Something Brewing

CBC Radio: Vinyl Cafe and Age of Persuasion

2010-03-08T18:06:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm starting to show my age, but I'm starting to find music uninspiring and unremarkable, at least the stuff on the radio anyway. I haven't really bothered to explore new music, but turned to CBC radio instead. I've been exploring some of the shows on there. Quirks and Quarks caught my attention initially, along with Ideas. I listened to some episodes on some of my long drives and found them interesting, but not really gripping.

Then I discovered Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean and Age of Persuasion with Terry O'Reilly. I'll write more about Vinyl Cafe in a later post, but two episodes from both shows stood out to me given the current federal political climate. Both have to do with political ads and using media in political campaigns.

The first episode is from Mr. McLean commenting on the tastefulness, or lack thereof, of negative advertising. I share his opinion that negative ads are disgraceful and do not contribute to any intelligent debate about the kind of policies that are good for our country. They break down issues into simplistic black and white points of view and are rife with disinformation. Say what you want about Stephane Dion, but his Green Shift plan was a progressive attempt to factor in environmental factors into economic accounting of businesses. It was worth a serious debate by our political leaders and media. Unfortunately, as Mr. McLean illustrates, the negative ads by the Conservative Party pretty much stifled any debate and Mr. Dion eventually lost the election and was summarily deposed by the Liberal Party. Here's an excerpt of the Vinyl Cafe episode (the rest of it involves a song and a letter correspondence).

The second episode is from Mr. O'Reilly explaining how negative political advertising came about and why they work. He breaks down the history of negative advertising and the effect of new media technologies on political campaigns. He also explains why these ads work. You can listen to the episode here.

I think it's safe to say that we'll have another federal election sometime within the next two years. Unfortunately, with that will come the slew of negative ads and over-the-top political spin. Until the general public lashes back against this type of advertising and rewards politicians who take an enlightened approach to campaigning, political parties will continue to take big issues that need enlightened debate and dumb them down with cheap spin tricks and simplistic black and white points of view. We will all continue to be worse off for it.

Clipper Round the World Yacht Race

2010-03-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

I have to see a financial planner about this. I found out about the Clipper Round the World Race from talking to someone about sailing: "My friend's of a friend of a friend is on this crazy race around the world...clipper something...or was it something clipper...hmm."

I did some digging around and found the site. 10 months of open ocean sailing and no experience needed. Crazy!

I already sent for an info package. I'll have to figure out how to save up for it.

My horoscope didn't say anything about this...

2010-02-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

Thursday Feb 4, 2010 is going to be etched in my memory as one of the toughest days of my life so far. If ever there was a day where it didn't pay to get out of bed, this was it.

I needed to do laundry because I needed some decent business clothes for some meetings in Toronto so I got up early and went to the 24hr laundromat. I brought my laptop with me to do work while I was waiting. After laundry was done, I went home and decided to stay there and work until lunchtime before going into the office. I had a hard time concentrating so at around 10:30am I decided to pack up the car, drive into work, and then head to Toronto straight after I was done work.

At around 11am, I was driving south along Bagot St. through the intersection when a guy ran his red light coming east down Princess St. and t-boned me. My car spun around, stalled, and then rolled backwards into the building of the Shoppers Drugmart.

Here's what my car looked like after it was all said and done:

I even made the evening news in Kingston.

If the resolution was a little better you could see me talking to the cops and firemen. The guy who hit me got a ticket for running a red light.

I got a little sentimental when I saw my car get taken away on a flatbed tow truck. I felt incredibly lucky not to be hurt physically, and that no-one else got hurt. That was my first car and I had it for 10 years. I have a lot of good memories associated with it. I knew it was time for a new car, but I didn't want it to happen like this.

DIY Jet Engine

2010-01-24T11:54:00.000-08:00

There are some days that I wish I had a garage with all sorts of tools in it to build projects like...umm...my own home made jet engine!!! I could use it to do all sorts of neat things like...uhh...cool beer! or...uhh...cook a hot dog!

Seriously now though, I know about jet engines because I worked in aerospace for a while as a mechanical engineer and thought they were really neat. I wanted to go work for Pratt & Whitney for a while.

A jet engine is a type of turbine engine. Essentially, it's two fans on a common shaft rotating inside a tube. The first fan compresses the air into the combustion chamber where fuel is added and ignited. The air then suddenly expands rushing out of the compression chamber to drive the second fan, which in turn drives the front fan which compresses more air and so on. The engine reaches a constant speed when the ignited hot air mixture rushing out the back of the engine provides enough power to compress the incoming air and the system reaches an equilibrium state. The air rushing out the back of the engine has lots of power left in it though and provides the thrust force that can enable a plane to take off from the ground. They're complex machines to set up and run and aircraft mechanics get paid a lot of money to keep these engines running without any problems.

I've keep thinking that it is plausible to design a turbine engine that uses concentrate sunlight heat the compressed air rather than fuel. After all, some power generators can concentrate enough sunlight to melt salt. So why not use sunlight to directly power a turbine engine on a smaller scale. Something like this stirling engine.

I started digging around and found a whole wealth of information about using automotive turbochargers. Some good sites are here and here.

I'll keep this project in the back of my mind. Maybe one day when I'm settled in a house I'll give it a whirl.

Best Recipes Ever: Paprika Chicken

2010-01-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the new cooking show on CBC Video called "Best Recipes Ever" hosted by Kary Osmond. It's simple everyday food based on recipes from Canadian Living magazine. Osmond demeanour adds a lot to the show, although she seems rushed and a little stressed with the recipes that she tries to deliver. Still, it's a much better show than the Food Network's 30-minute Meals with Rachael Ray.

I tried out the paprika chicken recipe from Episode 7. I like a little heat in my meals so I added a chopped fresh chilli pepper. I also used chicken thighs instead of breasts. Overall it was pretty tasty! A nice smoked pepper flavour from the generous amounts of paprika. I made too much though and I'll probably be eating it for a few meals over the next few days.

Here's what my plate looked like:

Urban Farming

2010-01-24T10:44:00.000-08:00

A couple of interesting applications could come together in the relatively new future to bring farming to urban centres. The first is the concept of vertical farming talked about here. This globe and mail article also talks about a BC entrepreneur developing urban barns for growing crops.

The second application is the technology that may enable these concepts to take off already exists. From my experience working at a fibre-optics devices company, I thought it might be a good to develop a device that would capture sunlight and divert it indoors using fibre optic cables. Bring outdoor lighting indoors. I did some research and someone's already ahead of the game in this area as described in this article from ecogeek.org.

Indoor growing operations aren't a new idea. Drug dealers have recognized the profit potential for them and it's a big problem as far as Canada's law enforcement is concerned.

The major drawback is electricity consumption. Plants need a lot of light and heat to grow properly. Urban indoor farms will have to consume a lot of energy to grow crops. A technology that allows these farmers to bring sunlight indoors and allow them to grow common vegetables year-round will work towards reducing the energy costs of an operation, especially here in Canada. The initial capital cost for the building, equipment, and lighting technology will be high and I'm not sure that the price point of the vegetables produced in these farms will be palatable for consumers. It would be an interesting pilot study project to examine the profitability of these urban farms. Maybe a single-level warehouse in a suburban industrial zone might be a good spot to start. If you let your mind wander a little bit, the possibility of growing bananas in Canada at some point in the future doesn't seem too implausible.

Book Review: Outliers, Malcom Gladwell

2010-01-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

There was a lot of hype around Malcolm Gladwell last year when I was in the MBA program. People were talking about how insightful his writing was. I never really bought into the hype then, but with all the driving I was doing over the Christmas break, I decided to listen to audio books instead of music. I loaded "Outliers" in my mp3 player and started listening.

The premise the book is to examine the reasons behind the seemingly anomalous success behind the likes of Bill Gates, the Korean Air safety record turnaround, and the success of some Jewish New York lawyers. His argument is that these success are not simply the result of the tenacity, determination, and talent of the individual, but rather the result of environmental, cultural, and time factors that put the individual in the perfect place at the perfect time.

The book's been out for a while and I think anyone can find plenty of reviews about it with a simple internet search so I won't go into great detail here.

I found two parts of the book really interesting. The first was the reason why most top level hockey players have birthdays in January through April. It turns out that the cut off date for kids hockey is January 1st. Kids born earlier in the year tend to be more physically developed than their later-born peers, especially at the age when they start to jump to higher level hockey programs. The most physically developed and talented then go on to receive better coaching, more ice time, play with higher skilled players, and thus get a better chance for elite level success. It's an interesting observation, but Gladwell doesn't offer any suggestion to even out the odds a little more to group hockey players according to physical maturity rather than strictly age.

Another interesting point was in his discussion of the Korean Air disasters. There was a time when Korean Air had the worst airline safety record in the world and airports were starting to refuse landing for Korean Air flights. Gladwell argues that the major reason behind these crashes was cultural. He talked about the Korean culture being very hierarchical leading to a great reliance on the captains. Junior pilots were afraid to challenge both their captains and the air traffic controllers that they were talking to. Gladwell introduces Hofstede's Power Distance Index study to explain the effect of cultural differences on the airline's safety record.

The discussion about the airline itself didn't interest me very much, but Hofstede's study did. I'm a mix of two high power distance cultures: filipino and arab. Over the past 20 years now, I've been living in a very low power distance North American culture. I started thinking about previous interviews, jobs, negotiations, relationships, and friendships and how that cultural difference affected me in terms of how I behaved and what I expected out of the behaviour of my superiors and peers. It was eye opening and explained a few things about my past. I now notice it in my behaviour, how I talk, and how I think. I don't feel the need to change my viewpoint or values, but at least now I can understand the communication modes better. I recommend that any new immigrant or foreign student to have a look at Hofstede's study and to try to be conscious of it when coming to North America. It will help a lot in interviews.

I found the rest of Gladwell's book unremarkable. He talks about the minimum 10,000 hours required to be an expert in anything. This idea isn't new. There are a few documentaries that talk about the brain and how it grows with repeated practice at a given skill. Susan Polger's father was a psychologist in Hungary and had the idea that any child can be trained to be a master in anything as long as the child had an affinity for the skilled practice. There's a whole documentary about it called "My Brilliant Brain", you can watch it here. The CBC also had a documentary along the same lines as part of David Suzuki's show "The Nature of Things" called The Brain that Changes Itself. It's based on a book by Toronto psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Norman Doidge.

Gladwell also spends a great deal of time developing the idea of environmental factors that contribute to the success or demise of the individuals that he talks about. This is nothing new to anyone who has an avid interest in entrepreneurship. Almost every success story has an element of fortuitous random convergence of outside factors that place the entrepreneur at the right place at the right time. In most cases, it's a type of lucky meeting between people that leads to success.

Gladwell's writing style is very wordy for my taste. I got the impression that he over belays some points and gets repetitive at times. Maybe it's because I prefer a direct approach to communication and don't need to hear a lot of verbiage to understand a given argument. Overall, I think "Outliers" is a worthy read. Maybe his other books are a little better and more insightful. I've got another audio book and hardback book of his to get to this year.

New look again

2010-01-13T20:51:00.000-08:00

Trying out a new look...the default templates in blogger aren't all that appealing to me now. Might look at downloading some free templates.

I've been neglecting this blog...I'll have to get back to posting more frequently.

Online CRM stuff

2009-12-14T15:18:00.000-08:00

In doing research for solutions for the alumni database project that I`m working on, I came across some interesting web solutions.

HighriseHQ and Network Hippo are some really interesting CRM applications. I tried out HighriseHQ and really liked it. I haven`t tried network hippo yet, but that`s on my list of things to do this week.

Stuff like this inspires me to learn more about web technologies. I wish I knew enough to setup up concepts like these quickly to make a pitch to potential partners and investors for new web technology ideas.

Some interesting ideas

2009-12-14T14:58:00.000-08:00

I keep having these great ideas and get excited about implementing them, but I keep finding that other people had those same ideas earlier and already put a solution in place.

While I was interviewing with Torstar Digital, I came up with some ideas for improving Workopolis.com, one of their web properties. I thought that there must be a way to have enhanced resumes couple with some sort of generic online system for employee reviews. That way the system could rate people based on their performance as rated by their bosses. It would give additional information on top of the simple resume to help recruiters choose candidates to interview. I figured the same system could be used abroad in other countries so that skilled immigrants to Canada would have a rating to point to that would be familiar to employers here in Canada.

I also had that in mind when I was putting together my online resume. These days, recruiters get hundreds of resumes when they post a job. Sifting through them to find good candidates to interview is a time consuming and expensive job. The one-page resume formated isn`t enough anymore...you need something else to show recruiters. My online resume shows more detail in a way that`s easy for people to access and review. It also helps in trying to arrange info meetings.

I was looking into trying to develop a site where people could make similar online resumes easily and open the system up for recruiters to search through. A kind of giant resume book. I also thought of adding a performance review feature based on the U of Waterloo co-op evaluation form.

I started talking to people about these ideas and found out about two sites: whyhire.me and rypple.com. Apparently, these people had similar ideas put them into motion. What I had in mind was a little different (and in my mind better...for obvious reasons) from their solutions, but they already have something built.

I`m thinking about putting together a proposal for the Queen`s business career centre about implementing the solution for their grads with some other added features.

Back in Kingston

2009-12-14T14:34:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, I was on my way to Ottawa for an info meeting with an engineering company. I made plans to stop in Kingston along the way and arranged another meeting with a company in town. The traffic on the drive was a lot lighter than I expected and I got into Kingston a couple of hours early, so I decided to stop by the business school and say hi to the MBA staff.

I ran into my old team facilitator from the MBA program and we decided to go out for lunch. I turned out that there were some changes that happened in the career centre and he became the director there over the summer. He was telling me about some of the challenges that he was facing. One of them was that the Queen's alumni weren't being utilized well enough in placing graduating business students in jobs. He wanted a database developed that would help in engaging alumni and help his department prospect jobs for students. He asked me how my job search was going and then asked me if I was interested in running with the project since he didn't have anyone available to make it happen. So we ended lunch with a verbal agreement on a 3-month consulting arrangement to get this database off the ground and I agreed to start 4 days later on Nov 23.

The info meeting in Ottawa fell through and nothing came of the other info meeting I had set up in Kingston so I left town earlier than expected to head home to pack a bag with some work clothes.

I've been working on defining the requirements of the project over the last 4 weeks...interviewing staff and asking them how they use alumni data and how they store it. It's a similar type of information flow and data problem to the one that I was tackling with my big business idea. People use data in a business process but keep track of data differently. You can gain efficiencies and better performance through a combination of behavioural changes and application of some technology. In the case of the business career centre, the goal is to place a higher percentage of students in jobs in a shorter time period. The final product will either be an adoption of an existing CRM database or a custom built system specific to the needs of the career centre. I'm leaning towards recommending a custom solution but there are other financial and time factors to consider. The new system should be up and running by mid-feb barring any issues.

It's an interesting place to be...My previous interaction with the career centre staff was as a student. Now I'm working with them in their office. The first week was a little surreal but I'm starting to get used to it now. I have to say that I like this type of consulting gig. I set my own hours and don't really have a boss. I just invoice my time and show results. I just have to find some longer term arrangements so I can finally stop living like a student and get to feel like a pro again.

Places I've been

2009-10-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

Played with google maps a while ago and included a map of places I've been to in my life so far on my online resume. I figured it'd be a good thing to include here. There's a link in the side bar on the right too.

View Places I've been in a larger map

Political ads

2009-10-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

Some Liberal minds are starting to get it. The person who came up with this idea should be promoted to the federal party level. I'm not really attached to any political party but I do think the current conservative federal government needs to be called out on some of their fiscal decisions and the myth of them being fiscally responsible needs to be debunked.

I originally found it on this blog through progressivbloggers.ca, but here's the video in any case:

Toronto Zoo

2009-09-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

I was in Toronto for a weekend for a get-together. Decided to go to the zoo with a couple of friends on a nice sunny Sunday afternoon. It was really busy! We walked around for about 3 hours...also managed to roll down a hill for a bit of fun.

Cormorants?

2009-09-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

With the fall season setting in, a lot of water birds have been flying through the area catching fish along the river. I go for walks sometimes along the waterfront and see lots of them. I was driving by one day and saw a whole bunch of cormorants (I think) sitting in a single tree. I happened to have my camera with me and stopped to take some pictures. As soon as I got close though, most of them got skittish and flew away. I took these pictures of the ones cool enough to stay on the tree:

Work

2009-09-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

Well...I'm finally working again. An old employer contacted me about helping them with a large order of machined parts that they received. The needed help programming their cnc machines and designing the work-holding fixtures. We figured out a short-term contract arrangement.

It's nice to be working, but it's a bit of a bitter pill to swallow. I started this blog after I quit working there because I got tired of the atmosphere and knew that I could do better than working there. There was limited opportunity for growth and learning and the place is rife with complainers. I left there because I had a chat with the owner about growing into larger role, but he told me he was happy with my productivity where I was and there wasn't much of a possibility of me growing into a management position or playing a larger role in developing the business. I quit a month after that discussion and decided to go to India and the Philippines to figure out what to do next. That journey eventually led me to the MBA at Queen's. I never thought that I'd be back in the same chair doing the same work again. I'm trying to make the best of the situation, but this turn of events isn't helping my morale. Hopefully, something will develop soon.

Reading articles like these doesn't help either.

Madrid?

2009-09-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been getting a lot of hits from Madrid lately. I don't think I know anyone there but it's nice to see some people exploring around the site. Feel free to make a connection...

