Dang. I knew there was something important going on yesterday. No, not the geek dinner with Tod Maffin, or the Sept. 11 reading by Dave Bernans.
Category Archives: Navel-gazing
Everything you clearly don’t know about the Islamic veil controversy
The Gazette today began its five-day series Identities about reasonable accomodation, and their timing couldn’t have been better. The Bouchard-Taylor commission is beginning its public consultation tour of the province (Montreal is the last stop on their trip at the end of November), and a pair of conflicting rulings have been issued concerning the rights of Muslim women to wear veils in upcoming provincial and federal by-elections.
I can’t pay my bills, and I’m cranky
So I’m trying to pay my monthly bills tonight, and boy is it needlessly complicated. You see, I tried going to my bank’s website and logging in like I do every month, but they’re having “internal server problems”, so I’ll have to wait.
So I went to the Rogers website, where my cellphone bill has to be paid by tomorrow, and tried to login there so I can pay by credit card or something. But the site wouldn’t accept my password, and then locked my account. I tried calling them to have the account unlocked, but they’re experiencing a “higher than normal volume of calls” (at 11:30pm!), so I gave up after a few minutes.
So instead of paying my bills, I’m going to criticize Rogers on their email policies. And since I’m particularly cranky, I’m going to be harsh.
Last month, I was forced to sign up for online billing because that’s the only way Rogers will provide me with a log of what calls I make. (Actually, they don’t. Every time I try to download this log, it shows me a blank page.)
So this month, instead of a letter in the mail with my bill, I got an email that looked like this. Here’s the problems:
- The shortcuts for “forget your password” and “forget your id” are www.rogers.com/forgot and www.rogers.com/forget respectively. And that’s not a mistake. A past-tense forgetting is about passwords, and a present-tense forgetting is about IDs.
- The first link, to check out your bill, says www.rogers.com but actually links (in the email) to a page at www.shoprogers.com. A link that gives one domain and actually leads to another is a textbook example of a trick used in email fraud. How am I supposed to know shoprogers.com is owned by rogers.com?
- The email does not use your name or any identifying information about you other than your email address and an internally-generated 9-digit account number.
This doesn’t inspire confidence.
Oh Kurtis
I had an uncomfortable conversation today with a good friend. She said she had some bad news.
“Did you read the front-page story about the fire?”
I hadn’t, since I was still reading Saturday’s paper. I quickly looked it up and scanned it.
“It was Kurtis’s cottage. Kurtis died in the fire.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know Kurtis Hansen very well (I wasn’t sure until today what his last name was), but we’d hung out together many times when we worked at the Gazette. He was an evening security guard who would join the editors in the smoking room late in the evening to gossip. (I quickly learned after joining the paper that important social networking happens while people have cigarettes.) We’d discuss everything from the relative attractiveness of female staff at the paper to his women troubles.
He was our favourite security guard, because he had a very easy-going style and the kind of dry, wicked sense of humour that only copy editors can appreciate.
He left his job at the paper last year to work at Telus, which offered him more money and less boredom. I didn’t expect to see much of him again. But now the absence is permanent.
It won’t affect my life significantly, but I can’t just dismiss it.
What’s worse is the horribleness of the death itself. His two sisters are also gone, as well as two family friends. His father, who tried to drag him to safety and failed, now has to live with the loss of three children, assuming he even recovers from his injuries.
It sucks. Which is why those of us who knew him will be getting shitfaced later, in his honour.
The Gazette’s Katherine Wilton has an obit, which includes some quotes from his former boss. The cause of the fire is still unknown.
UPDATE (Sept. 5): Today’s Day 2 stories concern Kurtis’s 15-year-old stepsister who also perished, and a story about propane safety (even though no cause has been determined for the fire). The latter includes a “test yourself” quiz about propane safety, which like most government safety quizzes is insanely simple to anyone who graduated elementary school (you mean I should light the barbecue after I start the gas? Wow, thanks, because I’m a complete moron). Besides those issues, I’m not crazy about publishing a light-hearted quiz game as part of the coverage of five violent deaths.
UPDATE (Sept. 6): A Facebook group has been setup in his honour. And as he would put it: There’s some fine honeys there.
UPDATE (Sept. 9): Noah Sidel talks about Kurtis in his Off-Sidel column in the Westmount Examiner.
UPDATE (Oct. 6): The Gazette runs a belated obituary notice for Kurtis Hansen, Kelly Hansen and Heather Edelstein. It includes an online guestbook.
My Top 5: Me, Me, Me, Me, Me
Here I was about to complain that nobody listed my blog in their top 5 for Blog Day (not to be confused with Blog Action Day, which is an entirely different pointless exercise), but then I see Laurent has my back. So now I can feel a sense of empty vanity as I constantly recheck my traffic statistics to see if this endorsement has sent a mob my way.
I’m not one to list my favourite blogs. I have the major local news blogs in my blogroll here, hundreds of local blogs in my feeds, and I’ve profiled quite a few for the paper.
So if you want your blog mentioned here, well, I have a comments section, so mention it yourself. Unless of course your blog sucks, in which case don’t mention it.
I found this one in the sewer
This week’s blog is controleman, who at 19 is I believe the youngest blogger I’ve profiled so far. He’s an urban explorer, which is cool, and he has me on his blogroll, which is cooler.
Not that putting me on your blogroll will in any way influence whether or not I profile your blog. That would just be unethical.
GoJIT: “There was a loss”
This Week in Me features an interview with Serge Duchaine of GoJIT, the Dorval-based transportation company which lost a lawsuit last month and was ordered to pay over $118,000 to a St. Tite company for $90,000 of lost cowboy boots.
Doing the interview, I learned something interesting about standard practices in the industry (emphasis mine):
Gazette: Why did you offer only $6,000 in compensation for $90,000 of lost merchandise?
Duchaine: When you don’t insure goods, you’re automatically insured for $2 per pound. All the rates are based on the value you’re carrying. So the guy says: “It’s not enough, I’d like to protect all our merchandise.” There’s an insurance fee that every transport company has in the industry. More than 95 per cent of clients take a calculated risk. It doesn’t happen enough for them to buy this coverage. If someone says they want more protection, they have to buy it from an insurance company.
Ironically, it’s GoJIT which had insurance in this case: liability insurance. So the insurance company, which would have to foot the bill, is appealing the decision.
Still, it would be nice to know how 88 boxes on six palettes, over 100 square feet of warehouse floor space, just disappeared without a trace.
I like to blog during the summer
Laurent has put up video from the August Yulblog where he went around asking people what their favourite summer activity was. (He’s been making the questions easier each month since people have had trouble answering — he threatened to make next month’s question “what’s your favourite colour” if people were still having trouble)
Of course, what you’re looking for is at 1:49: Me.
I got at least one comment that I wasn’t recognizable from the nose up in that tiny photo at the top of my blog, so here you go. That’s what I look like.
Ladies, the line starts here.
Hell no, we will go
This Week in Me is a Justify-Your-Existence interview with Mandeep Dhillon, a rabble-rouser with No One Is Illegal who’s among the busloads headed to Montebello (map) this weekend to protest the Three Amigos and their Security and Prosperity Partnership, an area Stephen Harper is gung-ho about.
I’ll remember it more as the first interview I conducted that my batteries in the voice recorder actually lasted through. I interviewed her just after Tuesday’s CN protest, after the cameras had left and everyone was about to head home.
I’m sympathetic to many of the arguments about public transparency and native rights and police brutality. Unfortunately I find the language used by Jaggi Singh and his ilk to be off-putting at best.
We’ll see on Monday whether the fears of Montebello’s residents — that protesters who can’t get near the fortress of doom resort where leaders are staying will instead just smash windows of local businesses — are justified.
Fagstein: Now with shared feeds
I’ve added an item to my sidebar which shows my Google Reader shared items, which will mostly be interesting posts from the Montreal blogosphere or stories from the papers which I think are interesting but don’t have much to comment on besides “hey look at this”.
Those who want to subscribe to it directly can use the direct feed link.
A rare glimpse into Coolopolis Towers
Readers of the Gravenor Bros. excellent Coolopolis already know that it’s the featured blog this week.
Getting the story behind it wasn’t easy. Coolopolis Towers is located in an undisclosed offshore location and is heavily guarded. My credentials being as pathetic as they are, I would never have been allowed entry.
Instead, I sent in Mandy, a secret agent who’s been working for Fagstein WorldMedia Ltd. for many years (for reasons of security, I can’t show a picture of what Mandy looks like, but believe me she’s a knockout). Her charms easily got her past the first few layers of security, and her shameless appeal to Kristian Gravenor’s vanity quickly gained his trust. (The secret? Ask him about Azerbaijan.) Through some innocuous-sounding questions and by slipping some helpful chemicals into his drink, Mandy got Gravenor to spill the beans about Coolopolis. A hidden transmitter quickly beamed that information to my top-notch surveillance team sitting on a stealth dinghy nearby.
As the article points out, Mr. Gravenor is a fan of exaggeration. The “gorillas implanted with intelligence chips” are actually chimpanzees, and the chips are just GPS tracking devices. The “800 lb Godzilla-like dragon creature” that is supposed to be guarding the entrance can be generously described as maybe 400 lbs, and is hardly Godzilla-like at all. And “Ruprecht, Her Majesty’s Royal Mail carrier” is actually Roberto, a Mexican-born illegal alien who says his bosses haven’t paid him in weeks.
Instead of owning up to it, of course, Kristian appeals to my vanity, hoping that I’ll keep some of my findings to myself.
Not a chance. The world has to know about Coolopolis.
The users provide the colour
No featured blog this week (sorry), but instead I have a short story about the Ile-Sainte-Hélène metro station (now Jean-Drapeau) and an interview with its architect and designer Jean Dumontier, for the Expo Artifacts series.
Most of the information is old news to metro buffs (like the fact that the large halls on the platforms used to house bathrooms), but I found it interesting that the lack of colourful artwork in the station was purposefully designed, since the large crowds wearing colourful 60s clothing provided plenty of colour.
The paper version also includes a (small) photo of Dumontier with a three-dimensional model of the station’s original (more elaborate) plans, which he still has at his house.
I stand by my choice
Montreal bloggers have some odd choices for fantasy vacations. (Marge Simpson? Really?)
Gimme some of this and some of that. Or maybe merge them somehow?
Speaking of YULblog, it seems Happy hates me. Why? Everyone loves me, especially dogs. Now you might argue (as Christelle did) that Happy has never met me before, and that it was in a bar packed with people and loud noises late at night. But I think it’s because Happy is a stupid, mean dog. She doesn’t even read this blog!
The ultimate Transformers geek
Two articles this weekend by yours truly:
This week’s blog is Urban Photo (or should I say “URBANPHOTO”?) by freelance writer Christopher DeWolf. It’s one of the ones that’s been on my list for a while (long before he asked me to write about it). It covers urban life and design with an emphasis on photography. Its contributors include blogosphere familiars like Kate McDonnell and A.J. Kandy.
Also this week is a Justify Your Existence profile of Transformers collector Daniel Arseneault. He has 1,700 of the action figures but still manages to have a normal-sounding life. Yeah, he lives in his parents’ basement (with a staircase that forces you to bend down as you descend lest you hit your head), but he’s an auto mechanic and sport enthusiast with a fiancée. Read up about him here and on his website, or join his Montreal Transformers Fans Facebook group.
And while you’re checking out Montreal Diary this week, you can read Amy Luft’s recounting of last week’s water fight.
Un titre bilingue for a bilingual blog
This week’s blog is An Unexamined Life, written by an anonymous (well, I know who she is because she added me on Facebook) bilingual mother whose kids don’t know about it (hopefully they won’t figure it out). It’s another in the people-I-emailed-in-February- but-haven’t-spoken-to-since- so-they-probably-thought- I-forgot-about-them camp.
It’s a personal blog (sometimes feeling almost a bit too personal), and very poetic. Check it out.
My bank of blogs to profile is nearing empty, so I’m going to start another round. Know of any local blogs that should get more attention? Email me (blog at fagstein.com). Here are my preferred criteria:
- Authored by a Montrealer or Montrealers, or about Montreal in some way (by Montreal I refer to the greater metropolitan area, including the West Island and nearby shores)
- Updates often (at least once a week)
- General audience (meaning not someone’s LiveJournal recounting their daily minutiae and friend dramas)
- Unique in some way (interesting to read, interesting to write about)
- Not one I (or somebody else) has already written about (search this blog’s archives for mentions)