that ring of confidence

Why study industrial arts?

The 1950s' must have been a wonderful time, with handy public service videos like this one to help kids make decisions about what sort of post-secondary education they should take. I actually saw this as part of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 VHS video that Aaron Peck and I rented from Silver Screen Video back when I was in high school. If only I'd taken its advice. Damn my liberal arts education.

My first courses are complete

I return to school and finish two courses through the power of cramming large amount of highly caffeinated tea into my stomach and staying up really late.

Like a vampire I've been up late nights, but instead of blood I've been trying to suck my brain juice from my extra large head.  Instead of a thirst I've had school projects to do, and instead of living forever I've just given up sleeping to maximize my working hours.  My first two courses for the BCIT Technical Writing Program [jks] wrapped up this week with heavily weighted final exams and final projects.

It was time to brew some Earl Grey tea.

I finished my last project around ten this morning, after catching a full four hours of sleep after the exam.  The exam itself, for my Technical Editing course, was either way to hard or way to easy.  I was the first one done, and while there were a few terms that I did not know I feel like I got most of everything else.  It's hard to know if I was so fast because I missed things that I was supposed to edit, or because I've essentially either been freelancing or editing something for the past decade and a beginners course was a little too basic.

Ah hubris, my good friend, I've missed you.

I should have my final marks, or at least a good idea of what those marks are going to be, within a week or two.  Then I'll need to pick out the next two courses that I'll be starting in January.  The plan is to burn through this and finish sometime just after the wedding in August so I can start a new jobs with the big money paychecks to keep my trophy wife happy.

In the classroom they have wi-fi

I guess it dates me to say that when I was in high school nobody brought laptops to school. When I got a very old Powerbook to take with me to France, and would use take it in class on my return to Canada, it was a novelty. Even when I hit university the only other students using laptops tended to be the special needs students who the school supplied with computers to aid in their studies. There certainly was not wi-fi available anywhere around campus, and if I wanted to get my laptop online I needed to unplug one of the computers in the Phoenix's office and stick the stolen ethernet cable into my computer.

By the time I left it was more common to see laptops, but university wide wi-fi was still in the future. In the newspaper office we'd finally set up our own private wireless network, simply because we were always short on ethernet ports, and that seemed cutting edge.

These days though wireless internet is the norm in post-secondary schools across Canada. Karen Pinchin wrote an article for The Georgia Straight about how that's taxing student's attention spans in class [tgs], and I guess the fact that I'm blogging as the teacher is trying to get his laptop to display the correct slide, is proof that it does divide attention. Myself though I'm of the opinion that students basically find ways to let their minds go on mini holidays with or without technological advances.

I was generally attentive in high school but when the teacher was having to go over a concept for a third or fourth time for someone my mind would wander. Back then I'd write short stories, work on terrible lyrics to terrible songs that I intended to write one day when I finally learned to play guitar (I never did and likely never will), or came up with names for the terrible band that would never perform my terrible songs.

On notable class was grade eight English. I was an avid reader and would generally finish a novel within a week, which since we studied a novel over a month or two, meant that I had a great deal of time during the class' reading time. Seeing this, and seeing that Curtis Seaman was also reading ahead, Mr. Brooks would send the pair of us out to wander the school and write short stories and plays for extra credit. This never resulted in any great pieces of literature, since they were generally very silly parodies that only really made us laugh.

Still it was the type of thing that made us really enjoy the class, and I think that year was probably the best mark I ever got in English.

So here I am blogging. The projector is almost fixed, and the class is ready to continue so I guess I'd better go. I probably won't get extra credit for this, but at least I'm not unleashing more terrible lyrics to terrible songs to a yet unformed terrible band out into the world.

Even Superman needs a break and I'm no Superman

Between school, work and freelancing I'm starting to feel a little bit tweekish [wp].  Being busy is of course good, since work and freelancing pays the bills, I'm starting to feel like I've been on the go for so long that I could just curl up right here and have a nice long nap.  I've had a fairly recent vacation [jks], but while Las Vegas was fun it certainly was not relaxing.

I just deleted two full paragraphs explaining why I felt so stressed out, including a large section on the ins and outs of my days off, but at the end of the day that doesn't matter.  What does is that I feel like I need to have a nap, or at least a nice comfortable spot in the store near the iPhone display where I can lay down and cry for awhile.

I need a staycation [wp]. 

