despite hearing bad news about an incident that happened to a Co worker and his wife.
It unfolded unknown to me at the time as I usually see B leaving out the office or on his way to the train. I didn't see him Friday night. Saturday morning after I had left Tim's with my breakfast, there was no B to meet me out by the front entrance of the office. I didn't think anything of it at the time.
I sat at my dialer and had my breakfast and took my insulin. The phone was ringing off the hook and no B around. Then one of the guys came by and told me that B came home Friday night and found his wife dead on the floor. Cause of death unknown. We'll find out more details over the next few days but it put me in a downer and my performance on the job showed. I think it affected the whole office.
When I left out of the office at 2pm Saturday I just about passed out on the train I was so tired. The redi mart was closed so I couldn't get my 6/49 ticket for Saturday's draw. I played a bit of Oblivion for while and had a nap for a few hours. I played Oblivion while Anne called a couple of times to keep me company.
I took my sleeping pill about 3:30am Sunday morning and getting up here and there to use the bathroom but I woke up about 1:30pm in the afternoon. I feel a bit better about the weekend.
The the Oiler's had to lose of course. Even if the Oiler's don't make the playoffs and there's a good chance they wont get there, then I'll be rooting for Vancouver. After Vancouver then the Flames. After that any Canadian team still in the playoffs. This year I think it's going to be Washington and Calgary. Calgary deserves to win it all but if by some small miracle the Oiler's do get into the playoffs, then it'll be Washington and Edmonton in the finale. If they can get in but I doubt that's going to happen.
Some other disturbing local economic news here. It seems that Atco I-tek their customer care call center here is going to out source their part time call center work. Yes I'm all in favor of the market place but out sourcing our jobs to Mexico, China and or the Philippines, well just annoys me to no end. It's our politicians letting us down again. I once heard that no credit card information can leave the country. I don't know if this is true or not or impacts these offshore jobs at all, it should. And to think, I was almost close to getting a job there last October.
Friday I picked up Steven Erikson's Book 2 in his Malazan series. It looks like a really good series and I'm going to order the rest. I ordered the first 3 in the series.
Sunday afternoon Anne and I talked about me working at her place of employment 3 days a week but I like working security. It's 3 days more money and I can read and do work on my writing and bring a along a lap top. So I think what I'm going to do is to apply when I get my income tax because I'm going to need $50 to get a security clearance. If I don't get that then Pizza is my next source.
I'm still reading Timothy Zahn's "The third Lynx" and its way better then the first one. I'm about 60% into the book. This is really good.
I'm kind of looking froward to the new Star Trek movie "Academy." In a way its kind of silly to see the Enterprise looking more sophisticated in this movie then in the original series. I'm not going to go and spend $12 to see it though. I'll wait until it comes to the dollar theater.
If I do get the security guard job I'm going to apply at WH and see if I can get the site at Pacific Rim Mall. It's a small site and the only thing open after 7pm on a Saturday is the resturaunt upstairs but that was 1994 and they might not even have that site anymore. As long as I don't have to do apartments. The only reason why I didn't keep up with that job back in 1994 was because all WH could offer me was the shifts but I didn;t think about getting on with GWE at the time again.
The other thing is with WH I can get into playing ASL again and I'd insist Rob let me have Thursday's off and I wont work Sundays. I'd have WH Sunday night.
Anyway gang, that's all for now.
e. Jim
Monday, March 30, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Must be a Wednesday
In business news the CBC is about to lay off 800 people. Something is wrong with this picture. Do not adjust your set. They (the CBC) site dwindling audience and lack of advertising dollars. And other networks are going to feel the same pinch. I heard CanWest Global could be next. The problem stems from what choices people have to watch on TV, when 80% of modern programming is reality TV type programming or rehashing game show ideas or spin off’s of The Simpson’s. I don’t watch a lot of TV anyway, except the Oiler’s the evening news and wrestling. The only thing I like to watch on CBC is when there’s an Oiler game on. But I smell a Boondoggle here with the CBC, with their expecting layoffs and maybe closing down stations and insignificant programming the CBC still receives about a $1B budget from the Canadian Government.
Also Stats Canada went and released unemployment numbers but these were reflected at least here in Alberta by the downturn in the construction industry. I don’t know what March unemployment numbers are like but for February we were at 4.4% yet with about 550,000 people are on EI and that’s a significant number. Meanwhile oil dropped down to $52/barrel. Everything else like the Dow and the S&P is went up. But with the US Government now owning about 80% of AIG there is very little good economic news on the horizon. Except Saskatchewan, go figure.
More closer to home, our office still isn’t full after 7pm. We have a good 4-8 empty dialers. It’s still nothing like it was a year ago when we had a crew of about 8 tap shooters after 7pm.
I played some more Oblivion last night but the game froze up on me and I haven’t played it since around 3am this morning. I was trying out the bribing tool in the game and at the end one of the characters just went nuts attacking people. The guards came out and killed them. So once again I need to go back to an earlier saved game.
In SF Signal they are talking about the most funniest authors in SFF. I didn’t comment yet but for the most funniest SF author would have to be L. Ron Hubbard and his “Mission Earth” series. It was meant to be funny. I’m not a huge fan of comedy in science fiction literature but if I stumble upon something that looks good I wont turn it down because it‘s a comedy. I’m not a funny kind of person. I mean I consider myself likeable and I’m always friendly to people but I’m not one that has a library of jokes I can pull out of a hat. That’s not my personality but comedy and SF somehow kind of goes hand in hand. When “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” came out in 1978 it gathered a bit of a cult following but hardly registered a pulse beat under my thumb. I did like “Ghostbusters“ and “Back to the Future” and of course “Austin Powers” while not really science fiction, it has some SF concepts in the series etc but that’s Sci-Fi. As for the written word there are lots of SF comedy going around. I hear Terry Prathcett’s “Disc world” is supposed to be pretty good and Robert Sheckley is also pretty good from what I hear. I’m not about to turn down a good book because it’s a comedy yet I haven’t read a good SF comedy since Mission Earth.
L.E. Modesitt, Jr in his blog post yesterday had an interesting entry called permanence. He began by various upgrades of Word and how technology changes can often lose data. He also made a good point about paper and how we can read scrolls hundreds of years old but who in say 300 years from now will be able to even find my blog entries and email’s? He also talked about how in the US medical records will be made electronic but those medical records can be venerable no matter how much safety encryption measures are in place. And what about medical bracelets and even pacemakers and other items electronically connected to the hospital. Imagine if say terrorists broke into a universal set of standards for hospital wards and launched a virus into hospital equipment currently being used. Thousands of people could be at risk. It seems the more and more we use computers in our everyday lives the more venerable we become.
This got my warped imagination to think that this current economic crunch the world is currently in is brought to you from the folks at El Qaeda. What’s my basis in this? The fact that the economy changed so abruptly makes me believe this was a terrorist attack on a global scale.
My wife left out of here about 3:30pm and I left out of here at my usual time at 4pm. I was able to read a bit on the way into work.
I collected a good amount of cans and bottles before the shift began. DC wasn’t into work and apparently JT is on stress leave? Must be nice work if one can get it. Super wanted me and a few others in the back to do CCSD taps and I was about $230 and a CC by the break. I made another pass at the cans and bottles during the break. In the 2nd half I did a lot better doing CBF and I got another CC sale and a total of $530. No bonus money for me at all but that’s ok.
I got my 9:20pm Corona train into Clairview, another curling event? I just about missed my bus as the thing pulled out of Clairview making an exit but I was able to catch the bus on the exit swing and home.
Everything was as I left it and I turned off the radio and began to get into playing some “Oblivion.” The game after it crashed this morning worked just fine and I found a couple of new areas as well on the map. According to Yahoo answers there are about 330 different locations like Temples, caves, shrines that sort of thing. It’s a big game. Then there is the expansion pack “The Shimmering Isles” and that’s already available.
And finally no we didn’t win the big one on Anne’s 6/49 quick pick draw tonight. Somebody won $3.9M however.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Also Stats Canada went and released unemployment numbers but these were reflected at least here in Alberta by the downturn in the construction industry. I don’t know what March unemployment numbers are like but for February we were at 4.4% yet with about 550,000 people are on EI and that’s a significant number. Meanwhile oil dropped down to $52/barrel. Everything else like the Dow and the S&P is went up. But with the US Government now owning about 80% of AIG there is very little good economic news on the horizon. Except Saskatchewan, go figure.
More closer to home, our office still isn’t full after 7pm. We have a good 4-8 empty dialers. It’s still nothing like it was a year ago when we had a crew of about 8 tap shooters after 7pm.
I played some more Oblivion last night but the game froze up on me and I haven’t played it since around 3am this morning. I was trying out the bribing tool in the game and at the end one of the characters just went nuts attacking people. The guards came out and killed them. So once again I need to go back to an earlier saved game.
In SF Signal they are talking about the most funniest authors in SFF. I didn’t comment yet but for the most funniest SF author would have to be L. Ron Hubbard and his “Mission Earth” series. It was meant to be funny. I’m not a huge fan of comedy in science fiction literature but if I stumble upon something that looks good I wont turn it down because it‘s a comedy. I’m not a funny kind of person. I mean I consider myself likeable and I’m always friendly to people but I’m not one that has a library of jokes I can pull out of a hat. That’s not my personality but comedy and SF somehow kind of goes hand in hand. When “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” came out in 1978 it gathered a bit of a cult following but hardly registered a pulse beat under my thumb. I did like “Ghostbusters“ and “Back to the Future” and of course “Austin Powers” while not really science fiction, it has some SF concepts in the series etc but that’s Sci-Fi. As for the written word there are lots of SF comedy going around. I hear Terry Prathcett’s “Disc world” is supposed to be pretty good and Robert Sheckley is also pretty good from what I hear. I’m not about to turn down a good book because it’s a comedy yet I haven’t read a good SF comedy since Mission Earth.
L.E. Modesitt, Jr in his blog post yesterday had an interesting entry called permanence. He began by various upgrades of Word and how technology changes can often lose data. He also made a good point about paper and how we can read scrolls hundreds of years old but who in say 300 years from now will be able to even find my blog entries and email’s? He also talked about how in the US medical records will be made electronic but those medical records can be venerable no matter how much safety encryption measures are in place. And what about medical bracelets and even pacemakers and other items electronically connected to the hospital. Imagine if say terrorists broke into a universal set of standards for hospital wards and launched a virus into hospital equipment currently being used. Thousands of people could be at risk. It seems the more and more we use computers in our everyday lives the more venerable we become.
This got my warped imagination to think that this current economic crunch the world is currently in is brought to you from the folks at El Qaeda. What’s my basis in this? The fact that the economy changed so abruptly makes me believe this was a terrorist attack on a global scale.
My wife left out of here about 3:30pm and I left out of here at my usual time at 4pm. I was able to read a bit on the way into work.
I collected a good amount of cans and bottles before the shift began. DC wasn’t into work and apparently JT is on stress leave? Must be nice work if one can get it. Super wanted me and a few others in the back to do CCSD taps and I was about $230 and a CC by the break. I made another pass at the cans and bottles during the break. In the 2nd half I did a lot better doing CBF and I got another CC sale and a total of $530. No bonus money for me at all but that’s ok.
