attached to a post. Grandma sticks her hand into the box and comes out with what she calls “The mail”. She gets really excited about it. What a great excuse for a walk. We do not always come home the same way as we went and I am afraid that they will get lost. Good thing I have a good sense of direction so I can guide them home.

Then Grandpa told me we had to go dig a cable trench. Sounds like fun, I like to dig. Well he got this big stick with metal on the end and started digging in the gravel. This is something I am good at so I started digging everywhere he did. Sometimes his big stick gets in my way and I have to bark at it. He laughs. Next He got this long black snake like creature out and started to stretch it out along the driveway. Well, I thought I could help by grabbing the end and pulling. I must have pulled too far because Grandpa kept pulling it back. Once I got it and took it a safe way down the lane. After we agreed upon where the black wire should be, can you believe it; Grandpa put it in the trench that I had dug and told me to fill in the trench. Well, I had to dig another trench to fill in the first trench. I really got dirty. About this time Grandma came out to see what us boys were up to. I was glad to have a break from all the manual labor. I ran to get Grandma to show her our well-done job. Well, by the time I got her out to the work site her I had made her nice white top and socks really dirty. I told her I had been digging in the dirt. Next thing I know Grandma is in the laundry room operating a huge white box that she claims will fix all the dirt I put on her. I offered to help sort the pile of clothes but she thought Grandpa
need more help than she did.

Finally we had to stop all this work and have lunch.

After lunch Grandpa started working on his Christmas lights. I tried to help by holding them for him. He finally said that he did not need my help right now. So, I went searching in the bush and found the neatest log. It is longer than me and I had such a time dragging it home. Well Grandma came out to see my latest treasure and laughed and thought it was too big. Grandpa finished his Christmas lights and I decided to help him put away his tools. I picked up his hammer and took it to the garage (Wrong!). So then I took it to the back door (Wrong!). Grandpa caught up with me at the shed and said he would put it away and thanks for the help.

Then my friend Sue called to see if Grandpa and Grandma wanted a hot tub. Next thing I know they have shed their clothes and put on something called bathing suits and they all got into Sue’s big box of water outside in the cold. The part I do not understand is thatthey have been telling me that the lake is too cold and that I should not go into it. Now, here they are sitting in a tub of water outside. I decided to taste the water. It was warm but not really as good as the lake water. Everyone’s head was at my level so I could poke them with my cold nose to check on them to see that they were all right.

After that Grandpa asked me if I wanted to go fishing. Sure I said. So off we go to Peter’s dock since that is the only one left in the water. I cannot quite figure what happened to all the docks that we here on my last holiday. Well, Grandpa took this really long stick with a beautiful shiny “lure” (That’s what he called it.) attached and preceded to throw it out into the lake. I really thought that it had gotten away from him and I cried and ran along the dock to see if I could help get it back. But, guess what? Somehow it came swimming back to Grandpa without my help. Now for the strangest part, Grandpa kept throwing it back into the lake, it kept swimming back to shore to get out of the lake and I kept talking to it all the time.

Thank heavens, Grandma finally called us in for supper. I’m exhausted. I cannot lift my feet off the floor to walk so I drag them. Give me my supper and a soft bed.

Oh! No! They want to go for another walk. Maybe just a short one to make them happy.

Well I am enjoying my holiday but I will be ready for a little rest when I get home to you.

Love
Pilot

P.S. It gets really dark here at night.

Microsoft's records management approach, spc11

2011-10-05T16:43:00.001-05:00

The records management session went really quickly. It seems like the rm program at ms is really solid, but they're filling in a lot of the gaps in sp's records center with third party technology. They have a holistic approach for records management, but their physical records sounds to be a lot more advanced than the digital ones.

3rd party software that ms is using as part of their rm solution:
- Using iron mountain for unified records management, with gimmal soft
- Content sync and migration is metavis
- Colligo is the email management, file shares and offline
- Docusign is their esignature tool

They have a split solution for records management: some are stored on-premise and others are in the cloud. One requirement that they wanted to access their ndas from anywhere.

They are using the records center as the compliance center. And they use the MetaVis Architect Suite for sharepoint. They chose it because it can connect remotely and manage on-premise sharepoint environments. We were given a demo of it. The tool looks really solid.

Decisions we need to think about before making decisions about the environment:
Where should content reside?
Which content should be retained and included?
Do you reorganize content during copy? Location? Metadata?
Scheduling? What is the proper scheduling for the extraction of content?
What if conflicts exist between the on premises and cloud content?
Should content history be preserved?

Lessons learned and reccomendations:
Create a test center and configure sample policies
Execute pilot whose intention is to validate security, workflow solutions and retention
Develop compliance driven site collections for inplace records
Sandboxed solutions is key for SPO
Plan for authentication headaches

Next up for them is an integration between Gimmal and iron mountain.
They have one records center and plan to have more as the time it continues.
They failed to explain document sets properly to the business, so they use libraries instead.

Search session : spc11

2011-10-05T16:23:00.001-05:00

The search session was presented by two guys. One who was a self-professed search expert and one who loved the technology. Both were consultants.

They outlined some common challenges with search including:
- missing or poor metadata
- duplicate info
- siloed information
- repositories with unknown content
- incorrect security and retention

One of the key messages was that: Good stewards focus on deduplication of content. Duplicate identification by search requires a title match and the body content hash to be equivalent in the docs. If two docs are found that are duplicates that the search returns one result and notes that a duplicate was found.

The presenters gave a live demo of entity extraction, which reads all the content sources and all the word in those documents. You can build a hierarchial navigation structure by telling the search which terms to look for. They also mentioned the Hierarchial classifier, but didn't discuss it in detail.

The most important takeaway for me came out of this session: To address the fileshares that exist for years, you can define the entities structure in a text file and then tell it it crawl the fileshare and then it extract content into the structured buckets. And then you can navigate the content and organize it, apply metadata and retention classifications by buckets.
Another takeaway for me is to understand more about taxonomies. Another is that by typing # in the searmch box you get everything.
Also, you should Assume that the taxonomy is always wrong ehen the site is launched and to remember that Content creators and content consumers can have different taxonomies. Need to identify when to use a presentation taxonomy

Top tips for search
- Crawl as much high value content as you can - Prevents users from confusing poor ranking with failure to index.
- encourage natural hierarchies: nest less important sites, discourage flat structures.
- use natural language for metadata
- supply metadata
- get rid of junk

When to use a folder vs a document set: use folders when you don't need hierarchies, use doc sets when you can. Doc sets cut down the work to get good metadata, also facilitates workflow and retention.

Also, the guys in this session were excited about the content organizer and said one of the benefits was that users don't have to know where to store things anymore. Unfortuneately for micosoft i had spken to some consultants from Finland who had attended a session where the product manager for the content organizer said not to use it in an enterprise environment.

How Micrsoft's doc team works

2011-10-05T13:21:00.001-05:00

Met someone from Microsoft Sharepoint's documentation team. They have about 100 people writing the online content for the office online and tech sites for sp.

I asked him about their approach to writing documentation. They use the personas that the office development team uses to inform their writing, but they'd like to write their own. They have, for past releases, written scenarios, which sound like really involved stories that illustrate how the "swiss army knife that is Sharepoint" can be setup and used. I hope to find that scenario and if the guy follows up, i'll post the link here.

The way he spoke about the development group was very much as an outsider, but one with a voice over what is created and how it is tied in. In my past work i've seen documentation fill a similar role: seperate but very engaged.

Apparently Microsoft's docs team runs design sessions to hear about what their users want and are planning to do so that the docs can better meet their users needs. The ideas are culled really early on by the doc team so that the initiatives for a particular release can be identified. (this culling is motivatedby his perception that their docs team is really understaffed.)

Telus uses social media to change educational model #spc11

2011-10-05T12:32:00.001-05:00

@dpontefract knocked my socks off. He works for Telus and is changing the culture there. He believes in heterarchy, not hierarchy and is pushing telus to move to a less hierarchial model.

His talk was about how social technologies are helping telus change their work practices, engage their employees and create a culture of continuous learning all to provide a better customer experience for their customers.

The focus of telus is to
- improve the likelihood to reccomend - as a key indicator of customer experience satisfaction
- change the work style
- collaboration improvement

Problems that need to be addressed
- people are dispersed
- expectation is that you're part of the story, not being told
- multigenerational workforce

Work styles are changing at telus. Their targets are to have people work 30% from office, 30% from home, remainder are hybrid. Reasons include cost savings and an increase in employee engagement.

Three legs of the stool: leadership, learning and technologies

One of the major changes is that Learning is a continuous, collaborative process. It is informal, formal and social.

Telus does not have best in class customer experience
Tries to move the organization along the path to collaborative culutre strategy. Collaborative culture = connected learning + leadership framework + social technologies

From the blue ocean strategy, telus has adopted the Fair process: engage, explore, explain, execute, evaluate.

Dna of organization, who it targets and how it happens.

Different kinds of learning: social, informal, formal. Examples include Informal: mentoring; Social: networking, blogging, tagging.

"Its about social work and about saying its ok."

40% of team members are participating in social learning
- called wikis, blogging, microblogging, forms ect..
55% have seen a return on investment

How are they measuring success and perfomance? Poll 10k people once a quarter and ask questions like:
Have you participated in learning? (broken down by learning type)
Have you noticed an improvement in how you're performing? (again broken down by type)

What are the best adoption strategies he's found?
Adoption community - 20 to 50 ppl show up to the biweekly meeting. They're the leading ambasadors of change. Also created a specisl program called "Special advanced learning training for you". And Built an elearning course introducing the social site 25 mins long. Helps them with the adoption piece.

User centric approch with FAST: spc11

2011-10-05T11:13:00.001-05:00

This session was given by a guy who believes wholeheartedly in agile and user-centered design, but does the interaction design upfront. He gave some interesting tips about user-centered design approaches and an overview of the process his company follows.

Unfortuneately the session did not cover fast in any detail or how to design searches. It was disappointing.

I didn't manage to capture all the phases and steps involved in his process, but here are some of them:
Analysis: stakeholder workshop, user interview, personas, user stories and tech assessment, create data source inventory
Concept development: create information model, create process model, concept sketches, model system architecture, feasability study woth prioritized source systems
Interaction design: concept sketches are presented to stakeholders, create wireframes for user stories, perfomance test....
.... And this is where i missed the rest

He also included the following list of User interview question types:
Participation - let me help you do X
Demonstration - show me how to do X
Role-playing - i'll be the customer and you are you, let's play
Sequence - walk me through the process?
Specific example - what did you do last time?
Peer comparison - do others do it this way?
Project ahead - what will this be like in 5 years?
Look back - how are things different this year?
Quantity - how many X do you need?
Exhaustive list - what do you need to do X?
Other viewpoint comparison - what is your boss' opinion?

And here's a list of Search tips and development approaches he brought up:
Business intelligence specialists have great tips for ways of showing refiners.
Use synonyms
Broken by sources: people, documents, products
Always show availability when you show people profiles
Use jquery to develop protoypes first and then plug the prototypes into fest search

Forrester session: spc2011

2011-10-04T17:19:00.001-05:00

In my prevoius life i got to interact with analysts several ways. One way was giving vision demos for our upcoming work, another was at user conferences, and the third was as a resource to help us make decisions. In all cases, the analysts were treated VERY well and with a lot of love and appreciation.

At the sp conference the analyst got grilled. He was presenting to his customers, to the people he wants to buy his research and the people he needs to tell him things so he can report them. And he got grilled. For the first 10 mins the audience just pulled apart the approach of the survey and the way the data was collected. The analyst admits the numbers are basically "noisy", but then added that they had some qualitative research to back up the numbers. I just about fell off my chair. We moved on from picking on his data very quickly, and instead began discussing the numbers whose methodology we were just questioning.

The format of this session is built to set the man speaking up as an expert. It's very clever and gives me more disdain for analysts and their approach to making reccomendations. They report what they see now, and that's through a very fogged lens, and use this information to extract trends. I believe that the past cannot be used to predict the future.

Oh, and the forrester guy used his own slide template and wore his own shirt. Branding him as an "impartial" presenter.

