Home Telephony 101

I am playing musical phones this morning. One of the local discount houses offered a special deal: a three handset 5.8 cordless set for less than $100. Since we have a wireless network at home, the 5.8 protocol is advantageous as it does not interfere with our computers and other wireless devices.

I feel like I am in the middle of a junior high math problem that goes something like this:

Taming and RT have the following phone equipment:

• A corded fax machine;
• A corded bedroom phone with a built in alarm clock;
• A corded phone with an answering machine;
• A three unit wireless jobee with a base station that needs to be connected to a phone jack;
• An old wireless phone that interferes with the computers; and
• A selection of other corded phones, splitters, and extra cords of various lengths buried in the way back of the basement.

 The following phone-ish service needs have been identified:

• RT needs an alarm clock on his nightstand, however, he never answers the phone if Taming is in the house, no matter what. Currently Taming jumps over RT to answer the phone at night. She has occasionally not quite made it all the way;
• Taming and RT would both like phones on their desks, as they are too lazy to move their bums out of their chairs. There are no phone jacks anywhere near the desks;
• Taming would like to be able to talk on the phone when she is cooking and when she is outside on the adjacent patio;
• If the phone with the answering machine isn't by the door to the outside, the chances of it actually being looked at are pretty much nil;
• The ugly Fax machine has to go someplace vaguely in the office area. There is a phone jack, but it is in the den part of the office-den combo, and as we mentioned, the FAX machine is really, really ugly;
• Phones are needed in the detached garage and in the area of the basement where the laundry and other lower level appliances are located. Jacks are available in both locations;
• No phone service is currently needed in the living room, as that room has no furniture. This situation will hopefully change, at some point; and
• RT would like to be able to talk on the phone when he is in front of the TV and Taming tells him it is one of those rare calls that are actually for him. No jack there, of course.

For 15% of your final grade, distribute the existing equipment around the house and create a set of associated behavioral guidelines for phone usage. No human beings can die as a result of implementation of this plan.

 

posted by taming at 07:08 | link | comments (2)|
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Skip This One, Kay

I had my first sampling of the Horse Harar roasted to full city (mebbe+) today. It was 48 hours old (urmmm, post roast that is), and very, very good. The blueberry notes are gone. I'm guessing they just don't survive in the darker roasts in the current crop (as opposed to last season's lot #30). In any case, the coffee this morning was good enough that after RT left for work, I brewed up some French Press just for me.

I also roasted another 130 grams of the stuff, again to full city ~ +), so that I could see how this will taste on days 5-7.

I'll go to a sorta Vienna on my next roast day.

 

posted by taming at 12:19 | link | comments (1)|
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Beyond Tonka

The difference between men and boys
is the price of their toys.

Last night, when RT got home from the Global Petroleum Show in Calgary, we watched the RM Auctions' Monterey Sports & Classic Car Auction on TV. That means my fella spent the afternoon looking at million dollar trucks, and the evening looking at million dollar cars.

It was truly lousy timing, because he is looking for a new car now, to replace his 13 year old clunker. My job in all this is to stay out of the way, other than mild reminders that whatever he chooses has to fit in our garage along side of my own shabby chic vehicle. When I think about cars, anything that we can't comfortably pay off in three or four years seems outrageous, and all I really care about, once that standard is met, is that I can see over the steering wheel (not always a given at my height).

RT has a very different point of view. For him, and I know he is not alone in this, there is a connection between what he drives and how he sees himself. In his mid 50s, it has once again become important for him to drive a hot car, albeit a mature hot car, rather than the kind of car he drove in his racing days.

I always thought the whole mid-life crisis thing men experienced was kind of silly, but that was before I loved a mid-life kinda man.

Warning: You are about to read a whole bunch of shtuff that is probably not generalizeable, but sure seems true to me right now.

Like most boomers, a major part of my formative years was spent in the 60s. And people of my generation seem to have gone one way, or the other, in terms of material needs. Some of us got very caught up in acquisition, others, not so much. Clearly, some of us non-aquirer types have slowly gone over to the dark side as we have gotten older, exchanging our Berkies for Jimmy Choos, and our counter top bean sprouters for $500 electrical gismos of one sort or another.

I've been to more than my share of parties where the women position their hands so that the other women at the table are forced to look at the rings on their fingers or their freshly done acrylic nails. Heck, I sport those nails myself, and almost always have them redone the day of a big party. How shallow is that?

