My accomplishments for the past two weeks can be enumerated on a single hand:
-packer tests
-finishing one slide of a Powerpoint
-making changes to a report which shouldn’t have been made in the first place
-giving underground tours
-re-learning how to use AutoCAD to make a drawing of some pipes, and subsequently failing to find on site most of the parts which I had drawn
I know it’s hard to believe that one person could accomplish ALL THAT over a two week period, but what can I say. Sometimes I just don’t think I’m human.
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Since September 18, I have been happily ensconced in E wing of the Diavik Main Camp, being overwhelmed by the excitement of a) getting to go underground, b) working on engineering tasks (well, data entry, but that’s all I’m good for so far), and c) actually interacting with people while working! Diavik has many things to recommend it, which I will expand on later, but there is one thing which has had a particular impact on my ability to write this blog and that is the internet connection. It’s horrible. However, I don’t own a laptop, and it’s actually very refreshing to be able to get away from all the nonsense on the internet to which I am normally drawn like a suicidal moth. And you know you’re going to learn something when the first advice your boss gives you is to “always remember that you don’t know fuck all.” By the by, that’s actually not sarcasm.
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Posted on July 19th, 2008 by Glenn Finlay in
Reviews While I’m here in Fort Mac, I have a job - driving trucks. I tend to focus on my job, and not making perks for myself. But I have managed to read a few books. In the absence of anything amazingly exciting regarding mines, or mining, I thought I’d try my hand at writing book reviews.
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One brief follow-up to the ducks debacle, and I’ll let it fade into the sunset as it already seems to have done: only a few days earlier, an employee was crushed by a haul truck at an oil sands operation. It never even made the news.
Also, a disclaimer: this entry is rather rambling and incoherent. I apologize for this - I’m afraid I’m out of practice and still adjusting to my new shift schedule. It’s better than the 12:30AM-12:30PM shift I worked for 6 months a few years ago as a security guard, but graveyard turnarounds always take me a couple weeks to adjust to.
Short of crushing somebody or getting hopelessly lost, I have so far managed to make nearly every possible mistake a haul truck driver can make over the course of my training. Especially amusing was switching the digital speedometer to metric from imperial and failing to realize that the load measurement also switched, resulting in a 10-ton overload. Especially stupid was getting stuck axle-deep for over an hour and a half on a dump, and needing two bulldozers to pull me out.
Despite being across town from most of the other students, I’m actually restarting some old habits I’ve lost: most going to the gym, cooking, and reading. Of the three, reading is the one I’m happiest about. Back in highschool I hardly spent a night without reading a book before going to sleep, but I unfortunately lost it in late highschool and early university as there were too many demands on my time and I didn’t have any clear idea of what I wanted to read. Partially that was a result of trying to read War and Peace well before I was ready to understand or even enjoy it. There are actually two libraries nearby, the Fort McMurray public library at city hall, and the Keyano College library right across the street. I’ve just finished a fairly interesting, and actually kinda relevant book, Hitler’s Scientists, and now I’m starting on something I’ve wanted to read for a few years: The Feynman Lectures on Physics.
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Posted on May 4th, 2008 by Glenn Finlay in
Politics Well, here I am. The weather is nice, the trees have no leaves on them yet, the city has about 70,000 people spread over an area easily three or four times as large as Downtown Vancouver, and the rent is by all accounts skyrocketing (one chap told me his rent went from $1600 to $2700 in one jump). And so far, nobody has mentioned any ducks.
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It would seem that the end of the semester threw a bit more at me than I expected. Or, to be more precise, a bit more than I was prepared to handle. Or, to be blunt, more than I was willing to do quickly. Heck, I leave on Tuesday and I still don’t have one of my T4’s. It’s going to be a busy Monday.
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It’s been a while. Frankly I’ve just been being lazy. This semester isn’t particularily onerous, which goes a ways towards explaining why I haven’t been putting forth much effort. It’s far too easy to fall into complacency when I’m not so busy that I have no time. On the plus side, I’ve finally caught up on sleep! However, with the semester nearly over (a scary thought in itself, time has literally flown by), it’s interesting to look back on the courses I’ve been taking. We’re still doing general topics common to many engineering disciplines, soils, fluids, that kind of thing.
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Well… now that the Mining Games have come and gone, I finally have some time! And I’m finally getting back to schoolwork. Or, at least, I would be if it weren’t just so darned hard to get back into the swing of things after being involved in such a large event. Large compared to anything I’ve been involved in previously. I’m sure 200+ delegates and $225,000 of sponsorship is pretty small potatoes in this industry, but to me that’s just amazing - we put on a hell of a show, and I just feel really grateful that I was allowed to be a part of it.
The things which I have learned through being a part of organizing these Games are things which I would never have learned in class, and it honestly makes it very hard to concentrate on schoolwork, knowing that I have just had such a valuable experience, and that everything I am doing in class is basically an brief introduction designed solely to prevent me from being completely shocked when I enter the workforce.
Unfortunately I do not have much choice. Time to catch up on everything that I’ve been letting slide for the past month!
It would appear that I do not, in fact, have as much time as I had first thought.
Posted on February 2nd, 2008 by Glenn Finlay in
Mining Games It’s past 4 AM, and I just learned a hard lesson about saving your work after Illustrator crashed halfway through designing a pamphlet for the Mining Games. Designing promotional material takes a lot of time and energy. That’s more or less what I’ve been busy with the past two weeks. On the plus side, I get to be creative (to some degree), and I’m learning to do something completely new. Maybe one day the results of all this will become public, but for now everything is rather mediocre and amateurish. At least it’s getting better - I think. I would like to think that. It makes it easier to explain why I’m still awake.
Until February 25th, my time is going to be severely restrained and any number of last minute bloopers could result in hours of extra work for all of us on the Committee. I remain very excited about the Mining Games, and I think we’ve got an excellent event set up here. Once we have finalized schedules (anything could happen yet!), I’ll see about posting them.
In the meantime, just keep on truckin’!
Brain meltdowns are always rather embarrassing. Thankfully nobody else was home. But now it’s time to move on. I am very excited to have a job with Syncrude for the summer as a heavy equipment operator. This will be the most important educational experience of my life to this point. Also, I’ll make going there a roadtrip on my motocycle, which will be awesome. I can visit my grandmother in Edmonton, and learn how to make delicious pies. I might even learn something about mining! But mostly pies (I kid, I kid).
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