Don't Touch the Glass
Bars and beers, I am a fan of beers, but it is bars that fascinate me. Across all walks of life folks head out to relax and to take a load off. Sooner or later most people will end up spending some of there time sipping a brew trading BS with their friends or strangers at bar over a jug of the house special. The last year and a half has seen me spending more time in pubs then average. This is partially a function of money and partly a response to work. It is a function of money because now I can afford to go out when I can go out, and a response to the dry nature of my camp.
The semi-enforced sobriety at work has made going out for drinks part of my routine to separate work life from life back in civilization. A beer will never taste better then after 6 weeks dry. Ironically before working in the bush I could have gone six weeks with out a drink but the choice was never removed from me. A few drinks after I land back in civilization do wonders for unwinding the stress of weeks of continuous work. These drinks have to happen somewhere and alone in a hotel room is not my choice venue. Which after my abandoning nightclubs I have confined my substance consumption to domestic environments and pubs.
Pubs are not as mystifying as Nightclubs. For a start a person can be heard over the music or the TV, which is playing in the background not blasting the floor to shreds. This opens up normal channels of communication that are blocked in noise saturated environment of a Night club, where body language is king and you won’t make it if far without the latest bling. Though bars also collect there own species of patrons, the nature of pubs is more a function of geography then night clubs as clubs tend to cluster around the center of towns, pubs are more randomly distributed. To skip past a long winding paragraph, the size of smoking rooms in bars reflects on the demographics of neighborhood where the bar is situated. Smoking rooms decrease in size in pubs located near the center of cities and expand away from urban centers. This can be examined with a truly meaningless comparison of a few joints I have visited over the last year for one reason or other. I will start in the south and move north for no real reason.
At the Southern extreme of my range I frequent one or two places in Penticton, Of those two I can not recall the floor plan well enough to recall the presence or absence of smoking rooms, of the second it has one, tucked away in a corner, It also has a large balcony. It is located on the second floor in a down office block. I can not tell if its location or marketing that result in it having a base of regulars that fall either in to the student type or business professional type, but that appears to be who ends up there. Due to Penticton's gentle climate, for the majority of the year the absence of a smoking room is made up with its large balcony. Which was not in use on my last visit, which was in early January. This being Penticton any observation made during the winter will be negated by tourist influx during the summer.
Moving north some 60 odd Km lands me in Kelowna. Where on a more then a few Friday nights I have gone out for beers. Due to the friends choice of venue I have ended up repeatedly in one of the two western themed clubs/bars that have the city as their host. The older more established centrally located and marginally classier joint has less then a quarter of its floor space devoted to smokers. The small size of the smoking room made it one of the first places I observed the terrarium like qualities of smoking rooms. When the smoking room is small and confining like that the sense of us and them is strongly apparent. In fact some of the smoking rooms have the same proportions as a standard aquarium. The general flow of people is to hang out on or more likely around the dance floor and moving into the smoking room only when the craving takes over. This pattern differs from the bottom of the market. The red neck joins.
The second Western themed bar is in neighborhood with a poorer reputation and making a good effort to maintain it. The bar was built on the empty lot that once held a grocery store, and now hosts a sad attempt at a western bar. This is the second incarnation of that building as a bar/club, I never made there in its first incarnation but my loss is less then minor. It plays at being some kind of nightclub; it has a DJ and a dance floor. The dance floor is nearly always empty and the DJ is not the cocky young type seen at flashier joints but a scruffy nearly middle-aged dude who has not been hip in 15 years at least. In this sadness is a smoking room, half the place safely behind glass packed full when the dance floor is empty. Here every one hangs out on the smoking side, coming out to get drinks and some times dragged out by the rare man there with his girl friend who has an affinity for the song and has developed the urge to dance. My most northerly venue lacks a theme or pretense, which after the mail order western effects is a refreshing change.
So there I was in a bar a small working class pub in satellite community of Kelowna known as Winfield. Foul weather had caused me to delay my departure to Nakusp by a day, which did nothing to improve the driving conditions but that is a separate issue. My only reason for being in Winfield was a hotel close to the airport and away form the city traffic. It also has the advantage of being in walking distance to a pub. The working class nature of that joint was made transparent by the presence of the glass partition which enclosed close to half the floor space. That was where this essay was born.
Unlike other places with smoking rooms, it is not a place to go when you want to have a smoke but the place to be because you smoke. Since it is likely that your friends will smoke too every one gathers in the smoking room. I found my self in the position of being more part of them then of us. I was the minority. Me and handful of others were clustered around the windows looking into the smoking room, wanting to be part of the apparent fun but not wanting to take part in fumes.
