So I'm partway through my second set of training sessions, and this time all my living accommodations are funded, which includes travel cost, food, and a hotel room. On Sunday I set out for Oakville, where I would stay overnight and begin my training the next morning. I was a little sketched, because this journey would require me to take on another two transit systems, the Missisauga MiWay, and Oakville Transit.
Both took Presto cards, but they don't clock distance, as the Go buses do. So you don't clock off, you only clock on, and even though they have the same Presto machines as the Go buses do, none of them work. There's a different side-machine that takes it. So first time I got on the MiWay, I used the wrong machine. Then I tried to tap off when I didn't have to.
Looks like Presto takes off a flat rate in both Mississauga and Oakville, and it seems to act as a replacement for the bus pass. I take the bus enough that I can't imagine a cash rate ever being preferable to a monthly bus pass that offers unlimited use, even if you get a discount for Presto.
I was really disappointed that I didn't get to ride one of the accordion buses. At the transitway that connected me between Guelph and Hamilton, and Guelph and Oakville, I saw for the first time a strange form of bus, two bus-lengths wide, connected in the centre by a curving section that looked like the expanding and contracting centre of an accordion. Since I had to take MiWay to Oakville, I was hoping I could ride one of those since I'd just recently had the opportunity to ride a double decker, but I was unlucky and only got a standard-format bus.
I guess I've been in enough hotel rooms that the novelty has warn off and my eye has become a bit more discerning. They got me a room at the Monte Carlo Inn, and I couldn't help but notice that the base of the bathroom faucet leaked when you turned it on, that the floor-mounted door stop wasn't actually mounted to the floor... It was just kind of sitting there. The door-mounted doorstop was missing the knob at the end of it, so it was just a coil, and there were holes in the bathroom door where something had been mounted previously. In addition to the regular accommodations, they offered a safe, which I haven't seen offered at other places. Was just a bit interesting.
So the next day I head out to training. I show up, the woman sends me to an empty room and says this is where we're meeting. I'm about half an hour early so I'm not surprised I'm the first one, but at about five minutes to our starting time and me being the only one in the room, I get a bit concerned. A woman steps in, asks me if I'd got the email. I say I hadn't. She tells me everyone's meeting at a Tim Horton's down the street.
I think that's a bit odd. Who hosts a five day training session at a Tim Horton's? But I head down. They said the group would have signs up but I don't see anything like that. A man asks me if I was there to meet a group. I say yes, and he says they're leaving in a white car.
So I run out, flag them down and hop in their car. Turns out we're carpooling back to the office. The people training were just dropping their cars off since there wasn't enough space in the office parking lot. Since I don't have a vehicle, it made it kind of a pointless treck but oh well.
So we get back, and the content of the session is a bit different from what I was expecting, so I ask if this is Train the Trainer. Turns out, no it isn't, that's in London Ontario, which is closer to Kitchener than Oakville.
I call my boss and she's really apologetic. She calls me an Uber and we go all the way from Oakville to London. By the time I get to the session, it's more than halfway through the day.
Got a new hotel room. Because of the short-term arrangements, she was only able to get me a suite at the Windermere Manor. Just for the first two days though, now I've transferred to a standard room. So in the past couple weeks, I've been in five cities (Kitchener, Guelph, Hamilton, Oakville and London), I've used three transit systems I've never used before (Go, MiWay, Oakville Transit, plus I'll have to work my way back from London and I've used Guelph and Grand River Transit as well) and I've been in three different hotel rooms.
I can even compare the suite and a standard room at this hotel, which I never really thought I'd have the opportunity to do. Basically the difference is the suite has a living room and the standard doesn't. The suite has two TVs and two sinks while the standard has only one of each. The suite has a microwave and the standard doesn't. The standard, though, has a desk while the suite doesn't. Not having a microwave is kind of annoying, but otherwise I wouldn't pay more money for the suite. I spent all my time in the bedroom anyway, didn't need the living room.
The hotel is right on a Pomemon Go Pokestop. It's like a hotel perk. I can collect items every ten minutes from the comfort of my bed. This is how I learned I'm not technically in London. I caught a Pokemon and it was listed as having been caught in Arva, Ontario.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Flu and Go
I had the flu last week, which isn't fair because I had my flu shot, and last year, I also got the flu even though I had my flu shot. Otherwise, I can't remember getting the flu since I was a kid. When I got my flu shot, everyone in the community was like "The flu shot gives you the flu!" and I was like "Ignorant people, you just don't like getting shots, and just because you know someone who got the flu after getting the shot doesn't mean it gives it to you. That's corroboration not causation, it lowers risk, it doesn't give immunity, so there's bound to be a few people every year who get the shot and sick anyway, but it doesn't excuse not trying to prevent it."
But then I got sick and nobody else did, which really made my logic look iffy. Oh well. I kind of like being sick, though. Forces me to just concentrate on myself and my own well being. It's like being on vacation with the added bonus that you're too delirious to worry about life's troubles.
My brother and mother both got the flu, and nobody else in Guelph did, and I didn't even see them in person, just talked to them over the phone. It's like I spread it through the phone line. Maybe it's a family thing, some genetic vulnerability.
My temperature peaked at 103.6. Before this, I wasn't even really sure what constituted a temperature. I first checked after a morning shift when my legs felt like they would give out, I was feeling short of breath and seemed to be complaining about the cold more than other people. I had an evening shift that day, and I usually don't bother to go home between shifts on days like that because I spend more time on the bus than at home if I do, but this time I thought I should at least check my temperature. Read 101.5, looked it up and saw that was a significant fever. Called my evening shift and read them the facts.
Good thing, too, because my temperature would continue to rise. First time I broke 103, I looked up the levels of fever, and it said "Adults should be able to survive temperatures of 103 to 104 for short periods of time" I was like, "I can survive this for a short period of time?!" Yeah, worst part of being sick. That didn't feel like vacation. I was going to take a Neocitrine, which "May cause drowsiness" but took Tylenol instead, because I wanted to be awake so I had a fighting shot of saving my life if my temperature continued to rise.
My grandmother said that the people who get hit hard often seem to recover faster. Like they just get it out of the way. I thought that seemed like a funny idea, like the virus shows up in my body, and my ornery cells are just like "BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!" and raises my temperature to near-fatal extremes just to get things done and out of the way. Next time guys, can we leave it in the 102 range?
I got to ride the Go Bus recently. In the next week and a half, I've got to be in Hamilton and Oakville for training. Oakville isn't connected by Greyhound, and I had to be in Hamilton earlier than a Greyhound could get me there. So curiously, even though I've never been called to use Go before, I'm now being called to do so due to two unrelated circumstances, six times in the next week and a half.
I was super sketched to be using a new transport system for something that required certain results. Go has its own trip planner, so I printed out my plans and went to buy my tickets from the terminal. I couldn't buy online, which seemed weird. I showed up, asked if I could buy a ticket departing from Guelph in the Kitchener station. She told me to buy it in Guelph and asked me when I was leaving. I said Thursday (I think it was Tuesday at the time), she said the tickets are only good for four hours.
So then I point out that my departure time is like, 4:00 AM and there's no ticket places open at that time. She says that I can purchase tickets from the driver if I have exact change. I ask if it's a flat rate for tickets and she says I'll need to know my exact distance.
SKETCHED! I don't know how a system can operate, where everyone potentially has to have an on-the-spot discussion about mileage with the driver when they get picked up.
I wound up buying something called a Presto Card, which is like a pay-as-you-go card that you tap in and out with when you ride. I take a Greyhound to Guelph to station myself for training, as it takes a half hour of travel out of each side of the Hamilton trips, and fifteen minutes of walking. That's an hour and a half saved per day. Mom's still got the flu though, so I'm really banking on our flus being the same, as I could otherwise be infected again.
But it's still all so new. It occurs to me (as it has before) that while I see Go buses all the time, and Go stops, I've never seen anyone board one. They just drive by, with people on them, but don't seem to have any interaction with the rest of the world. Like decor, or some kind of foreshadowing that I would eventually need to use one.
I actually begin to feel like the protagonist of a story, with this element introduced but left inactive because it would be pointless to involve it earlier. I'm further creeped out when I see that there is a Guelph bus that leaves every fifteen minutes, and it only goes one direction, which is the way I need. The first conversation I hear that day is about the roundabout transit system for traveling to Hamilton. I'm like, how could I have possibly never seen one board if they come to the main station every fiteen minutes?!
I've got nightmares that the bus driver won't take Presto because we're leaving from Guelph and not Kitchener, and then he won't be selling bus tickets because even though the bus lady said they did, the website said not to purchase from drivers. I'm worried I won't know how to signal I want to stop and that I won't recognize my stop since it's a foreign city.
Turns out, the Go is exactly like a city bus. There's an electric sign that says which stop is coming up (sometimes with a list of the four following stops!) and a voiceover. There are "Stop" buttons at every seat that you can press to signal when you want to get off. Presto tap was easy. I got to ride in a double decker! I sat in the seat above the driver and pretended I was driving the bus from my tower in the sky!
I get to my destination and it turns out my training isn't Thursday and Friday, it's Friday and Saturday! I was given bad info! By some miracle I actually am free on Saturday. At least I got to get used to the system, but that's $27 and five hours on the bus for a practice run... I was thinking of renting a motel room before I found out day trips could be an option, good thing I didn't do that!
But then I got sick and nobody else did, which really made my logic look iffy. Oh well. I kind of like being sick, though. Forces me to just concentrate on myself and my own well being. It's like being on vacation with the added bonus that you're too delirious to worry about life's troubles.
My brother and mother both got the flu, and nobody else in Guelph did, and I didn't even see them in person, just talked to them over the phone. It's like I spread it through the phone line. Maybe it's a family thing, some genetic vulnerability.
My temperature peaked at 103.6. Before this, I wasn't even really sure what constituted a temperature. I first checked after a morning shift when my legs felt like they would give out, I was feeling short of breath and seemed to be complaining about the cold more than other people. I had an evening shift that day, and I usually don't bother to go home between shifts on days like that because I spend more time on the bus than at home if I do, but this time I thought I should at least check my temperature. Read 101.5, looked it up and saw that was a significant fever. Called my evening shift and read them the facts.
Good thing, too, because my temperature would continue to rise. First time I broke 103, I looked up the levels of fever, and it said "Adults should be able to survive temperatures of 103 to 104 for short periods of time" I was like, "I can survive this for a short period of time?!" Yeah, worst part of being sick. That didn't feel like vacation. I was going to take a Neocitrine, which "May cause drowsiness" but took Tylenol instead, because I wanted to be awake so I had a fighting shot of saving my life if my temperature continued to rise.
My grandmother said that the people who get hit hard often seem to recover faster. Like they just get it out of the way. I thought that seemed like a funny idea, like the virus shows up in my body, and my ornery cells are just like "BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!" and raises my temperature to near-fatal extremes just to get things done and out of the way. Next time guys, can we leave it in the 102 range?
I got to ride the Go Bus recently. In the next week and a half, I've got to be in Hamilton and Oakville for training. Oakville isn't connected by Greyhound, and I had to be in Hamilton earlier than a Greyhound could get me there. So curiously, even though I've never been called to use Go before, I'm now being called to do so due to two unrelated circumstances, six times in the next week and a half.
I was super sketched to be using a new transport system for something that required certain results. Go has its own trip planner, so I printed out my plans and went to buy my tickets from the terminal. I couldn't buy online, which seemed weird. I showed up, asked if I could buy a ticket departing from Guelph in the Kitchener station. She told me to buy it in Guelph and asked me when I was leaving. I said Thursday (I think it was Tuesday at the time), she said the tickets are only good for four hours.
So then I point out that my departure time is like, 4:00 AM and there's no ticket places open at that time. She says that I can purchase tickets from the driver if I have exact change. I ask if it's a flat rate for tickets and she says I'll need to know my exact distance.
SKETCHED! I don't know how a system can operate, where everyone potentially has to have an on-the-spot discussion about mileage with the driver when they get picked up.
I wound up buying something called a Presto Card, which is like a pay-as-you-go card that you tap in and out with when you ride. I take a Greyhound to Guelph to station myself for training, as it takes a half hour of travel out of each side of the Hamilton trips, and fifteen minutes of walking. That's an hour and a half saved per day. Mom's still got the flu though, so I'm really banking on our flus being the same, as I could otherwise be infected again.
But it's still all so new. It occurs to me (as it has before) that while I see Go buses all the time, and Go stops, I've never seen anyone board one. They just drive by, with people on them, but don't seem to have any interaction with the rest of the world. Like decor, or some kind of foreshadowing that I would eventually need to use one.
I actually begin to feel like the protagonist of a story, with this element introduced but left inactive because it would be pointless to involve it earlier. I'm further creeped out when I see that there is a Guelph bus that leaves every fifteen minutes, and it only goes one direction, which is the way I need. The first conversation I hear that day is about the roundabout transit system for traveling to Hamilton. I'm like, how could I have possibly never seen one board if they come to the main station every fiteen minutes?!
I've got nightmares that the bus driver won't take Presto because we're leaving from Guelph and not Kitchener, and then he won't be selling bus tickets because even though the bus lady said they did, the website said not to purchase from drivers. I'm worried I won't know how to signal I want to stop and that I won't recognize my stop since it's a foreign city.
Turns out, the Go is exactly like a city bus. There's an electric sign that says which stop is coming up (sometimes with a list of the four following stops!) and a voiceover. There are "Stop" buttons at every seat that you can press to signal when you want to get off. Presto tap was easy. I got to ride in a double decker! I sat in the seat above the driver and pretended I was driving the bus from my tower in the sky!
I get to my destination and it turns out my training isn't Thursday and Friday, it's Friday and Saturday! I was given bad info! By some miracle I actually am free on Saturday. At least I got to get used to the system, but that's $27 and five hours on the bus for a practice run... I was thinking of renting a motel room before I found out day trips could be an option, good thing I didn't do that!
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Burritoes
Hi everyone. Sorry it's been a bit. On review, my post frequency has been trending down year-by-year (although the posts have become longer and my views keep going up), so I made it a bit of a New Year's Resolution to post more often. First half of January, this was coming along just fine, but come February and I lapsed. I just need to fit in three more posts before the end of February and I'm back up to speed (I average one post per week)
I've been posting mainly on major-ish events as well, instead of more slice-of-life observation stuff. Another blogger that I'm a fan of, Ali Brosh from Hyperbole and a Half, as she began posting less and less, justified it by saying when she writes about the little things, it's like a burrito, which is nice, but when she'd write about big important things, it's like a jet plane, which is amazing. And after she's made so many jet plane posts, she doesn't want to disappoint her fans by giving a burrito.
But personally, sometimes I don't want a jet plane. Sometimes I want a burrito. Sure a jet plane is awesome to watch and more difficult to produce, but a burrito is nourishing and relatable. Some of her best stuff were burrito posts, and I actually make an effort to alternate between jet planes and burritoes on this blog. The reason Seinfeld was the most popular show on TV during its run is because there is an appeal in the smaller things in life.
Remember that post I made about going for a walk in the woods after finishing my last ever college class with two of my fellow graduates? We got scared by some snakes and we stalked a guy into the woods because we thought he might try to kill himself. That was one of my favourite posts, and I'd call it a burrito, since nothing in it happened which had a lasting effect on my living situation.
So the excuse for not updating is because my days are divided between work and travel. And because of the nature of my work, confidentiality has to be considered in everything I do. And since traveling by bus takes such a ridiculous amount of time, I have those large lengths of time where not much happens (usually. Remember when that young guy and older woman got in an argument about priority seating, he attacked her and I jumped between the two and took the hit?)
But even if there's nothing life-changing, I should be able to come up with something to talk about.
I finally got a coffee maker. Remember how I was missing the coffee filter basket, and the only way to get a new one was to order it in? The price was reasonable but hsipping and handling would cost more than the piece itself, which struck a wrong chord with me on a moral level. And then, it would be easy enough to buy a $15 coffee maker from the secondhand store across the way, but I didn't want to buy a whole new maker when I only needed a piece of plastic. But eventually I just sucked it up and got a whole new maker.
The other day, I was going through my backpack for paysheets and found a Christmas envelope addressed to me that was still sealed. It was from someone who'd given me a present, and I guess I put the envelope in the front pocket of my backpack and forgot about it, even though I put the present under the Christmas tree. I open the envelope and there was a $100 Fairview Mall gift card! Suddenly my expression of gratitude toward him seems a little lukewarm on reflection.
I recently found out that I can get reimbursed for a loud of things during my work that I've been paying out of pocket for. A year and a half in and I just found out about something called an "expense sheet". Yeesh.
I saw some turkeys last Friday. I wasn't sure if they were domestic or not, as they were on somebody's property, but they were just out and about, not restricted by anything. House by a highway. I approached slightly to snap a few pictures, but when they noticed me I backed right out.
