Blessed by the Potato

I noticed that over the last few months I’ve gotten a lot more spam coming through to all my addresses. I was kind of annoyed since I got the same messages a few times after I already plunked one version in my quarantine, so the filters weren’t learning too quickly… but what was stranger that a lot of it was getting by the filters because it wasn’t even trying to sell anything. Some of them didn’t even have links. I thought it was really strange and figured that there was a malfunctioning spambot out there somewhere, or that someone was just sociopathic and liked to clog up the tubes with spam just for the love of making strangers angry. I’ve seen a few other neat theories on this out there, such as a semi-sentient artificial intelligence attempting to communicate with us by using spam — the most common form of communication on the internet (even before Chuck Norris jokes).

Just tonight I saw an even better theory: that the weird snippets of somewhat-normal looking text with no links is being sent around to de-train spam filters. They are messages that are quite similar to normal messages, so they slip through the filters as they stand. If you use those messages to train your net, then the odds are good you’ll increase your false positive rate, and possibly become fed up with your filters and start lowering your threshold, allowing more marketing spam through…

Spammers can be so evil.

Part of the reason my IP has been changing is that there’s a bit of a shake-up happening at Rogers. For a long time now I’ve been on the “grandfathered Extreme” plan — the $44, 5 Mbps plan that was introduced about 2 years ago by Rogers. Since that time, they’ve upgraded the Extreme plan to a $46, 6 Mbps for new customers, but many of us old ones were still getting the cheaper, marginally slower one. As I said earlier, Rogers is trying to get rid of its power users by increasing the price of the Extreme plan and getting rid of anyone who was “grandfathered”. So, I said that the new price was not worth it (especially as the standard Express plan had been upgraded to 5 Mbps), and asked to be downgraded (via the website referenced in the letter I got notifying me of the price increase). The transaction went through, I got a reference number, and was told that my downgrade should take effect in about 48 hours. A few days later I noticed that I was upgraded to the new version of Extreme, the 6 Mbps download (and an aside: this summer has been fantastic for my connection, all the students in my neighbourhood going away for the summer has made it the first time I’ve actually gotten the full listed speed from my modem, so I could actually detect this kind of change). Since I didn’t want to be paying more for it (not even $2/month more while they processed my downgrade request), I called in and asked about it. I got transferred between 3 people (2 of whom didn’t even know I was on the 5 Mbps Extreme plan, not knowing it existed), and found out that my request on the webpage never registered, despite the tracking number. So, I asked the final person to downgrade me, and much to my surprise, she offered to leave me on Extreme and not apply the upcoming price increase for a year! It completely boggled me, as I’ve always had to fight with Rogers to do anything, yet here they were offering me a deal for no reason (I didn’t even have to ask — I was going to continue paying them the same amount for slightly less service anyway).

Amazing luck, as usually getting Rogers to do much of anything is a minor miracle, so I’ve been pretty high about it. When I hung up the phone I was in shock, not believing it had happened. It was a bit of a pain when earlier today I got an email that the automated system had finally registered my downgrade request (with a different tracking number too), a week and a half later. As I feared, that had wiped out my “negotiated” discount. I called Rogers and spent 45 minutes on the phone bounced between 3 agents, but they finally gave me nearly the same deal (it’ll be $2 more per month since I’m starting from the new Extreme now, there being no $45, 5 Mbps plan to put me on anymore). I didn’t even have to beg or threaten to go down there, I just simply had to wait while each sucessive agent checked on something (presumably with a supervisor) and bumped me up the ladder. If I was amazed and shocked the first time I got the deal, I felt like bloody Heracules for keeping it after the second set of calls.

