Throughout my adolescence, I had always been "the computer guy".  However it wasn’t until the summer of 1994 that a career in technology really started to take shape.  I had just finished highschool, and was working my final summer as a dockmaster at the City of Chatham marina.  People from all over the Great Lakes region would cruise down the Thames River to spend their weekends in our little southern Ontario town.  I split my time between actual "work" and socializing with our guests to make them feel welcome.  As summer jobs go, it was fantastic and was right in my wheelhouse.  I recall spending a good amount of time one weekend with a particular couple who had come in from Cleveland on their mid-sized yacht.  Jeff Christian was a young executive who was not afraid to talk about his success, and was equally complimentary of the people around him.  He was apparently impressed with me during his short visit, and before navigating his way back up the river he left me his business card and urged me to call if I ever wanted any help.  I tucked it away, and knew it would be a valuable contact.

A year went by, and as I neared the completion of my final year of university I made a call into Jeff looking for some career guidance.  He welcomed me into his company, where I became the first summer intern at Christian and Timbers.    It was a tough summer for me.  I was a naive kid from a small town in Canada moving to a relatively large and unsafe American city.  Without a car, I found Cleveland and in particular the neighbourhood in which I was subletting an apartment to be a scary place.  Public transit was sketchy and I had my life threatened on more than one occasion.  Jeff took me under his wing, bringing me out to his house on a few occasions to spend time with his family, and encouraging some of my co-workers to lend a hand as well.  I was nobody, but he chose to invest in me for some reason and for that I remain grateful.  He was powerful and could be ruthless, but at the same time compassionate and caring of the people around him.

While at Christian and Timbers, I met many great people both in the IT department and throughout the company.  I was put onto a handful of IT projects that allowed me to spend time with pretty much everyone as I tweaked their desktop Macs or trained them on the new email solution.  Working at one of the hottest tech headhunting firms also gave me an opportunity to see how the industry works, and to get a feel for how one should manage their career.  My direct manager Kinton made a point of crafting a reference letter whose sole purpose was to help set me up for bigger and better things in the future.

The following summer that letter was specifically cited as the reason I was selected to join the internship program at GTE (now Verizon) at their headquarters in Dallas, Texas.  There I was exposed to bleeding-edge technology and really gained a passion and understanding of new media and understanding the point where technology and business need combine to create value.  After GTE I was able to create many more opportunities and was lucky to be able to take advantage of them all.  These early years set up my career like a line of dominoes, one that is still very early in its cascade.  I progressed through Procter & Gamble, Oracle, a small biotech startup, and for the last several years in senior management roles with Canada’s largest software company, Open Text.

It is in this role that I now find myself returning to Cleveland later this week to meet with some of our customers in the area.  I thought that it would be a good opportunity, more than a decade later, to look up some of my old friends and thank them for kick-starting my career.  So into Google I typed the search term “Jeff Christian Cleveland”, hoping to uncover current email of phone information so I can get in touch.  The result of that query was a massive shock to me: The Rise And Fall Of A Corporate Headhunter,  How Jeff Christian went from Silicon Valley recruiting sensation to homicide defendant in Cleveland.

It seems that since we last talked, Jeff’s life has been a severe roller coaster.  He landed a huge win in the late nineties by recruiting Carly Fiona to the top job at Hewlett Packard, and soon after the dotcom bubble burst his life came crashing down around him.  He split with his wife and took up with an eighteen year old girlfriend.  He became consumed by alcohol and drugs, and the new lifestyle came to a horrible climax when he was charged with negligent homicide in the death of a colleague.  In July of 2007, he was convicted in two separate incidents and is currently serving three years in prison.

Wow.  I have to admit that mostly I feel sympathy for Jeff.  Granted, I feel even more for the lives and families that were ruined by his actions but there is something inherently sad about this story.  A man that once took me under his wing and showed so much compassion under much simpler circumstances must have found himself with no one around him with the strength or determination to help.  Jeff’s primary character flaw has always been hubris, but when I knew him anyways that hubris was tempered by caring.  I can clearly see the path that led him to where he is now, and ultimately it is of his own doing.  But I only wish that someone could have been there to intervene and interrupt the self destruction.

