My wife caught me reading before dinner

earlier, so I thought I'd share a couple of photos, God I need a shave. My website doesn't display photos very well.Saturday when Anne went to take the money to the bank I asked how much we have for rent for September, dreading the worst. $750 (I think she said) but I know I heard her say over $700 and I get a cheque for the rest on Friday so that's good news. With the strong possibility of her having work on Wednesday and training for a new job mid next month things are looking a bit brighter for us. The only problem I'm facing is with my job at the end of September. I might not have one in October or if I do, my job as it is now might be a shadow of it's former self. This is why I'd like to put my name in at pizza and if Anne likes it there and has good things to say about it, I'll work my job as it is and work pizza Thursday, Friday 11-4pm and Saturday from 3-8pm

This next photo is of dinner. Notice the massive backed potato? The pork chop was good as well but more then I could have handled.

But man that was some meal.

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now.

e. Jim

Good news bad news, I guess...

Overnight we went to bed at our usual time but I woke up around 6:20am to do the cbi thing. Feed Cats, Breakfast, Insulin. Then I read for a bit. This usually tires me out enough to sleep. About 7am I went to bed and still couldn't’t sleep. I tossed and turned about. So, I got up again and did a bit more reading. Then my wife gets up and makes some popcorn to feed the birds across the street. About 9:15am I’m sufficiently tired enough to go back to sleep. But now I’m worried about our rent money for September. Or lack there of. My next cheque wont be until next Friday because of the long weekend and Lodge night. Also, my wife’s place of employment wasn't answering their phone yesterday so she could go get her pay cheque. We need that cheque today. Our rent is due Monday/well Tuesday. Nice thing to have on my mind while trying to get some sleep right?


Then I’m in bed sleeping soundly at last. I look at the clock and it’s 1pm, “Honey you want to call work?” mumble-something-mumble. WTF? Next thing I know the lights flash on and there’s Anne flinging a piece of paper at me. “our rents gone up.” I’m half awake and Anne is going into panic mode. I put the water on for coffee and my reading glasses on to take a look at the notice. Our rent went up by $50. Big deal. We’re panicking for that? It’s kind of like a good news bad news thing. Bad news the rent went up by only $50. Good news is that it could have been a lot worse. Some more good news is that because of the new Laws, they can only raise the rent once every 12 months. So we won’t have to worry about increases like over $100/200+ Tuesday I’m going in early to put a few extra hours in and to get the note there for Rob to fill out so we can apply for our subsidy. Yet she's got 2 jobs now. She goes in for training on her new job in 2 weeks and even though her current job often cuts her hours that's not sustainable. Now she has an opportunity for another job, which has better and more stable hours.


Anne managed to call her work and they have the cheques ready. Whew, our rent is covered. Plus the full Cheque I gave her last night. When she gets out of here and goes off to her job to pick up her cheque she’ll figure this thing out. It could have been a lot worse. It’s tough trying to be a science fiction-writer. But I’ve learned a long time ago, that life is a struggle. It’s all about paying ones dues I suppose.


Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Interuptions...

is what's been keeping me away from posting here. Just when I get a post compiled in Word, I get distracted. Then before you know it, the job thing gets in the way, supper, life in general.

I did a bit more writing on a "secret project" I'm working on. Yeah right.

I just came back from work this evening. I hate the company I'm working for. I like the people I work with and even middle management are ok. The Charities are great and for the most part so are the customers. I feel bad for Alberta Easter Seals. They started AES here in Alberta in 1951. Over the years various groups adapted the term "Easter Seals" out of the original, The March of Dimes, Alberta Easter Seals Society, Alberta Lung Association Easter sticker drive (the older public associates what we're doing with all the rest.) I'm tired of fighting with Mrs. Jones/public who is just as oblivious as our management about the different types of "Easter Seals" groups out there. I even think Alberta Easter Seals and all the rest are just as oblivious. I don't know how many times I've had lost a sale because of the various "Easter Seal's" groups Mr.s Jones had said she just responded to. It's really pathetic. The waters are really muddy with all the various Easter Seal like groups out there. I'm fed up with Alberta Easter Seals. I had a customer said something to the affect that "I got your calendar today." WTF? It just makes our job harder to do.

I gave Anne a call just before I left out of here. Meatloaf for supper. When-1am?

However on the way into work and home I was able to get a good bit of reading in. I reached just over the half part of "Judas Unchained" and I'm 13 days behind reading schedule. I should be around page 645/1008. So much for reading schedules, otherwise at 15 pages/day. Even at 15 pages/day I won't have this book read until about the end of September. Most likely I'll have it read about Mid October. It's a long but entertaining read. Then I can go onto read the "Forgotten Realms" trilogy. (see website block of books I'm reading.

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now.

e. Jim

My wife

rode in with me as she wanted to actually apply at Pizza. I was running in late but got to my dialer about 4:45pm. I had a great night pulling in 5 CC’s for a $15 bonus and $875 on the night. On the way out the office it was raining on the way home. I had a good reading session there on the train home and on the wait bus. I got in just before 10pm and watched a great episode of Raw.

Before We left out of here I did a bit more writing fleshing out scenes. I’m not sure I know where I’m going to be going with this thing yet.

I want to fill in that “Currently reading” block and also hoe to upload images to a static page. I know about the src tag but there’s got to be more to it then that.

My wife has an interview on Thursday for pizza.. I hope she gets the job. If she gets in and starts next week I might be (part time) soon to follow.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

A laid back Sunday

That was my weekend such as it was. I got a lot accomplished. I did some reading, Piano practicing and yes even some writing that wasn’t Blogging. Real writing.

