EnMax follies

I see that EnMax is a bureaucrat’s dream, and a consumer’s nightmare. No surprise for a government owned entity.

A Fellow I Know reports what happens if one renovates a house in Calgary, installs a new electric meter base and panel and wants that service “energized” and the old one disconnected. Buddy foolishly thinks that by combining the requests so they are done by the same truck and crew at the same time EnMax will be more efficient and save money.

Buddy is an idiot. EnMax has zero interest in efficiency.

First buddy phones EnMax and gets referred to the meter inventory clerk who says she cannot initiate an order until he goes to the EnMax site and requests a new “Site ID”. Can she just issue a new site ID right there and then, on the phone? No. Why not? Who knows. On requesting a new site ID one gets an email from EnMax saying it will take a few days.

Really? It takes a few days for a computer to verify that a given address exists and to add a “1” to the last site ID issued? The meter clerk cannot be allowed to have a computer terminal linking to the computer that does site IDs?

Next, buddy gets a voice mail from the meter clerk saying maybe they can do it on the old site ID as a simple change of meter, but buddy will have to talk to “Planning” or “Projects” or some such creature. Buddy does and is told the only solution is to wait for a new Site ID. It seems that a site ID is actually a “meter location id” and a location on a garage wall 30 feet from the old location on the house wall is sufficiently different as to amount to a new site, with a new ID which will be done “shortly”.

Buddy says that everyone at EnMax that he dealt with was polite and as helpful as possible and clearly constrained by the EnMax system.

Business madness

I see that Ace Bakery is insane.

My wife brought home from the Superstore a loaf of Aces’s Ciabatta, which I have always liked.

By chance I looked at the bag and spotted a fairly prominent “No GMO” note. On closer look I also found a “no genetically engineered ingredients” disclaimer.

If Ace and the Superstore want to suck up to leftist nutjobs, or actually believe this GMO Luddite nutjobbery, that’s their privilege. It’s my privilege to refuse to buy Ace bread, and that’s what I will do.

If one adopts leftist claptrap, one has chosen to side with the enemy, and to hell with them. If Ace thinks the left will ever do anything for them or their business because of this thing they have done, they are crazy. The left will eat them as well as everyone else if it has a chance.

Calgary Restaurants

I see that Calgary Restaurateurs are still mostly pig ignorant hillbilly clowns.

Strolling down 17th Avenue from 14th street to 4th, then down 4th to 23rd was a sore trial.

First I stopped at Home and Away at 17th and 13th. Pretty much empty at 11:40 AM on a gorgeous sunny Saturday.  I asked for and got a seat in the shade on the equally empty patio. I asked for and got a seat between the speakers to avoid the hellish sound system. Didn’t help. It took a long time to get served and the server did not know what the rotating tap beers were. She went to find out. A new one turned up and she knew the names of the beers but not where they were from. I gambled and won on a good IPA out of Vancouver. I declined to order food, drank my beer, paid my bill and left, not being able to stand the “music”.

From then on every single eatery on the south, shady, side of 17th had shrieking, howling speakers. I do not believe that any of them, or any other restaurant in this benighted hellhole for hospitality, offer a quiet space or room. Their owners all believe that we are extremely anxious to hear young man shouting rhythmically about fuckin’ hos or rockers screaming tunes most of us have heard a million times, and didn’t much like after the first fifty hearings. And they think we want it loud, good and loud.

Except for Starbucks, which seemed quiet, and which was full. Do you lumpheads get it? Quiet and full. Starbucks even has the burden of shitty coffee and inedible baked goods to overcome.

Back when I worked in the restaurant business my manager explained grimly that if I was comfortable then my customers were not, that he cared about the comfort of the customers and did not care about mine, that the customers did not want to hear the crap I called music, nor did they care if I was hot and sweaty from working hard, I should keep the heat turned up and shut up.

Finished at La Boulangerie which was bearable as for sound. Great coffee, lousy lunch. Sausage roll with carmelized onions and red peppers. It should have been microwaved then the pastry crisped up in  a hot oven. Instead I got cold sausage, and soggy pastry, with cold onions and peppers feeling slimy. The waitress who brought it out to me looked at me like I was a lunatic when I asked her for cutlery and literally told me to get it myself.

If restaurateurs are aiming to keep the bulk of the over 40 crowd out they are doing everything right.

Calgary Herald

I see that there is a very bad article supposedly about Calgary Marathon road closures at http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/reminder-of-road-closures-for-sundays-scotiabank-calgary-marathon

It has some quite stupid and basic journalistic mistakes, as follows-

 

1. no details, little info – journalists, being mostly pig ignorant lefties, and lazy to boot, have still not gotten the idea that the internet is an essentially free distribution system. No print, no ink, no physical delivery. As a result they are still cheese paring cheapskates with data. Where, you pea brained lunatic, are the roads closed? Which roads and for how long.

 

2. A further result of short articles is less sidebar space for ads.

3. Then the Herald gives a third party link and actually sends a customer away. That’s right you stupid reader, if you really want info, fuck off and go somewhere else for it.

4. Finally, the third party link does not work. The Calgary Marathon site is no doubt small and it is swamped. This does not make the user annoyed at Calgary Marathon, t makes the user righteously annoyed at the incompetent buffoons at the Herald.

I weep for the brilliance of the Herald’s thought process and look forward to the day of their demise.

City of Calgary, Water, Sewer, Roads, Haddon Road SW

I see that once again Haddon Road is collapsing into various sinkholes.

The City has been uselessly screwing around with this street for years. They dig it to install utilities, then re-dig it over and over again to fix them. They apparently do all of this very badly indeed.

Two photos for your viewing pleasure.

One, a sinkhole right next to a grate in the massive fairly new storm sewer under Haddon. That sewer clearly leaks, has water infiltrating, which carries in material, which causes collapse and sinkhole. Everybody not utterly stupid knows that, but when the signs of sinkhole first appeared the City slapped a bit of asphalt on and ignored the underlying problem. The thing is probably 4 feet square and 4 feet deep; dangerous as hell

Two, almost right across the street, a big sunken area with one patch, and Jesus save us, another patch on top. Two loads of civil servant dunderheads still ignoring the problem.

Is the real problem the bottomless incompetence of City staff, or their bottomless featherbedding, screwing up repairs so they can come back over and over again?

 

CTS

I see that there are still hardly any bus stop pullouts, even when there is room for one, and even when roads are rebuilt. Nor are bus stops apparently located with any thought to the convenience of drivers. They’d be in the middle of major intersections if CTS thought they could get away with it.

Do you think this is intentional because the city hall socialists hate cars, love mass transit run by unions and will do anything possible to decrease the utility of the private auto forcing us onto buses? Is there any minor unpleasantness they won’t use to achieve their ends?

City of Calgary, Traffic Division, Energy-efficient street lighting

What is the true saving from the newly installed LED so called Energy-efficient street lighting? Net of capital costs of the install, real cost, not airy fairy governmental lying accounting.

I’m guessing there is no net saving but rather a huge loss.

The Genius of Rona

The Genius of Rona has decreed that Rona shall carry large bolt pins for 14″ to 18″ hinge straps, but shall not carry those hinge straps. The bolt pins fit nothing that Rona carries.

Because the consumer can go screw himself?

Because Rona mangers are a bunch of metro-sexual millenniums who wouldn’t know a hawk from a handsaw?

Both?

Lowes, you are idiots for buying these idiots, they cannot be fixed, just killed.

Calgary Public Library

Wandering about the net I found a book by Mike Cernovich, “Gorilla Mindset” which is, per Amazon, “the most successful non-fiction book launch of 2015, immediately hitting best-seller lists”.

The CPL does not have it. I think Cernovich might be called a rightist. The CPL is a foul nest of lefties. It carries every creepy leftist idiot book ever published, often multiple copies.

Civil Servants

I drove Medicine Hat to Calgary yesterday. At Gleichen I took 901 to 22x. The turnoff is marked with signs saying Important Intersection, Highway 901 and East Gleichen.

Sure, that will tell tourists and inexperienced drivers that 901 is a good, newish, road to the south end of Calgary that bypasses the horrors of Deerfoot and saves time.

Remember, Civil Servants do not care.