Controversy? Just Sweep it Over There Under the Rug

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Well, after a bit of noise on this topic this summer things pretty much quieted down – until yesterday. FIFA announced yesterday that Canadian team captain Christine Sinclair would receive and undisclosed fine and a 4 international game suspension for her comments after the Canadian semi-final loss at the Olympics this summer.

I for one think that this punishment [if you can call it that] sends the following message: “We are not going to let you get away with lobbing accusations at our officials, however, since we’re not prepared to discuss if there was any truth to your allegations here’s your slap on the wrist. Now everyone just stop talking about it.”

I know of at least one person who feels that Ms. Sinclair should be banished from soccer for life. He calls what was said “defamation”. Well, sir, it’s only defamation if what was said was untrue and in this case the waters appear cloudy enough that you’re going to have a hard rime proving that Christine’s comments were completely unfounded.

The official had been making questionable calls throughout the game and the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back – the call that referee Christiana Pedersen made that resulted in the kick that led to the tying goal – was so out of place that soccer fans and commentators had to struggle to find a case of that particular infraction having been called before. That’s an inconsistency that happened to occur at a crucial moment in a game, and Ms. Sinclair knew it. Everyone playing knew it, and everyone watching knew it. FIFA and the IOC knew it. The Americans definitely knew it. 

 In fact, one American player admitted afterwards she had been attempting to influence the referee the whole game. All Christine Sinclair – and many of the other Canadian players – did was call bullshit (and rightly so, in this writer’s opinion).

One thing I do know is that having played a number of officiated team sports at various levels there has always been a saying that, when found to be true, seemed to result in optimal results for both competing teams:

You know you had good referees when you can’t remember if they were there.
There are also a few other applicable phrases that come to mind:

Just let ’em play
Commonly used in hockey to indicate that it would be best if the teams were left to their own devices to decide an outcome. This usually results in minor infractions on both sides being ignored and the pace of the game being unusually high. This approach runs the risk that one side will attempt to take advantage of the loose rules, but more often than not it just creates an atmosphere where the players truly decide the outcome.

A strike in the 1st inning should be a strike in the bottom of the 9th
A baseball reference indicating that an umpire sets the tone for the game by calling balls and strikes a certain way – and remains consistent. Upsetting this consistency results in controversy later in the game when something that’s been called a strike all game suddenly becomes a ball. The manager’s punishment for arguing this usually results in an ejection (“getting tossed”) and lots and lots of yelling.

A penalty in the 1st period is a penalty in overtime
A corollary to the aforementioned baseball saying. If a hockey referee calls a penalty early in the game, but doesn’t maintain consistency, this results in confusion among the players as to what is acceptable and what is not, and in both my examples ultimately allows the official to have more control over the outcome.

There’s a hierarchy for all officials in all sports at all levels. You’ll often hear sportscasters talk about it before important games. “This is so-and-so’s 5th Stanley Cup Final appearance” or “So-and-so has worked hard for the last few years and deserves to be officiating in his first playoff game”. Officials work their way up the ladder and the best ones get the important games. Referees at that level, for those games, should simply be better than the rest. Not infallible, but certainly the cream of the crop. 

An official should never decide a game, especially one of magnitude, and that’s exactly what happened this past summer.

Now, I wouldn’t say that this controversy is anything close to what the NHL had to deal with back in 1999 with the whole toe-in-the-crease incident, but it’s in the same ballpark and I’m afraid that the comments and decisions that have come down are as good as it is going to get for either side. 

 ~afb~

NHL Who?

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I’m a big hockey fan and I have been for as long as I can remember. Yes, I cried when my parents told me I was playing hockey that one fateful September day back in 1982, but I loved the game – I just didn’t want to play it. Now, almost exactly 30 years later I can honestly say that I still really love hockey – its the people that run the teams and don the uniforms that bring tears to my eyes. Okay, it’s not so much tears as it is pure unadulterated rage and loathing… but enough about me. If there’s one thing this latest NHL work stoppage has shown me is that it’s not about me. Or you. Or anyone else that makes NHL hockey possible for that matter.

It’s about players who think they’re bigger than the game – entitled to more than half the daily take simply because they worked up a sweat, and it’s about owners who think that they can mismanage their lemonade stand and still be entitled to profit. Make no mistake though, it’s definitely not about the paying customer. They’ll get their watered down, over priced, sour beverage – and they’ll love every drop and come back for more. 

