Author: Jeff Milner

As Gary mentioned we had our family reunion over the weekend. Anna-Maria did put on some fancy elf ears on me and smaller pointy ears on Gary. Below is a picture of me with the ears on. I had a chance to go kayaking down the upper Saint Mary’s River a couple of times with Anna, Corry, Anson, Jackie and Glen. Today I was able to recover a bit just taking it easy working at the pool and not doing too much else. Of course now I am not really prepared for going to Calgary for Jackie’s wedding and we’ll be scrambling to get everything in order tomorrow, especially with my plan for Anna-Maria and I to take part on the Milner float in the parade in Raymond.

The University of Sydney is experimenting with series of electromagnetic pulses directed into the frontal lobes. Hooked up to the machine, 40 percent of test subjects exhibited extraordinary, and newfound, mental skills. Link to New York Times article.

What I want to know is, where can I get one?

Ok, here’s the scoop. If you don’t want to do the survey then please realize that “I’m busy now” does not equal “I’m not interested” and in most cases will result in being called back in a couple of days. If you don’t want them to call you back ever ask politely for the name of the company, write it down along with the date and the name of the interview then politely ask them to remove your number from their list. If they ever call you back (you’ll know it’s them because you wrote down their company name) you can sue them.

But if you are turning over a new leaf, as Tracie did today, and decide to take part in the study, then here are some things you’ll want to know. First thing you should do is ask, how long does this survey take. Most of the time the interviewer won’t tell you unless asked. Once you ask they have to tell you. Don’t be intimidated if they tell you it will be 15 or 20 minutes because just because you agree to begin a survey doesn’t mean that at anytime during the survey you can’t just decide that you’ve had enough and politely tell them, “You know what, I’m sorry but I’m just no longer interested in doing this survey” and then you can either tell them they can call back later or not to bother. I should note that the survey cannot be used unless you are on the demographics at the end when you hang up. It doesn’t really matter if demographic questions are answered.

If you don’t know the answer to the question don’t say “Well I’m not really familiar enough … ” or “That question is ambiguous”, just say, “I don’t know”. It’s as easy as that. If you do know the answer but don’t want to give it for whatever reason, either say, “Refuse” or “I don’t want to answer that”. If they pressure you, just repeat, “Refuse”.

It probably doesn’t matter one bit if you give your first and last name, but unless they are entering you into a draw or something else where they are going to need to identify you, there is no reason that a first name wouldn’t do the trick. As far as giving even your first name, well it does make life easier for the supervisor who may or may not verify that interview. It’s just a way for the supervisor to know who to ask for if / when they call you back to see if the interviewer was acting in a professional manner.

When it comes to sharing other information, the first 3 digits of your postal code is enough to let the surveyors know the general area. Anything more than that and they know your location down to the side of the street that you live on, maybe down to as much as two or three houses. And when I say they I mean the people that analyze the surveys not the people doing the surveys – we couldn’t care less. So when it comes to postal codes, if you feel uncomfortable just tell them number letter number refuse refuse refuse. It’s your right; you might as well take it. Again it probably doesn’t really matter one way or another. I know that in one particular survey they like to know your postal code so that they can see how close you are to particular stores and evaluate how well you like their store based on your location and answers. That’s it for survey advice for now, perhaps I’ll add more advice as things come up.

My new roommate moved in today; the one I mentioned in an earlier post. He is from Tokyo. He bought himself a USB Wireless network adaptor and without me even being here to change any of my router settings was able to get onto my Internet connection. Maybe I should evaluate my network security. Maybe some other time – it’s late… Anyway I did tell him that the wireless connection would be the best idea and its great because this way he can just use the Internet connection from his own computer in his own room. I love technology.

I like lifeguarding a lot better than surveying. The pay isn’t as good (just slightly), but the environment is way better. I especially liked my shift today because I didn’t have to do any of the cleaning responsibilities and there were enough staff there to answer any of my questions.

The pool that I’ll be working at for the majority of my shifts this month is attached to a senior citizens recreational facility. That means that there are a lot of elderly people that like to swim there. It’s great because in a days work there is more chance that you’ll have to save someone from a heart attack then yell at kids to stop being “stoopid” and end up having to call an ambulance for their spinal injury. Actually I wonder what the ratio of elderly to kid injuries is really like? Either way, being a lifeguard rocks.

