Frustration sets in

Its now day 13 of the strike (if you don't count weekends) and the enjoyment of an extended reading week has long passed. I'm now getting worried that the school year might start to conflict with my summer trip to Germany with Leanne. I'm going on this trip no matter what because its an opportunity that probably won't come again for a very long time, and the plane ticket is already booked. But if I want to be rid of this school and all the politics that goes with it... I want to write my exams and pass the course and never look back. But with each passing day of the strike it looks more and more like I'm not going to be able to finish my year. I'm praying I will but I've had my plans messed up by unions so much that I feel that its inevitable. But I won't lose hope.

Attack of the unions

Well here I am at 11:34 pm hearing that I am now part of the third strike I've been a part of in my 22 years on this earth. First one: high school teachers went on strike. Second: BF Goodrich where I was forced into a strike as a summer student. Third: The Ontario college teachers union! Wow! Is this a fluke or is this common for people?

This particular time around it isn't a huge deal for me because I could use a few more days off to catch up and work on projects. I also had a midterm scheduled for tomrrow which is now postponed. Oh well... as long as this doesn't turn out to be another BF Goodrich then I'll be fine.

It finally came

Well the rebate actually came a couple days ago... $20 in the bank. Its not a lot but at least I showed some people at D-link's rebate center that they can't promise to send money and never do it. I'd say it was worth the effort.

I hate insomnia

I've never experienced it myself directly, quite the opposite actually. I usually can fall asleep in about 5 minutes if I'm really tired. But I might as well be experiencing it myself.

Leanne has insomnia and it tears me apart. Not the lack of sleep itself but what it does to her when she's awake. It takes a huge toll on her both mentally and physically. She wants to sleep so badly but she can't... and both of us feel completely helpless to fix the problem. I long for a day when I can say "How did you sleep last night?" and she'd say "I slept great!". I think that's only happened once or twice since I've known her.

Lack of sleep really takes a bite out of your immune system, so she always gets sick when she gets a run of insomnia. That just makes things worse because she can't sleep even more if she's sneezing or coughing.

She's tried many different things to help her sleep like the tips found here. But nothing works. Its like her body is revolting against her. Even with sleep medications they work for about 2 weeks then her body becomes immune to them. It's frustrating beyond anything I've ever experienced. I feel so helpless.

Why I hate rebates

This isn't meant to be directed towards one company in particular. Its more for the whole rebate system. But here's my story:

I bought a D-Link DI-524 wireless router from Futureshop. It was on sale and had a $20 rebate, so I bought it. The employee who sold me it said something along the lines of "Have you had much luck with these rebates? Because mine usually take months and sometimes I never get them!". I should have taken that as a sign.

I waited 2 weeks to make sure the router was working properly before I cut out the UPC bar code and mailed it in with my properly filled out rebate form in early September 2005. October and November pass with no activity. Finally in mid December I get a post card from D-link telling me that I bought my router outside of the offer date! I'm thinking, "How could Futureshop have printed me a rebate form when the offer had already expired?". So I came storming into Futureshop (or at least thats how I felt in my mind). And explained my problem to a very nice employee at the Courtesy Desk. She called D-link personally and, after about 45 minutes of talking, determined that my rebate receipt was dated 12/09/05. Futureshop prints their dates in the form of Day/Month/Year. D-link read it as Month/Day/Year. So they thought I purchased the router on December 9th 2005 instead of September 12 2005! So they reissued the rebate claim (or so I'm told).

So now its the end of January and I'm still waiting for any indication that I will get my rebate. I'll keep you posted.

Changed my mind

Ok well Geoff convinced me to not give up on this blog. I may change over to my website at some point but for now I will leave this here. You win this round Geoff!

Blog moved!

I have moved my blog to my official website. This will be my last post here.

Rootkit follow up

Just a follow up to that last post… Sony has released a program to remove the cloaking technology that hides their files (the rootkit) so if you have installed the software that comes with one of these CDs then be sure to remove it this way. Here’s a nice program to scan your computer for rootkits. It doesn’t remove them but it lets your know if your security has been compromised. Often the only way to get rid of them for sure is to format your hard drive.

The CD that (could have) killed my computer

I recently bought a new CD from Switchfoot called “Nothing is Sound”. Its my new favourite CD but it has a dark side to it… not the music but what is physically on the CD. It contains Sony’s shady anti-priacy software on it. What’s so bad about this software? Well it uses something called a “rootkit” to hide itself from detection by any other software. Sony’s software can’t be uninstalled without contacting Sony and going through some hoops. See this Washington Post article for more on that. Now, I don’t pirate music and I have a legitimate CD for every MP3 on my computer (no file sharing either), but the problem is that this rootkit leaves computers open to attack by hackers and viruses because all a hacker needs to do is make a virus that starts in $sys$ and its undetectable by any anti-virus software. Fortunately, the day before I bought the cd I saw an article on Slashdot about this problem so I had a heads up. When the CD is inserted a window comes up with the license agreement. If you agree then it installs its DRM software on your computer... locking the songs to your computer and not allowing you to play them on other computers if they’re ripped from the CD. The ironic thing is that if someone did want to pirate the CD, there is nothing stopping them at all. All it took to prevent the software from being installed was to press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and close the program from the task manager and I was free to copy all the songs as MP3s onto my hard drive using Musicmatch Jukebox. Record companies need to learn that stuff like this is just going to make your legitimate customers hate them even more when people computers suddenly fill with viruses after listening to the latest CD, while doing nothing to stop piracy at all.

