Derek K. Miller - Penmachine words music comment - Vancouver, Canada

The city of Burnaby, B.C., where I grew up and live, is just to the east of Vancouver itself, and is well known for a significant amount of parks and other green space for such an urban environment. One part of that is Burnaby Lake, a fairly large and extremely shallow wetland in the centre of the municipality.

The lake sits in Burnaby's central valley, and forms part of a waterway that starts at Trout Lake in Vancouver, runs east along Still Creek through Burnaby into the lake, and out into the Brunette River, which flows east and then south through Coquitlam into the Fraser River, which empties westward into the ocean. In recent decades governments have dredged the lake several times, both to provide enough depth for competitive rowing and to avoid having excessive sediment from development and the city's storm sewer system turn the lake into a mudflat—which is why the water's edge is so sharp in the satellite photo.

My wife had the great idea of taking the kids on a ten-minute car ride down the hill from our house every few days to check out the waterfowl and other birds, and to see if any chicks have arrived yet this spring. So far they haven't. But there are tons of animals and plants there, from birds such as ducks, Canada geese, crows, and pigeons to carp, frogs, squirrels, and even a significant population of beavers, the world's largest rodent and Canada's mascot.

She's gone down there with them a bunch of times, but this weekend I was feeling well enough to tag along. And a couple of days ago the sunny weather and abundant animals brought out another example of local wildlife: the Canadian wildlife photographer, whose distinctive plumage and plaintive ktsch-ktsch-ktsch-ktch call (known affectionately as the "shutter-and-mirror-slap") were in fine form down at the Piper Spit pier. The next day we visited again (this time one of the girls' school friends joined us), but our bunch was alone because of the cold and rain, which actually turned to snow briefly.

The entrance to that part of the park also crosses some railway tracks, which our daughters enjoy putting pennies on to see if they'll be flattened by passing trains. We're accumulating quite a collection of thin copper ovals now.

Exactly 20 years ago, in April 1988, I was working a summer job as a park naturalist, headquartered at the nature house at this exact spot, between the railway and the boardwalk. That job was where my wife and I first met. We led canoe tours of the lake some evenings (no motor craft allowed), and this year we're thinking of getting a canoe and taking our kids out there too.

Labels: anniversary, environment, family, friends, love, memories, park, vancouver

As I mentioned a few days ago, my band The Neurotics played, for the 15th year in a row, at the Vancouver Sun Run, which as of this year appears to be the largest fun run in North America. There were over 59,000 registrants for the 2008 race.

As part of the photos I took downtown today, here's me behind the drum kit, with Swingy Neurotic (a.k.a. Doug Elliott) on bass:

Thanks to Dilly Neurotic (a.k.a. Sean Dillon) for snapping that one. We all look a bit chubbier than usual because it was freaking cold for late April in Vancouver (just above freezing), so each of us had at least three layers of clothes under our costumes—I was wearing a T-shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, and a chunky sweater underneath my Union Jack shirt and glittery jacket.

Rock on, Sun Runners!

Labels: band, music, neurotics, photography, retro, sunrun, vancouver

I finally saw Juno tonight. My kids and I watched it on DVD together. Yes, it's a very good movie. You can read the reviews for that.

As somebody who lives in Vancouver, what I really noticed was how obviously Vancouver it is. You can see it in the locations—the residential architecture and subdivisions, the trees and lawns, and especially the light. As in so many things filmed here, like The X-Files and everything else, the light is different from what you see in productions filmed in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, or other film centres.

It must be the combination of our latitude, weather, proximity to the sea—cloudy or sunny, rain or snow—it looks like here. Maybe Seattle might look similar, yet somehow things filmed there don't look the same.

Does anyone have a line on why that might be?

Labels: environment, film, photography, seattle, vancouver

With all my cancer treatments and so on, I have, remarkably, not been to Vancouver's famous Stanley Park since the vicious windstorm that hit Greater Vancouver near the end of 2006, a year and a half ago.

Having been born and raised in this city, I think that's the longest time I've ever been away from the park in my entire life, until today. I was downtown for an errand, and decided to take a side trip in the car to drive through the park and see how things were going.

I was astonished. Toppled trees are still everywhere, and the stretch of Park Drive from Prospect Point to Third Beach is unrecognizable. What I always knew as a dense rainforest overhanging the road now comprises steep, open vistas across hundreds of broken trunks down to the ocean.