It is a function of the one constant in human civilizations. There are two groups of people in the world, Us and Them. It does not mater which group you belong to every one out side that cohort falls under the listing of them. In the case of Public Houses south Western BC, Them can be a function of nicotine addiction. This separation is mechanically enforced with glass walls. Who then falls into the Us category is then a related to nature of the neighborhood where the watering hole resides. Smokers become Them closer to town centers as 21 century norms start to dominate, if you migrate far enough from centers of civilization values start to drift closer to mid to late 20th century, and non smokers start to fall into the Them listing.
None of this changes the fact that if I could I would take off the roof from a smoking room and through in a hand full of cigarettes and watch them fight over them like so many fish in a bowl.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Oh The Games We Play
Northern Lights Entertainment report.
This will be a departure from the traditional entertainment report for I will not be talking about media I have brought with me to work for my enjoyment. This rotation I tried to keep the media load light in the overly optimistic view that if I have less to distract me I will do more writing. That is failing so far as I picked up on my last day in town a new tech toy, the
iPod touch. It is more hand held computer then iPod, and if itunes would ever let me down load the new software update it would be even more of one.
Tech toys while fun and distracting are not my focus. Rather it is what was done on my time off. First the short summery: Some last minuet shopping in Kelowna a few days before Christmas, Madness. A good Friday night drunk to shut down from that madness, coffee with some of the old K town crowd. Kelowna was followed with a trip to Nakusp, which was framed with interesting drives over the mountains. Thankfully I have Serenity, which handled fine even at Deep Creak proving that Subaru are Suberb (Blame Aimee for that one).
Christmas was in Nakusp where I had to cut down a tree on Christmas Eve day because on one else in the family was in the mood for one. In a break with tradition the better part of the gifts under the tree were from me. All of which went over well, including and much to my surprise, socks. Which were accepted with all the appearance of joy. The latest news is that the socks are still being worn and have aided in the distracting of board mind.
The last gift was delivered late, on the 4th of the New Year unwrapped and unexpected. The package, the Settlers of Catan it is board game the goal of which is to build your civilization. Now civilization-building games are not new to me but tabletop forms are. This is a game type I have always played on a computer.
Catan proved to by addictive, which is ultimately why I picked it up I was already addicted from Christine's introduction over Christmas time and I know it would go over well with Risk playing crew in Penticton. I had underestimated the appeal. The first night there we played four games almost non-stop till nearly 2am. The second night was not as long but almost worse as we had started to add the expansion packs. By the end of the weekend our maps had grown to huge proportions and the game play was fast and chaotic. At times it felt more time was being spent setting up the map then playing it. The beauty of the Catan franchise is that every one is active even if it is not your turn you are still involved as trade between players can happen at nearly any time, you can improve you out come next turn with a good trade.
Oh the Games We Play.
It was my intent to deliver a fun present instead I spawned an addict, I am sorry, but I will join a game the next time I am in those parts.
So this year I learned trust the gut, give gifts that feel right even if they are a little silly and gaming is good for your mental health.
This will be a departure from the traditional entertainment report for I will not be talking about media I have brought with me to work for my enjoyment. This rotation I tried to keep the media load light in the overly optimistic view that if I have less to distract me I will do more writing. That is failing so far as I picked up on my last day in town a new tech toy, the
iPod touch. It is more hand held computer then iPod, and if itunes would ever let me down load the new software update it would be even more of one.
Tech toys while fun and distracting are not my focus. Rather it is what was done on my time off. First the short summery: Some last minuet shopping in Kelowna a few days before Christmas, Madness. A good Friday night drunk to shut down from that madness, coffee with some of the old K town crowd. Kelowna was followed with a trip to Nakusp, which was framed with interesting drives over the mountains. Thankfully I have Serenity, which handled fine even at Deep Creak proving that Subaru are Suberb (Blame Aimee for that one).
Christmas was in Nakusp where I had to cut down a tree on Christmas Eve day because on one else in the family was in the mood for one. In a break with tradition the better part of the gifts under the tree were from me. All of which went over well, including and much to my surprise, socks. Which were accepted with all the appearance of joy. The latest news is that the socks are still being worn and have aided in the distracting of board mind.
The last gift was delivered late, on the 4th of the New Year unwrapped and unexpected. The package, the Settlers of Catan it is board game the goal of which is to build your civilization. Now civilization-building games are not new to me but tabletop forms are. This is a game type I have always played on a computer.
Catan proved to by addictive, which is ultimately why I picked it up I was already addicted from Christine's introduction over Christmas time and I know it would go over well with Risk playing crew in Penticton. I had underestimated the appeal. The first night there we played four games almost non-stop till nearly 2am. The second night was not as long but almost worse as we had started to add the expansion packs. By the end of the weekend our maps had grown to huge proportions and the game play was fast and chaotic. At times it felt more time was being spent setting up the map then playing it. The beauty of the Catan franchise is that every one is active even if it is not your turn you are still involved as trade between players can happen at nearly any time, you can improve you out come next turn with a good trade.
