Kim Siever’s Blog

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.

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.

This summer, we travelled to Ponteix, Saskatchewan, for a family reunion on my mother’s side of the family. It was 100 years the Cloutiers had been on the family farm.

I brought my camera along becase I felt going to my mum’s hometown would present some nice photo opportunities.

One of the photos I took was after Regan and Aisling had been playing on a playground near our hotel. They wanted to check out the creek that runs through the city, and we had to cross the train tracks to get there.

While we were on the tracks, I saw the elevators off to the east, and the gorgeous colours the setting sun produced. I had the children sit on the tracks, and snapped a few photos.

I was pleased with how this one turned out. So were others, and I had multiple suggestions to submit it to a photo contest.

So I did, albeit nonchalantly.

Today, I received a package in the mail from Tourism Saskatchewan saying this photo was given an honourable mention in the “people” category of their Great Saskatchewan Photo Contest. I received a 2010 calendar as a consolation prize.

I thought that was kind of neat. Winners should be posted on their site next week.

Posted via web from hotpepper’s posterous

A lot of people have the idea I am some sort of environmentalist or hippie. After all, I compost, take the bus to work, live in a 798 sq ft house with my family of six, use a reel mower, have a tankless water heater, use grocery bins instead of plastic bags, and recycle. The list goes on.

The funny thing is, however, that none of that has anything to do with the environment.

You see, I’m Scottish. And Dutch. Which means I’m cheap.

I compost and recycle because it means I don’t have to buy as many garbage bags. I use a reel mower because I don’t have to buy more gas or spend more on electricity.

I take the bus to work because I don’t have to buy another car, which means a car payment, more insurance, and more gas.

My family of six lives in a 798 sq ft house because we bought it for $75,000, reducing our monthly housing costs at the time by $150. I use a tankless water heater because it saves money on gas usage, and we don’t run out of hot water.

I use grocery bins instead of plastic bags because I can pack them faster in the store, and my store charges for plastic bags.

I don’t hate environmentalists. Some of my best friends are environmentalists. Just realize that most of my seemingly green choices are generally just simple practical choices.

Yesterday, I received a copy of “Crush It!” by Gary Vaynerchuk.

I won it in an online contest held by the Three Dudes and a Mic podcast. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but everyone I know who has read it can’t stop talking about it.

I am looking forward to reading it, but I have to finish The Amber Spyglass first. Earlier this year, a meme spread across Facebook that claimed the BBC ran a list of 100 books and said most people will have read no more than 6. The list ended up being published by The Guardian, and I had read 13 of the books.

After reading how far behind I was compared to the numbers my friends had read, I decided to read all 100 books. The His Dark Materials trilogy, of which The Amber Spyglass is the final installment, is 9th on the list.

This afternoon, I sat in a teleconferenced workshop about how to communicate with finesse and tact. I don’t know if I learned anything or if I will be a better communicator; I guess time will tell. I did notice something though that made me wonder what kind of person I am.

Among the pages of the workbook we had to print out prior to the workshop was a quadrant chart. Along the top was “open”, along the bottom was “closed”, and “direct” and “indirect” were on the left and right respectively.

As the speaker continued with this part of her presentation, I realized the examples she had on the left and right quadrants were transposed: the two on the bottom and top right should have been on the left, and the two on the bottom and top left should have been on the right.

Over the next 5–10 minutes, everyone else in the room picked up on the error. Now here comes the interesting part.

As far as I could tell, everyone in the room fixed it by prefixing “direct” with “in” and removing “in” from “indirect”. When I looked at my chart, I had used arrows to indicate each example should be on the opposite side.

So what does that say about me that I made my change graphically while everyone else in the room did it by editing words on the page?