Elsewhere in Dreams

I am holding here
(though a link slipped
through my fingers
yesterday
to find you
floating a little farther
to sea)
and these days I imagine
myself a staunch
bastion immovable
in my resolve;
oh silly boy at any
moment you could
let go tether
and watch it rock and
trough away,
but also wrap its
length around your
legs and feel its
pull and become a
mirage half-obscured
by whitetops and
thundershowers:
or maybe I’ll stand
back bowed head proud
eyes defiant
arms straining
jaw set
and remember that
my name is not
Sisyphus
and that I am
not climbing a mountain
and blinking tears of
eternally damned frustration
out of my eyes at the facts
rock-solid as they always
will be - no no no
this is not me
crying so much as
unable to make a
decision.

About two months ago, we ordered a document scanner for the company. The problem was that all Canadian retailers charged exorbitant prices for the thing - upwards of $600 CAD - when the selfsame scanner was available from US retail giants for under $300 USD. Even with the exchange rate, we would save hundreds of dollars - or so we thought.

I went online with the company credit card and bought the document scanner from Ecost, an internet retailer based somewhere in the States. They shipped with a broker, Borderfree, which is essentially an agent of Canada Post that specializes in getting things across the border. All good, right? Everybody wins, except for the lousy Canadian rip-off artists.

Wrong. Ecost sent the parcel, Borderfree got it over the border, and Canada Post went and delivered it to the wrong address. Someone named “J. Joyce” signed for it, someone who, I might add, doesn’t work at or have any connection to De Boer Tool. So here we are, two months later with no document scanner and no particular way to find out what happened to us. The schills who work at Canada Post refer us to Ecost, who refers us to Borderfree, whose customer “service” representative works for Ecost, none of whom can find out what on the great and mighty earth happened to our parcel. Ecost (or Borderfree, or both) has been in contact with Canada Post and determined that the product has been delivered. They keep telling me that “J. Joyce” signed for it, and I’m like “thanks, I know that already” and that it’s been delivered to 335 Admiral Blvd, Unit 23, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada; I keep replying that we DO NO have the stupid parcel in our posession.

Ergo, I will never use Canada Post for anything. Ever. Not mail, not parcels, nothing. They can’t get that right, they don’t deserve my business. I’ll email and Purolate everything else. Until then, I’m on the runaround, constantly emailing and phoning Ecost to try to get something done about this. Every few days they email me back something that I already know, and that they should already know. I still don’t have what I’m looking for.

Google Earth has been launched for free, and we’ve bee playing with it a bit at work. And by a bit I mean a lot, and by a lot I mean way too much. But it’s an amazing program, even if some of the satelite photography is a little… wonky. And of course, with mere broadband and not a pipe bigger than the Chunnel it takes a while for stuff to load until it’s been cached on the local system.

Speaking of cache and local system, if you set Mozilla Firefox to work offline and type in “about:cache” you get a very interesting report on what exactly is cached in both memory and to disk. Very interesting indeed, says I. Just a hint for the privacy paranoid among us: delete your cache, history, cookies, passwords, and anything else you’ve left behind before you exit this program. Preferably get a Sanatize extension and a file shredder program. Also make sure all your emails are sent using 128-bit encryption.

I have a five dollar bet today, and so far I’m winning. I don’t really want to win, because it’s not that important that I have another five dollars, but it’s the principle of the matter don’t you know. So in the spirit of all that is British, slightly sarcastic, and riddled with overstatement, I say “The game is afoot! I smell the sweet aroma of a fiver even from my chair!”

Do you ever wonder what it’s like to climb a mountain? I do, sometimes. Like, what is it that causes a man to do that to himself, just to say he could? And more to the point - what’s it like to feel you foot slip a fraction of an inch and know that if you let go now the tether might not hold and you might fall?

I do, sometimes. But then there comes a point in every man’s life where he realizes he can’t (as Neal Stephenson so aptly put it) with a few months training in Japan become the world’s biggest badass. And yes, I am that old, and that man, and I’m not a badass. The criminal probably whips me, not the other way around. I am not caped, nor am I a crusader.

I am, however on a mission. And I’m about to win five dollars.

This morning I installed yet another Firefox extension, this time an extension to the built-in JavaScript blocking functions. The extension is called NoScript, and thus far it’s worked just beautifully. Add that to the “global install” list.

I’m getting quite sick of a few things here at work, most of which I won’t burden the public or semi-public with. But I will say this: I’m quite sick of my sisters acting like their jobs are either part time or whatever time they feel like it. Not so much Lisa, who you can pretty much count on (unless she’s planning a wedding or something), but the other sisters who work here: they just come and go as their schedules permit and of course stuff doesn’t get done. So some tools didn’t go to Quebec last night like we promised - but I got to do violin lessons! And of course the one time I didn’t come in I got reamed out for it, even though I was caught in Ancaster in the snow and then wanted to go to Toronto with my then-girlfriend. Yeah, that’s a bit frustrating.

But don’t let me gripe you to death; Douglas Wilson (when he’s not fighting off the Moscow Diversity Suppression Committee) writes some great stuff. The following is no different:

One of God’s great patterns is that of taking apart, and then restoring fully. The restoration, the resurrection, is fuller, deeper, and richer than the original unity ever was. But before God tears, we consistently tend to panic, afraid that this time He will not be able to put anything back together. But He always does.

At this cul-de-sac
you remember
bravely facing
the world and all it
entailed,

knitting hands together
like strong cloth
while the tires
hummed along
deserted roads;

as you continually
reach toward the wheel
let me remind
you

what it felt like to
move

and damn
the consequences.

I am writing this
poem as you requested -
oh, not so much
asked as silently demanded -
but you well
know one doesn’t have to
ask, to ask.

I am writing this
letter wrapped in simple
prose and ineligant
language
just like you wanted
when your eyes
folded shut.

I am writing this
epistle in the hopes of
enlightenment: we are
back at the same
old doubtful crossroads,
and for that I
am sorry.

I am writing this
with my hands tied behind
my back.
You are not just
anyone, love,
and though it is
frightening to hear it said,

I am tying this
ship to a dock, to
a future still
uncertain;
I am settling
on a chance.
I am betting
on a decent
animal.

So I went out and bought a Fast Track USB module to record with, and wow. I’m blown away. Alright, not quite blown away, but it’s a sweet piece of equipment. It’s got an XLR and 1/4″ input, monitor and phones output, and basically zero latency. So for the last three hours that’s all I’ve been doing: fooling around with it to make it sound pretty. Now, as for my voice and guitar playing skills, that I have to work on. However, I at least have the right tools.

I overheard this at the shop today:

Person 1: The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his…
Person 2: *uncomfortable silence*
Person 1: Stomach! Through his stomach!
Person 2: Oh.