Tag: Rants and Raves

Frustrated Devices

I’m getting increasingly frustrated with gaming on iOS. I am a casual gamer and do not enjoy epic games that involves hours of time. I much prefer games I can play for a few minutes, then walk away from.

For a while it was a pain when a game forced me to choose between an iPad version and an iPhone version. More often than not there is a universal iOS app now that supports both platforms.

However, my frustration kicks in when game state cannot be synchronized between iPhone and iPad. I am still in the scenario where I have to pick which platform I want to play the game on, and not be able to switch between devices.

Not all games are like this though. In fact I have a couple games that work between iOS devices, including our Apple TV.

My wish for game developers, when creating a universal app, would be to put some time and effort into supporting iCloud based data so that players can switch between devices seemlessly.

Respect Email

Sometimes I don’t get people. I’ve put a few ads for things on UsedVictoria and for every ad, I put in to contact me by email.

If I was responding to an ad, I would respect that and do all communications through email.

Most people responding say something along the lines of:

I’m interested. Please call me at xxx-xxxx

.

WTF?? If I wanted to talk on the phone I would have got you to call me.

Also, if you do respond to an ad, please sign your name. Nothing like getting an email from zip32frooha@gmail.com and having no clue who I am talking to.

Park Pooping

Wednesday I had the kids at Veterans Memorial Park in Esquimalt. It was a nice sunny day and the park was full of kids and families. While my kids were playing I watched as a woman came into the park with her two dogs.

She then let them off leash. Actually, not just off leash, she took their collars off. This is already not allowed, but I figured maybe her dogs were well behaved. She then pulled out her cell and did her best to ignore her dogs. The dogs stayed on the grass, but the larger one started having a poop. She kept her back to her dog ON PURPOSE. I know since her dog was having an issue pooping and waddled in front of her. As soon as the owner saw this, she turned some more so she couldn’t see her dog. This went on for a couple minutes.

I could see she had no bags with her, and I could see by her body language that she wasn’t interested in cleaning up the mess. I started to get angry. I was going to head over and give her an earful, but I refused to do that in front of my children. I did look through my wagon to see if I had any waste bags with me and unfortunately I didn’t.

As soon as her dog was done, she headed out of the park with them.

This is a memorial park that lots of kids play in. Off leash dogs are not allowed. There is an off leash park not too far away (less than a 5 minute walk). I’ve had my kids come home with dog crap on them from people like this.

In retrospect I should have said something to her to let her know that I saw what she did, and wasn’t impressed. I regret not taking that action.

Today CFAX has a new poll related to whether it is worth $50,000 a year to supply dog waste bags. I quickly voted yes, but there is no way to provide comments. On Wednesday if there was a bag dispenser in the park I would have grabbed a bag and walked it over to her. That would have sent a clear message.

Please note that I am a dog lover and do my best to clean up after my dog. I quite often clean up after other people’s dogs, and quite often carry extra bags with me. I’ve used the bags from parks when I have run out, and I’ve used the bags to clean up messes other people have left behind. $50,00 is not a lot of money from the city’s budget specially consider what the City of Victoria spends to remove discarded couches ($125,000 in 2007). Anyone who has had to clean dog crap out of their child’s shoe will agree. Perhaps increase the dog licencing fee to help offset this cost?

Peanut Mixing

For many years now we have been buying natural peanut butter. The kind with just peanuts as the only ingredient. The kind that separates when left sitting for a while.

I don’t mind the separation, and I don’t mind the mixing. What I do mind is the spillage that results because the jar is too small. Mixing a full jar of peanut butter and not spilling some of the peanut oil over the side is impossible. A forever oily jar is a pain too. Surely it can’t cost that much to make the jar a tiny bit taller to aid in the mixing?

Telus Ridiculous

I know it will never happen, but I would love it if Telus could explain something to me.

I pay $30 a month for 1GB of data for my smartphone.

I also pay $7 a month for caller id.

The data transfer for caller id is absolutely negligible for Telus, yet they charge me 1/4 the price of a GB of data? That doesn’t make any sense. I also know it is not difficult for them to turn on caller id. It took the guy 30 seconds to add it to my account and it was active immediately.

I guess the differential is due to the value of the service, but this seems a little ridiculous to me.

Ferries Smoking

I travel on BC Ferries a few times each year. Lately with the kids we spend a lot of time in the kids play area which is a welcome attention grabber for the kids.

A long time ago BC Ferry Corporation changed where smokers were allowed to smoke. Previously smokers could smoke anywhere outside, but the change restricted them to a small spot on one outside deck.

My question though is why they chose to place this location right outside the windows to the kids play area? Does this really make sense? I certainly don’t want to watch people smoking, and I really don’t want my kids to watch people smoking as well.

I’ve only noticed this on the spirit class ferries, but these are the ones that we seem to ride the most.

Blockbuster Bad

Soon after I got my new cellphone and phone number, I started getting calls from @Blockbuster informing me of overdue movies. These calls were destined for the previous owner of the number since I rarely rent from @Blockbuster any more.

This morning I called to get this fixed up. I called at a few minutes before 10 and the person that answered sounded cheery enough. It sounded like the store was already open. When I started to explain the issue she cut me off saying she couldn’t help me because the store wasn’t open yet.

I was dumbfounded. I was a little speechless.

I verified that she couldn’t help me and she said yes. She needed to get the store ready. I asked if the fact that I am a customer made a difference and she said no. She couldn’t help me because the store wasn’t open yet.

Not being totally coherent I said something to the effect that “That is pretty bad.”, and she actually said no it wasn’t! I hung up after that since I didn’t want to deal with her any more.

After 10am I called another @Blockbuster to get the number removed and the guy that answered took care of it in under 2 minutes, and even let me know that I may get another call within the next couple days since their system updates are a little slow.

The helpful guy spent less time on the phone with me than the argumentative lady. Nice.

I haven’t rented from @Blockbuster in a while, and I think I will continue that trend.

Turning Mistakes

On the weekend we made a trip out to Costco to grab a few necessities (and a few other items too). After Costco we had to head across Millstream Road to buy some dog food at Petsmart.

The intersection is a pretty busy one, and the lights are regular green lights. If people are turning left, they need to yield to people driving straight.

Well, that didn’t happen. Some dude in a white Ram turned left, following some other vehicles, not seeing me. I honked at him for cutting me off.

I get it that people make mistakes, but at least own up to them. This guy just ignored me, and that made me mad. Pay attention while driving!

Parking Watch

I read a ridiculous article on Canada.com today. You can read it for yourself here.

The gist of the story is that the author feels like parking tickets are hurting downtown businesses.

I absolutely could not take the author seriously after she wrote “I’ve had a few in my day — probably 10 a year since I moved here in 1989”. She has received approximately 200 parking tickets in downtown Victoria. What the hell? Did you not know you need to put money in the meter? It’s not that hard to get back to the car before time runs out. Do you not own a watch?

She even complains about one ticket she got when she parked, then went into a store with a sale without putting money in the meter. Well, duh, I think you deserve that one.

The whole point of the parking meters is to keep people flowing. You come to downtown, you do your shopping, then you leave. Without the meters people would park their car and leave it there all day thereby clogging downtown. No customers could get to the shops.

Personally I don’t see anything wrong with the current system. I’ve lived in Victoria since 1993 and I have had two parking tickets that I can recall, neither at parking meters. Both were in Robbins controlled lots. Something tells me that Jody Paterson is doing it all wrong. It is ridiculous that one person could accumulate that many tickets.