This past year has been great.  The year of 2009 was filled with ups and downs and all kinds of twists and turns.  But now, we are down to it.  The final hours are ticking away and, when we all wake up tomorrow morning, it will be 2010.  Are you excited? 

For us Vancouverites, it will be a bittersweet opening few months with the stress and jubulation that surrounds any city hosting the Olympics.  We love it and hate it all at the same time.  It is like the holidays.  When you first start shopping, all you can think of is the smiling faces of your family and friends.  The perfect gift will be opened and, without warning, their face will light up with joy.  They will (practically in slow motion) wrap their arms around you and plop a loving kiss on your cheek and whisper loving things in your ear.  Of course, reality will strike with a lightning bolt borrowed from Zeus. Imagine, for a moment, sitting down at your kitchen table, a fresh coffee steaming in the light of a January morning, and you open yor credit card bill.  All of the loving thoughts you've been harbouring for months will disappear into the morning air and you will wonder how in the Hell did you manage to spend so much money! 

That is what New Years Eve and Day are all about.  Two final days that we can use to live out a few additional fantasies.  We allow ourselves to forget that, within a few days time, we will be back to whatever activities dominate our "normal" lives.  We will be enjoying the sound of the office again or the classrooms of some foreign university or finding the perfect pitch in a remote recording studio.  Let's make this last bit of our 2009 something to remember.  What are your plans for this eve of the New Year?  I remember the last few have been quite tame in their execution.  Last year was hanging out and drinking heavily at a friend's place.  The transfer into 2008 was something I don't remember.  It must have been uber-tame. 

For 2009, this year is strange since we decided to fly on the cheapest days of the holiday season: Christmas Day and New Years Eve.  Christmas Day wasn't too bad since we arrived earlier in the evening and with plenty of time for gift openings on both ends but this New Years is going to be a little problematic.  We arrive after seven in the evening and, with the weather being what it is in the mountains and in Saskatchewan, we will most likely end up being late.  I hope not.  I believe my family isn't picking us up.  They are heading to their New Years events and dropping our car at the airport before we arrive.

And, yes, I think we all need to get together and view the movies 2001 and 2010 to see how much those fictional worlds are like our reality.  Didn't someone have a dolphin for a pet?  Where is my dolphin?  Happy New Year, everyone!

Like so many bloggers before me, here is my look back on 2009.  Yes.  2009.  Okay.  Let's get to it!  Any time now.  Fine, now type!  Toss those thoughts onto the screen, my man.  Come on, Shane.  Let's do this thing!  Boo-yah!  Write!

(Chirp.  Chirp.  Chirp.)

2009 has been an odd year.  I have learned much about so many things and I have accomplished many, many things.  I have reached goals I thought I would never achieve.  I have let myself be who I really am.  I have helped others accomplish their goals.  Was this reflected in my blog?  Not so much.  It is a little weird, isn't it?  Or am I just giving some lip service to a sense of guilt I have about not writing on my website as I think I should be. I have thoughts and things to give.  Links to provide.  Pictures to share.  I do it all. 

But this website is neglected.  If it had feelings, I am sure it would look up at me with sad eyes and whisper quietly: why have you abandoned me?  Oh, it breaks the heart.  But it is only a website, isn't it?  Those who only read blogs may think so.  But a blog is different somehow.  Not only are you throwing a bit of writing out into the gray mass that is the Interwebs, but you're displaying a little bit of yourself.  You are opening yourself to complete strangers (no, not you, Mommy!) and websites like that deserve a little more respect.  Not a lot.  Just a little.  That is, of course, if you write posts like I do.

I will always remember 2009 as being one of the worst blogging years to date.  I suppose every year for the last few has been less than stellar in the blogging department. I do recall promising from time to time that I would write more (which I have, just not here) and interact more.  I guess I have done that.  So, what have I done that I haven't posted about on this website?  Let's see:

• Started guitar lessons.
• Have written several books (unpublished as of yet, still shopping them around) of poetry.
• Launched some kick ass websites for clients.
• Read a whole lot.

And I bunch of other things that I haven't written about here.  What I am trying to say is that I have been doing a whole lot.  I just don't understand why I haven't written about them here.  I am a blogger, aren't I?  Shouldn't I be writing here more often?  Am I not a kind of spokesperson?

I shall continue this thought process in my next post.  I shall call that next post: Part II.

