Saskatchewan Plates

It sucks that all these music festivals are in July, it makes it impossible to be at too many. Nonetheless, I’ve managed to track down an event that doesn’t coincide with my previous engagement in Dawson City.

It’s Victoria’s 8th Annual Ska Fest happening July 11th to 14th, featuring The Mad Caddies and a whole lot of other bands I don’t know. The Skatalites list it as a tour date, but aren’t on the Ska Fest website. Either way I believe it’ll be a blast.

Jayme, Davin, Brad, Sarah (and anyone else in the Victoria area), wanna go wit? I’m thinking about volunteering in an effort to keep costs down.

Rather than doing work, I decided to look at houses for the big move. I started looking at places in San Francisco, then looked at the valley, then Kirkland (where Google’s Seattle office is), and then Vancouver. Obviously getting no where, I decided to do a bit more research on the summer road trip instead.

I’ve been aiming to be in certain locations at certain times. End of April to Sackville before Dave and Keeley head back west. Amanda and Trevor’s wedding is on May 18th, which gives me about a month to make it from St. John’s to Southern Ontario. My convocation is on June 13th, but that’s definitely expendable. I’ve got an invite to stay with Michaud’s family in North Bay if I’m planning on driving the Trans Canada highway end to end. And I’ve got to be back in Saskatoon for June 22nd as that’s the big Lynch family reunion, and I’ll be damned if I just hear stories about it.

Beyond that lies the western leg of the trip. Another drive through the Rockies is definitely important, as is visiting everyone Vancouver and Chandra in Vernon. I had planned to go to both the Nakusp Music Festival and the Dawson City Music Festival, but unfortunately both are July 18th – 20th. So it’s one or the other, and while Dawson City hasn’t set up their line up yet, Nakusp’s is looking weaker than last year’s so it may be just a visit to the hot springs instead. Beyond Vancouver is Victoria and the Island, North to Port Hardy and Prince Rupert by ferry. Yukon and Alaska only a day beyond that. Back to Saskatoon by August.

So I’ve had a few “wow, that sounds awesome” comments, but so far no fellow trippers. Anyone interested in joining for a portion of the trip?

I’ve applied for Google’s full-time conversion process. I’d like to say I have a pretty good shot, but I honestly have absolutely no idea what will happen. It’s one of those things I really don’t want to get my hopes up about. I’ve been told I should know whether or not I got an offer by the end of September. That means, I need to know what the rest of my options are on the exact same time-line. Time to start sending out emails.

So I’ve been trying to compile a list of very cool technology companies to get my foot in at before I hear back from the big G. This list is incomplete and I’m definitely relying on the wisdom of the crowds to fill it out – read: post up suggestions.

The big guns
Microsoft (Particularly the Vancouver office)
Apple
Amazon
Yahoo!

The old jobs
Business Objects
RIM (Only if I can get on this project)

The up-and-comers:
Facebook
Kaleidescape
Pandora
The Feedroom
Any Vancouver Start-up (Now Public comes to mind) – Depending on the job, a Vancouver company could probably have me for 5-10k less a year.

What other great tech companies are all over your respective radars?

Deryk was the only one who submitted any additional ideas: The automated drink mixer. And it’s not like I haven’t always wanted my own Mr. Butlertron.

The only other idea I thought would be doable considering the crowd would be the ticketmaster killer. I know that it doesn’t have a mechatronic aspect to it, but considering we all tend to have incredible taste in music (with the exception of Jarrett), I thought those who couldn’t contribute to the code could definitely contribute to the direction.

Anyway, I’m going to defer to the community on this one.

DHL is the biggest piece of shit delivery company on the face of the planet. And I don’t need to argue it, they can quite literally prove my point for you.

Call 1-800-CALL-DHL right now (it’s 1-800-225-5345). Listen close.

The automated system immediately answers and says “Please hold while we transfer your call to a customer service agent” at which point it promptly hangs up on you. Wow.

Dear Apple, there’s a reason why DHL was so cheap when you got estimates on shipping out all of your replacement batteries. It’s because they’re quite obviously the worst run shipping company floating around out there. Stop getting shit all over yourselves.

“Post 9/11″

Here’s what I propose.

This is something I came up with just a few seconds ago after watching the weather network for an hour straight, so forgive me if I haven’t worked out some of the logistics.

I want someone to host a distributed DVD rental service in Waterloo.

The only way a person can join is by being refered by a friend and then submitting their own DVD collections to a central collection which is a hosted on the obligatory website. The website keeps track of all the DVDs in circulation, all the users, and where each person’s DVDs are.

Use Case
I’m sitting home after supper Tuesday night and I have a craving for some cheesy bruce campbell action. So I hop on the web and punch in “Evil Dead” (That’s got to be the most common use case out there).

