Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure people have spent lots of time working on it. This isn’t to impugn their efforts or anything. Or maybe it is? I don’t want to get a reputation or anything here for being a jerk or nothing.

I’m familiar with the compromises that get made when dealing with higher-level decision-makers, especially ones who are academics (I think even they would agree that they love to argue, even about things wildly out of their field.) I’m sure that the various committees looked long and hard for something that everybody didn’t hate and went with it.

I know how it works. And how, sometimes, it doesn’t work.

1. UBC Blue and UBC Grey

The Dullest Dull in Dullsville.

We’ve got to talk about this, UBC. Who sits in their office in the jewel of the Pacific Northwest, the most gorgeous, scenic city in Canada — sounded by ocean, evergreen forests, flowering shrubs and plants as early as February each year, in a city stuffed full of beautiful architecture and vibrant communities, on a campus full of trees and brilliant people — and thinks “Dark and brooding, like a Vancouver winter. That should be our colour scheme!”

There’s something terribly drab about UBC’s colour-choice of dark blue and grey that makes me want to commit suicide after a solid two weeks of drizzly, cold, overcast days. I mean, I get that it rains here. All Vancouverites are pretty much living in an ongoing overblown joke about the rainshadow effect. Goddamn the five mountain ranges that stack up behind this fair city like waves marching into shore, causing every cloud within a thousand klicks to converge above us and cheerfully douse us with their contents, 200+ days a year. I get that. But to make this the basis of your branding? NO.

Not only that, but it seems that whoever designed the website and literature eschewed all those high-falutin things like detail and shading, and decided that big solid blocks of dark colour were the way to go. Oh, and let’s mix that with light-grey text links on a white background for the full, boring effect:

How interesting!

UGH.

The UBC web presence actively irritates me every time I have to do something on the site. It’s so… so… BLAH. I mean, it’s not awful, considering. And given what they have to work with (GREY, for god’s sake), I think they’ve done an alright job. But did nobody tell them that they could use other colours? There’s a whole wheel full of them! Brand consistency is important, but for crying out loud: dark blue blocks of colour, grey buttons and background? SNORE.

Some of the department pages have managed to take UBC’s drab, boring, bleak templatey look and feel and make it alright, mostly by doing things TOTALLY DIFFERENTLY, things that don’t really match the main look and feel at all:

Pretty, right? Look: COLOURS!

Awkward layout aside, look: more colours, sort of!

I like the first one best, by far – it’s very pretty, and would be perfect without that huge heavy dominating dark blue paperweight at the top. The second one toes the line with the branding more than the first, but it’s OK too (awkward layout aside.) Yet notice that the most interesting thing on this page are the yellow and teal callouts. The rest follows the blue/blue/grey rainy theme (although I think I spy a gradient, even! WOW!)

Alas, the grey background still clashes with the dark-blue bar wherever you are on the site, and no amount of creative sub-templating will make that less of a snooooore.

Hilariously, the A Place of Mind sub-site — wherein they attempt to sell the branding – does not follow the branding at all. (That’s to its credit, because it makes it actually look nice.) But note: it even uses a different hue of blue! That’s nuts! But they ditch the grey background:

Pretty!

Grey... ish. But also, other things.

They can go on about “brand consistency” all they like, but this subsite totally flaunts that. (Say, can we switch to this colour scheme instead? Look! Brown! Green! Light blue (not grey)! A gradient, for god’s sake! It’s not perfect — still not tones I would have chosen — but the look is so much better.

Anyway. I don’t know why they’d would go against their own branding so wildly; I can only think that there’s some inter-departmental war going on, and these pages represent organizational sniping of the highest order. Either that, or people need to visit each others’ cubicles once in awhile. BUT I DIGRESS.

2. A place of mind

UBC said that it chose this phrase to be “deliberately evocative.”

