Yearly Archives: 2007

Anti-Social

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Someone was asking me yesterday about social networks. And what with the constant stream of emails and posts about facebook, twitter, et al, I figured I may as well chime in on my stance.

No.

Just no.

My feelings on social networks and web 2.0 in general strongly mirror Derek’s, who said it so well, I’ll just give you his words:

I have this thing about trying to keep my online existence stable, so if you link to something of mine, it will still be around in a few years. If I gave you my email address or ICQ account number in 1996, or my blog URL in 2000, it still works…. I like to have an archive that persists.

I have this blog. I have my photos on flickr. I have a profile on LinkedIn. I really think that’s enough. I’ve had the same email address and cell phone number for at least 8 years, with no intentions of changing them.

But when you get down to the nitty gritty of my reasons, it’s honestly mostly out of sheer laziness. It’s a universal truth that any product with staying power will do one of two things: Increase Pleasure or Reduce Pain. I enjoy blogging, I find WordPress easy to use. Pleasure Increased. I very rarely included pictures in my blog posts, because I found it a huge hassle to upload them to my webspace and remember the code to insert an image (doing it so rarely meant I never bothered memorizing it). Enter flickr, and whaddya know – an easy way to store my photos, and include them on my blog. Pain reduced.

As for LinkedIn – It’s an easy way for me to remain connected with past colleagues, especially now that I’m job hunting, and maintain a network in a fairly unobtrusive way. It also keeps professional networking easy for the socially uncomfortable (myself included) by setting the tone for a conversation. Asking my old boss for a recommendation on my LinkedIn profile is easy for both of us, rather than dropping him a line out of the blue and asking for referrals or references when we haven’t even spoken in 3 years. LinkedIn for me is reducing pain and increasing pleasure because I’ve gotten some great introductions through the service as well.

Don’t even get me started on Second Life. Dealing with Real Life is more than enough most days.

So while I’m not writing on walls, or tweeting, or soaring through virtual worlds, or whatever else people do on the myriad of social networks available – I AM on the internet. I’m googleable by about 12 different variations of my name, and not at all hard to find or get in touch with.

Also, curmudgeon that I am, I’m really trying to spend my energies on valuable and authentic social relationships. Someone who only finds me because I happen to be on facebook, and starts a conversation with “So, what’ve you been up to in the past… 10 years…” is, nine times out of ten, just curious about where people in their past are now. If there was actually a solid basis for friendship, we’d have probably kept in touch a little more regularly.

However, the person who takes the time to google, find my blog, photos or profile, and actually makes an effort to keep in touch a little longer than the lifecycle of the average social networking site (Friendster who?) – well that’s what I want online social networking to deliver.

My So-Called Life

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Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives.
~Paulo Coelho

It’s no secret to those who know me and care to ask that the whole job-hunt has me pretty miserable these days. I could say that I’m trying to harness the power of positive thinking and all that jazz, but in reality there are as many days that end with tears as those that end with smiles or just exhausted ambivalence.

Yet I still don’t feel compelled to blog about it.

About a year ago, you could hardly stop me from pouring out my misery online at being single and the horrible injustices I was suffering while attempting to find someone suitable to date. Or, if not suitable, at least not wanting to make me scoop my brains out with a spork to forget the encounter.

Then I found someone – and things were really steadily going up in my life. Great man, great job, great dog, great home. That lasted about a year – you’d think that wouldn’t be long enough to erase the cynicism, vitriol and spite in my wee, black heart when one of those ceased to exist in my world.

You’d be right. And still, I felt no compulsion to blog about it.

And I didn’t really understand why. Until now.

I attempted to throw a party last weekend. For all intents and purposes, most things about my social circle and the invite were the same. Early reports indicated it would be an even bigger success, since the location was far more desirable to potential party-goers. Last year, 90% of the people who RSVP’d “Yes” attended, plus a motley assortment of extras. This year, barely half the confirmed attendees bothered showing up.

What’s different?

This year I’m not nearly as interesting.

A year ago I was a dating blogging sensation, who had just entered into a relationship with a man who had his own fair share of scandal.

This year? We’re just another set of yuppies. For the most part, fortunate and exceedingly happy ones.

I could fill pages and pages with cutting testimony of my job-hunt frustrations and foibles.

But underneath it all lies a desire to keep these personal feelings for myself and those who have more than an idle curiosity about them.