Ultimately I am still grateful to Jeff, and to Kinton and all the other great people who helped to get my career started.  But now moreso than gratitude I feel a sense of sorrow for someone who was at one time a mentor.

My flight arrived on Sunday afternoon, so my coworker Steffen was kind enough to pick me up at the airport and head into the city for Oktoberfest.  I’ve been to Oktoberfest in Kitchener many times, but wasn’t sure what to expect.  As expected, lederhosen and busty german barmaid dresses were out in full force.  Something I didn’t expect though was the carnival-like atmosphere.  The closest event I can relate it to would be the Canadian National Exhibition, except with huge tents serving beer, sausage, and rooster.

It was a very international affair, with people from China, Russia, and of course Germany sitting alongside us at the long wooden table.  We didn’t get too silly, just enjoyed two steins of beer and then went on a few midway rides.

On our way back to the train, I stopped by a geocache to hide one of my travel bugs.  On the park bench beside the cache, two young couples had decided that this was the perfect place to publicly display their love for each other.  One might have actually thought given the style of their performance that they were producing “adult entertainment videos” had it not been for the absence of any recording devices.  Steffen claims that this is not a common sight in Germany, but I’m not sure that I believe him.

I’ve been out geocaching with several friends and family over the last few weeks.  Some that I didn’t get a picture of (unfortunately):

• Dad wandering into the middle of a road while reading his GPS
• Walking through a stream behind Tim’s house looking for a cache that was hidden under a tree stump
• Wandering around Gatineau post-conference with a group still wearing suits and digging through brush
• The ultimate cache surprise in Munich where two couples were, how shall we say, “practicing for parenthood” on the park bench next to the cache

Here are a few snapshots I took along the way.

Out with Laurie in Belleville

Darryl pretending to be unimpressed by the “Love Cache”

More caching with the kids in Milton
 

This is not by any means new, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever shared this little piece of amazing history that I accidentally stumbled upon a few years back.  It came up again in conversation the other day, and it’s one of those “I don’t believe you” sort of facts.

A coal mine under the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania caught fire in 1962 and is still burning today.  After the local gas station noticed their tanks were hot, and after local residents started falling into smoldering sinkholes, the entire town was relocated by the federal government.  The fire is expected to burn for 250 years.

The roads are all closed down, but you can still walk into Centralia.  I’d love to go visit, but it’s about 7 hours drive from Toronto.  Perhaps if I end up in the area for a customer visit I’ll pop by.  Click here for more info from wikipedia.

Here are some amazing pictures from someone who visited in January 2008.

The call came at 12:45 that the load of guys from Waterloo would be passing by Milton shortly.  I packed up my stuff and abandoned my family who hadn’t quite finished the tee-ball end of year extravaganza.

Aww, isn’t that cute?  Anyways, I met Darryl, Graeme, and Tim at the carpool lot on the 401 where our adventure continued.  We met the rest of the guys downtown.

Stop number one was a tour of the distillery district on Segways.  The tour itself was marginally interested (as expected) but zipping around the area on Seways was really fun.  The tour began with a lesson on how to ride the Segway and a short obstacle course.  It’s a fairly simple process of leaning forward to go forward, leaning back to slow down or back up, and twisting the left handlebar to turn left or right.  After passing our compulsories, we were off in a line touring through the area.  Comments from other tourists in the area ranged from “that’s really neat” to “do you realize how dorky you look”.  Yes, by the way, we realize how dorky we look.  My favourite was a bride getting her wedding pictures taken who took a second away from sucking on her cigarette to yell out at us “hey, I want to ride on one of those!”.

We finished the tour and headed to Steamwhistle for a brewery tour.  It turns out that they take water, barley, hops, and yeast and transform it into a magical beverage .  When we arrived at the brewery, they handed us two tickets each to sample this “beer”.  A tight-shirted gentleman then toured us through the facility and described the whole process.  He was such a nice man that we decided it would be only polite to drink more of this so-called beer throughout the remainder of the evening.

