The trend of busy years continued in 2011.

Blogging

According to my calculations, I posted 97 blog entries in 2011, with over a third of them in the month of March.

The weather featured prominently in the things I blogged about. In addition to the absolutely sucky weather that we had on a few occasions, such as 2am on March 6th or again on March 9th, I also talked about feeling the weather when the air pressure changed a lot over a short period of time.

I wrote about drivers a couple of times, including a proposal to require new drivers in Ontario to display a "P" and Queensway drivers talking on their cellphones (instead of using a handsfree device). As an aside, I’ve noticed more and more drivers holding their phones while talking lately — perhaps some more enforcement is in order.

There were some good opportunities to view the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle Discovery in early March. I posted a couple of entries about how to view them and also a short video I made of one of the passes and an entry about the "making of the video". It’s a bit difficult to make them out in the video but trust me, they’re there. 🙂

April saw just two posts: an update on Ottawa’s spoiled brat punk young pirate radio station operator and the other being my thoughts on the leadership debate.

I talked about blogging burnout in May and also posted some pictures from the Ottawa Race Weekend.

June featured a classy bunch of people I called the basketball net vigilantes, an entry about why your straight cut shredder isn’t as safe as you think it is and a couple entries about dragonboating. And Starbucks Canada declared that I was awesome (but you already knew that).

In July I talked about the weather and posted some pictures of lightning and also pointed out that privatization of the search-and-rescue system is just plain stupid (again, something you already knew).

August saw me post some pictures from Les Grands Feux du Casino du Lac-Leamy that I took as one of the volunteer photographers at the show. I also gave some advice on how to take pictures of fireworks.

More weather-related entries appeared in September along with a rant about cyclists who persist in riding on the sidewalks even though it’s illegal and dangerous to the legitimate users of the sidewalks (i.e. the pedestrians). I also posted my list of essential iPad apps.

October saw a very sneaky trick pulled by Joseph Mallozzi that resulted in me being sucked into the world of comic books. Joe apologized, but the damage was already done. (Incidentally, Dark Matter #1 is coming out next Wednesday, so be sure to pick up a copy or two at your local comic book store.) I also talked about looking forward to the almost annual geocaching event that was coming up at the end of the month called Go And Get ‘Em 16 (GC3486K).

I talked about a very busy week I had at the beginning of November and then wrote a couple of entries about bus drivers. A threat to bring the buses to a halt made by the president of Local 279 of the Amalgamated Transit Union caused me to bring out my anti-ATU 279 logo for an entry. OC Transpo silliness continued when management muzzled the Singing Bus Driver. OC Transpo passengers responded with their rendition of the Transpo-hemian Rhapsody.

December included the unexpected discovery that while I thought I hadn’t done a lot of geocaching in 2011 I had, in fact, done more caching than any previous year. I also posted a couple of updates on my new addiction interest with some reviews of some of the comic books I’d been reading, including The Ray #1. As well, I posted links to the YouTube clips of A Touch Of Brass’ appearance on CTV Ottawa’s Morning Live show.

Travel

I made a number of trips for both work and pleasure in 2011. Having had my fill of winter, I headed down to Florida for a week in the middle of March. My parents had rented a place in West Palm Beach for a month so I was able to stay with them while I was there. I spent a lot of time doing a whole lot of nothing’ on the beach, interspersed with a couple of rounds of golf and some geocaching.

In late-July and early-August I took some time off and split it between spending some time at the cottage and camping at Presqu’ile Provincial Park.

Work took me to Sherbrooke for a couple of days in October. A couple of weeks later I headed off for a couple of days in Edmonton at the beginning of November, stopping along the way for a day in Toronto to take the Display Fireworks Safety and Legal Awareness course to obtain my certification as a Display Assistant for display fireworks.

Work

I had a couple of things published at work this year and being an odd-numbered year I spent a good chunk of my time getting ready for the survey I manage to go into collection, which it did in October and November.

