Opinion

Holy crap! I have opinions! Lots and lots of opinions! You want to read my opinions NOW!

Death of a martyr: Alexei Navalny

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Alexei Navalny. (Picture courtesy of <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/aleshru/6268649551/" target="_blank">Mitya Aleshkovsky</a>. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" target="_blank">CC BY 2.0 Deed</a>. Cropped.

Alexei Navalny. (Picture courtesy of Mitya Aleshkovsky. CC BY 2.0 Deed. Cropped.

Speaking of “fools”, I awoke this morning to news that putin has murdered Alexei Navalny. Instantly the word “martyr” sprung to mind but, sadly, that word has been diluted over the years by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. (The “fool” in this case, to be clear, is putin, not Navalny.)

But it immediately occurred to me that a martyr is someone who gave their death AND their life to a cause. Any crazy person can die for something ridiculous; only a real martyr walks back into the jaws of death willingly, knowing that the jaws can and likely will close on him again.

And they have, they did. The State of Russia has murdered someone who actually cared about his country, as opposed to putin who only cares to sacrifice his citizens on the altar of his ego.

Far-right business hacks at the “National Post” / “Financial Post”

Feb 16th, 2024

by Craig.

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The National Post: “Who’s the biggest fool, Eby or Trudeau?” (No author.)

With respect to my comment on Eby on Tuesday, I noted a piece in the “National Post” (apparently in the “Financial Post” section) by some nameless entity (see screenshot above) — perhaps the Post itself, or perhaps an individual named “Corcoran” (see second screenshot) — but not marked as “opinion” (see first screenshot) even though it clearly is, titled “Who’s the biggest fool, Eby or Trudeau?” It’s hilarious that anyone who disagrees with the almighty Bell is considered a “fool” or an “ignoramus”. That’s what’s called an ad hominem attack; if you can’t explain why you disagree with someone, call them a name. The words “fool” and “ignoramus” work. And if you run short of names to call people, just pull up a recent campaign speech (or any speech) by a guy named donald trump to get some more words … although not that many, since the guy has a very limited vocabulary.

But hey, I get it, people disagree! So I’ll raise the bar a little and respond intelligently instead of calling the “National Post” (or Corcoran) “fools”.

I don’t believe anybody — Eby, Trudeau or anyone else — is suggesting that BCE should subsidise their subsidiaries until the end of time. But big business(es), and those on the right in general, are big on the fact that people should take responsibility for their own actions. What a concept! But that only applies to poor people on skid row and drug addicts, not big business. It’s completely unreasonable, foolish even, for us idiots that don’t run BCE and other massive companies to think that BCE should take responsibility for their own misguided, stupid and even foolish decision to attempt to buy up the media industry, and their own foolish decision to run said media industry into the ground with their ignorance! It’s foolish for us to believe that BCE should pay back various levels of government the money that they/us — Canadian taxpayers! — will pay in (un)employment insurance to the unemployed journalists, cameramen, teleprompter readers and various other human beings that will become unemployed.

Of course not! It’s their own fault they’re unemployed! The fools! And if it’s not their fault it’s the big bad government’s fault for forcing us to work within the confines of decent, modern, civilised Canadian society!

“Bullshit”, as described by the “Financial Post”, is quite clearly the domain of big business press releases (viz. “moving forward”, at least for the employees that won’t be moving backwards in lifestyle) … and the fools at the “Financial/National Post”. I hereby award the “Harry G. Frankfurt Award for Demagogic Bullshit” jointly to Corcoran, their shitty newspaper and BCE Inc.!

The Financial Post: “Who’s the biggest fool, Eby or Trudeau?” Corcoran?

Updated, 17 February 2024: Made notes about the possible author of the article in the captions of the screenshots.

Encrapification: My vote for word of the year, even though it’s only February

Feb 13th, 2024

by Craig.

1 comment

David Eby. (Picture courtesy of BC NDP. CC BY 2.0 Deed. Cropped.)

The frustration of David Eby, premier of British Columbia, was palpable in his “2½-minute tirade” on Thursday (8 February 2024) against BCE Inc., parent company of Bell Media and therefore CTV News and all of its many holdings. But it was his invention of the word “encrapification” that stole the show for me. My web search for the word turned up the above CBC report as the first search result on Friday.

The great thing about the English language is that it is constantly evolving, and that it has building blocks to create words like this. I can’t speak for other languages, of course; I’ve studied several over the years, for which I’m grateful (especially Latin), but besides English there’s only one other (French) that I can say I could speak reasonably well in a pinch, but I don’t know it well enough to invent words in this way.

