A week back from Toronto, and the Toyota Matrix.

Well, I’ve been back from Toronto for about a week now – it was an amazing trip, and while I don’t remember what happened on the trip in Winnipeg anymore, I made sure to type up some blog notes on my phone on a daily basis while I was there. So, one of these days, I need to sit down, find a way to import those notes, and make a post about the whole trip. That is, if I ever get the time. I never have time for myself these days, and even though I have access to the Net at work again, it doesn’t mean I can use it for playing… much.

Candace and I have been hanging out an awful lot this week, but then again, she really saved my hide this entire week. She picked me up from the airport when I got back from Toronto, she drove me around when I didn’t have a vehicle, and she even brought me to the eye doctor (more on that later)! We also had a movie night and she visited at the WP and got to know Mom and AM. They all clicked and got along well together. Future wife material much? I dunno, we’re just friends, as far as we’re both concerned, but I just dread the day when Mom starts pressing the issue. For now, we just hang out and have meaningless but interesting conversations. Oh, and her new Mustang is pretty sweet. I told her that if I ever get a Bumblebee Camaro, we’d rule the streets of Thompson! Hahaha. No, really.

Work has been busy as usual, and I’ve been occupied with several projects, while finishing up some outstanding cases that I had. One of which was a process documentation for onsite support on how to configure a legacy WYSE terminal. Yes, we still have them. We realize they’re legacy and we’re slowly phasing them out, but until they’re all gone, we need to know how to get them working on the new Thin servers.

When I got back to Thompson, two things happened – my glasses broke and my car was dead at Inco. My glasses are very old, and it’s been about 5 years or so since I got them. So, I set up an appointment with Moore Specs, the local eye doctor and glasses store, run by my friend’s sister. I always go to her because she has a really good sense of style, glasses notwithstanding. So, I saw the eye doctor first, and he said that my vision hasn’t really changed all that much over the years, but that I should start making regular appointments just to be on the safe side. I concur. Also, he addressed the psoriasis issue with my eyelids, and he recommended a specialist to me, which is great. I’ve been wanting to take care of it for some time, but with a lack of doctors in town, competent service is somewhat lacking. So, anyway, Bobby (and Candace, who was with me at the time) helped me to pick out two different pairs of some very nice glasses, and my total bill came to roughly $550. However, when I e-mailed my benefits office, they informed me that glasses aren’t covered, only the check-up! What a crock! I think I might have to switch over to individual Blue Cross. The contractor benefits are just not worth it; now I’m $550 in the hole from my budget plan and I have to somehow make back that money through the restaurant, deliveries, and home computer repairs, while at the same time, paying off other outstanding bills I accumulated since the Toronto trip. Great (not really, but you can’t hear sarcasm very well when reading text).

So, anyway, on to my car – Eugene brought it to work the week I was in Toronto. However, Thompson was experiencing 40 below weather, in which my car does not start, even when plugged in for hours or boosted by another car – so I usually leave it running during weather that cold, or I start it every hour for a few minutes, even when it’s plugged in. Like I said before, my car and extremely cold weather does not mix. So, idiots that they are, Dad and Eugene went out twice to boost the car. They didn’t seem to understand that after cranking the engine several times in that kind weather, nothing good would come of it. And it didn’t. When I got home, Dad went out there with me (and incidentally, the weather got somewhat warmer) and I immediately had a bad feeling when I tried to crank the engine and I got no response except for a clicking noise. It was a bomb! I jumped out of the car and dragged Dad along behind me, diving into the snow a few feet away as the car exploded into several molten pieces, sending shrapnel everywhere that fortunately didn’t hurt us. Who would try to kill us? My enemies from the ex-KGB? Those terrorists I thwarted in Guam this past summer?