What I really want to do is to get two days off in a row, and just disconnect.  I'd like to stick my iPhone in a drawer for two days, grab my iPod and just enjoy life without a telephone, email or anything else.  These days I try to go a day without using a phone and I inadvertently start a citywide manhunt for my lifeless bloated corpse.  I need to find a way to modularly unplug myself from life for awhile, without everything else falling apart.

Now excuse me, I need to go lay down and have a nice cry.

I'm not even supposed to be here today

Through a series of not particularly interesting occurances I ended up having both yesterday and today off this week. It was unintentionally perfect, since it was going to give me two whole days to work on the sizeable load of school work that I'd been given in my first two technical writing courses [jks]. They did not look particularly hard but rather time intensive, and one is even just a major copy and pasting job that requires pasting various recepies into a basic Word File for use in a cookbook that is going to be a class project.

Two days.  It seems easy enough, especially given the way I used to be able to crank out a 15,000 word essay in an evening back at Okanagan University College.  Yesterday I had a relaxed morning as Lydia got ready for her baking class, and then went for a walk with my mother who was taking Charlie for a walk.  Around three in the afternoon just as we were returning to my apartment Mirco called and asked me to work tomorrow... I mean today

Dante's plea/mantra in the movie Clerks "I'm not even supposed to be here today." is my rallying cry as I shuffle through the day with my school work half finished.  Once the rest of the staff arrives I'll make a sneaky exit out the backdoor, but until then I'm on the customer service frontlines.

New words for obvious concepts or My Secondary Trip Through Post-Secondary

My first class in the BCIT Technical Writing program was Thursday night. Not quite having a perfect idea of how long it would take to walk from my apartment to the downtown campus I left about an hour early, walking through a light rain while listening to the CBC's Q podcast to hear an interview with John Hodgman about his new book More Information Than You Require.  I brought my Macbook, not quite sure what the computer setup would be, and used to taking notes on a laptop from my OUC days.

The classroom was basically a computer lab, so it had all the computers we needed.  I kept notes of the class in Evernote [en], so that I can access them from my iPhone or back home on my Macbook.  It's a fairly new facility, at least fairly new in terms of the Canadian post-secondary scene.  The computers are all Windows boxes, but they've got some programs specifically for technical writing types that I don't have on my Mac, so I'll be using them for the in-class work and my Macbook for the homework (which hopefully will all be doable in Microsoft Word).

I'm nearly done these beer shots so it might be time to get back into school

Taking a look at any random month over the past year or so and you'll find entries like this one [jks] where I'm looking for work.  It has become the new looking for a girlfriend in the dramatic narrative that is my life, and like my pre-Lydia attempts at finding love my job hunt has resulted largely in disapointment and nights spent surfing the internet looking for porn... I mean jobs.

A bit over a month ago I felt like I'd finally gotten into a good position in the hunt.  I'd an interview with a local company looking for a technical writer, I had an interview lined up for a sales position with the new Apple Store and I had an interview lined up with the comic book store I shop at.  The Apple Store and the technical writing job were both oppertunities that I considered to be career stepping stones; positions that would lead to bigger and better things.  The comic book store seemed like it would be fun, and a way to help make some extra money to help pay for the wedding.

I got a part time job at the comic book store, which was not the full time position I'd hoped for but was a promising start.  The techincal writing job did not pan out, and the Apple Store turned me down after bringing me in for a group interview where they did not actually interview us but spent the entire time telling us why we should work for Apple.  By the end of the interview I'd gone from really wanting to work at the new store to really really wanting to work at the new store.  Sadly there was something in the way I watched the promotional video that informed them they did not want me.

The epic poem of my life

I'm trying very hard to come up with something to blog at this point.  Following the Mr. Rawson school of forced free writing never ends up with anything readable, and certainly nothing that you want to submit to a(n) (potential) audiance of millions.  In fact during the ten minutes of free writing every class I tended to just fill my workbook with the phrase, "I am free.  I am being forced to write."  It was meant to be ironic, in that way that we can achieve irony at 17.

I suppose to make this a better blog I need some drama or adventure in my life.  Another trip, for example, to compete with last year's travel to Europe.  Something quite facinating and new so I can dazzle you with photographs and tales of eating weird food in dodgey resturants.  Instead I have pictures of the inside of the Skytrain, as I commute to and from Metrotown every day.

Which is not to say that life is boring, or dull.  I watched Bee Movie last night and it was pretty good.  However the fact that you're reading about me watching Bee Movie is a sign that perhaps I'm not leading the sort of heroic life that is worthy of great study.  Perhaps I should join Jason and search after the Golden Fleece [wp].  I'm sure such a journey would provide many chances for good pictures and many meals of weird food in dodgey resturants.  At the very least Mysia should be interesting.

