Fun facts

After months from calls from financial institutions and collection agencies, we have finally received a call for our phone number's previous owners on a different subject - dogs.  Actually, the call was about a particular type of dogs, Chihuahuas.

If all our wrong numbers were like this instead of daily robo-calls from the same bank this dud number thing might not be so frustrating.

I guess I am now getting a sense of what it must be like to be one digit off a pizza place.

Cameron: 31
Neil: 0

And then there were three

As I mentioned yesterday, for the past few months we have been receiving calls from collection agencies for two individuals.  Given the consistency of these calls I just kind of assumed that these were the only two individuals for whom we would receive calls.

It seems I was wrong.

Just moments ago I received a call for a third individual, though in this case I don't think that it was a creditor calling.

I can't help but think that we managed to get a a particularly active recycled phone number.  Two to four calls a day is starting to get a little annoying.

That explains the daily phone calls

Since we have had the phone number we have now we have been getting all kinds of calls for someone named Johnson. These calls started within hours of the phone line's activation.

My guess would be that we are currently getting about a phone call a day for this Johnson, presumably the previous occupier of this number.

After a while Jeannette guessed that the frequency of the calls suggested that this Johnson likely owed somebody money. Well, after just having receiving an automated call from a collection agency I feel that I am in a position to confirm this hunch.

The upside is that we now know why we are getting so many calls. The downside is that we now also know that until we convince them that we are not who they are looking for we will continue to receive daily calls.

New Spamming Technology

It seems that over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of experiencing a new type of spam - text messages sent to my Google Voice number. Fortunately, because the service is free, this doesn't cost me any money or much time (at least yet). What is troubling is how they happen to have gotten my number (unless they are just generating numbers). It is also troubling to think that this could start happening on a more widespread basis and that web-based services could start text spamming actual phones in such a way that would be almost untraceable (though I know to what end they would be working with such an approach).

While looking through my spam texts I happened to come across a mysterious message that I received a few months ago.



[Embedded audio]

I have no idea where this came from or what the caller was getting at. Hopefully they eventually found the person they were looking for.

A Few Quick Notes 300

-We had another rather overcast day in Halifax, fortunately this wasn't accompanied by much precipitation. Hopefully the forecast isn't accurate and we won't have another few days of gray before we see the sun again.

-A few days ago I planted a few tomato seeds. As we haven't had much sun and as I had stashed the pots in the back of my room I was imagining that I had wasted the seeds. Just as this thought was beginning to take hold I noticed that several of the seeds had started to grow. At the moment I can see the early stages of four relatively undeveloped tomato plants. I wonder if me moving them from the back of my room to a position by the window help? I can't imagine that it did much harm.

I am hoping that a few more plants will become visible in the coming days. I think it might be a little over ambitious for me to expect that all 12-15 of the seeds that I planted result in full-fledged tomato plants, particularly given the conditions.

-As is their habit, my bean plants are continuing to grow at an excruciatingly slow pace. I really don't quite understand why it is that they are growing so much more slowly than the other bean plants. Anyway, I guess I should just be happy that they are continuing to grow.

-Earlier today McGill called to solicit a donation from me. While I am not particularly surprised that they are trying to get donations from me already, I am a little surprised that they have my number in Halifax. I guess I must have made the mistake of giving it to them, but I don't know when or why I would have.

-We had beans with vegetables and corn bread for dinner tonight. By cutting the meat from our meal I kept the total cost of the meal quite low, though surely the corn bread hiked things up a little. I might have some leftover rice and beans as a snack later tonight.

-A few days ago a friend of mine mentioned that she recently made a chocolate raspberry cake and that it turned out quite well. I was immediately quite tempted and asked for the recipe. Of course, once I had the idea in my head I couldn't get myself to wait for her to respond so I scoured the hinternet looking for a recipe for such a cake that didn't require me to head to the grocery store. After a little searching I found such a recipe.

While reading the recipe I noticed that the contributor mentioned that they hadn't made the recipe themselves, but that they had consumed it. This should have been a bit of a tip-off that this likely wasn't the recipe for me. Not only was the recipe somewhat misleading about how much batter would be produced, but also about how much baking soda should be used. I am pretty sure that the recipe called for about twice as much as should have been used.

While the cake is quite edible, I am quite sure that it would be possible to make a chocolate raspberry cake that is much better. Maybe this will teach me a lesson about waiting for tested recipes.

-For a reason unbeknownst to me, I have had the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" stuck in my head for the past number of months.

-We have received quite a number of phone calls in the past few days. If this keeps up I might be inclined to take the phone of the hook for a few hours a day.

A Few Quick Notes 298

-According to Environment Canada it was 9 degrees above zero at times today, though it certainly didn't feel that warm in downtown Halifax. If my sense of the temperature was correct this may be one of the few times I have experienced lower temperatures in town than at the airport.

-I am now 2/18 in this year's Roll Up the Rim to Win contest. Almost after snagging a free coffee on Tuesday I re-invested my winnings in a losing cup, and have subsequently entered a three cup losing streak.