I don't think it's a breach of confidentiality to mention that sometimes in the work I do, I go bowling. I used to be a terrible bowler, but I'm actually pretty decent now just through my experience at work. But last time I went, I saw the best bowler I've ever seen in my life. He was in the lane next to us, and he'd come alone.
Before he started, he slid all over the floor in front of the lane, I guess judging it's smoothness, and for any knicks that might throw his concentration or shift his gate as he approached in whatever minuscule way. He'd brought his own balls of course, and every time before he'd throw, he'd wipe them with a cloth. His actual throw was interesting.
I always throw the ball to travel straight. I try to have it travel just off-centre so it hits the head pin at an angle. Almost all semi-professionals, however, do this weird crescent moon shot, where it curves out, skirts along the gutter, then comes back to hit the head pin at an angle. I don't know how they do this, it looks magic.
This guy had an even stranger throw, though. He'd throw it so it traveled straight, until it was almost at the end of the lane, and then it would jet out, hit the gutter's edge, then jet back and smash the headpin at an angle. It was seriously like he had telekinetic powers.
In his entire first game, he only got strikes. That's a perfect game. Like, why would you even continue to play after you'd perfected your technique? There would be no variety anymore.
Even though he was playing alone, he wouldn't play rapidly. After every turn, he would sit down and gaze at the alley meditatively.
His second game wasn't perfect, and it was funny because he couldn't do precision hits. He was so used to getting strikes that if he had to hit at a different angle, he could never do it.
There was a full moon yesterday, a minor eclipse, and we had a comet come closer to the earth than one has in the previous 30 years. I forgot to check for the eclipse and the comet.
Life has been pretty dynamic over here. Actually, I'll have a lot of stuff to talk about once the dust clears, but I can't really talk while things are still up in the air. You'll understand when I'm more free to talk about it on here.
I've been posting mainly on major-ish events as well, instead of more slice-of-life observation stuff. Another blogger that I'm a fan of, Ali Brosh from Hyperbole and a Half, as she began posting less and less, justified it by saying when she writes about the little things, it's like a burrito, which is nice, but when she'd write about big important things, it's like a jet plane, which is amazing. And after she's made so many jet plane posts, she doesn't want to disappoint her fans by giving a burrito.
But personally, sometimes I don't want a jet plane. Sometimes I want a burrito. Sure a jet plane is awesome to watch and more difficult to produce, but a burrito is nourishing and relatable. Some of her best stuff were burrito posts, and I actually make an effort to alternate between jet planes and burritoes on this blog. The reason Seinfeld was the most popular show on TV during its run is because there is an appeal in the smaller things in life.
Remember that post I made about going for a walk in the woods after finishing my last ever college class with two of my fellow graduates? We got scared by some snakes and we stalked a guy into the woods because we thought he might try to kill himself. That was one of my favourite posts, and I'd call it a burrito, since nothing in it happened which had a lasting effect on my living situation.
So the excuse for not updating is because my days are divided between work and travel. And because of the nature of my work, confidentiality has to be considered in everything I do. And since traveling by bus takes such a ridiculous amount of time, I have those large lengths of time where not much happens (usually. Remember when that young guy and older woman got in an argument about priority seating, he attacked her and I jumped between the two and took the hit?)
But even if there's nothing life-changing, I should be able to come up with something to talk about.
I finally got a coffee maker. Remember how I was missing the coffee filter basket, and the only way to get a new one was to order it in? The price was reasonable but hsipping and handling would cost more than the piece itself, which struck a wrong chord with me on a moral level. And then, it would be easy enough to buy a $15 coffee maker from the secondhand store across the way, but I didn't want to buy a whole new maker when I only needed a piece of plastic. But eventually I just sucked it up and got a whole new maker.
The other day, I was going through my backpack for paysheets and found a Christmas envelope addressed to me that was still sealed. It was from someone who'd given me a present, and I guess I put the envelope in the front pocket of my backpack and forgot about it, even though I put the present under the Christmas tree. I open the envelope and there was a $100 Fairview Mall gift card! Suddenly my expression of gratitude toward him seems a little lukewarm on reflection.
I recently found out that I can get reimbursed for a loud of things during my work that I've been paying out of pocket for. A year and a half in and I just found out about something called an "expense sheet". Yeesh.
I saw some turkeys last Friday. I wasn't sure if they were domestic or not, as they were on somebody's property, but they were just out and about, not restricted by anything. House by a highway. I approached slightly to snap a few pictures, but when they noticed me I backed right out.
I don't think it's a breach of confidentiality to mention that sometimes in the work I do, I go bowling. I used to be a terrible bowler, but I'm actually pretty decent now just through my experience at work. But last time I went, I saw the best bowler I've ever seen in my life. He was in the lane next to us, and he'd come alone.
Before he started, he slid all over the floor in front of the lane, I guess judging it's smoothness, and for any knicks that might throw his concentration or shift his gate as he approached in whatever minuscule way. He'd brought his own balls of course, and every time before he'd throw, he'd wipe them with a cloth. His actual throw was interesting.
I always throw the ball to travel straight. I try to have it travel just off-centre so it hits the head pin at an angle. Almost all semi-professionals, however, do this weird crescent moon shot, where it curves out, skirts along the gutter, then comes back to hit the head pin at an angle. I don't know how they do this, it looks magic.
This guy had an even stranger throw, though. He'd throw it so it traveled straight, until it was almost at the end of the lane, and then it would jet out, hit the gutter's edge, then jet back and smash the headpin at an angle. It was seriously like he had telekinetic powers.
In his entire first game, he only got strikes. That's a perfect game. Like, why would you even continue to play after you'd perfected your technique? There would be no variety anymore.
Even though he was playing alone, he wouldn't play rapidly. After every turn, he would sit down and gaze at the alley meditatively.
