Saskatoon in the winter

OK, so in case you ever wondered what I do for a living, I work in the IT department of a small agricultural trading company. About half of my job involves Java programming (doing front-end UI design for a new business system) and the other half involves system and network administration. I enjoy both aspects of my job very much.

This winter (as seems to be the running trend now for two years in a row...) I had the honour of visiting Saskatoon again to install our new server room closet for our new office. It was fun! ...and tiring! Though at one point the thought did cross my mind, as I was bolting in server lockers, as to where exactly this was listed on my original job description. :-) Things evolve I guess...!

Anyhow, the real adventure didn't start until I was due to fly home. The flight out of Saskatoon (to Calgary) was due at 9:30pm. My flight was delayed until nearly 12:30am when of course all Calgary -> Vancouver flights were done for the night. It wasn't all bad though - it is quite interesting how events like this can bring the most unusual people together. I had quite an engaging conversation with a young, intelligent university student and a very old grandmother! It was also fascinating to observe the optimists and the pessimists in the room. It certainly made for some interesting conversation. Most of all, it was hilarious (though not helpful) to hear WestJet's (the other airline) constant jabs at Air Canada.

"For the information of those passengers traveling on WestJet flight 136, we are not currently affected by the weather [unlike Air Canada's flight] as we fly jets, not turbo props."

Probably the thing that worried me the most though was getting home in time for Erich's 2nd birthday, which, though delayed by one night, did happen. He was so happy to see me, and that is always a joy.

Trip to Alberta and Saskatchewan

As part of my (Jonathan's) work, I was sent to three municipalities in Alberta and one in Saskatchewan to deploy some new workstations and VPNs. Although there could be much to be written about the fascinating IT work (and indeed my colleague has written a bit about this in his tech blog), I found more interesting the opportunity to see how the various parts of my company's operations work. Seeing the more industrial end of how things work puts into perspective the work that I do on a day to day basis. Shown above is our plant in Brooks, AB.

While I was away on my trip, I kept in touch with Erich and Karen through the use of a web cam. I have a web cam mounted on top of our TV. This camera feeds into the computer underneath the TV which normally serves as a digital VCR. I was fortunate enough to borrow an additional web cam for the road, and so every night just before Erich's bedtime, I had the opportunity to say hello to him. I learned afterward that when Erich was told that daddy was on the phone he would point at the TV in eager anticipation of seeing my face. How very exciting!

During the trip, I also had the opportunity to stop briefly in Calgary where I visited my good friend Kyle and his family. Shown here to the right is a picture of Kyle, myself and his youngest daughter Cora.