Matt Refghi

Credits

Filmed by: Joseph Pereira

Transcription

Matt: Hi this is Matt Refghi at Toronto Comicon, I’m here with Ace Ventura, who for some reason was not on the celebrity list, but he should have been.
Ace: Yeah, what’s the problem with that?
Matt: I don’t know, we gotta talk to management. But are you here on business by any chance, are you looking for somebody’s lost pet, or kidnapped pet?
Ace: No, not right now, I just came down to the comiccon.
Matt: Okay, came dwon to the comic con.
Ace: Yeah, I was there actually, I saw you, but there was some problem with the mic, I guess.
Matt: Yes, it seems like we have somewhat of a curse. The microphone doesn’t want to cooperate. But maybe this time it will, we have to keep fighting against things like this.
Ace: Yes!
Matt: Because what’s important in life, as you have told me before, is…
Ace: To enjoy yourself.
Matt: To have a damn good time.
Ace: Yes, have fun!
Matt: Right, so, you’re like the physical representation of fun, basically.
Ace: haha, thank you
Matt: So, you mentioned to me that you’re an actor.
Ace: Yes, I am an actor, I graduated from John Abbott College in Montreal.
Matt: Alright, perfect. And you go to bars, and you go Ubisoft, and places like that in character…
Ace: Yeah, haha, you’re right, I just kind of put myself out there, I just gotta try it, right? Do it, actually. So.
Matt: Right, absolutely, and your goal is to – well, you’ve already perfected this character, I’ve already said that before – a few times, microphone.
Ace: haha
Matt: But anyway, you’re doing great with that, you also mentioned The Mask, that you’re gonna venture off into The Mask territory.
Ace: Yeah, well that’s a work in progress actually right now. I’m planning to do it at the Montreal Comic-Con, I gotta get, you know, the costume and everything, but the act’s – it’s kinda there – still gonna need practice, but yeah just need to change it a little bit, and show what I’m able to do, you know, cause this is, I’ve got it down pat. And my goal with this character, actually, is to meet Jim Carrey one day, and I don’t know, maybe he’s gonna be in front of a mirror right now.
Matt: Yeah. A mirror that, as you mentioned before, there’s like a personal element. Cause it’s not a pure copy, right?
Ace: Exactly. I am not Jim Carrey, you know.
Matt: You coulda fooled me.
Ace: I know! Right now… hey, buddy!
Matt: haha. Very good, very good. So, Montreal Comic-con, you also said you’re planning to hit up a bunch of other conventions, basically just trying to, you know –
Ace: All of them this year, actually, all of them this year. I don’t know, I’m just so excited and I come down here, I see the people having fun, and I look at all the booths, everything’s amazing, and when people laugh, that’s my fuel, right? That’s my – it gives me energy, and I just keep doing it.
Matt: You keep spreading the cheer, and your philosophy of just having a damn good time, having fun, right?
Ace: Yeah, well, that’s my philosophy of life, that’s my life philosophy, yeah, haha
Matt: Alright, best of luck in your acting, sir, and as I mentioned before, I look forward to seeing the Mask, so I’ll see you probably at Ottawa Comic-con, no sorry, that’ll be at Montreal Comiccon.
Ace: Yea, but I will definitely go down with Ace at Ottawa Comiccon, for sure, I’ll be there.
Matt: Alright, so I’m hoping to see you there. And just keep working on this, man, you’ve already got this one down – just keep working, hey, what can I say, you’ve got this down, keep what you’re doing, going, alright?
Ace: Thank you. Thank you! I hope you’re having a lovely day.
Matt: I’m having a great time, sir.
Ace: Have yourself a lovely day! Take care now. Bye bye.
Matt: Okay, I’m fine with that.
Ace: haha

Credits

Featuring: Simon Fontaine

Filmed by: Joseph Pereira

Transcript

In this video, I’ll be showing you how to change the homepage and the default search engine in Internet Explorer 11. Now, while I am using IE 11, keep in mind that these steps may work in IE 10, or even IE 9.

Alright, so the first thing that happens when I launch Internet Explorer is typically I get hit in the face with MSN. MSN is a very busy website, and some people like it, but me, personally, the first thing I want to do is get this monstrosity out of my face. So to do that, I have to first click the gear button in the top right, I’m just gonna zoom it so you can see it here: tools.

So I click tools, and then I scroll down to options, Internet options, and I’m gonna click that. Now the first field that you see is actually the first field that’s actually selected, is this one right here, called Home page. It’s fairly straight-forward – simply changing this to Google. I’m gonna put Https Google.ca, the Canadian version, and s for secure, so it has higher security. I’m then gonna click apply, and then I’m gonna click OK. So this solve the home problem, and I can test that just by clicking the little house icon in the toolbar here. Goes straight to Google, much better. If I type a search, it goes to what I want, everything’s cool.

