Ramblings of TJR -- Marketer -- Mom -- TV Addict.

In the grey Vancouver winter my neighbourhood is quiet. We stay inside.  We use our backyards to access our vehicles in the garages that line the back alley.  We sneak out back to take out/bring  in the garbage.  We think of the back alley spaces as a means to an end.  Then the rain stops and the sun starts to shine. And the beauty of our neighbourhood and our back alleys becomes clear.   I love the... laughter of kids playing street hockey and the calling of "cars" in multiple languages back yards of the Vancouver Specials, which are really just drive ways, lined on either side with thin patches of gardens planted full of tomatoes, peas and carrots conversations with neighbours over the back fence sound of multiple lawn mowers almost creating a symphony together way kids don't see race, culture or religion, but instead see a friend to ride bikes with, even if they can't pronounce each other's names water washing down the alley from cars b...

I recently joined Networking in Vancouver as a guest blogger. This is my first post  To Live Tweet or Not Live Tweet.  

Last week I attended a lovely event put on by Microsoft and the folks at Hotmail.  I found myself sitting in a room of 20 women or so and feeling embarrassed to say " My name is Tracey and I've had a Hotmail account since early 1997 ."  I was the only person in the room, who didn't work for Hotmail, that had kept their Hotmail account since the beginning.  I was proud of my dedication to hotmail, even through the rough spam heavy years ( although truth be told nothing will ever beat the spam-fest that my Telus email account has become ).  I stayed through the rise of gmail. In essence I stayed through the lean years when everyone else abandoned ship. And that loyalty has paid off.  Hotmail began a real shift in the last few years.  They realize they took a lot of things for granted and dropped a few balls.  And increased functionality in their product has been great.  So over the past 2 years instead of ch...