It’s my last day here at Tucows, and at the risk of sounding like a film critic, I’m going to have to say that the feeling is bittersweet. Fittingly enough, this song is running through my head:
Can’t see the video? Click here.
And I can’t mention that song without making reference to the most painful cover version ever:
Can’t see the video? Click here.
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!
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.
(This article was cross-posted to Global Nerdy.)
Possible dream jobs.
The poll posed these two questions to adults:
The results:
Both my parents were doctors, so at the age of 5, I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. This was in the early seventies, and the way I hear my parents tell it, those were some of the best years to be in medicine, from a money-making point of view.
However, at around age 7, I discovered space and astronomy books. I was glued to the TV set when the Apollo-Soyuz mission took place and followed any news about the not-ready-for-flight space shuttle, which was stilled named the Constitution. (A letter-writing campaign from Star Trek fans would later make them rechristen it as the Enterprise.) I thought I might make a good astronomer, space scientist or rocket engineer.
In my teen years, I met my friend Pavel Rozalski, whose dad did some computer/electronics work at a glass company, and he got me into computers. We developed a sort of early Apple Computer working relationship while working on our science fair projects: Pavel played the “Woz” role doing much of the building of our simulator of AND, OR, NAND and NOR gates, while I was the “Jobs” guy, doing a lot of the writing of reports and talking to the judges. Our heroes were the guys who did stuff out of their garages — Woz and Jobs, as well as Hewlett and Packard. From then on, I was hooked on computers. I wanted to do something computer-related when I grew up.
I was also a dabbler in music and graphic arts (especially cartooning — most people at Crazy Go Nuts University know me for being a DJ and a cartoonist rather than an engineering and computer science major), so I always hoped that there’d be a way to combine those two loves with computers, perhaps with some chatting with people thrown in.
I remember reading an article in Creative Computing, one of the premier computer hobbyist magazines of the late 1970s and early 1980s. In that article, a programmer predicted that in the next coupel of decades, computer programmers might get the same sort of recognition as rock stars. I remember thinking, “Yeah, I’d like that.”
I showed the article to a friend of mine who laughed at me. “That’s stupid. That’s why I’m going to be a rock drummer. It’ll be way better — you’ll be coming home, all tired from work, ready to die, and I’ll be onstage and on TV in front of screaming chicks, getting high off the audience’s smoke.”
(Dude: been there, done that. With an effin’ accordion. How ’bout you?)
Finally, at the end of my teens — or maybe just after — I became aware of Guy Kawasaki, who held an interesting position at Apple: Technical Evangelist. I remember thinking “That’s a cool job…maybe I’d like to do that someday.” Since then, Guy’s been a role model of mine.
All this is an explanation for my generally good mood: I’m working at my dream job.
Me and Chad Fowler playing the opening number for an evening keynote at the RailsConf 2007 conference.
Here are some scenes from last Friday night, when I joined my old pal from Crazy Go Nuts University, Karl Mohr for his last number of the evening, the maudlin yet somehow catchy Can Your Remains Be Buried With Mine? at the Tranzac Club:
(Now that I look at the photos, I think I may need to explain what’s going on at a later time…)
You can see more photos from the performance in this online album set up by photographer Roman Bershadsky.
While hanging out on Queen Street West back in the summer of 1985, I saw a T-shirt with the image below and bought it immediately. I wore it all summer that year:
Click the image to see the source.
Yesterday’s entry, “Thank You, Mask Man!”, got me thinking about that time and what was then my favourite t-shirt. A little Googling led to me to this entry in the blog We Saw a Chicken, whose author had scanned the image from the magazine Strange Things are Happening.
I’m going to invert the image and make it the desktop background on my computers.
Way, way back — I’m talking about twenty years ago — my friend Yann and I decided to go catch one of Reg Hartt’s Sex and Violence Cartoon Festival shows. For those of you who aren’t from around Accordion City, Reg is one of the city’s better-known eccentrics — he’s a film and cartoon buff who likes to show his collection of rare films. If you walk around some of the city’s hipper streets, you’re likely to see a poster for one of his screenings.
Yann and I had decided that after years of seeing these posters plastered all over town, we should actually attend one of these events. Reg now hosts his film screenings at his house, but back in the late eighties, he held his movie nights at the Cabana Room, which was the upstairs bar of the Spadina Hotel, which was located at the corner of King and Spadina. Today, that corner is both a nightclub and dining destination as well as home to a number of fancy offices and condos, and the Spadina Hotel has since closed and turned into a backpacker’s hostel. The corner is a yuppie haven now, but back then, it was considerably more seedy.
That upstairs bar was the sort of place you’d expect to see Charles Bukowski challenging Mickey Rourke, Harry Dean Stanton and Tom Waits to a shooter-drinking contest. It was delightfully divey, and populated with an assortment of interesting characters, from hard-drinkin’ old men to the not-quite-legal-to-drink (the legal age here being 19) spiky-haired punk and alternative rock crowd who’d spilled over from Queen Street, which was then a little edgier than it is today. The place looked like it hadn’t changed since the early 1960s. My favourite creature comforts there were the air conditioning — possibly the best in town, next to the bone-chiller at Sneaky Dee’s, then located in The Annex — and the Jiffy-Pop cooker on the bar, which was a hot plate rigged with Jiffy-Pop branding and a mechanical arm that shook the Jiffy-Pop package side-to-side as it cooked.
The Sex and Violence Cartoon Festival featured all sorts of old cartoons dating from the 1940s through the 1970s that you could no longer show in most places for their racy (and sometimes racist) content. One of Yann’s and my favourites was Thank You Mask Man, a cartoon based on a routine by Lenny Bruce, in which Lenny himself does the voices. It’s about what happens when the Lone Ranger decides to accept the thanks of the townspeople he saves, with hilarious — and very profane (especially considering the time) — results.
Thanks to this entry on MetaFilter, I know that someone put Thank You Mask Man on YouTube. Watching it makes me feel like I’m drunk and 19 again. Watch and enjoy, but be forewarned that this is a Lenny Bruce routine: