Conflict of dis-interest

alright… before I really start, let me say that I have had some wine and may not be my usual witty (or coherent) self.

Today is my least favorite day of the year

luckily it is almost over.

the reason it is my least favorite day of the year is because this is the birthday of my biological father.

I always stop and think today…. should I reach out and wish a happy birthday? should I be the bigger man?

but then I realise…. int he last 365 days, I have not heard anything about him, or from him, and I am ok with that.

besides… why should I be the bigger man in this… he is my friggin father after all.

I am about to say something here that I am sure will be used against me at some point by my darling sister

It pains me that I don’t have contact with my father.

I mean, really it shouldn’t and after she praised me for being so “strong” in this, I should take that and run.

but I always thought I was better than him.

but really… I am avoiding him as much as he avoids me… so really… we are the same in that

I really hate this day.

hopefully tomorrow is better.

this post is a test of blogging via the cell phone

so it has been pointed out to me that i am really bad for updating my blog. since i have been reading on the bus instead of carrying the laptop, updating the blog has totally slipped my mind.

needless to say, if i decide that this works well, i may continue to use it

an update is coming

seriously…. it is…… and it will be big….. and impressive….. and massively earth shattering……

I like the weekends

I must say, this weekend was a good one, even though both the wife and I were not feeling well. Saturday was pretty much taken up with grocery shopping, but then it was off to a friend’s birthday party.

Our friends Ryan and Lorraine threw a birthday bash for Lorraine, and decided to go with a wine tasting theme. Everyone was asked to bring a bottle of their favourite wine, and we all shared. It was nice being able to try a lot of wines that we normally wouldn’t buy.  There were a lot of different red wines there so we were able to sample ones we hadn’t had before.

I am really starting to like red wine. I never did before, but out of all of the wines that we tried, there was really only 1 that I didn’t particularly like. It had an acidic bite that didn’t really sit well with me. I think in the future, that may be a party that we would hold though.

Sunday, we didn’t do near as much as we planned. With not feeling well, we didn’t get nearly as much of the outside work done as we thought we could. We still have to finish winterizing the yard. The water barrel is still like half full. With it about to start dropping below zero this week at nights, we will have to empty it pretty fast.

Now for the week at hand. It is only a 3 day week for me as I decided to take an extra long weekend next weekend. But it promises to be a busy one. If all goes according to plan, I should be getting my 9 month probationary review today. I can’t believe it was already 9 months since I was converted over from being a contractor to a regular employee. But I think a 9 month probation is a little on the extreme side. I suppose it does give them a greater amount of time to determine if the person s really the kind of person that they want in their organization.

So one of three things can happen in this meeting today, either I am told I am good, and am taken off probation, I am told I need to get better, and have 3 months more probation tacked on, or I am told I suck and get a pink slip. Of course, I am quite confident that it will be the first option. There have been no issues that would leave me to believe that the other two options are even a remote possibility.

I mean seriously, with the amount of extra work I have taken on, they couldn’t possibly say I haven’t been doing what is needed. I also thing that there is a good enough rapport with myself and my team lead/manager that they would tell me if there was something I needed to work on at any particular time.

I am of course writing this on the bus on the way into work, so when I actually get to posting it, I will know what the results of the evaluation are.

All I can hope for I guess is to no longer be on probation,,, and maybe a raise, that would be nice.

Other things to look forward to:

• This weekend is thanksgiving which of course means turkey dinner.
• Monday we are going to the corn maze with Ryan and Lorraine, should be fun
• this weekend is a 5 day weekend for me
• I get to wear jeans to work all week because I paid to support our charity event

Insert Post Title Here… because I am too lazy to think of one.

I am not quite sure what I want to write about today, so this post may be a little more random than most. Not that previous posts have exactly been structured or anything.

We picked up a new computer bit recently, the My Book World Edition II Network attached storage (NAS) device. Basically in a nutshell it is a File Server that will allow the Wife and I to put all of our important files on a 1 Terabyte drive that backs itself up onto a second 1 Terabyte Drive using a Raid 1 configuration. This of course will mean that all of our music and media will be centrally located and accessible from all of the computers on our home network.

I started the process of moving our files over yesterday and have made it as far as the media files and various installers I had on my desktop computer.  Pretty soon we will have everything in there. Nice thing about it is I have my own folder on there, and the Wife has hers, and we have a common folder.

When you look at the specs on it, it is pretty much a small linux box. I am wondering if it would be a good idea to hack into it and make it do other things it wasn’t originally designed to do. Stuff like using it for a print server as well, that way I can use my printer from the laptop easier.

When everything is said and done, I must say that we will have a pretty sweet little home network. The only thing that will be missing is a device (be it a computer or otherwise) that will allow us to watch downloaded movies on our projector. I am sure there are numerous options out there, I will have to do some research into which one I choose.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of TV to watch. Monday, we watched 1 show then played Lego Batman for the rest of the night. Yesterday, we watched 1 show and I spent the rest of the evening configuring our NAS. The PVR is sitting at about 30% full right now.

