Shawn Sorichetti

I’ve been following the status of the ongoing protest of the Rogers rate plan for the iPhone at http://ruinediphone.com, and checking Google News regularly for news updates. I found it interesting that while the other major news organizations in Canada have carried the story in one form or another, and yet CityTV has made no mention of it.

CityTV was quick with the “BREAKING NEWS!!!! Ted Rogers announces that Rogers will be carrying the iPhone in Canada this year!”. It’s nice to have an in in the Rogers organization to carry this story first, but where’s the story on the backlash? Are news providers in this country not supposed to be unbiased?

Here’s a copy of the feedback I provided to the station:

As a loyal Breakfast Television/Cable Pulse TV viewer, 
I have to ask myself, why is there no mention of the 
ongoing protest of Rogers iPhone rates not being 
covered by your station?

In case you haven't heard, Rogers announced the plan 
rates for the iPhone 3G last Friday. The response 
on the Internet has been less than favourable, with 
a large protest at http://ruinediphone.com as   well
as groups on facebook.com. The other news stations 
have covered it (those being CTV, Global, and CBC). 
Newspapers have covered it, most notably The Globe 
and Mail has multiple articles. Even    International 
Websites and Newspapers have been carrying it.

So why hasn't CityTV/Breakfast Television/Cable Pules 24?

I'm beginning to think that this ownership by Rogers 
is hampering these stations abilities to report unbiased
news. These stations certainly made a point to tout that 
Rogers was going to be carrying     the iPhone within this 
year. I saw Kevin Frankish speak of it numerous times. 
Your site archives, list multiple stories. Not one  on 
the backlash.

The lack of story coverage has lead me to question the 
trust I have    placed in your news organization.

Thank you

~Shawn

I really don’t expect to hear much from them, other than a fluff response of “all news is important to someone, but we can’t cover everything”, while they’re running stories that “Britney Spears is looking for a new house in a less trafficked area”.

I think it’s funny how a simple little thing like a rate plan has made me question the integrity of an entire organization.

Way to go Rogers!

Canada’s in an uproar, and once again Rogers is the cause.

It’s not very often that Canadians speak out about anything. But now the country is speaking, and the country is upset with the rate plans Rogers introduced for the iPhone.

There are only 2 other instances I can remember of Canada being this upset. One was in 1995 when Rogers (big surprise), introduced 7 new cable channels via negative option billing. The other when the CBC mentioned that they would not be renewing Don Cherry’s contract in 2004.

High mobile rates have always been on Canadians minds. We are the 3rd world of mobile technology, and to thank for that we have the Canadian Government, the CRTC, Rogers, Bell and Telus.

Rogers is a mobile carrier monopoly in Canada. They are the only GSM provider after the Canadian Government allowed their purchase of Fido, which provided the 3G network Rogers now touts.

We held a lot of hope that Apple would be able to strong arm Rogers into reasonable data rates (unlimited) with the iPhone, as they had done with AT&T. However this is not the case, and the usage cases that Rogers is providing for emails/web pages downloaded are unrealistic in today’s world.

While I’m not convinced that this protest will amount to anything, I’m still holding onto a hope that Rogers may finally see the light.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for over four months. It started in my head as separate posts, but they never were completed. So now there’s one big post.

There is plenty of change to talk about. Some minor, some life altering. The biggest change occurred at the end of October.

Employment

At that time I left IBM for a position with Scorecard Systems. I spent 11 years with IBM. I started as an OS/2 administrator and moved my way to Backup and Recovery Architect, Tivoli Systems Management Specialist, UNIX Administrator and Web Developer. With numerous and various stops in between.

I had a great time, learned a lot and made some great friends. But towards the end the environment and direction were no longer agreeable to me.

The move to Scorecard Systems has been a great one. I’m now doing SQL development and UNIX consulting. I’m really enjoying the change of attitude, business size and philosophy. I’m no longer a number lost in a sea.

While this move was going on, my wife was also changing jobs. After 4.5 years as a server at Montana’s, she’s now serving at a new Baton Rouge that opened near us.

These are two big, life altering changes that just happened to occur at the same time, making them even bigger.

Source code management

After some “encouragement” from rjbs, I have switched my chosen SCM from subversion to git. I had been using a combination of subversion and SVK for home and work, but experienced a number of issues with SVK and merging at work that I moved to straight subversion.

After talking with rjbs, I converted my home repositories to git and my work repository to a combination of subversion server and git client. Something I’ve carried over into my new position. It works remarkably well, and amazingly fast. Much better than SVK.

Editor

With the change in jobs came a change in platforms. I can now do my work entirely from a Mac. This has allowed me to change my default editor from Vim to TextMate.

I have been a long time vi/Vim user. Keybindings on all my systems are set -o vi and they still are. With all my editing being done locally and with large amounts of files, the flexibilty, tools and environment of TextMate are a great help to my productivity. Although I still find myself dropping to a terminal and opening a file with vim for quick edits.

OS X Utilities

I have been a strong proponent and user of Quicksilver for years. So much so that I am constantly teased by my friends with the answer for everything being “Quicksilver will do that”. Recently my view has changed.

About a year and a half ago CromeDome started complaining about copy/paste and drag/drop issues. After a couple reinstalls and much problem determination he discerned that Quicksilver was the cause. I dismissed this as an Intel versus PowerPC issue as I’d never experienced this problem. That is until a couple of weeks ago.

I lost the ability to reorganize tracks in iTunes, drag files between finder windows, and copy and paste between some applications. After searching the forums I discovered that this is a long known, recurring problem that has yet to be addressed. Such a major problem, that usually results in a wipe reinstalls, without a migration as this would cause a reoccurence, still remaining unfixed, this was unacceptable to me. I immediately uninstalled it.

