I missed reading “Dersh’s” op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled Democrats and Waterboarding until this morning. After reading it, these two things came to mind:
Here’s a set of amusing photos about danger at work that I found thanks to my friend, Miss Fipi Lele. Click on them to see the set at full size and better quality:
Click to photos to see them at full size and quality.
Images courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
Perhaps it’s a bit early for Christmas-related posts, but this can’t wait: it’s Lore Sjoberg’s musical project, Nine Inch Noels, which takes selected Nine Inch Nails lyrics and sets them to a medley of Christmas tunes:
One of the best things about this photo is its filename — Paris Hilton v. Britney Spears:
“Outta the way, fatty!”
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
It’s official: I handed my two weeks’ notice to Tucows on Monday. After four and a half years as their developer relations guy, during which time I held two titles (Technical Evangelist, and before that, the less wieldy Technical Community Development Coordinator), worked in two departments and occupied 5 different desks spread across two floors, I have decided to move on to a new job and with it, new challenges.
Networking accordion-style during a break at BloggerCon II in Boston (that’s Mass Ave. in the background, and yes, I’m wearing a cow-print vest).
Photo courtesy of Julie Leung.
Maybe it’s the whole “turning 40” thing, or maybe it’s the programming itch, but I feel that I need a change of scenery. Life at Tucows was pretty sweet, but I came across one of those rare — if a little bit risky — opportunities that life doesn’t hand you too often. As much as I loved my job at Tucows, I’d be have to be a fool and a coward to pass up the opportunity I’m about to take on.
My first desk at the Tucows office, taken Fall 2003.
Me at my second desk at the Tucows office, taken Winter 2004.
My third desk at the Tucows office, taken Spring 2006.
The view from my fifth desk at the Tucows office, taken Fall 2007.
The decision to leave Tucows was not an easy one. In many ways, the Technical Evangelist position was a dream job. It combined a number of things I love to do: programming, writing, schmoozing, graphic design and I even got to work in a little accordion playing. I’ve worked with some of the finest colleagues I have known, I’ve reported to some excellent bosses — first Ross Rader, then Ken Schafer, and finally Leona Hobbs, and for a CEO who is admired and respected throughout high tech, Elliot Noss.
A still from the webcam broadcast (no audio) of my first annual review, Spring 2004.
A still from the webcam broadcast (no audio) of my first annual review, Spring 2004. Those are Ross Rader’s hands.
A still from the webcam broadcast (no audio) of my first annual review, Spring 2004. That’s Ross Rader on the right.
One of the best things about my job was having the privilege of wearing the mantle of Tucows, a company that’s well-regarded in the world of high-tech. Walking into a room of techies and saying “I’m with Tucows” is like traveling through Europe with a Canadian flag sewn on your backpack, walking through Boston with a Red Sox cap or being able to play Take Me Home Country Roads on accordion in front a room of West Virginians — it establishes your bona fides and marks you as one of the good guys. I hope that Tucows has benefited equally from having the “Accordion Guy” as its head tech cheerleader.
Representing Tucows at a geek function at No Regrets with the accordion.
Speaking at the “Business of Blogging” seminar at IBM’s CASCON 2005.
A still from a CTV News piece on Google.
I’d like to thank my first Tucows boss, “Boss Ross” Rader, and his boss Elliot Noss for believing in me enough to hire me, and the two bosses who followed, Ken Schafer and Leona Hobbs, for being equally terrific. I’d also like to apologize to Leona for handing in my notice while she was on vacation (you know how it is with “windows of opportunity”). I also have to thank my teammates in Communications, Hasdeep Kharaud, Kari Dykes and James “Yes, that’s my real surname” Koole; it’s been a blast working (and lunching at Pho Asia 21) with you guys. Hell, I’m just going to thank the everyone in the company for making my four and a half years there an enjoyable experience.
Playing accordion at the evening keynote at RailsConf 2007 in Portland, Oregon.
At DemoCamp. “Amber’s being unprofessional again, isn’t she?”
Talking about Windows Vista on CityTV News, early 2007.
Flying the Tucows flag at the php|works conference, 2006.
My final day at the office will be next Tuesday, the 20th. I leave Tucows with mixed feelings: happy and excited about my new position (which I’ll talk about later) but sad to leave a great workplace and the company for whom I’ve worked the longest in my entire career. It’s been a great ride, guys — thanks!
In the previous post, I included a YouTube video of the infamous “Where’s my money?” scene from Family Guy in which Stewie beats up Brian for not paying back a debt.
So where was Stewie’s money? Why did Brian owe him money?
