Change is in the air at the McQueen residence. My brother has gotten a job back home and has moved out. We're down to having one Jack in the house now. I have commandeered brother Jack's old cubicle (ie: bedroom) and made it my office. There's a nice desk in there, and a bed. It's perfect. My bedroom is right beside my office, and my office has a bed in it. All I need downstairs is a bathroom, and I'd be set!
As the summer comes to a close, Jane is preparing to head back to University. Oh how we will miss her!
Bruce has graduated from high school and will be starting on his path to higher education soon.
And I'll be sticking around at my job, at least until Christmas, on another co-op work term. I have decided against getting my honours degree.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
French Cuisine, Anyone? (Part II)
A few weeks after my first incident we went back to the same place. This time, it was a similar experience, but the potatoes were burnt, yet cold.
Then when she (same waitress) gave me the change, she gyped me again. Not the twelve or thirteen cents like before, but rather about thirty five cents.
35 cents is not just not wanting to mess with pennies. I thought "Wow! This is a terrible waitress! I'm surprised she still working here!"
So this time I wrote down on the bill something to the effect of "If you didn't hold out your hand, you would have gotten a tip." and I walked out of the restaurant. When she saw the bill with the note said "What's this?" and gave the bill to a coworker, who passed it onto Craig, who gave it back to me outside the restaurant.
That time, others were unhappy with the quality of the food, so we decided that restaurant was cut. We wouldn't go back.
Now, a couple of years later, I have been to a few other restaurants in the area, and none of them seem to be able to calculate proper change. I'm wondering if the French have different math than the English folk. Or perhaps they don't teach math in Quebec or something? (Its a good thing no French restaurant owners read my blog. "Yes, I'll have toast with jam and spit, please.")
UPDATE: A year later, and I have found most places are pretty good. Although I just had another experience tonight, so look forward to a future blog post.
Then when she (same waitress) gave me the change, she gyped me again. Not the twelve or thirteen cents like before, but rather about thirty five cents.
35 cents is not just not wanting to mess with pennies. I thought "Wow! This is a terrible waitress! I'm surprised she still working here!"
So this time I wrote down on the bill something to the effect of "If you didn't hold out your hand, you would have gotten a tip." and I walked out of the restaurant. When she saw the bill with the note said "What's this?" and gave the bill to a coworker, who passed it onto Craig, who gave it back to me outside the restaurant.
That time, others were unhappy with the quality of the food, so we decided that restaurant was cut. We wouldn't go back.
Now, a couple of years later, I have been to a few other restaurants in the area, and none of them seem to be able to calculate proper change. I'm wondering if the French have different math than the English folk. Or perhaps they don't teach math in Quebec or something? (Its a good thing no French restaurant owners read my blog. "Yes, I'll have toast with jam and spit, please.")
UPDATE: A year later, and I have found most places are pretty good. Although I just had another experience tonight, so look forward to a future blog post.
French Cuisine, Anyone? (Part I)
I work in Quebec. My office is very close to Ontario. I can see the Parliament Buildings from my window. In my time here I've noticed a difference between the Quebec restaurants and the English ones I'm used to. The first time I noticed this was when I went to a local Bistro.
Often times, on Friday morning, the team in which I work will take a bit of time and have a staff breakfast. We used to go to this one particular Bistro. My first experience there happened to coincide with my first experience eating in a Quebec restaurant.
I walk in the front doors and there's a bunch of tables. I notice the ash tray's, and the smoke that permeates the air. I think "That's odd. They have the smoking section at the front, rather than the back." Now, in Sault Ste. Marie, smoking has been banned in all public places. Same with Ottawa. But not Gatineau. So, seeing smoking in a restaurant took me by small surprise at first, but whatever. No big deal.
But, we were lead past those tables, through a hallway, up a few stairs into another room. Nobody was in that room. "Cool!" I thought, "Not just a non-smoking section, but one that is sufficiently divided from the smoking section. This is sweet!"
