I have not been a Bell customer in decades. As a third party ISP customer Bell has been a thorn in my side for years as they conspire to not provide the legally mandated service levels that is required of them.
However, they might be worth a look.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Tales from Telus: The home team
Given the disgusting current state of price gouging in Canada's wireless market I needed to make a plan and do some research. I knew what I wanted from a provider:
- Value for money: Call time minutes and texting is meaningless in a world of smartphones. Data would be the only thing that mattered.
- Network reliability
- Customer service
- Ease of use to self manage accounts
Tales from Telus: a descent into madness
I have been a
Telus customer since 1997. I even recently found a rate plan brochure outlining
their offerings at a time when the dollar was worth (adjusted for inflation)
36% more than it is today.
Monday, January 27, 2014
The Hockey Punks
The dog had grabbed her miniature tire on a rope and loped
back to me, fiercely flinging it from side to side and growling, even as she
smacked herself in the head with a piece of hardened rubber. It was dark as it
is on a winter afternoon and the community league ice rink to the side of us
was unlit, the ice closed. Two figures were on the ice when an angry voice
shouted “Get off the ice it’s closed!”
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Why I am still here
2013 might have been the last year of my life. The crushing weight of endless debt, declining health and no inclination to change it, and a soul-sucking job only reminded me of how pointless and meaningless my life had become. I had a lost all sense of purpose or direction and existed only to serve the needs of a family I had come to resent.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
the family joke
My 16 year old basement dweller stepson came up the stairs and rummaged in the kitchen. He slammed bread into the toaster and turned to me annoyed. "I can't believe I have to wait for toast"
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Loss
I have always had a morbid obsession with my own passing.
Staring out of a bus window I would imagine in great detail the very second my
life would end, and it would leave me gasping with anxiety and the sense I had
glimpsed into an abyss. I am terrified of that inevitable moment and have spent
the last year being reminded it is closer every day.
The news that Ryan
Davis of Giant Bomb had died suddenly, at age 34, and mere days after marrying
the love of his life hit me like a ton of brinks, inexplicably. The loss of a
complete stranger to me, a man I once stood five feet from and didn’t have the
courage to introduce myself, broke me emotionally. Earlier in the week I
learned that my mother, who lives on the other side of the country, is no
longer suffering the delayed effects of multiple severe head traumas as
originally told, but is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Having watched her
father die from this hideous disease as a skeleton of a man; drooling,
incontinent and unrecognizable, I am now in the horrible position of wishing my
mother would die early, so I can remember her as she is, not as a shadow.
My wife held me as we both wept, sleeping in the basement as
my father tended to my mother upstairs in our bedroom. My parents and I walked
the dog the next morning and mom was clear and aware. I would learn later this
was the same day Ryan died.
After they left to continue what would likely be my mother’s
last road trip, my wife and I made desperate plans to continue cycling our debt
to enable at least one of us to visit them every three months or so. Debt is a
massive cause of stress in my life and I have no ability to manage stress, only
suppress it. Our debt often seems insurmountable.
Our 4 year old domestic car was (wrongly) diagnosed with a
dying water pump, covered under warranty. The correct diagnosis was the un-warranted
alternator, a round-trip ticket worth of repairs.
I made the mistake of watching the horrid Man of Steel to
distract from the reality of my mother’s illness, and sobbed at a poorly told
tale of mother and adopted sons.
We struggled with my step-son and his self-contempt and
inability to connect with education or other people.
The morning of July 8th it was revealed that Ryan
Davis was gone. He had died at home on July 3. Dozens of eulogies sprung up
with moving statements of love. The entire gaming community seemed to grieve as
a one, for a face and voice that had been ingrained into our lives for years.
His public persona seemed as close to his private persona as it could be. He
seemed both quick to anger but quick to laugh. He loved his work and worked
hard at loving life. Photos and video of the raucous occasion of his wedding
had been posted only days before. It was incomprehensible this larger than life
man who appeared to have life by the balls would be taken so suddenly and
without warning.
I sobbed uncontrollably against the kitchen counter, with a
deep ache in my chest. I envied and admired Ryan, as I do so many. I struggle
with depression and self-loathing. Somewhere along the near decade of my
relationship and pressures of raising kids I lost the ability to have fun. I
lost joy. I live vicariously through the lives of those I admire, most often
through podcasts, it seems. I often fall asleep, soothed by the sounds of
conversation, of voices engaged with each other in a way that is sorely lacking
in my own disconnected life.
The reality that I can no longer hide or deny neither my
mortality nor that of those around me is sobering. Death has permeated all of
my interactions online and off in the last year and I find myself feeling terrified
and alone, crying in the dark. I contain and crush down my emotions, bottling
them up until I can hold no more. I am struggling to find balance in the
understanding that loss from this point forward will be an ever growing
companion.
My grief is complicated and messy, partially containing the
loss of an admired personality along with the extended and horrible future that
awaits my mother. I look to my own life and find it lacking with little to no
idea how to fill it. I am depressed and genuinely sad, and often filled with
regret.
I work the tools therapy has given me to try and control the
depression. I have started my mornings by reading aloud a post-it that has a
simple phrase and I try to believe it. My wife called me on my bullshit the
first time when directly after looking into my own eyes and stating “I accept
myself completely right now” I turned to her and said “I hate looking at myself”.
So I said it again and bit back a self-attack waiting at the
tip of my tongue.
The Giant Bomb team assembled a podcast
that I believe will mark the moment they recognized their work and their lives
would never be the same. They aired their very personal grief and struggles
with moving on and they opened their hearts to remember their friend.
This past week has been a forced march into the next stage
of adulthood, where death is no longer the ephemeral impossibility of youth,
but something to be expected and planned for. It will make re-finding joy more
difficult. I tell my wife at every parting I love her and am grateful for her,
because it could at any time be the last. I am trying to be more grateful for
friends and family. I am trying not to hate myself.
I am trying not to be afraid.
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