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 Owner: Martin Cirino |
Captain’s Log: I just can’t get my mind clear of thoughts, which is really making me crazy. I’ve been trying for months to just relax and stay calm, and get through this, but it’s not been an easy journey. I’m getting out of the house now just about everyday, and sometimes several times a day, but things still aren’t getting better. I sometimes feel that I’m in more pain now than I was just a few months ago. I can move my ankle more than before, but that’s because I’m using it more. Is the pain associated with keeping on my feet longer? And will this pain ever ease up, because eventually I’m just going to give up walking altogether if it doesn’t get any better. The pain has now started to climb up to the knee now, and I can feel it giving just a bit when I walk, and that’s probably not a good sign, especially since my physio sessions rely so heavily on forcing my knee and pushing with my toes, and that’s another problem I’ve been starting to have that I first noticed about two weeks ago. I’m doing these new exercises at physio where I force my knee to bend by pushing down on my toes, which is painful in itself, but the added pressure of my physiotherapist pushing down on the back of my ankle, which mind you is really painful too, but pushing down the ankle to the ground and me forcing my toes into the ground. And it really affects how I perform at the next few sessions. Usually my concerns are laughed off. I try to be serious and say exactly where I hurt, I’m sure they must care somewhat, but they just don’t always show it. They usually handle me pretty roughly, and are in a hurry to get me in and out of the hospital as quick as possible. Again not out of the ordinary, it’s Medicare we’re talking about, in a medical system that is having severe financial problems, and nurses that are ready to walk off the job on strike at any time. Physio is a bit different, there’s no real rush to leave, since some sessions last 2 hours while others closer to 3 hours each, and this is 3 times per week of forcing and pushing and sweating and pain. Nobody really to blame but myself, it was my stupidity to fall, I should have walked my usual way home and not think of taking a shortcut of riding a bus home. It was unavoidable though, since the city did not clear off the sidewalk of ice, and the bus stop was recently moved to a new location, which is not lit, or has a real bus stop sign. (still to this date). The doctor pretty much said that my long healing process was caused by not having the surgery until close to 3 weeks after the accident, since this type of surgery is usually done in the first few days. I was about to say that it WASN’T MY IDEA to have the surgery 3 weeks after, there were several factors, including the fact that it was New Year’s, there was a lot of swelling and the doctor was away on holiday and whatnot. I have a new secondary diagnosis from the doctor, and it’s apparently a rare side affect that happens with ankle related injuries, but when it happens, it’s 100x more painful and lasts 10x longer than normal healing. It’s called “Ankylosis”. Like I do with any strange word that someone gives me, I checked it up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosis . And there are two variations, one is caused by an injury, and the other by a disease in a 3rd world country. It doesn’t specify in my record, but I’m assuming I have the former. Symptoms are a stiffness or muscle blockage preventing proper movement of the ankle, which pretty much explains my problem to a tee. And this diagnosis was sent off to my insurance company. This is really a story in itself, and they have not been very helpful, nor professional at all, and I can’t believe how they could treat me like this after paying into this policy for over a DECADE! It’s only going to make things worse for them, instead of sending me weekly cheques, they’ll be sending me one large sum of money that they owe me in the 3 months of back salary that I have not been paid yet! I was told by a few friends that I could apply for welfare, but that would complicate a lot of things, and that would take even more time, and more red tape to cross to get through… I’ll just have to wait and see what they think about my latest letter that I sent them. It cost me another $45 since the doctor wants to get paid every time my insurance company demands more paperwork. Which I really don’t agree with. But since they apparently “lost” my paperwork in the past; one person said that I sent the paperwork 4 times, while another person said they never received anything from me. I called them up to find out what was going on and I had received a really rude response from the person who was SUPPOSED to walk me through this process step-by-step! The exact response that I got when I asked her what I was supposed to do, because I was waiting PATIENTLY for my insurance to come in, she said: “If you’re too slow to figure out how to fill out your claim, then you probably shouldn’t be receiving any benefits (…) Did you know that out of all the years I worked for this company, you’re the first person that’s ever had an issue with the way we run things”. I was pretty much lost for words. I had never been treated like this in all my life. What did I do to deserve this type of DISRESPECT from my own company. It’s a chance I had gone to my job to talk to the new Human Resources person, and phoned from work so everyone got to hear the phone conversation, well, my side of the conversation at least, and there were about 10 people who stuck their heads in the office to hear me actually almost raise my voice, but note that I never raised my voice, and remained respectful, unlike the woman who talked to me on the phone who was VERY rude and the only help she could give me was ask my Human Resources. I said that since my injury they fired the one that I knew for years, and the one who replaced her had family problems and had to leave, so they called up a replacement from another store, who didn’t last very long, and now it’s one of the big boss’ daughters that runs the human resource department. She’s pretty nice, but doesn’t have the experience that’s needed in a cast such as this, except for the fact that it took her over 2 months to get her insurance claim when she was off for an injury, and she got the run around just like I am. And I heard stories like that from all of my coworkers. So it was a blatant lie saying that I was the first person in her history that ever had a problem getting MY money. And as soon as I start getting my money, I’m going to have to fight for my insurance premiums which I don’t feel I should be paying into, especially if I’m not getting any salary whatsoever. My bank account is practically empty, I have NOTHING, I have NO income, NO over job to do, and right now I’m living off my refund cheques that I got back from the government for returning to school, but it’s not going to last very much longer. I have saved up some money on my own for just such an emergency, but not very much, and I’m starting to put things on credit now, which isn’t very good, and something I had hoped to avoid. Thankfully when everything clears up I’ll be able to pay off my credit cards, and my family for this, but until then I’m going to suffer. And to think, just adding to the pile of things on my mind is severe money problems now… If this latest doctor’s letter doesn’t get through to my insurance company, I’m sunk. I can’t afford to fight any more… I’m running out of options now, and obviously there’s nowhere to turn for help… I’m trying different avenues, and various methods to get me by, and I do have to say I’m pretty resourceful, and can live off a tight budget, but the money will run out soon… I know what their goal is too, it’s to force me back to work, I know, I’m not stupid, even if I don’t always agree with that assessment, I know I’m smarter than them, and I have to beat them at their own game. First thing’s first, I’m going to have to find a way to stop them from STEALING MY MONEY from my bank account without my authorization. Yes, they take a portion from my pay WHEN I’M WORKING, but they have never until now started dipping into my bank account to remove money for a service I am not receiving. I have my bank statements, and proof. But that’s not always good enough, I should know, I have the insurance book right next to me, and it’s written in plain black and white that I get 2 weeks full paid leave before starting my insurance claim, they denied me the 2 weeks full paid leave, and said it wasn’t meant for this type of case. I just wish someone would know what they’re talking about and give me a straight answer. And be HONEST and tell me that they are doing this just to prevent people from making claims. If it was as straight forward as they let on it is, then they would lose a lot of money, since everyone would want to go off on sick leave I suppose, so they have to make the process so complicated and tedious that you think twice about faking an injury, but what about the honest people, can’t they see that I am HURT, they demanded my x-rays, and they’re not even doctors, they’re insurance agents, but you can clearly see what my ankle looks like. I even got a quick picture of the latest x-ray while I was at the hospital, over the doctor’s shoulder. But it is my ankle, so it’s my property. It doesn’t look too nice, it’s full of heavy metal hardware that weighs my ankle down, and rubs in my shoes and causes my foot to turn red. Maybe I should become an author, but then as soon as I give myself that title, I’ll lose all creativity, and not have anything to say. When I’m a “blogger” I find I have so much more to talk about. And the thoughts keep flowing. I’m really tired, yet I can’t stop typing. I wonder if there are jobs like that, where you can speak your mind and get paid for it? What about typing non-stop and ramble about randomness? I suppose there’s something out there for everyone, I just need to find it. I want to be successful, I really do, I want to live a good life, a life where I don’t need to worry about financial issues, and where I can live comfortably, and go out and buy something without counting how much tax is added to it, and how long it’s going to take me to pay off. I’ve gotten to the point where I look through take-out menus and find out the best deals, and then end up limping over to the restaurant just to save the delivery fees and possibly get a discount for picking it up myself. I suppose it gets me out for some exercise, too bad I can’t really cook, or I’d just make food for myself at home. Just spent the entire day at the hospital yesterday. Had physio and had a doctor’s appointment. Things are progressing, albeit very slowly… Can’t go back to work yet… Still not strong enough. I guess I should go out and enjoy the sun while I can. I was actually hoping to be 100% by now so I can get back into the swing of things and start thinking about my future. Right now, everything is still on hold. Doctor thinks it’s taking so long because