Performance, People and Phones

The word of the week is . Not tangerine, as you may have considered...

Sept 6 – Vacationing from your day job

How’s everyone doing this fall season? Anyone have any interesting plans? Going back to school? Plans for travel? Nobody else I know keeps a blog to mention these things in, so I thought I would ask... toss it out there, let us all know. I’m considering a vacation early in the new year, but as you all know I’ve yet to choose a destination – any suggestions?

It’s a dream that a lot of people want but don’t know how to fulfill: quitting their day job. But unless you win some money or otherwise find a shortcut, it’s almost always a matter of long panning and hard work. GetRichSlowly has a great piece that examines the ups and downs of quitting your job, as told by someone who has done just that. Good reading that makes for interesting choices.

Sept 7 – Princesses and Dinosaurs

Perhaps you’ve forgotten about a lovely web community based at DeviantArt.com? Not been there lately? Well, you should... when they have cool things like this: Disney Princesses as Superheroes. I like superheroes, and these are a little more than stick-figure napkin-sketches... plus there’s so MANY other cool things to search / surf for on DeviantArt. Crossovers, contests held on many topics, or just plain strange stuff that pops out of people’s heads and onto the digital page. Like these undead Disney character cosplay costumes, similar to the Twisted Princesses I posted a few months ago – cool!

Apparently there’s also a lot of love out there still for a certain low-IQ, big-on-smash Transformers character by the name of Grimlock – check out these great images that people have come up with over the last twenty years or so. I have to admit he’s a fave of mine as well: big, dumb, simple in his priorities but not vicious as you would expect from his appearance. No pushover though – who would want to tangle with a giant metal T-Rex, anyway?

Sept 8 - Performance

Strange how some things blindside you when you’re distracted... well, not so strange, when you’re distracted by about a thousand other things. While preparing for 3 employee reviews this week, I forgot it was time for MY review – and I had it sprung on me today. It took almost three hours... and it was excruciating to see myself deconstructed in terms that the company felt were important, or not. Nothing in there about being generous, friendly, kind, honest... all those things we value in our day-to-day lives are set aside for more corporate traits like accountability, leadership / inspirational traits and other things designed to maximize profitability and minimize expenses. By the end I felt as though I’d been taken apart and put back together again as a person I wasn’t familiar with, or sure I liked. Such is the way of the management world, when you are tasked with such that you cannot accomplish it all yourself no matter how hard you try... so you are told you will be judged on how well you have others get things done by delegation. If they fail, you fail, and you alone suffer the consequences, which will likely result in you no longer having a management job. Intense pressure, which I’m already under. Yay.

So I’ve been trying my damndest to come to grips that I’m no longer a CSR, that my job is a ‘challenge’ in so many ways to me now that it seems foreign to me. I’ve looked at a fair number of sites on Performance Management, and come to the conclusion that managers are all insane, as a whole, to do what they do for the rate of pay they get. I should have developed a single skill set( hopefully one not vulnerable to being outdated quickly )and become something like a plumber, or a carpenter. Or lawyer.... that’d have been a LOT less stressful, for sure. *shrugs* Hindsight won’t erase dark circles.

Sept 9 – Name Games

Of late, I haven’t played much of any of my collection of games, Xbox or PC – it just doesn’t appeal to me when my time is so limited and my energy levels so low. Still, I’m glad to see that PC games are still going strong – C|Net had a recent posting about how PC games may be going through a renaissance again, thanks to games like Starcraft II and gaming services like Steam. Seeing as I’m using a ‘newer’ laptop and CPU, I’m able to still play most games at decent speeds, albeit while the laptop’s plugged in. Getting a new PC desktop isn’t really on my radar, as I don’t feel the need to upgrade or to give up more space in my bedroom. What I do need is more time and less stress, neither of which you can buy anywhere. For example:

Here’s something I found to help me out when meeting new people: How To Remember People’s Names. It’s a great article, not too long and it may save you some embarrassment when you meet that person again for the second time... that’s all. Simple, eh?

Sept 10 – Call me about the weather?

Holy expensive hardware, Batman... have you seen the price of the latest smartphones? I’ve been considering one( sort of )lately, but looking at their cost when purchased outside of a contract with a phone provider is eye-opening – have a look at the cost of some of the most popular phones, priced to sell. Does anyone out there have one of these things? Are they really worth it? I know Canada has one of the worst levels of price-gouging when it comes to cell phone costs, and it bothers me to see how much people are paying for the ‘privilege’ of owning the latest phones. Hundreds a month? No thanks!

Yes, I’m an io9.com junkie, but there’s good reason, when they print really useful articles. Like this one about weather prediction, which they explain as related to barometric pressure. This has a direct interest for me, as I’m sensitive to changes in air pressure... just like the article mentions. As well as being sensitive thanks to the damage to my joints( via arthritis )so I get a double-helping of weather prediction most days. Useful, but painful – like a lot of things in life you don’t ask for but are given.

Sept 11 – Nine Years

Nine years since two iconic buildings fell and thousands lost their lives in several places across the United States in 2001. The horror of those two attacks still makes me shiver when I recall with perfect clarity where I was and what I was doing at the time. I made several phone calls immediately to our stores in the Falls, where staff didn’t seem to comprehend that the world had changed that day. I watched things unfold live on television for hours, unable to comprehend that I place I had visited years before as a tourist( as had millions of others )was now a pile of rubble. All at the behest of other humans – was this the same feeling that those who ordered Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed felt as they saw the results? There can be no going back; history will record as it always has, and the world will judge.

I managed to leave work somewhat early today, after the usual duties were done, including as always that the bi-weekly payroll was completely correct and submitted. The rest of the evening was spent simply decompressing from the week – television, some reading and a whole lot of NOT thinking about work; that’s the hard part of late. Work / life separation has been very, very tenuous for me lately.

Sept 12 –Newt and Numbers

Today, the folks in charge of the global banking system finalized their plans to stave off future financial crises of the like we faced this past year... led by Canada’s shining example, as our banking system was the rock in an otherwise turbulent global sea of economic chaos. Good news, that means a more stable world economy that is less prone to suffer ills on a massive scale should one sector or country falter. We’ve still no idea what will happen should some global disaster like an asteroid strike happens, or the sun hiccups, but for the most part we’re planning on minimizing the damage our own problems create.

Heck, I didn’t post a link last week, but here’s one now: Mike Hogue has put up some new cool downloadable stuff at Newt And John.com, along with the always-excellent weekly update for the comic! See how Two Roommates Take On The Universe – in colour, no less! Seeing as I spent a good portion of my day today playing Battlefield: Bad Company2 on the Xbox, I heartily recommend a good laugh after heavy gaming.

