Tag: work

Pacific Grove

April 17, 2015
Work Posts

I was down in California last week for a meeting. It was held at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula. Here is the sunset from the second night.

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The large crowd of people were from the group I was with, the beach was only a five minute walk from the hotel.

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The temperatures were about 20 degrees C, but we all know it’s 10 degrees colder by the lake (or ocean in this case).

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We had good weather all week, just a little chilly.

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There was some sort of photo shoot on the beach the one morning.

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A sign on the path to the beach warning of mountain lions in the area.

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There are not many meetings where there are deer grazing outside the meeting room.

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The one evening while watching the sun set, the wind was howling, causing the sand to be whipped around, making it difficult to see at times.

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One of my colleagues from Nova Scotia, when he left there was still three feet of snow on the ground back at home.

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The view from the conference centre.

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The conference centre started as a YWCA meeting place back in the early 1900’s. It is now part of the Asilomar State Park.

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All of the meals were provided, but by the last night a few of us decided to head into Monterey for some seafood.

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On the wharf.

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There were seals hanging around.

Lots of fishing boat in the harbour.

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There are three seals in this picture.

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The one in the water made his way up onto the dock.

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Storm Clean-up

August 27, 2014
Work Posts

I was out to Bratt’s Lake, just south of Regina this week for a few days. We were out there to clean up some damage from a thunderstorm system that went through about 3 weeks ago. According to Environment Canada, the storm that went through August 8th was not a tornado. They said the damage was very likely caused by straight line winds and not a tornado. The Doppler radar estimates had winds as high as 140 kilometres per hour. It picked up one of our 10×10 buildings and tossed it across the field. The bare patch is where it was originally, the blue dumpster is where most of it ended up.

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A closer look at some of the damage.

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It crumpled the walls and roof.

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It was a big job to dismantle it enough in order to throw it in the dumpster.

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We ended up filling two 20 yard dumpsters.

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This was the first dumpster being hauled away.

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Flat Valley Solar

March 28, 2014
Work Posts

I was out in Flat Valley, Saskatchewan this week installing a solar array at one of our temporary sites.

We are set-up on the property of the landowner who holds our lease for our permanent site about 1km away.

A view to the south, we should no problem finding the sun.

On the way back to Saskatoon, we stopped in North Battleford to see the giant Mountie on a horse. It is 23 feet high and was built in 1963.

Nearby is this buffalo that is made from barbed wire.

Ice Road Trucker

February 15, 2014
Work Posts

For 10 months of the year, the only way to access our site is by plane from Yellowknife. Given the time of year we were going in, the option of the ice road was possible. The road into the site opened at the end of January. The NT Power Corp flight schedules would only get us in, to get out we would have had to charter our own plane out. Going in by road made more sense if we could swing it. There were two of us from Toronto and one of our NT Environment colleague’s from Yellowknife. It is about a 4 hour drive from Yellowknife.

We crossed the first big lake (Marian Lake) and traveling at a speed of ~50-70km/hr it took an hour. The roads on the “ice” are wide and smooth for the most part.

The portages between the lakes are another story, just paths cut through the bush. The worse part was probably the small stretch of road going into the Snare Rapids hydro facility. It was extremely rough.

Snare Rapids, NT

February 14, 2014
Work Posts

I was in Snare Rapids, Northwest Territories for a week. The site is located about 140 km north of Yellowknife. With the ice road open, we were able to drive in to the site. The closest town is Wha Ti, which is only accessible by vehicle when the ice road is open.

There was a lot of ice fog created from the hydro-electric dam. It made for a nice coating of ice on the trees.

Despite it being north of 62 degrees N, there was still sun in mid-February.

You can see the cloud of ice fog that is rising over the Snare River. The dam’s capacity is 8 MW.

We had a rental truck from Yellowknife.

 

The one morning the temperature was at -38 degrees C.

The power corp has a full-time chef in camp, the second night this was our dinner, Alaskan king crab legs and steak.

 

The runway at the airport.

Back in Yellowknife.

Here I am outside the City of Yellowknife City Hall building.

Around city hall.

Buffalo Airways is located at the Yellowknife airport (YZF), home of the Ice Pilots television program.

At Least They Use the Crosswalks

August 1, 2013
Work Posts

After breakfast we headed over to the Land Registry office in Kenora to find some land owner information. As we pulled up to one of the major streets there was some four legged pedestrians causing heads to turn. This pair of doe and buck started in between the crosswalk lines when they started to cross the street.

They stopped for a few leaves.

Checked out the Boston Pizza window.

And then headed back onto the street.

Made a few cars wait while they decided to cross again.

