It seems I’ve fallen behind on my blogging duties lately! I said it wouldn’t happen and here I am, in the same old predicament as before. In my defense, I am working two jobs. My record was 42 days in a row of work but then I had to do the Sun Run on April 17th so I took a couple of days off. Not that I enjoy this though – I look forward to my next opportunity to sleep in, which looks like it will be the May long weekend since I do not work early for a change, but rather late.

My new job as a customer service rep (and recently also project manager) at Vin65 is going well. It seems I have more than enough work to do every single day and I get to do the things I love. I still miss the crew at Netgenetix a ton, but I’m slowly getting used to the new one here at Vin65 too.

On the other hand, I have my weekend job at McDonalds, still ongoing. For a long time, despite the things that frustrate me, I’ve considered McDonald’s a fairly smart corporation that teaches its employees better work ethic as well as leadership and customer service skills. Recently though, it feels like they’re going downhill.

A new type of service technique called Global Front Counter has just been introduced at my restaurant and is being rolled out to many restaurants across the nation. Part of this new service technique involves having one crew member simply taking orders and a second crew person just gathering the food – the order taker is never allowed to move away from their till so that they are always ready to serve customers when they come in the door. This DOES make serving customers faster, no doubt, however there is one small flaw for low-volume restaurants. This has to be implemented at all times.

So this means that even when there are no customers in the restaurant the order taker cannot move from their till, not even to stock up or clean where they still have the front counter in view. This means they have only one small area to clean, which is within arms reach of their till. Trays are to be cleaned in the lobby and not be on the counter, so that scratches that secondary duty as well. This past weekend the girl on front counter was bored to tears and was not allowed to do anything away from her till (or the other managers got mad at her) – her receipt printer was sparkly clean and everything within arms reach had been cleaned 10 times over. Even if I am working drive thru by myself and have 10 cars waiting for food and front counter has no customers in sight, she is not allowed to help me because she would be abandoning her till.

What kind of work ethic does that teach? Learn some practicality here people.

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I love this recent blog post from Seth Godin called Pricing Power. It got me thinking about worth.

We’d all like to think that we’re worth a certain amount of pay and perhaps for different reasons. It’s hard to tell how much you’re really worth sometimes when there’s nothing to challenge your thinking and perception. For the longest time I figured I was worth a good salary because, although I might not have as much experience as the next candidate, I’ll put my blood, sweat, and tears into my work along with loyalty and doing anything that will help the company grow and prosper. Most of all, because I work hard and I do whatever I can to exceed your expectations.

So if I’m not worth as much as I believe, then what am I worth? And how do we go about finding out what our true worth is? And the ultimate question too, who’s willing to pay for it?

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Canadians are robbed blind by the high cost of the things they pay for. We pay more for food, alcohol, gasoline, clothing, and telecommunications than many other countries, especially the United States. This is one of my biggest peeves about Canada – maybe we’re just too nice, that we just take what they give us without a fight.

I for one, though, will not take internet metering lying down.

The CRTC just decided to let your Internet Service Provider put a meter on your Internet.

Bell Canada and other big telecom companies can now freely impose usage-based billing on independent Internet Service Providers (indie ISPs) and regular consumers. Big Telecom companies are obviously trying to gouge consumers, control the Internet market, and ensure that consumers continue to subscribe to their television services.

This means we’re looking at a future where ISPs will charge per byte, the way they do with smart phones. If we allow this to happen Canadians will have no choice but to pay more for less Internet.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO STOP INTERNET METERING

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Being a leader is…
• being a positive example for others
• being able to walk in others shoes and see things from a different point of view
• being understanding
• being patient
• being calm under pressure
• knowing how to communicate effectively
• having confidence
• having direction and ambition
• being receptive to ideas and feedback
• being able to motivate and inspire

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It’s been quite a while since I’ve written here, but it seems Thanksgiving always leaves me with something to write about and a tad extra time to do so.

I find that there really are two starts to every year – the obvious traditional January 1st and the start of Fall. With the beginning of fall we get not only the back-to-school frenzy, but also the return of your favourite TV shows, Thanksgiving, and HOCKEY!

