Giving Thanks

We don’t do thanksgiving in Scotland, although something close to it was practiced recently when we qualified for the 2026 World Cup after a 20 year absence from the competition. I’ll have to dig out World Cup 98 for the N64, that was the last football game I played where you could play as Scotland. It was cool, I think Chumba Wumba were on the soundtrack.

World Cup 98, the last football game I played xD

Anyway, as American culture dominates western media, especially if you’re a technologically minded white male in his forties, it’s impossible to avoid the Thanksgiving/ Black Friday tsunami that has engulfed the internet this week. Seemingly, it broke through my European consciousness this morning and I contemplated things I’m thankful for.

I am so grateful to have been able to make the podcast as long as I have and have some exciting mini projects coming to fruition before the end of the year, I have a wonderful healthy family and an amazing partner, all of whom know how much I admire them and how important they are to me. My mind wondered as I went upstream of all of that goodness and I realised I hadn’t properly thanked someone.

If it weren’t for my friend Ivanka, I never would have worked at Canonical, likely never would have met Alice and so would not find myself where I am today. I was working at a company called The Team for my friend Phil when I did a short talk about Ubuntu to a gathering of London tech folks one evening. I was using some cheap laptop to show off Open Office and Gnome to a room of folks who mostly used Macs. The question came in from the group;

Me, presenting Ubuntu to the gathered masses.

Ubuntu 8.10

“Would you use this fill time?”

“You know, I would!”, I replied.

After that, Ivanka came up to me and whispered in my ear;

“I might have a job for you.”

I interviewed, got the job despite the misgivings of the benevolent dictator, and the rest is history. So it’s a small thing nearly twenty years later, but thank you Ivanka. I don’t know that I’ve ever joined the dots to this extent before but really, if you’d not taken a chance on me and we’d not been on that adventure I wouldn’t be where I am today.