Graham Ballantyne

I want to buy a home. Really, I do. Maybe one day the real estate market will come back to something approaching normalcy, but for now I’ll continue forking over $750/month to a very nice lady for our one-bedroom condo. And on days like today, I’m glad that’s the case.

I went into the kitchen last night as I was heading to bed and noticed a rather large puddle on the floor. It was pretty late and I had to get up early to head out paddling in Deep Cove, and I figured it was just water from the cats’ fountain so I mopped it up with a towel and headed off to dreamland.

Fast forward to this morning. I got up, shut off the alarm (forget Sunday shopping laws, they should enact Sunday alarm clock laws), stumbled towards the laundry room to get my paddling clothes out of the dryer and momentailry paused while my sleep-deprived, daylight saving hating brain tried to parse the cold, wet sensation coming from my feet. A rather large, muddy (thanks to stray clay cat litter on the floor) puddle greeted me. In the kitchen: a similarly large, not-so-muddy counterpart. The kitchen and laundry room have a common wall; water was coming in to the kitchen from under that wall.

I phoned my landlady, who in turn called the property management company, who in turn called a plumber. I poked around and investigated while I waited for him to show up; my theory was that a pipe in the wall was leaking. Once the plumber arrived and managed to knock a couple of holes in the laundry room drywall with his Leatherman’s saw (while muttering under his breath about someone not returning his drywall saw) my theory was confirmed; the cold-water pipe for the washing machine was dripping in the wall, right where it passes through a doubled-up stud. Here’s a crappy illustration:

Plumber #1 got another, more urgent call (pfft, backed up sewage drains are more urgent than my drippy pipe?) and honestly, he probably would have been here all day hacking away with his 3-inch long Leatherman saw, so he called for backup and took off. Plumber #2 arrived an hour or so later (fully kitted out with all manner of saws, I might add) and started enlarging the hole around the problem area. Almost as soon as he started poking around the problem area, the drip turned into a heavy stream. Some quick action by Chris-not-Joe the plumber had the stream back to a steady drip. We MacGruber’d up a funneling system with a plastic bag and a bucket — something resembling a SFU Facilities Mismanagement repair job — and Chris packed up his tools; they’ll come back tomorrow to finish the repair when it isn’t double-time rates.

Water was still seeping into the kitchen so I did what any self-respecting man would do: grabbed a hammer and made the hole in the wall even bigger. Some regigging of the drainage system resulted in this masterpiece:

The building restoration folks are here now removing baseboards and setting up fans and dehumidifiers — shades of a few years back when a pipe in the bathroom ceiling leaked. The laundry machine and a whack of insulation are sitting out in the hallway. Fun times.

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Take a look at three people around you. Odds are, one of you will die from cancer. It’s a scary thought, right? Not as scary as the thought of what those odds might have been as close as ten years ago, but thanks to the efforts of folks like those at the BC Cancer Agency, the odds are getting better all the time.

The is an epic two day, 300km bike journey from Vancouver to Seattle from June 20-21. Riders collect donations with all funds going to the BC Cancer Foundation. This is where you come in.

I’ve committed to raising at least $2500. It sounds like a big number, and it is. I need your help in two ways.

1. If you can, please sponsor me. Whether you can give $10 or $1000, every dollar counts. You can donate in one shot, or spread your contribution over 2-10 monthly payments. Donations over $10 are tax-deductible. You don’t have to be a Canadian, either; donations from the US are also welcome (and a good deal right now — $100 CAD is only $77 USD).

2. Spread the word. Tell your friends and family. Link to this post, to my fundraising page or to my Flickr entry. Tweet about it. Post about it on Facebook, MySpace or whatever the social network du jour is. Heck, get on your bike and ride along. There’s rides in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec as well; visit conquercancer.ca for more info.

Cancer affects us all. I’m doing my part to kill it; won’t you join me?

Thank you.

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It started with a single Tweet:

My wife was away having a girls-night with her step-sister and step-mother and I’d already spent the day at home while construction workers removed my patio door, did something construction-y with it and reinstalled aforementioned door, so I figured a evening out was well deserved. I spent some time browsing Apple’s movie trailer site and initially settled on Valkyrie, the Tom Cruise flick about the “good” Nazis. I mean, who doesn’t love a good Nazi movie, right?

Rob’s a co-worker and a fine human being, so his suggestion of Gran Torino  seemed good enough to me. I hopped over to the Festival Cinemas website to see if it was playing at my favourite little theatre, the Fifth Avenue (Fifth is great – only three screens, decent prices, good popcorn and a really good coffee shop just around the corner). I saw the little movie poster, clicked through to the showtimes page and sure enough, playing at 7:00pm. I hopped in the car and headed out towards Kitsilano.

By the time I got there and parked, it was coming up on 7:00 and there was a huge line outside the box office.  As I queued for my ticket, an employee kept coming out and announcing that most of the films had sold out. He never mentioned Gran Torino, however, so I stayed in line. I finally got to the crappy ticket machine (seriously, fix that debit card reader why don’tcha?) and… what’s this? Gran Torino isn’t listed.  Hmm. Thinking that maybe it had sold out as well, I walked over towards the box office and looked up at the marquee – nope, not there either.

