Life: The Holidays Beckon

It's been a couple of very busy weeks at work leading up to the Christmas to New Year's break here at the university. There are labs moving over the holiday, and they all want their 20+ year old chemicals removed from the old labs. And, of course, they all waited until this month to do it. We're still not done with them, and won't get to them until the new year now.

Waste shipments always make for extra icing on a busy week, and with our desire to clear out as much from our building as possible, it meant that we shipped out more than 70 drums worth of waste in two shipments on consecutive Fridays. Thus, last week was a blur as we hurried to process everything we picked up. I can fit a lot into my days, but some days it just doesn't go fast enough anwyay.

I have gotten some fun in too. I got in a couple of games of Flames of War last weekend. I have also had the chance to sort through some more of my stuff to figure out what else I can do in terms of getting things finished on the miniatures front. I hope to concentrate on assembling all that I can over the winter. I have been working to settle on some armies to try, and will fill in gaps as needed to get things painted and playable over the spring and summer.

So now that that insanity has slowed, it's time to gear up for the trip to Edmonton to visit the families. No doubt there will be way to much eating and sleeping, but both Aerin and I are looking forward to some slack time. Tonight we finish getting everything packed up and ready to load into the car tomorrow afternoon. We both have to work the morning, but that will be mercifully short and filled with things to kill time. I will get my pickup stats done between now and then, and do a corrective inventory for our beyond frustrating online waste system.

Christmas Eve dinner with Aerin's family followed by present opening with my family will lead to a late night, and we will both sleep long on Christmas Day. We're having an early dinner with my family, and my grandmother and uncle should be there too. The rest of the day will no doubt be spent eating yet more food and sweets interspersed with games and movies. Boxing Day is presents with Aerin's family and then yet more food, and hopefully some bargin shopping.

The rest of the time is pretty free form. I will be working on a proposal for a game project I am collaborating on with another Flames of War player. There is also some final proofing to do for a guy from Italy that has been patiently waiting for me to finish since August. I may actually get some Flames of War in too.

Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!

Life: Settling In

Two weeks go by very quickly these days. The last week of November is almost a non-existent blur in my memory now. Where did the year go to already?

With the arrival of the freezing cold weather (-40C with windchill) I am very happy that we got our move done when we did. I can't imagine trying to load and unload a truck in these conditions. The people we were going to rent from originally were hopeful they could move before Xmas, but the long term weather looks none to promising for that even though they have a company doing the move for them. When I stopped by to pickup some mail that had made it there before our switch in residence they had all kinds of boxes stacked up waiting to go. I'm glad Aerin and I managed to spare ourselves that fate right now.

Have you ever heard the phrase "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part"? That's the way things have headed the last week at work as everyone that is moving labs over the holidays wants old chemicals and waste containers dealt with before they move. Our team leader's last day was on Friday before his three and a half weeks of vacation, so we're now short handed with more than enough on our hands to keep us busy. We sent out our 9th waste shipment of the year (compared to just seven last year), and we make one more the end of the week to clear our things so they are not sitting around for a couple of weeks unattended. Certainly never a dull moment at work these days, and I'm certainly looking forward to the time off between Xmas and the New Year we get while campus shuts down.

So the last couple of weeks have been busy with work by day and settling things into the new house by night. Aerin has had some busy nights doing shiatsu treatments for clients. We spent the Monday night after our move at Ikea spending a good chunk of our security deposit on new furniture that we needed but didn't have space for in the old apartment. So we got a new bookcase and a kitchen island amongst others.

The living room and dining room here are as big as the old apartment kitchen and living room/dining room put together. Unfortunately the kitchen doesn't have as much counter space or drawers/cabinets as we had before. The kitchen island has helped a little, but isn't going to quite get us there maybe. We'll continue to look at how to deal with that at a later date once we see how things are going for use with the current setup.

I have a room all to my self for my game stuff. I'll be reorganizing a few things in there, but for the most part I can start setting aside some time work on things without worrying about our tripping over everything or having it out for a few days between the time I have available to work on it.

We have a spare bedroom still that is currently a collection space for everything that hasn't found a permanent home or just needs to be sorted out. So we can host a few more bodies than we could before. Our old place was pretty tight with just the two of us; it was downright crowded once you got to three or four people. And it'll hold all our (mostly my) outdoor gear.

And the bedroom is quite nice too. We got the blackout blind hung yesterday, so that helped me sleep a little better last night. The street light is pretty bright through the existing blinds, so it was nice to have it a little darker for sleeping. I just have to remember to close the spare bedroom door if we plan to sleep in since it's across the hall and lets in a lot of light.

As a bonus we can now have a proper house warming, or even just have a few friends over, since we now have actual space to host people without sitting in each others laps. The house warming will happen some time in the new year.

Time to get some things done here. Cheers!

Life: Move Complete

So the big day arrives for the move. We've got a lot of boxes loaded with stuff, and could have loaded more if we'd actually had space to put them.

So Saturday started out spectacularly. Apparently a reservation with Budget for the truck isn't actually a reservation - it's a go to the front of the line, first pick that expires if you don't show up immediately upon opening. When I arrived to pickup the truck, there wasn't a single one in sight. I talked to the guy at the desk, and was informed that since I wasn't there at 8am my truck was gone. Needless to say I was pretty mad and used a few choice words.

The thing that steams me the most is that even when I said to the guy I made the reservation with on the phone that I needed it for 9am, all he said was the reservation was for 8am and didn't mention a single thing about it being 8am or nothing. Needless to say I will be writing a not very nice letter to Budget about their policy and inability to communicate that policy.

After a call to Aerin, she quickly had a new truck lined up from Discount. I had to go back to the airport to get the truck, but I can't say enough about how much better my experience was with them. And I saved at least $60 over Budget's gouging. We could have gotten a bigger truck since we couldn't quite fit in all the furniture, but it was a short trip to get the rest moved. In the end it took a little longer to move with the late start and second trip, but we were done in about 4 hours with the help of our friends and co-workers.

So a big thanks to all that came out to help!

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.