Someone Used to Write Here

2009-03-30T15:56:00.000-07:00

CBC: Marketplace on Door-to-door Energy Contracts

CBC: Marketplace recently did a story on door-to-door energy contracts in Ontario and the high-pressure (and in some cases illegal) sales tactics used to sell them. It focused on Direct Energy and Universal Energy. In an earlier post I wrote about Ontario Energy Savings' tactics and those described in that Marketplace episode sound very similar.

Door to Heaven found in Princeton, BC

2009-02-28T10:17:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by Tyym

Great pic by my friend Tymm looks like a celestial doorway.

2008-08-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

Amazing Story about Dogs and Babies

Lex-: this lady zips into our parking lot (stops in the entrance of it, turns it off) runs in and shes like do you see those 2 dogs in my van? they arnt mine, i was in the sw and i saw this dog running down the road so i went to get it to look at the tags and it jumped in the van
Lex-: then her friend called and said her car broke down, so she went to go pick her up and 15 minutes later she found a nother dog
Lex-: so that dog jumped in the car, so she got to her friends broken down car, who had a baby, then drove them to get help or whatever, so the lady had her friends baby in the back of her van
Lex-: so i had to call animal services to see if they could pick the dogs off before we closed cuz it was the long wknd, they said they could so i went out to get the dogs with her
Lex-: well the dogs locked the van
Charles: ...
Lex-: baby is in the back...
Charles: oh god
Lex-: the lady is freakin out, she didnt have a spare key and it wasnt even her baby!
Lex-: well the baby started freaking out, im out there trying to calm this baby down thru the window playing peek a boo and stuff (made it worse)
Lex-: while she called ama or whatever and shes like the dogs locked the van and my friends baby is in there!
Lex-: they came within 5 minutes (good thing)
Lex-: she takes the baby out closes the door, dogs are still in there...
Lex-: i run out there get them out before they lock it again! gosh!
Lex-: well she leaves after all the comotion, we have the dogs, and we cannot reach the owners cuz they didnt update the dogs microchips so we had their old number
Charles: this story is amazing
Lex-: then @ 5 oclock ( we close a 530 animal services called and she wouldnt be able to make it by closing because she was dealing with a dog attack. so she asked if i could meet her somewhere with the dogs
Lex-: so we ended up taking them to our place and wait for the by law officer. they were little shitzu's, smelly barky shitzu's but they were kinda cute.

2008-06-18T23:19:00.001-07:00

Groundhog Invades Cat Sanctuary

Groundhog Invades Cat Sanctuary
Originally uploaded by slearch

The food laid out for the cats at the Cat Sanctuary near the parliament buildings in Ottawa gets eaten by a very non-cat animal. We stood there and watched it for a while and it ate for literally 10 minutes straight, only then switching over to the water dish next to it.

2007-12-09T21:15:00.001-08:00

Amoral Adhesive

Charles: have you ever bought something
Charles: that had like
Charles: a label stuck to it
Charles: saying something like
Charles: "warning, before using this, please read the manual"
Charles: ie something that is meant to be removed
Charles: only to try to remove it
Charles: and it have this super adhesive glue on the back
Charles: that gets left behind on the thing you bought
Charles: and be able to clean it off with nothing?
Shaver: hm
Shaver: why do you have to remove the sticker?
Charles: the specific label that i had
Charles: said "valve may have opened while shipping, please close before turning on
Charles: and it was right on the front
Shaver: :/
Shaver: yeah i've had that
Shaver: but i usually leave labels on
Charles: (this is an espresso machine btw)
Shaver: just cuz they've such a pain
Charles: so i removed it, left behind a lot of glue
Charles: so i tried scrubbing it off
Charles: and it just left scratch marks around the glue
Shaver: :/
Shaver: unlukcy
Charles: making the slight eyesore i would have had with the label into a large one
Charles: on a fairly expensive present from anna
Charles: and now i am pissed
Charles: i think my plan is to put my own sticker on it
Shaver: a big smiley face
Charles: good idea
Charles: god
Charles: any company that uses that adhesive is amoral
Charles: :P
Shaver: yeah that is pretty awful
Charles: it is on a contoured surface too
Charles: so putting a sticker on it isn't a simple matter
Charles: ok
Charles: if you are ever faced with this amoral adhesive
Charles: lime juice
Shaver: seriously?
Charles: once again i should have checked the internet before i started scrubbing
Shaver: yeah
Shaver: that's a theme of my life
Shaver: getting angry over things that are easily solved with a simple google seach
Shaver: search
Charles: slearch
Shaver: slearch
Shaver: yes
Shaver: mistyped
Charles: it would have had some level disfiguration anyway i think
Charles: but it would not have been as bad
Charles: fuck
Charles: in the grand scheme of things this is a pretty dumb thing to get worked up about
Charles: but i can't help it
Shaver: oh those are the worst things
Shaver: if something like that is bothering me
Shaver: i have trouble studying
Shaver: or sleeping
Shaver: sometimes
Shaver: i generally work from lowest priority to highest
Charles: i wish i could edit----> undo portions of my life
Charles: this is the top of my list
Shaver: life is the process of realizing that an undo function would make it worthless
Shaver: that is my attempt at a grand statement for today
Charles: not bad
Shaver: worthless is a poor choice of words
Charles: meaningless?
Shaver: but it's a good starting poing
Shaver: point
Shaver: sure
Charles: worth less?
Charles: haha
Shaver: yeah
Shaver: that'd actually be better

