I've been back in town since last Thursday, now on my fifth day, and I'm only starting to get into my list of projects that have been building up for the last year. As tomorrow is the last day of RRSP season I've got to jump online this afternoon and transfer some money in a hurry. I'm also working on getting a contractor lined up for my kitchen, and I've been doing a lot of singing in the last few days, and spent a chunk of Saturday and Sunday playing computer games, and... oh yes, I started a new project at work on Friday so that's been keeping me busy, too.

As I expected, the trip back from Seattle was awkward with all my luggage, but surprisingly Air Canada managed to get it all home in one piece. I almost missed the connection in Vancouver due to a late flight up from Seattle, but in the end everything worked out nicely. I even had a chance to study some of the music for the Consort Caritatis concert.

On Friday I started my new project, meeting the client team in their offices Friday morning and beginning to get oriented with the project partner and my lone co-worker. Friday afternoon I left a bit early and had a quick nap at home before heading up to the Exultate concert, where I manned the doors. The choir did a great job (the Durufle Requiem being the title , and the turnout was fantastic: Exultate's best attendance ever, in fact. A lot of people showed up to see our guest conductor, Wayne Riddell, who now lives in Florida. I didn't get to sing with him, of course, but he seemed to bring a lot of energy to the group and managed to produce some wonderful double fortes, not an Exultate specialty. Composer John Beckwith hosted a party at his house afterwards, which was fun (but by that point I was TIRED).

Saturday we had a Consort Caritatis rehearsal, which went very well. I spent the rest of the day playing computer games with Dave (viva the home network) leading up to a humiliating series of Starcraft games in which he whomped me mercilessly. I resolved to review my tactics. He won't get off so easily next time!

Sunday morning I sang at Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill's church, Christ Church Deer Park. He has a solid choir, with some excellent leads, although I missed the sense of blend and overall musicality that used to exist at Saint Mary Magdalene's, where I sang until last fall. (I still haven't decided if I should go back to SMM or not, and hearing nasty rumours about the current state of the choir hasn't helped.) We performed Missa Pape Marcelli, by one of my favorite composers, Palestrina. (Ok, so that's hardly an envelope-pushing opinion, but it's true.) Sunday afternoon Bruce and I went down to the Elgin Theatre to see A Flea in Her Ear, which friend Andrew Ager (time for a new bio picture, Andrew) was accompanying on the piano (dressed in a slightly ridiculous bowler hat). He did a great job, and it was a very enjoyable play.

Monday (good lord I've been busy the last few days!) I got back into the project work, and completed my first 'deliverable' for the client, but had to leave work at 1pm to meet up with Bruce, Kelly and Diane and drive to Kitchener. The concert with Ben Heppner was a big success (about 1,700 in attendance) and as the 'backup group' we had a great time without too much stress. We only really had one difficult piece to perform, in German at about Warp 8, but it went decently well and we joined the audience in the pleasure of hearing Ben's incomparable singing bouncing off the far walls of the Centre in the Square for two and a half hours.

I finally made it to today... I'm working on some client work, but also catching up on some administration activities from the last project, and getting the highest-priority personal projects (e.g. that damn RRSP) started as well. Back to the grindstone...
posted by Tom at 1:45 PM | link | (0) comments

The flight yesterday was great although the weather did not fully cooperate; after a couple of days of sun, the clouds moved in and there was a light rain falling by the time we got aloft. However, the winds were quite light and there wasn't much turbulence. After a bit, though, I discovered that my weak stomach from childhood was making a comeback and on our way back to the airport I suddenly got very nauseous and lost my lunch... Sorry about that, Rob! Good thing it was a rental airplane! Rob was very gracious about it and didn't immediately throw me out, which I was quite happy about.

Anyway, as a long-time flight simulator afficionado it was wonderful to try my hand at the real thing: I got to use the controls a few times to do some gentle turns, climbs and dips. I have a whole new appreciation for the extent to which a pilot gets "seat of the pants" feedback: the feeling of weight changes a lot, even for very simple maneuvers. I'm not sure I'm ready to go back up in a single engine plane today, but I'll probably try it again soon.

