This is a picture I did not take of a pickup truck on the highway with a large cardboard box in the back, labelled: QUANTUM NANO.

The box seemed excessively large, considering…

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Courtesy of the Timehop service, I get an email from time to time letting me know what I was up to a year ago on a given day, based on my activity on my social accounts.

The only thing I was up to a year ago was this, apparently:

Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s to a year where NOTHING happens. Well, almost nothing…

2010 was a year of constant change. Some good, some bad, but it just wouldn’t stop. So by 2011 I was good and ready for some stasis. Oh, how naive January 1st, 2011 Melle was…

2011 began with some ugly family stuff, but also with a new relationship that kept me sane and renewed my hope in a lot of things. But not so much with the stasis.

In February, Carol and Ilya had some interesting meetings in California, which led to being informed at a “routine” company update meeting in March that Google was buying PostRank. And the only thing that makes huge news more fun is not being able to say a damned thing about it to anyone. Until June. Including a trip to California for interviews in April. Nothing like lying to your friends and family for business purposes.

Should anyone have doubted that I can keep a secret…

June 3rd was the announcement and party, June 11th was my birthday, and June 12th the team flew back to Mountain View for orientation. June 17th I started working in the Kitchener Google office.

From time to time I still have moments where my mind boggles at it all. And other days I really miss my little spot in the back corner of the office on the fifth floor at King and Allen and those 15 other people with whom I helped build something cool.

Per my prior blog post, my adventure at Google will be coming to an end on February 2nd, or when I resign for another position, whichever comes first. I wish things could have worked out well, but I leave there knowing it was never in the cards. And I am grateful that the whole adventure leaves me in a financial position that I don’t have to panic if I don’t have a job on February 3rd. (Though I plan to hustle my ass off to ensure that I do.)

The abovementioned relationship wasn’t easy. It seemed like everything conspired against it to make things way harder than they should have had to be. Due to certain circumstances, I wasn’t expecting 100% clear skies and smooth sailing, but I also wasn’t expecting a never-ending series of spanners in the works. I still believe things happen for reasons, though.

We finally admitted defeat in November, long after we really should have. But it’s a testament to both our personalities and needs that it lasted so long. Now? We try to figure out what we should have embarked upon back in December 2010. I’m not eager to throw myself at any new relationships just yet, though me, myself, and I have a few things to work out.

I didn’t write very much this past year, which bothered me and still does. I aim to rectify that. I’m good at it and it feels good to craft stuff, and sometimes just to get it out of my head. I’ve figured out things like blogging, and I’ve figured out social media, to the detriment of my own blogging and other writing. Now it’s time to figure out how to manage it all in proportions that work for me. And hey, there’s still that book stuck in my head. I can’t believe it’s been two years since the presentation that sparked the idea for it in my head.

No stasis in 2011 for those around me, either. Friends’ startup was also acquired, new jobs were begun, new homes were moved into, new cars were driven. Babies were born and loved ones were lost. I am grateful that the deaths mostly passed my family. Goodness knows we had plenty in the preceding year or two.

I remember, years ago, seeing my doctor back home after she and her family had returned from a year in Israel. I commented that it had been “quite a year to be there”. What with assorted bombings, assassinations, government machinations and the like. She basically shrugged off my comment with the reply that “isn’t it always?” Which was very true.

It may seem like 2010 and 2011 were constantly changing and that seemed somehow unusual, but I’ve come to realize that that’s all years. It just seems like it more and more as I get older as I have more life and more perspective and a greater sphere in which change is always happening.

The best I can do is to take care of myself and those I care about, make the best of whatever comes, and embrace the best parts wholeheartedly. Or when things happen beyond my control, attendre et espérer. (I got an important tattoo in 2011, too.) Yeah, it’s January 1st, and I’m supposed to be full to bursting with optimism, resolutions, and plans for the new year. I shall leave that to others. Never really been my thing, and I’m a little beat up right now.

Sometimes a quiet New Year’s Day is just as necessary as a quiet New Year’s Eve.

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You know how people refer to the best possible outcome of getting what you want as being “of your dreams”? Job of your dreams, man of your dreams, dream house, etc.

Except that it occurred to me that my dreams are typically weird, disjointed, and mostly quickly forgotten.

I’d be ok with the trappings of a decently crafted reality, I think.