Here are the stats that i collected from his talk:

Platform being used by survey respondents:
Sp2010 57%
sp2007 65%

Organization size by respondent:
19% 1000-5000
16% more than 100,000
(someone in the audience pointed out that thesenumbers must be skewed by more than one person from the large orgs responding)

Satisfaction is good around: Collaboration, Content management, Sites, portal and intranet.
People aren't using sp for bi, search, extranets, social.

As the importance of sharepoint grows, so does the appetite for custom development of applications on top of it.

Slow deployments are caused by
- technical issues 59%
- lack of governance 41%
- functional issues 36%
- skills and talent lacking 28%
- users adopted more slowly 28%
- funding 25%

For third party vendors, these have the widest use:
workflow - nintex
Avepoint, axceler, quest - administration
Social - yammer and webtrendz

Business is 73% satisfied with sp deployment
IT is 79% satisfied

81% deployed on-premises
17% of respondents would never use the cloud

28% had a positive experience with deploying sp in the cloud, and the analyst says that more people are going to the office365 platform. It sounded like a commercial.
He recomends developing a roadmap to deploy functionality based on need, ridk and readiness

How MS is driving social adoption: spc11

2011-10-04T13:49:00.001-05:00

This session was put on by two guys who i was initially skeptical about, but who it turns out that have a great rapport. They gave a wicked presentation that showed their adoption success with a facebook-like application.

The demos got me really excited. It showed really clean nice people profiles, feeds and microblogging. They've done some neat stuff with tagging and leveraging those tags to propse interests.

The most awesome idea was that when person x starts following y, that person y gets an email. I think this is a key approach to drive initial traffic, which can really drive adoption. They tracked the activity from day one using a sql back-end.

Their goals
- make it modern
- aggregate content
- centralize solutions
- key adoption drivers: integrate, champions,delight

They want to use feeds, search and profile to allow people to enable:
Finding people, content, Staying connected and sharing

Another program that was grassroots is the #askgeorge program. Some guy at ms posts a silly question each day and people reply. They decided not to squash this program and now george has the most followers of anyone at ms.

They've taken an agile approach with their rollour and showed us some features that are only 3 weeks old, although the entire project was created over 6-7 sprints.

Duet session notes, spc11

2011-10-04T12:13:00.001-05:00

This session demoed and explained how sap and sp can work together. It reminded me of the basic funtionality that opentext-sap training starts with. The integration is stronger and the experience is better than what opentext provides, although it looks a little less mature.

Here's the difference between duet and duet enterprise:
- Duet was built as a framework between office and sap. Client install. Packaged business scenarios that were prebuilt.
- Duet enterprise provides the framework to implement security, etc.. Also reporting, workflow, collaboration, search

Duet provides the interoperability layer that allows sp and sap to be integrated.

Some features of note include:
Offline scenario support
Sso - maps ads and sap user. Security is based on the sap permissions. Allows any sp objects to be secured with sap roles. User mapping is done on the netweaver side, if the usernames are the same, no work is required, otherwise the mapping must be maintained manually.
Templates and building blocks
Monitoring- for troubleshooting. For this platform, both sets of tools are being monitored.
Supportability
Business content- sap content is available as web services, sp content is availableas external content types in bcs. Supports read, write, update.
Some objects are shared by default, includes client.

Scenarios
Can access sap contacts and tasks, among others from within sp
Can define the workflow in sap. A decision step can be exposed in a sp task library that uses a standard infopath form.
Can also have the profile information published out from sap hr module
In sharepoint there is a list of reports that can be requested from sp, run in sap and then shown in sp.

Demo
Shows filters on the list data from sap
Shows that data can be updated from within sp and reflected in sap.
Showed creating a workspace based on sp data
Reports allows you to add parameters
And allows you to schedule reports

Live queries are made when requested by sp.

Sap netweaver gateway - gets data from differen backends and exposes on different devices: sharepoint, social, mobile and web

Duet requires:
Bcs, so sp2010 is required
All browsers supported by sp2010
Office 2010 is nice so that you can do work offline, sp workspaces supports working offline

Three solution types
- out of the box
- intermediate with infopath forms, and leverage webpart pages
- advanced: custom connectivity and custom coding

Case studies include: sandvik and Infosys.

Some observations of mine:
- The presenters didn't want to take questions during the session, and ended up ignoring the hands that were raised. I think this is a crime. They're more interested in creating a long video presentation than engage with their audience. Although there were a ton of questions at the end, so maybe it wasn't as much of acrime as i initially thought.
- Another aside is that the tables and backdrop is a shiny black material. This should make the presenters stand out,but unfortunately the speakers are wearing black shirts, which results in their bodies fading into the background and the effect of disembodied heads and armless hands.

The website is duet.com for more info.

Here's a videos of them throwing tshirts at the session:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7jE7-1oeY

From dm session spc11

2011-10-04T12:03:00.001-05:00

This session was presented by a consultant who does much the same work that i do. He has a great personality and i pitied him because the crowd that he had was not engaged.

Here's some of the info he shared with us:
- 1 in 6 projects overrun their budget 200% and schedule by 70%

Thinks to make deployments sucessful
- don't try to boil the ocean, break work into discrete chunks
- resist scope changes
- assemble right team

AIIM stats about project failure
- not enough education about solution
- poorly defined requirements
- lack of mangement support

Here are some questions that his company asks people:
What type of information are you trying to manage?
What processes support that content?
Who are the people who are affected?
What are the systems that are used?

One thing that i think was important was the point he made about success: he suggested that planning for success and a high demand after the first project is extremely sucessful. Here are some things that How to deal with the demand?
Governance model
Microsoft is having the tools created
Ecm project triage
Plan for sucess

On my sp blog posts and the conference

2011-10-03T17:49:00.001-05:00

There is not enough to eat at this conference. I'm not hungry, but I didn't get chicken or marcaroni for lunch. I think putting 7,500 people in one place and then having food be a scarce resource is a bad idea. There is also no snacks during breaks. I like a snack.
I have a new crush on the guy in charge of pm, jared. He's exciting.
I have in the past been very critical of opentext for the lack of prominent women speakers at their conference. I was too hard on opentext. Not only are there no women speaking, but i haven't seen any walking around representing microsoft. And the number of women attending here is much less than content world. I would put it at less than 8%.
I love the hotel, though. And am having fun at the sessions and talking to strangers. As you would expect.

Spc2011: records management session

2011-10-03T17:40:00.001-05:00

The Records management session was over my head. I don't have either the technical understanding nor the handle on the records management lingo to have gotten much out of the session. It's too bad, but i guess the target audience were people who knew about both.

I got a few things out of the session, though. Here they are:

Retention needs to be automated to be efficient.

People you need to support a rm program: sr mngt, designated champion, well-defined scope of project, general counsel support, policies with business practices

Steps to an rm program:
Start by conducting an records inventory, and categorizing content
Let depts determine how long to keep the types of content
Let legal review it
Launch with an comm plan, policies and procedures, analysis and dev of file plans
Begin organization of records and clean-up
(note on this: these short steps look deceptive. I think they wold actually take a ton of time and battles for people's time. I think there must be a better way to do this.)

The following is a simple structured categorization mechanism for records in SharePoint. The idea is that these four levels of hierarchies would give you enough info to automate an rm retention plan.
- Business function
Retention category
Enterprise content type of two kinds: organizational content type and local content type
(I didn't understand what the speaker meant when he said "The approach is that subclasses of data are created at the business level." but i think it's important.)

3 types of Records declaration strategies - in place records allows you to declare an item a record in the origonal locatiom; record center, cental management of records; multi-state hybrid- multiple stage policy stages

Content organizer - a more robust from scalability perspective. Allows the creation of a drop off library. Only routes documents and derivations.

Site collection admin has to become an records manager in order to do in place records management.

Users need to name it, tell us when thy're done with the file, tell us what it is.

When a record is moved to a record center, Security doesn't transfer along with it. The security inherits from the location where its stored. And this means that the new location controls the search.

I tried, but wasn't persistent enough, to ask for a list of resources to learn more about records management that would explain the jargon. Must try harder to be brave and ask dumb questions, i think.

Spc11: Adoption session #1

2011-10-03T14:10:00.001-05:00

Adoption plan should include:
Communication - executive level support, leverage experts, town hall meetings, breakroom posters, online scavenger hunts and ongoing comunications
Training - the users get training just in time and just enough
Content conversion - moving the old content into the new system. 1 clean and migrate everything, 2 don't migrate anything but index old content, 3 clean and migrate recent content only.
User support - contact person for every page, internal site owner user groups who can help themselves, get helpdesk on board and help them answer questions, end user feedback loop, end user resources
Incentives and rewards - wiifm, make it fun, recognition for content contribution, Have a great ux
Executive buy-in - get help from execs to change the culture,need a governance board
Information architecture- good site organization matters - if its not easy to find users will give up, simplify the template by turning off features, visual brand
Governance plan - you invest in the infrastructure and you want to make sure that you're getting the most out of it

SharePoint conference 2011: keynote

2011-10-03T13:03:00.001-05:00

I'm at the sharepoint conference in Anaheim, california this week. At the keynote today a guy was on stage next to a server farm. And he was dj-ing. He is a sr technical product manager. And people are dancing in their seats. At least tom wilson and I are.

Conference theme is productivity delivered. It's also to honor the amazing things that customers and partners have done with sharepoint. It's a smart approach: if microsoft has no new features to share they can at least tells stories about the successes that the old features led to.

We were welcomed by Jared, who is in charge of sp product management. He introduced a lame video about interviewing actors to be the sp spokeperson. It stole the momentum that he built in his welcome to us.

3 guiding principles of sharepoint: redefining collab, unleash the ecosystem, builing a worldclass platfom.

Focus of redefining collaboration is: ux, social fabric, customers and partners.

In summary, the session was a bunch of hype, some MS execs looking excited like Google nerds, some case studies and a couple case studies.

My fav demo was where they showed a database hot failover for 7,000 concurrent users in about 10 seconds. (They had some heavy duty hardware on stage and unplugged one of the servers during the presentation. Cool!)

One of the speakers said that the product teams are running the cloud service office 365 at ms. The pressure is on the dev teams to make it work. I think this is interesting: forces those doing the development to consider how they will support the features because they are supporting them... Wonder what the impact on dev organizations will be.

Some stats mentioned:
- 25% of sp deployments are doing extranet deployments.
- next sp dev release will staff four times the ux and visual designers they had the last release.
-84% of people at companies work remotely
- 65% of companies are deploying at least one social tool
- 70% of it budgets are spent on siloed aging infrastructure
- There are 7,500 people here
- Sp is the biggest business at ms. 125m licenses sold.
- 65% of organizations have deployed enterprise wide.
(note: i may have flubbed some of these stats in copying them down. No sources were quoted.)

Noticed:
- the photo on the "reliable" slide has a light burnt out
- some women appeared in the photos in the presentation, but not onstage or in video :(

I have high hopes for this conference.

Debora(H?)

2011-09-11T20:56:00.003-05:00

Hi Debora(h?),

Would you drop me an email?

Thank you,

Amanda

Pilot writes home

2011-06-28T19:23:00.002-05:00

Here's a letter my dog sent me. He's at my Mom and Dad's house.

Hi there!
What a day I had yesterday.
It was garbage day and Grandpa got out this one wheeled contraption called a wheelbarrow. Well, barking at it did not stop it. So, I gave up on that idea. I learned that biting the rolling tire was not a good idea either. Good thing that Grandpa stopped it before it ran over me. My final solution was to run around it in circles. This must have been the right solution since Grandpa and Grandma really laughed.
Next I met six new people. The first two were stone masons. One of them had a hound called Betty and he thought I was just beautiful. The second two were carpenters and they made a lot of hammering noises. The final two were electricians.
Then I had to help Grandpa move trees. He trimmed some branches and my job was to strip all the leaves off them when he was tragging them into the bush. It was a lot of work and sometimes when I stepped on them Grandpa would drop them. I think that he wanted me to carry them.
By lunch time I was so tired that I went and sat at the door wanting into my crate for a nap.
After lunch we had to walk out and get the garbage green box.
Then Granpa got out this four wheeled very noisy tractor that he rode around the lawn. I was scared but Grandma hugged me and I watched. It must be safe since Grandpa was smiling.
When he finished I had to help him rake the cut grass. Do you have any idea how much fun it is to chase a rake?
Then I went down to the lake and helped Grandpa move some rocks. He was throwing away some really good ones that I rescued and took up onto the lawn.
After supper I met three more people. One was driving a great big yellow tractor like Grandpa's little one. He was nice and I did not mind the noise that it made.
The other two were the electrician's boss and his wife. They really liked me.
Then we all went up for some quiet time. Grandma turned on a thing called TV and it had people on it. I sat and looked at it and barked to scare those people away. It worked, a commercial came on with dogs on it.
Well I have to go pack. We are off to see Great Grandpa and Grandma.
I'll tell you about it when I get home.
Love
Pilot.

