that ring of confidence

In the classroom they have wi-fi

I guess it dates me to say that when I was in high school nobody brought laptops to school. When I got a very old Powerbook to take with me to France, and would use take it in class on my return to Canada, it was a novelty. Even when I hit university the only other students using laptops tended to be the special needs students who the school supplied with computers to aid in their studies. There certainly was not wi-fi available anywhere around campus, and if I wanted to get my laptop online I needed to unplug one of the computers in the Phoenix's office and stick the stolen ethernet cable into my computer.

By the time I left it was more common to see laptops, but university wide wi-fi was still in the future. In the newspaper office we'd finally set up our own private wireless network, simply because we were always short on ethernet ports, and that seemed cutting edge.

These days though wireless internet is the norm in post-secondary schools across Canada. Karen Pinchin wrote an article for The Georgia Straight about how that's taxing student's attention spans in class [tgs], and I guess the fact that I'm blogging as the teacher is trying to get his laptop to display the correct slide, is proof that it does divide attention. Myself though I'm of the opinion that students basically find ways to let their minds go on mini holidays with or without technological advances.

I was generally attentive in high school but when the teacher was having to go over a concept for a third or fourth time for someone my mind would wander. Back then I'd write short stories, work on terrible lyrics to terrible songs that I intended to write one day when I finally learned to play guitar (I never did and likely never will), or came up with names for the terrible band that would never perform my terrible songs.

On notable class was grade eight English. I was an avid reader and would generally finish a novel within a week, which since we studied a novel over a month or two, meant that I had a great deal of time during the class' reading time. Seeing this, and seeing that Curtis Seaman was also reading ahead, Mr. Brooks would send the pair of us out to wander the school and write short stories and plays for extra credit. This never resulted in any great pieces of literature, since they were generally very silly parodies that only really made us laugh.

Still it was the type of thing that made us really enjoy the class, and I think that year was probably the best mark I ever got in English.

So here I am blogging. The projector is almost fixed, and the class is ready to continue so I guess I'd better go. I probably won't get extra credit for this, but at least I'm not unleashing more terrible lyrics to terrible songs to a yet unformed terrible band out into the world.

I meet the future Prime Minister Stephen Harper

i realize that I've never really told my Stephen Harper story here so as Canada heads to the polls today to potentially re-elect Harper as our Prime Minister I figured now is as good a time as any.  It was in fact five years ago Thursday that all of this happened, so the timing is pretty appropriate.  We can call this an anniversary retelling of the story.

It was October 16th, 2003.  I was celebrating my twenty-fifth birthday and writing for The Phoenix at what was then Okanagan University College.  Jay-Z and Beyoncé were "Crazy In Love", Outkast was riding "Hey Ya!" for all it was worth [mo].  The American lead invasion and occupation of Iraq was only in it's seventh month, and the big debate in Canadian politics was whether or not we'd follow America into Iraq after standing by them for the invasion of Afghanistan.  The Liberals had stayed out of Iraq, and since the political landscape on the right was fragmented with the breakup of the old Progressive Conservative Party into the Conservatives and the Reform Party it looked like nothing was going to change.

In Kelowna The Phoenix as a news outlet had benefited from the breakup of the right because it had eventually lead us to having Stockwell Day as leader of the Reform Party and his George W. Bush-esque photo-ops and buffoonery were like mana from heaven for snarky student journalists.  The party's switch to Stephen Harper was a sad day for us, since he was a) not local (Day had his riding in Westbank/Summerland) and b) he was not an obviously complete fucking idiot.

There were no more homo-erotic press conferences on the shores of Lake Okanagan in a wetsuit.  There were no more hiring of criminals to spy on the other political parties.  There were no more defections of MPs.  There was no more fun.

Happy Ten Years Google

to celebrate their ten year birthday Google has put their oldest available search index online. Now for a limited time you can search their database that was active in 2001 [g01] as well as my hilariously ugly Matthew Good Band fansite and various student paper stuff [g01]. What will you find if you do? Well for starters you'll find one of my first blogs [g01] as well as the fact that that other Jeffrey Simpson had a slightly larger web presence than I did, even though I kind of figure that he had no idea what the internet was at that point.

Give the search a try, and see what comes up. In 2001 for example there was no iPod. What a backwards age that must have been.

