I took it into my ISP to have them install a faster modem for my High Speed lite connection. Previously I had been using just the regular old 56K modem that came with the computer. Now I connect at speeds of 115.2Kbps, up from 26.4Kbps, but there are some fine print disclaimers on that speed, ie it only works on web pages, and it doesn’t work on anything compressed, but the faster speed is nice. More importantly, I have internet again in my home; there were four hours while it was being installed that I had no internet.
After bumming around town for 3 hours (delivering stuff for my parents mostly), the fix it guy told me it would take another hour, so I decided to go to the public library to kill an hour there, use their free internet while waiting for my computer (I had already read most of the magazines, and I don’t like borrowing books becasue I have a hard time returning them). This is what I got to put up with at the library: Some kid was baby sitting his 2 yr old bros, who obviously had a s***(poopy)** diaper (or maybe handn’t bathed in a couple weeks). I use the term baby sitting in the loosest possible term. The older kid (not more than 12, 13) was using a computer, and his little bros was climbing on top of the desks, rolling around in the chairs, and otherwise misbehaving. The extent of the “baby sitting” was that the kid would tell his little bros to “behave” every five min, but make no other effort to control the child. And the librarians looked the other way, and who could blame them?
You just know that in a case like this (IE there are some things that I am not disclossing that would get me flammed/banned big time) the mother/parents/media would come back later in the day, and rip the librarians a new one. (I digress: Once when I was working at A&W, there were these kids (small) that had been left in the store for about an hour w/o obvious parentage (ie no one was in the resteraunt), and the cops/someone official (I got this half of the story from scuttlebut) were called. Anyway, when I was working my shift (on working at A&W: don’t), the parent (I think) came in and started screaming at me. I had no idea what it was about, and very quickly left and got a supervisor, they get paid more than me so that I don’t have to put up with that. The way they yelled (and throwed, and messed up [they actually squirted the ketchup on the counter]) at the super more or less confirmed the rumour. The ending is basically, they left after yelling at the super for a while (and a kitchen drone came out and said that they called the cops (unusual initive for an A&W drone)) then they left)
This really P****** me off (annoys). First off some mother would trust the care of her kid (the baby) to another kid (12 yrs old is still a kid). And secondly, someone would bring a misbehaving child to a library, and not stop the inappropriate behaviour or leave, but as much as I would like to blame the older kid for this I can’t. I can hardly expect a 12 yr old to be able to control a baby/toddler, fortunately most 12 yr olds don’t have to. So I guess I have one gripe from
this: I hate lacking parents.
I wish I had thought of calling Children’s Services, I bet there was an infraction in there somewhere.
On the plus side, I found a place that sold me a dollar bill, and a Manitoba dollar for $1.50 each, and gave me 2 fifty cents pieces in change. For the Americans, dollar bills are no longer printed, the Manitobia dollar wasn’t a circulation piece, and the fifty cents pieces are circulation pieces, but are hard to find, as many banks do not order the coins.
I’m afraid that is not really pit worthy, but I had to vent.
BTW the moral is: “If it’s free, and desirable, you will have to fight all of the (how shall I put this) undesirables for it” Or: “Free samples from the grocery store have fed many a small child”