So yesterday, partially inspired by a conversation I had with Trish and Roger over the weekend, I explained–not for the first time–in detail why it is this provincial election thing just isn’t doing it for me. And why the federal election–only a few months ago, for the record–did only slightly more than that for me. And now, or rather a while ago, the 3 leading parties have produced another in a long list of reasons for yesterday’s entry–in the form of their reaction to this year’s rent increases. Back in August, an increase was granted of a maximum of 3.1%, or higher than any previous increase since the late 90′s or early 2000′s. The basic reaction of all 3 major parties? Ow, that sucks. The liberals are making noises about reexamining the legislation after the election, with not much in the way of actual specifics on what they’d change. The conservatives are making the same noises with the same kind of specifics or lack thereof. And the NDP’s just making noises–I think they just like to hear what they sound like, personally. Meanwhile, those of us who can’t aford to buy a place to call home and don’t want to live in mom’s basement have been forewarned to hang on to our wallets–it’s about to get wicked nifty not so cool. This happens a lot in recent elections–an issue comes up that’s got a pretty significant enough number of people pissed off, and gives anyone with half a brain cell a golden opportunity to do something–oh, I dunno–different with it. Then, within a few days of it being talked about, all 3 parties come out with an answer at the same time, and all 3 parties escentially flop it. And all the while, folks get ready to have less money to hand out to everyone else who’s bills are going up. If our choices are going to be widdled down to the same, the same and the same, do I really need to know which one wins?

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In yet another example of things that didn’t happen when I lived in Ottawa last time, the company what takes my rent money every month–the same company I was with before I left the city 3 years ago–now gives you a lazy type option for doing, in my opinion anyway, the most tedius of the household chores. And, knowing my tendency towards the lazy as I do, first chance I got I was all over it. So as of this morning, mixed in amongst all the other usual stuff that goes into getting the apartment set up and getting me refamiliarized with this area of the city, I got my hands on my first apartment-sized dish washer. Yeah, okay, so it’s not exactly world’s most major. But, well, it’s kind of somewhat vaguely amusing to me–I’ve lived in 3 apartments so far, two of them in Ottawa and two of them owned by the same company, all in the span of the last 5 years–and until today, it’s been by hand with the actual cleaning of things. I still haven’t gotten my apartment-cleaning, laundry-doing, food-preparing robot, but I’ll settle for a dish washer until such a creature is perfected. Hey, these things make me happy. Proof I need something more to do? Maybe. Potential of that happening tonight? Not unless you count sleep. Eventually.

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Moving is almost always a 2-week exercise in waiting. Sometimes, it’s even a 2 month exercise in waiting. There’s the waiting for the approval in the new place. There’s the waiting for the confirmation the new place won’t fall down around the previous tenant’s ears before he moves out, nevermind before you move in. There’s the waiting on things to finally cancel themselves out at the old place so you’re not paying for phone or electricity services you’re not gonna need anymore. There’s the waiting for confirmation you’ve got your vehicle of choice ready to throw your entire life into the back and hope like hell it comes off that vehicle in one piece. And there’s the waiting to see how long it takes before multiple people blow a blood vescel with the help of the company renting you the afore mentioned vehicle containing your entire life. That was escentially last weekend for me.

I finally got the approval for the apartment officially, and subsequently blogged–again–about it. Which meant in about 45 seconds, everything and its dog got cancelled, transfered, delayed until its effective cancelation date, packed in a box or otherwise done away with. So all we had to do was the easy part–pick up the UHaul trailer, load it, get it to the other end, offload it. Easy, right? Except for those parts where it wasn’t.

Because of scheduling issues with the primary driver, we had to have someone else go pick up the trailer on Friday. Now, standard procedure would be the thing passes at least one safety inspection before it’s allowed to leave the lot, nevermind any last minute checks that get done as it’s on its way out. Standard procedure. Unless, apparently, the trailer’s being rented in Petawawa. It got to my parents’ place, where it would be spending the night until we were ready to use it, initact. Well, mostly. The primary driver did his usual run around to make sure everything was appropriately glooed in place the next morning, and discovered it was obviously put through its safety inspection pre-departure by someone who just so happened to be nearly as blind as me. There were no working clearance lights on the trailer. Not overall a huge matter–they aren’t exceedingly used for a whole lot anyway. But, there were also no working break lights on the trailer. Yeah, as you could probably guess, that posed a small problem. So we were shoved 4 hours behind schedule while that got looked into. No huge dealy, really–we still got loaded that day. And the garage we took the trailer to was more than willing to bill UHaul directly for the repair work–an offer, I have to admit, at which I spent the rest of the day snickering. So we get everything to Ottawa, it’s intact, and the trailer hasn’t blown itself to pieces inexplicably. Cause for cellebration–which we did after everything was offloaded. But not before we made an attempt at taking the trailer to its final resting place–well, as far as we were concerned, anyway.

See, the thing about being in Ottawa is there’s half a million UHaul locations capable of receiving vehicles like this between here and the east side. The bad thing about living in Ottawa is there’s half a million UHaul locations who could easily decide they don’t want to let us make them this trailer’s final resting place. We were given the address of, what we would later find out was a small little convenience store type dealy or something. That convenience store type dealy just so happened to be registered UHaul location, so UHaul told us “Yeah, sure, go ahead and drop off that trailer over there. They won’t mind.”. They did. And made it very clear they did. Which prompted us sitting in their parking lot while my father, who happens to share my name and can do things like this, called up UHaul and unloaded with both barels. The end result was spending a few more minutes at $1.40 per liter driving across town to their primary drop location for the Ottawa area, and finally getting rid of that trailer.