You can keep this suit of lights, I'll be up with the sun

i will admit it's been awhile. I got busy writing [tgs], and then my computer crashed and I've spent the last three days fighting to get it working. Thanks to the Genius at the Pacific Centre Mall's Apple Store I figured out my plan of attack, but it's likely that I won't be able to save most of the files that I had been transfering from one computer to another for slightly over a decade.  Though most of it was no big loss, I don't really need a saved game for each of the last three Sim City games, some of it was worth keeping.

Thankfully I'd actually backed up all my photos a few weeks ago onto DVDs.  The last six months or so of photos that I hadn't backed up are mostly on my Flickr account [fkr] so that is not a major problem.  Sadly I've lost a great deal of writing, and while most of it was just scraps and fragments it's still gone.  Most of it I have backups in the real world, with the eVent! articles and a lot of the Phoenix stuff in boxes in storage.  Some of it though is just gone.  All of which makes me wish I'd have been more diligent keeping my writing archive site up-to-date [teotw].

It is though a clean slate, a chance to start again.  My Macbook is running considerably faster with it's freshly erased and near empty hard drive than it was with a nearly full drive with programs and files migrated through three other Apple laptops (an iBook and two Powerbooks). 

My only worry is whether I'll be able to reinstall Adobe CS2.  I've got the actual purchased discs, but for some reason the registration code didn't work last time I tried to install it.

Now though I should be back to blogging on a more regular basis.  Well, hopefully.

I'm pants at job hunting

I am totally rubbish at finding a job.  Other people seem to be able to do it with very little difficulty, but nearly six months on and I'm still working on resumes and haunting the cyber halls of Monster.  I will admit I'm being a bit pickier than I could be, because since I'm so crap at this I'd rather not need to do it again soon.  That's why I'm only trying for jobs that I really would like to have such as at the soon to be opened Apple Store in Pacific Centre [mbv], or the reporter/photographer job at the Chilliwack Times [ct] that I applied for yesterday.  (I built an on-line photography portfolio for that job that you can browse here [fkr]).

So I've decided to draw up a few rules for the sort of job that I'm looking to take, just so I don't end up doing this macabre dance in six months. 

1) I have to like the job.  I guess this seems like a luxury, but most of us spend so much time at work that the fact that we generally don't like our jobs is insane.  Life's too short to be doing something that I hate any longer than I need to be.  I mean it doesn't need to be as fun as a trip to EuroDisney, but I don't want to be going home ready to hide under my bed crying.

2) I want the possibility for advancement.  This is one of the reasons I've been focusing on larger companies  during this job search, because there's more chance for things like raises, promotions and rewards for long term service and good work.  I've been with the same company for nearly a decade and the people hired this month are paid the same as me, get as much control over their hours as I do and there's pretty much nowhere for me to advance.  To the company the only difference between me and new hires is that the new hires are younger and more attractive.

3) I'd like to be able to be creative.  Granted if I get a sales job this isn't going to be much of a possibility, but when I was talking to Rob Butz who I used to work with at the Phoenix I realized that my years with the paper were probably the best I've ever had.  Being able to do something like that, something that manages to use at least part of my creative side, would be wonderful.

4) I'd like to have a job that includes travel.  This is sort of an outside shot thing, but I like travelling for work.  I used to really dig the weeks I'd have to go to Toronto for Campus Plus meetings and would actually really like something were I got the chance to travel.  Maybe having to spend two weeks a month in Peace River might blow, but some travel would be hot.

5) Working somewhere where they respect me would be wonderful.  Really so much can be ignored if I have the feeling that I'm needed and an important part of the team.  Feeling like you're just a cog in the machine, and as easily replaced as a three dollar mop, is incredibly demoralizing.  Things like money and hours can be ignored if there's a sense that my contribution is important and that I'm doing a good job. 

How my art got into Value Village

I just got back from my second trip to Kelowna in the last two weeks, this time it was a quick one day jaunt down with Nathan for purposes of performance art. More on the performance art later, if it amounts to anything. As it was most of our time was taken up by driving around Kelowna taking pictures of things and admiring the recent burst of construction that has brought the city forwards into true Malltopia. We also managed to visit with Chad who I hadn't seen last week, since he missed all the non-official grad activities.

