Category: Family and Friends

Posts about my family, friends, and acquaintances.

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Updating to iPhone 7 Plus

It’s about time … well, almost, my carrier doesn’t have any stock at the moment but that doesn’t stop us from ordering the phone all the same; but, that’s not what I wrote to tell you about.

Loyalty.

Whenever you are updating any service, always remember that almost all of the “big” carriers/providers have a “loyalty” department. Even if you haven’t been a long time customer, give them a call and ask for a better deal. It might not be much but like the old adage says, “if you don’t ask, you won’t get”.

Thanks to the loyalty agent that worked with us yesterday; and, Telus, don’t forget to thank these people, too. They do a great job and work hard to retain your existing customers!

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Saturday Night in Dundas 

The music is loud but good all the same. It seems the band caters to the local university crowd even if they’re playing sets more suitable to my age group. Although the current set sounds just as good as the earlier sets I don’t think I know the actual songs themselves. 

We call this Saturday night at the Winchester Arms. Pizza; Stella; good music … not much more to ask for. 

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Handyman I Am

Well not really, but with home ownership comes a certain amount of a requirement to become at least a little bit handy around the house doing minor, and sometimes not so minor repairs.

This Saturday just past, with some more work last night (and still a bit more to go) I am very grateful for the help one of my newest friends (Bob!) gave me with replacing the stairs leading into our family room (also known as my home office space). There were a couple of cracked treads that needed to be replaced and my wife with her industrious ways was able to locate some new oak treads and risers Bob and I used to replaced/re-inforce the old pine(?) treads and risers.

The stairs leading up to the bedrooms needs to be tackled soon but at least we have a much better idea what we will be looking at now that the lower stairs are almost complete.

Today, just a short while ago, I also finally got around to replacing the GFCI outlet in the lower bathroom, which also appears to have corrected the issues with the outlet on the other side of the wall (and presumably on the same circuit). Another one for the win column!

Looking forward to more projects around the house yard now that I have taken a few slivers and zapped myself a few times … it’s all part of the fun owning a home. I hope you are able to enjoy these things too.

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Happy Turkey Day

A Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate and give thanks on this day.

Even the turkeys are doing a happy dance today!

dancing-turkey

To see the notes click here.To hide the notes click here.
Re-scheduled from the original 2009 Thanksgiving post.
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IDxD

Wait? What?!

Some days are a bit of a challenge around home but we always try to find a way to makes things light and continue to look for the bright side as often as we can.

Although a topic for a much longer series of posts, Terri has been diagnosed with a rare brain disease, Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy (Autoimmune) (HE). Among its many varying symptoms and issues the ability to communicate will at times have us use “Identification by Description” (IDxD) for Terri to get her point across. Fortunately this is not often but it can be infuriating, frustrating and downright demoralizing when it does but being together for over 20 years we know each other well enough that it works.

Coming up with this little acronym gave us both reason to laugh … and laughter is the best medicine!

 

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Telus Loyalty Reward – Thank You!

I had thought about just sending out a tweet to say thanks but then 140 characters or less probably will not convey Telus‘ kindness or the value of their thoughtful gifts … yes, gifts! Completely unexpected, too.

Let me backtrack a bit … we pre-ordered our iPhone 6 Plus 128MB phones shortly after it was possible to do so on the Telus Mobility web site. We hemmed and hawed a bit about which model to go with an ultimately decided to just go BIG. After ordering I thought it would be nice to share this with a tweet:

Earlier this week I received a call from FedEx asking to confirm my address for a delivery. All said and done, I asked who is the shipper? They replied with Telus … and I’m thinking cool, the iPhones are coming earlier than their original October 6th promised shipment date.

Yesterday, as arranged, the FedEx delivery arrived … Terri opened the box as I knew if I opened the box the rest of the day would be gone (I really do love to play with new tech). The iPhones were not there?! What?!! I spoke to Telus earlier in the week and they said they were just completing the order processing and the iPhones would be shipping this week. Very patient and helpful customer service associate as well. (The iPhones were shipped via Canada Post and arrived technically on Thursday … I had to go to the Post Office to pick them up on Friday).

Back to the mystery(?) FedEx shipment … inside was a quality note card with a hand-written message thanking us for pre-ordering our iPhones and sending out the tweet above, signed by “Your friends at Telus”. Thanks!

What else was in the box? Another box with a big purple ribbon tied up into a bow and inside that box was the following:

Now I can really have some more fun. Stay fit. More power. Great sound.

Thanks, again, Telus … we will enjoy these thoughtful gifts!

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My 2013

The year 2013 stood out more than past years, enough so to write this post..

Our “babies” left us this year … our babies being our fancy pet rats. We rescued, and provided a sanctuary at times, as well as adopted fancy pet rats for close to ten years but as difficult as it was we chose to take a pause in that work this year with the passing of our last babies over the summer time. They are beautiful, intelligent, addictive little creatures but we are among the few that see them that way and they require a great deal of work to ensure they live a safe and comfortable life. A life any family pet deserves.

I changed jobs this year, some may even say I started a new career, too. I spend nearly 25 years with E.C.E. (Canada) Ltd. serving many roles with many titles but essentially it could all be boiled down to customer service. It was a tumultuous year for E.C.E. as well with new ownership taking over but they will survive and strive if by nothing more than the passion of that new ownership … or so at least I firmly believe and wish them all the best going forward with.

After many months of discussions and negotiations I started my second career as the Lead Happiness Engineer – NextGEN Gallery at Photocrati Media; in its essence a customer service role but one with great potential for growth. The opportunities offered by a small company can be immense, especially one that is building its product offering on the WordPress platform. Obviously there is the possibility of growing the Lead Happiness Engineer role, but there is also the possibilities of being able to actually use my WordPress knowledge and the code writing skill sets I have built as well with contributions to the Photocrati Media products currently being offered and the new products, features, and options being considered for the future.

We, Terri and I, traveled this year, too. It wasn’t that we has set out in the beginning of the year to cross something off our bucket lists but we created the opportunity all the same. We rode the world famous trolley cars of San Francisco. Although we had far reaching plans to visit the Grand Canyon, Yosemite Park, and the Hoover dam (not necessarily in that order) the US Government happen to “close” at the same which was actually quite fortunate in hindsight as our travel plans were forced to be drastically changed but, also in hindsight, our west coast vacation was a much better holiday. We stayed in Monterey for a few days and then moved up to San Francisco for a few more days.

Looking forward to 2014 already has a significant event on the horizon, Terri and I will be celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary … not certain what else this year holds for us but we have each other and I am certain we will have things to do and places to see.

Happy New Year!

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Big Basin Redwood State Park

After our harrowing experience driving on mountain roads to get where we were going. We were almost to the point where we had enough and just wanted to find our way out of the wilderness … and a freeway to Monterey. We pretty much stumbled upon the park, so much so that we didn’t think we were even at the right place and dreaded the very thought of having to return the way we had just driven. Fortunately we had finally found Big Basin Redwood State Park … and with the help of the park rangers also found we could just keep driving and find our way back to Highway 1 and a more or less safe road to Monterey, too.

Before we left, we paid a second time for day-use of a state park and proceeded to take our time following a simple trail through the trees. Here are some of the picture from the day:

 

To see the NB click here.To hide the NB click here.
Travel Tip: When touring California State Parks, you only have to pay once … and just remember to display your ticket in the driver’s side front window … for any State Park visit that day.