Last day in Seattle! I'm very excited to move home. I thought I had already shlepped most of my things home, but when I went to pack up last night I found I had no trouble filling up my backpack, two duffle bags, and rolling carry-on. I also have my laptop bag and skis... The airline is not going to be happy with me...
posted by Tom at 1:01 PM | link | (0) comments

It's lunch time -- actually 1:30 -- on Wednesday, and I'm still full from dinner yesterday. We had a very nice turnout for my farewell dinner, and Craig presented me with some BAF tchotchke that he and his daughter had accessorized with stickers advertising the web site we've been developing. I was quite moved. My team have been very lucky to have such wonderful clients.

Today I had a great chat over coffee with Ellen Woodhams, the VP of IT, and started wrapping up my work. Going flying this afternoon... Zoom!
posted by Tom at 4:51 PM | link | (0) comments

As a farewell and an appeal to come back, Seattle has offered up some wonderful weather this week. It is sunny and bright outside, and "the mountain" (Mount Ranier) is clearly visible to the south, towering over the Cascades. I'm wrapping up work on a complex (for me, anyway) Flash tutorial, and trying to clear my desk so I can come back to Toronto with a clear conscience.

A fun social week, too: had a nice dinner with Ivy and Jeremy at Spazzo Mediterranean Grill yesterday, lunch with Bruce Nelson and Craig Planetz at the Bellevue Athletic Club today, dinner with the whole team at Daniel's Broiler tonight. Tomorrow I'm going for a spin at 3500 feet with Rob Kryzak, and will try and get some good photos of the area from the air.
posted by Tom at 7:26 PM | link | (0) comments

Back at work on Monday after a wonderful weekend skiing at Whistler. We were a bit delayed in leaving Seattle (a rare blizzard struck the city Thursday night) but by the time we arrived on Friday in the early afternoon all our troubles were behind us. The snow conditions were great, all of the runs and lifts were open and operational, and by Saturday morning the sun came out and gave us some spectacular views.

Ivy brought her boyfriend Jeremy up, and they spent Saturday taking a ski lesson while I skied with Jim and Gina Cogan. Jim, who's the project manager for BAF's IT department, is also a ski instructor and gave me some useful tips (body straight down the hill, let the legs do all the work) that I didn't manage to internalize enough to actually apply, although I tried. We cut up the cruiser runs on Blackcomb and went down the glacier at the back, my favorite area.

On Sunday the clouds had rolled in and there was fresh powder. There were also incredible crowds, and it took us quite a while to get up the mountain. After a couple of short runs on Blackcomb, we went back down to the village and up Whistler for the afternoon. The sun graced us with its presence again, and we had a blissful afternoon zooming around the mountain, including a trip to the back bowl which was wide open and had a fabulous view of Blackcomb and the surrounding mountains.

Now I wish I was staying out here longer, so I could go up again. I may just have to take another trip out here later in the season...
posted by Tom at 1:51 PM | link | (0) comments

There's a uniquely betrayed feeling you get when you lose work because your computer has crashed. I'm in the middle of developing a flash tutorial animation for my client(yes, I do do real work) to explain to their customers how the moderately complex security system protecting their data works. I was working on some tricky buttons, trying to get the flash version of a web page to work the way the real web page does so I can simulate navigating the real site.

So the message that Flash had performed an illegal action and would now be shut down was, to put it mildly, unwelcome.

It's a familiar feeling, and this particular time I probably lost no more than an hour or at most two of work. Plus, since I remember what I did, I can probably recreate it much faster than I spent creating the work the first time. So instead of feeling rage and the overwhelming need to throw the monitor out the window (not the smartest idea for a whole long laundry list of reasons, not the least of which is that the monitor was simply the messenger and what I really need to do is throw the Flash development team out the window), I instead have the wounded spouse's self-condemning feeling that it was, in some way, my fault: I knew the program wasn't completely stable, I've had problems with it before, and yet, I went back to pretending that everything was ok. Plus, I didn't save my work frequently enough.