Photo credit

• Photo by: Jeffery Simpson
• What: Arc de Triomphe, Paris France
• Date Taken: May 15th, 2007
• Camera: Sony Ericsson K790i

By the bright lights in some ICU // Even the planless have a plan

Thankfully once again it's looking like I'm going to be hitting all of my sales quotas for the month.  Though it still means that I'll make half of what I used to back before the buyout, it's at least a good financial foundation.  Especially since I'm still in the job hunt mode, and trying to sort out school. 

How oddly fucked up is my schooling situation?  Well currently I am registered at both the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, though I have not yet registered for any classes.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to clear up my OUC > UBC-O status in the next week and get everything sorted out in regards to getting my BA after ten years.  If I go to SFU I'll lose nearly two years worth of course credits, so I'm trying to avoid doing that while also avoiding moving back to Kelowna.

Looking for a job I've been a bit less proactive than I had been, since I was putting most of my energy into aiming for a job with Bioware in Edmonton.  Now I'm waiting to hear from Bioware, but I've also got to finish up a resume for eBay in Vancouver and then follow up on other job leads.  The trouble is getting time to do all of this has not been easy.

Meanwhile my broken hard drive seems to mount fine on the ten year old PCs at work, so there's some slight of hand required to get it to actually work with my iMac.  I might just have to buy a new hard drive and transfer all the music over to that at work.  Oh and I need to find time to get to the comic book store.

Facebook cynical

Message I left on Chad's Facebook page [fb] but then later deleted least I tar him with my cynical attack on high school:

Dear person that I did not speak to in high school, nor have talked to or thought of since.  My computer tubes Facebook machine tells me that you are were a fellow graduate of OKM in 1997.  I would like the oppertunity to meet with you at some social function, perhaps a high school reunion, so that I could confirm this for myself.  Do not worry, now that I do not have to worry so much about being popular with the right type of people I may very likely speak with you.

I mean even someone like Tom Hanks had to have talked with Tom Sizemore during the filming of Saving Private Ryan even though they are not the same class of person.  However an ability to commune with common man is one of the many traits that I share with highly successful people such as Mr. Hanks.  Male pattern baldness is another.

Since my liver was removed, following my hybrid versus tree traffic collision, I have been interested in reconnecting with the little people who've done so much to add background colour to my life.  You've been like extras in the blockbuster of my life and at the very least I should let you hang out at the craft services table that is my company.

Another one in the "I should really get my degree" catagory

I saw an old editor from The Phoenix outside the office at work today.  Mike Ault was the first Editor-in-Chief while I was at the paper, and the most colourful.  So of course I quickly sent an email about it to Delme, and then we talked about it on MSM.  Below is a bit of our conversation, Delme is "The Man Who Laughs" and I'm "Jeffery":

The Man Who Laughs says:

OMG

The Man Who Laughs says:

Seriously? Mike Ault?

Jeffery says:

Yeah man.

Jeffery says:

I was like, "Hey it's a chubby guy with weird glasses on a bike."

Jeffery says:

Then it dawned on me who exactly it was.

The Man Who Laughs says:

go ask him if he's still taking naked pictures of underage girls.

Jeffery says:

I was going to but then I thought better of it. I don't need that guy in my life.

The Man Who Laughs says:

few do

Jeffery says:

Dude, do you remember our first Phoenix meeting? Well my first anyway. When we went to his apartment and there was like a billion pictures of naked girls all over the place?

Jeffery says:

And I was like, "Well these newspaper people are freaks."

The Man Who Laughs says:

I remember it vividly. It was like something out of a lame thriller.

Jeffery says:

And it was literally like the three of us, because Dave was working or something.

Jeffery says:

Ha ha.

Jeffery says:

I know I figured there was probably a female torso in the freeze.

Jeffery says:

*freezer.

Then conversation turned to other editors who were at the paper during our time.  One of the editors, who I believe was the features editor, was Maya Segas.  Maya went on to become the student council president for a year and was involved in Amnesty International on campus, so she was pretty driven.  Of course we Googled her.

Jeffery says:

Found her.

Jeffery says: Here

Jeffery says:

Maya is a Campaigner for Oxfam GB. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Maya has a B.A. in International Relations from the University of British Columbia and an M.A. in Human Rights from the University of Padua, Italy. She also worked in Brussels and Copenhagen for international organisations before joining Oxfam. She also did half of her Master's Degree in Bilbao, Spain.

Jeffery says:

The rest I found seems to be about Sega.

