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First Excursion: The Humber Bay Pedestrian Bridge. I actually knew the engineer who built it. There are three types of animals hidden on the bridge structure.

We took a stroll down the Western Beaches, and it amazes me how beautiful our neighbourhood is. Virtually all the lakeside all the way to Ontario Place is striped with trails amid parkland and beaches. And ice cream stands, which Silverlotus approves of.

Finished off the invigorating walk with a dinner at Yumi on Bloor West. It’s sugarpops to have a good Japanese restaurant close by, even if it’s a bit on the pricey side.


Second excursion: Tall Ship Kajama, facing aft on the port side as we travel westward in Toronto Harbour.

I took Silverlotus and her parents on a boat cruise on the Kajama, a three-mastered schooner. We sailed from her berth at York Quay due west to the mouth of the Humber Bay and back, for a total of 1.5 hours. Fortunately, the clouds rolled in just as we docked.

Not too long ago, Harbourfront was a grimy industrial complex. Now it’s a thriving tourism area with many docks for many ships.

An interesting observation: York Quay has fifteen gardens, all designed by local artists. My favourite is one composed of plants growing out of old television sets, by Janet Morton.

We spent the next hour whiling away browsing the tourist traps at Queen’s Quay.
I actually got Silverlotus to put on a hat – it was a giant $70 Tilley hat that you could hide a machinegun in, but a hat nonetheless.

V has a fairly nice job. Problem is, it doesn’t pay too well. He was promised a raise if he received a good quarterly performance review.

!>()http://gallerie.silentblue.net/albums/toronto/Sidewalk_Closed.thumb.jpg 150w 113h! His boss hasn’t given him a quarterly performance review in one and a half years.

Well, until two weeks ago. He got a “highly favourable” rating. As thanks, they bumped up his bonus limit. But no raise.

So on Saturday, I spent most of the afternoon helping V out with his resume. Time to look for greener pastures. Here are some tips I have:

* Make your name in a bold, big font. Place your name as a header on the second page, too. This is your time to shine, baby.
* Place categories in order of relevance to the job you’re applying for. If your Education is more relevant than your work experience, put it first – and vice versa. Yes, this means you’ll need to keep several copies of the resume.
* Place items within categories in order of relevance. The resume police won’t come out if you don’t follow chronological order.
* Remove all things not relevant to the job. That includes past work experience, and skills. The Activities category should be taken out all together.
* You don’t have to list specific dates for jobs, graduating, etc. The year should suffice. If the job or course was particularly short-lived, including the season is acceptable (i.e. Summer 2002)
* Quantify everything. If you don’t have an exact figure, estimate. How many customers did you serve? How many sales in dollars did you bring in? How many percent does your new brainchild improve operational efficiency?
* Everything should be able to answer the old age question, “So what?” You must be able to justify each point, each job, each accolade, each school project, and why it’s on your resume, and why it makes you the perfect candidate.

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry…Command and Conquer was the first CD-ROM computer game that I truly enjoyed. You could control an entire army, from securing resources to devising stratagems. The background story was incredibly complex, for a game: two sides, the noble GDI and the charismatic Brotherhood of Nod, waged a war on the ground and through propaganda in a bid to be the first to control and understand an organism known as Tiberium that is slowly taking over the world. I used to play it so long, my contact lenses fell out of my head.

You could tell there was love put into this game. Playing as Nod, if you uncovered three crates spread over several campaign levels, you obtained a nuclear warhead in the final mission. As GDI, you received a different ending movie depending on how you destroyed the Nod Temple – if you used the orbital Ion Cannon, you would see the charismatic Nod leader, Kane, spread his arms like a cross-like figure as the beam pulverized him and his stronghold.

Red Alert and Red Alert 2 continued the tradition of background rock music, fancy install sequences, over the top FMVs and crazy weapons that were a hoot to use, but still remained firmly entrenched in a modern combat setting. Despite being prequels and spinoffs, they too offered teasing glimpses into the alternate universe that C&C created.

The true C&C storyline still yearned for its rightful sequels. Westwood planned it to be a trilogy: Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun, and Tiberian Twilight.

However, Command & Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun, hyped for over four years, turned the C&C story into a sci-fi cliche with UFOs and mutants, and was a commercial flop. By then, Westwood was dead and assimilated into the EA monolith. Generals, while very pretty, was devoid of storyline or artistry. It was C&C in name only. The golden goose from Las Vegas was officially poached.

It’s hard to get excited by the possibility of Command and Conquer 3: Tiberian Twilight. Will it bring the old excitement back, or will it be the final insult?

Big surprise: CNET reports that 22% of all technology workers lack four-year degrees.

I remember my co-op job at the Systems & Technology division at a major national bank. My manager had taken Anthropology.

That’s why you should hire me. I’ve got my Bachelor’s of Engineering, I’m the real deal, all natural whole grain, unlike those other cheap knockoffs. Heck, I spent five years in engineering purgatory to get a Management co-degree, all the while the Arts and Commerce students sat in their 3pm classes on a Wednesday dressed to the nines, ready for another night at the clubs.

Which goes to show, once you leave school and get your first professional position, your education is irrelevant.