That is certainly one of the nice things about having the PVR. There is no such thing as a missed show for us anymore. We set up the series we want to watch and it just records them when they are on. The only drawback to this is that we find that in general we watch a lot more TV. The upside of course is that it is TV that we want to watch.

Currently we are actively watching Chuck, Survivor, Terminator, House, Bones, CSI Miami, CSI, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and Heros. I am sure there are more in there, but since I don’t have the PVR screen in front of me and I don’t feel like thinking about it much, that is pretty much the list.

I am currently contemplating whether or not to record the leaders debate tomorrow. I think I have already pretty much decided who I am going to vote for. There seems to be some rather strong thoughts in my head when I think about the big 3 parties.

Conservatives: I trust em as far as I can throw em.
Liberals: No Thank You.
NDP: they seem to have some pretty good ideas in terms of social programs, but they don’t seem so strong on the country’s economical growth

All in all, I like the NDP Platform though. There are some parts of course that don’t really apply to me as an individual, but they do apply to people I know and care about. For instance, I personally could care less about child care programs and incentives. I however have many friends and family members with the little people. and one must never forget the little people.

I do however feel very strongly about education. A big part of that has to do with my wife being a teacher and hearing about all of the utterly bullshit things that happen in Edmonton’s fine learning establishments. It really does make me worry about the future.

But that will have to wait for another time. I am almost at my stop.

too much to do…. too little time

alright….. I realize I have been neglecting the blog lately…. but I promise I will do a proper update soon…. really…..

Is it too much to ask?

OMG!!!

I have to wonder about some people. In this particular case it is my sister in law. She gives up possession of her house at noon today. This of course for most people isn’t a problem. For her it is a huge problem, and unfortunately for my wife… it is now her problem.

As I mentioned in the garage sale post a while ago, she is moving into a condo. The reason for this move is that she can’t handle the financial burden of the house on her own. She is so deep in debt that it would pretty much take a TLC style intervention to get her back on track.

This move has so far cost the wife and I over $100,000. Yup, you read that right. $100,000. It is a scary number to work with. But the results are not that bad for us.

Pretty much what happened was that because the sister in law had worked herself into such a deep hole financially, the bank decided that she would not be able to get the mortgage for the new place (despite the fact that she has the mortgage for the old place at the moment). So she asks the wife if she can cosign on her mortgage as that would be about the only way that she could get it.

Long story short, we ended up paying off our mortgage so that we could not only cosign, but be the primary on her mortgage. I still have an uneasy feeling in my stomach about that one.

So, everything is set, and through all of the drama her move date gets pushed back from last saturday. She is finally able to move on thursday. For the normal person, this wouldn’t make a huge difference, other than a lack of entertainment options and real food as it would all be in boxes in the corner.

Not for her.

In fact it wasn’t until wednesday that her entertainment centre got packed up, I know this because it was me that packed it. Seriously, even last night as the movers are moving stuff, she was still packing.

That has to be one of my greatest pet peeves… people who aren’t ready when they are supposed to be. Especially for moving. I am of the opinion that if you are moving, everything should be packed and ready to go before the movers (be it friends or hired movers) get there.

We went over after I got off work yesterday to help her clean the house and it was a mess. Sure there were boxes and what not everywhere, that was to be expected. But before we could start any sort of cleaning we had to take emergency packing measures (read: throwing non breakable shit in garbage bags). We got there at about 7, and it wasn’t until 9 that any cleaning could actually happen.

The wife said she was going to talk to her sister and tell her that everyone that was there to help out that wasn’t paid to be there all said that this was the last time. I myself have helped the sister in law move 3 times. The story you read above has been the same for basically all 3 moves (minus the financial part of course… that is new)

I think the biggest demoralizer was that she said that she wasn’t even intending to clean. I mean seriously, when you have lived somewhere for almost 2 years (and some areas haven’t been cleaned since the day you moved in) you clean the fucking place before you go.

Sure it isn’t like an apartment where you lose the damage deposit if you don’t, but it is common courtesy to give the people moving in the luxury of a nice smooth move. If I was moving into her place as we left it yesterday, I would have to put all of my stuff in storage and clean the place before I would even start bringing it in.

Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like out house is immaculate. But I also know that any mess in there is OUR mess. when you move in somewhere, it is somebody else’s mess. That makes me uncomfortable.

I think that is enough ranting on this, I guess I will have to look at the positives. at least the bank doesn’t own our house anymore.

A/S/L ? Are You F’n Kidding Me?

It has been an amazingly busy week. At work, we are down a couple of people which is really hard on the rest of the team as it is up to them to pick up the slack. When you are part of a small team, it is very noticeable when there are people missing. for instance, because of my regular work, I generally only help out with calls when it gets busy. The majority of my work is done off the phones. So in a typical day I will log between 10 and 15 calls max. Yesterday I did 35. Unfortunately with all of the calls my regular work is suffering a little bit.

There is still however some really funny stuff that happens once in a while.

This morning, I open up my laptop to check what the weather is supposed to be like, and I quickly realise that I have forgotten to turn off msn messenger.

There is a friend request from some random person, so I accept it and begin to talk with them… you know it is a bad sign when they start the conversation with “A/S/L?” or other decade old chat lingo.

