Off Topic Archives - Dyck Knows

No Quarter

June 10, 2015 by K D

I spend a great deal of time in resistance. I push and I pull and so often against the grain. When will I find that persistent fluidity of movement, fluidity of thought.

It’s the hiccups that throw me for the biggest loops. Legs too tired to keep pedalling or running because I haven’t eaten enough. Surprise meetings at work that I have no preparation for. But there’s more than this. It runs much deeper than this. When the evening is so completely serene with it’s muddled and burnt orange sky far down the valley, why do I feel so distant?

Oddly, as base as it seems, I should probably have signed up for the 24 Hours of Adrenaline solo event. I think bearing down into something like that would appease what I miss.

a story from a friend

November 22, 2014 by K D

The skin between my toes has disintegrated, raw and stinging as sweat and miles of movement rub my toes against one another. The cold too, the cold doesn’t help. Running through snow is slow and as it continues to fall so will slowness. This can’t wait so hurry. Hurry.

When Jim first came to the camp he was kind of broken, but kind of fixing too. We used to say he was on the mend a heavy drinker for sure, and he had his scars for sure, but he seemed to be the one of us that would make it back, I’d have put my money on it.

When he first came to camp he told me stories of his family, how back home they had great dinners when his uncles killed a moose, of how they boated their way up the shores of Georgian Bay out of Midland, past Penetatanguishene, all the way up past Parry Sound and towards French River. They hunted up there, deer, sometimes moose if they were lucky, or a black bear, and would boat it all the way back down and drag the animals to the trucks waiting there at the boat launch. They’d be gone for days he said, and some years they’d miss a boat coming back smashed on the Canadian Shield and the boaters dead in seconds of the icy water of Lake Huron. He said he swam once after a boat smashed on the rocks and felt the water pull him in but his uncle grabbed him from another boat and dragged him over the gunwale and kicked him for losing an animal to the lake.

He told us too how his father used to touch him and his brother when they were kids, how his brother smashed his father’s skull in with a rock taken from the fire pit, his brother now in jail or out of jail and out of touch, he didn’t know. But his father was dead, and by the sounds of it that’s a good thing, but I never said nothing when Jim was telling his stories. We drank together to get him going, he’d be quiet at first but would get going when the liquor hit his belly and warmed him up. We got along fine but we were pretty much the only ones that did, and we kept quiet when there was work to do.

Once we had an American hunter from Michigan I think come up and hunt moose with us. This American had a chip on his shoulder and that didn’t go well with Jim. The American wanted Jim out of there but my dad told the American he had no right, and he didn’t. He told him to lose the chip on his shoulder and fuck off or go home to his wife without a moose. The American shut up after that and got his moose, but he didn’t tip at all. On his way out on the plane he gave us all the finger out of the window. Jim and I laughed which probably pissed him off even more my dad smacking us in the back of the head for showing disrespect. Jim and I got drunk that night on whiskey the American left behind, and Jim told me this one last story.

Jim’s dad was a trapper and a hunter just like Jim. They grew up in Kitchener but his dad never had any work. I guess his dad quit high school pretty early, and then his back gave out and he never had any manual work after that. But he was a hunter, so his wife back then grew a garden in the yard of the house they rented off welfare, and Jim and his dad would spend their days in the farm fields around Kitchener hunting what they could. Out of season they’d shoot ground hogs and coyotes and they’d eat them just like any other meat. In season Jim’s dad would hunt deer around the farm fields and later wild turkeys when they came back to Ontario. The conservation officers told him to shoot deer out of season because they saw him and his boy all the time with ground hogs and felt sorry for him, but Jim’s dad never hunted out of season.

The uncles wouldn’t have Jim’s dad up north. It seems they knew he was no good and left him be. It seems once he had his own kids he left the others alone, so the uncles left him alone and ignored him and ignored his kids until Jim’s dad got his head smashed in. The uncles stood up then, but Jim and his brother were already hurt and it was too late.

So now we’ve got a missing snowmobile, a missing bottle of whiskey, and a missing Jim. My dad’s snowmobile almost ran out of gas following the tracks so he turned back and told me to wait, but once he turned back I started to run along the tracks of the other snowmobile, the moon is up and I’ve got that light so long as the tracks don’t fill up with snow. I’ve been an hour running, no sound of a machine behind me or in front, just me running in the moonlight and all this fresh snow and cold, the cold coming in quick and my cheeks frozen with it. There’s a lake up ahead I know about, about an hour and half by foot so I’m close and I know Jim’ll be there all the way drunk on that whiskey and I’ll drag him back and leave the sled out there for tomorrow, but this is a long, long way, and the cold, the cold is coming in awful quick and the snow, it’s pretty heavy now and that track is filling in quick.

I know I’ll get to Jim just sitting out there on the frozen lake watching the stars. He’ll be drunk pretending like he doesn’t have a care and that’s why he’s drinking way out here by himself and drove his sled till the gas was out and drank himself silly. He’s a tough son of a bitch and he’ll be okay, he never hurt himself for real just talked about it a lot. He’s just a talker and me, my toes’ll warm up again and heal and Jim and I’ll be working the camp again in a couple of days after this cold is over.

