Conway Twitty is not funny

Me love you long time. Though I am squeamish about my equipment.

I choose work over fun. This doesn't mean that if you put a naked woman in one room, and a thermo text in another, that I will automatically default to the text. What it does mean is that if that naked woman wants a three day contract for my time, I am going to walk away.

Why?
A) She's likely a prostitute, since when do I have naked women lying about my house?
B) She has likely come into contact with a lawyer in the not too distant past, where else would a hooker get boned up on contract law.

And most importantly:

C) I would see that three days as a lost opportunity to complete 'necessary' work. 'Necessary' because in my mind, not completing engineering is failing. Shituation.

If you are wondering why I am talking about this, it has something to do with a phone call from my Dad.

Dad: Come to Hawaii.
Me: No.

Pretty fucking simple. Why won't I go?
A) He's likely a prostitute.

In truth, because I know that I would accomplish zilch wrt engineering in that time. I actually rationalized it by this thought:

I can go to Hawaii any time, I only have one chance to pass engineering.

Luckily, I (and you engineers) will make large sums of money in short periods of time in the future, and likely work for firms that throw vacation time around like confetti at a fifties wedding. Economy better not crash or I'm gonna be pissed.

Writing this is much more difficult when I'm not stressed out. Or considering my current level of stress, it may just be more difficult when other people aren't around to soak up my bitchiness.

I got a call from my landlady last week, keeping a watchful eye on the goings on of the strata council, making sure I do nothing to displease them. After we got that cleared up, someone brought up the summer. Luckily she's realized that selling a condo for a profit is not going to happen at this point in time. Lucky because Justin, Meggi and I have a place to live for the next year. Rent is going to be a point of contention, will have to see what prices are like come summer, given the choice between staying put or saving a few bucks a month, the money will win. Now that's loyalty for you.

I have recently been made aware that I am similar to my father in one frightening way. The story my friends will be familiar with would be about when my older cousin 'had an announcement to make' one Christmas, it turned out that he was going to be a dad. The goofy thing about it was that the only person who didn't know was my dad, because nobody wanted to tell him for fear of him turning his back on them. He didn't of course, was happy as shit that Dwayne wasn't gay, and proud that he was coming within spitting distance of acting like an adult. At least that's what I assume his thought process was. Either way, I apparently put out the same vibe, I feel a little dissapointed in myself, but I'm not sure why. Substantial pondering will be required on that issue.

...Also funny quote that sums up life at the moment:

Andrew(Not SpeaknSpell in case you're wondering): In the beginning, God said, 'Let there be Thermodynamics'... and here it is.

What else is there now besides engineering. My friends: engineers. My job: engineer. My every waking hour: engineering. Well rounded students my ass.

Schism - Tool - Great Song ./definitely not something to give someone in a troubled relationship.

I believe this is the first time that my bloggery has been accomplished away from the oh-so comforting atmosphere provided by the crappy html windows of Blogdrive. By that I mean that this entry was not crafted online, but in the austere environment of good ol’ word. 

 

The past few weeks have been quite hectic, there has been a lot going on(or going down, or starting up). Basically, my days have been filled with that wonderful feeling that lets one know that life still fills their bodies, yes boys and girls I am speaking of stress! (Tangent: I no longer indent paragraphs, score one for technical). In spite of the things I’ve had to do, I’ve also been devoting a substantial amount of time to random pursuits.

The pace of life at the office for the past few weeks has been slightly more relaxed than over the first few months. I show up early, alter some drawings, do some paperwork and calculations, attend meetings, then head out to the parking lot or landfill for an inspection. After the inspection I have another chunk of paperwork to tackle, reports to copy and send, and then back to calculations, drawings, and meetings. I’ve been surveying quite often still, including a super-amazingly accurate level/rod topographical survey of a portion of the parking lot sub-base. That last came about as a result of our office being chronically short-staffed, no surveyors available, no techs available, no total station available. Ended up requisitioning one of the contractors labourer’s which I can apparently do any time I require a ‘Survey Assistant’. Not sure if I can call my assistant into the office to answer the phone and give massages, but if not then there will be substantial alterations to contracts in the future. 

Erica came by for her interview/meet thing on the 31^st, was much less intense than I expected, though the entire episode seemed to be a check to ensure that I was not being driven to suicide by my work. Suppose that it gives her something to do and adds a little justification to the ridiculous fees we pay(or don’t pay, depending on whether or not you are me). Still no word on the outcome of my first co-op report, though I expect it to be a resounding F(uck you Albert, for not citing, providing references, or using a duotang).

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That’s supposed to represent a break, or division, perhaps a crack in the narrative?

 

On the life side of life, I spent a few weeks searching high and low for residences for myself, and those other two hippy children, whatever their names are. There was a substantial amount of pressure from the northlands to secure a place early, really early. I couldn’t argue too much with the logic of finding a place early, more so for me than for the others, but the panic was something that I could live without. The amount of ‘stuff’ that I have accrued over the past two years seemed staggering, still does, but with a whole month to move things around, I figured the reduced stress of having a place for August would balance the cost of double rent for one month.

