Country Hills Toyota: Avoid at all Cost

I would like to expose one of the worst businesses in the Calgary area with the hope to protect consumers: Country Hills Toyota. I've had so many businesses with this so-called dealership but have been able to avoid them for the past year or so after I experienced lots of poor service, bad customer service, overpriced items, you name it. The thing about this dealership is the location. This is the only Toyota shop that serves northern Calgary and the nearby towns. The service charges are atrocious and the waiting time and appointments are the worst. I must add that the other dealerships are not much better than this but Country Hills Toyota goes for the price. Here are some examples of how I experienced different services of them:

1. I was there for a simple Oil Change once. I used to go there for Oil Change frequently. I don't anymore. The waiting time is incredibly long. Oil Change is the simplest thing that everyone can do: There's a drain on the bottom. Drain the old oil. Contain for later recycling. Put whatever(!) back on, add fresh oil and make sure it is enough. That is all. The entire process takes about 15 minutes or so. The important thing is just to make sure the old and dirty old is completely out. They keep you waiting for sometimes hours to intensify their operation(!) and make it worth the big bucks they charge you. Once I waited there for over three hours. They were so ashamed and embarrassed that they didn't charge me for that! 

2. You need to know that many of these businesses are just a source of employment. What I mean is that there're people who don't work the way they shall, due to lack of proper management and the ownership needs to compensate for the losses somehow. I was there one day early around 08:00 to have my oil changed. There were as many as, probably, 20 big lights were on! The amount of money that is saved by turning those lights off in a summer long day, is beyond the understanding of the people who manage the costs in these businesses.

3. I bought a 2025 Toyota ____ in Aug. of last year from a dealership in Calgary. The documents showed the vehicle had been made in July of that year and it was legitimate. I had given deposits to other dealerships in the area, including this place, Country Hills Toyota. I never received any calls or any updates about my order. I eventually got my deposit back. I had one counter with one of the ugly idiots from a village in ___! You'd be shocked to know about it: When I asked about the price of a Crown, he told me it was expensive! The Toyota I bought is a little less expensive than a Crown but I don't believe you should tell a potential customer that a car they're looking at is expensive to imply that they can't afford it unless you're a mindless, stupid, ignorant, dumb rube and that's what most if not all the salespersons in Country Hills Toyota are.

These guys are going to be alright because they cover a vast area in northern Calgary but I'm happy that I was able to cut my ties with them. I will go to other less fraudulent services in the town! 

(Photo: Country Hills Toyota showroom ceiling at almost 07:15 on a summer day. Imagine how much waste could be avoided here but the owner doesn't care. He adds all the extra cost to your bill. That's why I'm not paying $150 for a damn oil change service which literally doesn't take more than 20 min. from an unskilled labourer)

The Stinking Animals of the Barn

 There are a couple of women who come to the office usually in the last two days of the week, almost every week. They pretend they work but they laugh and talk more than they do! It gets worse when another one, who is usually quiet, when the other two are away, joins. 
Ha ha ha. Ho ho ho! Bela, bela, bela, Yap, yap, yap! 

Every 20 minutes. They never shut the f--k up. It makes the job very difficult by not being able to focus. Everyone knows nothing can be done about it. No one says anything! My solution is easy: When it becomes too much, I get the hell out and go to the other office! Spend a little time there and come back in 10 to 15 minutes, hoping their big mouths are closed! 
Something happened in an afternoon that shut these annoying, selfish, stupid, idiots up, a few days ago! One of the bosses was in the office, working! These brainless idiots became mice! Quiet. Coming and going without a peep! It showed how immature and stupid these women were. Laughing and not caring about anything and then quiet as a mute kid the minute the teacher walks in the class! Stupid and shameless. This is what I'm going to do: I've written down the date the manager was in the office and I will send these rubes a message about how pathetic they were on that day, when the time is right! 

In case someone wonders why I use the term Barn to introduce this stupid workplace, this term, surprisingly, was used first, by The Mumbling Guy and I appreciate it! It truly is what the word means! 

(Photo: The white roofed building, the barn, at William Pickton's Farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. This was the place that Pickton murdered his victim's, mostly women from Downtown East side Vancouver [East Hasting] and allegedly fed them to his pigs! I lived quite close to the far, for a short while before 2011 started and that was the time that he already had been under investigation but not much had yet been done. The farm later was turned into a set of disgusting apartment buildings, like many other places in Canada. The barn that I work in is not as dangerous as this one. However it could be very annoying and traumatizing because of some worse-than-pig, human-like animals as I described above!)

Weird Food (2)

 I bought some batter this past Dec., probably for the first time after 20 years! I just needed for my Turkey cooking to avoid dryness. It worked and I've used it only once after that. It's now too fatty and too strong for me! It's taste throws me out! It's been sitting in the refrigerator for nearly three months. I should perhaps give it to someone! 

With that in mind I was in a couple of supermarkets this past week and I saw a new scam: Olive Oil Butter!!!!!!!!!!!! Olive Oil, if not mixed with cheap oils, which most of the bottling companies do(!) a healthy fat but when you turn it to butter, meaning you process it, even if it is originally Olive Oil, which it is not, it becomes a health hazard! I don't really know who eats butter these days or how they eat it but while I'm not very surprised, I'm baffled by the level of dishonesty, lack of care and deceitfulness that these businesses use to empty the pocket of consumers while affecting their health. 

(Photo: The butter section of a supermarket shows different types of butter. From European style to Olive Oil, perhaps flavour and benefit[!]. The latter goes for CAN $5.99 and it weighs 454 g, not even 0.5 kg!)

The Cockroach in the Front Yard

I've written about these assholes of the neighbourhood already once: Drunkards, lowlife losers, drug-addicts, thugs, you name it. I'm no perfect person but I have limitations and boundaries. If you have no red line that you believe you shall not cross at any cost, then you would do anything to achieve your goal and that's not too far to break a law. That's how I look at the things. 
With that in mind, we have this ugly loser whom I've written about earlier but I'd like to say about another encounter with this beauty queen! This ignorant retard is from Cosenza in southern Italy. For those how don't know, there's a big difference between the center and north of Italy and its south, including Sicily. That is why you see the majority or all the Italians who migrated to the US, in the 50's and earlier are from the south or mostly from Sicily.  I'm going to Italy this year, for the first time but my focus would be on north but from what I've read and heard about the south, including Cosenza, it is a poor region. I had a buddy here in Alberta who went back and now he lives there in his parents house. He worked as a painter here and told me once that he never had a chance to go to a school because he always had to work. I had this plan to go to Italy back in 2021 and he sent me a list of the things he wanted me to buy for him after telling me that I could stay with him and his Mom who was alive at the time. It was really funny:

• White Socks!
• Some sort of Vitamin (I don't remember what the hell it was)!
• Some other odd and ridiculous thing! 

He always complained about his life and everything related to it. He used to say that a friend of his lived and worked in a Pizza Shop (or owned it) in Ontario and then added: " I don't know how to make Pizza "! Or he said once that their home in Italy did not even have a stove! I don't know how they cooked and ate but I assume it was on an open fire. 

Now that you know how southern Italy is, a little bit, I go back to the Beauty Queen! She bragged about how his father was a business owner while she shopped at filthy stinking toilets such as Dollarama and Wal-Toilet-Mart! Despite the fact that, I think, she was looking for someone to satisfy her with her basic biological needs at the age of 62, and I've told that story, once we were talking, she kept saying " I don't work at the moment "! I don't know what she expected me to do for her! Hand her some cash? Bring her food?! You look like a healthy woman. Go get a freaking job anywhere in the city. You only have to overcome your biggest and most disgusting habit of being lazy. You can't do anything about the fact that you're a cheap, idiot. That's how your brain has been developed but you can stop being lazy and work. In this case you don't have to beg people for money. Then one day he said his Dad had passed away and he left her and her siblings some money. That was a big chunk in a way that she could pay her mortgage off! I don't know if you can do that. Most of the banks have regulations which prevent you from doing so as that is how they make money. You pay interest. Her begging and disgusting nasty behaviour did not stop there because once an animal is a filthy, nasty one, she most likely remains a filthy and nasty one. This time she started to convince me that I needed a major change to my yard to make it look better. I denied that. I simply did not want to spend any money. Then one day I came home and saw changes to the yard. It was not bad but it was unnecessary. I messaged her and thanked her. She demanded money! And I said to myself: Are you kidding me?! I'm not going to give you even a single Penny! First of all no one asked you to do so. You ain't even supposed to go to someone else's yard without their permission. Do I have to get a restraining order?! Secondly, You should've asked and negotiated the cost! Screw you. 

She barely talks to me after this which I'm thankful for. I'm just waiting for an opportunity to get the hell out of this shitty neighbourhood but I don't want to rush it. I will look for a bigger and nicer place within a better neighbourhood with less drunkards, drug-addicts, deadbeats, child-abusers, wife-beaters and mentally disturbed individuals! Seems to be a very hard task to accomplish but not impossible. I need to sell this place first. 

(Photo: A yard in Palm Springs, CA. It was heavily raining when I was there almost 2 years ago but because of the extreme drought and heat, particularly in recent years, many households have ditched the lawn) 

XRF and Litvinenko

I was reading about this recent conflict in western Asia (not Middle East which the average stupid, ignorant, calls it!) and it somehow was redirected to the role of Russia and then how the Russian government kills, assassinates (same thing!), silences and kidnaps or exiles its opponents and critics. The story continued with the strange death of a former FSB * officer, Alexander Litvinenko in Britain back in 2006 and then pointed at a scientific fact which I had read about during my XRF certification studies. I think it would be interesting to say it here:
XRF is a method (an NDE) of analyzing the elements of a material and their percentage: What a material is composed of and what percentage of each element could have a significant effect on its characteristics and performance. For example Nickel (Ni) is added to Steel to prevent oxidation. This is generally between 8 and 10 percent. If a corrosion-resistance material is ordered and does not have MTR or the provided one does not look authentic, XRF comes to assist to see whether the right amount of Ni exists or not. 
Next I briefly discuss how is XRF generated. XRF is generated by the way of radiation. We need to know what ionization means so then we get to these two types of radiation:

• Ionizing radiation.
• Non-ionizing radiation.

