I was so intent on using the exact wording of my second-line manager’s question as an excuse to insert a reference to IBM’s Career Derailment Factors into the post that I didn’t realize that what I’d written would be confusing for anyone who wasn’t living in my head (or at least in the same house).

Today, though, two friends at work pinged me within a few minutes to ask whether I was OK and if I could explain what I’d written.

So I’ll try again (there were no other reportable developments today, so this gives me an excuse to post).

I’ve chosen not to look for a new full-time position at IBM; if a truly wonderful position came looking for me, I would certainly consider it, but it’d have to be right on target. Unless that happens, I’ll be retiring from IBM in the near future.

Note that I said “retiring from IBM”. I’m not ready to really retire, but I am sure that the grass is differently-colored on the other side of the firewall, and this gives me a great opportunity to find out what that color is.

I found a new one today.

After reaching out to my network in the wake of last week’s surprise, several people had identified one particular opportunity that was a plausible fit for me, and I’d asked my second-line manager to help connect me. I’d even sent her something which would pass as an internal résumé, at least for a first look. And she’d made contact and had a call scheduled with the executive who needed to fill the slot.

So I wasn’t surprised when she popped up on IM early this morning and asked a simple question: “I have a call with [redacted] – what do you want me to do (I can derail it, or push for it, or try to be neutral…..)”

I had a one word answer, straight from my gut:

“Derail.”

I don’t think she was surprised.

And I was relieved to make my decision explicit.

She and I talked for a while. Both of us came away from the conversation happier, and with a slightly-revised plan for the rest of my time at IBM. Later today, I talked with my first-line manager so I could make sure he knew what was going on, since he’ll have to make the first move to implement the plan.

Welcome to the endgame.

Links and Notes for IBMers

• IBM Leadership Competencies
• Derailment Factors

For those trying to follow along in BluePages, note that my first-line manager is in Canada and doesn’t show up in my “reports-to” chain.

I realized that while all that activity was necessary, it wasn’t sufficient, so I also blocked several hours of “Think Time” on my calendar for today. The plan was to stand in front of a whiteboard and write down positives and negatives of various options, make unanswered questions explicit, and ignore the world. I told a couple of colleagues that that was what I was going to do; I even blogged about it yesterday.

It didn’t happen.

Instead, I spent most of the day talking with people who’d also been affected (some directly, some by having their teams reduced), as well as several other colleagues in various parts of the business (at least two of whom had been my manager at one time or another). I also had a long session with IBM Benefits, so that I really understand what my choices and resources are if I do retire.

But what I really did was listen carefully to my gut.

Because it turns out that this decision isn’t going to be one I make entirely objectively, based on threats and opportunities, strengths and weaknesses, and financial considerations.

My gut has to be happy.

And it’s giving me a pretty clear message about what will make it happy; it’s a message which doesn’t require a whiteboard to analyze.

I’m going to sleep on that message tonight and make sure I’m reading it clearly.

Tomorrow could be interesting.

There was some very concrete advice (have a local phone number and a “professional” email address for the search process; never answer a call to your cell phone that might be search-related unless you can actually talk right then (otherwise, let it go to voicemail); remember that your résumé is a sales document), as well as some discussion which centered on my own needs, desires, and skills.

I came out of the session with a few must-dos (some of which are administrative in nature), the realization that I can’t hop along both the internal and external paths for very long, and some hints towards turning my bulleted list of accomplishments into a résumé. Not bad for a first step.

And then I came home and spent the rest of the day on the phone (even attending one conference call, which will be the last in that series for me). It’s helpful to get the perspective of folks who have been through this process, as well as those who are still safely ensconced inside the Blue Curtain.

Tomorrow, I plan to go to the office; I have a lot of “think time” booked on my calendar. I expect to turn off the phone and Sametime for most of the day, too.

I don’t think the timing could have been better. It was great to be able to concentrate on what was happening on stage right now so that I could respond and make the team look better. I probably could have done without one scene suggestion (“fired”), but even that one led to a very funny scene in the game of “I Can Do Better”.

Tomorrow, I get to continue my exploration of what lies ahead. I haven’t connected to the intranet this weekend, either (though I can’t blame a snowstorm and cable cut this time), but tomorrow morning, I’ll be curious to see what awaits in my inbox, and what options have opened or closed internally. I also have my first meeting with the placement firm tomorrow, which should be interesting and informative.