 I am now almost completely moved out of the house in Winfield, leaving behind mainly things I don’t want to bring along, with the notable exceptions of my TV and stereo. In case you are wondering, yes, I have become a condo dweller. I still dislike the idea of living in building full of people, who due their being people, I likely despise. Ugh. People. Anyway, it’s in the heart of Rutland, on Rutland Rd and Rutland St.. I lied about that last part. It’s directly across the way from my place last summer. And so far is proving to be very convenient. If anyone feels like creeping on the place you can google ‘Legacy Rutland’ and find floor plans for the L-shaped building, unit is an ‘Athabaska’. Apparently condos should have names that sound like b-grade porn stars or else geographic regions.

The best and worst thing about the unit is that it is brand new. Not brand new meaning newly renovated, or just a year old, brand new as in I was one of the first people to set foot in the finished product. Brand new in the way that everything still has that sterile smell like the dorms in first year. The upside of this is that I don’t have to worry about what the last person in here did, the downside is that I a) have completely unblemished everything to fuck up and ruin, and b) haven’t had anyone before me to find problems with the unit. But we shall see how it turns out. My living room is looking a little empty without a TV, and watching movies on the lappy is getting old faster than an child with progeria, or whatever the hell it’s called.

So there’s living arrangements, on to... adventures!

***********************************************************************************

Fucking word turns that line of stars into some shat covered cat looking thing every damn time I turn my back.

 

Erin and I went on a journey up to Dawson for August long weekend. The main goal was to attend the Fellers family reunion in Fellers Heights. The trip up usually takes 13 hours, with stops. About six hours into our trip I realized that we would be 15 hours on the road. This is a gay amount of time to spend on the road. In fact, I feel the same way about 15 hours in a truck as I do about live cats. We ended up making slightly better time than expected, but offset it by stopping at Bijoux falls in the pine pass. Small, but pretty, will post pictures on Facebook in the not too distant future.

The reunion turned out to be smaller than I expected, only about 150 people. Apparently not many of the out of towners decided to show their out of towny faces. I did get to impress upon Erin the scope of my family though, as we were visited one night by my six nephews, along with four of my cousins, and a further seven of their children(luckily the three asshole children didn’t show, otherwise I may have cried).

We had traveled to Dawson on Friday, spent Saturday observing the family reunion, and then decided to head to Tumbler Ridge for ‘Grizfest’ Sunday night. It was a very nostalgic trip for me, was able to cruise past places that I had spent a substantial amount of time working with my father. Also had a chance to see how ridiculously colourful the wilderness is up there. I’d forgotten that just how vibrant the north is during summer, makes the Okanagan look like a dustbowl.

As we neared Tumbler, we drove through the remnants of a forest fire that forced the evacuation of the town about three years ago. It was strange going from a vibrant green landscape to one of complete desolation, blackened pines as far as the eye could see in every direction. Very humbling.

When we got to the campsite in Tumbler, we were greeted by a bunch of girls from my high school who had been camping with Meggi. They had also been drinking, a lot. Was a little awkward. Not terrible, but seeing a flock of people I used to drunkenly flirt with stumble towards Erin and I seemed like an incident waiting to happen. In the end it turned out that tickets for the festival were $55, and the only act left to hit the stage was Theory of a Deadman. ... ... ... ... ... No thanks?

Was rather hilarious, Justin hadn’t even heard of them before. Erin, Justin, Shawn(BCIT buddy) and I ended up walking down to the concert to recover the girls towards the end of the show. Every song we heard along the way resulted in a shocked, ‘Isn’t this a Nickelback song?’ from Justin. Was kind of saddening. It turned out that the beer gardens had run out of beer, water and pop so the girls were thirsty and sober when we found them after the show. I was very disappointed by this, I had hoped for some drunken sing-a-longs on the walk back to the campsite. In the end, we were run down by Shane(Childhood friend) on his bike, who had apparently been stopped so many times over the weekend in his truck that he gave up driving and simply rode his bike from place to place. At one point he had forced his brother to put the four(count ‘em) open bottles of beer he was carrying onto the curb before getting into his truck. He did this to avoid a ticket worth several hundred dollars and possible vehicle impoundment and in the end got an eighty dollar littering fine. Was worth a chuckle, no possible way to win for that boy.

After we got back to the campsite we cooled down relatively quickly and went to bed. The noise, as usual died off by about 5 am, the general vibe before then being hushed conversations, loud music, the occasional burst of overjoyed yelling, and some pack of duck-fucking retards who would yell either “Fuck the Police” or “Fucking You Pigs” every time a squad car made a round through the campsite.