Rebecca at Miss604.com has been documenting the changes since the storm hit, so I had some idea what to expect—but not really. I'd like to take my bike down there sometime in the next few months and explore the trails again. In many ways, it's a whole different place now.

Labels: environment, history, park, vancouver, weather

Back in 1994, I was making a go of it as a full-time rock and roll drummer, and my cover band The Neurotics managed to snag a spot along the route of the annual Vancouver Sun Run, where we got paid a bit of money and had the chance to entertain tens of thousands of people as they ran 10 km through Stanley Park.

We were pretty silly (as we always are), and the runners liked us, so somehow the next year we were recruited to play on the scaffold above the starting line for the race, downtown at Burrard and Georgia streets. We've been the band there ever since (among numerous others along the route), and next Sunday, April 20, 2008, marks our 15th appearance at the Sun Run. (The band's lineup varies a bit each year, but for once the group of four musicians will all be guys who've done this show before.)

It's a strange gig, and one of the reasons the organizers keep calling us back is that we've honed our ability to play what guitarist Sean calls "heads-up hockey" up on the temporary stage. We have to show up before 5:00 a.m. to beat the road closures, haul our gear up some rickety scaffold stairs, do a very quick setup, and then go get some breakfast. Once we start playing around 7:30, it's pretty much a continuous performance until all 50,000-plus runners and walkers have gone by. That takes several hours.

But while we're up there playing much of that time, there are a lot of stops and starts, dictated on the fly by the race organizers and announcers on the platform with us—and we get little warning. Sometimes we only play 30 seconds of a song. Others we get 10 seconds (or less) of warning that we'll have to stop another, or just as much notice that we have to start. The mayor might speak, or other local celebrities. There are speeches and announcements, and each group of runners has its own starting announcement and air horn. A group of Fitness World aerobics types helps everyone get warmed up. We need to fit into the gaps, so we learned years ago that a set list does little good.

It is an awesome thing to see tens of thousands of Vancouverites thronging the streets below. It's also a huge load of fun. I was unable to play last year because it was early in my combined radiation and chemotherapy treatments. This year the timing is better, so while I'll be tired, I expect to be able to play the show without a hitch.

If you're in downtown Vancouver early on Sunday morning—especially if you're running by on Georgia Street in front of the RBC tower—look up, way up, and maybe you'll see me bangin' like Charlie Watts. But I'll probably be too busy to wave.

Labels: age, band, history, music, neurotics, retro, sunrun, vancouver

About 20 years ago, when my roommate Sebastien and I were first learning to play in a rock band, he wrote a song whose chorus was:

Wally's Burgers is the place to go
Wally's Burgers is the place to go
Wally's Burgers is the place to go
Let's go!

Wally's has been a drive-in burger joint on Kingsway in Vancouver since the 1950s (it changed its name to Wally's in 1962). A couple of weeks ago I dropped by to grab one of their delicious Deluxe Wagon burgers, but the place was packed, so I went elsewhere.

I only found out this week that was because Wally's closed forever at the end of March, so my last meal there had actually been a couple of months ago. A few days ago my wife and I noticed that the famous neon sign had come down, and today I drove past to see the windows boarded up. It's a shame. The burgers really were extremely good.

For someone born and raised in this city, I discovered Wally's surprisingly late, in the 1980s, but I was hooked. Over my years of commuting by bicycle along Kingsway, first to university and then to work downtown, I've eaten innumerable Chuck Wagon burgers and fries there.

There are other tasty hamburgers in Vancouver, but none quite the same as Wally's. As far as I know there has only ever been the one location—but had its owners taken a different business approach, I think Wally's could have been a B.C.-wide institution like White Spot.

At least we still have Me-n-Ed's Pizza. In fact, I ate some three days ago.

Labels: food, history, vancouver

There are some pretty views from the Fairview neighbourhood of Vancouver, but it is now officially my least favourite part of the city. It's objectively far nicer than many other parts of this region, but that doesn't matter.

Part of my dislike comes from a job I had there back in the '90s. There was no backbreaking physical work or relentless tedium (I encountered those in earlier jobs, installing alarms and working night shift at a gas station, respectively), but it was still the worst position I've ever held, because the psychological environment of the place was positively poisonous. I would take the longest lunch hours I could, sometimes walking down to False Creek and sitting on a grassy knoll, just staring into the distance eating while trying to purge the stress from my system.

