Don Khuth Chronicles

Ever since my roommate moved in, things have not been the same. I don’t get the same amount of privacy that I once had. I don’t get to do the normal things that I get to do. And I now have to depend on someone to make sure my electricity doesn’t go out. Or even worst, that the house doesn’t get foreclosed.

When it comes to finance, my roommate is clueless about it. She’s probably clueless about a lot of other things because she’s in her own little world, unknowingly to her is a whole other world outside the front door. I don’t know if she understands the full consequences of her actions. I’ve told her plenty of times before but it seems like it’s far beyond her level of comprehension.

She lost her job about a week after I left for Hong Kong but she didn’t bother to do anything about it. I didn’t find out about it until a few days after I came back into the country. She didn’t even have the common courtesy to tell Jenn’s mom about her situation. Jenn’s mom is the one who’s dealing with her rent while I’m away. She had to find out from Jenn who’s thousands of miles away before hearing it from my roommate. That’s a very inconsiderate thing to do given the fact that these are the people who are trying to help.

When she first moved in, things started out just hunky dory. She had money for the rent and the bills. As time went by, the bills slowly started to climb while the money slowly declined. Every month I would have to ask her for the rent. Every pay day I would have to ask her for money to pay the bills. This went on from the time she moved in until now. I assume that certain things are due on certain dates so it’s known when they’re due. It’s not rocket science.

I’ve told her time and time again to conserve electricity and water because that is where all the money is going. But she doesn’t listen. She’ll load up the washer, load up the dry and take a shower all at the same time. I don’t know where she goes if she needs to wash her clothes every other day. She can’t even afford to pay for those commodities and yet she abuses them. At least, I think she’s abusing them because I don’t know anyone who does their laundry after other day. It has gotten to the point where I am only willing to pay for my share. It’s doesn’t make sense to pay for half the bill anymore when I use less than half of the resources. Before I would pay for the whole thing and then wait for her to pay me back but she has gotten too far behind on paying that I’ve stopped.

The most recent hydro bill came up to $428.66 which is fairly high considering the fact that I wasn’t in the country. Before I left, I left her a note telling her to converse because I wasn’t willing to pay for anything while I’m gone. Of the $428.66, my portion is only $77 which is half of one month’s bill. I wasn’t at home for most February so I’m not paying for it.

Ever since my roommate started falling behind on rent and bills, I recommended that she get financial assistance because she cannot afford to live in this house. According to my calculations, the best that she can do with her pay cheque is a $200 rent with utilities included. There’s nowhere in Hamilton that you can rent for that low. I took the time to find her the phone number and address of the difference government services that will help her if she applies for them. But all she has done with my recommendation was listen. She did not act on it and now she’s in trouble.

When she lost her job, I recommended that she apply for Employment Insurance. She should have applied for that as soon she lost her job but she didn’t. I don’t know why she didn’t but she didn’t. I think her best excuse was because she didn’t have her record of employment from Walmart. But countless times I’ve told her that she doesn’t need that right away. The important thing was to apply for it as soon as possible. I’ve even went as far as asking her if she applied on a daily basis. Every time I asked, her replied was always “no” which made me mad. Here I was, trying to help and she’s not willing to accept it. Well, too bad for her because went she finally went to apply for EI, she was too late.

Now she has no job, no steady income and the bills are piling up. I told her that consequences of being behind on her financial responsibilities and I hope that the threat of eviction is enough to get her to wake up. She did not pay first and last month’s rent so she doesn’t have the luxury of getting a warning before eviction. She’s taking her situation a bit too lightly and she’s just going to get herself into trouble. It’s not fair to me and to everyone who’s trying to help her. I’d hate to say it but people like her deserve what’s coming to them. If someone wants to help you while you’re down, you best take their hand.

I don’t know what it is but my roommate continues to annoy me. The only time that she doesn’t annoy me is when I’m not home or when she’s not home. The unfortunate thing about it is that I have too much patient and I can withstand a lot of annoyance but I think that one day, I’ll pop.