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I have mentioned the Very Personal Ad before, and, indeed, wrote one up when I wanted to find a new apartment. Worked like a charm; I love it here, though these things can take time. And so it is time to try this experiment again.

What is this ad for? A job.

The Googles and I will be parting ways in a little while, so it is time to figure out what my next adventure is. The circumstances of my departure aren’t relevant; I’ll probably write some about it one day. TL;DR is basically: “what I do, they don’t do here”. No crying, no recriminations, no hurtin’ songs… Just c’est la vie. I do not, however, enjoy certain uncertainties very much. And right now I have a bunch. I know I will be okay — I always have been. I will not get eaten by the eels at this time. I am working to vanquish the uncertainties, however, and asking for some help.

I’ve talked to a few folks, applied for a few things, but I would love to see/hear about something (a specific role, a company, some people I’d be totally jazzed to spend my days with) and just know that’s it. It would also help if they thought I was it, too. Seems odd to be working on this stuff at this time of year, but the world doesn’t seem to slow down at Christmas much anymore.

I imagine most folks who would read this are reasonably familiar with me and what I do. However, to get all official: here I am on LinkedIn. Here is my resume. Ask me anything. Even better, let’s have coffee while you ask me stuff. I’ll probably ask you stuff, too.

I don’t want to commute every day or move to Toronto, though I know there are a bunch of amazing gigs available there these days. Some remote work combined with commuting I might be okay with. Travel sometimes (like with planes) is fine. I don’t want to move to the Valley, though, either. I’ve been offered that before. I feel fortunate to live here in the Region where there’s a whack o’ stuff going on, and new companies being born pretty much daily.

I have worked at really big companies, medium-sized companies, and a couple of teeny startups. Generally, I tend to be happier in a smaller environment. It has some to do with scale, but really it’s more about… Dunbar’s number, kinda. You know, how supposedly we can only maintain 150 close ties/friendships with people? In a smaller company, you can ask anyone anything at any time. Just walk on over and sort things out. Or the whole company can have lunch in one room. Get to know all of your team. Make sockmonkeys for all of your co-workers and not have to spend all year on it.

It’s personal, it’s efficient, and most importantly for me, it lets me get my hands dirty and enjoy variety. I have been on the internets about 20 years. My attention span was shot a long time ago, but I am damned good at absorbing and synthesizing information, creating and curating content, learning from and connecting people. Direct contact with data and folks. Delicious. I’m really good at organizing things and taking care of people. I’d still be good at it even if I wasn’t a Mennonite (and community is what we do), but hey, as a bonus I make delicious treats for my co-workers.

Again, the organization doesn’t have to be teeny, but it sometimes helps. With size typically comes hierarchies and silos and process. If you know of a company where that hasn’t happened, let me know. (I still compare Google more to the insurance companies I’ve worked at than the tech companies.)

I like working in tech. I like how things change, how curious and innovative people are, and how they don’t just have ideas, they do stuff about them. Action Folks can be found anywhere, but most of my experience happens to be in tech. That said, it would be nice if what the company does is helpful. It makes someone’s day better or connects them to folks they need to know or helps their business grow or what have you. Not everyone can save lives, but it’s hard to feel noble about your job only being to help big companies convince consumers to spend more money.

I like to help tech, too. Or, rather, the people in this community with me. I’ve been around long enough and been fortunate enough to have some experiences that other people can find useful. They can reproduce my successes and hopefully avoid my mistakes. I like sharing, and am almost always happy to do so. The extra special thing is, too, that invariably you learn interesting things from everyone you talk to. I love that.

So yeah. I like to build things: communities, knowledge bases, customer bases, relationships, networks, really cool products or services that people want. I like to record and share information: how-to content, blog posts, white papers, articles, case studies, videos, social dissemination, connecting the people building stuff with the people using it. I like to help people: educate them in what the company does and how that can be valuable to them, help them get ramped up and productive, answer their questions, help get their issues sorted out, enable them to go.

I firmly believe the internets know everything, and that we are better connected than we’ve ever been before. And hopefully I can borrow just a tiny bit of its connectivity and knowledge and find a place and some people where I can look forward to going to work every day, and make myself useful.

Thanks!

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Yeah, so I’m one cat away from being a crazy cat lady. Funny thing about years of Humane Society volunteering is that you just know when there’s something about a particular animal. And as much as I would have liked to have bundled home a pair of those Bassets who were there until recently, dogs remain a non-option. Most of the time I’m ok with that.

