Blessed by the Potato

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday. That’s an exceptionally rare thing for me to do, in the literal sense. Metaphorically, I wake up on the wrong side of the bed fairly frequently: I often wake up grumpy, or too tired to function, or find little things annoying. But usually that happens when I still find myself on the side of the bed I went to sleep on, which is universally the side with my alarm clock. There have been a few times when, having trouble falling asleep, I’ve moved over to the other side (especially when I made my regular side all hot and sweaty). But then when I wake up on the “wrong side” it’s not really the same, because I consciously moved over there in the night. But yesterday, I woke up on the wrong side, and was actually pretty confused as to where I was and how I had gotten there, because that sort of nighttime wandering just doesn’t usually happen.

[Warning: graphic description of unpleasant bodily functions follow]

The day didn’t really get any better for me after that. I was violently ill with diarrhea, perhaps the worst I’ve ever had. I spent basically an hour and a half on the toilet, going a minute or two thinking that the worst was finally over, just to be hit by another round of cramping and liquid evil. I made it through the rest of the day okay after that, but had very bizarre stomach rumbles and painful cramps the rest of the day. Usually when my tummy makes noise it’s sort of a long, protracted grumble with many individual rumbles and gurgles within. Sort of a rum-ble-rum-b-b-b-g-g-g-le. These were like dinosaur calls. A single, loud, painful note that seemed to coordinate the actions of many different areas of my gut. More of a Wroooooooaaam. Very strange indeed.

I also found ants in the kitchen, after thinking we had finally gotten rid of them in the spring. This time they were where I had most feared they might show up: in the food cupboard. Before, they had been drawn to the sink area largely because of the drops of coke left in the cans I had piled up there — rinsing and disposing of the cans individually rather than stockpiling a half dozen to do at a time seemed to help the problem significantly, and chemical warfare seemed to drive the rest off. The sink invasion also seemed to be partly out of convenience: while we never quite pinpointed exactly where they were entering the kitchen, it appeared to be somewhere over on that side of the room. The food is kept in a cupboard on the other side, and had seemed safe… until yesterday. While we have been pretty good about keeping our dry goods in containers and not letting any cans leak, there was one thing we had overlooked: Christmas candy canes. There was a small stockpile of them in there, to serve as a source of emergency sugar if needed. Of course, they came to be in that stockpile because they were rejected from the decoration pile at the time they were in season, because each of them had in some way broken. A broken candy cane is, unfortunately, a candy cane that lacks a seal, because breaking the cane almost always involves breaking the plastic wrapped around it. And so it was that I saw a lone ant crawling out of the the food cupboard, opened the doors, and saw a dozen swarming around the broken ends of the candy canes.

Ugh.

Well, today that mess is all cleaned up and I haven’t seen any more ants. We were also treated to a nice thunderstorm last night (though the air is still pretty muggy today), and those storms for some reason can drive the insects crazy before they strike.

Unionville will block the roads for just about anything. A town festival, or a music show, a baseball game or for just a pedestrian-only weekend along the shopping strip, they’ll block that road at the drop of a hat. Any hat. It is, in fact, one of the most popular summer time sports in Unionville, edging out even swimming in a backyard pool.

I don’t really mind the fact that they do it, turning Main St. into a pedestrian mall is often a step in the right direction because there’s usually someone who steps into the road without looking anyway. But it really bugs me how they go about it — they block the road off just before the first usable turn-off. There’s a bit of a drive up Main St. from Hwy 7 before you get to where they block the road, and never has there been a sign saying “road closed ahead” or something like that. If there was some kind of warning, then it would be faster to turn around, go back out to Hwy 7, and take one of the other streets into the residential area of Unionville (and of course, not having a functional grid layout contributes to the hurt here). There have been many times when I’ve had pizza rapidly cooling in the car, just to find Main St. blocked, and being forced to go around the un-named alley just to the east of it. That alley is essentially a parking lot, and it can take quite a while to get through, and then turning left onto Carleton when you do get through it is always an adventure, since there’s no sight line thanks to the ubiquitous parked cars, the slope, and the curve in the road. What really makes me mad though is the stupidity of blocking the road right before an actual usable street. It’s literally 100 feet from being a serviceable blockade, and there’s just no reason to block the turn onto Fred Varley, especially since all the shops are to the North of it (and there’s also a strip mall on Fred Varley itself — potentially a good place for Main Street walkers to park, and also housing a bunch of business owners who probably get cheesed off when people can’t drive up to them).

The 12-volt outlet (cigarette lighter) in my car has been broken ever since my brother had the stereo system installed, possibly since before it came into our family. It’s never really bothered me. While I am a little anal about monitoring the air pressure in my tires, and always carry an air compressor in the trunk, I’ve managed to keep my tires inflated through the use of other people’s 12-volt power or the free air pumps at service stations.