Last night, I was tired from a long day at work. After work I ran a few quick errands. When I got home, I was ready to pass out by 9:00 PM but stayed up a bit to talk with Jenn over Skype. After we were done talking, I fell asleep right away only to be awaken an hour or so later.

My roommate has a cat that she likes to yell at during the odd times. I know that animals can understand some things you say depending on how loud you are but she speaks to her cat as if he understands English. In fact, she speaks to all the animals like that. And she reminds them that she has already told them before not to do it and yet they continue to do it. Her cat looks back at her and looks as if he’s saying, “What?” only he’s saying it in cat language.

I was comfortably sleeping when I was awaken by her screaming at her cat to stop doing something. The yelling didn’t last long so I fell right back to sleep only to be awaken again by music. The music was pretty loud according to my half-awakened standards. I assumed that she knew that I was sleeping because my car was parked outside and the light in my room was off but I guess that assumption was never made. Eventually, the music was turned off and I fell right back to bed.

I wake up in the morning feeling fairly rested. When I get out of my room, I made sure not to be quiet any more. Usually, I would quietly close the door behind me but I’m already fed up so I just close my door as if I was the only one there. I run down to the kitchen to make my morning coffee only to find the counter all dirty. There are bits and pieces of Kellog’s Special K cereal all over the place, peanut butter on the counter and a spoon with some brown stuff on the stove. A spoon! With some brown stuff! On the stove! Seriously, how did that single lone spoon get missed during clean up? It was brown stuff in a spoon on top of a white stove. How do you not see that? And whatever that brown stuff was, it has now left a little stain on the stove, which I am not going to clean.

I don’t think she knows how annoying she is sometimes. I guess it’s my fault for not telling her straight out but I don’t like to be rude. Sometimes she’ll be talking and my response would be “Yeah. Uh huh. Okay.” And she’ll continue to talk about things. I hate it most when she talks about things on the television. I don’t watch the telly much so I could care less what goes on. Every time she tells me about an episode, I don’t say anything but nod. I’m hoping that’s enough of a sign to say, “Yeah, I really don’t give a shit” but she doesn’t pick up on the sign.

When she watches television, she’s really into it. If there’s a suspenseful scene where something jumps out and kills someone, she’ll shriek out, “Oh no!” It’s as if she didn’t see that coming. Or she’ll try to warn the character not to go into some room. It’s as if they can hear her warnings. And if she’s watching a comedy, she’s got one of the weirdest laughs ever. My girlfriend thinks that her bother has a weird laugh but my roommate has one that’s even weirder and annoying.

Sometimes, my roommate can be inconsiderate. I take for granted the common sense that I have and believe that all people have common sense but like I’ve said before, common sense is not all that common. They’ll be times where I’ll be on the computer reading something and she’ll walk into the living room and turn on the television. Or sometimes when I’m reading something, she’ll interrupt by telling me about some customer she had at work. After working eight hours at my job, I don’t want to hear about work after I’ve come home from work. Some people just need to let go of work and stay away from it when they’re not working. I don’t like to talk about work when I’m not working. I don’t even like to talk about work when I’m on lunch. Those are my time and I prefer to spend them without having to hear about work.

There are lots of other things that people can talk about. I understand that television is a common ground for most people but I, for one, do no turn on the television. I still believe that it’s a waste of time. Yes, I’ll watch the odd shows during the odd times but I do not have time to follow a television serie every week. I’m probably the quietest person in the room when the topic of discussion is in regards to television. I don’t care who won on America Idol. I don’t care who dances well in Dancing with the Stars. And I really don’t care what season it is of Survivors. I have a life and I prefer to live my own reality than to sit around and watch other people’s reality.

I have a little issue that is currently happening at work that I don’t quite agree with. I voiced my opinion on the matter but it doesn’t seem like my coworker wants to hear about it. I thought that my reasoning made sense so I’m not sure why he didn’t want to hear it. I’m a people person so I try my best to please the majority of them. I found out recently that I’m considered a utilitarian.

