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Adventures with Canada Post

OH MY GOD Have I got a huge rant about Canada Post today.  >.<

[I may reformat this later, but for now it’s just copypasta from texts I sent today.  Sorry.]

Very important package went missing.  Not arrived, but marked as delivered.  Not in the lobby mailbox.  I think the carrier put it in the wrong box, and i have no idea where it was actually left, so I can’t just go to that company and ask.

Their CS is ball-ass awful.  I phoned in, and their automated system told me it was delivered and that was all the info they had.  It said I could create a ticket online.

So I created a ticket online.  but first I HAD to register for an account, because fuck you.

Then I fill in the ticket, giving them all the details.  “From address” was a REQUIRED field, so I looked up the Best Buy Mississauga address and used that.  WTF.  Ok, so I fill out their stupid 5 PART FORM and hit send.

Then it tells me Thank you for your submission, your ticket has been noted, we will not contact you about this issue again and the ticket status says CLOSED

JFC qkehkjhsfkjehfkuwyrdmofereoirtjlrvkgjrtlg

So I am an angry Caitlin.

So I went downstairs and left a message on the lobby box asking if anyone else received it, and to bring it to our suite.  I also left a note INSIDE our box rescinding permission to leave packages in the box, and saying they all must be brought to the suite directly.

I also called a different CP phone number, and actually talked to a guy and opened a service claim, since it was a $200 package.  Cool, got that set up, but in order to proceed they need Best Buy to phone in and approve the claim.

So Best Buy is actually pretty cool, and has a “contact us about this order” form on their site, so I can use that.

But that’s not the point.

I’m also annoyed because this is a $200 package.  It’s “just” a bunch of MacBook Air USB to Ethernet adapters, to solve our office networking problems, but that’s not the point.  It’s a thing we ordered and need, and was supposedly delivered.

And it was $200 worth of shit.

I think I know how the problem happened, so I’m pissed off at that too.

You know how the CP package delivery is usually separate from the normal CP mail delivery?

A few months back, we got a new CP package guy.  He came up and asked me if we required him to come up to the suite if a package did not require a signature, or if he could just put them in the box.  I said the box was fine.  Tra la la.

Now, we are suite 304, but our actual box is number 300.  I have no idea why, it just is.  But the names of each company in a box are PRINTED INSIDE THE BOX.  So if the CP guy just looked at “304” and stuffed it in the #304 box, instead of the SURFEASY BOX, then I can understand the problem, except for the fact that it’s a known issue and that’s why we have the names written inside the boxes (and CP knows about this)

So I left a note on #304 asking if they’d received it, but they might not even see that until tomorrow, and *then*, even IF they have it, might not have time to run it over to me that day.

I know I sure as hell don’t have time to run around re-delivering mail, sorry.

And I left a note inside our box rescinding permission to leave packages in the box.

I’m more pissed off about the whole thing because of their shit CS support for this.  If someone else got the box, there’s a good chance I’ll actually get it for reals tomorrow.  It’s the terrible, hour-long adventure of actually trying to get CP to know about the problem that really pissed me off.

And I get (and technically, support) the push to get tickets done online as opposed to over the phone, but JFC have a better ticketing system!  Don’t AUTO-CLOSE reports of missing mail.

But it’s also a pissoff that it happened in general. Everything else I needed to fix the network arrived today (from other places, and not through CP).  The Airport Express.  The ethernet cables.  Just not these, the things I need to ATTACH the ethernet cables >.<

So I can;t even set up the Airport thingies, since I need to connect to it via ethernet to set it up, and spoilers, I have a Macbook Air and therefore need the adapter to use an ethernet cable.

Plus I needed the adapters for the 4 other people in the office, and myself, who will need them to connect to the network> UGH

OH.  AND.

The shitty ticket form for CP had a 1000 character limit for details.  Ok, fine.  But it didn’t say how many characters you HAD, it just yelled at you if you were over.  So I fucked around with it for a bit, trying to see what I could cut to get under 1000 characters, but it wasn’t working.  So I copypasta into Word to do a character count.  726 characters, 944 including spaces.  HOLY HELLS, CP.

And now I am utterly, utterly drained.

It’s … It’s Alive!

Well, sort of. I’d like to get back into documenting my life a bit more, so I spiffed up the blog so it’s actually functional again. Updated the version, slapped on a new (free) theme, and I’m all set.