I don’t know how long this has been going on, but I stopped at two different Esso stations in the past week, and both had started charging 50 cents to use their air compressors. Outrageous! For now, Petro-Canada, Shell, Sunoco, and Loblaws/Supercentre gas stations still have free air compressors (though the new Shell at Hwy 7 and Woodbine hides theirs around back halfway along the car wash lane). Considering how relatively cheap an air compressor is, how long they last, and how important properly inflated tires can be for safety, I’m really surprised at that move. Providing free air is just a cost of doing business for a gas station, and not a very big one, either. While I don’t run a gas station myself, an educated guess would suggest keeping the windshield cleaning stations topped up with cleanser, paper towels, and squeegees would cost more over time than the air compressor. I find this especially disturbing and surprising since they jumped straight to a 50 cent charge, instead of starting at just a quarter, and since they jumped into the mess all on their own.

Well, looks like I won’t be buying gas from Esso any more… which is a good point that Wayfare made: how much can they possibly be making, 50 cents at a time, from the few people who actually check their tire pressures regularly? Does that at all compare to the amount of goodwill they stand to lose from cheapskates like me?

The budget woes of Canada’s largest city have been in the news a lot lately, culminating in Mayor Miller’s defeat in council to increase revenues. Since I don’t really live in Toronto any more, I haven’t been paying too much attention to the whole situation, and have some mixed feelings on the whole idea. On the one hand, Toronto needs money, and some of the ideas were pretty good ones, in particular the vehicle registration surcharges. Property taxes are one of the only other routes open, but at this point I think (even as a non-property owner) that they’re starting to get excessive — high property taxes encourage sprawl, which is already pretty far out of hand. A casino is neither here nor there for me — but I think with casinos in Orillia and Niagara and slots in many closer locations, Toronto’s gambling needs are pretty well serviced; on the other hand, Montreal, Ottawa, and Halifax seem to live with their casinos without turning into hotbeds of sin. I’m particularly pissed that the other levels of government haven’t been able to help Toronto out, particularly the Federal government which has found billions of dollars for almost everything else under the sun (perhaps if Toronto elected a separatist party, we’d get appeasement money too).

After city council voted to delay any funding increases until after the results of the provincial election in the fall, they had to start looking for ways to cut. The CBC has an article on the planned TTC cuts that made me do a double take:

Cancelling about 20 low-ridership bus routes, including the Dupont, Pharmacy and Calvington lines, as soon as October.

Abandoning plans to put 100 new buses into service this fall, instead using them to replace old vehicles.

Closing the Sheppard subway line at the beginning of 2008.

Cancelling all planned service improvements.

Hiking fares by 10 to 25 cents.

In the immortal words of Kyle’s mom: What-what-WHAAAT??!! They’re going to close the brand-new Sheppard subway line? I haven’t ridden that line yet, even for novelty’s sake, but I imagine the ridership is low (especially if they’re planning on closing it). But realistically, how much can it cost to run a line that’s already built, compared with the busses they’d need? Electricity is cheap (especially compared to gas prices lately), a train only needs two employees (and it would take more than two busses to replace a train, unless they’re really empty), and maintenance/wear-and-tear on an electric train is way lower than a bus. Plus since installing the line, the condo developers have set up shop all along Sheppard. In just a year or two there’s going to be a metric shit-tonne of people trying to commute along that corridor. I just can’t see the sense in closing it (especially after the billion dollars needed to build it has already been sunk).

And more fare hikes? It’s already gone up over 75 cents in less than 10 years.

$130 million is what the TTC is looking to cut, according the the article. Pennies compared to the billions in extra spending the “conservative” government brought in (and a sad farewell to the concept of paying down our debt). One thought: if I were in charge of a major political party, perhaps one with millions of dollars at its disposal to launch unending attack ads outside of any election call, I’d consider (though the legalities may be tricky) just throwing that ad money at public transit to build goodwill and make much better use of the resources. How many voters are actually swayed by ads anyway?

So, here’s what I consider to be a very good question: should transit be a municipal issue? All our levels of government are interested in pissing down the chain lately: provincial and federal levels passing responsibilities down to municipalities; municipalities running out of money, cutting programs, and telling people to deal with issues themselves. But perhaps with transit, we should buck it up to a provincial or federal responsibility. That might also make transit more equal between cities: Toronto, for instance, has pretty darned good transit with the TTC. The 905, by and large, has decent transit options for getting to Toronto, but not getting around their own municipalities. London has a decent bus system, especially for a city of its size, but lacks some amenities such as late night busses (in Toronto you can take the subway home from a bar if you leave just a little bit before closing, and the vomit comet after that; London shuts down bus service to Richmond Row at midnight). A province-wide transit authority (with a lot more money) would be able to give every reasonably-sized municipality decent bus service, and would be able to integrate the services between cities: perhaps making it possible to take a bus from Sheppard to John St. along Yonge without having to pay two fares; also synchronizing the schedules between different services.

