Living in Canada snow's a foregone conclusion.
Owning a corner house, on a non-arterial road, the streets don't get plowed. Eventually there's enough of a snowpack on the road to bring the road's surface up to the height of the sidewalk - and that's when the "fun" begins.
I'm not sure if its the area I live in (mostly smaller, starter-type homes), but inevitably, someone drives on my sidewalk. That's annoying, especially if there happens to be fresh snow out on the sidewalk. So, on top of shovelling my driveway, and my 120ish feet of sidewalk, I now have to chip away at the packed snow/ice on the corner that people continually drive on. Tonight alone, this added about another hour to my shovelling.
I understand people cut the corner. Fine. It happens.
Its when people drive.. on my lawn.. I get annoyed. Its not rocket science, there's a foot and a half snowbank. I understand the sidewalk/road thing. I don't understand the.. "huh, I'll drive into this snowbank" bullshit. It's even funnier when you can follow the tire tred, and identify the instant as they're turning the corner that they realize they're going to hit the light standard that's a foot into my lawn. Good times. Generally these are fairly wide.. truck tires. You know the type of truck. Lifted 3/4 ton trucks with massive wheels, which my wife refers to as "small penis trucks".
Last spring, I cut a flower bed in the front lawn, the front edge of which could be in the "path of destruction" for some truck this winter. Fortunately, I was able to find a rock, about a foot and a half in diameter to guard that front edge with. Just big enough to be drug along with one of those trucks, bouncing around in the undercarriage.
Should be good times for the first person driving on my lawn this winter.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Price is Wrong, Bob!.. err.. Drew.. Drew.. >.>
So recently, I've been subject to more "awesome customer service" from the retail local retail sector. Its absolutely hillarious that we, as consumers, actually allow bad customer service to exist. Quite frankly, If more people had balls, and decided to spend where they were treated as, I don't know, customers, rather than assholes interrupting someone's texting on an Iphone (while they're working), I think you'd be surprised how the general atmosphere of customer service would change.
For argument's sake, I believe there are a few factors in this ongoing problem. I think the biggest one, by far, is location.
Consider your local economy. What are the pillars of the economy? Essentially, identify the one or two things that drastically affect the quality of life of where you live. (and no... I'm not going off track, just think about it and trust me here). Where I live, its the oilfields. The production of oil is what makes the provincial economy tick. There are two factors tied to the oilfields that affect the quality of life: the price of oil per barrel and the value of the dollar versus the US dollar. Its pretty simple, the higher oil is, the more money is made here. The lower the Canadian Dollar is versus the US Dollar, the more we make in Canadian Dollars per barrel. So, lets review. For the local economy, a high oil price and a low Canadian Dollar equals unbelievable wealth, everyone has a job, labor shortage, every rigpig is driving a new lifted pickup. The minute the dollar goes par, and oil takes a nose dive, suddenly we have mass layoffs and massive government deficits. So, then the retail sector does get influenced by the price of oil, but, will still keep on going regardless. The retail sector suffers, yes, but doesn't dissapear.
Now, consider someplace like Las Vegas. I'm not certain when the last time you've been to Vegas, but the place is literally the epitomy of consumerism. Take for, example, the strip. Every big Casino has some sort of mall/shopping area. Ceasar's, Venitian, Bellagio, Aria (or the new mall beside it), Wynn are some of the biggest, many of which are comfortably within walking distance, all of which have the same stores. I'm not talking about having a McDonalds in each. You know.. Louis Vitton, Tiffany's, Kenneth Cole, etc.. the big stores. Also consider that there's three outlet malls, the Fashon Show Mall, Town Center, and I'm sure many other malls we didn't get a chance to go to within a 20 minute drive. To put it very plainly, the place is oversaturated with commercial stores. Couple this with the simple fact that the American economy is becoming more and more dependant on the retail sector and suddenly customer service becomes literally, life and death.