I quit after nine months, during which numerous coworkers had come and gone, some quitting after one day and others (including the person who hired me, who'd been with the company since it was founded) being summarily fired for often arbitrary reasons. I'm amazed I stayed so long.

But that's not the main reason. It's because Fairview is also home to the B.C. Cancer Agency, where I spend far too much time these days. Counterintuitively, the people there, from volunteers to doctors to nurses to technicians, are overwhelmingly wonderful, friendly, helpful, and understanding. The building is nicely decorated for a medical facility. It runs like clockwork—I've never had so many appointments with such complex interrelationships run so smoothly and on time, or been apologized to so profusely when things run late or get postponed.

And yet, it is the Cancer Agency, where I have gone for CT scans and radiation treatments and chemotherapy and emergency prescriptions of blood thinner injections. It's where my doctors told me that my cancer had spread to my lungs. True, Fairview is not where I spent the worst days of my life, late last July when I had lost 50 pounds, was hooked up to two IV poles in a ward at St. Paul's hospital, and could only lie in bed—not bathe, walk, eat, or even drink—for several days.

Yet somehow Vancouver's downtown West End, where those worst days did happen, still holds too many other happy memories, of fireworks and new love with my wife, and childhood walks in the park with my grandmother. Fairview is where I'm reminded, all the time, of how broken my body still is. Even driving through it on my way elsewhere, I feel queasy, my subconscious focusing on the nauseating chemical soup of chemo I get there every two weeks. Tomorrow is the next infusion.

Sorry, Fairview. I can't help it. You suck.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, ctscan, fatigue, linkbait, memories, radiation, surgery, vancouver

According to the provincial government, there are 12 species of woodpecker that appear at least occasionally in British Columbia, but only a few are common in the southern coastal areas outside the summer months. The one I've noticed most often is the pileated woodpecker, with its distinctive red swooshy head.

Right now, one of these guys is being a real goddamned pecker around our house.

UPDATE: I think I have unfairly maligned the pileated woodpecker. Although I still haven't spotted it directly, numerous reports from my readers and more careful listening to the infernal tapping tells me that our woodpecker is more likely to be a Northern flicker (I've updated the accompanying photo accordingly). In any case, a suggestion to burn some paper under our stove hood when we hear the tapping, so smoke sends the bird away, may be working. We'll see.

You see, it has decided that the metal chimney above our stove is an ideal target. I don't know why: if I were a woodpecker, I'd probably figure out fairly quickly that there aren't any tasty grubs living inside a kitchen vent. Then again, woodpecker skulls have evolved largely to withstand massive repeated impacts, not for smarts.

Now, imagine what it sounds like at, say 7:18 a.m. on Easter Monday, to have a woodpecker pounding away, Kalashnikov-like, on a highly-reverberant tube of metal that leads directly from the roof of your house into the amplifying stove hood in the middle of your kitchen, which is in the centre of the structure, right across the hall from the bedrooms. This has been going on intermittently for two or three weeks now at our place.

I stumbled out of bed and turned on the stove vent fan (which is very loud, being older than I am). No dice. So I wandered outside in bathrobe and bare feet and hucked a couple of small stones from our yard in the general direction of that part of the roof. I was surprised at my accuracy at such a bleary-eyed time of the morning.

There were some clattering noises, and I think I scared it off for now. It's likely pileated—the largest surviving woodpecker variety in North America, by the way—from the sound of its drumming, but I haven't actually seen it yet. I suppose if it persists in trying to find an insect colony in our kitchen chimney, it will eventually starve to death, but maybe it's clever enough to be working on some nearby trees too. I hope it avoids punching a bunch of holes in the aluminum, anyway, and that it gets the point (ha ha) eventually and moves on. Or I'll have to get better aim.

Labels: animals, annoyances, biology, vancouver

There's going to be a podcaster meetup this Wednesday, March 12, 2008. Details:

6:30 p.m.
The End Cafe
2360 Commercial Drive (just north of the SkyTrain)
Vancouver, British Columbia

Alas, I won't be there—I have yet more chemo that day, so that night I'll be in sad shape, curled up in bed watching The Food Network, or sleeping. But my co-host Paul plans to be there, and I'm hoping some of the rest of you will too—if you're not at SXSW in Austin, of course.

You don't need to be a podcaster or blogger or whatever. If meeting other webby types is up your alley, head on down. Doing a little RSVP at upcoming.org or Facebook would help with planning, I guess, but you should also just be able to show up.

