Always behind

Yup, Jolly Bird is in town. I call her Jolly Bird becasue she once sent me an email and said she felt like a jolly bird flying, and "jolly bird" was in a pink font.

She arrived, late, from Shanghai on Thursday August 2nd. We went to the cottage for the weekend. She went out on the Ski Biscuit, and swam way out into the lake. Pretty cool for a girl who says she can't swim very well. Lots of nice pics to post later. I am still torn on the Picassa vs this blog vs facebook. Lately it has been all facebook, hence the lack of posts here....

We'll get Cindy set up with her own blog so she can write about her experience of moving to a new country far far from home.

JON

When I signed up for the MBA, I did not want to be a consultant. Consultant's (especially in IT!) were just people you paid a bunch of money to , to tell you what you already knew. They were useless and got in the way of real IT people, like me :). I also did not want do finance stuff. I know, they get the big bucks, but the idea of creating monster Excel spreadsheets all day was not appealing.

So, of course, I start as consultant, on Wall St. on Monday. Sigh. It's only 18months (in a corporate apartment ;). I'll live.

The Service OPS thing will always be with us. Take the BCE place food court for example. There is a Greek place and Italian place next to each other. Same size serving area, same size seating area. But the Italian place seating area is never more than half full. The Greek place is packed. They are separated by a little fence. The lineups to get food at each place are roughly the same. Clearly the Italians don't have the throughput of the Greeks. Nothing wrong with that, but at least lease some of your seats to the Greeks. Or hire more staff. Or look at the line jumping problem and some better signage so first timers can go the correct line. Sigh. Try the meatball sub, it's great.

Here are the latest pictures from Yixin's (EE-shin) visit to Canada and mine to Shanghai, CN.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jon.kimball

Three albums. Canada. Shanghai. In laws.

Wow, this is freaky. I seem to be seeing the world in a whole different way. On the weekend we went to Belleville and Ottawa. We took the patented half day tour of Ottawa. It was pretty looking and freezing-ass cold. The locals were in shorts and having picnics, we wore winter coats. Totally forgot to look up Ronit. He's out in the burbs anyway.

Anyway...
# Coming over the bridge into B-town, you can see the bell tower at Albert college. Never noticed this before.
# driving from deseronto to hwy 14, you go through a neat little town of Porterville. I think. It was cute. Also a very nice looking campground right on the bay. never knew that was there.
# The demoretsville dam is still funky. Car looked very manly rolling over all that grass.
# the pigs at Campbell orchards are funny
# Cindy does not know how to use a swing. Misplaced youth.
# the Mall seems brighter and nicer than I remember it. The dingy yellow glow of my youth replaced with indirect lighting and domed ceilings.

There was more. Things just look nicer than I remember.

JON

I am proud to announce I have not flown United in three years as of Mar 31, 2007. Yay! I would be happier if they just went under and let an airline who cares server their routes, but I take the victories in whatever form I can get them.

As a result of my “I would rather hitchhike than rely on United rule” My air miles are expiring. The question is, what do I do with the 39705 miles? I wanted to use them somehow. Preferably every single one. I can’t use them for anything on Air Canada even though they are supposed to be in the same network – the Star Alliance. Not even upgrades. Next.

Their online store looks good and I spend some time browsing the products. Lots of brand name stores. I am surprised it is so well done for a United endeavor. On checkout I was informed it is only useable by preferred members. Definitely not me. Next.

They have a mileage transfer system. Cool. I get Brent’s United number. Then at the end of that process, I was informed there is a just a small convenience fee for transferring the miles. In my case, $180. Next.

They have a deal with Sony to buy albums in the Sony Connect store. 10,000 miles for 10 albums or 100 singles. Seems reasonable. I buy 20 albums and 100 singles. I get the coupon codes in an email. I log into Sony Connect. The coupons don’t work on the Canadian site. They do work on the US site. So I log in there using my US mailing address. I pick a few albums I have been meaning to get and put them in my basket. When I try to download, I was informed that I can’t download from the US site because I am physically in Canada at the time. Emails to support give generic, useless advice. I try a few anonymizer type tools. Anonymizer works very well for web stuff but doesn’t fool the Sony SoundStage software.

I give up and just bittorrent the albums I wanted. Whatever.

Then I get an e-updste from United. My 9705 miles expire in 2010 now. Apparently any kind of transaction is enough to reset the timer. I did not need to spend them all after all.

I donate the rest to Ronald McDonald house. At least that was free.

I am still downloading albums from the internet…it’s just easier than trying to pay for them!

OK. I wa supposed to go the gym tonight. But my back was still alittle sore from my previous workout. Then I debated doing abs and some cardio. Nah. I walked on by. I walked home.

I felt guilty so I ate a whole sleeve of saltines with cream cheese. Ugh. What am I going to do with the three remaining sleeves?

JON

BTW no name saltines suck. avoid.

P.S me snowboarding last weekend.