His second game wasn't perfect, and it was funny because he couldn't do precision hits. He was so used to getting strikes that if he had to hit at a different angle, he could never do it.
There was a full moon yesterday, a minor eclipse, and we had a comet come closer to the earth than one has in the previous 30 years. I forgot to check for the eclipse and the comet.
Life has been pretty dynamic over here. Actually, I'll have a lot of stuff to talk about once the dust clears, but I can't really talk while things are still up in the air. You'll understand when I'm more free to talk about it on here.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Direct Support Work
Hey everyone what's up?!
So you know how I've had to branch away from my field recently in favour of industrial work?
Well, when I contacted the coordinator who linked me with the two contracts that I would have to cancel, she responded with "What can I say to change your mind?"
I told her that there were lots of things she could say to change my mind. I said that I was refusing evening and weekend work so that I could maintain my original three contracts with the agency, and I said I wasn't accepting ongoing work because I had to slot away the "Train the Trainer" training in late February. I said that I would rather survive within my field than flourish outside of it, that my loyalty was 100% with the company, but that to continue working with them, I needed to survive, and that I wasn't surviving.
So they offered me an additional 20 hours and an increase in pay.
I didn't know I was valuable enough to play hard ball.
So I'm giving it another go as a full-time Direct Support Worker.
So you know how I've had to branch away from my field recently in favour of industrial work?
Well, when I contacted the coordinator who linked me with the two contracts that I would have to cancel, she responded with "What can I say to change your mind?"
I told her that there were lots of things she could say to change my mind. I said that I was refusing evening and weekend work so that I could maintain my original three contracts with the agency, and I said I wasn't accepting ongoing work because I had to slot away the "Train the Trainer" training in late February. I said that I would rather survive within my field than flourish outside of it, that my loyalty was 100% with the company, but that to continue working with them, I needed to survive, and that I wasn't surviving.
So they offered me an additional 20 hours and an increase in pay.
I didn't know I was valuable enough to play hard ball.
So I'm giving it another go as a full-time Direct Support Worker.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Court
So we got our gas heater working again. I got the gas heater guy to drop by again, and a nightmare scenario occurred. After several days of the gas heater not working, this guy stops by and we step into the living room. On entry, I just think "Whoo, this room is toasty".
The guy walks up to the heater and it is radiating heat for the first time since he left. He's like "It's working". I'm like "Seriously man, it was working after you fixed it, but the next morning it wasn't, and it hasn't until you just showed up just now". He takes me seriously and takes it apart. He says the controller is bad, which was a knob on the top of the heater. He installs a thermostat which shows the temperature of the heat omitted and has buttons to increase or decrease heat output. Much better than the knob that you would have to crank to change the heat to a mysterious universal temperature, which would turn off randomly.
So our main heat source is better than it ever was before. Gas heater guy also said he would propose changing the electric heaters to gas, since it's more cost efficient.
Unfortunately, a hand rail popped out of place recently and the lights in the kitchen stopped working and it's not the bulbs.
Guess where I was today? If you guessed "In court", congratulations!
My landlord invited me to court awhile back. He claimed I had some money due and I disagreed. Since then we came to an agreement and he said it would be a waste of both our our time and that he'd cancel the meeting, but I checked a few days ago and the hearing was active. I messaged him and he was like "Oops, see you on Thursday".
So I felt I had to show up to the hearing, even though I knew I was on the up-and-up, because if I didn't show, I was worried he could be like "Yo, this guy's a jerk" and get me kicked out because I wasn't around to give a sound counter-argument.
So he has a lawyer in in and represent for him. I've done a lot or preparation. I've got bank statements for the entire duration of my living in the unit with printout images of every paid rent cheque. I've got copies of confirmation of details on my gas and hydro ownership. I've got my notice of rent increase and everything to do with the trial.
I'm confident, but I choose to take free legal advice when they offer, and when they ask, I choose to take up their offer of having a mediator, doing things in front of a judge and crowd.
During the cool-off period, I approach the lawyer representing my landlord. He does some math and says I owe $81.
I'm like, "That's not much" and he's like "I know".
Who goes to court and tries to evict someone on $81?
So he reads me the details and I'm like "That's incorrect. I moved in two months after that and my rent was a different amount. It changed just last month".
So the charges against me went from $81, to $44, to $25, to nothing.
The lawyer is flipping. "F*** my life. He is trying to evict on pennies. I've got better things to do than charge on $50 F***ing dollars. I don't give a sh**, I really don't give a sh**"
So in the end I didn't owe anything. Sucks because I had a full work day I had to cancel, which would have earned more than $81, so it's like he prevented me from having that money regardless.
The guy walks up to the heater and it is radiating heat for the first time since he left. He's like "It's working". I'm like "Seriously man, it was working after you fixed it, but the next morning it wasn't, and it hasn't until you just showed up just now". He takes me seriously and takes it apart. He says the controller is bad, which was a knob on the top of the heater. He installs a thermostat which shows the temperature of the heat omitted and has buttons to increase or decrease heat output. Much better than the knob that you would have to crank to change the heat to a mysterious universal temperature, which would turn off randomly.
So our main heat source is better than it ever was before. Gas heater guy also said he would propose changing the electric heaters to gas, since it's more cost efficient.
Unfortunately, a hand rail popped out of place recently and the lights in the kitchen stopped working and it's not the bulbs.
Guess where I was today? If you guessed "In court", congratulations!
My landlord invited me to court awhile back. He claimed I had some money due and I disagreed. Since then we came to an agreement and he said it would be a waste of both our our time and that he'd cancel the meeting, but I checked a few days ago and the hearing was active. I messaged him and he was like "Oops, see you on Thursday".
