Bell Aliant sucks. And blows.

I'm sitting here tonight, purt near frothing at the mouth, over my experiences these past 6 days with Bell Aliant / Bell Mobility / Bell Whoever.

On Friday, April 19th, I went to the Bell Aliant store, all a-flutter, because I was going to splash out and buy myself my very first smartphone, an iPhone 5. WOO HOO!!!  I went with a friend who was equally excited about the idea of 'getting with the times', and having the chance to see what all the hype was about.

We dealt with a young lady named Hillary. That should have been my first clue.

She was dealing with my friend when I arrived. When they were done, then it was my turn. She was very pleasant, whatever, but I wasn't there to make a new friend. I was there to sign a contract, obligating myself to a device that I was under the impression would connect me to a world wide web of possibilities that were beyond my imagination. Happy day!!!

What I ended up signing, as it turns out, was a contract that obligated me to a device whose potential was used up within the first FOUR days of ownership, because of a totally inadequate "data package" that was sold to me, "me" being someone who had never laid a finger on a smartphone before, yet was supposed to instinctively know that just turning it off meant nothing to the data usage.

Call me old-fashioned, with expectations of  customer service, but I contend that it was incumbent upon Bell staff to tell me certain traits of this thing - Bell staff who, KNOWINGLY, were selling me a package that 1) woudn't last a week, let alone a month, 2) to a person whose flip-phone was sat on the counter, so that should have been a clue, and 3) would cost that person A GODDAMNED FORTUNE by the end of the month. It wouldn't require a rocket scientist to figure out that a flip-phone owner MIGHT NOT be entirely familiar with the subtleties of data usage and cellular data. I was told I had unlimited airtime.Too bad I was NOT TOLD that it related to the telephone only, the INSIGNIFICANT part of the bloody thing I was buying.

 

If I hadn't downloaded the Bell app, I would never have known that I was teetering on the edge of cellular bankruptcy. For some reason, not unexpectedly, the "My Bell" element of their website does not show my cellular phone usage, as it should, only my satellite TV information. No one knows how to fix this. Am I shocked? No, I am not. So, if I hadn't taken the Bell app for a test drive the other day, I would never have learned - FROM MY COWORKERS - vital information concerning the use of this phone. It does not come with any kind of a user manual, online or otherwise. I guess they're only meant for people who have been born since 2000, with the intricacies of these things embedded in their genome.

So, I called their customer service people today. I spoke with one girl for whom English was not her first language. She had the nails-on-a-chalkboard habit of laughing at everything I said, probably nervous hysteria, but she was driving me up the wall with her incessant giggling over a situation I found to be anything but funny. I asked her to stop laughing, once, because my issue was not funny. She said, "You so funny, but I can tell underneath a little frustrated." REALLY?!?! JUST A LITTLE??? I told her this was "100% frustration, nothing funny about it". The next time she laughed, I told her I could not deal with her anymore and hung up. I called back and got "Robot Guy". The only use he served was to tell me that I was entitled to the 'buyer's remorse clause' in the contract I had signed. Finally, a glint of light at the end of the tunnel, but interestingly, not one effort was made to try to warm me up to the idea of getting the appropriate package, not even from the guy to whom I returned the thing. Shows a very telling lack of interest in customer service, or even trying to scam a few extra dollars for Bell.

I tossed the phone and all the other garbage associated with it back in the bag, and got my arse down to the Bell store as fast as my wheels would take me. After standing there for over an hour, I finally had my old trusty flip phone back, and I left there, if not happy, then at least feeling like I had stemmed the flood of being ripped off and misled.

It will be a long time before I stroll down the smartphone road again, particularly with Bell Aliant / Bell Mobility / Bell Whoever as the service provider. Maybe by the time the iPhone 10 is on the go, I might consider it. Might.

I can see why they call them smartphones. You've got to have a PhD in Bell Manipulation, with a major in Unscrupuloussness, to avoid being ripped off and deceived.

