Archive for the ‘Stupid People’ Category

The Most Brutal, Most Honest Review Me Post Ever

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

While a lot of the PayPerPost items force you to be postive about a product in order to qualify for the payout, Review Me does not ask for that. You can be completely honest with any kind of reviews for anybody, and I found one that made me laugh at the end.

Who did this? None other than a fellow blogger, and also my client (one of the bigger accounts!), John Chow!

He was asked to serve up a review for this scam of a pyramid scheme, and he cleanly exposes the dark sides of it - about how ONLY the guy who owns the website will leech off your efforts while chances are you won’t get any back!

This review is a MUST-READ, just so you can read the last sentence on John’s review - and I won’t reveal it here! Read for yourself about this scam!

Share/Save/Bookmark

A Special Video for Blondes, Dedicated to Jane May

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

I got this hilarious video from a friend of mine - a video of how the whole “dumb blonde” thing got started. And I’d like to present this video to Jane May, a fellow blogger who is a gorgeous blonde and NOT stupid like this one, but nonetheless blonde.

This text is replaced by the Flash movie.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Stinky People and Public Hygiene Standards

Friday, May 4th, 2007

I am hereby making a motion to make a certain degree of standards on odour to allow for admittance in to buildings and other public places that are NOT in open air.

The background behind this is :

I often work out of Blenz Cafe because they have free wireless internet and a great atmosphere. It is pretty much my second or third office.

A few days ago I was there working, burning the late-night oil at around 10:30 or so. I suddenly noticed a severe odour, mainly of cigarettes blended with body odour. It was basically like a fucking ashtray, except it was like you had your nose right into one.  It was this old degenerate of a guy who looks like he fought in the second world war, and smells so intensely all over of cigarettes and other things that it was just outrageous. Seriously, I could smell him from my seat while he was at the counter getting his drink.

After he sat down next to me (dirty old rat has a laptop, so he sits at the high-tables with the stools, along with the power plugs, intended just for laptop users like myself) that was pretty much it. He was sitting 4 seats down but it did not matter. The stink was unbearable it was giving me a headache.

Last time, I just went home because there were no other spots open.

This time, I had just gotten here, and the guy walked in and sat down at the same spot so I had to move to another spot. It’s not exactly comfortable being on a couch with a low coffee table while typing on your laptop.

Thanks to his stink, I am forced into this situation.

They should really have an odour detector and set a standard for admittance. If you stink, you cannot get in the door.  That’s how it should be. 

Share/Save/Bookmark

The Worst Restaurant Experience in a long time - The Elbow Room

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

elbow-room-wall.jpg

I usually don’t do the whole restaurant review thing - I just go there and enjoy my food with my friends or by myself, and I couldn’t be bothered to take my camera everywhere. So you probably won’t ever see me telling you about what restaurant was fabulous. But as marketers all understand, 1 bad experience will impact the business much more than series of positive influences, and I intend to exert that force to use.

I went to the Elbow Room which is on the corner of Davie st. and Seymour Street, on the South-side of Davie street. It’s a crumby looking diner with old decor from the 60s and such, and it has a very unique rustic friendly-looking atmosphere. But the goodness ends right there.

The moment I walked in, I saw these “Rules” on the wall. I’m sure this is intended to make the place interesting, but when they actually stick with the rules, that’s when the line is crossed.

Rule #1 : We only bring you your first cup of coffee. If you want somebody to bring you a second one, get a butler!

This rule made me chuckle, sort of. I don’t drink coffee anyhow. Whatever.

So up until this point, my impression was that this must be one of those low-cost restaurants that operate on a simple, partially-self-served basis, like a hybrid of a fast food place and a real restaurant.

My server, who was this raspy-sounding old woman, came up to me. I got the menu, took a look. The prices were NOT diner prices - some of the egg benedicts were $10 or more, which is more expensive than Milestone’s benedicts (which were under $10). This was actually pretty pricy compared to the shitty decor and the ugly staff they had, as well as faded and chipped chairs/tables they had. I was shocked, but since I sat down, I decided to try it anyways. I ordered the Karen Benedict, which had bacon, baby shrimp, and avocados on it. It was $10.00. She asked me if I wanted hashbrowns for an extra $1.00. I said no - for me it’s just wrong to be so cheap with sides. When she asked me if I wanted coffee, I said “no, just water please.”

My water doesn’t come. The server walks by 10 minutes later, and remarks “Oh you didn’t get your water yet!”, making obnoxiouisly clear that she’s telling me I need to get my own water. Then I realized, in the middle of the restaurant, they have a water machine. So I walked up, and grabbed a water, after waiting for another lady who was getting grumpy at the poor service as well.

Rule #2 : You want water? What do you mean, bottled or Perrier? Tap? Oh please. If WE bring you the water, there will be a small charge.

That came into my sight from the rule books. The whole point of going to a restaurant is to enjoy food without having to serve oneself. It’s the convenience that I go for, and that’s why I pay quadruple the cost of the food ingredients put in.

elbow-room-rules.jpg

The benedict finally came. Literally, the benedict came, and nothing else. I figured they’ll put a toast or something on the side, but nothing. just a sorry-ass looking benedict, which looked more like a whipped-cream topped dessert because of how little hollandaise sauce they put on it. It was dry, and the bacon was overcooked. It was a pathetic benedict. I go to a lot of restaurants, and coming from me that’s a huge call.

The bill came to $10.60 with taxes. My credit card slip read $11.00 as the total. I can’t justify tipping any more than 40 cents when I had to grab my own water and then be served an incredibly expensive dish compared to what food was given.

The Elbow Room is a restaurant that I will label with poor service, poor presentation, bad food, expensivce prices, frugal ingredients, and nothing more. I suppose I should be glad they at least accepted credit cards.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Web Hosting Providers to Use or Avoid

Wednesday, April 18th, 2007

When I deal with clients who have existing web hosting services through other companies throughout, it’s often quite ridiculous how they operate. I’m a web designer/developer, and I have a strong emphasis on what should be a standard part of a good web hosting and domain hosting service, and here’s a few to list :

  • A proper control panel for account management.
  • In case of a web hosting company, cPanel is a MUST.
  • phpMyAdmin for MySQL should be a given. I’m not setting that up.
  • Web folder protection methods should be in there. I shouldn’t have to generate my own .htaccess and .htpassword files.
  • Regular backup on the hosting server’s end. It’s for their own good. What if the place burns down, or, though highly unlikely, one of their servers blows up a hard drive? This also helps me because I had to request emergency restores on some files when my FTP or Dreamweaver syncrhonization messed up.

Just so you all know clearly, I use BlueFur Web Hosting for ALL of my hosting services (including my own site) and NetFirms.Ca for domain registration. The two companies I choose have all the features and support I require to make my job easier, and my clients’ lives easier.

However. The sad part is, there are so many companies out there that completely lack it. Here are a few examples :

  • Does not have a centralized backend - things are sort of tacked on top of each other. To get to the controlpanel, you do one thing, but the control panel is not a cPanel. So to get to the phpMyAdmin, you need to go to another login URL.
  • Does not have phpMyAdmin installed by default. It outrages me when they say “here’s where you can download phpMyAdmin to install it.”
  • Does not have a control panel whatsoever (I’ve seen 1 company like this).

The companies that did not have the above requirements are listed here, as far as I can remember (I did not put links on it - dont’ want to give them backlinks at all) :

  • www.radiant.net
  • www.canadawebhosting.com
  • www.netnations.com
  • www.smartt.com

The highlight of the day is www.smartt.com.

Here’s the reply email when I - completely perplexed after attempting to log on through their website - asked them where I can log in to the control panel so I can set up the database and access the phpMyAdmin :

Hi Jeff

There is no control panel available to create the database. If you provide us with the following information we will create the database for you.

Database name:
Database user name:
Database password:

Once the database set up is completed you can manage it by using phpMyAdmin which can be downloaded from:

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php

Thank You

So here was my very polite response back to them :

That’s a ridiculous hosting service.

I just emailed my client, and as per my working contracts, unless they are willing to pay me a surcharge to do the extra labour of installing phpMyAdmin, they need to switch to bluefur hosting, which, in my opinion, is a proper hosting company with a proper backend all automated.

The 2nd option to divert the above scenario is that you install everything (database/username:pearlite, password:f1xtures) including the the phpMyAdmin and let me know.

I’ll await for the first one to make a decision.

Thank you for your help.

The biggest joke? www.smartt.com has, on their top banner, “We Offer Complete Internet Services”.  Pfffffffft!

Share/Save/Bookmark