The highlight of the brewery tour for Darryl was discovering another guy who was there for a bachelor party who was clearly wayyyy nerdier than Darryl.

We then headed to Jack Astor’s for dinner, where the waitress proceeded to dump an entire glass of ice water into Darryl’s lap.  He was advised by the manager to blow-dry his lap using their high-powered hand dryers in the bathroom and to enjoy his free meal on the house.  The group moved from Jack Astors and on to the Bier Markt where we remained until the music got too loud for comfort.  Then on to Fion McCools where we sat on the patio until a nearby patron threw up on the sidewalk and then called it a night.

Thanks for driving Tim, and I hope you had a fun night Darryl!

We spent the last weekend at Brenda’s family cottage in Erieau.  It’s an interesting place, built by her dad and other relatives out of materials savaged from CP (or was it CN) rail.  The wood was salvaged from boxcars, much of the furniture from a decommissioned caboose, and clothesline made from steel rails driven into the ground.  We’ve visited before, but this was really the first time at the cottage that was “kid friendly”.

Most of our time was split between fishing off the back-yard dock and swimming at the large beach on the lake side.  After three days, our tally of fish was 55 Blue Gill all caught with either a Dora the Explorer or Finding Nemo kids fishing rod.

Katlyn and Graeme had some good times playing Tetris head to head on her pink Game Boy DS, which looked surprisingly at home in Graeme’s hands.  Unfortunately I didn’t have my digital camera with me, but caught a couple of shots with the Blackberry. 

On Saturday evening we headed over to my Aunt and Uncle’s farm to say hi to everyone.  It was a quick in-and-out because they’re in the middle of tobacco harvest season and free time was at a minimum.  They treated us to the full “city slicker” tour including a walk around the main farm area, some horse rides for the girls, and a driving tour of the vast Brush empire along the lake in Blenheim.

I chose not to buy the photos at $25 each, but here are some of the proofs from our surfing lesson.

The flight home was uneventful in a good way.  We arrived back to Milton totally exhausted and missing the kids.  Luckily, my parents offered to drive the kids to meet us and after lunch we had a family nap.

We returned home to discover three unexpected things:

1. The yard was an overgrown swamp.  Apparently it has been raining here for two weeks straight, and our spring thaw pond has returned.  The vegetable garden has been overtaken by a pumpkin vine with a 25-foot wingspan.  The interlocking brick is an explosion of weeds.
2. The pool was also somewhat of a swamp.  It was overflowing with water, and a nice kool-aid green.  Reparations already under way.
3. My fish tank was a cesspool.  Somehow all of my cichlids, some of them seven years old, were not only dead but decomposing.  The plecos were still alive, but I don’t know how.  We cracked some windows for the smell and I went to town changing water, scrubbing ornaments, and de-clogging fish bits from the filter.

Luckily, Katlyn’s fish were fine.  Those were actually the ones I was worried about, they’ve never been alone for an extended period before.  The two-week block worked well in the 6-gallon.

As planned, we spent the last couple days relaxing in Waikiki.  The hotel offered us some minor annoyances, uncharacteristically ignoring my Hilton Honors profile of “King, High Floor, Away from elevator”.  Most Hilton properties follow it to the letter, I assume rooms are assigned by computer.  However this one first attempted to give us a queen bed, which caused an argument with management until “we’re completely full” turned into “oh, look I just found a king bed for you”.  The new room was right beside the elevator, but it didn’t seem too loud and I figured I had used up my quota of complaints for the day.  The next day however, after not sleeping well, I did request and receive a new room away from the elevator.

Other than the room shuffling, the hotel was a great place to hang out for the last few days.  The pool on the fourth floor was great for hanging around and reading a book, and the free drinks in the afternoon certainly helped.

We did some souvenir shopping, went out for a nice dinner, and that pretty much sums up the last two days before jumping on the airplane and heading home.  Overall, it was a great vacation and I’d do Hawaii again for sure!