he waited over 2 weeks to schedule the surgery, which should have been done within a day or two of the accident, and plus he didn’t mention all of the other mistakes along the way, such as that nurse putting the cast on wrong, and waiting for over a month to get into Physiotherapy, which is over capacity as it is. Plus the nurses are all having a labour dispute, so it’s time for “work to rule”. I guess they wouldn’t do anything to harm the patients, but they certainly are working slower, and making people wait longer. To think, 6 months ago I never would have thought I would still be in so much pain… Time apparently heals everything, just wasn’t expecting that I would be counting in months rather than weeks. Still having trouble sleeping, went to the basement now, much cooler down here. Still have too much on my mind now to concentrate on anything important, so forget about being creative. I planned on updating the site today, but I really don’t feel like it. So I’ll just leave it be for now. I had plans yesterday, and had to cancel because I was too sore and tired after spending the day at the hospital. I did get a chance to go out on Tuesday, went to go see some trains! I took lots of photos, and I even was able to jump on board a few of them. I mean literally jump, on one foot. And then climbed down very slowly. One good thing though, I didn’t have as much trouble as a few months ago, if this was back in April, I would never have been able to climb up the narrow stairs into the cab. So I guess that’s some progress. I just wish that it still wasn’t so painful to move! I hate having sharp shooting pain every time I take a step!! Grrrrr!! It’s annoying, but it’s frustrating too! Well… I’ll continue this a bit later, going to surf around the net a bit, check out some Youtube videos and maybe have a good laugh at people making fools out of themselves. I’m watching a classic moving now, “Risky Business” haven’t seen it all the way though before, but it’s supposed to be really good. I’m at the point now where the kid calls all the prostitutes over to his house while his parents are away. Yup, that’s right, I’m watching movies, Star Trek, game shows and soaps all day! Captain’s Log: 070110-01 Canada Day 2010. I didn’t really feel like doing anything today, I missed the town’s fireworks the night before, but I did get to see it from my front porch, got a few photos, but nothing much. The fireworks only lasted about 5 minutes, so I only saw the last little bit. Usually I go to the river and watch, but this year I wanted to, but I just couldn’t manage to get out in time. Normally it takes about 25 minutes to walk there, but at the moment it would have taken close to 2 hours at the speed I walk now. I have to say though, I am grateful that I can still walk, there are people who have had injuries where they couldn’t walk anymore, and I couldn’t imagine ever not being able to walk. It’s part of what I have to, nay, NEED to do just to keep sane. And the 4 months that I wasn’t able to even walk a few feet before sitting down kept me very sad and filled with frustration. I am still frustrated, because every time I walk, I always suffer with so much pain for hours after. I’m still doing physio 3 times a week, and with sessions that last 3 hours and sometimes longer each, it makes everyday a matter of endurance, since I’m trying, and forcing, and suffering. I expected at most I would be completely healed within a month, and at the very most 2 months, and everything could go back to normal. Even if I hated normal, atleast normal was better before than right now, maybe. Now that I think about it, things normally weren’t very good. No way to advance or move forward the way things were going. I suppose in a way what happened was sort of a good thing, it helped me seriously think about how things have been going, and how I can improve the future. After 6 months I am still lost, though I find it comforting to know that I am missed, it shows that maybe my work was appreciated, but never really acknowledged until it was too late. It’s going to take a long time to get back to doing 8 hour days, let alone pulling a 13 hour double-shift… I never really liked those, but I figured that as long as I was there, then I could be around to make sure things were going to be done. But then again, nobody really listened to me while I was working, and most of the time I ended up doing the work myself, plus have the rest of the work of others piled on top of mine. It’s not always fun to have to do the work of 3 or 4 people. I used to do it as a case of pride in my work, but after a lot of thought I figured out that I wasn’t going to get paid the salary of 3 or 4 people, and it really got frustrating to have so much work to do, and very little appreciation for my efforts. Sure the occasional “thanks” and “good job” really helped keep me going, without that I probably would have stopped working years ago. One thing I can give them is that they are very smart. Just give you enough appreciation to keep you working, but not enough that you build confidence in your abilities. Which is why I stand, or I should say sit, the way I am right now. Back to Canada Day. I really didn’t care about doing anything today, besides sleeping. But I managed to leave the house around 6:30pm to head over to the local activities and see what was going on. Unfortunately when I arrived, there was nothing going on besides an empty tent, and some comedian or wrap artist performing inside the local youth house, the place you have to walk under a bunch of old shoes on power lines, and walls covered in graffiti. Nice to know our tax dollars are hard at work building a club house for gangs… Anyhow, I went over to the food stalls, and saw one of my childhood favourite foods on the menu, “Jamaican Patties”, and they were $2.00, so I limped over to the stall, and right as I was beginning to order at the counter, about 6 kids ran up and shoved me aside, and took over the entire counter, and all ordered the Jamaican Patties, and happened to buy out their entire stock, except the vegetarian ones… I am not really a fan of anything “vegetarian” especially something that generally has MEAT in it! I left in dismay and walked over to the Pizza table, and saw a dry cold delivery type pizza sitting on the table, and it was $3.00 per slice! C’mon! It was delivered from the same place that charges $0.99 per slice, and the restaurant was just a 5 minute walk away to get a FRESH slice! So since there was no entertainment, and the crowds were not very plentiful, I decided to give up and walk home, with my piece of Canada Day cake in hand, one good thing that came out of this, they still had cake left, and I got a slice! Now back to rehashing the rest of my week. This story I really have to post on the main page of my site, and on the other forums it’s that big! Last Sunday I have to say I probably met one of the nicest bus drivers I think I’ve ever seen! He was an STM driver on the 515, for those that don’t know, the 515 is the unsuccessful tourist bus route that leaves Dorchester (Dominon) Square and takes you through Old Montreal and to the bus terminal. Usually 1-2 passengers ride per departure, sometimes none at all. Well, I saw 27-022 on Ste-Catherine street, and I tried to get a picture of it, since it has the complete (except front) Eaton’s Centre wrap. I missed out on the photos because the camera was acting up again and everything seemed to turn out blurry for some reason. It looked better on the computer at home, but at the time it appeared blurry. So I walked around the corner and saw it laying over waiting for passengers, the driver had parked the bus and walked outside and stood in the shade, it was my opportunity to get a complete 360 of the bus, since the driver wasn’t onboard. I got about 2 pictures and the driver approached me. I was a bit concerned, since as many know, I hate confrontations, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the driver was really excited and happy that I was getting a picture of his bus. Now, he asked me something, and it was a slight misunderstanding, but it certainly turned out for the better. He said something like, “Veut-tu prend un photo avec moi dans le bus?” And I said SURE, and I assumed he meant that if I wanted to take a photo of him sitting in the bus, to complete the photo of having a driver driving the bus in the photo, but what he actually meant was if he could take a photo of ME sitting behind the wheel of the bus. And as soon as I figured out what he meant, I found myself sitting behind the wheel, and the driver with my camera taking photos from all sorts of angles, from the front of the bus to across the street looking in the driver’s window, to the front door looking into the bus. The first few photos didn’t really turn out because it was a bit too dark, and was a bit blurry, but he kept saying in French, “Oh let me take another one, I want to get a perfect one for you!” He took about 4 or 5 photos, and after a short lesson on a digital camera (with the halfway click and the the full click afterwards, he was a pro!) And the rest of the pictures turned out great! The two passengers that had boarded were very impressed with his demeanor as well, and I have to say this is probably one of the friendliest STM drivers I ever met! I just wish I could have gotten a photo with him in it, so if I saw him again, I would know to say hi. But he is a Frontenac driver, and it’s one of the smaller garages at the time, and he probably drives the 515 quite often, so I’m sure if I head back I’ll see him again. I never mentioned to him that I was a transitfan though, since some people often don’t understand our hobby, and my tourist guise was very well received, even if it wasn’t intentional. Now about Toronto. And the STUPID G20 issues. This is on my mind because I think it was NOT handled the right way. The event started out with officials complaining that the police were way too lenient and weren’t controlling the crowds enough, so by the afternoon, the police took a riot-squad stance, which caused the protesters to therefore riot. Even though only a handful of people were causing property damage, while the rest were protesting peacefully, everyone was treated as a criminal and arrested en-masse, after they were trampled on by horses and shields. Apparently it was something strange for them to see abandoned police cars lit on fire, I guess they’ve never been to Montreal where a police car fire is just part of the Stanley Cup Play-offs post-game entertainment. And by the end of the weekend, over 900 people were arrested, even media personnel that had proper credentials proving that they were there to cover the event. I can’t wait to see this one go to court! And it cost us the taxpayer over 1 BILLION dollars split among 20 million adults in Canada means we each paid $50 for this debacle that should have never occurred in a major city such as Toronto. If they wanted to spend that kind of money they could have built their own city in the middle of nowhere and caged in the entire area to prevent