Drat this working for a living all to heck.
May. 5th, 2013
01:02 pm - I need a raven that says, "Waka waka waka"! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIX_6TBep
Do I need words in here so that I can post on LJ? Yup. How dumb is that?
Never mind, just watch the raven video. :)
Apr. 20th, 2013
12:27 pm - So, how many people have actually left Canada to perform a terrorist act?
Apparently, the Harper "government" have decided to displace a challenge to them about the power of party whips that was to happen on Monday with the burning need to fast-track their Bill S-7 - Combatting Terrorism Act:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-po
It will, among other things no doubt not mentioned, make it illegal to leave, or attempt to leave, Canada to perform a terrorist act.
So, if a person leaves Canada as a student to study on exchange in Britain, and the person likes it there, and stays there for four or five years studying, and then becomes convinced that somebody somewhere else needs the person to blow them up so that they will understand how bad they are - does that count as leaving Canada to perform a terrorist act?
It seems pretty damned nebulous and knee-jerk to me.
Apr. 8th, 2013
12:10 pm - Money & other anxieties II
Remember me telling you that I have moved my pitiful pile of money left over from my student loan from Royal Bank because they were charging me $2.00 a month for the privilege of using my money?
Now there's this:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c
Royal Bank of Canada, I am more than disappoint.
Mar. 9th, 2013
11:54 pm - Tablets and Angry Birds.
I was recently given a Samsung Galaxy Tab2 7 tablet. Yay. :)
Some things about the process make me uncomfortable. No, Samsung, I am not giving you the password to my regular email for the Samsung Account I have to have in order to use the functions of the tablet. So I have resurrected my google account for the purposes of using this tablet. So, now that we are past that emotionally-charged hurdle, we can get on with learning how to use the tablet.
The hardest part of everything is trying to figure out where the navigation buttons are located. Sometimes they don't exist, so one never knows when to give up looking.
Huh. The internet is not the internet. It is a truncated version to fit the screen and memory limitations fo the device. Okay.
Also, it is WIFI, and we don't have wireless at home. I have been using the wireless at work, which means that things that should be quick end up taking forever. Example: I was trying to create the google account (also required), and it was loading and loading and loading - and timing out - and loading and loading and loading - and timing out - and so on. Finally it turned out that I hadn't actually signed in to the wireless at work, which I was expecting a log in page that never appeared, so I thought it was still functional from the day before. So that took most of the day until I had a moment to try something else, - and then the log in page showed up. Why the google account configuration screen doesn't have a warning that the internet (in spite of the icon showing connectivity) is not actually connected, I don't know, but it would have been useful.
So, of course, I downloaded Angry Birds,which I have been hearing about forever, and which I have wanted to play. Yay. Even better: it is Angry Birds Star Wars. :)
I feel a little bit like I'm living on the prairies and somebody gives me an outboard motor: no doubt this is an excellent thing, but I don't quite know how to make use of it yet - and I need more stuff (a boat, for preference) to use it to its fullest capacity.
We shall see. We shall, that is, if I can be dragged away from Angry Birds. :)
11:36 pm - Money and other anxieties.
So, when I went back to school to finish my BA, I took out a Canada student loan. It was my second student loan, but I had paid back all of my first student loan, so I was permitted a second one. My first one was with Scotia Bank, and I paid it back when interest rates were highest, and I felt so unloved by my Scotia bank that I went to another bank to deal with my day to day stuff, and closed the account once the student loan was paid off. Cue seven years later, and I am taking out my second student loan at my day to day bank, the Royal Bank of Canada.
In those dark days, for both banks, the gov't gave me a document, I took it to my bank, signed it, and the bank put the money in my accounts. Once it was time to pay off the loan, my bank was my loan holder. The thing about those loans was that, if the bank could get the student to default on the payments, up to and including the last payment, they could get the whole amount of the loan from the gov't of Canada, immediately. So guess how much interest they had in helping students during that tricky time between graduation and the first serious paying job. Yeah.
