Blessed by the Potato

Not much has been going on for me to talk about, so I will once again commit the blogger’s sin and talk about myself.

In reverse chronological order, and most exciting, Wayfare gave me a present for handing in my thesis: a Darth Tater! It’s so cool, I’ve all ready got a ton of plans for him. For starters, I put him on my bookshelf where he totally intimidates my StarCraft marine and my Heavy Gears (to be fair though, the Gears are in 1:87 and 1:144 scale). Then, I’m going to take him to my defense, and to the conference in Mexico, and take pictures of him in all those places. It’s sort of like the gnome from Amelie, except instead of just visiting all those places, he will be going to subjugate them, and bring them back under the control of the Empire. Maybe he’ll also commit atrocities towards any Jedi Potatoes he finds; I’m not sure about that last one, since it might make crossing international borders difficult.

Earlier, I checked out The Wizard Test by Hilari Bell from the library. It was a pretty good story, I’d recommend it (even though it’s “young adult”). I’d also recommend that you borrow it from your library — it’s only about a 2-hour read, so you won’t get very good money-for-entertainment-timesink value if you buy this one (but you will get fantastic time-for-plot returns!). Wayfare’s been reading a lot of kids/young adult books lately, and she’s right, there is a lot going for them. While they tend to be more simplistic, they can be quite entertaining none-the-less, and the fact that you can finish one in just a day or two of casual reading (on the subway, on your lunchbreak — not like a day or two of summer reading) means you don’t forget details or waste copious amounts of time on the book.

My car window got stuck down on the weekend. The motor’s been really feeble for a long time, and for over a year I’ve had the child safety lock on it to keep just this sort of thing from happening. Unfortunately, I turned it off so someone in the back could roll down their window (which does work fine), and then forgot to put it back on for the front passenger one. It cost me $100 to have it put back up, and they didn’t even manage to get around to fixing the root of the problem, despite keeping me there for over three hours. I’ve got another appointment on Tuesday at 8:30 am to get it fixed, unfortunately I wasn’t thinking clearly and forgot that I’ve got Monday off, so an early appointment on Tuesday is particularly inconvenient. Ah, well. What’s odd is that the guys at Canadian Tire told me that it wasn’t the motor that was stuck, it was the master switch. I find that odd since even when it did go both down and up, it was very, very slow about it. I would have thought that would be a symptom of a sick motor.

My World of WarCraft account is dormant for the time being. I just didn’t have the time to play anymore, and without anyone I know playing it hasn’t been that much fun, either. Unfortunately, I just remembered today that they introduced weather effects in the last patch, and I never thought to log on and check them out. I’ll have to remember to try that on the weekend with someone else’s account. Netbug had a fairly lengthy post on WoW on his blog recently, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to add in a comment — very uncharacteristic.

A quick disclaimer: I wrote this in early March (so when it says “today” or “last week”, that’s when I’m referring to), but didn’t post it at the time because I had been focusing on Rogers bashing a little too much at the time, and also because this is not one of my more readable rants (a particularly long one at that). However, Netbug recently praised Rogers Home Phone and I figured that as long as the rant was already written…

Netbug pointed out one thing that I didn’t consider in the original rant below, that you can lower the price with Rogers’ “bundles”: I could save 5% ($4.65) by bundling the phone and my internet service (analog cable doesn’t count for a bundle, but with TV it would be 10%, and 15% if I had a cell phone with them too) with a 2-year commitment. Still not worth it for me, living in rental housing with basic cable, but it might make the whole exercise less futile for someone with permanent lodging and a big screen TV. (Fun fact: for the first year and a half I lived here, I only had a 12″ TV, and watched DVDs on my computer)

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I got a flier delivered in my mail today advertising Rogers home phone service. They send me the same stupid flier almost once a week, it’s getting to be an obscene waste of paper, and I’m thinking of mailing them soon to let them know…

The biggest problem I find with the whole thing is that their pricing is completely out of whack with what it costs to get a phone (hey Rogers: you don’t have a monopoly on phones like you do with cable TV, you can’t just pull prices out of your butt!). Before we get into the details, here’s my a priori assumptions and ideas on the matter: Bell is the old school monopoly, and the incumbent phone service provider. As far as landlines go, they are “the” company to go with. As a result, one might expect that they would have the highest prices, both due to residual monopoly thinking, and due to the value of their name brand.

Telus has offerings, and is a fairly well-known telephone company. Rogers, while well-known for cable and cell phone service, is a complete newcomer to the landline (I think it’s technically VOIP) industry [update: I’m pretty sure it’s only VOIP to the CTMS — that is, the cable head-end for your neighbourhood. After that, it’s on the phone system, not the internet — another source says that it’s simply reselling of Bell’s normal phone lines]. Thus, I would expect Rogers to offer the best prices in order to get people to switch to their service. After all, as a consumer I’m fundamentally lazy, so I will only switch services if there is a savings involved, or if I believe the quality of the product or service will be better. For example, I generally avoid shopping at Futureshop unless there is a significant cost savings, as the staff there are generally smacktards, whereas the staff at the Business Depot located in the same mall here are much better behaved. For me, the smacktard cost is about 5-10%. About a year ago I bought a laptop at Business Depot even though it was $50 more because the staff were more helpful, and relented after the first rejection of the extended service ripoff–err… contract. For my parents’ wireless router, however, I ended up getting it at Futureshop, since it was $30 cheaper.

