Month: May 2010

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Oz’s Fieldtrip

This afternoon, Oz and I went on a two hour walk to town and back. He was such a good boy!

On the way there, he took his sweet time sniffing around and marking his territory, so I thought we’d never make it! I accidentally kicked a rock a short ways past the motel and Oz went tearing after it. We played that game for a good ways, with me throwing a new rock for him to play with every few steps and that definitely got us moving.

The afternoon was starting to be a scorcher, so when we got to town I brought him down to the river so he could cool off a tad since his owner had mentioned that he loves the water. He was very happy with this detour.

Since today is a holiday, not much was open, so I decided to just get an ice cream and come back home. I tied Oz to a bench outside the store where he was immediately adopted by two grannies from Maine. Oz was very happy to lie in the shade under a bench and be fawned over while I got my cone.

I had my ice cream as he continued to garner attention and then it was time to head back since I had a shift starting at 5. Oz knew the way home and he was eager to get there, since he was obviously exhausted. He walked to the full length of his leash without straining, stopped, and then looked at me with an expression that said “Come on, I wanna get there!”

what a sweet boy!

what a sweet boy!

waiting for me to throw another rock

waiting for me to throw another rock

playing in the Yukon River

playing in the Yukon River

chillin' out in front of the ice cream parlour

chillin’ out in front of the ice cream parlour

Playing the ‘cool aunt’ with a dog is always fun, but I know I am nowhere near a stage in my life where I could have one. I’d definitely need to be home a lot more and have a semblance of a routine. That said, I look forward to more outings with Oz.

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Almost Gone With the Wind

Two nights ago, I awoke shivering the middle of the night and had to grab another blanket. Last night, I slept with a window and two roof hatches open and stepped outside this morning to weather that had already passed twenty degrees. Calgary apparently got snow yesterday. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

It wasn’t unbearably hot, though, since it’s still windy out. That wind is a mixed blessing since it covers everything in a fine layer of grit. I won’t miss that grit, but I will miss that breeze as the sun starts to beat down mercilessly.

Today’s big to-do was a staff barbecue. There was a bit of schedule coordinating necessary for both the manager and I to attend, but we made it work.

Between the heat, the manic pace of a busy day, and the mountain of grilled shrimp, I’m feeling rather spent. Guess I’ll call it another good day in the Klondike. 😀

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A Very Full Day

I don’t know what it is about the long sultry summer days of the Klondike, but I seem to wedge twice as much into a day as would seem feasible. So, today:

A Ferry of My Own!

I was out at Gertie’s a little bit later than I should have been last night, so this morning’s awakening at 9:20AM by my iPod Touch alarm clock was a tad brutal. I’d promised friends across the river that I’d help them move back to Bonanza, so I was up and at ’em in minutes. In fact, I was at the hostel with the car nearly packed within a half hour, including a short wait on the ferry. Not bad!

We had to wait for the ferry to cross back, less than ten minutes. I had the ferry to myself, which was kind of cool. I would have thought that they would wait to load up, but nope. They take the passengers who are there, or at least as many as they can fit, and then they cross. Back and forth, all day, every day. What a service!

Once back at the motel, I checked them in, dumped their luggage, grabbed some toast, gulped down coffee at the office and started my day.

Beds and Bundles!

Housekeeping was shorthanded this morning, so I spent an hour stripping beds and then running linens and towels up to the rooms. I needed to be back at the office for noon, which enabled me to discover that I can make two beds in fifteen minutes. I’ll have to look up my record for last summer and see if that’s good or bad. 😀

Back in the office, it was the usual zaniness. During quiet moments, I continued to make little bundles out of our check in cards in preparation for inputting into our computer system. I designed and implemented a new database this week, so I have a huge backlog to go through. I don’t mind since I love data entry AND I’m doing it on a Mac! Yes! We’ve got a Mac in the office this year and I can do 90% of my work on it! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay!

I was relieved at quarter past two and headed home to play with my iPod some more.

iPod Breakthrough!

After getting in a little work at my contract (subject of a future post), I decided to focus on the iPod and try to get more ebooks on it. I put together a few semi-related pages and came up with a way to connect the iPod to my cellular connection! This finally gave me full iPod use, limited only by my bandwidth restrictions. I was given a huge cd filled with tons and tons and tons of wonderful ebooks and I transferred a few of them to the iPod. Then, I discovered that you can actually bookmark and annotate books in the Stanza app. Amazon Kindle? Pfft.

