Web Standards, Accessibility & More

So I went to the Toronto, Canada area almost two weeks ago and to Boulder, Colorado this past week.

During my 5-day trip to Canada (with my manager), I stayed and worked in a suburb of Toronto, Mississauga. I also spent a day in Waterloo, the home of my new employer RIM (Blackberry). It wasn’t terribly exciting, but it fun to be in Canada again, and to see the French plastered everywhere. And I sure lucked out with the weather; around 65F and sunny, which is amazing obviously for November.

Also, more importantly, I met many people that I’ll be working with from my office in Redwood Shores, which was very important. If a company has offices spread throughout a country or throughout the world, it’s very important for people who work together to meet face-to-face and build rapport.

I went to Boulder to speak at and attend a conference about web accessibility and assistive technology. (See the post Speaking at “Accessing Higher Ground” Conference.) The first thing I noticed was that the Denver airport was really nice. It snowed the second morning I was there, which was neat since I don’t see snow much any more (but it melted by afternoon). The conference was good, met some good people, and I even got a free t-shirt from WebAIM. On Friday night, I ate dinner at Zolo one night, which I totally recommend. Then I met a couple old friends who now live in the area and went bar hopping on Pearl Street in downtown Boulder. Pearl Street is very cool.

Here’s the view from hotel room in Boulder, Colorado:

It’s been almost two weeks now since I started a new (day) job at Research in Motion (RIM), which makes the Blackberry mobile device. The office is located in Redwood City (well, Redwood Shores), California, and is strangely enough, just a few buildings over from my last job. I’m doing software development for Blackberry devices, so it’s a bit of a change from my work in front-end web development, and going well so far. It’s taking a while to get my application environment set up, but then again, I’m also documenting the process at the same time. RIM is actually a Canadian company, and I’ll be visiting offices next week in Mississauga and the headquarters in Waterloo, near Toronto, Ontario.

Got an email a while back from an old friend back home in Michigan. Yes, it was one of those goofy lists, but many of them were funny. I’d modified a few of these for the better.

You know you’re from Michigan when…

• You find 32 degrees “a little chilly.”
• You drink pop and bake with soda.
• You know what a “Yooper” is.
• You go to Canada on your 19th birthday.
• You think owning a Toyota is un-American.
• “Vacation” means going up north on I-75. You measure distance in hours.
• You can drive 65 mph through a feet of snow during a raging blizzard,
  without flinching.
• You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
• You know it’s possible to live in “the thumb”.