An Icicle in Mid Drip

January 15th, 2012 Thomasso

It was such a picturesque day in wintery Fort Langley that I could not resist shooting an icicle melting away in the sun, as water dripped downwards from it like a leaky faucet in a down town crack-house. They were pretty, and neat, to watch becuase we do not get icicles that often here in the Metro Vancouver area, so it was a “stand and stare” moment for me.

Capturing the dripping action with a digital camera had its moment too. Close the aperture, shorten the shutter, up the ISO for that high speed catch. My only limitation was time becuase I was already freezing from my little walk around town. Dress for winter if you want to take outside photographs in winter. Lesson learned!

ADDED: I was going to go outside again after I warmed up to shoot some more, but ended up not going out becuase of other things popping up that needed to be dealt with–then it got too dark. So I just went through my photos again, and found another image that I think has some good qualities.

I guess now I have to master too the art of high speed photography. The ISO and shutter speed have to really be quick to catch these drips! Shooting with the camera set to Automatic, The drips would never be caught. I think two things were happening. First, my timing was lousy. Being so close into the subject, and waiting for the drip to happen, then pressing the shutter button, timing was everything – I had to be quick. Second, my shutter speed was just way too low for this type of capture. I needed a super fast shutter speed to catch the drip in mid flight after it left the icicle.

I know I tried a bunch of times, but everything I was doing was just too slow.

The image above I cropped to give it better positioning, but was shot at a wider angle as compared to the image at the top of this post.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs | 3 Comments »

What Has Tom Been Up To?

November 22nd, 2011 Thomasso

So much has gone on with me in the last four days, that even I cannot laugh it off, and I still have so much more to do. Right now I am living off of just a couple of hours of sleep as the wind storm from last night kept me up. The power outage from the storm, with the pounding rain and tree branches hitting my roof, sleep was just not going to happen so I stayed up. But I was tired before that too. Perhaps I should just start at Friday, and finish off my post with today’s events. You, reader, should be clear once I have itemised my last few days.

(pay no attention to the mistakes in this post – I’m exhausted and will clean them up tomorrow)

Friday was dedicated to the last day of a week from Hell. Both in terms of work, and my personal life, Friday was a painful one. Personally, I was just getting over a harsh flu. Compounded to the pain and suffering of the flu was an equally hard work week of tedious issues and problem solving. It was not the amount of work that created the harshness, but the quality of it. I learned that some players in the business really “kicked the can” as it were, with our forth quarter budget, and made some really bad calls. This translated into an extremely chaotic round of finger pointing at the retails side of it, but fortunately in my department, I only received the stress of working with these people.

On my personal side, I had made preparation to volunteer for the civic elections in Langley Township. I helped a candidate out. I only helped out becuase of my friendship connections and ties to this person in the neighbourhood, not my political colours. Only the ignorant and weak minded would accuse me of playing partisan politics at this level – you know who you are! So I volunteered, helping out a friend in need. I did enjoy myself.

Going into Saturday, the day of the civic election, my commitment to volunteering kept on going. The only difference, was I planned on taking it easy, but I was asked to continue to help out with my friend’s campaign. There was the striking of the political ads signs – which under law each candidate has but a couple of days to pull all the signs from the streets and road, or fine would be given out. So I helped pull signs.

My own personal candidacy was on Monday, so I had to focus on that. The magic balance was now lost, between helping a friend versus getting myself ready for my big moment. I was running for a seat on the Board of Directors for the Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s (KPU) Alumni Association, and I had planned spending most of Saturday working on that. Instead, my time ran out on Saturday–and I got to bed around 11:30pm that night.

I almost slept in Monday morning for work. Right from the start of the day I was chasing time. I ignored the other departments as much as I could, fearing that the spill over from last week’s “meltdown” could erupt again. This was the last thing I needed, more stress. While at work, I start sending out tweets to people that I knew who were alumni from the university. Regrettably, getting people to come down to vote on a Monday night was not going to happen. I was too new and had very little exposure to the alumni to get the confidence of voters from the student body. So I tried to conjure up any support I could before I headed down to the Surrey campus. However, not before my work would throw one final hard ball at me.