Lately, the company is on a cost saving initiative so they’re trying to save as much as possible whenever they can. One of those initiatives involves the licensing of software. An email was sent out to managers of each department asking whether or not their subordinate require the use of Adobe Acrobat Standard. Some of them need the software to create PDFs but they don’t need the editing capabilities. Since they don’t need to edit PDFs we have software that will allow them to create PDFs but not edit. That particular software is available for them to install at will. Unfortunately, no one has heard of the software to create PDFs so they all request the licensed software which in turns means higher cost.

The manager’s job was to reply back to the email and inform us which one of their employees requires Acrobat Standard to be installed and which doesn’t need it. If they don’t reply, we’re going to assume that none of their employees needs it and we’ll uninstall it. That’s the part that I have a problem with.

My coworker has been delegated the job of uninstalling the software in the background. The unsuspecting user will not know that the software has been uninstalled until they try to use it. Everyone laptop and desktop has one version of Acrobat. If they have Acrobat Reader they won’t have Acrobat Standard and vice versa. The problem here is that if they have Acrobat Standard and it gets uninstalled they don’t have anything to view PDFs anymore. Since they can’t view PDFs they’re going to complain and I’m usually the first on their list to call.

When I found out that there were a lot of people that require the software, I suggested to my coworker that he notify them before uninstalling. My reasoning was that the managers don’t know enough about their employees to know who needs what software. It would be nice if he had given them a little courtesy email to confirm with them that they don’t need Acrobat Standard. The people who were complaining were people who needed the software but no longer have access to it. My coworker’s response to my suggestion was, “It has nothing to do with me.”

I’m standing there, dumbfounded and staring at him and I’m questioning how this has nothing to do with him since he’s the one that’s uninstalling the software in the background. I understand the fact that the managers didn’t reply to the email so it’s partially their fault but you can’t punish the employee for something that their managers didn’t do. Uninstalling the software without the users knowing will cause more problems than it’ll solve. So what if you’re saving the cost of licensing, you’re going to end up having to reinstall the software after the user found out that it went missing.

A coworker called me at the end of the day and asked what I did with her copy of Acrobat Standard. I told her that I haven’t done anything yet. I took a look at the list of users whose copy of Acrobat Standard is going to removed and saw that she was on the list but according to that list her copy shouldn’t have been installed yet. I don’t know if my coworker uninstalled it before going home and didn’t get to update the spreadsheet but it made her a little upset because she was not able to do her work. She ended up having to call it a day because she had to wait until tomorrow to get the software reinstalled.

It seems like day after day, I’ll get a phone call asking about the PDF software. I think it would have made better sense to contact the user rather than their mangers and ask them if they needed the software. If they had said, “No” the problem would have been solved. But for those who actually need the software, it causes headache, frustration and down time. I think to save them the headache and save me from having to repeat myself a few dozen times, an email should have been sent out to the correct people in order to avoid further issues. But there’s something about office politics that causes some employee to do what they’re told and don’t ask any questions. Every now and then, you need to ask the right questions to ensure you’re doing it right. Other times, you just have to use your own common sense and do what’s right.

I’ve been trying to get my credit history in order but no one seems to be able to help. I don’t think it should be this hard to get a flag removed once everything has been paid in full. One company blames another company and that company blames the company that blamed them. So I’m stuck in the middle with a flag that will stay on my record for six years.

A while back, I was looking to increase my line of credit instead of having to tap into my RRSP but my bank manager informed me that every credit check came back as a decline. He said that there is currently a flag on my account that deems me bad for creditor. I didn’t know what on my credit history could be causing this since I’ve paid most of my bills. There were times when I paid them late and the bill was sent to the collection agencies but I eventually paid them in full.

After further investigation, I found that the flag was set on my Rogers Wireless account. It showed that I went from an R1 rating (payments made within 30 days) to an R9 rating (bad debt, placed for collection). Of all of the times where my debts were placed for collection, this was the only time that an R9 rating was placed on my history. If my memory serves me right, I paid for this bill before receiving a notice from the collection agency. I don’t know if paying Rogers instead of the collection agency caused something to go awry but the bill was paid. My bank manager told me that I should not have been given an R9 rating right away. It should have gradually gone up the scale instead of jumping straight to the worst rating.