Oh the Games We Play.
It was my intent to deliver a fun present instead I spawned an addict, I am sorry, but I will join a game the next time I am in those parts.
So this year I learned trust the gut, give gifts that feel right even if they are a little silly and gaming is good for your mental health.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
A Rant
Facebook.
It appears that I hate Facebook. It did not start out that way. The first two weeks were cool. In the first two weeks there was an explosive growth in the number of people I got in touch with. After dozens of friends’ requests were made, some with people I had not seen in many years then things leveled off.
Without new contacts coming in and the existing ones staying quite after the first contacts I lost interest. Of the people I got in touch with the majority were friends from university people who I sheared classes with partied and drank with, but most not likely to be long-term friends. The result, those that I wanted to stay in touch with I had remained in touch with out face book, and with face book I gained access to pointless trivial about them with out any substance.
The trivia has grown tires some quickly. I just don't really care about all the updates people post. That is not the worst of it. I am being spammed. A handful of people are forwarding a handful of messages. So often they are passing forward chain letters. These messages did the email loop years ago and were old then.
I don't want chain letters, I don't want any thing that makes me feel guilty for being able bodied and white with a good job. I don't care if chain letters have biblical roots. Just because Saul got sun stroke on the road to Damascus, inspiring him to twist the words of his teacher a Jewish carpenter who turned out to have a fatal allergy to oaken beams and iron nails, into his own twisted faith, does not mean I want any thing to do with the other tradition he promoted. Chain letters, a sunstroke inspired tool he hopes to be a good way of scaring the gentiles into his new religion.
I don't want forwards on my wall or as messages I don't want guilt inspiring stories of personal sacrifice and suffering. If you are not going to take the time to write something yourself I don't want it. If you want me to take the time to follow the link form my email to the website, stealing a minuet or two of my time, make it original make it personal. Act like you are my friend, tell me a story or a joke, and don’t spam me with a message that has been passed on more times the Pam Anderson's honeymoon videos.
I don't hold this rant to have any historical accuracies the views expressed here are mine along and do not reflect on Nothernlites or any of its associates.
It appears that I hate Facebook. It did not start out that way. The first two weeks were cool. In the first two weeks there was an explosive growth in the number of people I got in touch with. After dozens of friends’ requests were made, some with people I had not seen in many years then things leveled off.
Without new contacts coming in and the existing ones staying quite after the first contacts I lost interest. Of the people I got in touch with the majority were friends from university people who I sheared classes with partied and drank with, but most not likely to be long-term friends. The result, those that I wanted to stay in touch with I had remained in touch with out face book, and with face book I gained access to pointless trivial about them with out any substance.
The trivia has grown tires some quickly. I just don't really care about all the updates people post. That is not the worst of it. I am being spammed. A handful of people are forwarding a handful of messages. So often they are passing forward chain letters. These messages did the email loop years ago and were old then.
I don't want chain letters, I don't want any thing that makes me feel guilty for being able bodied and white with a good job. I don't care if chain letters have biblical roots. Just because Saul got sun stroke on the road to Damascus, inspiring him to twist the words of his teacher a Jewish carpenter who turned out to have a fatal allergy to oaken beams and iron nails, into his own twisted faith, does not mean I want any thing to do with the other tradition he promoted. Chain letters, a sunstroke inspired tool he hopes to be a good way of scaring the gentiles into his new religion.
I don't want forwards on my wall or as messages I don't want guilt inspiring stories of personal sacrifice and suffering. If you are not going to take the time to write something yourself I don't want it. If you want me to take the time to follow the link form my email to the website, stealing a minuet or two of my time, make it original make it personal. Act like you are my friend, tell me a story or a joke, and don’t spam me with a message that has been passed on more times the Pam Anderson's honeymoon videos.
I don't hold this rant to have any historical accuracies the views expressed here are mine along and do not reflect on Nothernlites or any of its associates.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Bingo Fuel and Stinging Slinging.
Work has taken a shift in direction. We are moving the bulk of the drilling to a new different property to the south of camp. A property I had not seen until a week ago. When Pete Jordan and me flew out there to both check on the drill and get me familiar with the property. The plan was simple, take a chopper down to the property check out the drill and or shut it down and then fly back to camp end of day. Pack a lunch and long underwear.
This should have bee a quick and simple day, but light is a limited commodity. At the latitude of 63,1/4 degrees north in December the earliest time we can fly is around 9:30 am and the latest we can fly is around 3:50pm.
Adding to this compressed timetable were the other demands on the helicopter. It had to fly in some supplies from town. Fuel for the drill, two barrels full, weighing enough to make the bird burn through extra fuel on the short flight from town. With the bird having to make a trip into town to get the fuel drums there was a lot of time-spent waiting. After it delivered the fuel the chopper landed in the swamp, not the helipad we had marked out, it turned out we had a different pilot form the
morning.
