Posts filed under 'Rant'
Ok, so Pete must be with me today… (for those of you don’t know, Peter Near has TERRIBLE travel karma). I go to the airport in a taxi, it’s early morning, the dude only takes cash. I don’t have any cash. I run inside to find an ATM. No ATMs. I try to find a currency exchange. I find one, it’s closed. Says go to the other terminal. I run to the other terminal. I find a currency exchange. They can’t use my debit or credit cards. Plane is leaving soon (I always tend to push my luck and sometimes it causes problems). They tell me to go back to other terminal and a different floor and talk to that currency exchange. I get money. I head back to car (it’s been like 45 minutes). Guy is still there and has been calling the office trying to get a hold of someone who can get a hold of me. I pay him and get my luggage. He leaves. I go to try to check in. Machine isn’t working properly. Issues me only half of my boarding passes (going through Heathrow). I try to find someone manning the machines to help me out. No one around. Really close to flight time. Find someone. They can’t make the machine work for my itinerary any more either. Say, I’ll just have to talk to the connection people at Heathrow. I get to Heathrow, manage to get checked through without issue. Go get a sandwich and no yellow mustard. Only English mustard. Dammit! (ok, so that’s not so much of a big deal).
March 7th, 2007
Ok seriously - The Break-Up is complete crap. As a comedy, if written well, it could have been not a bad premise… however, it wasn’t written as a comedy. It is an exploration of two people who have a fight, break-up, spend all their time trying to hurt each other and then at the end go their separate ways. On my new scale of poor-good-fantastic, it scores a phat 0. Not worth watching, renting or even knowing about. I can’t believe that movies like that get green-lighted by studios, have big name “talent” attached with a $50M budget. Sadly it has made about $250M to date which is just depressing since it will be considered a success.
December 26th, 2006
Last night I sent an email to the Mazda dealership just outlining my position — why I shouldn’t be paying more and an itemization of all the issues I had with them. Got four phone calls on my cell during the day but couldn’t answer as I was in a executive customer meeting. At the end of the day I call him and say, “you called”. He says yes, he did and that he read my email. I asked what new information he might have and what he can do for me given the email I sent. He says that there has been no progress and still hasn’t found a car for us at this time. At this point I think - why did he try to call me four times today with no change in the situation? Right after I get off the phone, I call the other Mazda dealership (referred by others at work) to explain my situation. I ask if they can take care of this and give me the price I want? He says he’ll check. 20 minutes later he phones back and says yes. Now, he can’t actually sell me a car yet because there are laws in Ontario and I’m still under contract with the first dealership. I call Karen and talk about the situation. I leave work and get a ride home in Darryl’s new Mazda 3 hatchback (damn him) and then take the one car we have remaining and drive to the dealership. While I’m driving there, they apparently call and say they’ve found a car in Ottawa. I show up at the dealership and sit down with the manager. I say “we’re going to walk away”. He defuses my ire completely by saying that he understands, can’t win them all, apologies and will refund my deposit. That was classy and very smart of him. It turned a swear-fest and a day of stewing into basically a mild grumpy and funny story. It also means that I won’t write them off in the future. We’ll give them another chance when we buy again as it was an honest mistake and really his situation was intenable.
That dealt with, Karen and I hop in our one car and go to the other dealership and sit with the agent that we were referred to (Mike Cole). Easiest sale he ever did probably as we had all the stuff worked out already. We get through it quickly and if everything holds (and the 3 cars in Canada haven’t already been sold) it means we will be in the car a week from Monday. Got a call from the bank verifying financing (it was noted as a priority rush, so I got a call at 9pm at night, for which I was impressed) so that shouldn’t hold up anything. Stay tuned for the conclusion…
October 19th, 2006
Karen and I carefully coordinated today… She had to get the plates off of Ol’Bluey (the sunbird) and dispose of him before we could go and pick up the new car. She took the car to a wrecking yard at lunch and then a co-worker drove her back to work — we didn’t elect to give it away to a charity as it would have taken them 2 weeks to actually pick it up. At 5:00, I ducked out of a very important work meeting to go and pick up Karen from CiTS. I picked her up by about 5:30 and we left Kitchener very excited to go and get her new car. Pulled into the dealership and went in. Talked to the sales guy and Karen asked to see the newly delivered vehicle. We walk in and see a phantom purple, dazzing and shiny, NON-HATCHBACK Mazda 3. So, naturally I say “that’s the wrong car model”. Sorta stunned looks are exchanged between all three of us and he runs out to go check the computer. Comes back and shows the paperwork and it says Mazda 3 GT. We say it’s the wrong car, we wanted the hatchback. We go back out to sit at his desk and he looks at the computer again. Everything apparently that was punched into the computer was for a GT and not a GT Sport (the difference in why we didn’t get the hatchback model).
