If you could imagine a single picture that represented the unwillingness of Canadians and Americans to, for the most part, grasp global warming and the changes required, could you imagine something better than this?

The Toronto Star recently published a map showing where the city would be hosting A(H1N1) vaccine clinics for the public. I sent this to all the Toronto employees at my company as an FYI. I got a response from a colleague (who I don't know very well at all) and we engaged in some back and forth debate on the vaccine and vaccines in general. I recommend reading from the bottom, so you get the full conversation. If you're interested in other links or have found other resources, please feel free to post.

Update: fixed broken links (even the ones I think are garbage), and name is changed to protect the other party.

( the full email trail )

There's a concept I thought of this morning which I'm sure brighter minds have already thought of. I call it "shrinking to your audience". It's when a company chooses to play to their current customers instead of playing to the customers they want or need.

I'm in Ottawa for work, and I just struggled to get from one spot to another by transit. I have *never* had this difficulty before, in many many trips to Ottawa. I didn't struggle due to bus frequency or routes (though Ottawa has a lot of growing up to do on that front*), but rather due to paying my fare.

In years past, I could purchase daypass vouchers at the Ottawa airport, much like buying bus tickets, and then turn them into a daypass when I boarded my first bus each day. The daypass was cheaper than 4 transit trips by cash, and gave me lots of flexibility while in the city. It also meant that I wasn't paying for $30-40 cab rides to and from the airport, so I was saving the company money too.

Last night upon landing, I learned that there are no more daypass vouchers. I have to buy them with cash on the bus. Problem: now I need to have exact change cash with me each morning, and I get no receipt for work expenses. Oh well.

This morning, I tried to find somewhere to sell bus tickets so I could get back on the bus and get to the office. A brand new, shiny, clean Shoppers Drug Mart didn't have any. Everything else was closed -- and this was right downtown on Monday morning at 7:00! Finally I found a corner store that sold tickets -- cash only! -- and was able to get some transit for myself.

OCTranspo's job is to increase ridership and improve the transit experience for people in Ottawa. Removing pass options, removing payment options, and removing (or not pushing) ticket sales outlets is not the way to do that. It's a shame, because I'm sure the various decisions had all sorts of pros listed. But if you're driving people away from transit - even I felt like just hailing a cab last night when my bus was 6 minutes late and my scarce cash was about to be used up - then you're not doing your job.

Come on OCTranspo. Ottawa city council has proven they're not ready to be the grownups on transit. Can you please avoid following their example?


* I say this because during rush hour there are about 100,000 bus routes that each go right downtown. There is almost no hub-and-spoke connector system in Ottawa, so nobody is being trained for future LRT. Instead, people are offended if they can't get a bus directly from their neighbourhood to their place of work, and Ottawa ends up with insane bus gridlock twice a day. In the 80's OCTranspo was named the best transit system in North America. Today, OC has a great website, but their system leaves a lot to be desired.

This month's Wayves Magazine has a good "You tell us" survey question:


Send in your anonymous reply at http://wayves.ca

I reinstalled PingFire in Firefox this afternoon, remembering how it made posting to LJ easier from wherever I happened to be online.

I've been tweeting and updating Facebook, but my longer (bitchier?) side has been missing its outlet.

Recent thoughts that could be too long for Twitter*:
- Obama would have been better to dodge the Nobel. But it's a no-win for him regardless, and it's better that he move on and hopefully accomplish more. But as a friend said, "sometimes talking IS doing something".
- It's winter WAY too soon.
- I'm getting an iPhone! Very excited, except for the having to pay for my cell phone.
- Vincent and I hosted a crazy Thanksgiving party on Sunday. Great fun, amazing turnout, huge amounts of wine consumed. We even played spin the bottle! (seriously!) It was surreal in a really fun way. And I don't think I caught anything from anyone either. :-P

* no guarantees.

( still more! )

Update: Facebook album for day 3: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=309211&id=610245592&l=01dae141c4

Day two, once we finally woke up - not too hungover, luckily - was going to be a wandering day. We'd heard that the neighbourhoods of Harajuku and Shibuya were worth seeing, and judging from the map it seemed easily walkable. ( More trippin', with photos )

Last week, Vincent and I headed off on a spur of the moment trip to Tokyo! This post tells the story (with photos!)
( Check it out! )

A guy I laid off 3 years ago when I managed some people is now my peer in the newly merged company. I wonder if he hates me?

Fascinating. I wish LJ had a feature to show me a frequency graph of my posts, that would be a cool addition to these stats.

Thanks for getting me in here, fiver00 !

1_2_ready_go and I just booked an impulse trip to Tokyo! Amazing seat sale and hotel deals, only $800 each (approximately 25-50% off, same on hotels). So excited!

Our route September 4-5, then back September 10:


Anybody been to Tokyo with advice?

Fascinating look at local food options and how the big chains can't/won't offer them due to cost, paperwork, cost, auditing ability, cost, and did I mention cost? Remember that your decisions in a grocery store are your vote: if a company is selling more organic stuff, more local stuff, less chemical stuff, they will react to that. Check out how the organic section has grown in your store in the past few years!

Buy-local push prompts Ontario grocers to go independent [CBC.ca]

Five Sobeys grocery stores in southern Ontario have left the Sobeys chain so they can offer local meats and produce -- I just wish they were closer to Toronto!



We do have an independent meat store a couple blocks from our house (Fresh From The Farm) which we're going to try visiting more often (and they do online ordering!) plus we just signed up for Front Door Organics which will deliver local produce right to our house on a schedule we set at a pretty good cost. Fun!

I contemplated tweeting about my blogging, but I have a few coworkers who follow me on twitter, so perhaps connecting the two is not s-m-r-t. I often think to myself that I wish I could start fresh with Facebook, LJ and Twitter, like I do with software on a laptop.

- LJ: people I know in person + people I know online only. No coworkers*, no family.
- Facebook: people I have at least met in person only**, lots of coworkers***, lots of family****.
- Twitter: people I know in person + people I know online only. Some coworkers, no family.

Hmmm. I understand why some people delete accounts and start fresh, but I hate the idea of leaving my previous posts/content behind.


* except for one, but he's cool (Hi Straz!)
** except for two I'll be meeting within weeks!
*** on limited profile to hopefully prevent anything embarrassing
**** NOT on limited profile... constantly thinking "oh god did i say anything embarrassing?"

Lovely story about remembering Michael Jackson from another LJer:
http://sally-bloodbath.livejournal.com/31772.html

Not blogging much these days - I used to have an extension for Firefox that would let me easily blog from any page, which led to my preponderance of links and quotes from pages. But it's not supported in Firefox 3.5 yet, and I haven't found a suitable replacement yet.

(Wants: post to LJ, Facebook, and Twitter in any combination I choose. Live in a toolbar button. Be stupid simple.)

I'm still reading LJ, though I'm gradually migrating all the public RSS feeds into Google Reader and just leaving real LJ people on LJ.

As for tweets, I just tweeted by 666th update! Hide your children and grab your rosaries. I've posted various interesting (to me) things on Twitter recently, so I thought I'd duplicate some of them here in case anyone is curious. If you're on twitter and would like to find me, I'm "c_9" (c9 was taken).

( Blogging about tweets, so should I also tweet about blogging? )

Not on track for Elite status next year. :-(