I got my 9:20pm Corona train into Clairview, another curling event? I just about missed my bus as the thing pulled out of Clairview making an exit but I was able to catch the bus on the exit swing and home.
Everything was as I left it and I turned off the radio and began to get into playing some “Oblivion.” The game after it crashed this morning worked just fine and I found a couple of new areas as well on the map. According to Yahoo answers there are about 330 different locations like Temples, caves, shrines that sort of thing. It’s a big game. Then there is the expansion pack “The Shimmering Isles” and that’s already available.
And finally no we didn’t win the big one on Anne’s 6/49 quick pick draw tonight. Somebody won $3.9M however.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Monday wasn't a bad day
after all. I got up around noon and watched the markets. Wow, the Dow was up by almost 500 points. Pretty amazing. Oil is just over $53.
At work we did semies all night, I didn't mind too much. I ended up with a $7.50 bonus and I got line hour and had a pretty good shift pulling in $330 and a $50 CC sale. I got a bunch of bottles and cans to take home on the train and I read a bit more of "The third lynx."
I got home, 10 minutes before Monday night Raw. It was a great show. on a scale from 1-10, I'd rate it a 9. Good stuff. The main event was very interesting.
I still haven't found time to do much memory work on my Lodge stuff but I hope to get that taken care of this week but I have no printer to print out a hard copy and I really need this. I hope I haven't taken on more then I can handle.
After Raw, I ended up playing some "Oblivion." I'm still at level 5 but wondering how many Save games I have left. I'm at 455 save games. I hope it just resets itself. It's a fun game with a lot of character.
Anyway gang, that's about all for now
e. Jim
At work we did semies all night, I didn't mind too much. I ended up with a $7.50 bonus and I got line hour and had a pretty good shift pulling in $330 and a $50 CC sale. I got a bunch of bottles and cans to take home on the train and I read a bit more of "The third lynx."
I got home, 10 minutes before Monday night Raw. It was a great show. on a scale from 1-10, I'd rate it a 9. Good stuff. The main event was very interesting.
I still haven't found time to do much memory work on my Lodge stuff but I hope to get that taken care of this week but I have no printer to print out a hard copy and I really need this. I hope I haven't taken on more then I can handle.
After Raw, I ended up playing some "Oblivion." I'm still at level 5 but wondering how many Save games I have left. I'm at 455 save games. I hope it just resets itself. It's a fun game with a lot of character.
Anyway gang, that's about all for now
e. Jim
Sunday, March 22, 2009
This Saturday morning felt good going into work for a change.
I was feeling pretty good going into work Saturday morning. These pictures were taken while waiting for my bus about 9am to Clairview station. Looks like a typical winter day doesn’t it? The first image is looking West towards the Manning bridge. My Saturday #11 bus shows over that bridge all the time at 9am towards me. I’ve shown this before but this is supposed to be Spring!
e. Jim
I was feeling pretty good for the trip in. I managed to read a bit and stretch myself out on the decorative pedestals at Corona and got the tightness out of my back and neck a bit. For the first time in a long time I wore my green bomber jacket into work. I had a good start to the shift as well for a Saturday morning. Team India is back. Nice to see them return. We had a shorter crew as well. I got a couple of CC sales and my last sale was a CC sale but at least now I know how to ask for the CC sale. JT wasn‘t in to pay me the $4 so I offered DC to go double or nothing for the game this afternoon since he didn’t have any change on him. I walked out of there empty handed but I got a $5 bonus for next week.
Next week I’m expecting $46 in bonuses on my cheque and a full week. I kind of dozed off on the train there for awhile on my way home and once inside my place I was hoping have a bit of a nap but best I could do was to doze off. The next image is the walkway right behind our apartment. In a couple of weeks all that snow will be gone. I love April out here because everything has that dead feeling of renewal before the leaves pop out. There are no bugs hanging around. By the end of April all the leaves on the trees are budding.
This is a view of our balcony. The white vertical board at right covers our BBQ. See the two (birch?) trees almost side by side? The evergreen between them is “The Boot’s tree.” The window beside the white board is my office and the next window is our bedroom. I love our balcony because it’s so long and enclosed to give us some privacy.
And just for fun the last image is of my job workbook. I keep my nightly records in here. The green strokes are $800-$1000+ nights. I’ve had 4 so far in March, Five in February and 12 in January.
All in all I had a nice day for Saturday. The only hic-up I had was Anne telling me this morning when I locked up I failed to close the lock properly leaving our apartment unlocked while she was at home sleeping for 3 hours. First time that’s ever happened. That and the blow up just now she had with me leaving out of here to Walmart over chips no less.
Since I’m still on Saturday time here, I spent about 3 hours playing Oblivion. I’m still at Level 5 and I’m not able to use any magic yet. I’m finding the Quest bosses really hard to eliminate. Journeying through the game this evening I discovered about 3 new forts a shrine and a couple caves as well. This game is going to take me awhile to complete.
Providing Rob pays me all my bonuses I should get an extra $46 on my next cheque. Since I only bought 2 books so far for march, I can get 2 more next week.
What would make my weekend complete is if the Oiler’s go into Minneapolis and win the game. We Didn’t get that 6/49 win Saturday night. There was 1 winner claiming (6) $4,448,017.00 and someone won (5 + bonus) $317,715.40. Also, 144 people won (5) $1,822.60 and finally 6,486 (4) people won $76.60. That’s 6, 5+, 5, 4 respectively. Of course even if I won the big one, I wouldn’t announce it.
And finally Sci-fi guy and Sci-fi chick are still reviewing Urban fantasy books. What science fiction and urban fantasy have in common, I Haven’t the foggiest idea.
I just did a rush edit on this post and we're done for the night.
e. Jim
Thursday, March 19, 2009
I don't really have a lot to say today
but at least the weather is getting better. I've got my window opened up. Boots is sleeping beside me peacefully. And, I'm ready to go into work in about an hour or so.
I woke up at noon with a headache and I decided to sleep for a bit longer, headache gone.
Still reading "The third Lynx." I wanted to have this thing read by now but it's been tough finding time to read an hour and really get into reading an hour. I read about 10 pages/day mostly on the way to and from work. but at least I'm almost at the halfway point in the book.
Anyway gang, that's all for now
e. Jim
I woke up at noon with a headache and I decided to sleep for a bit longer, headache gone.
Still reading "The third Lynx." I wanted to have this thing read by now but it's been tough finding time to read an hour and really get into reading an hour. I read about 10 pages/day mostly on the way to and from work. but at least I'm almost at the halfway point in the book.
Anyway gang, that's all for now
e. Jim
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Today is a lame day for a Wednesday and not a lot is going on
at the moment. Anne's out of here for her 3pm start. It's my usual line up for me.
But I have a work related issue that needs to be addressed on the job. Most businesses pay out vacation pay. Since the place I work at pays weekly hence my vacation pay is paid out on a weekly basis. Right now it's at 6% of my weekly gross pay. I think it caps out at 8%. However, I have my vacation pay accrued every week. That means my company holds it back for me, like a bank account upon my request. It's a release form I have to fill out. I can take out as many "draws" as I want. Usually I do this twice a year, at the end of June and just around Christmas time. Last Christmas when I tried to take out my vacation pay I got a memo from head office saying there was an "overpayment" and so no vacation pay will be released. This kind of took me for a spin. Huh? I never saw any increase in my rate of pay since last June till December. Last time I took a draw was last June. I figured well, ok. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Then a few months back I heard that this happened to other people in the office as well. Some of them were saying I should do something about this. I thought, well lets see if they do this again and site an "overpayment" when I take out my vacation pay in June.
The thing is, there's no explanation as to where the overpayment came out from. Then my wife looked at my pay stub last week and discovered my vacation pay is not showing up on my pay cheque. it should show as a running balance. Uh-oh. I've been so worried about my job lately I was to timid to rock the boat and say something. Now that everything is more or less ok, I need to find out what's going on with this.
The first thing I'm going to do is contact Rob this afternoon if he hasn't left the office when I get there and say that my vacation pay is not showing up on my pay cheque. Could he ask HO what's going on? If a memo comes back saying again about an overpayment without an explanation, then I'm going to ask for a history of my "overpayment." Could they email Rob. If they don't do anything for say the rest of this month then I'll ask one more time with a push: Something like "Or James will bring this up with Alberta Employment Standards if this isn't resolved." AES is the labor board. Their lawyer's will most likely open proceedings to do an internal audit of my company and that could be a big headache they don't need. I need to be careful here as I'm in unfamiliar waters. What I think? HO is confusing my bonus money as an overpayment. last week for instance I was expecting $35 in bonus money. This is for things like CC sales etc. Imagine my surprise when I got $5. That kind of told me that it's HO fouling things up again. I asked Super to make sure that $30 gets on this cheque and he placed it on the attendance sheet. It sounds like they're trying to get rif of me. Force me to quit.
Tonight, is the Old Timer hockey game. or OTH as we call it. Odd how my wife got a couple of vouchers from her place of work. I know business trades ad space in the hockey programs and my wife's place of employment might be one of the partner companies.
Speaking of companies and such AIG as everyone knows is in the news again. Politicians are passing blame and pointing fingers. Basically they're showboating more then anything. Right now the banks need trust. If there's no trust, credit can't circulate. Trust is a two way street folks, it works both ways.
I'm still reading "The third Lynx." I'm really enjoying this book. I like books that are in first person. There are so few first person books these days.
Last night on Coast they had Gregg Braden on again. He's got a whack of YouTube videos on spiritualist like topics. He's a great speaker and a favorite on Coast.
Also, it seems that Robert J Sawyer is coming to Edmonton on one of his book tours promoting Wake. Most likely this will be at Audrey's again. The date will be Thursday April 23rd. I don't have a copy of Wake yet but he'll have a lot of them in hard copy on his table. I'm not a 100% sure he'll be at Audrey's but he was last time to promote Rollback a few years ago. I'll email him when I come home tonight and I'll have an answer most likely tomorrow.
We're still getting some cold weather around here. Too cold for Spring, which begins on Friday. But we're going to see a lot less of the -15C's and crap like that out here. By the end of march early April the snow should all be but gone.
Anyway gang, that's all for now
e. Jim
But I have a work related issue that needs to be addressed on the job. Most businesses pay out vacation pay. Since the place I work at pays weekly hence my vacation pay is paid out on a weekly basis. Right now it's at 6% of my weekly gross pay. I think it caps out at 8%. However, I have my vacation pay accrued every week. That means my company holds it back for me, like a bank account upon my request. It's a release form I have to fill out. I can take out as many "draws" as I want. Usually I do this twice a year, at the end of June and just around Christmas time. Last Christmas when I tried to take out my vacation pay I got a memo from head office saying there was an "overpayment" and so no vacation pay will be released. This kind of took me for a spin. Huh? I never saw any increase in my rate of pay since last June till December. Last time I took a draw was last June. I figured well, ok. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Then a few months back I heard that this happened to other people in the office as well. Some of them were saying I should do something about this. I thought, well lets see if they do this again and site an "overpayment" when I take out my vacation pay in June.