So, we eventually got everything loaded. We eventually got the trailer tossed somewhere that isn’t attached to the back of one of our vehicles. And smartly, UHaul hasn’t as yet tried to turn around and bill me for their failed safety inspection. And all it took was the twisting of approximately 3 arms, and the smashing together of the equivalent of two heads. Not bad for a weekend. For the right price, UHaul. At this whole organization and basic covering your ass thing? UFail.

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Things that happen when you go 3 weeks without updating, episode number I’m not sure how many. House hunting, of a sort, didn’t turn out to be a complete and total flop–hence the, well, nearly a month without updating this thing. Which, yes, means I’m once again nearly a month late with April’s highlights–that’s on the list. In between all the other insanity. Sandwitched between trips to see family, an entire life shift kicked me in the face. Not only has the job market actually at least done a relatively average job of not sucking, but as of 3 days ago officially, I have a location that will for the foreseeable future pretend to be a new place to live. And, surprise, it’s back in Ottawa–roughly across the street more or less from where I used to be. The apartment’s laid out pretty well like the old one was. And, to boot, it’s in the same building as–and, in fact, is directly below–the rental office that used to manage the building I moved out of.

Shane and I have had a running joke amongst ourselves since before he moved in here that I’d eventually be evicting him from my living room. So, when we first got wind we’d be landing this apartment, I wrote him an informal eviction notice–which, naturally, got blogged. It generally wasn’t received all that well by many, in spite of references to it for the majority of the 5 or 6 months he’s been living here. Still, it was mildly entertaining to those who actually had some involvement with it. And, officially official now, on the 15th of this month–yes, that’s in 2 days–I sign the papers for the new apartment, and officially evict him from my living room. Larger apartment, more space, major city, and in a decent area for getting to potential places of employment–not much could be better. Well, except for having something to do at one of those potential places of employment–but we’re working on that.

Speaking of potential places of employment, I’m encountering indications things might actually be trying very hard to return to some kind of pre-2010 level as far as job market activity goes in Ottawa. What lead me to that theory? For the first time in just about ever, Rogers, who I’ve gone rounds with before for other reasons on the customer side, has once again at least temporarily started posting openings–and I’ve applied for just about all of them. And if that wasn’t a vague attempt to possibly lull me into a false sense of getting somewhere, another potential employer I hadn’t heard from in nearly a year threw out a few positions of its own. Alcatel-Lucent, who I’ve had an interview with in the past–and who’s building is actually laid out very similar to the one Dell used to own–is, also at least temporarily, back in the hiring business–and likewise got poked with an application or two. I’m not sure what all will come from any of that, or the few job postings I responded to by more conventional means from companies I haven’t seen much of in the 3 years I’ve been looking, but hey, I can’t exactly do much worse off on the job front.

what all of this means is I’ll potentially have plenty more in-person things to comment on and/or mock rather than the occasional dumping of links that also hasn’t actually been happening in quite a while–I need to fix that–or the seemingly lacking actual coherent thought that happens to have more to it than 140 characters. Such thoughts may or may not involve version 3.0 of the pot-smelling basement. Or, they may be extremely disjointed list-type stream of consciousness “I’m sick, so have an entry” type posts–not entirely unlike this one. Or they may be little more than 140 character thoughts in blog format–at least, if Twitter keeps doing what it was doing for most of today, anyway. Still, things are trying real hard to calm down now–and will do a whole lot more of that after this weekend. Which, you guessed it, means the mockworthy comes right back to where it started. Hey, on second thought, I should go 3 weeks without updating more often. No, wait–next time something important might actually happen.

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Apparently, March is the month of moves and potential moves. Back in January, I was looking at the possibility of returning to Canada and right away diving into a move of my own. At the same time, Jessica has been building up to her own move. Mine fell through, but in this last week of February, hers is in full swing. To the tune of several dozen boxes, storage bins, and various other containerlike objects that can and will be used as packing boxes (thanks, Heather, by the way). This tiny apartment almost looks like it would be cramped with all the packing materials that have yet to actually be turned into things what contain personal belongings. It’s extremely odd to think in a week from now, most of this stuff will be exactly where it should be in the new place. And I’ll have been here to make absolute sure it gets there. I guess I’m participating in a March move after all–just not my own. Hey, whatever works. Now where’d I put that roll of packing tape?

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I’ve been on ODSP’s case for, like, ever about not escentially drumming us out of the running financially, for what little my being on them’s managed to accomplish. For those just tuning in, ODSP is the Ontario Disability Support Program, also known as those folks what pay me because no one likes to hire the blind guy and I still have bills to pay. I’ve done everything from harass folks locally to write the folks who actually make the decisions, most of which eventually ended up documented on this thing calling itself a blog. Adding to my reasons for harassing folks at both ends of the food chain, my recent attempt to save money has prompted ODSP to attempt to save a little on its end. Thus, not doing a whole lot on mine to make actually saving money worth my while.

Let me bring you up to speed. I live in a fairly cheap apartment, rent-wise. It’s $550 a month, plus your electricity. For most places, that’s cheap. For Pembroke, I’m surprised it was even vacant. I’ve lived there since 2009. At the end of 2010, I decided it would be in my best financial interest to do the roommate thing. Yeah, that would eventually require a bigger apartment, but two bank accounts are almost always better than one, so the math should have worked out. Then I got a phone call. I’d forgotten there was actually two different types of math at play, here. There was actual math, as in that stuff you were forced to sit through before they’d let you get out of highschool, then there’s ODSP math. That, apparently, follows an entirely different, much more nonsensicle, set of rules.

