Directions

Greetings.

This is one of my thought processes pieces if you do not want to read about the workings of my mind or my origin story leave now. I will try not to let this become a whining entry like I wrote last fall.

I am currently following a lead from a former coworker. It is a lead that has a reasonable chance of getting me a contract. That is the good news, the devil is in the details. It would be the same old, same old. Another job looking at rocks in some nowhere place working too many days in a row to be good for the head. I am following the lead because I can not afford to not take a contract. A trip to the Yukon will only be cool for the first few days and then the drudgery and the cold will sink in.

So its clear that I want to do some thing other then exploration geology. Hell I never planned on getting into that industry, I had class mates who did that field was a very deliberate choice. I stumbled into it. I took a job in my second year in my program it paid good. Then at the end of my program too tired of school to want to take on grad school I took a lead from my economic geology prof and landed myself a job in the Territories.

The job lasted two and a half years, it did me well, and got me out of being poor for a while. I was insecure and did not make any effort at looking for another job. I was also young and thought that loyalty to a firm mattered. This was not a path most people I knew or even me self expected from me.

The default position or opinion held by the people around me was that I would go in to grad school. Class mates that had worked in more cooperate settings commented that my temperament did not fit what they had seen, I chose research projects out of curiosity not practicality and I would have had the full support of the people I knew on faculty. Hell I had more grad school contacts in my last years then I did in industry.

I sat baffled as friends talked about having competing job offers, while I throw my resume in to the black hole of the internet for nothing.

So great was my ignorance when I over heard someone in my class talk about the salary he was negotiating, I was surprised by the notion you could negotiate a salary.

The situation now is somewhat better. I am more diversified, I have experience, but I don't feel as optimistic as I would like. The upgrading I did at BCIT so far has only landed me a very small number of ultimately unsuccessful interviews, the jobs I am getting reenforce the old trends its not the happiest of things.

This is not about me being globally unhappy, which is not the case. The one thing that was gained from BCIT with certainty was, in the absence of very strong personal ties to the interior, Vancouver is where I want to be. A shout out to the Skeptics in the pub people and the folks in East Van that I run into regularly for reenforcing that choice. Nor is the situation hopeless or stagnant. My resume is being sent to a professional should produce more polished document. Taking a different friends advice I have engaged in dialog with a recruitment agency.

At the end of the day, the easy jobs are the ones I don't but end up taking because at some point the money gets too low. Now I know I don't need to work non stop in that field to support my current standard of living but I want to be able to think beyond the basement suite.

The question I ask me self daily, is what can a person of average intellect, a generalist science education and moderate tech literacy do. I am confident that living in Vancouver is the out come I want to have after that I am less and less certain as time goes on.

How to have tea.

Greetings Bloggies.

And so it came to pass that I was walking along Commercial drive on Friday. A day of comfortable temperatures but unpredictable weather. I was approaching the northern end of the street, I had a mission, to get a pin. The pin reads,

I will not

Obsess!

I will not

Obsess!

I will not

Obsess

It may not be as awesome as Lars's Campus Crusade For Cthulhu, but its cool non the less. I was just out side a bike shop, saying one or two words with one of the staff who was on the side walk as I was passing. At this time I was not going for walk out of the need for that, I had already filled that walking back from the tailors on Hastings earlier that day, I was off to get out of the house perhaps say Hi to people I know.

I got distracted by the passage of a Tom Holt book. Thanks to the slightly sane nature of my personality I decided to start a conversation about the book or at least the author not having read that book specifically. For those who do not know Tom Holt is a english comic writer, I once described him as methadone for Pratchett addicts. If you enjoy Terry Pratchett or Christopher Moore you should like Tom Holt.

So, a conversation was started. The specifics do not matter but generally nerdy. Our collective direction of travel was the same for that moment. I picked up my pin and ran out of plans for the afternoon.

I accepted an invitation for tea, which resulted in the day having about twice and eventually three times as much walking as usual. Tea involved a long walk to a location recall being close to the Adanac bike route and very close to the freight terminal. The tea was had in a very lived in apartment with a pile of books on the hall way floor, including, at least three of the trilogy in 6 parts, other wise known as the Hitch Hikers Guild to the Galaxy, Making Money Terry Pratchett, and some scifi story collections. Facing the books was a large collection of teas. Greeting any human entering were basement cat and fluffy basement cat. Two pretty black cats of social and vocal characters.

Now it should be noted that this is a post about how to have tea not how to make tea. For all of the interesting talk, I can not accept the method tea brewing that was employed. One does not make tea by inserting a cup of water with the bag in it into the micro wave. This failure was allowed to pass after my host's cats decided I was a favorable piece of furniture. Also any one who claims, though I lack an proof, to have a friend who head of Security at CERN is cool.