In theory, anyway. Let’s see if I can actually remember to take time to write things.

I mostly stopped because of Facebook, really.  More people responded to posts there, since they were already on it anyway, so things here got ignored. I never really bother to write out full stories for FB, so I’d write a quick blurb about something, people would like/comment, and that would pretty much be it. Blegh.

LJ Test

I think I fixed the LJ problem. At least with future posts, not so much with the past ones.

If you see this, it worked, and I am happy. If you don’t see this, I’m very frustrated, but you don’t know it.

Honeymoon!!!

We’re going on our honeymoon!

That’s right folks, 4 years later we’re finally getting a honeymoon! ^____^

Josh is in a wedding party for a wedding happening in Australia in January. We figured since we’re going to Oz anyway, we’ll make a nice long honeymoon trip out of it.

We’ll be going for a month-ish, spanning December and January. Anyone have any suggestions for travel booking sites? Most of the big cheap ones (RedTag, iTravel2000, SellOffVacations) don’t fly to Australia for some reason (Austria, yes, Australia, no. WTF?)
Ideally, I’d prefer to rent a cottage or something instead of staying in a hotel room for so long, but it’s peak season there so I don’t know if we can afford to do that.

Suggestions? Tips?

Faery Fest was Fun

[ljuser]dart-dense-boy[/ljuser] and I were at Faery Fest this weekend!
We had lots of fun, even though I managed to get sunburned on Saturday and Lindsay had a less-than-awesome drop in blood sugar on Sunday (such is a con, eh?).

We didn’t sell as much as we were hoping, but now we have 3 shows under our belt and are learning what sort of displays work best for what items.

We met some awesome people in the booth next to us – [ljuser]uniformgrey[/ljuser] (a fun, awesome chick who makes horns paintings and all sorts of nifty things) & Kevin (I don’t know if Kevin has an LJ or not, but he’s a cool guy who kinda looks like Adam Savage and makes his own chainmail). They had a bunch of cool things in their booth, and I bought some horns for my faun costume and a cute little bottle with “+1” etched onto it for Josh (shhh, it’s a secret!). They are awesome, except they accidentally live in Peterborough instead of Guelph. 😛
I will have to post about the stuff I bought at their booth in the VAR blog, but no time to do that this morning, it’s almost time to be off to work!

My hair bleached out in the sun sooo badly, it’s crazy. I started out the weekend with blue/green hair (Fishbowl from Special Effects), and now part of it are nearly white again and I need to re-dye because it looks like I haven’t touched it in months. Blargh.

My Mom’s Store is Open!

Yesterday was Opening Day for my mom’s store in Kincardine! It’s called J’Adorn, and it’s across the street from Becker shoes (across the street and a few doors down from Fincher’s). I’d post better landmarks for those of you who are from Kincardine as well, but as you know all the downtown stores seem to play musical chairs every few years, so practically nothing downtown is in the same place as it was back in 2000. Except Fincher’s and Becker.

The Grand Opening isn’t until August 7th. Yeah, yeah, kinda far away, but she wanted the store open in time for tourist season, and then my brother is getting married in July so everyone will be focusing on that, which leaves August as the time for a Grand Opening.
Loads of people came in to see and it was really busy all day. A very nice start to what I hope is years of good business in downtown Kincardine.

I am pleased with how the website came out.

More Meme Time, Oh Boy!

Took this test. For two questions, it’s scarily accurate.

Your result for The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test…

6 – the Questioner

Thanks for taking the test !

you chose CY – your Enneagram type is SIX (aka “The Loyalist”).

“I am affectionate and skeptical”

Questioners are responsible, trustworthy, and value loyalty to family, friends, groups, and causes. Their personalities range broadly from reserved and timid to outspoken and confrontative.

How to Get Along with Me

• Be direct and clear.

• Listen to me carefully.

• Don’t judge me for my anxiety.

• Work things through with me.

• Reassure me that everything is OK between us.

• Laugh and make jokes with me.

• Gently push me toward new experiences.

• Try not to overreact to my overreacting.

