Thinking Aloud

Oh summer, you are a time of such energy and adventure, relaxation and rest, rejuvenation and vitality. Here’s a little taste of what the summer has brought us so far.

Mt. Albert Edward

Jo and I had a week of holidays which we split up between doing a 3 day hike of Mt Albert Edward (PDF Map), a very HOT 3 day hike. That was in the midst of the heatwave mid 30’s down in the Comox Valley, estimates from the ranger made it sound like it was probably high 20s or low 30s where we were, sheesh, i’m not built for that kind of heat!!

The trip was great, but I really do feel like the heat made it twice as hard. Had it not been for a pond of snow melt 3/4 of the way up to the summit we wouldn’t have made it to the top.

But when we did make the summit we had a delicious lunch and enjoyed a spectacular view. One I’ll not soon forget, if only for how hard we had to work to get it.

Sunshine Coast

After that we headed over to the Sunshine Coast for a couple nights to visit with Joanna’s family at their cabin over there. Had a great time, it was so warm and with the cabin right on the water we were able to stay reasonably cool by getting two or three swims a day. We had one completely awesome night swim up in the bio-luminescence, which was completely magical. Not to mention the opportunity to go water skiing. See picture of the water skiing Joanna.

Hardwicke Island

Finally we headed up to Hardwicke Island to finish off the holiday. It was cooling off by that time, so it wasn’t REALLY hot up at Hardwicke. We had a great time up there, just laying low, reading books, going to the lake and eating great food. I had some fun fixing up a few things for the power system and really enjoyed having more than a weekend to spend being up there.

New York for Work

Finally, New York. The flight was kind of long, 5 hours after we made it from Vic to Seattle. It was pretty hot and humid the whole time that I was there. But enough about my petty complaints, this is NYC. I got to see a few of the sights, Central Park, Times Square, eat some New York Pizza, go dancing and listen to BisMarky in a NY Club, so there I can’t say there was NO time for having fun. That said, the lion share of the time was definitely spent at the Affiliate Summit East Conference, talking, talking, talking and meeting people to try and make connections for constant-content.com. I shouldn’t forget that we did have the opportunity to go to see the Yankee’s pplay the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium. Which was probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience, the Jays lost (that I fear isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime experience ) It was certainly a worthwhile trip business-wise, but I’m glad to get home. A bunch of us got colds (on the plane I think) which was a real bummer, so Friday and Saturday this week, I was pretty useless. Just trying to keep my head above my shoulders.

And the summers not quite over yet!

In an incredible handy coincident of wants it turns out the BC government wanted to get old crumby cars off the road at exactly the same time that I wanted to get rid of my old crumby 91 Honda Civic, massive door ding and all. And while the used car prices are already pretty low, the government was willing to give us $1300 towards an electric scooter through the scrapit program. We jumped through the hoops, we got the money and now I’m riding an electric scooter around town, and I just past 100km on the odometers. Yes, that’s right, 100.

How is it?

Well, there’s a few things that I like and few that I don’t. Starting with the good stuff. It’s incredibly quiet. I mean dead silent. Zipping along about the loudest thing I hear is everyone else. Which has the nice feeling of floating on the cloud and the detriment of scaring the bejeebers out of blind people, not that I’ve encountered that situation yet. Another obvious upside is the never needing gas part. It’s a novelty that hasn’t worn off yet.

Matt told me that once you get a bike you start getting the wave from other bikers. Turns out that in some cases motorcycle riders will condescend and offer the wave to even the lowly scooterist, I appreciate it, although I do feel a sense of other-ness as I noiselessly (and relatively slowly) glide by as they quickly and powerfully eat up the pavement. Speaking of speed, my speed record is 65km/hr. I’ve done it once, on a downhill, drafting behind a car. It’s not a fast scooter. 100 kms in I’m still waiting for my first road rage incident as a motorist speeds by exclaiming how the slowness of my ride makes him want to run me down. Hopefully, sounder minds prevail.

The Downsides

On the downside, the range is pretty limited. While I’ve yet to actually reach the heart stopping moment where the batteries are exhausted and the scooter slows to a stop on some major thoroughfare, I do dread its arrival. The other downside is the size and weight of the scooter. It’s heavy, those batteries are very heavy and just shuffling the scooter around can be a bit of challenge. And it turns out that the scooter itself is a bit small for someone who is 6′3″. It’s especially noticeable with the storage compartment bolted on the back. I suppose you could say that it lends a feeling of humility to the rider to be somewhat cramped on the bike, but I would have paid a little extra to get a slightly longer wheelbase and a couple more inches of knee-room.

The Helmet

Last but not least, there’s the helmet. Yeah, that’s right it looks a lot like power ranger without the tinted shield. Do all helmets look this ridiculous? Actually, it’s very comfortable and seeing as how it came with the bike. I’m not complaining, we’ll see how it goes over when I hit my first scooter meet up. I’ve seen them in the past, line ups of Vespa’s at Ska Fest and other in town music events. I’m not convinced they’ll take me seriously, being electric and all.