I already worked this morning at the Y and now I’m off to my second job at Environics. I’d like to post more but I’m just so busy. Hopefully I’ll have enough time to stop at the bank on my way to work. In the meantime, enjoy this picture of me pretending to be Aron Ralston. (Yeah it’s in bad taste, but what parody isn’t?)

If I recall correctly, actually if Anna recalls correctly, she remembers the critics giving rave reviews to 8 Mile. Frankly, if that’s true, all I can ask is what were they thinking?

I got into the movie a few minutes after it started but I don’t think I would have missed much had I come into the movie with only a few minutes left. Nothing really happens, there is the romance that doesn’t go anywhere, the family crisis of being out of money that is only temporarily resolved when the mother wins bingo and the case of the unresolved record contract.

Nothing happens in this movie.

The climax was a “rap battle” in which contestants insult each other while rapping. What a stupid idea for a movie. The best part was in the special features (Anna loves special feature DVD’s). In the special features they go behind the scenes to the filming of the movie and Eminem does some rap battling against some of the extras. He was actually quite good – but honestly a real documentary of his life would have been tremendously more interesting.

My house is doing pretty good. Slowly but surely I’m getting everything fixed up. I still don’t have my own lawnmower, and yes the grass is getting pretty long, oh and I still have a roommate that eats a lot of my food despite my protests. He is, however, moving out at the end of the month, and so far my plan is to take in these two new roommates that I talked about earlier. One of them wants to get Tenant Insurance, but I think he’s a little over-zealous because there isn’t much point in us both paying insurance but maybe there is, I don’t know. For sure they don’t need to know about the condition of the shingles, but he did ask so that he could tell his insurance company. Anyway I need to find out exactly what I need to do about insurance because it looks like he wants something more than what I have (he doesn’t even know what I have – I’m not sure I really do either except that it’s a rip-off job).

I went to find out about refinancing my mortgage. I guess with the super low rates today re-mortgaging will pay for itself in about 8 months. Really, I suppose I should go for it. I just need to find out the exact details of how much they will charge me to buy out the mortgage and if they will even allow me to buy it out without selling the house. I talked to one lady at TD and she said I could payout a lump payment up to 15% without penalties and then paying out the rest would cost approximately 3 month’s interest – which as far as I can figure is about $1600. That’s amazing eh? Anyway paying the same amount on the mortgage with the lower rate will mean it will be paid off in 13 years.

When I went to buy my house, just as I was making one of my final offers, out of the blue some mysterious “other prospective buyers” also made an offer. Apparently from what I had heard there had been no serious offers on the house for the last 4 months that it had been listed. All of a sudden now that I was making an offer these other people were offering and what was more, they were offering more than me.

However, the owner’s real estate agent assured me that since I had offered first that they would let me have a chance to raise my offer up a couple of thousand and still get the house. The really strange thing about all this is that even with my higher offer, the other offer was still higher but they wanted to sell the house to me. My theory is that because I was acting independent of a real estate agent – I was just buying it without an agent, the owner’s didn’t have to give part of the sale price as a commission to my agent and so even though I was offering less he would get more money out of the deal.

It was a real stroke of luck that I didn’t have a real estate agent. I’m not saying that it always works out that well, but it sure did for me. Oh I almost forgot, the other people that made an offer on the house showed up wanted to look at the place one last time, I guess in case I changed my mind. They pulled up in a little red truck just as I was up on the roof with the house inspector. They told me they were the other people that had made an offer on the house. I wish I would have talked to them, but I was busy up on the roof and just never bothered to go down and chat with them. They just drove off never to be seen or heard from again. Who knows, maybe I could have resold the house to them for more… I don’t know. I guess I’m glad I didn’t though, I kind of like this place.

Anna-Maria will have to keep a close watch on me now because now I have two jobs! I just got hired on at the Y to be lifeguard there, which while not the most glamorous place to work it does give me some lifeguarding experience. I’ll be starting on the 30th of June, and the way my schedule is set-up it looks like I might just spend the rest of my summer working. I’ll try to pencil in some time to post on the blog and sleep and the essential things needed for survival, because it looks like I may have more hours than I can handle. TWO JOBS!