Houses: What $500,000 buys in Calgary

Downtown Core:












This little 798ft2 dump can be had for a cool $450, 000 which is cheap for downtown. Quite likely, a 6-storey apartment building sits next door. Larger, renovated character homes start in these neighborhoods at around $750k!

Inner (Older) Suburbs:









This house is 2300ft2 with 4 bedrooms and is listed for a cool $605,000 in the neighborhood we love! The yard and garden are stunning and the interior has been mostly renovated. It's a great neighborhood with beautifully landscaped yards, once-lovely houses and great schools.
We're waiting for a slightly smaller one to come on the market.

The only trouble is these neighborhoods are expensive and the houses often need renovations since they've been built in the 60's and 70's. Once you pay this much for a house, who has another $100k to put into renovating???


New (Outer) Suburbs:









For $500,000, you can live in THIS box, which is identical to the other TWO boxes on either side. Notice how close together the houses are. Everyone says it gets better once you go inside. I'm sure it does and that the houses are great inside, all shiny and new. But still, I would need a map to find my house, which looks identical to the other 10,000 houses in my sub-division. By the way, people are paying at least $350,000 for houses just like this even farther out of the city. I find that to be an obscene price to pay for a "starter" home in a city that isn't particularly interesting. I like Calgary and all, but it's not like we're sitting on the ocean. The mountains are 1 hour away, but it's the oil boom that is causing prices to sky rocket!

House Update #2

We attended a cool BBQ on Saturday night at David's boss's house. They are totally, insanely rich. They have an enormous house in Calgary's Pump Hill, a creepy but sickly affluent neighborhood full of experimental architecture and 15,000ft2 houses.

David's boss's husband is head lawyer for some big Alberta oil company, so their house is insanely beautiful. Like a ski lodge for 50, built for a small family. Their son's bedroom was larger than my condo. And it appears a small forest of walnut trees sacrificed their lives for their foyer and 30ft cathedral ceilings. I always thought "you can buy stuff, but you can't buy good taste". I was wrong. You can buy exquisite taste. They also have art, which they refer to by the artist's name. Is that a Jackson? No, it's a Moss.

I stand corrected.

Anyway, the food and house and his boss and everyone were lovely and fun. We actually had a great time. The wine flowed. David's colleagues are nice, interesting people.

Then, at 8pm we broke rank and went to see Prospective House #3, the one I was so sure was The One. It wasn't.

The house tour started well. The lot was lovely. Huge mountain ash and spruce trees in the front. Brick and wood construction. The brick was in excellent repair. The front roof looked good. The garage was a heated, over-sized double garage, finished with new dry wall. Once inside, the house looked good from the front door. Blonde, old hardwood floors that had been refinished but showed some age. Taupe walls. Two fireplaces. The homeowners followed all the rules by keeping it stylish and neat and with all the lamps glowing in the evening light. They had a Scrabble game on the table. The bedrooms were small but pleasantly decorated. Then the trouble began. The main bath was weirdly renovated with Corian counter-tops and a bathtub that didn't have a shower. Odd. The main bedroom was small and the windows were old, hard to open. They had weird security bars on the bedroom window. Our realtor swears there is no crime in this neighborhood, but it was creepy. The master bath was dismal, scrubbed clean but grimy. Crying for renovation.

The kitchen was small and the cupboards old and run-down. They looked like they needed to be replaced. The sink was old. In general, the kitchen seemed small and sad. The kitchen window was huge and lovely and faced the west back yard. A closer inspection of the walls revealed a lot of wear and tear and dents covered by the fresh paint.

The basement was nice, finished but not fancy. An old furnace that needs replacing. The downstairs shower had mold. The back deck was kind of crummy. And from the back deck, the back roof could be seen. Shingles were a mess, curling up, not visible from the front. Funny. A roof job needed. The back yard was well-treed and large (700m2 lot), but the new 100ft long fence was only 4ft high, not the usual 6ft. You could see into the alley. Not the privacy we want.

