Dear Bell,
I’ve been debating parting ways with your service for a while now, as is evidence by my last blog post. I decided to call and ask you straight up. What are you willing to do to keep me as a customer? I called.

Contact #1 (10:28am): I spoke with a support agent in the billing department. This woman was nice and polite, and said that there was nothing she could do for me, but transfer me to the Loyalty Department. I was okay with this, and sat on hold for half an hour as I waited for my call to be transferred. Eventually I put through to the Loyalty Department, I spoke with a woman who was somewhat helpful, and seemed as if she genuinely wanted to keep me as a client. Then she put me on hold as she had to research the options. Then I heard “beep beep beep” and the call ended. Shit. I didn’t want to call back and sit on hold for half an hour.

Contact #2: I tried the web chat. I sat for a short while waiting for a rep to speak to me. I finally got one, and after explaining the previous call, asked her to have the loyalty department contact me. She told me she can’t make outgoing calls. I told her to ask her supervisor to take care of this. She said no. I told her to ask her supervisor’s supervisor to take care of this. Eventually she tried to help me, and told me not to change plans, as I have unlimited bandwidth. I got frustrated by her lack of understanding, and poor written English, and closed the chat window.

Contact #3 (11:28am): This call, according to my iPhone log only took 22 minutes. I spoke with a rep in the billing department. gave him my information, asked to have the loyalty department call me. He informs me that the loyalty department is closed on Sundays… wtf?!?! I ask to speak to a manager. He assures me he can help me. I tell him what’s going on, he transfers me to the loyalty department. I wait on the line. Eventually he gets through, and as soon as he hangs up from the now-threeway call… “beep beep beep” I’m disconnected.

Contact #3 (11:52am): This time I don’t take no for an answer. I tell the woman that I’ve been hung up on twice, that I’ve provided my contact information four times, and I must speak with her manager. I start off by giving him my callback number. I tell him what’s happened, and he answers by promising to have them call me. We hang up.

Contact #4 (12:20pm): The supervisor calls me back, tells me he has someone from the Loyalty department on the line for me. I say hello to the gentleman, we talk for a few seconds, supervisor disconnects… “beep beep beep” I’m disconnected.

Contact #5 (12:31pm): I contact them, tell them to have their supervisor, the one I was previously speaking to call me back.

I’m still waiting. If I don’t hear back in 30 minutes. I’m calling to cancel. Even if I have to go a month without home internet as I wait for TekSavvy’s cable to be available in my neighbourhood. I’m cancelling. These fuckwads can go and shove it up their collective ass, I’m cancelling. I’ve been paying them monthly for over eight years, and this is the loyalty they show me? I’m fucking cancelling.

Yours Truly,
Adam M. Anklewicz

Currently I’m using Bell Canada for my internet. We all know that Bell is pure evil. However, I’m grandfathered into their unlimited internet package. Sadly, they keep on upping the price of the package, without increasing any speed.

My bandwidth averages at 130GB per month. With that in mind, the Bell FIBE, beyond being stupidly priced in comparison to TekSavvy, it’s out. My peak bandwidth usage over the past 11 months is 210GB.

So now my question becomes, do I save $27/month and go with the 5Mbps plan? Do I save $25/month and go with the cable, which is quite a bit faster, but then I’d have to worry about the cable line coming into my apartment which has never been used in the three years I’ve been here.

Or, I could pay an additional $14/month and get insane speeds that I’ll only use for torrenting… legal content, or course.

Thoughts, boy and girls?

I’m on pseudo-vacation. The school where I work is on break from today until a week Thursday. I’m working on Monday morning, and Wednesday (all day). That leaves ten and a half days for me to do what I please. I’m making goals for this vacation, but they’re kind of lofty goals.

Wanna suggest stuff?