A crises started brewing in my department becuase one of my co-workers made some errors, and then refused to clear them up before the end of the day. We have a policy that of you make a mistake, you clean it up, even if that means staying some extra time in the day to clean it up. My co-worker refused, and left. I was responsible, and I made some quick patchwork fixes so that I could leave it until Tuesday. My time had already lapsed into my preparation time for the election, which, I had to be there for 6:00pm–less than one hour’s time. Leaving work, late, getting home, I had to forego the fancy clothing, and settle for just changing into a sweater and grabbing my laptop and bag. Yes, still wearing my jeans and street shoes.

The election was held after an hour of formalities with the KPU Board of Directors of the Alumni Association. Each candidate was given two minutes to make a speech, and then had to field only two questions from the room.  I spoke, and was never asked any questions. Sadly, out of the seven of us vying for the six seats, I came in last. I only received 12 votes out of the possible 19. Defeated.

However, I took with pride becuase this was my first time, and this was a learning experience, and learned from it I did. I was offered to join various committees in light of my interests in volunteering with the Alumni Association, but I made myself not make any promises until I had a clear head.

Monday night when I got home, there were weather warning posted on the net. I went straight to bed as it was past 10:00pm, and I was dead tired. Not even 30 minutes into my sleep I was awaken by the sounds of flying branches hitting my window, and the wind pounding my roof. It was brutal. Widows rattled, the walls shook and I could feel the cold air in the room. Then like clockwork, the power went out, just after the second gust of wind started dumping branches on my roof. No sleep.

The power came back on around 5:00am this morning, and soon after my alarm clock went off. I got dressed and headed off to work. Trees were down everywhere. Because of the darkness, my lack of sleep, and the slippery roads, I hit one of the wooden road barricades, as the main road was closed due to a tree down across it. I backed up, and took another route. I spent today being as quiet as I could. The only real interesting thing that happened that gave me contact with the outside world was the grounds keepers accidentally set off the fire alarm late in the work day. But I continued to lay low until I left for home. Now I am fighting to stay up without napping so that i can get my bio-clock back in sync.

Posted in Bitching about weather, Bitching about work, Diatribe, Events, General, Graduation, Socail Media, Story Telling, Twitter, University classes | 1 Comment »

The End of Summer

September 2nd, 2011 Thomasso

Yikes, waking up this morning and looking at the calendar seeing September on it sure was a shock. I was just getting used to August, and all of a sudden the month is over. Shock! This is the part where I think to myself, “Where has the time gone.”

Today while I was writing out my invoices, I caught myself writing down “August,” perhaps a Freudian slip,  or just a bad habit, but nonetheless, it made me think that August was too short and not hot enough to qualify as a summer month. I think the last few summers, when we were getting six weeks of heat wave, we had gotten spoiled. With so much good weather as compared to this year which seemed unusually cooler, I feel we, as a collective whole, got ripped off.

The rest of the year we get rain, and more rain, then some more rain on top of that – I think you can see the pattern. So I look forward to summer, like a child wanting sweets on Halloween, there is always that expectation of something good and memorable going to happen. Living in Vancouver, sitting the West Coast of Canada, we are prone to mild, very rainy winters. So naturally, summers are valuable and cherished times for me.

I only hope is that the good weather continues right up until October, like it did last year. Last year it was so nice, but the weather was cancelled out by the prolonged winter which continued up until late spring of this year. I just want the good stuff. I know, I am greedy and asking for the world, but hey, I am only human.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General | Comments Off

Lack of Knowledge Hurts

August 3rd, 2011 Thomasso

OK, my version of a tail at the office shredder and water cooler gossip. A life filled with toner, paper-clips and confined to a cubicle. The story goes like this…

Sometimes a lack of knowledge is a very painful thing. When you think you know the answer, and you begin to move forward with that knowledge, and then you are forced to stop becuase you do not have all of the knowledge needed, the heartbreak of not being able to finish can be self-crushing. It is like when you took on the job with only half of the necessary tools you needed to finish it, and everyone has to stop to rethink the problem, this can be very frustrating and sobering at the same time. But worse yet, what if you were purposely not given all of the tools, perhaps becuase of a hidden agenda, or you were a threat to someone else’s position in the network?