One thing that improv has taught me is that it’s not always wise to plan too far ahead, because you never know what curves your partners will throw at you, and trying to force the scene in the direction you want can hurt it and make you look silly. Tomorrow will be here soon enough; for now, I want to thank everyone who’s given me support or advice so far — you’re making me feel very good!

It was Monday morning, about 9:20am; I’d been in the office about 30 minutes, after my usual weekly trip to the chiropractor. I’d been unable to connect to the intranet all weekend because of a fiber cut in Westchester County, so I was busily processing my Lotus Notes inbox (reading email, in English). And I was awaiting the arrival of a colleague (let’s call him J) who was driving in from Fresno to work with me, at our manager’s request — there were two goals: better defining a project we were planning and making sure that J saw other IBMers occasionally. So I wasn’t surprised when my manager (M) popped up on IM to ask if he could call me — I assumed he was going to offer some suggestions for our meeting.

I was wrong.

“Hello, David. There is a resource action today and your job has been eliminated. If you cannot find another position within IBM by March 31st, your employment will terminate on that date. I am sending you the official information by email – please read it.”

I’m probably not quoting exactly, but that was the gist of it. I’m sure M was reading from a script, because the words weren’t in his style, and he delivered them almost in a single breath.

I was stunned. Not just because of the news, but because I hadn’t heard any rumors of a resource action, unlike 2009, where I think there must have been ads on TV telling IBMers to watch for it, it was so widely expected.

After the scripted part of the call, M and I talked a bit longer; he told me to concentrate on myself and not worry about the work in progress and apologized for this having happened.

Almost as soon as we hung up, another IM window popped up; it was another colleague on the East Coast who was going to call when J arrived so we could work together. I told him that I’d been resourced, and that I might need to cancel our sessions, but would let him know.

Of course, I called Diane immediately and gave her the news — she says I sounded pretty shaken. I don’t remember.

I decided that since J had already driven two hours, it didn’t make any sense to tell him to turn around — I did phone him and warn him that I might be distracted and told him why.

When he arrived, we called our East Coast colleague and had a good technical session — I told them where the things I’d been working on would fit into their project (that’s not how I’d been planning to phrase it originally), and we talked about where they were going to go with the project.

In the meantime, I’d told my assistant (who was probably more shocked than I had been) and asked her to start setting up meetings with people who might be able to help me, starting with my HR Partner, who I met right after lunch (with J, where the discussion was not very technical).

The discussion with my HR Partner was just what I needed; she was empathetic, sympathetic, and knowledgeable about the resources that IBM was making available to me (including an outplacement firm, financial advice, and, of course, a severance package). She was also straightforward about my chances of finding a new position in the 30 days I had left (not good, but it had happened in previous cycles).

When I left her office, I felt a lot better — I wasn’t thrilled about what had happened, but I realized that how I reacted to it was in my hands (as a senior IBM executive once said, “You own your own morale”).

So I started reaching out to people in my network and asking for pointers to opportunities, whether inside or outside IBM. And I started declining some of the standing meetings on my calendar (especially the ones at 6am Pacific!), while keeping the ones where I thought I could make a contribution.

I could go on in endless detail, but I suspect it would be boring, and wouldn’t actually help anyone reading this. Suffice it to say that I haven’t been nearly as busy for quite a while, and that it is wonderful to have so many friends and colleagues (both those still at IBM and those who have made the transition) who have been willing to listen to me and offer support of one form or another.

I would have been quite happy not to have gotten that phone call on Monday, but I’m very fortunate because I’m in a good position to use this to move forward.

• I have the luxury of time to figure out what “forward” means (not everyone does).
• IBM is providing various forms of assistance (I meet with the placement firm on Monday — since I’ve never had to write a résumé, I know what one of my first tasks will be).
• I know lots of people who want to see me succeed and are willing to help.
• And I don’t have to write a PBC for this year! (Well, probably…I am looking internally, and my management team is helping me in that quest.)

Stay tuned.

Special note for IBMers

Frank Jania was included in last year’s layoffs; he wrote “Lessons From A Layoff” during his last month at IBM. I read it at the time, little suspecting that I’d find it so pertinent a year later. It’s on BlogCentral, which will be replaced by Lotus Connections blogs sometime in the not-so-distant future; I recommend you read the series (8 postings) while the URL is still good!

