Updated posts

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OMG, the entire continent of North America is a joke!

by Craig.

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(OK, sorry, I had to start two blog posts with “OMG” just to show that Canada isn’t the only basket case on the continent. And I apologise for excluding Greenland, Mexico and the Caribbean from the definition, but I’m sure that in this case they won’t complain!)

USA

All I’m going to say about the USA though is that their “experiment with democracy” isn’t going so well. I’m not even referring to their electing an admirer of dictators and “strong men” who is expected to turn his back on the rule of law; I’m referring to their inability to manage to govern their country without facing a government shutdown, seemingly every few weeks but in reality it seems to be every couple of years. I mean, I understand that the legislative side of the government needs to vote money for the administrative side of the government to be able to do the jobs defined by the legislative side of government, but really? I suppose the United States does have a record of slavery — which is the only way to describe being forced to show up to work for no pay cheque (“check” to you Americans) — so what’s the big deal with bringing it back temporarily every few years? I don’t get it.

And after 248 years — almost a quarter of a millennium — why not “experiment” with the executive side of government? This notion of a president and a vice president is so old-fashioned, so the administration-elect is experimenting with a new triumvirate: I’m not sure how to characterise it, as it seems to be rather unofficial at the moment, but it looks like it goes something like this:

Super (unelected) president: Elon Musk
President: donald trump
Vice president: JD Vance

Or maybe it’s like this:

Unelected president: Musk
Vice president: trump
Tea boy: Vance

(South Africans [including Musk] and southern Americans will nod their heads sagely at my thinly veiled racist term for Vance, which is entirely appropriate for the take-over of America by the citizen of the Third World country to which I’m referring. [And yes, you can quibble with me on my definition of the “Third World” here too, but since 1994 South Africa has been clamouring at the door of the club.)

Canada

The turmoil in Canada continues as well!

First of all, the antiquated electoral system of this country means that I will *GUARANTEE* that next year we will be bowing and scraping to Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre. Anyone — including Justin Trudeau! — who thinks otherwise is clearly smoking something very potent. I was talking to someone today who suggested that if the Liberals get a new leader they might do a little better than if Trudeau was leading them, but in my mind that may mean three seats instead of two. The coming defeat of the Liberals will rival or perhaps even outshine John Turner’s in 1984.
I have no doubt that perhaps, back in the day, Trudeau may have had a vision for where he wanted to lead the country, but it’s as plain as the nose on my face that today he is only thinking of himself. If he is indeed “reflecting” on his future as has been suggested, somebody also needs to suggest he give Joe Biden a call to get a lesson on humility and thinking of his country first. Of course, that didn’t work out too well for Biden and his party, so I suspect that Biden is the last person Trudeau will call for advice. Or maybe Trudeau is hoping for a snow storm this Christmas or over the New Year, and he will take a walk in said snow storm in the same way that his daddy did in 1984.
I rarely agree with anything Poilievre says, but how can one disagree with his current characterisation of the Trudeau government as a “chaotic clown show”? Someone on the CBC’s “At Issue” panel (probably Andrew Coyne) described the new cabinet, shuffled yesterday, as “Fanatics, loyalists and members of the prime minister’s wedding party.” Of course, the deliverer of the “clown show” remark then made it clear that the clown show will continue when he becomes prime minister because he also suggested that if he writes a letter to Santa Claus (or the governor general) he could get his Christmas wish of becoming prime minister sooner! God help us all.
To me the Trudeau government has become like that old, second-hand car you used to own. It’s completely unreliable, you know that the chances of it failing to get you to work tomorrow morning are far greater than 50%, but you somehow think that you can will it to get you there! Sound familiar?!

