Merry Ho Ho

So I'm back home with the parents for Christmas, and, suffice to say, things are quite quiet around these parts. I guess I'm glad to be back. Beats the alternative: hanging around Ottawa on Christmas Day alone. It looks as though things will be a little busy for me next week as I continue to make some story pitches, as I contemplate a return to freelance journalism. We'll see how it goes. In 2010, more or less.

Getting back to Barry's Bay was a bit of a hassle. The bus station in Ottawa was a zoo, mostly as people formed a huge line-up for Toronto to head back there for the holidays. I felt sorry for the poor suckers. I'm glad I got there early as the Renfrew-Pembroke line, which I took, was a little on the long side too.

Once one the bus, I had the misfortune of having a young man sit beside me with an "electronic cigarette" that emits water vapour. He asked the bus driver if he could smoke it, and of course he got an answer of "No." So what does this dude do? He smokes it anyway all the way from Ottawa to my stop in Renfrew. Nice. I guess he was just looking for attention. But I couldn't help but note what a doofus this guy was. Only I get to sit beside the kooks, I guess.

So that's it for me for now. Merry Ho Ho and Happy New Year and all that!

Stuart Hickox

This is a post about Stuart Hickox, who is running a non-profit organization in Ottawa called Project Porchlight / One Change. Basically, trying to get people to replace their regular light bulbs with the CFL variety.

He was recently interviewed on Newsworld about whether or not these bulbs cause UV radiation, which you can watch here. He handles himself quite well, and I couldn't take my eyes off him during the interview. He also (infrequently) writes a blog called Walden Cabin, which you can read here.

He and I met up a number of years ago when I was on the wane of my freelance journalism career, and he was just getting started -- by being published in both Reader's Digest and Macleans, the lucky son of a gun. We were both members of the Professional Writers Association of Canada for a while, and I think we were both running the Ottawa chapter for a very scant short time.

I've kind of lost touch with Stewie since I wound up moving to Toronto in '07. But he's gone onto some great success with Project Porchlight, which I'm quite envious of. How does he do it? I don't know. But I wish him all of the best, and hopefully I might be able to reconnect with him sometime -- if he has the time. I was thinking of getting more involved with volunteer work, and it would be cool to deliver light bulbs.

Speaking of which, I'm really digging those funky new light bulbs. I use them on a lamp I bought from IKEA this year in my living room and I figure I'm saving about $2 or $3 a month simply by using them, instead of the regular bulbs in my kitchen area. Cool stuff that this guy is doing, then. I hope he can keep up the good work.

A Vinyl Haul From Legend Records

One of the great vinyl stores in Ottawa is Legend Records. I use to frequent there all of the time when I was living in the west end, as it used to be in the Lincoln Fields shopping mall. Well, they've moved to a new store on Wellington Street since I moved to Toronto. And today I decided to give myself a little treat and check it out.

The new store is, quite simply, huge. There's at least four anti-chambers in the place, which is a big improvement over the old store -- where some of the records were crammed into cupboard beneath the shelves in the tiny space that they used to have. The guy who runs the place now has dividers noting what artist is in that section along the shelves, which makes it a lot easier to find what you're looking for.

So here's what I picked up:

I got the Carpenters' Now and Then album. Cheesy, I know, but one of my aunts used to have this on 8-track and I gave it a good wearing out as a kid. Eager to see if the record still holds up to my memories.

I'm on a bit of a Blue Oyster Cult kick lately, and while I know that their first four or five albums are probably the best, I picked up the Some Enchanted Evening live set, and Imaginos, which I'm curious to hear as I understand it is a bit of a return to form after the horrendous Club Ninja.

I also managed to score Chicago's V and VII, which pretty much rounds out my collection of said band. (I still have a few gaps post-Terry Kath but I'm not too interested in filling them in.) I now own pretty much everything they did from 1969 to 1978, which are the key years.

That's pretty much it, though I was tempted to scour for more. Early Christmas gift to myself I guess.

I should mention that the rarities in the store are amazing. The dude who runs the place happens to have a rare promo copy of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" on 7-inch. As many of you may know, the group decided to forgo releasing that song as a single at the last minute, so that's a particularly cool thing to have in stock. I didn't really go rummaging, but there's a section of Beatles vinyl ... both in mono and in stereo!