ALL THAT GIRL, HILLARY, HAD TO DO was to say that the package we were considering was insufficient for most people's needs and not the great deal it seemed to be. She would THEN have sold two $70 packages, instead of two $45 packages, and everyone would have been satisfied. But no. That's not how she chose to play it. She chose to get us out of the store as fast as possible, with the least amount of information possible, maybe so she could resume sexting or playing Angry Birds, or whatever drivel entertains the mind of someone who chooses Bell customer service as a career.

A disgraceful end to what should have been a mutually satisfactory transaction, and could have been with virtually no effort at all from someone who knew better.

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Politicians condoning violence - the lunatics have taken over the asylum

People are freaks.

That's the short story. However, blogs do not live on short stories alone, so I feel that I must elaborate.

Here it is, April, 2013. Kathy Dunderdale's Progressive Conservative government is in power. Her finance minister, Jerome Kennedy, just tabled an unpopular budget. This is where the freakishness begins...

Since the time in 1997 when the offshore oil first came ashore making us all Western oil sheiks, and more recently, when the Atlantic Accord made us a "have province", people have gone insane.

Supposedly, there's money for everything. Universal daycare on every corner. A bloated public service that is insupportable in the long run. Free university tuition. Gas at $0.20 / liter. Free electricity from Churchill Falls, and in the future from Muskrat Falls. You name it, the provincial government of this province of 500,000 people, a quarter to a third of which are actual taxpayers, will provide it. No questions asked.

People are freaks.

So this budget gets passed. In order to maintain our way of life in the long term, cuts were justifiably required, and made. Some I agree with, others not so much, but all of a sudden, the freaks started to surface, and boy-oh-boy, it's gotten ugly.

Opposition politicians are basically accusing the government of everything short of selling children for medical experiments, in order to balance the budget.

People with more money than sense are posting insulting billboards around town, and probably further afield, I don't know. I don't want to know.

Insulting, personal attacks are everywhere on Facebook. If you don't like the party's position, fine, debate the merits, but leave personal attacks out of it.

Then, it got super-duper ugly...

A Facebook page was created, "Kathy Dunderdale must go", upon which some psychotic nut posted a desire to see Kathy Dunderdale get a bullet through her head.

Then, it got super-duper stupid...

Gerry Rogers, a member of the NDP party (I'm not going to spell out what 'NDP' stands for, because it's not worth the wear and tear on my fingers), joined this page, either actively, or by accepting an invitation. It's not clear, because she's lying like a rug about it.

When challenged in the House of Assembly, she said she did not join the page, knew nothing about it, does not condone violence, blah-blah-blah, yet when asked three times to apologize to the members of the House for her association with this group, she refused and was escorted out. Once out, she headed for the television cameras, to plead stupidity... er... IGNORANCE about this page.

She's a flat out liar, and needs to go far more than Kathy Dunderdale.

Yet, all over the Internet, there is still evidence of people who support her. It's just incredible to me. But, as it is very likely that the vast majority are socialist NDP'ers, then it is understandable. Their mission in life is to have the government nurse them from the cradle to the grave, so any inkling of tightening belts with respect to government spending is equal to robbing a child's piggy bank at gunpoint, in their eyes. These eyes, it must be noted, probably contribute nothing or next-to-nothing in property taxes, income taxes or by any other means.

I've heard it said before that politics in Newfoundland is a contact sport. Very, very true.

One particular person on Facebook has been challenging me, accomplishing nothing but embarrassing herself, and has been the source of much merriment for me as I prove her wrong on every count. I have invited her, and everyone else, to try to sign me up for a page without my knowledge, as Gerry Rogers claims happened to her. Can't be done, especially on that page, which is a 'closed group', membership by invitation only, an invitation to which one must respond in order to join. I have invited her to 'unfriend me', but she does not, opting instead to sticking around, trying to make an absurd and ridiculous point. As I said, it's embarrassing. She's like a ball of wool, and I'm the cat. LOVING it.

So, when the dust settles, and if she's still around, I'll give her the boot. Anyone who can't understand why association with a group that condones, or provides a welcome environment for people to threaten violence, is a freak. Stupid beyond all. As Jamie Lee Curtis' character Wanda said in the movie A Fish Called Wanda, "calling you stupid is an insult to stupid people!" That's just how I'm feeling about this at the moment.

