Mmm, waiting for Complimentary Coffee Maker Coffee to brew. Hopefully it won't be too horrible. Heh.

So I'm in Victoria. It's my first time here. Yesterday, after work, I caught a SkyTrain to a bus to a bus to a plane to a bus to a bus and got here around 9:00pm. I'm staying at the Bedford Regency downtown, right on Government Street and on Bastion Square.

Hotel good: It's a beautiful place. One of the oldest in Victoria, and with what claims to be one of the oldest English pubs in Canada in the basement. (I checked it out. It was really, really neat. Good food, good beers, and an interesting crowd of people.) Also, the room is very nice; it's more of a suite. I'm kind of surprised at how low the cost was, honestly; I feel like I'm getting off very cheap this weekend.

Hotel bad: It's a really loud neighbourhood and the walls are super-thin; I heard everything the others on the floor did, and got woken up several times. But oh well. I seem to not be too good at picking hotels.

The plane itself was an awesome experience. It's the sort of thing I'd really only do once--a flight like that is inefficient in many different ways--but it's worth doing once because seeing Vancouver, the Georgia Strait, and Vancouver Island from the air is definitely worthwhile, and because it gives a different taste of flying.

If the Nice Café is like eating breakfast at your friend's mom's house, then flying on Orca Airlines is like your friend's dad giving you a ride to Victoria. Except, um, in his Piper PA-31, which I never had any plane-owning friends. (On second thought, if your friend's mom runs the Nice Café and your friend's dad flies around in a Piper PA-31, could you introduce me to your friend, please? }:D)

No boarding passes, no security check, just some guy comes up, asks who's going to Victoria, and you follow him out onto the tarmac and climb on the plane. You fly over the San Juans, land at some sort of side parking lot of Victoria Airport, and the co-pilot points at a gate which leads out to the parking lot. (Not an airport terminal gate--a chain-link fence gate.)

So now I'm staring at my Victoria Regional Transit System Rider's Guide and Map. Current plan so far is to go to the Maritime History Museum, which is half a block away, and then back to the pub for weekend breakfast (it opens at 11). I think after that I'll head down to the Legislative Assembly campus and the Royal BC Museum. The transit comes in after that--I'm thinking about heading out to wander around the UVic campus or something; not entirely sure yet.

Oh, and the polar bear says hello:

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

Aki took me out with his wife, Reiko, and a bunch of their friends to get pyrogies. The Ukranian Orthodox Cathedral, which happens to be about six or seven blocks from my apartment, has a monthly Friday night dinner in the school gym. It’s a fundraiser, and it’s an interesting time.

We waited in line–out the door, down the street, almost to the corner–for an hour and a half. (I don’t think we would have waited that long if we’d known, but.) The food was tasty and everything was neat. I really enjoyed meeting their friends and getting to spend more time with them.

(Should you wish to try this yourself sometime, it’s at 154 E 10th Avenue, first Friday of every month, from 5-8. We got there at 6. I’m told if you get there at 5 or at 7:45 you’ll have much better luck.)

But it was also neat, afterwards, to be able to have them over to my place for a beer and conversation. It’s the fourth time this week I’ve done something that would count as entertaining guests, and it’s nice to have a place conducive to that. It’s also nice to see, as spring begins to bloom, my Vancouver life doing the same; I’ve mostly been dealing with settling in, learning my way around, and working all the time to really get out and meet people.

Honestly, I’m exhausted, and I feel like this entry had a lot less of a point than I meant it to. It seems a valuable piece of the record, however.

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

This sounds like one of the more awesome things in the world on TV. In today’s Globe and Mail, front page, below the fold, there’s an article called Arabic TV takes a turn for the verse (added bolding is mine):

ABU DHABI — In the Arab world’s answer to American Idol, the contestants carry prayer beads, the judges are tenured academics and the hostess wears a fuchsia abaya. It is Tuesday night and in a lavish theatre on the edge of Abu Dhabi, the live taping of Million’s Poet, the most popular prime-time show in the Middle East, is about to begin.

Contestants are gathered in a green room, praying for God to bless them with a strong sense of rhyme and metre. The Crown Prince of Bahrain is in the audience. So are several of the ruling sheik’s wives. Most of these poets come from poor Bedouin villages, where their ancient art of Nabati poetry – composed spontaneously and delivered in colloquial Arabic – was slowly dying. Tonight, they will perform for a live television audience and 70 million viewers, competing for a cash prize of one million dirhams ($275,000) and the greater goal of restoring their tribe’s lost pride.

“This show is getting more response than soccer. More than soccer. Can you imagine that?” said Mahdi al-Wayli, a 33-year-old contestant from the village of Najan, Saudi Arabia.

I did a little digging and found a clip on Youtube:

Oh, and one more quote:

On this night, Mr. al-Wayli advances to the next round with the most votes, reciting an ironic poem that mocks the Islamic ideal of tolerance in a region ravaged by foreign invasion and war.

It strikes him that the only greater irony is that somewhere in Saudi Arabia, his Bedouin tribe is cheering him on, connecting with their collective past on prime-time TV.