Wait, I must be getting tired, because my blog just suddenly went fictional. Let me try to wake up and get my bearings again.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, yes, I tried cranking the engine and got no response except for a clicking noise. Something wrong with the starter again. Dad and Eugene definitely blew something. We had no choice but to call a tow truck and get it dragged to Canadian Tire. They told me to come back after the New Year, since their backlog was tremendous. I thought to myself, ‘Okay, so what am I going to do for a car for the next two weeks?’ I can easily car pool with Eugene in the early morning for the first week, but then Eugene would be headed to Winnipeg on Thursday, so that would only work for three days. I racked my brain on Monday at work, and for fun, thought to myself, ‘Well, it sure would be cool if I had money to afford another vehicle.’ I had been recently thinking about a Toyota Matrix, and it wasn’t long before I started searching for one on AutoTrader Canada. I found a couple good candidates, and went for the cheaper one, signing up for financing for fun, just to see if I would get approved. By golly, I got approved. So, I really took it seriously and worked out a test budget to see if I could accommodate a car loan – it was within reason and I would only be set back by about nine months on my debt-free budget plan, so I quickly mobilized my efforts and took all the free time I could get to find the Matrix I wanted. The McPhillips Toyota dealership in Winnipeg had a 2003 Toyota Matrix XR available for a reasonable price, and it checked out fine in Carfax reports online, and my questions were answered promptly. So, I did a quick calculation and called up my bank to get a car loan so that I could get everything arranged through the bank. They consolidated my current loan with the car loan for me, and I got approved. So, I called the dealership, we made arrangements, and after faxing papers to sign and getting another consolidation loan with the bank to factor in extended warranty and such, my car was officially purchased today (which is actually Friday, since this blog entry will be posted after midnight on Saturday). In the middle of all this, Canadian Tire called me and said that they were able to squeeze my car in and replace the busted starter. Eugene drove it to Winnipeg, and Eugene is picking up Esmond at the UC and driving back up to Thompson with him in the Matrix, and they should be arriving in roughly an hour or so. I’m staying up to wait for them. I can’t wait, even though I’m tired!

I just realized that I could have blogged about the Toronto trip instead, but this is way more interesting, I think.

Toronto-saurus Rex!!

It’s about time. I have less to do at work now. That was a crazy two weeks. While I do have a case open and a project in the works, they’re not urgent right now. Nice.

So, I’m going to Toronto on Sunday for a week. My company is sending me there to get some VMWare group training done. So awesome, and so soon after my Winnipeg training. Although, one of these days, I have to make a backdated post about the whole trip. It was fun and educational at the same time. However, I think Toronto might top that!! O_O

So, while I do have training, I’m already thinking about food and entertainment. I definitely want to hit the Paramount, though Cineplex.com stated that it was renamed to the Scotiabank Theatre. That’s lame. But, anyway, when I was in Winnipeg not too long ago (three weeks?), there was nothing playing in the theatres. So, I ended up not going anywhere for movies (watching Transformers in Esmond’s dorm room doesn’t count). BUT! This time, there are actually a few good selections in the theatres – Enchanted, Hitman, The Golden Compass, and Beowulf (Angelina Jolie in 3-D, awooooo!).

Unfortunately, they put me up at the Fairmont – and it’s about $250 a night!! I had no choice but to increase my AMEX (which I’ve recently paid off) to $5000. Ouch!

Well, even though I have some time to update my blog, it’s still not enough time, as it’s now the end of the day. Off to the WP I go, then.

Warehouse One

Wow, an actual lull at work. I’m shocked. Anyway, I just thought I’d share something funny that I found while I was organizing my bookmarks.

I quickly checked out the Warehouse One official website. Check out their splash page ad.

I mean, WTF?! The smug expression on the guy’s face, the girl’s look of utter surprise, and the positioning of the gift box seems awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

That’s right. He just gave her a Dick in a Box. Huh… didn’t know Warehouse One sold them.

NOTE: I was going to post the video, but it’s apparently been taken down by both NBC and YouTube. Thanks for nothing, disgruntled parents of the USA.

Explanations, frustrations, and the need to vent it all away.

