CT 1….all done

I have been taking a CT course through the CAMRT. Over the past few months I have been diligently passing in assignments and doing my homework like a good little boy. Today was the final exam. I have been studying pretty hard for the past few weeks, I’m not the kind of guy to go into an exam unprepared. The exam was scheduled for 2.5 hours but it only took me about an hour and twenty minutes. I was expecting it to be a bit harder, not tha I’m complaining of course. I imagine it will rake a few weeks to get the results back but I’m sure I dud just fine! I have two mire CT courses to take but I think I might wait till next summer to take tge next one.

This afternoon I’m taking it easy. I may have a few celebratory beverages tonight.

Lets try this again

It’s been a whole since I posted to my blog but I’m going to try and get back into it. I’m at home today (I don’t work Fridays usually). I am taking a CT course throught the CAMRT and the final exam is next week. I’m not too nervous about it at this point, the material is fairly straight forward and I like learning how things work. All of my assignments so far have gone very well and I’m not the type of person to cram at the las minute so we’ll see how things go. If I complete this course I still need to take two more anatomy courses if I want to Apply for a speciality practice in CT for Nuclear Medicine. Not sure if I’m going to do that but having these CT courses will hopefully help me out in the long term.

More later

Twitter…ing

For the past couple of weeks I have been trying to get into twitter with mixed results. I find that I simply do not have the time or desire to get full into it. I have posted a few things and gave had a few poor soles try and follow me but it’s just not that important for me to receive any amount of my time. Maybe I would feel differently if I had some friends use it but none of my friends use it.

iPhone changing communications

I have had my iPhone for almost a week now and still love it. I have been surprised at how it has changed the way that I communicate with people. I am no longer tied to my computer or restricted to where and when I can email friends and family. I find myself checking facebook more often and updating my status more frequently due to the ease and simplicity of the facebook app. More later

iPhone

After months of not so suttle hints my wife finally broke down and got me a new iPhone 3G. It’s absolutely amazing and will make you rethink your view of what a cell phone is all about. It does everything any other cell phone does but it does it with all the class and quality you soul expect from Apple. I’ll post more impressions and some app store rviews soon.

Trip to the Don Valley

 

I took a bike trip down the Don Valley the other day and took lots of pictures with my new Nikor 55-200mm lens for my D60. This lens is going to be amazing, really enjoy the reach it has so far. The only problem is that it does not have any wide angle capabilities so I’ll have to change back to my 18-55mm lens when I need to take wide angle shots. The only other option would be to buy a 18-200mm lens but it costs about $550 so I’ll give that a swerve for now.

If you want to check out more of my photos you can go to

www.flickr.com/photos/marcjones

Cheers

Nikon D60

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve made a post on this site.  I have been updating my other blog a bit more regularly, you can check it out at http://torontoliving.wordpress.com/  I wanted to discuss some of my impressions of my new Nikon D60 over the past few weeks.  I have a Macbook Pro as you may recall so I’ve been playing around with various software programs to organize, edit and catalog my photos.  I started off with iPhoto of course which just happened to release an update two days after I got my camera giving it RAW image support for my new camera.  I found that alright but the image editing features it offers are really sub-par.  I have quite a bit of Adobe Photoshop experience so I thought I would give Adobe Lightroom 1.3.1 a try. Apparently lightroom is used by many photographers due to its more advanced image editing (which is non-destructive by the way).  I also tried Apple’s Aperture 2 program for a while, found the editing much better then iPhoto but I think I didn’t like the long long time it takes to index the images.  I found it really sucked the energy our of my computer occasionally and I had to quit the program to get my computer running normally again.  The problem with lightroom right now is that it does not yet have an update for my camera (which is quite new on the market) and therefore does not support its RAW format.  I’ve been simply playing around with the camera lately so I have just been shooting in JPEG format for now.  I did a bit of research today and found out that Adobe did release an update for lightroom to support my camera but pulled it after it was discovered that it has been causing all sorts of problems.  Interesting to say the least.  I’m sure they will have the problems ironed out soon and get the update out again.  In the mean time I have been happy using Lightroom but have to import my photos in RAW format using Nikon’s transfer application then export them from there into JPEG format and re-import them back into lightroom…or use Aperture for a while.  

 

I’ve been very impressed with my camera by the way, don’t have much experience for comparison purposes but since I have been using a 7 year old point and shoot canon this is 100 times better, the picture quality is amazing and the camera just does sooooo much more.  

 

HDTV

Well, Brigitte and I went out and bought a beautiful high def TV and home theatre on September 2nd.  We decided on a Samsung LN-T4061F, a beautiful 40 inch 1080p LCD TV and a Yamaha home theatre system with 5.1 surround.  We bought it at future shop and got a fairly good deal on it since we bought the stand and warranty with it as well.  It took them about 5 days to deliver it which kinda sucked but I was blown away by the picture once we got Roger’s in to hookup the HD cable.  I have so far been impressed with the picture, especially when watching football or baseball….golf also looks good but I’m not a huge golf fan.  I have noticed a huge difference between different networks when it comes to the quality of their HD programming.  CBS and CITYTV in Toronto look absolutely beautiful, fox on the other hand doesn’t look nearly as good.  I have since learned that for some reason fox broadcasts in 720p instead of 1080i like the rest of the networks.  I have also noticed that their sports tend to pixilate more readily, they must have the compression on a bit too hight to save bandwidth or something like that.  All in all I’m very impressed with the new TV.  I was a bit shocked last week when Survivor (one of my favorite shows) was not broadcast in HD.  I guess they didn’t want to lug HD cameras around in the jungle or something…oh well, maybe next time.