 We only have ourselves to blame.

NHL hockey is the only professional league in the world to have lost an entire season due to a work stoppage, and do you know what happened when they came back? Seven years of record record revenues. Now we’re on the verge of another collapse, for pretty much the exact same reasons that caused the last stoppage and fans are taking sides. Seriously? We are actually divided on who is to blame? Even Bob McKenzie, who has probably the greatest hockey mind the business has ever seen, won’t pick a side on this one.

 Fool me once, shame on you…

 There should only be one side that matters in all of this: the one that pays the bills. In case you didn’t catch on, it’s our side. Us. The fans. The only way the spoiled elite and the out-of-touch beyond wealthy will ever understand is if we hit them where it hurts he most:

  • For the players you go after their ego, and the tactic is simple:
    You stop watching!
    Adore and revere someone else. Pay no attention to the spoiled brat in the corner, he’ll find someone else to carry his books to class.

  • For the owners you go after their pocketbooks, and the tactic is simple:
    You stop paying!
    You give someone else your hard earned dollar. Pay no dividends to the greedy, fiscally irresponsible jerks in the ivory tower, they’ll move on and try to find another sucker to con.

A very reasonable and wise man by the name of Neil Hedley wrote an article a couple days ago in a less scathing and vitriolic tone, but the message was essentially the same. Unless enough people say it, and enough people commit to it, we’ll just be right back here again eight years from now and another eight years from then. 


Fool me twice, shame on me.


So it’s time for hockey fans to step up and do something worthwhile. Sell out the junior rink around the corner, up the road, or in the next town over. Simply because you can, head out to a high school or college game – and buy a giant foam finger. Read a damn book (I recommend Neil’s) or get behind another sport (Lyndon Johnson has one that seems to be catching on).

Just do something, anything, that keeps the NHL and its players from fooling you again.


[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp6-wG5LLqE?rel=0]

Making a List…

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If you’re like me you’re on Twitter. If you’re one of the few dozen million Twitter users following more than a few dozen people you may have noticed your Twitter feed fills up pretty quickly. One thing I have discovered is that Twitter is all about interactions. It’s not about how many people follow you, it’s about who you follow, and most importantly the people with whom you choose to engage.

Twitter = Engagement.

How some people following thousands and thousands of accounts can keep up and actually engage is beyond me. I love seeing celebs or “experts” following 50,000 people. There’s absolutely no way that’s practical for anything and I suspect that those accounts are at best a person (or team of people) just scanning the @ mentions for something worth replying to or at worst just self promoting pseudo spam churning out links or 140 character insight in a robotic “look at me!” sort of way.

As someone who is reasonably compulsive about keeping things in order, as soon as I started following more than a couple hundred people I knew I needed a system. Maybe you don’t need a system, maybe you have one of your own, but in order for me to maximize my Twitter interactions and engage as effectively as I can I have come up with something that plays out like this:

First things first – I almost always use the Twitter app for my iPhone when I’m mobile and just want to check something quickly (mentions, direct messages, trends, searches, etc…). At home, I’m almost always on my laptop and I’m using Hootsuite (free). I have a system for how and what I tweet as well, but that’s a separate post altogether, for now we’ll focus on organizing the 486 people I’m following.

Lists.

One thing Twitter has done that’s a great idea is lists. Their implementation of lists is clumsy and getting at them from the web or iPhone app takes too many clicks but fortunately there are other apps out there that help with this. Now on to the system…

It’s really quite simple. Everyone I follow goes into a list. Heck, even if I don’t want to follow someone I can add them into a list (they won’t clog up my main feed and they’ll still show up when I look at my list). One follow, one list. How many lists do I have? Good question. I have 13, and here they are (along with what each one is):

  1. Friends (self explanatory)
  2. Tweeps (these people interact with me on Twitter most often)
  3. Tweeple (I like what these people have to say)
  4. Community (people in my community or other local communities)
  5. Writing (people who write)
  6. Personalities (famous people, celebs, and personas)
  7. Sports (athletes and sports journalists)
  8. News (traffic, weather, headlines)
  9. Music (musicians, music journalists)
  10. Visual Arts (photography, painting, other forms of visual art)
  11. Geek Stuff (social media “experts”, science, geeks and nerds)
  12. Businesses (twitter accounts for businesses I support/recommend)
  13. Causes (charitable organizations I support or generally agree with)

Now, this is where Hootsuite comes in really handy. I can display dozens of tabs at once and up to 4 streams on a single tab. A stream can be anything I want, including searches, hashtags, and lists. I order my lists in terms of how much I want to see those tweets and put them on tabs, and voila!

