Recently in Aggravations Category

I was reading the Winnipeg Sun today, and was pleased to find that I was not the only one these days who is rather unimpressed with the recent displays of American justice. Two glaring cases come to mind immediately, those of Paris Hilton, and Scooter Libby. One was given a free ride by his President, and the other was given a weak sentence, attempted to get away with 4 days served, and then finally served a shortened sentence, due to ‘good behavior’, which came to be some 20 days, for a crime that many people believe offenders should spend years in prison for even on first offences.

Scooter Libby decided to leak the name of a CIA operative whose husband pissed off the Bush administration, and was sentenced to 30 months in jail for his part. Within a few hours of Libby being refused freedom by an appeal court while he waited for his appeal to be heard, the US President, who swore he would punish those responsible, commuted Libby’s sentence, essentially freeing the one person who has so far been held responsible for this leak, which could easily have caused a serious risk to the US national security. This is the same President who was the leader of the country when the events of September 11 occurred. Glad he sees the security of the country he is burdened with the task of protecting as an important thing. I wonder whether Bush would have been so eager to help his secrets to be kept if Libby had exposed more vitally secret information?

The next… shining example of the American justice system is Paris Hilton, whose crime was one which could easily have cost another life, of many other lives, and while her supporters tried to get her off with 4 days served, a judge forced her to serve her sentence with time off for good behavior. The truly ironic thing? As weak as Hilton's punishment was, it was still more than Bush felt his friend should have to serve for his lapse in national security. This is the system of justice that Dubya says should be implemented(read forced) around the world? Dubya, a dictator who was horribly lenient with his friends, sent his army to take out a pathetic dictator who was brutally violent to his people. Justice? Not in either country.

Hit more for the tale of my recent move.

I hate waiting. I am one of the most impatient people you will ever meet. I am eager to get the new Audio 100 headset a friend has kindly bought me after I ruined my last one, and it is 'in transit' which to me means it is taking far too long to get here. Yup, I am one of those people. The day they turn the transporter from fiction to reality will be the day I am a very, very happy man. I just hope I live to see it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I am gonna go check at the door to see if the postman is here yet. For the hundredth time. This hour.

Damn it. Long time readers know that a few months back, I had a Plantronics Audio 90 headset go dead on me, and had a couple I know in the US kindly order me a new one. Well, in a fit of my own stupidity and clumsiness, I am now on 2, yes count them 2 dead Audio 90's. I have worked up a rigged system where I am using the mic from one, and headphones from the other set, but this will not work in the long term. I hope to get a replacement soon, but I need to work out a go between and so on. Wish me luck!

Unfortunately, my plan to get back to my former home and clean up the stuff I had no choice but to leave behind failed. I am angry about this, because I had planned to go there yesterday with the help of a friend who had offered his help, but then who had never shown up. This was rather aggravating, as I got next to nothing done in the big picture, and as the person was not available today either, I didn't even go back. I know the landlord is probably pissed off at me., but if the caretaker has a decent contract with him, he'll at least have made a little extra cash, and he has plenty of family to help him clean the place out. And that is that. I am moved. Back home. /sigh

I apologize now for the forthcoming rant. I know I just spoke yesterday of being thankful for what we have, not angry about what we do not. I must say I did get what is surely the most interesting and unique Christmas gift I have ever received. Nearly guaranteed eviction. That's right, wrapped in a shiny bow and all, my employer has ensured I will be getting an eviction notice form my landlord due to the fact I am no longer making enough per month to pay my rent. Indeed, their policy is one that does not guarantee part time employees any hours, so I could easily get none, and hell, it's possible this post alone might get me there. However, as I do not know what I did, or who I pissed off to get to the point I am at now, I am not sure I really give a damn anymore. I am left with no doubt that I am being punished, but again, I have no idea why. All I know is that in the week between Christmas and New Years, I am packing and moving back to my parents place. Joy to the world!

I had hoped to avoid this, hoped that this wouldn't become a problem, but unfortunately neither hope seems to have panned out. While walking around at work today, without any cause I could name, and in a time period where they were offering me more hours, my right knee, the opposite of the one I dislocated, began to hurt every so often. Taking it for the odd pains I usually get, I tried to ignore the pain. Alas, it didn't like my ignorance, and proceeded to become a whole lot worse.

Within 10 minutes it had progressed to a great pain every step. My extra hours looked to be near their end before they'd begun. I struggled through the night, doing as much as I could, trying to test the limits of my mobility, but by 8:30, only an hour and a half into the extra time, it was over, they called it on account of immobility, and I went to sit in the lunch room for the half hour I had to wait for my ride home. I really, really hope this isn't a new pattern, cause if so, I am not gonna like this.

