Camp life

Greetings Bloggies.

This institutional life.
I am in an institution. I am sane, well on the average. The people around me seem generally normal but I can't shake the fact that I am in an institution, in this case Cameco's Rabbit Lake mine.

As a mine it has a mix of dangers and red tape. One of the first things I noticed is that almost no one walks any where and there is almost nowhere you can walk. This is a producing mine, an environment I have not worked in before, it also a Uranium mine. Add wolves and bears in the endless wilds around us, a no walking alone policy makes sense. This is not what I am here to say. I do not want to degrees into whining about the things I miss in Vancouver. The first draft of this when there and that paragraph died.

No I am here to try to describe, the character, as seen by a outsider of an institution. I have worked in exploration camps, 20 odd people or less. This camp is larger, but it has one thing overwhelmingly in common. These places are here to get work out of people. Every thing is rules. And that is how I think of an institution, a place with internal rules above and beyond the ones of society, hence no walking.

Out in the world, where people live, not just work and go into bed or the gym for maintenance, there are rules. Societies grow around rules, some rules die a well deserved death other new ones come into play and some stay the same for ages. As a law and generally rule following citizen, I follow the rules that keep me out of trouble and follow my own for there reasons or lack of. What separates institutions out here form the world out there seems to be extra rules.

No walking alone is a good example. Out here, that rule makes sense wolves and bears, haul trucks ( 500 tone), and Uranium all make going for a stroll a poor idea. I know I want to but rules, that and the fear of walking into a hot zone. Other rules, no drugs or alcohol, your here to work, and work safely. We the company want to get our 12 hours out of you and you will damn well play some other time. Also everything happens at a set time. On the other hand things are free. You can eat your fill, get your sweet tooth filled and come back for more later.

Other odd rules include no touques or hats of hoods in the dinning hall.

Signs, clutter the walls in places like this. I don't know what the lowest common denominator is but there is an assumption about it being fairly low, if the toilets have pleas flush after use signs.

Rabbit Lake

Greetings Bloggies.

So, this time I will return to my more positive tone after several whiney posts. It could not be be helped, I was down and not doing the right things for my self so I bitched over the internet, a truly modern past time.

So I am working in the north again. Norther Saskatewan. Things are different here on many levels. I am working for an engineering company not a exploration company. The site is a producing mine. In this case Camico's Rabbit lake, one of this countries oldest continuously producing Uranium mines. Thats right not gold, no the soft pretty metal people dig up to hide in vaults, but the 10th most abundant element in the crust and one of the best energy sources for the future, Uranium.

Though I like the fact that I am working in a support role for a uranium mine, I am glad that my work takes place away from sources of radiation.

The differences between Rabbit lake and exploration jobs, are large, for one thing at the small exploration camps, the geologist were king, the camp existed to make sure our drilling got done and the data came in. Here we are a small subset of a huge operation. This camp can hold up to 700 and might currently hold 300. What the exact number is don't mater, I have been used to camps of 10 to 40. Other things that are different. The job I don't know how to do it yet. I am learning and have a good teacher. I know the core of many of the tasks but not the specifics. It is refreshing to do new work.

What I know of the work is that I will be doing tests on the hydraulic nature of the rock and I have a fancy tool to do it with. The tool has an odd mix of simple tough elements and finer nearly delicate elements. As I said on facebook some times I feel more a plumber then a scientist, but tools get data and without data, there is no science.

The following sentences were written the day after the bulk of the post.

It should be said, after today that there is still no shortage of drudgery as part of the job. Today I was tired and hand to log my first hole for engineering purposes. It was fairly smooth, I need to pick up the pace and fight the strain that comes from too much of the same thing.

Somethings are the same. The food is industrial bland. Engineered to not offend any one and to provide calorie rich fair to those who need it and those who do.

The question I still can't answer is can I do $30,000 or hours of work of this and feel satisfied and have the life I want. Though I am slated to be here for three weeks I don't know when or what I might get called on to do again, if any thing. How often and for how long will I have to be away. It is a question of both. Three weeks is a sane amount of time away.

So I am unresolved. I still think that gaining work closer to the city I live in and coming home at night are my long term goals. The long term keeps getting interrupted by the short term demands of money. That stuff is like crack, every time you start to run low you or you bills just keep demanding more.

Rabbit Lake

Greetings Bloggies.

So, this time I will return to my more positive tone after several whiney posts. It could not be be helped, I was down and not doing the right things for my self so I bitched over the internet, a truly modern past time.

So I am working in the north again. Norther Saskatewan. Things are different here on many levels. I am working for an engineering company not a exploration company. The site is a producing mine. In this case Camico's Rabbit lake, one of this countries oldest continuously producing Uranium mines. Thats right not gold, no the soft pretty metal people dig up to hide in vaults, but the 10th most abundant element in the crust and one of the best energy sources for the future, Uranium.

Though I like the fact that I am working in a support role for a uranium mine, I am glad that my work takes place away from sources of radiation.

The differences between Rabbit lake and exploration jobs, are large, for one thing at the small exploration camps, the geologist were king, the camp existed to make sure our drilling got done and the data came in. Here we are a small subset of a huge operation. This camp can hold up to 700 and might currently hold 300. What the exact number is don't mater, I have been used to camps of 10 to 40. Other things that are different. The job I don't know how to do it yet. I am learning and have a good teacher. I know the core of many of the tasks but not the specifics. It is refreshing to do new work.

