Blessed by the Potato

Part of the reason my IP has been changing is that there’s a bit of a shake-up happening at Rogers. For a long time now I’ve been on the “grandfathered Extreme” plan — the $44, 5 Mbps plan that was introduced about 2 years ago by Rogers. Since that time, they’ve upgraded the Extreme plan to a $46, 6 Mbps for new customers, but many of us old ones were still getting the cheaper, marginally slower one. As I said earlier, Rogers is trying to get rid of its power users by increasing the price of the Extreme plan and getting rid of anyone who was “grandfathered”. So, I said that the new price was not worth it (especially as the standard Express plan had been upgraded to 5 Mbps), and asked to be downgraded (via the website referenced in the letter I got notifying me of the price increase). The transaction went through, I got a reference number, and was told that my downgrade should take effect in about 48 hours. A few days later I noticed that I was upgraded to the new version of Extreme, the 6 Mbps download (and an aside: this summer has been fantastic for my connection, all the students in my neighbourhood going away for the summer has made it the first time I’ve actually gotten the full listed speed from my modem, so I could actually detect this kind of change). Since I didn’t want to be paying more for it (not even $2/month more while they processed my downgrade request), I called in and asked about it. I got transferred between 3 people (2 of whom didn’t even know I was on the 5 Mbps Extreme plan, not knowing it existed), and found out that my request on the webpage never registered, despite the tracking number. So, I asked the final person to downgrade me, and much to my surprise, she offered to leave me on Extreme and not apply the upcoming price increase for a year! It completely boggled me, as I’ve always had to fight with Rogers to do anything, yet here they were offering me a deal for no reason (I didn’t even have to ask — I was going to continue paying them the same amount for slightly less service anyway).

Amazing luck, as usually getting Rogers to do much of anything is a minor miracle, so I’ve been pretty high about it. When I hung up the phone I was in shock, not believing it had happened. It was a bit of a pain when earlier today I got an email that the automated system had finally registered my downgrade request (with a different tracking number too), a week and a half later. As I feared, that had wiped out my “negotiated” discount. I called Rogers and spent 45 minutes on the phone bounced between 3 agents, but they finally gave me nearly the same deal (it’ll be $2 more per month since I’m starting from the new Extreme now, there being no $45, 5 Mbps plan to put me on anymore). I didn’t even have to beg or threaten to go down there, I just simply had to wait while each sucessive agent checked on something (presumably with a supervisor) and bumped me up the ladder. If I was amazed and shocked the first time I got the deal, I felt like bloody Heracules for keeping it after the second set of calls.

There are some caveats, of course: this now locks me into a 12-month contract with Extreme, but with the phone lines in my place I wasn’t really planning on going anywhere. They didn’t mention anything about not telling people, but I should warn you that Rogers is really weird and random about cutting deals: calling and telling them that your friend got a deal, or that practically everyone else in Ontario got a DOCSIS compatable modem, or that Bell’s willing to offer you a lower price, will virtually guarantee that you won’t get a deal. I also have no idea how they determine who is and is not a “good” customer and thus eligible for a discount or more timely repairs. I’ve had reasonably good luck here in London (it took a few tries when the node was overloaded, but things are quite a bit better now, though I’ll have to wait until September to be sure), but they won’t do anything for me on my parents’ account in Toronto. I’d consider both accounts to be good customers: I’ve been with them for over 3 years, have the most expensive internet plan, and own my modem (so they got the money before the rental charges came back, and it makes me less likely to leave — though that cuts both ways: why entice someone who has more corporate inertia?). My parents have had Rogers TV since before we moved there in 1987, upgraded early on to multiple digital terminal outlets with all kinds of channel packages, and we’ve had cable internet since around 1998 (just after it moved from the Wave to @Home). Plus my brother’s cell phone plan is with Rogers at the same address (and he upgrades his handset every year or so, paying a hefty premium for it, too). Yet despite having less than 1/10th the advertised speed for over 4 years (I only really noticed just how bad it was when I moved out here and saw how much faster things were in London — and this was an overloaded node at the time!), I’ve never been able to get them to admit to any problem with the modem or neighbourhood (although posts from dslreports.com indicate that that area of Willowdale has terrible congestion, with everyone getting low speeds like that). I call and complain every month or so in the hopes that a long enough call history will finally point the way to a problem, but often they just tell me to call back again later in case the problem is temporary. I have to ask Netbug if the call history comes up for them or not. Last time after having the tech try to sell me on a new $100 modem (without admitting anything was wrong with the current one for a replacement), and then telling me to reformat my computer (after telling him it was brand new out of the box and that the old one didn’t go any better) I finally gave up and asked to be downgraded to the Light plan so I would at least pay less for the crappy speeds… and the tech said he couldn’t do that and hung up on me! I don’t know if there are different call centres in London and Toronto, or if my parents somehow have some sort of tech support red flag, but you can see why this call history would lead me to enter a nearly comatose state of disbelief when they offered to save me money out of the blue…

I recently tried out Fictionwise, an online ebook store. Putting aside the matter of ebooks for just a sec, I think the store is rather well done. You can set up a micropay account, or pay with a credit card, and they’re pretty good about offering a large number of formats (including Acrobat in almost all cases). Considering it is an ebook they’re offering, the prices are not spectacular: I just bought 9 short stories (all by Robert J. Sawyer) for $5.50 (US); the last book of short stories I bought had 23 and cost $12.54 (including tax), so the cost per story is just about the same. Perhaps the whole business with the ink, paper, and shelf space doesn’t cost as much as one would assume… though I suspect agreements not to undercut traditional publishers has more to do with it.

