No response from Sharon - so I've redrawn for the TNB tickets for tonight (I was told the show is sold out and sure don't want the last two tickets to go to waste...) and sarabeth's ballot was drawn.

I'm waiting for her to call. Or I'll have to move down the list...

Cheers,
George

(Twenty years as a full-time journalist is a tough habit to break, but generally justFRED has kept clear of news or politics. So see this as a personal opinion, not an official statement from justFRED)

The recent semi-accurate attack by The Daily Gleaner on provincial Attorney General T.J. Burke along with a few other recent pieces have me shaking my head in wonder - and not of the 'Oh, ain't that cool' variety.

Burke, as you know, was a bad boy once as a teen. He got into a fight outside a bar, was arrested, charged, pleaded guilty, convicted and fined $250. He was later pardoned, went on to become a lawyer, was elected to the Legislature and now sits as the province's chief legal officer.

Last Saturday, a bottom-feeding Gleaner reporter - I just can't use the word 'journalist' in this context because it has strong ethical connotations to me - dredged up the 17-year-old affair and, according to Burke, managed to get at least some of the facts wrong. But I'll bet this nasty piece of work made the circulation department happy, a rare event these days.

And they've kept the story alive, running a piece on the front page on Wednesday under the headline 'Burke changed life around after conviction at 18'...

So was the motive simply to sell papers? Or is something else at work here?

On the same page, above the fold, is a headline: UP FRONT| VIRGINIA GUN LAWS 'VERY LIBERAL'

The same line is repeated in the story beneath the headline, but without the cloak of all-caps: The gun laws are 'very Liberal' in Virginia...

Very Liberal with a capital L? As in the political party to which Mr. Burke belongs? Shouldn't that be 'very liberal' as in not strict?

Now I'll grant you that TDG is reknowned for sloppy writing, fracturated grammar and horrible spelling (Headline of the main editorial, Friday 13, 2007: Stronach's change of heart wreaks (sic) of personal ambition). That should be 'reeks', lads. Look it up. And don't rely solely on your spell chucker.

But the paper also has a history of egregious attacks on politicians, political parties and anybody else it takes a dislike to, reputations be damned.

But I can't accuse it of reaching a new low. That would be ridiculous, and half a century too late.

All I can say to T.J. Burke is: Welcome to the club.

The good news is that most people will tell you: Don't worry about it. It's only the Gleaner.

But it's not you I've been thinking about. It's your family. Something I doubt ever crossed their intrepid reporter's mind.

Cheers,
George

So now that Jennifer and MHayes are out of the running - who's going to win the final 5th month anniversary celebration?

It could be you.

Contest details are http://www.justfred.ca/justfred.forums/showthread.php?p=401#post401">in the forums

Cheers,
George
justFRED.ca

That was fun...MHayes won the TNB tickets and a free pizza.

Visit http://www.justfred.ca/justfred.forums/showthread.php?p=397#post397">the forums for details about today's chance to win another pair of tickets and lunch at The Grill on York.

Cheers,
George
justFRED.ca

Help us celebrate our fifth month online with a chance to win theatre tickets and a free pizza.

Details http://www.justfred.ca/justfred.forums/showthread.php?p=381#post381">in the forums.

Cheers,
George

Knowing that spam is such a pain in the neck, why would any legitimate business be stupid enough to send me junk mail FOR A PRODUCT OR SERVICE I ALREADY HAVE?

My rule of thumb is simple: Don't do business with spammers.

Spamming is theft of resources, and doing business with thieves is just plain stupid, unless you don't mind being ripped off.

I wonder if Rogers Wireless knows that Hughes' Brenda Peters is resorting to the techniques favored by the online pill pushers, con artists and porn merchants?

Cheers,
George

Get over your triskadecaphobia and give us your best Friday the 13th story - and you could win...

Details in the http://www.justfred.ca/justfred.forums/showthread.php?p=364#post364">justFRED.ca Forums.

Cheers,
George

This past week certainly has provided us with some interesting experiences as Aliant business customers. First there was the "line sharing" problem - for some reason, my home phone number was being shared with a completely different line elsewhere in the city. After notifying Aliant tech support on Sunday, the problem was finally fixed on Tuesday. I hadn't bothered switching my home phone to voice-over-IP yet, but I'll definitely reconsider now.

And now, round 2: a member of our staff works remotely in a rural area and uses an Aliant dialup account for internet access. Yesterday the dialup account stopped working; after 15 minutes on the phone with Aliant tech support, it was eventually discovered that the Aliant sales team had deactivated the account for some unspecified reason. Apparently, no one outside the Sales team has access to reactivate the account - and, in a sadly-typical display of Aliant bureacracy, the Sales team is currently on Holiday and won't return until next Tuesday. In other words, we're out of luck until then.

So to summarize what Aliant apparently believes is an acceptable level of service to business clients:

- make no attempt to contact a business client before making major changes to their services
- make the change on the day before a holiday weekend
- don't give anyone else within the company access to reverse the changes
- don't provide the client with any way to fix the problem (or even find out the reason for it) until after a 4-day weekend

Aside from being a ridiculous comedy-of-errors, that is inexcusably-poor customer service - especially to clients who are paying premium fees for supposedly a higher level of quality / reliability.

As many of you have noticed already, we've made some recent updates to the justFRED Blogs. Many of the changes are cosmetic - we've updated the blogs so that their appearance is more consistent with the rest of the justFRED.ca website. A new http://www.justfred.ca/blogs.php">listing page has also been created; the redesigned page shows an overview of recent posts in all of our blogs.

Behind the scenes, we've made some changes to the blogs themselves. Rather than a single "justFRED" blog, there are now two: http://blogs.justfred.ca/justfred/">justFRED Contests and http://blogs.justfred.ca/justfred-news/">justFRED News & Announcements. The contests have become so popular that we felt they deserved their own blog - and contest junkies have no need to worry, the address for the contests blog has not changed (same with the RSS feed, etc).

Aside from the recent updates, we have quite a few new features and tweaks planned over the next few weeks - including new bloggers and better integration between forums and blogs.

- Stephen
justFRED.ca

Stephen - who handles our tech support - can't be reached by phone this weekend. Calls to his number are being automatically re-routed to a different home phone number...and the poor woman who has that number is getting all of his calls.

Aliant to the rescue. They say we should call him and let him know about the problem. LOL. So why don't they call his number and see for themselves? "We are not able to make outgoing calls." ROFL. Hey, maybe they need Rogers new telephone service.
Then they refused to even consider checking it out unless we provided them with his mailing address. I guess they get a lot of bogus complaints about phones not working, right? No. It's just their policy.

So we dug out his mailing address...and they promised to have it checked out in three days.

The owner of the number that's getting all of Stephen's calls isn't impressed: "I guess I'll just pay my phone bill in three months," she told us.

Ah, Aliant. Here for somebody. Apparently not for us.

Cheers,
George
justFRED.ca

PS - If anyone sees Stephen, would you let him know why his phone's been so quiet this weekend?