Anyhow, for the matter at hand. The ubiquitous Rogers flier arrives in my mail again last week, and being a day where I’m already 3 hours late for work, I decide to read it (I can be a real retard at times). Here’s the offer: Local phone service + 1 calling feature, $29.95/mo (plus system access fee of $4.25). Add on unlimited long distance for $19.95/mo, or 1200 evenings & weekends minutes for $18/mo (less if you call less than 225 minutes). Fine print: Actually not too bad. Oddly enough, you’re prohibited from using your long distance access to send faxes (though I doubt that’s enforced).

It’s not a terrible deal, I’ll admit, but here’s how my Bell bill breaks down:
Local access: $19.13/mo, plus $5.95 access fee. I don’t get a “calling feature”, but it’s still $9.12 cheaper. The long distance is slightly different: right now I pay $18.95/mo for 1200 minutes (essentially unlimited for me), but they’re only good evenings and weekends. For the most part, I don’t find that to be a burden, the few calls I do have to make during the day rarely run up more than $1-2/mo. Looking at my Bell bill, I noticed that the system access fee is going to go up in April by $1.50. So I called to complain, and the agent was actually really helpful, which is a huge, refreshing change for phone support in companies (there was also no waiting on hold period, so I suspect it was a slow day and he was bored). Nothing to be done about the system access fee, of course, but I found out that my $19 plan had been upgraded to 1200 anytime minutes, and the 1200 evening & weekends plan had gone down to $12/mo. So, I had him switch me down to that cheaper plan (like I said, I hardly ever use the phone during the day). They also threw in a $7 credit towards the daytime long distance I had used in the last few months after the plan changed since they didn’t automatically upgrade me to the same-price “anytime” plan.

That makes the final bill about $13.50 cheaper for Bell (with my new long distance package), but assuming I pick up a calling feature at $6 to make the packages the same, Bell is still $7.50 cheaper.

Granted, if you absolutely, positively need call waiting, call display, visual call waiting, call answer, and call forwarding, then you’ll come out ahead with Rogers, since they charge about half what Bell does for the add-ons. For me, that doesn’t work: I’m very old school with my calling features, since those per month charges really add up. A year or two with call answer, and you’ve paid for your answering machine (though you do miss out on the ability to take messages while on the phone). I dislike call waiting (email me or call my cell if I’m on the phone and you need to get through), particularly since when you choose to ignore it since you’re on an important call, the person on the other end can never tell if you’re not home or what — a busy signal actually says something :). And with a cell phone, it just becomes a matter of “manual call forwarding” — getting people to try you on your cell themselves (without eating up airtime for forwarded telemarketers). Finally, for call display, I figure: why bother? I almost always answer it even when I can plainly tell it’s a telemarketer, and when I don’t feel like answering the phone, I let whoever it is leave a message (even if I can tell that it’s my mom and she hates when I do that).

This is simply not a very good deal, certainly not enough of a savings to make me switch. Bell has its issues at times (there are some billing horror stories out there), but their home phone service seems to be the best branch (most of the nightmares are for expressvu, sympatico, and wireless, in roughly that order too). The reliability is very impressive — I’m not sure Rogers’ phones would still work if we had another multi-day blackout like we did two summers ago, and that’s not factoring in the usual late-night outages that used to plague Rogers and still happen occasionally.

It reminds me of a discussion raging recently about the Rogers digital cable service. My parents got it, and have not seen the benefit. There’s been talk about discontinuing analog service in the next few years, since it eats up a lot more of the spectrum on the cable than digital TV does. The sooner Rogers can get everyone switched over, the better. However, the benefits just don’t seem to be there for regular people like me and my parents. There are many advertised benefits, and some quiet downsides.

First, the real benefits we’ve seen are pretty much limited to the time-shifting channels and Rogers On Demand. However, there’s very little free stuff on ROD, and what you have to pay for looks pretty over priced: I’m better off walking to the video store most of the time. The picture is clearer on some channels, but most have no difference (for HD, you’ll need a HDTV and a more expensive HD tuner box from Rogers; and this is a household where everyone wears corrective lenses, so buying a new HD TV isn’t a very high priority).

