The Savvy Boomer

United Airlines treats first class customers the same as all classes-VERY BADLY

We just returned from an extended European vacation which will be the subject of most of my posts over the next few weeks.  Most of the trip was fabulous with the odd exception but the oddest-and worst belongs to United Airlines.

The travel industry is the lowball champion

Move over automobile industry, the travel industry is now the undisputed champion of the lowball.

As we cruise through the initial stages of retirement, we are traveling more.  As we book travel plans, it has become very apparent that the travel industry is all about lowballing.  They lowball you with a rate and then whack on the fees.  Look at this example.

Qwitcherbitchin

On a recent US trip, I was happy to pay about 30% less for gas than I do in Canada.  Yet, everywhere we went, people were complaining about a $4 gal.  Why?  I live in Canada and we have an abundance of oil resources and we pay 30% more.  In fact we pay more for everything here -income tax (OK this includes most of our health care premium), housing, food, airline fares, booze-all the necessities of life.  Do we like it?  Not really, but it is what it is ie. the price we pay to live in a beautiful (usually rainy) part of the world and if I need to pay more to drive the vehicle of my choice to wherever I want to go to do whatever I want to do (within the law of course,) so be it.  If you've ever lived in a part of the world that doesn't have those freedoms, you know where I'm coming from.

 

BC Ferries Rant

Since recently moving away from the frenetic pace of Vancouver to the slower pace of Vancouver Island, we have been subjected to the whims and total disregard for service attitude of the Crown owned operation known as B.C. Ferries.  If you want to know more background about the composition of this dinosaur, read Vancouver Sun's Stephen Hume's recent take on the state of affairs of the (dis)organization.

The main complaints about BCF are the condition of many of the vessels, the fact they lose money, the million $ plus the President of BCF is paid, the food, the prices they charge for everything with 3%+ price increases promised every year, and of course the fact that the employees are unionized so once every few years, they go on strike and the only way to get to the islands is by air so forget about bringing the car.

Yesterday's crossing was typical.

Farmed salmon producers protesteth too much

Here's my first rant of the year:

Which of these would you rather eat?

 

 
Salmon is my favourite fish and my go-to healthy dinner.  For those of us lucky enough to live in the Pacific Northwest and B.C. in particular, we regard eating salmon as part of our culture, so much that I will never order salmon in a restaurant outside of the Pacific Northwest because it would be like someone visiting from Texas ordering barbecue in B.C.  Besides that, the salmon may be Atlantic or as they like to call it to disguise what it really is-"farmed" salmon. Most serious restaurants in the Vancouver area will not serve Atlantic salmon and for good reason.  A lot of farmed salmon is served on sushi, so be sure to always ask first. 

That Atlantic label is deceiving.  I once saw someone about to buy fresh Atlantic salmon in Costco and I said "You realize that's farmed don't you?" They replied that it was cheaper than the other salmon labelled "Pacific wild" and weren't willing to pay extra just because it was caught in the Pacific versus the Atlantic Ocean.  After I set them straight, they bought the real salmon.

There is no way in the world I will ever eat farmed salmon again-I've tried it twice and all I can say is "YECHH!"  I'm not going to go into all the reasons why, but the main ones are how the salmon are raised, what they are fed and their effect on "real" wild salmon.  Most people from B.C. feel the same so the salmon farmers have decided to run a series of strong radio, TV, print and web ads which basically say that anything anyone says negative about farmed salmon is a myth and that those people are pig-headed and ignorant.

Really?  OK even if I were to believe all their propaganda there is one point they never address and that is taste and appearance.  To me, Atlantic (farmed) salmon tastes like salmon flavoured jelly and looks like it was mixed with some other kind of food to make the meat look like a white striped pale orange.  Compare that to the red, robust, perfect taste of a wild sockeye-even one that has been sitting in the freezer for a few months and you'll see what I mean.

The good news for serious salmon lovers like myself is that people who don't know or care about the difference, buy the farmed and leave more of the wild for us.

There are lots of web sites out there that will give you their self interest side of the story (I have no interest in either, other than health, nutrition and taste) but this CTV article gives you an unbiased view.  And every time I see the ad come on comparing how people who think farmed salmon are bad to a drunken teenager blaming the cat for wrecking the house when his parents return home, I become even firmer in my resolve against farmed salmon.  It caused me to write this post and others as well.

 

British Columbia's criminal penalties are a joke

A woman is convicted of dangerous and impaired driving for killing this little girl and she gets 2 1/2 years in jail.  Despicable!!  And her lawyer is going to appeal!  Read the story and weep.

Alexa Middelaer 2003-2008

The problem with today's youth

Some snot nosed kid called Jason Kincaid who writes for TechCrunch was whining because the free Google Voice app wasn't working yesterday.  Let me get this straight Jason-you expect free phone calls to be a God given right and if the service happens to be down for a couple of hours you have a right to bitch?

Let me remind you of a few facts:

• It's a FREE service-you get what you pay for
• In 1980-when you were still in diapers or perhaps still a wet dream, long distance calls were charged according to distance called-L.A. to N.Y. was about $1 a minute so today's LD charges of 2-5 cents a minute are irrelevant.
• What kind of idiot depends on FREE to conduct his business?
• Anyone who calls me for business (personal calls, no problem) on a FREE service gets hung up on (I can tell because you sound like you are calling from a urinal) because if you can't spend a few cents a minute for a landline or cell call, I don't want to talk to you.
• FREE means you have no right to bitch

OK end of  rant.

Brats whining about boomers

Look at some of the articles below written by people who are probably children of boomers who probably paid for their kid's education so that they could learn how to be witty enough to bitch about the boomer generation and therefore their parents.  Any boomer I know never disrespected the previous generation  but I guess the whiners need a target to blame for their perceived woes.  Fortunately, they are in the minority as most gen x and gen y seem to understand that whining never solved anything.

You would think that most of them would have learned to do at least a little research and understand that boomers are classified as people born between 1946 and 1964, and not call President Obama a Gen-Xer and not call his mother, who was born in 1942, a boomer.  Yeah, the rest of their research and facts pretty much follow in that same vein.

Swan Fungus (This guy has some serious issues calling a boomer "a GD MotherF'g stupid bitch ending the post with "Ugh! Baby Boomers.  Die, please?"  I'll bet his boomer mother is real proud but somehow I don't think he cares.)

The Worst Generation Ever (no posts for 6 months-maybe his parents sent him to his room for a time out)

Samuel J Scott(frustrated that boomers won't retire so he can't get a decent job to pay off his student loans)

Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist (an HR firm that obviously doesn't place anyone over 40)