Censorship

October 23, 2014 by K D

An annoying conversation has reared up in one of my professional circles, and what it amounts to is the constant need for some (read: IT leaders) to determine what is best for others (read: users). In other words, some kind of delusional professional choke hold on what is and isn’t appropriate for usage in the businesses they support. The old guard of IT still holds fast to ideas of control and restriction, of doling out resources and access to their businesses like a parent guarding Halloween candy from diabetic offspring. Those involved in this conversation are my peers and colleagues in the province, and many of them support some of the largest divisions here.

The argument is for a province-wide list of cloud services that are acceptable for use in the classroom. A list approved by IT leaders, signed off by boards who are listening to these IT leaders, and then put out there to further govern what teachers can and can’t offer in the classroom. There is some merit to this I suppose; the jury quite literally is still out on the ramifications of storing private student data in the USA, this litany produced by privacy lawyers and theorists is extensive. I suppose, if I were a parent I could maybe be slightly concerned about my kid’s data getting into the hands of Homeland Security or some nefarious uber-power, but it’s unlikely.

Think back to not too long ago when firewall appliances were encumbered by whitelisted URL lists and blacklisted URL lists. Think back to when some underling in IT sat in a server closet at headend literally typing in these URL’s or importing them from CSV files. Think back to the not too long ago when users weren’t allowed to install their own software for fear of licensing breaches or virus outbreaks. Think back to the not too long ago when a software install required a support ticket and the begging, pleading and hoping the request would be granted. Oh wait, this is still happening! It’s insanity.

Our schools are charged with the task of building better citizens. Of producing people who can think for themselves and solve complex problems and work out ethical issues all on their own. But still, IT tries to cripple the effort by determining in advance how this should be done. Do you see it? We’re asking teachers to teach kids, but don’t trust them to determine which tools to use. Do we really need to tell staff what’s good and safe on the internet?

Rather than spending resources on telling staff what is safe, allow them freedom of movement and thought and stand behind them if their choices do in fact bring the house down.

I’m blaming IT for this, but really the entire argument is the spawn of privacy and litigation lawyers. Still, it’s the IT leaders who are picking up the torch and burning down the village. The work of classrooms rarely contains trade secrets; rather it contains the ingenuity and creativity of youth that should be shared with the world. There is nothing sacred going on here that necessitates lock and key and the fear – oh, that fear – that student ideas and assessments are going to get into the wrong hands.

Sue Gardner recently did a keynote I was fortunate enough to attend. In that keynote she stated quite simply this: We can neither predict nor control what somebody will do with our stuff, so get over it. Amen. Let’s give the key to the safe to teachers and students. Let’s allow them the creative space to do what they need to do to prosper and do well. All IT needs to do is provide access to this great big, wonderful “OPEN” Internet of Things, and then get the hell out of the way so the actual business IT is supporting can do their jobs.

I’m a simpleton, this I know and yes this could very well end up with me getting sued or yarded up in front of the public someday to defend my leniency and wild-west style of management, but I just can’t subscribe to thinly veiled censorship. We’re not helping people by holding their hands and doing the thinking for them. Someday, somebody you don’t know or like WILL get hold of your stuff, so get over it.

Matter

September 26, 2014 by K D

The Kinnear Centre in Banff is an impressive building. If one’s surroundings aid one’s mood and thought, The Kinnear Centre should be a womb of innovation. I am at a conference hosted by Cybera, and the session is on developing a provincial solution for Federated Identity. Conceptually I understand it, but technically it’s well over my head. Still, I enjoy participating in the audience. It’s moments like these that drag my mind out of the footsoldier mentality usually required by my job, and into a more visionary arena. I like ideas more than action.

Out the window an aging facility janitor ambles by, his left hand carrying a tray of supplies, his right arm swinging to offset the weight that you would think would be routine after years of service. Clearly his body is breaking down, pain in his back or hip causing a limp, but his face reveals nothing. Not pain or joy, seemingly oblivious to the beautiful fall day in the mountains of which he is part, and definitely oblivious to the fact that behind the windows nearby a group of people is beginning to plan participation in a technology solution with global implications.

So I thought, “What does it matter?” How is any of this, other than providing those behind the window with an opportunity for intellectual masturbation, making the world a better place? How is any of this improving the lives of those outside? The discord between what was occurring inside the conference room, with our lofty ideas of how technology should work, and what was occurring outside – a man of seemingly blank ambition whose life would not change if the conference weren’t taking place – was stark. Were we “doing technology” just for the hell of it, or is this the seed of innovation?

I used to think that every technological change needed to have a business reason, that doing technology for it’s own sake was a waste of resources. But now I see these exercises as just that, exercise; something to spur on creativity, to make the mind fit and push boundaries. The opportunity to build teams around something that may or may not work. This is play, and it should be part of every job.

While that janitor at the Banff Centre may never know anything about Federated Identity (wildly presumptuous, I know), maybe one day it has an impact that he doesn’t fully understand. Maybe it helps his grandkids get into university. Maybe it helps him get the appropriate emergency care. Maybe it helps his wife plan that once in a lifetime trip they’ve always dreamed of.

Maybe doing something for it’s own sake, if done well and with passion, actually matters.

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