Puppy Class Review #5 - Ottawa Canine School

2011-06-28T18:36:00.002-05:00

You may have noticed that someone named Chantal left a message on one of the reviews. She runs Ottawa Canine School and we ended up finding out about her school after we got the puppy. We wanted to check her school out, particularly because our vet reccomended her.
The type of puppy kindergarden she offers is really similar to Best Friends, but it's rolling. Which means that you can sign up whenever you want and start going. And, the very best part, is that because you'll probably start on different days than another dog, you're going to meet MORE dogs than you would if you had signed up with a standard class that ends up running every week for X number of weeks.
We signed Pilot up for both the Sunday and Tuesday puppy kindergardens. Chantal offered to switch around her program - they teach the same thing on Sunday and on Tuesday of the same week - for us, which I thought was really nice.
Instead, we just decided to take Pilot to puppy class for as often as we could. We've been to 10 classes so far and I've seen a marked improvement in:

Pilot's confidence with other dogs
My confidence with how Pilot will treat little dogs - at the beginning I was so nervous that he'd hurt them that I kept trying to pull him off the little dogs. Andre and Chantal made a special effort to explain to me that Pilot is just playing and he's not hurting the little dogs
Pilot's recall in the face of distractions - he loves dogs and Mike and I don't exist when other dogs are around. It's awesome to have a safe, fun place to practice getting his attention when he's as distracted as he'll ever get.
Pilot's humping - it only took three classes, but Pilot stopped humping. Andre would gently pull him off the dog he was humping and then let him go. The theory behind this is that once Pilot learns that humping stops him from getting to play, that he'll stop humping.

It's also really nice to see other owners who are going through the same things as we are: biting, humping and not listening. It's also great to be in a class where the dogs have a mixed age range. Pilot started his classes really early - I think at 10 weeks. He could only do this because I got the vet to give him his shots early. (Which is crazy, but is also me.) He met dogs who were much smaller than him, who were four and five months old. And they taught him some stuff, while still playing nicely like puppies.
I like the Ottawa Canine school the best. It has the same style of training as Best Friends, but the dogs' age varies, the environment is cooler and more fun, and there's always more than one trainer present to help with the dogs.

Answering the question "Which one do you get?"

2011-04-15T08:26:00.003-05:00

Jean, the wonderful breeder of our puppy, had a temperament test performed on the puppies on Sunday. She's been thinking about which puppy we'll get since then.
Mike wants a small dog - "We want the runt!"
I want a well adjusted, confident, lovely, calm dog - "We don't care what it looks like, so long as its a good, friendly dog."

Well, we're getting the biggest dog in the litter, the blue dog. When we visited Jean, he was the floppiest, calmest one. He was also a kilo more than the smallest dog - which is a lot when they only weigh about 3 kg.

Here's a photo of him passed out:

It's not exactly the most flattering photo, is it?

Here's another of Pilot at 4 weeks with me. We both look a little bottom heavy, huh?

Assembling the Puppy crate and playpen

2011-04-14T12:48:00.002-05:00

Last night Mike and I assembled the puppy crate and puppy playpen, as recommended by Dr Ian Dunbar. It took less than an hour, but produced a lot of garbage in the form of big boxes and everything was heavy.

We basically had to move our kitchen table to the space under the stairs so that the puppy could have more than 1/2 the front room for his playroom. Combine this with the fact that our bikes are inside and it looks like our house is a bit like a garage. This is kinda funny and kinda sad.

On the lighter side of things, we'll welcome anyone - Deborah! - to drop by this Sunday to pet the puppy. He comes home on Saturday, and we hope to have him settled in by Sunday afternoon.

His name is Pilot. We still don't know what color - the puppies from his litter all wear strings around their neck with their color - he is. This is somewhat stressful, and somewhat irrelevant.

Puppy Class Review #4 - Canadian Canine Academy

2011-04-07T11:08:00.003-05:00

I'm struggling to write this post. We had to leave the Canadian Canine Academy training session after 10 mins because I was emotionally upset by what we saw.

A snapshot:

Three people sit at an end one end of the room. They look like judges, but in reality they've paid for the brainwashing that will qualify them to "train" dogs.
Puppies and owners form a ring around the outside of the room. The puppies are wildly trying to greet one another while their owners jerk on their necks and force them to sit.
The instructor takes a dog from an owner to test the dog's heeling capability. Without a command he begins walking around the center of the room, jerking viciously on the dog's neck. By the third round, the dog is no longer pulling on the leash. The dog's head is down, it's wagging its tail submissively and looks like it's just been beaten.

I was about to cry out "There is a better way!", but decided to leave instead.

This style of training is what Dr Dunbar refers to as dated and cruel. It uses punishment, pain and degradation and there's no excuse for it. All the puppies were confused. There was no difference in the skill level of the graduating puppies and the new puppies. No one was learning, no one was having fun and, something that's far worse, dogs were being hurt, pushed and jerked mercilessly.

The Canadian Canine Academy has something great going. They're setup to proliferate the horrifying training methods for years. Three observers in the class will use the cruel methods after they receive their certificates. As new people join the class and are instructed to hurt and demean their dog, they do it because everyone else around them are doing it.

Bottom Line: Go to Canadian Canine Academy if you want a poorly behaved dog - none of the dogs that were "graduating" last night would sit on command - that hates you, has been treated terribly by strangers and is constantly confused.

An additional comment: during the class there was some high-pitched yipping coming from behind a door in an adjacent room. Twice the instructor yelled in a low-pitched, cruel voice "QUIET". The third time he excused himself, opened the door and we heard a horrible, sharp yelp. He returned smiling. I was horrified.

Puppy Class Review #3 - Carolark

2011-04-05T09:25:00.002-05:00

Sunday afternoon Mike and I went to Carolark, a dog training school in Kanata with a wonderful website. I had high hopes that this would be the class for us. We arrived for the 2nd puppy class they ran that day.

It was awful. Mike and I had been riding the happy, fun wave we had gotten from Best Friends school and were hoping to have another fantastic experience.

Here's what went wrong:

Not Friendly - When we arrived, I tried to talk to the trainer lady to say Hi and why we were there. She looked at me and then turned away and went to photocopy something.
Smelly - the whole room smells like rubber and in the afternoon sun it was overpowering
EVERYONE SITS - we sat and watched as the owners arrived. They brought their entire family. And they all went to different sides of the area and sat down. None of the dogs were allowed to interact and the people just sat, staring.
EVERYONE SITS FOR A LONG TIME - Mike and I left when the first exercise started. It was 20 mins in. 20 mins during which the trainer lectured the bored families and the freaking out puppies. They did do one activity during that 20 mins. It did not involve anyone standing up, but it did involve confusing the puppies.
Military style - the 20 mins was very similar to a scene from a military movie where a captain tears down his reports > the instructor loudly stated a bunch of theory and frequently criticized the energetic puppies.
No puppy play - there was no off-leash time. We were too busy sitting.
Badly behaved puppies - none of the puppies could sit on command. This proves that "no fun = no training".
Clicker - Everyone had a clicker and was trying to use it, however, they were clearly not trained properly on how to. They simply could not reward, click and command at the same time and the result was really screwed up interactions of dropped treats, extra clicks, delayed clicks and embarrassed owners.
Focus on awards - the entire room was full of photos of dogs who had won awards. At first I thought it was great that they were so proud of their dogs, but it's clear to me now that the school values winning over fun.

Bottom line: I can't imagine anyone who would like this class. The total void of fun is enough to kill any desire to want to learn how to train a dog.

Why are they still in business? It boggles my mind that anyone would recommend or attend the puppy class. It was horrible. The only reason for the continued success must be the pure number of people in Kanata who are getting dogs and think they want to be able to say "Yes, the dog went to training class."

Puppy Class Review #2 - Best Friends

2011-04-05T09:12:00.003-05:00

Sunday morning Mike and I drove out to Innes and the 417 to see a puppy class at Best Friends. Their website is horrible and I was convinced, as we drove that we were wasting our time.

Turns out we weren't.

We arrived and met the trainer and then the puppies came in with their owners. The puppies were immediately allowed to play. And then the trainer asked the owners to call their puppies. And, guess what, the puppies came! And sat! Which I think was amazing, given the fact that the puppies were in full play mode. (They were on week 4 of their training.)

Things I liked:

There was an older dog there, Sophie, who we got to meet and who was used to demo activities that the trainer wanted the owners to get their puppies to do
The trainer, Suzanne Grant, was spectacular. Her goal seemed to be to make sure the puppies were having fun and that the people were moving the entire time
No puppies were tied down
No people were sitting. Some of us, like Mike and I, were sitting and watching. But halfway through the class Suzanne got us engaged and asked us to volunteer to meet the puppies. (It's good training for them to meet strangers.)
2 play sessions - the puppies got to play together during two play sessions. And, unlike the Forever Friends class, they were allowed to play like puppies: nipping and leaping and tearing around the room. Suzanne made all the owners relax and think this normal behavior was normal
Every dog in its own time - one of the dogs was really shy. Suzanne made sure that everyone knew how to approach, interact and handle the dog.
Puppy gets played with by strangers. I like this the most. Suzanne seemed to understand that the puppies need to meet strangers and had people other than the owners train the puppies.
Puppies have fun and owners are moving! Mike liked this the most. The puppies were never sitting and waiting for their owners to learn something. Suzanne taught by doing. She would demonstrate something and the owners were supposed to do it as she did it. And then the class moved on.

We also felt that the facilities were cleaner and brighter than Forever Friends.

In Conclusion: If we had that much fun just sitting and watching, I can't imagine how much fun we'll have if we actually have a dog that we're trying to train. And the dogs were really well trained and confidently playing with one another. I would rate this school as great, even if their website sucks.

The Pilot Project : Puppy Class Review #1

2011-03-30T09:09:00.003-05:00

Last night Mike and I went to the Forever Friends Puppy Kindergarten.

Here's the things I liked:

Very clean
Nice, kind, welcoming, well-spoken people
Positive reinforcement used
Teaching included grabbing collar as a positive thing
Incorporated play sessions in between training sessions
THE PUPPIES > OH, THEY'RE SO CUTE. This is why it's better to choose a dog before you go visit these types of classes. We really loved some puppies that are inappropriate for our lifestyle.

Here's what I didn't like:

Teaching not to bite - According to what I've read, puppies should be taught to bite softly until they're 5 months old and then the teaching to not bite should begin
Dogs tied to the floor and trained on leash - the puppies were kept on their leashes and tied to rings on the floor during the training session. While this is a great way to control a puppy, it doesn't help train them to behave when they're distracted.
Too much talking - A lot of theory was explained by the instructor while the dogs and their owners sat and listened. This is a waste of training and play time.
Puppies let to go play with each other infrequently - this reinforces to the puppy that play is fun and training is work. From what I've read, it's better to let them play and have fun while they're being trained. It teaches them to learn to behave when they're excited.

We left after 40 mins of the 60 min class.

In conclusion: I think this is a great class for people who are looking for a place where their dogs get taught things. I'm looking for a class where the dogs get socialized with one another while the owners are trained.

As a side note: there was a man there training a Black Russian Terrier. It was really, painfully shy. It wouldn't take treats from the trainer and also didn't really get into playing with the other dogs. It really stuck to its owner's side. It also wasn't good at being calmed. These all point to poor socialization and I'm desperate that our dog should not be like this.

Recipes

2011-03-27T18:13:00.001-05:00

I think this roast chickpea recipe sounds great.

I made this moo-shu recipe tonight for dinner, minus the pork.

