Blessed by the Potato

I have a soft spot in my heart for post-apocalyptic science fiction, and City of Ember fits the bill. It’s a suitable-for-children adventure story, set in a city built beneath the ground to shelter the remnants of humanity from an unnamed horror on the surface. Whether it was nuclear war or some other catastrophe, the builders expected that after a certain amount of time — 200 years — the surface should be safe to return to, and included instructions for escaping the city in a box handed down from mayor to mayor over the years. Unfortunately, an untimely death broke the chain along the way, and the knowledge was lost. Centuries and generations pass beneath the ground, and things are starting to fall apart in Ember. The great generator that keeps the beacon of light and hope in the darkness running is breaking down, more and more knowledge is lost, spare parts have run out, and everything has just been reused and repaired too many times. The city is old and tired and falling apart and is little more than patches on top of patches.

So far the premise sounds like Fallout: the movie, which would be awesome. In this case the adventure is all about uncovering the builders’ hidden instructions for leaving the city, and the kids’ struggle against the city elders, and less about adapting to the super mutant filled wastes outside.

The movie is surprisingly good, especially the visual effects of the underground city. I thought the cobblestone roads didn’t seem quite worn down enough, but otherwise it looked great. Everyone seemed to give a good performance, even the child actors. I did have to scratch my head towards the end when the older children inexplicably grabbed the 3-year-old to come on their incredibly dangerous, illegal adventure with them, but oh, well. It was good, and so I have a lot of trouble understanding why I haven’t heard anything about this movie. Where was the advertising saturation? I don’t even recall seeing it in the movie listings back in October (when IMDB says it was released).

I talked earlier about useful holidays gifts… in addition I got myself an Xbox with the monetary gifts. At $240 on a boxing day sale it seemed like a steal even if I only use it as a media centre… however, with another $100 needed for a wireless adapter (or $50 and a headache to set up an access point near the TV) and $60/year for Xbox Live, I’m not sure anymore that it was the best use of my money. Ah, well, the PS3 might be a better media centre (with blu-ray) out of the box, but all my friends have Xboxes so I hope to actually game with it. I also planned to pick up Rock Band for it, but holy crap, that’s another $200! Add in two more games at $80 each and that’s my entertainment budget for the whole year blown! On top of that I got a return or refurb unit, as it already had an Xbox Live ID set up as well as a connection to “Aaron’s HP Media Center” set up, which kind of bums me out (but not enough to actually get my butt down to the store to return it).

From Wayfare I got a Soda Stream/Soda Club home carbonated drink maker. It’s basically a CO2 tank that you can use to make carbonated water at home, to which you can mix in concentrated syrup to make your own sodas. I haven’t tried their cola flavour yet — as a die-hard Coke (or recently, Coke Zero) fan, I doubt I would like it — but the lemon-lime and root beer has been pretty good. It’s a bit of a novelty to mix up your own drinks at home, and they also claim that it’s cheaper and more environmentally friendly to do so. On the surface, that makes a lot of sense: why ship fully prepared/diluted pop around the country along with the extra packaging that entails? You’re basically paying to ship water, when it makes much more sense to just send the syrup and dilute it with carbonated water at home/on site (like movie theatres and restaurants do with fountain pop).

Unfortunately, while it might be slightly better for the environment, at the prices they’re charging it’s not cheaper. A big part of the problem is just with their implementation: they don’t have the kind of volume or distribution network that Coke or Pepsi have. I think this scheme would work really well if Coke or Pepsi decided to start offering in-home fountain pop units and sold syrup boxes at the grocery stores instead of cans and bottles. For Soda Club though, you don’t just walk down to your local grocery store (at least, not in Canada) and pick up a bottle of syrup and a carbonation tank. There are only two places that seem to sell the carbonation tanks, one in Paris, Ontario, the other in Mississauga; and nowhere local that sells syrup.

