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.

A weekend over

So this weekend turned out to be rather busy. some good parts, some not so good. here is how it all happened

Saturday morning, went on the computer to check the email, disaster struck. I am typing along merrily and hit the Enter key…. nothing… uh oh. That’s right, the enter key on my keyboard is dead. this of course is rather unfortunate as I rather liked that keyboard. So while we are out shopping on Saturday I bought myself a new one. I will have to write a post from home one day or work from home this week to really test it out. While we are shopping we also hit Costco to see if they had any of the wine kits that they were selling left in stock.  Turns out they didn’t have the double pack ones that we were looking at earlier, but they did have unconcentrated ones in the primary fermenter pail for a pretty good price. So we picked up an australian Shiraz and started it as soon as we got home.

Of course we also have a Cranberry Shiraz to start right away, but I think that will have to wait until after we give the new Shiraz a good head start. Also on order, we have a chocolate port, which should be in Oct. 10. Of course that one will require more equipment to be purchased as it only makes half as much. I must say I am looking forward to having a nice variety of wine around. I think one of the things we are going to have to look at in a new house though is a proper laundry room or something of the like, one with a big sink in it and lots of room to work, because if we could have an area to actually make the wine that would be awesome. I could then take a wall somewhere and turn it into wine racks.

I think I may also start looking into the beer kits they have at the place we buy the wine. I have had an experience with homebrewed beer, and it wasn’t pleasant. I am thinking though that I am a lot more mature now and know more about the process that it may not be quite as disastrous. I mean, if I can make my own beer I am set. I am sure it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than buying even the budget beers from the store.

So anyway, Saturday was pretty much spent shopping, though we had originally planned to do much more that day. Sunday was a bit tougher.

Sunday was apple day. Our apple tree in the back yard produced an amazing number of apples this year. After 4 hours of picking, washing, coring, and slicing, we had enough apples for us to make 10 really good sized apple crumbles (of course they were bagged and frozen for later.

I was amazed with the taste of them this year though. they are sweeter and juicier than they normally are. It kinda gives me hope that the hard cider I plan on making eventually will be rather tasty. would have to be able to get approx 23 litres of juice though, so we would probably have to supplement with store bought apples.

now for the final part of this (again sorry about the epic-ness) post. Our darling dog is driving us crazy. All day he is fine, we leave him inside at home no problem. Then sometime in the middle of the night he piddles on the floor. I don’t get it. I mean obviously it isn’t that he just can’t hold it because he is stuck inside sometimes for over 12 hours on weekdays without a problem, and we are lucky if we are asleep before midnight on any day and up at like 6 on weekdays.

I am almost at my wits end. The wife made a comment yesterday that we have sorta become antisocial lately and not invited anyone over. But with the constant messes on the carpet, albeit they are left at night, it does cause a problem.

I just don’t know what we are going to d with that damn dog. The only reason we got it was because She wanted it. I didn’t really want the dog. Now don’t get me wrong, I love our dog. I just am going crazy with the piddling.

If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

I may get around to posting eventually

while it is somewhat wrong to say in a post that I will post eventually… that is pretty much the state of things… I got the game “Spore” last night… and I have a feeling I will be completely addicted to it for a while.

To my darling sister… if you feel you need something to suck away every waking moment …. get Spore… it is like “Sim Everything” … goes from primordial ooze to intergalactic space travel…..

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…..

a death in the family

ok, so I wrote this post yesterday morning but didn’t get a chance to post it. but here it is

_______________________________________________

I wrote last night that I had just found out that my grandma had passed away. I must admit I am still somewhat overwhelmed by the feeling. Should make for an interesting day at work today, with any luck it will be rather busy and I won’t really have much time to think about it.

A few months ago my Grandma was diagnosed with stage 4 bone and lung cancer and was told to enjoy the summer. The wife and I booked a trip to montreal to visit as soon as we found out. I am now incredibly glad we did. We had a choice financially, go down for the funeral, or visit while she is still alive. The Choice was obvious.

We had a great time on our visit and it was incredibly hard to leave. Part of what made it hard was hoping desperately that her health would hold out long enough for my sister and her husband and daughter to go visit.

They got back from montreal on saturday.

At least it all happened quickly. There wasn’t a lot of suffering. When my time comes, I hope I am lucky like her and have all of my dearest friends and loved ones take the time to come visit before it is too late. It wasn’t expected, but I know it meant the world to her to have a chance to visit with the people she held dear.

Now my thoughts turn to my grandfather. I have to wonder what will happen now as he is no spring chicken so to speak. The house they live in is way too big for him, and there is a lot that needs to happen. Hopefully though, under that stoic german fascade, he will find a way to deal with this and carry on living.

I can only base what he is feeling on my observations of others that have lost partners. The overwhelming emptiness must be horrific. To not have your confidante, your sounding board, your biggest supporter, right there by your side. It is something I don’t know how well I could handle.

I guess that one does what they must. One tries to simply just keep going.

And now for a selfish moment, as I ride here on the bus on the way to work. I really didn’t want to go in today, but I am covering for someone for 3 weeks while they are on vacation and they are showing me the ropes for the next couple of days.

I guess I just hope that there won’t be any embarrassing shows of emotional weakness today… I guess we will have to wait and see

:-(

got bad news today, my grandma passed away…. more to come when I can think coherently…..

Round is sooooo totally a shape

Round is a shape, but it occurs to me it is totally not the proper one. Especially when your friends are somewhat active people and they rope you into going to the nature park for a hike. A 16.8 KM hike none the less. I don’t think I walk 16 km in a normal week, let alone in one big 4 hour stretch

So as I sit here, dreading the morning as there will be pain… oh yes… there will be pain. I have determined that I have but one choice. Get into better shape. I am not talking losing weight, but becoming more physically fit.

I think I will need to have some sort of goal based system though. I think right now, I just need to start somewhere. Get the momentum going as it were.

The nightly walks with the dog are a good help, but that is usually only a half hour or so. I guess increasing that would be a logical place to start.

We also have a home gym. I suppose I could start using that as well.

All I know is by the end of that walk, I think I died a little inside. Luckily it was the out of shape part.

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.