I’ve written most of this week’s blog while sipping tea over at The Mountain Bean, on a wet weekend here in BC. I can look out the window and see the nearby forested hills almost completely obscured by white mist, as the mountain weather sits quietly on the land around. It’s quiet, beautiful, and smells absolutely fabulous – so fresh and clean that you wonder there’s any civilization around at all nearby.

Smiles, Summer and Seeing the States

The word of the week is indescribable.

Aug 30 - Falling For Mona

No haiku or life-inspired local poetry this week, just a comment from FB that I shared and some people liked:  Fall? What's that? All the trees here are still green... butterflies flitting through the fields among the forested hills, deer cavorting amongst the flowers, and beach-goers still soaking up the fast-fading Westerly sunshine. Ah, BC... the ...last place in Canada where Summer spends its final sweet weeks. All in all, I’m enjoying the cooler weather, without any leaf-change underway.

Remember that Nicorette commercial from a year or two ago, where the cute brunette flight attendant freaks out from a lack of nicotine? I’ll bet you do; that was Anna Silk, and she’s starring in a new show premiering Sept 12^th on Showcase called Lost Girl. It involves the supernatural( as seems to be the case of a lot of shows of late )but follows a different premise for the heroine. I’m interested to see where it goes, so I’ll try to catch it online or on YouTube as it goes along – also, Anna seems to have a Mona Lisa smile, which is intriguing to detect on the small screen. Try it.

Aug 31 – Nerf Sentries for your RV

Today’s the last day of August, and it occurred to me that I’ve not been camping in about a decade now, not since a trip to a far-north cottage with a giant industrial fridge and a dangerously-nail-filled plank dock on a lake. When I was younger, I really enjoyed touring through RV’s at shows held at the Pen Center every few years or so – seeing all the cool configurations packed into limited space still appeals to me. I’ve seen some interesting RV’s over the years, not ones that I’d buy myself( as they’re damn pricey )but I always appreciate the unusual – which this one has. I mean, come on – a hottub on the roof?

Some few months back, I mentioned that Nerf’s toy guns have exploded( pun intended )in popularity this year, with even machineguns making it to store shelves. Now a sci-fi fan has taken Nerf to the next level by adding heat-seeking capabilities to the machinegun – watch this video to see it in action. Aliens sentry guns, anyone? I wonder if you can safely add a taser element to those things...

Sept 1 – Crazy Rotation

Work this week has been hellish again – no matter what I do, how hard I work every minute of every shift, I still fall behind every day. I think the number of tasks and responsibilities being offloaded onto branch managers from our company is simply crazy, given the other expectations for customer service, marketing, managing the branch activities / employees and so forth we have to take care of as well. Trying to run two branches worth of responsibilities is wreaking havoc on my brain, and I can only hope that I can turn things around in the next month before I begin to seriously lose focus and ability to work. One comfort is that my current work doesn’t know about my blog, and I can mention such generalities here in passing, though I obviously can’t go into detail due to the nature of my employment. Rant rant rant... end.

Hmmmm.... seems in all my craziness, I forgot about one important aspect of car maintenance these last few years: tire rotation. Oops. I checked the tread on the tires this week, and the front ones were markedly more worn than the rear; obviously, since we’ve never rotated them. I took the car in to Wal-Mart where they performed this critical operation for a measly $5 per tire. Which apparently should be done every 20,000 km or so to keep the wear even. I also learned that BC law would not have let me do this come October, as apparently the tires with the deeper tread have to be on the rear of the car – how does that make sense with a front-wheel drive car where the weight is at the front? It doesn’t.

Sept 2 - JUST a phone? Really?

When is a phone just a phone these days, when it comes to portable devices? After moving to BC in late 2007, we were forced to replace all three Sanyo 4500 cell phones as Telus had just upgraded their networks here – they tried for hours to get them working, but the programming wouldn’t take. The replacement phones have a LOT of features... and commensurately lesser battery life as a result. My parents use them as phones, set the occasional alarm and still have yet to figure out how to take a picture or send a text message. Why can’t we get a phone that is JUST a phone and not pay for features that will never get used, like IM apps? I’m sure there’s a marketable idea here, to produce a phone that one simply makes calls with – perhaps an adult version of a kid’s cell phone? I’m not sure, but I’m going to see what I can do to find such a thing... or make some money from the idea if I can’t locate such.

Which leads me to my next question: should I get a new phone? My contract with Telus is up in November, and they’re already sending me offers to ‘upgrade’ my ‘outdated’ phone... which I still like a lot. As above, I don’t do much with my phone: I barely text( no QUERTY ), I rarely call anyone, I don’t surf the web on it( tiny screen / text based / expensive )and since it’s WELL before Android, I can’t do much for it in the way of apps. I’ve been considering an Android phone like the red-hot  Samsung Galaxy S, but I’m really put off by the monthly costs, not to mention signing another contract to get the thing for a decent price. More and more I’m inclined to just wait, as the phones will get smarter, cheaper and much better in terms of screen quality / resolution... until they come with a full HDMI out with 1080p, I may just wait. And wait. And wait...

Sept 3 – MMO and Harlan

In all the crazy hours I’ve been working this week, I’ve managed to find a little time to update my iPod Nano – good to do if you have to spend an hour here and there waiting for your ride. I’ve added a few inexpensive shows to the thing, one of which is rather amusing: The Guild. It looks at the lives of members of an online MMO guild, who pretty much ignore real live in favour of the ‘better’ lives of the characters they’ve created to game online. Obviously tongue-in-cheek and overdone at times, it stars Felicia Day as the main character whose MMO addiction is so bad that her therapist fires her in the first episode. So far, it’s been quite enjoyable.

Heck since we’re on the topic of TV shows, does anyone remember that old stalwart of bad late 70’s programming, The Starlost? About a spacegoing ark of humanity, critically damaged and hurtling towards doom with the only hope of salvation being... Mormans? It was awful, low-budget stuff... and I loved it as my childhood imagination was fired by the concept, if not the execution of the show. Years later I discovered that the original idea was none other than Harlan Ellison’s, one of my more fave authors. Now word has come down that a comic series is coming out that reboots the TV show, which is a lot better news than hearing they were remaking the TV show – 70’s mullets, heavy moustaches and paper-thin effects budgets aren’t the stuff of new sci-fi TV standards any more, as BSG has shown us.