Needless to say, the RCMP have far more restraint than I do. I may not agree with some of the laws (N rules) but I don’t think people fully grasp what a society without police would look like. For instance, the power went out in most of northern rutland a few nights ago, I was driving through shortly after the lights went out, already there were police in vests directing traffic at the major intersections. Not a momentous feat by any means, but just a solid reminder that when the shit hits the fan, there is someone there to clean up the mess.

Anyway, that was a random leap to the future that shouldn’t have happened. Back to Grizfest. Erin and I woke up in the morning feeling nasty and nastier, I slept alright, but was skating around the borderline of a hangover. Shawn roused shortly after we did and helped us pack our shit. We decided to check out the dinosaur discovery center and footprints before hitting the highway again. It turned out that the discovery center was an old hardware store, with four imported full fossils, and a bunch of plates of rock from the surrounding area. The footprints were impressive. No monsters, but very well preserved for being tens of millions of years old.

The footprints had originally been discovered a few years ago by hikers exploring Flatbed Creek, which runs very near to the town site. We headed out towards one of the sites along the creek that was recommended by the pre-pubescent staff of the Discovery center. The hike was relatively brief, about 20 or 30 minutes each way. And all that we could find were greatly eroded specimens. Ie. they looked more like holes than tracks, except for a few that looked like fucked up people prints, made me laugh to think that so many pseudo-scientists latched onto things like that as proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.

Rest of the trip was uneventful, so far as I can recall.

*********************************************************************************

One of the things I forgot to mention about our time in Dawson was the trip we made to my old elementary school. The inspiration for this came about from a discussion of how sweet playgrounds were. Erin told me that a bunch of schools in the Okanagan were replacing the old wooden playgrounds with metal and plastic ones, which I felt was sacrilege. I began to worry about my old haunt, and figured we’d better swing by to see how pitiful it had become in the new age of over-protection and safeguards. What we found when we arrived was surprising to say the least. The first thing I noticed was the old Adventure Playground, still all splintery and gross, standing in all its glory on a hill near the school. Basically the only thing that had changed from my time at the school was that the merry-go-round was no longer in existence, and a large ditch had been filled in. Oh, and they built a FUCKING CLIMBING WALL! Sons of bitches, I thought they were making these things more care-bearish. The sight of the possible crippling climbing wall was very relieving to me. While there, I also had to chuckle at some of the playthings that still persisted, such as a ladder to the top of a swingset(about 20 feet high), an igloo made of metal bars(perfect for fucking up shins and knees) and the old gymnast rings. I had to play on those puppies for a few minutes.

********************************************************************************

Madison got me started watching the Thunderf00t videos on youtube a while back, and it has developed into something of an obsession, which I think I have only recently overcome. At first, I found the videos highly entertaining, before I went a little deeper and realized how serious the subject was. Basically, Thunderf00t(and many others) post videos which seek to point out the glaring flaws in the ideas of Christian fanatics who spam the net with videos ‘proving’ a historical basis for the old testament. Yep, everything from 6000 year old earth, to Noah’s flood, to straight up magic-fingers creation. Basically everything you ever learned in science class, just catapult that info from your mind. It would be great if these points of view were streaming from some dude in his mom’s basement, railing against the ‘elitist conspiracy of the scientific community’, but these guys fill auditoriums with their followers, hell they are broadcast on national tv and make more movies than Samuel L. Jackson. When you stop and realise that more than half of the united states doesn’t accept evolution, it gets a little frightening.

Granted, only a small portion of the fanatics go so far as to deem themselves Young Earth Creationists, but there are quite literally millions more of them that look at science as subordinate to the bible in understanding life. One memorable clip shows an Australian Engineer turned crusader speaking to a crowded auditorium filled with children.

Old guy: “Who knows everything?”

Children: “God!”

Old guy: “Who’s always been there?”

Children: “God!”

Old guy: “Who do we trust, god or the scientists?”

Children: “God!”

Now if that’s not brainwashing I don’t quite know what is. Again, it wouldn’t be too terrible if he was telling them to follow the commandments, live as Jesus lived, or one of a thousand other messages that he could’ve pushed, but no. He was telling the kids to rebel against centuries of scientific progress. Not just in biology, but in geology, and even physics in some of his more extreme arguments.

The way I see it is that there’s two parents, religion and science, they’ve always had a bit of a rocky relationship, but now Mommy Religion is telling the kids that Daddy Science is a drunk every time she tucks them in. Seems like a good way to gain custody when the split becomes official.

Anyway, there’s so much on youtube that one person probably wouldn’t be able to get through it in their lifetime. So I spent a few days watching videos from both sides, (By the way Madi, watch the Kent Hovind videos uncut, almost as comic to listen to him destroy himself as it is to listen to everyone else attack him) and then went out and bought a book.