Not much going on today. It’s into the office for my 4pm shift. Anne hasn’t heard anything yet from pizza. I hope they got her resume. I think because there was no cover letter it got pushed to the back burner. She’s mentioned she’s going there today. We’ll see. I want her in there so I can get in there and use Pizza as a back up for when Xl goes under. I suspect it will before the end of the year. I hope I’m just overreacting here but in case I’m not, I want a spare parachute. What I’d ideally like to do is work security 5-9 and pizza after that. I’ve got mixed feelings about this.

This afternoon, I’m going in at 4pm for the job. Put my 4 hours in and come back for Raw. Yes it’s a typical Monday.

I tried calling Mike and Doris about 7pm, 6pm their time but they were not home. I tried. I’ll call again about Wednesday. I’d like to ask Mike what he knows (if anything) about our Grandfather on our father’s side. We know next to nothing about my Grandfather. My mother’s father there’s lots about JJ Johnston. He was a fixture in New Westminster for many years. I wish I knew more about my family.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

I'm an edit post behind had a nice ride

going into work this morning even though I was feeling a bit tired. When I got into the office. Bud was playing "shuffle the staff around." One of the “sweethearts of the day staff” was going to come in and make a rare shift appearance on a Saturday that I’m here 9-10 times on. “That’s her dialer during the day.” I knew this but I didn’t know she was coming in today. I said “Well it’s my dialer everyday and this morning.” He squeaked like a chicken. “Bud," I said, "the only one that seems to be worried about this is you.” I was ready to go home because of this. I really hate being pushed around especially something that’s so childish, yet this happens almost every Saturday. I held my ground and this person came in without making a noise. When she came by she said, “can I get my stuff under this station?” She smiled and thought nothing of it. Wow Even Dave R came in and made a cameo and sat with me. We got along good as he showed me his new cell phone. Despite the crap from Don I had a pretty good shift even though we played that stupid “Line hour or move type boiler room game,” Moe's been puting on every shift lately. I had a couple of large taps roll in and a few CC’s as well. I was at $450 by break and in the 2nd half I slowed down a bit pulling in $625 and 3 CC’s for a $10 bonus for the whole shift. I left feeling pretty good and almost past out on the train to Clairview station home. I had a nice wait for my bus home in the warmth of the +24C afternoon.

When I got home Anne was no where about. I immediately went to bed and past out having a snooze for 3 hours. At the moment Anne is out getting a slurppe. She wanted me home this morning and I was all but about ready to pack it in then I recalled the “3 strikes” and your out (without a Doctors note.) crap. So I decided about 8:30am to head into work anyway. You don’t play games with the boss.

I’ve been awake for an hour now feeling alright. Other then Don and his antics this morning I’m glad I went into work today. JT confirmed the DNC list and Rammu explained to me how it works. At anytime in the conversation the customer says that he’s on the Dnc registry, we have to terminate the call. This is why this weekend my résumé goes out to Pizza. So far Pizza has yet to call my wife but last year when I had my name in for a job there, it took them awhile before they contacted me so Anne told me. We were porbably fighting at the time and she didn't feel like telling me. I hope who ever is doing the email job monitoring sees Anne’s name and calls her for an interview.

All that and I even managed to get a bit of reading in as well today. I think I managed about 10 pages. Also I did my Saturday evening data backup routine. Were good to go.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Anyway last night

I went into work. Anne’s been off all week but she gets another cheque and that will cover September’s rent. I found my end dialer I got my first couple of sales right away and even a CC. After that I couldn’t get anything going but at the break I asked Moe to keep me on the taps. I’ll do a lot better in the 2nd half. I did and managed a slow recovery to $365. $20 less then Wednesday nights total. About 8:45pm they brought the cheques around. Nobody in the office especially the old timers said happy birthday to me. Of course most of the old timers are gone.

I was glad to get out of the ofice and I walked down to my bus stop with John Mc D and caught a bus to my bank on a colder then usual dark August night. Surprisingly it wasn’t raining. I did my banking and tried calling Anne from our cell phone as she had wanted me to take some money ou of the account. I called twice and she didn’t answer. Friggin vacuum cleaner. I was about ready to leave for the LRT and taking the stairs half underground she called. A few more steps and I would have lost her but I answered and back up the steps to the bank again and took out the cash and I missed my train coming down.

Two LRT trains headed the other direction while I waited for mine sipping back on the diet Coke I hadn’t finished from earlier and reading my book. Finally the train. I got a seat with some guy lifting his leg up on the short seat high railing with his bag on the floor. There was no one else sitting with him. I endured this until just before we pulled into Stadium and took the other window seat. The Stadium LRT ramp must have had a thousand football fans taking the train to Clairview. By this time I wasn’t in a very good mood. Most of the fans were happy so that meant the Esks won. I realize there was no reason to be in a bad mood. I mean it was my birthday. There was no bus at Clairview and the Abbotsfield was going the other way. Then I realized I was up against the Fringe and the football game. At 10pm another Northgate bus for the short distance home, would be another 20-30 minutes away yet. I walked home with $200 in my pocket. What in the world did my wife need $200 that made me miss my train and force me to walk the rest of the way home in the dark on my birthday no less? I was mad. And I showed it when I got home. We got into a bit of a brouhaha, but it lacked the teeth I’d normally would have and my reason for it quickly evaporated. I put that behind me.

I watched the news and Anne made me a nice upper of tacos and mexi fires while I felt better about the world and watched the news. Markets were up on all fronts. Speaking of which Lucian had a piece of paper titled “9 reasons why stocks for Apple will rise in 2009.” It seems that Apple stocks are trading on the NASDAQ for about $175/share. Don’t they have to be bought into groups of 10? He Didn’t seem to think so.

Anne typed up her résumé for work as I finished my dinner and watched the news and sports. Yes, the Esks won. Their record is what 6-2 now? That’s not bad. They had something like 48,000 fans there last night.