protesters from getting anywhere near the location! Instead they caused a disturbance to an already overpopulated, poorly run city! They even stopped street car and subway service just to prevent the possible protester from making their way into the downtown core, but instead, what it did was prevented the protesters downtown to get out of the area. I’ve never heard of a case where a transit system was shut down to stop people from going somewhere. Montreal certainly had the right idea during our riots and protests, the metro passed through the stations involved so that protesters couldn’t fuel the flames, but the system remained in service to give everyone else access without delay! And another transit related issue in TO, they have Bus stop flags that don’t list bus routes, destinations or schedules!!! I never knew this until I went to Toronto a few weeks ago. I figured a city the size of theirs would have a much better run transit system than Montreal, since we’ve all had our issues with Montreal’s system, but coming home, I have to say I have a new appreciation for our own system, and can’t figure why they would limit transit so much in Toronto. If they were to add streetcars in Montreal, we’d have it all, and they’d have nothing. Well, they do have the GM New Looks, 105 of them at last count, and that probably still gives them some credibility in the eye of a transitfan, but if they don’t run their service with any sense of reliability, then what’s the point? I asked about how the bus service works, and I was told that the didn’t need info on bus stops since the bus would travel the entire length of one particular street, and they didn’t need schedules since they ran in intervals of 20 minutes or less… Unfortunately I wanted to ride a bus that had no connection to a subway station, and so I got off and walked over to another street and waited for a bus that apparently would stop at a subway station. Unfortunately the 20 minute interval didn’t apply for this bus, since there were about 30 or so people waiting, and we were going on 35 minutes and seeing 5 buses pass on the other side of the road, but NONE were serving the side I was on, and on top of that, people were already waiting when we got there. So we hopped aboard the streetcar, and took a 30 minute ride, in the wrong direction, and ended up once again in the middle of nowhere, where we then had to trace our steps back along the very ill conceived subway network that had little or no information for passengers to guide them along their way. Maps were hard to find, and schedules were nonexistent. BUT again, I have to mention that the subway service on a Saturday was quite good, we waited for less than 5 minutes each time to ride, and there was more than enough room to sit down each time, so I really can’t complain about that aspect, even though they apparently all have AC, but our train did not, so it was very warm and sticky (and stinky) in one of the train cars we boarded, but it was only for 4 stops. I do say though that I would like to return just to ride the subway and document it, since it looks so much like New York City’s subway line, with track-side signals that would take me a very long time to figure out. (Such as running full speed to a red signal and it turn green a few feet from reaching it, and what if it didn’t change, would it cause the emergency brakes to be applied, and if so, that must happen pretty often then.) All of the trains we boarded all were operated manually, which was kind of fun, but not very challenging since the station platforms were built longer than the train, so no real skill was involved in controlling the stopping accuracy. Each stop the operator would stop from 15 feet to 5 feet before the end of the platform, but never right at the edge of the platform. I guess they didn’t really need to be too accurate, since the doors managed to open each time, and the platform was long enough to allow for that kind of random stopping. One thing that Montreal metro operators have on Toronto’s, our manual mode means you have to be skilled in controlling your train, and know your stopping distance to make for a perfect stop with less than 2 feet for margin of error. I once again salute our metro operators. And another thing, Montreal operators have it all, a nice large air conditioned private room to operate their train, while in Toronto, they have a little corner, with a window that someone can stare into the operator while they’re driving. BUT again, a good thing in TO is you can look through the front of the train at the track infront of you, which is always fun. And I had my chance to do that during my trip to Toronto. (Some nice videos too that I will upload eventually to my Youtube account).\ Just about 3am now, and my randomness continues, well, tonight I seem to be far more coherent than usual, since I have so much on my mind that’s relevant to transit, which I haven’t felt the passion for in quite some time. I enjoy our buses, and our metros, and have learned about another city’s transit system, and got to see more GM New Looks in one place than I think ever in my life! And I lived in the Montreal area all my life, and I never saw so many New Looks at one time! I really should get myself a blog. Well, I have one, but nobody visits… I guess I should actually add content and then people would visit. That’s certainly true for the photo galley. I’ve just started using Google’s free Analytics statistics system, and it’s amazing that the thousands of photo gallery hits this site receives every single day. I already had hit stats from the gallery since it’s installation but never believed that over 2 million photo views were registered in 2 years of being online, but in one week alone over 22,000 photos were viewed on the gallery from close to 1000 visitors! That means each visitor went to the gallery and viewed 22 photos on average! And these are real visitors, and not just search engine robots, which I had a problem with a few months back, some search engine named bakugan or whatnot from China was leaching my bandwidth by trying to index every single page on this site, several times over, which is over 10 gigs of content, you can imagine the bandwidth usage this search engine was using. I then did a search for a way to block it, since I don’t expect to have any visitors come from China. I added a robots.txt file, which it promptly ignored, but I found out another secret was to create dummy html files for it to read in certain folders, and it would not be allowed to access the files in that folder if the html file was there and gave no link to those files. Kind of complicated, but it makes sense if you think about it. You can’t few the insides of folders to protect the content if there is an html file in that folder, since that’s the file you will see, and only the files linked from that html file will be visible. Make sense? Sure it does! Well, I’ve run out of things to say, and I can see the sky starting to brighten, so the morning has now arrived. It’s 4:30am, and I’m wide awake, but really tired, but don’t think I can sleep. Just watching Star Trek now; not sure what comes on next, maybe I’ll try and sleep now. hmm.. But then wake up tomorrow afternoon and things will still be the same, yes, I need to change, I can’t stay the way I am, the type of person I am, it’s never gotten me anywhere, I need to be a different person, with a different attitude. I’ve found out the hard way that being rude and angry to someone gets a different reaction than being nice and submissive to someone. It’s giving me the wrong impression on people, because on the rare circumstances that I have been upset and angry with someone, I seem to gain more respect from that person. I HATE yelling or being upset with people, but maybe that’s the only way, which is why I need to change my personality to be more aggressive, and treat people the same way that they treat me, sure it’ll break my cardinal rule #1, No confrontations, but it seems that’s the only way to move up in this world. Kindness and manners doesn’t seem to pay. Well, good night… It’s 3:30am and another one of those weird nights has arrived. I wasted yet another day when I feel that I could have done so much more. I just wish I knew what I could do to help me do more. When I work, I feel like I’m wasting my abilities, but then again I don’t feel that I am good enough to accomplish anything better. Sure there will always be someone better than me, and that’s fine, but I don’t want to stand in the way of someone else who could possibly make better use of those opportunities. If I’m given a task to perform, I’ll complete it to the best of my abilities, no matter how long it takes me. I will remain determined and persevere and complete the task. Direction? Where am I headed? I wish I knew. This ankle injury has certainly put a lot of thoughts and ideas into perspective, I just wish I knew what to do with these thoughts and ideas. 3:37am, watching Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, and a word that stood out was “Negativity”, and I certain feel a lot of that right now. It may be real or imaginary, but it’s stuff like this that keeps me awake at night. I feel that I have creativity, and I have something to share, but I also feel that I’m very easily swayed and take criticism way too hard. I love constructive criticism, since it will help me improve and I’ll learn something new out of it, but the criticism that puts me down and leaves me feeling lower than I was before thinking of something creative or offering something to share, so it really makes it hard for me now to want to share or think of something creatively. I have a well established website, I’ve spent literally hundreds of hours making sure it runs properly and contains the most factual information and selection of photos. Sure not everyone appreciates this work, but those that do, are very supportive. I guess I sort of need the frequent encouragement to keep me thinking creatively. I’ve worked 12 years at one place. Heck, it’s even paid for my college years, and computer program that I graduated from, but I’m still at this place. A lot of people have asked me, “WHY?!?” , and I keep explaining that I love serving customers, I love keeping up to date with the latest technology and electronic devices. And I love sharing my knowledge with everyone. Sometimes that gets out of hand, when customers become regulars and then become friends. So they come to the store more often, but they take more time from me, since they sometimes want to use me as a repository of information for their needs. The person I work with really doesn’t like that, and I can’t really blame her, but when these people do decide to buy something, they usually are quite happy with their purchase, since they made an educated decision and most of the time will buy something more expensive, and return for all of their other items they need to buy, even if we do charge a bit more for some of our items, the customers appreciate the extra service that I provide them, and the kind and patience I give to