Welcome to the Aerostar Hotel!

I realize that I haven’t blogged lately, not since I was in Winnipeg for training last week, but it’s been hectic, and there have been some… complications at work. Another story for another time, I suppose. I have something disturbing to talk about right now.

Last night, I was doing deliveries at the WP. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Instead of using Eugene’s car (he currently has my car in Winnipeg because of the low mileage per gallon), I was using my parents’ van, an old 1991 Ford Aerostar XL. Also nothing out of the ordinary there. One particular delivery went to Minago Bay, one of the residential streets in the new trailer court. Unfortunately, since the last two huge snowfalls we had this past month, the city has not been able to get their workforce to plow many of these smaller streets, mine included, and this one in particular. As a result, I got stuck trying to get into the street. Luckily, a passerby motorist saw my plight and helped push me out. However, it was my fault in the first place for trying to turn into the street where the snow drift was the heaviest. So, I turned into the street again using the worn out path and made it to the delivery destination. However, on my way out, I got stuck yet again. The snow was unbelievably soft and powdery, and it all sat on top of a frozen ice layer. Fun. I thought I could dig my way out, so I unlocked the sliding door and pulled out a shovel that Dad kept in the back for emergencies. Dig, dig, dig. It still did me no good.

The customer I delivered to saw my plight (and most likely heard me gunning the engine) and rushed out to help give me a push, but that got nowhere. We switched roles and I got out and pushed – I almost strained my back, but he got out and circled around Minago and back over on to Campbell, where the road was worn down better. I thanked him and went on my merry way to the next delivery (the bastard pretty much sent his crazy Husky after me for being late). By the time I got back to the restaurant, I was exhausted from all the shoveling and pushing I had to do, so I stumbled inside and plopped down on the first chair I could find. I let Dad do the next delivery so that I could gather my wits about me, and in due time, we finished up the last few pick-up orders and closed up shop. Dad and AM left in the van first, and Mom and I followed them in Eugene’s car. Once again, nothing out of the ordinary there.

At approximately 4:00 AM in the morning, I awoke to the sound of our house alarm klaxon blaring away. I lurched out of bed and noticed that everybody was still asleep. Figures. I trudged downstairs and deactivated the alarm system, cursing the damn system for malfunctioning at a time like this, and right when my shoulder was starting to ache from all the overexertion during deliveries earlier. I checked the alarm panel and noticed that instead of complaining about the front door (which likes to trip the alarm at night every winter), it was reporting that the door leading to the garage was the cause. ‘Well, isn’t that strange,’ I mused to myself. I opened the door and checked the alarm sensors to see if everything was still in place. No issues there. The garage door was still closed, so it couldn’t have been an intruder. I shook my head and decided to deal with it in the morning, since alarm security would be calling us any minute now. I shut the door and turned the alarm system back on. I wearily trudged back upstairs to my room and attempted to go back to sleep, all the while wondering what would really happen if somebody broke into our house, and what actions I would take to defend the house. After running through a few scenarios in my head, I heard some kind of a scraping sound. Was that coming from outside?

I headed over to the bathroom and looked down at the side of the house. I didn’t see anything. I went back to my room and heard the scraping noise again. I started to wonder if those noises were related to our alarm system tripping out earlier. Well, like it says on the back cover of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, I decided to stay calm and
went to wake Dad up. I explained to him what had happened about 20 minutes before, and that’s when we heard the knocking. It was coming from downstairs. We went and checked the front door, but nobody was outside the door. The knocking came again, over from the other side of the house. I suggested that perhaps it was coming from the laundry room door, which leads outside, but we don’t have any steps that allows somebody to walk in easily. As we were about to approach the door, we heard the knocking again, and it distinctly came from the door that led to the garage.

The door that I opened and checked earlier.

Cautiously, we turned on the light in the room and opened the garage door. There was a caucasian boy standing there, all bundled up in winter gear, in our garage. He looked like he was in his late teens, and he smelled of some really bad alcohol. Mom and AM had woken up and were now watching the scene unfold in apprehension.