I think that’s it for now, hopefully I’ll find a bit more time to blog soon.

Wine Tour Update

It’s been a while since I posted to the blog so here we go.  Brigitte and I went on a wine tour down in Niagara on the 18th of August.  We rented a Mazda 3 which was very nice, good on gas too which was an added bonus.  We wen to about 5 or 6 different wineries, most of them good, a few of them were not so good.  We were really impressed with the smaller wineries along the wine route but by the time we got to the last few we were a bit shocked at the quality of the wines.  The two wineries that we didn’t like too much were Peller and Jackson Triggs.  These two wineries were much larger so you would figure the wines would be  a bit better but that definitely want’ the case.  The wines we tasted had a weird taste to them that turned both of us off.  

After the wine tour we decided to go to Niagara falls (when in Rome).  We drove down the main street in Niagara that goes past the falls.  We were planning on stopping, parking the car and getting out and walking around for a while but it was so busy there was no where to park.  They also wanted $20 to park your car for a few hours so we ended up driving back to Toronto and went to the Astoria for dinner.  All in all a good day.

Not sure what we’re planning for the Labour day weekend but I wouldn’t mind checking out the CNE as I havn’t been there in about 15 years.

Niagara wine tour weekend

This weekend Brigitte and I are going to check out the Niagara wine region.  I have lived in Ontario my whole life but havn’t really been down to check out the wine region.  I’m not what you might consider a wine conoseur but I do like wine and am looking forward to trying a few good dry red’s.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  The weather Saturday is supposed to be beautiful so we should have a good time… too bad I have to drive.

Greekfest Update

We went to the taste of the Danforth last Saturday and had a wonderful time.  I was amazed by all the meat and things at the event…the BBQ’s were definitely going full out.  I’m not going to lie to you, I ate a lot of meat, mostly lamb but also had some chicken which was superb.  I took a few pictures and posted them on my web site, you can view them at http://myweb.dal.ca/mjones2/Marc-Jones/Photos/Pages/Taste_of_the_Danforth.html  We were planning on going back on Sunday but we slept in and then it clouded over and started raining so we just had a lazy day around the apartment.

Greek Festival This Weekend

The taste of the Danforth is this weekend in TO and I’m very excited. Both Brigitte and I love Greek food and I hear this is the festival to end all festivals for the Greek loving population.  I think its supposed to be nice and hot and sunny this weekend so I’m sure we’ll have a good time.  I think it’s also the annual beer festival in Toronto this weekend as well so it should be a good weekend.  I think we’re going to bring out camera so I’ll post some pictures when I get them.

Moved into the new Apartment

Last Wednesday we moved into a bigger apartment in the same building…what a fiaso that was.  We had booked the elevator from 9-11 so that we could move all of our stuff, even borrowed a two wheel dolly to get thing done quickly.  Greenwin had double booked the elevator so another couple was aslo there to use the elevator at the same time.  Since they were not listed on the “official” manifest we took the elevator and began moving. Half way through the move they decided that it was their turn to have the elevator and stole it from us.  The other great note about the move was that the apartment we moved into was an absolute mess.  The girl that moved from the apartment did not clean anything.  There was cat hair all over everything, including in the oven, on the lamps and in every nook and cranny in the apartment.  We had to vacuum before we could even move any of the boxes.  Greenwin did send the painter and a clan of cleaning people up but they do a half-assed job most of the time that needs to be repeated anyways.  At about 3pm we finally got the rest of our stuff moved.  

Wednesday had to be the hottest day of the summer too of course, that just seems to be my luck when moving, it’s either -30 or +30, no inbetween here!  We have the place looking fairly good now which is nice and we still have some pictures to put up but that’s about it.  I’ll upload some pictures of the mess when I get the chance and what we did with it.  The balcony has seen the biggest transformation.  When we moved in it was covered…and I mean covered in pigeon feces.  We cleaned, scrubbed and had the Super put up netting so that there would be no repeats of the mess.  We bought some indoor-outdoor carpet and put it on the concrete, now it looks very nice…now lets hope I don’t get some strange disease from all the feces I had to clean up!

Two days of 42 degrees C…finally cooling off

After the past two days being over 40 degrees C with the humidex it’s finally cooling off now.  The apartment is very warm, I think the cement is holding alot of heat.  I had the AC running full out for the past 4 days and it kept the place around 25 degrees which was nice but I’m sure glad to get the temp down below 25 finally.  Right now it’s 22 in the place and It’s supposed to go down to 14 tonight so I’ll be getting lots of nice cool sleep tonight.  I think it supposed to be nice this weekend as well, high of 24 or so and sunny all weekend… that never happens on a long weekend! 

First Hot days in Toronto

Well, we had the first really hot day of the summer here in TO this week.  It went up into the mid 30’s with the humidex this week on Thursday and Friday.  I had my new air conditioner working full out during the day so it was nice and cool in my apartment when I get home from work.  I set it at 24 celcius so that it wasn’t working “full out” but still cooled and took the humidity out of the air.  There was also quite a bit of smog in TO this week.  I noticed it most on Friday when I couldn’t see the condos off in the distance due to the greenish blue haze hovering over the city.  On Friday night the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees in a few hours and the smog magically disappeared (I’m sure it just blew into Quebec but what are you going to do eh).  All weekend it has been a respectable 20 degrees or so which is nice, that means I can put a fan in the window instead of putting on the AC.  Although I prefer to have a fan in the window I’m sure glad I bought that air conditioner…and it’s still May, imagine what its going to be like in June, July and August….I think I’ll get my money’s worth out of it this year for sure.

