Job update

Well I've been employed now for a couple of weeks. I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to be doing it in a couple more, though.

I got sent a tablet PC last week, so I didn't have to do everything on paper. Except that they didn't send the right power adapter, so I couldn't charge it or use it. When that eventually arrived, it was another few days before I could actually use it, because no one had thought to set me up an account on the server. So it was a week before I could use it.

And this morning, I was asked to fax over my bank details, so they could add me to the system and run payroll. This, in spite of me having provided them with everything they needed when I signed up three weeks back. It turns out that they'd misplaced everything, though naturally they didn't find it until too late.

I'm really, really not impressed right now. I've got one more shift scheduled for tomorrow, and am wondering if I should just quit after that. I feel like it's just a huge waste of time, really.

Bah!

No reply to my email from Demon, so I called them. Apparently, they don't log IP addresses on the POP3 server, which I'll admit to being a little dubious about.

Ah well. It was worth a try. I did get a phonecall from a very nice detective this morning, telling me that they're closing the case; they did arrest someone a couple of weeks back, who he described as "un-cooperative", and since he didn't admit to it, there's nothing they can do.

Now all I need is for Dell to get their finger out and actually send me the new computer I ordered three weks ago.

Snow!

We had our first proper snow overnight - there was about an inch waiting when I woke up this morning.

Sadly, most of it will have melted in the next couple of day - the temperature is going back up to above freezing for the weekend.

But I've been impressed with what I've seen. The sidewalks have been cleared, and the chap my landlord has paid to clear the drive did it quite early in the morning. I assume things will be a little different when the snow keeps on coming, but we'll have to wait another few days for that!

I don't remember packing that....

Well, my goods from the UK arrived today. It was a remarkably painless opertion to sign for them, though it involved going to the Customs building down by the airport. There was a little more paperwork to fill in, and lots of forms were stamped, several times apiece. And that was that, aside from a few questions about what I was bringing in, specifically to make sure I wasn't bringing in anything prohibited.

(On the other hand - if I was bringing in food, I'm pretty sure that after two months in transit, they'd have been able to smell it without me having to ask.)

So my seven cases are here. I've unpacked half, and will sort the rest as and when I get around to them. I've got two cases of pictures which I'm not sure I'll bother unpacking - I'm not sure I'm going to put them up in the apartment, even though I've been given permission from my landlord.

It was fun going through my stuff, and finding all the things that I'd forgotten I'd packed. Many of them were wrapped up very well indeed, and now I'm thinking I should have left a few for Christmas....

The plot thickens

Being quite lazy, I didn't bother to change the passwords on my email account after the PC was stolen, mainly because it's quite hard.

I've been using their webmail client to read emails sent to my demon account; and when I logged on this morning, all the email there had gone. Since I'd not deleted it, the only other option is that the new owner of my PC finally opened up Outlook and downloaded everything.

So I've asked demon if they can access their logs and let me know what the IP address used was; and I can then pass that onto the police here.

I'm pretty sure nothing will come come if (either demon won't or can't provide me with the information, or the police here won't know what to do with it), but I can at least do everything I can to help.

On central heating and smoke alarms

This apartment doesn't have any radiators. I suspect that that's not an unusual choice for Canada - after all, when the temperature outside is regularly below -20 for most of winter, you probably don't want that many pipes full of water running through your property. Each an every one is a potential problem when the freeze starts.

So instead, there are air ducts. When the boiler down in the basement kicks in, it starts sending hot air through the ducts - they're mounted either low in the wall or in the floor, so it's a pretty effective way of heating the house.

However (and didn't you just see that coming?) there's one small issue at the moment. The smoke alarm down in the cellar is beeping; it started around 1am. This being North America, the beep is followed by a badly digitized voice saying "Battery low". This being Canada, that is followed by the same message in French ("Pile faible"). And because the smoke alarm is next to the boiler, why - it's echoing through the hot air ducts and there's not a spot in the house where it doesn't sound like it's right next to you.

I can hear you asking as to why I've not just changed the battery, or even just removed the existing one. Well, the main reason is that it seems to be wired into the mains, rather than having an actual battery. Which does make the message just a tad more confusing.

Weather update

I'm sure you'll all be excited to know that I was snowed on today!

It wasn't exactly a blizzard - it took me a couple of minutes to work out that what was catching my eye was in fact snow, and it definitely didn't stick.

On the other hand, today was the first day that I was wearing my proper winter jacket; I'd been a little concerned about whether I was going to be mocked by Canadians for wearing a winter jacket in November; but that lasted until I felt the first gust of wind. That was the point at which I decided that they could mock all they wanted.

I assume we'll be in for a little more snow over the next few days - I wonder how long before it'll stay?

Another day, another supermarket

This one, conveniently situated just a few minutes up the road from the apartment here - it was faster to walk there than wait for the bus. The suburb I'm in is called Vanier, which is a very French part of town; there are a lot of people who use French as their first, if not their only, language.

Which meant that more than once, I was met with polite incomprehension when I launched into my spiel. I have discovered, though, that I speak good enough French that I can discuss the store card with someone, and explain the benefits; though apparently not well enough to convince a francophone to actually sign up for it.

I'm back there on Saturday and Sunday, so I can try again then; I should probably learn some vocab in the meantime....

My first full shift

So I'm just in, after six hours of signing people up to the store card. All on my lonesome - my trainer was at a supermarket a few miles away.