This morning, while washing some dishes, a tiny fragment of melody from my childhood popped into my head — it was a line from some novelty song that I think we’d sung in elementary school. I’d never known the name of the song, and all I could really remember of the lyrics was this:

[something] is a raccoon….always hungry, very hungry….he sings [something else]

I couldn’t get the little bit of music out of my head, so I wondered if I could find out what it was.

I typed “always hungry very hungry” raccoon into Google and got two results, both of which were from Japanese pages, and both of which had a bit more of the song in the translated search result fragment. I clicked on the first one and was greeted with a page of imperfectly translated Japanese; searching on “raccoon” brought me to an entry with this text:

this song is sung by Arthur kit

and with a picture of an Eartha Kitt album in the left margin of the entry:

So I went back to Google and typed Eartha Kitt raccoon; the second hit was this YouTube video-free video, with Eartha Kitt herself singing the song, Sho-Jo-Ji (the Hungry Raccoon).

Elapsed time from wondering to result: about 90 seconds.

There are times I wish I could Google the workings of my mind, but perhaps I’m better off not knowing myself that well!

Even though he’s Mr. Inbox Zero himself, he leaves items in the OmniFocus inbox until he knows what he’s going to do with them.

Thinking that way encourages the use of OmniFocus quick entry to quickly capture ideas and thoughts — I was shying away from using the quick entry box because I felt compelled to process the ideas immediately, at least to the point of assigning them to a context and project. But this morning, I dumped five things into that inbox during an early-morning call and left them there until I had a break in the action mid-morning; then I processed them all and was able to send four of them off for action almost immediately. It’s a much more fluid workflow.

Thanks, Merlin!

IBM (mostly Lotus) was out in force — they were greeting attendees at the bottom of the escalator and promising “sweet tweets” at the booth. And they delivered, with a nice “candy bar” (which was completely depleted well before lunchtime). In addition to the calories, they had four pedestals set up, showing Lotus Sametime, Lotus Notes, and Lotus Symphony (all of which I happen to have on this very computer, imagine that!), as well as Lotus Connections (which lives on servers) and LotusLive (which lives in the cloud).

Microsoft had a big booth, too, but not much content — they were showing Office 2008 for the Mac but talking about Office 2011 (which will be ready late this year). I suspect that the show cycle didn’t match up with their development cycle as well as they’d hoped.

I suspected I’d be making a few impulse purchases at the show, and I was right — the first one was from 4iThumbs. It’s an iPhone screen protector with bumps, designed to help you learn the virtual keyboard; I played with one and decided it was worth gambling $15 (show price) to see if it can help me type more accurately on the phone. I haven’t yet actually installed it, but maybe I’ll get to it tonight.

Two years ago, I picked up an earbud Jack to keep my earbuds from tangling, but it wasn’t a good match for my FrankenBuds. So this year, when I saw the Budsock, I insisted on a tryout before parting with my $4 — the earbuds were barely small enough to fit, and it works. Recommended.

The last impulse purchase this year was a pair of RichardSolo 1800 external iPhone batteries (at two for $50, how could I resist?). I’ve already used one to get me through a long day of GPS mapping, and the other one’s on a truck to New Orleans. So far, so good — though I really don’t know why they added the LED flashlight and the laser pointer.

The only talk that I really wanted to see this year was at the OmniGroup booth — Merlin Mann gave a talk on “Advanced Secrets of the Omnifocus Ninja”. Since I’m using both the iPhone and Mac versions of OmniFocus to help manage my life and get things done, I thought it’d be an hour well-spent (or at least one which generated amusement), and I was right — Merlin’s demo has helped me get a handle on perspectives, one of the most useful features of OmniFocus. And Merlin’s schtick was funny, too. But I got my best tip before the presentation, talking to one of the real Omni people — use Yelp bookmarks to keep track of restaurants to try, rather than OmniFocus. A tool for everything, I guess.

Scanners were big — both Fujitsu and Neat had large booths (nearly adjacent), and there were a few other vendors. I had hoped to get a deal on a Fujitsu ScanSnap at the show, but they weren’t selling there; fortunately, Costco has them on sale this month, and one is wending its way to my door even as I type this.

Most of the iPhone app developers were in one area, packed four to a tiny table — it was crowded, to say the least. Microsoft was there with their Bing app, cheek-by-jowl with one-person outfits. I had an interesting conversation with the developer of Snoring U. Smule, the Ocarina people, were there with several amusing apps. And I spent some time catching up with John Wolpert of Cabulous, which would be a good tool to have if I ever needed a taxi in San Francisco. There were several GPS apps, and lots of picture-sharing tools, too.

