"Je dis que ça soulage"

En mode "Tontons flingueurs", je n'ai peut-être pas été juste envers le vétérinaire que nous avions appelé quand notre matou est tombé malade, mais le gars n'a jamais rappelé et notre chat est mort.

Et puis, quand on dit dans la description de son cabinet qu'on se déplace - et même de nuit, on se déplace. Sa secrétaire/épouse nous disait de venir au cabinet, mais, sans voiture, c'était coton, surtout pour faire dix bornes sur une départementale hyper-fréquentée avec à l'épaule un chat malade dans son sac de transport.

1- SOS lancé. 2- Pas de nouvelles. 3- Un chat mort.

Mon adorable boule de poils était peut-être condamnée de toute façon, mais je ne le saurais jamais maintenant et le véto n'a JAMAIS pris la peine de rappeler.

Il est mentionné sur "PagesJaunes", "VetClic" et... Google. Comme j'étais connectée à Google, j'ai pu mettre un commentaire où je raconte ma mésaventure avec ce professionnel. Injuste ? Peut-être, mais quand on dit qu'on rappelle, on rappelle. Quitte à mentir et dire qu'on a trop de patients à voir.

Ça, c'était pour le véto qui nous a ignoré... 

Le gars à cause de qui mon chat est tombé malade... Là je n'ai pas fini de faire des offrandes régulières aux dieux, histoire de lui pourrir son karma - et là, je m'en tape de savoir si c'est injuste, ça soulage.

Certains banquiers sont de gros FEIGNANTS et sont du côté des voleurs (les joies d'une carte "CB")

Ben tiens... Encore une arnaque de plus en notre bon royaume de France.

Celle-là ne m'est pas arrivée à moi, mais je me coltine la paperasse et j'ai l'impression que mon banquier et mon conseiller moitié me prenne pour une buse, moitié sont NULS à pleurer.

Pour faire dans le court, la famille a été victime d'un vol sur Internet (produit commandé jamais livré). 

Le problème a été immédiatement signalé.

La commande à "ABC" a été payée à "JKL".

On demande le "chargeback"/rétrofacturation - comme indiqué sur les sites du gouvernement - sauf que le truc est passé par CB (carte bancaire), pas par VISA ou Mastercard et donc, c'est un "litige commercial" et débrouillez-vous avec le vendeur voleur.

Il existe des textes de loi qui sont censés nous protéger, mais les cartes co-badgées CB (la quasi totalité des cartes en France parce que... y'a pas l'choix) suivent leur propres règles. 'Faut dire que c'est compliqué de suivre un paiement électronique (le gars à la tête de l'agence où il y a eu le problème ne comprend pas comment ça marche ! Je ne plaisante pas. Hélas !).

Chez VISA ou Mastercard, le chargeback serait en route depuis belle lurette pour non respect des directives européennes. 

Chez CB, c'est : "on s'en tape et ne nous dérangez pas avec vos problèmes".

Donc : 

- problème tout de suite signalé. On bloque l'opération ? Ah, non, il faut payer le voleur.

- on peut faire revenir l'argent volé ? Ah, non, c'est un litige commercial qui ne regarde pas la banque.

Et ça vous est dit, sans broncher, par des gros BALTRINGUES qui jouent régulièrement au poker avec des milliards, se font aider par nos politôcards (donc avec NOS sous !) et ne font strictement rien en cas de problème.

Je fatigue. Grave.

C'est moderne. 'Faut pas avoir peur.

Merci la RATP !

Fini le gaspillage de papier : adieu les bons vieux tickets T+, bonjour le passe Navigo Easy (bon, déjà, c'est quoi ce nom ?).

C'est moderne. C'est beau. C'est neuf (lavé avec Mir laine, ça poserait peut-être moins de problèmes).

Et ça marche bien... Sauf que, non, ça ne marche pas bien. Seule la dernière validation est enregistrée dans le passe et ça peut poser problème. Par exemple, parlons de quelqu'un (moi !) qui prend un premier bus le 3 mai (validation normale) et en prend un second trente minutes plus tard, donc parfaitement dans le temps imparti pour une correspondance avec le même ticket, sauf que la borne du second bus pense qu'elle est encore en AVRIL.

Résultat : le second bus me bouffe un ticket et si j'avais été contrôlée, j'aurais été en infraction, sauf que... ben non, j'avais fait ce qu'il fallait. Du coup, je me serais pris une prune ET aurais sans doute manqué mon train. Trop génial !

Avec un ticket papier, la borne du second bus aurait sonné, je serais allée voir le chauffeur qui aurait vu de ses yeux que j'avais pris le premier bus trente minutes plus tôt, il aurait déchiré mon ticket et basta. Histoire terminée.

