If I Were One of Those Guys...

Oh my goodness...

...do I ever feel like garbage this morning, er, afternoon. Nicole and I headed out to the Purple Onion last night for "power hour." I like to refer to the P.O. as the "high class, white trash" bar of the city. Anyways, between 8 - 9pm, hiballs were a mere $1/each. As you only have an hour to take advantage of this scandalous deal, the trick is to order as many drinks as soon as you arrive. In our case, we each grabbed 9 doubles, equaling about 18 oz of booze.

There were these guys from Calgary at our tables, and this particularly loud-mouthed one didn't waste more than a few moments before he started working his angle on Nicole. He was allowed one strike, I figured, as not only did he look hopelessly incompetent, but had apparently been drinking since 4pm. When it eventually dawned on him that Nicole and I were, in fact, "an item," he was cowed into silence and averted our collective gazes.

As the night progressed, I learned that the new $20 bill looked really cool under black light. My new shirt, on the other hand, did not. What started as a light blue shirt, instantly became a beacon of pink, which caught the attention of more than a few hillbillies and metalheads. It was here that moron #1 got the nerve to open his yap again. It was really unfortunate that he did, because what followed was both unexpected and disturbing: "Dude, if I were one of those guys who checked out other guys...you're the best looking guy here in a pink shirt."

At first I didn't really know what to say. Thanks? Do I sucker punch him in the throat? I chose confused silence and incoherent mumbling.

We capped our drunken escapades off by chowing down at Sam Wok. I'll be honest, I have a sneaky suspicion that the food there would be great even if you weren't completely blitzed. It didn't take long for the 4 of us to absolutely destroy 5 delicious dishes of super-happy Cantonese delight! I'll need to check it out during the middle of the week to test my delicious-ness suspicion.

One final thought, coconuts are easier to crack open than I anticipated, even with a hammer and corkscrew, but what you'll find inside is vile to the extreme.

Currently: Rehydrating, rehydrating, rehydrating...

Suite 1508: Total War

I swear I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Not to any degree of severity, mind you, but obsessive tendencies none-the-less. Case in point - my continual playing of the game Rome: Total War. I just can't seem to help myself. It is a very, very good game, this is true. But it is also a game with very little payoff at the end. Upon first conquering the S.P.Q.R. (and most of the then civilized world), I was so upset with the pithy "Congrats! You win!" ending that I uninstalled the game in a blind moment of rage. Yet here I am, back in front of my computer, playing the damn thing yet again.

I think I now have some idea of how smokers must feel.

Currently: Happy to be back in my own bed...don't bother visiting Grand Cache. It totally sucks over there.

Jesus is F'n Metal

Nicole has been one busy gal with the concert hook-ups. Here's what we're booked for already:

March 29 - Velvet Revolver
April 21 - The Weakerthans
April 26 - The Killers
May 19 - Green Day

It's gonna be a fine spring, my friends, a fine spring indeed.

Raping and Pillaging the Earth

I'm not some nutsy environmentalist. I don't take pamphlets from those Green Peace hippies on the street. I do, however, make every reasonable attempt not to blatantly pollute and destroy the space around me.

Well, perhaps not every attempt. I suppose I do work for an oilwell drilling company, and that sort of activity might be viewed as a tad harmful - not just the creation of a 2km hole into the planet's crust, but also the petro-products that follow. However, what I witnessed this past week in the oilfield was a degree of environmental damage that I'd never thought acceptable.

The office sent me out to Tri-City Rig #41...a brand new double that just rolled off the assembly line last September. Considering my old rig, #13, had components dating back to the early 70s, I was more than happy to check out such a fine setup. It had all the bells and whistles, in fact, a great deal of the labourious things I previously had to do were now fully-automated!

Unfortunately, that also meant that the crew had a lot of free time, and "free time" on the patch means "grab a scrub brush and get cleaning." This was where all my disbelief began. This rig was drilling with invert, a type of drilling fluid which I believe comes from an evil, parallel universe, much like that goatee-d Spock. It's hideous stuff that seeps into your pores and destroys all your work gear. Boots, wetsuits, gloves, coveralls. Everything. What doesn't get slowly broken down is saturated beyond cleaning.