But… What does “A place of mind” actually evoke? Seriously. A friend commented that it sounded “a bit cheesy.” Indeed it does. It’s an awkward phrase, conjuring “Peace of mind” but not really. And yet, maybe it’s sort of related to “a piece of [my] mind”? (I’m giving one ofthose right now. Hey, it works! Or wait…)

Ok, ok. I get the whole “We’re the place where you come to think about stuff!” But nothing about the current phrase says any of the words that UBC’s market research said UBC was about: “open” “bold” “connected” “adventurous” “globally-aware and respected”. Instead, we get a tagline that says that we’re just some place, somewhere. Anywhere.

Did they just mean to imply like we’re the Zeller’s of the academic world? A place of shop; a place of shoe. A place of low-priced kitchen and bathware? A place of, I don’t know, you know? Regardless of its meaning, or lack thereof, the phrase as a phrase doesn’t move, inspire, or convey any sort of dynamic process. It’s limp. It just sites there. Thud.

Maybe I’m not getting it. Maybe if we dissect it we’ll discover its bildungstrieb, that mysterious force animus that makes it go. Let’s take it in parts:

A place. We’re not the place of mind; we’re just one of many. You know. You could come here. Or not. Whatever. This is technically correct; there are lots of other Places of Mind – my mind, yours, oh, and SFU… And philosophically, I agree that we’re not the place either: mind is everywhere (unless you’re a philosophical materialist, of course). Or it’s all in your head. Or whatever.

But I’m not sure that “you know, whatever” is the inspirational drive that UBC wants to impart here.

It sucks, OK? I’m pretty certain that the word “place” was used at the prodding of somebody with a specialization in humanities; those people (like me) love taking ordinary words and making them Mean Things. And there is a very specific and technical Meaning of the word place in the humanities. It has much broader (and, let’s face it, interesting) connotations than any of the more colloquial usages. Alas, we’re not all geography majors.

Sorry: unless you’re Joss Whedon’s production company, geeky heavily-laden in-jokes should not a slogan make. A brand should always be outward-facing. This one’s pretty inaccessible. And thus, bad.

of mind… do you mind? Mind the gap. I’m feeling mindful… I mind! I don’t mind! Do I mind? I think I do. Clearly, I must! But I digress, again.

This fragment is as bad as the first. It doesn’t really conjure thinking as much as it does that itchy annoying feeling you get when you’re stuck next to some smelly mouth-breather on the bus. Which I do mind, thank you very much.

If you want to get technical again, well: what sort of mind are we talking about? Any kind of mind? A specific kind? Your mind? Mine? THE HIVE MIND! Er, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t seem to refer to any special, dynamic, vibrant, specific sense of mind or minds.

Thud, thud, thud.

How about: making minds! There’s an alright phrase… A cliché, sure! But its meaning is at least obvious. It’s active. We’re doing something. That “s” makes a world of difference; it makes it travel. Hmm. No?

Oh, well. I know there’s something better out there somewhere, just waiting to take the place of this tired, limp phrase.

It matters

Branding matters. It sets the tone for everything: signage, business cards (which are another piece of uninspired awful; see?), not to mention web designs and posters and commercials.

UBC’s branding at the moment is brought to you by the words “drab” and “thud.” I think it needs a re-think. Nobody would mind, especially not at my place.

A few days ago, the Internet called me up and asked “How it going?”

Well, Internet, let me tell you: it’s going.

It’s interesting. I’d highly recommend it.

But. Some warnings: it’s still not entirely natural, even after a month. I have to devote a small bit of brain to the feet still, and sometimes it’s too much. That might just be me: I have the attention-span of a very young gnat who has never had to concentrate at all in its small gnat life; it’s pretty bad. I’m extremely flighty and non-linear. My brain sort of goes off without me sometimes. (Twitter and other “services” haven’t helped.)

The making-my-feet-move is just one more thing to stuff into my flighty brain, and sometimes it takes me up to the tipping-point where I realize that I’m unaccountably annoyed for some unspecified reason; and then I realize what the reason is. It’s that I haven’t been focussing properly for the past ten minutes because I’m too busy walking. And then I turn off the power. And stand there, and work. And then it’s OK.

