Life: Not Homeless

So last night Aerin and I found a place to live, so we are moving this Saturday.

It's a house in Parkdale at the foot of the hill below the hospital. Aerin would have liked me to dicker on the price when our new landlord was open to an offer, but I was too damned tired and excited to have found a place for my neurons to fire in that direction. At the very least we are not paying more than we are now. I am happy to found a place, and I doubt it will be a problem to go back and talk to her about lowering the rent some after we've not driven up the utility bills for a couple of months.

The house is a quite old, but in good shape. It's hardwood floors throughout the house. Three bedrooms. A big living room, and space downstairs too. Gas, water and electricity are included in the price. I'll try to post some photos once we get moved in.

Games: Technical Support by the Illiterate

I don't play a lot of computer games - never have. But every now and again I like to have something on hand to kill some time. A favourite de-stressor and time waster has been Battlefield 2 from EA Games. It's first-person shooter on the military side of things in a fictional near-future world.

My trouble started when I decided to check out if there was a patch for the game since I had noticed a couple of glitches in the game play. I downloaded the appropriate patch and proceeded to apply it. Whether something went wrong, or I somehow got the wrong patch, I don't know what exactly happened, but suddenly I couldn't get into the game. It just wouldn't let me sign in no matter what I did, checked, double-checked. There should have been no problem.

So I figured something was screwed up and tried to re-install the game. BIG mistake apparently. The damned thing doesn't even accept my previously valid CD key, so it doesn't even start the install process. So I contact EA technical support online.

BIG mistake apparently.

It's really not that hard a problem to describe. "I'm trying to install the game, but it doesn't accept the CD key as valid. I've double-checked I'm entering it correctly." That's the short version, but do you really need anything more? Apparently, yes.

Long story short, the first moron sent me on a wild goose chase for a fix that doesn't even apply in this situation, and then I get some half-baked response about a bunch of other conflictst don't apply because I replied that it wasn't that.

So I try again. This person didn't even read the message or look at the screen caps or look up previous contacts with EA because I got yet another response that has nothing to do with getting an invalid CD key message while trying to install the game.

Is my use of English really that bad?? I doubt it.

I doubt I will be playing Battlefield 2 anytime soon.

Life: Presentation Hell

I've been thinking about going back to school, and Industrial Design has seemed the answer. My intent would be to work on outdoor gear design. Since I get to take free Continuing Education courses as part of my benefits from the University of Calgary, I'm taking some art and design to see what I like/don't like about the whole thing.

I am currently taking a History of Design course. It's been really neat to learn about the different elements of design, and look at all the history and development of all aspects of design from chairs to art. But part of the course is student presentations, and that's where it falls down. The presentations have had lots of interesting information, but that's been the only part of it that's good - presentation skills have been sorely lacking for more than a few people. I'd almost rather have someone dragging their finger nails across a chalk board because at least people wouldn't think it impolite when I stuck my fingers in my ears and cringed.

A couple of people just read their essays as their presentations. All of them were WAY WAY past the 15 minute time limit. Does no one actually practice to see how long their presentation runs? The last guy got his done in 15 minutes, but we still ran 10 minutes past our finishing time of 10PM. A couple of people have done the classic reading of the PowerPoint slides. A couple of people didn't even have a PowerPoint presentation - they used Windows' built-in picture viewer and let the pictures just flip by with no connection to what they were talking about.

And the last bit is one of the most disappointing too. The class rooms are in the ancient Craigie Hall, which means they are not really setup for media in any useful way. The lights are either full on or full dark. The presenters get to hide in the dark with their nervousness and give their presentations as the disembodied voice from the shadows. This makes it easy for people to fake themselves into safe place, but it makes it very hard to read their notes in the dark - again, slowing down the proceedings.

So now next week the heat is on. We have about 10 presentations to get through, and I really wonder if any of the other people presenting have any clue how long their presentations will actually run. I plan to go first so I can just be done with it so I can leave on time.

Life: The Roof Not Over Our Heads

It's about 10:15PM as I start to write this post, and I really should be in bed. I'm a little wound up at the moment because I had hoped to hear from our future landlords about the state of their house and a possible move date for us.

If I hadn't mentioned it, when the "new" landlords went to inspect their new house there were a lot of problems that needed fixing before they could move. That bumped our move in October, and we've been waiting ever since. With the end of November approaching way too quickly with no indication of when we might get to move, Aerin and I are in limbo hell. Do we wait it out and hope to move before the end of the month? Do we start looking for alternatives (because we really don't want to be here any more)?

So even if I go to bed it will likley end in a lot of tossing and turning. I would try to do something slightly constructive, but my concentration just isn't into it. Here's hoping for some news on Wednesday.