December 2009 Archives

1am is not the time any sane person should be awake. Nor is it the time that any sane person should be wandering around in the freezing ice-rain in a bathrobe. Nor even more so is it the time that you should be blogging about why.

So Firefly got some work lined up with the newly-falling snow doing snow removal from parking lots. Someone setup something with someone and it basically came down to "we'll probably call you, and it'll probably be in the middle of the night" (to get ready for holiday shoppers no doubt). So we go to bed around 11 (myself a bit later as I was getting Christmas cards done) and I can't sleep anyway, most likely due to the high octane coffee they have at work. So finally just about when I'm ready to get to sleep, the dreaded call comes in.

12:08am

Horrible time, but all things considered, expected. There's talking on the phone, and then rustling around to get the 18 layers of clothing required to run a bobcat in the snow in the middle of the freakin' night. In all of this there's also a lot of burping and sounds of someone not 100% on their game. So being that I was barely asleep anyway, I'm up and about to see what's going on. She's not feeling all that well, but hard to say if it's the fact she was jolted out of sleep to talk on the phone about snow removal or something else. So tea is drawn, a mandarin orange is eaten, and after a while I find I don't need to overreact and my loverly wife is feeling back to normal again, and ready to drive a huge truck, plus trailer with bobcat on it, to Coquitlam (luckily she does have someone driving with her and knows not to push it so I don't have to go all mother hen on her).

Almost time to go back to bed when she's back at the door from the snow/slush/rain combination falling in the -4C temperature to see if I had an ice scraper. Keys to my car are handed off, and then I end up going out to help because they're having problems finding the key hole and making sure the stupid thing is un-alarmed properly (last thing I want is my car alarm going off at 1am).

Let me tell you even with the blubber I have on, and even with the heavy duty housecoat I was wrapped in, that wind cuts right through the exposed skin like you wouldn't believe.

Luckily now they are bundled in a big truck to go off on a bobcat riding adventure and I have noted down the adventure to bring value to this oft-ignored blog and to hopefully let whatever caffeine is still in my system deplete enough that the next 4 hours will be blissful sleep.

What would be really awesome to have on the iPhone, and I'm sure it's completely doable, as the device is just a little computer, is advanced incoming phone call management, like Google Voice. For example, I'd love to be able to set up my phone so that:

• Contacts from my "business" category are either silent or go directly to voicemail from 8-12 and 1-5 Monday to Friday
  
• Contacts from my "family" category ring regardless of ringer mode
  
• Contacts from "family" after 10pm ring twice as long as normal before going to voicemail (to let me wake up and find the phone)
  
• If calling after 11pm and the soucrce is my brother-in-law's #, immediately goes to the whiney "but I have to get up early to go to work" voicemail and he gets an electric shock in the ear...
  

Ok, so the last one is a bit mean and unrealistic, but you can see the potential. Actually looking at this list I can see the awesomeness of Google Voice which until now I didn't quite get. Sadly until it goes international, us poor Canadians are out of luck. I wonder if one of the reasons that the GV app was rejected from the iPhone was because Apple can do these things and are maybe planning some of this awesomeness for iPhone OS 4.0?

Random thoughts at midnight-thirty while I can't sleep and have to get up in 5 hours.

Question: Do you ever worry about your cat getting annoyed at you for petting it while it's trying to sleep, and it not being able to sleep because you keep on petting it?

Answer: I wouldn't worry about it. Think about this. When you get home from work after a twelve hour day and find your cat sleeping on the bed, realize that it's probably been there since you left in the morning, with only minor interruptions of turning around. Keeping him or her from sleeping because you keep on petting the little bugger to hear them purr is the last of their worries.