Made Carrot Soup last night

2011-03-24T10:07:00.002-05:00

I love epicurious. Here's the recipe that I made last night.
I skipped the mint and included a can of green lentils and some celery and garlic. I also spiced it with curry powder and pumpkin spice. It looked like baby food but was super duper tasty.

Amanda vs Kate

2011-03-16T12:14:00.003-05:00

Ways I am similar to Kate Middleton:

We both prefer to use our full first names
We both have brown hair
We both think that wearing skirts below the knee is a stupid, outdated convention
We both have wide smiles
Neither of us have stylists

Ways we are different:

One of us has the exclusive job of giving birth and looking pretty
One of us has shorter, more dyed hair
One of us has a wide smile, one has a more spiky smile
One of us can eat anything, anywhere she likes
Only one of us can ask the other over for dinner

I think Kate Middleton is important. I think it's important that people support her, her hair, her smile and, by extension, the royal family. They are, after all, the ones who put the "monarchy" in the constitutional monarchy that keeps us paving our roads, paying taxes and organized. Her popularity contributes to the stability of the monarchy and matters to the UK and to Canada.

Maintaining her popularity is also the only way she can get what she wants, whatever that may be. If she decides to stay married for her whole life, she needs to have higher ratings than her husband, so that he has to keep her. If she decides she wants to leave, better popularity can help her escape. And further, if she has her sights set on becoming queen before she's 40, her popularity can pave the way to the throne.

We live in a popularity-economy. If you can't see that, you're not looking.

"Dog, dog, dog, dog, dog"

2011-03-07T08:56:00.003-05:00

I'm obsessed about the pending puppy arrival. We get our dog, Pilot, on April 16th and I've worked myself into a frizzy.
To pass the time, I've been channeling my A-type energy into learning as much as I can about raising a healthy, happy, well-behaved dog. You may think this only extends as far as learning how to get it to sit, but you'd be underestimating me.

Food - I did a comparative analysis of the food our breeder suggests, the food the vet suggests and about 5 other high-end dog foods. Our dog will eat Pacific Ocean's Fish Puppy.
Training - I've studied Dr Ian Dunbar's online writings, watched any videos he's in and have highlighted and sticky-noted his first book. I've also reached out to all the local (within 20 min drive) training locations to see when their courses are and if we can observe a course
Health - Mike and I went to see the vet for a chat to learn about shots, food, training, temperament and the breed.
Gear - I've been searching craigslist and kiiji since the puppy was born for various sizes of dog crates and a doggy playpen. I also have a list of Dr Dunbar approved toys.
Credentials - I've also been learning about the different levels of certification that a dog can get - obedience, good citizen, temperament tested - and am thinking of creating a set of goals, with dates, that we'll try to achieve with the dog.
Inbreeding - last night I learned about the coefficent of relationship - which indicates how related an animal's relatives are. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a recommended level of relationship, which disappointed me. (Our dog's great-great grandfather and great grandfather were the same dog. Is this bad?)

Our dog will be a Black Russian Terrier. The voyage began in the summer and has resulted in Mike and I meeting 7 of the dogs, driving as far as London to meet breeders and hundreds of hours of my time watching youtube videos.

Ok, you waded through that text. Now, here's a photo of the dog I think will be ours in under 40 days... It's the orange one! His everday name will be Pilot, after Rochester's dog. His real name will be something like Midnight Solo's Wolfgang.

I'm so far down the well of obsession with this dog that I've started noticing that there's no daylight. As such, I've been putting a lot of effort into not saying dog more than 20 times a day to Mike.

Spring 2011 colors

2011-03-07T08:54:00.002-05:00

Here's pantone's colors for Spring 2011:

I think the brown (Russet) and grey (silver cloud) would make great pants. And I like the pink (Honysuckle) and orange (Coral Rose) for tops.

Dinner Win

2011-02-03T21:14:00.003-05:00

Just made the following for dinner and it worked:

Asparagus salad - didn't fuss with the dressing or herbs, just used high end italian dressing
Flank Steak - the meat and the vegetables were AWESOME
Roasted pears - I didn't think this was super special, but the audience loved them

Or maybe..

2011-02-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

I could go as Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies...

There's always this girl from Drop Dead Fred...

80s hair and makeup

2011-02-01T20:55:00.002-05:00

I'm supposed to go to an 80's party on Friday. Here's some hair and makeup photos I found that I might try...

"it's only 2 kilos over"

2011-01-28T04:28:00.001-05:00

Bless the woman at desk 12 an the check-in for those words. My suitcase is gigantic, but really did only weigh 20 kilos when I left. Now it's up to 25. This is due partly to shopping and moslty to the textbook conny asked me to take to bill.
I'm in the munich airport and have just had a breakfast of apfelsoft (apple juice), fruit salad and yoghut. Yoghurt in germany is better. It makes yoghurt in canada look revolting. I took the city bus here with my ginoumous suitcase. Fortunately everyone was on their way to the airport wiith their luggage and was emapthetic, as opposed to angry for my audacity. Last night I took the sbahn (train) from grasbrun to the hotel I stayed at. I would reccomend the hotel really really highly. The staff were awesome and the room was really cool and nice. Novotel, it was, and also the best deal I could find in the area.
Yesterday I was in munich for meetings. I drove there with nic and we went quickly. I believe about 100 mph, but that's what he said he planned to drive. I didn't look at the speedometer in case I got scared.
The rest of this trip was spent in kempten, with a quick jaunt to munich on the weekend.
I can now say the following words in german: water, apple juice, please, thanks, thank you, main train station, pickle and donut. I belive I can also say a swear that is ok to say around kids, but I'm not aware of when the right context to use it is, so I probably won't say it. Oh, and I also know how to say yummy.
This was the best trip I've been on, either work or for vacation. Partly it was because we got so much done, partly it was because the project has SO much promise and partly its because it was sooo much fun.
Our team building activity was a 1hr hike up a downhill ski trail, have dinner on top of a mountain and the tobbogan down. It was amazing.
Olaf, who is in the videos, took exceptional care of me. He made sure I had a ride everywhere, that I had stuff to eat that I liked and that I had fun. Oh, and that my dad gets a gift.
I'm now going to buy some bread to try to take across the border. It's unclear to me if it's possible, so I'm going to try.
Oh, and stuff to eat while in germany: the juice with fizzy water in it, salads, fruit, bread, rolls, donuts, pastries, pretzels, pork, spatzel, eggs and museli.
I weigh more than when I left, like my suitcase.
*************
From my Blackberry

Collateral from Munich

2011-01-25T05:03:00.002-05:00

Here's some photos and videos from the trip I'm on in Germany:

Some sculpture from etsy

2010-11-14T14:24:00.002-05:00

On high pressure sales

2010-11-06T17:19:00.002-05:00

I really like test driving cars. I also like salespeople, in general. Their agenda is clear and usually they're pretty direct.

Today we drove three cars:

Subaru's 5-door Impreza - a nice looking, if a bit dated, 4 wheel drive, 5-door hatchback. First released in 1993, restyled for 2008.
Volvo's C30 - a stunningly sexy, utterly impractical, 3-door hatchback. First released in 2008.
Nissan's Juke - a brand new (2011), funky, aggressively styled cross-over.

We started out today knowing sales people at each of the dealerships we visited - we had done a round of test drives in May - so we knew who we were going to talk to and basically how the process would go.

Here's how we felt about each interaction:

At Otto's Subaru, we met with Jacques. He's a wonderful, sweet person, who knows a lot about cars and didn't even blink when Mike's brother hit the gas to see how the Impreza would accelerate. He's a wonderfully assertive, polite salesperson who seemed to want to spend as much time with us as he could. We left the dealership feeling warm and fuzzy about the experience and wanting to see him again. (No exaggeration here.)
At Carling Volvo, we quickly walked in chatted a bit with Doug while someone else brought out a car for us to test drive. Doug showed me really quickly how to adjust the seat and then they sent us on our test drive, without a salesperson (!). We exchanged maybe 20 sentences total the whole time. Doug's the kind of guy you expect played football, is courteous to women and thinks Volvos are the best cars on the road. He's really joky, but also a very strong personality, which I like. I'm not sure what he thought of Mike, Mike's brother and I walking in there and then walking out right after the test drive, but he gave the impression that he liked us and was happy that we wanted to drive his cars.
At Hunt Club Nissan we found a Juke with a big "SOLD" sign in the showroom. And then we found Chris, who's an awesome person, who took us for a test drive and was totally relaxed about the whole thing. He answered our questions and laughed at our jokes. Then we got back to the showroom and I asked him if he could write up a price for us, just so we knew how much it would cost to get a Juke off the lot. The conversation took place in three phases: Phase 1 > Begins when we get to Chris' desk. We chat about the things we like about the car, the dealership and Chris. Phase 2 > Begins when Chris gets back from asking his manager for a cost of the Juke. He gets the number and explains that we can order in advance - there's no Jukes available right now - with a $500 downpayment. I say that's great, and we'll let him know in December. He tries to explain that I need to sign something today or else I'll have to wait much longer than January. I say, that's fine, we'll wait. That we have to until our house closes. Mike joins in the explanation. Mike also adds that he doesn't prefer the Juke, but that I'll be able to talk him into it. Phase 3 > Chris calls his manager on the phone and they have a long discussion. His manager talks for so long that I begin to be annoyed. Chris explains that the manager dropped the $500 deposit and that we can just sign the contract today. I explain that we won't sign anything today. Chris continues to talk at me. I continue to explain that I like him and his approach to sales - although, by now, this admiration is failing - but that we will not sign anything today. I leave feeling bad and sad.

What's the conclusion? Well, today's goal was to pick a car. And we decided which car we'll purchase once the house-buying dust settles.

Subaru's Impreza wins. Mike likes it best, the brand has a name for being dependable and long-lived and we like Jacques and think he's interested in making us customers for life, and that if we have problems that he'll help us fix them.
Volvo's C30 loses. I love this car. I have a tremendous amount of lust for this car. I drool and yearn when I see one that I could own. Unfortunately, Mike doesn't like it because the door is too heavy and it's hard to get in and out of the backseat. The reason I decided against it is because it would be hard to get the dog into the car. (I like the Carling dealers, though. They're awesome.)
Nissan's Juke loses. I like Chris. I DO NOT like the dealership's approach to sales. It sucks. SUCKS. They take a wonderful person like Chris who spent 45 mins building a warm relationship with us and set it on fire by making him pressure us into making a decision we won't make. I'm not going to reinforce this behavior by buying a Nissan. (This is really, really too bad because the design of the car is amazing. The designers clearly put a lot of thought into making the outside and the inside as compelling and beautiful as they could. And the price is insanely good for the base model. At 4:10 thought we had found our new car and thought that we were going to be able to make Chris really happy in a few weeks, after our house is bought and after we've had a chance to discuss the price and the car. At 4:30 I walked out of the dealership feeling guilty, mean and like I had been too aggressive, although Mike and Mike's brother affirmed that they would have been way less nice than I was and that I had nothing to feel bad about.)

Why were we out test-driving if we're not in a position to buy a car? Well, because a) we wouldn't get trapped into succumbing to high-pressure sales, b) because I wanted to test drive the cars before the snow gets on the road to see how they drive in normal weather and c) our user conference is coming and I needed some mindless stuff to distract me from the stress of preparing for it.

Black Russian Terriers

2010-10-31T14:48:00.003-05:00

Today we met two Black Russian terriers and the owners of Barents Night Kennel, Lilly and Bella and their owners, Doug and Tatiana.

(I've been researching dog breeds for about three years now. We have some really strict criteria - that just about makes it sound like we don't want an animal that behaves like a dog - and it's taken a while to find the right breed. Our criteria includes: calm and quiet in the house but playful outside, a good companion dog, a dog that can be satisfied by 1 hr of walking a day, low shedding, low smelliness, protective of owners and house, and easy to train. This past summer we were convinced that a Polish Lowland Sheepdog was the right type of dog to meet these criteria, but, although they don't shed, they require a LOT of brushing. I expanded our search and we found the Black Russian Terriers, who meet all of the above criteria, although they're a little big - 90-160lbs.)

