Archive | March, 2010

Hobbies Far Away

By on March 12, 2010 in Journal

There are many things that I currently like. Or hobbies I guess you could say. Writing, Yellowknife, Building WordPress Websites, Camping, Snowmobiling, Photography and Media, are just a few. Which there in lies the problem. It seems, to me anyway, that I’m always complaining there is not enough time in the day to do some of these things. Most of these things, writing (Blogging), wordpress stuff, and photography, are things I want to improve on as they may or may not potentially be careers. I have some skills, but they are limited. So lets break it down.

Writing: I would love to be able to write a good authentic article. I believe I would probably do well writing on something from the north or Yellowknife, because that is where my passion lies. I don’t know why I find writing so enjoyable, maybe it is the false hope that someone is actually reading it. It calms me and allows me to get out what I want to say. Actually it is more of a love-hate relationship. I do enjoy it, but struggle with it immensely. I rarely seem to be able to get a continued flow in my writing. I constantly go back and reread what I have written or forget where I wanted to go with that thought. It is a pain in the ass when you’re trying to get something done. I use to think I was an excellent typist, alas I am far from it. So when my thoughts get ahead of my fingers it all goes downhill. I have contemplated getting MacSpeech (Dragon Dictate), but the cost has always stopped me. The final issue I have with my own writing is, my lack of grammar and spelling skills. Trust me it drives me nuts!

WordPress: I have a fairly strong knowledge base of wordpress and how it works. I actually consider myself pretty smart when it comes to this CMS. The one thing I wish to improve on is my code skills. It would be lovely to properly know how to customize wordpress themes and understand how things work together.

Photography: This is something I picked up 2 years ago and then bought my first DSLR a year and a half or so ago. I always have the best intentions of learning a knew skill and slowly I have. I think photography and writing go hand in hand; I often meet or hear of photographers who are also freelance writers. Writing about Yellowknife all the time I often need photos to go with it. So learning how to take a beautiful photo of something happening around town is something I am really wanting to do. I try to keep my camera on a manual mode, but often get over whelmed with the little time I have to take the photo and put it onto a preset setting. I can’t seem to get it down, how to properly use the camera while out and about.

There you have it, the negatives of the things I want to do better at. The reason I wanted to point these out is so I could see them in writing. The solution to all of these is rather simple, and I even know it. It is time. All I need is time, or at least that’s what I believe. Five days a week I work five hours a day at a coffee shop and for the rest of the day I am responding to e-mails, writing the next days post, working on the back end of the site or dealing with something to do with the business. I end up getting into this routine around 1:30 and then I go until 8pm with a break for supper, it is none stop. My feed reader is constantly packed with over 900 unread blog post, my tweeting has slowed and so have posts on this blog. One solution to gain more time would be to leave the coffee shop but it is currently my only source of income and I depend on it to pay the bills and my school debt. I’m probably over exaggerating things, but I blame that on the lack of income in my business. If only I could start to get a little income to take some of the pressure off, then maybe I would be able to try and learn more about the things mentioned above.

The solution is in sight but far away. AHHHHHHH! Frustrating.

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Sorry Wrong Number Yellowknife

By on March 5, 2010 in Journal

Lately I have been getting a lot of calls for people around Yellowknife asking me questions about what is going on around town. I love this, because I love sharing it. I mean it is the whole point of YkOnline, to share what is happening. Anyways along with those calls I have gotten some calls from, for lack of better words, confused people. Three calls really stick out in my mind and I will share them with you. By the way I never answer my phone by saying anything about YkOnline, it is just normally “Hello, Kyle speaking”.

1) I received a call from a lady who wanted to pay a bill. I asked with “Hello” and she said “Hi, I would like to pay my hydro bill”. I was then confused and said “excuse me” which led the woman to say again “I would like to pay my hydro bill”. At that point I knew she had the wrong number and asked her who she thought she was talking to. She replied with “Isn’t this the City if Yellowknife” and I semi chuckled and said “No”. She then hung up without saying anything.

2) A man from southern Alberta call me asking for a Newspaper. That really confused me, I thought why would I have a newspaper. He explained that his friend had won a gold medal and he wanted a newspaper from every capital in Canada.  As I told him I didn’t have any, he questioned why a newspaper company wouldn’t keep any. At that point I was shaking my head, I then explained to him what YkOnline was. He told me I was the first website he landed on when he searched Yellowknife Newspaper. I thought I would help him out so I tried to find the number for the newspaper on their website, but couldn’t so I frantically rummaged around to find a two month old paper with a phone number in it and sent him on his way. I wonder if he actually got that paper?

3) The Final call was just this morning. A lady called me about the Snow castle, I thought okay, whatever, I’ll help her with the information I know but apparently that wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted to know how much snow was used to build the castle, and I had no idea. I said that and tried to explain how it was built, but she wanted to know. She told me that this is the kind of thing someone helping build the castle should know. That confused me and I apologized but explained that I really have nothing to do with the Castle or Festival except that I have been there. She replied well this is stupid, it said to call you for details. Now I was really confused, but I don’t know where she would have gotten the idea to call my number for details about the Snow Castle. In the video I said check YkOnline or the Snowking website for the schedule, but nothing else. I told her the best place to get a hold of someone would be the Snowking website, but she hung up on me mid sentence.

I’m wondering if maybe I’m not clear about YkOnline and who actually operates the site. I’m a life-long resident just like anyone else. I have a passion for Yellowknife and want to share it with everyone. I have a large knowledge of the city but am not really affiliated with any group or organization. I am also not part of the City of Yellowknife. I’m happy to see that the site is gaining ground and more than willing to answer questions about the city and what is going on but am wondering if I should explain who I am a little better. What does everyone else think?

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