Bomb Threats and Backed Up Buses

Ottawa seems to have had a rash of "suspicious" packages lately.

First, on Feb 14th, there was a suspicious package found in the mail room of Public Safety Canada, which is a block away from my work. The next day, a suspicious package was found in the Centre Block area of Parliament Hill. Both were found to be non-hazardous.

That brings us today. It took me an hour and 40 minutes to get home from work. It should only take 30 minutes tops. Why? Not because of the snow (which didn't help) but because there was a bomb threat in an arena near the O-Train and Transit Way:  http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2013/02/19/ottawa-bomb-squad-called-suspicious-package.html

 

While I do appreciate the fact that the emergency response crews moved quickly and did what they had to do to ensure public safety, this is the 2nd time in the last year that traffic got all snarled up due to that particular section of the transit way being closed. This should raise a major red flag to OC Transpo and city officials that maybe, just maybe, more access roads and better emergency plans should be put in place for our transit system. There are very limited access points to the transit way, which means that when it has to be closed, the buses have to detour quite far before they can get back onto it. Since the detours are onto roads which are already experiencing high traffic volumes due to commuters, the problem compounds itself and the entire bus system gets fucked up as a result. Except for route 86. It seemed perfectly fine.

I got to my bus stop a little after 5pm. After waiting for nearly 45 minutes, I gave up and grabbed the next bus that was going my way. This bus then took 55 minutes to get me home. Mostly because it takes a very scenic route. Thankfully, I had my book with me so I read on my way home. I had to stop at the grocery store so by the time everything was said and done, I got home 2 hours and 15 minutes after I left work. That really sucked.

And adding to the commute home's misery, there's a hockey game in Ottawa tonight so there was even more people on the roads than normal. By the time I got home, the traffic on the main road near me was still bumper to bumper. Even on a game night, it's usually all cleared up by 6pm.

I really hope they catch whoever left the package at the arena and charge them with everything they can, just for the sheer misery that they caused everyone this evening. It's not funny and it's not cool. Emergency services have much better things to be doing with their time, like saving lives and stopping real crimes.

Sigh. One day they'll invent a cure for stupid.

Good Night!

Sarah

Ottawa's Transit Way

French - How I Loathe Thee

I am not an idiot. Ok, well most of the time I'm not an idiot. Judging by how badly I just did on my french homework, an argument can be made to the contrary. Even after re-reading my notes I still couldn't get it. The fact that the teacher hadn't covered this off in class yet might have something to do with it. I have a vague recollection of him mentioning something in the last 10 minutes of class that kind of hinted towards what we needed to know for our homework assignment but that's all.

Just to make sure I hadn't blacked out or something during our last class, I contacted my co-worker who's in class with me and she confirmed what I'd been lead to believe. No, we didn't cover it in class. Now I don't feel quite as much of an idiot. It's nice to have someone to confirm that you're not as stupid as you feel.

What pisses me off is that our teacher is assuming that we'll know this. Some of the answers I was able to figure out based on some deductive reasoning but the rest? No fucking idea. If the teacher would have just taken the time to clearly explain how/when/why each one is used, I'd be able to understand what's going on. But he didn't and now I'm just confused and frustrated. Nuts to that. I'm giving up on the french and reading my book. It's much more entertaining.

There are only 2 classes left in this semester. I can do this. I can get through this. I'm thinking at this point, it might be easier to hire one of my co-workers to tutor me. Seriously. They've been speaking french all their lives. They learnt grammar and spelling so they should be able to explain it. And maybe explain the how, when and why too. A couple of our colleagues have looked through our french books and they just start laughing and then wish us good luck and walk away muttering about it not being "real" french. I think I'm doomed.

The only bright side to this seems to be that my use of numbers in french has improved and I'm getting better at asking questions in french. Still can't spell in french to save my life but we'll take it one hurdle at a time here. 

Good Night!

Sarah

The Great Run-A-Round

I'm feeling a bit better tonight. I still am tired and don't feel like eating but I had a nice hot bath with some lavender scented epsom salts and I used a warming mud mask on my face and now I feel a little more relaxed. Last night I woke up just before 1:30am, just after 4am (might have been the little earth quake that happened in Quebec), again at 4:40am and then at 5:55am. Friggin' annoying.

Today was a little better of a day. The morning sucked and seemed to drag on but I got some stuff done that needed to be done so that was good. Worked on getting yesterday's discovered mistake fixed and then got into a nice pissing contest with our ITHelpDesk, which I won.

We have 2 Help Desks: one for the special program we use and one for everything else. We had a problem with a user account. So the designated coordinator contacted the program helpdesk (like he's supposed to). They got back to him and said that it wasn't at their end, but provided instructions on who to contact to get help, as the issue lay with the group who looks after the accounts.

Here's the fun part. You can not communicate directly with the account group. You have to contact them via the main helpdesk.

So, the coordinator asked me to contact the main help desk since I'm the account contact person. No problems. The instructions from the program helpdesk said to contact the main helpdesk and ask that the issue be forwarded to the account people. So that's what I did. I provided all the necessary info on the user etc.., included a note saying that the program helpdesk told me to contact the main help desk and sent off the request. I get a canned response email back from the main helpdesk telling me to contact the program help desk. Sigh.

I email the helpdesk back and pointed out that in my request, I said that we'd already spoken to the program helpdesk and that they told us to contact the main helpdesk. A few minutes later, I get an email back from the main help desk saying to read the instructions and contact the program help desk.

You've got to be fucking kidding me. So...I hunt down the email train between the program coordinator and the program helpdesk, find the one that instructed us to contact the main help desk, and I copied and pasted it into my email back to the main help desk.

And I didn't hear from them again. But what a waste of time. It took the coordinator half a day to get a response telling us that we need to contact someone else. Then I wasted an hour emailing with the idiot at the help desk. And guess what? The user's problem still isn't resolved.

Which reminds me, I never got my help ticket # for that request. Guess I get to harass them again in the morning.

I'm not an idiot. I know how to read and follow instructions. Unless they're in french. Then I'm fucked.

Speaking of which, I have French in the morning. Dammit. At least I remembered to bring my books home tonight. I probably should get to bed. I need to be able to pay attention in class tomorrow morning.

Good Night.

Sarah