Now. In a saturated environment like Vegas its stupid-easy to simply walk out of a store because of poor customer service. Don't like the service, go across the street and buy the exact same item from the exact same store. In my experience, I was treated like royalty in these stores. Why? They desperately wanted my buisness. I baught a watch in Vegas, and had it sized twice. The second time was at a completely different store the next day. They sized it no problem, they cleaned it and buffed out some scratches on the band. Here, I'd be grilled for a reciept, or just simply told to go back to the store I baught it from.
Now consider the non-saturated environment where the major driving economic factor is NOT retail. Suddenly, to go to, for example, a different Best Buy location on the basis of getting stuck with unknowledgeable, bitchy, horrible service individuals suddenly isn't such a easy option. Is half an hour drive (potentially in the snow and horrible road conditions) worth not having to deal with a retard trying to sell you a product? Suddenly this isn't such an easy choice, and on the other side of the equation the retard making your blood pressure rise doesn't get punished by lower sales. The people that are geniunely bad at retail are allowed to sell and "work" without any sort of recourse - the store sells things therefore they don't care that the customers are dissatisfied with the service. I can't tell you the times I've been screwed around by various retail outlets after the cash changed hands. Three installs and 12 hours of install time to get my XM into my car. Yes, 12 hours in Best Buy. Constant run around for trying to return faulty electronics, shoes, clothing. Being asked to leave a store for calmly asking a non-inflammatory question. Being refused service because the store is closing IN AN HOUR (yeah, fuck you Canadian Tire. Fuck you.). Unfortunately, I'm not alone.
And yes, I'm sure someone working retail at this point is lighting a Molotov cocktail, and getting ready to throw it through my window, but you know, tough shit. I have politely listened to people I know working retail constantly complain and fly off the handle about horrible customers. How customers are always wrong, stupid, moronic, etc, and how those retail workiers are never, ever wrong about certain situations. I don't discount the fact that horrible customers exist; I will argue to the death, however, that there are an equal proportion of horrible customers to horrible customer service individuals.
Unfortunately, I don't live in an area where good customer service means life or death for that particular store. Well, it just means I'll have to disturb either teenagers texting while working or their managers/older coworkers (who for whatever reason haven't managed to make it farther in the workforce) with simple questions about their products, to which I'll get flippant and condescending answers to. I'm sorry to disturb your groundbreaking, earth-shattering work in arranging the shelves for my retarded question - retarded only because I'm not intimately familiar with your store or store layout, because I've only spent 20-25 minutes of my insignificant life in your store.
Yeah. I wasn't wrong in saving up to drop a few thousand in Vegas on consumer products.
For argument's sake, I believe there are a few factors in this ongoing problem. I think the biggest one, by far, is location.
Consider your local economy. What are the pillars of the economy? Essentially, identify the one or two things that drastically affect the quality of life of where you live. (and no... I'm not going off track, just think about it and trust me here). Where I live, its the oilfields. The production of oil is what makes the provincial economy tick. There are two factors tied to the oilfields that affect the quality of life: the price of oil per barrel and the value of the dollar versus the US dollar. Its pretty simple, the higher oil is, the more money is made here. The lower the Canadian Dollar is versus the US Dollar, the more we make in Canadian Dollars per barrel. So, lets review. For the local economy, a high oil price and a low Canadian Dollar equals unbelievable wealth, everyone has a job, labor shortage, every rigpig is driving a new lifted pickup. The minute the dollar goes par, and oil takes a nose dive, suddenly we have mass layoffs and massive government deficits. So, then the retail sector does get influenced by the price of oil, but, will still keep on going regardless. The retail sector suffers, yes, but doesn't dissapear.
Now, consider someplace like Las Vegas. I'm not certain when the last time you've been to Vegas, but the place is literally the epitomy of consumerism. Take for, example, the strip. Every big Casino has some sort of mall/shopping area. Ceasar's, Venitian, Bellagio, Aria (or the new mall beside it), Wynn are some of the biggest, many of which are comfortably within walking distance, all of which have the same stores. I'm not talking about having a McDonalds in each. You know.. Louis Vitton, Tiffany's, Kenneth Cole, etc.. the big stores. Also consider that there's three outlet malls, the Fashon Show Mall, Town Center, and I'm sure many other malls we didn't get a chance to go to within a 20 minute drive. To put it very plainly, the place is oversaturated with commercial stores. Couple this with the simple fact that the American economy is becoming more and more dependant on the retail sector and suddenly customer service becomes literally, life and death.