Salary Stories Feature

I was approached by Michael Allen at Payscale.com to do a piece about Nuclear Medicine Technology for the blog he runs. If you want to read the whole interview you can find iton their blog on payscale.com. The interview contains information about what nuclear medicine is, how to become a nuclear medicine technologist and the average salary for a technologist, although this varies a great deal from location to location around the world.

Parallels update 2

Got Parallels running perfectly last night, Windows setup fine with no apparent problems.  I didn’t get much time to mess around with it but it seems to be working just like a native windows installation.  It appears to be very fast on my new MB Pro which was a bit unexpected and OS X doesn’t seem to be slowing down because of the extra load either.  I did install MSN Messenger and it appeared to go just fine.  The internet works so the network setting appear to be correct.  I’m not sure how much I’ll use Windows to be honest, I have found alternatives for ever program that I ever used on Windows for the Mac.  I would like to install a linux image as well so maybe I’ll play with that tonight.  If I don’t use Windows that much I may just delete it.

Parallels Update

Well, the setup is almost complete and I have to say it is very VERY easy to install Windows this way.  I have had no problems so far which is nice, all seems to be going well with my copy of XP.  It’s getting late so I doubt I’ll be tinkering too much with it but hopefully I’ll get it all up and working by the time I go to bed.  

Parallels for the Mac

I am in the process of downloading a copy of parallels for the mac.  I want to see how good it is at running windows xp on my mac.  I have a new MB Pro with 2gig of ram so it should work fine…I hope.  I’ll update you as I go.

Beautiful Sunny Sunday in TO

I woke up this morning and noticed that it was bright and sunny outside.  I decided to get up, make a coffee, clean the apartment up a bit then head for a nice walk downtown Toronto.  I found myself walking down Davisville Ave. craving another coffee so I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee.  I got it to go and started walking towards the subway station (I was planning on taking the subway down to Bloor then walk around downtown).  I looked down Yonge street and decided to see how long it would take to walk from Davisville to the Eaton’s Centre.  I stopped at the pharmacy to get a new pair of sunglasses since it was beating right in my face and for some reason I can’t find any of the 3+ pairs I moved from Halifax with.  I then proceeded to walk down Yonge street in the sunshine.  It took me about 2 hours to get down to the Eaton’s Centre but I had made a few stops to check out some interesting stores.  I bought a few shirts at Winners, that took about 30 minutes.  I then walked all the way to Union station, had a piece of “street meat” (a gigantic hot-dog for those who can’t translate) then took the subway up to Eglington.  I had every intention of getting a few groceries but decided against it in the end and walked home.  Long walk….I’m pooped, time for a nap.

The Cat’s move to TO

Brigitte visited last weekend and decided to bring the cat with her.  He has never been on a plane before nor has he ever gone on a long trip anywhere.  He made out alright but he somehow managed to cut his nose on something in the cage.  I think he tried to put his nose through the plastic air slots on the side at the wrong time and had it cut when the plane hit some turbulance.  He’s fine now, doing his normal stuff, running around, waking me up at 4am the whole bit.  I’m sure he’ll do fine here.

Testing a new program for blogging

I have been trying to find a good program to do blogging on the mac so I though I would give the Journlr program a try.  Lets see if it posts properly to WordPress.

Looks like it posted fine, I think I’ll try using this for my blog posts for a while and see if I like it.  I really don’t like the wordpress web posting as I find it very slow.

Ordered a book using iPhoto

I recieved a book that I ordered using iPhoto and I have to say it looks pretty good. I wanted to get the book made after talking to my parents. They didn’t get very many good pictures from out wedding in Cuba last year so I decided to get the book made for them. I had Brigitte scan some of our wedding photos so that I had the “official” ones in the book. I also used some of the ones we got from out friends from the wedding. We have a 2 MP camera and I would say that it is the absolute MINIMUM you want to use when printing photos. I wanted to have a few full page photos but iPhoto cautioned me before submitting the files that the resolution was not ideal…so I sized the photos down a bit. The book came by fedex which impressed me, I figued it woudl come by snail mail and take 2 weeks. The photos are good quality and the paper it was printed on was thick. The only issue I had was that the cover was made of cloth and the photo that was supposed to be on there was printed on a sticker and simply stuck on the cloth, which doesn’t really work that well. Overall I’m impressed with the book. I think brigitte wants to make one for her mother as well, maybe for christmas. If you want to check out the book I have converted it to a pdf file. You can access it here

Cheers
Marc

Starting to Explore Toronto

I’ve been in Toronto now for 3 months and have not really gotten out in the city to explore it. Over the past few weeks I have gotten around TO a bit more. Two weekends ago I visited the Royal Ontario Museum for the first time since I was in grade school. I had a great time and was blown away by their collection. they have an exhibit from Peru currently with lots of interesting artifacts, most of which were made of gold. I was amazed at how intricate the detailing was on their jewelry, made some of the current jewelry look like crap in comparison. After spending 4 hours in the museum I took a long walk down Bloor street looking at all the high-end shops in the region. I went into this store that sold very nice kitchen stuff and have to admit that I came out of there drooling….but everything was very expensive. After that I took a walk down Yonge Street and ended up at a pub for a burger and a few beers. Over all I had a great day.

