so the bastards laid me off, due to restructuring. they went for the some of the most senior people first and laid off 10-12 people who had been around about 5 years. they saved more money that way, since we made a few thousand a year more than a new guy. what a smart move in a knowledge-based company- a large part of my job was answering questions, training new guys and showing people how to access documentation, system resources and configure devices that they need to do their jobs.

today i noticed a problem w. my home connection and msg'ed a former coworker. they were in the midst of a major outage and 5 guys were working, all of whom were green as freshly fertilized alfalfa. the automated trouble reporting system for our newest, most complicated product was automatically creating tickets and phone calls and no one was available to take them.

another great decision on the part of the board. hope that when they start to lose customers, they see their mistake.

I'm glad I'm a man.

Because if I was a woman, and I found out I was pregnant, the first thing I would want to do is pour myself a stiff drink. And I wouldn't be able to.

Congratulations, Wendy and Paul.

Wendy must now treat her body like a temple, not that she didn't before. In fact, treat it like a golden temple, The Golden Temple at Amritsar. Nothing but curries from now on for you, the spicier the better. Make sure to use ghee and have it all with lime pickle and chapatis and a side of pickles and ...ice cream and bacon and chocolate and... cheese! and...

og.

My wife and I are guilty of pet names, inside jokes and cuteness that would probably cause a pwetty liddle bunny wabbit to want to vomit. Or anyone we knew if we did this stuff outside the home. Fortunately for you, we keep it in private. Here is an example of digusting cuteness: an email written to lisa by my alter-ego, the primitive caveman known as "Og."

og sneak out few mins early he think.
try be liberry 6 clock.
grunt

the cities of Europe have burned before, and they may yet burn again.

Apostatewindbag tells me that in Saint Gilles, Brussels, that gritty (yet nice) little multicultural district I visited him in which saw 5 cars burned by rioters monday night doesn't have the racial divides seen in Paris. In Brussels, everyone was rioting together in a collective spirit of disenfranchisement: white, black, north african.

As much as North American media would have me believe that this is the work of islamic radical terrorist-wannabes, I'm not buying it. Seems to me it is a whole bunch of poor people pissed off about being poor, some of whom are tired about not being accepted by their adoptive homeland, or even place of their birth.

Check out Apostatewindbag's posts on the European media and their spin on recent internal events. Makes me wonder what kind of press the now-heroic 68ers got over here during their days of glory.

"Hippies who hate freedom, cause widespread mayhem in drug-induced hysteria, then grow up to become the forces of government oppression themselves."

A Rough Guide to The Inevitable Casual Personality Profiling Through Place of Origin

Clinking glasses and beer spilling from pitchers. A CFL game on the ubiquitous big screens covering every wall of the sports bar, masquerading as an old english pub. Friday night beers with the crowd from work in a bar filled with other members of the downtown after-work crowd.

"So where are you from, buddy?"
Geez, here goes again. Uncomfortable looks around the table are exchanged.
"I'm from mars," he answers tiredly. Person who asked question in first place looks mildly insulted by the answer.

Jamaican: easygoing, but lazy.
Or perhaps he's African?: Sexist, politically radical. Grew up dirt-poor.

Not that ethnicity isn't important. I hate to take the perspective that ethnicity is completely unimportant, that our ethnicity doesn't affect who we are or how we see the world. How and where and by whom we are raised are important in forming who we are, but not all of who we are. Where you are from is often the smallest part of the equation, but the most loaded question to answer.

A quick look around the table revealed a motley crew of stereotypes to be had:

Greek: hot-headed, don't anger him or argue when he espouses an opinion. loyal to family.
German: outwardly artistic, inner fascist.
Whitebread, standard Anglo-WASP Canadian female: easy to get in the sack, good chances here.

Are we so pressed for conversation that we must resort to a quick judgement of personalty based on a cursory glance at one another? A quick sizing up by birthplace, ethnicity or accent (not to mention gender, height, clothing)?

Large-city Eastcoaster(New York, Toronto): pushy, overly businesslike.
Raised in small town westcoast: drinks Kokanee, likes to smoke pot and fish.
Grew up in Surrey: get him drunk and he's likely to shitkick you.

Lest I sound like a crusader of political correctness, or idealistic, easily offended proponent of identity politics, let me stop there. I just think we need to take a step back before we judge, or even ask.

And for those of noble birth, but no particular origin, other than whitey-white.
Canadian Euro-Mutt: easy to push around, nice, but a little boring.

"I'm not from Mars," he eventually said after the conversation had progressed through a few different drunken topics.

"I'm from Zimbabwe."

smelly selling agents

In househunting news, I had a place sold out from under me before I could take another look at it and decide to make an offer, and I got a look at a rotten basement in another place, since the tenant upstairs was (according to the sleazy-seeming agent) refusing to let people view the rest of the house, despite 24 hours notice given.

I walked into the basement and they hadn't even bothered to remove the old car seat, or sweep up the dirt all over the carpet, or fix anything. Walls covered in mold all along the foundation and it looked like someone had done a deep inspection for rot- with a sledgehammer. The south wall of house was rotten through from outside to the inner drywall, you could see through the holes bashed in the bathroom wall. Worse than the place I live in now and there was no telling what horrors were hidden.

The price for this prize? $438,000. Oh, and you had to bid against the listing agent, who clearly wasn't making any attempts to make the place look better, since he had a bid in himself. Bet he was offering less than $438,000. I'm still thinking about going to the real estate board with this one.

My score so far:

1. house in good neighbourhood- 2 appointments to view, stood up by listing agent both times, resident not home and when did come home, refused to let me in. house got re-listed for $20,000 more and then taken off the market.

2. good house, right price, wrong neighbourhood. if i am to live with no car, i need to be near the train. it sold quickly, anyways

3. 3 open houses in one day: 1 was awful and old and small and dirty with massive renos required, one was a horrid renovation, where the owner followed me around, trying to discourage me from looking too closely at the spray covering the ceiling tiles and other hidden evidence of water intrusions. i could hardly stand in the basement suite and I am average height. third house was nice, but actually listed at about $100,000 less than it could fetch- they were auctioning it off that tuesday, but if the reserve was met, the auction would never happen and you needed a $10,000 bank draft to join the game.

4. nice place, right location, but too expensive, considering the need for about $15,000 in basement suite renos. i thought about bidding low anyways, but the listing agent discouraged this, saying price was firm. then it got re-listed at $25,000 less and sold at midnight the day before I had my second viewing.

5. "come look at my wonderful listing for a rotten basement that looks like a former crack den and bid against me and a bunch of other realtors without having seen the entire place. did i mention my offer is being considered tonight, so don't expect to be able to make an appointment to view at a later date". i smell property flipping conspiracy.