The three of us get on to the chopper staying low on the approach to avoid unwanted decapitations; they can really ruin your day. We took from off the swamp and about 5 to 10 minuets into the flight Pete is talking to the Pilot and some slightly important information is put forth. There was not enough fuel for the bird to make the round trip.
The chopper had about 45 to 50 minuets of fuel and we had about an hour and fifteen minuets of day light left. From where we were flying from it is about a 20-minuet flight to camp and greater then half an hour to get back to Yellow Knife.
Camp does keep some Jet-B on hand to refuel choppers with but because the pilot had just hauled in fuel for the drill he had left his fuel pump in town to save weight. Our fuel drums do have hand pumps but this would have taken too much time to fill it up, using up too much of the remaining day. Which could have forced him to say in camp to avoid flying after dark. So to save the chopper from as they say, bingo fuel, we turned around and headed south to Yellow Knife.
The cool thing of landing in town was being in a chopper as the Pilot parallel parked the bird. To do this we came in a few feet of the ground and the flew side ways in to the space between a Hughes 500 in front of us and second Bell 206 behind us.
The one time I am in town during a work rotation it’s a Sunday. To add to the fun all three of us have left our wallets and any and all forms of money at camp and personally I had nothing to read. Our lack of funds was fixed as was our accommodations, one through a preexisting arrangement the other through a favour, not in that order.
The evening was dull, but it was an early end for the working day, that coupled with larger softer hotel bed and a good dinner was worth the trip into town. It was something of a tease as normally I only see Yellow Knife as I am leaving work. Though we did get some looks leaving Boston Pizza, as we were a scruffy lot.
The next day was started with sleeping in and ended with the being cold and fearing that we would have to spend a second night in town. In between we returned to the drill site in a helicopter without working heat and frosted up windows. This really boosts your confidence in modern engineering. Once I toured the property moving to say warm and huddled in the drill when it was not too busy.
Things started to go bad when the chopper was hauling in a second set of fuel drums. Two or three times it circled and hovered but failed to kill its forward momentum enough to keep the drums form swinging at the end of their long line forcing it to abandon its attempts to deliver the fuel. After its last failed attempt at delivering the fuel to the drill's location at the time, It attempted to drop the barrels at the site where the drill would move to next, this was more open. This proved to be some of the least inspired flying I have seen lately.
Once again the bird came in low and fast when it should have come in high, hovered and then come down slow. This hover and drop approach would kill the forward momentum of the drums at the end of the long line preventing them from swinging. The drums started to swing side to side under the helicopter and as the pilot compensated and perhaps over compensated the swinging increased and became a circular motion like some over sized up side down mace. It was worrying seeing the chopper buck in response to its miss-behaving load. When the pilot at last made his call he brought the bird down with the drums still moving under him, they kicked up cloud of dusty snow, I had a brief worry that they seals on the things could fail and we would have a royal mess on our hands.
This excitement was followed with a long wait in the cold and the approaching dark. On paper the plan was for the bird to head into town refuel and take us back to camp, it did not work out that way and as the sun was setting we were still waiting for our ride. Several calls of decreasing politeness and of increasing frequency were made to the helicopter hanger as darkness approached.
When It came, the sun was most of the way down, it was delayed it turned out, but we had a faster bird with a full tank of gas getting back to camp at last was not going to be a problem. We did make it back to camp and not much else has happened since. Okay a few days after that adventure I got to be the guild on a second trip to that property, I flew in the front of the bird looking down at the ground through the transparent floor of the cockpit. This time I had my wallet. But nothing much happened that trip, we flow to the southern end of a lake where we will be setting up a drill in the new year and did some fancy flying to get a close look, on this day we were back before lunch and I did not have to leave my seat.
This should have bee a quick and simple day, but light is a limited commodity. At the latitude of 63,1/4 degrees north in December the earliest time we can fly is around 9:30 am and the latest we can fly is around 3:50pm.
Adding to this compressed timetable were the other demands on the helicopter. It had to fly in some supplies from town. Fuel for the drill, two barrels full, weighing enough to make the bird burn through extra fuel on the short flight from town. With the bird having to make a trip into town to get the fuel drums there was a lot of time-spent waiting. After it delivered the fuel the chopper landed in the swamp, not the helipad we had marked out, it turned out we had a different pilot form the
morning.
The three of us get on to the chopper staying low on the approach to avoid unwanted decapitations; they can really ruin your day. We took from off the swamp and about 5 to 10 minuets into the flight Pete is talking to the Pilot and some slightly important information is put forth. There was not enough fuel for the bird to make the round trip.
