This page was born of Kari's desire to fill in the blanks while waiting for Brenda to produce her first batch of recipes.  It really consists only of Kari's random thoughts.  In the beginning, the random thoughts were all about food, but Kari now seems to be moving away from food and towards Life, the Universe, and Everything.  However...if you like blog-like documents about nothing in particular, keep reading.

The page will be updated whenever Kari feels like it.  She may feel like it every Monday, but she's not really sure about that yet.


Monday, September 6, 2010:  Definitely a Curse

It is once again 4:30 a.m., so in the interests of easing myself towards a more sane sleep cycle, I shall do only a short Rant, this one a follow-up to last week's.  I am still waiting for my computer, which has now been in the shop for six weeks.  The Puture Phop people have finally given me my data back, but the machine itself is absent.  In the meantime, I am stuck with my desktop.  This computer is actually better than my laptop because it does not have Vista on it, but it has its idiosyncrasies.  For instance, the display occasionally turns pink or yellow for no apparent reason.  The useful USB ports on the front of the tower actually fell inside the box a year or so ago, meaning that I had to knock out one of the front panels, pull the loose ports out the front of the machine, and plug a USB extension cord into one of them (the other had somehow become completely bent out of shape and now works only sporadically).  My scanner does not like the extension cord.  When I plug it in, it will often decide that it is going to disconnect, then reconnect, then disconnect, then reconnect, and so on forever.  Of course, the computer goes ding every time this happens.  I am sometimes able to force a connection by squeezing the plug and the extension cord really firmly together in my hand, but not today.  Today, only plugging the scanner into the defective port worked.  In the meantime, my DVD drive has gone wonky and will not reproduce sound properly (it's definitely the DVD player's fault; if I play something off the Internet, the sound is fine).

I just don't know what to do any more.  I can make a computer or piece of computer-related equipment self-destruct simply by looking at it funny.  I would really like to punch technology in the mouth.  Since I can't, I think I'll retire to a corner and weep gently for a bit.


Monday, August 30, 2010:  It's a Curse, I Tell You

In late July, my one-year-old laptop stopped working.  This is not exactly an unusual state of affairs for me; I don't seem to be able to keep a functional computer for more than a year at a time.  Fortunately, I had gone for the extended warranty, which tends to be a scam unless you're, you know, me.  I should always go for the extended warranty.

I took my computer in for repairs on July 27th.  I had bought it from a well-known chain whose name I shall cleverly disguise so that no one will possibly be able to guess what it is.  Let's call it Puture Phop.  The guy at the desk told me I would have my computer back in a week to ten days.  He also charged me seventy-nine bucks to back up my data.  Good old Puture Phop.

'Twas exactly one month later that I returned to the Phop to inquire into the fate of my computer.  I could have phoned, of course, but I find phone conversations with people in computer stores very frustrating.  No one listens to anything you say, and when you arrive at the store, the person at the counter contradicts everything the person on the phone told you.  There is no record anywhere that you have spoken to anyone at all.

Events at Puture Phop played out as follows:

I approached the repairs/set-up counter.  There were two people being helped, so I stood a few feet back and waited.  Ten minutes later, the same people were still being helped, and when I came out of my daydream, I noticed that some guy had calmly cut in front of me.  The two people left, and the jerkwad started talking to one of the clerks.  The other one left the desk and went to talk to about six other Puture Phop employees who were just standing around, doing nothing.

About twenty minutes passed.  The jerkwad kept on being helped.  A couple started hanging around near the desk, but they eventually got impatient and left.  At long, long last, the jerkwad was satisfied, and I moved up to the desk, though by this point, there was no longer anyone behind it.  There continued not to be anyone behind it for a good five minutes.

At last, an employee, Bob (Not His Real Name), wandered up to the desk and asked me what the problem was.  I explained that I very much wanted to locate my computer, please.  Bob said a month was excessive for a repair job and promised to check.  Meanwhile, just like magic, another employee had appeared to deal with the enormous line that had formed behind me.

Fifteen more minutes passed.  I could see what was going on off in the staff area, and it was instructive.  It went something like this:

1)  Bob checked a computer for my information.
2)  Bob moved to another computer and checked there as well.
3)  Bob returned to the first computer and did yet more checking.
4)  Bob called over two other employees and showed them my receipt.
5)  The three of them opened a huge cabinet that looked to be full of laptops and went through it.
6)  They went through it again.
7)  They went through it a third time.
8)  They stared at the receipt a bit more.
9)  Bob returned to one of his computers and checked it again.

