Posts (page 2)
Ok, here’s the deal. I like email. I think it’s one of the best ways to communicate – even when the subject is emotionally charged (perhaps especially when the subject is emotionally charged). Especially when both parties are Green.
Email allows you to put your thoughts together and the organize them into the way that makes the most sense. You can edit out comments that turned out to be a bad idea and add more points to a particularly important thought.
I have an emotionally charged problem right now. I did some work for my brother on behalf of a guy who runs a festival. I put in 120 to 150 hours of work a few years ago with the idea that eventually, once the festival was established, I’d get paid.
The festival is really established now (it’s a $3M event this year!) and there’s no sign of me getting paid. And I was turned down for a paid video gig that would help the organizers make even more profit next year.
So I need to talk to my brother about how much work it is every year to setup and run the system that I built and about not getting any payment for it at all. I wrote a fabulous email and then was told to do it face to face.
The big deal is that since I wrote the program I’ve started working for my brother’s company – so now I’m a contractor and an employee. Messy.
I emailed my brother asking for a time that we could meet and he called me last night to ask what was up. So we did it on the phone.
He said that I was selfish, not a team player, that the company would be better off without me and that he could do the work himself for free and have less stress than with me complaining all the time. I had to spend the night wondering if I had a job the next day.
So, needless to say, I didn’t sleep at all last night (and now I’ve started wondering if I’m ever going to get a good night’s sleep again).
Today will be a low key day.
Sherry is ok with us moving back to Kitchener and taking a high tech job there. I just happened to read an article in the Toronto Star saying that Kitchener was starved for programmers while thousands of auto workers are without jobs. The problem is they can’t cross train these people. Well, I’m already a World Class programmer and I love Kitchener.
I’m hoping to take it really easy this week and just get some sleep. Vegas is coming up in two weeks (and could be awkward since my brother is going on the same trip).
An email came in later today saying that he wants to work out a mutually satisfying solution. Whew.
I’m really thankful that there’s a resolution in the works
I’m really thankful that we can still go on vacation together
I’m thankful that Mom and Dad live in town and can offer advice when stuff like this happens. Yuck.
This is becoming a recurring theme – I had a great weekend, but not quite enough sleep!
Friday was supposed to be a trip to the movie theatre to watch Iron Man, but a friend of ours got sick and she and her husband had tickets to a fancy-smancy dinner that they couldn’t use anymore. The table was with another friend of ours and the dinner sounded amazing, so I said I’d take the tickets.
Turns out that was a really stupid idea. Sherry yelled at me for trading our movie plans for a free $100/plate dinner. Ooops. I’ll never do that again.
The dinner was incredible. They served the best tasting escargot that I’ve ever tasted and the salmon that I had was amazing. Sherry’s prime rib was even better than my salmon. The conversation was fun and the evening was really pleasant. But I’ll never do that again – getting yelled at was pretty traumatic.
Saturday was errands and getting ready for the Poker Party that we were hosting that night. We also started putting the skirt on our deck. Poker was a lot of fun, but a little late. We all lost $10, except Eric who won $50 – which is actually not a surprise – he was there to teach us how to play Texas Holdem.
Sunday was church and we finished the skirt – it looks amazing for two amateurs. We went over to my Mom and Dad’s place to return his table saw and to have tea. Then we called it a night (and made the mistake of watching the second episode of Lost – which made it another late night in a string of late nights…)
I’m thankful that the skirt is done – all that’s left now is the plexiglass – once it’s all done I’ll post pictures
I’m thankful that dinner was so good or I’d be in a lot more trouble than I am
I’m thankful that my friends thought of us to give the tickets to.
I know that God wants us to enjoy food.
This has been a bit of a weird week for me. I guess the trip to TO made it feel like Wednesday was Saturday and now it feels like Tuesday, but tonight is date night (not tomorrow because I’m going in to work to play). Weird week.
I have a list of stuff that needs to get done in the next little while and I’ve already started to think about the Bayfest mess that ensues this time every year.
