Quick Post – New Category – Big-time catharsis…

Well, I hate to get all negative so early into this blog, but here is the first of hopefully not many peeves.

Driving back from the city, I heard a radio ad that used the “ping” sound – the little ding-like sound that warning systems on late-model cars like mine use. That’s right, just before they announced the brand – which I have intentionally erased from my memory – there was two pings that made my eye immediately dart to my dashboard control panel … and my heart skip a beat. (My car is not exactly a late-model – but it pings. And it has over 200k, so something ping-worthy could happen at any given moment.)

Now I respect the need to brand their radio spots with an audio sting that’s unique and memorable. But that sound. C’mon. Dirty pool – and I’ll bet I’m not the only driver out there that gets bugged about it.

Now that I’m at it – I’m not thrilled with cellphone rings being featured on the radio either. More than once I’ve gone for the hip before I realized that it’s just part of a radio spot’s soundscape.

I think it’s time to start broadcasting my ipod feed the stereo and forget about commercial radio…

Posted in Peeves | 4 Comments

A few words from Dick the Butcher

“The first thing we do,” said the character Dick the butcher in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part II, is “kill all the lawyers.”On the heels of the Canadian election, and a slim majority being granted to the tories, I wanted to post about something that’s been on my mind for awhile. It took a stand-up interview with a defeated Marc Garneau to bring it home.

The interview was conducted after he had clearly lost his bid for election in a Quebec riding. The final question was in the what’s-next-for-Marc-Garneau vein. He thought, and then announced that he had given up his job at the Space Agency in order to run, and now was unemployed and in the market for work. He needed to find a job, he explained, as he had “a young family”.

Here was a true Canadian hero, the first astronaut to carry our nation’s pride into space, admitting that he was job-hunting now to support his family after trying to win a seat in parliament to further serve the public.

And it occurred to me – why? Why can’t any individual who secures a registered party’s nomination be given the same status that we extend to expecting parents. Just like maternity leave, one should be able to leave their position temporarily to run for office and have it waiting for them if they lose the election.

Otherwise, we have a parliament stuffed full of lawyers, who can more easily be temporarily absent from their firms long enough to take a run at a seat.

So maybe – in the metaphorical sense – we should get rid of all the lawyers that run this country And make room for some of the bright and successful entrepreneurs, plumbers, teachers – and astronauts.

For what it’s worth, here’s a point-of-view on Shakespeare’s famous quotation. Worth a read.

Posted in Brogue Craic, Politics | 2 Comments

The first stab at it…

I’ve been wanting to develop some better graphics chops for awhile now, and this design is part of that curve.

Read More »

Posted in CatchAll | 1 Comment

Vanity, thy name is blogging…

For starters, I have to admit to a certain trepidation about self-publishing. Over the years, I’ve set about now and again to record my thoughts and opinions about a wide-range of things I knew little about. They usually end up being returned to me by my mother, who collects such embarrasments. Innocently, or so she claims.

She recently gifted me with a little piece I had written to her in a letter many years ago, and where in overly-flowery and stilted prose I rambled on about my new girlfriend. Fortunately my new girlfriend didn’t have the opportunity to read it, as she would’ve run for the hills if she had. And I would’ve been without a wife for these past nearly-twenty years.

In any case, I decided it was time to start this blog as I think there is a benefit that can derive from it. It can be a good thing, I’m wagering, as a tool for communication with, and even if only with, my friends, clients and family.

A lot of smarter people than me have had a pretty good go at making the blogging case for business. I’m not as much of an evangelist as that, but I can see the benefits.

And this is the spot where I’ll try and emphasize those. My plans for the next post – the first real post, if you will, are to begin to talk about blogs, newsfeeds and the secrets-that-the-power-users know, but in a way that’s accessible to folks who aren’t necessarily early adopters. The guys I hang around with at The Brogue, for example.

I’m just not making any promises as to when I’ll get around to that post!

Posted in CatchAll | Leave a comment

“You can’t play piano in a whorehouse and say you’re only in it for the music.”

“You can’t play piano in a whorehouse and say you’re only in it for the music.”

Mike Nichols in Wired, years ago…

Originally from

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