In the workforce, time equals money, and money equals the root of all modern mankind’s aspiration in the business world. If you are constantly in a state of perpetual competition, in particular, like the the greed base search for money, then hiding knowledge, say from your adversary, is a necessary fact of life. But what if it is part of your team, a necessary component of your well being from within the complex mechanism of a corporation?

Say you and your co-worker worked in a office. You did accounts payable, and your co-worker did sales. One day the company decides that it wants to restructure its middle management to make itself more competitive and cost effective. You discover that your co-worker in sales has a degree in computer science who specialises in networking and mainframe operations. However, you, who spends most of your time working on the mainframe, feel that you should have the position of heading the task force and take on the restructuring of corporation’s networking systems. The C.E.O. makes her decision, and your co-worker is chosen based on her credentials. You are outraged, and feel insulted, and you offer no help whatsoever. In fact, you go out of your way not try and make the project fail, and you always insisted on saying that you should have being the one chosen instead.

Now, three weeks later, your co-worker manages to finish the mainframe and the corporation’s networking is operational. It is now your turn to join the team from within your department, and work to adapt your department’s operations to the network. You resist. Your team is is left struggling to solve some issues of integrating some of the key software functions to fit the new network. Days go by and still your department is not running at one hundred percent. The C.E.O. is concerned, and even has sent you a memo asking why your department has not finished integrating with the net network yet. You ask for a meeting to explain that you would have done things differently to the network, and that you could have, based on your expertises, finished the job that, as you pointed out, no one else  could finish. So, the C.E.O. hands the last phase of the project to over to you to complete.

You start the process of reintegration. But your limitations about the overall network start to breakdown the mainframe, and the department is left in a state of chaos and your leadership causes confusion and anger among the staff. Systems crash, and soon the entire network grinds to a halt. Not only did you not live up to your expectations, but the damage to the corporation, your co-workers, and the team’s moral, are left in disarray. Then the unthinkable happens – a rival corporation takes over the contracts and sales that you once held, and bankruptcy takes place.

Unemployed, you are angered. You are angered at the world, and to your former C.E.O., the guy that got the network going in the first place; everyone is guilty except you. Only if you had a little bit more knowledge, and a little bit more time, and if everyone played on your team, on your terms, at your level, things would have being different.

The moral of the story: playing on the same team is a win-win endgame all of the time in any situation. All the players working together means that you have all of the necessary knowledge to get the job done – you just need to know where you fit in on the game board.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Story Telling | Comments Off

Good Bye July

July 31st, 2011 Thomasso

I better get one last post in before the month finally ends. My posting on the blog has come to a stop since I started working full time. All work and no play, makes me too busy to blog I must say.

At least the money is flowing in now. It is so nice to have the steady flow of income once again, but the economic state of our markets is just to shaky for me to start breathing normal yet. I have this fear that the whole country is going to go belly up, and we (including the parasites of society like Bankers, Politicians and Drug Dealers) are going to go down with the ship. I am thinking about the U.S. and its debt problems right now.

I notice the Banks that I deal with have being very mellow these last few months. I cashed a $2200.00 cheque last week, and the teller gave me no speech about why I should open an account with them. Usually I get one. That is scary – something is up?

I still have lots of friends who are struggling to find work. For them, working under the table, as in working for cash only, seems to be what is keeping them from going out onto the streets. One friend, an neighbour, told me that he goes to the food bank once a month just to tie him over. Social services will not even look at him becuase of his status: Male, non visible minority, no dependants. His next move, if he does not find work, will be the streets.

On the other hand, I have some friends who are just as bad as I am – too much work. It seems that in Canada, right now, it is either black or white in contrast when dealing with employment. You are either working too much, or your are not. I never trusted the numbers that are spewed out by the media, even from Stats Canada, becuase those metrics are skewed. The true measure is really what you can see in front of your face, or view the raw data yourself. In my neck of the woods, half of my friends are either employed while the other half are working ridiculous hours.