them. I’m on month number 6 now that I have not worked, and each passing day makes it that more difficult to think of ways to dig myself out of where I’m buried, and get back into the swing of things. I know I can’t go back to the way things were before, I have to make something better for myself, I have to show my abilities to its full potential. I feel so limited in what I can do though, even though I have the whole wide world, I just need the platform to launch from. To be quite honest, I’ve always hoped that all of this hard work over the years would eventually pay off and that opportunities would be beating a path to me, sadly it has never worked out that way… So I really have no idea what my next options will be. True, I have to sort out my injury first of all. I think things are improving, albeit slowly, and it’s going to be a very long time before I’ll be able to walk comfortably again, and that’s one of my biggest fears, since walking is really a huge part of my life. It’s helped me clear my mind, and forget my troubles. Just walking and walking for miles on end, hour after hour, doesn’t matter what direction and doesn’t matter for how long, just as long as I walk away from where I have been, and that I never trace back my steps to where I have already been before. I must come back, but a different way, take a different route back, even if it takes longer… It’s almost 5:30am now, and things still aren’t better. I had hoped that dumping my mind into this message would help, but infact, things aren’t looking better yet. I’ll continue on then until I make a realization, hmmm, maybe not, I would be typing until my fingers fell off before finding out something good about myself. Thankfully I have a TV to watch and a computer to type on, it’s a few of things that keep me sane at the moment. Funny cartoons, like Pink Panther that’s on right now, reminds me of how times were back in the 1960′s and 1970′s. Sure it’s just a cartoon, but the style of animation gives me the impression of being around back then. It’s funny though that just watching tv, you can relate to just about everything that airs with some aspect of your personal life. For instance, just right now the Pink Panther was running along the top of trolley lines, and then at the end of the cartoon got run over buy a bus that looked like a GM New Look. Sure buses and trolley’s are both interests of mine, but what really gets me is that just about every show I watch has a scene where someone has either broken their ankle, or a game show that has ankle as a clue! Imagine this. The category was types of bones that you can break, and the contestant’s first answer was ankle! Bah! I suppose writing all of this down rather than talking to myself is one way to help keep me from going crazy. I really should do something about it though, but being stuck in the house for so long as really affected how I handle situations, and writing seems to help since I can’t walk. It doesn’t help for long though, and that’s why I need to write longer and longer and starting posting weirder and more obscure messages. The latest thing on my mind is the fhtcq. A once great organization with events and activities that I looked forward to attending. I even signed up my family, and paid for memberships for each of them since I wanted to give as much support as possible to them. But year after year, things kept going downhill, friends of mine who were already members or who joined with me were all but gone, and new members who joined afterwards have all disappeared as well. When I stopped attending there were about 5-7 people onboard the bus, and they were the family members of the president, and two people from Quebec named Paul and Steve. Both of whom made the most recent events unbearable. They always wanted to have fights with people, including me. And bring up stupid arguments about things I didn’t even know anything about. Sure some of the issues involved Mario, and that I knew Mario must have made him automatically assume that I was involved. Heck, I never tried to get this guy fired, I never reported to his boss that he was trying to sabotage the buses in the garage! What I think really happened was because there was a maintenance worker labour dispute going on, and one of them could have cut the air lines in our bus that locked up the brake system. Was he involved? Who knows, possibly, I don’t have that kind of information to tell, he apparently felt guilty about something or else he wouldn’t have been trying to prove to me that he did nothing. But then again, that could have just been his personality, since he always had an arrogance to his attitude. Oh look, 6:00am and Inspector Gadget started. A good show from the early 1980′s… I remember waking up early on Saturday mornings to watch this show when I was young. As well as a bunch of other shows. And I guess I’m not alone in remember Saturday morning cartoons, since Warner Brothers has released 3 or maybe 4 collections of DVDs with compilations of Saturday Morning cartoons! Most of which I haven’t seen since the first originally aired, so it’s really a fun find. Well, as you can tell by the topic of the post, it’s 2am, and I am not sleepy. I have read a bunch of articles saying that it’s completely normal, and to try and work out normal sleeping patterns. But I just find it really hard to sleep now, whether it be day or night. I do get to sleep though, and I can sleep for many hours at a time, but only after I’m completely exhausted, whether it be the middle of the day, or early in the morning. (Rarely at night though). I’ve also noticed that if I sleep for 2 hours a day for a week, that I’ll sleep for 14 hours after that!!! I suppose it’s because my energy is not being used now, and it just keeps stored and ready to go, and since I’m not working, I have no use for all of this energy. I do however notice that whenever I exercise, I am really tired after, but not for very long. I always feel that I should be doing something, and I really want to, and I’m trying to force myself to do more, but whenever I do that, I end up really sore, stiff, and in a lot of pain, and I’m stuck with 4 hours of physiotherapy to get myself back to moving again… Things weren’t supposed to be like this, they said it would take 4-6 weeks to get back to normal, then it changed to 3 months, I’m on month 5 now and I don’t see when I’ll be normal again. (Normal? umm, well, normal ankle and walking movement atleast). So I get back to sleeping. It’s 2:15am now and I have so much built up energy, I just have to type, and type and continue typing. My mind is racing, and thoughts and ideas are all building up until it bursts, but then again, I try not to listen to myself, or I’ll just keep putting myself down again and again… Creativity is what I need, but on demand rather than just appearing randomly. It’s the only way I can move ahead is if I’m creative. And I have the time now, why can’t I make good use of it… But I’ve always been good at procrastinating and wasting time, which is why I’m in the state I’m in right now. No, not with the broken ankle, but just better time management. I remember having to take a course back in high school called Time Management, and then again a back in my DEP program, it was a required course. “Time Management” … hmmm… Sure… It didn’t seem to help me at all, or I would be a millionaire by now. I’ve now come to the point that I am writing meaningless rambles on my own forum, when I can be doing so much more. I’ve spent the last 5 days sorting out photos I took over a week ago, and I could have done all of that in a few short hours, I have the time, why not finish what I start and move on to something else. I don’t get it… I’ve never had time to ever think something was boring or that I was bored, because time is always passing by too fast. Things I should have done years ago, I still have yet to do, and while time keeps moving, I have always stood still, while people around me are moving on and doing things, I have not. Most think I am great at my job, but I have never been respected for that, and in respect, I mean, paid for the effort that I have put into my job. Anybody can do my job, a kid out of high school that knows a bit about technology can get my job done, heck even a dropout that doesn’t even like technology can get away with it, because customer service and product knowledge isn’t as important as it used to be. I may not be old, but I feel like it, when I see people that are less skilled and obviously put in less effort than me be offered more opportunities. I sit at home still, while I stare at the computer screen, it is now 2:20am, and I wonder to myself, what more I could do to help myself… It’s not too late, I know that, but sometimes it feels like it is, and that’s when I look for the encouragement of friends to help give me that extra boost. It helps, but never lasts for long, because soon after I end up again wondering what to do next, and how I can improve myself and my career. I decided to go back to school last fall to improve my knowledge and to pursue a field that I was very interested in but never took my interest seriously, until I finally put my foot down and put the money where my mouth was, and joined a course in Radio and Media. I thought things were going well, and that I would have a career waiting for me when I graduated the course. I would work hard, and I would do my very best effort to make sure I made this work out, and then halfway through the course, coming home from an evening of work after Christmas, I had my accident, and not an ankle sprain, or a normal ankle break, nooooo, I had to crush BOTH ankle bones that hold my foot to my leg, and pivot my ankle so that I can walk. Had to be that… I’m happy though that I was given the opportunity to continue the course during the next session, but as everything else I’ve ever done, and all the time and effort I put into it, I feel like I didn’t make the most of it, and take advantage of what I had, and how I could change things if I only had the chance. Well, I might be given that opportunity to work even harder than before and make it work. But I’m certainly going way out of my comfort zone to make this work. I’ve never been a very verbal person, nor have I ever thought of a career in the radio industry, but if I can make it work, I would do anything to make this as my career. I know now that I’ll probably never make a fortune with this, but as long as I could live comfortably, it will make it all worth the effort. I just need a find a way to keep all of those negative and pessimistic thoughts out of my head, and things might eventually work out. When I need to think about things and clear my mind of everything that keeps building up inside, I take a walk, a long walk, a 4 or 5 hour walk and I’ve done 8 or 9 hour walks and gone from Montmorency in Laval all the way to Old Montreal, then walked through the old port, then back downtown. And I made several stops along the way, doing things that I enjoy, my photography, and transitfanning. And when I’m home, I can go out at 9pm and then get