Sept 4 - Upscale around the clock!

Say, has anyone been into a McDonald’s lately? They’ve gone upscale without me noticing, as I was in there recently for their $1 any-size summer drink special. The new one here on Island Highway has plenty of designer-fabric seats, stone-block walls, a fireplace and flat-screen TV’s! Since when did they decide they wanted to go after the Starbuck’s crowd? I say that as there is now free WiFi at ALL McDonald’s locations... seems they want you to pay and stay, then pay some more. It can’t be the food, though they’ve added some less-greasy selections to their menu too, mostly chicken sandwiches that haven’t touched a deep-fryer.

The less said about work today, the better: I opened at Colwood and closed at Millstream, making it a 13-hour day... no major stresses other than the usual Busy meaning No Useful Work Got Done. I’m blessed with a fun, sane staff who are interesting people in their own right, but I have a lot of work that only I am authorized to get done that keeps piling up. At least the arrangement for getting my dad to work seems to be working out at Colwood: we drive me to work, he takes the bus to Victoria and I go get him at day’s end, usually hours after I’ve finished. So far, so good for the general timing of it all.

Sept 5 – A Visit to the USA!

Up early at 4am today to catch the ferry to Port Angeles, WA in the USA – my parents and I are visiting a cousin of the family we’ve not seen in decades. We boarded the ferry and left Victoria a little after 6am, at which point I discovered that a) ferries don’t have sea stabilizers and b) I was prone to motion sickness; no sea legs for me. Watching the railing dip several long feet from the horizon and back again was rather excruciating for me, but I made  the 1.5 hour crossing without succumbing to seasickness to make landfall in sleepy Port Angeles close to 9am. We headed south to the town of Port Townsend where we met our cousin and her husband Bailey for breakfast at a little restaurant called The Bayview on the water – I had some stellar cheese-covered has browns with bacon and a sample of biscuits and gravy that reminded me of my trips to the southern USA in years gone by. We headed to Fort Worden, where I toured through the abandoned coastal defence bunkers, which are in remarkably good shape. It turned out to be a beautifully sunny day to spend there for a few hours, then we headed back to Port Townsend where we found the perfect patio spot at the Courtyard Cafe` : under a tree! With some root beer on hand, cheese-beer soup and a turkey sandwich on superbly fresh bread, I was in heaven until mid-afternoon. We strolled over to the local 50’s diner for some ice cream to cap off the day, puttered around the smallish tourist-driven small-town charm main street for a bit, then parted ways from our lovely American cousins to head the 55km back to Port Angeles for the ferry. I had wisely stopped to pick up some Dramamine along the way, so when we boarded the ferry at 9pm, I was feeling quite confident about my stomach.. and I wasn't disappointed. We were home by 11pm, none the worse for wear save being very, very tired - it was my first trip to the USA in almost ten years, so that was rather interesting in itself. Lots of good food! :-)

I’ve written most of this week’s blog while sitting parked in line, waiting to be loaded onto the Port Angeles COHO Ferry to return to Victoria. It’s been great to type it all up on the older Compaq laptop, as with the extended battery I get almost 3 hours of useful time per charge. Now that I know how to properly condition a battery, I expect to get a good few years of life out of this thing, more if I eventually add an SSD drive and Windows7. For now, I just slip it into sleep mode to eke out a few days between charges... again, useful when I want to pop out to a cafe` or elsewhere to compose my thoughts.

Swaps, Sanity and Staff

The Word of the Week is...nonplussed.

Aug 23 - Bang, it's Monday
 
A story in two parts,
Is not a story,
But a promise kept.

Want a great way to start off your week? How about being audited? That was how my day started today – for the second week in a row, one of my branches was audited while I was there. A glance at the pile of work I was scheduled to catch up on today, as I do once a week every week when I work at my smaller Millstream branch, a shrug, and then into the audit. By the end I was cheerful on the outside and brain-dead on the inside – it was a struggle to maintain my equilibrium as the score was tallied. I told myself that it was all small items, that my staff were on the ball and that things can be greatly improved in the next month or so with not too much effort. I kept telling myself that. Yeah... I’ll be pretty bummed for the rest of the week while I plan what I’m going to do to fix the details.
 
Aug 24 - Training
 
Where poets fear to tread,
Hollywood gladly gambols,
And many pay in tears.

Yes, it’s more about work, but good things( for a change ): I’ve been training two new hires for the last week, and they’re dynamite. It’s been a rare pleasure for me to show these two the ropes, as they’re always on the ball and I have yet to have to explain something twice; they’re sharp. Goes to show that our updated hiring practices are paying dividends already, focusing on hiring the best candidates, not just people who look like they can fill the space needed first and learn their way to competence second. So in my current stress-ball of tangled yarns, theirs is a shiny, bright thread indeed.
 
Aug 25 – Argh, brains...
 
If you're dead serious,
Do people take you seriously?
Or do they just ignore you still?




There’s a new show coming out from AMC: The Walking Dead, based on a graphic novel series of the same name. It’s more gritty, realistic and far less stylized than a lot of the current crop of zombie works out there – apart from things like World War Z, of course. Aside from Stephen King’s The Stand, there’s been precious little in the way of television work about the apocalypse / undead in general... and if you mention Twilight or its ilk, I’ll send you snarky notes. One question about a TV series though: how long can it go on? Will the focus go from discovery of How Bad Things Are, to Discovering The Real Reason for The Disaster, to What Will We Do Now? And beyond? We’ll see where AMC takes it, if they can go from a shuffle to a run, without tripping and being devoured. Its premiere date? Halloween 2010! For now, Resident Evil: Afterlife will have to suffice, which opens September 10th nationwide.
 
Aug 26 - Bambi?

Fawns, stags and does cavort,
Eating shrubs meant for looking only.
Is it any wonder they're so cute?

Deer, deer everywhere – it’s really unbelievable how many deer I see in a day. I could go months in Ontario without seeing one, but here I see up to a dozen a day – since they have no fear of vehicles or people, they line the roadside some days. Today I drove in to work on my usual side-route through a wending series of roads down the mountain, which passes one section where a ravine skirts along the side of several properties. Wouldn’t you know that on one fellow’s front yard, no less than SIX deer were standing in his garden, devouring his plants? It made for quite the sight, though I am sure that that homeowner wouldn’t have the same point of view.
 
Aug 27 - Vacation soon?

If you can't play at work,
And you have to work to play,
Does that mean you're confused?

