Mental Trackmarks

I am playing around with WordPress at the moment. If you want to look at the old blog I dropped it at gordienoye.com.

I have been busy. It was more than that … but I have been busy.

I want to pimp a cause: Camp Triumph. My family has taken advantage of the camp for two years (the first year was in the old location; this year was at the new, very beautiful and developing location).

The creation of the new camp has involved a lot of donated time, materials, and sweat and has resulted in a beautiful beginning. I really suggest that you take a look at the previous link (repeated here) to see the effort that went into planning the new site with respect to everything from wind direction to sunsets to energy efficiency to longevity of the buildings.

There is a Facebook group for the camp and you will find many, many people extolling the camp’s value. If you are unsure of the camp’s value then take a look at the testimonials of the children who attended and their parents. I know it is truly a great place.

What I would like you to do (whoever you are) is to consider voting at the Aviva Community Fund site for the project to Build a Lodge for Camp Triumph. It will cost you a registration (email and password–you can disable the “send me updates emails” while registering) and allow you to cast a vote each day from now until December 16th.

That is all. If you can find the time and inclination I would appreciate it and you might (no guarantee) get a small warm feeling in your belly. Your mileage may vary. I want to help the camp because it helps others a great deal.

I will end with one final note from the write-up on the Aviva site that underscores the commitment to the camp by the people who work there. Nobody at the camp gets paid, it is a labour of love,

“Everyone who works at Camp Triumph is a volunteer. In 2009, 74 volunteer staff participated. All of the Camp counselors are university students coming from a variety of faculties such as Medicine, Engineering, Architecture, Journalism and Fine Arts. Our other volunteers range from Educators and Guidance Counselors to Firefighters.”

Then at that very instant we heard a loud WHACK!
From out in the fields came the sickening smack
of an axe on a tree. Then we heard the tree fall.
THE VERY LAST TRUFFULA TREE OF THEM ALL!

Well, I have taught my first class at UPEI after a reasonably long period of not teaching anything to anybody. It was as nerve wracking as always. I have accepted that this will always be the case. Lots of nerves, lots of preparation, things work out more or less okay. There is still a lot to be done. I have had a little under two weeks to prepare my courses and I am not finished yet. But, it was a good start.

Since I will be writing class notes and lecture slides and all the stuff I should be doing to make a good class instead of writing here I will leave you with a version of “Tainted Love” by Pop Stasi that is very good even if it is being used as an advertisement. You can also check out the original by Soft Cell.

Lest you think that I am worked off of my feet, I tok a little time today to make a panoramic view of the Sun-N-Shade looking from just outside of the office toward the entrance. I used Hugin (after seeing what Peter Rukavina created with a few pictures outside of his door) with my iPhone camera (advertising slogan: “it is what it is”). It turned out quite well considering the camera and the overcast day. I am going to play with Hugin more.

Campground, campground, campground–how I love the lessons you teach. I have amused more French-speaking campers than I can count (in any language) with my attempts to communicate. One of the families that came through was as hopeless in English as I was in French and we almost laughed ourselves foolish through pantomimes and gestures. The teenage daughter excused herself to laugh on the deck outside of the office because she was giggling too hard and eventually realized that she should be self-conscious because she was, after all, a teenager laughing like mad in the presence of her parents. Rather than describe the actions I will leave it to your imaginations to picture the discussions on the size and quantity of mosquitoes and the quality of the College of Piping’s dance performances in Summerside.

People on vacation want to be happy. That is the best part of being here (dancing in the office and making funny faces while pretending to swat mosquitoes is a close second).

The variety of people is wonderful. Not always the individuals, but the variety is amazing. I have accumulated many more stereotypes (very few are negative) and many more exceptions to them. I like to think that I am cheerful, polite, and resourceful enough to eventually figure out what people want and get it for them. I did blow one situation today through and only through the greatest of luck did things work out very well–all thanks to a lady from California.

For reasons known only to the gods that govern camping traffic near large bridges, there was a rush of people (about five groups at the same time) this evening around 7:00pm. This is quite unusual for a Sunday evening. As I worked through the groups that were in the office I had my head down quite a bit and when I had a piece of paper slipped into my view I was surprised. Two gentlemen passed me a piece of paper that asked me if I had a cabin to rent. I answered that I did not. They looked puzzled and wrote another note. It said that they would like to have a cabin but would take a tent site if there was no cabin. I again said that there was no cabin available but I had a tent site available if they wished.

I am sure at this point you, the reader, have figured out that they two men were deaf and me telling them that there was no cabin was very close to useless. How I could remain so damn stupid after these two exchanges staggers me. I figure I am pretty clever and astute (I even mentioned my cleverness above, remember?). Yet, I did not catch on that speaking to a deaf person is not the best means of communication–ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE IS A PAD OF PAPER RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. But, stunned I was. Then, because I have more good fortune than I deserve, a lady from California was waiting behind the two men and she was very capable with American Sign Language. She and the two men had a great conversation and quickly forgot about me and the cabin. I was able to help the remaining people in the office find camping sites and then waited and watched the silent and beautifully expressive conversation.

