Kick me Out Soon

Thank you internet, my day is complete.

2011-09-06T18:20:00.001-07:00

Here is a story that was posted on 4chan first then on reddit a while ago. One of the greatest shit stories ever.

All in all, it hadn't been a good day. Bad traffic, a malfunctioning computer, incompetent coworkers and a sore back all made me a seething cauldron of rage. But more importantly for this story, it had been over forty-eight hours since I'd last taken a dump. I'd tried to jumpstart the process, beginning my day with a bowl of bowel-cleansing fiber cereal, following it with six cups of coffee at work, and adding a bean-laden lunch at Taco Bell. As I was returning home from work, my insides let me know with subtle rumbles and the emission of the occasional tiny fart that Big Things would be happening soon. Alas, I had to stop at the mall to go Christmas shopping. I completed this task, and as I was walking past the stores on my way back to the car, I noticed a large sale sign proclaiming, "Everything Must Go!" This was prophetic, for my colon informed me with a sudden violent cramp and a wet, squeaky fart that everything was indeed about to go. I hurried to the mall bathrooms. I surveyed the five stalls, which I have numbered 0 through 4 (I write a lot of software) for your convenience:

0.Occupied.

1.Clean, but Bathroom Protocol forbids its use, as it's next to the occupied one.

2.Poo on seat.

3.Poo and toilet paper in bowl, unidentifiable liquid splattered on seat.

4.No toilet paper, no stall door, unidentifiable sticky object near base of toilet.

Clearly, it had to be Stall #1. I trudged back, entered, dropped trousers and sat down. I'm normally a fairly Shameful Sh1tter. I wasn't happy about being next to the occupied stall, but Big Things were afoot.

I was just getting ready to bear down when all of a sudden the sweet sounds of Beethoven came from next door, followed by a fumbling, and then the sound of a voice answering the ringing phone. As usual for a cell phone conversation, the voice was exactly 8 dB louder than it needed to be. Out of Shameful habit, my sphincter slammed shut. The inane conversation went on and on. Mr. Sh1tter was blathering to Mrs. Sh1tter about the sh1tty day he had. I sat there, cramping and miserable, waiting for him to finish. As the loud conversation dragged on, I became angrier and angrier, thinking that I, too, had a crappy day, but I was too polite to yak about in public. My bowels let me know in no uncertain terms that if I didn't get crapping soon, my day would be getting even crappier.

Finally my anger reached a point that overcame Shamefulness. I no longer cared. I gripped the toilet paper holder with one hand, braced my other hand against the side of the stall, and pushed with all my might. I was rewarded with a fart of colossal magnitude - a cross between the sound of someone ripping a very wet bed sheet in half and of plywood being torn off a wall. The sound gradually transitioned into a heavily modulated low-RPM tone, not unlike someone firing up a Harley. I managed to hit the resonance frequency of the stall, and it shook gently.

Once my ass cheeks stopped flapping in the breeze, three things became apparent: (1) The next-door conversation had ceased; (2) my colon's continued seizing indicated that there was more to come; and (3) the bathroom was now beset by a horrible, eldritch stench. It was as if a gateway to Hell had been opened. The foul miasma quickly made its way under the stall and began choking my poop-mate. This initial "herald" fart had ended his conversation in mid-sentence.

"Oh my God," I heard him utter, following it with suppressed sounds of choking, and then, "No, baby, that wasn't me (cough, gag), you could hear that (gag)??"

Now there was no stopping me. I pushed for all I was worth. I could swear that in the resulting cacophony of rips, squirts, splashes, poots, and blasts, I was actually lifted slightly off the pot. The amount of stuff in me was incredible. It sprayed against the bowl with tremendous force. Later, in surveying the damage, I'd see that liquid poop had actually managed to ricochet out of the bowl and run down the side on to the floor. But for now, all I could do was hang on for the ride.

Next door I could hear him fumbling with the paper dispenser as he desperately tried to finish his task. Little snatches of conversation made themselves heard over my anal symphony: "Gotta go... horrible... throw up...in my mouth... not... make it... tell the kids... love them... oh God..." followed by more sounds of suppressed gagging and retching.

Alas, it is evidently difficult to hold one's phone and wipe one's bum at the same time. Just as my high-pressure abuse of the toilet was winding down, I heard a plop and splash from next door, followed by string of swear words and gags. My poop-mate had dropped his phone into the toilet.

There was a lull in my production, and the restroom became deathly quiet. I could envision him standing there, wondering what to do. A final anal announcement came trumpeting from my behind, small chunks plopping noisily into the water. That must have been the last straw. I heard a flush, a fumbling with the lock, and then the stall door was thrown open. I heard him running out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

After a considerable amount of paperwork, I got up and surveyed the damage. I felt bad for the janitor who'd be forced to deal with this, but I knew that flushing was not an option. No toilet in the world could handle that unholy mess. Flushing would only lead to a floor flooded with filth.

As I left, I glanced into the next-door stall. Nothing remained in the bowl. Had he flushed his phone, or had he plucked it out and left the bathroom with nasty unwashed hands? The world will never know.

I exited the bathroom, momentarily proud and Shameless, looking around for a face glaring at me. But I saw no one. I suspect that somehow my supernatural elimination has managed to transfer my Shamefulness to my anonymous poop-mate. I think it'll be a long time before he can bring himself to poop in public -- and I doubt he'll ever again answer his cell phone in the loo. And this, my friends, is why you should never talk on your phone in the bathroom.

So…… Late again.

2011-09-05T00:08:00.001-07:00

Guess I’m not going to win this year. How ever shall I live?

Twas playing games again. One of these days I shall grow up.

Nah…. lol

So mom called today and said she was going to come on tuesday and maybe just stay one night, or till friday. Yeah. Great. Kathy is a little put out because I have 5 days off in a row and we had planned to just spend it alone, and no family coming over here all the time, like it has been for the past few weeks. Ah well.

We also found out my mother’s plans for the winter. They be coming home which means we have to find someplace to be. Not that my mother would mind us being here, but because we need a place of our own. That is our own place. Not that I think family won’t still come around, because they will, but this way we can at least get rid of our storage locker.

I just don’t know what type of place we’ll have. Rent is insane, not only for price but for availability. With a dog? Yeah, cut our chances even further. We’ll do it, but its going to be hard.

Oh yeah… Almost forgot today’s post

2011-09-03T22:38:00.001-07:00

Whoops!

So we done yet or is it going on for another month? Cause I’ll tell ya honest if it is I think I’ll just shoot myself. lol

I slept most of today, woke up around noon and was supposed to go get my hair cut, but nah. In a little too much pain. Five hours later I took a 3 hour nap, and I’m about ready to go for another now too. And this is only day one of my 5 day weekend. I think by the end of it I’ll be all slept out.

I get the mag “This Old House’ and every time it comes I turn to the back page where they have a section called ‘Save this old house’. Almost every house I have wanted. One of my dreams is to take an old house and renovate it. Doing some of the work myself and letting plumbers and electricians do their magic. A dream home to redo would be this one on Charlton Island. I would love to restore that to its old style charm, yet have the amenities of a modern culture. Of course this is pipe dreams since I am severely lacking in funds to do something like that, but its still a nice dream. I like to view available houses from time to time, some of them are free here and here.

Cyclists. Grrrr!

2011-09-02T22:15:00.001-07:00

I get that cyclists want to be able to ride their bikes in peace, I get that they want equal access on the road, I get that it really is a healthier way for people to get around and more people should ride their bikes to work, etc…

However, what I don’t get is that if they want to have equal access to the road why they continually ignore the rules of the road (ie laws). Time and again they just breeze through stop signs, red lights, ride into the oncoming traffic lanes to pass stopped cars, etc.

Recently Wpg Police started ticketing cyclists for riding bikes on the sidewalk which had cyclists all up in arms. They complain about always being attacked for riding and they have no safe place to ride (sidewalk or road). However cyclists have injured people on sidewalks because they are just riding like idiots and then get angry that people get upset about it.

And yes, I get it that some cyclists make it bad for everyone and that there are many who say ‘I don’t do it, don’t punish me’, except that on a daily basis I see cyclists either riding on sidewalks or violating road laws. Far too many for it to be ‘only a few’. The police should go on a ticket spree and ticket every cyclist riding on sidewalks or blowing past stop signs or red lights.

However I do agree with cyclists that there should be bike paths, and there is an easy way to do it too. Every time there is a repair to the main roads they widen it by 36”. Take it from the sidewalks which are a good 10’-12’ anyway. In a few years there will be safe lanes for cyclists to ride without endangering pedestrians and without pissing off motorists. Just make sure they still follow the rules of the road and not break em any chance its convenient.

Fuckers.

Pain sucks.

2011-09-01T20:56:00.001-07:00

Stayed home from work today cause the back is just killing me. I have to go in tomorrow though, no matter what, so its not going to be fun.

The good thing is I have 5 days off in a row after tomorrow, so that will be good. Enough time to get back on track. Hopefully.

Blame Two Worlds

2011-08-31T23:18:00.001-07:00

Blame Two Worlds for the late post. Got too into it and that messed up my schedule. At least I’m not working early tomorrow.

Finished up the sales training which was good. So now I can go back to the phones and stop almost falling asleep in class. Trainer almost threw a pen at me yesterday. I can’t help it though! Any meeting we have, I struggle to stay awake, days long training only makes it worse. I need to keep my mind busy or it wants to sleep I guess.

After work I went to my doctor’s and got the final bit of paperwork for getting my own desk, just as my manager goes on vacation. lol I talked with her today about it and she said that I should just email the ergonomics guy and get him to set everything up. So hopefully that gets done quickly, it will make my days far less painful. Sitting in a regular chair for hours on end just ends up hurting, so I need a desk that I can stand or sit with. Luckily I have a job where they actually do work with you to accommodate you.

Training

2011-08-30T21:00:00.001-07:00

So I’ve been doing ‘consultative sales’ training. Basically how every call can be a sale, yet the company does not want to sell something the customer doesn’t need. Conflict much? Yes, yes indeed. Personally I hate ‘sales’ and ‘sales’ training even more.

Have I learned anything? Yeah, I’ve learned to ask a few more investigative questions, but that’s about it. I’m not going to change my basic approach in helping the customer. I’ve talked with a co-worker who is also in the training class, he’s really good with customer service skills and has been tapped to help out new hires when they first come on the floor, and he agrees with me in the way to help customers.

So while I have learned something from the class I am not going to use a lot of it. I have another half day of training and that’s it. Then its back on the phones. Yay!

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow which will hopefully get me the note I need so work will get me my own adjusted desk. This means no one else can use it, unless I am not working, and if they do they cannot adjust anything or the shitstorm will hit. So that will be nice.

Cop out

2011-08-29T20:13:00.001-07:00

Going to sleep. Didn’t have much sleep last night and a full day at work learning things. Its tough to stay awake and learn things. More learning tomorrow too. Tough day ahead.

Went out for dinner too, brought back leftovers. Yummy.

Night.

Wow, I got nothing.

2011-08-28T20:18:00.001-07:00

Yeah. Nothing interesting happened today, no game purchases, nothing major or interesting happened. Nothing even to piss me off so I can rant about it. *sigh*

I’m starting up a series of books I’ve read about 2-3 times already. Its by John Ringo and its the Posleen series he wrote. Its about a federation of aliens coming to the earth for help cause they need help fighting the Posleen, and of course we kick ass and take names, but the earth takes a huge hit too. All in all its good mindless reading.

I’m probably going on to read the Obsidian trilogy by Mercedes Lackey after. Another series I’ve read a number of times.

I tend to keep books I like. I’ll reread them a lot. I know that some people can’t do that, but I love rereading stuff I have enjoyed.

Full house again

2011-08-27T21:38:00.001-07:00

So my brother called today to see if they could spend a few nights here, which of course they can. They are cleaning out the dorm apartment that the two oldest boys (Josh & Matt) were sharing during the summer and the middle one (Matt) is just moving to another dorm room for his school year, Josh is currently working as a landscaper. So this sunday they are cleaning out the room and coming over here for dinner and staying a few days. Josh will stay till friday.

Another house on this street just went up for sale. The last three that were for sale all sold pretty quickly, one in just a few days. Since I’ve been here about 8 houses sold on this block. Every time one goes up for sale I tell my wife the same thing, ‘I wish I had the money cause I’d buy them all up as they went on sale’. Its true too, I’d love to own an entire street of houses. Fix them all up to be super energy efficient and rent em out. As we are right by the Assiniboine park, where a ton of things happen during the summer, it would be a great place for rentals. But ah well. Such is not the case.

I’m still wanting to buy a house, hopefully in the spring, but not sure yet. No word yet from my brother what his thoughts are with us going together to get a house. Maybe when they are here I can talk to them about it. He hasn’t said anything about it I think the answer is no, but since I haven’t heard back, I’m not going to dismiss it entirely.

I’m currently playing Pirates of Black Cove, a game I beta tested for Paradox, its even got my name in the credits. Plus there is a character in the game called Colonel QuickDraw, although I have no idea if that character is named after me, but it is kinda funny. I’m also playing Two Worlds which is an RPG game. Its pretty fun, and along the lines of Oblivion. I just bought Two Worlds 2 for $15 on a 70% of sale, so that will get played after Two Worlds.

I have kinda given up on Metro 2033 as I am stuck on one mission, and after 5 hours of playing that one mission I’m not going to keep banging my head against the wall. Graphics on the game are great, I like the weapons and the FPS part of it, but it is a console port and that is annoying me. Not being able to save at any point is very annoying, specially considering I’m stuck at a level. And that is what it feels like to me, just one level after another, not open world at all, or maybe its just I haven’t reached a stage where it is open world. I donno but I doubt its going to see much, if any gameplay.

Women should not rule the world

2011-08-26T20:58:00.001-07:00

Why?

Have you ever seen what women do to their Sims when playing The Sims? They torture them. Make a really nice house, furnished with all the bells and whistles a little Sim could want, even a swimming pool. But, when they go for a nice leisurely swim they take the ladder out of the pool and watch in glee as their Sims tire and drown. They even upload videos to share in their Sims torture and death.

Or how about the ability to phone out for that nice take out pizza, but unable to actually get it because women have taken the door away. No bathroom so they pee themselves as well. For some reason women seem to find this funny.

No. No woman should rule the world because I’ve seen how a nice seeming woman, who outwardly is very nice and cheery and helpful becomes this power mad, Sim torturing fanatic.

Then again… She is American. So maybe that’s par for the course.

I’ll amend my title…

No American woman should rule the world.

Requires a 3rd party download and account

2011-08-25T19:55:00.001-07:00

How I hate those words.

A lot of new games say those words to me. Its very annoying. See those words mean that you can only play those games through Steam, even if I buy the game from someone else, I can only play the game through the Steam client.

Now there is nothing wrong with Steam, I think Valve is a good company, they have a sense of humour (unlike other companies), and for the most part they deal fairly with their customers. This, this is a good thing. However you HAVE to run the Steam client to play games. That’s what I don’t like. I don’t like it that a 3rd party is now between me and the publisher/developer.

For the first time in the history of the Civilization franchise I have not bought the newest one to come out because it has to be run through Steam. It was a disappointment, but one I can live with. Its not like I HAVE to play it or my life is ruined or anything. However more and more games I’d really like to play are on Steam client only: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, F.E.A.R 3, Call of Juarez: The Cartel. Well the last one has two strikes against it, its Ubisoft AND Steam (me no likey Ubisoft either, but they are a bastard company).

Right now I have two games on Steam that I’m actually going to play. Metro 2033 and Pirates of Black Cove. And actually the only reason I had Steam on my old system was to beta test Pirates of Black Cove and I found out today that they gave us beta testers the full version. Steam went on my new system because I wanted to try a game that pushed my new system a little bit so I picked up Metro 2033 for $5.

So now I have Steam on my system and it does bug me. But I already have 2 games I am playing would 3 or 4 make that much of a difference? And I can hear Cliff rubbing his hands together, with a gleam in his eye, a wide grin on his mouth and whispering in my ear, ‘Yes Brad, come to the dark side, you’ll like it, its not so bad, look at all the pretty games!’ Well fuck you Cliff! Stop with the peer pressure (no pun intended I assure you). I’m just going to crawl over here and cry at the eroding of my values, morals and stances on things.

Next thing you know I’ll be a Republican.

Nah…. THAT will never happen. I do have some standards. lol

Ah… GameStop there are reasons people hate you and don’t trust you.

2011-08-24T21:01:00.001-07:00

So in my last rant I spoke up for what GameStop had said regarding used sales, now I’m going to rant about them.

Fair is fair right?

GameStop opening Deus Ex boxes, removing free game code

Yes, you read that right. In the link it mentions a Field Operations manager who sent out an email saying that for the new Deus Ex game to remove the coupon for On Live that gives them a free game on the service.

Why you ask?

Well that very question was asked of GameStop’s spokesperson (because the FO manager who sent the email was too chicken to do it himself) and she said that “Square Enix packed the competitor’s coupon with our DXHR product without our prior knowledge and we did pull these coupons.”

As of now a thread on Reddit has 2281 comments on this, and a lot of them saying how they hate GameStop, and that this is NOT a new practice with them. Some make a very good point that once they have opened those boxes they are no longer ‘new’. and how can they still sell those games as ‘new’?

I’ve hated GameStop for a long while now, mostly because I am a PC gamer and every time I have gone into their store and gone to their PC ‘wall’ not one person will say anything to me, even if I am the only person in the store. Oh and their PC ‘wall’? Yeah its maybe 4 games wide and 5 games down. The last time I went the vast majority of the games were from Blizzard. Multiple copies of WOW and Starcraft 2 taking up the majority of the space. The best place to buy a PC boxed copy of a game is Best Buy of all places. Its been that way for a few years now too. If its not console oriented it seems GameStop wants nothing to do with you.

So fuck you to GameStop for being the assholes everybody thinks you are.

Game publishers. My rant for today.

2011-08-23T21:47:00.001-07:00

Gameindustry.biz put out an article today titled GameStop: Used sales benefit the whole industry. I’ll paste it here because you need to sign up to view it.

GameStop's executive vice president Michael Mauler believes that second hand sales benefit not only retailers such as his own company, but publishers and developers as well, driving sales and keeping customers engaged with yearly franchises.

Speaking to Edge, Mauler explained that without the opportunity to cash in on older titles, many gamers wouldn't be buying as many new ones.

"I can understand the feelings [but] we've sat down with developers and publishers and really gone through the data," Mauler told the magazine's website. "I personally think there's a lot of benefit to the publisher. "A great example is sequels, where there's a large percentage of people who are just not going to spend $60 every single year without being able to do something. They'll look at their shelf and see ten FIFAs, Pro Evos or Maddens.

"Being able to take the older one and do something with it in order to buy the next version is really important to consumers. That drives new sales quite a bit."

According to Mauler, getting new customers involved with a series which they may not have invested in at full price also pushes sales of DLC, but initiatives such as EA's Online Pass, which encourage direct payments to the publisher in return for access to online modes and features, aren't particularly effective.

"Our data says that used customers play a lot less online than new customers. The number's very low - like 15, 20 per cent."

The reason for that, Mauler feels, is the diminishing attractiveness of online offerings as time goes on and the users become more core, increasing the experience gulf for new adopters. Instead, he says, second-hand users will invest in DLC, extending their game experience.