back around 1 or so just walking around town, one end to the other, and listening to my MP3 player, to prevent myself from thinking of anything except enjoying the MP3s. It’s now after 2:30am, I’m not tired, and I really want to continue typing. I’m doing this mostly for myself, since I really don’t expect anybody to read this far in, but I post it nonetheless, just to have the satisfaction of someone reading my rants. I can continue all night long, that’s one thing I’m good at is, staying awake at night, and well, I can type pretty fast, so it doesn’t bother me to type in the dark, since I don’t need to look down at the keyboard while I type. Maybe there’s a career opportunity waiting for me in typing. I like doing it, but then maybe if I have to do it, I won’t like it as much… But why should that matter? If I get paid a lot, then it would make it worthwhile, but nothing pays people what they feel they’re worth anymore. Perhaps I’m stuck in the olden days, even though I never lived through them myself, I feel that maybe I would enjoy it more in those times more than now. I have lots of ideas of things to work on, but then I find out later that it’s already been said and done and people have moved on. Even at my new school, I began to feel this. My first project at my radio school was to create a commercial, and I thought it was something that you would hear on the radio, but unfortunately it sounded too much like something that you would have heard on the radio 20 years ago, and things have changed over the last 2 decades, and sadly not for the better in this industry, which is why being creative and unique will help get you recognized in this industry. And that’s what I have to work on, and make work for me. Another project I worked on was my voice performance, and my voice was said to sound too much like a radio announcer. (Which I personally thought was great). But it’s not what the media industry is looking for now, they’re looking for natural voices and personable talent that will attract the everyday person, and not sound like a stereotypical announcer from 50+ years ago. Thankfully I had a good instructor who FINALLY got me to speak as a normal person infront of the microphone, and that took quite a bit of effort in itself. I thought things were going well, and the course was getting really fun, we had just started producing our own music logs and were going to visit a radio station to learn how the professionals did their job, and well, that’s when things all went bad. A few days after Christmas, when I slipped and fell on the ice while trying to get on, of all things, a bus, to ride home from work. And as much insurance as I have at my job and with the unemployment offered by the government, it was so much of a pain to get any money, and I’m just glad that I had gotten my Christmas pay just before, and I was alright financially, but I could only think of how bad things would have been if I had been deep in debt or had many bills to pay. It took over a month to finally get my first cheque from the government, and I was alright for a while, until that ran out, and my company had to take over the insurance payments. Well, I’ve been waiting over a month now for that, and they won’t pay. They keep sending letters to my doctor saying he didn’t fill out the paperwork completely, so he filled it out again and again, and is still being harassed by my company for not doing the proper paperwork. I had all of this filled out back in January so that I wouldn’t be stuck in this predicament, but NOOooo, things never work out the way they’re supposed to. So I wait still to get money that I have paid into for close to 10 years! It’s MY money, now it’s time for ME to collect! Almost 3:00am now, and starting to wind down, slightly, I suppose I could continue picking at my brain to start dumping more of my thoughts here, but this is just a taste of things that are on my mind as we speak, and ideas and thought that run through my mind all at once, and all day, everyday. There are so many other things on my mind that I have yet to decipher, but hopefully I’ll figure it all out one day, but then again, I’d be the best psychiatrist in the world if I could figure out the human mind. Who knew that things would be so complicated. I noticed above that there is a forum limit to 60,000 characters per post, maybe that’s my next goal to see if I can reach that limit before I get to sleep. Let’s talk about the weather. It was pretty warm today, and it’s supposed to be really hot tomorrow. I’m keeping to the basement most times now, the temperature stays comfortable and never gets too hot or cold, and I have a nice TV to watch my DVDs and play my video games. Over the years, I’ve collected a nice sum of games. Not very interested in playing recently though, more interested in using my mind to do something more constructive. But what would be considered constructive? Ankle hurts right now, guess I should lay down. Maybe later, it’s not too bad. Oh look Card Sharks just started. Interesting to watch TV at 3:00am, that’s when the Wayback/Playback airs on GSN. Bob Eubanks at his finest. Well, next to his staring role on the Newlywed Game, which he’s done for over 6 decades from the 1960′s and he’s even hosted a brand new episode recently in 2010. Now that’s a career, that’s something that people will remember him for! But only people who have a premium cable or satellite package, since it’s not a basic channel. I’ve always wondered how fun it must have been to work on a game show, be a producer, or cameraman, not necessarily the host, but it had to have been a great honour to be a host of a popular game show. Look how well The Price is Right has done from the 1950′s until 2007. Unfortunately, after Bob Barker retired, I don’t consider it part of the same series, since I really am not that crazy about how Drew Carey is running the show. But I suppose the show is still on, though they could have retired it with Bob Barker. But did you know that he wasn’t the only host of the show, that’s right, Tom Kennedy and Dennis James hosted nighttime versions of the show while Bob helmed the daytime episodes. And even before Bob Barker took the helm in 1972, it was hosted by Bill Cullen, now he was a master of all ceremonies, hosted more game shows than all of the other hosts combined! And did a masterful job of each and every one of them! Ick.. Infomercials, very annoying, but if I fall asleep with the TV on, I accidentally subliminally absorb the content of these programs, and have the urge to buy a deluxe mixer, and I’ve gone down that route before, and I regret buying that Magic Bullet that worked twice for me, and wouldn’t even turn on after that. It was supposed to be a great Christmas present for my mom, but she never even had a chance to use it. So that really put me down, but then again, is a kitchen appliance the best thing to buy a woman? Speaking of blenders, I won a blender at the company Christmas party this year, well, not exactly, I won a spice rack, but then was asked by a coworker to switch my spice rack with her blender. I work in a department store, so I knew that the spice rack was worth $20 and the blender was worth $100, but since she was heavily inebriated, and it was my gift, I declined. But all evening she kept bugging me to change it, and over and over, and I said I wasn’t interested, but I finally gave in, since it was getting really annoying, and I sort of talked myself into getting that blender, it had all sorts of neat gadgets such as juicer, and it had a spigot so you didn’t need to take the lid off, and it had all sorts of power options, so I considered making smoothies and such with it, so I finally said FINE, I’LL TAKE IT!!! … And as soon as I did that, she took my spice rack, to another table, and switched it for a blanket! What?!? And then she came up to me and asked me if I wanted to exchange now MY blender for a $20 blanket, and I laughed and said, no thanks. And she left and traded the blanket for a $30 fondue kit, And brought it over to me, and asked if I wanted to change it… I was like, uh no! And she left, and then brought over a dictionary that was worth $40 and asked if I wanted that and I said NO THANKS. And she said she wanted her blender back now, and I was like, no it’s mine now. She spent the rest of the evening trading people’s gifts, so that by the end of the night nobody had the gift that they had won. She then tried to give me a $50 tool kit, but I have all the tools I need, and she asked me what I would take in exchange for my blender, and I said the only things that I would trade for are that camera over there, or the big screen tv, or the blu-ray player, or that wii, even though I have one, it’s always fun to have a second one, especially if it was a free gift! But no, that was her limit, and she walked away, and by the end of the night she ended up with my spice rack once again, and made one final trade before she left for a $10 gift certificate to M&M Meatshops… (cue: Price is Right losing Horns). 3:20am now, and really starting to unwind. It’s amazing how much one idea or thought can link to something else. And I could probably keep linking thoughts together, with whatever pops into my mind. A clue on the last show was William Shattner, so I automatically thought about Star Trek, and then old tv shows, and then sci-fi, and movies, and movies I’ve seen lately, and movies I’ve seen the most amount of times, and then Shrek, and then Shrek 2, and then visiting the hospital, since that was the movie I saw over 20 times in the theatre everytime I went to visit my grandmother, and on my way home, I went to unwind at one of my favourite movies of all time. And now I think of my grandmother, I start to feel sad, and just run out of things to write about… We spent a lot of time together, we always did just about everything together, not sure if she really shared my passion for computers, but she always looked through the newspapers and magazines for computer shows that were coming to Montreal, and we would attend every single event. She even was willing to cover the costs of my first internet account back in 1996, when I started working on my first websites, which are now long gone with the closing of GeoCities, but I still remember the website addresses over the years. Probably a dozen or so different types of sites I’ve worked on over the years… But now I’ve changed topics off the good memories I’ve had “hanging out” with my grandmother. She had 3 pets, two dogs and a cat, and they were like her own children when we weren’t around, and she had something to snuggle with every night and keep her company. My grandfather passed away before I was born, he worked at a factory that dealt with products that are now deemed to be dangerous for your health, but back then nobody knew or thought anything of it… And it hurt so much when we had to search through her personal belongings, because even if 30 years had gone by since his passing, the house had remained pretty much untouched since he was gone, and everything that he had done was still where he had