Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Some pics of the house in the original state

Exterior

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Kitchen

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Living Room

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Mowing the Damn Lawn

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Update Pt. 2

Update pt. 2:

Employment pt. 1: Still have Job
Employment pt. 2: Girlfriend still has job
Election: Liberal minority win - God help us
House: WE'RE IN!!! Man the place is in rough shape.....

Monday, June 28, 2004

Update...

Employment pt. 1: Still have Job
Employment pt. 2: Girlfriend not sure if she still has job
Election: Haven't voted yet, but polls suggest Liberal minority win
House: Present resident still there, apparently wants to stay until the 30th...

More updates as they arrive...

R

p.s. BTW since I had nothing else going on today I decided to take my car in for service... At this rate, I'm afraid of what THAT will amount to!

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Coming to a Head

So,

Upon coming to work this morning I noticed a curious "Department Meeting" scheduled for 10am... sent suspiciously late yesterday...

Turns out that next Monday June 28th we find out who will be "impacted by aforementioned restructuring activity". Pretty unpleasent meeting actually, our manager was instructed to read a "prepared statement" and then field questions, that vast majority of which were responded to with "I can't answer that". Not sure if they will do the old Room A/Room B routine or if our boss will call us in one by one... I guess it doesn't really matter.

It would appear that they WILL generously provide 20-25 minutes for the chosen few to pack their desks before being escorted to the door. I can't think of a less dignified way to treat people. The shit is, I wouldn't say it's all that much of a stretch to claim that most everybody in the company views the folks who do "get it" as the lucky ones... talk about a crappy situation.

Funnily enough, I actually on Vacation on Monday - so I get to find out over the PHONE! Sweet.... but what about coming back to the office to get my personal effects? Will they let me in? What if I see my prized brushed platinum "5 Years as Public Company" keychain (i.e. BONUS) up for sale on eBay?

Oh yeah, did I mention that my girlfriend works at the same place? Talk about double jeopardy!

Oh yeah, did I mention that she and I bought a house last month and it CLOSES on Monday June 28th?

Yes you read that correctly; it's quite possible that we'll be a pair of unemployed, homeowning, no-money-to-pay-the-mortgage mafa's with exactly three month's salary to burn through....

Not to be a pessimist, but does it ever seem like the universe is aligning against you?

I guess this is a good a place as any to record the events as they transpire - so stay tuned...

R

p.s. it's not all that bad I guess... on the plus side a very kind person I've never met was nice enough to share a Gmail invite with me today. Thanks for making my day Scott! Scott's Website is one of my common haunts during the workday.

testing

testing

So Many Tests!!

does this work?

Test....

hmmm.... does this work?

Monday, June 21, 2004

Bring on the Gmail

So as most people who use it will have noticed, Yahoo has upgraded their email services. Many see this as a preemptive strike to keep some of their fed up users from switching when the Gmail animal comes their way - I'd tend to agree. It actually is pretty good - I mean, 100MB *is* a spare bit of space... and if you already have all your addresses, phone numbers, calendar, etc. etc. all set up I can see many folks just not wanting to bother with the switch to Gmail...

Except my Yahoo mail wasn't working all morning today. Down completely. 404 error at mail.yahoo.com.

Not sure where the problem was, but I had like 5 or 6 relatively critical messages to go out this morning... which I thus had to send using my (eek!) hotmail account - after reactivating from lack of use, of course.

sheesh... isn't email supposed to be figured out by now? Why do I have limitations on the amount I can store? Why do I have max attachment file sizes? Why do I have to pay extra to have it forwarded somewhere or to use POP3 to download to Outlook? AND WHY DOESN'T IT WORK ALL THE TIME!

It's like the phone company not realizing that charging people for local service just pisses them off and gives them another reason to switch the second an alternative becomes available... Built up consumer frustration is a dangerous thing for business, just ask MLB - or the NHL next year - the Canadian cellphone industry when the CRTC FINALLY legislates number portability...

Gmail... are you listening? I promise my complete devotion AND 100% of my web searching if you can satisfy me!

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Hey now, here we go!

So this should be the initial post - insert wisdom here.