1. See people
   • Visit my family¹
   • Visit the Millers
   • See Emily, tonight, post-Sadies, perhaps another time²
   • Visit Graeme and Heather³
   • Do some hangouts with Vince
2. Concerts & Events
   • See The Sadies, tonight
   • Ron Sexsmith in-store
   • The Weather Station at Holy Oak, FUCK that’s the second sedar night. Damn goyim.
   • Go to at least one other show (anyone suggest any?)
   • Spelling bee!
3. Books
   • Read “Life” by Keith Richards
   • Read “René Lévesque” by Daniel Poliquin
   • Read “Make Me A Woman” by Vanessa Davis
   • Read “William Lyon Mackenzie King: Dreams and Shadows” by Lian Goodall
   • Read at least three other graphic novels to be borrowed from the Toronto Public Library
4. Television
   • Watch remaining seven episodes of series two of Waiting For God
   • Watch remaining two episodes of The Increasingly Poor Choices of Todd Margaret
   • Watch all six episodes of Jekyll
   • Watch remaining two episodes of Being Human (UK)
   • Give the North American version of Being Human another shot
   • Watch the season premiere of Doctor Who
5. Films
   • Watch Polytechnique
   • Watch The Hanging Garden
   • Watch The Town
   • Watch Toy Story 2 with the Millers, continuing our Pixar marathon
6. GSD & go places
   • Do two client gigs
   • Get passport paperwork filed and applied
   • Go to the Island, at least once
7. This here blog
   • Write at least three blog posts a week. This doesn’t count.

1. Okay, so this one is easy as it’s the sedars. [↩]
2. Perhaps overlapping with Millers. [↩]
3. Maybe help them move [↩]

With the upcoming demise of Stillepost.ca (funeral details are found here) Toronto will be losing an incredible resource for show listings. Hell, that’s the majority of what I use the site for. So, do you people want to pick up the slack? I’m willing to shell out for the domain, and cover hosting, if you kids are willing to help me with content. What say you?

I figure a simple WordPress install, with one page of listings, and that’s it. A handful of admins, and people can comment like they did before to add shows.

What’s the domain? Thoughts?

We live in the future! Things keep on popping up in my everyday life that just hammer in the fact that we live in the future.

• I was reading a book on my telephone. (A PDF displayed on my iPhone)
• Geordi’s PADD is real! Honestly, the real one is quite a bit cooler than the fictional one. (iPad)
• At my finger tips, I can see exactly where my friends are. (Google Latitude, Foursquare, Facebook Place)
• The news of the world comes to me, and I can sift through it as I like. (Google Reader)
• Celebrities talk to us. (Twitter, or specifically.)
• I can make a telephone call… from a boat en route to the island. (When did cellular phones stop being awe inducing?)
• I can have thousands of record albums with me everywhere I go. (MP3 players)
• You can say “Call Mom” and your phone will call your Mom! (Assuming you have your Mom programmed into your phone as “Mom,” unlike me who has his mother programmed into his phone under her full name)
• You can arrange to have sex with strangers without meeting them! (Craigslist, but don’t do this, this is dangerous)

Do yourself a favour, world. If you’re ever going to write a blog post about how awesome someone is, make sure that the next time you see them, you recognize them. I wrote a blog post about an author who I knew once upon a time from when I worked in sales, and her publisher even linked to it. Then I saw her on the weekend, and I didn’t recognize her. *facepalm*

So, because of that, I’m going to prove that I have a horrible memory by writing about my other favourite customer from my times at That Shithole.

Imagine a strange man coming up to you in your workplace, saying “Hey Adam, how are you?” Giving you a hug, talking for a while as if you’re long buddies and even inviting you out for lunch one day. That was my first recollection of Richard Bell, but, I hope, it wasn’t his first recollection of me.

Over the years that I worked at that computer store, he’d call me up frequently and I’d help him with his sales and we always had a lot to talk about. If someone was looking for a definition of the word mensch, I’d point them in the direction of Richard Bell. He seemed to treat everyone with dignity, respect, and as an equal. He had a kind heart and was always a pleasure to talk to. I couldn’t even call him my client, as he dealt with a lot of the other staffers at the store, mostly in pro audio. I didn’t know why for a while, I just figured, he’s a musician. The store saw a lot of people who worked in creative fields, it was nothing out of the usual.

One day, years later, I finally found out who he was professionally. Richard Bell played keys for Janis Joplin, The Band, Burrito Deluxe, Ronnie Hawkins, Crowbar, Bob Dylan, and many other artists that would make any music nerd drool.

