What is this thing that sits on my desk with a twirly cord attached to it..??? I hear you can put it to your ear and talk to people far away.. I think it's called a PONE or something like that... been without a working communication device for so long now it's like some kind of alien being sittin on my desk.. and my ear tends to get sore when I talk to my daughter for more than an hour... never used to be like that.. what is with that?... and I forget it's there and when it rings (which is very seldom because people have forgotten me out here in the country since I've been gone from their speed dial) I get a fright at the clanging of it's internal bell.. and the more I've been without the more I think that the silence was great... but for that possible emergency or a need to make a hair dresser appointment (which to me is a call for immediate help).. I guess it's ok to have it around...
Speaking of hair dresser appointments, I have one this evening... my hairdresser was off on maternity leave (and so was my doctor.. hmmm.. strange).. and I found that the other hairdressers I tried have not been up to her standards.. hope it's not a case of remembered things being better than reality.. will let you know this evening how it all turns out... gotta go and go off to the job of jobs... later...
Out of My Mind
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Sunday, February 18, 2007
LandDesigner... a piece of crap!!!!
A couple of years ago we got this "wonderful" program called LandDesigner that is supposed to allow you to do a 3D version of your property with all the buildings on it and create wonderful gardens, you can even put a real photo of your house and drag and drop photos of real plants and shrubs into the design and see how it would look without having to dig up your yard, it even is supposed to have a buying guide to track the costs of the various plants etc.. and it is also supposed to have a calendar to keep track of all the things you're supposed to do in each season for your plants and when each is supposed to bloom in your area etc.. and you are supposed to be able to walk around in your 3d design... *notice the "supposed to"?*... well, sounds great in theory and since I have my new whiz bang computer with all the bells and whistles I thought I would break the cd set out and give it a whirl, so to speak..
I got the program loaded and proceeded to go through the first part of the program, laying out the lot dimensions and adding buildings etc.. got the layout done, put the house on the lot, and then tried to go to the next step which is to add barns and other features.. well that's the point where the program went belly up on me... and it did it over and over again at that point... can you say piece of crap??!!! I was so pissed off I could spit... hrrrumph... Oh well, back to the paper and pencil to design my new wonder garden I guess...
I got the program loaded and proceeded to go through the first part of the program, laying out the lot dimensions and adding buildings etc.. got the layout done, put the house on the lot, and then tried to go to the next step which is to add barns and other features.. well that's the point where the program went belly up on me... and it did it over and over again at that point... can you say piece of crap??!!! I was so pissed off I could spit... hrrrumph... Oh well, back to the paper and pencil to design my new wonder garden I guess...
Friday, February 16, 2007
How did my new car become a garbage can on wheels???
When we got our new car last fall (A 2007 Saturn Ion Quad.. mmm .. I love our new car.. ).. I vowed to keep it nice and neat and tidy because it's a leased car... well, that little bit of self control lasted about a month and slowly but surely the coffee trays and cups and assorted pieces of paper etc started to litter the floor.. why can't they come out with some kind of a car garbage can thingy that won't top over for us pigs on wheels?.. if they can supply us with multiple cup holders so that we can drink coffee on the road, why can't they take that extra step and give us a portable waste basket to put the empty cups in until we get a sufficent supply to take to the garbage can when we get home? After all they frown on us when we throw garbage out the window as we're taking a nice drive in the country.. Tim Horton cups are made out of paper so are biodegradeable after all, right?... so to appease some idiotic moron who passed a bylaw that PEI can't have carbonated beverages in cans sold in this province, only bottled bubbly and have a law against litter, I allow the crap to pile up and up until I run out of room on the passenger side... then I proceed to fill the space between the back of the front seat and the back seat.. now it's getting to the point where I may have to start on the trunk...
Saturday, February 03, 2007
We now are land lined....
After a year of fighting with the phone company they finally sent a guy out to check our complaints about our cell phone service. It's a long sad story but the long and short of it (well basiclly just the long) is that a little over a year ago we had two cell phones that we signed up on a three year contract for and a land line. We decided to cancel one of the cell phones but Aliant in their infinite wisdom told us that in order to do that we would have to pay out the cell phone contract which was $20 dollars a month for three years each phone .. hmmm.. 36x20=$720.0x2phones.. I don't think so Tim!!!...
So we said "screw you" and disconnected our land line.. leaving us with two cell phones... which would have been fine except for the fact that we live in the Burmuda Triangle of cell phone hell... a call can start off at a good signal and almost immediately drop off the map and you would hear the dreaded bleep blida bleep of a dropped call.. So instead of "screw you" it was "screw us" and we spent a year of complaining and being told we signed a contract so we suffered and moaned and basically became cut off from the outside world when we were at home.. our families stopped calling because they couldn't maintain a call for more than a couple of minutes at the most.... we never made any calls to any businesses from home... and heaven forbid if we had an emergency and had to call 911 (who's cost of service is added to our bill each month)..
The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was last week when we tried to call Aliant about a mistake on our bill.. you know when you phone those places that you have to go through the dreaded automated system where you have to press "1" for this and the "#" key for that.. well they don't have a "I'm going to take this fucking phone and ram it up your arse if it drops one more call" key... so I fumed and cursed and called back again and again.. until in frustration I called them on Skype (that wonderful phone system where you can phone out from your computer to a land line for next to nothing a year but don't have the system in Canada yet where you can receive calls and get your own Skype phone number)...
