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Posted 5 months ago at 19:30. 1 comment
Sorry I haven’t written much in the past month. Could you even tell? Anyway, there’s a reason.
I’m pretty reliant on an internet connection. I work from home, I have an IP phone for work, I have a Tivo that needs to talk to the internet to get its program data, I have a son that loves to watch old Sesame Street clips on YouTube…etc, etc. We had been connected via Bell at the old house. The service was decent, but recently we’d started having problems with random charges or long distance packages being added to our bill without our consent. As the base monthly cost crept up, we resolved to go with something new and non-Bell when we moved. (Aside: we are, in fact, all moved now, and the old house has been sold. More on that later.)
I did some research, and had decided to go with a bundle from Rogers since we already had cell phone service with them. I arranged everything to be setup on the day before our move (Feb. 25th), and that’s where our tale of epic fail begins.
I won’t bore you with the details, I’ll just bore you with the summary instead: between Rogers and Bell, it took them from Feb. 25th until Mar. 20th to get all our various services running, with internet being the last one to come up on the 20th. The details are somewhat comical (if you don’t happen to be me) and I’m happy to share them over beer at some point.
Despite initiating the entire fail chain, Rogers actually salvaged a lot of good will at the end of the process by getting their act together, but I’m not very impressed with either company or their customer service to be honest. Thanks to my parents and in-laws for letting me work at their houses over the course of this fiasco, although I hope I don’t have to commute in order to telecommute again any time soon.
Gotta love a two-party system.
Current Tunes: Josie and the Pussycats - Come On | Filed under House, Ottawa
Posted 5 months, 1 week ago at 09:26. 0 comments
This will likely be the last year I play winter ultimate. Of the 3 years I’ve played in Ottawa, twice I’ve been among the players chosen to change teams in a mid-season effort to rebalance the league. In each case, I’ve gone from a strong team that I enjoyed playing on, to a subpar team that had trouble winning a single game…even after rebalancing!
I think I understand why I’m (seemingly) always chosen to change teams. I’m not that strong a player — I’ve never captained a team, I’ve only been to a handful of tournaments, and I’m getting older — but I am athletic, I am consistent, and I am level-headed. The teams I end up on lack most/all of those things.
This year has been particularly frustrating because not only is my team lacking the above factors, but it also seemingly has no desire to get better, or even to compete. We’ve managed to tie one game since I’ve been moved over, making our record an abysmal 0-9-1. This team is happy when we score in double digits. For reference, only once this season have our opponents scored less than 20 points.
What’s most annoying is that we’ve had our chances to win some games: up by 5 with 10 minutes left in one game, up by 2 with 2 minutes left in another. My personal favorite: in one game we were down by 1 with 2 minutes left. This is a situation where you’d expect everyone on the team to be fired up and ready, or at the very least paying attention, but it took us more than a minute to even field a full line. I was so disgusted after that loss that I couldn’t even go out for beer afterward. That’s pretty serious.
I think I’ll take a pass next year.
Current Tunes: GrooveSalad, courtesy of SomaFM | Filed under Frisbee, Ottawa
Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 21:43. 0 comments
- Get a digital camera.
- Set it down on something when you’re taking your pictures. Ideally, this should be a tripod, but any flat surface will do, really.
- Clean up your room/yard/pool before you take a picture of it. Pile all that crap right behind the camera or wherever…I don’t care.
- Check the pictures once you’ve taken them. If they are blurry, take them again. THAT IS THE MIRACLE OF THIS TECHNOLOGY!
- If you need to do anything other than crop your photos, you fail. Misrepresenting your property and/or wasting my time is _not_ going to make me buy your house.
You’re only trying to unload your most expensive asset, I’m just sayin’.
Current Tunes: Orbital - Nothing Left 2 | Filed under House, Ottawa
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago at 09:56. 0 comments
The FIFA U-20 World Cup got off to a slow start in Ottawa goal-wise, but yesterday more than made up for it. 10 goals in all, and Argentina certainly seems to be the class of our pool.