With normal drilling fluid, you mix chemicals with water. With this invert stuff, you mix chemicals with diesel. That's right, diesel is being pumped into the ground and spilt all over the surface. It gets even better. To clean invert off of the rig, you use a scrub brush and a bucket of...diesel! Wanna pre-soak that? Well then, just use the diesel pressure washer! You know how washguns produce a fine water vapour that slowly soaks you? Yeah, well, I'm so pleased to have been in all those confined spaces, being coated by, and breathing in, all that wonderful diesel. There were rivers and puddles of it all over the place.

But hey, you did get in shit if you didn't recycle your pop cans, so I guess that counted for something. Right?

Currently listening to: Matthew Good - 21st century living

As Seen on the Daily Show

Okay, well, not my blog in particular, but the phenomena of blogging and its "threat" to credible media sources.

I would write more about that, but I feel an over-powering urge to whine about the over-abundance of group discussions that I've been forced to endure over the past week or so. Out of the past 8 days of class, 5 of those days have included some form of assigned/graded group discussion. This tends to get quite overwhelming, not simply because it forces me to actually finish my assigned readings, but because of the general ineffectiveness of the whole group scenario.

There's a wise saying along the lines of, "If you want to ensure nothing gets done, and extinguish creative thought, just form a committee."

Scheduled group discussion falls under this same idea. When my fellow peers actually do decide to mention anything aloud, very rarely is it insightful or worthy of further debate. In part, this is due to the structure of our discussions, whereby the class is divided into groups and asked to apply the assigned readings to the same teacher-fabricated question.

After the first group makes their presentation, virtually every other group follows them up by saying, "Um, well, most of what we discussed has already been covered, but, uh, oh!...the covers of our texts sure are shiny, aren't they!?"

An hour of discussion time eventually degrades into 5 minutes of interaction, and 55 painful minutes of the professor throwing out rhetorical questions to fill time. Bah! Now if you'll excuse me, I've got another group discussion to prepare hand-in notes for.

Currently: Anticipating heading out to Hinton to work on a *new* Tri-City telescopic double over Reading Week.

MPAA

There are websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them.

This website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures. The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity. Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop.

Yeah, so this is totally not what I was expecting to see when I attempted to finish up my download of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It's a real shame too, since it was already at 90%! These MPAA guys just aren't much fun at all.

Are You Ready To...

...muthafuckin' BBQ!?

Making good on a personal resolution that I made, ohhhh, at least 6 months ago, I finally got my act together and picked up a decent grill for the patio. I managed to snag it for nearly 50% off, and since it was already assembled, they also agreed to deliver it to the apartment for free! Heck, even the propane cylinder was half price - I guess it sometimes does pay to wait beyond the busy season.

Nicole and I have both been looking forward to this moment, and I didn't hesitate to pick up some mouth-watering t-bones for supper tonight. They've been marinating for hours.

My friends, this is the start of something beautiful...

Currently listening to: Satellite Ambient Radio

Crisp Clean Air

I never would have imagined it, but I've managed to catch the running bug. Now, I'm not talking about the kind of "running" that plays out the morning after binging on beer and jumbo donairs - I'm talking about enjoying the great outdoors 5km at a time.

When Nicole signed up for winter running classes, I justifiably reasoned that she had simply lost her mind. January is hardly the time I'd choose to start running outdoors. In fact, never is about the time I'd choose to start running...period. I believe my distaste for running stems from the fiendishly forced "fitness runs" in gym class. When the teachers were too lazy to organize a sport, or teach us something new, they simply fired up their stop watches and made us run around like government mules. Quite frankly, I hated it and them with all my being.

Anyways, Nicole has now convinced me twice, with those undeniable doe eyes of hers, to join her for runs in the arctic air. With proper running attire, it ended up being far less tortureous than I anticipated. It's actually easier to run in the cold than it is in the sweltering heat, and the snow adds some degree of cushioning from the pavement.

