Ohh North Korea!

So North Korea has apparently decided that they are just not isolated enough in the world. They decided to solve this the way any rational nation solves a dilemma. Nuke it from orbit! Or, in this case, from underground. This time they managed to not embarrass themselves with a failed test.

So, how did the world react? Besides feeling jilted that North Korea never calls anymore, the world was offended that the black sheep of the Korea siblings would so blatantly ignore a UN resolution. Yes, the world has apparently been asleep or stoned for the past 50 years. The world did, however, leap into decisive action; promising to get started post-haste on drafting another resolution. Surely that would put the North Koreans in their place!

Where I Live

Hey everyone, just thought I'd toss up this picture I've had kicking around for a while. Took it in winter 2008, during the lunar eclipse.

My Email To Bell CEO George Cope

So, I've been having a hell of a time dealing with Bell Canada. When I was getting my service hooked up, it took a month (and several hours on the phone with them) for them to get my address right. Then for some reason they sent my bills to the address that doesn't exist, instead of the one I spent a month giving them.
When I finally managed to get a bill from them, I tried to pay online but my online account showed no bills, and wouldn't let me make a payment. An hour on customer support was absolutely no help, and one rep told me that they weren't trained to deal with online payments.

Here is my email to George Cope, CEO of Bell Canada Enterprises. If I get any response, I will add that in too.

Dear Mr. Cope,

I am writing to inform you that the service I have received from Bell Internet has been among the worst service I have ever had the displeasure of paying for.
I signed up for Bell High-Speed Internet in mid-September, 2008. I was told that my modem would arrive within 3-5 days business days. When it had not arrived nearly 2 weeks later, I phoned again and discovered that my address had been improperly recorded (the sales representative had failed to mark down my apartment number) and that the package containing the modem had been returned to Bell. I gave the CSR my address again, and was told that my modem would be sent express post, arriving within 1-3 business days. A week later, no modem had arrived. I called again, to discover that once again the CSR had not put my apartment number on my account, even after I had them repeat my full address to me. Once again, I was assured that the problem was solved, and that my modem would arrive within 1-3 days. This aggravating process repeated itself, all in all 4 modems were sent improperly addressed over the course of a month. Several CSRs flat out lied to me, telling me they had fixed my address, and that they would flag the order so that I would be called if delivery failed. I was never informed once, it always came to me to call your company to find out that they had made the same mistake again.

Finally, in mid-October, I decided that I was done waiting. I called the cancellation department. They inquired as to why I was canceling before my service had been connected. I told them how I had been waiting for my modem for a month. The person in the cancellation department was helpful, and did fixed the address in about 30 seconds, and sent me my modem, and gave me 2 months free service for all the aggravation that this had caused me. (Not to mention personal financial loss, as I went over my allotted minutes on my cell phone to deal with this issue, and was spending upwards of 20$/week in internet cafes during this time. For the record, from the time I signed up for your service until the time I received my modem, calls to Bell Customer Support accounted for roughly 90% of my cellphone usage.) I figured that the problem had been solved.

Unfortunately, I was mistaken. After my 2 months of free service ran out, I noticed that I was not receiving bills in the mail. When I signed up, I had asked specifically for paper bills. However, I figured that I would be contacted if I missed a payment, or if a bill was not delivered. I then forgot about it, as I was entering an extremely busy part of the semester. Last week, I started receiving calls from a blocked number. I would pick up, and a few seconds later, I would be disconnected. Finally one of those calls went through, and it turned out to be Bell Internet Accounts Receivable asking me why I had not payed my bill. I told them that I had not been sent any bills. Thinking back to the fall, I asked them what the address on my account was. Can you guess the problem, Mr. Cope? Correct, once again my apartment number had disappeared from my account. Your company had been sending my bills in such a way that they were not deliverable. And NOT ONCE was I informed that my bill had been returned to Bell Canada, until the point when I was sent to Accounts Receivable.

Mr. Cope, I was offended. I was being accused of being delinquent on my account. I have never missed a credit card payment. I have never missed a tuition payment. Whenever I borrow money, I pay it back promptly. I have missed one cell phone payment in 4 years of having a cell phone, and that was because my cell company (not Bell, don't worry) changed my billing date without informing me. I take pride in paying on time Mr. Cope, so you can imagine my surprise when Accounts Receivable called me.

Now, perhaps it says something about a company's priorities when it takes an entire month to get my modem shipped to me, but Accounts Receivable can fix my address immediately. I received my bill yesterday, and had the late charges removed (Heather in the business office was very helpful).

Today, I attempted to pay my bill online. Now, with every other online payment I have ever made to other companies it is a very simple process. You log in to your account, click the payment option, enter your credit card information, and you're finished. For some reason when I logged in to http://www.bell.ca/myinternet my bill was not available online, and there was no obvious way to make a payment on a paper bill. I called 514-310-SURF and spoke to someone in technical support, I was on the line with them for roughly 25 minutes. They decided that it was a "billing" issue, and transferred me to the billing department. After a 5 minute hold, I was on the line with a person in the billing department for 30 minutes. She was also unable to help me. She also mentioned that they "weren't trained to deal with online billing". When I was told that she was going to transfer me back to technical support (who had transferred me to her, and had told me that they could not help me) I told her that I was just going to hang up.

Afterwards, I spent another half hour scouring the myinternet website to figure out how to pay the bill myself.

I'm not asking for anything, Mr. Cope, except that your company begin to act like it wants to retain customers. Dealing with Bell Canada has been nothing but raise my blood pressure, and cement a feeling that customers are not valued by your corporation. And while I'm too young to have to worry much about the blood pressure, your company should be concerned that they are alienating young customers, customers who have many years of internet and phone service ahead of them. Many years that will likely be spent with one of your competitors.

