Lead To Win

Well, it's been an interesting journey. But it's only about to begin. I participated in the Lead To Win program. Here is their pitch:

If you are serious about starting a profitable tech-based business in Canada's Capital Region during the current economic situation, we invite you to apply to Lead to Win (LTW). Ontario’s Talent First Network is pleased to announce the launch of the Lead To Win program for laid-off or under-employed tech workers. The program is based upon a program of the same name that was delivered during the last economic downturn in 2002. Over half of the participants in the 2002 Lead to Win program created a new business in Canada’s Capital Region. These new businesses collectively created over 300 jobs and attracted over $90M in investment.

The program is no cakewalk! As a matter of fact, despite all the FREE great food and cake that they fed us during the program, not once were any of us invited to walk or even take a quick stroll across cake of any shape or form (no African dancing either... do your research).

After at least 3 Phases of filtering and improvements, I am proud to announce that my idea has come out on top. Of God-knows how many application 50 some opportunities made it into phase 1, 40 some make it to phase 2 and 30 some made it to phase 3. Of phase 3 participants 19 are rated Green (ready to go) and of them 7 opportunities have been rated Green by all it's assessors. My opportunity is one of those 7, which is cool I guess. I mean if your into that whole "being the cream of the crop" scene.

Anyway thought I'd just put that out there. That's one of the things I've been up to now that I'm back in the hemisphere. I did some other stuff but I can't remember it right now.

To learn more about the program, or to apply for it, visit their website: www.leadtowin.ca
Tell them I sent you. Unless your idea sucks, in which case I never heard of you and you never heard of me. No, like seriously who are you?

But in all honesty, this program is not made to filter people. The idea is to make better entrepreneurs out of us all and to make jobs. You will improve yourself or your idea drastically during the process guaranteed! I highly recommend the program and especially those who voluntarily put it together in true entrepreneurial style. I owe a lot to them and will be even further indebted as Phase III progresses. Actually I will take this moment to thank them and thank them in advance.

Here are some shots of the graduation: I am receiving my diplomat here from David Hudson:


Here I am celebrating with Tony Bailetti:


For those of you who know me best and know how I like to celebrate graduations: Yes, I did pull a Timon (from the Lion King) style celebration just before getting the diploma.

I'll probably write more about this soon but feel free to ask questions... My press secretary will be happy to address them.

More TV nostalgia

Ok I couldn't resist: two blog posts back to back. See, I was afraid I was gonna forget about this one.

That's right... Dr. Snuggles. Oh, how his amazing adventures brightened our days and haunted even our wildest nightmares with all those talking trees and other unnatural paraphernalia. So I saw the little snipet (which I'm sure you all just enjoyed) and was pondering some of the things that you were probably all thinking too, like "What in the world was that animal wearing overalls?", "How does he expect that shuttle to survive re-entry?" and "No seriously! What is that f&*%ing thing? Its freaking the hell outta me!". But then something caught my attention. "Why doesn't this old geiser ever take that bag of a wife with him?". Then I understood. It was a hidden message. Dr.Snuggle flies up to the rainbow. The RAINBOW! Weird when you think about it. Plus he takes that little god-knows-what in the overalls with him. Kinda freaky really. Anyway, enjoy your distorted memories!

This piece of TV nostalgia has been brought to you but Island Mike.

Yesterday's Special

Yesterday was not particularly special.
But I did clean out the bathtub using some pretty harsh chemicals. (You have to in this day and age with to fight the evil ever strengthening forces of THE ENVIRONMENT (and/or ALISTS)!!!
Anyway, after the battle, I noticed that there were a bunch of ants just hanging around this small part of the tub!? So I was all like: "Excus-ah me-ah mista ants! Whaaaats-ah matta yo moouuuth?", but they completely ignored my cleverly disguised Nicaraguan accent (thinly veiled by a poor man's Italian accent). Those ants did not move! It was weird. So I told them so. Didn't change a thing. So I gave one of them a "middle finger salute" catapult style. That... seemed to work. They all scattered and I concluded that the chlorine must have dazed them. So I guess the moral of the story is that those ants reminded me of the mannequin Jeff from that old TV show "Today's Special"! It also reminded me that I have a poor understanding of morals of stories. Man that Jeff was one hell of an idiot. I was 3 years old and I knew that most of his life's worries could be put to an end if he'd just put a strap on that damn hat.
In celebration of this epic tale, let us all enjoy a nutritious trip down memory lane with a side of badly constructed and confusing metaphors.

