Here's the newest member of our little family. She's a lot of work, and it can be heart-breaking trying to get her to work into our schedules while still getting all the care she needs, but so far it's going well and she doesn't seem to hate us.

A story has just come up talking about how she tried to squash the big CBC story on RBC's outsourcing last year. From reading this, it's hard to tell whether she really did or didn't, so I found it hard to form an opinion of her actions based on that alone. What I DID do though was look up a story she did for the Globe and Mail on the subject. Here it is: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/lets-worry-about-skills-not-outsourcing/article11084876/

This is such a massive load of corporate shilling it hurts my head to even read it. I worked at RBC for 15 years and saw first hand what their outsourcing is all about, and I expect it's the same for all the other companies doing it. There wasn't even a tiny bit of it that had anything to do with finding people who were more qualified than those here in Canada. It was 100% about getting people cheaper. There were a few good people but most of them were woefully unqualified and needed to be spoon fed copious amounts of training just to get useful work out of them. But they were cheap.

This here is the most telling quote in her whole article:

"Information technology workers displaced in Canada are being replaced not by cheap Indian workers but by better ones. India has emerged as a centre of excellence in applications development, for instance, and so a business needing the very best in that field will seek it out."

That's not just vaguely untrue. That's a bold-faced lie that's easily verifiable by talking to ANYONE that's had to integrate outsourced workers into their projects.

She's not a journalist. She's a tool, and should be ashamed of herself.

Today I rode my bike on Twyn Rivers Drive for the first time.

I don't really recommend it. Ugh.

http://app.strava.com/activities/150688652

I'm drinking this stuff tonight.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/147/65997/?ba=jasonmason

Poor Michelle. She tried the first sip before I'd had any. She said it was like drinking pepper sauce. She wasn't really wrong.

After the first few sips, the pepper isn't quite so potent anymore, though it's nearly 10% alcohol, so that might help.

Beer Advocate basically hates it. If not for the fact that I've never had anything like it before, I'd probably agree with them. It's uniqueness sort of saves it for me though.

That and the fact that I'm not really familiar with the Lukcy Basartd Ale (not a spelling error) that it's based on, so the sense of shame at ruining it is lost on me.

I won't buy more, but I'm glad I had it.

For my entire adult life I've been working full time for the same company. Today they gave me my gift to celebrate 15 years of service. It's a juicer. Hopefully I like home made juice.

Also, on Wednesday, I resigned. My last day will be May 7th.

*sigh*

It's the end of an era. On the 8th I'll start a new job with a new company. I'm confident that it will all go well, but it's a huge change in my life and, of course, it's a risk.

If I make it to Christmas, life will be good and next year should be one to celebrate. Wish me luck.

I fished the book and watched the movie. I really enjoyed the book and have started Ender's Shadow. I'm enjoying that as well so far.

That said, I really didn't think too highly of the movie but not because it was particularly bad or anything. I feel like they did a good job with what they had but that there just wasn't enough time to get into the details they needed. It's obviously difficult to condense the contents of a novel into a feature length film and some are more successful than others. In this case, they just weren't able to get enough content in to really give the feeling of the pressure put on Ender to push him right to the edge of his abilities.

They basically touched on each of the scenarios he went through to get to the end but without the serious conflicts faced in each. Without that, it all just seemed too straight forward.

I don't know whether it should have been split into multiple films or whether it just can't be filmed at all. I guess it just is what it is.

I finally finished reading the latest Game of Thrones novel so I'm back to the classics for my reading enjoyment.

I'm not sure how much of a "classic" this really is, as it came out in the 70's, but I'm now reading Ender's Game in anticipation of watching the movie when I'm done.

So far so good!

I'm only a few days into it, but it's gripping and surprisingly current. Knowing that it was written around the days of Pong, I'm impressed at the visions of technology that are so relevant today.

I mean, their desks seem to be 3D iPads and the interactivity of the video games fits right into the modern day.

I just finished watching Thor: The Dark World. I'm very confused and have no idea what the hell just happened.

This is somewhat amusing.  I was browsing a site and came across a link that brought me to a site called HowLifeWorks.com

It didn't take long to realize that the whole thing seemed kinda fishy, so I clicked around a little to get a sense of the place and then did a search to get an idea of whether the whole thing is just a big scam.

Well, by all accounts it is.  It's basically set up to look like a news site of sorts, but it's all a ruse to get you to buy stuff from their advertisers.  If you pay close attention, they actually suggest you go and do your own actual research elsewhere.  🙂

None of this is the funny part though.  What's amusing is that one of the sites I found describing how the whole thing works appears to be under a subpoena to disclose information about people on the Internet that posted their opinions about the site.  And further to that, the actual lawyer posted in the comments, appearing by all accounts to be trying to frighten people off from posting reviews.

Here's the review:
http://www.reviewopedia.com/howlifeworks-com-reviews

Note the legal notice posted there.  

And here's the subpoena:

http://www.kbg-law.com/Subpoena.pdf

I mean…  I know that companies value their reputations and all, but are people actually paying lawyers to prevent people from exposing what's essentially a giant scam?

So there you have it.  The world has disappointed me.

I'm not really going to go into much detail here as it's not really necessary. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, is a quick read and well worth the time.

Just like War of the Worlds, it's held up quite well over the years and I recommend it.

So that's that.

Now, I was going to continue on with The Invisible Man, but I think I'm going to dig into George R. R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons. I just got a copy and have been looking forward to it for quite a while.

It's a big one, so I probably won't have much to report on for quite some time.