It has been a while

You're right Rob, it has been a while. This is because I have been super busy with working up to 57 hrs a week, 9 hrs of school a week and a vague attempt at a social life.

It has been many years since the last time I went to the Space and Science Centre, now Telus World of Science. Well, excpet recently. I went a couple of weeks ago with a friend, and work has decided that for a "Team Building" excersize we're going there this wednesday. They have interesting ways of building teams. A general feel of non-disclosure, segregation and not using the best people for the jobs on normal days, and then shutting down the office and taking everyone out for some fun. We'll ignore the fact that the average age in my workplace is probably over 45, so the fun will be very interesting to  watch if nothing else.

In other news, with my term at my current job almost over, I had an interview last week for a position with the RCMP. They appeared to be highly impressed with me, so with any luck I'll pass my security check and start there soon. Chances are that it will be a shitty job, but at least it's a permanent job near my house. The general feeling of that building is more friendly, even with the people walking around in handcuffs (ok, ok, I exagerate, I have not seen any of those in my few trips inside). There is a sense of people united toward a common goal. Something to strive for. It's much better than an attitude of limitless funds and wastefullness. That attitude is driving me insane, and aparently I'm in a better department for that. There are some departments in which they spend tens of thousands of dollars on meetings, this is because the department thinks that they are the most important, even though no one has ever heard of them. Anyway, enough with the ranting. I'm basically just really happy to be moving to something more permanent. Though some of you wouldn't know it, but I like to know what's going on in my life, even if it is just a vague outline. This not knowing what I'll do in 35 days when I'm out of a job has not been fun.

Anyways, I made stew yesterday, so dinner time it is.

Faith?

It has been a long time since I've considered faith at all.

Or the lack of faith in my life, or me. If I had faith I would assume the best. .. And that doesn't happen. Ever.
How the heck do you get faith? How do you practice having faith if .... you don't.. know how the hell to have faith in anything or anyone? The only thing I really have faith in is the fact that people are stupid and will fuck up.

I hate it when someone reminds me how miserable I really am.

Maybe it's... I seem to only have faith in people who are unfaithful. And for those who I could trust my life with, I'm wary of.

It's stupid.

I don't know if it's necessarily that I'm a terrible judge of character, or if I'm convinced that I'm stupid and could never get something like that right? I don't even have faith in myself. I know I can do things like finish assignments, write essays well, do basic tasks for jobs I'd get right now.

But.. in terms of having to apply myself and change, I'm convinced I'll fail.

The antonyms of faith are atheism, godlessness, disbelief, doubt, distrust and treachery. I really don't want these words to define me, but as it stands they seem to be all I have to call my own.

Even more so

So, a friend pointed out some holes in my first post, and while they are valid for normal homes, for underground homes (while they come with their own risks) fill in the holes.

Heat from the ground is also cooling from the ground. If you build it properly, the undergound house maintains a cool temperature all year round. Add some basic heating and a convection cooling system, and it should work pretty much on its own. Obviously there's more research to be done, but it's an interesting concept.

Electicity, yes, on the grid is good, both to get and send back if one can figure out a good system. I haven't done too much research on it, apart from the obvious solar panels.

There's more information here.

Crazy?

For sometime now I have wanted a change in my life. Some catalyst to make it my own. Yes, I bought a condo almost a year ago, you would think that that would be enough. I guess still being in school is making me feel like a child still. Though I do work full time, and am doing well where I am now, I don't feel sucessful. It's a state of mind, an attitude, and when that attitude is mastered and adopted fully life is good. My new idea is to get some land outside the city, probably to the North West on the way to Westlock. I don't know if I would move out there anytime soon, but it would be nice to get out of the city for camping, and build when I can or sell if I can't. It's a fairly low-risk investment. Even if the land sits mainly vacant, all I have to do is keep the weeds under control, I could probably still sell for a profit in the coming years. The prefered option is that I do something to the land, get animals, build a house, plant a garden of some variety.

The perfect picture would include the house being fairly self-sufficient by getting power from the sun and heat from the ground. Horses, cows, chickens, maybe some dogs, a husband, some kids on 25 acres of land. Not that I know how to do any of that, but I can learn. Though, who knows, maybe all of this is just because one of my good friends at work lives in a similar situation.

I was given the suggestion to just drive around, so when I have time I'm going to harass one of my friends to come drive with me, and just look at what's out there.

Who knows....

Space

I recently aquired four Stella beer glasses. They are nice, and I like Stella, but I have no clue where I'm going to put them. My cupboards are full, and so are my drawers (as in, the stuff in the cupboards can't move to drawers). Right now most of the glasses are still wrapped up in paper and are on my table. Time to clean up I suppose. That's really all that Saturday afternoons are good for anyway. I already did my seven hours of work this morning, so now it's cleaning time, then early to bed so I have a nice long day tomorrow in which to study.

New Hires

I am pleased to say that the two newest hires are almost self-sufficient in one area of the job. This means that tomorrow I am going to authorize them for overtime and hopefully they will come in on Saturday for some nice overtime work. This also means that with eight mostly fully functional team members, we will be slightly overstaffed for a short period of time. That period ends when the work load increases again. Bits of the workload have more than doubled in the four months that I have been there. The biggest issue will be in a month and a half when we will probably lose three of our members. I am not looking forward to this day. The next biggest issue will be that another two of us will leave a month later. Leaving three people to do what seven can maintain, and eight can catch up on. Hopefully more new hires will arrive before that happens.

In other news, I talked to my new team leader (he starts on Monday) that I had applied for a job at a game company. My team leader knows the Human Resource people in said game company and offered to mention my name the next time he had an opportunity to do so. Who knows, I might need to buy a car soon so I can do this new job. That would be great experience, and I would be the envy of a lot of my friends.

Overtime

Before the holidays I was doing 12 hrs of overtime per two week period, in January I was too busy to do it. But in the past two weeks I have done about 20 hrs which will be really nice to pay for the holiday shopping bill that just came in. Since I have been starting earlier in the day it's a lot easier to put in a couple hours each day, as long as I don't have to go to school early for group meetings.

Hopefully the two new girls will be able to show up on Saturday, it will be my responsibility to get them up to speed in the next three days so they are valuable enough to actually be allowed to get paid OT.

School... yes, I'm in class right now. Don't worry, it's the break. Luckily my project got pushed back a week, so I have two weeks before I have to hand in a 10 page paper on Nexopia. Then, when that one's done, I have to do another two projects, also on Nexopia. This close connection to a company makes it so that I always have to be the company contact. I didn't even want to do the group projects on Nexus, but no one else had any good companies that we could study.