Now. In a saturated environment like Vegas its stupid-easy to simply walk out of a store because of poor customer service. Don't like the service, go across the street and buy the exact same item from the exact same store. In my experience, I was treated like royalty in these stores. Why? They desperately wanted my buisness. I baught a watch in Vegas, and had it sized twice. The second time was at a completely different store the next day. They sized it no problem, they cleaned it and buffed out some scratches on the band. Here, I'd be grilled for a reciept, or just simply told to go back to the store I baught it from.
Now consider the non-saturated environment where the major driving economic factor is NOT retail. Suddenly, to go to, for example, a different Best Buy location on the basis of getting stuck with unknowledgeable, bitchy, horrible service individuals suddenly isn't such a easy option. Is half an hour drive (potentially in the snow and horrible road conditions) worth not having to deal with a retard trying to sell you a product? Suddenly this isn't such an easy choice, and on the other side of the equation the retard making your blood pressure rise doesn't get punished by lower sales. The people that are geniunely bad at retail are allowed to sell and "work" without any sort of recourse - the store sells things therefore they don't care that the customers are dissatisfied with the service. I can't tell you the times I've been screwed around by various retail outlets after the cash changed hands. Three installs and 12 hours of install time to get my XM into my car. Yes, 12 hours in Best Buy. Constant run around for trying to return faulty electronics, shoes, clothing. Being asked to leave a store for calmly asking a non-inflammatory question. Being refused service because the store is closing IN AN HOUR (yeah, fuck you Canadian Tire. Fuck you.). Unfortunately, I'm not alone.
And yes, I'm sure someone working retail at this point is lighting a Molotov cocktail, and getting ready to throw it through my window, but you know, tough shit. I have politely listened to people I know working retail constantly complain and fly off the handle about horrible customers. How customers are always wrong, stupid, moronic, etc, and how those retail workiers are never, ever wrong about certain situations. I don't discount the fact that horrible customers exist; I will argue to the death, however, that there are an equal proportion of horrible customers to horrible customer service individuals.
Unfortunately, I don't live in an area where good customer service means life or death for that particular store. Well, it just means I'll have to disturb either teenagers texting while working or their managers/older coworkers (who for whatever reason haven't managed to make it farther in the workforce) with simple questions about their products, to which I'll get flippant and condescending answers to. I'm sorry to disturb your groundbreaking, earth-shattering work in arranging the shelves for my retarded question - retarded only because I'm not intimately familiar with your store or store layout, because I've only spent 20-25 minutes of my insignificant life in your store.
Yeah. I wasn't wrong in saving up to drop a few thousand in Vegas on consumer products.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Darwin is rolling in his grave.
Nah, this isn't going to be a social comment on creationism vs evolution, because, well, there really isn't any discussion, evolution is fact. I digress... lol
I'm convinced that as a civilization, we're building a society that works completely against Natural Selection.
Essentially, if you're not familiar with the idea, natural selection, in the biological sense, is defined by wikipedia as the following:
Natural selection is the theoretical process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism in the theory of evolution.
This is essentially the root of the idiom: "Evolve or die", one of those sayings that gets thrown around much too often in the business world. If you extend this idea to the human experience, this is where homosapien using tools, etc, was able to dominate other human-like species. Unfortunately, as we've evolved, we've slowly grown overconfident and worked against Natural Selection. Our society, on a fundamental level, is preventing the "If you do something completely stupid, you get punished for it" aspect of many situations.
Case in point: The evolution of automobiles. One of the driving forces in the industry is to improve safety. Couple that with improved handling and acceleration, and you've essentially reversed Natural Selection. How? People can drive like complete selfish idiots, endanger themselves and others, and walk away from accidents that would rather maim or outright kill them because of these "safety" innovations. I miss the good old days of solid cars, no airbags, and sometimes seatbelts.