But the clincher....the neighbor was out back partying with his friends. They were talking loud, drunken, partying. As we stood on the back deck, an argument broke out. Expletives, yelling, cursing. Our realtor was mortified ("look over here, come back inside...").

After seeing the house and thinking it over, we decided it was too much money at close to $500k with all the work needed. Too bad, because the neighborhood was lovely and there was a park across the front as well, that wasn't mentioned. But we were horrified with the neighbour's behaviour. Pure white trash, the shit we hear enough of in the middle of the night in our own downtown, full-of-renter neighborhoods. They saw us on the deck but continued hollering and cursing, beers in hand.

As we sat in the car to talk, the skinny, shirtless, big-haired loser jerk neighbor comes out of his house, sits his beer in the road and opens the back of his rusty Jeep. Goes in the front, turns on the stereo, loud. Obnoxious music. It's dark on the street but Asshole Neighbour is cranking his tunes. You can tell he rules the street. He keeps looking at us. He knows his neighbour is selling. He shows no respect. I imagine everyone on the street wants to burn his house down, with him in it.

I think we might have considered the house if it wasn't for him. We were happy he was there so we saw how loud and obnoxious a neighbour can be. The neighbour you ask to keep it down and he tells you to "F" yourself, that he can do what he wants in his house. Welcome to the neighborhood.

House Hunting Update #1

David and I toured two houses last evening. Both were unimpressive. The first, in a third string neighborhood, was a handy-man special which had been weirdly modified by the previous owner. I think it was either a grow-op or a crack house in its previous life. I was ready to leave after 5 minutes, but after a thorough tour we were ready to run. Our agent used the opportunity to point out lots of problems and flaws and watch-outs, so it was a good place to start. The walk beside the house sloped towards the basement, meaning bad draining. The fireplace was soiled with smoke, meaning bad drafting inside the chimney. And the bedrooms had been renovated by removing walls, leaving heating registers in the middle of the floors. The windows were old and so was the roof and furnace.

The second house was once a noble house in a lovely neighborhood, our second choice neighborhood. It was built in 1973 and had not been renovated. The layout was lovely, except for the south-facing 2nd storey master bedroom with the ugly window overlooking the school across the street. I could already picture myself in bed with a massive headache, children screaming outside in the playground, and the scorching prairie sun streaming into the south-facing bedroom (most Calgary homes aren't air-conditioned...we don't get much over 30C/85F weather). The house was severely dated despite the new carpet and furnace and roof. We decided quickly it wasn't worth the trouble, not for the price. We would have no money left for the copious renovations.

Today, a listing finally came up in our #1 neighborhood. David has a company BBQ tonight at his boss's posh house, so we are seeing our agent at 8pm. This gives us a quick excuse to ditch the colleagues early too!

This neighborhood is a gem. It is pricey and established but not really well-known except by the well-heeled set since the neighborhood is small and out of the way. The neighborhood sits on a peninsula of development surrounded on three sides by green space. To the south and east is Fish Creek Park, the largest urban park in Canada. To the east is a green zone. The neighborhood is private and delicious. We're seeing another older home, which hasn't been substantially renovated, but it was described as immaculate and charming. Charming can mean charming or it can mean quirky and weird. We'll see. I can tell that David is excited. We are almost ready to move in from the description and the fact that the house is located one block from the ridge and a wide-open view of the valley below and the mountains. The house sits one row behind the million-dollar monster homes that line the ridge.

I'm dying to see it. But we have to schmooze with the colleagues first at this BBQ. Should be a fun evening. I finally get to meet some more of David's colleagues and get to see his boss's grand house. Will post an update soon, but will spend the next 5 hours trying to emotionally detach myself from this house, so I am prepared for disappointment.

