Fire, it’s what trees crave.

I grew up in Fort McMurray, home of the Canadian oilsands.

I remember this being a small place and the local newspaper running the story that the place moved from “town” to “City” status.

In the early 2000s this place boomed. Went from about 35000 population to 90000 (there was talk of about 140000 in the region, many people flying in and working out of campus).

During this time, we were getting lots of bad press… The media running stories of rampant drugs in the area and that sort of thing. They used footage from outside the seediest bar in town at 3 a.m. of you go to any town or city and hang out at the lowlife bar at 3 a.m. you can claim how horrible the place is. In reality, this place is filled with young working families. Sure, we have some problems but then any place in earth.

The 2008 financial crisis was kind of a break. By this, I mean that this place was so busy that this slightly impact to the region meant that, for the first time in about 5 years, I had an opportunity to hire some semi-qualified people. In the past 5 years, some of the interviews I had with people (this is for IT jobs) were just ridiculously bad.

2014 saw the price of oil crash. That definitely slowed things down here, moving it from a boom town to a normal place.

2016 brought the wildfires. You may have seen it on the news. 88000 people evacuated from the city.

In 2020, a flood struck our downtown area. Folks from that area were evacuated to other areas.

Currently, we have another wildfire in the region. About 6000 people are currently evacuated but as I understand it, the fire still a ways away and it has been raining a bit over the last couple of days, so I am not overly concerned for the homes of evacuees.

So, my home town has gone through lots of chance and challenges over the years. It was built on a real pioneering spirit and I’m proud of the that the people have demonstrated through the hard times.

Sneakers had got to be one of my all-time favorite movies. Definitely still relevant.

I moved to Linux on my desktop back in 2019. I was sick of my slightly old (4 year old) processor running constantly at 20 to 30 percent utilization.

During COVID, there were times I worked from home and did so successfully on Linux.

Gaming was one of the big for me as well but the transition to Linux was not really that painful. There was only one of two games that I had to leave behind, and even then, I was able to set up Looking Glass to play them occasionally (definitely not a task for a regular end user).

I think some people are too comfortable with MS Office to migrate, if anything, I think Office isa bigger barrier to Linux adoption than Windows is. After all, the are plenty of comments saying “Windows 10… Bad. Windows 11… Worse!” There are no comments focusing on the Office suite being bad.

Turned 13 today. I complain that my wife only buys me a present every four years. She says if I keep saying that, it may come true. Also, at work, I tell them to excuse my behavior, I’m just acting my age.

As far as 28th vs March 1st, well, I celebrate both days. If I’m getting scammed out of birthdays three out of four years, I’m taking an extra day on those off years!

It was tough, but I squeeked it in just under the wire.