Things to Do When You are Between Jobs

It’s been a lit­tle over a week before my last day at IBM. I was frankly blown away by the good-bye that I got from cowork­ers that Fri­day. We all went out to a Thai feast in Burn­aby (and by Thai feast, I mean it just kept com­ing and com­ing until we started gig­gling as each dish was brought to the table; Pad Thai? Sure, Crispy Fish with sauce? Why not!? More Stir-Fried Veg­eta­bles? Of course!)

I packed up my desk (I had spent over a week mov­ing books and toys from it to home in half a dozen trips). It was a strange time, with my time alloted to the project over, and work still need­ing to be done the project I’ve been work­ing on. I hope that I haven’t left too much hang­ing; Some of it was depen­dent on details of fea­tures that had not been defined yet, but where I had to leave wire­frames (which are essen­tially dia­grams of how screens should look and what should be on them and where) par­tially fin­ished, I tried to make it clear how they could be com­pleted. I said many good-byes to friends and col­leagues, and drove home from Burn­aby, a lit­tle dazed (hey, it was prob­a­bly all that food at lunch).

On Sat­ur­day, we decided to play tourist all over again. We went to the open house of CityTV and took a sta­tion tour, meet­ing most of the crew of Break­fast Tele­vi­sion (which I must con­fess, we’re not reg­u­lar view­ers of, but it was fun, nev­er­the­less). I won a CityTV Umbrella, and we got some Cold Stone Cream­ery Ice Cream at the end of the tour. I like the sta­tion; It’s small and has a lot of per­son­al­ity, and they run Jeop­ardy each evening (and also carry Reaper, which is a lot of fun and another series filmed here).

Sat­ur­day Night, I went to the ticket office at the Orpheum just before the Sym­phony Con­cert, and got a last-minute seat for the con­cert (only $15!). I heard the VSO play one of my favourite pieces, Prokofiev’s Third Sym­phony. I love it because it’s mostly loud and fast, and almost never lets up. In par­tic­u­lar, the third move­ment is some of the wildest and most vivid music that Prokofiev ever wrote, and much of the drama of the piece is due to the fact that it’s taken from his opera ‘The Flam­ing Angel’, which chron­i­cles a young nun’s psy­chotic break­down and pur­suit of a man she believes is an angel, com­plete with an on-stage exor­cism and chase through the streets. Not your usual opera fare, and cer­tainly not your usual Sym­phony. The orches­tra did a fine job, but I sus­pect that it was too racy for the crowd, who didn’t give it as much of a stand­ing ova­tion as they did for the Tchaikovsky Piano Con­certo in the first half. Ah, when will they stop doing this?! Once again, peo­ple, when every per­for­mance gets a stand­ing ova­tion, it ceases to mean anything!

The rest of the week­end was a bit qui­eter, but things picked up again today, with a job inter­view. I’m not going to write more about that until things set­tle down either way. Pam also has a lead on a con­tract, so it’s prob­a­ble that the free time between engage­ments for both of us is prob­a­bly going to come to an end soon.

Tomor­row evening is a spe­cial SIGCHI event: the film designer Syd Mead (who was respon­si­ble for the rev­o­lu­tion­ary sets and scenery of Blade Run­ner) will be in town speak­ing, fol­lowed by a screen­ing of the final cut of the movie.

What Americans Know About Canada

Last night, I couldn’t help miss­ing all of the swipes that the Republican’s took at Canada’s Health Care sys­tem dur­ing their tele­vised debate. I remem­ber either John McCain or Rudolph Giu­liani mak­ing a stu­pid joke that if the US decided to adopt Social­ized Med­i­cine, Cana­di­ans wouldn’t have any­where to go for health care. Yeah, right; Believe what you want to believe, Mr. McCain and Giu­liani. It was amaz­ing how many times that all of the Repub­li­can can­di­dates all repeated the phrase: ‘The US Health Care Sys­tem is the best in the world.”, as if say­ing so would make it true.

When I men­tioned to my par­ents, back in Bal­ti­more, the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­ity of a Pres­i­dent Huck­abee, my mother said “If that hap­pens, then we’ll be join­ing you.” Really? If I were them, I’d be more seri­ous about that, con­sid­er­ing this clas­sic clip from the CBC’s This Hour has 22 Min­utes in 2001, where Rick Mer­cer shows just how gullible they (includ­ing Gov­er­nor Huck­abee) can be in Arkansas:

I’ve writ­ten before about the stag­ger­ing lack of knowl­edge about the rest of the world on the part of Amer­i­cans, but I would hope that any poten­tial future Pres­i­dent would know more about Canada than this. Per­haps I should be wor­ried if there will there be enough room for the Amer­i­cans flee­ing north to join us if Mike Huck­abee, a man who might be just as unin­formed as George W. WPIUSH, becomes President.

