A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

This past weekend I flew out to Toronto and met Jeffrey who was arriving from Montreal. Jeffrey was interested in seeing a Raptors game while he was out in that part of the country, so that seemed like a pretty good excuse for me to meet him there. It had been over two years since I attended a Raptors game at the Air Canada Centre, so this was a great opportunity for me to feed my addiction. Since we were going to be there for a few days, we also got some tickets to Evil Dead : The Musical. It would also work out for me visit my many friends in Guelph.

Before I left Saskatoon on Friday, I checked the Toronto weather forecast for the weekend. It wasn’t looking good as there were major snow storm warnings issued for all of southern Ontario. I was lucky enough that I got in just before it started up so it didn’t affect my flight.

I got to Toronto early in the afternoon and decided to rent a car since I was going to be traveling between three cities. I was supposed to get a compact such as a Ford Focus, but for some reason I got downgraded to a sub-compact, getting stuck with a Hyundai Accent. To my surprise, it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I was expecting. I met Jeffrey downtown at the Eaton’s Centre. We had some time to kill before the Raptors game at seven o’clock so we went to the St. Lawrence Market and bummed around. Seeing that market again really made me wish that we had something like that in Saskatoon. We bought some fresh fruit and chowed down while being geeks on our respective internet tablets. You gotta love free wi-fi.

We headed to the Air Canada Centre a little early since I wanted to try and get my picture taken with, “the man, the myth, the voice”, Chuck Swirsky. For those of you who don’t know who this is, he is the play-by-play voice of the Toronto Raptors. He’s has become a favourite among the team’s fans, and has gathered somewhat of a cult following. He is known for his use of personal catchphrases during the games such as, “Get out the salami and cheese mamma! This game is over”, and “That was sick, wicked, and nasty!”.

I had emailed him to see if I could get a pic with him and he told me that he was always outside Gate 1 about 50 minutes prior to tipoff, and would be happy to meet me. So Jeffrey and I hung around the area waiting for him to show. We were about to give up, when he rolled in, blaming the storm for his tardiness. After he jumped in on the Raptors TV pre-game panel, I managed to swipe a picture with him.

Even though getting to meet Chuck was enough to make this whole trip worth it, I figured we should still go and check out the actual game versus the Washington Wizards. On the way to our seats we crossed paths with some of the Raptors Dance Pak. I couldn’t refuse after the ladies swooned over me and wanted to get their picture with me.

Our seats turned out to be better than I was expecting so that was a great. Another added bonus was that the ACC offers free wi-fi, letting Jeffrey and I further display our geekiness with our internet tablets. The game didn’t start off too well for the Raptors, but they got their act together creating a pretty entertaining match. It went into overtime, but the Raps couldn’t pull it off. Disappointing, but it was still and exciting game.

Following the game we grabbed a bite to eat before heading out to Chris and Kaleigh Kuzma’s pad. They are some friends of Jeffrey, Rachel, and Michelle and were nice enough to let the two of us stay with them. We did a little visiting, but we were all pretty tired and called it a night.

When we woke up Saturday morning, the snow was really coming down, and was accumulating very fast. Since the weather wasn’t cooperating and Jeffrey and I had done the Toronto tourist stuff multiple times, we just decided to go see some movies before we headed to the Evil Dead show. We saw 10,000 BC which I enjoyed more than I probably should have, and Semi-Pro which was just another cookie-cutter Will Ferrell flick. You can likely wait for both of these on DVD.

After the movies we met Chris and Kaleigh for dinner and then we headed to the Diesel Playhouse for the musical. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but since it was critically acclaimed and had been voted “Toronto’s Favourite Show”, I had a pretty good feeling. The first two rows were called the “splatter zone”. You probably can imagine why it is called that. Jeffrey and I made sure to get tickets directly behind this zone since we didn’t want to get sprayed with blood. As it turned out, our seats were “unofficially” in the splatter zone. We were provided with ponchos to help keep the washable blood out of our clothes.

All I can say is that I completely enjoyed the show from the moment the curtains opened. It was much more of a farce than I was expecting and the music was great. Once the mayhem started to reach a climax in one of the final scenes, the blood started to fly. At one point I was taken by complete surprise and took a stream of the red stuff directly in my face. It was hilarious….but the “blood” definitely didn’t taste good. I can’t help but recommend anyone in the area to check out this show. It’s a great time.