Sailing around Toronto, NYC/QCYC Open Regatta

2009-09-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to sail in the National Yacht Club / Queen City Yacht Club in Toronto this past weekend. I got a ride on a boat through a friend on a big C&C sailboat...over 35ft long. I'd never sailed on a boat that big before so I was looking forward to the experience.

It was a really nice boat with enough cabin room to stand up straight inside. The inside was nice and there was a galley and shower. I guess the boat was designed to be a compromise between racing and cruising with enough sail control and rig to be raced, but also with enough creature comforts to be able to cruise it around comfortably.

It took 2 people to manage trimming the large genoa. There's almost no way to physically reel in the sail to close to trimming position. One person had to tail the sheeting line with another to grind the winch. I alternated with my friend between grinding and tailing. It was hard to know when to stop grinding because the most effective leverage position was to face the stern without seeing the genoa. The skipper had to call out when the sail was in the right position...there's a real danger of damaging the sail and poking a hole through it against the spreaders. Sails that big are really expensive! I also helped out on the foredeck with launching and dousing the asymmetrical spinnaker.

It was neat experience overall, but I found that I was detached from the race and couldn't keep track of our tactical position. The boats in the fleet are also different and there was a handicap rating similar to PHRF. It was hard to judge your speed and point relative to other boats since some where more like sport boats than cruisers. I much prefer one-design racing I think. It was also really nice to sail around with the Toronto skyline in the background. Here are some pictures:

Bayfest, Port Rowan

2009-09-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

I was at a friend's cottage at Turkey Point for Labour Day weekend. We decided to drive to Port Rowan to check out Bayfest there. We heard that they used to have old school frog and minnow races for kids and thought that it might neat to check it out. Unfortunately, they don't do that anymore due to some animal rights issues. It was still neat to check it out for a couple of hours or so. The weather was really nice.

I forgot to take my camera and had to settle for taking pictures with my cell phone. I was pleasantly surprised about how well they turned out. I have a cheap phone so the resolution isn't good and details are hard get unless you get really close to your subject. Here are some of the better pics:

There was a family BBQ stand there too. They converted old oil containers that used to be used for oil-based home heating. They cleaned them out, cut them in half and mounted them on a trailer. They had room for 3 of these massive charcoal BBQs but only had 2 on the trailer. I tried a sample of their pulled port...really tasty! Here's what the set up looked like:

Niagara on The Lake

2009-09-09T14:31:00.001-07:00

I went to Niagara on the Lake a few weeks ago to walk around and take some pictures. It's a nice scenic area. It's located where the Niagara River spills into Lake Ontario and there's a cool fort across on the American side at Youngstown. It's a nice romantic tourist spot and there were a lot of older couples walking around. It's also wine country and I stopped along some vineyards on my way into town.

I ran out of D-76 developer on the previous roll. I didn't want to mix a whole batch from powder again and decided to go with a concentrated developer that I can dilute on the fly. I decided to go with Ilford's Ilfosol 3. Can't really get it around here...had to stop in Burlington on my way to Toronto. I liked using it and the results came out great.

Here are some pics:

Around Niagara Falls

2009-08-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

I decided to go to Niagara Falls for an afternoon and take pictures of the tourists. The falls are only about 20 minutes away. It was entertaining seeing all the tourists around and it was pretty busy. I have to get better at not being shy and asking people to take their picture. I passed up a few nice shots because I was trying to avoid confrontations...I still had a few good shots. Here are some:

Around Fort Erie

2009-08-26T13:25:00.001-07:00

I moved back home to Fort Erie a few weeks ago. Not too happy about the move...I thought I would have found work by now, but the economic climate is still pretty bad and the job search process is slow going.

There's not much to do in this small town. I decided to pick up my camera and try to kickstart my photography again. I had some D-76 kicking around still and I was wondering if it was still going to be good. It'd been sitting in the basement in a tote box for about 2 years.

I went for a walk around the old downtown area...it's not big, only about a block long. The developer still worked, surprisingly enough. Here are some of the pics:

This one isn't of the old Jarvis st. area, but the yard of the old CL Sailboats company.

Electricity from Mud

2009-08-04T06:44:00.000-07:00

I came across an interesting article about a scientist working on extracting electricity from mud...yes, mud.

Apparently the Geobacter protebacteria is key to the whole process. The little organism can breakdown metals and conduct electrons. You can read more about the little creature here.

Online Resume

2009-08-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

I applied to a position with an online properties company and decided to do a web version of a cover letter and resume. The position was called "Strategic Innovator"...really fancy title, but basically had to do with generating/promoting new business ideas and managing the process of bringing them to reality.

I had an interview for the position a couple of weeks ago and still haven't heard back from them in terms of a second round interview. I'll give them a follow up call soon.

In any case, you can have a look at my online resume here. It's the same as the one I used for the job application but without the cover letter.

I tried something like this a few years ago around 2003 or so. The reception was mixed...some recruiter was having a bad day and scoffed at it, while some other people thought it was pretty neat. These days though, online interaction is a lot more prevalent than it was 6 years ago. Hopefully this time around the site will make it easier for people to forward my info and some more opportunities will come my way.

One neat thing about using Drupal to develop the online resume is that I can use Google Analytics to track the site usage. This gives it a lot more feedback on viewership than any of the job sites like Workopolis or Monster.

I'll also put a link in the side bar.

Entrepreneurship Links

2009-08-03T11:38:00.001-07:00

I was going through some old bookmarks lately and came across this link from CanadianCareers.com, an old site but with some relevant info.

The first link contains some good resources for researching about starting your own business in Canada. There are a couple of links that test your entrepreneurial spirit.

The second link has some good general info about job search techniques.

Laser Sailing

2009-07-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to go out on a Laser dinghy a few weekends ago. I've been thinking about buying one for a while now, but never sailed one so I had no idea what I would be getting.

It's a tricky little boat to sail and needs constant attention to wind and wave conditions. You always have to be working the sail sheet and rudder to keep the boat moving. You also have to keep shifting your weight along to maintain the boat balance. It's a lot of work, but fun when you get it going. It's also easy to capsize! Righting the boat and getting back on is easy though.

I'm now convinced that I want to get one. It'll be a good way to get a fun workout in in the summers. I can always start racing in dingy regattas once I get the hang of the boat. The only downside is that I wouldn't really be able to take people out with me. Maybe 1 person, but that would be pushing it.

Anyways, here are some pics:

Geez...getting porky again. Need to start exercising regularly again.

Hobie 16

2009-07-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

It was really windy here in Kingston a couple of weeks ago. I rented a Hobie 16 from Ahoy Rentals for a couple of hours. Once the boat gets up to speed, it's really fast and easy to sail. Tacking is a bit of a challenge though...you need to backfill the jib to get the boat to come around. It's a lot different and slower than tacking a mono hull boat. It's also easy to stall the boat and get stuck pointing in the wind and not going anywhere. I preferred gybing because it was easier and quicker, but got beaned on the head with the boom once. Have to duck really low.

In any case, it was huge fun! I want one!

2009 Richardson Partners Financial One Design Regatta

2009-06-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

With summer rolling in, my itch to sail started getting stronger. I put out the word on to the Kirby25 fleet that I was looking for a ride at regattas. I got a call from Problem Child within 15 minutes of posting my note on the forum.

I drove up to Ottawa on the Friday night before the regatta to set up my tent and catch up with the other sailors in the fleet. I kept up my tradition of bringing a charcoal bbq and grilling my dinner.

We were expecting a lot of rain for the weekend, but the weather held up with a nice breeze and no rain. We packed in 7 races on the Saturday...a lot of work! The most I remember doing in one day in previous years was 5. I'd sailed with Problem Child before so we were familiar with each other. I gave them some tips about sail trim and race strategy and we did fairly well overall. We almost got a first on one race, but we made two extra gybes and gave the race to the fastest boat in the fleet. The last race of the day was pretty hairy with four boats coming together at the finish line. There was some bumping of boats and a protest, but it was all in good fun. Needless to say, I was pretty tired by the end of the day.

We woke up Sunday morning to a misty rain and no wind whatsoever. The race committee called off the race at 11am and I packed up my tent and drove home to Kingston early.

It was nice to be back racing again. Looking forward to doing more over the summer.

My Big Business Idea

2009-06-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I started the MBA program with an entrepreneurship mindset and a big idea that I thought I could pull off by the end of the program. Unfortunately, while people generally like my idea, it hasn't really caught any momentum and my priority right now is finding a job so I can feed and house myself.

In any case, I'll put my idea out here and see what happens. If someone takes the idea and runs with it, so be it.

Basic Idea
Working in mechanical design and process engineering for 9 different companies, I have a broad perspective on how engineering departments use their design software and manage their data. I see four major pain points: software licensing, data management, sourcing of new suppliers or customers, and information sharing.

Mechanical engineering software is really expensive and can cost up to $20,000 per year for one workstation depending on what features are needed. If you have a design office with about 20 engineers, this can add up to a significant overhead cost.

Another consequence of modern mechanical design software is the amount of data generated. This data, usually in the form of solid models, drawings, FEA results, jigs and fixtures, and test reports have to be kept track of and stored somewhere. When you different software packages creating these different engineering objects, and different people using these packages, it gets tricky trying to store and manage the different bits of data. Different companies have approached this problem in different ways, but the basic problems persist: data duplication, server maintenance and growth, and ongoing development of a custom data management system. This also adds to overhead costs.

Sourcing new customers/suppliers and information sharing relate to time costs and are difficult to quantify. Developing a new business relationship with a new customer or supplier really has to do with building up trust with them. One way to build trust is to share financial info that gives a glimpse into the health of the company and the quality of the management. D&B has made a business out of this kind of reporting for over 100 years. This info reduces the time needed to decide on doing business with a new company, and hence, overhead administrative costs.

Another time costs associated with finding new customers and suppliers is the amount of time needed to find them. An ebay type online market would work. mfg.com and alibaba.com are working to fill this space. They're both great sites, but I think they're missing integration with 3D CAD systems.

Information sharing is a difficult thing to pin down as a cost. Not everyone can look at an engineering drawing and understand the shapes and mechanisms being depicted. Having a solid model where people can look at from different angles and show how the mechanism would work is invaluable and makes meetings run smoother. Having a CAD workstation devoted to a meeting room is not a good cost to have. There where different approaches to managing this problem in my experience. Creating a movie file of a flyby and animated kinematics was the easiest and least costly solution that I came up with. But overall, you can reduce design review meeting times significantly by having a solid model that you can manipulate easily.

So to solve these issues, I came up with the idea of tying in an engineering software package with a web portal. The engineering software package would consist of a CAD system for modelling, a FEA package for stress analysis, and a CAM system for programming CNC machines. The web portal would be there for business functions: Data Management, Credit Reporting (tying in with ERP systems), an Online Market, and a 3D parts catalogue for easy part sourcing. The software package would be free and the web portal would have a subscription fee.

Here's the latest powerpoint slide deck that I did. The idea still needs to be massaged a little more and I need to work on my pitch. There's not much point in putting more work into it though unless I can sell the idea to a potential customer.

I've targeted a previous employer for the idea pitch, but I'm not sure if I'm proceeding with this yet. I want to put together a focus group of my former colleagues and peers to see if my assumptions are correct. I haven't approached them about it yet, but I might making some noise about it in July.

More about Bootstrapping

2009-06-23T09:48:00.001-07:00

Here's a good write up about bootstrapping. The info there isn't mind blowing or anything that you couldn't find elsewhere, but the author puts it in blunt and simple form. Really good stuff.

The Ottawa Network

2009-06-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

The Ottawa Network has events every now and then to get entrepreneurs around Ottawa to get together and discuss business topics. I went to the last one this spring, held at the Code Factory, to see if I could meet some people that could lead me to a job with a small startup company. I didn't get any solid job leads, but the discussion was really interesting.

The topic had to do with bootstrapping your business. The tree panelists were in full agreement about external funding: there is none. There are some VCs that are still investing, but only after a business is demonstrating revenue growth. Angel investors have been hit hard by the economic recession and are finding safe havens for their money. The only good way to raise funding for your business is by generating customer revenue. Basically, sell your idea to someone before you even spend a dime developing it.

Practically this means identifying your target first customer, meeting with them, and explaining that you can solve their problems if they explain them to you. At this meeting, your job is to sell them the idea using a presentation. If they like it, you can then start talking about a deposit to begin the work and subsequent funds to continue as the project progresses. But until you have a first customer committed, there's not much point in doing any work or spending any money.

Apart from that, I met some interesting people doing some interesting things. One guy in particular started a website called careerseer.com. It's basically a search engine for job postings for the Ottawa tech sector. It mostly has to do with the software industry, but there may be some postings that are more business related.

It's too bad I only went to one of these networking events. I knew about them when I was still in the MBA program, but never went to one for various reasons. I should pass on the info to the new class, especially the new ventures club members.

Night Shots

2009-06-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

I was up late one night. The moon was bright and it was windy with some clouds blowing by. I went out to take a few pictures around the Kingston township. I was using 15 second exposures on ISO 50. It's a little tricky taking night pictures with an old digicam with a small screen, but these turned out ok.

CanadaBrainstorm.ca

2009-06-08T08:59:00.000-07:00

Ever since finding about the Brainstorm Ubuntu site, I've had an idea of building a similar website, but for people to exchange ideas on how to improve Canada. I've been watching the news about Canadian politics for a while. I got discouraged at watching elections and how some issues dominate the campaigns. The central campaign issues, like same-sex marriage or public funding for religious schools, have little to do with the national interest of our country, but are really specific. It's a neat marketing/campaign trick by clever strategists to come up with a hot-button issue that everyone has an opinion on and that deals more with belief and cannot really be debated based on logical reasoning. These polarizing issues pretty much divide the voters into for and against sides pulling otherwise undecided voters into one political camp or another. Larger issues such as foreign policy, international competitiveness, inter-provincial trade, and environmental policy get drowned out by the media hype around the single polarizing issue. The end result is that we elect governments based on personal beliefs and ideals rather than a reasoned evaluation of their policies and platforms.

So one way to combat this problem is to define the issues ourselves in some sort of grassroots movement independent of any political party. So during campaigns, when political parties talk about what they think Canadians want, we have some sort of record that contains ideas brainstormed by the population for the kind of country that we want to live in. Political parties can then be evaluated based on how closely they match with the idea repository. These ideas also need not be limited to the realm of public policy. Private industry leaders can also take notice and work to fill a demand in an area that they see an opportunity in.

In any case, looking for a job is a time-consuming process and I need some other way to feel like I accomplished something. So I built CanadaBrainstorm.ca using Drupal and the IdeaTorrent package from the Ubuntu people. The basic premise of the site is as follows:

Great innovative ideas for improving Canada are exchanged between people everyday. However, the majority of these ideas never reach public policy makers and industry executive-level decision makers.

A method for storing and evaluating these ideas is needed so that the best ideas can be accessed by political and industry leaders. These ideas can then be acted upon and brought to reality.

Anyone can create an account, log in, and contribute an idea or vote on one. I'm trying to publicize the site through facebook and personal emails. I'm hoping that some people will be keen on the idea and the site will generate some momentum. I have a section about me with links to my resume and this blog. Hopefully, some sort of job lead will come out of it as well.

I've included a link in the side bar. Please spread the word about the site and get involved!

MBA: Last courses and the end of the program

2009-06-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted and the memories of the courses are fading fast.

Managing Innvation
Managing innovation was taught by Lib Gibson. She's also an adjunct professor at the Rotman school of business in Toronto. She presented some interesting concepts in terms of how to create business environments to encourage the flow of ideas. Much of what we discussed can be found in Peter Drucker's book Innovation and Entrepreneurship. We also discussed how disruptive innovations work, how to protect your company from being blindsided by disruptive innovations, and some interesting topics from TED.com. Overall, I really enjoyed this course.

The Tricolour Venture Fund
This was the highlight of my MBA academic experience and was run by Elspeth Murray, Peter Gallant, and John Molloy. Queen's has a Venture Capital Fund closely associated with the Parteq Innvotions, the technology commercialization entity for the university. We were split up into three teams and provided with a list of 9 different new ventures who are looking to secure funding to help their businesses grow. The first phase of the course was to do an initial investigation of the companies and decide on which companies to do a deep investigation and due diligence work to evaluate the investment potential. The second phase involved the due diligence work on the companies we selected through extensive meetings with the new venture entrepreneurs and management, and detailed research of the technology, market, and competitors. The companies we evaluated included:

Skymeter - a gps technology company

Shoeboxed.com - a digital receipts company

iPeak Networks - an internet technology company

SciSense - a medical device company

My team evaluated Xuuk, a fledgling start-up company that developed eyetracking technology for measuring how many people look at a sign and the length of time that each person looked. Really neat technology. The small management team had done a lot of work with the small amount of funding that they received up to that point. We recommended investing but our recommendation went to the investment committee who decide on the actual investment. This was a fun course that involved a real project with real companies and making an investment decision with real dollars. It wasn't just an academic exercise. I really liked it and it inspired me to seek work within the start-up area with VCs and on the government policy side. Unfortunately, the state of the VC industry is bad right now and work prospects are not good.

Marketing of New Ventures
By the time I started this course, the end of the program was in site, the weather was starting to get nice again, and my motivation for course work was incredibly low. I was the only student from Queen's to take this class, the other four students in the course were exchange students. I kind of liked it because of the small size and the company tours that we had. We checked out Mitel's technology incubator in Ottawa called Wesley Clover. We also did a live project to develop a marketing strategy plan for the Westbrook Golf Club in developing a new sports complex on their land.

The final days of the program were spent saying goodbye to classmates who were going on exchange, the exchange students who were with us for a few months, and a big party where we all wore white t-shirts and signed each other.