Both of us were initally overwhelmed by the size of the dog. They're jet black and, due to their rustic coats, they look gigantic. They have a very commanding posture and, when Bella jumped out of the car, she was excited. Her size and energy had Mike and I both stepping back and thinking that there was no way a dog like this could fit in our life. (Please note: Bella did not jump, bark or behave in other standard doggy ways. She just gives the impression of size, force and energy, even when she's still.)

We walked into PetSmart, which is apparently one place you can go to socialize your dog (!), and stood around chatting with Tanya and Doug and Bella. Bella became calmer after a bit - she's not used to stores and lots of stranger and different dogs - and Mike and I both got to pet her and watch her. She has a stunning personality. She's calm but very strong. She also has an intense focus on things that interest her. Her coat was beautiful. She had a bath within the week, and since she's still a puppy - at 90lbs! -, her coat is still soft and less wiry than older dogs. It turns out that beneath her fur, Bella isn't so massive. She has fine bones and a thin body. Her coat is so thick that it makes her look big. After Mike and I overcame our shyness at Bella's bigness, we - very happily realized - that she's not the gigantic dog that we thought. The more time we spent with her and Lilly, we realized that they project a much bigger image than they actually consist of.

(This made us both really happy. Mike thought, at the first time we saw Bella, that there was no way that it could possibly work, but after the half hour, we realized that they just look big.)

Tatiana explained that they're very protective and sensitive to their owner's feelings. She described how the dogs will sense that the owners don't like someone, or are scared of someone, and will become protective. She also spent a lot of time hugging and kissing her dogs, who were very, very receptive to her. They were standoffish with us, although Bella did let us pet her.

The dogs, along with the BIG fur, have a BIG bark. Lilly barked once while we were there and both Mike and I were startled and took steps back. The bark was a sharp, loud, commanding, warning noise. Their size, stature and bark are imposing.

Tatiana has hopes of puppies in December and we have some serious thinking to do. These dogs might be overwhelming for us. (But then again, perhaps the fear that they'll be overwhelming will make us over-train them...)

Here's a photo of Mike with Bella to his left and Lily in the foreground:

Skate Canada in Kingston

2010-10-31T14:41:00.002-05:00

Tracy and I went to the Skate Canada event in Kingston on Friday evening. I've never been to a world-class figure skating competition before, although I've watched them on TV. It was really neat to see. We saw the Men's Short and the Ice Dancing short programs.

Here's a photo of Tracy:

And here's a photo that Kurt Browning is in - he was there with CBC Sports:

House photos - for Debra

2010-10-19T15:07:00.002-05:00

Mike and I are probably the most public about our house stalking, but there seems to be others of you out there. Here's some photos of our house for those of you who are interested.

Here's a picture out our back window, when standing in the kitchen. Notice the drywall (new!) and the flooring (new!)

Home Depot South Keys - A great experience

2010-10-18T12:00:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I decided to build a lamp. I found a bunch of different articles on the internet for how to build a lampshade, wire a lamp and all the stuff you need. I made my list and went to home depot at South Keys.
Home depot is not in the business of helping people build lamps. They are, however, in the business of helping people with their projects. I spoke with someone in lighting who took me to the "wire your own lamp" section and explained to me how to buy light sockets that support three-way light bulbs. I found a nice man in hardware who found me some wire. A lady in wallpaper asked me if I wanted help, but I just wanted to look at wallpaper. A nice man in paint explained to me where to get an exacto knife.
And, most importantly, Howard in plumbing found me looking at different pipe connectors. (I needed something to cover a 3/8" diameter threaded pipe.) He and I evaluated a bunch of options and then he found a copper pipe connector thingy that would work. He even cut it into 4" lengths for me. Here's a photo of him cutting the pipe:

All in all, I spent about 3 hours walking around the Home Depot South Keys, and even though I got discouraged and lost my confidence several times, thanks to the friendly help I got, I came home with the stuff to build some lamps.
Yay, Home Depot South Keys!

Put an offer on this house...

2010-08-21T18:30:00.000-05:00

More photos here.

Clothes I would buy...

2010-08-11T21:26:00.001-05:00

Fall 2010 colours

2010-08-11T20:58:00.001-05:00

And we're choosing tile...

2010-08-08T20:06:00.003-05:00

This weekend we went to choose bathroom tile. I was expecting an ordeal. The kind of ordeal where you're staring at a billion options and blindly making a choice that your partner will hate, while they're also choosing blindly and making a completely different choice for a completely different reason. (My standard blind-choice reason is either hyper-bland - "this will go with EVERYTHING"- or over-the-top insane - "look at all the swirlies"- while Mike tends to look at the cheapest options and choose the one that will be easiest to clean.)

We met Mel at Starbucks and drove with her to the tile store. (I don't know what its name was, but it had a really impressive outside. Kind of like what you'd expect a tile store to look like in a really expensive movie.) Mel is really calm and approached the whole thing in a really relaxed way. She walked around calmly, looking at the different options. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I screamed through the building, gobbling up the tiles with my eyes, as fast as I could and basically ended up overwhelming myself. I decided I hated shiny. That was all I could contribute. (We knew before we went in that we wanted something warm - a criteria Mike tossed out the window when he saw a dark grey tile that he liked.)

I finished my screaming review of the tile options and returned to Mel. I asked her what she was thinking. She pointed to a nice brown tile and said that she liked that. She also showed me some other tiles on the other side of the building. Mike finished his whirlwind tour and found us. He didn't ask Mel and I what we were looking at. He just wanted to know what was easiest to clean - note: he's NEVER cleaned the bathroom. Mel said something in a medium color tone. (She and I had been looking at a cream white at the time.) I redirected us back to the original dark tile and Mike liked it. So that was that.

Really. It was that easy. I asked her about her ability to choose from all those bizillion options and she said it's what she does all day. This is the same thing I do for my dev teams: I can look at an interface and tell them where the buttons should go because I do it all day.

Who would buy this house?

2010-08-05T11:30:00.002-05:00

Shoes for today

2010-08-04T03:55:00.002-05:00

If I were going to buy a pair of shoes for the office right now - I'm not going to - I would buy one of these:

If I were going to buy a pair of shoes I could never wear, I would buy these.

I feel sick

2010-07-29T16:03:00.004-05:00

Today I work for a bird feeder company. And I really like squirrels. And I think squirrels have been ignored in the bird feeder industry for a long time. Sure, squirrels are scarce where our bird feeders are made. And yes, it's hard to change the opinion of the world that bird feeders aren't meant for squirrels, but I really like them and can relate to them.

I used to take it for granted that even although we don't see a lot of squirrels around the place where we make our bird feeders, that there wasn't a secret plan to keep the squirrels away.

Then I visited some of the people who buy our bird feeders. It turns out they have lots of squirrels!

So, I brought it up to the kid who makes the packaging for our bird feeders. "Hey," I suggest, "Why don't you include some squirrels on the package?" She explained that they can't put squirrels on this one - they don't have photos of the right tone - but that they'll do it next time.

This subtle and ever-present focus on promoting birds, while our customers love squirrels, is something that is going to make me hate participating in the creation of bird-feeders.

Reflecting on a Customer Experience

2010-07-28T09:23:00.001-05:00

The Situation: Last night, after months of internet shopping, procrastinating and spread sheeting, Mike and I went into a Telus store to buy an HTC Hero and sign up for a prepaid cell phone plan for $25/2 months.

Why Telus? They offer the best prepaid plans in Canada.
Why a Hero? Battery life, size, weight, excellent user reviews, Android and sheer awesomeness
Why are you buying the phone outright and then buying a prepaid plan instead of getting a contract? Basically, we want to minimize the amount of risk we’re exposed to – we have $500 now, but we may not use the phone enough to warrant the $2000 bill over three years. And we want a way to flexibly increase or decrease our usage because we don’t know how much it will be used. And I want a cool device that I can use even if I don’t need a cell phone.

Our Experience: We walked in and were stared at by the people behind the counter. I stared back and asked, “Would one of you like to help us?” One of the girls spoke up and we engaged with her. We fired a slew of questions at her. They were things like:

Can we get a Hero with a prepaid plan? She said yes, but some services won’t work.
What services won’t work?
How does long distance calling work? She explained it very authoritatively, but then when we gave her a scenario she got confused.
Will the phone choose to use a WiFi connection instead of a data connection?
Is there a way to stop the phone from automatically updating from the data connection?

When we got to the data connection question, she was adamant that the Hero phone’s data connection could not be turned off and that every time we walked away from a WiFi connection, we’d be charged. And since we want to have a prepaid plan, those charges are very high. Another person behind the counter suggested that we could turn off the data, but she was again adamant that no, the data could not be turned off and that we would be charged.

This is when Mike and I walked away.

The Kicker: She was wrong. Mike asked a co-worker today about data plans and he said that data connections on phones could be turned off. A quick internet search confirms this – HTC even encourages their Hero users to turn off their data connections to save the phone’s battery life and there’s all kinds of forum questions about how to turn off data when roaming. I even called HTC’s support line and, even though I don’t have a phone, the guy on the line told me that once the data connection is turned off, it’ll stay off.

The Reflection: There’s something worse than a salesperson who doesn’t know their products. It’s a salesperson that doesn’t want to help you in any way. This salesperson wasn’t really seem interested in selling us a phone. She didn’t talk to us about our options, just about how what we were planning wouldn’t work.

The Next Steps: I might just perform an experiment. There’s about 4 Telus stores in this area. I wonder if the experience at all of them will be the same…

Things I would buy today

2010-07-26T20:10:00.003-05:00

Music by Andrew Staniland - except the music that is available on iTunes. The music on his website is wicked, but not available for sale. :(
Cuffs by uniqueartpendants - specifically the ones that follow.

"Owner of book worm" - a poem?

2010-07-22T13:36:00.002-05:00

Personal

Box stores

Likes used books - old and new together

Old favorites

Closing owner - sales down

Big stores taking business

Neil Gamon - now book. Can't believe difference between price of books

Dollar at par -

Should pay with american money - american price

Robby fly into canada

He's arrested

I'm the local canadian consulate official

Robbie - Richard

Mr livingston

Nightmare - don't know what happened. Why am I in jail?

Last spring finished university. Travels. Couch surfing

Been for 1 month. France students

Went with them to party - driking

Went to hostel

Next thing - he's in a car

That's all - parents think Marijuana

Pinched some for later.

Drunk, disorderly, drug dealer

Aware of strict laws - against drinking and drug use

5 years

"This isn't Canada robbie"

Get the authorities to try under candadian law

Johnson

Husband feeling better

Asks for cigarette

Hevay smoker

Quit for years

Lot of weight

Convince him of a change

Health scare

Not the first time of heart attack

"Old twit" > Deserves to live life the way he wants

Leslie - social worker

- husband's chart. Minor and back on the mend

- records alturistic healt care coverage

- all this medical treatment will be covered

- health insurance coverage - lifestyle change recommendations

Refusing to cover costs with heart attack

Plan on paying the hospital charges

Chris has a car office

Factories are closed

Everyone is leaving

No opportunity with employment. Prosperous area. Lower crime rate

Immigrants are here

Speak anything aside from English

Chris managed

Working closely

Prosthetic

Appts

paraplegic

International olympics committee

Laurie Jack

Paralymics

Can he compete

Terry - star, consistently winning

Use Cheetah prostesis

Can match speeds -

Disadvantage as the

Chair of committee - will terry be allowed to compete?

Store owner

2 policemen

Security video tape

Cans of formula - stolen

Word gets out

Easire for the policemen

Pick the wrong store to rob

1st time. Didn't know what else to do.

Hungry baby.

Wrong. Must feed baby.

Stealing is wrong. Got to feed the owner.

Feel sorry for them.

The Law is the Law.

Criminal record.

Don't have to press charges.

Watching program

Topic - Alan Back, white. Affirmative action programs.

Call for quotas of students to be admitted

Reverse discrimination.

Were minorities

Ruling was split - Powell could be used as an important element in the admission process

Diverse campus and diverse worknig environment

Sufficiently qualified.

Note: I found this while searching through my work notebook. It's from 2009 and it's entirely possible that it's a poem I liked and also entirely possible that I took these notes during a meeting.