I had a great experience with Shaw technical support earlier this morning. A tech person Kerry was very helpful in retrieving my Outlook Express and with my permission took over my desktop from their call center and set up 2 identities, one for my wife and one for me. She was very nice and professional. At one point I accidentally lost my cell phone connection and because of our Shaw phone she was able to call back on our home phone to conclude the email set up process. The whole thing took less then half an hour.

This all came about due to my wife trying to send her résumé over to Pizza via email. Something we haven’t done before but Pizza must be using Outlook as well and I had thought that Microsoft has Outlook only with Office and they give you a 30 day free trial with PC‘s. Apparently that was irrelevant. Find Run, type in the command they gave me and another set up wizard popped up. This is when the fun began. I filled out their complement questionnaire and marked all 3 positive.

I copied & Paste her résumé into Pizza’s email box and sent it off. I hope they received it. There’s nothing on Anne’s cell phone indicating a missed call or anything. They’re training is on the weekends so she could still get a call today or this weekend. We know people that have worked in their office and they have nothing but good things to say about them and their operation.

On a colder then usual Friday I’ll be out of here about 4pm on a bus to Clairview and into work. After work though I’m taking $25 into work and I’m picking up 3 more books from my book order and home to watch 3 hours of wrestling. I want to see the Smackdown aftermath of Summerslam. I don’t know if I’m going to watch all of Smackdown though.

All of the above, well most of it is what happened on my 56th birthday.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Not a lot going

on for today. The usual go into work at 4pm home by 9:30pm, that sort of thing.

Weather wise, it's been a lot cooler lately. It's nice getting that break from the +30C we had earlier during the week but the temperature is supposed to warm up for the weekend. That's alright.

I received my Lodge newsletter last night on my desk, and it's hard to believe Lodge is only a few weeks away. I always enjoy Lodge nights and this time I'm going to try and put an extra shift in while I can for that week. Maybe I'll sneak a morning shift in as there are no emergent meetings this month.

I got a facebook message from my niece Jenn wishing me a happy B-day. All of my immediate family is in Victoria. Jenn is out from my only sister's kids and now Lea is a grandmother. Wow at 56 sure makes me feel old.

One of the big social problems we have here in Edmonton facing mostly businesses is tagging. You know the graffiti that's placed all over any bare space imaginable? I was thinking about this recently. The City says (in its "infinite wisdom") that it's up to the business owner (that is the real victim of being tagged) to clean it up the mess or face a fine. What? The area in question is the LRT corridor from Rexall place to Stadium but it could be anywhere. Usually the offenders that do the tagging (mostly) are teens. One business along the LRT corridor said last night how they spent roughly about $5000 on paint to paint over the mess. An alternative? Use the "Mosquito." It's a device that is no bigger then a 5 lb bowling ball but repels teens away with its screeching audible only to teens. They can't stand it and won't linger around to take the amount of time it takes to tag a wall. Of course it's not just teens that do the tagging. Young adults in the 20's do it as well and it is a criminal offence. I'm sure business are aware of the
Mosquito. I mean for the $1,500 price tag, it's a teen deterrent that might eliminate some tagging.

Anyway, as for me not much is going on for today. Yesterday afternoon I went into Audrey's books and bought L. Ron Hubbard's "Mission Earth" book 1. These are all special order books.I also picked up Timothy Zhan's "The third Lynx." Most of these new novels i picked up recently won;t be read for a couple of years yet. For example I bought "Judas Unchained" last October and "Pandora's Star a year before that. but these are huge books. "Judas Unchained" for example has 1008 pages. I'm at 400/1008. My next book after this is the "Icewind Dale" trilogy Forgotten Realms Collectors edition. This one has 1023 pages! By the time I finish "Judas Unchained" at the rate I read won't be until the end of September. Maybe. The "Icewind Dale" trilogy will take me the rest of the year. I should order another copy because it says "collectors edition."

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now.

e. Jim

yesterday was still

warm when I left out of here to go to work but it wasn‘t like +28C or anything. I managed to read a bit of “Judas Unchained” on the train in.
I got a dialer and settled in. We ended up doing CF. I mentioned to one of the staff that we should be doing “Halloween O Ramma” soon but she said we lost that campaign. What a shocker! I rather liked doing HOR. Also Rob gave his kick-off yesterday morning she said and said something like how the whole office will be revamped in October. “Only the best will be working.” Whatever that means. He was lamenting about a 3-10pm shift a few weeks back. Anne’s going to put her name in at Pizza, she’s off this whole week. Right now we’ve just got my income coming in. I’m going to be very surprised if I have a job at Xl to go to by the end of the year. It’s not because of the economy it’s because of the lawsuit last year on our company and the new regulations against telemarketing. I ended up at the break with $78 on CF and Moe sends me over to the other side and I do CBF. I ended up doing $500 in 2 hours and 2 credit cards. I had a better night.

I was glad to get out of the office when 9pm rolled around. It was comfortable weather wise leaving with Tom (One of the recent semi employees that takes the train but goes the other way.) I got a seat on a packed train and read. Lots of people taking in “The Fringe.” “The Big Kahuna.” Sounds like a great name for a Starship doesn’t it? Anyway, the #11 bus was pulling out and waited for passengers at Clairview when I got off the train. For a 9:35pm bus on a weekday night, it was packed. I got home and there was my wife with the Vacuum cleaner on. She went to get her B-Bell cake earlier. She gets about 3 of them/year. One for my Birthday and one for hers and one for Christmas. They cast about $20 each and are really nice, good quality.