Over the last month or so, a group of us welcomed the incoming class (2010) and passed on some of the culture of the program, lessons that we learnt, and survival tips. We sent them on a scavenger hunt around town and threw a party for them. It was interesting to see them starting the program and wondering how we looked at this point last year. They're going to have a great year.

Convocation happened on May 26th at Grant Hall. It was a nice ceremony that started off with bagpipes. It was nice to meet the parents of classmates and introduce mine to some of my closer friends. It was fun, but also a little bit sad. It officially marked the end of our MBA experience and an end to one of the best years I've had to date.

Trip to Europe, the rest

2009-04-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post and the story of my trip is starting to fade. Here's a quick run down of the rest of the trip.

Amsterdam
Amsterdam's a cool city. I know it's a cliche place to go and party, but it's still a good time. The tourist area, especially the red light district, is over-hyped in my opinion. There's a lot more to the city than the party spots. We walked around the city away from the tourist areas and there are some really nice neighbourhoods to walk around in and soak up the atmosphere. I'm sure it's a really beautiful place in the summer time. We checked out the Van Gogh museum and the science centre and took a canal boat tour. I didn't really take many pictures of the place though.

Brussels
Brussels was my favourite spot. It was mainly untouched by the world wars so a lot of the old building are still there close to their original state. The grand square is amazing. You don't really see it until you walk into it and once you're there it's awe inspiring. Especially when it's all lit up at night.

Here's a stitched shot that I modified into black and white and tried to give it an old look:

There are some cool spots around the city and I'm sure you can spend a whole week there and still be looking for places to explore. Le Cirio is one of the coolest bars I've been to. It's got a really old feel to it. The bartenders are old guys that are pretty funny. A La Mort Subite (the sudden death) was another cool spot. It seems like it's been a place were people have gone for an after work drink for years. Has some of the best beer I've ever tasted. The peach beer is really good.

Bruges
Bruges is the most well preserved medieval town in Europe. If you haven't seen it, check out the movie "In Bruges"...it shows how scenic the area is and it's a good movie. It was a bit of a time warp going there...really slow pace. We climbed up the bell tower and had a good lunch of crepes. We also stopped in one of many chocolate stores and had some really good hot chocolate.

Here are some pics:

After the day trip to Bruges, we hung out in Brussels for another night and then hopped on a train back to Mannheim.

Meinz
Germany has a festival called Carnaval. Not sure what it's fore, but I think it's the same idea as Brazil's carnival...last party before the lent season. We took a train to Meinz because it was recommended as a cool spot to check out the festivities and it was less than an hour away. Overall, it was a really fun day. We got dressed up and checked out the parade and the atmosphere.

Heidelberg
Heidelberg's another cool little town about a 30 minute train ride from Mannheim. It's got some cool little bars and an old castle at the top of a hill. Really scenic. Unfortunately the weather was cold, rainy, and cloudy. Still cool to see.

I was pretty wiped by the time end of the trip. The flight home was good...I slept for most of it. Overall a great trip.

Trip to Europe, Berlin

2009-03-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

The elective courses that I want to take are scheduled so that I was frontloaded with two courses in January and early February and backloaded with three courses in March and April. In between, I had 6 weeks of free time...well mostly free time. I got a job as a teacher's assistant for a 4th year commerce course on management of new enterprises and the Tricolour Fund is an ongoing project course.

3 of my classmates were on exchange in Mannheim, Germany, for a couple of months. They had some travel plans laid out and talked me into going over there and travelling with them for 10 days. It doesn't take much to convince me to go on a trip anywhere...I just checked my finances and made sure I didn't have any outstanding deliverables for the fund or my TA work.

I met up with them in Mannheim on a Friday and that night we took a train to Berlin. Berlin was an interesting place. Apart from the old buildings like Reichstag, it felt a lot like Toronto...except with Germans. We spent a couple of days there...had an awesome dinner at a rustic Italian restaurant and went to a club. We checked out the historical sites...the holocaust memorial put a somber tone on the second day...kind of depressing combined with the cold snowy weather.

Here are some pics in any case:

A square in Mannheim

From the Reichstag

Sometimes the people around you make a picture...it's worth putting them in your shots. Here are a couple from around the Brandenburg Arch. You get some surprises like this one...

...or you can people watch and take some interesting ones.

Had to stop and check out this Bugatti

There are some really nice spots around the area...like this pano shot of the museum and cathedral (forget the names) near the arch

(I forgot to set the camera to manual so the exposures were all different. Had to photoshop it quite a bit to even things out...)

Of course, had to check out the wall...

Next was a brief stop in Rotterdam to have some lunch with some other classmates on exchange and on to Amsterdam...

MBA: Strategic Leadership

2009-03-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

This course was designed to help explore personal leadership styles and to give students tools to develop their own leadership styles. There were more personal style surveys such as the FIRO-B instrument, another try at the MBTI to see if it changed since the beginning of the program, a survey about one's degree of self-monitoring, and some other stuff all designed to help you know yourself better.

I had high hopes for this course as real opportunity for personal growth, but the learning side wasn't as valuable as I thought it would be. There was a lot of writing involved and it seemed frivolous at times.

One interesting exercise was a project on networking where we had to interview a couple of executives and ask them questions about how they built and manage their professional networks to help them be successful. D and I partnered up and interviewed Joe Pal, the founder of Pal Insurance, and Paul Vallee of Pythian (see earlier post on Financing New Ventures). Both are interesting men with some solid life experience. In terms of networking, both men agreed that networks are built slowly over time in an organic manner. Neither had a deliberate and structured approach to managing their professional relationships. Also, you have to be genuine and be ready to help people with no benefit to yourself. Over time, this strategy will payoff because of the reputation you build for yourself.

Meeting these two gentlemen was the real benefit of this course...not sure I really learnt anything from the class work.

This leads me to a bit of a rant about business school in general. Coming from an engineering background, sometimes it seems that business people apply buzzwords and frameworks to things that should really be in the realm of mundane common sense. Not sure why it's done...maybe some business profs need something to do sometimes and come up with some intelligent sounding framework or theory. "Networking" is a buzzword that drives me nuts sometimes. They host 'networking' sessions and give talks on how to build your 'network'. Basically, they talk about how you make friends...something you've been doing your whole life since you started kindergarten. But now, in the academic business realm, it's a field of study and there are theories on the benefits of networking. End of rant. Won't even touch "synergy".

MBA: Financing New Ventures

2009-03-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

After the Christmas break, everyone starts taking elective courses so the class breaks up and we're no longer all together all the time. My focus is on entrepreneurship and new ventures so my elective choices are geared toward that.

Financing New Ventures was co-lectured by Elspeth Murray and Andrew Waitman. The course is about how venture capital companies work, pool money together, and set up their deal flow.

The course is a prerequisite for the Tricolour Venture Fund which is also offered as a project course as part of the MBA curriculum. It's like a real life Dragon's Den where we get to evaluate start up companies and decide if the fund is going to invest in them in return for an equity stake in the company.

Andrew Waitman taught most of the course. He was a key part of Celtic House, a VC company in the Ottawa area that financed some successful technology companies over the past 10 years. He's got some great knowledge of the industry and some great insights in what it takes to make a new venture successful. He's not an academic type, speaks frankly, and tells it like it is. He had a column for a while in which he wrote about different topics with the VC and entrepreneurship realm. You can read some of it here.

As part of the course, three entrepreneurs were brought in to talk to us and we were given the opportunity to ask some detailed questions about their business and what it took for them to be successful. Really interesting.

Damian Lamb started Genesys Capital with a partner because they saw an opportunity to tap into the life sciences research in Canada and turn some of the ideas into viable businesses. He was another very frank speaker and gave us some real insights into how VC companies get started, function, and make money for themselves and their funders.

Wael Mohamed started a network security company called 3rd Brigade and gave us some good knowledge about what it really takes to get a new venture off the ground. One key learning I took was about how to simplify your idea and show your due diligence to make it easy for investors to understand what your talking about. He showed us his initial pitch presentation and it was very simple, clear, and concise. Really neat.

Paul Vallee was an entrepreneur at an early age and actually started a business when he was still an undergrad. After 3 or 4 new ventures, he became successful with the Pythian Group, a database monitoring and management company. Andrew Waitman is now CEO of Pythian. They just revamped their website and there's a video with both of them on the home page.

Rob Ford also came to talk to us about term sheets, the legal documents that accompany VC financing deals. Nice guy...he had some interesting stuff to say about the legal side of things and how deals are structured to protect the VC companies.

PEI and the Trip Home

2009-02-03T19:43:00.000-08:00

We decided to swing by PEI on the way home because it was so close. The confederation bridge is also a Canadian landmark and an engineering marvel that was featured on the Discovery Channel. The original plan was to go have dinner in Charlottetown, but the wind was blowing hard and there were snow drifts on the road. It was a nice sunny day but still brutally cold.

We crossed the bridge and pulled into a little sleepy town called Summerside and had some seafood for lunch. Funny enough, the restaurant was out of lobster at the time.

Here's a picture of the bridge:

Really cool driving across it.

We stayed the night in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Not much of town...I was surprised by how small it was. New Brunswick doesn't have much in it anyways. Small logging communities and long stretches of road with nothing around. Scenic though.

We hit a bad snow storm around Quebec City and were stuck in it for the rest of the ride home. Driving through Montreal was brutal! We just took our time the rest of the way and made it home safely.

MBA Games in Halifax

2009-02-03T19:04:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since my last post. I was waiting for some pictures from MBA games and then course work kicked in.

The games were good times! The first night was exciting with lots of cheering and excitement. I felt sorry for a wedding reception that was being held in the hotel at the same time...we must have been really loud.

Overall, we weren't that impressive on the sports front. We got hammered in basketball and didn't do so well in dodgeball. We won both our waterpolo games and did well in the outdoor soccer portion. We had a small contingent and there isn't a lot of athletic talent in our class anyways. It was still fun though.

Unfortunately, someone broke the window of our van in the hotel parking lot and stole a laptop. We got a new van rental but had to pay a $500 deductible on the damages. Apparently Nova Scotia's experiencing hard times and there are a lot of similar robberies in Halifax.

Anyways, here are some pictures from the games:

Here's a little clip of the opening ceremonies:

The waterpolo team:

Love this picture!

The dodgeball team:

The snow soccer team:

The basketball team:

me in action

Group picture after the closing night dinner:

The Dalhousie business school did a great job organizing it. With 13 different schools and a couple hundred mba students (organizing them is like herding cats) it couldn't have been easy but they pulled it off.

Quebec City

2008-12-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

5 of us are on a road trip to Halifax for MBA Games. About half of the class is heading out there and the organizing committee decided to fly out there. D and I thought it would be more fun to drive out there and spend new years out east. A housemate of mine is from there so we'll know some people to hang out with for a couple of days before the rest of the class shows up on Jan 2nd.

We decided to stop for a night in Quebec City on they way there to break the drive up and to avoid driving through a sparse stretch in New Brunswick at night. I've never been to the city before so naturally I wanted to stop and check the place out.

We got here around 4:50pm and checked into the hotel. The we went walking around town. It's a really nice city that has a very European feel to it. The roads and highways are a little crazy around here and there's lots of ice and snow. We walked to the old part of the city and checked out a few things. We stopped by an outdoor spot with a bar made of ice and serving some hot bevies:

Then we walked around a little more up to the boardwalk by the Chateau Frontenac and saw this cool toboggan slide thing. At $2 per person, it was hard to resist.

I tried taking a video of the ride down, but the cold sucked the juice out of the batteries in my camera. Here's a short clip of some other people on the ride:

It feels a lot faster than the video shows...awesome little thrill.

After that we stopped for some dinner and a few pints at Pub St. Alexandre. Nice place...pretty busy though. Here's a little shot of the place:

I'll have to find a way to come back here in the summer time. We'll be heading out early tomorrow morning...10hrs of driving to get to Halifax. Here's what our route looks like.

Emails from readers

2008-12-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

I got a couple emails from people looking at applying to the Queen's MBA program. I have to say that it's a pretty cool feeling hearing from people that read my blog. If you're thinking about applying to Queen's or are coming here on exchange next year, by all means, please email me. Would love to hear from you.

MBA: Module 8, Capstone Simulation

2008-12-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

The final module of the team portion of the program was a week-long simulation. With 13 teams, we were split up into two separate fictional industries of firms competing with what were called set-top boxes...kind of like Tivo systems. The simulation itself is done by an organization called Links Simulations...I guess they're pretty popular with the business schools. Some of my friends that went to other schools did the same sort of exercise. You can get a sense of the simulation here.

The simulation ran for 10 financial quarters. We had to submit a memo for each quarter discussing our decisions. We also had to submit a final 5-page report explaining how we made our decisions, why we made them, and whether or not someone should invest in our company. These write-ups were a bit of a pain. Especially the final report!

The simulation itself was a great exercise though, run by Professor Peter Dacin, the husband of Tina Dacin who taught the Strategic Implementation and Change course I talked about in an earlier post. My team ended up winning our industry with the highest cumulative net income. It was a really good way to end for our team. We had some rough patches along the way, but we really came together at the end. We had to make service, marketing, pricing, and production decisions every quarter while keeping an eye on our competition and what they were doing. There were three primary markets: US, Europe, and the Pacific region. A new Latin American market was introduced half way through the simulation. We also had two selling channels: retail and direct. We had to observe market trends, customer trends, competition product configurations, and pricing. We also had to watch our production costs and decide whether or not to invest in plant capacity. It's hard to explain exactly what we did and how we did it without going into lots of detail. I took on the production decisions and worked with two other people on forecasting decisions. Our overall long-term strategic decisions were made together as a team with different people checking research reports, industry trends, and competitive position. Here's a little bit of what my spreadsheet reporting looked like...there's a comparison of forecasted sales versus actual sales and the overall trends:

Our prize for winning is that we'll have our names engraved on a plaque that future classes can ooh and aah over. It was a weird feeling when it was all over. One of our team mates is going on exchange to China and we may not see him again. We'll all be taking different classes in the elective portion of the program so we may not even interact all that much for classes. It was a strange feeling at the end of it. It didn't last long though...we went out on our '12 bars of christmas' tour that night and burned a few brain cells.

MBA: Module 7, Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

2008-12-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

Module 7 was a week-long course in Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship taught by Professor Packalen. It's hard to pin down exactly what this course was about, but it covered topics about personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, how to manage and grow a business, and how to obtain funding for a new venture.

Again, there was a serious burnout factor left over from the previous module and motivation was really low. Regardless, I found a couple of points in the class interesting. One was a simulated negotiation of a new venture with a couple of Venture Capital companies. Instead of participating in the exercise, my team was split up to observe the negotiations of the rest of the class. Each negotiation session had three teams, one as the new venture, one as an existing VC already invested in the company, and the third as a new aggressive VC wanting to invest. The dynamics of the negotiation was really interesting to observe and some people really got into their roles. One thing that really stood out to me was how quickly the negotiators started talking about pushing the founders of the company (they weren't present at the negotiation).

Another interesting exercise involved a pitch from an actual entrepreneur trying to get his business going. We had to develop our own framework for evaluating a business idea and use it. I guess it was an exam of sorts. We had two hours to apply our framework and decide if we would invest in the business. The actual business idea was really cool. The company is called Ocorant and they're trying to develop a next generation heart monitor. I can't say much about what was pitched to us, but you can read about it here. My hand was sore after two hours of writing, but I think I did well...my framework was pretty involved.

The course actually made me think of working with Venture Capital companies. I'll have to think about that career tack a little more and explore it.

MBA: Module 6 Strategic Leadership

2008-11-30T11:39:00.000-08:00

Module 6 was the toughest module to date. I don't think the content was particularly difficult, but with the weather turning and 7 months of work behind us, the burnout factor was setting in. It was difficult to get motivated to do work, and some of the assignments we had seemed to be work projects for the sake of doing work. We managed to get through it, but I'm looking forward to the Christmas break and not seeing the school for a while.

The module was called Strategic Leadership and the courses were Finance Strategy, Strategic Implementation and Change, International Business, Negotiations and Conflict Management, and IT Strategy. A lot of the topics had to do with making strategic management decisions and how to get people to go along with them.

Finance Strategy
This was a fast paced course! Only five class sessions but a lot of topics to cover, Professor Wang seemed constrained by the short length of the course. He flipped through slides really quickly and there wasn't much time for questions and discussion in the class. I had to do a lot of reading form the textbook just to get a sense of what the topics were. People coming from Arts backgrounds without a strong command of math had a hard time with the course and some groups even hired tutors to get them through. The quizzes and exam were fair though, but the course was a lot of work. A lot of people were happy when it was over. The general consensus was that the course needed more classes than 5.

Strategic Implementation and Change
I wrote about this course already in an earlier post. The course ended well with a simulation about implementing change at a fictitious aerospace technology company. The simulation was-web based and you had to go through an information gathering phase, a planning phase, and an implementation. The idea was to get everyone on board for a change in the company's business strategy by a sequence of initiatives with limited time and money. The goal was to get over 60% of the company on board. My team didn't do that well, some of our decisions took too long to implement or drained our resources. It was an interesting exercise in any case.

International Business
I didn't like this course much. I thought the amount of assigned reading was unrealistic and, at this stage of the program, time management was more key than actually getting through all the topics. I basically did the minimum amount of work required for this course. It dealt with topics dealing with international business like the bombardier-embraer feud, the dubai-ports fiasco, Chiquita banana in south america, and other similar topics. If you were an news junkie like I was over the past few years, you had a good handle on what the topics were about. I had a hard time knowing what we were supposed to be learning though. The discussions and presentations were interesting, but at the end of the day, I didn't really get something out of it that tied everything together.