There are some caveats, of course: this now locks me into a 12-month contract with Extreme, but with the phone lines in my place I wasn’t really planning on going anywhere. They didn’t mention anything about not telling people, but I should warn you that Rogers is really weird and random about cutting deals: calling and telling them that your friend got a deal, or that practically everyone else in Ontario got a DOCSIS compatable modem, or that Bell’s willing to offer you a lower price, will virtually guarantee that you won’t get a deal. I also have no idea how they determine who is and is not a “good” customer and thus eligible for a discount or more timely repairs. I’ve had reasonably good luck here in London (it took a few tries when the node was overloaded, but things are quite a bit better now, though I’ll have to wait until September to be sure), but they won’t do anything for me on my parents’ account in Toronto. I’d consider both accounts to be good customers: I’ve been with them for over 3 years, have the most expensive internet plan, and own my modem (so they got the money before the rental charges came back, and it makes me less likely to leave — though that cuts both ways: why entice someone who has more corporate inertia?). My parents have had Rogers TV since before we moved there in 1987, upgraded early on to multiple digital terminal outlets with all kinds of channel packages, and we’ve had cable internet since around 1998 (just after it moved from the Wave to @Home). Plus my brother’s cell phone plan is with Rogers at the same address (and he upgrades his handset every year or so, paying a hefty premium for it, too). Yet despite having less than 1/10th the advertised speed for over 4 years (I only really noticed just how bad it was when I moved out here and saw how much faster things were in London — and this was an overloaded node at the time!), I’ve never been able to get them to admit to any problem with the modem or neighbourhood (although posts from dslreports.com indicate that that area of Willowdale has terrible congestion, with everyone getting low speeds like that). I call and complain every month or so in the hopes that a long enough call history will finally point the way to a problem, but often they just tell me to call back again later in case the problem is temporary. I have to ask Netbug if the call history comes up for them or not. Last time after having the tech try to sell me on a new $100 modem (without admitting anything was wrong with the current one for a replacement), and then telling me to reformat my computer (after telling him it was brand new out of the box and that the old one didn’t go any better) I finally gave up and asked to be downgraded to the Light plan so I would at least pay less for the crappy speeds… and the tech said he couldn’t do that and hung up on me! I don’t know if there are different call centres in London and Toronto, or if my parents somehow have some sort of tech support red flag, but you can see why this call history would lead me to enter a nearly comatose state of disbelief when they offered to save me money out of the blue…

Well, I’m up at the cottage for the long weekend, along with Millie, my parents dog (they’re off to PEI). To keep the dog smell out of my car, I took my mom’s truck, and wow is it ever a different experience to drive that thing. To say the engine roared to life when we first pulled on the highway and got up to speed is completely wrong: it didn’t even purr. The engine yawned, as though saying “yeah, no problem; wake me when you need me.”

Loading the trunk was no problem, but closing it was a little rough as the door was pretty high up when fully opened. Not a problem, as there was a bright red button to press that made the trunk close all on its own. The headlights had harnessed the power of twin suns (I was worried the whole way up that the fusion containment might fail), and illuminated the tops of trees a long distance down the road. It seemed everything in it was tweaked and powered to a ridiculous degree: the 3-zone A/C, the stereo faceplate that flipped up to insert a CD, the no fewer than 8 buttons on the steering wheel (2 of which I still can’t figure out — Wayfare won’t let me press them in case they’re for the ejection seats or to deploy the heat seeking missiles, and with this truck, we can’t be sure they aren’t on there); even the windshield wipers have a funny little shimmy to them to get rid of that little triangle of unwiped area at the centre-bottom of the windshield. I find it difficult to imagine wanting a car where the engineers seemed to sit around and dare each other to find new and creative ways to make something needlessly powered, automated, hidden, button-activated, remote-activated, or covered in leather. That said, it was nice being up high — though I wouldn’t need to be if everyone else wasn’t driving an SUV.

The weather is gorgeous up here after the giant storm cleared the air of the heat and humidity that haunted the region last week (thankfully, I couldn’t make it then :). It also knocked down a tree and a half into our yard, and a rather large tree at that, but it isn’t on the cottage, deck, or driveway, so I’m not too concerned (certainly not concerned enough to actually try using the chainsaw… I’ve seen Evil Dead).