We ran the math out, figuring we could probably manage to free up an average of roughly $250 between the two of us, which could easily be realocated into bills we otherwise would have had a difficult time paying had we decided to be stubborn about it and forego the whole idea of a roommate. Those numbers in hand, we actually planned our month of January figuring if things changed, they wouldn’t change by a whole heaping lot, so we could optionally minus 50 from here or there if we needed to in order to cover off something else. We played with it until it didn’t hurt our heads, then left it there. The month rolled over, and shortly after, the phone rang. It was ODSP. They’d decided they’d be cutting a nifty little slice off each of our monthly allowances, to the tune of very nearly what we were figuring we could just end up reusing. On top of that, a letter showed up in my name 3 days after that wonderfully heartwarming conversation, escentially telling me they believe I was overpaid for the month of December and they’d be collecting that back, kind of now like. And they did it in the form of slicing off what they were going to, plus what they thought would be an awesome magical number to just sort of start at for repayment. Yeah, just how I wanted to start my 2011. While dealing with that, we were also looking at the possibility of said larger apartment, and trying very hard not to laugh at the prospect of them arguing with us about our attempt to save money just long enough that they wind up being forced just by way of our expenses to reverse themselves anyway, and we’d still wind up not having actually managed to come out any further off the financial ropes.

Since I hadn’t yet figured out exactly how much they’d be snagging from me each month to compensate for having paid me more than they’ve decided I’m worth, I went with their usual practice and left things as they were for the time being. Then the roommate fled to see his girl, and I came down here. I wouldn’t find out until a few days later, when I both had time and wasn’t at too much a risk of losing a lung to actually do the month’s finances on my end–belatedly, but hey, they got done. Their definition of a repayment plan leaves me with less money at the end of it than I had pre-roommate. All told, I actually ended up losing most if not all of what I was kind of aiming to put towards the actual paying of bills.

Look, guys, I get you’re cheap. Really, I do. I get you measure your $10 annual increases in the context of millions of dollars combined. Again, I really do. But not even you can comprehensibly wrap your heads around this attempt at math, as evidenced by the fact no one I’ve spoken to on this file’s come anywhere near close to an explanation that doesn’t try very hard not to trip over itself and fall flat on its face. Just what actual sense does this make? Seriously? Not only does ODSP want to not actually give you more money, but if you actually try and save yourself some of the money they do give you, that only serves to invite them to claw it back whether they actually should or not. And of course, the system is designed in such a way that they decide you can live on this amount, and you get to provide them 80 metric tons of documentation on why you can’t, then wait for them to maybe or maybe not–usually not–change their minds.

ODSP is here to foster independence and help recipients to actually function on their own without needing to spunge off family/friends. Just don’t actually try and avoid spunging. Turns out ODSP math doesn’t allow for it.

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It just randomly occured to me, as I was plowing through various things that have been piling up while life was busy throwing us curve balls, it’s been exactly, as in to the day, two weeks since I’ve actually posted anything up here. And probably longer than that since the anything had actual content. Oops. Publishing don’t number 1, and I did it. Oh well, you’ll have that. And the worst part of it is, the two weeks in question actually stood a chance at being somewhat exciting. If by exciting you mean a small rolercoaster of fun.

Where to start. Big news in the nowheresville household, we had our eye on a larger apartment and moving back to Ottawa. Well, back to Ottawa for me–Shane has never actually had the good fortune of living there, specificly. So we had the apartment lined up–the lady showing it to us had us sold within the first 10 minutes. We filled out the application. Then, we sat around here and waited. The application ended up not going through, which made things very interesting–note to readers, if you’re looking to make a major move like this and you’ve already gone ahead and set things in motion to have services moved/activated on your moving day, watch out for that quick 180. It’s real hard to hit the off switch when they come back and say you can’t actually have the apartment. Or maybe that’s just a Rogers thing–anything’s possible. We ran into that problem when the phone call came in that we didn’t actually land the apartment. We have a pretty good idea *why* we didn’t land the apartment, and while yeah it sucks, we know for next time. Too bad, too–it was a wicked awesome apartment.

Fortunately, since we look for bright sides on this here blog when we can, the apartment falling through means it doesn’t complicate our return from yet more planned events in the past two weeks. Shane had originally planned to drop in on his girlfriend at the beginning of February, but situations ended up coming up that sort of necessitated he be down there now. I’m still on schedule for bothering Jessica, who has actually managed to update her blog more than once this month, at the beginning of the month as initially planned. We were originally going to come back from our respective vacations on the second of March and promptly pack the place up for moving, but now we have a little bit of flexibility re: when we come back, just in case things decide that falling sideways while we’re down there is the order of the day. It also gives me a bit more time, if necessary, to help Jess with her own move at the end of February without having to worry about shooting back up here for mine. And, since I like not being attached to a deadline, I can presently put a questionmark on my return date–we shall have to see how things play out.

The fun doesn’t stop there, however. In list format, with explanatory posts to come when I have more brain power. Because presently, this caffeine thing isn’t working for me anymore.

• Life decides at the worst possible time to throw one hell of a curve ball. We got smacked with one this past weekend–and are still recovering. Which reminds me, I need to move a few more things over to the replacement external HD.
• Related: Hey Dell? You can ship Shane’s laptop any freaking time, now. Seriously.
• Those guys from Toronto actually one a game or two. That should be posted about before I forget. Again.
• Sadly, they also lost a shitload. That, I wish I could forget about posting about.

Related: Mixed in with the last couple weeks’ fun helping of funness were multiple large doses of snow. And yes, an extra side order of snow. I’m selling it for cheap. Want some? Please?

Now, let’s see how many of these hockey posts I can crank out before I go fall over. And later today, or tomorrow, a metric ton of mockery. No, I’m not kidding. I’m looking at two pages of blog material over here. And now I actually have time to post it. This might get very unpretty.

