Category: Revelation

It’s resume time again

It’s coming up to the end of my contract. My boss’s boss’s boss asked all the contractors for copies of our resumes to help him get approval to renew the contracts, as we’ve all been here far longer than is allowed by company policy, and so he has to do whatever crafty tricks he does in order to keep us. But I figured a good resume isn’t a bad thing to have if his tricks stop working, so I spent some time on it and asked some friends to review it.

My old resume was, in the words of one person who looked at it, a “bit last millenium”. He suggested that I find a nice template somewhere and redo it. The problem is that I like having the resume there on the web both for portability and accessibilty, and most of the templates you find are Microsoft Word. But in googling around, I stumbled across a pretty nice looking resume that was implemented as an XML file with an XSL file to translate it into html. Now that is 21st century! Unfortunately, I lost the link and the guy’s name in my rush to stealadopt his technology. The XML has optional “hide=’true'” attributes so you can leave out different bits for different applications, although I haven’t made use of that.

The new resume looks pretty good. Have a look. Offer me a fulfilling job with lots of money.

Lance update

Somebody clicked the “buy it now” and bought the Lance. The speed at which it sold this time says that maybe we could have gotten a bit higher price, but this gives us time to deliver it before the annual runs out.

We’re not sure if the buyer is going to come to pick it up, or if he’ll want it delivered. I volunteered if it’s the latter. The buyer is in South Dakota, which means taking the longest trip I’ve ever made in a private plane. But even if I don’t end up delivering it, I enjoy flight planning, so here’s what I did.
Continue reading “Lance update”

Kayaking? What’s that like?

I went kayaking on Friday. This is the first time I’ve been since 29 June, when I injured my elbow during or after a paddle. The new anti-inflammatory drug I’ve been taking, and neoprene elbow sleeve seem to have helped bring the pain level to manageable levels as long as I don’t twist and pronate my hand.

The creek is down lower than I’ve ever seen it. There are mud flats all over the place, both on the creek and in the bay where the creek lets out. There was very little wild life, except for one scary loud sound of something large crashing through the weeds as I passed by one part of the creek both on the way up and the way down. So much of the route was a quiet tunnel of dead reeds. Out beyond the reeds, however, the forested banks of the creek are in full colour change.

I can’t believe how badly my skills and fitness have degraded in that time. First of all, I had to let out the straps on my PFD to accommodate my weight gain. I then couldn’t get the spray skirt on properly, at least partly because I didn’t feel stable enough to work on it much. Then I discovered I just couldn’t sustain paddling for very long. So I ended up paddling and resting and paddling and resting. I only made it as far as the weir.

The low water level has created a big mud flat just in front of the weir. The weir normally is a bit of a challenge, often running quite fast. But the mud flat has created another narrow channel that was running even faster than the weir normally does, and then there was a very small pool before the weir with very little room to get lined up for that fast stream. I decided not to try it. I’d been planning to turn around at the weir anyway, and I still wasn’t confident enough in the boat to feel confident I could keep it upright.

On the way back, I finally started getting some confidence back. I still was still having to paddle for a minute and rest for a minute, but I was actually stable enough to get the spray skirt put on right.

It’s two days later, and my “good” elbow hurts more than the “bad” elbow. That’s a bit weird.