Like yesterday, today was a double shift: open Colwood, try to get some work done when the staff arrive, then over to Millstream to do the same and simultaneously close the store. All this because I’m short one staff member, but as I mentioned above, I am very pleased that her replacement is coming along VERY well so far. The end is in sight for long days where I get nothing done as a manager, and I can actually start thinking about some vacation time for myself AND my staff - I have two weeks at a minimum that I have to take before the end of 2010, so scheduling THAT sooner rather than later is a slice of heaven I dearly want on the menu soon. Yum.
 
Aug 28 - A Dozen Days Done
 
Every day should be a Day Off,
Where they're not special really,
But just a vacation waiting in secret.

Saturday... my first day off in 12 days straight, so I slept in until nearly 9am – for some reason I couldn’t fall asleep until well into the morning last night. Breakfast was brief, as I headed down to the storage lockers to spend the morning and some of the afternoon emptying, sorting and repacking two lockers – one for keeping, one for selling and the difference to the garbage / recycling room. It was fairly successful; we managed to whittle things down to the space of a single locker, with more likely to go in the coming months. After that massive effort, I spent a good hour napping( and woke with a headache? )then over to the Mountain Bean until dinner, which was fairly crowded for a Saturday. Considering that ALL I’ve done this week is work and recover FROM work, the day off today was really, really needed. Sanity.
 
Aug 29 - Make Me An Offer!
 
People own things, not the other way around.
Making room for more things causes problems.
Find the balance, and you find yourself free.

We were out the door today shortly after 7am, the car packed to the gunwales with Stuff for the Swap and Shop. We arrived at the Western Speedway to find a spot in the middle of the Pits area of the track and proceeded to set up for selling, which was remarkably easy. Two more carloads of things were brought by my parents as the place filled with seller tables – imagine a racetrack totally lined on both sides with seller tables! Quite a lot of things were gone by 9am, and the crowds really started arriving soon after that – we had a lull around 11am, and after that we starting giving away what was left, which was in the main of little value anyway. I would be surprised if we made a dollar on ten of actual value, but what I took away from the experience was not only how NICE all of the people wandering around the track browsing were, but how thrilled most of them were when they bought items from us for next to nothing that had some worth to them. I'll definitely go back, though I have to say that going with the firm intent of NOT accumulating stuff is the way to do it - there was a lot of what I'd now call junk, not collectables, all on display / for sale / swap. Since I need little right now of what I saw, it was quite liberating to wander and not walk away with anything save a little nostalgia.
 
As I said: different. Is less more? Or does it leave one wanting for more? You decide... me, I’m going to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long week, but at least the weekend ended well enough.

Nemesis, Nostalgia and Numbers

The Word of the Week is....nostalgist.

Aug 16 – Spring Vacation?

Winter’s a-comin’ soon, and with that thoughts of leaving cold Canada for warmer climes. I’m better off than most here in Victoria, where snow is somewhat of a stranger most years( except 2008! )so I can’t complain. I’ve been to Mexico twice, but I’ve never been to a ‘tourist’ resort where the plan is to party hearty for the whole time one is there – no sitting on the beach watching the stick in the sand tell the time. I’ll be keeping an eye on sites like Expedia.ca and FlightCentre.ca to see what packages I can find on the cheap.

What’s your favourite season? Mine’s Spring: full of possibilities, where the dull of Winter is put aside in favour of new growth and fresh beginnings. Summer’s the time to play, Fall’s time to buckle down for the passage towards the cold months of Winter that have to be put up with in order to reach Spring again. Strangely, some folks over at the Battlefield 2: Bad Company Forums say that Winter is their fave season... better camouflage?

Aug 17 – Talking Dimensions and Space At Home

Though I didn’t grow up to be a scientist, I still harbour a fascination with many areas of the scientific world. Rene put me onto the following great video on YouTube, which is all about the Ten Dimensions – there’s not just three anymore:

Those of you who’ve read my blog for a while know that I enjoy talking about efficient use of space in homes, given the places that I’ve lived while in BC have all been rather limited in size. One architect who has perfected the art of maximizing space in innovative ways is Gary Chang, who grew up in Hong Kong where space is always at a premium with 7 million people packed into the city. His space-saving Hong Kong apartment uses foldaway storage and reconfigurable elements to turn one 330sq-ft room into many, all again without compromising the function of any element. Watch the video on his website and you’ll see what I mean – who needs a big house, anyway?

Aug 18 – Wince-worthy War

Sometimes I’ve winced at the way some people use words in a sentence; I’m not an editor, but it still makes a part of my brain hurt to hear the language mangled severely. One of the things that people often misuse in a sentence when writing is “i.e.” – which is short for “that is” not “here are some examples” of things. TheOatmeal.com has a great example of how i.e. should be used, very similar to Bob The Angry Flower’s visual rant on the humble apostrophe – flower up, dudes.

Ouch – I had my butt handed to me in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tonight. The game isn’t designed for going solo, as it’s squad-based so that you have your buddies there to back you up / cover you / revive you / resupply you during combat. But, since I’m too cheap to splurge on purchasing a bunch of the upgrade packs’ to get myself more weapons in a flash, I’ve been working my way through each of the kits to try and get gear to help me in the game. Guess what? A LOT of the other guys already have MOST of that gear and it really helps: I was on the receiving end of a LOT of fire tonight as I slogged my way through each session. By the end I was really grumpy; in some games I had multiple ‘Nemesis’ players on the other team, whose skill combined with gear meant I was meat on the table for many a match. Grrr.

Aug 19 – Star Wars and Nostalgia

Last week, the LA Times ran an excellent piece interviewing Gary Kurtz, who was the producer on two of the original Star Wars films and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal. In the interview, Kurtz talks in detail about how he parted from George Lucas over the direction that the third Star Wars film was to take. I found it interesting to read, as Kurtz makes some great points about commercialism and filmmaking in general. Definitely worth the read IMHO.

On occasion, a song will stick in your head and you can’t get it out. More commonly, you start the day off with a song in your head – see if you can’t remember the last one that got stuck there! This week I’ve have the theme song from “Tales of the Green Forest” in my head from my childhood, as it aired on TV Ontario back in the eighties. A little searching found a few videos and little else, as this Green Forest nostalgist writes – apparently The Green Forest is lost between the original broadcast and DVD, never to see the light of day. Weird.