But Eby is completely right. I used to be all in favour of companies like BCE doing whatever they reasonably could to make more and more money but, as we’ve seen over the years with the likes of Facebook, Google, Microsoft (remember them?!), Amazon, etc., real people are hurt when companies become too big to care about both the people they employ and the people to whom they sell their products and services. I don’t imagine that the CEO of BCE woke up one day and decided to gut the media landscape in Canada, but he has. Eby’s characterisation of what BCE has done reminds me of what Canada Post did on a much smaller scale years ago: When I left college I expected to be quite movious — another great addition to the English language courtesy of Zambian English meaning to move around a lot — and so I rented a post office box. I rented it at the Vancouver International Airport because, working in the aviation business, I expected to be there often and so it would be convenient to be able to collect my mail there when I happened to be at that airport. It was going to become my “permanent” address.

Canada Post had other ideas, of course. They stopped renting new mail boxes at the “Airport Postal Outlet” (as it was known) and then, in a remarkable turns of events that nobody without an MBA could ever have predicted, they then claimed that there was not enough mail going there to support the existence of said outlet! Despite my attempts to “Save the APO“, it was taken away, and thus began my never-ending quest to set up new “permanent addresses”. What a gong show. I have had no fewer than seven “permanent addresses” in thirty-three years, when really, I should have had ONE!

A few random logos of the involved entities. Trademarks of the respective corporations.

Anyway, back to BCE. The day after Eby made headlines there was another politician who was evidently jealous of the attention that he wasn’t getting, so Justin Trudeau got on the horn (apologies to those of you for whom that phrase has a more lurid meaning!) and called it a “garbage decision” and said he was “pissed off”. Good effort Justin, but not nearly as cool as Eby! 🙂

At least CTV’s newly unemployed former employees will be able to count on Canadians’ thoughts and prayers for a day each year when Bell does their annual “Let’s Talk Day“. Thoughts and prayers certainly helped Lisa LaFlamme a lot when they fired her for letting her hair go grey, just as they helped me when Bell ripped me off for $11.27 for a one-minute phone call!

One weird trick to avoid scams and spam

Jan 26th, 2024

by Craig.

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Forgive my clickbait title, but everyone and their dog has this one rule you must follow to avoid scams and spam … or some variation of it. Maybe it’s a top-ten list or something. They’re all valuable, to some extent, and yet every day people are duped. And now that scams are being written by AI, you can’t even count on spotting scams with broken English (or whatever your language is) and poor grammar.

But every time I read about the latest data breach I think to myself, “Thank god they don’t have my email address or phone number.” Wait, what?! How do I open accounts without giving that information?! Oh, I do, but it’s not the one email address and phone number that 99.99999% of the world give out. For that reason as well no connection can be made between accounts because each account has a different email address!

For many years I’ve operated a system of what I call “supplier addresses”. If I’m dealing with Twitter, for example — not that I use their name because they were mentioned in recent news about a data leak — I create the email address “twitter@mydomain.com”, and I only give that address to Twitter, nobody else. (I can do this, of course, because I own my own domain and use it to its potential. Here’s a clue: Stop using Gmail for everything and register your own domain!) Yes, I have the email address craig@mydomain.com (umm, that’s not the real email address, in case you’re stupid), but the only people who get that email address are my family (the ones I talk to, anyway) and friends. Nobody else on the planet gets that address, and I certainly don’t enter it into a form field on a web page and I don’t post it on the Web! This is why it drove me nuts, back in the 20th century, when people sent jokes out to everyone they knew and exposed all the email addresses in the “to” and “cc” fields! Some people still do that!

So if Twitter (in this example) sells my email address or is hacked, I know exactly who let my email address into the wild. To be frank, that hasn’t happened to me many times, but I quickly realised that it does happen, so the email addresses I create now all include a number (e.g., twitter123@mydomain.com). If the email address is compromised I just change the number and inform Twitter by changing it in my account with them and kill the old address. My numbering follows a system, but you can make your own rules.

I also use a system of rotating email addresses that change every month. I use those addresses for short-term relationships, like when you have to provide an email address to download some white paper or connect to free wifi or something like that. No problem, bud, have this address. If it does get spammed, it will only be for a few weeks, but the reality is that I almost never receive any spam that I don’t expect on those addresses because they don’t last long enough for spammers to sell, circulate and use.

For the last couple of years I’ve been doing the same with phone numbers. Well, almost the same, as I can’t create ad hoc telephone numbers on my domain. (I’m aware of ENUM, but I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about it as I’d like to be and society isn’t ready yet for phone numbers that look like 12345@mydomain.com.) I first started using VoIP (long term) in 2011 (if I remember correctly), but only in 2022 did I switch to a company where I have full control over setting up new phone numbers in multiple geographic locations as and when I please. Now I don’t give out my personal phone number to anyone except the aforementioned family and friends, I give out one of my junk phone numbers. (Actually, I make one other exception, for medical contacts.)

