So, I am employed. More to the point, my life actually has some direction for the first time in years. It’s time to be frank with you my loyal reader, and the other not-so loyal ones which I still appreciate, my interest in politics has always been inversely proportional to whatever else (of importance) I’ve had going on in my life.
To put it plain, politics has been a hobby. Being underemployed for over a year, and student before that gave me a great deal of time for hobbies. I still have free time, but I have made a conscious decision to spend what time I do have on me. I have a clear plan for my life for the first time, and it’s a plan that actually has a sense of tangible realism. The key to that plan is not only doing my new job (more on that below), but doing it well and devoting myself towards being a success. (more…)
Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Of course every day previous was the first day of the rest of my life, but this one is different because it is also the first day of my new job (which I’m not going to divulge much information on.) I can’t say that I enjoy the early mornings as much as some, and my passionate distaste for coffee is particularly cumbersome at the moment, but it’s still a big day for me. Toodles!
Today is my grandmother’s 89th birthday, and I just want to take a moment to talk about her. My grandmother is a remarkable woman, not because she swam across Lake Ontario with her legs tied together or anything like that, but because she is one of those people who never breaks. She is who she is, and nothing that happens to her, and nothing that she does will change that.
Of course, who she is is a bit on the crazy side (she’s told my sister that she doesn’t need to be married to have children, she just wants another great-grandchild), but in a benign way. Tonight we are going out for Lobster to celebrate her birthday, and despite her advanced age and arthritis, she will still extract every morsel without a drop of waste, and without making a hint of a mess.
Bubby, Mazel tov!
I’ve enabled the comments function of the site now (with some handy third-party software called jreactions), which means that we now support feedback.
Since feedback was the final technical requirement I had before I would officially “launch” the project, I am now officially in promotion mode. I will be promoting this site everywhere and anywhere I can in the next ten days and I appreciate any help anyone can offer in this regard. The next step that I will take will be coming up with a formula for electing the first group or “Congress” (hopefully I can finish that tonight or tomorrow) and coming up with an open and honest mechanism for elections. In the meantime, tell your friends!
So far only two people have voted on the Blogging Congress name poll, which is a bit disappointing, although not entirely surprising. I will be going with Canadian Bloggers’ Congress if I don’t get any substantial feedback suggesting otherwise, and will register the domain soon thereafter.
There is still work to be done, but I hope to have the site’s “constitution” and rules done by the end of this weekend, so I can start building a pool of candidates for next week.
Actually, yesterday was quite possibly my best day in recent memory. I was offered (and took) an exciting new job in the Recruitment field, and the manner of my receiving the offer was incredibly flattering. I nailed the “Test the Nation” IQ test, got a bunch of personal shit resolved, joined Facebook, got my first member for The Bloggers’ Congress… the list goes on. If it seems unusually sunny outside today, it’s just me.
The first question people ask me when I get all worked up and start pestering them about the Bloggers’ Congress is usually, what is it? (Sometimes it’s “why are you bothering me?”)
This is a fair question, so I will endeavour to answer it here, and answer a few others along the way. The Bloggers’ Congress is designed to be a site where Canadian bloggers can come together and represent an organized and representative face to our larger community. It is not a Model-UN type organization. The site will provide original content along with newsfeeds and other resources for anyone interested in Canadian politics. Once the site is fully hosted a forum will be added to promote discussion. (more…)
They said it couldn’t be done, but I didn’t take “said it couldn’t be done” for an answer!
That’s right. Turns out that with a little bit of rejigging with Joomla’s category and link setups I was able to incorporate all of the necessary features for the Canadian Bloggers’ Congress webpage, and do it two weeks ahead of schedule. There are still some minor details that I need to work out, and I do have other features that I would like to incorporate when I have the time and expertise to do so, but for now it is what it is.
This of course means that it’s time to get my shit together and get it actually running. For that, I need three things:
- A final site name
- A matching domain name
- Participation
The first one I will put to the public. The new poll is pretty straightforward… if you vote for other please leave your suggestion in this discussion. The domain I will register as soon as I have the name settled (and the migration shouldn’t take too long at all); which of course leaves the tricky part: participation. (more…)