Colm Wilkinson

There were some problems. The moment we arrived at the Centre in the Square, the downtown Kitchener theater, we knew we were in for a bit of a mess. My purse malfunctioned, sealing the tickets and everything else inside and I almost had to cut it open with scissors. The people vacantly strutting about were on average older than Colm himself. Some obnoxious couple was sitting in front of us calling out crap, when he was trying to make friendly banter with the audience. The same couple's big heads were in the way when he broke out with the "Bring Him Home."

Nevertheless... the theater was indeed as acoustically awesome as Dennis (who is a teacher at the school and who coincidentally happened to be attending the show) claimed. The staff was friendly, the price of parking was not too embarrassingly high...

HE WAS AMAZING!

Let it be known that you haven't heard Danny Boy until you've heard it from an irish ex-pat who defined the roles of both the Phantom and Jean ValJean.

Happy birthday, Jorgh! -xox-

Run for the Cure (no 2007)

Regardless of the reasons, I didn't participate this year. :(

Telus Tells Us That Customers are Dumb and Should be Taken Advantage Of

Today's rant is not so angry and not full of rageahol, but it would have been ... about half an hour ago. I forgot by one day about topping up my cell with the Pay and Talk thing through Telus, and I was in for a mean surprise when I filled it this morning just before driving off to work in the Rav4. The account balance was zero, no thanks to my stupid memory, and the rate was now nearly doubled from 25c/min (ridiculous anyway) to a terrificly gouging 40c/min.

I was absolutely livid all day, but I didn't have time to rage at any service reps until I got home a while ago. I spent the whole day rehearsing in my head all the irate customer phrases that I always read about, where people make seriously silly or amusingly irritating demands to the service people.

I, myself, have never done any sort of negotiations (read: angry raving) in that sense, since I'm such a square that I follow the laws and regulations and other ridiculously arbitrary rules imposed by some faceless authority.

But after reading a few articles in the last few weeks about negotiations, creating opportunities, or just punching your way through a crowd (which I have had to do more recently like through Oxford Street, without the punching), I felt ready to give them the most convincing ANGRY IGNORANT LADY CUSTOMER conversation. The following dialog is an embellished paraphrasing.

Me: I just topped my account this morning with this card, and I want to know why my rate has changed.
Rep: You let your account go to zero. The rate goes up when you recharge. That's how it is.
Me: Wait, so you're telling me that since I missed recharging by one day, I can't get my rate back down?
Rep: You'll have to buy a 50 dollar top up card.
Me: I don't want to do that, that's ridiculous!
Rep: Sorry, that's how it is.

I'm not one to back down anymore, especially being so mad at stupid things lately. Like having to deal with my kids running around the computer class this afternoon clamoring at their classmates' computer components, going "This is not your own! OUR OWN!" (I'm so evil.)

Me: Well, I find this completely ridiculous. I try my best to top up every month, and this one time I miss the expiration by one day and I get this? I want to get my rate back!
Rep: Well we can change that just this one time.
Me: Yeah, you do that.

***ROCKIN'***

OK, well... I don't think this deserves a *rockin'* since I actually negotiated away the remaining balance that I did have, but it was much better to get my rate back by sacrificing the little balance I had, than to pay 50 dollars for another card that I was never going to use up anyway. (You'd have to look at the Telus Pay Per Talk plans to understand more how this works.)

MS Office Excel Still Wins :(

One of the things I have been telling my students (especially the most clueless ones about computers) is that there is software out there that they don't have to pay for. In fact, there is such a massive, continuous supply of freeware, shareware, open source awesomeware, that one never needs to buy software... unless it's for k-12 schools. :(

The software suite I am talking about is MS Office. Nothing really major wrong with it - it's definitely a useful set of programs - but there are a number of things that I can point out that need to be removed, fixing or enhancements. (Formulas, for instance. I don't give a @#$%ing crap about MathType. Stop asking, dialog box!)

On the other hand, the free alternative, Open Office, offers the same functionality for 100% less money. That is, maybe you might have to pay for the electricity and internet connection to download it, but it's freeeeeeee.

However wealthy a person may be, the moment someone says "FREE", anyone and everyone with half a brain would jump on the chance to try it out. Hence, I have been recommending to the masses to use OOo (OpenOffice.org) when their trial software has expired, to avoid going through the "Miss, I couldn't write my essay because Word just expired" crap.

Too bad I discovered today that OOo has one big, huge, black mark on its awesomeness. I can't believe that after 5 years of so many people asking for chart and regression options such as giving the equation of the regression line, and no one has made it yet.

I especially find the second to last comment stupid, about how he believes that because it is open source means everyone is at fault. (We're soooo sorry that we don't know squat about coding. We're soooo sorry that we want to use this program in schools and my students don't know what the crap is going on, let alone how to get a stupid regression line to show up. And on top of that, we're soooo sorry we like your program and want to make suggestions, while nobody asks how this should be done.)

TRIP OVER :(

I wrote a bit about the trip on Facebook because I already uploaded the photos there and on Flickr, but I don't have the link up yet. Well, if you do find the Flickr account, the photos are there as well. In the meantime, here's something you won't see from either of those collections:

Vacation!

I'm on vacation!
It's celebration!
It's celebration,
I'm on vacation....

Oh wait, no I'm not. :(

At least not yet! :D

As soon as these kids write their final exams on Monday afternoon, I'm taking everything home, correcting it all (which is going to be less than last term, as I have half the number of students and exams), delivering them Tuesday morning, and we're jetting off (by car, that is...)to possibly Toronto, and Montreal. And possibly Quebec. I don't know about Quebec, since Jorghnassen doesn't seem to want to take the extra two hours of driving to visit, but I'd like to see my mum at least, and hopefully squeeze in some time with the bunny man and his wife.

Then we're jetting off (literally) to England on the 27th, to attend Jorgh's brother's weeding. (Inside joke.) Oh, that reminds me, I need to get a camera before that. A real camera, not one that takes things like this:



Anyway, time to get cracking... I have another pile of corrections to complete at the moment!

Ms C's Random Food Review: Purple Cauliflower

What: A not-so-gross looking purple cauliflower from the discount pile. Since I don't have much experience with buying vegetables in general, I thought I could get away with cutting off all the darker crappy parts and cook it as normal.

How: A stir-fry with a bright yellow zucchini, onions, and really red wine-soaked mushrooms, and then another time with cream of mushroom.

And...?: It is way freaky when you have a plate of vegetables with weird colours. Even weirder when the cream of mushroom turns purple from the joy of anthocyanins.

Then it gets gross when you try to eat it. Don't get me wrong - I really like cooked cauliflowers, and I even appreciate raw cauliflower (with the weird aftertaste reduced by soaking in some salt). And I barely ever eat raw vegetables... @_@

Well, I don't know about regular healthy purple cauliflowers, but this one tasted like acid. Everything I made was invaded with the taste of a really acidic bite. No matter if I added sugars, cheeses, tomatoes, salt, spices.... Nothing hides the acid.

On the plus side, it doesn't have a terrible aftertaste - it does leave a tingly acidic (purplish) tongue, however.

Rating: 3/5 until someone tells me what the hell went wrong.