I got some new photos up on my website. There's a link in the sidebar.

Monday was quiet. I got up about 12:30pm and watched the Dow & oil tumble. I worked on my special project (msp) for awhile and that brought me around to about 2:30pm. I had my shower and got ready, Anne made us a bowl of chilly. I headed into the office and got myself a seat. Super wanted me to sit with the 4 tap shooters I was 1 of 4 in the front 20 not in the back as we usually collect ourselves. I got JT to go get us a Tim’s coffee. I got some bottles and cans and I had a slow start but then things picked up. We began All Star Baseball. By 7pm I had $515 and 3 CC sales. JT’s dialer is good for CC sales. My total for the end of the night was $860 and not one bonus. First $800+ total I had in 5 weeks.

I got my gear and headed out into the mild night air and read for a bit from BRH. I should be at the half way point by the end of the week. It’s really good. I got home, as Anne met me at the door. She was upset with Pledges or for him I should say. What he’s been with me since 1991. Hard to believe I was in my late 30’s at that time. I noticed Pledges was slightly favoring his back paw. I thought and still think it’s just a cramp he’s going through. Hard to believe that was 18 years ago. That’s him in the photo above taken minutes ago.

Hopefully I’ll have him for a few more years yet. But it’s going to be a sad day around here when he goes. With all the things that can go wrong with a cat at his age, I’m grateful I’ve had him for so long. He’s been a good friend.

Last night’s “Monday night Raw” was out of London England. The show started off slow. It picked up a bit with Santino and the match with Triple H and Randy Orton was a real barn burner. On a scale from 1-10, I’d rate Raw a solid 7.

I did a bsl reading and I’m running at a high 11.7! I had that chop and foil wrap potato plus corn on the cob earlier about 11:30pm. When I go to bed about 4am, my bsl should be down about 8.

This week I have the RJS reading to go to and I’m looking forward to it. This time I’m bringing my camera and I’m going to have a proper photo up and running. I missed Rob when he was here for Pure Speculation. Also, I hope to pick up a copy of “Wake” as well.

Anyway gang, that’s all for now

e. Jim

I got up around

noon and did my stuff. Anne made me a nice lunch and we headed off to vote. She brought the digital camera along and took a couple of photo’s of me. These 2 are the best in the bunch. That’s my ball cap I’m holding in my right hand on a rather windy day. We took these waiting for our bus. It passes by the orange barricade you see in the background.
The bus stops right in the narrow portion of the road. It’s called the trap and were just in front of the main doors to Sifton school. Shortly after we took those our bus came whizzing by and we ended up missing it. We parted our separate ways just out back of our place as I went onto work. I missed that bus as well but I got the other one and even though the day was partially overcast it was a nice day.

I got into the office a bit on the early side and the boss had left and the staff were just about to leave the afternoon shift. The only thing on my mind was the election results. I had a good start to the afternoon. I ended up with 3 CC’s and a pretty good night but towards the midway point of the 2nd half I had a difficult customer that said something unpleasant. “Do you want to talk to my supervisor?” The guy said “Sure,” as the floor manager went by me he looked at me funny saying I was supposed to trouble shoot the call. Yeah and waste my line hour time? So my “Supervisor and I glared at each other and he had some choice words for me. He’s been on my case for awhile now. I did get some election results near the end of the shift and it was PC something like 139 seats. They were saying to me all night that the Conservatives will be having a minority Government again. I just hung up on the guy waiting. I was glad to get out of there. I made my way to Corona and waited for my train and read on the way home feeling somewhat relived that at least the Liberals didn’t win. The Bloc won most of their seats in Quebec of course. The NDP came in just behind The Bloc.

I got home to catch the other results and Harper won with something like 142 seats. Other then that minor crap with the floor manager I had a pretty good night.