But that wasn’t the man I knew, I just knew a man who was a real kind soul. When I found out he had passed away a few years ago, I was sad, mostly sad that I didn’t keep in touch with him after leaving that employer.

Apple has a long history of hatred towards English Canada, and if Apple were a Quebec company, I might perhaps understand, but instead Apple is a corporation founded in the United States, who’s Canadian office is in Ontario¹. Why they have this hatred, I don’t know, perhaps Apple is loyal to the concept of Manifest Destiny and wishes to see the United States of America stretch throughout the North American continent, or perhaps us north of the 49th² just don’t even register on Apple’s radar.

A HISTORY

This post is mostly relevant to iOS, but I believe that it’s important enough to give some historical context. Starting with what I recall as being some variant of System 7 until Mac OS X 10.5³ was released  if you purchased a new Macintosh computer, during setup, the computer would ask you what country you are in. If you select Canada, you’ve made a grave mistake. In early iteration of the Mac OS,  it would then set your keyboard to French Canadian, and your / key would produce an é. Anglo-Canuks don’t use a French Canadian keyboard; they’re quite different. We don’t like the dwarfed shift key, or the misshaped return, or the many other difference. If you worked at an Apple Authorized Reseller in Canada, you knew that the number one call was “why do I get an e-accent-aigu when I press the slash key?”

This wasn’t too terrible, because Apple didn’t have a system-level spell checker, but they eventually would.

Later Apple corrected this. It would ask you, “What language do you speak, my Canadian friend?” If that hoser replied, “I speak English, eh” it would then put an American flag in their menu bar, allowing them to easily switch back and forth between a US English keyboard layout⁴ and the French Canadian keyboard layout. Fab! It’s done.

Wait a second. How many Canadians are going to see the star spangled banner and click on it, see a Maple Leaf and choose that, because, well, who doesn’t want to see a Canadian flag on their screen over an American one? Hey resellers, you’re going to get the same calls! I worked at a reseller and I can assure you that the number one post-sales support call was this issue.

Then 10.5 came and we all rejoiced, you installed the OS, it asked you what country you’re in, if you were brave enough to admit you were in Canada, you’d get two options, “English” or “Français.” Both had the Maple Leaf.

In addition, Apple finally got a good and working Canadian English dictionary in their spell checker. However, it’s not as easy set up as you’d think. Most software developers aren’t creating a Canadian localized English version for their software. Mac OS’ dictionary is chosen based on the user’s choice of languages, and it’s a priority list. If the first choice is Canadian English, and the second choice is American English, and the third choice is Japanese, then if a program doesn’t have a built in localization for Canadian English, it will go to the second language, in this case American English. If it has neither it’ll continue down the list. If you can name 10 programs with Canadian English localizations, I’ll give you a prize.

The user has to force the OS to use Canadian English. To do that, you have to go to System Preferences, and choose Language & Text, in there visit the Text tab, and change spelling from “Automatic by Language” to “Canadian English.” Otherwise, when you’re in Adium, or Pages, or Safari, or any program which relies upon the system’s language dictionaries, you’ll be told you spell wrong. Apple might think you spell wrong, but I love you and your superfluous “u”s.

iOS (aka, iPhones and iPod, and stuff)

So now we’re in iOS days. a new OS, new moronic things. First off, there’s no Canadian dictionary or language option, at all. The closest is British English. So I set my phone to that. I can use the US keyboard layout, as that’s the perfect option to use in Canada. We have the same symbol for the Canadian dollar as our neighbours use for their dollar. So here’s two screenshot of my current setup.

So what have we here. We can see that I’ve set my language choice to “British English,” because while that’s not Canadian English, it’s as close as we’re going to get. I’ve also set the keyboard to “English,” which is Apple’s way of saying “American English” or “US English.” Alright, fine, whatever! Let’s take a look at what happens when you type, using this setup.

Wait a second! Your language is set to “British English” and yet it’s underlining “practised,” “colours,” ”armour,” “defence,” and “honoured?” That makes no sense. Oh, the spell check isn’t linked to the language option, it’s instead linked to the keyboard layout. What?!?!

Yes kids, it doesn’t matter what language you’re using, what matters is the keyboard layout. I could change it to a British keyboard, and have the $ key buried deeper and the £ revealed, which is better. Which is better?

