I know I’ve been relatively quiet over the last while… I’ve actually been pretty busy with the house move and election planning. There will be some new stuff at the beginning of September…

Meanwhile, I’ve been hearing at work a lot of, “Kirk. We want you to win… but we don’t want you to win.” We’re currently planning the distribution of my duties for the 6-7 weeks I’ll be campaigning - but if my coworkers expect the election, then the rhetoric has hit a new plateau entirely, and the likelihood of going is very high.

And you’re going to continue to hear it. While they’re not saying whether or not they intend to pull the plug, the grits’ obvious strategy is to get people talking this summer, and that they have. It might not be front and centre in every paper every day, but there is this constant rumbling that might get a little louder in the coming months.

So when could this all happen? Well, Parliament resumes on September 15th - 11:00am EST, in fact - assuming the Tories do not prorogue parliament (which I doubt they will). So let’s say the government falls that week, we’re looking at an October 27th election (assuming the writ is the standard 36 days plus epsilon to get to the first possible Monday). And so it continues… November 3th, November 10th, November 17th, for the government falling in subsequent weeks.

Of course, if you read this weblog relatively consistently, you’ve probably already noticed the repeating pattern of ‘possible election’ followed by, ‘nope’. In fact, Harper now has the second longest minority parliament in history… so, you know, take my elections ‘doomsday’ dates with a shaker of salt.

I am, of course, working on campaign stuff this summer. I won’t get into too much here, but I do at least have an ear to the ground and have been talking with some of my volunteers and donors. Of course, this is while I’m not doing plenty of other things, such as packing our things to move into our new house… More campaign information will follow, however… all in good time.

The prodigal son returns. It has been nothing less than a hectic month, between planning for a fall election, traveling across the country, and making some property deals (aka, buying a new place). The latter is the most recent, and the most nerve-racking - we essentially sold our current place while 3,500km away in Southwestern Ontario, and bought the first day we were back. Of course, it sounds a whole lot more sporadic than it was; Robyn and I have been diligently watching the housing market for over a year now, have regularly checked finances (mostly comparing short-term results with the long-term fiscal projections), and have been planning this for a long time. It just seems sudden, making two property deals in under a week.

Last week, as I mentioned, we were hopping around Southwestern Ontario. We happened to see a lot of Robyn’s family, as well as some very good friends of ours from school. The original reason for going East was a wedding; in fact, one of the most interesting wedding’s I’ve ever been to - half Mennonite, half Jewish… all fun. We then stayed in Ontario and visited different friends and family.

Election stuff. Well, the government cannot be collapsed by the opposition until Parliament returns on September 15. So it’ll be a bit. But that does not stop the endless planning that goes into a solid bid to represent a riding. The advantage now is that I’ll actually have a garage to store all election mats.

Hopefully I will return to the weblogging fray with more regularity. Kudos to those who keep checking for new posts. I only do because it’s my home page…

Andrew Coyne jumped on the story, though, to show signs of the possible insurrection at hand. While it would be devastating for the Grits and their party, the thought had crossed my mind that between Rae and Ignatieff, since Dion hasn’t got much of a Roman Guard on his Cabinet, they could pull off a successful bid to collapse the government without Dion. Again, devastating for that party, and it was fly in the face of both of their ambitions, but it is politics, after all.

I read an article a few weeks ago about how crass partisanship is destroying parliament. There are renewed calls from people for independents to come forward and get involved. How appropriate. The problem is, still, that it’s far more difficult to raise funds and to run as an independent. You may remember last summer I developed a few points for how we can help equalize that system. Of course, it will take running within the current one successfully to be able to come in and make those changes, but it would definitely help open the playing field.

Over the summer, I’m going to be working on a number of campaign projects, always moving it forward. I continue to look for active people who might want to volunteer for the campaign, and you’re always welcome to become a ‘fan’ (or ’supporter’) on Facebook.

… and maybe, just maybe, Calgary will see some extended periods of sunshine soon…

I’ll believe in not looking into politicians’ personal lives when they stop putting their families on Christmas cards

… best I could do on a strict computer budget, since I intended to buy a new one next year instead of this year… I also took the old HDD and the new one, running data striping on them, and using the NAS for backups, so that should give me some performance on the HDD level.

Of course, part of the reason I was unable to work on it was that we were in Winnipeg this weekend, attending Donny and Riki’s wedding. Carlos, Donny’s Best Man, and someone I’ve spent countless hours with in Azeroth, gave one of the best Best Man speeches I have ever seen in my life.

Many of the invitees were alumni of the infamous 110 Columbia, which now sits as a crater on Columbia St in Waterloo (one imagines the 52″ TV which sustained our undergraduate lives sitting within the crater like a monolith, with students dancing around it wielding crude tools made out of bones…). It was good to see old friends and discuss old times, and of course, the future. Robyn and I also tried to convince a few more to join the city with streets paved with gold…

Update: The computer boots. Once I gain access to all of my important files that were created since last backup, then I’ll format the thing and re-do. If the drive is salvageable, I may even buy one more and start a nice little RAID array…

Update #2: The computer randomly freezes. Seagate’s utility says the drive is fine, but chkdsk says it isn’t. I now have a brand new HDD to try out and see if it continues to randomly lock. If it does, my board’s probably fubarred since my CPU and Memory are fine, which means getting a new computer under duress (in which case I’ll use both drives), and if the new drive works, well, then the other is trash.

Meanwhile, Robyn and I were at the Running Room the other day (because Robyn’s been doing some races), and they had a sign for employment (like any other place in this city) that said, “Make Running Your Job.” Which made me think… “It is!” Of course, I’m pretty sure we’re not talking about the same kind of running…

In other news, I’ve finally been getting around to read Shake Hands With the Devil. A coworker lent it to me. I suspect a number of people who read this weblog have read it, but I must say it is probably the book that has wrenched the most emotions out of me…. I hope to have it finished by Friday… It really should be required reading.

Time to prepare for a fall election…