The Man Who Laughs says:

[face_jaw-dropped] Wow.

Jeffery says:

And people named Maya playing it.

Jeffery says:

I know. Typical Maya.

The Man Who Laughs says:

I feel so completely useless right now.

Jeffery says:

You feel pathetic? I'm in an entry level sales job.

Jeffery says:

Monkeys could do what I do if they could be trained not to throw their poop at the customers.

Clearly finishing my degree and getting some kind of job doing important work like being Prime Minister or driving a starship is in order. 

Geography =

In class

I'm in geography right now.  A two month summer course to blow through my last three science credits so I'll be > < that close to being done my degree.  So far the professor seems to be wanting to leave us for a standup comedy act as he's done riffs on things so not related to geography that it's tangent-riffic.

Anyway I'm one of three Mac users in the class.  The girl infront of me has a 14" iBook and the prof looks like he's got a 12" Powerbook as well.  Hmm... I should buy a Powerbook... 15"... drool.

Play the hand that your money is on.

I woke up yesterday at 5 am to finish up an essay that had been haunting me for about a month.  The overdue library book piled in my room spoke of my lack of motivation and aversion to sitting down and banging out the last 1,200 words required to bring the essay home.  However with the final yesterday, I could not put off the essay any longer.

After hitting the five minute snooze option on my BlackBerry 6 times it was 5:30 and I was ready to hit the keyboard.  I finished the essay up at about 10 am, and after a bit of work with my iDisk trying to easily transfer the Word file to my iMac for printing, I finally loaded it onto my iPod shuffle and walked it across the house for printing.

Then I set about studying for the exam which was at 1 pm.

The exam was where I redeemed myself for being a terrible student.  I have always done well on history exams that are heavily focused on essays.  I might not be able to find Tokyo on a blank map of Japan but ask me to write an essay on how the Japanese military gained such influence within the Japanese government during the the 1930s or about the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere and I'll be smiling.  I felt good, one more class down and two to go to finish the degree from Hell.

Then, on my way out, I picked picked up a copy of the Phoenix on my way out and the post-exam glow faded right quick.  I had thought something was up with this issue of the paper since talking to Melissa the other day.  She mentioned an article about me and not knowing that there would be an article about me I just assumed she meant one of the articles by me.  But no, there was an article about me.

The article can be summed up as the theme, "Jeff has been here a long time.  He's a loser."  They quoted, or fake quoted, people like the student union president calling me a sad sack and pathetic.  They also, and I think overall this annoys me as much as the content of the article or even more, ran a very unflattering picture of me beside the article.  Previous to this I had made it clear that I did not want my picture in the paper.  This had come up when there was going to be a feature asking for people to apply for editorial positions by having pictures of us current editors and descriptions of what our jobs were.  I had said that I did not want my picture in the paper and when it was clear that they didn't really give a shit what I wanted I essentially said I would quit if they did since I was mainly hanging around to help the paper out.  They ran a picture anyway, but it was cropped so only my eyes were showing so rather than be a prick and make a fuss about it I ignored it.

So ignoring the fact that I didn't want my picture in the paper, since I'm feeling really shitty about my appearance due to the post-Atkins weight gain that's occured since September, and then taking a chance to slam me they also didn't feel the need to let me know that the article was going in.  Which of course they don't need to do, but since I'm an editor I thought maybe consulting with me would have at least been polite.

So I managed to go from being pretty pleased with myself to being pretty pissed off at the Phoenix.  There was some post-publishing year training to be done, helping the new people learn the ropes, but I'll need to cool down a bit before I even consider helping them again.

All of which I'm sure makes me sound like I take myself too seriously, which I probably do.  To be fair to them I've said worse stuff about myself in the paper, but most of that is premptive.  If you make fun of yourself for something you worry people will make fun of you about it stops them from doing it.  It sometimes hurts less to mock yourself then have someone else do it.  So when they took that as a cue to attack me, well it's a good kick in the balls to end the year.

"Calculation Theme"

2,500 words.

I used to be able to knock this shit off in an evening, my veins coursing with Jolt Cola and the digital clock ticking towards when I'd rush to hit print, and drive across town to stumble into class in time to hand in my work.

I guess I'm out of practice because giving myself a three solid days on this paper has not yielded anything like a finished paper. Instead I'm about 1,000 words in and frankly wouldn't mind ending the whole thing at 1,200 words. I'll keep it up however, and get this damn thing in as soon as possible. However the longer I work on it the more I start to realize I need a stiff drink and a masturbation break.