I am a published author and have been for a few years.  Since becoming one, I have thought long and hard about the future of books.  Most of the time, I think about how I love to have books around me.  If you've ever been to my house, I have a lot of books.  I wish I had more shelves to stack them on but I have been told my book addiction needs to be kept in check and, apparently, shelves only make my addiction worse.  So, then, I stack.  The books find an empty space on the floor to inhabit and I continue on my merry way.

And this is the problem.  I go on my merry way and ignore one simple fact: books are in danger of disappearing.  Not because people will stop writing or publishers will stop publishing but because technology will not be free enough to let today's publishing industry continue.  I found this article via Digg.com today and here is a snippet to get your brains on my wavelength:

When I buy an audiobook on CD, it’s mine. The license agreement, such as it is, is “don’t violate copyright law,” and I can rip that CD to mp3, I can load it to my iPod or any number of devises—it’s mine; I can give it away, I can sell it; it’s mine. But when you buy an audiobook through Audible, which now controls 90 per cent of the [downloadable] audiobook market, you get a license agreement, not a property interest. The things that you can do with it are limited by DRM; the players you can play it on are limited by the license agreements with Audible. Audible doesn’t do this because the publishers ask them to. Audible and iTunes, because Audible is the sole supplier to iTunes, do this because it’s in their own interest....

Anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself. We must stop them from being allowed to do it. The library of tomorrow should be better than the library of today. The ability to loan our books to more than one person at once is a feature, not a bug. We all know this. It’s time we stop pretending that the pirates of copyright are right. These people were readers before they were publishers before they were writers before they worked in the legal department before they were agents before they were salespeople and marketers. We are the people of the book, and we need to start acting like it.

You can read the full transcript of Cory Doctrow's speech here.  I shared this elegy about the book with some people (within earshot) and their initial reactions were that: 

• It would never happen. 
• People would fight it.
• Cory Doctorow is being too sentimental about books.

This got me thinking.  Could books disappear?  Is Cory being a turd and just trying to make a speech sound interesting?  But then I remembered Bolivia and the water protests that happened there in 2000.  But, Shane, you're saying.  That incident was about water and you're talking about books!  Oh, really - I may retort.  My point is a bunch of very smart people got together and made it virtually illegal to collect rainwater because a company wanted to make the water system of an entire country private and controlled.  Smart people.  They let it happen.  They wanted it to happen.  I could make mention of Germany and World War II but, I think, most people would agree that somewhere along the way something went wrong.  And now I can hear you saying: but Shane, that was a situation where millions of people were murdered and you're talking about books!  How are these things possibly related?  Again, I submit to you: smart people let something horrible happen.  No one sat up and said to the person across the table that something was wrong until it was much to late to do anything about it.  In any case, books are important.  They are as important as our entire civilization.  Books revolutionized everything.  And now you're thinking that I am being more dramatic than Doctorow and, maybe, I am. But I feel very strongly about the disappearance of books.

Let me tell you why.

There is a technology created for DVDs that allows an individual to purchase (or rent) them.  They can take the DVD home, unwrap it, and watch it.  24 or 48 hours later, the DVDs destroy themselves and make themselves unreadable.  The user them tosses the DVD away.  Firstly, that is a complete waste of materials.  Secondly, what is to stop publishers (or some governmental body) from inventing a similar technology for paper?  It will happen, mark my words on that.  If an entire country can make it illegal for people to collect rainwater, what is to stop them?  Imagine, books that erase themselves.  It is not outside the realm of possibility.  By the way, if you don't think it is possible for things like restricting rainwater collection to happen in more "civilized" country, I suggest you tell that to the state of Colorado.

Again, I return to my point.  Sure, Cory Doctorow may be more sentimental about books than you are, but he has reason to.  Situations where laws about who controls water rights normally belong in the pages of your favourite fiction book.  But, as they appear to say, truth is stranger than fiction.  Things we take for granted each and every day are under threat and we should stand up and take notice now before things like water and books are gone forever.  When a monumental change like this happens, we may never get it back.

We are in a new economy and, as I am sure you've noticed, most content publishers are struggling to make ends meet.  Newspapers, book publishers, and music producers are all thinking up ways to make sure they are rewarded for their efforts.  They should be rewarded.  Publishers and digital rights management advocates need to embrace the technology as well.  They have been fighting, suing, and making merry with courts for a while now and it needs to be re-thought.  I don't mind people protecting their work but there comes a time when the work needs to be free to the masses and we need to reinvent how we reward people for the work they create. I am not going to pretend I have the answers but I want people to recognize that this future is coming and, before you know it, you will wonder where all the books have gone.  Don't kid yourself.  It will happen if we're not watching and doing something about it.  It did happen to water and the people of Bolivia were lucky to get it back.  We may not be so lucky next time.

