COMPUTERS CAN'T BE WRONG!!!

 Well well well vindication is mine saith the Dave! Vengeance is certainly too much to ask for when battling the "Entity" that is in control of Canada right now, but I got me some vindication and that is about as sweet as it can get for a lowly worm like me. How did I get my vindication you probably didn't ask? Well let me tell you anyway...

Remember a few posts ago when I was bellyaching about the evil member of the Telecom Triumvirate, Telus (Telus What You Have For Brains)? I explained how they are continuing to harass me even though I turned in my router (and got money back for it) in the midst of month-to-month payments that were fully paid in the 2nd week of September when I left Trail and moved here to Calgary. They even sent a letter to my Mom and got her worried so she called me and asked what she should do about it. I told her to open it and it was a bill so I told her to please wipe her ass with it and throw it away. She said she'd do half of that. 

I have given up trying to cancel my internet. I tried going to the place I signed up and they said I couldn't do it there. I tried online and couldn't figure it out. I tried calling and there was no way to do it that way. I tried responding to the emails and texts they send and got an immediate message back saying I couldn't reply to the email/text. Today I got an email and I thoroughly checked it for some way to cancel my Telus internet which I haven't used for 2 1/2 months but for which I have accrued a bill for well over 200 bucks. I found a new number that started with 310 so called it expecting the usual telephone gymnastics that go nowhere. After a few questions asked by a computer I was told the earliest operator was an hour away but I was given an option of getting a call back so I took that. It took about an hour but I DID get a call back. I answered and it was ANOTHER computer. When I say that I mean a recorded message waiting for you to say something then use voice recognition tech to set up another recorded message in response to your response. I thought I was in for yet another dead end but shockingly I was asked by the recording if I wanted to speak to an operator. I said as snarkily as possible "Well DUH!!!!" No, I said yes. No point being snarky to a recording. And after a little waiting music LOW AND BEHOLD I got through to a human being!

I didn't allow myself to get excited though. Human beings at Telus had failed me (and lied to me) before. So I explained to the Filipina on the other end, I forget her name, the whole story. She didn't lie to me or cheat me or anything. She just looked at my account and told me it had a balance of zero. Well what is all this stuff I've been getting then? She said she didn't know either. So she asked all my ID information and made sure I was who I said I was. Then she asked the email address of the people who have been sending the emails. She didn't say anything but I am pretty sure this has happened before judging by the things she was saying. It reminded me of the time my TD bank account was hacked. They didn't act surprised either cuz it happens a lot. IT HAPPENS A LOT.

So, if you were, like everyone including my Mom who opened my fake bill, assuming that it was MY fault, it wasn't. This whole time everyone has been giving me the old skeptical agreement faces while I told this story. That's what we're trained to do! COMPUTERS ARE NEVER WRONG, are they? I was right, the computer was wrong. For the umpteenth time since coming back to Canada 8 months ago.

So I hang up the phone feeling like I'd won the lottery. I BEAT the omnipotent Telus! I wouldn't have to pay the 278 bucks, they wouldn't increase that bill, I wouldn't get any more emails or texts or.... BBBRRRIIIINNNNGGG! (That was my phone. It doesn't really ring. Most of our phones don't ring anymore. But the sound effect still works) "Hello how is your day going?" "Good." "Well I'm about to make it better. You have qualified for several discounts on your Telus service -" "I'm not interested." "But you haven't even heard the offers." "I'm not interested in Telus, thank you. Bye." Click. (My phone didn't really click, I just hit the red phone circle and ended the call. But the sound effect still works.)