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The job market’s been doing a very good impression of a miserable failure the last year or two, at least up here. Very slowly, the interviews I was involved in began to slow to a trickle, then eventually stop. Then the same happened with jobs I didn’t have to have lived in a university for the past 10 years to apply to. Now, jobs in the Ottawa and valley area are kind of at a premium. I’ve been doing the disability income thing for the last year out of desperation, so I’m not forced to go back to living at home–not that I don’t like my parents, but from over here, please. This after being on employment insurance since the job I did have went to India in 2008. That has, naturally, required some financial creativity to keep myself ahead of the curve. My latest attempt at financial creativity consists of turning my one-bedroom apartment into a somewhat improvized two-bedroom, and taking in a roommate. It kind of works, seeing as he’s needing to get just about as financially creative as I am. I love my own space, but sometimes, sharing is caring. Or in this case, sharing is not ending up in the poor house. So on December first, shane will be borrowing my living room. Bright side: there will be much geeking. Not so bright side: some of our debates, when we start having actually meaningful ones, may or may not end up bloody. But hell, that’s half the fun, no?

The roommate situation has kind of pushed forward the necessity of looking for a new apartment. Because, really, while this works, I’m not quite so mean as to restrict him to the coutch for the foreseeable future. Particularly given he’s probably just about as likely to have a significant guest show up over here as I am. The coutch, while folding out and quite comfortable, is probably not conducive to, well, much of anything beyond sleeping. I’ve been looking for a bigger place the last week or so as a result, and have come to a very not quite surprising realization. Finding an apartment that doesn’t generally suck, have craptastic heating, or fit rather easily into this one is pretty near to impossible–at least in Pembroke. Which may mean our financial creativity will probably end up taking us back to Ottawa. Good, ish. Except for that part where the rent in Ottawa was what sent me all the way over here in the first place. Fortunately, the only deadlines we have are how long we can keep this whole creativity thing going. And the only restrictions we have location-wise really depends on whether or not, and where, one or both of us may end up working when we decide to move. In the meantime, hey, I like this kind of adventure.

As for where one or both of us may be working, it’s pretty much certain I’m probably not going to be working at Online Support after all. You may or may not recall I was waiting for questions to be answered, and paperwork to be processed before I could start over there. And oh yeah, Freedom Scientific‘s JAWS for Windows program so I could actually, you know, use their computer and know what it’s yelling at me. It took a little longer than I expected, but the ball’s finally rolling on the purchase of the screenreader–give or take the time it takes me to drop kick certain answers from certain individuals, I should have a copy that runs on windows 7 professional by the end of the month. Problem being now, though? Online Support hasn’t responded to me since a day or two after I wrote that last entry. The guy I’m dealing with from Ontario’s second career program has been trying to get a shot at them as well and hasn’t gotten anywhere. I’m leaning very much in the direction of just writing off the company. except for the fact they’re pretty much the only thread that hasn’t snapped off completely over here–yet. I’ve always suspected if I did end up employed again, it would probably be somewhere that isn’t Pembroke. This is kind of lending a bit more support to that suspicion.

Things are definitely happening, and in a quickly kind of way. But they’re definitely happening. And in a couple weeks, it’ll be nearly four years since the last time I developed a roommate–no better time to snap that streak. Or something. And just in time for that, we’re lining things up for a goodly portion of insanity. In other words, just another day in the life of me. I think I need a new one.

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Only slightly less irritating than job hunting, and for completely different reasons entirely, is apartment hunting. Sadly, in my case, doing the one almost necessitates doing the other–see, and if Ottawa employers had just returned my phone calls we could have avoided that. If I go for the position who’s offer has just about everything to it but my signature, I’m going to end up needing to move closer than I am right now, strictly on the principle that my day’s pay would otherwise be going to transporting me to and from. Which leads me to a bit of random curiosity digging around today. And that promptly left me exactly where I was this morning.

To start, folks in Pembroke don’t advertise. At all. Unless one counts the occasional thinggy you’ll pull out of the local newspaper’s classified section. The ones that do advertise, like the one I went in to have a look at this afternoon, shouldn’t advertise. At all. It was a basement apartment, which literally was just the basement of–I’m pretty sure–someone’s house, turned into apartments (yes, plural). It had virtually no distinct living room/kitchen area to speak of, something that vaguely pretended to be a bedroom, and no closet space–what we thought was closet space turned out to actually be furnace storage space. And given I saw nothing in the place that would indicate I controled my own heat or whatever, my guess is the floor above me has it for the building. This is not how these things are supposed to work. Added on top of that, with utilities included it rang out to the tune of approximately $40 a month more than my rent right now, plus electricity, for this place–also a basement apartment, laid out much better than the one I looked at, with an actual living room and a distinct, if not exactly roomy, kitchen area. And heat I don’t need to knock on my upstairs neighbour’s door for.

I ran into similar problems in Ottawa, only with a twist–apartments in my new, post-layoff price range located not in the middle of nowhere amounted to little more than closets. My room when I went to college was bigger. I have a rule when I go apartment hunting. If I can throw something and hit my bed from the front door, it’s way too small. I could do it with a hundred percent accuracy in some of those places. Granted, if the potential job possibility in Ottawa ends up being something that doesn’t vaguely resemble nothing, that’ll be significantly less of an issue and I can safely look for something a step or two up from closet.

I’m very glad I don’t actually have to do this very often. Now, if I can just skip forward to the point when I don’t have to do this at all, that’d be awesome. Failing that, anyone have a spare paycheck they’re not using? Yeah, didn’t think so. So much for my master plan of getting rich by being lazy.

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Okay, so maybe I may or may not actually need it. But I’ve gotten to the point where that’s one of those things I’ve been contemplating. Almost seriously, actually. If only because the idea of deciding exactly how much I work on a given day is way, way too appealing to me. And considering the fact that your usual type jobs aren’t doing a whole lot of hiring lately, this might just turn out to be the next best thing.

