Your Website Hosting
Another critical issue is hosting. You might have a great site, but if your host doesn't have the equipment and technology for hi-speed internet connection, all the visitor will see is "waiting for..." Again, they won't wait around. With more and more features being added to websites your host has to have the capacity to deal with your site and everybody else's. And what happens when your site is down or you have a problem? Can you contact your hosting company quickly and do they respond with qualified help? Hosting is not just a matter of the lowest price.
For seven years now I have used Bluehost.com. Their pricing is competitive, but most importantly their support is unmatched. Websites aren't perfect. Things happen. In a worst case scenario your site is suddenly gone! Do you have a backup? Probably not and all your hard work would be gone if your host doesn't backup your site, including not only the thousands of files, but also your databases, every night. Bluehost does.
Other Considerations
In addition to your host there are issues with your domain search and registration and what's called SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which is how you will rank on searches. With a couple hundred million sites vying for attention how will people find you?
Although the way that the major search engines index your site is changing, we use a combination of what are called meta-tags and meta-names, basically everything people would enter om a search. Some are pretty basic, like location and your business, but others can be just as important. I know of one site who had no search words, not even their city and guess where they came up? Page 56! Now who would go that far searching for anything? On most searches you need to come up in the first few pages, preferably page one, but that's not always easy to do.
A couple of other considerations on where your site is going to come up in the results is how current your content is, such as a blog and whether you have any dangerous site links on your site. This happens when you don't have the proper security in place on the comments you allow on your site, and people post comments with links to dangerous or adult sites. Google will drop your ranking instantly if they discover these links on your site. Sometimes a simple math calculation to prove the poster is human works, but they are getting more sophisticated these days and can sometimes get passed these measures.
There's a lot to consider with any website. The first smart choice is to deal with someone who knows what they are doing and has YOUR best interests at heart.
Career Assessment. This was amazingly accurate.
Discovered a site in my job search, and this was the free report they gave me. I was amazed at how well they captured who I am, job-wise anyway. It’s www.careerxactcom. Hey, if you are looking for anyone?
Memories of My Father
It's truly hard to believe that it's been eight years since my father died in my arms. It's said that moments of great trauma stay with you forever and every single moment from hearing the first screams from my friend, Ans, are seared into my memory like they happened yesterday.
James Taylor said it best
If you've been following my blog you know that life has not been kind to me lately. Just when I thought things were finally turning around for me with a job, albeit the worst job I've even had in my life with the worst company I've ever had the misfortune to work for, Stream Global Services, I was wrongfully dismissed last November.
Healthcare in Ontario SUCKS!
When I lived in BC and was diagnosed with diabetes in 2004 everything I needed was covered by my medical plan. Not so in Ontariario. You have to fight for every dollar. The best example of idiotic care here is that they pay for insulin but not the needles to take it. Are we supposed to drink it? Needles are $40 a box, and, if like me you use six a day, that box doesn't last very long.
The Death of Customer Service?
Apparently Facebook's new search feature will allow people to search for certain key words from a number of sources. Hopefully it will search WordPress blogs as well. This post is about my disaster of an experience with BelairDirect, my insurance company. They only underwrite insurance in Ontario, so this won't be of any interest if you are in BC, where ICBC handles all the insurance. I didn't know how good I had it while I lived in BC.
Another Milestone?
Proves that you are never too old to get fired. I'm struggling with whether it is worse to work at the worst job in my life, or getting fired from the worst job in my life?
My Life at September 2012
It has been a long and bumpy road, no question. How I have ended up in this situation, penniless, working part-time at minimum wage, alone and in a city I loathe, is the result of mistakes and just plain bad luck. All of us have many "turning points" in our lives, moments or decisions that changed the direction of our lives completely. Location plays a huge part, obviously. Where we are born and where we chose to live during our lives, Marriage, Kids, Career changes, Death, Loves and the people who come into your life, as they say, for a "reason" or a "season".