The thing is, there's no explanation as to where the overpayment came out from. Then my wife looked at my pay stub last week and discovered my vacation pay is not showing up on my pay cheque. it should show as a running balance. Uh-oh. I've been so worried about my job lately I was to timid to rock the boat and say something. Now that everything is more or less ok, I need to find out what's going on with this.
The first thing I'm going to do is contact Rob this afternoon if he hasn't left the office when I get there and say that my vacation pay is not showing up on my pay cheque. Could he ask HO what's going on? If a memo comes back saying again about an overpayment without an explanation, then I'm going to ask for a history of my "overpayment." Could they email Rob. If they don't do anything for say the rest of this month then I'll ask one more time with a push: Something like "Or James will bring this up with Alberta Employment Standards if this isn't resolved." AES is the labor board. Their lawyer's will most likely open proceedings to do an internal audit of my company and that could be a big headache they don't need. I need to be careful here as I'm in unfamiliar waters. What I think? HO is confusing my bonus money as an overpayment. last week for instance I was expecting $35 in bonus money. This is for things like CC sales etc. Imagine my surprise when I got $5. That kind of told me that it's HO fouling things up again. I asked Super to make sure that $30 gets on this cheque and he placed it on the attendance sheet. It sounds like they're trying to get rif of me. Force me to quit.
Tonight, is the Old Timer hockey game. or OTH as we call it. Odd how my wife got a couple of vouchers from her place of work. I know business trades ad space in the hockey programs and my wife's place of employment might be one of the partner companies.
Speaking of companies and such AIG as everyone knows is in the news again. Politicians are passing blame and pointing fingers. Basically they're showboating more then anything. Right now the banks need trust. If there's no trust, credit can't circulate. Trust is a two way street folks, it works both ways.
I'm still reading "The third Lynx." I'm really enjoying this book. I like books that are in first person. There are so few first person books these days.
Last night on Coast they had Gregg Braden on again. He's got a whack of YouTube videos on spiritualist like topics. He's a great speaker and a favorite on Coast.
Also, it seems that Robert J Sawyer is coming to Edmonton on one of his book tours promoting Wake. Most likely this will be at Audrey's again. The date will be Thursday April 23rd. I don't have a copy of Wake yet but he'll have a lot of them in hard copy on his table. I'm not a 100% sure he'll be at Audrey's but he was last time to promote Rollback a few years ago. I'll email him when I come home tonight and I'll have an answer most likely tomorrow.
We're still getting some cold weather around here. Too cold for Spring, which begins on Friday. But we're going to see a lot less of the -15C's and crap like that out here. By the end of march early April the snow should all be but gone.
Anyway gang, that's all for now
e. Jim
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
March madness at it again.
I was very apprehensive leaving out of the apartment yesterday afternoon. This grew more evident the closer I got downtown. But in the office I asked DC where do I sit? He said something like “how about in your usual spot?” Really? Bud moved and W was also leaving. Then JT said that the morning tap shooter crew are still working. It’s just the back 20 not working mornings. Instant relief. Rob said nothing to me. Everything is business as usual. JT etc stayed until 7pm. I decided to gather a bunch of cans and bottles for home. I did ok in the 1st half but only one CC sale. I think I was at $250 in the first half. I felt a lot better.
I tried calling Anne about the job situation but she wasn’t answering the phone. I had a slow 2nd half and the source we were doing was drying up and we had to do semies in the last hour. This is usually a 2 week campaign anyway. I made a 7pm pass at the bottles and cans and got a few more. I ended up with a $350 total. Nothing stellar that’s for sure.
I had a quiet train ride to Clairview and a brief wait on my bus. Anne was busy with housework when I came in. It was -10C on the way home. Not bad. I’m just happy I have my job, everything’s fine.
Monday night Raw had a few surprises in store. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate the show about a 9, Anne made us a great dinner of pork chops and her tin foil wrap potato’s and ET. This was a great way to wrap up a day that had a bit to much drama in it for my liking.
I mentioned before this week has a lot of things going. My wife’s birthday yesterday, Saint Patrick’s day today, tomorrow is OTH, Spring is on Friday. It’s going to bean busy week…………1:10pm> The cat woke me up around 11:30 this morning. I could have slept for another hour, easy. Then my wife had to get up a couple times back to back. All the cats come in and I’m up feeling cheated of potentially an extra hour of sleep. Anne felt a need to go over to the pet store to get a cat house or some damn thing.
Again the local issue of homelessness was in the news this afternoon. Beware of rant: Apparently between the province and the City of Edmonton, there is now $3B put out to get rid of the homeless problem. But wait now, the same story said there are something like 3,000 homeless people on the streets here in my City. I don’t know how many in Calgary but I image it’s a bit more then 3,000. So, lets say there’s 8,000 homeless from all across the Province. That’s about $375,000 per person. I wonder how many of these homeless people have jobs? Maybe a year ago I’d guess maybe 2 thirds. Now I’d say about half. How many of these people are from out of Province that recently arrived? How many of these people were in halfway houses? Probably most of them in the major cities. So what happens when the City finds these people a home? Their monthly rent is going to be as high as ours. Is the Province going to pay for their rent as well? That’s a pretty good deal rent free and a new home. Most likely that comes with lights and water. What about food? Easy, that’s why we have food banks. Wait now, a roof over ones head, free power and water, free food! Meanwhile the working poor (Which I consider myself and my family.) are paying $850 rent on a 2 bedroom apartment. My wife has to go to the food bank down the street at least once a month, We have jobs both working part time hours and like most families were just getting by. Pardon me if I sound like I’m whining here. That’s not what I’m attempting to say but it seems to me that $3B is a lot of money for about 8,000 people that are homeless here in Alberta. Yes I can work more hours at 56 years old being diabetic and having scoliosis of the spine might be hard on me. My wife has her own health issues and it’d be hard on her but we shouldn’t have to when all these homeless people are getting such treatment. People may ask me if I’ve ever been homeless? Yes, once around 1976 for a few weeks in between the job I had at the Army & Navy store in New Westminster BC. But I was housed up in a big room with about 4 other guys and we got meal vouchers for the pacific café 3 times/day. I was waiting for my unemployment at the time. Sure I’ve never had to sleep on the streets or anything but that’s only because I’ve got to much pride in myself. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for homeless people but I have to wonder about this “$3B plan,” to eradicate homeless people here in Edmonton/Alberta. Of course there’s a lot more to it then that. More on this later.
Ok, onto other things. There’s been some discussion going on about the Sci-Fi channel and it’s seemingly lack of SF content these days. I don’t know about this since I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’m too busy doing other things like piano practicing, Lodge work, my job, reading and finding time to play some Oblivion etc, to really notice. Yes, I’ve noticed “Space,” our version of the Sci-Fi channel here in Canada, has been running some monster movies and other stuff not really related to Science Fiction. For example right now Space is running a STNG episode “The most Toys.” The only problem I have with these specialty channels is they seem to have about 10 episodes of anything. Except the new stuff and even then. I mean you can only run so much of anything but with so much Sci-fi out there you’d think that Space could just stick with SF content. There’s enough SF movies out there they could run those in the evenings and all the rest during the other times. I think it has something to do with licensing agreements here in Canada or Canadian content.
Anyway, as for me…I’m in for my usual 5-9 and hopefully they’ll have the hockey game on. I get to watch a bit of that. Then it’s home and more of the same. Sorry if this reads choppy today I‘m not quite awake.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
I tried calling Anne about the job situation but she wasn’t answering the phone. I had a slow 2nd half and the source we were doing was drying up and we had to do semies in the last hour. This is usually a 2 week campaign anyway. I made a 7pm pass at the bottles and cans and got a few more. I ended up with a $350 total. Nothing stellar that’s for sure.
I had a quiet train ride to Clairview and a brief wait on my bus. Anne was busy with housework when I came in. It was -10C on the way home. Not bad. I’m just happy I have my job, everything’s fine.
Monday night Raw had a few surprises in store. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate the show about a 9, Anne made us a great dinner of pork chops and her tin foil wrap potato’s and ET. This was a great way to wrap up a day that had a bit to much drama in it for my liking.
I mentioned before this week has a lot of things going. My wife’s birthday yesterday, Saint Patrick’s day today, tomorrow is OTH, Spring is on Friday. It’s going to bean busy week…………1:10pm> The cat woke me up around 11:30 this morning. I could have slept for another hour, easy. Then my wife had to get up a couple times back to back. All the cats come in and I’m up feeling cheated of potentially an extra hour of sleep. Anne felt a need to go over to the pet store to get a cat house or some damn thing.
Again the local issue of homelessness was in the news this afternoon. Beware of rant: Apparently between the province and the City of Edmonton, there is now $3B put out to get rid of the homeless problem. But wait now, the same story said there are something like 3,000 homeless people on the streets here in my City. I don’t know how many in Calgary but I image it’s a bit more then 3,000. So, lets say there’s 8,000 homeless from all across the Province. That’s about $375,000 per person. I wonder how many of these homeless people have jobs? Maybe a year ago I’d guess maybe 2 thirds. Now I’d say about half. How many of these people are from out of Province that recently arrived? How many of these people were in halfway houses? Probably most of them in the major cities. So what happens when the City finds these people a home? Their monthly rent is going to be as high as ours. Is the Province going to pay for their rent as well? That’s a pretty good deal rent free and a new home. Most likely that comes with lights and water. What about food? Easy, that’s why we have food banks. Wait now, a roof over ones head, free power and water, free food! Meanwhile the working poor (Which I consider myself and my family.) are paying $850 rent on a 2 bedroom apartment. My wife has to go to the food bank down the street at least once a month, We have jobs both working part time hours and like most families were just getting by. Pardon me if I sound like I’m whining here. That’s not what I’m attempting to say but it seems to me that $3B is a lot of money for about 8,000 people that are homeless here in Alberta. Yes I can work more hours at 56 years old being diabetic and having scoliosis of the spine might be hard on me. My wife has her own health issues and it’d be hard on her but we shouldn’t have to when all these homeless people are getting such treatment. People may ask me if I’ve ever been homeless? Yes, once around 1976 for a few weeks in between the job I had at the Army & Navy store in New Westminster BC. But I was housed up in a big room with about 4 other guys and we got meal vouchers for the pacific café 3 times/day. I was waiting for my unemployment at the time. Sure I’ve never had to sleep on the streets or anything but that’s only because I’ve got to much pride in myself. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for homeless people but I have to wonder about this “$3B plan,” to eradicate homeless people here in Edmonton/Alberta. Of course there’s a lot more to it then that. More on this later.
Ok, onto other things. There’s been some discussion going on about the Sci-Fi channel and it’s seemingly lack of SF content these days. I don’t know about this since I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’m too busy doing other things like piano practicing, Lodge work, my job, reading and finding time to play some Oblivion etc, to really notice. Yes, I’ve noticed “Space,” our version of the Sci-Fi channel here in Canada, has been running some monster movies and other stuff not really related to Science Fiction. For example right now Space is running a STNG episode “The most Toys.” The only problem I have with these specialty channels is they seem to have about 10 episodes of anything. Except the new stuff and even then. I mean you can only run so much of anything but with so much Sci-fi out there you’d think that Space could just stick with SF content. There’s enough SF movies out there they could run those in the evenings and all the rest during the other times. I think it has something to do with licensing agreements here in Canada or Canadian content.