What brings on this rant? Heh. Winter driving conditions and stupid drivers. There are many people today that Natural Selection should have claimed, but for whatever reason, they get saved, and then flip you the bird because youmanaged to "wrong" them (also known as swerving out of their way so you don't sideswipe them.. )
I miss Natural Selection.
I'm convinced that as a civilization, we're building a society that works completely against Natural Selection.
Essentially, if you're not familiar with the idea, natural selection, in the biological sense, is defined by wikipedia as the following:
Natural selection is the theoretical process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism in the theory of evolution.
This is essentially the root of the idiom: "Evolve or die", one of those sayings that gets thrown around much too often in the business world. If you extend this idea to the human experience, this is where homosapien using tools, etc, was able to dominate other human-like species. Unfortunately, as we've evolved, we've slowly grown overconfident and worked against Natural Selection. Our society, on a fundamental level, is preventing the "If you do something completely stupid, you get punished for it" aspect of many situations.
Case in point: The evolution of automobiles. One of the driving forces in the industry is to improve safety. Couple that with improved handling and acceleration, and you've essentially reversed Natural Selection. How? People can drive like complete selfish idiots, endanger themselves and others, and walk away from accidents that would rather maim or outright kill them because of these "safety" innovations. I miss the good old days of solid cars, no airbags, and sometimes seatbelts.
What brings on this rant? Heh. Winter driving conditions and stupid drivers. There are many people today that Natural Selection should have claimed, but for whatever reason, they get saved, and then flip you the bird because youmanaged to "wrong" them (also known as swerving out of their way so you don't sideswipe them.. )
I miss Natural Selection.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Society is SMRT
I'm amazed at the complete stupidity of society.
Yeah. I went there.
I'm getting sick and tired of the news media. Not necessarily about the particular slant, or outright lies (Fox "News") that a news outlet may spin a particular story. No. I'm exceptionally tired of the rumor/gossip/star-watching mill that today's news media boils down to.
Case in point: Tiger Woods.
To this point, he's done a very good job of keeping his PRIVATE life out of the news. Now, he's just one of the countless "celebrities" who have a very ARTIFICIAL importance in the world today. Every move he makes is scrutinized and over-hyped to the point where all other news in the world takes a back seat to what Tiger did today.
So very tired of this bullshit.
Today's society has ridiculously screwed up priorities and people are profiting and promoting them. People are making a killing off celebrity worship. What have they done of REAL importance? Who was the last celebrity to invent something that improved the life of millions? Who was the last celebrity that served in the military to keep the peace, to protect the weak, or sacrifice themselves to save a comrade? Which celebrity has done charity work and not publicized it or profited from it in terms of their image? Yeah, I thought so. These people are worshiped. These people are loved. Why? Media's created a self-sustaining, totally addicting market for people to consume meaningless information about random "important" people's lives. Rather than focusing this energy on bettering the world, even through something as simple as volunteering locally to make a difference (note that I haven't gone over the top and said: Hey! We can stop world poverty!) its wasted completely.
Society is ill, and its going to get much worse before it gets better.. if it gets better. Essentially, its going to take a "World War II"-sized event to derail this bullshit. Society is so hung up in celeb-centricity that having the trendy clothes, electronics, cars, etc, is more important than having the ability to EARN these things.
As I get older, I see a distinct rift between my generation and the current group of highschool/early undergraduate kids. I look at my generation, I realize that by and large, we haven't had our defining moment, such as a moon landing, or a world war. There hasn't been a single event that has been a catalyst for focused effort. However, the majority of people that I've gone to high school with have made something of themselves. They've gone out there and put forth effort to do something. Effort that yielded results.
Now. Especially in the last two/three years, I've noticed that the generation that grew up with the "Everyone deserves respect/nobody fails/you can be what you want to be, even if you don't bother to put in the effort" mentality has started to head out into adult society. Unfortunately, that mentality has followed them. Generally those messages are positive, but people who gave them to this batch of kids must have forgot the important caveats. Everyone deserves respect: respect is earned through actions, not given when demanded. Nobody fails: when they put sufficient preparation and effort in. You can be what you want to be: with hard work and perseverance. Someone along the way dropped the ball with these kids, not drilling into them that you actually have to work for things in life. Seems like the messages were too "front loaded" with the good, popular, happy overarching messages, without outlining the importance of hard work and effort. From personal experience in teaching labs at my University, I've run into the following situations:
1. Student does nothing in the lab. Doesn't listen to the lecture portion, doesn't do the assignment, then complains to the prof that I didn't teach *him*, and that I'm responsible for his failures.
