The Jeff R Project

So I was behind on my Telus Mobility payments. Oops. My bad. We cancelled Chris’s account a while back and incurred the early cancellation fee of a few hundred bucks and we’ve been paying it down since then.

Apparently not fast enough for the Telus Mobilty. They “redirected my outbound calls” today so I had to speak to them. “redirected your outbound calls” really seems like Telus-Speak for “blocked everything you delinquent bastard” as I received NO text message or phone calls all day. I also wasn’t able to SEND text messages. Highly inconvenient and “unknown.”

According to Wayne or Bryan, the rep I talked to, they’ve made 3 attempts to reach me. They sent a text-message which I never got. They called twice (really? Never got those either) – oh wait! Telus RANDOMLY grabs a number on the account and dials it.

Both times they called my office. That explains some of those robot calls Kelli keeps getting.

Telus says they have no responsibility to change or fix this process. I get my bills, I pay my bills and they make these good faith efforts to reach me before “redirecting” my account.

Really? That’s it? I don’t believe they actually do any of that. Since twice now, I’ve had the same experience. No calls, no emails, no warnings, just “redirect.”

Slimy bastards. Anybody got a upper level contact I can use over there?

So being Saturday Chris and I made our usual pilgrimage downtown today. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed the walk.

We swung by the Apple Store in Pacific Centre and I picked up a new screen protector for my iPod Touch. The last one had done a good job saving the screen from all kinds of goop but it was time for a new one.

Then it was off to Chapters for some reading. Pretty magazines.

We the attempted to eat lunch at Red Robin’s on Burrard and Thurlow, which we have done many times before without incident. No such luck today. Perky Hostess 2 gleefully took us to booth 62, dropped our menus and left. No sooner did Chris go to put his bag down than a giant cockroach scurried across the table, onto the bench and over to the wall. We didn’t scream but we did let the staff know what happened, that we were disgusted and were leaving.

Next we tried White Spot at Georgia and Seymour. No luck there, there was quite a line and a long wait.

We debated our options on the walk home. Not being adventurous with food these days limited our options and we settled on eating in at FatBurger at Dunsmuir and Beatty. Nothing “bad” happened but while we were waiting Chris was pushed to the dark side of our on going “do-we-don’t-we” debate about wanting children.

Right now we’re downloading A.I. to watch Haley Joel portray the perfect non-excreting child that we aspire to have.

Plus he can double as a Playstation 3.

Today Apple released version 2.2 of their iPhone and iPod Touch software. Despite the multitude of similarities between the devices, except for features relating specifically to capabilities on the phone, they’ve been treated equally.

I don’t expect my iPod Touch to take pictures or make calls. I don’t expect the map to be as accurate as the GPS enabled phone etc. But I do expect the software to be equivalent in most cases.

Today Apple rather sneakily displayed to us (or reminded us) that they are not the same and we lesser mortals, aka iPod Touch owners, had better get used to it.

Todays 2.2 update included Google Street View and other nice add-ons to Maps. BUT only for iPhones. Yes that’s right. People with iPod Touch apparently don’t need transit maps, Street Views or the ability to email a location to anyone.

Dear Apple:
Please give me my full update. Seriously, WTF.

Sincerely,
Jeff

I’ll get to the bag part shortly…

Nobody seems to be quite sure what’s going on with Granville Street. The 1200 block to be specific. The City of Vancouver did a lot of work this summer. On at least 2 separate occasions they tore up the west side of the street to lay new pipes and do other work. Then they tackled the east side.

Now, for some unexplained reason, they’ve denuded the street. They’ve chopped down every tree in the 1200 block of Granville Street leaving behind 4 foot high “stumps” in most places. In at least 1 place the stump is only a foot tall.

Our best guess is that they are going to be working on the power lines that run overhead and are doing it for safety. Nobody is happy though. The street looks very open and clean(ish) right now, like some of the pictures we see from days gone by, but Vancouver loves its trees and we’re all sad to see mature trees go for no visible reason.

They’ve also removed the 2 public garbage cans from the east side of the street. There was one outside of the Two Parrots restaurant at the north end of the street and another outside 7-11 at the south. Both are gone.

So in the morning, and lunch I take Rumble for a walk around the block, and when he poops, now that there are no garbage cans, I’m “left holding the bag”.

Get it?