Author: Erwin

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SHAW CABLE SUCKS MAJOR WANG

So today I had scheduled a visit by Shaw Cable to install two additional outlets in my place. I was told by Shaw Cable to be at home between 12pm and 5pm. So, I sat at home all day, leaving my errands to fall by the wayside.

Lo and behold, 4:45pm rolls around and still no cable guy. I call Shaw and some guy on the other end assures me that someone’s is still coming to install my outlets… today. Right. A few hours pass and it’s 7:30pm. No cable guy… big surprise. I call Shaw again and a different person tells me that my installation call got “bumped”. Well, thanks for freaking telling me about it! I sat at home all Tuesday and Shaw knew sometime during the day there weren’t coming and neglected to call me. That’s what I call total lack of customer service. Typical Shaw.

The sad thing is, Shaw can get away with this crap all the time. Who else are you going to patronize to get your cable service? Shaw has a virtual monopoly on the Lower Mainland cable television industry.

By comparison, Telus did a great job when they installed my phone and ADSL service. Each time they came, they called 10 minutes before they arrived to make sure I was home and ready for them. After each visit, a representative from Telus called to make sure I was happy with the service I received. I doubt you’ll ever see that kind of service from Shaw.

Anyways, I was furious at Shaw, so I called their “Customer Service” line and talked to another representative. They fed me some standard crap line about installations taking longer than expected and having unexpected delays. I told them someone else used the word “bumped” but they were adamant that was a poor choice of words. I wanted to say to regardless of how you wanted to phrase it, I got screwed today. I asked them why they couldn’t simply phone me if they knew my installation was going to be delayed. The woman on the other end apologized and she said that some Shaw technicians call and others don’t. Apparently, it’s not a policy for Shaw to be polite and courteous. Furthermore, the woman admitted that with recent Shaw technician hirings, they lowered their standards for employment. According to her, the latest batch of technicians are of lower quality than what they’d like. She also said that they’re using complaint calls like mine as a way to weed out the poorer performing technicians. Gee, thanks for letting me be a part of Shaw HR.

I asked her who was going to re-imburse me for my time, and the best she could do was a lousy $20 credit on my account. $20? How many people make only $20 a day? That’s not even worth one month’s cable service.

So now, I have to clear another day out of my schedule to wait for these knobs to come again.

If I could get cable TV service from Telus, I’d do it a second.

Shaw Cable you get my suck wang award for this month.

MISCELLANEOUS MONDAY

I had rather boring Monday. I didn’t wake up until 11am. Spent the first hour just surfing for news. I read my mail, electronic and otherwise. Then I got down to the nitty-gritty and began looking up local high-tech companies. I think I must have been weak from hunger because I neglected to write down a few of the companies which I found interesting. There are several companies that might fit the bill, but I am a long way from where I need to be. First, I need to find a project that might interest said company. This in itself is where I’m stuck. Second, I then need this company to want to fund my research. In these hard economic times, this is a tall order.

I ate lunch which consisted of left-over lobster and noodles. I then had to assemble some furniture for my mom. This only took an hour fortunately. I started my research again, only to have some slight panic set in on my progress. During my distress, I sent an e-mail to my thesis supervisor Dr. Croft, requesting a meeting. It is my hope she’ll calm me down and give me reassurance. Either that, or a thesis topic with funding. Ha ha ha… graduate humour.

After I calmed down, I remembered I still had to watch Run, Lola, Run before it had to go back to the store. I discovered there are two versions of Run, Lola, Run on DVD. One is widescreen with a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, and the other is pan and scan with only a Dolby Surround track. Guess which one I had. Yep. It was shame because the movie had a great soundtrack and my sub remained virtually silent the whole time. Nonetheless, it was a pretty good movie. I’m sure actress Franka Potente got a good workout during the filming.

After dinner, around 9pm I intended to return the DVD, with a pitstop at the local pho joint and also Safeway. Deciding to go eat pho first, I pull into the parking lot only to see the place dark and with a closed sign out front. What the hell was up with that? They usually close at 11pm or 12am.

Having my pho hopes dashed, I decided to return the DVD first and then I went to Safeway. On the way home, I stopped by my favourite Panago outlet and picked up some wings and a salad. The young woman behind the counter informed me that they no longer put cheese in their garden salads. This irked me, since the cheese was an integral part of the Panago garden salad.

I ate the wings and salad, and now I’m typing this. Yay, what a day. Now, you can be glad you don’t have my life. Thanks for reading.

IKEA AND WENDY’S

Today, I went to Ikea with my mom to help her buy furniture. There’s always hot women at Ikea. I also like Ikea’s contemporary furnishings. Hot women and nice looking furniture, it makes for a great afternoon. I wish I could meet a girl at Ikea, that way, I’d be assured she’d be hot and have good taste at the same time.

After I dropped my mom and the furniture off at home, I went to Staples by myself. I went to buy some pens and I also went and looked at electronics (it’s for my thesis). Anyways, after I left Staples, I noticed that I was around a Wendy’s restaurant. It was 4:30pm, and I knew I had a Father’s Day dinner with my parents at 6:30pm. What the hell I said, and I ordered a Classic Single Combo. It was good too. I think out of all the fast food chains, Wendy’s is the best. Their food looks and tastes most like homemade items. I only wish they had more locations, if so, I wouldn’t be visiting McDonald’s so often.

