Bathrust
Well, I arrived in Bathurst a little after 6 last night. Mom, Dad and I had intended to leave around 8 in the morning, so that we could get to Bathurst by mid-afternoon, but unfortunately, we had some car trouble. Dad eventually found that a wire was loose somehow, and once he fixed that, the car was fine. It delayed us for about two and a half hours though.
Of course, when I say that the car was working fine, I mean that in a general sense. After we were driving for a while, Dad noticed that the car was sputtering at high speeds (around 100 Kph or so) so he decided to stop at Canadian Tire and pick up a new filter. While there, my mother and I were coerced into signing-up for Canadian Tire Credit cards, even though the lady telling us to do so said they sucked. We just wanted the free gifts, and she wanted to give them to us. I got a little calculator thing with a pen in it and another pen. Not that great, but worth signing up for a credit card that I will likely never even bother to activate. Course, I forgot them in the car, so I'll probably never see them again. Anyway, after that, Dad decided to install the new filters right there in the parking lot. He said he felt uncomfortable doing it there since Canadian Tire has a garage, but Mom browbeat him into it.
So once again we were on our way. As we entered New Brunswick, it was discovered that non of us had actually looked at a map, or knew how to get to Bathurst. So Dad decided to drive along the Trans Canada for a while, then eventually stopped and asked for directions. It was lucky that we did so, because we were actually going in the wrong direction. We were only about 15-20 minutes out of the way, but it could have been a disastrous delay to drive that was already 6 hours long.
Anyway, we eventually got here and I got settled in. Bathurst is a nice little town/city (I'm not sure which it is). There are lots of little parks, and it's built right next to the water, so there are lots of nice views to look at. The place I'm staying is about a half hour walk from the downtown, which is pretty reasonable. Not extremely convenient, but definitely doable.
Getting the internet to work was quite a task. The other guys I'm living with already had internet, so getting it wasn't a problem, but getting it to work certainly was. The guys had a wireless router, so I figured that I'd just use that, since I don't have a long LAN cable. I worked at it and tinkered with it for like... 2 hours, and I could not get my stupid computer to connect to the network. Eventually, Matt, my roommate, suggested that I call our ISP, and get them to walk me through it, since they had set up the router. I was on hold for like 20 minutes before I finally got to talk to anyone, and then the guy spent the next hour telling me to do stuff that did not help at all. He eventually gave up and said I should call my computer manufacturer and ask them for help. I was like, "...Thanks."
Things weren't looking good, but then I suddenly had the brilliant idea of just running a LAN cable from the crazy Aliant router to the router that I brought from home. It worked perfectly. It only took me about four hours of work.
Anyway, first day of work is tomorrow. I hope it goes well!
Of course, when I say that the car was working fine, I mean that in a general sense. After we were driving for a while, Dad noticed that the car was sputtering at high speeds (around 100 Kph or so) so he decided to stop at Canadian Tire and pick up a new filter. While there, my mother and I were coerced into signing-up for Canadian Tire Credit cards, even though the lady telling us to do so said they sucked. We just wanted the free gifts, and she wanted to give them to us. I got a little calculator thing with a pen in it and another pen. Not that great, but worth signing up for a credit card that I will likely never even bother to activate. Course, I forgot them in the car, so I'll probably never see them again. Anyway, after that, Dad decided to install the new filters right there in the parking lot. He said he felt uncomfortable doing it there since Canadian Tire has a garage, but Mom browbeat him into it.
So once again we were on our way. As we entered New Brunswick, it was discovered that non of us had actually looked at a map, or knew how to get to Bathurst. So Dad decided to drive along the Trans Canada for a while, then eventually stopped and asked for directions. It was lucky that we did so, because we were actually going in the wrong direction. We were only about 15-20 minutes out of the way, but it could have been a disastrous delay to drive that was already 6 hours long.
Anyway, we eventually got here and I got settled in. Bathurst is a nice little town/city (I'm not sure which it is). There are lots of little parks, and it's built right next to the water, so there are lots of nice views to look at. The place I'm staying is about a half hour walk from the downtown, which is pretty reasonable. Not extremely convenient, but definitely doable.
Getting the internet to work was quite a task. The other guys I'm living with already had internet, so getting it wasn't a problem, but getting it to work certainly was. The guys had a wireless router, so I figured that I'd just use that, since I don't have a long LAN cable. I worked at it and tinkered with it for like... 2 hours, and I could not get my stupid computer to connect to the network. Eventually, Matt, my roommate, suggested that I call our ISP, and get them to walk me through it, since they had set up the router. I was on hold for like 20 minutes before I finally got to talk to anyone, and then the guy spent the next hour telling me to do stuff that did not help at all. He eventually gave up and said I should call my computer manufacturer and ask them for help. I was like, "...Thanks."
Things weren't looking good, but then I suddenly had the brilliant idea of just running a LAN cable from the crazy Aliant router to the router that I brought from home. It worked perfectly. It only took me about four hours of work.
Anyway, first day of work is tomorrow. I hope it goes well!