What I know of the work is that I will be doing tests on the hydraulic nature of the rock and I have a fancy tool to do it with. The tool has an odd mix of simple tough elements and finer nearly delicate elements. As I said on facebook some times I feel more a plumber then a scientist, but tools get data and without data, there is no science.

The following sentences were written the day after the bulk of the post.

It should be said, after today that there is still no shortage of drudgery as part of the job. Today I was tired and hand to log my first hole for engineering purposes. It was fairly smooth, I need to pick up the pace and fight the strain that comes from too much of the same thing.

Somethings are the same. The food is industrial bland. Engineered to not offend any one and to provide calorie rich fair to those who need it and those who do.

The question I still can't answer is can I do $30,000 or hours of work of this and feel satisfied and have the life I want. Though I am slated to be here for three weeks I don't know when or what I might get called on to do again, if any thing. How often and for how long will I have to be away. It is a question of both. Three weeks is a sane amount of time away.

So I am unresolved. I still think that gaining work closer to the city I live in and coming home at night are my long term goals. The long term keeps getting interrupted by the short term demands of money. That stuff is like crack, every time you start to run low you or you bills just keep demanding more.

September

Greetings Bloggies and other readers.

Well its time for me to be honest with my self. September was a wasted month. Effectively nothing forwarding my longer term goals was accomplished. I can not blame external forces. These failures were all mine. A cold that lasted much longer then I would like, gave me the excuse to slack off for part of the month. Minecraft, a game wedged it self in my weak mind and sucked up even more time (Joe, I admit it its not minecraft's fault).

I made other foolish choices. A set of decisions at the end of august or start of september put two opportunities in conflict. One was a reasonably likely geology gig in the Yukon, the other an interview with a instrument company. I admit that I want to step away from exploration geology as a career, but a 2 to 3 week job, and a chance to see the Yukon is a foolish thing to skip out on. I feel that I botched the interview, its nearly two weeks and not a peep back. The conflict was between the opportunities was of my own creation, I could have arranged the interview later, by the time I started wrangling the people to get me that interview I knew the time line of Yukon job and could have done things differently.

The interview was approached with false confidence and being under prepared, add to that I was in the tail end of the cold and life was not at its best. I did some research prior but still got stonewalled at some basic questions. One question that got me was about where I saw my self in N number of years. It was pointed out to me that I should have had a vision as to where I was going after BCIT, with the diploma form there. The truth which is I wanted an office job, to get away form the periodic exile that geology can cause so I that I could have a more balanced life, would not have fit the expectations. With greater knowledge of the prospects there it became possible to question if the opportunity was a good fit. There is uncertainty about weather my current thinking that role fit. Either I gained enough knowledge to conclude that the role was not right for me because the technical and creative aspects were above me, or I have retrofitted those thoughts on to it because I have not heard back.

When I step away from my attempts at a professional life, September was good month. By and large I ate well. I cooked some new things. I have gone out to pubs, I have started to establish my self as a regular in one or two places and have a greater sense of community. I got someones phone number but forgot to call her because well I realized I felt no chemistry, I can only throttle back my geek so for. Bike rides, kayak adventures, walks and other activities killed some of the time, at least I don't feel as much like the dough boy. As a Dough boy, the best loaf of bread to come out of my kitchen was created last week.

From the inside of my head things were up and down and backwards. The backwards was the worst. The earlier half of the month, confirmation bias a side, saw me dreaming about my ex girlfriend, some of those thoughts have leaked into waking. If living in Vancouver means one thing in my life its moving forward and the motivation to chase away that past from the front of my mind is a good starting point for getting out the funk I drifted into. To be fair there is a place for those memories and emotions just not in quantity or persistently.

Thats all for now.

In the past this would have ended up in a bound note book in an illegible scribble.

More gripes

Greetings Bloggies.

I have been delaying writing this for some time. But for some time stress has been building. I suppose its normal. I am not busy enough, nor am I getting my head in gear enough to really fix it. The cumulative effect of this is I find me self more bored and lonely then I would like. The key symptom is tension in my jaw, to the point of nearly being painful.

As I had said on facebook, the trouble with the current period of my life is that it got started with such a completely emotional decision that following up on that with rational actions leaves me second guessing things. On July 20th , when I left the Elkhart job, I was certain of what I did not want to do. The life style desired was clear in my mind the means to support that less so.

A flurry of activity to get settled kept my mind occupied for some time. But as time passed and the obvious targets for jobs came back with negative news my mood and motivation weakened. I always have this irritating thought, running through my head when ever I am looking for work. I am educated I have a couple peaces of paper to prove that I passed through some programs, but I don't really know what I can do. I don't have an clear idea of what jobs I am qualified for. Often enough I wonder if I could find a form of happy working at a coffee shop with people hipper then I. I feel that would not really work.

Right now my best prospects will take me out of town if they pan out. On a short term basis. I am not sure how I feel about that all in all. Certainly, the money will solve the problems it can solve. I just wonder how far I can go on that path. Ultimately I want to have a job in town. In the end I will take what I can get and make the best of it. Lacking a clear passion to steer me that is just how I am going to have to stumble through life.