12:04 a.m. - 2004-03-28
Defense
My DSL provider was offering a free preview of their "pay for downloadable music" site. Most single songs were $.99 and albums averaged about $10.00 apiece. Not bad. I downloaded 9 single songs, because that is the biggest benefit of music available on the internet. Choose your own mix of music based on your tastes, instead of letting some marketer do it for you. Their purpose is to spin the profits out for their company, by producing albums that only contain one or two great songs that one is willing to pay the price of an album to have. Anyway, since I already have a healthy collection of CDs I really enjoy, I opted to select songs from albums that I wouldn't normally purchase, even though they do contain a few gems - no disrespect to the artist either. So one song from ABBA (loud groans from my sons), one each from Phil Collins, DMX, Eminem, Peter Gabriel, Nickelback, and Sam Roberts. Two from Crystal Method. I don't think I'll be using their service on a regular basis though. The music can only be played on one sound system and the songs were so distorted it was painful to listen. Frustrating.
I had just finished "shopping" - listening to all the music selections that took my fancy before I made my choices;that part was really quite enjoyable, as it is with most other forms of shopping - when the telephone rang. Someone from Elections Canada wanting to talk about the office I had chosen to rent. We had a long discussion first - because he asked how I felt about it - about the meeting scheduled for Monday for the local group of Returning Officers. Like a large number of other ROs I don't see the point. It is a review of the training we took - oh six weeks ago. The new Returning Officers will be the only ones who might benefit, but the rest of us would all prefer to be doing the work that will actually help us during the election. I think I got my point across when I noted that I had been doing a fair amount of work that I know Elections Canada will not pay me to do and, despite that, I would rather continue working on that premise, than attend the meeting at full pay. I can't afford to be without paid work right now, but even less can I afford to have my time wasted by frivolous day-long meetings. EC won't be paying for the meeting until mid-May anyway, if their usual pace is followed, so easing my immediate financial situation isn't even an incentive they can offer. Fortunately, I've worked extensively with the person who called me and they know I rarely work at anything other than at full tilt. I'm not lazy nor do I cut corners, I'm just fed up. Not only do I have my own work to do, but I've been mentoring the new Returning Officers, some times taking up four or five hours a day with no pay for that either, because the person they hired to act as a support for them doesn't know enough to be helpful to them. I think working as a team is important, and I don't want to see any of the new people fail, but I'm tired of being expected to fill in that gap, in addition to everything else I need to do. The caller noted that he had been hearing the same complaints from a lot of other seasoned Returning Officers as well. It's frustrating when a company won't pay you to do work that is critical to your job, but will pay you to waste a whole day for nothing of benefit. If past experience is any measure, we will also be criticized because we haven't got all the other tasks completed because of all their interference. If I have to play out the role of Cinderella, I want the fairy godmother and the "happily ever after" prince to go with it too, thank you very much. The discussion of the lease issue was extensive too, but the outcome was just what I needed. Venting and achieving a couple of goals all in one phone call. That was helpful. Nice guy - hope I didn't make his ulcer any worse.
Number five son dropped by for the afternoon, as did one of the people working for me. She just wanted some more materials to review, my son just wanted to visit. He said lately most days he works, then just goes home to bed he's so tired, but he does seem happy. He and his girlfriend want to book a trip to Mexico, so we spent part of the visit on the internet looking up information on the different areas, each of which have their own local flavour, and checked on available package deals. We discussed the requirements for getting passports too. Canadians aren't required to have them to tavel in continental North America, but given what we have seen and heard in different news stories, it seems prudent to have one anyway - just in case.
This story out of our Department of National Defense was interesting and I suppose it has something to do with international conditions as well. No army was ever successful in invading Russia, if their campaign had to go into the winter months. Old Man Winter is a formidable foe, and the Arctic is completely unforgiving. However, there appears to be some belief that it could become necessary to have a military presence there. Patrols Who knows?
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