The Tao of Jace

After spending nearly three weeks of my life in Canada, I feel obliged to offer a review of the country and specifically the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

First of all, I think I like Canada. It’s pretty nice. All of the people are pretty nice and easy going, almost like Mormons. Kinda creepy, actually. There’s not a lot of honking or rude hand gestures or angry people, and as an American this puts me in a very strange place. A place with butterflies and moonbeams. See? Creepy. I feel a little more at home in the places with rabid moths and harsh florescent lighting.

Television up here is another story. There are, as far as I’ve seen, only two good tv shows: Royal Canadian Air Farce and Corner Gas; but even these make me see why entertainment is such a dominant industry in America. The Canadian acting is generally on a much, much lower level than what one expects from prime time US shows; but the subject matter is usually a little more down to earth and realistic, while still quite funny. I really, really like Corner Gas, though; as a sitcom it works in almost all the right ways. Royal Canadian Air Farce is a lot like SNL. I’ve only seen the older ones, but they’re incredibly funny and the writers at SNL could learn a lot from these Canucks.

My radio experience has been very limited, and in a great way. I found 89.9 Hal FM on the way from the airport to the hotel and haven’t had to find another station. In three weeks. This station just plain rocks. They’re seriously one of three great classic rock stations that I’ve listened to in my lifetime. One was kzps in Dallas, which is still the best station in that town, I think. The other was the Bear that used to be in Abilene, which, unfortunately, has since started sucking profusely (this was once the greatest radio station in the history of ever; not once did I hear the same song twice and I can count using only my hands the number of commercials I heard, while they were in their prime, of course). Hal FM is a great station, and the personalities I’ve heard have been fairly knowledgeable and quite interesting. Candy sounds hott. Yeah, with two t’s.

Shopping sucks. Midland has a more impressive mall than the 5 downtown shopping centers I’ve been to combined. And, often forgetting the exchange rate, I sometimes feel like I’m getting ripped off. I think I am sometimes, especially at the movie theatre. I wasn’t pleased after that.

So all in all, Canada’s a nice place to visit for a week or two. Tops. Then get back to the sanity and strife of the States, or you’ll become a nice zombie just like these canucks.

Or perhaps it’s more like, “Oh.

“Canada.”

I’ll be making my first trip to our northern neighbor sometime next week. My passport arrives on Saturday (or thus sayeth the company we’re paying a whole lot of money to get this expedited by), and I’ll be flying out sometime next week. For two months.

Yup, I’ll be working for Semperian in Canada with Keane. Hopefully it will be a pleasant experience, and I don’t doubt that it will. Except for all the aboots and ehs, which can be a little annoying, eh? Dammit. It’s already starting.

Wedding stuff is going well, though I must say to any guy who is thinking of getting married that your time spent “helping” with the registry would be better spent on other tasks. Just make sure that she understands your tastes and that you would rather not be forced into premarital homicide because the blues don’t match (yes, they did, Mandy). Or just stay with the big stuff, like china.

Let’s see. What else is new? I got a new Cadillac CTS, for those who don’t know. Traded in the Solstice about a week ago. As soon as I get her cleaned up, I’ll try to take some pictures. I must say that after spending just a week in the Cadi, I don’t think I will ever happily drive another maker’s vehicle. The ride is splendid, wonderfully quiet, and the Bose sound system rocks. Haven’t had it long enough to make any sort of review, but so far I must say, If you have the means, I highly recommend it.

Laters.

Very much is going on in the work scene these days. I was working on a new application for a process that might be moving here from elsewhere in the GMAC world, and I’ve taken a trip to Phoenix, where the process is currently handled, to take a look at the current tools and systems that are being utilized. It’s pretty amazing how much you can actually do in MS Access. For some reason, that’s the system the-powers-that-be decided to use a hundred million years ago, and it’s the system they’re sticking to. I’ve found out that I can do almost anything in VBA that I can in any of the more modern languages, not nearly as eloquently, of course, but still quite effectively.

And I just got back from Southfield and Detroit, Michigan, where I built a database that will be deployed to a few sites in the states and two in India. That was my first time to be that far north and the first time to see Canada. In an appreciable twist of irony, the grass really was greener on the other side.

It’s really amazing how much changes in life. Seems like just yesterday I was driving to the ATC every day for a Comp Sci class or packing up my stuff to go to college. It’s strange to think I’ll be married in less than five months and maybe further along in my career in just a few weeks (more on that later). Sure is a whole lot going on in this crazy, mixed up world.

The following are the steps I followed that successfully pushed a bad day into a funny, but still crappy day:

1. Spend a little bit of time updating your resume, which looks great by the way, and then
2. print it out to the old printer you used when you were downstairs.
3. Realize your mistake, but remember that the printer is unplugged and sitting on a wall.
4. Print out another copy on the printer you’re supposed to use.
5. Forget all about the problem.
6. Have a meeting with your manager
7. Have your manager tell you that the printer that used to be downstairs is now in the site manager’s office and still a-printing. Yeah, even that resume you printed out earlier.

Now isn’t that special.

Here’s the link.