An Atlantic salmon leaps in its pen.

I have made the jump from journalism to communications and I am loving it.

It’s not easy, that’s for sure. Multitasking is a must. And I have chosen to do communications for a company embroiled in controversy. A whole industry embroiled in controversy, actually.

I am now the communications officer for Mainstream Canada, based in Campbell River, the second-largest salmon farming company in British Columbia. And boy, is salmon farming ever unpopular these days.

But I think all the hate is unwarranted. I covered aquaculture for the Campbell River Mirror newspaper for eight years and I heard all sorts of awful things about the industry, but I just didn’t see it.

I looked. I tried to see what all the environmental groups hated about the farm industry. But I just didn’t see the evidence.

But I did see a lot of evidence of questionable behaviour by the environmental groups attacking the companies. I refer to inconsistencies, lies and even possible “greenwashing” on behalf of the Alaskan fishing industry. I also refer to a general mean-spiritedness and unwillingness to compromise.

Meanwhile, the industry has become more open, improved its practices and been consistent, ironically, thanks in part to the pressure from environmental groups.

When the communications position with Mainstream Canada came up, I jumped at the opportunity to work in an industry I believe has a bright future in B.C. and which has an important part to play in feeding the world’s exploding population, as well as contributing to a healthy economy on Vancouver Island.

I’ve left journalism and I’m not looking back. This is too much fun. I hope I can help people see what I see about the industry — an earnest effort to run a good business that feeds people, employs people, is environmentally sensitive and is profitable.

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Napping in the heat with my dog Sam.

Ugh.

It’s super hot and super gross. Thermometer on the window says it’s 34 degrees Celsius. I believe it. A haze from forest fires on the Mainland hangs over the Island, making for a diffused light and blood-red sunsets. Not 100 feet away, I can see the haze settling over the forest nearby.

It’s exhausting. All I have the energy to do is be a useless layabout. Good thing the dog agrees with me it’s a good way to spend the afternoon.

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Hang on a sec, I’ll see if I can get him. tydjm789dtghm xdfgnawer

Nope. Missed. He’s too fast. And there are too many places for him to hide. And lots of parasites to feed on. That’s the problem with Mac keyboards – they’re white, which looks great when they’re new, but makes it easy to see all the inevitable grime, crumbs, pencil lead, paper clips, hair, coffee stains, fried chicken (I kid you not) and that “gunk” of mysterious origin.

There he is – dfhbdnd3756

Nope. Missed again.

This guy’s hard to kill. He pops up, taunts me, declares a jihad on my corpulent, decadent Western fingers and disappears.

I think I’ll call him Osama bin Spider. There he is again, on the number pad! 32. -+. 0.2659999999999

Missed again. This spider is good. But tragedy – there was collateral damage this time. The number 9 was killed in the decisive air strike by my fingers. I will go on television and issue a carefully-worded apology to the rest of the residents of the number pad province. My fingers will be more compassionate and endeavour to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the keyboard keys, in the hopes that they will surrender Osama bin Spider to justice.

Meanwhile, we will rebuild. I have plucked another number 9 from a keyboard in the backroom technology graveyard. It’s as good as new, at least until the next airstrike.

Maybe it’s time to try another tactic. I just noticed something disturbing. All my pounding on the keyboard has disturbed Osama bin Spider’s eggs, which now appear to be hatching. Tiny little red spiders are crawling around – gross! I think I’ll call them the Spiderban. Or the Talib-nids. I can’t just get rid of them – the more I type, the more come out. The harder I type, the faster they move. This is terrible!

Time for a massive counter-insurgency offensive. Here it comes, you disgusting Talib-nids!

wsz’’;kjuy vgfrvbgthyki,l op.; .,mnbv 567p; 15688610,hjgfxm c5g41n6gf486dn4fgn

That kind of worked, but now they’re all holed up under the F-keys. I’m afraid to hit those because I might launch all sorts of applications at once and crash my computer. Maybe I’ll just leave them alone for now. But I can’t back off, because then they’ll take over my entire keyboard and cover all the vowels and consonants in a web of injustice.

I think I know how American General Stanley McChrystal feels. Now, how did he get out of running the war in Afghanistan? Oh yeah. Bad-mouth the president in a magazine no one takes too seriously, apologize and resign. It’s foolproof.

Here goes. APPLE SUCKS!

Can I get assigned to a different keyboard now?

