that ring of confidence

At work

The 'Ham'burger at Fiamma Burger

While on our honeymoon in New York Lydia and I fell in love with The Shake Shack and their Shake Stack burger. Sadly New York is on the other coast and it's going to be awhile until we get back. Thankfully the second best hamburger joint that I've ever been to is just across the border in Bellingham WA.

Along with Lydia's former roommate we went to Fiamma Burger last weekend where I had their special 'Ham'burger. I'll admit I'm a sucker for a burger with an egg on it, and so adding egg, ham and fried potato shavings to one of their great burgers was the perfect way for Fiamma to win back my heart and stomach.

I'm so glad I don't live in Bellingham otherwise I'd be far fatter than I am.

The Kindle and some tech writing

It seems like since I've gotten back from my honeymoon I've been kind of on the ropes and running behind on everything.  I picked up swine flu somewhere in Maine on our trip and was incredibly sick when we returned.  However having missed two weeks of work already for the trip I headed back, only to pass the flu onto at least one of my co-workers and possibly two.  After a few days, and a definitive doctor's diagnosis of H1N1 [wp] I ended up back at home for nearly another week.

I was just over that and back to work when I got the news about David [jks], and so blogging has certainly not been my top priority.  Add to that two articles that I've finished off for The Georgia Straight, and I actually don't feel bad about ignoring this blog.  Besides apart from an accounting of the honeymoon I've not had much to write about up until recently.  Ironically when I have blogged it's been for the Straight and that has been about the new Kindle I got for my birthday [tgs].

Well actually I combined a few of my gifts into the Kindle, using the money my parents and my brother gave me to order it from Amazon.  Since the Kindle was only available in America when I bought it I had to get it sent to a business in Sumas that specializes in receiving packages for Canadians.  Since then the Kindle has begun shipping to Canada [tgs], though I've heard that it does not have the web browser.

I've also blogged about Indigo/Chapters' moves into the ebook market [tgs] for the Straight. While I was on my honeymoon my article on Facebook games for The Georgia Straight as well [tgs].

I'm also likely going to be speaking at the 72nd annual Canadian University Press (CUP) National Conference in Edmonton this January.  It's being hosted by the University of Alberta student paper The Gateway, where a number of my closest CUP friends worked at, and though it's been awhile since I've been to a CUP conference it should be fun.  I've not gotten all the details nailed down, but I appear to be listed as a speaker [cup] so that's always a good sign.  The last CUP conference I spoke at ended up with me writing for the Straight, so hopefully this will also be a good networking opportunity.

David

The internet has provided me with a few friendships over the years.  Apart from one, the relationship that meant the most to me was the friendship that I had with David Robles.  Since I have no friends who read comics I had turned to the interne to talk about them, and after being on a few sites with David we ended up becoming friends.  The more we talked the better we got on, which is generally rare for me.  I think I've reached the point in my life where making new friends is basically impossible, so I'm just hanging on to the ones that I have as hard as I can.

 

Finding out that David was a doctor, or at least finishing off the internship part of medical school, and from Panama was surprising because the common reference point of our shared hobby made any differences seem negligable.  I first met David in person in Seattle a few years after I'd met him online.  He was up from Panama visiting his girlfriend Julie (pictured with David above) who also lives in Vancouver, and the Canadian government was not going to let him into the country.  Later he finally got the okay to come to Canada, and stayed a few weeks with Julie and we hung out a few times including a trip to the Canucks.