Thursday, September 30, 2010

NSFW – Thesis on sexual partners

babyalien

Well to start off that’s kinda how the day was. We was thrown to the wolves like babies to the slaughter. In other words our first time on the phones. And we actually talked to real, live people (how disgusting!!)! But I did have a bit of fun, I had one call that was a little kid going ‘goo goo ga ga gee gee’. One girl in my class had a drunk person call. Yeah, its gonna be like that. Fun times. The redeeming thing is that it pays pretty good, and it looks like I am going to have 2.5 months of full time hours before I get put on casual part time, so not too bad at all.

And to round out what the topic was…. Follow the link below. Just don’t read it at work.

http://jezebel.com/5652114/college-girls-power-point-fuck-list-goes-viral-gallery

Its bloody hilarious. The wifey is currently reading it and chuckling heartily.

Monday, September 27, 2010

First day of work.

So I had my first day of work today. I didn’t get much sleep at all last night, maybe two hours, but I wasn’t nervous it was just my mind was going a mile a minute with other idiotic stuff, and maybe that was me being nervous. Although I’ve never been ‘nervous’ like that. But anyway… Yeah, first day of work. It was pretty relaxed, not much studying overmuch, mostly a history of the company, a basic covering of our jobs, our benefits, or employee discounts, etc… Apparently this whole week will be a bit of casual studying, meeting  HR and Union reps, heading over to listen to people on the phones, etc.

Our employee discounts are pretty good. A 32mbps internet speed is only $50 compared with $85 (in the US I had a 3mbps line), cell phone with unlimited txting, data plan and basic phone is just $43 and I can add 3 more people to that. When I went to the MTS store the other day and looking at a plan for Kathy, me and my mother we were quoted at $170. Plus we get to save $25 off a monthly bus pass. So not too shabby employee benefits.

The group I am in seems to be pretty nice, 6 women and 3 guys including me, we’ve sat around and had lunch together and we’re getting to know each other, so its pretty cool.

Overall it was a good day and looks to be a good week.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Miscellaneous stuff

125kj-coilgun-500x375

Looks like a movie prop eh? Not so! Its a real functioning coil gun. Pretty bloody cool. This guy’s post shows pictures and plans for it too (I hope he patented it first).

Here it is in action.

I don’t know anything about these things but his projectile seems big and some of the comments suggest he’s kept his power down on purpose. I wonder with a smaller, lighter projectile, and more power how this would work.

And for Cliff, although he’s probably seen this already…

Oh and one more thing to get you huffy and irked… Yes Virginia, there really is two ‘justice’ systems.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Damn you all to hell!

Its started, and we’ll never be the same again. What am I talking about? The day that apes take over the world. It has begun! And its all the fault of a little boy.

Would you like to play a game?

Yes that’s right. That’s a gorilla with a DS, can the end of the world be far off?

Clearly they have already evolved better parenting skills.

Finish your homework first!

Little boy you’ve doomed us all!

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Bad news

Except that its now good news…

Last Saturday (Sept 11th) I received an email from MTS saying ‘thank you for your participation, but we regret to inform you…’. So not very good news and it was a bit of a letdown. MTS pays really well, plus the benefits are really good and so, as I said, a bit of a letdown.

Spent the rest of the week talking with a CEO of a very large company getting his help redoing my resume and he said he would pass it on to people in his company, a company that is part of the ‘Group’, and a good friend of his is the CEO of another large company and would send my resume to him as well. So all in all a very good guy to have helping me. There were no promises made, he will not pressure anyone to hire me, but he said he can ask them to look over my resume, and as I told him the help he gave me on my resume is great as it is.

I had made plans to go to ‘Employment Insurance’ in the morning and see what kind of help they could be in getting a job. Since I have been out of the country for 9 years I wasn’t expecting any money, but if training was available I would be up for that. Either way just getting some better ideas of the job market and what is available and what resources I could use would be a great help. However I needed my resume printed and I don’t have access to a printer on this computer, so I had to wait for my mother to come back from Gimli.

Then this morning I got a call at 8:40am (waking me up, who gets up earlier than that? That’s just crazy.) from MTS asking me if I was still interested in the job and that if I was could I please take another assessment that they will send out to me. So I did that other assessment and got a call around 3pm saying that I got the job. They still have to do reference checks and a criminal background check (No Cliff, I did not use you as a reference, and not a word about Prague!), but I should be clear on both of those. The head of HR in my last company really liked me and she said she would have no problem being a reference for me (recently reconfirmed).

If you’re wondering why the ‘regret to inform you’ email and now getting the job, a few people had to bow out so I was an alternate I suppose you can call me. Out of the 3,000 people that applied I was in the top 25 (22 positions were available). So not too shabby.

So today was a good day.

Friday, September 10, 2010

I won!

Except I didn’t.

I did win an auction for a video card I wanted for my system (an old AGP system). I received it in the mail today and proceed to install it in the computer and then the computer promptly refuses to boot up. My first thought is I knocked off some power cords. Nope. Then I think the power supply isn’t enough. Nope (I have a 600W). I reinstall my old card and the computer boots up no problem. So then I think its the card. Maybe the card was borked from the beginning. So I email the guy and see what his thoughts are.