As more people came in and occupied the other tables, they lit up. There was no non-smoking section at all! Isn't that illegal? Perhaps not in Quebec. After all, apparently giving yourself, and those around you, cancer is deeply rooted in the French culture. I'm told by various people "Smoking is such a social thing. Normally I don't smoke. But I do when I'm at a party."
To that I say "Ahhh, yes. What better way to spend time with your friends than by slowly killing them."
Anyway, I digress.
So, as we're finishing our breakfasts, we're given the bill. Each of us gets a bill. The bills are placed on little plastic trays, and given to each of us. I look at the cost. I had two eggs, bacon, homefries, toast, and a glass of orange juice. It came to over $7.00! How do they justify that?! Were those eggs golden eggs?! At my university I could get the same thing for just over $4. This was over a three dollar difference. Furthermore, the quantity at this Bistro was a lot less than at the university.
So I look in my wallet. All I have are twenties. So I put one on the tray. The waitress comes back and people start paying. Most are giving her money and saying "keep the change." Now, I'm not about to pay with a $20 for a $7 breakfast and tell her to keep the change. Especially after I've just lost six months of my life due to all that cigarette smoke.
So, she gives me some change back. Not the proper change, mind you, just some change. She's off by about 13 cents - not in my favor. But it's 13 cents. Big whoop-di-freaking-do.
Now, I understand that they probably don't want to deal with pennies, but if the bill was $7.43, and a $20 is given, then err on the side of the customer. Give them $12.60 or $12.65. It's only a few cents. But if you err on the side of the business that looks really bad. If you err on the side of the customer they think "Cool. They gave me a couple extra cents!" and then they're inclined to tip more.
The other thing about tips is that I like to be surreptitious about it. It's part of our North American culture. We tip, but we don't talk about it. When you leave a tip behind, you leave it as you're leaving. You don't calculate the tip in front of the waitress either, unless you're telling her to keep the change.
So, as she's taking our money, after she had taken mine and given me the change, she was stacking the bill trays. She didn't take mine. The stack was right beside me, so I put my tray on top of the stack. She took it off and gave it back to me.
???????
When she left I asked the table why she did that. Someone told me "Because you didn't tip her."
"WHAT?!?!?!" I had been planning on tipping her before that. I left a few pennies on the table. I figured she already got her tip when she gave me the incorrect change. They already stole enough of my money with the grossly over-priced breakfast.
To be continued....
Often times, on Friday morning, the team in which I work will take a bit of time and have a staff breakfast. We used to go to this one particular Bistro. My first experience there happened to coincide with my first experience eating in a Quebec restaurant.
I walk in the front doors and there's a bunch of tables. I notice the ash tray's, and the smoke that permeates the air. I think "That's odd. They have the smoking section at the front, rather than the back." Now, in Sault Ste. Marie, smoking has been banned in all public places. Same with Ottawa. But not Gatineau. So, seeing smoking in a restaurant took me by small surprise at first, but whatever. No big deal.
But, we were lead past those tables, through a hallway, up a few stairs into another room. Nobody was in that room. "Cool!" I thought, "Not just a non-smoking section, but one that is sufficiently divided from the smoking section. This is sweet!"
As more people came in and occupied the other tables, they lit up. There was no non-smoking section at all! Isn't that illegal? Perhaps not in Quebec. After all, apparently giving yourself, and those around you, cancer is deeply rooted in the French culture. I'm told by various people "Smoking is such a social thing. Normally I don't smoke. But I do when I'm at a party."
To that I say "Ahhh, yes. What better way to spend time with your friends than by slowly killing them."
Anyway, I digress.
So, as we're finishing our breakfasts, we're given the bill. Each of us gets a bill. The bills are placed on little plastic trays, and given to each of us. I look at the cost. I had two eggs, bacon, homefries, toast, and a glass of orange juice. It came to over $7.00! How do they justify that?! Were those eggs golden eggs?! At my university I could get the same thing for just over $4. This was over a three dollar difference. Furthermore, the quantity at this Bistro was a lot less than at the university.
