TB or not TB

The whole fractured quote (which I learned from my mother many years ago*) goes:

TB or not TB
That is Congestion
Consumption be Done About It?
Of Cough, of Cough,
but it’ll take a Lung Lung Time.

I’m beginning to think that February was named after some God of illness or disease, rather than the Latin term februum, which means purification, via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 in the old Roman calendar. (via Wikipedia)

After Northern Voice, I was looking forward to a quiet Sunday, and around noon Pam and I walked down to Granville Market and picked up a bunch of vegetables. About an hour after we returned, I started feeling weak and dizzy. Then I got chills. By nightfall, I was running a high fever, and awoke several times during the night to pray to the porcelain god. Wonderful.

It’s now Tuesday, and this flu has now become a low-grade fever, aches and nasty cough. I’ve been through 1 bottle of Tylenol as well as 3-4 boxes of tissues, but I’m hoping to be back at work tomorrow and picking up where I left off last week. So the score is: Around the first week of the month, I brought in a cold (which got me sick for nearly a week), which Pam caught and became ‘Flu-like symptoms’ for her, which got passed back to me and became full-blown flu. I hope she doesn’t catch it back from me again, because this beastie apparently keeps growing in strength each time it passes from one to the other.

We’re both just sick of being sick; nearly a whole month has gone by where either one or both of us was either coughing our lungs out or shivering under the blankets.

So What about Northern Voice?
My impression was that this year, both Moose Camp (the free-form first day of Northern Voice on Friday) and the more formal Saturday sessions were more geared toward some of the less technological sides of blogging (community-building, social change through blogging) as well as some of the other other media connected to blogging (Podcasting, photos for the web, video).

Unlike last year, this wasn’t as much about all of the startups and developers who were working in the Web 2.0 space. It seemed pretty clear that for an individual blog, a lot of people (including myself) swore by Wordpress, but for larger multi-blog sites (like Urban Vancouver) Drupal seems to be the software of choice. Mind you, we do have a significant local Drupal development house here in Bryght, but at this conference, the closest we came to a technology fracas was when two educational developers squared off about the advantages of each of those platforms. There was an excellent session by Kris Krug, a local photographer and an organizer of the event, about preparing photos for the web (and I was delighted to learn that I make the same adjustments in iPhoto that he does, albeit in a different order). While I was intrigued with Nancy White’s “Holding Paradox in the Palm of your Hand”, I must confess that I didn’t understand a word of her session, what with ‘control versus emergence’ and ‘applying control panel sliders to online versus offline multiple memberships’…As fellow blogger Isabella Mori (who did understand it, and whose husband is probably in my camp) aptly put it “For you, she might as well have been speaking in Chinese.” Yes, that was it.

Also connected with the event, was Tod Maffin’s gracious offer of a tour of the local CBC studios after dinner on Friday night. A half-dozen or so of us made our way through the CBC’s very ‘lived-in’ looking facilities, and I was particularly pleased to get a moment or two to hear the CBC Orchestra rehearsing Darius Milhaud’s Suite Provençale in the lowest underground floor, deep under the city of Vancouver.

I did get some good knowledge and handy tips from the sessions, and the sessions are all available via podcast at http://northernvoice.podcastspot.com/. Maybe I’ll try and listen to some of the more techie sessions to see if I can still get my geek fix from the event, albeit belated.

*That fractured Shakespeare was apparently a Public Service Announcement regarding Tuberculosis. I noticed with amusement that it also shows up as part of the schtick by Woody Allen in the first sketch of “Everything you wanted to know about Sex” of 1972

Dinner and a Show & Last Minute Walking Directions

I attended a really nice kick-off dinner for Northern Voice tonight at the Heritage Hall on Main at 15th Avenue (Pasta, Salmon, roasted potatoes, fennel and celery root, salad and chocolate cake) as well as a wonderfully warm slide show by Lee Lefever, who along with his wife has truly traveled to the far reaches of the world. See www.theworldisnotflat.com to get a taste of their planetary wanderings.

Now I’m getting ready for another Information Fire Hose.

But wait: Anyone who is wondering where to walk on the UBC campus to the Forest Science Services building where the event will be held from the Campus Bus Stops should check out John Bollwitt’s excellent walking map. Thanks John, and I’ll see you there tomorrow!

In Sickness and in Health & My Employment Situation

The mountains were really amazing today, with a snow-line that was as precisely drawn as any elevation curve on a topographic map. I was lucky enough to be near the northern tip of downtown near the Convention Center so that I could capture something. The view in the morning from our balcony was spectacular.

Pam has had a really bad cold for about three days now. Actually, it’s a bit worse than a bad cold, but not as bad as the flu: according to the doctor she saw today, it’s ‘Flu-like Symptoms’ (which reminds me of that ridiculous phrase: ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction-Related Activities’ that was the reason-of-the-week that the US was invading Iraq). She’s still coughing a bit on this third day, but her temperature has returned to something more approaching normal, and she’s up and out of bed. We were relieved that it wasn’t pneumonia, which is something that she had many years ago (and laid her up for nearly a month). I’ve been cooking and cleaning and doing most of the running of the house, but she’s nearly back to normal and hopes to return to her job by the end of the week.

