Rantastic - Ranting

You Suck, Bettman

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:49:00 -0400

Normally I don't go for silly stuff like the Nova Scotia legislature is pulling, but I will definitely make an exception in this case. The playoff schedule is ridiculous. And why? So NBC doesn't have to interrupt their Saturday night lineup.

This kills me. The CBC is actually paying $65 million a year for the games (which NBC is not), and they'd like to have an evening game to show to people who actually care (which the Americans, for the most part, do not). Who does Bettman let decide the schedule? The Americans, obviously! BAH!

The TV schedule garbage is messing up all the teams, I think... The Penguins-Senators matchup is one of the higher-profile ones because (a) there's a Canadian team, and (b) there's the Sidney-Crosby-hometown-hero thing going on. But the rest of the schedules are just as bad. The Flames play at 5 p.m. tonight, when a lot of people are just leaving work. Seriously, would it have killed them to put it an hour later? It's at 7 eastern time, they could have started at 8 instead to give people a chance to catch the first period where they'll actually be watching it. And the weekend games are at like 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Geez!

This is all just a part of the fun pandering-to-Americans thing going on in the league for the past few years. Seriously, when the Stanley Cup finals are in a certain town and they basically have to give away tickets (I'm looking at you, Tampa), is this the market you're looking for? For real? When I know more than a few Canadian cities which would be packed to the rafters and people would buying nosebleed seats for ridiculous prices and buying every team-themed thingamabob they could get their hands on?

Man. It's just unreal. It's time for a Canadian Hockey League. We can have the Flames, the Canucks, Oilers, Senators, and Habs, and Winnipeg can have the Jets back and Quebec can have the Nordiques, plus we'll throw in a few more teams. I'm sure quite a few players would stick around (or come back) for the same money plus playing in front of crowds (not empty stadiums) that actually care. And Bettman can happily continue destroying the NHL. I want our damn Cup back though.

Car Seat Kerfuffle

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 11:44:57 -0500

So, there was an article about a Consumer Reports study this week about infant car seats, and how our children are DOOOOOOOOMED!

You can tell I don't put much faith in these studies.

Yes, if you subject a car seat to worse and worse crashes, bad things are going to happen. It's a fact of life that nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is going to protect you 100%.

If the government says my car seat meets their regulations, I'm OK with that. After all, if you look at the real-life consequences of these regulations, you get stories like this one - OPP contradicts Consumer Reports on child seat safety. The Ontario Provincial Police are willing to go on record to state, "We've had no documented cases of any sort of failures that the Consumer Reports are worrying about in the past decade".

Good enough for me. I mean, if this encourages the government to redo or double check their safety tests, fine. If my model of car seat gets recalled, I'll send it back.

But what really raises my hackles is the kind of alarmist bullshit reporting we're seeing this week over tests like this. And it happens every bloody month! There's a new study out every few weeks, breathlessly reported in the media, about how something that makes our life easier as parents will have disastrous consequences for our children. Car seats. Jolly Jumpers. Mobiles. Infant seats. Playpen bassinets. All the government regulation in the world is not going to prevent the kind of accidents that lead to most of the safety warnings. Here's my tip - try a little due care and attention and you're less likely to get in a car crash or have your child launch himself off the table or what have you.

The way these things are reported, every bloody child safety story might as well have the same title: "Don't have children, BECAUSE YOU'LL JUST KILL THEM."

Walmart Self Checkout: NEVER AGAIN

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 22:28:00 -0400

As previously mentioned, Matt and I got the crib mattress over the weekend, along with a few other things.

Now, I don't know about most people reading, but if you've been shopping for baby stuff recently, you know there is a ridiculous, overwhelming amount of baby stuff out there. Like, way more than there needs to be. And after sorting through brands and styles and everything else for the first, like, three things I bought, I had had enough of that.

When I got to the mattress decision, I was totally lost. Foam? Coil spring? Brand name? No name? How many coils does there really need to be? What density foam? Do I need a mattress protector? What size sheets? Will this fit in my crib? ARGH!

I finally decided to just buy whichever mattress had the best warranty to price ratio, which was a Simmons mattress at Walmart (15 years, about 50 bucks, and it was a name I actually recognized). Now a crib mattress is an awkward thing to maneuver when you're having trouble maneuvering yourself most days, so Matt, despite his deep dislike of Walmart, had to come with me.

First bad decision: we went on the weekend. Don't try this at home, kids.

Second bad decision: I remembered a bunch of other stuff I wanted to pick up (cat stuff, laundry baskets, a garbage for the baby's room, etc.) and we tried to do this without the use of a cart, as there were none to be had.

Third bad decision and by far the worst: we tried to use the self checkout counter.

I think maybe the software for those things is not quite up to the level yet.

