nsavage

As a Canadian who lives near the border (as many do), my family and I have been shopping in the US for decades. Covid already put a dent in that, but I can't see ever doing that again. As comparison, my dad remembers going weekly to the US for grocery shopping.

As a Canadian living near the border (as many Canadians are!), I would often drive into the US for shopping. There are a number of towns that seem dedicated to serving Canadians, like Watertown, NY. I've found that often the US border guards would be much nicer than the Canadian border guards, probably because the Canadians are the ones that need to deal with the customs rules (Canadians aren't trying to smuggle their new purchases back to the US without paying tax!).

I haven't been on a shopping trip like that in a while though, and I find it hard to believe I'll ever do it again now. I feel bad for Watertown, but with the tariffs and the risk of detention, its not worth it.

Funny enough, I posted an article I wrote here yesterday with the same sort of thesis. Different technologies (mine was Docker) but same idea of LLM leading me astray and causing a lot of frustration

Now we're getting into the real meat of the questions. I love Kraft Dinner, in a somewhat ironic way. The best way to eat it is to add hot dog slices while cooking the pasta, then top it with ketchup. You can also have it with hot dogs and beans on the side (as my dad would call it, "beans and wieners and Kraft Dinner") It sounds disgusting, but its comfort food. Not sure if I would like it if I hadn't grown up eating it.

It might be an English Canadian thing. My partner is French Canadian and thinks its disgusting.

The protests lasted quite a long time and I think the public's opinion on it changed over time.

At the beginning, most left-wing/centrist sorts of people saw it as an annoyance, but Ottawa is used to protests. Within the first week or so, people were bringing their kids to the event

After the first week or so (again, going by memory here), I think the general perception of danger started increasing dramatically. Most of the kids were gone, replaced my angry men with nothing better to do. In hindsight, nothing happened during the occupation, but given the overlap with the sorts of people who own guns (remember, the border blockade in Alberta at the same time did see people with guns), I think people were legitimately scared. The police certainly were too scared to do anything!

There was also a scare at the time at an apartment building in Centretown where someone tried to barricade the doors and light it on fire. This happened during the convoy, and while nothing happened and it seems it may have been unrelated mischief, we can only say that in hindsight. At the time it was very scary. There was another incident where truckers were showing up at a local school and yelling at people.

I think most people supported the Trudeau government in putting an end to it with the Emergencies Act, which later was found to be unconstitutional. It was pretty popular at the time. The general perception was that the federal government was doing what the provincial government (despite what Doug Ford thinks, Ottawa is actually in Ontario!) should have done weeks ago.

Without looking up the specifics, by the time of the convoy, the vast majority of covid restrictions were gone. They liked to complain about vaccine passports, which Canada had, but by 2022 the vaccine passports were gone everywhere except the US border, by the request of the US government. So, from the outside, these guys were protesting and occupying Ottawa over actions of the US government. On the other hand, these guys don't really like being talked down to no matter what the elites say the real problem is. It started as a protest against vaccine passports but really turned into a ragefest against the establishment.

I live in Ottawa and lived here during the convoy. Happy to answer any questions as an actual resident from anyone about my experience.

Author here. Glad I'm not the only one with this problem!

What I'm experimenting with is building a graph out of "entities", which I'm calling people, places and things found in each card. The point I guess is to allow the LLMs to make connections between cards, but this won't be replacing user made connections.

This lets me pick up all cards that reference something like, I don't know, "factories" as a concept, which isn't something the user will necessarily want to directly connect.

Downside is that deduplicated taxonomy: I have, from a scan through my list, "factories", "Factory" and "Factories". My attempt to head this off is by vector searching based on the proposed entity keywords and having an LLM decide if they are the same or not. I think I need to work on my prompt for this though.

I have similar anecdotes about this and Yamaha guitars.

Isn't this essentially the same argument as "there are only 10 covid cases in this area, nothing to worry about"?

It's really missing the point, the point is whether or not exponential growth is happening or not. It doesn't with husbands, it does with covid, time will tell about AI.