Books are great, all you have to do is look at the spine and you know whether or not to trust it blindly. If it says Harper Collins, or Penguin, you know that there’s been an editor through it a few times, probably even checked the references, on the other hand, if it says Wild Bill’s Love Shanty Publishin’ then its probably about as useful as a handful of grass.

Anyway, got a book by a prominent Biologist, who happens to be very Christian, who also thinks that Creationists need to take a look at the facts. In the end, his point becomes this: Science is not here to prove or disprove religion. When science proves that we all evolved from fish way back in the day, people of faith should take a step back and say, “I’ll be darned, our god was great enough to create a process, which acting on its own yielded the ultimate product, us. People who could communicate with each other, build religions and worship an almighty figure.” Seems like a good point of view to me, I can’t say no to it, so there’s a start.

After reading the book I think I can put the issue to rest, well at least my obsession can take a nap. In the end my aversion to creationists was strengthened, strengthened, then reaffirmed.

The guy also had a really good argument for intelligent designers, though his argument against irreducible complexity was a little weaker(the reason I bolded that last one is so that you, the people, can google it and see if you can’t see the same gaping holes that I do, the main one being something that us engineers should see very quickly).

On a side note, I got into an argument with a guy on youtube. It was all about the above topic, the other combatant turned out to be an electrical engineer, which shocked me.  I asked him if he agreed with one of the YECs’  beliefs that an ‘Ice Comet’ created the polar ice caps. He implied that he did, but:

 

Speed of slow comet: 20,000km/hr         5555.55m/s

1 kg stopping from 5555.55m/s releases: (1/2)*1kg*(5555.55m/s)² = 15,432,098.76 Joules

To heat one kg of water from 4 degrees above absolute zero, which strikes me as being the temperature of space, I may be wrong and don’t have internet to check:

                1kg*269.15K*4.23kJ/(kg*K) = 1138.5 kJ

                1kg*333.7kJ/kg = 333.7kJ

                1kg*100K*4.2kJ/(kg*K) = 420kJ

                1kg*2257kJ/kg = 2257 kJ

                Total = 4149.2 kJ

So far, we’ve used less than a third of our kinetic energy, but given that the earth is rather large, and has a fair amount of inertia, I’m going to assume that all of the kinetic energy of the comet is converted to heat during its rapid deceleration.

                15432.1 – 4149.2 = 11282.9 kJ/kg of comet-juice still left to spare.

Also assuming that the average speed of the comet during its collision is 10000km/hr, the time to travel through 110km of atmosphere would be about: 40 seconds. That puts the power output of a 1kg comet at:

                 15432098.76J/40s = 385802.469 Watts

Pretty good for a chunk of ice, that thing could run an oven for three or four hours.

Doesn’t sound like those comets will be rapidly cooling off the earth and leaving behind massive stockpiles of ice so long as the laws of physics hold true. I pointed this out to him and he replied that maybe this one little insignificant detail wasn't true, but that he felt 90% of the stuff Hovind was saying was true.

Google Kent Hovind and check the Wikipedia article, hilarity!

Hopefully I haven’t made any glaring mathematical errors (4.3*3 = 1200 right!), that would be embarrassing.

By the way, I really wanted to work 'catapulted over the walls like the corpses of oh so many lepers' into this entry, but not all dreams come true.

Also, can now get internet in condo by holding the lappy in the frame of the door that leads to my balcony, need to get me some lawn chairs!

Ever taken a moment to stand back and ask what you are.

I tried, didn't appreciate it, won't do it again. Besides, the only part of me that isn't dyed a misty red at this point in time is the area that gets blurred out on tv.

Went to the dock again today, sun was up, was amazing. Spent about an hour pissing about in the water, swimming along. THEN! A boat went by, a wake boat, with a wake. Apparently it was a rather large wake because it dislodged the second anchor on the raft and sent it spiralling away from me.

Rather annoying, I'd been looking forward to putting my feet up. I spent about another hour fiddling with anchors, really didn't need that long, but I figured my lunch of jerky and submerged jug of apple juice(which IS denser than water apparently) would keep.

Last night was a long one, up til two am doing absolutely nothing, surfing the web for anything that would catch my eye. 'The Internet is for Porn' by the way. Got up at seven because the temperature in my room was more demonic inferno than cool breeze, and then went to dock.

Now that the little tangent is done with...

Got back on the dock, whipped out my PopSci magazine, and fell asleep. Woke up, cursed numerous times, rolled about gingerly and made a slow creep for the water.

Burn is not bad, but it exists, very complete too, the back got it when I was fixing the anchors, the stomach got it when I was asleep.

Foolishness.

very dehydrated as well.


Talked to both parents today, its amazing how little communication exists between the two. Total time on the phone was over three hours, ended up hearing about the same events from two completely independent grapevines, kind of an objective perspective, very handy.

Watched a show about some guy trying to engineer two different species into one freak, was an amazing concept, but so horridly boring that I did dishes instead. Not gonna make it very high on the Nielsen Ratings with that kind of drawing power.