Anyway, as for me…I’m in for my usual 5-9 and hopefully they’ll have the hockey game on. I get to watch a bit of that. Then it’s home and more of the same. Sorry if this reads choppy today I‘m not quite awake.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Sunday, March 15, 2009
I'm not going to worry about things anymore.
Sleep for me came by really hard overnight. I got up about 5:30am to do some reading. That helped but I couldn’t help but not think about my job and what tomorrow at 5pm will bring. I managed to fall back to sleep though. Anne got up around noon. I tried to catch a half an hour after that but she left for work about 1pm.
I woke up around 1:30pm and fixed myself a coffee. It’s been snowing on and off all afternoon. Not a lot going on right now. I decided to play some Oblivion and I got to an earlier saved game and that got me out of the sewers a lot easier. I “lost” all that gold and hit points. I decided to pick up on the current quest and got a lot further in the quest then ever. Agimir met me in a mausoleum with a friend. They were grave robbing but hey confronted me and I got “killed” I tried going after Agimir again but I was getting beaten up to badly. I tried to steal something and that interrupted the flow of combat. The Imperial Watch threw me in jail. These end of the quest bosses are too tough for me.
I got a call from Anne’s sister that sent her the birthday money. I Haven’t spoken with this sister yet. Anne called latter and relayed the message back to her but her sister that called lives in NS so they’re a little further time wise away then we are. My wife said it’s really slow for a Sunday. Since this was the first Sunday she ever worked at pizza since she started there in September. She thinks she might get sent home early. I’m still reluctant to tell her about my job situations but at the same time I want to ask her to get me an application for Pizza this evening. I won’t mind working X4 8 hour shifts. Friday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. That way I get Saturday, Wednesday and Thursday off. But if nothing happens to me tomorrow, then situation normal.
If you notice the goofy looking color Facebook photo of me on my website (left sidebar) I’m at my station in the office I work at. We have 41 of those computer stations with equipment that’s over 10 years old. There’s another 21 possibly 31 stations on the other side but only about 5 of them are occupied in the evening. There’s lots of room left but how much source do we have?
Facebook has a new “Homepage.” I noticed that the comments aren’t published immediately like in the “old Facebook.” Maybe I accidentally hid them, I don’t know.
Anne called me on her 8:30pm break and they’re just starting to pick up there now. I dropped the bomb on her that my place of employment is cutting back and how I’ve been holding this up inside for the last 2 days. She said for me not to worry about it because I’m evening and agreed with me how Rob would have called me in right there. I actually feel a bit better about this.
I got Boots with me this evening. Him and I are pulling in guard duty in my home office. You have to be careful when you ty and pet him because he has an instinct to scratch.
Anne said if they do let me go then she’ll get me a Pizza application when she goes to her job on Wednesday. I think I might actually like this better then where I am now. No more Saturday mornings. A cheque directly into my bank account every other Friday. I could use her as a recommendation and we’d get the referral bonus money from them (if they do ) hirer me on that is. My reference might be a bit of a problem because of all the time I’ve taken off. In the last 8.5 years at least one day/week. That’s about 450 missed days in the last 8.5 years. Umm, considering I don’t take smoke breaks or vacation time off and the fact that they ripped me off my vacation pay last December, me and about 4 others as well.
Speaking of Internet related things, I’ve been having issues with my Gmail. I keep getting on the link I’ve used for months a “Windows updater.” This sounds like a virus because it wont let me get into my Gmail from there. I go direct to Google to get it. The other thing I heard on Coast this morning is something called “Wolfram Alpha.” it’s hyped as a killer replacement for Google because it does searching in different ways. Wolfram Alpha apparently launches in May. Something tells me Google has their hand in this somehow.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
I woke up around 1:30pm and fixed myself a coffee. It’s been snowing on and off all afternoon. Not a lot going on right now. I decided to play some Oblivion and I got to an earlier saved game and that got me out of the sewers a lot easier. I “lost” all that gold and hit points. I decided to pick up on the current quest and got a lot further in the quest then ever. Agimir met me in a mausoleum with a friend. They were grave robbing but hey confronted me and I got “killed” I tried going after Agimir again but I was getting beaten up to badly. I tried to steal something and that interrupted the flow of combat. The Imperial Watch threw me in jail. These end of the quest bosses are too tough for me.
I got a call from Anne’s sister that sent her the birthday money. I Haven’t spoken with this sister yet. Anne called latter and relayed the message back to her but her sister that called lives in NS so they’re a little further time wise away then we are. My wife said it’s really slow for a Sunday. Since this was the first Sunday she ever worked at pizza since she started there in September. She thinks she might get sent home early. I’m still reluctant to tell her about my job situations but at the same time I want to ask her to get me an application for Pizza this evening. I won’t mind working X4 8 hour shifts. Friday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. That way I get Saturday, Wednesday and Thursday off. But if nothing happens to me tomorrow, then situation normal.
If you notice the goofy looking color Facebook photo of me on my website (left sidebar) I’m at my station in the office I work at. We have 41 of those computer stations with equipment that’s over 10 years old. There’s another 21 possibly 31 stations on the other side but only about 5 of them are occupied in the evening. There’s lots of room left but how much source do we have?
Facebook has a new “Homepage.” I noticed that the comments aren’t published immediately like in the “old Facebook.” Maybe I accidentally hid them, I don’t know.
Anne called me on her 8:30pm break and they’re just starting to pick up there now. I dropped the bomb on her that my place of employment is cutting back and how I’ve been holding this up inside for the last 2 days. She said for me not to worry about it because I’m evening and agreed with me how Rob would have called me in right there. I actually feel a bit better about this.
I got Boots with me this evening. Him and I are pulling in guard duty in my home office. You have to be careful when you ty and pet him because he has an instinct to scratch.
Anne said if they do let me go then she’ll get me a Pizza application when she goes to her job on Wednesday. I think I might actually like this better then where I am now. No more Saturday mornings. A cheque directly into my bank account every other Friday. I could use her as a recommendation and we’d get the referral bonus money from them (if they do ) hirer me on that is. My reference might be a bit of a problem because of all the time I’ve taken off. In the last 8.5 years at least one day/week. That’s about 450 missed days in the last 8.5 years. Umm, considering I don’t take smoke breaks or vacation time off and the fact that they ripped me off my vacation pay last December, me and about 4 others as well.
Speaking of Internet related things, I’ve been having issues with my Gmail. I keep getting on the link I’ve used for months a “Windows updater.” This sounds like a virus because it wont let me get into my Gmail from there. I go direct to Google to get it. The other thing I heard on Coast this morning is something called “Wolfram Alpha.” it’s hyped as a killer replacement for Google because it does searching in different ways. Wolfram Alpha apparently launches in May. Something tells me Google has their hand in this somehow.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Saturday was a pretty good day.
I’m going into work feeling pretty good and all yesterday. The weather was nice and mild. I read a bit from my book as well on the way in. At the drugstore I bought my 6/49 ticket and got some change to pay JT and DC. I met JT upstairs as the shift was over and paid him that $4. Then I heard about the bomb. Apparently head office is making some cutbacks and the morning shift is no longer. They’re running 1:30pm-9pm now as of Monday. They might even go from 1:30pm-10pm and cut Sunday’s shift off. It’s still 8pm in BC. I might get 5 hours/shift if that’s the case. This actually threw me for a loop here and made me feeling down for the night. At least they didn’t lay me off-yet. I got a couple of calls from Anne while she was on her breaks 6:20pm break and 8pm. I collected a lot of cans and bottles and she said she was going to give me another $20 because of my missing bonuses. I ended up with $360 and 2 CC sales. Nothing stellar. I called Trevor saying I’d come by on Monday and pick up my copy of “Path’s of Darkness." It might be Friday.
After work I went to Tim’s to get a medium decafe and a blueberry fritter. I drank the coffee on the way home. It was very nice out there and still is. Super etc knows I’m not in for today because of Anne’s birthday. I mentioned to JT about how I’m not going to tell her about how the morning shift is being cut back as of Monday. I came in to watch Smackdown and Anne came home and made me a couple of hotdogs and fries for my lunch last night.
Then it occurred to me that they are going to cancel the morning shift, they can still use the dialers for the afternoon/evening shift. JT was saying how when he was on the trip to Vegas sitting beside some guys from our Calgary office that they were scaled back to about 15 people. But this was in the summer before the economy went bad. We had that many people in our office as well before the recession. Apparently Rob etc were pulling in a lot of the back 20 telling them they‘re let go. But Rob never pulled me aside. He was right there watching me pay off JT.
I heard on Ched this afternoon as I was packing my things up that Iphone and Itouch users can pick up Ched anywhere where there’s a wi-fi connection for free. Interesting. I’d love to be able to pick up the Oiler’s game in progress on my way home from work. Gives me a whole new reason to think about getting an Iphone.
If I’m laid off on Monday, the first thing I’m going to do the following morning is get on EI. Then look for work. I’ll be applying at Pizza and see if I can get hired on there. I’m not going to tell my wife what happened just yet. I want to see if I can get a job the next day. If I survive this round then great, I'll remain at my job. I’ve got 3 years until "early retirement." Economic recovery is apparently near the end of 2009. Just how long it will take for the economy to recover is another thing. If I can get another year out of where I’m working then fine. If my company Edmonton goes belly up, then I can go to Pizza. Rob might offer me a couple of suggestions and I know Anne wont like them but I have to keep my job.
I don’t know what’s happened with Anne. She left out of here about noon to mail my T4’s and pick up my insulin. Then we’re supposed to go out for our dinner. Unless she’s changed her mind. I don’t mind going. The weather isn’t bad out there at +1. All we do is board the bus out here, take the train to Coliseum station board a bus to Kingsway Mall and the connecting bus to the Ramada and we’re there. It’s about an hour trip there and back. But Anne might decide to buy herself a birthday present instead and get a Rose bowl pizza. The longer she stays out there the window closes because I want to be home by 8pm ish for the game. The whole dinner would run us about $50 and it seems like a waste of money for $50 just to go out and eat. I’m ok with it either way though. I’m just kind of worried about Monday. With them cutting back the morning shift and with the numbers/resources we have to work with, is my job in jeopardy? I asked Dave if he was concerned and he said something like he works from “1:30-9pm” so it doesn’t affect him. Yeah but a lot of those morning people the ones that haven’t been laid off yet will migrate over to the afternoon/evening shift. There might be no more 5-9 anymore. It might just be 1:30-10pm. 7.5 hours of work with a half hour break. But Rob could tell me that Monday. I might just ask if I could do business instead and work 8:00am-4am. I can get up at say 6:45am get out the door by 7:20am. Best part about business is I not only get my evenings off but I also get my weekends off. I can see my job cutting back Saturday’s and Sunday’s. That’s 35 hours for everyone. I can handle that..........I'm back:
Friggin Oiler’s, couldn’t win a game worth trying. They can go into OT but after that. Forget it. Tonight they went from 7th then 8th and 9th and back to 8th again. They share 8th place with the Wild. Yeesh.