Then it begins. He’s apologetic that it’s the wrong car. He punches some stuff into the computer and says to get the hatchback it will be an additional $600-$700 for that model. This causes me to get very loud and start swearing at him. Let me recap. I inquired about, test drove and handed him website print outs from CarCostCanada with the hatchback photo and the correct model number on it. Now we don’t have a new car, we don’t have an old car and I’m going to pay more for the experience? Karen and I stepped outside while the manager and the sales guy tried to work out a solution. Karen very much wanted to walk away with a car, any car, and that makes a lot of sense since we now only have one car to use between us. Fortunately as luck would have it we don’t really need a second car for the next little while so we’re not going to be too inconvenienced. Karen and I talk for about 30 minutes and eventually resolve to stick to the plan and wait and get the hatchback (which it seems there are only 3 of them in the entire country for some reason). We go back in and tell them to get us the car we want. They say sure (it will cost more) and they’ll start looking for it tomorrow morning. We leave very unhappy.
October 18th, 2006
New airport security measures are mostly a load of crap. Anyone who flys regularly knows it’s for the perceived value of heightened security but in reality we know that there isn’t much their new measures can do to be effective against any possible threats. The gels and pastes rule is still in effect, I made sure I took the smallest tube of toothpaste with me on my three day trip. Flew from Toronto to Kingston’s tiny airport and had no issues. However, when I decided to leave Kingston (it has one gate, one counter and about eight people work there apparently with more time on their hands than they need), they went through my luggage and found my toothpaste and made me bag it for safety. If you look at the image and the scale of the size of the toothpaste, you can understand how silly and largely irrelevant it is and how much it afforded airline “safety”. This kind of crap is what makes travelling a pain to deal with and it’s only going to get worse as more stuff happens.
October 2nd, 2006
I am mostly a self-service banker. Don’t really need to talk to someone most of the time, don’t really do much other than automated bill payment and withdrawing cash at ATMs. On occasion I need to transfer money from one bank to another to pay off debt or other things that I have incurred. Mostly that means going to TD, whom recently have posted lots of marketing on their branch windows about how customer service is #1. So, I go to this branch and ask to transfer money - something like $4000 or so. They can’t give me cash, you need to order it in advance. This is a bank?! Do they not deal in cash? Ok what can I get? Bank draft. Fine, give me that. Who’s it made out to? Me (duh). Here you go, the $4000 and there is a $6.50 service charge for the bank draft. Huh? Why are you charging me? Because it’s a bank draft. But it’s because YOU couldn’t give me cash. We charge $6.50 for bank drafts. (wanting to close all my accounts on the spot) Can you not waive the charge? Yes, however we can’t do that in this case. (me pointing at the sign on window) Service is #1! (walk over to CIBC, literally 20 steps the other side of the mall entrance) I want to deposit this bank draft. Done; there will be a five day hold on it until it clears. But I need it now. Bank drafts aren’t the same as cash, 5 days to clear. *sigh*
My question is, how come banks are allowed to make billions of dollars every year off of us but provide less and less service for doing it? Looking at it, they use a lot of my money to make their own, charge me money for letting them do it and aren’t involved in my financial dealings at all (98% of my banking is all online). I seriously hope there is a reckoning in my generation with these (and all) greedy corporations.
July 9th, 2006
Several of us went to see Lord of the Rings: The Musical tonight. Let me say that this further proves that Saul Zaentz destroys all Tolkien stuff he touches and I’m glad he stayed out of the movies. This also resparked my hatred for theatre and a dawning belief that MOST theatre is crap. Now, I do feel bad for the actors and crew in the show, they tried their best and I hope that they did it because it was merely professional work and not a belief that the show was good. I instead blame the director and the writers for putting that show together in the first place. Now, I have lots of friends in Toronto in theatre and specifically fighting… and they all warned me off of it with frenzied gestures and vocal ranting, but I figured I had to see it anyway.
First off, if you don’t know the story of Lord of the Rings, it might very well be impossible to follow what is going on as they jump rapidly through the story and not always continguously. The play is 3h 45m, which is VERY LONG for something that you enjoy watching much less something that isn’t good.