I’ve given thought to temping, and have even applied with several agencies to that end–not that they’ve gotten me anywhere, but who’s counting? The income would probably be just as steady, only I’m not doing it in -40 degree temperatures after spending nearly as much time getting to/from work as I do at work. There’s just one very minor little problem. Work from home opportunities in Canada aren’t exactly overly well advertised.

I did come across one or two companies who pretty much just serve as the bridge between contractors and clients, which is probably kind of what I’m looking for–unfortunately, in one case they’re primarily US-focused for both clients and contractors, and in the other their method of actually getting contractors into the system escentially requires that you forget Windows and boot into their own operating system–not cool for someone who kind of needs to hear what he’s doing. thankfully I’ll probably never be so desperate for work that I’ll just grab hold of the first thing to pop up, so this is mostly just all manner of research at the moment. It’s an interesting prospect which, if I do it right, will escentially allow me to work a halfway decent schedule and still have time to do the important things–like spend time with the fiance, and plan for the eventual wedding on top of finding a so-called real job.

If I can find a company with the flexibility I like and technology I can actually work with, something kind of like ContractXchange minus the need to use their own OS, it’s a definite possibility for me to consider–if for no other reason than I’ll already have most of what I need handy, and situations like this one may not be as frequent an issue.

It’s things like this that the research I’ve been sort of doing tonight comes in quite handy for. That, on top of the added fact that if I’m seriously thinking of actually doing this, I’m probably going to need a bigger apartment. A lot of these arangements I’m noticing strongly recommend you have your own dedicated office space, plus phone line, for this kind of thing–or at least a dedicated digital phone if nothing else. Which pretty much means the current setup I’ve got going on–the computer’s in the living room, and the only phone line I’ve got here is my personal one (Is my apartment even big enough for two landlines?), plus at the moment it’s a one-bedroom–is probably not about to make the cut. Neverminding the fact actually doing the work, particularly during the hours I’d prefer to be doing the work, would not be conducive to anyone I happen to have staying over–like, say, the afore mentioned fiance–actually sleeping if it was done in this apartment. I could probably, in a huge pinch, invest in something like Skype or Vonage if I had to and solve at least one problem. If I wanted to take all this ultraseriously, I could go even further and invest the money in an entirely separate computer strictly for all my work-related crap–but that just might be pushing it a little tiny bit. Since the initial setup’s probably going to cost me anyway if I’m actually considering this, it’s kind of worth throwing out there. Particularly if I have to start making modifications to the setup on this machine in order to get it to play nice with what they want me to do.

Like I said, this is pretty much mostly just research and random contemplating at this point. I’m throwing it up here mostly because I can, and because if I do decide to dive in with all this, I’ll probably need to look this up to figure out what I don’t want in a potential employer of this variety. And, well, because there may be an idea or three floating around I haven’t yet run across. I don’t even know if this is something I’ll seriously give chase to, but if I do, at least now I have a pretty good idea what I’ll need, what I’m looking for, and what both will cost me. Now, let’s see if I can pull a random job out of my hat. That’s always helpful.

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The month is just over half over, and already things have gone and decided breaking is the thing to do. It started last week, with the near breaking of my plans to return home this past weekend–plans that were changed for other reasons, which will be elabourated on once the appropriate people have been properly hunted, nailed to the nearest wall, and my time and effort in aranging things is appropriately compensated–in blood, if necessary.

Then, earlier this week, the old blogging stomping grounds of LiveJournal, where I still occasionally show up mostly because I’ve yet to convert all the cool people away from it to much more fun things, decided it would be fun to break my LJ RSS hack. More specificly, one of their upgrades apparently broke their own authentication mechanism. That only ended up being fixed an hour ago–and not, laughably enough, before several people who were experiencing similar problems re: their RSS feeds had decided to bring it up quite blatantly in the dev community–I should really consider watching that community, now that I think about it.

Last night capped off the reason for renaming the month of August to the month of Broken. We needed to get laundry done. As in, like, ASAFP. Which turned out to be at just about midnight last night–hey, we never claimed to keep a normal schedule. That was around the exact same time we figured out that hey, this building’s supposed to have two working washers and two working dryers. This building has one of each. And the broken ones are broken in such a way that by the time we figure out they’re broken, we’ve wasted a dollar in each. Those are, to my knowledge anyway, still broken–we’re presently air-drying the affected articles of clothing. Sadly, my name isn’t on the lease here so I don’t get to personally scream in some poor maintenance bastard’s ear about it, but Jess will undoubtedly take amazing amounts of pleasure in doing exactly that just as soon as she can find 30 seconds to breathe.

Well into the third week of August, and we’ve already had plenty of things go breaky smash on a technical and non-technical front–an average of one per week at this rate. I’m officially renaming the month of August to the month of Broken. Now, to go whip something real quick up to make it official on this here website.

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Take the act of actually paying your rent as a perfect example. If you happen to live somewhere like in Ottawa, failure to pay the rent on your part resulted in a warning of eviction notice on the part of the landlord a week or two later. It doesn’t matter if you have the money and they didn’t try to take it, or they tried and you didn’t have the money. Compare that to somewhere like Pembroke. Apparently, not taking one’s due rent–even if you have the cheque that says you can do so and even if the money exists–is perfectly fine. I might be inclined to say normal. Of course, equally normal–for the building I live in, anyway–is to not actually get your landlord on the phone to figure out if he does, indeed, intend to cash the said rent cheque, or if it’s just going to sit there collecting dust while he does I’m not sure what. I’ve lived here for almost a year now, and I think I’ve actually gotten him on the phone all of twice.

I handed him 6 months worth of rent cheques in April; he’s already cashed two of them. This month’s rent should have been drawn at the latest by the seventh of the month. As it’s currently ten days later, and I still have more money than I should, I’ve spent a large part of today trying to invent a means of geting him to wake up and answer his phone, short of showing up at his front door with cash in hand. If I can’t drag an answer out of the man by Monday, I’m halfway tempted to do just that.

