Yikes! Less than a couple of weeks away now…

PAB2008 will be our second time attending Podcasters Across Borders, a podcasting conference organized by Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis of the Canadian Podcast Buffet (not to mention several other excellent podcasts — check them out, along with their fine stablemates at the Rogic Podcast Conglomerate), with plenty of help of their better halves, Cat and Andrea.

Now, I’m technically not a podcaster — OK, I do contribute occasionally to podcasts: I’ve turned up on some episodes of K’s podcasts, I’ve done some voice work for Sage Tyrtle on QN (latterly Quirky Nomads) and have participated in the inspired (and inspiring) ensemblecast The Talking Stick which Todd Tyrtle has recently launched. And I do usually have a hand in the production of K’s podcasts, but really, I’m not a podcaster per se.

I mean, based how sporadic my blog posts are, you’d be listening to one, maybe two podcast episodes a year… if that.

But I do enjoy contributing, I very much enjoy the production side of podcasting but most of all I enjoy the people whom I’ve met and gotten to know through podcasting.

And the relationships, the participation in the community that we’ve become a part of, in large part through attending PAB2007 last year, are sustained between in-person meetups by the vast array of social media tools and internet connectivity — twitter, FaceBook, blogs, email, Skype, webmeetings et al.

Damn, we live in interesting times…

Oh, dear… Auntie Beeb’s BBC News website feed today served me up this gem:

Great tits cope well with warming

What can I say…

Um, well…

How about: Benny Hill, Monty Python…

Which explains a lot about me…

If you do nothing else this week, go listen to these two podcasts:

• CBC’s Spark podcast Episode #35 - Mainly for Nora Young’s interview with podcaster, writer, musician et al Derek K. Miller of Penmachine; there is other interesting content as well, but do not miss this interview.  There’s a full version of the interview on Spark’s site.
• QN Podcast Episode “Gin, Television, and Social Suplus” from April 30th, 2008 - Sage Tyrtle reads a stop-you-in-your-tracks essay written by Clay Shirky of Here Comes Everybody.

Oh, and if you still happen to have an hour left over, go listen to the DicksnJanes podcast episode #149 wherein K, I and some friends and acquaintances from podcasting help The Scarborough Dude celebrate his 60th birthday this past weekend.  Happy birthday, Dude!

And while you’re at it why not go read Bob Goyetche’s excellent rant over the morphing/rebranding of Podshow into Mevio (WTF???  Just what kind of drugs were they on when they came up with that name?) - the comments are particularly worth reading.

When I was growing up in Toronto, we sometimes had the TV tuned to Buffalo’s Channel 7 (they were/still are the ABC affiliate there) and one of their “public service” type announcements that ran regularly between the end of prime-time and late-night programming was Irv Weinstein intoning “It’s 11 PM… Do you know where your children are?”.

With this latest headline on the BBC News website, you could paraphrase ol’ Irv by saying “It’s 11 PM on the Doomsday clock… Do you know where your warheads are?“.

Sigh…

The BBC News website reports that ” EU farmers to produce more milk“.  Now, I had always been under the impression that it was cows producing the milk, but I guess things have changed a bit in agribiz…

I’m sure there are plenty of you reading this that cringe at the thought of answering marketing surveys, giving businesses information about yourself that will let them sell more stuff to you, or at least to people who are like you.

I’m a bit ambivalent about it all, as I’m disinclined to help out most companies that are trying to market to me — I’m the kind of consumer who bases their purchases on sober reflection after thorough research, most of the time. Actively trying to convince me that I need to buy some company’s product that I wouldn’t otherwise even be thinking about buying just gets up my nose most of the time — there are exceptions, when occasionally I learn about a product that I haven’t been aware of that suits some need.

But I still do often fill out the surveys that you’re invited to participate in via a URL printed on the receipt from a store, or that get sent via e-mail after having responded to one of the former — and no, I’m not daft enough to respond to just any old survey invitation that arrives in my Inbox…

It’s the carrot of being entered in a draw that motivates me to respond. That and a slightly perverse sense of satisfaction in knowing that by answering honestly, I’m going to really mess up their demographics… you may have noticed my avatar here is a drawing I made of a square peg in a round hole. ‘Nuff said.

And I actually have won something (a fairly decent prize too, certainly worth the time it took) from filling in one of these surveys — could’ve knocked me over with a feather when it happened.