Là, je me retrouve à débattre avec la RATP qui ne voit que la dernière validation parce que leur nouveau super passe est configuré comme ça et, désolée les gars, mais je n'ai pas les moyens de prendre un Navigo "normal" qui enregistre TOUS les derniers trajets effectués.

Du coup, j'espère que la médiatrice va comprendre et admettre mon problème.

Une petite cerise sur ce gros gâteau ???

Si le passe Navigo Easy rend l'âme tout seul, on vous le remplace... MAIS :

"Concernant les titres présents sur votre passe Navigo Easy qui ne fonctionne plus :

Les t+, OrlyBus et RoissyBus ne sont jamais remplacés"

Ben tiens ! T'achètes deux carnets de dix tickets, le passe passe l'arme à gauche et t'as que tes yeux pour pleurer ? Je ne sais pas comment vous appelez ça, mais chez moi, ça s'appelle de l'ARNAQUE.

Mais bon, c'est moderne. 'Faut pas avoir peur. (Même pas peur, juste envie de hurler)

Flurching technology!

Feel free to skip this growl, but I need to growl...

 

I use Thunderbird to send my e-mails because I've got a dozen different addresses on different platforms and I'm not going to connect to each address in the morning to check my messages.

Now... I don't know if the fact that I still use ADSL is the issue, if it's Thunderbird that's hiccoughing, or if it's Gmail that blew a fuse, but I've been having odd issues recently:

- sometimes I have to send my message from a different address if I add an attachment to an answer (I can't always change the address; that's okay with friends and family, not with co-workers).

- sometimes the message I'm typing isn't saving to the draft folder (I've had to copy my text, abandon the modifications, close/re-open Thunderbird, and start my message again).

- sometimes I send a message, but the SMTP connection closes and the message doesn't leave my inbox OR sometimes it does, but it says it didn't, which is why I started adding one of my addresses in BCC to make sure that the e-mail was sent.

And we come to last night... I was answering someone for work (but not a fellow) and that person has been helping me a lot. When the draft-saving failed, I copied my text, closed everything and re-opened Thunderbird. I restarted the message, added my backup address in BCC, and clicked "Send".

Thunderbird told me that sending failed - I got no message to my backup address and even connected to that account to make sure that it was empty, and it was.

It's a very important answer, so I connected to Gmail. There's nothing in the "Sent" folder, but my answer (and its attachment) shows with the initial message that's still in the inbox. Still no trace of my answer on the backup address.

I had an issue like this a few weeks ago: my answer wasn't in the "Sent" folder, but one of my colleagues got my answer nonetheless.

If the message reached my correspondent, I can hope that I'll get a confirmation that my attachment was received, but it's Sunday and not everyone's glued to their keyboard...

If the message is lost, I'm going to look like a muppet when I send a new message to inquire/apologise tomorrow.

Flurching technology!

Admitted Guilt

Ten years ago (!), I wrote something about the fact that there's an annoying tendency in society to not believe rape victims - and a lot of recent verdicts (all around the globe) just confirm that sad trend.

But some nutcases do exist, and one such nutcase is making my blood boil as a State channel will broadcast a documentary followed by a debate, and even though there's a recording of the female accuser taunting her male partner and telling him that no one would believe that he was the victim, the presentation of the documentary exclusively blames male supporters of the accused man, who, according to them, orchestrated a hate campaign against the female accuser.

I've read as many things as possible on the topic (you know, that tendency I have to do my homework), and I know what it's like to be in the claws of a twisted manipulator, and I am convinced that the girl is the monster of this story and that she abused the victims' handbook in the hope to profit from the situation because the world was to stand on the side of the woman. 

Now, seeing a State channel taking the side of the accuser only because she's a woman looks a bit like some "woke" agenda - and it bugs me; they should report the truth and admit that she single-handedly brought the cause of women back decades with her antics.

We're not out of the wood, and true victims will have to fight even more because of that one liar, and it makes me terribly angry.

'No, my dear neighbour, I wasn't raised in a barn.'

Apparently, my next door neighbour thinks I was raised in a barn (even though we've known each other for years!).

Here's what happened: I open my door and she's right outside my door (in the dark, which makes me think that she might be the one who keeps opening the window on the landing nine steps below our shared floor). We say 'Hello!' and chat a bit and then she asks me if my cat was sick on our floor - and I fucking left it there for her to clean.

*blink*

What?

Pardon my French, but fucking WHAT?!!!!!

I told her that my cat doesn't go out and if he'd been sick, I'd have cleaned his mess. I'm furious that she thinks I'd do such a thing.

My misanthropic side is growing. I'm really fed up with most bipeds.

Publicitaire psychopathe ?

Cette publicité a pour titre Un père Noël pas comme les autres...

Dès la première fois que je l'ai vue, je me suis demandée si le gars qui avait pondu ça avait des problèmes psychiatriques. Quel genre de malade concocte une pub où un père Noël se paye la tronche de deux enfants à juste quelques jours de Noël ???

