Post-scarcity

Proof that we live in a post-scarcity world: Someone built this. And I, and half-a-million other people, spent 7 minutes watching it. Remind me again why you like working so hard?

How I suspect most people spend their time

Those of us with blogs probably spend more time in the little lime-green segment than most…

How to run the world for free

Bye, American

Can anybody explain to me why we need to create jobs*? It seems to me that there's enough stuff that needs doing to keep everyone busy and that's before you factor in (now fanciful but once standard) things like "everyone gets a new car ever 2 years."

The United States has started their protectionist sabre rattling. The US began yesterday debating a nearly $900b "stimulus" package which includes a Buy American clause. This has obviously got Canada, whose largest trading partner, the news is fond of reminding us, is the United States. So,what is Canada's response to this Buy American clause which is being taken as tantamount to a declaration of war? Why, in true Canadian fashion, it's a strongly worded letter, of course.

My favourite part of the letter is "If Buy American becomes part of the stimulus legislation, the United States will lose the moral authority to pressure others not to introduce protectionist policies." That's right, US, this is for your own good.

Since when does a 500 lb gorilla need moral authority? I think the US has shown time and again that if they want other countries to do something, they tell them to do it. And should the people of that country disagree with the US, they will suddnely find themselves unable to trade or or the hosts of the US military. I'm not going to weigh in on how many of those sanctions and invasions I think were or weren't justified: that is clearly a matter of personal taste.

The important thing is that the Canadian Ambassador's letter to the US Senate leaders is hogwash. It is not the product of a well-reasoned point-of-view about the wellbeing of the citizens of the Ambassador's motherland, but rather the product of prodding by politicians at home which is in turn the product of wanting to be seen to be doing something. Because really, isn't that what government is for?

Ultimately, I think that any sort of stimulus package is a bad idea. It has little chance of achieving any sort of lasting happiness or prosperity and it is all but guaranteed to prolong this balance sheet recession in which we now find ourselves.

Want to create jobs in Canada? How about joining a local community support agriculture program and pushing for sustainble farming practices? L and I are currently considering Plan B Organics, which some friends have belonged to for almost a year. And remember, it's good for the environment, the food is better for you and sustainable agriculture is labour intensive so it creates jobs.







* I am well aware of the arguments for creating jobs, but I believe they are predicated on an outdated system which is a lot like feudalism but the landowners are now the bankers with bigger brains, armed with confusing economics instead of the lords with bigger muscles, armed with swords.

No Equivalent

So lately I've been looking for a new job. There are lots of great things about the place I work right now, but there are some pretty glaring omissions from the list of Things I Need At My Job. I think for a lot of people, "it's the thought that counts" are just words. But for me, I really mean it. I would much rather a gift worth $5, or even nothing, if a lot of thought or hard work went into it. Similarly, I would much rather a small raise, unbidden, then getting a big raise after asking for it. This appears to be not understood at my current place of employment.

My friend T is also moving to a different job. For different reasons, really. In any case, neither of us has ever been employed at any one place for a long time. This greatly concerns my mother, who grew up in the Job For Life era. I have tried to explain to her that anything longer than about a year or two is not actually considered job-hopping anymore, at least in my experience.

T was talking about her longest ever job, about 2 and a half years. "It's funny," she said, "the way relationships differ from jobs: you are always serially employed."

"That," I responded, "is because there is no employment equivalent to masturbation."

We're All Going To Die

I work on the twelfth floor of a building in downtown Toronto. It is the top floor. The view is quite nice. There are, however, a number of downsides.

Emergency situations, for example.

We've had two fire drills in the time I've been at the company. The first one was shortly after we'd moved in. When the fire drill happened, we had no idea what to do. It seemed like we weren't the only ones. Our whole floor piled out and into the emergency exit stairwell only to make it to the 10th floor and stop, blocked by everyone from the floors below us. We stood in the stairwell for about 10 minutes.

Finally, someone came over the loudspeaker. "Gfhfh ghflj farlfh gofhgla. Thank you." In a real emergency, we would have died in the stairwell. It took us half an hour to get out of the building.

Once we were outside, we had no idea where to go. Apparently every floor has a designated waiting area. The person who was supposed to know ours failed to attend the meeting where those were handed out. "Go somewhere! Go for lunch! Just get out of here, I don't know where we're supposed to stand," she chided.

In light of all this, we were all sent extremely detailed instructions before this years fire drill, by e-mail. I never read my e-mail. There's just too much of it. When the fire alarm went off, T and I decided it was a good time to go for coffee. So out we went and down the stairs and we made it all the way to the 5th floor before being blocked by the lower floors. Off we went for coffee. When we got back, our floor had been evacuated. We found them across the street and went to stand with them. Apparently the instructions we got included fierce warnings about food and drink in the emergency stairwells.

