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I swear I’m doing more with my life these days than watching hockey and selling tickets.

As soon as I figure out what that is, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten a LOT of interested parties contacting me regarding Round 2 playoff tickets. Yes I have them, and yes, Game 6 is for sale.

It’s a huge pain in the hind-end to keep track of offers, so I’ve listed the tickets on ebay.

You can bid on them here.

I’m crossing my fingers that they make it to the fourth (and final) round, when I’ll actually use the tickets to attend the game myself!

UPDATE: sold again!

Effing hockey team.

I was seriously hoping that the Canucks would have won game 5 or 6, so I wouldn’t be in the position of having to sell the tickets for game seven.

So much for that idea.

So I have one pair of tickets available for the Western Quarterfinals - Tomorrow (Monday) at 6:00pm. You pay what I paid: $75/ticket ($150 for the pair) and arrange to pick them up from me (in Kits) sometime before then.

Email jen at thisdomain dot com or leave a comment if you’re interested.

I am slowly realizing why I’m not getting any bites on the job front.

I am kindof an idiot.

I believe I’ve made some sort of formatting or spelling mistake on every. single. application I’ve sent out.

In a list, I’ve used a dash, then colons (I should’ve gone with one or the other). I’ve completely misquoted the job title (specialist instead of manager). I’ve forgotten an attachment. I’ve misspelled all sorts of words - especially the first few days of using Open Office, before I realized I had to install a dictionary.

In short: I suck.

I can not proof anything on a screen to save my life. You would think this means I’d start printing out cover letters and proofing them on paper before sending - but that seems like such a waste of paper.

My resume is obviously ok, but any cover letter or email I’ve sent is guaranteed to have a tiny glitch in it somewhere. It’s usually only one (sometimes two), but I’m assuming this is the death knell in my chances for all these jobs whose descriptions ask for “attention to detail” and “impeccable writing skills.”

Some days I swear I’m just destined to fail at life.

I could certainly use a bit of a pick-me-up today.

So I ask you, blogiverse, to indulge me in my wee pity party, while I present to you a list of things that suck today:

I am still jobless. Not only that, but of the dozen or so applications I’ve sent out, I’ve received exactly one phone interview (which is as far as that candidate experience went). Otherwise, no responses at all. In addition to that, at least two of the jobs I applied for were re-posted within a week of sending my application. It’s not like I wasn’t qualified, and didn’t demonstrate that in my resume or cover letter, so it’s pretty sucky to realize I don’t even merit a phone call.

And while I would normally console myself with the procurement of something pretty or shiny (say what you will about filling personal voids with material goods), the EI gods who determined that unemployed workers in BC are entitled to 55% of their earnings, up to a maximum of [insert figure that launches one into abject poverty here], have convinced me I’d rather have groceries and electricity than trinkets.

The condo we purchased, waaaaaaaay back in May 2006, that was supposed to complete in July 2007 has been pushed back. The official word from the Realtor representing the developers is that they “hope to have everyone in by December.” That basically negates the awesome mortgage pre-approval interest rates we secured for a July closing (rates right now are at least 0.2% higher than what we got - but our rates are only good for 120 days from approval) and means we get to spend an extra 6 months pouring rent money into someone else’s pocket.

I make a shitty, shitty housewife. Being at home all the time means I go stir-crazy, and also lose all concept of space and time. I rarely know what day it is, and have no idea where time goes when it passes. All I know is that all of those “things” I figured would be so easy to get done around the house, still aren’t.

There are doggy-hair tumbleweeds blowing around everywhere, there is always laundry to do, the bathrooms are shamefully filthy (think college aged male bathroom levels of icky), the kitchen sink is always full of dishes - especially today, since I overcooked the basmati rice last night and made quite a dog’s breakfast of the aloo gobi (nothing says “good morning” like a pot full of tepid water and leftover stuck-on curry bits).

Obviously none of the aforementioned are terribly tragic compared to any number of things going on in the rest of the world, but they’re certainly harshing my buzz. And I still definitely feel entitled to a bit of a mope about my situation.

So blogosphere - I implore you - give me something to smile about!

Tell me something awesome that’s going on in your world. Give me an example of the best opening for a cover letter you’ve ever seen. Leave a comment with anything funny or smile-inducing (I have tried both Knut and the hand-holding Otters - I need something stronger).

And hopefully in a day or two I’ll return to tell you something that doesn’t suck.

UPDATE: Sold! I love it when a plan comes together.

It seems my career as a high rollin’ ticket broker is just not meant to be.