So, it’s come to my attention that Pure Speculation is This Weekend. Oct 18th- 19th Whew. Also, I get another $20 and I have COH $35 on hand plus another $20 for Saturday. So this is good news.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Wow, were at +23C

out there and it’s warm in here. I’ve got to have the fan on. Right now I’m working on my first coffee trying to take stock of what I’m going to do after October 1st. So far, nobody at the office is saying anything, which I find surprising. This morning though I had a closer look at the “Do Not Call List” (DNCL) registry rules. I think its more for those telemarketers that are trying to sell a product like tickets, which affects some of our campaigns. In that respect it compromises my job, somewhat but the company I work for is third party. Now I’m not a rules lawyer or an expert on legal jargon but I read from Part 2 of the rules and if your “calling on behalf of” a registered charity then your exempt from the DNCL. So to keep it legal, all I just half to say is something like this: “Jim calling from XL on behalf of registered charity:” If I read that sub-section correctly, then this shouldn't’t apply to us. I asked Anne to take a look at it and she agreed with me. I did the 3:30am cbi thing. I felt better about my job going to bed spending some time with my wife as we listened to a pretty good Coast show about the LHC.

Yesterdays LHC experiment was to test the beam in the tunnel and it works. The question that seems to be asked the most from conversations I’ve heard and been a part of are, “What real world benefits and applications are there as a result of this experiment and others like it?” Well for one thing, I tell people is that the whole concept of the Internet was developed out of Cern. Without the Internet Cern physicists had no means to process and exchange the information they gathered on the scale that was/is needed. Now with the LHC Cern is already working on The Grid, which is the Internet a thousand times more faster then it is right now. Not only that but physicists at Cern using the LHC will have a better tool to use to delve deeper into our understanding of the Universe at a Quantum level. Maybe the LHC when activated at full power will be able to create mini black holes and traversable wormholes. Apparently it wont be for another couple of months yet before the LHC is fully activated. But if they find wormholes at Cern, think about those implications

I took some more cute cat photos and one of my wife. This one is of Sparky watching the fish wondering where the other fish has gone. We lost a budgie bird and a gold fish this summer.

I had a good sleep after that. I got up about 12:15pm and watched the markets. Oil again sitting at $101 and some change. I figure it’s going to go right down to about $50 in February of 09 and after that it’ll climb back up to the $130 level, stay there for a few weeks and drop again. At the moment our Unemployment rate here in Edmonton is sitting at 3.4%, which is pretty good.

I took this photo of Sporty. His eyes are actually blue but he's guarding over my Diet Cola. Anne got a good price for a 12 pack, $1.63 something.

After reading JU, I’m looking forward to “The Icewind Dale” trilogy. The first book in this 1997 Omnibus is “The Crystal shard”, which originally came out in 1988 followed by “Streams of Silver.” and “The Halflings Gem.”, which came out as I was getting into “Adventure gaming supplies” and all these books were flooding onto the shelves of the store. I love the omnibus format. While on the topic of books and stuff, I haven’t yet been able to call Audrey’s and ask Trevor if he could get me a print out of any books I have on order. This will be a “Note to self” reminder. I wish I had a cell phone application that alerts me at any given time and rings, in my own voice at 8pm: “Call Audrey’s, or call blah, blah, blah, etc.” This would be great because I don’t remember what books I ordered and I need to order more from my favorite vendor across the street. Especially more from the “Forgotten Reams” series. Cover flow would be pretty good as well for a book organizer.

And finally I couldn't resist taking this photo of Anne as she's walking up to the bus bench towards me.

This afternoon, Anne and I go into work. She’s going to try Pizza one more time and see if she can go back to work for her other job Friday. Pizza doesn’t sound that bad actually. Sure they might be a lot of work involved in it and it certainly isn’t easy money but there are bonuses. Most of their calls are from people that have already placed an order before and want to renew the same order. But occasionally and this happens, Billy says- “I had Pizza at my Uncles place and I forget what sauce they used.” Then you’ve got to do some research and that takes time. They don’t have any quotas but their big stickler is time. They would prefer the order to be completed within 30 seconds and if you make 3 mistakes in a 4 hour shift, they send you home. I mean lets face it most people no matter how fast or good they are will make mistakes the first time out until they learn the system. But once all the bugs have been worked out most people there Anne says say the job is pretty easy. They were telling her that the average dialer gets about 200 calls in a 4 hour shift. At 50 calls an hour and if most of those are repeat orders.

Anne’s going to be going in tonight and I get my pay cheque and then it’s off to the bank. I get my $20 bucks and maybe I’ll meet Anne on the train coming home. Nothing much going on after that.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Some photos

I'm trying out this evening

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now

e. Jim

My wife caught me reading before dinner

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

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

But man that was some meal.

