And it only took an explanation from Brad Paisley to set me straight-ish. Gee, if I only knew 10 years ago what I know now.
Well gee. If I knew back then what I know now, there might have been a slightly different ending to a past relationship or two. Then again, considering the said past relationship or two, maybe not knowing’s a good thing. Either way, relationship complexities explained. Now, back to my simplistic life. Where’d I put the sports section?
One of the things I liked about this town, and there are very few, was the fact you could get pretty well anywhere you need to on roughly 7 dollars by taxi. Unless I had to go into downtown Pembroke, that was perfect. It didn’t break the bank, was relatively easy to arange, and worked out cheaper in a lot of cases than paying for someone’s gas. As of Saturday night, however, the new going rate is apparently 12 dollars. They’re apparently blaming increased gas prices–I didn’t think they increased all that much in the first place. While on a one or two-time basis that’s not much of an increase, consider that if you lack transportation and live here, the taxi is your best friend. Paying 12 dollars give or take going each way, then, on a semi-regular basis can add up in a real goddamn hurry. Thank you very much, local cab companies. I didn’t wanna keep my already limitted money anyway. Sadly, it’s still cheaper than living in Ottawa right now. That’s just uncool. On the bright side, I can now proudly join the list of the officially screwed.
Apparently, the library of congress doesn’t have enough archived material. So, it’s going to start archiving tweets that show up in the public timeline. That means, that whole soapbox you got on about why it is your sister shouldn’t be allowed to own a car–you know, the one that took half a dozen tweets just to establish the background–now escentially belongs to the LOC. The archives will start pretty well back at Twitter’s beginning, in 2006, and there’s a rumour tweets won’t actually get archived for about 6 months. So, you still have time to delete that ranting essay before someone you don’t want seeing it, well, sees it.
Random curiosity’s sake: apparently, this is the first recorded public tweet that’s likely to end up archived. Yep, we’ve all just made history. Go us.
As anyone who’s been following my ramblings for a while knows, I’m a recent and still in progress convert away from LiveJournal. To this day, I still blog on that site as Arinoch, though now it’s more a duplication of the content you’d usually find on this site. One of my big reasons for skipping out on LJ is the lack of control over what you actually have the ability to do with your blog. But, a slightly more important one–to me, anyway–was the lack of an ability to actually see who bothers to read the thing. Until recently, they had absolutely no means of statistical tracking. Which, admittedly, isn’t the primary reason I do this, but sometimes it comes in handy. They tried to correct that minor malfunction with their own, internal analysiss tool, called “My stats”. It was barely useful for more than to see how many of your “friends” continued to check up on you every 20 minutes. So now, they’ve taken the next logical step and gone with the use of Google Analytics instead, giving you the option to get as detailed or not a look at your blog as you please.
I’ve been using the same service on this site, after trying several things to see who would provide me with the more interesting stats–and, after consulting with one well-known expert in the field, Toronto Mike. And all I can say is it’s about goddamn time. If I hadn’t already switched from LJ, I’d probably reconsider doing so now. Particularly if they opened up what you could actually do with the blog you’re optionally paying them to host. Offering this, plus options for advertising on your own–hey, why should LJ-sponsored ads be the only option available–is a good start, though. Now keep it going. I may be tempted to not hang up completely.
What I’d like to see next? StatCounter support, for the realtime stats analytics doesn’t touch. Dunno why they don’t touch it, but oh well. Now, allow me to go play with this for a little.
By this time next month, new phone service will be asigned to numbers in a new, much talked about area code–that being 343. It’s supposed to go into effect as of the 17th of next month. In slightly unrelated news, my old 613 number still has up a recording telling folks I’ve moved, and my number has accordingly been changed. Keep in mind I moved in October of 2009. Does this mean phone companies aren’t reusing old numbers, but are rather kind of letting them hang out in limbo for the sake of it? I wonder if this means I can request my old number when I move back to Ottawa, assuming I’m not too poor to aford a telephone by then. That’d make my life about a hundred times easier, what with most of the services I’ve long since stopped using on account of having moved still having that old number. Which, more than likely, is precisely why it probably wouldn’t happen that way. Ah well. People call enough of my formerly current phone numbers they’ll eventually get the new current one. Maybe. You’d think that’d cost the phone company more, though. No wonder my bill seems to have gone up a bit…
every couple days, I’ll accidentally unearth a potentially decent job worthy of at least considering applying. And, every couple weeks, I’ll find one I actually apply to. Apparently, since the advent of this newfangled recession thinggy, that’s the exception rather than the rule. Nowadays, a typical Ottawa job prospect goes something like this.
And I was doing so well, too. Sadly, unless an employer feels generous enough to train me in it, or pay me to take said training, I’ll just be looking elsewhere. If it didn’t cost so damn much to get there from here for interviews I’d contemplate working in toronto. But, since it does and I’m poor/broke, anyone looking to hire a unilingual geek?
It probably doesn’t help matters much that most of the positions being shopped around now are with companies that have pretty heavy duty government contracts, and so the bilingual requirement is pretty much non-negotiable. A lot of the small, local businesses, or businesses that aren’t almost exclusively government sourced, seem to be slowing and/or stopping hiring for the time being–examples include local companies Protus and Momentus, both of which have a pretty heavy reach in their particular industries–some of which, rather, tend to overlap just a little bit. The same could be said for national businesses like Rogers, who saw an advertisement position pulled virtually the same day it was originally posted–I dunno why either.
