Bad time for a fire drill

May 8, 2006 - Tagged as: Vancouver, Work

At approximately 2:45 am last night, the fire bell started ringing. I was feeling sort of sick anyway, so I was not impressed. At 2:45 am on a Sunday night, I would prefer if the fire bell didn't ring unless there are plumes of black smoke and an uncomfortable amount of fire in my immediate vicinity.

Of course there was no fire. Now I am at work, semi-sick and very tired. Add this to the fact that I have nothing interesting to do right now and you have the recipe for a bad day. Only 2.5 more hours until lunch.

Back to the big smoke

August 2, 2004 - Tagged as: Vancouver, Work

I'm moving back to Vancouver in September for another co-op term with VTech. It was a good experience last time, so I am expecting it to work well again.

Lauren is starting school in fashion design in September so we're moving in together. It's sort of insane, but it's very convenient. As long as Lauren cleans up a few times during my four months in Vancouver, it should be better than my last experience living in Vancouver.

This brings us to yesterday. Lauren and I got up stupidly early so we could catch the 7am ferry to Vancouver to look for a place to live. We had a few appointments setup throughout the day, but for the most part we just ended up looking around. Luckily for us, there are bajillions of apartment buildings in the Marpole area, so we just wandered around there. Actually, that isn't entirely true. The first place we checked out was a bit further east on Knight st. The area is disgusting. There is garbage everywhere. It was really hot and loud as well. It looked like we were in the bad part of town from the movie Falling Down (which is a kickass movie by the way). I would say that the weirdest thing about that location is that as soon as we stepped off the bus, we were struck with a smell that was undeniably hamster piss.

I have decided that one way to judge an area is to get on a bus and see how badly the people smell who are living there. By this measure, Knight st. was not a good place to live. Here's another way to check. Ask the landlord of an apartment about Internet service. If they say something like "Hmm, I'm not really sure. I think there's someone in the building with a computer.", then you probably aren't in a good area.

After a stinky bus to the Marpole area, we 'talked' to a number of landlords who had vacancy signs posted out front. Talked is in quotes because a lot of the time, we asked questions and had no idea what the people said back. We started to have better luck later on. We found a place here that we both liked. It's not too loud, looks very well maintained and there isn't any bus upholstery for carpet (since it has hardwood floors).

Lauren has dubbed our time in Vancouver as the "Lauren and Dave Experiment". Hopefully it will be a success.

Back in Victoria

May 3, 2004 - Tagged as: Site News, Miscellaneous, Work

I am now back in Victoria after spending four months on a co-op term at VTech. It was a cool job, but it sucked being in Richmond where I didn't know anyone.

The good must have outweighed the bad because I decided to take another co-op term there from September to December 2004. They have some really interesting products in the works that I will probably get to work on. I'd tell you, but they'd have to kill me.

I just had an interesting thought. What is the normal amount of toilet paper, soap (during shower), deoderant or shampoo to use. My theory is that people use vastly different amounts of each product since (thankfully,) you don't usually see how other people wipe their butt.

Inquiring minds want to know. Sadly they don't want to know badly enough to finish the comments code for this sorry web site.