I’d rather live quieter, knowing who my true friends are.

I’d rather be happy, than interesting.

Hey Internets

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I’m having a party.

You’re invited (link removed).

Unfortunately, I think you need an evite account to view that.

But seriously – come on over, it should be a good time!

Fit-Miss

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So, I do believe that at some point last week, I promised a post of things that don’t suck. And failed to deliver. But! I do have, hot off the presses, something that definitely does not suck!

FREE STUFF!

Because I referred some friends to SPUD, I (out of 83 eligible referrers) won their draw for a prize! Three free sessions to build a personalized strength training and nutrition plan from Duquette Strength!

I had my first meeting with Roy Duquette today, and boy was that a wake-up call.

I know I’ve been feeling generally mushy and sluggish over the winter months, but I found out today that while I’m the same weight, and even a little thinner than I was a few months ago, my body is comprised of a whopping TWENTY-NINE PERCENT body fat. Gross. I have scenes from Fight Club running through my head. My poor, abused body only has 89.6 lbs of lean muscle mass doing the work to carry my lard around.

Hopefully, with Roy’s help, that’s all about to change.

I’ve picked up some supplements for protein, healthy oils, and greens, and have strategies to incorporate those into my already pretty healthy (but admittedly carb-heavy) diet. I go in later this week for a postural and alignment analysis, to tweak the nutrition plan, and to get started putting the workout together. After that I have one more free session of personal training.

And since we’re on the topic of health and all, there are a couple websites that have been sent my way for quick reviews – they’re both worth a glance.

Along the Fight Club lines, there’s a web campaign out (www.bewiseaboutbeauty.org) by the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. It’s exactly what you think – an information site about the details of various procedures, and recommendations on how to find a cosmetic surgeon.

Most interesting factoid? That Liposuction does not actually remove cellulite. Because tight bands of fibrous tissue cause cellulite, extracting the fat layer that resides just under the skin may actually worsen the dimpled look. Armed with that tidbit, I suppose I’ll just restrict my own personal plastic surgery experience to watching Nip/Tuck.

The other site is more about nutrition, but far less user-friendly. At eatbetteramerica.com (a project of General Mills) there are a few fun things to look at – if you can get past the super slow-loading flashy mc-flasherness of it all. While the site thankfully doesn’t brow-beat the user with brands the way some other sites (Kraft Foods) do with their “ingredient assembly” excuses for recipes – there’s nothing really revolutionary here for anyone who’s well-versed at all with basic principles of nutrition.

There is a pretty nifty section on how to “Healthify my Recipe”, where the test chefs take Aunt Ida’s Fatty McFatterson Mac & Cheese recipe (among others) and change the ingredients up a bit to make it less of a heart-attack in a bowl.

In case you don’t want to suffer through the flash (which has twice crashed my browser whilst typing this), I’ll give you the Readers’ Digest Version: Don’t start every recipe with a pound of butter, put down the fucking whole milk and eat a carrot or two!

Though I guess it’s hard to make these kind of changes when you don’t know where to start. And if you absolutely must have the Macaroni in your life, may as well make it healthy.

Which brings us back to my experience today. Roy was awesome in helping me find ways to incorporate extra supplements into things I’m already eating! My morning smoothie gets a boost from some greens powder and flax oil. Even my morning Choffee (hot chocolate powder in coffee) changes to Chocolate Whey Isolate powder in Coffee. Giving up coffee was non-negotiable.

So, armed with some new knowledge, and about to be gifted with more, I’ll try going about my day a bit more mindful of increasing my lean mass and getting fitter instead of fatter.

I’ll report in again as things progress – perhaps in a week, perhaps in a month – depends on how fast my body composition changes. Of course, it would probably go faster if I’d decided against my post-gym, drive-thru Chicken Snack Wrap on the way home from my appointment with Roy – which (FYI), if you are a fast-food lover, is another thing that (in my Mc-deep-fried-chicken lovin’ opinion) does not suck.

Game 6 – Get it Now!

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congrats_b.jpg

Originally uploaded by CouzinHub.

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!

Insert inventive title about hockey tickets here

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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.

Head, meet Desk

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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.

Dear Blogland

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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.

Playoff Tickets One More Time

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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!

New Car on the Block

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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.

Taking Back Monday

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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.

Playoff Tickets

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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.

Did you Pass Math?

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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.