Aug 20 – Can’t Budget Friendship

Yes, it’s hard sometimes working for a living... but I’ve seen a lot of alternative lifestyle representatives walk through the branch doors over the years, and so far I like earning a wage by comparison. Work to live, don’t live to work though – keeping a work / life balance as you go along means you have things to do outside of the office / workplace that keep you sane. I see a lot of people’s paystubs and I have to say it’s not what you earn but how you spend it – it’s shocking how many people keep throwing money at a problem instead of just thinking about alternative ways to solve things, like budgeting. Maybe budgeting should be taught as early as high school?

Tonight I talked to two of my favourite people, both of them out-of-the-blue calls, which are usually the best kind. First was Lucas, who told me all about his Kilt experience in the company of a ravishing redhead, who are my version of Kryptonite you could say. Makes me want to be able to hop a flight back to Niagara once a month or so just to see what goes on at the Kilt these days. Later on, Rene called and we caught up on things; it’s been some months since we last managed to connect. I was thrilled to hear that he’s gone through a ‘sea change’ for the better recently, which is less than he truly deserves given the rotten luck he’s had this year. All in all it was a great night to catch up with friends, which I wish would happen more often... maybe when I’m working less and have more interesting things to report about my own life?

Aug 21 – Kickass Waiters

I’ve talked about doing podcasts recently, and the idea is still buzzing around in my head. I have looked at some of the ways that people are expressing themselves on the web nowadays: blogs, podcasts, journals and more... one of the more interesting ways is on a YouTube channel of your very own, like WheezyWaiter. Who has a beard and reminds me of Kevin Spacey, sort of, and is fairly funny – who said original material is just for budding comics? Still, I’m not sure I’d be that interesting on camera, though I’m told I’m not likely to crack the lens when I crack a smile... just when I crack a joke, people may scream a little bit. Or poop themselves. Or something. Have a look at Justin.Tv where people have channels galore!

After a rather busy day where everything I wanted to complete at work kept getting interrupted, I was ready to kick some ass. Which is perfect, as I watched Kick-Ass via a Zune rental on Xbox Live. It was my first Zune rental, and took over an hour to download on my lite-version internet -8.6 gigs of HD goodness doesn’t move quickly. I liked the movie, as it had original moments and really moved the plot along without any slow spots. I agree that HitGirl stole the show, though I wondered at the morality of a ‘tween killer whose body-count numbered in the dozens yet that aspect of the ‘hero’ never gets a word of airtime in the movie. The Wolverine reference was also fun with the x-rays – but where’s the claws?

Aug 22 – Training for Rentals

Bleh – work again was true to form, with the day averaging one person every ten minutes all day long. Meaning I got nothing done towards catching up on my manager duties, which are again delayed towards another day... backed up again, with more ‘vital’ tasks piling up. I’ve been training two new employees all this week, which has actually been quite pleasant as they’re both extremely quick learners. I enjoy training( my parent’s teaching background coming to the fore, perhaps? )and it’s my aim to have them both ready for the front lines in less than three weeks time. I’ve been told I’m the premier trainer on the Island and so far all the people I’ve trained have remained both with the company and solid employees all, so maybe there’s something to that.

Disappointingly, I was unable to watch Kick-Ass again to pick out any hidden references or stop-motion a few scenes, as the Zune rental expires 24 hours after watching( or 14 days after download without watching ). Seems like a rip to me, though it’s the same as returning a DVD to the rental shop. If it weren’t for the download time, I might use the service again, but for now I’ll consider other services like Zip.ca for DVD rentals or a streaming service like  NetFlix, which is coming to Canada Fall 2010.

Next week: something more interesting. Or at least different. Mayhaps.

Files, Fallingwater and Fridays

The Word of the Week is...ignoble.

Aug 9 – Stress Roomies

Today’s Monday, which means... a new Newt And John comic has been released out into the wild! What do I like the most about this webcomic, apart from the fact it’s written by the very talented Mike Hogue? Well, it’s about two roomies... who despite their differences, seem to get along quite well in all their crazy adventures together. It’s about friendship enduring hardships, trust, and boatloads of humour. Never having had a roommate, I find the concept both fascinating and scary – which is why I keep coming back to laugh every week. Thanks Mike!

Laughter is good, because work has me really, really stressed in the last few weeks. I’ve got to get out and exercise more, as well as serious look at some massage therapy – the fall season doesn’t look to be any less stressful, despite new staff coming into the picture. I think what gets me the most is Death By A Thousand Cuts, where it’s all the little details that end up killing you slowly – much like when Londo from B5 quoted Eric Sevareid saying “it’s like being nibbled to death by ducks.” While slow, in the end you still end up perishing, just not as quickly as it would be with, say, a wild cougar.

Aug 10 - Stark Prices

Here’s something I forgot to post a few weeks ago: Iron Man was in town here in Victoria. Specifically, he was here to open the new Best Buy in the city– I was reminded of the openings of a few ToysR’Us stores back in the 80’s with the likes of Mister T and Knight Rider, neither of whom I got to see, due to the massive crowds that gathered. Doesn’t look like the case here:

Keeping up on current prices is always a good idea when you’re in the market for something, be it large or small. I always keep current on costs for computers and entertainment tech in general, as that’s where my interests are. When it comes to cars, I’m not all that current, which is why I’m glad I discovered Consumer Guide Automotive – they have tons of great info that let me have a solid idea of what I should be paying for a given model and year of vehicle. Armed with that info, you can make a far better informed choice when shopping at dealers – remember not to get the extended paint warranty!

Aug 11 - On blogging...

Today I had a thought about my blog, comparing it to a journal – they’re not the same, and don’t serve the same purpose. A journal is more like a diary, where you put down thoughts that will likely never be read by anyone save yourself or by others perhaps in the distant future after you’ve passed on. A blog in the meaning of this one I keep is meant to catch people up on what you’re doing, as well as providing a small means of documenting how your life is going in general every week. It collects your interests at the time, puts  the things that you’re working on into better focus and generally lets you get things out that may have been stuck in your brain for a while. I have a lot of those.

Along with my blog, I sometimes have pictures and videos that I plug right in – nice that you can do that these days with almost no effort at all. But what if you want to share some larger files with people, say that video montage that you made from old BlackAdder episodes that isn’t really appropriate for YouTube, or a video game that you’ve slaved on for months? I’ve search for file hosting for a while, found a place called FileFactory that’s decent... but it’s still not ideal, as it has quite a few limits placed on downloads. Maybe Torrents are the way to go now, cloud computing and all that...