The happy part of this last month has being working full time. Yup, I am not complaining about work, althought I am putting in some killers time. In fact, I am embracing it becuase I really missed the work while I was a student. Funny eh?

And yes, working full time is way easier than being a student, by a long shot! No home work.

So, I am off to pay pad rent, then figure out what I am going to do today, being that tomorrow is a Stat Holiday. I also love long weekends.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Holiday, Humour, Socail Media | 1 Comment »

Frustration in Cyber-Land – Work, Play and Fun.

July 5th, 2011 Thomasso

I think “frustration” is the best word to describe this week so far, but only pertaining to my work, as the rest of my daily activities  are “awesome” for lack of a better word. Do not get me wrong, I am loving what I do, and everything else for myself is going great there, but it is what I am doing, the reaction from my co-workers, that is causing some heartaches in the work environment. I have been asked to take on a little side project, which is preparing the website for the company. I have total control over its content, and my guidelines are very general. The effect on the rest of the staff is huge though so tension is mounting.

First, we are switching servers. Yes, this means that for those who had access to it, they will no longer have the privilege of “tinkering” with it because it will be “off-site.” I have being calling for this for quite some time now. The disruptions in service in the past was huge and it was very frustrating. Since the initial migration to our off-site server, life has being normal, except  for a few who no longer get to “tinker” with it. It is they who are heartbroken now as they can no longer test their toys on the working server, or should I say, “play with the main server.” They still have the “old” one for their use, but I guess all the fun is taken out of it now for them.

Second, this means that our email and data service will also change. Yes, our connection will be purely Intranet based as everyone will have access to it universally. And as an added bonus, in my opinion, we are ditching our Microsoft Outlook becuase of cost, and problems with it letting in so many viruses and other junk that plugs up our servers disk space. So, if you want your email, you are going to have to switch to webmail – yes, w-e-b-m-a-i-l. This is in light of so many work stations carrying huge amounts of archived email accounts. People will have to let go, quit hoarding, and save space while our “off-site” server takes care of the data load.

Lastly, I have to train, or teach, the staff how to work with the new marvel of web based email. So this puts me in a position of power. With knowledge comes power, and with power comes fear from the masses; fear of the unknown as I see it. The problem is assuring the masses that there is no need for fear, and that all will be well once they embrace the unknown and it becomes second nature within their comfort-zone. I cannot wait! *evil laugh*

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour | Comments Off

The Test Trip – Ft Langley to Walnut Grove and Back.

June 1st, 2011 Thomasso

Today, not only being the first day of June, but is also the first trip shopping using only BC Transit as my means of transportation. I have to say that it was a resounding success, accept for a minor inconvenience, it rained like crazy on my home, but this could easily be overlooked as not being long term problem. I was really impressed with this. The round trip took 41 minutes from leaving my door to returning back home. This includes the short wait at the bus stop, the actual shopping in Walnut Grove, and riding the bus home and walking to my door at home.

I think for future trips I will take an umbrella with me if it looks even remotely close to raining. Although there are now shelters at each stop that I was at, you really need the coverage while walking from the shopping centre to the bus stop.

My shopping time can stretch out to about 15min giving me plenty of time catching the return trip. Today I did manage to catch the very same bus for the trip home.

Above, at the corner of Walnut Grove Drive and 88 Avenue. The rain was pounding the pavement just as soon as I left the store. I should of had an umbrella with me.

Final thoughts on Translink’s transit system

Since the days when I first used the buses in Fort Langley, BC, the system really, well, sucked, for lack of a better word. It was atrocious and not really worker-class friendly, so it suffered from lack of rider ship as a result. It really served no purpose for me using it to go to work. In fact, back in the 1990s, employers would often say that they are not accessible by transit, which was code for, “we are not interested in you if you are taking transit.” So adopting the vehicle was an necessity.

Today, I have to say that Transklink has at least improved its service to a workable level. The idea of having more trips per day, leaving every half hour during peak hours, has really made the system workable for using it for regular activities during the day. However, its service still needs improvement during the early hours as I still see very few people riding it to work, such as shift workers, who start at hours such as 7:00am to 8:00am.

