The Savage Life Style of a Student in University

July 15th, 2010 Thomasso

Dear blog, sometimes I use this little corner of cyberspace to vent and air my thoughts, and other times, just to show off my inner side of life which includes some art, images and diatribes. I think the theme of today’s entry will be on communication.

First let me paint the background for you. Over the last five weeks I have been part of a group that presented in my human rights class, lovingly called CRIM4301. Today we had to teach the class on a assigned topic, in this case, on the International Criminal Court. There are five of us, so lots of room for each of us to present for the whole three hour block. Five weeks ago we planned our subject matter, set goals and worked on our own to make our parts well rehearsed and polished. In fact we met more times than what was required because we all wanted the obtain the goal of “A,” or higher.

Forty-eight hours ago two of the group members approached the prof and asked him some question on why we got such a weak mark on our group proposal. It was a low “B,” and that hurt. He replied that we need to change our thesis, and eliminate half of our topics, and keep everything to a bear minimum.

Last night I got the email with the header, “Urgent, urgent, urgent,” across it and a cryptic note that read, “wrong everything, here is our new thesis, start over again….”

Everything we had worked on was thrown out the window. We had to start from scratch, and salvage what we could from our original plan.

With little sleep, we made it through, but with a pissed off attitude as we marched on blindly with our talk.

I was so glad that it that is was over and done. Although, personally, I feel that this was way too much, and that our effort was substandard, there is a part of me that is angered at the whole situation. We felt that communication was not given on what the prof asked for, but on the other hand, we should have kept asking and asking for his opinion and checked in to see if we were on the right track.

It is over now and I can sit back and lick my wounds. I look out at the wonderful clear blue sky and wonder why I am inside with the window opened and my computer and monitor blasting heat at me. Then that old saying popped into my head, and it goes, “You can loose the battle, but still win the war.” Perhaps that is so true in this case?

Well, there is about four weeks left in this term, and still lots of work to do. I must love punishment.

Posted in Criminology, Diatribe, General, University classes | No Comments »

The Black Mark of a Credit Stain of a Corporate Shame

July 13th, 2010 Thomasso

This morning, as I was driving into work, I heard on the radio, CBC, that a couple had their credit history ruined by a black mark from the TELUS corporation from a bill that was never paid. This story intrigued me because I went through this exact same situation over fifteenth years ago from a couple called City Tell, from up in Prince Rupert.

What was so intriguing was the attitude from the customers, who obviously valued their credit rating, were out raged that something from so long ago was biting them in the butt now. From what I understand, when an account goes delinquent it is automatic for a company to put it into arrears, then  onto collections. I mean, I do this on a weekly bases at my second job, as I deal with delinquent accounts when searching for information on people who have moved, or for those do not want to be found: the Skip-Tracer. What I have found is that communications is the primary reason for ninety percent of all issues that I come across.

The fault of two fold. First, companies are lazy. It is easy to set up the billing account and have it sent off through the post office, email, or what ever other form of billing there is. There is usually a different department for each process of services; for example, the government, which is the worst for having multiple departments running the same account. Then if the account changes, there is most always a lag in the chain of command before the action is finished. I found in my little world that forty percent of my cases the fault started with the company and its inefficiencies on handling account. This is where the customer has given the correct information and followed through with the proper legal steps to change the status of the account. Also, most customers actually have over paid at this point. The remaining case the customer simply allows the count to go delinquent, mostly in protest.  Second, and the larger slice of the pie chart, the customer simply vanishes, and what information the company has, goes towards that customer’s credit information. The recovery rate, in my cases, are about seventy percent. So here you have total communication breakdown.

My advice to this couple would have being simply to implement legal action against the corporation, and then start the negotiations. I mean, only if their credit rating with worth that much to them would this have been worth the effort and cost. You must use justice in business as it was intended for – to fight a wrong and seek damages.  Of course, a $200.00 bill it a tough case to consider going to court over, but I have seen this done.

