The view from Silicon Valley North

{Mounting soap box}

Who would have thought that such a simple thing would end up so complicated? I know I’m deviating from my current music theme, but lately I have been simply amazed at the way people are reacting to a simple precautionary measure. The government is not telling you what to do and disposable masks do not limit air flow (Some of the cloth ones do).

Doctors and nurses have been…

Hey Readers,

I would like to take a break from writing about my own musical adventure and introduce you to a friend who collaborated with me on track #11 on “Wind & Fire”.

Julio Santos lives in Ottawa but is originally from Brazil. I watched a few of his online videos and asked him if he would help me with some latin guitar for a song that I wrote while in Mexico. I’ll tell you more about that…

A child of fortune is defined as a person that is considered lucky.

I have always been the kind of person who lives for tomorrow. For me tomorrow holds the promise of new adventures, new opportunities to learn, new places to discover and new people to meet. I am no stranger to hard work and as a generalist with an ever growing skillset, there are always new skills to acquire.

I guess I consider…

A Special kind of Crazy

We live in a crazy time. I can say that because I have 62 years under my belt and I have seen a fair amount of crazy. Lately we’ve been experiencing something I call “A special kind of Crazy”.

If we look back on 2019, President Trump was impeached! but nothing happened.

The USA was separating children from parents at their southern boarder and placing those kids in what resembled detention…

The Person I Am

I’ve BLOG’s on this before, but it’s even more applicable in current times.

I’ve always known that there was something different about my upbringing. My mother raised me and my two brothers and sister to reflect her values and one of those values was how to treat people. The key word in that last sentence is People. She was very clear that there is no such thing as black people, yellow people,…

The change of seasons in Canada breaks the year into blocks that effect our moods, our productivity and our schedules. For example, cleaning the windows is not a good idea when it’s -40 degrees C outside. Sometimes Canadians need a break from the cold and if they can afford it, they head south. The concept of a winter break is something that my wife and I just started doing now that the family…

The concept of retirement is a relatively new thing proposed by German Chancellor Otto Bismarck in 1889. “Those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state”, he said. It wasn’t until post WW2 that the concept came to the new world and since then, has been equated to being free – “Freedom 55”.

I have been lucky in that by complete chance, I…

One Foot in Heaven

Seems like I have been able to find the time to create and schedule a few more posts this week. Today I would like to take a few minutes to talk about the story behind the song “One Foot in Heaven”. If you look at the story from a different angle you can find solace where there seems to be nothing but pain.

Today would have been my mother’s 88th birthday, but we lost her in 2013. She was…

The next in my continuing series of posts, is a look at how evolution has changed how we interact with our environment.

I have a 2009 Jeep Wrangler and it has allowed me to escape to some places that would be hard to reach otherwise. It was on one such escape, that I decided to kill the engine and observe nature at work. I watched a hawk circling above a clearing before it dived to try to catch a…

This is the story behind the song “Conversation”

I found myself at an open mic one night where a guy at the bar bought me a beer because he liked my set. I had decided to play some Doobie Brothers that night and I guess he was a fan. In any case, I felt that I should take a few minutes to have a chat with him. The conversation started off normal enough, but then I could feel it slipping into more…

Hey Everyone,

I’m going to try to post a series on what was on my mind while writing the songs on the new album “Wind&Fire” by my band “NorthOf60”.

I should probably start by saying that the name has more to do with how long each of the band members has been on the planet rather than a reference to degrees of latitude.

The songs were written in 2019 so that should give you a time perspective. In…

Hey Readers,

It’s been four months or so since the world started it’s transition to what we have today. I suspect the changes will continue well into next year and perhaps even beyond that. Companies have discovered that their workforce’s can be just as productive at home and many have closed regional offices. There are a small handful that have migrated to have the entire company remote. I was…

Hey Everyone,

I have been doing a lot of learning about what 5G is going to bring to the world. It is truly an amazing advancement with next generation radios that provide multi-connectivity and distributed cloud technology that will revolutionize industry. With 5G it will be possible to deploy low latency applications close to the edge in what is called far-edge cloud. Many network functions…

Well that was an interesting few months. Now that it’s over maybe it’s time for a comment (or two).

I’ve blogged before about how I thought that American politics has been effecting the world negatively and it seemed to hold true for the Canadian election. It’s not the craziness that we see in the USA, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Russia, China … but it was the craziest Canadian election…

Hey Guys,

Today CNN reported that Saudi Arabia displayed debris from the refinery attack that proves the drone attack was sponsored by Iran.

I’m not going to say that was not the case but if you follow that logic, every attack in the world by a foreign country that purchased weapons from the USA would make the USA responsible.

Am I missing something?

Just People …

I recently was exposed to some posters at work that made me ask myself some soul searching questions. The posters were LBGT promotional posters and I couldn’t identify what exactly upset me about them. I asked myself questions like “Are you anti-gay? Are you prejudiced?”

In order to understand my thought process, I have to give you a bit of history.

My mother was ahead of her time in that she…

Hey Readers,

Just a heads up that I have been working on a new project. You could say that I have enough projects already but I would counter with “There’s always room for one more [grin]”.

At one point in my life I coached young people who wanted to break into the music industry. Two of those young people have gone on to record albums and one makes a living playing and teaching music. I on the…