So, Mr. Cope, I have a few pieces of advice for your company:
-Paying a bill online should be quick and simple. This should NOT include spending an hour on the phone with tech support.
-It should not take a month, and a call to the cancellation department, to get a modem shipped to an address anywhere. Much less one in the middle of Montreal.
-CSRs should not lie and tell a customer that they will do something that they have no intention of doing.
-Finally, you are a phone company. The robocalls from the Accounts Receivable department should not disconnect themselves randomly. This reflects poorly on your company.

If you have made it this far into the letter, thank you for your time Mr. Cope. I do not expect a reply (as I have no reason to believe that you will read this), but a reply would be very much appreciated.

Sincerely,

Patrick

"Un-American?" More like "Un-Soviet"

Throughout the entire battle to get the Stimulus Package passed down south, I heard "socialism" thrown around a lot as an argument against it. What I found most interesting, is that The people who threw the term around were utterly devoid of useful ideas. Their plan to solve the crisis was to continue with the path that led to the economic crisis in the first place.
While I don't really like large amounts of government spending unless it is necessary, this is a time when I think it is. But I don't think that even government spending is the issue here (many of the opponents to the stimulus were complicit in the United States running up record deficits). What is happening here is that a group of people, whom I won't name (knee-jerk Republicans/Rush Limbaugh), are trying to score political points by linking the new President, Obama, with "Communists", "Socialists" and the Soviet Union. These people appear to be willing to score these political points even at the cost of allowing the economy to fail. Rush Limbaugh even admitted that he "hopes he [Obama] fails."
While I may not agree with all that Obama does, or all that Stephen Harper's government here in Canada does for that matter, I do not hope for failure. When a government fails, especially during a time of crisis, it is the people who suffer. Especially when the what the government fails at is a plan to HELP its citizens. What Rush Limbaugh was wishing for was the governments inability to aid people in need. When he says he wants Obama to fail, he is saying that he wants the stimulus money to go to waste, and for the people it was supposed to help to suffer. I can't imagine what sort of psychotic personality would wish for millions of lost jobs, poverty, hunger, disease and the crime increases that would go with such things, but apparently they exist. And host radio shows.

But what is maybe more concerning is that the Republicans for all their criticism, and despite deciding that they are the "Party of ideas", are completely devoid of constructive ideas. Or, for that matter devoid of any idea that does not consist entirely of "tax cuts". Basically, the Republican party is saying that governments should continue with the economic reasoning that helped lead to this economic crisis, and that exacerbated the economic crisis. Of course, doing this in the hopes that changing absolutely nothing will help the situation.
Now, that doesn't sound very American to me. The whole concept of "good old American know-how" seems to be dead in the Republican party. That concept of course being that when something goes wrong, you figure out how to fix it instead of just keeping on the same path. Your car dies, you tinker with the engine until it works. Your economy dies, you tinker with it until it works.
What the GOP is asking of Americans is that they become as blind to this crisis as Soviet citizens were to the economic hardships of their country. You know, before it fell apart. The ideological inflexibility that the Republican party is showing is absolutely stunning and makes me think of the procession of Soviet leaders who could not stop the USSR's economic failure because they could not accept the changes required. They call the stimulus "Un-American" and yet proceed themselves as single-mindedly as the old Communist Party in the USSR. What made the USSR fall and America rise wasn't their differing views on Capitalism, Socialism and any other "ism" you can think of. It was their differing ability to change direction. When faced with a challenge, or failure, the Cold-War America rose to the challenge, tried new things, and changed what it was doing. The USSR didn't change how it operated ("stayed the course", if you will) and ended up broken. A political and economic dinosaur.
If Americans don't want to end up like the USSR, they shouldn't be afraid of new ideas, or changing course. Without change, we in the West will do no better than our former foes in the East.

Taken

I watched Taken the other day. The simplest way I can put this is as follows: AWESOME!
It's a little cheesy at some parts and starts off a little slow, but once it's out of the gate it becomes absolutely fantastic. Fast-paced, action packed, gorgeously choreographed fight scenes.
I absolutely recommend this.

Also, ladies and gentlemen may I present the President of the United States.

New Stuff Soon!

New stuff coming soon!

I'm working on a couple new things, I'll put them up when I'm done.

For much more frequent, but less substantial, updates please check my Twitter.
http://www.twitter.com/montrealpat1

Thanks!

Quantum of Solace

So I saw the new Bond movie (Quantum of Solace, for those of you who live under rocks) and I really liked it. It isn't as good as Casino Royale was, but its still very entertaining. The new Bond girl is incredibly good looking, the entire movie is fast and lots of fun.

I did have a couple issues with it. First, it needed an extra 10-15 minutes, sometimes it was too fast, and Dominic Greene is never really developed to the same level as other Bond villains were. Second, sometimes it needed to slow itself down. The opening scene was very good, but if it had been a little slower and easier to follow, it would have been incredible. But probably my 2 biggest problems with the movie was that the theme song and its animation were kind of lame, they dragged and sapped the energy that came out of the opening chase. Also there was a rediculous scene involving planes, i'll leave it at that.

My favourite part (besides Olga Kurylenko as Camille) has to be the opera scene, I'll try not to ruin it, but it is incredible cinematography. (Fun fact, apparently the opera playing in the scene is about a woman who betrays her lover. Vesper anyone?).

Daniel Craig has another excellent performance as Bond.

Overall, it's a worthy movie, and an excellent way to spend 105 minutes. It's fun, but it is no Casino Royale. See it.