Wait a minute, I'm just getting started. My teaching job had to set me up on their computer payment plan called ADP. I was on something similar with Tech in Trail and I had to walk in to work to submit my hours online cuz the computer pay program didn't work from my home. Security helping me out again. 😊 SO nice of them! Well the same thing happened with ADP. It wouldn't work on my home computer because I couldn't open up my company email from home and get the ADP invitation email. I went through a long ordeal with my boss practically begging her to just send the email to my normal email but she wouldn't budge. As it turns out, it didn't matter because not only does the company email have a problem, ADP has a problem. This, I'm told, is a payment platform used by thousands of employers across Canada. And since it's a computer program, IT CAN'T BE WRONG! It must be ME who is fucking things up. Well I went in to work and Dwayne the IT guy couldn't figure out the problem I had with email either so he used a workaround which worked. I had to access it through a different browser. Neither of us know why that worked but whatever. Then we logged onto ADP while at work on my work computer and it worked. Problem solved, right?

The other day Jia sent me a message that I hadn't specified my hours as "teaching" on my hours. I'm at home because it's Sunday. So I go to ADP and log on. It sends a secret code to my phone because, you know, security, my protection. I plug the code into the space for it and I get stuck in an infinite redirection loop saying, "This page isn't working. recruiting.adp,com has redirected you too many times. Try deleting your cookies." So I tell this to Jia and she says it might be because I am using my phone (which I wasn't) or because I need to clear my browser history (which I did a few times in the next two hours during which I was trying to unfuck the fucked up ADP site). I tried a pile of things. I even searched the problem and found out that IT HAPPENS A LOT. Different people have tried different things. Some say it's the Bing search toolbar, many called ADP and were told they had a virus, some used a registry hack... this I did not try because I don't like messing with my registry. I cleared cache, files, history, cookies, chocolate bars, and sleeves and sleeves of Fig Newtons but all it did was extend my computer time trying to refill my cache and browsing history so that I don't have to remember passwords and websites all the time. I still went to the ADP site and got stuck in the infinite redirection loop. The only diff was it stopped giving me the cellphone code, it just went straight to "Try fixing the problem originating on our end by messing with YOUR computer because... COMPUTERS ARE NEVER WRONG." 

The next day I logged on without incident, corrected my hours by adding "teaching" which is over 90% of most TEACHERS' hours yet it isn't an option on the dropdown menu. You have to start typing "teaching" before it becomes an option. Why not change this? BECAUSE COMPUTERS ARE NEVER WRONG. 

THEN after starting my new job at a warehouse in Calgary I was sent an email. "You need to register with ADP." Swell. So I did the whole shpeil again and again I got trapped in the infinite redirection loop. And again after waiting a day it worked. Now I find that if I log in through their website, it doesn't work, but if I log in through the link I got from them via email, both work. I am sure I'm not the only one! But we all just let these glitches slide and act like computers are this wonderful revolution! How long till we learn the hard way they aren't? Are you seeing a pattern to this post? As always I'm about a decade behind the Simpsons. They predicted this overdependence and complete surrender to computers a long time ago.

What follows the ominous ending to this vid is a visit to Itchy and Scratchy Land where the robots go haywire and start killing people. 

The worst part about the whole thing for me is that I get blamed for the problems. We had a meeting Monday and Jia brought up the fact that a lot of people have been doing the ADP wrong, forgetting to do it, or maybe having computer problems like me. She didn't specify exactly but she did say that if we don't do it right, we don't get paid. I'd say that's forced surrender, wouldn't you? But that wasn't the end of it. THEN Kerry pipes up and says, "I don't think you should need to be reminded that computer literacy is expected of you all. It was a prerequisite to your hiring." Okay so now, because COMPUTERS ARE NEVER WRONG, we're all computer illiterates. But hang on a sec, I TEACH 1L/2L. Those L's stand for literacy. Some of my students are unable to read and write in English or even their own languages. So what we do is we teach level 1 and 2 stuff but literacy students are given more help and more time on tests and anything you need to do to differentiate your teaching to accommodate them, go ahead. Because students are not the same. They're all unique. We must practice learner-centered education.

As for the teachers - fuck them! We'll standardize everything they do, treat them like they're identical robots, and blame them when anything goes wrong. We can't blame the infallible computers can we?