So I felt I had to show up to the hearing, even though I knew I was on the up-and-up, because if I didn't show, I was worried he could be like "Yo, this guy's a jerk" and get me kicked out because I wasn't around to give a sound counter-argument.
So he has a lawyer in in and represent for him. I've done a lot or preparation. I've got bank statements for the entire duration of my living in the unit with printout images of every paid rent cheque. I've got copies of confirmation of details on my gas and hydro ownership. I've got my notice of rent increase and everything to do with the trial.
I'm confident, but I choose to take free legal advice when they offer, and when they ask, I choose to take up their offer of having a mediator, doing things in front of a judge and crowd.
During the cool-off period, I approach the lawyer representing my landlord. He does some math and says I owe $81.
I'm like, "That's not much" and he's like "I know".
Who goes to court and tries to evict someone on $81?
So he reads me the details and I'm like "That's incorrect. I moved in two months after that and my rent was a different amount. It changed just last month".
So the charges against me went from $81, to $44, to $25, to nothing.
The lawyer is flipping. "F*** my life. He is trying to evict on pennies. I've got better things to do than charge on $50 F***ing dollars. I don't give a sh**, I really don't give a sh**"
So in the end I didn't owe anything. Sucks because I had a full work day I had to cancel, which would have earned more than $81, so it's like he prevented me from having that money regardless.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Heaters
So three of the six heaters in my unit aren't working. I mentioned in my previous post that the heater in my room wasn't working, but it turns out the heater in my roommates room isn't working, and the main heater in the living room is also not working. The currently operational heaters are the bathroom heater, the front hallway heater, and a secondary heater in the living room.
We had someone drop in, but when he saw my roommate's heater, he said it was electric, and he only does gas heaters. I showed him the main living room heater, which apparently is gas, and he went to work. He managed to make it start up, and after he left, I noticed that the switch on our control panel had one turned off. So I flipped the switch, and me and my roommates heaters started working again.
All six heaters were working. What a wonderful world.
But then I noticed that the control panel switch for me and my roommate's heaters switched off. Tried again and it did so again. The problem wasn't the heaters, it was the control switch. So I put a nail in the wall next to the control panel, and I wrapped a rubber band around it and the switch to force the switch in place (you may remember I used a similar technique to make my cell phone charge when it was having charge port troubles).
Unfortunately, even though the switch remained in place, the heaters would stop working after about fifteen minutes. To get them started again, you had to flip the switch off, then on again. Now obviously, it's pretty well impossible to do that when you're asleep.
Overnight, the gas heater stopped working again. So we were back to our original dilemma.
I decided to buy an electric heater for my room. I don't know anything about the heater scene, I see that prices range from about $30 to $100 and are indicated as to what size room they are most suited for. I got the $70 Mainstay Infrared Tower for medium-large rooms. Turned it on and it created this abysmal groaning sound. I can handle humming, buzzing, clicking, gurgling, and whirring, but this is a terrible grinding noise. So awful, I wonder which is worse, the cold or the noise. When applying for temp work, I was asked to indicate which environments were preferable compared to others. I answered that a cold environment was preferable to a noisy one.
I don't know if this is standard, but I know none of my other heaters groaned up this racket. So I get another one, same day. The Sunbeam 17 Inch Ceramic Tower. This baby purrs like a kitten, it has six settings instead of two, and it has an option to use a built-in thermometer to turn on and off to maintain your desired temperature. It's also more compact, and claims to be 10% more efficient with electricity usage than regular electric heaters. So if any of my readers are looking into getting a heater, Sunbeam smashes Mainstay in this respect.
Let me tell you about the work I've done over the past week.
I've acted as a warehouse worker, helping load stuff onto trucks because the warehouse we were in was going to be rented to someone else in a few days. After we got everything out of there, I was tasked by the same company to organize things and disassemble stuff so that they may be more easily transported out of a new warehouse, which now belonged to them but was full of the previous owners things.
I'm loving the Kitchener industrial scene so far. I think I already mentioned that my previous gig at the lubricant packaging factory was manned by like, two guys and went at an extremely relaxed pace. This gig was also two people, and we were only moving things when the truck appeared, and there was only one truck, so when he was delivering, we were left to our own devices.
I mean, this job has me lugging heavy objects on the regular, but realtalk, I would rather have a job that required me to be strong than required me to be fast.
Some of the guys from the warehouse I just unpacked were telling stories of what their work was like before relocating. They were talking about how they had no work, so they hooked up a TV, built a bed, and watched nine seasons of Supernatural over time.
They said they would send emails to their superiors saying "We're watching TV and taking naps" and the response was that they needed them to be available in case they needed something.
They are next to a high-end grocery and were talking about how they would go to their stirfry station every lunch. They pay very competitively. They pay me more than any other temp job has offered.
It sucks because this warehouse was in my neighbourhood. If I had stepped onto the scene a bit earlier, it could be me watching TV on my work bed, with my steel-toed shoes, eating stir-fry and making bank all the same.
We had someone drop in, but when he saw my roommate's heater, he said it was electric, and he only does gas heaters. I showed him the main living room heater, which apparently is gas, and he went to work. He managed to make it start up, and after he left, I noticed that the switch on our control panel had one turned off. So I flipped the switch, and me and my roommates heaters started working again.
All six heaters were working. What a wonderful world.
But then I noticed that the control panel switch for me and my roommate's heaters switched off. Tried again and it did so again. The problem wasn't the heaters, it was the control switch. So I put a nail in the wall next to the control panel, and I wrapped a rubber band around it and the switch to force the switch in place (you may remember I used a similar technique to make my cell phone charge when it was having charge port troubles).
Unfortunately, even though the switch remained in place, the heaters would stop working after about fifteen minutes. To get them started again, you had to flip the switch off, then on again. Now obviously, it's pretty well impossible to do that when you're asleep.