Okay, I got up around 1pm this afternoon. Did my thing and Anne came in to haul me out for dinner. She was out getting my insulin and other things. She brought back chips, dip etc. We left out of here around 4pm under sunny skies at +3C. Very nice. We got out train at Clairview and I read my book with my wife down to Stadium. We caught the #127 after a 15 min wait and then over to Kingsway mall for the #12. We got some good connections. We got to the Ramada about 5:30pm. Their prime rib was awesome. Best beef I’ve ever had. Very nice. I went back for seconds. Even the desert was good. I think our bill was $50 and I gave a $5 tip to our waiter. We paid our bill and headed across the street and I took my insulin in the bus shelter. We made great connections getting back. It was nice seeing the Oiler faithful heading out to the game. We were waiting for a bus at Clairview home and the #183 came by and a brief wait and we were home by 8pm.
The Oiler’s could have easily knocked themselves out of the playoff race all together but they have a game in hand more then anyone else. But they’ve got to start winning some games. They didn’t play very well tonight. I give them a C+ 3-2 Av’s in OT.
I’m not to worried about losing my job. Pizza is always hiring. I can work a Friday night, Sunday and Monday. The only thing with pizza is that bonus money is hard to come by. But if I get hired I can get on right away.
Over the last several weeks I’ve been following the prose over there at Sci-fi guy .ca. The site promotes a lot of Urban fantasy. Nothing wrong with this, but where is the sci-fi at Sci-fi guy. ca? Am I missing something here?
So, for today, on a scale from 1-10 I’d rate today an 8.5. An Oiler win would have made it a 9 and winning anything on this evenings 6/49 would have made it a 10. I slept in on a Saturday, went out to dinner with my wife and watched the Oiler’s lose, but lost on the 6/49. All in all, today was a good day.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
After work I went to Tim’s to get a medium decafe and a blueberry fritter. I drank the coffee on the way home. It was very nice out there and still is. Super etc knows I’m not in for today because of Anne’s birthday. I mentioned to JT about how I’m not going to tell her about how the morning shift is being cut back as of Monday. I came in to watch Smackdown and Anne came home and made me a couple of hotdogs and fries for my lunch last night.
Then it occurred to me that they are going to cancel the morning shift, they can still use the dialers for the afternoon/evening shift. JT was saying how when he was on the trip to Vegas sitting beside some guys from our Calgary office that they were scaled back to about 15 people. But this was in the summer before the economy went bad. We had that many people in our office as well before the recession. Apparently Rob etc were pulling in a lot of the back 20 telling them they‘re let go. But Rob never pulled me aside. He was right there watching me pay off JT.
I heard on Ched this afternoon as I was packing my things up that Iphone and Itouch users can pick up Ched anywhere where there’s a wi-fi connection for free. Interesting. I’d love to be able to pick up the Oiler’s game in progress on my way home from work. Gives me a whole new reason to think about getting an Iphone.
If I’m laid off on Monday, the first thing I’m going to do the following morning is get on EI. Then look for work. I’ll be applying at Pizza and see if I can get hired on there. I’m not going to tell my wife what happened just yet. I want to see if I can get a job the next day. If I survive this round then great, I'll remain at my job. I’ve got 3 years until "early retirement." Economic recovery is apparently near the end of 2009. Just how long it will take for the economy to recover is another thing. If I can get another year out of where I’m working then fine. If my company Edmonton goes belly up, then I can go to Pizza. Rob might offer me a couple of suggestions and I know Anne wont like them but I have to keep my job.
I don’t know what’s happened with Anne. She left out of here about noon to mail my T4’s and pick up my insulin. Then we’re supposed to go out for our dinner. Unless she’s changed her mind. I don’t mind going. The weather isn’t bad out there at +1. All we do is board the bus out here, take the train to Coliseum station board a bus to Kingsway Mall and the connecting bus to the Ramada and we’re there. It’s about an hour trip there and back. But Anne might decide to buy herself a birthday present instead and get a Rose bowl pizza. The longer she stays out there the window closes because I want to be home by 8pm ish for the game. The whole dinner would run us about $50 and it seems like a waste of money for $50 just to go out and eat. I’m ok with it either way though. I’m just kind of worried about Monday. With them cutting back the morning shift and with the numbers/resources we have to work with, is my job in jeopardy? I asked Dave if he was concerned and he said something like he works from “1:30-9pm” so it doesn’t affect him. Yeah but a lot of those morning people the ones that haven’t been laid off yet will migrate over to the afternoon/evening shift. There might be no more 5-9 anymore. It might just be 1:30-10pm. 7.5 hours of work with a half hour break. But Rob could tell me that Monday. I might just ask if I could do business instead and work 8:00am-4am. I can get up at say 6:45am get out the door by 7:20am. Best part about business is I not only get my evenings off but I also get my weekends off. I can see my job cutting back Saturday’s and Sunday’s. That’s 35 hours for everyone. I can handle that..........I'm back:
Friggin Oiler’s, couldn’t win a game worth trying. They can go into OT but after that. Forget it. Tonight they went from 7th then 8th and 9th and back to 8th again. They share 8th place with the Wild. Yeesh.
Okay, I got up around 1pm this afternoon. Did my thing and Anne came in to haul me out for dinner. She was out getting my insulin and other things. She brought back chips, dip etc. We left out of here around 4pm under sunny skies at +3C. Very nice. We got out train at Clairview and I read my book with my wife down to Stadium. We caught the #127 after a 15 min wait and then over to Kingsway mall for the #12. We got some good connections. We got to the Ramada about 5:30pm. Their prime rib was awesome. Best beef I’ve ever had. Very nice. I went back for seconds. Even the desert was good. I think our bill was $50 and I gave a $5 tip to our waiter. We paid our bill and headed across the street and I took my insulin in the bus shelter. We made great connections getting back. It was nice seeing the Oiler faithful heading out to the game. We were waiting for a bus at Clairview home and the #183 came by and a brief wait and we were home by 8pm.
The Oiler’s could have easily knocked themselves out of the playoff race all together but they have a game in hand more then anyone else. But they’ve got to start winning some games. They didn’t play very well tonight. I give them a C+ 3-2 Av’s in OT.
I’m not to worried about losing my job. Pizza is always hiring. I can work a Friday night, Sunday and Monday. The only thing with pizza is that bonus money is hard to come by. But if I get hired I can get on right away.
Over the last several weeks I’ve been following the prose over there at Sci-fi guy .ca. The site promotes a lot of Urban fantasy. Nothing wrong with this, but where is the sci-fi at Sci-fi guy. ca? Am I missing something here?
So, for today, on a scale from 1-10 I’d rate today an 8.5. An Oiler win would have made it a 9 and winning anything on this evenings 6/49 would have made it a 10. I slept in on a Saturday, went out to dinner with my wife and watched the Oiler’s lose, but lost on the 6/49. All in all, today was a good day.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Thursday, March 12, 2009
I'm kind of in a rush this evening folks.
My wife left out of here about 7am this morning to get our taxes done. It’s a free service in the Edmonton public library for low income earners. We qualified by about $500. Meanwhile I was sleeping and about 8:30am I woke up with this terrible headache. I was struggling with this thing all morning. Finally I took my last Advil and went to rest on the couch. About half an hour later I felt great. I was playing Oblivion when Anne came in and she was accusing me of trying to sabotaging our subsidy forms by somehow taking my part of the form out So I’m looking for the form and she finds it. Good news is she doesn’t owe the Feds anything. Also, She’s getting back a nice refund and so am I. The thing with the free service is that even though she can have them do my taxes, I need to sign the form to get them done electronically. She’ll get her refund a lot sooner then mine.
I think what I’m going to do with my refund is get a secured Visa card and Government ID. With the Visa card I can buy my SFF books etc on Ebay.
I headed out to work and got my dialer and hunted up a lot of cans and bottles. I had a good haul this evening. I got my cheque but there were $30 worth of bonuses missing from my cheque from last week. Super corrected this for me. We were doing CCSD again. I was having a good time. Anne called me and we ad a chat. At break I made another pass at the bottles and cans. DC and I bet on the early game, Calgary at Red Wings. I took the Wings. They lost in OT. Great game. Then the Oiler’s JT and I went double or nothing. We Didn’t see that much of the Oiler game but after I got the $15 bonus and another $1,000+ night and a whack of cans Anne said I can come straight home. I was glad for that. I got in to watch the Oiler’s record 7 straight OT wins. They lost again in OT. And that’s where I am right now.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
I think what I’m going to do with my refund is get a secured Visa card and Government ID. With the Visa card I can buy my SFF books etc on Ebay.
I headed out to work and got my dialer and hunted up a lot of cans and bottles. I had a good haul this evening. I got my cheque but there were $30 worth of bonuses missing from my cheque from last week. Super corrected this for me. We were doing CCSD again. I was having a good time. Anne called me and we ad a chat. At break I made another pass at the bottles and cans. DC and I bet on the early game, Calgary at Red Wings. I took the Wings. They lost in OT. Great game. Then the Oiler’s JT and I went double or nothing. We Didn’t see that much of the Oiler game but after I got the $15 bonus and another $1,000+ night and a whack of cans Anne said I can come straight home. I was glad for that. I got in to watch the Oiler’s record 7 straight OT wins. They lost again in OT. And that’s where I am right now.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Looks like another cold one out there
It was another cold one leaving out of here today for work. I bought a diet Coke at the drugstore and went upstairs just as the shift was changing. Rob was giving out some huge bonuses for the staff leaving out of there. I got a modest collection of cans and bottles. Anne was glad to hear from me when I called shortly before kick-off. We ended up doing CBF and that bombed so we did OTH. Seeing as how the game is next Wednesday. 2 CC sales and $100 l/h got $25. I was no where close and 3/5 calls or so were semies. I ended up with 2 CC’s and $285. Nowhere close. I made sure Super put the missing $10 bonus I missed from last time on my cheque from last week.
Oh last night while Anne went to get my chips and glasses she noticed Boots at the corner of our building. He cried seeing her and ran up to her. She said how she opened the front door, he goes through tale up in the air. She opens the stairwell door. Boots goes through following her up the stairs to our apartment door. He’s in my office with me now. The place stinks but I got the fan on and we’re ok.
Anne’s off today but were ok. So far they haven’t cut back any hours on the job. That’s always a good sign. Oh and there's an Oiler game on TV tonight. Good stuff.
It was still bitter cold heading across the open parkade to Corona station. I didn’t have my reading glasses so I couldn’t read on the train home. But I called my buddy Charles and he’d call me back. He did as I was watching Raw and Anne went out across the street to the store.
Anne made me a great cheese burger for lunch and I had that and watched an excellent Monday night Raw. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate this Raw a 9.
Anne made me a great cheese burger for lunch and I had that and watched an excellent Monday night Raw. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate this Raw a 9.