But what if I type something up here? “I’m searching.” Oh, look at that, it went to Bing. You know, Bing is not the worst, but personally, I’m a big fan of Google, so I definitely want this to be changed to Google. To achieve that, we have to click on the gear again, and here there’s an option called “manage add-ons,” click that option. On the left, you’ll notice “search providers,” second option. I’m gonna click that. And here all I see is Bing, of course.

Now the solution is to locate the link at the bottom that’s kind of not obvious, that’s written “Find more search providers,” that’s what I’m interested in. Bottom left. I’m gonna click that. Now, on this page, they have a gallery which has different search options, so simply scroll, and there’s Google Search. I’m gonna click add.

Okay. And I get a pop-up, now this is important. I would like to use search suggestions from this provider, notice the checkbox there? I’m gonna leave that checked, because that is what I want. Okay, I’m gonna add. Perfect. Now, it’s been added, but this is not totally clear. In any case, all I have to do now is close this window, and I have to close this as well, manage add-ons. And then I have to go back to the gear, back to manage add-ons, and back to the search providers section. Now I see that both Bing and Google are there. Alright… but notice this: status, default, for Bing. That means that even if I try to type a search again like I’m searching in the address bar, it’s still gonna pop up Bing. So what I have to do now is right-click, actually left-click Google, right-click “Set as default.” Perfect. Now all I have to do is press Close. And then I can try doing my search again. Ah, Google. Much better.

Now, to each their own of course, if you like MSN, or you like IE, and things like that, that’s fine. It’s just that personally, I’m all about the Google, and so that’s how you can configure Internet Explorer to have Google as the search engine and the homepage.

Description

The WinDirStat video

Download WinDirStat here: https://windirstat.net/

Dropbox “Get Space” page: (Make sure you log in first) https://www.dropbox.com/getspace

Transcript

Alright, so this is definitely one of the most popular questions I get asked: what do you do when your Dropbox is full? There’s actually two approaches to this. The first is to maximize the free space that Dropbox gives you for performing certain tasks. The second is to flat-out delete files that are using too much space in your Dropbox. I’ll be exploring both of these with you. There is of course a third option, which is to pay for Pro, Dropbox Pro, I think it costs about 10 bucks a month.

Alright, so the first way I’m going to show you involves going to Dropbox.com, so this is flat-out Dropbox.com/home, I’m logged in, and then what you have to enter is this: Getspace. Don’t try looking for a link, I had difficulty finding it, but if you actually type just “getspace” here and press enter, it’ll go straight to the page. On this page, you can see a few things. Yeah, you can upgrade your account, that’s gonna help, obviously, but we’re gonna assume that we’re not doing that right now. So I’m gonna scroll down… refer friends to Dropbox, this is a classic, if you know friends that could benefit from Dropbox, you may recommend this to them, you can actually invite them to their e-mail and if they install Dropbox on a machine, then, you’re gonna get credit for 500 megs. This is good, but personally I don’t like bothering people that much unless they really have a use for Dropbox, then I’m happy to recommend it to them. Because, by the way, when you recommend someone, they get 500 megs, and you get 500 megs, it’s kind of like not just you, they get it too.

Then there’s the tutorial here, “Get started with Dropbox.” This is just a tutorial you have to step through, a few tasks you have to do for them. You do enough of these, five steps, you get 250. It’s a pretty easy way to get it. Now here’s another option, following them on Twitter, again, fairly easy if you have a Twitter account, just do it. Or tell them why you love Dropbox, this one you can do absolutely anything, you can put a smiley face, and they won’t bother you. And at the end here, you can keep tabs on how much space you’ve earned by just clicking this link, and it’s gonna show you all your accomplishments on that front, right now I’ve got nothing. Alright, so that’s the first method, really trying to maximize the space that you already do have.

Now, let’s say you don’t want to maximize the space that you have, but you instead want to figure out what’s wasting the most space, and you want to resolve that problem. I have a tool for you. The tool’s called WinDirStat, I’ll be showing you how to use it, I actually did another video on it, so if you want to check it out, you can check in the description. Alright, so this is WinDirStat. Instead of pointing it to a drive like I did in a previous video, I’m gonna point it instead to a Dropbox, you can see that at the bottom there. Okay? So I’ve selected a folder, and I’ve selected the Dropbox, my Dropbox. Alright? So once I’ve done that, I just have to click OK, and it’s gonna start calculating and stuff, but I’m gonna interrupt this because I have already done it in advance.