We drove over a 1000 km’s on northern Ontario back roads and didn’t see one sign of wildlife. Now realize you don’t have to leave the town, they’ll come to you.

Then they finished with some flowers from the bed in front of the ServiceOntario building.

My drive over two days. A. Winnipeg, B. Kenora, C. McIntosh, D. Quibell, E. Vermillion Bay, F. Kenora, G. Grassy Narrows, H. Winnipeg

Penn State Site Visit

March 31, 2010
Old-Rainwater

I was down in State College, Pennsylvania this week for work. University Park is an unincorporated community that sits within the borough of State College. Most of Penn State University is in University Park.

University Park map

We have a monitoring site at Penn State University. I’m suppose to go down twice a year to inspect the site, but usually my schedule only allows for one trip. The site itself is about 7 miles out of town on Pennsylvania Game Commision land. A couple of miles from the site is a shooting range, I drove by it this time, and it’s just bizarre seeing this shooting range with targets set up and people firing their handguns.

Penn State

State College is the main campus for Penn State. Beaver Stadium is home to the Big Ten Conference Nittany Lions.

Beaver Stadium

This was my ride down. With the government logos on the side of the car and my government passport, it makes for easier border crossings.

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But it doesn’t make the lines any shorter.

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Chapman’s Rising From the Ashes

March 26, 2010
Old-Rainwater

This week I was out near Chatsworth for work, we are installing a new monitoring site at the Kinghurst Nature Reserve.

Chatsworth map

On the way back I went through Markdale, home of Chapman’s Ice Cream. Last fall they suffered a fire which destroyed their main production plant. Here’s what’s the Chapman’s plant looked like in July 2007 when we went to the Markdale Ice Cream Festival.

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This is what’s left of it.

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They are building a new plant in Markdale, currently they have a temporary mini-plant operating. So far we haven’t had any problems getting ice cream at our local Superstore. They had a good supply in their distribution centre before the fire to carry them through until they started the mini-plant.

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This picture is from their website. Imagines rows and rows of ice cream.

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The Rock in February and Happy to Be Off!

February 20, 2010
Old-RainwaterWork Posts

I spent the first week of the Olympics in Stephenville Newfoundland. It was bad enough trying to stay awake in Mississauga with the 3 hour time difference, try the 4.5 hour difference. Suprisingly, the winter out there has been similar to ours, a little bit more snow, but not as much as usual.

Stephenville, NL map

I was scheduled to be back early Friday morning, things were going to plan, settled into my priority seat. There were electrical problems with the system, so they tried the Airbus equivalent of the Ctrl-Alt-Del. After a few attempts, they announced the flight was cancelled. When they cancel a flight due to plane problems in Toronto, they just shuffle things around and voila, a new plane, you’re good to go. In Deer Lake, when they cancel a direct flight back to Toronto on an Airbus 319, you’re pretty much screwed as there are no other planes.

Eventually they re-booked us on a 12:15 pm flight to Toronto, not bad, only about six hours to wait. Through the morning, things got worse, 12:15 turned into 13:00, than 14:00, then 14:45 and finally 15:15.

Delayed flights

There was some consolation when they announced over the PA that the plane had left Montreal. The ground technician covering up the engines, as they were expecting some weather to pass through.

Cancelled flight

It was almost 12 hours later than my original arrival time, but it was good to be home. A lot of people on the flight were going to destinations beyond Toronto, so they were scrambling to rebook their connecting flights. Many were going to the Olympics and down south. When the second plane arrived, it was starting to look like Pearson.

Deer Lake Airport

A Quiet Month?

January 31, 2010
Old-Rainwater

There hasn’t been much activity on the blog this month. We have been busy with the usual things, work, school and more work and school. Gillian had her first set of exams last week and she is confident she did well. Angela and Claudia have been working on their speeches for speech arts. It is Claudia’s first time doing a speech, her topic is “The World’s Fastest Things” and Angela is doing “Genetically Modified Foods”.

It would be nice if we had some snow, at least the girls would be out there playing, that’s usually good for a few photos.

Blog cartoon

I have been busy at work with a hiring process, we have been trying to get everything done and offer letters out before the pro-rogued government comes back and puts on a hiring freeze as part of their deficit cutting. An indication of the job market, for an entry level technician position, we had multiple candidates with their Masters degree, one with a double Masters, a PhD, and a double Bachelor’s degree . One of the abilities we test is “the ability to assemble and disassemble equipment”. This might be the test we use next time.

Interview cartoon

A reminder that Takao Tanabe: A Work of Art is on Bravo tonight at 8:00 EST.

Bravo reminder