Lou (new roommate) informed me that Caiti (old roommate) wants to get a puppy, or guinea pigs. My mind is filled with images of me tossing their soggy, just drowned corpses onto Caiti as an alarm clock.

Maybe not that extreme, but given the fact that a stray cat was 'externalized' less than four days ago for touching my trash, she should realize that the consequences would be dire for an animal who touched my furniture.

At 21:42, its definitely time to retire.

Part 3 of 3

 This particular section actually has nothing to do with the bible, or religion. It is an order for lunch tomorrow, #9 Seasoned Spare Ribs, #28 War Wonton Soup.

Tomorrow is Andy's going away party. Andy is the senior draftsman at work, about 5'4" and 100% entertainment. He was Canadian Champion in Judo 2 years in a row, played with such bands as The Offspring and Green Day, and is a CAD god like no other.

He is leaving tomorrow to move to Victoria where his wife will be pursuing her Master's Degree at UVIC. He isn't technically leaving, since he will be working for the company from home, in his current position as senior draftsman.

Basically I just wanted to bring this up because I spent so much time talking about work, without spending much time explaining that it is the people I work with that make my job great. After a month of working with Andy, he's asked me to come visit him in Victoria, go camping, and go scotch-hopping at the Victoria pubs. With a normal person, you would chuckle this off as a hollow pleasantry, but he's pretty dead serious and has already scheduled in time for Alex, one of the Junior Techs to travel to Victoria and stay with him for a week. 33 years old with the heart of a 20 year old. Very good guy. Though the creepy voices he does are made truly terrifying by his stout, leprachaun-like appearance. Trust me, its worth a shudder.

PART 2 OF 3

Sleep is nice, and so are Saturdays. In fact, sleeping on Saturdays is rather amazing. So as I was softly snoozing last Saturday, Ben came and knocked ever so lightly on my door. He informed me that there were some people at the door asking for me. LANDLORDS! Don't they know that sleeping on Saturdays is next to godliness? Got out of bed, threw on pants/shirt, no undies though. I trudged upstairs, all the while trying to force my hair into a less Edward-Scissorhands-ish arrangement.

When I got to the door, there was the JW lady, this time with two young girls. Normally, I appreciate my discussions with her. But NOT when she disturbs my Saturday slumber. We got to talking and I was again pulled into the discussion, she asked me about anything that my bible may have proven/disproven as far as Jesus goes. So I hit here with the Great Flood of Lies.

Essentially, it is mathematically impossible for enough water to have fallen on the Earth to inundate as claimed by the bible, especially considering that the topography of the Earth would have been very similar to today given the Bible's 10,000 year maximum time frame. I casually mentioned this, but her brow began to furrow as I spoke.

'That's funny' she said 'because I have this pamphlet that says scientists have proven it is possible.' Madison knows how I react to someone challengin my ideas. I smiled, said it would be interesting to see another perspective and took her pamphlet. We talked a little more and then she went on her way. I must say, she is very cute.

As soon as the door closed, I slapped Ben upside the head for waking me up, then went downstairs to investigate this pseudo-science she was spouting.

The pamphlet begins with a question,

"                        Was The Flood of Noah's Day Really Global?

    The Noachian Flood occurred more than 4,000 years ago. So there are no eyewitnesses around to tell us about it (DER, REALLY!!! No Four Thousand Year Old People Around, Since When!). There is a written record (Italics Added) of the catastrophe, which states that the floodwaters covered the tallest mountains of that time.

    The historical document (Italics Added) reads: "bible quote".

[Christian Science Incoming]
    Some may wonder if the story of the whole earth being covered with water is a myth or at least an exaggeration. Not at all! (Italics Added) Indeed to some extents the Earth is still flooded.  Seawater covers about 71 percent of the Earth's surface. So in reality the floodwaters are still here. And if the glaciers and polar ice caps were to melt, the sea level would rise to cover cities like New York and Tokyo.
   
    Geologists studying the landscape of the northwestern United States believe that as many as 100 catastrophic floods once washed over the area. One such flood is said to have roared through the region with a wall of water 600 meters high traveling at 105 kilometers an hour - a flood of 2,000 cubic kilometers of water, weighing more than two trillion tons. Similar findings have led other scientists to believe that a global flood is a distinct possibility."

My first reaction to this was a laugh, then a holy shit, then a whole lot of anger. The fucking audacity of these people. Whoever publishes this should be fucking shot in the kneecap and then forced to run a marathon with thirteen rabid weasels stuffed up his ass.

First, when you're trying to prove that the bible is true, do not say, THE BIBLE IS TRUE BECAUSE THE BIBLE IS TRUE.

There is nothing more annoying to me than this argument, because I said so got old a long fucking time ago.

"the sea level would rise to cover cities like New York and Tokyo."