Last weekend Brigitte was down and we decided to go to Ikea since we had a rental car for the weekend. I was amazed at the layout of the store and the selection of merchandise. The prices were also quite reasonable. I ended up buying a cheap coffee table, a rug, a metal sheving unit for the kitchen and a few other nic-nac type things. After that we went to Sears and bought an Air conditioner. I really hate the heat and for me to spend one hot hazy and smoggy day without one was unacceptable (in my eyes at least). I decided on one that sits inside the room and vents the hot air and moisture out the back. It’s 10,000 btu so it should do just fine for an apartment but I guess we’ll see when it starts getting hot.

Alright, enough for now.

Spring in Toronto

I havn’t posted anything to the blog in a while so here I go. I went to Kitchener for Easter this year to see my parents and brother and had a great time. The weather sucked, it snowed the entire weekend but it was just flurries. Dad and I went out for some Errands on Saturday and stopped to get a litter box for Propeller and a gigantic pail of litter. He’s comign out with Brigitte next Friday (the 20th) and he’ll be staying for good. I’m quite excited that he’ll be stayring, it gets lonely all alone (sniff sniff). This weekend I don’t have any plans but I was thinking of going to the ROM either Saturday or Sunday. I guess I’ll see how I feel come the weekend. If anyone has any suggestions about where to go in Toronto for a good time please leave me a message.

Another Lazy Toronto Weekend

Had a really lazy weekend this week. I went to see a concert on Friday night, got a bit drunk and was a bit “blurred around the edges” on Saturday. The weather wasn’t that great here this weekend so I really didn’t miss much outside. I spent the whole day Saturday sleeping then watching movies. I had a bunch of movies to catch up on so it was nice to do that. Today (Sunday) I have been playing around on the computer all day. I have been experimenting with the iLife suite of apps on my new Mac. I wanted to make a new photo book for my parents containing some of my wedding photos since they didn’t get that many when they were at the wedding. I think it turned out really well. I sent it off to get published so we’ll see how it looks when it gets here next week some time. I have also been playing with iDVD. I’m quite impressed with the programs but find iDVD a bit basic. I imagine it will get better with time but hey, it came with the Mac so I can’t complain.

I think it’s supposed to rain all week here in TO so I guess spring is officially here. Hopefully it will be warm at least.

Great weekend in Halifax

I took a quick trip to Halifax this weekend to see Brigitte, had a great time. I left Toronto after work on Friday and took the subway/public transit to the airport. I have to say the trip was flawless although it did take 1 hour and 40 minutes to get to the airport. I can’t really complain since it only costs $2.20 to get all the way to the airport, much cheaper then the $40 or $50 that a cab would cost. I wasn’t in much of a rush either so I just relaxed and took in the city as we crawled along on the bus.

It was good to see Brigitte again since we hadn’t seen eachother in about a month. She is going to be coming to TO in 4 weeks with the cat so that should be interesting. I was thinking of renting a car for the day so that I could pick her up at the airport.

Friday night in TO

Well, it’s Friday night in Toronto, the night before St.Patrick’s day. I’m kind of in the mood to go out for a beer or 2 but I’m not sure I can find someone to got out. I know how most people feel on Friday night, you work all week and all you want to do on Friday night is have a drink or two then pass out early. I’ve been in TO for over a month now and havn’t really been out on the town for a good drunken night yet.  Most of my friends (me included) don’t really want to go to a “club” and pay $20 to get in an $8 for a drink so we usually just hang out at someone’s place and drink there first.  I’m sure TO has some great patio’s in the summer to drink on…I’m a huge fan of the patio drinking sessions in the summer.

If anyone has suggestions about a great place to go on a Friday night, meet some new people and have a good time please let me know.

New Computer update

If you have been reading my older posts you may have noticed that I was often complaining about my old PC computer. After I was offered a job in Toronto I ordered a new Macbook Pro. It is absolutely amzing and I love it to death. I have never owned a mac before but I have to say I am extremely impressed with the way it works, the way it looks and the ease of use. I have been using Windows since the 3.1 years and I found it pretty good (not the older versions of course, XP was pretty stable). I always had my problems with windows, the constant crashes, the missing DLL files, the problems setting up networks etc. One of the main problems that I always had was that my computer would slow down to a crawl after running windows for about 3-4 months. I found that the easiest way to overcome this was to format the computer, re-install the OS and all the programs and continue on. This worked fine and I just accepted it. I have had my new macbook pro for about 2 months now an havn’t noticed any of those problems but it’s probably too early to tell. I thought I would miss some of the software that I had for the PC but have been pleasantly surprised by the huge selection of replacement software for the Mac. I did find a copy of Office off Limewire and installed that but I don’t use it very often. The new iLife suite is very good. I havn’t really gotten into garage band or iMovie yet but I have used iWeb, iPhoto and the calendar and contact list all with no problems. They seem to work together quite well which is nice. Alright, enough about the new Mac, needless to say I’m very very happy!

Beautiful Weather in TO

I have to admit, I have been impressed the past few weeks with the weather in Ontario. I’m used to cold, damp dreary weather until the middle of June. On Tuesday this week it was about 15 degrees and sunny at lunch allowing me to take a nice long walk up to Eglington without a coat on. It has cooled a bit today but its still nice out.  I’m sure I’m going to hate the heat later on in this city.  I remember the heat in Ontario from the last time I was here in the summer visiting.  I think it was about 45 degrees during the day with a low at night in the mid 30’s…about 15 degrees to hot for me.  I am planning on getting an air conditioner before it gets too hot.  I was thinking about getting one of the ones that sits in the apartment and has a hose that goes to the outside.  I really don’t think a “window shaker” will fit in the windows in my apartment so this will be a good option.  Plus they are portable so you can wheel it from room to room if necessary (although I currently live in a bachelors apartment with only one room).