A follow-up on this, thanks to West End Bound: An Arti­cle in today’s Van­cou­ver Sun:
Cana­dian health care bet­ter and cheaper than U.S., says research If you think that this source might be not entirely neu­tral, bear in mind that they are report­ing on a British study, not a Cana­dian one.

Filmed In Front of a Live Audience

Before my work­ing week­end, Pam and I were lucky enough to be able attend an event that was, at least as the come­dian Simon Rakoff and ‘Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies’ described, the first time some­thing like this had hap­pened in 10 years in the Van­cou­ver area: the film­ing of a Sit­com pilot in front of a live stu­dio audience.

Because of an email from the CBC that I answered (I don’t know how I ended up get­ting it; prob­a­bly from hav­ing signed up at the CBC web site at some point), at about 5:15 on Fri­day, Pam and I found our­selves shiv­er­ing in line at twi­light in front of what looked like a non­de­script busi­ness office, at the cor­ner of First Avenue and Gilmore Avenue in Burn­aby. We had both just come from work nearby, so we were for­tu­nate that it was easy to get to. The con­ces­sion truck was feed­ing chili to the actors and crew (and it smelled good), but soon we were ush­ered in to a messy col­lec­tion of sets, cam­eras, and bleach­ers inside. After a few min­utes, Mr. Rakoff handed out tick­ets for a bunch of draw­ings for door prizes that would go on as the evening’s film­ing pro­gressed, and explained our duties for the evening. “Peo­ple watch­ing TV aren’t too smart, he said, “so we want you to help out, and laugh so you can show them where the jokes are. Your laugh­ter is an impor­tant part of the process of bring­ing this show to life.” OK. Bring on the jokes. But first, the setup.

The name of the show was ‘All the Com­forts’. That much we knew already. Here’s the gist of the sit­com that we were to see, cre­ated for us the first time that evening:

The Bunion fam­ily is headed by Mac and Brenda, who, in their retire­ment years, are hop­ing to take off with their new motor home to cel­e­brate their golden years alone together. Unfor­tu­nately, their plans are thwarted by their daugh­ter Susie, a ditzy 20-something who has never left the nest, and the recent return of their always opti­mistic and timid but ne’er do well son, his pretty but abra­sive wife and their 2 kids (2 typ­i­cal pre­co­cious and cute sit­com chil­dren). Mac is a grouchy rubber-faced Jackie Glea­son type who just wants to be left alone to enjoy his massager/recliner, his sand­wich, TV and bot­tle of Snap­ple in peace. Soli­tude and space is to not be found. Through a series of phys­i­cal gags, jokes involv­ing aging and child-rearing, the cranky old guy even­tu­ally apol­o­gizes for yelling at his grand-kids and may even admit that there are advan­tages to hav­ing them around (one of them dis­cov­ers and turns on the ‘auto adjust’ but­ton on his hi-tech chair, end­ing his 4-year quest to find ‘the per­fect set­ting’). While they aren’t a per­fect happy fam­ily, they may just make it, although Mac will still be thrilled the day that all of his kids finally do leave, and he and his wife can hit the road together.

Before I get into any crit­i­cal appre­ci­a­tion, it was just kind of fun to see how you shoot a sit­com. This was a four cam­era show, with direc­tor call­ing cuts and cam­era angles, 3 dif­fer­ent sets (includ­ing the motor home), and a large crew, includ­ing a stage direc­tor, cam­era­men, sound man, grips, key grip, clap­per, a bunch of writ­ers doing rewrites of jokes down to the last moment, and bunch of other peo­ple (who I couldn’t tell what they did). This was as close as we’ve got­ten to the film­ing of a real TV show, and it was a great edu­ca­tion about how this is done these days.