placed it. His important papers, his technical manuals, his flight logs. He was a pilot as well as many other things. I never was as good as him in math, I tried to do math, but it never worked for me. Which is why I never was allowed into Computer Science, which I think I could have managed. I even tried to apply for Computer Science at Dawson, but the requirements to get in were 535 math, which was enriched secondary 5 math! I could barely pass regular math programs and skimmed through with a 65% in secondary 5. I even took night school courses while going to regular school during the day just to catch up on my missed advanced math courses, but it never stuck with me, and it frustrated me more than anything. I didn’t want to disappoint my family, so I stuck with it, but I just couldn’t keep up, and the semester ended before I had finished the last part of the program, and I could not gather up enough courage or determination to continue where I left off during the next session. And by this time, college had started, and I was accepted into the program that everyone else takes. Social Sciences. And Dawson College was certainly a life experience in itself, not as bad as high school mind you, but I was never one to enjoy school. I was never encouraged to do good, since everyone around you was happy to do so bad. Some were strong and were able to beat the bad atmosphere and somehow aced their entire school career with 99.9% averages, but how that was possible, who knows. I had a handful of really bad teachers over the years, and some were just determined to fail me for whatever joy they had in doing so. I was never a person to instigate a fight, nor stand in the way of someone who wanted a fight. Always a very passive person, which is why I always wondered how some teachers felt that way. And religion of all courses, was one teacher who thought that teaching about God was to take passages out of the bible, and white out half the words and call it a test to fill in the blanks! Sure I could have memorized the bible, and perhaps it would have been the only way to pass that course, but I really thought it was wrong of her to waste our time learning about all sorts of things not related to the course, and then throw a pop quiz or final test at us that had little to do with anything we had learned. And if you’ll check her stats, I’m sure you’ll see that she had a serious issue with guys, and that all of the guys in our course failed, miserably, while all of the girls got high 90′s just to balance off the marks. (or whatever other reason you could think of). Dawson a similar thing happened, except it was regarding a male Humanities teacher who felt it was his duty to fail all male students, and give female students 100%. The way that he justified his decision for doing that was because he taught a “Male Power” course in the other program and he didn’t want to make people feel he was sexist or discriminating against women. So he made us do the most mundane and idiotic projects, such as go to the library, and take an encyclopedia and search out the word “MAN” and find out how many times it was used. Now there are over 2000 pages in one volume of the encyclopedia, plus we had to write a 5,000 word essay on our findings. (no more, no less remember, he counted and deducted points for going under or over that number). I never missed a class, and handed all of my assignments in on time, but I ended up failing miserably in his course. 35% to be exact! After my 1st assignment received a 12% grade because it was over his “limit” by 100 words, I lost 10%, then lost 10% because the title was not centered properly, another 10% because I did not use 100 pound quality paper, 10% because I left an empty page for comments at the end of the essay, 10% because my spacing was double and he wanted it 1 and 1/2 (he even took measurements). I even lost 10% for my NAME!!! Because he said that in college you have to start with your last name first with a comma and your first name, and then your student number. And I even approached him about this, and he said it was something I was supposed to have learned in high school preparing for college! And the rest of my points were lost 1% for each spelling or grammatical error, which gave me a grand total of 12% in that essay. And things didn’t get any better, I had received a 0% for another essay because I based my findings and related it to my own thoughts and opinions to a personal topic, which he did not want to hear anything about and stopped reading it the first occurrence of the word “I” and failed it. I was so frustrated with this course, and this teacher, but I didn’t know what to do. I was told by a friend that there are people I can talk to. So I went to the ombudsman, and try to find a solution to this problem. And since the course had finished by this time, and I received my failing grade, I did not want to have to take this course over again, so I found out that I could have all of my assignments reviewed by the head of the department as well as his fellow peers. So I gathered all of my assignments, and explained my story, and left it in their hands. It took a good 6 months to find out the result of my complaint, but in the meantime before I found my result, I learned that the teacher had been fired, after 30+ years of teaching. He had 25 out of the 30 people in the course do the same thing as I did, even though none of us had talked to each other about this. Mostly guys, but some girls complained as well, because they felt that the guys were unfairly treated and wanted to complain (not change their marks though, since they all got the tolken 100%). The teacher soon after was on the radio putting down our class (indirectly) for getting him fired, and that people weren’t ready for his style of teaching. Well, the result of my 35% ended up 65% and that if I wished, I could have a 3rd party independent company evaluate my grade, but it would cost $200, but it might not change the grade, and that a 65% was a passing grade, and that I should leave it at that. So I took my passing grade and went on my way. Unfortunately since I had no result, I had taken another Humanities course again, and what were the odds, the teacher was a personal friend of his, and he must have known me some how, he never really liked me throughout the course, but he didn’t need to, I just wanted to finish the course and get out of college. But this guy gave the same spiel as the last one, but this time he bluntly said that you’re all going to get 60% and it’s up to you to work your way up from there. Well, I ended up with the tolken 60% by the end. Oh well… If I didn’t need to take Humanities, I certainly would have passed on that, as well as Integrative Seminar, where I had a course that took place in a lounge, with couches! And a teacher that made me do my final assignment 25 times before he would even accept it, and his last words before I handed it in on the 24th time was, “This is GREAT! If you want to fail and end the misery, hand it in and accept your failure”, so I went back for my 25th time, along with the rest of the class in the middle of June almost 2 months after the course had finished!!! You could say I was never very lucky with my choice of teachers, but I got through it, but for what. I have a high school diploma, a college degree and a professional education diploma in computers, and yet I still have not used any of it to advance me through my career, and I sit here at 4:00am writing as much as I can until my fingers seize up. If you’ve read this far, then WOW, I applaud your dedication to reading every single message in this forum, I probably would have already skimmed through it to get the jist of it, rather than read every word, but then again if it’s interesting to read, then there is quite a bit of it to enjoy. I hear the birds are starting to chirp outside, guess the do that sort of thing at this time of the morning. The sun isn’t even up yet. And the TV is still on and I’m watching Star Trek now. The Next Generation, yeah, with Picard. Great captain! Great Show! I always enjoyed the series, and since my injury, I have started to watch Star Trek: Deep Space 9, for the first time. I never wanted to watch it when it originally aired, since it was never going to be as good as The Original Series or The Next Generation. But I sort of enjoy it now, they have a few of the same characters that were in The Next Generation, that carried over to this new series, but the plot lines were pretty weak and the story never really flowed very well. Guess you can say that I didn’t miss much, but I guess it was good for its time, and I watch it now, so it’s now awful. But it’s far more depressing to watch than the other episodes of exploration and fun escapades. Deep Space 9 takes place on a space station, so the plot lines are limited to that. It’s 4:30 now, as you can see I’m slowing down. Well, I’m keeping myself occupied with other things as well. I’m doing the night-watch on a group of 12 Counter-Strike gaming servers, keeping them free of hackers, while the rest of the administration sleeps. Volunteer position, but it’s a job of trust, and that I have taken it very seriously. I always take positions of trust as serious as possible. I’ve been playing this game regularly for the last 3 years or so. And been a game administrator for about 2 years now and a game server administrator for a year now. I get to install and update the main server with new maps and have the control to reboot the main computer server. It’s not too late, and there is still time to move. Oh look, the sun is starting to rise now, it’s 4:45am, and the darkness is starting to fade into light before the sun comes up. I like to see the sunrise now in the mornings during these types of nights that I haven’t been able to sleep. And for those of you that have read through to this point, I’m sure you’re having trouble sleeping as well and just looking for something to read. Who would have thought, computers have practically replaced books and newspapers, and now people are watching TV and movies on the internet, why would anyone need to go out anymore? One goal of mine is to record as many TV shows and movies as possible, and I’ve recorded over 700 tapes, 6 hours each of game shows and other various shows over the last 15 years or so, and then the last 5 years I’ve been burning my programs to DVDs and now am recording shows and movies on DVD directly. With all of this time at home, it’s given me a chance to start sorting out all of these shows onto a huge database I’ve created with lists of each show I’ve recorded, and when possible, the original air date, recording date and show description with episode information if I can find it. Some shows I like to record are The Littlest Hobo, a show I remember growing up with every single Saturday morning since I was born, and it still airs on Saturday mornings on CTV, but only in the last 2 years have I decided to record the show each week. There were 6 seasons and 25 episodes each, so about 125 episodes, and 1 per week with 52 weeks in a year, well, it would take a few years to record them all. I’m starting to catch up now because another CTV affiliate has decided to air the program twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday! So now I can record this episode 4x faster. I’ve done the same thing with other shows as well, I think of myself as a completionist, and like to record every episode of every show I watch. I’m on my way to having a complete collection of Star Trek, as well as other TV programs, but as for Game Shows, it’ll be a very long time before I get entire collections of those, since Game Show Network, or GSN as they would like to be called now has or had atleast 40,000 episodes of programs. I have a good chunk of episodes from most of the shows that they air, but I’m still missing quite a few. And that’s why I’m glad I have youtube to watch, which has full series of shows, including game shows that have aired over the years. 