I like my evening meal around 11pm while I’m watching the evening news. My dinner consisted of (my favorite) instant mashed potatoes, 2 processed rib-let racks (Nice product from Presidents choice) some pees and even dressing and a big glass of diet Coke. I was set. Then after I finished dinner, Anne brings out a Happy B-day slice of cake for me with lighted candles. It was really nice as we sang “Happy Birthday” for Jimmy! Hehe. Anne got me a Polo t-shirt but it was a bit small on me and a badly needed mouse pad. Yesterday was a pretty good day.

Some National news: It seems there’s rumblings of a fall election. The Tories are slightly ahead in the polls of the Liberals. If the Liberals get in then they’ll introduce a very unpopular National Carbon Tax. An NCT will seriously slow down our economy. The plan is called “The Green shift.” More like “The Green shaft.” Even after the National Energy program (NEP) introduced by Trudeau in the late 1970’s, it took Billions of dollars out of our local economy. The NEP sent thousands of people unemployed and devastated our economy. When PC leader Brian Mulroney was in power in 1989 he abolished the NEP program but it took almost 10 years before Alberta recovered from the NEP economic devastation. Now if the Liberals get elected and Dion introduces his NCT, it will be another version of the NEP which was nothing more then a tax grab anyway. This is essentially the same thing. In July the BC government (Liberal) introduced a Provincial carbon tax. Sure each BC resident got a $100 out of it but the program cost something like $440 million. The tax is very unpopular in BC. And it seems only a few Provinces are exempt (Ontario and Quebec of course.) from the NCT. Dion’s plan calls for $15B in taxes he says are "revenue neutral." Yeah right. All that for a $150/year rebate cheque to fight “global warming?” Thanks Dion but no thanks. Who’s going to be paying for this “Green shift?” Albertan’s. So this is why a NCT plan is a bad idea. So I can only hope that if Harper is going to call an election this fall, he’ll be able to win another minority Government.

I had a couple of hours on the computer before bed after midnight and worked on a test static page to try some basic HTML CSS. In my test page (as I was following along from a YouTube video tutorial) I got lost with positioning a CSS element. It’s an absolute position but the command string was lost and when the new one was added it wiped out the previous command, obviously. I’ll try it again tonight after work.

I also did some piano practice as well before bed. I’m going to have trouble with the C chord on my right hand because of my 4th finger is broken or sprained or something. I can lift it but not that far off a black key. I can do broken chords of course. I’ll get better as I go along but to implement the C-chord with proper right hand positioning is going to be hard. My left hand is fine.

This morning I got up about 5:45am and did the cbi thing and read more from “Judas Unchained.” The author makes some obvious cliché’s but this is understandable as these are part of the characters thought processes. We all use cliché’s to some degree in everyday language. Are these cliché’s or just worn out phrases?

I haven’t been doing much fiction writing of my own this summer as I had hoped to do. Mostly it’s been Blog writing. I’ve been doing piano work, reading and website stuff. That sort of thing. I’ve been working a bit on a short story but nothing on that over the last few weeks. I still want to get out a hard copy this fall. I need to really work on the language and turn that up a notch. I’ve got a couple of ideas for longer pieces of writing and I’ve been hashing at them as well.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

I made a longer

post over at my website yesterday. See link to site under "resources" in the sidebar

Anyway, Bloggers that's all for now

e. Jim

Hot Summer Weekends

it would have been on this weekend 30 years ago that my brother Mike & sister-in-law Doris got married. Their 30th anniversary is Tuesday, so I’ve got to give them a call. Last time I talked with Mike was in January. He was the one encouraging me to get on AISH. But that’s another story.

I had a pretty good night last night relaxing going over YouTube videos of classic musical organs. There are some nice pieces out there.

I read about 10 pages from Peter F. Hamilton’s “Judas Unchained” this afternoon. It’s really good. There are some surprising parts within the books pages that make me wish the author would continue with that train of though. I’ll have a “review” of sorts maybe next month.

We took our sleeping pill this morning about 3am and went to bed. I got up about 6am all groggy to do the cbi thing. By 6:15am I was back in bed. I slept right up until 1pm! I had a good 10 hours of sleep. The pill is still working in my system but I can’t sleep away the whole afternoon. I fixed myself a coffee and fired up the PC and with it on idle I wanted to read.

My wife has an appointment with the bank tomorrow to see if she can get at that RRSP. She should withdraw just enough for Septembers rent. If that doesn’t work out then we can always go to her pension fund for a hardship withdraw. We do this maybe just a couple of times/year because it’s income she has to pay taxes on. And if those two avenues don’t work, then she has another cheque coming at the end of the month (not enough to cover the whole rent just about a third of it) but then I have a couple more cheques that could cover the rest. So Monday will be a decisive day for us. The trouble is with her job, as she does research work and it slows down in the summer and December.

This afternoon when Anne gets up, she’s going to go to Rose Bowl pizza for my birthday pizza. I’ll be 56 years old on Thursday. Wow. While she’s out doing that in a few hours, I’ll be watching Summerslam for 3 hours. I order only 2 wrestling pay-per-views/year; Summerslam and Wrestlemania. The one happening today only makes sense to order because this is my birthday week. My birthday present. it's all ordered and ready to go.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Warm out there

I felt relaxed heading into work this morning. We were doing CPA and Moe stressed $200 a line hour. Yeah right. An hour later and not one sale, so Moe moved me and the other gal beside me over. Same isle but with CF. I ended up pulling in $123 for the shift. And you know what? I couldn't care less. This weekend my resume goes to Pizza.

I took a couple of photos from Belvedere station. One of the highest vantage points (accessible to get to that is) in the area and took a few photos but they were from behind glass. They didn't turn out to well. This one is a little better:

GL still doesn't handle images as good as Blogger. You'll get a better view of all the pictures I took today over there.

These are just some of 6 images I took this afternoon on my way home. One didn't turn out very well, too much glare on the glass.