But the main issue I want to get to that has been bothering me for months now is all of the idiots who keep uttering the name Christy Clark as a possible successor to Trudeau! What are you people smoking?! (Sorry for all the marijuana references, but we’re talking about politics after all!) Yes, she was the leader of the BC Liberal Party, but the BC Liberal Party was a liberal party in name only! I distinctly remember Raef Mair questioning Gordon Campbell on this issue during an interview on Mair’s CKNW talk-radio programme many years ago, when Campbell became the leader of the BC Liberals, or was running to be. Mair asked Campbell to define “liberalism” with reference to the name of his party, and Campbell simply couldn’t do it! Mair may have been a bit of a pedant in that moment, and perhaps the definition of liberalism has changed over the centuries — or maybe it comes down to the different definitions of “freedom” that those on the left and right sides of the political spectrum use — but the fact of the matter is that in the years since Campbell became the premier (followed by Clark) up until the party folded earlier this year, the BC Liberals were — as described in the Wikipedia article on the party that replaced it, BC United:

conservative, neoliberal, … occupying a centre-right position on the left–right political spectrum … a “free enterprise coalition” [drawing] support from members of both the federal Liberal and Conservative parties … the main centre-right opposition to the centre-left New Democratic Party …. Once affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, the British Columbia Liberal Party became independent in 1987.

Their name reminds me of something my Grade Seven teacher (Mr. Cuttel) told the class one day, that he found it ironic that countries in the world that were widely known as being anything but democratic seemed to like using the word in their names to cover up their lack of democracy, e.g., German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), etc. Perhaps the BC Liberal Party was using that logic!

If you don’t live in BC and just can’t quite grasp the nomenclature, I strongly recommend you read the CBC article “Why the B.C. Liberals are sometimes liberal and sometimes not“, with a video with excellent (i.e., corny) sound effects by Richard Zussman, who now reports for Global BC. It’s really not that difficult; as illustrated above, people can call their countries whatever they want, and those countries are named by political leaders who lie just as much as political leaders everywhere on the spectrum.

If Clark even runs in an expected leadership race I’ll be surprised, but if she does and wins, I’ll be handing in my licence to run this blog.

BC’s Liberal Party does not equal Canada’s Liberal Party (CBC)

Updated, 2024-12-22: Some minor changes (mostly formatting), plus added the screenshot of the CBC video to which I link. Also, apparently this is the third post title I’ve started with “OMG” recently! All because of politicians!

Some random musings, mostly about morons apparently

Mar 3rd, 2024

by Craig.

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Some bonehead named trump

I’ve had a note for several weeks to address the moronic comment some idiot named donald trump made about NATO members who don’t spend 2% of their GDP on defence spending. He seems to think that NATO members can simply be evicted from the alliance like delinquent tenants in one of his run-down tenement buildings. One of those countries is Canada. I’m not defending Canada’s apparent lack of spending on defence, especially in this day and age of increased Russian aggression, but here’s the thing, don: If Russia attacks and takes over Canada — we’re the country that is largely between you and Russia — as you have explicitly encouraged them to do, your problems on your southern border would look like a walk in the park compared to the problems you will have on your northern border!

Fucking moron.

Twitter/X

I know, I’m the last to note this, but Twitter feeds used to feature regularly in the search results for various things I look up online on a daily basis. But since that no-name idiot — Musk I think he calls himself — took it over, said results are less and less useful. For starters, you only get the one tweet, and Twitter refuses to display any replies. Given how often in the past I’ve spent way more time on reading replies that I should have, in some ways this is a good thing. But I’m sure my buddy Elon wasn’t worried about how much time Craig is wasting on Twitter. I don’t know what Musk is worried about, but maybe it’s his bandwidth bill. Or maybe he’s actually doing what he seemed to be setting out to do, which is kill Twitter. I wish I had so much money that I could literally piss $44 billion down the drain.

I also note now that when you try to load a Twitter feed you are often/usually forced to log in. You can no longer simply go to a Twitter feed (e.g., twitter.com/ninernet) and peruse the posts. If you can, the posts are all in random order rather than chronologically. Yeah, that’s exactly how you generate interest in your service, by restricting people from even viewing it and confusing them!

Dilbert / Scott Adams

Speaking of Twitter and rich people who can piss away their wealth, Dilbert came back up on my radar recently. I used to read Dilbert daily, but one day it disappeared. Turns out it was unceremoniously dumped by its distributor after the author, Scott Adams, made what some people described as racist comments. Whatever. Now he continues his comic but you have to pay him US$7 a month for the privilege of reading it, or you can follow him on Twitter for US$3 a month. (I note that I can load his Twitter feed without being forced to log in! I don’t know why or how Twitter differentiates between one feed and another in that regard.)

But on his Twitter feed I note that he’s re-Tweeting Tucker Carlson and videos of teenagers fighting. Seriously? Teenagers fighting?! If that’s what this idiot considers to be “entertainment”, no thanks. I’ll pocket my hard-earned cash and not support some idiot who supports trump and considers teenagers beating each other up as entertainment.

Charities and their begging calls

I’ve just blocked the fourth number I’ve added to a list of Red Cross numbers that call us constantly. Why do they call us? Because we give them money every month! So we give them hundreds of dollars a year but they still want more! And they’re willing to call us many times a month/year for that purpose, and continue calling even though their calls don’t go through. I don’t get it. Maybe I should answer the next call and get them to cancel our monthly donation.

Android 12

I think I’ve made reference to Android 12 a couple of times on here. Actually, once. But goddammit, the idiots who made it are stupid. I know, I’m probably the only person in the world who plugs their phone in at night when they’re in bed, next to their bed (there are reasons), and I’m the only person in the world who crawls into bed with an already sleeping partner; so forgive me for thinking that I’m so special that developers should think of me. I’ve gone to great lengths to try and turn off just about every stupid, unnecessary bleep and bloop that my fucking phone makes, and yet, occasionally and for no obvious reason (but not every time!), my phone decides to let me, my sleeping partner and the fucking neighbours know that I’ve plugged in my phone! Hooray! Craig has plugged in his phone successfully! I can’t tell you how much my partner loves being woken up by this news. I have “Charging sounds and vibration” turned off, so I don’t know why Android ignores that directive … but only sometimes!

And while I’m on a rant about Android 12, let me give a special shout out to the 3CX app. For years I’ve had that running on this and previous phones and it never once “broke through” the do-not-disturb setting, but now it does. I don’t know whether or not I should blame Android or 3CX, but my money is on Android; after all, it’s the operating system, and that should control the installed apps, not the other way around. So now I have to remember to shut down that app so that it doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, as it did twice in one night a few nights ago!

RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine worth its weight in gold

In case any of you think that the communist government of Canada pays for all things medical, let me tell you that relatives, pensioners, just plonked down $540 for the two of them to each get the RSV vaccine. Wow! And I’m on the verge of plonking down $350 for the Shingrix shingles vaccine. One thing I can tell you though is that I won’t be getting the Shingrix vaccine at Shoppers Drug Mart. I have not been happy with the fact that they have virtually eliminated staffed check-out cash registers at their stores. I’m not a Luddite (says the guy writing a blog), but society needs to deal with the fact that we still have unemployment to deal with, and you don’t deal with it by bringing in machines to replace humans without a plan. They were also in the news recently for billing the Ontario government for unnecessary medical checks on patients.

In other news in Canada

Turkeys terrorize residents of small Quebec town. Sorry, apparently there was a serious aspect to this, as they were becoming aggressive and that was a danger to children, not to mention adults who don’t like to be scratched by sharp claws. But this video had me cracking up, as well as the woman shooting the video! 🙂

Brian Mulroney

Brian Mulroney died on Thursday, 29 February. As one would expect for a former Prime Minister, this was big news in Canada. It reminded me of the fact that he was the first and last Conservative Prime Minister for whom I voted, in the first election in which I could vote. As many people have said over the last few days, politics have changed since then and the Conservative Party itself has also changed since then. Now they have a leader who used to be known as a pit bull in Stephen Harper’s government, who caters to his “base” of anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti everything! Now you couldn’t make me vote for that party even if you put a gun to my head. Sadly, as Canadian politics go, he will be Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre in 2025. 🙁

Updated, 2024-03-08: Added the fact that Twitter/X posts are now all in random order rather than chronological.

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

Feb 16th, 2024

by Craig.

Comments are off for this post

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.

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.

Excellent service (not!) at Visions Electronics, Vancouver

Dec 29th, 2023

by Craig.

Comments are off for this post

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!

China releases two Canadian hostages

Sep 26th, 2021

by Craig.

Comments are off for this post

Protest sign calling for the release of Kovrig and Spavor

After 1020 days — 2.8 years, 34 1/2 months — the Chinese have finally released the two Canadian hostages (the “two Michaels”, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor) they took after the lawful arrest of Meng Wanzhou in Canada at the behest of the Americans.

This, mind you, was after almost consistent but vehement denials by China of any connection between the two cases! The two Michaels just happened to have been caught “spying” mere days after Meng was arrested!

The prisoner swap was almost completely in line with my suggested method, except that it was over in a matter of hours via aircraft rather than days via ship. But it was completely in line, as noted in other media, with any prisoner swap done during the Cold War! The Chinese didn’t even make any kind of an effort to make it look like there was due process in the trumped-up spying cases of the two Michaels whereby, months or years after the release of Meng, they discovered new “evidence” that their charges were incorrect and the Michaels were exonerated by the courts. Nope, just, “Get in the van, we’re taking you to the airport.”

Unbelievable!

Updated, later 2021-09-26: I get caught up in the blatant injustice of it all — three years each stolen from the lives of two innocent humans, while the reason for it all enjoyed damn nearly 100% freedom in one of her Vancouver mansions and availing herself of the near paradise that is Vancouver and Canada, all while showing off her ankle bracelet as a fashion accessory and waving at supporters like she’s a celebrity — and lash out against the Chinese government, but the fact of the matter is that I was personally elated to hear the news on Friday our time. I am immeasurably happy for the Spavor and Kovrig families, and of course the two Michaels themselves. Welcome home guys!

Collage: Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor (the Two Michaels)

American Olympic gymnast quits, claiming “mental health”

Jul 30th, 2021

by Craig.

Comments are off for this post

I don’t generally take much notice of the Olympics — I left the country when they came to my city — but, as we all know, they get lots of press. You can’t miss them.

So, of course, I’m aware that a certain American gymnast suddenly stopped competing, apparently after not doing so well in one of her early events. I’m not even going to name her, but she is named in this CBC News story.

I’ve never competed at that level in any endeavour, sport or otherwise, but you don’t get to “that level” overnight; it’s a gradual progression of relentless training and competition. Theoretically, only those physically and mentally tough enough to compete at each level make it to the next level. And at each level there is tougher and tougher competition, and more and more pressure to perform, and greater and greater hopes and expectations, on the part of both the athletes and their fans/spectators.

As I say, I’ve read the article I’ve linked to above. I haven’t read much else about her and her decision, but the article above does seem to give a reasonably balanced view of her decision. However, the fact is, as I stated above, that she wasn’t recruited a week before her performance in Tokyo and thrust into the limelight with no preparation and the weight of the world on her shoulders; she’s had years to get there, to improve and adapt both physically and mentally.

The fact is that she quit the moment she didn’t quite perform up to snuff, and she is using the claim that she is taking care of her “mental health” as a crutch, and excuse. Recently tennis player Naomi Osaka also pulled out of competition with the same excuse. I scoffed at that too, to myself, although until now I wasn’t really as aware of the details as I don’t follow sports as closely or avidly as others. However, in Osaka’s case, she did not quit the moment things didn’t go her way; as I understand it there were a number of setbacks, not the least of which was the seemingly overbearing reaction to her plans to subject herself to less media scrutiny. She did, in her case, seem to be telegraphing that she needed some “space”, and when the jerks fining her started piling the pressure on top of that, she gave in. (With her wealth, it wasn’t the money, I’m sure.) Did she have more or less of an excuse to cave at the moment she did than the moment at which the American gymnast caved? I don’t really know … or care. It’s just that I don’t think there is really a valid comparison, as some have been making.

Should athletic organisations spend more time and effort training their athletes to be able to handle more pressure? How much pressure should they be able to handle? How do you objectively measure pressure? To answer that last question, I don’t believe you can. You only intuitively know when someone can’t handle pressure after the fact. And we all now know that the American gymnast can’t, and so therefore probably isn’t Olympic material.

Updated, 2021-09-08: I gave Naomi Osaka some leeway in this post, but after her performance during and after her match with Leylah Fernandez, I’m chucking her in the same category as Simone Biles. I see some commentators referring to this growing group as “Team Quit” and “Generation Quit”.

Rogers buys Shaw. How bad can the news get?

Apr 6th, 2021

by Craig.

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Three weeks ago it was announced that Rogers Communications Inc. is planning to buy Shaw Communications Inc. This is yet another example of the big communications and media companies in Canada giving the middle finger to the public, and doing what they want to maintain the oligopoly they hold over the aforementioned marketplaces. Study after study, year after year finds that Canadians pay the highest prices for cell phone usage in the world, and yet the federal government, who are supposed to regulate these companies, pays lip service to lower prices but never actually follow that up with action.

Shaw owns Freedom Mobile (to whom I refer as “Troublesome Mobile” given the absolute gong show I had transferring a number to them from Virgin, a number I actually had to abandon), and they are the only reason I only quite recently got a cell phone in Canada. Before 2019 I found it more convenient and cheaper to have a phone with an American provider and “roam” in Canada. I combined that with Sugar Mobile to have a Canadian phone number. It wasn’t exactly a great system, but having lived in Third World countries in the past I am used to “making a plan” to work around the inefficiencies of Third World governments and thinking. Welcome to Canada.

Ironically, Air Canada just cancelled their planned purchase of Air Transat. The reason? The European Commission wanted concessions from the newly enlarged airline, while the Canadian government had given the green light to the merger. Thank the gods for the EC, saving Canadians from ourselves.

There has been talk that the federal government could insist that Freedom Mobile and perhaps Shaw’s fledgling cell phone service, Shaw Mobile, be excluded from the deal, to do something to encourage the nascent development of competition in our mobile industry, but such a suggestion assumes that the Canadian federal government has the cojones to do so. (But speaking of Shaw Mobile, it looks to me a lot like Sugar Mobile, the company against which Rogers successfully waged a legal challenge to shut them down in 2017! That hypocrisy is a story for another day though.) While I would support the federal government doing something like that, it won’t be enough for other opponents of the deal, such as OpenMedia.

I can assure Brad Shaw and Edward Rogers though that, regardless of the action or lack thereof from the Canadian government, if the purchase and merger go ahead, the new company will lose a long-time customer of Internet connectivity, cable TV, and now cell/mobile service. The cell service will go back to the United States; Internet will probably go to one of the resellers (possibly even of Rogers, but we don’t have much choice), and if I can get my shit together we’ll “cut the cable” completely.

Updated, 2021-04-07: Add link to Troublesome Mobile.

Out of range or no pwr at base: VTech cordless phone

Feb 15th, 2021

by Craig.

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VTech model CS6649-3 cordless phone and “digital answering system”.

After a power failure, the cordless handsets on my VTech CS6649-3 cordless phone and “digital answering system” stopped working and displayed “Out of range or no pwr at base” on their screens. This system is at least ten years old, so I figured I’d be buying a new system. However, I did a web search and came across a couple of pages that didn’t quite help me solve my problem, but got me started.

The least helpful, of course, was the first result from VTech themselves: “What should I do if Out of range OR No pwr at base appears on my cordless handset?” I did briefly consider the possibility of third-party interference, but this seemed highly unlikely all of a sudden.

Further help was available at the following links:

The latter also led me to the video by Andrew Calvet, which is cut off suddenly at the end. (The “*7890#” code in this video works on my phone, but the “*331734#” code mentioned in other search results, including the two above, does not.) I got the same result as in the video, and then just hit “off/cancel” key several times to get back to the home screen. However, my screen still stated “Out of range or no pwr at base”, so I was no further ahead. So I decided to disconnect the battery, wait a few seconds, then reconnect it. (I needed to gently use pliers.) It then stated, “To register HS see manual”. Great. So I started to look for the physical manual, then remembered I had it saved on my computer.

I haven’t done a page-by-page comparison, but page 61 of this manual has the instructions “to register a handset”:

Press and hold FIND HANDSET on the telephone base for about four seconds until the IN USE light turns on and it shows Registering…
Press QUIET# on the handset. The handset shows Registering… Both the telephone base and cordless handset show Registered, and you hear a beep from the handset when the registration process completes. The registration process takes about 60 seconds.

I had to set the date and time the first time I did this on the first handset, but didn’t have to for the other two handsets. At the end of it all, all three remote handsets are working. The base was always working.

Not sure if just disconnecting and reconnecting the batteries in the handsets (and re-registering) would have done the trick; perhaps entering the “*7890#” code wasn’t actually a necessary part of the process.

Hope this helps you.

Updated, 2021-07-27: This happened again less than six months later. I can therefore confirm that simply disconnecting and reconnecting the battery does not work. You still need to enter the code as instructed in the video, then disconnect and reconnect the battery. The cause of the current failure is unknown, as we did not have another power failure.

Updated, 2021-08-30: OK, it seems that I’m having to do this almost regularly now, although the most recent time happened after I pulled the plug on everything in my office while I went away for a couple of weeks. So, for my own benefit, rather than making you (or myself) watch the video and read the manual, here are the steps:

On a/the handset, press MENU/SELECT.
Scroll up to Settings.
Press MENU/SELECT.
Enter *7890#.
Scroll to TEST HANDSET.
Press MENU/SELECT.
Scroll up to NEXT PAGE ….
Press MENU/SELECT.
Next menu option displaying should be REGSTR CLEAR. Press MENU/SELECT.
The phone will ask you to confirm “REG CLEAR ?“. Press MENU/SELECT. Phone will display “OK“.
Disconnect and reconnect the battery in the handset. It’s my habit to wait a few seconds in between. The handset will now display “To register HS See manual”.
On the base, press and hold FIND HANDSET for about four seconds until the IN USE light turns on and it shows Registering….
Press QUIET# on the handset. The handset shows Registering…. Both the telephone base and cordless handset show Registered, and you hear a beep from the handset when the registration process completes. The length of the registration process varies, but it usually takes fewer than 60 seconds.

You’re done.

The American right is laughable

Jan 8th, 2021

by Craig.

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If their storming of Capitol Hill on Wednesday 6 January 2021 was their idea of a “revolution” — as one tearful insurrectionist put it to a videographer — they’re an absolute joke. A revolution has leaders and goals and lasts more than a couple of hours; that was just a disorganised mob getting their jollies and selfies for a few hours.

Note to self: If I ever need someone on my side in a revolution, don’t go into battle with American alt-righters, especially a “leader” who says he will walk with you, and then gets in his limousine and is driven off.

Updated, 2021-01-09: Added link to video of the revolutionary, “Elizabeth … from Knoxville, Tennessee.” “We’re stormin’ the Capitol, it’s a revolution!” OMG, she’s fucking hilarious!

(Dear Elizabeth from Knoxville, Tennessee: Just in case you’re confused [because it seems you are easily misled], we are laughing at you, not with you! Ha ha ha.)

Updated, 2024-08-04: Added the note to the previous update about who we’re laughing at. I’m not kidding, I crack up every time I come across this post again, and I thank Hunter Walker (@hunterw, who is now on Bluesky) on Twitter/X for leaving this hilarity up. I know there are ways to download web-hosted videos, and I probably should download this one, but it’s too much time and effort for me to bother. (Damn, before I finished that sentence, I “bothered”, so I now have the funniest video in the history of mankind saved on my hard drive and backed up by Tarsnap.) Congratulations, Elizabeth from Knoxville, Tennessee!

Updated, 2024-11-05: The video is no longer available on Twitter/X. It needs to be preserved though, so I will consider adding it from my hard drive.

Updated posts

OMG, the entire continent of North America is a joke!

USA

Canada