I’ve been contemplating finding an apartment over here that may or may not be slightly cheaper than what I’m paying right now, in an attempt to stop my bank account from sliding in altogether the wrong direction. At the moment, cheaper or not, at this point I’d settle for a landlord that’s actually available. I’m not a huge fan of talking to someone’s voicemail–particularly voicemail on a cell phone. I’m an even less huge fan of it when we’re talking money owed that has not been collected. I’m significantly less of a huge fan when the owner of that cell phone who’s voicemail I’m forced to talk to is extremely bad at returning phone calls. I get the pleasure of having to contend with all three rolled up into one.

Tiny little note to my ever so pleasant landlord. I’m trying to give you money. Or, rather, I’ve given you permission to go right ahead and take my money. I’ve even given you that permission for the next four months. I have money, which you have not taken. Please to be rectifying this situation quickly, lest you like the idea of irritated blind man showing up at your front door. I can oblige, if you’d prefer. Personally, I’d just prefer you take my money. No love, the irritated blind man.

Also: He clearly loves his voicemail. Just called yet again. Is there a legal method for firing your landlord while still keeping the apartment?

Update: Superintendant dood doesn’t have an answer either. Yay multiple levels of stupid. Now we both get to wait for the guy or guys who actually own(s) the place. Go me.

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I’ve been trying to find halfway decent ways to save me some money–cutting back on things where possible, changing companies if another company offers me a price significantly lower than what I’m paying now, and most recently, looking for possible places to call my temporary residence that end up being relatively cheaper than that which I’m currently staying in. On top of trying to get me properly educated, but that’s another entry. Since no one around here wants to hire folks in my particular fields, and since no one in Ottawa has gotten around to calling me back yet, saving money until either situation changes is the thing to do. Enter a bit of research being performed on my part over the last couple days.

There’s a possible building I’m looking at moving into. When I called about it on Friday, they didn’t have anything available. I got a call just a few minutes ago that one of the renters there may be looking to sublet the apartment. Over the course of the conversation, the process of 20 questions ended up starting. Around question 19, I was in full WTF mode. He asked if I was working at the moment, which–okay, I get it–you need to be paid. So do I. I told him I was presently on disability, but that I had been working. I didn’t tell him if I have my way I’ll either be working or back in school by this time next year, mostly because that would generally lead to me informing him I’d be moving out just as soon as either situation came to light. Then, he asked my age.

I’m not one to keep my age a secret by any means–I’m 26, if you’re curious–but, er, what does that have to do with my ability or willingness to pay the rent? I don’t get it. If it’s a disability thing, I’m kind of WTFing just a little more–but that, at least, isn’t altogether very surprising. But, still. I have money in hand. I want to give this landlord money. I can keep giving this landlord money until such time as either I go completely and totally broke or he raises his rent beyond my price range. My age has very little if anything to do with that. So, uh, what’s it to him? Anyone have a clue? Can I borrow it?

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Sometimes, my apartment has the weirdest benefits. I blame living in a small town. I was treated to a rather unplanned–at least, I didn’t plan it–fireworks show for the May two-four weekend. Or, as we call it up here, the Victoria day weekend. It didn’t last entirely too long, but it was vaguely entertaining. Kinda makes me wonder what unplanned goodness I’ll be privy to for Canada day. Or if I’ll still be here to see it.

In randomly unrelated and still amusing news, I’ve gone all 24th century on my cell. My text message, instead of one of the default Nokia sounds the thing ships with, is now one of the com badge sound effects from Star Trek: Voyager. Because, well, I had it on the computer and didn’t have any other use for it. I was moderately amused. Still kind of am, a little. Or rather, I was–now I’m just lazy.

Sorry, no earth-shattering content here. Perhaps I should have saved my PAC-MAN rant for today? Oh well. I’d of still posted this anyway.

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Thing about having a basement apartment, even if it’s in a building that lacks certain important features–like, say, security–is you have certain built-in benefits at no extra cost, be it for electricity or the extra convenience. Like small-time central air. I think it’s a law internal to the building. Usually, it doesn’t matter what part of the building I end up in. If it’s warm outside, it’s pretty nearly hot in here. Step into the hallway and it kind of slaps you in the face. But, step into this apartment, and holy crap. Temperature drops a good 10-15 degrees the second the door closes. I almost never open the windows in here. It’d be a sort of violation of the laws of summer, I swear. In here, the laws work in reverse. And at no extra cost. I can live with that. I can really live with that. Now, let’s see if it keeps being liveable in about, oh, August.

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I haven’t been spending a whole lot of time in this apartment, particularly when compared to how long I’ve been paying rent on it. But, there’s one very noticeable thing that always seems to be present every time I am. A very bad-sounding, apparently constantly in heat, cat. I didn’t pay it much mind when I first moved in, mostly because I had no idea what it was and, well, was home even less than I am lately. The cat and its owner live right across the hall from me, so anyone who happens to be dropping buy, or standing close enough to this side of the outer door of the apartment, gets treated to a very entertaining meow.

We initially thought the cat might have been sick and/or left alone–particularly considering it’d been keeping it up for almost the entire time Jessica was here after Christmas. So I had little to no choice but to get the landlord over to have a look and make sure. Shortly thereafter, we discovered a note posted to she who shall be officially dubbed Catwoman’s door explaining the cat hadn’t been abandoned/starved/what have you, just that it was in heat. A week, two weeks, three weeks later, and it seemed the cat was still doing that. There might have been small breaks in between, but it seemed every time I left or came back to my apartment, that cat was always in heat. And, sure enough, to this day the note still remains stuck to her door. And I thought I heard it go off again this afternoon.