I've got some photography up of the trip on my Flickr page [fkr], though most of it is either scenic photography from Knox Mountain, or pictures of Chad, Nathan and I chilling at Joey's on the patio drinking giant beers and eating sushi tacos. 

Since I only had Tuesday off we drove down Monday after I finished work arriving in Kelowna at about 11:30 pm, and then drove back this morning leaving at 6:30 am and giving me just enough time to get to my apartment and then up to Metrotown so that I arrived only five minutes late at 1:05 pm.  It was drive-riffic.

As a side note we went to the Value Village [vv] thrift store in Kelowna and I found a t-shirt that I had actually made.  Pictured below this Phoenix shirt I designed along with Todd Leskie for the PWRCUP conference we hosted at OUC.  It seems that someone must have sold/gave theirs to VV, or the large box of extra ones that we had left over was given away.  There was also an UBC-O History Union t-shirt [fkr], which lead me to belive that someone (Brian Doubt maybe) that was involved in both the History Course Union and the paper had been donating to VV recently.  So there you go, something I created is in the museum of Value Village.

Random results from my ego Google search

Every now and then I Google myself to see what the world at large is saying about me, or more likely the Jeffrey Simpson that writes for the Globe and Mail.  Most of the stuff I find is from old websites that I've created over the years, so it's fairly seldom that I come across anything of note.

However just now while watching an episode of the painfully stupid show Mutant X, whose relationship with Marvel Comics' X-Men I've not been able to figure out, I came a across this link to an article about an editing decision I made with the Phoenix.  I had decided not to run an ad for a group that wanted to free holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in the paper, something which got me some positive letters for once.  Apparently there was an article on it in the Daily Courier, which got a mention on the site for the Canadian Jewish Congress.

In this connection, every Canadian could well learn from the leadership demonstrated by two outstanding representatives of younger generations: Susan (last name unknown) and Jeffery Simpson, managing editor of The Phoenix, the student newspaper at Okanagan University College, where I take history classes.

Go to City Park and you will see Susan's words written in the year 2000 on the public washroom wall for the Fat Cat Children's Festival "If I Had a Wish" art-expression project: "I wish to stop racism."

In the same vein, Simpson recently withdrew an ad placed by the Canadian Association for Free Expression, a so-called free-speech advocacy group, and detailed his reasons why in an open message to his readers. So cogent was Mr. Simpson's argument that it inspired a congratulatory letter from myself.

Simpson demonstrated bold, judicious, responsible and perceptive editorial leadership in choosing not to profit from an ad aimed at garnering funds for the defence of imprisoned Ernst Zundel.

Zundel is that racist dinosaur who not only denies the Nazis' mass slaughter of six million Jews during the Second World War, but further claims that the Holocaust is just a fictitious component of an international Jewish conspiracy.

Heeding the words of people like Landy, Susan and Simpson is precisely the prescription every Canadian needs to eradicate racism.

It's the event of the week: a pun for all you scenesters

After feverish speculation about what sort of publication I might be working for (okay Nathan had a dream about it and I consider that to be enough to classify it as feverish) I am pleased to announce that unless they hate my articles, I will be freelancing for eVent! magazine.

This came about because they were short staffed and the Phoenix ran a parody of their paper that we called iVent! and included such great articles as "Local Band is Shit".  eVent! and the Phoenix have had a turbulent past as one of our editors accused them of using sexist advertising when they started, which started an editorial war between the Phoenix and eVent! daddy publication the Daily Courier.  Then eVent! ran one of my Matthew Good concert pictures without a) crediting me or b) paying me which started another kerfuffle.

After running a parody issue with a front cover headlines that simply read "Tits!" I got an email from the editor Andre Wetjen I figured it was simply to signal the move into the courtroom.  But no he was offerin me semi-regular freelance work which is super good because it means money.  Money is good because it equals food and other things that I want.  The rate is pretty good as well, about the same as IGN.com was paying, though without the sweet sweet American funds bonus.

My first article which I wrote last night was about my experiance during the U2 video shoot for "City of Blinding Lights".  Granted I had written about that for free here, but I wrote something new and had to spend some time cutting to keep it under the 800 word maximum.  My next article is on Star Wars merchandise, which as far as I forsee will involve renting Star Wars video games and eating Star Wars branded M&Ms.

