the pod bay door

:: Each visit to Winnipeg is not complete w/o an evening with a group of important local friends, including Tony, Steve, Mike, and others, and usually in the form of a bbq, which we did this evening at Steve and Val’s house. Mike and Susan are on vacation, so I missed them this time around.

As always, we had much fun, the burgers and smokies were downed, the beer flowed, the conversation continued for hours. Claire, Tony’s daughter, will be entering UW this fall, and recently began an online journal. I love her concise and to-the-point movie reviews!

:: Tomorrow is Part 1 of the high school reunion. And I get to sleep in again.

:: I’m running searches on Google trying to find a specific satire blog (which really pokes fun at blogging in its simplest form), and I found a reference to satire blogs by Dubya and Saddam. Oh, I found it.

:: I arrived in Winnipeg on Monday afternoon, around 1:00 pm. On the way in, I stopped and briefly visited with friends at two locations, and then headed home. Later in the evening, my folks and I visited my Mom’s sister, Carol, who had quadruple-bypass surgery last Thursday (and is being released from hospital this Wednesday). While in the hospital, three of my cousins and their families also appeared, it was great to see them as well. Afterwards I visited my Dad’s sister, Eleanor (also my godmother), and her husband Carl.

:: Today Steve and I visted Chester Cuthbert and his wife Muriel. Chester is a legendary book collector who has lived in Winnipeg for 90 years. He is still spry and active, and Muriel and he continue to live in their own home. We had a good meeting, pouring over old fanzines and other publications, and comparing notes. In the mid-70s, many members of the Winnipeg Science Fiction Society would congregate at Chester’s house on Saturdays for regular, informal social gathering.

:: This evening, I attended the last organizational meeting of the reunion happening this weekend. I met my old pal Brenda Claggett at her condo, and we drove to Liz Bachman’s house, where I met Liz and four other classmates from 1971. I hadn’t seen any of these people since that time, and to put it bluntly, we had a blast! The committee was working out the final details of the two events, and afterwards, we sang a few songs while I played guitar, and we munched on Gondola Pizza. We also laughed ourselves silly (with the help of freely flowing beer and wine).

It was good to see these fine people again. During the evening, we went into Liz’s basement to see a memoriam she’d created for the twelve classmates no longer with us. It is a simple but moving display: each classmate’s Grade 12 picture was enlarged, scanned, framed and mounted on a black background, with each person’s name below their picture. Very tastefully done, and a fitting tribute to our mates who have preceded us to the next life.

In the past, I was ambivalent about attending a high school reunion, and recall in the early 80s swearing I’d never attend one. I missed the 25th in 1996. I can tell you quite honestly that I’m really, really glad I am here for the 32nd. The weekend will be very memorable and rewarding for me. BTW, Brenda is cooking beer butt chicken for me tomorrow. I’ll explain later.

:: It is becoming unprecedentedly difficult for anyone, anyone at all, to keep a secret.

In the age of the leak and the blog, of evidence extraction and link discovery, truths will either out or be outed, later if not sooner. This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician and corporate leader: the future, eventually, will find you out. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did.

The above excerpt is from William Gibson, writing in the NYTimes, brought to my attention some weeks ago by Derryl. It’s a fascinating observation written on the 100th anniversary of George Orwell’s birth, and a sad reflection on the state of privacy in the world. (Registration required for NYTimes.)

:: Ever get the feeling that life will never slow down, no matter what you do to change that? It’s a quiet, lovely July 2nd evening, the sun still shining despite the time being 9:53 MDT. The house is quiet after an activity- and family-filled weekend, my 50th birthday being the excuse for the gathering. Tonight I wanted to see 28 Days Later, but by 9:15 I was too exhausted. I want to slow down life, but life isn’t listening right now. (Speaking of 28 Days Later, watch the first six minutes of the movie right here. I can’t wait to see it.)

This morning, at 12:45 am or so, I lost my connection from my home computer to my web site (sitting on a server in Edmonton). This morning it still wasn’t working. Connecting to my site from other machines worked fine, and is still working at this moment (else I couldn’t post this). I called my hosting service, who said everything was fine, and advised that e-mails are preferred over phone calls. OK, whatever. Meanwhile, this problem, which has happened before, and neither my ISP nor my hosting service could decipher the problem. I’ll check it from home again tonight, and decide what to do next.

I’m growing ever so weary of this.

Update at 5:00 pm – D’OH! What a doofus (I am). While getting pinged repeatedly last night, I loaded a range of IP addresses into my Restricted Zone that included my own IP address. (Slaps self upside the head).

:: Ah, Sunday morning, late April, in Edmonton. The sun is shining, the temperatures beginning to get warm, the birds singing, the kids playing. A nice, hot cuppa joe, the NYTimes, sitting under the canopy in the back yard, and – what? Snow? You’re looking out from my driveway at 10:00 MDT this morning. This is to what we woke up in Edmonton this morning. But it was nowhere near as bad as Calgary, and the rest of southern and central Alberta. I did spend 15 minutes bashing the snow from my Juniper trees, whose branches were bending over from the weight of the very, very wet snow.

:: The year is nearly 1/3 over, and it always seems to be going so quickly. Tomorrow at work we begin two weeks of “spring training”, consisting of a number of in-house workshops and training sessions. In the midst of this, I’ll try to get some regular work done. I’m working on a presentation I will give on June 10 in NYC at the annual SLA Conference, and there is a forthcoming presentation on edu-blogs, which I will be presenting with Geoff on May 22nd.
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¦¦ I’ve already mentioned my concerns about the looting of the library at the Basra Polytechnic College. The gutting and pillaging of the Iraq Museum of Antiquities has me seething. It took ten years to reopen the museum after the Gulf War in 1991, and now, two years later, it lies in ruins. When you read a little about what the museum held, you realize that what has happened rivals the destruction of the library at Alexandria. An estimated 170,000 items were destroyed or stolen! Where were the American troops (see next paragraph)? The responsibility for this sits squarely on their shoulders. The observation of this Al-Jazeera reporter says it best: “When mobs in Baghdad entered the Iraqi national museum and destroyed the artifacts, little did they know that they were wiping out large traces of history. Not just of Iraq, but that of the entire world.”
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