I THINK MINING

The fifteen-year old, fifteen-inch TV died this weekend. Now I have a major problem: disposing of the hazardous waste supposedly inside. With only a bike to transport things, I will probably have to break the old TV into tiny parts and mix them in with kitchen waste to be sneaked into the garbage container of the town-house complex. What a way to spend a weekend.

The good news is that I bought a new 27-inch TV that is so big that one can turn out all the lights and the place still shines like a spot-light focus. I also succumbed to a set of eight Elvis movies in a velvet-covered presentation box. So you can guess what type of music consumed my weekend.

I do not have any of those TV-game players like my grandkids. You know the ones where you pop in a disc and you have to guide something through a series of obstacles and entities intent on destroying you. If you are fast and flexible of finger, you destroy them first and the thrill of the power of killing incites to more. Nevertheless, I will have to get the “game” described in this report to take down to California and Iowa as the winter turns Vancouver wet. Here is part of the report:

Giant video games with throaty diesel engines powering monster-size earth movers, excavators and dump trucks have hardened miners at a metals conference this week in Peru giggling like children. Far more than just a gimmick to attract customers to the Caterpillar stand, the video games are actually simulators designed to help teach people to use massive, multimillion-dollar heavy mining equipment. “We’re selling the training, not just the trucks,” said Pedro Lopez, of Caterpillar’s Peruvian affiliate Ferreyros.

Players struggle at first to use a blinking and buzzing mix of pedals, levers and buttons to motor around huge plasma screens. One test has players pick up dirt with an excavator and deposit it in a dump truck. “Go to the left a little. Now forward!” one enthusiastic bystander told a player. “I thought it was hard to pick up the sand at first because I didn’t know how to use the controls to put it in the dump truck,” said Shirley Mandros, a saleswoman from one of the hundreds of other stands at the multinational convention.

The simulators require drivers to pass through timed obstacle courses in simulated mining pits, being careful to avoid wrecking multimillion-dollar rigs and causing the games to crash. The driver’s cabin in the dump truck bounces over the rough road of mines, and some players enjoyed backing the truck up to a ravine and pulling a lever to dump the dirt load.

I confess that I am not sure that my grandsons will thrill to this game, but we will see. Certainly they are too young to garner this benefit as postulated by the seller: “There are some real shortages of people in the mining industry right now, so anything involving training is useful,” said John Capehart of Automated Positioning Systems.

As the kids would say: whatever! At least this weekend game can be continued through the week as a genuine mining-related activity?