Do I still receive spam and attempts to scam me? OMG, of course I do! But my email and phone are not beeping every five seconds with a new one, and none of my thousands of grandchildren have called me to ask for bail money. In fact, because of my system I hardly ever have to deal with either. I know that if the email address I first used to register a domain in 1996 (now owned by AOL) was active I’d be inundated! But it doesn’t so I’m not. 🙂

There you go, my “one weird trick” that everyone can and should use to avoid spam email and scam phone calls. Maybe one of these days I’ll write a more comprehensive document on all the actions I’ve taken over the years and the nuances to protect myself. Here’s a hint though: It’s work, but it’s simple, and it’s way less work and aggro than deleting all the spam from your email and voice-mail accounts.

A compendium of reactions to recent news

Jan 19th, 2024

by Craig.

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Danielle Smith in a time warp

I note that in Alberta the Danielle Smith government has done a time warp and thinks they’re living under a 2035 federal government led by none other than 63-year-old Justin Trudeau! (I wonder if he’s still as beautiful as he is here and now in 2024?!) It’s Trudeau’s fault that whoever is in charge of electrical power in Alberta dropped the ball and had to buy power from the nasty, commie pinko NDP government in British Columbia! Yup, those nasty, commie pinkos are really good at running economies into the ground and then begging for help from right-wing economies, as we all know. Even Washington State in the good ol’ (definitely non-commie pinko) US of A had to buy power from us commie pinkos in the recent cold snap in this part of the world!

Editorialising teleprompter readers

I noticed last night (18 January) that Chris Gailus, one of the Global BC teleprompter readers, tried to make some sort of off-the-cuff editorial remark during the six-o-clock news, but stumbled and ended up dragging it our for more seconds than was really necessary. I can’t even remember what it was about, but I think it might have been about driving in Vancouver snow. Weirdly, a BBC teleprompter reader also made an editorial comment yesterday! I’m actually quite shocked at that, because I usually hold up their teleprompter readers as the epitome of professionalism, but I suppose standards are slipping there as well!

The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS)

There was a report on the news about the rise in the number of complaints from the public to the CCTS. It was a masterpiece to see the nuanced, massaged reactions from the cell-phone companies to the complaints they had received! “Yes, we know we have a huge number of complaints, and even one compliant is too many, but we have the fewest complaints per subscriber with ringworm!”, said the spokesperson for RogersBellTelus! Jesus H. Christ! What kind of warped and twisted upbringing and education do you have to have to come up with their beautiful lies?! (I think they call it “positive spin”!)

Milani Plumbing Vancouver review

Every time I see one of their ads on TV I just shake my head. We used to be good customers of theirs. Then we moved, and I guess we just used a plumber that was familiar with the townhouse complex in which we lived. Then we moved again, and when our first plumbing issue came up, who did we call? Milani, of course. There was no question and no hesitation. I don’t remember whether or not I was informed when I made the appointment or afterwards that they had a minimum $200 charge just for showing up (I’d have to re-read my notes), but it wouldn’t have made any difference because I assumed that the person who came out would do the job we needed and the bill would likely come out to more than $200 anyway. No problem.

But the guy that showed up essentially just told us what we already knew about the problem (“You have a problem!”) and had no intention of fixing it and installing what we wanted on the gas line! He was just there to collect the $200. When he left I was standing there $200 poorer and still with the plumbing problem! So I called Milani and complained, and I was informed several times by the person I spoke to that their service technicians don’t carry around the full stock of a Home Depot in their vans! WTF??! Who thinks that they do?! (Obviously that’s something drummed into their heads in what little training they get, and I’m sure they love telling stories around the water cooler about their stupid customers who they think expect that!) The problem we had needed just some expertise, and may have required some parts that any journeyman plumber would have in his tool kit, never mind in his spacious three-quarter-tonne van or one-tonne cube van. I will grant that we didn’t expect him to have the part we needed for the installation on the gas line, but we expected that we’d pay for the hot-water issue to be fixed, and then he’d come back — maybe another day — with the parts needed for the gas work. And we expected that the work for both would add up to more than $400!

Anyway, after I had been treated like an idiot by the idiot on the phone at Milani, I told them not to bother coming back with the part for the gas-line installation. Presumably it became part of the huge inventory that their plumbers carry around with them in their Home Depot-sized vans. We have never called them back to come and work on our plumbing ever since, and never will. But clearly they still get a lot of suckers paying them $200 a shot to come and do nothing for them; that’s how they pay for these expensive TV ads!

Instead of a flashy plumbing company who can afford to run TV ads we got an old guy (named Gabriel [Gabe] Khoo) in to do the work, and we’ve used him ever since. He shows up with a white van full of tools and parts and doesn’t rip us off for $200 a shot just to show up and tell us what we already know. He’s better than Milani Plumbing in Vancouver and their painted trucks and flashy uniforms any day!

The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas, Review

Jan 13th, 2024

by Craig.

2 comments

Welcome to Shitty Las Vegas, Nevada. (Picture courtesy of Joao Carlos Medau. CC BY 2.0 Deed. Modified.)

OMG! Where do I start?!

TL;DR: Don’t stay at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas! NEVER EVER stay at The Cosmopolitan! That’s what we’ve been telling everyone we know.

Our troubles with our Christmas getaway started before we even checked in, with their wifi. It wouldn’t work, despite the fact that my phone connected to all other wifi hotspots with no problems. At the check-in desk the agent suggested I try other of their multiple networks from our room. I did … of course. I also rebooted my phone and reset wifi settings back to their defaults. I managed to connect another phone (not mine, and my laptop) by using the web browser and bypassing all of the SSL errors with which I was presented. Cool, so I try that on my phone. No go. Call “guest services”. Their position is that the wifi is working, so it’s my phone that’s the problem … or my phone company! (WTF?!) I should call them instead. They also helpfully suggest I should reboot my phone, but my suggestion that they reboot their network doesn’t fly, despite the fact that the problem is obviously not that their wifi isn’t working, it’s that their own connection and authentication process is broken.

Keep in mind that I’m not trying to get online to play Wordle; I’m trying to get online because my business requires I be connected 24/7 (or as near as possible) to monitor systems and be available if there are problems. My ability to do that is what allows me the ability to go on holidays and patronise hotels!

So after a sleepless night worrying that things could be going wrong and I’m incommunicado, I try again in the morning. This time I managed to connect with my browser by bypassing and dismissing all of the SSL errors (caused by the configuration of their systems!) in my web browser. Wifi worked for the remaining four days we were at the hotel.

Back to the check-in: We were early. We knew that, and we politely asked (not demanded) if it would be all right if we checked in early and got our room, since we had taken a very early-morning flight and hadn’t slept much the night before. After appearing to hammer out “War and Peace” on his keyboard, the agent very kindly informed us that the type of room we had booked wasn’t currently available but, for an extra $75(!) per night (which he made sure to point out that he had reduced to $50 a night!) we could upgrade and move in right away. (At other of the many times we were at the front desk we heard other guests being “helpfully” upgraded. Not that I’m suggesting it’s an ongoing scam at all!) Anyway, we reluctantly accepted the “upgrade”, as we were exhausted. We went straight to our room and passed out for three hours.

The next day we returned to our room and our key cards wouldn’t work. Great! Back down to the front desk — not a short walk! — for at least the fourth time in two days. The agent (who seemed reasonably competent and on-the-ball) immediately identifies the problem as being the battery in the door lock, and says that someone will be right up to fix it, in five minutes. So we dash up to make sure we’re there. We could have left the hotel and gone and spent our time doing more touristy things instead of waiting at the hotel, but we were told it would only be five minutes! After mentioning the problem to the cleaning staff member on the floor after waiting for some time (way longer than five minutes), she calls security (the only party she can apparently contact) and asks them to relay to the facilities department that we’re waiting, and that at least one of us needs to go to the toilet … having just availed ourselves of the most expensive buffet I’ve ever seen in my life! After another while a security guard shows up but he cannot get in either, and he also identifies the problem as being the battery! (Congratulations, Einstein!) We pointed out that the problem had already been identified. He then suggests I’d better go and find a public toilet to use.

So off I go to find the toilet to which he directed me. It’s closed! I eventually find another. I sit down and immediately my body relieves itself; I was that desperate. As my back end does its business, my front end realises that there’s no toilet paper! No effing toilet paper when it’s too late for me to find another stall with any dignity! After having a few minutes to contemplate my problem I decide to use the disposable seat covers to wipe my ass. Have you ever done that? Well, they kinda work, but they’re smooth, so there’s no real friction to do the job properly. When I’d used a few of those to my relative satisfaction I pulled up my pants and made the third trip to the front desk to enquire whether or not we’d ever be able to get back into our room. As I was dealing with the agent my partner texted me to tell me that the technician had finally arrived. I told the agent how disgusted we were — about waiting an hour and forty minutes, and having no toilet paper with which to wipe my ass — and she said they would refund us “a couple of nights of the resort fee“. (That is a direct quote.) My partner’s response to that via text was, “I’ll take $100 off!” (The “resort fee” was about $50 per night!) So we were relatively happy with that — even though you’d think this significant extra fee (on top of their published room rate advertised with Expedia!) would be an incentive to the hotel to provide decent service, but the story continues when we check out.

Besides the check-out process, here’s a bullet list of several other issues:

Plumbing noises!: Apparently this is a new building, but the all-night plumbing noises were crazy!
Creaking toilet door: Can’t use the toilet in the middle of the night without waking up your partner. I suppose we could have had this fixed, but we’d had enough of dealing with guest non-services by then.
Regular TV seemed to be continuously interrupted by in-house adverts, in the same way that Youtube videos are interrupted by ads.
Slow Internet: I noticed when my laptop was doing an operating system update that the download speed seemed to be slower than molasses in January.
Smoke: Whether we were in the lobby or on our balcony, we were surrounded by smoke. On the balcony it was marijuana smoke, and in the lobby The Cosmopolitan must have paid a bargain-basement price for their HVAC system.

If that list was all of the issues we had, they’d be no worse than any other hotel. But The Cosmopolitan went the extra mile to ensure that we were well and truly dissatisfied, pissed off, and angered.

Finally, on our last night there we phoned guest services to enquire about a late check-out the next day, as our flight was not until late at night. Again, we realised that we were asking for a courtesy, but considering how much trouble The Cosmopolitan had already put us through we didn’t think it was a huge ask. We were told that it would likely not be a problem because they were not fully booked, but that we should check in the morning. Cool. So in the morning we checked as instructed, but suddenly in fewer than twelve hours they were now fully booked, and a late check-out was not possible. So we scrambled to shower and pack. We tried to check out on the TV, but it didn’t work. At the desk we were told that the “couple of nights of resort fees” we were to be refunded was actually only one night! Despite our pointing out the lie, the agent wasn’t budging.

So from start to finish — literally! — The Cosmopolitan fucked us over and lied to us. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell we’ll ever patronise this establishment again, and we’ve been telling everyone we know this story in great detail!

Updated, 2024-10-11: Removed the link in the pingback in the comments because, as is to be expected of an automated webspam website, they’ve deleted the post that they stole from me.

Motorola for the win

Jan 8th, 2024

by Craig.

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As you’re aware if you follow this blog — all two of you — I recently broke my cell/mobile phone and needed to replace it. I know, this is stunning news that you just never hear and likely haven’t experienced yourself, but bear with me. 🙂 Although I had a cell/mobile phone long before many people did, I essentially gave up on them and stopped owning one for many years due to the way that the Canadian cell phone oligopoly rapes their customers.

In 2017 I decided to buy a phone from an American supplier — Ting, who operated based on paying only for the services you wanted and used — even though I was in Canada. Ting was a mobile virtual network operator owned by Tucows (before they sold it), a Canadian company who also own OpenSRS, a domain registrar who operate based on the reseller model. One of these days I will write more about them and why I left them after almost twenty years, but it should suffice to say that they didn’t (and don’t) live up to their own hype. Tucows never opened Ting in Canada because of how fucked-up the Canadian cell phone market is, and they essentially said that to their Canadian clients … without using the four-letter word I used. 🙂

However, Ting was awesome for the approximately two years I used them. (They actually did live up to their hype!) They’re not any more, sadly, because they now operate based on the plan system like just about everyone else, rather than actually charging you for what you need and use. (Tucows sold Ting Mobile.)

Through Ting I bought a phone that was adequate for my needs, a US$60 smartphone. Why didn’t I spend a thousand dollars on an Iphone? Because I don’t give a fuck about fads like owning the latest and greatest tracking device. Simply put, I just needed a portable computer in my hands that would tell me when I had email that may or may not need my immediate attention. I roamed in Canada, of course, but that was still cheaper in the long run than owning a Canadian cell phone. Bizarre, but true! I also wasn’t scrolling through Facebook endlessly and watching videos on it; all it did, essentially, was check my email. (In January 2024, after Rogers and Bell coincidentally raised their rates at the same time by about the same amount — after Rogers bought Shaw and promised that being allowed to do that would cause rates to be lowered! — I’m again hearing other Canadians talking about getting a non-Canadian phone and roaming! With VoIP and Internet-based messengers like Signal, why not?! Welcome to the 21st century!)

I still have that $60 cell phone! I occasionally use it on wifi, but I suspect it wouldn’t be welcome on any cell networks in 2024, or be able to download the latest apps.

In 2019 I was enticed to join Freedom Mobile, to whom I refer as Troublesome Mobile. I am not generally someone who looks for the cheapest, nastiest deals around — quality is not cheap, but quality isn’t to be found in this industry at any price! — but considering the extent to which the Canadian cell industry, as I say, rapes the Canadian population, the deal was good for what I needed, a portable computer that let’s me check my business email when I’m out. I don’t know anyone who pays $15 a month (before taxes) to be connected wherever they go.

Troublesome Mobile offered a Motorola phone at a reasonable price, so I went for it. I had bought a Samsung tablet a few years before but, as I said at the time, “In a nutshell, I am mightily disappointed in my Samsung/Android tablet.” So there was no way I was gong to acquire a Samsung phone, and I never will seeing as they have become the Apple of the Android world. When looking for a new phone late last year, I decided on another cheap, unlocked phone from an electronics retailer. I mean, smartphones have been around for years now, right? Apple is up to the Iphone 132 now or something, I believe, and each iteration is a vast improvement over the one before, right?! Well, apparently not. I was well aware that my old Motorola had Motorola apps on it that imparted more functionality on the phone than what comes with Android the operating system, but I naïvely figured that by 2024 those things would be standard in the OS. Ha! They aren’t, but I knew I’d adapt … until my new Cat Phone wouldn’t play nicely with my network of (limited) choice.

So I returned it and, as I said, walked into the trap of the Canadian cell phone oligopoly and crawled back to Troublesome Mobile on my hands and knees and handed over a couple of hundred dollars for another, low-end Motorola. Now, with my new phone, I can again karate chop my torch on. Yippee. Sadly, I learned that the feature of my old phone whereby I could do a double wrist twist to turn on the camera doesn’t work any more. As I said, new versions of software don’t imply improvement.

I readily admit that my vast experience will all of three brands of smartphones doesn’t hold a candle to the experience of selfie queen Kim Kardashian, who can afford to buy (or is probably given) a new phone every week, but Motorola is one company that I’m reasonably content with … except for the fact that it’s owned by Lenovo, who are based in the hostage-taking PRC. Now all I need is a Motorola sponsorship so that I can get paid for my effusive words of high praise! 🙂

Excellent service (not!) at Visions Electronics, Vancouver

Dec 29th, 2023

by Craig.

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I did something for the first time in my life on Boxing Day, and that was go shopping looking for a Boxing Day deal, days after I had smashed my cell phone by dropping it. I’d done a bit of online research in advance, of course, so I already knew roughly what I wanted. My old phone was running Android 9 (“Pie”, to you weirdos that like to use silly words instead of version numbers) and the new one runs Android 12. (I’ll have more to say about how crappy Android 12 is in a future post. How Google gets away with selling a software product [as Microsoft does], even though it’s open source, without providing any kind of support except through their fanbois is beyond my understanding.) I’d also decided to shop at Visions Electronics, who had been open on South East Marine Drive at the north end of the Knight Street Bridge for a few years. I’d never been in there, so I thought it was time I had a look after driving past about a million times.

Although I wasn’t there at opening time, I was still surprised at how “un-busy” they were. It’s not as if the place was deserted, but I suppose they just didn’t have the deals people wanted. Apparently Boxing Day sales are a thing of the past, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday taking their place.

I first went over to the big “CELLULAR” sign, where I found … no cell phones. I eventually found a small cell-phone display (nowhere near the big “CELLULAR” sign!), but they were just selling phone packages from the Canadian cell-phone oligopoly (including my current provider, Troublesome Mobile, aka Freedom Mobile), which was definitely not why I was there. I just wanted an unlocked phone. The salesperson there was uninterested in helping me if I was looking for an unlocked phone — he was busy doing something else on a computer anyway, and I was unhelpfully interrupting him — and pointed to a desk where customers were apparently checking out and paying for goods.

Unlike the old A&B Sound, which used to be located further west on South West Marine Drive, the place wasn’t roaming with salespeople looking for marks, even though the interior decor is similar with boxes piled everywhere. Instead I made my way to the head of a short queue where I stated that I was interested in a Cat S42 smartphone, and that I had questions. Instead of a helpful salesperson being very interested in selling me a phone, all I received in response — besides a look at the phone in question — was aggression towards and disinterest in my questions, one of which was based on the visions.ca website reporting different specifications for the phone than the Cat Phones website. Just as I didn’t really want to have a phone with a smashed screen, I also didn’t want to drag out the process any longer than was necessary by going somewhere else or going back home empty-handed to restart my research for what has become a standard consumer good, but for which cell-phone companies charge sometimes four figures for their products!

Anyway, to make a long story short I handed over my money to the ungrateful salesperson and walked out with the new phone. Admittedly, I got it for $210 less than the price on the Cat Phones website, but considering how I felt I was not really welcome or wanted in their store, I don’t plan to go back for anything else. Just not gonna happen!

Updated, 2 January 2024: After wasting several hours of my life on the Cat Phone (not the Bat Phone!), both on the phone itself and on the line with Troublesome Mobile (aka Freedom Mobile) for the better part of two hours, I returned the phone today to Visions Electronics because, despite the fact that one would assume that the phone was manufactured according to “standards” by Bullitt Mobile Ltd. in the UK, Troublesome Mobile declared that it was an “off-brand” phone and it was incompatible with their MMS system! It so happened that I returned it to the same salesperson (Thomas Lai-Mana) who sold it to me and who was completely uninterested in answering my questions when I bought it. Surprisingly (or maybe not!), he wasn’t one bit interested in why I returned it!

I also returned it because, despite the fact that the Visions website states that the phone is compatible with “All known Canadian carriers” (which seems an odd way to put it) … it wasn’t! Frankly, I don’t know whether to blame Bullitt Mobile Ltd. or Troublesome Mobile, but I already have a very low opinion of Troublesome/Freedom Mobile, so let’s go with them.