Hmmm, didn’t work. Maybe I’ll just have to get up off my butt and go get the canned air to gently blow the junk out. No destruction required.

And maybe it’ll get that fried chicken out from under the space bar, too.

Originally published in the Campbell River Mirror, June 25, 2010

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Which I don’t anymore, since my preschooler daughter accidentally knocked it on to the tile floor. All it does now is show me the “sad iPod” icon which was cute the first time I saw it but now taunts me with its dead eyes.

Sad iPod is sad.

I even took the little guy apart. It wasn’t hard – it’s a 5th-generation iPod with a little hard drive, and I was able to pry it open with my fingernails. I tried to see if it could be fixed by resetting a cable, but no luck. I think the hard drive is toast.

Apple can fix it for $130, plus shipping. Forget it. Instead, I spent $60 on a Sandisk Sansa View. It’s not as elegant as the iPod, its menu system is OK but not what I’m used to and it’s got a lot less memory than the old iPod (eight GB compared to 30).

But it was on sale.

It’s smaller and uses flash memory instead of a little hard drive. And apparently it plays videos too, but I haven’t played around with that feature yet.

Best of all, it lets me put files on through drag-and-drop. Easy. The View automatically organizes files based on the information in the ID tags written into the file, letting me play albums, which is what I prefer.

This works with all the MP3s I’ve made myself, ripping my CDs with Exact Audio Copy. I gave up on iTunes’ built-in ripper ages ago when I found it was creating files with random popping errors. EAC is slower, but no errors. Plus, it tags files with standard ID tags.

Which, apparently, iTunes does not. When I tried to play some of the songs I’d bought with iTunes on my View, the songs showed up in the menu all out of order and the album art was missing. In fact, the art for a lot of my albums was missing, even though I had added it in iTunes.

I guess iTunes must not write the data into the tag, storing it on the computer and on the iPod or something. Whatever. It’s stupid. Stick to industry standards, please!

So, after a few hours with MediaMonkey, I have re-organized my music  and everything is all tagged, embedded with artwork and working properly. I hope I never have to use iTunes again.

I might try to fix my iPod again, but this time I think I’m going to try this method. It just might work:

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Oh right. I got full hosting from GoDaddy.com (which I like well enough even though it’s got lots of haters) and have been playing around with the look and widgets now available to me.

Let me know if you like or hate it!

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Shoot him in the junk! It's his only weak spot!

I’ve gone retro.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing 10-year-old video games I never had a chance to play the first time around.

Thanks to Good Old Games, a site run by CD Projekt, makers of my favourite RPG of all time The Witcher, I was able to pick up Giants: Citizen Kabuto for $6. It’s a game I always thought looked interesting, but never managed to play.

Wow, did I miss out back in the day.

The game is a blast. I’ve finished one third and it’s fun, humourous, challenging and satisfying. Plus, the 10-year-old graphics are still cute.

You start out as the Meccs, heavily-armed goofballs who crash on their way to a vacation planet. They end up fighting the evil Sea Reapers, who are oppressing the native Smartie population. You can jetpack around, blast bad guys from a mile away and carry weird aliens on your back. You can also blast the indigenous life forms for meat. Fun.

I also picked up Outcast, which I’m saving for later. The story is a bit of a hybrid of Stargate and Timeline, but not too derivative. And the sound is great. The voxel graphics are interesting. The game plays like a Zelda game, with guns and aliens. So far, it’s fun.

Retro gaming is fun, and cheap. The best part is, these games might not have graphics up to today’s standards, but the gameplay is so good that I forget the graphics after a few minutes.

That’s the mark of a truly great game. Graphics are not the most important thing — gameplay, story and fun factor are.

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People getting healed, enemy armies getting blinded and slaughtered, talking donkeys, people rising from the dead. And there are many Christian stories from the past 2,000 years of miracles that were even more amazing.

But funny thing, as soon as cameras and film and video recorders and tape recorders were invented, miracles seem to have all but disappeared, except for the odd case of someone’s aunt being healed something which showed up as a dark patch on a scan which may have been cancer. Maybe miracles have gone the way of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and UFOS, which still cannot be captured definitively on film or video even though almost everyone has a camera with them on their cell phone at all times.

Although video and photography equipment has become cheaper, higher quality and more accessible, we still have to make due with rubbish blurry photos that could depict anything. That’s because there was nothing real to begin with.

Are miracles the same? Are they only real when no one can prove they happened? When the only way of recording them is through word of mouth?

