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August 3, 2009 - 8:26 PM Through my bedroom window  I was awakened from a deep and restful sleep around 2:15 this morning to the sound of wind, heavy rain, and thunder. After scrambling out of bed in the dark, while running about the house to close all the windows I couldn't help but be amazed by the lightning I was seeing. As is my habit and custom, I grabbed a camera, pointed it out the window and voila. An amazing display of electricity. I have noticed since moving that this area gets much more powerful storms than I ever saw at my last house. The thunder from some of these flashes shook the whole house and several blasts even set off a few car alarms in the neighbourhood. Kristi and the girls have gone to BC to visit her parents, so I've had the house to myself, the first time I think I've ever been alone in my new home. Apart from the birds' chatter, the place is amazingly quiet. As I was puttering about yesterday I became acquainted with a number of insects around the house. We have a lot of spiders here. I had no idea there were even this many spiders in the city, let alone my house. Fortunately, the vast majority are outside. I was sitting on the deck yesterday, watching the sun set with a cold glass of orange juice in my hand when I noticed that between nearly every rung on the porch railing sat a teensy spider in the middle of it's own web, spanning the gap. It reminded me of a busy market, where there is but one customer and many traps into which they may fall. Really, a smart fly would stay clear of any such buildings and enjoy a much longer life span, but I suppose there is something here that brings the flys too or the spiders would have long left the area. I observed one such spider downstairs while I was trying to find a chase to the attic. Some sawdust had fallen into his otherwise invisible web, making it noticable. This particular spider had chosen a very unlikely place to spin his web, a place I would have thought no fly would have ever flown. Yet none the less, whatever the why, here this spider sat on his web. At first blush, the spider looked as though he could have been a skeleton. I blew on him a few times without invoking a response. Wondering if his trap had outlived him, A third puff of breath knocked the spider right off the web. He landed a few inches below on the water meter and stretched his legs. Have you ever been sitting in a car during a long journey and stopped to go to the bathroom? When you first get out it's almost as if your legs don't even work anymore. You stand and stretch and try to work out the kinks in your stiff and sore appendages. That's the impresson I got as I watched him awake. I wondered how long he'd sat there, motionless, waiting day in and day out for his next meal. And then it hit me. I felt sorry for the spider, and, reminded of a story my dad told me a few days earlier, I decided to fetch a fly for this spider and see what happened. As we have been in no short supply of window flys lately, I jogged upstairs, grabbed a fly from one of the living room windows and carried it downstairs. Then, suspence building, I dropped it onto the spider's web.  There was no stiffness or soreness demonstrated this time the spider moved, no! That little spider lept to life, scaled the web and wasted no time wrapping his meal up. Nimbly it danced about the fly, and as I watched closely noticed it was wrapping it up tightly with tiny silk thread. Then, once bundled, it detached the package from the web, carried it off to a safer place and proceeded to feast. I don't believe the fly or the spider knew their situations had been changed on them And so it is also with us. We go about our days, doing the things we do, working, playing, eating, sleeping, trying to survive this life, when sometimes, for reasons unknown, life takes an unexpected twist. In this case, the same event meant good news for the spider, bad news for the fly. Would the spider have thanked me if he had known? Would the fly have cursed me? I don't suppose I'll ever know.  August 6, 2009 - 9:27 PM Technical support... How can I help you? Over the past few weeks, I have had numerous occasions, both at work and at home, where I have had to experience the joy of phoning for technical support. You know what frustrates me more than anything else? Having the call center operator, who's reading from a text book or a step-by-step troubleshooting guide ask me condescending questions. The fact is, I have already diagnosed the problem past "Have you checked for any loose connections" or "Turn the device off and then back on again" and will probably need to speak to your supervisor before this issue I'm experiencing will be resolved. Of course, you can't say that without sounding arrogant, and since I do require something from the company I'm calling it's probably not in my best interest to set the demeanor of the person I've reached against me. So what do you do? I've had to phone Shaw technical support several times lately with issues regarding my service. First with my Internet, that was a several-call trouble ticket, now I'm on hold with a fellow who is trying to figure out why my voicemail is not working. The call time just past 11 and a half minutes, most of which have been spent with me on hold. (I've written this entire article in that time, incidently.) His first inferrence was that I entered my password incorrectly and thus - it caused my password to expire. On the first try? I find that very hard to believe. I used to be an installer at Shaw, installing the very service I am now trying to have fixed. I've helped dozens of people set up their voice mail and I know what it's supposed to do and when it's not working properly. *sigh* I've just been told that there was a problem at their end and that it should be working tomorrow by 2:00 pm. Of course, I won't be home until 5:00 or 5:30, long after Shaw's business solutions office is closed. Monday morning rant call, anyone? August 23, 2009 - 5:56 PM The Ring...  The first time this year, and not without an adventure!  Colin took the girls camping this weekend, so Kristi and I thought it would be an excellent opportunity for us to do some camping of our own, and that we did.  Of course, no camping trip would be complete without at least one thing not going according to plan, and this weekend was no exception. While heading out to our lake destination, we came over some railway tracks and Rusty's steering rod broke. Have you ever had a shopping cart with one wheel that just won't cooperate? Well, that's about the best way to describe what Rusty's front right tire did. It was a little bit intense for a moment or two until we came to a complete stop on the side of the road, but nobody was hurt and the problem was minor. A phone call to my dad had another steering rod on the way out, and Kristi and I had nothing but time to kill while we waited. We made some beds in the back of the van and relaxed, doing what we do best - enjoying each other's company.  Several hours passed before my dad arrived with the spare part off his old van, and within minutes we had it on and were ready to continue our trip. I don't know what we would have done without his help, and we weren't a mere hop, skip, OR jump away from the city... I'll have to do something pretty spectacular to make this one up to him, but as always — he was more than happy to help.  In light of the time lost, we cancelled our lake plans and headed into the badlands to camp for the night. The poor Seadoo got dragged all around Southern Alberta for nothing this weekend, but he was a good sport about it none the less, and got a good wash and a full tank of gas out of the deal too. We arrived at a near—full campsite, but found a spot and set up our camp.    This morning we got up and noticed the reason there did not appear to be a Men's outhouse was that it had blown over, leaving only the toilet on top of the cement pad and the vent stack. This had amusing picture opportunity written ALL over it.  Hey, where's the toilet paper??? BACK to Journal Index |