New York City: Elevation 10m
Tokyo: Elevation 18m

A fucking sneeze could inundate these cities, given that the average elevation of the earth is over 800m, and that if every berg, glacier, cap and cube of ice on earth were to melt the sea would rise at most ~100m, there is no way the amount of water on the planet today could 'cover the tallest mountains'. Hell, it wouldn't even blot out the New York skyline (Empire State=381m above ground = 391m ~ 4 times higher than any possible flood).

"One such flood is said to have roared through the region with a wall of water 600 meters high traveling at 105 kilometers an hour - a flood of 2,000 cubic kilometers of water, weighing more than two trillion tons."

The american Northwest, more commonly known as ALASKA, suffered from powerful tsunamis created by massive earthquakes in Japan. When was the last time you heard of a 600m 'flood'? Imagine for me if you will, a wall of water that could wipe out all life in 'the northwest united states' hold that image in your mind, try to quantify it. Then think about Lake Huron, take HALF of Lake Huron, and you have about 2000 cubic kilometers of water, ah dang, don't think thats gonna be enough to wipe out civilization as we know it JWs.

One thing that bothers my boss Elliot a lot is when people use fucking idiotic forms of measurement. For instance, did you know that the 'great flood' that struck the united states contained enough water to fill 3333 thousand BILLION Aquafina bottles!!! Who the fuck cares. Two trillion tons eh? If the great fucking flood were to fall as rain over the Province of Quebec (avg. elevation over 500m by the way), there would be a grand total of 1.256m of rain. Catastrophic, yes, globally catastrophic, not quite,  especially when one considers that Quebec is about 1% of the total land surface of the earth.

The thing that pisses me off the most about this document, is not that it is wrong, because it isn't, the information is true. What bothers me is that the information is so blatantly misrepresented that an uniformed reader would feel like the impossible is in fact normal.

I.M Chisov was a Russian pilot who bailed out of his destroyed aircraft and survived a fall of over 6.5 kilometers. Therefore, miracles happen.

Crazy I know, but it is true.

The only part I forgot to mention was that he was over a mountain range, landed on an extremely steep, powdered slope and rolled down to the bottom of the mountain. He had serious injuries, but survived.

If I hadn't told you that last bit, and you were retarded, you might've jumped on the bandwagon right there. But really, all I did was not tell the whole truth, and plant an idea in your mind.

So angry.

And just so you know, everything I mentioned should be common sense(if not common knowledge) and can be found by anyone with five minutes and an internet connection.







 

PART 1 OF 3

Long titles have a certain appeal, not in the sexy kind of way though. The thing is a long title will make me pause long enough to think about the words, read it over and take a moment to appreciate what rises to the surface of the putrid mess of intelligence that is my mind.

What a long, long time it has been.

There are things I want to show you, and a few things that I'd rather hide, lucky for me, my camera has been sitting without batteries for a sufficient amount of time to gather a fine layer of dust.

Work:

Work has been pretty damn good so far. I didn't know what to expect when I walked out of my interview, or back in for my first day for that matter. Since then I have drawn and redrawn water systems till my eyes could see nothing but air relief valves and robar couplers. Weeks spent typing in caps have definitely made me appreciate the sublety one can convey with text, a YELL, a whisper? Not in AutoCAD, at least, not in legal documents.

For those of you who have been out of the loop, my office had a contract to revamp the water systems in six(6) provincial campgrounds. My first day I was tossed balls deep into Bear Creek, wielding a yellow highlighter and riding a CAD steed in a battle against giant, red-stained drawings. It seemed like every day I was pulled from one park to another as priorities changed, before eventually shooting out three camps at once under the E.C. Manning Park banner. The next day, two more followed, progress.

Then we got word that Kamloops was down by about 9 staff members, to about 9 staff members. This meant that we were thrown five additional parks to complete, all with substantially earlier deadlines than originally expected.

The parks continue to frustrate everyone involved.

Aside from the parks, I worked on a new water system for Silver Star, a subdivision at Silver Star, a few parking lots, a massive subdivision in Vancouver, and a 'little' project called Hiawatha. There's been others but those are the drawings I can remember most easily.

Sitting at a desk doing CAD drawings for 8+ hours/day isn't the best entertainment in the world, but the drafters I work with are very much entertaining, lots of gay jokes, family guy references and intense political and religious discussions.

Of course, I would've gone bat shit insane by now if I'd only been doing CAD work... Lost a few beans as is.

The nice thing about our office is that we have a Geomatics division, so I've been able to get out in the field surveying a few times now, at such exotic locales as the Landfill, the Ball Parks, and the Storage Center.

On top of that, there's been a few calculations, contract documents, cost estimations, and assisting the more civil focussed staff members with understanding what valves and electricity are.

Recently, the lights in the tunnel have been getting brighter. Don't get me wrong, the tunnel is very well lit already, but my shadow is now almost burnt into the wall.