Aug 12 - Falling Silicon

Architecture is one of my interests, though I admit it’s more of an admiration of the unique than anything to do with structural engineering – mathematics of that level are simply beyond me without study and practice. One place I keep coming back to look at year after year is Fallingwater, the house constructed by Frank Lloyd Wright that many consider his masterwork. C|Net has a visual tour of the place online as of today, and I think it’s well worth the browse. If I ever come into major money, I would seriously consider building a similar home in a similar setting, here in BC, rather than buying a new-built place or renovating an older place somewhere.

Despite my current lack of success in repurposing my 7-year old PC as a media server, I’m still much in favour up upgrading one’s older PC instead of buying a new one every other year – within limits. Gizmodo has a great Upgrade Guide On The Cheap, which I like very much; some sound advice in there. I’m planning on upgrading both my laptops in the new year with SSD drives, which will improve their speed and lower power usage considerably. Huzzah!

Aug 13 - Lucky Moi

Unlike some people, I don’t give Friday the 13^th much thought, as I have a lot more to worry about than unlucky superstitions. Really, who has time to watch for black cats, ladders, and other things that supposedly herald bad luck? I have news for you folks: so far, I’ve had an eagle eye out for GOOD luck, as I have all the bad luck I can handle, thanks. It’s then that you make sure your appreciate the little good things that keep popping up, like the coffee shop keeping the last peanut butter cookie aside for you, since you always come in on a certain day to ask for it. Those are the little things in life that you should love, and bad luck has nothing to do with them at all.

The second of my two replacement adaptors arrived today, along with record temperatures outside, which I find amusing in an annoying way. Most laptop power adaptors run hot, so in the interest of keeping these two replacements alive, I have them cozened up to a large fan to keep them cool 24/7 – my online research indicates that nobody out there makes cool-running adaptors for laptops. Sure, you can buy tons of cooling gear for your desktop PC parts, but nada in the way for laptop power. Hmmm... apart from the sizzle of overheated adaptor, I smell an opportunity here. Anyone want to come up with a business plan with me?

Aug 14 - Undead Browsing

FireFox is the browser I use day to day, due to its stability, huge number of customizable options and continual improvement. I stayed away for a while a few years ago when the program became bloated and buggy, but the newest versions are solid and great to use. Apart from such great extensions  like Xmarks, WheelOfTrust and BarTab, you can customize the look of FireFox with themes, like this one - by Thundara!

The movie for tonight was George Romero’s 1990 remake of Night Of The Living Dead, starring Tony Todd and my fave gal Patricia Tallman of Babylon 5 fame. Like a lot of horror movies up to and from that era, the special effects / gore are the real stars, despite the human drama. Indeed, at the end things are really, really preachy about the barbaric nature of humanity in its treatment of zombies... weird, but there you are. Mmmm... brains?

Aug 15 - A walk...

Today was my typical Sunday off: get up ‘late’ after 9am, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and then hop online to see who’s around for Xbox. Turns out nobody, so I went for a bike ride along the unfinished main entrance to Bear Mountain, which is quiet, scenic, and chock-full of rocks – have a look:

The afternoon was spent playing BF2, which saw some really high scores( thanks to a couple of 5K achievements )and some really, really bad scores. Fun was mostly had, and I rolled into a game of Borderlands with Lucas that saw some decent progress made – apparently the Berserker is not to his taste, but suits me fine. Great game, in that we can keep coming back to it.

One advantage( and one of the few good things )about working so much this week and last is that I’ve been able to enjoy solid air conditioning all day long. Today was a scorcher, closing in on 38C outside, but thankfully with very little humidity – I love BC! Still, when you’re sweltering inside at a few degrees below that, it’s not all that great anyway. Taking off to spend some time in a cool coffee shop is a great way to beat the heat, which I did today – finding a cool pool, shopping mall or library also works quite well.

I’m typing this outside on my balcony, where the patio stones are radiating heat well after 9pm as the late summer sun sets over the forested hills here. A light breeze has picked up to cool the air and it’s just perfect – no bugs to bother me, nothing but the sound of the frogs in the pond below and the occasional little human sounds coming from the area around. Lovely.

Wasps, Work and Wednesdays

An even shorter version of the blog this week: half in haiku and link-free!

Aug 2 - Happy BC Day, Canada!

Being busy can be painful.

Sometimes it seems you move backwards slowly.

Dealing with it is artful.

Today was BC Day here in British Columbia, a holiday not shared by all the other provinces. Usually it means people get outside to enjoy themselves, but today I put myself on the schedule so I could give my staff each a 3-day weekend. Silly me. It was a busy day, like Friday, Saturday and Sunday were as well so I got little done aside from the usual daily operations tasks. Nothing like falling behind by inches to make you wonder about the order of things. However, my nausea seems to be under control, thanks to my Tecta once a day; the prescription costs about a dollar a day, which is manageable given that I don't worry overmuch about feeling sick of a sudden now. though I still have moments that I have to talk to the doc about, it's about 90 percent licked.

Aug 3 - Visitors

If Tuesday is like Monday,

How well does that bode for Wednesday?

The week can be confusing.

Yesterday was busy, and today was as well. I had a visitor from head office here for the entire day to better “get a feel” about how the retail end of things work, and boy did she get an eyeful. Most of my afternoon and evening was spent at the counter serving customers, doing my ready best to provide top-level service perfection to show how things should be done in every transaction. By the end, I was quite tired and my throat was hoarse, but I felt I had given a good accounting for my visitor.

Aug 4 - Calling Friends

Days off are very precious.

They should be spent like precious gems,

To be treasured, like friends.

My one day off, and I still had enough left to catch up on at work that I had to go in for 4 hours at noon. Thankfully, I managed to dodge enough phone calls and emails to get what I needed to done, which was somewhat of a surprise at the end. I made it out after 4pm in time for a 5pm doctor's appointment in Victoria, after which I went down to the beach at Beacon Hill Park on Dallas Rd and spent a little time watching the waves at work. The walking paths extend all along the south shore of Victoria and are a haven for joggers, dog walkers and other nature-lovers. There are quite a few places along the walk to relax, on benches or down stairs leading to various scenic spots. It was quite relaxing, and the evening was capped off by a surprise call from Lucas, which was over an hour of great topical chat. S'what friends are all about, really – thanks, Lucas!

Aug 5 - Ouch? It's all gone hazy...

Today, nature hurt me some.

A wasp stung my finger; it swelled.

It just made work harder.