With the flood of tickets to tonight’s game on the market, I’ve had absolutely zero success selling my pair thus far.

As much fun as it would be to be at GM place tonight, I’ve not become magically employed in the last 72 hours, and the general playoff markup is still too rich for my blood.

So I’m offering the pair of tickets for sale, for $148.00 - exactly what I paid for them as a season’s ticket holder.

Considering Ticketbastard charges $117 per ticket plus fees, you’re getting a pretty damn good deal.

Leave a comment, or email (jen at thisdomain dot com), and I’ll even meet you at GM Place pregame, since I’ll be downtown anyway.

Puck drops at 6:00pm - hopefully with your butt in those seats instead of mine!

I’m sure many of you have heard of or seen the new car-sharing cars around town. Zipcar has moved into the city, offering up some competition to the homegrown Cooperative Auto Network (CAN).

I think competition in any industry is a great thing, though I think comparing a co-op to a for-profit service is a bit apples and oranges.

Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to compare one of my CAN invoices to the rates for Zipcar, and see how much they differ.

In a nutshell, CAN bills by the hour and the kilometer. There’s also a monthly administration fee. The cars are ALWAYS $2/h, regardless of the type of car you’re booking. Exceptions: the maximum charge is $24/day, and there is no hourly charge between 11:00pm and 7:00am.

The kilometer and administration rates vary, depending on the amount of driving you do in a calendar month. Rates are calculated at all three price points ($6.25/mo + $0.38/km, $15.00/mo + $0.28/km, $40.00/mo + $0.18/km) and you’re always charged the lowest.

Zip Cars are charged by the hour or day. Period. Kilometers (150/day) are automatically included, and rates vary depending on the vehicle you want. In Vancouver, that translates to $9.75/h ($69.00/day) for regular economy cars (Yaris, Mazda 3, Civic) or $11.75/h ($87.50/day) for trucks or “cool” (Mini, Prius) cars.

Both programs include the cost of fuel, maintenance and insurance. With gas prices being what they are, CAN added a “fuel-fluctuation adjustment” when prices went over $0.80/L. It’s based on the average price of gas and fleet fuel consumption over the calendar month.

So how does that translate into hard costs each month?

In February 2007 I drove 199kms. I took seven trips, ranging from 1-7 hours in duration. My most cost-efficient plan was the “moderate” plan, giving me the $15/mo + $0.28/km rate. The total fuel-fluctuation amount was $0.0337/km.

My total CAN driving costs were $116.84, plus the administration fee of $15. CAN total = $131.84. That doesn’t include a discount of $5.11 for keeping my account up to date.

Here’s what the breakdown would look like in a Zip car:
Feb. 1, 2 hours = $19.50
Feb. 2, 7 hours (truck) = $82.25
Feb. 9, 2 hours = $19.50
Feb. 15, 3 hours = $29.25
Feb. 16, 4 hours = $39.00
Feb. 19, 1.5hours = $14.63
Feb. 21, 1hour = $9.75

Zipcar total: $213.88

The Zip car would cost nearly double. Actually more than that, because the only cars available in my neighbourhood are “cool” cars - so I would mostly be paying the $11.75 rate, rather than the $9.75. Though Zipcar does offer discounts (around 10%) for pre-paying at least $50 every month, the $50 doesn’t roll-over if you don’t use it. Also, my average trip length is about 25kms. To use the included 150kms/day, you’d have to be driving to Abbotsford and back on each trip.

The biggest advantage to using Zipcar is the very low barrier to entry.

In the nature of a Co-op, CAN reqires all members to purchase shares. These function the same as in any other co-op; they help maintain a healthy cash flow in the organization, and ensure a certain commitment level from members. It requires a commitment. The shares don’t accrue interest, and unless the co-op becomes insolvent, are fully refundable within 6 months of reneging your membership. The first member of a household is required to buy 50 share for $500, and an additional member must purchase 25 shares for $250. Nobody who’s ever owned a car should balk at these prices - they’re lower than the average repair bill - and anyone who’s truly committed to car-sharing should be willing to make a commitment to the cause, and the organization that makes it possible.

Conversely, Zipcar only requires your $25 initiation fee.

With the ease of access to Zipcars, parked in neighbourhoods and available 24/7 with the use of your secure entry card, they’re certainly a more convenient way to rent cars. You’re paying a for-profit company for the use of their vehicles - at a great premium. But it’s certainly a handy way to do it if you only need a car very occasionally, or regularly rent cars anyway.