Mauler's thoughts are unlikely to coincide too closely with those of publishers, given the vested interest he represents. However, he also makes a point about scheduling which may find more sympathy amongst industry figures, despite its stronger phrasing.

"We the industry have done it to ourselves," Mauler says of the second hand market. "We take all the great releases and put them all in a two-month period.

"If you're an FPS fan, you look at all the games that are coming out this fall, and you'd have to be pretty wealthy to buy all of them. There are going to be people who buy Battlefield 3, and they're not going to have €60 for at least another month or two...they're all coming out so close together."

A lot of comments on the article were related to not liking how a used copy of a brand new game could come in a day or two after launch and that the publisher sees none of that money. I don’t know about you, but if I see a used game for a few dollars cheaper I still buy new. I don’t know if some nutball has jerked off onto the disc. Now if that game was $20-30 cheaper I might risk it, but $5? Nope.

Some comments got me irked.

This is the same argument illegal music downloaders made/make right?

And.

Thanks for sharing Mike, and I wish you and your team luck since you seem to be sincere enthusiasts. However, I think that used sales can be molded to benefit the industry -- consumers, retailers, and developers/publishers alike -- but that they currently (Gamestop model) are abused in a way that undeniably benefits executives at Gamestop far more than they deserve while eating into potential profits that developers need to stop getting laid off so often in this industry. There are a lot of things that need to happen to make this industry healthy and ethical, but used game sales strategies and lack of regulations/norms that protect IP creators have allowed Gamestop to swoop in and profit significantly off of our work.
To others saying the consumer gets to decide: If we really let the consumer decide what price point they wanted to pay, then everyone would just pirate games. Maybe you think this is ok, maybe not -- just throwing out there what extremes can occur when free market justification is followed unwaveringly.

And.

Someone send this story to all of the studios that closed down last year....oh yeah they closed down last year because of people kept buying there games used and not new.

And.

http://www.PostalGamer.com: Used sales benefit the whole industry

Which is a site that is used to buy and sell used games to people, and they will pay the publisher a portion of the proceeds because: “PostalGamer understands how the current used game retail environment is damaging the industry”.

Really? Fuck you all. This is my response to the article I linked to above.

Where do people, and publishers, get the idea that they deserve money from used sales? Because they made the game and all of a sudden that means they deserve money in perpetuity? When was the last time you heard Ford or Honda whining they are losing money on used car sales and that used car lots are stealing their profits? What about Samsung or Sony complaining that people selling TVs in garage sales are no better than pirates? Oh yeah they're not.

Why is it that after more than 30 years of making video games, publishers are only now crying about used sales? The idea that its killing the industry is rather silly since used sales have been around since the beginning of video games, and since the video game industry is bloody huge and making in the billions every year their arguments are rather weak.

I can't tell you how many times I've bought a used game and then gone on to buy the next version new. I started Civilization that way and have bought every version, and expansion pack (sometimes multiple times) new, over the years. So while Gamestop's argument in this case is self serving, they are making a valid point. The thing about a brand new game being offered used so quickly after its released is that someone had to have bought it new, brought it in to Gamestop, taken either cash or store credit (which gives you more back), and if they are taking store credit there is a very good chance they are buying another new, just released title. Is Gamestop making profit? Yes they are. When is that a crime?

The next time you buy a used car, send a few thousand to the manufacturer for all the hard work, design, prototypes and manufacturing they had to go through to put that product out. Sometimes years in development. Do you feel that is fair? Because they can use the exact same argument as game publishers are using. It doesn't matter that the scale is different, the argument is the same.

I am sure someone would mention the, 'but you're just 'licencing' a video game, you don't own it' argument. If video game companies really believed this, why didn't they crack down on used sales 30 years ago? Why did it take lower profits for them to start making that argument? This is a money grab by publishers nothing more. Lower profits hit, not because of piracy or used sales, but because of a massive recession. If we ever get out of the recession then we'll see people with more disposable income and buying more games.

I’m not even going to go into how new games are the same price at retail as they are at digital stores, yet the costs are a fraction of what they are at retail. I believe I may have mentioned that at some point.

It really annoys me that more and more people are buying into the whole ‘licensing’ shtick. They didn’t stop it for man many years, so precedent has been set. I don’t think they should be able to claim ‘licensing’ now. Plus I do see a slippery slope with this, and I’d rather not start it off.

Another computer bought

2011-08-22T21:08:00.001-07:00

No not for me I just bought a telephone jack splitter and some more telephone wire cable so that we can plug in our fax machine.

No my nephew who is starting college this year needs a laptop so my mother asked me to start looking at laptops and find the best deal. Of course it all boils down to price, so I had to find out what she wanted to spend on him. So she asked me for prices, cause she knows nothing about computers. So I quoted from $500-700 would get him a decent computer.

So off I go to start looking for computers, its got to be available right away so internet stores are out, looked at some smaller stores to see what they had available and nothing really that good, the big box stores had better deals. In the end it was between Best Buy and Futureshop. Not the greatest, but they did have the best deals. I did notice something though, both stores carry ‘slightly’ different computers. This way you can’t go to them with a flyer from the other store and look for a deal, they won’t match it because its not the same computer. I came across this in getting my mother a computer for christmas as well.

I finally chose a computer at Best Buy for a few reasons. The comparable computer at Futureshop had 2gig less ram and only an increase of processor speed by .2. Personally I’d rather have more ram.

Best Buy computer

Futureshop computer

It was a little more expensive than my mother wanted to spend, but when I asked my brother what he was looking to spend his top end was $800, which that falls in under. They went together to buy it for him.

The benefit with the Best buy one was also if you bought the Office 2010 student version you also got Outlook, Publisher and Access for free, which actually brings that Office suite up to the Professional level (a $500 value in total for $99). The Futureshop one was just the basic Office 2010.

Both places were that if you bought a HP computer you got a free Xbox 360 as well. My brother rolled his eyes when I said that, cause he doesn’t want his son playing games while at college, but I told him that its free, and he can keep it at his apt and watch dvds on it, now he doesn’t need a dvd player. Plus I said he could get some golf games and play those (he loves him some golf games).

Overall my nephew is happy, my brother is happy, my mother is happy, and the oldest nephew is a bit jealous cause his laptop is about half as powerful as his younger brother’s. lol But he is happy too. I’m happy because I was able to be around to help them out and make sure my nephew got a computer that should hold well hardware wise.

Not being around for most of their lives I am trying to be as helpful as I can. We’ve driven them around looking for jobs, had them over for dinner, helped them with their resumes, and in general just being around for them. My brother and sister-in-law have thanked us a number of times for all the help we have given them with stuff, but we’re family and this is what we do for family. Well I suppose if you like your family you help them out. lol

Do you like pop?

2011-08-21T20:44:00.001-07:00

I do. I probably drink more than I should, but this guy takes the cake.

I do like how he shut the big cola rep down though.

The sad thing? I never knew about this place until I was leaving the LA area. I would have loved to try some of that stuff out.

There is a Manitoba brewer of pop that uses real cane sugar instead of the HFCS used in pepsi and coke. I forget the name though, but I’m going to track it down again and try them out.

Yeah, short and sweet tonight (no pun intended).

Pies

2011-08-20T22:06:00.001-07:00

So my mom and Tom with my nephew Matt were coming into town today and I figured I’d make my nice burgers again. So on the way to Safeway to get some groceries I decide to stop in at Mr. D’s Tart and Pie and grab us some dessert. They make some nice 4” pies and that way we can all have something different. I grabbed:

2 Raisin
2 Pecan
2 Cherry
4 Apple
1 Blueberry
1 Strawberry

All put in a nice box and ready to go. Awesome, Tom is going to be in heaven (that man loves him some pies).

We stop at Safeway and I wrap up the pies in a rug I have in the back of the car because we have Ares in the car with us, I don’t want him getting at them. So off we go to get what we need and we are only in there for about 15 minutes. On the way back I see Ares in the front seat waiting for us. "’Oh good’, I think ‘he hasn’t gotten to the pies. Good boy Ares!’. Open the back of the CRV and there is the box, torn up and 10 of the 12 pies eaten. *sigh*

There sits Ares…

With a look of innocence on his face. Uh huh. Yeah right. I mean I know he knows he’s done wrong, but I have to admire his balls for trying to pull it off. Like him sitting in the front seat is really going to fool us. Dog, I think we are smarter than you!

We get home and I ask Kathy to call the vet just in case. He’s had raisin and they are really bad for dogs. They said that we could just watch him and see if he gets lethargic, or we could get some hydrogen peroxide and dump it down his throat to induce vomiting. Which is really weird because we had seen this video earlier in the day (at 3:20 is the point where it becomes pertinentto my story).

(I swear he is talking about Cliff at 7:35)

Soooo…. We just went with the watching him to make sure he’s ok. So far no problems. This dog has a cast iron stomach I think. He’s eaten 4 Eatmore chocolate bars at one time before and he’s been fine. The dog is an eating machine.

The burning question I know you all have.

2011-08-19T22:18:00.001-07:00

Does it work?

Yes. Yes it does. After uninstalling and reinstalling the PhysX file a few times, rebooting a few times, it suddenly seems to work. Why? I do not know. I’m still going to say fuck you Nvidia though. I shouldn’t had the problem in the first place. Yes I know Cliff, it may be misplaced anger, but just live with it. I’ve never claimed I was perfect. lol

Grahpics set to high and runs fine. Less openworldy than I like, but its a console port so not bad for that. If I had paid $20 for it I’d be less happy, but for $5 its fine.

Now for something completely different…

Work is weird sometimes, some of the calls are uncomfortable. Ex boyfriends/husbands or ex girlfriends/wives stalking them and them needing to change the number, a mother runs off with their child and the husband seeking text message files to give to the lawyer for the police investigation. I had one call where this girl says this guy is harassing her and is the guy that killed her daughter a few years ago and the police are not doing anything, and she is telling me all this and her only question is can she add time onto her pre-paid phone? Sometimes the calls are tough to take, specially when someone has lost someone and they are taking care of their accounts. I’ve seen some reps crying when they get off the phone because of the story they have just heard.

I didn’t get this call and its kind of sad/funny, this guy calls in to do a transfer of service from a phone in his name to his wife’s name, the rep tells him what needs to happen and that they will give his wife a call to finish it. He didn’t know that, and tells the rep that ‘I guess I should tell my wife we are separating before we do this then?’ Yeah. Nice eh?

One day I was on a late call, we close at 6pm and I finally got off the phone with him at 6:25. I was on the phone with him trying to help him understand his bill, and the hardest part of our billing system (which really does suck. The kicker, he could not see the bill at all, he was blind. At about 6:05 the supervisor came around to bug me into hurrying me up and get off the call, good naturedly harassing me. Well she was going to until I told her ‘outstanding balance credit, and he’s blind’. She winced, hung around for about 8 minutes listening to the call and then just waited till I was done. The next day I got a commendation from her for making the guy happy, understand what had happened and been so patient with the customer. My manager was really happy with that.

Overall I am enjoying my job, but there are days when you get those calls which can really impact you. And if you get a nasty customer your first call, the rest of your day is toast. Its hard to pull back from that.

(Yes I know this post is a little late, but I was responding to a post in one of Cliff’s topics, and I don’t pre-write my topics at all. So there.)

Fuck you Nvidia, fuck you with a fucking fuck stick!

2011-08-18T17:50:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I have no games that can push my new system at all. Going from a 10 year old AGP system to a 6 core is a bit of a jump obviously. I had been looking at FPS games to see what would be nice, cheap and a good game. Well Metro 2033 was on sale yesterday for $5, so I picked it up. It was one I had looked at when it was $20 and thought that would be a fair price to pay for it too, and $5 was too good to pass up.

[sidebar] Metro 2033 needs to be played through the Steam client, of which I am not a fan of. Personally I just don’t think I should have to run a 3rd party software when I want to play my game. But, that’s just me. I don’t really have a problem with Steam, I think Valve is a great company, I just want my purchases to be between me and the company that made it. So me getting the game to be run through Steam is kind of a big deal for me, maybe not for others, but for me that is pretty big. [/sidebar]

So I install it overnight, cause it took forever to download, and an hour ago I tried to play it. I get this message:

The program can’t start because PhysXLoader.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

So I search the net to find solutions. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it. Nope. Same error. Do more searching to find out Nvidia decided to fuck with anyone not owning an Nvidia card and make it so the game will not work with any other card but their own.

Fuck you you fucking bastards.

This is just pure fucking bullshit I cannot believe it. I just simply do not understand it at all. I can’t find a fix for it other than one that uses two separate video cards, one Nvidia, the other an ATI. Yeah, that’s not much of a help. I can’t find any other solutions either. So until then…

Fuck you Nvidia you fucking shitheels. You get no more money from this family ever again.

Bastards.

Work talk

2011-08-17T20:52:00.001-07:00

I had a conversation the other day that went like this:

“Hi Jackie (supervisor), this guy wants FSB, but LDB won’t take it, he’s on PPI and it needs IPS to get FSB to work in LDB right? Now do I do the credits in SAP or OCC?”

FSB, LDB, PPI, IPS, SAP, OCC, MMCD, RD30, LD50, HIP2, C27, C26, C65, C61, S7, S2, CID, VMM, TT1, TTB, P5LD, DTL, etc, etc, etc.

So many codes, and we pretty much know them all by sight. Maybe not off the top of our heads, but when we see it we know. Its pretty amazing and a little freaky. I’m sure all of us have the same at our works and its just kind of funny how we can go from speaking one language to speaking another with hardly a thought about it.

Work talk vs home talk.

I wonder if multilingual people transition this easily?

Oh crap, today is almost tomorrow and no blog post yet.

2011-08-16T21:33:00.001-07:00

I almost went to bed without writing about something. Again, I am at a loss about what to write about… Games! Games will do nicely.

I am currently playing Might and Magic VIII Day of the Destroyer, a huge graphic improvement over MM7, but nothing that even comes close to pushing my machine. I went through my fairly large Gamersgate account, and I have nothing that I could use to really push my new machine with. There are games I want that could (like FEAR 3), but I’m not willing to pay $50 for a game. That’s not to say I won’t pay for a game at brand new prices, because I have with Mount and Blade: Warband and with M&B Fire and Sword. Personally I think that games bought digitally should be cheaper than at the retailer.

See if you take $60 game and sell it at the retail stores the publisher gets about $27 per game to split up with development, marketing, other expenses. The rest goes to retailers, distribution, royalties, etc. Now that’s a rough estimate, but pretty accurate. If you are wondering where I got that info its here.

Where does this tie in with digital distribution? Well on a $60 game the digital distributer takes a 30% cut which is $18, leaving $42 to the publisher. Which is $15 per game more than retail. It would be easy to drop the price of new digital releases by $5-10 and they would still make more money. Do I see this going to change? No not really. Even if retail is totally gone except for the special editions with their ‘special’ items in the box, the execs at game companies will just look at it and say that people are used to paying those prices already, so why lower them? More profits for them is good company policy. I honestly cannot fault them for it, but I can certainly not buy their brand new product. I’m not so insane I HAVE to have a game. But that’s just me.

I also downloaded Star Control 1 & 2. I haven’t played them yet, but they are installed. Also Mount and Blade Warband is installed and I am just grabbing the Floris Expanded Mod Pack right now. So that one I’ll see how well it will push my system (probably not that much), once it gets modded up with some better graphics, we’ll see how that looks.

Three days, three computers

2011-08-15T20:15:00.001-07:00

In the last three days I’ve written three blog posts on three different computers. My original old one (which has died), my wife new one last night, and now my new one. I have to say working on my wife’s computer last night was the hardest. Not only was she hanging over my shoulder, pacing back and forth, sighs, and in general just the general angst you feel when someone is on your computer. The only thing missing was a whiney voice asking ‘are you done yet?’ every 30 seconds.

My computer I took back to Computer Trends today and we just did a straight swap and no problems at all. So I spent part of today working to put programs back on the computer. The other part of today was spent napping because I really should have been at work but woke up in a lot of pain, so I called in. Not great, but I do see my doctor again tomorrow so we’ll see what we can do.

I have two HDs in my old computer I need to swap into my new one, lucky they are SATA because the new one has no room for a IDE HD. I have an old video card that may work to slap in there to see if I can get it working enough get things off the one IDE I have.

Kathy spent her day moving stuff from her computer to her new one. We were able to get that one up and running to be able to move stuff, but it still needs more investigations as to what happened exactly. But as I said yesterday if I am comfortable with these old computers I’ll give em to my nephews.

Do you ever get an itch that cannot be scratched? Like the itch itself is under the skin? I get them in the area of my back that is mostly numb (from my surgeries). I have one now and its bloody driving me insane. Just so ya know.

So yeah. This is my blog post for tonight. More inane ramblings.

What a bloody day!

2011-08-14T20:14:00.001-07:00

OK so the thousands of my loyal followers that were paying attention yesterday. Ok, maybe not thousands.

The hundreds of you.

Well ok. The two of you And, one of them is my wife, so does she even count? No no dear. Of course you count! Put down the knife... Just think calming thoughts. Think about invading other countries bringing 'democracy' and 'freedom'. That's a good girl.

Speaking of Americans...

This lady thinks she should be president.

I shit you not.

Anyway… So you might remember I was leading up to something yesterday and then backed away from it. What what I was going in to was going from this:

To this:

Much nicer yes?

The desks are pine, and are actually the very same desks I sold to a friend of mine 10 years ago when I moved down to the US to be with Kathy. At the time they were pretty much brand new and it really sucked having to give them up. Well my buddy and his wife are expecting a child soon, so his office is now going to be a baby room. He sold me back my old desk, which is a very nice thing for him to have done and since they are very nice its also great for our computers.

Well….

It would be great if our computers worked. Yes, you heard me. My computer, after a bios update a year ago has never been off because when I tried to it would just automatically reboot. Now it will turn on, but nothing shows up onscreen, monitor just goes to DVI power save mode. Kathy’s computer would not even turn on again. Both computers, if you read Cliffs blog and my cursing at him when he posted about his new computer specs, are 10 year old AGP systems that were pushed to about the limits they could go. 3.2ghz hyper-threaded Intel single core CPU, 2 gigs RAM, 512mb DDR3 video cards. Basically pretty good computers, even if they were 10 years old. If I can get them up and running again I’m giving them to my nephews to use.

So in a heat of panic, as my wife needs her computer to make a living (I might have mentioned she is a ghost writer at some point, we went out and bought some new computers. We went to Computer Trends and bought this computer x2.

Asus, AMD Phenom II x6 2.6ghz, 8gb RAM, 1TB HD, ATI HD 5750 1gb video card.

Not bad for a prebuilt system and once you get rid of Trend Micro’s really bloody annoying virus scanner that was blocking everything we tried to do, it worked out fine.

Fine did I say? Not quite. You see after setting up the computer for my wife, women come first, my computer doesn’t work. Nothing comes up on the monitor. Yes, the same problem as my old computer. However I also tried it over where my wife’s computer works fine, and still the same issue. So after work tomorrow I get to go in and see what went wrong.

So its been an interesting day. I don’t think we ate until 6pm, and that was with all the moving of stuff around. Hell as of now I’ve only had one half of my sub sammich, which will get eaten after tonight’s post.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better, although I doubt it. Mondays always suck. If people don’t get 24 hour cell customer service they are unhappy, and apparently its all my fault. Joyful.