I called up Rogers and asked them if they could remove the flag but they told me that they did not put the flag on my history. They informed me to contact the collection agency and ask them to remove the flag since the debt was passed onto them. But when I called them, they told me that they don’t put flags on credit history. They told me that they only buy bad debts from companies and then report when the debt has been collected. The person I spoke with gave me the number to Rogers’ account payable department and requested that I contact them.

After contacting Rogers again, the lady I spoke with said that they are not able to remove the flag because they didn’t put it there. I informed her that the collection agency didn’t put the flag there so someone had to have placed the flag. She recommended that I contact the credit bureau and see if they could remove the flag.

When I contacted the credit bureau, I spoke with someone who had an Indian accent. I wasn’t expecting much of that call since I don’t have much faith with Indian call centers. He told me that the flag stays on my credit history for six years and cannot be removed. I told him that the debt was paid in full so there should be no flag on my account at all. I’ve even told him about the letter that the collection agency sent me to confirm that payment was made in full but he just retaliated and repeated the fact that I’ll have to wait six years before the flag goes away. According to him, “the R9 credit rating will remain on your credit bureau for six years from the date of final payment and will limit you from obtaining any type of loan or revolving credit.”

Six years is a long time for my credit history to be affected and I didn’t want that to happen. Since I was fed up with talking to people on the phone, I decided to visit TransUnion in person. I met face to face with a lady and she told me that I had to fill out a form and they’ll remove the flag for me. That was it! It was as simple as that.

I guess it’s true that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. It’s a simple request but it was hard to get the right result. Much like my post about Dell, I had to do this on my own as well. I was tired of waiting for other people to do things for me so I had to step in and do it myself. Some people just don’t like to do things if it doesn’t benefit them. Now I know what to do if I want something.

Some people have a knack for turning simple things around and making them more difficult than they should be. I don’t know why they like to do that but it’s a little annoying when you’re trying to get things done. Maybe it’s their way of creating job security or maybe they’re just following procedure but someone needs to get things straightened out so that there is less confusion in the future.

I’ve recently been in contact with some people at Dell because I’m trying to get certified with them. Once I’m certified, it will make things easier and it’ll save me 30 minutes of talk time on the phone. Every time there’s an issue with one of our machines, I have to call in and the Tech Support would walk through diagnostic procedures before sending out a Technician. Even if I try to save time by telling them of all the diagnostic that I’ve done, they still manage to find time to ask me all sort of questions to prolong the phone call. There are the odd times where I’ll reach an experience Tech Support who will immediately request an on-site Technician but those are rare occasions.

If I was certified, all that is required from me is to visit Dell’s technician website and request the replacement parts. Once the request has been made, a Technician would be dispatched and arrive on-site within a couple of days. Filling out the request forms takes a matter of minutes rather than 30 minutes on the phone. I don’t like wasting time on the phone when I can spend that time doing other things like actual work.

My contact with Dell started on August 28, 2009 with an email to a contact that my coworker gave to me. As soon as I sent the email, I get an out of office reply stating that the contact is on vacation. He left another email address to contact while he is away. I sent an email to that address and get a reply containing the necessary information that I requested. The contact informed me that there is $200 fee to get recertified. The problem was that I don’t need to be recertified because I have not yet been certified. I tell the person this and they send me a form to fill out. They also stated that if I wanted to pay by credit card, I do not need to fill out the form.

So I call into Dell to inquire more about making a credit card payment. They regret to inform me that because I am located in Canada, they cannot process my order. I don’t know what kind of difference it made since I’m sure that Visa and MasterCard are accepted world wide. Nonetheless, they tell me to contact the sales person in Canada to make this payment.