Dans un élan charitable, je me suis dit que la pub passait seulement après le coucher des mômes, mais non ! Même pas ! 

Comme si cette fichue planète n'était pas assez dure, les rêves des gamins passent à la trappe - et si ça fait vendre des forfaits...

J'entends déjà les « Mais c’est de l’humour ! ». Curieux, je ne trouve pas ça drôle.

Quelle bande de baltringues !

Et Joyeux Noël !

Common Insecurity in a Lady's Life

 Long time, no post. I know. Let's say that life has been highly entertaining in a weird way.

A few years ago, I was abandoned (with other passengers) in a remote station by the train company: the last train never came and the emergency contact we managed to reach didn't give a fig about us.

Fast forward to this week, same station. This time, the train is "only" late (half an hour late), but it will reach the station. What was the issue, then? Well, two country coppers were there because a man who wanted to leave at the prior stop fell asleep and was less than a gentleman with the lady conductor and the coppers were called to have a chat with him and - apparently - make sure he boarded the next train to reach his stop.

The cousin who drives me to the station usually stays with me so we can chat until my train arrives (and he doesn't want to tell me that he's just making sure that I'll board the train safely as that station is lost in the middle of fields and it's not entirely safe). This time, he couldn't stay, but he was relieved to see the coppers staying around to "protect" me and the other woman on the platform. We also had the pleasure of waiting with teens, who were borderline wannabe  thugs (insert a sarcastic "Splendid!" here).

It was rather windy and rain was in the air.

The two coppers talked with the unruly passenger, who turned out to be a(n ex-)druggie with highs and lows.

Two women... One unstable bloke in his late thirties and five strange teens... The two coppers got bored waiting and left about ten minutes before the train arrived. They left without ever saying a single word to any of us and this is pretty usual. Usual, but infuriating (the last time I called my police station's direct line, no one answered).

I'm fed up with the situation and a myriad of other unpleasant feelings (I wanted to be a copper when I was a wee gal). Insecurity is becoming "normal" and it angers me. I'm in a capital city, not a village with no coppers around, but the last times I interacted with coppers were frustrating: during a demonstration one prevented me from going home by my usual route and I had to detour (just because he had the authority to bully me as the actual demonstration was three blocks away and heading away from my position) and during the "ronacircus", one tried (operative word) to frighten me by telling me that I might be fined when I reached my destination (I was going to see Mother, who needed to go to the hospital) as I didn't have "enough" documentation to go with my Ausweiss/Gesundheitspass - I could see the glee in his eyes as he wanted to frighten me... for fun.

Insecurity isn't new, but there's something fishy brewing and I don't like it.

Women in History - The Hard Work behind Footnotes

I'm editing the book of a distant cousin and I have to add an awful lot of footnotes to explain who the people he mentions are.

There's one paragraph where he drops so many names that it generated a page and a half of footnotes.

I have a few mysteries that I needed to solve with detective skills; for example, at one point he writes about a noble lady who was the model of a sculptor (scandalous!!!) and so he only gives her initial and vaguely describes the completed statue. I had to check all the works of the sculptor and check which noble lady visited him when the statue was being created.

I think I've found statue and lady, but I'll have to check the sculptor's correspondence to make sure.

You just have to have an interest in genealogy to know that the lives of women were seldom recorded properly... which takes me to last night's footnote. I found a mention of a young woman (by chance, she was linked to the same sculptor who had the noble lady model) and a specialist of that sculptor had a mini biography about her in his book. Splendid! But when was she born and when did she die? Not a word - and that bugged me beyond words because it's unfair. So I put on my Sherlock cap and got to work, but it was bumpy...

Letters mentioned the age people thought she had, then I found her marriage briefly mentioned in archives (the registers burnt and we only have reconstituted data) and I knew she had at least one son because there are descendants.

I located the birth certificate of her son, which made me go looking for his marriage certificate. Once I found it, after checking all 20 districts of Paris over two decades, I knew that she was dead by the time he got married. Then, I checked three decades and I didn't find her, or her husband who was also dead by the time their son got married. I checked the town where the son was living - no luck.

I was ready to type that she was lost in History when I thought (because I've had the case in my family), 'What if she was registered with her birth name instead of her married name - as she should have?'. I checked the decade her son was born in the same district he was born and... bingo! There she was.

The age she was given in her death certificate wasn't consistent with the possible years of birth mentioned in the letters and I ended up with four possible years. The death certificate stated where she was born, so I went to check their registers and I finally found when she was born.

That took me about nine hours. Because I'm stubborn as hell and I didn't want her to be one of those "lost in History" women.

I have a lot more respect for footnotes now (some require a few minutes of work, but others send the historian on a quest that can take an awful lot of time).