Doug
So last night was the weekly trivia night out at the marina. A bunch of us from work got together and played on a team. For every question we came up with a joke answer that had Doug in it. As for the real answers, we got most of them right, but not enough to place in the top 3. There's always next week!
Also, sometime between 3-4 this morning (I think) the power conked out. I woke up shortly before 4 to silence. Nothing was running and it was dark. So, without the fan going I quickly ended up lying there covered in sweat. Thankfully the power came back at 3:55 so I managed to fall asleep again and then get up at 6:30 for an warly start to the day at Madran. Oh joy of joys.
Beresford
Okay, now that that rant is out of the way I can post something productive about today (ha, as if a blog is productive).
This past weekend I wanted to do laundry. I
needed to do laundry. I was down to my last set of wearable clothes. For the first time I can remember I actually emptied my top drawer. So roomie C and I had agreed to go do laundry on Sunday. Or so I thought. Roomie C went to the office to do some work on Sunday and never told me. So here I was stuck here, with a pile of dirty clothes, no key for a vehicle and no way to get into the office to get a key. And no way to contact her at the office. The laundromat closes at 3:30 on the weekend and 4:30 during the week, which is the end of my office hours. I mean, what the fuck? What's the point of a laundromat if its not open late for normal people? Christ.
So come last night I was a bit miffed. Just a bunch of little things about everyone adding up on top of this laundry situation (see previous post). This morning at the office I jokingly mentioned that I'd be scuzzy this week due to not having any clean clothes to wear. Jim cracked his usual joke and then mentioned that there's a laundromat in Beresford that's open in the evening and its bigger than the one in Bathurst. So on our way to Madran this morning we checked it out. Its open until 11pm! Sweet. Things are starting to look good.
Once we got back from Madran this afternoon I went home, changed, washed up a bit, packed up all my laundry and headed out to Beresford. I also grabbed the towels as they haven't been washed since we moved in and they're a little scuzzy (plus they're all my towels and facecloths, so I kinda feel obligated). Turns out this laundromat is actually a bit cheaper than the one in Bathurst. I think I'm going to this one more often. Although I'm still a bit miffed with the roomies, so I think I'll keep this place a secret from them for now.
I did learn a lesson today, though. I have way too many dark clothes for the regular dryers. Two hours of drying time is expensive. So from now own I'll use the high capacity dryers. Hopefully they're cheaper...
While the clothes were drying for the second hour (sigh) I got hungry. My original plan for supper was to stop at the Wendy's in Bathurst, but I was hungry and still had another half hour for my laundry to finish. So I went in search of Beresford's Subway. It's another 2-3 minute drive down the main drag past the laundromat. Its another one of those attached to a convenience store jobbies, although this place still has its service garage.
Its just about the best Subway I've ever found. Now I've worked at a Subway for 2 years, so I'm pretty critical of the restaurants. The new Subway on King St in Saint John is pretty nice, but this one just blows it away. Its a little store, smaller than Westwind Place, but its nicely decorated (as far as Subway decor goes) and has plenty of windows. And it has door chimes! Oh how I longed for a door chime. I think there was a staff meeting going on when I was there cause the back room was full of people. only two of them had uniforms on. And most of them were young, attractive girls. Definately going back to this Subway. Plus, in addition to the standard chips and cookies they have apple pies, cinnamon rolls, brownies and danishes. Danishes! I got an apple one and it was super yummy. Plus, they have smoothies! I don't really like smoothies but damn, a Subway with smoothies! I was just blown away.
Blarg
Whoever thought it would be a good idea to take 4 people that hardly know each other (or don't know each other at all) and throw them in a basement apartment for 3 months needs to get their head examined.
Sure, I love the job and the apartment and the food is all paid for. But, the roommates leave something to be desired. Sure, they're all nice people but some of their mannerisms and habits just rub me the wrong way. For now I'll just call them roomies A, B and C.
Roomie A is the first one that moved in after me. Over all she's pretty cool, I don't have much gripe with her. Other than that she's a channel surfer which drives me fucking nuts. If I'm watching a TV show I want to watch the show and keep it on that channel. Not blaze through every channel during commercials and miss parts of the show I'm trying to watch. Also, she's on the phone a lot. Tonight I picked up the phone to call my brother because I've hardly talked to him in a month and want to see how him and his family is making out. But when I picked up the phone she said "My friend is calling in 5 minutes!!" I'm sorry but my brother is more important than your friend. Plus, the phone itself is mine and the phone service is in my name. Bite me.
