Month: August 2014

Pleasant visit

The visit with the fOlks was very good and we had a SPECTACULAR trip back.  The wind and the sun were in perfect proportion, and we got chocolate soft ice cream for a snack.  Thank you Paul for subsidizing that trip (pOp too….) and mOm for the baby stuffs. It was fun noodling around Victoria looking for baby stuffs.

Why I love Susan Sarandon. She just so effervescently and totally rocks.

Watched Boyhood.  I really enjoyed it, and then immediately read a black critic’s takedown of it and have to now file the movie under guilty pleasures.  Sigh. Jeff bailed partway through since various characters were being jerks.

Sahara Delights is now in the space Kitty Kate’s Cafe was in.

Went singing at Tom and Peggy’s last night.  The alto part for Word of God is wicked hard.

 

Katie coming by today

We’re going to hack away at the list of things to do for the garage sale.  It’s not to make money it’s to dejunk and declutter, as I brought way more stuff into this house than I should have.

Of possible interest to Jeff.   We finished the Chasing Shackleton series.  Even though you know how it comes out, it was still darned thrilling. Also of possible interest to Jeff.

Aw crap, Jack White’s coming to Burnaby and I’ll be out of town on the 28th.

 

 

Why I’m not in customer service any more

(To be read in the Comic Book Guy voice). (Re the failure of a login link on a retail site to look and feel correct – the response ).

Wow. We are sorry? You have multiple personality disorder? Weasel words, and rather rude ones at that, if you’re not actually suffering from a really awkward and debilitating mental disorder, in which case props for keeping the job. Or possibly you’re royalty, in which case it must a drag you’re having to slum it in a customer support job. Or possibly you did confer with another employee… at 1:52 in the morning.

Properly designed websites indicate when there’s a clickable field by switching from the ordinary cursor to a ‘little hand’. This doesn’t happen on your site. I scrolled over and clicked the red type a couple of times but I must not have been in EXACTLY the right location when I did. Your communiqué did direct me to a fix, and for that I thank you.

Please tell me that the “royal you” won’t just NOTE my ire (I thought I would blow a head valve at the use of the word ‘note’), but that you are going to COMMUNICATE it to somebody who can fix the website. Using Chrome on a Mac, the clickability of that link is not obvious and that is both a sales AND customer support issue since it helps the site shed money and makes irritable individuals like me contact customer support.

Now, rewrite that email so it’s not a passive-aggressive little screed and explain to me where you are on the planet that sending a customer an email at 1:52 in the morning is okay/normal, and why you’re working for a company that makes you do that. If you’re sending the email from a secret lair in orbit, cool.

Salmon for dinner again

Premade salad plus a big slab of the previously bbq’d salmon on a bed of baby spinach with mango salsa.  The new fish is in the freezer.

I’m in contact with an editor in Saanich and should meet her next week.

This data visualization of the earthquakes in Iceland is very interesting.

They just announced a dancing baby Groot doll, which is adorable.  Wish I could crochet, there’s an equally adorable pattern for it.

There were earthquakes in Chile and California and Turkey overnight.

Liberia’s health care system, never good after 14 years of civil war, has collapsed in the face of the Ebola crisis.  So many healthcare workers have died that even if the hospitals and clinics were open there’d be no caregivers. The official death toll is rising at the rate of about 15 per day with an upward trend, with about half of the reported cases resulting in death.  Even with Ebola if somebody keeps you hydrated and clean of your excreta you may survive.  You can’t find gloves; there’s civil unrest and food prices have jumped. WHO reports that since you can’t fly into West Africa any more it’s delaying the few health care professionals and supplies that are actually headed in the right direction.

Enough of that.

Now a couple of humorous safe for work pictures.

Looking for a wifi network?  

Something worn out?

 

 

Nobody should care about my lunch

But it’s important to me, because Jeff caught the fish I am eating.

I’m having smoked salmon pâté with Natural Pastures brie, sliced purple onion, on a very expensive toasted crostata bun. With a side of raw baby carrots and Assam/Darjeeling blend tea.