Anyway, back to my story, I got ahold of them on Skype to straighten the bill out and said at the end of the call that I wanted to make a complaint about our cell phone service and explained my frustration about the numberous dropped calls that evening (leaving out the arse ramming scenerio if you're wondering). They passed me along to their service people who took my information and passed it along to the other service people and asked what number they could call for more information if needed... I told them it's no use calling on the cell phone and the Skype can only call out, so I said to email me and proceeded to give them my email address..
Sure enough, a couple of days later I got an email asking for particulars: our civic address, time of day of dropped calls *like all day every day*, etc... I emailed them back all the info and they emailed back saying they would call me or in my case email me when a service man would be in our area... I emailed back saying "I hope you see the irony of the fact that you have to email me".. A few days later a guy did come out and confirmed our problem and gave us the name of yet another guy would took the complaints and said to tell him that he checked out the service in our area and it is minimal to nill and I thought "hmmmm... smells like a buck passing mission to me"..
But I did as I was told and lo and behold on Friday I got a call on my cell phone from the last guy on the list who is the head honcho for the cellular servic on PEI and he had an offer we couldn't refuse.. he allowed us to disconnect one cell phone with no penalty and would reimburse us back to the first of the year and would hook up our land line with no activation fee.. but the real funny part is while he was expaining all they would do for us, the phone kept dropping the calls.. I was laught myself silly as he called back and called back trying to apologise and grovel and saying he is experiencing our frustration first hand.. ha.. you don't know the half of it baby...
just a little side note.. I emailed him the next day and asked him if the first of the year he's reimbursing me for is the first of this year or the first of last year.. I'm leaning towards a reply of the first of this year but it doesn't hurt to ask eh...
So we said "screw you" and disconnected our land line.. leaving us with two cell phones... which would have been fine except for the fact that we live in the Burmuda Triangle of cell phone hell... a call can start off at a good signal and almost immediately drop off the map and you would hear the dreaded bleep blida bleep of a dropped call.. So instead of "screw you" it was "screw us" and we spent a year of complaining and being told we signed a contract so we suffered and moaned and basically became cut off from the outside world when we were at home.. our families stopped calling because they couldn't maintain a call for more than a couple of minutes at the most.... we never made any calls to any businesses from home... and heaven forbid if we had an emergency and had to call 911 (who's cost of service is added to our bill each month)..
The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, was last week when we tried to call Aliant about a mistake on our bill.. you know when you phone those places that you have to go through the dreaded automated system where you have to press "1" for this and the "#" key for that.. well they don't have a "I'm going to take this fucking phone and ram it up your arse if it drops one more call" key... so I fumed and cursed and called back again and again.. until in frustration I called them on Skype (that wonderful phone system where you can phone out from your computer to a land line for next to nothing a year but don't have the system in Canada yet where you can receive calls and get your own Skype phone number)...
Anyway, back to my story, I got ahold of them on Skype to straighten the bill out and said at the end of the call that I wanted to make a complaint about our cell phone service and explained my frustration about the numberous dropped calls that evening (leaving out the arse ramming scenerio if you're wondering). They passed me along to their service people who took my information and passed it along to the other service people and asked what number they could call for more information if needed... I told them it's no use calling on the cell phone and the Skype can only call out, so I said to email me and proceeded to give them my email address..
Sure enough, a couple of days later I got an email asking for particulars: our civic address, time of day of dropped calls *like all day every day*, etc... I emailed them back all the info and they emailed back saying they would call me or in my case email me when a service man would be in our area... I emailed back saying "I hope you see the irony of the fact that you have to email me".. A few days later a guy did come out and confirmed our problem and gave us the name of yet another guy would took the complaints and said to tell him that he checked out the service in our area and it is minimal to nill and I thought "hmmmm... smells like a buck passing mission to me"..
But I did as I was told and lo and behold on Friday I got a call on my cell phone from the last guy on the list who is the head honcho for the cellular servic on PEI and he had an offer we couldn't refuse.. he allowed us to disconnect one cell phone with no penalty and would reimburse us back to the first of the year and would hook up our land line with no activation fee.. but the real funny part is while he was expaining all they would do for us, the phone kept dropping the calls.. I was laught myself silly as he called back and called back trying to apologise and grovel and saying he is experiencing our frustration first hand.. ha.. you don't know the half of it baby...
just a little side note.. I emailed him the next day and asked him if the first of the year he's reimbursing me for is the first of this year or the first of last year.. I'm leaning towards a reply of the first of this year but it doesn't hurt to ask eh...
Friday, February 02, 2007
Only have a minute...
Can we talk?.. well I just have a minute before I have to scurry off to the job of jobs.. this Island is whacked when it comes to weather forecasts.. we have a weather warning and we are supposed to have from 1-3 cm of snow!!! And the snow plow driver is going by and preplowing the roads (guess it's to save time later???)... sparks are flying off the blade and I really don't thinks that's too good on the ashphalt... but maybe I'm not up on the logistics of snow storm preparedness... Well I'm outta here.. promise to chat more later.. sorry I've been lax in coming in and filling you in on the fascinating adventure that is my life.. later gator...
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