Welcome to Toronto

It’s been a while since I posted to my wordpress blog so here we go. If you have been reading my blog you know that I was previously living in Halifax Nova Scotia and looking for full time work as a Nuclear Medicine technologist. I found a job…in Toronto. I made the move to the big city from Halifax on the 30th of January. I started work on Feb 5th and have been here ever since. I grew up in Kitchener so the southern Ontario life isn’t really new to me, just a bit unfamiliar. I remember visiting Toronto when I was younger thinking “wow, this place is huge” Well, needless to say, this city hasn’t gotten any smaller! I will be making regular postings on my experiences so far in Toronto, and of course a few criticisms (cough, it won’t kill you to hold the door for people behind you as you leave or enter a building).

Got a Job!

I was finally offered the job at Medisys in Toronto.  I’m quite excited as you might imagine.  I’ll be leaving for Toronto on the 31st of January and Start working on the 5th of February.  I have been busy today getting things sorted out with Medisys.  I am hoping to have some moving expenses covered which would really help me out.  We are planning on renting a U-Haul for the trip and leaving it there.  Brigitte will make the drive with me then fly to Moncton a few days later.

Vonage Update

The switch from Aliant to Vonage is now complete.  It went fairly smooth, not without troubles however.  I got a call from Aliant the other day, before my phone number got transferred to Vonage.  They said that they had contacted vonage and had not received a request to have my phone number transferred.  This was of course a lie since the transfer was sent on the 30th of December.  Aliant did mention that this transfer to vonage was a fairly new thing and they were still “ironing out the wrinkles”.  I called Vonage and had them re-send the transfer request.  After another day or two the phone number had changed.  We still have a dial-tone on our old phone line but I’m sure this will disappear in a few days.

The only other issue we had was that our DSL (fromAliant) needed a POTS free line since our phone number was going to be disconnected.  This is of course going to cost us another $35 since they simply change the phone number associated with our DSL account.

I have made a number of calls on the new Vonage line already and the quality is quite good.  I found that there was a slight delay when talking to my parents in Ontario but this was expected.  I got used to it after a few minutes and I’m sure eventually I won’t even notice it.  I did like that fact that I wasn’t sitting they constatantly trying to figure out how much the call was going to cost me.  We signed up for 500 minutes a month and we typically used only 100 on Aliant so we should be just fine although I can tell already that we will use more long distance then before…but who cares, I doubt we’ll go over our 500 minutes each month.

Phone interview a big success

I had my first phone interview this morning and I think it went extremely well. We talked for about 30 minutes and the conversation was not awkward at all which makes me feel really good. There were a few questions about dealing with difficult patients, a few on basic nuclear medicine themes such as ALARA but nothing specific about any procedures. Cathy mentioned that she did have to interview a few other people but she was “very” happy with our conversation. She was going to pass along my references to HR for followup. I hope to hear from them in the next week or so.

UPDATE: I got a call from the HR department at Medisys asking if they could call my references.  That looks like a good sign to me.  I called all my references this morning to give them the heads up, the ones I talked to appreciated the effort.

Phone interview on Monday

On Friday I decided to call Medisys and find out what’s going on with the job they had posted for Toronto.  After leaving a message on a phone in Quebec I decided to call the Nuclear Medicine department at one of their sites in Guelph Ontario.  I really lucked out because one of thier staff members is the person who does all the hiring for Nuclear Medicine.  She was acting as the secretary for the day but she wants to conduct a phone interview on Monday.  I’m quite excited as you may guess!

No Job for me

Called Hamilton Health today and it seems that the job I applied for there has already been filled.  I guess they were not willing to interview someone from another province, not too surprised.  I think this job search is going to be much harder then I though it was.

Applied for More Jobs today

I sent in a resume and cover letter for a nuclear medicine job in Oshawa this morning. The job is listed as part-time so I’ll have to ask them how many hours are expected if I get an interview. If there isn’t many guaranteed hours I’ll have to pass. The job is at Lakeridge Health Network. As with the other jobs my skills match what they are looking for so we’ll just have to wait and see what becomes of this one.

No word yet from the other jobs that I applied to before Christmas. If I don’t hear from them by next Monday I’ll start calling around and see what’s going on.

I also sent in resume’s to the Ottawa Heart Institute and the Ottawa Hospital.  Neither have current postings for Nuclear Medicine positions but hopefully they will keep my resume and cover letter for any furture opportunities.

To Vonage we go!

Brigitte and I were looking at our finances today and were a bit shocked to discover that we were paying $36/month for local phone service from Aliant.  We now each have a cell phone so there is no real reason to keep dishing out for the local phone service.  Then we got to thinking that long distance on a cell phone is incredibly expensive.  We looked at a few options, one option was to add some long distance time to our current cell service, the other was to get Vonage and bypass the phone company all together.  After some number crunching we decided on Vonage.  They offer 500 minutes of long distance a month for $20, not a bad deal.  This long distance is good for anywhere in Canada and the USA and we also got to keep our existing number.  This will save us a few bucks anyways.  Vonage also sends you a free router (which you hook your phone up to) if you order through the internet.  This was a nice perk as we were going to dish out $70 for a VOIP router at Future shop.  It’s in the mail so I’ll keep a posting of our experience with VOIP.