Jeffrey was heading back to Montreal on Sunday, so I dropped him off at the train station. But not before having to dig the rental car out of a ton of snow. Knowing that this may be a tricky endeavor, it had been bothering me all weekend. As it turned out, with two shovels going we had the car out in no time. I headed out to Waterdown (just outside Hamilton) to visit my buddy Shawn, his wife Wendy and their new baby Sabrina. The highways were actually not too bad considering how hard the area was hit with snow that weekend, so I made it to their place with no catches. I spent the night with them, and we didn’t really do much other than visit and catch up on what has been going on in our respective lives. It was a great visit.

I left Waterdown Monday morning and headed to Guelph where I had lunch plans with some old friends from the Co-operators. I stopped in the office and said hi to some old colleagues before a bunch of us headed to a new pub close by. Since it was spring break, I didn’t get a chance to see a lot of people I wanted to, but it was great to see everyone else. Once we finished up there I went to see my old landlord Dominic. It may seem kind of weird to go visit a landlord, but this guy was awesome, and he and his wife did a lot for me. Probably the greatest landlord in history.

I was staying with my buddy Danny and his girlfriend Aislinn at their new house in Guelph so I headed over there. He gave me the grand tour and we spent the rest of the afternoon playing Guitar Hero : Rock the 80s. We went out to a pub for some pints and a bite to eat, and were lucky to have a couple of old buddies join us. The party animal Khamsy was a little disappointed that we were being so tame. He had big plans for me that night involving “praying at church” (ask me in person about this), but I wasn’t up for a crazy evening.

My flight back to Saskatoon was just after noon on Tuesday, so I said my farewells to Danny and Aislinn and made my way back to Pearson International in Toronto. Luckily all of the snow situations were under control and my flight was not in jeopardy. The trip was like a whirlwind, but it was awesome to see so many of my old friends, and get a chance to see Guelph again. I really love that city and was surprised to see how it has boomed over the last two years, becoming the fastest growing city in Canada. Toronto was fun as usual, but the terrible weather was a limiting factor…guess I’ll have to plan another trip.

You can see more pictures from the trip below.

• Thumbnails on Flickr
• Slideshow on Flickr
• Thumbnails on Picasa
• Slideshow on Picasa

Before I left The Co-operators, we implemented a system that we had been working on for quite some time. Without getting too deep into the technical details of the project, I’ll just say that it was going to serve as the backbone for managing the company’s client information. To use a more trendy term, it was the guts of the Customer Relationship Management system. I was glad that I was able to see the deployment of the system prior to making my move back to Saskatoon since I had put so much work into it. Two years have now passed, and about a week ago my old Project Manager contacted me with some exciting news.

Guess what…. Our CIF won an “IBM Innovation Award for Best Use of Information as a Service in an SOA Project”. The award will be presented at the upcoming IBM Information On Demand (IOD) Conference in Las Vegas. Add that to your resume.

I am incredibly happy for The Co-operators Information Systems department since I had been a part of it for six years, and know that there are some great people there . Speaking from experience while being on the CIF (Customer Information File) team, I know that a lot of hours went into getting that system out the door, and the award is well deserved. I also appreciate that after two years management remembered my contributions, taking the time to let me know of the accomplishment. Now I just need to convince them to fly me to Vegas for the celebration.

IBM’s all-new, global Information On Demand Innovation Awards honor best-in-class applications and solutions from among IBM information Management customers and the customers of our business partners. This prestigious Awards Program recognizes organizations that are using IBM-based solutions to significantly improve efficiencies and gain competitive advantage for their organizations.

Hoops is a weekly talk show that is broadcast on Raptors NBA TV and on the Fan 590, a sports radio station in south-western Ontario. It’s hosted by Eric Smith, “The Coach” Jack Armstrong, Paul Jones, and Sherman Hamilton.

Whether it’s on the court or off the court … HOOPS has all the stories covered regarding the Toronto Raptors, the NBA, and basketball in general.

With the Toronto Raptors set to face the New Jersey Nets in the opening round of the playoffs, excitement among fans is reaching explosive levels. You could see the enthusiasm amongst the Hoops hosts as well as the fans calling in. About halfway through the show, there was a call from Edmonton and Eric asked him if he was getting a sense of excitement amongst Edmontonians, and out west in general. Not surprisingly the caller said that if it wasn’t for satellite TV, he wouldn’t know anything going on with the Raptors.

