The week in review, in general.

Hmmm, how does one summarize a week that sucked major ass most of the time? Oh, I guess you say just that. THIS WEEK SUCKED MAJOR ASS MOST OF THE TIME. I won't bore you with the stuff I cannot talk about in here anyhow. I won't complain about idiot co-workers, idiot vendors and ignorance abounding all over the place. I won't even bore you with what I wanted to do this week and did not get one iota completed. Instead I will explain my Friday as it pretty much illustrates it all.

On Friday, I woke later than I wanted to, saw DW off and started working. I was going to surprise DW at work before she left. Her iPod was missing the included ear pods thanks to TC so I was going to go and get her suitable replacements (or better) so that she did not have to use the crappy airline one. I also was hoping to get my father's computer completed so she could take it with her when she dropped off the car for him to use while she was away; no dice. I checked on the bank hoping to see the fruits of my past labour; on-call and call log bonus money. Instead, it did not seem like the numbers were adding up to what I expected meaning I could not do what I wanted to do this weekend. I also could not verify the numbers prior to callign payroll because I could not find my login information (we have electronic paystubs now).

To continue my day, I was missing the World Cup game that afternoon. When I got in, a new guy was in my boss' desk so I had to break him into my sharing role of that space. The vendor messed up again for the same client of ours for the fourth time this week alone and i had to make that call to get things changed before Saturday. I started archiving my outlook because it was an obscene size on the server. So, before they warned me again or went snooping around to find out why it was so big, I started that process; it takes forever to do.

My nephew played a Brazilian championship under 19 swaud in a friendly at Ester Shriner Stadium in North York. The idiots running the thing thought that charging people for an unadvertised event, $25, was a good idea; this up form the ten they normally charge. Needless to say, they had a ridiculously small crowd on hand when they could have filled the stadium with reasonable ticket prices. On top of that, teh idiot coach did not play the guys to win against this group even though they were leading 2-1 at one point. As usual, my nephew played brilliantly but grew very frustrated with the ball-less wonders he was playing with along with the agressive, ankle-hacking group he was playing against. What started out as exciting futbol quickly turned into a farce. The home squad lost 4-2 when they had no business doing so.

So, it is time to head home and I start my vehicle by remote like I always do. Now, if you have neevr been in TR, you would not know it has this expensive security system setup in it; immobilizer, car starter, windows down and up, door locks, and two-way communication with a 6km range (which I have successfully tested to about 3 or 4 km away). It has one simple, but effective achilles heel; the remote battery. Without the battery, you cannot operate all the various functions. Sure, they do have a manual override switch and sequence to shut it off in such an event that your battery dies but who remembers that shit? So, when I went to check the status, it died. Now, I could not get into the truck without setting off the alarm.

Lots of people hanging about and hating to look like an idiot with a big fancy Trailblazer and a blaring alarm, I bit the bullet and used the factory remote to unlock the door. Yes, it set off the alarm immediately. No biggie as at least five other cars that evening did the same. None of the looked like TR though. So, I get in and restart the truck (as it had shutdown after the ten minutes had passed). Shortly afterwards, it rearmed itself with me in it while it was running. Ok, at least I had A/C and I was safe inside. Now what?

My father and my nephew had already left the parking lot. There were lots of youths around but so dumb looking and acting it was simply not worth the hassle. I could risk driving it to the convenience store which would surely set it off again. Uhm, no, not in Toronto. Young black men in tinted vehicles being approached by police with suspicions rarely end well so let's use that as a last option. I had to come up with something better. Simply put, I needed some way to apply 1.5 volts to the alarm remote in a AAA space. I had none of those spare batteries left because I gave the last two to DW before she left for her ailing wireless mouse. I had lots of AAs in the truck used for the headphones of the DVD system. Naturally, unusable because they were too big. Hmmm, right voltage, wrong size. I could work with that.

Using the dead battery and a live one, I tried to transfer enough juice to disable the alarm. I only needed to do that once as it will rearm itself once I got home. The recharge would not work so back to thinking. Okay, instead of trying to transfer the charge from the AA to the AAA, maybe I could transfer it directly to the remote? Sure, but the contacts were inside a tube-like area so something had to sit "inside" of the battery compartment of the remote. I looked around the truck, emptied the glove box and cubby holes. Nothing. I was starting to get frustrated. That's when I foudn them; my SIL keys that were given to us to be able to hit Ottawa whenever we were in the area.

I eventually took the two keys off and, holding them against the appropriate ends of the battery and then jerryrigging them into the battery compartment to touch the leads, I was able to get enough connection to trigger the remote. Now the fun part as I had to hold that in place as the stupid remote's sing-song startup sequence went through. Then, I had to twist two fingers to press the first and third buttons in order to disable the alarm. A few tries later, and the flashing blue light went out. Whew!!

I closed the glove box, whipped out of the parking lot and heading hoem down Bathurst. Once home, I threw a charged battery into the remote and rearmed TR. I had just missed DW's message on the laptop by thre minutes as I had to take care of nature or blow out a kidney. FUN FREAKING FRIDAY.

Saturday and Sunday were fine, except me and Jack Schitt hung out and did nothing constructive all weekend. I did go and hang with KJ and family plus some other friends till midnight so that was quite enjoyable. And, of course, DW and I engaged in some G-rated Skyping on the computer. So, I guess you can say that the week ended nicely after a shitty start and middle.

TTFN.