In anticipation of ubiquitous wireless palm devices and GPS, GeoNotes is a system with which you can annotate physical locations and read the annotations of others with your palm device.

For example, if you visit a restaurant and find the pasta to be particularly good, you can sumbit your gastronomical musing to the system. All future customers will have the benefit of your experience when they arrive. Very cool. Found via peterme.com.

The summer I graduated from high school, I quit my job at a grocery store (something I had promised myself a year earlier I would do after a year at the job) and took a job with the government. Come to think of it, I don’t even know who I was working for, HRDC or Industry Canada maybe. Regardless, the job was to build websites for non-profit organizations. It was a make-work project through and through that seems vaguely communist in retrospect. I got the job through a referral and recommendation of my high school computer teacher (one of the best teachers I had).

This is not to say, however, that I was at all qualified. Nobody was at the time. The web was young and frames where bleeding edge technology. I got a great start at that job. It was slack, fun, and I earned a humorous nickname from my co-workers. What I remember most about that summer, though, is waking up. And I don’t mean some kind of epiphany or religious awakening, I mean waking up every morning.

I started work somewhere around 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning. The job was about a fifteen minute bike ride from my house (a very similar route to the one I had taken on a bus to high school everyday for the three preceding years). I would wake up in the morning at around 7:00 or 7:30 because I was ready to, with no aid from an alarm clock. I would shower, eat breakfast (remember breakfast?), and bike to work.

I remember it being sunny every day. Some days I would wear my walkman and listen to Stranger than Fiction by Bad Religion (out of character for myself at the time). Other days, I would travel without a soundtrack.

I packed a lunch everyday, which I would eat outside with my co-workers (a fantastically odd lot). Since I was making good money and still living at home, I had money to burn. With nothing else to spend my money on other than a Fender HotRod DeVille 410 60 watt tube guitar amp I had been dreaming about (and have since bought), I spent most of my salary on compact discs. The mall was between work and my house and I used to stop by the music store once or twice a week. I remember one day in particular where I bough superunknown by Soundgarden and there where actually two CDs stuck together in the one case. I was like winning the lottery.

It was a good summer I spent there. I had a good job. I worked with interesting people. But what really separates that summer from every other, both before and since, is the mornings. I would wake up every morning feeling rested and looking forward to going to work.

At this point, perhaps a bit of context may help explain why this is so important to me. The first 20 minutes of the every day of my high school career where hellish. I woke up to an alarm feeling like I had fallen asleep only an hour ago. I used to claim illness on days where I just couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed.

Since that summer I’ve had better jobs (and no job at all) but I have never had another time in my life where it was so easy to get out of bed in the morning. Even now, when I have a rewarding and challenging job (often more challenging than it is rewarding, mind you), I still have to fight my way out of bed every morning. No matter how great the hours that follow promise to be, the first 15 minutes of every day are perpetually difficult.

Clearly, there are some factors at play here that are in under my control. Diet, exercise, and going to bed at a reasonable hour would all help, I’m sure. But what I remember so fondly about that summer of pleasant mornings was that it was effortless. The dread of impending morning didn’t drive me to bed every night. I went to bed when I was tired, ate when I was hungry, and woke up in time for work every morning.

I was conscious of it at the time. I knew I had a good thing going on. I can still remember waking up and thinking, “Wow, I don’t mind getting out of bed. This is good”.

Since that summer, this state of waking up with ease has become for me something of a Holy Grail for me. Not so much that I would try to get more exercise, or eat better, which I’m sure would help. Rather, I’m just waiting for a point in my life when it will once again be effortless to get out of bed every morning.

This is a slightly “the more you know”-esque post. Teaching must be a difficult profession. Here a few of my better teachers:

Mr. Grant – Grade 4 English

Mr. Grant gave me and a few of my classmates a special assignment to read a book that was slightly above the grade 4 level (or so I thought). He seemed like an actual human being, as opposed to the other teachers which seemed like, well, teachers.
 

Mr. Griesbauer – Grade 12 Computer

I remember being amazed at how the same few kids who would practically crucify the teacher in first period would then engage in a meaningful and pertinent debate with Mr. Griesbauer only a few minutes later. The difference between him and the other teachers was that there was a mutual respect. He encouraged me to pursue my current career path and even helped me get a job to get me started. I understand he’s since been swallowed up by an administrative position.
 

Ms. Willis – Grade 12 Math

Since she was the principal we had all assumed she was a crazy and vindictive woman. As it turns out, she was very good at teaching math and took a genuine interest in each of her students. By the time I took her class she was only teaching the one course and spending the rest of her time with her duties as principal. I remember one day she asked us if we felt she didn’t have enough time to adequately teach the class since she was principal. It was risky to ask a meaningful question like that to a class of teenagers. She was leaving herself vulnerable. In an uncharacteristic display of maturity, we told her that not only was she doing a great job teaching, but that she should teach more. I think she’s full-time administration now.

I would like to offer apologies to our more aged readers. Please be aware that Rob’s opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the remainder of aov. “Grandmother sex” (see post below) is, of course, a beautiful and natural thing and we here at aov (myself, at least) would like to stress that we are very supportive of all the seniors out there who enjoy satisfying sex lives. Not so supportive that we’d like to actually hear about your sex lives though. And no pictures. I cannot make that clear enough. No pictures. None.

So, to sum up: Enjoy all the “grandmother sex” you can get, but go easy. Paramedics prefer their heart attack victims fully clothed.

It’s always refreshing to look at where our hits come from, who the referers are.

So, I looked and was saddened to find folowing Google search criteria which returned our site, and was then clicked on because the searchers thought we had what they wanted:

(not for those easily offended)

• +”rob fletcher”+video (!!!)
• grandmother+sex+stories (disgusting)
• porn+e+cards (mildly amusing)
• sex+winamp+plug (mildly disturbing)

I can remember when you got when you searched for. Then I remember when you would find hardcore porn if you were looking for something innocent. Now the table has turned. All those porn freaks who made it so bad for us all are getting a taste of thier own medicine. Hard luck finding content when you wanted pr0n.

Are there any celebrities who share my name? If not, I should be concerned by porn hunter out there with my full name.

Because I write a great many things which do not go anywhere. This is as good a place as any:

The Zyphoid Process
She punched him as hard as she could. He felt her fist land just below his ribs. It hurt like hell. He couldn’t breathe.

He felt her fist land, centred just below his ribs, right on that bone – the one whose name he could never remember, except that it started with a “z”. It hurt like hell and he remembered in first aid class how they were all told to be careful when doing the Heimlich manoeuvre. If you went too high, you could hit that bone which extends like a tab between the bottom of the ribs and starts with the letter “z”. You could hit that bone and break it off.

He could hear her crying. Turning around to leave. She was walking away.

He thought about the bone snapping off from the breastbone and floating around his chest. He tried to remember first aid class. Did it lacerate the heart, or puncture the lungs?

He thought about that sharp fragment of bone, severed and misplaced, floating about his chest. He thought about that jagged, errant satellite orbiting his vitals. What was that tickle in his chest?

He couldn’t breathe and he thought about a sharp fragment of bone floating around his chest and slicing open his heart.

By the time the pain subsided and he thought to open his eyes, the hallway was empty and she was half a block away.