Wednesday, June 26, 2002. Entry #171

More on our laid-back protesters:

To protest a big, lavishly expensive shindig for the various delegates, G-8 protesters held their own party in a parking lot across the road. It was nice and peaceful, and they sang songs and beat drums and stuff. A few guys made their way across the road to the main party, but the rest didn't bother.

This morning a huge rally was planned to march on the downtown core from three different points, and block the major routes into the core. An effective idea, as our high-rise district is extremely compact, and can be shut down by some strategic traffic action. Not surprisingly (for Calgary anyway), they were only able to muster up about 500 people in one location, thus failing in their primary objective. It also sounded like no one had a map, so they sort of wandered around the core for a few hours, turning corners at random. Oh, and they all made sure to be off the streets by 10 a.m.

Isn't that sweet of them?

It's not like the city wasn't prepared for the worst. All the cops are on full alert, the hospitals are ready and waiting, the firemen are suited up and hanging around their big metal poles. Most businesses have their own preparations as well. My ISP advised us that they were ready to minimize any service interruptions that might occur. That's great. The downtown may be in flames, but I'll be able to surf Fark.com. Excellent.

The Pet Store is forcing Lisa to work every day all week. It seems they are concerned about protesters entering the stores and 'setting the animals free', so they're requiring extra management in the stores at all times. Like Lisa would be able to stop a bunch of rabid Greenpeacers from rampaging through her store. She's no more qualified than any other employee to dial 9-1-1.

Besides, it looks like the protesters are more concerned with their tans than releasing a bunch of hamsters to the Canadian wilds.

My day tomorrow is shaping up to be utterly insane.

In the retail business, the hockey season begins in July, so we're prepping a ton of new hockey-related articles and features for Friday, and I was budgeted Wednesday and Thursday to do all the work. That's a pretty tight squeeze, given the amount of new material, and, of course, I'm not getting all the necessary stuff from our writers and artists in any kind of timely fashion. Most of it will end up on my desk sometime tomorrow, which means my Thursday is going to be crazy.

Our production system is supposed to operate like an assembly line, with each person adding his little widget to the product before I apply the final coat of paint and send it off to the store. However, everyone seems to think that the conveyer belt stops immediately after them, so they can push everything back to the deadline. The marketing people don't get their key picks to the writers, which delays them getting me the stories. The photo studio delays taking the pictures, which delays the graphics people from formatting them and sending them on to me.

Everyone seems to think I'm some sort of magic HTML machine, where you dump files into a feeder on the top of my head and I instantly regurgitate formatted copy onto the server.

Grumble grumble.

Don't worry though. I'm fine. It's a good thing I work best in a panic situation.

One Year Ago Today: I was still on hiatus, but in 1797, Charles Newbold patented the first cast-iron plow. He couldn't sell it to farmers, though, because they feared the effects of iron on the soil.

Mom Rating: 3 out of 5. Mom'll be happy to hear the protests are going peacefully, but she's still happier to be out of town for the week.

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Take me home, big fella