Don’t get me wrong: we’ve all been sitting at our desks surfing the internet or staring into space and realized that our attention wandered away ten minutes ago and you have to go and find it and kick it until it crawls back and asks for forgiveness. This is just another manifestation of that; I don’t actually think humans are geared for doing long stretches of a single task like we now do. Our brains take a holiday when they’re full, and we can’t really stop them. This is the same thing, just in a different way.

It simply requires accommodation; nothing’s free. But it takes some getting used it; there’s definitely a threshold.

The second warning: OH GOD my back. The second week my back felt AWFUL. It was the treadmill’s fault: I was unconsciously leaning forward and tensing up as I worked. The walking motion was just totally the wrong reinforcement, and my neck seized up like the motor of a 1983 Hyundai Pony on a hot day in July. Much ice and ibuprofen later and I’m fine; and now I’m really conscious of my posture, because holy crap, as soon as I start to lean and tense, I really feel it in my shoulders. Now that I know what not to do, it’s fine.

Fitness-wise, well, here’s the thing. It’s excellent. I’ve put on stupid amounts of muscle, and I’ve lost almost ten pounds.

I’ve only been doing between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours per day on it. I expected I’d do more, but it turns out that I’m out, walking around, sitting in meetings etc. actually a lot; and as mentioned above, I take breaks. And it’s been hot in the office. So every day I feel guilty that I haven’t done 3+ hours of walking because I’m here, right? In the office for 7 hours a day, why am I not walking the whole time?? Then I realize that that’s STUPID. I’ve replaced a huge chunk of time at my desk with standing/striding. Huge. It is an hour of exercise that I simply wasn’t getting before, like, at all. It’s significant. I think my heart will thank me (and my hot gams, which are definitely getting some definition as a result of the increased activity.)

It’s true what they say about how it improves your productivity: I experimentally sat all day yesterday, and by 3:00 I was ready to die. I was exhausted, annoyed, hot. I’d forgotten to take my lunch break, again, and my eyeballs felt all gritty. I was in a foul mood. Not pretty.

But when I’m using the treadmill, that happens far less. I still get tired, but I don’t get that epic awful tired. I’m alert and able to work right through the day, and still feel energetic when I close the office door behind me.

I truly believe that, despite the attention-splitting thing, the treadmill has made me more productive (seriously, man, yesterday was a total write-off, and I blame the sitting.) Even though my attention is crazy bad, I find myself more able to yank myself back to do things when my mind does wander: self-talk, like “So, what should you be doing right now? DO IT!” is way, way easier now.

I’m more motivated. I’m getting fitter. AND nobody at work seems to think it’s weird, which surprised the heck out of me.

So. I’d definitely recommend it.

UPDATE: Hey, visitors from Proggit! Here’s a link to the original post about setting this up, with a photo of my setup at the bottom.

Given what’s happening, it seems merely common sense that a sudden release after millions of years will have some repercussions. I mean, we’ve all eaten too many beans and gotten gas – we can all imagine that, times several thousand. So. It can’t be good, right? The article makes a very compelling case.

However, I say the story is fabulous, I mean just that: it is a fabulous story. It’s fabulous as a piece of writing; it’s shitty journalism.

It is written by somebody truly in charge of the structure of article-writing. The author guides you cleanly through from a very catchy headline (“world-killing”) to a chain of reasoning supported by footnotes and “experts” in various fields. It brings in a “lone scientist” who has a groundbreaking theory that might be proven right (literally), it gives a timeline that lends pacing to the article, it quotes from witnesses who claim to have seen similar signs of disaster (earth bulging at the site, by, like, a lot!), it brings in a conspiracy theory (government lockdown, which is in fact true) and it presents other possibly similar situations that may have happened in the past. It walks you through them step by step.

It’s extremely well-written.

But from what I can tell, it’s complete and utter hooey. Mostly. How do I know? Well, I have some experience in journalism, and in science.

But how can YOU know?

We have a sort of “cult of expertise” in our society that is very dangerous, but also very useful. We trust experts – we have to: they’re experts! We must rely on them, because they know things and do work that we just can’t, don’t, or won’t do ourselves. They’re good at the things that they do. Experts? They’re essential. But there’s a real trust there, that experts are honest and professional. That trust can easily be abused by people claiming to be experts but who aren’t. But how do you judge an expert on their own terms? How do you tell what’s horseshit and what’s not, if you don’t know the field yourself?