I think I did alright. I didn't offend anyone - well, there's no angry messages waiting for me telling me not to come back tomorrow - and managed to get ten sales. That's just marginally more than minimum wage, so I'm quite happy with that. I don't think I'll ever be rich, but I do seem to be getting better.

Though to give credit where it's due - the new promotion started today is for a large box of chocolate biscuits (sorry - "cookies"). It bears a suspicious resemblence to the Marks and Spencer Belgian biscuit selection, as a matter of fact. And it's a pretty impressive incentive to sign up - every person who signed up today took a voucher for one.

As a side note, I currently have around twenty or thirty more vouchers, in theory waiting for me to pass out to punters. So if I do go bad, I can probably survive off those for quite some time.

So in brief - I enjoyed today more than I was expecting to; and while I may never be very good at it, I was at least less bad than I feared.

My first day in work!

Well, I guess technically it was the second - I was there for a couple of hours yesterday for my training. Today, I was dropped right into it.

I slowly improved over the course of the day, but I still found it incredibly difficult. I know it'll come as a surprise to you, but I'm not the most outgoing of people, and walking up to people and starting a conversation - even though I'm literally being paid to do so - is so far outside my comfort zone that I can't even see it from here.

But it did get easier, and I managed to avoid dropping myself in it too badly. I got a total of four signups in the three hours I was there, though since two of them did't have ID, my trainer got to sign them up. I suspect she'll do a lot better than I did, too - she's pretty darned good at what she does.

But I'm signed up for shifts for the rest of the week, where I'll be all on my lonesome. I'll see how those go before I make any decisions. At the very least, I'll be earning minimum wage while I'm out working, and that's more than I earn otherwise. And who knows? I may actually get better at the whole thing!

Apartment update

My landlord has just left, once again. I now have an actual back door, which both closes and locks; though the frame needs some work.

And by some work, I mean that there's an inch gap at the top of the frame, and the door isn't especially flush. On the other hand, did I mention that I have a working door?

Her contractor will hopefully be coming in the next week to make it pretty.

She's been supportive about the whole, though perhaps less decisive than I'd like. I may be old fashioned, but I'd have preferred to have a professional round in a day or two to secure it; instead, she tried her regular contractor, and when he was unable to do it quickly, she got her uncle to make a start. I don't know whether he's got any actual training, but my landlord seemed a little disappointed with what he'd done, and she's been round here a couple of times in the last couple of days to get things in a workable state. To the point where her daughter, when they were leaving, asked if they were going to the hardware store for more parts. Bless.

And also....

I heard from my putative employers, and I start on Monday; I think I get one day's training, and then it's time to go solo.

I'm quite excited - it'll be almost a year since I've actually worked; and I'll still be able to work the rest of my job hunting around my work schedule, too.

Quick update

It's now Thursday afternoon, and I've finally gotten the home network back online. Rogers were as helpful as they could be, but in the end it needed me to connect to the hub with an actual cable and make a few changes. While it may seem that having MAC filtering set up works wonderfully, it's going to give you Issues if - say - all the PCs whose MAC addresses are permitted suddenly disappear.

Other than that - the carpenter has just left for the day - at least, I assume he has; he's walked out of the apartment with a vague grunt, and the car is no longer outside. I assume he's coming back, though, as the door is still nailed shut - with a different, larger, piece of wood.

I suspect I'll be continuing to keep the back door closed by having the fridge against it for the immediate future, just for peace of mind. But I've still not gotten anything like the amount of stress I would expect to get from having things stolen. I wonder if having such a major clearout as part of the move made me slightly less attached to Stuff?

Well, that sucked

I came back from a pub quiz at one of the bars downtown, to discover that in my absence, someone had broken into the apartment.

They'd kicked the back door down - my neighbour downstairs had gone for a walk and then taken a sleeping pill when he got back, so he was out for the count and didn't hear a thing. Luckily, I think they decided that they'd made too much noise as it was, so all they took was the netbook and the PC - they walked past a few bits I was surprised they didn't take, like my mobile phone (admittedly, they don't make a cheaper phone, but even so), a little cash, and the Kindle.

The police were excellent - a very nice policewoman was round in about ten minutes, which
I thought was excellent considering there was no one there they could catch. She took a statement, was impressed by the amount of damage they'd managed to do to the door (the metal bolt is bent - they'd kicked it through an inch of wood); I was naturally disappointed that CSI Ottawa wouldn't be visiting, but that's unsurprising considering how little they actually touched. And then she said that there was practically no chance of them being caught and headed out.

I'm surprisingly alright about the whole thing. I know I'm supposed to be worried about someone coming into my space uninvited, but I'm wondering if I've not been there for long enough for it to feel like a home; and they didn't take anything that was especially personally important - as far as I can tell, they came in through the backdoor, saw the PC, grabbed that and the laptop, and were gone - it wouldn't have been more than a minute or two.

I'm annoyed about a couple of things; mainly that I've not been able to speak to my beloved for a couple of days and let her know that I'm OK. Other than that, I've changed the passwords on a couple of accounts, just in case whoever ends up with the kit decides to have a little fun with my Facebook account; and the only thing I'm annoyed they took is the adapter I had on the netbook, so I could plug it into a North American socket. I was intending replacing the netbook anyway, in the next couple of weeks, as it's pretty much stopped working - I wish them luck rehoming a three year old netbook with a UK keyboard, no working wireless card, and which needs to warm up for five minutes before the left side of the keyboard starts working. I've got a couple more bits to add, but I'm currently in Starbucks abusing their free internet policy, so it might have to wait til I've figured out how to reconfigure the home wireless hub.