Overnight, the gas heater stopped working again. So we were back to our original dilemma.
I decided to buy an electric heater for my room. I don't know anything about the heater scene, I see that prices range from about $30 to $100 and are indicated as to what size room they are most suited for. I got the $70 Mainstay Infrared Tower for medium-large rooms. Turned it on and it created this abysmal groaning sound. I can handle humming, buzzing, clicking, gurgling, and whirring, but this is a terrible grinding noise. So awful, I wonder which is worse, the cold or the noise. When applying for temp work, I was asked to indicate which environments were preferable compared to others. I answered that a cold environment was preferable to a noisy one.
I don't know if this is standard, but I know none of my other heaters groaned up this racket. So I get another one, same day. The Sunbeam 17 Inch Ceramic Tower. This baby purrs like a kitten, it has six settings instead of two, and it has an option to use a built-in thermometer to turn on and off to maintain your desired temperature. It's also more compact, and claims to be 10% more efficient with electricity usage than regular electric heaters. So if any of my readers are looking into getting a heater, Sunbeam smashes Mainstay in this respect.
Let me tell you about the work I've done over the past week.
I've acted as a warehouse worker, helping load stuff onto trucks because the warehouse we were in was going to be rented to someone else in a few days. After we got everything out of there, I was tasked by the same company to organize things and disassemble stuff so that they may be more easily transported out of a new warehouse, which now belonged to them but was full of the previous owners things.
I'm loving the Kitchener industrial scene so far. I think I already mentioned that my previous gig at the lubricant packaging factory was manned by like, two guys and went at an extremely relaxed pace. This gig was also two people, and we were only moving things when the truck appeared, and there was only one truck, so when he was delivering, we were left to our own devices.
I mean, this job has me lugging heavy objects on the regular, but realtalk, I would rather have a job that required me to be strong than required me to be fast.
Some of the guys from the warehouse I just unpacked were telling stories of what their work was like before relocating. They were talking about how they had no work, so they hooked up a TV, built a bed, and watched nine seasons of Supernatural over time.
They said they would send emails to their superiors saying "We're watching TV and taking naps" and the response was that they needed them to be available in case they needed something.
They are next to a high-end grocery and were talking about how they would go to their stirfry station every lunch. They pay very competitively. They pay me more than any other temp job has offered.
It sucks because this warehouse was in my neighbourhood. If I had stepped onto the scene a bit earlier, it could be me watching TV on my work bed, with my steel-toed shoes, eating stir-fry and making bank all the same.
Monday, January 2, 2017
Christmas Flood
So I managed to go home for Christmas. Since I work with individuals, it's not easy to take a vacation, as I have to cancel on seven people instead of one. However, all my Direct Support Contracts canceled on me, and the assignment from my temp agency started a week later, so I wound up with extra time.
I show up in Guelph Thursday evening. Wake up Friday morning, get up to go to the bathroom and step into standing water, which is covering the kitchen floor. It doesn't take long before me, my mother and brother are filling buckets of water and tossing them out. But the water is flowing in almost as fast as we're getting rid of it.
We contact our Landlord, and he calls a plumber and another guy. The three of them show up, there's a theory that it's a burst pipe because of all the freezing and thawing that's been happening due to fluctuating temperatures, but the plumber rules it out, as his evaluation concludes the plumbing in the house is fine.
Next theory is that it's a crack in the foundation of the house, and the water coming in is melt, although this would require a pretty large and pretty recent crack. They shovel away all the snow and ice from around the house and put up the metal plates against the roof to funnel away falling water. Doesn't slow the river any.
We find where the water's getting in. It's coming in through a wall on one side of the kitchen. It looks like the interior of the house is sweating. The landlord leaves his wet vac for us and his push broom and says he'll be back the next day. Gotta give him credit, the next day is Christmas Eve.
Since there is a drain in the laundry room, so long as the water was kept somewhat shallow, we were able to use the broom to sweep water into the drain as it pooled into the centre of the kitchen. We put up wads of towel to stop it from being swept into my brother's room during this process. Regardless, water is beginning to seep through the foundation inside both my mother and my brother's rooms. The only fully dry room is the living room.
Landlord gives us a $100 prepaid Visa and an Italian Christmas cake. He's really apologetic and I get why, but he's hustling and nobody gets what's happening so I really can't cast blame.
We cut the water in the house and nothing happens. We get a representative of the city to cut off the city water and that also doesn't help.
So me, my mother, and my brother exchanged stations, making sure the river was manned consistently, bailing water out of the apartment for a solid five days.
Know what it was? There's an abandoned house next door and uphill from us. A pipe burst, no one was there to report it, and before anyone thought to check, it was waist-high in water. Water from that house flowed underground and seeped into our apartment. Explains how our plumbing and foundation were unchanged, and why cutting the water in our house didn't work.
So we finally get that under control. Day that I'm about to return to Kitchener, I get a call from my roommate. He's says "Our unit is flooded."
I don't think my good luck charm is working.
So I get back, and yeah, flowing water, and standing water about as bad as the Guelph situation. It doesn't persist as long, though. It's coming from beneath the sink, so I turn the knob beneath the sink and that cuts the water. Our landlord gets a plumber night-of, he does some work and all is good. But it is the story of how I came from one flood to another, and how I was up until 3 AM the night I got back, vacuuming up water and mopping when I had work the following morning.
Before this Christmas, I'd never used a wet vac. Now I feel like an old hand at it.
Just had New Years. This isn't just the beginning of a new year for me, it's also my first year anniversary living in this unit. I remember last New Year, me and my roommates didn't realize that our heat was working (It was, we just didn't turn it on) so we spent a night without heat. This year, I found out the heater in my room is broken. So I guess like, not having heat in the New Year is like a tradition now.