While my desktop is still in the process of trying to kill the loose threads in its memory and shut itself down (advising me gently but, it appears, futilely, that I should wait for its interminable cleanup process to track the rogue threads down and purge them in a safe way) I turn to the laptop, connect to Blogger, and type this note. And you know what? Blogger hasn't crashed yet, but the laptop--which has died three times already today, although since I had nothing unsaved any of those times has avoided my wrath--is equally, if not more fallible, and I'm just running from one abusive relationship to another here.

Not to draw this whole rather unsavory metaphor out too much, but it's interesting how readily the world as a whole has dumped the slow, boring, and safe mainframes, that never crash, and moved whole heartedly to the snazzy, sexy, dangerous PCs that keep coming back to hurt us.
posted by Tom at 6:43 PM | link | (0) comments

New! Check out my book review section.
posted by Tom at 1:15 PM | link | (0) comments

I think I may have a slightly addictive personality, which came out Monday night when I was working on a small presentation for Tuesday. The assignment was to create a 5-7 minute presentation. Now I *know* that some presentations can take 10 minutes to cover a single, high value Powerpoint page, but I still spent 3 hours on this silly thing, which ended up being an 8 page argument for Accenture doing more sponsorship of the arts. A good chunk of that time was searching the web for the right graphics. This is not a sign of brain cells being used in the most effective manner. Stephen Covey would not be impressed.

What made it worse was that the training, and my subsequent work, was in Etobicoke (see note below about travel to and from Etobicoke) and I hadn't yet done my laundry, and I needed to pack for a week and a half on the west coast, where I am as I'm writing these words.

Nuts.

Reminds me of the time I spent 3 days working on an algebra proof for my Grade 10 math class. I ended up producing a rigorously-defined beautifully formatted 3 page proof for a problem that the teacher later admitted he'd written up incorrectly. I bet he never even looked at the result.

So anyway, Monday night, I picked up sushi at Sushi Bistro on the way home (9:15), put on my laundry (9:45), ate dinner watching the National (when did they get their new theme?), put the laundry in the dryer (10:55) and then installed and played the first mission of the Starcraft Expansion Pack (12:15) before finally starting to pack. Which I finished at 1:30, leading to my second night in a row of 4 1/2 hours sleep.

Tuesday we wrapped up the presentations course (which went well, although I was for some reason quite tired and didn't do a great job on my 7 minute presentation) and I got on a plane back to Seattle, where I'm writing these words.

And now for the good news: this is my last trip out here for this project. I don't have another project lined up yet (although a couple in the 'States are possibles) and I might actually get a few more days at home before my next project. And mom and dad, if you're reading this: I'll come and pick up Hoover on the March 3-4 weekend, and I'll have my cat at home again!
posted by Tom at 5:22 PM | link | (0) comments

Oh, Dad would like me to provide a link to his web site. I'll probably build a links tab for this site, but for now, here's Professor John Leslie.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what the "link" links after every post were, they're actually links to that post in the archive files. If you click on one, your browser will jump to the archive section and the address field on the browser will have the exact URL for that particular post. Just in case I said something clever that you'd like to bookmark or link to yourself. Knock yourself out.
posted by Tom at 12:19 PM | link | (0) comments

Monday morning, and I'm back in Toronto attending a class on how to make presentations. They're videotaping us so we can see just how excruciating our personal mannerisms are. Whee... The course is being held in our office in the wilds of Etobicoke (that's Ih-toe-bih-coh for out-of-towners) which is difficult to get to by public transit. As I don't have a car, this means I have to leave extra time in the morning to get to class on time, which would be ok were it not for the fact that...