Up until about 1992 I had had what you would call a "normal" life. Got married in 1969; had two wonderful children, both of whom were heavily involved in sports, which I loved. After twenty-three years of marriage I finally accepted that it was never going to be what either of us wanted, and now that the kids had busy lives of their own and hardly had time to see me, I made a life-changing decision. My parents, brother and sister had moved to the Okanagan in 1970 and we had seen each other on rare occasions for many years. In 1991 my mother was stricken with fifth stage melanoma and was given only a five percent chance of survival. For various reasons I had been working around the clock, trying to keep a roof over our heads, while my ex didn't even try to get a job, and my doctor told me I was a poster child for a heart attack if I didn't make some radical changes. My marriage was dead in the water and I wanted desperately to spend what remaining time my mum had with her, so, at the encouragement of my kids, I moved West and spent sixteen glorious years in paradise.
What I did not know when I left was that it would cost me my relationship with my kids. I believed that they would come out again to visit me and my family and we would again have the wonderful times we had enjoyed earlier when they had come out for three weeks. Both kids said they had never seen me happier and encouraged me to move. For whatever reason, and this will haunt me to my deathbed, my ex chose to cut-off any contact with my kids and no matter how hard I tried, would not let me see them. After making contact with my daughter, she asked me to come down to see her. I drove across the country, in the depths of winter, nearly buying the farm several times, only to arrive back in Brampton to discover my ex and her new hubby would not let me see her. I hung around for three weeks, staying with my son's family, to no avail. I never saw my daughter again after leaving her in 1993. It crushed me and has never made any sense to me. I reconnected with my son through Facebook in 2007 and I had high hopes that we would be together again, but he chose to again cut me off. I was most upset that my father had passed away and my mother was suffering from Alzheimer's, but they had made no attempt to contact them in all those years. It broke my heart.
After losing my parents I took over a foreclosure on a mobile home in Westbank and worked fourteen hour days, seven days a week, for a year and a half, completely gutting it and rebuilding it into a showpiece home, one I was told was the best in the Okanagan. The day before I was to list it, one of the local Indian chiefs came out in the press, stating anyone who bought on Indian land was "stupid", because there was no tenancy and all their parks would be shutdown and condos built instead. Overnight the market crashed. Not only could I not sell it, but I also lost the financing I had. My doctor told me that my stress level was "off the charts" and I had to get out from under this burden, no matter what. I managed to put the place in the care of a good friend, and my other friend agreed to look after the place until I could hopefully sell it in the spring. I left for Panama in 2007; however, instead my so-called "friend" let the place go to ruins, most critically not shoveling off the heavy snow from the roof, and it collapsed. The repair estimate was over twenty thousand dollars and I had no hope of paying for this. My buddy managed to salvage a distress sale, but I lost everything.
My time in Panama was no picnic either. I was renovating an apartment complex for a guy back in Kelowna, but he didn't pay me for my work. I had also given temporary shelter to a Panamanian family who were facing being on the streets. They were only to stay for two weeks, but after two months I had to get the police in to get them out. When they finally moved out, they stole everything that wasn't nailed down. They never even paid me for the two months I had fed them. I was left with $21 in my bank and no hope. I also had a gall bladder attack and ended up in the hospital, where they nearly killed me with their antiquated surgery techniques. I barely escaped with my life. My dear cousin back in Toronto offered me shelter, so I sold everything I could get my hands on and flew back to Toronto. She saved my life at the time.
As luck would have it, mostly bad luck, during my time in Toronto I met a woman from London on the internet. We talked for hours and she eventually came to visit me, and, well, it was love at first sight for me. I honestly believed she was my soul mate and we would be together forever, so I moved to London to be with her. Tragically, she got secretly involved with another guy on the internet, and went to meet him behind my back. It was obviously over between us and now I was just left stuck in a town I hated, alone, broke and very unhappy. I ended up on assistance and living in a men's shelter. Somehow, through all of this, I managed to get a part-time job at Home Depot, but I was not getting enough hours to survive. The Salvation Army Centre of Hope paid my last month's rent to avoid my eviction, but I couldn't pay December's rent either, and again faced eviction. A small glimmer of hope was that the London Housing Corporation finally contacted me about getting a "geared to income" place, but I couldn't even meet with them until the end of December, and there is no guarantee that I would be approved. I was at my wit's end. There are many days I had dark thoughts. I am also a diabetic, and was about to run out of my meds yet again. The last time I went through that and had no meds for six weeks, I ended up in the hospital with a sky-high sugar level of 24, which is the stage for a heart attack. Maybe, after all this, it would be merciful.