The tea ran out the cats got bored and other things needed done. So an other Kilometer or two was added to my marching that day as the path was retraced thought apocalyptic skies and gusts of wind.

Later on I walked 75% of that distance to see Sunday's Best play. Their show at the Prophouse Cafe rocked. I had missed 4 or 5 of there last shows and hated my self for it. I did not have tea at the Prophouse but did approve of the brewing method. The loose leaf tea was steeped in a conical vessel which when placed on teapot drained into the pot, no mess, and no need for overly bitter overly steeped tea.

Anti Pope

Greetings.

Because I have this stuck in my head I think you should too.

I like how the antelope is in fact a zebra.

The Fancy Stuff Why I Cook It

Greetings.

This post has been simmering in my head since friday morning. I can no say why a brief chat on the street with a friend I did not expect to see in my neighborhood precipitated this but here it is.

If you know me on Facebook and you do if your any one you will know that I get both compliments and flack from food. Compliments from the few items I share with a lucky few friends and flack from the rest of the times when I was the only person to eat it but enough of a bastard to share it on Facebook. Though I would not call my food gourmet I do try to stretch my boundaries and have fun at it.

So the why of it. Firstly I just do like food and enjoy the experimentation and the act of both the cooking and the eating. I got raised in a home where improvised meals and variations on themes dominated over fixed recipes. This provided the seed for the try any thing as long as its not too complicated attitude I practice.

Secondly I spent a long time being functionally homeless. I was not a bumm, but from June 2006 to August 2010 I did not have a place of my own. From June 2006 to October 2008 the majority of my time was spent in the exploration camp at Discovery NWT. I certainly had the means to keep a place but with 6 out of 8 week spent in a camp there was no sense in it. After my a lay of I spent the tail half 2008 and much of 2009 on a cabin at the folks place. The cabin had minimal facilities but the absence of well plumbed sink turned me off cooking in there. I did some cooking during this time but it was not my space and its never easy cooking in some else's kitchen. This is where my first really sucky breads were made, the failures that lead to successes I have made more recently.

It was not until BCIT residence that I felt my cooking take off. Here at least the small slice cupboards was mine and the house had a good cooking culture. It was also under the pressure of the GIS program that I really started to value cooking as stress management function.

That brings us to now. Now I have my own place, simple basement suite in east van near lots of good shop. The unit was attractive to me the moment I walked in, it had a large kitchen, to be frank the main room is almost all kitchen. This was a pleasant contrast to the kitchen as after thought I had seen in other places. So now at last I can. But why do I and why the fancy stuff. Simply put I get bored.

Since completing the GIS program at bcit I have had an off again on a search for full time work. I have head my finances together with the fruits of two contracts, neither of which represent a direction I want to move in. The lack of steady work and a desire to feel I have done something leads me to cook and develop fancier dishes. The satisfaction of making a new bread or pasta work provides some of the satisfaction. Its a form of problem solving and creative expression.

Something I learned last year is something I enjoy. The one job, an unpaid practicum, that I enjoyed most of all was working for ESSA technologies on some software solutions. I did spend a great deal of time over my head and had to pick the brains (BRAINS!) of the team a fair bit, but I had fun. It was hard work often with my head banging against a mental wall but when I got things and managed to write some code and test , and eventually make it work it felt good. Cooking is easier then that but there is a similar satisfaction in making things work and building from scratch.

The Long Game

A bitter Sweet hello to my bloggies.

So I am writing this because a resolution has been achieved. In early November 2010 I got an email for a job opening that apparently I was a good candidate for. The position was for a GIS position with a local environmental and engineering firm. A series of emails were sent back and forth as I tried to fish out the details to see if I was interested. I has barely been home from Saskewan for more then 4 days when this news fell on my lap.

It was good luck.

Well not luck to be honest. The product of the Long Game. As I was preparing to head to BCIT to get re-educated, a series of contacts were made with the intent of landing me a practicum position before classes started. Due to this work by end of summer I had gained a series of contacts who were interested in talking business. It was one of these contacts that reached out to me in early November with the lead on the job.

For once the advice form HR websites and the endless pamphlets on how to get a job paid off. I had done as they said, made a contact, kept in touch and was on their radar when an opening showed up.

That is how it should work, but in the end I lost the job to someone with more GIS experience. There is value to my geology work but my mapping work exists only in the class room. I could not compete as well as I hoped. So now once again I find my self at loose ends. I only know what I hate to do for work and have no idea about what I want to do. So now that it is the new year and I have lost one more opportunity it is time to put forward a rather lame but honest new years resolution. It is my goal for 2011 to get a job that only sucks my soul a little and lets me come home at night.

Fandom

Greetings Bloggies.