Alright, so the scanning is done. Now let’s take a quick look. As I mentioned in the previous video, the larger the square, the bigger the file within the space you selected. So the space I selected is my Dropbox folder. So the bigger the square, the bigger the file is taking up space in my Dropbox folder. So this is probably the easiest way to debug what is wasting the most space. If I click on this massive square over here, massive rectangle, I see that it’s a video game footage from Postal 2. Okay, so naturally, it’s raw video files, based on a Premiere project, okay. Makes sense. Now I know that if I delete this file, it’s 127 gigs by itself. That’s definitely gonna make a big difference in my Dropbox folder. I can keep repeating the process by clicking these giant squares, and eventually I’ll clear up enough files to reduce the space used in Dropbox. Keep in mind, you can right-click at any point and say you want to delete, send it to the recycling bin, or delete with no way to undelete. And it’s also possible to simply say you want to explore there, which is one my favorite options – you just say “explore here” and it pops open a Windows Explorer window focused on that file.

And that’s how you can free up some space in Dropbox, I hope this helps.

Hi everybody. Today I’ll be showing you what to do when you encounter a window in Windows that is stuck offscreen. And by that I mean you can’t actually open it, but you do see it in the taskbar. So no matter what you do, you can’t actually make it pop up.

All you have to do is hold shift over the taskbar icon, and then right-click, and here you’ll have some options. The option you’re interested in is Move, second one from the top. So you click move, and as soon as you’ve done that, you can kind of, like, let go of the mouse and keyboard. You should press one of the arrow keys, doesn’t matter which one, in this case I’m gonna press Right. Look at that! That made this window pop out of nowhere, okay? And in certain cases, pressing the arrow key is not enough, the window will still be off-screen after you’ve done that. But what you do is then move the mouse. So after pressing an arrow key, move the mouse. And you’ll notice that the mouse, or rather the window follows the mouse. So that’s the trick. All you have to do is press the arrow key once, then move the mouse, move it around, and you’ll eventually see your window. It’s a weird situation to be in, but this is a way to solve it.

Alright, now here’s another solution to the exact same problem. This one is actually simpler to execute, but will actually re-arrange the positions of all the windows you have open on Windows. So, it’s not generally something that I recommend, but if you want a really fast fix, this’ll do it. So what I would do is right-click the taskbar, then here, I’m interested in the “Cascade windows” option, visible here. When selected, cascade windows is gonna make all windows appear, in this fashion, like a deck of cards, stacked. Like if I actually click past here, I can find the window that was stuck offscreen. So this could be a handy one-click solution, but prepare to re-organize your windows.

Hope this helps!

Description

Never heard of Notepad++?

https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Transcription

In this video, I’ll be showing you how to open multiple instances of Notepad++. That is, multiple windows. By default, when you double-click on the shortcut, you’ll get one window. Double-click again, still one window. The reason is of course that there are tabs, so the program doesn’t the logic in opening multiple copies of itself. But of course there are cases where this could be useful.

In this particular case, I have two files, list a, list b. To view one, I have to hide the other, so naturally, there is a benefit to having both open at the same time, and I might actually want that. To get that done, I simply need to click Run, and select the option “Open in another instance”. That will pop open another Notepad++ instance, another window, that is. But… it does give me a weird prompt, it says “Create new file”, Notepad++ list doesn’t exist, it’s, gon – whatever it says, just click No.

Okay. So now it’s kinda tricky visually, but there are two windows. So if I drag this away, you’ll see, hey, there’s actually two. Now, the next step involves dragging – you can either open a file straight through here, just like I did before in the other instance, or you can actually drag the tab, so left-click hold and move the tab into the other instance of Notepad++, and, drop it. And then when you visit that instance, there’s your file. And then you can do cool stuff like Windows 10 the ability to snap windows, you can like drag this one here, and then select this one here, and there you go, list a, list b, you can compare them very easily.

So this is one you can do when you’re just running Notepad++ already. Now, let’s say you didn’t have it open already. Or let’s say you need these windows to open separately all the time. Well, there is a way around that. It’s a bit trickier, I’ll show you that now. Quite simply, you have to be aware of this particular command: multiInst. Now, don’t worry, this is actually a one-time fix. So notice how there’s a Notepad++ shortcut on my desktop. Alright, let’s say I wanted to transform the shortcut to actually have multiple instances, which is what this multiInst thing means, multiple windows. Okay. So to do that, I would right-click this, select properties, okay. And in here, notice how it says “Target”? I’m gonna just zoom this in for you guys. So there’s some text there. You don’t need to pay attention to exactly all of it here, all you need to know is that at the end here, you have to copy this text, and you have to put a space after the quote, and then paste the text. I’ll show that up close. There you go. So “exe”, quote, space, -multiInst. Okay, now you click Apply, click OK.

Alright. So, the next time you use the shortcut, it pops open Notepad++. Use it again, another Notepad++. And again, another one. So, if you’re into that, this is a good way to have that happen. Now, what if you wanted both? Instead of actually modifying the shortcut you already had, you could have simply made a copy, so, ctrl c, ctrl v, and you could have done it to this shortcut instead, and then kept the normal shortcut around.

And that’s how you do it.

