This makes me sad

The dogs and I just returned from a lovely hour long walk in the forest behind our house. The last km of our walk was along the road, which is a no-through road 17km from the highway. Around and in the cattle guard was a whole load of cigarette butts and ash. Presumably someone was driving along and thought "hey this is a great place to empty out my car ash tray".

It makes me sad to think that a person could be out here and so ignorant of the beauty of this place that they chose to do this. Gross. Gross and sad.

Hopefully they aren't dumb enough to do the same thing in the summer and cause a wildfire.

iPad WiFi

I am in a hotel using the wifi but my iPad is getting a pathetic signal. This is annoying because Blaine is studying so I want to watch Netflix. I have entered the search parameters "iPad WiFi antenna" into google in the hopes of finding the optimum angle at which to hold my device... 5 minutes later and I am still awaiting my search results. Perhaps Google is running slowly in protest at being called a corporate tax cheat?

Posted with Blogsy

Crock of Ages of Shite

I am writing this somewhere over Manitoba I suppose, half way on a flight from Vancouver to Montreal. For my first on board movie I watched J Edgar, an informative, moving and eye opening movie directed by the awesome Clint Eastwood. Blaine watched Rock of Ages and was giggling away throughout, my sister in law is even more obsessed with RoA as she was with Twilight. So I figured I would give it a go. Guys, you are both wrong. Less than 15 minutes in and I was compelled to pull out my iPad to write a blog post about how dreadful it is. Maybe it will get better soon... maybe if I have a Johnny Walker Black Label it will help?

Let me share my opinion on "dining" aboard Air F You. Domestic beer (aka piss) is $6.50, Heineken is $7, wine is $6.50, sparkling wine $7, spirits $6.50. It's a no brainer, give me the scotch.

The best snacks are the cheese and crackers $4, and the carrots, celery and ranch dip for $5.

For $9 you can get a drink and snack combo.

For $13 you can get a meal, snack and drink. If they have pizza do the meal deal. The other food isn't worth wasting the calories on.

Generally you are best advised to buy your "meal" at the airport before your flight. Advice in the regard requires a whole other blog post depending on which airport and which terminal.

30 minutes - I have my scotch. It isn't better yet. Blaine says it is because I am too young.

51 minutes - I am wondering if my brother's next inking will be Stacee Jaxx pistols.

1hr 3 minutes- grateful that the plane will land before the film finishes.

1hr 25minutes - seriously?

I didn't finish watching. The meagre offering of witty one liners was not enough to make up for the dross.

Posted with Blogsy

NU food prices protest

 Events were organised across Nunavut on Saturday June 9 to protest high food prices, including this group marching outside North Mart. There are sites popping up where people are posting pictures of exorbitantly priced goods.

I don't think that frozen corn dogs and cans of soda are really necessary items and am inclined to agree with some people that suggest "junk" food prices could subsidize "healthy" food. But who decides, and how, which food fits in which group?

$70 netted me this bag of groceries (to support the protest I shopped at Baffin Canners not North Mart)

• 4 chicken breasts $22
• 2 packs of Parma ham (agreed not exactly a necessity) $8.36
• A packet of bacon $6.94
• Small tub of sour cream $2.41
• Mozzarella cheese $8.48
• 500ml Whipping cream $5.23
• Butter $7.10
• 2l milk $5.63
• Cherry tomatoes $4.27

In the past couple of weeks I excitedly bought some fruits that seemed brilliantly cheap, but maybe I am getting too used to prices here. $3 for a ripe avocado, $7 for a delicious pineapple, $4 for a mango.

Immigration

I am a permanent resident of Canada which entitles me to live and work here. To prove my status I have a Permanent Resident (PR) Card which I must show when entering the country, cards are valid for 5 years, mine expires on January 11, 2013. Permanent residents are eligible to apply for citizenship once you have accumulated 1,095 days of physical presence in the country. The citizenship application requires you to detail every trip out of the country that exceeds 24 hours and, since I like to vacation it took me a little longer than three years to be eligible to apply.