By this point, I was pretty sure that Puture Phop had lost my computer.

Bob eventually returned to the desk and informed me that my computer was off somewhere, probably "waiting for a part."  He would photocopy the receipt and ask someone senior about it.

To his credit, Bob (who actually was quite helpful) phoned me today and told me that my computer had been located and really was waiting for a part.  He said I would probably get it back in about a week.  I'm not holding my breath, but it was nice of him to call.

I seriously think I'm under some sort of curse.  Computers make me sad.


Monday, August 16, 2010:  It's Five Fifteen in the Bloody Morning

I would love to write you a real rant.  I truly would.  However, when I go out on my balcony and look east, I can actually see the damn sky getting light.  I've stayed up all night again.  I expect this (very short) little document is going to be full of typos that I shall miss because I am too tired to proofread.  Under the good points, I was able to watch last week's episode of Futurama while I was finishing up the last boring mechanical aspects of my comic.  It was about evolution, and it actually made me laugh more than once.  There is hope for Futurama.  I'm not sure there's any hope for me, on the other hand.  I have three classes again this fall, two of them online and one with sixty students in it.  I plan to break down and weep very, very soon.  The West of Bathurst book will probably be finished in the year 10,000,000,000 or so.

It is currently 5:25, and I think I need to go to bed right freaking now.


Monday, August 9, 2010:  An Open Letter to the Perpetual Construction on Bloor Street

Dear Perpetual Construction on Bloor Street:

We have known each other for a long time, you and I.  I can't remember exactly when we first met, but I know it was many, many years ago.  Ever since, you have been a presence in my life.

I have to admit that I never thought we would be together forever.  I was initially under the impression that you felt the same way; in fact, I expected you to stick around for a few months, then move on.  I knew that ours was a casual relationship, not meant to last.

Yet as time went on, you seemed to settle in.  Oh, you weren't entirely anchored in one place; you progressed slowly down Bloor, transforming the roads and sidewalks into pretty much exactly what they had been before, only with more planters.  However, your apparent movement was really an illusion.  You were clearly in it for the long haul, while I was still not ready to commit.

We have now, I think, reached a crisis point.  You have spread out over several blocks in one of the busiest parts of downtown, reducing traffic to one lane in each direction and causing bicyclists to go in constant fear of their lives.  I, alas, am one of these bicyclists.  I just don't think we mesh any more.  We have grown apart.  Your interests directly contradict mine, and your stubborn refusal to get the hell off my bike route demonstrates an extreme lack of sensitivity.

I really think it is time for us to spend some time apart.  I know you mean well, but you seem to want to stick around forever, and I would like my freedom.  Perhaps you should consider retiring to the suburbs.  Surely there is someone there who will be willing to love and appreciate you.

Goodbye, Perpetual Construction on Bloor Street.  For both our sakes, please consider finding some new interest a very long way from here.

Yours temporarily, with luck,
Kari.


Monday, August 2, 2010:  It's Official:  Computers Hate Me

I went to Newfoundland last weekend.  It was a good trip, though I fear I was grumpy enough to make several of my friends quite angry with me.  I would like to apologise to these friends.  I know I should hide my bad moods and not impose them on others, but I find it difficult to do this.  I can see myself being a jerkwad; I just can't stop.  The result is that I feel bad about it not just afterwards but also while it is happening.  This is difficult to explain to normal people, who are generally able to control how they behave.  Clearly, there is something wrong with me.

At any rate, one of the things causing the grumpiness was the fact that the second I arrived in Newfoundland, my laptop stopped working.  I had wanted to get some comics finished so that I didn't fall behind and could mark without interruption once I returned home; instead, I got hours of fruitless frustration.  One of my friends eventually managed to revive the computer, but only for an evening.  It is now in the shop, and I am using my other computer, which is slightly less dysfunctional.

I do not understand why computers hate me so much.  Perhaps they sense my computer-related weakness and go wrong simply because they can.  Other people keep their computers for years; I go through laptops the way most go through Kleenex.

I just want a computer that will turn on and do stuff.  That is all I ask for.  I'm tired of the inexplicable freezing and the data loss and the blue screen of death.  I'm tired of not understanding why neither my mic or my headphones work on my desktop any more.  I'm infuriated by Vista, Word, and all their little friends.  If Future Shop charges me for any aspect of these repairs beyond data recovery, for which it is already bleeding me dry, I shall punch someone.  You sold me this utter piece of crap, Future Shop.  You fix the damn thing.