They're not in any kind of order or anything but I like this last one of the train leaving underneath me. I don't think there is a photo like this anywhere online of the train leaving Belvedere station for downtown:

So there you have it. Just 5/6 images i took today. Compare these with my website and now you see why I don;t like placing photos there. Don't get me wrong, Geeklog is a great backend system but I've been hearing good things about "Ruby on rails" and Wordpress, but Blogger wins hands down.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Anne came out with me

to my bus stop waiting for the bus Wednesday afternoon, She went across the street to go feed the birds. Then she came back and kissed her husband off to work. I had a nice trip going in. We did Comedy Fest and I had a slow start. Mostly doing semis. I was surprised I ended up with $140 by break. Anne’s phone rang and she tried to call me earlier then usual. I guess cell phones are ok. Again they gave me the cold shoulder, JT and Gary. They are still pouting over me turning JT in for the paper balls Saturday. I was glad when they left at 7. I had 2 CC’s as well and I put them on the board and JT dropped a note on my keyboard “big rat” or something like that. At least I think it was him.

It seems that my Amway connection wasn’t going to the meeting after all. It would have been nice to find out if Ellen and Helga still show up. I’d like to hide behind a plant or something there one night just to see of they do show up. At least I know where they have their weekly meetings. If she’s still in the business at all.

The 2nd half was really slow but I ended up with 3 CC’s. I got $9 in bonuses out of the night. At break some of us asked why is it the evening shift the only ones that always have to move when the afternoon shift leave half way from the shift. If that’s the case, then why can’t I come in at 3pm and leave at 7pm? That’s 4 hours right? Then Moe snaps and says, “You’ll sit where I tell you to or there’s the elevator door out and don’t come back.” Lately he’s been a real Hitler. I’m very close to calling Pizza and put my name in. I’d work from 9:30pm-closing 3 days a week for now and if I like the job and it’s easy enough then next time Moe comes out with a comment like that or something similar “,and don’t come back.” I’ll pack my things and say something like “I’ll come back and pick my last cheque up on Friday.”

Anyway, I had a 20 minute wait for the train. Extra cars on. It seems Tom Petty was at Rexall last night and “Motley Crue” was in the night before. The Rexall parking lot was full on the way home. We’ve got some great acts coming to Edmonton this year such as Elton John, Celine Dion, Neil Diamond and Metalica. I think they were here a few times before.

I got to the bus at Clairview and called Anne and read more Judas Unchained. From the time I leave the office at 9pm it takes me an hour to get home. I wait a good 20 minutes for the train. The trip home is 20 minutes. There’s a 10 minute wait on the bus. The good news is I get an hour to read. if I’m lucky and I don’t get any distractions. Strange how it can take me half an hour to get to work though but an hour to get home.

Anne ordered “Summerslam” for me for this Sunday. It’s my birthday present. I get 2 WWE pay per views/year. Either Summerslam or Survivor series or Wrestlemania. I hope I can keep it if we don’t end up getting into a fight or something like that. The plan is she gets up at 2-3pm on that Sunday and then around 4 goes to Rose bowl to get our Pizza. This way I have it there at about 6pm.

Despite the bs from earlier on the job with Moe, I had a pretty good night. I’m about to have a cup of hot milk and head for bed. Ufologists Stanton Friedman and Frank Feschino will discuss a terrifying UFO encounter in 1952, when a damaged UFO crash-landed on a farm in the small town of Flatwoods, WV. Sounds like a good show.

Friday I’ve got a couple books to pick up at Audrey’s. “Mission Earth 1” and I think one of the “New Jedi order.” Unless some of the other books I’ve ordered comes in those will be my 2 titles for this week.

I tried using Google’s Gadgets thing for my blog but I don’t like them. I prefer just a simple button but instead the gadgets are scroll levers on the side and bottom making them look ugly. Not only that but most of the gadgets are broken anyway. I’m not very impressed.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Work and crap

It looks like a fairly nice day out there with a good breeze coming in through my open window. I don’t even have the fan on and it feels nice in here.

Since September 2000 my life has been going along just fine. Sure there’s been some rough hills in the way; like me becoming diabetic and having cataract operations and laser surgery toothache pain etc, Anne losing her job. Then we lost that monthly allowance Anne used to get just this last spring. This covered half our rent. Losing that through a monkey wrench in our lives. Now the big thing for me is my very job could be at stake here. Not because of anything I’ve done but because of several other factors.

The first was the Lawsuit that happened last year, We were barely 1 year into our new office when we got this thing dumped on us. A couple of our staff members misrepresented the charity. The news hit me hard in January. Now (good for me) our local economy, thanks to the oil is booming again, has been on a steady boom since about 1997. Our General manager left for California. The day shift is full but it’s the night shift, that’s down to a skeleton crew. So the big talk was foreign workers to relieve the stress off of a tight labor market here in Edmonton. Even my wife lost her job in February of this year. Then Dell computers closed down their office and this spring Convergies shut down. TD bank moved their call center operation off shore. We got the foreign workers all right but because of the Lawsuit Service Canada and Immigration are very aware of our company. They won’t let foreign workers work at my place of employment because of it. Foreign workers at least the ones from India have to pay $5,000 for immigration and lawyer fees. Immigration lawyers are making a killing.

Through some fancy legal footwork about a dozen people came here from India last November. I thought we were going to get something like 20-40 people. But over several waves we got a doz. I don’t know anything about immigration. I’ve been to the states maybe less then a dozen times just to visit. And this was mostly roller skating parties in the early 1970’s with our Christian youth group at the time. We used to go every other Thursday to Blaine Washington. It took us an hour to get there. I think I went to Blaine maybe 6 times. I wouldn’t say I was a Christian back then but it was an outlet for youth in our local neighborhood. I was in Seattle once for the afternoon back in 1971. Since then it was Minneapolis 1997 with Amway. I’ve never lived in another country. But these foreign workers form India get more money then domestic workers and that’s understandable. In my company they don’t get much more then me, a buck more then what I’m getting. Big deal. For that they spend $5k? It’s not the company it’s just to live here in Canada. It’s a better life and a good deal for them.

