This week my long and arduous job search came to an end. I applied for a job with Shaw Cablesystems. I’ve been a customer for many years using their digital television and internet services. I have always had good experiences dealing with the company and its representatives so when I found out that Technical Service Representative (TSR) jobs were available there I pounced on the opportunity.

I received a link to the job by a friend. The link had an online questionnaire around my technical knowledge and an “apply now” button at the bottom. On the next page I set up my account for the Shaw careers database filling out all of my information and copied and pasted a plain text version of my resumé into the form provided.

On the same day I got a phone call about coming in to Shaw Tower for a screening interview with a Talent Supply Coordinator from the HR department after which I scheduled for back for a second interview the next day with two supervisors from the Technical Service department.

I had to bring my passport (which I seem to have lost on the way home) and my driver’s licence so a credit and criminal record check could be done on me.

After the second interview, which I thought went well, my interviewers told me that I should to wait for a call one way or the other.

The phone call with a job offer came a day later. It included an amazing benefits package that starts right away, not the least of which is an employee discount on the old cable bill. Nice! Every bit helps.

The whole hiring experience was extremely pleasant, professionally executed and efficient. At no time was I made to feel I was just a number.

The offices in Shaw Tower are beautiful and modern. The people I met were all friendly and accommodating. That’s a corporate culture I can get used to.

I start training on Monday. I am looking forward to this new adventure.

If you’re in Vancouver and might like a career at Shaw you can attend the Shaw Tower Open House tomorrow. Here are the details —

We have three questions for you:

• Are you customer service driven?
• Do you have a passion for sales?
• Do you love technology and innovation?

If the answer is YES, then come to our open house and bring a friend!

Shaw Tower is opening its doors on Saturday, July 24th from 2 to 4 p.m. and we are looking for enthusiastic people to join our Customer Service and Technical Service teams.

There’s never been a better time to join the Shaw family as we continue to grow and expand our business.

So, if you know anyone who would be interested in applying, please pass along the information below.

Details

• When: Saturday, July 24
• Time: 2 to 4 p.m.
• Where: Shaw Tower, 1067 West Cordova Street, Vancouver
• Open Positions: Customer Service and Technical Service Representatives
• What to bring: Your resume
• What to expect: Be prepared to have an on-site interview with one of our Customer Care Supervisors

IMPORTANT: These jobs are all PART-TIME and only guarantee 20 hours per week. Our call centre operates 7 days a week from 7 AM – 11:30 PM. All candidates must be available to work anytime within these hours.

Carol and I got up at an ungodly hour yesterday, 5:30 a.m., to scoot across the border into the U.S. to take photos of tulips at the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I took our Diana F+, my Canon Powershot G5 and my iPhone with its Hipstamatic camera application. I haven’t seen the photos from the Diana as they haven’t been developed yet, the Canon’s photos were so-so, but the iPhone captured this:

Not too shabby even if I do say so myself.

Carol got plenty of great pics, some of which she’s posted on her blog.

It’s Easter morning here in Burnaby. Trying out the geotagging feature in WordPress for iPhone. Not quite sure yet how to display the information or a link to it but I’ll figure it out.

Rolled out of bed, did our usual tune in with the Universe exercises as the cats wrestled and ran through the house. Kind of distracting. It’s difficult to meditate when cats are bashing into you every few minutes. They’re cute though so they can stay.

Breakfast has been eaten. All fueled up for the next part of the day — morning pages and mote bashing away at my screenplay for Script Frenzy.

After that comes Langley, relatives & ham. It seems the only parts of holidays we participate in anymore are the eating rituals. Oh well…

Script Frenzy 2010 is under way and I’ve started working on my script Concussion. I banged off 6 of the 100 pages in just over two hours. So if you figure about 3.3 pages per day to get me passed the finish line by April 30 I am already ahead of the game. Buffers are a good thing, but I won’t be happy until I’m finished. I do tend to be a fast starter though, but I am hoping I can keep this pace up — One word at a time.

