We’ve been in the lower mainland for two days and a bit, now… and I continue to be surprised by the amount of snow that lingers… huge drifts of wet, heavy stuff. It rains a bit, then it freezes a bit, then it snows a bit… nothing out of the ordinary for Ontario, and not that uncommon for parts of Alberta. But to the greater Vancouver area, this is causing major consternation! There just aren’t enough snowplows. Heck, there aren’t enough snow shovels! The sidewalks are not being shovelled. Driveways are not being shovelled. People have simply dropped their vehicles … Continue reading

Our eldest daughter finally made it to Toronto yesterday, and hopefully will be finding her way to Pittsburgh today… but, in her parlance, “What a gong show!”J started out for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Christmas Day… routing from Edmonton to Vancouver to Seattle to Harrisburg. Her flight into Vancouver was cancelled. So, she was re-scheduled and re-routed to fly Edmonton to Toronto to Cleveland to Harrisburg yesterday, which she did, but only part way. She managed to get as far as Toronto before ice fogs cancelled her flight into Cleveland.While standing in line for three and a half hours to get … Continue reading The kid and her air travel woes…

We are supposed to be in BC with friends at this point. We aren’t. Vancouver airport just doesn’t seem to be able to deal with snow and freezing rain. We had arrived at the Edmonton airport on time yesterday afternoon, having checked before we left home that the flight was posted as being ‘on time’, when all of a sudden the gentleman at the gate announced that we would be delayed leaving for a minimum of two hours because Vancouver (YVR) had shut down to deal with the snow and rain. After an hour of waiting, the airline (Westjet) just … Continue reading Delayed…

Its 10:30 pm on Christmas Day evening… G. and my younger sister have retired for the day, leaving me with time to update this blog. And yes, I do know that I haven’t touched it for a couple of weeks… and a few things have happened, not all of which I’ll go into tonight, but I will get to them eventually… like the trip to my aunt’s memorial service in Victoria, with snow (wierd damned weather this year!) and the rental car that I banged up (damn! but I wish there was someone/something to blame that on), visits with my … Continue reading Merry Christmas… Ho Ho Ho… Damn!

I have spent my last work week sequestered with 14 mid level/senior level IT managers from our current client reviewing the results of a significant RFP (Request for Proposal). The ‘winner’ of this RFP will be awarded a multi-million dollar contract to provide services province-wide. The participants have all analyzed the responses from the qualified Vendors in detail, and we’re now meeting to establish consensus. My role is to monitor the ‘fairness’ of the process, and not really to provide opinions. This stuff is really interesting… seriously. I’m listening to this group rationalize their scoring for questions such as “Supplier … Continue reading End of the Week