First good news: I'm in charge of site management for the parks I drew, well a few of them anyway, my boss wants the really distant ones so that he can go camping a few times a month and bill the shit out of the company for it. My domain encompasses Bear Creek, Okanagan Lake, Fintry and one other mysteriously unmemorable campground, all of which will require frequent inspections, overtime, and many, many chargeable kilometers.

Second good news: The 'little' project I mentioned earlier, Aqua, is going to be built on the site of an RV park. Nothing too grandiose, just a few towers built out of a massive subterranean parking facility, surrounded by townhouses, restaraunts, and businessses. I definitely don't get to oversee construction on this one, I don't get to survey, or even likely see the construction. I probably won't be able to touch the buildings with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole, but I do get to design the storm system for the area.

My boss basically told me that I can work on it whenever I wanted, he just wanted me to know that I wouldn't be a CAD mule all summer, that eventually, I might get to strut a little.

That takes care of work.

From the jacket of the 'A Knight's Tale' DVD:

extremest sport

That is all.

I write from a future so far beyond that it is behind. I write from a post-mayan calendar world. Earthquakes and tidal waves sweeping away the evidence of the past as the world shifts through one more chaotic mass extinction. (EXCEPT BLOGDRIVE WONT LET ME POST FROM THE FUTURE...)

Gloomy eh? Good thing things are much better than things could be, better than the things that I described in that thing above this thing.

1) Grampa Fields is alright, will likely be on blood thinners and require frequent checkups, but for a 79 year old man that's not bad at all. I imagine the staff at the hospital are beginning to wonder why they have a patient like him in the ICU, never ending streams of visitors, giggling kids darting around his bed, trying to avoid his tickling fingers and frighteningly loose dentures.

Basically, the strokes haven't done shit to his attitude or energy level.

Though he does like hospital food, which is a crock of shit, after 60 odd years of eating my Grandmas cooking, I'd slay the poor bastard who tried to feed me hospital rations.

2) Other Gramps makes a mistake:

    Mistake: Forgot to check whether or not the back door to the house was actually closed.
    Outcome: I arrived home an hour after my sisters and nephews, they had already had a fire going since they arrived. Though the upstairs of the house was acceptably warm(could stand on floors, only required a heavy sweater or jacket to keep warm), the downstairs was basically a meat locker.

The floor was so cold that my brother in law was actually standing on a pair of gloves in front of the firplace, trying everything he could to milk every last ounce of heat from the iron giant.

Also fun: taps did not run, this was because there was no pressure in the pressure tank, this in turn was because the plastic water line in the service room was a block of ice. I shut down the cistern pump, and waited for the house to heat enough to melt the ice in the line.

Later that night, my father checked the hose, found it warm, turned on the pump, got pressure. Hooray. However, we were unable the valves that feed the rest of the house, as we had already found that the plastic valve in the shower we are installing had exploded($80 right there). Following the thawing of the pipes, we also noted several trickles of water flowing down the walls of the bathroom we're remodeling. Two broken pipes, low down and already exposed since we'd removed the drywall.

This now officially sucks. Ever not been able to drink water from your tap, or wash your hands, or flush a damn toilet? It's annoying to say the least.

Not many hardware stores keep a graveyard shift for people with late-night plumbing fetishes, so we went to bed and dad headed into town in the morning to pick up supplies.

With a bit of quick sawing and soldering, we had the broken sections replaced and ready to go. I went and slowly opened the valve that feeds the water lines inside the house.

Pause.

Pause.

Silence.

Sweeto, no leaks, pat myself on the back.

Drip
Drip
HISSSSSSSSSS.

So much for being finished.

Turns out an elbow used to connect the laundry room to the hot water lines was also cracked. This one should have been safe as it was connected to a valve which was in turn connected to a rubber hose(washing machine connection). Unfortunately, my parents had closed the valve before they left, ensuring that the pressure developed by the freezing water would not swell the delicate rubber hose.

Not to be too snide, I probably would've done the same thing, but in retrospect, it was definitely not the right way to go.

I cut a hole in the wall from one side and pulled the entire valve assembly away from the rest of the piping while dad held a torch to it from the other side(to melt the solder). Within a few minutes we had it back together and were officially good to go.

And so it stands, knock on wood.


Consider this Sidebar time, fun-facts about the Bedell residence and our attraction to icy lines.

Many years ago, I don't know how many, but it was definitely a many, we returned home from vacation to find our water line frozen.

Due in part to how rednecked we are, there were several barrels of methyl hydrate(methanol) in the woods near our house. These had been acquired after an interesting day spent on an old oilfield lease. Will spill the beans on that later.

Anyway, we took a barrel of the alcohol and piped it down the water line from our house. Presto, running water.

For those of you who didn't follow that: pure alcohol goes through ice like nobody's business.

Not as many years ago, we returned home from a spring break trip down to Victoria. Ten days during which it had been below -40C almost every day. Again, no running water. But whatever, we know the drill, alcohol down the pipes cures all...