Negotiations and Conflict Management
This was an interesting course, albeit a short one. The textbook is a good one: Essentials of Negotiation. We had to do negotiation exercises in pairs where half the class had one side of a story, and the others had the other side. The idea was to get to a negotiated deal. I learnt a lot about myself and how I negotiate. A lot of past conversations, relationships, and interviews boiled up from my memory. I think just being aware of my tendencies in negotiations will help me in the future. We had to do team presentations about doing business and negotiations in different cultures. For our final paper, we had to take a negotiation from our past and break it down and analyze it. I did mine on my salary negotiation at my last job.

IT Strategy
This was a looooooong course. The idea was to make good business decisions in terms of using IT resources. I found the topics repetitive and I think this course was better off being 5 sessions rather than 10. We did learn a good analysis tool in breaking down a business problem and getting to the central underlying issues. We also learnt a good technique for writing memos with less than 250 words that were direct and efficient in conveying problems and recommendations.

I was glad when this module was over. I decided to pass on an information session trip to Toronto for meeting with companies and touring some facilities. I figured I needed a few days to lay low and vegetate instead of hob-nobbing and shmoozing in a suit. I know that companies aren't really looking to hire at this time of year, plus none of the companies really matched what I'm looking for. My job search will begin in earnest in January.

MBA Jobs in 2009

2008-11-30T11:31:00.000-08:00

The job market when we graduate in May might be interesting. It's hard to sense what job hunting will be like in the new year. I know going into Christmas, there's no point in applying for jobs because all companies are pretty much winding down for the year. Come January, companies should have a better handle on what the need for the coming year in terms of resources...will have a better chance on finding some type of job.

How good that job will be is up in the air. I know some of the people who've been getting job offers said that the salary levels aren't as good and companies are using the current economic situation as a reason. With Canada moving into a recession now, I know it will be tough looking for work.

Here's a take on the current financial climate and some commentary about the job prospectus for MBAs in the coming year.

Obama and homework

2008-11-05T18:52:00.000-08:00

So years from now, when people ask me where I was when the most powerful country in the world, military and economically, elected the first black person to be their president, I'll remember that I was up until 3:30am writing a paper for Strategic Implementation and Change for Tina Dacin.

Her course is actually pretty awesome. She teaches about all the stuff managers will need to do to turn companies around from failing to successful...how to develop and implement strategies for change. It's difficult to describe the course content here because it isn't quantitative or qualitative. It's about situational awareness, psychology, problem solving, motivation, and leadership. There are two books referenced in the course. The first is "The Heart of Change" by John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen. You can get a sense of the book here. The other book is "Execution" by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. You can go to your nearest library or bookstore to check out the content.

The paper we had to write was about the Tar Products division at Allied Signal circa 1994. The division was suffering from declining negative profits, increased raw material costs, and was the only losing division within a successful large conglomerate. Chuck Griffith (I tried to find some good info online about him but no luck) was hired to turn the company around. Our paper was about how we would go about turning the company around. The class after we turned in our papers was awesome. We did a live simulation exercise of the initial meeting of Mr. Griffith and the Tar Products senior managers. It was amazing how quickly the situation can go bad. Body language, word selection, and general attitudes came into play...and we were just simulating it! I can imagine how tense the actual situation might have been. In any case, Mr. Griffith's approach was shear genius...I don't really want to tell the whole story here because it will ruin the case for potential students. A few of us sat around after class discussing the issue...really cool.

Anyways, I'm really enjoying this class. Professor Dacin is awesome with a neat sense of humour. Really gets the class going in some interesting discussions.

Now about Obama...great to see him get elected. It's a weird parallel that we're studying how to implement change and Obama won on a platform of change. His speeches are incredible (the best part starts at minute 9)...I wish we had a leader here in Canada that can inspire people like that. How does he do it? You think this is inspiring ? How about this? or this? This?

The US had one of their highest voter turnouts in their history, we had our lowest...both in the same year and within a month of each other. Any idea why? Where are our new leaders going to come from? What does that mean for our future?

Cool Knee Brace from SFU Research

2008-11-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

I saw this browsing around the news today. It's a really neat idea...power small devices using power generated from walking. It's a shame that the military application is the one that will likely be first to be implemented, but I guess that's how they'll generate the revenue to make a commercial product. In any case, check it out here.

Sheesh...

2008-11-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

Hmmm...I wonder what these people are hiding from...

Lemoine Point Walk

2008-10-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

The fall season here in Canada is a nice time to go out for a walk in the woods. The colours of the leaves turning are pretty vibrant. They usually only last for a couple of weeks before the leaves fall due to wind and rain.

I organized a little outing a couple of weekends ago to the Lemoine Point Conservation Area near here. About 20 of us went. It's a short 20 minute drive from downtown Kingston.

I've been luck with the weather for the events I organized. It was a beautiful fall day. Here are some pictures:

You can have a look at the rest of the album here.

MBA: Module 5, Functions of Management

2008-10-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

Module 5 ended last week with a couple of exams and was pretty challenging from a time management standpoint. We're now on a week long break and courses start up again on Oct 14th.

The campus recruiting season was in full swing and we had to balance team meetings and projects with information sessions. People had to write cover letters and customized resumes pretty regularly. I decided to bypass the campus recruitment period...partly out of laziness and partly because I wasn't looking for just another job with another big company. I did keep an eye out for interesting consulting opportunities and applied to a strategy and operations consulting position with Deloitte. I managed to get an initial interview with them. They called me a couple of days later to tell me that I wasn't going on to the second round of interviews. The interview was at 8:30am and I'm not the sharpest tool in the box that early in the morning. There are a lot of good candidates in our class so I wasn't too disappointed when I found out that I wasn't getting the job.

Anyways, the module consisted of five courses: Business Communications, Finance Fundamentals, Marketing Fundamentals, Business Decision Modelling, and Operations Management.

Business Communications
For the premium tuition that we're paying at Queen's, I kind of expect a certain level of organization. The program structure should be all figured out and things should run like clockwork...that's what I think in any case. This business communications course kind of got lost in the shuffle. It seemed like it was a bit of an afterthought and the lack of coordination between the mba office and the course lecturers was obvious. The lecturers were two guys who used to work for CTV and are now doing consulting and teaching executives how to give presentations. The course was meant to teach us what constitutes an effective business presentation and how we can be effective presenters. There wasn't much information that I didn't already hear before except for a tip to use a web cam to record the presentation practise sessions. I remember taking a presentation undergrad course at U of Waterloo for clean technologies that covered the same material. This course itself would have been more useful at the beginning of the program before we went did several presentations over 5 months. Since we didn't know what the course was going to be about and there were no instructions given to us to put together material, some of us ended up presenting material that we already presented in previous courses. So it two days of repeat material...pretty boring. It was a bit of a waste of time in my opinion, especially since we had a ton of other work to do.

Finance Fundamentals
This was another funny quirk in the organization of the program. The professor who was scheduled to teach this course ended up going away on paternity leave. Another professor who was asked to teach this course declined since it was a 6 week period...too short for her course structure. So we ended up getting a professor from RMC to teach one of the most fundamental courses of any business program. They guy was a terrible lecturer and his style and course structure was very confusing. I resorted to learning straight from the textbook. I don't know how well I did with the theoretical portions of the exams, but I think I did well on the calculations.
The course itself dealt with the financial tools used to make business decision. We covered time value of money concepts like annuities, perpetuities, and bonds. We also learnt how to evaluate potential projects based on initial investments and projected future cash flows to decided if it was good to invest in a given project or not. These decisions used net present value, payback period, IRR, AAR, and other tools. Although the concepts didn't seem that hard, this was a tough course for me since it involved more memorization than application of concepts. I also can't really visualize interest rates and money moving around.

Marketing Fundamentals
Grooaaaan! Marketing...maybe it's my engineering background but I didn't enjoy this course at all. It seemed to touch on concepts we already covered in previous courses for strategy and positioning. The topic seemed pretty straightforward to me: know your company, know your product, distinguish yourself from your competitors by meeting you target market's needs. I found that there were too many frameworks that made it seem that there was a lot more to marketingk: 4 P's, 5 C's, 6 M's. I know I'm not cut out for a marketing career...I'm too direct and logical.

Business Decision Modelling
I really liked this course. It was about developing tools to help you make business decisions. Applied stuff like figuring out what the optimal product mix to produce to maximize your profits. Or how many maintenance bays a mechanics garage should have to maximize profits and meet the local demand. The course dealt with linear programming, integer programming, decision trees, and AHP. Professor Yuri Levin was pretty effective in teaching this course. He kept the classroom atmosphere pretty light and was readily available outside the class hours. His course notes were also pretty detailed and provided a lot of practise problems for people to work on. People who didn't really know MS Excell were at a real disadvantage in this course.
Part of this course was a project where we had to apply the concepts directly. My team did an optimization of a machining process from one of the small projects that I worked on when I was at Aero-Safe Technologies.

Operations Management
Another really good course. Professor Paul Roman was really good. He grabbed everyone's attention right away and kept the class engaged. His course was mainly case based. For every class each team had to deliver a brief where we had to review a case study, select 3 main issues, and provided 3 recommendations to help the business featured in the case. Paul would then break down the class in terms of their decisions, have an in-class debate, and then show what each company ended up doing so we can compare our business decisions to their's. Another part of the course involved a field trip to a company where we had to select a company and then arrange a tour of one of their processes and report on it with possible recommendations. Our team did a tour of Metal Craft Marine. It was a bit of a challenge for us since there was no steady manufacturing process for us to observe. Metal Craft is more of a job shop for boats and the guy we dealt with had a lot to say about marketing and not much to say about their process. We did our best and I think we did ok on the report and presentation. For people in future years, I don't recommend going to Metal Craft for this project...too difficult to pin down process inefficiencies.

I was really glad when this module ended. It took a lot out of me in terms of dealing with team dynamics. I've recharged the batteries over this past week. All set to start the next module...looks like it'll be pretty challenging as well.

Interesting Article...

2008-09-29T07:09:00.001-07:00

Here's an interesting article on the current financial crisis:
here

Looming election issues

2008-09-19T06:59:00.000-07:00

A federal election is happening again here in Canada. I think this is the third in the last decade. Personally, I think it's a sign of a great political divide here in Canada as a whole and an indication of the quality of leadership that we have on the political level. No one leader has emerged to rally the country around a solid vision and goals to achieve as a people.

The Stephen Harper party seem like the default choice because they control their optics very well and seem like the most organized compared to the other parties. Although recent political gaffes highlight their behavioural issues and

The green party has more visibility these days with Elizabeth May as their leader, but they're a long ways from making a significant impact in parliament.

The NDP seems more ballsy this campaign, but I still think they're a little too socialist for my liking. I think they're really good at complaining about the status quo, but I don't have confidence in them to run the country. All talk, no walk. But that's just my impression.

The Bloc Quebecois are irrelevant at the federal level since they're only concerned with what happens in Quebec and will never form a government. They have less punch these days since the separation movement has pretty much died in recent years. They do take away votes from other left parties, especially the liberal party.

The liberal party seem to have a good team, but they're running a weak campaign so far and I don't think Stephane Dion has a strong enough personality to get people over the negative ads by the conservative party. Their initial attempt to focus the election around the environment has not worked and they're shifting their campaign focus to the strength of their team. They should have worked it the other way round.

On leadership
Personally, I think leadership is such a subjective thing that everyone has a different impression of what a good leader is supposed to be. Harper is a strong man that runs a tight ship. However, a leader also has to be measured by the people that follow him, and in that his followers are poor. Putting together a manual on how to obstruct parliament committees isn't displaying leadership at all, rather it shows strength as a political tactician. It seems selfish to me and doesn't have the good of the country at heart. I don't know why the other parties aren't hammering him on that. Tasteless jokes, puffin poo, and poor class also speak to this.

Dion has an impeccable record as a public servant with a great deal of integrity. His seemingly weak persona throws people off and is easy to dismiss. I'm sure he'll be a great prime minister for the country, but I don't think he'll get a chance. The conservative media blitz on him will be too hard to overcome.

Layton...I have a hard time taking him seriously. Likes to hear himself talk too much.

On the environment
Byrne Purchase spoke to us during our course on corporate social responsibility. He's had various positions in government including a stint as an energy minister for the government of Ontario. He shared his candid views on the environmental issue and his prognosis is pretty bleak. It's not something that any one country can fix alone. It's a global phenomenon and it needs a global collaboration to do something about it. Of all the plans that are in place, he favours the Carbon Tax system because the tax revenue infrastructure already exists. The Cap and Trade system may work also, but governments would have to build the system first and that will take a long time. I tend to agree with him. So with that, the liberal green shift plan makes the most sense to me, but again, I don't think the majority of the country will agree. All Harper needs to do, and has been doing, is to scare people into believing that it will be bad for the economy. The liberals also have a hard time breaking the plan into simple bite-sized concepts that average people can absorb.

I know the NDP favours a cap and trade system. The green party has it's own carbon tax system but it's too extreme for people to accept.

It'll be interesting to see what plays out over the coming weeks.

Kingston population boom

2008-09-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

Wow! Kingston just exploded after labour day weekend. The Queen's campus got overrun with a ton of students returning to school. There's a lot more excitement around campus and the business school is a lot busier and noisier.

I keep walking around campus and wishing I was an undergrad again. It's a vastly different atmosphere than the one I experience at Waterloo. Lots more girls...I mean lots !

That also makes me feel a bit old. I know I'm over ten years older than the majority of the kids on campus.

The house I'm living in is also full now. We went from four people to seven...4 girls and 3 guys. The new people seem nice. I'm hardly ever there so I only run into them every now and then. We only have one laundry machine in the house so managing that might be a little tricky.

Whitewater Rafting

2008-09-06T16:50:00.000-07:00

I organized a trip for the class to go white water rafting about an hour east of Ottawa with River Run Rafting. Organizing the trip was a little bit of a hassle but the service from River Run was excellent...night and day compared to what we received from the skydiving place.

We had to get there a couple of hours before we were scheduled to go on the river. Lunch was included with the ticket price...I guess they want to make sure people had enough energy before the trip. They had a volleyball net, basketball net, horseshoe pit, and a ping pong table setup so people can entertain themselves while waiting for the safety briefing.

Organizing a caravan of MBA students is a bit like herding cats, but we managed to get there with plenty of time to spare. The rafting itself took about 6-7 hours...it was great! We decided to go with the 6-man sport boats because we thought it would be more exciting that way. I'm glad we went that way. There were some other outfits on the river that had 12-man boats (some even more) and it didn't look like it would be all that much fun. They packed us on a bus to get us to the beginning of the rapids and we had a little safety pep talk before launching.

There were a couple of other boats in our group of 5 boats...don't know much about them since we didn't really interact with them other than splashing them as we paddled by. The video's pretty neat...only $30 and well done.

I might have to plan another smaller trip for next May when the rapids are supposed to be crazy...

Here's the video in any case. I had to split it up into two parts because of the Youtube time restriction...

MBA: Module 4, Corporate Social Responsibility

2008-08-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

Module 4 was just one course about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) taught by the full-time MBA program director, Dr. Scott Carson. It was another "soft" topic course and started with a couple of days of lectures and then three days of presentations by the class teams about a variety of topics relating to CSR. My team's topic dealt with the ethics of using sex in advertising and specifically dealing with Abercrombie and Fitch (A&F). It was an interesting project. The documentary I watched about Edward Bernays came in handy...I wrote about him in an earlier post. W used an excerpt of the documentary as part of a discussion about the psychology behind using sex in advertising.

Studying A&F was interesting too. Apparently they have a history of using racy advertising to sell to teenage and college kids. You can read about their 61 year old CEO here. I'm not a brand-name person but the marketing strategy works...A&F is making a ton of money.

Another component of the course was an individual paper about a company discussing the congruence its CSR and corporate strategy and how the two match up. To be honest, I found the paper to be a really difficult one to write. My enthusiasm for the topic was very low and I felt that I was writing a lot of filler material just to meet the 6-page minimum requirement. I wrote about Westport Innovations, an interesting environmental technology company in British Columbia. They were ranked 9th in Corporate Knight's 2008 50 best corporate citizens in Canada. The paper was also due at 10pm on a Sunday night...not the best way to spend a sunny weekend.

Skydiving Drama

2008-08-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I arranged a skydiving trip for our class. It's something that I wanted to do before starting MBA school but ran out of time. It turned out that we had to do a business case for a skydiving outfit in Gananoque for our Management Accounting class. I thought I'd only get about 10 people to sign up, but ended up with 23 people in total including a couple of professors.

In talking with the owner of Skydive Gananoque, I decided to book the day before Canada Day since he was going to have a Twin Otter plane that could take a group of 6 tandem jumpers at once. I planned it out that 12 people would go in the morning and 11 would go in the afternoon, sandwiching a class that we had that day. Things didn't go according to plan...the pilot for the plane got held up at the border and they had some other issues. We ended up going on the smaller Cessna planes that could only accommodate two tandem jumpers at a time. The morning group took a lot longer than expected while the afternoon group and me ended up waiting around for about 3 hours before the first of us got on a plane. It was a bright sunny day with minimal clouds and they barely squeezed us in before sundown. Our management accounting prof who set up a whole business case for them didn't get to jump. They suited him up and then told him that it was too dark to go. Not very nice. A little communication on the part of the owner to let me know what was happening would have been good just to manage expectations a little bit. We could have figured out a way to make it work out for people.

It wasn't an entirely negative experience though. The jump itself was euphoric. I laughed myself to sleep that night. It's too bad it got marred by bad customer service.

Here are some pictures and videos:

I think this one of Kwesi is the best though...

Here's the video I paid $100 for...maybe I'm losing my sense of humour, but I didn't appreciate what the tandem instructor was doing during the free fall.