This is not a practice confined to my workplace. I am discovering that it is spreading across Canada like a Chinese manufactured immunodeficiency virus... might... if it ever happened. 😒 The US too? No surprise. It seems to me I have spent a long time in Asia watching their education systems go the opposite way. When I got there teachers were told to stick to the standardized curriculum. No autonomy. No creativity, No differentiation. Now there is almost complete autonomy for teachers to do what they feel the students will learn best from. Is it possible that with the massive influx of foreigners to Canada (many from Asia) they are bringing their old education habits with them? And weak educators across the country are just abandoning the years of hard work their predecessors did to get us beyond those bad habits? I think it may be possible. At least it seems a possible contributor. 

At any rate, my message today is more about computers and our premature dependence on them that is likely to bite us all in the arse. In the outset of this post I used the word "Entity." It was in reference to the latest in the Mission Impossible series. I recommend that movie. There is silly car chases and last second escapes like all action movies but the story is interesting. I think it is not only possible but likely to happen soon if it hasn't already. Check it out.

In conclusion, computers CAN be wrong and often ARE wrong. They're not better than people... yet. They certainly can't teach as well as humans and never will be able to. They are being pushed onto the human race for profit, more than technological advancement. As consumers we need to figure out how to slow the pace of this technological revolution so that profit keeps pace with advancement. In my opinion the profit has far outstripped the advancement and needs to be reigned WAAAAY the fuck in as do our well manufactured opinions of the infallibility of all technology.  

Or maybe I'm becoming an old fuddy duddy. What do you think?

Happy Forgetrance Day

 I'm sitting here with a pile of hockey cards every single one of which I have pulled from a pack and taken good care of, some since I was a kid. I'm sitting here feeling like I feel when I register for anything in Canada. I feel like I feel when I have to go to immigration outside of Canada. I feel like I feel when I have to get a superfluous certificate or license. I feel like I've been sodomized without the common courtesy of a reacharound. And I didn't even lose any money! This is a feeling a lot of strong booze tonight did nothing to overcome. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to pack my shit up and go overseas again. A scarring experience. See if you disagree...

I will not list the entire 35 cards I brought to the Eastridge Sports Cards and Games shop today because it would make for the most boring blog post ever. I'll just give you a few: Wayne Gretzky autograph in the Engrained set on a plastic card. Virtually indestructible. Auto is perfect, card is perfect and if it were run over by a truck it would still be perfect. I saw one online that was graded a PSA 8.5/10. I don't know how. I mean Gretzky might have spelled his name wrong? But that might raise the price, no? Anyway, the 8.5 was sold for $1035. I can't find that at the time of this post, but here's one going for 800 bucks. I dunno how long that link will last but I'll give you a pic of mine to compare:

The auto is better, the corners are better, I put this baby in protective sleeve and casing the moment I pulled it and I have the vid to prove it. It has not been exposed to the elements since. I have no doubt it would get higher than an 8.5. Probably a 10. It's not cardboard, it's plastic. Still pack fresh. I don't know what a 10 would go for but it would be in the thousands. Keep that in mind...

Here's another one of mine:

That's Stevie Y. and yes that's his rookie card from O Pee Chee 83/84. PSA 10 is over 4000 bucks. 9 is 5-700.  Keep that in mind.

Pierre Turgeon - Sneaky Pete - recent inductee to the hockey hall of fame. Rookie card. 

Jari Kurri, hall of famer, one of only 9 people to score 70 goals in a season. This card is MINT! Could be another 10.

Hall of famer Dale Hawerchuk. Scored 45 goals in his rookie season and 40 or over six more times in his career. Over 500 goals in the NHL. Hall of famer (first ballot). Rookie card and again immaculate! 

Here's a card with pieces of game used jersey from Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr. 

Ovechkin jersey pieces, Jagr (a hunk of his stick for cryin' out loud! How cool is THAT?), Gretz super action from his second year in the league (80/81) and again -  zoom in on that card, it's almost perfect! Around here Kipper is a hero. I have a card with two pieces of patch from his game used jersey. It's one of only 15 in the world! I have no way of knowing how valuable it is because there are no comps. It's too rare! 