I would love to see an equivalent on North American television. And yet, somehow, I don’t see it coming any time soon . . .

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

Since I am supposedly tied into The Community, or something, I’ve been asked to post this:

My company needs a Gentoo admin/developer and a hardcore perl person, like, now. Really, last month. :)

If you can own the portage trees, the kernels, or the perls, and you’re interested in being imported to Vancouver, let me know. (If you’re not Canadian, it really helps if you have a bachelor’s degree in, well, anything, for visa fun times.) I’ll pass along resumés.

Benefits include relocation, awesome healthcare (the socialized stuff plus private add-ons for dental and vision), either a 6th or 9th floor space with big windows, and fun co-workers. Oh, and working in tech for a company that has no debt, has never had VC, and is profitable.

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

I had planned to do some more creative writing tonight and hopefully have something to post, but I got distracted by lots of other things. This looks like a political post, but it’s satire and (hopefully) humor, so don’t page down quite yet.

One of them was Obama’s rally in Wisconsin. So I’m half-listening to it, and I hear him tell me that decades of money and influence got us up and let us down. Uh…what?

Not quite:

“We know it takes more than one night – or even one election – to overcome decades of money and the influence; bitter partisanship and petty bickering that’s shut you out, let you down and told you to settle.”

So, to review, Obama is:

• never gonna shut us out
• never gonna let us down
• never gonna tell us all to settle

Uh, ladies and gentlemen, I think we all just got Rickrolled.

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

I don’t want this blog to be all politics all the time, but it is kind of that point in the news cycle right now. I’ll try to write about something else today or tomorrow.

Anyway! The bill to grant telecoms immunity for wiretapping just passed the Senate. I’m sure everyone can guess how I feel about that (rah rah free culture). Obama voted against cloture/to preserve the filibuster; McCain voted for cloture.

Clinton, however, didn’t vote. This seems like a critically important bill; granting past immunity for wiretapping is a huge deal, whether you’re for or against it. And had Clinton voted for or against it, I could respect that, because at least she would take a stand.

Not voting, and trying to have it both ways, is following the same kind of idiocy Kerry/Edwards did in 2004 and Gore/Lieberman did in 2000. It’s weak, it’s lame, and it doesn’t work. Why is the DNC so supportive of this concept? Take a stand, tell us what you think, and we’ll either agree with you or we won’t, but we’ll at least respect you for it.

Clinton (D-NY), Not Voting — what a coincidence; that’s how I feel about her, too!

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

I contacted a UK-based “responsible, fair trade” tour group this morning; they specialize in African tours, and I still want to go to Marrakech. Their (and my) ideal tour setup is, they help arrange hotels and such (language barrier is a problem here for me), they meet you at the airport, drop you off at the hotel, and off you go. (They can also arrange for local, bilingual guides; this is always a very good idea, especially in a medina city.) I basically suggested a very rough time frame and some rough ideas; at this point, I mostly just want a budget so I can be saving up for this. (And maybe work on my French some more; given my new location, it can’t hurt.)

Tuesday was, of course, Super Tuesday. Here in Canada, as well as in other countries, the Democrats had set up polling stations! One of them was at the Wolf and Hound, a pub over on West Broadway. Fish and I met up there around 6:30, along with a couple friends of his from UBC, before things really got going, which was good–it meant we had a table. The place was completely slammed. It was a good mix of other expats and curious Canadians; we ended up explaining the American primary process many a time, and we mostly got it right. (We were right more often than CNN, anyway, not that that’s saying much.) Mike showed up toward the end and got to experience part of the American process, heh.

The voting process: First, you wait in line, of course. I got there in between two bursts, so I was only in line for 15 minutes; by the time I was done, the line was out the door. There was an initial form you filled out in line that registered you as abroad (so that you couldn’t turn around and vote in your local caucus/primary), and then when you got up to the voting table, you were handed a form that included your current Canadian and previous American address, Congressional district if you knew it (WA-43!), and your vote. Then you fold it up, drop it in the box, and off you go.

The pub was far busier than they expected; they ran out of both Keith’s IPA and Okanagan 1516, which filled me with sadness. The food was good, though. And it was neat to be in a room full of people who not only participated, but were interested; the room cheered loudly for both Clinton and Obama (due in part to the four or so Clinton supporters being extremely loud).

That seems to be part of the expat experience, though: the people who show up and who participate are the ones who actually care enough to figure out how to do so. It’s neither easy nor automatic now, and the results seem to be better and more interesting for everyone.

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

This is the first of my 2008 media posts; like so many people, I’m trying to track what I consume and record what I thought about it. As always, what I’m currently reading is in one of the sidebars, so that’s sort of a preview of what’s to come. I’ve got a page in the sidebar that will index these posts, too.

In this issue: Fullmetal Alchemist; Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy; and the Golden Compass movie.