Not this time, we ended up filling the pipe with alcohol to no avail. Some stubborn goddamn ice.

Yet another decoration of the forest near my house is this gross old yellow steamer that my dad acquired at some time in the past. Basically, you pour in diesel, light it afire, and pump cold water into the beast. The water passes through thin tubes in the combustion chamber and comes out as really hot water and steam. We hooked the beast up to our loader and hauled it down to our pump house.

Alright this is epic, too epic, skip to the white if you feel like retaining your sanity.

Our pump house is basically a thick walled box with a tall peaked roof set next to our dam(basically a dugout, but in a ravine so only one side is actually manmade hence dam). The shack sits on top of a concrete pad and covers an 8 foot diameter culvert which is inserted vertically into the ground. This serves as our cistern as well as providing a bit of extra settling between the open water and our pump.

We'd been forced to import a pile of heaters to the pump house since the cistern was more like a giant ice-cylinder. Just by heating the air we were able to thaw the cistern.

By this point, we were already about three, maybe four days without water. GHEY.

We'd been taking showers and bathroom breaks at my aunt Ivea's down the road, which I'm sure she appreciated to no end. Our other 'emergency' option was the buckets of water we harvested via melting snow on our fireplace. Could get a flush per bucket, really slow process, but sometimes preferable to the journey next door. Needless to say, being at home was a drag at this point.

We managed to get the steamer operational and set it up just outside the pump house. We rigged the inlet directly to our main cistern pump and shoved the outlet hose as far up our water line(toward the house) as it would go and fired the operation up.

After a night of constant recirculation, our pump house was the place to be. -30 to-40 outside, about 40 above and steaming inside. We initially made a lot of headway and were able to ram the hose almost all the way through to the house. But it jammed about 60 feet short.

We ran the steam for a few more days, even going so far as to pump a bunch of alcohol through the steamer and into the line. No effect.

At our wits end, Dad finally fired up the excavator and set to digging.

Some very memorable times came from this particular trench:

    1) Northern Lights: I have never seen northern lights as intense and beautiful as I saw while working on laying pipe in the trench one night. The sky was so bright that we didn't need flashlights, and we could easily see our shadows dancing across the ground beneath us. Bands of blue and green raced across a starry backdrop for hours on end. Was amazing.

    2) Oh Shit!: While refilling the trench, my brother and I went down to secure the pipe with large clods of earth. Unfortunately, there had been a break in the weather and shit was melting. Shit in this case includes the walls of the trench. There were only two ways out of the trench, one at either end and we were damn near the middle when the walls began sliding in. Wouldn't have been too bad, except that we had to decided to bury the pipe extra deep, in the neighborhood of ten to twelve feet. I've never moved so fast in snow gear as I did that day, both my brother and I racing for the nearest exit as the collapsing walls chased us. Luckily, it was a short sprint, only about thirty feet ended up falling, but damn was it frightening.

    3) 'Pshh. I'm fine, besides, father always knows best.' Not the exact quote I'm sure, but something very close. This about five minutes prior to my slightly intoxicated father falling into the trench with his twenty ton excavator. In his defence, it was icy as shit and difficult to keep the excavator on track. On the other hand, I knew this, so why the hell didn't he? Anyway, it took our skidder and a neighbor's D9 Bulldozer to tug the bastard out of the trench. Bedell Home Water: Delayed for another day.

That's about it for memory lane. A day or so after we extracted the excavator, we had running water. We sat on our hands for a few hours while the hot water tank warmed up. Then we burst into action, loads of laundry, dishwasher, showers. All for about ten minutes until I noticed some decidedly unhealthy looking water gurgling up through the drain of the downstairs shower.

Apparently our sewer had also frozen.

By this time, we were in no mood for any more games. My father smashed through the frost with our large excavator and quickly uncovered the sewer line. We had already located the freeze with a bit of hose stuffed down an access, so we knew approximately where to dig. Unfortunately, we didn't know how deep the pipe was buried. In the end, it turned out to be much shallower than expected(ie. we smashed it up good with the excavator while digging).

It took about two days to uncover, remove, and replace the frozen sewer line. And then, sweet hot showers.

For those who managed to stick it through to the end of that, kudos. To those who didn't, don't worry, I'm sure you've heard the story before.

My nephews have almost warmed up to me again, the old ones are fine of course, but the youngins(Danny, Case and Heywood) needed a little persuasion. Today they seem to have finally gotten over my non-shagginess and accepted me as a person. Very nice.

Will be heading back Thursday morning by the sounds of it, driving back with my grandpa in his new pick-up. Sounds as though he'll be selling his place in Falkland and getting a new modular home up here. Would be a good move for him, will probably make some money off of it too.

Anyway, thats about all the bloggery a boy can handle. Just one of 211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do.

Will see y'all in a few days(with luck).