Headphones were another popular category — Sennheiser and Shure both had huge booths; I was amused to see Shure was selling phono cartridges, even one for 78rpm records. And, of course, there were many vendors selling cases for MacBooks and iPhones — and iPads. I think I’ll wait until I have an iPad before I buy a case, though.

I wasn’t sure how well Macworld would do without Apple — but I think it came through just fine, and I hope to return next year.

That, of course, was before the economic meltdown.

Last year’s meeting was cancelled on fairly short notice; instead, we used teleconferences and Second Life to hold the meeting; it was an uneven experience (but having the meeting cancelled did make it easier for me to enjoy a very nice tour of New York, so I wasn’t completely unhappy about the substitution).

I’ve attended a couple of meetings using the behind-the-firewall version of Second Life this year, and, as I’ve written here and here, I found the experience less than thrilling.

This year, they made the unsurprising decision not to hold a physical Academy meeting, which meant that I could expect to spend a significant part of three days in the internal Second Life environment. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but I didn’t see any alternative — especially after they got the code working with Snow Leopard, depriving me of what seemed like a great excuse not to participate.

I’m still not a big fan of the virtual environment (and am very happy that one of the nine mini-plenary sessions was held at Almaden so I could see some of my colleagues in person), but it was a far less unpleasant experience this year.

As before, I think that the very best feature of the environment is the spatial high-fidelity sound, which makes conversations, even in a group, much more realistic than a teleconference. In public areas, the sound tended to carry a bit too far — this was good when it let me eavesdrop (and choose to join) a group conversation with a very senior executive; it wasn’t as good when there were a lot of conversations in a small area, as happened during the closing social event.

The team who put the conference together did some innovative things, like setting up the poster sessions so that each poster was in a sound- (but not sight-) isolated room — you could easily have a discussion without being drowned out by conversations in the hall or at an adjacent poster, which is better than a real poster session, but you could see who was in a room as you walked by (one definite improvement this year was the integration with our LDAP directory, so everyone’s avatar was identified with their real name). And poster presenters were given better instructions, too — many came with one-sheet posters which you could actually read in the environment, rather than trying to show a series of slides which needed more screen room than was available.

I still found many aspects of the virtual space to be distracting or counter-productive — there was a lot of tedium involved in getting from place to place, and watching a slide show in-world is not an inspiring experience.

Another interesting choice was the way video messages from senior executives were played — you went to a theater, sat down, and watched as a video was played (at a low frame rate and resolution) on a screen at the front of the room. It reminded me of Apple’s first Mac commercial; I think the video would have been better served up without the trappings (and outside the virtual space, at higher quality).

One social hour went very well — the space was arranged so that I was able to position my camera overhead; I could see the names of everyone who was there, and when someone talked, the green-bar animation made it clear who it was (and the audio quality made dealing with accents much easier, too). And there was even room for a text chat on the screen, for additional comments (both public and private). It beat the hell out of a teleconference.

Using a big screen (relatively speaking — 20 inches, 1600×1200) instead of the laptop’s screen made a big difference; I didn’t have to squint to see things (and I was able to do other stuff on the laptop screen). Using a headset also helped, because then the sound was properly aligned with my vision — the first day, I used the external screen but the laptop’s speakers, and that was a problem. And having a new MacBook Pro with the fast graphics chip helped, too, though it did a number on battery life and made the machine run hot.

I still found no reason to spend any time or effort customizing my avatar, though if it had been completely generic, I might have wanted to do something to make it more recognizable at a distance, but I was fortunate enough to have been used as a test case for “realistic” avatars earlier in the year, so I was already wearing a distinctive aloha shirt. Nor did I see any reason to drink virtual drinks at the socials (though many people did — and some lucky folks were at home with real drinks available).

I’ve been using Lotus Notes for more than 15 years, and I’ve gotten fairly good at making it do what I want — but, with apologies to my Lotus friends, it’s not a tool that I really like. I expect that the same thing will be true about meeting in virtual spaces — it’s going to have to be part of my toolkit, and I’ll get better at using it, but I don’t expect to become a fan. And I look forward to the time when those who are enthusiasts stop trying to convert skeptics and settle for helping us become competent enough to get our work done.

Now, can I tell you about this wonderful Mac-only application I just started using?