Transcription

Hello everybody. In this video I’ll be showing you how to clear up hard drive space. So we’ve all been in this situation, we accumulate too many files and we need to clear up some space so we’re able to install whatever, install a game, install some software. I’ll be showing what I typically do to clear up space. Now the most basic thing you can do is if you’re aware of where the largest files are on your drive you just manually go to them and delete them using Windows Explorer. But let’s assume you don’t know that.

There’s a few things you can do. Even though I’m using Windows 10, most versions of Windows that are fairly recent have this particular feature. If you right click on a drive and go to Properties, you’ll notice that there’s a disk cleanup button… right here. So what this button does is it has this automated process that’s gonna figure out how much space you can free on that drive. And it has a number of techniques for that. So if you look right here, Setup Log Files, Downloaded Program Files, and it tells you what the worth is of each of those. What the weight is of each of those. Right now I’m seeing nothing substantial, but if I wanted to use this, I’d have to check the relevant boxes and click OK. It’s that simple.

Another trick as of Windows 10 is the Storage feature, so if you go to the start menu here and type storage and press enter, you’ll see this nifty little tool. And if you click on the drive that’s concerning you at the moment, it’s gonna start calculating stuff, now, this is definitely a step up from previous versions of Windows. It’s not perfect, though, and I’ll be showing you a tool that’s way better than this, but at least for now this is a pretty cool spot to go and figure out what the main offenders are. At the moment, you can see it’s calculating, but when it’s done calculating, as you can see, it gives you an idea… okay, so green is apps & games, alright, which means that they’re taking up that much space. And red is … other people. So files that are owned by other people. So you can actually explore this particular tool and learn more about what’s taking up space on your computer. Here’s an example, but I won’t go through this right now. Also, notice you can sort by size… very useful. So that’s another thing you can do. But, let me show you a way to visualize all the space on your computer, whether it’s in a folder, or in the drive as a whole. It’s a very very nifty tool, check it out.

This tool is called WinDirStat. Win D I R Stat. I’m gonna put a link in the description of course. So when it first pops up you can choose what it is you want to actually analyze, in this case I care about the C drive as a whole. Click OK, and it’s gonna start working – see the little PacMan doing some stuff up there? You gotta get this tool just work endlessly and at a certain point it’s gonna have tons of data for you to analyze.

Alright, we’re back guys. So if you look here there’s a certain amount of data that’s shown here. I’m just gonna maximize so you see the most possible. Alright. Now, what is this? Now this is the beauty of WinDirStat… these huge squares everywhere. Now here’s the concept. The square size is relative to the size of the file, so the larger the square, the bigger the file. So if you wanna go target the things that are wasting the most space on your drive, you click on the big squares. The only thing to keep in mind is that there are… like, this shows you everything, including system files. You don’t want to be deleting stuff wrecklessly, so you have to use a certain amount of thought, and I would recommend googling pretty much everything before you delete it. But I can tell you for example, if you look at this green square right here, this is, and if you look above, you’ll see the file that’s highlighted, that means that it’s the file that I selected in the squares. So it’s selecting hiberfil.sys. That’s the hibernation file used by Windows, you don’t want to delete that. Same thing with pagefil.sys. Now a good hint of this is if you go and check out the top right, it says system files are green. Okay. So that means the green ones you can kinda just ignore them, because Windows needs stuff to run, and you don’t want to wreck the way works. Now, another big tip is if you actually click on the Windows folder, you see over here, top right? Windows folder. So if I click it, notice that there’s a white outline around this entire group of squares. What this means is that entire folder is Windows, I don’t want to touch that. If I delete anything in there I might mess up my Windows, so I’m not touching that. So my goal is now, you know, my task has now been simplified. All this, forget it. Page files, forget it.

So let’s start analyzing a little bit here. Okay, what is big? This. What’s this? Replay.pbf… okay. So if I zoom up here, we see that Matt, another user on this computer has DiRT 3 installed. Replay.pbf. Now, I am Matt in real life so I can tell you that I don’t have DiRT installed, so something is up there. So this is a hint for me to either uninstall DiRT 3 properly, or clean up the files on my hard drive. That’s gonna save me 1.9 gigs, it’s visible right there. Ok? So I won’t delete it from here, because if I can trigger an installer, I will, that’s always the cleanest way. But at least now I have this info to exploit.

Now there’s more squares, so we click here, hm, ok. Top left, you can see Nvidia corporation, you can also see it at the bottom, I should mention. You see at the bottom there? Hold on I’ll show you right now. CplSetupInt… my mouse is not working but anyway you see what I mean. In the status bar in the window, there it is, bottom left. You can also see when you’re hovering on files, it shows you that.

So the idea is, NVIDIA corporation downloader, why do I have so many? And each of them are 370, suggests to me that perhaps the old updates for my video drivers have been sticking around for no reason, so I can probably delete those. I would of course double-check the version of my video drivers and validate that the ones in that folder are old and that I can delete them properly.

