Richard’s Blogosphere

Spadina-Fort York is a federal riding, a provincial riding, and a Toronto ward, and the boundaries are identical. Being from British Columbia, and having spent most of my adulthood in Vancouver (which does not have a ward system), the riding boundaries do not match at all. The recent changes to the wards in Toronto (from 44 to a proposed 47 to an eventual 25) set the wards to match the provincial (and therefore federal) ridings.

For years (really, years and years), I was and still am a loyal Coca-Cola drinker. At every job, it would take about a week for colleagues to realize just how often I drank it. There haven't been many days that have gone by where I haven't had a Coke, which I alternate between thinking of as a mark of shame and shrugging off as an aspect of my personality. I'm not saying I can tell the difference in a blind taste test, but Pepsi cola lacks the zing that Coca-Cola has.

Back when I thought I wanted to be a sysadmin, I read Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas A. Limoncelli. The sections that appealed to me the most were about routines. The routine of his that I always remember is that he gasses up his car on Sundays. Despite being a believer in the cashless society, the thing I always do now on Sundays is get cash. That way I don't have to think about it for another week.

The Toronto Flower Market takes place a few times during the summer, and I try to buy something there each time to brighten up my apartment.

Today marks my third anniversary of working at Acquia. This job has been more stressful than I imagined it but also with more laughs, learning and love than I imagined. Today was a good example, where an issue affected multiple customers and I ended up being the communications lead for the problem, but through teamwork and empathy we each played our part and kept things as light as possible while we figured out what was wrong.

I’m not really sure what I was doing at Drone:Klub:21 beyond listening to synthesized music coming at me from all directions. It was pretty cool seeing men (let’s face it) agree on a key and a tempo and make new sounds from electrons, but I’m one of three “audience members” in four chairs provided. There were three times as many performers as listeners.

I will server for another year on the board of the Icelandic Canadian Club of Toronto.

Despite being somewhat socially isolated in Toronto, I've felt connected to my friends in Vancouver through video chat.

I write post-mortems for significant events so that the next time will go slightly better.

A delay, not to mention more contextual awareness, will improve the current crop of apps that send you reminders based on your physical location.

After two years of living in Toronto, this city is still new to me, so I took the opportunity to pick a random point and make a randomly generated route that I could run.

I'm commuting between work by bike again. I signed up in 2016 as a member of the Toronto Bike Share, and renewed again this month. Their call centre operation is weird, with a call center that presents options for English and Spanish. This being the country where English and French are the official languages, I have an idea of what that means. I haven't had a problem with their support when needed, at least.

I show off my picnic basket and blanket.

I would have gotten him to sign my Kindle.

16 easy steps!

16 easy steps!

As a streak of 561 days in a row of playing Ingress comes to an end, I’ve decided to quit.

As a streak of 561 days in a row of playing Ingress comes to an end, I’ve decided to quit.

A summary of my trip to Gravenhurst, Ontario on July 15th, 2016.