WTF?

2011-08-13T21:59:00.001-07:00

I donno what the heck to write about tonight. I’m not like Cliff that can write two days of posts in advance.

I could write about the game I am currently playing, Might and Magic VII: for Blood and Honor. Its pretty fun, I’ve played it before ages ago, and got a good deal on it at GOG.com, so I’m playing it again. On wait in MM8, which looks to have upgraded the graphics nicely.

I could write about the house I have no hope in hell of getting, but I’m still going to go see tomorrow anyway. It would be a perfect house for my brother & I to go in together with, but not enough time to do it. I love the garage though, perfect for a nice big workshop.

I could write about how I’m feeing better today after a bad few days. Thanks to the loving attention of my wife and some pills. I have to do a bit of lifting tomorrow, so we’ll see how the back holds out.

I could write about… No I’ll wait till tomorrow for that one… Yes I am going to keep you in suspense.

I could write about the Battletech League that I found out about today. So far I have zero information on it, but since I am a fan of the Battletech universe and the Mechwarrior games I’m going to take a look and see if its something I will start playing. If its still around. I don’t even know that much right now.

So yeah, I don’t really know what to write about today.

Decrepit

2011-08-12T20:32:00.001-07:00

Yeah, that’s pretty much me in a nutshell. Kathy likes to joke that I am falling apart all the time. Of course she is not meaning it as hurtful or anything and I don’t take it like that. The truth is I am decrepit and falling apart. I’m getting shooting pain down my sciatic nerve again after around 3 years of it not being there. Some times its just so bad my whole body aches like I have a fever.

The last few weeks I have been in a good amount of pain. One day I even had to leave work early because I just could not handle the pain and trying to figure out people’s bills (for those that do not know I work for a cell phone company in their call centre billing). I have so many knots in my back I could be a massage school training dummy and keep going back every day for them to get more knots out. While that’s half in jest, I probably could do that.

Next week I’m supposed to meet with the ergonomic guy the company has and see what he can do for me. I’ve been using a stand up desk that is someone else’s desk while they are on vacation. My manager has been very supportive and I’ve been keeping her in the loop with my doctor’s appointments and such.

I do need to lose weight, and I have been eating healthier, the problem is that I also need to exercise and I need to use a pool to do it. I can’t walk very far anymore and even taking the dog out for a walk ends up hurting, so Kathy has been doing it. She’s been getting a little frustrated that she has had to do it all the time lately and I can understand that. I need to do the research to find out when I can get to a pool to do the exercise. What I’d really like is to work with a physical therapist who can guide me through getting back in shape without causing more problems. Problem is that costs money and my Blue Cross will not cover that at all.

This is what I’d really like. It would be perfect for me. I hear the Pan Am pool in Wpg has one, but I don’t think I can get access to it without a physical therapist. Figures.

Folklorama

2011-08-11T20:57:00.001-07:00

I donno if you’ve ever heard of Folklorama, but my wife has been hearing about it for around 10 years from me. Its a really cool event, well multiple events really. It has around 40-45 different countries represented and its their food, music, dance and sometimes even their alcohol on display. I grew up going to this and its given me an appreciation for different cultures and different foods.

So my wife & I are going to go tomorrow (friday) to 3-4 pavilions. We are in week two now, so it will be the Africa/Caribbean, Ukraine-Kyiv, Paraguay and if we are still hungry the Hungaria pavilion as its right near our house.

Its stuff like this that makes me want to do culture weekends. I may have mentioned it last year but I think it would be great. Take a weekend and from breakfast on Saturday to dinner on Sunday we will pick one culture and make those meals. Some will be easy, some will be hard as special ingredients may be needed. Hell I wanted to make Arros Con Gandules (rice with pigeon peas) I had to search out where I could get pigeon peas (gandules) and found a Mexican specialty store. The owner of the store was very friendly when we told her what I was going to be making, and that Kathy was from California and could understand a bit of Spanish. But I know that we will run into this a good amount when we actually start our weekends, it will just have to be planned properly.

On a side note… This morning, before I go to work, I glance over at my wife’s computer and she’s looking at the picture from this link. So tell me ladies, how would this be even remotely comfortable? My wife said it was an oddity, so she had to look. Uh huh. That’s why she stared at it for so long.

*sigh*

Homes, apartments, condos oh my!

2011-08-10T22:41:00.001-07:00

So yeah, another topic on homes. If you’re bored please move along… As I mentioned before rentals here are not exactly easy to get, my brother, the one who lives in Aaman Jordan, has been looking for an apartment to rent and hasn’t been finding any luck at all. He has been looking in a nicer area of town, but that’s because that is where their youngest son is going to go to school. He came by with his oldest son today for dinner, I invited them over for hamburgers on my new grill, and I finally got to make my nice hamburgers in Canada for the first time.

Ground beef
Diced red onion
Grated carrot
Oats
Egg
Lowry’s Seasoning Salt
Pepper
Liquid smoke
Mix all above ingredients well and make into thin patties. Then sprinkle Gorgonzola cheese in the middle, place a second patty on top and make sure the edges are squeezed together as much as you can.
Gorgonzola cheese

Its yummy. Although the cheese will run out the sides still, but you’ll still get a good enough blue cheese flavour for it to taste real good. I’m not a blue cheese fan, but I love this burger. My brother and nephew liked em a lot.

Anyway… my brother was pretty disappointed with looking for apartments. Places he had called last week to look at apts today were either not answering his call today, or said they had were gone already. So he’s kind of weary about that.

One thing my wife and I have been talking about is possibly going in with my brother on getting a house. Multiple times since they have been back they have said they regretted selling their house here when they went to the Middle East as they could not afford the house now. So I talked with him a bit about this tonight to see what his thoughts were. It would take longer for him to be able to get into a place, unlike an apartment, but it would be an investment for both of us. I said that in 2-3 years we could look at if they wanted to buy us out, or us them, or just sell it on the market and come away with the increase in the market value including the upgrades we will have put in it. So he is going to take that to his wife to see what she says. They have a realtor, one of my sister-in-law’s friends, so that could be a good help.

I also showed him mls.ca and how to look for houses there. Gave him an idea of what a mortgage on a 200k house would be and how that could be divided into two to make it very easy. I also added that when they left their oldest will need a place to live and trying to find a place on his own will be pretty hard. I said if we went together after they left their oldest would pay their portion of the mortgage, which would be cheaper than rent he would pay, and we would also be there to help keep an eye on him. He seemed somewhat receptive, but we’ll have to to see how it goes. I’m not going to pin hopes on it. One thing for sure is to create a document where it clearly states where each of us stands on upgrades, repairs, etc… That way in 3 years time there is no fight over anything, its evenly split. Money is never a good thing to get in between family, so I want to head that off at the pass.

On another note.

My wife tried Lotsa Fizz candy for the first time tonight. I didn’t tell here what they were, or what they did, but I could sure tell when it finally fizzed in her mouth (Relax Cliff, not that kind of fizz… Dirty mind!) cause she was ‘Oh! Yup, its fizzing.’, it was pretty funny. That and I got her some gobstoppers too.

Basement dweller

2011-08-09T20:02:00.001-07:00

No that’s not a picture of me (sorry ladies). But since that’s what I currently am (basement dweller) I figured I’d come up with nice imagery for you. You’re welcome.

Its been almost a year since we’ve moved back to Canada and we’ve been living in the basement of my mother’s house since then. Not the plan we had hoped for, but not overly bad. My mother and her husband Tom are up taking care of a camp, ordering the food and doing handiwork around the camp, so they haven’t been around for a few months and its been pretty nice for both of us. They may even stay the winter there if everything goes right.

Its pretty crazy with rentals here in Winnipeg, less than 1% vacancy rates. Hell its cheaper to pay a mortgage than rent. We almost were paying a mortgage too, our offer was accepted, but the last minute financing fell through. So that was pretty crappy. If you ever leave the country for 10 years, keep an active credit card here so that you can maintain a credit score. My number is good, but because there was no activity it means nothing. So be forewarned.

So we are on the hunt for a place to live, be it rentals or mortgage. Which will it be? I donno yet.

I might even blog about it (maybe).

Well colour me BBQ'd

2011-08-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

I figured I'd just head over to Cliff's blog and see if he'd manned up and done the AAR he'd promised if I got him the game he wanted. Alas he has not, and will surely tell all and sundry that he needs a new 6-core, high end machine to play it on. Sure Cliff, sure. It's fukkin ponies man!

Better be careful or that 'other' game will look SOOOOOO nice next to all your war games... I'm just sayin.

But, I digress... I go over to Cliff's site and what do I see? My name up on the 'I will shame myself publicly (well as much 'public' as we can get) by writing a blog post a day challenge'. Well bloody hell I forgot about that. So I suppose here I am. I may do a lot of swearing at Cliff, so no surprise to any of Cliff's close friends who I am sure do a lot of that themselves.

Anyway... I finally bought a BBQ. Its been almost a year since we've moved back to Winnipeg and about a year since I have BBQ'd anything. So we saw a BBQ on sale at Canadian Tire for a decent price ($79.99) and figured we'd go ahead and finally buy one. Not the one we wanted but its a BBQ. So on our way home we stop and grab a few NY steaks, and after putting it together and firing it up for 20 minutes or so I took a break. I mean hell, the piece of shit was a pain to put together and I actually had to be outside! In the sun! Do you know what that does to my pale complexion? I might tan! How can I keep my basement dweller cred if I have a tan? So after a few hours, after its started to get dark, I decide I can venture outside and grill. A little bit of Montreal steak spice and pepper, and ohhh they cooked up perfect! A baked potato and some beer and its a perfect meal!

Until... Kathy after eating about half, and in her fervor to eat this deliciously cooked steak, breaks the plate and spills the steak onto the floor. So she sat there with this horrid, sad, look on her face, sort of in shock at losing this culinary masterpiece. So I did what any loving husband would do. I laughed at her.

*sigh*

No I didn't, I am a sad sad man, I just helped her clean it up and cut a hunk off of my steak and gave it to her. Now I have to say that I had barely touched my steak at this point. In eating I am very methodical and eat vegetables first (they cool fastest), then potatoes/rice/pasta, then meat. Its how I've always eaten and its just what I do. Now here comes this sad face of a wife who looks like a lost puppy in the rain, and I give her some of my barely touched steak. Personally I think she did it on purpose to get more steak than I did. She's American, she'd do things like that.

Keeping America safe…

2010-12-07T19:29:00.001-08:00

Yes. This is going into Walmarts, hotels and malls, all in the name of ‘keeping America safe’.

Aside from the whole Soviet Union style ‘report on your neighbours’ vibe going on with that. Need I remind you who they are asking to help keep America safe?

Are you feeling safe yet?

No?

Well how about now?

I feel safer already.

(Probably because I’m in Canada)

The patience of a god…

2010-11-08T17:43:00.001-08:00

have I.

Well at least according to my last caller. Today was my first day on the phones without anyone listening directly in, so I was super nervous. By the end of the day I was doing ok, or at least less nervous. Throughout the day I was constantly 5-10 minutes late in starting my breaks as I would get calls just before they started, except the last call was about 8 minutes before the end of the day, which is normally enough time for a quick call.

This one wasn’t.

Her first question to me was, ‘How much time do you have?’, to which I replied, ‘As much as you need’. Silly me, and damn you Murphy! Thirty-eight minutes later I am finally off the phone with her. She had moved from one city to Wpg and was looking for a cell phone provider, she was looking at our website and was asking questions on the plans, as well she was going off track and talking about other things. In the end she was happy and wanted to talk to someone to say a nice word about me to them, so I gave her to one of my supervisors and she proceeded to praise me to the skies, said I ‘had the patience of a god’ and that other providers when she had called them were fairly rude and that I was extremely nice and she was going to go down and use our service because of me. So not too bad for a first day at work, and work does have a system in place to acknowledge ‘commendations’ made by callers about the reps they talk to.

Now I just hope everything I told her was correct.

So things were ok today overall, I learned some new stuff and wasn’t too bad on the phones. All I really have to work on is my after-call paperwork. Some of which is going to get quicker as I learn to listen and fill in stuff at the same time.

I feel like a Sprite

2010-11-03T16:33:00.001-07:00

and I don’t know why.

Since Cliff ranted about a commercial today I figured I should at least copy him and add a commercial to my blog. Somehow I don’t think Cliff will be complaining about my ad though.

German(??) Sprite commercial (NSFW)

So next week I start on the phones all by myself. Kinda scared, kinda looking forward to it. The crappy thing is we JUST started a new batch of promotions, so that means all the promos we learned are almost all out the window and we have a bunch more to learn, basically by tomorrow, with no chance to take the material home. The majority of the docs are ‘confidential’ and so cannot be taken home nor emailed to ourselves. So its a bit annoying. Plus just as we get comfortable with that set, we’ll have another set rolling out. Fun stuff.

So far I haven’t been too nervous while on the phone talking with people, but I have had someone sitting next to me where I can bounce things off of, so when I get back to the customer I can actually sound like I know what I am talking about. Next week I won’t have that, although our trainers will be there to help us out.

We are getting a couple of cool phones, but all in all the promotions and phones are pretty weak for Christmas. We are putting in the 4g network around Feb/2011 (supposed to be released already) and thy are probably waiting for that to happen before they do anything big. But what do I know? I’m just a new hire they are throwing to the wolves on monday. *sigh*

I have no words….

2010-10-30T20:28:00.001-07:00

http://kiwi.kz/watch/u8ton5kj0q7u/

NSFW. No nudity, but… well watch it and see. German(?) version of America/Britain's got Talent I think???

The female judge’s face is pretty funny during the whole thing too, specially at the end.

A letter from Cliff’s landlord…

2010-10-26T20:43:00.001-07:00

Oh Cliff….

Actually to get Cliff off…. the hook here, he had… no hand in this at all. Its actually from a site called Lamebook. Some of the stuff in there is pretty funny.

Fired!

2010-10-15T17:43:00.001-07:00

No not me, but made ya look right? Nyuk nyuk.

A girl was fired yesterday, and looking back its not surprising as she was really quiet in class, didn’t ask questions and apparently the trainer’s assistant was spending all her time with her. She was given lots of opportunity and lots of help, but just wasn’t able to grasp what she needed to learn. The sad thing is it was also her birthday yesterday too. Kinda sad. She was a nice girl, but some things are not meant to be I guess.

They told us at the end of yesterday why we had not seen her, and also said that the rest of us are doing pretty good, that there were no negative comments about us. So while sad to hear about the one girl, its nice to know we are doing well, even if we all feel overwhelmed by all the things we need to know.

And today (friday) we had a nice pot luck lunch. One I am still stuffed from. I made a casserole dish that my family has been making for as long as I can remember, and everyone seemed to like it. A few people cheaped out and didn’t make anything at all and instead bought something, one girl brought a bag of edamame beans, one guy didn’t have time to make the pie he had promised, so he ran across the street and bought a large bag of jelly beans. However there was enough really good food that we had a really good feast.

All in all the group I am training with is pretty fun and we seem to be helping each other fairly well. Three weeks down and three more to go before we are on the phones full time. Kinda scary right now, but we have been on the phones for the last 3 thursdays in a row. We are taking more and more of the calls and taking them longer, before the rep we are seated with takes over. So we are getting used to the idea of actually being on the phone. I’m also starting to see where I could have handled a call differently, and maybe saved a customer, or saved them some money. So its a bit interesting to actually see that, rather than everything just way over my head.

Happy Canadian turkey weekend everybody!

2010-10-07T20:27:00.001-07:00

Going up friday to see my dad in Gimli and having turkey, coming back sunday for turkey with mom. Mmmm mmmm good!

Work has been ok, even though some of the program stuff is going over my head, but I’ll get it eventually. The sad thing is that the stuff I am struggling over is in a program that is getting phased out. So even though I’m busting my balls over learning it now, its gonna be gone in a few months and I’ll have a new program to learn.

I missed a yelling, pissed off lady today though. The girl I was listening with had a call when I took my break, so I missed out on a really irate caller. :( That would have been awesome. Maybe next time.

Oh how the Japanese entertain me…

2010-10-02T22:55:00.001-07:00

I think my wifey can beat out those coin catching girls pretty easy though. My wife has nice boobs. (she’s probably going to hit me for saying that)

NSFW – Thesis on sexual partners

2010-09-30T19:24:00.001-07:00

Well to start off that’s kinda how the day was. We was thrown to the wolves like babies to the slaughter. In other words our first time on the phones. And we actually talked to real, live people (how disgusting!!)! But I did have a bit of fun, I had one call that was a little kid going ‘goo goo ga ga gee gee’. One girl in my class had a drunk person call. Yeah, its gonna be like that. Fun times. The redeeming thing is that it pays pretty good, and it looks like I am going to have 2.5 months of full time hours before I get put on casual part time, so not too bad at all.

And to round out what the topic was…. Follow the link below. Just don’t read it at work.

http://jezebel.com/5652114/college-girls-power-point-fuck-list-goes-viral-gallery

Its bloody hilarious. The wifey is currently reading it and chuckling heartily.

First day of work.

2010-09-27T19:40:00.001-07:00

So I had my first day of work today. I didn’t get much sleep at all last night, maybe two hours, but I wasn’t nervous it was just my mind was going a mile a minute with other idiotic stuff, and maybe that was me being nervous. Although I’ve never been ‘nervous’ like that. But anyway… Yeah, first day of work. It was pretty relaxed, not much studying overmuch, mostly a history of the company, a basic covering of our jobs, our benefits, or employee discounts, etc… Apparently this whole week will be a bit of casual studying, meeting HR and Union reps, heading over to listen to people on the phones, etc.

Our employee discounts are pretty good. A 32mbps internet speed is only $50 compared with $85 (in the US I had a 3mbps line), cell phone with unlimited txting, data plan and basic phone is just $43 and I can add 3 more people to that. When I went to the MTS store the other day and looking at a plan for Kathy, me and my mother we were quoted at $170. Plus we get to save $25 off a monthly bus pass. So not too shabby employee benefits.

The group I am in seems to be pretty nice, 6 women and 3 guys including me, we’ve sat around and had lunch together and we’re getting to know each other, so its pretty cool.

Overall it was a good day and looks to be a good week.

Miscellaneous stuff

2010-09-21T18:45:00.001-07:00

Looks like a movie prop eh? Not so! Its a real functioning coil gun. Pretty bloody cool. This guy’s post shows pictures and plans for it too (I hope he patented it first).

Here it is in action.

I don’t know anything about these things but his projectile seems big and some of the comments suggest he’s kept his power down on purpose. I wonder with a smaller, lighter projectile, and more power how this would work.

And for Cliff, although he’s probably seen this already…

Oh and one more thing to get you huffy and irked… Yes Virginia, there really is two ‘justice’ systems.

Damn you all to hell!

2010-09-17T19:52:00.001-07:00

Its started, and we’ll never be the same again. What am I talking about? The day that apes take over the world. It has begun! And its all the fault of a little boy.

Yes that’s right. That’s a gorilla with a DS, can the end of the world be far off?

Clearly they have already evolved better parenting skills.

Little boy you’ve doomed us all!

Bad news

2010-09-16T16:51:00.001-07:00

Except that its now good news…

Last Saturday (Sept 11th) I received an email from MTS saying ‘thank you for your participation, but we regret to inform you…’. So not very good news and it was a bit of a letdown. MTS pays really well, plus the benefits are really good and so, as I said, a bit of a letdown.