Yes, it means I’m effectively putting the people I follow on Twitter into a hierarchy, but that’s just the way it is. Sometimes I’m not in the mood to listen to what my writer friends are up to. Many times I’m not concerned with what a celebrity is doing. Quite often I want to know what’s going on with my friends and in my community. Here’s how my tabs are broken down:

  • Tab 0 – mentions, direct messages, my re-tweeted (yes, I’m narcissistic so that’s why it’s first)
  • Tab 1 – friends, tweeps, tweeple, community
  • Tab 2 – writing, personalities, sports, news
  • Tab 3 – music, visual arts, geek stuff
  • Tab 4 – businesses, causes
  • Tab 5 – hashtags (trends and topics I like to follow)

Here’s what it looks like on my laptop and on my phone (click to enlarge):

But what about maintenance? Another good question. There are a bunch of non-Twitter apps and websites that will help you manage your lists but the one I like to use is found at http://tweetbe.at. It’s free and does a pretty good job of managing lists, list members, and other twitter followers/following. The only downside is it will only load 500 of the people you’re following on any given screen. Once a month or so I go through my followers/following and start to clean things up. I get rid of the spam-bots and unfollow people and shuffle the list participants based on recent interactions.

So there you have it. My Twitter system in 1000 words or less. I’d be interested in knowing what you’re doing to manage your Twitter environment. Use the comments below to share or post links to other systems that work.

Reach for the Stars

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I haven’t written in a while, and with thoughts and ideas bouncing around my head like a beam of light reflected by a million mirrors it seemed a good time to put pen to paper… er…. fingers to keys and let some words out into the world.

This was supposed to be a post about Lance Armstrong, doping, the spirit of competition, and inspiration. This was supposed to be a post asking questions and challenging my perceptions – and hopefully yours – about athletes, sports, and the fans that support them. 
Then another Armstrong died.
I grew up a big sports fan, not just of hockey (ice hockey for those who require the clarification) but sports in general. I was blessed with above average, but not noteworthy, skills in a few areas and to watch elite athletes perform at such a high level left me in awe. However, equally inspiring were the people that understood (or wanted to know) how our world and the universe around it behaved, as well as the people that were were not afraid to go out and explore it.
Galileo, Curie, Bohr, Darwin, Feynman, … 
Yeager, Gagarin, Sheppard, Glenn, … 
Armstrong.
Say what you want about the moon landings (insert conspiracy theory here) and the fact that there was a list that stretched from here to the moon of people who would have accepted the offer to be the first one to set foot on it, the fact is that Neil Armstrong was the man that was chosen, and Neil Armstrong will forever be the man who made history, and inspired billions.
He was the first person to set foot on the moon. Think about that for a second. Only a precious few had even ventured that far into space before, and exactly zero had left the “comfort” of a spacecraft, donned what had to have felt like the thinnest piece of clothing ever, and set foot on the closest extra terrestrial object we could find – a mere 384,400 km away. Most people cannot truly comprehend exactly how far away that is. Walk around the Earth’s equator 9 times and you won’t have traveled as far.
By stepping off that ladder and onto the cold, grey, desolate expanse of Earth’s only satellite, Neil Armstrong forever changed the way people would view the universe. You want to talk about inspiration? I’m not going  suggest you take a look at his Wikipedia page or check out his A&E Biography. I’m going to ask you to go outside when there’s a full moon, look up, and think about the fact that there’s a boot print up there left behind by a guy from Ohio.
The instant Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon the phrase “reach for the stars” was no longer a metaphor.

It’s a Good Thing I’m Cute

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So lately I’ve been obsessed with my backyard. Specifically my one corner where I put the kids’ pool. Over the last several weekends I’ve been slogging away in the backyard trying to make it a little more functional, and a little more aesthetically pleasing to stare at whist I’m barbecuing.

Here, in all its glory, minus some grass seed (going down this weekend after the heat wave) is what I ended up with:

Ta da!
Click to enlarge.

