In keeping with the JOCUAMAOE trend… (click on the image)
Category: Rants
Things that piss me off.
How I learnt to love myself and stop supporting Telkom
My friend Vhata says I must not moan in my blog so I’ve decided to try and make this post as positive as I humanly possible. However, let me start by saying that Telkom is a filthy disease ridden whore.
I could go and explain why I feel this way but honestly I can feel myself getting angry just trying to think of where to start… The important bit is this: I refuse to continue to support Telkom.
Until recently there really wasn’t much of an option when it came to broadband in South Africa. Telkom’s ADSL was the “best” solution, but like I said earlier, Telkom is a dirty whore…
Since Telkom owns all last mile copper the only other option is wireless. Traditionally the wireless market in SA was run illegally by unlicensed operators until a few got licences and the incompetent dogshow that ensued caused everyone, myself included, to decide that wireless was not a feasible solution (yet).
Enter, stage right, Amobia: a wireless communications company partnering with Frogfoot, a company I already have immense respect for.
Besides the pedigree that Amobia inherits from its Frogfoot connections, it’s also a company that is making a marked difference to the lives of the South Africans where it means the most… They’re connecting under-privileged schools; initially for internal communication, Open Source downloads and email, but ultimately to the Internet. They’ve done 35 and are on their way to 100. Not bad for a company a fraction of a fraction of the size of Telkom.
I’ve watched Amobia from afar for a while and two days ago, in the midst of another glorious Telkom blunder that left me discovering that Telkom’s systems really are a mystery even to themselves, I decided to jump ship and order an Amobia connection. Yesterday (the very next day) I had a technician in my house making sure that I would be able to connect properly and I expect to complete the paperwork tomorrow. It costs less per than Telkom’s ADSL and I know that Amobia doesn’t oversell their bandwidth so I should have a flawless, connected future, sans pigs, rats and filthy whores.
I’ll keep you posted.
Why some people just dont "get" the "Internet"…
(Alternative Title: When not to call someone a racist)
I am increasingly amazed at the interweb. People seem to not realise that the world is rapidly becoming more and more online to the extent that it’s probably likely that no matter who you are, your name, or your bussiness’ name is being Googled on a daily basis. Which brings me to the guy who called me a racist.
A while back a few of us went to a restaurant called Nonna Lina‘s for lunch. The entire event sucked. The food was bad, the service was bad and the owner/manager overcharged us. I was so appauled I wrote a very strongly worded email to the restaurant and BCC’d a bunch of my friends.
Now a little bit about expectations… What did I expect from them? We’ll, to be honest I expected a reply… maybe even a sorry. I would have been very impressed if they had said something like “Hey, sorry you had a crap experience, won’t you come and have lunch on us and see if we can make things right.”
Alas there was nothing… not even a nasty reply. (Actually their first email address bounced so I had to find another which didn’t bounce, so I know they got it)
So obviously they didn’t care… My little email and my 50 friends didn’t count. Then, a few weeks later, I posted the email on my blog.
So now I am the 3rd result in Google for Nonna Lina.
A month goes by and a few days ago I get an email alerting me to a new comment on the story. It’s from the owner. I assume he Googled his restaurant’s name and got a little fright… but not enough of a fright to apologize… instead he writes a badly constructed list of excuses, demeaning my own ability to discern good food from bad food. Insists that their shocking food is true Italian Fare… the fact that 11 people found their food disgusting must mean that I run in very plebby social circles.
Then he strangely tells me that I should talk more… weird… I think what he’s trying to say is that we should have spoken to him then instead of writing about it on the internet… except, he forgets, we tried to talk to him but he wouldn’t listen and instead walked outside and started smoking.
Then, as if all of this wasn’t enough, he calls me a racist because I said that his waiter’s English was bad and we struggled to communicate with him. I must point out that his email had shocking English too. So now I’m a racist who doesn’t like Italian people… I must tell that to my Italian friends. Also, I’m constantly ripping off my girlfriend about her funny colloquialisms. Dammit, I must be a racist.
Actually, it had never occurred to me that his waiter was black until he brought it up.
Can you spot the two faced bitch?
So, someone recently pointed me to some random girl’s blog about how she doesn’t like it when people rip off George Bush… she feels that we don’t have the life experiences to know what it takes to run a country and so therefore we should just shut up. Besides the fact that she is patently wrong and by her argument the only people fit to criticise bush would be other presidents, she is also, sad to say, a two faced bitch.
From her flickr site
Ahhhhh, man… so touching…. look how her heart is touched by the poor disabled child…. Someone like that would never make fun of disabled people on her blog…
Oh shit, wait…
From her blog
Oh no. You. Didn’t!.
Paris Hilton would be so proud.
PS. I’m not giving this bitch any linkage… I’m sure she has a cellphone, if she wants to be famous she can use it like Paris.
Things that are currently pissing me off
Ok, this is the first in what will probably become a regular thing — Me ranting about things that piss me off… In the interests of all things sane I’ve decided to keep a list and then once in a while write a post, include all of them and call it done. Also, please note, I’m pretty sure my language wont stay family friendly.
Scientifically formulated Mr Muscle
Ok, basically this rant could essentially be categorised as bullshit fluff copy. From the actual Mr Muscle advertisement “Mr Muscle is scientifically formulated…” Oh.My.God! It is SCIENTIFICALLY formulated… It must be so much better than the UNSCIENTIFICALLY formulated stuff I’m using currently. Maybe it’s fictionally formulated using every second word in the seminal paper on the topic, Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs And Ham. I realise that people buy into pseudo-science garbage, but how much longer must we continue to dumb down the public.
Honourable mentions go to the the radio ad for a night club in Cape Town called Coup d’état. One line goes something like “Elevate your mind and lift your soul in our …” ARE YOU STARTING A GOD DAMNED CULT IN YOUR NIGHT CLUB? If not, please stop talking like someone who’s about to hand out the cool-aid laced with god juice so we can all go “home” via the space ship hiding behind Hale-Bopp.
Mobile “Content”
I think for quite a while now my number one pet hate is, and will probably continue to be, mobile “content”… and I put the word “content” in quotes because really, how god damned retarded has the world got that we actually pay money for someone to tell us what our name “really” means or whether your boyfriend’s name and your name = true love and picket fences. It’s a fucking equation… a pseudo mathematical random equation that some coder probably came up with in about 3 minutes. You’re better off flipping a coin and at least at the end of the coin flip you still have your R5. I’m not even going to talk about how stupid it is making serious life decisions based on a friggen SMS… Didn’t you people read MacBeth?
I think I might just come up with my own set of mobile content just to see how retarded the public really is. How about this: “The are you going to die tomorrow?” Quiz? Just sms “DieTomorrow” to 66677 and we’ll tell you whether you’re going to die tomorrow. Of course the service will always reply with a “No” and I’ll always be right… and on the occasion that I’m wrong, who gives a fuck, you’ll be dead.
Then of course there is … mobile porn… porn, on your phone. 3cm x 4cm of porn, on your phone. I understand that most of the people buying this stuff probably don’t have internet or are just so incredibly vacuous that they can’t figure out where to find porn on the internet, but still, it’s porn, on your phone. Pictures of naked woman, ON YOUR PHONE? I’m actually too annoyed for words.
I honestly hope that the only demographic stupid enough to spend money this way are so incredibly stupefied by the testosterone pumping through their voice-breaking, pimply-faced bodies that an act as retarded as wasting money on 100 pixel wide pictures of nude girls is somehow justified by the temporary retardation otherwise known as puberty.
Then we have the “oh my god, how stupid do you have to be to enter these things” competitions. This famous golfer can be quite a tiger, can you unscramble the letters in his name and figure out who it is. His name is “TGIER WOODS”. I swear, I would love to meet the person who is a. Clever enough to figure it out AND b. stupid enough to think that they are in fact clever and should waste R2 by entering.
Of course there’s always the Burping Frogs and other bullshit wallpapers, ring tones and assorted rubbish. I sat in a restaurant a while ago and even though the food was good, the only thing that went repeatedly through my head was: ‘I swear I’m going to stab you in the face with a pencil if you don’t stop playing that frog ringtone while I’m trying to eat; I don’t care if you’re 11, I will resort to violence‘
The only other thing left to moan about when it comes to cell phones are the “Dating Services”. Like Campus Flirt. They advertise on the radio constantly and every time I hear the ad all I can think about is that someone is going to die soon. Yes, its morbid, but look at the myspace murders in the states… Any time you create a channel for people to “flirt anonymously” you can be guaranteed there is at least one psycho waiting for someone to prey on. And unfortunately, as we’ve covered before, young people (and we know they’re not all over 18) do stupid things like agree to meet their new best friend somewhere private.
Most abhorrent about campus flirt is that you have to SMS “MEET” to some number… then they spell it out for you: M – E – E – T… just in case you were looking for something a little more serious.
Lastly, and this one is really a short technicality
Has anyone noticed that the SABC is running ads for their newly commercialised studios? You can now go and get your band recorded there etc. (Now I know that technically this has always been the case as a few of my friends worked in their studios for years, but now that they’re advertising it I’m starting to get annoyed). I’m paying my TV licence… It is the right thing to do… But don’t go and start using my charity (because I consider it charity) to fund studios and then make money out of it.
If the government of this country was stupid enough to give you the right to demand that every cathode ray tube owning household HAS to pay a TV licence fee or be fined, then you sure as hell better not be running a second commercial venture making money on the side.
The end.
Do not eat at Nonna Lina
To anyone reading this for the first time: Please note that this post dates back a long time and for some reason is repeatedly proving rather popular. I get a lot of emails and comments about this post, mostly positive and some negative. If you have a valid comment then by all means post it, but if all you’re going to do is tell me that I’m a dick for complaining, then I suggest you don’t waste your time… Also, read my blog, You might find that I’m actually quite a nice guy. The gist of this entire saga is that we had shocking service and Nonna Lina has repeatedly, for almost two years now, refused to simply say sorry, but instead resorted to excuses and insults.
Also, read this semi-update to the story.
(This is a classic Arbitraryuser in the form of an email I sent that dates back to November 17th 2006.)
Today at 1pm a group of us, 11 in total, decided to have lunch at Nonna Lina… This was because they are currently punting their “Special”…
Their offer was one of the meals on their “special menu” and either a soft drink or a beer. The prices, R39 and R45 respectively.
Here is a list of why you should never ever eat at Nonna Lina:
Not Nonna Lina Pizza
- A few of us ordered the “Salami” pizza. It was crusty, oily and they use cheap cheddar cheese. But, the cherry (ha ha) on the top was the absolutely atrocious amount of “salami” on the pizza. We counted; There were 3 slices of the thinnest, smallest, cheapest, nastiest salami, cut into quarters and spread over the pizza. AND THAT WAS ALL. Just nasty cheese and 3 pieces of nasty salami.
- The service was terrible. EVEN THOUGH WE HAD PRE-ORDERED OUR MEALS the last meal was placed on the table about 20 minutes after the first.
- One of the meals was wrong, but fearing another wasted half hour someone took one for the team.
- They sell pasta and pizza… but the dont have Tabasco Sauce… We know they’re trying to be cheap, but come on! Maybe just buy the generic stuff.
- The waiter struggled to bring the drinks to the table and needed to get reminded constantly. There were only 2 other tables so being “busy” is not an excuse.
- The beer was warm.
- Besides being generally bad, the waiter also struggled with english, which will probably explain the next 2 points perfectly.
- Then came the killer… When the bill arrived it was more than expected… There were two meals we didn’t even have and even though we had only seen their “special menu” apparently one of us ordered a meal off the main menu.
- Then the real kicker. The Savanah and Castle didn’t count as alcholic beverages… And the Appletizer wasn’t a “Soft Drink” so the unlucky souls (me included) had to fork out R45 for a shitty pizza and an extra R15 for our drinks.
- No mess up on this scale would be complete without the owner/manager fighting with us about the bill and eventually deciding that it was time to light up a smoke while we were still arguing with him… Eventually we paid up and left, never to return again.
So by my count, Nonna Lina owes me a beer… and you know what, they can shove it… Keep it for a rainy day when all their customers have finally decided that the R8 Boerewors roll outside the Spar on Kloof Street is a better option. More appetising, more tasty and served with a hell of a lot more class than Nonna Lina could dream of — A paper serviette and your choice of 5 sauces in recycled plastic bottles.
Regards
Jonathan
ps. Feel free to pass this on to anyone you think might make the mistake of going there.
- Update: Nonna Lina never replied to my emails… I think that speaks volumes.
Update 2 [29 Jan 2007]: I finally got a response via this site from the guy who owns the place. Amongst a bevy of poorly constructed excuses he called me a racist for bringing up the fact that his waiter didn’t have a very solid grasp of English. Ummm ok. Add that to the list of reasons why not to eat there.
Usability really isn't that hard…
I know that “Web Usability” is oft touted as being this hard thing… like something akin to the truely black magic that is Search Engine Optimisation, but really, it isn’t… Yes, there are hardcore people studying eyetracking and all kinds of usability studies, but really, all I’m talking about is a little bit of common sense.
Take for instance the people who designed the Morton’s on the Wharf website.
This is their splash page:
Now, firstly, we all know how passée splash pages are. You do know this right… I mean, it’s something we know, like sharing toothbrushes is just not cool.
Yes, in the 90’s, you were super cool if you had a splash page, especially if it was animated. Morton’s has one of these. It says you need flash and directs you to download flash if you don’t.
So what if I don’t have flash? What if I’m on my phone? Firstly, sites designed with flash that don’t NEED flash are just retarded, but we’ll pretend that this site actually needed flash. (Technically it does, but really, it doesn’t)
So I come along wanting to get the phone number to call to make a reservation… But alas, I need flash, and I dont have flash, so instead I get told to download flash… Opera Mini on my phone doesn’t do flash so I’m stuck. All they needed to do was give me their phone number and email address and I would have called. It would have been TRIVIAL to say
“This site needs flash, we suggest you download flash. Alternatively you can call us at 555-2303 or email us at reservations@mortons.co.za”
Am I right or am I right?
Ps. Mortons has good food.
j.
arbitraryuser 