The thing is, Service Canada won’t let these East Indian kids stay beyond 1 year because of Xl and the lawsuit. The lawsuit is what’s killing us and maybe even my own bottom line. Now we have this “do not call” registry thing (dnc) that’s coming into affect September 30th. It’s a Canada wide initiative. We have to say a disclaimer, which is an opening for the customer to say something like “Please take my name of your list.” Prior to this management never did take names off the list because if they did that we’d have nothing left to call. Basically all management did before and at times during the shift was to recycle the names and reload. As it is we’re working 3-4 campaigns/night. For almost 2 hours I was calling semies and cold on another campaign. We’ve got taps for maybe 2.5 hours. Half an hour past break all 4 remaining tap shooters move over to cold and semi calling, including me. It’s tough going.

That was when last night one of the East Indian kids my “Amway connection” told me about the trouble their having with this company. I learned that half of them have jobs with McDonalds. They at least with McD’s have extended their Visa until 2010. Most of them so the guy was told, are getting $12-14/hour. Add all the factors above and the dnc list in September if I don’t do something soon I might be without a job by the end of the year.

Then there’s my wife’s place of employment. She’ll get a full pay cheque Friday (towards rent) but next week, she’ll get half of that. This means that on Thursday and Friday I’m going to have to put some extra hours in. That’ll give me 29 hours. We’re experiencing a little crises because not only do we have rent to pay but we need groceries, bus passes my insulin. We’ll be steady in September but we might not be able to go to that nice dinner at the Ramada Inn. The other thing is we have back up options. Anne could go to the bank and pull some funds from her RRSP. If that doesn’t work out she has some hardship pension fund money she can take out. She’s off today so hopefully this week she does that.

The other thing is and we have yet to take advantage of this is CRHC and their rent subsidy program. I called them up a year ago and we got the forms. Anne had her subsidy form filled out but then lost her job like I said.

All this before she lost her allowance. She last accessed the pension fund so we could get that widescreen TV. Ours was going fast. Our next “Federal income won’t be until October when we get the GST cheque. That’ll be enough to cover bus passes and that’s it.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Laid back Sunday

Not a lot going on got today. Sunday I got some reading in and learned how to play Fur Elise. Well the right hand part.

Anne made us a really nice rotisserie BBQ chicken, potato salad baked potato and corn on the cob. We watched an hour of the “Honeymooners.”

Last night we had a good thunder and lightning storm out here. We got a lot of wind and a bit of rain but that was about all we got out of it.

Nobody won yesterdays $4,671,103.00 million, so this gets carried over for Wednesday. I’ll buy a ticket. I’d be happy if I got 5 numbers plus the bonus round for $166,825.10. Two winners won that one. Most of the winners win “The Big One” in Ontario or East of Manitoba. That’s where most of the population lives.

Still reading “Judas Unchained”. By this Friday I wanted to be at the books halfway point, which is around page 505. Instead now I’m only on page 272. Barely a quarter of the way through. I’d like to have the book read by the end of August but it looks like I’ll have this book read by the end of September. If that.

At 4pm it’s off to work and hopefully I’ll have a good night. If the boss is going to pick on me, I’ll put my name in at Pizza. I want to do this anyway before the end of the month is up.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

I missed the

Cariwest parade but I got into Clairview and a long wait in the heat but at least able to read. I got home and Anne was just coming in and out. I managed to snag a couple of hours of a nap.

I wanted to do some hard drive back up but the unit failed twice on me and shut me down automatically. I’m going to have to figure out what’s wrong with this thing.

Of course I didn’t win The Big one. It was only $4M. So much for getting the ticket on 08-08-08. I really needed to get the ticket today. Today should have been 08-08-08. The next date like this wont be for another 1,000 years when it’s 08-08-3008.

One of the posters on YouTube (claiming to work at CERN mentions: “The first full circle of the beam is planned for first week of September and the first collisions in the first or second week of October. So nothing new physics wise can happen before then. And even then you can be relaxed as the 2008 run will only be at partial energy and low luminosity. Basically the real LHC running starts in ca March 2009, this year is mostly engineering tests and calibrations.” We’re at least 8 months away until full activation.

YouTube is an awesome resource. I wish they had this thing up and running in 1996 when I was doing basic math at NorQuest. YouTube would have been a Godsend. There’s even English Grammar tutorials there as well. Makes me think I wasted money on buying that book on Grammar.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Yeesh, could this be the week of decision?

About 2:30 in the afternoon I usually take a shower but the soap bar was dwindling down to nothing. I stepped out of the tub and banged my toes right into the tub. Hurt like hell. I didn’t think anything of it once the pain was gone.

I shut the place down and locked up a bit early as I wanted to get to Fs a bit early to get some JVC gummy ear buds. $12.95. Good stuff. Maybe there would be time to go to Audrey’s but I stopped in at the Redimart and got a lotto ($43 Million) ticket and a diet Coke. I borrowed the use of Fran’s pocket knife to rip apart the packaging. Insert into my Phillips Rush player and I was blown away by the sound these things produce. Very nice.