So, a brief explanation before I get to the reason for sharing this post. The pool sits where a shed used to sit (I moved it to the corner by the house & out of the way to free up backyard, but leaving behind a dirt pile). So I cut out a bit more, dropped a retaining wall down and a tarp and some anti-slip mats. Tossed some rock in the back (not pretty, just rocks) with a couple urns with tall grass in them (hard to see, but they’re there). Put a small bush/tree thing and some wood chips beside the rocks (also hard to see the bush/tree) then some peas, some pumpkins, some peas, more wood chips and another one of those bush/tree things (I dig rectangles and symmetry). Add a box for toys, the pool, the pump, and voila! Oh yes, can’t forget the GIANT tennis ball. Water logged 6 year old optional.

The pool is an 8 foot round, self inflating thingamabob. It comes with this shitty pump and some chemicals to keep it from getting algae and some chlorine to keep it from infecting the kids with bacteria or something. It holds 2300L of high quality H20 and takes a bugger of a long time to fill up – at least in the kids’ minds it did.

That black contraption on the fence just by the skimmer? Oh yes, that’s my “heater”. We affectionately refer to it as “the contraption”. It’s a black garden hose with some plumbing parts chemically bonded to each end so they fit into the hose for the pool. I used “The fucking strongest adhesive we sell. Don’t get it on your hands”. This is precisely what the 15 year old at Rona said to me when I asked him for “Something like caulking that I can get wet that holds like a sonofabitch”.

The water is supposed to snake its way through the black hose cable tied to a lattice piece also painted black, get heated by the sun, and output to the pool. A couple problems with this setup were clear from the first minute:

  1. The pump was screaming like its ass was on fire
  2. The water was not moving very quickly through anything and the pool was getting stagnant
  3. The filter in the pump works better if the water is moving through it at its designed speed

After a couple weeks what I appeared to have was a not-so-awesome looking 2300L of brownish water that was a fraction of a degree warmer than without the contraption. Plus, I’m not exactly sure the contraption’s super caulking wasn’t slowly leaking chemicals into the pool.

So, tonight I lay the contraption to rest and decided to check the water quality with the strips they give you. A bit too much chlorine (overcompensation is the likely culprit) and a little alkaline. Easy fix. Add more anti-algae stuff (couldn’t hurt, right?), lay off the chlorine for a bit, and add more water. Wait a couple days and see what happens.

I put the hose in the pool and turn on the water. I had a few inches of wiggle room before I hit the “do not fill past this line” line. I left the hose to do its thing and went upstairs to read my daughter her book.

Lo and behold, I completely forgot about it.

When I did finally remember what I had done I ran outside and the pool was about to crest. Quite the meniscus on the damn thing even. It was awesome. I didn’t take a picture, but I should have. It was a freaking thing of beauty. Could’t help but think, “now what?”

Well, I’ll tell you what. I decided to drain some water. There had to be a reason to not go beyond the “do not fill past this line” line. I then had a flash of brilliance. I would use one of the hoses from the pump to drain some water. Not wanting water to pour out of the spot where the hose used to be connected I did what any backyard level genius would do: I lifted the pump up above the water level. I was totally using science! [mumble] years of university have never felt so worth it.

So far so good.

Only, I needed another set of hands and my wife would most certainly not come out and help me. She already was ticked I forgot about leaving the hose on. So I did what any backyard level moron would do. I put the pump down.

On the edge of the pool.

Not so gently.

Well wouldn’t you know it, the top of the pool caved quicker than it took me to yell out an expletive and a complete shit-ton of water poured out of the pool at breakneck speed (assuming the neck being broken was some sort of small rodent or large insect).

The mats were swept away. The “decorative” rocks that were holding the basketball net in place were washed halfway down my lawn, and was briefly standing in several inches of water, as the pool continued to pour out a steady stream beside me.

It took way longer than it should have to un-collapse the side of the pool, but when I did I took a look and the water was just slightly below the “do not fill past this line” line.

Genius.

Helmets Help. Period.

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Well the coroner’s report came out with a recommendation to mandate helmets for all people riding bikes. As soon as I read the article I knew all the crazies would come out of the woodwork. You’re stomping on our rights! It’s more dangerous walking down the street – mandate helmets for that!

Well, having suffered quite a few brain traumas in my lifetime I tend to take an interest in these “discussions”. I put the word in quotes because the way I see it there’s really no argument. A bike helmet likely saved my life. It absolutely prevented a serious injury. Not having one on while riding a bike seems like a ridiculous notion. But that’s just me – and a few hospitals few of other people.

