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Way back in June — the 13th, to be specific (I guess that should have been a first sign, eh?) — I packed up a whack of things on my desk to bring down to Costa Rica. TeamMG (Mary and Morgan) arranged for this to be shipped down here by FedEx, a company I had used many, many times to get things from Point A to Point B quickly.

Problem: When a company doesn’t have a complete representation in Point B, you’re not going to get your box as fast as you thought.

Today is 24 July. I only got the box today.

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Today, I arrived back in Costa Rica with my family in tow. Little did I know that my “other” family — my friends and colleagues back in Calgary, were facing quite the tragedy. I found out no sooner than I turned on my computer to send a quick note to my partners here in Costa Rica (remember, I have no phone with which to call them), and I got an IM request from Dave. All he said was: “Call me. Urgent.”

It would appear that my friend, colleague, and fellow watch geek (though I could never ascribe to the level he attained) Sean Lineham passed away last night.

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I’m in Panama. Been here since Tuesday afternoon. Been really, really busy. So far, the biggest problem I’ve had here (aside from the aforementioned busy-ness and subsequent inability to talk to my family), is that I’ve had Van Halen’s Panama stuck in my head pretty much since we left San Jose.

Damn you, David Lee Roth. Damn you!

So far, it’s a great place to visit (a post coming on this soon). But we’ve been steadily on the move.

Oy.

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I’ve been with Critical Mass (Canada) for 8 years. Eight years, two months, and 9 days.

Today is my last day.

Sorta.

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For all intents and purposes, I’m off the Rolex team. I’m still on their resource sheet, but the reality is that I haven’t done sqwat with the Rolex account for over a couple of weeks now. It’s all been transferred to Torin, who’s the new Tech Lead. I went into self-imposed exile at the fringes of the team’s seating space, soon to be a long-distant memory.

But before I left, I had a debt to settle. Many months ago now, I had to institute what we called the “Jugo Juice Rule”. It was an effort to get everyone to calm down a bit (we were all under a lot of pressure, and mistakes were becoming more frequent) and concentrate on what they were doing. Short version: If you made a mistake, you owed the entire team Juge Juice (a fruit smoothie).

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…and I feel, well, okay. Maybe not necessarily “fine”.

Critical Mass has done a bit of a reorganisation. I emphasise “a bit”. Mostly because this is not the radical shifts we’ve seen in the past. I think this is my third or fourth reorganisation since starting with Critical Mass back in 2000 (admittedly, I’m losing track), and this is the most minor change we’ve had.

At least when you look at the big picture.

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Last session of the conference. And yes, another Schill recommendation. But this one I wanted to go to as well. We always have this problem — how to let people know something is private without the fear of “unauthorised” access.

Sadly, Kellan’s slides exploded just prior to the session, so we see an Apple-like presentation sans imagery.

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