Ionization happens when an atom loses or receives an electron. It's a negative ion if it receives an electron, of course, and it's a positive ion if it loses an electron. With that in mind, it is needed to say that non-ionizing radiation, although could cause burns, is not so harmful to the body. Examples of non-ionizing radiation would be light, cosmic light, microwaves and radio waves. Ionizing radiation, on the other hand, could be quite dangerous. In order to see the level of risk when exposed to such radiation, first we need to understand the different types of ionizing radiation. They are:

• Alpha particles (α),

• Beta particles (β),

• Neutron particles, and

• X-Ray or Gamma Ray.

This diagram shows how different types of ionizing radiation travel and how they could be stopped

Describing what kind of radiation each of the above ones are, helps to get closer to the answer:

Alpha particles consist of two Protons and two Neutrons. For that they have +2 charge and they are heavy. It means that it cannot travel more than 1 to 2 inches (25.4 to 50,8 mm) in the air, lose most of their energy and stop after that distance is reached. Alpha particles could be stopped by a piece of paper or the outer layer of skin but if they are inhaled or ingested, they could be harmful and detrimental. 

Beta particles have higher energy and travel faster because they are lighter. They have a negative charge and  travel up to 10 feet (a little more than 3 meters). They also are emitted from the nucleus of certain radioactive atoms. They could be stopped by a layer of a few millimeters of plastic, glass or metal foil.

Neutron particles are the next strong ionizing particles but we're not going further. 

When Litvinenko was first hospitalized, he showed some early symptoms of food poisoning:

• Nausea and vomiting,

• Extreme fatigue and weakness,

• Diarrhea,

• Headache and confusion,

When the illness progresses, other signs start to emerge after a week:

• Immune system failure. At this stage a rapid drop in White Blood Cells leads to the body being completely vulnerable.
  Increase risk of internal and external bleeding. This is due to loss of platelets. Platelet helps with clothing. 
  Hair loss. This also starts to happen despite the fact that Alpha particles do not affect the victims through the skin. This was seen in Litvinenko's appearance. A symptom completely different from food poisoning. That baffled the physicians at the time.  

The severity of these symptoms depends heavily on the dose but how Alpha particles reached Litvinenko's body is the next question. Polonium 210 which is the source of Alpha particles radiation is assumed to be brought to the country (Britain) easily by a Russian assassin. It could be simply put in checked-in baggage, wrapped in a piece of paper. There would be no way to detect that and no harm to anyone, neither the assassin nor the security personnel in Russia and Britain. Then slipped into his beverage or food and waited for the slow but effective reaction. First signs of food poisoning, as described above and then other signs and symptoms which refute the theory of food poisoning. He was gone by the end of the third week. 

The above theory is what was concluded after autopsy had been performed and investigations had taken place but no one was ever charged and prosecuted for this crime. 

X-Ray radiation which is the fundamentals of XRF has more energy, travels faster and longer. We leave it here because we just wanted to see the way that the former agent was assassinated scientifically. The part that does not make me angry with the Russian Government and whoever pulled this off is once you work for one side and you go to another side, you betray your country and you automatically are a traitor. Traitors deserve death and in this case a very painful death. He deserve it more than Robert Levinson did. He only acted as an spy, he was not a traitor.

* FSB is the Federal Security Service organization of the Russian Federation which has its root in KGB of the Soviet time.

(Photo: Litvinenko's grave in a London cemetery. He is buried far away from his birthplace of the town of Voronezh)

The Sudden Jump

I went to get some gasoline on my way home from work yesterday and I got shocked! I knew the prices had gone up but I didn't expect $1.66 for a damn litter! It's in the news that the Strait of Hormuz in Persian Gulf where most of the oil and some other commodities have to pass through is chocked and that has resulted in this spike.

This picture taken from the south of the Persian Gulf, not the Iranian coast shows an UAE small warship escorting a commercial container ship at the Strait of Hormuz. This waterway has a width of 33 to 39 km.

Trump, as part of his confusion and the fact that now he doesn't know his right hand from left(!) has asked the European allies to help him to once again make the shipping possible through that waterway but the so-called NATO allies have said it was not their war! He's pissed now and has threatened to leave NATO!

I went to the port city of Mahshahr on the shores of the Persian Gulf just a few years before my immigration but have never traveled as far as that. I hope one day one the area is peaceful I can go and see this part of Iran.

(Photo, top: The picture taken yesterday shows what CAN $30 will get you. Not even 18 liters of gasoline in a PetroCanada Gas Station)