That’s right, boys & girls. I was in the completely wrong place. I somehow missed the big purple text that said “Now Playing at The Park Theatre” on the showtimes page. You know, I’m an educated man. I have a university degree. Granted it’s in geography, so that may explain how I was able to navigate myself to what I thought was the correct place, but not how I suddenly forgot how to read.

I wandered around the corner to Elysian Coffee, drowned my ineptitude in an espresso and a mini oat (rathole: Elysian’s mini oat cookies? To die for. They make being an idiot totally worth it.) and considered my options. I’d already paid for two hours worth of parking, and dammit, I was going to get my $2.00 worth. I didn’t want to go home, because that would mean I’d have to explain myself to the cats, and they’re not very understanding of such matters (or of anything, really). Also, $2.00! I also couldn’t sit in the coffee shop for two and a half hours because that’s a lot of coffee, even for me. I ambled on over to the Chapters at Broadway & Granville and used a Christmas gift card to pick up Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital. I’d heard an interview withthe author on the Net at Night podcast with Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur, liked his ideas and whished to subscribe to his newsletter.   I haven’t cracked it open yet save a cursory glance whilst in the store, but I’ll report back once I’ve read it.

At last, I made it to The Park on Cambie. Nice neighbourhood, now that they’ve put the street back together. I parked (for free, natch), grabbed my ticket & popcorn and waited for the 7:00 showing (the one I was supposed to be at) to vacate the single theatre. Note to future patrons: if it’s a back-to-back showing and there’s people hanging around the doors while you’re leaving, please don’t loudly discuss the end of the movie. Thanks.

Not to worry, Robert. While it certainly wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen, it was pretty good. I won’t spoil it for you (unlike those 7:00 dicknoses). Clint Eastwood was good; he had some great dry comedic lines and some even better silent glares (in only the way Clint Eastwood can glare). It was a bit predicable in places, but otherwise I highly recommend it. Just make sure that you check the listings carefully before you go.

I retreived my car and headed home. It felt a bit odd driving down Cambie towards Marine Drive; the rear end was a bit sluggish and it kept pulling. I had planned on stopping at a gas station to check the tire pressure when, as I turned onto Marine, FWAP GRR GRR FWAP FWAP GRUMBLE GRUBLE started coming from the back of the car. I pulled over as soon as it was safe to do so and evaluated the damages: a fat-as-a-pancake rear-right tire.  My snow tires, in fact (interesting fact: my car, a 1999 Subaru Outback wagon, had snow tires mounted when I bought it in July 2007. Some research turned up that it had spent it’s previous life up north, which also explains the heated seats, mirrors, wiper, block heater and gun rack). Bah. I mounted the donut spare and crawled home. Note to fellow Subaru owners: always carry a spare fuse so you can throw the car into FWD if you have to use the donut or need to be towed. I couldn’t do that until this morning. Oops. I probably could have pulled an unimportant one, like for the airbags or something.

So, that’s my night, as reported on the Twitter. Oh, and if you’re driving through south Vancouver late at night, watch out for the coyotes.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a first date, but I imagine it and the proverbial first blog post have much in common. There’s the awkward conversation, the long pauses, the constant fear that you’ve got spinach stuck in your teeth. Does she like me? Am I rambling too much? Will I get lucky tonight? Yeah, pretty much the same thing.

Ahem.

Hi there. My name is Graham, and welcome to my website. You may be wondering, “who the hell are you?”, and that’s a fair question. I mean, really, when it comes down to it, who are any of us? It’s an age old question, one of self, of introspection, of…

Right. The rambling. Sorry.

So, like I said, I’m Graham. By day I’m a not-so-mild-mannered “systems consultant” in the Institutional, Collaborative and Academic Technologies group of IT Services at Simon Fraser University. That’s a long-winded way of saying that I get to work on some cool stuff with a group of really great and smart people. My current pet project is SFU Blogs, a pilot project to provide a campus-wide blogging service (WordPress, of course) for SFU departments, faculty, courses, services and projects. I also work on and provide support for such fine hypertext services as SFU Wikis and SFU Connect.

Outside of work (if you listen to my wife, there’s no such thing), I’m a cyclist, photographer, husband, cat herder, Scouter, hiker/camper/kayaker/canoeist and general outdoorsey guy. I like to cook, I’ve recently taken up baking bread and I drink far too much coffee. I’m a big fan of independent Canadian music, the Mother Corp and  movies that don’t get played at the local megaplex. I’m a Mac, right down to the insipid jeans, hoodie and Chucks.

I’ll be honest – long-form writing isn’t one of my most favourite things. You’re far more likely to find me posting bite-sized nuggets of wisdom (or wise-assery) over on the Twitter, or photos on Flickr. I have no real idea what I’m going to do here, but I invite you to figure it out along with me.

HELLO.

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