After packing my things up and shutting the place down and locking up I ran out to my bus stop. Still bits of haze in the air. Most of the snow on the ground is gone other then the bit’s in shady areas. So I’m at Clairview and couldn’t believe the lack of kids in the area. Teacher development day or something? I read from PS on the way into work and went to Tim’s for my Roll up coffee and met with a huge line up almost to the entrance. The East Indian kids came up to say hello. I like these guys. Good people. They’re getting dicked around by immigration Canada. So after about a 10 minute wait I get to the line up. “Coffee. Large. Black please and in a double cup.” Sounds simple enough right? So I get my order and work my way across the parkade. Getting overcast and a bit hazy. Moments before getting inside the office I notice my coffee looking whiter then usual on top of the cup cover. WTF? I opened it up and they gave me the wrong one. I was pissed off and with only a few minutes to 5pm I wasn’t about to turn back and resume the line up at Tim’s so I dumped the coffee. It was my own fault because I should have examined the coffee first before lifting it off the counter. I got inside and most of the dialers were taken. I thought I’d have an early night. But there was one available dialer. It was that shit-head little girl working 3 days a week placing her bag where I sat last night because she didn’t want me sitting there beside her. Not that I care. I wanted close to the monitors so I could watch movies in between calls. That’s ok, today/next week will be different. I’m going to get Fran to leave a sign there saying something like “Jame’s spot.” I had a pretty good evening though. I got 2 credit card sales before break and had a brief chat with some nice people/customers and sat beside Winston and did a bit of reading. Since I don't smoke, my smoke break will be spend 2-5 minutes reading. I get that once an hour. And I stay at my dialer as well.  

So about 8pm I break down and decide, hell with it, lets spend 75 cents and get one of Rob’s cheep coffee’s from the machine. I put in a Toony and the redoubt reads “Credit $2.00” I just got scammed. I press other buttons and I get a $1.25 back and French vanilla. Uggh. So not only do I lose $1.65 from the Tim’s coffee but I lose .75 cents from Robs coffee machine. I tried the loony for another round and it said credit $1.00. I was pissed off by this, Royally. I’d have better luck begging for a coffee outside of Tim’s looking like a bum off the street for God sake. Also, I had to fight like hell to get my pay cheque-again. “It’s not like I’m going to run out as soon as I get it.” This is Rob’s doing. Not just against me, but everyone because he doesn’t want people to get down when and if they find their cheque not accurate, missing hours etc. I can appreciate this.

I was just glad to get the hell out of that office at 9pm and I needed to use the bathroom to take a dump. I should have done this before I left but our bathrooms are pig sties. Literally. I held it until I’d got home. I got to the upper concourse of Corona and there was the Clairview train heading home. Since Robs working us to the hour ordinarily I’d have caught that early 9pm train. About 10 minutes later a South train roars in behind me. Uggh, holding. About 5 minutes after that another South train rolls in. WTF? That’s 2 and no North/East-Clairview. Holding. Finally I get my train and riding side saddle, still feeling pretty good but holding. I think Anne called me on the train around Belvedere. Really holding. Finally Clairview! I got to the #183 bus and holding tight. Come on, come on. Lets go. There’s that Muslim woman always hoping I’d pull the bus cord for her. Finally the driver boarded and pulled the bus out and lets try an experiment and wait for the last possible moment to pull the bus cord to stop. Still holding it in. I wasn’t about to pull the cord and sure enough she’s looking over her shoulder for me and pulls with a pissed off look in her face. Christ, some people huh? I got inside and found the toilet, relief and that’s when Anne called my cell. “Give me a few minutes honey and call back. I'm kind of busy right now.” I cleaned up and went to the couch with the phone to catch 80% of the 3rd period Flames at SJ game in progress. SJ was winning 2-0. Anne called asking what I’d like for lunch. Fireside macaroni entrée left over pork chop? Sure. The Flames lost the series is tied. They don’t play next until Sunday. In my office/work pool, Detroit won over Nashville. Sorry Greg, He-he he. Anne came in and cooked dinner as we watched the news.

After dinner we looked around for an Allen key so I can get into my XP case but Anne couldn’t find it where she thought it would be. Anne thought she had one in one of the drawers under the aquarium tank. I then had the idea of cracking open my W/98 computer case. Would she have a Robinson or Phillips screwdriver? She did. I unhooked the W/98 tower and screwed apart the case panel and inside found the Ram slot. I pulled the two levers apart on one section of the panel to reveal the case innards. There was the Ram. Two strips of 256Ram. I popped one of the Ram out from its slots. Easy enough. It wouldn’t give me any indication if this was DDR SDRAM or other wise. The Ram in my W/98 computer had 8 black bumps on it. Is this the pin size? After unhooking the cables and shutting down the XP power supply I found out that I didn’t need a screwdriver/Allen key at all to pop the case panel open. And there was the Ram. It showed 9 bumps/pins. I assembled everything back together and powered up the XP computer. Half an hour later I’m back in my desktop and a bit of research later yes, the Ram has 9 pins. I’ll buy one strip on Saturday. If it works, then I can get another one later.

Purchasing this Ram is a major computer upgrade for this Xp machine. I bought it initially in July of 2005 for the Xp operating system. The original Home Xp OS was at that time $250, so another $250 no big deal right? Besides it came with a 9-1 memory card reader, two extra USB 2 ports right up front 80GB hard drive. However the computer was slower then expecting a pay cheque from the Government. The computer crashed on me a couple of times and I had to resort to the W/98 computer for a few years. Even that was faster then this PC. Mostly because of the bloatwear PC’s bog users down with. So tomorrow if all goes well I’ll be on a South side Train and bus to ME for the Ram. I’m considering just one strip of 512 Ram to make sure it fits properly. A bite to eat at Wendy’s and home. With the new Ram installed this will hopefully make the computer faster almost to be a brand new machine. Sigh, the things a struggling Science-Fiction writer puts up with.

Anyway Bloggers, that’s all for now

e. Jim