By RanXerox on October 10, 2004 - 5:34am
Here's a big fat heads up to all those crowing about the potential of the Internet to transform our society. On Friday (and up until yesterday morning), your glorious tool; when placed in the hands of local bumpkins Telus, was "unavailable" due to "regular scheduled maintenance". Two thoughts come to mind.
One, if *you* ran a business which supplied services to it's customers 24/7 and were planning on shutting down for several hours, wouldn't you *WARN* your customers ahead of time? I mean, its regular scheduled maintenance - so how come I never got a copy of the schedule?
Two - when can we expect a column in either of the local rags posing as newspapers that details how much "lost productivity" there was due to Telus's "regular scheduled maintenance"? These awful dailies never hesitate to remind their readers of the damage viruses and trojans do - lets see if they're willing to 'tut tut' one of their major advertisers. And I mean a *serious* tut-tut. Show us in dollar figures how much lost productivity there was when a major ISP goes nutbar on the afternoon before a long holiday weekend. Yeh... I bet that'll happen...
I've been using Telus ADSL since the 20th century and generally speaking, I'm very pleased with the service - though I noticed a distinct lowering in the quality of their service when they fired several thousand workers a few years back.
In any case, this 'outage' highlights a minor if significant point that I'm pleased to keep the blog 'boosters' and Net lovers aware of. The Internet doesn't belong to you or me. It's not an essential public service, unlike television or radio which transmits through 'publicly owned' airspace and is regulated. The Internet is accessible ONLY to those that can afford it - and that's not 'democratic' in any way, shape or form. Its only available because "market" forces make it that way, and even *then*, its obviously not available 24/7 365 days a year to those that *do* use it. The fans of the Internet are at the mercy of those that deliver it to them, and when *those providers* fail... what have you got? A bogus Wi-Fi setup? Useless wires?
By RanXerox on October 9, 2004 - 9:56pm
Shaolin Soccer
By RanXerox on August 30, 2004 - 5:21pm
A time lapse movie of Commercial Drive -- click on image to watch Quicktime movie (7.5MB).
By RanXerox on August 21, 2004 - 12:55am
Granville Books is one of the best book stores in Greater Vancouver.
They don't sell CD's, they won't top up your latte and they wont ask if you've 'found everything you're looking for today'. But they will sell you a book. They will order books for you. They will tell you where you could find that rare out of print edition you're seeking, or offer an insightful and intelligent suggestion on another author to consider, and they'll do it because *THEY LOVE BOOKS*.
They're employee owned and operated, which means they try and pay themselves a fair wage (nobody's in their doing their $6/hr until 500 hours has passed...) while a maintaining an eclectic and broad range of books.
They're far more interested in helping you find what you need than they are turning a buck and moving your ass out of the store. For all this effort, the book readers of Vancouver turn instead to Chapters - a huge chain that successfully smote down more than a few other independents booksellers on its 'moderately fraudulent' rampage across North America.
Remember Duffies?
People "said" they loved it too - and then one day it disappeared.
Talking isn't enough. Show your support and do yourself, local businesses, and the local economy a favour the next time you purchase your reading material. BUY FROM A LOCAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSELLER.
Head over to Granville Books and buy your books from an employee/owner.
By RanXerox on July 6, 2004 - 12:20pm
Meet Bob Sartor.
Bob helps to run the Forzani Group. Bobs "group" (which includes Sportchek, Sportmart and Sports Experts) has been slapped with a 1.7 million dollar fine for overcharging customers while claiming items were priced "regular".
Bob will be working hard to cover up remedy this incident by perhaps claiming it was a clerical oversight that led to this constant 'misleading' (I remember a long time ago when people called it LYING).
We wonder if whether Bob, his group, or its advertising could ever be believed again, and we've made a mental note to never trust him or his "misleading" stores ever again.
While I wonder whether Bobs smirk will be wiped off his face when his company slides into the crap heap of disgraced retailers, he can still count on me to NOT attend their going out of business sale when it does...
By RanXerox on May 20, 2004 - 11:26pm
Awoke. Lolly gagged. Took camera on bike ride. Created imagery. Got home. Drank Coffee. Downloaded camera images.
wondered...
"If we live in 'Greater Vancouver', where exactly is 'Lesser Vancouver' ?
Life is grand. I'm lovin' it.
By RanXerox on May 19, 2004 - 9:14pm
Awoke. Dawdled. Took camera to park. Walked dog. Took pictures. Arrived home. Watched Triplets of Belleville. Made remarks about film. Drank Ginger Ale. Downloaded camera images.
Life is great. Hold me back.