Marcel Dionne autographed card; Ed Giocomin card 19/100 with a piece of his goalie stick; Mike Bossy rookie; Brett Hull rookie; Brendan Shanahan rookie; some other good rookies in good condition; a card with Bobby Clarke, Bobby Orr and Guy Lafleur "Hockey Heroes of the 70's"; Gretzky record breaker from when he was 19 years old in 79/80 (in awesome condition); clear cut acetate card of Cam Neely17/100 to honour his membership in the HOF; and many more NONE of which are worth less than 30 bucks. 

This was what I brought to sell today because I'm in the midst of a 3-week layoff/holiday from work and am getting behind in the bills. I had planned on working security here somewhere to cover the down time but, as I explained last entry, it will take a long time to get all the paperwork and certification for me to do the job I did for several years last time I was here. I worked in the goddamned hospitals FFS! Every hospital in this city! That was less than 10 years ago. I need to get certified again? Even though I've RE-certified and worked in BC, the province next door? 

How could I be so stupid? 

OF COURSE! I went to the card shop with all these cards that I know I pulled from packs and are legitimate, but none of them are "slabbed" or certified or graded. This is the equivalent of certification in the country where you need a certificate to take a fucking shit! OF COURSE you need certificates to get what hockey cards are worth! What could I have been thinking? Business on a handshake? PPPtttthhhhbbbbttt! That's not possible any more.

Those 10 cards pictured above? 7 of the 10 of them are either definitely or most likely worth 500 bucks or more. Do you know what I was offered for those AND 25 more cards that were worth at least 30 dollars each? Remember this is Canada and I haven't certified any of them. Go lowball. Go beyond lowball. Give me your best FUCK YOU estimate and you STILL won't guess low enough. I was offered $440. CANADIAN! 

A lot of these cards I have babied and kept in climate controlled storage at over 100 bucks a month since the turn of the century. $440.00. That's not even a rent payment! That's not even enough to treat my sister and bro-in-law and two kids to a nice steak dinner. That's over 4 decades of collecting, preserving, and paying for storage. 440 bucks. I almost told the guy off when he gave me the news over the phone. I don't know how I controlled myself when I went back to the place where I had left the 35 cards and picked them back up again. I told the guy some shit about being sure I would have missed them and now I won't have to. But I wanted to consume him to keep myself from eating my own lips like the native monster that personifies greed called the Wendigo. 

This is what I see when I walk down the street here. I feel like Rowdy Roddy Piper in "They Live" being able to see the fucking hideousness that walks among us. But I still don't think, I refuse to think, they are the majority. They're just stronger than the downtrodden commoners of Canada who drink their beer, watch their hockey, spawn their babies, and voluntarily perform their wage slavery. It's very sad and I see good Canadians feeling the stress of it every day and I don't know how much longer they're going to bear it. I hope not much longer. 

If you haven't guessed this is my annual Remembrance Day blog post. It's almost 2 AM here and it's been Remembrance Day for almost 2 hours. I've been wearing my poppy for over a week now and we've been talking about watching some war movies this long weekend to observe the day. As always I think there are better things we could be doing. Re-read from the beginning till this point in the post but this time think of all those guys who charged up onto the beach when the door on the troop transport boat dropped. Think "Saving Private Ryan." They were pretty sure they were going to die but did it anyway. Why? So that capitalism could run amok like it has in their countries? I doubt a single one of the soldiers who died or survived the heavy fighting in any of the "great" wars would have included the word "capitalism" in any conversation of why they were fighting. Democracy, freedom, peace, equality, justice, and good words like that for the children they left behind would have been the words they used. I've heard them speak. We all have. So tell me honestly, do YOU think they'd be happy with what they see now? 

