Municipal elections are a bit tricky. You don't have parties to fall back on. You actually have to listen to the
candidates and judge whether or not they'd be good in the job. You have to work a bit.
It's even worse in Waterloo, where there are five different races I'm asked to weigh in on: Mayor, City Councillor (I
liked "Alderman" better, but I suppose gender neutrality is good), Regional Chair, two Regional Councillors and three
School Board Trustees. That's a lot of people to sort out. And then there are two plebiscites this time 'round.
Little surprise, then, that voter turnout is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 25%.
I made the commitment, though, years ago, having made this place my home, to get more involved in local issues and local
government. Politics I could live without, but it goes with the territory, I'm afraid.
I'd been hoping to get out to debates for all the races I have a say in and blog about them. The debate thing isn't
working out so well, with all the other things I have going on. I still want to talk about my process of coming to
decisions, though.
It's not so much to tell people who to vote for (although if I'm voting for them, I wouldn't be offended if you did
too), as it is just my way to encourage people to make up their own mind and participate in this process. That's even
supposing anyone's reading. For me, doing this helps me sort out my decision-making process for myself.
I think democracy is important. I know a lot of people don't particularly care about what happens at City Hall, so long
as it doesn't intrude on their lives too much. But I want this to be a great city. I think other people do too. It's a
little bit of work, but being informed about where you live and finding people to represent your values is a small thing
that can help build the city you want to live in.
Also keep in mind that if you don't vote, I can guarantee there are people who don't share your values who are voting.
So get ready for a bunch of election-related posts. Unless I slack off and don't get to them. And don't worry, I only do
this sort of thing during election time. It'll all be over in a couple weeks, and then we can go back to our regular
schedule of no posts.
I ended up doing a lot of driving over the weekend, visiting people in Belleville and Ottawa and briefly crossing the
border. Driving on long trips is the perfect environment for listening
to Doctor Who audio dramas.
I'd caught up on the regular series with The Whispering Forest.
And I'd made it all the way through the second series of Eighth Doctor
and Lucy stories before I headed home. So I decided to pick up the audio adaptations of the Sixth
Doctor's missing Season 23.
As I've previously alluded, I really like the Sixth
Doctor in audio. I like him on TV too (I like all Doctor Who, really), but I do find myself having to forgive it a bit
here and there. The intent of these Lost Stories audios is to come as close to how the episodes would have appeared on
television as possible. Which is fascinating, but not without drawbacks.
I spent nearly all of Mission to Magnus thinking I would have loved to
have seen this on TV in the Eighties. It features the return of Sil, who's always wonderfully portrayed
by Nabil Shaban, and
the Ice Warriors, albeit in more of a Seeds-of-Death-destroy-everything mode
than in the more nuanced Peladon stories, but no matter.
[[Kwartzlab]] has been talking about throwing a LAN party for a while now. We've got power, a network and drinks, so
it's ideal. Eric and I got to talking, though, and with the [[Ubuntu]] stuff in
Waterloo centered largely around Kwartzlab it would be extra awesome if it was a free software LAN party. Everything we
play is open source and available through the Ubuntu repositories.
So he went off and tested some games, made a live
CD, set up a meta-package and we played some games.
(Pioneers is awesome, but its reception was a bit disappointing, mainly because only Eric and I had ever played Settlers
before. Generally, I think if you're going to the trouble of getting people together in a room, you're better off
playing the boardgame. Over distances, with seasoned Settlers fans, it has much more potential).
We started small, limiting ourselves to Kwartzlab people and a few friends. But our goal is to get other Ubuntu groups
involved, ideally culminating in a cross-country or international Ubuntu LAN party. Which is just awesome.