2007-11-26T21:54:00.000-08:00

An Intense Moral Dilemma

My old roommate Tim was against killing anything. He hated spiders perhaps even more than me, but if we found one in our apartment he would want to catch it and escort it out the door rather than let me throw a phone book at it. I guess this rubbed off on me, because last night I discovered this little guy scurrying over my floor.

I trapped him easy enough, but didn't know what to do with him. Tim's brother suggested on MSN that I let him out in the apartment lobby, but it didn't really look like he had anywhere to go in there (it's just a stairway to the upstairs suite anyway). I briefly considered the basement, but I don't think it would have been a great idea to start a family down there. Letting him outside seemed like a death sentance -- it's around 0C here. I was torn! What would Tim do?

Well, I took him in his glass down the street to someone else's house and set him down near it. Hopefully he found a hole inside or under their porch or something. Best of luck little buddy.

2007-11-22T20:33:00.000-08:00

Ontario Energy Savings: Scum of the Earth

Ontario Energy Savings is a company that offers to fix energy costs for Ontario Hydro customers at a rate higher than the current rate to "guard you against uncertainty in the market". Why are they the scum of the earth?

The main reason is their sales tactics. Employees who are presumably on commission sell contracts door-to-door. They usually open with something like "I'm from Ontario Energy Savings and I need to check if your hydro rates are protected." The name "Ontario Energy Savings" coupled with their "need" to check suggest to the customer that the person at their door is from Ontario Hydro or, at the very least, some utility the customer already has an account with. The employee then asks to see a Hydro Bill and copies down the account number from it. They then say that they can save you money by fixing your electricity rates and that thousands of customers have reported such savings, boy energy rates are sure to go up don't you read the news? Just sign here and you will be protected.

If you ask them to leave the forms here to let you think it over, they tell you that you can just sign it now and cancel any time within the next 10 days. This is true -- it's actually part of Ontario law that any door-to-door contract has a "cooling off period" of 10 days wherin the contract can be cancelled. After the 10 days the company actually has to call you and ask you if you still want to enter into the contract. This call is recorded (again by law) and you may ask for a copy of the recording.

My first contact was with a young lady at about 9pm last summer. I kept asking her to leave the papers with me and I'd talk it over with Anna and send them in if I decided to sign. She was adamantly against this. I was kind of sketched out at some random company going door to door asking for account numbers, so I passed.

The second time was maybe a month later. Anna was sick so I slipped out to grab some Subway for us. When I got back there was a contract tacked to our cork board. She was kind of out of it and the guy had pressured her and given her the line about being able to cancel within 10 days. We called the next day to cancel, and they told us it was cancelled. We then got the 10 day follow-up call asking us to confirm our participation. Not once, but five times. FIVE TIMES?! Good lord. What a bunch of scums.

We have since turned Ontario Energy Savings away at our door twice without talking to them. That is 4 times in 3 months or less.

This company victimizes people with high-pressure sales tactics to get them to sign expensive long-term contracts. In fact, if they suddenly changed their deal from a bad one to an awesome one I would still hate them -- their sales tactics are that disgusting. There are many stories on the web about Ontario Energy Savings tricking people into signing contracts, claiming affiliation with Ontario Hydro to gain access to apartment buildings, and even convincing a couple's 18 year old son to sign the contract (and confirm the follow up call!) under the pretense that they had already spoken with his parents (any household member 18 years of age is able to sign this kind of contract). Since it is likely that the employees are on commission it is hard to get mad at the people at the door; I'm closer to feeling sympathy for them for having what appears to be a terrible job.