I mailed my citizenship application and paid the fees back in June 2011. At that time there was a 15 month processing time. In September 2011 I received confirmation that my application had been received, not that it is being processed, just that it has been received. Today the processing time is listed at 19 months. I telephoned the contact centre to discuss my options and was advised that it is OK to have an expired PR card in Canada. Indeed, but what if one wants to take a vacation? I have two options:

1. I can go to the Canadian embassy of the country where I am on vacation and ask for a 'travel document'. This didn't strike me as a) how I want to spend my holiday or b) even a slightly good idea.
2. Alternatively I can apply to renew my PR card. However, renewal applications cannot be submitted earlier that 6 months before the expiry date and current processing time is 4 months. I was cheerfully informed that this is the lowest processing time ever for PR cards.

So now I need to get more passport photos, complete the application form detailing everything I have eaten for the past 5 years, pay $50 and hope the wondrously speedy processing times remain in place for the next 9 months. Worst case scenario I guess I will just have to stay in Australia at the end of our winter holiday ;-)

Tahoe 2012

After an excellent holiday I am back at home with the dogs who are far too exuberant for this early hour. Yesterday's -40 windchill and my lingering tiredness truncated our walk and now I am paying the price with a 7am tug of war / dog wrestling display.

Our trip began on for me on Thursday February 23 when I flew down to Ottawa to join Blaine who was there attending meetings with AFAC and AANDC. He picked me up from the airport and then back at the hotel I enjoyed a draft beer or two then we dined on sushi - both unavailable in Iqaluit. Friday morning he went back into meetings and I set off for a day of rampant consumerism, starting with a 9am hair cut and colour. Keen to get my fix I lunched on sushi, then more shopping. I emerged from Loblaws at South Keys with a trolley heavily laden with goodies to find a heavy wet blanket of snow covering everything and no sign of it easing up. Not good for driving back to the city, and not good for flying. Eventually I made it back to the hotel and dragged Blaine over to the Rideau Centre to look at a snowboard jacket and Sorel boots on sale. He found a snowboard jacket too, and a few other things. We celebrated our shopping success with a bucket of KFC and a couple of glasses Jameson's in the hotel room, then re- packed our bags ready for our early start.

The 4am wake up call came far too soon and we dragged ourselves to Ottawa airport where I endured the line ups and hated self check in kiosk. Blaine dropped the car off and got a cab back before I had made it to a human being at the check in counter where we were informed that our 9am flight from Toronto to San Francisco had been cancelled and that we should go Lin e up for ticketing to be rebooked. I noted that this would cause us to miss our 6am flight to Toronto to which the charming Air Canada staff responded there was no point boarding that flight as we couldn't fly on to SFO until the evening. We joined the fray of disgruntled passengers in yet another line up so that we could be subjected to more surly unhelpfulness by charmless Air Canada staff. Through security we settled in for the day on a couple of couches at which point I examined our boarding passes and noticed we weren't even sat near each other. Miraculously a helpful AC employee got us seats together and gave us a $10 meal voucher each. I went back to the couch and watched some TV. A couple of hours later my brain got going and I pessimistically checked the AC website to see if our flight to SFO was cancelled yet at which point I saw seats for sale on the noon flight. Back to the AC desk where I found the other helpful AC employee who worked her butt off to try to get us to Toronto in time to catch the noon flight. Had we been allowed to board the 6am flight then we could have made it, but we didn't. Instead we got to run around Ottawa and Toronto airports trying to make flights and re-telling our sorry tale. Eventually we arrived in SFO around 1am and rented a car to drive up to Tahoe. By the time we arrived Dom and Tim had woken up so we and a few beers then got about an hour of sleep before our bodies woke us up again. 

The next two weeks were much more enjoyable. Living in a big house backing on tho the woods near California base we spent our days snowboarding and our evenings BBQing, drinking and hot tubbing. We rode Heavenly, Northstar and Kirkwood mountains and even got free S'mores at Northstar. The weather was a little crazy, ranging from +4 on top of the mountain sunny days to wild winds that shut down all but Powderbowl chair. We took advantage of the free Epic Mix photographers to get some photos, unfortunately some of them didn't show up on our accounts so we don't have the group shot on the rock at the top of Powderbowl chair. The photo of me falling while wearing a bikini top did make it and is now my Facebook profile picture. On the last day I was struggling with my leg so I was escorted to Sky Deck where I sunbathed and sipped Shock Top while the rest of the group rode over to Stagecoach lodge.

Saturday morning we got up early and packed the cars then breakfasted at the Lakeside Casino before driving back to San Francisco. After saying goodbye to the others at the airport Blaine and I headed over to Pacifica for some Gorilla BBQ. As always we were defeated by the delicious stack of meat and tasty sides. Next stop was Infineon raceway then on to the Napa Premium Outlets for more shopping. Back at the hotel we enjoyed a refreshing bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc and In n Out burgers. 