“What are you doing in our garage? How did you get in here?” Dad asked.

“I don’t know,” the kid replied. “I woke up in here.”

“Whereabouts in here?” I asked.

“In that van there,” came the reply.

Dad promptly opened the garage door and let the guy out. I couldn’t help but shake my head. I asked Dad and AM if they noticed anything was amiss on their way home from the WP. AM commented that before they entered the van, there was a teenage boy wandering our parking lot, obviously looking for somebody, and smelling of alcohol. When they got into the van, she noticed that she could smell the alcohol from inside. On the way home, she also noticed that the sliding door was rattling like it wasn’t closed shut properly. Each time she voiced these observations out loud, Dad just shrugged it off as usual (he’s so lethargic in his old age).

“So, let me get this straight,” I said in disbelief. “This guy drunkenly crawled into our van while we were closing up the restaurant, you drove him home while he was sleeping in the back seat, and he just woke up now?”

Ascension gave way to pointing out how it may have happened. After all the exertion during my last delivery of the night, I didn’t lock the doors, especially the sliding door. Dad also should have checked the back seat when obvious clues were slapping him and AM in the face.

Mom and AM were just relieved that this didn’t escalate into a home invasion case like three weeks ago when an Inco retiree had his home broken into which subsequently ended up with him getting shot to death.

So, what’s the moral of the story? Even though you think it might only happen in movies and television shows, check the freaking back seat of your car for any intruders or sleeping drunks before getting in and driving.

When I look back at this situation, I really have to laugh. It was such a stupid thing that happened, and it could have been a lot more serious, but it wasn’t, and we still learned our lesson. Also, if we had called the police, they probably would have been laughing about it at the lunchroom water cooler.

I’m thinking that since the guy slept in our Aerostar like it was a hotel, we should have charged him. Hehehe.

Okay, so I didn’t update all week.

But I have pictures, so I’ll post something more elaborate later.

Even after the training course ended, it seems I’ve been busy. I thought this trip was a chance for me to relax?

The weekend of stereotypical Punjabi helpdesk attendants.

Well, the flight to Winnipeg was uneventful, which I am glad to report. I ran into Keith and my cousin, Oliver, at the terminal in Thompson (Keith was working, Oliver was traveling). Oliver and I decided to get some lunch when we got to the city, so he called up Margaret while I called Esmond. I had to get my car rental, so Oliver decided to follow me while Margaret would bring along their mom and pick up Esmond at the University. It’s a good thing Margaret gets lost easily when it comes to new directions – I had quite the hassle at National.

Oliver and I got to the car rental agency spot, and when I went to pick up the rental, they gave me a choice between a Caliber and a Sebring, so I took the Sebring. I thought I would just have to sign the papers and all, but as it turned out, I would have to pay for it because it wasn’t prepaid by Inco. According to National’s strict policy, they require pre-authorization on a credit card (so that they can ding you if you skip out on them), they do not accept a prepaid option with cash, and the cardholder must be present with a photo ID. I could pay for the whole thing with cash, but they needed the pre-auth. Well, that was just suck, because I knew for certain that I didn’t have enough for the pre-auth on my credit card. Peas and rice, I just finished paying off my RRSP loan and I’ve been on a very good budget, but I don’t have any cash put away for these situations yet! Some prior notice from the company would have been nice – “Yes, we pay for the flight, but you have to pay for the rental and hotel yourself, then expense it all later.”

So, there I was, absently handing over my Visa, hoping for a miracle, and the brainless bimbo behind the counter just kept swiping my card as it kept getting declined. If it didn’t work the first time, what makes you think it would work the next few times?! Because of that, all the declined pre-auths stacked up and now my Visa is unusable. I had $400 available in the account, and now it’s all gone. I had no backup money, just the money in my account. Son of a bitch. The bimbo advised me that it would be alright, I could just call Visa and have them cancel the pre-auths and then she could pre-auth the max amount that I had available, and then come back to pre-auth the rest later. She even allowed me to use their phone. It didn’t work that way. The Punjabi guy representing Visa needed her to provide him with the exact pre-auth amounts she had made, and the bimbo forgot them, because the transaction screen closed off or some crap like that.