To order online, you can get 2 carbonation tanks at $25, which is rated to carbonate 120 L of water. In testing, we found that the sodas were fairly flat at the recommended carbonation level, so realistically this would probably carbonate 90 L. A syrup bottle is $5, which can be diluted into 12 L of pop, but again in testing we found the sodas “weak” at the recommended dilution, so 9 L would be more realistic per bottle. So to make 90 L of pop would cost $25 + (10x$5) = $75 plus $5 shipping, or $80. And that’s US dollars. To be generous, let’s peg the exchange rate at 1 USD = $1.10 Canadian, so $88 for 90 L (or to be very optimistic, 120 L), and we’ll also ignore the cost of the machine and CO2 tanks in the first place. To put that into 355 mL can servings, that would be $0.347 per “can” (or $0.26 per “can” if we want to be very generous with how far the supplies will stretch and what the exchange rate will be).

That does compare favourably to full-priced pop at $5 per 12-pack ($0.416 per can). However, I never buy pop at that price. Deals of 3 cases for $10 come up quite regularly ($0.278 per can), and I often stock up on pop at prices as cheap as $2.50 per case ($0.208/can)!

There is some benefit to avoiding the environmental impact of having to recycle all those pop cans, but I’m not sure I’m willing to pay 60% more for my pop to get it. Plus, the carbonator is loud, which makes sneaking a pop while Wayfare sleeps harder, and all this is assuming that I’m ordering enough syrup to make 90 L (equivalent to 253 cans, 21 cases of 12) at one time. I would drink that well within the ~6 month shelf life of the syrup if that was all the pop I was drinking… but while the lemon-lime and root beer flavours were passable, I haven’t tried the cola yet. If that is “off-brand” and I still drink Coke the majority of the time I reach for a soda, then those secondary flavours might sit around longer, and I might need to spread the syrup orders out, increasing the shipping costs.

Now that the secret’s out, I can tell you all that I got Wayfare a new cell phone for xmess. She doesn’t use much time at all, and was formerly on a low-usage Telus plan that they don’t even offer any more. However, her handset broke apart, so it was time for a new one. I was hoping that Telus would give her a new one just to keep her as a client, but it wasn’t until I called in to switch her number that that offer was made. In the end, I think it was a good thing anyway. She told me she was on a $15/month plan, which sounds pretty good for a light user. After looking at her bill though, I saw that she was really paying $25/month after taxes, voicemail fees, and network charges were added on, which is pretty terrible for 50 minutes of airtime (50 cents/minute, much of which went unused through the month)! On top of that, the long distance rates were atrocious.

So a pay-as-you go phone seemed just the thing a light user like her needed. Most of the pay-as-you-go plans were pretty similar: roughly 20 cents/minute local, 30 cents/minute long distance. The thing that set them apart was the various additional fees and how long the airtime top-ups lasted. The winner was, believe it or not, Petro-Canada mobility (the oil company, yeah). They had no extra monthly fees (aside from the 911 fee) and $20/$50 top-ups lasted nearly 6 months (180 days), and a $100 top-up lasts for a whole year! The Nokia handsets they have are low-end but do have some neat features like FM radio tuners and voice recorders. However, we were quite surprised to find that the phone doesn’t have a volume control! (not normally a feature I feel I have to ask about) Here’s a breakdown of the competition:

Update: The phone does have volume control! You have to press left/right on the d-pad during a call, rather than the intuitive up/down.

Bell – 30 cents/min local; 40 cents/min long distance. Voicemail “express” included. $3.95 monthly system access fee. Top-ups last 30 or 60 days. A number of optional features for extra $$$, including automatic credit card top-ups. With the system access fees and the high rates, this is basically just a shitty monthly plan. Avoid it.

Solo – Bell’s more dedicated pre-paid plan, Solo has a higher daytime local rate of 40 cents/minute, but only 5 cents/minute evenings; long distance is an additional 30 cents/min. Voicemail “express” included, no other fees aside from 911. Top-ups last 45 [$20] or 75 days [$30], and are available from a number of retail outlets as well as via credit card.

Telus – 25 cents/min local; 55 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees aside from 911. Top-ups last 30 [$10] or 60 [$25+] days. Expensive add-ons like text messaging (might be needed if you get lots — they charge 15 cents/message without a plan!) and unlimited evenings/weekends are an option.

Fido – It’s pretty complicated. If they can’t explain it on their website so that I can understand it, then that is a fail. They call it a prepaid plan, but you have to refill monthly, so it’s really just a monthly plan that you can top-up by buying cards at a convenience store instead of a bill in the mail.

