Author: wwducat

About: Writer, Technology guy, Photographer, Possibly EX-Software QA Engineer, Worker Bee. Interests: SCUBA, Working out, Friends, New Views, New Vistas, Photography
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Southpark is right

Canadians are Wacky

I’ve spent the last two years dealing with a fractional percentage of Canadians. With a vanishingly small percentage of those people being actually “normal”.

Almost every Canadian I’ve spoken to has been full goose batshit crazy.

At first I thought it was just cultural differences. I’ve changed my mind!

The majority of people I talk to are, a little nuts. The Canadians I’ve talked to, take it to a whole new level. 

They seem to want to abdicate responsibility for everything including basic maintenance for themselves and their devices. I’ve talked to folks up there who refuse to restart their machines. I mean really? You won’t restart your phone to fix a problem? 

Instead you want me to wave a magic wand 4000 miles away and make your problem go away. Are you serious? This is especially annoying when you’ve managed to walk them through the issue and they’ve admitted to you that other applications on their phone aren’t working properly. I can’t say anything but nice politically correct things.

South park canada on strikeWhat I’d like to do is give them a full on dose of reality. “You aren’t maintaining you phone, your applications aren’t working because you’re not maintaining your phone, and you’re a fucking moron!”

My annoyance with these Canadians is taken to new heights when they get all whiny and play the “Victim Card”. Really? You expect that to make me more likely to want to help you? NOPE! I care even less.

You’ve got the problem, you’ve made the problem, I’ve told you how to fix the problem and you’re not willing to do what I tell you. Nothing in life is a certainty, other than you’re going to die at some point. Machines and technology are even less certain because… well they’re machines and they wear out.

I’ve decided that should I ever be in a position where I’m making something and selling it, I will specifically not sell to Canada. The cost of doing business with them is simply going to be too high. It’s like they’ve gotten so used to getting their way and getting free shit that NOW they expect to get free shit whenever they feel like pitching a fit. Well not on my dime!

That being said, there are some Canadians that I like. I’m not sure which group is the exception, but I’m going to be very selective about Canadians that I hang out with in general.

It’s a pity really. The few Canadians that are in my life are pragmatic, productive, hardy people. 

Perhaps I’d misjudged. Perhaps the Canadians I know, left Canada because they just couldn’t take the bullshit of their countrymen. 

I’ll have to ask…

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Had a good day…

My weekends are usually busy; I know, whose weekends aren’t?

The problem is that often I spend a lot of my weekend on the road driving, and this weekend was no different, save for one detail. I drove to meet a friend and we talked, ate, drank, and walked around the Glendale Galleria and local area. 

No agenda, no plan, just two old friends enjoying each other’s company.

It was great.

It also highlighted to me thatI really need to make more time to just enjoy the simple things. It also underscored that I need to get a new job and get to a more “normal” schedule. I know this but it’s easy to get caught up in the grind of my day to day insanity and forget that I work to live I don’t live to work for any corporation or corporate assholes.

DUH!

I need to appreciate the little things and I need to make more time for those little pleasures in my life.

Getprev2 4I also found out that I should trust the helpful navigation lady in my car even if she can’t make up her mind. When she updates her estimated travel time by a substantial amount I need to take notice. Instead of ignoring her thinking she’d lost her mind. Especially when she doubles the travel time in transit. So helpful navigation lady, I apologize for what I said to you on the I-5 south of LA. You are not a daffy fucking bitch… 

I saw midnight for the first time in a long time, and I’m paying for it today. Not that I’m complaining but I feel like hammered shit. Got to the mountain and just couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night. Strangely, while I’m really tired, my state of mind is good. I can only chalk it up to seeing new sights, and great company.

Doing chore around here this morning and will head back down to San Diego later this afternoon. My goal is to get down there early enough to get to bed and get a decent night’s sleep. Tomorrow I get to hit the grind again but hopefully I’ll be in a better state of mind as I make it through the week.

I hope your weekend is a fun one.

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End of my week…

Was originally planning to have after work drinks with a couple of coworkers. But that didn’t pan out like it was supposed to.

So I altered my plans, Now I’m sitting in a nifty little coffee shop (Not Starbucks) having a very tasty strawberry smoothie, while I wait for a massage.

In all, probably a healthier alternative than drinking.

I could use a massage, and I’ll probably sleep very well tonight.

There are things I should be doing. Laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the apartment etc. But I’m in a bit of a “To Hell with it Mood,” it’s been a bitch of a week.

That being said, I still have to drive back to the mountains for my “weekend”. Honestly I could really do without that drive. I mostly like being on the mountain, but I dread driving up there. The drive is always bad until I get past Temecula. Then it’s OK until I hit Corona or Riverside, (depending which way I go). Then it’s gridlock again and what should be a 90 minute drive turns into a 2.5 hour odyssey.

I’m wiped out by the time I get to the mountain and all I want to do is veg out in front of the boob tube.

I actually used to like driving. But California has really gone to hell in that regard. People I’ve talked to up and down the coast have all commented that it’s much worse than it used to be, but no one seems to be able to put a finger on what has happened.

It’s just a part of living in California these days. Like the drought…

Perhaps it’s something that will change… but I suspect that any change will be for the worse. I thought it was a localized thing, but Folks in Florida are saying that traffic is much worse there too.

Wonder what Alaska is like? Humm…

I’d like to find someplace that’s got light traffic, low housing prices, a decent job market, low taxes, and a reasonable climate.

I know!

Me and 1 billion other people!

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Well, time for my massage and I’m going to relax as much as possible.

