crows to burnaby

Monday I was working from home, and noticed with increasing frustration that the web server seemed to be crapping out repeatedly. It'd be up for several minutes, flake out again for a few, come back for a while, and finally it seemed to die for good. I try not to snark at my hosting provider right away - usually they already know if something's wrong and are trying to fix it, and they don't really need me to nag at them - but after an afternoon of interrupted work I finally called them up around 5:00pm. They said that the servers themselves were okay, but there was some kind of connectivity problem at the datacenter. They're based near Toronto, and the owner (a friendly guy) suggested that since I'm in Vancouver myself I could try giving the system a kick.

It took a few minutes on the phone before it dawned on me that maybe there was a connection between my server outage, and the news story I'd read only minutes before, about how there'd been a fire underground in the electrical system downtown, and most of Vancouver's business district had been without power since the morning. I asked "Uh, where exactly is that datacenter?" The owner said, "Something called... Harbour Centre?" "Yeah... yeah... that could be the problem."

I gather they're still trying to repair the damage to the power cables, but luckily enough the servers came back to life less than an hour after that conversation. Good thing, because I get a little twitchy when I can't check my email for a while.

Still, it amuses me that the power was out downtown for seven or eight hours before I even knew about it. I guess that's the drawback to freelancing... it's easy to get lost in your own little world.

BTW, if anyone's looking for web design and solid XHTML/CSS work, with a side salad of web accessibility, social network knowledge and copywriting capabilities, I am accepting new projects again. Portfolio and more info at outsideinthesun.com.

When you next feel like being lightly amused, please check out One Song Per Station, a fun little concept developed while the band was on tour and noticed the increasing tendency of radio stations to play fewer and fewer songs more and more often. We figured someone had to take it to the logical extreme - it's what the people want!

Anyways... enjoy.

As a fair-skinned, freckled, redhead who burns easily and is a textbook candidate for skin cancer, I was a bit disturbed to read about how useless or dangerous the vast majority of sunscreens apparently are. I'd heard rumours in the past that some ingredients in sunscreen cause more harm than good - this certainly seems to confirm it. Out of 952 products, the Environmental Working Group only identified 143 that were both safe and effective - and most of these are brands I've never heard of and wouldn't even know where to find.

This report comes just as it's finally become summer in Vancouver; with the exception of a few days when I wasn't HERE, it's barely broken the 20 C mark for months. Now it's prime beach season, finally safe to wear tank tops, shorts or skirts without worrying that I'll be chilly later on.

I guess I'll just keep up my habit of dodging the sun and hiding in the shade, and in addition to tracking down a safer sunscreen, will give some thought to longer sleeves and skirts if I think I'm going to be exposed to good ol' UV for any length of time. It's a bummer, but I'd rather maintain my pale Victorian complexion than end up with lobster-red alligator skin with potentially deadly repercussions.

To the lady who paused at a stop sign at Commercial Drive today long enough to shout at me, "I know it's not my place, but on a hot day like this that dog should be at home!", I would like to say the following:

1. That's exactly where we were going. (I did get to say that before you drove off, but I doubt you were listening.)
2. My dog cannot use the toilet. Wouldn't it be more cruel not to walk him?
3. Hypothetically speaking, what if it was really hot inside my apartment?
4. So you're offering us a lift home then? Mind some dog hair on your car seats?
5. No, it really isn't your place.

When I was a kid, I noticed over the years how every September, everything felt different. It mostly had to do with being immersed in a slightly different world; there was always a new teacher, and usually a few new kids, and even the others would have changed a bit since school let out. And the seasons were changing, and most of all, I would be in a totally different classroom with a different smell, different windows and views, lighting, decorations. New binder or backpack or pencil case, maybe. Different books, different schedule. In the rest of my life, maybe my piano lessons would be on a different day, or I'd have some new after-school activity that would start in the fall. Without being a dramatic change, everything felt like it had shifted somehow.

Of course, scent memory being what it is, I can occasionally encounter some smell that remains me specifically of grade 3 or grade 6 without really knowing why. I don't know what it is that differentiated the years so much, but every school year seemed like a strange rebirth from an old life I hadn't realized was going to end.

I hadn't really had that feeling in years, but it's exactly how I feel right now. At some point in my month away, it feels like I left the old scents and sounds behind, and I came home to find that a new year had started. I don't feel quite like I am who I was when I left. I feel like I cut free some of the things I might have been using to define me, and now that which I think of as "me" is more malleable and less concrete. New job, newly single, new life: I feel untethered and a bit adrift, and I like it.

And, strangely, everything smells different now, just like I'm starting a brand new school year.