One of my deeply held beliefs is that communication is fundamental to understanding (obvious) and understanding reduces conflicts (reasonably obvious, I hope) and fewer conflicts makes people happier (not going to prove it but it has held true for me). Being in a situation where I was unable to communicate I immediately felt awkward and helpless. It was only a small step from that to being embarrassed at my gaff, worried about causing offence, and becoming more nervous than I had been when dancing and swatting mosquitoes to the mortification of a stranger’s teenage daughter.

The lady from California allowed all of us to communicate easily and, dare I say it, comfortably. She and her family went to settle into their camper and the two guys went off to pitch their tent. I came in here to write and think a bit. I will do better next time.

Time for a gratuitous Dead Kennedys’s (argue amongst yourselves on the use of the possessive here–I am taking the band to be a singular entity that happens to end with an ’s’) finger poke in the eye of the music industry. I am sure that people will eventually kill the movie and music industries by making copies of movies and songs but they are going to have work much harder than they are now to make it happen. Even the efforts of Jello and company were not enough to kill the industries (and, I guess, all their profits).

I am tempted to write a book about working at the Sun-N-Shade campground this summer. There have been enough laughs, quandaries, and pearls of wisdom in the last two weeks to at least fill a trade paperback. If I could come up with a touchy-feelie title that evokes folk knowledge and caring (perhaps something involving chicken soup or self-healing) I might just might make my fortune and be able to ride the talk show circuit for a few years and retire in the splendour deserving of a modern-day oracle. Of course to do all of this I would need some reasonable stretch of uninterrupted writing time; so that idea is out.

I have come up with a chapter title for the portion of the book that relates the wisdom bequeathed to me by George, the social hub of to campground. George does everything from stand-up comedy to emptying garbage cans and is able to find humour in most any situation (self-deprecating or not). The chapter will be called “Grab the Easy Stuff First.” This is not so much a philosophy as a way of life that has been honed by years sailing off of the east coast of Canada. Even though he professes what might be construed as a lackadaisical attitude toward work I have yet to see any of his jobs undone. To abuse a nautical metaphor, he gets where he is going with minimal tacking and almost no wake.

Speaking of time, I have been writing this post for five hours now and I … cripes, I just got interrupted again and this sentence has taken me twenty minutes and I forgot what I was going to write. I cannot wait to see the narrative of this post when I am finished.

Ah, the jobs. I am fascinated by the number and variety of small jobs. The bigger jobs such as collecting the garbage, cutting the grass, and cleaning the facilities are all running without me getting involved to muck things up. There have been a few times that I have wandered in to clean up a large mess or move things about to make cutting the grass easier, but I am not needed much there. It is the “everything-else” jobs that fall my way. Here are some of the “everything-else” that I have undertaken (skilled in the area or not):

• wasp nest removal
• clothes dryer repair
• golf cart repair
• lawn mower repair
• reversing and parking obscenely large trailer
• argument mediator
• computer technician (including wireless network)
• tour guide
• restaurant critic
• delivery and shuttle services
• fan belt squeal remover
• and so on …

There are a ton of little jobs like that (some longer than others) and every one of them interrupts something–usually supper.

I would have to say that I am enjoying the variety and challenges that I am getting these days at the campground. There is a fair bit of tedium when it comes to checking people in and taking reservations and doing the books but the rest is a very interesting adventure. There is, however, a significant downside: the evenings.

I am alone in the evenings. When all of the jobs are finished and all of the music has been played and songs sung–then I am alone to finish my work and go to bed. I never suspected that this would be the hard part of the job. I have been married (with children) for quite a long time and this stretch has been the longest period I have been away from my family at night. I am missing my family at night a lot. It is just too quiet. There is no conversation, no discussion, no planning for the next day … just quiet.

I was talking with a man a while back who is a widower and he was telling me about how empty his house has become. We talked for about ninety minutes about this and that with always the underlying theme of emptiness. He was not unhappy, it was more adjusting the the change of not having a loved partner around to maintain their well-established pattern. I found myself trying to be sympathetic but not really understanding the nuance he was trying to convey. I suspect that like many people, I had simplified the situation to fit my understanding and past experiences.

My situation is a temporary dislocation and not a permanent loss. But I cannot help but feel that there is a part of both circumstances that is common, the disruption from comfortable routine and companionship. I have been struggling to put my finger on why I am bothered by this at all and this is what I have surmised. It may be complete twaddle and I know it sounds (borderline) silly, but so be it. As a footnote, part of the discussion on loss was the fact that very few people discuss that type of loss (I was told that it was discussed more with women and less with men) and it is very difficult to put into words. Maybe I understand the nuances a little better and maybe I don’t. I know I am looking forward to getting back to my comfortable routine.