Here's one of the videos that we took on the ground. You can see how dark it was at the time. Kwesi took this one for me...you can hear what they said about Clinton (the prof) not jumping in the end.

Clinton decided to take his money back and go jump somewhere else.

You can have a look at the rest of the pictures here.

At the end of the experience I was a little upset by the customer service we received. One of my former colleagues asked me about and I replied to him in a bad way. Word got around to the owner of Skydive Gananoque, Tom, and a few nasty emails got exchanged. Here's how it went:

I removed the email thread after some advice from people. Probably not the best thing to do.

I know I'm no angel in this, but I think Tom was over the top. Personally, I think he had a really bad weekend on Canada Day where things didn't go very well and my comments just gave him an outlet to take out his frustrations. As much as he dislikes me, he still has my picture on his website. It was a good lesson on how not to do customer service in any case.

I'll have some recommendations for next year's MBA class if they want to go skydiving. Tom's outfit is close to Kingston, but he probably has a grudge against MBA students now...thanks to me. Next year's class may be better off going to Ottawa for the day...that's a 2 hour drive to get there but they might get better service.

MBA: Module 3, The Foundations of Management

2008-08-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

Module 3 of the Queens's MBA program was pretty intense. We had four courses: Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Organizational Behaviour, and Managerial Economics.

Financial Accounting
This course was actually pretty good. I'm not about to pursue a career in Accounting, but we learned how to read an annual report of a company, pick out unusual information, and assess the health and management of the company just by looking at their financial statements. Professor John Moore is a dynamic old school prof. So old school that he still uses transparancies and a projector. I haven't seen anyone teach like that in at least a decade. He had great command on the class and it was obvious that he's been teaching that course for a long time. He uses a putter for a pointer too. He ended up calling on me one class when he was discussing the subjective and objective aspects of accounting. Since that class, everytime he wanted to call something subjective, he pointed at me so I could say it. It was good...kept me on my toes.

Management Accounting
I'm one year older than Clinton Free, the professor who taught this course. A really smart and interesting guy from Australia, he quit a consulting job to be a professional cricket player for a while. His class goes at a fast pace, but he keeps it interesting and lively with some jeopardy-like game play and other shenanigans. The course itself dealt with making managment decisions using financial information. e.g. whether or not you should drop a product, buy a machine, or if you should accept a special order of a product. We had a business case about Skydive Gananoque and had to evaluate their busines and produce some marketing ideas for them (I ended up organazing a skydiving event for the class, but that's for another post).

Managerial Economics
Dr. Bo Pazderka is a really interesting character. He has a dry sense of humour that I really liked. His class was very well structured and the course notes were really organized. He's also really soft spoken and talks slowly. You really have to pay attention to what's going on in class. It's also really easy to fall asleep. The course dealt with supply and demand curves, but in relation to companies and firms. It dealt with the behaviour of the market in an industry with perfect competition, a monopoly, monopolistic competition, and an oligopoly or cartel. Interesting stuff really, but it was hard to keep up with the readings.

Organizational Behaviour
I don't want to say too much about this course. I didn't really enjoy it and the work load for it was a bit ridiculous. The volume of reading and writing that the professor required from us was crazy without any added benefit. A lot of the material was repetitive and I found the whole topic very academic and without enough focus on practical applications. In my mind, you can talk all you want about human resources management, but there's no substitute for rolling your sleeves up and walking down to the shop floor and talking to the people doing the work. Then you find out what makes them tick, what they're looking for, and how to motivate them.

This module was a lot of work and the stress level was showing in the class. Tempers were short and I think people were happy when the break came along. We'll have to enjoy the break because I don't think it'll be long before the work load kicks up again.

More pics from the Toronto autoshow

2008-08-01T21:12:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to developing a roll of film that I had lying around. It's got some more pics from the Toronto autoshow. Here are some of the better ones:

Kinston New Ventures Tour

2008-07-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

The Queen's MBA program had been working with some of the local businesses in the area. I think the idea is to promote Kingston as a place where people can stay for a while...not just go to school and move on to bigger cities. They set us on a tour of about 13 local business. It's hard to coordinate 75 students showing up a these different businesses, so they gave each team 3 business to visit. There was a elevator pitch competition at the end where each team was given a company and had to deliver the pitch to a panel of judges. There was a nice trophy at the end.

I was really happy that one of the businesses on my team's list was Transformix Engineering. They design and build automated high speed assembly systems for various clients. Their plant is small but they're doing some neat things. It was nice to be back in the familiar world of cutting metal and assembly things on the shop floor. I made a mental note to contact them later in the year to start a conversation about the possibility of working with them. I still like engineering but I'm ready to move on an get involved on the business side of things. Working with Transformix would give me a chance to have both sides.

Down time...

2008-07-31T18:57:00.000-07:00

July's been a busy month. The school work kicked up a few notches and I've been trying to find that balance between work and play. It's worked out so far, but it's been difficult. We have about a week off now. I have lot's to post about...it's been almost a month since I've posted anything.

In Ottawa

2008-06-09T20:46:00.000-07:00

I decided to do a day trip with some of my classmates up to Ottawa on Sunday. They haven't been there before and it was the first chance most of us had to get out of Kingston. It was another fun day and I had a good time showing people around. It was also a good chance to get together with some friends that I haven't seen in a long time. After checking out Parliament Hill, we had brunch at a restaurant called the Courtyard in the downtown market area...good spot to eat!

Have a look at the pictures here.

Finally some sailing!

2008-06-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

Part of my role as the fitness liaison for the class is to organize about two events per month. A lot of people were keen on sailing. There's a rental place in Kingston called Ahoy Rentals. The rent out bicycles, canoes, and kayaks. They also rent out sailboats and can even setup sailing excursions around the 1000 islands near Kingston. I managed to rent a Tanzer 26 and set up three 2hr sails for about 15 people in the class. One of the guys in the class, Dave, has sailed for a long time and used to be a sailing instructor. He helped me out for the day in teaching people points of sail and sailing the boat.

It turned out to be a really fun day and the weather cooperated. We had a steady gust of around 10 knots and the big boat handled fairly well. After about 9 hours out on the water, I was pretty beat. The sun has a way of tiring you out.

Here are a couple pictures from the day:

You can check out the rest of the pictures here.

MBA: End of Module 2

2008-06-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

Well, two exams in one week marked the end of module 2: Statistics and Microeconomics. It was a start contrast in teaching styles by two different professors. Prof. McGill made a boring topic like statistics and made it seem interesting by continually referring to the real business applications of statistical methods. Prof. McHale, on the other hand, made the interesting topic of economics and made it seem really boring. You can't expect every professor to be great at classroom management, but I was really disappointed with how the economics class turned out.

I meant to post a blog last week, but I spent the weekend doing multiple regressions of housing data for North America. It was an interesting assignment. We had to use the regression technique to forecast real estate investment for the first two financial quarters of 2008.

The mad rush to finish the assignment in time was followed by a study session for the exam in the middle of the week. There wasn't any time to relax because we had to get to studying for the economics exam on Friday.

It was a pretty crazy week and I'm glad that it's over. No doubt, there's more craziness to come.

MBA: Statistics and Microeconomics

2008-05-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

This past week we started with a new module in the course curriculum. It's called Making Decisions in a World of Complexity. The theme of studying two aspects of the same topic continued pairing Microeconomics with Statistics. The microeconomics course is about the big picture thinking regarding industries and society while the statistics course deals with how to collect and manage the numbers that aid in forming the economic picture.

Microeconomics
The course is actually titled The Global Environment of Business. Prof. John McHale is really a brilliant guy. You can tell that he's highly intelligent and knows his stuff really well. I get the impression that he thinks at such a high level that he has a hard time explaining economics concepts in simple terms. I asked a couple questions in class and got some really long answers when I was just looking for a simple one. I think he's so advanced in the field where some of the basic concepts like the supply-demand curve is second nature to him that he has a hard time relating to people who have no experience in the field.

The course gets really interesting at times. We discussed big issues like Peak Oil and Climate Change from an economic perspective. One team had an interesting presentation about the Stern Report. My team had to present an alternate point of view by Bjorn Lomborg. We had to read a chapter from his book "Cool It" and present the information as advocates of his argument. You can get the gist of his point of view from this YouTube video.

Apart from the funny similarity of his name to a character in Office Space, I think Lomborg is missing the boat on some key aspects of the increasing global temperature. He's primarily concerned with some big humanitarian issues in the world like HIV, poverty, and famine. My view is that if the global temperatures continue to increase, the weather instability will magnify the issues that he's concerned with. Maybe my reading of The Weathermakers has had a big influence on my point of view, but that's another topic of discussion.

In any case, I still have to learn the material and understand some of the economic analysis tools that we're being taught.

Statistics
The course is actually titled Acquisition and Analysis of Information for Management and Prof. Jeff McGill does an excellent job of making the topic interesting. In a way, it's refreshing to be back to the familiar world of formulae and number crunching where there are definite right and wrong answers. It's been a really long time since I did anything with statistics though and I don't remember much from my university course. I do remember that I didn't enjoy it very much and that I didn't do very well in it.

Naturally, the course is heavily dependent on using spreadsheets and in our case, Microsoft Excel 2007. In one sense, the Microsoft programmers have done a good job in including some advanced analysis tools that makes breaking down data very easy. In another sense, the new interface is very unintuitive and is cumbersome to use. It takes a while to get use to it and the simple tasks take longer than usual since I spend a lot of time trying to find where the commands are.

The course material isn't difficult in itself, but the time crunch of learning everything in a span of a week and a half is pretty challenging. Some members of our class have no background in using formulae and some have never used MS Excel. It's a steep learning curve for them. I'll encounter the same thing when we get to the finance courses.

I decided to run for the student executive body. They are the link between the program administration and the class. I ran for the fit-to-lead liaison position and found out today that I got elected. The fit-to-lead program (you can read about it at the bottom of this page) is there to make sure the students get a balanced experience and form healthy lifestyle habits. They provide information about healthy diets and set up opportunities for people to get out and be active. They also set up personal training sessions and fitness assessments. I ran because I thought it would be a fun thing to do. I know it's going to be a tough balancing act between my school work and the liaison duties, but it's only for a year and I think I'll have a lot of fun doing it. Along with a couple of other guys, I've already played a part in getting a sailing program running (we'll find out more concrete details this coming week). I also made a personal list of things that I want to do this summer...getting the class involved in them will make it more fun.

MBA: Second week...

2008-05-19T18:50:00.000-07:00

The second week of the Queen's MBA program was a little more structured than the first. There were two courses: The Role of the General Manager and Leadership. I guess they wanted to start us off thinking about leading an organization from the top and entertaining the possibility that one day we would be CEOs and general managers. It was an interesting week covering both the technical and abstract aspects of leading an organization.

The Role of the General Manager
This was a really interesting course taught by a dynamic lecturer with a really interesting job outside of teaching. Professor Peter Richardson gets recruited to conduct strategy workshops mainly for mining companies to help them form business strategies that will help them turn around and become profitable. He told us some interesting stories about some big mining operations and how he conducted the workshops that involved selected people from across the entire organization; all the way from the executive level down to the labourer level. We had a case study where we had to look at Acklands Grainger and come up with a strategy to turn them around. He even brought in Doug Harrison talk to us for an hour and entertain our questions. Mr. Harrison was the guy in charge of turning Acklands Grainger around back in 2000.
Professor Richardson works with his wife, Elspeth Murray, in the Strategy field and they published a book called Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 days. We had to read four chapters out of the book for the course, but the workload was fairly heavy and I only skimmed through it. It'll be on my reading list for when I actually have the time to sit down and do some leisurely reading.
I was really intrigued by the Strategy field of study. I'll have to make a point to visit Prof. Richardson's office and ask him about the academic research aspect of what he does. I did manage to talk to him a little bit about general management consulting companies like BCG.
After coming up with a strategy, a key part in implementing it is getting everybody in the company aligned with the goals set by the corporate strategy. Part of the process is coming up with corporate vision, mission, and objective statements. You can see those statements in the lobbies of most companies...they usually have an airy and flowery tone to them. I saw them when I was working at JDS Uniphase and didn't think much of them. It was interesting to learn about how they actually come up with those statements.
I was more concerned with the details of implementing a strategy than coming up with some phrases that sounded nice. The part of the course that I found most interesting was Prof. Richardson's break down of the employees of a company when a strategy goes into implementation. He has a 20-70-10 rule of thumb. When you outline a new strategy, 20% of the employees will see the value of the strategy and will be highly enthusiastic about implementing it. 70% of the employees will take a wait-and-see approach. The remaining 10% are what he calls "the saboteurs." These are the people who hate change and will fight it every chance that they get. Prof. Richardson said that the key to successfully implementing a new strategy is to find the 20% employees (they could be the receptionist, secretaries, line workers, maintenance people, engineers, any employee at any level really) and engage them to rally the 70% fence-sitting employees. The 10% saboteurs will either leave on their own volition or will eventually find a way to allow the company to get rid of them. It was an interesting perspective...I kept thinking back to some of the places that I've worked at and recalled several sceptical people who always had something bad to say about the company. I don't know if they would have actually been effective at derailing a corporate strategy, but they definitely made the work atmosphere miserable.

Our team assignment for this course was to take a case study for Paradigm Foods and form a strategy to turn their business around. We had to present our strategy to Prof. Richardson, Elspeth Murray, and the MBA Dean, Dr. Bill Blake. Our team came up with a solid strategy (we thought so in any case) and had a good presentation...really good if you consider that it was the first one we did as a team and we were unfamiliar with each other's styles. We paid a heavy price though...we were up until 4:30am on Friday night putting the strategy slide deck together. It seems that we're a group of perfectionists with poor time management skills.

Leadership
Dr. Blake has been studying leadership for around 30 years. He was in the Canadian navy and had some neat stories to tell us. This class was a stark contrast to that taught by Prof. Richardson. The GM course dealt with concrete concepts regarding corporate strategy and Prof. Richardson had a lot of energy and was in constant motion. Dr. Blake, on the other had, is a soft speaker with a soothing voice that made it hard to stay alert...especially after lunch. The course itself was more of a discussion class that dealt with the abstract concept of leadership. It took a while to get going in the class, but people got engaged and there were some interesting discussions in class. Ethics was one area that we looked and it was interesting to hear the different interpretations of the same case study. The assignment for the course was an individual essay talking about the best or worst leaders that we have ever worked with or been around. I decided to talk about the worst leader that I encountered...won't go into details here but it was an interesting course none the less.

This week we'll get into microeconomics and statistics. I'm not sure if these courses will be as interesting as the previous ones, but I'll have to wait and see.

One that that really struck me here was the Maps of Meaning series by Prof. Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto. He's a psychology professor who occasionally shows up on the news as an expert when something crazy like a school shooting happens. The first episode had a lot of relevancy to the team building course while the 2nd lecture related to the leadership course very closely. I had watched the series back in 2006 and referred to it every now and then. It had a big effect on how I now view the world. The quote on the title of this blog is the last thing that Prof. Peterson says in his last lecture.

MBA: Thoughts on the first week...

2008-05-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Well...1 week down, 51 to go.

It's been a crazy week! I have to say first that the MBA staff are really good. They know how to make the program structure run well and smoothly. They're very helpful in terms of getting the students set up and running. If you have a question about something, they're very quick to get you the answers. They've been doing this sort of thing for a while and pretty much know what the students are going through.

A lot of people, especially the international students, arrived right before the program started. There isn't enough time to get used to a new city and find out where to get the essentials like food and how to get there. The school understands this and provides lunch and dinner for the first week until people have time to settle in and figure out their personal needs and logistics. The program content itself is just like a regular 2 year MBA but condensed into 1 year. So getting off to a fast start is essential...that's pretty much what the first week was about.

Know Thyself
The program is centred around teaching the individual how to work as part of a high performance team. Most people usually know what they're like but they don't usually know how to describe themselves in a nutshell. Getting to know the people you work with also usually takes time since interacting with new colleagues usually is a slow process that starts with getting to know them at work and then, later on, outside of work. Individual personalities and different levels of introvert/extrovert tendencies affect the time it takes for any team to gel and get to the level where they're in sync and working well with each other.

In the Queen's MBA program, there isn't enough time for that process to occur naturally. There's also a risk that a team won't gel at all and that would work contrary to the goal of the program. So they've done a lot of work in getting people to know themselves and getting team members to share they individual info with each other. The idea is to accelerate the gelling process of a team.

One of the tools they use is the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). A guy named Ned Hermann did a lot of research into how the brain works and figured out a way to show it using a survey. Basically, he divided brain tendencies in to four categories and assigned colours and letters to them. Once you've done the survey and seen the results in a diagram and data form, you get a clearer picture about who you are and what your natural tendencies and preferences are. Obviously, most people know themselves pretty well. Not many people, however, know how to communicate to other people who they are in a nutshell. This instrument provides a way. There's a lot to it and it'll be difficult to summarize it all. You can read more about it here.

For me, my dominant quadrant is yellow, followed closely by blue. My green and red quadrants about equal, but about half as dominant as the other two. My blue/yellow dominance means that people like me are suited for jobs that have a combination of creativity and quantitative work...like a design engineer. So I guess the fact that I've worked as a design engineer for my entire professional life is no surprise. It's a nice affirmation of what I think I'm about and what my preferences are.