Taking Stock
Every once in a while I take stock of my life, partly because it's therapeutic and to see what I was thinking at the time. One of my regrets in life is that I have not recorded either my words or in pictures many things in my life. Video is a much more prevalent part of our society these days, but it wasn't way back when my kids were growing up. Particularly because I am now estranged from my children it would be nice to be able to watch videos of them growing up. Both my son and daughter were heavily involved in sports, yet I don't have a single picture from all those years of hundreds of games.
As for recording my life, you never think at the time that you will ever begin to forget some of the things you experienced during your life. I have been more diligent about it over the last few years, but I never recorded a word before that. I wrote a poem when my son was born and I wrote a poem for my daughter when I moved out West, but that's about it. On one of my many infamous cross-country trips between BC and Brampton, a trip that takes just over forty hours, I had a recorder with me and from that I produced a novel, carefully transcribing every word and printing it. It was about two inches thick on standard 8 1/2 by 11 paper and I called it My Body Time because that was the note I added on every recording. To his considerable credit my Dad actually read it. Somewhere, somehow it got turfed and I don't have the computer file anymore so it's gone, which I regret. It would be fun to not only remember the trip, but to see what I was thinking about my life and future at the time.
So, where am I now? It seems like any record of the things that have happened to me over the past few years has been a tragedy. If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all. Nothing has gone right, from my health to where I lived, to family, really nothing. Somehow I keep plugging along, believing that by some miracle things will turn around and get better, but it never seems to work out that way. I've certainly had some low points, like lying in the sweltering heat in a men's shelter, wondering if this was the bottom. Things got a little better when I got a job, lousy as it was, to getting an apartment through London Housing and having a little money in my jeans. It wasn't enough though because they, Home Depot, didn't renew my contract and I was back on welfare again.
That was back in December of 2010 and it was also a time my health took a very bad turn. Because I had no money I went six weeks without my meds and ended up in hospital. My sugars were off the charts and I came close to buying the farm. I don't remember five days before I finally managed to get to the hospital. They just monitored me until my sugars came down, gave me three days of basic meds and sent me on my way. Thanks to my doctor at the walk-in clinic, who reached into his own pocket and together with a pharmacist got me my urgently needed meds, I survived. I had had an ongoing battle with Ontario Works, trying to get my meds before it was too late. I wrote them a letter advising that there would be a letter on my cold dead body clearly implicating thing them in my death because they wouldn't help me. Within an hour of delivering the letter I got a call to come in right away. They issued me a drug card, a bus pass and money to buy food.
My job each and every day was to check all the job boards, read the local papers online and research any companies that might be hiring. I also worked with Goodwill, who sent me on a wild goose chase to take courses for my passion - employment counselling, only to have it all fall apart when it turned out to be a post graduate course and I did not qualify to take it. I also went through Leads, whose mandate is to find employment for the disabled, which, by now, I was. They were hopeless and never helped me in any way. In our meetings they would call up a job board, which I knew by heart, and tell me to apply for jobs I had already applied for.
One of the jobs was at a call centre, for which I applied online months before. Out of the blue I got a call from them asking me to come in for an interview, which I did and was hired to start right away. I was praying that they didn't do a CRC (Criminal Record Check), but they did. I figured it was just another job I lost because of this stupid mistake from twenty-five years ago! I was surprised when they called and asked me to explain what happened. The HR person just kept saying that it was twenty-five years ago, so they went ahead and hired me anyway. I was so grateful at the time to finally land a job, but I had no idea what I was in for. They turned out to be the worst employer I've ever seen in my whole life and the stress of the job got so bad that I was shaking all the time and my blood pressure, normally ridiculously normal, was really high and my sugars were off the charts, in the high twenties and low thirties. My doctor said I was a poster boy for a heart attack. I learned about getting Medical EI, so I went off on medical leave to try to calm down, and to find a better job.
