Shawn Sorichetti

Prior to every Toronto Perl Mongers a group of us meet prior to the meeting for dinner and warm up beers. We generally pick somewhere close to the meeting location, and a time that most people can make it, and still have time to enjoy their meal.

Last night it was agreed that we should meet at an Indian place, and after a couple of very good recommendations The Biryani House was chosen.

We were a lot late arriving, but some of our group knew we were coming and had a table for all of us. On our arrival we were informed by the others at the table:

“The waiter says we have to order from the fixed price menu.”

We asked the waiter to clarify for us:

“No, you don’t have to order the fixed price, but there’s a $20 minimum for each person, not including taxes, drinks, or tip”

There’s an automatic 15% tip included on the bill for groups of 5 or more. We were a group of 6.

We picked out what each of us were going to order, some fixed price, some multiple dishes from the menu, all over the $20 minimum, tax, tip, and drink not included of course. Next round of ordering begins:

“I’ll order the fixed price, appetizer 1, main course 6, and dessert 8″
“very good”

“I’d like main dish 9, and main dish 13….”
“I’m sorry, either all of you have to order fixed price, or none of you”

“Let’s leave”

So we did. Way too many rules for something as simple as ordering dinner.

If the rules were the waiter’s (which I doubt) he lost out on a minimum $20 tip as required by their rules. If they’re the restaurant’s rules, then they’ve lost the business of 6 people, and likely anyone we tell.

Recently Rogers updated the firmware of the Scientific Atlantic HD PVR they sell to their customers. While the updates are greatly appreciated. I can now start watching a program it’s recording from the beginning not where it’s currently playing live, and when the show ends, the playback no longer stops. Some other annoying features still remain. The key one being how program titles are used to determine what gets recorded.

As an example, Survivor: Fiji (yes we still watch Survivor). When Survivor: Fiji first started being broadcast the PVR guide listed the title as Survivor: Fiji. Shortly after the name changed to Survivor: Fiji (HD), normally indicating a program shown in HiDef, which Survivor is not. The PVR did not recognize the title change and didn’t record new episodes, until I cleared the old record schedule, and added a new one for Survivor: Fiji (HD).

Survivor aired last night, as CBS did some schedule juggling to accommodate Final Four Basketball. Sure enough, the name in the PVR guide had changed again to Survivor: Fiji and the PVR failed to record this episode. Luckily we noticed this omission before it had aired on the west coast and were able to record off one of those channels. Failing that Rogers does allow you to rent Survivor episodes for 24 hours at a cost of $1.99, an outrage to me, seeming how the PVR they supplied me was set to record a show using guide data that they also provided me.

Programs that are HD, that have HD in their names have also changed to a name not including the (HD) moniker. It’s not always the same network either, programs like CSI:NY, Grey’s Anatomy, Prison Break (which we no longer watch), and Heroes, each on a different network.

I have called Rogers to complain, but so far nothing has happened. For now I’m hoping for another surprise firmware update that includes the HD status of a program in it’s description, not in the title.

Zooomr Mark III is launching. The outage is supposed to be about 2 days, but they’ve promised that existing blogged photos will be available the entire time. Their downtime does give me some more time to preen my photo collection rather than just posting the ones I feel are the best.

I’m looking forward to a big upgrade over the previous code (over 250 NEW features). I’ve had some bumps during my time with them, and more than a couple things on my ‘wish they had’ list, but overall I’m happy.

I wish Kris and Thomas luck with their upgrade, and hopefully a speedy return of service.

I came across this tip on Hawk Wings for speeding up Mail.app, with some simple database maintenance. I find it odd that Apple doesn’t run this command every so often on mail startup/shutdown.

Quit out of Mail, open a terminal window and run:

When it’s done you should notice a huge improvement in speed on Mail.app startup at least.

The article and comments claim disk savings too, however prior to running the database file was 31MB and after 28MB, the speed increase made it worth it.