Last year's New Year Resolutions were to get my G2, progress my romantic life in some way, and to find full-time employment in my field. I didn't get my G2. I did some Driver's Training, but I did half of the sessions on one end of the Summer Program, then found I had no time during the summer because I had two jobs and was working seven days a week, and then I did the other half of the sessions on the other side of Summer Program, which was mostly refresher. Wound up not touching some stuff and didn't wind up taking the test.
Closest I came to progressing my romantic life, I landed a date but she wound up standing me up. Wouldn't respond to any of my messages after that.
And as for employment, I had a few good job leads but nothing came of them. I managed to grow my Direct Support Contracts from three to seven, but ultimately found I couldn't survive on Direct Support alone and went back to being a factory temp, eliminating all my new contracts except the three I started with.
I did score that Safe Management Instructor gig, which I'll be training for late February. Unfortunately, I can't take on ongoing industrial contracts until I finish this training.
So 2016 was a big ol' washup and I'm restating my resolutions this year.
Today I was supposed to have a week-long assignment starting 7 AM, but when I showed up, they were like "The guy you're supposed to report to isn't here until 7:30, please wait in the lunchroom" So I waited until 7:30 and they were like "He won't be here until 8:00, please wait in the lunchroom." At 8:00 the guy I reported to showed up, and he was like "Turns out the guys in the warehouse you were supposed to be in are on vacation, please come back tomorrow".
Bah.
I show up in Guelph Thursday evening. Wake up Friday morning, get up to go to the bathroom and step into standing water, which is covering the kitchen floor. It doesn't take long before me, my mother and brother are filling buckets of water and tossing them out. But the water is flowing in almost as fast as we're getting rid of it.
We contact our Landlord, and he calls a plumber and another guy. The three of them show up, there's a theory that it's a burst pipe because of all the freezing and thawing that's been happening due to fluctuating temperatures, but the plumber rules it out, as his evaluation concludes the plumbing in the house is fine.
Next theory is that it's a crack in the foundation of the house, and the water coming in is melt, although this would require a pretty large and pretty recent crack. They shovel away all the snow and ice from around the house and put up the metal plates against the roof to funnel away falling water. Doesn't slow the river any.
We find where the water's getting in. It's coming in through a wall on one side of the kitchen. It looks like the interior of the house is sweating. The landlord leaves his wet vac for us and his push broom and says he'll be back the next day. Gotta give him credit, the next day is Christmas Eve.
Since there is a drain in the laundry room, so long as the water was kept somewhat shallow, we were able to use the broom to sweep water into the drain as it pooled into the centre of the kitchen. We put up wads of towel to stop it from being swept into my brother's room during this process. Regardless, water is beginning to seep through the foundation inside both my mother and my brother's rooms. The only fully dry room is the living room.
Landlord gives us a $100 prepaid Visa and an Italian Christmas cake. He's really apologetic and I get why, but he's hustling and nobody gets what's happening so I really can't cast blame.
We cut the water in the house and nothing happens. We get a representative of the city to cut off the city water and that also doesn't help.
So me, my mother, and my brother exchanged stations, making sure the river was manned consistently, bailing water out of the apartment for a solid five days.
Know what it was? There's an abandoned house next door and uphill from us. A pipe burst, no one was there to report it, and before anyone thought to check, it was waist-high in water. Water from that house flowed underground and seeped into our apartment. Explains how our plumbing and foundation were unchanged, and why cutting the water in our house didn't work.
So we finally get that under control. Day that I'm about to return to Kitchener, I get a call from my roommate. He's says "Our unit is flooded."
I don't think my good luck charm is working.
So I get back, and yeah, flowing water, and standing water about as bad as the Guelph situation. It doesn't persist as long, though. It's coming from beneath the sink, so I turn the knob beneath the sink and that cuts the water. Our landlord gets a plumber night-of, he does some work and all is good. But it is the story of how I came from one flood to another, and how I was up until 3 AM the night I got back, vacuuming up water and mopping when I had work the following morning.
Before this Christmas, I'd never used a wet vac. Now I feel like an old hand at it.
Just had New Years. This isn't just the beginning of a new year for me, it's also my first year anniversary living in this unit. I remember last New Year, me and my roommates didn't realize that our heat was working (It was, we just didn't turn it on) so we spent a night without heat. This year, I found out the heater in my room is broken. So I guess like, not having heat in the New Year is like a tradition now.
Last year's New Year Resolutions were to get my G2, progress my romantic life in some way, and to find full-time employment in my field. I didn't get my G2. I did some Driver's Training, but I did half of the sessions on one end of the Summer Program, then found I had no time during the summer because I had two jobs and was working seven days a week, and then I did the other half of the sessions on the other side of Summer Program, which was mostly refresher. Wound up not touching some stuff and didn't wind up taking the test.
Closest I came to progressing my romantic life, I landed a date but she wound up standing me up. Wouldn't respond to any of my messages after that.
And as for employment, I had a few good job leads but nothing came of them. I managed to grow my Direct Support Contracts from three to seven, but ultimately found I couldn't survive on Direct Support alone and went back to being a factory temp, eliminating all my new contracts except the three I started with.
I did score that Safe Management Instructor gig, which I'll be training for late February. Unfortunately, I can't take on ongoing industrial contracts until I finish this training.
So 2016 was a big ol' washup and I'm restating my resolutions this year.
Today I was supposed to have a week-long assignment starting 7 AM, but when I showed up, they were like "The guy you're supposed to report to isn't here until 7:30, please wait in the lunchroom" So I waited until 7:30 and they were like "He won't be here until 8:00, please wait in the lunchroom." At 8:00 the guy I reported to showed up, and he was like "Turns out the guys in the warehouse you were supposed to be in are on vacation, please come back tomorrow".
Bah.
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