What I’m Blogging

Join Gigantic Concrete and see the world. Well at least North America. Well at least every gravel pit and cement plant at the end of the road in the middle of no where. But I digress.

…spending a lot of my time being bored…

I’m sitting in Terminal 2 gate E at Toronto Airport waiting for my incredibly small plane to take me on the first leg of my cross continent excursion. Gate E is the small bunker like building up against the fence. You have to take a shuttle bus to get here. There are no places to buy coffee or other types of junk food. The only benefit, is that I’m the only techno geek here at the moment, so I didn’t have to fight anyone for one of the power outlets to recharge my Camera/Laptop/Cell Phone. There is no Wi-Fi connection here, as there is in the main terminal, so I have to resort to the Sony Ericsson Edge PCMCIA card and go cellular.

This trip is a babysitting detail. I’m going to give the Finance site some warm fuzzies about their new Local Area Network that my guys put in on Friday night. The bean counters wanted someone on site in case the flashy new switches from Cisco failed to work. As that is only a 0.0023% probability, I will be spending a lot of my time being bored. Oh well, short end of the stick again.

…if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts…

It’s the birthday of English essayist, philosopher, poet, historian, and statesman Sir Francis Bacon, born in London, England (1561). He spent much of his intellectual life challenging Aristotle’s view that knowledge should begin with universal truths. He said, “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” In Novum Organum (1620), Bacon wrote that scholars should build their knowledge of the world from specific, observable details. His theory is now known as the scientific method, and is the basis of all experimental science. His scientific method eventually killed him. When driving in the country one day, he got the idea to test the effect of cold on the decay of meat, bought a fowl, and stuffed it with snow. Later that day he came down with a cold, which killed him.

There’s something going on around here. What it is isn’t exactly clear. What the heck is going on with the weather? One day it’s -10 Celcius with all the snow we can shovel, the next day it’s +12 Celcius, sunny, and were breaking out the spring wardrobe.

…Old Man Winter’s senility is showing…

Back on the farm as a boy, when I walked to school up hill both ways for five miles, Winter was Winter. Snow drifts were one hundred feet high, and you wore a thick thermal snow suit that prevented all movement more complex than a waddle. Exposed flesh froze on contact with the outside air, and recess at school was an exercise of arctic survival reminiscent of Scott’s trek to the South Pole.

When it’s the middle of January in Canada you expect the deep freeze. There are notable Canadian exceptions to the rule. Vancouver is perpetually shrouded in rain, except for the one day in August legislated by Parliament for the sun to shine. It’s like England with giant redwoods. Calgary is another oddity. A chinook, a warm dry wind blowing down the eastern slopes of the Rockies, can blow in changing the temperature from -20 to + 20 in a very short period of time, driving the inhabitants insane. For the rest of us, however, this constant fluctuation of unseasonable climate proves only that Old Man Winter’s senility is showing.

Forget about exceeding structural limitations. We are now operating well beyond the manufacturer’s suggested stress level. I am back on the road again this weekend, or should I say up in the air. On Sunday I leave for Detroit, On Monday I fly back to Toronto to bounce to Calgary on the Red Eye. Next day, I fly late again to be back in Toronto for a Wednesday morning meeting at Gigantic Concrete Network Central Command. Oh ya, I’m on call too, so I have to answer support calls while I’m in the air. For my next trick folks, watch me pull a rabbit out of my… well you get the idea.

…I have to pause and laugh…

This was supposed to be a nice quiet weekend home with the family. Looks like that is getting shelved for the needs of corporation… hallowed be it’s name. The other thing to go is my ability to vote in the upcoming Federal Election. Not that I’m very political, but I’ll be about a thousand miles from my polling station. Maybe if I fold the ballot into a paper airplane and throw it really hard. The politicians are just going to have to get along without my vote on this one I think.

Sometimes, when I think that I’m actually the manager of this wacky department, I have to pause and laugh….

It’s the birthday of A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne, born in St. John’s Wood, London (1882). He wrote for the humor magazine Punch, and he was the author of a successful play called Mr. Pim Passes By. But once he published Winnie the Pooh, nobody ever remembered anything else he had written. In a little verse, he lamented: When I wrote them, little thinking/All my years of pen - and - inking/Would be almost lost among/Those four trifles for the young.

Some people are like Slinkies . . . not really good for anything, but you still can’t help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.

received by email, author unknown

Anyone notice that the rate of blog publishing is directly proportional to the amount of time not invested in indentured servitude?Well it’s been noticeable to me. Life at Gigantic Concrete continues its merry path of “chaos and consumption”; time is never under control and there is never enough of it.

I have my team spread thin to the far corners of the empire on various and sundry tasks. I’m trying to hold down the fort, answer service calls, plan several varied and complex projects, try and fit in interviews for additional contract help, and keep the stream of electrons flowing constantly so that the flow of rock never ceases… Can you say stressed?

The Christmas lull is over, the new year of projects and mayhem has washed ashore like a tsunami of tasks and expectations, and me without a life raft or a rubber ducky.

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

Poem: “Lost,” by David Wagoner from Collected Poems 1956-1976 © Indiana University Press.