tonychung.ca ~ online, upfront, and personal

When I saw The Other Coast (image) comic strip in the paper this morning, I had to laugh. So much of today’s communications media: phone, text/SMS/MMS, email, TV, online publishing—are only available as long as there is enough storage to keep them. The Way-Back Machine on the Internet Archive helped me recover my Tablet PC Blogs posts in a jam, but if all the hard drives in the universe were full, what would have happened then?

In contrast to my post about what happens on the Internet living forever, I present the alternative view. My friend Wayne Radford, the self-proclaimed “King of Poco”, put this bug in my ear over lunch one rainy afternoon. The short version is that our online publishing efforts, though wide reaching, are only temporal.

Continue reading: Internet—forever but not permanent

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Between new years day and Chinese new year my grandmother, and great-grandmother to my children, passed away at the age of 92. We admitted her into the hospital on new years day because she had stopped eating. She died peacefully in her sleep only one day before we would have celebrated Chinese New Year. We’re going to miss her.

At the “Celebration of Life” service we held in her memory, Rev. Terry Shea opened with a poem by Linda Ellis, to remind us that while our date of birth and date of death appear on our gravestones, it is more important to consider how we spend the years in “the dash” between those dates. I first heard “the dash” several years ago when Wayne Myers, an elderly missionary to Mexico, spoke as a guest at Coastal Church in Vancouver. The message within those 36 lines was appropriate for the occasion; I later spoke about my memories of life with Grandma Rose, packaged as “some things death teaches us about life”.

This is a recap of those thoughts, but not exactly as I presented them.

Continue reading: Some things death teaches us about life

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I love Joel Stein. In his article that concludes peanut allergies are an issue only in rich, lefty communities, he compares a recent medical report to a short story he wrote years ago about a severe allergy epidemic that crippled the future until it was discovered the symptoms were psychosomatic. Funny that he didn’t show it to anyone, because he usually says the very thing on everyone’s mind that they wouldn’t dare say in public. I myself have often wondered why in recent years it appears that everyone and their dog can be allergic to peanuts.

Continue reading: Don’t make your allergies my problem

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One of my sons’ favourite shows right now is a Land Before Time episode, “The Great Long Neck Migration”. In the movie, the dinosaurs embark on a journey to find a new feeding ground, based on a sleep story (dream), or vision. Along the way, they meet other long neck dinosaurs, one of these being Little Foot’s long-lost father.

My youngest son is especially touched because Little Foot sings a song about how daddies are so great. He always wants me to watch this film with him, cuddled under a blanket. Oh for these days to last forever!

Continue reading: Walking with daddy dinosaurs

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Now that I have your attention: A fellow Tech Writer (Tina—I mean Holly Harkness) turned me onto a Wired magazine article about how blogging has lost the spontaneous, personal feel, now that there are so many of them out there. According to the writer, Paul Boutin, one would have more success being heard by contributing to the Facebook-, Twitter-, Flickr-, or YouTube-ospheres, rather than the blogosphere.

From the beginning, blogs have always been about conversation and sharing. Yes, several have advertisements on them. Yes, several have hired pro writers (for instance, Duo Consulting hired me). And yes, many do read more like online magazines than personal observations from the field. But nobody’s forcing you to read them. You can select what you want to read.

Continue reading: Blogs suck, and absolute blogs suck absolutely

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Leaving a job is hard, regardless of the one making the decision. Whether the choice was mine or the company’s didn’t stop me from the feelings of loss, and the ensuing depression that paralyzed me for a couple of days before I could move forward. Nobody prepared me to be released from a job when I was doing well, and this was the case.

It would have been easy to feel bitter at the apparent injustice of the situation, except that my faith in God, who provides every good and perfect gift, has already prepared me for my next assignment. And my next assignment for me. I know that I need to rely on His strength in my times of weakness. And there have been many times. Several times. Per day.

Continue reading: How you leave is how you will enter

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At first I thought I should write a post about where I was at the moment the planes hit the World Trade Center. Then I remembered I wrote an article shortly afterward that I posted on a reflections website. I could easily revisit that article, adding any new thoughts and reflections from today’s perspective. But then Rick Detorie completely floored me with todays strip. Pictures really do say 1000 words. Or at least the core three.

Continue reading: Remembering 9/11

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