The chopper had about 45 to 50 minuets of fuel and we had about an hour and fifteen minuets of day light left. From where we were flying from it is about a 20-minuet flight to camp and greater then half an hour to get back to Yellow Knife.
Camp does keep some Jet-B on hand to refuel choppers with but because the pilot had just hauled in fuel for the drill he had left his fuel pump in town to save weight. Our fuel drums do have hand pumps but this would have taken too much time to fill it up, using up too much of the remaining day. Which could have forced him to say in camp to avoid flying after dark. So to save the chopper from as they say, bingo fuel, we turned around and headed south to Yellow Knife.
The cool thing of landing in town was being in a chopper as the Pilot parallel parked the bird. To do this we came in a few feet of the ground and the flew side ways in to the space between a Hughes 500 in front of us and second Bell 206 behind us.
The one time I am in town during a work rotation it’s a Sunday. To add to the fun all three of us have left our wallets and any and all forms of money at camp and personally I had nothing to read. Our lack of funds was fixed as was our accommodations, one through a preexisting arrangement the other through a favour, not in that order.
The evening was dull, but it was an early end for the working day, that coupled with larger softer hotel bed and a good dinner was worth the trip into town. It was something of a tease as normally I only see Yellow Knife as I am leaving work. Though we did get some looks leaving Boston Pizza, as we were a scruffy lot.
The next day was started with sleeping in and ended with the being cold and fearing that we would have to spend a second night in town. In between we returned to the drill site in a helicopter without working heat and frosted up windows. This really boosts your confidence in modern engineering. Once I toured the property moving to say warm and huddled in the drill when it was not too busy.
Things started to go bad when the chopper was hauling in a second set of fuel drums. Two or three times it circled and hovered but failed to kill its forward momentum enough to keep the drums form swinging at the end of their long line forcing it to abandon its attempts to deliver the fuel. After its last failed attempt at delivering the fuel to the drill's location at the time, It attempted to drop the barrels at the site where the drill would move to next, this was more open. This proved to be some of the least inspired flying I have seen lately.
Once again the bird came in low and fast when it should have come in high, hovered and then come down slow. This hover and drop approach would kill the forward momentum of the drums at the end of the long line preventing them from swinging. The drums started to swing side to side under the helicopter and as the pilot compensated and perhaps over compensated the swinging increased and became a circular motion like some over sized up side down mace. It was worrying seeing the chopper buck in response to its miss-behaving load. When the pilot at last made his call he brought the bird down with the drums still moving under him, they kicked up cloud of dusty snow, I had a brief worry that they seals on the things could fail and we would have a royal mess on our hands.
This excitement was followed with a long wait in the cold and the approaching dark. On paper the plan was for the bird to head into town refuel and take us back to camp, it did not work out that way and as the sun was setting we were still waiting for our ride. Several calls of decreasing politeness and of increasing frequency were made to the helicopter hanger as darkness approached.
When It came, the sun was most of the way down, it was delayed it turned out, but we had a faster bird with a full tank of gas getting back to camp at last was not going to be a problem. We did make it back to camp and not much else has happened since. Okay a few days after that adventure I got to be the guild on a second trip to that property, I flew in the front of the bird looking down at the ground through the transparent floor of the cockpit. This time I had my wallet. But nothing much happened that trip, we flow to the southern end of a lake where we will be setting up a drill in the new year and did some fancy flying to get a close look, on this day we were back before lunch and I did not have to leave my seat.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Nothern Lites Entertainment Report.
Just a quick update.
Things have been busy at work as the year winds down I am getting wound up for next year which will be a fair bit different from the last year and a half. I will have the chance to spend time in Yellow Knife and see properties other then this one. I am working on a longer post about my recent Helicopter adventure. More on that after some editing.
I have become a pusher, a crack dealer. That right I have gotten some one at work addicted to podcast novels. Addicted enough to ship out a pack of CDs for me to copy the shows on. So I complied the Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff collection; Diary of a Mad Man, The Dooms Day Club, Number 1 with a Bullet and The Art of Surfacing. All good interesting, from time to time violent and or distrubing. These can be found at Pacific Coast Hellway, I would be Remiss if I did not mention every one's favourate musical Pussy The Musical , which did not include on the CD's because at the time it was not complete.
I also added one of my favourates as a bonus, Phili Rosi's Crescent some places are far darker then deep space. I would have add Mike Bennet's One Among the Sleepless
One Among the Sleepless, to that list but ran out space on the CD's, it is a slightly dark and wonderfully British novel. ( Mother you would be pleased to not that with the exception of Crescent all the books listed in this post are not Science fiction.) Speaking of science fiction, go check out Christiana Elles's latest project, Space Casey.