Jerk it out

I bought an iPod shuffle through the Apple store online when it first came out. It arrived this week in the mail and I've been using it quite a bit since. It's a neat little gadget, though it's certainly not going to replace my iPod for day to day usage. However it's tiny, holds enough music for a day or two, and is durable and cheap enough that I don't have to worry about babying it like my iPod. I just have to remember not to wash it when I wash my pants, since it's small enough that I can have it in a pocket and not feel it at all.

Meanwhile after a few days of getting over strep throat I came down with a killer cold which had me flat on my back as well. However sadly I wasn't able to take time off work, so I've been going and going while hacking up a lung. On the plus side my throat doesn't hurt nearly as much as before, though my nose is running like Carl Lewis.

Now I'm at school, trying to catch up on the classes I missed. I'm glad I dropped out of that geography course, because catching up on missed labs was not going to be any fun at all. As it is I don't think I'm too far behind in my two history courses.

On another note Beck has a new EP out on the iTunes music store. It's more rap / hip hop than his last disc Sea Change. If you've got a computer capable of downloading music through the iTunes music store check it out.

In class

After spending yesterday in bed trying not to speak at all due to a harsh sour throat I finally ventured out of the house to go to school. I'm in currently sitting in Russian History, and the professor is I swear a troll doll. Granted his hair is shorter, so if you stuck him on a pencil and twirled it about he wouldn't do the hair band hair thing, but that's nit-picking. Aside from that he's dead on troll doll.

However he's already won my heart by declaring that he doesn't fail people, he just has them do the work again. Not that I was worried about failing, but you know, its good to know. We are now about to learn everything we need to know about 1,000 years of Russian history in 40 minutes. If only we could do the other 1,000 years in as short of time period I'd be ready for the exam at the end of class.

Not knowing anything about anything: not just for Yanks anymore

EducationGuardian.co.uk | News crumb | Youth find place for Gandalf in British history

I've always rejected the notion that Americans are some how dumber than other people. Granted it's fun to make fun of them, but while they may know next to nothing about the rest of the world, they tend to know quite a bit about their own history in a way that Canadians do not.

When I was working a shift at the Uptown Theatre I had a revealing conversation about just how much the average Canadian knows when two of my co-workers among other things could not name the Prime Minister and thought that Canada had fought against the Jews in World War II.

This Guardian article I found however shows that things aren't only bad this side of the Atlantic.

A sizeable slice of younger Britons think Gandalf, Horatio Hornblower or Christopher Columbus was the hero of the English fleet's defeat of the Spanish Armada, a survey showed today.

Less than half identified Sir Francis Drake as a key figure in one of the most famous sea battles in British history, the poll for the BBC showed.

A third of 16 to 34-year-olds did not know that William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings, while more than a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds thought Britain had been conquered by the Germans, the Americans or the Spanish.

Serious moonlight

I was originally going to call this post "Easter Bowie" because it sounded like the beloved children's holiday creature and because it was Easter and I saw David Bowie. Then I was going to call it holy shit because of the vast amount of studying I have to do in the next 24 hours.

Maintaining Radio Silence

It has been awhile since I last wrote anything here. So I am going to go quick to catch you up on the never ending excitment that is my life. So last time I dropped a line I was in Victoria attending the WRCUP conference. So let us begin there.

The conference was good. Well organized and fun. Jeffrey Weston was there and in fact the conference t-shirt was designed by my good friend. I decided to finish my time with the Canadian University Press and did not run for any CUP jobs. However the Phoenix will be hosting the next CUP conference when PWRCUP hits Kelowna.

Back in Kelowna I was once again visited by the door to door religious peoples. They spent some time explaining to me that God was not a trinity and that the God Christ was different than God proper. They also told me that heaven was nearly all full already. In fact they seemed convinced that all the spots in heaven were already reserved. "There was only one man in Ontario going to heaven," the elderly man told me. That seems true, I mean shit it's Ontario how many people from there can expect to be going to heaven. Oh also apparently there is no hell, and the good people who haven't already reserved a spot in heaven will just stay on Earth which will be spruced up a bit after the end of the world. Where everyone else will go I'm not sure.

They again invited me to their Easter service and gave me another magazine.

From the pictures in the magazine I learned that:
- men in fedora hats with revolvers would feature heavily in the apolcalypse
- the paradise Earth will be transformed into will be a farming community
- God thinks swearing is really shit

Anyway they promised/threatened to come back next week and read Bible verses with me. I'm either going to have to be rude and put my foot down on this shit or just stop answering the door. I'm too polite when I can not even tell Jehova Witnesses to screw off.