Kitchen Details

2010-07-11T17:30:00.003-05:00

Mike and I talked to a developer today about a kitchen he's building. Here's some of the insane specs:

Alternatives to TV

2010-07-08T18:48:00.002-05:00

I'm looking for an alternative to a TV and have decided that a projector screen embedded in the ceiling plus a projector is the best option. Here's a couple shots of the setup we'd like to have, we think:

And the little reading I've done on the topic suggests that this Casio projector might be right thing to do. It's got a solid state lamp with 20,000 hours of viewing time.

Here's some videos about it that seem cool:

Photos from camping - Canada day

2010-07-05T19:39:00.003-05:00

Mike and I went camping in Frontenac Park this past weekend with some of our friends. Here are some photos of me:

Getting water in the most awkward way
"I'm not awake yet"
What the world would be like if I were 5'6"
The bestest, most amazingest photo ever - post camping euphoria

All courtesy of either Cynthia Cruickshank, most wonderful person in the world, or one David Tyner, master photographer.

Sewing projects

2010-06-30T22:26:00.002-05:00

Here are some sewing projects I would like to do:

FFFound

2010-06-29T20:51:00.002-05:00

Here are some things from fffound that I like:

Something I like today

2010-06-23T17:10:00.002-05:00

This necklace

Permission Marketing Fail: Microsoft

2010-06-23T08:43:00.002-05:00

Mike got an email from Microsoft that he didn't sign up for. Here's what it said:

You may not know this, but your contact preferences do not allow us to send you e-mail communications about valuable Microsoft product offers, services, and events that might benefit you.

How many people changed their profile settings because of this spam? I bet it's a very small percentage compared to the number of people who hate MS more now.

Performance Art / Awful

2010-06-20T16:55:00.002-05:00

Mike and I just watched a performance art piece. It was free - sponsored by some sort of Canadian fund for the arts.

Let me tell you about it: we were brought into a vault - really just a cold room made of cement in the basement - with about 20 other people. Someone named Sandra, who has a Ph D, is standing, facing one of the corners of the dark vault. She's rocking back and forth. Once we're all in - there was tons of room - and fall silent, she comes out of her corner. Her head is shaven, she's brutally thin and looks really intense.

She walks over to a styrofoam tray of some sort of blood and very slowly drips some into her eye. One of the audience walked out at this point - this was a bit reassuring because it meant that we could leave the dark vault, even though the older ladies in the room would scowl at us.

Then she picks up some white thread and winds it once around her neck. Then she begins to pull the thread with her right hand, as she lets more off the spool with her left. This amounts to strangling herself, a bit, and leaves a mark around her neck.

Then she picks up five or six drum sticks and begins beating her thighs. Really, really hard for a long time. Unless she's wearing some sort of plastic armour, she'll have enormous bruises tomorrow.

During the blood I was thinking "Ew". During the thread, I was thinking "How interesting that no one is going to stop her from doing this. I hope she doesn't bleed from her neck." During the beating with the drumsticks I was outraged and had to hold myself from speaking to her. I would have said, "SANDRA. What are you doing? Stop." If it weren't a play, and if there weren't a ton of people videoing and photoing this "event", I would have spoken to her.

So, this brings up some questions: why didn't I stop this person from hurting herself? How far can an artist go before the audience stops them? Why did it make a difference to me that there was someone videoing? And is Sandra disappointed that no one stopped her?

I know that what I saw wasn't art. I know that it was sad and awful but I don't think there was a point or any value to it. I watched someone hurt themselves today and I'm disgusted I didn't try to stop her.

Quote from dinner with german

2010-06-10T18:57:00.001-05:00

Upon seeing that a german collegue is struggling with chopsticks, I ask "would you like some help?"
He replies, "No."

And then says, "I want some salad."
*************
From my Blackberry

Watched TV last night

2010-06-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

I’m in Waterloo for the next 8 days and one of the benefits of this is that I get to watch TV!

TV is horrible. But, anyway, last night I watched three episodes of “At the end of my leash”, a show about a guy who coaches bad owners into taking care of and training their dogs.

I cried during every episode. Mostly I cried because those silly owners don’t deserve their beautiful dogs.

I love my husband

2010-06-04T10:44:00.000-05:00

I think luck is when someone is prepared for an opportunity.

Together Mike and I literally do make our own luck: we work together to agree on things we should do to be prepared, Mike takes care of the day-to-day administration of these activities and I’m constantly on the lookout for opportunities.

We’re attempting to pull off a feat that will make Kilimanjaro look like a cakewalk. Together.

One of the things Mike’s been doing for years is posting and sharing photos of us, just in case the videos aren’t enough.

T-Shirt from Texas

2010-06-02T16:41:00.000-05:00

Ridiculous post

2010-05-31T16:20:00.001-05:00

(I'm fictionalizing the story so that no innocent bystanders are harmed.)

What happened: I work for a company that makes sproket from moon ore. One day, while I was driving my ore collector on the moon, I received a message from Francie to drive more to the North to avoid a giant crater.

I thought I should drive around the crater to the South. I had a quick call with my peers, who have experience driving around this part of the moon, and the general consensus was that I should drive around the crater to the North. Francie was particularly vocal about her opinion about going North. I swallowed my pride, went against my better judgement, and drove North. I arrived safely.

A few months later, I was driving in the same area and automatically began to drive around the crater to the North. Francie came on the intercom, "Amanda! Where are you going?" I explained that I was going around the crater to the North, as per the discussion we had had a few months ago.

Francie thought that this time South was the best option and brought up my argument from our previous conversation - the surface of the moon is less crunchy to the north and, as you probably know, harder to drive on. I tried reminding her that when we discussed this months ago she had said that the greater gravity to the north overcome the crunchyness of the soil.

To settle the problem, Francie called another meeting, with different peers, to discuss the situation. All four peers agreed that I should drive to the South. This made me extremely upset.

What I didn't do: I lost my temper, swore, turned off my communicator and drove into the crater. Since it's very wide, it took a long time for me to cross. I was running out of oxygen when I reached the other side, which turned out to be a vertical wall that my ore collector couldn'tclimb. Then I died.

What I did, really: I lost my temper and began fighting with them. Explaining, vindictively, that Francie had told me to go North last time, but I had wanted to go South. Francie laughed at me and I got even angrier. The other four people on the call tried to calm me down, but I had lost my head and refused to see reason. I threw a tantrum and said I wouldn't move until everyone could reach consensus. I demanded that the people who were involved previously be included on our call. Then I hung up.

Then I felt really really bad. I realized that I had behaved like a child.

Shortly after that, I got a message from Francie giving me a weather report indicating that South was the better direction. I got angry again and replied that I would read it once everyone else had read it.

Then I sat in my ore collector on the moon and waited for my temper to calm down. Once that happened, I realized that there were several reasons for going North that the new group hadn't considered and I went through my files and found those reasons and was really well prepared for the call.

But, since being angry requires more oxygen than being calm, I consumed my oxygen before the call. Then I died.

What I should have done: I should have kept my temper. I should have said that there were many reasons for going North and that I needed some time to remember them. Then I should have checked my oxygen tanks to make sure there was enough time for me to discover the answers. Then I should have discovered the answer -there are moon monsters to the South - and shared it with them.

Then we would all be happy and I wouldn't be dead.

Socks for Operation Come Home

2010-05-11T12:34:00.001-05:00

My Girl Guide unit is collecting socks for Operation Come Home, an organization that reunites homeless youth with their families. The girls decorated the cases that the Girl Guide cookies come in and brought them into their schools. I brought a box here to my work and have been overwhelmingly touched by the contributions of my co-workers.

It’s really amazing to reach out to a group and have them support you.

How can ECM Vendors help you succeed? - A response

2010-05-09T11:14:00.003-05:00

Cheryl's post did a great job explaining the software licensing model: when software is sold by the number of licenses and if more people want to use the software than you are licensed for, you have to buy more licenses from the vendor. In that respect, it does cost the customer something.

But, I disagree that the model automatically results in punishment for the customer. Consider this shoe analogy:

Yesterday I walked my 10,000th km in my shoes, Keen Calistogas. Today I got a call from my Keen sales rep. They were totally excited about my achievement - I haven't been able to get more than 5,000 km out of any of my other shoes - and wanted to talk about how I could get a few more thousand km out of my Keens. We had a great discussion about the service my Keens need to get me through the next 5,000 km. The sales rep also tipped me off to the Sienna Ballerina, a shoe that will fulfill my need I for a dressy, comfortable flat.

The chat ended with me purchasing some inserts and a new buckle for my old Keens and promising to give the Sienna Ballerina's a try.

Does the experience above really sound like punishment? It sounds to me like a supplier and a consumer achieving a shared goal. In this case the consumer has walked comfortably for thousands of km and together they've figured out how she can walk many thousands more.

The difference I'd like to highlight between shoes and ECM software is that I know how to get the most out of my shoes without the support of the vendor while most people deploying ECM software need help with adoption. By their licensing software via a user/seat model ECM software vendors are committing to helping with adoption. If you buy 1,000 seats, but have 10,000 users, we're going to do our best to help you get those users on the system because our bottom line is on the line. If you don't succeed, we don't get paid.

Rather than asking your ECM software vendor "why they're punishing you for success", as Cheryl suggests, ask us which programs we have in place to help you succeed and how quickly we can respond when the success we helped you achieve means that people are clamoring for licenses.

Seth Godin's Road Trip

2010-04-06T15:37:00.005-05:00

Seth Godin posted about his plans to have a road trip earlier today. I got really excited and filled out his Google form hoping and wishing that he'd come to Toronto - giddily thinking the whole time "yay! Seth loves Google forms too..."

One of the fields wanted my email address. I hesitated. I NEVER give out my real email address. The little voice in my head was saying, "This is Seth. You know Seth. Seth would never spam you. Seth's built his career and his reputation on permission marketing."

I read the help text a bit closer:

Never sold, never rented, we won't email you unless we have a specific question just for you... no mass mails, promise.

It seemed pretty clear. Unless they had a question about bringing Seth to Toronto - perhaps about a venue or a hotel or which week worked best for me - I wouldn't hear from them.

I entered my email address.

At 2:56PM I received an email from Seth with the following text:

Just a short note to thank you for taking the time to share your big ideas about my road trip.

We're going through and sorting by city, then working our way across the country, figuring out the best way to incorporate your ideas and (when it's a good use of your time) let you know how you might be able to participate.

It might be a few weeks or months, but you'll see things unfold on the blog.

Thanks again.

Seth and Ishita and the Road Trip team

That's not a question! It's SPAM! MY TRUST WAS VIOLATED!!! I quickly unsubscribed and THEN received another email - Note: I just shook my fist at the screen - from the team, supposing that I had UNSUBSCRIBED BY ACCIDENT!!!! I guess that since they think I'm such an idiot to put my email in the "We won't email you, promise" text box that I probably am stupid enough to have unsubscribed accidentally.

Here's the email I sent to Seth and his team:

Hi Seth and Road Trip Team,

I received this email after entering my email address into a box that promised: "Never sold, never rented, we won't email you unless we have a specific question just for you... no mass mails, promise."

One of the main reasons that I love Seth is because I believe that he wants to build trust with people, wants to market to those who want to hear the messages and - perhaps this is a leap - but would never send a mass email.

THIS IS A MASS EMAIL. It's not a question FOR ME. It's spam. You've violated my trust by doing something after explicitly - see "promise" above - promising not to.

Thanks,
Amanda

I'm starting to calm down now and am sad. One of the people who I truly believed in and truly felt was motivating others to do good things for the world failed me.

Got to the top

2010-03-22T06:08:00.002-05:00

On Saturday morning, Mo and I reached the Summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was hard. HARD. But I just kept following Mo.
Neither of us had any symptoms of altitude sickness. We walked about 90km from the start to the end of the Lemosho route that we took, starting at 1900m and climbing to over 5600m.
The computer connection I have is too slow to upload any photos or videos, but I promise some as soon as possible.
I'm surprised I didn't die. I'm also surprised how well the 'just follow Mo' strategy worked. It was hard. We had two long days of hard hiking, but all the days were fun and nice and a challenge. The photos I have taken and am guarding with my life will show you the many different terrains we walked through. I promise a better, longer post once I have a keyboard with the right layout and a better connection.
I have four flights to take before I get back to ottawa. They start tonight at 10pm Moshi time and extend until 11pm Ottawa time. A total travel time of 30hrs, including shuttle.