We saw them and thought, hey, shorter lines! Just scan, pay and go! How hard can it be? We've got four degrees between the two of us, we can figure this out!

Well.

It didn't seem to be scanning anything we were putting in. Oh sure, it would beep delightfully at us, but our total never moved from $0.00. We thought maybe it was the package we were scanning and decided to try a different one, but no luck. Then we thought, well maybe the list doesn't show up until the end and we would have scanned the change pads five times over, so we hit the "Cancel All Items" buttons and started over. Then we tried the mattress.

First off, the mattress needed to be lifted and held at a bizarre angle in order to get the code to the scanner. And it beeped! But it did not show a total again. Even worse, we were now getting a warning about an illegal number of items, possibly because it beeped again as we were trying to put the mattress down. (Mothers of twins, don't try to shop at Walmart, I guess.) Then we tried to clear it by cancelling all items and it wouldn't because it was already illegal! ARGH.

We decided to bail at that point and just wait in line like everyone else, though I did go find a Walmart girl to reset our machine before we ditched. Unfortunately for the next person in line, she was just as anxious as we had been to get out of there and jumped on our machine despite our warnings that it was seriously foobarred.

So, yeah. Not doing that again. My three-word summary: Total. Gong. Show.

The ongoing saga of the dead freezer

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 09:01:15 -0400

Note to anyone who knows me in real life: Pretty much anytime in the next few months that you hear me say, "Guess what!" with a crazed look on my face, you can guess that my freezer died and you'd have a pretty decent chance of being right.

Way back around Canada Day, it started making a funny noise. We weren't too sure about that, having never owned a freezer before, so we kept an eye on it to see if it was just working harder because of the heat or if there was a problem. We opened it one day to find things looking a little... soggy. Frantic fridge-freezer reorganization ensued, as well as a trip to my Aunt Kathy's to store some stuff at their house.

We phoned Sears, and they booked a repair guy. Well, the first one couldn't fix it. They needed to order a part before they could fix it. The second guy came a few days later and put the new part in.

We put some ice cube trays in and waited a few days... and it made ice! Yay!

And then we went back into the freezer a week later... and everything had thawed! Boo!

Another phone call to Sears, and another two service guys (the first one never has the tools to do any repairs... maybe they're sent to weed out the people who don't plug in or turn on their appliances before phoning for help), and our freezer made ice! Yay! And then thawed over the weekend! Boo!

So, it's the third time it's died since we got it... on January 31st. Yes, of 2006. Yes, only six months ago.

Seriously, at what point do they finally admit that repairing it over and over and over is not worth the time or money they're spending on it (not to mention my wasted time) and just replace the dang thing? I'm getting antsy to freeze some food for when the baby comes and I'm all sleep deprived and can't cook. Plus also, trying to clean a chest freezer that meat keeps thawing in with a seven-months-pregnant belly in the way is teh suck. (I have finally learned my lesson... we don't put anything in there anymore that doesn't freeze and thaw repeatedly very well. It's pretty much ice cube trays and freezies now. Which is kind of a waste of a 8.8 cubic foot freezer.)

Stupid Calgary real estate

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:26:42 -0400

I found out last night at my pre-natal yoga class that my yoga studio is being pushed out of their space. Their lease comes up for renewal in August and the landlord has decided to increase rent rather sharply (more than doubling it). Even has a new tenant lined up already knowing that the yoga studio can't pay the higher rent.

I am really bummed because I'm going to start going twice a week for my pre-natal class in the next session, and it was going to last almost up to my due date, but now it's going to be cut off on August 13th. Not sure what is up after that, but my pre-natal instructor said she'll carry on with the class in a different location if need be, but I'm guessing I'll have to bring my own mat and blocks and bolsters and stuff. I've got most of the gear, but I'm going to need to buy some bolsters, I think. I'd never used them before in all the yoga I did before this, but they are awfully nice to have for support when you've got a big belly in the way of everything.

Even though it looks like I won't be affected too greatly (besides having to find the new place and probably driving farther), I wish a successive string of deliquent and destructive tenants on the greedy landlord. Sometimes people say I'm a bad capitalist because I dislike the greedy landlords and house flippers*, but I recognize their rights to do what they're doing - and I reserve the right to wish bad karma crashing down on their heads for the next twenty years.

___________________________

* Not all house flippers are evil... just the ones that buy houses, do nothing to them, and then re-sell them for $50,000 higher. You suck!

CIBC - continuing "excellent" "customer service"

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 18:19:53 -0400

CIBC phoned again (remember the last time?). They want to know how I'm going to pay them. I resisted the temptation to tell them I was going to write a ludicrous tell-all book about my life with OJ Simpson as my sugar daddy and just asked if they could phone back perhaps when the Stanley Cup finals are not on.

Apparently...

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:00:02 -0400

... there is a wormhole between Wilmington, Ohio and Calgary. Who knew? After I posted yesterday on how slow my computer parts were coming, they showed up at noon. D'oh!

