Painting... the first adventure as a new home owner

We've started to prepare the kitchen at our new house for painting. Laura and I have never *actually* painted a room at all, so this should be interesting. We've been offered a lot of help and advice from people. I'm grateful for all of that, but I sort of want to do this myself. Our home, our kitchen, the walls can suffer from our painting mistakes. I hope we won't make too many, but I can't expect that we'll do it perfectly the first time.

One of the reasons that we're painting the kitchen is because it's very white. The floor is white, the walls are white, the cupboards are white. I can't picture myself working at a workstation like that (I consider a computer desk and a kitchen my 2 workstations).

I'm pulling for us. We're all in this together.

Going to miss it...

I'm feeling a bit melancholy now. Maybe it's the weather, I don't know. Either way I'm going to miss the apartment. I'm going to miss the view, the "every day is garbage day", the cozyness, the zero maintenance, the poo canon, ...

Having said all that, I'm sure that I'll love the house and wonder how I was able to deal with the apartment. I'd like to move in now, but good things come to those that wait pack. ;-)

Oie...

We're moving, which is really cool. Now the PITA stuff: changing our address for all the places that have that info. It would be awesome if their was a giant cental user repo that all business could tie into, but I'm sure the privacy people would crap themselves. Yes, I know the ontario gov't has a place where you change change all your info with them... that makes it a little easier.

The hard part is when I tell people the new address (and no, I'm not going to mention it on this blog). For each person it seems to take at least one clarification. The systems where I can just enter and fill in my info are the best. Ah well. I'm happy to move, even if it's a bit of a weird street name. :-P

Let me vote for you... it's okay, we're lawmakers

When a friend pointed me to a video of lawmakers voting in Texas, it was just one more thing that makes me glad that I live in Canada. Wow.

Journey Leap?

After watching the first episode of Journeyman, Laura pointed out something: the idea of it seems very close to Quantum Leap. In that light, I think that the intro to Journeyman should be changed to have a narrative that goes like this:

Theorizing that one could go about their lives, Dan Vasser stepped into the world and vanished .... He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is google, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a search engine that everyone and Dan can see and hear in 2007. And so Dan finds himself journeying from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next journey will be the journey home.

Bank branches are <i>so</i> last century

While getting ready for the closing day of our new house, I've been dealing with bankers and a lawyer. Mixed reviews for both.

This rant is directed at scotiabank. Don't get me wrong, the staff that I have dealt with have always been nice and helpful within the rules of the bank. The rules / policies are what I have a problem with. And this may be a issue with all of the major banks, I don't know.

The issue: if I open a savings plan at one branch, I should be able to handle any services with that account at any other branch. I shouldn't have to drive 45 minutes each way because I had set up the account at a convenient place for where I lived 5 years ago. I want to be able to go to a place that convenient for me now.

It's not like it's a paper record or anything. If you can see it on the computer screen in front of you, and I can do other services at that bank, I should be able to do all my services transparently.

So, for something that took me about 5 minutes to do at PC financial, it took me about 3 hours to do at scotia. And only because I was being a PITA customer saying things like "I'm sorry, that's not possible", "That doesn't make sense", "Why do I have to come back? Can't we do this now. It's just one form!" (it wasn't for scotia)... you get the idea.

Scotia: please modernize your processes and policies, not just your tools.

Ontario election - talk about what you're going to do

One thing that I really don't like about this upcoming election are the attack ad's from the PC party. The liberal party ad's are "we are going to do ...". The PC party ad's are "they other guy didn't do ... last time when he said he would. The liberal leader also kicks puppies."

Those ad's don't help me understand what you're going to do if I elect you. All they do is make me mad at you for bringing more negativity into my life. Having your whole campaign of "we're not the other guys" is a really crappy campaign. That sounds to me that you have no plan past getting elected.

I laugh when I picture that: the PC's winning by a landslide and the next morning looking at each other and saying "now what?" while shrugging their shoulders.