Have a drink or two for me, will you?

Labels: blog, chemotherapy, geekery, meetup, paulgaray, podcast, vancouver

In Vancouver, the clouds cleared just long enough for some beautiful views of the lunar eclipse. I got some nice pictures (and so did my dad):

Mine were taken with a Nikon D50 camera on a tripod, and attached to a Sigma/Quantaray 70-210 mm zoom lens set at f/5.6, ISO 800, exposures generally between a half-second and two seconds. My dad took his with a Canon Digital Rebel XT attached to a Celestron C90 reflector telescope on a tripod, acting as a 1000 mm f/11 lens, with similar exposure times and ISO settings.

Labels: americas, astronomy, eclipse, moon, photography, science, vancouver

Tim Bray, who was involved in it all and who lives here in Vancouver, wrote a good story about the beginnings of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which is the foundation of a lot of how the Web works today. It's a reason that Navarik, the company I work for, has a business, for instance. His story talks about the people who helped make it happen, which is why it's a good story.

At the beginning of his piece, Tim wrote, "XML is ten years old today," because version 1.0 was officially released on February 10, 1998, a few days before my older daughter was born, and during the Nagano Winter Olympics. The specification had been kicking around in draft form for about a year and a half before then.

XML is a powerful way to make information readable and writeable both by computers and by people—and also, most critically, to make it portable between different kinds of devices over different kinds of information networks. In its simplest form, it is merely a well-structured way to format plain-text computer files. And it is an open standard, so no one has to license it or pay for it: you can just use it.

So now you can work with a web browser or a feedreader or another website to grab a web feed from a blog and read or republish it elsewhere. And big companies can wrestle their ancient mainframe computers into sending and accepting data from technologies that hadn't been invented when they were built, like web applications. When you read this website or make an airline reservation or buy a T-shirt online or check your webmail or update your bank balance, XML is involved.

It's one of the key standards that emerged from the dot-com bubble, and has helped the Internet become an essential utility around the world. Not bad for a ten year old.

Labels: geekery, opensource, telecommunications, vancouver, web

Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is infamous worldwide. Even though it's home to thousands of people from all walks of life, most folks here and elsewhere know it for its poverty and widespread drug use.

When my mother was young, it was our city's main shopping and entertainment district. Her parents often visited for dinner and dancing. Even when I was a kid in the '70s, we went there all the time, to Woodward's, Army and Navy, Gastown, and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Then, when Woodward's shut down in the early '90s, the area's gradual decline became an implosion.

But it's part of a much bigger picture. The Downtown Eastside is the symbol, but Greater Vancouver's poverty and addiction problems are widespread. There are hotspots of dealing in New Westminster, Surrey, and other places too. Beyond those, the consequences—illness and disease, property crime, street prostitution, violence, despair—are everywhere in my hometown, from the city centre to its most far-flung suburbs.

Yet this is still a delightful place, a wonderful one to live in, beautiful and clean and vibrant and diverse. How can that be?

I've never been an addict, nor poor, nor in danger from addiction or poverty, but I know people who have, some of them very close to me. When they are part of that world it is like they pass through the looking glass, into another realm, a parallel city that is here, beside the rest of us. Or inside, but largely divorced from the green transparent condo towers and the parks and the trendy shops and the well-maintained Vancouver Specials.

In that shadow city, people steal from friends and relatives for money to buy cocaine, booze, heroin, and meth. They and their associates get abused, beaten up, and threatened. They live in crappy apartments or basement suites or rooming houses or run-down hotels or on the street. Or in decent places they fear they could lose in an arbitrary moment. They hang out with gangsters, frequent places I'd rather not know about, flick lighters and burn lips, or tap needles and hunt for veins.

Those of us on the bright side of the glass encounter touches from the other side. Should we believe the rumours: are those 99-cent slices of pizza so cheap because the cheese is fenced by addicts stealing from supermarkets? Should we buy those steel screen doors because our houses have been burglarized and our CD collections stolen once too often? When we see that man or woman begging on the street, or sleeping in a wet mummy bag under the overpass, or standing in line on Welfare Wednesday, can we look them in the eye?

Closer to home, more bitterly, we see people we love, or want to keep loving, drift back and forth across the glass, sometimes healthy and engaged and employed, sometimes ill and disconnected and aimless. We can't tell which version is real, because they both are.