But I think that anyone who is truly committed to the principles of car-sharing (which is pretty community minded in the first place), and wants to use car-sharing as their primary mode of transportation, would be A-OK with the initial share purchase. And it obviously would only take a few months to recoup that $500 in share costs with the simple savings of using CAN over Zipcar. Not to mention the fact that with CAN, you do get that $500 initial investment back if/when you leave the co-op.

There’s this song I love by a band called Streets. The song is the lead track on their album A Grand Don’t Come For Free, and it’s called It Was Supposed to be so Easy. Basically it’s about a random guy who was supposed to deposit some money in the bank and everything that can go wrong in that particular scenario does. It sets the stage for the rest of the album, taking the listener through a lyrical journey during which the poor bloke loses £1000 and his girlfriend and the rest of his life pretty much falls apart.

But this isn’t about music. This is about reinstalling my OS.

It was supposed to be so easy.

It all started about a year ago when I contracted a few viruses (virii?) that any scan/quarantine/erradicate program I could lay my hands on were powerless against. I’m sure all sorts of interesting data was compromised (if you’ve ever emailed me, your spam is probably my fault. sorry.) but overall my user experience wasn’t too drastically affected.

Then the fine folks at microsoft came out with their genius “genuine windows” update, which decided that my copy of WinXP was not genuine (a claim which I will neither confirm nor deny) and my OS slowly started cannibalizing itself. I was stuck in a catch 22, where system restore was disabled, and upgrades deemed necessary to run applications were disallowed. Programs were ceasing to function.

No matter, says I - I’ll just get another copy of XP and reformat. It’ll get rid of the viruses in the meantime.

It was supposed to be so easy.

A business acquaintance of mine had an unused copy of XP in her office. As I occasionally do contract work for her, we figured that as long as she wasn’t using it, it made sense that I installed it as another company copy of the OS.

Reformatting, here I come!

The hour or so it took for windows to chug along through its install process didn’t reveal any problems. Until it came time to register the software. It couldn’t find an internet connection. I was lost, so I had my handy resident nerd sleuth out the problem. Turns out that none of my motherboard drivers installed, including (of course) the onboard ethernet adapter.

There was much cursing and yelling and googling and threats of throwing fiscal responsibility to the wind and going hog-wild at the apple store and finally the tearing apart of boxes in the back of a closet - but I did manage to find the old install CD for that particular piece of hardware. And lo there was internet. We thought it was good.

We were wrong.

Turned out that after what was now 3 hours of backups, installs and other assorted clusterfucks, that particular copy of XP had already been activated.

Back to square one.

Behind that actually. Square one already had a functioning - albeit crippled - OS.

Enter Linux.

And the heavens opened and the earth rejoiced and all and sundry (and nerdy) were glad.

We downloaded and burned a copy of Ubuntu.

We loaded the cd.

And it just. worked.

Ok, there is one bit that doesn’t “just work” - there isn’t any default support for a lot of media formats, like .mp3 and .mpeg because of patent issues. Neil had to ask it to install those particular plugins.

Other than that, it was an amazingly friendly boot and install, and open source applications have come a LONG way since I tried using a Linux OS (fedora) for a couple months at work a few years ago.

And with the advent of Ubuntu, I now live in a windows-free home. It’s strange, but so far it feels pretty good.

Especially since the awesome African tribal music ubuntu uses as its startup sound is so much cooler than the ubiquitous windows startup riff.

Oh, and speaking of music, at the end of the Streets album, the guy’s life turns around, he gets his girlfriend back, and he finds the £1000 he thought he lost.

Sometimes everything works out ok after all.

It’s that time of year - the Canucks have made it to the playoffs once again, and probably won’t go past the first round (once again).

Personally, the lure of the cash draws me more than the lure of seeing playoff hockey - so if you’re interested in contributing to the “Jen’s unemployed and has no money - thank goodness people are willing to pay premiums for hockey tickets” fund, check out my ad on craigslist. I think I’m being pretty fair - staying competitive with the low-end of everyone else who seems to have tickets for sale.

Get ‘em while they’re hot folks. It’s probably your last chance to see the boys in blue on ice, rather than the putting green, for the foreseeable future.

Apologies for the extra step in commenting here, but since the “close old posts” and Akismet plugins are starting to fail miserably (87 spam comments to be moderated in 2 hours), there’s one more simple step required to leave your mark on la watercooler.

I’ve installed the “Did You Pass Math” plugin, which requires you to answer a simple math question before your comment will be accepted.

Hey, at least you don’t have to try reading a blurry captcha.

Hopefully that will slow the spammers for a little while.

The ColdFX stops working if you stop taking it.

Someone please scrape out the inside of my face. It might feel better.

*whimper*