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Kanye West comes to mind, naming his daughter North. North West is her name. True story.
modified 20-Oct-19 21:02pm.
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On most days, the subject line would be saying all that needs to be said. Just thought I'd fill in some details this time around.
Got a call yesterday from a neighbor - for some reason that still escapes me, she's had her residential line changed to a commercial one - and her internet connection at the same time.
Here in Canada, Bell's residential internet service is called Sympatico, so you get an account such as [whoever]@sympatico.ca. In contrast, their business accounts use [whoever]@bellnet.ca.
After the switchover was done (and the Bell service "technician" gone), she realized she could no longer access her sympatico.ca email. She's got important emails going back to 2007, and (of course) customers are still sending new stuff all the time to the only address of hers they know about.
She phones them up, explains the situation, and they inform her bellnet.ca and sympatico.ca "don't really work with each other". They can't give her back her old account. She can't log in. The best she can do apparently is to ask a friend who's on Sympatico (I'm not), have him phone Bell and ask them to link his account with hers (with her authorization), and then he'll be able to forward everything to her new bellnet.ca address.
That's gotta be one of the dumbest suggestions I've heard in a long time. Off the top of my head, that means:
- He's gonna get full access to her email
- All her messages are going to have the same date (the forward date) - good luck finding anything date-based from now on
- People are still going to send her stuff through her old address, which means anything that comes in is still going to have to be forwarded...what, until the end of time?
Bell's level of incompetence keeps reaching new highs all the time - I have no idea why I'm still surprised. My neighbor's not exactly tech savvy (as are most people, in her defense), so I have to put a lot of blame on Bell for not explaining to her ahead of time this was going go happen.
She was already fuming, so I wasn't going to pour oil on that fire by explaining this is why you never use your ISP's email service.
I was reminded of an incident last year when a relative of mine needed my help to reset his email password (again, Sympatico) because somehow it wouldn't let him back him. Easy enough, right? I forget the details, but ultimately the blocker was that I could not find a way to complete the password reset procedure without going around in circles. Ended up phoning Bell--pretty easy they say, just to go the main Bell portal, login with your Bell customer details, and initiate the password reset procedure from there. My relative had never set himself up as a Bell customer (that's apparently not the same thing as the Sympatico account, although the two get linked once this is done). No problem, in order to register as a new user on the portal, just login with your Sympatico account.
As I was trying (in vain) to make the Bell rep understand the problem over the phone, I actually asked him if he was a bot, because otherwise he just had to be the most clueless individual I'd ever spoken to...I rarely lose my cool when dealing with people who are "just doing their jobs", but I was going nowhere with him.
Personally, I dropped Bell as an ISP almost a decade ago and I've never looked back. When people phone me for help with anything to do with Bell, my blood starts boiling before they even start explaining the problem...
Rant over. I'm not sure I wanna check with my neighbor to ask how things went.
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What she should have done is set up her own hosted domain name for her business. It is really inexpensive. She would have to pay an annual fee to the hosting company, but for a business it is a normal operating expense.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
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You're overestimating the needs (and user sophistication) here. By "business", I wasn't inferring there was even a web site involved, and my neighbor's perfectly happy doing business with a generic email address rather than anything named after her business.
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My wife never set up a web page, either. She owns and operates a small ranch, raising goats. The private domain gives us control over our email and gives us an air of legitimacy when we deal with other businesses.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
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So you'd like to see the end of Bell?
That might perturb some people.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Mark_Wallace wrote: That might perturb some people.
Most people in Canada would rejoice.
It's more of a general sense of deeply-seated (but justified) hatred. I don't know of anyone who doesn't despise them.
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The level of organizational stupidity is astounding. I'll wager that there are people in Bell Canada that know this is a problem.
Last week my natural gas provider sent me my monthly email informing me that this month's statement was available. Since I'm on auto-pay, I don't usually login to my account. I was curious about my usage, so this month I did, where upon I learned I was behind in my payments - by months. Huh?
Digging further, it appears that their database turns off auto-pay if you change payment accounts. The web site doesn't tell you this, it just happens. I looked diligently in their email - no mention of my account being late. I suppose the heat turning off might clue me in.
So I wrote them a nice customer feedback email explaining that their system was flawed and needed some corrections. Customer service informed me that just because I have auto-pay, wait for it, I still need to verify it's working. 
They missed the entire point of my email. I'm reading about how Marriott, Dell, Dunkin Donuts, Home Depot, Target, etc have all had recent data breaches. Sort of explains why my card # has been stolen 6 times in the last 3 years.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: Sort of explains why my card # has been stolen 6 times in the last 3 years.
See? At least someone's trying to get transactions processed against your credit card...
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Some might know I am not new here. Most may not.
Anyways, I have moved to Netherlands. So far everything has been good personally. Financially I am screwed because every service (in India) I engage with is run by idiots. I am OK shelling out money as long as they do the job. They don't.
Positives? I like it here. Lots of walking, less pollution and so many beers!
Work wise, I am going to miss programming. If I get time I might write an odd method here and there but I see I have moved to the dark side (no not management, consultant).
If anyone here is thinking to move to another country, understand their laws and also keep aside 3 times normal monthly budget for at least 2 months after moving.
Apsrt from this spend time understanding their culture but I make sure I do not copy or pretend to be like them. It really has helped me in my 8 years of travel around the World.
Now, real question, did someone beat OG in points? Did DD came back? Did hamsters make a union and now we are all slaves?
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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'llo,
Hadn't seen you for a while, Welcome back! Well OG got beat once in points but he came back stronger than ever, Nothing has been seen of Darlek since Pikey accusations, he was running as a local politicain as far as I can tell he wasn't victorious...The hamsters get a little annoyed now and then but haven't forced into Human Balls yet (kinda like a Zorb, but made from polycarbonate)...
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lw@zi wrote: did someone beat OG in points?
Yeah, but I did a midnight raid down the chimney, avoided the lasers, jumped over the shark tank, and stole 'em all back.
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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If that's what it takes, you're more than welcome to keep the lead. 
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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That sounds a lot like you were playing "Zwarte Piet", did you wear black facial paint too ?
More information about the tradition here: Sinterklaas - Wikipedia[^] 
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lw@zi wrote: did someone beat OG in points?
We briefly had our chance a couple of weeks back:
I'm up to 768 rep points in QA now!
Sadly, Chris managed to track down the bug and fix it, so we'll just have to wait for him to overflow the rep point data type.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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lw@zi wrote: Anyways, I have moved to Netherlands
The Northern part, or the good part?
lw@zi wrote: Apsrt from this spend time understanding their culture but I make sure I do not copy or pretend to be like them.
Already noticed that, you said you liked it here. One of the national hobbies is complaining how bad it is; the weather, the prices, the railways.
..and the rent is too damn high!
Welcome 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: The Northern part, or the good part?
Den Bosch, guess that is South.
I have noticed people complaining about weather not other things though, yet. The look like they are not able to process the information when my response about weather is that it's good.
Some did tell me rent is high but I am OK with paying a little more as long as I live in the center (don't need a parking spot so nothing to complain).
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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lw@zi wrote: The look like they are not able to process the information when my response about weather is that it's good.
It's usually also not as bad as they make it out to be. Have a kroketje!
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Good to hear from you again, be careful not to get involved in the "Zwarte Piet" discussion which is getting quite heated by now
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I am not going to discuss anything sensitive here since most of you appear to be giants to puny little me and I don't want to get beat up.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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I'm not sure whether I recognize you, but I do recognize the sig:
lw@zi wrote: "It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[^]
...which I've always disagreed with, because JavaScript and VB6 aren't difficult to "decipher". The difficult thing to understand, if anything, is WTF they were thinking.
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Sounds like a good advice, one that i surely need if I ever have the chance to move Netherlands.
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Did the Powerpoint presentation cross the road to get to the other slide?
Sent from my Amstrad PC 1640
Never throw anything away, Griff
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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You got it. Foiled again.
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OriginalGriff wrote: Powerpoint presentation
Hey, this forum is supposed to be KSS!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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