The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
By Jove, I think I’ve done it! I’m caught up in all the administrativia I’ve had to deal with in recent weeks. Standing orders, change of addresses(*), insurance claims, contro&lcirc;e des habitants, yada yada yada. All done(**)!
(*) actually, I still need to do a COA for Orange.
(**) until it starts again!
I’m in Italy at the moment and my shiny shiny new cell phone is as useless as a brick because my new contract doesn’t have roaming activated. I just spoke with customer services and they can’t enable that option until 6 months have passed on the contract “to avoid huge roaming bills”
What’s insane is that my contract includes 30 minutes of talk time when I travel anywhere in Europe. Except I can’t use it. Because my roaming is blocked.
Fucktards.
We haven’t had bin pickups since before Christmas because our pickup days fell on the holidays. Last Wednesday, they picked up our green bin but didn’t touch the pile of excess recycling in carrier bags next to it. I put all the bags in the bin and phoned the council to complain. They told me that they had a second crew that was exclusively picking up the extra stuff but i had to leave it next to the bin or they’d miss it. Out I went to empty my green bin. That night, when no crew had come, I put everything back into the bin. The next morning, I phoned the council again to complain and they told me that the second crew actually didn’t come yesterday but was coming today, so I had to put the extra bags next to the bin again. I told the council lady that those bags had done more mileage than a small car, so zhe said that she’d log it as a missed pickup and a bin lorry would come in the next couple of days.
This morning, a bin lorry came and picked up not only our green bin, but also our black bin. Since there are no bin lorries with the capacity to collect both waste and recycling, this means that all the recycling we’ve been moaning about is now going to the tip.
Idiots.
Ahead of December 21, which marks the conclusion of the 5,125-year “Long Count” Mayan calendar, panic buying of candles and essentials has been reported in China and Russia, along with an explosion in sales of survival shelters in America. In France believers were preparing to converge on a mountain where they believe aliens will rescue them. Doomsday scenarios suggest that the date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. They include the arrival of the next solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the black hole at the center of the galaxy,or Earth’s collision with a planet called Nibiru.
Dear chav lady with glittery nails. Slagging off your barrista will not make your coffee brew any faster.
Participant: I have problems understanding your concerns.
What I wanted to say: “my concerns is that you’re as dumb as a sac of hammers”.
What I said: “let me try and rephrase them”…
I bought some cough syrup yesterday but I found that I can’t take it with the antidepressants I’m on. I went to the pharmacy this morning, after my voice left me, to go get some syrup I could take. The pharmacist gave me the syrup I bought yesterday. When I told him I couldn’t take it, our conversation went like this:
– I can’t take that one.
– you sure?
– pretty much
– let me look… Clickety click…. Hmmm. You’re right. Those two don’t play nice together. Hmmm. That’s the only option you can really have…
– so I need to stick with halls?
– umm, yeah. Hope it doesn’t last for too long.
We phone up the Southern Cross grill, a restaurant that’s next to the hotel. I ask for a chef salad, no tomatoes (allergies) and a dressing that doesn’t contain garlic (allergies). We go to pick up the food, get back to the hotel and find that I’m 0 for 2. My salad has tomatoes and the dressing reeks of garlic. I phone them up to complain and the guy on the phone says, and I quote, “well, what do you want me to do about it” in a completely dismissive and derogatory tone.
How about a refund to start with? Or at the minimum an apology, you fucker?
So yeah. Southern Cross grill, if you read this, you suck.
Today is a day where Dilbert makes more and more sense to me.
User support is a painful side-effect of software development. Thankfully, it’s a small part of what I do because, while most users are fairly technically competent, it’s the truly moronic ones that make we want to shoot myself. Also, telling people they’re morons, while fun, is less than tactful (which I am not) and not good for career progression.
Comics from User Friendly