Jason’s Random Thoughts

It’s snowing outside …

For the past 10 days, the city of Vancouver has been without clean water.  And for the same 10 days, the citizens of Vancouver have been pretty quiet.

I’m really quite surprised that there hasn’t been some sort of protest of rally somewhere downtown yet.  There have been rallies carried out for everything from raising transit fares to Bush’s visit to China.  “Educated” people have called for the demolition of the provincial legislature, and demanded that groups of sqatters be permitted to use buildings slated for demolition as their homes.

Yet when it comes to the state of the city’s water supply, there has been very little noise.

Today I cleaned my home, and aside from the mirrors and windows where Windex is used, I can’t tell if anything is clean or not.  There is a fine powder coating my bathtub, the kitchen sink, my floors, the counter … everything where I had used water with the cleanser.  This makes me wonder what the water was like before purification systems.

It’s clear that the water we drink in Vancouver doesn’t go through much filtering before it’s passed into the water pipes.  If the water facilities in Southern Ontario were like this, I’m quite certain that I would have died long ago from whatever mutagenic enzymes and bacteria currently exist in Lakes Erie and Ontario.

I understand that some cities are fortunate enough to be surrounded by a bountiful natural environment where resources can be tapped without much processing, but with the rising populations in the Vancouver area, can we really afford to ignore the possible consequences of such contamination in the future?

I know that it would cost millions to upgrade the filtering systems for Vancouver, North Van and Burnaby, but how long can we go with bottled water?  Rather than attacking the next over-budget item on the Olympic agenda, perhaps the city can look at upgrading the water systems to ensure the everyday citizens and world-class athletes can rely on the basics.

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I love winter.

The cold.  The wind.  The rain.  The snow.  I just can’t get enough.

Walking through the cold makes me feel great to be alive.  The wind is a fierce reminder that even air can hurt.  Rain is what Vancouver and Richmond get most of the time, but the snow is what covers the mountains and makes the massive stone walls appear even more impressive for the half hour I’m outside during daylight.

Of course, with the cold comes the warm.  Stepping into a home after braving the cold for an hour or two certainly gives one an appreciation for comfort.  This also makes me wonder what the people who don’t have a home are doing to keep warm.  I’ve often considered this as the seasons change and we edge ever closer to the top of the globe.

Though I can’t change the world all at once, I can certainly change someone’s world.  This weekend I’ll donate some new blankets to the shelter.  There’s apparently quite the shortage, and if it costs me a couple of bucks, then so be it.  I enjoy the warmth of my home and my electric blanket every day of the year.  It’s only human decency to help others enjoy some measure of heat during the coming months.

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For the last month I’ve been trying to be pretty regular with my postings on this site.  I know that very few people come here, and even fewer people care about my opinions and happenings in life, but this gives me a place to flush out ideas and be a little more social.  One of the biggest reasons I decided to make my own site using the WordPress software rather than going with a generic package at MySpace or Windows Live (like my last blog) was because of the problem with advertising.

Advertising agencies collect a phenominal amount of information about each of us.  I can’t visit Google without seeing AdSense adverts targeted towards me, no matter what website I happen to view.  I can’t go a day without at least one spam email referring to me by name.  I had hoped that by constructing and maintaining my own site that I would reduce the effectiveness of these spy machines and provide readers with richer content and a better user interface (I would really like to see MSN or MySpace try to offer some of the services I’ve managed to get integrated here).

Relatively unlimited disk space is another benefit here.  Sure, for the moment my site is a total of 28.9 MegaBytes (thanks to all the pictures), and most blogging sites let people have upwards of 200 MB or even 1 GB of space … but by hosting my own solution, I could easily have a site as large as I wanted.  This might be useful going forward if I were to post streaming videos, or audio files, or whatever else might be worthwhile in the future.  I think it would be really cool to have some streaming video on here showing some trips, or exciting events (like getting married, or some special moments with my future children).

One of the features that I was recently thinking about was having my cell phone contact this website and update my current GPS (Global Positioning System) location.  This way I could have a Google Map showing in the side bar with a little arrow showing where I was at that moment.  This would be relatively simple so long as I write a little Java application that would run on my cell phone and find out what radio tower I was closest to, then relay the GPS coordinates to a private database table on my website.  This is something I will definately do when I have kids, because I will want to know where they are at any given time.

Of course I wouldn’t tell them that the cell was going to act mainly as a locator … they would just think that I was a cool dad for getting them a cell phone for their first day at school
But this makes me wonder … is this too much information?  If I did write that application so that others could see where I was at any given time through a website, would I want to let everyone know where I was?

In 99% of all instances, it really wouldn’t matter.  When I’m outside, I know I have no real right to privacy.  I pass by at least 9 video recorders on my way to the bus stop every morning, and at least 14 on the way home.  I’m sure there are several recorders that I don’t even know about that catch me walking from one location to another.  But one thing that I do enjoy is the privacy I have in my home.  By telling the world that I was at my home, would this errode even more of my false sense of privacy?