I also like the idea that your transit ticket is good for 90 minutes. So my round trip cost only $2.50 for the trip! That is cool.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about weather, Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Photographs | 1 Comment »

Just Plain Old Tired

May 27th, 2011 Thomasso

Wow, trying to adjust to all these new and sudden changes to my daily lifestyle has really started to take a toll on my energy levels. The impact of work, or more precisely, taking transit, has left me with taking cat-naps when ever I get them. It seems no matter how hard and try and sleep, I still cannot force my body to sleep during these new hours, and waking up is like pure torture – brain is up, but body wants to go back to bed. I thought after a couple of day I would just smoothly slide into this new routine, but I do not seem to be no where close to fully adjusting to it.

For the last week I have been in perpetual tired mode. I even laid off on the amount of coffee I drink per day. Yes, coffee! So I guess it is all up to nature and letting my body go through the normal adjusting period.

I have had lots of comments on this too. Several of my co-workers, and friends, have noted how tired I look. I even noticed it whenever I look in the mirror at how tired I look. But feeling it is the worst – I just cannot snap out of it.

My theory is that it all has to do with the weather. The rain, cool temperatures, and lack Sun, must be a contributing factors to my prolonged adjustment problems to jumping back in to a work schedule. I know for the last couple of days I had to turn on my heat in the house becuase the nights started getting very cold. Last morning I thought it was March all over again. Waking up to that, well, was torture added to my misery of having lack of sleep.

Posted in Bitching about weather, Bitching about work, Diatribe, General | Comments Off

The Transit Experience: Langley Style

May 20th, 2011 Thomasso

Now that I am using the transit system, again, it does not appear to be as bad as I thought it would be, but time will tell. I did take transit many many moons ago, back in the days when I first moved to Fort Langley. Back then, I had no vehicle, so I had no choice but to take transit then until I earned enough money to buy one, but that took a while. So I used the bus system a lot.

So anyway, here is what my day looked like at the crack of dawn. I was the only rider catching the very first bus of the day out of Fort Langley. This would be the 6:06am bus heading into Langley Centre from Walnut Grove.

About twenty-seven minutes later the bus dumps you off at Langley Centre where I waited. I have a choice at this point. I can jump on the 314 bus which will drop me off at the doorsteps of work, or I can hang around town, wait a bit, and walk that whole distance. My shift does not start until 7:30am, so I have over an hour to kill.

I bet you are asking yourself why I do not catch a later bus?

The next bus that leaves Fort Langley is a 7:06am bus which would get me into Langley Centre with just over ten minutes to travel a five km distance, so the 6.06am bus is my only option. Today I used my walking time to stop and take pictures. And I took several.

This image, (above) is Glover Road and Fraser Highway, standing in the little park. Note: the number of cars and people around. Even the vagrants are not up yet?

This photo makes me laugh: the broken water fountain (above). I have never seen it working.

And finally, on my way to work, looking at Langley City Hall, we have the sign and entrance. Do not tell anyone, but I think the lettering is real gold… <_< …>_>…?

So, I tried to take as much time as I could, and I still ended up arriving at work a half hour early. It was a good walk. Took lot of pictures, and enjoyed the early morning sunshine, but hanging around in an empty building was not much fun either.

And this was my morning commute into work today.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off

Personal News Summary

May 12th, 2011 Thomasso

I am just posting to let you all know that I am going to make a fairly large post tomorrow, begin that it will be Friday the Thirteenth, and of course the end of the week. I know there were a couple of you that I promised I would post today about some special topics, but I feel lazy today, so I will procrastinate until tomorrow.

Just some small tit-bits:

I have started a new part time job today. I will release more details about that very soon. Multiple employers is getting confusing, not to mention scary.

The graduation ceremony is set for June 9th, 2011. That will go ahead as planned.

It appears that I will not be going into a legal battle with the Harper Government Revenue Service after all. They have finally squared their accounting blunder and seen their errors. Another Canadian citizen spared with the wrath of bureaucratic incompetence.

The world is changing, as it should, for the better. I see very positive change coming! I am excited about that.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Graduation, Humour | Comments Off