-As you can see, the corn has now been chopped down and not yet replaced. At the moment I don't know what I should plant to replace the corn. I kind of think that something rather vertical, like more corn, would be good, though I would rather have a larger pot for corn. Anyway, surely within the next few days I will have come up with something to plant in the pot recently vacated by the corn.



-As I have previously mentioned, I am finding it very difficult to take pictures of the scarlet runner beans in my bedroom. While this shot shows some of the growth, I don't think it does the plants justice. Hopefully I will be able to figure something out in the coming days, though I am not particularly hopeful given the space I have to work with and the unfortunate location of a few walls.

I should also note that it seems that the plants aren't growing as quickly as those in the living room did. I find this a little strange as the pot is larger than any of those that I used in the living room. Maybe scarlet runner beans actually like to be pot bound much more than I originally imagined. If this is the case I might expect growth to speed up as the root structure develops, so I guess I should start seeing changes any day now.



-None of us made it to the Ice Castles filming session at St. Mary's University today. Last night Neil and I both realized that we both had MSU hats that we could have worn to add a touch of realism to the session. Hopefully a few dedicated Spartan fans were present in dressed in green and white.

-Normally we don't get all that many phone calls, so that I had to field five calls was rather anomalous. I feel that I sometimes can go at least a week without having a real phone conversation, so I really wasn't mentally prepared for such phone activity.

1-900 Meteorologist Service Now Available in Canada

I was somewhat surprised to learn that Environment Canada is now offering a 1-900 number for private, one-on-one consultations with a meteorologist. If this is something that interests you, it seems that all you need to do is call the number (1-900-565-5555), agree to pay $2.99 per minute, and talk away.

Aside from not wanting to pay $12.00 to hear about a storm that either won't come or is in the midst of striking, I am not sure how I feel about such a program. Something about the arrangement just seems a little off-putting. I wonder how many people actually use this service and what type of information they provide in such situations but then don't include in their free services.

Most importantly though, I really want to know how many times Weather Canada gets callers who are hoping to reach a more traditional 1-900 service. Do these callers keep talking because they are too embarrassed to admit that they were actually looking for something a little juicer than a one-on-one weather forecast?

A Few Quick Notes 106

-Today started off on the cool side of things, as so many days do, and eventually turned out to be quite respectable. The temperature seems to be near 20 with a clear sky and slight breeze, a significant improvement over some of the rain filled days that we have experienced recently.

-This winter and early Spring I took a (mandatory) management course at library school. At the time it seemed as though I wasn't really learning anything all that useful. One main focus was on the uses of different types of analytical and strategic planning tools.

One technique that came up time and time again was “SWOT analysis ” (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). For various projects we had to use this technique, though I am not sure if I every really saw the utility.

Earlier this summer I finally saw a situation in which I thought that I might be able to use this analytical tool. I decided to conduct a SWOT analysis on my life. Unfortunately, at least based on my mis-use of this analytical tool, it seems that my weaknesses and threats outweigh or overpower my strengths and opportunities.

I really worry that some of this may have been tainted by my not having properly identified either my primary problem or desired objective (which would place this analysis in context). Maybe if I become motivated I could try and conduct a full-fledged strategic planning exercise on my life (though we all know I will never be motivated for this to happen).

-Today, the day after my phone was installed, I noticed that the phone was ringing. Actually, as the phone is so new, it took me a while to recognize what was happening when it was ringing, though I eventually did figure out that the mysterious sound was the sound of a ringing phone. As I was somewhat confused I forgot to answer with my typical intro and instead just said "hello."

The person on the other end asked if she had reached motor registration. Obviously I replied that she had not reached her intended number. She then indicated that she had somehow been transferred, seemingly by an automatic transfer system. I really hope this call is not indicative of things to come, if so these calls could become tiresome very quickly.

-So far this summer I have had very bad luck when it comes to catching cloths on relatively blunt doorknobs and handles.

In June, while moving some boxes from one location to another, I was walking backwards while pulling a cart when I somehow managed to catch my left rear pocket on the door handle, the result being that the handle popped through the fabric and I was hooked on the door.

A few weeks later I was walking by an old card catalogue when the right sleeve of the long sleeve shirt I was wearing caught on a drawer handle and tore a small hole in my shirt. I wonder if this may be the first piece of clothing damaged on such an innocuous piece of furniture?

Shortly after my run-in in with the tricky card catalogue I was walking next to a cupboard and managed to catch the left front pocked of my pajama pants on the rounded cupboard doorknob. Within about a second I managed to have a tear that was several inches long.

As I have been wearing pants every day (a workplace concession) I have noticed that just about every pair of pants I own has small holes near the inside seem at about the height of my knee. While these wholes surprised me at first because of their unusual location and frequency, I think that I have figured out a possible cause.

It seems that they are all in about the same area that tends to get caught between two kegs of beer when one engages in the exciting activity of keg stacking (as one might do if one changed kegs on a semi-regular basis). I guess from now on I will have to be more careful about which pants I wear to work unless I want to live by the maxim “tighter jeans means less caught fabric.”