Another tool they use is a Gallup survey that tells you what your themes are. It's difficult to explain what a theme is without showing the report. I wanted to scan the pages to show people, but I'm still adjusting to the rhythm here and haven't gotten around to setting up my scanner. Once things settle down a bit, I'll post the info. The basic idea of the Gallup survey though, is that it gives you another sense of who you are written down in a report. There are 34 themes in total and they list them in the order of most dominant to least dominant. Since every individual is different, every individual report will be different. I guess that since every person's fingerprints are unique it only makes sense that every person's brain works in a different way. My most dominant theme is Strategic while my least dominant theme is Significance. I don't have the exact definitions handy right now, but, if I recall correctly, the Strategic theme has to do with big picture thinking and problem solving while the Significance theme has to do with how I feel about what people think about me.

I can see where they're going with these kind of tools. Written reports that paint a picture of who you are make it easier for you to identify the kind of work that you really want to be doing and also helps you put together a strong resume and gives you the basis for being really strong in an interview situation.

Team Work
The team aspect of the program is intriguing. In one sense, I feel like I'm a bit of a lab rat with experimenters watching how I work and how I interact with other people. In the other sense, I'm starting to see the how of the team program at Queen's stands out from the other programs. There's a lot of socializing going on in the first week designed to get the students interacting and getting to know one another. Whatever the reasons are, you naturally gravitate toward certain types of people based on who you are and who they are. You also form quick impressions of the people around you and categorize them to make sense of the frenzied social situation. When I finally found out who the people on my team are, it really stood out to me that I hadn't talked to any of them in the socializing aspects. At that point, I pretty much saw the real value of the Queen's team structure. They deliberately set you up with people that you aren't naturally compatible with. The idea being that if you can work with that team, you can pretty much work with any team.

Apart from myself, my team includes a girl from a Greek family and a background in IT consulting, an Irani girl with an architecture background, an Indian guy with a telecom background, another Indian guy with a telecom background, and an English guy with a political science background.

They put us through some exercises designed to get us to know one another. One interesting team building exercise was called "bombardment". There's some info about it here. Basically, it forces you to see the positive aspects of the people that you'll be working with and then tell them about it bombarding them with positive feedback. I found it to be a strange and weird thing to go, but it does force you to break up your initial impression of them and how you categorized them. I found the body language of the exercise particularly interesting. It'll take too long to elaborate any further here, but I might write a more detailed post about it some time down the road.

As a group, our brain dominance is very yellow and the Strategic them is one of our top five themes. To me, that means that we have to potential to be really creative and come up with really good solutions to problems. If we can find a way to work with each other really well and manage our natural personality conflicts, we could be a really good team.

There are four stages that any team goes through: Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. You can read about the stages here, but if we can manage to get to the Performing stage quickly, we'll be really good.

Each team also gets a team facilitator/coach. Someone to help us get over some of our problems and get us working together. Our facilitator has a really strong human resources background and has a lot of info that can help us out.

Achieving Balance
This is something that I naturally try to achieve in my life, but, thankfully and probably for the best, not everyone is like me. So the Queen's program tries to illustrate that to people with the Fit-to-Lead implementation. A healthy body and a healthy mind will allow people to perform at their best. Since the brain is a physical organ in your body that affects how you think, having a healthy and active lifestyle combined with good nutritional habits will lead to a healthy state of mind. So they encourage physical activity and devoted the latter half of the first week to getting people out an active. They organized a trip to a driving range and mini-putt place to get people active. There was a volleyball court there as well so people go do what they preferred. I stuck to the driving range...I went through 3 buckets of balls cranking them with a driver. Lots of fun for free!...everything was paid for by the school. I might bring my clubs back the next time I visit my parents...there are a number of golfers in the class.

There's also another silly aspect of the fit-to-lead program. Every now and then, some of the student employees of the program will come in with a boombox and get everybody dancing for 10-15 minutes. People who've worked in a large corporate atmosphere will be familiar with this. I hate being forced to dance so naturally I'm not really big on this. I know why they do it...it lightens up the mood in the class room and gives everyone a fun diversion. I dance when I feel like it, but forcing me to do it has the opposite effect of what was intended. Whatever...I'll go with it and who knows, I might come to enjoy it.

Continuity
A group from the previous class came for a visit yesterday and threw us a party. They made us wear silly things and got us running around Kingston on a scavenger hunt. People who've gone through engineering schools in Canada will be familiar with this...it's just a fun thing to do and good excuse to have a few drinks.

Those guys were still fresh out of the program...they only just graduated a week before our class started. Things started out in a very civilized fashion, each team sat in their team rooms while a graduate from that particular room came in and talked to us about the previous team. Apparently, my team's room is one of the better ones and last year's team was one of the best...a good omen. The graduates also gave us some pretty good pointers and assured us that everything will be ok...Queen's wants us to succeed and they'll do everything to try to help us out.

This post is starting to get a little lengthy so I'll wrap it up here. The main thing that I got out of this first week is that if you approach this program in the same way you start a new job, things will work out well. I think the fact that you're paying a significant financial price for this education and that you're in a class room environment throws you off for a loop. In a way, you are starting a new job. This program is a very intense and long training session for the work that you'll be doing afterwards.

It's going to be a gruelling year, but I think it'll also be really fun and I'll end up with a really great sense of satisfaction by the end of it.

MBA: First day...

2008-05-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

I officially started the MBA program at Queen's today. I wore a suit since they asked everyone to wear "business attire". It's a bit of a switch from the jeans and shirt dress code that I got accustomed to working as an engineer. I guess I'll have to get accustomed to wearing more formal attire from here on in.

There was a pre-program mixer organized through a group on Facebook Saturday night. I got to meet some of my classmates and mingle together. I met most of the rest of the class today...there's 77 of us so it's difficult trying to get to know everyone right off the bat. It's a good group overall...should be a good time getting to know everybody.

Anyways, it seems like this week is going to be a long one. Lots of details to take care of and lots of info. Here's what the schedule looks like:

Pretty busy week! A lot different from undergrad years...everyone's going to be busy for most of the year. I like it...it'll be intense and busy, but I think it'll also be fun.

I'm the oddball in the group as far as computer use is involved. I ended up getting a linux laptop from Dell because I wanted to avoid Windows Vista. In hindsight, I might have saved myself a headache and just buckled into buying a machine with Windows on it. I installed Windows XP using VirtualBox...today was a trial in seeing how it would work. So far so good. I installed Lotus Notes without a problem. I'll see in the coming weeks how the networking and printing will work. I know that there's a version for linux, but I think I'll tackle that if I have some time over the weekend.

It's all gone JMo

2008-05-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

If you're ever driving around Markham, Ontario, and you hear a guy's voice in the background occasionally yelling "Beat it!", then hear a loud bass and with some dance/techno music, that's probably JMo driving by your vicinity. He's a real life Frankie Wilde minus the coke badger, Ibiza clubs, bikini babes, and cheap whiskey...and he still has his hearing, remarkably.

Anyways, I sat next to JMo at MTC...good guy, but loud. He put together a new mix: Sunday Sessions April 2008. It's pretty good...I have it playing right now. You probably need a good sub woofer to really appreciate it, but it's still good to listen to. You can listen/download it here.

Why get an MBA?

2008-05-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

I've thought about getting an MBA for a while now. A couple of my friends have gone through Rotman and one through Wharton and they shared their experiences with me. I liked everything that I heard and was really interested in the topics, but, in my mind, two years of schooling with no income was a steep price to pay...never mind the tuition. It wasn't until I found out about one year programs that I seriously contemplated going back to school.

Here are a few of my reasons for doing it:

Ambition
I've had thoughts of starting my own business for the past few years and even attempted starting my own mechanical design company after my career break. I've also been keen on sometime managing an engineering department. To achieve either goal, I'd need to obtain some sort of management and business knowledge and apply it somewhere. An MBA is one way to get that knowledge...applying it in a new position after school would be a great experience.

Increased Opportunity
Between my co-op and full-time experience, I've spent almost 9 years in the same sort of mechanical design role designing machined/stamped metal parts. The context of the design, whether in high-tech, aerospace, or automotive, has changed, but the overall process and methodology has been the same. Over the years, I've developed other interests and contemplated a career switch to something in the field of computers/software. Starting over from scratch at an entry level would have been a long and arduous process. An MBA gives me access to other non-engineering industries without having to start all over again. Industries like banking, financial investments, information systems, and management consulting all recruit MBA students. Last year's Queen's MBA annual report shows a list of companies that recruit their students...it's a long list (page 8).

Personal Growth
I've been able to excel at almost every job that I've had. I want to see just how far my talent and ability can take me. The personal coaching and leadership training that an MBA offers can be extremely helpful and can help me attain higher goals.

Higher potential income
Pretty self explanatory here. I can draw a higher income with an MBA than with an engineering degree alone.

Timing
Manufacturing in Ontario is slipping and the local economy is not doing so well. It seemed like a good time to step out of it for a while and go back to school.

Here are a few of my reasons for choosing Queen's:

1 year program

Technology based

Team oriented approach

Kingston: smaller town and sailing mecca

Timing: the program starts in May and my lease in Toronto ended at the end of April...it just made a lot of sense.

Intangibles: not sure why exactly, but when I tried their student-for-a-day trial I pretty much knew that an MBA was what I wanted to do and Queen's was where I wanted to do it.

Most people apply to a bunch of schools but I only applied to Queen's. It was a pretty safe bet that I would get in as long as I didn't screw up on the GMAT exam.

Anyways, student life officially started today. I just moved into a room in a house with 6 other grad students. Tomorrow I'll stop by the MBA office and pick up my student card. I'll pick up some groceries and a few items. I already have homework to do so I'll have to get cracking on some reading.

I've thought about making entries on this blog summarizing my readings as a study method to try and make the knowledge stick better. I'm not sure how practical that will be, but I'll try it and see how it goes.

Moving on...

2008-04-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my last day of work at Multimatic. I'm headed back to school for an MBA at the Queen's School of Business. I'd only been at MTC (Multimatic Technical Centre) for a year...a year and two days exactly. It's a decent place to work, there a lot of highly capable people and I got along with almost everyone. In terms of Mechanical Engineering, there aren't many other places that have the capabilities that they have. Their core business is automotive hinges, but they're also into race cars, high end sports cars, and the occasional sailboat.

I got to work on an interesting project relating to European automotive standards for head impact protection in the event that a car hits a pedestrian or a bicyclist. The basic idea is that the hood of the car would be designed to absorb the energy of the impact of the victim's head as a method to reduce head trauma or fatalities. You can read more about it here.

In terms of design, there are two ways of achieving this goal. You can design a passive "soft" system where the hinge, supporting structure, and the hood buckle under the impact of the victim's head. The other method is to design an active system where the car has sensors on the front bumper to detect a collision and an active lift system where the hood is raised by about 50-150mm at the hinges. This youtube video shows the implementation of the system on a current Jaguar vehicle (EUMatic is a European division of Multimatic and they produce the hinges for Jaguar).

The project I worked on was an active system that was already in development, but I was tasked with designing a hinge system proposal for a future European version of the Chrysler 300. Instead of airbags or other pyrotechnic devices for lifting the hood, the system I was working on used gas struts. The central idea is that in the event of a false deployment (faulty sensor or impact with a garbage can or other inanimate object), the driver could just manually reset the system by opening the hood and continue driving. Currently, a false deployment with the Jaguar system would mean that the driver would have to call for a tow truck and have the hinges/hood/airbags replaced...pretty costly. The Multimatic system would protect against that.

I can't go into details about the project, but it was a really good learning experience. The workload was heavy but interesting. I did some pretty neat kinematics on the design side (something akin to this), had three quarters of the analysis department work on the strength and dynamics of the system, and got to be part of a technical review at the Chrysler Technical Centre in Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Unfortunately, even though the Chrysler engineers loved our system from a technical standpoint, the price tag was a little to high for their liking. The last I heard was that our system was around US$50 more per system than the next competitor. That came out to around US$6M more for the entire vehicle program. They went with a supplier that offered a non-resetting pyrotechnic system.

My last design task was to design some demo fixtures of the GM Tech World show where GM invited a select number of suppliers to show case their technologies. One of the demo fixtures was for the active system using a Saab 93 hood. It was really cool seeing the system in action...the fixture literally jumped of the floor. Pretty dramatic! It'll be interesting to hear about the reactions of the GM people.

In the end though, as interesting as that work was, I decided that it was time to move on to something different. Pursuing an MBA was a step that I need to take to get to do the kind of work that I'd grown more interested in. I'll write more about the thoughts that went to that decision in another post...

About Biodiesel...

2008-04-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot about Biodiesel lately in terms of an alternative energy source. It's attractive since it's a closed loop cycle type of fuel. Vegetable oil from plants like Rapeseed (Canola), Peanut, and Soybean can be converted into a fuel suitable for running in diesel engines. Rudolph Diesel, the German inventor of the engine, initially ran his engine on peanut oil in the very early 1900s. With the advent of cheap petroleum, diesel fuel extracted from crude oil was more cost effective to run in these engines.

You can read about the benefits of a diesel engine here.

Biodiesel seems to be gaining in popularity with the current rise in gasoline prices (As of today, crude oil goes for about US$120 per barrel). There seems to be a grassroots movement for home made biodiesel fuel, a Youtube search for biodiesel shows a lot of instructional videos on how to make it.

CBC Marketplace has a good article about the fuel. Canada Clean Fuels is a Canadian company that distributes biodiesel and their website has a lot of good information about the benefits and drawbacks of using the fuel. Other good resources can be found here, here, and here.

As I understand it the main benefits and drawbacks are as follows:

Benefits

The carbon contained within the fuel is extracted from the atmosphere by the plants harvested for the fuel. No carbon is transferred from underground storage (petroluem) to the atmosphere.

Pure bisdiesel (B100) burned in a diesel engine has significantly lower CO2 emissions that current gasoline engines.

Engines run with biodiesel run cleaner and more efficiently. They also last longer and require less maintenance than when run with petro-diesel. Biodiesel does not contain the substances that can gum up an engine.

Lower cost fuel.

Drawbacks

Increased NOx emissions. These can be offset with good catalytic converters.

Poor cold weather performance. Biodiesel becomes very viscous and can freeze at the cold temperatures that Canada experiences in the winter. Blending biodiesel with petro-diesel can alleviate this problem.

Large areas of agricultural land will need to be devoted to growing the plants needed for large scale fuel production.

Not readily available at gas pumps

There aren't a lot of passenger vehicles that have diesel engines. Volkswagen is at the forefront with the Turbo Diesel Injection engines (TDI)

In a previous post about Tim Flannery, I mentioned a Canadian company called Dynamotive and their process for producing Bio-oil through pyrolysis. I started wondering if the Bio-oil could be used to make Biodiesel. That way the process has a double effect on removing CO2 from the atmosphere: carbon sequestration and reduced tailpipe emissions. Maybe that was their original intent with their business idea.

I also started thinking that a series hybrid vehicle with a small efficient diesel engine generator would be a relatively simple car to develop. This sort of solution has already been implemented for locomotive engines and buses (see here and here).

Maybe it's just a matter of time before this type of solution is implemented economically for passenger cars. I guess we just have to be a little more patient...

More on politics...

2008-04-22T18:45:00.000-07:00

Since I my last post was about politics and I criticized a website making fun of Stephane Dion, I figured it's only fair to post something from the other side...

I came across this site while searching for recent politics news:

www.gettingthejobdone.ca

While the site isn't as bad as the one mentioned in my previous post, it still lacks integrity and class. Considering that no one has taken credit for the site other than a link to an obscure email address, I can only assume that one of the opposition parties put it together.

If you are going to say something bad about someone and publish it online, have the courage to sign it and own up to it. It will be refreshing to get a sense of accountability and integrity from our political leaders...

In bad taste...

2008-04-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

I follow politics fairly closely and I've tried to avoid getting too political on this blog. I recently browsed through the website of the Conservative Party and found this:

notaleader.ca

I find this distasteful, lacking originality, and an example of poor leadership.

Devoting a whole website to criticize and make fun of a person is something that losers do. It also shows poor sportsmanship and lacks class.

Any monkey can criticize (I'm doing it right now). I don't understand how this sort of stuff attracts people to your point of view. Using the same bad picture for Stephane Dion over and over also shows laziness and a lack of creativity. The dog blog isn't even remotely funny.

I agree that Stephane Dion and the Liberal party have been disappointing thus far, but this sort of thing shouldn't be tolerated for very long. Trashing somebody else isn't good leadership. Coming up with a coherent and thoughtful vision for Canada's future and getting the voting public to buy into that vision is true leadership. So far, I don't see any of that in any of our political parties.

Review: Tim Flannery in Toronto

2008-04-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

Since I posted an ad about it here, I went to the Tim Flannery's lecture here in Toronto with a couple of friends. I read his book a while ago so I was looking forward to hearing him speak in person.

Bridget Stutchbury spoke first about how pesticides in South American countries affect the birds that migrate between North and South America. I have to admit that I didn't find her lecture all that interesting. It seemed like she wasn't used to speaking in public and was a little nervous. Focusing on such a small aspect of the overall environmental problem seems a little short-sighted to me. Helping South American farmers produce healthy and profitable crops without the use of costly pesticides is a solution that will save the birds as well as help poorer people prosper. Ms. Stutchbury didn't touch on that aspect other than saying that people should drink shade-grown coffee. It's a good idea, but it seems a little shallow to me.

The after effects of dinner and this first part of the lecture got me a little drowsy. By the time Mr. Flannery actually got up to speak I was ready for nap. I did get a little shut eye at the beginning of his lecture but kept listening to what he was saying. I woke up from my little power nap when he got to the pithy part of his lecture. He touched on a few interesting ideas:

Electric Cars
He noted an interesting project in Denmark regarding electric cars. It's something to keep an eye on to see if it really works or not. The cars being used seem to be production cars retrofitted with batteries and an electric motor. He mentioned the idea of a removable battery pack to work around the long charging time of the batteries and tax holidays for electric vehicles (no tax for a certain amount of time).