Six months ago I started a new job at RevenueWire.  A new employer and a new chance to get my hands dirty (if you cansay that while working for a company that does all of its work at a computer keyboard.  After working at the university and spending a lot of time up to my elbows in legal work I was ready for something that provided a little more opportunity to own a project and carry it through to completion.  So it’s time for a reflection.  Six months in to working for an affiliate network specializing in downloadable security products and what do I have to show for it.

Well, there has been a lot of learning going on.  I can say that.  Despite being a technical person, learning about affiliate marketing has been a consuming task.  And being as it is a changing beast I’ll certainly be learning about it for the next six months as well.  It really has occurred to me that being an affiliate marketer means being someone who understands both the techniques of marketing and also the technical aspects of the being an online publisher as well.

One of the projects which I have been most involved in is working on www.constant-content.com a site that draws together Freelance Writers and people seeking well-written unique and unindexed content for their websites.  The site has a great community around it, they seem to be keen on the changes that we’re bringing to the site.  We’re starting to build momentum and I think it’s on its way to becoming THE place to purchase articles online

All in all it’s been great to be able to get into something new and even though climbing through yet another learning curve isn’t the easiest thing, I’m pleased to be on this path. For now…

After at least 4 years of faithful service and minimal repairs, Joanna and I decided that it was time for our 91 Honda Civic, DX 1.5 liter to find a final resting place.  This car has been great.  A simple car with a small engine it has been as gas mizerly as any economically sensitive student could want.  When I first bought the car, it was already in tough shape, but it turns out it was a pretty tough car as I took surprisingly little pains to maintain it and it performed admirably.  But it was in a pretty sorry state when I dropped it off at the wrecker yesterday.  bald tires (one of which had a nail in it), dinged up door that I gave it backing into Dean’s Pathfinder out of the Shelley St. townhouse., the hood was still peeling paint, the muffler system was starting to rot away, brakes were squeaking occasionally and the inside was starting to smell a little dank and moist.  In spite of that Matt and I took the Honda out on a surfing trip this past Saturday as a sort of swam song and once again the vehicle did its job, getting us to Bear Beach and back safely.

We were getting rid of the car through the scrapit.ca program, which is a provincially funded program to get more fuel efficient cars on the road.  The rebate that they will give you on a new car is related to the reduction in CO2 that you will create by driving a newer car.  So, for the maximum rebate you need to buy a vehicle that will effectively reduce your CO2 output by 4 tonnes over 3 years.  As a testament, to how mizerly the Honda Civic after much research we determined that for the maximum rebate our only choice was a Toyota Prius (Hybrid, as if there was any other kind!).  It’s 2008 and my old very average ‘91 Honda is still uses less fuel than today’s average car, even amongst the new Civic’s and other compact cars the fuel savings/CO2 savings are minimal.  I find that a little dissappointing. I believe that car manufacturers now get more power out of the same amount of fuel, but I just can hardly believe that 1991 was the pinnacle of fuel efficiency.

We’re a one car family now.  However, in order to get our rebate from the scrapit.ca program we needed to get something new.  And they let you use the rebate for a bike, bus pass, or… electric scooter.  So, we’re looking long and hard at the electric scooter.  I’ve got my eye on the EVT-168, which will do up to 60 km/h  and claims to have a range of around 40km. which should be sufficient for trips to the grocery store and church.  We’re hoping to test drive one this weekend!

Dear 91 Honda Civic, DX 1.5 liter,

You are a great car, you almost never let us down.
But your time has come, ashes to ashes, back to the ground
You were peppy, economical and carried the load.
Thank you for carrying us down many a road.

Good bye,
Jeff and Joanna

Joanna and I decided it was a good day for heading to the beach on Sunday.  And it was nice and warm, sunny, perfect.  Usually, this means a trip out to Thetis Lake to revel with themasses in a nice cool, clean lake.  But on Sunday we decided to slum it and stayed in Esquimalt.

Staying close to home meant swimming in the Gorge, I’ve been meaning to do that for what seems like years (well maybe just year).  Needless to say I’ve been wanting to do, because:

1. Nobody swimms in the Gorge, but I can’t think of a reason why not
2. The Gorge is somewhat an estuary which means lots of life
3. There is a rapid where the Gorge narrows and I dream of having my personal free wakeboarding/surfing site as the tide goes in and out.

I mentioned that I wanted to swim in the Gorge to one of my workmates and as a true born and bred Victorian (they’re a rare breed) he told me he would never swim in the Gorge as it far too dirty.

But I did it, and… it was fine.  Lots of eel grass, not terribly warm (but not terribly cold).  I swam through the rapids, and snorkelled along the shore.  And while the place isn’t exactly teeming with life, there was plenty of filter feeders (oysters, rock scallops, clams, etc) doing there thing, and a few small fishes.