Spent the rest of the week talking with a CEO of a very large company getting his help redoing my resume and he said he would pass it on to people in his company, a company that is part of the ‘Group’, and a good friend of his is the CEO of another large company and would send my resume to him as well. So all in all a very good guy to have helping me. There were no promises made, he will not pressure anyone to hire me, but he said he can ask them to look over my resume, and as I told him the help he gave me on my resume is great as it is.

I had made plans to go to ‘Employment Insurance’ in the morning and see what kind of help they could be in getting a job. Since I have been out of the country for 9 years I wasn’t expecting any money, but if training was available I would be up for that. Either way just getting some better ideas of the job market and what is available and what resources I could use would be a great help. However I needed my resume printed and I don’t have access to a printer on this computer, so I had to wait for my mother to come back from Gimli.

Then this morning I got a call at 8:40am (waking me up, who gets up earlier than that? That’s just crazy.) from MTS asking me if I was still interested in the job and that if I was could I please take another assessment that they will send out to me. So I did that other assessment and got a call around 3pm saying that I got the job. They still have to do reference checks and a criminal background check (No Cliff, I did not use you as a reference, and not a word about Prague!), but I should be clear on both of those. The head of HR in my last company really liked me and she said she would have no problem being a reference for me (recently reconfirmed).

If you’re wondering why the ‘regret to inform you’ email and now getting the job, a few people had to bow out so I was an alternate I suppose you can call me. Out of the 3,000 people that applied I was in the top 25 (22 positions were available). So not too shabby.

So today was a good day.

I won!

2010-09-10T20:54:00.001-07:00

Except I didn’t.

I did win an auction for a video card I wanted for my system (an old AGP system). I received it in the mail today and proceed to install it in the computer and then the computer promptly refuses to boot up. My first thought is I knocked off some power cords. Nope. Then I think the power supply isn’t enough. Nope (I have a 600W). I reinstall my old card and the computer boots up no problem. So then I think its the card. Maybe the card was borked from the beginning. So I email the guy and see what his thoughts are.

Meanwhile I am looking around to see what I can find out and one thing stuck out at me was that on the Powercolor web site it mentions changing the bios to 1.6V. The seller responds with a quote he pulled from somewhere saying many P4 motherboards (like I have D865PERL) are a 1.5V motherboard.

So it looks like I have a 1.6V card with a 1.5V motherboard.

Fuck.

So….. Anyone in the market for a Powercolor HD3850 512mb GDDR3 256bit AGP graphics card?

And….. Does anyone have a X1950Pro 512mb GDDR3 256bit AGP card (what I currently have that is broken) laying around?

Playing games

2010-09-08T20:08:00.001-07:00

So I haven’t been adding more to my blog because I’ve been playing games. Actually one game.

Its like Masters of Orion but set in the Star Trek universe, so pretty decent. I’ve been putting in a good amount of hours on it. Since this is the first time in months I’ve been able to actually play a game for more than 5 minutes this is a good thing.

So pardon my lack of posting… again, but I’m kinda relaxing and liking a stress free environment.

No new news on the job, I’m still waiting for the letter to come in the mail. So hopefully soon. If we can we’ve decided to try and find a house to buy rather than rent. It may mean a few more months at my mother’s (if we are allowed to stay), but it would mean less payment than rent, and no problems with Ares. But we’ll see. That all depends on me getting a good paying job.

Typing, typing and more typing

2010-09-04T19:45:00.001-07:00

I suppose I should keep on writing or Cliff will start crying or something…

So in preparation of my next assessment at MTS I am trying to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard, which is what I normally do. In fact I normally type with just my middle two fingers, but I have been fairly quick doing it this odd way. So today I am trying to type without looking at the keyboard. So far its about 50/50 in looking down, its just habit and hard to break.

I do need to learn how to type properly though, so its off to find a typing tutor.

Fun fun.

So the month is almost over

2010-09-02T20:25:00.001-07:00

So the whole month of the blog challenge is almost over. Its been pretty interesting and its seems that Cliff has a good group of friends to hang with. I’ve learned a lot from the group and its been interesting to read about your lives and thoughts. I’m definitely keeping up following the lot of you. Not only do you guys have some of the same thoughts I do about agri-business, but some of you are further along than I am, and are doing some of the things I want to be doing. So being completely selfish I want to keep in contact so I can ask the questions I need so I don’t have to learn them the hard way. :)

I wasn’t really able to really follow everybody, everyday though. With the move and whatnot it put a serious damper on my time, it actually got worse once I arrived in Wpg because of family being around. In hotels I could be on and ignore Kathy all I wanted, but I can’t ignore the rest of the family. That would be wrong.

So Cliff is lucky to have a cool group to hang with.

News today: My contact within MTS said I am going to be sent for one more round of assessment testing, which means I passed the interviews. So good news there. Bad news is we spend near $300 at the vet today because Ares had his rashes start to appear again, and the vet gave us other pills, plus heartworm pills we don’t have to worry about in CA. But the good news is we got some good info out of him for things to do, and what we need to do in the future. He has more things to do, but nothing that is in dire need, just more maintenance stuff.

So that’s it for today. I guess we have one more to write for tomorrow?

Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

So it went well.

2010-09-01T20:27:00.001-07:00

Thank you for those of you sending positive wishes my way about the interview, it seemed to work. I think I did pretty good on the interview. It started off with me telling them about my accident while scouting out the building and that 4 days in Canada and I get hit from behind. One of the ladies said, ‘Welcome to Canada.’, which was pretty funny. Before the interview started we talked a little about the drive we had coming from California and the job market in the US. They really could not believe its as bad as it is, 80% of people looking for work will not find it. It was pretty shocking to them.

Then they started asking me questions in turn, each reading from the same sheets and writing down my answers. I only messed up one answer and that was asking me about current promotions they have going. My answer to that was, ‘I honestly do now know right now, but I can certainly see why the training is 6 weeks full time.’. But, I did answer everything else, and on some of the answers I made them laugh a good bit. They asked what I had over other applicants and I said that I assumed I was one of the oldest applicants and as such my ‘drama’ days are over. They laughed at that answer and my ‘inside’ source when I told her that said that was a great answer. She seemed to think I did pretty well. I hope so. But, we’ll see. I’m not going to hope too much in case I get disappointed. I’ll find out in a week and a half if I got the job or not.

The other good news is that I was able to pick up a really good monitor for a really good price today, so I’m pretty happy about that. My computer is now up and running. Although I still do not have a lot of time to get on it, it is nice to have it back.

Ares has settled down a bit although he is now getting pushy about his boundaries. He doesn’t like staying in the basement at all, but my mother said if he stays at the landing at the top of the stairs that's ok. Plus her husband, who is not overly happy about a dog in the house, has been petting him and it looks as though they’ve been doing a small bit of bonding. So that's good too.

Overall. Not a sucky day.

Read these other blogs because Cliff will make someone a good wife someday! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

So yeah, our luck is holding up great

2010-08-31T21:17:00.001-07:00

Today started out pretty good, I got a call saying that my inside help will come by and coach me with the interview I have tomorrow. And when she came by it went pretty well, and she said the two people interviewing me are really nice. I think they know a bit of why I am here, so I think that will help too. But we’ll see, I don’t want to put too much hope in this.

We were able to get a joint bank account too, which was better than when we tried to get one in the US. I wasn’t allowed to be on the account until I had credit, which is kinda weird. But, Kathy was able to get on the account with a zero credit rating here. Plus I found out my credit is actually pretty decent here. Who knew? So all I have to do is keep that up and it will be good. With the lessons we have learned from being at the bottom, I don’t think we’ll have any problems in that regard. Not that we went spending out of control, but when I lost my job all the credit cards went unpaid that we had been paying down. I never want to be in that position again.

I went to go check out the location of the building I have to be at tomorrow for the interview, I don’t want to be late or searching for it, so a recon was needed. On the way back, just before Confusion Corner (it really is confusing, and Kathy said that whoever designed it was on acid) we got hit from behind. Nothing overly serious, but enough to leave a fair sized dent in the bumper. Both Kathy & I are a little sore, but again nothing overly serious. Kathy is a little upset, but we are not at fault and their insurance should cover us. Hopefully I won’t be too stiff in the morning for my interview.

Well back to studying for my interview. There is a TON of things to know, and I can really understand why there is 6 weeks of full time training to get a casual part time job. Not only do I need to know about MTS I need to know about their competitors too. Ugh. I tink its gonna be a long night.

Read these other blogs because God loves you! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

What the hell am I going to write about now?

2010-08-30T19:36:00.001-07:00

I mean most of my blogging has been about the move, and now that is done, what the hell do I write about?

I did get a call today from MTS about a job interview though. According the the ‘inside source’ I have the online test I had to take just before I packed the computer up must have went well. If not, then I would not be given an interview. So that is good news. I have the interview on wednesday morning. Two years of applying for jobs in the US and I got 2 interviews, one day in Canada and I already have an interview. Go figure. It would be nice to get this job.

Our room is a huge mess. We are trying to get things figured out, but its not easy as we have very limited space. We want to have as low an impact on my mom and her husband as possible, so we are reluctant to spread out to find more storage. So that’s an issue.

Ares has been pretty good, but he doesn’t like being left alone for very long, if he is then he starts making noise. He did this tonight and my mother came down to see him before we could, when Kathy got down here my mom was already there petting him. She really loves having a dog in the house, although I know her husband is not too pleased. So far he’s being ok, although I know he wants us out of here asap.

And in response to Erron’s question about Kathy (from my last post), ‘How is Kathy doing? You're coming home, but she's leaving hers, just in time for winter in Winnipeg (yikes!).’ I’ll let Kathy speak for herself:

This is Kathy, Brad’s wife, taking over the hubby’s blog for a second to answer Erron’s question. Thanks for asking, by the way.

I am doing ok. The process has been a very emotional one for me as this is my first big move away from home, kith, and kin. I can honestly say that I never anticipated that I would ever leave California before now. I might have imagined moving to a different area of the state, but never leaving the state, and certainly never leaving the United States.

As Brad has noted, I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster about this move since we made the decision to do it. One moment I’ll be happy and excited, and the next, crying my eyes out. As the move date grew closer, the emotional roller coaster picked up steam, and I don’t quite know how Brad was able to put up with me at all during that time. I guess he really does love me a lot, lol.

Anyway, now that we’re here, my emotions have evened out and I am actually quite happy to be here. Winnipeg is beautiful and so green! Living in the desert for over twenty years has made me forget how lovely a sea of green grass can be. The street that Brad’s mom lives on is in an older part of town and it is lined with large trees that overhang the sidewalk and the roadway. It is lovely to walk Ares down the street and watch the tree shadows dapple the ground ahead. There is moisture in the air and hence,there are beautiful cumulus clouds that race across the sky in great puffy cotton balls. (Right now it is raining and there was actually a bit of thunder and lightning…beyond cool. I love thunderstorms and they were rare in the Californian desert.)

I am thrilled that Brad already has a job interview after going so long without one and I am hopeful that he will find work soon…even if this one doesn’t pan out. Once he is working, my remaining worries about this move will be put permanently to rest.

Read these other blogs or the internet will contain no more porn! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

So here we are in Canuckistan

2010-08-29T21:59:00.001-07:00

Yes we finally made it. The journey is over and the new adventure begins.

We did have a bit of a nervous time at the border, we got pulled inside and grilled about a few things. Mostly about what Kathy does for a living (we said writer), no I’m not moving here, we are leaving in a month, where are we staying, etc… Twas a bit of an adventure in and of itself.

They didn’t search the car, which was nice, cause they would have found 2 computers and a 42” LCD tv, it might have been hard to explain away. It was a huge relief when we got our passports back and said we are ok to go. After that it was just driving up to Wpg and trying to remember where things were to get us to my mother’s.

My dad did meet us in Grand Forks to help us unload the U-Haul and since he took the RV they are bringing some boxes up for us. Mostly just boxes of books and some dvds. We did set up the tv and dvd player already and they work fine.

The people at the storage place were simply great. They came in on their day off, they gave us a cheque (I can now spell cheque properly too!) to cover our extra night and food, and also showed me where to drop the key off for the U-Haul, so they are pretty damned good. I’m glad I used them, cause they are pretty awesome.

Our computers are going to stay dead for awhile until family goes away. So until then Kathy & I will share the laptop. Fun times.

Never, and I mean NEVER say…

2010-08-28T23:31:00.000-07:00

‘It can only get better.’

Murphy hates it when you say that, he really does. He’s a sadistic bastard he is, and he likes to torment people.

I said it.

I shouldn’t have.

I REALLY shouldn’t have.

Why do you ask? (I know you’re wondering)

Because Murphy, the sadistic bastard that he is fucked me over. I spent the majority of my day waiting for U-Haul Roadside Assistance, to come change a tire that had tire bulge (passenger side rear tire). Not just any tire bulge either, I’m talking mutant tire bulge. (I do have pictures, but because my phone is borked it won’t send anywhere. I’ll get them somehow though)

This mutant tire bulge was the size of a softball cut in half and placed on the tire, the longer we waited, the bigger it got. Not only that but it had a smaller (not much) cousin on the inside of the tire too. I called roadside assistance and the first people they tried to get to come help me refused to do the work. I was 15 miles outside of Grand Forks, my destination, too. I had crappy cel phone reception and the only good thing was that we had made a pit stop when we noticed it. I’m super lucky I did not have a blowout and an accident.

So it took 4 hours to finally have someone arrive to tow the car to a U-Haul 15 miles away where they fixed it in 10 minutes. The tow truck driver, and the two guys at the U-Haul had never seen anything like it before. All of them agreed I was lucky it didn’t blow on me.

The good news is that U-Haul will pay for the hotel and food costs because I had to stay an extra day because of this. Also, the storage place is going to open up and get me singed in tomorrow even though they are closed on sundays. I talked with them yesterday and they were absolutely awesome, they waited around, gave me their private cel phone number to call them in case I was able to come in.

My father who had come down to help me unload is going to stay longer and help me out too, so that is great too. We had a nice dinner and chatted for awhile. So the evening went pretty well, and we also get to sleep in, so that is another good thing.

Baring anything else happening we should be in Wpg sunday night. Which will be very nice. This trip has been one bad thing after another and I just want it to be over.

Where the shit flows

2010-08-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

I’d like to talk about something else that is going to be bothering me for, at least, the next 2 years. I say two years because that is how long it’ll take before, I hope, we’ll get our own home and can do things to it.

In Kathy’s home I redid the entire kitchen, sanding the oak cabinets down and restaining them, putting knobs on, new floor, new stove, hood, dishwasher and faucet. Then going into the master bedroom and painting, new lighting, new tile floors for the bathroom, and finally, and this is really the most important part, a new toilet. But not just any toilet, and ADA certified toilet. Basically what that means is the seat is higher.

Now if you have a regular toilet, grab a yellow pages that is about 2” thick, go to your bathroom, put it on the seat (closing the lid might be a good idea), and sit down. Go ahead and try it. I’ll wait.

…

Back now? Now how did that feel? Felt comfortable didn’t it? Didn’t have your knees in your face did you? For children this is fine, but as an adult I prefer an adult sized toilet. A few inches make up for a hell of a difference when you’re sitting on the throne.

As we have travelled along our trip every place we have been to has the smallest toilet size (14”), every time I go to sit down my ass wants to sit a few inches higher. Where we are headed is the same thing. I am going to try and figure out a way to convince my mother’s husband to change it. I’ll pay, but he has to agree to it, and I donno if he will.

I guess my ass is going to sit a few inches lower for a few years.

What? TMI? Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Dammit!

2010-08-27T19:08:00.001-07:00

No its not about Beaver today. Although I did talk with someone who offered me coupons for a future visit, because yeah, I’m spending a lot of time travelling. *sigh*

We actually pushed through Dickinson today and made it to Manden which is just outside Bismark. ND. The storage place closes at 1pm tomorrow, so we decided to push a little harder today so tomorrow isn’t so bad. As it is we have about a 4 hour drive and then we have to unload the truck. Fun. I’m looking to hire someone cause there is no way I’m going to be able to do it.

So what got me upset? Its pretty disastrous and if I had known what was going to happen I would have delayed leaving. This is just not good at all. I don’t really know how to say it, so I’ll just come out and say it… I’m going to miss Top Chef D.C. I’ve seen over half of it down here so far, but once I hit Canada I don’t think I’ll even be able to Hulu it. My mother does not have good cable channels, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch it all over again at her house (Canada runs the show behind the US air dates) .

Oh the humanity!

And that cackle you’re hearing? That’s Cliff laughing at me. Bastard!

Why me Lord? Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Fuck Utah: The Continuing Saga

2010-08-26T16:52:00.001-07:00

Well we didn’t make Dickinson, ND today. From the delays we had yesterday resulting from the horrible stay in Beaver, I am super tired and super sore. We spent a little time in the hot tub last night and then we were really hungry so I took a quick run to Safeway before it closed and grabbed some frozens. After that we just went to sleep.

We had to stop a few times on the 250 mile trip from Dillon to Billings because my back was just bothering me too much. The drive was very scenic though, I can definitely see the draw to come to Montana. Some beautiful valleys with rivers running through them that would be great to set up a nice piece of property along.

So as we get to our hotel room and set everything up (like internet) we got an email from the Quality Inn in Beaver. Here is what they sent to me:

Dear Mr. McGraw,

On behalf of the Quality Inn of Beaver I would like to offer my sincerest apology for your inconvenience during your stay with us.

I would like to thank you for bringing the issue you had with your stay to my attention. We take great pride in the customer service our hotel provides to our guests. It is also our goal to provide guests with what they ask for to help their stay more comforting. In my research I see that you had checked into the hotel at 7:50 pm August 24, 2010. I spoke with my staff that worked on that day about this issue. On this day we had been notified by Beaver City about a power outage that would occur from 12:00 am to 4:00 am. We had placed on our doors as well as the counter the notice about this going to happen. It was also mentioned upon check in to all guests. I was on the phone when the power was turned off speaking to my clerk and over heard the conversation you had with him about the power. At no time did I hear my staff have an attitude with you during his explaining why the power was off. However, I have spoken to all of my staff as to the proper procedure if this was to occur again in the future. This way there is no misunderstanding when the power is being shut off to making the guests aware of it happening.

As this is something that we have no control over I apologize that I am unable to give you a credit for your stay. We followed policy that had been placed if this was to occur. Had there been an issue with it at the time of arrival it was explained to you that you could have stayed elsewhere. We don’t want to lose you as a guest and we try and accommodate all guests to the best of our ability.

I would like very much for you to give us a second chance next time you’re in the area. Along with my apology I’d like to offer you a 10% discount off your next stay with us. Please call the hotel directly to make your next reservation and reference this letter and upon arrival present this letter to receive this discount.

Again, I would like to express our regret that your stay was not to your satisfaction.

Sincerely,

___________________________

Del Hinckley, General Manager

To me that is basically a giant ‘fuck you, you should have stayed elsewhere’ from them. Here is what I just sent back.

Del,

I appreciate your quick reply, however while your 'policy' on informing customers may have been in place, it certainly was not enforced. At no time during the check in was any notice available, nor was it mentioned to me and nothing was on the door in our room. When my wife talked to the front desk clerk (when the power shut off) what he said was that he didn't know what was going on, and that he had just got there, he did NOT tell her about the town turning off the power, as you allege. If all your staff were aware of what was going on, he should have been able to answer my wife's question. Also, if all these notices were around, and we were supposedly informed of what was going on, why would my wife head to the front desk, where you say you heard her, ask what was going on?