Another Christmas Gone

Brigitte and I returned from Christmas on the Farm on Tuesday morning.  We had planned on leaving in the afternoon but a storm was bearing down so we decided to try and get ahead of it by leaving early.  I think our attempt worked out fine, we ran into some snow squalls, some freezing rain and some normal rain on the way but the high-ways were fairly clear and not too slippery.  We had a great time up there, ate lots, drank lots and relaxed a great deal, what else could you ask for on Christmas!

We took some nice pictures of the family so that Phil could see what everyone looks like since he hasn’t seen most of them in years.  I put the pictures up on my picasa web page http://picasaweb.google.com/marc.thomas.jones since my flickr account has been maxed out.  I’m not sure if I’ll upgrade to a pro account or whether I’ll just use the free ones and delete some older photos, I guess that will depend on whether I get a job soon or not.

Christmas Prep begins

Brigitte and I are heading up to NB for Christmas again this year which I’m very excited about. We have been going up there the past few years and just love the piece and quiet of the Theriault Farm. Today we’re getting everything ready to go (we leave tomorrow morning some time). I used the rental car to take the empty beer bottles back today. Since we don’t always have a car we store them up till the next time we have a car then cash in the windfall. Today I got $22 which will help pay for our trip. Now we’re cleaning a bit, doing laundry etc., nothing too major. I think we’re going to go out to Bayer’s lake tonight and get a few more presents (Brigitte needs tome CFMB boots) so we’ll see what they’ve got out there.

Have a merry Christmas!

Testing Deepest Sender plugin for Firefox.

After formatting my computer I have been trying to find some good blogging software. I have been using firefox for a while now since it has much better features then IE (in my opinion). Lets see how this works. I just installed the “Deepest Sender” addon to firefox which allows you to post to your blog without logging into wordpress and using their editor. I’m not saying that I don’t like wordpress editor, I really do, but I find on my slow computer the editor is a bit slow. This one seems to be very quick and simple. I’ll try posting a picture as well and we’ll see how that goes. Well, I tried to add a picture and the popup is looking for the picture source, which I’m assuming is the uploaded link. I guess I’ll try use the link from the originating web site and see what happens.

Update:  I just posted using the Deepest Sender plugin and the post looks great!  The only thing I don’t like is that you can’t simply select an image from your computer to put into the editor, but maybe that’s what blogging is all about.

Another Severe Spanking for my PC

So I had to format my computer AGAIN. I can’t believe that Microsoft is still in business with the crap that they put out. I usually have to format my computer every 6 months or so but it has only been about 3 months since my last formatting and I’m getting really sick of it. It seems that the computer just starts getting slower and slower as time goes on until I get to the point where it won’t even play movie files anymore without losing the sync between the video and sound. I have to admit that my computer is fairly old but when I first format the thing it works just fine, no stutter, no problems. The specs of my machine are as follows:

• Pentium III 800 MHz Intel Processor
• 256 Meg of Ram
• 32 MB ATI XPert 2000 Video Card
• Sound Blaster Audio
• 2 CD drives, 1 x Burner 1 x ROM
• 2 Hard Drives, 1 x 20 Gig, 1 x 10 Gig
• 160 Gig External Firewire Hard Drive

As you can see this computer is not that new but it works fine most of the time. I’m going to be getting a new machine as soon as I find a job and I’m looking at the MacBook Pro. I just can’t buy another PC, I have way too many hastles with them. I am however a big curious about the new version of Windows coming out. I think they have stolen many ideas from Apple over the last 5 years to come up with this new OS but I doubt very much it will be as polished…or as stable. Microsoft should have embraced Linux years ago when they discovered their system was so prone to attacks and bugs.

No Jobs yet

It’s been close to a week since I sent in some Resume’s to Ontario companies.  I still having heard anything from them.  This of course is of no surprise as it’s very close to Christmas and I don’t really see anyone making a hiring decision before Christmas.  Two of the four jobs I applied for have been posted publically so the closing dates have not yet passed.  I am fairly confident that I will have interviews for some if not all of them as I am fully qualified for each.  I think I might call ADF on Friday if I havn’t heard from them just to make sure that they are still looking for someone.

Loving Love

Just got the new Beatles remix CD Love and I have to say it is very VERY good. My brother Paul mentioned that Dad might like it for Christmas so I went to HMV and bought the 2 CD version. It’s actually one CD and one DVD audio disc. I played both and they each have the same music on them. I was pleasently surprised to see that it was a continuous play CD with no breaks between the songs, they simply melted together seamlessly. I would have downloaded this CD from iTunes but I think the Beatles and Apple are still battling it out over the use of the word “Apple”. I think the Beatles think that Apple should give up the name since the Beatles record label is called Apple. I don’t think there is a person alive that will mistake the two companies so I can’t figure out why they can’t just get along. I think the Beatles would benefit greatly from having their music listed on iTunes, as many other big bands have. Even Metallica has given in (probably after seeing all the money they were losing off of iTunes sales). Needless to say the first thing I did when I get the CD was to rip it into MP3 format so that I can listen to it on my computer (I don’t even own a stereo). There has been great debate lately about the notion of fair use of copyrighted materials. I personally think that since I have purchased this CD I am entitled to do whatever I want with it, including selling it at a later date (to a pawn shop for instance). As I said, I don’t own a stereo so I use my computer as my primary source of music (with some great Altec Lansing speakers). I also have an iPod which I have transferred my music to. It is possible that my wife would be at home listening to the computer while I’m out with my iPod listening to the same music but I doubt that would happen very often. What are your opinions on Fair Use?

