The Hilton Chronicle

Dianne and I have just returned from Calgary where we said sayonara to our intrepid traveler, Sandi, as she heads off to Japan for at least the next year. We drove down to Sylvan Lake near Red Deer on Thursday evening and stayed the night there before getting a head start to Calgary so that Sandi could be downtown by 9:30. She had an all day orientation and while she attended that Dianne and I hung out together and did a little shopping before checking into our hotel near the airport. We then picked up Sandi and a couple of her new friends and brought them back to the hotel for the evening. Sandi spent her last evening in Canada with us as we went out for supper and then caught a little TV in the room. We had her at the airport bright and early this morning and after checking in and checking her bags we had breakfast and hung around the airport before seeing her off to the security area where she would await her flight. The first leg of her journey was to Vancouver where she connected to a nonstop flight to Tokyo. She will spend three days in Tokyo, orienting and seeing the sights before traveling to her assignment in Gi-Fu province. Hopefully she will be able to contact us as soon as she gets her internet hooked up. We have set up a voice over ip connection on her laptop so that we can talk to her and see her as well. Dianne and I had a leisurely drive back from Calgary stopping in Red Deer for a bite to eat.

Posted 7:51 PM by Jeff

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

New Job

Today was the fist day of my new job and it went pretty well. It was mostly an orientation day in which I met a lot of people, signed a lot of papers, listened to a lot of explanations and had lunch with the boss. My next three weeks have been planned out with training, riding along with other technicians and generally learning the ropes. Looks like it might be fun.
On the weekend we held a goodbye barbecue for Sandi and had about 40 people attend. The weather was great for it and we filled up the back yard with chairs, tables and guests. We were up until 3:00am Sunday morning singing karaoke which was a lot of fun.
On Monday night the hot weather was disrupted here when a massive storm center moved in and at times it looked like we might get a tornado. The black clouds which swarmed in were turning and blowing in all different directions at times and when the clouds broke the rain was coming horizontally. Fortunately it did not amount to much and we got some much needed moisture. It has been quite a bit cooler since which has been a welcome relief.

Posted 4:38 PM by Jeff

Saturday, July 14, 2007

More Changes

Here we are halfway through July already and we have been enjoying some extremely July type weather the last few days. Actually the term "enjoy" might be a slight exaggeration as this weather does play havoc when you are tring to work, especially in a non air conditioned environment. Temperatures have been in the mid to upper 30's for most of last week and it has been quite a sweat-fest at work. Even in the shade of a house it gets pretty warm and the only refuge I can get is when I have to do some work in a basement. Nonetheless it is nice to finally have some summer weather here. Who knows how long it will last.

Sandi treated herself to a new laptop computer last week in preparation for her trip overseas. She bought a HP Pavilion and it is quite slick, even though it is running Vista. She is getting used to giving it permission to do everything she has requested it to do. I have been helping her get some programs loaded and some removed and just generally set up to where she likes it. It has a built in webcam and once she buys herself a headset we will try and get Skype running so that we can talk to her and see her in Japan for nothing. She just has a couple of weeks to go before she leaves and she is frantically running around trying to take care of all the loose ends of her affairs before she departs. She is having a big going away party here next weekend and has invited all her friends to say goodbye as she won't be seeing them for about a year.

Some big news for me this week: I handed in my resignation and gave two weeks notice to Connect. I have managed to land a position working for Aramark Beverages as a service technician. It will involve going around to various offices in the city to repair, maintain and install coffee and food service equipment. I was finding that the billable hours way of payment at Connect was not working out for me and that my paycheck was never enough to cover our expenses so I started looking around again. I found this job online and was able to secure an interview and they practically hired me on the spot. So, now I start there on July 25. It's a fixed monthly salary with possible overtime and there is a benefit package, something we lacked at Connect. The money is still not quite up to where I would like it to be but I think it is at least a step in the right direction. It's a vast improvement in many senses. I won't have to be pulling wire in the dead cold of winter, most offices are heated and air conditioned. And it won't be quite so physically taxing. There's a bit of lifting involved but nothing really strenuous. So, I am looking forward to this change. Unfortunately I won't be getting any holidays this year except for one day between jobs and I am taking the Friday off that Sandi has to be in Calgary for her orientation. Dianne has a couple of weeks off around that time so she will have to find something to do with herself without me.

