Yesterday was travel day. As our plane pushed back from the jetway they tried to fire up the engines (some say this is required, I’m still unconvinced) and all we got was the sound of a 1983 Ford pickup trying to start in Northern BC, in January, when it’s -40 Celsius and you haven’t plugged it in overnight. So we sit there and listen to the rrrah…rrrrrrrrahhh……rrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaahhhh…..wwwrrrahhh…wwrrrrrrrrraaaaahhhhhhh. Perhaps I should have hollered out to the pilot what I was thinking (“PUMP THE GAS PEDAL!”), but alas I decided not to be a back, back, back seat driver. Because of this transgression on my part the next thing that happened was a complete blackout, air conditioning shut down and dead silence.

They pulled us back to the gate and after about fifteen minutes the pilot comes on and says “We have a couple of issues pop up here and we’ve fixed one of them, so we should be away in a minute or two”. Now, it may just be me, but this still indicates that there is one outstanding issue AND the pilot is going to push on regardless. If this works for the airline industry, why can’t it work for the software industry. “Hey Mr. Client, we’ve got to defects in you system. We’re working on one of them and that should be all we need to do before we put it into production.” Somehow I just don’t see this being accepted in the industry.
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In the end we made it to Montreal only about 20 minutes late. I jumped a cab (is that statues of Jesus a sign of things to come while in the hands of French drivers?) and made my way downtown to get some rack space and meet D’Arcy for a wobbly pop or two. The scenery during the drive in was unlike any urban experience that I’ve had in my life. The road system was very much about elevated sections and lots of nondescript cement pillars and beams. On top of that I have never seen so many old (early 20th century) industrial facilities in my life. They were all along the roadway as we came towards downtown. The closer to downtown that we got, more brick buildings and the more narrow three story housing units became visible. At first they seemed odd, but it didn’t take long for me to become quite fond of their look.

Now I sit in my hotel looking out the window at the downtown skyline and I can see the Centre Bell amongst a nice skyline of new architecture sky scrapers and the old brick buildings. I’m getting ready to go to the User Group conference being held today at DevTeach. Time to sign off and go have some of the free brekkie that was so kindly provided with my room.

Je suis le Codeur d’Igloo et suis aujourd’hui un beau jour.