Dot Com Pho – Day Trip Edition
I recently had a few things to take care of in the Vancouver area, and had a credit with my favourite airline Westjet that needed to be used. So hi ho, hi ho, it was off to the wet coast (or left coast, depending on how you look at it) I went on Saturday. But I couldn’t make a stop in the GVRD without meeting up with everyone for Dot Com Pho.
Using the power of Twitter, we set up a meet-up at Pho Lan in Richmond. The crew included Stephen Fung, Ed Lau, John Chow, his wife Sarah, his daughter Sally, and Jennifer Unruh from Citrus Pie. We then proceeded to poke fun at Vancouver-based hippie feel good conference Northern Voice, discuss Twitter as the newer better IM system, and point out the foibles of doing business in Richmond. Oh and the Pho was pretty good too. Check out the video below.
Writer’s Block Begets Linkage
Even the best of us face the what is essentially the worst enemy of people in writing based professions; writers block. Scott Ramsoomair, in his latest comic over at VG Cats, sums it up pretty succinctly.
It’s been a long running gag amongst fans of this web comic that though the site title says Updated Mondays, it rarely follows such a strict posting schedule. Now Scott has his own reasons for this, and some of those include cases of writers block. Since I’m experiencing the same thing right now, I figured I’d take a queue from Scott and look for inspiration elsewhere, amongst the blogs of people who actually managed to recently produce real content.
Our first stop is as star studded as it gets, with a look at Leo Chiang’s blog. Though mostly noticed for his background role on Battlestar Galactica, his resume does seem to be getting bigger. Well the man with the tattoos finally managed to sit down and relax after a hectic shooting schedule. He reviews the latest Starship Troopers direct to DVD release, and has a couple favourable things to say about it. That’s good, cause the last one was just terrible.
From star studded to those hoping to be studs and stars, we take a look at what’s going on with Stephen Fung. Aparently with a lack of anything to do, he decided to start slinging around some pig iron in the hopes of being sparta-ized. I can’t really make fun of him, because even though I could probably bench press him, I doubt I could pull off what he pulled off. Must be the power of the Asian Squat, which my white ass is entirely to top heavy to do.
Finally we turn to Michael Kwan, who is flexing a muscle of a different kind (his fingers…for typing…you sick buggers) while he is staying here in the great white north of Alberta. His latest post goes on about grammar, and more importantly the proper application of the colon and semicolon. I know of a few people that should read this post before being allowed to write anything else on the internet, but I guess I shouldn’t be casting stones whilst residing in a glass house.
Hopefully I will have some more stuff to post up here soon, and maybe I’ll even manage to finish some of the reviews that I have for Futurelooks. Either way, it’s going to be an interesting month.
Dot Com Pho – National Edition
I first heard about Dot Com Pho what seems like at least 100 years ago. It was in my early days with The Tech Zone, and I had heard about it only after leaving the Wet Coast for my home city of Edmonton. According to John Chow, it was this legendary meeting of Dot Com peoples from around the Lower Mainland. They got together every week for lunch and talk of tech.
It was never as serious as it sounds though. Those who have been around John, Stephen Fung, Michael Kwan, Ed Lau, and the rest know that the last things these guys can pull off is "serious." Myself and many others got to witness their serious-deficient ways in the first ever video of Dot Com Pho. Now, through the magical internet box, I get to join in on this meet up of goof offs. Luckily I bring no additional sanity to the table. Only my enjoyment of good food and…interesting conversation comes with me.
This is only my second time having Pho, so I’m still a little rusty with how to consume the wonderful soup. However, while Michael makes his home here in the land of sun and cold, I’m sure you’ll see a fair bit more of me in future videos. Perhaps a Dot Com road trip is in order for the Vancouver team. Besides our women are more beautiful (Ed I’m talking to you), and our streets are more easy to navigate.
One Big Chocolate Bar
Peer pressure brought about what is my first food post. Recently whilst walking through our local Costco, my friends and I saw this HUGE Toblerone (wiki) bar on sale. Apparently it was the post easter, post any-other-holiday-you-give-candy, we must get rid of this sale. Everyone was busy thinking what the hell you would do with such a huge candy bar. I was busy counting my cash.
Now spur of the moment purchases like these are the type of insanity we usually reserve for John Chow, especially in the purchase of extremely large stuffed polar bears. But I was under pressure to be the go to guy in this crazy endeavour. Now I’m left with the above chocolate bar sitting on my living room table. I’ve pictured it with the Guitar Hero Wii controller. You…know for size comparisons.
If your curious exactly how much chocolate such a bar is…well…here you go. That’s almost 10 lbs of chocolate, for those of you still using your archaic pounds to measure. Now I’m left asking myself what the hell I’m going to do with this mammoth slab of chocolate. I couldn’t possibly eat it; at least not in it’s pure form. Perhaps I’ll have to give it to someone I know who likes baking. They’ll make it into cookies or something.
Dell Closes Edmonton Call Centre
Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) today has announced that they are closing their Edmonton call centre, effectively putting 1,200 Edmontonians out of a job. This was further confirmed today by the Edmonton Economic Development Corp, which stated that it had been told the call centre located in the Edmonton Research Park will be closing permanently sometime between May and the end of July.
This is the second closure announcement in a week for the 2nd largest PC builder. It was only Tuesday that Dell announced that they were cancelling a 1,200 employee expansion to their Ottawa location and reducing the current workforce of 1,500 by an unspecified number.
The two Canadian call centres were originally opened in an effort to curtail problems with overseas customer service, product issues, and declining profit margins due to intense competition. During a tour of the Edmonton location in late 2006, Michael Dell was even asked by The Edmonton Journal if Canadian labour could compete against overseas workers.
“The reason we are here in Edmonton and in Ottawa is because we need skills…What’s important to us is that our customers get the best experience from anywhere in the world. We found that support teams here have a better track record of helping the customer,” Dell said. This is in contrast to the statement released today with the closure announcement.
“Differentiating Dell through superior service and support remains one of the company’s primary strategic priorities and we appreciate the role our talented Edmonton team has played in this effort,” said Dave Vanden Bosch, Dell’s Edmonton site leader.
Employees affected by the closure are being offered other jobs at the company, or severance packages and career placement services. The jobs being lost in the closure will be moved to other locations.
For more information, check out the Edmonton Sun article.
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