On any snorkelling adventure I hope and pray for loot and snorkelling in the Gorge was a treat beyond compare (did I metion nobody swims in the Gorge?!).  It was like visiting Sports Traders.  10+ golf balls, 1 lacrosee ball, 1 Wiffle Ball, one golf tee, a bottle of beer and my pride and joy 1 ten pin bowling ball.  I was really proud of the bowling ball.  I left it at the bottom of a garbage can.  The poor city worker who has to empty that can.  I hope he brought his “a” game to work when he tries to lift that grabage bag.

One of the fun/interesting things that I have had the chance to do over the past couple years is to be involved with the Canadian Centre for Ocean Gliders.  It’s a group that uses unmanned autonomous vehilces to take scientific measurements of water data and then use that data to see what can be learned about the ever changing nature of the ocean.

Dean, Matt and I had all have had a turn at one time or another deploying and watchingthe glider travel around Saanich Inlet and.  Now that both Dean and Matt have moved away from the Victoria area, I’m the local expert.  So, I’ve agreed to spread myself a little thinner and help deploy this very cool vehicle for another mission.   We’rehoping to launch the glider int he first couple weeks of September.  If you’re interested I’ll be setting the tracking page on the Gliders site to follow the gliders progress.

I received this from Joanna in my email.  And tonight it was cloudy.  I even put it into my calendar.  Guess now I’ll never see Mars as big as the moon…

*Two moons on 27 August*

*27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for…*

Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting in August. It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will culminate on Aug. 27th when Mars comes within 34.65M miles of earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27th 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.

Share this with your friends as NO ONE ALIVE TODAY will ever see it again.

It has been getting ever clearer to me as people start to ask me for my opinion and what my team has been doing this week, that I have arrived in middle management.  Hmm… So now the question become how to be a good middle manager.  I read a few things like Joel Spolsky’s thoughts on middle management. Which gives me some hope that yes there is a good reason to have people doing middle management.  So now the issue is just how to do it well.

One of the big issues that I think anyone in management faces is trust.  This is proboably doubly so if your in middle management.  Because now you not only have to have people that you can trust to do good work (which thankfully it seems that I do) but you also have to be able to explain to anyone else how your method of management works and does indeed get the most out of people.

To be honest my experience of managers is that they have had a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards managing me and consequently I think I’ve been a fair bit less productive than I couldhave been otherwise.  So, somewhere between micro-managing and “I don’t care what you do just don’t bug me” seems to be the happy medium that I’m looking for.

The other new aspect of this is the planning, and strategic business development side of things.  This is both exciting and somewhat daunting.  This is the part where we choose a direction and hope like heck that when we reach the next measuring point that it worked and we’re making more money or at least making the same money.  And here my true colors show.  Much as I’d like to be a risk taking business adventurer, I lean towards conservativism, which I am pretty certain in the web world leads to business death.

So, here’s to growing into something new.  Hopefully, Ths doesn’t make me really annoying.

Congratulations to Lindsay and Mike Erez (or Benderez, if you will) on their beautiful wedding yesterday.  I’ve always wanted to be at a wedding where they broke a glass when they said the vows.  It was great!  not quite as loud as I thought it might be.  But there was definitely the satisfying smash as Mike’s foot came down.

And that was just the beginning of a great evening of feasting and dancing.

StumbleUpon
I didn’t really now what to expect when I started using StumbleUpon.  “Another social bookmarking site” I thought, will this be any more useful/interesting than del.icio.us?  or digg? 

Why do I find myself actually using StumbleUpon while my digg.com and del.icio.us accounts die a slow death? 

1. It’s like channel surfing the internet.  One thing about the internet, you’ll only find something if you’re looking for it.  StumbleUpon fills that need to kill time in a mostly passive way.  What do you want to look at or read about?  Who cares!  Just hit the stumble button and see what you get!
2. It’s not a competition – Digg I’m sorry, but I feel like I’m competing when I digg something, will my digg bring something to the front page will it not.  I don’t think I want to care.  I’m just going to give it the thumbs up to let the rest of the stumbling world know this doesn’t suck.  It might not be new news, it might not even be an article.
3. The toolbar.  Ok, I installed the toolbar, generally I hate toolbars in my browser.  They clutter everything up, rob you of screen space, but there’s two thing I like about this toolbar.  It doesn’t take me to the StumbleUpon website, which I don’t really want to go to anyways. And it has a simple thumbs up button, no competitions just a trail of thumbs ups to guide the next soul in search of something interesting.

So for those of you who like me, occasionally just want to be entertained.  Try StumbleUpon see if you like it, I seem to.

For those looking to find the strengths of each of these services I would say:
Digg is more like News
Del.icio.us is more like Bookmarks
StumbleUpon is more like A tour guide for the internet.

It seems that in my world where I no longer have a TV and my social networking energy is limited, having a guide, is kind of nice.  

Tags: Flock, stumbleupon, digg, del.icio.us, improvements