I should play nice and add in a bit of a blurb on Space Casey. Its a space opera in much the same way a Gilbert and Sulivin peace is an opera, it has elements of drama and in some cases singing but the nature of the drama is completely different. Now that I have said nothing for a long sentence, let me talk about the book, con artist gets a hold of an alien space ship and is forced to save humanity, while indulging in the whims of an unstable AI and other alien oddities. All held together with Christiana's dry wit and good collection of guest voices, including the future evil over lord of the planet Scott Sigler.
I will leave you with one pretty picture, the Con Mine's Robertson Shaft and the rising sun. As seen from Great Slave Helicopters in Yellow Knife earlier this week
Things have been busy at work as the year winds down I am getting wound up for next year which will be a fair bit different from the last year and a half. I will have the chance to spend time in Yellow Knife and see properties other then this one. I am working on a longer post about my recent Helicopter adventure. More on that after some editing.
I have become a pusher, a crack dealer. That right I have gotten some one at work addicted to podcast novels. Addicted enough to ship out a pack of CDs for me to copy the shows on. So I complied the Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff collection; Diary of a Mad Man, The Dooms Day Club, Number 1 with a Bullet and The Art of Surfacing. All good interesting, from time to time violent and or distrubing. These can be found at Pacific Coast Hellway, I would be Remiss if I did not mention every one's favourate musical Pussy The Musical , which did not include on the CD's because at the time it was not complete.
I also added one of my favourates as a bonus, Phili Rosi's Crescent some places are far darker then deep space. I would have add Mike Bennet's One Among the Sleepless
One Among the Sleepless, to that list but ran out space on the CD's, it is a slightly dark and wonderfully British novel. ( Mother you would be pleased to not that with the exception of Crescent all the books listed in this post are not Science fiction.) Speaking of science fiction, go check out Christiana Elles's latest project, Space Casey.
I should play nice and add in a bit of a blurb on Space Casey. Its a space opera in much the same way a Gilbert and Sulivin peace is an opera, it has elements of drama and in some cases singing but the nature of the drama is completely different. Now that I have said nothing for a long sentence, let me talk about the book, con artist gets a hold of an alien space ship and is forced to save humanity, while indulging in the whims of an unstable AI and other alien oddities. All held together with Christiana's dry wit and good collection of guest voices, including the future evil over lord of the planet Scott Sigler.
I will leave you with one pretty picture, the Con Mine's Robertson Shaft and the rising sun. As seen from Great Slave Helicopters in Yellow Knife earlier this week
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Tail Gates.
The other day after finishing a pile of paper work and becoming frustrated from the hours at the desk. I headed off to load my shop with core for the next day. Now due to a series of mechanical mishaps the Toyota Land cruiser that I use to haul core was out of order. This left me with my 2 least favorite vehicles: the overly large Dodge Ram and badly mistreated Ford Ranger. The Dodge was in use at that moment and after some wrangling I gained access to the ranger to move core.
The Ranger holds about 20 boxes core, loading that many boxes is a good work out. Now I noticed as I was loading it that the plywood bed liner was covered in about a centimeter of ice. This made loading the first layer of core boxes easy as they slid in nice a smooth. After the truck was loaded I drove it down the road to my shop. This road is smoother in the winter with the snow and the ranger has decent traction with the chains. Every thing was smooth until the last large hill before the shop. This hill has a bend in middle and a bump caused by a partially berried bolder.
Because of some difficulties in climbing that hill the previous day I made a point to have a good bit of speed to get up the steep start of the hill. I did not have faith that the Ranger would have enough torque to make the hill at a low speed. Stupidly I managed to hit the gas and the bump at the same time. I cleared the first third of the hill the truck did not spin out or stall. There was odd burst of speed as I left the bend.
Having made it up the hill I continued to my shop. I backed into the slot by my shop door to unload the truck. That was when I say the truck was empty. All 20 boxes each weighing at about 30 to 50 pounds depending on the lithology had fallen out. As fast as I could I drove back to the way I came.
There in the center of the road in sitting in almost one unit was the boxes. Two or three were upside down, and only one had any meaningful spillage. That was lucky. It was the fact that they jumped out of the truck all at once that kept things from being too messy.
There was at this point only one coarse of action, reload the truck one box at time, up hill. I had left the Ranger pointing down hill on nearly flat spot. I backed it up the hill and had some hairy moments on the way back down the other side so I pulled over to the side to try to turn around. As I did this I saw the core slide back a few inches. Things were easy for the last leg as it was all down hill and there was no risk of it falling out again.
Before the after noon was over I made two more trips each one less eventful then the last. After the first trip I improvised a restraint using some steel banding that was lying in the back of the truck along with some rope. This looked laughable oddly it worked. In the first few hundred meters of my second trip the core shifted. Looking in the rearview I saw that the top most boxes were putting tension on the steel band. Out of fear of a second cargo failure I let the truck pick up some speed on a down hill, only to slam on the brakes, this let the cargo shift forward just a wee bit. I was lucky to have enough smarts to find the sweet spot where cargo would remain fixed in the bed but the truck did not stall, it was at a crawl.