Roomie B is the second one in after me. Her english isn't all that great, but I can't really fault her on that. But she smokes. And puts her buts in the kitchen garbage, which stinks up the place. She's a coffee addict. She stumbles out of her room in the morning and the first thing she does is make a pot of coffee. I'm sorry but I fucking hate coffee. I can't stand the smell of the stuff. And I have no sympathy for people who can't survive without it, just like smokers (and she's both! Fantastic.). But the thing about her that drives me nuts is that she doesn't turn off the fucking shower. Just because you turn the taps off doesn't mean the shower is off. Push the fucking knob in.
Roomie C is the last one to arrive. I actually knew her a bit before this summer from UNB. She's a "vegetarian". But she eats fish. What, fish aren't good enough for you to care about? Oh, lets save all the cute cuddly mammals and the birds but who gives a fuck about fish. I fucking hate fish. I especially hate the smell. And in an apartment that only has windows in the bedrooms that cooking fish smell hangs around for a long time. And you're eating eggs? Hello, that could have been a chicken someday, ever think about that? And your obsession with exotic cheeses... I don't get it. Think about the poor cows that laboured to make that cheese! Yes, I know you're a PhD student and have a lot of work to do, but when I'm glued to my computer I at least stay in my room. Being glued to your computer in the common room with the other roomies and constantly tapping away is just fucking rude, I'm sorry.
Sometimes I'm not really much of a social person. I like to putter around on my computer and do what I want. I enjoy my privacy and ability to do what I want. But just because I'm in my room most of the time I'm not working doesn't mean I don't want people to talk to me. If you're going somewhere, please talk to me. If you're renting movies, ask me if there's anything I want to see. I'm downloading movies for you people, come on. Oh, and spot on for going for groceries today without me. Really appreciate it. I provide you people with towels, a phone, and unrestricted internet access. You could at least be nice and include me in "group" things.
Music stats
According to iTunes I have:
3960 songs
15 days listening time
31.32 GB
That ends up being some 943 artists and 345 albums spread over 80 genres. I don't really trust some of the ID3 tags, but I'm not about to go edit 3960 of them.
TGIF
Okay, so my blog was acting funny this morning and I posted something thrice... No worries, fixed that up.
Today was yet another day out at Madran. But instead of moving around a few tons of rock (literally), I got to cut a bunch of core instead, which is a little easier but time consuming. Especially when you get a piece that takes 10 minutes to cut. Who'd've thought silica would be such a match for a diamond saw?
And for snapshots into a typical day at Madran...
Jim doing his Hulk impersonation
Me playing around in a mostly empty core shed:
For all you Jeepers out there....
sticker:D
Carnies!
Today was a good day. This morning I got to play with a rock saw again and cut a bunch of core samples for Sabine. When we got back to the office I found out that I am indeed getting paid tomorrow for 2 weeks! Woohoo!
This evening Sabine and I were just chillin, watching some CSI when Monique and Ylang dropped in and suggested we go to the fair/carnival/FREX/Ex/what-have-you. I told Monique that a mutual friend that's in town had called so we went to her hotel and picked her up. Went on a bunch of rides and had a blast! I'd love to go again, but I don't know if anyone else will want to go again....
Garbage can turkey
Last night was an awesome barbecue for the DNR summer students at John's place. On the menu was John's specialty, garbage can turkey. Now, I know what you're thinking: John's a bum and eats garbage. But wait! He doesn't, really. Its just a special way of cooking the turkey. I shall elaborate.
First, he drove a stake into the ground. To the stake he tied one of those special stick-things you buy for cooking hotdogs and marshmellows on a campfire or something. Next he had this cone-looking thing that he stuck into the turkey (after it had been clean out, naturally). The turkey fit perfectly over the stick as you can see
here. After this, the garbage can went
on top of the turkey. He then poured about a bag and a half of charcoal briquettes onto the top of the can and lit them. Using the lid of the garbage can he piled more briquettes up and lit them, so we had a little rig going like
this. After about an hour or so the briquettes from the lid were spread around the bottom of the garbage can and used to cook potatoes. After an hour and a half from the lighting of the fire the
turkey was
cooked. And I tell ya, it was the tastiest turkey I've had in a long while (and I don't really like turkey).