I contact the sales person in Canada, Tim who then sends an email to a team, requesting that they provide me with information. Ali from the team answers the email. There’s one thing wrong with this. It’s that Ali is the one that I’ve been in contact with this whole time. He’s the one that told me to contact Tim. Ali replies with the same information that he gave me earlier. By now, I have no idea what to do since I’m being sent in circles. I had no choice but to email them back saying that I’ve already been through this with him. Ali’s reply was to get a credit card payment to my sales contact and he’ll forward the payment confirmation to them and they’ll have my account set up. Ali also requests that Tim give me the information about my sales person so that I can process the order. Tim’s reply was that he was the sales person and that he’ll get back to me on Monday to process my credit card information.

My opinion of the matter was that Tim should have known the procedure to get this process started. I mean, once Ali got the ball rolling, it was only a matter of time before the actual process got started. All that was required was for Tim to initiate the email request to Ali and that was it. I called him up to give him my credit card information and within a matter of hours, my login credentials were emailed to me. Now I’ll have to sit through hours of online documentations and take a few assessments before Dell deems me a certified. I’m looking forward to that.

Today, as I was driving to school I saw a bumper sticker on a Chevrolet Cavalier that said, “Out Of a Job Yet? Keep Buying Foreign!” At first, I was a little confused because I had to think about what the sticker was implying. They say that because we spend most of our money on foreign items, we’re not supporting local business. That’s when it clicked that the sticker might be wrong. I wonder if the driver realizes that the Chevrolet that he’s driving is foreign because I don’t think it’s a Canadian company that manufactured it. It might have been made in Canada but the money is sent back to their head quarters… in the US.

Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t the act of buying locally the cause of our current economical crisis? I haven’t been following the crisis in detail but from what I know, the present crisis was caused by a bunch of bad loans. Loans that were made domestically that went awry and cause this whole turmoil. And in order to pay off the higher ups, they had to close down and lay off a whole bunch of people. That caused a waterfall effect and stopped people from spending.

When I saw the bumper sticker, I started thinking whether the driver fully understood our current situation. Although, I don’t fully understand the nature of the crisis, I’m pretty sure that buying foreign items did not put us in our current predicament.

For starters, American cars are supposedly bad on gas so why would I want to buy one? In our present state, wouldn’t it be wise to save money where we can? And if foreign sellers are the ones that are saving us money, shouldn’t we buy from them? Everyone likes to save money but if a company isn’t willing to cut prices, why should we help them make money if they’re not willing to save us money? Otherwise, you wouldn’t be getting your money’s worth.

The auto sector took a big impact when the economy went down hill but they’re all foreign to Canada. From what I’ve read, people who are driving around with those bumper stickers are probably people who lost their job when Ford or GM shut down. If American cars were as good as foreign cars then maybe a lot more people would buy them and they wouldn’t have to close down.

That’s my rant for the day. I’d just thought that I’d share my observation with you. It’s a dog eat dog world out there and you got to be competitive if you want to stay on top. If those companies can’t stay in business because no one’s buying their product, they better come up with some new strategies. It’s survival of the fittest out there. I’ll continue to buy foreign if foreign will help me save money. So, it’s not everyday that I see bumper stickers that makes me think. I bet those bumper stickers were made in China too.

When I dine in at a restaurants, no matter now fancy it is, I tend to leave a 20% tip to the waiter or waitress. I rarely get bad services at the restaurant that I attend so 20% is a fair amount for good service. I’m often tempted to leave nothing at all for bad service but some of the wait staff makes most of their money on tips so it’s best to leave a little.

In Hong Kong, there are a few restaurants that enforce a mandatory 20% tipping system. So no matter what you’re ordering or how bad your service is, you have to tip 20%. I disagree with that completely because it is not fair. It’s seems like the management team refuses to pay their employees what they deserve so they give the tab to the customers. I will pay for good service and so will a lot of other people. It’s the good service that will bring me back to that restaurant and the bad service that will steer me away.

I visited a few bars and pub while I was in Hong Kong and every one of them had a service charge. I don’t think it takes a lot of effort to open a beer cap but apparently some of them think that it’s worth a 20% service charge. That’s the lifestyle there and I guess that’s what everyone expects when they go to bars.