I had a grand idea for a blog post about my position on this so I could share it with those of you who don’t have me as a friend on Facebook (where it was written in several comments to a FB friend with vastly different opinions on the matter). Then, his last comment sealed the fate of this post. Regarding a law that requires helmets for cyclists: “I’ve got a beef with helmet legislation without data to back it up.”

That got me thinking, and I asked him point blank: what’s the magic number? What data has to exist for it to be OK? Who gets to set that threshold? I would argue that the fine doctors who get to see all the patients (dead and alive) would have a pretty good idea, and they seem to think it’s the way to go. I’m sure it’s all just a clever rouse though, you know, to get more people into the ER and funding their research. Oh wait… they’re recommending helmets and suggesting that FEWER people will pass through their walls, freeing up valuable resources and people for other less preventable injuries? Their data is bullshit and they must be up to no good.

All sarcasm aside I only have one point to say and that is this:
A cyclist wearing a helmet is safer than one without.

The Stanley Cup is in the Building

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So last year I had the first chance to have a repeat of the night before one of the greatest moments of my life – and it didn’t happen. You see, on June 13, 2002 with my wife three weeks away from her due date, Detroit won the Stanley Cup. 

I was watching Steve Yzerman kiss The Cup and I turn to my wife (she was pretending not to watch the game) and pat her on the tummy and say, “OK, you can give birth now”. Well, at 05:00 the next morning she wakes me up with, “Andrew, we’re going to have a baby”. More than half asleep I reply, “I know” and roll over to go back to sleep. She replies with, “No. We’re going to have a baby TODAY. My water just broke” and at 17:17 on June 14, 2002, weighing in at 7lbs 7oz, our daughter Avery was born.

Fast forward 9 years ago from then, and go back almost one year from now, and on June 13, 2011 a team had a chance to win the cup (Vancouver). It would have been a great moment for me. Not that I’m a fan of the Canucks, but since that night back in 2002 I haven’t seen The Cup handed out the night before my daughter’s birthday. 

For almost a decade I’ve been referring to Avery as “My Stanley Cup”, and the presentation of The Cup the night before her birthday as “My Halley’s Comet”. This year it looked promising with Game 7 happening on June 13 and what promised to be a gritty low scoring duel. Alas, with LA up 3 games to none on New Jersey it’s not looking good for an Avery’s Birthday Eve Cup presentation. 

It’s OK though, as just watching the Stanley Cup get lifted into the air is one of my favourite moments of the year, and it will hereinafter happen within a handful of days of my little girl’s birthday. So this year, like every year since 2003, I’ll record the last few moments of the game and The Cup presentation – whether that happens tonight or not – and I’ll watch them in the morning with my own little Stanley Cup and her little Drive Through Baby brother (which is a story for another day). 

Wednesday, June 6:

  • Update 1: At the time of posting there is no score in Game 4 with 14:04 left in the 3rd period.
  • Update 2: Jersey scored with 12 minutes left and LA just tied it up a minute later.
  • Update 3: Jersey goes up 2-1 with 4:29 to go. 
  • Update 4: Game over.  No Cup tonight. LA up 3-1 in the series. Game 5 goes Saturday night.

Saturday, June 9:

  • Update 1: Jersey up 1-0 15 minutes into the first. LA better start looking better soon. I really don’t want to have to watch past my bedtime during the week.
  • Update 2: Three minutes into the second period and LA ties it up. Excellent, my sleep regiment may not be thrown out of whack after all.
  • Update 3: Dang. Jersey goes up 2-1 halfway through the second. Looks like that goal went in of someone’s butt too.
  • Update 4: LA has a goal waved off as it went in off a high stick. Sure, it doesn’t count but it was impressive nonetheless.
  • Update 5: End of two and Jersey is up by a goal. It’s far from over, but I’d really like this thing to wrap up tonight. Going 7 games would bring my Halley’s Comet around again though, so I’m a bit torn.
  • Update 6: Six minutes to go in the third. Still 2-1 Jersey and Glen Healey on Hockey Night in Canada just used a rodeo reference when talking about Martin Brodeur for the 973rd time.
  • Update 7: Well, it looks like New Jersey is hanging in there. Since I’m watching this thing wrap during the week anyway, might as well be a game 7 on Wednesday. Could this sequence of events have a 10 year cycle?

