Monday 17 March 2008

real and virtual adventures

The other day I stumbled upon what might just be the greatest browser based game ever made: Off-Road Velociraptor Safari...

(Space of about an hour where I play Off-Road Velociraptor Safari and finally achieve my 1000th velociraptor kill (over the last couple of days))

...I became heavily addicted to the game the other day and could not pull myself away from it. the basic premise of the game is that you drive your jeep around killing velociraptors and doing ridiculously awesome stunts... I know... You actually get points for doing awesome things like totally thrashing your jeep, getting killer velociraptor airtime, and jump killing velociraptors from extreme distances.
Anyways, as awesome as it was, I finally tore myself away from the game at about 3:00 in the morning on Saturday and then got up at an indecent hour to go canoeing. definately worth getting up for. We canoed down a 14?km section of the Kettle river (way past big white coming from Kelowna). at first it was pretty lame because the river was pretty shallow and we had to get out into the freezing cold river to push it through some parts. eventually, however, it picked up and then joined with the West Kettle River and got really rolling. A ways later though we were trying to manouver the canoe through a rapidish bit and the river channeled into this turn. we tried to manouver around it, but ended up broadsiding a log, the canoe filling with watter immediately and getting lodged underneath. It took us about 8 minutes alternately standing in the freezing cold water and standing on the ice, so we wouldn't get hypothermia or something, to get the thing out and miraculously we didn't lose anything but the bailer. We had to break out a fire on the shore because we were dead frozen and then we had to do it again an hour or so later down the river. The whole rest of the trip though, we were pretty much all shivering and it started raining and getting windy. it was simultaneously really miserable and a really awesome adventure, but we had chili at the Beukerts house when we got back to Kelowna so it was all good.

park ranger

Wednesday 5 March 2008

In Limbo with Dylan

Listening to - Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan)

So I've been having myself a pity party, griping about how much it sucks working for Tim Hortons and about how crappy my manager is and so on and I was planning on finding a job in Kelowna and leaving, but then suddenly my manager is replaced by a really solid person who it would be great to work for and I'm caught flat-footed, it was like a slap in the face it was so quick and because my manager was the main reason why I was planning on leaving and now I don't have a great excuse to leave, but I still want to leave... I just can't think of a good enough reason. Maggie's Farm has pretty much been my anthem the last few days because it fit so well to my situation, but now the rules are changed and I really don't know what to do. I feel like Mr. Jones...

Listening to - Ballad of a Thin man (Bob Dylan)

I was thinking a while back about working at Tim Hortons and the fact that I was no longer being challenged in my work. For the first week it was challenging just learing the ropes and how things worked, but then I had pretty much mastered most of what I had to do and there was no room for expansion and then it just got boring because I wasn't learning and I wasn't being challenged, mentally or physically, I think the only way I was being challenged was learning how to deal with crappy people. In pretty much every job you will encounter and deal with crappy people, but when it is the only challenge in your job and when you have to take the crap they deal out without reacting (which I really have a hard time doing (case in point, losing it with my manager and telling her how crappy she was being)) then something's wrong with the whole situation. I want a job where A: I'm being challenged, and B: there's a healthy amount of respect going around. Tim Hortons, to date, hasn't really been that job at all. So we will see, if having a new manager changes the atmosphere and changes the way the job works, then I may just stick around, but most likely I will be gone by the end of the month... I am a rambler after all.

Park Ranger