Chinese Vegetable and... Banks AGAIN?

As some of you might have witnessed, I have been growing some (unidentified) chinese vegetable over the last few months on my window sill. A few of them have grown to a harvestable size while I was gone, so my mum cooked it for me. Not bad, for about 3 months of agonizing over their stunted growth!

Desjardins called me today to give me another reason to bitch at them and about them, again. In a nutshell, the caisse changed their accounts last month, resulting in their unsuspecting clients having to pay fees for each transaction unless the client indicates otherwise. So I ended up paying for a bunch of transactions because their letter to me did not mention this.

I ranted to Big Pu last night about this, and both of us wanted to know if there were a way to protest their stupid new account structures. Protest? Because they're not a bank but a cooperative, which should mean we are supposed to have a say on this. I admit that I am a bad co-op member because I did not stay well-informed. The people who decided on making stupid user fees are even worse. But whoever voted these dumbasses in who created this shit should be punched in the kidneys.

Videotron and Cable Internet

I returned to Quebec City once again, after almost 2 weeks of Waterloo (non-?)adventures. Jorghnassen will be able to fill in the rest of the details, but I knew that I had to return here. For whatever reasons, I still had to return to settle some things.

One of the things I did before leaving for Hongtario was downgrade my internet service from Videotron, seeing that I would not be around for about half a month. There's three plans that home consumers would consider: the basic, the high speed, and the extreme high speed. When Big Pu signed me up for cable service eons ago, there weren't such distinctions and the limits were completely nonexistent. Once Videotron started getting more popular and people started downloading even more videos and crap like... well, you know... they created the other types of accounts. BASIC (or "Super Ultra Light") for the person who doesn't know any better; HIGH SPEED for the user who likes to do moderate browsing and downloading but still has to say "OMG WOAH HORSEY" every so often; and EXTREME (or "Pirates Ahoy!") where nothing is limited and the bandwidth should be enough for the, uh, Connoisseur of fine digital media.

Videotron rolled me over to the High Speed account, which I have kept until last month. I then decided to downgrade the account to Basic, which I knew would lower the down and up limits, from 20GB/10GB to 1GB/1GB. But I didn't know that the bandwidth would also go down from 7Mbps/820kbps to 600kbps/128kbps. Yay go cable >:( But at least it helps to not go over the limit too quickly, since everything downloads so fricking slowly!!! (*head exploding in frustration*)

Then to make matters worse, by the time I turned on this computer from 2 weeks of inactivity, there were 11 WINDOWS UPDATES, all security related. So I blew through about 1/10 of my limit in one day. (If it keeps up I'm going to have to call the guy and tell him to change my account again.)

/Internet account whining.

In other whining, I have yet to obtain a criminal record check that doesn't cost 60 bucks and two blisters only to be inadequate for the picky needs of the OCT.

He Ain't Heavy...

I am trying to put together a Hollies collection for my mum since she's such a big fan of them... and other old 60s bands. (That reminds me... SNL and BeeGees made us all sing "Nights on Broadway" like it was hip again.)

One of the songs is "He Ain't Heavy (He's My Brother)." Of course, no one can listen to this without the visual imagery of a boy carrying another boy (at least larger than the former) and get all tingly inside. This pretty much details the origins of this song as well.

"But I'm stroooonnnggg... strong enough to caaarrrrr-rrryyyy him..."

I have my own imagery when I listen to this song; it's of me carrying Big Pu on my back from Shatner to Burnside when he somehow passed out in Shatner, for some odd reason I forget now. I think it was because he forgot to eat or somthing strange.

Indeed, he wasn't that heavy, but mostly because "he's my brooootherrrrrrr."

I hope you're doing well, wherever you are in Japan, Big Pu. :)