I am sorry. I want to make that clear, first and foremost, because I am sad that it came to this. I have been quietly fighting comment and trackback spam on this blog, trying to make sure it affects as few people as possible. This is the first time in a very long time I have actually blogged about this, but I felt you should know, as my readers. If you use a dynamic IP DNS service like Dyndns, no-ip, or others, and use such an domain name for your url, or link to such in your comment line, you will find your comment blocked on this site. The cause of this is the spammers, who have begun to abuse those services and post trackbacks and comments with such url's. I tried to hold back, just deleting the entries, but they keep coming in wave upon wave. Sorry.

It has been over a month since I actually had a chance to take pictures, and by that I mean something other than hobbling around, trying to take a picture before I a) slip and do worse damage to my knee or other body parts or b) can't stand the pain anymore. I had surgery on the 28th, and the knee is being stubborn. I had a doctors appointment today and I suspect he thought I should have been up and walking without problem by now, which I am not. I cannot bend my knee fully, nor can I walk without a visible limp.

I need to have full use of my knees and legs for my work, as 'lift at the knee' is a major stress point there. I worry it'll be another month or more before I am given the green flag to go back to work, and another 2-3 weeks after that before I actually get hours, 2-4 after that before I actually get a decent paycheck. I have applied for EI, and am in temporary receipt of assistance, but I really hate to be on either. I should be making $340 a week gross, not that much every 2-4 weeks net. If I were working right now, I'd be getting 40 hours a week at 48.50 an hour.

The company in charge of the lot that I slipped in and their insurance company are dicking me around. I told them about all this 1 month ago, and all I heard from the claim adjuster was a call with a few minor questions, and another when the guy was out there, asking me to describe the location. That last call was about 2 weeks ago. I called the management company on Tuesday and told the guy that if there isn't significant progress by Friday I am contacting a lawyer. I am sick of this BS. I have now received 2 bills from the city for the $270 for an ambulance ride. I despise owing money, especially when a) it should be covered under taxes, and b) I shouldn't be getting the bills, the management company should. *sigh* Yeah, I am unloading it all. Sorry for making you all the targets. The one bright point are my many friends who frequently ask for updates, and give me well wishes. Thanks one and all.

Why is it that in every form of expression, there comes an equal force of those who feel the need to be complete asses and force people to hold back in their self expression? From newsgroups to blogs, Fotolog to Deviant Art, trolls are there and worthless all around. I was randomly surfing a persons dA profile(mine is here) and noted on the picture that one person, sl00p, was being a complete ass. I also noted that this didn't appear to be the first run in. I went to the persons profile and went back, and noted that the harassment began on a post of a model or friend of the photographer where the girl was naked, holding a pillow in front of her. Now I am not an art critic, so I avoid trying to proclaim what is or is not art.

Sadly, this sl00p person and many others did not refrain. I thought the shot was quite artistic, conveying an innocence, perhaps an unwillingness of the subject to reveal all. Perhaps the subject wasn't even naked. I do not know. I do know, though, that the critique was completely useless and in no way constructive. The replies to the troll bashing, though, were art in themselves. The person defending the troll was eloquent, and clearly highly skilled in defending the moronic nature and sheer stupidity of the troll, while bashing those who tried to defend the artist. God forbid someone actually stand up to a troll, instead of letting them trash everything the artist does. Oh no, we might hurt their feelings. Uggh.

To apply for assistance during the 6-8 weeks minimum I am off work, I need to wait a week and a half for an orientation, and no telling how long after that before I can actually get help to survive while I am medically unable to work at my present job. The benefits would not begin until I actually get accepted, not dating back to my first call, or even my orientation. Their estimate for the wait? 2-4 weeks. To apply for EI, one must wait to get their RoE, which the employer can hold for 14 business days before sending. The applicant must then apply, and their is a 2 week 'you don't get shit' period before benefits kick in. Estimated wait for first payment, 2-4 weeks. Is it any wonder why we have so many fucking homeless here with a below poverty wage?

I am not pleased. Never a strong believer in not shooting thee who delivers grim news, I am trying not to be mad at my doctor who just told me I have at least 6-8 weeks further before I can return to work. That means 6-8 weeks worth of no income, of sitting here on my ass doing nothing, and with precious little to occupy my time, as it is possible another of my pass times is going to be removed, and my first love, photography, is not easy to do from ones couch or bed unless one is much better looking than me. I really find myself asking and encouraging the use of that donate button up there if you have any to spare. Thanks in advance for all who give me their well wishes, and I hope to at least read some of the tech books I have over the next 2 months.

