Social Anxiety, and Banks... Again.

Being cooped up indoors 24/7 for much too long, I also realize when I have to conquer the urges of hiding away from the world and reaching outside when I need to. So at least when I have an issue, like not being paid for work done, I can overcome stupid fears, like that of using the telephone, and try to figure out who messed up. Fortunately, I didn't have to get upset at people to fix the problem over the line, and things are resolved.

---

I have an aversion to the telephone because the fact that I cannot see a person's reaction when I speak to them already comprimises a part of my brain telling me if I am being unwelcome or not. It comes from my deep-rooted insecurity, and the memories and fears of rejection that has plagued me throughout my inexplicable childhood. Thus, I would rather conduct transactions and communicate face-to-face as much as possible, comforted by the physical presence of a person.

However, the bank (or cooperative) is another issue. One time several years ago when I started studying at McGill, the caisse populaire didn't allow me to pay my tuition bill at the teller without charging me extra for some stupid reason, and the fact that the teller was cold and unhelpful didn't improve my thoroughly negative impression of banks.

I have never, ever liked banks. I would rather hide my money in a pillowcase in a box in a concrete vault at the bottom of the ocean on another planet in another galaxy. Unfortunately, on this planet, normal everyday monetary transactions require a person with some profession or other to have an account at a financial institution. Thus, I have one, at the Caisse Populaire Desjardins. And I avoid it as much as possible. (Though I avoid the RBC even moreso.)

But their internet banking gives me relief. Internet banking is a godsend, and should have come much, much sooner. I can pay my bills online. And I can OC-ly check my account every ten seconds to make sure they are paid.

Except if I am using Firefox, apparently. My second call of the day involved whining at the tech guy, and being told that the error page I kept getting sent to was due to me using an internet browser that was not "Internet Explorer or Netscape" ...!

Netscape...!? Didn't that die out when people were still trying to avoid the Y2K catastrophe that crippled hospitals, government institutions, financial institu-oh wait. That might explain it. (The fact that the monetary investment by everyone into the Y2K bug hadn't caused such a ruckus meant that they were reluctant to let Netscape die in the horrific Firefox wake.)

But wait - paradoxically, the Netscape investment didn't include creating internet banking back then. Otherwise, I'd have been saved the embarrassment of walking up to the teller and being told in none too many words that I was an idiot. What the hell are they using my money for? *rage rage rage*

Let's Beautify the City

Quebec Urbain pointed out a piece from R-C, discussing the problem of abandoned and contaminated lots in Quebec. Within the comments, there was a link to the province's database of contaminated lots, which (un)surprisingly pointed out quite a few around here, due to all the different types of light and heavy industries, auto and truck service stations, and SPA(?!). There's even one down the street, behind the dentist's office (which very well might be a reason the dentist is relocating across the street). The disconcerting part of is that there are so many lots whose owners don't bother to pay to decontaminate the lot, just so they can sell it off or do something with it.

Which is why I was quite happy when the city bought out the long-abandoned and sucky corner of Masson and Père-Lelièvre and made it into a park. This should be done for "toutes les grosses intersections on retrouve un de ces terrains!"

Videotron and Cable Internet

I returned to Quebec City once again, after almost 2 weeks of Waterloo (non-?)adventures. Jorghnassen will be able to fill in the rest of the details, but I knew that I had to return here. For whatever reasons, I still had to return to settle some things.

One of the things I did before leaving for Hongtario was downgrade my internet service from Videotron, seeing that I would not be around for about half a month. There's three plans that home consumers would consider: the basic, the high speed, and the extreme high speed. When Big Pu signed me up for cable service eons ago, there weren't such distinctions and the limits were completely nonexistent. Once Videotron started getting more popular and people started downloading even more videos and crap like... well, you know... they created the other types of accounts. BASIC (or "Super Ultra Light") for the person who doesn't know any better; HIGH SPEED for the user who likes to do moderate browsing and downloading but still has to say "OMG WOAH HORSEY" every so often; and EXTREME (or "Pirates Ahoy!") where nothing is limited and the bandwidth should be enough for the, uh, Connoisseur of fine digital media.