I actually wrote a letter to the organizers laying out my personal concerns regarding my payment. I feel that I put in a lot more than I get out and I’m tired of doing that. It was fine when the festival was struggling to get started, but now they’re booking million dollar bands (Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Rascal Flats, etc) – I think they can afford to pay me a little now, right?
The weird thing about this is that my brother is tightly involved with the organizers and he’s the one that takes care of the part of the crew that I work for, so really I have to get him to ask for something for me. Weird.
Sherry is installing a 4000 pound rock today in someone’s yard. She’s afraid they’re going to have to make a mess of the flowerbed to get that huge stone into the right place. Let’s hope that all works out – and it’s going to be a blisteringly hot day today. Bummer.
Vegas prep continues. We’re working out who’s paying for what now.
I haven’t seen Rick in a bit – I wonder if we’ll get together Sunday for breakfast – that would be nice. I have a couple of pens for him – he used to use these Zebra fine black pens until they stopped carrying them here at the local stores. I found a place in the States that still stocks them, so he asked me to buy their entire stock.
I’m really enjoying Woot.com. They have a special every day and some of them are pretty good. They have a deal with paypal so that you can make a standing PO with paypal and then to Woot you just log in and press “I want one” – check your mailing info and press done, and you’re done. (Woot is not allowed to just have the one button since Amazon successfully patented that while the patent office had no idea what they were going to do with the Web. Weird)
I’m thankful that my life isn’t always this weird
I’m thankful that we’re in good shape for Bayfest this year
I’m thankful that Sherry and I date weekly
I know that God wants to reward me for all the work that I put in at Bayfest.
... I must be exhausted now.
The trip to Toronto was, on the whole, excellent. I exceeded my own expectations and the presentation went far better than I had hoped.
I was clear, accurate, understandable and credible. The hardware and software did exactly what it was supposed to do and one guy in the audience said “It can’t be that easy” – implying that we had pre-arranged some of the events and that he wouldn’t be able to reproduce my demo. Just wait until he gets his hands on the demo and finds out that it really is that easy!
The only downside to the trip was the seven hours of driving and a night in a hotel room just before the presentation. I guess the hotel room was better than leaving here at 3:00am.
But, anyway, if I thought I was tired before, I’m barely functional now. I think I’ll just fly under the radar today and tomorrow and then catch up on my rest this weekend. The only thing that’s really planned is a movie on Friday night (Indy!) and a poker game on Saturday – I’ll just make sure they both wrap up by 10:00.
Mike and I were able to get the paving stones for our patio from DeGroot’s on Tuesday. We had a fork lift put them on to the crane truck and then we used the crane to lift them off the bed. The whole process took less than two hours. So now all we need is the gravel and a bunch of labour to get our patio done. Whohoo – we may start that this weekend…
Dang. Have you read about this ACTA crap that Stephen Harper is trying to push through? The way that I read it, he can pass this Agreement without parliament’s approval and without public consultation.
The agreement will allow border guards with no computer expertise to arbitrarily decide if any of the songs on my iPod are illegal. If they guess that any of them are, they can fine me and (at their discretion) destroy my iPod.
This agreement is being pushed by the US based RIAA and MPAA!
Yikes. More information here: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/
I’m thankful that none of the ACTA stuff has passed yet – write a letter!
I’m thankful that our meeting went so well yesterday.
I’m thankful that my product will be able to increase our company’s revenue significantly.
I know that God respects the prayers of a righteous man.
Oh my. It’s been a tiring 10 days. Starting with the weekend before inventory, and going through inventory and then getting ready for this stupid meeting in Toronto and we had two more late nights this past weekend and I won’t get much sleep tonight because the presentation is 8:30 am and we’re about 3.5 hours away. Dang.
I need to get a little sleep. I’ll have to make sure that I keep the social calendar down to a bare minimum for a little while so that I can recover.