Ontario Energy Savings truly is the scum of the earth.

2007-11-21T08:01:00.000-08:00

YEAH IKEA

I spent most of yesterday assembling a wardrobe from Ikea and the only thing I accomplished was discovering that it had a little defect causing one of the doors to not close. Disassembling it isn't really possible, and it definitely won't fit in the Fit, so here we are. It would be pretty weak if they can't do anything about it.

2007-11-20T11:34:00.001-08:00

So one year later I decide to make another post. Maybe it was because I ran this blog through this and it gave me Elementary School! What a colossal slap in the face! Perhaps I have to start using gargantuan verbiage to elevate that ranking! Boy am I doing a bad job!

Also after watching the latest Dexter I don't really see how there can be a third season which is kind of unfortunate. Maybe if they just stuck to the books they could have made it last longer.

2006-11-13T21:12:00.000-08:00

First NHL Game Ever

So for my birthday Anna bought us tickets to see Ottawa play Montreal. I had never been to an NHL game before, and it was quite an experiences. First of all, I paid $4 for a small pop. Four dollars. Two toonies. A six-inch at subway + change. What a joke.

Before the players came out onto the ice there was this huge epilepsy-inducing Senators highlight clip show being projected on the ice - it was really quite painful. Despite all my griping to this point I had an awesome time and would go again. It was an exciting game and watching it in person made me appreciate how fast it is down there.

The game was kind of disappointing in the sense that Ottawa took a tough loss 5-3. Gerber made an amazing save in period 2, but let a couple softies in that took the air out of a third period comeback that looked like it was going to happen.

Oh yeah and Montreal fans. Tons of Montreal fans.

2006-11-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon www.physicsforums.com, and now I find myself addicted to helping the people there with their math problems. There is a whole section for math, and maybe with my background I can help some people out.

2006-10-28T22:27:00.000-07:00

Two games tonight and both were snoozers. Ottawa and Boston was scoreless until late in the second (Heatley got some backdoor pass from Spezza on a 5-on-3), but then the Sens gave it away in the third and lost 2-1.

As for the Edmonton game, I feel really sorry for the Edmonton fans that probably paid double for their tickets so that they could see Ovechkin light it up. Both team seemed to be trappin' it up and it was 1-0 until like the 50 min mark.

Also the Singleton 2x today was a disaster.

2006-10-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Spam

Spam no longer tells me that I need a bigger cock. For some reason, modern spam is just an unintelligible string of unrelated words. Take this for example:

"Giorgi Beck" writes:
system using metrics to shine a light on the right ideas and get people
international forces to remain even in the face of the violence, saying
been "very much a part of our strategy all along." HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our
Andrew Flintoff hitting 59 in a 144-run victory. The White House earlier had said
are not at the center of day to day business. They are running
because it was stating something that we've been talking publicly about for months,"
of senior management. They give something for people to put on
tight angle. Mahmood cashed in with an lbw and yet another edge to Read - who
our Connexions and Correspondence....

I was with this guy up to the stuff about systems of metrics, but then he lost me. I mean, it gives me no links to websites offering me the best meds on the web, nor does it offer the lavish lifestyle of working from home for $5000 a week. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME GIORGI BECK!?!!??!

2006-10-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

I'm recovering now from back spasms caused by an injury at the gym. I never really ask the people in charge how to use machines - I just read the instructions on the machine and hope for the best. I guess that was a bad idea.

Physiotherapy seems fine, although today when I went it seemed like the physiotherapist was just too busy to see me. She kinda hooked some electrodes up to me and left for a while, then came back, stuck some pins in me and left for a while, and so on. After it was all done she stretched my back out a little then got me the hell out of there. I assume it's helping, so whatever.

2006-01-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

Seems that gym-goers are just as dumb wherever you go.

2005-12-25T22:19:00.000-08:00

A Few Things

Tucker Carlson

"Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York."

"Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he's nice but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada."

-Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson is a conservative "pundit" in the states with frequently inflamatory views. I had heard of him before, but only because Jon Stewart was a guest on a show he co-hosted called Crossfire. He's obviously some kind of bozo, but he's become kind of the 'voice of the right' in the states. It goes without saying that as a Canadian I had a strong reaction when I heard these comments, and at first thought I figured Americans would probably have a similar reaction to these as when anyone makes a bigoted statement. Perhaps not. More from the right in the states (these are from Ann Coulter):

"[Canadians] better hope the United States does not roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent."

"It's always the worst Americans who go there."

