Ahhh, Retirement

Indeed the golden dreamy soft gel focused ideal of the leisurely retirement lifestyle, you know, out there shopping for vinyl or sitting at cafes writing novels (hee hee, that pingback is for you, Martin).

Nope not me, I am still at full time work at Open Education Global and the real work of blogging here 😉 But I did get this interesting email from BCPensions:

We’ve received notice from your former employer that your employment ended on December 17, 2021.

As a vested College Pension Plan member, whose age at termination of employment was over the earliest retirement age, you’re entitled to a monthly pension benefit and are eligible to apply for your pension immediately. This letter outlines your options and explains how to apply for your pension.

Indeed, in 2020 and 2021 I had contracts to do web development for a few projects with the Justice Institute of British Columbia (mostly likely I have Tannis Morgan to thank for the referral. And the JIBC system had my hired as a Sessional Employee (working remotely from 2 provinces to the east), but it also meant for that time period I was paying into the BCPension fund.

And now just being around for a bit longer means that even though I am still working, I can start tapping into that fortune starting next month. Look at me on the retirement gravy train (after taxes, the monthly amount might be enough to buy 3/4 of a tank of gas, but its something).

But it was a fun reminder of the work I got to do then, back in my gravy days of WordPress development (have I used that expression twice in a post? obvious I ain’t writing with Claude), and it was good stuff. The funny thing is that this 6 year old project web site is still online fully functional.

BC Corrections Leadership

The first project was a resource for leadership in the BC Corrections system (good proof I can work in content I know nothing about). As we called it in oiur team “CorrLeader” was a mix of accumulated resources and also a guide to programs and offerings from the organization and JIBC.

Peter, the project leader had much of the concepty organized but what I liked working with him was his interest in the metaphors and the visuals. So we developed this idea of leadership being a complex terrain, and sometimes we traveled it as specified by a map and other times exploring by a compass.

There were a few prototypes with generated maps and toying with Leaflet.Js but in ended up being rolled into WordPress with an elegant theme. One of my proudest parts was, after hearing how busy these leaders are, they don’t have time to look at a computer all day, that often they were on mobile. I dug into the WordPress API and did a lot of monkeying with JQuery and local storage to create a mobile side site that could display the latest resource, and allow the person using it to use and save filters for content they were interested in.

No Need to Beam Me Up: Building the CorrLeader Navigator with Bootstrap and the WordPress API

It’s even more remarkable that the Navigator site ( just HTML/CSS/JS) is also still online and working https://host.jibc.ca/ccjd/corrleadernav/

Towards the end, we even added a podcast called CorrTalk that was done all by the project leads, Sarah and Peter (who was a natural at being a host).

I’m still not sure of how/why ther web site is still there and functioning. Do they still use it? (nobody updates). Is it one of those projects that organizations forget about and thus it lives longer?

Segregation Reform Program

The second project is one I am a bit rusty on, it was again a whole series of standalone course-like materials about models of Corrections that move away and beyond punishment. The specifications were that it would be built in Articulate Rise (A tool I never used before but learned as I went) that was in some ways a bit interesting to use as it was in someways very flexible but also very limited, no hacking on functionality like WordPress.

The course content was embedded into a Blackboard course, and I believe then the module end quizzes were scored there. There were modules in Introduction to Segregation Reform, Administrative Fairness, Indigenous Cultural Awareness, Trauma-Informed Practice, Mental Health Needs in Custody Settings (I know these from a hardrive folder of content folders). JIBC provided me access to a vast collection of photos from Corrections facilities I could use, I just had to blur any faces of inmates.

The one post about the project I could fine was all about playing with custom CSS to do better bullet points (?)

When Asking a Long Time For Larger Bullet Points…

Again i was surprised/shocked to find in my notes that the login I used at the time still works! I was able last night to peek at the old content I built.

And So?

I got this far without a real destination for this post. It still strikes me odd that much of this web/digital content still lives. I wonder if there is a term for bits of the web that still live because most people who would normally nuke a web site just forgot about them. Like survival by neglect?

But mostly I remember these projects as part of the long arc I had in working with colleagues who loved teasing out ideas, not afraid to try new things, and also gave me a lot of leeway in choosing visual and functional design.

Yeah, I think that is what I retired from… the fun/exciting work all in a time of optimism or belief in the potential of digital tools interwoven with human creativity.

Now it’s just Ask Claude blah blah blah blah borg. Not me, as I am not retired from work or creativity.

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Featured Image: Retired flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)