After the feasting we played a few rounds of rings (a few different rules than what I'm used to, but that's to be expected) and then moved inside to play cards when the bugs got too bad. We played Pass the Ace for a solid 3 hours or so and eventually headed off around midnight. Twas a good evening, all in all.
Gelukkig dag van de vader
Today is father's day. Happy day to all you fathers out there! Unfortunately I don't get to see my dad today, being a 5 hour drive away and all. But I finally got a hold of him after several attempts at calling today. I'm hoping to go home on the 30th, so I'll get him something then.
Last night I realized how fast time goes by when you're coding; sort of like photoshop time I suppose. I was up until 2:30 or so fooling around with
this little page. When I finished it last night I had 48 ships on it; today I added 12 more. Yes, I know, I'm a nerd. :P
Also, Aliant's DNS server is being pretty sketchy again. I really should call them about it.
Computer!
Well today I finally got my own computer. The computer I was using is hooked up to a scanner and a digitizing table, so whenever anyone wanted to scan or digitize (or Sabine wanted to use the internet) I had to bugger off and find something else to do. So today I rearranged the room a bit and John brought up a snazzy laptop for me to work on. There's a nice optical mouse that goes with it, too! Only thing is I'd love to have a standard numpad for entering numbers with, but I'm getting the hang of the 789-uio-jkl-m. numpad that seems to be standard for laptop keyboards.
Also today Jim and John treated myself, Monique, Sabine and Cyndie to a chinese buffet at lunch. It was yummy! John was also going to have a barbecue at his place tonight but the weather is pretty crappy and its been moved to Monday. Should be fun!
Another day....
Yesterday was a fun day, for the most part. First thing I got to clean up the rock saw room, which wasn't so great. But then I got to go to Madran to check out DNR's core storage site, which was pretty cool. Then we headed out to the Brunswick no. 12 mine, which was really cool. The head casing (see picture) tands about 300' above the ground and is supposedly the tallest freestanding structure in Eastern Canada. It extends into the gorund 1.425km to the ore body, which is Fricken Huge (official geological term). Something like the largest massive sufide deposit in the world.
More pictures can be seen
here.
Today was pretty much a slow day, as usual. Filed more drill core logs, and then Jim got me to update a bunch of Mineral Occurances file, which is basically just a couple of filing cabinets in the basement that keeps track of all the economic minerals around the province.
I found out that we have this really cool engineering copier machine, which is a photocopier for maps, blueprints etc. It can copy sheets up to 36" across and has a roll of paper in it. So, today I copied about 22 maps, adding to my collection. Unfortunately the only topo maps I could find that I wanted were a 1:50000 map of Fredericton and the 1:250000 map for the 21G block, which is okay. I copied 20 1:50000 maps of mineral claims, which are just the 1:50000 base maps with claim blocks on them. Nicole said that the other offices might have topo maps for the 21G and 21H blocks, so I might look into that. To purchase the full colour maps is $11.45 a pop, and for 21 maps that's a bit out of my budget. Maybe I can get them cheap cause I'm working for DNR... Or even if I can just get photocopies of them I'd be happy.
GTA: San Andreas
The game is finally out for PC and I managed to...acquire...a copy and get it running on my computer. This game is awesome! Its huge, its sweet, its kick ass it....has maxed out my system. I run it at the lowest display settings, 640*480*16 and it
still jumps around. Guess its time for a new video card. When I built my computer I didn't really build it for heavy gaming or anything as I figured I wouldn't be playing any of these new, high end games that need a lot of computing power. But then Rockstar comes out with a new GTA. Now I suppose if I get the PS2 from Curtis and buy the game I won't have this problem. Except I'd have to commandeer a TV from someone to play it, but that's no biggie as there's 2 TVs here right now... hmm.............
New template
I nicked a new template from
here. Pretty simple. I liked the original template I had picked but it was a bit...clunky, or something. I dunno. Eventually I'll come up with something on my own. I should take some pointers from Anthony. ;)
It works!
Okay, now that I have everything sorted out, I can post in earnest. My old "blog" is here. Eventually I'll spruce this one up with a custom template, as soon as I figure out how.
Today I decided to take the afternoon off, due to the extra hours I "worked" on Monday. Before I left for the day I got a lesson on geophysical surveys and digitizing maps and such.
It is very very hot outside. We just got back from getting more groceries; the girls are set on having a barbecue at some point. And coming back from SuperValue Ylang drove for the first time on 8 months, and her first experience with an automatic. She learns quick.
Testing...
...is this thing on?