As for ‘All the Com­forts’, it sounds like pretty typ­i­cal sit­com fare, doesn’t it? On this evening, what the writ­ing of the pilot lacked, the actors made up for in pro­fes­sion­al­ism and energy. They made the mate­r­ial far fun­nier than it deserved to be, but will it be enough for this pilot to catch on? That’s hard to say. The theme of the return of kids liv­ing with their par­ents far into their 30’s is some­thing that many of us are uncom­fort­able with, to be sure. It used to be a stigma, but is becom­ing so wide­spread that it is clearly going to have to be re-evaluated. Dis­com­fort often leads to humour, so this might have a chance. On the other hand, if it just becomes another col­lec­tion of sit­com gags…

• Mac attempts to return a stolen xxx before dis­cov­ery of the theft … Hilar­ity ensues.
• Susie is given the posi­tion of respon­si­bil­ity she can’t han­dle … Hilar­ity ensues.
• Brenda, tries to change her phys­i­cal appear­ance through an xxx … Hilar­ity ensues.

I hope that they reach for plots and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment that’s bet­ter than these stock sit­u­a­tions. Pam and I have both become real fans of Cor­ner Gas, a CBC Sit­com that con­sis­tently pro­vides a big laugh at least once in an episode. I sus­pect that it’s the writ­ing staff, although that sit­com also has very good act­ing. So far, ‘All the Com­forts’ is no Cor­ner Gas, but per­haps it could be. I’m hop­ing it does, because to have been in the audi­ence at the pilot could be a bit of his­tory, if it is a hit.

The Puppet Speaks for Me

I know I’ve blogged in the past about this, but here’s more Cana­dian iPhone Angst.

It’s so frus­trat­ing that Europe is going to buy this before we do. Heck, at this rate, Botswana, East Timor and (yes, iiiss nii­ice!) Kaza­khstan will get the iPhone before we do. Or so it feels that way when taunted this way.

By the way, Apple is not the only one taunt­ing us. I keep get­ting mes­sages on the TiVo about how we can down­load free pilots for all of the new shows on the US Net­works with the Ama­zon ‘Unboxed’ fea­ture on our TiVo. Except when I get to the screen to do the down­load, I get an error mes­sage com­plain­ing that I don’t have a US billing address, so for­get it. Sim­i­larly, if I go to nbc.com (who I won’t even dig­nify with a link), where I’m sup­posed to be able to see pre­vi­ous episodes of shows like “30 Rock” or “Heroes”, they actu­ally check my IP address and block me from see­ing the video, even though we do, in fact get the NBC net­work here:

Hey, these are old episodes, not even the new stuff. Why don’t they just come out and tell me to go and bit­torent the stuff myself. Oh right, I for­got; that would be illegal.

In the words of the pup­pet frog: “FIX IT!”

Road Trip to Springfield (sort of)

“OK, we’ve got a new car. I know it’s mainly to make the com­mutes to our jobs a lit­tle ear­lier and gas is expen­sive, but whad­dayasay we take a lit­tle drive?”

“Great idea! Where shall we go?”

“Well, we’re in Beau­ti­ful British Colum­bia, sur­rounded by moun­tains, beaches and parks. We could drive to the Ferry and take a trip to the islands. Or we could take a trip to the south of the city to the berry fields and pick some logan­ber­ries or blueberries.”

“Um, it’s rain­ing. Pretty hard, too.”

“Drat.”

“I know, let’s take a trip to the only Kwik-E-Mart in Canada!”

And with that, we packed our bags with cam­eras and were on our way.

The Kwik-E-Mart, for those who aren’t famil­iar with this bit of pop cul­ture, is the fic­tional Con­ve­nience Store chain in the Simp­sons TV Series (now in it’s 18^th sea­son). The store in the show is run by Apu Nahas­apeemapetilon (No one can ever pro­nounce his last name, so he just goes by Apu). In ‘the real world’, the 7/11 chain has picked stores sprin­kled through­out North Amer­ica and redec­o­rated them, in many cases renam­ing their own prod­ucts, so that they closely resem­ble the fic­tional stores. It’s part of a tie-in with The Simp­sons Movie, which is due to open in the­atres in 6 days. The result is…a 7/11 with some fun, often hilar­i­ous decor and sig­nage, and a steady stream of smil­ing peo­ple, either cus­tomers or like us, tourists. It’s truly, mar­ket­ing genius. On the Daily Show with Jon Stew­art, Matt Groen­ing, the cre­ator of The Simp­sons men­tioned that the Kwik-E-Mart trans­formed 7/11s were the first time he’d ever seen ‘happy peo­ple’ in those stores. Our Kwik-E-Mart is in Port Coquit­lam, a sub­urb to the east of Van­cou­ver. It was a bit of a drive, but we did some shop­ping on the way back, and gen­er­ally enjoyed our new free­dom. The traf­fic, on the other hand, I could have done with­out. Doh!