Despite my long-standing bias against South American theatre troupes…er, football teams, I find myself compelled to cheer for Argentina. Their fans are awesome — our section features a bunch of guys in Mexican wrestler masks playing large drums — and their play on the field has been inspired.
It might also help that chanting “ARGEN-TINA!” is only a short leap from “ARRRRGGGGOOOOOOS!“
Current Tunes: No Doubt - Artificial Sweetener | Filed under Football, Ottawa
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago at 14:25. 2 comments
In what is possibly the best non-bacon-related idea ever, the Centrepointe Children’s Drop-in Centre also runs a toy library. Toys can be checked out for a period of two weeks, which is probably longer than your child was going to remain interested in a given toy anyway.
Current Tunes: A Tribe Called Quest - After Hours | Filed under Ottawa, Parenthood
Posted 1 year, 3 months ago at 09:52. 0 comments
The weather ended up being exceptionally nice yesterday, so we took Will over to Andrew Haydon Park. The evidence is on flickr.
Will also got his first, real haircut this weekend. He needed it.
Current Tunes: Porcupine Tree - The Sleep of No Dreaming | Filed under Family, Ottawa
Posted 1 year, 6 months ago at 11:31. 0 comments
Need something to do next Saturday? I recommend the following progression:
Hot->Cold->Rest
Hot->Cold->Rest
Hot->Cold->Rest
Hot->Cold->Rest
Massage
Port
Chocolate Fondue
Two thumbs way up for Le Nordik spa, just outside of Ottawa. Gladly would I give greater praise would but that I possessed more thumbs.
Current Tunes: Fatboy Slim - Song For Lindy | Filed under Dining, Ottawa
Posted 2 years, 2 months ago at 22:19. 1 comment
The weather was awful over the long weekend. Fortunately, the only thing we had planned was indoors: a fine rendition of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing at the NAC, featuring an all-grown-up-now Megan Follows in the female lead. I’ve always been a Stoppard fan — Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead remains one of my favorite movies — and it was a rare treat to see one of his works performed live.
If you fancy yourself some clever and funny wordsmithing, the play continues its Ottawa run until May 27th.
Current Tunes: Black Lab - Keep Myself Awake | Filed under Arts, Ottawa
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 10:08. 0 comments
The NAC has closed circuit television set up so that tardy theatre goers can watch the performance in the lobby until a suitable break in the performance when they can take their seats. There was no theatre performance last night, so the staff had helpfully tuned the TV to the hockey game for ballet patrons like ourselves.
Sadly, the savage ballet that is pro hockey didn’t end quite so well for the Senators last night, nowhere near as well as it did for Houston Ballet who delivered a stellar performance.
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 16:22. 0 comments
I was somewhat dismayed to read in the local paper today that the city had lowered the basketball net at a downtown park. This change was nominally made to make the park more child-friendly, but also had the “side-effect” of disbanding the large groups of non-white basketball players who frequently used the court.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’m whiter than white bread, and I have barely shot a basketball in the past 5 years, but during my high school years, I did play basketball a fair bit, and even played at St. Luke’s, the park in question, a few times. The competition was always fierce, and yes, the players were mostly black, so I can’t help but feel that this was racially-motivated.
The official arguments put forward by the city for lowering the net don’t really hold water. Despite being a downtown park, the park is not that small, and there is ample area beside the basketball court that is already set up for children with various play structures, sand boxes, and even a wading pool during the summer. I haven’t played there in over a decade, but players were always mindful that children were nearby and tongues were largely held in check. With regards to the public urination, profanity, and drug use mentioned in the article, perhaps things have gone downhill since I played at St. Luke’s. If that is the case, I would think that a better solution would be more rigorous monitoring of the park, rather than dispersing these problems and associated individuals to who-knows-where-else…the devil you know, and all that. As it stands, all you’ve done is eliminated yet another cheap, well-used, outdoor recreation alternative for downtown residents.
I’m not very impressed with my city’s government today.
Update: The city bowed to public pressure today (2006/04/21) and will be reinstating the basketball net at the proper height.
Current Tunes: Moist - Creature | Filed under Ottawa
