Twitter - signboards on steroids is all

"A way to think about Twitter", .my friend Richard Ford explained, "is that it is like a bunch of tiny radio stations all broadcasting at the same time. You can tune in to whatever you want to listen to. This helps, but I'm,also thinking it is becoming like those ubiquotous sign boards that are used for advertising businesses, community organizations, and churches. Yes, there is a church in my neighbourhood that I pass regularly and they always have one of those smarmy cute little sayings about life or god or something or other. Some of them are pretty good and get you thinking, but for the most part they're just advertising. These boards only have a few lines to grab your attention and deliver the message. Hmmm - I wonder if this is where 140 comes from?

Monetize at all cost?

I know this is a "free" service and they need to figure out a business model that works. Seriously though, ad insertion can be dangerous if the keywords mean something completely different in the context of the post.

Backyard Frolic

These two bandits showed up in out back yard around twilight and wrestled around for a good 45 minutes. They even came right up to the deck and kind of ignored us.

Disk Golf

http://www.kdgc.com/rosehill.htm This was a first for me. Much harder to throw than a frisbee, but good fun. Thanks to my friend Tom who at 60 has as much energy than Josh and Turner at 14.

The Sound of Freedom

Memories come flooding back of what the world felt like back in 1981 when I first heard the scream of the GE J79 jet engines from CF104 Starfighters roaring down the runway. In the bravado of the Cold War era we called it "The Sound of Freedom". It was a time when the Soviet Union was portrayed to us by our leaders as this unholy force that was hell-bent on ruining us. Standing by this pedestal outside Soellingen Germany in the fall of 2008 this sentiment seems more and more ridiculous as it gets buried by the passage of time and as we hear from other normal people who grew up on that side that they were told the same stories about us. The Rhine River valley is much quieter now than I remember when we were there playing our war games. Tractors plowing the asparagus fields paint a much more sedate landscape today. I can still imagine the distant echo of the sonic boom from the Mach 2 run I did with the test pilot a quarter of a century ago. Freedom sounds different today.

Hindi Punjabi Gospel Chapel - A Mennonite Bretheren Church??

This one caught my eye a few weeks ago when I was walking around in Surrey (near Vancouver). It seems that at least in some small neighbourhoods it is possible for us to all just get along. This example illustrates the general attitude that you feel in the Lower Mainland. Cultures from all over the world have converged here and although it is not always a comfortable coexistance for some, practical folk just seem to figure it out and get on with it. If you follow the news media though you'd get the impression that it is currently all about gangs from other cultures going around and shooting each other. I really don't think this is a fair representation, but I guess good news doesn't sell.

Duck, duck, snow!!

April Fools redux with snow falling when we got up this morning. Ducks everywhere in the streams, lawns, roads, flying, and perched on top of houses. I can hear the Ducks Unlimited folks quacking with joy!

Deer, deer, deer, deer, deer, deer, deer, deer, deer, deer, deer,

On my morning walk along Mount Royal Ave. looking down into downtown Kelowna with Lake Okanagan and the William R. Bennett Bridge in the backround. A herd of 15 (I counted them) deer. Very cool since this is only about 2km from my house.

It is not unusual to see deer along here, but I've never seen more than a few at a time.