When I checked out and asked about the power outage the girl at the front desk certainly kept repeating that she had a sign on the front desk, but where she pointed out where she put the sign, at check-in there were numerous maps of the facility. If it was underneath the maps I appologise for not realising that I had to root through piles of papers to find the notice.

I understand that the power outage was the city's doing, and I do not hold you responsible for cutting the power, however in not being informed by any of your staff, and the attitude I have dealt with in trying to find out what was going on I do hold you responsible for. I would also expect, that even though it is not of your making, you would automatically offer a discount to all guests for the inconvenience. Because of the lack of sleep this caused us it has set us back a full day of driving, which costs us an additional $150 in lodging and food. I find your lack of willingness to resolve the issue to be pretty insulting. As of right now I am going to continue to take this to Choice Hotels corporate.

Also, I fully understand how customer service should be handled, not only have I worked retail sales before but in my last job I was sent (sometimes over 100 miles) to deal with the 'difficult' customers and make them happy.

Brad McGraw

So the ongoing saga of Utah continues. I donno what it is, but so far this trip has had a lot of downs in it, from the Uhaul, to Utah. Maybe its things starting with the letter ‘U’?

I do have to say the people at the GuestHouse Inn and Suites in Dillon were very nice. Not only in allowing us to use the hot tub after hours, but in telling me where to find food and when Safeway closed. Also this morning checking out the girl was very pleasant and told me about trying fried bologna and onions in an egg sandwich. (we were talking about their continental breakfast and sidelined into more breakfast talk) I told her about an egg in the hole, which she had never heard of before, which to me is odd because I grew up eating them and love them.

So we are in Billings, MT for the night. Everything is pushed back a day too. Tomorrow we are just going to go about 300 miles to Dickinson, ND.

My apologies for not getting the chance to really read or respond to everyone’s blogs. I just haven’t had the chance to really go through them. I’ve just sort of been randomly clicking on a few and reading them. Kathy beats me if I am on the laptop too much. :(

The first time Beaver has disappointed me! Hopefully there will not be a second time. Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Oh and fuck Utah too

2010-08-25T22:10:00.001-07:00

Bloody bastards. We go back to Beaver, the smelly, rotten, no one wants to go near it Beaver. Why is it smelly and rotten? Well right now its mostly just the Quality Inn we stayed at. ‘Quality’ was in short supply there. The room was fine, no biggie there, it was a hotel room, they are pretty much all the same. Turned the AC on for awhile, got Ares’ crate set up so we could go to dinner without worrying he’ll chew up the furniture.

After a nice meal Kathy & I start to relax in the room and shortly after midnight the power goes out. This means we can’t get ready for bed (Kathy has to take her face off after all), we can’t connect to the internet and no TV, nor are our mobile devices charging anymore. Not a good thing at all. So Kathy heads down to the front desk to see what’s going on and he says, ‘I don’t know, I just got here’. So obviously no help there. So I pull out the mini flashlight I packed for some odd reason and I shave and Kathy gets to take her face off by flashlight (a first I am sure).

Morning comes around and when I go to check us out I ask about the power outage (that lasted 2.5 hours), and the morning clerk says that the city was doing some stuff and that there was a notice on the desk, and if anyone didn’t want to stay they could go elsewhere. Except that we never saw the notice as where she had pointed out she put it was covered in numerous maps of the hotel, nor did anyone tell us about this, not the girl that checked us in, and obviously not the late night guy. I asked about a discount and she just kept telling me about the notice she put out, and that seemed to cover it.

Well we got like 3 hours of sleep because of the whole thing last night and about a 100 miles into the drive we pulled over cause I was seeing double. So I had a nap and Kathy was hit on by some 90 year old man. We got hit by Salt Lake City rushhour, which slowed us down hugely and after we left Ogden (just north of SLC) we stopped at a rest stop again and just rested for awhile. We finally got to Dillon, MT at around 10pm, so we were on the road roughly 12 hours. Not fun.

We are headed to the Jacuzzi now, and Kathy is gonna give me a massage afterwards. I need it badly.

On to Dickinson, ND tomorrow. A longer drive, but hopefully done faster with a good nights sleep.

Oh… I did make a formal complaint to the Quality Inn ‘Guest Services’ line. I’ll find out in 72 hours what they are gonna do. I’m mostly pissed off at the attitude of the people there, so fuck em. Time to complain. With 3 hours sleep and 540 miles to drive I’m not in the mood to be nice.

Idahoans are sucky drivers

2010-08-24T22:30:00.001-07:00

Y’know, I have planned on doing some sort of play on ‘Beaver’ tonight, something suitably vague, but still able to pull a joke from if you have a dirty mind (like I know you all do). We did make it to Beaver, UT (476 miles) today after leaving 2 and a half hours late (10:30am), we still made good time and pulled in by 6:30, and that with 3 stops along the way, about 30 minutes each. So that’s an average of 73 miles an hour, not too bad.

That was at one rest stop just across the Arizona border in Utah, very pretty country. While going through Arizona we came to one part of the Interstate that had been cut out of the mountains. Very ‘S’ shaped road, it was pretty cool and I would have enjoyed it far more if there was not some fucking idiot in front of me.

He started bothering me even before we came to the winding mountain stretch. I had been pulling up to him in the left lane, and there was this other car in the right lane going slower than him that he was passing. So as is ‘right and natural’ he should have pulled to the right and gotten out of my way. He didn’t, and the bitch in the other car decided at that point that she didn’t like a U-Haul passing her and floored it. Now the guy in front of me is randomly speeding up and slowing down, always making it so that I can’t pass him on the left, and there is a line of cars behind me all probably blaming me for this shitty driving.

Now we come to the winding road where this asshole decides he likes to put his brakes on for every fucking corner. I think I had to deal with this asshole in his shitty GMC Jimmy for about 20 miles. Fucking bastard.

Idaho, fuck you for your shitty drivers.

Ares loved this place, it wasn’t blistering hot like some of the other stops, and it had grass for him to run around on, so he liked it a lot.

Tomorrow we head for Dillon, MT. This drive is going to be a bit longer as we are going another 40 miles further than we did today. Kathy wants to sleep in a bit and leave by 9am, but I’d rather leave at 8am. We’ll see what happens.

I do have to say that as we were passing through Vegas I offered to take Kathy out to a nice steak dinner. She declined, but I don’t know why. She loves steak. This is why men will never understand women.

Oh and I am VERY glad we were not travelling the other way through Vegas. MASSIVE traffic jam due to construction. I think I drove for 10 minutes before I saw the tail end of the jam, with more cars coming in.

So tomorrow we start it all over again. More fun fun fun !

We’ve left! Three more days till Canada! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Delays, delays, and more packing

2010-08-23T21:36:00.001-07:00

So earlier I promised I would update you guys on my delay. Well it was basically because yesterday required more care in packing our electronics than we thought it would. All we had left to do was our clothes, tv equipment and computers, but that took longer than we had anticipated.

I also check my email one last time and received an email from MTS HR wanting me to take a quick test. Well here I am already really tired from packing and I now have to take this test, so I hope I did ok. I know I got a few things wrong, but nothing too bad I hope. My main concern is the typing test. I suck at typing tests. I don’t type in a proper manner, and in fact only use the middle two fingers of each hand, but if I am just typing ‘off the cuff’ like I am now, its decently fast, but if I have to read something and type it takes me longer. So I am nervous about that.

So after that we started to do some more packing of our stuff and along came 11pm, and we just decided at that point to stay home one more day. We really did not want to start the day tired as hell, and driving 8 hours. So we slept in and started finishing the organisation of our stuff. Luckily one neighbour had come over to give us some cranberry raisin muffins for our trip (she’s really sweet) and I asked if her husband could come over and help me organise the packing. So he came over to help after awhile. He made off like a bandit too. I had things I was not going to take and when I asked him if he wanted them he did. He got 3 pieces of granite (cutouts from granite countertops where a sink would go) perfect for his bbq he is planning on building, he got a large container that I had put all my extra supplies back in my cabinet days, so full of caulking (stop giggling), shelf pins, epoxy, all kinds of pretty decent stuff, plus 3 chop saw blades that I am not sure if they’d been sharpened or not, but good blades anyway. So I do believe he was amply rewarded for his help. That and beer too! But I could not have done all that he did, so really very cool of him to help.

The delay also meant I could see all the neighbours before we left, which I was not able to do yesterday, so that’s a good thing. Oddly enough I was able to see an old friend I used to work with at Target too. Just as we were leaving I heard my name being called and there he was! I had been trying for weeks to get in touch with him, but he has 3 kids now and works a lot of hours, so he doesn’t have a lot of free time. He’s got three cute kids and a wife that looks like Kirsten Dunst. He’s a really cool dude and it was good to see him one last time.

We still have to load up the CRV with a few things, but I would not want anything in there tonight anyway, its very tempting for someone to break in steal stuff. So loading it tomorrow it will be. I figure 2 hours after we get up will be enough time to pack and leave.

Now I have some bad news. I have to take out the garbage one last time. I thought last week was going to be the last time, and Kathy said that was going to be the last time too. But noooo! Now I have to do it one last time (again). I’m very bitter.

Ok, now I really mean it! We leave tomorrow! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

‘Victory is mine!’, sayeth the… Brad?

2010-08-22T15:38:00.001-07:00

Foreword… Sorry Cliff. Positive ending, no rant today.

So yeah, I won that battle. And yet again it was a phone call to the CEO of U-Haul, as he was piling his kids into the car (on his way to church), that did it.

We woke up a bit late (9:30am) after doing a lot of packing last night and I promptly called the U-Haul traffic routing place I talked with yesterday. It was Amy, the one I talked with yesterday, and she told me the same thing. That $27 was gonna stay the way it was because according to her, her boss (Tina) had gotten an email direct from the CEO saying $27. Again I told her I would not make a big fuss over a $27 difference, I would just be unhappy. I told her that when I talked with people before and that I saw the cargo van available for one-way rental I was right when other people said that could not be so, and I am right now when I say it was a little more than a $100 difference. Still she said she could not do anything. I told her I had no option but to go through with it, but if I had any other choice I would cancel my reservation, I just have no option at this point.

Right after I talked with her I called the CEO again. He remembered talking with me and when I said they gave me a $27 discount he immediately said that was wrong. He sounded a little upset too. He said he told them to give me a $103 discount, not $27. Again he appologised and said with 18,000 employees sometimes the message gets mixed up. He asked if I knew the city the traffic routing place was at, and I gave him the phone number, who I talked with and my reservation number. Three minutes later I got another call from the traffic routing place confirming that the discount was now $103 in total. It wasn’t Amy who called me back either, I think she might have been a little upset with me. I’m gonna bet that the CEO was quite abrupt with whoever he talked with about this.

So overall a good result. Props to the CEO again. Nice guy and is trying to do the right thing. So not bad for a CEO at all.

The seat seems to be pretty comfortable and it only has 24,000 miles on it too, so not bad. Now we’ll have to see how it goes for the rest of the trip. heh

All we have left to do is pack up our clothes, the computers and our LCD TV. Other than that we are set to go. We’ve already packed some things in the U-Haul, and we are taking it slowly and with many breaks. Its 35C right now, so not the best time to be packing up. I’m pouring sweat right now.

Oh and Tammy, yes the 14’ would add another tank of gas. When you’re going 2,000+ miles, even a few mpg less starts to make a difference. Its why I wanted to use the cargo van in the first place. :) Plus we are still going to have room in the 10’ anyway. A 14’ would be left with an insane amount of room.

We leave tomorrow at, hopefully, 8am. We’ll get to Beaver, UT in the early evening, again hopefully. So our trip is Lancaster, CA to Beaver, UT to Dillon, MT, to Dickinson, ND (and no I did NOT make than name up. I’m not sure I want to know the entomology of that name), then on to Grand Forks for the storage, then to Winnipeg. My father is supposed to meet us there, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to yet. Their passports are expired and they are calling the border crossing at Emerson tomorrow. So I’ll know more later. I did get an alcohol order though, dad wants some 40s brought up. lol

We leave tomorrow! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Testing testing, 1, 2, 3

2010-08-21T23:22:00.001-07:00

Just testing to see if I can blog from the laptop, so I can continue in this challenge.

We are still packing, although most things are pretty much done. All we really have left is suitcases, take down the TV and wrap it up, and also our computers. So sunday night we will not have our main computers on at all. That will be really weird. What are we going to do? I don’t really remember what I used to do before I became addicted to computers. I just sat here for a few minutes and yeah, drawing a blank.

I’m also having an issue with the U-haul people again. They called this morning and said they didn’t have a 10’ truck, but would I take a 14’ for the same price as the 10’? Uhhh… no. And add ANOTHER $105 to my trip for another tank of gas? I’m already up past what I had budgeted for. Then I found out that after all my problems and calling the CEO and him helping me out, the grand total of my discount? A whole $27. Yeah, that ain’t happening. If it was going to be like that I would not have bothered making all the phone calls I did, I would just be bitching about U-Haul. It was a little over $100 difference, this is what I told everybody I had talked to, and this is what I am after. I talked with a few people today and I have another call to make tomorrow. If I don’t get what I should have gotten in the first place, its time for another call to the CEO. And then I’m not going to be nice about it. I’ll straight out tell them this will hit social media sites.

My budgeting originally went like this:

U-Haul cargo van - $1,228 vs 10’ truck - $1,334

Gas savings in using van about a 35 gallon tank @ $3 per gallon = $105

Total savings = $211

Now that I have to take the 10’ truck I just lost that gas savings of $105, but I figured it would even out with the offer of the cargo van rate, but now they are going to knock $27 off the price? Everything that I had calculated for the cargo van, and everything I had budgeted for is all messed up now.

So now I’m pissed. Add to that I am sore, tired, hungry and stressing out about packing and making sure we are able to leave on time monday morning.

Well if we don’t get what I am hoping for, I’m gonna have a blog post Cliff is gonna like.

2 Days to go! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

They didn’t shoot me because they thought I was crazy

2010-08-20T21:24:00.001-07:00

If you have seen The Longest Day you may remember a scene as British troops are landing on Sword Beach where a guy starts wading ashore and playing the bagpipes.

Well amazingly enough that part is actual fact. He was a private named Bill Millin and he died yesterday. One of the interesting things in the artice was this bit:

He said he found out later, after meeting Germans who had manned guns above the beach, that they didn’t shoot him “because they thought I was crazy.”

Its pretty funny, but also pretty amazing.

My gramps went ashore on Juno Beach but he doesn’t talk about it much. His best friend died there and it still holds some powerful memories for him. Literally one second his friend was next to him, the next he was gone. Gone as in they found a boot, nothing else. He has only talked to me once about his military days and I have never pushed him to tell me more. There comes a look in his eyes that tells of a weariness of soul, and its best to let that alone.

Really the only thing he has mentioned of his military days in WWII was when he was in the Netherlands, at least I think it was there I am not completely positive. Anyway, apparently he made a friend of a young child there, sharing chocolate and whatnot. After the war they started sending letters back and forth and every year to this day he gets a Christmas card. He has gone back and visited a few times as well. Pretty interesting.

Not sure why I wrote this, but I did.

The pressure is building for us to get our stuff done and each day it seems the list gets bigger, even though we are crossing stuff off. Basically we have tomorrow to get everything packed up and ready to go, and we are not even close to that. I spent a lot of today fixing leaky faucets instead of doing moving stuff. So I’m irritated, sore from kneeling on cement, and tired. I really really wanted Sunday to be a day of just packing up the U-Haul and that is it. Looks like we are going to be doing much more than that. I’m not happy.

3 Days to go! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

A trip into LA (its all about Nick)

2010-08-19T21:39:00.001-07:00

So today we went down to say goodbye to Kathy’s brother and his family. On our way down we stopped of at Habitat for Humanity and I donated a Honda CRV full of crown molding, toe kick, scribe molding, glass cabinet doors, brushed nickel knobs, drawer sides & glides, cabinet hinges and hinge plates and some other odds and sods things from my former life in cabinetry. There was a lot of stuff. I’m glad they took it all and they seemed happy to get it too, so that was my good deed for the day.

We got to the brother’s house and then shortly after that we went to a Chinese restaurant a few blocks from their house. The oldest nephew (Nick, the stinky one. I swear that should be his name.) didn’t show up until just as we were ordering and so held that up for a few minutes, and then he ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, while the rest of us ordered the $5 specials, which annoyed his parents.

I should explain something here. Nick is 27 years old, his only job to date has been handing out flyers, he spent 5 years in college and still doesn’t have his prerequisites to transfer to a full program. He finally dropped out of college and is now writing ‘the next great novel’, which started out as the ‘next great movie’. He decided that he is first going to publish this book, and then it will be made into a movie and then he’ll be famous. Cause that is all that is important to him. Famous is life to him. He meets someone famous and he’s on cloud nine for ages. He really believes that celebrity is something to be idolized.

I should explain the ‘stinky’ remark too. I know you want to hear this. All our bedrooms are down a hallway and the guest room is the first room. Every time he is over the hallway smells. Like burning nostril smell. The MIL tells him to take a shower, if he stays a week he’ll bring one change of clothes, maybe, or just expect the MIL to buy him clothes while he is up here. Hell, today he wore a shirt that had all kinds of food stains on it, it looked pretty nasty.

He’s house sitting for a guy with a 3 month old puppy right now and at lunch his mother was asking him about the puppy and his response was, ‘What do you care? Its not your puppy.’. Yes, ‘normal’ conversation with his family is impossible, he hates talking about anything not of his direct interest, and even when you do approach him on his interests he’ll blow you off. He’s not like this with other people, just with family. Half the shit he’s done I’ve found out through my neighbours who he’s talked to on occasion.

The sad thing is he’s not an idiot, in high school he got pretty good grades, but as his friends have gone off to college and gotten real life jobs, he’s gone on to find new friends. In his words, ‘he’s not into reality’. He can also be very kind, but its hidden in a shell of narcissism. All his faults can be directly blamed on bad parenting too. Not near enough discipline, which has allowed him to literally allowed him to cry and get what he wants, to this day. A few years ago he told all his friends about this huge party he is going to throw at his house, invited a ton of people and didn’t ask his parents permission (since it is there house). Once he told them he was having a party his dad said no. Net thing we know he is calling us bawling his eyes out that he wants to throw a party and his dad said no. In the end he got his way, cause he ha learned that the bigger pain in the ass you are, the more likely everyone will submit to his will.

Now after all that you may think I don’t like the kid, but I do. He can be funny, and make some pretty good comments from time to time. He doesn’t really have a mean bone in his body, but he is also highly annoying. At lunch he was complaining that he didn’t get his food at exactly the same time as the rest of us, and made sure everybody knew he wasn’t happy. I’m glad we were able to see him one last time, but I just wish I didn’t get the feeling that he was really only there for the free lunch.

I should end this here, otherwise I could go on for another few pages. Cliff knows, he’s heard me rant about him a few times already.