Sunday we got to the airport super early so we had time to check in our oversize bags. So glad we chose to fly at lunch time not the first flight of the day. The return flight was moderately uneventful, just the usual rudeness that we have come to know and expect from AC. By the time we got our bags and the car it was almost 1am when we checked into the hotel, then I re-packed ready for my flight home in the morning. Another early start but this time the First Air check in agent was super nice so the day started happy. Blaine and I had a coffee together then I went through security and he went back to Ottawa for three intense days of meetings with the CAFC.

The dogs went crazy when I got home, both jumping around and circling me furiously wagging their tails. I was supposed to be moving offices but while we were away there was a small fire in the empty room that was to be my office. It is now being repainted and I should be able to move in later this week, excitingly it has a window!

our sealift arrives

We were not overly impressed by the "customer service" from NSSI Desgagnes. As I have not received a response to my request for clarification so I can only share with you my understanding of the process:

1. Wait for boat to arrive
2. Telephone NSSI office / beach shack 979 0002 which is never answered and does not have voicemail
3. Drive to NSSI office / beach shack which is never staffed
4. Telephone Desgagnes in Montreal who will advise you to repeat steps 2 & 3
5. Drive around sealift beach and compound (avoiding being run over by recklessly driven heavy equipment) looking for a) your crate and/or b) an NSSI employee
6. After approximately one week you will find someone who takes your PO Box number for billing and tells you that Hansons's will deliver your crate
7. On the same day you will receive a bill in the mail from NSSI Desgagnes to demonstrate that they had your PO Box address all along
8. Come home from work one day (August 31) to find crate outside house

Wasn't that fun and efficient?

You will then need a man and some tools to open the crate and carry the contents inside.

The main driver for our shipment was dog food. Johnny and Sage eat a brand that is not sold here so we either have to bring it up by boat or plane (Orijen never responded to Sage's letter). We popped a few things in the crate for ourselves too.

I spent Wednesday evening (after wings) arranging all the goodies down in the sealift room.

Feeling Loney? Shaw offers new chat facility in lieu of customer service

GoToAssist:

Your representative has arrived.

Stephen - 6685 (15:39:24):

Thank you for choosing Shaw Internet Chat Support, my name is Steve.  I will be happy to help you today.Before continuing, would you please confirm your home telephone number and address so that I can bring up your account information?

Customer (15:40:02):

I have moved and my account is closed... the address the account was at is xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Stephen - 6685 (15:42:28):

i have reviewed the account and for that i am not sure on what we would do to get that changed you would be best to speak to our customer service department either in our retail office, or by phoning in

Customer (15:44:59):

uh hu

Customer (15:45:12):

I have been on hold for an hour an a half to try to do that

Customer (15:45:28):

and an hour waiting to chat with you

Customer (15:46:09):

to be told to go away...

Stephen - 6685 (15:47:07):

i am sorry you have been waiting so long , it is extremely busy, however this is not something that we can take care of over chat, we are not trained for this type of issue on chat, our customer service department will be able to assist you and help get it sorted out

Customer (15:50:17):

are you trained to telephone customers?

Stephen - 6685 (15:50:57):

we are chat only

Customer (15:51:16):

where are you located?

Stephen - 6685 (15:51:25):

in bc

Customer (15:51:31):

how is the weather?

Stephen - 6685 (15:51:40):

cloudy and windy

Customer (15:51:48):

it is sunny here in the Arctic

Customer (15:51:57):

do you snowboard?

Stephen - 6685 (15:52:09):

oh nice,  i do when i get the chance in winter

Customer (15:52:22):

Sun Peaks or Whistler?

Stephen - 6685 (15:52:49):

ive been to whistler and some other places when i travel.

Customer (15:53:06):

You should check out Heavenly at Lake Tahoe

Stephen - 6685 (15:54:08):

i will look into that for sure,    i do apologize we cannot help further, once you get in contact with our customer service department they will be able to help you for sure,  was there something else we can help with right now?

Customer (15:54:29):

I thought you said you were trained to chat?

Customer (15:54:47):

I figured your job was to chat while I am on hold for customer service

Stephen - 6685 (15:54:59):

no, we help with technical support over chat

Customer (15:55:20):

can you give me an example of what kind of support?