I tell myself that as long as I realize it's shallow, then it is somehow not quite as bad. After all, I make my own yogurt and still wear Berkies, at least some of the time.

In any case, I've never confused who I am with what I own. I've never felt the need to have a trophy food processor either.

It seems easier to grow into middle age (and beyond) as a woman, at least on some levels. We may struggle with changes in our appearance, and be close to tears when we realize that even if we can still fit into a bikini, we are being kinder to the rest of the world when we don't, but in other ways, women just have it easier. This may not be as true for women whose identity is more closely linked with their professional careers than mine has been, but even the women I know with high powered work lives don't seem to experience middle age as a turning point in a crisis sort of way.

Last weekend, RT decided it was time to haul the beer fridge up from the basement and install it in its summer home, on our patio. He did it, but with more huffing and puffing than it took last year. I looked in his eyes, and I could see how this wounded him. From my perspective, it was a small thing, but for RT, and many men like him, it was yet another thing to pile in there alongside of finding himself working with men a generation younger than himself and speculating about the little blue pill. RT is coming to terms with being on the downward slope at the same age where I am seeing myself as finally coming into my own.

More than that, when I find myself concerned about this sort of thing, I can have long conversations with other women. RT has friends who are going through the same thing, but it is, in some guy sort of way, against the rules to talk about it. So when RT translates his fears about growing older into the quest for a new car, he is, in fact, bonding with other men doing the same thing.

I guess I'm lucky that RT and his friends are dealing with getting older by buying new cars. In other social circles, these same men would be trading in their wives.

In any case, when RT brings home a new garage mate for my aging chevy, I'll smile real big, and count my blessings.

 

posted by taming at 07:31 | link | comments (2)|
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Party, Urmm, Potty Time in Alberta

When you mention Alberta to most people, they either get a blank look in their eyes (if they are typical Americans) or think about our beef industry or the Calgary Stampede, a week long celebration of our cowboy past with rodeos, pancake breakfasts, and a whole lot of two fisted drinking. These days, people who go into shock at the gas pumps also think about our oil production.

Alberta's economy is on fire, these days. It's a cyclical thing, and everyone over the age of 40 here knows it, but it is affecting everything that is happening in the province. Housing prices in Calgary have gone up 37% in the past twelve months. The population of the city I live in increased by almost 5% in 2005, and housing prices have gone up enough so that the home we stretched our budget to buy last year, now seems like a true bargain. Salaries have gone through the roof, too, and even fast food joints are having trouble getting and keeping staff.

In places like Ft. McMurray, the starting wage for people at McDonalds is well over $15 an hour. Here, further south, the local Wendy's restaurants have to close their dining rooms on the weekends, because they can't staff them. The drop out rate in local high schools has increased, and fewer people are going on to University. It's the call of high wages for relatively unskilled work. When $15 an hour seems insufficient, a few classes at one of the colleges offering oil related certification can land someone who might have worked in an auto body shop a few years back, a job on a rig paying $600 a day.

RT rode the wave of prosperity, and experienced the inevitable crash that followed, the last time. It meant a few years of real hardship, and about ten years out of the industry. He's back in it now, older and wiser for sure. Interest rates can triple, and we won't be in any danger of losing our home. We're not allowing ourselves to get used to whatever level of prosperity we may be (temporarily) experiencing now.

Alberta has a bull by the horns, and some days, it sure seems like the bull is winning.
From the Edmonton Sun:

Rising potty demands
Mon, June 12, 2006
by MICHELLE MARK, Staff writer

Alberta porta-potty supplies are in the toilet as demands from booming industries put a strain on availability.

All across the province, waste management companies are scrambling to keep up with the construction and oilfield booms that are drawing workers from far and wide.

“It’s a necessary evil,” said Stewart Holder, owner of Gallason Industrial Cleaning Services out of Fort Saskatchewan. “The first thing to arrive at a site is the supervisor and next is the portable toilet.”

Holder said demand for the toilets is up at least 40% this year over last year.

 

 

posted by taming at 07:05 | link | comments |
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oh Ick

Everything I put in my mouth right now tastes gawd awful. Well, Diet Rite cola tastes OK, but that's about it. I've had a sinus thing going on for over a week now, and I suspect it has a new manifestation. I served a friend coffee this afternoon, and he raved about it. It tasted like sewage to me. Not that I have ever actually sampled sewage, but I have a vivid and wonderful imagination.

This better end fast. My life as a coffee blogger is at stake.

 

posted by taming at 14:54 | link | comments |
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