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

Not a lot going

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway Bloggers, that's all for now.

e. Jim

yesterday was still

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Anne came out with me

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Work and crap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim

Back at it, again.

Today is the official day that Darryl Katz becomes owner of the Edmonton Oiler’s. The Oiler’s were looking to acquire Marian Hossa a UFA from Pittsburgh. Kevin Lowe had a great offer for him as well: $10/season. A couple of hours ago he signed with Detroit for less money. Well, when you can go to a Stanley Cup contender why not? I can’t help but in the back of my mind (since last year’s off season’s Lowe/Penner deal) that somebody put a bug in Hossa’s head not to play in Canada. If not in Hossa’s head then in his agents head. Notice all the big name stars are in the US? It’s not that we can’t afford these players. Someone (ahem) wants to keep the star players in the US. (The better to sell NHL hockey to an American market.) Hey I’m just saying.

Another beautiful day here in Edmonton. Hard to believe it was 30 years ago I was in New Westminster BC slumming in a rooming house meant for homeless people. The rooming house was sanctioned by the Province I believe. I recall how (I think 5 of us) we’d get meal tickets from Welfare and we’d cash those in at the Pacific Café. (long gone) Most of my stuff was in storage at the Anderson house. I think I moved out of there about August 1st when I got this big UIC windfall of over $1,000. I barely stayed in the apartment block for 2 weeks, which was on the site of the current Douglas College. Of curse the apartment was old and drab like most of New West was back in those days. I stayed in that place about 2 weeks when I got a letter from my folks inviting me up to Edmonton. I picked up my mail at General delivery. Downtown post office. It’s now the location of the New Westminster downtown Police department. About the invitation however, Mike invited me to attend his wedding. Mom sent me a return Via rail ticket.

I don’t recall much of the trip but I left August 15th and got to Edmonton 2 days later. Jeff picked me up at the CN Via rail tower, when Via was still dropping passengers off right downtown. That weekend mom had tried to convince me to remain here in Edmonton. She would get me a job working with Wackenhut Canada as a security guard. I thought about it over the weekend. I figured why not? I’m only 25 and there was nothing left in New West for me at the time. I brought my UIC claim up to Edmonton, stayed with my parents in their Bellaire apartment and the rest is history.

I recall going back to the coast all but 5 times in those last 30 years. 1980: Was on SCA business. 1984. I remember hooking up with Dave Winfield my childhood best friend. 1991, 1997 and the last time 2000, which the last 2 times were in Victoria.

Anne’s out doing a bottle run. We’re kind of short on cash this week but at least we have July’s rent money and our bus passes. Anne gets paid a couple of times this month and that’s for August’s rent. My cheques cover everything else. I’ve got just under $5 and I need a quarter and I can get a half liter diet Coke and a 6/49 ticket. The bottle money will just keep us in pop and I get paid tomorrow.
I shouldn’t rag on Rob or the company. Sure it was a rotten thing they did, not having to come up to me and say something like “Well, Jim, if you miss a day without a Doctor’s note you don’t qualify for your CC’s bonus.” To be fair it wasn’t like I went up to Rob etc and said “Listen, I’m taking Monday off.” I just took it off and showed up the next day. How fair and honorable is that to them? Not much. So I shouldn’t complain to much how lousy I’m being treated there. I work the evening shift. During the morning and afternoon if you’re a tap shooter, you must be pulling in $200 line hour. The line hour is the money/sales you get on your recap in an hour. For the sources we have it’s almost impossible. Moe isn’t like that because mainly we have a shortage of workers for the evening shift. You get what you get as a tap shooter. So I shouldn’t complain. Yes I’m only getting $10/hr but I’m not limited to staying at Xl like the East Indian kids are. Due to immigration policies they can’t leave for a better paying job. Many of them are saying that this job is nothing more then “hand from mouth.” Basically all it means is that your just making a living to cover the basics. Making ends meet. The real good jobs are Union/trade and professional jobs. I’ve been going through these hand from mouth jobs all my life and making a career of them. Army & Navy Department store in the 1980’s has been that way. These types of jobs are at the low end of the employment food chain but in the 1980’s and mid 1990’s people were struggling just to get those kinds of jobs. I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I’ve been able to barely keep my nose above the waterline.

Anne’s not back yet from the bottle run and her banking and it’s getting kind of late as well. This afternoon at 4pm I’m going to Xl with a good attitude, grateful that Rob has kept me all these years. He’s still a weasel but one I can live with. After work it’s coming home. Nothing special tonight. I’m going to get some piano practice in and do my reading, watch the news. The usual.

Anyway Bloggers, that‘s all for now

e. Jim