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now.

e. Jim

Warm out there

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

I was somewhat

tired and waking up on my way into work. I read a bit on the train coming in. No Tim’s as I had the waffles there earlier. At 8:30am. I had a bit of a trouble finding a dialer even though I was in early and nobody was around, “Your in my spot” type thing. A certain someone I was trying not to sit beside today. Sigh. Anyway I sat by the end of the isle away from where I normally sit. I ended up getting one CC. By the 2nd half I was at l/h. The 2nd half wasn‘t much better. I ended up with $866. The funny thing about this week was I opened Monday night with $885 and Saturday I closed the week with $866. Two $800+ totals in the week and 18 CC’s. In other words Rob made his point: A few extra shifts could make or break getting the CC bonus. So, I’m going in for Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.

After the shift Moe was able to call my bank report since January. I think it’s pretty nifty that we can get those stats from the computer. It’s all laid out week by week. For the 575 hours since January 1st of this year I wrote: $78, 816 and I banked $56,790. Now I can start playing around with some numbers. My l/h from just what’s banked has been $98.77/hour. Written tells a different story at $137.11 l/h. Moe did some calculations for me and said that I have a72% bank even though the l/h kind of sucked. The numbers look promising.

I ended up taking some more photos of the day as I walked out of the office with the intent of going up to City Center mall for a bite to eat. I took this shot of one of the newer apartment high-rises apartments almost completed. This is Tower A of what’s I think called “The Q.” I think the other one is under construction.
The next photo is of another condo building almost under completion. Trouble with these condo units is that only rich people can afford them. They are out of reach for people like my wife and I. We’re barely lucky we can keep pace with the rent in this building.

It’s Market day on 104th & Jasper. The dividing meridian across the street where that person is standing is identical where I’m standing shooting this photo. I ended up walking down 104th st past the Great West Sadlery building, which was a warehouse I used to work in for the Army & Navy Dept store back in the good old days. While walking down this street people were looking over head trying to find out where the sounds of those jet engines were coming from. I thought st first it might be “The Snowbirds” kicking off the Edmonton Indy. I walked around past “The boardwalk. Nothing of interest except I past by the new YMCA building. Looks nice.

I went and had a look around at Coles bookstore and they’ve got about 10 Indiana Jones novels a few of the new series Battlestar Galactica and other stuff as well. I could shop there for more then awhile. They’ve also got some Mech Warrior books out as well and a few Magic “The Gathering.” The only problem is you guessed it, Canadian pricing. I don’t see Audrey’s holding this American pricing thing for much longer. For $8.00 a book that’s a pretty good deal. I give it the end of the year.

I went down to down to the food court and got some Taco Bell, for their burrito combo including fires supreme 2 burrito‘s and a drink for $7.99. Good deal. After that I went and checked on “The Source” to see about their Itouch. They have the 8Gb for $300. Not to bad. Future Shop sells theirs for $285. Most likely I’ll get the hard drive at Fs and the Itouch as well. I asked about the wi-fi limitations of the Itouch and the clerk there provided me with an interesting side note that all of the City Center Mall (Edmonton Center for us old timer’s.) is a hot spot. Meaning I can connect to the Internet in Edmonton Center with an Itouch right there. This is very interesting. I had a bit of a dry throat/laryngitis type thing going on and I needed some Halls. I got a package and noticed the back of this shoppers T-shirt “London Calling.” I struck up a conversation with him. He’s a younger fellow as well. He said he got into The Clash about 5 years ago. We had a nice talk. I should have asked him what his favorite Clash song was but I think he was in a bit of a hurry.

I went back up to Coles to take another look at their books selection. I should have brought more cash with me. I am excited about the Itouch and that Internet wi-fi capability to view web pages. All it needs now is cell phone access but that’s why Apple has the Iphone 3G. I just don’t like a contract and a monthly plan. So I decided to get going and I headed down “Rice Howard way.” and took this shot from the direction I came.

