The World Economic Forum rated Canada’s banks #1, against the US at #40 and Britain at #39. The interesting story is at Time.com.
That said, I still hate them all for their ridiculous policy of wanting to charge me for the privilege of letting them use my money to make money for their shareholders. My savings go to Coast Capital, thank you very much.
Nice.
Don’t know about you but I’ve got CNN simmering in the background while I work. I’m not American. I don’t live in the States. I am aware that the next twelve hours or so will change their country and the rest of the world with it.
McCain has commanded a fairly old school style political campaign. This was my big disappointment with Hillary, as well. She started strong but slid back into the usual cycle of rhetoric and opponent slagging. I don’t believe she would have made a good president, not compared to Obama, and I’m not sorry she’s gone. Along with her plan of giving everyone $400 to stave off the recession. You can see now what a useless gesture that would have been.
What set Obama apart for me, what I think has inspired the country, is that he does not subscribe to that mentality. He speaks, for the most part, of ground-level, common sense ideas. It’s a simple message: “The system is broken, and I can fix it.” That’s not a revolutionary message in and of itself, but the difference is that it does not sound like rhetoric. I think he knows what the rest of us know, and he’s actually willing to do something about it. That’s new. It bugs me a little that he has styled his more flowery oratory after MLK, but I can hardly blame him. People tend to emulate those who inspire them.
What bugs me most about the GOP campaign is their brittle smugness. With straight faces they freely bludgeon the truth and act like they’re letting us in on the secret. In an age where facts can be checked in about the same time it takes to type it into Google, those tactics are just stupid. If they are counting on voter ignorance then they are stating bluntly that they really believe YOU are stupid. Are you stupid?
Whether they do the country good or not, THAT is completely unacceptable for me.
This is a big day. Politically speaking, one of the biggest ever.
For most of the last year I’ve been parked on one of several couches, editing or mixing sound, creating music, creating or managing websites, writing, editing photos, creating graphics and editing a book. I know I’m missing a job title or two, but that’s been the bulk of it. Mostly I’ve been in Vancouver, but about two months of that has been in Manhattan. My work days normally last from between 8 & 10 straight through midnight or 2am. Sometimes I will take the day off and do almost no work at all on Saturday, but usually I keep working straight through the weekends. It has not been easy. Honestly, my lower back is kinda trashed and I have to plan my diet pretty carefully so I don’t overflow the couch. Thomas, the cat, has been my closest friend. My wife is on the other side of the continent when she’s not flying and if I’m very lucky I see her for an average of about three days out of thirty. When I do see her, she has to share me with work.
That said, I still brag to anyone who will listen that I have the greatest job. It’s pretty rare that anyone can argue. Most people hate their jobs– if not to the point of loathing then at least they will go on at length about the job they’d rather have.
Almost all of my report cards, from elementary school right through grade 10 or 11, detail mysterious founts of potential I evidently hinted at, if ONLY I would apply myself. All the things I was made to feel guilty about– the sketching and the music and the endless hours wasted reading and writing and messing about with computers– all that creative thinking that wasn’t “on task”… well, now it’s paying the rent, so screw you, system! I play with my favourite toys ALL DAY LONG.
Back on the other hand, I spend the great majority of my waking hours thinking about work. I was in New York for a month and only used my camera on one day. My world is pretty small. I rarely even think of updating my own blog. I believe I have a regular readership of two where it used to be about a hundred. The high point of the week is Friday, when as often as not I will meet Jayme and Matt et al for a badly needed pint. And human conversation. There are days when the only words I speak out loud are to the cat. It’s not so bad. He does chat back and his sense of humour keeps up with mine.
All this is focused toward the move to New York, to a wife and a waiting job, and, in the not to distant future, the beginning of real work on our first feature. The more I find out about the film industry, the more I know I can do it. By far, the greatest advantage most of those industry folk have over me is their connection to other industry folk. The way I figure it, if we can produce a full-length marketable feature on our own, and maybe sell a script or two, meeting those influential industry folk should be a gimme. I’ve already proven to myself several times that I can succeed outside the system, so I really don’t see why this time should be any different. I’m cocky that way.