However, I’ve considered getting Anatole a cat for some time, even though Guelph Humane Society told me when I got him that he doesn’t like cats. Like people, I tend to think animals are pretty adaptable, and I know he gets lonely sometimes. Plus, she’s pretty.

I feel like I know something other people don’t, because she was stuck there for about six weeks. But there’s nothing wrong with her. I’m sure I’m anthropomorphizing here, but it’s gotta suck seeing kittens, cats, dogs, and puppies coming in and going out, and you just stay there. Even if, blessedly, the cat kennels at KWHS are much nicer than your average small metal cage.

However, she made barely a peep from the moment we walked out of the HS to getting her home. She sat quietly in the carrier watching Anatole while he skulked and hissed and growled. She starts purring the moment you come near her, and purrs louder than Anatole, who’s twice her size. She has the tiniest little voice, and talks when you come in the room. She was talking to Anatole a lot this morning, too. Catnip makes her drool, and she eats every morsel of her tuna. If Anatole wasn’t here, she’d have been perfectly at home and roaming around as soon as she came in the door.

Anatole has made sure to assert himself, and as much as it would be easy to tell him he’s being a dick, he has been an only pet for at least five years, and possibly his whole life. (I got him when he was about five.) He’s adapted remarkably quickly, really. Day one was mostly him remaining lofty (in his satellite dish) and observing, with occasional forays to sniff at the spare room door, where I had her locked in.

She was tired of being cooped up by the evening, though, so I let her out. Had to happen eventually. She mostly stayed in there but he could come sit by the doorway and hiss at her. It was very much an, “I’M THE BOSS OF THIS HOUSE!” display, and kinda funny. That night she came out and explored more, and he was even less impressed when he discovered she’d made it onto the bed and was sleeping in his spot. But at 7am on Sunday I realized the hissing was coming from beside my head on the floor, and he was standing a mere three feet away from her.

Yesterday she mostly spent in the spare room, napping. Kinda worried me that she was going to be a really nocturnal cat, but I also reminded myself that she’s had a lot of changes, and if she wants to nap like the wind, so be it. She ate reasonably well, which was good, since the HS said she tends to stop when she’s stressed.

She also took to the scratching devices I got, blessedly, since she’d taken a go at my mattress and the rug in my room the night before. Anatole greatly enjoyed the scratching wedge in the living room, too. I didn’t bother to remind him that he’s declawed.

I also had a stroke of genius — catnip. Got them both high, and she forgot he was in the room and he forgot that he hated her. Good times. She’s a serious drooler when on catnip, though.

A handful of overnight hisses, and Anatole keeping watch from the papasan chair in my room, which amused me to no end. However, when I got up this morning they were standing at the doorway of my bedroom sniffing each other. Great success! Since then he’s followed her around the apartment a lot, she’s escaped to the spare room when he gets too overbearing, and they had an almost scrap — he kept pawing at her, which she didn’t like. She’s starting to stand up to him, which is good. No doubt she’ll be queen of the castle shortly.

Anyway, I’m glad she’s here, though it doesn’t entirely feel like she’s one of us yet. And I admit it’s a little hard on my soul bringing another cat home, even if it’s good that there’s one less in the shelter. One more cat feels like that much further away from a dog. However, things happen when they’re supposed to, or not, and for now Xenia’s supposed to be here.

Oh, and her shelter name was Olive. Anatole’s was Barney. Barney and Olive (50s sitcom couple) to Anatole and Xenia (Soviet spy team). Much better.

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This is a picture I did not take of driving down Albert Street at dusk, through drizzle and thickening fog, watching the seemingly endless arrivals of the local murder of crows coming in to roost in the black, skeletal branches of the big maple trees along the street.

A perfect night for murder mystery.

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Cross-posted from my professional blog. Some things that have been developing in community management that I don’t think are good ideas.

Pretty girls out front

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I went to make some toast for dinner the other night, and realized as I was opening the bread bag that I couldn’t. Well, I could, but I’d have had to use the oven. You see, I no longer have a toaster. And it occurred to me that the reason I don’t have a toaster is so messed up that I’m kinda surprised I never got around to blogging it.

I had mystery maggots.

Back in September, I went into the kitchen one Saturday morning, and noticed crumbs all over a fair-sized section of the counter. Which made no sense since I hadn’t prepared food or cooked in there in some time.