I haven’t touched this old blog in quite some time, but I haven’t gotten a chance to. To make it quick and without naming names, when I was away in Winnipeg for that week-long training, one of my managers stirred up some shit with a manager of a different group (all within the IT department), which came down on a fellow colleague of mine, who stirred up some shit to save his own hide. In short, I got blamed for not doing my job and surfing the web all day. I’ll be honest – there have been days where I didn’t have much work to do, and instead of looking for more work to do, I’d just sit in my office and pretty much surf all day. However, ever since Wil got the new job and left me to do the job solo, I hadn’t had a moment’s peace to even think about surfing, let alone looking for extra work to do. Let’s be frank, though – my prosecutor doesn’t exactly go looking for work when he has nothing to do either. In fact, I don’t think anybody in Inco does it – heck, even my Dad, the official mascot for hard work, doesn’t go looking for additional work! So, in the end, this rumor went all over the department and things were arranged to have my access taken away. Now, they can’t just take away my access because I obviously need it for my job. So, they replaced the unmonitored wireless router with just a wired router. A trustworthy informant told me of these dealings, and even warned me not to run a cable all the way to my desk, no matter what – because these people even made a bet that I would have done so by lunch time. Well, excuse me. The router allows me to jump past the corporate proxy server and access protocols such as FTP and VPN. An engineer came into my office to have some documents transmitted by FTP to an external contracting company – and I had to turn him away.

In the end, I knew the situation would come back to bite these idiots in the ass for this bad decision. Some accounting auditors from another company arrived to continue some work they had done in a previous visit – but they couldn’t access the wireless router anymore! I immediately told them to speak to whoever had highest seniority in the IT department – and it certainly wasn’t me. In due time, the wireless router was reinstated, but the guy who used me as a scapegoat wasn’t even here! However, he’s back tomorrow, and I can’t wait to confront him about the situation. I couldn’t do so before without compromising my insider and getting him into trouble, but it can still happen, so I’ll play it dumb and pretend like I found out about it when the auditors arrived. Oh, this is going to be interesting.

I’ll admit that I do surf at work – but only when there really is nothing else to do. Between two jobs, I never have a chance to surf at home except for the mission critical stuff, and even then, I keep it as brief as possible. I had some overtime to do today, and while I had access to surf, I didn’t really bother because I would’ve gotten too absorbed into it and I know how I can get with it.

So, here are some interesting questions, if anybody is reading this. Who actually has unmonitored access to the internet at work? Who takes shameful advantage of it? Who has gotten into trouble with it?

I shouldn’t have to justify my actions. I’m a server admin. My job requires surfing ability, and when I surf, I exercise my ability to seek out a specific piece of information. There have been many instances where I came across some issues with a particular piece of hardware or software. Surfing sometimes gets me the solution faster than a phone call to my guys in Toronto – and that’s if the person I’m looking for is on duty (everybody rotates on shift work over there). If some people are miffed because they see me surfing, then that’s tough cookies. These jerks get top pay, top benefits, and top perks. I’m contracted, which means I get bollocks for pay, squat for benefits, and shit for perks. These people are just damn jealous that I have the access and the means. Do I take shameful advantage of it? Only if I have the time. Do these bastards wave their pay, benefits, and perks in my face on a daily basis? Damn rights, but do I go around flaunting the fact that I can access Facebook and they can’t? Of course not. I’m not an Inco asshole. Besides, I’d love to see any of those jerks sit in my chair, do my job, and still dare to say that I shouldn’t have unmonitored surfing access. If that were the case, then when a server goes down and the fix is detailed in a private forum on the web, I am hooped. If you really want that kind of access, go ahead and try to do my job. You’ll find that those surfing days are few and far between.

Holy shit, it’s two hours past my bedtime, and I am going to be fucked tomorrow at the office. THIS is why I haven’t been able to blog recently – because I value my sleep over it, and I have other hobbies that I need time for as well.