Sadly, though, she's not the only one. There are myriad freaks around us, I fear, who seem to have no clue about how truly awful threats like this really are, not only to the individual but to our society as a whole. While I toy with her like a ball of wool, I weep for the perverse stupidity and lack of morality of people like her.

God guard thee, Newfoundland.

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Dining alone - an adventure!

About a year and a half ago, on September 8th, 2011, I had one of my all-time oddest dining experiences, thanks to the Bacalao restaurant in the Clarenville Inn.

I had been working in Clarenville for the weekend, and had gone out for supper after work. Little did I know how strange that experience was going to be.

Here, for the sake of posterity, are the posts I wrote on Facebook that very night.

Old posts are not easy to retrieve from Facebook, and I fear that down the road, they may be permanently irretrievable and this story would be lost to me. Because of that, I've decided to post it here. The saga begins...

 "I just had the most bizarrre meal in the history of restaurant dining. I'm about to tell the story. It may take several posts. If you don't want to get sucked into the vortex of bizarre-ity now, then you'd better "step away from the status update". You have been warned... Here goes... I'll let you know when the story is over...

"So I go to the Bacalao restaurant in the Clarenville Inn for my supper. I'm here for work, so I'm alone. The very nice waitress seats me, and I read the menu. All is pretty much status quo so far.

"Across the room, at a table near the windows, is a 60-ish couple, drinking their coffee. The server comes back to me. I order the Bacalao fritters to start, and the steak frites for my main course. I also order a glass of wine. The server goes to get the wine menu, and as soon as she leaves, I hear the woman tell her dining partner, "There's a woman sat across there, by herself, facing the wall. She ordered an appetizer, a steak, and now the waitress is gone to get her the wine menu." I did a double take as I thought very loudly to myself, "W.T.F.???????" The story continues...
 

"Her dining companion (husband, I'm assuming), is staring at me. I, of course, stare back. It's not often that I hear myself being talked about with so little attempt at discretion. So, it is this stare of wonderment that the server sees when she brings me the wine menu. I said to her, "I'm sorry, I'm just a little distracted. That woman just recited my order to that gentleman, word for word. I can't help but wonder why I'm the source of such fascination!" I said it to her, I did. Beauty part was, missus heard me, as I intended for her to do. I ordered my wine, and the staring game began...
 

"It seems she realized she was being anything but discreet, so she shut up about me, but her husband kept staring at me through my appetizer and the 1st half of my steak. It must be said that based on the accents and the conversation, they were CFAs. (CFA = "come from away", visitors to Newfoundland) I had no dining companion, so I had a lot of time to contemplate this oddness. I thought for a moment he must be visually impaired or something and she was describing the scene, but he was staring at me so intently, I ruled that out. AND, even if that WAS the case, BE DISCREET, LADY, FOR GOD'S SAKE! She gave me the creeps. BUT... the story is not over yet...!

"Eventually, (not soon enough), they got up to leave. I was tempted to wish them an interesting evening, but I thought the better of starting a racket in the nice restaurant. Within less than 5 minutes, a party of four women, mid-to-late 50's, came in and sat at the table that the odd couple had just vacated. If I'm not mistaken, three of them were CFAs, and one was a Newfoundlander. 

"It soon became apparent that they were old friends and were travelling all over the island together, having a blast! It was nice to see and overhear. They were discussing the menu in depth, and couldn't make up their minds what they wanted. Next thing I know, one of them gets up and starts walking around the restaurant, looking at the other diner's plates!!

"...and of course, where should she stop but at my table! She said to me, "And what are YOU having tonight???" She was laughing and clearly just being nice, so I told her, in depth, what I was having and how good it was! We talked about the other items on the menu that sounded good, and about how salt fish right before bed makes you thirsty all night, having to drink, and then having to go to the bathroom, which is hard with 4 women in one hotel room, and so forth and so on. She was a hoot!! I just sat there and laughed at her!

"Anyway, I finished my meal, thoroughly entertained listening to them debate the wine they were drinking, and loving every drop by their comments. They were funny, and all I could think was how great it is that these four women, definitely good friends, have been having such a good time, and enjoying their trip.