And you see where this is going. This is really helping you visualize, and to a certain extent, that’s what the storage tool did when we checked it out earlier. I’ll pop it up again, see if it remembers. Yeah, it remembers, see it’s helping! You know, and it’s not as a good as WinDirStat if you ask me, but it’s a definitely a nice step. So I really appreciate that in Windows 10.

So if you keep going, you’ll keep targeting squares, and you’ll see hmm, here’s a 7zip file for Chrome, well, I wouldn’t want to mess with Chrome, I wouldn’t want to screw up Chrome. But before you delete anything, you typically want to Google and figure out what the names of these files are, and see, can I delete this file, online? Google that. Can I delete file named this? You know? And you always play on the side of caution.

So, that’s a nice little trick to free up some space. And you can use this to free up space not only on the entire drive, but a specific folder, which is particularly useful for things like Google Drive and Dropbox. If you’re running out of space, you just point it in those folder, at those folders, and it will analyze and it will show you all the squares. And you know there’s no Windows in there, so everything you’re seeing is in fact taking up space in your Dropbox or Google Drive folder. So definitely a very useful trick for clearing up space.

Anyway, so that’s it guys, those are some tips for you. Some other basic things are, you know, usual suspects are the Downloads folder, when you download stuff via a browser, typically it ends up in the Downloads folder. Let me see if I can show you that real quick. So, the Downloads folder is here, yeah, there you go. ZoomIT and Audacity. So, you typically download files, if it’s programs, you download them, you install them, but you don’t necessarily remember to delete these files. So a good place to delete these files is in the download folder.

And that’s it guys, I hope you find this tool useful – check in the description, you’ll find the link for the program.

Have a good one!

On August 1st, 2016, I decided it was time to continue challenging myself just like I did with my two 30-day challenges in 2013. The third challenge turned out simpler than the previous two: I would bike at least 20 km (~12.4 miles) per day for thirty consecutive days. Unlike 2013, there were no other rules – no photos, no mandatory checkpoints. And, for some reason, I also decided to keep the challenge completely under the radar until I completed it. The only people that could see my progress were those that followed me on Strava, since I named my rides incrementally (Day 1, 2, etc) as I went along.

And so the challenge began, and progressed without fault for two weeks. Then came day 16, a particularly rainy day. I wasn’t new to dealing with rain – I understood very well that no matter what the weather was like, I’d still get out there to complete my challenge. That’s why I was wearing a poncho, and as much of a water resistant jacket as I could locate. Despite my gear, given the abundance of rain, I was soaked far before I reached the half-way point. By 19.2 km, I realized I needed just a little more distance to meet my mark. So, to wrap up the day, I decided to drive (large) circles around an empty parking lot. It may sound weird, but I’d done this before, and it was a good, optimized way to finishing up the day. On this particular occasion, however, I drove over a certain puddle that I expected to be exactly that: a puddle, but instead, it was a puddle concealing a massive chasm leading to another dimension. 

Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but that’s a size 14 shoe. That pothole wasn’t messing around. My bike rolled over it from the right (from photo’s perspective), which meant my front wheel immediately dropped into it, and the next thing I knew, I was flying off of my bike, where I landed on my left side. I managed to get up fairly quickly, and discovered some basic wounds on my left elbow and hand, but other than that, nothing seemed to be wrong. As I was still being bombarded by rain, I immediately turned my attention to my bike, as the chain had been knocked out of position.

After a few minutes, I’d restored the bike to working order, and proceeded to glance at my phone. I was short roughly 0.5 km from my 20 km goal, and while my wounds were bleeding a bit, they weren’t too big or too serious, so I resumed cycling – I wanted to finish what I had started (the challenge, not my demise). Having learned my lesson about puddles and potholes, I specifically chose to drive on a bike path where I knew the asphalt was in great shape, and I even specifically avoided puddles, just in case.

Despite my optimized approach and my original assessment of the damage, a few minutes later, I started to realize that something was wrong. When I rolled over bumps or cracks in the road, it would trigger pain in my ribs, on the left side of my chest. This, wasn’t good. Back in 2014, I had broken 2-3 ribs in an inline skating fall, and I worried I might have earned myself additional fractures. The 2014 rib injuries were incredibly painful – by comparison, the pain I felt driving over the bumps wasn’t as pronounced. I wondered if perhaps I had a hairline fracture, something less extreme.

But I was stubborn, so I still drove, but did so as carefully as I could to still reach the 20 km for that day, since I was so close. Part of me still wanted to continue with the 30-day challenge despite the accident, but by the next morning, I had decided to be reasonable, to let my body heal. I later learned from an x-ray that I had fallen in such a way that I caused trauma to the same ribs that I broke in 2014, only, thankfully, I did not fall directly on the same spot. Ending the challenge meant avoiding the probability of me falling on the ribs once more and doing more serious damage, no matter how small the odds.

