The Annekenstein Monster

Leastlink
I told you. Didn’t I tell you? That Eastlink goob who took my NFL Sunday Ticket subscription screwed up. Pre-game time today, I turn to the appropriate channels, nothing on except the “call this number to subscribe” image. I call for Customer Service and, of course, it being Sunday, there’s no answer. I call for repair and talk to a very nice and helpful guy who tells me it’s not showing as being part of my service. I explain that the doofus told me I was connected and ready to go. After some investigating, he figures out how to get me connected, then tells me I’ll be billed in three easy installments. But, I say, doofus already took my credit card info and confirmed that I paid for the whole service upfront. Nice Guy politely and professionally informs me that he, being in the repair department, cannot check that out, but asks if I could call back the service department tomorrow to confirm the status. The Sunday Ticket now showing up on my TV, I happily agree and thank him for his quick and courteous service.

Bad news, though. Dolphins lose to what is supposedly the worst team in the NFL.
Sigh.

The Big Election
At another site, someone asked what the difference between a conservative and liberal is. I replied that a liberal is the guy who will buy beer for everyone at the table. A conservative will buy buy beer only for his friends. Both will leave the bar without paying the tab. Someone else then posted that the NDP is the guy who orders beer for everyone in the bar, but expects the bar owner to pay for it.
In other election news, CB asked me who I was going to vote for, Wayne Collins or Gordon MacKay. I said I haven’t decided yet, but who did CB think I should vote for. He said Wayne Collins would be the better candidate. Why? Because there’s a Wayne and there’s a Colin on Whose Line Is It Anyway. WLIIA is his favourite ‘non-cartoon’ show.
Me, I’m waiting to see what kind of beer they’re offering.

Not So Smooth Cycle
Speaking of Smooth Cycle, here’s the story so far: I’ve heard nothing but great things about the service and staff at Smooth Cycle, and in fact, have had excellent service there in the past. Which just adds to the frustration of this particular episode.
Two weeks ago, the chain on CB’s bike broke. K took it to Smooth Cycle to get repaired. She was told to come back in a coupla days. A coupla days later, she goes back, is given the bill for the service, pays it. The bike is rolled out. No chain on it. Apparently it wasn’t fixed, as the chain had to be ordered. Come back on Tuesday. She does and is told that there were problems getting the chain. Because of the Labour Day weekend, the order for the chain had been cancelled. Huh? Don’t you mean ‘delayed’? No, cancelled. Huh? Anyway, the chain’ll be in soon, come back on Thursday. Give them an extra day and I come in today, Friday. Bike on hook, no chain. I do notice a cobweb on it, though. Chain’ll probably be here later today. “So, I’ll come in tomorrow to pick it up?” Only one guy working on Saturday. “But he’ll be working on my bike, right?” Hard to say, could I come back on Monday? The guy sees and hears my disappointment and frustration as I go on to explain the absurdity of two weeks to change a chain. He gives me a quarter-hearted “Sorry ’bout that.” as I walk out.

Dromedarian Straw
Just off the top of my head, here are things, both big and small, that have bugged and frustrated me lately:
– Our fridge keeps malfunctioning. Every so often, the compressor stops working and it causes the fridge to lose its ability to freeze for a number of hours. Things get defrosted, and eventually the fridge will work again for a number of days. Can’t trust it though.
– The bathroom troubles: tub faucet broke. toilet bolt broke and soaked our floor. Pipe to toilet broke and re-soaked our floor. Have since had it all repaired.
– The tv broke. Still shows a picture, but the colour is screwed. The screen is now a series of rainbow-rings of colour.
– The cassette player in our car broke. Seems to have seized and won’t play cassettes.
– The driver’s side door power-window seems to be broken. It won’t go down all the way. Something must be obstructing its path.
– Having a hell of a time getting a simple bike repair job done at the usually reliable Smooth Cycle. Two weeks and counting on a chain-replacement that should take 2 days.

The Gods Of Moisture
By the gods of moisture, I have been spared. Firefighters Challenge cancelled due to rain. Too bad, ’cause I woulda nailed that competition. I’d have beaten them all. No, wait, I mean I’d have been nailed into a coffin.

Now that I have this second chance at life, I’m gonna live it to the fullest. Starting with nachos and cheese during tonight’s opening game of the 2003/2004 NFL football season.