So it might not be Cliente, a publication that came to Nathan in a dream, but hey it pays and being payed is almost as good as being poked with a stick and fed rice.

---

Also you might have noticed the slightly new design of the site here.  Sadly I did not come up with the snazy graphics, rather they're from Ready.gov an American government website that prepares citizens for a terrorist attack.  Aside from the kickin' graphics the site is chalk-full of paranoia goodness.  The fact that there's a section for kids coming soon makes it so amazingly awesome that I just want to pee in a mini-van cup holder.

They don't believe it now, they just think it's stupid.

The article in the Phoenix that I was angry at may have turned out to have been a bit of a boon for me.  Turns out that I've been tentativly offered a regular freelancing job based on the fact that I'm leaving the land of the student press.

Which is very exciting, but I'm going to keep the nature of the job and the publication under my hat until I have some more confirmation.  Not because I've been asked to, but rather because if I don't get it I'll look like a bit of a dope for having blown the chance to get a regular and paying job.

Meanwhile work is slow, which means I'm not making much but I do get to listen to the iPod and nobody has yelled at me yet today, so that's good.  Not getting yelled at makes me feel loved.  I like feeling loved.

Play the hand that your money is on.

I woke up yesterday at 5 am to finish up an essay that had been haunting me for about a month.  The overdue library book piled in my room spoke of my lack of motivation and aversion to sitting down and banging out the last 1,200 words required to bring the essay home.  However with the final yesterday, I could not put off the essay any longer.

After hitting the five minute snooze option on my BlackBerry 6 times it was 5:30 and I was ready to hit the keyboard.  I finished the essay up at about 10 am, and after a bit of work with my iDisk trying to easily transfer the Word file to my iMac for printing, I finally loaded it onto my iPod shuffle and walked it across the house for printing.

Then I set about studying for the exam which was at 1 pm.

The exam was where I redeemed myself for being a terrible student.  I have always done well on history exams that are heavily focused on essays.  I might not be able to find Tokyo on a blank map of Japan but ask me to write an essay on how the Japanese military gained such influence within the Japanese government during the the 1930s or about the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and I'll be smiling.  I felt good, one more class down and two to go to finish the degree from Hell.

Then, on my way out, I picked picked up a copy of the Phoenix on my way out and the post-exam glow faded right quick.  I had thought something was up with this issue of the paper since talking to Melissa the other day.  She mentioned an article about me and not knowing that there would be an article about me I just assumed she meant one of the articles by me.  But no, there was an article about me.

The article can be summed up as the theme, "Jeff has been here a long time.  He's a loser."  They quoted, or fake quoted, people like the student union president calling me a sad sack and pathetic.  They also, and I think overall this annoys me as much as the content of the article or even more, ran a very unflattering picture of me beside the article.  Previous to this I had made it clear that I did not want my picture in the paper.  This had come up when there was going to be a feature asking for people to apply for editorial positions by having pictures of us current editors and descriptions of what our jobs were.  I had said that I did not want my picture in the paper and when it was clear that they didn't really give a shit what I wanted I essentially said I would quit if they did since I was mainly hanging around to help the paper out.  They ran a picture anyway, but it was cropped so only my eyes were showing so rather than be a prick and make a fuss about it I ignored it.

So ignoring the fact that I didn't want my picture in the paper, since I'm feeling really shitty about my appearance due to the post-Atkins weight gain that's occured since September, and then taking a chance to slam me they also didn't feel the need to let me know that the article was going in.  Which of course they don't need to do, but since I'm an editor I thought maybe consulting with me would have at least been polite.

So I managed to go from being pretty pleased with myself to being pretty pissed off at the Phoenix.  There was some post-publishing year training to be done, helping the new people learn the ropes, but I'll need to cool down a bit before I even consider helping them again.

All of which I'm sure makes me sound like I take myself too seriously, which I probably do.  To be fair to them I've said worse stuff about myself in the paper, but most of that is premptive.  If you make fun of yourself for something you worry people will make fun of you about it stops them from doing it.  It sometimes hurts less to mock yourself then have someone else do it.  So when they took that as a cue to attack me, well it's a good kick in the balls to end the year.

