Catpaw – diary of an angry cat

According to US Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, “There are more international terrorist organizations active in Canada than anywhere else in the world,” he maintains. I haven’t stopped laughing about this one.

The secret is out I guess – we, up here in Canada, are just one big group of happy terrorists … yup, along with our socialised medicine, proud history of Peace Keeping, and a tradition of compromise, we are are a group of subversive nasties. Canadians are just waiting to infiltrate the unsuspecting world … oh wait a minute … did I say Peace Keeping?

Canada, the nation that helped pioneer Peace Keeping, has been labeled a hotbed of terrorist activity by some nutcake in Colorado. Not just a hotbed, but the nation with the most international terrorist organizations than anywhere else. Where did he get his information? A lead laced fortune cookie? I suggest Mr. Salazar pick up a book and check his facts – that is if he knows how to read. We are now nastier than Iran, Iraq, Sudan, need I go on? Just how did this idiot come to this conclusion? I wasn’t going to use the word idiot, but I am at a lose for words for a change.

Do you hear that noise? That is the late Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson rolling over in his grave. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his help in settling the Suez Crisis. He is often referred to as the “father of peace keeping”. He helped pioneer the use of Peace Keepers. The other noise? That’s the noise of approximately than 114 Canadian soldiers who have died while on Peace Keeping duties and the sound 100′s soldiers seriously injured while serving in the name of peace – fighting the same forces we are now accused of being in league with. In 1988, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the UN Peace Keeping Forces for its long and honourable history of maintaining peace and diffusing rising tensions in virtually all parts of the world. Peace Keepers have saved millions of lives. Canada has been an integral part of this Force and we are extremely proud of this history. We are not a leader in terrorism. We are not promoting any form of terrorism. On the contrary. We are weary of the accusations and half truths.

Mr. Salazar is an ass. He needs a lesson in manners. He needs a lesson in history. He needs a lesson in current events. He needs to be publicly shamed.

We need action not only to end the fighting but to make the peace… My own government would be glad to recommend Canadian participation in such a United Nations force, a truly international peace and police force.

Lester B. Pearson, November 2, 1956

If you are surprised at this latest recall, you need to give your head a shake. Yet another toy recall has shaken the greedy western toy companies.

Why pay a livable wage when you can endanger lives and plump up your profit line at the same time.

The only way this is going to stop, is when the consumer stands up and says enough with corporate greed. Large companies are so eager to produce huge profit margins so they can have inflated dividends and undeserved golden parachutes, they are willing to sell their souls and our safety to the devil. The devil, in this case, being countries with no accountability in health and welfare concerns.

Can’t you just hear their rationalisations?
A little lead paint? Go ahead – its cheap, cuts the costs. Besides, our kids won’t be eating the paint.
Antifreeze? Makes a great sweetener! Cheap too!
What do you mean “does the device meet safety standards – those standards were developed by over zealous, left-wing, morons who don’t believe in money. We don’t need them or the regulations”.

This list goes on and on, as this past summer has shown. Everything from dog and cat food to toothpaste, toys, jewelry, furniture, electrical appliances, food and more. In the great rush to prove capitalism is the great god of everything, the multinational companies have played a dangerous game of Russian roulette with our lives so they can watch their off shore bank accounts grow.

In the meantime, consumers are growing increasingly jittery. What is safe to buy anymore? Can we trust anything the multinationals say? Profit for the sake of profit. To hell with the consumer.

They’ve forgotten one very important factor in a capitalist society – without the consumer there is not capitalism. So stop screwing us around or we will talk with our wallets.

read more | digg story

Bear with me … or is that bare with me? Depends upon whether you are in a bad mood or a naked mood I suppose. Either way. House keeping today. Cleaning the litterbox up and tidying the edges to make the site readable. Getting rid of the clutter and speeding up the load time. Long overdue.

I have many rants in the loading ramp ready for you but I’ve been busy with other stuff – life has a habit of getting in the way.

I’ll also be playing with new designs so if things don’t look quite right, its not your monitor, its the site. Ignore all craziness. For a change its here.

Make the scary customers go away! They make my brain hurt!

Crazy customers have finally done it – I can’t think straight. Had another one yesterday – she forgot her appointment. Not the first time she has done this. She had the appointment booked for a different day, although I booked and confirmed this appointment 2 weeks ago. In the past, she has complained that I made the mistake so I made sure I confirmed well ahead of time. This is part of the rather incoherent email message I received from her:

its 6.30 and I am now home I know we had an appt today , but I figured may be incorrectly that the computer was not behaving and so all was cancelled until it came home..

I just shook my head. What the hell? I’m going to run away. Any country out there want a nice little tech support person? Competent? Easy to get along with? Let me know… will relocate…

Anyway, I’m too dizzy from the silliness from the last 3 days to blog properly so I’m going to share some silly news from around the world with you.