I also believe the couple has put too much into their financial institution for going public against TELUS like this. It is obvious that they use credit, and have a lot at stake with their money. Perhaps they should consider becoming rebels and start dealing with cash only instead and not ever have to worry about the credit scores again? Just a thought.

But I applaud these people for the guts it took to stand up and go public with this.  Bravo for them!

Here is the story: Credit ruined over unknown Telus bill: Company says privacy concerns prevented search for couple

Posted in Diatribe, General, Social Justice, Social economics | No Comments »

The Weirdest Sleep Last Night – It Was Too Real

July 10th, 2010 Thomasso

I do not know if it was the heat, or the supper amount of stress I am going through with classes right now, or the exotic food I ate for dinner, but man, did I ever have a weird sleep. Right now it is 5:30am and I am looking outside at the first bit of sun light hitting the horizon and my body feels like a million dollars: unbelievably great. My brain, on the other hand, feels like a water balloon full of thick gooey sludge. I think I might have a head cold that is going around?

It was a welcomed sight seeing the high clouds roll in last night. I know the heat was killer, and everyone was feeling it, but we only had three days of it. According to Environment Canada’s definition of a “Heat Wave,” you need to have three consecutive days of 32C, or hotter, weather to constitute that title. We only broke that temperature for two days, so we can not use the term Heat Wave until the next high pressure weather system moves in.

So far, the heat seems to be trapped under the clouds and it does not appear to any threat of rain, but the clouds are moving away as I can see clear patchy skies. The night was warm, which is unusual from the last few days where the temperature dropped to 15C at night. We had our share of rain for far too long, so I think we might be back to some more glorious sun shine which I am looking forward too.

Well, I think I might throw on some coffee and start preparing for the first of two papers due this week. I hope you like my Sun Shine Man drawn on InkScape.

Posted in Art, Bitching about weather, Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs, University classes | No Comments »

Overload Circuit 17B: Total Denial

July 9th, 2010 Thomasso

Tonight I am taking it off. I am just going to sit around and rest, have some dinner and not think about anything academic. It has been a week of extremes for me. With a presentation that was delivered on Tuesday, that also involved a day of Hell, not baring the heat wave but a shorting out of an electric forklift, the day ended with myself wanting to hide underneath a rock for the rest of the day. That feeling of loss of control was overwhelming, yet I was in the driver’s seat, and it made no sense to me as I tried to navigate home with only one headlight that was dimmed by a faulty module switch under the hood of a newly acquired Pathfinder SUV.

This week I managed to block most of the daily events of work. The highlight was the rush of last minute requests that came from all directions. Other than the Tuesday forklift indecent, the rush and amplitude of demands were unfathomable. I learned how people change on a moments notice when extreme pressure is applied. I also learned that people developed extremely interesting coping mechanisms when dealing with pressure, stress and fatigue. If the heat did not get you, then the chain of command did. The best anyone could was the best they could under the circumstances.

The “Smother With Kindness Rule,” (SMKR) was used extensively during the peak demands periods at work too. I have blogged about this before, where the more angry you get with someone, the more SMKR you apply to them. One person I remark to when the SMKR counts of the synonym “awesome” hit four words per minutes, I humbly asked if I had done something wrong. The reply was more synonyms of the word “greatness.” I now know that person was pissed!

The presentation from Tuesday was, in my mind, an almost complete disaster. I took the hit on the loss of one complete letter grade because I could not get permission on a graphic I wanted to use in the power-point because of possible legal issues. The graphic had a corporate logo in it, and after I was reassured that it was going to be all right, no permission was ever given, so I took it out of the power-point. Yes, I should have had a back-up plan, but I was given the word on faith that it would be all right. (Never bet on faith alone – it will bite you in the ass.) The requirement of the graphic was a pivotal element in my power-point. Even the most trusted and responsible people you know can leave you high and dry out of the water during your moment of need. For that person, it was not a matter that warranted any concerns because of the philosophy that that person lived by: “if it is not profitable, then my time is not here.”  I guess it was charity to that person? Too bad, I will treat in kind when my time is needed.