Oz!

I went back to work at quarter past five and it was the usual zaniness until a customer checked in with a bunch of dogs and the manager decided to adopt one. Well, she’s trying him out tonight on a trial basis, but they’ve bonded, so I know he’s staying. 🙂 Somehow in the middle of this, she and I agreed to coparent him this summer, so I sort of have a dog now! He’s a Jack Russell, the only breed I have any experience with since that’s what I had growing up, and we named him Oz! I will be taking pictures soon. 🙂

The Night Is Young!

It’s presently 8:40, dinner’s in the oven (chicken and lasagna), laundry’s in the washer, I have work to do, I want to play some more with my iPod settings, and I want to finish the short story ebook I’ve started.

Just another day in paradise and I’m lovin’ it! 😀

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iPod Touch Resolution

The Apple guy who fixed the problem was none too helpful, feeding me canned answers that guided me to the solution in a roundabout fashion. Turns out that my credit card company has my information on file in ALL CAPS. I didn’t know this because I get everything online from them. I only figured this out when the lightbulb went on and I decided to try an experiment.

Apple pinged them and my company said “Sure, the card is good!” but because my info at the iTunes store was written in Normal Capitalization, Apple said “I don’t care what the credit card company says, the card is no good!” Rather uppity of them, no?

Now, I just need to make sure I don’t blow my budget at the App store. 😀

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iPod Touch Update

I received my new credit card yesterday and entered that information into my iTunes account, but still got the same ‘payment method declined’ error message. It was time to contact Apple, but before I did that I checked with my credit card company to make sure that they weren’t declining Apple’s pings to my card. Sure enough, the culprit was Apple. I sent them a support ticket explaining the problem and they are now ‘working on it.’ Let’s see how long that takes. I love Apple’s products so much, but the support behind them sucks. At least, the need for support is very minimal; this is only the second time in five years that I have had to ask for help with something.

Meanwhile, reasonably tech-savvy Rae did some not so kosher manoeuvring and was able to get a couple of free apps onto her Touch. I know I’ll need to reacquire them properly once I get my iTunes account running, but for now this was enough to be able to play around for a few hours and really discover how amazing the technology is. It’s beyond Star Trek, that’s the best way I can phrase it. I can tap, pinch, flick, and swipe the screen, and more, and I have to wonder if there is anything this device can’t do!

I’d bought a cheap silicone cover for it to start, but I went to bed last night knowing that this device is going to be glued to my hip from now on. So, I went on eBay this morning and ordered a nice leather cover from the same guy in Hong Kong from whom I’d bought the nice leather cover for my iPod classic:

I don’t normally like buying from Hong Kong, but the ‘book-style’ covers are rare on this side of the ocean and Hong Kong has a better colour selection. The cover will get here when it gets here and it’ll be exactly what I want. The silicone cover will still be good for using the Touch at home; it’s definitely not going to waste.

I’ve had a hankering to reread some favourite books, so I downloaded the ‘Stanza‘ app, as per Andy‘s recommendation, and then connected to Project Gutenberg to download some tomes by Jules Vernes, Alexandre Dumas (père), and Guy de Maupassant. I spent a couple of hours reading short stories by de Maupassant and saw my desire for an ebook reader go from 150% to about 1%. Some folks find the Touch too small to be a good ebook reader while I find the size to be perfect. The Touch just sits in the palm of my hand without any fatigue at all. I might get some eye strain from reading on a computer screen, but I didn’t get any of that at all yesterday. My only disappointment was that the Gutenberg copy of Around the World in 80 days wasn’t formatted properly and was missing all the accented characters. t ws lke tryng t rd wtht vwls. 😀

I’ll need to resolve my app store issues with Apple before I can really get settled in with my iPod Touch but at least now I’ve gotten a proper taste of this device I’ve been craving for so long and I know that it will be worth the wait. This device is amazing and represents an unfathomable technological leap from the computers of my youth. I just wish Apple hadn’t spoiled my fun so soon after purchase; that breach of trust will be irreparable.