Carbon Sequestration via Pyrolysis
Pyrolysis is basically the process for making charcoal where organic matter is heated with the absence of oxygen. The particular application that Mr. Flannery talked about was regarding biochar. You can read more about it here and here. This is how I understand the process:

Plants (agricultural crops) absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

The carbon is used up in the plants cells.

Waste plant matter is then collected and put through pyrolysis.

The resultant charcoal is then buried in the agricultural soil to help retain moisture and nutrients.

The net result is that carbon is taken out of the atmosphere and put into the ground.

A Canadian company, Dynamotive, is involved in this process; although the focus seems to be the production of biofuels where the biochar is a waste product. I should also point out that hydrogen is one of the gases produced in the pyrolysis of organic matter. It could be siphoned off and used in a fuel cell to generate electricity for use in the pyrolysis process or for feeding the electricity grid.

Political Leadership
Mr. Flannery didn't have much good to say about the environmental policies of our current government. He criticized their approach in promoting emission intensity caps rather than overall emission caps (see here for a brief description of the difference). He mentioned that he was at the Bali conference but was more critical of the American efforts and didn't really touch on the performance of our current government. He went on to explain the political change in Australia and how the environment was a central theme to the election and played a part in defeating the government lead by John Howard (see here or here).

He also mentioned the political leadership in China where the government is starting to see the economic benefits of a more sustainable energy system using cleaner energy sources. He highlighted that China is on its way to developing auto emission standards that were stricter than the US CAFE standards. The potential implication is that cars made in China could be sold here in North America, but North American cars could not be sold in China simply because they wouldn't meet the Chinese emission standards. He also pointed out that the different levels of government there are starting to be measured by their societal and environmental performance along with their economic performance.

It's rare to hear praise for China these days, but as I mentioned in my review of the PBS E-squared series, once the Chinese political leadership decides to do something, they don't take very long to go about doing it.

not so great ideas...
Mr. Flannery briefly talked about a concept where some villagers in the Amazon belt could be paid for not developing their land as part of some sort of carbon credit trading system. I just don't see it happening. Basically, those villagers would end up getting paid for doing nothing...can't see many people agreeing to that.

Alberta Tar Sands
He confessed that he didn't know much about the topic. He did say that it didn't make much sense that we only pay around $1.10/litre for gasoline when it gets extracted from Alberta, trucked down to Texas, refined there, and then trucked back up here. He just said that if a free market approach was taken and subsidies for oil companies were removed, renewable energy sources would provide a very real and competitive alternative to fossil fuels.

The question period at the end of the lecture was interesting as well. Some of the members of the audience mentioned switching to Bullfrog Power for the electricity. Incidentally, my buddy Alex was there with me and he works for Bullfrog in business development.

Overall, the lecture was pretty good, well worth the $25 ticket price. Mr. Flannery's passion for the subject is easy to see. From my engineering perspective, the ideas he presented were intriguing and I started thinking about how they could be successfully implemented in practice. It'll be interesting how some of technologies develop and if they actually get adopted by governments and industries.

Linux Coolness

2008-03-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

If you think Windows Vista or Mac OS X is cool, check this out. Considering that linux is free, it's pretty amazing compared to the other two operating systems.

It's not without problems though. The guy who made that video posted his Ubuntu 7.10 installation procedure for the Thinkpad R61.

Some vendors are starting to offer linux pre-installed on their hardware. I read somewhere recently that Lenovo will be offering them with Novell Suse Linux (don't remember where I read that though...). Dell now offers systems in Canada with Ubuntu already installed (They offered it in the US for a while now, but just recently made them available in Canada. Not sure why the delay...). System76 sells Ubuntu systems on what looks like Lenovo hardware...the laptops do anyway.

You can always buy an Apple machine and run Linux on it too.

Tim Flannery in Toronto

2008-03-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

Tim Flannery is the author of The Weather Makers. I read his book and wrote about it in an earlier post.

I got an email the about a lecture that he'll be doing here in Toronto next week at the Bloor Cinema (April 3rd, 7pm). I'll be checking it out with a couple of friends. Here are the details:

RSGC Guild Sponsored Speakers Series
A Focus on the Environment

Tim Flannery and Bridget Stutchbury
The Weathermakers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change

NSW AOTY Tim Flannery.jpg

Speaking at the Bloor Cinema ~ 506 Bloor Street
April 3rd, 2008
Doors open at 6:30 pm ~ Lecture begins at 7:00 pm
Followed by book signing ~ Books available for purchase

Tickets are $25
General Admission
Purchase tickets online at www.rsgc.on.ca
https://www.netdirectories.com/~rsgc/oler2.cgi?1054

World renown explorer, conservationist and writer-scientist, Tim Flannery has written many bestselling books, including The Future Eaters, The Eternal Frontier and of course the #1 international bestseller The Weather Makers. Tim Flannery was director of the South Australia Museum and professor at Harvard and the University of Adelaide. He was voted Australian of the year in 2006 and is now professor at Maquarie Universty. His new book, An Explorer's Notebook, Essays on Life, History and Climate, will publish in Canada Spring 2008.

Short-listed for the 2007 Governor General's award for non-fiction, Silence of the Songbirds follows birds on their 10,000-kilometer journey from Canada to South America, and charts the threats. Tim Flannery claims, "this book is a must-read for anyone whose heart has thrilled to the song of a bird." Author Bridget Stutchbury completed her PhD at Yale , was a fellow and research associate at the Smithsonian and is now an Associate Professor of Biology at York University.

Book Review: The Assault On Reason, Al Gore

2008-03-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

I initially found out about this book last year by reading an excerpt of the book on commondreams.org. The excerpt talked about a lot of issues that I was interested in regarding society and democracy. I even posted an entry here about it.

I got the book as a present this past Christmas and only got around to reading last week. Here's a list of the contents:

i. Introduction
1. The Politics of Fear
2. Blinding the Faithful
3. The Politics of Wealth
4. Convenient Untruths
5. The Assault on the Individual
6. National Insecurity
7. The Carbon Crisis
8. Democracy in the Balance
9. A Well-Connected Citizenry
10. The Rebirth of Democracy

The book starts out fairly well. In his introduction, Mr. Gore talks about different areas of the brain that are activated while one is reading versus the areas that are activated while one is watching tv. The main idea is that reading is an active process where the reader processes symbols on a page and mentally creates images and abstract concepts. Watching tv, on the other hand is a more passive activity and the brain activity is mostly focused around the visual centres. He doesn't get too technical, but manages to convey the message fairly well.

There are some unexpected nuggets of information here and there like how to hypnotize a chicken, but overall a lot of the content dealt with stuff that I already knew about. He mentions Edward Bernays and the BBC documentary "Why We Fight", topics that I wrote about in my previous post.

I found the middle sections of the book tiresome to read. It seemed like he was blaming everything that went wrong with America on Bush, Cheney, and their cohorts. I agree that it seems a little surreal that so many Americans were duped into agreeing to the Iraq war, but the blame doesn't entirely rest on Bush and company. In a democracy, the people rule. It's up to the citizenry to stay well informed and hold their elected officials accountable. The American citizens have to shoulder some of the blame for being so apathetic to what's happening to their government and country and buying into all the false information that was thrown at them (e.g. Saddam Hussein/ Al Qaeda link, Saddam Hussein playing a part in WTC bombings, WMDs in Iraq, unexpected levy collapse in New Orleans with hurricane Katrina, etc.). We have the same problem here in Canada, but the repercussions of the apathy of Canadian citizens don't have such a massive global effect.

In any case, Mr. Gore's book was long on blame and short on solutions. He tries to explain that the internet will be key in re-activating the populations' interest in their government, but doesn't really offer up any ideas on how exactly that could happen. He draws a parallel between the advent of the printing press and the current development of the internet in that almost anyone can publish something online at very little cost without having to pay huge sums of money for a national newspaper ad or a 30 second commercial. I understand that logic, but people surfing on the internet have to be interested in a topic before they can search for information about it. I think most people will be just as disinterested as they were before the internet, but instead of watching tv, they'll spend their time on facebook, youtube, and albinoblacksheep, among other places. (By the way, Mr. Gore sits on Apple's board of directors and is a senior advisor to Google).

I was hoping that Al Gore would have some brilliant insights into how people can combat the massive marketing and propaganda type campaigns being thrown at them, but the book didn't offer much in that area. So while I'm fairly disappointed with the book, I still recommend reading it. There are a lot of lessons to be drawn from it and if Canadians are aware of how the current situation in Iraq came about, maybe that will help us gain some clarity on what exactly we are doing in Afghanistan.

laptops of the future

2008-03-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

I'm looking to get a laptop computer and I've been doing a ton of research about them lately. I'm not keen on buying a new laptop with Windows Vista on it. It seems like such a bloated OS to me with a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles. The cheap deals on some of the newer laptops are hard to beat though. I'd buy an apple macbook but they're too expensive for what you get. Nice machines but so what. Anyways, enough about that nerdy topic and onto some cool nerdy things.

I came across a computerworld article about laptops of the future. Not too distant future...more like 2015. They concept renderings look amazing. Not too rugged looking though, except maybe the solar powered one. Check them out for yourself.

Riding the Subway

2008-03-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

Every time I ride the subway I see something that I'd like to take a picture of. I always wonder about how some people are going to react and most of the time don't bother taking a picture because I don't want to provoke a scene. I'll have to get over that feeling sometime. Here are a couple of pictures that I managed to take recently:

Interior Design Show

2008-03-16T18:57:00.001-07:00

I checked out the Interior Design Show with a couple of friends just to see what it was about. One of my friends is really keen about the show and does some part time work designing rooms for people.

There were some neat ideas for condo living and some interesting artistic pieces. We got there fairly early in the morning and it didn't take long for the show to get really busy. With the real estate boom that we have here in Toronto, it's not surprising that there's a huge market for furnishings and other stuff for the home.

While there some really neat things there, I was floored by the pricing of the majority of items. It seems that there are a lot of people with a ton money to spend and no clue as to how what it takes to make furniture and how much it should cost. The markups on some pieces was insane. I did hear a few people asking about how some products were environmentally friendly or somehow green. One company said that they planted a tree for every furniture product that they sold. There were a bunch of companies with green sounding names like "Erth Coverings". Their main deal was that they sold natural products, but there was no mention of a closed system where they treat and recycle their waste water or if they have a solar panel bank supplementing their electricity usage. I mainly got the impression that consumers were more or less looking for an answer that said that the companies were environmentally friendly but rarely asked how.

There were some pretty neat items and some slick materials for countertops and tiling. Overall, though, I left there thinking that it would be a good idea to start a home decoration company with a truly green manufacturing cycle and some unique products...could make a lot of money. In any case, here are some of the more interesting pictures that I took:

(stuff made in China wouldn't cost a lot...these guys must have had a huge markup on their price!)

Toronto Autoshow

2008-03-16T18:07:00.000-07:00

I went to the Toronto Autoshow with a group of my colleagues from work. Being an automotive company, they gave us free tickets and an afternoon off to go check it out. We walked around for about 5 hours looking at all the different cars. Being a hinge designer, I took the time to check out some of the ways that the different car makers design their hinges for the side doors, hatches, and hoods. It was interesting to see the various implementations, but I think most people wouldn't even notice.

There were some interesting concepts but, sadly, no electric cars. GM had their Chevy Volt car there, but it was pretty obvious that it's still in the early development stage. They had a cover hiding the interior of the car so you couldn't see the console or the controls. I suspect that the interior is largely unfinished and the cover was there to hide the ugly prototype functionality that they had in there. I'm not even sure if the car could be driven or not. Here are some pictures of it:

I recently read an article about how the GM head of product development believe that global warming is a farce so I really don't think that they're taking this car too seriously. I think it has more to do with marketing than anything else. I'll be surprised if it makes it to production by 2010.

There were some other interesting cars out there like this one:

We also checked out some of the products that our company makes like this step on the Ford F150 tailgate. Naturally, we had to stop and take a few pictures:

Describing the versatility of the MultiPole:

The Lamborghini exhibit showing the history of their line of cars was pretty cool. It was interesting how the styling has changed over the years. I managed to get this picture of one of their newer models:

There was also a neat little motorcycle section showing some slick Ducatis and other bikes:

I had a thought of having a small truck as my next vehicle so I decided to check out the Chevy S10. I stepped on the rail they had on the truck and felt it move. I took a closer look and found that it was loose and kept getting looser the more I put weight on it. I pointed it out to some of the guys...you show a bunch of engineers something and they jump on it like kids on a jungle gym. One of the GM show people came over and said that it was show quality rather than production quality. I thought it was ridiculous that they showed something that flimsy at the premiere Canadian autoshow. Here's a video showing how flimsy the thing was.

Overall, the show was pretty good, but after 5 hours of looking at cars I was beat and ready for some dinner.

Lens hack and the Toronto Zoo

2008-02-20T19:59:00.000-08:00

Ever since reading an article about homemade tilt-shift lenses like this one, I've wanted to build one and try it out. I browsed through ebay for a while and eventually settled on a Xenar lens from an old Korelle SLR for about $75.

I kept my eye open for some sort of bellows and even researched building one. One day though, one of the guys at work had some rubber boots for car suspension struts lying around and he donated one to me. I found some time a couple weeks ago and hacked something together using electrical tape, cardboard, and the base of a busted teleconverter.

Here's what the monstrosity looks like:

I got a chance to try the thing out recently at the Toronto Zoo. Focusing was a little tricky and I was worried about it falling apart. It held up well with the snow and dampness. I used a roll of Kodak C-41 black and white film. The pictures turned out fairly nice for the most part. Here are some:

I really like this one though:

I really like the lens...there's some dirt in it too that adds to the antique soft focus look to the pictures. I used it again at the Toronto Autoshow last week too with a roll of colour film. I noticed that it started to fall apart after a while and probably let in some extra light so I don't know how well the pictures will turn out. In the meantime, I'll have to think of a more robust method of building the lens.

PBS e2 Documentary Series

2008-02-02T22:35:00.001-08:00

I caught an episode of the e2 (e squared) PBS documentary series one night and found it intriguing. That particular episode dealt with renewable energy and how it can be implemented in different ways. I kept an eye out for it for a while but never managed to see it again. So I decided to buy the DVDs from the PBS store as a Christmas present to myself.

I've been watching the series over the last few weeks and its a really good documentary series. The first two seasons have mainly dealt with architecture and how to design sustainable buildings. It's a little surprising, but it turns out that buildings account for about 48% of greenhouse gas emissions. There are some neat ideas presented in each episode about managing water and solar energy in buildings.

A whole episode is even devoted to renewable energy efforts in China. One vision they shared was about bringing agriculture into urban areas through the use of rooftop farming. China definitely has bad environmental image on top of a bad image in terms of human rights. Dirty smog-filled urban areas come to mind. Even with this image though, one architect made the point that once a totalitarian regime gets hold of the idea of relying less on fossil fuels and implements more sustainable energy systems, the whole country can be transformed very quickly. They even built a test building that implements numerous ideas for sustainable design that developers and architects can visit, learn about these ideas, and put experiments into place. It's not all pleasant though; there are some alarming numbers about rural to urban migration and coal consumption. It'd be interesting to see how China develops in this regard.

India, Tibet, and Columbia are mentioned in addition to American cities. No Canadian content so far. It seems that we're lagging behind in innovation in the area of sustainable development even though the environment gets a lot of air time on the news here and politicians seem to talk about it a lot.

The only downside is that each episode starts with an ad by Autodesk. They sponsored the series so I guess it's not a bad thing. You can always fast forward through them.

Anyways, the e2 website has previews of episodes and worth going through. It's a fairly new series so most libraries probably don't have it yet. I'm definitely going to pass my copies around, but the DVDs are not expensive and definitely worth the money.

No Ads

2008-02-02T22:33:00.000-08:00

I checked the Google Adsense account for this blog and found that no one had even clicked on anything...ever. I decided to remove the feature; thought it was a bit of an eyesore anyways.

Booo! on Flickr

2008-01-18T21:23:00.000-08:00

I tried showing someone at work some pictures from my travels only to find out that Flickr would only show the latest 200 or so pictures unless I signed for an account with a fee of around $25 per year. When I transfered my pictures from Yahoo!Photos to Flickr, they didn't mention this deal.

I'm a little miffed about it. In know it's not a lot of money, but I'd rather pay for online hosting and setup my own web gallery. Time to do it is the primary issue.

In the meantime though, you can see some of the pictures in this blog here (a lot of the photos from India were not included for some reason). I also replaced the link to my Flickr photos with the same link.

In the meantime, I should slowly start on the web albums...

Book Review: The Unexpected War, Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang

2008-01-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

In the fall, I read "The Unexpected War, Canada in Afghanistan", written by Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang. I'm not sure but I think Mr. Lang is a journalist who writes for the Globe and Mail. Ms. Stein regularly appears on tvo on The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Mr. Painkin's show is excellent and really worth watching if you want to know more about the world and the major events that happen in it).

When this book was published, it got a lot of coverage on the news. It got a lot of fanfare and some good reviews. The authors were interviewed on the different news networks. I'd been following the news about Afghanistan and its effect on our Canadian politics so I was curious about the book and decided to read it.

The book is a story on how Canada got involved in Afghanistan. The authors interviewed the principal people involved in the decision to go there from the politicians to the military personnel and even former prime minister Paul Martin. .

The story has some surprises. In 2003, when the US was getting ready to invade Iraq, a lot of Canadians (including me) were proud that our government made the decision not to go along and be part of the invasion force. It turns out that the American military didn't really want or need us to help in a military way, but rather was looking more for public moral support and help in convincing other countries to join. Apparently they didn't think our military capability was sufficient enough be much good to them. Other surprises in the story regard the way the decisions regarding Canada's presence in Afghanistan were made.