• “Practised” was auto-corrected to “practiced.” In Canada the verb is “practise,” the noun is “practice.”
• “Colours” is underlined as incorrect, it’s correct. It didn’t try to auto-correct.
• “Aluminum” is shown as correct, but if it was British spelling, it would be incorrect.
• In this context I’m using “curb” as a noun. In Canadian and American English that would be correct. In British, it is not, the noun is “kerb,” the verb is “curb.” As in, “I sat on the kerb in the hopes of curbing my enthusiasm.”
• “Armour” is listed as wrong. In Canadian English, it is correct. It tried to auto-correct.
• “Defence” is listed as wrong, it is not.It tried to auto-correct.
• Fibre is surprisingly listed as correct, I thought Americans spelled it as “fiber.”⁵
• “Honoured” is correct, screw you iOS! It tried to auto-correct.
• I should’ve chosen Superman to save me, he’s part Canadian… and all Jewish. They must’ve used a kryptonite scalpel for his bris. “Oy, mein schmekel!”

So there you have it. Apple hates Canada, and our weird amalgam of British and American English, but I’m going to let Apple in on a couple secrets.

1. Determining your dictionary based on keyboard choice, and not language choice is stupid and worse, not intuitive.
2. You know your colleagues who have built Mac OS X… the ones on the other side of campus, who are sitting there wondering if you’re going to put them out of their job, yeah, those guys. They already have a Canadian dictionary. You should ask them for a copy. You might have to bribe them, but I hear Mountain Dew and Doritos go a long way with geeks. If that doesn’t work, maybe a hooker? I’m sure they put in long hours, it’s hard to find companionship.

Thank you, good night, I’ll be here all week, try the veil.

1. Markham to be specific. [↩]
2. Yes, I know Toronto is south of the 49th, but it’s a common reference to the Canada/USA border. [↩]
3. Leopard. [↩]
4. Which is 100% identical to Canadian English’s keyboard layout [↩]
5. As I typed “fiber” I actually typed “fibre” and had to correct myself. Canadian English is habit, American and British is not. [↩]

I got an iPhone 4. It’s my first smart phone.

Signal
The one thing everyone’s talking about and the one thing I most noticed with the iPhone is the signal, but it’s not what you might think. My old phone was using Telus’ old CDMA network, I couldn’t make a phone call or receive a phone call with much luck in my apartment. While I don’t live in Toronto’s downtown core, I’m not far from it. At Broadview and Danforth, if you can’t get a cell phone signal, that’s just pathetic.

Now that I’m on Telus’ HSPA+ network (3G), my signal has drastically improved. You can call me if you want. I might not answer.

As far as the antenna issue that has been widely reported. Yeah, if I hold it in a certain way, I lose signal. I just don’t hold it that way, and Apple’s sending me a free case.

Apps
Here’s where I need help. What can you suggest? I don’t have many installed. Shazaam, Epicurious, Facebook, Twitter, Google Mobile, Google Earth, Remote, Urbanspoon, and VLCRemote. I don’t care about games, just applications which will make my life better. What can you suggest.

Calculator
Is it weird that I really love the look and interface of the calculator? My old phone had the shittiest calculator interface, and I used it all the time. This excites me.

32GB is not enough space
I have a large music collection, I want to have all of it on my iPhone. I can’t. Instead what I’m doing is putting what’s on my 30GB iPod (which will now live in my glove box) onto the iPhone, here’s the catch. To fit all that on, I need to use the new feature “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 Kbps AAC.” Fab, perfect, except one thing. It takes forever to convert and transfer that much data.

Syncing and communication or use
When the phone’s syncing, which I said takes a while, you cannot use the iPhone. To do so will stop the data transfer. So if a call or more likely a text message comes in, to reply to it, you have to cancel the sync. If Emily’s wondering why it took me so long to answer her questions about going to the Miller abode, that would be why.

Sync Ringtones disables Manually Manage Music
I saw that my ringtones weren’t on the phone, so I turned on sync ringtones. Bad idea. That disabled manually manage music, and so all the music I spent days transferring was removed from the phone. Last night, it synced only about 2000 songs between 2am and 9am. We’re at 2179/4195. Sigh.

