What's This?
The most recent diaries are at the top, with the first entry being the very latest. My odyssey begins at the bottom of the list.
The [K5] links lead to where I posted each diary at the Kuro5hin community website, and the [HuSi] links lead to the ones I posted at Hulver's Site. There are followup discussions at each one, which you can join if you sign up for a free account.
A lot of things had to come together before I could start mailing my free CDs.
Amateurs play for fun. Professionals play for keeps.
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
Everything came to a screeching halt.
I'm hoping that running will give me more energy.
I will be in town through New Year's Day.
I may have wandered off course, but I haven't lost my way.
I explain why it's taking me so long to release new recordings of my music.
It has never gotten much search engine traffic.
I walked back into the living room this morning after pouring a second cup of coffee, when Bonita said...
There was a surprise waiting for me when I got home last night.
I sleep so much that I don't have enough time to get what I want out of life.
I don't want to have to pay customs duties on my stuff.
I'm saying goodbye to Vancouver.
Pride is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins.
I'm sick to death of the crap I get from morning people.
I have only been able to use the net in a serious way when I was at one of the many cafes in Vancouver that offer free wireless.
Bonita named her Mademoiselle at first, because she wears a French maid's outfit.
It's a side effect of the medicine I take for my mental illness.
A form of Vitamin B12, it offers some hope of treating my sleep disorder.
A day in the life of a Free Software programmer.
Ogg Frog needs some real quality time if I'm ever to finish it.
I sleep more than anyone I know.
I fear I could have a heart attack if I don't get into shape.
I am the best there is at debugging.
The Good Book says it was an apple, but there are many kinds of apples.
I love my current company, my coworkers, the software products I work on, and living in Vancouver. But...
I think John is mentally ill. I think John is deeply depressed.
For many years my ambition has been to be a composer someday. But I have never, until early this morning, done any composer's most important job.
"We are athletes of the small muscle." -- pianist Leon Fleisher
Everyone seems to be OK with me working nights. For one thing, I don't have any trouble putting in more hours this way.
Maybe I'll play better this time.
I'm playing the Open Mic at The Cellar at Granville and Nelson streets in downtown Vancouver BC.
I just slept for twenty-four hours.
I'm on the hunt for an elusive bug.
'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
How hard can it be to show a stranger a moment of kindness?
An old link whore crawls out of the Stone Age.
It's the way to get to Carnegie Hall.
Would this woman think I was asking for a date?
I saw a young woman crouched down on the ground, against a wall. She was crying sorrowfully.
I'm quite happy to stay with my job in Vancouver BC.
Let me tell you about The Mother Of All Budgets.
The first substantial work on my own software product for several months.
I don't want to move out of my apartment but I'll have to if my landlady doesn't stop driving me bananas.
While I've never been a morning person, I don't like working all alone in the office late at night.
I'm a productive little worker bee, but I'm too tired at the end of the day to carry out my grand ambitions.
If I don't stop sleeping all day I'm going to get fired from my job.
I don't like what I have become.
Let those who come after see to it that their names not be forgotten.
Nothing comforts me when I'm anxious the way writing does, and I have never been so anxious as when I moved to Vancouver.
They're the worse kind of police there are. If they catch you, there ain't no attorney gonna save your ass: You're going DOWN.
I have every intention of repaying my debts but it's going to take some time.
Flexitol Deep Cooling Gel. It's the shit, I'm telling you. "soothes & cools HOT and TINGLING feet". Yes, yes it does.
In which I kiss my wife goodbye then fly from Truro, Nova Scotia to Vancouver, British Columbia for my new job.
My first night in Vancouver: unable to get online from my hotel, I set off in search of wireless Internet and made my first friend.
Should I take the job? It's on the edge of the Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighborhood in Canada and widely regarded as a dangerous place to be.
I walked back into the living room this morning after pouring a second cup of coffee, when Bonita said...
I left my wife behind in Atlantic Canada so I could make a better life for both of us on the West Coast.
Dear Dr. M.,
As I write this I'm seated in First Class aboard a plane climbing from the Ottawa airport. Tomorrow is my first day at my new job at a software company in Vancouver, British Columbia.
When I came to Canada three years ago I was a broken man. I was sick of programming and didn't know how I could provide for myself. But in recent months, writing software has given me a joy I have not known for years. Now I'm being flown across the country to my new job.
Software consulting is a hard way to live, but it has the advantage that one can live anywhere; for three years I lived in Nova Scotia while most of my clients were in the United States. Before that I consulted from Owl's Head, Maine, St. John's, Newfoundland, as well the remote fishing village in rural Newfoundland where my wife Bonita grew up, and Santa Cruz, California where I lived for fifteen years before my Bonita and I moved to St. John's to get married.
or Salariman (Japanese: サラリーマン, sararīman) is a Japanese term for a white-collar worker.
-- Wikipedia
What consulting doesn't provide is any kind of security. It's a good job for someone who is young, single and with nothing to lose, but not for a married man who is trying to put his wife through school. We had both long grown weary of all the chaos, uncertainty and quiet, clawing desperation. Something had to change. I knew I had to get a salaryman job.
But we had a problem: my wife has a year to go at her art school in Halifax before she graduates, but there is very little of the kind of computer programming work I do anywhere in Atlantic Canada. Once I realized this, I began to apply for jobs all over the country.
The job I found was in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the Pacific Coast and thousands of miles from my home and the woman I love.
I had never been to Vancouver and didn't know a soul there.
Please join me as I tell my story.
