Squamish Peak Gondola

 In early June, Kathryn's parents came for a nice visit and we took a day trip to Squamish to ride the very new gondola up to the peak of a nearby mountain. This is in the same area as 'The Chief', but does not share that peak or impose on the people that are out for a hike rather than a day trip.

 The top has a very nice new building with a restaurant/gift shop and that hallmark of standing in high places in BC, a suspension bridge. Kathryn is noticeably more comfortable with suspension bridges than our first visit to the Pinawa suspension bridge and now gamely trots too and fro hundreds of feet in the air.

 The view is certainly worth the effort with a selection of viewpoints out over the valley and Howe Sound. You can click on the panorama below to enlarge it. There were also some very talkative but hard to photograph Sooty Grouse up in the trees and an assortment of short but pleasant hikes around the peak.

BCIT: Year One Marks and Thoughts

 Final marks have come in and the first year of my two year diploma course at BCIT is officially over and passed. While it was a pretty intense workload I would totally recommend going back to school for any of my friends in vfx that have long since lost the love of the art and don't know if they can keep up the routine for another 30 years. Its terrifying for the first few weeks because its such a huge change, but its also exciting to be learning new skills and fun to meet new people and maybe realize you're not as old as you sometimes feel.

 So I thought I'd share my marks AND newfound statistics skills with everyone via the box plot below, which aggregates the marks from my 17(!!!!!) courses in the past year and breaks them up into quartiles according to distribution. I won't bore you all with each and every one, but my lowest mark at 84% was a tie between Communications 1 and Principles of Management, both of which have a heavy group project mark which I will attribute at least some of the slip to. At the far end of the spectrum, due to a generous marking system I got 101% in Computerized Accounting, and all averaged out I managed a 92% (weighted) average for the first year.

 I'll round out this post with a few common questions I've had from people in the last year:
Q: Can you do my taxes?
A: Weirdly enough there is more to accounting than mastering the Canada Tax Code. Going in I was sure that I'd be doing everyones taxes by this point as well, but there's actually a lot more to learn in there and I've really only scratched the surface with a ton of introductory courses. So I can technically do your taxes, but probably not much better than you can ;)

Q: Do you miss vfx?
A: That I do not. Not the work, not the clients, not the hours, not the environment, not the constant pressure to line up my next gig. I miss many of the fine people that work in the industry, but have kept up with many of them, and with summer and weekends I hope to be a little more accessible for maintaining friendships better than the last few years.

Q: Wouldn't it be funny if you ended up doing accounting for a film company?
A: Funny how things work out sometimes, but I just do 9-5:30 and my weekends are my own. haven't opened Nuke or Maya the whole time but log a lot of time in Excel and Simply Accounting, both of which the past term prepared me for.

Thanks to all my excellent teachers, my loving wife, and all my supportive friends over the past hectic and amazing year. Looking forward to September and all the challenges that will come with it.