If I had some kind of decent recording equipment handy I’d post a sample of this cat’s vocalisations up here, mostly because it tries very hard to sound pathetic and instead comes off more slightly amusing. Still, Catwoman maintains the thing’s just in heat–I don’t even know how long a cat’s supposed to be in heat. And, since I can’t prove otherwise, all I can do right now is be highly amused. And try to get a halfway decent recording. Anyone wanna loan me something portable that does MP3 recording? Anyone?

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I spent almost 4 years in Ottawa, on the third floor of a three-story building you couldn’t get into without buzzing in, or having a key for the front door–this on top of the key you had for your apartment. Jessica’s building in Rochester takes it a step further, needing a key to get into the building, a key to get onto your floor, and a key to get into your apartment. This building in Petawawa? You have a key to get into your apartment. Well, actually you have two, but who’s counting? And this building gets something the other two I mentioned don’t seem to get–or at least, they get very rarely if at all. Folks coming around marketting their own electricity initiatives.

I get an average of one of these people knocking on my door on a weekly basis. And, of course, not being able to know who’s there until I open the door, I take a chance it might not be someone trying to sell me something. And every time I’ve done so, it’s been any number of situations from people who’d just like to see my hydro bill, to people who just want to tell me about the green initiatives their particular company/organization/what have you is offering. To one offer I’ve received asking if I’d be interested in locking in my hydro and/or gas prices for 5 years. And every time, my response is the same–I point at the door leading out of the building, with a polite suggestion that they go that way.

I received a grand total of one such offer while living in Ottawa. And they were stupid enough to try pitching that offer to me over the intercom system the building has. They, of course, got hung up on. I don’t have that option here, so to get rid of them, they first have to be effectively standing on my doorstep. I swear, just as soon as I can twist a governmental arm far enough back that it decides it’d be in its best interest to increase disability payments–or just as soon as I can get myself hired again, whichever comes first, my next move will be back to a secure building. Ideally I’d much rather see that type of marketting made illegal, but since that’s not very likely to happen, I’ll take my secure building. Besides, there’s something to be said for having a little warning when you’re getting company–welcome or not. Gives me time to hide my porn magazines. Er, wait, I didn’t say that.

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For about two or three months before I moved to Pembroke, I scouted the apartment listings for a halfway decent place that doesn’t knee me in the wallet. The very few places I found that didn’t were, well, closets. My room during my time at Algonquin College was considerably bigger–they pretended to call it a bachelor. And, of course, now that I’ve found this apartment to fake my way through calling home for a price that almost doesn’t knee me in the wallet, halfway decent places for almost halfway decent prices started becoming available. Now, just when I can’t actually move into a place like that. Somebody clearly has a very cruel sense of humour. Nice to know such creatures exist, though. Now, if they just could have showed up while I was still looking.

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Unless I’d like to devote half my small amount of spending money to cab fair, laundromat fairs and replacing half the supplies I don’t get back from the said laundromat, apparently. At the beginning of the year, I discovered this building’s dryers rather suck when it comes to actually, you know, drying. But in order to find that out, it required I first take 25 minutes to convince it that it wanted to take my money. After a long conversation that involved the temporary use of my mail key to complete payment, and actually force the thing to accept my money, I discovered I’d of been better off not bothering. Getting my clothes roughly equivalent to dry would cost just about twice what it cost me to wash the things. Instead, after having a very short conversation with the landlord, I decided my parents wanted to see me more often anyway. Now they had a reason.

And, because technological screw-ups always happen in at least twos, while not hearing back from the landlord on the building’s machines, my parents’ washing machine decided to take a permanent vacation. So now it’s temporarily laundromat or nothing for all of us, at least until their replacements get there–fortunately it shouldn’t be more than 3 days. Or, in corporate speak, whenever they get around to it. They say bad things happen in threes. well, I just ran out of laundry things to go break. Any guesses what’s next?

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My apartment in Ottawa had its moments of sheer and utter amusement. Not the least of which is the lower floor that, after about midnight or so, took on a decidedly potlike quality. Usually I only happened to notice because I was, as always, up at that hour–only doing laundry instead of my usual routine of, well, doing nothing. Of course there was the lazy and plenty of it, but it wasn’t *all* lazy.

I’d actually gotten used to not being able to giggle amusedly at the fact some poor fool was pretty much baking his brain on a day when most folks would be considering maybe existing just enough to think about going to work. Then I decided to come down to Rochester.

Jess and I were in the midst of getting done with the week’s laundry, and were distracted with talking so much that I didn’t immediately notice, but when we did, I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing in the middle of the hallway. Right there, in my girlfriend’s apartment building’s basement, the potlike quality made its reappearance. My regular source of amusement didn’t abandon me, it just moved in with Jessica. The mocking shall resume.

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I keep threatening to do that post about what the hell happened to me since the last time I was actively blogging (Um, LJ-ing, perhaps?). Well, consider this my attempt at doing so. I’ll warn you in advance there will probably be things that get missed–it *has* been about 4 months, after all.

For starters, there were more than a few trips across the Canada/US border between myself and Jessica, who’s rarely updated LJ is over here for anyone who doesn’t already read her. Things in that department I don’t think can get much better. Well, beyond the elimination of the border but eh, that’s coming. Beyond that, I’ve been doing a lot more experimentation with Gentoo, my for the moment linux distribution of choice. I’d messed around very briefly with Debian and Ubuntu, but couldn’t get quite what I wanted out of those distributions. That, plus I rather like a challenge and Gentoo definitely provides that. I kept an old HP laptop around for the purposes of experimentation–and, actually, it was the same laptop I did most of my blogging on in the old days–so I can break it 6 ways from Sunday and not really be set back more than a couple hours’ tinkering. Works perfectly fine for me. In addition to that, I’ve been continuing to pound pavement in hopes of landing me a job. Not an easy thing to do when every day the unemployment line gets longer, but we manage. This in between trips to catch up with family, because… well, you know, they don’t tend to like it when you avoid them for long stretches at a time.