A-Maise-ing!
Sunday, the Karoberon (KA-ryn, ROB, camERON) went to Albany to check out the recently-featured-in-the-Guardian corn maze. If you didn’t see the article, some guy created a maze out of his corn-field. We got there and the parking lot (first of all, I was impressed there was a parking lot) was pretty full. Maybe 20 cars. The place was abuzz with people. The barn where you paid your admission had a popcorn machine with great smelling popcorn, other concessionary type purchasables and other assorted corn and/or touristy related items. I was told that this was the busiest the place had ever been. Way to go, Guardian!
Driving up I kept trying to figure out how much it’d cost. I thought it *could* be free. You know, just a cornfield with a half-assed maze within it. I thought a coupla dollars. When I got there, and realised it was a *thing*, I knew there’d be some charge. In the barn, the sign (I thought) said adults $1. Very reasonalbe, I thought. Even low. Turns out it was adults $6, children $5. Hmm, well okay. 20 dollars after taxes for the three of us. For a corn maze. Corn.
And the maze? Well, I’m a tall guy and the few mazes I’ve been to, I can usually see over them. Not so with this one. Nice and high. The mazes I’ve been through usually have the ‘correct’ path worn down much more than the false routes. Not so with this one. All routes are equally treaded, so you can get no clues from that. And the corn is more than sufficiently grown so that you can’t see others on the ‘other’ side of the corn-row. You can hear people nearby you, but unless they’re directly in view on your path, they are usually invisible. Another nice feature. And the maze itself was big enough and long enough so that sometimes when you went down the wrong path, you’d walk for quite a ways until you came to the end.
So, in you go. You’re given a coupla sheets of paper. One has corn or potato info questions on it. When you come to a numbered choice of direction in the maze, you read question of the corresponding number. Get it right and you go in the direction it tells you. Get it wrong and you’re sent in the wrong direction. A great idea. The other sheet has ten lines to write down ten ‘treasure hunt’ items. Throughout the maze are ten numbered sticks, each with something written on it. Find all ten, write them down and you can enter your name to win some type of prize. It was actually quite challenging to find all ten.
Over all, I was quite impressed with the maze. A couple of times we got lost, a coupla more times we had difficulty finding the next treasure hunt item. In all, it took us about 30-40 minutes to get through, and it was a pretty fun time. The last 10 minutes or so was kind of “let’s just get to the end”. AFter all, you’re surrounded by corn.
Congratulations to the people who created the maze. Obviously a lot of thought went into the design and implementation. If the corn hasn’t been harvested yet, I’d recommend you go to Albany (it’s on route 1-a) and check it out.

The Case of the Over-stressed Organ
It may be the end of me. Seriously.
There is a Firefighters Challenge coming up this weekend in Charlottetown. It’s described as “the toughtest two minutes in sport”. Firefighters, in full firefighter gear, compete through a course of various challenges. Fastest wins. GO! Carry a pack up 5 flights of stairs – then pull a rope with a coiled hose up those same 5 flights of stairs – then run down the stairs – then use a heavy mallet to knock a heavy object a certain distance – then run an obstacle course – then pull a charged (ie, ready to squirt, much hearvier) hose a long distance, then turn it on to hit a target – then dead-man lift a heavy dummy another long distance over the finish line – then collapse and hope you aren’t dead. In about 2 minutes. I’ve been to them before and they are quite entertaining, and look physically exhausting. I mean, it took me about 2 minutes just to type that description of the challenge. And it winded me.
It may be the end of me. Seriously.
The radio station has decided to enter a team into the Thursday ‘corporate’ part of the competition weekend. I volunteered to be part of the team. Of course, we’ll each take only one segment of the challenge, and we won’t be in full gear, but still it may be the end of me. Seriously.
Of the challenges that were remaining when I was asked to join the team (read: when everyone else was asked and had refused), I chose running up the 5 flights of stairs. I think I have to carry 40 pounds. The other option was pulling the hose up using a rope. Now, I know what you’re saying. Running up 5 flights of stairs isn’t that difficult. And you’re right. What you don’t know is how out of shape I am. What none of us know is what my heart will think of all this…what’s it called? Exercise?
I believe it may be the end of me. Seriously.
The reason I didn’t choose pulling the rope is this: I know I can climb 5 flights of stairs. It may take me an embarrassing amount of time, and I’ll more than likely throw-out my university-recreational-basketball-injured knee, but I know I’ll succeed. I’m not so sure I can guarantee success in pulling the rope up 50 feet. I question my upper-body strength. To the point of risking popping my knee.
So, Friday, keep an ear out for the funeral announcements: “…suddenly, on the 4th floor of a temporary scaffold… in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the What-Was-I-Thinking Foundation.