"I finished my meal, and went out into the lobby to pay. The girl who had been my server and the other waiter who was working tonight were both there, and they started asking me about that first older couple, and what had gone on with them. It seems that after I made that comment to the waitress about being a source of fascination to them, she went back in the kitchen and told the other waiter, and they wanted to know what had happened, so I told them.

"I then told them what a great time those four women-friends were having, and how entertained I had been listening to them, and that I wanted to buy their bottle of wine for them, that they were enjoying so much. So, I did! The waitress said that this had been the oddest set of circumstances she had come across, and she had come across some pretty strange things in her line of work. It was pretty odd for me, too, I have to say; first being creeped out by a play-by-play of where I was, what I was doing and what I had ordered, and then by the total pleasantness of seeing these four friends enjoying each other's company so much. It was so funny!!

"Finally, I left there, and went to an Irving station to buy some milk. The man ahead of me was buying cases and cases of beer! He had to make several trips with them, out to his taxi. TAXI????? Good God. All I could think was, there'll be no shortage of contraband being sold from taxi trunks in Trinity Bay tonight! Oh, me nerves!!!

The End."

Statistics 101 - Lying and the Media

I was just listening to a US news program on TV that was discussing distracted driving. The host stated, and I quote, 

"...62% of those who died in distracted driving accidents were daydreaming. Only 12% were talking or texting..."

 

I can see how they can determine who was using a cell phone. That is easy enough to prove, BUT I ASK YOU... how the HELL do they know that people were daydreaming before they died in an accident?

That is the same *S*T*U*P*I*D* logic that applies when it is said that someone who dreams of falling off a cliff will die if they actually hit bottom in the dream. Not die in the dream, I mean, DIE die. Supposedly that's why people tend to wake before they crash into the ground. We can only surmise, therefore, that people who die in their sleep, a supposedly 'nice way to go', have actuallly succumbed to a horrific multiple trauma, though they've left a beautiful corpse.

So now it is that the lunacy of this not only continues, but is legitimized on news programs.

 

Maybe the 'daydreaming' person fell asleep. Maybe he or she was reaching to change the radio station. Maybe they were suicidal. Maybe they were trying to soothe a child in the back seat. Maybe they were getting something out of their eye. Maybe they were trying to retrieve their cell phone off the floor. Maybe they dropped a cigarette. Maybe they were swatting at a bee! WHO the HELL KNOWS?!?!?!

But the use of fictitious, meaningless statistics and making them say what you want them to say is not a phenomenon unique to US television. Certainly not!

Just the other night, here in St. John's, Newfoundland, I was watching "NTV Evening News: First Edition", and observed the host reporting on the most recent political poll findings. On the screen was a graphic which illustrated the popularity of the leaders of the three provincial political parties. The numbers were as follows:

Lorraine Michael - 61%
Dwight Ball - 41%
Kathy Dunderdale - 25%

So, according to NTV that night, and Coast 101.1 FM the next morning, this is where the leaders stand. Fascinating. This is how 127% of those polled responded. These professional media types, sounding very knowledgeable and authoritative, rattled off these numbers, and hoped that 127% of those listening wouldn't notice. Well, I can assure them that 100% of ME noticed. And bellylaughed at their ongoing desperate public manipulations.  

 

To quote Mark Twain - "There are three kinds of lies; lies, damn lies and statistics."

 

 

 

The Moral of the Story - Give anyone a TV camera and a microphone, and they will say anything they want, and 127% of the world will believe them.

 

 

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Bird flu - a media-induced epidemic

Nine people have died so far from the latest bird flu outbreak in China.

Based on a 2011 estimate, China has 1.3 BILLION people. So, 9 dead from the bird flu, out of 1,300,000,000 people. That's roughly 0.000000006% of their population. This is miles away from being in any way statistically significant, or even newsworthy.

More Chinese people have died from sepsis related to biting off a hangnail, for God's sake.

But, that's our media. Not happy unless they're inciting terror in the masses, be it related to overestimated snowfall accumulations, or deadly viruses, it's all the same! BUT, that said, I am all about happiness these days, so I won't fester over this.

Facebook DID ask me what was on my mind, though, and it would have been ignorant not to reply.

...so I did.

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