A bit off topic, but you had me curious: the first exonym that I could think about was Quebec City, which is called in French Ville de Québec. The interesting part though is that the official name of the city in both languages is Québec, lacking the Ville or the City. Is this an exonym though, since its Canadians who have come up with both? Probably depends on who you speak to.

I've had cats for years and its obvious once you spend enough time with them. My cats clearly know their names for one. We've experimented by chatting with the cats in the room, and when you drop one of their names in the middle of a sentence their ears perk up.

Location: Ottawa, Canada

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Yes

Technologies: Python, Typescript, Javascript, Go, Swift, SwiftUI, SQL, Postgres,

Resume/CV: https://nicksavage.ca/

Email: nick@nicksavage.ca

Technologist looking for new challenges. I have an unusual mix of technical and business skills. I currently work in finance as the chief of staff to the CTO, helping manage technology at the firm both from a leadership and from a project management perspecive. My background is in accounting (used to be an auditor, am still a CPA in Canada), transitioned into tech. I actually think management is really interesting as well and am interested in how to lead teams to success.

I am a mostly self taught developer, worked on projects at my current firm in python and a proprietary functional DSL. I have been working on a passion project for the last year or so in Go, Typescript and Swift (iOS app) both because I wanted this to exist and to learn how those technologies work.

I'm looking for full-time, part-time or consulting work. I am open to anything from project management to straight technical positions.

I worked for Zellers in Canada in 2011 and we accepted cheques. I only remember ever seeing one though, but we did take it. Zellers has obviously been gone a long time though, and 2011 was quite a long time ago.

  Location: Ottawa, Ontario
  Remote: Yes, open to local 
  Willing to relocate: Maybe, depending on the role and location
  Technologies: Golang, Python, Typescript, React
  Résumé/CV: https://github.com/NickSavage/CV/blob/master/Nicholas%20Savage%20-%20CV.pdf
  Email: nick@nicksavage.ca
  Github: https://github.com/NickSavage/
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasbsavage/

Former financial auditor (CPA) who transitioned into tech. I work in a leadership role in technology now, helping the CTO manage their teams.

I don't write a lot of code at work anymore, but I have a number of personal projects I dedicate time to. My latest project is a zettelkasten interface written in Go and Typescript. It's at the point where I use it in production (if you can call a single user "in production"!)

I'm looking for a role in either of those two camps, dedicated to management or coding or maybe even somewhere in between.

  Location: Ottawa, Ontario
  Remote: Yes, open to local 
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Python, Javascript, React, SQL
  Résumé/CV: https://github.com/NickSavage/CV/blob/master/Nicholas%20Savage%20-%20CV.pdf
  Email: nick@nicksavage.ca
  Github: https://github.com/NickSavage/
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasbsavage/

Former financial auditor (CPA) who transitioned into software development. Well-rounded technologist bridging the gaps between business and technology. Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams towards achieving operational excellence and driving technological innovation. Looking for a position in operations, engineering management or product ownership.

  Location: Ottawa, Ontario
  Remote: Yes, open to local 
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Python, Javascript, React, SQL
  Résumé/CV: https://github.com/NickSavage/CV/blob/master/Nicholas%20Savage%20-%20CV.pdf
  Email: nick@nicksavage.ca
  Github: https://github.com/NickSavage/
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasbsavage/

Former financial auditor (CPA) who transitioned into software development. Well-rounded technologist bridging the gaps between business and technology. Proven ability to lead cross-functional teams towards achieving operational excellence and driving technological innovation. Looking for a position in operations, engineering management or product ownership.

I live in Ottawa and have been donating there for years. Just wish they would send me less junk mail.

"Northern outputs"? My grandparents an hour from Ottawa in a small town only had satellite internet until about six months ago when the government paid for fiber through the town.

The whole strong cities movement, which has many laudable goals, I think fails in the same way that many public health initiatives do. The proponents always assume they know more than everyone else, and therefore are better than everyone else.