The scene is from the episode Patriot Games — the episode in which Peter joins the New England Patriots (and later gets kicked off the team and sent to join the London Silly Nannies).
In the episode’s other story, Stewie becomes a sports bookie. Brian uses his services to place a wager and loses $50 betting that Mike Tyson will beat Carol Channing in Celebrity Boxing. Brian takes his own sweet time paying the bet, and the savage beating ensues.
While doing a search on YouTube for the scene, I found a number of versions in which anime fans took the dialogue and matched it with scenes from their favourite series.
Here are two in which the dialogue is matched with scenes from Naruto:
In this video, the “Where’s my money” scene gets the Dragon Ball Z treatment:
And here’s the Inuyasha version:
While doing a quick search for images, I stumbled across an Onion article that I’d read before but haven’t seen in a while: Housemates Reject Third-Roommate Debt Relief Plan…
Click the image to read the Onion article Housemates Reject Third-Roommate Debt Relief Plan.
That story reminds me of my own third-roommate situation from a little while back. My deadbeat ex-housemate, who left in December 2001, still owes me a few thousand dollars for rent, utilities, a laptop he borrowed and never returned and the largest domestic phone bill I’ve ever seen. He went home for Christmas in 2001 and couldn’t even afford to come back after the holidays, and I haven’t seen him since.
He often failed to help out with housework and liked to belittle my programming skills (much of my career was writing custom desktop applications in Visual Basic — the Rodney Dangerfield of programming langauges — and web applications in PHP and Python; he was a big-shot security consultant whose preferred programming tool was Lisp, considered by many pure computer scientists to be the Holy Grail), so I took delight in returning fire by ribbing him about his debt and my employability in relation to his (he lists himself as an “independent security consultant”, which to me read as “unemployed security consultant”.
I almost ran into him at a conference in Portland in May. I was flipping through the conference schedule, and saw his name on the speakers list — he was giving a presentation! I made sure I arrived twenty minutes early for his presentation and sat down in a front row seat, right in front of the podium. I convinced some friends who were at the conference — Luke was one of them — to attend, just so that I’d have witnesses watch him squirm. I wasn’t going to ask him “Hey man, where’s my money?” during the Q&A session of his presentation because I really didn’t want to hijack the conference for my own jollies, but he didn’t know that.
The presentation time came and went. Five minutes passed and the podium was still empty. The room was getting a bit restless, and I sat on the edge of my seat, thinking Come on…come on…come and face me, you little deadbeat…
Ten minutes after the scheduled start of the presentation, he still hadn’t shown up. One of the sound techies got on his walkie-talkie to see if he was still in the conference green room. Shortly afterwards, he want to the podium and announced that my ex-housemate was a no-show.
“Argh!” I remember yelling. “Once a flake, always a flake!” Flaking out on a debt is one thing, flaking out on a speaking engagement at an O’Reilly conference is a serious career-limiting move in the tech world.
A few days later, one of the conference organizers explained on his blog that my ex-housemate wasn’t a no-show; it’s that no one informed him that he was speaking at the conference. The explanation sounds a little convenient for my tastes, but I know and trust the conference organizer, so I choose to accept the official explanation of what happened.
Maybe it’s the whole “turning 40” thing and all the associated “cleaning house” I’ve been doing lately, but I’ve come to a decision about what to do about the Deadbeat Ex-Housemate: I’ve decided to forgive his debt.
And after this one joke, I shall stop ribbing him about him owing me money:
Q:What’s the difference between my ex-housemate Dan and a large pizza?
A:A large pizza can feed a family of four.
His owing me money was bad in the short term, especially since it happened around the time I got laid off from the dot-com for which I worked, but in the long run, the impact it’s had was minimal. I have better ways to spend my mental energy than being annoyed at the guy as well, especially with some upcoming changes that I’ll talk about very soon. I suspect that he would also benefit from not having the albatross around his neck, as I’ll bet that there are a number of other people to whom we owes money. After six years, I’m ready to write off the loss, and letting him go seems like a contribution to the Net Good.
You are forgiven, Deadbeat Ex-Housemate. Go forth and get thyself a steady gig now.
The wife is always horrified whenever they show the Family Guy episode with the “Where’s My Money, Man?” scene, but I have always found it hilarious and strangely cathartic. Here it is for your viewing enjoyment — be advised that the violence, although cartoonish, is still pretty graphic:
Update: Looks as though the copyright holders yanked the clip off YouTube. Ah well. You can view it here until Fox yanks it from that site.
Don’t bother playing the video; it got yanked by the copyright holders.