Meanwhile I am looking around to see what I can find out and one thing stuck out at me was that on the Powercolor web site it mentions changing the bios to 1.6V. The seller responds with a quote he pulled from somewhere saying many P4 motherboards (like I have D865PERL) are a 1.5V motherboard.

So it looks like I have a 1.6V card with a 1.5V motherboard.

Fuck.

So….. Anyone in the market for a Powercolor HD3850 512mb GDDR3 256bit AGP graphics card?

And….. Does anyone have a X1950Pro 512mb GDDR3 256bit AGP card (what I currently have that is broken) laying around?

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Playing games

So I haven’t been adding more to my blog because I’ve been playing games. Actually one game.

Star Trek BotF

Its like Masters of Orion  but set in the Star Trek universe, so pretty decent. I’ve been putting in a good amount of hours on it. Since this is the first time in months I’ve been able to actually play a game for more than 5 minutes this is a good thing.

So pardon my lack of posting… again, but I’m kinda relaxing and liking a stress free environment.

No new news on the job, I’m still waiting for the letter to come in the mail. So hopefully soon.  If we can we’ve decided to try and find a house to buy rather than rent. It may mean a few more months at my mother’s (if we are allowed to stay), but it would mean less payment than rent, and no problems with Ares. But we’ll see. That all depends on me getting a good paying job.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Typing, typing and more typing

I suppose I should keep on writing or Cliff will start crying or something…

So in preparation of my next assessment at MTS I am trying to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard, which is what I normally do. In fact I normally type with just my middle two fingers, but I have been fairly quick doing it this odd way. So today I am trying to type without looking at the keyboard. So far its about 50/50 in looking down, its just habit and hard to break.

I do need to learn how to type properly though, so its off to find a typing tutor.

Fun fun.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

So the month is almost over

So the whole month of the blog challenge is almost over. Its been pretty interesting and its seems that Cliff has a good group of friends to hang with. I’ve learned a lot from the group and its been interesting to read about your lives and thoughts. I’m definitely keeping up following the lot of you. Not only do you guys have some of the same thoughts I do about agri-business, but some of you are further along than I am, and are doing some of the things I want to be doing. So being completely selfish I want to keep in contact so I can ask the questions I need so I don’t have to learn them the hard way. :)

I wasn’t really able to really follow everybody, everyday though. With the move and whatnot it put a serious damper on my time, it actually got worse once I arrived in Wpg because of family being around. In hotels I could be on and ignore Kathy all I wanted, but I can’t ignore the rest of the family. That would be wrong.

So Cliff is lucky to have a cool group to hang with.

News today: My contact within MTS said I am going to be sent for one more round of assessment testing, which means I passed the interviews. So good news there. Bad news is we spend near $300 at the vet today because Ares had his rashes start to appear again, and the vet gave us other pills, plus heartworm pills we don’t have to worry about in CA. But the good news is we got some good info out of him for things to do, and what we need to do in the future. He has more things to do, but nothing that is in dire need, just more maintenance stuff.

So that’s it for today. I guess we have one more to write for tomorrow?

Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

So it went well.

Thank you for those of you sending positive wishes my way about the interview, it seemed to work. I think I did pretty good on the interview. It started off with me telling them about my accident while scouting out the building and that 4 days in Canada and I get hit from behind. One of the ladies said, ‘Welcome to Canada.’, which was pretty funny. Before the interview started we talked a little about the drive we had coming from California and the job market in the US. They really could not believe its as bad as it is, 80% of people looking for work will not find it. It was pretty shocking to them.

Then they started asking me questions in turn, each reading from the same sheets and writing down my answers. I only messed up one answer and that was asking me about current promotions they have going. My answer to that was, ‘I honestly do now know right now, but I can certainly see why the training is 6 weeks full time.’. But, I did answer everything else, and on some of the answers I made them laugh a good bit. They asked what I had over other applicants and I said that I assumed I was one of the oldest applicants and as such my ‘drama’ days are over. They laughed at that answer and my ‘inside’ source when I told her that said that was a great answer. She seemed to think I did pretty well. I hope so. But, we’ll see. I’m not going to hope too much in case I get disappointed. I’ll find out in a week and a half if I got the job or not.

The other good news is that I was able to pick up a really good monitor for a really good price today, so I’m pretty happy about that. My computer is now up and running. Although I still do not have a lot of time to get on it, it is nice to have it back.

Ares has settled down a bit although he is now getting pushy about his boundaries. He doesn’t like staying in the basement at all, but my mother said if he stays at the landing at the top of the stairs that's ok. Plus her husband, who is not overly happy about a dog in the house, has been petting him and it looks as though they’ve been doing a small bit of bonding. So that's good too.

Overall. Not a sucky day.

 

Read these other blogs because Cliff will make someone a good wife someday! Cliff - Peer Pressure Works, Chad - The Grind, Kelly - ‘Round the Bend, Kim - In Desperate Need of Entertainment, Erron – From the Inside Looking In, Kyle - Blog, Liam - In the Now, James – Feelings of White, Shaun - Expedition of Truths, Tammy - Tam I am, Vlad – Analog Coast, Janine – Because.