"We could have taken them over so easy. But I only want the western part, with the ski areas, the cowboys, and the right wingers. They're the only good parts of Canada."

Commence eye-rolling. But seriously, how do these people get on TV? I guess it has to be that it makes good television, but these people are... respected in their areas. I mean what the hell.

Secondhand Lions

A movie I only saw the second half of. It is "a coming-of-age story about a shy, young boy sent by his irresponsible mother to spend the summer with his wealthy, eccentric uncles in Texas." The uncles own a lion, spin tall tales about hijinks with an arab named 'The Sheik", and get into barfights. SPOILER ETC.

Ok, so at the end the uncles die, and when the kid comes back to the property to see what he's inherited, a helicopter appears and lands. Out steps a young petroleum company executive, and he explains that he is the grandson of "The Shiek" and that he heard the uncles died on the news. His grandfather always told stories of them, he says, and so the audience finds out that the tall tales weren't so tall after all.

Ok.

My point here is that this proves no such thing. The uncles had a lot of money, what's stopping them from paying someone and saying 'when we die fly in on a helicopter and claim to be the grandson...' etc.

It proves NO SUCH THING.

Merry Christmas

2005-11-24T01:25:00.000-08:00

How to Work Out Like a Champion

1. To stretch, find a big complicated-looking weight machine to stretch against. These have a lot of little handles and such that make it easy to stretch against. After you're done, maybe take a breather by leaning against it and taking a drink of water.

2. In between sets, sit and rest on whatever machine you were using. Feel free to break out a book, have a drink of water, you know, whatever.

3. When using dumbells, try to stand as close to the dumbell rack as possible. This allows you to see the dumbells you aren't using more clearly. It also allows you to put your dumbells back with minimal walking (ew!).

4. If for some reason you find yourself lifting weights away from the rack, don't fret. The obvious solution to this problem is to simply put the weights you are using down wherever you happen to be, then walk away! Out of sight, out of mind.

5. If you run into a buddy at the gym, the best way to talk to him is to sit on whichever is next to the one he is using. This way you're not standing up, allowing you to shoot the breeze with minimal expentiture of energy. If you're feeling spicy you can stand up, but be sure to obstruct a nearby machine as much as possible.

2005-11-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

I'm Grad I Graduated

My father came to Victoria for my Master's graduation. It was the first time I had seen him in about 5 years, so it was quite the trip. He's still pretty much the same guy; most of the time he comes off as a rough-around-the-edges redneck, but every once in a while he'll tell a story or make a comment on something that show's there's more going on. Maybe these stories are just meant to make the listener think that, but I really don't think so.

Here are some pictures

This is me with my dad during the reception after the grad ceremony.

This is my dad with my Uncle Graham. Graham was the only other family able to make it to the ceremony, and a couple days after that he took us up to his home in Duncan. This was taken at a lookout point on the Malahat.

This is my cousin Julia, Graham's daughter. Isn't she adorable?!

This is my other cousin Liam. He's seven years old, but apparently reads and comprehends at some unfathomable level. This Halloween, he told his dad that he wanted to dress up as "a hand". This to me is the first proof that this kid was going to be way smarter than me - no way did I have ideas that good when I was his age.

2005-11-03T21:31:00.000-08:00

Ultimate

The pattern always seems to be the same. All the teams in the league are better than us, and they know it. Every game, for the first 15 minutes or so, they call us pretty hard - that was out, that's a foul, that's a "pick" etc etc. Then, when they are up the inevitable 4 or 5 points, they loosen up, start laughing, "this is all for fun" attitude and all that. We can't call anything, or else we're being poor sports. It's one of the most frustrating feelings in the world - for me at least - to not be playing on a level playing field. I can definitely say that this semester was not what I had in mind when I signed us up.

2005-11-02T15:56:00.000-08:00

Just a short one today. I noticed at the mall that, when given an empty cup and a fountain pop machine, I still mix. Some orange, some rootbeer, some cola... what am I, five?

2005-10-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

So yeah, the "Sunshine Garden". Sounds made up to me, and even the business card wants to call it something else, but I was there. Tara decided to buy me dinner as a belated birthday present, and I could hardly argue. This place, however, was ... something. We were served by a cute older Chinese lady who knew maybe 10 words of English - including handsome, directed at yours truly (cha-ching!). Before ordering, she brought a little piece of paper with some english questions on it and then pointed at them for us - ie, DO YOU LIKE SPICY FOOD, DO YOU LIKE SWEET AND SOUR. Shake head, shake head. Nod, nod.