"Did you take that in the stairwell?!" I was asked with incredulity. "You're going to get in so much trouble!"

What are we, in grade 3, here? Everybody tie your hands the skipping rope, we're going for a walk. Yeesh. "No, I just went and got it," I explained.

In the end, we all survived the fire drill. I have, however, started searching craigslist for used parachutes to keep at my desk for future emergencies.

Eat The Brick

So I was posted to on-call duty this week at work. This means that I get to carry around the work phone and whenever something breaks at work, I get a call. Luckily, knock-on-wood, nothing really terrible has happened. There's still tonight — I get to give it up at noon tomorrow.

So to make sure the phone is a useful tool, the company bought a "smart phone." This, to me, feels like a bit of a misnomer. I have instead dubbed the work phone "the Brick," mainly because it is about the size of a regular housing brick and weighs as much. It feels utterly ridiculous to talk into. I feel sort of like I'm talking into a laptop, but not by the usual method of microphone and headset, rather, by holding the entire stinking notebook up against the side of my head.

The software for this thing is ridiculous. When I received the phone on Monday, a holiday in Canada, it was in this weird state, where, despite having an infinite number of non-phone functions, the only one that would actually work was the phone function.

"Try rebooting," suggested M.

I did. No such luck.

On Tuesday I showed the phone to T, my boss.

"Did you try rebooting?" asked T.

"Yes."

"Here. Lemme try." He started up google maps, the first internet application he could find. It told him it was going to have to reboot. Bam. Down it went. Then it went to a screen I don't remember seeing when I rebooted it. Came back up. Suddenly e-mail and web worked.

"You know there are multiple levels of rebooting to these things," chided T.

"Yeah, you know what else would reboot it? Putting it under a streetcar," I pouted back. "Smart phone my rear end."

Manners

My mother made sure that manners were embedded in my soul before I left home. I never chewed with my mouth open or put my elbows on the table and I always knew which fork was the salad fork and which side my bread plate was on. That was, of course, before university. I've since forgotten all that. Except chewing with my mouth open. That's just gross.

The funny thing I've learned about manners is that they are, with a few exceptions like the chewing with your mouth closed thing, almost completely arbitrary.

But I digress. (I know: shocking, isn't it?)

The last time I threw a dinner party, my coworker N was the last remaining guest, other than my girlfriend at the time. N and I drank the better part of a bottle of scotch together at the end of the night. My manners dictated that I walk her to the door, which is down a flight of stairs, when she finally left. How I didn't break my neck doing so is unclear.

At work, N always seems to have some horrible task for me to do. She claims she's just the messenger; that these onerous, odious, tedious chores are issued from on high and she's just passing it along. I dunno if I buy that, and even if I did, I'm totally a "shoot the messenger" kind of guy. In a vain attempt to get her to stop, when she asks me to do something painful, I threaten to poison her at my next dinner party. Every time I get a new job, the number of doses of poison goes up:

N: Oh, by the way, you'll have to [insert annoying task that will take way longer than anyone expects] on Friday.
Me: Uh huh? I'm going to use a really painful, slow acting poison for the second dose.

Finally, about a week ago when we reached 4 doses, she looked at me and said, "it's funny how you're mad enough to kill me, but you'll still invite me to dinner."

"Well," I reasoned, "I don't want to be rude."

Memento

I'm coming down off of one of the most intense weeks of my life. I feel compelled to write about it. I promise on Wednesday there will be a nice, light, fluffy anecdote, but for now I'm going to be selfish instead of entertaining.

Just to make things difficult, I'm going to write about it backwards. It'll be like that movie, Memento — confusing and frustrating.

I just got home from having dim sum at Rol San with The Usual Suspects. They sat us at a HUGE table which could have sat 10, I think. There were people lined up out the door, staring at us with our more-than-half-empty table. Suckers. The waiter had trouble understanding that I wanted to leave the dirty serving dishes on the table so I could take pictures of them. We used the standard white-people-in-Chinatown method of communicating - everyone yelling at once. J'aime le Chinatown.

Before dim sum I rode down to the St Lawrence Market and got some nice pictures of the antique market. I thought it was funny that when I'd ask a seller's permission to take pictures the answer was always, "sure! What's it for, anyway?" Isn't that the kind of thing you'd want to ask before giving me permission? I think I'll get extra prints done and take them back to the sellers.

Last night was the Toronto Symphony Orchestra with S. The opener was a modern piece — the composer is still alive. I was a little worried: in my opinion, dead people write much better music. I was pleasantly surprised. So much so that I really want to try to track down a recording of the piece. It's called Over Thorns To Stars and the composer is Stephen Chatman.

