Happy to see me go!

You know how sometimes a company is happy to see you stop being a customer? Perhaps if you really take advantage of the unlimited salad and breadsticks at your local restaurant, or you drive your rental car 1000km in a day because you have unlimited kilometres? Customers like that really drive down their profits.

I can't help but think that Shaw is really glad I moved out of Edmonton, and here's why: Below is the internet usage for the cable modem at my old place. I shared the hookup with two other people, who still live there. In fact, someone else has moved in in my place. Based on the chart, can you guess when I moved out?



Yup, you guessed it, October 1st, 2005. After I left, the bandwidth usage fell from 120GB per month to 30GB per month. The average while I was there was 115GB/month, and the average now is 26GB/month. I can only imagine what kind of party they had at Shaw HQ to celebrate my departure.

Unfortunately, I don't have any usage data from my current ISP, but the great thing is that there are absolutely no caps on the amount you can download or upload per month, so I have no fear of getting that dreaded phone call or letter telling us/me to cool it on the bandwidth consumption (which happened a few times in Edmonton, including getting shut down for a week).

Little Bastards.

No, I'm not referring to the kids down the street, I'm talking about these assholes:




Don't let their cute appearance fool you, these little shit disturbers are pure evil. Let me tell you a story...

In the summer of 2004, my parents noticed these cute guys hanging around our house. They were a cute little diversion, and add to the wildlife we see around here, including a few deer, and lots of birds. Well, after a while, my folks starting here some funny sounds coming from above the garage, and "in" the front wall of the house. After some investigation, they found that there was an entire family of racoons living in the soffit at the front of our house! Not so cute anymore. They ended up having to hire a pest control guy to come and remove the mother and babies. Except, they weren't able to catch all of the babies, so they had to come back at least once to pick up the orphans. Oh, and just so you know, they didn't kill the little buggers, just released them into the wild, away from our house. The family hasn't come back since, and all is well...

OK, fast forward to Decemeber 2005. There is a bathroom in the front of the house, on the upper floor. On a particularily cold day, I noticed that the water wasn't flowing, and the floor was very cold. We put a heater in there, and things got flowing safely within a few hours. Fast forward to January 2006, and the same thing happened again! Well, thinking it was due to the racoons who had been living in the soffit directly in front of the bathroom, I decided to climb up there and check it out. Well, it turns out the racoons has decided to pull out fibreglass insulation to use as material for a nest. There was a 4'x4' square of outer wall with NO insulation! After the weather warmed up, I did my best to patch it up with some new insulation, and thick tarp, to cut down on the wind. And we had made plans to get a pro up there to perfect my shabby job (Skelhorne knows all about my excellent handy work).

ANYWAY (holy crud this is long), before anything was done, we had another cold snap, and this time, we were not so lucky. A pipe froze, and then burst. Unfortunately, it happened during the day, when no one was home.



The water was flowing down from the upper floor for 2 hours, at full force. It managed to soak my dad's office (luckily, no computer), and then down into the basement, and totally ruin the entire downstairs. Every shred of carpet was soaked, some walls were ruined and lots of things we had stored down there was soaked as well. Thank goodness for insurance, as the repair costs were about $20,000! Here is a shot of the basement after tearing up all of the carpet and sub-flooring, and with some serious dehumidifiers running.



Just this past week was when things were finally moved back after the carpet was replaced. All told, the whole event took 2 months from accident to resolution.

Like I said, those assholes are pure evil, and if I ever see them again, I'm going to punch them in the face.

Laff!

I just found this is my folder of Hawai'i stuff. I got a kick out of it, hope you do too. I censored the name to protect the stupid...




ps. I'm heading to the season premiere party for season six of The Trailer Park Boys tonight. Hopefully I'll have lots of pictures and fun stories from that. I'll be sure to update y'all asap. And I've got some other good posts in the works. Back on the writing horse, I am.

Junos Week Wraps Up

Well, in case you didn't know, the Junos were held in Halifax this week, culminating in the televised awards tonight. I didn't end up going, seeing as the only tickets available were from scalpers looking for $200+ each...

BUT, I did go to the free concert held in the Grand Parade Thursday night. Me and 15,000 of my closest friends! I headed down with Annie from undergrad chem, and our friend Lisa. We showed up during Jimmy Rankin's set (unfortunately, we missed Garrett Mason, the opening act). Eventhough I'd never heard any of his songs (except his closer, the Rankin Family hit, "You Feel the Same Way Too"), he was great, and did well to keep the crowd pumped up as the sun went down.


After Jimmy, Joel Plaskett took to the stage. He was great, and probably my favourite act of the night. That guy loves his job as a performer, and that love really came out in his act. Plus, he played my most favouritest song by him, "Love This Town". I managed to grab a short clip of it on my camera.




The next group was Matt Mays & El Torpedo. They played the great "Cocaine Cowgirl", and plenty of songs that were new to me. Another great band, and by this time, the crowd was plenty rowdy (for good and for bad). A few crowd surfers, and plenty of people drinking and smoking, but still lots of fun.


The headliners of the night were The Trews. Another damn fine group! These guys were rocking to a very enthusiastic crowd, and did not fail to deliver. Unfortunately, we were getting tired and sore from the big crowd, so we headed out before they finished their set.


The Juno fun didn't stop there, though. Friday night was the Juno Cup, an annual hockey game between the Rockers (music industry folks and musicians) vs. the All-Stars (former NHLers and local stars). I headed down to the Forum with Annie and Lisa and Lisa's sister Janine. The cup is held as a charity event for MusiCan, to ensure music programs are available in Canadian schools. Michael Lansberg (TSN) and Chris Murphy (of Sloan) were the MCs of the event, and kept a constant, sometimes uncomfortable, running commentary throughout the game.
The highlights for me were the celebrity coaches: Mr. Lahey and Randy for the Rockers team, Julian for the All-Stars team (all three of Trailer Park Boys fame, and they were complemented on the ice by Ricky and Bubbles, both playing for the All-Stars). Another highlight was Measha Brueggergosman scoring a penalty shot goal, though she could barely skate. That really got the crowd going! And who knew Bubbles was such a good player? He scored one, and could have scored a few more, had Alan Doyle (of Great Big Sea) and Sami Jo Small (member of the Women's Gold Medal winning Hockey team) hadn't been in nets for the Rockers. But sadly, the All-Stars ended up winning the game 12-11, to increase their undefeated status to all 3 years the JunoCup has been played.

Well, in case you hadn't noticed, I had a great time at these extra-curricular events to the Junos, and that's because I really love Canadian music. And a big part of that is CBC Radio 3 and their weekly podcast (here's a good one to start with, host Grant Lawrence's Best of 2005). Before I started listening to it almost a year ago, I had no idea there were so many incredible musicians in Canada! If you have any interest in discovering some great independent music, ranging from acoustic to rock to rap, and all things in between, check out the site and podcast. Also, New Music Canada has thousands of independent musicians and their best songs all avialable for free! I've spent many a night just throwing together some kick-ass playlists of songs from the site. And for those of you who like live shows, might I suggest Just Concerts, now called the Concerts & Sessions section? Another great music resource, that has just recently changed over, but will be expanded soon.

ps. Check out my Junos pictures by depressing a mouse button while hovering over this series of text.