Engineering Ingenuity

So a brief update before I go to bed.

Yesterday I ran for the first time in quite a while, but managed to do 2 km in a little under 12 minutes.  I am hoping to be able to run this pace or slightly faster the day of, so I will just be working on endurance now.

I got my first donation yesterday which was sweet.  I am very excited to know that I already have some support.  I will do a longer entry later this week about my reasons behind doing the run.

As always you can follow the link on the side-bar to donate!  And if you are on Facebook (which admit it, we all are) you should join our group ‘CivE’s in their Skivvies’ (by clicking HERE) to show your support, even if you don’t want to donate!

I could hide out under there
I just made you say “underwear”

The profound lyrics of the ‘Barenaked Ladies’.  Which is sort of odd, cause this post has to do with semi-naked ladies… and men too.

Yesterday my friend Lauren asked me if I would like to do the Underwear Affair.  It’s a 10 km run or 5 km walk for cancers below the waist, where you get to run in your underwear.  Of course there was no way I was turning this offer down, so on June 19th I will be running 10 km to raise support for this great cause.

If you would like to donate I you can click HERE to get to my page.  My goal is to raise $1000 and our team ‘CivE’s in their Skivvies’ (pronounced siv-ees) is hoping to raise over $5000.   I will chronicle my training here for you all to see.  This will be interesting as I am sure as I am in no way prepared to run 10 km.

Anyway, if you would like to donate, any ammount would be appreciated. And for those of you who are in Calgary I will be having a fundraiser BBQ at my house in late May if you would like to wait and donate then!  It will most definitely be underwear themed and prizes will be awaked for best (aka least) dressed!

Some times we all have a day when we feel like Pig.

My day seems to be turning into an entire week…

Dear Canadian Government,

Do you not have anything better to do with your time than worry about gender equality in a song?  Honestly I am all for gender equality, but seriously find a better problem to solve!

OTTAWA — Canadian women, who owned a bit more of the Olympic podium than their male counterparts, may live to see an end their exclusion from Canada’s national anthem.

The Conservative government announced Wednesday in the throne speech that Parliament will explore rewording the anthem and returning it to its original gender-neutral wording.

Opposition MPs said they have no problem with reconsidering the wording, but that they also want the government to take more concrete action to encourage the equality of women in Canada.

New Democrat MP Olivia Chow said she’s confident there can be a quick and long overdue reworking of the song. “This is a useful thing to do. What about the daughters?” she asked.

Watching Canadians mumble their way through the words of the anthem during the 14 gold medal presentations at the Vancouver Olympics may have been the trigger needed to rally enough support to finally purge the song of language that suggests “true patriot love” is only commanded of Canada’s males or, more specifically, “all thy sons.”

A return to writer Robert Stanley Weir’s 1908 original words means the opening lines would be:

“O Canada! Our home and native land!

True patriot love thou dost in us command.”

Those gender-neutral words were replaced when a different version of Weir’s poem was chosen as the country’s official anthem in the 1980 National Anthem Act:

“O Canada! Our home and Native land!

True patriot love in all they sons command.”

The phrase “sons command” has long seemed outdated, given women’s participation in every walk of life, including the Canadian military.

Most recently, Canadian women flexed their muscle by winning 14 medals at the Vancouver Olympics, three more than their male teammates.

In gender-equal touch, ice dancers Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue shared the podium for gold, giving Canada a total of 26 medals.

A senior government official said a parliamentary committee would be asked to study the issue and make a recommendation on how to proceed.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff shrugged off the initiative as a poor substitute for genuine action to improve the lot of women.

“Anything that makes a national anthem more gender sensitive is a good thing,” he told reporters. “But, with no disrespect (to) those who feel strongly on this issue, but for heaven’s sake, we’ve got some very important challenges. And every time the government is asked to do something real, it does something symbolic.”

Ignatieff criticized the Conservatives for stripping the goal of “equality” out of the mandate of the Status of Women, and also for killing the Liberal plan to create a national child care program after they won power in 2006.

Chow echoed Ignatieff’s complaints. The Toronto MP said there will not be equality for women until there is wage parity between the sexes.

“How can there be equality if women are still earning 70 cents for every dollar earned by Canadian men,” she asked. “Even though O Canada is gender neutral, we still do not have equality.”

For the record, here are the two versions:

ORIGINAL ENGLISH LYRICS TO O CANADA

By Robert Stanley Weir, 1908

O Canada! Our home and native land!

True patriot love thou dost in us command.

We see thee rising fair, dear land,

The True North, strong and free;

And stand on guard, O Canada,

We stand on guard for thee.

Refrain

O Canada! O Canada!

O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.

O Canada! We stand on guard for thee.

O Canada! Where pines and maples grow,

Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow,

How dear to us thy broad domain,

From East to Western Sea;

Thou land of hope for all who toil!

Thou True North, strong and free!

(Refrain)

O Canada! Beneath thy shining skies

May stalwart sons and gentle maidens rise,

To keep thee steadfast through the years,

From East to Western Sea.