It's getting hot in here, so ask the damn questions quickly

It is hot in the Phoenix office. I thought I'd be a good guy and swing by the office for the staff meeting as opposed to skipping it and running home to play some World of Warcraft. I figured if I was cantankerous enough I'd be free within about an hour. Staying at the school was not a sexy thought, since I was in the library until 9 pm yesterday working on a paper.

Sadly it was day one of our two day hire-fest. So it is currently almost three hours into the damn session and we've still got more plunkers to go. The heat is on, and literally as it's probably as hot in the small airless newspaper office as it is in... someplace fucking hot.

I'm tired, I want to go home.

Now you have drunk all your beer, go drown your empty selves

When I haven't posted for awhile there's always a desire to do a big post not only explaining why I haven't been posting but catching you up on the last little bit of my life.  However the time needed to do such a post then starts to add up as time goes by to the point where a catch up post is as formidable as a history essay.

So let us just refer to these last few weeks as my missing period.  If I am ever famous and dead (I know one day I will be dead, but famous?), historians, biographers and members of my fanclub can speculate at what amazing things I did during these lost days.  My favorite of the rumours that have yet to start is going to be the one that says I spent the time in a hot tub having sex with a touring group of Italian co-eds until finally emerging wrinkled and sexually satisfied to post this entry.

Meanwhile I've had a bottle of wine in the boot of my Mini for a few months.  I was going to give it to Allan Coyle who is the Media Relations guy for OUC, for his help with organizing the PWRCUP conference.  However I never got around to it and then during the latest cold snap in Kelowna it decided to pop its cork.  My car has smelled like red wine for about two weeks.  Attempts to wash the carpet have not made a dint in the smell.

Also for the first time in years I missed the CUP national conference, this time held in Edmonton.  My being sick was just too much of a kick in the throat to be able to go, and so I spent the time not posting on my blog.  What I did, well that's for the fan club to wonder.

New game and new Soapbox

I worked today, the theory being that the last Sunday before Christmas would be a big day for sales. It was alright, I sold enough stuff to pay for my having been there but not enough for us to make Sunday a regular shift.

The shift did give me time to work on my latest, and possibly last Soapbox style article for the Phoenix. I was prompted by a submission to the A&E section that is basically a Soapbox article written by two girls. The difference is that they've decided self deprecation is for the dogs. Sample line, "I had been shot down for FRIENDSHIP by a guy I didn’t even think was sexy". Which begs the questions, umm... okay and is your caps lock key stuck?

Anyway there's actually a few instances where if they were to become rich and famous off the article I'd have a good plagiarism lawsuit. Such as their idea for name-tags to let people know who is single, dating, gay, straight and so on, which seems similar to an article I wrote about people wearing buttons to let people know who is single, dating, gay, straight and so on.

After work I went and bought Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II for XBox. I played for about 7 hours and then the game froze. Now the disc won't load, though the XBox can handle other games fine. So I'll go into Future Shop tomorrow to get a new disc.

The end of the world

I am currently working on a new website which is going to house all of my written work that I own the copyright to, and have links to the stuff that I don't (for example the IGN articles). Right now I'm going through all of my old websites and loading the old Soapbox articles from the Phoenix onto the site. This process is forcing me to realize that in general I am a hack. Seriously most of the old stuff has a few decent jokes, but mostly got by on the "hey look at me I'm a loser" factor. The site is worth checking out, and over the next week it'll grow to house anything that's even remotely fit to print including my short stories and the plays I wrote for high school drama productions. In the future any new stuff I write will go there, unless I don't own the rights to it and then I'll link to it.

What, you're telling me there's still 2 hours left?

Today seems long, and boring.  It's been a day of contsant troubles at work.  I'm wanting to bite someone's head off and feed it to the derranged hobos that hang out at the Gospel Mission downtown.  Right now pretty much everything possible is annoying the hell out of me, including the sound of the machine that we use to charge purchases to credit cards with.  The fact is if I was legally allowed to murder one person a month this would be the month I'd decide to do that.

Now this guy is here complaining about how he doesn't know how to use the MP3 player he got somewhere else, as though just because we sell things that use electricity we should some how be responsible for teaching how to transfer .wmv files to MP3.  Now he's telling us about all the viruses he's had on his computer.

Add to this the fact that there's a Phoenix meeting after work and I'm about as pleased as shit to be awake right now.  I had been interested in going to Todd Leskie's party later on tonight but I'm afraid I'd ruin their carpet through some sort of homicide.  Against who?  I don't know, but you know at this point I'm not picky. 