As I quickly learned, the crumbs were… alive. There were wee maggots all over my counter. WTF? As noted, there wasn’t any food around, nor any flies in the kitchen, so where the hell had they come from?

I squashed, wiped up, and bleached the hell out of the counter, including lifting and cleaning under everything on it — coffeemaker, canisters, etc. (In part to see if they had come out from under or behind anything.) Still had no idea where they came from.

Over the course of the day I would go into the kitchen, and every single time there were fresh maggots on the counter. Squash, wipe, bleach — repeat! I checked under and around everything on the counter. I checked by the window. I checked the cupboards above and below. I checked the stove and the garbage and the mat and everything else I could think of. I made sure there were never any dirty dishes. No visible source and they just kept appearing. Sometimes there’d be two, sometimes there’d be 20.

This went on for four days. I was getting to the point where I was going to have to burn down the building just to stop feeling skeeved out. And thank goodness they fed me at work, cuz no way I’d be able to prepare food in there.

Now, it was always in the same area beside the sink, so I decided to remove everything from that area, bleach the hell out of it, and see if anything showed up. Because, really, they’d have had to have been dropping out of the sky.

That worked — nobody showed up. But then… I’d moved the coffeemaker, toaster, etc. onto the stove during the experiment, and sonuvabitch, there were maggots. Okay, so they had to be coming from one of those things. But I’d picked them all up, I’d cleaned them and shaken them and… WTF???

So I moved all the things that weren’t near the maggots back to their original locations. Maggots still appeared. I started moving things that were near the maggots back to the counter one at a time, until only the toaster was left. Then, after the toaster had sat on the stove by itself for a while, I picked it up.

Sure enough, maggots. Which apparently had dropped out the bottom.

Woohoo, right? Well, kinda. I immediately threw out my toaster, because… ugh. But WTF laid eggs in there? I hadn’t seen bugs in the apartment, not even the ubiquitous fruit flies that show up should there be a molecule of sugar they can detect. And what insect that produces maggots (larvae) prefers old toast crumbs?

I even googled “toaster maggots”, but the closest thing to useful was a tale that involved a mouse accidentally being killed and decomposing in the family’s toaster. I guess I never did check mine for deceased wildlife, but I also never smelled anything.

Fortunately, since I threw out the toaster, I haven’t been visited by any more maggots. I also haven’t gotten around to getting a new toaster, which I suppose I should, if I want to make good use of that kamut bread I bought as a gluten-free experiment.

I have a feeling I’m going to be a bit uncomfortable using even a new one for a while. I guess I’ll just have to make sure it looks nothing like the old one.

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If someone asked you if you wanted to go to a concert put on by a guy in his mid-50s, I don’t think you’d quite be expecting what we experienced on Saturday. Glitter, spandex, strutting, gospel, wailing guitars, high heels, and, naturally, many references to purple.

Welcome 2 Canada, indeed, Prince.

Andrew, Shawna, Melissa, myself, and Sherry (whose bucket list this concert was on) went to the second Toronto show this weekend, and it did not disappoint. It was a good sign when he started things up with Purple Rain. And proceeded to rock through a bunch of hits, a few covers (songs he wrote and others), and a few songs I wasn’t familiar with. (Setlist)

Whatever the audience make-up, when he commanded us to sing, we knew the words. There was even a gospel-tastic cover of Sarah McLachlan’s Angel during an intermission, courtesy of the backup singers.

The music itself starred in the show, too. Prince called out the band on a regular basis, as well as the superiority of real, live musicians and singers. As well as his own copious collection of hits. As he hollered out during the encore, “Call the babysitter — I got too many hits!”

And, blessedly, the encore ended with a fine rendition of Kiss, Sherry’s favouritest Prince song. It just wouldn’t have been a complete evening without it. We sang, we danced, we got the funk out. Exactly as His Purpleness intended.

And for your funktification, the defiance of the “no photos or video recording rule:

November 25th show videos
November 26th show videos

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This is a picture I did not take of a group of golfers out on the links in California in November, preparing to putt, their green surrounded by a flock of Canada Geese.

This is also a picture I did not take of an elderly Indian woman at security at SFO, wearing a gorgeous and elaborately patterned blue and gold sari, with worn grey men’s sport socks peeking out beneath her hem.

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