So Vancouver, like many other cities, is amazing and happy and prosperous, not just on the surface, but all the way through. Also all the way through are the other, hollow parts that might be hard to see, or simply hard to look at. The parts intertwine, they interlock, they form the social structure of our city. If you slip through the looking glass into the hollows, it can be hard to find the way back, even when the other side, and your old life, is right there.

I don't have a solution, or even an ending. Smarter people than me are working hard to try to figure things out. But maybe these things resist figuring, resist logic. We are all here, and there. We don't know which road, if any, leads out of the wood.

Labels: addiction, controversy, government, home, security, vancouver

Oh, how I love the view from our front window on a sunny winter day:

Labels: photography, snow, vancouver, weather

For kids who live in Vancouver, snow is a bigger treat than in much of the rest of Canada. While it does snow here every year, it tends to arrive when cold outflow winds from the B.C. Interior get overwhelmed by a warm wet front from the Pacific—so it may very well dump down and then melt almost immediately.

Several times over the past few weeks, therefore, I've planned to take the kids out sledding in the fresh snow, only to have the sky turn to rain and the ground become unpleasantly sloppy before we get the chance. But not today. It was just around freezing, but the snow was pounding down, so we packed up and went.

We were the first sledders today at our local park, which has slopes as steep as any ski hill. So my daughters were able to get a bunch of good runs in before they were wet and cold and we went home for hot chocolate and peanut butter sandwiches. Unfortunately, because of my current cancer treatment, blood thinners, ileostomy bag, and all that, I don't think sliding and bumping down the hill is a good idea for me, so I just watched and took photos.

Labels: cancer, family, ileostomy, park, sledding, snow, vancouver, weather

I realized recently that I haven't mentioned next month's fourth annual Northern Voice blogging, podcasting, and general Internet fun-time conference here in Vancouver. It takes place just over a month from now, February 22 and 23 (a Friday and Saturday) at the UBC Forestry Sciences Centre.

If you're not normally the sort to attend geeky tech conferences (well, and if you are, for that matter), this is one you should go to, because it's friendly, cheap ($60 Cdn for two days, as opposed to thousands of dollars for some events), and fun. There are always plenty of both new bloggers and experienced types around, from all over the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. It's well organized. Plus, the location is fantastic.

In 2005 and 2006, I both attended and spoke at Northern Voice, but in 2007 I had to miss it because of my first of many cancer surgeries. I'm planning to be there this year, but purely as an attendee who'll take lots of photos.

My wife, who went last year, is more involved this time, helping to organize the Thursday-night gala. You should sign up and come along too.

Labels: conferences, friends, geekery, northernvoice, vancouver, web

Today's weather was as unpleasant as Vancouver winter gets: just above freezing, windy, with driving rain. Water sluiced down the gutters, and even brief jaunts outside, from the house to the car, or standing at the gas pump, felt bitter. Having something of a chemotherapy hangover from last week didn't help. I slept for four hours this afternoon in a grey funk.

The kids had trouble getting to sleep, in part because the house was creaking in the wind. I imagined what it must have been like to live in this climate in a Salish or Haida village 150 or 200 years ago—despite the richness of our landscape, surely even those First Nations people would have huddled inside their homes in weather like this too.

Then, tonight, around 11:30, I was getting ready for bed and looked out our front window. The wind had died down, the streets were dry, and the sky was clear; I could see stars and, in the klieg lights of the ski slopes, fresh snow on the North Shore mountains. It was quiet, and beautiful.

Labels: astronomy, chemotherapy, family, snow, vancouver, weather

Here, this afternoon, is what Kingsway in Vancouver looked like just as we were driving up the long, slow hill into Burnaby—notice there is no snow at all:

Mere minutes later we near the crest of the hill near our house in Burnaby, and it looked this way:

We needed the extra grip from the snow tires to get up our steep driveway. In Greater Vancouver, a few metres of extra elevation make all the difference.

Labels: snow, vancouver, weather

I've been wondering how to write this blog post all day, or whether to do it at all. But it seems silly (not to mention out of character) to avoid, so I'll just see what comes out.

UPDATE: This post originally had "1970-2007" in the title, which was wrong. I knew that in my head (Martin was born before me, in 1968), yet his Facebook profile said differently, and I used that. Details are easy to screw up. I've corrected the title after a note from our friend Johan.