When I was buying the records, I mentioned that I hadn't been there in awhile as I had moved to Toronto for two years. It turns out the owner's daughter moved there, and doesn't like it too much. She's having a hard time making new friends down there, and kind of misses Ottawa. That's sort of parallel to my story, I guess. Funny how these things line up.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some vinyl to listen to. :-)

PopMatters Reviews

Since I took some time off from blogging, I've missed out on posting some links to PopMatters books (and a lone CD) reviews that I've done over the past few months. I thought I would rectify the situation and put a bunch of them up:

I Am A Genius Of Unspeakable Evil And I Want To Be Your Class President

Chronic City

Brilliant Colors: Introducing (the lone CD review I've done so far)

Going Away Shoes and Ferris Beach

Her Fearful Symmetry

It Feels So Good When I Stop

People I Miss In Toronto

I was cruising through my analytics and see that someone in Spain has found my blog. How cool. It seems as though it must have been by accident, as they didn't stay for very long. Still, it is nice to know that my blog has a global reach.

Trying to keep up my pace here and I don't really know what to blog about, so I though I would do some "grass is greener" belly-gazing and blog about all the people I miss in Toronto. I didn't really hang out much with people, which if I could do all over again, I would have maybe gotten a little more social during my time spent there. So many good people that I worked with, and would love to see again if I had a chance. These include:

Jason Ainsworth -- My friend in T.O. who was originally from L.A. We hung out a lot in 2007, and went to a lot of movies and went on a lot of ROM walks on Sundays. We didn't really see too much of each other when he started dating, but he was a good friend. I am looking forward to the mix CDs that he is reportedly working on and will send me.

J.P. Casino -- This guy helped me out a lot when we both got laid off from Critical Mass at the same time, by providing me a list of contacts that I should hit up. I wish I hung out more with him. He's a really cool guy. Glad to hear that he's been super successful at his new job.

Jennifer Vetterli -- Probably my favourite person I follow on Twitter as she's unafraid to tweet about all of the frustrating things that happen in her life, without fear of judgment from others. She's super-smart and does an excellent job as an Information Architect (now, Senior IA, I'm told). Always a good person to talk to in the office, and she has a helluva good taste in music. I, too, wish I hung out with her a little more often.

John McArdle -- We would sometimes take time off lunch at CM to go vinyl shopping at Rotate This! Ah, those were the days. He, too, has an incredible taste in music -- he introduced me to F***ked Up and Oneida -- and he is an incredible photographer to boot. Just as I'm typing this, he tweeted me, in fact, to thank me for complimenting him on some of his photos, which he posted to Flickr earlier today. I, too, really wish I had hung out with him more often. We were supposed to meet up at a No Age show at The Horseshoe Tavern in 2008, but that never transpired, alas. We were, though, both at the same show! I guess we just got our wires crossed or something, or maybe I got there too early to find him as I took a plum spot at the front of the stage/mosh-pit. I forget.

Tyler Lockyer -- He was the go-to-guy for all of the social events in the CM office, who, alas, got laid off on the same day as I did. I should probably thank him for the trip to the casino in Niagara Falls, as I won $600 as a result of that office social outing. The last I saw of him was the day after the lay-off earlier this year, as we met up for coffee at the neighbourhood Starbucks. He was going on a trip to Cuba during the upcoming days, as I can recall. Was never really super-close with him, probably because he was a bit younger, but I should have hung out more with him. (I sense a recurring theme here.)

There are probably other people that I miss, and there's always of course Matt Milan (but that's another blog post), but I think those are the major ones. I really should have gotten out more in Toronto, and realize that there were so many people around me that I could have been a bit more social with. I guess I found making new friends to be a bit awkward for me. Maybe I just enjoyed the company of my vinyl collection at home a bit too much. But there are loads of good people that I left behind and I'm glad to have known them. I, of course, have great friends in Ottawa, which I am thankful for.

UPDATED TO ADD: How could I forgotten about Patricia Storms, the writer of children's books and author of Booklust? We knew each other before I went to Toronto -- I commissioned her to do the artwork for a book of poetry that never saw the light of day -- but we met up a few times when I moved to T.O. She was always funny, and great to talk to. She even tried to help me line up a job when I found myself unemployed. I hear that she's been very successful with her new book, The Pirate and The Penguin, and hope that she's doing alright. (She hasn't updated her blog in a month.)

Also, David Mills, another IA at Critical Mass. We talked a lot about books when I was working there, as his wife runs a bookstore, and he even Secret Santa'ed me a vinyl copy of the Grateful Dead's Workingman's Dead album. (I knew it was from him as he was really the only Deadhead in the office.) We didn't hang out after work as he was a family man with kids, but he was a really cool guy and I miss him greatly.