Anyways, we wanted to order some chicken chow mein, but there was none on the menu, so Tara finally tried to convey this to her by saying 'chow mein' and flapping her arms like a chicken 'till she got it. That got settled well enough, but as we started to order our next item she just wandered off... right. We got it worked out though.

Meal was good, we were leaving, when she gave us the business cards and brought out another sheet of paper with TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS COME HERE. She was such a cute little old lady, so go there! Don't tell them I sent you though, as they won't understand.

2005-10-24T01:43:00.000-07:00

From Tara's blog. Well done Tara, well done.

So not even two hours ago I turned 26. As in, "A man in his late 20's was charged with assault last night after a disagreement during a poker game. Reports indicate that the victim may have called 3 cold with 97o and gone 'runner runner'. More at 11."

2005-10-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

Yes. Last friday I went to see Opeth in Vancouver, and I must say they were fantastic.

The two opening bands were Street (from Vancouver) and Fireball Ministry (from 'the Grange' most likely). Street was better than Fireball Ministry, but neither of them really belonged. Street had kind of a fast 4/4 throughout their songs, almost like a punk band, but the singer's appearance definitely screamed...um... screamo. Fireball was straight-up biker rock, and at one pointthe singer made a joke to the crowd about their huge bald drummer raping us after the show. Right.

So, Opeth. I was near front left of the stage, anticipating what I hoped to be the best show of the year. Unfortunately for me, tons of metalcore/emocore kids come to metal shows and just basically crash around in the crowd flailing their arms everywhere. As soon as Opeth started, 2 or 3 of these scums smashed into me in some way, so I just bailed out of there and went near the back to rock out solo.

So, the setlist, along with Mike's in-between song commentary (paraphrased and occasionally edited for hilarity/memory):

The Baying of the Hounds

"Are there any... old school fans here?"
*cheers*
"Fantastic."

When

"Are you ready to.... rock?"
*cheers*
"Are you ready to... cock, rock?"
*cheers and nervous laughter*

Bleak

"How is everyone... feeling?"
*cheers*
"Fantastic."

In My Time of Need

(really paraphrased because he rambled on and on for like 5 minutes)
"Actually, the producer of our latest album, or wait, actually he was the engineer, in the studio he did the edit for this song... by the way the edit fucking sucks... and in the song I say the word..
*throws the horns \m/*
"Satan"
*cheers*
"... but for some reason he was religious and edited out the word..."
*throws the horns \m/*
"Satan"
*cheers*
"... so please, sing along during this song and sing with me when I say..."
*throws the horns \m/*
"Satan"
*cheers*

The Grand Conjuration

I can't remember what he said before the Moor, but I believe it was something about cock rock again *slaps forhead*.

The Moor

"This next song is the... softest song we've ever written. It is also the.. sissiest song we've ever written. Actually, this song fucking sucks. But we're Opeth so when we suck it's still pretty fucking good."

Deliverance

"Ok, I want to do an experiment for this next song - I want you to all headbang throughout the _entire_ song. I dunno if you've heard... in music.. whatever there's .... 3/4? 4/4? all that crap... . Well this whole song is in 4/4. Here is an example of a... pop... 4/4"
*Drummer starts a standard 4/4 beat, and Mendez starts playing Billie Jean ;)*
"Here is what we are going to be playing"... * drummer does a slower beat*.
"This song, which is our last song, is from the album Blackwater Park... it is called... ... Blackwater Park."

Blackwater Park

Crowd chants "Opeth, Opeth", and they obviously come back out. Mike introduces the band members to the sound of Per playing "No Quarter" on the keys. He introduces Peter as being signed to a basketball team, while he informs the crowd that he has changed his name to "Steve Gutterberg" or "Stever Guttenberg" or something of that nature. Everyone in crowd looks at each other nervously, waiting for Per and Peter to call the white coats.

Demon of the Fall (encore)

So, overall a pretty fuckin' rippin' set. They played 'When', which is kind of an obscure song but which has always been one of my Opeth favourites, and they also played The Moor and Blackwater Park which are songs I had always wanted to see live. The crowd was the worst part about it, but then again maybe I'm just getting old :).

2005-10-20T01:49:00.000-07:00

It has just occured to me that I only created this to put off doing some math. It's not so bad - there have been many times over the last few months where I've thought of something decently ... thoughtful ... and wanted to record it somewhere. I had a similar thing going here, but I really hated the interface. Perhaps my now-longer years will cause me to somehow take this more seriously. Wish me luck.