This past weekend, Jenn and I visited a restaurant in Olde Stoney Creek called the Village Restaurant. I’ve gone there once before but that was a long time ago. My first impression of it was that the customer service was great. We didn’t wait long to be seated and our food was promptly prepared. This time around, I’d have to say that the service was terrible.

Jenn and I had to wait about twenty minutes before were seated. There were a couple of seats available that could occupy two people but those seats were left unattended. And when we did get seated, we didn’t even get a menu. I had to get up and get a menu from the front counter. Luckily, it was within arm’s reach or else we wouldn’t have ordered anything for a long time. The lady that seated us told us to have a seat and then took off. If it wasn’t for the coffee guy, I would have probably left.

We arrived at the restaurant at 11:00am but didn’t get seated until 11:30am and didn’t give our order until 12:00pm. That’s a pretty long time to wait for breakfast. I understand that it was busy but it wouldn’t have been as bad if we were given the basic items as we were seated like a menu and a drink.

I’ve been there before but Jenn hasn’t so she doesn’t know what they’re offering. You can assume that they’re serving common breakfast items but with some places you can’t be sure. Even with a menu, it was another ten minutes before we could give our orders. I’m not sure what was going on but the waitress was tending to the other part of the restaurant more often than the part that we were seated in.

After we gave our orders, it would be another fifteen minutes or so before we received our food. I must have finished my coffee already before the food came. By then, I didn’t have much of an appetite. Part way through our meal, the waitress came back and took our ketchup bottle and she did it in a rude manner as well. She didn’t even bother to ask if we were finished with it. She walked over and as she was speaking with someone else, reach in, grabbed the bottle and took it somewhere. I had some fries left that I had planned on dipping into some ketchup but since I didn’t have any, I didn’t feel like eating the fries.

There’s a good chance that I will not be going back there for breakfast. I like to try new places to see what it’s like and I’ll return to those that provide good service but after what happened on the weekend, I don’t think I want to go back there again. It is a little bit out of my way to get there but I thought the drive and the atmosphere would be nice. Breakfast can be a pretty hectic time for restaurants but I’m sure that if they knew that, they’d be well prepared with staff. I think for now, I’ll stick with my regular restaurant where it’s nice and quiet.

I don’t quite understand the purpose of making an appointment and not keeping it. I’d assume that anyone who is professional enough to make an appointment would be professional enough to follow through. If they are not able to keep that appointment, I’d assume that they would call and give a reason why they can’t keep the appointment. I guess my expectation for some people are too high.

My mom asked me yesterday if I could take her to get her hair done at a friend’s house. I was in the middle of homework and I was trying to get an assignment completed before having to submit it but I thought that maybe I can take a little break and help out my mom. My dad and my brothers are busy working and I’m the only one who is free on a Saturday so I did what my mom asked.

When it came time to leave the house, I told my brother that I’d be over in a few minutes and ask him to tell my mom to get ready. This way, I could get to their house, pick up my mom and take her to my friend’s. In a perfect world, everything would work out smoothly. But since I’ve come to the realization that this world isn’t perfect, I knew that something was going to go wrong.

I arrived at my parent’s house promptly at 3:00 PM and walked into the house. My mom’s first words were, “How come you’re here so quickly?” I’m not one that likes to make people wait so when I say that I’ll be there at 3:00 PM, I’ll be there at 3:00 PM.

I mom reached for the phone and made a phone call. She told me that she has to give my friend a call first to see if she’s home. At this point, I’m a little annoyed because my friend should have been there if she had already made this appointment. The phone rings and rings, nobody answers and it goes to voicemail. My mom had to let my friend know that the appointment was for 3:00 PM and that she’ll be on her way there soon. Before hanging up, my mom asked that she be called back.

