My trip wasn’t all horrible, as you can see…

(I haven’t posted pics in a while. Special thanks are in order for the inspiration; it comes from Chie’s site.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 9:07 AM EDT

No Comments »

Wow. The trip I just went on to Sudbury to look for an apartment was seriously one of the worst trips I’ve ever had the displeasure to take part in.

First off, we left things a bit late, as I explained in the last entry, so most apartments available for September 1 were already taken. The few we did find were either too expensive, too scummy, or too far away. We found two that we kind of liked, but one of them, the competition to get the place was so fierce that the landlady was hand-picking her tenants, and as we found out yesterday, it wasn’t us. The other, we suspect has a rodent problem, is in a bad-ish neighbourhood, and looks like crap. And we might get turned down for it too. At this point, I don’t even care. We can make other plans; perhaps we’ll divert to London after all. We won’t know until we’re there, basically, at which point I’ll write about it.

Now, this alone is not enough to make the trip bad; it does get worse. While driving back and fourth to the campground, which is located about 20 km into the backcountry on a twisting, hilly, and narrow road, my brakes on my car started acting up. They were making a lot of noise, such that driving became embarassing, so I stopped in at a brake shop to have them looked at. Turns out that all the salt and crud from the roads here this winter have finished off my front brake rotors, and the rear drums were already long since gone. So, a full brake job was necessary. I didn’t exactly want to lose stopping power while clipping along through the country at speed.

The next day things got worse. We discovered halfway through the day that each cell call to landlords, answering machines, and pagers was costing us about 0.58$ and our phone minutes were being rapidly depleted, so we switched to payphones; they’re only 25 cents, right? Wrong.

We used our credit cards to make the calls, since we couldn’t be bothered to carry a bucket of change with us everywhere, and Bell phonecards were strangely nowhere to be found. Keep in mind that nowhere on the payphone does it say that the cost of local calls placed via credit card would be higher. After making a crapload of calls, one of our cards got declined. We though that was odd, so we called the card company. They told us that it was declined due to suspicious activity. I had been prepared for that. The part I wasn’t prepared for was that it had been costing us 5$ per call. The card company suggested calling Bell to complain and clarify, which we did.

Bell, as usual, turned out to be completely useless in the matter. They told us that it shouldn’t have been 5$ per call, but that it was more than 25 cents, but didn’t say how much. They went on to suggest we were lying by implying that the phone should have warned us of any additional charges, which it did not (otherwise we wouldn’t have been so foolish). They also said they couldn’t do anything about it until we received the statement for that card in the mail. To an address that we don’t even know yet. Great. Fucking Bell. Thanks for nothing, assholes. Thanks for that reminder again of why we are no longer, and never will be again, your customers.

In addition to the fact that it rained nearly the whole time we were there, our camping experience was totally ruined on Friday when we returned to our campsite late, as we had every day, only to find that our tent was gone this time. I thought at first that perhaps it had blown away, or that the park rangers grabbed it and stowed it because they thought we’d gone and left it behind. A quick trip to the ranger’s station revealed the sad truth: our tent had been stolen.

Thankfully, there was nothing in it, as we had anticipated leaving earlier or perhaps moving to a different spot later on, and had thus packed all our gear into the car. Still, that sucked. There we were, too late for a motel, in the pitch dark, and cold, wet weather with no tent. So we did the only thing we could: we slept in the car. I folded down the back seat and we crashed out in our bedroll with our legs in the trunk and our upper bodies resting on the hard upper seat-back. Actually, it wasn’t too bad. Certainly no worse than the cold, hard ground, though I still would have preferred not to lose the tent to some bottom-feeding lowlife.

Thankfully, our miserable luck would end there, as we made it back okay, and now everything is fine… or fine-ish, since we’re still not sure where we’ll end up.

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 5:53 PM EDT

2 Comments »

We’re quickly running short on time, and the list of options has only narrowed slightly. Looks like Sudbury is shaping up to be the choice, since Thames Valley school board left their hiring until the very last second, and we can’t wait around.

The reason for the delay, is supposedly due to the contract dispute that the teachers were having, or so I’ve been told, though it is equally possible that the delay was a stalling tactic to see who is really serious about the jobs.

So despite the fact that I’ve only just this morning been offered a post in London as a school bus driver, we’re leaving to look for places in the ‘bury tomorrow evening.

A pity I had to turn that job down, since it sounded like fun. Well, I’ve applied for a similar post in Rainbow Country as well, so I may get to find out in the end just how much fun it is.

Also, since for no apparent reason hotels and accomodations in Sudbury are insanely expensive, we’ve decided to cheap out and camp at Fairbank instead of getting a motel. I haven’t been camping in several years, and I haven’t really camped (as in no trailers, no thinly-veiled excuses to party) in even longer. Should be fun

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 2:41 PM EDT

2 Comments »

The stories of the two World Wars always seem to have a great impact on me. Today’s is certainly no exception. I feel I “owe” it to those who fought there to hear or read their stories.

Both my grandfathers fought in WWII, in some capacity. Both were lucky enough to have survived. My paternal grandfather was a part of the Dutch underground resistance, putting his skills with electronics and languages to use building and operating radios. He never relayed too many specifics, though frequently reminded us of the hardships he endured, living out of a warehouse, scavenging to survive. My maternal grandfather lied about his age to enlist in the army at age 17, as a paratrooper. He was deployed behind enemy lines, and to the day he died, refused to talk much about it, despite having brought home a few trophies, namely, a German officer’s Luger pistol. All I was able to learn about the experience was that he spent some time in the Black Forest on the Rhine, and that it was cold and wet.

