Category: Uncategorized

Home Awake

Being the only one in the house not sick or three, I am the only one awake this afternoon. I find myself listening to Acts of Volition Radio show #6, watching the sunny melty day outside moving on, wondering whether it would be so wrong downloading Counterstrike for moments like this, surrounded by the snoring, communicating only with headphones and screen.

[Four gerunds and a gerundive in one sentence…wow.]

Call Centres At Risk

With all the other news last week, one that may affect the Maritimes as much as the US ban on beef imports is the proposed effective ban on US firms using call centres located in other countries. In the heady 90’s many politicians in the East lunched out on the concept that call centres were IT jobs…something akin to pumping gas being part of either the oil or auto parts industry sector.

Still, a job is a job and export dolalrs are better than local ones if you want economic growth.   Ruk had a great thread about the issues surrounding these employers a few weeks ago.   Here is a list of the Nova Scotian call centres. How many depend on the profit margin from US work to stay open?

Not Hot Law

Having a boo at the Jan/Feb issue of Canadian Bar Association’s magazine National it was very interesting to read at page 40 the list of areas of law considered “not hot”, not the “areas where finding work is currently fruitful”. Number one? Technology. The rest of the duds:

  • Securities
  • Mergers and Acquisitions
  • Corporate/Commercial
  • Public Sector

Looks like the 90’s are now truly over. Good thing I finished that LLM in IT back in ’02.

Futurist Nut Bars

So why is Tod Maffin so smart? I was driving along on Saturday afternoon not really listening to DNTO and – WHAMMO – Sook Yin Lee says Tod’s going to tell us that blogs are dead already. Here is the promo for the piece:

And Tod Maffin dives into the world of blogging. Like everything on the web, what began as a grassroots movement it’s suddenly become corporate. Is this the end for web diaries as we know it?

Isn’t there a rule that anyone who calls himself a futurist isn’t? Or at least goes somewhat nuts. But then today there is Dave3, also a smartie pants, saying, to get the news, he is going to give up reading everything but blogs. [Maybe he’s on an all rice crispy diet.]

I am confused. In the days before the future, when I was a kid, the characteristics of the future where unlike today – food would be in tubes, we’d use personal jet packs and clothes would be all silvery. I sure as hell didn’t expect that I would have to rely on self-appointed wackos with bandwidth for the news any more than I thought 13 factories would supply all the meat for the vast majority of prople in the USA [a frightful fact I heard on talk radio last night] or that most food in the store would rely on killer transfats. It is starting to look like eating real food and relying on good new sources are the kinds of things that will make you an outcast in the new next future.

I tire of this. Why don’t futurists tell stories like

around 2012 people will get sick and tired of self-appointed gurus consulting to government on untendered contracts [supported by 25% finder fees] advising upon which leaders and stakeholders needed input…and will kick the bums out.

Though its unlikely as 98% of cheques to futurists are sign by the bums, that’s a future I’d like to see. Then, again, now that I think of it…maybe it’s happening now in Ottawa in 2004. The wheels may be coming off of one guy’s particular future as we watch right now.

Prepare Ye

I am hoping to get into weekend travelling this summer a fair bit and will look south as well as north for stuff to do nearby. So what is there to plan to do this summer across the border in the land of first prize hots?

The “I-Heart-N-Y” site is pretty good for this stuff.    Any suggestions out there?

Later: I understand I may find myself here on Cape Cod at some point, too, if Portland is to be believed.