The day started out fairly well; I went over to the Mountain Bean for a bit to relax before work. It was nice, given that it's been hazy all week due to the more than 400 forest fires burning on the mainland here in BC – there was a rare air quality warning today on Vancouver Island, as the wind had blown huge drafts of smoke our way, making the sunset last night a strange orange-red colour. At work, I went out to lock the garbage bin with our new lock... and was stung on my left index finger by a wasp for my trouble, for no reason I can tell. It swelled up hugely and was quite painful, so I called BC Telehealth for advice; they told me what to watch for in case of an allergic reaction to the sting, as I couldn't recall the last time it had happened to me. Some antihistimines brought the swelling under control within a few hours, so I soldiered on for the rest of my shift quite annoyed at the randomness of life. At least I had another blazing red hazy sunset at the end to make things seem rosy when I went home.

Aug 6 - Working yet again...

eBay came through for me.

My adaptor arrived today, making me happy.

The laptop thanked me too.

Six days of seven I've worked this week, which seems to be all the blog is turning out to be – considering that as of day's end today I had worked some 47 hours already, it's truer than you think. All that time was well-spent though, as I felt fairly caught up by today, with only a few hours of manager tasks awaiting me next week – including another visit from the higher-ups at head office that is always stressful if you're not prepared enough. On the bright side, both of the stores I am managing are doing very well, with some of the best numbers of all the stores in the district and some of the best staff too. So I'm hopeful that the tide is turning and that the remaining months of the year will see less stress for me and more positive results for the stores.

Aug 7 - Saturday Sliding Away...

After work, I was tired.

But still, the police needed my memories.

After that, my arm hurt.

It wasn't a bad day at work, all in all – I managed to wrap most of my work up today before leaving a little early, well before 4pm. I didn't go home though; I had an appointment at the RCMP to do a photo lineup to identify a suspect in a stolen cheque case from a few weeks ago. I was happy to oblige, as it would likely mean more serious jail time for the suspect, given their already large police file. Another stop for a tetanus shot( recommended by the BC TeleHealth for the wasp bite and I needed the update anyway )then it was home for a relaxing evening... but without my laptop. The AC adaptor felt FAR too hot, and refused to charge my laptop even with intense fan cooling – so much for surfing the 'net or other tasks. I consoled myself by watching TRON, which was a lot better than I had expected – I'd not seen it in almost 25 years or more and it held up very well overall, despite some differences in what 'cutting edge' meant then and now.

Aug 8 - Blast it!

Skags are hungry and vicious,

But still pale next to real people.

Battlefield and Borderlands all day.

After giving up on charging my older laptop, I decided today was a wash for getting anything done on my various projects since I didn't have access to any of the files on either of my laptops. So instead, I hopped onto Xbox Live and didn't look back – it was late afternoon by the time I had played through 20 levels of character development on Borderlands with Lucas, which was damn good fun. Later on I joined Dave, Bill and a few others in blasting bad guys on Battlefield 2: Bad Company where I held my own for most of the games, making it to level 5 and unlocking a few more weapons, gadgets etc.

Since my Compaq's replacement AC adaptor failed yesterday, the blog was back to basic notes for this week. I hope, I hope, that the adaptor for my newer Gateway arrives early this week, as that laptop's been gathering dust for 2 weeks now. Very frustrating, I have to say, being denied easy internet use as well as all the other PC functions that we're used to.

Tecta, TMNT and Trevor

The word of the week is foreshortened – deal with it.

July 26 - Be My Guest!

On my way to and from bear Mountain, I see at least one or more deer a day, lingering quite close to the roadside( if not on it! )and almost unafraid of cars. Really, they should have named the place Deer Mountain, as there have to be hundreds of the creatures in the woods of the area. When I called the Langford City Hall to ask why there weren't deer warning signs on the roads leading up the mountain, I was told “All the locals know there are deer, so it's not necessary” - rather rudely, at that. So I presume that all the tourists and visitors to the area have foreknowledge of the deer somehow, and that when the inevitable happens and someone gets hurt in a collision, that the city has that excuse ready and quite lawyer-proof...

I was at work earlier than I expected today, as we're now 'hosting' staff from our local head office every few days for training. Specifically, I've been singled out as the 'best able' to present how staff and stores function at the Retail level, so as to help Head Office staff understand how to better help us do our daily jobs. While some people would turn this into an hours-long complaint fest, I look at it as an opportunity to get Head Office staff focusing on how to quickly solve Retail problems. Which means in essence that instead of Retail staff seeing their requests end up in an electronic black hole when trying to get Head Office to help with something, we might actually make lines of communication easier and more productive. Which in the end would make my job easier – so I show up early today and teach, no big deal really and I think it went very well indeed.

July 27 - Meeting Surges

Morning saw me in Victoria for an early doctor's appointment, where I picked up a solid prescription for Tecta which is making a big difference my my nausea bouts. Seems that one of these tiny pills a day keeps the barfing away, which I can appreciate as it gets in the way of my job when I have to excuse myself from the counter constantly during the day. Whatever the underlying condition is, so far the Tecta is treating the symptoms, which reduces one more stress factor from my massively full plate. The rest of my day was spent in a monthly manager's meeting, which I won't detail – suffice to say that more was loaded onto our plates with firmly-fixed smiles and the subtle glitter of dire punishments if we failed to figure out how to balance things anew – nothing surprising there at all.

I surfed around a few of my fave tech shopping sites that evening while on the balcony, again using my parent's Dell laptop as mine were out of power. I was looking for a portable surge protector, specifically one designed for laptops. There were no solid ones on eBay, so I went to NCIX.com, TigerDirect.ca and a few others until I found a good APC protector on BPDirect.com – for less than thirty dollars including shipping I bought peace of mind. Silly when you think about it; I've had a UPS on my home PC's for years, but I never thought that I would need one while OUT of the house, not being one used to having a laptop. Goes to show you have to really try to think of things ahead of time, to be prepared for the Law of Unintended Consequences. Damn you Murphy!

July 28 - Make Beer, not PC's

Most of my one day off today was spent trying to get my older PC working using a variety of methods and operating systems... to no avail. Ubuntu, RedHat12( and 13 )as well as Windows Home Server simply won't install on the machine, for various reasons. In all cases, I blame Murphy: each failure drives like a sliver of bamboo under a fingernail, as I'm THAT close in each case to getting it to work, except for one minor glitch each time that prevents me from completing the install. Very, very frustrating, especially as it would give me a PC to use apart from the currently-defunct laptops. I hate to see good hardware idle and I am angered that I can't get the damn system to accept an OS. It's not TOO much to ask, really... is it?

