I just saw on the Inquisitor website this tattoo of the Twitter Fail Whale. Anyone that uses Twitter knows that it goes down once in a while (most days anyway) but Twitter is a great nad fun way to keep up with lots of people using 140 character messages forwarded to all that follow you while you get hte messages from anyone that you follow…in real time.

Well I really like Twitter now but next year maybe not, in 10 years I suspect for sure Twitter will just be a faint memory for me.

This all goes back to this tattoo. Years ago I thought it would be cool to get my hotmail address tattooed to my shoulder. Fortunately for me I tend to take the lazy way out and now I know that I am much to flaky to take the responsibility to get a tattoo.

That is exactly what this guy or girl shoud have thought before laying down the bucks for a new tat.

Since my daughter was really young I have taught not to trust the man, told her not to let the man keep you down and yo also question authority.

Now that she is 8 I am a little worried that she is going to start thinking that I am the man and will not trust me.

Fight the power!

I know that as adults we are supposed to watch movies like Shrek or Monsters Inc and say that they are great quality and entertaining to everyone but I am sitting here on the couch and when I look up from the computer I just caught myself saying, “wow this cartoon has great quality”.

Come on, it is some YTV show for kids, educational to a 4 yeat old but I am not supposed to be watching.

Now Spongebob is on. I guess this is better? No….

I am going to be 4 today and see how life is for a 4 year old.

Well I guess that is the way that Sandra Oh from Greys Anatomy sees it. Here is what she said yesterday:

“This matter is way too important not only for our writers, but ultimately everyone who makes movies, everyone who makes entertainment here in this town and again for the rest of the world.”

I for one am looking forward to spending more time with my family over the next few months instead of watching my 10 hours a week of TV. What happens if I decide not to go back to watching?

The two solitudes in Canada I am starting to believe are only partially related to Quebec. In fact the two solitudes in Canada are Winter and summer. Here in Calgary this morning I got to work at night at 6:45, When I looked out at 8:00 this morning it was still nights and now at 9:45 I see that it is now daytime.

being at a northern latitude in the middle of Winter here in Calgary we will have a 5 hour or so day while in summer the day nearly does not end. I get up in Summer and it is already well past the 5:00 dawn and go to bed during the evening at 10:00 when the sun is about to set. In Winter, in the deep of Winter I will not see the sun until about 9:00 in the morning and if I leave work at 5:00 it is already dark.

We are getting closer to that dark time then the all day of sun. It could be worse though, it is probably raining in Vancouver right now.

Yesterday I had to drive my mother in law to the train station becasue she was going downtown to meet her pot dealer. I promise that one of these days I am going to write a big long post about my mother in law but today is not the day.

My wife and I have a pretty clean lifestyle, I will have a beer or two occasionally and my wife stopped drinking any alcohol when she got pregnant with our first child and has not had a drink since so I think that from a drug abuse standpoint we are almost model citizens.

So in saying this I have to say that just the fact that my mother in law has a drug dealer is horrifying to my wife and she is always angry that money her mom spends on food goes to buying pot.

Did I go off topic again? Yes what else is new. Anyway, I am driving my mother in law to the train station and the conversation goes like this.

“I think the train stops running at 1:00 or so”

“Thats ok I am just going downtown and then coming straight home”

“Really? Why are you bothering to go downtown at all then?”

“To get some pot, my guy is 63 and goes to bed early so I am just getting it and going home”

“Oh” (I still can’t believe she takes a bus or train for an hour to score dope but that’s her business)

“The guy I used to go to had HIV and died a few weeks ago I didn’t even know but I found out from his boyfriend”

“Really? your dealer had AIDS?”

“Yes, that’s pretty sad he was only 41″

Quietness, quietness, quietness

“Well, uh, see you tomorrow for your moving”

“By Billy have a good night”

Why do I tell a crazy short story like this about my mother in law? Well I think I have known about a dozen or so closeted or not gay guys in my whole life and the quietness in the car was because I was thinking that somehow the biggest epidemic that I have known in my lifetime is absolutely not a part of my life. I have never known anyone with AIDS or HIV and do not see any of it in my life except the occasional story on TV, I never even see it in my RSS feeds that I read. Has Aids disappeared from view in North America. It seems the only stories we see now about it are the aids babies in Africa stories.

I could really care less about people dancing even if they are famous people but last night I was happy to see that they brought back the flamboyant third judge. He is the only reason to watch the show, absolutely fantastic!

It started a few months ago while I was watching the Amazing Race and made me a little uncomfortable. Last night I was watching LA Ink and it happened again. I know what they mean but it makes me feel a little strange that it is happening. What is it?

Guys and girls calling girls “Dude”

Now I know that hte term Dude has been used for a long time to refer to a guy that is a friend but to me it has always seemed like a name that a guy would call another guy. The first time during Amazing Race, and I can’t remember who said it but I turned to my wife and said.

“Did that guy just call his girlfriend dude?”

Very strange. All I can think of is rolling around with my wife in bed and saying “Dude, you are so hot. Dude do that again” Makes the whole situation sound a little homo erotic daydream that I am not quite sure i am at all comfortable with.

Is this going to continue to pick up steam? You know when you have a new term and it seems to show up everywhere? Soon everyone will become androgynous with a girl or a boy being a dude. After the word becomes less popular as these things always seem to happen then no one will again be able to be called a dude, girl or boy for 20 years or something.

So I don’t know who to blame for this. Will it be the Amazing Race dude or Kat Von Dee and the dude chicks that she works with. Probably it will be looked at in history as the fault of the dude from the 70s show in “Dude wheres my car”

Friday was Todd’s last day in the office. I have been the main support guy for tickets over the last year or two but I am now on a project that is supposed to be taking all of my time so Todd the contractor was brought in to cover all of the support.

At this point I should point out that I am not very passionate about the process of Remedy and doing tickets but hey I may have already covered that under my “resentment of authority” rants.

Anyway Todd comes in with some lagging skills in support and became the superstar. He was able to handle all of the support, train up one or two new people, start and complete a bunch of mini projects and kick start our documentation all in three months. This has been better than probably any of us has done in years but now we have a tight run ship for the first time in a while.

Besides the great work Todd has always been full of stories. Stories about running a project team into the ground on the first project he ran, great stories about working in the oilpatch, and just the daily stuff of drinking beer or getting his roofing done. Also the banter between him and Kerry will go unequaled in our area for years to come and is the stuff of legend.

Sadly Todd is now finished his contract and we have to do it all ourselves, I am excited because we have a good groundwork but am a little nervous that we are a bit screwed because we have to live up to the great customer service standards that he has set.

Thanks for that Todd you were a blessing AND a curse.

I picked up my daughter from school today with my son and realized that even though the world is significantly different then when I was a kid there are still some things exciting to kids that I liked when I was 10.

• Fun Dip
• Riding a bike
• Slurpees
• Swinging your gym bag/backpack as you leave the school
• playing in the park
• Staring at the dorky kid and wondering what that kid is thinking (well maybe I was on the other side of that one)