Mark Roseman's Blog

CHI Not?

Had been thinking of going to the annual CHI conference this year, since it's in Montreal. It would mainly have just been to see some people anyway, but after taking a brief skim through the advance program, I'm thinking maybe not. Just not a lot of things that really would be of too much interest to me (even the courses, which are basically free as part of the registration now). I'm sure there's a lot of people who would be interested, but...

Small Town.

Well, ok, city. Were looking at houses again yesterday and are putting an offer in on another one... a extremely well-finished three year old custom infill a few streets from the river near downtown (and also a short walk to Homewood... something we didn't think we'd end up doing; the house itself is also quite different than the type of place we were looking for, but would work really well nevertheless).

Pauline talked to one of her coworkers who lived a few streets away (a fair number of Homewood folks live in that general vicinity), who happened to know someone who lived on that street, who along with some other people that they knew, provided us a pretty good "background check" on the immediate vicinity along with all the necessary neighborhood gossip. Long term residents of small cities can be scary who and how much they know.

Canadian Politics.

Failing the Liberals getting Ralph Klein extremely drunk in front of a TV camera, looks like a change of government next week. Nobody will be too sad to see a thorough house-cleaning in the Liberals of course, and most hope it goes far enough. The Conservatives definitely deserve credit for a surprisingly strong and well-orchestrated campaign. I'm hoping it doesn't generate a strong majority government, or if it does, that they are focused on the need to get elected again in the future, and so don't do anything too stupid. It should make for some entertaining stories, as it's been a small miracle that anyone could keep the muzzle on some of the more outrageous neocon nut jobs in the party this long. Not that that, or the inevitable petty and self-righteous responses, will help raise the level of discourse or respect in politics here anytime soon, alas.

House Hunting.

Slim pickings right now in Guelph for the type of house we're looking for, unfortunately. We've looked at a few, and there's a few more quite nice ones, but way too close to the hospital for comfort. We actually tried to get one that would have been great, but it already had a conditional offer on it that the other buyers firmed up (looked at it one morning, flew to Edmonton that afternoon, and were faxing offers back and forth that evening.. busy day).

Thought about building, but decent lots for small custom builders are hard to come by (and for the hassle, at this point our preference is that we'd rather buy than build anyway). Unlike K-W, Guelph actually does a really good job of managing growth in an intelligent and much more sustainable way.

We'll keep an eye on the market for the next little while anyway...