I waited there for a bit to see if there’s any call back but sadly, there wasn’t. So my time is wasted, my mom’s time is wasted and nobody’s happy about this. I was a little pissed off at the fact that m friend couldn’t do a little thing such keep an appointment. This is the not level of professionalism that you show your customers or even a friend. I understand that it’s my friend’s time that we’re booking but that’s the whole point of getting paid.

There are certain things that people do that makes me lose faith in them. Not being able to keep an appointment is one of them. If two parties agree to do something on a certain time and one of them bails out on the other, that just sucks. I don’t like to waste time and if it’s anyone’s time that they’re wasting, it should be their own.

I’ve been working in IT for about two years now at my present company but I’m not sure if I qualify as a professional yet. I’m not even sure what qualifies a person to being a professional. I assume that it’s someone who has worked in the industry for a while using the education and skills that they’ve learned in which case I guess I am a professional. But being a professional, I run into issues where I’m not sure what to do or whether I should be doing it at all. But being a good person, I try to help when I can.

I used to work with people who believed that if it’s not your job, you don’t do it. I think that’s a union’s ideology and I’m not really a fan of that because I think it’s a waste of time. I don’t really care if I’m doing someone’s job but if it’s getting something done, I’ll do it. I prefer to do something than waiting for someone else to get the job done. Like the saying goes, “If you want something done right, do it yourself” but in this case, it’s more like, if you want something done at all, do it yourself.

Here’s a scenario that I was faced with. I was told by an ex-coworker that their computer had a virus and that IT was notified but because of their job, they were at the bottom of the ladder and IT would get to whenever they can. It’s been a month and IT has not responded to the virus. From a professional perspective, IT should have been all over that ticket because a virus is pretty serious. And the ivrus was residing on a personal computer but a work computer that is on the network. This virus could potentially propagate through the domain. And if that happens, the company could lose sensitive information.

At my present workplace, if a computer is infected with any virus, we immediately take it off the network to prevent it from infecting any other computers. It’s a preliminary precaution that we take just in case it’s a worm that can easy replicate itself. You don’t know how harmful the virus can get so it’s best to isolate the computer.

The virus that infected this computer was called System Guard 2009, probably a variation of AntiVirus 2009. If you don’t know anything about computer, you would think that this software is doing you some good but it’s not. It pretends to be an application that will scan your computer and protect it from threats but it’s only doing that because it’s trying to get you to buy their software. Once you’re infected, this software will continue to annoy you by pretending to scan your computer and displaying fake warning messages.

This software is hard to remove because it works in conjunction with another. When you try to uninstall it, it will reinstall itself. If you try to delete the folder, something will be copy it backr. You can try to remove it using some other software but there’s a chance that it’ll come back. When I saw that this computer was infected with that, I tried to remove it. I was there and I knew how to solve the problem so I did it.

So here’s where my dilemma comes in. When another employee of that company found out that I was touching the computer, she mentioned that I shouldn’t have done that. I told her that the computer had a virus and I simply removed it. Her argument is that I shouldn’t be touching the computer in the first place. In a way, she’s correct that I shouldn’t be touching that virus but if no one else is going to get rid of it, how long before the virus actually gets removed?

I’m in IT and I believe that it’s my responsibility to stop any virus from spreading any way I can. The average user does not know enough about viruses to stop them from spreading. If all it took was to download a free virus scanner, scan the computer for infections and deleted any known threats, then I’ll do it whether it’s my company’s computer or not.

I’m a little tired of this “it’s not my job” attitude. There seems to be a lot of that in the corporate world as well. Some people won’t do that job because they’re not getting paid any more if they go above and beyond the call of duty. There’s no incentive for them to do anything outside their scope so they chose not to do anything.

On the other side of the spectrum, if a union person sees you doing their job, they’ll complain about it because you’re threatening their job security. They believe that if you’re doing their job now, you might end up doing their job entirely and therefore getting rid of them.

