Tag: Blog

More delivery company fun

I’ve often mentioned the strangely difficult struggle that is trying to get something delivered here. But today I’m in the middle of a story that makes even less sense than most.

I’ve ordered an office chair because the one I have has certain bits that are falling apart. So I ordered one and it was due to be delivered Friday via Fedex Ground. I worked from home Friday, made sure that I wasn’t doing anything that would prevent me getting the door, signed up for delivery notification by email and made sure that the chair was marked as being out for delivery… and around 11:30 got a notification that the Fedex truck had come and gone. This was a little weird, I had been at home all this time and no one had come around. I called Fedex to complain, we fully confirmed my address (including the door code), and everything was correct. When I went downstairs there was a notice on the front door of the building. Next delivery date was today.

Today I again work from home and make sure that I’m able to answer the door when the Fedex people show up. Again I get the delivery exception notification, again I call to complain, again confirm the address. And then when I go downstairs I see a notification. Only now it’s actually in the building (!) on the door of a mailbox, but it’s on the door of the wrong mailbox. Despite the mailboxes being clearly identified and the apartment number for delivery being correctly written on the notification paper. So the Fedex guy actually entered the building without calling me to be let in for some reason, and then proceeded to leave a notice not on my clearly-identified mailbox but on that of a guy one floor below me.

It’s not just today. Clearly for two business days running this Fedex contractor has made it to the building and despite the information he has being 100% correct, and myself being at home waiting for him, has just plain failed to deliver.

Meanwhile the postman had something I needed to sign this morning, he rang up, he was let in, came up to the apartment, got his signature. Just a few minutes ago I got another call from the front door, it was the UPS guy, I let him in, he came upstairs to deliver the package. Yet somehow the exact same instructions just aren’t cutting it with the Fedex guy. I don’t get it. Is this some kind of courier humor? Will the chair end up getting delivered by Ashton Kutcher who will then inform me that I’ve been punk’d? Someone’s putting some effort in it, the only other thing I can think of is that the guy who’s supposed to get the chair to me doesn’t know how to read numbers or something equally ridiculous (how did he manage to find the address then?). It’s beyond comprehension really.

When the going gets tough, gutless cowards cut and run

Yes it’s true, Stephen Harper has now suspended Canadian democracy for two months, for no reason except that he found himself unable to shove unacceptable bills down the nation’s throat. What a good way of starting 2010, under a right-wing dictatorship from Alberta. Eventually we will all see this Conservative government for the miserable, catastrophic blight on this country’s history that it is, but by then it just might be too late and Calgary’s neo-Texans might well have sold our future down the river already.

Of course Harper (whom I will never call either Right nor Honorable as I eschew lies) is not the sole person to blame here. A special mention goes to the most incompetent Governor-General in the country’s history, Michaelle Jean, who’s probably too busy jet-setting around the world to realize that the GG’s job is supposed to consist of doing more than just turning to Harper and asking “oh I don’t know, what do YOU think I should do?”.

How time flies

It’s been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell today, and I haven’t been able to put that out of my mind all day. Not being German it’s not something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, but 20 years ago I was in front of the TV watching CNN and witnessing what turned out to be the end of the Cold War — the only geopolitical frame of reference I had ever known in my life. Basically, the Communist world, in a very short amount of time, realizing that it was done, that its page of history had turned already.

I find it quite striking personally because this really is the first history-changing event I experienced as an adult; so really all but 7 months of my adult life has taken place since then. Sometimes it’s hard to keep from thinking about how much of that was wasted, but there’s little purpose dwelling on that. You have to wonder, though — besides events like 9/11, what is it that the generation after mine will remember fondly in its middle age? It’s not to say that such a big terrorist attack was insignificant, but it just doesn’t strike me as the same sort of event.

Things I found out recently — the wall came down as a result of a mistake. An East German official, Günter Schabowski, screwed up when reading about a plan to lift restrictions on travel by East Germans, and said that the new “open border” policy applied right away, which it clearly wasn’t intended to. This was picked up by West German television stations that ran with the story an hour or two later, and the East Berliners, who watched mostly West German television, heard about it and rushed the border points. The guards didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on, but there were far too many people for them to control.

How did it look when that Schabowski interviewed for his next job… “well, in my last job I misread something on television and started the demise of the country I was working for.” I’ve not always been a perfect worker, but I can honestly say that in no previous job have I ever caused a country to cease to exist.

Things I found out today — the Berlin wall was only built in August 1961. Prior to that Berliners (and Germans generally) could go from East to West Germany and back. So when Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech the wall was practically still new.

The vagaries of IT work

Up until today I was pretty sure that I would never hate an IT product as much as I hate IBM WebSphere, but I think we have a new winner: SAP Netweaver v7. Just installing the damn thing is like trying to thread a needle while someone is stabbing you repeatedly in the face, and every time you look at him for guidance he says “nuh-huh, no hints!” Oh, and it can *only* use a version of Java that Sun has already announced is EOL’d. Literally your JVM must be between 1.4.2_08 and 1.5.0, exclusive. Why is “bloody impossible to get going” become a positive attribute for computer systems in the past few years?.. When has that become a good thing?

White Bag Doritos

Has anyone else picked up those new Doritos in the white bag with the dollar sign on it and thinks that they taste about the same as the original nacho-cheese flavor? Honestly, there’s either no difference at all and that contest they have is a big joke, or the difference is so subtle that it would be completely lost on the usual late-night-munchies crowd.

A fresh look?

I thought it would be amusing to shake things up with a skin change — also a WordPress upgrade broke the plugin I was using to generate the excerpt for my stories on the front page, so this was a move of necessity more than whimsy. This little number is called Head 1.5 and it’s by Priss. It’s quite pleasant once your eyeballs stop hurting (it is a rather bright template).

Time for a Chrysler Death Watch?

I just went to the Montreal Auto Show this evening. All in all it was a fairly staid affair, but one shocker is the Chrysler display which, frankly, might as well have smelled of impending protracted death. Seriously, they have huge space, but couldn’t actually be bothered filling it, so that you have a few well-spaced-out cars, few visitors, and an atmosphere that fit a funeral better than a marketing event. Maybe Fiat can use that space to show off the 500 and their Alfa-Romeo line next year…