My job

As some of you might know I got a job and I love it.
I've been working for a cleaning company called "Klien" (For the English blokes pronounced as "Clean")for at least 1 1/2 year now. The name comes from the English word "Clean" but written like we pronounce it in dutch. We clean apartments and back in the old days we also did offices. We work with students and teens ranging from 16 to 30. (Few exceptions made)

I started there at a very young age, normally they wouldn't have accepted me, but they were short on employees. Besides my brother asked if I wanted to come work there, at that time he was in charge of a couple of "Projects" as we call them in a certain area.

So I said yes almost straight away, how can you reject a job that pays €4.43 per hour at the age of 14? You can't, it pays heck of a lot more than working at a local supermarket.

At first it started of very rough, I expected my project to be in my brothers area, but it wasn't. I got into the messiest area of them all. The one who was in charge of it got fired not long after. I also had a hard time keeping up with the speed, normally you get paid 3 hours and that is the time you should be able to clean the project. It took me 1 1/2 hour to clean the first stairwell. I had to do 4 off them.

Soon I got the hang of it and I reached the 3 hour mark. I still wasn't satisfied because it was a very boring project to clean, 4 identical stairwells. I asked for a transfer and I got through. I'm still working at my "new" project and I love it. I loved my job so much that I started working more and more. And soon I earned over 100 euros each month.

Things have changed during this time, an Inspector decided he would stop and my brother replaced his spot. My other brother I didn't mention before used to be a regular employee but ranked up and replaced my brothers spot as an "Project leader".

Basically my 2 brothers are in charge off me, and it's going really smooth.

If you are dutch and live around Breda, I strongly suggest looking at our website. It pays a heck of a lot more than working at your supermarket thats just around the corner. It's a really fun job, you interact with the "Clients" and during Christmas and new year they give you tips.
Today I got invited to drink a cup of coffee which I rejected just to stay polite, even though I could have used one, It was cold and I was only wearing my Fleece-Sweater and Polo.

More school.

Today I had a chat with my nephew, who is also an art teacher at our school and is involved with the ZEP. I ask him if he had a chat with my coach yet, he said he didn't so I explained him the lot.

He said there would be no exceptions but he would ask if there were some tickets left (like they usually have for the people who didn't have the opportunity because of illness etc.) He said he would e-mail me if he could get me one.

A truck arrived with the seats, which appears to be pretty big. And they already placed quite a few.

I also received a new roster for that will replace the old one after the Outbreak week. And it's crap. Just like my previous roster I have no lessons on Monday for the first 2 hours. Instead I get a nice 8th hour so I will be home late. For the rest off the week I got the first hour off on Tuesday and Friday, but Wednesday and Thursday are full 7 hour days, and that sucks. I really liked having an early weekend on Friday only having 6 hours. But that dream is roughly interrupted.

I can only hope they screwed something up and redo our roster.

Mencia ZEP.

If I only knew it was so big.

I didn't bother when they sold the tickets 2 weeks ago, I never thought it would be so big.

ZEP is a cultural evening for and from students from my school, there is a big stage and multiple students perform an act. And I had no idea what it was, reason? I'm new on that school.

Today a truck arrived with trusses, moving heads, lights and scanners. I mean, what the fuck? I thought it was just a stage with a couple of spots, but moving heads and scanners? This must be big!

So I had a chat with my coach (My art teacher), he helps me with school and stuff so I feel comfortable (I am new remember.) We have a chat every 2 weeks and today was one of them. I told him I didn't expect it to be so big, but there were no more tickets. Since he is pretty much involved with everything that has to do with the ZEP, he told me he would see if he could get me a ticket, I said it wasn't necessary until he offered me a spot on the second floor of the hall next to the performers. I'd probably be there all alone since I don't know much people, so I am not sure if I will go or not.

(I feel so dumb for not buying a ticket.)

Those days...

When you are home alone need to do maths homework and are chatting with friends and do not know what to blog about. I hate them.

Then you also need to learn your french test and physics test and the only good thing is that you eat pizza, but that dream gets disturbed by the fact that there is nothing interesting on tv.

Yeah, hopefully I got something worth blogging about tomorrow.

I am Jesus?

Apparently so...
I've been compared to multiple celebrities because of my long hair, my mom usually calls me Andre Rieu.

I went to a Halloween party as Jesus once but I didn't expect what happened today.

An 11th grader stepped up to me and my friends, knelt down in a praying position and said. "May I be your apostle my lord?" Then he ran away and me and my friends really didn't know what to say besides "What the f***?"

