the flying squirrel

I don’t talk about my work much here. That’s intentional. I don’t think it’s appropriate. Sometimes, though, my work life encroaches on my personal life and I have to at least say something.

Like today.

My (now former) employer of 11 years and I have parted company. Thus, I am unemployed.

The offers of help and support I’ve received so far have helped cushion the blow. I have some time to ponder my next step.

While I liked the work and really wanted to bring my project to completion, it’s also been stressing me out for months. I wasn’t even allowed to take all my vacation this summer, what with all the work. I could really use a break.

Once I’ve given myself a little time to decompress, I’ll be out there looking for new challenges and new opportunities. I have some ideas, but would greatly appreciate help and suggestions.

Polls close in about an hour. For the record, I’m done with politics until the next election. Unless maybe I feel compelled to comment on the US election, but what more could possibly be said?

I think we’re good.

I’m back from Thanksgiving weekend in Belleville. Technically, today is a vacation day, but I am currently at work futzing around in order to get things working and presentable for my feature presentation tomorrow.

Nice weekend. I got to see Matt and Rin. I spent a whole lot of time working on a WordPress plugin which I may end up finishing at some point. I also wandered around my old neighbourhood with a GPS for the glory of OpenStreetMap. And I got to see family and eat lots of food. All in all, very good.

Can’t sleep. Posting this might help.

I wasn’t going to talk about the election results, but given that the results for Kitchener-Waterloo were a tiny bit extraordinary, I felt I should really say something.

Rather than the comfortable Liberal win that most people were expecting, it turns out that Conservative Peter Braid won the riding by a slim 75 votes.

I, for one, blame the Communist party for splitting the vote and allowing this to happen!

No, seriously. The polls utterly failed to predict this. The reason, I think, is that the polls don’t ask one vitally important question: how likely is it that you’ll actually show up on voting day. I can totally buy that people just assumed that Telegdi would win so they didn’t have to bother to vote.

Turns out it doesn’t work that way.

The people who wanted Peter Braid to represent them really wanted Peter Braid to represent them. About 5000 people who said they wanted Telegdi in polls didn’t show up for the only poll that matters. Voter turnout across the country hit an all-time low.

So congratulations, Mr Braid, on a hard-won victory.