Stephen - 6685 (15:55:42):

well we help with internet or cable challenges

Customer (15:56:05):

My internet is really slow. Any ideas?

Stephen - 6685 (15:56:21):

you dont have shaw internet service, so you would be best to contact your service provider

Stephen - 6685 (15:56:35):

we will need to end this chat session, as we are unable to assist further,  Have a great day.

Customer (15:56:45):

enjoy your summer

Stephen - 6685 (15:57:02):

Same to you  (whats left of it =P)

GoToAssist (15:57:07):

Stephen - 6685 has left the session.

Don't Upgrade to iPhoto 9.1.5

On Sunday afternoon I complied with my Mac's desire to run a software update. When I next launched iPhoto I found that all the nice coloured icons on the left hand menu are now grey which initially made me think they were not functioning, not so they are meant to be like that now. Worse than this however was that none of my photos displayed when in the "all events" view nor as thumbnails in the event itself. When I double clicked to open the image it deigned to show itself, but then promptly disappeared when I reverted to the thumbnails. 

I quit and relaunched the application, rebooted the computer and repeated for good measure but nothing worked. the application decided that it wanted to spend 3 hours detecting faces (a feature I do not use or want to use) so I left it to its devices to see if that would fix things. It did not. Eventually it did decide to provide me with thumbnail previews once in an individual event. However, it showed the same single image of Blaine in Paris as the thumbnail for every photo in the entire library.

It did not take long on Google to learn that 9.1.5 has been unkind to other mac users so I decided to roll back the update. This required several hours on Google and various forums to identify the best route, Apple support does not describe how to "un update". To employ a belt and braces approach I quit iPhoto, ran a time machine back up and made a FAT copy of the albums that I had added since Sunday. I opened applications in finder and then entered Time Machine, went back in time to Sunday morning (right clicking then get info to ensure it was iPhoto 9.1.3), another right click then restore to... navigate to the applications folder in the wizard and enter your administrator credentials when prompted.

Relaunching iPhoto I was delighted that the anticipated results has come to fruition, my library was unchanged but the application version was rolled back. My double back up was unnecessary, but you can be certain that had I not spent the time doing that then it would have all gone wrong. Oh important note, when you relaunch iPhoto be sure to check the skip 9.1.5 box or you will be doing this all again.

Polarman and Sparky

Polarman, Iqaluit's very own superhero, was spotted at IFD's charity carwash this weekend. One of the beneficiaries of the event is Habitat for Humanity so it seems fitting that Fire Prevention's superhero should start a relationship with Polarman who takes pride in looking after the community. Perhaps together they can make this year's Fire Prevention week the biggest and best that our city has seen?

This year the theme is "protect your family from fire" and I encourage you all to participate. You can access resources to use at home, work and school from the NFPA website.

http://www.nfpa.org/categoryList.asp?categoryID=2017&URL=Safety%20Information/Fire%20Prevention%20Week%202010&cookie%5Ftest=1

Really?

Easter Sunday we headed out on the ice again to watch the last of the Toonik Tyme events; the snowcross. As this is a snowmachine event we decided to travel on the snowmachine, makes sense to us. A row of vehicles and spectators lined the side of the course, we parked at the end of the row and watched the practice runs, enjoying the sunshine on our faces. A couple with their baby arrived and parked about 20foot to our right, they got off their machine and started chatting to some other people behind us. Blaine was sitting on our sled, I stood beside him chatting while I photographed the action.

After 30 minutes or so of practice runs, the starter dropped the flags and the race began. Apparently this was the signal for the aforementioned group to come and stand right infront of us! There are miles and miles of open ice and they have their own machine parked off to the right but no they just walk right past me as I am taking photos and then stand there. Blaine and I were too amazed to say anything. the four of them stood there for the whole time chatting away smack bang in front of us blocking our view and my pictures!!!

Do you know these people? Do you have any idea why they would be so freakin' rude?

As you can see there is PLENTY of space but they took the effort to walk from behind us, around us and regroup again infront of us. I have tried to think of a plausible explanation but am drawing a blank. To top it off when we started the engine to leave, the chick in the Maple Leafs toque turned around to look at the sound of the engine, but only moved aside when her man pulled the stoopid beatch out of the way.

Rant over, happy Easter everyone!