Taking Sly for a birthday trip to Aulani. We’re at YVR in one of their lounges relaxing before our flight. Looking forward to a week in the sun.
I’ll report as we go.
Headed to Hawaii
My Lime Addiction
No, not the fruit, the scooter company. If you’re in a larger American city (LA, Austin, Dallas, etc) you’ve already seen the bright green electric scooters littering your walkways. Here’s a quick video used as a tutorial to teach new users how to properly park your scooter at the end of a ride.
Lime started a pilot program in Calgary on the second week of July. The city gave them the latitude to have these devices out on the streets for people to use and to charge same people 30 cents a minute for the opportunity.
So these scooters have pretty good batteries and will last almost a full day but they eventually require recharging. Enter the Juicers!
I’ve signed up as a ‘Juicer’, a contracted employee of Lime that is tasked with gathering, charging and ‘serving’ a number of Lime scooters each day. I was provided with a couple of chargers to use in my activities and will charge an empty scooter to full in about six hours. Then I find a location out on the street to serve, or drop off, the scooter. For that sequence of activities (harvest, charge, serve) i receive a payment of $5.25 CDN for each scooter charged.
Why? Why am I doing this? What is the possible reasoning behind someone who is doing fine financially wanting to run around being a ‘Juicer’? In the rain, tonight, I asked myself that question a couple of times.
It’s tough to explain but people who actually know me will probably understand: it’s about the quest rewards! I’ve always been a big fan of Role Playing Games (RPGs) going all the way back to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Sitting around a table, rolling dice that are desperately trying to kill me and killing the (dragon, kobold colony, Orc infestation) before receiving a reward for all my hard work. +5 Vorpal Sword!
I like the small work/small reward of the ‘Gig’ economy. I like that I can make an extra $10.50 per night doing about 30 minutes (max!) combined of work. Pays for my morning coffee addiction!
The other question I get asked all the time is how much electricity am I paying for to charge these scooters? I asked one of the electronic engineers in my lab for a suggestion as to how much electricity is consumed and his suggestion was about 8 cents per scooter per night. I haven’t gotten my first full electricity bill to confirm this yet but I don’t have any reason to think it’s much more than that.
I’m going to continue doing this until they take the scooters off the road in November. I might still be interested in continuing in the spring but who knows? As long as I continue to get that mini-rush of quest complete, I’ll probably continue the activity indefinitely. I’ll update if that changes.
Pic A Day!
Sly and I at the Magic Kingdom. A great picture for an overcast day. I like it because my beautiful wife is smiling and I’m tolerating getting my picture taken.
Pic A Day!
Another from our vacation last year.
You may not know that Disney Cruise Lines has it’s own private island, as most Caribbean cruise lines do. Usually at the end of your 4 – 7 day cruise, the last stop is at this island, Castaway Cay.
Great place to relax and recharge after… well pretty much anything. Last year we did the cruise after we did Disney World and I really enjoyed the timing. Got a chance to really relax and spend as little time as possible concerned with regular life. So here you see me enjoying the sun, sand and serenity of Serenity Bay. Yes, it’s actually called that since only adults are allowed on that side of the island and it’s so quiet as a result.
Annnnnnddddd…. We’re Back!
I had a HELLUVA time trying to get this space back up and running over the past four days. There might be some interest so I’ll describe some of the issues I ran into. My geek ego is damaged. Read on to discover why.
Big Gold Limo!
Big gold limo.
So you have another coffee…..
So you have another coffee with a couple shots of Bailey’s in it!
That Face You Make…
When your flight is delayed but you’re sitting in the lounge so don’t really care.
CES 2019
I’ve been absolute shite about keeping this up to date but I’ve got an update that I think needs sharing somewhere off the ‘social’ media’.
I’m headed to Vegas tomorrow for CES. This will be my third year attending but this year is a little different: I’ve joined the Canadian Delegation to represent SAIT (and Alberta/Canada) at the show on behalf of Applied Research. Myself and Emerson Burns (see our Bios here) will be at the show and at the Canadian Pavillion manning a booth for a bit of time. I’ve embedded a map below in case anyone might be interested. Blue pin, top left is where we’ll be for a couple days during the show.
The combination of fear and exhilaration is astounding; something that I’ve seen innate value in for the past two years finally becoming something we might use as a vehicle into more potential projects.
I hope I don’t fuck this up, I hope that we can derive some real value out of this and that it turns into something we contribute to on an annual basis. I hope this is something that I can build off of and develop new streams of potential project partners, close to home and abroad.
Don’t expect a ‘Facebook dump’ of selfies and activities while we’re away; I think my boss wants to hedge a bit and see how this trade mission goes before announcing our participation to stakeholders that might look down their nose at two ARIS employees being sent to Nevada simply because of the location without considering the value of the mission. Though when the weekend starts and the pressure has lessened you might get a couple of photos posted of Emerson and I blowing off some steam.
We’ll see.
Average Day with Sly In Vegas
- Breakfast of some type
- Walk up the strip
- Shop for shoes
- Walk up the strip some more
- Stop for a donut
- Walk up the strip
- Shop at the Miracle Mile Shops
- Stop for a beer (Sin City Stout and Weissbier are AWESOME)
- Shop at Sephora
- Wander through the Cosmo to check out potential dinner locations
- Get a bus to the Towne Square Shopping mall
- Visit the Sugar Land shop to buy candy (mmmm candy corn)
- Watch a movie (Mary Poppins Returns)
- Go for dinner at the Yard House. Amazing Jambalaya and Sly loved the Nashville Chicken)
- Attend Xmas Santa and Snow event! Great fun!
- Get bus back to the Strip
- Stop at Walgreens for more water and snacks
- Return back to the hotel
- Provide wife with Netflix on the TV
- Head downstairs to gamble a bit and make MGM appreciate my loyalty
- Back upstairs to record the day, listen to some videos and have some relaxation time.
This was a perfect day and I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Though we’re not really planning anything, a visit to the North Outlet Shoppes and a late lunch at Pizza Rock are on the agenda. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to spend some time at a table if I can find something for Sly to get up to.