The origins of Beersbee seem shrouded in mystery, according to a few web searches I did today. On the one hand, there is the history listed at Beersbee.org along with rules and some photos, as well as the listing at RealAlberta.com – seems to be a different game than the one I am familiar with from Ontario, which involves no poles and has only two players at a time. Seeing as I barely get out here as it is, it's highly unlikely that I'll run into a BC variation of the game around here – I'll have to think of my own variant while planning for next summer's outings.

July 29 - Trevor Visits! No BPA!

Today I left work a few hours early, in order to give Trevor and his family a tour of Victoria. We started out things right with a late lunch at John's Place downtown, which won praise for its fantastic food and unbelievably low prices. The bread especially was pronounced superb by one and all. After settling them into the Scots Hotel near the harbour, we went over the Parliament buildings and took a tour of the provincial digs, including the grand entry hall where $10,000 of gold leaf adorns the walls – our taxes at work, though 10K is really peanuts all in all. Following that, we enjoyed some great root beer floats down on Government street, watched a few street performers put on their act, and toured the downtown pedestrian areas along with a fair crowd of other folks walking hither-whither. As dusk approached, I caught a ride back to Bear Mountain from Trevor, but we idled a while on the patio at Jack's Place to shoot the breeze, enjoy the lovely summer evening weather and to speculate on the total lack of mosquitoes and other sundry airborne pests in BC. All in all, it was a grand day that I enjoyed immensely, as I believe Trevor and his family did as well.

Remember the BPA scare of last year? Well, it's back, this time in the form of cash register receipts – go figure. Seems that forty percent of US receipts tested contained levels of BPA, which has set off alarm bells all over the place – not here though, which I found surprising, as people were quick to get rid of water bottles containing BPA. Strange, as receipts are everywhere – have YOU seen anyone putting on gloves to handle receipts this week?

July 30 - Sainted Alias

A fairly long day at work, begun early and seasoned with a smattering of schmucks throughout the day – trying to help people is its own reward, because they sure don't appreciate it sometimes. I was told a few times by my staff that I have the patience of a saint, as I managed to turn several customers from venom-spewing idiots into people who listened attentively to what I had to say, as it meant that their problems would be solved simply and quickly. Why complain loud and long, if the alternative is to listen for a few seconds to someone who's been doing this sort of thing for almost ten years? Makes sense, right? Anyway, I lent a hand at both stores today and managed to get home before 8pm, making it 'only' a 12-hour day...

While worn out, I did manage to catch up on a few more episodes of Alias tonight to finish off the fourth season finally. It's been a long time since I started watching the series, but thanks to Mike I managed to keep my interest alive to make it to the final season this week – I'll hopefully start it this weekend. In the meantime, I still think Ben Afleck must have worked some kind of hypnosis on Jennifer Garner; how else could such a babe fall for such a goof?

July 31 - Demolishing Cartoons

Saturday morning cartoons stink nowadays – the heyday of the Eighties has long since passed, and I don't recognize a lot of what's out there when flipping through the channel listings before work. A lot of shows seem like commercials for Japanese toy systems, and while the TMNT are still around they seem somewhat less... fun? If that's possible? Makes you wonder if kids and TV are parting ways, to make way for video games and the online experience in general. I see more and more people texting / talking on cells when I'm out, lost in their own little worlds and removed a step or two from the reality around them.

Demolition Man was on tonight, which I always enjoy catching on TV as it has the lovely Sandra Bullock in one of her earliest roles. Bonus that she wears spandex for most of the movie too. Not a bad flick really, even factoring in Stallone and Snipes, who put on a good show of hating each other's guys without too many snarls or long-winded jibes. Definitely re-watchable, as even the parts with Denis Leary in them aren't hard to take... mostly.

Aug 1^st - Summer's Half Done? 

Not much to say about today – I worked again, giving my staff each a 3-day weekend. The branch was busy, so much so that I didn't manage to catch up on any of the 'must-do-now' projects that I had hoped a Sunday would provide me some time to work on. I averaged one customer served every nine minutes for the sever hours the doors were open today, which as you can imagine leaves little time for aught else when you factor in the daily paperwork, calls etc that each day loves to provide one with.

Creating the blog tonight using OpenOffice on my parent's laptop, as I'm still waiting for one or the other of my replacement power supplies to arrive from eBay. I'm also still waiting for the manager from The Mountain Bean to call me; I'll stop in Tuesday I think to have another go at actually talking to her. For now, I'm just relieved that neither laptop seems to be damaged – I could claim that the USB ports on my newer laptop were fried, but they stopped working months ago and I'm not that kind of person. I see enough of people trying to take advantage of my company every day; at least today there was some payback, as a fraudster was arrested at another branch late today - I had left notes in the computer directing staff to call police should he be dumb enough to show his face again at one of our stores, and today he proved my predictions right. Goes to show that greed will overpower common sense time and again. Made me smile - briefly.

That's it for now - I'm just waiting on NewtAndJohn tonight, really.

A placeholder ...

Until I manage to extract the blog notes I've entered all this week from my laptop, this minimal blog entry will suffice.

Why do I need to do this, you ask? Well, I blame The Mountain Bean - specifically, their electrical outlets. 

A few weeks ago, I was typing away at the Bean on my older laptop and after a while I decided to plug it back in to charge the battery up again, as it only holds a charge for about 30 mins or so now, being aged and all. Lo and behold, as soon as I did that, the screen began to flicker strangely and I heard the AC adapter making a buzzing sound. I quickly unplugged it and then fired off an email to the eBay seller I had purchased the adapter from asking for a replacement under their Lifetime Warranty, then thought no more of it.

On Saturday, I went over to the Mountain Bean on the first of my days off, thinking to spend some quality time relaxing, surfing and so forth to the accompaniment of hot tea and peanut butter cookies - was I ever wrong. I sat at my usual window spot, set the tea down and plugged in my laptop... only to smell something burning a minute later. Imagine my shock when I looked at the AC adapter to my left to discover wafts of white smoke pouring from it! I whipped the plug out of the wall socket and fearfully checked over my newer and much-more-irreplaceable Gateway FX laptop for damage. Thankfully, it seemed unharmed.

Unfortunately, that leaves me with two laptops without power and batteries that will soon run out - it will be a week or more before replacement AC adapters arrive from eBay, which thankfully are still available and don't cost too much overall. I'm quite miffed at The Bean and I'll be talking to their manager Monday, though in the main I'm just concerned that there's an electrical problem and that it doesn't happen to anyone else. If I have the replacement costs of the adapters covered along with a few free cookies, I'll be satisfied - though a LOT warier about plugging in my expensive and delicate machinery into any old strange socket.