Strong town supporters just have this smugness that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and its a big turn off from the movement. The problem is they don't have to convince me, they have to convince the 57% of Americans (from the title), many of whom are not in the online echo chamber about strong towns,

It's not that strong towns is wrong, its that their approach is "your whole life is wrong and you're just too stupid to know it", when it should be "we should develop better places for all of us to live".

Note that this is more a problem with internet commentators vs the actual source material. It's obviously (to me at least) right.

But on the other hand, I'm Canadian, I grew up in a car-dependent suburb. I lived downtown in my city in a walkable neighbourhood, and now I live in the car-dependent suburbs again with my family. I've been to Europe too, the walkable neighbourhoods there are great! But I also like my suburban house. Changing hearts and minds on this will take more than smugness though.

I can see it being a useful battery tech as well to be used with wind power: offshore wind to generate electricity and generate hydrogen from ocean water to be burned when the wind isn't blowing.

This was probably right until the 1960s or so, but there is conclusive evidence that they at least reached Newfoundland, and there is some other newer evidence of settlements on Baffin Island as well.

I wonder if its a cultural thing. In my area of Not-California, roads will often have a local municipal name, but also be a county highway. For a while, navigation was unaware of this and would tell you "turn on highway 48" while driving downtown. As a driver, you go "wtf is highway 48". YIou have to zoom all the way in on the map to see that its Bank Street. Now it usually says "Bank Street", but will only display the 48 on the map. Very frustrating.

Another set of things annoying about Google Maps: - Google shows pins for locations on the map. Often if I try to click one, it zooms in on a new pin on a random lat/lon next to it. This mostly happens when zoomed out with a wide view of the city. Obviously I was going for that random location, not the ad you were trying to show me. - It routinely shows me illegal routes, some of which I don't notice until I'm well on my way to the route. I know some of this is a data problem, but I don't think the cops will care that Google told me to turn at a "no turns during rush hour" place.

I don't think this is correct by law. I'm pretty sure you're required to file a return if you earned any income in a fiscal year.

That being said, de facto you are correct. The CRA will chase you if they think you owe them money, but is happy never receiving your returns if they owe you money.

There's a lot of legends like that in the Isles. For example, the first King of Britain is supposed to have been Brutus of Troy, descendant of Aeneas. The easiest explanation is that there is a great incentive on behalf of rulers to claim descendence to legitimize their own rule, but maybe there is some kernel of truth somewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutus_of_Troy

To be fair, where I'm from, "London" would probably refer to London, ON, but that's just because I live in Southern Ontario. So it's not like no one has heard of it.

On the other hand: no one in Southern Ontario will be asking what time it is in London, ON because it's all in the same time zone, so this seems like a problem.

I think that's a pretty poor way to think about the time period between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. Napoleon won many battles but ended up losing to the military and financial power of Great Britain (the so-called fiscal-military state). Basically Britain was able to fund its fighting effort by selling bonds instead of extorting 'gifts' from the nobility. Britain may not have worked in the same way as France, but I'd argue that Britain's was better and France never really recovered.

I'd also argue that the real reason Britain won was the overwhelming power of the Royal Navy, especially after Trafalagar and the decades long blockade of Europe. Keep in mind also that Britain overcame Napoleon even while fighting the sideshow of the War of 1812 against the United States. A good book on this would be In Nelson's Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars - James Davey

Napoleon may have famously bragged that he couldn't be stopped, but he was and lived the rest of his life in disgrace on St. Helena.

Location: Ottawa, ON

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/nicholasbsavage

Email: nicholas.b.savage@gmail.com

I am graduating at the end of the year with a Bachelor's of Commerce in Accounting. I am looking to pursue my CPA Designation when I am done. I am looking for exciting and challenging work in the tech industry in an entry level position for something related to accounting, bookkeeping, accounts payable/receivable or finance. I'm a nerd at heart and dabble in programming and self host my own Debian server. I'm looking to work for a company making something outstanding and get experience in the field and in accounting.