I think I've asked this every Remembrance Day and I have yet to get an answer. Are our "Greatest Generation" satisfied with our stewardship of our countries? Is this celebration of unabated greed what they fought, bled, and died for? What do we honour in these soldiers? Let's THINK about it for once on Remembrance Day! What exactly were they fighting for and why have we rewarded their heroism with the exact opposite? 

Okay, I'll readily admit things are not as bad in Canada as they are in some nations. But if things were the way they should be, the way they ought to be in order to properly honour our war heroes you can bet things elsewhere would not be as off the rails as they are. 

Canada used to be a country that set trends in the world. This is one I'd dearly love to see us set! Why can't we make our country into something the war heroes we perfunctorily observe every November 11th would be proud of? I don't mean just in empty words like "freedom," "democracy," and other words that the Eagles would say are "just some people talkin'," I mean reality. Are we free? You can't find a study anywhere that shows what the average Canadian thinks about that. I wonder why that is.... Do we feel that things are really democratic in Canada? Bitch please! We have exactly ZERO control over anything! 

This is Canadian democracy and we're constantly told, "What? Stop being so negative! You don't know how good you got it! Do you know how many countries WISH they had pepperoni pizza? Get back to work, procreate and stop your bellyaching." 

My readers this is not the way things were before or after any of the wars were fought by our greatest generation (at least not to this extent) and I would submit to you that the fighters would be horrified at what has become of the nation they fought for. Furthermore, I will propose, (as always) that we do something, ANYfuckingTHING, to stop our country from slipping into this madhouse of unchecked moral relativism and selfishness any further.

I'm too tired to list all the things we should/must do. But look at the above experience. When/how/why did our country get to the point that businesses charge UNreasonable markups? When/how/why did we get to the point where the customer is not always right but always screwed over? If the world (as quoted last post) has enough for the needs of everyone, a rich country like Canada has WAAAAY more than enough for the needs of everyone! How then are there so many people struggling, poor, on welfare, working paycheck to paycheck, unable to eek out an objectively prosperous existence? 

I'm sorry but for the umpteenth year in a row Canada is NOT honouring its soldiers and heroes, it giving them as big a fuck you as I got from the card dealers today. We need to give a shit about this! Otherwise let's change the name of this holiday to Forgetrance Day.

Canada is Certificately a Great Place to Live!

 Well, I finished course number 8 of 12 in the master's and got a 94. I also finished the PBLA certification for the job I'm already doing. It took as much as or more work than the master's course. It was a slog but got another piece of Canadian survival paper. Here are my two latest in the land of certification:

Not sure which of these is more legitimate. 

I still feel like a stranger in a strange land in my own country. I downloaded the Tim Horton's app so I could choose 3 players a night in the NHL games and if they score goals you get rewards. I went 7 straight days with at least one guy scoring a goal for me and got a week of free coffee for it. Nice. 

So I was walking to Timmy's to get my free coffee looking at all the shiny new nut storage holes (or "houses" we euphemistically call them), flashy new vehicles, and people scurrying around in them searching for more nuts to fill their homes. I just don't think I'll ever buy into this system. I will never feel like I NEED a beautiful new home or car. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I don't have a wife, kids, friends, co-workers, or much media hammering the idea into my head like a death of a thousand cuts. Well not a death per se, but certainly a slavery. And not a thousand cuts per se, more like a million. 

Everybody here NEEDS the house and car and all the trappings (and I DO mean things that trap you) that go along with them like insurance, gas, repairs, taxes, maintenance, and don't forget all the necessary documents and certificates for both. They are but a few of the many cuts that contribute to the average Canadian's wage slavery. 

I just watched an Indian movie that is really great! I wouldn't say it's that scary but it was suitable for our Halloween viewing. It's a really cool movie that starts with a Gandhi quote that I have paraphrased many times on this blog, "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed." I would go so far as to say the world has MORE than enough for everyone's needs. We could probably all have the nice homes and cars if resources were divided in anything close to an equitable way. The movie is called Tumbbad and it's the first Indian movie I've seen without some choreographed dance scenes in it. Way to go India! But it also has a timely message about greed and its pitfalls. Not just in Canada but in most countries we grow up programmed to spawn workers and consumers for the overlords and we so often self-program ourselves to believe that we join the rat race for our families. We scheme and plan and save and even cheat hoping that we can trick the gods using greed to overcome them. But they're smart. Smarter than us. We can't do it. 

