Is moving to Yellowknife an option for you? I hear they have internet. At least some days. 
A psychedelic country music lyric popped in my head.
“I stabbed a Smurf with a yellow knife, and he bled green.”
I did not get enough sleep last night.
Last night I had one of those dreams about being back in high school, but it’s not what you’d expect. I wasn’t lost and confused and missing classes I needed to graduate, as those dreams usually go. I was killing it. I was so on top of things I realized I could finally, truly relax.
Then I remembered my son had been locked alone in my car for hours.
Not trusting the bank or the gas company, I made sure to pay that bill super early when it came in. After all, it took them over two weeks to figure out what to do with a check last month. Now, all of a sudden EFT is working again. Yay?
And I thought I had ranted about this on here, but I guess I didn’t…last month I ordered a Starbucks gift card on Amazon, but when I opened the (sealed!) envelope there was no gift card, only the remains of the paper holder where some asshole had ripped the gift card out before sealing the envelope. 
I have called Amazon customer’s service multiple times, and finally got an email response stating that I would get a refund within 5 to 7 business days. It has been well beyond that time, and I still don’t have my money back. I’m starting to think it’s going to be a loss…I kept the gift card holder, but not the Amazon envelope, and my doorbell camera was down the day the package was delivered, so I have no evidence of its condition upon arrival (other than the picture the driver took).
I’m really glad I did!
I’m about at the same spot now where I’d stopped for a while before restarting and introducing the mistake that was driving me crazy. There are also a couple of things I had misunderstood which were making it look a little shabby but after reviewing the full pattern and watching a couple tutorials I sorted that out too.
It’s going much better this time around!
For anyone interested:
I’m doing this pattern but needed to make it wider for my yarn (added two stitches to either side) and replacing the turning chain (which doesn’t count as a stitch) with stacked singles (which do!). I also started with a foundation chain of double crochet. I practiced each individually but putting it together and correctly editing the pattern was harder than I expected. I kept adding stitches inadvertantly. I’m pretty sure I have it now!
For those not familiar with the banking system in Canada, it’s dominated by the Big Five, plus a few smaller banks that may not even have a brick-and-mortar presence, and some credit unions. The Big Five are a tightly regulated oligopoly, so in most important ways they’re indistinguishable. But there are various aspects of customer service quality that distinguish them, and even distinguish individual branches.
My consistently worst experiences have been with the Toronto Dominion Bank, aka “TD Bank”. Fortunately they’re not “my” bank, I just have a credit card with them for ancient historical reasons that I can’t even remember. As the card was due to expire soon, they recently sent me a new one. And it was defective. The chip worked, but the RFID “tap” function did not.
So I asked them to send me a replacement, which was going to be sent by courier. Fearing that I might miss the courier, I asked that they send it instead to a local branch, where I could pick it up at my convenience. What could be simpler?
But this is TD! I got there this morning just after 10 AM, figuring that would be the least busy time. The place was packed! The maze leading up to the teller windows was a mile long. Fortunately, they have a “service desk”. It was occupied by a gentleman apparently reviewing his entire lifetime financial history. But the line to the tellers was so long that I stood there waiting until, finally, his lifetime records resolved, he left. So I went up to the “service desk”.
Apparently, the “service desk” was not in the business of providing service. I was told “there are people ahead of you”. I didn’t see anyone. But apparently the “service desk” had suddenly turned into playing teller, and was soliciting customers from the mile-long teller lineup. I expressed my frustration at dealing with this useless institution, and was met with “I understand”.
So I joined the long lineup because I really had to get my card. When I finally got to a teller, I explained in frustration that I had been waiting now for about 40 minutes just to pick up a card that had been couriered to them for pickup because the original card was defective. So while she went to retrieve the new card, she said to insert my old card into the card reader and enter the PIN.
Do these people not have a brain? What is it about the concept of “defective” that doesn’t register with you? It turns out that the chip did work, it was the contactless tap function that didn’t, but she was essentially saying “please insert this card that doesn’t work so we can verify your identity before handing over the replacement card that does work”.
I left with my new card after more than 40 minutes. I congratulate myself that in response to platitudes like “I understand” and “have a nice day” I barely restrained myself from replying “fuck you, too”.
TD is also the bank where I must have had an account a great many years ago, because I remember being in a long lineup at the time that they were advertising some compensation (I don’t remember what it was) for anyone who had to wait more than 30 minutes or something in line. And by the time I got to a teller window it had been much longer than that, which I mentioned to the teller. She looked at me sternly and asked, “are you demanding compensation?”. I was much younger and more timid then and said, no, it’s OK. Today I would have said, “I want what your advertisements promised”.
Was the tap asking for a PIN? My new card had me enter my PIN the first time I used tap to activate it, I guess.
No, the tap was just completely unresponsive. No beep, no double-beep, nothing. And it wasn’t the terminal; I tried it again at another place, and, again, no response at all.