I was not surprised to find out that it was a chat bot promoting an adult site. I was however somewhat surprised that we are half way through 2008 and they are still using that tactic.

I remember back in the 90’s there was a lot of that sort of activity. People were also a lot less net savvy then though. The people they are targeting with these chat bots are the type of people that grew up with computers. The 20-30 something crowd. I would like to think that most of us are smart enough to recognize a bot when we see one.

Though, if they are targeting someone who is online at 6AM (which would be in the range of like 5AM to 9AM for most of north america) you would think it is a fairly good bet that it is someone who is checking the news or weather before heading in to the office. After all, if there isn’t an acutal need to be up at 6am… who the hell else is awake?

I can’t say that they are better or worse than Telemarketers, but at least I know a pretty good defence against them. The block button works wonders.

It would be nice if these msn-marketers were required to be real people, actually having to type in the scripts and promote the site in the context of the conversations that are being had. Any of us that have been on the internet for any length of time could come up with hundreds of creative ways to make that fun.

On that note, time to go to work and pretend to be productive for a while. Or at least pretend to enjoy my job more than I do.

Freakin Early Short Post.

So last night was a good night, sat and watched a couple of movies with the wife, my brother, and his girlfriend. Miraculously I was not paged all night so I could actually almost enjoy my evening. Though I did keep having to check the pager to make sure it was even working. It is amazing how quickly you can get paranoid while you are on call. I even woke up at like 4:30 this morning to check the pager to make sure it was still on and getting a signal.

I feel much more rested today though. Not sure why. It isn’t like I slept particularly well again. I have been having that problem a lot lately. I am completely and totally tired, then I lay down in bed and BAM!! instantly awake.

Oh well.

I guess it is off to work now. I wonder if I will get paged before I get there? All I know for sure is that it will be a Timmy’s day today.

On call… joy oh joy

So I am going to be writing the next few posts on my work laptop. This of course is because that is the laptop I will be carrying on the bus with me as I travel to and from work until Monday.  The reasoning for this is that I am on call right now. Our account offers limited after hours support which entails carrying a pager 24/7 for one out of every 6 weeks.

This is my first week with said pager, and yesterday was the first day. It wasn’t so bad though, only 2 pages and they both came in at around 7:30pm. Unfortunately because of the pager sitting by my bed I didn’t sleep nearly as well as I normally do. I guess my subconscious mind knew that I could wake up at any time. This was not the case last night. but I still feel very tired.

I am just glad that the pager didn’t go off during dinner. The wife and I went out for dinner with my folks, my brother, and his girlfriend. It would have been a shame to have to leave mid meal to go home and work. They of course knew ahead of time that I would be on call and it could happen, otherwise we would have went to the Keg instead of Kelsey’s.

*sigh* we are just leaving downtown. I have 5 minutes before calls get routed to the pager, and I still have over a half hour until I get home and on to the net where I can actually help anyone that calls in.

On another note, this bus driver must have lead bricks for feet. he is jamming on the break and gas like nobody’s business. I guess the amp that is his driving ability only goes to 11.

Tonight for dinner, we will be having homemade pizza. I think if you were able to pull stats off of the bread maker, you would find that we make more pizza dough than actual bread in it. I think if you looked at the pizzas we make, you could almost make a case that it would be cheaper to order out some days. We do tend to go a little overboard sometimes. 3 kinds of meat, pineapple, mushrooms, peppers, black olives, occasionally some jalapeno if I am feeling like some spiciness. It is totally worth it though. The smell of fresh baked pizza, it is like the scent of heaven.

And back to the random bus thoughts… there is a weird smell in the bus today… I can’t quite put my finger on it though…. smells almost like hospitals…. you know, that over sanitized smell… I think it is striking me because usually on a day as rainy today, I am used to smelling wet people. Not a pleasant smell at all.

hmmm…. we are now 3 minutes into my on call shift… not even at capilano mall. this does not bode well. especially as I know that in 5 more minutes, they will be rebooting a major server. I guess the bright side is that every call that comes in counts as 1 hour of OT. and even if none come in I am getting $25 per day do carry the pager.

I am starting to get the feeling that we are going to hit every red light from work to home. The way it has been going so far it certainly looks like that is the case. I guess I can take solace in the fact that there will be warm pizza waiting for me at home.

Are we getting the feeling yet that this post is quickly becoming one of those train of thought exercises? I realize I am rambling, but that is what I do best. sometimes there has to be a post with no particular structure. Or point for that matter.

the smell is continuing, doesn’t really smell like hospitals now that I think about it.

I wonder what I will be like by the end of the week. if there are a lot of pages, that may mean that I will be sleep deprived by monday. I guess fair warning (though it would be more fair if I had put it at the top of this post) is in order that upcoming posts may be a little odd.

almost at the edge of Sherwood Park… that means 15 minutes until I get home. I wonder what will happen first… pager goes off, I get home, or my cell phone goes off when heather calls to find out how far away I am.

I guess I can stop writing now, have to change busses shortly. so I have to pack it all up.

more randomness later

who knows, maybe I will be able to do a crazy 3am post this week while I am online dealing with some crisis.