The Third and final trip lead me the solution I should have had from the start, a tail gait. Now since the original for that truck is long gone I was forced to improvise with a core box lid trimmed to fit roughly the width of the bed. This worked, the boxes pressed against it but could not unwedge it.
Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same action repeatedly and expecting different results, I suppose this means that I am not completely insane.
The other day after finishing a pile of paper work and becoming frustrated from the hours at the desk. I headed off to load my shop with core for the next day. Now due to a series of mechanical mishaps the Toyota Land cruiser that I use to haul core was out of order. This left me with my 2 least favorite vehicles: the overly large Dodge Ram and badly mistreated Ford Ranger. The Dodge was in use at that moment and after some wrangling I gained access to the ranger to move core.
The Ranger holds about 20 boxes core, loading that many boxes is a good work out. Now I noticed as I was loading it that the plywood bed liner was covered in about a centimeter of ice. This made loading the first layer of core boxes easy as they slid in nice a smooth. After the truck was loaded I drove it down the road to my shop. This road is smoother in the winter with the snow and the ranger has decent traction with the chains. Every thing was smooth until the last large hill before the shop. This hill has a bend in middle and a bump caused by a partially berried bolder.
Because of some difficulties in climbing that hill the previous day I made a point to have a good bit of speed to get up the steep start of the hill. I did not have faith that the Ranger would have enough torque to make the hill at a low speed. Stupidly I managed to hit the gas and the bump at the same time. I cleared the first third of the hill the truck did not spin out or stall. There was odd burst of speed as I left the bend.
Having made it up the hill I continued to my shop. I backed into the slot by my shop door to unload the truck. That was when I say the truck was empty. All 20 boxes each weighing at about 30 to 50 pounds depending on the lithology had fallen out. As fast as I could I drove back to the way I came.
There in the center of the road in sitting in almost one unit was the boxes. Two or three were upside down, and only one had any meaningful spillage. That was lucky. It was the fact that they jumped out of the truck all at once that kept things from being too messy.
There was at this point only one coarse of action, reload the truck one box at time, up hill. I had left the Ranger pointing down hill on nearly flat spot. I backed it up the hill and had some hairy moments on the way back down the other side so I pulled over to the side to try to turn around. As I did this I saw the core slide back a few inches. Things were easy for the last leg as it was all down hill and there was no risk of it falling out again.
Before the after noon was over I made two more trips each one less eventful then the last. After the first trip I improvised a restraint using some steel banding that was lying in the back of the truck along with some rope. This looked laughable oddly it worked. In the first few hundred meters of my second trip the core shifted. Looking in the rearview I saw that the top most boxes were putting tension on the steel band. Out of fear of a second cargo failure I let the truck pick up some speed on a down hill, only to slam on the brakes, this let the cargo shift forward just a wee bit. I was lucky to have enough smarts to find the sweet spot where cargo would remain fixed in the bed but the truck did not stall, it was at a crawl.
The Third and final trip lead me the solution I should have had from the start, a tail gait. Now since the original for that truck is long gone I was forced to improvise with a core box lid trimmed to fit roughly the width of the bed. This worked, the boxes pressed against it but could not unwedge it.
Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same action repeatedly and expecting different results, I suppose this means that I am not completely insane.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Yoshi's Kosher Sushi Episode 1
The origin of Kosher Sushi
It was late August, I was at the tail end of my rotation. Work had and moved sideways from my normal core logging activities. I was working on sorting out old curshed rock samples.
The process involved manually emptying all the waist bags into the bucket of a front end loader. The bag dumping took more time then the sorting, this left me with time to think. No one on that crew did much talking, adding even more time to my thinking time. It was in this dead air that the first bit of Yoshi's Sushi came too. It started with one word it was so dumb it should have died there. One thing went wrong, I met Yoshida Cohen with him in my head I some how turned what was the dumbest idea of the week into the nucleus of a story. So for the all to see,
Yoshi's Kosher Sushi. A personal First, a complete self contained self contained work of fiction. Which due the size of the peace and the geologic speed of the editing will be serialized.
Enjoy
Yoshi's Kosher Sushi
Yoseph ducked, Samuel did not.
Yoseph turned as he heard two consecutive thuds, the second one louder then the first. In the dim light of the alley way Yoseph saw his companion dead against the door, his hands still clutching the lock picks. The second thud had been Samuel hitting the door. The first thud had been the projectile hitting Samuel. Yoseph froze when he recognized the means of his specialist’s execution: a six pointed blue and white shuriken. A throwing star of David, stuck out the back of Samuel's neck just below the base of the skull. That second of inattention was too long. Before he could turn around Yoseph felt a chill move across the front of his neck. A sword was pressed to his throat.
