Litui.Net

We’ve got a huge store and we’ve spent a lot of money and many years filling it with good product to sell.  Our storefront is large and windows allow the customers a full view of our stock, but time is taking its toll and our stock is beginning to overcrowd the store.  Additionally, our customers are sometimes complaining it’s too crowded or technical issues are causing the store to close too frequently and randomly in the day.

Conveniently, our landlord is just polishing up a brand new, fancy store.  It promises all the features of the old store with much more space, polish, and room for expansion.  Like the old store it’ll only house a certain number of customers, but the landlord is working on neighbouring properties so we’ll be able to allow more customers in anytime we want for a price.  We’re hard-pressed to pay the large amount being asked since, in spite of needing improvement, we remain unsure that the advantages outweigh the cost.

Both stores had the restriction (not uncommon in this particular line of business) of a certain number of distinct products.  We could offer variations of each of these products but had a restriction on the core number.

Additionally, unlike the old property, the new one comes with shelving and in-builts that allow space to be shifted around.  We no longer have to keep the aisles clear at all times to account for a specific number of people, but rather we can make the space for our customers on demand.

We decide to go ahead with the purchase.

We get a walkthrough of the property and determine (mostly) that all is in order.  A few things need fixing up and there’s confusion on our part as to how to effectively use the shelving, but for the most part we’re fine.

Some time later, we’re prepared to move in and show up to do so only to find that the front doors won’t open, even unlocked.  We call up the landlord who is also unsure of the answer.  We spend a great deal of time trying to work it out, put the moving crews on hold, and finally work on some other projects.

After a week the manager suggests that it may be related to the security system and we should try entering through the neighbouring property.  Success.  Once in, we rewire the security and begin the move only to find that things we expected to be in the lease were not in fact present.  Checking with the landlady again, we find that there are many crazy unspoken items that we apparently agreed to which were not in our original terms at the old store and which we never saw in writing prior to moving in.

• We were told that the building was constructed with new materials, but we were not given the whole story.  The building was indeed constructed with new materials but not up to recent standards.  The construction is not as strong as buildings other firms are constructing these days, but no one else has constructed a building as well suited to our industry so we’ll have to bite the bullet and accept the shortcomings.  It still appears to be a better structure than the last.

• Each of our products could only ever come from a single supplier.  If we wanted to use backup suppliers we would have to pay for those separately.

• At any given time we could only ever advertise and sell 100 distinct products or variations thereof.  In fact, to achieve this at least 75% of the window space has been blocked off.  We could sell multiple of each of these but all other products would have to remain hidden in our store unless we paid for additional licenses to sell them.  Since we have over 380 products and variations in our inventory, this is clearly sub-optimal.  Additionally, of the 260 customers we’re allowed to have in our store, how many of them will only be interested in the 100 products available?

• In our old building we used to use a free line to send information about store operations to a 3rd party accounting firm.  On initial inspections, no similar line existed in the new building so we did not account for that in the lease terms, however since then a line has been installed and is not in use.  Unfortunately, the landlord has now seen fit to charge an additional fee for access to that line (the particulars of operating with which are left to us to fund and explore).

Bereft of updates on happenings of the past year and being something of a copy-cat, I’ve decided to wrap up 2009 in a single post. I am, however, going to try not to duplicate events too much.

NYC

My pal Dave and I set for New York in May to take part in the celebration/memorial for the birthday of Frankie Manning. This was my first time in New York and it was definitely among the most amazing cities I’ve been to. The two of us stayed on 32nd and Broadway and spent the first few days of our trip exploring the city.

Manhattan was far more dense than I’m used to and built upward at heights that ensured my head was tilted back in true tourist fashion while walking down the street for most of my stay. I rode tour buses around both Manhattan and Brooklyn and hopped off and on at my convenience. I managed to take in Central Park, the Empire State Building, Times Square, Grand Central Station, and more. Dave and I even went to see Guys and Dolls with Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham on Broadway. I managed to take a few hours one day to explore Crown Heights in Brooklyn, home to a large population of Chasidic Jews. In Harlem, Dave and I found the Savoy Ballroom marker and enjoyed some amazing chicken.

The dancing portion of the trip was also fantastic. The event ran for almost 5 days. The primary venue was the Manhattan Center including both the Hammerstein Ballroom and Grand Ballroom. On the first full day there was a memorial service for Frankie followed by a second line to Central Park where we danced outdoors all afternoon. Other venues over the 5 days included panels with those who knew Frankie Manning over the years, dance workshops, tributes, competitions, and of course dances every evening.

I learned a lot about dance during my trip and had the opportunity to take instruction from some living legends like Chester Whitmore and Chazz Young. I met Norma Miller and had the opportunity to watch these and other masters dance. Most notable was the dance on stage one night between Chester and Dawn Hampton wherein the two demonstrated how enjoyable dancing could be without being overly complex or athletic. The two were having fun dancing.

While the event was about Frankie Manning and largely Lindy Hop, watching people dance (especially the older dancers in the scene) made it more clear to me than ever that dancing is just moving to the music and having fun with it. Going to workshops and studying moves and technique (as well as being such a beginner as I still consider myself) has made me over analytical about Lindy Hop. I decided then that I would work on rhythm and movement as basic elements independent of Lindy Hop and just have fun with social dancing.

Gaming

This year marked a return to gaming on a more regular basis. Jodie and I started playing World of Warcraft again in the first half of the hear though our interest has dwindled again recently. I became quite addicted to Fallout 3, and have more recently been ignoring it in favour of Dragon Age: Origins which is proving to be one of the best role playing games I’ve played in years.