I'm operating on about 4 1/2 hours of sleep, owing to my determination to finish Starcraft over the weekend, a classic videogame that's taken over my spare time (at home) for the past few weeks. The final missions of the single player game wrap up an epic storyline with a satisfying conclusion, and were a lot of fun to play. Starcraft is a wonderfully balanced real time strategy game, and if you like that kind of thing it's a must-have. It's been out for a couple of years so it's pretty cheap, too.

Back to Seattle tomorrow evening, and on Wednesday I'm having lunch with our project sponsor to plan our "ramp down", final transfer of tasks, documentation and training, and I'm expecting that this might be my final trip out there for this project. Mixed feelings; I'm looking forward to getting home, but (as I've mentioned before) this was a great project. Thanks to the great people I worked with!
posted by Tom at 12:16 PM | link | (0) comments

The airport was open. Unfortunately, Colorado Springs' airport was closed. An incredibly thick fog had moved in and when we got to Denver we found that all flights onward were cancelled. After about an hour of annoying delays, we set off in buses and eventually I got to bed at the resort here at 11:45 local (1:45 am Toronto time). So my resolution to get more sleep has suffered another night's neglect.

Our class today has covered a quick overview of the Seven Habits and we're now in a Personal Mission Statement activity. So far, I've come up with a bunch of goals and principles, but haven't found many common themes or ways to condense the list. But here are a few of my most brilliant ideas: (tongue firmly in cheek)

• Don't confuse having an opinion for being educated.
• Always look on the bright side of life, and remember there's always ways to make it brighter.
• Don't confuse money with success.
• I am truly happy when I am singing music that is important to me with people I love.

posted by Tom at 7:01 PM | link | (0) comments

I'm on my way off to Colorado in about an hour. There's a blizzard outside, and I hope the airport is still open or it's going to be a really long day.

The decision point for the week is whether or not I should pursue a project that's come up in the U.S. working with the same Associate Partner I reported to last year. On the one hand I really want to get home and try and get more of a personal life, but on the other hand there are no obvious projects to join in Toronto and it sounds like the U.S. project would be a really good idea from a career standpoint. It would have been much easier if I had been able to sell some work up here as I'd planned, but the client's rather lukewarm response turned to total silence so there's almost no chance at this point. Too bad, as that would have been *great* for the career and let me work from home as well.

Next weekend I'll be in rehearsal for a Consort Caritatis concert with Ben Heppner coming up in a couple of weeks. More training at home for a couple of days, then back to Seattle.
posted by Tom at 2:35 PM | link | (0) comments

Ok. Life got busy in a hurry last week and over the weekend.

The course ended up very well. Thursday night we went for dinner at 302 West in Geneva, IL, which was excellent although quite expensive: US $65 per person. Friday the course teams presented their final results to the "steering committee" (their peers) and the course ended on a high point.

On the weekend I went up to the Snymans' cottage and had a wonderful time. They've recently bought a snowmobile, which fits into the category of things that I disapprove of in principle, but enjoy in practice. We went zipping across the lakes (frozen at the time, mostly) and other than one rather scary moment where Christine and I almost rolled the thing (we hit an ice block with one ski as the other one went into a depression) we did fine. I hadn't realized how fast those things go -- 90 km/h -- and how much ground you can cover in the open. I can see why the northern communities in Canada use them all the time. Still, they're smelly and loud and somewhat dangerous, and I think I'll stick to cross country skis (better exercise and ability to enjoy the environment) for my own winter excursions.

Today I rebranded my stored documents at work, which for 75% of them meant the circular file. We have sheets of Accenture stickers around the office to paste over the Andersen Consulting logos on anything that's worth keeping. Seems excessive, but we're under a deadline to no longer even refer to the old name after March 31. Which reminds me that the superbowl was last weekend and the Accenture ads were quite prominent (not that I watched the superbowl). They did, however, get a mixed reception. It wasn't clear what message the bacteria forming a chip was supposed to convey, for example. Branding is a complicated subject, and I'm glad I'm not in the marketing department which must be coming under some fire.
posted by Tom at 4:13 PM | link | (0) comments