Darryl a long time employee wanted to get back to me about the vacation pay rate after 5 years it’s 6%. That’s about the only thing that keeps me at my job. So Darryl took me out back where the staff have their smoke breaks and we had a hat about this. He says he used to have his cheque accrued like me but the thing is, it gets taxed when it comes out like that in one lump sum. Or even several installments. The thing is, the Feds will tax the vacation pay one way or another. Bt he gave me a neat idea. He said he used to go to H & R block to get his taxes done and the tax consultant said that he ought to have the company take more off for taxes like an extra $10/week. This is what had caused me a lot of trouble when I was working at the A & N back in the 1980’s. Darryl had said that his $250 tax return went up to something like $400 or something like that. He says it really pays to have $10/week taken out. So I think beginning next week I’m going to put in some extra hours and get the form taken out to have an extra $10/pay cheque for income tax. That’s why I had so much trouble with A & N in the 1990’s. I would always be behind and seldom ever got caught up. It wasn’t until when Anne and I got married I began to do my taxes for the Alberta Health Care subsidy. The GST helped to bring my balance owing down from over $1,000 to where over the last couple of years we’ve been getting a refund. So now I’m getting a refund of over $300/year. An extra $10/week would also help.

Work went by really slow. I think I got $150 by break and 2 CC’s. I didn’t get a call back from Anne at break. I ended up with $395 on a $100 sale. That’s when the computers went down. Moe shut us off at 8pm with the option of working the extra or going home. Most of us went hone earlier.

I decided to go over to Audrey’s and get 3 books. My 2 “Ever Quest” books were in and I picked up the last in the Stardoc books plus a book on Grammar, which I had reserved for me for Friday.

Anyway I took the other train towards university and feeling happy listening to my Clash tunes. I had a chat with one of the transit supervisors at Clairview keeping an eye on the various “street gangs” in the area that have been causing some troubles lately. Not for me but just in general. I’ve never seen any signs of it. I caught the bus home and opened a window. I began to notice why my toes ached on my right side. Being diabetic I’m always worried about my feet. My middle toe on my right side is all bruised up now. I just hope this isn’t the pending sign of a hidden disaster.

Anyway about the toe I’m just going to keep an eye on it. As long as it doesn’t rot. I’m kind of worried about it. I don’t want to lose a toe and find it will need to be amputated. From the toe goes the foot and then the foot goes a leg and then that’s the end. What I don’t go through with.

In 34 hours 21 minutes the LHC will be activated. That should be about 11:30am Friday morning. Apparently the last countdown was for the finale cooling. If they have another countdown for something else, I’m going to lose interest in this thing.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Holiday hangover

Since I’ve made Geeklog my CMS of choice I’ve been wanting to learn how to do some FTP. The culprit and still is, the Firewall in Xp. I think it’s still part of Service pack 2. But my web guy got me a program that is similar to FTP called Confix. It’s a simple process. This means I’m no longer using “Library Thing” to display book cover images. May I direct your attention towards the right sidebar? The book cover images are what I’m reading next after “Judas Unchained.”

After JU it’s “The Icewind Dale” trilogy by R.A. Salvatore. After that it’s Lou Anders anthology “Fast Forward #1.” Then and if there’s time before the end of the year Mary Rosenblum’s “Horizons.” The book I’m currently reading “Judas Unchained,” is going to take me well into the end of September. I’ve been reading some thick books lately.

So I leave out of here at 4pm waiting for my bus under clear warm +27C sunny skies for my bus with my wife waiting with me. Her place of employment had no work for her yesterday. I caught my bus and realized I didn’t have any coffee with my hot water so I went into Tim’s for a cup of coffee. As I left, there was Shank and Rummar. Nice kids. So I walked back to the office with them. The boss wasn‘t there. I learned he’s on holidays for the rest of the week. Good. I ended up having a pretty good night pulling in $780 and only one CC’s and a $10 bonus. I had a good night.

I began writing again. That’s right. At the moment I’m re working an old story, “Crosshairs.” It’s word length is 5,220. I want to trim that down to around 4,500 words before I send it out. I think in the morning I’m going to go to Future shop and check on that printer and get those JVC Gummy headphones.

When I got in I tried to use that program Markus told me and with his instructions, it worked great. All I did was replace the 3 other images that were there. I need to do that on my own. That’s my next project. After that I want to be able to create a new menu and design and attach static pages to that menu.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

At 8pm I went

over to Money Mart and enquired about their preloaded CC’s. They have a Visa which one can load up with any amount. The only drawback is Visa will charge me $17/month even long after my one time use. Plus I think the clerk there said 2%/transaction. Also the $20 one time fee. I could keep it ongoing and that’s where the $17/month comes into affect. The other option doesn’t look very promising is the Master Card gift cards but they don’t come in denominations of $50-$100 and I think I need

At least $125. I walked out of there empty handed still unsure of what to do. I’m not sure yet if WS is an online service or a physical product. I’m delving into this a bit deeper and I’m finding out more and more. I like it so I think I’ll just toss caution to the wind place an order. I checked the listings all evening and watching the back and fourth but I couldn’t find Main Event all night. NBC is out of Washington, and we’re an hour ahead of them. I might have missed it that way. But I’m off Monday night so I get to watch Raw at least.

This morning we’re up until 3am and we’re going to share a beer and take a pill. Probably not a good thing for a diabetics to do.

Markus got me an English translation of an FTP program and I haven’t yet heard how to use it so unfortunately I can’t place a photo here because of the inconsistencies with GL’s image files sizes. So for my Blogger readers, here is a photo of my latest piece of hardware. I don’t know what to do with the mess of all those cables yet.

