Night Of The Underdogs

25 January - Smoove B riding for most of the day today. Pretty crisp but clear morning and and a bit of bleak rain but I seemed to go in a pretty steady direction for most of the day. Lee was still very apologetic about yesterday's issues but today was mostly good. Did end on a bit of a bummer as I had to go all the way across the Burrard Bridge just to return one item and then I was told that iwas done while I was over there and it was only just after 4. The microeconomics of the job are quite easy to ponder over. The amount of money one makes when they're just puttering along is really bad but it can go up significantly when you move fast and their is enough work to support the movement. But over the day you can really get pushed hard and the extra remuneration really doesn't increase proportionally to the effort made. I was reasonably occupied all day and I was moving efficiently but I wasn't taking enough trips with me when I was moving to get the money up. The pay is all worked out automatilly using a computerised system. Each job has a value assigned to it. When the job is marked picked up on the Blackberry half of that amount is assigned to the driver. This half is then multiplied by the driver's commission rate and this is what the driver is paid. When an item is marked as delivered (requiringa POD to be entered) the remaining half is then multiplied by the commission rate and paid. If an item gets given to another driver then the half gets paid to them (multiplied by their own commission rate, of course). The commission rates differ between drivers and different jobs have different values depending on their weight (sometimes), distance and urgency. Take the last job of the day, which was a return. I picked it up (got paid), dropped it off (got paid), it got stamped, I picked it up again (got paid) then held onto it for a while. Normally one doesn't go over the side unless theree's a few things to take over or a lot of things on the other side that will get taken back. So, by taking the job all the way over tehere meant I was only getting a quarter of its total value for expending a great deal of effort (going all the way over there and coming all the way back). Needless to say, I wasn't happy. Did pick up my new glasses this afternoon though but haven't removed my contacts in order to try them yet. Can only hope that they work but they look pretty cool anyway.
Did a bit of reminescing with Excel when I got home but other than that wasn't very productive. On one of the movie channelsiit was Night of the Underdogs and the features were (ad free even!) The Karate Kid with one of all time best bad guys in the form of Kreese and one of the most bafflingly contested but completely inspiring (complete with Joe Esposito;s rocking Your The Best accompanying) extended tournament scenes over. After that it was Sylvester Stallone's debut. Watching Rocky I was enthralled by the proto-training-montage. The scenes are unforgettable and inspiring but not as frenetic and overcaffeinated like the training montage video clips that we see today. It is undoubtedly the singular common anscestor of all training montage scenes today, a Y Chromome Adam if you will. In my mixed up memory I seem to have gotten Rocky I and II intermittently entwined and it was almost like seeing it for the first time, I really couldn't remember exactly how it all panned out. I knew it would be INSPIRING though.