But the first speaker, Gary Hamel, wasn’t focused on Enterprise Architecture (I won’t abbreviate it, because when I see “EA”, I think of “Extended Attributes” and OS/2). His talk was on the need for “Management 2.0”; the basic premise is that management, as it evolved at the end of the 19th Century and the first part of the 20th, is no longer delivering significant improvements in organizational performance. Like many other technologies, its development has been in the form of an “S” curve, and it’s reached the flat part of the “S” at the top.

If this were a “normal” technology, you might expect a disruptive innovation to surface, probably courtesy of a small start-up company (see Clay Christensen for much discussion of this), but that’s unlikely in this case. Instead, management needs to transform its own practice.

Gary mentioned three challenges to management in the 21st Century:

1. How do you build a company that can change as fast as change itself?

In particular, he asked a rather pointed question: how easy is it for a first-line worker to get a small amount of money and time to experiment with an idea? Some companies make experimenting everyone’s responsibility (Google’s famous “20% time”), but most companies don’t — instead, they’re monopsonies, organizations where there’s only one buyer/funder for innovation, and “no” is the default answer.

2. How do you build a company where innovation is everyone’s job?

Knowledge is becoming a commodity — creativity is the differentiator. How do you encourage creativity throughout the company, and speed up the process of bringing innovations to the market?

3. How do we build organizations which inspire extraordinary contribution?

He posited a hierarchy of employee contribution:

    passion
    creativity
    initiative
    intellect
    diligence
    obedience

and noted that the bottom three are becoming commodities, and that the top three are “gifts” — they are not something an organization can compel.

Management was originally invented to turn people into semi-skilled, programmed robots who fit into the org chart and the assembly line, but this is no longer the problem that organizations need to solve. Instead, we need to get employees to commit to organizational goals, and that’s a voluntary activity. Open Source projects are a common area where we see this kind of voluntary commitment, but there are for-profit companies which make it explicit, too, such as Gore and Associates, where employees are explicitly empowered to say “no” to any request, and there are no “managers” (just leaders of self-organized teams). He noted that Gore and Associates hasn’t had a losing year. Ever.

Gary finished by talking about the two dimensions of improvement that management provides: amplifying individual human flexibility and ability and aggregating individual contributions at scale; he claimed that social networking will make it possible to do both more effectively than existing models (the market, which majors in improving flexibility, or bureaucracies, which major in aggregating at the cost of flexibility).

Definitely an interesting talk, and worth the price of admission (which, for me, was the loss of a day at work and four meetings).

The rest of the day was much more focused on the problems of Enterprise Architecture and organizations, and, while the discussions were of interest, I didn’t find myself writing down nearly as much as I did for Gary’s talk. The hallway discussions were, of course, best of all!

And I must say I could get used to the food and drink at the Four Seasons.

It was definitely an informative and interesting day; I’m hoping to be invited to another session.

Here it is.

Welcome

Welcome to a self-running GTD mindsweep. The prompts and timings here were captured from @GTDCoachKelly’s Twitter mindsweep on October 15, 2009. Click the “Speed Up” button to run the mindsweep at ten times normal speed; click “Slow down” to return to normal speed.

This is utterly miserable JavaScript, and not very good HTML; the visual effect is pretty lame, too. Consider this page a proof of concept…and click “Start mindsweep” to start.

Since Yelpers had praised Melissa’s breakfast, we decided to go there — our timing was great (maybe the clock was a good idea after all), since we didn’t have to wait at all, but by the time we finished, there were at least a dozen people waiting for tables. The food was OK (next time, I go for the waffle with blueberries), and the coffee was very good.

On our way back to the hotel, it started to rain — just a couple of drops, but as soon as we got to our room, the skies opened up. So we packed and checked out, borrowing an umbrella from the hotel for the rest of our time in Banff (and it worked wonderfully — we didn’t see another raindrop when we were outside…of course, we spend most of the time inside). We wandered around and did some shopping (not much buying, though); then we had lunch at Evelyn’s Coffee Bar. I thought about having dessert there, but I’d had my eyes on Cows the entire time we’d been in Banff; they had reviews in their window calling them out as equal or even better than Bertillion in Paris, and I was ready to put them to the test. They didn’t come close to living up to the reviews, but the ice cream was perfectly acceptable; nonetheless, I’m going to go elsewhere next time I’m in Banff.