Seeing as that I had a few extra moments of time this Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to combine two of my loves to create a masterpiece. My love of Apple comes together with my love and loyal dedication for the Vancouver Canucks in this lovely iPhone wallpaper (which I’m more than happy to share I might add). If you click on the image you’ll be able to save the actual size version for use on your own iPhone.

On my travels this weekend I’ve also found another great gem in the city of Vancouver. The following house is quite amazing the way it’s been built and designed. I’d live there! Every time I drive past it I half-expect to see some dwarfs filing out the front door. Come on, can you blame me?

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It sure has been a while since my last real post. I sure do miss blogging on a regular basis, however it’s just been far too busy these past few months to even think about anything but work at Netgenetix. Where I left off in October we had just started ramping up for some Olympic projects at work. We ended up doing quite a bit of work considering the small size of our company (thus little resources). A summary of our work for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics:

• • Olympic and Paralympic Torch Relays
  • 8 Personal Video Message Terminals
• • BC Canada Pavilion
  • 3D Immersive Theatre in the Green Room
  • 3 Glass Touchwalls in the Green Room
  • 2 E-Postcard Terminals in the Green Room
  • Introduction Touch Screen Content for the Green Room
  • CIRS Building Touch Screen Content for the Green Room
  • Project Management of the New Media Room (with interactive touch screen cubes)
• • Canada’s Northern House
  • 2 Personal Video Message Terminals
  • Green Screen Interactive Terminals
• • Robson Square
  • “Front Page News” Newspaper Kiosk

Personal Video Message Terminals are kiosks you walk up to and record a video on. The ones on the torch relay were used to record videos in each community on the relay that would be played in Robson Square during the Games. The e-postcard version used at the BC Pavilion took a snapshot of you in the Pavilion that you could add a message to and send to family and friends via email with a message. If you were there, you probably saw one – so, what did they look like? or, I have a close up sexy photo.

The 3D Immersive Theatre showcased the fun things you can do in BC as the viewer follows a family on their vacation in the province. The theatre included not only 3D visuals, but wind effects, rumbles, and scents.

The Glass Touchwalls showcased four energy efficient companies in BC in a fun game-like format. The touchwalls are approximately 8ft tall clear glass with the interactive space at about chest level (for touch usability).

The Introduction Touchscreen simply showed you the different areas of the Green Room and a little bit about each area. For example, it would tell you where the Glass Touchwalls and the 3D Immersive theatre was. We supplied the illustrated graphics and text content.

The CIRS Building Touch Screen simply allowed you to view videos on how the CIRS Building was conceptualized and how it would be environmentally friendly. We supplied the illustrated interface to navigate these videos.

The New Media Room is the area of the pavilion which featured 3 large multi-touch cubes which allowed the visitors to wipe away layers of animation for such products as the Need for Speed video game as well as watch behind the scenes clips from movies like District 9. We provided the project management for this room. Watch the video featuring “The Curious Tree” cube.

A Green Screen Interactive Terminal is a booth you can walk into and record fun videos in front of a green screen to send to friends and family. It’s great fun and the videos to choose from can be customized by the venue or client using it. Watch a video of someone using it.

The Newspaper Kiosk was a fun free way for people in Robson Square to have their photo taken on the zip line, with the Olympics mascots, or in front of the GE Ice Plaza. It uses the same green screen technology as the Green Screen Interactive Terminal except it takes a snapshot as opposed to a video and presents you with a print out of your picture on the front page of the news. See some cool people in the Vancouver Sun.

Needless to say, we were quite busy and there was a lot of overtime worked, however it was quite the experience and I wouldn’t take it back at all. I loved being involved and working on something that was for a bigger cause.

In December, we had our annual Christmas banquet for Toastmasters and I performed speech project #10 – “inspire your audience”. So, in case you missed it, you’ll find the text version on my Speeches page under “Attainable Dreams”.

Now that the Olympics are done and my year of being President at Burrard Toastmasters is coming to an end, it may be time to take a step back and look at what’s coming down the path next.

Until next time, adios.

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