Then there are the folks who think they are even smarter and try to philosophize their ways past the gods using greed to get more than other folks because altruism just doesn't exist or something else the selfish halfwits' ingenious hero Ayn Rand might have said to describe objectivism. She was very educated and her ideas ring true to the tin ears of those who are looking to justify (or objectify) their greed, but they're not smart. They don't work the way they do in her books. Ever wonder what happened to Sears? I do! Especially around this time of year when I used to look forward to the Christmas Wishbook they put out. Well you can thank Ayn Rand almost as much as Eddie Lampert that kids can't do that any more. Despite what Ayn Rand and Gordon Gecko say, greed is not good. We did not stave off extinction because of ruthless, competitive self-interest, we cooperated and suvived as a species despite it.  At least that's what science shows us. It follows then that the almost religious pursuit of the self and the demise of social lives and human contact is probably the best way to run our species into extinction. I see it all over the place here. 

Just today my bro-in-law went into an alcohol-assisted rant about how he's just a paycheck. I'm surprised that doesn't happen more often. He IS. I believe life is about more than going to work and making money so you can pay the bills and maybe spend a few minutes with family on weekdays and possibly with friends on weekends. I already REALLY miss going out with friends, I mean friends who also have free time so they can talk about more than their jobs or the repairs or additions to their homes and yards. People who have time to go places, see things, and tell interesting stories about them. Where are all those people? They're not doing the dutiful Canadian thing. They're not living the lives they're supposed to be. A lot of them are overseas being forgotten by friends and begrudged by family. Maybe even envied by both. Friends and family like it when you come home for a visit but they can't go overseas to visit you, they don't have the time or freedom to leave their nut stashes.

I am really hopeful that I can make things work out with this job I have. It's a good opportunity for me. But it might require the kind of dedication and cult-like subscription to the standards and policies of people who are NOT educators. It might require a competitive self-interest and lust for money I am proud to have never acquired. It might require a re-emersion into a culture I don't want to be immersed in. It will most definitely require lots and lots more certificates!

Now that I'm off work till November 15th and not doing either course I have decided to get as many of the pieces of paper I need as I can. First I went to the nearby registry and asked what I needed to transfer my BC health coverage to Alberta health coverage. If I'm not mistaken it used to require nothing but a birth certificate. But our health coverage only USED to be good here. I also wanted to change my BC security guard license to an Alberta one. I brought my current BC license and my former Alberta one. Expired in 2014 but I thought, you know, since I had worked a couple months ago as a guard and had worked in Alberta 9 years ago in the hospitals all over Calgary, it might be more salient than a piece of paper. Nope.  

I needed proof of residence. You can't work a job unless you're chained to a home payment of some kind. Nice for the employer. No matter what garbage wage they choose to pay you, they KNOW you desperately need the money for shelter. I also needed two pieces of ID and my passport. As for the security guard license I needed to fill out an application that is not easy to find online (though they'll tell you it is), get a criminal record check (which could take 6 months), a passport photo taken within 60 days, my training certificate (which I couldn't have gotten my BC license without), and my BC license. I also had to pay $109.00. The CRC is getting very expensive too. Last one I got was hundreds of dollars. Now they MIGHT know here in Canada that the ones from Ottawa are identical to the ones from any local police dept., but I don't know if I can count on that. I'll probably have to phone them back. Oh, and, (of course) the number I got for the place to do all this was not working. I got a fax machine sound. The email address wasn't useful either. I sent an email a week ago and it still hasn't be responded to. 

So, if you did not understand the CDE (Canadian Defecation Etiquette) certificate at the beginning of this post, now you can understand it a little better.