This is very unusual; I’m the one who gets sick more often (although I’d say I’m pretty much average; Pam begs to differ). I did have a cold a few weeks ago and it was very bad, making me miserable for the first week. I’m hoping that I don’t catch whatever she has (especially if it’s not the same bug I fought off ), especially with the 3rd Annual Northern Voice Blogging Conference coming up this weekend (actually, starting Thursday night, if you count the kick-off dinner).

This year I have not one but two blogs to flog. (Did I actually write that? I should take my own temperature.) There’s this one, and a new blog that I’ve just started. I’ve decided to separate my writing on personal matters from professional issues — User Interface, Information Architecture, Design, and all of the other subjects that fall under the broad moniker of ‘User Experience’. Rather than give it a clever name, I’ve decided to take the opposite approach. The name of the blog is drucker.ca . The URL is, well, what you’d expect.

Actually, for awhile I did write a blog about User Interface issues when I had the consulting company called The Kendall Group, but back then I didn’t know much about writing a good blog, generating traffic or even filtering out Comment SPAM. (It ran on TypePad, which I was only beginning to learn). I stopped writing in it right when I left the US, and now I’ve decided that it’s time to resume something like it. Especially when looking for work.

Yes, that’s right, although I’m not unemployed per se, I am down to part-time at my previous employer, and am looking for a company that needs a full-time UI Architect, or perhaps a company that needs one in a consulting capacity, at least for the time being. There just wasn’t enough work at my employer for someone who does what I do (although I still am needed from time to time) on a full-time basis.

So I have my new business cards, my new URL and new blog, and I’m completely legally able to work in Canada (or the US, although for there, it would have to be via long-distance and/or telecommuting). If Northern Voice doesn’t turn up something interesting, the Massive Technology Show returns in a few short weeks, and that’s what lead not only to my first job here in Vancouver, but also our beautiful condo here that looks northward toward those phenomenal mountains. I have high hopes for either of these networking opportunities to bear some fruit.

Our Lunch with Wanda

Since it was Saturday and the sun was out (a rare combination if there ever was on in Vancouver in Winter), we took a walk, and ended up on Granville Street, up near Meinhardt’s. We had met with someone earlier and didn’t have lunch, so we were a little hungry. We stopped and went into the narrow little restaurant that is run by Meinhardts called ‘Picnic’, which offers some of their salads, sandwiches and quiches from a glass case at the front, and has seating in the form of 3 or 4 tables for two and a large, marble-topped picnic-style table that runs roughly half the length of the room. We took our seats, the two of us next to each other on the bench, and were just about to dig into a lunch of Endive Salad, Chicken Sausage roll (in my case) and Yam salad, when Pam’s eyes go wide and her jaw drops. Across from us, about to sit down right in front of Pam, is Nancy Robertson, who is the woman who plays “Wanda” in the Canadian TV sitcom “Corner Gas”. I knew that Ms. Robertson and her husband (and creator of the show), Brent Butt, were both Vancouver residents and lived nearby, but this was the first time we’d ever run into any of the cast.

It’s important to note that Pam is a Corner Gas Fan. Actually, she’s more than a fan. She’s a big fan. As in not ever missing an episode (and thank goodness for the TiVo, we don’t have to rush home to catch it when it’s on).

After letting Nancy eat her lunch and read her Georgia Straight, Pam couldn’t hold back any longer and said what an honour it was to meet her. We chatted for a little while, and Nancy was very gracious, and hopefully not too put upon. We noted that it was a nice thing for her to be able to get a vacation, and she related the shooting schedule (4 1/2 months) in Saskatchewan, where the series takes place. She told us that the series was being released in the US this coming September, and Australia as well. I’m hoping it’s a hit in the US, partly because it will be nice to see Canadian characters on American TV who are not Mounties or the McKenzie Brothers .

After we said goodbye and headed out for other errands, I asked Pam if this made her day or perhaps her week? She just grinned from ear to ear.

A Bakery Renovation

At Granville Island, you don’t usually see one of the vendors rebuilding their stalls (or booths, or whatever it is they call their space). It’s especially unusual to see one of the more equipment-intensive establishments doing big changes, like the 2 fish vendors, the dairy stall, the 2 Italian food vendors, or one of the 2 confectioners. So it was pretty shocking to see Stuart’s Bakery completely disassembled and what looked like years of crumbs that had fallen between the pastry cases and other bits of the floor behind yellow tape and traffic cones.

I asked one of the workmen if the bakery had gone out of business or if this was just a renovation and he anxiously assured me that Stuart’s was doing just fine, and don’t worry, they’ll be back after the work is done.

Of the three bakeries at Granville Island, I like each for something different: Terra Breads is the nearly legendary artisanal bread shop that boasts large sourdough bagettes and incredible blueberry bread. Just outside the market forming a backdrop to the whimsically named ‘Triangle Square’, “La Baguette et L’Echalote” is where I like to get croissants and the occasional half-baked loaf to finish at the oven at home. Stuart’s was where I preferred to get staple breads; a good, dense white bread loaf or raisin bread, some superb fresh homemade pitas, and every once in a while, a piece of pastry or pie. It was the most old fashioned of the three and despite the fact that it was a little dowdy, it nevertheless frequently had a line (although rarely as long as the ones at Terra Breads). Again, despite the fact that I’m speaking of it in the past tense, Stuart’s is not gone; It’s just being redone. I will be very surprised if the new incarnation changes anything but the displays and signage. I’m sure that there are a few things that never change, and probably shouldn’t.