I’m off to do some piano practice……2:20pm> Onto my first coffee. We went to bed about 3:30am listening to Coast for half an hour. I couldn’t sleep around 9am so I got up to play Oblivion. I think. I made an error last night on the job having to do with a sale type. The customer bought 2 tickets to OTH for $40 but I couldn’t remember if I out X tickets or XD sponsor. I don’t want to bring this up and draw attention to myself as well. The customer said she’d get her grandson (out of town) the tickets. Hopefully she called and he said “can’t make it, other engagement,” or I did put down X for tickets. Playing Oblivion helped me get it out of my mind.
This afternoon it’s off to work. We got -25C out there. I don’t know if there’s a wind chill. Most likely there is but by Friday it’s supposed to warm up out there. I’m going to try and put Thursday and Friday afternoon in because Anne wants us to definitely go out to the Ramada for her birthday dinner.
Ahh, the new Star trek movie is coming out in a few months time. I hope it’s good. Sure it’s a prequel and different characters playing the originals although much younger, I wouldn’t say it’s young adult but probably borderline. I’ll most likely see it when it comes to the dollar theater in the fall.
Oil today is down by a bit sitting around $45. Premier Ed was saying yesterday that our credit rating for borrowing is one of the best in any regime in North America. And for that reason the Province is going to borrow for infrastructure projects. He says even with $40 oil were making money.
Oh last night while Anne went to get my chips and glasses she noticed Boots at the corner of our building. He cried seeing her and ran up to her. She said how she opened the front door, he goes through tale up in the air. She opens the stairwell door. Boots goes through following her up the stairs to our apartment door. He’s in my office with me now. The place stinks but I got the fan on and we’re ok.Anne’s off today but were ok. So far they haven’t cut back any hours on the job. That’s always a good sign. Oh and there's an Oiler game on TV tonight. Good stuff.Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Sunday, March 8, 2009
I'm tinkering around with this site again
I've added a Tweet this to the bottom of each post and took advantage of Adsense monetizing option.
I'm having a pretty good day.
Over the last several weeks my wife has been mentioning her birthday. The original idea was for me to take the day off and go out for dinner Saturday for her birthday on Monday. But I mentioned how one of the Lodges here in Edmonton is holding a EA degree night this up coming Friday. I'd love to go to that and dinner out with my wife but I can;t justify both days off work. Friday night and Saturday. I could have done this if I went in this afternoon to make up for Friday, sleep in for Saturday and go out for our dinner.
The other thing I could do is go to the Lodge, by working Friday morning. Or any one morning this week or a combination of afternoons. That way I could go to the Lodge. The other thing I'm thinking is if (This is what Anne most likely would do,) Go to her job run over and get us a Rose bowl pizza (She's been thinking about this as well.) after work and then Sunday we go to the late night movie and home. We might end up just going to The Ramada anyway.
I've always wanted a caricature done of me in pencil, 3/4 right frontal shot. I thought maybe at Capital Ex or the Agracom but when we went to the Ex a few years ago, and I was looking, they didn't have anything like that. I stumbled upon by accident a site that does this. $89 bucks isn't
isn't a bad deal.
Sorry about the book cover images. I'm going to fix those by using Library thing. I haven't been using this site as much as I'd hoped but that's going to change. LJ isn't bad but not as feature rich as Blogger and Blogger is free.
I spent about 3 hours playing Oblivion earlier this afternoon. I love this game. Yesterday I discovered the value of The Arena. Today I've discovered the use of the bribe wheel. I'm on a quest in one of the Northern towns but the bad guy is a bit to strong for me to take right now and my armor is broken. Going up to fight this guy with an armor class of 9 just doesn't cut it. I decided to do something else and I found killed off a goblin and found a battle axe of some kind with lots of "life" left in it. The newly "acquired" axe has a damage value of 3. Most of my weapons have a damage value of 2. It seems the less life a weapon has the less damage value it has.
I'm also looking at getting a space opera kind of game for the 360. Something like "Galactic Empires." This was an in house, pen and paper computer assist game that Adventure gaming supplies had here in Edmonton. How the game worked was there would be 6-8 players. You got a home planet and resource points to build ships and other things. Players mostly built Fleets send them out to explore and whoever got the most space and killed off his rival won. However there was an intangible: The dreaded NPC. Moves had to be by Saturday as the game master (gm) needed to input the moves into his computer program. Scouts got the skinny on how strong a fleet was. Odds were calculated. You won, you'd advance. Moves were done on Order sheets. It cost $2/order sheet. The game was simple wide open lots of room for alliances back stabbing. Great fun. It wasn't complex at all. When the store closed unfortunately so did the game. Too bad because this was a great game. I don't know if the Xbox has anything close to that. There probably is, somewhere.
I'm slowly reading through the "The Third link" and I'm enjoying the read. I hope to have a review of sorts by the end of this month.
Anyway gang, that's all for now
e. Jim
I'm having a pretty good day.
Over the last several weeks my wife has been mentioning her birthday. The original idea was for me to take the day off and go out for dinner Saturday for her birthday on Monday. But I mentioned how one of the Lodges here in Edmonton is holding a EA degree night this up coming Friday. I'd love to go to that and dinner out with my wife but I can;t justify both days off work. Friday night and Saturday. I could have done this if I went in this afternoon to make up for Friday, sleep in for Saturday and go out for our dinner.
The other thing I could do is go to the Lodge, by working Friday morning. Or any one morning this week or a combination of afternoons. That way I could go to the Lodge. The other thing I'm thinking is if (This is what Anne most likely would do,) Go to her job run over and get us a Rose bowl pizza (She's been thinking about this as well.) after work and then Sunday we go to the late night movie and home. We might end up just going to The Ramada anyway.
I've always wanted a caricature done of me in pencil, 3/4 right frontal shot. I thought maybe at Capital Ex or the Agracom but when we went to the Ex a few years ago, and I was looking, they didn't have anything like that. I stumbled upon by accident a site that does this. $89 bucks isn't
isn't a bad deal.
Sorry about the book cover images. I'm going to fix those by using Library thing. I haven't been using this site as much as I'd hoped but that's going to change. LJ isn't bad but not as feature rich as Blogger and Blogger is free.
I spent about 3 hours playing Oblivion earlier this afternoon. I love this game. Yesterday I discovered the value of The Arena. Today I've discovered the use of the bribe wheel. I'm on a quest in one of the Northern towns but the bad guy is a bit to strong for me to take right now and my armor is broken. Going up to fight this guy with an armor class of 9 just doesn't cut it. I decided to do something else and I found killed off a goblin and found a battle axe of some kind with lots of "life" left in it. The newly "acquired" axe has a damage value of 3. Most of my weapons have a damage value of 2. It seems the less life a weapon has the less damage value it has.
I'm also looking at getting a space opera kind of game for the 360. Something like "Galactic Empires." This was an in house, pen and paper computer assist game that Adventure gaming supplies had here in Edmonton. How the game worked was there would be 6-8 players. You got a home planet and resource points to build ships and other things. Players mostly built Fleets send them out to explore and whoever got the most space and killed off his rival won. However there was an intangible: The dreaded NPC. Moves had to be by Saturday as the game master (gm) needed to input the moves into his computer program. Scouts got the skinny on how strong a fleet was. Odds were calculated. You won, you'd advance. Moves were done on Order sheets. It cost $2/order sheet. The game was simple wide open lots of room for alliances back stabbing. Great fun. It wasn't complex at all. When the store closed unfortunately so did the game. Too bad because this was a great game. I don't know if the Xbox has anything close to that. There probably is, somewhere.
I'm slowly reading through the "The Third link" and I'm enjoying the read. I hope to have a review of sorts by the end of this month.
Anyway gang, that's all for now
e. Jim
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Most of my daily dribble is over on my website. See "Resources" for a link to there from here.
Snow was in my face waiting for my 9am #11 bus to Clairview this morning. Even though I was a bit tired, I was still feeling pretty good. I got into Tim’s and got my sausage muffin 2 hash browns and I cashed in that coffee Anne won last night. The snow was coming down pretty good crossing the parkade but it wasn’t cold out there.
I got into the office had my breakfast feeling pretty good. Staff began filing in and it was after 10am. No Super. About 10:15am I called Super and he was just coming in. Even though we started late, I had a slow start but managed to pick it up and I got a $100 sale and went on a sales binge from there, by the break I was around $415 something. Super pulled guys not at line hour off taps and moved them over to the front 20. Will Mc made a rare appearance today. JT and I were kidding each other about the game, him being a Leaf’s fan. In the 2nd half I finally got a CC sale, woot! I ended up with line hour, $780 to be exact. We had a pretty good crew of tap shooters.
I was glad to get out of there and the weather cleared up as well. No cans or bottles with me today. I can’t take them all the time but if ever there was a time I should is Saturday because there is no cleaning staff Saturdays. I was glad to get the train to Clairview get my 6/49 ticket and home. I tried having a bit of a nap but couldn’t sleep.
I don’t often plug other Blogs but Sci-fi Chick has a book review on “The Domino men” by Jonathan Barnes. This is a sequel to the “Somnambulist.” Apparently the book is a light fantasy with a lot of conspiracies tossed in. I like the idea that its written in the first person. No doubt “The Domino men” is hardcover but the “Somnambulist” is still in MMP. The review is listed with others over there at Amazon.com
I played some more Oblivion before the Oiler/Leaf game at 5pm. Anne called a couple of times. Leaf’s scored first then the Oiler’s right after that. The score ended up being 4-1 Oiler’s. Hehehe, Sorry JT. Worst part about it for him was the disastrous loss the Oiler’s came off of Thursday night. Roly’s play was outstanding but the Oiler’s are relying on him to much. JT and I went double or nothing, so I get $4 bucks from him and $2 from DC.
Well, I didn’t win the “Big One” tonight but I got one number. Lotto Canada doesn’t post the official numbers until later. If nobody won it tonight, it goes up to $8M for Wednesday.
Anyway gang that’s about it for the weekend blogging wise. I might post tomorrow, briefly. I’ll see how it goes. This should give you enough to chew on. Now to go practice some piano…….Ok, I’m awake now. I think. Last night going in was easy. I got a couple pages of reading in and that’s always a good thing. I gave the guitar busker a few coins at Corona station on my way to the drugstore/office. I bought a bag of cheese pleasers and I met JT coming in and sat with him in the back 21, not in the overflow. I picked through the office trash bins and managed a whack of cans and bottles. I had a good start but no CC sales the first half. JT and I went double or nothing on his Leafs and my Oiler’s in Toronto, that game is on this afternoon at 5pm. I had brought with me a thermos of hot water but no coffee. Rats. The rest of the shift didn’t go so great only pulling in $325 on the night. I was able to pick up my pay cheque. It was really slow going for the rest of the shift We ended up doing AES and all we had was 2004-05 taps. It wa a lame Friday night.
