Wow. Must post Blogs more often. I'm getting soft...

Had a great weekend, with lots and lots of singing. Other than Sunday morning at St. Thomas's, it was all Pax Christi, a Toronto Mennonite choir directed by my friend Stephanie Martin. We performed the Dream of Gerontius by Elgar, a fabulous, lush work rarely performed in Canada (although apparently one of the 'big 4' in England after Messiah and Elijah). The choir numbered 84, we had a decent-sized orchestra and great soloists, and basically rocked. Steph did a wonderful job, and was a total pleasure to sing for.

With the dress rehearsal Friday night and performances Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, guessing that I had very little free time this weekend would be correct. Saturday day was a nice break, and I slept in (read paper in bed with cat, yay!) and played games with Dave in the afternoon. Brain reset, basically.

I've found some great web sites recently. Here are some of my favorites:
Feed magazine associated with Suck.com, but less bitchy. Good stuff.
Slashdot, a bit-head mag with articles on evil Microsoft and good Linux and the battle for freedom of music from the czars.
Kuro5hin, another techie mag with slightly better production values but less content than Slashdot.
and, of course
Sherman's Lagoon, the ongoing cartoon about a man-eating shark.

posted by Tom at 5:23 PM | link | (0) comments

Another Monday...

I had a good weekend, getting most of my errands done. Saturday I was supposed to do my taxes, but as it turned out it took far longer to update the last 12 months of activity into Microsoft Money than I had anticipated (a prerequisite step) so the taxes will have to be done this week some time. Pete Dobos and Paul Whiteley came to visit Saturday evening and we watched Full Metal Jacket and played a couple of rounds of You Don't Know Jack 3.

Sunday I had seven for dinner: Michael, Molly, Patrick, Robyn, Dave, Rob Ford and Catherine! The dinner turned out very well. We ended up with a bottle of champagne toasting three marvellous events: Michael and Patrick both having received new job offers, and Catherine is pregnant! She's due in November, and she and Rob are both clearly thrilled, which is great. I'm looking forward to being a virtual uncle... :-)

Not much else of news right now. Here are the upcoming concerts and other choral events:

Saturday April 28, Pax Christi Chorale, Dream of Gerontius, Grace Church on-the-Hill, 8 pm (pre-concert lecture at 7pm)
Sunday April 29, Pax Christi Chorale, Dream of Gerontius, Grace Church on-the-Hill, 3 pm (pre-concert lecture at 2pm)
Friday May 11, Exultate Chamber Singers, The Prima Donna's Choral Adventure, St. Thomas's Church, 8pm
Friday May 25, Exultate Chamber Singers, Twentysomething Fun-draiser, Arts & Letters Club, 6:30pm - 10:30pm

posted by Tom at 11:53 AM | link | (0) comments

Congratulations to Michael Kim for scoring a job at Apple in San Francisco!! He's holding out for enough money to get a guest room, which sentiment I endorse and support. Road trip!

I've been busy this week, with choirs (Pax Christi, Exultate, St. Thomas's tonight), a visit to Philip (good discussion about the class struggle, education systems, foreign languages and yet more about Linux), and a lot of writing and proofreading at work. The weather's been glorious...

Last but not least: Accenture IPO as reported by Reuters, FT, and C-NET...
posted by Tom at 1:44 PM | link | (0) comments

Apart from a whole bunch of singing at St. Thomas' (Easter weekend, four services) I had a nice lazy weekend. Kind of brain dead, actually. I played a lot of Starcraft: Brood War. I missed the Easter week services at SMM... The atmosphere at St. Thomas' is different, and although the music standards are much better I don't feel like I belong there yet. I'll stick it out for a while to see for sure.

I was supposed to be cooking for the Usual Suspects last night, but forgot that on Easter Day all the grocery stores would be closed (duh) so I ended up having dinner at Robyn and Dave's. Dave came back after and we watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which I hadn't seen before. Brilliant movie, a very impressive first effort for Mr. Madonna. I'm looking forward to seeing Snatch.

Flipping TV stations afterwards, I noticed that A&E is starting a new show based on the Nero Wolfe books, favorites of my parents. Mom & Dad, it starts next Sunday; you may want to watch or tape it.


posted by Tom at 2:50 PM | link | (0) comments

Ok. Looks like the problem has been fixed.

On the way in to work today, I noticed how many people are still or again wearing suits. When I got in, I wrote a fairly long and (I think) interesting Blog about why this should be, two years after business casual won the war in corporate Canada. (This reveals my bias on the subject: many Bay Street lawyers and financiers would argue that business casual hasn't yet won.)

I'm not going to write the whole Blog again, but just a couple of notes: I think people who wear suits because they like them are either (1) in denial of the less hierarchical, more collaborative business culture of the late 90's and early 00's, or (2) identify themselves more strongly with their work than any other aspect of their lives. (This definitely applies to Bay Street.) Either way, it's sad. I sure hope suits don't make a comeback, but I don't think I have a lot to worry about. I sure won't choose to wear a suit every day, and I doubt many others under 35 will, either, any time soon.