I've also now set up a memorial page for Martin, including links to articles about him, copies of the notes from his eulogy speakers, and photos from his memorial event on January 6, 2008.

I heard this morning via a phone call from my good friend Simon that one of our mutual friends, Martin, died early in the day on Christmas Eve. While I didn't see much of him these days, I had known Martin for more than 20 years, since our days as BBS geeks in the early 1980s. We first met in person at Vancouver's Expo 86, at least a couple of years after I'd met him virtually online. He showed up at Expo with a shock of blonde dyed into his dark hair, and a Super 8 film camera with which he was making strange little time-lapse movies of everything he saw.

I can't confirm what details I've heard about his death, so I'll avoid repeating them in case anything is incorrect. His last Facebook update, from a week ago, talked about the snow on one of our local ski hills, from which he'd just returned. So his death seems to have been quite accidental, and certainly unexpected. While over the years it has happened to a few people I've known who were roughly my age, Martin is the first friend of mine to die, as far as I can remember.

He was a talented engineer who had recently "retired" (in his mid-30s) after making a bunch of money when his video game company was bought out. He seems to have spent much of his time since then DJing and organizing raves and other events. Maybe he'd spent some time riding freight trains, at which he was also an expert. Both of his parents and his daughter, now a young adult herself, have survived him.

Years ago Martin and I used to take mountain-biking trips together in the backcountry around Greater Vancouver. Engineer that he was, he brought the topographic maps (this was pre-GPS), and he was always hard to keep up with. We traversed the logging roads between Squamish and Indian Arm. He witnessed my worst-ever case of road rash, where I took a downhill on a logging road too fast and ended up sliding down the gravel on my side.

I've thought a lot about death this year. Having stage 4 metastatic cancer will do that. What's particularly strange about it is that Martin hosted a party for me on in June at his fabulous condo high up in a Yaletown tower, a few weeks before the big surgery that put me in hospital for most of July, and from which it took me months more to recover.

Yet here I am, still kicking, feeling as good as I have in all of 2007 despite my ongoing chemotherapy, and Martin is suddenly gone.

I haven't cried yet, but I still may. I came close when I saw my youngest daughter sprawled out asleep in bed as if she'd fallen from the ceiling, and it reminded me of Martin's daughter doing the same at a party about two decades ago. Mostly I distracted myself in a lazy post-Christmas day with my family watching TV (including a whole slew more of MythBusters), and late tonight I've been listening to a bunch of blues, plus the amped-up blues that is the latest White Stripes album. Jack White's Ph.D.-level guitar distortion helps draw the sadness out and cauterize it a bit.

Part of me feels it slightly unseemly to write this, since I'm not sure it's what his family and closer friends would want. Yet I hope they don't mind, because not writing it wouldn't be right either, like a hole in this blog—always a very personal place for me—where something important should be.

I'm not one to speak or write to the dead, as many are doing on Martin's Facebook page. I don't think he's anywhere to hear me anymore. I'll simply say that, as little as I saw Martin in recent years, I miss him with his twinkly eyes and off-kilter funny techie stories. I know many other people who surely do too. Together our memories will preserve what was best about him.

Labels: bbs, cancer, death, friends, geekery, memories, music, vancouver

From my youngest daughter, Santa Claus, and the rest of us here in my Great White North family, Merry Christmas.

Have a happy hoho!

Labels: family, friends, holiday, vancouver

As often happens in Vancouver, our tap water is a little cloudy following the heavy rain and melting snow earlier this week. There is no boil-water advisory, as there was last year when this happened, however there is this:

Those with compromised immune systems due to HIV or who are undertaking chemotherapy [my emphasis - D.] or anti-rejection medications should always use drinking water that has been boiled or treated to the same level as boiling.

Damn, that's me, as my parents and wife pointed out. So no tap water for me. My immune measurements have been okay so far, but that can change—I've only had four of my planned twelve chemo treatments for this round.

Some people might take that, like advice to avoid drinking water in Mexico, as a good reason to have more beer or Scotch¹ or something, but these days alcohol makes me feel almost instantly like crap, so it's bottled or boiled water and diet pop for me.

At least I can still take a shower. And go to my company Christmas party tomorrow. As designated driver.

¹ Thank you again to everyone who came to my birthday party back in June and brought Scotch whisky as a gift. I have enough for several decades now, I think, especially at the rate I'm (not) drinking it at the moment.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, vancouver, weather

People from the rest of Canada often make fun of us here in the southwest corner of the country, where the weather is generally mild and we never face the kinds of minus-35°C blasts our brethren enjoy so much.