I got a lot of cans and bottles to take home and on my way over to Audrey’s. They had a poetry reading in progress right by my Science Fiction/Fantasy section (SFF). All readings in the store are done in that location. Audrey’s has been having a lot of poetry readings lately and on a Friday night. They had the stairs to the basement roped off. “Ask staff for assistance.” I asked if I could leave my bag of cans behind the ordering counter. My special order guy had to escort me around the back way of the stairs through a winding corridor down to the basement where I emerged from a hidden entrance. I noticed last week the store had a small elevator for obvious reasons. I should have checked special order first and I almost picked up “The Dreaming Void”, Peter F. Hamilton. I wasn’t sure if this was Cyberpunk or Young adult. Two genre’s I usually stay away from. By this time the reading was over with when I had picked out my selection but I checked the special order selection with T’s help and there it was Part 2 of the “In Conquest born” series by C.S. Freidman. I’ve had Part 1 since 2006. Sorry Hamilton. I’ll get “The dreaming void” next time. I picked up “Wilding” and the way upstairs by this time was cleared.
Peter F. Hamilton and CS Friedman have some things in common: They both write Space opera. This is my favorite gene in Science Fiction. I would have ordered some more books but Audrey’s was closing down for the day. I’ll have a list of books next time. I usually like to order 4 at a time.
Having collected my cans and paying for my book I headed for the LRT below only to realize that ETS escorts were reminding LRT riders the end of the lie was at Corona because of the 2 new lines opening up next month. ETS is testing trains on the new tracks from Grandin to the 2 new LRT stations: McKernan/Belgravia and South Campus for the next couple of weeks. They open up April 1st I believe.
I barely got to my bank and to Central station below the bank and home. I barely got comfortable to settle in for Smackdown. Anne came in alright from her job. She had a slow night. The rest of Smackdown wasn’t bad but what an ending. Anne made me a late lunch and I went off to bed listening to Coast. Their special topic line was “Your Magic moment.” I listened in for about 5 minutes and that was enough of that. I had about 4.5 hours of sleep but I’m ok. I might just go straight home get my lottery numbers. Anne bought some cell phone minutes for me and put my feature on. I’m going to try and call Neil about the RCMP degree team thing and remind WM about the material he said he’d email me for the FC prove up in May. Hopefully I can doze off on the couch and watch the hockey game.
Yesterday afternoon I got some Oblivion in and I found the “Arena district” in the game. I like this section. You can “bet” on matches. I think matches favor the house. You can also train using their armor for matches and fight NPC’s with arena equipment. I got a 2 handed claymore and went up against one NPC but got killed. Thank the 9 for rejuvenation. I basically touched bases on the arena and I need to explore more of this area. I thought this would be a good place to look for a quest sword. I need the quest sword before another NPC in order to join the Thieves guild. Oblivion is classic D&D at it’s best.
Hey, tomorrow is daylight savings time. Well overnight that is. We gain an extra hour of daylight. Today the Sun sets at about 6:23pm. Sunday night, the Sun sets at 7:23pm. I love this time of year despite the cold snap we’re currently in. Today is going to be nice but we’re going to plunge down into the -20’s for a few days. Winter’s last reminder that it isn’t over for us yet here in Northern Alberta.
We’re supposed to get some snow this morning on my way in. Anne won a Tim’s coffee last night on their Roll up. All I ever get is their “please play again” message. But tonight’s 6/49 is supposed to be $4M. I’ll get a number fill in slip on my way in. Anne says get a quick pick but you never win on a quick pick. Most I’ve ever gotten playing this thing steady has been 3 numbers.
So tonight, it’s hockey, piano practice making my blog rounds and waiting for Anne to come home. I’ve got a TV dinner for supper. Uggh. She’ll make me a soup or sandwich for later tonight. At least the rent is paid. This week is her birthday and we’ve got to go down to the library to get out taxes done. I’m expecting a return this year. Sorry if this seems kind of choppy today but I’m kind of in a rush this morning.
Anyway gang, that‘s all for now
e. Jim.
I got into the office had my breakfast feeling pretty good. Staff began filing in and it was after 10am. No Super. About 10:15am I called Super and he was just coming in. Even though we started late, I had a slow start but managed to pick it up and I got a $100 sale and went on a sales binge from there, by the break I was around $415 something. Super pulled guys not at line hour off taps and moved them over to the front 20. Will Mc made a rare appearance today. JT and I were kidding each other about the game, him being a Leaf’s fan. In the 2nd half I finally got a CC sale, woot! I ended up with line hour, $780 to be exact. We had a pretty good crew of tap shooters.
I was glad to get out of there and the weather cleared up as well. No cans or bottles with me today. I can’t take them all the time but if ever there was a time I should is Saturday because there is no cleaning staff Saturdays. I was glad to get the train to Clairview get my 6/49 ticket and home. I tried having a bit of a nap but couldn’t sleep.
I don’t often plug other Blogs but Sci-fi Chick has a book review on “The Domino men” by Jonathan Barnes. This is a sequel to the “Somnambulist.” Apparently the book is a light fantasy with a lot of conspiracies tossed in. I like the idea that its written in the first person. No doubt “The Domino men” is hardcover but the “Somnambulist” is still in MMP. The review is listed with others over there at Amazon.com
I played some more Oblivion before the Oiler/Leaf game at 5pm. Anne called a couple of times. Leaf’s scored first then the Oiler’s right after that. The score ended up being 4-1 Oiler’s. Hehehe, Sorry JT. Worst part about it for him was the disastrous loss the Oiler’s came off of Thursday night. Roly’s play was outstanding but the Oiler’s are relying on him to much. JT and I went double or nothing, so I get $4 bucks from him and $2 from DC.
Well, I didn’t win the “Big One” tonight but I got one number. Lotto Canada doesn’t post the official numbers until later. If nobody won it tonight, it goes up to $8M for Wednesday.
Anyway gang that’s about it for the weekend blogging wise. I might post tomorrow, briefly. I’ll see how it goes. This should give you enough to chew on. Now to go practice some piano…….Ok, I’m awake now. I think. Last night going in was easy. I got a couple pages of reading in and that’s always a good thing. I gave the guitar busker a few coins at Corona station on my way to the drugstore/office. I bought a bag of cheese pleasers and I met JT coming in and sat with him in the back 21, not in the overflow. I picked through the office trash bins and managed a whack of cans and bottles. I had a good start but no CC sales the first half. JT and I went double or nothing on his Leafs and my Oiler’s in Toronto, that game is on this afternoon at 5pm. I had brought with me a thermos of hot water but no coffee. Rats. The rest of the shift didn’t go so great only pulling in $325 on the night. I was able to pick up my pay cheque. It was really slow going for the rest of the shift We ended up doing AES and all we had was 2004-05 taps. It wa a lame Friday night.
I got a lot of cans and bottles to take home and on my way over to Audrey’s. They had a poetry reading in progress right by my Science Fiction/Fantasy section (SFF). All readings in the store are done in that location. Audrey’s has been having a lot of poetry readings lately and on a Friday night. They had the stairs to the basement roped off. “Ask staff for assistance.” I asked if I could leave my bag of cans behind the ordering counter. My special order guy had to escort me around the back way of the stairs through a winding corridor down to the basement where I emerged from a hidden entrance. I noticed last week the store had a small elevator for obvious reasons. I should have checked special order first and I almost picked up “The Dreaming Void”, Peter F. Hamilton. I wasn’t sure if this was Cyberpunk or Young adult. Two genre’s I usually stay away from. By this time the reading was over with when I had picked out my selection but I checked the special order selection with T’s help and there it was Part 2 of the “In Conquest born” series by C.S. Freidman. I’ve had Part 1 since 2006. Sorry Hamilton. I’ll get “The dreaming void” next time. I picked up “Wilding” and the way upstairs by this time was cleared.
Peter F. Hamilton and CS Friedman have some things in common: They both write Space opera. This is my favorite gene in Science Fiction. I would have ordered some more books but Audrey’s was closing down for the day. I’ll have a list of books next time. I usually like to order 4 at a time.
Having collected my cans and paying for my book I headed for the LRT below only to realize that ETS escorts were reminding LRT riders the end of the lie was at Corona because of the 2 new lines opening up next month. ETS is testing trains on the new tracks from Grandin to the 2 new LRT stations: McKernan/Belgravia and South Campus for the next couple of weeks. They open up April 1st I believe.
I barely got to my bank and to Central station below the bank and home. I barely got comfortable to settle in for Smackdown. Anne came in alright from her job. She had a slow night. The rest of Smackdown wasn’t bad but what an ending. Anne made me a late lunch and I went off to bed listening to Coast. Their special topic line was “Your Magic moment.” I listened in for about 5 minutes and that was enough of that. I had about 4.5 hours of sleep but I’m ok. I might just go straight home get my lottery numbers. Anne bought some cell phone minutes for me and put my feature on. I’m going to try and call Neil about the RCMP degree team thing and remind WM about the material he said he’d email me for the FC prove up in May. Hopefully I can doze off on the couch and watch the hockey game.
Yesterday afternoon I got some Oblivion in and I found the “Arena district” in the game. I like this section. You can “bet” on matches. I think matches favor the house. You can also train using their armor for matches and fight NPC’s with arena equipment. I got a 2 handed claymore and went up against one NPC but got killed. Thank the 9 for rejuvenation. I basically touched bases on the arena and I need to explore more of this area. I thought this would be a good place to look for a quest sword. I need the quest sword before another NPC in order to join the Thieves guild. Oblivion is classic D&D at it’s best.
Hey, tomorrow is daylight savings time. Well overnight that is. We gain an extra hour of daylight. Today the Sun sets at about 6:23pm. Sunday night, the Sun sets at 7:23pm. I love this time of year despite the cold snap we’re currently in. Today is going to be nice but we’re going to plunge down into the -20’s for a few days. Winter’s last reminder that it isn’t over for us yet here in Northern Alberta.
We’re supposed to get some snow this morning on my way in. Anne won a Tim’s coffee last night on their Roll up. All I ever get is their “please play again” message. But tonight’s 6/49 is supposed to be $4M. I’ll get a number fill in slip on my way in. Anne says get a quick pick but you never win on a quick pick. Most I’ve ever gotten playing this thing steady has been 3 numbers.
So tonight, it’s hockey, piano practice making my blog rounds and waiting for Anne to come home. I’ve got a TV dinner for supper. Uggh. She’ll make me a soup or sandwich for later tonight. At least the rent is paid. This week is her birthday and we’ve got to go down to the library to get out taxes done. I’m expecting a return this year. Sorry if this seems kind of choppy today but I’m kind of in a rush this morning.
Anyway gang, that‘s all for now
e. Jim.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
That was Tuesday
We went to bed about 3:30am yesterday. Coast was kind of lame but I was more wiped out then anything. I had a good sleep overnight and woke up around 11am and read for about half an hour. I got my wife up about 12:30pm as she needed to go to her bank so we could get the rest of March’s rent money. She’s still there most likely on her way home.
We got a whack of snow Tuesday morning. Hard to believe that this will all be gone in about 3 weeks. Right now it’s -5C out there but tough getting around.
Tonight the Oiler’s are in Nashville and I’m going to be catching a bit of that game in between phone calls. I’m not betting JT any more since he hasn’t returned my $2 out of the TB game from last week. It’s only $2 but if I owed him, he’d sure make a point of it in a hurry. Burn me once, never again. I’ll bet DC, he’s good that way. Speaking of hockey the big trade deadline is Wednesday. Will the Oiler’s make a move? I don’t think so.