It gets worse. We rely on journalists to translate expert-speak into ordinary-people-speak for us. There are certain shorthands that we’ve developed that let us know when something is credible. It’s useful, because journalists can act as go-betweens and help experts talk to us, and help us understand the work that experts do. Unfortunately, journalists must be invested with some trust too. And the same problem rears its head: who do you trust to be honest and credible?

For example, the author of this article has hit all of the “hallmarks” of a credible article: he talked to eyewitnesses. There are footnotes to scientific papers. Interviews. Theories! And numbers! Especially numbers.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot in the article that is, well, problematic.

Unless you know what you’re looking for, it’s easy to be swept away by the chain of reasoning. Unless you actually go and read the papers, check out the background of the experts yourself, and have some basic understanding of what’s involved, it’s easy to form an opinion based more on how certain the writer is of the article’s conclusion than how certain the actual scientists quoted within it are.

That is where trust breaks down.

So. My public service for the evening is a brief primer on spotting logic or credibility problems in things that claim to be scientific journalism. Here are some things to keep an eye out for:

1. Past doesn’t always dictate future: Events are complex and multi-causal. For example, in this article, “experts may agree” that methane releases in the past were the cause of extinction events (although linking to a BBC TV series exploring the issue does not actually prove this to be the case – television is not even a tertiary source, credibility-wise), but even so, journal articles about methane releases at different points in time correlated with extinction events prove only that, at some point in the past, there were methane releases correlated with extinction events. But it doesn’t say anything about the circumstances that led to the releases, whether methane was a primary cause (for instance, there may have been very different environmental factors: like during the Cretaceous, there was a 40C oceanic dead-zone around the equator for several hundred thousand years — things were wildly, weirdly different). It might. But it might not. Hard to say. Where are the journal articles actually linking similar events in the past to similar circumstances now? Not there.

This doesn’t mean there might not be a link. It just means that the journalist is telling us a story right now that is purely circumstantial. Keep that in mind.

PROTIP: To judge a theory’s credibility, you need to hear what the actual author of the papers about the past events thinks, not what a reporter thinks based on some other expert’s interpretation of the possible applications of the theory. Conclusions must be based on data, not merely the question “could this happen?” Sure it could! The real question has to be “Given the current data that you’ve seen from this specific situation, what is the probability of what happened in this other situation happening in these circumstances?” You’ll likely get a different answer, unless the causes and effects are pretty well known. In the case of the BP spill, we’re not presented with any sort of history that tells us that this is so. That’s because the situation is unprecedented. We’re in completely foreign territory here.

2. Numbers: Using numbers makes something seem credible, but you have to make sure the number actually matters or is relevant to the problem at hand: for example, the article says that oil is gushing at 40,000 psi. THAT IS A LOT. But wait. That’s relevant to the problem of trying to apply a cap, not to fissures appearing elsewhere in the ocean’s crust. Or is it? Maybe. But the journalist doesn’t talk to any scientists about this event. Reports that they’re happening are eye-witness, but what does that mean? How does seeing a bulge translate into bulges-per-psi? And, now what? What we need is a comparison: the ocean floor can support XX,XXX psi in this area, but not XX,XXX + YYYY psi. Remember, the oil was always down there, at pressure. Now the pressure is venting in a specific area, and that’s the problem. So maybe 40,000 psi causes cracks, maybe not, but you need to actually hear an expert in the field use the numbers to make a point. Just quoting numbers alone? Not at all useful.

Now, we know that cracks are appearing (NOAA says that they are natural, but could be getting larger now as a result of the spill). The author is pointing out a serious problem. But there’s no actual information about the extent of the problem given in hard numbers. Part of that is because there’s a lockdown and BP seems to own the EPA. So again, we have something circumstantial. But it’s still not science yet; it’s speculation. An essential first step, but…

3. Interview subjects & eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses tell us that something might be happening, but they don’t give us a measurement baseline. They’re like coughing and sneezing: they tell us there’s something wrong with the lungs, but not necessarily what’s causing the illness. But journalists love eyewitnesses. Eyewitnesses are quotable. They provide “human interest.” They tell us a story. But they’re not science.

