He made it happen.

“He dreamed of a better world.”

 There's no real trick in that. I don't think there is anyone among us who hasn't dreamed of a better world; who hasn't wanted to change things. 

But Steve Jobs made it happen.

 Love him or hate him or Apple or the products it makes, Steve Jobs changed the world we live in. He had a passion that he pursued with single-minded intensity for his entire adult life. And the world we live in is a better one for it.

I type these words on a computer made by Apple that is the descendant of the original Mac and the Apple II: the first computer to really be useful to ordinary people. You read these words on the “World Wide Web”: a creation of the technology that was first invented on a computer built by NeXT Computers which Steve Jobs built when he was forced to begin again after being pushed out of Apple.

 There are only a few in each generation who as individuals shape the world we live in; fewer still who shape it for the better.

 Goodbye, Steve.

A good man died yesterday...

A friend of mine, Derek... ...well, really a friend of a friend—someone I'd only met in person perhaps once, died yesterday, and I feel the sadness of it. He was only 41.

How do I know he was a good man, then, if I knew him so little? People I did know well—people who have been my friends for many years—knew him and they thought he was a good man. And I knew him through his many blog posts; most of which over the last few years dealt with his impending death from colorectal cancer. Even in the face of the knowledge that his cancer would kill him, he wrote with gentle humor and if he was angry and scared from time to time, he almost never let it show.

Just the other day, I was wondering why he hadn't posted for a little while, but now I understand. Still, it was only 6 days from his last post on April 27 until his death, and I hope that means that his ending was as peaceful as it could be.

I'm sad for the loss of him, I'm sad for my friends' loss, I'm sad for his family.

Anyone but Telus...

After years of frustration, I wrote the following email to my local telecommunications conglomerate.

Dear Telus,

I have finally grown completely fed up with your abysmal customer service.

As time has gone on, I have slowly cancelled services which I used to receive from Telus such as high-speed internet and home telephone service, until I am now left with only an email only internet service and my Telus Mobility mobile phone service.

Why? Because time after time, Telus has been completely lacking in its abilities to serve my needs as a customer. The latest occurrence was with regard to my email only service and my attempt to change its setting on Telus's web account portal. It turns out that when I cancelled my land line and reduced my internet service to an email only service, an new account number was set up for me, but unlike the email account ID which was transferred from my old account number to this new one, my online login was not. So when I logged in to my online account, it showed an account that no longer hand any services associated with it.

When I called the 310-2255 number to seek support, not only was I subjected to your barrage of computerized voices seeking to "direct my call for my convenience" (actually to save you money), when I finally did get to speak to a human being, he kept interrupting me and when I asked him to refrain, he hung up on me. When I called back and spoke very sternly but distinctly to another human being (after repeating "Agent, agent, agent..." until your money-saving, customer-enfuriating system relented) I finally got to explain my problem (despite having to repeat myself on simple things like being asked my name, stating and spelling it and then having said human give me back the spelling incorrectly). She finally got my problem, put me on hold in order to solve it, but never once realized that there were two different Telus account numbers in play; that took me to do while I was on hold.

I went back one more time to the https://www.telus.com website which had until that point (after my one initial viewing of the problem) given me back a string of "403 - forbidden" error messages and managed to realize that what was happening was that attempting to log in to the site again was causing the problem and simply going to the URL without logging would cause the site to load properly (great coding there, Telus!). At that point, I realized that I was looking at an account that said "closed" (and for which I was owed $6.01 which has never been refunded to me, nor transferred onto my other Telus account; way to run a billing system, Telus!). Since I was still on hold, I went looking and finally found a bill for the email only account and linked it to my online login and made the change to my email spam setting that I'd wanted to make in the first place.

At which point, your representative came back on the line with her only suggestion that I wait and see if the website was working tomorrow.

Frankly, this was precisely what I had come to expect from Telus, and I'm tired of it.

Just as soon as I am able, I will arrange my affairs in order to end my email service as well as my Telus Mobility service, and from now on, when I am asked (in my work as a technical support consultant) from whom my clients should seek telecommunications services, my answer will be:

"I can't tell you for certain what services you should use, except to say that it shouldn't be Telus. To use Telus is to be set up for disappointment and frustration".

And I'm also going to Twitter a link to this email message, which I am going to post as a blog entry in a blog that you have inspired me to start.

http://alans-random-rants.blogspot.com/2010/05/anyone-but-telus.html
https://twitter.com/alanbaker

Thanks for nothing.

Alan Baker

PS

Since you've not seen fit to actually simply provide an email address that customers might reasonably use to contact you on any page of your website, I've done my best to find what email addresses I can via Google. Hence this message goes to:

Nick Culo, TELUS Media Relations, nick.culo@telus.com

Karen Dosanjh, TELUS media and public relations, karen.dosanjh@telus.com

Darren Entwistle, TELUS President and Chief Executive Officer, darren.entwhistle@telus.com (this one I can only assume is correct).

As well as via the email web form I had to Google to find. Good job, Telus!

It's about time we Canadians stopped putting up with being overcharged for almost everything we buy and receiving lousy service in return. Let's start demanding more for our money people!