Anyways, so as you might have expected, when dinner time rolled around, I wasn’t hungry at all. Which was alright, since my parents brought home the extra lobster. Oh well.

Hey, Greg Williams, if you’re reading this, it was nice seeing you at the A&B on Friday.

STOP PROBING ME!

Garrett Knights warned me of this, but it’s still bad to see it first hand. Apparently, the set of IP addresses Telus assigns to its’ ADSL subscribers is well-known. How can I tell? I’ve been probed over 7 times in last two hours. My last ISP was not well-known so their IP addresses were not as public. It was so safe, I uninstalled my firewall because I didn’t need it.

Now, I’m getting probes from France all to the way to Korea. They’re testing my ports, looking for weaknesses. I’m not sure what they could do.

I’m going to leave ZoneAlarm running for a while to see what it can find.

BACK ON ADSL

Well, after over a week of not having ADSL, I am finally back on. I’m not sure what crack withdrawal feels like but I think I have a pretty good idea.

Meanwhile, the new place is a mess. I have boxes everywhere and no place to put them. I tempted not to put them anywhere since I’ll be moving out soon anyways.

The internet though, you have to have the Internet man.

The view from this window overlooks a decrepit, low rent apartment block. I’m thinking about installing a web cam so that I can share.

Enter shirtless guy holding a beer

“I didn’t hit ‘er offisur!”

Enter woman with big hair holding filthy child

“He done it ’cause he loves me sir!”

How can I not share this with the world?

MOVING DAY

It’s late, I’m tired, I should be in bed, but I need to be up for a few more minutes yet. The house is quiet, but it’s almost empty. The walls are bare, and many rooms are devoid of furnishings. Tomorrow, I’m moving the rest of my stuff to a tiny townhouse. My parent’s townhouse. My mom has decided she doesn’t want to deal with mortgage payments anymore. That’s fine, but I get the feeling my parents didn’t expect to have their 28 year old son with them in the grand scheme of things. Ha ha ha. Well, that’s what I get for deviating from an engineering career (what a sacrifice I made for you EA! lol).

I’ll miss this house. We moved in right when I started university, which was the most important chapter in my life. My memories of school and this house go hand in hand. That’s odd, because I lived in residence while at UBC. There are many others reasons why I loved this house. When he moved in, this house was brand spanking new, untouched by any family. It actually looked shiny. We came from a house that was over 25 years old at the time. It had only one bathroom, the new place had three. Our old house didn’t have a garage, the new place had a two car garage (with an electric door opener, something which my parents had never had). The old place was small, the new place had more room that we knew what to do with (my mom eventually solved that problem by buying new furniture). The old place had crappy appliances, the new place had a refrigerator that made ice on demand! The old place had one ancient phone jack in the most inconvenient place, the new place had a phone jack in almost every room.

Of course over a span of ten years, you form many other memories as well. With so much new space, a lot of family was able to visit. Almost all my cousins came over to stay, some for even extended periods of time. I also remember watching a lot of the Canucks games in the house during their run to the Cup in ’94. Strangely, one of my fondest memories consists of putting together a new barbeque in the middle of the kitchen floor on a hot Saturday evening. My sister was watching Pulp Fiction on TV and she was listening to me swear as I got all sweaty when the legs of the bbq wouldn’t fit together. I remember getting DSL in ’99 and the thrill of having the Internet on all the time.

It’s all the little slices of life that happened in this house that I will take with me. Can a house feel like a part of a family? I certainly think so.

Well, I’m rambling so I’ll end it here. Let’s hope everything goes smoothly. I should have the DSL back up on Tuesday. I’ll be back then.

IS THAT SO THONG?

Undoubtedly, if you’re a guy you’ve noticed the proliferation of these low slung jeans that young women are wearing. They ride really low on the hip. Women who wear these jeans invariably see fit to also have thong underwear underneath. How can you tell? It’s obvious when these women sit down. The jeans are low, and the straps of the thong sit high on the waist. Combine those two and you got some entertainment.

I was at the Lougheed Mall food court yesterday. As I made my way to KF… I mean the sandwich place, I saw this attractive woman at one of the tables. She was wearing the abeforementioned combination. I could plainly see the top of her pink satin thong above her jeans.

As I walked past, I thought, “Cool!”. Then, as I lined up for my bucket of chi… I mean BLT, I wondered is that really cool? Wouldn’t I be better off not seeing her thong? These women are plainly hot and there’s almost no chance in hell I’d ever snag any of them. By showing me a tantalizing piece of their underwear, isn’t that just mean? Aren’t they just saying, “Hey, have a tiny peek at my thong, nice huh? That’s as close as you’ll ever get… ha ha ha!”.

Now, had I not seen that food court thong, I would have turned my attention to getting fries… I mean a salad with my BLT. Wouldn’t ignorance be bliss in this case?

As I tossed the bones aside from my BLT, my thoughts changed though. No, I concluded, it is wrong to not want to glance at thong. Rather than view it as a taunt, I should view it as a gift, a bonus if you will. If these hot women are willing to show a little off, then we should appreciate what we are given.

End of story.

By the way, most men probably have already come to the same conclusion, and done it much faster too, but this is me.