PROTIP: Beware stories peppered with eyewitnesses claiming things are happening because they’ve seen certain phenomena – smoke doesn’t necessarily equal fire. It often does, of course! Bless our eyewitnesses: they’re often the only way the public ever becomes aware of serious problems. But they’re not definitive. They’re not data. They’re anecdote.

4. A compelling story: I hate it but it’s true: most scientific journalists just aren’t that good at writing. They’re hampered by the fact that real science is very messy and often lacks a through-line; common sense isn’t common — things are often counter-intuitive — and a ripping good yarn is hard to achieve when you actual fact-check and source properly and use the actual quotes from the boring guys instead of the interesting ones that professional PR people create.

PROTIP: If your “holy-shit-this-is-incredible-o-meter” is going off, try Googling some names and theories for yourself… just in case it really is too good (or bad) to be true. There actually are some talented science journalists. Like, three. But they’re the exception.

5. Conflating sources: Note that actual journalistic claims in the article aren’t sourced: “frantic efforts to quell the methane”. By who? How does the reporter know this? Who told him? “Some environmental experts…” “Experts all agree…” The only things he actually cites as facts – like the 40,000psi – aren’t followed by an actual expert tying those facts together. He does that, then moves on to the next “fact” / “scary quote” / paragraph or two of exposition. BAD NEWS.

6. False credibility: And sometimes, experts just aren’t. The article in question made it onto a talk show yesterday, where “another guest expert, R.C. Hoagland, stated…” yadda yadda earth explosions horror tsunamis! But Hoagland, a cursory Internet search reveals, is a crusty old crank known for his contributions towards the moon landing hoax theory and for supporting several interesting doomsday ideas not unlike this one. Even if he wasn’t known as a crank, an interview with a scientist is not the same as a journal article, so “an expert” commenting on a story is not a good source of information per se, unless they’re talking about the scientific debate or interpreting pre-existing data in laymen’s terms. Experts who extrapolate too freely? Beware of those guys: they’re often for hire on a talk-show circuit. They’re not there to inform; they’re there to look interesting on TV. And TV is, well, TV.

But regardless of the medium, interviews by their nature are informational, not scientific (Mark Twain had a lot of zingers about how useful interviews are; many are still apropos); they are not designed for real debate, especially when we’re discussing a “edge theory” that only a few groups of people are really equipped to talk about at all, and then in very highly specialized terms that couldn’t possibly make good TV.

If experts are used in interviews, it’s often simply to lend a veneer of credibility to the TV show. Because it is just that: a show.

PROTIP: An expert is only ever an expert in their specific field. Review their contributions to that field. How many papers have they published? Are they interpreting or blue-skying? Are they genuinely involved in the scientific work and taking an active part in scholarly debate, or are they gadflies? Using Google Scholar and searching for their known publications is a good place to start.

Anyway.

There’s a heck of a lot wrong with this article. I mean, a lot. It’s really well-written, it’s very compelling, and it ties into a deep, completely reasonable fears about the breadth, depth and scope of the BP disaster, the true extent of which is being hidden by the US government at the urging of their corporate masters. But as a piece of journalism is truly hideous. It uses every rhetorical trick in the book to lead the reader to its conclusion, but I’ll bet if anybody contacted Ryskin, the scientist responsible for the original methane theory, he’d have harsh words about his work being used in this way. I suspect.

So, science journalists, you have a job to do: get this story right. It’s very important. It might even be true. Who can tell? As written, it’s worse than useless: it’s fearmongering, anti-scientific garbage.

UPDATE: Found some of the blog sources (and comments from people who seem to know the field) that the article didn’t credit directly. Some worrying stuff, but nothing definitive from the oceanographer or geologist interviewed directly. The methane-explosion-release hypothesis originally came from discussions a few weeks ago of nuking the seabed to stop the leak.