5:00am now, I’m starting to ramble now, I’m still not tired though, let me go look through the various forums, see if someone else is awake at this hours and then I’ll come right back (…) Well, looks like everyone else has gone to sleep, I guess I should lay down now, and try and get some sleep, so I won’t sleep all day long, and waste another day. Canada’s Worst Handyman just started, so maybe I’ll watch that. I’m sort of happy that some channels air 24 hours a day, rather than infomercials. I remember back in the day, and it didn’t seem so long ago, that after a program day was complete they ended with a colour-bar and high or low pitched sound… While some aired music, and others aired a listing of the programming for the next day. Boy that brings back a lot of memories when I was younger. And I always remember starting the day with the Canadian National Anthem at 6:00am, and then my Cartoons started!!! Yay! I was always awake on Saturday mornings to watch my cartoons! Back in the 1980′s I watched shows like He-Man, Snorks, Muppet Babies, Rubik’s Cube, Looney Tunes, Smurfs, and many others such as Tiny Toon Adventures, Super Mario Bros. Super Show, and into the 1990′s where I saw the Disney cartoons, such as Talespin, Ducktales, Darkwing Duck, Aladdin, moving on into the mid 90′s with Bonkers, Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, Animaniacs, Pinky & The Brain, and non Disney shows such as Captain ‘N the Game Master, and Super Mario World, (loved my video game shows) and into the late 90′s with Pokemon, yes, I watched Pokemon, and I watched it into the 2000′s but not the newer episodes, I don’t know if I grew out of watching that show, or they just got stupider or just tried to attract to a much younger audience, though I still like cartoons, just not the newer episodes of this show. Well, anyhow, in the 2000′s I’ve watched Spongebob Squarepants, Rocko’s Modern Life, Fairly Odd Parents, and then there are the standard staples than the entire family enjoys which is The Simpsons and Family Guy. I suppose I could continue editing this, but I really want to go for a walk tomorrow, I have a cane now, to help keep my balance and give me a little hand while walking up or down steep slopes, and to help climb and walk down stairs as well. I tried doing that at Angrignon metro last week, for the first time in close to 5 months I rode the metro. Not much has changed, thankfully, except that they added a yellow border along the edge of the platform, well, it’s yellow because it’s new, but at some stations it’s black and full of garbage and crud, and they claim they don’t have any way to clean them yet because they’re too new and there’s no equipment for it. Well, I enjoyed my time in Montreal, perhaps I will try that again tomorrow afternoon, well, this afternoon, unless it really is too hot, but then again, I need to get out into the air, it’s no fun staying in the house all day and writing for 4 hours at a time. Well, it is kind of fun, it’s 5:15am now, and I’m going to wrap it up. I’ve said that before, but I have so much more on my mind, perhaps if I take another night and write down more of it, since I probably could write down quite a bit more. And try not to repeat it, but since I’ve started thinking about wrapping it up, so many more ideas have come to the top of my mind, just screaming to be written down. Like video games and more on Super Mario Bros, and about my Game Show collection, and my transit hobby. 5:20am, I call this discussion to a close, and it didn’t crash the forum. So I guess I made it in under 60,000 characters, a lot more than what Youtube offers for comments, I always am forced to reword my comments or delete certain things to make it fit. Just like ebay that gives you 5 words to explain your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your purchase, and speaking of dissatisfaction, I’d like to talk about my restaurant experiences over the years, but I’ll close up my brain for now, it’s running out of energy tonight to think coherently and make logical sentences, though I don’t think I’ve ever been known to think logically, so why should I write that way. Oh well, good night folks and thanks for reading this. And I can almost promise you that I will have to continue on another rant post another time in the near future, it really helps get things off my mind and onto paper, well, um, er, computer screen. Good Night! I figure I’ll update everyone with how things are going now, and try and bring you up to date from where I left off last time. Well, I had the surgery back on January 12th, never forget that date, and went through 3 weeks of agonizing pain that I do not wish to inflict on even my worst enemy! I did enjoy flying higher than the sky with all of those heavy doses of medication, but they never lasted very long, and I couldn’t take them every time I needed them, so the incredible pain that I experienced every 2 hours was not fun at all… After going from one temporary cast to another every week, I arrived the first week of February when my doctor had gone off to help the victims in Haiti, and so I was left with the alternate doctor, who looked at my ankle, brushed me off, then passed me to the same nurse that caused me so much pain in the emergency room 2 months prior! (That’s a whole story in itself I’ll fill you in on next time). So this nurse decided that I was apparently ready now for a real cast. One month after the initial surgery. And this cast would be on until my next x-ray in 2 weeks from then. Now we’re into the last week of February. Forget about sleeping. Instead of sleeping at night, I have been sleeping during the day and dreading the approach of nightfall. It was kind of weird actually, I would be wide awake until I was exhausted then pass out for a few hours here and there, but occasionally I would stay awake for over 24-30 hours at a time without wanting to sleep! I’m sure it didn’t help that those times when I did get to sleep I was rudely awaken by my ankle doing some sort of spasm, and jumping into the air causing me extreme shots of pain. Thankfully that has passed, and I was able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, but it took several weeks thereafter to recoup all that lost sleep. I read about sleeping and apparently you can stay awake for many hours, but eventually you have to make up for it. Your brain has some sort of counter, so if you sleep for 6 hours one night, and 2 hours the next night, you will automatically need to sleep 8 hours the 3rd night. And what’s worse, if you sleep 2 hours every night for a week, you’re brain will shut itself down all weekend, and you’ll sleep through it. Now we’re talking about close to 2 months since I actually spent any time outside for any period of time. I was getting extremely depressed, and wondering when all of this suffering would get better. I’m sure the medication didn’t help with my brain activity and was causing a lot of emotional issues. But I do have to say, the Internet and my mom’s laptop has certainly made this time more bearable. The last week of February, I had my appointment with my regular doctor, and he went and confused me with talking very quick and making no sense whatsoever. I praise him for handling such a large number of patients in a day, and apparently he is the most renowned doctor at the hospital, and everyone I’ve talked to knows about him. I suppose he never did anything wrong, he was just very quick and efficient, not the best bedside manner I suppose would be my evaluation of him. Anyhow, he looked at it for 30 seconds, said, “ok, looks nice, keep it on” … and then a few seconds later asks me “how long has this been on?” and I said, 2 weeks, and he said “oh, ok, that’s good then”. And I asked if I could go now, was it ok? And he said, “oh, no no no, they’re going to take it off now”. I was kind of shocked, since I remember from previous experiences of the last few casts and all of those staples and stitches. (I’ll fill you in on these stories shortly as well). I expressed my concern, and he said, no no, it’s ok, and after it’s taken off, go arrange an “Emergency Appointment” with a physiotherapist. But first he asked, if I had private company insurance for physio, I said I did, but only $300 and he sort of chuckled, and said, “ok, I’ll give you a referral for the physio at the hosptial”. So I went into the cast room with the nurse. Yes, the same nurse that was very rough and rude with me back in December when I first entered the hospital. She closed the door behind me and brought out this serious equipment. One piece looked like a shop-vac, the other piece looked like a circular saw. Well, my heart sunk into my stomache by this time, and my stomache was not prepared to keep it down either. She told me it wouldn’t hurt and it wouldn’t take very long.. HA! Well, I’ve got a big story about this as well, (Another story I’ll fill you in on when I have a few minutes to think about it again). So I’m out of a cast now, and I’m told to put no weight on it, or do anything with it for atleast 2 weeks, and make an appointment to see a physiotherapist. And mention that it’s an emergency. Reason being: The nurse who put that cast on me a few weeks earlier had left the ankle pointed at a bad angle and layered the cast over it. I asked if I needed some sort of protection for the ankle, it was bleeding and looked awful after being covered for so long, and that plaster cast could have made things worse for me than better by the look of the ankle, foot and leg. She told me no, nothing and she showed me the door. I was not prepared to leave yet, since I was still mentally and physically recovering from that circular saw and the sound that it made, and the dust and chunks of cast that were flying around the room! So I took another 4 or 5 minutes to get back into the wheelchair and while I was trying that, the nurse came back in and asked why I was still there and took my arm and put me into the chair and said it was fine. (I would have said something rude and possibly abrasive, but again I was not in the right frame of mind to make any coherent thoughts at that time). Now to the physiotherapy section of the hospital. Little