Disappointing Records of 2009

So it is the time of year for Best of 2009 releases at the usual suspects like Pitchfork and PopMatters, the latter of which I write for. It's pretty obvious what Record of the Year is, at least at Pitchfork. If the new Animal Collective full-length doesn't get it, as it was something like No. 14 in the Best of the Decade poll, I will eat my hat. (I expect a high showing from the new Grizzly Bear album as well, which may, just may, play spoiler.)

So I decided to do something different. Compile a list of disappointments from 2009, and, boy, were there a lot this year, as far as I can tell. Here are a list of the most notable ones from me:

Peter, Bjorn and John -- Living Thing

Is this the same band that brought us Writer's Block? What gives? This album takes a turn away from the baroque pop of the former album, and replaces it with a glitchy technological sheen. The only really memorable song is "It Don't Move Me", which was also the first single. The lyric sheet is especially embarrassing: "Hey, shut the f*ck up boy, you're starting to p*ss me off, take your hands off that girl, you have already had enough." (Cringe.) I'm not against new directions, but after almost completely abandoning their old sound, this band really alienated this listener. And Rolling Stone gave this four stars? What were they thinking?

The Fiery Furnaces -- I'm Going Away

This is not really a bad album, per se, but it is a bit disappointing as it is more straight-up and less discordant than their previous releases. There's not a lot on this one that grabbed me from the outright, and it just seems kind of bland and boring compared against Blueberry Boat, which is one of my favourite "weird" releases.

The Decemberists -- The Hazards of Love

This one gets my vote for Worst Album of the Year. While the Fiery Furnaces stepped away from the prog rock, these guys all but embraced it on this release. The problem is, there is hardly a proper song on this thing to be heard. It all sort of just blends together into one big mess, and the "concept story" really doesn't make a lot of sense. My eyeballs hurt just looking at the lyric sheet. I was really disappointed with this one, particularly since their former album, The Crane Wife, is so good and varied.

Bob Mould -- Life and Times

This is actually a pretty not bad album, but it just seems that Mould is sort of resting on his laurels and is just trying to rote rock out these days. Better this than the garbage he had to offer up on Modulate, I suppose, but I haven't really fully embraced a Mould record since The Last Dog and Pony Show, which came out 11 years ago. Perhaps people change and their tastes might grow, as my seem to have, but wouldn't it be nice if we could get another Warehouse: Songs and Stories out of Mould? Just one more like that one? Pretty please?

The Flaming Lips -- Embryonic

I would suppose that this is not a bad album, either, but it seems like such a comedown after Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. The songs pretty much blend together, and it goes on and on for about 70 minutes. I admire that they were trying to make a "double album", but it would have been nice if they had a few more proper songs, and not noise collages and off-beat experiments on this one. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite, considering what I said about the Fiery Furnaces above, but I just haven't been able to get into this one at all. Maybe it's a grower?

Yo La Tengo -- Popular Songs

Again, not really a bad album, per se, but I really haven't dug into the second half of the record at all, considering that it is nothing but three long, mostly instrumental pieces. I could have done with just one. Another album that I haven't really revisited much, but, then again, maybe this one is a grower ... .

Good Times

I had a very busy and productive weekend, in that I met up with three groups of people during the course of it.

I met up with my friend Wes yesterday and it was a very early start. I met him at the Elgin Street Diner at nine in the morning. Very early in the morning for me, especially on the weekend when I'm prone to sleeping in. Breakfast was alright: I could have done without the beans on the side that the ESD seems to serve. But the conversation was good and veered from Tom Waits to Touch of Evil to Wes' skin grafts on his teeth. I enjoyed hanging out with him, which is hard to do these days considering he has two children now. Hopefully, he'll have some more time for me during the Christmas-New Year's break.

I then rushed over to Moxie's Bar and Grill in the Bayshore Shopping Center (which was a zoo!) for lunch with my aunt and grandma. I had some calamari salad, which was very yummy, and even indulged myself in a white chocolate brownie -- which I wondered about afterwards considering that I'm trying to lose weight.

