Friday, December 30, 2016

I owe what now?

My internet/phone/cable bill is not due for another 10 days but I thought I'd pay it now. Just went into it and they've charged me an extra $90 for going over my data limit by 60GB between Oct 21-Nov 20! I never got a warning - up to now, I always have got a warning when I was at 80% of my limit and another at 100% of my limit, but nothing!

Thursday, December 22, 2016

First time reporting someone to HR

In the elevator on the way up to the office just now, I mentioned to one of the assistants in the elevator with me 'can you believe it's almost Christmas?' and she said 'yes' which kind of threw me, so I said 'it just seems like the fall went by so fast' and she said 'the years go faster when you're older' not even joking, like I'm ancient or something. Whatever.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Sad return

Finally home from vacation.

Opened my door to the disaster area I left from whirlwind packing, plus the furniture all still pulled out from the walls from when the roof leaked and the ceiling fell in mid-August, plus all the buckets and towels I'd left in case it all happened again in my absence (where it's all been for over two more months while the building management apparently fixes the roof), plus the stained ceiling tiles that have not yet been replaced, plus all the kitchen cupboard contents still stacked on the floor in the dining room from the inspection access from the week before vacation, plus another notice that my unit would need to be accessed YET AGAIN - tomorrow - for phone line upgrades throughout the building... and just started to cry.

How is it possible to have spent such a glorious 11 days and come back to this?

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Jawbone lack-of-customer-support

Left today on Jawbone's site:

July 28 I contacted Jawbone as my UP2 had developed a crack. I crazy-glued it together while waiting for a response.

Thursday, September 08, 2016

Outside In Boldly Goes!

Hey guys, I'm an author again!

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, there's a book! And I'm in it!

OUTSIDE IN BOLDLY GOES: 117 New Perspectives on 117 Classic Star Trek Stories by 117 Writers


Pre-order now! It's got some perfectly swell authors in it, including me. My second book inclusion, hooray!

From the back cover:

Put ten Star Trek fans in a room and you’ll wind up with eleven opinions, fourteen heated debates about Starfleet uniforms and somebody cosplaying Spock in a teleporter accident with a Gorn. That’s because Star Trek fans are gloriously weird, uniquely different and sometimes entirely outlandish. And so is this book.

Celebrating 50 years of Star Trek, Outside In Boldly Goes is a collection of 117 reviews, one for every story of the original series, the animated series, the Kirk movies and a few bonus extras. Well, we say “reviews”, but we mean that loosely: within these pages, you’ll find scripts, Starfleet communiqués, DVD commentaries, fill-in-the-blank games, log entries, restaurant reviews, poems and a trading card set.

Provocative, engrossing, hilarious and utterly gonzo. These aren’t your father’s reviews.

Preorder today!


Friday, August 05, 2016

Cottage report: Friday

Don't you hate having to get up to an alarm when you're on vacation? It's especially hard when the tradition is to stay up to stupid o'clock in the morning and just sleep until you feel like getting up. I mean, I'm still up before noon, usually around 9:30 or 10, but on Wednesday we needed to be up and about and decent by 8am because workers were coming to do a few fixes on the cottage - ceiling repairs in the bathroom, wood fixes on the front face, that sort of thing. And T had to go into town to get them. So no bikini basking that day! They did good work though, nice guys.

Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Cottage report: Tuesday

Our Killarney trip this year certainly has been a great one so far!

Our trip in was a bit different than usual though, we blew right past Parry Sound, where we usually stop for lunch. Didn't think about the fact that we usually visited a restroom while there as well - by the time we turned off the highway we were both in a bit of a desperate situation. Good news is we now know where there are public restrooms along that 45-minute drive!

Friday, July 22, 2016

Ghostbusters, revisited

(some spoilers ahead, be warned!)

Lastnight T and I got out of the oppressive heat the city has been enduring and went to see the new Ghostbusters reboot. I had initially been a little leery of it, being a huge fan of the original and its sequel (notice I didn’t have a meltdown over it – internet trolls take note!), but I love the entire cast so I thought at worst I would be seeing a bad movie with a bunch of people I adore, so what’s the harm?

Monday, July 04, 2016

Proud police?