I’ll end this on this note…

Did you see that? His feet! He’s playing with is feet! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Cel phone company part dos

2010-08-18T20:24:00.001-07:00

Kathy keeps saying I’m spelling ‘cel phone’ wrong, but I don’t care. For some reason I associate ‘cel’ with the phone and ‘cell’ with DNA. And since I ain’t no scientist I’m gonna stick with ‘cel’. SO screw you spell checker and screw you wifey! I’m going rogue! (just not in a Sarah Paliny way)

So what happened with my cel phone? Its still fucked up. I called this morning and talked with Customer Service and they asked me the usual bullshit questions and asked if the internet part of the phone worked. I don’t know, I use my PHONE as a PHONE and don’t use it to web surf. I had to repeat that twice. So he transferred me to Tech Support and they said that the internet part of my phone could be trying to update and not be able to. She said to bring it in to a repair centre and they could force an update on it.

Off to a repair centre where I had to leave the phone for a few hours. I call them back and ask if my phone is ready yet. Nope. Its broken they say. It won’t take an update at all, and the only way to stop that from happening is to upgrade my plan (and get a free phone) or buy a replacement phone. Yeah, not gonna happen. I told them my contract is up in Oct and I’m not going to renew, so I’ll just come by and pick up my phone, which I did.

Now what did I tell you yesterday? That they’ll try and get me to upgrade somehow, and yes my tinfoil hat is on correctly (so they don’t hear my thought waves, they can do that y’know ). Considering its difficult to get a new battery for a phone that is a year old, or any accessories, that they turn around cel phones so quick they want you to throw the old away and get the latest and greatest. Yes I do believe this whole thing is deliberate.

This scene really speaks to me right now.

Oddly enough, so does this one…

5 more days to go!

They fuck ya with the cel phones! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Bastard cel phone companies

2010-08-17T21:24:00.001-07:00

So today I am waiting for the call about setting up the deal on a 10’ U-Haul truck that the CEO got for me. First off though, another night with no sleep. I was just too hot last night and it wasn’t happening, then we get to the window tinting place and there are no appointments available (I did make one for tomorrow), just as we are leaving the tint place I get a phone call I know is from U-Haul, well my cel phone decides that this is the perfect time to ‘update’.

At this point I have to mention that at least once a week it does this, or at least attempts to. I’ve left it for hours on ‘update’ and it never finishes. The only way to get out of it is to shut down and reboot. Now I have an old Samsung a920, with a battery that is pretty much dead, and a contract that ends in a little over one month. For the past few months this phone has been acting up like this, the majority of the time just as I am receiving a call.

Do I think this is deliberate? You bet your ass I do. Either they want to piss me off so much that I cancel the service and get a disconnect fee or they want to try and upsell me to a new phone with a new contract.

(It just tried to do it again)

I hate this phone and I hate Sprint. I’m gonna call them tomorrow and give em a what-for. Its made me miss an important call (luckily I was able to get a hold of the person), and its been very very frustrating to have to deal with. Fuck them up their fucking asses with a fuck stick. I’m in the mood to yell at someone and luckily I have a free 2.5 hours while our CRV windows get tinted.

Also tonight we had a dinner with some old ladies from the MIL’s church, Kathy & I had asked that they come over because they are really nice ladies and we will miss them. It was a good time and it was nice to see them one last time.

Cel phone companies are evil. Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Dealing with U-Haul

2010-08-16T18:44:00.001-07:00

For the past month or so I had been looking at U-Haul trucks and vans for my move. I had been figuring how much stuff I was taking and looked at gas and was figuring all these things out. In the end I figured taking a cargo van was going to be the smartest thing for me to do, both in space needed and gas mileage.

Along comes today when I go to order a cargo van. The website now says that a cargo van isn’t available for that type of move. WTF? This is not good and I kind of head into panic mode of ‘oh shit this is not good!’. I call up the place I had been getting boxes from and was told that cargo vans never go one way. I told him the web site allowed me to set that up just last week, so he gives me the corporate number to ask them.

So I called corporate and they tell me the same thing, and hinting that maybe I read things wrong on the web site. I know what I saw and I wasn’t going to budge on that and so she sees if there are any one way cargo vans she can find. A one way cargo van was found she said in Altadena, which is inside LA, about an hour and a half away from me. So I call that number and talk to Raul, the general manager and he starts telling me nothing is available for that type of move, so I told him corporate says he does have one. He checked and said that yes he does, but that the system will not recognize the reservation, but that we’ll do a 10’ rental and he’ll change it to the cargo van afterwards. Well that doesn’t work either, he says he’ll call the ‘traffic’ dept to get it changed over and 5 minutes later he calls me back and says that we can’t use a van as its not the right ‘model’ to be transferred over. He told me that normally only vans that are being sold out east are available, and that there are none right now.

So I call corporate again and talk to the same girl and tell her what has happened. She doesn’t seem overly pleased I am calling back and that she’ll see if she can find something for me and call me back. Two hours later still no call, and I kind of doubt I am going to. So its off to use the power of the internet (‘Internet! Internet! Internet! Internet HOOOOooo!’), and track down the CEO’s address to see about sending a quick letter to see if I can get some help from him. In my search I found reference to him on Frontline and that after the show was taped he wanted his cel phone # published so that if people have problems, they can call him direct. So this is what I did.

He was very nice, listened to my struggles so far. He was a bit surprised that the van was an option to rent one way like that, but he didn’t doubt I saw what I saw like the corporate girl seemed to. He said he’d look into it and get back to me. AN hour and a half later he called back, appologising for the delay, I was actually expecting a call tomorrow, not today, so that was nice. He did look into it and found that the guy who deals with sales actually did put it up on the site for one way rentals, and that he (the CEO) didn’t know that was done. What he could do was offer me the 10’ truck rental for the same price as what I saw for the van rental. He said that if I had made a reservation for a van they would have figured out how to send a van to me, but because I hadn’t the discount was the best they could do.

So that’s ok. The money I save on the rental will be about how much more in gas I will have to spend. Its still about another $130 more from my budget, but that’s not terrible.

So today had some frustration in it, and if nothing was going to be done about the mix up today’s post would have been laced with f-bombs. I know Cliff would have been happier if it was. Sorry to disappoint Cliff, the CEO of U-Haul was pretty decent, blame him for a nice post instead of a f-bomb filled rant.

Tomorrow I should get a call from a reservation centre around here with the discount, and I’ll pick it up on Sunday. Tomorrow I have to get a new muzzle for Ares (there is going to be a LOT of new people around him, and he’s somewhat protective, so we are going to be very careful) and get the back windows of the CRV tinted. We called up a place today and got a very nice quote, and my neighbours have gone to them before, and said they are good. So that’s my day tomorrow really. (exciting isn’t it?)

(Give yourself 2 points if you got the Thundercats reference in my post)

Be kind, rewind. Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Garage sale day 2

2010-08-15T20:03:00.001-07:00

Well it was slower, but we still sold some things and made a few hundred bucks, so all in all not too bad. The big thing that sold today was the exercise bike, so that’s good. We still have 6 boxes of books to donate, most of my cabinet supplies and a computer desk and a really ugly 1980’s tv hutch. But we’ll deal with that this week.

We actually got sleep last night too. I was so sore I was walking around like a 95 year old man, and when I wrote yesterdays post I was soooo tired. I should have left all the spelling mistakes in there for you to see, but there was a ton. I could barely think. But Kathy gave me a massage and I fell asleep during that, even though she was digging in so hard she was leaving marks on my skin. But after that we both went to sleep and slept right till 5am when the alarm went off. So we got a good 5 hours sleep.

The biggest surprise I think was selling all the computer games. I had about 150 out for sale in total. One lady came out yesterday and today and bought a bunch both days. She also picked up the bookshelves I had made too, so that was good. In fact overall it was pretty decent. It would have been nice to have sold the cabinet stuff, but I’m calling habitat for humanity and seeing if they’ll want them. I hope so.

So tomorrow we have more running around to do. Kathy kind of wants a day off, but I’d rather get everything done and take the days before we go off. Next Sunday I should have the cargo van packed up and Monday morning we be leaving. Its kind of exciting till I started to realise that I’ll be living in the same country as Cliff, which is kind of a downer. It was nice having border security between us. Ah well, at least we have Sask to be our ‘no man’s land’, our demilitarized zone’.

Only 7 more days till we leave here.

A moment of silence for the black pig please... (you’d know what I am talking about if you read these other blogs. You ARE reading these other blogs right??) Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Garage Sale day one

2010-08-14T21:06:00.001-07:00

Lord am I tired. I’ve had two naps so far today and I could sleep through till tomorrow still. In the last few nights I’ve had very little sleep. The night before last we went to sleep about 5am and I was woken at 8am for a package at the door. It was the new MP3 player speaker and I wanted to see if it worked, so I fooled round with it right away. If it needed to be returned I wanted to do so immediately. This woke me up so I could not get back to sleep.

Then yesterday I moved two heavy computer desks and an ugly 80’s style TV hutch to the garage in preparation of Saturday's garage sale. I was sore, even more than before, and just could not sleep at all, so before the garage sale I had about 3 hours sleep over the two nights. Not great.

The sale itself went pretty good. Some people just walked up and left, others stayed for awhile. But we sold one computer desk, the big 50” tv, ALL of my computer games (over 110 of them, which was a surprise), all of my cans of spray stains (used for my cabinet touch up work) and a few comics.

Some books sold, but not all. So the rest will probably get donated to the library or hospital. The guy that bought some comics said he’ll probably be back tomorrow, and if he does I’ll see if he wants to make an offer for the whole lot. That way I don’t have to deal with it any more. Same with the guy who is interested in some of the crown molding I have. If he wants the rest of my cabinet supplies he can take em. If that happens I will be very happy.

Both Kathy & I had some fun too. A few of the people that stayed awhile were interesting to talk to and we had some good laughs with them. We were able to almost watch the entire Back to the Future trilogy before someone bought the tv too. ‘Junk faxes’. lol

I am walking like a 90 year old man though. I’m kinda beyond sore and into pain. So Kathy is going to massage the hurt away too. Coupled with some tylenol and I should be able to get a bit of sleep.

Here’s hoping tomorrow we sell everything else.

The best reason to have children

2010-08-13T23:29:00.001-07:00

I mean other than to have them do all the chores when they get older.

To mess with their minds.

Yes, this does mean I have my main computer back up and running. Fear the postings of Brad!

Garage sale starts in 6.5 hours and I wake up in 4.5 hours. I better get to bed.

The land of opportunity

2010-08-13T17:09:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has been bothering my wife is that the United States is supposed to be the ‘land of opportunity’, and people are supposed to come here rather than leave the country to find work. She has grown up hearing this, that everybody wants to come to America, its the best place on earth, equal opportunity for everyone if only you work hard enough. Politics aside, she’s taken a big hit to this worldview these past few years.

Almost everyone I talk to sort of has the same surprised reaction when I tell them I’m leaving the country to find work. They all suffer from that view that everybody should be coming here. Kathy & I have talked about how from a very early age they’ve been told the ‘US is number one’, ‘we are the best’, ‘this is the land of opportunity’, etc. But, a watermelon isn’t caviar no matter how many times you say it is. On an intellectual level people know that the US is in trouble, but deep down in the recesses of their brains all those years of indoctrination have taken hold and its hard not to listen to those voices.

When I’ve talked with my neighbours they get uncomfortable talking with me about this too. They have a hard time believing that Canada is doing better than the US is. It doesn’t help when I tell them Canadian banks have been held up as the model to the rest of the world on how to do business, that Canada has topped the G20 in growth for a few years running, and in fact has really been the only G20 country to show growth during these hard times. They are all wishing me the best, but I can tell its also not easy for them to think about this stuff.

So this is one of the things Kathy is having to deal with. Its not easy knowing she is leaving her beloved country to find a better opportunity elsewhere. Canada isn’t a lot different than the US culturally, the attitudes towards things are a lot different (like healthcare), but we are not that different. Who knows what Kathy would be thinking if we were moving to Russia to find work?!? ‘Didn’t we beat those guys?’ ‘I don’t want to live in Siberia.’ I’m going to live in a communist country?’ I think if we were to be moving there she’d flip.

One other thing that is bothering Kathy is her mother. Last night while a guy was looking at my comics her mother started in on her and said that she should have told me that she was going to stay here, and her mother told her that her doctor told her she should not live alone, and a few other things to pull at Kathy’s feelings of guilt. Kathy’s mom is obviously going to miss her and I don’t know if this is her way of expressing that (badly), or if she is really trying to guild Kathy into staying. Either way its very hard on Kathy and there were a lot of tears shed. I’ll be glad when we are on the road and at least that part will be over.

Deconstructing computers.

2010-08-13T15:31:00.001-07:00

So I am taking apart our computers now, and will put them back up later tonight (Hopefully). Our current computer desks will be in the garage sale. So off they go.

The biggest worry is if the MIL will keep her car outside the garage tonight. I need the room to put all the stuff we have in the garage.

But before I go I’m gonna leave you with some videos. Both are funny, but one is NSFW (or children). It contains nudity, but not pornographic.

First the funny making fun of Monty Python one.

Now for the NSFW one. (you may actually have to go to the original link as its gonna get cut off, I can’t resize it.)

Elave - Nothing to Hide
Uploaded by hushtoa. - Watch more comedy videos and sitcoms.

I like the commercial, I think its pretty cleaver and funny, but its not something we would ever see in NA. It was a web only ad, and then they did take it down.

Oh, what the hell, one more video. If you really want to know how messed up the pharmaceutical industry is in the US, watch this. Its pretty messed up.

So there ya go. Nuts eh?

I’m sore.

2010-08-12T23:01:00.001-07:00

My whole body aches. I guess these last two weeks have kinda caught up to me. All the packing and moving and stuff, not the greatest thing for me body. Kathy has been great in giving me massages which have really helped out. I know I am really glad that we’ll have a week that isn’t about packing or anything like that, it’ll just be relaxing. Making the final arrangements and getting things done.

Kathy worries that this is going to be too much for my body, and while I am sore I do believe I will live. When we get to Wpg I may need a week of sleeping to recover, but I’ll be ok.

Oddly enough though its not the lower back that is the major problem its almost everywhere else. I mean my lower back has been my main problem for around a decade now. Almost my whole spine is fused, from T1 to L4, its all fused. No bendy, no twisty, just held in place. Since my surgery in 1983 all of my spinal movement has been in a few lower vertebrae. The bad thing is this has pretty much caused the discs to deteriorate away to nothing and now my vertebrae are just grinding on each other and pinching nerves. Not a good thing at all.

Normally that area of my spine is just a mass of knots that Kathy massages away, and I could easily have a massage a day, and the next day more knots would appear. I joke that I could be the ‘massage dummy’ at a massage school. But even though those knots are still there, that’s not my worst area right now. Its mostly upper back.

The good thing is that Kathy’s massages do help out a lot and it usually segue into something even more fun.

[Cue cheesy video here]

Visit these other blog or God kills a kitten! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Moving stuff & garage sale

2010-08-11T21:46:00.001-07:00

Still in pain a bit, even though we’ve taken it easy the last few days. Obviously we did not get everything done by last weekend like I wanted to. Its the last little bit and so there is no huge rush, but I still want it done.

This weekend is our garage sale where I am going to try and sell about 50 PC games, and games going back into DOS days. So that’s not going to be easy. We have romance novels (Kathy’s) and my sci-fi books a 50” TV and some other odds and ends. I have a fair amount of cabinetry supplies kicking around, toe kick, quarter round, crown molding, a ton of brushed nickel knobs, sprays and other assorted stuff. I’m hoping shit ill sell, but I just don’t know. Its a risk and I’m really not one for risk.

I’ve had a few people start calling me already, and only one guy has now called me back. He may take all my comics, but he lives an hour away, so it would be a trip for him to come up here. So he’s not sure hat he’s going to do. I hope he buys them, but if not I’ll try and sell them at the garage sale and if nothing then, then I’ll just bring them along.

Same with the video games. What doesn’t sell comes with me. The books will get donated to the library if they don’t sell. Same with other odds and ends stuff. Find a place to donate them to.

We just found out Kathy’s brother is coming up on Saturday too, and probably in the morning. Which is kind of a waste and not a good thing really. If I’m out taking care of the garage sale that means Kathy is inside with her mother and two brothers, one of whom is an emotional roller coaster, you just never know which way he’s going. So I’m hoping they come in the afternoon.

Anyway, coming up to this weekend is gonna be stressful. Not looking forward to it.

The good news is that a lot of other things are getting organised. We ordered some rechargeable walkie talkies which should be here tomorrow. Since Kathy will be in the CRV and me in the u-haul we need some way to communicate. Plus I plan on giving them to my dad for him and his wife to use when they are RVing or boating. So its not a waste of a one time use.

I also got a portable speaker system for my MP3 player. I can’t believe how hard it is to find one that isn’t specifically for a Zune or an iPod. I picked up a Sony one that was small, snapped close and while no tthe best sound, wasn’t too bad. But then even with the MP3 player going full blast it wasn’t very loud and it started to skip the music. My guess it was trying to draw too much power from the MP3 player. So I returned it and ordered a battery powered one. The good thing about this one is that we can use it for our laptop afterwards too. Its speakers are dying and this will work nice. So again, not a single use waste of money.

Twelve days till we leave. I’m both excited and nervous at the same time. Kathy is just a rollercoaster of emotions. She laughs, she cries, she’s excited, she’s nervous. In other words, she’s acting just like woman normally does. :)

If you don’t go visit these other blogs, I swear I’m going to move to Canada! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Mother in Law VI: The Gardening

2010-08-10T17:46:00.001-07:00

I have to admit, I like the title. It sounds like a scary flick. Well its a scary life, but I thought I would say some of the good things about the MIL since I have trashed her before.

She gardens. And, she’s actually pretty good at it, although not as good as she thinks she is (weeds and grass growing in the garden). She has a lot of rose bushes that when they are flowering are really pretty, she also has a beautiful Wisteria in the front of the house.

The good stuff lies in the fruit trees she has.

That is from out fig tree. It produces a lot of figs and since Kathy loves them, she’s in heaven while they are in season. Those ones aren’t ripe yet, they go to a nice dark purple colour when ripe.

Next up is almonds. Last year we got about 6 bags full the size of the 5lb potato bags. This year it looks to be the same. The funny thing about the almonds is that Honey will grab ones that fall, shell them and eat the meat inside. Smart dog that one.

Then comes grapes. We have two older vines that produce quite a lot of grapes. They don’t get as big as those in the stores, but they sure are good. Usually the MIL puts bags over the grapes (to keep out birds), but for some reason this year she hasn’t. I hope they are going to be ready enough before we leave.

This is an apple tree that is supposed to have two kinds of apples on it, but so far only the golden delicious have come out.

We also have a pear tree, peach tree and newly planted an olive tree and a lemon tree, hopefully they will start producing next year. We also have the obligatory tomato and cucumber plants. All in all there is a lot of fruit in the garden, and its quite nice.

I wanted to try and grow a Chokecherry and Saskatoon berry tree, according to the MIL the soil is fine for them and the climate, while hot, should be ok if they are watered enough. I never did try though. If we were going to stay, I probably would have asked the MIL for some garden space.

The MIL also loves birds, which makes having bird dogs kinda a weird choice. Honey has gotten 11 birds so far. She also likes barking at the bird shadows in the morning. But the MIL has a few feeders out plus a bird bath she made herself. We also have some pretty hummingbirds come visiting as well.