Update to come.

Hairbrushes and Headaches
Every time I brush my hair (that’d be about once a day), I open up the medicine cabinet to get the brush, which is always right there, conveniently on the middle shelf. However, what’s not convenient is that right beside it, touching it, is a bottle of Tylenol. To get the brush, I have to carefully extricate it from said shelf without hitting the bottle, otherwise the bottle tumbles into the sink below. I don’t know why I’ve never tried to better organize the medicine cabinet. Perhaps it’s because most of the stuff in there (apart from the brush and a little bottle of after-shave gel) belongs to my wife.

Anyway (and the reason for this post), today as I was getting the brush, I noticed the Tylenol and realised that I’ve not taken any Tylenol for a long, long time. In fact, I went on to realise that I’ve not taken any medication in a long, long time. For that, I am thankful.

Touchdown Miami
Well, I went ahead and did it. I ordered NFL Sunday Ticket so I can watch all 16 Miami Dolphins regular season games, and any and all other teams regular season games too. It’s a little bit of an extravagant purchase, and to afford it CB won’t be able to eat til November, but Goll Darnit, I’m Stuart Smiley.
It was kind of interesting calling up Eastlink to order it. I had investigated all the features etc online before I called, so I knew pretty much everything I asked ‘John”, but I wanted to hear an actual human tell me all about it. For me, hearing a human voice tell me the features and how much it costs validates the fact of it.
Anyway, after a few other questions, I asked “And it is available in my area? I live in Charlottetown.” “Probably” he says. “You can probably get it.” “Can you give me a bit more certainty than ‘probably'”, I asked. “If I can’t get it, I’d rather not waste my time finding out about the specifics.” “Well, if you live in Charlottetown, you can probably get it. Unless you live in an outer-area.” “What’s considered ‘outer-area’?” “Like, the outskirts. If you live in the city, you can probably get it.” After a couple of moments of back-and-forth banter as to whether I might live in an outskirt, I asked “Is there any way you can tell me, for certain, whether I can get NFL Sunday Ticket in my home?” “What’s your phone number?” I tell him. After a bit of fingers-tapping-keyboards, he says “Oh, you have telephone! You have telephone, so you can get it.” I’m assuming he means I have Eastlink’s telephone service. “Great, I’ll order it, then.” The second insight into John’s potential fallability came when he said something like: “I better enter this now, otherwise I might forget later.” The third insight was when, after I ordered it, I asked him how I go about finding the games; what channels all the games were on, and after saying he didn’t know, and after some keyboard entry, he began to tell me the channels. But in his telling he got lost in his own confusion and just stopped in mid-sentence. It was as if the information had beaten him.
So, I have every expectation that, come Sunday, when I turn the channel to 507 to watch the Miami Dolphins play Houston (or channels 501 to 513 to watch any other game), that there’ll be nothing there. I expect John’s done something wrong.

We Came In 8th!!!
I was watching some of the World Track and Field Championships on CBC-TV this week. I have to say that I am continually impressed with the fair and level-headed sports reporting that CBC employs. Yes, there is a general bias towards Canadian athletes (as there should be from a Canadian broadcaster), but it seldom seems to get in the way of the actual stories of the various events. This is in stark contrast to the American tactic which employs the ‘how does that affect me?’ method.

Case in point: tonight one of the featured events was the Women’s 5000m. There were two Canadians participating. Over the course of the 14 minutes of the race, the announcers (Canadian) would occasionally comment on the status of ‘our girls’, but primarily stuck to the story of the race. At the end of the race, the announcers were quite pleased that the Canadian participants finished 8th and 12th, and that the 8th place person set a new national record (and personal best). If the CBC took the ‘American’ tact, they probably would have had 5 minute ‘getting to know her’ pieces on each of the CDN participants, and the whole of the race would have been spent focusing on how our girls were doing. Actually, they probably wouldn’t have shown the whole of the race (or any of it for a pitiful 8th place payoff), but rather just the ‘exciting’ final 400m.

Case in point: they’ve shown many events where Canadians were not even participating, and reported on them well. I realise that one reason for this is that they have 2 hours a night to fill, and there’s simply not 2 hours of Canadian action to fill it. Yet, I feel the American approach would be to attempt to fill the 2 hours with as many fluff stories as possible on the few ‘national’ participants, and only show action that involved them.

So, good work CBC. Thanks for showing us the Italian long-jumpers and Czech hurdlers and American all-sports.