did I know that an Emergency meant that I would be put on a waiting list for close to a month?!? I put my name in, and they said they would contact me shortly with an appointment date for my first visit. I knew I wasn’t going to be called for atleast 2 weeks, since the doctor said no activity for that amount of time. 2 weeks had passed, and no news from the hospital. I waited another week to make it a 3rd week and then decided to call into the hospital and find out what was going on. The receptionist laughed at my request saying that it takes a lot longer than 3 weeks to get an appointment with the physiotherapist! And she passed me to the physio department. I talked to the receptionist there, and she said that since I was an emergency case that they would try and get me into the program by the next week. So I was on week 4, and FINALLY got a call back. We’re in the last week of March now, and I FINALLY have my first appointment. This time it’s a Tuesday, and the next scheduled appointment was Thursday, and the 2 weeks following I had a regular schedule of Monday-Wednesday-Friday from sessions lasting as long as 8:30am-11:30am! But usually not passing 2 hours. Progress has been slow, but steady, I’ve been trying to put weight on my ankle, and doing all sorts of exercises to bring back the muscles and strength in my leg and ankle. We’re on 3 months now of no activity on my ankle, I needed a lot of work, and forming and shaping to get things back to normal! (I’ll fill you in on this story of physio in another post later on). This brings us now to the middle of the night on April 13th, 2010. The last week or so I haven’t been able to sleep again, and my mind is racing with thoughts and ideas. Not necessarily all good, but I’ve been trying to keep positive, but it doesn’t always work. I’m feeling pretty down right now, and I don’t know when things will start looking up again. I’m starting to feel like I’m on a roller-coaster, and I don’t even like riding them! I have so much more on my mind to talk about, but I’ll give my fingers a rest right now. I’ll post more updates shortly. A matter of bad luck, or fate, I’ve been spending the last month trying to figure it out. Let me fill you in on exactly what I’m talking about. It was a cold icy winter evening of December 28th, 2009, I was just getting out of work, and I walked to the edge of the building and saw my bus coming down the street. I was on the other side of the street, so I flagged down the driver, and she stopped and waited for me at the new bus stop that was created just two months earlier. It took a construction company all summer long to carve out the stop to make it safer (supposedly) for pedestrians. I crossed the street and onto the sidewalk, and turned to board the bus, and I must have hit some really slippery black ice. I slipped and fell onto the ground. I really thought nothing of it, since I didn’t feel any pain, I felt mostly embarrassed. So I tried to get up, and I fell right back down, I couldn’t even get up!!! I then started to freak out! The driver put the bus in park and climbed down the stairs to give me a hand, I managed to climb onto the stairs, and then looked at my left foot, and realized that it was pointing in the WRONG DIRECTION!!! The driver asked if I needed an ambulance, and after looking at my foot, I said ofcourse. The dispatcher came on and said it would take atleast 20 minutes and it would be inconvenient or something along those lines, things were pretty blurry by then. After waiting a few minutes, by this time a second bus pulled up behind. I was on a route 23, (rush hour bus) and the bus behind was a 32 (regular service bus). Since the bus I was in was scheduled to end the route at the hospital (how convenient), I said look, how about I just ride to the end of the line at the hospital, and she was like, fine, and the driver of the second bus told everyone to get off the bus we’d make an express run to the hospital. People on the bus infact grumbled about getting off and asking how they would get to their destination on the 32, she explained to get a mini-bus at the mall and take the 33 (local route) to their stop. 2 people outright refused to get off, and so we made two stops along the way to the hospital and made several short turns to skip the traffic and took the highway the rest of the way to the hospital. We pulled up to the front entrance of the hospital, and we parked just past the regular bus stop just before the loop to enter the hospital emergency entrance, and the driver parked the bus and she ran inside and brought out a wheelchair and physically lifted me up (!) and carried me down the stairs and into the chair and drove me into the hospital! We signed in and I waited to be looked at the triage section, and I thanked her so much, and apologized for making her late for her next departure, and she said, “I don`t care, I just have the Kahnawake run after and nobody usually rides that departure anyhow”. I thanked her again, she was really so nice! I’m not sure what else I could have done, I was pretty much a dead-weight and couldn’t even walk! I spent the evening in the hospital getting x-rays and they temporarily wrapped up the ankle. Two weeks after, several more x-rays and lots of doctors poking my ankle, we found that I had infact shattered 3 of the main bones that held the ankle onto the leg and it would require surgery to fix the broken bones back into place. So now is the 25th of January, I’m still in a temporary cast, and awaiting another doctor’s visit to see if they can remove the staples that they put on the week before to close up the incision where they operated. I can’t say that it was the most comfortable experience, and when I looked at it for the first time, I pretty much passed out from the sight of it. I’m still in a lot of pain and probably will be for quite some time to come. I’ve been prescribed several narcotics to help ease the pain, including Morphine and Demerol as well as lighter doses including Tylenol that I can take between doses. I’m going to find out soon when I can get my real cast, and according to the doctor, that even after it heals, it still could take me 3-6 months to get back to normal walking again! This plus several visits to a physiotherapist and lots of exercise. This is going to be a long “walk” back to recovery so to speak. So for my bus sightings, the last bus I was on was on December 28th, 2009. And it was CITSO #855, and thanks again to the nice driver who was able to help me out… The one thing I found useful about OPUS was that you could use Interac to buy your 6 tickets at the machine, rather than carrying cash with you. I was ripped off 3 times by the OPUS machine claiming that my payment was accepted then later resending the message and saying it was refused, yet ended up charging my bank account. Thankfully it was removed from my account, but only 4 days later! Still, it was pretty useful for those that had no money. Now I find out that beginning last month that they will no longer be distributing 6 tickets in the automated vendors. So I have to go back to the Changeur, with cash, just like the good ‘ol days. Which means in the end that this new system has reversed back to how it was in the past, except now you’re given a piece of paper that if you put it in your pocket, there’s a high probability that it won’t work anymore when you try and use it. So infact, the system has reversed even further back. Magnetic tickets never refused me if a corner was bent, or ever got stuck in the turnstile preventing people from using that turnstile until someone fixes it. I don’t use public transit everyday, like I used to, but right now I’ll tell you that my once or twice a week voyage into the city where I never had any problems with transit before, with the exception of the line closures, now boasts a slew of new problems I’d rather pass on. I’ve gone through 2 OPUS cards that just plain stopped working after 2 or 3 uses, several trips to the changeur to reissue a ticket so that the machine would read it, and even some instances where I was able to validate my ticket, but the turnstiles would refuse to unlock to let me through and I was forced to slip through because there were 20+ people waiting in line at the changeurs box. Now, I’ve never calculated exactly how much time it takes to board, I know for a fact that it takes longer than the previous methods of payment. I watched a whole bus load of passengers board the 165 yesterday at Guy-Concordia metro and each person had to stand by the opus reader a good 4 to 5 seconds while it read their card, and in most cases, out of about 25 people that boarded, none of the cards were accepted on the first try. There was always this little red light that lit up, once, sometimes twice, and then the passenger looked bewildered and then tried again a few seconds later, and it worked. The same with student fares, a yellow warning type light lit up to let the driver know it was a student fare and to verify the image. But how many drivers will actually do this? And calculating all this time it takes to board a normal departure, multiply this by 2 or 3 for rush hour crowds, and if a load of 60 passengers boards and each has to pass their smart card, and it takes 5 seconds to have their card accepted, (and a lot longer if its refused, because that’s the time the passenger will take to argue it out with the driver), and even if it’s 2 seconds longer, that means 120 seconds more, and possibly 2 or 3 traffic lights later, and then more people rushing for the bus that don’t want to wait for the next departure now waiting impatiently behind. One good thing though that remains is that during huge crowds of people, there is almost always a supervisor (CO) available on hand, and in most cases when crowds are expected they schedule buses with higher capacity (Classics instead of LFS models), and they forego the fare taking and board as many people as possible in as short of time as possible, front door, back door, or wherever there’s an opening; pack it in as they say! And pay later. I can only imagine if each individual person had to pay during these events, and how they would all have to board in the front and wait their turn… Inspectors are soon going to be travelling the metro line as well, making sure everyone’s all paid up. But with all the bugs in the system that aren’t yet resolved, I can only imagine that this will be an easy cash grab for those that thought they had paid and infact didn’t due to a hicup in the system. And you know what. All this work to prevent fraud, and the only people it’s really going to affect are the honest people that pay for their fare whenever they use transit… The rest will continue to hop turnstiles, walk right passed bus drivers when getting on and spit at the feet of inspectors. And that’s how life will go on… Now that everything is almost reliable with the new STM buses, they have to make another change to break something that has worked for 50+ years! Check out this video of the crazy beeping bell!
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