This dance has been going on since at least the middle of 2008, when first I started actually looking for work after Dell closed up shop. Probably longer than that, although at least then I was landing interviews with some degree of consistency. It seems only to be more noticeable now that we’re pretty much still trying to fish the economy out of the Ottawa river. Now, this has become the more typical job search routine and not just in the tech industry either. businesses are still shutting their doors, people are still being shuffled around to fill vacancies left over from cost-cutting measures, and companies who haven’t closed up shop have pretty well put the breaks on new hires. It’s a good thing the job search doesn’t piss me off. Otherwise, I’d of probably quit that full-time job a long time ago. Now, if we could just negotiate a pay rate for those of us who’s full-time job consists of looking for a full-time job. Yeah, I didn’t think that’d be likely either.
Scary, but not the slightest bit surprising. Approximately 2000000 Canadians personally know someone–a family member, friend, co-worker–who’s been sexually abused by a catholic priest. That’s way too freaking many. I don’t even consider myself catholic and I feel dirty right now.
After sitting down to watch the Montreal toronto game last Saturday, I was rendered completely speechless for pretty much the entire week. Hence, no posts up here. You know it’s bad when we can’t even win properly to help ourselves. But we had a wicked as hell chance to screw someone out of a shot at the second season. Not just anyone, either, but a team we hate only slightly more than those goddamn Senators. Montreal only needed a single point to get into the playoffs. One. single. point. All we had to do was not fall completely apart in regulation and they’d be golfing on the course right behind us. We didn’t even manage to do that. Okay, so we still won, even if it was in OT, someone will likely argue. And they’re right. It just would have been nice if I didn’t for the next week or so at least have to hear about it every time Montreal pulls off a playoff win. It’s already bad enough we have to hear about Ottawa. Oh wel. As we in Leafs nation always say, there’s always next year.
And it’s entirely my mother’s fault, too. She usually has it on in the background while I’m over there. From the IMDB info on it:
A newlywed with the ability to communicate with the earthbound spirits of the recently deceased overcomes skepticism and doubt to help send their important messages to the living and allow the dead to pass on to the other side.
That’s the basic rundown of how it proceeds. Episodes tend to touch on all kinds of situations–I’m pretty sure the main character’s helped in solving a murder or two. She was watching one yesterday wherein a victim of a kidnapper, now dead of course, pretty much helped the main character to stop that same guy from potentially killing his next victim. All of this while trying to help both dead and living come to terms with the fact they’re no longer among the living. Plots are fairly interesting, and at the very least it’ll be a distraction from my multiple episodes of CSI, SVU, Star Trek, and whatever else.
I think I’ll attempt a conversion of Jessica to watching this show while I’m at it. It’d probably be right up her alley anyway, what with the spiritual crap that gets tossed in there and all that wonderful goodness. And, hey, there’s the added bonus of the snark factor. No show can go wrong with that. So, yes. It’s officially made the pirated list. torrents are free, and free is good. Besides, I have the room. Why not?
The Star provides a rather interesting take on why it is the province of Ontario, and indeed many other governments both in and out of Canada, are usually pretty hesitant to fix systems like welfare, or the only slightly less crippling disability support system. In a nutshell, the province views it as a case for less eligibility. If you’re not working for at least the minimum necessary to live, the article argues, you’re not entitled to at least the minimum to live. This according to the province’s mentality, anyway. Which is a rather interesting notion, when you consider many of these entities now are, supposedly, in place to help people who otherwise can’t meet those minimum standards. Minimum standards that, as one Toronto counsellor’s finding out for himself, aren’t really doing a whole lot of being met.
Toronto Councillor Joe Mihevc’s 11-year-old daughter Catherine looks at her family’s food bank ration of tinned salmon, dried chick peas and peanut butter and wonders what her friends will think when they come to her house for lunch this week.
That was one of the first reactions of 10 prominent Torontonians at the Stop Community Food Centre yesterday, as they embarked on a week of living on what thousands of people on social assistance regularly pick up from local food banks.
That’s not far from the truth. And, on the $572 welfare recipients get–again, this according to the very same “do the math” campaign, food banks are probably going to be a frequent stopping point for a hell of a lot of people. Particularly those who’d rather a roof over their head when they do grab something to eat. And, keep in mind, the $572 is just for a single person. Living in Pembroke, nevermind Toronto, I couldn’t manage to pull off being self-sufficient on that. I can barely manage that on ODSP–hence my two, and soon to be three, letters to the government on the subject.
On ODSP, a single person is entitled to only $460 more than someone on welfare. Which escentially means I can aford to live in subsidised housing and maybe buy escential groceries. It also means, even though I’m not currently in subsidised housing, I won’t flatline financially. It’ll be extremely close on a lot of days, but that’s about it. A welfare recipient, however? It’s either subsidised or nothing for them. There aren’t very many small apartments, particularly in Toronto, for less than $500 a month. If there are, they probably don’t come with anything included, thus negating total expenses still being less than $500 per month. Which doesn’t leave a whole lot of getting by money for pretty much anything else. And that’s the system the province, according to the Star, isn’t very likely to fix any time soon. Unless a whole freaking lot of us find ourselves some blunt objects and a local MPP.
H/T to Zoom, who pointed this campaign out back in February. The fact there’s interest out there from people who aren’t currently benefitting from the system might just go a ways towards helping. Or, at least, it can’t hurt. Now, about those local MPP’s.