Central Station entrance was right behind me and I took the stairs down and got to the front of the train. It was really busy this weekend what with “Capital Ex,” “The taste of Edmonton” and the Indy going on. Actually, after this weekend, there’s “Heritage days,” coming up next and then there’s, “The Edmonton Folk festival,” and if that’s not enough then there’s “The Fringe” and the “Cariwest - Edmonton Caribbean Arts Festival.” There’s still another 4 festivals left for the summer, one of the reasons why I still love this City. I took the train home and there was my bus waiting under the +29C heat. The sign there flashes temperature and time. Trust me, it was a hot one.

Yeesh! My wife left out of about 6:30pm here for points I don’t know where and out of habit I checked to make sure if the door was locked. She has this disturbing habit of leaving the front door unlocked. She could be gone for hours. So what do I do? I lock the door. Only natural right? I put my ear plugs in my ears and I try to have a nap. All of a sudden (I guessed I must have been in a deep sleep the lights come flashing on and here’s Anne hollering at the top of my lungs like it’s a five alarm fire or something.) She’s saying she was pounding on the door so loud she almost broke it down. I didn’t hear anything with the earplugs in. She said she had to call the caretaker to open the suite because I couldn’t hear her pounding away. So where were her keys? Nice blaming me for locking the door and not taking her keys to get back in. I feel like going out for a walk and to let her stew in her own BS. I think she realizes that as much as it was my fault to lock doors it was her fault to not bring her keys.

We kind of “kissed and made up.” We laughed at her Hanna Montana 3D glasses she tried on because she likes the show. It’s kind of a kids show. Again us old timers have seen this before with “The Monkey’s,” among others. The kids like it and she’s got some pretty good little numbers that grab even me. Here’s a shot of my wife about an hour ago watching “The Jonas Brothers” and Hanna.

Anyway, we figure it out that the sounds of the “jet planes” were not “The Snowbirds” but rather the sounds of the Indy race going on at the Edmonton municipal airport. Other wise known as “The Muni.” Despite Anne’s little blow up earlier things have more or less blown over.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

I locked everything

up out of here at 4pm and the bus shelter was near empty. It took me a long time to take this shot looking West on 137th. It was warm and muggy out there about +28C when I took this shot about 4:06pm. I managed to read a bit heading into work but underground the cars had their interior lights running on a kind of on off standby mode making it harder to read on the train. Mostly they were doing that underground. I got into the office and got a dialer near Lucianne up behind management computers. I figured it be more quieter. It was actually. I ended up with a CC and about $305 by break. Anne called and we had a chat at 7pm. Just after kickoff I got one of the staff to take a full length shot of me but I was smiling, with my bad teeth and all. The photo looked far away too. I collected a lot of bottles and cans. During the 2nd half I got another CC and a $200 sale for a total of $885 on the night.

I got Shank to take another picture of me. I think this one looks a lot better but I finally realized I don’t look good without glasses. I’m better looking with them on but since I don’t really need them anymore except for reading and these reading glasses on the other side of a photo lenses make me look even more creepy. But this is a better one then the one taken earlier by Melody. This shot was taken about 9pm:

I got in about 9:30pm and did my admin stuff. I ad a pretty good evening even though my teeth were bugging me a bit, By about 8pm I felt a lot better and all in all I had a pretty good night. I caught the train back with extra cars and a seat by myself and I did a bit more reading.

Of course I settled into watch Monday night Raw. I enjoyed Raw. I’d rate Raw on a scale of 1-10 an 8. The best was seeing Cena doing a double FU on the new Tag team Champions.

I’m about 10 pages off my 15 pages/day schedule for JU. I hope to make better gains overnight and the rest of today. Despite having my teeth hurt periodically I had a pretty good day.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Some more photos

taken mostly today. This one is of my "Judas Unchained" book. I'm on pace for 15-20 pages/day. That's my reading glasses on the cover.This picture is of Sparky & Sporty taken about an hour ago. I hope the flash isn't hurting their vision or anything. Sporty is the white guy.Uh-oh. Anne took this photo about an hour ago as well. Me at my piano. Hopefully by this time next year I'll have the Yamaha PSR-S900. This is just a practice piano. It has some cute DJ settings as well. That's my left lazy eye there. Pardon me for not smiling, My bad teeth and all.

And this is of Sparky. I love this little guy. Sparky loves chasing bugs the other babies and he loves to cuddle with us in bed in the mornings.