Posted 9:59 AM by Jeff

Monday, July 02, 2007

June Update

Seems I've been out of the loop so to speak for an entire month as the last post was in May. So, with the beginning of a new month upon us, here is a bit of a recap of the last month or so.

At the end of May, as you recall, Dianne, Angela and Sandi went down to visit Nicole & Chris in Crestview and had a fairly nice time. They were a bit delayed getting back as bad weather in Houston grounded all planes there and no incoming flights. So they were delayed leaving Pensacola and by the time they did get to Houston their connecting flight had already left. So, consequently, they were stranded in Houston and had to spend the night there at their own expense before they could get out on a flight the next morning. From then on everything went smoothly until they got home, albeit 24 hours late.

Work is going pretty good for me. I have been doing some work that is not as taxing physically as I have been installing connectors, cover plates, and distribution panels in homes that are nearing completion. I have also been involved in a couple special projects installing home theaters and multi room sound systems in some pretty swanky homes.

I took the plunge and installed the Vista upgrade on my laptop a couple of weeks ago. It lasted all of four days before I got totally frustrated and did a clean install back to XP. It was so annoying as every time I booted the computer it kept giving me warnings of incompatibilities with certain programs and the operating system, even when the program was uninstalled! And then the overblown security system started driving me nuts as it wanted confirmation from me that I was actually the one that had started the program and that I actually wanted it to run. Then it had to phone home every five minutes to check to make sure I was not running a bootlegged copy of Windows. I got so fed up that I scrapped the whole exercise and went back to XP. "You are beginning to realize the shortcomings of the new operating system. Confirm or Deny?"

I had to put the wedding video that we shot in May on hold for a bit as I needed to get back to the Fort Edmonton project. They wanted a revised draft of the production with a few changes made to the original. I finished that up last week and sent it off and hopefully in about a week's time we will know whether the project's a go and the DVDs can go on sale or whether we have to do a bit more revising. I am anxious to get that project out of the way and finish the wedding video as we have a couple more weddings lined up for the end of the summer. I also have two or three smaller projects waiting to be started. I still haven't got to my desk building project and am still holed up in Nikki's old bedroom.

Sandi is now less than a month away from leaving us for her trip to the Orient. She has received her placement and has been communicating with her predecessor there getting a low down on the living conditions and the lay of the land. He is selling her his bicycle and his microwave oven and has been giving her advice on all sorts of things. So now that things are more concrete in the planning, Sandi is getting really excited. She has to go down to Calgary on July 27 for a full day orientation and then flies out of there the next day, so we are planning to drive her down there to see her off.

Our family cell phone contract expires this month so we decided to upgrade our hardware as we renewed the contract. So, Dianne and I are now the proud owners of a pair of matching Blackberry Pearls. Dianne was in sore need of a PDA since her Palm Pilot died some time ago and without spending a lot of money you cannot buy a basic unit anymore. So, we decided to give the Blackberries a try as they incorporate a cell phone, internet browser, PDA functions and a digital camera all in one tiny unit. We've spent a lot of time playing with them over the last couple of days as the learning curve is a tad treacherous. I got so wrapped up it with yesterday, sitting outside in the sun, that I totally lost track of time and ended up with a nice burn all over my front. It's not hard to see why these amazing little devices are nicknamed "Crackberries" as they can be quite addicting.

Yesterday was, off course, Canada day, and we spent the evening at Angela and Lee's house on the river bank waiting for the firework display. We had quite a spectacular view and I tried my hand at photographing the show along with several other people who were there. The pictures turned out not to bad as you can see from this sample. I realized right away that I am going to have to invest in a remote shutter release cable as the time exposures are a little shaky from me holding down the shutter release button.

So we are now into the official summer month of July and we are really hoping the weather decides to be what it is supposed to be for this time of year. The last couple of weeks have not been too bad, but it still gets very cool in the evenings. We've been trying to get out for our bike rides but have not had a lot of success in being consistent yet this year. We went for a ride tonight and it was very nice. It just seems that either something comes up to make us busy or it's just too miserable outside. Hopefully we can remedy that in the next few weeks.

Posted 10:14 PM by Jeff

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