I’m drafting letters to my MP & MPP while the image analysis computer here chugs away (as useless as I know that will be, what with the provincial government in hibernation until the election, and the federal government under the thrall of the insane fuck-wads conservatives, while my MPP is Liberal; as is my parents’). I’ll post them soonish.

Update: Of course, Wayfare is probably right “They won’t close the subway, it’s just a political move.” Political grandstanding of this sort is quite common, and the TTC probably wouldn’t close the Sheppard line just as it gets into the design stage for the Spadina subway extension…

So with the trip to Ottawa and the cottage coming up, we thought it was best to secure some online access with a dial-up account. It was a surprisingly difficult ordeal. Many websites for ISPs would forward us around due to acquisitions and mergers before we found what the new ISP name was, and then many of them made it difficult to find the access numbers needed for all the cities we would (or might) visit. Oddly enough, many also made it difficult to actually order an account.

Take Bell Sympatico for instance. We tried calling them first because we knew that they had access all across the country. We even have most of the access numbers already since my dad uses Sympatico at the cottage (I was tempted to just use my dad’s account and hope that they wouldn’t notice the simultaneous connection). But it took a lot of navigating around their website before we finally found which number to call. Wayfare called to order, and after 20 minutes was pulling her hair out and swearing never to use Bell again for anything.

First, she tried the online chat feature (which sounds like a good idea — the internet support people should know about the internet services). That… didn’t go so well, and she was directed to call the number (310-SURF). She had to go through the frustrating automated menu, then was transferred around 3 times until she finally got a representative who told her that the line was only for high-speed DSL subscriptions and would have to transfer her for dial-up [I may get some of the details wrong here, she’s got them all somewhere and may correct me in the comments]. That transfer lead to her being on hold for something like 5 minutes [after something like 20 minutes had already elapsed], then she was told to call a different number (310-SURF) where she could find someone who could help her. Now, that’s just criminal: a customer should never have to call back to a company to get help, especially when all they’re trying to do is something completely ordinary: order a service and give the company money. And a customer should never, ever have to call the same number back. She pointed this out, and the rep told her that she would have to call back, and then told her which specific menu options to pick to get someone. He turned out to be completely, flabbergastingly wrong. So, going through another chain of reps and hold periods, including being transferred to India (possibly Pakistan, definitely a weak international connection either way), she got someone who was going to try to sell her some dial-up internet access. She was asked for the number she would connect from. She explained that she wanted roaming access while we were on vacation, that we’d be connecting from all over Ontario (and possibly Quebec)… and the rep told her that wasn’t possible. Now, that’s just plain wrong. I know it’s wrong, since the whole purpose of my dad having a Sympatico account is because we can use it while roaming, with access numbers everywhere. So all in all, an hour of Wayfare’s time wasted (more in fact, since the service was so bad she’s going to have to write them a letter to complain).

So we tried really hard to go with Bell, to give them our money and stick with the familiar, but they wanted no part of it. Back to surfing the internet for recommendations for other ISPs. We found a few really cheap ones local to Ottawa and the cottage area, and considered getting one account for each place if we couldn’t find an ISP with access to both. Eventually, I found out that Teksavvy has a dial-up plan (in addition to their DSL service) at a pretty reasonable rate, with access in Barrie, Ottawa, and pretty much anywhere in Quebec we might care to go. Whether or not Barrie was a local call to the cottage was still up in the air, but Teksavvy has such an excellent reputation that I figured we’d go with them for Ottawa/Quebec access at least, and possibly figure out the cottage later [though it turns out Barrie is local]. The toll free number to call was in pretty small print, so I wasn’t hugely impressed by that (what happened to the giant “order now! Call:” banners that used to plague ISP websites?), but the guy who answered the phone was great. He:

Of course, these shouldn’t necessarily be shining examples of outstanding customer service, but simply par for the course. The fact that it’s not is just simply a shame upon the other call centres. Anyhow, now I think Teksavvy will be our ISP for every summer where we need roaming dial-up access.

One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen is advertisements for short-term contract dial-up access for vacationers. I believe I saw one once, nearly 10 years ago, for one of the PEI ISPs…

Other than dial-up, we did briefly look into the possibility of the high-speed wireless modems from Rogers and Bell. However, we weren’t sure of how well they’d perform (cell coverage at the cottage can be spotty), and how cost effective they’d be (Rogers only mentions a purchase option for the modem, as well as setup fees, and they can be a real pain to negotiate with for short periods of time, e.g.: charging for two months if you just want to use it for the last week of July and the first week of August; Bell’s service was excessively expensive and they only listed their “pricing with 2 year contract” — no idea how much it would cost to only use for a month).