Author Archives: Rob MacD

I’ve been at my new job now for about a week and a half and it’s going very well, thank you for asking.
Fortunately, there hasn’t been that awkward Getting To Know Everyone’s Names / Getting To Know Your Duties thing that people suffer through on new jobs.  That’s because I already knew practically everybody in the office, and I’m doing the same job that I did at my last position.  So that’s good.

I’ve been having a bit of trouble with the Transit system, though.  I’m finally starting to come around to the idea that the transit bus picks me up an hour and 15 minutes before I’m supposed to be at work (it takes me 15 minutes to drive to work by car).  I don’t like it, but I guess I have to accept it.  And I’m beginning to tolerate the idea of being in town 40 minutes before I need to be at work.
There are worse things, I suppose, than having to spend 40 minutes drinking coffee and reading the paper before work.
However, I’m having trouble accepting the wonky transit schedule for my return trip home after work.  I’ve only tried it once, and that on the second day they implemented their new schedule, but that experience was so disheartening that I don’t know when I’ll want to take the bus back home again. 
I pick up the bus almost directly after work, and right outside the building in which I work.  So that’s good.  And the bus speeds its way out to the Charlottetown Mall in about 10 minutes.  That’s good, too.  However, with their new schedule, I now have a 20 minute wait at the Mall before the bus I transfer to shows up to take me the 5 minutes farther away out of town to my final stop.  For some reason, I find this 20 minute wait intolerable and unacceptable

The day that I took the bus, there was confusion and rain, too, to further frustrate me.  I got on the “University Avenue-Ch’town Mall” bus at 5:09 as it’s scheduled.  It was pouring rain.  When the bus gets to the Mall, the driver asks/ demands of me if I realize this is as far as he goes.  It was the second day of the new schedule.  With the previous schedule, the same bus would take me all the way to my stop.  So, since I didn’t know I’d have to transfer, since it was in no way indicated on the new schedule hand-out, I said “No.  This bus doesn’t go to Winsloe?” 
The driver seemed to get kind of perturbed, as if I was upsetting his day, and with a huffy attitude told me that he didn’t think there was any bus going out to Winsloe.  I showed him the schedule that shows a bus leaving the Mall to Winsloe at 5:45 (in 20 minutes time).  After some perturbed CB communications with someone else, he tells me that it looks like I’d have to wait for Bus Four.  He didn’t know, though, where in the parking lot it would stop, because the CB communication wasn’t crisp and clear, and they couldn’t make each other out.  All the while, the driver seemed like I was putting him out by wondering if I’d be able to get a bus to take me home.  In the rain.

Finally, he thinks he’s sorted it out, but I’m skeptical that it is.  So I leave the bus and walk into the mall and shortly thereafter, after talking myself into being pissed off, in the rain, I phone my wife to drive the 5 minutes into the mall to pick me up. 
In the meantime, 15 minutes later a bus drives by.  It has no number on it to clearly tell if it’s Number Four.  It stops way up at the other end of the mall.  Another person, and her 4 or 5 year old, who were in the same boat as me (going to Winsloe) were waiting with me.  She asked me if I thought the bus that just drove by was the one we were supposed to get on.  I told her I didn’t know, and that I was now getting picked up.  She, and her son, then trudged up the sidewalk, in the pouring rain, to see if the bus that stopped so far away was the one she was supposed to get on.  My wife picked me up, and as we drove by the bus, she still hadn’t made her way to it. 
I have no idea if that was the proper bus, but I suspect it wasn’t.

So, yeah, that experience totally turned me off of taking the bus home after work.  In the morning, it takes the bus 30 minutes to go from my stop to my downtown destination.  I don’t think it should take another full 30 extra minutes to get me back home in the evening. 
That’s just poor scheduling.

Anyway…

Wow, so the Bird Flu hits PEI.
This comment from Dr. Lamont Sweet (and he really is!) leaves me with many questions:

Sweet urged anyone who has been in contact with poultry in the last
week who is experiencing flu-like symptoms to see their physician.

The first of which is this:  What if you were using a condom?  And what if you’re 75% sure the sniffling is from the cocaine?  I guess, too, I’d need a general definition of “poultry”.
Aw, I guess it’s best not to worry at this point.

Technorati Tags: avian flu

This article doesn’t not make no sense to me.  The researcher seems to be saying that tourism is bad for tourism.
In other logic, I believe the water wouldn’t be quite so wet if it didn’t rain.