I then unwillingly (but knowingly) walked into the trap laid by Canadian mobile operators and went to a Troublesome Mobile retail location and bought a Motorola Moto G Pure … for fifty bucks less. (I bought it outright, not on some stupid payment plan.) I’ll have more to say about this ongoing scam in due course, but I’ve got so much to complain about at the moment that I need to take a break for the sake of my sanity! 🙂

Updated, 8 January 2024: I mentioned my experience at Visions to a friend, and she told me she and her husband had had a similar negative experience with a TV purchase from them. If only I had known I could have avoided my experience!

YVR has more snowploughs! Just as the climate is warming!

Dec 21st, 2023

by Craig.

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I noted, in a recent news report to which I don’t have a link, that Vancouver International Airport (YVR) has learned from their mistakes last year at this time and now has more snow ploughs than they can handle. If “snowmaggedon” happens again, they’ll be ploughing their little hearts out to save the day!

Except, Tamara Vrooman, CEO of YVR, apparently didn’t get the memo that the climate is warming! Talk about the former CEO of a bank (err, sorry, credit union) making misplaced investments! One wonders if she actually hired drivers for all of the snowploughs!

Listen, I’m probably no better a climate scientist than Vrooman, but winter does happen in Vancouver. I know the statistics all point to a warming climate, but I suspect that Vancouver hasn’t yet seen its last snowflake.

In other YVR news (YVR and Canadian airports rank in bottom third of global airports list), YVR sucks! I find this surprising, actually. Despite the fact that the local Mounted thugs murdered a passenger there in 2007, YVR has significantly improved the international arrivals area (where Robert Dziekański was killed) and, really, the place is quite nice. Canadian airlines, though, are probably dragging down people’s perceptions of the airport; considering all the stories in the news these days about handicapped passengers being forced to drag themselves (literally in one case!) off of their planes, some of them at YVR, it’s not surprising that perhaps those experiences have sullied the ratings of YVR in particular. Of course, the airlines will point their fingers at the airports and the airports will point their fingers at the airlines, but that doesn’t help anyone when their disability means they can’t disembark an aircraft like all of the able-bodied passengers.

Of all people, Vrooman, former CEO of the “we love people more than you do” credit union Vancity should know that. But she has seemingly gained all of her kudos over the years by suckling the public tit, or (as in the case of YVR) working at a private organisation that is essentially a privatised arm of Transport Canada. I have very little respect for her considering her legacy that I deal with at Vancity.

The most moronic, nonsensical — and least surprising — war in history; Russia versus Ukraine

Mar 24th, 2022

by Craig.

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Flag of Ukraine.

It was a month ago today that Russia invaded Ukraine, the first (as I understand it) inter-state invasion in Europe since the end of the Second World War in 1945, 77 years ago … over three quarters of a century! I am speechless. Europe has been united in order to prevent such a catastrophe from ever breaking out again (“Never again!”), and one madman with a personal agenda based on a twisted understanding of history has changed that.

I really don’t have it in me to try and put together some coherent piece to add to the billions of litres of ink already spilled on this topic, much of it written by people far more erudite (and paid far more) than me, so I’m going to make a few little notes.

“Madman”

That term, “madman”, has been top of mind for me since I saw his speech denying the existence of Ukraine over a month ago. In news coverage I saw a comment by one American Republican senator that vladimir putin “didn’t seem right”, or words to that effect. I thought exactly the same, and several people have made similar comments since. On the other hand, I came across this piece by Joanna Williams in “Spiked”: “The war in Ukraine is not about Putin’s mental health“. To be honest it sounds like something written by a contrarian, but that seems to be Spiked’s raison d’être.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Unlike his Afghan counterpart on 15 August 2021, Zelenskyy stayed the course and stayed in his office in Kyiv. He turned down an American offer to evacuate him and his family with the statement, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” The guy is a fucking hero. As a politician and as a human he is probably loaded with flaws, as are all of us, but as the President of Ukraine and the leader of a country invaded by the biggest country in the world, he has and will continue to have my undying respect. I’ve often said that instead of wars, the leaders of countries should get in a ring with each other and fight until there is a TKO; despite his self-manufactured manly image, putin probably wouldn’t last thirty seconds again Zelenskyy.

Peace talks

These have been a joke since day one. I get it; whatever side you are on, you walk into “talks” asking for the world, and you eventually settle for less. But why are there even peace talks? Don’t you talk first in order to avoid a fight, and only then fight? I suppose the Ukrainians have been talking to the Russians since 2014, when the Russians invaded Crimea and, nudge nudge, wink wink, “didn’t” invade the Donbas, but clearly that talking has gone nowhere in eight years. What little it did result in, the Minsk agreements, weren’t worth the paper they were written on in putin’s mind, and he started his “special military operation” (“war”, or “invasion”, to most of us) against Ukraine anyway. Hindsight is great, but if you can’t sort out a problem in eight years, both sides are probably not trying hard enough.