2. Student does the lab assignment incorrectly. Acknowledges that they made mistakes. Demands full marks based on the fact that they bothered to hand in the assignment.
3. Student that I've never seen in the lab comes on the last lab period and demands that I give him the marks for the whole semester, since he showed up.
Yeah. Unfortunately, these are all true. The "Give me" generation will be in full control shortly. To quote Clint Eastwood:
"The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits."
Soon these twits will be in control. Heaven help us.
Yeah. I went there.
I'm getting sick and tired of the news media. Not necessarily about the particular slant, or outright lies (Fox "News") that a news outlet may spin a particular story. No. I'm exceptionally tired of the rumor/gossip/star-watching mill that today's news media boils down to.
Case in point: Tiger Woods.
To this point, he's done a very good job of keeping his PRIVATE life out of the news. Now, he's just one of the countless "celebrities" who have a very ARTIFICIAL importance in the world today. Every move he makes is scrutinized and over-hyped to the point where all other news in the world takes a back seat to what Tiger did today.
So very tired of this bullshit.
Today's society has ridiculously screwed up priorities and people are profiting and promoting them. People are making a killing off celebrity worship. What have they done of REAL importance? Who was the last celebrity to invent something that improved the life of millions? Who was the last celebrity that served in the military to keep the peace, to protect the weak, or sacrifice themselves to save a comrade? Which celebrity has done charity work and not publicized it or profited from it in terms of their image? Yeah, I thought so. These people are worshiped. These people are loved. Why? Media's created a self-sustaining, totally addicting market for people to consume meaningless information about random "important" people's lives. Rather than focusing this energy on bettering the world, even through something as simple as volunteering locally to make a difference (note that I haven't gone over the top and said: Hey! We can stop world poverty!) its wasted completely.
Society is ill, and its going to get much worse before it gets better.. if it gets better. Essentially, its going to take a "World War II"-sized event to derail this bullshit. Society is so hung up in celeb-centricity that having the trendy clothes, electronics, cars, etc, is more important than having the ability to EARN these things.
As I get older, I see a distinct rift between my generation and the current group of highschool/early undergraduate kids. I look at my generation, I realize that by and large, we haven't had our defining moment, such as a moon landing, or a world war. There hasn't been a single event that has been a catalyst for focused effort. However, the majority of people that I've gone to high school with have made something of themselves. They've gone out there and put forth effort to do something. Effort that yielded results.
Now. Especially in the last two/three years, I've noticed that the generation that grew up with the "Everyone deserves respect/nobody fails/you can be what you want to be, even if you don't bother to put in the effort" mentality has started to head out into adult society. Unfortunately, that mentality has followed them. Generally those messages are positive, but people who gave them to this batch of kids must have forgot the important caveats. Everyone deserves respect: respect is earned through actions, not given when demanded. Nobody fails: when they put sufficient preparation and effort in. You can be what you want to be: with hard work and perseverance. Someone along the way dropped the ball with these kids, not drilling into them that you actually have to work for things in life. Seems like the messages were too "front loaded" with the good, popular, happy overarching messages, without outlining the importance of hard work and effort. From personal experience in teaching labs at my University, I've run into the following situations:
1. Student does nothing in the lab. Doesn't listen to the lecture portion, doesn't do the assignment, then complains to the prof that I didn't teach *him*, and that I'm responsible for his failures.
2. Student does the lab assignment incorrectly. Acknowledges that they made mistakes. Demands full marks based on the fact that they bothered to hand in the assignment.
3. Student that I've never seen in the lab comes on the last lab period and demands that I give him the marks for the whole semester, since he showed up.
Yeah. Unfortunately, these are all true. The "Give me" generation will be in full control shortly. To quote Clint Eastwood:
"The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits."
Soon these twits will be in control. Heaven help us.
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