Our own beloved native land,

Our True North, strong and free!

(Refrain)

The version adopted in 1980 reads as follows:

“O Canada! Our home and native land!

True patriot love in all thy sons command.

With glowing hearts we see the rise,

The True North, strong and free!

From far and wide, O Canada,

We stand on guard for thee.

God keep our land glorious and free!

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.”

With files from David Akin

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

To my friend, who knows who he is:

I mean this in the nicest most sincere way possible.

You are a good friend, but really you are осел.

That is all.

Being bored in class sometimes leads to interesting things.  I came across this infographic on the internet while I was perusing Digg.

Two things caught my interest.

1.  It’s doesn’t mention porn. I thought anything talking about the internet had to mention porn.

2. The average broadband speed in Japan is 61 MBPS.  That means it would take only 30 seconds to download a 2 Gb movie.  Compare that to the average of 30 minutes here in Canada.  Holy fast internet Batman.

So I just noticed today that I have had over 1000 views, 1077 to be exact.

I thought this was cool, so I thought I would pass it on to you.

That is all!

Besides my last, rather insignificant post, I haven’t exactly been keeping up with my writing.

I am sitting in class today. It’s that 8 am class that I never really want to get up for. The teacher isn’t that great. It’s his first time teaching a class, a virgin professor if you will. I have heard your first time can hurt, but I don’t think I could find the words to describe how painful this class is. Also, he is from somewhere in Asia and doesn’t seem to have a full grasp of the english language. Oh and it’s stats. I have heard lots of bad things about stats, and often get the line “Your in stats? That sucks.”, when I mention the class. So today I feigned paying attention and applied for jobs instead.

Applying for jobs is always a fun process. All applications seem to require a resume and cover letter. The resume I am fine with, it’s the same for any application I send in. The cover letter on the other hand is a pain. I won’t get into the details because it will sound whiney, but lets just say the ammount of effort I put into the cover letter doesn’t seem worth it. The other thing I hate about job applications is the ridiculous questions they ask. On the Nexen application I was filling out today one questions was, ‘How will the things you have learned affect your performance at your job and why do you want to work for Nexen?’ I mean sure this is a valid question but does it honestly reflect who the applicant is? Anyone could spend hours crafting the perfect answer to that question, but in the end could be the worst candidate for the job.

Another thing I have come to notice about applying for jobs/job interviews is that honesty doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It’s all about the ‘right’ answer. One of my CivE friends has a job interview tomorrow and a few of us were talking about the common interview question, ‘What is your greatest weakness?’. One friend said that she would answer ‘I am too much of a perfectionist and would take on other’s work if it wasn’t being done properly’, while my other friend said that she ‘spent to much time making sure everything was correct’. I mean those sound like great answers to me but it really doesn’t sound like a weakness. I would love to have someone on my team capable of doing the work of two people. Or having someone who takes an extra two days to get a project done that is flawless. But honestly is that a weakness? I don’t think so. If I were an employer I would much rather know that a candidate sends over 4000 texts in a month or has a facebook addiction but who is going to ever say that? I once said in an interview that I can be a bit condescending sometimes, which I still feel was the most honest and correct answer, but I know it wasn’t the ‘right’ one.

Anyway in other news I spent this past weekend in Panorama on a snowboard trip. Besides the two 7-hour busrides I had a really awesome time. We were put up in condos right on the hill which meant we could ski right out to the lifts. Panorama is a great hill with 2 lifts at the base that take you about a third of the way up the hill. 2 more consecutive chairs take you another third each, to the top of the hill if you want. There were lots of long flowing runs that allowed for a lot of speed, which is the only thing I can really do well on a snowboard.  Most of the runs were groomed in the morning and had enough snow not to be icy by the end of the day.  On Saturday night the Backside people (the group who hosted our trip) threw a party for us at the main lodge.  It wasn’t anything special and the only real interesting part of the night seemed to be a girl in a life jacket who was being an all around slut.  It was pretty entertaining to watch her run around the dance floor to different random guys dance with them for 30 seconds and run off to the next.  Sunday we got 4 hours in on the hill before packing into the busses and heading back to Edmonton.

So I think that’s all for now.  If I find myself  bored in class again, which is almost inevitable, I will probably start writing again.  I will leave you with a ‘Pearls Before Swine’ comic.  Click on it to zoom!

I haven’t posted in a while.

School sucks.

Professors who can’t speak english suck.

Flames suck.

But.

I am going snowboarding this weekend, so things are looking up.

That is all.

I am on the bus back to Calgary.

The woman behind me just made a phone call to what I can only assume is the person picking her up.

It’s a woman with one of those high pitched voices, and she’s using it in the manner that one might when talking to a small dog.

I can come to only one of two conclusions.

Either, she has trained her dog to talk on the phone and drive a car, in which case she should be awarded a Nobel Prize.

Or, she treats people like small animals, and should be a ring masters in the circus.

I have a feeling it is the former.

Dear lady talking on her phone to her dog, please stop. The whole bus can hear you.