UPDATE: After writing this I was reading some google news and found an article on iTunes and how there is now questions about how profitable the service has been in 2006. I will post the text of the article below.

Can iTunes help music sales sprout higher?

Analyst’s report shows business at iTunes taking a dive, as consumers are opting to download single tunes instead of entire albums, adding pressure to declining sales in the music industry

By Eric Benderoff
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 13, 2006

A new report on digital music sales casts doubt on the power of Apple Computer Inc. to reshape the music industry and turn around a long-term slump in music sales.

The report, from Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff, showed that sales at Apple’s iTunes Music Store dropped dramatically in the first six months of 2006. Since January, the number of monthly transactions declined 58 percent, while the number of songs purchased each time fell 17 percent, leading to a 65 percent overall drop in monthly iTunes revenue, according to Bernoff.

The first-of-its-kind analysis of iTunes, by far the leading retailer of legal music downloads, shows that it “is not the engine that will restore the music business,” Bernoff said in an interview Tuesday.

Yet the iTunes store is successful, selling more than 1.5 billion songs since its inception in 2003, making it the fourth-largest music retailer in the country, said Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple.

“The conclusion that iTunes sales are slowing is simply incorrect,” she said in reaction to the Forrester study. Sales at iTunes “account for 6 percent of all music sold in the U.S.” Kerris declined to disclose detailed sales data.

Aside from the issue of iTunes’ sales trend, Bernoff’s research spotlights a significant shift in how people are buying music online: They want singles more than albums. That trend is putting further pressure on overall music sales, which continue to drop steadily year after year.

Indeed, according to data released in October from the Recording Industry Association of America, sales of digital singles increased 71.3 percent in the first half of 2006, with 286.3 million singles sold. That’s up from 167.1 million digital singles during the first six months of 2005.

But sales of digital singles are not picking up the music market. According to the RIAA, the overall estimated retail value of the music industry–including both digital and physical sales–declined 6.1 percent in the first half of the year.

Shipments of CDs and music DVDs to retailers fell 15.7 percent in the first six months of 2006. That continues a free fall of music sales that began in 2000, when CD shipments reached 942 million. By 2005, CD shipments were only 705 million.

The shift in buying habits is only part of the problem for the music industry.

Accurate figures are hard to determine, but piracy continues to plague the industry as people swap music at illegal file-sharing sites and trade burned copies of new CDs with friends.

If the music industry hoped that Apple’s model of selling digital music would stop the current slide, Bernoff’s report appears to be a cold splash of water in the face.

His research shows that people who buy an iPod go on to purchase only about 20 to 23 songs at Apple’s online music store. Bernoff’s conclusions came from credit card transactions, Apple press releases and Forrester consumer surveys.

At iTunes, “it’s mostly people buying one, two or three songs at a time,” he said. “It’s different than what people thought was going to happen when the iTunes store opened.”

Bob Merlis, a long-time executive with Warner Bros. Records and now a Los Angeles-based music industry consultant, said the iTunes phenomenon of purchasing individual songs “is not healthy for the music industry.”

“It doesn’t address something that albums and full CDs did, which is having a body of work from an artist,” he said.

“It’s so fragmented now. You get the song you like but you don’t get to know the artist anymore. It encourages this rapid turnover,” he added, pointing out that a band like U2 achieved its popularity because fans came to know them through a substantial body of work.

“If U2 came along right now, would they have the staying power? It would be very difficult to maintain that ongoing interest,” Merlis said.

Nonetheless, despite overall declines in sales, digital music is a bright spot.

“This is a marketplace that went from nothing three years ago to already this year surpassing a billion dollars in retail value revenue,” Jonathan Lamy, senior vice president of communications at the RIAA, said in an e-mail. “That’s encouraging and will only continue to grow in the future.”

At EMI Group, digital music sales grew by 68 percent for the first half of 2006, according to company figures. Digital revenues accounted for 8.5 percent of all sales, up from 5.4 percent a year ago.

Furthermore, 10 percent of sales for Coldplay’s X&Y album have been in the digital format. Of those sales, 35 percent have been by track and 65 percent were in album format. EMI called it good evidence that people do want full albums in digital formats.

On the other hand, 70 percent of digital sales for Gorillaz–another popular EMI artist–have been in track format and 30 percent in the album format. The information didn’t mention specific Gorillaz albums or songs.

Merlis said one way to get more from digital downloads is to offer more value for the consumer.

“In the album era, and with CDs, you get lyrics and nice packaging,” he said. “More value equals more consciousness by the audience that this is good. If it’s just a song, it’s not that compelling.”

To that end, he noted that many downloads will start coming with lyrics, thanks to new agreements with record labels.

Gracenotes, which provides data such as song titles to digital download services including iTunes, will launch its lyric service early next year. The company has agreements with each major record label.

Roger Faxon, co-CEO of EMI Music Publishing, which agreed to work with Gracenotes last week, called it a “landmark deal” to open new digital opportunities.

———-

ebenderoff@tribune.com

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Applied for another Job

Jack called again today to give me the heads up on another Nuclear Medicine Job. This time it is at a company called Medisys which is located in Toronto. I just sent off a resume and cover letter. They wanted me to put how much I expected to make per hour on the cover letter. I found this a bit strange but put $33-$40 per hour but mentioned that it was negotiable.

