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09/21/2005: "congealing the amorphous"


Yes, I've been pretty quiet as of late. I'll blame that squarely on my current contract, which has me commuting to Mississauga every day. Adding two hours of driving to one's day really does make for a long day, especially if you get up as early as I do to ensure that you're driving before all the bad traffic. Ergo, I'm to bed early, thereby I don't spend a lot of time online at home in the evenings. Capische?

The job itself isn't bad at all, and the two other guys I'm working with are very nice. I've managed to start up a carpool with one of them (Charlie), which works out really well for both of us. We share driving duties, which means the one getting the ride gets to sleep on the way in to work, which we've both taken advantage of.

This arrangement has only just started: yesterday was the first day that he drove (and I slept), with today being the reverse. Charlie drives a Honda Accord, which is a fairly decent automobile. I realized this morning how well Hondas are made when driving my Hyundai Elantra. I have absolutely nothing against Hyundais, and am eager to own another one. However, the one thing I noticed was that the Accord was much, MUCH quieter at highway speeds than my Elantra. Impressively so.

Now, I may not be comparing apples to apples. The Accord is a sedan, whereas my Elantra is the GT, which means it's a hatchback instead of the sedan version. Why would this matter? Trunk noise. A truck is made to hold stuff, not muffle noise. With a sedan the truck is muffled by the back seats, which is the only path trunk noise can take into the passenger cabin. On a hatchback however, the noise can go either through or over the back seats, with only the hatch cover providing any sort of audio protection from trunk noise. My hatch cover, typical of all I've seen, is simply a piece of felted plastic. Hardly a great sound insulator.

In any case, I was impressed with the Honda's interior sound level traveling at 120 km/h. By comparison, the Elantra GT is much louder. Perhaps I'll have to drive an Elantra sedan and see how it compares.

In other news, I'm still working on getting my second meeting with Bob and John down in Windsor. I've now managed to talk to both of them this week, and we might have something on for either Friday or Saturday. I have no further details, but all the details that keep coming back are the same ones I've heard before, so at least there's a consistency of thought behind everything, and I'm not just getting sucked into a big pool of formless, wallowing opportunities that won't ever solidify. (How's that for some imagery?)

I had an interview for a transit bus manufacturer in the Toronto area last week. It was for a contract position that might go permanent, but that's not guaranteed. This was a company that was already on my preliminary list to target for networking, so I grabbed the opportunity for an interview. It sounds like a really good company to get into, and I would leap at the chance to do so, were it not for two facts. One, it's contract with no guarantee of permanency. Two, I'd rather launch my career sideways in Windsor doing engineering sales leading into project management and business ownership. Plus, the arrangement I have now works out fairly well for Jannette (who is able to have the car on days I don't drive), so I decided to pass on the opportunity.

Yes, they were interested in bringing me on (at a higher wage than I'm getting now), but I'm not going to leap out of the contract I'm on now for yet another one, only to possibly leap out of that one the second that something concrete (read: with paycheque attached) comes out of Windsor. I'd rather be honest with them now and commit to them properly when I'm able to do so, if I need to pursue that opportunity ever again. So, I've filed them in my "future opportunities folder" to reference in case nothing actually coagulates out of the cloud of possibilities. (Hey, I'm on a roll!)

In other words, I have nothing to report, but that my car is louder than Charlie's car. Thanks for coming out!

Oh, and yesterday was Talk Like A Pirate Day. Shiver me timbers, I keep missing it! Arrr! I'm going to have to put it on my calendar for next year, me harties.

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