Michelle called me yesterday. She said she had a favour to ask – she had run out of gas a couple of blocks from my place and she was hoping I could bring a gas can over. As it turns out we always keep 20L of gas on hand in case the power fails for a couple of days (I’d hate to lose the meat in our freezer!). (Ok, do you guys remember the power failure that wiped out the Eastern Seaboard a couple of years ago – the one they blamed on Ontario but was really in Michigan somewhere? That’s the kind of thing I want to be able to ride out).
Anyway, I dropped off the gas and she said that she only had a couple of bucks left until Friday (payday) and that she’d get me the money for the gas then.
If your tank is that empty shouldn’t you just park the car until payday? Anyway, I’m really hoping that she learns the value of money and how hard it is to earn (and easy to spend!) while she’s playing house.
Sherry lost her best worker yesterday. One of the other guys threw his back out and so Sherry’s guy had to go and cover his work. She’s afraid that they’re going to expect her to use the machines that she can’t handle safely. Bummer. Let’s hope today goes well for her.
I’m really excited about what’s going on at our church recently. I’ve been working on building a sense of community and I’m getting some pretty good feedback. We’re going to run a program called “Deep Coffee” there shortly and we’ll see what kind of a turn out we get for that. Let’s hope it works well!
Bayfest is closing in. I’m hoping to do some video work for the organizers. I’m meeting with one of the key people today to see if they liked my proposal. Oh, let’s hope!
Vegas is closing in too. I’m a little too tired to be overly excited about that yet, but it’s on the horizon… I need to get a little sun tanning in…
I’m thankful that I normally get 8.5 hours of sleep every night.
I’m thankful that I enjoy my social calendar
I’m thankful for a chance to show off my program in Toronto tomorrow.
I know that God has given me authority and He wants me to use it wisely.
This past Wednesday was inventory day (which went remarkably well once the inventory started, but the whole processes sucked rocks through bent straws right up until the start).
Then yesterday I found out that we have a surprise meeting in Toronto to sell our flagship product to a huge potential market. I don’t have anything ready for that type of a demonstration. I figure it’ll take three to four days to get my material together and polish my presentation. I have exactly three days including today to get it done and that’s if I work 16 hours this weekend.
I hate surprises.
We have our first Christmas present show tomorrow night! We got season passes to the local theatre for Christmas and tomorrow is the first show of the season. We’re excited! It should be a good time.
I’m also hoping to get some work done on the deck this weekend and we have dinner plans with friends of ours on Sunday – that should be a good time.
I’m thankful that our Christmas present was so cool and that we get to start enjoying it this weekend.
I’m thankful that we have friends that want to invite us over for supper
I’m thankful that we have a flagship product to sell and make money with
I know that God has way more in store for me than He has given so far.
Today is inventory day. Yuck. The whole mess starts at 9:00am and wraps up around 3:00am tomorrow. Yuck.
I don’t need to be there for the whole thing but I’ll be on call the whole time in case some of the technology refuses to co-operate (I have ways of making them co-operate).
I’m in negotiations to do a very large video project – it would be very cool if I can pull it off (it would mean a couple of new HD digital video cameras would be added to my stable of hardware – whohoo!)
I’m not really hopeful of getting the project – I suspect that when she sees how much the project is going to cost it’s going to get scrapped. I’ve checked around and I’m the cheapest in town, but it’s still a lot of money.
I’ve sent the proposal off to our marketing guy for him to tune up, but I don’t even think his magic touch is going to help. We’ll know soon – I have to get started on it by early June – so we’ve only got a couple of weeks to nail this down.
I’m just recovering now from my ‘late’ nights on the weekend. It’ll take me the rest of the week to recover from a truly late night tonight. Yuck.
I get my van back on the road on Monday – I’m so excited! I may actually do it this Friday so that I can use the van to move some wood around this weekend. It’s going to be so handy to have a van with an 8’x4’ cargo area and it’ll be really nice to get Sherry her own ride to work. Yaaaa!
I’m thankful that we can afford to own two cars
I’m thankful that we don’t do inventory every month!
I’m thankful that I’m almost done my 8mm transfer job.
I know that God has plans to prosper other people through me.