Then, this morning, I went over to my friends Anita and James' place for a brunch that consisted of yummy cheese scrambled eggs and medallion sausages. The breakfast was yummy, and the conversation was good too. It's hard to meet up with these friends, as well, considering that they also have a small child. (I have to admit that during the breakfast I was wishing and alternatively not wishing that I had one of my own.) We, too, will hopefully see more of each other in the New Year, as there is talk of starting up a games night. This is not to speak of the Horror Movie Club that James usually hosts. (UPDATED TO ADD: Thanks for the cookies, Anita!)

All in all, it was a very satisfying weekend. I wish more of them were like this one.

Matthew Milan, Boy Genius

So, instead of being down about my lack of work right now, I thought I would blog about something more positive and upbeat: my experience working with one of the design world's most genius innovators: Matthew Milan. I don't want to be a sycophant, but I thought that maybe some postive posting might go a long way for my positivity.

Matthew and I go way back: all the way back to elementary school. We were in the same Advanced Learners class, even though we were in separate schools. (The class was held every week at St. John Bosco in Barry's Bay, Ontario, which I attended so I didn't have to go anywhere ... unlike poor Matthew who would have to hop a bus each week just so he could take part). I don't remember an awful lot about those classes, except for the occasional talk about Edward de Bono, which Matthew would bring up in conversation when I went to work for him at Critical Mass in Toronto.

We then played together, in high school, on the same Reach For The Top trivia team. Matthew was a monster at the game, frequently scoring more than 200 points in televised matches, which were taped in Pembroke, Ontario. I even saw him answer a 40-point question with maybe just five words of the question given. I remember the answer to this day: Cassius Clay. Seems that Matt had practically memorized all of the old trivia questions in former games -- which I guess the powers-that-be sometimes recycled -- and was able to answer the question based on memory. It was crazy. The guy just completely dominated trivia.

We lost contact after awhile when we moved onto university. But, when I posted to a Toronto newsgroup a few years ago that I was looking to move out of Ottawa and try life in a different city, Matt answered the call. He basically asked me for my résumé and walked it over to the HR department at Critical Mass when I e-mailed it to him. Two job interviews later, and I got the job as an Information Architect (IA), which was a completely new field to me.

Life in Toronto was very difficult for me to adjust to in the beginning. But Matt was patient -- the whole organization was very patient with me, in fact. When I started contributing a bit more, Matt became something of a mentor, showing me how to use Visio to make wireframe mockups -- one-on-one. I was completely amazed at his skill using the program, and just his general thinking altogether. He was, again, a monster in the role. He claims that when he first started out as an IA, that he had to sometimes phone other people to help him solve the occasional design problem. I don't believe it. Nothing fazed the guy, at least in my working experience with him. I never once saw him crushingly fail at whatever he put his mind to. The guy, in short, was a genius. No problem, big or small, fazed him. He might have (minorly) kvetched the odd time about something he had to solve, but when it came right down to it, with time, he always found a solution. And that solution was usually the right one.

Matt even tried throwing me extra responsibility in my role by having me develop a series of training courses for other staff in the office. Unfortunately, while I did all of my research and put together a number of PowerPoint decks to this task, these courses never came to pass -- for whatever reason. (I think it was because we just got generally busy with our major client, and these courses sort of just slipped to the back burner, alas, as "billable work" was more important to the company.) I look back on that and wish that I was able to complete that work, but I appreciated the opportunity to be able to do it in the first place. I think Matt was right in putting me on that task: he knew that I was a skilled researcher and could complete it without much in the way of supervision.

The thing that I appreciate now, looking in the rear view mirror, was that Matt was always pushing me to be better. And the thing that I particularly appreciate was Matt usually had the time for me to answer my questions, no matter how insignificant they might have seemed. (Well, per se, I suppose.)

Not everything was rosy, and I include this section just to make it look like I'm not unnecessarily kissing up to the guy. (Also, it's probably the journalist in me.) I recall that on one of the Spyglass research projects -- basically, a forward-thinking exercise about pitching certain ideas and products to our clients -- we had to come up with something about geo-tracking technology. (Or along those lines ... .) This was a field that Matt had an education in, but much of the information was so bleeding edge that there wasn't a lot of stuff to find online. That make the project incredibly challenging and frustrating, and Matt was there pushing us to keep looking ... and maybe make a few inferences between the lines. I like hard-cold facts, not coming up with something out of nothing. (Again, it's the journalist in me.) So I found that aspect a little difficult to deal with. How do you impress someone who might know all of the answers but doesn't want to give them up? But I guess that was part of the deal; Matt kept on pushing, and encouraged people to come up with their own ideas, rather than ape his own.