So, never mind that, cue forward another eleven years, and I have finished the degree and gotten the job (several jobs, but hey) and paid off my student loan (the second one). At that time I am in a small town that doesn't actually have a branch of the Royal Bank, but I get the payments to them. And I am left with about $300.00 in the account, which can sit there until I am ready to deal with it as far as I am concerned. Because the Royal doesn't have a branch in my town, I have opened up an account with another bank, and that is my day to day account.
And then we move and then I change jobs a few times, and all in all, I haven't had the time to get that Royal Bank account sorted out. Every so often, I get a letter stating that my account appears to be dormant, and would I please send the document back indicating that I want my account to be kept open. Okay - the fact that I have money in it should be a clue, I would think, but okay.
Cue February, when I decided I had the time to close the account. Low and behold - they had sometime in the past few years begun to charge me $2.00 service charges for the privelege of letting them use my money for their own money making schemes. And so I close the account and get $125.00 back. Yay Royal Bank.
So, I took the money and started a tax free savings account[1], and in one week my pathetic little pile of money earned me a penny.
Which, you know? Is a lot better than being charged another $2.00 fee.
[1] - it's a Canadian thing
Feb. 5th, 2013
07:17 am - TED comes to Vancouver 2014 ...
http://www.globaltvbc.com/vancouver+to+h
http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/04/the-next-c
... but the tickets for the five day event are $6000.00, so I guess I'll have to wait until it comes out on the intertube. :)
Jan. 9th, 2013
01:45 pm - Phones - bah.
I would just like to say that I hate people who like to use the phone. The reason is that most people I have to deal with who phone me because they like to use the phone, do so because they like to hear the sound of their own voice. Anything I tell them by phone is immediately forgotten. So, for me, I have to listen to someone blathering on pointlessly, asking questions to which they don't actually pause long enough for me to make an answer, and then if I do rudely talk over the top of them long enough for some dead air where I give them a useful piece of information - they don't listen.
And people who call me and chew and slurp in my ear while doing all of the above disgust me beyond words.
There. Now you know.
Jan. 1st, 2013
01:01 am - And Happy New Year ...
... from the last time zone on earth!
We get to see what everyone did, and then decide whether or not we are going to do anything or not. Mostly we missed the actual midnight moment, but we shared a kiss when we noticed. :)
Dec. 21st, 2012
11:31 am - Happy Solstice!
Best wishes for longer days for everyone - everyone North of the Equator, I mean. :)
Nov. 27th, 2012
02:55 pm - Spinach & Onion Egg Puff
This was me using up a mistakenly purchased bag of frozen spinach, because Lorne doesn't like spinach. This turned out to be a keeper, so I am putting it here to be able to find it again. :)
butter
grape seed oil
1 sweet onion
1 yellow onion
1 package frozen spinach
1/8 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg
5 large eggs
1/3 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese
salt + pepper
bread crumbs
Melt butter in grape seed oil over medium heat in a frypan. Dice both onions and add to pan. Saute slowly until reasonable browning has occurred. Sprinkle in dried thyme and stir. Place frozen spinach in and stir until all ice crystals are gone and spinach is warm. Sprinkle with nutmeg and continue to stir. Once fragrant, remove from heat.
In a bowl, whisk eggs and cream together with salt + pepper. Add both shredded cheeses and whisk again.
Grease a baking dish (solid not clear) liberally with butter. Place spinach mixture in bottom and roughly smooth (leave gentle hummocks). Pore egg mixture over top, shaking gentle to cover. Submerge any hummocks that are too peaky. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with butter.
Bake at 350 F for 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool 10 minutes before serving.
NOTES:
onions were the size of baseballs, not softballs
frozen spinach package was about ... yay ... big
it poofed very prettily, but then subsided
it is easy to overdo thyme: be cautious
apparently it is possible to have too much nutmeg, too (rumour has it)
once it cooled it released some grease, but it was damn tasty
report is today that reheat in microwave is a success
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