I shall probably wander off and cry now.  Have a good holiday, Canadians.


Monday, July 19, 2010:  The Unfortunate Thing About Board Games

Last weekend, some friends and I were reminded of one of the unofficial Rules of All Board Games:  no matter how fantastic a game is, if no one in your group knows how to play it before you start, you will all hate it forever afterwards.

It's always advisable to learn a board game from someone who understands the rules.  These things tend to come with twenty-page-long rulebooks badly translated from German or Chinese; you can certainly read them, but they will answer your questions in the wrong order, if at all.  An experienced player will explain the rules as they come up.  The first ten minutes of the game will involve some fumbling, but people will probably catch on after that.

Sometimes, however, you will find yourself with a game everybody assures you is "good" but nobody knows how to play.  Such was the case last weekend with my copy of Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot.  My sister gave it to me for Christmas about two and a half years ago.  She usually plays the games she gives me with me, but this time, she was banished from my parents' house because she was pregnant and they had been exposed to German measles.  She told me the game was a good one, but I didn't have a chance to try it out until last Sunday.

I'm sure it is a good game.  I'm not sure we'll ever play it again.  We seemed to spend endless amounts of time looking stuff up in the two instruction booklets, often fruitlessly.  There were all sorts of fiddly rules that went along with certain types of cards, and we kept doing things wrong, and friend #1 cluelessly used what was probably the nastiest card in the game to give us all Ebola Virus and basically bring the game to a standstill, which, as we discovered later, shouldn't have happened because we were actually using the Ebola card wrong.  Friend #2 decided early on that he hated the game, and he actively tried to lose.  Friend #3 played skilfully and with intent to win, only to be taken down accidentally by friend #4.  I won, mostly by virtue of staying quietly under the radar throughout the game; I had no idea what I was doing and was employing no strategy whatsoever.  The effect was basically what you would get if five people who didn't know what nutmeg was were turned loose in a kitchen and commanded to bake a pie.  Any resulting edible substance would probably be a fluke.

I am a little sad about this game, which I suspect is actually kind of neat, and is certainly no more complicated than Munchkin, which it resembles.  At our next games night, however, I hope we stick to games at least one of us knows.  It is hard to keep track of one's bunnies when one doesn't know what they are for.


Monday, July 5, 2010:  Free Music and Other Sad Stories

I apologise for not posting last week.  Marking and the comic conspired together to eat my life.  They should also be eating my life now, of course, but I am currently pretending they shouldn't.

Since nothing besides marking and the occasional film* has happened to me in the past two weeks, I shall simply reflect briefly on the nightly concert at the pub across the street from me.  The place has a live band on the patio just about every night of the week in the summer.  I dimly remember the days when it stuck to Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  Those days are gone now.

It's not that I particularly mind; I quite like the whole thing with the free music.  It's just that some of the band choices are...odd.  Back in the days of Monday/Thursday/Saturday, it was all jazz, all the time; now we get various styles played on various instruments.  Tonight, it's jazz.  Occasionally, there's old-fashioned rock and roll or country.  On Canada Day, it started in the middle of the afternoon and was just freaking weird.

I mean, okay, give me Elvis all you like, but a jazz version of "On Top of Old Smokey"?  Whose idea was that?  Was your band bored?  It's bad enough that you felt obliged to turn it into jazz; the fact that it's purely instrumental is just going to make people think of the much more commonly known parody, "On Top of Spaghetti."  It was a kind of strange thing to find myself listening to, to tell you the truth.  I was waiting for you guys to segue into "London Bridge is Falling Down," but you never did.

I seem to remember that there was other odd music that afternoon as well, but now, of course, I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.  At any rate, I'm sure there will be odder stuff some evening soon.  Tonight's rather anonymous jazz is relaxing in comparison.

*Damn you, Pixar.  Damn your ability to make me sob for ten minutes, even though I know perfectly well how you are doing it.  Damn your sad music and poignant moments of silent character interaction.  And damn you, M. Night Shyamalan, for taking what could have been quite a good little story and trapping it forever in Expositionland, where it falls prey to such deadly lines as, "It is time we show the people of the fire nation we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs."  Damn you.

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