Anyway, the point of this post is actually a new survey invitation I received in my e-mail, from a company that I’ve responded to before. And usually there will be some statement about how long the survey should take to complete — generally a wildly optimistic i.e. short time, as in “this survey will take approximately 5-8 minutes to complete”.

Riiiight. And monkeys might fly out my butt… Usually about 15-20 minutes in and after 30 to 40 web pages of clicks with seemingly no end in sight, I’m alternately cursing myself (for having been sucked in) and the survey company (for having lied to me about how long it would take).

So when this latest invitation arrived, I nearly fell down ROTFLMAO — at last, a truthful survey invitation! Here’s what it said:

Thank you for taking the time to answer a Leger Marketing survey regarding Healthcare. Your cooperation would be greatly appreciated. This questionnaire should take you about 2400 minutes to fill out.

That’s my emphasis there… Diogenes, I think I’ve found your honest man.

So the BBC News website reports that “Bush insists US not in recession“.  This from the same lips that assured the world Iraq had WMDs out the wazoo to justify unilateral military action.

OK, just had to post about this headline that made me smile I found on the BBC News website today — seems that Microsoft aren’t content with just being a bunch of yahoos, they want to buy the eponymous company.

The ever interesting Walt Jaschek, author of the Walt Now blog, lead me to learn this about my blog:

Reading level courtesy of Critics Rant TV Reviews

Um, do I really write all that high falutin’?  Guess that explains my strong MEGO factor.

You know how we’ve become accustomed, in North America at least (where working in a retail service position is generally viewed as something you do until you get a real job — more about this below), to being served at “big box” stores by mindless drones with no real product knowledge or experience…

And yet… the unexpected sometimes happens. Twice now we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the knowledge and hands-on experience of the staff of the Michaels® crafts store in Waterloo.

Once was when K (aside: the link is to her new blog “42.1“; wabi sabi has been retired from active blogging duty, although it’s still on-line if you’re looking for her earlier knitting posts — she’s consolidated her on-line knitting presence at the shownotes blog of her Purl Diving podcast) and I were shopping for a stamp-pad to make Christmas cards. To make a long story short, the woman working there had been doing stamping for a good decade or two and provided us with very helpful guidance on which brand and type of stamp-pad would work best for the cards we were using — a heavy, textured stock in a dark red. She explained the pros and cons of the different ones they carry and said which one she preferred, and why — longevity, quality of the impression and so on.

Then, today, K was in search of some Japanese seed beads, size 6 and 8, which are on the requirements list for a beaded knitting workshop she’s attending next weekend. First, we tried the specialty bead store in Waterloo — no luck. They did have some seed beads, but much smaller than the sizes K needs.

The clerk was pleasant enough, but wasn’t experienced enough to suggest alternatives they might have other than to point out the section where there might be something that would work. Now, they do have a lot of beads… which is admittedly A Good Thing for a bead store, but makes finding just the right one a bit like the proverbial needle in a haystack endeavour.

The best she could suggest was to call back Monday and speak to the owner, who knows about beads and might be able to help. Riiight.

So, off to Michaels… but K didn’t hold out much hope of finding anything remotely like what she needed at a big box store. Still, it turned out they had some seed beads, and what’s more — they had, once again, a staff member who actually knew about beads and beading. She was able to at least find us some that should be suitable for one of the projects on the agenda for the workshop.

On top of that, she recommended a couple of bead stores in the area — well, actually, three, including the one in Waterloo that we had just come from, which we mentioned — that might be able to help us out with the other, slightly smaller size bead. We will likely try out at least one of them to see if anything suitable can be found in time.

Now, perhaps the store management at Michaels might not be too keen about staff referring customers to a competitor (albeit a small one), but in this case, we did buy some beads from them, and based on our experiences there with staff that actually know something about the products they sell, we’ll definitely be back for other purchases. In my mind, that’s a pretty good payoff for them.

Now, of course, Your Mileage May Vary and I can’t say that every Michaels will have the same quality of staff, but it’s at least encouraging to know that big box does not always equal the death of decent service.

Oh, and about the earlier observation about service jobs being looked down upon in North America (and with some justification… can you say “D’ya want fries with that?”), it’s in contrast with what we experienced when we lived in France for several years (and had the opportunity to travel a bit throughout Europe, as well). There, service jobs, at least the ones where you don’t ask “Voulez-vous des frites avec ça ?“, are still respected and reasonably well compensated. As a result, you get people doing these jobs who enjoy it, who are knowledgeable about the field and are proud to serve you professionally.

Miss that, a lot. Ah, well — small finds like the staff at Michaels keep the flame alive…