Everything works wonderfully... it's nice to have a power cord that just works again!

ARGH

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Wed, 31 May 2006 08:17:04 -0400

We finally dug through our files and found the AppleCare agreement for my laptop last weekend. The power cord, having been tripped over one too many times, is broken to the point where I basically need to hold it together to get any juice to the laptop.

They're sending us a new one, but man, it's gonna take forever. They're shipping it DHL, who I haven't really heard of. I'm not quite sure why, as the last two things we ordered from Apple got sent FedEx and it was really fast (like, my iPod came from China in three days).

No, it's been four days since the parts shipped from California, and they're now in... Ohio. At a sorting facility, which will undoubtedly take days to get through given the rate they've travelled so far.

Seriously, four days from California to Ohio? It hasn't even crossed the border yet, and I know that's gonna take some time! At the increasing rate of deterioration of my power cord, my laptop will be cold and dead for a week before I can plug it in again. :(

URGH

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Wed, 17 May 2006 13:21:08 -0400

I have spent awhile today trying to make a master plan for a scrapbook I'm going to start work on soon. Mom recently bought me a good bit of scrapbooking supplies for when the baby comes... a pretty white album with baby shoes on the cover, and pre-made baby-themed sheets and all the little decals and titles you need to make a baby book.

This is all great and I really appreciate all the cute new stuff, but I'd prefer to not suck by the time I start on that. So I decided to get some practice and scrapbook all of my favorite photos of Matt and I from when we first got together, through the wedding and up until the baby comes (my mom also got me a very cute "Expecting" sheet and embellishment set to use with photos of me when I'm even rounder, so I get some pregnancy photos in there). Being the ~~control freak~~ A-type personality that I am, I can't just go nuts with the paper and scissors and glue right off the bat - no, I have to plan.

Got to make sure it's not too repetitive, I won't run out of things to say, I don't miss anything, and I actually have facing pages for my cute sheet set. It would suck if I had to stick something in later and it bumps all the pages up by one and my pregnancy sheets aren't together. They're very cute together... but perhaps not with other pages (there's a few odd colours in there).

Silly me, what do I use to try to plan? Microsoft Word! Sure, why not? I feel like a sucker for punishment today!

It's crashed on me three times already. Once because I tried to change the page size while the printer was unconnected (why it needs the printer for that, I have no idea), and twice when I was trying to move photos (once was accidental... I knew not to do that from the last crash but I accidentally clicked and dragged and down it went).

There has got to be a better way.

I may go to Powerpoint, which I hate even worse, but at least I can move photos without the whole thing dying horribly. I almost feel like I've have enough Microsoft today though. What I would really love is some software like Futureshop's Photobook planning site... it seems a lot easier to move photos and insert text, and it's got template suggestions and shows me clearly what pages are facing each other. Does anyone know of anything like this for MacOSX? I found PhotoPrinto, which integrates with iPhoto (huge bonus!), but I read a review of it somewhere that makes it seem like maybe it needs more computer than I really have.

Suggestions, anyone?

Another day...

nospam@example.com (Tamara) — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 09:40:00 -0500

... another bad story coming out of Quebec's daycare system. A model for the rest of Canada, indeed. :\

This isn't as bad as leaving a child out in freezing temperatures for four hours, but could easily have been worse if the child had an illness or had woken up alone. How much trouble could a toddler get into while completely unsupervised?

I have to remind myself every once in awhile that, thankfully, this nightmare of a system will not be coming to Alberta. We won't have to pay taxes to support it, we won't have to hear horror stories from friends who need to use it, and we will definitely not be using it ourselves.

I'm thankful that, finally, our choices as parents will be respected. When Matt and I got married, we talked about our views on kids and childrearing beforehand so there were no surprises afterwards. We both feel that having a parent at home with the wee ones (especially when they are young, before they get to school) is the right choice for us and our family, and I'm glad we're not going to be punished by the government for that choice.

I've heard so many people say lately that they have no choice, they need to go back to work, have to put their kids in daycare, etc. etc. etc. There is almost always a choice. I hate being told that I'm so lucky to be able to stay home - we are making sacrifices to make this work because it is a choice and not fate or luck or anything else. We don't have a big fancy house. We don't have a second vehicle. We don't go on a yearly tropical vacation. We don't do these things so we can do what is right for our family - having a parent at home who loves and cares for them and can be there just for them.

I don't think you're ever going to be able to pay a stranger enough to care for your child the same way, and in Quebec, it seems they care a heck of a lot less.

Edited to add: Fantastic entry at Kerplonka about all the reasons to run from a Liberal-style top-down union-run daycare system, and more childcare opinion at Choice for Childcare. Apparently today is a blog burst so I'll try to write more about childcare later.