Ops-Normal.org

Software.
Everyone expects people to be Beta testers these days, and not a d@mn thing to be done about it.
And they all try to force you to buy new stuff to work their new stuff. Backwards-compatibility is out the window, like 'putin-style out the 32nd floor window'.

Just discovered I could not get an Amazon order sent to the Post Office.
It appears plastic food storage containers are dangerous goods.
The idiots at Canada Post have obviously got some AI that finds the acronym BPA in the title....
...except it actually says 'BPA-Free'.

Whenever Mrs Hydro sends a 'care package' to our USA family she includes a packet of dog treats for the canine. These are always declared, and we've never had any problem with them. However, the latest (kangaroo jerky) was removed because it 'contained dairy products'.

I only order by the bottle, have I got a problem?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67993025

Woody wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 18, 2024 11:19 pm

I only order by the bottle, have I got a problem?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67993025

I'll see your bottle and raise you a 5L box.

PP

Remember, there is no safe level of government advice - try to avoid it completely.
Failing that, read it more slowly, and only consume it with friends, who will cheerfully take the p!ss out of it and avoid you taking it too seriously.

Woody wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 18, 2024 11:19 pm

I only order by the bottle, have I got a problem?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-67993025

No, most restaurants will happily sell you a bottle.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a Frontal Lobotomy!

The effects are similar.

Good to see that there’s members who appreciate proper measures of wine

A measure of wine in a Catalan mountain-country restaurant is a bottle - if it's a local red wine it's usually free. (Included with the meal: three courses €12.)

My shipment of "Dangerous goods", the BPA-free food storage containers that Canada Post refused my request to have them sent by...

..is now being shipped by Amazon's choice of carrier, which is.......Canada Post.

Some years ago bought a petrol engined driven hedge cutter on line which was delivered by the post office, when I put it together it was too heavy for me so the supplier told me to send it back using the agreement they had with the post office. I contacted the post office and they refused to accept it, I gave them the details of the returns agreement but they said they couldn't accept it off me because it had a petrol engine, I explained it was still as new and petrol hadn't been anywhere near it.They agreed that they had a returns agreement with the supplier but that wasn't the problem, they couldn't take the petrol engine off me because I didn't have a licence to give it to them! After a few conversations with various people in the post office me and the nice guy at the supplier said borrox and shipped it with a competitor on next day delivery.The supplier was quite annoyed by then and I wonder if the post office got any more work.

The Post Office: We do Letters, Parcels, Documents, and Stupid.
Oh boy, do we do Stupid. We're known for it!

5G Home Internet

My 5G home internet is being very intermittent.
While trying to stream the NFL playoff game through my FireStick and browse the interwebs lots of pinwheeling at best or at worse, error messages: Not Able To Connect.
When SpeedTest will actually connect to a server the pings seem OK and download speeds are about average, for me anyway, but nowhere near the advertised speeds.
The culprit seems to be the upload speeds which range from .01MPS to under 2 MPS.
Fortunately, a while back I bought an inexpensive powered antenna off the river place,which will get the digital OTA stations, including the ones carrying the playoff games.
Only problem is that some games are only carrird by cable channels that can only be accessed through my streaming service.
I have just about given up on calls to customer service to complain about lack of usefulness, although if I want to put up with hold times and maneuvering through the phone tree with having to reestablish my identity with every rep I get transfered to, I can usually get a credit on my next bill.

PP

Where possible I use wired stuff for data, way more consistent than this new-fangled wireless nonsense.

When I ditched cable, "cut the cord", I was paying in the neighborhood of $100/mo and ever rising for internet alone and bill was over $210/mo including cable TV.
Now I pay $30/mo for the 5G internet and ~$100/mo for TV streaming service. About 50% of the TV fee is for access to local pro sports telecasts.
Several providers are tearing up the streets and snarling traffic to install fiber.
I haven't checked on their pricing yet as I don't think the service is available to me yet.I think part of my 5G problems is that I was initially unable to get the service as they were slow to roll it out even though the advertised the Hell out of the service.

PP

Out here in the middle of nowhere, my internet provider, who lives 3 doors down the road, finished laying fibre about 2 years ago.
It's a lot easier locallly as he just drove a cut-and-cover trencher fitted to a small tractor slowly down the grass shoulder, with loops up on poles every so often.
I am on an aerial pointed at his main aerial, so I get about 80MB/s, and thus don't really need fibre.
I pay C$86/m, which is the cheapest around, no limits (unlike the big boys), and basically instant service, though I've only lost service twice. Once was a hurricane where I was the first to be fixed after the Emergency Services, and the other he'd fixed within the hour.

For wireless it depends a lot on the delivery method. If it's a point to point link that you're not sharing then it's probably OK. If it's a shared frequency then you're going to get significant slowdowns when others are also trying to use the service. Same is true of shared WiFi. Wired connectivity isn't 100% either - when the pole in the adjacent street collapsed, we lost power and internet for 12 hours while they installed a new pole.

I figure that as I work from home, paying a bit more for reliable internet is worth it, given the $$$ I save on not having to commute (or own a car for the purpose). When I lived in the UK, I had a redundant feed - cable and a DSL link, and had everything set up to share the two. Not seen the need for that here, although I should investigate costs associated with dropping the bandwidth on the Xfinity cable (so it's cheaper) and putting in an AT&T fibre feed alongside it to top it back up again. However, they both come from the same pole network, so chances are I'd lose both at the same time for most faults.

The Canadian Liberal Cabinet starts a retreat today, where they assure us that Economics and Affordability will be top of the agenda.
They'll be having Champagne at every meeting.




Francois-Philippe Champagne is the Minister for Science and Industry