I have some assistance though…

I got a new copy of Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ in the mail today. I seem to have misplaced my last copy and have a feeling it went to charity with a few hundred other books. Also, Carol Browne left a prosperity Buddha on my desk. These things should help. As does Quiet Riot’s – Bang Your Head (Metal Health), part of the inspiration for my script:

I love watching progress bars move.

I’ve decided to participate in this year’s Script Frenzy. I considered it last year, even signed up for the site but did not follow through. Why? I’m not entirely sure. I have a funny feeling that obsessive World of Warcraft playing fed by a heaping helping of self doubt and fear had a big part in it. My WoW account has long since been cancelled and I am doing a lot of work to overcome those other difficulties so perhaps this year I might just make it.

What’s Script Frenzy?

According to the web site Script Frenzy challenges creative writers to “write 100 pages of original scripted material in the 30 days of April. (Screenplays, stage plays, TV shows, short films, and graphic novels are all welcome.)”  It costs nothing to participate and there are no huge prizes other than “Happiness. Creative juices. Pride. Laughter. Bragging rights. A brand-new script.”

Why am I doing it?

Why not? I very much enjoyed participating in Movember by growing a ridiculous looking moustache and rounding up donations to a good cause. I met a lot of cool people doing that. This could be a similar experience.

There’s not a lot of pressure to participate other than that you put on yourself. That I like. I haven’t paid for anything and I’m doing what I’m doing for fun and for free.

After you sign up for the site you are asked to fill out some information about your potential screenplay and yourself. You can choose a home region to connect with other writers who are participating near you. Here’s a link to my Script Frenzy profile. Why don’t you sign up too so we can laugh at each other’s horrific screenplays? OK, maybe they’ll be awesome. Does it really matter? Not really.

My screenplay, taken from an idea I had last year, is called Concussion. It’s about “a slacker is given a gift that could do the world a lot of good; knowledge of the afterlife & the ability to communicate with the dead. He uses it selfishly and things backfire on him” — sort of  The Sixth Sense meets Slackers.

To write I am using a free piece of screenwriting software called Celtx. It’s pretty robust and does pretty much everything you expect from the other expensive screenwriting packages like Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter. I did pay a whopping $9.95 USD (plus 5% GST) for the Writers Pack add-on for Celtx. I wanted the distraction reducing Full Screen Mode as well as the Advanced Session Timer that not only keeps track of my progress but allows me to tweet it using a built in #scriptfrenzy hashtag. I’m not sure I will use the Plot View but I got it just in case. I’ll buy the Art Packs later when I actually shoot one of these screenplays of mine.

I’ve also installed a cool widget on the sidebar of this site to track my progress throughout the month. Also, if I’m not completely spent after writing for practice, work and this project I plan on tossing up a few blog posts about my experience.

This could be fun. I’m already working on my outline using the late Blake Snyder’s beat sheet from the Save the Cat tools page. I can’t wait to see how this story turns out.

Our new addition to the family is adjusting well, after a rocky start. He was a bit skittish and hid behind the couch and hissed at us for the first week. He’s warming up to everyone, especially Oscar. They can be found either playing together, hanging out under the dining room table or cuddled up together on the small couch or the bed.

Oscar, seen here in the foreground, really loves his new little brother, Donner. Yeah, that’s him with the giant eyeballs at in the background.

No, we didn’t name Donner. He came with that crappy name. Apparently, he was a “Christmas kitten” at Katie’s Place so they named him after one of Santa’s reindeer. We haven’t been able to come up with anything that fits him any better. It’s sort of appropriate as Carol is a huge fan of Christmas.

I snapped this shot this morning with Carol’s camera. Hopefully I’ll have my own DSLR soon. The old Canon Powershot G5 just isn’t cutting the mustard. I’ll steal Carol’s when I can, but it’s kind of tough to wrangle; kind of like taking a rifle from an NRA member.

As soon as there was the slightest bit of snow on the ground me and the other hooligans in my neighbourhood donned our snowsuits, toques and idiot mittens and went sliding on toboggans, sleds and/or crazy carpets. The hill of choice was next to the duck pond in my home town. When sliding we had to be careful that we didn’t end up on the ice of the pond if it had not frozen completely solid.