Quicksilver has been replaced by LaunchBar and PTHPasteboard. After using this combination for a couple of months now, I have to say I’m not missing Quicksilver.

With the change to daylight savings time, a sign that spring is on the way, upon us, it’s quite a surprise to be getting record setting snowfall.

I’m so tired of shoveling.

update: Just came in from the third shovel of the day. Another 8 inches on the driveway, and the wind has really picked up. The banks on the side of the driveway are now 2 feet over my head, as there is no where else to put the snow.

Time for my annual list of Christmas presents received.

Clothing

• Scarf
• Leather coat
• Long sleeve shirt
• Maple Leafs workout wear
• Roots sweatshirt and pants
• Pajamas
• Slippers

Games

• Halo 3
• The Orange Box
• Bioshock
• Guitar Hero 3

Movies

• The Bourne Identity
• The Bourne Ultimatum
• Futurama: Bender’s Big score
• Pirates of the Caribbean: World’s End
• Mallrats
• Night out in a bag: Fargo (movie, coolers, chocolate, popcorn, and bowl)

Toys

• Stuffed lion

Books

• The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes

BrentEvans Geek Tonic: Writers Strike Update: Ultimate Guide To How the Strike Will Affect TV Shows: “Writers Strike Update: Ultimate Guide To How the Strike Will Affect TV Shows”

Comprehensive list of Television shows and how many episodes are left before they run out.

My wife took our van over to the dealer to get a lube, oil & filter. About 2 hours later the phone rings “The intake gasket is shot and it’s leaking coolant into the oil, and needs to be replaced”. This is the 4th GM vehicle we’ve owned that has required this work. The repair bill would have been $1100, GM offered to pay all but $200 of the bill. However….

Couple years back CTV did a story on GM vehicles that had were experiencing intake gasket problems. It included pretty much all cars/vans built between 1995 and 2003. There were several internal memos where this problem was acknowledged but GM would do nothing about it (there are several class action suits in progress). At the time my car was experiencing the problem and noting the van was also on the list, I called GM to complain.

They logged my complaint about the car, plus my concern that a couple months after the warranty on the van was up, the intake gasket would blow and I’d have to foot the bill yet again. They said they couldn’t repair something that isn’t broken, but they’d keep a record of my concern and should the time come, something would be done.

So I called and sure enough it was logged just as I said it would be, and the woman who took my call said she’d look into it and get back to me.

She later called me back and said they were doing everything they could and no further action would be taken. I informed her of the fact that I’d already expressed concern over this issue 3 years ago, and that I’ve paid for the same issue 3 times previously. That them not handling their quality assurance problems is not the customers fault and I should not be paying for it. She didn’t agree.

At this point I made sure she documented the fact that I would never be buying another GM built vehicle. That in fact my last vehicle purchase had been a VW to avoid the shoddy workmanship and general lack of quality in GM vehicles.

The part that kills me, is GM is wondering why more people are buying imports. Willing to pay more than what a GM vehicle sells for.

After a lengthy outage caused by a ISP move, and shipping issues, I can finally start to blog again. My first photo has already been posted. Can’t believe I took this on July 1st. It really shows how long the ISP outage was.

More to come….

As mentioned ealier this past Saturday was spent building a shed, amount other things. The shed is now 99% complete (lacking an external window), and I’d promised I would post a picture of it when it was done. Well, close enough to done.

This also marks my first upload to Zooomr Mark III

I am a HUGE Heroes fan. From the very first episode, I knew it was going to be my favourite TV show (replacing a floundering Lost quite easily).

Any TV that is worth watching is recorded on our Rogers PVR in HD, shows that are just on and we happen to “watch” are on the old standard def 27″. Heroes of course must be watched off the PVR.

A little while back, NBC made a change to the time that they were showing Heroes and the Canadian network (Global) that carries Heroes moved it to Sunday nights, A full 24 hours before NBC showed it. I started to record it on Sunday nights on Global.

All was good until a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that while I was recording on the Global HDTV channel, Heroes was being shown in standard def, but still in widescreen. I figured it was just a mix up, and they’d get back to showing HD part way through (quite common for Canadian television).

The first series of commercials came on featuring the awful Bell beavers, Frank & Gordon (really please, these beavers were horrible enough during the Winter Olympics, do we have to continue to endure this punishment?), in HD. “You could be watching this show in HD if only you had Bell ExpressVu”. Wait a minute, is this beaver telling me that Global and Bell have an agreement that Heroes will only be shown in HD if I have ExpressVu? I’m paying Rogers to receive Global in HD, and this commercial is clearly in HD. I thought it must have been a coincidence. The rest of the show was shown in standard def, except for the Bell commercials.

The next week, same thing. Standard def Heroes, HD Bell beaver commercials (can someone please run them over with a truck?) telling me in order to see Heroes in HD, I have to get Bell ExpressVu.

Is this a new trend? Service providers competing with each by striking deals with networks to only show shows in HD for their customers. Is this not the type of thing that the CRTC is supposed to protect consumers against? Maybe they should focus more on what the providers and networks are doing rather than trying to protect us from the “evil American advertisers”.

Some of you may ask, why not record off of NBC HD then? Well, the CRTC has stated that if a Canadian channel and an American channel are showing the same show in the same time slot, the Canadian channel’s feed will be shown on the American channel, ensuring the “evil American advertisements” aren’t seen. So NBC HD will be showing the exact same thing as the Global “HD” channel. Stupid beavers and all.