Ok, so it was a great weekend, but I didn’t get nearly enough sleep!
Friday was your typical Friday – we laid low and tried to recover from the week – which is a good thing, the next couple of days were going to be busy!
We did a little shopping Friday night to get the stuff for the Tiramisu and we also stopped in at my Mom’s place to visit with Aunt Heather (who’s down from Newfoundland). Shortly Newfoundland will be a ‘have’ province and will be paying equalization payments to Ontario (which will shortly be a ‘have not’ province) – I LOVE it!
Saturday morning I did go to my 6am meeting (there were only three of us there that morning – but it was still pleasant and productive). Then we did a little housework getting the place whipped into shape for the evening’s festivities.
We made the Tiramisu early that morning so that it had time to chill. We also cooked the onions, mushrooms and chicken for the meal that night.
I did a little more work on my side project – converting 60 8mm reels of film to DVD. The capture process takes a lot of time and you have to be there watching the whole time. The converting will take a bit of effort too since he wants labels on everything…
We finally started getting dressed for the party and it started pretty much on time. We were all dressed to the nines (and I didn’t get any photos – doh!) and we had a great meal. We sat around 6pm and started with Asagio Bread with Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar. Then the salad was served followed by the main course.
I cooked Chicken Fibonacci marinated in white wine and slowly roasted on the BBQ – it was tender and juicy and delicious. We served artichoke hearts and mushrooms with the chicken and oil basted gnocchi with caramelized onions and mushrooms – wow – what flavour!
Dessert (as you know) was homemade Tiramisu. It came out even better than our test batch and was the rave of the party. Then we wrapped the evening with a couple of bottles of Amarone wine Very fun.
Our guests stayed until about 10:00 (we were scheduled to go until 9, but I guess people weren’t ready to leave… we actually stayed around the dining table the whole time. I guess our 7’ table and 10 wooden chairs was a good investment. Cool.
Right after our guests left we changed into our grubbies and headed to a party at one of Sherry’s co-workers. It was her bosses’ birthday a couple of days before and this was his big bash. We stayed to 11 and then called it a night (keeping in mind that we’re usually retired for the evening by 9 most nights!) We didn’t get to bed until after midnight!
Sunday we actually skipped church – which turned out to cause a small panic for a buddy of mine – he was expecting us there and got a little worried when our phone wasn’t answered… he called my Mom’s place looking for me. I guess I should let Rick know the next time I plan to play hookie from church.
We cleaned up the house from the night before and I bottled a batch of wine for Dad. Sherry whipped the garden back into shape and I did a LOT of video capturing that afternoon – I actually have all of the reels on my HD now and I’m getting ready to start the render process. Very cool. Did I mention that this job is worth about $500 to me? That’s the start of our Mexican vacation right there I tell ya bye.
That night’s dinner was at Danielle’s place (my future potential Sister-in-law, maybe). She cooked chicken and ribs which were good, but the potatoes and veggies were amazing. She served the salad in cucumber bowls (which was pretty cool) and the dessert, oh the dessert. It was a chocolate and peanut butter as ours was Italian and espresso. Wow.
Home and in bed by 11pm. Yikes
I’m thankful to see Aunt Heather again
I’m thankful that Sherry works so hard (this would be tough to do on my own!)
I’m thankful that our family is so close
I know that God blessed me beyond everything I deserve
Ok, so it was a great weekend, but I didn’t get nearly enough sleep!
Friday was your typical Friday – we laid low and tried to recover from the week – which is a good thing, the next couple of days were going to be busy!
We did a little shopping Friday night to get the stuff for the Tiramisu and we also stopped in at my Mom’s place to visit with Aunt Heather (who’s down from Newfoundland). Shortly Newfoundland will be a ‘have’ province and will be paying equalization payments to Ontario (which will shortly be a ‘have not’ province) – I LOVE it!
Saturday morning I did go to my 6am meeting (there were only three of us there that morning – but it was still pleasant and productive). Then we did a little housework getting the place whipped into shape for the evening’s festivities.