By the way, my headache is raging, as it's done all week. I hope I am lucid for the party. I will just stand there, perhaps, and pretend I am shy. : )

My Experimental Photography...

Today, I emailed a wonderful photographer, Dorothy Gantenbein, who lives in San Francisco. I discovered her work a short time ago and was smitten with her techniques, her oh-so-fresh style, and her creativity. Dorothy's quietly beautiful work resonates with me and helped me realize that photography doesn't have to follow anyone's formulas. She takes the type of photos I dream of taking. I haven't thought that about anyone's work for a long, long, long time. Check through her archives...she has more brilliant ideas than you can shake a stick at!

I emailed Dorothy about Orton images (which she probably already knows). An Orton is a photography technique that gives impressionistic, soft images. For some reason, her ethereal montages and her mention of watercolour reminded me of Ortons again. Ortons can be just slightly soft or really softened to give a more painterly quality.

So I dug through my archives and found a photo I took and tried to salvage a while ago. Using the original photo, I had produced an Orton image in Photoshop (in which I am utterly incompetent) using directions from another photographer. Attached below are the original photo, the Orton image, and a coloured pencil sketch I produced. These techniques may be amateur to some, but for me, I was spell-bound with what one can produce from a rather plain photo.

The original photo of a dried flower and the softer Orton image...(touched up)












And finally, a coloured pencil botanical sketch which I've always loved...














After the house hunting is done, I sorely need to get back to my photography. Thanks to Dorothy and the other intrepid photographers who publish their lovely work and techniques for others to appreciate. Despite headaches and my often lacklustre existence because of them, I just may have found my muse again!

(I've also signed up for a pottery class in September - so with house hunting and that, it promises to be a physically exhausting but hopefully transformative fall!)

House Hunting

David and I have finally decided to take the plunge...into a crazy Calgary real estate market. At least things are cooling somewhat after a white hot spring market drove prices through the roof. The influx of people looking for work in the oil patch has made home-buying virtually unaffordable for many. Average house prices were over $400, 000 in May.

But after years of living in apartments and condos, albeit some rather lovely ones, we've decided it's time to buy a house!

I won't be blogging much for the next few weeks.

We met an agent last evening and I did the mortgage pre-approval today. Now for the fun part - looking at houses. Some say it's a chore, running around to see one crummy place after the next, realizing your budget isn't high enough, etc. but others say it's thrilling and enjoyable, as long as it doesn't last too long.

I'm actually excited despite the fact that prices seem like extortion to me. But the market is softening a little, there are more listings, and stuff is sitting on the market longer than a single day, like before. The bidding wars have stopped. People are no longer getting double their asking price. But there are lots of greedy (or wise?) souls out there trying to dump their dumps for insane prices.

Another problem is that Calgary doesn't exactly have the old-fashioned character homes we'd like. There are a few inner city neighborhoods with these older style 2-storeys, nicely renovated for a cool $750k or more. Slightly over our budget.

Many of the older, established neighborhoods that we like (the ones with mature trees, big lots, plenty of green space and not too far from the core) have boring bungalows from the 60's. Some of the houses are beautifully updated and look great, but the style isn't "us". Still, we've decided to compromise and look in these neighborhoods.

The third, and most gruesome option is the new suburbs. These are farther out and built like row after row of matching cereal boxes spaced 5 ft apart on tiny lots. We'd love a "new" house, but on the bald praire, the gopher fields they're developing don't leave much to the imagination. Neighborhood-after-neighborhood of these sprawling suburbs are growing like a plague. Picture a flat field with a million identical-looking houses. Yards are miniscule, and you have 20 neighbors staring at you whether you walk out the front or back door. And there are few trees. Personally, I hate the homogenization of these neighborhoods. The whole beige-ification of life. A new house is nice, but there isn't much character or space in these burbs.

So...I called our agent tonight to start looking at some of the listings he's shown us. Nothing stands out, but the lots are all lovely. We're looking at a couple of specific mid-town neighborhoods that are a little more posh than regular middle class, have top notch schools, and have slightly only slightly insane prices.