Monday, June 11:

  • Update 1: Jersey just gets nailed for a 5 minute penalty. Let’s see if LA can capitalize. As much as it would be cool to repeat the sequence of events of 10 years ago (minus Detroit winning the cup, and a baby) I kind of want LA to win this thing.
  • Update 2: No sooner did I post Update 1 and we have Update 2. LA scores and are still on the PP for another 3 and a half minutes. Could this be the night La La Land gets a Cup?
  • Update 3: Wow, another goal for LA. Up 2-0 with still 2 minutes to go in the PP.
  • Update 4: Holy crap. A third power play goal by LA – on the same power play! LA is on a roll!
  • Update 5: Well Jersey has their work cut out for them. 4-0 for the Kings of Los Angeles just two minutes into the 2nd period. 
  • Update 6: Jersey shows signs of live. One minute left in the 2nd period. Is it too little too late?
  • Update 7: Looks like LA is going to pull off the win on home ice. Going to watch The Cup get lifted tonight, and then I’ll watch it again with my kids in the morning.

    Pray for Lydia

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    FINAL UPDATE


    I attended the ribbon waving event. Cried a lot, but smiled more. Took some photos:

    http://potatochipmath.blogspot.ca/2012/11/lydias-homecoming.html

    UPDATE!

    The date and time for Lydia’s ribbon waving event has been set:

    Thursday, November 1 @ 5:00pm in the Herrle farm parking lot and laneway.

    http://prayforlydia2012.blogspot.com/2012/10/lydia-has-had-another-good-day.html?spref=tw

    UPDATE!

    Lydia is on her way home!
    http://prayforlydia2012.blogspot.ca/2012/10/waving-lime-green-ribbons.html

    On a date yet to be chosen (though likely the first Friday of November) people will wave green ribbons as the Herrle family gives Lydia a little tour around the parking lot and down the lane way. I will be there. Hopefully you will be too!


    As many of you know, on May 17th tragedy struck a small rural town just outside Kitchener-Waterloo. Lydia Herrle was struck by a truck after getting off her school bus and has been in a coma ever since. Her parents, James and Michelle Herrle, own and operate Herrle’s Country Farm Market and are not just well known in the community, they are well liked. They are blogging about their journey through this difficult time and you can read about it here: 

    http://prayforlydia2012.blogspot.ca

    I have only had the pleasure of meeting any Herrle on two occasions, both times it was Trevor: once last year at a community event where we exchanged a few minutes of pleasantries, and the other time earlier this morning. The first meeting was much happier. Today, I dropped off a gift for Lydia. A little something for her to look at when she wakes up. I also wrote a letter I hope someone will read aloud to her, and one that she will read herself some day soon.



    I added some colourful stickers to brighten it up a bit. A cross, some music, some flowers, and few butterflies. Things I know will bring a smile to her face. My only wish for her now is that she wakes up to see them.

    I won’t post the entire letter here; that’s for Lydia and her family to read, but I will share a particularly fitting quote that I used from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

    “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”

    So stay strong, Lydia. Stay strong, be patient, and know that there’s an entire community by your side every step of the way.


    First Rule of Fight Club

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    Rules are everywhere. Whether they are imposed on you by your parents, teachers, law enforcement, education systems, employers, or any number of other institutions that scatter the globe, they are out there, and there’s likely someone that’s not you making them. So what’s a person to do?

    A while back Umair Haque wrote this on Twitter: “If you follow the rules, don’t expect to win.”

    It might be an original quote or he might simply be echoing a sentiment shared by many, certainly by some who have failed in the past, and it’s certainly food for thought. Can you only win if you break the rules? Has anyone who has ever ‘made it’ in this world ever done so completely by the book?

    Here’s my recommendation:

    Play by the rules until you are in a position to change them – and then change them. 

    After that, there are no limits as to what you can accomplish.

    Do you think Steve Jobs broke the rules and forged ahead guns a blazin’ to get Apple to the top? It might look that way to some folks, but the more likely scenario is that his path was more subtle. Patient. That is, right up until he was in a position to re-write some of those pesky rules that were standing in his way.

    There will always be rules even if you work for yourself. Society seems to impose them whether we like it or not, whether it knows it or not.  Playing by the rules, at least some of them, is important. It allows us to learn, to adapt, and to establish a greater sense of where and how we fit in, and more importantly, where we don’t. From there we can decide if it even matters.