We made the Tiramisu early that morning so that it had time to chill. We also cooked the onions, mushrooms and chicken for the meal that night.
I did a little more work on my side project – converting 60 8mm reels of film to DVD. The capture process takes a lot of time and you have to be there watching the whole time. The converting will take a bit of effort too since he wants labels on everything…
We finally started getting dressed for the party and it started pretty much on time. We were all dressed to the nines (and I didn’t get any photos – doh!) and we had a great meal. We sat around 6pm and started with Asagio Bread with Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar. Then the salad was served followed by the main course.
I cooked Chicken Fibonacci marinated in white wine and slowly roasted on the BBQ – it was tender and juicy and delicious. We served artichoke hearts and mushrooms with the chicken and oil basted gnocchi with caramelized onions and mushrooms – wow – what flavour!
Dessert (as you know) was homemade Tiramisu. It came out even better than our test batch and was the rave of the party. Then we wrapped the evening with a couple of bottles of Amarone wine Very fun.
Our guests stayed until about 10:00 (we were scheduled to go until 9, but I guess people weren’t ready to leave… we actually stayed around the dining table the whole time. I guess our 7’ table and 10 wooden chairs was a good investment. Cool.
Right after our guests left we changed into our grubbies and headed to a party at one of Sherry’s co-workers. It was her bosses’ birthday a couple of days before and this was his big bash. We stayed to 11 and then called it a night (keeping in mind that we’re usually retired for the evening by 9 most nights!) We didn’t get to bed until after midnight!
Sunday we actually skipped church – which turned out to cause a small panic for a buddy of mine – he was expecting us there and got a little worried when our phone wasn’t answered… he called my Mom’s place looking for me. I guess I should let Rick know the next time I plan to play hookie from church.
We cleaned up the house from the night before and I bottled a batch of wine for Dad. Sherry whipped the garden back into shape and I did a LOT of video capturing that afternoon – I actually have all of the reels on my HD now and I’m getting ready to start the render process. Very cool. Did I mention that this job is worth about $500 to me? That’s the start of our Mexican vacation right there I tell ya bye.
That night’s dinner was at Danielle’s place (my future potential Sister-in-law, maybe). She cooked chicken and ribs which were good, but the potatoes and veggies were amazing. She served the salad in cucumber bowls (which was pretty cool) and the dessert, oh the dessert. It was a chocolate and peanut butter as ours was Italian and espresso. Wow.
Home and in bed by 11pm. Yikes
I’m thankful to see Aunt Heather again
I’m thankful that Sherry works so hard (this would be tough to do on my own!)
I’m thankful that our family is so close
I know that God blessed me beyond everything I deserve
I called the insurance company to see what to do about Michelle moving out on her own fully expecting them to say that she can no longer be on my insurance. They didn’t.
It actually was no big deal to them. The guy (Ricardo) suggested that she stay on my insurance until a year after she has her Full G license (about 18 months from now). He said it would save her about $1k per year.
Hmmm. That being said, what’s the motivation for her to ever leave (at least until she’s a six star driver too…) We’ll just pay the extra insurance (which Ricardo politely calculated for us – once without Michelle, once with) and then ask for Michelle to pay us back. Easy.
Turns out I told this story to a friend of mine and he does the same thing with his Mom-in-law. Go figure. It doesn’t make sense why they would pay less if they’re on my insurance policy – I don’t make her drive any safer… Go figure.
I woke up with a Migraine today. Bummer. The light from my monitor is a little harsh (it doesn’t help that I have three 20” LCDs – they cast a lot of light…) I’m laying low today and just getting stuff organized for next week. It’s nice to take a regrouping day every now and then.
I now have 26 of the reels done. I ran out of battery for the transfer box or I’d be further along. I’ve charged both batteries now and should be good to go for the rest of the weekend.
I’m thankful that my hardware is doing so well.
I’m thankful that my job is secure enough that I don’t have to be concerned about regrouping once in a while
I’m thankful that my Migraines are mostly painless.
I know that God has handed me the keys to His kingdom.