Crazy Carpeting picture by Canadian Veggie on Flickr

We saw this kind of incident numerous times. There were never any drownings that we heard about. It usually ended with a crying kid splashing his or her way home in a snowmobile suit that now weighed as much as they did as it was drenched.

There were other obstacles; trees, for example.

One time in particular I hopped onto my dark green crazy carpet an rocketed down the hill. I promptly lost control of the piece of plastic I was sliding on and flipped around backwards. Being a smart ass I waved and grinned stupidly at my friends standing at the top of the hill. They were yelling something at me.

I realized what it was they were yelling as I hit the stand of trees 3/4 of the way down the hill back first. It still smarts sometimes when I have walked a long way, so I might have cracked a rib that day. That was over 30 years ago.

Idiot mittens indeed.

Here’s a video of someone riding a crazy carpet who did not hit a tree:

I’m not sure why this popped into my brain today, but it was there so why not share? Now I want to go crazy carpeting again.

Like many other Canadians, specifically Vancouverites, I woke up on Monday morning with a sense of loss and a bit of an emotional hangover. The euphoric buzz of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, over less than 24 hours, quickly wore off. It left me with a question that I’m sure many of us are asking, “Now what?”

Photo by kennymatic on Flickr

In 17 short days Vancouver hosted the biggest extended party it has ever seen and, possibly, ever will see. I’m even going so far as to say that a Stanley Cup win by our beloved Canucks would not even come close to the carnival (as fugitivephilo says in a thoughtful blog post about consumerism & patriotism) that we saw. Wow!

A better fictional account of the most dramatic Canadian Olympic games could not have been written.

Day one started with the horrible news that Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili had been killed during a run at the Whistler Sliding Centre. There has been much speculation as to the reasons for the fatal crash and a complete analysis is yet to come. With this tragic event came the ringing true of that old adage, “the show must go on.” All but one of the Georgian athletes, the other luger, decided to continue their participation in the games.

The extended torch relay crossed Canada, traveling approximately 45,000 kilometres, and wound through Lower Mainland neighbourhoods and had us frothing like Pavlov’s dogs, tweeting madly about who was going to be the final torch bearer lighting the Olympic cauldron. The speculation was more fierce than a Next Top Model photo shoot with guesses ranging from the very possible like Betty Fox, mother of the late Terry Fox, to the extremely unlikely and downright silly, like the ghost of Mr Dressup.

Protesters attempted to thwart the torch’s progress but succeeded only in having it re-routed around them. The spectacular Opening Ceremonies were tarnished by a few ‘technical difficulties’ (which seemed to be a recurring theme with the CTV coverage of the games as they went on). Watching Wayne Gretzky (actually the most speculated final torch bearer), the great one, chased by maniacs while riding through Vancouver in the back of a VANOC pickup truck, torch in hand, off to light the Olympic flame on the waterfront seemed perfect. How Canadian.

The 17 days of the games went by in a blur. It was certainly a roller coaster ride for Canadians. Jenn Heil came ‘this close’ to capturing Canada’s first Gold Medal on Canadian soil with her moguls run, but that honour went to another freestyle skier, Alexandre Bilodeau, for his defeat of bad boy Canadian turned Aussie, Dale Begg-Smith.

Gold Medallist Alex Bilodeau - photo by John Biehler on Flickr

Things continued along the same lines for our country throughout the games. There was medal after medal by the Canadian female athletes. We learned that Canadian girls really do kick ass. After a bit of a rocky start, yes even the hockey team, the men finally began showing up and then the gold rush began. Although Canada didn’t own every step on the podium it certainly owned the gold medal podium winning 14 gold medals, breaking the all-time record for golds by any country in the history of the Winter Olympic Games by one. That one medal happened to be the last of the games, won by those dudes from the NHL and that over time goal against Team USA by the now legendary (and fellow Nova Scotian) Sidney Crosby in the most epic hockey game I can recall in my 40 years on the planet.

Here’s what that win sounded like from across False Creek. If you watch the whole video, take note of the “Loooouuuuu” Luongo cheer as he makes a save at 1:00, and then at 1:20 the entire city goes insane as Crosby scores his goal:

Nice.

