Nothing Really Works With Vista

Back on July 12^th, there was an explosion at Shaw Centre in downtown Calgary. It seems that a fire broke out in a transformer in the electrical room and then the sprinklers came on a shorted everything out back up systems included. I had heard initially that it was an explosion that caused the damage but I only heard that the once. I am something of a conspiracy theorist, and that is just the way they would spin it in the media if there were some kind of sabotage. I am thinking James Bond, Jason Bourne or Terminator scenarios, but I realize that is pretty “out there”.

 

Even not taking into account the movie script theory, this was a pretty scary outcome. There were 30,000 customers affected by the outage, not to mention that 911 and 311 (city info) failed, radio stations went off the air, thousands lost internet and therefore their ability to call out, the hospital computers were down and so too was all of the labs in the city. The registries were out of commission for three or four days and some government offices were unable to do their work. No one noticed that the government workers didn’t do anything. If I were a terrorist (I’m not and never will be, God bless Canada!) I would be filing this information away and try to find where similar buildings in other cities were located.

However, Calgary’s problem is nothing compared to what India went through a couple of days ago. They had two cascading power failures that left over 640 million people without power. To put this in perspective, the population of North America is about 530,000,000. That would be all of Canada, the United States and Mexico being in the dark and not doing anything but what people do when it is dark. They make love and loot stores, not generally at the same time of course. Factories and hospitals closed, trains stopped, roads became impromptu parking lots and miners were trapped in the mines.The blackouts extended almost 2000 miles; it is 2157 miles from Calgary to Toronto. That wouldn't be so bad if it happened in Canada, because there isn't anything really worth lighting up between Calgary and Toronto. 

India is used to inefficient electrical service, and it is estimated that demand exceeds supply by about 10% on a regular basis. Part of the problem is that about 30% of the total generated power is stolen. Crazy place!

 

The thing that I don’t get is no one seemed to notice that all of the call centers were shut down. They would have to be wouldn’t they? I have at times needed to talk to one of the call centers and to tell you the truth, I probably was on hold long enough that they could have had a major power failure and I would never have noticed. I guess they are back to the way it was before the outage, but that is none too good and unless something is done pretty quick, I may never be able to figure out why my Canon i450 printer won’t work with Vista. Oh shit…I just have to face it, nothing really works with Vista!

 

Gossip

I am one of those people that just loves gossip. I don’t really care who the gossip is about or even if I don’t know the person, it is just fun to know something everyone else doesn’t. Well, they don’t know until I tell them.

I’m not sure why people confide their secrets to me, but I suspect it is because they figure I am harmless. Well, I am more or less. In high school the girls would tell me who they liked and then swear me to secrecy, which wasn’t my strongest trait. I am a good listener, but a really crappy secret keeper. I am the “Peter Pettigrew” of the non wizarding world. Most of the information didn’t seem important enough to tell anyone, so I just kept track of it for my own amusement.

Later on in life, nothing had really changed, I was still the go to guy if you wanted to spill your guts about pretty much anything. Being a gossip is really all about paying attention and then retaining that useless information and being able to pull it out at the most opportune time. When I was at work, I developed the ability to talk non stop and still listen to whispered conversations two aisles over. I guess that was my super power. EAVESDROPPER GUY. I also paid attention to what was going on at the meetings and became someone that knew what the bosses said. It was still bullshit, but I at least I could tell people to just keep doing whatever it is that they were used to doing.

One thing I was never able to master was high school charades. I would be sitting in class with the teacher droning on and on when Sandy Burnett would get my attention and mouth something or other. I would smile and shake my head as if to say, ”I haven’t a clue what you are trying to say Sandy, but can’t it wait till after class?” Sandy would then mouth the words slower. That is kind of like talking louder to someone that doesn’t speak English. I smiled and shook my head again and then Sandy mouthed even slower and used hand gestures. The only hand gestures I knew were invented by the Italians and were dirty. I was pretty sure that Sandy wasn’t talking dirty to me in math class. Eventually I would say “WHAT?” and the teacher would hear me and I would get a detention. Eventually the class would end and in the hall I’d ask Sandy what she was trying to say and it turns out that she wanted me to get Shirley’s attention. That was worth a detention.

Lately, I haven’t been so good with the gossip because I have Tinnitus which makes it hard for me to follow more than one conversation at a time. We all get older and lose our super powers I guess. I do miss the gossip though.

Today I was at physio therapy and the Physiotherapist had me wait while he talked to another patient. This guy is so soft spoken, that I have trouble hearing the instructions that he is giving me at the best of times. When he came over and drew the curtain, he said “It is such a sad case, about five years ago she worked for….and WCB refused her claim because …which was a lie of course. So …hired a lawyer and …didn’t help. …hasn’t worked in…I am helping when I can but…I could be fired if…” This went on for five minutes and he would fade in and out like a cheap transistor radio with a nearly dead battery. I knew it was really good, but I couldn’t stop him and say “What was that about the WCB?” I nodded my head and went “ohhh” at what seemed to be the appropriate times, but I still don’t have a fucking clue what he was trying to say and I never will.

The only good thing that has happened lately is Facebook. It is a godsend for gossipers. I can creep around the web and find out all of the latest gossip which no one seems to be embarrassed about any more.

Well, time to go, but never fear I will be “following” you…