Millie is a bulldog (I’ll try to get a picture after I get access to a camera). She looks kinda sad and kinda tough, but is in actuality the suckiest dog ever. She mopes and whines if I leave the room, and won’t go to sleep unless I come tuck her in. For the first day here she wouldn’t even go eat unless I came with her to the laundry room (where her food is), and she won’t go pee unless I come at least halfway down the lawn with her. She’s one step away from needing a glass of water and a peek in the closet for monsters…

There have been a lot of long weekend fireworks set off out here, and it isn’t even the free day yet (Sunday/Monday). I know that it’s a pretty big tradition across Canada to have Victoria Day and Canada Day fireworks, but apparently no one else has heard of Simcoe Day (August Long Weekend) fireworks except the people who happen to live on the lake here.

My IP has been changing a fair bit with Rogers, so the site has been becoming inaccessable at times. I decided a while ago to just go ahead and get some real hosting, since I don’t think I’m going to stop updating in the next year or so (and hope you will continue to read…), but I just haven’t gotten around to actually doing anything about it yet. I will soon, and hopefully at that point everything will settle down and there won’t be any more outages.

Right now, I’m using dial-up to get on, and SWEET HOLY POTATO IN THE BLACK EARTH BELOW is it ever slow! I thought I remembered dial-up, I used to use it all the time. Back then it was a 28.8, too, and now I’m connected at 46.6, and I can barely use it to check my email. I was expecting images and the like to take a while to load, perhaps some extra lag for text pages, but this is ridiculous. I’m looking at almost a minute just to get to a site, after it times out two or three times. Have I been spoiled by cable? Is dial-up always this bad, or are the phone connections particularly troublesome after all that storm activity this week? I doubt it’s due to conjestion, since it’s the wee hours of the morning in cottage country…

I recently tried out Fictionwise, an online ebook store. Putting aside the matter of ebooks for just a sec, I think the store is rather well done. You can set up a micropay account, or pay with a credit card, and they’re pretty good about offering a large number of formats (including Acrobat in almost all cases). Considering it is an ebook they’re offering, the prices are not spectacular: I just bought 9 short stories (all by Robert J. Sawyer) for $5.50 (US); the last book of short stories I bought had 23 and cost $12.54 (including tax), so the cost per story is just about the same. Perhaps the whole business with the ink, paper, and shelf space doesn’t cost as much as one would assume… though I suspect agreements not to undercut traditional publishers has more to do with it.

I did find it somewhat awkward to browse through their catatlogue, but that was more due to the nature of browsing for books online than anything specific to Fictionwise (I have the same problems with Amazon, though at least Amazon’s default font is a bit bigger).

“Books belong to a special class of inventions that have not been much improved over the years because they are already so very good, such as with the hammer, knife, or spoon. The computer will never fully replace that.”

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found that quote, but it’s very true. I read a ton on my screen at work, and perhaps even more once I get home, so I don’t really have any problem with the concept of an ebook. But it will never really replace a printed book for me. I’m most comfortable reading short stories on my computer, since I find the worst part about the electronic versions (well, after the eye strain and inability to lounge around) is how hard it is to mark your place and come back to it later. That’s not to say I wouldn’t consider buying an e-novel — I have read novel-length documents off the screen, and will again — but most of my long-format reading will be done with a real book. To me, there’s an added level of inconvenience associated with a long story on the screen, so I’d expect more of a discount than what I’ve seen with the short stories (also, buying single novels takes away the convenience/choice bonus of buying individual short stories rather than the hit-and-miss assortment often seen in printed collections).

I just got a letter today saying that the price of my Rogers Extreme service will go up by $7/month (15%) starting August. Apparently, they haven’t even properly told their CSRs, who are mostly finding out from irate customers who’ve been getting these letters this week and calling to complain.

I have to wonder if Rogers is trying to kill off its extreme tier of service now. This is a substantial price increase for a fairly marginal increase in speeds (more than double upload, and almost double the cap, but only going from 5 to 6 Mbps down). They even encourage people to downgrade to the “express” tier in the notice.

Edit: that seems to be the current conspiracy theory: Rogers’ network couldn’t handle the extra upload of extreme, and throttling has largely been circumvented lately, so they’re now trying to kill off the tier (or really make people pay for the upload bandwidth & cap) by upping the downstream speed of express (it’s already where extreme was 2 years ago) and encouraging people to switch down.