I'm already having trouble pacing myself, and wonder how my headaches will be as things unfold. Our meeting with the realtor ran late last night and David and I were brain-dead all day. I spent half the day at work on the phone with the mortgage broker, and the other half looking at the listings photos, figuring out where exactly the houses are situated, and doing mortgage payment calculations. Being the dork that I am, i actually developed my own Excel spreadsheet to do those amortization tables showing how interest calculations are done and how much of each payment goes to interest and principal. My results matched the online calculators, so I was geekily pleased with my geek self. I emailed it to David who will likely delete it while shaking his head.

I came home with a bad headache, and have spent the evening on chores. I'm detail-oriented to a fault, so I have a feeling I will overload myself in the weeks to come. But I'm so excited!

I will be checking other people's blogs as often as I can. And will post little updates as the process unfolds.

David, Football & A Long Lens

My darling David is overjoyed.

His name has been drawn to attend "Stamps Camp" in Calgary this weekend. Stamps Camp is an opportunity for Calgary Stampeders (our CFL team) football fans to come out, meet their favorite players and possibly be signed as a "Stampeder" for a day and attend training with the team. 100 names have been drawn. The only qualification was to be over 18, in semi-reasonable shape, and to be a fan. On Saturday, they'll be split into 5 teams of 20 and will be put through drills and such. The winning team gets "signed" for a day, wins some prizes and free tickets, and the big news - they get to spend a training session with the actual team, the day before the big Labour Day game!!

David is thrilled. He's an experienced rugby player (so good that he played for the national team) but loves CFL football as well. I'm so happy for him (despite the fact that I don't understand the rules). He's hoping to actually throw the ball around with some of the big-name players. I have a feeling it will be a wonderful day of memories!

To memorialize the day, I've decided to do some photography. Since I don't own a long lens, I'm renting a telephoto zoom from The Camera Store, the best camera/gear store in Calgary. I'm getting a killer lens, a Sigma 120-300mm f2.8, which retails for over US $3000. This is a pro lens and will enable me to get some great action shots. I'll basically be able to get full-frame shots of David over 30 yards away. Since he will be out in the middle of a big field, I'll need this lens to get close.

(I hate to admit I'm almost more excited about the lens than I am about his football adventure).

I'm a little nervous about using this lens. First of all, I've never shot sports. Ever. Telephotos are finicky. They don't get as much light as regular lenses (it's a really long dark tube compared to a short dark tube), and for action photos, you need really fast shutter speeds (like 1/1200th sec or faster) to "freeze the action". Since you don't get much light, that means you need wide-open apertures and faster film to get the right exposures. Plus, it's a heavier lens (about 6 pounds!) than I'm used to, so I borrowed a nice monopod from one of my colleagues. That's important, because hand-shake gets magnified with a long lens, even at faster speeds. Plus, the monopod will be much better than my tri-pod for panning and moving. And I need to pick up some 400 or 800 ISO film, which is faster. And probably a new battery for my camera to drive the auto-focus on this big monster.

I'm also bringing our Canon digital point and shoot just in case I (a) drop the US $3000 lens (God forbid), (b) can't figure out how to get the shots I want or (c) want to make a little video of David doing the chicken dance.

If I have any luck, I'll post some of the results. And more importantly, I'll let you know if David is being signed to the big leagues...

Migraine-like Pain

Sometimes tension-type headache feels like migraine, or merges into the spectrum of migraine to actually become a certifiable migraine. This week has been one of those weeks. And I know why.