What I Like About Being a SIX

• being committed and faithful to family and friends

• being responsible and hardworking

• being compassionate toward others

• having intellect and wit

• being a nonconformist

• confronting danger bravely

• being direct and assertive

What’s Hard About Being a SIX

• the constant push and pull involved in trying to make up my mind

• procrastinating because of fear of failure; having little confidence in myself

• fearing being abandoned or taken advantage of

• exhausting myself by worrying and scanning for danger

• wishing I had a rule book at work so I could do everything right

• being too critical of myself when I haven’t lived up to my expectations

Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele, The Enneagram Made Easy. Discover the 9 Types of People.

Harper: San Francisco, 1994, 161 pages

You liked the test? so S P R E A D I T ! tell everyone!!!

(copypaste the HTML-code from below to your profile or blog!)

you wanna know MORE? so check out, what Wikipedia says about your type… …even more you’ll find in Google

_____________________

You are not completely happy with the result?!

You chose CY. Use the BACK-button on your browser see the other options!

Take The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test at HelloQuizzy

Contacting Professors

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to go about contacting professors and seeing if they are interested in taking on a Masters student?

Is it better to just send a polite “request for information” type email, or a “Hello, I’m Caitlin and I’m awesome and you should be my Masters Advisor, let’s meet to discuss this” email?

To toss a wrench into the works, my university grades were less than stellar. I had an 89% overall GPA at Seneca, with a 92% for the last year, but my UoG grades are… not as pretty. Which, if you’re wondering, no, I don’t like admitting. I’m hoping my shiny smile and real world experience will make up for that part (and have it on good authority that one of the current PopMed MSc students has a 0 on his transcript, so it’s not all about the grades, despite what the Grad Calendar says).

—– long back story follows, if it’s tl;dr, please just reply to the above, thanks! —–

I was out for lunch with my awesome boss and her friend from UoG the other day, and this friend gave me three (!) names of profs to contact about being an MSc Advisor. Holy crap wow, she’s now my new favourite person. 😀

I was feeling a bit down on the whole Masters thing, since going to the info day and poking around the Graduate Calendar was rather discouraging to how I was envisioning this process. Ideally, I’d like to keep my full time job (because it is made of awesome and win) and go to school part time for a couple more years and at the end get a piece of paper with a higher degree than I currently have on it. I’m not interested in being the type of MSc student that’s chained in their lab for 16 hours a day for $20k a year (I already have a better job, thanks). And I’ll be honest, I’m not particularly interested in writing/defending a thesis. I just want to learn. (and get that dangling carrot)

Anyhoo, it was looking less and less likely that that was even a possibility, based on the rules and procedures in the Calendar and looking at what other MSc students were doing.
Then at lunch the topic swung around to whether or not I’d done a post-grad degree, and I said I’d like to. My boss said they were trying to convince me to keep my full-time job while I did it, and I quipped that first I needed to convince the school to let me do it that way. Friend-of-my-boss seemed confused that they wouldn’t, and I admitted I hadn’t actually talked to any profs because I thought doing it that way wasn’t actually feasible. She said that was exactly what some profs look for in a Masters student. We talked briefly about what type of MSc I was interested in (Epidemiology in the Population Medicine department of the OVC – in part due to my new interest in the dairy industry) and she mentioned there was an Epidemiology By Course Work MSc (which I knew) and gave me some names to contact (which is awesome), and said basically all I’d need to do is convince someone to be my MSc Advisor and then I could do it roughly the way I’m picturing.

So now I have to actually contact these people, and I don’t want to screw it up. Yikes! o_0

Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

Good news, everyone!

Garrison is engaged!

That’s right, my brother is getting married! He and his girlfriend Erin just announced it to the family over Thanksgiving weekend. Wedding is tentatively scheduled for Summer 2010. They already have a house and a cat and are living in Kincardine.

Update on the $50

Turns out the $50 was indeed for a supplemental exam I took back when I first started going to Guelph, due to a funny credit swap from Seneca.

When I asked why I hadn’t received a bill for said exam, they said they don’t send bills or invoices for supplementals, and it would not have appeared on my tuition bill either. The guy I was talking to said that if the prof running it didn’t tell me it cost money, I’d essentially have no way of knowing about it.
Nice, eh?

When I asked how I managed to graduate while still owing money to the school, he said he didn’t know how that was possible, and that it was weird that it happened. o_0
Oh well.
I want my transcript so I have to pay it I guess.

Hey ! Here is a poke for you to try to remember to get over there and give them the $50 for me. ^_~ If not, that’s ok, I’ll go on Wed afternoon after the meeting with the lawyer. But in that case, I’ll need my cheque back.