In Transit

2010-03-12T10:13:00.002-05:00

Perhaps you don't know, but I have plans to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro in a couple days. I haven't had a lot of time to blog about this because I've been collecting stuff (translation: oozing $$ out of every pore) to go. Stuff like the new, extraordinarily expensive, non-essential merino wool zip shirt I'm currently wearing was fun to buy. Other stuff, like the yellow fever shot, had a couple hitches - namely that my muscles seized for a couple days and I couldn't walk.
I'm not convinced I'm in good enough shape to do this, but I'm doing it anyhow. My mom said that it would be the hardest thing I've ever done physically, and that she knows how hard it is is really something to give me pause. Then I shake that doubt down.
I'm meeting my friend Mo in Newark around 2pm and we"re going to sweet talk the ppl at the check-in desk into giving us seats beside each other. This climb is her idea. I'm practicing not saying it with wrath - I can envision a moment of "I hate this. this is all your fault" on the side of the mountain and want to recognize it and stop it before it happens.
Someone asked me if Mo has trained and I said "She plays on the men's waterpolo team" and everyone seems to think that's sufficient.
I've been getting up early all week. Today I got up at 3am in the hope that I'll be sleepy at 4:30pm. I'm tired now, if that's any help.
Mike's the enabling force, if not the driving force behind this last minute trip - from invite to this blog post has been 8 days, 1 of which was a full day at Tremblant and 3 of which was spent with the girl guides. I'm really grateful for his attitude that this is an adventure that I can't miss. It's made it easier for me to spend the copious amounts of money that I've needed to - I actually maxed out our Visa once. Expensive merino sweater aside, I've been pretty minimalist in the gear I've brought and tried to be conscious of the things that we can't reuse.
I'm taking altitude sickness pills and they're making it hard for me to want to eat and desperate for the bathroom or a drink, in turns.
I'm 1/3 of the way through the 2nd Twilight book, and this is only Toronto. I'll have had time to read the whole series, write an essay and plot a competitor by the time I get to Africa. I also have Hemmingway's "The snows of Kilimanjaro" on the advice of a coworker, who thought that I should at least read some fiction about the area, if I can't be physically ready for the climb.
I love Porter airlines. I'm sitting in their lounge, drinking free awesome tea - which I really should be avoiding because it will dehydrate me - and blogging to you. Thank you to their Experience Officer. Note: the computer area is full of kids. Kids who think they're grown up. The one to my right is watching deaf slam poetry videos on youtube and the one on the other side of me is wearing a Tegan and sara sweater, reading their site and Iming using this newfangled thing called Facebook. Oh, for the days of ICQ.
Sorry for the brokenness of this post: I'm sleepy, too oxygenated and dying to get a drink.

Trust, New Boots and the bus

2010-03-08T16:05:00.000-05:00

I feel like I’ve done something brave, independent and amazing whenever I plan to go somewhere on the bus. Today I took three and felt brave and scared the whole time. The fact that I arrived at my destination and then got from there to work without getting lost, needing help or having to talk to anyone has made me really happy.

I handed my passport over to someone in the Tanzania Embassy today. She smiled and nodded and waited for me to leave. I asked her for a receipt. She was polite and gave me one, but it clearly hurt her that I didn’t trust her. Heck, it hurt me.

My new boots – of course I have new boots; I’m climbing a mountain and I’ve never done that before – and my feet are having a love/hate relationship. My feet love them and demand that I wear them everywhere – “Where have you been all our lives?” – but when I’m just sitting my feet HATE them and throb and demand to be freed from the hot, structured traps – “OW OW OW. Give us the pointy high heels any day”.

Update

2010-03-08T08:07:00.001-05:00

So much has been going on that I haven’t had time to think, let alone blog.

St Lucia In the middle of February, Mike and I went to St Lucia. It was great. You can read about our trip here, or look at photos on my Flickr.

Mt Tremblant The weekend after we got back, Mike and I went to Mt Tremblant with his brother and wife. I made a video that’s posted to youtube. I’m getting a whole lot better at snowboarding and managed to go really quickly down some difficult hills. I really think that a mountain is much better than a ski hill – this will seem like a no-brainer to most of you – but I really think that it’s important to learn on a hill before you go on a mountain.

Girl Guide Camp We took the Girl Guides camping this past weekend. The theme of the camp was Holidays and we lived an entire year in one weekend, beginning with New Year’s Eve on Friday and ending with Christmas on Sunday morning. I was in TERRIBLE shape about 5pm on Saturday – too much fun and running and chocolate – but managed to squeeze in a 15 min nap and pull it together for the campfire.

Mt Kilimanjaro My friend is climbing Mt Kilimanjaro next week and I’m going to go with her. I got a ton of shots last week and felt like I was dying most of the week, but I’m back and at ‘em now – the Girl Guides knocked it out of me. The next three days will be planning, packing and shopping. Mike and I combined don’t have the right gear to climb a mountain, so we’re having to buy a lot. I’m wearing my new hiking boots everywhere, so my work isn’t going to see any fancy high heeled outfits this week.

I feel right now like I’m burning through my disposable income and my vacation at a tremendous rate. And I am. We’ll have to wait and see how I feel about having no vacation at all around Xmas.

Top Ten St Lucia Moments

2010-02-23T11:22:00.000-05:00

1. Sailing to Pigeon Island

2. Sailing to Marigot Bay from Pigeon Island

3. Sitting on the porch of our cottage overlooking Marigot Bay

4. Eating AMAZING pain au chocolat with Mike in the morning on the beach at Marigot Bay

5. Getting to the top of Barre d’Ilse

6. Eating Scallops at Chateau Mygo

7. Buying spoons and smelling the spices at the Market in Castries

8. Snorkeling at Anse de la Cochon

9. Getting ice cream on the way out of Marigot Bay

10. Mike finding the car rental key in the ocean, the day after it fell out of his pocket.

What we did for Mike's birthday...

2010-01-30T19:44:00.004-05:00

The decoy: On Mike's actual birthday, his brother came over and we had dinner. Then we went snowboarding. It was quiet, nice and I think it made Mike happy.

The real deal: Mike and I come home from work at 4:45 on Friday. We have plans to hang out with Tyner and Cynthia - Mike is really excited to go climbing with Tyner and I'm going shopping with Cynthia. We get to Tyner and Cynthia's at 5:30. Cynthia and I take off "shopping" and Mike and Tyner have dinner. At 6:10 Mike's brother calls and asks Mike a favour: can he take some batteries to the Museum of Science and Technology because his wife is there and needs some for her camera? Chris has a prior engagement and can't do it himself. Mike says sure. Tyner and Mike buy some batteries and head over to the museum. (Mike had some questions: how did Chris know that he'd be at Tyner's house? Oh yeah, Chris had also been invited climbing, but couldn't go. How did Chris get Tyner's number? Tyner provided the answer here: 411.)

They arrive at the Museum of Science and Technology and are met by our wicked guide Jason. Jason brings Mike and Tyner to the tour group to give Angie the batteries. (Tyner pipes up with, "we should check that the batteries are the right kind.")

Me and a bunch of the coolest friends jump out of hiding and shout surprise. Mike stands there, smiling hugely and looking surprised.

Then our sleepover party began with some amazingly fun activities. It started with a literal BANG as Mike got to light a balloon filled with hydrogen on fire. It exploded! We got a tour of the trains, the planetarium, a steam boat demonstration and we got to play in the connection section and run around. We then had cake, pizza and pop and watched a movie in the auditorium. Then we slept on the floor of the train bay and were jostled awake at 7am by the lights being turned on. We had breakfast and then spent the rest of the morning looking at the museum exhibits.

It was great. Thanks to everyone who could come.

Amazing Women...

2010-01-26T20:38:00.002-05:00

I count myself very lucky to have known so many amazing women. Women who decide to do things, learn what they're taking on, recognize the cost and then put their heads down and do them.

Tonight I'm very proud to be a member of the female sex.

If I had grey eyes
they would reflect the colours of the sea;
amethyst - turquoise.
I would shade them from the sun with a thin, brown hand.
My skirt, wet-hemmed
would be caught up on one side.

- Gaye Farrow

Craftsmanship - Buck 65 & Seth Godin

2010-01-20T11:39:00.001-05:00

Seth Godin made a post about Craftsmaship this week. It reminded me about Buck65's "Craftsmanship" song. I wanted to reply with a link to Buck 65's song, but there's no way for me to do that on Seth's blog. (Probably reasonable. I can't imagine how many comments Seth would get. )

"It ain't about the dollar or trying to go fast" - Buck 65

Subset of the Top 100 Brands I've bought something from

2010-01-04T20:40:00.002-05:00

Mashable released a list of the 100 most social brands. Here's the list of brands that I've bought something from this year:

2. Disney
6. iTunes
11. Starbucks
15. BlackBerry
18. Microsoft
22. Best Buy
30. Dell
31. Coca-Cola
34. iPod
41. Victoria’s Secret
49. Intel
50. Subway
59. Walmart
60. Zappos
62. McDonald’s
65. Skittles
70. Pixar
72. IKEA
73. Pepsi
79. The Gap
82. Toys”R”Us
83. H&M
87. Visa

Here are the ones my mom has bought from:

3. CNN
10. Nike
11. Starbucks
16. Sony
24. Ford
31. Coca-Cola
32. CBS
33. ABC
46. NHL
50. Subway
51. Hewlett-Packard
59. Walmart
62. McDonald’s
65. Skittles
66. KFC
68. NBC
72. IKEA
73. Pepsi
87. Visa
96. Sears

These are ones we've never heard of:
36. Turner
58. Pandora
63. Krystal

These are ones my mom doesn't know about

60. Zappos
83. H&M
92. Hulu

These are ones I've never heard of:

75. REI

Agile Videos Posted

2010-01-03T12:35:00.002-05:00

At Content World this year I gave a presentation on the agile project management stuff I do. A lot of people who attended the presentation liked it, so I took the audio I recorded of that session and the visuals that I created with Prezi, and made a five part video series. The videos that are linked below range from 2 1/2 minutes to 6 mins.

The series is mostly for Amardeep and Chris, who have said they are interested in Agile, but I have high hopes that I'll get more than three views...

Snowshoeing!

2010-01-03T12:33:00.001-05:00

On New Year's Day we went snowshoeing! (I'm in the yellow coat)

Movies to see

2010-01-01T18:45:00.002-05:00

Here's a list of movies that made someone's top 10 that Mike and I want to see:

1. "A Serious Man"

2. "Ponyo"

3. "Inglourious Basterds"

4. "Two Lovers"

5. "Coraline"

6. "The Headless Woman"

8. "Bright Star"

9. "Fantastic Mr. Fox"

10. "La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet

Buying snowboarding boots in ottawa

2009-12-31T15:00:00.005-05:00

I had an incredibly positive experience today buying snowboard boots at Tommy and Lefebvre's 2625 lancaster road location. I always find it daunting to pick up something new - talking to experts who have loads more knowledge and, generally, a lot of disdain for me and my yuppie, uninformed approach to shopping: "I want to buy some snowboard boots... and they shouldn't cost more than $200."

A wonderfully sweet, nice, friendly, smart, knowledgeable person named Jordan helped me today. He explained the criteria that are expected from a good fitting snowboard boot - heel is tight, toes can touch the end, but aren't tight against it, and it's comfy when standing - as well as taking a great deal of trouble to help me overcome my skittishness and gain rapport with me. And even though appearance isn't supposed to matter, he humored me. When I told him that I think my boots are UGLY, he explained that once my pants are over them, and I'm strapped into my board, that no one will see them.

Here's what they look like. See the incredibly enticing - for 14-year olds - teal fur? Jordan says its also functional: it helps you slide in and out of the boots.

Jordan helped me find a helmet, too. I like helmets - this is related to me being a clutz and not really liking when I bash my head into things.

This is the "G9" helmet from Gyro that I now own and hope to keep free from scratches, bashes and more.

I got home and put the boots and helmet on and got to walk around for a bit, demoing how my pants cover the boots - "Look! You can't see them at all!" - and I bashed my head into a table as I was bending down to lift up my pants to show Mike the boots, so now I know the helmet works too.