The downsides are numerous, starting with the cost (about 25% more than analog, at least for the basic package). The program guide is a joke (and is down or wrong a lot, especially in the middle of the night). Channel hopping is painful, as the digital tuner is significantly slower than the analog tuner built into most TVs. The seperate tuner adds a seperate remote; while the remote can learn to turn your TV on and off, it only controls the volume from the cable box, which doesn’t give you the kind of range you get when controlling the TV directly. Note that someone has refuted this point, and told me that if I “read the manual” I’ll find that there’s a way to program the remote to change the volume on the TV instead. Unfortunately, I never found this, and my parents’ system didn’t come with much of a manual, just a 16-page installation guide. Wayfare’s dad, who’s very knowledgable about technology, couldn’t get it working on his system either, and if he can’t do it what hope is there for the rest of us? Since the cable comes into the tuner box first, and then out to your TV or VCR (or DVR if you’re more hip to the times), if you want to record something you’ll need to program both devices to work together. My parents just barely got the hang of setting up the VCR to tape shows, so they’ve given up all hope of recording off the digital cable.

There are benefits to be had, but they largely seem to benefit Rogers: if everyone goes to digital cable, they can discontinue analog, freeing up spectrum on the cable for other things. And digital terminals don’t require a technician to come by to change the filters every time you choose a new channel lineup.

London is fantastic for the number of parks and trails running through the city, especially those following the river. I’m pretty fortunate since my apartment building backs onto the river; well, it backs onto some forest, which in turn backs onto the river. Either way, it makes for some sweet walking/biking environs, and I’ve not been taking advantage of it nearly enough while I’ve lived here.

So now I’m making an effort to lose some weight and get in shape through the two basic, baby step approaches of:

1. eating less

2. exercising more

I’m taking it pretty slow (I just don’t have the willpower to go hungry at the moment, nor the energy to really work out), so with the nice weather I’ve made a point of going out for a walk almost daily. I took a slightly different route today, following the muddy path right along the edge of the water, instead of the nicely maintained paved one that’s set back a bit. On my walk, I ran into Christie, who settled herself into a neat little warren of fallen trees to curl up and read a book. She gave me permission to take a picture of her setup, but judging by the look on her face I think it was just because it was the fastest way she could think of to get me to stop bugging her and let her go back to her book. I won’t say exactly where along the path this keen little spot is, just in case I want to read a book there myself one day :)

There are a number of people I know who’ve gotten married recently, or who are planning on it in the near future. That, or they’re planning on moving out on their own. Either way, lots of people thinking about what to put in their new kitchens. One traditional thing (moreso for the people getting married than those moving out on their own) is to get some china with a pattern that they pick out together (read: that the bride and her mom pick out together). However, this isn’t a very useful tradition for most people: my own parents recently bought a new set of china because they realized that their wedding china was… hideous. Even with that, and with making a point of using their new china as often as they can — they still save it for special occassions, but use it for more of them, like thanksgiving, birthdays, tests, etc., instead of just christmas and easter — even with that, they still hardly ever use their china. Sometimes, they don’t realize until they’re halfway through a meal that they used the regular plates.

So why even bother? Aside from my parents, no one notices when we use the regular plates. It also saves a lot of attic space not having to store a bunch of barely-used plates alongside a dress that was only worn once. Perhaps most importantly, you just can’t beat the timeless solid white of Corelle plates. There are no patterns to form weird Rorsach patterns when food covers part of it, and no paint to slowly chip off with each use.

Yeah, I really like my Corelle plates. The best part about them is that I don’t need to constantly worry that I’m going to break them — I can actually use them. They are nearly indestructable, and that’s their big selling point. They’re not completely indestructable, as I have broken one since moving out here to the L-dot (and people are still amazed that I’ve managed to do that). Given how clumsy I am and how many other dishes I’ve broken over the years (particularly beakers in the lab… ugh), only having one broken bowl is a pretty big testament to their durability (and to give more credit to them, I dropped it from shoulder height with spin).

For those picking items for your wedding registry, it’s important to put some things on that people will want to buy for you, as well as what you want. Having a china pattern on record is nice, but most people I’ve talked to don’t want to be giving china, knowing that it will be used less than the 9th fondue set on the pile (a problem made worse if your pattern doesn’t have universal appeal so people wonder if a mistake was made). A good idea I saw recently was to put a bunch of board games on the registry (everyone needs a scrabble and monopoly, and not everyone has them yet). They’re reasonably priced for your poorer, younger friends, and fun to buy (rather than “hey, how’re you liking that toaster I got you?” … acutally, toasters can be sort of fun, but you get the idea.)

Full disclosure: this post was in no way supported by Corningware/Corelle or Parker Bros. games. However, it could be.

It’s amazing sometimes how much the river can flood in the springtime. Fortunately, this year I remembered to take some pictures of the difference. I didn’t manage to catch it quite at the peak (when they were paging people over the public address system at the hospital because the parking lot was flooding out), but I did get within about 2 days, so the water level is pretty high!

Here’s a pair of shots of the bike path running under the bridge onto campus:

And here’s a pair of the creek running behind my building (that during hot periods in the summer dries up completely):

I don’t know how fast the water rises once the snow melts and those ice dams are removed, but you can see why they always warn parents not to let their small children play near the creeks and rivers in the early spring. Not only does it flood out some of those paths, but the water moving down the river moves a lot faster, too.