Toronto, "The Big Smoke"
- Walking down to Union station the other day, I'm walking along Front Street, right out front of Union, and out of nowhere a vagrant approached me, punched me in the face, swore, and then walked off. So I reported him to Union station security, who said they'd call Metro Police to pick him up. They took my name and number. I haven't heard back. The scariest thing about what happened is that there were about 4 to 5 people who had crossed Front Street with me who didn't even stop to ask if I was okay. I went to the nearest hotdog stand, and asked where I could find a Police officer, and the lady laughed at me, and asked "What do you want the Police for?". Although she didn't see what happened, she obviously doesn't ever have any need for the Police.
- Broad daylight, 6:00PM, near the heart of the city's financial
district. Lots of people around. It just doesn't get more central than
Union station. - What a tremendous city we live in. The man was obviously not all
there, and most likely drunk. What if the next time it happens, he's got a
knife? - Radio Shack gets the "Dumb-Assed Customer Service Award" this week. I
went in there with a $50 gift card I got for my birthday, to buy a new
cordless phone. I don't usually shop at Radio Shack because the staff
there tend to be rude, abrupt, and generally ignorant about most of the
products they sell -- either that, or they typically feel that they know
everything about the products they sell when they don't. So I wander into
the store at the Eaton Centre, and after not getting any help from the 6
associates in the store I finally picked out a phone. Ironically, at
that moment, an associate came up and asked if he could help. He went into
the back to get the phone, and after about 10 minutes came back to the
register. I gave him the gift card, and he tried to swipe it. It didn't
swipe. He tried about 4 more times, and it still wouldn't swipe.
Meanwhile, another associate had come over:
(associate #1): It won't swipe!
(associate #2): Here, give it to me.
(associate #1): Okay, but I've tried.
(associate #2): Did you try it with tape? You're doing it
backwards, swipe it the other way.
(associate #1): Ok (gives him the card)
(associate #2): (swiping, actually swiping backwards now)
(associate #3): You have to swipe it the other way, that's
backwards.
(associate #2): (inspects the card) Ah! The magnetic strip is
damaged, it's not going to swipe.
(associate #1): Can we do it manually? Can we input it
manually?
(associate #2): (says to yet another associate) Can we enter these
manually?
(associate #4 - manager): No, you can't do them manually.
(associate #2): Oh well, we can't do anything.
(associate #1): Can we call head office, or something?
(associate #4 - manager): No, they can't do anything with it.
(associate #1): (says to me) Sorry, the card's damaged, and we can't
input it manually, there's nothing we can do. Where did you get it
from?
(me): I got it as a gift, 2 days ago. So you're telling me that
you're going to send me out of your store, with your giftcard, that I can't
use, because you can't swipe it? I'm ready to purchase something, and
you're going to send me out of the store.
(associate #1): You're going to have to take it back to the store
you got it from, and get them to exchange the card for a working one.
(me): I got it as a gift, and I'm not taking it back to them.
(associate #1): From who?
(me): A friend of mine!?!
(associate #1): Well, they're going to have to take it back, because
they have the receipt, and they know where it came from to exchange it.
(me): Someone in your organization is capable of taking that card
number, and verifying the balance and activation date, surely there is
something you can do.
(associate #1): No, the only person that can do something is the
store that the card came from. Even my manager says there's nothing we can
do.
(associate #4 - manager): Where did you buy the card?
(me): I got it as a gift...
(associate #4 - manager): From what store?
(me): I have no idea what store it came from, I got it as a
gift!
(associate #4 - manager): Well, the card's damaged, and we can't do
anything about it. (walks off).
(me): (look on the back of the card, see the number that says "Phone
for balance or any other enquiries) Can I use your phone?
(associate #4 - manager): Uh, ok, what number? (dials the numbers I
tell him)
- At this point, the automated system told me that my card balance was
$50 and the card had been activated on June 28th, 2003. I let the
associate hear it, and after he had a couple of others listen, he went to
talk to his manager again. About 10 minutes later, he finally agreed to
finalize the purchase.
- It took an hour to buy the phone. To top it off, I take
it home, and plug it in, and there are already 3 numbers in the Caller-ID
list. So obviously, the phone wasn't new, or was returned.
- That's customer service *and* quality. What a store.
- There's lots new on the computer front. I setup another machine,
nightcrawler that is a Windows 2003 Enterprise Server and Domain
Controller. I'm testing out Microsoft's Distributed File System (Dfs),
which supports multiple copies of files stored on multiple servers and will
automatically failover when one of the servers fails, or is offline. Dfs
takes care of the synchronization and replication of the files in the Dfs.
I've been specifically testing it out to see how well it works with Folder
Redirection -- My Documents, Favorites, Desktop and Application Data are
all redirected onto the Dfs, so that if I need to reboot one of the servers
for maintenance, the computers in the house don't all fall apart. There
are some hitches, but for the most part it works pretty well. - phoenix, my Sun Ultra 5, won't boot anymore after the power
fluctuations last week. I think the NVRAM's fried, and there's a new one
on its way. - I've been tweaking SpamAssassin, and it's incredibly catching even more
spam than it was before. Now using Bayesian learning/filtering, Razor,
Pyzor and DCC for checking. Some email is scoring 36+ points now, whereas
before, the highest I'd seen was around 20+ on our systems. Bayesian
filtering works by learning what words occur in both spam, and not-spam
(ham). By observing the frequencies of particular words, it calculates the
probability of a message being spam, given that these words have been
associated with spam that's been seen before. I'm sure that's a much
oversimplified explanation, but Bayesian theory is not new, it dates back
into the 19th century. Razor, Pyzor and DCC are all based on message
signatures which are checked against central servers. SpamAssassin can
also report message signatures from spam messages back to the central
servers for others benefit.