Why in the world did I just go buy a whole bunch of stuff? Well, I liked snowboarding. The only other activity that I've engaged in that I've suffered so much for and still keep coming back is windsurfing. I feel the same way when I'm not falling on my face snowboarding as when I get up on a plane windsurfing. And I think it's faster/better/nicer to have my own gear. And hey, what else is being a yuppie for?

Moral of the story If you're buying snowboard stuff for the first time and don't want some stupid skater kid talking down to you, drive out to Lancaster Road and ask for Jordan. Or call ahead and demand to know what his hours are.

Post-snowboarding knees

2009-12-29T12:05:00.003-05:00

I went snowboarding at Camp Fortune yesterday. Well, rather, a wonderful instructor named Allison - highly recommended - tried to teach me to snowboard yesterday. It turns out learning to snowboard hurts.

Mike tried to take a photo that does my bruises justice, but it's really hard.

Recommended Intarsia Books - Top Three or More

2009-12-25T15:15:00.006-05:00

My Dad's been doing the woodworking art called "Intarsia" for years. What's Intarsia? Dad says:

Basically it's a puzzle. Once it's cut out it needs to be glued back together. Which pattern you choose really depends on your skill level and what you like to make - for example: wildlife, horses or birds.

He was looking for a new book to buy today and I tried to find a list of the most popular intarsia books, but couldn't find one. He mentioned that he has used a lot of the books on the Chapters site, so we made a list of our own.

Here are the books that he's used and liked, with a note about them.

His Favorite - Intarsia Woodworking Projects: 21 Original Designs with Full-Size Plans and Expert Instruction for All Skill Levels by Kathy Wise
A good one if you're starting out - Easy to Make Inlay Wood Products: Intarsia : Complete Patterns and Techniques by Judy Gale Roberts and Jerry Booher
Another easy one - Easy to Make : Intarsia Complete Patterns and Techiques 3e. Gale Roberts
This one is more advanced because of the small pieces - Small Intarsia: Woodworking Projects You Can Make by Judy Gale Roberts and Jerry Booher

Dad reccomends to get comfortable with your Intarsia skills before attempting any small projects. If you're an experienced woodworker it may only take a few large scale, large-piece projects, but if you have no woodworking experience you should expect to do a lot more large scale, large-piece projects before trying the small ones.

Here's a couple of the books that he was looking at buying:

Intarsia Woodworking for Beginners: Skill-Building Lessons for Creating Beautiful Wood Mosaics by Kathy Wise - (releases in Feb 2010)
Creative Intarsia Projects by Garnet Hall. Note: this is hard to get.

Here's an Intarsia that he did for me:

Spring colors!

2009-12-21T12:28:00.002-05:00

"How many shoes do you have?" - Video Reply

2009-12-06T18:54:00.001-05:00

Here's a video I made that shows all of my shoes. It's stop motion!

For Tyner

2009-12-05T23:44:00.002-05:00

Olympus made an amazing video promotion for their new PEN camera. It's totally the coolest adventure I've seen an organization make for a while.

(You can tell it's not real homegrown stuff because it cost too much. That aside, it's wicked.)

Photos I like...

2009-12-04T23:52:00.003-05:00

Mike and I spent four days in NYC in 2008 prior to the GEL conference. Here's a couple photos of me from then. I got my hair cut off the day before we left for our trip and I felt very much like I fit in...

Better gadget

2009-12-04T17:51:00.001-05:00

Super thanks to Paul Stamatiou, who provided instructions on how to embed a BEAUTIFUL flickr slideshow in my blog. Now you can see all of Tyner's pictures in a way that's much easier to appreciate.

I have a new crush

2009-12-04T17:29:00.002-05:00

Youtube suggested that I check a video out and I have a new crush.

Check out the charlieissocoollike channel.

Nice Pairs from tweet cloud

2009-11-30T09:10:00.002-05:00

It's funny for me to see the words in my tag cloud because they really do represent what I do and think.

Amanda | mike

Time | world

Home | office

Waterloo | ottawa

Weekend | week

Thanks | Please

Read | write

Content: email, video, link, photo, Text, Phone, Blog, tweet

Happy

Loves

amazing

Funny

Awesome

Excited

Real

probably

Twitter theme

2009-11-30T08:55:00.001-05:00

There's a new thing on Twitter that lets you create a cloud based on the terms you most frequently tweet. Here's one of my tweets for the past year:

To make one of your own: visit the TweetCloud site

Mashup

2009-11-27T15:15:00.001-05:00

Google’s new advertisements (http://www.youtube.com/searchstories) fuels Seb’s quote: "I don't understand why I have to go to school at all, the internet knows more than all the teachers there put together." (http://www.27bslash6.com/slyseb.html)

A tree for me..

2009-11-26T21:26:00.001-05:00

Tyner, who is now a featured friend of my blog, took a picture of himself doing the yoga tree pose, in a tree, for me.

A very self-satisfied A

2009-11-23T19:52:00.001-05:00

You know those moments when you're asked to step up to a new level? And you're scared, but you've been waiting for a while to try out your new skills?
Well, I had a moment today where I got to be more than I thought I was. It was like discovering that if I try a bit harder that I can run faster than I've ever run.

I made a few mistakes - being defensive and being too bossy - but the overall impression was that I'm a product that people want. :)

Two neat moments: an executive told me to move and I declined, on account of a divorce; I was asked to take notes and declined on the principle that women are always asked to take notes and that I'd prefer to contribute.

I also tried not to play with my hair, so as not to undermine the whole "I can play with the boys" thing.

I also got told that I have "balls of steel", which I thought was a poorly worded comment, given the whole "I won't take notes" thing, but I really appreciated the comment for the sentiment.

All in all, I may have only impressed myself, but if that's the case, I'll be happy until I get the pinprick of sadness that deflates me.
*************
From my Blackberry

Swine flu learnings

2009-11-08T22:01:00.001-05:00

Hey, you know how swine flu targets the young and not the old? Well, Scientific American says that 79 percent of the swine flu cases have been in ppl younger than 30. They have an idea about why... It turns out that a vaccine given in 1976 to 43 million americans will create "a powerful immune response" when the person who had the vaccine is exposed to H1N1. And because H1N1 was circulating as a flu until 1957, the ppl who got it then have a built in immune response. WOW.
I may have just changed my mind about getting the vaccine. Maybe the vaccine is just a way to exercise my immune system? Just like getting a cold is?
The article goes on to say that as people get older they build up immunity to flus.
And now I'm back on the side of no flu shot: shouldn't I be trying to get sick and assemble a variety of flus in my immune system's resume?
*************
From my Blackberry

What happened this weekend...

2009-11-08T14:25:00.000-05:00

Friday at 5pm I got a phone call from mike: "aren't you coming home?" I was still at work, even though I had promised to come home around 3pm. I was a bit surprised: normally mike isn't home until 6pm. Well, I get home and he's made dinner - this never happens. He's asked two of our friends over for dinner - again, a never heard of occurence.
I happily help him get ready and, as part of the getting ready, I look for wine. We have none.
That's ok, though and we have dinner. As we're finishing our dinner, the doorbell rings. I say, "iit's the stupid girl next door. Dhe must be having a party again."
Then 5 people I really love appear. It's a surprise party. For me. I'm furious and overwhelmed and freaking out: we have v litle food and no wine.
Mike swings into action and clears all surfaces, puts all things away, gets out cheese and liqour he's been hiding, empties the fridge into a cooler on the porch and generally gets the house ready.
Seeing the panic and overwhelmed look on my face, one of my friends, E, tells me to stop worrying and let mike take care of it. Within mins our teeny apartment is turned into a party, complete with a large group of people I'm very glad to get to spend time with.
The party goes on until 1 am, when I begin to fall asleep.
The next day I get a haircut and then hop in the car with ian to catch a ride to toronto. We're travelling to celebrate deep's birthday. We land in at ian's sister's house at 5pm and - even though I've never met her before - she's totally amazing and let's me nap on her couch. She's having a party of her own, and my goal is to get out before her party starts. I leaave my bag there and head out in a magnificent purple dress and my birthday shoes.
I arrive at Le Select Bistro, a restaurant where deep wants to have his b-day dinner and surprise him. He's really happy to see me and our dinner flies by - filled with great conversation and yummy french food. I ate too much and felt sick for a while, which is my own darn fault.
Then we went to a bar and ian and a whole bunch of other people I haven't seen for ages showed up and that was really fun.
We went home and ian cooked pizza and I ate some chips and had some water. Then went thankfully and gratefully to bed.
This morning I stole deep's car and drove ian back to his sister's house and got my bag. (This part couldn't have worked out better. Really.)
Then I came back and watched moulin rouge until deep woke up, whereupon we went to a great place for brunch.
And now I'm on the subway, yawning, and heading towards scarborough town centre, where I'll catch a cab to my grandparent's house.
It's a marvellous day in toronto. I was walking back from brunch without my coat. The sky is soooo blue: it's stunning.
The last time I rode the subway this far, my grandfather was with me. He was taking me downtown for a job interview for the summer. I was really tired out by that trip, but today I started out tired today. :)
My plan is to catch the 7pm train home from scarborough. I'll be home by 11pm, but I have a half day off on monday, so I can sleep in.
I'm going to call my grandparents from the mall when I get there. If they're home, I'll go straight there.
Something to note about the toronto subway: it doesn't support visitors. I can't see one poster showing the subway stops from where I'm sitting this is a timely sentence because we're at the end oif the lkine but there was no announcement!
*************
From my Blackberry

Have just discovered Alexis Bittar jewelery

2009-11-05T18:09:00.001-05:00

Link

Dress or shirt?

2009-11-05T17:48:00.001-05:00

You, too, can own this shirt (dress).

This girl would have to be 7 feet tall for this to be a reasonable length on anyone.

2009 Movies I want to see, but haven't

2009-11-04T20:35:00.001-05:00

500 days of summer
Amelia
Blackbeard
Where the wild things are
Adventureland
Coco before Chanel
Enlighten Up
How to Seduce Difficult Women
Inkheart
Inglorious Basterds
The Time Traveller's wife
The Informant
Julie & Julia
The Men Who Stare at Goats
My Sister's Keeper
O'Horten
The Propsal
The Ugly Truth
Valentino: The Last Emperor

2008 Movies I want to see, but haven't

2009-11-04T20:23:00.001-05:00

in bruges
charlie bartlette
finding amanda
frost nixon
rachel getting married
Nick and norah's infinite playlist
The Reader
Revolutionary road
Vicky Christina Barcelona
Zack and Miri make a porno

Last night

2009-11-04T10:26:00.000-05:00

Last night I went shopping. I went to Winners. And spent about 2 hours trying on clothes. None of which I bought. I just like shopping.

At the end of my “trying on” odyssey, I decided to go to Chapters and bought books instead. It turns out that I can get a lot of books for way less than what I normally spend on clothes.

Here’s what I bought and why:

· Its Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want To Be: The World’s Best Selling Book – I got this because it’s short, has Posh Spice in it. I read the whole thing because it’s pithy, reminds me why I believe certain things and reinforced some ideas that I’ve had floating around in my head, but haven’t articulated yet.

· Punk Marketing – I bought this because it’s dedicated to “all the people who have shit-canned us… and their spouses”

· Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – I bought this because I wanted some philosophy. I stood in front of the hundred or so books on philosophy looking confused for a long time. Then I noticed that 3 different version of this book were for sale and each version had at least 4 copies. “It must be an important book,” I thought.

I like buying books and hope I don’t fall down the rabbit hole of buying them and then not reading them.

Content world in retrospect...

2009-10-30T09:55:00.001-05:00

Well, it came in with a roaring in my ears and ended up roaring with success the entire time. Seth godin said 'there's nothing like a professional' and ot's event staff proved that.
We had 110 ppl at the lab. That's 10 precent of the conference attendees. My team's work was featured during the general session, which was attended by more people than live in my hometown.
I gave two sessions and got two different reactions: one was acclaimed by the attendees who told their friends and those friends came to see me. The other one was called fun and I made a lot of new friends after it. :)
I got to see a lot of the people who know, use and believe in the software open text creates, and that always jazzes me up.
And it's hot and I booked a late flight so that, even though I'll have to work this weekend, I'm sitting in the sun by the pool watching lizards run around. Lizards and children.
*************
From my Blackberry