A short form stepped out from the deep shadows. What was visible of the man’s face :if you move you're dead. The man reached out and took the compact assault rifle from Yoseph's now limp hands. The man was dressed a loose black tunic, a gi from the Asian martial arts traditions, with a mat black scabbard for a sword sticking out from behind a shoulder.
Yoseph was tall enough to make out the midnight blue yarmulka, perched atop the black hood. That was all Yoseph saw.
The dark alley went black. The sword at Yoseph’s neck pulled away. As a sack was thrown over his head and drawn tight making it hot and hard for Yoseph to breath
The man spoke softly. " Yoseph, this raid is over, this place is ours."
Yoseph nodded. He was out of the game. He wondered about the rest of his team, but if they got to him and Sam then the perimeter guard would also been neutralized. It should have been a simple training drill: enter the building, retrieve the hostage and get out.
Someone nudged Yoseph in the back with something cold and pointy, directing him back to the mouth of the old cobble stone alley. He could feel zip ties closing around his wrists and ankles and was then tossed into the back of a vehicle.
The ride was rough. The van bounced and bumped with no respect for is bound passenger as it zig zagged a path through old Jerusalem. Yoseph passed out.
…
When Yoseph came to he was still bound hand and foot, but the hood was off. He was on a narrow bunk in cell. The bunk stretched from wall too wall, but was shorter then Yoseph’s six-foot height. Weak yellow light came through a tiny dusty window set at eye level in a steel door. Taped to the wall above his head was a note. Yoseph twisted around to see it. It was Hebrew, in a coarse uneven script. It read:
Escape and Find Me,
Yoshi.
It was late August, I was at the tail end of my rotation. Work had and moved sideways from my normal core logging activities. I was working on sorting out old curshed rock samples.
The process involved manually emptying all the waist bags into the bucket of a front end loader. The bag dumping took more time then the sorting, this left me with time to think. No one on that crew did much talking, adding even more time to my thinking time. It was in this dead air that the first bit of Yoshi's Sushi came too. It started with one word it was so dumb it should have died there. One thing went wrong, I met Yoshida Cohen with him in my head I some how turned what was the dumbest idea of the week into the nucleus of a story. So for the all to see,
Yoshi's Kosher Sushi. A personal First, a complete self contained self contained work of fiction. Which due the size of the peace and the geologic speed of the editing will be serialized.
Enjoy
Yoshi's Kosher Sushi
Yoseph ducked, Samuel did not.
Yoseph turned as he heard two consecutive thuds, the second one louder then the first. In the dim light of the alley way Yoseph saw his companion dead against the door, his hands still clutching the lock picks. The second thud had been Samuel hitting the door. The first thud had been the projectile hitting Samuel. Yoseph froze when he recognized the means of his specialist’s execution: a six pointed blue and white shuriken. A throwing star of David, stuck out the back of Samuel's neck just below the base of the skull. That second of inattention was too long. Before he could turn around Yoseph felt a chill move across the front of his neck. A sword was pressed to his throat.
A short form stepped out from the deep shadows. What was visible of the man’s face :if you move you're dead. The man reached out and took the compact assault rifle from Yoseph's now limp hands. The man was dressed a loose black tunic, a gi from the Asian martial arts traditions, with a mat black scabbard for a sword sticking out from behind a shoulder.
Yoseph was tall enough to make out the midnight blue yarmulka, perched atop the black hood. That was all Yoseph saw.
The dark alley went black. The sword at Yoseph’s neck pulled away. As a sack was thrown over his head and drawn tight making it hot and hard for Yoseph to breath
The man spoke softly. " Yoseph, this raid is over, this place is ours."
Yoseph nodded. He was out of the game. He wondered about the rest of his team, but if they got to him and Sam then the perimeter guard would also been neutralized. It should have been a simple training drill: enter the building, retrieve the hostage and get out.
Someone nudged Yoseph in the back with something cold and pointy, directing him back to the mouth of the old cobble stone alley. He could feel zip ties closing around his wrists and ankles and was then tossed into the back of a vehicle.
The ride was rough. The van bounced and bumped with no respect for is bound passenger as it zig zagged a path through old Jerusalem. Yoseph passed out.
…
When Yoseph came to he was still bound hand and foot, but the hood was off. He was on a narrow bunk in cell. The bunk stretched from wall too wall, but was shorter then Yoseph’s six-foot height. Weak yellow light came through a tiny dusty window set at eye level in a steel door. Taped to the wall above his head was a note. Yoseph twisted around to see it. It was Hebrew, in a coarse uneven script. It read:
Escape and Find Me,
Yoshi.
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