EVEN UPDATEY-ER: A real journalist/scientist has a go at this. And indeed, it’s utter bullshit.

A parrot! Visit this parrot today!

Except that there won’t be for long. It’s being closed. There’s enough money for the Olympics, see, but not enough to save Bloedel Conservancy. WHAT THE HELL, VANCOUVER?

When we got to the top of the hill, we noticed the dome along with signs asking for support, so we moseyed over to chat with the girl running the gift shop. She explained that the Conservancy had been losing money (apparently the City of Vancouver is running community cultural services for profit, now) and it needs a new roof, so the Vancouver Parks Board voted to close it instead of paying for the repairs.

Naturally.

Originally, the Conservancy was slated to close right after the Olympics (wouldn’t want such a lovely feature closed what with all the tourists around, eh? Yeah… ), but a community group has been attempting to raise the shortfall – all of $250,000, far less than a fraction of any Olympic construction project.

True to form, the City went ahead and solicited “expressions of interest” from private companies to “redevelop” the conservancy and take it out of public hands, despite the outcry. Providing an incredible cultural parks experience for Vancouverites is not within the City’s mandate, it seems. I’m beyond disappointed. I’m mad! We just got here. Stop going to hell, City!

They’re reviewing the proposals now, including the not-for-profit one, and once they decide in August (come on, seriously, what do you think they’ll decide?) the Conservancy will be lost, or at least transformed from a public floral wonder into another goddamned events centre or something equally banal and inaccessible to us ordinary folks.

Dammit. So! You should go see it, while you can (grr)! Maybe this weekend! It’s $5.50 to get in, and worth it; it’s very pretty. They have parrots! The grounds are equally awesome; there’s an old quarry area that’s been gardenized and it’s a lovely walk.

Looking for something to do Saturday morning? Give me a call! We’ll do the dome!

That wasn’t all the nature for the evening though: when we got home from our ranty walk, we hung out in the back yard for awhile and chased the cats around as the sun went down. I noticed a garbagey smell from one side of the yard. Hmm. It had been coming into the suite for the past week or so; last weekend we did an epic clean and couldn’t figure out what was making the smell. Well. I finally thought I knew what it was: the cats had killed a bird or rat and left it outside the window. Right?

Nooo.

After sniffing around the yard for ten minutes (which I hope wasn’t being videotaped by the kids upstairs, to end up on YouTube, because it must have looked ridiculous) we finally located the culprit: a cat (NOT one of ours) had crawled under the almost-completely-enclosed back steps, all the way to the far end, and had expired.

Aw, MAN!

Half an hour of poking and flashlight-shining and shovel-wielding and dead-cat-pushing later we managed to extract it, and place it in a garbage bag, and wash our hands, and hug each other, because it was all upsetting and shit. Poor dead cat.

Sigh.

Anyhoo. At least now the Eau d’Chat Morte will clear out, and our own cats will stop looking all sketchy and wild-eyed whenever they come in from outside. Dare to dream.

Third-season curse: When a male star gets a regular role on TV, they put on weight in the third season. For example:

• David Boreanz on Angel
• Nicolas Brendon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Jonathan Frakes on Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Matthew Perry on Friends
• Jay Morh on Ghost Whisperer
• William Petersen on CSI

My theory is that after ten or so years of being a starving actor these dudes land a steady role with a signed contract, and actually start eating. Like, every day! Not only are they entering their 30s, but they can hit the craft services table any time they want when at work; and they are working steadily, so stocking up on finger sandwiches like hamsters backfires.

Don’t get me wrong: William Petersen, any season of CSI? Mrowr. But once the series ends, however, they all diet like fiends.

Anyway. It’s just a theory. Let’s do some science: does anybody know any other examples of the 3rd-season curse? Post ‘em in the comments!

(I don’t think this phenomena occurs with women on TV. I suspect that they aren’t allowed to look a pound over the way they did when hired; pointed comments from agents and producers and general meanness on fan forums and the standard female fat-fear keeps them in line, whereas for men there’s much more leeway with respect to body weight, they can still be considered “hot” while carrying some extra. HOWEVER, this is all light-hearted celebrity-poking, not a philosophical discussion about the difficulties of being a fat man or a fat woman actor. So vamoose, serious-face!)