Is the age of miracles over, like some conservative Christian churches teach? Funny, the bible doesn’t seem to suggest that there were any “ages” or that miracles would ever stop.

What’s the most likely answer? God doesn’t do miracles when anyone can prove them, because they must be taken on faith? God doesn’t do miracles anymore because the bible is all anyone needs to believe?

Or there never were any miracles to begin with?

Maybe miracle stories are just stories, made fantastic in the retelling. I’ve seen this happen many times. A number of years ago, our newspaper received frantic calls about a “chainsaw massacre” and we had to investigate. One person in the office even said she’d heard about it and offered some lurid details. Turned out some guy had been walking down the road with a chainsaw, and may have waved it threateningly at someone he didn’t like. No one was attacked or “massacred” with a chainsaw, but the story spread and turned into the plot of a B-movie splatter flick.

Maybe that’s how miracle stories work, too. All it takes is a small grain of truth to be twisted into a story about something that never happened.

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The most beautiful goal in hockey history.

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I think I convinced Quatchi to move to Campbell River.

Yup, after the Olympics are over, I’m pretty sure the cuddly, hockey-loving sasquatch mascot of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games is going to come check out our fine city. Well, the woods, anyway. Sasquatches are really shy creatures, unless there’s a hockey game going on. But he might be interested in a patio home near the forest.

We met the big lug when we took our family to Vancouver this past weekend to enjoy some of the sights and free activities downtown. There was plenty of free fun, enough to keep us busy all day, from concerts to free admission to the art gallery, outdoor art displays and even some collectible freebies.

But although I would have loved a chance to wander through the art gallery for free, some things aren’t possible when you’re backpacking a two-year-old and also trying to keep a four-year-old girl from dashing into the crowd.

As far as she was concerned, the whole reason we were there was to watch the “Mascots on Ice” show on the ice sheet underneath Robson Street.

“Can I see Quatchi now?” she asked about six million times.

I wasn’t going to let her be disappointed. I handed off my cranky two-year-old son to my wife, hauled the girl up on to my shoulders and barreled through the crowd, staking out our spot at centre ice 15 minutes before the show began.

I have to hand it to the Olympic organizers – they’re very considerate of kids. Rather than making the thousands of little ones hunkered around the ice sheet wait for the mascots, Quatchi, Miga and Sumi showed up early, high-fiving and hugging kids while the rest of the skaters got their costumes on. And they stayed for a few minutes after the show, too.

While my daughter screamed in joy and tried to rip out handfuls of Quatchi’s fur every time he skated by, I adjusted my “City of Campbell River” pin and did my best to act as an ambassador for our community.

And I think it worked. Quatchi kept skating past us to check out my pin. I think he might be coming up next month to check out our fair city. If you hear a rustling in the woods, that’s probably him. Pray it’s him. If it’s the “Fuwa” things – the mascots from the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics – be afraid. Be very afraid. They only smile before they kill.

Beware the Fuwa, their hearts burn with MURDER

Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat.

Quatchi mentioned that other mascots from previous Olympics (barring the Fuwa) are interested in relocating, including Hidy and Howdy, the two polar bears from the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, and my favourite, Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat, who was the unofficial but popular favourite mascot of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

I hope our tourism promotion offices can get it together to attract them here, but I’m not confident. The campbellriver.travel website… well… it sucks. Sorry. Tiny little boring pictures and lots of text. Sasquatches and wombats aren’t going to read all that. It needs big, beautiful pictures of the Campbell River region, and less text. Maybe a video testimonial or two. Maybe they’re there, I don’t know, I didn’t bother looking past the front page, it was too dull.

And RiverCorp the city’s economic development agency, well, who knows what they’re actually doing. They’re apparently helping attract new businesses to town, but we can’t tell because they never call, they never write, and when I try and talk to them about a feel-good story all I get is “no comment.”

I sure hope Quatchi doesn’t want to start up a business here to ease his way into retirement, I don’t think he’s going to get a lot of help from them.

Sailboat passing Discovery Pier. Why can’t our tourism promotion sites have more pictures like this? Photo by Grant Warkentin.

As for the rest of them, I know there’s a long, boring history in this community of little tourism and business fiefdoms battling each other to see who can get the biggest pile of crumbs, but come on. It’s only going to work if we put the grievances of the 1980s and 1990s behind us and look at the future.

We’re only 10 years behind. Time to catch up. The mascot market is waiting.