Still, I generally enjoyed working with Matt. And the day that he announced that he was leaving Critical Mass, I sort of knew that it was the beginning of the end for me in the organization. (He was my champion there, and was always vouching for the work that I did. With him gone, I no longer had that.) I could turn to him for anything, even the most personal of things that I might of had a crisis with.

Matt has gone onto bigger and better things. He owns his own design studio in Toronto these days -- Normative Design -- and things, by all accounts, seem to be mostly positive there. Even though I have doubts about my skills as an IA, when he Twitters about all of the good things going on for him, I can't help but wish that I was working there as an IA, too. I don't know how he juggles life at work with an active life at home. (He has a kid, now.) But he does it.

Matt has still been there for me. He was the first person I called after getting laid off from Critical Mass. Whenever I need some job advice, he's been there -- even going so far to talk to me on speakerphone making the long drive from Toronto to the Combermere, Ontario, area where he grew up and has parents. (That was a bit weird, as I could hear my own voice echoing through the car as I was talking.) There's even talk of doing a special project with him -- non-work related, and I probably shouldn't mention it yet as A) it might not even come to pass and B) I don't know if he wants to make it public just yet.

All in all, though, working with Matt was a big pleasure. I can only hope that I get lucky enough to work with someone like him again.

Rogers = Epic Fail

I know a lot of people like to harp on about the poor service offered by Rogers, but I've experienced exceptionally poor service from the telecommunications giant since last month, in various incarnations.

It all started, as I said, last month, when my Internet went out. It seems that my neighbour in Apt. 804 was receiving free service that she wasn't paying for -- I guess the last guy in her apartment didn't bother to disconnect the service or something -- and so Rogers came to "fix" that problem. Problem is, in disconnecting her, the service dude seems to have disconnected me by accident, and, realizing his mistake, re-jammed in my cable to the box in the cable room and broke the cable connector. Honest mistake, maybe. but you'd think the guy would be more careful.

The issue is that it took Rogers four days to fix the problem. During this time, I got a few meaty job requests from agencies in Ottawa that I couldn't apply for as I had to resubmit my résumé to some of them. Couldn't do that with my Internet service out. So, thanks a lot Rogers, thanks a lot. You cost me a few job interviews, or potential ones.

Last week, I got a call from Rogers ironically asking me to take a survey on customer satisfaction. The bloke on the telephone not only couldn't get my name right, but he was calling me during peak hours -- eating up valuable minutes on my wireless phone bill. Can't Rogers, you know, send out a survey by e-mail? It's a lot less intrusive and doesn't really cost me a thing, Internet service notwithstanding.

Then, today, I got an automated phone call from Rogers claiming that I hadn't returned the DVDs that I had rented from them. This was b.s. as I'd returned them yesterday at 4 p.m. by putting them in the drop box slot inside their store. Maybe I should have taken the extra steps and returned them to the front counter, because when I went to ask one of the sales clerks about it, he was less than enthused about helping me.

I told him I had returned the DVDs yesterday, and his response to me was, "That's impossible." Seriously!

I told him I returned them to the drop box, and he decided to go and check. Lo and behold, all the DVDs I returned were there. I guess someone didn't clean out the drop box this morning, and they got "lost" in the shuffle.

What ticks me off is that he then told me, after the discs had been found, that "I never doubted you." Yes, you did, you freaking twit! You told me that it was "impossible" that I had returned them and that would indicate doubt, wouldn't it?

Seriously, I might just start renting from Blockbuster. And maybe I should go with Bell for all of my services. I can't believe that a company just continuously drops the ball ... every time. Rogers, you fail epically in customer service. Epic fail.

Feeling a Bit Better

Had a better day today, pretty much snowed in with the storm. (Do you think I was going to go anywhere when it was a blizzard outside? Oh no!) I waited for my aunt and grandma from Deseronto to show up, as they were apparently going to take me out to lunch, but that didn't happen. Probably due to the snow, I guess. I wonder if they even bothered to make the trip to Ottawa.

Got a Christmas card from my mother, so that kind of put me in a better mood. I wonder how many Christmas cards I'll get back from all of the ones that I sent out? Hmmm.

Also have booked a Sunday brunch with my Ottawa pals, James and Anita. So I'm certainly looking forward to that.

All in all, it was a pretty quiet day, though. Did my laundry. Big excitement there. (Note the slight touch of sarcasm.)