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now.

e. Jim

I had a 5

minute wait for my bus and I took a few photos. The first one ws my view as I waited for my bus to come over the manning bridge in the background there. I got on the train and read more from Ps. It was up the escalator and into Tim’s for double order of hash browns and the breakfast sausage sandwich. My favorite. The parkade was surprisingly full for a Saturday morning. I got my dialer and took my insulin and had s delightful breakfast. It’s 4:20pm as I write this and Chirpy is chirping away in the hot +29C. The photos taken this morning are all before the office photo. Anything else this afternoon is later.
I took this photo of the building on the other side of the parking lot. If you click on the image and enlarge the photo you can see all of the white thatching that the manager says needs to come down when they do their walk around. These are old buildings but there nice inside.

I took this photo of a condo unit right by where my bus drops me off. hard to believe they want a quarter of a million bucks for these places. When their done that is:

We had a full row of tap shooters as "Team India" returned as you can see from this photo. Fran sat beside me. She's the blonde. We had about 7 people on the other system. Sigh, CPA again. It was tough going for the first half hour but I gradually ended up with $565 by break. Don Brown showed up and had a chat with Fran and I. I didn't realize until after he'd left I should have taken a picture. The 2nd half was a little slower of course. Anne called and said how she’s going to go to the SPCA and see if Budgie is there. If not and there is another budgie bird there. I ended up with my 12 CC’s for the week anyway and if Rob is going to play these games because I miss a day he can go to hell. Some people there think he’ll honor them for me. I ended up with $840 and most likely that was top total again for the day. That red pouch there isn't mine.It belongs to Wanda who sits there during the day. That's Fran clowning around with one of the mini DVD's we're trying to pawn off:

One of the newer ETS buses to replace the aging "Jimmie's." These are the low floor busses. Very nice. They cost about a Million a piece and I think the City has something like 300 of them. The other shot is one I took inside at the back of an empty bus. I like riding the side seat on my way home facing the back door. Most major Cities have these types of buses. I had only moments to take the shot before some girl came on:

It was really warm out there today. I think the warmest I've seen it yet this season. I love this time of year. Look at the temperature on the clock at Clairview station:

Anne had called saying she is bringing home a companion for Chirpy. She’s called Sugar. My eyes lit up. She spent $15 on her and had to go through a lengthy interviewing process for all their adoptions. To adapt a cat is $100 because they want to make sure they get long term homes. So because Gl is so finicky at handling Photo’s I’m displaying some of today’s photos on my Blogger blog where the photos are better displayed

Meet the newest member of the Shannon family: Sugar. She's got pretty yellow feathers. They are a bit shy Chirpy the green bird left and Sugar right. Sparky is looking on. He's very interested:

And finally some of my Aleister Crowley books. Hard to believe some of them are at least 30 years old. I had a lot more then this at the end of the 1980's. That blue book on Astrology? I think it's very rare. I picked it up for $6 in the used book bin:

I didn’t bring any extra cash with me to get those “Warcraft” books. I’ll wait until Wednesday. I got my train and Anne called me at Stadium saying she was just leaving, Personally I think the SPCA is closed on the weekend and won’t re-open until Wednesday. I hope I’m wrong. Not much going on for tonight. I’m going to try and get some piano practicing done.

I checked on my 6/49 numbers and out of 2 tickets I got 1 number and it was a bonus round. For the most part I had a nice day and I’m happy I got somebody for Chirpy even though I miss Budgie. I hope he’s ok.

Tonight on Coast is about Aleister Crowley. Should be a good show. hence the phot of the books.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Saturday was busy

I had a pretty good day yesterday and got 5 CC's for a total of 26 for the week. I'll get a $52 bonus on my pay cheque next Friday.

I ended up doing something I haven't done in years: Take a trip out to West Edmonton Mall. You can get the full gory details on my website blog. I mainly wanted topost her to include a picture to compare it against my website photo of my office station. I'll post a longer blog entry later today.

Wow, what a difference. Blogger really does an outstanding job making these pictures a lot clearer then Geeklog. I'll be post most of my photo's here instead of my website.

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now.

e. Jim

I went and changed

my photo just now. It's a less darker then the other one.

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now

e. Jim