Before the fold, FMA: I watched the first disc of this last night, and probably won’t continue. Episodes 1 and 2 were both horrible and somewhat horrifying–and this is from someone who’s seen a lot of weird stuff in my time. Episodes 3 and 4 were kind of cute, but rife with cliché and poorly timed; they could have done some editing and compressed that into one episode. Instead the pacing was slow, and I kept getting bored and going off to other things. I was really disappointed; I’d heard such high praise for the whole series, and instead I was just bored and annoyed. Alas.

Canflix only has disc one, so I figured I’d give it a four-episode trial. Done with that.

My His Dark Materials commentary is below the fold because it contains spoilers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

My provincial insurance kicks in at the beginning of next month. Yay!

In other immigration-related joys, I went down to the Vancouver Police Department today to get fingerprinted on an FBI form so that they can run a criminal background check for immigration purposes. It’s not often you get to FedEx materials to the FBI.

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

A discussion with technoshaman on LiveJournal reminded me to put a license up on the blog content. Just like everything else I do, this content is Creative Commons, Share-Alike, non-commercial, attribution, 2.5 Canada. In short, you can do whatever you want with this content as long as it’s for non-commercial use and you acknowledge me as the creator; if you create something based off of something I do, release it under the same license.

It seems only fitting, if I’m going to be spending my days making the world safe and ready for open source and travelling around the continent advocating it, that I do what I say.

Speaking of Creative Commons stuff, for the last few years, I’ve hosted my photos on Flickr; during that time, Flickr got bought by Yahoo, and now Yahoo’s getting bought by Microsoft. I wasn’t thrilled with Yahoo, and I definitely don’t intend to give Microsoft money for photo-hosting, so I’ll be moving all of that content back to my own space over the next month or so.

Microsoft purchasing Yahoo just continues the trend: eventually, there will be two companies that matter in the Internet industry. Google and Microsoft is really not the good vs. evil battle it’s pitched to be, I’m afraid. I’m glad that my new job puts me in a position to help wage a battle to keep the web open, one application and one client at a time.

And in related thoughts, I submitted a proposal for a talk at OScon (O’Reilly’s open source convention, this July in Portland); there are some preliminary talks with a related open-source community about organizing more stuff there. It’s really my first opportunity to put these ideas into practice, and I’m excited to see how it goes.

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

It’s been almost a month since I moved to Vancouver. I’m writing this in between staring out the window at the sun shining on the harbour down below; it’s a sunny, but cold, day up here in the frozen North.

The strangest feeling so far with all the immigration was the first time I went back to Seattle. As I’d changed my ID over and whatnot, I had to check the “visitor” box to get back into the States, rather than the “resident” box; it’s the first time I’d ever listed myself as a visitor to my own birth country. (Marking myself as a resident heading back in to Canada was cool, though.) Otherwise, things have been mostly normal: I go to work, I go home, I wander around the city.

Work is good, so far. More or less running a department is definitely a strange new feeling, and it’s a role I’m still growing in to. For example, when my boss–the CEO–asks a question about something, I’m frequently being asked to make a decision, not just a recommendation. That’s definitely still settling in, but with it comes the confidence to actually do my job. My co-workers are really neat people; they’re almost all geeks, but they’re the kind of capable and socially functional geeks that are really fun to hang out with. (I’d like to put myself in that category, too.) Last night was a work poker night, and I came in second out of nine, which means I’ll probably be tested a lot harder in the future. The loss was in an honorable way and to my boss, no less, so there are worse ways to lose.

Vancouver! It’s beautiful, and I’m only just beginning to discover it. I could ramble about the amazing transit, the beauty of the harbour, the fun conversations I’ve had on buses. I can also lament that it’s been a month and I’ve seen so little of it. (I’ve spent barely any time south of Broadway, east of Commercial, or west of Granville. I haven’t been to Granville Island. I haven’t been on the SkyTrain past Broadway Station.) It’s also certainly not perfect; I’m reminded of that every day, as I work in one of the harsher parts of town, and so every morning I see all sorts of human misery. It’s sad, and I wish there was more I could do about it. But it’s definitely a Real City, with Real City awesome and Real City problems. 24-hour transit, but poverty and crime.

I’ve got this blog on an actual working server now, and crossposting to LiveJournal. Hopefully I’ll be better about using it.

Originally published at palimpsest. You can comment here or there.

A new year, a new country, a new job, a new chapter in life… it seems time for a new way of documenting it.

So, by way of introduction: hello. I’m a mid-20s tech employee/manager in Vancouver, working on an MLIS degree in Seattle, and doing all sorts of other random things. I’m likely to ramble about anything from books to music to bicycling to travel to costuming to photography to today’s random walk around my new home. I’m also a recent immigrant to Canada, so there’s sure to be plenty of surprises. (I have trouble spelling colour with a u and licence with a c.)

My goal in all of this is moving away somewhat from the concept of audience and moving toward a stronger sense of documenting my life. I’m at a really interesting point in it right now and I’d like to remember the little things along the way a bit better. So, perhaps more navel-gazing and less dinner-planning is in order.

It’s an interesting journey, so far; the fog’s too thick to really tell where I’m going, so hopefully it’s open sea and not the breakers.