And with lunch and dessert finished, we decided it was time to hit the road. Our rental car, a Toyota Matrix, didn’t have a cargo cover, so I was reluctant to go anywhere busy, but we weren’t quite ready to go to the airport, either. We decided to drive the Minnewanka Loop, which turned out to be a nice way to cap off our visit. We drove to Lake Minnewanka. We didn’t have the time (or the cargo cover) for the lake cruise, but just walking around the section of the lake near the parking was very enjoyable and scenic.

When we left, we decided to finish the loop instead of driving right back to the highway; we didn’t get very far before running into a goatjam on the road, so we parked and took a few photos, too.

We made one more stop on the loop, near mountains whose name I don’t know.

And then it was time to return to civilization. Soon enough, we were back at Calgary Airport and ensconced in our room at the Delta Calgary Airport Hotel, which was pleasant enough, though the views left everything to be desired after three nights in Banff. We’d returned our car, so we were limited in our dining options; the airport didn’t entice, so we ate dinner at the Compass Restaurant in the hotel, which was somewhat overpriced and too noisy (thanks to the TV in the YYC Lounge, adjacent), but tasty enough.

And that was basically the end of the trip; Monday morning, we walked across the road to the terminal, checked in, cleared customs, and flew back to SFO, picked up our car, had lunch, and drove home. No excitement, no photos.

We decided to try somewhere else for breakfast, and, based on the bartender’s suggestion on Thursday (and some Yelp and Frommer’s research), we settled on Coyote’s. The place was nearly full when we got there, but there were spaces at the counter, so we squeezed ourselves in and enjoyed a tasty meal. I had, and can recommend, the Smoked Salmon Scrambled Eggs; Diane went for the Vegetarian Frittata, and she seemed happy about her choice, too. By the time we left, there were a few people waiting to get in — go early (in our case, that meant 9am).

After Friday’s excursion, the last thing we wanted to do was take a long drive, so we chose a target closer to hand — Tunnel Mountain. We parked at the lower trailhead and climbed to the upper one; that was probably the steepest part of the climb (and the least attractive, too).

Once we’d gotten to the “real” trail, the views improved.

The single biggest human-created artifact that we could see was the Banff Springs Hotel.

But, of course, there were much larger and more majestic objects visible!

After a while, we climbed high enough that the trail took us to the back side of the mountain, and we could see the other half of the Bow Valley, including the Fairmont’s golf course, which looked awfully appealing (and I don’t golf)!

Eventually, we made it to the top of the mountain.

And, a bit later, and after more nice views of Mount Rundle

we eventually found ourselves back at our car, in search of lunch. We drove back to the hotel and walked into town, unsure of what we wanted, but hungry. We wound up at Balkan, drawn in by the lunch specials on the blackboards outside. The food was OK, but not outstanding — but the prices were very appealing!

We decided not to have dessert in town; instead, we walked to the Fairmont to look around, especially in the terrace garden

and enjoy afternoon tea, which more than made up for any calories or money we might have saved at lunch. It’s not something I’d want to do every day, but it was fun!

We’d picked up a Banff trail map while we were downtown, and decided that rather than walk back on streets, we’d explore the Bow Falls Trail. We walked down to Bow Falls

and then retraced our steps towards downtown.

We weren’t quite ready to go back to the hotel, and the map showed that if we followed the Bow Falls Trail through downtown, we could walk all the way to the Cave and Basin National Historic Site, which sounded interesting (our hotel had a pool modeled after the Cave and Basin).

But we didn’t get there. We had just left the Banff Recreation Grounds and turned onto the trail to the site when we encountered an elk.

We decided he had the right-of-way and headed back into town, and trekked back to our hotel…and then back into town again for dinner, along with thousands of other tourists. We looked at a few places, but the lines were long, and eventually settled for Tommy’s Neighbourhood Pub, immediately beneath Balkan. The food was simple (I had a buffaloburger; Diane had elk (I think she wanted revenge!)), the beer was decent, and the service reasonably quick. I’d go back.

One final trip back to the hotel, and we were ready to call it a night. The pedometer read over 34,000 steps for the day — that seemed like enough!

We left Banff on the Trans-Canada Highway and made excellent time until we hit the construction zone — they are “twinning” the highway through the rest of Banff National Park, and there’s construction between Banff and Lake Louise. But it wasn’t too bad, and soon we were at the Parks Canada information station in Lake Louise. The view from the parking lot wasn’t too bad, either.

A few minutes later, we were on the way again, turning onto the Icefields Parkway, which would take us the rest of the way. Even though it was a two-lane road, it was easy driving (I’d hate to try it in a storm, though!), and the scenery was nothing short of spectacular.