Goodbye Stela (will we ever meet again?)

It may be a couple of months late, but here is the official "goodbye for now" to my co-workers at Instituto Stela. I tried to include pictures of as many people as I could but I obviously couldn't get everyone in. The "Goodbye Stranger" music is provided by Supertramp and is appropriate. This is non-negotiable.


PS this video is awesome so I don't want to hear any complaints, unless they're hilarious!

Tuesday Funny Stuff

Here are some funny things I learned about today:

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

Also check out this link to K&K Mime.

And just when you thought it was a joke:


When I was a kid... or to sound even more old-man-like: Back in the good old days - when you could go to the corner store without worrying about getting hit by a bunch of global warmnings (warming & warnings) and a candy bar only cost a handful of nickels - things were hard enough: I always had trouble not laughing my head off in church when someone would sing the wrong line in a hymn or when they would ring one of those tiny bells right before communion. I feel sorry for all those kids of this generation. How are they supposed to act all solemn and churchy with a ridiculous clowns all over the place. Not that I think clowns are at all funny. I never laughed at a clown in my life. But I think that if you put a clown/mime in a church or any place of worship and have them dancing up and down it up all crazy-like, I would have no choice but to give into the hilarity and loose both my mind and control of my bladder. Good luck children of the new millennium, may your giant mime overlord take pity on your tiny souls.

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 3

Halfway through Day 2 of Mesh09 and I just got served the same dish I fed you all a few days ago. Looks like Karma doesn't have the same food temperature policy as revenge. This time I warn you: watching this video is a mild form of Rick Rolling.

Mesh Conference 2009 - Part 2

Day 1 of the Mesh Conference 2009 is now over... Food was great, but I didn't take any pictures of the food cause my "Mike Cooks Meat" contract clearly states that although I don't actually cook the meat to be allowed to blog about it, I still need to be able to cook it. This food however was beyond my abilities at this point. But can you blame me!? I'M JUST A HUMAN BOY!!! I would recommend the caterer... I WOULD recommend the caterer, but I don't know who it was, so instead I will recommend some of my favorite music from my early high-school days. Particularly music by the band Moist. Whose lead singer was David Usher who happens to be a speaker here at Mesh Conference yet again.

I got a couple of shots of David seen here talking about something impressive I'm sure... but unfortunately I completely missed the beginning of this session, the the middle (taking these magnificent pictures) and the end (I was setting up my laptop to download them). Why am I at the conference again? Doesn't matter. I'm too busy reliving old memories while listening to the Moist song "Leave it alone" in the video above... which I think may just be a mashup of some Jake Gyllenhaal movie. Could this be the real video? I don't remember if this song even had a video. I wish I had a vast quantity of trivial information at my fingertips that I could tap into to gain such fulfilling knowledge. Here is David on stage with Mesh Founder Mark Evans.

So I do admit that I was late for class and although I don't have a note, I do have an excuse. I was busy time-vampiring keynote speaker and co-founder of Kiva (which I blogged about a couple time... s... and once again for blog action day) Jessica Jackley who - I recently learned - shared a mutual friend with me: the high priest of personal inspiration and life purpose Jullien Gordon, whose blog-link regularly hangs out in trendy spots (see the bottom of this page). Jessica can be seen in the picture below answering questions from an inquisitive audience member.

The inquisitive audience member (who experts in the audience-member industry commonly refer to as Allan Isfan founder of FaveQuest) can be seen even further below.

That's all for today.