The quest: I needed a name to make me sound, you know, business-ey; I didn’t want something cutsey or punny, or especially nerdy. It had to be technology-neutral, survive over time, and not be too “high tech” because I loath those sorts of businesses — “SuperTechSpeed Solutions”; “TechWeb InterZone!” — and want to punch them all in their dumb, buzzwordy faces.

I also wanted the last word to be “media” and not “internet” or “design” because I didn’t want to limit myself — it was going to be the company through which Damian offered his video services along with my print and web design services.

That narrowed it down to only a zillion possibility from a gazillion; I had no idea. But I was listening to The Weakerthans a lot, and “One Great City” was getting tonnes of airplay on the CBC at the time. It came on the radio. The first line is late afternoon, another day is nearly done.

Inspired: OK! I liked the idea of getting things finished and wrapped up, so I tried “lateafternoon.com.” It was taken. Then I thought “hey, we all love alliteration! I can do a lot with a bunch of ‘M’s!” so I tried “midmorning.com” and “midmorningmedia.com”. Squatted! Dammnit. Ok… midafternoon? Taken. EARLYafternoon.com… YES.

And that’s the story of how I chose my business name.

The take-away? Inspiration can come from anywhere: a book, a song, doesn’t matter. Just grab a magazine or put on the radio, pick a nice phrase, and google away. Then curse the domain squatters, and SETTLE for third-best. Worked for me!

The less said the better, really: moving is a miserable and expensive experience that, frankly, sucks. Ugh.

However, I wanted to tell the Internet so that it knows how it is out there, for all those people contemplating a cross-Canada move. There’s not a lot on the web about it, as I discovered when I started.

So this is that story, the tale of our move.

We lived in Kingston, Ontario. I got a job in Vancouver. We needed to move, and fast. Also, we needed to go cheap, because money? There never is enough of it.

Choices. UBC had a favoured moving company, and wanted us to use them, even though they only covered some of the expense. So we got a quote from the company, Armstrong. It was well over $7,000, all told – and that was without their packing services etc, and with the piddly 5% UBC discount.

No way. We considered doing it ourselves, instead, because we just couldn’t afford Real Movers. Gosh, I thought, there has got to be something better. I started Googling. Kingston isn’t served by any of those newfangled “rent-a-container” things like real cities are, so the only option was old-fashioned highway-drivin’ trucks. There aren’t many options for Going Cheap: you can rent a UHaul, or hire a broker.

Moving brokers, unlike moving companies, sell your move to trucking companies who have spare space. They’re cheaper because they can economize and do several moves at once. We got lots of quotes from various brokers, including the place we finally went (Qwest Haven Moving) and all of them estimated that it would cost us $3,500. Half of Armstrong’s quote! About the same as DIY (figuring $3,500 for a UHaul, plus ~$400 for diesel, plus lodgings).

I was skeptical, though. We hemmed and hawed, knowing that there are rip-offs galore in the moving industry. I’d read horror stories about Internic Moving and a few of the others (including one guy who thoughtfully called my cell at 7:00am to ask if I was going with them — just for that, buddy, I’m NOT).

To mitigate against the risks, though, I’d googled the heck out of Qwest, and saw that they had an alright BBB rating. And for brokers, it seems to come down to the subcontractor who they sell your move to, although a good broker will ditch the bad seeds and listen to customer complaints, and continually update the list of movers they’ll use; a bad one will not.

After reading advice from Transport Canada’s “All about movers” fact-sheet, I asked Qwest for specifics about the subcontractor who would get our move, and I made sure THEY had a good BBB rating too. That’s key: make sure you get the name of the subcontractor; insist on a good one, and you’ll do alright with a broker – the other criteria is responsiveness to complaints, but I figure once you’re in the position of having to complain about something, it’s too late already.