When I was up around 6:30 Saturday morning I head this bump coming form the outside windowpane. I thought maybe it was one of the cats that got trapped outside over night. Right on the edge of the balcony was some kind of blue exotic bird. I think it was a cockatoo. It stood a good maybe 8 inches. If the window was opened he would have been ours by now but I looked at the bird he looked at me and in that brief second he took off into the tree. It was really weird.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

I get a long weekend after all

The bus came earlier then usual for a change. I got my August bus pass at the Redimart. Another $66.50 spent. And when we get the new LRT trains coming, most likely the bus passes will go up again. I got in before 4:45pm and got a diet Coke and a 6/49 ticket. For 32 Million, I’d be a fool not to buy a ticket for $3 bucks. No big deal. I had $35 with me ready to go over to Audrey’s to buy some of my nooks on order. I had a brief talk with Fran as she was leaving to go home for the long weekend. She was a bit upset that she lost her parking space. It’s most likely different for the evening shift people. She said Don Brown made an appearance. I should give him a call on the way home this afternoon.

I was expecting big things for a Friday night shift sales were slow doing CBF all night and because it was a Friday night and as usual no CC’s right up until break. Anne called a bit early because her break changes all the time. We had a nice little chat. I ended up with $560 which for a 3.5 hour shift, wasn’t bad. No CC’s. I was thinking that if I had all my 3-4 CC’s to get my 20 CC’s to qualify for the CC bonus, Friday night, I wouldn’t need to come in Saturday. I could have along weekend. But no the bastards wouldn’t give me one CC. Not one.

When 8:30pm rolled around I was glad to get out of there. I headed directly over to Audrey’s. Trevor said some of my Warhammer books were in. The Omnibuses. “The Blackhearts” and Warhammer 40k “The Blood Angels.” The books are about an inch larger then regular pocket books. I was also going to pick up the last Stardoc novel waiting there for me but I didn’t quite have enough cash on hand as the two Omnibus novels were about $11+ US. I missed my train home by a few seconds as it was boarding the last of the passengers before heading out. I had a ten minute wait reading on the train home.

I got home about 9:40pm and did some admin stuff and settled in to watch 3 hours of wrestling goodness. Speaking of which tonight WWE will be having their Saturday night “Main Event.” I’m looking forward to this. If I can find out what local channel it’s on. My wife came in about 11pm and made me a nice shaved beef something sandwich with fries and gravy and cheese bread. Good stuff. Then into bed. I listened to a bit of Coast and passed out for a couple of hours. At 4am I was wide awake. Anne was still up watching a movie. Coast had open lines. My wife is having some kind of bronchial condition causing her to having breathing problems. I know she wants me home for the long weekend but that won’t do anyone any good and I could lose out on some bonus money. I’ve got 17 CC’s and I could end up with a bit more.

I changed my mind and decided I’d stay home this weekend with her. Screw the potential CC bonus. I’ll have to call Bud about 9:40am I’ll show up Tuesday afternoon and work afternoons all this week. Last thing I need is a call from my wife in the hospital while I’m on the job. Besides I can head out of here about noon over to Fs and get that external hard drive and Ws. I checked for our local NBC affiliate and WWE’s “Main Event” is only on for an hour. It’s mostly a publicity type show for Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue. Hey it’s for kids and I can’t argue with that.

Also while cruising the TV listings for Space (my favorite station) I came across a listing for the highlights of Comic Con. Wow. This is on at 2pm. RJS was there and a bunch of others including Walter Koenig. This year at Denvention Robert J Sawyer, Nancy Kress, Ben Bova, Greg Bear L.E. Modesitt, David Brin, Elizabeth Moon, Kate Elliot, J Allan Erwin, Joe Haldeman, Kay Kenyon, Jay Lake, Mike Resnick George RR Martin, Larry Niven, Robert Reed and many, many more. Wow, what a convention. Of course this is World Con. I hear in 2009 it’s going to be in Montreal. I’m considering making a trip. I would have liked to have gone to Denver. I’m considering planning a trip to Montreal for this convention, August 6-10th. Air fare is about $300 return. A Best Western would be about $100/night. To do the whole thing right would be $1,000. I’m considering making this trip. If I did get a chance to go it would drive my wife crazy gone for 5 days.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Yesterday

I left out of here shutting the place down at 4:05pm but the buses seem to be arriving latter and latter. Now it’s about 4:15pm when they get to my bus stop for the Clairview train. I got into work on time but had a rough start to the shift what with no headset. Well the metal head band was missing. I was rather pissed off with this because I have to hold the headset up to my ear and that’s hard on my arm. I wasn’t very happy.

It showed in the 2nd half and I barely got over $300. It was slow for most people. Anne called at the break. I had a better 2nd half but Moe wanted me to move over. We were doing a bit of everything tonight. On Bob, I managed to sell baseball tickets a pack for $40 and I got it on a CC’s as well. My only CC sale. I’m at 17 for the week. If I have a bad CC’s day the next day is usually better. Fridays are usually good for CC’s and I have all of Saturday’s as well.

Then about 8pm the cheques were brought around and yes there was my vp. I was taxed $155. I’ll get most of it back in April. After work I walked up to the bank and did my banking. I took out the $360 and left the rest in there for my wife. We have over half of our rent here and Anne gets her cheque for the rest tomorrow. Also, I have enough to get a bus pass for August and I’ll be doing that today.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been looking at external hard drives at Future shop. One I’ve been checking on, a 500Gb hard drive was $145. Then it went down to $125. This weekend it’s $99, so after a few hours of sleep, it’s going to be time to go to Fs and get the hard drive and the credit card to order WS. I’ve never ordered anything online before so this is going to be a first for me. I’m a bit nervous. But at Fs they also have the Xbox 360 Arcade for $276. I’m very tempted to get that and Oblivion.

I was looking on Ebay Canada at some nice Clifford D. Simak books. I’m surprised they are still available but there are some 6 items, I’d love to buy.

Well we’re 6 days 21 hours away from LHC activation. I’m kind of excited about it. Will they find the Hogs particle? Will they find exotic particles never seen before? Maybe even wormholes. Now that would be awesome. The idea behind the LHC is to set the conditions before the big bang. At 600 million collisions/second, somethings got to give.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim