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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 1904
Finish work, 9:30, an early night, the sun's been down about half an hour. The jeep, parked beside the restaurant, rear passenger window smashed, stolen, my pair of skates (I was getting rather fond of them), they left the friend's pair, they won't fit me, and some glowsticks on the floor. That's it. $500 damage for well under a hundred dollars worth of stolen goods that probably won't fit...
Fuck, I gotta get out of this town. And everywhere on the ride home, cops issuing tickets, photo-radar, in Calgary this is "Policing" or "Detective Work", the half-wits version of Scotland Yard, anything above and beyond issuing traffic tickets or photo-radar is completely beyond their scope and ability...
...and your income, half of what it was formerly, fuck, I'm lucky to have a job, but the cops, they're working overtime issuing tickets, it's a fucked economy where everybody pays but the snivel servants...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2120
Now, bought the 7.99 London Drugs Cassette Adapter. And looking at moving some music onto my Samsung Galaxy Touch pad so I can have some tunes while I'm on the road.
Only the Micro SD Card with Adapter isn't recognized by my computer. HP Elitebook 2540p. I've been here before...
In a demonstration of Passive Aggressive Genius the computer doesn't even detect my new SD Card. No recognition whatsoever. Nothing. The Cut Indirect.
"(2) The cut indirect, to look another way, and pretend not to see him."
I've dealt with this before, invested a minimal of time searching for answers, downloads, drivers & cures online. It's a Windows thing. Windows doesn't play well with others.
Like a fucking little Autistic squib in the playground, it barely recognizes it's own spawn and progeny, so busy is it with scanning, reflecting, diagnosing, upgrading itself...
The Nikon Camera. Windows didn't even slightly recognize. Acknowledge. Plug it in, download drivers, reboot, etc, repeat, again and again, never did it recognize Nikon. Solution, finally, move Nikon files to Linux machine, upload to Google Images.
This is how Windows fixes a lot of it's shit, relying on the user to come up with creative and elaborate workarounds to their shitty and proprietary coding.
Follow this with Android - Samsung Galaxy phone. Attempts to transfer files on phone were met with countless suggestions to update, download new drivers, never arriving at a real solution. The final solution, of course, was to upload files to Google Drive or Images, and download again to PC. Actually, here I jest, the real final solution would be to hunt down the lead developer at Windows and kill him, but we still have some prejudices against this...give it a few more years and you'll see the light...
(1) The cut direct is to stare an acquaintance in the face and pretend not to know him.
The same with the Tablet, any attempts to directly sync with Tablet (damned Android, Galaxy, Samsung again!) result in the suggestion of countless downloads and drivers that squander time, memory and resources to no effect. Like Donald Trump, or Every White Supremacist you've ever met, Windows does not play well with others. The solution will always be the same, find another, non-proprietary unit, non-windows, move files there (the friendly OS, Linux, Even sounds friendly, like Linus from Charlie Brown...), move files there, upload to server, download to Windows, and I'm thinking of skipping a step, what step to skip, what's the common denominator here? and always, the one that doesn't play well with others is Windows.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2239
I'm tired of putting myself through the commercial radio stations. Can't do it, forever scanning the airwaves looking for something decent to listen to, trying to imagine my life on the road, prospecting, 8, 12, 16 hours a day driving, listening to this shit, lucky if you catch even just one good song an hour...
"...You can call my on my cell phone..". Fucking hell. Buddy, if I called you on your cell phone ass hole it'd be to find out where you were so I could track you down and shoot you. You've done for music what Donald Trump has done for politics.
Anyways, I've decided this will end, I have a perfectly great car stereo left over from the Jetta, but no time to install it (or no son, he's in Victoria...). And so I pop by Westbrook Mall to find some options. Into the Source...formerly Radio Shack, they have what I'm looking for. NextTech, the offbrand of offbrands, kinda like V-Tech and other anonymous tech names that no educated consumer would touch with a ten-foot pole. It's $39.99. Seems a bit pricey, maybe I should shop around a bit, I never go shopping for new shit, I'm a pretty bad consumer...
Not worth my time, I buy it, with tax it comes to 41.99. The salesman looks at me with dead eyes, tries to upsell me a ten years supply of value priced off-brand AA batteries. I must look like a real pervert. I politely decline. He asks if I'd like to, for an extra $8.00, purchase their extended warranty, these particular cassette adapters have a known issue with the plug breaking off, for an extra $8.00 they'll replace the plug, twice, over 3 years, no questions asked...
This is the lamest thing ever. And I've experience with the Source's Extended Warranty program...it's fucking shit. I decline. He offers to take my email, put me on their spam mailing list. Is everyone that shops here such a sucker, I wonder? No thanks.
$41.99 later and I have a vaguely uneasy feeling and my cassette adapter, now to find an MP3 player. Nothing great, just something that takes batteries (I don't wanna be charging it) and holds a lot of music. The Source has nothing, and so I shop around...bad quality MP3 players, designed to look like Ipods, $30, $40 bucks a pop, more even, for a lousy 2 or 4 GB memory, this is the gift the saddest kid on the block got at Christmas, I can hear him screaming just looking at it..."I asked for an IPHONE!!!", name's like "Hip Street" and "Cool Tunes" tell you just how uncool they are...
I head to London Drugs, and their MP3 players, like everywhere else, hold nothing, don't take batteries, $50, $100, WTF? Why not just buy a Tablet? Laptop? I mean, for the price...bloody hell...
But they do have a cassette adapter. $7.99. Unbelievable.
Now, a dollar or two, three, five, ten even, I'd swallow the loss, shoulda shopped around. But this boils my blood...
...Back to the Source, $5.00 Gas, this is their strategy, hopefully it's just not worth the suckers time to return it, it's not worth mine but they're not getting my money, fuckers, return cassette adapter, the manager assists me, asking innocuously why I'm returning it...
"Because I found it for $8.00 at London Drugs." I reply. I'm visibly not impressed. He's got no reply, then, after collecting a load of irrelevant data tells me:
"Well, you know, the quality isn't all the same, if you decide you need a better one...". It's the best he can do, I get it, he's gotta try. But really, I could buy 3 of them, use up my extended warranty, for half the price they're selling them for.
My new slogan for "The Source" - "The Source of Dollarama Shit at Holt Renfrew Prices..." Really guys, get a fucking life. And get it together. When you finally close your doors forever don't blame the internet, blame yourselves for your fucked up exploitative pricing.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 1902
...and that ludicrous signage you see everywhere, "Earn Vacations!", "Earn Free Flights", "Earn Free Food", none of which shows the slightest understanding of the word "earn", and I'll vary here from the dictionary to rant upon the meaning of the word earned...
It's tough. To exchange ones labour or service for cash might be an obvious example. Simple enough. We all earn our daily bread by working at things we'd probably prefer not to. So "Earn", the exchange of ones precious time or life for the necessities we need to maintain it, like food or shelter.
This is subverted or perverted in the ideology of "Earning reward miles" or "Earn free food" by the fact that you are, in fact, not earning, you are squandering money on luxuries and receiving a tiny discount to be saved and then squandered upon further luxuries. It's not "Earn", it should be entitled rather "Squander you're money here and you'll get to squander a disproportionately small amount of it here again later....".
But it's by these subtle shifts in language and ultimately thinking that they win our souls...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
- Hits: 2280
“A mans manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
For sure, we pander to a large clientele that would be thrown out of any other restaurant, let alone fine dining. But there's that peculiar inverse correlation between privilege and responsibility, the more people are given, the less they feel should be expected of them, manners are but the tip of the iceberg.
Manners are, by and large, the universal and largely unwritten code by which we as a society get along. They are the putting aside of ego, the finding or acknowledgement of the common ground by which we relate to others. Waiters, by and large, are expected to entirely know and adhere to them, waiters, generally, good waiters, the egoless vehicles of service, they know and adhere to the code but project nothing of themselves...which becomes rather difficult when they're the only ones playing the manners game...that said, there are few enough waiters now that even remember good manners ...
People, entering the restaurant, ball-caps on, cellphones to their ear, ignoring the hostess as they wander through the dining room looking for their guests/hosts, all the while loudly talking to the invisible other...
...or the earpiece, the sign of a permanently disconnected person, always someplace else, with someone else, never here and in the moment, is he talking to you or his other....
Technology, more than anything else, has managed to legitimize mental illness, remove the stigma, talking to Jesus? Angels? Demons? Leprechauns or Fairies?, channeling dolphins off the coast of Ithica? Who will know, hold that bit of plastic and metal to your ear, carry on, you'll blend in just fine...
Families, with their younger children, 3, 5, 7, the cellphone or tablet to watch movies or play games upon while mommy and daddy separately text their friends, converse, catch up, withdrawn entirely from the conversation, group, left out, uninvolved, later the parents will protest that little Johnny or Sarah is showing signs of Autism, not engaging with the other kids at school, and little wonder...
Eating. The dinner fork and steak knife used for the salad and butter, say nothing, replace them for the entree...
When done, plates piled up, with napkins on top, shoved aside, fewer than 10% of people now know that you set your cutlery at 4 o'clock and wait for the other guests to finish. Mind you, few servers know that you don't clear the table until everyone is done, and this is hard given the many mixed signals...
Couples, a romantic date, each by the light of their phone texting others, photographing their food, sharing on facebook, barely a word between them over three courses, Narcissism is on the rise, social media is reinforcing this...Banksy's Mobile Lovers -got it so very right...
A phone rings in a handbag during a busy dinner. The owner of the handbag pretends nothing is happening, the well-timed-indifferent fart of technology, look puzzled, curious, it couldn't have been me, could it? The phone rings again, loud, she must have it plugged into a speaker in her purse, no phone has a speaker this loud, it rings again, and again, and the table becomes paralyzed in their conscious effort to ignore it, they know good manners, know their offending every rule of etiquette, and you stand there and just smile, deaf to the ringing of the unacknowledged phone, merely trying to hear the guests order their meals...
And we have the regulars, who arrive just as we're closing, leave when we open again for dinner, they know, know damned well, but the rules were not made for them, they're special, and you smile thinly as you take their order half an hour after closing, their mock-friendliness, these people, they're our clientele, our demographic...
We get job seekers, 2 Italians in a single afternoon. The first, a half wit, fat, shaved head, dressed like a soccer hooligan, track pants, sneakers, despite clearly never having done a moments exercise in his entire life, Italian, he wants to emigrate to Canada (and I can imagine the joy with which Italy stamped his exit visa...and damn whoever let him in!), living in a group home, obviously touched, orders espresso, and fills it with a dozen sugars, orders a coke, demands a pasta of the chef, he feeds him, for free, but advises we don't have a job at the moment...
The other, wants to be a waiter, ski jacket, drops by Friday Lunch. 12:00. We're not full, but if you're a server you know this is not the time to be looking for work...
He's a server. Doesn't want to work lunches, has a lunch job already...("Then how are you here? I wonder..." the entire interview, visit, he wears his aviation styled sunglasses and toque. Never thinks to take it off. A***** takes a moment, we're too busy to afford it, but takes the moment anyways to interview him. It's disconcerting this, interviewing the unshaven, bearded, sunglassed too-cool to be here Italian looking for work...A***** catches my glance, he cringes, he knows, he knows damned well what I'm thinking...