hexstatik

you know, now that canada’s wireless auction is complete, i am totally ready to have a total shake up of the canadian cell phone industry, and i think the rest of the country is too. we definitely need it!

what, from ridiculous voice and data packages for the iPhone from Rogers, to getting charged for incoming messages by Bell and Telus, Canadians are being asked to bend over by every cell carrier available.

the best parts about getting billed for incoming messages by your carrier are:
a) they are no longer motivated to block spam from their networks, you’re going to pay for it (in fact, there is now incentive for them to allow it)
b) they have effectively just doubled their profits on text messages because they get to bill you AND the person you send the text too. bastards.

the one positive thing about all this is that the federal minister of industry, jim prentice, has taken notice and is finally standing up for canadians and asking Bell and Telus to justify charging consumers the new text messaging rates.  

like my good friend zameer pointed out, how is it that in a country with 1/10th the population of the united states, our cell phone carrier profits are equal to those in the united states? an excellent question i think.

this was sent to me by a co-worker last friday. unfortunately, i decided to watch it at work and had to explain to a cube mate why i laughing so hysterically. if you’re in IT, you’ll probably be able to relate.

plug your headphones in and enjoy: the website is down

a few weeks back, crystal and i went down to the US to do a little shopping. while at the seattle premium outlets, i stopped off at a starbucks to enjoy a grande latte. apparently, while starbucks prides itself in consistency of it’s product, the branding and experience is slightly different in the two contries. when i ordered my coffee, i was asked my name and the barrista wrote it right on the cup. odd. also, the cup had a brown logo, whereas here, we have green. perhaps they are just changing their branding and it hasn’t moved up to canada yet.

the whole name thing though is a bit weird though - next time, i’m going to ask the barrista their name before i give mine.

firefox 3 was released today. i for one had started becoming annoyed with the instability of firefox 2, so i installed it earlier today. while i like safari’s speed and stablity more than firefox 2’s, there is no google toolbar available for safari, so i was pleased to see that upon installation of ff3, a new version of google toolbar was installed and working.

i have noticed it is quite a bit faster than ff2. it also looks MUCH better on my mac. only time will tell in the area of stability.

today is firefox’s “download day”, where they are trying to set a new world record for the most downloads in one 24 hour period, so if you have firefox 2, download it give it a try today.

last sunday, crystal and i were up early to meet some of her ex-coworkers for a hike up to petgill lake, just south of britannia on the sea-to-sky highway. while the weather was cool, it was also quite gray, so the views from the top didn’t stretch all that far.

it was a fairly good workout now that i rowing and hockey are done for the season, and took us about 4.5 hours with a quick lunch at the top.

have a look at the photos i took along the way in my petgill lake flickr set.