I am very, very much unhappy. I will spend pretty much the next week or so on my couch or in my bed. I was walking to Regent from work tonight after I got off, and slipped on one of numerous patches of ice in the Office Depot parking lot, causing me to dislocate my knee and, I am just discovering, strain my back. To make matters worse, I lie there for nearly an hour while car after car, including some from my own work, drove right by me. I don't know who they were, but if I did, I'd tell them off. You see someone holding their knee on a well below freezing night, hollering for help, you don't just keep on driving. Hell, how hard would it have been to stop 50 feet away like the eventual kind people did and ask what was wrong?

This isn't New York. We don't have constant car jacking's and shit. Even the undesirable and considered dangerous population is primarily downtown, not in Transcona. There is not excusable reason why 30-40 cars, all bearing license plates saying Friendly Manitoba, drove right on by. Even a few walking into the bank well within the distance of my yell ignored it, keeping on walking without even a second glance. Am I mad my knee, the opposite one that was hurt back in the mid 90's, is blown out? Hell yes! I have every intent of calling Office Depot and finding out who is legally responsible for their parking lot. Am I angrier still that I could have gotten hypothermia if those people, the 41st or so car in nearly an hour, didn't stop? Fucking right.

This time the aggravation is with myself. I was sitting in the Toad in the Hole on Main St. on Friday, and a former coworker, when told that I was without TV and internet, asked if I had tried to bypass my Digital Cable box, because sometimes Shaw still pushes a signal through for the basic channels. I replied that I hadn't, because they said they would be killing all signals to my house, even if the digital box was still getting programming info. Well, since I couldn't sleep just now and I heard some odd knocking and was trying to find the source, I tried to plug the cable into the back of the TV. I am now watching Pearl Harbour on ABC. Yeah, The Geek was bested by a coaxial cable. So I do have now something to do other than be bored out of my mind, even if I will miss TechTV, the WB, and UPN, not to mention the Movie Central stations. I do expect all of those who are fans of my regular shows, like West Wing, Angel, Smallville, Andromeda, Enterprise, Everwood, and others that I might miss, to let me know what I missed. In the meantime, I shall watch basic TV.

Ok, so last night I had no power for a few hours, making it impossible to blog, watch TV, or anything else. Today I woke up to my mother calling to ask if I needed money to go to the Y for a shower, as there was a water-main break(pictures shortly) at the end of my street. Thankfully my water is just fine, making me think the water is from another main. I got up, showered, went to look for work only to find my street got flooded with about 5 to 6 inches of water from said water main break, and was slippery as hell. this water also caused all buses to be routed as far away from my street as possible. Then, all 6 of the places I had planned to apply at today were powerless due to either the same outage that hit me, or a new one for that area of downtown since I went to bed. Can I forget this whole day, please?

I concede that the tech pundits were right. The CAN-SPAM act has been in effect for a little over a day now, and while it does actually only apply to the US, my site is hosted there and my spam has not at all slowed, not to mention stopped as it should have. The real problem with the law is that people still greatly worry about the opt out link being a way to simply confirm an email address is real so it can be passed to nearly every other spammer in the world, or one of many advertised in the 'buy a list' spams. This is the ultimate problem with opt out laws like CAN-SPAM, and the spammers know it. Not until one person can track down easily the source of the address will it be anything but an invite to more spam. It's January 2nd, and the spam still flows. Damn.

Let me take a moment of your time to a little about a not so technological topic. This is the tale of my Christmas Eve. I woke up at 9, after about 4 hours sleep, left the house at 10:30, and walked to meet up with my mother to solidify Christmas plans. Had I stopped here, I would have had a great day, a relaxing one for the most part. Sadly, I did not just go home and wait for my parents to pick me up to go to my sisters. Nope, instead I spent the better part of 3 hours at Portage Place, the larger of the downtown malls, and got only gift bags of candy for my sisters kids and a black printer cartridge to show for it. I hit Payless Shoes for what I had been told was a buy one get one free sale, that turned out to be a buy one get the other half off. They only had one show of the style I wear. The other was misplaced somehow.