Videotron rolled me over to the High Speed account, which I have kept until last month. I then decided to downgrade the account to Basic, which I knew would lower the down and up limits, from 20GB/10GB to 1GB/1GB. But I didn't know that the bandwidth would also go down from 7Mbps/820kbps to 600kbps/128kbps. Yay go cable >:( But at least it helps to not go over the limit too quickly, since everything downloads so fricking slowly!!! (*head exploding in frustration*)

Then to make matters worse, by the time I turned on this computer from 2 weeks of inactivity, there were 11 WINDOWS UPDATES, all security related. So I blew through about 1/10 of my limit in one day. (If it keeps up I'm going to have to call the guy and tell him to change my account again.)

/Internet account whining.

In other whining, I have yet to obtain a criminal record check that doesn't cost 60 bucks and two blisters only to be inadequate for the picky needs of the OCT.

FREE E-BOOKS - Rock on!

Project Gutenberg collects books that are out of copyright and free for the public and makes these books available for download bliss. Of course, it takes a lot of effort and crazy reading to get something like this put together, so they rely on volunteers to digitize, proofread, format, and put together these thousands and thousands of books. This volunteer project is called Digitized Proofreaders.

So while I'm waiting for... uh, just waiting... well, I'm proofreading pages that have been spat out by a scanner and OCR program. Today is the 5th day since I joined, and I'm up to the 60th page. I am currently most involved in a textbook on algebra for high school, and it's probably the most annoying proofreading project there (other than the smudgefest-sideways-tables-scanned-with-a-flashlight books and the ancient-languages-with-weird-markings-and-charaters texts). I've hit upon the pages no one is eager to proofread because they're pages of nothing but fractions, and the OCR garbles every single character from these scans.

But on the plus side, I'm rank #2259, tied with only 20 people. YES!

RUN FOR THE CURE 2006 Some People Screw Up at the Bank and Elsewhere

I went to the CIBC today to drop off donations, but somehow the tellers don't know what the printed page of online donations looks like. Maybe it's the English that threw them off. They made me register *again* for some reason, but now it's out of my hands. For now.

If I reach $300 by the end of October, I'll get a puffy one-shoulder bag. Let's keep raising the funds! :)

After the bank, I went around the corner to the Running Room (Coin des Coureurs, in QC) and picked up my participant's kit. I only discovered the t-shirt they gave me was dirty on the collar, like someone had dropped cola on it. :(

Just waiting for the rain to stop... *sigh*

On the plus side, I'm runner #1448. AWWIGHT!

Oh My God Someone Listened to Me.

Jorghnassen went through the McGill Reporter a few days ago, and told me that someone is actually revamping the McGill website.

...

This means I have to donate something, don't I? :|

Open Letter to McGill Web Page

Dear McGill Web Page,

Yuo suxx0rs.

Unthankfully yours,
Everyone on the goddamn planet.

P.S. Tell Alumni to stop bugging me for donations until you fix it.

Every time Jorgh asks me about something that necessitates me looking up something about McGill, the discussion always falls upon the waste of webspace called McGill.ca. I am sure everyone who designed it is especially proud of how it is completely unreadable and unhelpful. I don't recall any news web site requiring the use of SIX narrow columns on a front page squishing in TEN different headings. It's confusing, it's disorienting, and it actually keeps people from reading the front page at all, except to unsuccessfully scan it for a link to a godforsaken useful document like an exam schedule.

Every single link on the front page goes somewhere different. That doesn't sound like a bad thing, but having a header that says "Student Information" versus a link that says "Student Services" somewhere else on the page lets you believe that McGill paid these people just to make as many webpages as possible with as many different combinations of the words "student," "full range," "faculties," "admissions," and "pat ourselves on our butts for making these fantastic web pages."

To be completely fair, the design is probably not up to the webmaster. I can emphasize with the poor prole who had to endure the hours of, "But I'm telling you, I want the web site to be completely white so all the text can run together like a massive word jumble. And squish the whole thing together in the middle of the page some more because I don't like using up the entire screen."

And yes, I know how completely ironic it is for a person who has such a messy looking blog to complain about how terrible another web site looks, but I made this site on a whim whereas WE PAID FOR MCGILL'S THING WITH OUR BLOOD TUITION MONEY.

Trend Wars

Amusing for perhaps a few minutes (or until you run out of things to compare), Google yourself a war! Surprising and unsurprising results?

