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It Happened to Me

Busy Week

I’ve had my hands full lately.

Wendy The Redhead came up to Accordion City

last weekend, and among her myriad gifts is the ability to keep me away

from my beloved PowerBook and by extension, blogging. Her visit was

wonderful, but I’ll have to blog it later.


On Saturday morning, I got a phone call notifying me that Dad had

fallen ill with fever-like symptoms and was taken to the intensive care

unit at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Wendy and I paid him a visit shortly

afterwards, but he wasn’t awake, We visited again the day after, when

he was awake and looking better. Dad likes Wendy, and he told her

stories about the time we lived in Boston. I’m sure that seeing her

also gave him the inspiration to make more plans; Dad’s jumped several

steps ahead of me and is already thinking of where to hold the wedding

reception.


Please note:

Before we start spreading any crazy rumours around the Internet, I have

not asked Wendy to marry me — that’s just Dad being Dad. I do,

however, need new “everyday” dishes and cookware; feel free to send ’em

anyway. Wendy would like a pair of green Converse shoes, men’s size 5.

Dad’s still in the hospital for observation. As I write this, we still have no idea when he’s getting out.


In the meantime, I also have my hands full cranking out the manuals for Blogware,

which is expected to see its 1.0 release very shortly. The Reseller

Manual measures about 80 pages when printed, while the Publisher (that

is, end-user) Manual looks like it’s going to break past 500.

As you may have guessed, entries might be a bit sparse this week. I’ll

try and squeeze in some time to get in an entry every day, but they’ll

be shorter than usual.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Even More Pics From the Annual Review

Suw “Chocolate and Vodka” Charman watched my review as she had dinner and took a lot of screenshots, including this one:

“On second thought, we’re both fired.”

Categories
It Happened to Me

Another Pic From My Employee Review

Ross: So, would you like to start off by making a statement?

Me: As a matter of fact, I would.

Ross: Go ahead.

Me: I would like to warn you

that I have taken some special precautions. If at any point I find that

I do not like the way the review is going, I have a sniper who’s taken

a position in the rafters who will shoot you.

Ross: I’m going to call you bluff and kick your ass to the curb. You are now the former Technical Community Development Coordinator, my friend.

Me (into hidden lapel mic): Blofeld to Jaws: Eliminate Mr. Bond.

Ross: You don’t scare me with your fakety-fake “supervillain” act, Mister Accodion Chu–ACK!

Thanks to Andy “termie” Smith for the pic!

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It Happened to Me

Annual Review Complete (or: "Weeeeeeee are the champions, my frieeeeeeeend…and we’ll be emplooooooooyed ’til the end…")

The review went pleasingly well, and I’ve got some cool directives for the upcoming year. As mentioned in the previous posting, it was all visible (if not audible) thanks to the webcam posted on Boss Ross’ desk.

Alan McLeod from GenX at 40 caught this great still from the webcam, during the part of the review where all Tucows employees must perform their best Stevie Wonder impression:

“My cherie amour…lovely as a summer’s daaaaaaay…”

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It Happened to Me

Annual Review Day Live Cam! (or: Beat THIS, Channel 9!)

Today is Annual Review Day here at Tucows, and Boss Ross

is among those doing reviews. Boss Ross, in case you’re not aware, is

the Director of Research and Innovation, a crack team made up the

following people:

Hey man, I didn’t say it was a big team.

Anyhow, if you want to see how they’re going, check out the webcam image either on Ross’ blog or below. Alas, there is no audio.

My review takes places at 2:00 p.m. EDT. Watch Darryl squirm at 3:00 p.m. EDT.

The Boss Ross Cam! Reload the page to see a fresh image.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Scenes From a Video Shoot

Although the clip of me and Elliot (Tucows’ CEO) at my desk did not

make it into David Akin’s CTV News story on the upcoming Google IPO (mentioned in this entry), my

co-worker Darryl borrowed my Nikon Coolpix SQ and made his own meta-video shoot.

All these movies were shot in the middle part of the middle aisle, home

of Product Management, Domain Direct and the the Technical Community

Development Coordinator. My desk is in the

dead center of the Tucows offices, which I like to call the “Keanu

spot”, after the location of his cubicle in the first Matrix movie.

The first video is of Darryl trying out the camera for the first time:

Here’s one of Darryl doing a slow forward shot of the middle aisle:

Here’s one of Elliot, me and David talking about the OpenNet Initiative.

I love the still capture shown below. The poses that Elliot and I are

in are straight out of those stock photo CDs of office scenes.

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In the News It Happened to Me

Tonight on CTV News at 11: David Akin Interviews Elliot Noss


David helps Lucien the camera operator focus as Elliot gets set up for the interview. This took place in the lobby of the Tucows offices.

This is a shot of journalist David Akin (who reports on business and technology for CTV News and writes for the Globe and Mail) setting up Tucows CEO Elliot Noss (a.k.a. my Boss Ross’ boss, Noss) for an interview that will appear on tonight’s 11:00 edition of CTV News. David wanted a local high-tech CEO’s opinions on the upcoming Google IPO and Elliot provided them.

(I met David at the DefCon 8 conference in Las Vegas back in 2000, when Chris Cummer and I were down there to give away copies of ColaVision, a strange but wonderful little OpenCola project, to the hacker hordes. He interviewed us for a National Post article in our hotel room at the Luxor, consuming several cans of Guinness along the way.)

David and Elliot were kind enough to let me video the interview (in fact, they encouraged it — thanks, guys!), and I’ll post the video, more photos and notes later today. As I write this, we are told that David and Lucien the cameraman are fetching a new camera, with which they will film a “you are there” clip with Elliot talking to me at my desk as I show him some new Blogware features.