So I look in my wallet. All I have are twenties. So I put one on the tray. The waitress comes back and people start paying. Most are giving her money and saying "keep the change." Now, I'm not about to pay with a $20 for a $7 breakfast and tell her to keep the change. Especially after I've just lost six months of my life due to all that cigarette smoke.
So, she gives me some change back. Not the proper change, mind you, just some change. She's off by about 13 cents - not in my favor. But it's 13 cents. Big whoop-di-freaking-do.
Now, I understand that they probably don't want to deal with pennies, but if the bill was $7.43, and a $20 is given, then err on the side of the customer. Give them $12.60 or $12.65. It's only a few cents. But if you err on the side of the business that looks really bad. If you err on the side of the customer they think "Cool. They gave me a couple extra cents!" and then they're inclined to tip more.
The other thing about tips is that I like to be surreptitious about it. It's part of our North American culture. We tip, but we don't talk about it. When you leave a tip behind, you leave it as you're leaving. You don't calculate the tip in front of the waitress either, unless you're telling her to keep the change.
So, as she's taking our money, after she had taken mine and given me the change, she was stacking the bill trays. She didn't take mine. The stack was right beside me, so I put my tray on top of the stack. She took it off and gave it back to me.
???????
When she left I asked the table why she did that. Someone told me "Because you didn't tip her."
"WHAT?!?!?!" I had been planning on tipping her before that. I left a few pennies on the table. I figured she already got her tip when she gave me the incorrect change. They already stole enough of my money with the grossly over-priced breakfast.
To be continued....
I Don't Know How Much Mow I Can Take!
If you recall, the McQueens have had a terrible time trying to get a working lawnmower. As I mentioned in Don't Mow My Lawn, they finally got a working lawnmower.
They used it this summer. After I had come home from house sitting I was told that the lawn mower was broken.
Huhh?!?! How did that happen so fast?! They just got it?!
Apparently, someone had gone over a root whilst mowing the lawn. This bent the blade a little.
Now the mower doesn't work like it's supposed to.
They used it this summer. After I had come home from house sitting I was told that the lawn mower was broken.
Huhh?!?! How did that happen so fast?! They just got it?!
Apparently, someone had gone over a root whilst mowing the lawn. This bent the blade a little.
Now the mower doesn't work like it's supposed to.
The Door Is A Jar
While I was away house sitting, the McQueen's garage door had been opened, and then closed. Unfortunately, there was something under the door of the garage. The door closed on this something. This broke the garage door.
A garage door is really heavy. The garage door is really a complicated piece of equipment. It has counter balances, cables and whatnot to make it so you can easily lift this 300 lbs door with one arm with ease.
When the door brook, one of these cables snapped. This made opening the door a difficult task indeed. The garage repair man had to be called. He came and fixed it. It's all fixed now.
A garage door is really heavy. The garage door is really a complicated piece of equipment. It has counter balances, cables and whatnot to make it so you can easily lift this 300 lbs door with one arm with ease.
When the door brook, one of these cables snapped. This made opening the door a difficult task indeed. The garage repair man had to be called. He came and fixed it. It's all fixed now.
The Family Vacation
A while ago the McQueens packed up and took a vacation. I didn't go with them. In fact, I wasn't even at their house when they returned. I was house sitting for someone else. (It follows that the next few blog stories I wasn't there for, so I'm relaying what I've heard.)
I'll give you a guess as to what happened when they went on vacation.
That's right. Car troubles. Even though they had the cars checked out before leaving, that didn't stop the car from acting up. While driving through Toronto, Jane was driving the Intrepid. She recalls "Even when I had the petal to the metal I couldn't get the car past 80kph."
Pastor Jack also told me they had to get the brakes fixed while away.
But, all in all, they had a good family vacation. They all got plenty of rest.
I'll give you a guess as to what happened when they went on vacation.
That's right. Car troubles. Even though they had the cars checked out before leaving, that didn't stop the car from acting up. While driving through Toronto, Jane was driving the Intrepid. She recalls "Even when I had the petal to the metal I couldn't get the car past 80kph."
Pastor Jack also told me they had to get the brakes fixed while away.
