Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Roddy-locks and the 3 Bears

A Fable About Going to the Cabin

One fine weekend, Roddy-locks decided to visit his cabin in the woods. It was a beautiful place on the edge of a sparkling lake, surrounded by trees and gorgeous scenery.




When Roddy-locks arrived at his cabin and was unpacking his stuff, he noticed something was not quite right. First, he noticed that his food was missing, and had been replaced by what looked like alien potatoes. "What happened to my food?" Roddy-locks wondered. "And who are these funny little alien spuds?"




Then he noticed that his cold beverages had been replaced by a lot of funny green bottles. "I don't recognize these," he said. "I wonder where they came from?"





Roddy-locks also remembered that he had left some towels laying around the cabin the last time he was there. He was starting to worry; what had happened to the towels?





Roddy-locks shook his head. Food, beverages, towels - he was becoming verrrrrry worried.

Puzzled, he sat down to watch some TV, but his satellite receiver was not giving him the channels he ordered. So he called Bell Express Vu and was put through to a very friendly person named Mike. Mike was able to help Roddy-locks, and was even able to identify that he was in Newfoundland.

"What are you doing in Newfoundland, Roddy-locks?" Mike asked.

"I am visiting my cabin in the woods," Roddy-locks explained.

"Be careful, Roddy-locks," Mike cautioned. "There might be big bad bears in the woods of Newfoundland!"

"Oh, I'll be careful!" replied Roddy-locks, although as he said that and hung up, he got frightfully nervous. "I'm really scared of bears, especially the big, bad west-coast kind of bears!"

After watching television for a while, Roddy-locks felt kind of tired and decided to take a nap. However, when he went to check on his bed he noticed it was all messy. "Someone has been sleeping in this bed!" Roddy-locks exclaimed.

He went to the second bedroom and noticed that the bed in there was also messed up. "Someone has been sleeping in this bed too!" Roddy-locks exclaimed.

He checked the third bedroom, and same thing: "Someone has been sleeping in this bed too!"

So Roddy-locks decided to sleep on the nice comfortable recliner in the living room. But when he got there, he found something sleeping in the recliner!




"Oh no!" thought Roddy-locks. "It's one of those big bad west coast bears! Whatever shall I do!" Being very careful not to wake the bear (who had a wicked temper when awoken too soon), Roddy-locks looked around for signs of other bears because they always travelled in packs of three. Suddenly the other two bears came out of nowhere, and the third bear woke up. "I'm doomed!" Roddy-locks thought.

But they were friendly bears and only wanted to share Roddy-locks' food, beverages and beds. They quickly became friends and told stories about the place where Roddy-locks worked. After some great food and a few very cold beverages they all fell off to sleep in the comfy warm cabin.

It wasn't difficult to get to sleep. One bear even spent the night in the comfy chair:



The next morning they all packed up and headed back to the west coast - because they were west coast bears. They tidied up their food and beverage bottles, and headed out on the road, looking forward to their next adventure.



The End.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

ED2710 - Introductory Blog

Hi Folks

Welcome to my blog! Perhaps the least-read blog in the history of blogging, it was created for one of the PSE courses (Educational Media) and I used it to post a blog about my dog eating a tube of blue oil paint on Thanksgiving weekend. The dog is still with us, almost a year later, which is a testament to our love for him and the strength of his insides.

But I digress... almost immediately...

The purpose of this initial blog is to introduce me, and my course topic area of interest. Accordingly, here I go:

Rod French, Program Developer (Business) with the School of Business & IT, College of the North Atlantic. I am a married father of a 14 year-old boy (man-child) who lives with his family in Kippens NL with our two dogs Keltie (a 7 year-old Bearded Collie with a host of mental issues), and Sherlock, the aforementioned paint-eating Old English Sheepdog of 19 months (yes, 19 months). In a subsequent blog I will post a picture or two.

My area of interest is business studies, mainly marketing and human resources. My undergrad degree is in Business Admin (major in Marketing) from Acadia (1990), and I received my MBA from MUN in 1992 (Marketing and HR). I am not the typical "business nerd" - I don't follow the stock markets, I couldn't explain to my son what the DOW Jones was, and I could care less about the Business section of the Globe and Mail. However, I am a bit of social demography geek - I have read malcolm Gladwell's four books twice each, and "Outliers" is one of my favourite all-time books.

I worked in community economic development for about 15 of my 16 years of my career, prior to coming to the College in 2009. Earlier this year I developed a new course for our Marketing diploma programs -  EP2150 Entrepreneurship - which has not yet been offered at the College, but will be starting in January. This course will be the focus of my COS.

Enough for now. More to come!

Rod