My doctor supported my leave, signing the forms required for both my company and EI, showing a return date of sixty days. I hoped this would give me time to find something better, but no such luck. As the sixty days approached the company called me to ask if I was coming back or needed more time? Medical EI runs for fifteen weeks, so I went back to my doctor to get an extension. Instead of continuing to support me he flipped out about not being my family doctor, saying he shouldn't be signing these forms. I might mention that I have been trying to find a family doctor for three years. As we were talking he was writing something on the original form. When I got home I was horrified to see that he had written "open return to work", something I had told him the company specifically would not accept. I scanned and emailed it to HR anyway. Naturally I got a call a few minutes later.
They would not accept this form and told me to find a family doctor to fill out the form correctly, even though they were well aware of how impossible this was. As my benefits were about to run out I contacted EI to see what to do. The agent I spoke with was very helpful and told me they could extend my benefits to the maximum fifteen weeks if I brought in the certificate. She said they accept an "open return" because this happens all the time. I went down to Services Canada to deliver the form, only to meet with a real bitch who looked at the form and said because it was signed on August 20th they might claw back my benefit payments. As if things could not be bad enough! I called my employer to return to work now that my benefits were expiring and I had no choice, but they want a clearance certificate from my family doctor. They know I can't get this because I can't find a family doctor, so now my benefits are about to run out and I can't return to work. So frustrating! Enough to drive me to drink, if only I could afford it.
On the health front things have improved a little. Thanks to increased meds, especially larger doses of insulin, my sugars have moderated considerably. I'm even getting some sixes and eights in the mornings, something I haven't seen in years. My feet continue to be a problem and I'm in pain 24/7, making sleeping really difficult. Walking is no joy either. I've recently discovered a new cream that's helping a bit, but it's no miracle cream. My biggest health challenge is not being able to do anything physical, which I've always done, and the thirty-five pounds I've packed on because of all the insulin.
On the family front things are still sad and confusing. My son came to London back in March and we managed to only squeeze in a forty-five minute visit after seventeen years apart, but he said we would get together "soon" and have a better visit. I was hopeful that I could somehow see my three grand kids, two of whom I have never met. Weeks later and after he hadn't answered several text messages, I called his cell phone, only to learn it wasn't his phone anymore. I started leaving increasingly concerned messages on Facebook, all with no answer. After weeks of trying I sent a not too happy note reminding him that he had done this to me three times already and asking what's going on? He finally responded with a really cruel message, saying in part that I wasn't his real Dad and had no right to see his daughters. Like a knife in my heart. He blocked me on Facebook and said that was the end.
My daughter has made no attempt what-so-ever to contact me after I drove across the country in the dead of winter to see her back in 1994. My wife's new hubby hid her away and would not let me see her. He also wouldn't so much as let me have coffee with my wife of twenty-three years, so that says it all. I did find my daughter on Facebook, but she also blocked me and reported me to Facebook for posting a picture of her. Really sad what people do to each other. My kids both encouraged me to move out West seventeen years ago to be with my mother, who we felt was dying of cancer and didn't have long to live. I never knew that the result was them cutting me out of their lives forever.
On top of everything else going on I had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. Revenue Canada had garnisheed my wages to the tune of 30% plus 100% of my vacation pay. London Housing was already taking 30% and I could barely survive, so living on 40% was impossible. Several people who came to my rescue or believed in me and loaned me money got drawn in to the bankruptcy, which I regret more than anything. I hope I find some way to still pay them back for their faith in me. I keep praying that my lottery ticket will hit and I can reward them big time. I figure the odds are fifty fifty - I could win or I could lose.
Friends and love life are still non existent. For a guy who loved being surrounded by many friends and pretty well was always involved romantically, being alone has been a killer. My last relationship was with the woman who I came to London for and that ended tragically when she screwed around on me. My life revolved around her and her lovely daughter, who I got along with so well. It all ended so abruptly and hurtful. I can't help but think I wouldn't be in this God-forsaken town if it wasn't for her. Can't believe it's been three years since I moved here. I have to find a way to get out before I go crazy. I had asked for a transfer to Chilliwack from my employer, but they won't do anything until I return to work here.
Oh well, there you have it.