journal features

busy day

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2005.03.04

As of 15:00, this is what I've done today:

1) called the CIBC and bitched about the charge on my transfer of funds between my credit card and my chequing account - they refunded the $2.50

2) called Primus and got my cell phone added to our long distance plan, then got them to reverse the 'primus local service' charge for this month (a $40 savings)

3) called a client to ask him about my time sheet, and left a message

4) got a storage unit (we're #41) and learned that we supposedly only get one phone jack and that we're to take the garbage to where the laundry is

5) got a drying rack and a toilet scrub brush and some brita filter canisters and some telephone line

6) did the dishes

7) strung some phone line from the living room to the balcony and into the office to use the phone in the office ($30 solution rather than $450).

8) discovered, after opening every box, that Tracey had already found the studs for her unit, assembled the shelves, and started putting all of the stuff away.

9) moved the heavy tubs, the blue chairs, the broken metal chair and the other clutter that was in the storage unit in the other place to #41.

10) got confirmation from a client that he'd signed my timesheet and faxed it in.

Hopefully I'll be able to put together the wardrobe this afternoon.

The moral of the story is that if you have a (CIBC) Visa account, any negative balance (that is, when they owe you money) is subjected to the 'cash advance' fee of $2.50. Buncha crooks!

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)