Not even Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, can be taken seriously. His first condition for Ukraine is to surrender and give the Russians everything they want … which, by the way, they are failing to get by military means.

Refugees

When the war is over, the countries that have taken in refugees should sue Russia for their expenses. Why not? Actually, not that I’m starting to draw up a peace treaty, but the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 was too harsh on Germany (it’s generally accepted) and contributed to the start of World War II. I suppose this will all need to be considered in time.

Russia’s words

I understand that all sides in conflict lie, but the lengths to which Russia has taken this stretch credibility. Starting before the war they accused the West of being “alarmist” and “hysterical” in their warning about a war. I mean, it’s just a joke. Now they claim they’re not targeting civilians, as missile after missile blows up residential blocks of flats, schools and hospitals. And “de-nazification”?! Not even in 1940s Germany was everyone a Nazi! How do you “save” the Russian-speaking people in Ukraine by killing them?!

Western aid to Ukraine

I realise how high the stakes are, but the West has let down Ukraine. The analogy I’ve heard — and analogies do have their limits — is one of a big bully on a playground beating a little kid. The little kid calls out to other kids to ask for help, but they demur, claiming the bully has a knife. Of course, the “knife” in this case is far bigger — nuclear weapons — but we are so far down that path already. I don’t want to suggest that talking isn’t worth it, but the reason that putin has decided that the West is weak is precisely because we have not stood up to him. If we don’t stand up to him now, he will keep pushing. Why wouldn’t he? There are Russian speaking minorities in countries all around Russia’s western border — even more now that Russians are abandoning the country while they can — and those countries will likely suffer the same fate as the Donbas in Ukraine.

So what do we do? Do we implement the no-fly zone that Ukraine has asked for? NATO says they will not, but do they really think that they can stay out of this fight forever? If the Baltic states suffer in the same way the Donbas has, will NATO really turn a blind eye? They can’t. It will be blatantly obvious that Russia will have launched a proxy attack on one or more of those NATO countries, and NATO will be treaty-bound to step in. And then what? You guessed it, we’re a shaky trigger finger away from nukes. I hope you’re practising to kiss your arse goodbye.

Poland has offered their old MiG-29s to the Ukrainian Air Force. Predictably, Russia claims they will consider this a provocation on the part of NATO, completely ignoring the fact that they have used Belarusian territory to launch their invasion. If they can use Belarus, why can the Ukrainians not use Poland? Sadly, the U.S. [rejected] Poland’s offer of fighter jets for Ukraine, calling it “untenable”. It’s at this point that you look at NATO and wonder if the alliance has somehow managed to paint themselves into a corner. It brings to mind the not-so-old adage, “Too big to fail.” Well, maybe NATO is too big to be useful if their own founding documents tie their own hands behind their back. But what’s the solution, or a better situation? I don’t really know, but the status quo is not working. As Zelenskyy himself asks, “How many civilians have to be killed before NATO will take the situation seriously?” (to paraphrase). He’s not wrong to ask the question, and it points out what I asked above: “Does NATO really think that they can stay out of this fight forever?”

Plain speaking from two former Irish presidents

Both Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson, former Irish presidents, has some rather undiplomatic and non-neutral words for putin. (“Former presidents united in condemnation of Ukrainian invasion.“) McAleese:

She described the Russian President as “demagogic”, “moronic” and an “appalling anti-human man” who she hoped the Russian people would one day find it “within their power to neutralise”.

On whether the Russian people could rebel and prove their own President’s downfall, Ms McAleese said she thought this was “the best hope”.

“It wouldn’t be the first time the Russians have done this… they have the courage, now they have to find it” she said.

“I’ve never been a person who ever had contempt for another human being, I’ve never been contemptuous. But I certainly am now.”
— The Late Late Show (@RTELateLateShow) March 11, 2022

Ms Robinson said: “There is no doubt that Putin is very well protected, until suddenly maybe he is not.”

Robinson puts it well: It may only be someone within his circle that will set putin straight, but according to other reports he has “coup proofed” himself over the last twenty years. This is to the disadvantage of Russia, and it may well result in the downfall of human civilisation. All because he doesn’t want to hear any truth spoken to him.

The BBC is geographically challenged

Several times (not just once) in the early days of the war … sorry, “special military operation” … the BBC stated that Poland was “directly east of Ukraine”. (See screenshot.) I have no words for that level of stupidity. Ironically, though, that’s where I go for most of my international news.

BBC says Poland is east of Ukraine.

Opinion

Death of a martyr: Alexei Navalny

Far-right business hacks at the “National Post” / “Financial Post”

Encrapification: My vote for word of the year, even though it’s only February

One weird trick to avoid scams and spam