Pyat travels to the RIM to meet his Waterloo!

As mentioned, I had a job interview at Research in Motion today, for the position of Content Writer for one of their internal training departments. Even if they were to offer me the job, it is extremely unlikely I would accept it, given that it would require nearly 200 kms of commuting every day. Granted, it's all easy highway driving, but I'd be unlikely to entertain the idea of doing that sort of commute again without some serious increase in pay.

Still, it is Research in Motion, Canada's equivalent of working for Google or somesuch, and just month ago I'd have snapped at a job there. So I took the day off my new job at CCI and motored up to Kitchener-Waterloo. Specifically, Waterloo, the smaller of the two conjoined cities.

I like visiting Waterloo. Half the city was built in 1890, and the other half was built yesterday. It's home to Laurier University (where Canadian math nerds come from) and several dozen high-tech and engineering firms, as well as enormous breweries. It's like Silicon Valley with socialized healthcare and an Oktoberfest parade.

EDIT: Actually, the nerds come from U of Waterloo, which is nearby.

I left during rush hour and arrived two hours early. The drive up was surprisingly smooth - no serious traffic to contend with. If I had to commute there, I could, and it would actually require less time than my current commute on the train. I spent about 90 minutes ambling around downtown Waterloo, taking pictures of things that interested me. Even the people in Waterloo tend to be interesting to look at. There were lots of fashionable professional women in exciting hats and boots and tiny Asian university girls with bright-red pigtails. There were also lots of doughy (or perhaps yeasty) brewery execs, but they weren't as interesting.

These are some of the things I saw.
( Read more... )

Pyat and the Battlefields of the World's Armageddon

Also, I'm reading an awesome book written in 1894, about the frightening future world of 1910. I'm on page 30 and there's already been a mad scientist, evil Germans, a flying submarine, and a comet that's going to blow up the Earth. It's heady stuff! The author was out-selling HG Wells by a considerable margin back in the 19th century, and is almost forgotten today.

For a fan of what is now called "Steampunk," it is good to turn one's back, from time to time, on the modern pastiche that represent the genre, and get back to the source. Not that there is a source, really, since these books were being written in a time when stories of this kind were not yet even classified with the Gernsbackian term, "scientificition".

A sample of the text:

"I shall not state my price in money, your Majesty. I am not working for money, but you will understand that I cannot convert what I have shown you to-day into the fighting reality. Only a nation can do that. It will cost ten millions of marks, at least, to — well, to so far develop this experiment that no fleet save your Majesty's shall sail the seas, and that no armies save yours shall, without your consent, march over the battlefields of the world's Armageddon."

"Make it twenty millions, fifty millions," laughed the Kaiser, "and it will be cheap at the price."

The Mad Scientist is selling his evil experiment to the freaking KAISER. How cool is that?