I did find it somewhat awkward to browse through their catatlogue, but that was more due to the nature of browsing for books online than anything specific to Fictionwise (I have the same problems with Amazon, though at least Amazon’s default font is a bit bigger).

“Books belong to a special class of inventions that have not been much improved over the years because they are already so very good, such as with the hammer, knife, or spoon. The computer will never fully replace that.”

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I found that quote, but it’s very true. I read a ton on my screen at work, and perhaps even more once I get home, so I don’t really have any problem with the concept of an ebook. But it will never really replace a printed book for me. I’m most comfortable reading short stories on my computer, since I find the worst part about the electronic versions (well, after the eye strain and inability to lounge around) is how hard it is to mark your place and come back to it later. That’s not to say I wouldn’t consider buying an e-novel — I have read novel-length documents off the screen, and will again — but most of my long-format reading will be done with a real book. To me, there’s an added level of inconvenience associated with a long story on the screen, so I’d expect more of a discount than what I’ve seen with the short stories (also, buying single novels takes away the convenience/choice bonus of buying individual short stories rather than the hit-and-miss assortment often seen in printed collections).

It was a very quiet Canada Day weekend — yet it seemed very busy nonetheless. I had planned to read a lot, wash & wax my car, and play a few games, but mostly just played frisbee and watched movies.

First up was Mirror Mask, a film with practically no advertising that I’ve seen. It’s very esoteric and visual, probably the same group at Jim Henson that did Dark Crystal. The acting was pretty decent, but I thought the story was a little weak. Unfortunately, I can’t be any more specific with my criticism, since I can’t really think of what was lacking; as Wayfare pointed out, Labyrinth wasn’t much deeper, plot-wise. It was just that certain je ne sais quois that would have tied all the strange and dazzling visuals together more tightly.

Date Movie was playing over at Dan’s, and the less said about that piece of crap, the better.

Then I saw Superman Returns, which needs no link. I liked it, as far as Superman movies can possibly go (Netbug has a longer review on his site, where he makes a good point: Superman is so super, that it’s hard to believably challenge him. Fortunately, I have an astounding ability to suspend disbelief. I really liked the hyper-optimistic, wonderous 70’s feel to it, as well: it’s a nice contrast to the other superhero movies that have been digging for darkness recently. I really didn’t care for the flying scenes: it looked very much like it was CG (a problem I had with Spiderman, as well), and either the makeup or the computer effects made Brandon Routh look creepy, or as Wayfare so sagely put it, “like one of those marionettes from that show with the rockets on strings [Thunderbirds].” I did like the new heat vision effect, though. Finally, I think it could have used a bit more Lex Luthor in it: either a scene showing him learning more about the crystals, or actually making some kind of weapon out of them (he talked about it a lot, but never did).

I had low expectations for Dave Chapelle’s Block Party, but it appears as though they should have been a lot lower. I knew it was mostly candid footage from this impromtu concert/event he threw, and I thought it would be really cool, or maybe even inspiring to see some of that. I also thought he’d be funny. Wrong on both counts, with rare exceptions. The biggest single problem was probably that they spent a ton of time on this weird couple (the “broken angel” people) that had nothing to do with the show. They were weird, scary, and a little funny, but certainly didn’t deserve the amount of screen time they got. The editing seemed to be off, with lots of slow periods following random people, and putting the events of the day in decidedly non-chronological order (and only the first few scenes had subtitles telling us what we were looking at… they seemed to have forgotten to continue with that after the first 20 minutes), then at other times the energy seemed to be building up and things were actually getting entertaining (such as when Dave would be up MCing or telling jokes behind the scenes), and they’d cut away halfway through.

I’ve started watching Grey’s Anatomy, and I think I’m going to like it a lot. Of course, I’m a sucker for the medical shows (Scrubs, of course, ER, MASH, House, and that other one that got the Fox treatment a while back and was cancelled).

Like I said, I played a lot of frisbee this weekend, which served to remind me of two important things: first, that I am woefully out of shape still (which makes me shudder at how very out of shape I was a few months ago, because I feel great now compared to that); second, that I have the most fantastic frisbee in the whole world and must always be careful not to lose it. You will remember, of course, that it was one thing I was really hoping the car thieves didn’t take when they trashed my car’s interior and ran off with anything remotely valuable. It’s a DinoSoar neon pink fabric frisbee that we bought at Wasaga Beach about 15 years ago, and I’ve never seen one like it since. It’s basically a self-inflating rubber tube with fabric around it and stretched through the middle to give it the frisbee shape. But since it’s flexible, it doesn’t hurt when you get beaned in the head, and you can catch it by just grabbing at it and squishing it up in your hand. It floats, too. I have a standing order with my friends: if you ever see one like it, buy it. If you don’t love it, then resell it to me, so I can stop worrying so much about possibly losing the one I have. The only downside to it is that it doesn’t get the same kind of distance that many hard frisbees can give you (and you can’t do the ultimate frisbee “kick-off” over-hand throw).

I had hoped to have some time to game this weekend, too: I had a hankering for some Master of Orion 2, and brought the disc back to my parents’ house, but never ended up installing it. Soon, my precious…

I didn’t end up getting into the Sword of the Stars beta, which probably is what kicked off the MOO2 craving. Reading CTRL-ALT-DEL, I followed the link to Darkstar One, which sounds very interesting. I’m in the process of downloading the demo, but it’s going to take all night. Hopefully I’ll have time after work tomorrow to run through it.

Also talking about games, I’ve got to mention the euchre game this weekend: we started down 7-0, and came raging back to win. What was amazing was the last hand that put us over the top: I went in on my own to take all 5 tricks, and when I called that I was going on my own, my partner groaned in pain: looking after the hand, he also had a hand that would have taken all 5 tricks on his own (with a different suit, naturally).