The accident caused me to reflect on cycling as a sport. I had a lot of experience cycling in my life, and this was the second time I was sent flying from my bike. The first incident occurred years ago when I drove into some mud, and rather than stay the course, I tried to turn to the right, to escape it. This caused me to lose balance, and I was sent flying straight over the handle bars, landing on my stomach in the dirt ahead of me. I tore up my left knee pretty bad, and suffered multiple scrapes, but other than that, I didn’t break any bones.

I’ve always been the type of guy that wears a helmet when cycling, without fail. I was also a fairly cautious rider, making sure not to push limits needlessly… but even still, these two accidents occurred, and they served as valuable lessons that would undoubtedly shift my behavior in a very permanent way. I pondered about all the other cyclists in the world, and the experiences they might have accumulated in their careers, amateur or otherwise. Just from my two accidents, I had learned some good lessons:

• Puddles may be hiding giant pot holes that are out to kill you, so it’s best to avoid them altogether.
• When you drive into mud, do not under circumstance try to turn – release pedals, keep your balance.

Surely, if all cyclists got together somehow and learned tricks like these, overall we’d suffer less injuries simply through increased awareness. But then again, is anything as good as experiencing an error yourself, and dealing with the consequences? In my experience, the best way to avoid repeating mistakes is to form a really deep, negative association. That said, I’m thankful my consequences this time around weren’t as bad as they could have been. Still… don’t be surprised if you see me cycling with a rib-protecting Michelin Man type get-up.

Photo credit

Second photo by Martin Deutsch (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Third photo by Edmund White

On the night of April 9th, 2015, I collapsed onto my couch, having finished a second day of working at a job fair that took place at the Palais des Congres de Montreal. On my face, despite my fatigue, was a smile – I greatly enjoyed working at fairs. At the time, I would occasionally work job fairs for one of my corporation’s clients, Champlain College Saint-Lambert. I even wrote a blog post about what they do. For those that didn’t read that post, here’s a quick run-down:

I worked primarily with the Recognition of Acquired Competencies (RAC) department, which fits within the realm of Continuing Education, for adults. RAC is a process that people can use to have their life and work experience recognized towards obtaining an official college certificate or diploma. If they have a significant amount of experience, Champlain can evaluate them for what they already know, and help them fill in the remaining gaps.

So anyway, that night, after collapsing on the couch, I felt motivated to write about my experiences that day. I knew I wouldn’t necessarily publish the post that night, but I wanted to make sure that the events were recorded in their freshest state possible, especially given my mood.

While I no longer work job fairs for Champlain, I felt it would still be valuable to share what I wrote back then, given the pleasure I derived from such experiences. I’ve also refined and reworked the content since then, so it should read better than it did originally. Here goes.

April 9, 2015

I’m always amazed at how much energy I derive from working almost every single shift at fairs. Every time one comes around, I secretly find myself hoping that I get to work as many time slots as possible, so I can personally be there to spread the word of RAC. You must understand: I absolutely love the concept behind RAC. It was incredibly awesome to learn that the Ministère de l’Éducation et de l’Enseignement supérieur had such a mechanism in place, back when I started working with Champlain in 2013. I couldn’t even believe it didn’t always exist – it seemed so logical to me. Ultimately, this meant – and still means that I derive genuine satisfaction by working alongside the RAC team, as I play a part in helping RAC change lives. Yes, RAC offers a practical, tangible product: a diploma or certificate, but what I value most is that the person is getting rightful credit for something they clearly knew all along. Why should an academic path be the only means of acquiring a diploma or certificate? If you can show what you know, then you deserve the diploma, regardless of your life path.

In this particular fair, two unique events occurred, both of which I felt were worth sharing.

Encounter 1

When the first occurred, I was standing at the booth, re-configuring one of our laptops so it’d be ready for future visitors. Our booth was situated at the end of a row, but in such a way that it was next to the main artery that people used to navigate through the various rows of the fair. As I was finishing with the laptop, someone was walking past the booth via this artery, only to suddenly stop, and speak to me.

He noticed I had a container of paper clips on the table next to me, and asked if he could have one to help him with his papers. It was an oversight that it was out and visible, but since it would be useful to this attendee, and we rarely used them, I figured why not. I handed him the container so he could retrieve one, so he thanked me, and jokingly said “I’ll be going now” and feigned walking away with the whole container in hand, with a laugh. I laughed in suit, and joined in on his humor: “yep, take the whole set.”