Hope the rest of you week isn’t too nuts.

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Ahh My Weekend.

Yeah, my weekend is probably not your weekend. But my Thursday mornings are sacred to me.

I sleep late, have a civilized breakfast, sit quietly over my first cup of coffee, and write.

Sometimes I write here, but often I’m writing other things, stuff that I’m passionate about, and it lets me take a break from working on the insanity of living.

My life is more complicated than I’d like…

My Thursday morning is my take a breath day. I highly recommend it. Get a cup of coffee, sit naked on your couch and just BREATHE.

Don’t bother with the TV, radio, or music. Just sit, enjoy the silence and sip on your morning beverage. I can tell you from experience that all the bullshit happening in the world… Will still be happening when you decide to tune back in.

You could check out for six months and when you come back, the soap opera will still be going on, and you’ll not have missed a damn thing.

So take some time for yourself. You’ll feel better. I promise.

Have a great day.

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OK, I drank the Kool-Aid

So I love my Rolex. It’s one of my favorite things.

However, lately more and more people have been taking notice of it. Granted if I lived in a better area it probably wouldn’t be a big deal but I don’t live in a better area…

I live in an area where there are a lot of seemingly desperate people and there are a lot of homeless people. A recent event catalyzed the decision I made yesterday.

I was coming out of a grocery store Wednesday, and there was a homeless guy asking for money. He said, “A white dude with a Rolex can afford to give me 5 bucks…”

Defenses came right up and I decided that my beautiful Rolex was perhaps a little too ostentatious for the area in which I reside. $5 Bucks? How soon before it becomes $100, or $1000?

This isn’t the first time… I’ve had one guy pull my sleeve up while waiting in line at a convenience store and say stuff like, “NIIIICCCEEE, what’d that cost?” Another time a cashier at a food joint fixated on my Rolex and announced to the entire room, “We got a guy here who can buy all our lunches.”

This latest incident is the most threatening, and one of the many reasons we as a society can’t have nice things…

Soooo, I’d been considering an Apple watch, and decided as I briskly walked away from the homeless guy, it was time to buy one.

My lovely Rolex will be put in a safe place and I’ll enjoy the benefits of a watch that I have to recharge daily. Sigh!

As always the guy at the Apple Store was very nice and helpful. I got what I wanted and it came in a nice black box.

I have to admit there are some things that may prove useful about having a computer on my wrist.

I can change the face to match my mood.

Currently, Micky Mouse is tapping his foot on my wrist.

I’ll have better information about my walks and reminders to get up and stretch will be welcome during my work day. Having the ability to place and receive calls ala Dick Tracy Might not be something I’m actually going to like, but if it’s an emergency situation that might not be such a bad thing.

I guess this is a sign of the times.

Being White has become a liability. Having worked your ass off is no longer something to be respected, (regardless of your skin color) but instead, means you’re a target for people who absolutely believe they are entitled to your shit because if you’ve got money, you’ve surely got money to give to them simply because they happen to be breathing.

Increasingly, I find that I don’t much like the world we live in.

The set up on the watch was pretty easy. I was finished before my lunch arrived at my table. Everything that is, except the cellular part of the setup.

it was then, I got sucked down the rabbit hole of technology. Turns out that my cell phone carrier can’t verify my actual billing address.

THANK YOU GOOGLE!

Yep The old Google screw-up (Ongoing for the past decade) bit me in the ass yet again.

Apparently, when Google was driving around taking pictures of our homes and neighborhoods, without our permission I might add, they made mistakes. NO! NOT The Google!!!!

They drove into my rural town and promptly listed my physical address as being in a neighboring town almost 10 miles away. But they maintained the correct zip code. This created a disconnect between the ZIP code registry and the Township. Effectively rendering all the addresses Google mapped on that day invalid, nobody except Google can fix it, and at this point, the error has been propagated across so many databases, it will likely not be fixed in the data.

Instead someone in the town council will simply cede our end of town to the neighboring town because it’s easier. People have had to rent boxes in neighboring towns just so they can get medications and Amazon packages.

We’ve been trying to get Google to revise this mistake for over 10 years. No Luck! Google is too big and too powerful and because they’re rarely wrong… It means that the general perception is that they’re infallible.  Another decade or so, and Google will be elected Pope!

All this meant; for me to actually enable the cell phone functionality, on the  watch required 3 hours on the phone with my cell phone carrier instead of simply being able to enable the technology with my phone. The first 1.5 hours was with a lady in God only knows where, who obviously had no idea about first world problems.

She did however alter my billing plan such that she tripled my monthly bill.

Ahem…

The second call, early this morning resulted in my having to reset the watch (losing all the configuration data I’d put in), resulting in being able to see that I had an account and that the watch connectivity was actually available. The third call, finally put me in contact with a guy who knew what was going on and was able to actually make the connection between their services and the communication unit in the watch.

What should have been a simple thing turned into a clusterfuck.

I now have 13 days left to return the Apple Watch if I don’t “Just Love” it. I like it thus far, but I don’t know if I “Love” it. My Rolex I absolutely “Love” and have loved since the day I bought it.

Time will tell I suppose. But I like the idea of my Rolex sitting in a safe, out of reach of the people I’m forced to live around here in San Diego. Alternatively I’d prefer to feel like I could wear my shit without worrying about getting bashed in the head by some asshole who thought what I had… should be his.

Call me old fashioned.

My brother is right…

I need to get the hell out of Kalifornia and move somewhere a bit more like his neck of the woods. Somewhere more like Mayberry.