The courageous, honest and brilliant Laurie Kingston writes about her experience with depression and anxiety in response to the obituary Andy Jones and Mary-Lynn Bernard’s wrote for their son. My point in sharing all this is to let go of a bit of the shame and chip away a little
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cmkl: Special day statements: go big or go home. Why I say go home
I have to admit the one year moratorium on special day statements wasn’t my first idea about how to handle the burgeoning busy work of creating statements to mark the progress of the calendar.
Continue readingcmkl: Back in running shoes
My first bit of proper exercise since January 19th. Nathalie Belanger, the most excellent physiotherapist told me yesterday evening I was okay to “resume activity” unless I encountered pain. So tonight I got on my running shoes and went for 6.6km along the canal. It felt great. No pain. I
Continue readingcmkl: Flaherty’s legacy? Ideological, reckless and just plain lucky – Armine Yalnizyan
In the people’s republic of Chris, Armine Yalnizyan is finance minister. I really love how she dissects this “Jim Flaherty steady hand on the tiller” narrative that so many commercial media outlets are building now that he’s resigned. I love how she looks at the policies and their effects rather
Continue readingcmkl: Georgia spring break trip redux: Savannah, Okefenokee, Cumberland Island
A lot of Canadians think “Florida” when they think spring break. And we have done that. But this year, I was the grateful passenger on another Irene Jansen organized travel extravaganza to Georgia. Irene came through Georgia some years ago on a road trip to New Orleans and she wanted
Continue readingcmkl: Why I’d support a passenger bill of rights: two words United Airlines
It’s true there are much more serious problems in the world. Poverty, rape culture, climate change. But this morning I want to put that out of my mind and complain about a first world problem. Scene: August. My lovely partner is a planner. If ever she tired of her career
Continue readingcmkl: Comment trolls might just be NSA agents
Or CSIS, CSEC or whatever. Glen Greenwald (The Intercept) has this item on some of the Snowden docs which would seem to be a training manual on how to discredit targets online. See How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations. The item stops short of
Continue readingcmkl: Proof that special day statements are pointless
A cost benefit analysis of why we must have a one year moratorium on special day statements in the house of labour.
Continue readingcmkl: Hudak drops ‘right to work’ policy
CBC is reporting that Ontario PC leader Tim Hudak has dropped the mandatory representation, voluntary dues policy for union membership from his party program. It’s nice to know that he figures it’s so unpopular as to hurt his chances at being the next premier.
Continue readingcmkl: Supreme Court says ‘unions represent you, they have a right to talk to you’
The Supreme Court has ruled against a tax auditor who has spent the last thirteen years trying to keep her employer from giving her contact information to her union, Kathryn May reports in the Ottawa Citizen. I’m guessing it will take another thirteen years to undo the mess the various
Continue readingcmkl: For a moratorium on commemorative day statements
I think what pushed me over the edge is the UN’s International Day of Happiness. When I saw it I hoped I’d been pranked and that it wasn’t real. Alas it is.
Continue readingcmkl: In defense of web content, or “don’t give me your binder and ask me to put it on the internet”
Over a yummy lunch a couple of weeks back some colleagues and I were talking about web content. They’d been at a how-to workshop where the facilitator seemed to have got it in their heads that putting any more than 150 words on any given page was verbotten. “I like
Continue readingcmkl: Nikon AW1: So I have a new travel/tripping camera
The Nikon AW1. I like it. A GPS, waterproof, shock proof, with interchangeable lenses, 14MP resolution in a half pound package. Here are my observations, impressions and notes.
Continue readingcmkl: A minor tear in my right, outer meniscus
We expect. We hope. We being me and the awesome physiotherapist I saw today at the Carleton Sports Therapy Clinic. The meniscus is the donut-shaped bit of padding between the ends of the upper and lower leg bones that join at the knee.
Continue readingcmkl: There’s a credit union at Bank and Somerset again
Back when I moved to Ottawa in the early 1990s I did all my banking with one of the big commercial banks. I realized how wrong that was but what could I do? “But there’s the cutest, most friendly little credit union right at Bank and Somerset,” one of my
Continue readingcmkl: Ex-soldiers hold sit-in to protest Veterans Affairs office closure
I suppose if you’re used to facing gunfire, police removal isn’t so bad. Though I think it’s an embarassing shame for the federal government that the veterans are having to fight all over again. Ex-soldiers hold sit-in to protest Veterans Affairs office closure.
Continue readingcmkl: Pete Seeger is missing, but not really
Pete Seeger has died. It’s trending everywhere. Which in a sense is all the proof I need of my thesis. It’s heartening to see that a life well lived, an inestimable contribution to music and politics will carry on. Kinda like the songbook you know? Well, exactly like the songbook(s),
Continue readingcmkl: CBC’s saying Canada Post will start killing door to door delivery in early February
CBC Ottawa is reporting this morning. But doesn’t say where. Allow me to guess – no swing ridings, no otherwise vulnerable government MPs. Because superboxes suck. CPC spokesmuppet Jon Hamilton admits as much. I’ve said it before, Canada Post, even if you’re hell bent on getting rid of as many
Continue readingcmkl: Wiped out skating – there is an upside
At least you won’t have to put up with any more annoying running posts for a while.
Continue readingcmkl: What to do: Evernote database corrupt, application crashes attempting recovery
I am a sincere devotee of Evernote. I use it constantly, every day. So when it crashed on me and the local copy of the database was corrupted, my life really sucked. Evernote can detect a damaged database. And it duly offered me a shot at recovering it. But every
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