After taking a single clip, he handed the container back. While he worked on clipping his papers together, I returned the container to its rightful place underneath our table, further cleaning up the desk space for future visitors. Once he had finished and put his sheets away, he casually looked up at the booth. He then proceeded to ask me what we did, but in a way that clearly showed it was an after-thought. I explained the usual things: that we recognize what people already know in a given field, and help them get diplomas that prove that knowledge. In the middle of my explanation, he noticed something crucial, and made this known out loud. I could detect that he was surprised, his interest peaked: “you have IT programs?” I smiled and quickly signaled him to come over to the front of the booth, knowing I’d have plenty to say to him. (I love talking to people about RAC services in general, but speaking to them about IT and RAC is a nice combo, given my own Computer Science background.)

The more I spoke to this person, the more we both realized that he was hands-down an amazing match for Champlain RAC’s services. He had recently moved to Canada from the States, and wanted to get Canadian credentials to help with Canadian employers. He liked both Champlain’s IT Client Support (ITCS) and Cisco (networking) services: a combo only certain candidates can do, those with strong IT support skills, and also significant networking knowledge. But, this person, in the end, ended up applying for ITCS, with plans to do Cisco after completing it. Each would reward an Attestation d’études collégiales (AEC) that would help in boosting his employability, and amusingly, as he told me, he had no idea what the fair was about, and had no reason to be there. He simply noticed people walking around with the fair’s branded bags, and figured he’d see what was going on. It’s amazing to me, how random chains of events can lead to potentially significant discoveries. If he hadn’t investigated the fair, if he hadn’t specifically wandered to our section to ask for our paper clips, and if I hadn’t been positioned perfectly for him to see our programs listed behind me… would he have ever known about RAC, a solution that he so clearly hungered for, without realizing it existed?

Encounter 2

Another encounter really marked me that day. A man approached me with his wife, and proceeded to ask me questions about RAC’s Transport and Logistics (T&L) AEC. As usual, I jumped into the RAC pitch, and, while he seemed interested in the concept, I also got the impression through his body language that he felt it wasn’t for him. He eventually mentioned that he had heard of RAC before, and liked the concept, but that it didn’t seem right for him…. so he thanked me for my time and started leaving the booth.

As he did so, I had an impulse – I asked him where he actually heard about RAC. He explained that he was involved in a training session of some sort, and that the option was mentioned: but that it wasn’t Champlain College Saint-Lambert specifically he heard of. The way he answered, I could tell that he thought I was primarily concerned with where he heard about Champlain’s RAC services, but in reality, my question was born of genuine curiosity regarding the spread of RAC as a whole. In my work for Champlain, I’ve come to realize, along with my colleagues, that a huge factor of promoting RAC is simply sensitizing people to its existence. Once they know it exists, it’s a no-brainer – the services practically sell themselves. So in asking him this question, I genuinely wanted to know where he happened to hear about RAC, as a concept: regardless of Champlain. 

Here’s what was interesting. That last question I asked kept him around talking. The more I spoke to him, the more I understood why he had tried to leave. He had the feeling that his experience was not going to be enough to satisfy RAC’s general admission requirements. Before, I didn’t know why he thought it wasn’t for him; but now, I could help. See, with RAC, people need to have a lot of experience: roughly 70% of the knowledge required to obtain a particular certificate or diploma, at least. We make this abundantly clear from the start – RAC’s not about handing out free diplomas and certificates, the person will be interviewed and tested to assess whether their experience is enough for admission. And, if they’ve acquired a lot of experience but are missing bits, it’s not necessarily a problem: we can help them fill those gaps with seminars and online resources, as long as those gaps are reasonable and proportionally sensible.

The more I spoke to him, the more I understood why he doubted his own skills. His T&L experience stemmed from working in a warehouse while in the military. It wasn’t necessarily a direct, cookie-cutter type of position, but I remembered what a colleague once told me: sometimes, people don’t realize how much they know. I even remembered editing a particular video testimonial where a T&L candidate was unsure that he knew enough, and guess what? He worked in a warehouse, also. Ultimately, while not in the most obvious of T&L roles, the candidate in the video had absorbed and done enough over the years to be considered a valid RAC candidate. 

I relayed the gist of this to the military man, citing the warehouse testimonial as an example, and by the end, it seemed clear that he might very well be a valid T&L candidate. And if everything worked out, he could even technically work on T&L while in the military, over a year, and then when he was ready to return to civilian life, he’d be able to transition straight into a industry, no down time. Beautiful. The flexibility of Champlain’s RAC services certainly made this a possibility.

Now, obviously, I did not possess the authority nor the experience to 100% guarantee whether this candidate would be admitted, but I heard enough, based on my experience, to suggest that he get in contact with the T&L advisor, rather than assume he wouldn’t get in. Ultimately, his experience would be analyzed through RAC’s admissions procedure, which would include an interview from an industry professional, and a self-evaluation. In short, he didn’t really need to worry about whether he was experienced enough – the admissions procedure and the team at Champlain would sort that out one way or another.