I’ll have to itemize my issues with the play, as there are too many of them to write about:
- Hobbits are portrayed as stupid people
- None of the characters are good - Gandalf was horrible; none of the presence that the character needs
- The people of Bree are hillbillies and do a hoedown with the Hobbits
- They skip Weathertop (stabbing Frodo in Bree instead)
- They take a moment similar to the movie at the council of Elrond, but instead Frodo puts the ring on the floor
- They skip the Watcher in the Water
- In Moria with the Balrog (hard to tell even what it is), a Florida Everglades airboat is on stage (the noisy fan to blow black paper at the audience)
- Galadriel has a hat on that makes her look like an sprouting potato
- When Frodo accepts the Phial of Galadriel, he takes it from his coat — WORST PALMING EVER
- Boromir dies by being circled and jumped over by Orcs
- Theoden just feels better after talking with Aragorn and goes to war
- Ents look very similar to ZZ-top band members on 35′ stilts (old men with hats, trenchcoats, beards)
- Helm’s Deep has a massive silent battle (as all the cast are using rubber swords)
- Gollum twists and contorts himself constantly for no reason
- Shelob is controlled by people not in all black (so you are somewhat distracted by the “operators” of the spider)
- Two very loud sword hits (SWORD HITS) ring out when Sam attacks Shelob
- The light of Eärendil apparently is about 40 watts
- Battle of Pellinor Fields is skipped and we move directly to the black gate
- The battle at the black gate is done as an interpretive dance sequence and people aren’t actually fighting, just gesturing and falling down
- Gollum when he takes the ring (and dies) descends slowly on a hydralic stage while standing
- Gandalf appears beside Sam and Frodo to rescue them (not sure how he got there or how they get back)
- Saruman comes out of Bag End in a trenchcoat and looking to knife fight (West Side Story anyone?)
- Bill Ferny kills Saruman by accident
- None of the songs (maybe except one) are memorable or even interesting
There you go - I hear it’s not doing well and I guess I now know why. It’s unfortunate but I guess after hearing the warnings I didn’t expect much… but I got even less.
June 24th, 2006
Ok - so I’m new to it, but at first glance, it provides nothing that doesn’t exist already in other languages. Perhaps it has some value in built in AJAX, but seriously, if you know what you’re doing with javascript, that part is somewhat trivial. Also, I don’t need yet ANOTHER language that does the same thing as ASP, JSP, Perl, PHP, Python – I mean seriously, especially one with as crappy a syntax as Ruby. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m biased, but Ruby and Rails seems like a good idea in a world that doesn’t have J2EE application servers overflowing the dumpster bin. Just giving me another record abstraction for SELECT * FROM TABLE(x) doesn’t do anything to make my life easier, it only provides marginal improvement over what I’m doing now in a completely different language construct.
That was my first day looking at Ruby — maybe in the next while I’ll find some secret major value there or it will actually turn my programming life around and make every task trivial…
… but I highly doubt it.
June 9th, 2006
Ok, Sean, Shae, Karen and I found that customer service in Arizona is just different than anywhere else we’ve been before. And when I say “different”, I mean “not helpful”.
We check in at hotel and ask about getting accomodations there on our return in 4 days. That sparks a 10 minute conversation trying to explain we don’t want to book the next 4 days at the hotel, but “in” 4 days. We went to a restaurant, Sean went to ask about whether we need to ask for seating, they sarcastically respond “that’s how restaurants usually work” but to sit anywhere we like. Next time, same restaurant, we try a different tact and seat ourselves, comments on how we should have asked (presumably to be told sit anywhere we like). Two different kinds of waiters, those that want us to drink bloody mary’s at 9am and those that don’t. We travel north up to the Sedona, a clerk tells me lots of details about her life and husband who has passed and a bunch of things that make her life not 100%. Travel North up to the Grand Canyon, we receive a “welcome back” at the entrance to the park, having never been there before. Back to Sedona. We order some pottery. We both buy a bowl but want to ship them together, that adds to confusion about how to divide by two. We arrive back in Waterloo. Two weeks later, no pottery bowls. Sean calls today. Oh they were sent. “With whom?” Don’t have any contact with shipper. “What’s tracking number?” Oh we don’t have that. “How do we find out where the bowls are?” I don’t know. So, I forsee a credit card cancellation charge coming up next week.
Customer service in Arizona, it’s just different. Be warned.
May 30th, 2006
