Thanks to the contributions of two very generous guys I managed to raise $100 in total. Thanks guys!
So true to my promise I will post a daily photo update every morning. Here’s today’s photo:
On to the next challenge:
If I raise $100 more ($200 in total) by next Wed (Novermber 11th) I’ll let you guys decide on my Mo style with a poll or something like that. So if you’d like to see me sporting a funky Mo, donate thems $$$s! 
In an effort to incentivize people to donate, I will post photo updates of my Mo every morning after I reach $100 of donations. So if you want to see my face every morning, go and donate! Remember, it’s all for a good cause.
Today is November 1st. This means a few things:
I hear you ask “what’s Movember?”
Movember is a way to raise awareness of prostate cancer, and raise money for the cause. It’s also an excuse to grow a moustache! Here’s an excerpt from the website:
A Mo Bro starts Movember – the month formerly known as November – clean shaven, and grows a moustache all month long, garnering support from friends and family in the form of donations. What’s more, a Mo Bro is a walking billboard for the cause as his new look opens the door for him to talk about prostate cancer – making the moustache a symbol, much like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer.
Anyways, I’ve donated $50 to the Movember foundation to start the month off, and will donate $5 for each of the remaining days of the month if I shave before the 30th of Movember. If you’d like to donate (and I know you would), just go to my donation page and go for it! I’m also part of the Google Canada Movember team, fondly called Mo’ogle Canada.
Lets get Mo’ving!
I just spent 2 very warm weeks in Mountain View, CA as part of my orientation at Google. Unfortunately it’s time to go back to the -18C temperatures of Canadia. A bunch of people keep asking me how it was, so here’s the lowdown:
To change levels safely with luggage cart, please use elevators…
…is what I just heard over the announcement system at SFO International airport. I think the main question here is: are people who take luggage carts on stairs/escalators actually smart enough to listen to announcements?
Fail.
Even though I enjoy the hobo life as much as the next guy it was finally time to try and get myself some sort of habitat – no, the cardboard box doesn’t count. I’m happy to announce that in one short day of looking (and a couple of months of frantic checking online) we found a kick-ass apartment for January. So don’t worry, I won’t be hoboing it up and freezing in the cruel Canadian winter.
Now it’s time to use Planning Wiz to plan our apartment layout!
Click View Larger Map to see more…
I’ve been asked a few times in the past few weeks about books that I’m reading, mostly because I tend to carry them around with me a lot. So I decided to write a bit about them. Maybe I’ll inspire a new generation of wonderful, socially-outcast bookworms. Or maybe I’m just bored. Here goes.
The Jungle
This is a story describing the horrors of the Chicago meat packing industry at the turn of the 20th century. The story follows a large fictional family of immigrants from Lithuania coming to the land of opportunities, and hoping for a better life. Instead they end up being enslaved by the Chicago meat packers, and starved to death one by one. This a very heart-wrenching story, and definitely not for those with a weak stomach. When the book was published in 1906, it was heavily censored and most of the worst details of human suffering were removed. What remained were the countless examples of unsanitary and plain dirty conditions in which America’s meat was prepared. The final outcome was that the book caused an uproar that culminated in the creation of the Pure Foods and Drugs Act (1906) and the eventually FDA.
The last third of the book is full of idealistic social propaganda, which makes you cringe a bit when you read it. This is why the last 100 pages took me longer to read than the rest of the book taken together. Still, the book is a very read, from both a historical and a personal perspective. More than once I’d finish reading a few chapters of the book and I was pretty depressed for the rest of the day. But overall reading it makes me appreciate much more all the little luxuries that we take for granted. Like, oh I dont know, not working from 6am till 9pm in a dirty, stinky, scorching room.
Agile Web Development with Rails
I’ve started learning Ruby on Rails a few weeks ago, and was recommended this book by a few people, and I’ve found it to be just excellent, so I’m forwarding the recommendation here. It starts out with a tutorial that covers many of the features of Rails by building a shopping cart application. The second half of the book covers most of the features in pretty excruciating details. Along the way they manage to cram in a whole lot of best practices, as well as good writing. I haven’t gone much further than reading the book yet, so we’ll see how well it prepares me for actually writing Rails applications, but it’s definitely a smooth and easy to read introduction.
More recommendations to come shortly.
Finally, after years of misery, I get the fame that I deserve.
I knew the day will come!
So I’m sitting and preparing “essay” questions for my organizational design exam a few days ago and I’m writing the paragraph you see on the right. I write the word entrepreneurial, and I really expect to get the spelling wrong, it’s just one of those words that I never get right. Plus it’s 11PM and I’ve been writing for a few hours. So I write the word entrepreneurial and I’m waiting for the little red line underneath it to appear so I can find where my mistake is and fix it. Lo and behold: no little red line appears under the word. As I finish it off I think to myself “Whoa! Dude! I can’t believe I just spelled it correctly. Maybe it’ll take it a second…” Nothing.
After a few seconds of blinking and waiting I smile a smug smile and continue on with the word spirit.
Having finished my sentence I give it another look, still surprised at the lack of a red line. After a few seconds I realize that I’m writing on paper.