And to think, he almost walked away thinking he wasn’t going to be good enough! Afterwards, I was really amazed at how a genuinely selfless question, born out of simple curiosity, could potentially lead to this man’s life changing for the better. When I asked, I wasn’t looking to keep him talking. I was merely curious. Yet, that random impulse on my part could have very well triggered a whole new journey. I love how the world works.

Photo credit

1. First photo by Jana Sharock
2. Second photo by Anita Borg Institute (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
3. Third photo by U.S. Pacific Fleet
4. Fourth photo by IKEA Woodbridge
5. Fifth photo by raymondclarkeimages

Over the years, I’ve had a decent amount of time to reflect on my own psychology. I’ve always been very big on the idea of doing no harm… put simply, I aim to have a damn good time while I’m alive, while being as kind as possible to everyone around me. Though this sounds good on paper, in the past, this mentality has caused me a significant amount of grief. The root of the problem lay within my own psychology… I cared too much (bear with me, you’ll see what I mean).

In the past, at the end of each day, my brain would systematically review the social interactions that had occurred, and it would identify the areas where I felt I had made mistakes… moments where I seemed to have unintentionally caused others to feel uncomfortable. This, of course, was a certain expression of perfectionism – I was on a constant quest to better myself, and this was just one of the ways I seemed to go about doing it. Problem is, I really, really felt horrible whenever something I did had a negative effect on someone else.

It had a lot to do with my past. Suffice it to say, when I was growing up, I became pretty familiar with being on the receiving end of disrespect – I was bullied quite a bit. When I reached adulthood, I still remembered how terrible it felt to be disrespected, so whenever I thought I had made someone to feel like that, I felt exceptionally bad. I never wanted anyone else to feel like I did so many times growing up. I felt so strongly about this, actually, that I would often find myself losing sleep… having difficulty just being within my own head, mentally beating myself up for the mistakes I’d made each day.

With time, I came to realize that the intensity of my emotions were usually disproportional to the actual impact they had on the individuals in question. I would get conclusive evidence of this when I would approach people afterwards, and apologize for instances where I thought I made them uncomfortable. These gestures were always appreciated, but in about 75% of cases, I learned that the people in question weren’t affected at all, or not as deeply as I had assumed. Over time, given these experiences, I slowly got better at beating myself up less. My heightened caution and sensitivity had a lot to do with my past… but my past wasn’t representative of the present. And just because I felt things so deeply, didn’t mean others felt things exactly like I did. It was a good realization to come to.

Believe it or not, there were also external factors that seemed to accentuate my worrying, in certain cases. I remember a distinct time where I felt more anxious and worried than usual, and I had a harder time being happy… it was odd. I remember questioning, what changed? Why, all of a sudden, was I having more difficulty with something so basic? Cheese. Yes, cheese. There had been a significant sale on cheese at the grocery store (I swear, I’m not joking), which lead me to buy higher amounts of cheese than usual, which I then ate more of than usual. (I have a hard time writing that and not cracking a smile, but it’s totally true.) I even found a correlation between my anxiety and the cheese, by consulting my food logging app. Now, I wasn’t a doctor, nutritionist, or an allergist, but I could see a pattern. I gave away all my remaining cheese, and decided to test my theory… I removed cheese from my diet, as a test. Sure enough, once I stopped with the cheese, my anxiety and nervousness dropped, and I started to feel normal again. Weird.

So, with a combination of age, experience, and dietary factors, I found myself with a better mentality. I should feel badly about what I’ve done wrong, but only for a moment – after all, I’m human. Feeling a moment of deep, honest regret is what ensures I don’t repeat the same mistakes. But the days of beating myself up endlessly were gone… in my mind, I would mentally visualize a dark cloud appearing over me, giving me grief for my errors, but unlike in the past, I acknowledged it, made a note to do better, then smacked it away immediately. Message received, no need to dwell.

I’ve also been really lucky in life with regards to meeting key people that understood my psychology very well. Among them, is particular co-worker, who coined an expression that I’ve since adopted and use regularly: reasonable perfectionism. You can drive yourself batty trying to do the absolute best job possible, or, you can do a very good job based on your experience, but not obsess to an unhealthy, unreasonable level.

Over the years, I’ve learned to trust in my experience as a human being. I still make mistakes all the time socially, but I don’t torture myself as much as I did in the past. I just keep growing, learning, and with that, I make less and less mistakes. I continue to have a damn good time, while continuously improving my ability to be considerate and kind with everyone around me. And, as long as I always feel at least slightly embarrassed at how I acted in the year before, then I must be doing something right.

Note: November 13 is World Kindness Day. I figured it might be a good time to release this blog post, which I’ve had in a mostly-complete state since June. I also figured it’d be a great time to start my weekly game giveaways, as announced in my recent video. One free copy of The Binding of Isaac is now available. Simply add it to your cart via my Giveaway “store”!

Photo credit

• Second photo by Roxanne Ready
• Third photo by Mario