Nothing much to report on the home front. I’m still adapting to the new job & schedule. The wife is back to work, document.write(“”); so it gave me more time to catch up on the TV series that were accumulating on the PVR. I’ve binged on Alcatraz and Unforgettable (my two favourites this season), as well as NCIS, Hawaii 5-0 and Vampire Diaries (but I still have to watch Grey’s Anatomy and The Walking Dead). But it’s on my writing that I should be catching up. I have a pile of books to comment on and many ideas of blog entries that I would like to share with the blogosphere. (Read more of my daily adventures beyond the jump).
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I had to deal with two technical problems this week. First, one of my favourite HD channels, Oasis, stopped working about two weeks ago. Whenever I was dialing that channel the cable box was crashing and rebooting. Quite annoying for a channel that cost me two bucks per month. I called Videotron customers’ service and they sent a technician. He couldn’t find anything wrong, so he boosted my signal (he thought it was a bit weak) and suggested that the problem was maybe with the decoder (I have an older Scientific Atlanta’s Explorer 8300 HD+). I was not happy with the idea of shelling another six hundred loonies for a new HD PVR cable decoder (although they are currently offering a two hundred bucks rebate). The tech finally called Videotron to make sure they were not seeing any problems from their end and then we learned that the problem was known: apparently the latest software update created a glitch between the close-captions and Oasis. Simply turning off the close-captions solved the problem until a new software patch was made (they were already working with Cisco to resolve the issue).

Secundo, one of my iMac’s memory bay broke down a while ago when I tried to upgrade its memory from 2 Gb to 4 Gb. I therefore found myself with the same amount of memory than before and the computer was running quite slow after the lastest OS update to Lion. That was quite annoying. So, in preparation for sending it for repair, I bought a new hard drive and cloned the iMac drive for security. But before scheduling an appointment with the always humble Apple specialist of the Genius Bar, I decided to try re-installing the memory again. And, you know what?, this time it worked! My iMac had self-healed and now it runs much faster with its maximum memory of four gigs (although if Apple refresh the iMac line this year I will be seriously considering buying the latest model in order to get a more powerful computer).

Anyway, beside doing a bunch of back-ups and software upgrades (with their new devices annoucement, Apple released many sofware and apps updates) or the usual basement clean-up or reading news online, I dug up some old notebooks and text files to find material to maybe beef up my blog’s content and feed some of my epublishing projects. Strangely, I always amaze myself when I read my old writings. Most of the time I don’t remember writing it, but I also feel I’ve lost so much edge (and vocabulary) in the last ten or twenty years… This time I read some poetry and texts from my twenties and I was surprised how dark they were. I had forgotten how much angst and despair I felt in those years. I might use some of those texts here, but the decision of using such texts is always difficult since they might be too personal to share. Some should be left for postumous publication (if there’s anybody left to oversee their publication of course). Or maybe I should limit myself to simply comment on my readings…

It was another busy but quiet week. I am settling in well into my new job, document.write(“”); but the long commuting is a real drag and I remain quite tired once I come back home which leave me not much time to do anything (like we say in french: it’s “metro-boulot-dodo”).
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There’s little notable events this week. Last monday my wife and I saw a small woodpecker in our front yard’s tree. I was able to identify it as a female “downy woodpecker.” I guess it is a sign of an early spring which is not surprising since day-time temperature remained slightly above zero celcius for most of the week (I’ve heard that the cherry flowers are already blossoming in Washington DC!). So far in Montreal we’ve had only one real snow storm. Where is my winter?

Yesterday I tried some warm spiced wine like they used to drink in the middle ages (or even in ancient Greece and Rome) and I found it horrible. I guess it is an acquired taste. I spent most of my days off re-installing a functional copy of Windows on my Mac (not much use for it beside getting to know XP better for my work, but it’s rather amusing).

I’ve also started reading Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (after watching the movie I was curious to see how different it was from the novel; I’ll probably eventually write a short comment on both), I’ve watched the Canadian TV series Bomb Girls as well as another Ken Burns documentary titled Horatio’s Drive, America’s first road trip (which was quite interesting and entertaining). And, of course, I’ve read news online.

First full week of work at my new permanent job. The new schedule starts much earlier, so getting up that early is really killing me. I was completely exhausted at the end of the week. I hope I’ll get used to that fast. But so far everything else is going well at the new job. However, my blood pressure and glucose level are much higher than usual (I don’t know if it’s due to the stress of a new job, the fact that I am so tired or because the pharmacist recently changed my blood-pressure medication for a generic brand — or maybe all of the above).

Since my wife is unemployed (fortunately the employer finally paid what was due and provided the belated ROE) I had to help her with some paperwork (EI filing and such), but we spent more time together than usual. We watched movies almost every nights (Norwegian Wood, a couple of Shrek movies, Marmaduke, HereAfter and several Ken Burns’ documentaries — I couldn’t watch the one I was most eager to see, about Mark Twain, but so far we’ve seen the ones about The Statue of Liberty, The Brooklyn Bridge, Lewis & Clark, and The Congress; they’re quite fascinating).

Unfortunately that (as well as working more hours, being so tired and having a longer commuting) left me with little time to do much. My list of to-do (writing, order processing, basement clean up, research on manga, new publishing projects, &c.) keeps pilling up…

However, I have updated my bibliography. While doing some clean up I found a pile of old Le Sablier (the newspaper of the University of Montreal’s history department). I delighted myself with the rediscovery of Mario Tessier‘s articles (historian, astronomer and librarian, he started writing with those “historical parodies” before writing sci-fi short stories, but is now mostly known for his “Carnets du Futurible” articles in Solaris) but also found a bunch of very short sci-fi stories and articles that I had totally forgotten writing! So I have added them to my list.

And I have also read a few interesting news stories and compiled their links for further sharing and usage.

And how was YOUR week?

I had a busy couple of weeks. So much that I had to postpone many of the “to-do” that I had planned (like, document.write(“”); among other things, writing or the magazine orders’ processing–delayed again!).
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I had to deal with a recycling problem (the city doesn’t pick it up when the container it not full enough and it doesn’t pick it up when it is too full. What am I to do?).

I had to deal with problems at my wife’s job (the japanese restaurant where she is working [in appalling conditions I’m sad to say] is moving, but the owner failed so far to provide the end-of-employment papers, the last couple of pays, as well as five-years worth of vacation-pay; the owner also has an history of ignoring labor laws and tolerating a work environment that foster psychological harassment (when she is not screaming and threatening herself), so I went to talk with her but without much success. All I got was promises, again.).

I had to deal with a couple of union-related problems at the job (investigating whether the printer’s thermal paper we are manipulating every day contains BPA or not [still unresolved] and dealing with quarrelling withing our already disfunctional union [not much success there either]).

The greatest news is that I was unexpectedly offered a permanent position, which means a full-time schedule (more money and vacation) and employment security (I’ll stop worrying about how much hours I’ll get for the next season). However, the news left me with mixed feelings: I liked a lot the library and the team I was working with, the change was very sudden (the next day) and made in difficult circumstances (the guy I was taking the job from was told only the previous day), the commuting time is much longer (nearly an hour and half to go there from home) and this new library would not have been my first and best choice of workplace. But I couldn’t turn down such an offer and, after working there for a couple of days, I must say I like it (the library and the new team) and I am sure it will all turn out well. In any cases, I have to work there at least a year, but after that I could always look for another permanent job closer to home if I am not totally satisfied there.

Despite all this, I still had a little time to write and to gather a few news links.