That one doesn’t really show the beautiful colours we see too. It is fun to watch them fly around and chase off other hummingbirds. I saw one chase another away, then lie in wait hidden in a tree branch, just waiting for the other one to come back. Sure enough about a minute later it came back and headed straight for the feeder. The one in the branch took off like a shot and went directly for the other hummingbird. He chased it away again and finally went back and fed. Like I said very entertaining to watch.

Some other good news. Kathy went to talk with her mother about helping us out with the move. She had been delaying it because with her family you just never know how they’ll react. They could yell and scream and say nasty things, or they could be very nice and do what they can. Thankfully it was the latter today. Her mother is going to try and help, plus talk to her oldest son and see what he can do to help as well. So that is great news, I just hope she’ll follow through with it. Since we are short on what we need right now, I really hope she follows through.

I had 3 calls from things I advertised last night, one was for the 50” TV, another was for all my comics and the last call was for all my PC games, dvds and music. I talked with each one but no one has called back or come to look at the stuff. So a little disappointing. I hope the garage sale this weekend will see me selling some stuff. My biggest sellers may be water and pop though.

A nice article I found about what the best foods its cheaper to grow than buy.

*edit* Almost forgot this…

Visit the other sites doing the blog-a-day challenge. Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Mother-in-Law V

2010-08-09T15:46:00.001-07:00

So here is another mother-in-law story. It contains things that happened yesterday and today. Two days ago the MIL wasn’t talking to us, made it so the dog ran out into the street and overall was a pain in the ass.

Yesterday complete opposite. She was happy, she went out and bought my wife & I some nice steaks for dinner, talked to us about the move and saying it was a good thing, etc… She also seemed pleased that I’ve got an ‘assessment test’ planned for the first part of Sept for a good paying job.

Today she’s not happy with the move. I just took a quick nap and the wife came in crying because her mom was crying and saying she should not go. That’s its too cold, she’ll get sick, etc… So now my wife is stressing about this right now.

This is the kind of shit I have had to put up with. Being moody and not speaking to us, being happy and doing nice things, to playing games with my wife’s mind. I really have no clue what to believe with her. We know she lies to get her way, we’ve seen her do it with her two sons. She had told one of her sons that my wife wasn’t paying any mortgage at all and that she hadn’t ever. When she said that my wife had been paying the full mortgage and bills for 12 years straight. She’s recently said she should not have to pay for anything in the house, that we should pay for everything.

She’s not all bad, she has helped us out in the past and done some truly amazing things. But what is sad is it takes getting to the edge and just as we are falling over, she’ll help. Most of the time if we ask for help its either a no, or very reluctant or very little help. So it is out of character for her to help out, but she has helped.

For me its just hard to believe what is genuine or her playing games. And really this is why I am wanting us out of here, and actually into a different country, that way her family cannot try and control her, she’s too far away. Plus her family will have to help out with the house and not have it all rest on us. When we are able we will send down some money and help too, because I do think that is important, but I never want us to have the full load all on us again.

I can’t wait to get back to Canada and get away from this.

A little about me.

2010-08-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

Since this blogging challenge I have new people coming to my blogs, and I’m going to theirs and finding out some pretty cool stuff, but I figured I’d catch people up on some things about me. Mostly cause I can’t think of anything to write about today. Well other than my mother-in-law who is in one of her ‘moods’ again. Which is actually a good place to start, my mother-in-law.

She hates me. Quite literally she hates me, and since she lives with us, this makes for some fun times let me tell you. Here is one post I made about her, Mother-in-Law Part 1. Since that first one I’ve done 3 more, here, here and here. Today she hasn’t said a word to us, and when we were leaving in our car the neighbour points at the street as Ares had gotten out. The reason he got out was because the MIL didn’t close the back gate which allowed him to run out. That gate is always supposed to be closed for this very reason, she knows this. SO while Kathy took Ares back inside and to tell her mom to keep that gate shut, I went and closed the gate. When we got back to the car I asked Kathy what her mom said. ‘Nothing'. She just sat there.’ said my wife. I’m not sure what set her off today, maybe its because two old walkmans were left on the table, or because we left two boxes of old records in the Den. She hates a ‘mess’ she does. Or it could be because she is fucking insane. Take your pick, its probably both really.

I also wrote about me having Scoliosis, which I have had since birth. It has given me many challenges in my life, but its also made me who I am, and while I wish my back didn’t hurt so much, it is a part of what made me. I can’t complain about that. What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger right?

When we move back to Winnipeg we will be staying with my mother for a short while. My mother is a completely different person. I wrote one post about her. Is it any wonder why I am wanting to get out of here and back home? While my mother is a great person, I really do not intend to stay with her any longer than needed. She has her husband and they have their life, and Kathy & I want to finally have a place of our own where we can run around naked. Somehow I think my mother might disapprove of it if we did that in her house…

Oh… I finally got those extra pictures of Ares.

As you can see Ares and Honey are really close. Both of them are going to be sad when we leave.

To the dogs

2010-08-07T00:31:00.001-07:00

So I’m going to write about my dogs today. Why? I donno, cause I pretty much feel like it. We just did more packing and running around today. Got the CRV checked out and ready to go, I even got them to knock 10% off the bill, so not too bad. The mother-in-law stayed nice today and didn’t do anything annoying, so I really can’t bitch about her today.

So dogs it is today.

I’ll start off with Honey, who is a miniature Cocker Spaniel. We didn’t know she was going to be miniature when we got her, she just turned out that way. She’s very cute and knows it. She’ll look at you with those puppy dog eyes and your heart just melts. She uses this to full advantage when she wants something.

This is her just chilling out in the yard.

This is a common theme to see me with my puppies. I like sleeping, they like cuddling next to me while I sleep. And Kathy (my wife) likes taking pictures of me while I sleep.

I think my favourite picture of Honey and I.

A very common theme with Honey, she likes laying on top of me.

Of course Ares likes to get in the picture too. You should just be able to see his nose there. He is right behind me. Sometimes what happens is when I grab my pillow the dogs will jump up on the couch before I can get there. And with Ares he takes up a lot of room, so what I do is just get as much onto the couch as possible and lean against him. He doesn’t mind, he’s stayed there for hours before.

Ares is a Weimaraner, and a beautiful dog. We got him as a rescue from our neighbour because he was ignoring the dog completely, after spending a full month walking the dog and being a very proud owner of a Weimaraner, a dog he had wonted for ages. Then I guess he got bored and decided to leave the dog locked up in a very small area and never spending any time with him. Now these types of dogs HAVE to have human interaction or they will go crazy. Ares (they named him ‘Harley’ after the bike) had been howling every day for months, and at night too. My mother-in-law was ready to call the cops on them. But, they are friends of ours, even though some things they do really irritate us, but overall good people. He had talked about breeding Ares and then selling him, but he made no move to do either, so one day I just said that we wanted to buy him and what did he want for him?

So one day we brought him home on a leash and I took him to the back yard to visit our other 3 dogs. I kept him on the leash for about 20 minutes, walking him around the yard, letting him sniff things and get used to the place. The second I let him off the leash he took off running all around the yard. He was just so overjoyed at being able to run around, he was soooo happy. When he took off Honey was watching him for a few minutes just running around the yard and decided to join him. They were both fairly young at the time and the same age, so they took to each other like peanut butter and jam. They were immediate friends.

Here is a bigger picture of Ares.

I’ll have more pictures of Ares soon. Our email isn’t working and the wife has all the good pics on her comp.

Ares is the one we are taking back with us to Winnipeg, and leaving Honey with the mother-in-law. Honestly I’d rather take both dogs, but that’s simply not an option. Ares is a large dog and very protective of the house and us, I simply do not trust the MIL to make sure Ares is kept calm if people come over. I don’t want to get a phone call that he bit someone and had to be put down, cause of course it will somehow be magically our fault, the MIL is never wrong, nor is she ever at fault for anything. But, Ares will have a 2000 mile drive to deal with. It is going to be interesting to see what happens.

One more picture to end this. This is the ‘dog blanket’. Back when we had Bell (Cocker Spaniel) and Angel (Springer Spaniel) this was a very common sight in the colder weather.

I really miss Bell and Angel, both passed away this last year. Both dogs were super sweet and I was really attached to Bell. When I first came here she was really shy, didn’t really let anyone touch her for very long, if at all, but she should sit next to me as I read a book, and would then sleep in that exact spot every time when I took a nap. It was always a blessing to have her lay down next to you, cause it just wasn’t something she did often. But anytime my wife was in tears there she was to comfort my wife.

Angel was special too, she loved to play ball, loved cuddling and if she wanted your attention her paw would go on your leg. She was the one who wanted the most attention. She was a great puppy.

I’m going to really miss Honey too. While Ares is great and we love him to pieces, it just won’t be the same without Honey around. I know Ares is going to miss him too. Half of the wife’s crying jags about leaving are about missing Honey. So its going to be tough all around.

Visit the other sites doing the blog-a-day challenge. Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looing In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

What did I do today?

2010-08-06T00:31:00.001-07:00

(Be warned I got on a roll and could not stop)

Not that anyone cares, but since I have to write something, you’re going to get a peek into the innermost portions of my day. If you don’t like that, blame Cliff. Its all his fault.

I got a call today from my mother’s husband about a job in Winnipeg. I had already emailed my resume to a friend of theirs who works in MTS, and apparently she called them and told them about a job I had to apply for immediately. So that’s kind of how I woke up today, getting a call about a job. Considering I haven’t had a job in two years this isn’t a bad way to wake up. This friend of theirs actually sent my resume to a few people in MTS, so I may have a few ways in, but we’ll see. They starting pay is really good, and hopefully its a good stepping stone to move elsewhere in the company.

After I did the online application we headed out to Target to find some portable speakers for my MP3 player (Samsung YP-U2J). An older one and considering most of the portable speakers I can find are compatible with the iPod or Zune, I donno if I’m gonna be able to find a set. I thought that if it fits in a headphone jack it should work, but now I’m not so sure. (If anyone knows if this set will work, let me know…)

On the way home we stopped at Honda to get an appointment to get the car checked up and fluids changed, so that is done for our trip. I also changed the wipers as ours were about 4 years old and nasty. (I know this is riveting information)

After that it was making phone calls to change the address on my This Old House magazine, and a few other odds and ends. I love that mag. I really love the last page “save this old house’, where you can find a house that is about to get demolished and hopefully someone sees it and saves it. If I had no worries about money I’d go around fixing up old houses myself and learning how to do everything. I’d probably contract out some of the work, but do some myself. I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to doing projects, so it takes me longer, but when its done it looks damned good and its not going to fall apart either.

The last few days we’ve also had a bit of a scare because Ares got sick. He wasn’t eating or drinking. Monday night he spent the entire night outside laying in the garden. I thought for sure we were going to lose him that night. I figured he was doing what some animals will do when they are dying and finding a place to die in. So it was a tough night. First thing the next morning we took him to the vet and they did some tests and what it seems to have been was just some stomach problems, and while very uncomfortable for him, not life threatening. He’s doing better, but is on a bland diet, which means chicken and rice. Except the mother-in-law seems to think he’s fine and wants to feed him his regular food.

Cliff has read some of my earlier work where I talk about the MIL, and she’s one crazy lady. She just ‘knows’ things and decides that’s what is best. It doesn’t matter if she has no bloody clue at all, she just ‘knows’ and therefore its reality for her. The problem is we’ve lost dogs and spent many thousands of dollars on vet bills because she ALWAYS gives the dogs food from her plate, every meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. It makes me so mad to think about it, but nothing we have said makes any difference, she keeps doing it. I can’t express my feelings enough about how glad I am to get away from that shit. I know its a sore spot with Kathy being in between us, but 9 years in a house with a MIL that hates me is far more than enough.

Ok… Calm the angst down…

What I’m currently doing is filling up my old MP3 player with music, and since I have to actually listen to a bit of the song before I know it its been 2 hours now and I still have 1.3 gigs left in my 2 gig player. Kathy is liking this though. She’ll get all smiley or start crying depending on the song. On one song a memory came up that she used to follow hot guys around in her car. Oh God, more confirmation she’s a stalker.

OK, I think this is far too long. Cliff… This counts as like 4 days posting right?

Thoughts of children and labour…

2010-08-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

One of the other bloggers (Janine) in the blog a day challenge wrote yesterday about how Child Labour is Awesome, which was really about the bonding experience she is having with her child washing her car, and how she bonded with her father doing projects with him. I know that my parents had me and my two brothers doing a lot of chores around the house, and some times I figured that was the reason they had us, cheap labour.

So being the weirdo that I am I figured I would discuss the pros and cons of child labour. Is having a baby for the purpose of using the child to make home life easier, really that cost effective? I’m not going to go all scientific, or break down the numbers, I’m far too lazy to do the research for that. But what I am going to do is go through a list of pros and cons of hiring a maid for 18 years vs having a child and getting them to do chores.

Children:

PROS	CONS
When they are not doing chores you can play with them	It takes around 5 years before you can really start to get any work out of them (they are lazy bastards until then)
You can do chores with them to bond and have fun with them	You have to teach them how to do it, plus keep an eye on them to make sure its done properly
You can yell at them and they can’t quit, they have to stay in the home	There is a ‘breaking in’ period. Literally. They break things.
When they get older you can withhold allowance to make sure they do the chores	You have to pay for room, board, clothes, school supplies, and then pay them to do the chores
Teaches them responsibility	They throw temper tantrums usually about not doing chores
They’re yours for life	You can’t fire them

Maids:

PROS	CONS
When they are not working, you ‘may’ be able to ‘play’ with them	Sexual harassment lawsuits
No need to train them	You still need to check and make sure they are doing the job
No need to do the work with them, just sit back and relax	If you yell at them they may quit and walk out
No need to feed, clothe, put a roof over their head, buy them school supplies or wipe their nose if they get a cold	Sick days, vacations. Days you’ll have to do the work yourself
Maid ‘uniforms’	Sexual harassment lawsuits
After they are done work they go away	You may have to go through a few before you find the right one
No complaining about work (to your face)	If they get injured they may sue
You can fire them

So there ya go. The Pros and Cons of child labour vs a maid. Make your decision wisely folks.

Visit the other sites doing the blog-a-day challenge (now updated!!). Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looing In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

A shout out to my fans.

2010-08-04T03:23:00.000-07:00

I have recently come to realise I have been ignoring the people that come to my blog. So please accept my most heartfelt apologies. I shall try and do better in the future. Some of you guys have been here almost from the beginning of my foray into attempting to write this blog. You even stayed around and waited during the times when I simply didn’t post anything at all, and you’ve stuck around to this point.

I’m going to try and make this blog more fun for all to read and I hope you’ll stick around further. At least this next month there should be more posts, well at least until I am on the road and then we’ll see if I can find some wifi to post some pics and a trip diary. It should be interesting since we are taking a 100lb weimaraner with us, and driving 2000 miles. Yeah that’s gonna be fun.

But back to my fans. I may not always understand what you are saying, but you always come in with a comment. I just want to let you know I acknowledge your dedication in coming to my humble blog. Thank you!

Here’s to you Chinese spammers!

Visit the other sites doing the blog-a-day challenge. Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am.

I’m in pain.

2010-08-03T03:28:00.000-07:00

Yes that’s right. I’m in pain. Not only because Cliff roped me into this post a day contest, which to be honest is gonna be hard for me, but should be interesting as well. But, I was talking about pain. I am FINALLY moving back to Canada! Yes that’s right, the 9 (<- and yes I’m counting that number as a word Cliff) long years of hell is finally coming to an end. I shall finally be free of the mother-in-law, which is awesome. But that still doesn’t cover the pain.

The wifey and I are packing up to move, and I have been going up and down a ladder carrying heavy shit down from above. Then unpacking, and repacking all the stuff we are going to take with us. So far we are getting rid of 5 boxes of books, 4 boxes of video games (the list is here if you are interested to take a look) and other odds and ends. Not everything is packed up yet either. That video game list only shows the big box DOS/95/98 games, not the smaller boxed newer games. A list of those is going to be made tonight, if I can move.

Yes now we get to the pain. All this bending over, picking stuff up, and moving it has really messed up my back. Its achey and sore. The wifey says today is a rest day, but the sooner I get this done the better off I’ll be. I have to build some shelves before I go, and I want our closets empty for when I do it. Plus I have a garage sale to plan for too.

This will now be the second time I am moving more than 2000 miles. I do not recommend it. Vancouver to Wpg was nothing compared to this.

Visit the other sites doing the blog-a-day challenge. Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am. Cliff has a lot to answer for.

Dealing with homosexual Nazis

2010-07-29T15:47:00.001-07:00

I have no idea what this guy is on, but I sure don’t want any.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Gay Reichs

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

While not directly related to the above foolishness it kind of does as it makes fun of the same type of people (idiots, and people who should not be allowed to procreate).

Free Dune II beatches.

2010-07-27T16:26:00.001-07:00

http://duneii.com/

Not gonna get StarCraft 2? Sick of the hype? Upset about no LAN support? Or just don’t give a fuck? If any of those apply, go old school and get Dune II for FREE! Just go to the above link and do to the downloads section (why do I have to tell you that?) and download it. Its bloody FREE!

You’ll probably also have to clear up a lot of space on your HD cause its fairly big. I mean if you have Civ, Wing Commander, and a few other games you’ll definately need to free up some space. I mean WC is 20MB! Who has that much extra space? Really. But Dune II is a whopping 5mb, maybe not as big as WC, but still pretty big.

OK, I do admit that the voices for the intro are fucking pathetic, but the game is pretty good.

Your battle for Dune begins…

Now!

Group of Asian comedians demonstrate how English people behave in Indian restaurants

2010-07-26T00:13:00.001-07:00

‘What’s the blandest thing on the menu?’ lol

Pretty funny.

Movie reviews if done by Brietbart

2010-07-23T00:01:00.001-07:00

• Huckleberry Finn: Affirmative action sends ungrateful black man on river cruise, using lib-approved child labor. (via)
• 2001: An intelligent computer heroically stops wasteful government spending on space exploration. (via)
• Little Rascals: Juvenile delinquency caused by having black friends. Also, where's Buckwheat's birth certificate? (via)
• Aladdin: Swarthy thief flees jail, abducts princess, kills trusted advisor & performs coup d'etat. (via)
• Black men stole the rock and roll sound from Marty McFly!!! (via)
• MLK's famous speech: "I have a dream that my nation will not be judged by character." (via)
• Inglorious Basterds: Deranged Jewish woman murders innocent moviegoers (via)
• The Lord of the Rings: Through grit, working class Hobbits take back 'their' Middle America from colored Orcs (via)

For more on Twitter… #IfAndrewBrietbartEditedIt

Hilarious.

Colliding black holes, parallel universes, UFOs, and more…

2010-07-19T16:12:00.001-07:00

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is awesome. Its about an hour and a half long, but well worth the watch. The first little bit is just intros which you can skip to, but only until the woman gets up as she introduces Dr. Tyson with some videos.

A Class Divided

2010-07-18T15:33:00.001-07:00

This is pretty interesting, and its about a woman in the 60’s and 70s doing racism experiments on children. She was all over the television and there were documentaries made about her. He name was Jane Elliot.

Here is the Frontline documentary on what she did.

How to disprove evolution. With peanut butter!

2010-07-11T01:38:00.001-07:00

Every time I open up a new jar of peanut butter, I’m gonna look for new life now. Just to prove these guys wrong!