This entire rant makes me think of this scene from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade:

I just remembered that I haven't made much of a splash about the third edition of Blogging For Dummies.  I will start with the publisher's verbage:

This is something that Susie and I worked on back in the summer and we made quite a few updates.  There are a bunch of new chapters and a whole lot of revisions to existing chapters.  We added a lot of stuff on social networking and whatnot and I was surprised how I had naturally adapted to newer technologies.  Getting it all down on paper was awesome and quite difficult at times to sort out all the details.  If you get a chance, why not head on down to your local book seller and get a copy or two.

I also have a shout out to Susie who is, as usual, totally amazing and rocks my world all the time.  The book comes out in January 2010.

I woke up this morning and realized it was December 28th.  December 28th is one of those days I consider to be a day meant for sleeping, watching television or movies, and doing very little.  I have held this belief for years.  Every year, for as long as I can remember, my energy levels seem to crash on this day.  As a result, I have considered this day to be a useless day.  Today, this year, I decided to check out what value December 28th may have had in the past.  Here is what I found:

• Westminster Abbey was consecrated back in 1065.
• Toronto's Yonge Street construction begins in 1795.
• The Lumiere Brothers perform to their first paying audience marking the birth of the cinema in 1895.
• Endangered Species Act is passed in the United States in 1973.

It looks like quite a few important things happened on this day.  I mean, really, how often does something as important as the Endangered Species act get passed?  How that happened on December 28th, I will never know.  Doesn't everyone stop on this day?  I thought this was true since everyone I know seems to also stop on this day.  So, when I was asked to go cross country skiing, I was stuck.  I wanted to rest but, I suppose that due to this knowledge, I decided to take some people up on their offer to go outside and enjoy the sunshine.  This left me with one other problem, I hadn't been cross country skiing for at least 25 years.  Quite an odd memory to come up with on a day like today.

The last time I went cross country skiing, it was around 1984 on the Cedar Hill Golf Course.  I must have been about ten years old then.  I went with my friend David and his family and I don't think I was very good at it.  My parents weren't much for skiing and I never learned.  It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties when I finally learned (not very well, though).  I learned to fall down, anyway.  I remember that I was run over with a large inner tube at some point. 

There you go.  The weird memory of the day.  I won't go into much detail since there isn't much to describe about skiing.  I put some wood on my feet and moved my feet forward and backward.  I did have fun.

I took a little time today and cleaned out the comments queue.  I was surprised to find so many CIBC related comments.  I posted them all, so, if you are at all interested, head on over there and join in.  I haven't spent much time thinking about CIBC since I don't deal with them all that often (we have a business credit card left with CIBC) but, the other day, I logged into the CIBC website and found that one of my accounts wasn't closed as I had requested.  Initially, I thought the account was just showing up because of some computer glitch.  I called the toll free line and asked if the account had been closed and they confirmed it wasn't.  Normally, I wouldn't have thought much of it because it was just a small error.  But the gong show that I had to endure to close that account (at least, I thought it had been closed) was too funny not to mention.  I didn't blog about it intially because I thought I had said enough about CIBC.  But, here we go.

Back in August, I called up and asked the branch how I could close one of my final accounts with them.  They said that I should come down to the branch and sign some documents in order to finalize the closure.  It sounded very straight forward and I headed on down to the branch a few days later.  I walked in and, as instructed by the person on the phone, grabbed the first available financial advisor.  The advisor said they would be happy to close the account.  We sat down and I provided him the appropriate documentation and identification.  He started typing away and then stared at the screen for a few minutes.  I sat quietly and waited for him to tell me what I was supposed to do.  Another minute or two went by and he said that he needed to get a supervisor to confirm the closure.  He disappeared and fetched another person to come and stare at his screen.  The original advisor and this new person stared at the screen, typed a few things into the computer and then looked at me to say that they needed to check with yet another person.

I sat and began to laugh quietly.  My better half told me to be quiet.  I remained silent for a little bit longer. 

A third person came in and did almost exactly what the second person did.  She typed a few things, muttered a few things to the others, and then said that they would have to bring in someone else.

I started to laugh again but I wouldn't be silenced this time.  With all of my experiences with this bank, I had had enough and was not going to be afraid to let them know that I was unimpressed.  The scene unfolded again one more time and a fifth person was brought in.  After almost forty five minutes, they all left the room.