That was strike one on my day. The second has two parts. I am trying to get back into frequently posted photography, and I decided to take some pictures. The towers at Portage and Main shrouded in fog. The less than expected crowd at the mall. There was also some I took of the trees. Trees that were the epitome of winter shots, no leaves, covered in a light but clearly visible layer of frost, and they looked beautiful. I also got a few of the current status of the upcoming MTS Center. Well, when I was about done at the mall out of frustration, I went to take one or two more pictures, and I got a message no digital photographer ever wants to see from a card with files on it. 'This card needs formatting'.

I came home, tried in vain to get the pictures off, and realized that the only explainable source is Black's Photography, who could find no pictures were they did previously exist. I then gave up, not having a real card reader, only the camera itself, and formatted. This was followed by some disconcerting green colouring with vertical lines on the LCD display and the inability to take pictures while the card is in the camera. In other words the card is toast. It cannot, I suspect, be revived. Not happy at all. Then, after going over to my parents, their CD drive would not open, and a trip to Polo Park's Payless showed not a single pair of dress shoes in my size under $75. The style I wear is $35. This made me and my mother quite pissed off, though we will try the last Payless on boxing day.

I then did go with my parents and grandparents(they brought their own car) to my sisters to have turkey, goodies, and to swap presents. The night was fun, the kids were as usual brats, and loved their candy for the most part. Ont he way out, though, the voltage light popped on in my parent's car, which meant the entire 1 hour drive was using the car's battery, I am told. Well, about 10 minutes into the hour long trip home, the car's headlights had become noticeably weaker. The radio was turned off to try to spare the power to make it as far as possible, but about 5 minutes later it was obvious that with no street lights on the highway it was unlikely that we would be able to make it back to the city at all, and a minute later the car died. We all piled into my grandparents car, and drove back to the city, and I then got a ride home. Thus ending my Christmas Eve. Bah Humbug.

So I have this nice, long rant on the music business and manufactured crap they put out. I had written a bit, and hit a roadblock, so I stopped for about 20 minutes to get my thoughts straight. Well, when I came back to the post, and finished typing it, I noticed that all of my net apps were trying to connect and fail. Thankfully before pressing Save I copied and pasted it into a Notepad app, but that still means I am currently without an internet connection. Let's see. I am unable to connect to the net, my email account is losing emails, and I cannot sleep, even though I have to be up in about 5 or 6 hours. So the highlight of my day was the Two Towers DVD set and the Gollum Statue, once I got it out of the box, which nearly an hour of fiddling.

So, how's your morning going? If you are in the US, or of American descent, you are likely getting some form of poultry or mock bird ready for cooking and eating later tonight, and the rest of the world, or at least my world, we have a day off for the US Holiday. I guess they figured we would get very few calls on Thanksgiving. I was going to call my ISP, but I am fairly certain my answer would be given by an answering service, so it is dead useless to try to get some satisfaction tonight. If, though, the connection is not back, if those two blinking lights on the modem are not gone by morning, I will call, complain, and have someone out here very bloody quick. At the end of hour 2, I am a little frustrated, but I am going to make it through I have no doubt.

Ok, I have just spent the better part of my post work night trying to solve a problem that was surprisingly resilient to all forms of resolution. When I left home yesterday(Sunday) Cody had told me that the computer had given off an error, so I rebooted to a very slow reboot and EXPLORER.EXE using over 200 MB of memory. Having to leave for work, I knew I would be haunted by this on my return, and I was unfortunately 100% correct. It turns out that a video file I had left trying to play the night before was causing the usage, having been launched from the Explorer window the night before, but even after several reboots, whatever had a hold of the program would not let go, and thus my suspicions of it being a virus were borne.

I updated my AV, disconnected from the net the hard way, and proceeded at 1:30 AM to begin a virus scan with Explorer getting the lowest priority in resources, and NAV getting the most. Still, nearly 2 hours later the AV came back with a clean bill of health, so I decided that scorched earth was needed. Instead of the normal format that most do, though, I decided Safe Mode was my best option and proceeded to force a hard reboot into Safe Mode, as 3 straight attempts at soft reboots lasted over 25 minutes. Once in Safe Mode I tried to excise the suspect file, all to no avail, and then needed a command Prompt Safe Mode to get rid of it, though now my system runs like a dream. I still, though, do not know if it was virus riddled.

Ok, so I got in on Blogrolling.com early, when it still had good free accounts. Hell, I think it was even still in beta. I have three blog rolls, and use them to link to some of the best sites I find online. There is a small problem, which actually branches to more than one problem. I cannot access any but one of my blogrolls now. I am not sure if this is related to an admitted hack of the service, or if it is another, far worse thing. Jason talks about moving to new code, and does mention blogroll editing being offline, and also no mention of it being fixed, so I can hope that the site is just in a rebuild now and not in a far worse issue of the service being further limited for those who cannot or do not wish to upgrade(mine is a cannot due to nothing but PayPal as form of payment), but time will tell.