But, all in all, they had a good family vacation. They all got plenty of rest.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Ain't I A Louse?
If you move your mouse over the title of my blog posts then you'll see something funny. And, now that scientists have invented magic, even if you turn off Javascript, it still happens!
Wot's this, you say, "Nothing's happening! What are you talking about?"?
I'm going to use my mind-reading capabilities and guess you must be using Internet Explorer. tsk tsk, you didn't read Browser Wars, did you?
For the love of the internet, please, for heaven's sakes, please download Firefox or Opera.
Both are absouletly fantastic browsers. The other day at work, after working long and hard to get pages looking right in all three browsers, my boss printed off some of my pages, and they looked awful. So I started doing "Print Previews" of my pages, and saw yet another area where Internet Explorer falls short. Firefox and Opera do fine, but not IE.
Sorry folks, but IE is so bad it's not ready for the home-user's desktop, let-alone the corporate desktop.
Not only is it feature-poor, it's bad at what it's supposed to do. (Case in point, you can't see the trick I'm playing on you.) And it has a really bad security track record. As of this post, there are 21 unpatched security vulnerabilities with Internet Explorer 6, only 3 with Firefox, and 0 with Opera. With Internet Explorer the highest criticality of the vulnerabilities is "high criticality". With Firefox it's "less critical".
Trust me. Try the other browsers for a bit and see what it's like. Get used to them. Then ask yourself how you lived with IE for so long.
If someone can give me a good reason to use IE, please comment. Lets hear the reasons. I've given you plenty to not use it (security, extensibility, advanced features, proper HTML/CSS rendering, etc.). Let's get a dialogue going.
Here's yet another reason to make the switch: The internet will improve. Right now web developers such as myself have to hold back on what we can do because 85% of the viewing public can't handle what we're doing. But if IE usage goes down, then web authors will start to branch out and do things they couldn't do before. They can start to do their jobs properly; they can stop spending so much time on throwing hacks together to make pages work in Internet Explorer. Then they can spend more time on making pages look good, and work better, etc.
Then Microsoft will realize that people have stopped using their browser, and they might actually make it with quality in mind. The downside then is that I'll have one less thing to complain about.
Wot's this, you say, "Nothing's happening! What are you talking about?"?
I'm going to use my mind-reading capabilities and guess you must be using Internet Explorer. tsk tsk, you didn't read Browser Wars, did you?
For the love of the internet, please, for heaven's sakes, please download Firefox or Opera.
Both are absouletly fantastic browsers. The other day at work, after working long and hard to get pages looking right in all three browsers, my boss printed off some of my pages, and they looked awful. So I started doing "Print Previews" of my pages, and saw yet another area where Internet Explorer falls short. Firefox and Opera do fine, but not IE.
Sorry folks, but IE is so bad it's not ready for the home-user's desktop, let-alone the corporate desktop.
Not only is it feature-poor, it's bad at what it's supposed to do. (Case in point, you can't see the trick I'm playing on you.) And it has a really bad security track record. As of this post, there are 21 unpatched security vulnerabilities with Internet Explorer 6, only 3 with Firefox, and 0 with Opera. With Internet Explorer the highest criticality of the vulnerabilities is "high criticality". With Firefox it's "less critical".
Trust me. Try the other browsers for a bit and see what it's like. Get used to them. Then ask yourself how you lived with IE for so long.
If someone can give me a good reason to use IE, please comment. Lets hear the reasons. I've given you plenty to not use it (security, extensibility, advanced features, proper HTML/CSS rendering, etc.). Let's get a dialogue going.
Here's yet another reason to make the switch: The internet will improve. Right now web developers such as myself have to hold back on what we can do because 85% of the viewing public can't handle what we're doing. But if IE usage goes down, then web authors will start to branch out and do things they couldn't do before. They can start to do their jobs properly; they can stop spending so much time on throwing hacks together to make pages work in Internet Explorer. Then they can spend more time on making pages look good, and work better, etc.
Then Microsoft will realize that people have stopped using their browser, and they might actually make it with quality in mind. The downside then is that I'll have one less thing to complain about.
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