Play

Once again, I steered for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings at the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival and the Fall 400 in Carleton Place. We won our challenge cup at the ODBF and did quite well at the Fall 400.

I logged 159 geocaches in 2011 and went out caching on 29 different days. As I mentioned in early December, this was my most active year so far even though it didn’t feel like it.

In August I volunteered as a photographer for Les Grands Feux du Casino du Lac-Leamy, which was an absolute blast. Being one of the official photographers, I had complete access to the whole site and took over 4000 photographs during the five days the festival took place. I also spent half a day with the pyrotechnicians, which was really interesting. Apparently, I was the first photographer in many years, if ever, who had gotten to visit the barge while it was being set up and photograph them at work.

I also got out golfing a number of times, including a couple of rounds in Florida. I only started golfing four or five years ago and it’s something I wish I’d started earlier in life.

Although I didn’t get out climbing in the Gatineaus this year, I managed to go to the climbing gym most Sunday afternoons. It always seemed that when I had time to go, my climbing buddy was either busy or broken (stupid ankle!) or the weather sucked.

Looking ahead to 2012

What does 2012 hold in store?

I’m going to Florida at the end of March for some sunshine, sand, saltwater and golfing, so that will be a nice break from the snow and cold. It’s only January 4th and already I’ve grown tired of winter. However, if we must have winter then hopefully it will be good for snowshoeing.

As I mentioned, I obtained my fireworks display assistant certification this past November. I’m hoping that I can get some experience helping out at some fireworks shows. (If you’re a display supervisor looking for some DA’s, please get in touch with me! )

I’d like to do some hiking and camping next summer. It’s actually something I’ve been wanting to do since my trip to the UK in 2010. There are some places just over the border in northern New York that look reasonable for some initial outings.

What are you looking forward to in 2012?

I hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and a prosperous and safe 2012!

It’s nice to see that some airlines don’t mind going that extra mile to make things a little cheerier for people travelling over the holidays. airBaltic let the elves at the Riga airport have some fun with one of their planes:

A tip o’ the hat to Gadling for mentioning it a recent post.

The Singing Driver’s fans respond to his being muzzled by the city:

Apparently the fear of losing their jobs if they lose their cool and blow up at passengers is grounds for threatening a strike, at least according to the president of Local 279 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents OC Transpo bus drivers.

“With the flick of my fingers, we could end up with having the buses not being out on the road” –ATU 279 president Garry Queale

I heard that priceless quote on CBC’s morning show as I was getting ready to head to work this morning and it’s in a story on CBC’s website, too.

In the last week there have been there have been at least three incidents where OC Transpo drivers have behaved completely unprofessionally towards passengers and at least two of them have had repercussions for the drivers:

• a driver was fired for swearing at and threatening a teen,
• a driver abandoned his bus at the Rideau Centre after a passenger complained about him being 40 minutes late (I wrote about this yesterday), and
• a driver apparently decided he was done driving his route and kicked his passengers (mostly senior citizen) off the bus in the middle of nowhere (no report as to what action is being taken against the driver as a result).

Most people would probably agree that bus drivers don’t have the easiest of jobs. While they are well-paid, they take the brunt of the complaints and abuse from passengers unhappy with the service for whatever reason, even if it’s beyond the driver’s control, such as the recent changes to the bus routes in Ottawa. Even with this, many bus drivers put up with it and strive to provide good customer service so they can take pride in their work. But this doesn’t seem to be true for every bus driver, as evidenced by the list above.

Contract negotiations between ATU 279 and OC Transpo are scheduled to start December 8th. ATU 279 reportedly is interested in improving workplace conditions instead of salary, but the fact that they’re already threatening to strike suggests that perhaps the union’s negotiation strategy is based on threats and intimidation rather than genuine negotiation. Someone should remind them how that worked out for the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organizaton (PATCO) in 1981 when they tried something like this. (Hint: On August 5th, 1981 unemployment in the US  increased by 11,345 people.)