Wait, that’s TD Bank?! I had no idea.
And I bought and sold stocks with TD Ameritrade! And never knew who they were.
(Got $6K return on a $2K investment though. Thanks Canada!)
Sometimes spinoffs of terribly managed corporations can be efficiently run due to competition. Rogers Communications, for example, which is arguably the worst cable provider in North America in terms of customer service except maybe for Comcast, operates a reputedly pretty good cell phone service, though I don’t use it because I hate the bastards with a passion. But wireless is a very competitive area.
that is a wonderful pattern!
I got so frustrated with knitting/crochet because I’m always adding and dropping stitches. I took up cross stitch instead and I’m a little bit addicted right now. I was thinking of starting a running thread for crafts.
I pit rugrats on their fucking little scooters (the little motorless push kind) who go zooming around with complete reckless abandon. Twice in the past couple of weeks I very nearly had one of those fuckers smack right into the side of my car.
Once was when I was backing out of my driveway on a rainy murky day and couldn’t see much of the street on my right-hand side because of the neighbour’s minivan. And suddenly – ZOOM! out of the fog comes a fucking rugrat going about 60 mph down the inclined street – way faster than the legal speed limit – dressed all in black, on an all-black scooter, not even a hint of anything bright or reflective.
And just today a very similar thing happened as I was backing out of a spot in a parking lot, my view to the right completely blocked by a van about as tall as an apartment building. ZOOM!!
The only thing that saved the rugrat on both occasions is my habit of backing up very, very slowly precisely because of limited visibility. But these kids really need to be taught a lesson that hopefully isn’t fatal. They do not own the roads; they are part of the traffic system and subject to all its rules and perils. Can’t really blame the parents because they probably don’t know what reckless idiots their kids are.
I think cross stitch would be too stressful for me! Too much fine motor skills involved.
I definitely learned to count my stitches often, and use markers (fine, they’re paperclips, but they work just as well). This pattern just has skipped stitches and a weird little crossover and on the row that makes the big hole, there’s actually two additional stitches total. Easy to lose count; I’d inadvertantly gone from 24 to 28 stitches because of not realizing what was happening with that hole.
I’ve never tried to knit and I’m not very interested. Then again, I picked this up kind of at random and enjoy it enough (but not all the time).
Rant: I slept very badly last night as I am a chronic insomniac and I’m out of steam on work. Things to do, no mental energy to do it.
We have a dipshit who I’d guess is around 14. He likes to ride his bike in the street and goes against traffic. I swear he plays chicken with cars.
My sympathy is reserved solely for whatever poor schmuck ends up hitting him someday. I hope they are okay afterward.
My Achilles tendonitis is back. Damn it. All I did was start walking around more to give myself some exercise in between work sessions. Wearing tennis shoes. I’m talking a modest 250 steps each hour.
Now I’m limping all over the place. Both heels.
I don’t really know what to do. I just got out of physical therapy a few months ago.
Trying to take better care of myself and look what happened. And I was really feeling good and more productive getting regular movement, too.
We have a couple of adolescent dipshits in our neighborhood who ride around on minibikes. They ride in the street, they ride on the sidewalk, they come flying out of the parking lot for the local park without even looking… I don’t want them to get hurt but they really need to have a pants-shitting close call with a large vehicle to maybe get the idea drilled in their head how dangerous their behavior is.
As it turns out, the builder’s installation plumbers chinsed out and NONE of our toilet and faucet attachments were up to code. This was just a matter of time. Good thing this was in the basement (and I had fallen asleep down there).
The clean up crew removed a shitload of water, and we moved everything to the garage and loft. All the wood furniture is fit for throwing out. The bottom two feet of the drywall was removed, and everything is drying out.
Addendum from May: I get my car back tomorrow. Unfortunately, my garage parking spot has been taken by wet basement furniture.
Have no idea why security updates to my phone have to change the fucking UI (smaller icons, search bar is now at the bottom when it was at the top, more), but these assholes better stop this shit.
“Johnson, I’ve been looking at the budget for our team and unfortunately, we have to cut someone. I’ve been seeing the progress of your colleagues, and I can clearly see how they are working to advance our product, but your contributions are absent.”
“I make patches! I make sure to close up any security holes! Without me, our customers would be vulnerable and people wouldn’t trust our product!”
“Hmm… Yes, Johnson, I get that, but what do you DO?!”
“Umm… Well, in the next patch, I, umm… I am going to improve the UI by making the icons smaller and moving the search bar, to… Umm… Provide a better… User experience!”
“Now we’re talking, Johnson! Keep up that good work, I think we can move around the numbers to keep you on board.”
Seriously, I remember many years ago when I was supporting CAD users at different organizations, and each new version of AutoCAD seemed to have arbitrary UI changes that made it harder to use the software. My speculation was (and still is) that they needed to show something different to justify asking people to buy the new version.