I know, this is not supposed to be a two blogs at once thing, but hell, it fits in both. Those who read the Photolog will note that this is a text post, but you'll see why in a minute, if the title didn't give it away. I am not happy at all today. I paid $180 CDN with shipping and tax for my HP Photosmart 320 digital camera, with which many of the pictures from here came from. It is now pretty much worthless, as it is not requiring a power source and allows only the length of the adaptor cord from said power source in order to take a picture, and let me tell you, the best pictures in this city are no where near a convenient power source. Therefore, I am pretty limited in the pictures I can take, and I have no idea how to fix the problem, or what the problem is other than it will not take batteries.

I have been telling myself for awhile now that I need to get a more digital camera appropriate set of batteries for the HP, preferably rechargeable due to my stubbornness for using the LCD to frame shots and take them, and as it was payday today, and there was to be plenty of decorations to take pictured of today, I decided to go to Staples and pick some up. Well, I went and after humming and comparing, I got an 8 pack of Duracell batteries made for such uses, and proceeded about 20 feet from the store, to pop the camera open and try out the batteries. Well, nothing happened. I ensured they were in right, and still nothing. I tried the other 4, and still nothing. I went back into the store, and had them hook up the adaptor they had, and it powered up fine.

This was good, I thought, because at least the camera wasn't fried. Well, they tried the batteries in other cameras and the batteries were fine too. Damn. I knew this would be bad. After trying another four brands of batteries nothing came close to sparking non tethered life in the camera, and I knew I had trouble. I went to Radio Shack, not willing to give up my love of taking pictures, and shelled out $30 for an adaptor, and then went to work, but after 8 hours of being tethered to the closest plug, and to the very short power cable, I have come to the conclusion I have a $200 piece of crap(with adaptor) and that this is a waste of a camera. I might try to find someplace that can take a quick(and free) look and tell me if it is fixable cheap, but I hold no hope. No more HP for Me!

Today I took almost 200 calls. This is essentially one week since the ramp up in calls began. Therefore, I approach tomorrow with a little more worry and trepidation than I normally would. You see, while tomorrow should be the end of this significant increase in calls at work on our main account, it also interprets to be what could be my most stress filled and anxiety riddled day on the phones. You see, today I took nearly 200 calls, as I mentioned, and there was 6 of us on the phones most of the night. Tomorrow there are 3 scheduled, and one person was looking pretty ill today. The other person has an amazing ability to call in sick at the worst times. This means that at best outlook, there will be 3, at worst, just me. They expect twice the number of calls that we had today.

I will spare you all from reading the following, as it is rather lengthy, but suffice it to say this was just posted by me to the FreeLamo.com forums out of extreme aggravation over the utter lack of intelligence and gross levels of ignorance portrayed by the many who simply state they feel he should go to jail as he has already confessed. I was one of the first 20 registered users there, and now find myself avoiding the forums there because I do not have the time to replay to every moron who doesn't understand the case of the facts. So, if you want to read more, please press the button below. If not, read the rest of the posts on the subject.

It seems I will only be using MSN's service for about another month or so, then I will be moving to some other service for IM, though I am not entirely sure which one yet. "As of Oct. 15, users of Microsoft's free Web-based MSN Messenger and its Windows XP-based Windows Messenger will need to upgrade their software to a newer version or be shut out of the service, the software giant said Wednesday. MSN Messenger users will need to upgrade to version 5.0 of higher; Windows Messengers customers will need to upgrade to version 4.7.2009 or higher; and consumers with MSN Messenger for Mac OS X will have to use version 3.5 or higher. The last MSN Messenger to be released was version 6. Meanwhile, Oct. 15 also will mark the deadline for Trillian support for MSN Messenger."

Ok, this is a line. I am drawing it in my head, so just trust me, it's there. Ok? Good. I have received, in a very short span of time, about 45 messages that either tell me my .pif attached email did not get through to it's intended recipient, or kindly informing me I have a virus. I had a few, as well, telling me my email was rejected because the attachment type is know to have been used in recent viral activities, but I could send it by .zip file instead if I so choose. I did not send these emails. Did you? I doubt it. These are all viruses, indeed, all of them SoBig.F, and all of them sent by people with my email address somewhere the virus found it. Therefore, since you my readers are the most likely to have my email address. I ask, nay I beg, Please Patch Now. Then, go here.