Jeff is vacuuming downstairs. I should probably do something about the kitchen floor since he’s being so enterprising.

Just got off the phone with Sandra; she had a reasonably good visit with Paul and she just got buzzed by three pileated woodpeckers, so there’s that.  I hope the rest of his travels are safe and fair.

a quick wander ’round the web

My morning starts with the following sites:

boingboing.net

From which we get a timelapse video of an airport.

cnn.com

From which I learn very little, but once in a while there’s something I follow up on.

digg.com

I find some of the best stuff I repost there

eurekalert.org

A brain expansion device.  Almost all the technical ideas for my novel, including that George’s skin is made of a sandwich of carbene and two other materials which we don’t currently understand, except one of them seems to be a nested molecular spring assembly.

facebook.com

Hey, I just this week reconnected with the glorious Janet, who saved my ass, Paul’s ass, and the ass of the children MANY times when we were living in Montréal.  It’s one thing facebook is very good for, and if I could talk my mother into joining she’d never get any ****ing family history done she would be so busy reconnecting with rellies.

fark.com

John  came home one time from Value Village with a Fark tshirt for me.  Long term fans of this blog will recollect I actually met Drew at a Vancouver Fark Party (Keith in tow).  I love him, as an idea and as a person.  ALSO, IT WAS THE ONE SPORTS BAR IN VANCOUVER I EVER WENT TO WHERE THE  ASPECT RATIO WAS SET CORRECTLY ON **EVERY**SINGLE**TV**  So really it was a lot like getting struck by lightning, while drinking with a crowd of new friends.

gawker.com

Cause I like gossip, yo.

io9.com

Where I get my sf media fix.

jezebel.com

The snarkiest and most hypocritical site on the net, viz feminism.  Really feministing.com is better, but I keep getting lost in the comments thread.

lifehacker.com

Good info and hucksterism jostling for clickspace

livejournal.com

Most of the filkers I know are on it.

news1130.com

Local news which I grab and repost for local peeps on facebook

popurls.com

ERMA GERD.  So much links, so much clickyness

rawstory.com

I’ve been following them since they were a little breathless puppy of a newssite

reddit.com

Nicer than 4chan, worse than cleaning out a pedophile’s garage.  A black hole for time, energy and the will to live.

slashdot.org

Most of the time I don’t understand the links, but it’s educational when I do

thedailybeast.com

Self-indulgent and unclear as to its audience, but I find original reporting in there which makes it worth it.

twitter.com

How terse can I be?  It’s a puzzle

and I often make sidetrips to

freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/

Very happy to see PZ Myers has unequivocally opposed Richard Dawkins on his fiat statement on the abortability of genetically non-normative fetuses. To posit that the correct moral stance is to abort the fetus is yet another vomit stain on Dawkins’ fratbro drunkard’s walk through the pubcrawl of contemporary ethics.

icanhazcheeseburger.com OH LOOK DOGE

visualnews.com PRETTY PICKCHURS

imdb.com

thecryptosphere.com/ – a site started by Lorraine Murphy, a local journo and online buddy.

 

 

 

Word count and then some

It wasn’t very inspired, but it doesn’t have to be.  It will have the crap edited out of it.

Jeff found a really good documentary about six crazy men reconstructing Sir Ernest Shackleton’s famous voyage, narrated by Brian Cox.  We are quite enjoying it, but watching six metre waves come over that tiny ships’ boat makes our hearts leap up into our mouths.

Word count made yesterday.  I’m wanting fresh corn and other stuff – it is the best time of the year for food after all.

Everybody have a loving and productive day!

Terrible night’s sleep

I have mostly not been having insomnia, but last night was pretty bad.

Today, job search, practice and writing.

Paul is in Ontario staying with Sandra.  They had steak cooked over a fire last night.  I hope Paul is at least able to get Sandra into a canoe – one of the drawbacks of owning a fantastic property is that you’re too busy looking after it to enjoy it.

Wish I was there!