Texting at the Dinner Table

One of my personal pet peeves is people texting at the dinner table.  Bad enough they have earbuds in their heads almost all day long and can’t hear a word you say, but texting while we’re eating dinner together is downright rude.  I spend time putting this meal together so we can all enjoy it together.  Maybe it’s not the Ritz but hey it’s home cooking.

Texting at the dinner table in our home is no longer tolerated.  I set a collection basket in the corner of the room and you can deposit your iPhone in the basket until dinner is over.  And that means the table cleared first buddy!

technofamily

Here are some excerpts from other experts:

“The family meal is a social event, not a food ingestion event.”
“Be aware that others can see your thumbs working even when they are in your lap”
“If you are in a situation where your attention should be focused on others, you should not be texting.”
“Maybe people think they can time-share: both texting and talking at once”
“No one thinks someone on the cellphone can really be paying attention to another person.”

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RBC replaces Canadian staff with foreign workers

This sounds illegal and even if it’s not, it’s immoral. I have accounts with RBC and I think it’s time for a change.

Dozens of employees at Canada’s largest bank are losing their jobs to temporary foreign workers, who are in Canada to take over the work of their department.

I will not willingly support any business in Canada that doesn’t support Canadians. We might as well change the name of Canada to Cachindia. (Canada-China-India)

Cachindia

Cachindia

RBC is the Roayl Bank of Canada, not the Royal Bank of India!

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Electrotemp Self Cleaning Water Cooler Review

Vail_Oxygen3_Aut_4bbd58b9a3108Electrotemp has had a good idea in a self cleaning water cooler to keep your water cooler clean and free of bacterial infection.

I was surprised myself to learn that many people don’t clean their water coolers and risk getting E coli, Legionella, and other serious bacteria infection.  I understand why it happens as cleaning the water cooler is a bit of a chore.  You must wait until your bottle is empty and between changes flush the system with water and small amount of bleach.  Clean all components and disinfect.  This takes time and effort.

Well, Electrotemp has a water cooler system that boils the water periodically during the night while you sleep and disinfects the entire system internally.  I was so impressed I bought one for my family.

Unfortunately it stopped working a few months after we received it.  The cleaning cycle is multi stage and stage 2 got skipped… which is the heating stage.  So my cooler wasn’t getting cleaned and disinfected.  I contacted the vendor and was shipped a new model and returned the old unit by Currier shipping.

A few months later this happened yet again.  I again contacted the vendor and was shipped a second replacement.

Now this unit, my third, is not yet three years old and it’s now not working again.  It’s the same issue with the self cleaning system skipping stage 2 of the cycle and not getting hot at all.  Certainly not cleaning and disinfecting at all.

I’m now int the process of contacting the manufacturer directly to find out what’s what.  Apparently they don’t have a service technician in the Ottawa area (our nations capital).

My concern with all this is that the cleaning cycle runs while you sleep.  Since I don’t trust modern technology to do what it is supposed to do, I set the time on mine off by a few hours so now it cleans late evening as I head to bed.  So if it’s not working I notice.  I’ll bet you don’t notice if your machine isn’t working, do you?

What I would recommend is that for anyone out there that owns one of Electrotemp self cleaning water coolers is to run a cleaning cycle manually.  On my model you press and hold down both of the settings buttons together until the cleaning cycle starts.  Watch it and make sure it cleans and gets hot.  In particular pay attention to stage 2.  It should take a long time here and get hot.  If it spends only minutes or no time at all, then you have a dysfunctional unit.

If you’re unlucky as I am with Electrotemp self cleaning water coolers please let me know by using the contact page.

Electrotemp website on Bacteria and self cleaning water coolers. http://www.electrotemp.com/Technology/automatic-self-cleaning

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The Day of the Teachers’ Union… has passed.

Do you belong to a Union?  I did.  Several in fact over my lifetime.  Over the years the need for unions has diminished in my opinion.  Unions were a necessity before we had government labour laws to protect our citizens from unfair employers who sought to take advantage of us.  Today we have minimum wages set by government that increase with the cost of living.  Mind you it’s not a huge wage, but it’s more than the $2.30 I earned when I started in the workforce.

Today the average teacher earns $82,000.00 a year for a little over nine months work.  They get two weeks off for Seasonal Holidays at that politically incorrect time of year that was known as Christmas Holidays.  (We got three days).  They also get a week off for March Break.  (We got nothing).  Let’s not forget the two months off in the summer each year.  (We got two weeks to start and maxed out at four after years of service and not in the summer either).  I don’t know how many sick days they get or accumulate but I’m sure it’s way more than what my wife gets in the private sector.  I think she gets… oh, none.  If she’s sick she takes vacation days.  I’m not saying this is a great thing, but I am saying that Teachers in particular are well off compared to many of you in the private sector.

Let’s go back in time a bit shall we?  When I was a kid in school we had homework; we had textbooks, one for every subject; we had detention too (after school, not over recess).  But today, speaking of books, why is it our kids don’t have any?  Oh, the school says we can’t afford them.  We pay taxes for education right?  We  have fundraisers every other month during the school year, I sign cheques every September to the school for this and that and another thing, and yet we don’t have text books?  Where does our money go for education?  Certainly it doesn’t go to buy books.  Which to me would be the second expense after the building and furnishings.  Nope, no books.  But we have very well paid teachers.  I’m not even going to talk about the portables…. (aka port-a-potties).

I won’t begrudge anyone their right to collective bargaining, but holding my kid’s education at ransom isn’t going to get you any bonus points.  Okay, so you might have an argument for a union for teachers, but you won’t get me feeling sorry for them.  I was a union member in hospital work.  We couldn’t strike at all ever.  Essential services you know. Education is an essential service and you shouldn’t be able to go on strike either.  Or maybe you could strike only in July?

So please teachers, don’t send my kids home from school with your brainwashing propaganda of why you’re working to rule and why you need more sick days, and why you won’t let them play sports after school because you have to be working to rule etc etc.  It will only make me more angry when I hear over my dinner table about how “my teacher says they need more sick days because she gets sick teaching us because we always come to school with germs”.  By the way, Collective Bargaining is not on the school curriculum.  This behaviour is akin to a divorced couple using their children as pawns.  So stop it already!

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Back to School Countdown!

What are you doing when they go back to school?

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