I had a nice lunch with Carrie P-M and Heather Geiger today and we talked about how our clients' cultures differ and how their cultures affect us. We agreed that we often, unconsciously or consciously, emulate their cultures when working with them. This has good effects as well as bad.

On the positive side, working within a client's culture makes it easier for us to be 'part of the team'. We are seen to 'understand the rules', to 'get it', etc. etc. This obviously helps us to build concensus, achieve positive decisions, direct and/or influence client team members (where appropriate) and ultimately, to be effective.

Less good are the pressures client cultures often impose on us: slow decision-making processes, arbitrary deadlines, more of a command-and-control hierarchy, a general tightness of purse when it comes to capital costs, but a lax scrutiny about employee time. We find ourselves observing but not helping to fix some of these problems, just because they're so pervasive.
posted by Tom at 2:50 PM | link | (0) comments

This is a test. Blogger lost a long post I wrote this morning (:-E) so I'm a bit miffed with it at the moment.
posted by Tom at 2:30 PM | link | (0) comments

Stunningly beautiful day in Toronto yesterday. It was sunny and 21 degrees centigrade, and it felt like the first real day of sunshine we'd had since August. Everybody was out in t-shirts and shorts.

I strolled up to St. Thomas' for Palm Sunday in the morning and got home about 1. Dave and I tuned up our bicycles and hit the streets. We went down to St. Lawrence Market (closed Sunday and Monday, for future reference) and on down to the big Loblaw's on Lakeshore to shop for steaks and veggies. We then stopped at Amsterdam's brewery to pick up some beer, and home to sit out on the patio and enjoy the glorious weather. Robyn joined us around 6 and we had the first barbeque of the season, which was absolutely delicious.

It was such a wonderful day that I'm not going to worry about the weather forecast suggesting that we're about to 'enjoy' two straight weeks of rain. That's a fair trade, in my book.
posted by Tom at 11:03 AM | link | (0) comments

The pictures from the latest Whistler trip are up! Check them out here.
posted by Tom at 9:51 AM | link | (0) comments

Almost time for the weekend. I'm attending a party tonight at Richard and Elizabeth Green's to toast Berk Barnard and his girlfriend Michelle as they prepare to move to Brandon, Alberta for Berk's new job.

On the choral front, I'm back at St. Thomas' church just in time for the Easter Week Marathon, and Bryan Martin has had to pull out of the next Exultate concert opening up an opportunity for me to sing with the choir again... albeit not a permanent position. (I'll take what I can get.)

It's cloudy and rainy in Toronto today... Blah. I'm going home.
posted by Tom at 2:16 PM | link | (0) comments

Well, I had a wonderful weekend, thank you. The family trip to Whistler -- meeting up with Amanda and Ivy from the Seattle project, and Ivy's mother, friend Eliza, and boyfriend Jeremy -- was a great success. Air Canada mysteriously failed to lose our luggage in either direction, and Kate's car mysteriously survived the trip in both directions (dripping oil and bleeding rust), and although the weather on Saturday and Sunday was cloudy (and snowy!), Monday turned into a cold but sunny magical ski day, the sort that is rare and to be cherished. The snow conditions were generally good -- some icy bits here and there, the sno-cone sensation in the warm bits near the base, but otherwise a nice mix of powder and groomed, packed runs -- and the lift lines were blessedly short.

It was actually the first time that all four family members were together since last Thanksgiving in Victoria, and everyone was in fine form. Unfortunately the snow conditions in the valley were poor (i.e., no snow,) so Dad and Kate's plans to do cross-country at the Nordic centre were foiled. Dad was a trooper and tried some downhills, but it isn't really his thing. As for Kate, she rented telemark skis and managed a very credible performance. On the (glorious) Monday, they managed to find some trails with snow at Cougar Mountain and had an energetic day skiing up the mountain.

It was great to see Ivy and Jeremy again. Ivy's friend Eliza turned out to be a terrifyingly good skier, but after leading us up into whiteout conditions on top of Whistler on Saturday, she tired of waiting for the rest of us and took off to conquer the rest of the mountain. Unfortunately she had to head off early Sunday to make it back to Boston via some complicated, multi-leg route. It was great to meet Ivy's mom Lynda, very friendly and enthusiastic, and all in all the two-worlds-colliding potential weirdness (work meets family) went off smoothly and easily for both Ivy and me. Definitely have to plan a repeat trip (or two!) next year.

I'm back, in the office, and working on my newly reformatted laptop. My computer's sporting a spiffy new operating system -- Windows 2000 Professional -- and is, predictably, 1000% more stable than it was running Windows 95. Also predictably all my personal applications have been blown away and it will take me weeks to figure out where everything is. Good thing I have some between-projects downtime...
posted by Tom at 4:13 PM | link | (0) comments