By Thomas F. Pawlick
If you are the kind of person who prefers to make informed decisions and presently do, or plan to do either of the following :
1. vote
2. eat
you need to read this book. For the rest of you I give you this:
The Rules of Bureaucracy
1. Preserve thyself.
2. It is easier to fix the blame than to fix the problem.
3. A penny saved is an oversight.
4. Information deteriorates upward.
5. The first 90% of the task takes 90% of the time; the last 10% takes the other 90%.
6. Experience is what you get just after you need it.
7. For any given large, complex, hard-to-understand, expensive problem, there exists at least one short, simple, easy, cheap wrong answer.
8. Anything that can be changed will be, until time runs out.
9. To err is human; to shrug is civil service.
10. There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Cider Quest 2010 progress report
I've tried a couple of more ciders recently. The Boss and I shared a 4 pack of Wapoos cider which is a local Ontario product made in the County of Prince Edward. I liked it when chilled but the Boss found it to be beery for her taste.
On the weekend we went to a local Pub to scope t out as a potential place to catch a World Cup game or six, Cuchulain's by name. I tried the Blackthorn cider they had on draft but I was glad it was the Boss who had ordered the pint. I didn't care for it at all. Too sharp with no reward. But the real find was that not only do I have a Mary Brown's franchise 400 yards down the road but if I go in the other direction for $2 extra I can get savoury dressing and gravy on my fries! Now if they would just put some Black Horse on tap I could break out my Doyle jersey and get fugly. Just kidding. I don't have any Doyle house clothes anymore.
Given the delicious combination of Fuller's, perogies and NFL at the Franklin Pourhouse I'm going to have to check out the Cock and Pheasant to see what surprises they might have in store for me. It's kind of shocking anyway that I have a British style pub a three minute walk from the house that I've not shown my patronage but to be honest the place scares me a bit because the parking lot is regularly full of empty beer bottles. Which I presume are dropped by the patrons getting primed on the drive over to the pub. But then I didn't think Cider Quest 2010 would be all sunshine and roses.
Results so far :
1. Wapoos
2. Bulmer's
3. Blackthorn (draft)
On the weekend we went to a local Pub to scope t out as a potential place to catch a World Cup game or six, Cuchulain's by name. I tried the Blackthorn cider they had on draft but I was glad it was the Boss who had ordered the pint. I didn't care for it at all. Too sharp with no reward. But the real find was that not only do I have a Mary Brown's franchise 400 yards down the road but if I go in the other direction for $2 extra I can get savoury dressing and gravy on my fries! Now if they would just put some Black Horse on tap I could break out my Doyle jersey and get fugly. Just kidding. I don't have any Doyle house clothes anymore.
Given the delicious combination of Fuller's, perogies and NFL at the Franklin Pourhouse I'm going to have to check out the Cock and Pheasant to see what surprises they might have in store for me. It's kind of shocking anyway that I have a British style pub a three minute walk from the house that I've not shown my patronage but to be honest the place scares me a bit because the parking lot is regularly full of empty beer bottles. Which I presume are dropped by the patrons getting primed on the drive over to the pub. But then I didn't think Cider Quest 2010 would be all sunshine and roses.
Results so far :
1. Wapoos
2. Bulmer's
3. Blackthorn (draft)
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Feeble attempts to not waste my entire life
The silver lining to my hellishly long commute is that I am reading a lot of books on he bus.Some are better than others but there have been a few I would recommend. Meeting the Invisible Man, The Art of Racing in the Rain and Long Way Gone. None of them are heavy reading but for me at least all were thought provoking. Long Way Gone in particular I would recommend to to the socially or politically minded, Meeting the Invisible Man to adventure travellers and The Art of Racing in the Rain to dog owners.
I'm currently reading the Friends of Killarney Park trail guide to the La Cloche Silhouette Trail. It's also easy reading and has helped me decide that if I go it will be later in the summer. I had been thinking about early July but there arose a conflict with a potential Dave Brubeck concert at the Ottawa Jazz fest. Reading in the trail guide that bugs remain a problem until mid July I've decided that if I go on the hike at all I'll go late July or August. Travelling in the high heat opens up the possibility of trying to ultralight the trail - do the whole thing fast and light in trail runners and sleeping under my rain poncho which also seems suited to hiking solo. This is also the busiest time of year on the trail and according to the guide it can be difficult to book sites so even if I solo the trail it sounds like I would have lots of company.
Although it looks like if I want to get the time off work I'll have to quit my job. But that also applies to trying to get time off to do some preliminary work on the farmland.And of course the whole lifestyle question of work to live or live to work? Right now I am living to work. But then there are bills to pay. I'm going to have to sleep on it one more time.
I'm currently reading the Friends of Killarney Park trail guide to the La Cloche Silhouette Trail. It's also easy reading and has helped me decide that if I go it will be later in the summer. I had been thinking about early July but there arose a conflict with a potential Dave Brubeck concert at the Ottawa Jazz fest. Reading in the trail guide that bugs remain a problem until mid July I've decided that if I go on the hike at all I'll go late July or August. Travelling in the high heat opens up the possibility of trying to ultralight the trail - do the whole thing fast and light in trail runners and sleeping under my rain poncho which also seems suited to hiking solo. This is also the busiest time of year on the trail and according to the guide it can be difficult to book sites so even if I solo the trail it sounds like I would have lots of company.
Although it looks like if I want to get the time off work I'll have to quit my job. But that also applies to trying to get time off to do some preliminary work on the farmland.And of course the whole lifestyle question of work to live or live to work? Right now I am living to work. But then there are bills to pay. I'm going to have to sleep on it one more time.
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