I don’t want to take away anyone’s job and I don’t really care about getting paid more. If the job that I’m doing is going to speed things up a little then I’m going to do it. There are people who likes to sit around and wait for things to happen and they would sit on it until the cows come home (and then they’ll sit on the cows) and they know that they can get it done quicker if they took the initiative to get it started. If it’s my responsibility to get something done then I’ll do on my own time. But if someone wants a part to be shipped and they want it shipped now, well that’s not really part of my job so I’ll take my time on it.

In the end, if it’s not your job to do something and it’s a minor task, what’s the harm in doing it? During certain events, you need to learn to prioritize tasks so that you get your job done because at the end of the day, you are still responsible for getting your job done. If you’re pulled aside to work on solving a problem and you know that you can solve the problem quickly, then by all means, help out. People these days need to start helping out one another without any reasonable cause.

A couple of nights ago, there was a listing on Red Flag Deals about a Lexmark wireless printer. The printer cost $59.99 and came with a 4GB USB drive. On top of that, there was also a $50 rebate so in the end, you just pay for the taxes and shipping which came out to just under $15. It was a pretty good price for a wireless printer and even though I didn’t need one at the time, the price was a little too low to pass up.

I placed the order, typed in my credit card information and received a confirmation email that my order has been placed. I made a payment from my chequing account to my credit card just so I don’t building my credit card up again and to save myself some time later on.

A couple of days ago by and I check my credit card statement to see if the charges for the printer were made but they weren’t. I thought that maybe the store hasn’t charged my credit card yet because the order hasn’t been processed. This might turn out to be a bad thing because if the order isn’t processed on time, it would mean that the rebate isn’t valid.

I received an email today from someone in regards to my online order. The email stated that the store was out of the printer and did not know when they’ll get some more stock. They asked if I wanted another product or cancel my order. Along with that message came a little email thread as well because whoever sent the email from the store didn’t blind carbon copy but carbon copied everyone.

A couple of people on that list were pissed off at the level of professionalism of the store because now their email addresses were exposed. I, on the other hand couldn’t care less who has my email address. It’s just an email address and I have a junk mail filter so if I didn’t want email from someone, I’ll just filter them out. This email ended up going into my junk mailbox first before I saw it. And just because the store CC everyone on the list, there’s no need to stoop to their level and reply to everyone on that list. The first guy to respond was kind enough to BCC everyone though. I simply replied to the store and asked them to cancel my order. I don’t have any reason to tell fifty people that I’m going to cancel my order.

Everyone on that list is probably a real person, placing real orders so it’s not like they’re going to spam you with junk mail. I’m not going to save a list of emails for people whom I’ve never met. I understand that some people are mad that their email address were released but I think it’s more annoying that I’m getting email from people who are complaining that their email address was released. One person said:

nice. this is the FIRST AND LAST time im doing my business with this shitty company. thanks so fucking much for letting all these people know my personal email.

you bet you can cancel my order…. and any other orders ill make in the future. oh wait, there arent gonna be any!!! haha.

Nice one Adam btw, im pretty sure this IS the RFD list.

Hey CanadaComputers, get yourself a decent customer service for a change and get your head out of that fucking ass of yours.

…I’ll be waiting for my gift card

I think that this person is just asking for attention with this smart alec response. It’s as if they’re screaming, “Hey look at me! This email is actually valid so spam me all you want!” Out of the fifty or so people, only three has replied to the thread. This person wanted to voice their opinion but they didn’t have the decency to BCC everyone on the list so they’re pretty much being a hypocrite. I just fired off an email back to the store and just asked them to cancel my order. I didn’t pay for the item yet so I don’t have any reason to be mad. I’m not wasting money.

I guess the way the store sent out this email is somewhat a privacy issue but I don’t think it’s all that bad. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong but someone getting a hold of your email address isn’t like getting a hold of your identity. Email addresses can randomly be created by some spambot as long as they know the host’s naming convention. For all we know, ittechguy@hotmail.com is a valid email address and can probably be spammed. If you want to remain anonymous and hidden, don’t reply to emails that are sent to you because once you’ve responded, you’ve just confirmed that your email address is being used. I’m probably taking this issue very lightly so your opinion might differ from mine.

What’s your say in the matter?