Before that was Photo Adventure Day! T and I met at the Distillery. We had cappuccinos and fresh baked pastries. The pastries were so good that, more than once, I had to stop T in the middle of a sentence so I could finish my stomach orgasm before participating in the conversation again. The weather sucked so we advised A, who was going to meet up with us, not to come since she was already running late and we figured the whole thing was going to be pretty short lived. Mandingo, were we wrong. Photo Adventure Day turned out to be a fabulous success despite the weather. We spent hours at the Distillery.

The second venue for Photo Adventure Day was the St Lawrence Market. We also discovered that we were extremely hungry because it'd been hours since the aforementioned stomach-orgasming-pastries. We found us some crepes. The guy behind the counter was playing Happy Christmas (War Is Over) and we gave him a hard time, to which he responded by turning up the music. In the end it turned out he had pretty good taste and that song was just a lapse in judgement. He even danced and tried to get his boss to dance. The boss offered up one of the other employees as a stripper instead. By the time we'd finished eating, we were both exhuasted and all creatived out. Thus ended Photo Adventure Day, part 1. Please, go to my flickr page and let me know what you think.

Which brings us to Friday. I rushed out of work and hit Henry's and bought my D70, for Photo Adventure Day. I've been sort of hemming and hawing about adding a digital SLR to my collection for a while. I was worried that the old F60 would get jealous, but she took it quite well. I love them both so much. After camera buying, I had pizza with L, took some pictures of her and I with the new D70 and was in bed by, like, 10:30. It was about as pleasant as a Friday evening after work could get.

So, Friday at work. I wound up having to stay late to fix something and I was worried I wasn't going to make Henry's before it closed. Obviously, I did.

So now we draw to the end of our tale. Or the beginning, as it were.

You'll remember that I released some new software a week ago and it had been causing some stress and extra work. Well, the people using it were all done their work by 5:00. It was probably the most relieved I've ever been. Then poker started. I couldn't play because A) I was so spent from the week and B) I had that extra thing to do that I talked about above. It's not a Friday afternoon without a little poker, though, so I went into the lunchroom to watch everyone play for a while. I saw D, one of the guys who uses the new system, walking around. I said, "hey! There's D, with a beer in his hand and a smile on his face."

"I wouldn't say it's a smile," he shot back, "I was out after the first hand."

"Hey, man," I said, "all I can do is get you to the table on time. After that you're not my responsibility. I mean, I'm not a miracle worker."

Lettuce Not Panic

No one who has met me for more than 5 seconds wold ever consider me a calming presence. If anything, I am the anti-calm. I discovered yesterday, however, that my constantly high energy level makes me less prone to panic. Exposing me to panic is a bit like throwing a glass of water into the ocean.

I recently had a big release at work. It's a fairly important system.

I was told, when I received the assignment, that 3 people had tried and either been fired or quit over this project. That sounded like a dare to me. But at least that may give you some idea about the kind of pressure that goes along with this project.

Since the release, some of us had been working very long hours. One person even wound up sleeping at the office to keep up with the work created by the changeover. Since the project is my baby, I had to work all day Saturday (St Patrick's Day). Those are just two examples. So, everyone was a little tense. I actually yelled at my manager, briefly, during a meeting the day before. But in spite of that, things had been chugging along smoothly right up until yesterday afternoon.

I had a dentist appointment just after lunch, so I hopped on my bike and rode hard to the dentist's office and made it just in time. It was my first visit to my new dentist and the hygienist wanted a blood pressure and heart rate reading. I explained that, on top of having ridden my bike very hard in very cold weather for the last 10 minutes, I was also under a lot of stress and hadn't slept very well in days. My initial blood pressure was something like 150 over 110, with a heart rate of 104. She decided that wasn't possible and let me calm down a bit more and took it again and got 126 over 68 but still a heart rate of 104. On the plus side, next time they do it I'll look really healthy.

Because it was my first appointment, it took almost 2 hours.

In that time, everything went from stressed to powderkeg. I was immediately dragged into a meeting where everyone was yelling, with the exception of the manager who I'd yelled at yesterday and me. It's a sad, sad day when I am the voice of reason.

Somehow, we got out of the meeting alive. I realized that I hadn't eaten anything since 7AM. I got my giant salad out of the fridge. I then set about calming everyone down. I wandered around the office and told everyone that everything was under control and that there was nothing to be afraid of, all the while munching on colossal forkfulls of lettuce.

Some would say the fact that I was there and willing to fix things is what calmed everyone. Others would swear that it was my willingness to tell people what was going that cooled things down. Still others would say that everyone sort of regained their own composure and my presence was just a coincidence. But I think it was the rhythmic, hypnotic chewing of lettuce.

I believe in the calming power of chewing.