This post is in response to having met people I consider myself a fan of. Specifically Spider Robinson, author of many books and even more terrible puns and George Hrab, author of 1 book several albums and a similar body of puns. In generally I have not self identified as a FAN. Outside of geography, I have no affinity for sports teams, and like any non fan I only care if the team in my city is winning, the rest of the time I don't even know they are playing. Similarly, movie stars and most famous performers fail to engage my interest.

The people I am fans of have reached me in ways more personal then the players on a sports team or an actor on the big screen. Spider Robinson, has made me laugh, taught me some of the principles of truly horrible puns, I have lost count of all the books of his I have read. I have stopped reading him in recent years, I have had my fill and even when a writer is good I will over time want to move on to new voices. That said his more emotional short stories still linger in my memory and the community that existed in the Callahan's pub series made me want to have some of that for my self.

I only saw Spider briefly, he did a reading and a signing afterwards. I exchanged only a few words, enough to convey my appreciation. This limited dialog is what I expect from a content producer in the traditional media. The other side of the coin is the relation that can exist in new media, those people who have carved out a space for them selves on the internets because the old school distribution and sales methods fail for something as fringe. The best example of that in my life is George Hrab.

Some where along the line I started to listen to podcasts, downloadable, generally audio content, generally free, often amateur. Many of them simply suck. Since at the time I had a boring job that did not always require my full attention I listened to many such shows, this chain eventually lead to the Geologic podcast. Its mix of dry humor, strait up silly skits and random factoids entertained me. This precipitated an exchange of emails that has continued in an off and on trickle over the last few years.

Upon hearing that George was going to be in Vancouver, I ordered my tickets as soon as I knew the site was online. To be fair he was a guest host on another podcast which I have been listening to for roughly the same amount of time, but he was coming to Vancouver non the less. So colour me surprised when, I was recognized in as I spoke introduced myself. Two me an interesting illustration of the way the internet has opened up media.

I conclude this with saying that, within my interests I am as prone to fandom as most though I feel I am a laid back supporter. I am also glad that now that I live in Vancouver that I can indulge my fixations better as many things come to town, because of that I can start checking off personal goals rather then count missed opportunities.

Stuff.

Greetings Bloggies.

Its been a while since I have written. I am back in vancouver. I came back on the 5th. Its good to be back but thats a separate post. This is a post I thought up while at Rabbit lake. Stuff, we all have it especially the people who read blogs.

I would say I am not the most materialistic of folks living in industrialized consumer economy, but I have my share of stuff. What got me thinking as my aged steel toed work boots absorbed water through their partly delaminated soles was that how little of the stuff I own has really brought value or utility to my life. In this case value stemmed from devices that have helped me earn money. I could do a separate post on items of personal or sentimental value.

I'll start with the foundation. Boots. I have two pair of quality boots between the two of them nearly every dollar I have made was spent standing in them or walking in them. Acquired first were the Scarpa hikers, my third pair of proper hiking boots and the first not to fail on a poorly placed seam. They have been resoled once but the resoling left them tighter then they were originally. Many an afternoon or evening was spent tramping across naked metavolcanics in a greenstone belt. That 2.5 billion year old pressure cooked volcanic rock wore those soles out.

Boot number two the work boots. Heavy bricks of hard rubber and leather. Not much for walking but a great boot to stand in. Stand I did, looking at rock in boxes for days on end leads to standing. They had one weakness I did not know about till after I got to the north. It turns out the hard compound rubber in their sole gets piss poor traction on snow or ice, worse then nearly any shoe I have have ever owned. Despite that they have still managed to have a huge number of hours logged in them. I debate resoling them. They might be worth it but that would also be a symbolic admission that I believe I will return to the lines of work that those boots represent, something I am aiming to avoid.

Next up is the multi tool. The least used item on it is the can opener. The knife has most often been used to sharpen wax china markers. I once tried to one of the longer narrow, not knife parts to pry off a hubcap on a truck. The truck was stuck with a flat on Prosperous outside Yellow Knife. I was trying to change the tired and had never seen the arrangement that truck presented to me. There was a plastic hubcap which had on it plastic lug-nuts. In the kit was a second tire wrench sized for the plastic nuts. Never having seen a hubcap that did not just pop off I could not image an arrangement as insane as that. So I did what I thought made sense, try to lever off the cap. I failed and had to beat the tool back into shape to fit it back in the housing.

Of the items that make me money perhaps most iconic is the hand lens. When pressed I will answer that I am a geologist. This is a suitable answer to outsiders as I have not yet attained a standing in the related professional organization. After a rock hammer the hand lens is iconic of geology. The pair, a cheap 10X and a vertigo inducing 30X have often let me identify tiny specks of gold that would have other wise passed me by. The flip side is true, they have also removed false positives from my data collection.

The art to using the 30X one is to focus your eye on the target and then slip the lens between you and it, you will never find what you were looking for if you go at it half assed.