It was a miracle, however, in the fact that Oliver was there, and he just pulled out his own Visa and put the pre-auths on it. Thank goodness for family. I’ll have to buy him a big steak later.

I can’t stand Punjabi help desk attendants. The fact that their English is heavily accented and difficult to understand only serves to aggravate situations, whatever they may be. North America needs to stop being so cheap and start help desk contracts WITHIN our country. No immigrant employees either!

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean all that. I was just venting, and it’s really the fault of the policies set in place by companies that are only looking out for their own asses instead of their customers. They’re probably all Chinks. :P

We all met at a noodle shop in Chinatown after finally getting the car, and it was a pleasant lunch. Margaret footed the bill, however, because I had paid for dim sum the last time I was there. Curses, foiled again! I wanted to make the company pay for as much as possible, because this damn trip started out on the wrong foot, on a fifty foot suspended tightrope with the wrong shoes on the wrong feet!

I was going to be grateful for the extra cash in my savings account, as well as the overdraft, but when I got to the hotel and pre-paid for everything, I was screwed anyway. Oh, well. It’s payday tomorrow, and I lasted this long with what I had in my wallet. It’s going to take a whole lot of receipt tracking to find out what I need to take back from my savings. After checking into the hotel, Esmond and I went to St. Vital, and though I found the games I wanted and even some manga I had my eye on, I couldn’t buy anything because I had no money to spare. Literally.

Sunday was spent visiting, really. I surfed the Net in the hotel room and ate breakfast for most of the morning, took a quick walk to find out where my training was taking place, and visited Ian and Jazmine. Jazmine made dairy-free pancakes for me. Yummy. OBJECTION!! However, I need to BUY my food or my company won’t have suffered my wrath. HOLD IT!! So, I made up for it when I went to visit Esmond in the late afternoon and we ordered two pizzas, cinnasticks, and garlic bread from Domino’s – all for delivery. TAKE THAT!! Okay, can you tell I want to play Gyakuten Saiban 3? In between that, Esmond and I managed to watch Transformers almost twice, try out Guitar Hero III, and watch a few episodes of WB’s Superman.

My training course started today, and I didn’t even talk about yesterday, so I’ll leave all that to a later date, hopefully tomorrow. Don’t worry, it will end on a better note than today’s post.

My car sucks, but who cares? I’m going to Winnipeg, baby!

It’s been a crazy week, work-wise, among other things. François, one of the IT managers, finally retired after 40 years of service to Inco. Good on him, it’s well-deserved. The guy worked really hard and made sure that things were done right. Wil took over his job and now that things have calmed down, I finally decided to take my rightful place at the back of my office. I moved my desk to Wil’s old desk, and swapped the roles of my desktop and laptop. Now my desktop is my domain PC and my laptop is a non-managed Vista laptop. Schweet!

My car broke down two days ago. I was on my way back to work from lunch when my head unit just suddenly kicked out with no power. I thought that maybe the damn thing died on me and that I’d have to get it replaced, but at the end of the day, I was on my way out of Inco when my head unit died again. Not too long after, my car died and I had enough forward momentum to pull over. I noticed before I pulled over that the battery LED was lit on the dashboard. I had a feeling that my battery wasn’t getting charged. Dad and I went back later that night to give the car a quick charge to drive it home, but we only made it to the highway intersection before it lost all its juice again. We had to call CAA to get it towed the rest of the way home.

I hate my car.

So, I’m off tomorrow morning to Winnipeg for a Windows Server 2003 course. My flight leaves mid-morning and arrives by lunch time. I arranged to have this weekend spent in the city before the course starts from Monday to Friday, and then I’ll have all of Saturday left before I have to head back on the Sunday afternoon flight. One thing is for sure – it’s going to be like a vacation, only paid for by my department. Muahaha. I also shouldn’t have too much trouble finding Final Fantasy Tactics for PSP.

Holy crap, I still need to pack. O_o