A group of Calgary swing dancers got together several times to fight for freedom (and gold) and battle supernatural creatures in the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition universe. Our DM is running the War of the Burning Sky Campaign Saga. We’ve been playing infrequently but it’s been a good time. For someone as nerdy as I am, it’s odd that I’ve played so little D&D in the past. Finally my old dice (and some new ones) are being put to use. Hopefully things pick up this year.

Moving

In September I moved to a nice new apartment in another corner of downtown Calgary. Jodie is sharing the place with me. Aside from still missing some furniture, decorations and the like, we’ve settled in quite comfortably. One of the criteria we were looking for in an apartment was the potential to have a cat and this place fit the bill nicely. This year we’ll be filling in the missing bits.

Jodie

Because she’s also awesome. We’ve been together over a year now and don’t hate each other so I take that as a good sign. We went to Edmonton together this year and saw a number of concerts in Calgary including Dragonforce, Blue Man Group, and Video Games Live. I travelled with her to Ontario to meet her family over the holidays. Great people (and cat) and a nice trip on the whole.

Work

Things continue to go well at work. Busy as always and projects are varied. I have more responsibility these days and more opportunities to learn about interesting technology.

Computers

My 2.5 year old Macbook Pro has been flaking out for the past few months. I suspect it’s this issue and now have a case number assigned and a warranty exemption for service. All signs point to the video issue but I need to go to a service centre to confirm. It started as graphical corruption while playing WoW that would crash the software and cause system slowdowns. Now when the corruption occurs, it hangs the whole system and on reboot I get the multilingual kernel panic. I am only able to boot my system again after I repair my partition in Target Disk mode using a second system and reset the PRAM. I’ll be taking it in tomorrow most likely.

Oh, hello again blog.  It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?  I know I’ve been neglecting you and I can’t promise to be any better about it, but I’ll feed you some scraps and hopefully that will tide you over for awhile.

While writing this I’ve been obsessively pressing F12 to check on my UPS shipment of a Samsung NC10 netbook [update: just now arrived!  yummy!].  I’ll likely be installing an alternative OS of some sort on it.  Probably Ubuntu Linux, but if I decide to change out the wireless adapter I may take a stab at turning it into a Hackintosh.  I recently spent some time (and factually, am still spending time) converting my desktop system, Butlertron, over to OS X.  Miraculously, it mostly works with only a few issues (occasional kernel panics on SATA controller).  It reminds me of all the effort I had to put into getting Linux working on my hardware back in the late ’90s.

Work at Cansel continues to go swimmingly.  I’m getting closer to the end of my third year of employment here (July) and looking back I can’t believe how much I’ve learned and accomplished here so far.  It’s not all fun and games, but it’s often stimulating and I feel the work I do is appreciated.  Work is still sending me traveling quite frequently.  In December, my boss and I traveled together to both Vancouver and Toronto to bring Global CADD Systems into the company fold.  Next week I’ll be going to St. John’s, Newfoundland to visit our new branch at MF Kelly.  Later in the week, I’ll be visiting our Halifax (Dartmouth) branch.  I also have several major projects due within a month.  Busy times.

I’ve been doing a lot of programming lately and I’m actually starting to feel like a programmer.  Those who know me will likely be rolling their eyes at this point, but it’s true that I rarely consider myself a programmer by nature.  I still feel insecure about the quality of my programming, but it’s finally getting to the point where I can pretty well sit down and write up whatever I need for the purpose in any of a handful of languages.  That’s a pretty nice feeling.

I continue to swing dance and will be in attendance at Frankie Manning’s 95th Birthday Party in New York in May.  This will be my first trip to New York as well so expect some crappy pics of Lady Liberty and the Empire State Building to surface a couple months from now.  In the more immediate future I’ll be attending 9PLEX A.K.A.: PLEX and the City here in Calgary.  This coming Friday and Saturday nights there will be dances with the Bow Djangos and the Polyjesters, respectively.  Both are very fast bands and I’ve been working hard at improving my Balboa accordingly.

This year I also introduced my girlfriend to Lindy Hop and she seems to be enjoying herself though she lacks the time in her busy school schedule to take dance classes at present.  Oh yes, I have a girlfriend named Jodie who makes me very happy. ♥

What few readers I have will have noticed that there have been no posts to this blog lately, a sad fact resulting from the occupation of my time by the collection of activities I’ve involved myself in lately.

Foremost has been the move from a basement suite located in Banff Trail (vaguely between the University of Calgary and Downtown Calgary) to the Eau Claire area of Downtown Calgary. While the bulk of the moving was completed this past weekend, there still remains work to be done cleaning the old place, selling and/or hauling our old furniture, and getting the new place in order. The new place is, however, spectacular with laminate flooring, a spacious living room, a large balcony, new appliances, thick walls, lots of light, and a great location. The only major downside so far is that I have to pay to get laundry done (and still have to pick up the card to do that).

On the dance front, this past Friday I danced with the U of C Swing Club at the Jack Singer Concert Hall lobby as eye candy for the Swing, Swing, Swing concert. This was a fairly casual venue and we just social danced. The sound system was a bit difficult as it was hard to hear the beat sometimes. Afterward, we had a Friday night dance enhanced by the presence of live music as played by the Solomon Douglas Quartet. Solomon is a great musician (and dancer) who knows exactly what and how to play for Lindy Hop dancers. This was my second time dancing to his band (last time was the Solomon Douglas Swingtet at 7PLEX in Edmonton) and this occasion was also excellent.

This coming weekend I’ll be attending the Andy and Nina Swing Workshop in Edmonton which should prove enjoyable. I’ll try to post about it here when I have time.

Not sure I agree with the greediness count. It may just be because I’m so focussed on myself lately, for various reasons.