It’s a mad, mad world out there folks and I’m going to hide under the bed for the rest of the day.

Supermarket staff refused to sell alcohol to a white-haired 72-year-old man – because he would not confirm he was over 21. The manager even got into a snit and took the bottles away when the granddad had the nerve to question this bit of insane adherence to the rules. Come on folks – one look at the man tells you he is of legal drinking age. bbc story

A Nebraska senator is suing God for causing harm to himself and his constituents – must be a slow day in the senate bathrooms.
“Mr Chambers claimed the move had a serious point – to point out how many frivolous lawsuits were clogging up the US legal system” – that’s right, clog up the system further with yet another idiot suit
idiot lawsuit

Shhh.. top secret – little league rules are so secret even a Pentagon Col. can’t see them. “I work in the E-ring of the Pentagon, but I don’t have clearance for the Little League rules.”
now that you know, we have to hurt you

“Drinkers of Moosehead beer in Ontario are being advised to stock up on their favourite brew after thieves made off with more than 100,000 cans and bottles….In August 2004, a truck containing 50,000 cans of Moosehead Lager bound for Mexico was stolen. Only 14,000 of the cans were ever found.”We can’t believe that of all the beer available in Canada that Moosehead would be targeted again,” Levesque said”
Well I can’t either – it’s a conspiracy! Yes, a conspiracy, I tell you, to drive the righteous beer drinking Canadians insane.

Jackass, pain-in-the-ass customer from hell (CFH) (see previous rant before reading further).

Oh yes, the afternoon went very well, with smoking CFH. I was already annoyed with her because she expected me to drop everything and come up on Sunday to fix a problem that she had put up with for over a week before calling me – hardly an emergency. She could access her mail via online mail so she wasn’t crippled. She has a habit of doing this – insisting on immediate service, no matter how many other people have booked appointments ahead of her. Sorry, unless there is smoke coming out of your computer, I don’t work Sundays.

I figured out how to solve the send mail problem that drove me crazy yesterday. 0x800ccc0f errors are strange. I went through the list of possible fixes yesterday and none of them worked, so this morning I spent some time pondering the not so obvious reasons for the problem. 0x error means you can receive mail but cannot send mail – your computer gets all confused and thinks the firewall (or something similar is preventing it from sending mail) could be a variety of reasons for this. Well, this time the solution was not one that I could find documented. I went through the existing software in CFH’s computer and wondered if Windows Defender may be the culprit. It’s a Microsoft product that is supposed to protect your computer from security threats – I guess sending email counts as a threat. Why it suddenly started to cause a problem is still a mystery. I’ll look into that on the weekend.

I uninstalled it and voila – instant send mail connection. Consistent and stable.

Chock one up for the good guys.

I also fixed her wireless connection (stopped working months ago but she never go around to doing anything about it), cleaned up some things that were annoying her, replaced her antivirus program, set up her router etc and firewall, cleaned up the garbage in her system plus reminded her she should be backing up her files (been over a year). Even showed her what external hard drive she should purchase to make things simple for her.

Time to write up the invoice.

I’m itemising what I did and she has already finished writing the cheque. I look at it and look at her. The cheque was for one hour’s worth of work and I had just done over 4 hours worth of work for her. I handed her my invoice without picking up the cheque.

She looks at the amount and says “what’s this?”.

I answered “my invoice”. She said “no what’s this number, I don’t understand”. I actually looked at her over my glasses and repeated, “my invoice”. She’s not stupid – she’s a professional who, before she retired, charged over $300 an hour for her services so she understands about invoices.

She picks up the cheque she wrote and hands it to me.

What? Do I have stupid tattooed on my forehead?

I looked at her again and said “that covers one hour of my time. I’ve been here much longer than that. I spent 2 hours of my own time this morning going over possible solutions. I’m not taking that cheque.”

“I don’t understand this number.”

She knows how much I charge. I have been to her place before.

I shrugged and told her its my hourly rate and that’s how much it cost. She stared for a few moments and realised she wasn’t going to get away with this. She wrote a new cheque out and handed it to me.

While I folded it up she said “I’m sure other computer support is cheaper.”

I smiled and said “[competitor] charges $129 an hour to come to your place – that’s $50 an hour more than I do.” “Yes but how long do they take to solve the problems. They might be cheaper.” I shrugged and said “call them next time.” I smiled and left.

She gets charged the TSTL fee – too stupid too live extra fee.

I smiled because that stopped me from saying something truly awful to the annoying CFH. I think I snapped a tooth from gritting my teeth so hard as I got into the elevator.

The good news is my faithful readers won’t have to raise bail money for me tonight.