Eventually, we pulled into the Icefields Center, our goal for the afternoon. The Athabasca Glacier was just across the road.

We had a quick, overpriced, mediocre lunch at the Icefields Cafeteria, then purchased our tickets for the tour to the glacier itself. After a brief bus ride, we boarded our Ice Explorer.

The on the vehicle reminded me of Star Tours, but this was not a simulation. And we did jounce a lot on our way to the glacier itself, where we disembarked and frolicked in the cold and rain for a few minutes.

As advertised, the glacier itself seemed blue at times, and there was some melting.

There was even more melting outside the graded area where we were let off, and some people drank the meltwater — I might have, but I didn’t feel like freezing my lips!

Outside the graded area, you could really see the contours left by weathering.

And you could also see the moraine left by the glacier.

But soon, we were back in the car and heading south. This time, we were in even less of a hurry, and so we made more stops to enjoy the scenery, including one at the “Weeping Wall”.

And another stop near Num-Ti-Jah Lodge, where we had a good view of Crowfoot Glacier.

If you search the web, you’ll find thousands of photos of Lake Louise. Here are four more.

From Lake Louise, we took the Bow Valley Parkway back to Banff. It, too, was beautiful, but we didn’t take any pictures (or stop, for that matter) — and the only wildlife we saw was a couple of birds.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we hoofed it to Melissa’s Missteak for dinner, which was definitely the best meal we’d had all day, though ordering dessert wasn’t the best choice we could have made. Finally, we walked back to the hotel (via downtown Banff), and called it a night.

Time passed.

This year, we discovered that the IBM Silicon Valley Lab, where Diane works, would be closed for an extra day to do some major power work, so that she had a four-day weekend. And IBM Yorktown, where I get my VPN connection for the Mac, would also be closed for the long weekend, while they did major power work, too. We tossed around a few ideas, and eventually settled on a trip to Banff, which had the extra advantage of renewing our United miles for another 18 months.

We left on Thursday, arriving at SFO with plenty of time for a leisurely lunch and trip through the
“Wright at Home: Modern Lifestyle Design” exhibit before boarding our Air Canada flight to Calgary. Calgary was suffering from very strong winds, but we had a pretty smooth flight — however, flights had stacked up and we had to wait about 45 minutes in the line at the Canada Border Services Agency. On the other hand, our luggage was waiting for us as soon as we’d been cleared, and Customs itself took the usual 12 seconds.

Hertz slowed us down again — the first car they gave us was almost too filthy to drive (those strong winds had brought a dust storm), and then it turned out that it had been smoked in, so I swapped it for a Toyota Matrix (nice car, but I wish Hertz had sprung for the cargo cover so we would have been able to stop without all of our stuff being exposed) and we set out for Banff.

Most of the Trans-Canada Highway in Alberta is a four-lane divided highway — except, of course, for the section in Calgary, which is a busy urban street with badly synchronized traffic lights (it reminded me of Stevens Creek Boulevard, in fact). But eventually, we left Calgary behind and headed to Banff at 110 km/h (or so).

We’d chosen The Fox Hotel & Suites based on reviews from Frommer’s and TripAdvisor; it was pricey (but everything in Banff is pricey), but very comfortable, especially after we moved to a room that didn’t face Banff Avenue. The hotel is about a 10-minute walk from the central business district; they offer complimentary bus passes, but we didn’t feel the need to take them up on that. The hotel’s restaurant was a Chili’s — we don’t eat there at home, and didn’t see any reason to do it in Banff, either, so we set forth for dinner, planning to go downtown. But we didn’t get there; instead, we stopped at The Meatball and had a pleasant dinner (and a very pleasant bottle of wine) — then we walked the rest of the way into town, looked around, and headed back to the hotel.

sudo ifconfig en1 down

On the MacBook Pro, it’s also easy to turn the Airport back on in the obvious way:

sudo ifconfig en1 up

But on the iMac, nothing happens if I issue that command. I don’t know why, but tonight I discovered how to get the job done:

sudo networksetup -setairportpower On

Why did I care, you might ask? Until 10.5.8, the iMac wouldn’t reliably join the network after the machine woke from sleep (or rebooted), and I had to turn the Airport off and on — I could turn it off easily enough from the command line, but I had to use the GUI to turn it back on, which seemed silly. Now I can do the whole thing from the command line (but with luck, I won’t have to).