Virgin – 30 cents/minute local; 60 cents/minute long distance. Voicemail included. Top-ups last 30 [$15], 60 [$25], or ostensibly 365 [$100] days [their website still says the $100 top-up lasts a year, but I heard that they cancelled that]. A large number of optional plans available, as well as some primo handsets.

President’s Choice – 20 cents/min local; 45 cents/min long distance [24 cents/min combined with a PC long distance card]. Voicemail included, no other fees (aside from 911). Top-ups last 30 [$15] or 60 [$25] days. Optional extras include browsing plans and evening/weekend plans, making it a hybrid of a pay-as-you-go and monthly plan. Credit card top-ups an option.

Speak Out – 7-11’s reselling of Rogers’ service features 20 cents/min local [25 cents/min with the lower top-ups]; 40 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees. All top-ups last a full year. However, top-ups are only available from 7-11 stores.

Petro-Canada – 20 25 cents/min local; 30 45 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees (aside from 911). Top-ups last 180 [$20 or $50] or 365 [$100] days. Top-ups only available from Petro-Canada gas stations. Edit: In March, just 3 months after getting the phone because of the decent rates, Petro-Canada has screwed it up by jacking the prices.

So for someone like Wayfare who only uses about an hour a month, but in fits and bursts where some months she won’t use it at all and then two or three in another month, a pay-as-you-go plan is perfect, and having the top-ups last a long time is also important — I shake my head at the ones with 30 day expiry: how are those really any different from a monthly plan? Being able to load up and not worry about it for the rest of the year is a nice feature.

Petro-Canada has been great so far: the people at the call centre were friendly when activating the phone and transferring over her old number. The one call she’s made on it came through clear. One thing though is that they need to load the phones with a normal ringtone option. I think there are only 4 song options. What happened to the classic brrring, brrring?

I first reviewed Astraweb back in 2006, shortly after Rogers cut off newsgroup access. Things have really only gotten better since my last review: speeds have picked up considerably (I can just about max out my connection now at certain times of the day, and the average is well above 300 kB/s, and well above 100 kB/s even in peak times), retention is longer, and the deal is now 120 GB for $25 US, which covers about 8 months of my downloading habit, and is still the best value-for-money I’ve found. What made me think of revisiting my already positive review was that I ran through the end of my last block of credits tonight, and they actually let me go over so that my download finished up. I only went a few MB over, and I have no idea how long they would have let me keep going (I doubt I could have set up a 30 GB download to run with just enough credits to start and they would have let that finish — maybe it only checks every few minutes or so), but it was nice that they didn’t stop it immediately when the digits rolled over to zero. I naturally signed up right away for another 120 GB, which should take me through to late summer (though if I don’t start using the VCR/TV to watch TV I might run out before this TV season ends in the spring).

Thanks to CC, I got my hands on a copy of Findependence Day
by Jonathan Chevreau to review. Findependence Day is the fictional story of a couple starting out with oppressive credit card and student debt, and how they learn to properly manage their money to reach financial independence (or Findependence), learning about RESPs, RRSPs, TFSAs, stocks, and frugality along the way.

It’s not a great story, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s short, and the lessons are there but not beat-you-over-the-head obvious. It’s basically an extended parable/anecdote for learning purposes. It’s edutainment. If you have the attention span and inclination to read a non-fiction personal finance book, then I recommend you do that, you’ll get a lot more information that way; the story is not compelling enough to recommend it purely as a work of fiction for those that all ready know the basics of their financial lives. However, if you (or someone you know) is not inclined to read up on financial planning (whether through books or blogs), then this is an excellent way to introduce them to the topic.

I was going to try to get my sister to read it next — she badly needs to start learning about how to manage her money. She doesn’t have the slightest interest in reading texts on the topic, so this might be a good way to trick her into learning this stuff… Except I realized that she’s 18. She needs to learn how to balance her chequing account and pay off her credit card, not how to grow her savings tax-free. This book isn’t actually going to help her at all at this point in her life. So instead I’m going to pass it on: if anyone would like to read it next just leave a comment and I’ll pass it along.