When Jean Chretien did not play along and declared that Canada would not be joining the invasion force, there was a lot hand wringing in the military and political circles around Ottawa that relations with the US were being damaged and we would suffer economic and political consequences. The book argues, with some interesting quotes, that our presence in Afghanistan was primarily a way to placate the US and show that we support them in their response to the airplane attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.

The big surprise to me was that, according to the authors, the decision was made to go to Afghanistan without knowing anything about the country or it's people, an idea of the exact role that we would play, nor the real military capability to be effective in that area.

The initial strategy was "early in, early out"; meaning that Canada would be part of the initial push to set up in Afghanistan but would rotate out after a year or two. A fairly short term commitment, but politically beneficial for relations with the US. This is very far from the current idea of a brave noble mission to bring peace and democracy to a people ravaged by 30 years of war and oppression by a militant group of fundamentalist muslims. The book paints a picture of an exclusively European effort in a more peaceful region in northern Afghanistan telling the Canadian group to find their own mission somewhere else. It seems that there were no plans at the time for the Kandahar region so that's where our military and political people decided that Canada would play a lead role. That decision was made before anyone from the government or military had even visited Afghanistan !

An interesting chapter in the book is titled "We Don't Know Anything About This Country" in which the authors briefly explain the history of Afghanistan and describe some of the tribal relationships in the area. They also used this chapter to illustrate that the decision to go to Afghanistan had more to do with make people in Washington happy than helping poor impoverished Afghanis.

There are some interesting side stories. I've always thought highly of Bill Graham and the book shows that he was an excellent foreign minister. You wouldn't know it by watching news clips of him, but the story also describes John McCallum as an excellent defense minister. General Rick Hillier also gets a good mention.

Overall, I found the book to be a good read. It helps that I'm interested in the topic anyway, but I think that anyone with the slightest interest in Canada's role in Afghanistan would find the book interesting. I also think that the topic of Afghanistan will play a major part in the looming federal election. Given that, I think that the general Canadian public should be aware of how we got to Afghanistan, what exactly we went there to do, and how that differs from what we are doing there now. Reading this book is one way of gaining this awareness.

Highly recommended reading.

Neglected Blog...

2008-01-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post something on here for a while but haven't gotten around to it until now. I've been busy with work on a project for Chrysler and a lot of work needed to be finished before Christmas.

I thought I'd have time to sit down and write something over the Christmas break, but I was too busy eating cookies and watching tv...the couch had a deathgrip on my butt too.

I've got a bunch of thoughts and ideas that I'd like to put here, so I'll try to make habit of posting regularly on here this year.

Buggin'

2007-11-08T20:43:00.000-08:00

A bug got caught in one of my lamps the other night. It seemed like it was on its last legs and wanted a warm spot to stay in. It caught my attention while I was watching Spiderman 3, funny enough. So I decided to pause the movie and take some close up pictures. It stayed still for the most part, but started buzzing and flying when I got too close with the lens. It's a little startling when you're looking at a bug up close. It's a harmless insect but still freaky. Here are some of the pics...I think the eyes are the freakiest part:

It's been a while...

2007-10-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy over the last few weeks and haven't really had anything to write about so this blog's been neglected for about a month.

The weather's just starting to turn cold after a balmy Thanksgiving weekend (Canadian thanksgiving weekend is in October). So I may have more time to ponder stuff and write about it.

My photography hobby is pretty much at a standstill. I haven't explored Toronto nearly as much as I would have liked to, but hopefully the pace will slow down a bit soon. I did manage to capture some good moments of our thanksgiving dinner in Fort Erie like this stitched panorama:

It's a good one of the after dinner mood. My brother made it in from Vancouver, my aunt from Florida, and my uncle and his family from Toronto. It was a good time and I think everyone thought so too. Good memories, hopefully we'll have more family members join us in the coming years.

Dirtsurfer

2007-09-11T21:26:00.000-07:00

On the subway ride home from the class I saw a couple of dudes with these things. I was pretty curious about the boards so I asked them how you ride the things. Seems interesting...I'm not sure that I'd find it as much fun as those guys...

Back to School

2007-09-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about going back to school for a while now mainly to take a fluff course to meet some people...particularly women...and get my social life going a little bit. I decided that I'd go to Ryerson University because it seemed like I'd get more value than at Seneca College or a similar college. Then I started thinking that as long as I'll be spending the money (not an insignificant amount), I may as well take something that I'm interested in.

I ended up registering for computer science 1. This may come as a surprise to some, but it's not exactly a field that's dominated by supermodel-type women.

The first class was yesterday. It was a bit of a pain to get down to the campus. I'll have to leave work a little earlier next week because leaving at 5pm put me right in the middle of peak afternoon traffic. I didn't have enough time to grab a small bite for dinner. I pretty much parked my car and hopped on the subway downtown.

Anyways, I'm pondering getting a certificate for programming applications available through Ryerson's continuing education program. I figured I'd try a course out to see if I like it...it couldn't hurt and I can get a bit of a tax credit for the course tuition.

The course itself is an introduction to programming and uses Java as its base language. The first lecture covered the basic concepts of classes and objects. It moved along pretty slowly...in my opinion, the content could have been covered in one hour instead of three, but that's the way courses are.

I got a little amusement out of listening to the professor. He's got a very robotic voice and way of talking that sounds a bit like Stephen Hawking with a Slavic accent. He also lacks almost any form of facial expression except for the occasional blink.

It should be an interesting course anyways...who knows what it'll lead to.

I'm now thinking that if I pursue the programming certificate I should also balance it with some other courses where I'll have a significantly better chances for dates...something like fashion 101 or the like.

Ruby on Rails

2007-09-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

I started playing with Ruby on Rails. It's a combination of an easy programming language and a web application framework with database linking that allows you to quickly develop web applications. I started looking into it a little deeper because I was interested in knowing how to make e-commerce sites (online catalogues and the like).

A friend of mine in Ottawa had initially told me about and my brother piqued my interest after he explained how it worked. I went out and bought a couple of books (RoR for Dummies and RailsSpace)

In hindsight, the Dummies book may have been a bit of a waste of money, but it may prove useful down the road. RailsSpace, on the other hand is pretty neat. The book has an online portion to it were you can look at the code a little easier and copy/paste to save you the typing.

The Ruby syntax is pretty easy to learn so far. It's fairly intuitive and a lot of the coding is not cryptic at all...you kind of write down what you have in mind. Have a look for yourself: this site lets you try it out.

The person who wrote that tutorial definitely has a unique brain. Obviously and out-of-the-box thinker. He/She wrote the strangest guide book. I'm not sure how useful it is for learning code, but the pictures are pretty entertaining.

Anyways, I'll slowly be chipping away at the RoR stuff. My interest in it got me thinking about what it would be like to be a programmer for a living. I decided to try a programming course to get a better taste for it.

JMo

2007-09-11T19:49:00.000-07:00

JMo is one of the engineers in my department at work. He's into music and does some DJing on the side. He's got a few mixes out on this site. The music's a little too clubby for my taste, but if you're like club / house / techno type of stuff, check it out.

Cornucopia Regatta

2007-09-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

I went sailing at the Cornucopia Regatta at DYC over the Labour Day weekend. I got an email from SimonK who just bought a Kirby 25 for a really good deal and he needed crew to sail it at the regatta. It turned out that the boat had been sitting for a while and was in no shape for a regatta. Fortunately, Undercover wasn't in the regatta yet so he managed to convince Theo to sign up and he organized a quick crew with Derek and myself. It turned out that I had the most experience at helming a boat in races so I was the helmsman by default.

For a crew that was just thrown together on a new boat, we did fairly well. We had some awesome starts, great point and speed upwind, and had some cool downwind battles. We were in the running for a respectable 5th place, but a couple of key mistakes on the Sunday hurt us since we had a DFL finish on one race. We ended up in a tie, but got 7th place since Ruby's best race was better than ours. I've been waiting for someone to post some pictures, but so far nothing yet on the Kirby site.

It was an awesome weekend and it was great to get back in there again. I didn't get out enough this summer. I'll have to figure out something so I can get out there regularly next summer. There's another Kirby regatta in Barrie this coming weekend, but I don't think I'll be going. The Cornucopia was probably my last sail for the season.

Some Macro Photos

2007-08-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

I decided to scan some negatives that I've had for a while as a test run for the scanner. Mainly macro photos that I'd taken a while back. Here's a little selection...

Some of my mom's plants:

I also had blue and red light bulbs that I played with one night:

I plan on having a couple of these printed for the walls in my apartment. I'll get around to it one of these days...

New Scanner: CanoScan 4400F

2007-08-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

I finally picked a new scanner. I had my mind set on this one by Canon but was overwhelmed by its size when I finally checked out. It has the capacity to scan 35mm film, slides, and 120 size film.

I'd originally thought about getting into medium format photography using my Yashica 12 TLR. The large negative format offers the ability for some really detailed pictures as this page shows, but it's also more expensive than 35mm film. Working life and living in Toronto means that I have less time to walk around and take pictures so I haven't really done much in terms of photography.

I decided to scale back and settled for this smaller scanner. It's limited to 35mm negatives and slides but offers the same resolution. I also like the film holder that comes with it. It's easy to load and it holds the film pretty flat.

The scanner also automatically scans each frame individually and shows a preview. You can then select the frames that you want scanned and have them saved to a directory. It works pretty well and the scanning speed is reasonable.

I haven't really looked into using it with linux so I have to boot into Windows to scan photos. The one thing that I don't like about the system is that you have to select an application to load the pictures into after scanning. The system comes with ArcSoft photo editing software so I selected it just to get it to work. I didn't use the software really because I'm used to editing photos in GIMP now. I tried getting the Canon scanning toolbox to load the scanned images into gimp directly but kept getting a .dll error. It's annoying but not that big of a deal.

Overall, I find the scanner works pretty well. I'm going to get a lot of use out of it since I have two bulk rolls of 35mm Kodak Tri-X to use...once I get around to taking some pictures on a regular basis.

Yummy Curry...

2007-08-13T21:37:00.000-07:00

For some strange reason, I've had frequent hankerings for curry over the last few weeks. I finally got around to making one tonight...my first Curry.

I found this recipe on the food network's site (a great resource btw) and modified it slightly. The store near me didn't have any fenugreek seeds so I left them out. I had some green chilis in the fridge so I used 3 small ones instead of the scotch bonnet (probably a good idea anyways). I didn't have a lot of fresh thyme, the little plant I have on the balcony doesn't seem to grow very fast (I think it needs a lot more sunlight). I added a bunch of oregano instead. I also used bouillon cubes in hot water instead of the chicken stock and added potatos and a green pepper just because...

I followed the cooking instructions and let it stew for about an hour and a half. I made some basmati rice with a pinch of garam masala to go along with the curry. It was a long wait and I got pretty hungry. It was worth it though...not the best curry I've ever had, but pretty good for a first try. I'll have to keep the recipe in mind and try to find ways to make it better. It'll be a good dish to have in the winter.

I've always looked closely at the pictures in food magazines and tried to see how they were set up. I decided to take some pictures while waiting for the food to cool off a bit. With a compact digicam, it's hard to get a really short depth of field, so I used gimp to simulate it. Here's what the dish looked like:

I may make a habit of taking pictures of some of my culiary creations...see how creative I can get.

Book Review: The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery

2007-08-13T20:13:00.001-07:00

I've been reading a lot lately. The latest book is "The Weather Makers" by Tim Flannery. I'd heard a lot about this book so I finally picked it up.

It's a really good read and Flannery's writing style is very informative and the topics are organized well. The book is divided into five parts: Gaia's Tools, One in Ten Thousand, The Science of Prediction, People in Greenhouses, and The Solution.

The first part deals with the Gaia idea brought forward by James Lovelock that our planet is one large organism that we and all other life on the planet are part of it. It's an interesting idea that has some merit. Once you start looking into the mechanisms of nature, it's easy to see how everything is interconnected and how plants, animals, and people both affect and are affected by the weather.

He goes on to an explanation of the structure of Earth's atmosphere and how greenhouse gases affect the overall temperature of the planet. A key chapter in this first part of the book deals with the carbon balance on the planet and how plants, soils, and the oceans store carbon. He also explains how coal, oil, and natural gas are a form of long term carbon storage. The rapid rate at which we are consuming these fossil fuels means that we are transferring carbon from these carbon storage media to the atmosphere through combustion and the release of CO2.

As I understand it, the major problem is not that this transfer is taking place, but rather the rate at which carbon is being transferred leads to a relatively rapid increase in the Earth's temperature resulting in a rapid change of climate systems. This rapid change means that biological systems (arboreal forests, rain forests, savannas, etc.) do not have enough time to adapt to the changing climate. Consequently, a significant portion of animal and plant life on the planet most likely face extinction. Another problem with the rapid rise of Earth's temperature is that it brings instability into the climate systems that can lead to the disruption of the Gulf Stream, changes in rainfall patterns, more extreme weather in some parts of the globe, and milder weather in others. It's too complex a topic to describe here, and in any case, Flannery does a better job at explaining it than I ever will.

The book also takes time to explain the rigorous peer review system for publishing climate change data. There are several review stages done by hundreds of scientists so any published scientific data about climate change should be taken seriously because it has the consensus of a large group of scientists. Flannery also takes the time to explain predictive methods and how they are used to get a good idea of possible outcomes of a 2 to 5 degree Celsius increase in the average temperature of the earth. The picture doesn't look good for the majority of the world, but places like Canada and Russia will likely benefit from the warmer climate in terms of increased agricultural production, milder weather, and an expansion of more hospitable land.

Other sections of the book deal with the naysayers of climate change and how propaganda is used to cast doubt on the scientific studies and findings. This issue is not new, it's a dirty method that's been sued before and will likely be used again wherever massive corporate profits and public interests diverge.

Flannery does offer up solutions to reducing CO2 emissions but the information is already well known and he doesn't offer up anything new. He mentions hybrid cars and the french compressed air car that I wrote about in an earlier post. Solar, wind, and wave power all also have a role to play in replacing fossil fuels as renewable energy sources.

Apart from the science of climate change and the politics surrounding it, there are some nuggets of information about the wonders of nature including this frog that changes it's stomach from a digestive organ to a brooding chamber for it's young.

In terms of the climate change topic, it seems to me that the forces of government and corporations will be to slow to react to the growing danger of climate change unless the public exerts pressure on both parties. There is a lot of debate still going on even in the face of volumes of scientific information dating back at least 3 decades. The poeple muddying the issue will be successful in delaying any seriuos reduction of CO2 emissions unless the worldwide public gets more informed as to the nature of the problem and what it takes to solve it. Getting more aware and informed can begin with reading this book.

Walkabout around Toronto...

2007-08-13T19:19:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to go sailing at a regatta this past weekend, but plans fell through. I didn't bother showing up because I didn't really have a ride. So I decided to go wandering around downtown Toronto on Saturday.

I started at Kensington Market, which starts west of Spadina and north of Dundas. I ran into the Chinatown festival on my way there. It was a little too crowded for my taste and it didn't seem like much of a cultural experience for me. I stopped briefly to check out some food deals that they had on the street...BBQ Pork on rice for $2 was a good deal, but didn't seem that appetizing.

In any case, another block onwards and I was in Kensington Market. It's a neat place that's different from the big buildings and business suit areas of the downtown core. It's got an alternative artsy feel to it...some strange people too. The small fruit markets are nice and there are a couple of army surplus stores as well as some safety clothing/equipment shops...you could probably find a good deal if you looked hard enough.

I stumbled onto a gem: The House of Spice. The strong smells hit you as you step in the store. They've got almost everything to suit your culinary needs. I thought I might find some Filipino spice mixes like sinigang and tinola mixtures, but they didn't have any. Lots of other stuff though. I ended up buying a pack of bay leaves (I didn't have any at home) and a loose leaf mix of Masala Chai. Reasonable pricing. It's good to know there's a place like that around town. Here are a couple pictures of the place:

I kept wandering around the neighbourhood looking for a decent place to eat...there were some interesting looking places but none of them appealed to me at the time. I just kept on walking and taking pictures along the way. Here are some interesting shots:

The art gallery of Ontario is in the neighbourhood too. I stopped in because there were a couple of exhibits I was interested in. One was an exhibit by Chuck Close, an artist who does some wacky and large portraits of people. For this particular exhibit, he used Daguerreotype photographs as a base and painted his portraits from there. Interesting exhibit, he collaborated with a poet to have some verbage alongside the images.

The other exhibit I was interested in had to do with modert art from India. I found them unremarkable to be honest, and the exhibit itself was modest. The other two exhibits on display had to do with medieval art pieces that were mainly christian artifacts and some First Nation artifacts. The latter was interesting but not very informative with captions such as "Bowl with a Beaver" and "Frog on a bowl". Overall, I may have spent 20 minutes in there, but not much more than that. It was a nice way to cool off a bit, but not worth the $15 admission fee...

After that, I found a place that sold shawarmas...unfortunately my excitement faded after I payed $6 dollars for the combo that just included a drink and the shawarma wasn't traditional. The handwritten sign offering Motza Ball soup for $2.50 should have been a clue, but I was already pretty hungry.

I thought about walking across town to check out some camera stores on Queen St. E, but decided against it. I was starting to get tired...been walking for around 4 hours by that point. There was lots going on around town that day...here are some pictures from the walk to the subway station:

I was pretty tired when I got home. I had a small bite to eat, drank lots of water, and then settled down for some reading. It was a good day...the weather could not have been better. I'll have to decided on another part of the city to check out.