I've been lazy about caffeine lately. After almost 2 years of caffeine-free existence, I have started to consume some, little by little. This weekend was a case in point. We went to visit David's Mom in the country, and as is typical of "Mom's house" there were lots of soft drinks and snack foods around. David's brother works for Coke and is hooked on caffeine-free diet Coke, which I sometimes also drink when I can find it. David did a good deed by buying us a case while we were sleeping on Saturday morning, but he got caffeine-free regular Coke by accident (he doesn't drink the stuff himself). I had a couple of these, but not wanting all that sugar, I ended up drinking a couple of Diet Pepsi's instead (i.e FULL caffeine).

I also ate a truckload of chocolate. David's sister-in-law is a chocoholic like myself, so once "permission to indulge" was given (by the fact that someone else is doing it), we consumed a container of chocolate cranberries and a couple of mega chocolate bars. Plus I had 3 (three!) slices of black forest birthday cake. I am so baaaad.

So not only do I feel like the Goodyear blimp this week, I've had a brutal headache since Sunday.

And another thing....yesterday, I also went down to the deli in my building and bought a Decaf coffee. The deli recently changed hands and is now run by a mediterranean fellow with several sons who appear to be not unlike the Gotti boys from "Growing up Gotti". They all dress in black, wear piles of gold jewelry and hair gel, and can't string a simple sentence together. When I bought my Decaf, there were no labels on the 3 containers of coffee sitting there. I asked Gotti #1 which was decaf. He said "this one" and I said "are you sure?" and he said "let me check." He opened the lid and sniffed it and assured me it was decaf. His logic was that since the first container was "regular", the second (which he didn't sniff) must be the flavoured coffee, so by default container 3 must be decaf. After several minutes trying to pay (he dug in his pocket for change) and get milk (yes, there is a difference between milk and cream) for my coffee, I left. Annoyed.

Then I woke up at 3am this morning and laid awake for an hour. My heart and brain were racing. I concluded that I drank REGULAR coffee yesterday at 3pm instead of decaf. I was ready to decapitate a Gotti this morning.

And to curb my blistering headache this afternoon, I went and bought a Diet Coke. I am evil incarnate.

Anyway, all of that to say I am now in terrible pain. Yesterday I had stabbing pain all day in my right eye and right forehead and a neck so sore I could barely turn my head. Both yesterday and today the pain has been one-sided and surrounding my right eye. This morning it felt like I had an axe in my head over my right eye. Now it feels like my right eye is being pulled fiercely from behind. I feel like I can't see clearly out of it and it seems to want to water. The neck and shoulder pain is fierce. And the pain is so bad I've been vaguely nauseous all day. It is just a sickening pain.

It's like daily tension headaches weren't bad enough even though severe. Now this. But it serves me right trying to have a life. Don't I know that my body needs 24-7 vigilance? And zero caffeine. Work has been a write-off today. I'm going home to bed...and Maxalt.

Dear Readers

Since I'm pretty new to this whole blog experience, I did a stupid thing recently....

I enabled "Moderate Comments" on my template, which means that I get to review comments before they get posted to the blog. However, I inferred that it meant I could simply delete comments I didn't like (like ones posted by robots, which I've received) but I didn't know it meant I wouldn't see comments unless I enabled them first....

So anyway, for the past couple of weeks, I've been wondering why no one has commented on my blog. I decided "no one cares" and that no one had any interest in my dizzying array of weird symptoms. I felt sad. Dejected. Boring. Unloved. Alone. The lone tension-headache person in a sea of migraineurs. Ok, so I'm exaggerating, but it was sad to see no comments...

Well, thanks to an email from Shannon, I discovered that there were dozens of recent comments on my blog, all patiently waiting to be "moderated" (approved) by me!!

Thanks to everyone including Jackie, Kerrie, Emily, Deborah, Diana, Jackson, Shannon, David, and others for all your thoughtful comments!

(and if I knew how to insert hypertext, I would link to all your blogs through your names but I haven't learned how to do that yet).

