The one with all the traveling.

It was a long week last week. Now that my site is now up and running, I can relax (sort of) and start posting entries with the intent of entertaining (boring) people (to death).

Last week saw me taking care of a project at work to install new uninterruptible power supplies in various sites in the north. Two of which to note were the ones in Lynn Lake and Churchill – which meant that I had to travel there. The Lynn Lake install was on Wednesday, so I had to rent a vehicle since the roads are not great to drive a car in (although I did it twice for Nelson House trips – but I was using a loaner). I got a big, honking Ford Explorer to drive to Lynn Lake with. Coincidentally, the girl at Enterprise that rented me the car was Cathy, who happens to be the daughter of a very good customer of mine when I was at RadioShack/The Source. She’s pretty hot too. Uhh… anyway, I got to Lynn Lake, did my thing there, and drove back. It was hard on me, but the next day should have been a day to relax before the next trip to Churchill. It wasn’t. I went crazy with calls, and I closed 9 calls that day, including two after-hours calls!!! Ridiculous! I couldn’t believe my luck when both government AND Wal-Mart paged me out. Damn bastards, and right before the Churchill trip, which I had yet to pack for at the time. Anyway, I took care of them and was able to go home and pack in a hurry, charging all my portable devices.

The flight to Churchill wasn’t too bad, but the work there was rather minimal. I was supposed to disconnect a server for shipping back to Winnipeg, but somebody already hauled it away just before I arrived. So, I ended up taking care of a simple call and made plans to install a UPS in the afternoon. A cool thing happened, though. While I was eating lunch in the office, I recalled faintly that an old friend, Jason, moved to Churchill years ago, but we’d lost contact after so long. I looked him up in the phone book, but he wasn’t listed, and I had no idea on whether he was still there. On a whim, I glanced at a post-it note on the site contact’s desk, and it had his freaking name right on it!! Talk about a coincidence! So, I asked a random person where to find him (since Churchill is such a small town where everybody knows everybody else on a first name basis), and they directed me to his workplace, which was only down the hall. Ah, long story short, the complex I was working in is the town’s mall, school, hospital, arena, gym, pool, library, and city hall all wrapped into one. When I got to the video rental store (which offers much more than just video and game rentals), Jason was right there, and conveniently, he was getting off work in a couple hours, so we made plans (since my flight back didn’t depart until 18:00). I did the UPS install and went back to meet Jason and his wife, who had moved up with him after six degrees of separation (another long story). We went out for coffee and cake (that was SOME cake), caught up on BS, and they showed me around town. It’s kind of funny. My cousins used to live in Churchill years ago, and I never visited them more than once. The only time I visited was because I was escorting my aunt from Malaysia, and I was helping to fix my cousin Margaret’s computer, so I never got a chance to go around town much. Anyway, it ended up being a leisure trip more than a business trip, but I won’t tell my manager that. ^^

I took the whole weekend relaxing, but not too much, as I did work on the site design (finally completing and launching on Sunday), so we can skip those details.

Monday saw me taking care of a few calls at work, but mostly doing up the paperwork for Thursday and Friday. I went to Cross Lake on Tuesday. Get this – my job was to setup a large-format mfp printer device at Royal Bank. Now, before you say anything, these damn things are easy to setup, only require a couple people to lift out of the box, and anybody who can follow instructions on how to rip tape and insert a toner cartridge and duplexer into the printer could do this job. Hell, anybody who’s just a few brain cells short of zombie status could do this job. I found it stupid that they had to pay my company big bucks to send me to a reserve 3 hours away on a dirt road to do a job like this. It’s insulting and demeaning, and I would probably be better off as a male dancer or stripper or escort. At least I’d make lots of money.

Anyway, that wasn’t the worst of it. I got stranded with a flat tire on the way back. I couldn’t find out how to access the flat tire. I couldn’t find the car jack and tools. Darn those Jeep Cherokees! Of all the people who decided to pull over and help, I got stuck with a native family. The man and his son were extremely helpful, and they did more than I asked for. There’s a lesson to be learned from this, I suppose – not all native people are filthy, neanderthal drunks and criminals. Just kidding. You live in the north for so long, and you become racist towards these people for no good reason at all, only that you just grow tired of seeing the bad seeds of these people. Everybody should just redirect all this pent-up anger towards those Chinese, who give us nothing but cheap craftsmanship, bird flu, mad cow disease, SARS, and homosexuality. Thanks for nothing!

I’m just kidding, just kill all the ones who speak English with bad Mandarin accents. “I understan’ that!” Hahaha.

I noticed that some people got confused with the original header image at the top of the page, since it looked clickable, but it really wasn’t. So, I changed it. I plan to make a randomizing, rotating image. I just have to make enough of them. I made this one in Photoshop instead of PSP. I rarely use that PS, especially CS2, so I think I did an okay job.

以上。。。であります！