I was thinking about this on the way in today. I'm not sure why the BLM protesters demanded police not be allowed to participate in the Pride parade going forward, I can only think it's due to recent and historical altercations (Global mentions disproportionate carding and the shooting deaths of Andrew Loku and Jermaine Carby, which are obvious points of concern).

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Racism lives

When we read about the terribly racist, misogynistic, violent things happening we wonder how it's possible, we don't know anyone who thinks like that.

We forget that we surround ourselves naturally with people who share many of our own ideals, and social media like Facebook helps us to filter our 'news' this way, until the only views we see are ones we tend to agree with.

Don't be fooled, there are a LOT of racist, misogynistic, violent people out there. Be prepared.

Monday, June 20, 2016

No spoilers damnit

About a month or so ago, while the show was still airing, I was talking to a lady at work who I'd never had a conversation with before and discovered we share a love of Doctor Who and of Blacklist. Was telling her how I don't like spoilers and try to completely avoid them - not directors or things like that but major plot points. She agreed. Then, within two minutes, she casually spoiled something that was coming up on Blacklist, after I'd told her I hadn't seen the new episode yet.

Haven't spoken to her since.

Sunday, April 03, 2016

Outta my spot

Much as I love people named Jennifer, one I don't know has parked in my spot. They've been ticketed, and will be towed if they're still there in the morning. Gone are the days of letting strangers park in my spot for three days.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Just had to share this

via Just Cute Animals
Wow, it’s Friday! I’m going out of town this weekend to meet with some people I’ll be travelling with in the Autumn. I don’t really have a lot to say I haven’t already said this week.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Winter?

So this winter was weird, right? I mean it’s not officially over yet, but it doesn’t seem to have even begun. Christmas Eve I went for a walk with my Dad along the canal and there was NO SNOW. We didn’t need our coats. I don’t know how people who live where it doesn’t snow at Christmas get into the spirit, we had a really hard time with it.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

You snooze, you lose.

via Leeds List
So a while back I got a notification that the awesome and otherworldly King of Crimps Noel Fielding is coming to town, playing at the Danforth Music Hall next Wednesday. I got pretty excited, because I loved him on The Mighty Boosh and IT Crowd, and every time I see him on any of the millions of quiz shows in the UK he frequents he’s the highlight.

Thursday, February 04, 2016

Swapping quotes

Noel Murray wrote about Buckaroo Banzai.

"...for a large number of people, much of the fun of being a movie-lover is swapping quotes with like-minded fans. Dropping a Life Of Brian or Big Lebowski reference in the right situation, surrounded by the right people, extends the communal quality of moviegoing outside the confines of a theater."

Perfectly put. Sometimes I listen to myself, to how much of my daily dialogue consists of quotes, and I worry that I don't know how to actually talk to people. And then I think about how the people who really get me respond in kind, and I relax.

Unpleasant surprise

When the on-site worker schedule from the management office clearly states only Tuesday and Wednesday but they really need to be in the whole week, the way to find out is not by waking up to find a strange man in your laundry room.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Pop Culture Happy Hour did a Small Batch on Monday about David Bowie - it was supposed to be about the Golden Globes, but of course this was more important.

I finally listened to it on Friday on my commute in and teared up in a couple of places, everything Linda and Stephen had to say was perfect. And they did put a bit of Golden Globes in at the end, and put into words something about courage and bravery that I think my brain has been trying to settle on for a long time.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

We talked about the Hot Coffee case in my Legal Issues class last spring, I admit I was once one of those people who scoffed at it as an example of frivolous law suits. Yes, it was hot coffee, yes she spilled it on herself - but turns out there was far more to it.

For example, if the coffee being served is hot enough to cause third degree burns (that's when you need skin grafts folks), is 'caution, hot' really helpful (safe 'hot' coffee would be 60°C, which I would still find too hot - while McDonalds kept theirs at 82-88°C, enough to cause serious burns in 2 seconds)?

Also, when all she wanted was enough to cover expenses (medical expenses plus short-term loss of income) of $20k and McDonalds only offered $800, it becomes a totally different story. And they were sitting on another 700 reports of people being burned and had previously settled cases for more than $500k.

She was already pretty old when it happened, afterward she needed a live-in nurse and went through eight days of skin grafting and a further two years of medical treatment.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Long Live The Duke

This morning brought terrible news: the Thin White Duke has passed.