The website returns that there are three copies in the collection. One copy is with Jeff who is across town and likes to be contacted via MSN, but he’s only had it for a few days so he might not have gotten the chance to watch it, I could message him if there wasn’t more available. The second copy is with Jane, but she’s already supposed to lend it to Ryan when she’s done with it.

The last copy is with Tiffany who is two blocks over and has had the video with her for the last few weeks. Tiff likes to get SMS messages, so I send her an automated message letting her know I’d like to borrow her copy of “Evil Dead” which is actually Craig’s from Rez, who can track his DVD with his personal control panel. Tiff responds back saying that she’s just heading out for the night but she can drop it off on her way (wow isn’t that convenient!). I give her some sort of kudos for being so damn helpful and providing me with satisifaction of my b-movie fetish,

Sounds a bit like communism doesn’t it?

sean

yeah (crass version) by lcd soundsystem

I have a question. I am hoping it will fire up some discussion.

How many of you would use a website that would have all the bars in town to plan their night? Something a long the lines where you could see all the events in town, see what bands/DJs are playing, sign up for VIP access to skip the line, and see a live camera feed of the line to see how long it is.

Something like this would have saved us a lot of hassle when we went to Montreal.

Anyway, if you have any feedback, I know most of the people that read this site aren’t real bar gowers, but I’d love to have a bit of a discussion about it. I’m trying not to look at it from the CS nerd point of view.

which is not very easy or sean-like,
sean

Let’s say your cool. I know, keep dreamin pal, but for the sake of augmentation let’s use that left half. So you’re a cool person and you want to get yourself some official cranium wear from your favorite band, skate or car company, etc. You could go to walmart and by the poser brand, but no, you’re hardcore, you ain’t pay for no poser shite. So you go down to the local music/skate/tuner store and pick out the genuine piece of merchandise and walk over to the asshole in a hat who takes your coin. He rings up the uber-cool soon-to-be-yours rock accessory and tells you, “that’ll be $35.67.” WTF? I ain’t got no tree fitty! But you buy it anyway, because you’re a corporate tool. Fact of life.

But Sean doesn’t grease the gears of the consumer machine! No no, I’m granting you, no wait, forcing you under the threat of defimation to your lawn, to make your very own boysofsummer.ca hat.

You’re going to need to get some stuff together. A grand don’t come for less than a grand.

it’s a sharpie

jackpot

what a hole

good selection

our canvas

It’s a fairly basic operation. You really only need to a felt tipped marker (sharpie for you brandname recognition impared), but you could be hardcore and use like toothpaste or human blood. Mean’s you’ll have to kill someone every time you wash the hat, but I assume that you’re some sort of serial rapist if you’ve chosen the bodily fluids route.

Alright, once you’ve confirmed your writing utensil. Time to come up with the canvas. Now canvas isn’t cheap, so I’m gona help you get a hold of it for cheap. The best way is to go couch mining. You know that warn down couch or arm chair that your old man is always sitting in while he watches tv or beats your mom? Well it’s a prime place to find loose change! All you need is about a buck fiddy. Shouldn’t be that hard to find.

Now that you’ve got your chump change, time to make a trip down to the local Value Village. Make sure to check out the old electronics area, you never know when you’ll find yourself a classic nintendo dirt cheap. And we all know how you love the geek-chique, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.

Anyway, after you browse around the granny panny section, find where they keep the hats. What you’re looking for is them cool mesh hats. You want to avoid one that has kind of a cloth fabric on the front, and stay away from ones that have a patch on instead of silkscreening. It’s best to get one that has a brand or company that you don’t like. Or something that could be considered penis innuendo. Something like “Peckerwood Lumber” makes a prime candidate.

If you can’t find any change, or if you aren’t anywhere near any sort of second hand store, head over to the homeless shelter, these things are all the rage there. See if you can’t swipe one from a guy that looks like he’s down on his luck. Shouldn’t be too hard. I guess you could pay ‘em with that change you mighta found, but fuck it, you’re gona have to buy a bar of soap to wash the stentch of poor off.

wasn’t that hard

customize

Now comes the most important part. You need to take your marker and draw a great big dink on the hat. Once you’ve done that, you’re done! You can modify the hat if you are craft-inclined. I, for example, took a knife to that gay little string at the beginning of the brim. You can also write boysofsummer.ca to help those lesser individuals who aren’t educated about the marvels of my life get up to speed. You can consider yourself a crusader now!

Anyway, if you’re one of those people who like to be on the leading edge of style, you better get to the stores quick, because by this weekend, if you don’t have the Sean’s Website hat, you’re probably fat. Either way, no one would want to put it in. Oh speaking of put it in, I need someone who looks good in a Bikini to model this hat, as you can see, I don’t do it justice.

So it’s been a year. Dinkers have found themselves at keg parties and on the heads of celtic bands, there’s bound to be some photographic evidence.