I'm enjoying my time off more so now then I did last year this time where my main job

I worked at this time last year as projects all but fizzled out last summer. I was fortunate to grab the job at Direct buy for July and August 2 last year. When I left my last market research job in February this year, I was left wondering what to do. Situation normal. I applied for employment insurance immediately (ei) and sent out two job searches and got the job I'm doing now. It didn't take long to find work. However work is slowly drying up at this job as well. They said around the end of June there would be projects over the summer even though work could be somewhat spotty at best. If I don't get confirmation of another project coming up this week, then I'll be out there along with the rest of of the unemployed masses looking for work. I need something else to fill in between short term and something steady 3 days there 3 days at the current job. Ideally the way things are going now, that'd be my best situation. The economy was a lot different this time last year then now. Or even more so April then even now. I've got a few call centre job options to pursue and being on ei at least I have some income until about the middle of September. After that, I'm back to where I was at the end of February. I'm not that desperate but by the middle of this month if I'm not working, I'll be feeling the ice buckle beneath my feet.

Switching gears here and a bit of a rant to follow. Now I'm about as tolerant of other religious beliefs as much as any Caucasian Anglo Saxon male can ever hope to be. There are so many religious beliefs out there as there are race and nations behind them. I welcome diversity but over this weekend there is this person (I'll call him Sparky) above us in the corner suite of my apartment building to the left near the street on one of the top floors that in this case give me pause. I mean my patience can only go so far. So Sparky is shouting out to what exactly I have know idea. We know who Sparky is. We've seen him independently of each other. Sparky is an old man with thin shoulder length bushy hair. He wears robes. When I'm waiting for my bus out here, I'll often see him squatting by the curb smoking some kind of tobacco at the set of lights or out in front here smoking, squatting. Because its a long weekend Sparky decides he should be shouting again to who knows what. He's speaking English from what we know. Its not in a monotone voice so its not like he's speaking in tongues. I'm not even sure Sparky is motivated out of some obscure religion. After Sparky makes a statement or whatever it is, he'll pause for a minute and something else comes out of his mouth and he's very loud. He'll go on like this until 3-4 in the morning. He went from about 3am to and started again about 9 this morning waking me up. Ear plugs helped for a bit. I'm sure we're not the only one's that hear this shouting. On our side of this unit we have 5 suites per floor of four levels. That's 20 suites including us, I'm sure somebody has made a complaint and has said something by now. I'm also certain our resident manager (rm) knows about this. Now because Sparky has been able to go on like this all weekend and even before this, its been going on, tells me a couple of things. 1.)He's either allowed to and is ignored by our rm. 2.)Or my neighbors are afraid to make a complaint. 3.)Or if my neighbors have complained to rm by now (and I'm sure since this has been going on through out the weekend they might have complained multiple times) and the rm shakes head "Its a religious issue," my neighbors simply gave up in frustration. 4.) Sparky is has Schizophrenia condition and is off his meds and the rm sites that as a answer. It has to be one of those 4 things. How come we haven't made a complaint? We need to keep a low profile here as well because we're paying about $300 less for our 2 bedroom apartment then the going rate. If we begin to make waves around here and bring undue attention to ourselves we could be faced with a rental increase so we don't dare complain. We avoided a rental increase last month but there's always this month. The security guard hasn't been seen for days and maybe that's another reason why Sparky isn't being challenged. Or if my neighbors have complained the rm might just say, "You'll have to take this up with on site our security after the weekend. If we hear anything from security then we can react accordingly." The other thing is as this is a long weekend the rm is unavailable. It's now going on to 1pm and I've been up composing this since 10am and Sparky is still going at it but easing up a bit. Hopefully tomorrow morning he'll get a notice under the door. 

Yesterday PM Harper had dropped the writ and has called for a formal National election. October 19. This is the longest pre election campaign in Canadian history. It will cost $500M. Since the bulk of the election will be decided over Ontario and Quebec because close to 80% of our Nation's population resides between those 2 Provinces. Our votes don't count for much beyond Ontario and Quebec and our votes out west wont decide which party gets elected. All our votes do is to decide which MP gets a seat in Ottawa. There are 338 seats this year from the 308 last election. This time I think I want to vote for the issues and not the party. I'm thinking our mission in the middle east is very important.  The NDP take that to lightly. I'm also voting with lrt funding in mind and the Liberal's have Amarjeet Sohi here in Edmonton. He worked with Mayor Mandel at City council. He's going against heavy hitter Tim Uppal. Lots of time to decide yet. 

Yesterday afternoon while the 4th floor man from upstairs gave us a break, I shot a video iPod Touch video and apparently (as I thought ) I took the volume down so low on the iPod, the volume sound icon had a slash for sound. I put together another little tune out of Maschine and sequenced it in Cubase. Then I did a mix down of a 2 minute song to a wav file. After uploading the wav file to iTunes and synching to my iPod Touch came the moment of truth. I could hear the kids from out back over the audio. Fail. The audio (more or less) is clean. My only other option is to book some time in the sound booth studio downtown and shoot the video again from there. Also, I'd be in a position to use some of the equipment in the studio like the video camera and use the Mac with Ableton. if they have monitors even better. Anyway this post has been over an hour in the making and that's all for now. 

A little business to take care of first....

if this offends some people, so be it. I'm not here to make friends. Let me break it down for you in plain English guys: I believe in God and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. I don't wear my religious beliefs on my sleeve or anything and neither do you have to either if you like. It's for the above I give pause today because on this day Good Friday. Jesus died for us. I'm not a Church goer or read the bible everyday but just to let my readers know that if you don't have God in your life, your nothing. Everything I am or lack there of comes from one source, that's God.

Yesterday morning I had circulation trouble in my legs due to problems with diabetes, Anne suggested I have an extra long weekend so I called into the office regretting my situation. At least I called in sick.

This is really not new News. Google announced that it is shutting down Reader. I like Reader but there are alternatives. One site I'm liking is TheOldReader thanks to i09 for posting this.

At the moment I'm trying to sync 1107 songs from my iTunes library to clear off all the music from my iPod Touch. I hope I'm doing this right. 

Ok, I'm switching back to Firefox. It's so easy to download photos Chrome always seems to have my photos turned sideways after I download as I'm about 40% synced. This could take all night. Finally, I've got this done. I cleared about 3.5 Gb space for the iTouch.
  
The Columbus/Oiler game at the Rex last night was a quite the game. It was a nice thing for the Oiler's to do win on the eve of a long weekend. They get 2 points and are just 3 points away from a playoff spot. With 17 games left anything can happen. It was a fun game to watch. 

Not only was yesterday notable in above but also I got my income tax return,which means I'm going to pay off Maschine,which is about 60% of my return but the rest is going to be saved for a rainy day. I'm hoping in a way though that I get "laid off"briefly and go on EI with a medical. I've done it that way last time 15 yers ago. The rational behind this is that while it may take 8 weeks to get my first check if it's approved. Next week sometime,I'll make my availability
less half a shift so I can apply for my CPP. This takes 4 months to activate, which means my first CPP check wont come in until about the time my first EI check comes in. If I can get social assistance for those 2 months, the Province will pay for my dental work,such as dentures etc. With the amount of hours I have, I might be able to have about 38 weeks off or just about 6.5 months off. That will take me to 61. Then by that time, I'll have other places set up. I'm trying to time it so that I have work during those 3 years 61-64 will be a tough 3.5 years but from I hope to be on EI for maybe half of that year I'll retire with full CPP and OAS and work where I am for 3 days/week. But that's the long term game plan. Anyway, that's all for now.