Battery life seems amazing
Can’t say more, until I use it more.

Google Sync
I use Google Hosted Apps with two domains, anklewicz.com/neverhadtofight.com (they’re the same) and myemployer.ca. I did a quick search to find out how to sync all the contacts, mail, and calendars from both accounts, and followed the instructions. Unlike the BlackBerry Google Sync, which falls to the symptoms of bad UI that BlackBerrys are known for, this was easy as pie, and I didn’t have to download any Google software. I just entered my account info into Mail, and it pulled all three things, calendar, contacts, mail. Fuck yeah!

Which calendar do you want
This one has absolutely nothing to do with Apple, that I can tell. When I connect my two accounts, it grabs the main calendar on each account. However, I have numerous calendars on each account. I have my FB Events calendar, my “Rock and/or roll” calendar, all the school calendars, etc, etc. To tell it to sync the other calendars, is roundabout and silly. You have to go to Google, and then log into your domain account, and then go to settings, and do this and that and choose this and that. It works now, though.

Making ringtones is fun

The screen and UI are elegant and beautiful

It’s much thinner than my old phone which did much less

I can’t answer it like Captain Kirk

The tinny speakers are kind of shit, but at a picnic or BBQ, you can bring it out to play music without brining another device

My duty to the tech community must be filled, as often I find answers through our lovely friend “Google,” I figure if someone else runs into this kind of a problem they might want to search for a solution, too.

Issue:

• Computer connects to wireless network, gets a DHCP lease, cannot access the internet.
• Cannot even ping local devices, with the exception of the router.
• Cannot telnet into router.
• Is able to see other computers on the network in the Finder’s sidebar through Bonjour. Cannot connect to devices.
• Other computers on local network can see, control, send messages, etc. through Apple Remote Desktop 3.

Computer:

• MacBook Pro 15″ Mid 2009 model, 2.53 GHz
• Connecting to network through Airport.
• Mac OS X 10.5.7

Complications:

• The last time this computer was in the office, it was before we changed the subnet mask from 255.255.255.0 to 255.255.252.0. Also, the DHCP range was changed from 10.0.0.x to 10.0.1.x & 10.0.2.x.
• The last time this computer was in the office, it was before we swapped a wireless access point from one campus to the other, and having some setup issues with that.
• When connecting through DHCP, it wasn’t communicating properly, but saw the subnet correctly (252).
• When setting up through DHCP with manual IP, it saw the old subnet (255), but worked, if given a 10.0.0.x IP address.

Attempts:

• Connecting through ethernet showed the same results.
• Removed Airpot from list of network connections.
• Resetup the DHCP server.
• Rebooted DHCP server.
• Tweaked configuration of wireless access points.
• Removed the following files from /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
  • com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
  • com.apple.network.identification.plist
  • NetworkInterfaces.plist
• Tried booting off of an install DVD, and checking if the problem persisted. It didn’t.
• Upgraded machine to Mac OS X 10.6.0 (Snow Leopard).
• Deleting the /etc folder and reinstalling 10.6.

I wanted to avoid reimaging the machine. The profile is a roaming user profile, so all the data is synchronized to the server, but from experience, this user has such a large profile that it takes hours upon hours to synchronize the data on first login to a machine. I figured that upgrading to 10.6 would resolve this. Fortunately, I’ve been running 10.6 on my own laptop for a while now, and haven’t had any problems¹. After a lot of suggestions and brainstorming from two wonderful people, Vince and Graham, Vince came up with the idea of trashing the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist which has a LOT of network data in it, and has since required some reconfiguring the machine. But it worked!

Thanks Vince!

Or so I thought. Then this issue appeared once again, magically, but this time on another computer. I deleted the preferences.plist and it didn’t fix a thing. I then went through everything I had done with the above machine. Still didn’t work. WTF? I wiped the machine, it worked. Then I used Migration Assistant to move the users and applications over. It stopped working. So I wiped the machine again. Moved across the /Users, still worked. Moved across the /Applications, and it stopped working. It stopped working when Parallels tried to create a virtual network port! I deleted the virtual port and it worked!

I’m going to test out VirtualBox and see if that works. Someone in China who uses the same Student Information System as us says it works.

1. On the work computer [↩]