After reading your comments, I've discovered that my symptoms aren't altogether novel, but that they may require more careful inspection. Shannon suggested that I get a second opinion and also reconsider Elavil, as it may be causing serious side-effects (numbness, imbalance, Parkinsonian-like effects) that I was chalking up to headache disease or not really considering as serious-enough (like the imbalance, which was sporadic).

Diana also made some interesting observations about her sleep that could have been written by me! She said "some mornings I wake up so refreshed and feeling pretty great. Other mornings I feel like I'm emerging from a coma and those are always bad migraine days." I find the same thing! The mornings it is easy to wake up, I'm usually headache-free, while on the deep sleep hard-to-wake-up zombie mornings I usually have a brutal headache. I've concluded that my morning headache is linked to the part of the sleep cycle I'm in when I awaken. For example, I often awaken from dream-sleep with a very bad headache.

With regards to imbalance, Deborah notes that although she doesn't take Elavil, she experiences un-balanced feelings. She says that "arenas, atriums, rooms with very high ceilings will throw my balance off."

I hadn't made the connection, but had observed the same thing. Large lofty spaces (like inside malls) or large public places (especially stairwells) really make me feel un-balanced and uncoordinated, with or without headache present. Recently I was in a stadium (stairs, people, noise, tons of stimulus) and walking in large crowds while at the Calgary Stampede and felt total disequilibrium. I had a bad headache at the time and chalked the spaced-out, unsteady feelings up to anxiety. I don't think David noticed, but I could hardly walk. I just said "I have a bad headache" but felt physically and emotionally overwhelmed. I guess this is a weird vestibular feature of headache.

Kerrie also notes that "being unsteady and having trouble with balance are frequent symptoms for me. They seem to come and go in waves though. I've been having trouble the last few months and have had as long as a year with frequent debilitating vertigo." She only takes low doses of Elavil for sleep.

So there is a witch's brew of balance and steadiness issues that accompany migraine disease, and may or may not also be a side-effect of Elavil. These vestibular (the body's balance system) effects of migraine are well-documented, often anecdotally. I haven't noticed much in the literature about them (although the evil Dr.Buccholz does mention them in his book).

Another vestibular note: I also read once that people who suffer car-sickness or motion-sickness as children are more prone to developing migraine. I was always car-sick as a child....

Regarding the numbness around my hairline...it hasn't gone away, nor has it worsened. My GP didn't have a clue what it was, and my neurologist, Dr. Becker, chalked it up to "migraine" saying that lots of his patients have similar complaints and they can't find a reason. Shannon suggested a second-opinion and I appreciate her advice. I've decided that when I see my neuro again in a couple of months, if the symptoms haven't remitted, I'm going to insist on tests, and pursue getting a second opinion if he doesn't follow up. Luckily I had an MRI last September, which my neuro reviewed when I mentioned the numbness, and the MRI was clear, so if something has developed, it hasn't been there long.

Getting a second-opinion may be a little awkward since Calgary's main neurology center is the Foothills Hospital, where I already see their leading headache guy, Dr. Becker. There are other neurological experts (with other specialties), but it will involve recalling the whole headache history to them, and discussing my current care. Last spring I did see one of the other neurologists, Dr. Pillay, after a referral from the Urgent Neurology Clinic after an 3-day episode of severe dizziness, severe imbalance (I couldn't walk straight) and heightened headache. The symptoms remitted by the time I saw him and the work-up he did was all clear (he ordered the MRI which I had in September). He suggested I stay on the waiting list to Dr.Becker about the headaches and other complaints, and called Dr.Becker "one of our best neurologists." So it may be a little complicated, but if Dr.Becker doesn't want to pursue the numbness issue, I will definitely push for another referral. I may do that anyway. And I will talk more to my GP and neurologist again about Elavil's potential side-effects.