    Knowing what the rules are and how to play the game is critical if you ever want to do something about it. You may have noticed a couple of themes here: knowledge and action. Knowing who your opponent is, what the field of play is, what the rules are, and what strategy to use is absolutely key.

    You can also possess every bit of knowledge you’ll ever need, but it’s absolutely useless if you don’t get off your butt and do something about it.

    HELLO My Name Is: TED

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    Update: Wednesday, March 27, 2013

    Dear Diary, the quarterback is taking the head cheerleader to the prom – again. What’s worse, I didn’t get that job because someone’s daddy called a friend from The Club and got him the job instead.

    Update: Tuesday, January 15, 2013

    Well it looks like the cool kids are taking applications to sit with them at the lunch table again. It goes without saying that I will not be applying. Forget the fact that the price went up ten bucks. They’re still forcing an application process on prospective attendees; and I still think it’s crap.

    I can understand not wanting a bunch of shameless self-promoters clogging up the event. I can also understand excluding people that just want to use the TEDx audience to make some sort of statement or protest. But here’s the thing: even with the application process, several people reported to me that last year’s audience wasn’t all that and a bag of chips, and weren’t terribly engaged either; with a great number of faces buried in their smart phones the whole time (FYI,  there’s a lot of Blackberry in this town).

    So apply if you must. Heck, I’ll even share the application link for your convenience. If you’re lucky maybe the cool kids will let you play with them at recess too. 


    Original Post From: Monday, March 19, 2012

    So TEDxWaterloo is happening this week. I won’t be going. Why not, you ask? Good question. I won’t be going because I didn’t apply for the privilege of buying a ticket. Why not, you ask? Another good question. I think having an interest in what the event is all about, being willing to take a day off work, and dropping 45 bucks on the ticket makes me worthy enough. The people at TEDxWaterloo disagree.

    To be eligible to purchase a ticket to the event you are required to fill out an application. I didn’t check every single TEDx event, but I randomly selected half a dozen with “availability” as per the event listing from the main TED site and all had some form of application process. Apparently this is a popular trend with the TEDx events. The main TED site simply has the disclaimer “This event is open to the public. Tickets are available. Ticketing policies vary by event.” 

    For TEDxWaterloo the application asks you the following questions:

    1. How do you spend your day?
    2. Tell us how you are involved in your community.
    3. What do you hope to get from 2012 TEDxWaterloo DIS CONNECTED event?
    4. What else would you like to share with us?
    5. List at least one website that will help us understand you better (such as your blog, your company’s website, LinkedIn profile, Tumblr, your Flickr account, writing, research papers, C.V., films and book) 

    If you read the whole page those questions were taken from, you’ll see a whole bunch of words about wanting people with a “spark” and “energy” and “passion”, and they try to be quite clear that your economic situation or standing within the community or any other “accomplishments” are not relevant.

    Really? Then why recommend the applicant share their blog, CV, and other potentially non-relevant information and leave a question wide open like #4? How about a single question:

    1. What are you passionate about, and how would attending TEDxWaterloo make a difference?

    Even still, this would just turn the “process” into a different form of essay contest. 

    I am passionate about a ton of things, and I can likely articulate this in such a way that my application would be accepted. Of this I am confident. However, just because I wrote it down a little more eloquently than the person beside me I get in and they don’t? 

    Where’s the line? Why does there even have to be a line?

    Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the event, or any of the speakers, or any of the attendees, or any of the volunteers. All of these people are top notch in my book, and I can really get on board with spirit of TED. I’ve drank the Kool-Aid and I like it.

    All I want is for the person on the right of that red line to have the same chance at getting a ticket as the person on the left side of it. Submit your personal information and if your name is drawn you get to buy a single, non-transferable ticket. Want the best of both worlds? What about a lottery for 90% of the tickets and an application process for the remaining 10%, with some perk offered for those who took the time to jump through the hoops?

    From where I sit, I just can’t see the event being undervalued in any way by accepting a random selection of interested people. Assuming the people who are even remotely interested are no less diverse than the current body of applicants all your demographic distributions will be met as well. Simple statistics has that one covered. 

    Wouldn’t it be something if that person just to the right of where the red line would have been drawn gets a ticket, attends the event, and has an experience that changes their life? 

    Better yet, what if you meet them there and they change yours?