Brendon J. Wilson

 by Brendon J. Wilson

So, What’s New With You?

It’s been a while since I updated my profile, so now is as good a time as any. The last two months have been hectic, and it’s not like I’m gaining any free time these days.

I quit Infowave on August 25th (as opposed to getting laid off) to start at a new startup in Yaletown called PKI Innovations. Before starting my new job I took three weeks of vacation, one of which was spent in the Rockies on a heli-hiking trip, and visiting my parents in my home town of Cranbrook. The new job is quite interesting, as it focuses on one of my major interests: cryptography. The company is currently working on technology to allow Outlook users to request Digital IDs on behalf of other users, thereby enabling encrypted email communications.

The MP Survey I did has managed to gain some attention, most notably from Hillwatch and the CBC. During my vacation I did an interview with Hour Magazine (published in Montreal), and last week I did a radio interview on the Al Stafford Show for 630 CHED in Edmonton, and have another radio interview this week with CBC Radio Halifax’s Maritime Noon program. Some time in the next two weeks, an article on the survey will also appear in Canadian Business magazine. It’s amazing what a little effort, and a visit by National Security will get you in terms of publicity these days.

My wife’s Sony laptop finally got fixed, and Mark Hanson, the VP of Sony PC Marketing, emailed me to confirm that everything was working properly. I took the opportunity to chew him out for a crappy product, horrible service, and nine months of fighting with Sony to fix a problem they knew about beforehand. It felt good. I’m still getting emails from people who have had the same problem with their VAIO laptop, and I’ve sent every one of them on to talk to the Sony engineer that helped me. That’ll learn’em.

Finally, I started working on a book for New Riders on JXTA, which is taking up all of my free time these days. Today, I’m releasing the first three draft chapters to the JXTA Community to get their input, and provide something back to the community.

And that, in a nutshell, is what’s going on with me.

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 by Brendon J. Wilson

A Nice Quiet Vacation

We were in the middle of the rockies mountains, part of a heli-hiking vacation in the Canadian Rockies, when we got the news. The manager of the hiking lodge gathered everyone together, and I assumed that there was some problem with our departure. We had completed our stay and I could only assume, with a sinking feeling, that the helicopter had some problem which would delay our departure. I had never been so wrong.

“I’ve never had to do anything like this, but I’ve just received the following information: The United States is under attack. Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center, and another has crashed into the Pentagon. At this time, North American airspace is closed to travel, and we are grounded. We’ll be trying to figure out ground transportation out of the lodge.”

At first, I thought it was a joke, and a bad one at that. My wife’s sisters both live in New York, one of them living not two buildings or so away from the World Trade Center. Several of her friends work at SIAC, which has several offices in the World Trade Center. All in all, not the greatest thing to say.

Some part of me refused to believe the news. It seemed all too convenient. After all, here we were in the middle of the wilderness without any real way to verify the claims. Was it a drill? Some kind of preparedness exercise?

To make matters worse, the majority of the people at the lodge were American. Nothing like an attack to make Americans talk of war. I could already see the wheels of major military campaign beginning to turn, and with it, a long year of pointless violence and political rhetoric.

Sigh.

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