So today I pay my respects to a Canadian hero. I would urge you to read about his inspiring story. You owe him. We all do.

Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 11:11 AM EDT

No Comments »

I was at the police station today to pick up a criminal background check. I needed it for a job I didn’t end up getting last month, so I didn’t bother going to get it. After 30 days, they’re supposed to destroy them, but they didn’t, and instead called me last week to let me know they’d be keeping it a few more days.

So I went to get it today. That went swimmingly, but I noticed something while I was there that I found a little bit disturbing: the secretary in the kiosk that handles that kind of thing had a calendar of shirtless “buff guy” pinups on the inside wall of her cubicle. Firefighters, perhaps.

That kind of thing doesn’t bother me, in and of itself. Rather, it’s the principle of the matter. This was not a private area at all. The kiosks are separated from the main lobby of the police station only by glass, much like a ticket booth in a theatre or amusement park. Anyone walking in there can see it. Like I said, it doesn’t bother me, and I doubt any of the other guys in the office (if there are any) would even care, but it might bother some people.

What if there were a man working in that office? What if he wanted to put up a “bikini girls” calendar? Do you think they’d let him get away with that? I really, really doubt it. I’m sure that the girls in the office would take issue with it. That kind of thing could even get a guy fired, and probably would, especially from something so publicly accountable as the police.

Egalitarian issues aside, the biggest problem I have with it is the fact that it’s a public office, taxpayer funded. You expect a certain degree of credibility from that kind of position, and a healthy dose of professionalism. Something like that does nothing to foster either of those things. On the contrary. I could see it in a small, “mom and pop” type operation. Maybe even a corporate office. But the police station? Come on.

How would it be to have a judge with a pinup behind the bench? Behind the counter (but still visible) at the local Futureshop technical department? At the MTO office, when you go to renew your vehicle license? Or behind the anchor’s chair on the evening news? On the wall at the HRSDC? Your doctor’s office? An embassy? Queen’s park? It’s just inappropriate and unprofessional.

Posted by Ron as Politics at 2:52 PM EDT

No Comments »

I’ve made a few tweaks to the blog here in an effort to curb the voluminous amount of comment spam I had been getting. Actually, Luke made the changes for me, since it was all code-y and stuff and I’m a novice at that sort of thing.

Now comments will not show URLs at all. Period. If there’s a good link you have to share, email me, or MSN me, or whatever, and I’ll add it on your behalf. Also, the comment form asks for an email address, but this will never be shown on the site itself, so not to worry.

Also, if something is messed up, please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix it in a timely manner [read: I'll whine to Luke for help if I can't figure it out right away ].

Posted by Ron as Computers at 11:09 AM EDT

2 Comments »

Well, last week’s reprieve only extended my job by about a week. Just as well, since it’s high time to gear up for leaving. And that means I must launch another job search in a city I don’t live in. That did not go well last time, and I expect as much this time as well, but you never know I guess, and it’s not a chance I can literally afford to take.

EI doesn’t pay a living wage, you see; you’re no better off on welfare, except instead of having the taxpayers cover the bill, you’ve earned it by paying into it for so long. Still, you get treated about the same. How’s that for encouragement?

In any case, the fun part about this job search is that I don’t even know where we’re going, so I’ll be looking in both London (Ontario) and Sudbury. Those would appear to be the big options right now.

Other than that, it’s time to pack, and pooch it a bit, too. Picked up Eternal Darkness for the GameCube, so I’ve been playing that basically every night. And wow, that game rocks. Very classy; it plays like a good H.P. Lovecraft novel reads (from which it draws a lot of inspiration). I’ve been through one of the three scenarios in the game, and about halfway through the second, and I just can’t put it down. The only real complaints I have are with respect to the combat. Namely, in that a few battles the high difficulty level seems out of place. You go from cakewalk to super-maddeningly-hard in no time at all. Very frustrating. Also at times, there is just too much hacking, blasting and spellcasting your way through the hordes of demons and zombies for my tastes. I just doesn’t suit the flavour of the genre the game is trying so hard to aspire to, but I guess they have to do something to keep the action fans entertained. Also, the puzzles could use to be a little more difficult, but the ‘Cube is aimed at kids after all.

Also went back to a few older titles I have that I’m not finished with completely: Front Mission 4 and R-Type Final, both of which have only a level or two left.

The former remained unfinished whilst I was working on a devilishly tricky bonus stage, which I can’t go back and complete later. The level required a different Wanzer setup than what I had been using throughout the rest of the game, so I had to do some cash farming to be able to make the changes to my units.

The latter is just damned hard, as you would expect for the final stage in an old-school arcade-style “twitch” shooter. Hordes of enemy ships, you and your pea shooter, just as it was meant to be. The game gives you only one shot at it, no continues, so if you fail you have to do the entire game over again to get another chance, and I can only stand to make two, maybe three attempts at it before I get too annoyed. The stupid thing is, that when I do that level in practise mode (same difficulty) I can make it almost every time.

So despite being out of work, I have plenty to keep me distracted. I’ll also try to post more often. No promises.

Posted by Ron as Work at 10:17 AM EDT

No Comments »