P.S. If you process common things too much, Google restricts your access. :(

I am such a bastard

I don't internet-stalk. Rather, I internet-peep.

Most of you may know that I don't publicise my blog. I almost do not have it on any search engine (I think). In fact, if you anonymously and randomly sign my blog, I will freak out for about half an hour trying to figure out who you are. Then I hide under a big shell until nobody's looking and run for freedom.

On the other hand, I will go to great lengths googling people I knew back in the past. I will turn over many a stone to pry into the depths of the underworld (ie. look in my old yearbooks) until things become clear.

And lo and behold, if you have a livejournal or a blog, I will find you. Or in this case, both of you.

EDIT: I should probably specify that these two are from my old school while I was up in blueberry land.

Random Stuff Day

Since I was asked to supply for a school downtown starting next Monday, I will celebrate by posting a number of odds and ends that I wanted to share with you. And by "you," I mean Little V. And everyone else. But especially Little V. :D

• Cheer up, right away! If you don't, then just keep clicking. If you don't like it then you're a heartless bastard.



• A blog I randomly stumbled upon, while searching for the elusive mp3 albums of Sesame Street Fever and the even more difficult to pin down Mickey Mouse Disco. There are a lot of other weird albums and music/tv related things downloadable on the site.



• A hard as $%@! intelligence test that claims every question is "common sense;" but like all "intelligence tests," there are a fair number of "WTF-how-the-crap-am-I-supposed-to-know-that-you-stupid-freaks." By the way, you have to make sure you type the answer exactly the way the test wants to receive it (barring capitalization), so you need to pluralize things or spell things correctly.



• Souhaku Scans, which distributes some scanlated manga titles. In particular, Yakitate!! Japan. Most recently, I read Angel Densetsu, which turns out to be so fricking hilarious that my neighbours think I escaped from the mental hospital.



• When is Yakitate!! Japan updated??? (and "Where's Naruto!?") They'll post the titles of the newest scanlated manga releases of the day, although regardless you'll have to hunt for some of them through IRC.

Take the Test!

Jorghnassen's RPG Nemesis test intro image, hopefully almost finished, unless he wants something changed. 

Rasterbate Yeah

The other silly image project. :)

This is what the internet called "Rasterbation." It is a process where you take an image and blow it up onto many sheets of paper (or simply the blowing up part), stick it together, and hang it up somewhere and have other internet geeks gawk at it. The finished image can consist of the halftone or coloured dots style (like newspaper prints), pixellation, lines, or any other kind of printing process. The idea is that you print it big. And take a picture of it. And show the world.

Join me in World Domination!

... Or just for nation leader luncheon...
Greater Caqban, the place to be
Where you can do hardly but take a wee;
Sigh not relief, for if you knew
The government will watch you too.

Gar-funkitize

Oh, Garfield, you and your crazy coffee antics! 

Note!

Go visit my comic if you haven't already.

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Interesting interactive link of the day: The Greatest Adventure of All Time!
Wikipedia for the ridiculous.

Wikitravel!

Anyone checked out Quebec City yet? Felix did. Then he sent me to the site. It was so craptastic that I had to start editing it. It seems that Evan liked that someone would work on it. Now Jorgh is also doing some edits too. ;)

Non-Educational Time-Wasters

Would you know it? I'm also terrible at games.

Balloon Duel - The great NES game revived as a modern-day Flash tribute. Customizations galore!

Snopes - If you ever send me another chain letter, I will smash your heads in...to this web site, which details how useless thsoe emails are. This site mostly debunks many (if not most) urban legends.

I got so caught up in the customizations for Balloon Duel that I made an ugly sketch of my two characters, the girl Seamus (yes, I know that it's a boy's name), and little Naruto. It is possible to make a Naruto character! Yes!!! 

Educational Time-Wasters

Note that I am terrible at geography.

Geosense - Compete against others online or play on your own! Possible slow servers. This game is hard because the scores are calculated to how close you are to the city.
Geography Olympics - Represent your country (or mess up other people's countries) and compete up to 3 times a day! This game is not quite as hard as the above, because it only asks for the country. On the other hand, the controls are rather wonky.
If you really have no clue! This is where I started, and it makes for a reasonably good tutor. Now I know the differences between Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. If I can do it, you can too! Note that I still can't spell, and had to look up the names.