It's hard to know The Truth. When you're talking to one of the best headache neurologists in the country, who happens to be president of the Canadian Headache Society, it's hard to not trust his opinion, or rather hard to doubt it. And when he says "it's probably the Elavil" or "I can't think of any problem that would cause that pattern of numbness", it's hard not to just relax and stop worrying about it and chalk it up to migraine disease. Especially when told by a neurologist "not to worry". But Shannon is right; we should all seek second opinionsand not put up with nuisance side-effects either, if they outweigh the relief we're getting, because we could be that one in 1,000,000 patients who have a serious adverse reaction to a drug.

Still, nothing is clear-cut. The miasma of migraine is spiced with all the nuisance side-effects that most drugs have.

Despite the confusion, I love hearing everyone's stories and histories. It comforts me, helps me feel "normal", and also helps to guide me in my quest. Thanks everyone. Your words mean so much!

~ Autumn Comes ~

Summer has barely
pressed itself into our bones
when hints of autumn slip through the cracks
of a still day -

a trace of cool in the morning air,
a blush on a leaf ,
a scent from my childhood
of September - school clothes,
wooly sweaters and cords,
burgundy and rust-coloured things,
frosty hayfields, stock still in the early light

Summer has barely
pressed itself into our memory -
with photos of trips still in the camera,
our bathing suits still damp -

when around the rush of summer
a sliver of cool slips through the window,
a first leaf falls slowly, softly,
ever so lightly,
but you can hear it -
a crisp decibel of sound.

Summer has barely begun
when I catch my breath and for a second -
feel the future come rushing in the air.

For me, summer is the present moment -
all now and no stopping -
but something about the first trace of
autumn stills me.
It reminds me of waiting,
of unknown things,
of a not-so-certain next.

Autumn is the future of me,
forgotten momentarily in the summer sun.

It announces itself quietly,
insinuates itself leaf by leaf
until there is no resisting it.
It starts me wondering who I am,
and who shall I be...

when autumn comes.


03 August 06
Terri Price

Hysys Simulator Training

Caution: This post has nothing to do with headaches!

This week, I'm in process simulator training (for work) for 3 days.

Simulators are software packages that enable us (process engineers) to build computer models of the chemical plants that we design, build and operate. Simulators are powerful tools, and to be a proficient simulator requires solid chemical engineering fundamentals (so your models don't defy the laws of physics, thermodynamics, chemistry, etc.), strong computing skills, and ideally years of design or plant experience to help you appreciate the subtleties of the processes you are modeling.

Simulating simple systems may only take a few days for a young engineer. But to be a wise and experienced simulator (who isn't phased by complex processes and troubling problems) takes years. I first learned to simulate ten years ago in a software called ProII, which was code-based, meaning you had to write custom code in the simulator language. This is akin to programming. Then I learned to build and run ProVision, an upgraded version of ProII which has a graphical interface and doesn't require actual code-writing. In these two programs, I've written hundreds of models, from simple heat exchanger models to a vast plant model which included hundreds of operations, streams (material flowing in pipes) and complex distillation columns.

Since January, I've been self-teaching on a simulator software called Hysys, a product of AspenTech from Cambridge, MA. I've been using it to build a complex model of a section of our Joffre, Alberta plant. Now, I'm finally taking a 3-day intro course to fill in any gaps I have. We're working through modules hands-on, which I am finishing in 10 minutes, while the other students take an hour. Hence this post, which I'm writing after finishing my Natural Gas fractionation module. But I am learning a few tricks and tips. Still, I think I was ready for the Advanced course. But in my usual fashion, I always assume I know less rather than more.

Still, when you are self-taught in any art, you sometimes miss quicker ways and tricks to do things instead of the brute-force method you've taught yourself. Also, there are many features of the program you don't even know exist, and which can make life a lot easier as a simulator. This morning, I learned a simple trick involving pressures in pipes, which will save me lots of time in the future.


The class is fun. Lots of students from other big companies, like Chevron, Shell, Suncor, Praxair and the engineering companies. Maybe I can make a few contacts at least...

Ok, back to my next module. Will post more about headaches in a day or two.