Gas Gambling

Yeah yeah I know…. Its been a while but I’m a busy guy. I’ve been thinking about something that’s on the minds of most people these days: gas prices. Its really quite a strange thing… the more I think about it, the more buying gas seems to have become a form of gambling. Gas prices gradually go down and down until they reach a certain point. As its going down you have to guess how low you want to go before you buy gas, because at any given point the price could jump anywhere from 10 cents to 30 cents (this is in Canada for those of you who don’t know). I feel like I’m on a game of The Price is Right or something. I also don’t understand how gas in our area right now is about 75 cents per liter while in the Toronto area its 15 cents more expensive. Why is our area so special right now? Not that I’m complaining, but I’d still like to know.

UPDATE OF DOOM!!!!

Hello my reader(s?)

Just thought i'd give a little update as to what new and crazy things have been happening with me...

Well my official youth responsibilities are now over. Its a strange feeling knowing that I will have saturdays off now. I'm so used to saturday being youth night now that it kinda makes me sad that I left. But everyone has to move on as some point. I feel like I didn't get my total alloted youth time because I joined so late. It was the middle of grade 11 before I started coming regularly. I had so many good times there and they people I met changed my life forever... heck if it wasn't for the youth I would never have met Leanne! That in itself is more than worth the time and effort I put into leading the past 2 years. I've been blessed so much by the youth group. Its so sad that so many people never get to experience anything like a youth group. Its a time of your life when you need people around you your age and with your beliefs to build you up. When you're stuck around people that constantly swear and talk about revolting things all day at school you need that time to just have good clean fun.

The current youth group is FAR less clique-ish than the young adults group. I'm sorry to any of the YA's reading this but thats just how I see it... I don't feel like I fit in there. Talking to them one on one or in small groups is great, they're really nice people, but as a group its just so different. Which is why I really don't intend to attend YA regularly... maybe once in a while... we'll see. Don't me wrong though, I'm not bitter or angry at any of them. It just doesn't feel like a family to me.

Word publisher

I’m just trying out the new publishing from word thing for the blogger.

Another Year Begins

Well i'm starting school again now... this will hopefully be my last year of school ever. Its going to be pretty crazy but I can safely say its the least stressful beginning of school i've ever had. Probably because I know everyone in my classes and all my teachers and I don't have any stupid elective courses that I don't want to take. It can't possibly be worse than last year... I hope

New stuff on the site

I have added a cool photo album and a stupid main page for my site. Check it out if you are bored :)

http://thatguy.homedns.org

I really miss Leanne. Yeah. She needs to come home.

Money

Wow this is amazing! People are actually using the Marc Fund. I have enough money to take me and Leanne to Wendy's now and buy the most expensive value meals we want! Only problem is I have to pay a service change to get the money out if I don't reach $150 so help me out!!!

I also received my annual Visa money back reward today. I got $73.36 back from them which is defenetly nice, but that also means I spent over $9000 on my Visa this pat year! Where did I get that kind of money? To be fair, I guess my tuition, books and my laptop are all included in that amount so that kinda makes sense. Oh well, its always nice when credit card companies GIVE you money!

Jumping to conclusions

Ok, so perhaps I read into the check a little too much. Turns out the money is from some deposit I paid in first year, and they changed they payment thing so now they're refunding everyone's $100. That's definitely a relief and its nice to get a free $100... but it still would have been nice if they had given me SOME explanation with the check so I would have been able to avoid all these headaches.


Well its about one month until my band's gig at Ontario Place... oh its gonna be rockin! Check out our bio on the site:

http://www.encounterontario.com/entertain.asp?sub=bios_vskyline

Conestoga College

Ok so I am quite angry today. Not to the point where I would break something but still quite ticked. I received a check in the mail from Conestoga for $100 today with no explanation given. Normally I would be happy to get a check in the mail but my concern is the no explanation that was given. What I'm worried about is that they decided to fail me in a course and not tell me because the person I talked to said it was probably an overpayment. This is not looking good. So now I'm waiting for a call back from my "records officer" for an official explantion, but I don't have much hope. Work is gonna be rough tonight cause i'm going to be preoccupied with this all night. ARG! How can any organization be this irresponsible and careless with its customers?

Therefore I suggest everyone avoid attending Conestoga College at all costs! They will screw you over so many times. Go to Mohawk or something.

As for the Best Buy problem I had, they let me exchange the DVDs today for a different brand with no problem at all. They may sell bad quality products but at least they have a good return policy!

The Marc Fund

I'm pleased to introduce the MARC FUND!

http://thatguy.homedns.org/misc/fund.html

Check it out!

In other news, I'm quite ticked off with Best Buy. I bought these blank DVDs and they were defective (couldn't be read after burn), so I exchanged them but these have the EXACT same problem. This is garbage. I've gonna try to exchange them for a different brand. Word of warning: Don't buy DYNEX DVD-R's.

So far from home

Well i'm in North Bay right now visiting my Nana. I haven't been here for about 3 years so its long overdue that I come here. Its hard spending more time away from Leanne especially after she is going to be gone next week, but its a worthy cause at least.

I've been having a good vacation, nice and relaxing. Me and Leanne went with Elaine and some of her family to Wonderland last week, and that was rockin. I wanted to get one of those old timey photos with Leanne but they were insanely expensive so we decided we would make our own! We'll show them good!

I really hope things go well when we start up the factory again on Saturday. I really don't know whats going to happen but I will defenetly enjoy getting the income again.

More stuff than you can handle

Well I finally got certified at work so now i'm on my own. And I sure got thrown right into it! All kinda of crazy stuff breaking down, and me forgetting stuff... it was quite delightful, in an insanely stressed kinda way. Oh well, at least I have a job in the first place. Only two more shifts until the plant shutdown and then its 2 and a half weeks off! I am going to enjoy that greatly and spend ridculous amounts of time with Leanne as well!

Nights of Fire coming up this weekend! It should be awesome, especially seeing as this is the summer kick-off with rockin music and free food. Hurrah! You should all come.