I saw this and thought it was funny enough to implement and post. Of course I don’t get out much and have been spending my time at the campground so a little physics and HTML humour may be exciting the portion of my brain dedicated to hilarity to unnatural levels. Regardless, here it is in all its splendour.

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As I am going numb from doing bookkeeping at the campground I noticed an article on reddit.com. Reading Reddit is no substitute for information but there are enough tidbits that I seem to give it more time in a day than I should (that was my obligatory I-am-not-really-addicted-to-a-social-news-site disclaimer).

The article mentions a Canadian from Chelsea Quebec who was stabbed in the neck and then sat down with his attacker and called the police. During the call to 911 the operator ended up speaking to the attacker who gave his name and birth date and awaited the police. Not your every day sort of occurrence.

Now the bit that I was startled to see, the man who was attacked is named Christopher Holloway. I met Christopher a number of years ago when we were both working for Bell Northern Research and Northern Telecom was a company that was making buckets of money. He had recently finished skiing across the Arctic from Russia to Canada via the North Pole. The trek was called Polar Bridge and there is a short blurb about it on Richard Weber’s Wikipedia page. I did not know Christopher very well but I knew enough from his stories to know that he was (and likely still is) very capable and pretty darn hard to faze. So even though the article states that he was “surprised last week by an intruder in his basement who had been eating his fruit and using his clothes dryer” I picture him being surprised in the “that’s unusual” sense rather than the “what am I going to do now” sense.

I am very glad he was not hurt. My first thoughts were very much about hoping he was okay. My subsequent thoughts (not the caring ones … ) were much more along the lines of the look on his face and irritation of being stabbed while he was trying to figure out what to do about a guy eating fruit in his basement who had just stabbed him in the neck. I have no idea of the circumstances but I cannot imagine anything else but a matter-of-face expression (some concern about weak legs, bleeding, and the knife, I am sure) and one more story to add to his already substantial quiver of tales.

I also remember biking to his house and when he opened the door he shouted “kill” to his very large Canadian Eskimo dog named Franklin. Although their temperament is described as “loyal, tough, brave, intelligent, and alert … it is affectionate and gentle” I did not know this and was far more concerned about the fact that I had a 90lb dog running toward me and my friend Chuck (on bikes) wearing little more than Lycra and a terrified expression. Better still, we were unable to flee and the first thing that Franklin did upon reaching us was to put MY ENTIRE HAND in his mouth and lick off the salt I had accumulated from a long ride. Chuck’s next words (when Franklin) moved to him were “Teeth, I feel teeth.” Franklin was a great dog.

I would have loved to know Christopher better but we ended up working for different companies and I paths seldom crossed. It is good to read that he is still kicking and apparently very much as I remember.

We had a dandy storm Thursday night through Friday morning–lots of rain and thunder. There was one clap of thunder that was louder than anything I had previously heard. It was an enormous explosion at precisely 4:00am on Friday morning (to be fair, it might have been slightly before that but when I looked at the clock on my computer it said 4:00am).

I was up and running and ready to volunteer at NORAD to protect my home from alien invaders. My laptop was providing the only light in the room and when I finally managed to orient myself I realized that there was a stink of burning plastic (or the like, it is hard to identify funny smells in the dark with a heart rate that has yet to recede below 200 beats per minute). Now I had to find the fire and figure out what had just happened (after a rather urgent need to urinate has been settled).

With flashlight in hand my wife and I wandered around the house looking for the fire. We walked outside and looked around. We wandered into the basement. We found nothing and gradually were calm and confident to go back to bed still puzzled at what had made the huge (emphasizing huge, big, loud, scary, thundering) noise and the funny smell, which had since dissipated and I was figuring that I had imagined it because waking up scared caused me to smell funny things.

It was dark, the power was out, and we slept the rest of the night very comfortably.

The next day the storm was gone and we waited for the power to come back. Our area was out (according to Maritime Electric) so we waited. We got suspicious around 6:pm when we saw lights on at our neighbor’s house and we were still without power. When we called Maritime Electric again they assured us that everybody had power … we suggested otherwise and they sent a truck out to investigate.

At 8:00pm the truck checked out the line to our house (which is about 500m from the road) and the breakers on the line. All were good. When they checked the transformer on a pole just outside of our house the problem was found: the transformer was not working. It had gone boom. It had shuffled off its oil-soaked innards. The lightening had made it explode. Thus the exceptionally loud boom.

At midnight we had a new transformer and power flowing into our home again. The crews that fixed the problem were fast and neat.

The tally from the storm began to accumulate after we had power returned and we found that

• None of our (powered) telephones worked
• Our satellite connection to the Internet did not work
• Our router did not work
• My laptop power supply was toasted (and smelled funny)

The laptop was not on a UPS or surge protector (my bad) but Apple has put a new one in the mail for me. The phones were likewise not protected and we bought new phones the next day. The router and the satellite were both on UPS but got toasted–but they were connected by CAT-5 cable.

All in all it was not too bad. Nobody was hurt and everything should be back to normal in a week or so. My heart rate should have dropped to normal levels by then.