Kim Siever’s Blog

The following is a reader submission.

I found your article on “I am he”, and hoped you could settle variations on that. I believe it is “She and I went to …”. Subjective form, but with first person last. And then “He gave it to her”. But can it ever be the compound “her and me”? I keep thinking that you must always fall back to “us”? —Andy

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the great question. It’s actually a pretty simple answer.

Consider these examples:

1. Bob gave candy to her and me.
2. Bob gave candy to us.

The first sentence implies she received candy and I received candy. The second sentence implies he gave candy to the two of us collectively, candy we should share together.

I hope that helps.

Kim

Email me your grammar questions. I’ll be sure to post the question and answer here.

Five years ago, the Vancouver Organizing Committee announced the “Own the Podium” programme, designed to create world-class olympians ready to compete in Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics, a process that normally takes a decade.

The idea was that if we create many such athletes, we could dominate the olympics in total medal count, which would of course been a record-breaking event for Canada.

The bad news is we didn’t succeed.

But wait. There’s good news.

It was still a record-breaking olympics for Canada:

• The first time we won a gold medal as host country
• The first country to reach double-digit gold medals in these games
• The highest number of gold medals in these games
• The highest number of gold medals of any country in any Winter Olympics
• The first time we have had a three-gold-medal day
• The first time in nearly 50 years we beat the Russians at men’s hockey at the Olympics
• The highest number of total medals we have ever won at any Winter Olympics

In addition, of the top 10 countries these games, Canada was one of only 2 countries to have more than half of their medals as golds.

Well done, Team Canada.

My regular readers probably know that ever since reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It, I have been trying to figure out what my passion is. And I think I have finally done it.

It actually happened a few weeks ago, but I forgot to blog about it. I was contemplating all the things I do and where I spend all my time, when I had an epiphany.

My passion is my family.

That’s it. That’s all there is to it. My journey is complete. But that is only half of the epiphany.

What I also realized is that, frankly, it doesn’t matter much what I do for a living. What does matter is that it enables me to focus on my passion.

I need a job that pays me enough to meet their needs and at least some of their wants. I need a job that allows me to take time off to spend extra time with my family. I need a job that allows me to take better care of their health.

What I do in that job really doesn’t matter. I am no longer interested in being happy with my job, just as long as it keeps me busy and relatively content, and that it allows me to focus on my passion.

My familly.

Regan and his cub pack joined another cub pack for the Kub Kar Rally tonight. This was Regan’s first Kub Kar rally, and I did not help him with his car at all.

They split the cubs into three groups according to year (first, second and third).

Because of the numbers and the variability in the surface between the 6 lanes, each group had several runs, and then their overall placement was averaged out.

Regan’s group had several rounds, seven of which Regan was in.

Here is how he placed:

1. Second
2. Third
3. Second
4. Second
5. Third
6. Third
7. Fourth

We’re not sure what place he hit overall because they announced only the top three, but we think he did pretty well for having designed the car entirely on his own.

One of the great things about living in Lethbridge is the variable weather. A common saying in Southern Alberta is, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”. While that may be hyperbolic, it does aptly illustrate our very volatile weather pattern.

What this means is that we get a variety of weather; it never stays the same too long. We don’t get a lot of rain, our summers aren’t too hot, and our winters aren’t too cold.

While we do get cold weather in winter, it doesn’t last more than a week or two before we get a reprieve.

That being said, I love winter in Lethbridge. I love the hoarfrost; I love sledding in the Sugar Bowl; I love walking through the river valley on my way to work. Winter here makes for some unique photos.

Here are a few I took:

You can see more of my winter shots here.

Continuing from last week’s article on my 1 million photos on Flickr, I thought I would post about another online project I worked on that gave me a sense of accomplishment.

In March of 2004, I made my first edit ever on Wikipedia, and it was at the Lethbridge article. All I did was update the population amount. Over the following few months, I contributed a few more times, as well as to a handful of other articles.

Over April and May of 2005,  several editors completely rewrote the content. When the 2005 municipal census was released at the end of May, I went to the Lethbridge article again to edit the population.

I noticed the article had changed substantially, and I saw the potential of it. I spent the next two years working on the article: adding new content, finding sources for claims already in the content, editing for grammar and clarity, and so on.

In February 2007, after following several internal Wikipedia conventions for good articles, I submitted it for peer review. The results of the review was that it was not good article material, but the reviewer left several suggestions for imporvement. I implemented those, and it was resubmitted and subsequently approved three days later for Good Article status.

GA status is the second highest status an article can get on Wikipedia, and it made me very proud, but it would’t last long. Only 6 months later, after making several more changes, I felt it was nearly ready for peer review under the assumption it would eventually be submitted for Featured Article status.

I received a lot of feedback from the peer review process, and implemented it. Three months later, I submitted it for Featured Article status, and on 28 November 2007, it was featured on the front page of Wikipedia.

That made me happy.

Last week, I posted about trying to figure out what my passion is. I want to figure what it is I love doing, would love to do for the rest of my life, and could realistically get paid to do.

What I did last week was put together a list of interests and hobbies, hoping it would spur me into more thinking.

I did think of a few things (opening a camping store, becoming a chef, and so on), but none of it got me genuinely excited.

While doing my swim this morning, I thought of what I could do for the next stage of the process to discover my passion. I am going to post about some of the things I have done in the past that have left me with a real sense of accomplishment.

First to the bat is the “1 Million Photos” project I did in the summer of 2006.

Basically, I managed to convince 6,000 Flickr members to add all the photos they had into a pool that’s only purpose was to be the first pool with 1,000,000 photos on Flickr. And we did it in 2 months.

Only one other group has reached that same number, but it took about a year.

That project took a lot of hard work, but it was truly the most successful grass roots, viral campaign I have ever been a part of, let alone initiated and orchestrated.

There was a lot of cold calling and a lot of follow-up. As well, I provided tools to make it as easy as possible for members to share the excitement with their friends.

Looking back, it was likely the most exciting project I have ever been a part of.

If there is one thing I got out of reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It, is that I really need to have a passion. Something I could love doing for the rest of my life.

My problem is that I have no idea what that is.

I love my family. If I could somehow stay home and make enough money to give my family a comfortable life, I would totally do it. I love spending time with my family. I just don’t see how spending more time with my family will make me more money.

I am committed to my religion. Given how much time I spend each week doing something related to my religion, I better be. Again, I am not sure how I could make a career out of living my religion, particularly one that relies on volunteerism and a lay ministry. I suppose I could start a Mormon bookstore. That just seems kind of weird, and having cheap thrifty Mormons as one’s clients just opens up a whole different can of worms.

Beyond those two things, I am not sure what else there is.

After a discussion during the most recent Lethbridge tweetup, I was thinking more about the idea of discovering my passion. One thing I thought might kick start this is to list out some of my interests and favourite pastimes.

• Pastimes
  • Cooking
  • Yardwork
  • Camping
  • Public speaking
  • Writing poetry
  • Being underwater (swimming, scuba diving, snorkelling)
  • Volunteering
  • Cooking over wood-fuelled fire
  • Taking photographs
• Interests
  • City planning
  • Technology
  • Maps
  • Organization

I am sure someone who knows me will mention something about grammar. I don’t know if that is something I enjoy as much as it is hating seeing/hearing bad grammar.

Now to think about this some more.