I am in desperate need of lots of beer. Just load the truck up and start pouring it into me.

I just finished working with the most difficult person on the planet – you know, the one who’s always right and your opinions don’t matter – I’m sure his attitude was exacerbated by the fact that he was under the delusion that his deadline for providing content to me is midnight tonight (that’s my deadline for turning the course over). He seems to have forgotten he’s at least two weeks late getting his work to me …

And he got very offended when I told him this morning to make a decision, tell me what he wants me to do to the course, and let me do it.  I’m already on site revision (over 125 pages) number 3 and there’s no way this will be completed on time if he can’t make up his mind!  Apparently, my saying so was very rude.   How dare I have expectations of being treated like a professional and not wanting to be forced to work 20 hours of OT in one week to pull someone else’s ass out of the fire.  I’m pretty sure treatment like this had a hell of a lot to do with why I left my last job.

Thank the gawds for temp boss.  He’s perfectly willing to just let me rant (and move the mountains out of the way) when I need to.

Despite all my complaining, I’m sure it will be a nice course when it’s finished. Too bad it’s completely inaccessible for those who are hearing or visually impaired. Oh, and it’s got some digital divide issues … and no, I haven’t figured out why I’m the only one who seems to care about these items … yep, this is exactly why I left the previous job.  I’m shouting from the rooftops about issues that we at least need to be cognizant of and being brushed off or ignored.

I know, no one wants to hear me rant about work on a Friday. Thanks be for the blues!

Today was an exhausting day at work.  Part of me is wishing that the guy filling in for my boss on her vacation was my boss.  Things that have been left unaddressed for weeks he’s handled in a few hours.  I’m not sure he wants the mantle of responsibility but he’s certainly doing a good job.

I got home from work with storm clouds looming.  Lately it’s been pouring rain scant minutes after I drive into the yard.  I arrived home to find Drew busy clearing out the garage in preparation for the demolition this weekend.  He’d already moved out the wood and typical garage items – lawnmower, snow-blower  and such – and I found him crawling into the attic storage space when I drove in.  Apparently the secret to being a pack rat is to store everything in the ceiling of your garage and then move when it’s full.  We found boxes with flyers in them from 1986 and more wood and boxes than you can shake a stick at.  Drew hauled it all down and set aside as much as he could for the garbage and recycling.  It was garbage and recycling day today and, true to form, the city of Edmonton garbage removal crew didn’t arrive.  So, instead of a few boxes of cardboard set aside for recycling, we had dozens.  Drew brought the wood over to the neighbours with firepits.  Most of them are now well and truly stocked for the summer.

We toddled over to L and J’s for burgers on the BBQ – all the while keeping an eye on the sky for the pending storm.  Just as we finished eating, the storm broke.  Thunder rolled and lightening crashed.  E, V and K from across the alley arrived just as we were moving into the L and J’s garage to shelter from the storm.  With the garage door rolled up (so we could watch the storm) we babbled for hours talking about cars and men and silliness.

After the storm had broken we toddled out into the alley to say our goodbyes.  As we’re standing in the alley, we watched a peace officer chasing a young man down the alley, calling after him to stop and to “get down on the ground and put you hands behind your head.”  The young man turned around and began taunting him, screaming “you’ll never catch me”.  He darted forward and lunged at the officer.  This gained him a face full of pepper spray (to which he showed no reaction). Apparently, he hadn’t seen what the peace officer and police officers immediately following him had – the wall of people standing across the alley watching it all unfold.  Drew braced for impact.  When the young man turned around, he screamed again that “no one is gonna catch me” short seconds before Drew tackled him.  Drew waited while the peace officer and police officers arrived; turning him over when they wandered into the neighbours back yard.  The alley filled with police cars, paddy wagons and an ambulance.  Statements delivered and witness statement paperwork in hand, we finished the journey across the back alley to the house.

Apparently no one had told the young man this neighbourhood doesn’t tolerate criminals.  It’s taken a long time to clean it up – years before we moved in it was a den of iniquity – and the residents have worked hard to make the neighbourhood safe for families again.

I wonder if any of this will make it into the local paper in the morning?  No media was present and it was just another day at the office for the hard working men and women of the EPS.