I find myself thinking more and more about when privacy matters, and what information I can show people.  In most cases, it doesn’t matter if somebody knows where I am at any given time.  I’m sure there are some people that would be interested to know where I might be if I wasn’t online at a certain time.  I’m sure that others would be interested to know where I might be if I was vacationing somewhere or travelling.  I’m just wondering where the line is set for the transition from “Amusing Information” to “Too Much Information”.

Of course, I’ll still put that tracker software in my kids phones.  They might never know how to read an analog clock because of it, but I’ll have some piece of mind even when they don’t get home on time.

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w00t!

My counter has finally dipped below 30 days, and I’m starting to get super nervous.  I’m not nervous because I’ll be on a plane.  I’m not nervous because I’ll be a stranger in Japan.  I’m not even nervous because I’ll be meeting with Reiko’s parents and having dinner a few times.  My nervousness comes from a feeling of unpreparedness …

Before leaving for my trip I want to make sure that I have absolutely everything I’m going to need.  The problem with this, is that I’m not exactly sure what “everything” actually is.  Sure, I’ll be going with the requisites such as personal grooming stuffs and clean socks.  I’ll make doubly sure that I don’t forget Reiko’s Christmas present, which is currently sitting in my kitchen.  And I’ll even make triple sure that I bring the wrapping paper and tape required to wrap it before I give it to her (I’ll leave it unwrapped in the event Customs wants to examine the package first).

Unlike the last trip, I don’t need to get lots of government stuff done before I leave.  Heck, I don’t have *any* government stuff to do before this trip.  I don’t need to file my taxes, do anything with my passport, or clear up the medical insurance in any way.  This in itself should be a blessing.  Just to be safe, I’ll let the Canadian embassy in Japan know that I’ll be in the country and how they can reach me if necessary … but I don’t think it will be necessary unless Kim Jong Il decides to make a statement.

When I think about it, I think that I should put much greater effort into learning the Japanese language.  I’m going to be travelling from Tokyo to Gifu without someone at my side, and then from Nagoya to Osaka on the way back.  If I could remember the basics of how to communicate, then I’m sure this feeling would go away.  As it is, it takes me forever to read and comprehend some of the simplest sentences in Hirigana, and even longer to read Katakana.  Kanji is still years away, at this rate.  Although I can understand more Japanese now, I can’t put words together in meaningful sentences.  Given the resources and tools I have available, I really don’t see what my problem is with learning how to speak …

Clearly, I need to focus on the long term goal while making strides in the present.

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These words were sung by Paul Simon over 20 years ago, and the song has forever stuck in my head (Graceland is a great album, so I guess every song has stuck in my head).  I often think of this song whenever I realize that people don’t know what they don’t know.

This past weekend I was forced to give up my secondary job due to a simple thing like incapacitating back pain.  For most of the last week I was in extreme pain whenever I would use any muscles in my lower back, and this certainly gave me some appreciation for how often we use our lower backs throughout the day.  To that end, I was forced to prematurely end the contract with that company and begin looking elsewhere for supplimentary income.

On a chance encounter, I happened to overhear a store manager at a semi-local herbal store complain about how long it took to do an inventory count and line it up with their monthly purchases and sales.  Seeing this as a prime opportunity, I asked how they performed this task and was shocked to hear that this small company relied 100% on paper.

While this might not have been so strange 5 or 10 years ago, to hear of a company not using a computer at all in their day-to-day operations is quite amazing.  Aside from “cash only” resteraunts, I didn’t think any tax-paying company would ever want to do things the hard way.  When I had asked why they hadn’t gone computerized, the reply was “Inventory systems cost way too much, and none are designed for a herbal remedy store”.

Jackpot.

I’ve been working with custom software packages that track everything from inventory to accounting to fulfillment for several companies.  A small business like this could be a cake-walk if they truly feel that nothing on the market will work for them.  When I asked what they would be looking for in a software package, the list was pretty light.  They wanted an automated inventory system tied to a POS that could handle basic book-keeping.  When I asked some more detailed questions such as what information they would need to track about customers, or vendors, or inventory receipts I was greeted with a blank stare.  They hadn’t thought about it before.

Of course, the manager wasn’t really thinking about everything they needed right off the bat.  Such a thing isn’t normally remembered my anyone because they’re too busy dealing with the day-to-day operations of a business.  I advised the manager that I could write some custom software for them pretty quickly, and could even have it in place within a month.  I offered to work on a special rate, too … 1/2 my normal rate, and a store credit for the rest.  I visit that business often enough every year that I could easily have a great supply of stress-relief tea and dry skin lotion (not to mention the occasional stomach relief pills).

Today the call came in, and the manager would like me to put something simple together just to walk through what they could have, and work out what they actually need.  So I’ll drop 4 hours of design time into the application using basic requirements, and then approach them with the rest.  The biggest questions I’m going to have will revolve around what these people may not know, and none of us know what we don’t know.

I certainly hope that this good fortune doesn’t turn out to be the end of a steady client-vendor relationship.

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