Ranting

If you don't care about sports or other random rambling rants, you should probably stop reading now. I am just getting very upset about things and want to rant somewhere.

Well the NHL lockout is getting huge coverage today, in Canada at least. The two sides didn't read my previous post on this obviously! So now they agreed on a cap with no linkage to revenues, they are just different by under $10 million now. NHL went up to $42.5 million with an unknown luxury tax equation below that, said it was a final offer, NHLPA rejected it. Good job guys on waiting until over half of the season was done to finally show how far you were willing to move. I hope both sides feel great about themselves. The owners at least have the excuse that they are losing less money this year than they did last year, but for the players, they would been better off taking a crappy deal and getting an extra year's pay. So that means unless one side was just bluffing, no hockey this year. I do not understand all these polls that say people don't want hockey back this year. If you don't want to watch it if it comes back, don't turn your TV to that channel. I want hockey back! It is only going to get worse between April and June when playoffs should be on TV... and yes Leafs fans, NHL does keep playing past the first week of May.

So what the hell is up with the Raptors? They wait way too long to get rid of Vince, get nothing for him as his value falls just below an average WNBA player, then as they start to play better without that cancer, then Alston causes trouble? He does realize he is Rafer freaking Alston, right? Someone should tell him this, and maybe he will calm down and play his mediocre basketball.

Why couldn't Mike Drint take one for the team and die before the voting happened? I didn't know the Grammy's were a lifetime memorial award for someone that probably already received a million lifetime achievement awards! I did not even know, before I saw the nominees, that Ray Charles had made a CD this year! When we focus on the past for a current award we end up with Karl Malone winning MVP of the NBA. At least the NBA had good precedent for this, Barkley won it 4 years earlier. We should be able to retroactively give these awards back to Michael Jordan.

I was on the subway the other day and I saw a fire on the track. The driver calmly left his little capartment, walked down to the track, put out fire, then kept driving like nothing happened. Well I was impressed how well he handled the situation, but this also worried me. How often are there 4 foot tall fires in the middle of the subway tunnels that make this guy so well trained? Also, what on the track caused this fire? Obviously nothing had to be investigated, so this had to be common! Good old TTC.

How am I supposed to feel guilty about downloading music when I give money to the music industry when I buy blank CD's for legal purposes? Screw them. I bought a Green Day CD in November (it was Buy Nothing Day, I had to buy something), first CD I bought in a long time, and I could not play it! I don't own any other CD player than my computer, but the CD has some stupid copy protection thing on it. I had to download a program to rip CD's to mp3 form just to listen to the CD I purchased. The other thing I could have done would be to download the CD from one of those pay sites. These sites give you the music is a format that I do not want to use, and then they put stupid restrictions on the file limiting the amount of times you can move it from computer to computer or put it on devices like mp3 players. So what this comes down to is I could have downloaded the Green Day CD the day it came out for free in my choice of 3 different qualities and I could do whatever I wanted with the files OR pay for something less convenient.... I wonder why downloading music is so popular. After the courts ruled that ISP's do not have to give up names of customers, I feel this is legal precedent to say that I'm allowed to download. This industry treats its paying customers so poorly, I will never buy a CD again.

Speaking of my grudges, I will also never buy Sprite. In grade 10, we had some 'important option assembly' to go to in the gym. It ended up being a 45 minute long sprite commercial, trying to get students to chant "Drink Sprite!" and crap like that. I had purchased a Sprite at lunch that day before this happened, and it was the last one I ever bought (6 years ago). I think it was a dishonest way to advertise to captive high school students. If I knew what I was attending beforehand, then fine, I can handle advertising, but that was done so poorly, I hold a grudge.

My newest company grudge is with Telus. I have a Telus phone that I got right at the end of December. It stops working, so I take it into the Telus store to get fixed since it is under waranty. I had a previous Telus phone so I say I can activate that instead of getting a loaner phone from them, but get this, they expect ME to pay $25 fee for switching phones. It is their fault that they gave me phone that lasted less than 2 months, I did not electively choose to go to an old model for the fun of it. Their customer service person was way less than helpful (if you have no authority to help me, don't waste my time), so I have to get her manager, explain the whole situation again, spend 10 minutes arguing to get the $25 off. This is complete BS, I am the one that was inconvenienced by having my phone break down, I expected the very LEAST for me to break even, this isn't some nice service Telus was doing me (any good company would have given me a discount for my trouble). So if you enjoy good customer service in a cell phone company, never use Telus.

The biggest thing that annoys me this term is my union. The PWU takes advantage of co-op students. The union is for full time blue collar workers, it does nothing to represent a student working in the finance department. I get no benefits that the union fights for since it is temporary employment, my wages are very comparable to other co-op students so it certainly didn't fight for a higher salary, yet $15.81 comes out of my paycheck WEEKLY to these assholes. Co-op students are great cash grabs to put in your bargaining units, we aren't there long enough to do anything about it, but from each position they will get close to $1000. This is stealing from students that can use this money for many things. Many students take co-op to help pay for school, and it really troubles me that this organization can be so cruel. I've tried to get out of paying the fees, but by Canadian law if you are in a bargaining unit you have to pay union dues. To get declassified from the bargaining unit takes much longer than a 4 month term allows. There is another law that if you have strong beliefs against unions you can give the money instead to a registered charity (but you are still required to pay money), but I don't even have time to do this. There is nothing in the CBA that has this provision, so I need to take it to the BOD level. This simply isn't possible for a co-op student.