When we moved into our new (to us) house we’d planned for some renovations.  First on the list – but not the first we could afford – was a new garage.  I didn’t want to own the ugliest garage in Edmonton and our original (circa 1950’s) monstrosity certainly qualified for the moniker.  Last year we put a new roof on the house.  This year the plan was to replace the garage and blow insulation into the ceiling/roof.  While both plans are still going to go ahead, it’s going to be tight around here for the next few months.  The estimate that our contractor gave us a few months back was what we used to try and save our pennies so we could afford the new garage.  Today we’ve learned that the cost of removing the demo detritus and pouring the concrete is at least 100% higher than the original estimate.  The cost of the garage package has increased as well.  The new plan is to subsist on Kraft dinner for the next few months so we can afford to save enough for the cost of the garage.  We haven’t even addressed the planned addition of insulation to our ceiling/roof.  Originally I wanted to do it over the summer but I think it will need to be pushed back until September to give us additional time to save enough $$ to pay the bill.

What really sucks about all this is that I was supposed to get a promotion and a raise at work seven months ago.  It has yet to materialize.  Sure, when it’s finally processed I will get back-pay.  However, the government will take a big chunk of that amount in taxes so I’ll be lucky if it covers the costs of the new insulation – and that’s assuming that it even materializes by the end of the summer.  I’m getting the feeling that it’ll never be processed before my next contract ends!

Remind me again why I continue to work where I do?

After many days of constantly rebooting the modem/router it has finally given up the ghost. We can no longer ping it, find it via its MAC address, etc. In effect, while plugged in it does not appear to exist anymore. It doesn’t even fulfill the duties of a basic hub for wired networking connections. The little piece of hardware from Telus appears to have died.  It did an honourable job for a number of years and likely earned its trip to recycled electronics heaven.

So, we get on the phone and call tech support to order a new modem. I really don’t have the temperament to deal with phone technical support. Too many years working in the IT field I suppose. I just don’t have any tolerance for people who 1) don’t listen, 2) can’t go off script, 3) tell you to do something you’ve already told them you’ve done, 4) never bother to ask what OS you’re running and 5) make assumptions about your level of skill or technical knowledge. I usually blow my top after 20 105 minutes. The hubby is just as bad.  His day job of late has been managing server farms.  Software and OS’ is my forte.  His is hardware.  Both of us are impatient brats when it comes to ‘puters.  We trade off talking to the jr. tech so we don’t go completely psycho on her.  It’s just too tempting. 

After 2 hours of wrangling with the jr. tech *oi vey! my aching head* we finally convince her to escalate us to her boss.  She doesn’t understand half of what either of us is saying and has spent the last 30 minutes asking us to repeat fruitless exercises – such as pinging outside internet sites.  Honey, if I can’t get a response pinging the router itself, I’m not damn likely to get a response from www.mytelus.com now am I? *sigh* 

Anywho, back on the farm.  We finally get escalated to the next level of support, spend 5-10 minutes outlining the problem and what we’ve done, et voila, the new modem is ordered.  How we managed to hang in for 2 hours at the lower level is beyond me.  I just didn’t want to lose my place in line I guess…

Now I just have to wait for the new modem to arrive.  2-5 business days.  ARGH!  If it doesn’t arrive before the weekend, I’ll have to spend 48+ hours without an Internet connection.  I have assignments due!  The sky is falling and the world is coming to an end!

I got my papers back for my enviro chem and psych classes. A’s on both. Not too shabby at all. Since I’m way behind in my readings I think I’m spending most of this evening reviewing the chapters from my psych class. I find it easier to process than the enviro chem materials and, since some of it is familiar from past classes, easier to remember once read. If I’m going to dig through homework assignments late in the evening then this is the class to do it in.

One thing that has me very confused is my grades in the bi-weekly assignments in the psych class. While the paper was returned with a significant amount of really helpful feedback, the grades assigned to the assignments came with no such commentary. The grades themselves weren’t horrible – a respectable A- on both – but I’m not sure where I might have gone wrong in the assignment or if I missed the boat on any of the salient points. Guess this means I have to send an email to the prof requesting feedback this week.

Setting my usual whining about school aside for the moment I’m having ohmygawd i can’t believe i can’t connect 24/7 major minor issues with my Internet connection of late. After 3 years of no difficulties with my wireless DSL connection, we’ve started to have some really annoying connection drops this week. I’m having to reset my modem multiple times a day to get the connection back. When it’s working it works beautifully. When it drops I growl and say horrible things that make the puppies’ ears burn. If you exclude the Internet portion of our network, the rest of it is working fine. I’m beginning to suspect that the issue might be with the phone line… it will soon be time to harass technical support and get them to fix the issue NOW!