I live out of suitcases in two different cities. My home base is not my own space. My income strictly covers my cost of living and I spent most of the year away from my wife. It’s not a life I could actually recommend to anyone. Maigen and I were on thin ice and though I feel we’re better now, we’re not home free. I need to get local with her.
You are probably getting the idea. The circumstances are sucky but I love my job. I’m going to make movies for a living. That’s pretty neat for a daydreamer who relentlessly refused to tap his potential.
I hear that Fox is the only station under the impression that McCain made a better case than Obama.
Does any woman out there believe that a vote for Palin is a vote for women? Please speak up.
It just occurred to me– the reason behind the absurd new Windows ads. In a laughably shameless ripoff of the “Hi, I’m a Mac” ads, Microsoft would have us believe that Windows will give you “Life Without Walls.” I say shameless because they would hardly start apologizing now. They’ve ripped off every successful Apple innovation since the desktop GUI. Well, to be fair, Apple stole the mouse from Xerox in 1979 before Microsoft stole it in 1983.
At any rate, Windows runs like a bloated warthog: fat, sweaty, and fated to ruin your day if you happen to sit down in front of one. That’s why PCs have to use the absolute fasted, most efficient hardware available. If they tried to use the hardware Macs use (and still easily win races with), they’d barely get out the gate. Recently, however, MS announced they’d be dropping some of the default apps for Windows 7, and moving toward smaller updates rather than sweeping Service Packs.
The ads don’t mention this move. In fact, the ads are completely without substance. All you get is “I’m a PC,” and the grandiose promise that Microsoft is in some way bestowing upon us mortals the miracle of… no walls? This leads me to believe they are going to throw themselves into the race with Google to get off the desktop and onto the web. Seems almost foolhardy when the mighty Goog started the race long ago with Google Docs, Gears, and now Chrome, not to mention the mobile web with Android. Google Desktop already offers to integrate searches of the web with your computer, so you can find stuff no matter where it is, even if you use bass-ackwards Internet Explorer. Google’s implied plan, without coming right out and saying it, is to free us from Windows. From Microsoft, if you will.
And now MS seems to have made the decision to try, somehow, to catch up with the mighty Goog. By first taking stuff away. Hmm. And this promise of Life Without Walls…. Am I the only one who sees this as an ominous threat? I likes my privacy.
Leave my walls right where they are, thank you very much.
Seems to me that between Apple and Google (and gutsy ol’ Firefox), MS is getting desperate. As it bloody well should.
oh beer. I can’t stay mad at you.
Back in NYC! This should be a really good trip. Here for a month, after being gone for less than three weeks, it’s like the bed was still warm. I likes the NYC.
Now that I’m shooting more & more in RAW the limitations of jpeg are starting to drive me nuts. You don’t notice so much for shots like this one, where you’re capturing a moment in life:
And this one:
And this:
No problem showing what you’re trying to show:
But then you get something like this:
…and the intense, living GLOW is washed away.
Man. That sucks. It’s like going back to Bud after tasting… just about any other beer. Bad example. Like going from LCD back to CRT. Never mind. Point is that going from millions of colours to just a bunch is… a big loss. Moving on, then.
Stoopid jpegs. Anyway, another thing to complain about while grinning is all these hundreds of really, really great shots that I can’t post for at least six months and probably never. Or at least until I get clearance from Redken. If that happens. I recently heard of a clearance costing twenty thousand dollars. No, wait… that was for Redken to get permission to use a photo. Maybe I’m in the right line of work after all. I’m definitely having fun with the job.
So for now you & I have to settle for fun shots that don’t show so much, especially the models’ hair, at least until the product launches. Could be worse. Meanwhile four of us took a steadicam rig for a walk around Manhattan, which was both more fun and exactly as much of a pain in the ass as it sounds.
It was fun, though. The fun parts.
Apparently Chris looks like the lead from a very popular punk band. Which would clearly explain why a steadicam rig was spinning around him on the Brooklyn Bridge. But not the lack of dancing girls. Or maybe it does.
I love my job.