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.

A goodly portion of my TV watching, at least that which doesn’t consist of hockey or baseball, is done on CTV. Usually, its Ottawa station–particularly since they were nice enough to kill news broadcasts from Ottawa’s local A Channel station.

Their Ottawa newsroom caught fire overnight last night, resulting in the temporary loss of use of that building and the possibly permanent loss of 30+ years of news and video archives. Definitely, it resulted in the permanent loss of at least 2.5 million dollars worth of computer and video technology. They get to provide their news updates during tonight’s football game–which starts in 4 minutes for anyone curious enough to watch-from the parking lot of their former headquarters. Tonight’s local update at 11:30, however, will ironically enough come from the A Channel building–the first newscast from that building since March of last year.

If you get any of your news from CTV in the Ottawa or Pembroke area, or even if you just want to help out, keep an eye pealed–there will probably be ways and means for you to do so. If you’re a Max Keeping fan and happen to have something from his time with CTV, you’re encouraged to help replace everything he’s lost in the fire this close to his retirement–info for doing so is in the article’s comments section. CTV, and the news I’ve gotten semi-used to watching from there, will probably never be the same. CTV Ottawa is dead, long live CTV Ottawa.

About 6 or 7 months ago, I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Convergys, an outsourcing company who at the time was handling a contract for AT&T. I didn’t end up taking the opportunity, however, on account of they were very up front about having absolutely no plans for doing, pretty much, anything I’d need them to do in order for me to work there. Like, for instance, installing a screenreader so I can actually use their computers. About that long ago, I stopped thinking about them. And on Tuesday, the office where I would have been working tossed all but a hundred of its employees. Suddenly, I’m actually kind of glad we parted company after our initial conversation. Otherwise I might very well still be exactly where I am right now. Except maybe on employment insurance. Thanks but no thanks–did that dance already. Oh, and as for where those jobs ended up going? You guessed it–overseas. On the up side, at least we’re helping their recovery.

In 2008, OC Transpo drivers went on strike, effectively shutting much of the city down, during two of the most demanding months of the year–specificly, November and December. OC Transpo management doesn’t want a repeat of such a thing. So, as an attempt to counter any future strike activity, OC Transpo will risk locking out the unionized drivers and mechanics as a negotiation tactic. Thus, effectively, shutting down much of the city. Someone do explain? Please? The logic behind that just completely and totally escapes me. Either way, the bus system comes to a screaming hault. Either way, folks end up not being able to get to work, do their shopping, or otherwise do the things that need doing. And, drivers and mechanics who’re affected still get strike pay. So what’s this here supposed to prevent, again? Someone wanna maybe straighten that out for me? I think I skipped that class in highschool. And college.

There’s about a 6-hour drive between Ottawa and Rochester, where I’ve been spending the last few weeks, which one would think wouldn’t amount to a whole lot of difference weather-wise–when we’re freezing, they’re usually freezing. But there’s been a winter trend that, until just yesterday and today, has been trying to buck the usual tradition. Winter has been playing head games with us. It teased us near to the beginning of November. And just when I thought we might escape the month snow free, not quite. And now, well into the month of December, we finally get serious about winter.

Ottawa got hammered yesterday with its first major snow storm of the year, as did the Pembroke area. And, surprising the hell out of me, as did Rochester. We’re still catching it good out there right now, and I’d be laying money on roads not being very fun to drive on this morning. It played with Ottawa and Pembroke, teased us up there, then finally decided to have at it. It didn’t once touch Rochester all month, but when it finally did, I do believe it made up for the teasing. Ladies and gentlemen, fans of Christmas everywhere can now relax. Winter has screwed your travel plans.

Break out the calendar if you plan on taking the bus next week, and mark down this Saturday’s date under “Important to remember”. OC Transpo has released their winter service schedule, with a twist for a lot of popular routes, which will be effective from then on. To start, they removed my formerly regular stop at Bayshore during their morning runs of routes like the 118. The 101 also doesn’t stop down by the office I used to work anymore–considering, you know, almost no one actually works there anymore–so if you have work to do near where the old Dell building is, you might want to think about taking the 182–at least, I think it still drops you off about a block from there. How does the change affect you? check it out for yourself, and then either bitch, complain, or otherwise opinionate in the comments if you’re so inclined. Or not.

This doesn’t exactly make me warm up to the idea of having police officers in schools, for any reason. An Ottawa police officer, now suspended with pay, is being brought up on child abuse charges. Well, actually, more like 4 counts of assault–and 2 of them with a weapon, but they might as well amount to child abuse. Considering the children in question were in his own family and all. And he was dealing with the public on a regular basis? Sometimes, the city scares me.

Clinics in the city have enough to last a few days, apparently. So those who want to, go get your shot. And those that don’t, sorry in advance for any trafic jams as a result. As for me, I’ll just minimize my venturing into crowded rooms until this whole H1N1 thing blows over if it’s all the same to you. Besides, if UPS cooperates today’s the day I should have a new toy to play with. That should make that objective a little easier. here’s a realtime list of currently available H1N1 clinics in Ottawa. Not sure how accurate it is, but it’ll give anyone who’s curious a starting point.

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.

After Dell’s closure in June of last year, I’ve been devoting much of my time to trying to find something remotely resembling work that I can get into. I’ve had several interviews, but that’s usually about as far as they go. I have another this wednesday for the CAA–I’ve had conversations with them before, so this shouldn’t be entirely too difficult.

I attribute part of my amusement at an observation I made yesterday to boredom, and perhaps to being still a little overtired, but a random stat circulated around Ottawa news outlets yesterday morning put a somewhat ironic smirk on my face. In the month of October, 800 full-time jobs were created. But yet, in that same period, unemployment went up by almost half a percentage point. Guess I’m gonna have more competition for that position than I thought. And the search continues.