Oh, by the way Chad Barclay now has his own blog, via my offer of a free blog a few entries ago.  A picture of him taken with the terrible camera in my Nokia 3220 tops this entry.  Why not drop by his site and say, "Hello, hello."

They will see us waving from such great heights. “Come down now” they'll say.

PWRCUP is finally over, and has been for about a day now. My body will soon return to sea level, and life will return to normal. Hanson Hosein was our keynote speaker and he was fantastic. Having him close the conference was a great idea since it dazzled everyone into believing we'd put on an amazing conference.

This was followed by a party in the Well which once it got going was really excellent. I'm pleased to say I DJed a kick ass dance / party and as opposed to finding my music too thin and weird, my music was just right. Of course the peoples have to match the music.

As a counter-point to a weekend of student journalism action I am now at the Q4 launch for Rogers Wireless. Whereas CUP types are generally bursting with awesomeness, the average Rogers salesperson, like any salesperson is bursting with being a tool.

Luckily we've managed to ditch the tools and now with Cass and Sean at the Pac Cell we have the table least likely to get in a fight with Rutland toughs outside the 7-11 tonight.

Aborted Soapbox

The following is what was to be the start of an article for the newspaper, that I decided to go a different direction with.

I was in the Well, watching the Tegan and Sara concert, when I heard my name called. I turned to see a tall fellow standing beside my chair. I said hello as I tried to place his face; had I worked in a project group with him once or taken a class with him or even gone to high school with him? I certainly could not place the face.

“I love your writing man,” he said.

Ah, it’s going to be one of those conversations.

He proceeded to tell me, in what I believe was a German accent, that he had been reading the Phoenix for years and enjoyed my articles “about encounters with women” the best. He wanted to know why I wasn’t writing anymore.

“I wrote a book review last issue,” I pointed out.

He waved his hand dismissively, and asked again for more stories about my encounters with women, more articles like I used to write about not being able to get a girlfriend. Book reviews and concert photography wouldn’t satiate him.

Now I suppose I should clarify what is meant by the fairly vague, phrase “encounters with women”. We’re not talking about erotic Penthouse Letters here, we’re talking stories of women not wanting to go out with me, mostly drawn from high school experiences. Tales of rejection, sadness and self-pity, described by someone else recently as a fruity “blend of Hunter S. Thompson and Douglas Coupland”. I would call it a mix of Woody Allen and the Magnetic Fields but then again who am I to judge.

Am I still the same person as I was when I wrote those types of articles? Granted I still identify with the Beck song “Loser” and I’m a 26-year-old virgin who has never had a girlfriend and I’m starting to worry that one day I’ll identify not with “Loser” but with the Tragically Hip’s “38 Years Old”, a song with a chorus that claims “he’s 38 years old and never kissed a girl”. Yet I would like to think I’ve grown in some way, gotten past the point where I have to whine about being single in print. I mean isn’t that what this website is for?

What's going on with those science people?

I'm in a Phoenix meeting right now. It's smashing. I got off early today because, well I get to work all day Saturday instead of having the day off. Having 1 day off a week is totally crappy. I will repeat that, it's totally crappy. I'm getting stressed out and I haven't even really started in hardcore on my two correspondence courses.

I realize that death awaits. There is no way out of this situation that doesn't end in tears and sadness.

A short post

This is just a short post to let you know I'm still alive. I can't promise for how much longer, but currently we're golden. Golden like 'the Mythical Golden Ram' of CUP lore.

The fine art of falling apart

Sorry that I've not let you in on any secret parts of my life recently. Things have been busy, or I've been lazy. Mainly I've been fucking about trying to get the copy of Virtual PC that I bought from the Microsoft staff store to work on my Powerbook. It has, as all my trips into the world of Windows have been, a headache.

The main problem has been that the copy of Windows XP that I bought at the same time is an upgrade and not the actual full edition. So it looks for an old copy of Windows '95-ME and then bleeps at me for not having that installed on my harddrive.

In other news we returned from Seattle safe and sound. We added no more tickets onto my account. I now am paying $91 to Washington State. $91 which I can only assume will go towards Homeland security or buying a bigger American flag for the Space Needle.