It probably was some kind of bet he made with his lame ass friends, I hope he enjoys his Coffee.

Lol.

School rant.

School is cool, I don't hate it, but I hate it when they change the roster.
Today we received the roster for coming week.
Next week is "Mencia Outbreak" and I can't really say I'm all that excited. The activities are cool and such, but I honestly can't be bothered about it.

Yet I am so glad I chose the N&T profile, basically includes Physics, Hardest maths, Chemistry and a few other classes I am going to follow next year.

If I chose another profile, I would have had to do some kind of roleplay about the UN, and I hate speaking and presenting stuff for a larger mass. So I chose another profile, and now I have to test DNA and blood groups, absolutely awesome!

On Monday we are having a workshop about "Samba Percussion" and a workshop
"Salsa Dance" The second day we are going ice skating which I have mixed feelings about, I don't like cycling to the other side of the city just for a couple of hours fun. We also get to see a movie which I predict has something to do with "Kamp Vught" which was a camp that held Jews in the WW2. We are also going on an excursion there.

I think the last day will suck most, we got something called "Taaldorp" Basically means you have to have a conversation with your teachers in 3 different situations, a restaurant, a clothes shop and a tourist information office. I'm not worried about the English one, but I am about French and German. To be honest, I absolutely suck at German, My French is OK but it takes me quite some time to construct a proper sentence. So back to studying I guess.

I think the best thing of this week will be my date with the girl I like. (let's hope she doesn't read my blog :P )

[Edit: She already did, shes absolutely fine with it.]

Theatre and lights.

I love going to the theater, no wonder my mom bought us a a subscription to a theater nearby, we were allowed to pick a couple (8?) shows from the coming year, we already had quite a few.

I like the plays in general, but I am still amazed by the lights. Just as any other kid I got a couple of those "disco lights" for my birthday and such.

Lightning isn't as easy as it looks, and that is what I found out last year just before summer break.
My mom's colleague asked if I wanted to help at a school play, just the technical side, sound and lights. We still had a few months before the actual play, and that was when I learned working with DMX.

DMX is the international protocol to control lights, t exists out of numbers from 0-255
0 being off and 255 the brightest everything in between is a dimmed light.
It is wonderful and you can't only control lights with it, but also scanners and moving heads.
Now moving heads are quite expensive, scanners being less and my mom's colleague had just bought a pair of them. Scanners are great, but the problem is that controlling them with sliders on a showmaster panel just doesn't give the accuracy you need to use it as a moving spotlight.
Instead we used it to reach areas normal lights couldn't get, little shows before the play and after gave us a the ability to entertain the crowd while the actors dressed up.

The play went great, it took us a full week to set everything up in the hall.
The most time taking the wiring. We only had 4 dimmerpacks which resulted in some nasty maths and buying new DMX cords which cost us quite a few euros.
The problem was that we only had limited cords to link the lights to the dimmerpack and it's always handy if you can have the lights "grouped", in the way of, having a couple of the same spots in a row on the slider panel. We couldn't use soft-patching either, so we had to do everything the hard way: Trial and Error.

Then a second problem occured, the lights, who were hung up on a long iron beam only secured at 2 points, started to sag.
We fixed this by using little chains and trying to suspend it from them. Worked like a dream.

Then the hardest part of all started, we had 5 hours to fix the lights for all the scenes, programming them on the showmaster. Only because we completely forgot how to programm "steps" it took us another 30 minutes plowing through the manuals and doing a little test.
We ran out of time and the poor actors could go home 1 hour later than we planned. And still it wasn't done. I believe we fixed the last 3 scenes only 2 hours before the first show. We had little time left and thats what we used to programm little pre-shows. The comments were amazing. The show was a succes.

I'm addicted to theatre, I think, and I judge a big part of the plays I go to on the lightning.

So what I was wanting to say is that, I don't have the money to buy DMX in real life, so I simulated it in a game called Gmod.

I started of doing a basic slider set up.


And then I started to make it a little more advanced, still using the same technique but I found out a masterslider can be very usefull.


And then a couple of weeks ago, I decided I would have to hard code it. Which I did, I used a chip that manipulates given inputs and so gives other outputs. I also made a scanner for it.


The biggest change is that instead of using the 255 units I only used 30.
255/30 gives a whole new ouput, less accurate but you won't notice the difference if you do it right.

I suck at making promises .

Didn't I say that I would make a blog post atleast every week or so?