No word on the jobs that I applied for yesterday. I really don’t expect to hear much from anyone till after Christmas.

Job Applications

Had a chat with Jack today, he mentioned that I should send in a resume to the job in Hamilton at the Hamilton General hospital. I had to fill out a form indicating my address etc but that’s not a problem. I received a confirmation e-mail from them stating that they had received my application which is good. I’ll paste it below.

Job Posting #8221

Dear Marc Jones ,

Thank-you for your interest in Hamilton Health Sciences. This email confirms that your application has been received and will be processed accordingly.

Thanks for visiting the Hamilton Health Sciences Career’s Website and please tell a friend!

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Jack also mentioned a few other jobs in Ontario, the first one is ADF (Advanced Diagnostic Facility) which is located in Toronto. I think Jack used to work there and said it was good with lots of overtime.

I don’t think I have ever sent a fax from my computer before, now I know why.  After updating Windows to include fax services I had to find a phone cord that reached half-way around my appartment.  Got all that setup then had to figure out how to actually send the fax.  Instead of having an option in Word to “Send this as a fax” you have to print the document to the fax machine (sounds sensible eh!).  After that you have to put in the receiver’s name, number message etc. then, and only then can you preview your fax.  This would also sound simple…you would think.  It seems windows turns your files into pictures, which for some reason won’t preview on my computer.  The cover page comes out correct but for some reason I can’t see the resume that is supposed to go.  So, in a moment of blind faith I hit send, 5 minutes later (connected to long distance of coures) it comes up with an error.  I try again and this time it actually goes.  I of course called immediately after to see if they got the fax and they apparently did…what a relief.  Next time I’m just going to go to Kinkos!

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I also sent in a resume to KMH Labs which runs a number of facillities in Ontario (including Kitchener). They had a simple e-mail resume submission which was nice.

This Computer is driving me INSANE

Still working on my old PC computer, this thing is starting to drive me nuts. It’s getting so bogged down that can’t do more then one thing at a time. Wasn’t Windows XP supposed to allow multi-tasking? I guess not. I think it has to do with only having 256 meg of ram in this thing, I think the OS uses about 200 of it, which doesn’t leave much for the rest of the programs. I got this computer in 1999 or 2000, can’t remember exactly when it was. At the time of course it was a very good computer, but now its not able to do the things I want to do on it (edit photos, make web pages, listen to music, watch and burn movies etc). I think it’s time to get a new one. I’ve been eyeing the macbook pro from Apple. Every review I’ve read is just glowing and I havn’t heard of a single person who is disappointed with their purchase. I was also thinking about getting a Dell laptop but after hearing many horror stories about servicing them I’ve decided to steer away from them. I also think it’s time to cut the old umbilical cord and separate from Microsoft products. I have never been particularly happy with any of the microsoft products or their business model. Take windows for example, almost everyone is using windows in the world today. They still insist on selling legal copies of windows for between $150 and 300$ which is way too expensive for the crap they are putting out. Now I’ve only ever purchased one copy of windows in my life and it was windows 3.1 which came with my old pre-pentium computer. Microsoft is now making it very difficult to copy their products with the new Windows Genuine Advantage scheme. You now need to have a legal copy of windows to dowload and install security updates (most of them anyways).

Windows Live Writer…lets give this a try

I just downloaded Windows Live Writer so that I can compose blog entries from outside the browser window. I’m not expecting much, after all it is a microsoft product. I’ll try and embed a picture and see how it works. I am already quite happy with the blogging software on WordPress so if this doesn’t work I’ll have no problems uninstalling the program (although it will probably screw up my system and force another formatting session).

Well, it seems to have worked. The only thing I didn’t like was that the picture was placed at the top of the page, justified to the left but the text did not wrap around the text. I fixed this editing the post in wordpress. I don’t really want to do this every time but I guess if I have to post a picture I’ll just have to jump though the hoops. What I did like is that the image was resized immediately when I inserted it (which is easier then uploading to wordpress then inserting them).

CFL football, still big news

I have to admit I havn’t been watching alot of CFL football in the past few year.  I’m not exactly sure why, I think it has something to do with the fact that I don’t really have a “team” of my own.  I do enjoy watching the Edmonton Eskimos play but I have to admit that I didn’t watch a game the entire year.  I think the schedule that the CFL has come up with has something to do with my lack of enthusiasm for this league.  A few years ago they changed the season start date to early in the summer to avoid having to compete with the NFL.  I don’t know about you but I just can’t sit there and watch football in August, it just doesn’t seem like the time for football. 

The Grey cup was a few weeks ago and I did get to see good portion of the game.  I though Nelly Furtado did a terrible job at the halftime show, she must have been drunk or something…or really REALLY cold.  Congrats to the BC lions for their great season. 

New England Patriots

 It’s Sunday afternoon and as ususal I’m sitting here watching NFL football.  The Pats are playing the Detroit Lions, who have a very bad Win/Loss record this year and I am just shocked to see how badly the pats are playing against such a weak team.  Last week New England played the then 9 and 1 Chicago Bears and played very well.  The only thing that I did notice last week which seems to be reapeating itself this week is the great number of turnovers.  As I’m watching the game there have been 6 turnovers, 3 of which were in the last few minutes of the game.  I’m not sure what is going one, are the balls getting frozen?  Are the players getting beter at stripping the ball from the receivers/running backs/quarterbacks?  Maybe it’s time the NFL starts looking at the balls and how they are changing the outcomes of the games….of course the NFL must really love the high number of turnovers, makes for more interesting television!