Here's my secret: I enter my running "zone" by focusing on the slow, burning rage that I harbour towards Student Loans, the University of Alberta, Advanis Field Research, and any bill collector I've had in my life. That's usually enough to fuel me for at least half an hour!

Currently: Massaging my tender groin-al area. Uhhhhh!

Delicious <--> Disappointing

The secret to life is that you learn, try, or experience something new every day. Nicole and I rewarded ourselves by having dinner at Gabbana, which is a small restaurant along Jasper and 111 St. The price was right and the food was absolutely delicious. I had a pork tenderloin soooo flavourful it would convert a vegan.

I then had the misfortune of watching the debut episode of "American Dad" It's from the creators of "Family Guy" and though I love that show, more than a few gags were still hit-and-miss. This new series looks like it could have promise, though after only a single episode, I'd had just about enough of the talking fish (some sort of replacement for Stewie), the female characters were lacking, and that candy eating alien (again, I assume a replacement for Brian) didn't evoke a single laugh. Bleh...

Afternoon T&A at the UofA

Where "T&A" logically stands for the teaching and assisting components of my SOC 489 teacher's assistant. In this particular class I have group discussion every week, based on a series of readings which are assigned. The teacher prepares a set of very specific questions about the readings, which we answer in the form of a 2-page hand-in summary, and the group discussion attempts to gather input from the entire class.

For the first group discussion, I was in the professor's group. It was mildly informative and essentially an extension of what she does during any given lecture. Today, however, I was in the T.A.'s group, and it was totally awesome.

Never before have I heard such frankness and colourful language in an academic setting. To sum up our group discussion, the T.A. basically made it clear that the readings we were assigned were bullshit, the course material was irrelevant, and the entire Sociology department was, again, dictated by bureaucratic bullshit.

Though I enjoyed the discussion, it did put me in quite a bind. I'm required to regurgitate the information that the professor and department require of me, yet this renegade T.A. is responsible for marking all my assignments, and has a particular affinity for recognizing bullshit. Quite the quandary, indeed.

Currently listening to: The ambient satellite radio station...so very soothing.

The Advanis Advantage

Bleh...so generally when your place of work calls you at home, it can't be expected to be a good thing. Effective immediately, I am no longer an employee of Advanis Field Research.

It's one thing to be fired because you're a bad employee, or because you gave the manager's underage daughter an STD, but to be laid off due to corporate "downsizing" is perhaps the worst fate of all. Through no fault of your own, or so I'd like to imagine, your job simply ceases to exist. Poof! Needless to say, the unexpected news came as a bit of a shock.

Now, let's be completely honest. I did not covet this job because I enjoyed it or received any degree of satisfaction from it. There were some very practical reasons I endured it:

1. Starting wage was $10/hr. I'd never get rich but still half decent for a student.
2. You could schedule a shift for whenever you wanted! The ultimate in flexibility.
3. It was a part-time job (re: no benefits) but at least you could put in 42 hours per week.
4. I could study while on the job.

Quite frankly, it's fairly difficult to find a job with the flexibility to work around a university schedule, provide you with a large amount of hours, and still pay a reasonable wage. Bah!

Currently: Digging up my resume so I can update it.

International Week

For the second year in a row, I will be attending several seminars for International Week at the University of Alberta. The theme for this year is "Making Poverty History" and the event features dozens of guest speakers, information sessions, and even performances.

I was never really aware of International Week until last year when attendance to the event was crucial for an assignment in a particular class. It was a very effective motivator. Though I was only required to attend and write on 2 sessions, I found myself motivated to attend as many sessions as possible. If I can remember correctly, I attended nearly 2 dozen sessions in a few days.

This year, due to a much more restrained work schedule, I will only be attending a handful of keynote addresses, starting with this evening. Once again, an assignment hinges on my attendance, but I'm confident that I would have chosen to attend regardless.

Currently: Desperately trying to get my computer running properly.