Still enjoying “The 3rd Lynx.” I should have it read in about 3 weeks. I usually read about 100 pages/week and that’s a pretty good speed for me. I’m going to order the 3rd in the Frank Compton series Friday and a few others. I usually buy 4 books/month and I’m lucky if I get to read 2 of them………1:40pm> So tonight it’s off to the job and put my 4 hours in and maybe even watch a little hockey as well in between phone calls. I’ll collect a bunch of bottles and cans and then head home. I’ll have an after action report after midnight Wednesday morning of course. Oh, an update on the Ethan Morrow eye injury: It’s not as bad as it originally sounded. He should make a full recovery but is going to be out of the line-up for awhile.
Anne was successful at the bank and gave me enough for my Lodge dues for Thursday. She brought me back a Wendy’s double bacon cheese burger and Biggie fries. I bought my 6/49 ticket and a bottle of diet Coke, which I didn’t really need. I was able to get a couple of pages reading done on my book before I worked my way to the office. Super put me in the back and was it ever a struggle to get sales. The best news the first hour was the hockey game on at 6pm. I think at break I was at $320, which was barely at line hour. They can afford to turn that phone room into a boiler room operation these days what with the downturn in the economy. The Oiler’s at Nashville game was a barn burner, from what little I could see of it in the back. I watched some of the Oiler’s goals. In the 2nd half sales were even harder to come by, I got 3 CC sales in the 2nd half and $105 away from line hour for a total of $615. I was glad to get out of there with a bunch of cans and bottles. The casualty if it all was the Oiler’s lost in OT but they got 1 point out of the game. There should have been a goal tender interference call that left Roli without his stick so Nashville could win the game in OT. The Oiler’s were robbed to say the least.
I was glad to get out of there with my bottles and cans in one piece but had some one had to tag along with me to Corona. I got a seat on the train and transferred over to an empty seat and read a few pages on the way home. I hate people that need to rub their backs up to me sitting behind me. So annoying.
After banging all the snow and slush off my boots in the stairwell Anne was doing the last of her laundry. Doing it now because Sunday is supposed to get cold and she likes to stick the dryer hose out the window.
What with my game crashing and all yesterday I was able to continue it with no big deal.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
We got a whack of snow Tuesday morning. Hard to believe that this will all be gone in about 3 weeks. Right now it’s -5C out there but tough getting around.
Tonight the Oiler’s are in Nashville and I’m going to be catching a bit of that game in between phone calls. I’m not betting JT any more since he hasn’t returned my $2 out of the TB game from last week. It’s only $2 but if I owed him, he’d sure make a point of it in a hurry. Burn me once, never again. I’ll bet DC, he’s good that way. Speaking of hockey the big trade deadline is Wednesday. Will the Oiler’s make a move? I don’t think so.
Still enjoying “The 3rd Lynx.” I should have it read in about 3 weeks. I usually read about 100 pages/week and that’s a pretty good speed for me. I’m going to order the 3rd in the Frank Compton series Friday and a few others. I usually buy 4 books/month and I’m lucky if I get to read 2 of them………1:40pm> So tonight it’s off to the job and put my 4 hours in and maybe even watch a little hockey as well in between phone calls. I’ll collect a bunch of bottles and cans and then head home. I’ll have an after action report after midnight Wednesday morning of course. Oh, an update on the Ethan Morrow eye injury: It’s not as bad as it originally sounded. He should make a full recovery but is going to be out of the line-up for awhile.
Anne was successful at the bank and gave me enough for my Lodge dues for Thursday. She brought me back a Wendy’s double bacon cheese burger and Biggie fries. I bought my 6/49 ticket and a bottle of diet Coke, which I didn’t really need. I was able to get a couple of pages reading done on my book before I worked my way to the office. Super put me in the back and was it ever a struggle to get sales. The best news the first hour was the hockey game on at 6pm. I think at break I was at $320, which was barely at line hour. They can afford to turn that phone room into a boiler room operation these days what with the downturn in the economy. The Oiler’s at Nashville game was a barn burner, from what little I could see of it in the back. I watched some of the Oiler’s goals. In the 2nd half sales were even harder to come by, I got 3 CC sales in the 2nd half and $105 away from line hour for a total of $615. I was glad to get out of there with a bunch of cans and bottles. The casualty if it all was the Oiler’s lost in OT but they got 1 point out of the game. There should have been a goal tender interference call that left Roli without his stick so Nashville could win the game in OT. The Oiler’s were robbed to say the least.
I was glad to get out of there with my bottles and cans in one piece but had some one had to tag along with me to Corona. I got a seat on the train and transferred over to an empty seat and read a few pages on the way home. I hate people that need to rub their backs up to me sitting behind me. So annoying.
After banging all the snow and slush off my boots in the stairwell Anne was doing the last of her laundry. Doing it now because Sunday is supposed to get cold and she likes to stick the dryer hose out the window.
What with my game crashing and all yesterday I was able to continue it with no big deal.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Hey hey, we're into a new month.
I’m having an easy day off today. My wife is out running around spending money. Yeesh. I played a couple hours of Oblivion finding out more things about the game I didn’t know before, like weapons. Right now the only damage most weapons do for me is 2 regardless of what weapon it seems to be. A 2 handed Warhammer (what I was using) takes away the use of a shield. So I repaired a broken Longsword that does the same damage as the Warhammer. I equipped the Longsword and put the Warhammer away. Bam! My Armor class rating went from 2-8. Love it. I need some gauntlets and a helmet of some kind and that will increase my armor rating even more. I’m playing a level 3 Imperial.
Well its overcast and looks cold out there. Snow must have came down overnight as it’s showing up on nearby roof tops. Nice way to bring in a new month but March can be like winter with average temps around -12C. Usually by the middle of the March temperatures around here climb to about the -2C as an average. We’ve been known to get a blast of snow around end of March early April. Daylight savings time is next weekend. That to me is a sign of Spring.
Just now I watched Star Wars The Clone Wars. “Jedi Crash” pt.1. I enjoyed this episode. I’m still waiting for the Star Wars live action TV series. I think I can keep waiting. This economic downturn might affect this concept as well. According to some sources the live action TV series will debut in 2010 or 2011. My guess is in 2011. That is if the economy doesn’t take out any of the major networks. “The Clone Wars” isn’t bad though in the meantime.
I can’t recall what night this was last week but while I was working the phones talking to Mrs. Jones in my home town of Coquitlam BC. Her address was on Hailey. Hailey runs North South intersecting Regan Ave. My neighborhood growing up in the 1960’s was between Smith & Como lake, Blue Mountain & Robinson. Blue Mountain Service station on the corner of Como Lake Ave and Blue Mountain had been there for years. As kids we used to go there to get 10 cent soda pops. Across the street from the Service station on the SW corner for the longest time was a wooded empty lot. So I asked Mrs. Jones what’s there today and she said it’s a Presbyterian church. This must have went up in the early 1980’s. Another piece of closure added to my life. Back in the 1960’s early 1970’s we had only one church in the area and that was the church of The Nazarene, on Como Lake Ave West of Robinson. I recall early when our family moved into the area about 1960. The area West of our house was being prepared with bulldozers and other earth moving equipment.
This week has a few interesting things going on. Firstly we have the NHL trade deadline Wednesday. Will the Oiler’s make a move? They need a major goal scorer but nobody at this stage in the game has 50+ goals this season. On Thursday, I have my Lodge night and I think we’re going to do an EA degree.
Last nights Oiler’s/Wild game was a bitter sweet win for the Oiler’s. Near the end of the game, Oiler’s team Captain Ethan Morrow got a stick to the face, eye area and went to the hospital. There’s no update about the injury. I’m also keeping an eye on the Columbus at Vancouver game. The Canucks won 3-1. I don’t know if that helps or hurts the Oiler’s.
I’m making some pretty good progress on my book “The third lynx.” This time, I hope to have it read by the middle of March. In theory. Then I can go onto read “The Blood red harp,.” then it’s James P. Hogan’s “The Legend that was earth.” After that (May?) Greg Bear’s “Darwin’s Radio.”
Oh and even though we’ve had Boots here for a few days, Anne had the balcony doors opened up to get some air and Boot’s jumped. Yup he’s out roaming around again.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
Well its overcast and looks cold out there. Snow must have came down overnight as it’s showing up on nearby roof tops. Nice way to bring in a new month but March can be like winter with average temps around -12C. Usually by the middle of the March temperatures around here climb to about the -2C as an average. We’ve been known to get a blast of snow around end of March early April. Daylight savings time is next weekend. That to me is a sign of Spring.
Just now I watched Star Wars The Clone Wars. “Jedi Crash” pt.1. I enjoyed this episode. I’m still waiting for the Star Wars live action TV series. I think I can keep waiting. This economic downturn might affect this concept as well. According to some sources the live action TV series will debut in 2010 or 2011. My guess is in 2011. That is if the economy doesn’t take out any of the major networks. “The Clone Wars” isn’t bad though in the meantime.
I can’t recall what night this was last week but while I was working the phones talking to Mrs. Jones in my home town of Coquitlam BC. Her address was on Hailey. Hailey runs North South intersecting Regan Ave. My neighborhood growing up in the 1960’s was between Smith & Como lake, Blue Mountain & Robinson. Blue Mountain Service station on the corner of Como Lake Ave and Blue Mountain had been there for years. As kids we used to go there to get 10 cent soda pops. Across the street from the Service station on the SW corner for the longest time was a wooded empty lot. So I asked Mrs. Jones what’s there today and she said it’s a Presbyterian church. This must have went up in the early 1980’s. Another piece of closure added to my life. Back in the 1960’s early 1970’s we had only one church in the area and that was the church of The Nazarene, on Como Lake Ave West of Robinson. I recall early when our family moved into the area about 1960. The area West of our house was being prepared with bulldozers and other earth moving equipment.
This week has a few interesting things going on. Firstly we have the NHL trade deadline Wednesday. Will the Oiler’s make a move? They need a major goal scorer but nobody at this stage in the game has 50+ goals this season. On Thursday, I have my Lodge night and I think we’re going to do an EA degree.
Last nights Oiler’s/Wild game was a bitter sweet win for the Oiler’s. Near the end of the game, Oiler’s team Captain Ethan Morrow got a stick to the face, eye area and went to the hospital. There’s no update about the injury. I’m also keeping an eye on the Columbus at Vancouver game. The Canucks won 3-1. I don’t know if that helps or hurts the Oiler’s.
I’m making some pretty good progress on my book “The third lynx.” This time, I hope to have it read by the middle of March. In theory. Then I can go onto read “The Blood red harp,.” then it’s James P. Hogan’s “The Legend that was earth.” After that (May?) Greg Bear’s “Darwin’s Radio.”
Oh and even though we’ve had Boots here for a few days, Anne had the balcony doors opened up to get some air and Boot’s jumped. Yup he’s out roaming around again.
Anyway, gang that’s all for now.
e. Jim
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