I was laughing hard now and was making fun of them in a good humoured way.  They smiled and continued on with their work but it was obvious that they were frustrated with whatever problem they had run headlong into.  To me, closing an account should be easy.  But, at CIBC, this appeared not to be the case.  At just over the one hour mark, the fifth person came in to the office and said to me that they were embarrased.  It turns out that CIBC can't close accounts on Saturday because Saturday is "not a business day". 

I replied: "Then why is this branch open?" 

She said: "Saturday isn't a business day." 

I again said: "Then why are you open today?  If you are not in business today, why am I standing here?"

She laughed.  I told her that there must be some way to close the account because I didn't want to have to come back.  She then disappeared and returned with the original advisor and we arranged that some other guy (this guy being number six on the roster) call me on the Monday and tell me the account was closed.  I said that this arrangement was acceptable.

The following Monday, I called up the guy and chatted on the phone for a couple of minutes to confirm that my account was closed.  He said it had been done.  Boom.  A completely stupid way to go about closing an account but, whatever, I had come to expect very little from CIBC at this point and it was merely a source of entertainment for me now.  If I wanted a laugh, I should just go to CIBC ask them a very basic question (like how to open an account) and see how long and how many employees it took.  (Which, incidently, I did ask this question the other day when I had to go back and yell at the manager of the branch about the lack of a closed account and it took over ten minutes before the teller returned with a brochure and I asked for some details about an account and the teller didn't know anything and said for me to just read the brochure.)

Anyway, back to my original commentary.  When I found out that over six months later, my account was still not closed, I went back to the bank and asked the manager why it took six employees of that branch to NOT close an account.  I told him that I was pissed and that I felt it was completely idiotic for me to have come to the bank, dealt with five employees directly and then a sixth on the phone to confirm that my account was closed.  Then to find out that six months later, it wasn't even closed!  And I had to come into the branch again to yell at them when I didn't want to deal with them in the first place.  How stupid is that!

I just couldn't not talk about this now that I have ignored it for so long.  I mean, come on... six employees to screw up the closing of an account because it was Saturday?  And none of them knew this simple tidbit?!

CIBC, not only do you suck, but you can also suck my big sack of sweaty balls.  Enough said.

It is that time of year again and I have decided not to do any resolutions this year.  I have come to this conclusion because over the last few years, many of the New Years resolutions I have made rarely get accomplished.  I don't know why but that seems to be the "way I roll".  Last year, I was able to accomplish a a bunch of my resolutions but many of them were only "half assed" and I was never 100% happy with how they turned out.  2009 seems to be the year where everything has changed. 

On a personal level, I took my health much more seriously this year and commited to losing some weight and getting my body into a much better position to start off on some extreme sports or some kind of program where I am getting to do things I never thought I would ever do.  So, in June, I was able to settle on an eating program (which is currently being put to the test because of Christmas cheer) and continue with my morning workout routine.  This has made my ever so happy.  I never really thought I would be able to look at my body in such a way where even I go: "Hey, not looking too bad, my man."  I think I want to slap my own ass just like all the sports greats but I have resisted so far.  I hear that Sham Wow guy already.  Bam!  Bam!

Professionally, we've done very well this year at the old day job and I can't be prouder of the group we've got.  There have been some ups and downs of course (how could there not be, if everything was even keel I would be suspicious) but we've weathered them as a group and it has made us stronger.  2010 promises to be an awesome year for Left Right Minds and it looks like our careful planning over the last few years has been paying off in spades.  Yah, I don't know what that means either.

As for blogging, I am a little shamed since I have fallen off the radar again and again this year.  Many starts and stops have come and gone but - wow - talk about slacking.  I suppose what happened (at least, for me) is I helped to re-write a bunch of the Blogging for Dummies book and the 3rd edition is coming out in January of 2010.  Head on down to your local book shop and pick up another copy.  There are some great tidbits about social networking and how you can combine your daily activities into your blog.  I suppose I could write about this kind of thing more often but I won't until January.  And if you don't pick up a copy soon, it will make me cry like a little girl with a skinned knee.  No, really.  Go buy one now.

I guess this is me saying that I am not dead and I am still around but I have been hiding a bit due to schedules, being busy, and also making sure I remain sane and get some offline time in here and there.  It is one of the most important lessons I have learned and share with every group I talk to about blogging: if you don't like writing or find yourself without enough time to dedicate to it, you may need to rethink your blogging strategy.  Participation is the key.

I think I will leave it at that because I need to return to the party.  If I don't see you, enjoy the rest of your holidays and I will blog like a mad thing in 2010.