Being a big Raptors basketball fan living in Saskatchewan, I knew where he was coming from. Eric then pointed out that there was a lot of calls coming in from all across Canada, and wanted to try and hear from all provinces. So with that, I decided to call in and continue the conversation of the popularity of Raptors and basketball in general across Canada.

It took a while to get past the busy signal, but I finally got through to the screener. He asked for my name, where I was from, and what my question was. After realizing that I was extremely intelligent, and probably incredibly handsome, he told me that he would put me on next.

“We have Hemant from Saskatoon. Hi you’re on Hoops.”

Eric may have pronounced my name properly, but the graphic on the TV sure had the spelling somewhere out in left field.

On the Phone
Hemond from Saskatoon

Oh well, I guess it’s better than Herman T. So since I was live on national television and radio, I put on my game-face and got down to business. I told the guys that I wanted to continue the discussion they started with the caller from Edmonton earlier. I explained that when the Vancouver Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors joined the league in 1995, it sparked an interest with me in the NBA. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that it was very difficult to actually see any coverage of the games since so few of them were actually broadcast in this part of the country.

My interest in the league continued, but I wasn’t very dedicated or involved. Then when I moved to Guelph, just outside of Toronto, all of the Raptor games were broadcast giving me what I needed to really feed my interest. The six years I was there was awesome for getting my fill of Raptors basketball. Then when I moved back to Saskatoon last year, I explained that I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to follow the team as easily.

As the guy from Edmonton stated earlier, I reiterated that with the help of today’s cable providers, one can get coverage of the Raptors for the entire season. I did emphasize however, that there are still some hoops (no pun intended) that need to be jumped through in order to achieve this, such as pay a premium fee to subscribe to Raptors NBA TV.

The question I fielded was why does the Raptors organization tout themselves as Canada’s team, but for areas outside of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) they are generally ignored by the sports media, and the sports networks make it so difficult to watch the team?

Out of everything the panel had to say in response to the question, Eric had the most intriguing statement. Actually, he started it off with a question to me.

In Saskatoon and area, do people tend to follow the Toronto Blue Jays, and get excited about the Major League Baseball season.

He already knew the answer, but he wanted me to answer it anyway. I responded with something along the lines of the following.

Yeah, I know a lot of people who follow the Toronto Blue Jays pretty religiously, and yeah, I think people tend to get excited about the baseball season.

Eric then when on to say that it took almost thirty years for that to happen. After ten years, the Blue Jays were ignored just as the Raptors are now outside of the GTA. He really feels that the same type of thing will happen with the Raptors – he just hopes (and me too) that it doesn’t take as long. I then asked the guys what sparked that interest in the Blue Jays to spread across the country, and the panel all agreed that it started to happen when the team began winning consistently, finding themselves at the top of the American League.

The call ended and I sat back to think about the conversation I just had. Even though it seems grim right now for interest in the Raptors to catch on in this part of the country, the guys over at Hoops seemed to have pointed out a little light at the end of the tunnel. And if their theory is correct, and the Raptors continue on this winning path that they have been following, the end of that tunnel may be closer than one thinks.

After about a month, I finally start my new job in a couple of days. After living in Guelph, Ontario for almost six years and working in a huge insurance company’s I.T. department, I will transition into working for a small, fast-paced software development company in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Even though my title stays relatively the same (Senior Software Developer), I’m not too sure as to what my responsibilities will be in the new company.

When the job was offered to me, I was told that they wanted to, “bring me in to mould their young developers”. I’m not sure what to make of that statement, but I still consider myself to be young – I mean, I’m only thirty years old (but could pass for at least 23 – haha!). I guess they meant, “mould thier less experienced developers”. I guess that makes a little more sense, but it still makes me a little nervous. I suppose the VP who hired me knows what he is doing.

I was told to show up at the office at 9:00 am. Since I don’t get possession of my townhome until December 1st, I will be commuting from my parents’ place in Wilkie, Saskatchewan for the first month. This will consist of a 90 minute drive each way which I’m sure will start to lose its appeal after about a week. I guess knowing that I will be getting mother’s home cooking for a month will be good incentive. Plus if need be, I may split the week up slightly and stay a couple of days a week in Saskatoon. I know enough people there that this shouldn’t be a problem.

Well, since I’m going to be molding some young developers starting tomorrow, I better start reading up a bit on Microsoft’s .NET Framework for C#. This may not mean much to any non-techies out there, but since I have been a J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) guy my entire career, this is a little bit daunting. Ahh – once you know one programming language, they all look pretty much the same – right?