Next week will be the homeworkicicus maximus of the semester. Three major assignments are due then.  Tonight I rest, tomorrow and for the next five days I work on assignments for my courses. Two are papers, and the other assignment is my big presentation with a group lasting three hours. This is where taking summer classes hurts the ego; you will be outside enjoying your summer days and I will be inside banging away on this keyboard hoping to create the perfect paper and writing the ultimate theses.

Posted in Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, University classes | No Comments »

Butterflies and Sweat – The Three Minute Presentation

July 6th, 2010 Thomasso

Tonight I have to give a presentation as part of my professional communication class . I got the sweat and butterflies going inside my head and stomach as I prepare for the three minute presentation.  Sure, I have done lots of these presentations in the past, and I should be darn good at these, but this one is different. It is not the content that I will be graded on, but the way in which I present myself and the quality of the presentation that will be critiqued.

Some call this torture, while others can deal with this without batting an eyebrow, but I fall somewhere in the middle emotionally with this. I know that I should not put too much into this, but I cannot help it, as it is for marks after all. And marks are what I need; really good marks, as I feel I have being slacking off in the last week or two. I got to see some of the other students do their presentations already, so that helped, but they got the better pick as their talks were allowed to run up to a minute longer than what I have to do today. The extra few minutes is better when you have a lot of information to spew out in just three minutes.

The content is just as weird as the time limit. We have to do what are called action analysis where you identify a problem at your work, or a situation that you deal with on a daily bases and you try to improve it. First you have to pitch it, then create the action analysis report by identifying that there is a problem, then later on you proceed with two additional steps where you find a remedy, and then you fix it, or try to fix it. I am talking, or presenting on, the action analysis tonight and I feel totally unprepared for it.

Posted in Criminology, General, University classes | No Comments »

Getting Evolution Working With ShawMail Under Ubuntu 10.04

July 4th, 2010 Thomasso

This is a very bare-bones How-To guide for getting Shaw Mail to work with Evolution, the default email program that comes stock with Ubuntu. I am using Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid and Evolution 2.28.3 for this guide. I highly doubt that these settings are going to change that much between each version.

Before you begin you may need to find the long address of your server address with Shaw. This depends on what area you live in around Western Canada, and can be found at this link on the Shaw web site. Just find your city, and copy and paste it into the field as shown in this guide. Shaw Server Names.

If you are using the start-up wizard, or you are adding a new address, the steps are pretty much the same. Shaw uses the POP and SMTP for email. Evolution is just as basic as any other proprietary software is, so these steps should be easy follow.

Also, you should have your email account already set up with ShawMail through their online web mail support page, including your email name, password and address. Evolution will not do that for you; you can only set up what you have already with Shaw. If you have Evolution set up, say with another email account, then these settings can be found in Edit -> Preferences -> click, and highlight the email account that you want to edit, or start a new account, and choose Edit.

Step 1.

Your name is really what you want displayed by Evolution. This is not something that you have to have set-up with Shaw. However, your email address is critical, as that is what you should have set-up with Shaw.

Step 2.

Next, set up the POP settings, which is how you download your email from Shaw. Where you see the field called “Server,” that is where you will paste the long address from the link at the ShawMail web page. And for the User Name field, that is the first part of your email address before @shaw, in my example it is different from the Figure shown in Step #1.

Step 3.

This is optional. You can set this for however long each time Evolution checks for emails. You can even set up a wave file to go off when it downloads an email, alerting you that you just received an email.

Step 4.

Setting up the SMTP, for uploading emails that you are sending. Again, paste the long address that you got from the ShawMail Web Page. You need to check off the “Server Requires Authentication” check box, but you do not need to check off the “Remember Password,” unless you do not like typing in your password each time you start Evolution.

The User Name field under Authentication in this Figure is just the name of your account that you listed for Evolution, not ShawMail. This has nothing to do with what you entered with ShawMail, but this name should match what you have entered in “Account Information” field in Step #1.

And that should be it.

The most common mistake I see is when the incorrect information is written down from what was typed in on the Shaw Email Website during the creation of an email account. The user name, pass word and email address must be correct or you will not connect to the Shaw Server.

I really hope that this guide helps anyone out as I know getting good support from any ISP on Linux based operating systems is something less than perfect.

Posted in General, Linux, Photographs, Software | No Comments »

Canada Day – What Does it Mean?

July 1st, 2010 Thomasso

I just did a whole day working on a new vehicle – thank you Diane. I am sore, as I spent most of that time standing in one position, arched over the engine with my head crouched under the hood. The good news is, I think everything looks good and the vehicle might pass through the inspection centre. We have this thing called Air-Care, or as some call it, the “mechanic’s Dream Law” because it force people to do maintenance on their vehicles in order to pass the emissions standards law. I think it is a great money revenue scheme, as there are ways to get around it if your vehicle does not pass the test–for another fee of course.   We can claim with this law that we care about air!

Canada Day, July 1, 2010 making the country about 143 years old.

What is there to celebrate? Well, this depends on who you are, where you are living and probably your age. If you are of Chinese origin, than July 1st is known as the “Day of Shame” because Canada had the Chinese Head Tax during the early part of the last century. If you are aboriginal, as some of my friends are, then they simply do not care and do not recognize Canada as a legitimate state, only the guns, segregation, land rights and poverty represent Canada in their eyes. If you are young, say born after 1990, then Canada day is just another opportunity for a long weekend and holiday to kick off summer with. If you were born between 1940 and 1965, then you would have a stronger appreciation for what Canada is; these are the baby-boomers. If you live in Fort Langley, well, it rained today, and it was not a great day doing the fun outdoor activities.

Personally for me Canada has all the problems that any other nation state has.  It has poverty and other issues related to economics and the care and well being of some its less fortunate citizens. I believe that we are over taxed, our Banks sucks, and the government does not adequately represent the people. But realistically these are minor issues because we are truly fortunate to live in a democratic government that at least is somewhat accountable to the people it servers and is more fare to us than other governments around the world. Any how, it was a great day to work on a vehicle.

Hummm, I sound so negative?

Good night and may the sun shine again soon.

Posted in Bitching about weather, Events, General | No Comments »

Speaking of Family in General Terms – 2010 So Far

June 27th, 2010 Thomasso

This is a post about some of the highlights of breaking points and changes that have occurred in my family, those around me of whom I am genetically attached to. I will not post explicit information about anyone person with details and personal information as I know how some members are very direct about their anonymity. I will respect that here on my blog.

To start off with, I like to congratulate the newest member to the family and to the world, my great (my sister’s, daughter’s daughter) niece. She was born on June 14, 2010 and marks the first of her generation into the new millennium. I really hope that we have left world in good enough shape for her to have all the wonderful opportunities that we have enjoyed in the preceding generations. It will be a tough run for her as my niece and her husband are just starting out themselves, but I am sure they will succeed too and move forward in peace and prosperity. A toast to the next generation and to a new life born into this world.

The heart is an interesting organ of the body. It not only congers up intrinsic values in our everyday language, but it also is considered the bases of the function of life next to breathing. A couple of months ago a brother-in-law had to undergo open heart surgery to fix a faulty valve. In all fairness to universal healthcare in Canada, the problem was fixed within a week of his diagnoses. With the advances in technology, he was discharged from the hospital within a week, and is expected to start working again by this August, and one can only imagine what would have happened if this took place over three decades ago.

An uncle who has had a very prosperous life suffered a stroke several months, and is now starting to recover some his basic motor function again. I spoke with with today on the phone, and was awestruck at the severity and recovery of his stroke. He had one half of his body paralysed and the stroke took away his ability to speak. But since that dreadful moment back in February he has shown great promise of recovery. With the support of his family, he is sure to make a full recovery.

A great uncle has move into a senior’s care facility. This is where time stops for no one and a signal that none of us are getting younger. Although I was never as close as I wanted to be too him, he was an iconic figure in my life. With so much distance between me and him, it is tough to build a bridge and keep the bonds strengthen, but time goes on leaving nothing in its path untouched. I will always have those memories.

The two tornadoes that touched down in Midland Ontario last week were very close to where two of my great aunts live. Midland is sort of my home town. I was very young when we moved from there, but I have lots of family there.

I sit here thinking about myself and the family around me, and how they have impacted me, and how I have impacted all of them. The family has shaped my core values, but as I leave the bonds of the family, and embarked on my own journey, my core values shifted greatly as my trajectory through life goes on. An English professor once taught me that this process is called existentialism, and that it is significant for each person, and as a significant event happens in one’s life, this existentialism will change creating a whole new set of core values for one’s self. Perhaps one should be mindful of this and make a significant effort not to forget the change in core values because this could also lead to a loss of other connections made from the distant past.

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The Foot Hurts Like Hell

June 24th, 2010 Thomasso

While at class this afternoon, I stubbed my toe. Sure, you are thinking to yourself, big deal, but I did not realize how bad it was until I got out of class and sat down at the park on campus and took off my sock to have a good inspection. I put a good size gash on my big toe—it hurts. Actually, I think it hut more when I looked it than it did while I was sitting in class thinking about it.

A thought about why, nearly four hours after the accident, my brain told me that the toe now hurts beyond a normal pain threshold of stubbing ones toe should. The more I thought about it, the more it made me wonder just how much effort I was putting into thinking about my toe. Survival mode seemed to have kick in at that moment because I started wondering if the injury could been worse than it really was, and would this mean going beyond the band-aid solution and actually heading down to the medical clinic to seek a second opinion, or a bigger band-aid.

I took the male macho option and dealt with the pain as is. I drove home, favouring my toe all the way. My solution was to drive barefoot and let my toe “breath,” perhaps allowing it to heal faster, but it did ease the pain a little.

I kept thinking how I got the injury, and how I could have prevented it. I stubbed in on the stairs while walking up them between the second and third floors of C-building. I was carrying a full pack of books, probably about 5 Kgs in weight, and my lap-top, another 3 Kgs, in my right hand. So I formulated my problem out in a simple flow-chart.

a) I should have taken the stairs. Should have thought about taking the elevator instead, it is obviously safer than the stairs. Screw the health and fitness idea.

b) As soon as I stubbed the toe, I should have stopped and tended to it. Maybe ice, band-aid at that point would have made my time sitting at the desk in the classroom better and more bearable.

c.0) Should have gone home and used my injury card. I never left a class before, ever, using that one.

c.5) Grin and bear it! Let the pain flow through. Enjoy the pain—it tells me that i am alive.

No matter which way I think about it, the toe hurts.

Posted in Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off

Clouds on High – When Did Summer Start?

June 23rd, 2010 Thomasso

The funny thing about clouds, you either love them, or you hate them, there is very little in between. When I looked on my calendar last week and saw that the summer solstice was near, I was excited. When I looked out the window, I had my doubts that summer was on its way, as I put my sweater on to go outside.

Since then, a week to be exact, the official start of summer has gone by, but the shift between summer and spring like days still bounces back and forth as each new day could bring any type of weather you can think of. Last week, Friday morning, it could have snowed it was so cool out. Today, I thought about turning on the air conditioner.

I told my co-workers that from now on the days are getting shorter until winter. That killed the moment.  They hate me now. Oh well, c’est la vie!

Still the clouds keep rolling in, and even now, with a fairly warm day, as soon as the sun is hidden from the clouds the cool air returns. “Clouds, I love you, but sometime you gotta go…”

Posted in Bitching about weather, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off