Please tell me these people don’t breed…

Cliff, this one’s for you

2010-06-29T16:22:00.001-07:00

John Cleese Soccer vs Football.

Satire or real? You decide.

2010-06-29T15:06:00.001-07:00

I don’t care, this is bloody funny either way.

Why privatizing national security is a bad idea

2010-06-28T22:55:00.001-07:00

Blackwater/Xe is getting off, again, of doing illegal shit. Obama says he won’t charge them with violating Sudan sanctions. Instead they are going to face a fine.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100627/wl_mcclatchy/3548656

Now these are the same guys who stole 500 AK47 meant for the Afghanistan militia, by signing for them ‘Eric Cartman’.

Blackwater has done a ton of shit we know about, and most likely a ton of shit we don’t know. Iraq kicked all Blackwater/Xe employees out of the country because of the amount of shit they were doing, and the US never held them to task for it. Letting them get away with it seems to be the US’s MO right now. In fact not only letting them get away with it, but profiting from it as well, they just got hundreds of millions of dollars worth of new contracts.

Now this gets me to thinking why are they doing this? Well one of the things they have been doing is a lot of hush hush shit for the CIA, stuff the US probably does not want to get out into teh public. So will Blackwater/Xe EVER face criminal charges? Probably not. They could set off a nuke and get away with it because they are in a position to hold the US government over a barrel.

This is why privatizing your national security is a bad idea.

America, why it sucks

2010-06-26T15:53:00.001-07:00

Just go read Fraud: America's New Watchword and see the shit happening here in the great country of the United States of America.

I can’t get out of here fast enough.

Canada has its own problems, but it ain’t the steaming pile of shit that is the US. Its gonna come crashing down at some point, and I don’t wanna be here when it does.

Oh yeah, the wifey had it out with her mother again today, who was complaining she didn’t have any money. Since we have $18 to last us two weeks, I don’t think she should be complaining. She also told my wife last week that we should be paying for everything and that she should not have to pay for anything at all. She’s blaming the wife and I for everything that has gone wrong. Fun stuff in our household right now. Yay.

Very cool building in NY

2010-06-17T16:41:00.001-07:00

So there’s this building in New York that has been vacant for at least a decade, with much of its interior blocked off since the 40’s. Recently a film location scout was given access to it and took some pictures. The architecture is really cool.

I’m glad the current owners are going to bring this old building back to its prime and not just gut and modernize.

If money were no object and I could do what I wanted without worry I’d go around buying up old houses and buildings and restoring them.

Oh those wacky Koreans and their swearing.

2010-06-15T17:28:00.001-07:00

Funny Gaga all male a cappella

2010-06-06T16:53:00.001-07:00

On the Rocks is the University of Oregon's premiere all male a cappella ensemble.
Official Website: www.uoontherocks.com

Pretty talented, and this video is pretty funny. I do wonder what Gaga thinks of all the funny videos of her songs.

This is all Cliff’s fault

2010-05-28T17:57:00.001-07:00

I’m just sayn.

So this is my first blog post in a long time, mostly because I’ve been spending my time over on this other site I run with Cliff. www.thedrmnews.com He’s been doing the vast majority of the writing, even more so lately, mostly because I have the attention span of a gnat right now. I’m angry and full of angst and anxiety, and I don’t really know why, and its made it so I can’t write for shit lately, nor can I play games, or do much of anything for very long. If I play a game for 30 minutes straight thats pretty good right now, and its been that way for a long time now. It used to be I could play games for hours and not get bored, now I can barely stand it.

So Cliff said I should write on my blog again and do a rant as its cathartic. If you’ve ever been to Cliff’s site (www.peerpressureworks.com) you might understand where he comes from on this. His sarcasm-laced posts are a wonder to behold. Its really quite amazing actually. How he wealds scorn like a rapier. So he has a lot of experience in cathartic writing it seems. So here I am, writing on my dead blog again.

But what do I rant about? I mean I don’t even know why I am angry. Should I be mad at Republicans? Should I be mad at Democrats? Americans? Non-Americans? The letter ‘Z’? Which is pronounced ‘zed’, not ‘zee’. Unless its in a name, like ZZ Top, its not ‘Zed Zed Top’ after all.

I suppose I could blame my mother in law, thats always a good reason. We had it out a few months ago where I finally snapped and started swearing at her. I suppose after 8 years of having to deal with her shit on a daily basis snapping is ok. She actually made as if to hit me a few times. I found that quite amusing really, but at the time I was actually shaking in anger. I’m a laid back guy, it did take 8 years to finally snap after all (I’d bet a UI cheque someone else couldn’t last a month. I’m looking at you Cliff.) , and I don’t like it that I snapped. I don’t like it that I’m angry now. The mil is always in the background with this air of disapproval no matter what we do. I’ve stopped mowing the front lawn, I’ve stopped even getting up early too. Basically I’ve finally stopped giving a shit if she gets mad or not, cause I just don’t care anymore. It used to be that I tried to keep the peace by helping out, or getting up early (not having a job means I don’t really have to get up at any one time).

We recently told my wife’s family we are moving back to Canada. Everybody except the mil is happy about that. She now makes comments to my wife about how she isn’t ‘built’ for cold weather, and other odd things like that. She’ll grab my wife by the shoulders and look her in the eyes and tell her not to move. Its messing with my wife’s head, cause she starts to feel guilty about ‘abandoning’ her mother. This is one thing that is annoying me I suppose. Its the pressure we both feel from her mother about this.

As I am writing this she is sitting in the kitchen behind me eating her dinner. She just asked me what my wife & I are going to eat, I said ‘chicken’, and then she asked if I was going to cook it. She did that because we had Kraft Dinner (mac & cheese) for breakfast/lunch and she got upset we didn’t have bacon and eggs. She’s ‘watching’ the bacon to see if we eat any. Yeah, thats the shit I live with.

We also have the mortgage modification going on right now. We’ve made our three payments and are now waiting to see what happens. I suppose I should be hopeful, but I’m more stressed. Everything rides on this going through, if not, we be fucked, and I am trapped here longer. Which I suppose is where I am really stressed out about. I’m trapped in a crazy country with a crazy mother-in-law, no job, no future, everything is falling apart and we have nothing left to fight it all with. No money and no energy. My health is shit too, so me getting back to Canada is a high priority so I can finally go see a doctor about some of my long standing issues.

All I really want to do is move back to Canada, find work, get healthy and live a normal life. I’m not after a Rolls Royce, nor a million dollars, I just want a normal life where my wife & I can enjoy ourselves. For the entirety of our marriage we have not had that. Thats my dream right now and while moving back to Canada is so close, it seems so far away too.

Cliff… Yeah, didn’t seem to help much cathartic-wise. My blood pressure is up again cause now you made me think of all this shit.

This is all your fault.

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons Part III

2009-12-03T20:32:00.001-08:00

(Intro and Parts I & II linked at bottom)

Catalina Erantzo Journal entries for the ship ‘Rebellion’.

June 8, 1522 – Lisbon. Lisbon sucks for Silk Cloth and Cheese prices. Tell me why I decided to try trading again? I think piracy is starting to look better and better..

Apparently the King of Spain is upset I took a ship. He said something about my ‘head on a pike’, which I find really strange. How can I explain my actions if my head is on a pike? I think ruling families should stop inbreeding, obviously its effecting their smarts.

June 9, 1522 – Lisbon. I ran into a trader at the tea house who was in his cups. I think he was dinking more than tea. He was easy to get information out of. After talking with Emilio last night, he said we need funds to repair, refit and eventually build our own, more powerful ships. So we’ll try this trading this out some more, I suppose it will be good to help train up sailing skills among our navigators as well.

Just before sailing I heard a rumour the Spanish Fleet was headed this way. So I moored my recent ‘acquisitions’ and also made sure I kept on my flagship the navigators I wasn’t too sure about their loyalty. I’m going to continue the planned trade route and see what happens.

June 13, 1522 – Bordeaux. Traded Rock Salt, bought Raisins. Also sold that Silk Cloth I bought. Didn’t make much profit on it, but it made more room in my hold for other stuff.

June 14, 1522 – Open ocean. Discovered Nantes.

June 17, 1522 – London. I hope no one recognizes me. I think a few of those British Naos look a little too familiar. Sold Raisins, bought Wool.

June 19, 1522 – Amsterdam. Sold Wool, bought Iron Ore and Glass Beads.

I’m beginning to think this whole ‘Spanish Fleet’ rumour was just some trick played on me. I hate humanity.

June 22, 1522 – Open ocean. Had a close call with the Spanish Fleet. Thankfully fog was our friend and we were able to slip away. Faith in humanity restored.

June 27, 1522 – Lisbon. Sold Iron Ore for a nice profit, bought Rock Salt. Pulled the Caravel Redonda out of mooring, I’m giving Alonzo a shot at commanding a ship. He’ll probably run it aground in the middle of the ocean.

June 29, 1522 – Madeira. Alonzo didn’t run aground! Shocking I know. Madeira is a nice island, ugly women though. The men are complaining. Sold Glass Beads for a huge profit. Obviously the natives are not too bright. Maybe they are part of the Spanish Royal family? Bought Sugar.

July 3, 1522 – Open ocean. Oh Shit! The Spanish Fleet found me! Not a good sign. Alonzo takes off, the coward! See if I ever give him a reference! After a few broadsides we were able to get away. Trap! Another fleet is coming up fast! Its Commander Ezequiel’s fleet! His flagship, the Santa Cruz, is signaling that if I surrender that I’ll get a ‘special pardon’, but what about Emilio and the crew? I think I shall bravely run away!

Surrounded! Blast it! This is it. My brother and fiancé will go unavenged. Emilio and the crew are behind me, we’ll go down fighting. All hands prepare to be boarded! What’s that? Their ships are breaking apart. My God! Fire!

Fire has spread to a few ships. They’re breaking off! They’re fleeing! What a relief! Boson! Take that man’s name! What’s he on about wreckage? What am I some environmentalist who wants to keep the ocean clean for the fishes? Hrmmmm. A Spanish officer? Well bring him aboard then. We can always kill him later. Well well well, Apparently this is the arson. Andreas Paella is his name.

He looks oddly familiar… Hey! He’s the vagabond sailor we met at the tea house in Seville. The one who encouraged us to go on with this venture! Strange to see him in the uniform of a Spanish officer. Apparently he knew my fiancé at school and wants to help. I’m still not sure, but since Alonzo the coward ran off, I’m short a navigator. I’m sleeping with a dagger under my pillow tonight though.

Introduction to New Horizons AAR

New Horizons Part I

New Horizons Part II

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons Part II

2009-11-28T18:44:00.001-08:00

(Intro and Part I linked at bottom)

Catalina Erantzo Journal entries for the ship ‘Rebellion’.

May 17,1522 9:30 am – Left Seville, Spain under cloudy circumstances. Ok…. I stole a ship. Not a big one! Well ok, maybe it was a big one. What was I supposed to do? The damned Franco family of Portugal killed my brother and fiancé! Besides, it was only one ship, its not like they are going to miss it.

10:30 am – Well apparently they count the ships in harbour. Who knew? My First Mate, Emilio, saw some guards pointing at us and running to the Commander’s office as we ‘test sailed’ this new Galleon. Maybe I should have picked an older model?

12:30am – As we sailed out of the Rio Guadalqulvir we discovered Ceuta! So that’s where it is! Considering my navigation skill and that its only a two day sail away, I would have thought I would have known where it was, but apparently not.

May 20, 1522 – Docked in Lisbon, Portugal. The lion’s den. After storming up to the Franco residence it was quietly mentioned to me it might not be such a good idea at this time. Something about ‘training’, ‘proof’, blah blah blah…

Took a mission at the guild to deliver a letter to Genoa. Seven hundred gold. I have no idea if this is even going to cover expenses, but if it doesn’t me and this old man are going to have a ‘talk.

May 24, 1522 – Open sea. Discovered Palma, Majorca. Looks like a shithole.

May 28, 1522 – After and 8 day sail we entered Genoa. Delivered mail. I was told I had to sail BACK to Lisbon to get paid. I am not happy. No one has heard of Cash on Delivery?

Picked up a rookie navigator named Alonzo Orieda who begged to come along.

May 28, 1522 – Sailed into Pisa and picked up 20 lots of silk cloth. I need to bring in some money somehow to build up a bigger fleet and trading seems a good way to do that.

Picked up another navigator named Miguel Solis. Seems a solid type. Orieda is annoying.

May 30, 1522 – Discovered Algiers. Another shithole. I think the dysentery has dysentery.

June 3, 1522 – I sailed, I saw, I conquered. Off the Cape of Trafalgar I spotted a British merchant fleet. In my single Spanish Galleon I took on these 5 ships and won! I captured 3 ships (Nao, Carrack, Caravela Redonda), while 2 escaped (both Naos). I bet this astounding victory will be remember for centuries as the brave battle where one Spanish ship destroyed an English fleet!

One ship was carrying a large cargo of cheese (thank you God it wasn’t Limburger cheese). Hmmm. Spending money to buy goods and potentially lose money trading, or ‘liberating’ cargo and capturing ships. I think I need to think about this some more.

June 8, 1522 – After some difficulty with my new ships I sailed into Lisbon harbour again. This might be a good place to set up our headquarters. This will also give me a chance to hire out some people to keep an ear out for gossip I need.

Finished the mail mission. Apparently holding a knife to the old man’s throat means we are banned from Woolworth's. I’m not sure if its just that one or all of them. Emilio thinks its all of them.

Introduction to New Horizons AAR

New Horizons AAR Part I

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons Part I

2009-11-25T20:38:00.001-08:00

My name in Inigo Montoya, you killed my father! Prepare to… No no no. Wait! That’s not it! *sigh* Oh God, this is going to be one of those days isn’t it?

My name is Catalina Erantzo and I am a pirate. I didn’t start out that way it just sort of happened. Shall I tell you my story? Well gather round children and I shall tell you my tale.

One fine spring day in 1522 I was walking towards the harbour in Seville to see if anyone at the dockyard had heard anything about my brother and fiancé's fleet. It was overdue and I was starting to get worried. It was common for other fleets to be late, but not with my brother Michael’s fleet. He was a fine navigator and sailor and was always able to edge a few extra knots that others couldn’t. Growing up I learned a lot about sailing from him and using that knowledge was able to get into the Spanish Navy, even though women were not usually allowed on ships. The navy was where I met my fiancé Hernan, who taught me everything he knew about gunnery. Ah… Hernan, I can almost feel that long gun he was so proud of… I mean… Never mind! Stop being so nosy!

As I neared the docks a messenger comes to me and tells me I am summoned to Commander Ezequiel’s office. Hopefully word has been heard about the fleet! As I enter the Commander's office I know something is not right. Both the Commander and Lt. Emilio Sanude, my fiancé's best friend are there looking very troubled. Commander Ezequiel cuts to the quick and tells me the fleet is lost, wreckage has been found and he hands me Michael’s saber. I am in shock, I can’t believe it and I demand to know more, but there is no more news to be had. Lt. Sanude tells me to meet him at the tea house when I am able.

After aimlessly wandering around Seville, and after getting into a fight with a drunken sailor, thrashing a small boy begging for food and kicking a stray dog I head to the tea house. Lt. Sanude is waiting there for me. He’s tall, well build and handsome in a rugged way. If you like older men with a mustache that looks like a cats tail has been nailed there. As he tells me he is not going to rest until he finds out what happened to the fleet by asking at every town his fleet sails into, we overhear a few people speculating about what happened to my brother’s fleet. One said the fleet was attacked by giant sea monsters and another said that he had heard it was the Portuguese Duke Franco’s battle fleet that did it.

After hearing that I stormed back into the Commander’s office and demanded what he was going to do with this new information. ‘Nothing’ he said. Nothing? I could not believe my ears! I demanded a fleet to go and punish the Portuguese for daring to attack a Spanish fleet like this. Afraid that would provoke a war I was denied. I stormed back to the tea house to see Lt. Sanude chatting up the local whore and I promptly broke her nose. I told him he has no time for that we have to figure out what to do! Sitting down at a table he said he didn’t know what else we could do. Overhearing us was a man who was dressed in fine clothes, that looked as if they’d been worn for 5 years straight, but he said we should not give up and we should find proof that the Franco’s killed my brother and fiancé. After this masterstroke of genius I told Lt. Sanude to meet me by the docks.

An hour later I snuck up behind him as he was looking for me and put my gun to his back. You have a ship, I told him and I want it. He looked a quite shocked at this, then calmed down and asked me if I really meant that I would steal his ship. I am going to get proof that Franco’s behind all this and then take care of him myself I told him. He looked me in the eye and told me to put away the gun, he is with me, but if I am to do this, I am to be in charge, he will be First Mate, but not Captain. He even said there ‘may’ be some ‘leftover’ gold bars from the New World that ‘might’ have been stashed away to help us finance this little operation. I put away the gun and smiled.

We shook hands and he told me to call him Emilio, and I said he could call me Captain.

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons

2009-11-24T20:54:00.001-08:00

Ok, I haven’t been updating like I should, so here is what I’m going to start doing. There are things called AARs, which means ‘After Action Report’. This is a story based around video games, but that is not part of the video game story line. Its something you write to have and share with others. So this is what I’m going to do.

I’m going to use an old console game called Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons from the SNES. Its a great old game that has six different storylines you can play separately. If you have a Nintendo Wii, it is available to download for 800 Wii points ($8.00), I would highly suggest picking it up. More info on the game can be found here.

The story I am going to follow is this one:

Catalina Erantzo is a Spanish naval officer who believes her beloved and her brother were both murdered by the Portuguese armada. Vowing revenge she turns to a life of piracy and soon becomes a red haired scourge of the seas.

Its the only female lead character and I’m giving her a nice and heavy sarcastic side. In the time the game is set at (1522) any woman that might have been a crew member would have been pretty tough, so that’s the direction I am going. While there are storylines I have never played, this is one I have played, but never finished, so I am going to start here.

Hopefully I can stick to a schedule of an addition every 2-3 days. I’ll throw in some more mother-in-law stories, since my wife seems to like those. lol

*edit* One thing to note is that there is a lot of geographical license taken in the game, and you are able to spot cities there is no way in hell of you spotting in real life, from the distances involved. Sailing times are also wildly off. So that's fair warning. I’m going off the game, not real life.

A few cool things

2009-11-16T23:46:00.001-08:00

Just a few of the things I’ve seen over the past few days that have caught my eye.

This girl has smarts! I wonder if she’s available for adoption?

Now this, this is not only cool in how it works, but a damned good thing to do.

Could our energy independence be far behind?

This could change automobiles.

Now I donno what people think about global warming or anything else, and really it doesn’t matter. I don’t think too many people would willingly live right next to a coal fired power plant, regardless of their views on global warming. If that’s the case I simply do not understand people fighting against making things cleaner for our environment. These last two links are pretty cool. I hope they end up working out, cause that would be great. Anything so we are not so beholden to foreign nations (oil) for our own national security.

Just sayin.

In Flanders Fields

2009-11-11T15:09:00.001-08:00

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

I remember back in elementary school every Rememberance Day (Veterans Day) that we would all pile into the gym and sit through a recitle of the above. If possible we had Vets come and speak to us as well. Its stuck with me these many long years later.

Thank you to all the Vets from every country who have signed on the dotted line to serve and protect your country.