Then the city celebrated…

Canada Wins Gold - photo by John Biehler on Flickr

“Booze free”, of course, as the VPD closed down liquor stores early after learning some hard lessons during the the alcohol fueled ’94 post Stanley Cup riot. I’m sure people managed to find their booze elsewhere, or just did something else. This is BC after all.

I didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked to due to massive lineups (of oddly friendly and happy people) and insanely high prices for the sporting events. Two trips to the Hudson’s Bay official Olympic store saw me go away empty handed. No red mittens or Canada hoodie for me. Oh well. I don’t need more crap anyway.

Those were the biggest downsides that I experienced.

For me, the traffic every day of the games seemed extremely light and I had no trouble with my usual commute. Translink did a very good job of scaring enough people out of their cars and onto transit to make that part of the games go off without a blip.

The protests were under reported in the mainstream media, although a group of self-accredited social media reporters, myself included, came together under the True North Media House banner and did our best to report the other untold stories and other perspectives during the games. I think we did a decent job getting the alternative word out considering our rather noisy competition.

It appears there is still some work to do before social media is the ‘go to’ place for the masses to get their news. The main flaw with any form media is that people must be tuned in to receive the message and the masses it seems remained glued to the more traditional television coverage of the games. That said, the amount of people tweeting comments during all of the events especially the opening ceremonies, hockey games and closing ceremonies proved there is plenty of crossover between the old and the new. Eventually the convergence of technologies that we’ve been hearing/dreaming about and we’ll be seamlessly commenting on events to a communal stream ticking across the bottom of our giant TV/computer screens.

Anyway, I had a ton of fun, and I think we made some new and closer friends in the process. Isn’t that was life should be about anyway?

As someone who poo poo’d the games I was pleasantly surprised by my experience. When I ask myself, ‘what now?’, today I think we had better start saving up for a trip to London in 2012 and/or to Sochi in 2014. The Olympics are coming. For now I think we’ll check out some Paralympic events. Wheelchair curling and sledge hockey look kind of cool.

**I’ll add some links to others’ awesome coverage of the games later on. This post pooped me out. I need a break. **

Carol, always pursuing the next great pin, and me on a quest for an official Vancouver 2010 mug a former teacher braved the crowds and traffic and headed downtown in to the Olympics related madness. It took over an hour to get to the parking spot Carol had for us in the building where she works. As soon as we walked out of the building onto Granville Street, this is what we saw:

There were buskers busking, clowns clowning and men in pink underpants putting on shows all along the usually traffic laden Granville Street in downtown Vancouver. There was a different type of traffic today. No cars. Just a mass of humanity aimlessly milling about watching the mass of humanity aimlessly milling about.

Here’s another shot:

I’ll do a post tomorrow about Carol’s pin mission and my quest for the mug. For more you can read Carol’s post about our day out and about.

I’m pooped, but what a load of fun.

Yesterday a team of us from DOXA Documentary Film Festival headed down to Creekside Park to see day one of taping for the Colbert Show in Vancouver. We were hoping we would be able to get a camera package for our upcoming EXPOSED! Celebrity Camera Auction fundraiser to Stephen Colbert. We passed our package off to an AD and hopefully Mr. Colbert will get the package and agree to participate.

I took Carol’s camera and got a ton of great shots from my vantage point back stage and running around through the crowd snapping away.

We weren’t the only ones to show up. There are estimates that over 5000 people were in attendance and the patriots were out in force.

The place went nuts when Stephen Colbert arrived and he did not disappoint. I was especially impressed with his improv. He is more charismatic in person than I thought he would be.

Oh look, Colbert must have seen me in the crowd as he waved right at me. He was actually counting down from five, but hey, a guy can dream can’t he?

Here’s a slide show of the best shots I snagged of Stephen Colbert, his guest Michael Bublé and eTalk Canada’s Ben Mulroney, as well as a few other lucky shots from a great day.

Many thanks to Carol Browne for letting her camera out of her sight for the day and to Miss604 for posting a couple of my photos .

Showing appreciation is nice. “And that’s the word”.