Then there was the move. I’d spent the last year and a half or so on employment insurance while I looked for work, thus enabling to keep my rather nice–even if I do say so myself–apartment in Ottawa’s west end. Not having found anything though, it became necessary for me to find somewhere else to call home lest I end up going very broke very quickly. So, on October 23rd, everything I own and a few things I forgot I owned got stuffed into one box or another, and carted an hour and a half away to this, a basement apartment who’s upstairs neighbour has perhaps one of the creakiest floors I’ve heard in my life. Now, I’m still looking for work, still finding time to do a little geeking, and still–at least, as of about 2 weeks from yesterday–making trips across the border when I have the time, money and transportation. Not a whole lot has changed, save for my mailing address–which I’m still finding things that didn’t get the notification of that change–and the fact some things in life just plain aren’t as convenient as they were a month ago. But, win some, lose some. That be life.

Once I have the space in this apartment, and everything I’ll immediately need to do so out of boxes and set up, I plan to get back into tweeking the laptop and making things work just that much better. And, with a little luck and a small miracle, it might result in me accidentally coming up on a skill or three I can put in a resume. Never hurts to say you can do something, particularly when that something didn’t require you shell out money you don’t have for a college/university education. Of course, if I don’t get that out of it, then maybe I’ll just have a computer I can use should I ever decide to wipe windows off this one. Either way, I can’t find a down side here.

Well, that’s the summer and part of spring in a nutshell. Not very exciting, just… chaotic, really. Semi-organized chaos, but still. And if this is any indication, the next couple months don’t plan to be any different. Which, surprisingly, is how I like it. Can’t very well go researching new and somewhat impressive things to buy if you don’t have time to, after all.

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This just started earlier tonight, but every so often, I’ll hear what sounds like someone/thing hitting the cieling below me. Except, it/they only bang once, and then that’s it. It happens by the sounds of it every couple hours or so. Apparently completely at random. I are having none of the idea what the hell’s going on, since I don’t really hear anything else going on down there. If it happens again, I’m half tempted to throw my day clothes back on and go knock on a door. They’re lucky I’m not sleeping right now, whatever that is. Or my half awake ass would be getting all up in someone’s face. And just for effect and to see what kind of reaction I’d get from whoever’s doing it, I’d be bringing the stick. Yeah, *that* stick. Blindies know the benefits of *that* stick around other people. Fortunately for them, though, I live mostly at night. So all it gets out of me is a mighty large wtf. Well, okay, and a random semi-rant on LJ. But it’s my LJ, goddammit, I’ll semi-rant if I damn well wanna. There’s plenty of other shtuff to read if you’d rather not read mine.

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Dear landlord: why in the name of everything did you wait until *now* to tell me the bank decided I’m too poor to pay my rent? I understand the banks are generally run by morons with approximately half the IQ of my biggest pimple, but I honestly expected something resembling inteligence from you folks. It’s friday. You’re barely open past lunch tomorrow. The bank is probably barely open past lunch tomorrow. You want me to pay you ZOMG naow plz. Oh, yeah, and you send me a letter stating so, dated today, telling me to call superintendant lady like right bloody now or else. Except she’s not working until tomorrow. And barely past lunch time. Again I say, what. the. fuck? Words cannot describe the level of stupid this just blew right on past. They can’t. You fail.

No love,
Me.

Dear RBC: Die. Die die die. I am not broke. I was not broke on the second of the month, when they tried to cash my rent check. I am even more not broke now, because my rent check, for reasons beyond my comprehension, decided to bounce. So why, pray tell, did you tell my landlord upon trying to cash my rent check that I’m broke? I fail to understand the mentality here. Or maybe you fail at making sense. I mean, I love that you’ve escentially given me more money with which to play, but next time, can it please please pretty please not come from that which you should be giving to people with the power to kick me out of my apartment? Urg. I’d say you should be shot, but that would be a waste of a perfectly good bullet.

Die in a goddamn grease fire,
Me.

Siiiigh. My headache, let me share it.

ETA: Going to collect money order tonight. Still want to drop kick somebody.

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Every 3-4 months or so, my land lord or maybe the super intendant, one of the two, comes around and does their quarterly inspections of the fire alarm system. Which, roughly speaking, translates to setting it off several dozen times on some random afternoon. And, with the exception of maybe one, I’ve been home every. single. bloody. time. Sadly, half the time sleeping (I did used to work nights, y’know). On the bright side, I know it’ll wake me up in case of an actual emergency. On the not so bright side, can westop playing with ‘em now? They work already…

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Jessica’s birthday went off without so much as a hickup. We spent the majority of the day just hanging out and talking, and I gave her her next and last birthday gift. It was a foot warmer from mom, which turned out to be appropriate thanks largely to the fact we had a slightly colder than usual night and it only served to confirm that yet, in fact, the heat in here isn’t working quite as well as I’d of liked. So there will be phone calls made about that momentarily. I took Jess out for dinner last night, dropping in for a couple hours at Montana’s Cookhouse. For the record, I’m ever so slightly reminded of a restaurant we went to during my initial trip down there. Except, of course, it’s in Canada. So it’s better. By default. Now we’re both sort of awake and hanging out in my living room; she’s checking her email, and we’re both just doing that thing where we be like 6 different kinds of lazy. Eventually, the plan is to take off for the parentals’ place and the coming Christmas cellebrations (translation: eat ’til you puke, drink ’til you puke, and get up early-ish). As for immediately right now, though? This apartment needs some serious heatage. Like wo.

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