Human Resource Refactoring

I try to avoid talking about work here. However, in this case I think it's worth a brief comment. My current employer has recently announced that it will be cutting 6% of it's current work force. If you are familiar with my employer, you'll probably recognize that as a fairly significant loss of jobs.

It's not really a surprise that this is happening. Many employers in my sector are making big layoffs this quarter. That said, we did post some pretty reasonable results on our most recent earnings call, so I'm a little surprised by the severity of the actions they are taking.

There's not a lot of detail about the job losses just yet. I don't know who's getting cut, where the cuts will be, or when they will happen. All we know is that they will happen, and happen sometime in 2009.

Nothing to do now but keep doing what I'm doing until I hear more.

[Note: Comments disabled on this post. Please feel free to email me any comments.]

Mistaken Identity

Tonight whilst browsing the internet, I clicked on the NY Times front page to see what was up with the world.

Dave looked up and said "Who's that a picture of? It looks like Slater!"

I replied, "It's a picture of a child. Dying of malaria. In Cambodia."

In other news, we have great optical coverage here in France.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Gigantic Turkey Roast in Abbotsford.

CBC is reporting that the cull of 60,000 turkeys at B.C. farm may begin Monday.

So what do you do with 60,000 Turkeys?
The answer's obvious: Turn that old barn you weren't using into a giant crockpot.

CFIA officials were preparing to euthanize the birds by sealing the barns and flooding them with carbon dioxide. Workers will then mix the carcasses with organic material in the barn to raise the temperature as high as 50 C during decomposition.

It's a good thing they are near Cranberry country. Just sayin'.

PingMag Goes Dark

Ping Mag, one of the blogs that I read regularly, has gone dead for 2009. The blog was an interview-style, journalistic site that focused on people that 'make stuff' in Japan, with a pretty big focus on small manufacturing businesses.

The blog was especially interesting because of the attitudes of the people that were being interviewed. These were people that had dedicated their lives, oftentimes going back several generations, to things that I never really think much about, such as making soap, rice boxes, or sandals.

Another common thread in their articles was that even though you might want to be a businessman, electrical engineer, or graphic designer, your true calling might really be making kites. This thread was brought up many times, and usually came up when exploring how people ended up in the job they had. Some people followed their hearts into a new career, some changed jobs to follow where their talents were, still others took over the family business and used new skills and education to shape their grandfather's or father's company into something of their own.

Reading about people that take tremendous pride in their work, while also being very humble, was really refreshing when compared to many of the other business and marketing sites that I follow. The articles always made for an interesting read, and a nice change from the business culture that I'm familiar with it.

Search Engine Energy Consumption

Until now, it was a rarely pondered question: Between the virtual bookends of someone searching for revealing pictures of Lindsay Lohan online and a search engine producing said pictures, how much energy is consumed?

The answer: Not Much.

The Globe and Mail ran this interesting colour piece on the energy consumption of performing an internet search.

The 12th day of Christmas

I finally figured out what the Twelve Days of Christmas are. I always thought it was about the last 12 shopping days before Christmas (the song seemed like more of a shopping list than anything else). Turns out, it's actually the 12 days following. The 12th day, which is celebrated as Epiphany here in France, is intended to commemorate the day on which the three wise men met with Baby Jesus. In honour of this event, we get to eat cake. Gallete des Rois is an Almond flavoured Frangipan with a bean in the middle. Whoever gets the bean, gets a crown that they have to wear for the rest of dinner.

Will Smith

Yesterday we left the house to go buy some groceries and heard some very loud music playing from around the corner. We followed our ears to the premiere of Sept Vies, the new Will Smith movie that was opening at the Gaumont (the theatre down the street).

After a few moments of craning our necks over the crowd we saw what the commotion was about; Will Smith and Rosario Dawson were actually there! It was definitely cool to watch the stars come into the theatre.

For a celebrity he had a surprisingly familiar face. I think it's because we spent so much time listening to the story, all about how, his life got flipped - turned upside down. Rosario was less familiar; she definitely stood out as a celebrity of some kind, but we weren't really able to place her until a few minutes later.

After we got home, I took the camera from the bookshelf and put it back into my coat.

A step closer to Internet

So just before Christmas I made a comment about my internet working. As it turns out, the internet, and thus my post, was full of lies.

The box blinked happily on the evening of the 24th, but went dark on Christmas morning. Unfortunately this means that we were without reasonable internet for the Holidays. Which means we were also without phone, skype, ichat, facebook, etc.

There's a coffee shop across the street that we've been stealing internet from, but it's unreliable at best.

On Tuesday, I was grumbling to a co-worker that my internet was hosed, and she kindly offered to call tech support for me. The ordeal lasted nearly three quarters of an hour and involved much yelling, jumping and waving of arms. I'm glad she's so animated (Probably a result of being Italian, or just living with Parisians) as it let me vent vicariously. I still don't know what she was yelling, but I'm sure it echoed my frustrations.

Anyhow, we just had a technician from Free come by and he thinks that my line is good, but the box is toast. He'll be sending someone else by on Monday with a new box that should work by Tuesday.

So, if it does work on January 6th, that will be 19 days of internet-lessness where I've still been paying. I don't think I have much of a chance of a refund, but maybe it's worth writing a letter. I think that > 50% of the month being dead is worth asking about. The sad part is that this timeline seems about par for the course here.

New Years in Paris

I asked around and it turns out there there are really three places to spend New Years in Paris.

1. Partying it up on the Champs-Élysées.
2. Watching the Fireworks from the base of the Eiffel Tower.
3. Watching the Fireworks from Trocadero, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.

We opted for #3. Fireworks are cool, and I think the atmosphere of the Champs-Élysées would have been a little lost on two out-of-place Canadians. We figured that we'd get a better view from the other bank, and hoped that we would encounter less people that side as well.

We hopped over to the Metro station at the end of our block, passing dozens of Police Officers on the way. The metro was packed, and we were herded through the passageway like people waiting for a rollercoaster. When the metro finally pulled up it was packed fuller than I'd ever seen it, people's faces, hands and other body parts were pressed up against the glass. Still, it was a party train. People were singing, kissing, yelling and generally having a great time. As packed as it was, people made room for us as best they could and we somehow managed to squeak on to the car.

Trocadero is only three stops from us, so the ride was pretty short. When we pulled up, the stop was all but empty, maybe 4 people there. Once the train came to a complete stop though, it literally exploded with people, nearly all of whom were singing soccer cheers, national anthems, or general party songs.


We made it outside without incident and managed to secure a pretty clear spot for watching the evening's events. The Eiffel Tower was already light up, shining blue in the night sky. Around the base are 12 stars that are representing the EU. I think, not sure though, that this has something to do with France's place in the EU for the latter part of the year. As the countdown began, the lights started going dark, counting down the last 12 seconds of 2008, and of Sarkozy's reign as the head of the EU.



The crowd cheered, champagne flowed freely, and we toasted each other from tiny yoghurt containers that we'd packed along for the trip.

The fireworks were... lacking. But, people had a healthy DIY attitude and brought along their own. Roman candles were being lit all around us, and the best light show was actually coming from behind instead of ahead of us. One guy got a little bored I think towards the end and started aiming at the backside of the horse statue that was between us and the tower.



When we were ready to go, we decided that the Metro was probably not the best way home. We didn't really know where we were, but one of the nice things about our location is that it's a huge people magnet for special events. So, we just followed the largest pack of people and it eventually led us back to our street. We grabbed some Haagen-Daaz from the store around the corner, and headed home for the evening around 3.

Happy New Years everyone!!