In our case, Qwest Haven subcontracted our move to Beanland Moving, who had an A+ BBB rating. It is a well-deserved rating. I highly recommend Beanland. Walter and his enormous truck made the experience quite delightful (I mean, as delightful as it can be when you load all your crap into an expensive truck and haul it across the country).

It took Beanland ten days (less, actually, but they did a few other moves along with ours, so the truck stayed in Ontario a few days after loading our possessions). We were told by Qwest to expend a delivery “band” of between ten days and six weeks, which is a lot of variance, but they got our stuff there exactly on Day 10. Also, they handled our stuff with care, made sure everything was there, and got the unloading done in about three hours, including my piano.

Anyway. Here’s the thing. Moving companies charge by weight. They will low-ball the weight – not on purpose, but it’s hard to figure, even with an experienced estimator, and they tend to estimate low. A good company will come in to your own home and see your stuff in person (for free); with brokers, though, you fill out a form and they guess based on what you have. Inevitably, you guess even lower than an experienced estimator would guess, so the quote from a broker using your low-ass estimate will seem extra-super cheap. Here, do yourself a favour: take your estimated weight, and DOUBLE IT.

Qwest’s sheet guestimated our stuff at 3,500lbs. Armstrong brought a guy in to guess the weight of our stuff, and he guessed 4,000lbs. He was still 1,000lbs off.

So although I expected the move to cost $3,500, it actually cost us $4,318 (all in.) Phew.

But it was a positive experience: Qwest was hands-on and kept in contact with us, and they gave us the contact info of our mover so we could keep in touch directly. They had no problem with us asking for the weigh-scale receipts. Their customer service was friendly and attentive, including the guys at dispatch, so they were well worth the broker’s fee. They also let me do creative things with my credit card(s), and with payments before/after year-end-fiscal-dates, which was awesome because we couldn’t have swung it otherwise. The moving subcontractor, as noted above, was also fabulous. Going with the broker may have cost $4,318, but it would have cost us easily $7,500 if we’d gone with Armstrong instead (even if we’d had the money. Which we didn’t.)

I say with all sincerity that if you have the extra dosh to spare, or if you have as much stuff as we did (a townhouse worth, and a piano), it’s worth it for the stress-savings alone. If you don’t have much stuff, you won’t save much doing it yourself, but you’ll likely save some. Remember, though, that they load and unload the truck for you: I own a piano, so any extra savings would have been eaten up by piano-movers anyway.

There. That’s the story. Now, I AM NEVER MOVING LONG DISTANCE EVER AGAIN.

PS: Some things to know about insurance: there is limited insurance on moves. Typical hauler’s insurance is limited to $7 per pound, or something: consider your television; it is worth at least $150/lb. You can buy extra through the mover, but it’s not worth it: if you have home or renter’s insurance or car insurance, you can add a rider for a move, or often a move is actually already covered, including loss or theft while in the truck. Also, when you sign a bill of lading after loading you are attesting that everything is listed therein. If things don’t arrive, that’s your only documentation, and it’s a legally-binding document. MAKE SURE IT’S RIGHT.

HOWEVER. I did something to my shoulder/neck/back on Monday. Unrelated to the treadmill, most likely, but very painful. If you follow me on Twitter you heard the whining; if you don’t follow me on Twitter, consider yourself lucky.

So I haven’t been treading much this week, is what I’m saying, although I believe that standing up at the desk today – even without the belt turned on – has made my back better, not worse. But really, I have no data to support that. I’m just sayin’, is all.

It’s like sawing off a unicorn’s horn to test for poison. SO draconian! SO unnecessary!

My friends: keep the unicorn alive! It will willingly dip its horn into your drinks; you just have to ask. And it will even (eventually) have baby unicorns, and baby unicorns are not only adorable, but they are a much better size for keeping next to the dinner table.

Even better? Get a chemistry set: it’s the freaking 20th Century already! Get with the times!

Or the best solution of all: don’t do things that will make people want to poison you! Like hacking Drupal core, for example, which makes me want to poison you AND stab you. Save yourself! Use the hundreds of Drupal core hooks — roll a module — or use template.php instead.

Thanks.