Today was pack-up day from the vacation rental and time to move back in to Waikiki for the remainder of the trip.  We bid farewell to Tish the owner and headed into town with a full vehicle.  Once again we ate at Zippy’s Diner prior to scuba and once again we had the same waitress.  She noted that Jodie was looking a bit more perky this time around.

At the boat launch, we met with our scuba class and found bags of gear with our names on them.  I was named “Jodie 2″.  After a short on-land lesson we piled onto the boat and headed out into the ocean.  Given the prep we went through, it was clear that this was going to be a bit more serious than what I had thought would be a shallow “better than snorkeling” adventure.  No, they were going over some very real life-threatening scenarios, how to communicate, and how to not get dead.

When we arrived at the first dive site, they tied the boat to a dive line that was anchored at the bottom.  We went in one by one, and the non-certified divers (including us) each had to demonstrate their skills about five feet down.  How to clear your mask, how to clear water from the regulator, how to find your regulator when it falls out, how to take someone else’s emergency backup, etc.  My mask was a bit leaky (I think my face is a bit abnormal) so I spent a good chunk of the first dive clearing water from my eyes.  Jodie had a minor freak-out during the skill training, but the instructor brought her up to the surface and talked her down.  She was fine after that.  We then followed the dive line down to the bottom of the ocean, which was about forty feet deep.  The instructor gave us a thirty-minute tour of the reef in that area, and we saw just a ton of fish.  The water was saturated with these tiny little sea slugs, they were literally everywhere in the water.  The dive instructors weren’t sure what they were, but they see them about once a year.  If you pop one (either by flicking it or by random chance) they explode into a small cloud of purple dye.  At the end of our first dive, one of the other people who was actually getting tested for his certification ran out of air.  He completely freaked out (as would I) and the instructor had to try to calm him down at forty feet below, while getting him to take a hit off of his air tank.  That ended our first dive a bit early.

The second dive went more smoothly.  We knew more what we were doing, and they got me another mask that fit better.  This dive site was near some underground craters, and there were several sea turtles who called this home.  I got lots of pictures on this dive, but it was with an old-timey disposable 35mm camera so we’ll have to wait to see if they turned out or not.  We saw a few turtles of different sizes, including one turtle who was sleeping in a crevice.  Again, lots of interesting fish of different shapes and colours.  After about thirty minutes on the bottom, we came back up to the boat.  I wished that we could stay out longer, but alas we had no more air.

After diving, we met with the wedding group again for one last dinner together and said our goodbyes.  The majority were flying back on Saturday night, and we would be staying for another couple of days until Monday afternoon.

After dinner, we went for a walk in Waikiki.  At the international market, I mentioned to Jodie that I’d like to go back to the hotel to use the washroom but she convinced me to use the public toilet there in the market.  Fair enough, so I went down a hallway to a small bathroom.  Inside I could see three large scary-looking guys who gave me a bit of a glare.  It was a tiny bathroom, with one sink, one urinal, and a toilet stall.  At this point it was too late to turn back, so I mustered up my confidence and said “umm, I just need to go to the bathroom”, and they moved aside to let me in.  The room was full of smoke, and in the stall behind me was the following dialog, “It’s good stuff, taste it.  Yeah, I got two more grams.  Now if you like it, you’re going to buy it right?  Yeah…”.  Fairly nervous about the situation at this point, I forced myself to use the urinal mostly for show.  I washed my hands and got out of there, the dealer in his bathroom stall office finally noticing me and shouting “Hey, who’s out there?”.  I walked quickly and confidently back out to the market, got Jodie, and went back to the hotel where we decided to stay for the rest of the night.  I didn’t particularly want these guys seeing me on the street and deciding maybe it was a bad idea to not rough me up.

So we stayed in, rented a movie “Forgetting Sarah Silverman” which we soon discovered was set in Hawaii, and took place at Turtle Bay Resort.  They filmed a major scene sitting in the very table where we ate dinner, and the entire movie used sites where we had just visited.  It was a fun movie, and even more fun because of the setting.  In one scene, the protagonist walks by a group getting married on the beach and says “A Hawaiian wedding, oh how original!”