I do think, however, that this weekend's snowstorm, which has been coming down continuously since yesterday, counts as Actual Snow. We can't see the road or sidewalk or lawn, and the big fluffy flakes have built up a good 10 cm on some surfaces in our yard.

Typically, though, a sloppy wet tropical system is on its way to Vancouver from Hawaii or thereabouts, so it's all supposed to change to rain this afternoon and melt over the next couple of days. So we'll enjoy the prettiness today and slog through the muck tomorrow.

If you like, you can watch a time-lapse movie of our putting up the Christmas tree yesterday.

Labels: holiday, snow, vancouver, weather

In the last week, there has been the expected consternation among cynical B.C. adults about the new 2010 Vancouver Olympic mascots Sumi, Quatchi, and Miga (and mysterious hanger-on Mukmuk).

I think they're reasonably cool, although there's no good reason a sasquatch (even a young one) should need earmuffs and boots, dammit. I think they're better than previous mascots (thanks to Scott at Facebook for the link), especially Canada's first, Amik, the 1976 Montréal plush lump that was supposed to be a beaver.

There does seem to be an early-21st century style developing, however—note the anime resemblance to the Fuwa mascots of the 2008 Beijing Games. Though maybe that doesn't carry over strongly to the plush and life-size versions.

What does bring out my cynicism, however, is having more than one mascot—that seems like a simple ploy to sell more stuff. If we had to pick one, I'd go with Quatchi: his "hey dude" slacker appearance, scratchy "why am I up before noon?" voice (check it out in Darren's unauthorized Olympic theme), and needless extra winter protection are very Vancouver. Though I guess if Sumi's oddball green tunic were Gore-Tex, that would do the job too.

Labels: olympics, shopping, toys, vancouver

...we went to a parade today:

Labels: family, holiday, vancouver

Mark Blevis, province-hopping Ottawa-based techie guy and co-host of the Canadian Podcast Buffet, among other podcasts, is putting together a podcaster-blogger-geek-nerd meetup on Monday, November 19 here in Vancouver.

It happens at 6:00 p.m. at Steamworks in Gastown:

I'm sure many of Metro Vancouver's finest will be there—and I mean finest geeks, of course. Right now I have no idea whether I'll go, but you should. There will be beer.

Labels: geekery, meetup, podcast, vancouver

I was pleased and honoured to have Lauren Wood and Tim Bray and their kids come to my birthday party back in June. One of the reasons it was an honour is that Tim is both a pioneering Internet tech-head and a socially thoughtful guy. His latest post is a gem:

TechCrunch? The top story when I last checked was "Pixsy To Power Search On Veoh". I’m containing my excitement.

It seems there's an inward-facing circle scattered around San Francisco and its peninsula; they're smart and experienced and money-hungry and very alert. But when the next big thing comes along (and I love this business, because I know it will) you won't have to rely on the professional noticers to tell you because it'll touch your life directly.

It's good that Tim and Lauren chose to live here in Vancouver rather than the Bay Area: they get more perspective, I think.

Labels: birthday, geekery, timbray, vancouver, web

My family and I are in Victoria, B.C., where we often go on mini-vacations. There has been a remarkable sprouting of condominium towers downtown in the past year—the place has changed quite a bit in a way it hasn't done for a few decades, at least since the first high-rise office and apartment towers appeared here in the '60s and '70s.

We actually got lost on the way to our hotel because we didn't recognize some of the streets we'd been down dozens of times before, and part of the southward view of the Olympic Mountains in Washington from our eighth-floor suite has been blocked by a new tower built next door.

I'm not complaining—it's just surprising. Until recently, Victoria seemed to have eschewed (or avoided) the condo-tower mania of Vancouver, which has completely transformed that city's downtown (and my own neighbourhood in Burnaby) over the past 20 years.

Labels: family, travel, vancouver, victoria

Some of us had a blogger meetup in Yaletown tonight. Here are a few photos:

Those who joined in were Rachel Newton, Chuck LeDuc, Mark Blevis, Tatsuya Nakagawa, Andrei Iancu, Vern Baker, Tod Maffin, Jeremiah Owyang, and me.

UPDATE: Here are some more photos from Mark and Jeremiah, who has also posted some video from our table at Milestones: