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TSN.ca are thieves

Just to record my experience with tsn.ca customer service.

I tried out their subscription, which had an end date, say July 5. The new cycle began on July 6, so that is when I should have been charged, but no, I was charged on July 5. That is the same day I cancelled the monthly subscription because I no longer wanted it, but the new month had already been charged.

So, I asked for a refund, and 3 days later they got back to me saying they provide no refund. That was it, no apology no nothing.

So, be careful and do not expect any help or understanding from their customer service. I am now stuck with another month of a subscription I cancelled on time and don’t use.

#theives #badcustomerservice #@tsn

Magical Girl Raising Project - Anime Review

This anime is deceptive, its art and the start of the story scream “I’m a shoujo anime!” But only the first episode and the art used fulfills that belief. It is a bloody story, however, not really well thought out. The characters mostly have some back story but none are too well developed, nor are their intentions and reactions aligned. The battles are not bad, but leaves wanting more because you can obviously think of something cooler to do with the characters abilities. So, spoilers ahead.

They never really explain why Cranberry is so simply stronger then La Pucelle, I mean she stops her sword with her hands, and then one kick ends it.

The twins are the emptiest characters of all, they have no real back story, and their reaction to first killing someone is not human or even realistic.

Ripple has a super convenient ability of never missing her target, why does she attack head on all the time, just throw things at random non stop from way far away.

Nemurin’s ability is outright useless. Seriously, no talk about a power balance for the players.

Top Speed was just kind of sad. She prioritized her friend over her baby with no real motivation to why, just that it reminded her of her old self. Lame drive.

Ruler was surprisingly well thought out compared to the rest, but was taken down too early. She was at least congruent in her actions and motivations.

Tama seemed to have a useless ability until she killed Cranberry, which was the best kill of the anime, although the battle was lame as well, Cranberry got hit because she was surprised that Swim Swim was a girl, seriously?

Calamity Mary was just crazy, and as she needed no motivation behind her craziness, this was fine. But she was way too overpowered for no apparent reason, even when fighting barehanded.

Magicaloid 44 should not have existed.

Hardgore Alice was immortal, she should have won. But again, her motivation to help Snow White was because she pick up the key to her house which had fallen behind her. Like, she didn’t need Snow White’s help for that, she just needed to turn around. And the way she dies, too easy... Knowing they were in the middle of a death match, she should have never turned back to normal, ever, simple enough. But NO! She HAD to go to school! Totally worth risking your life over.

Weiss Winterprison lost because he didn’t get enhanced before saving Sister Nana.

Sister Nana’s suicide was her only way out, but her behavior was too naive too many times, she should have learned from the first time.

Swim swim had the best ability of all, but an obvious weakness. What do you use against water? Electricity, obvious. No one thought of that. And she should have been targeted as dangerous by everyone since she killed Ruler, but no one cared.

Fav was disturbingly funny and grotesque, but the author never explained what it was and how its existence really worked.

Last AND really least of all was the main character Snow White. Useless. All she did was cry all the time. Never got hit. Insulted her friends just because she was angry. A useless battle ability. Easily killable. Worst character ever (except for the ones from School Days)! Just should have been the first to die as part of Rulers plan. Really, Ruler should have just ordered her to kill herself. The ending is so unsatisfying, the worst I have seen, even comparing with US ever lasting TV series or even Naruto.

Overall the anime is worth watching, although the ending is ultra bad. It is NOT an anime you have to watch before you die, however, so if you have something else to watch go ahead and leave this behind.

#anime magicalgirlraisingproject

This year Google started with evil business practices

One or two years ago, I read How Google Works from Google’s previous CEO Eric Schmidt. In there he tells the story of how they implemented Toyota’s practice to allow anyone in the company to stop production if a fault was spotted. Of course, Google does not make cars, but services, an abstract concept you can’t simply stop by pulling a cord or pressing a button. So, they implemented a culture element, where any employee shouts out that doing something is evil, and so they re-evaluate what’s wrong.

Since him, Larry Page replaced him, and a few years ago Larry moved on to Alphabet leaving Sundar Pichai as Google’s new CEO. Sundar obviously showed a lack of appropriate CEO behavior by firing James Damore just because the mass public was outraged, instead of actually reading what James wrote and having enough criteria to understand that James was not insulting anyone. He succumbed to pressure, made a mistake and never acknowledged it and learnt from it, but instead defended his decision. Mmm... sounds very mature and adult-like decision making to me.

Now, in Google’s most mature move yet, they blocked Youtube from Amazon’s devices just because Amazon refuses to sell Google products on their website. It’s like a kid screaming “I’m not stupid, you are!” back at another kid who called him stupid first, but at a bigger scale where customers of Amazon devices who love to use Youtube are the only ones really affected.

I hope Sundar reflects on his mistakes, or someone else who is more aligned with Google’s values is brought to replace him, and that this is not the start of a huge company ever increasingly making evil decisions that only negatively affect the public from which they derive their livelihood.

#google #amazon #evil

ORA-01033 in Oracle 12c

This has happened quite often, so I’m documenting the solution to find it easily in the future.

https://community.oracle.com/thread/3967558

connect in sqlplus using SYS as SYSDBA

select con_id, name, open_mode from v$pdbs;

alter pluggable database all open;

ALTER PLUGGABLE DATABASE "PDB1" SAVE STATE

show con_name

alter session set container=PDB1;

show user

alter system register;

Saving this useful link. It helped to connect SQL SERVER 2016 to Oracle Data Modeler.

[PORT]/[DB_NAME];INSTANCE=[INSTANCE_NAME]

It's no surprise that Ocarina of Time for the 3DS is what a lot of people go out and buy the system for. Hell, it's why I dropped the cash ...

Just wanted to document that this article was spot on for me. I found the sinking lure on the exact rock in the image, which I had never found it there in the 64 version.

Havaianas Sandals Suck

Just to warn about this brand of sandals, that they suck and to not buy them. We bought them with my wife because they seemed to be of higher quality, and we thought paying $20 - $30 for each would give us higher than average sandals. The opposite happened, my wife’s snapped in about 1 month, and mine in 6 months. We have bought $3 sandals in a random market, that look just as nice and have lasted over 2 years with every day use.

Summary, stay away from these.

#havaianas #sandals #bad #stay away

Achieve 100% Market Penetration with Zero Effort - Trick the KPI Instead of Doing Real Work

Today at work I was witness of what happened when a team was assigned a KPI to make the company achieve its goals, but instead of actually working towards those goals they worked towards tricking the KPI.

So, because of confidentiality I cannot expose what happened exactly, but I can provide an analogy that reflects the spirit behind it. Say my whole universe of customers are 100 rabbits. My customers buy from me rabbit clothes every month, specifically white clothes and blue clothes. But white and blue clothes are a slowly dying market, so my company strategy is to introduce the new hot product for the future, orange rabbit clothes.

However, only a small amount of rabbits are using the orange clothes, say (for the sake of keeping the numbers round and simple), only 10 rabbits use the new orange clothes. So, in order for the company to survive long term, it needs to increase the amount of rabbits who buy orange rabbit clothes. So, the higher-ups in their infinite wisdom of higher-up-ness, assign a team to do this, and they tell them their KPI (Key Performance Indicator) will be the amount of rabbit customers that buy orange clothes, giving them a yearly goal of say, increasing the amount of 10 to 13 (30% of current base increase with a 90% free market seams like a possible real KPI). And for that, in order to avoid confusion, they establish a common definition for an orange rabbit clothes customer, which goes along the lines of “An Orange Rabbit Clothes Customer is a customer who spends money buying orange clothes from us”. Seems fair enough.

So, this team has the resources to increase this orange rabbit clothes customers. To make better orange clothes. To market the new orange clothes. To actually do something to fulfill this goal to keep the company alive long term. But they would not bother doing that, there is an easy way out without doing any real work but surpassing the KPI goals that were assigned to them. They went ahead and changed the white clothes for white clothes with a hidden orange string, and the blue clothes for blue clothes with a hidden orange string. So, the other 90% of customers that do not buy orange clothes, now when buying their usual white or blue rabbit clothes, will have bought without knowing, an orange string of clothing, technically fulfilling the definition to be a new Orange Rabbit Clothes Customer. Viola! 100% market penetration with almost zero effort.

Once the team saw this, they were afraid of explaining such a sudden change, and that their bosses would find out they cheated the KPI definition instead of really working (God forbid!). So, they changed the local definition without their bosses knowing, but making it seem like they were only following the rules. They purposefully “misinterpreted” the rules to being: “An Orange Rabbit Clothes Customer is a customer who spends money buying orange clothes from us, but if it is our new white and blue clothes with an orange string then it will only be an Orange Rabbit Clothes Customer if they noticed the orange string was there”. But this was still too much increase, from 10 to 20, when the goal is 13. So, they refined it little by little until it gave a “reasonable” number: “An Orange Rabbit Clothes Customer is a customer who spends money buying orange clothes from us, but if it is our new white and blue clothes with an orange string then it will only be an Orange Rabbit Clothes Customer if they noticed the orange string was there and touched 15% of it”. This last unauthorized modification gave them an increase from 10 to 14, leaving them with an “overachieved goal” in their hands. CONGRATULATIONS, you just won your yearly bonus!!!

So, lesson in life, do not do real work, trick the KPI rules. Easier, faster, and easily manipulable. (Just in case, this is sarcasm)

#real life #work #office

This was bound to happen sooner or later, and it seems like Niantic chose sooner.

Story of Seasons for 3DS - Review

I just finished playing what I think is my last game day in Story of Seasons, it was an adventure which lasted 157 hours and 50 minutes.

This has been the best “Harvest Moon” game I have played since Harvest Moon 64, not that I played every single one in the series, I seem to have had bad luck with the ones I bought (A Wonderful Life for Gamecube and Rune Factory Frontier for Wii come to mind). I had played around 7 Harvest Moon titles between 64 and this, and I didn’t really liked any of them.

Story of Seasons was overall a really entertaining game, totally worth it. I hope this review can help fans of the series decide on playing it. Most positive things totally outweigh the negatives, which are bearable or not a big deal.

So here is the list of things I enjoyed:

The going steady system, really add a touch of romance

You take care of patches of 9 crops at a time, a real time-saver

Really vast selection of everything: veggies, fruits, other crops, cows, chickens, dogs, sheep-like animals, clothes, materials, fish, tools, decorations for house and farm, objectives, etc.

The bachelorettes, they are all interesting, varied and reveal their fair share of personal story through your relationship with them and their family. The most shallow was Agate, which seems to be simply the girl that loves animals, but I didn’t marry her so maybe there is more to know.

The festivals are well spaced out and nice.

You get a lot of farm space.

The loading time between screens was fast enough as to not bother the gameplay (this was a big issue in Wii’s Rune Factory frontier)

The trade depot, although a little limited at first, you learn to love it, and makes it more realistic.

All characters were likable

Rival system was fun, as it gives you extra scenes

Your children grow up to actually be children, not just toddlers or babies as in other games

The yearly trip with your spouse is entertaining, as it changes every year

You could build as many of any building as you wanted, no longer limited in amount of any animal you wanted

You could walk around in the storms

People don’t accept more than one gift a day

Your animals die of old age, sad but realistic

A person dies the first year, from what I know a first in the series

List of things I disliked:

The breakup system, too much hassle to break up, making it a pain to see all heart events

Your horse, no festival for it, it takes up barn space, and if greater than 3 hearts (which add up by simply riding it and can’t be brought down) follows you like a mindless zombie standing in your way while taking care of other animals

The fashion festival, never really found out how to consistently win, and wasn’t even fun.

The fact that you can’t just go to a festival without actively participating.

Mining was boring, just a hole in a wall that you hit with your hammer.

The renting farm space, tedious to constantly be renovating.

Travelling salespeople have important recipes, and they arrive randomly with random items, I never got some of the recipes I wanted.

Too easy to become filthy rich with some crops, accelerated everything too much

Not enough punishment for walking out in the storms, you could easily fix it by eating something just as you walked out and it would fix it for the whole day. Crops sometimes lost half a star, but one day of fertilizer fixed it. I learned not to fear it, where it was a major event before.

Dogs seem to never die, why is this if other animals can. And they get fat when not fed.

Animal graveyard is outside town, you can’t visit your dead animals.

#story of seasons #nintendo 3ds

I just read this article about why dogs are so awesome. I was amazed to know that their saliva helps your wounds heal twice as fast, and that some are trying to dial 911 for help. I love my two dogs, and they definitely help my wife and I, and everyone else who comes in contact with them in a friendly manner. Just being with them makes us happier and less stressed, and knowing the scientific reason for it stated in the article, makes you know and not just feel it.

I was shared this video today. Apparently there is a strange bug where you capture a Pokemon and when you check your bag it is another one. It hasn't happened to me or anyone I know, but it sure would be welcome to capture a Caterpie that turns out to be a Charizard, like in the video. Anyway, it seems that with this bug, two Articunos and one Moltres were caught and are currently in some gym. I wonder if Niantic will let them keep them forever, as it was most definitely not meant to happen.

Aristotle’s Divine Slavery

Yesterday I couldn’t fall asleep, even though I was really tired from a weekend full of appointments. So instead of cursing while moving around in my bed, as I have unsuccessfully done before, I remembered the Wise’s Duck wisdom (this is a duck meme found in facebook) which goes along something like the following: If you can’t fall asleep at night study, it’ll bring drowsiness and make you sleep, and if it doesn’t at least you will have studied.

In the face of remembering words of such insurmountable wisdom, it would have been nothing but the act of a fool to not follow them. So I grabbed a book which I had recently started reading, Aristotle’s Politics.

The first chapters talk about the nature of slaves and masters, as in how some people are born to be masters of others which are born to be slaves. And this is demonstrated by the characteristics nature has given each, giving slaves strong bodies to be ordered around by noble masters which are of more frail bodies but higher intellect and reasoning. This is of course, at the light of the current century, comments that could be considered nothing but racism at its core.

However, this is Aristotle who wrote this, and he strangely has a point if you don’t close your mind to thinking that his thoughts are outdated. I thought about it in my really tired state while looking for a fountain of sleep, and found the connection with the current world’s state of affairs. I found the essence of his argument to be that beings of superior reasoning power are bound to govern over other with less reasoning power, with less social power, with less thought power. So, the slaves from Aristotle’s time were of course only educated to be slaves, and nobles were educated to be nobles, and kings were educated to be kings. What is so different from now? Employees train their children to be employees. Entrepreneurs train their children to be entrepreneurs. The rich train their children to be rich. This happens whether on purpose or by mere observation of the children towards their parents behaviors.

Modern day slaves are employees, and are trained to be employees by employees which are governed by someone who is rich. Just as slaves in Aristotle’s time were educated by slaves instructed by their master to train them in the ways of slaves. Back then, I imagine if someone tried to rebel received physical punishment, nowadays they flunk you and make you repeat a year, which has a similar psychological effect of being rejected by the social mass to which you belong. The best slaves were put to coordinate over the other slaves, now the best employees are given promotions. In the end it is the master/owner who decides.

So, following Aristotle’s main reasoning, it is not that you are born to be a slave, you are taught to be one, as are rich taught to be rich. There are nowadays chances for employees to become rich, more so than for slaves to become masters in 350 B.C. There are quite a lot of stories of rags to riches, but they are more the exception than the rule. You can look around for information, and to break paradigms and teach yourself what the rich know, but most people do not do it. The reason why is a whole different subject.

Pokemon Go’s Eevee evolution trick seems to no longer be working. I had been reserving my best Eevee to turn into a Vaporeon (since it used to be the strongest, before getting nerfed) so I renamed it into Rainer. However, when I evolved it, it turned into a Jolteon which seems to be the weakest of the three.

I asked around and it has also not worked for other people recently. Maybe for some reasons Niantec disabled the trick, either by accident or on purpose.

I was pretty pissed off since I was expecting to evolve the highest CP Eevee into another super high CP Vaporeon, but in a game where the creators have stated is at 10% completion, I suppose such things could happen.

So, I found this article stating Vaporeon was modified and is no longer as strong as before. This was bound to happen as I had previously miserably failed to defeat a lower CP Vaporeon with my Jolteon that has the type advantage. I would need to try again and see if the results change. It is bad news for me though, as my highest CP Pokemon is a Vaporeon right now with about 500 CP higher than my second highest. But I don't think this will have such a huge impact, only that it will bring more balance to the game by not seeing Vaporeon in almost every gym.

millennial-review-deactivated20

Musk appears to be pushing for a product bundle, whereby he can combine SolarCity’s solar panels with Tesla’s Powerwall home battery system.

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