June 2008 Archives
Fucking hell, Rogers.
Rogers posted their pricing plans for the iPhone, and it looks like they're not going to stop price gouging for data any time soon. The pricing plans are differentiated by both available daytime minutes as well as allowed data, and there's no option to modify either one to find a package you can be happy with.
The least expensive plan is $60 per month, which gives you 150 minutes and 400MB of data. According to Websiteoptimization.com, the average size of a webpage is 310k with 150k of additional external files (CSS, images, etc). So this gives you about 890 page views per month. Now, I don't know about you, but I average over 100 page views per day, not including refreshes of Google Reader. It's also important to note that the 400MB of data includes emails and attachments. I think that if I averaged out my web and email usage over a typical month, I'd easily hit 1GB if not 2. Now add in Apple's status notification system (in which applications send update data through Apple's servers direct to your phone) and the App store, and you might be in for quite a surprise at the end of the month. For that level of usage, I'm going to have to shell out $115 per month (plus system access fees, and an additional caller ID package), which is almost what I pay for both K and my phones together now. On top of all that, I have to sign a three year contract for the privilege of giving Rogers money. Someone on one of the forums posted the all-in price, and it was near $3000.
I had hoped that the iPhone's emergence in the Canadian market would have pushed some changes to the pricing structures consumers here have to suffer. It appears that this is not the case, and that the providers will continue to charge criminal amounts for data. With luck, the spectrum auctions here will change things and introduce further competition. I guess time will only tell. For now though, there's just no chance I'll give Rogers a single cent towards an iPhone, and I'll continue giving Telus my money.
Why I shouldn't blog when sleep deprived
The following blog entry was typed into a text editor in Helsinki Airport very, very late at night, after a very very long journey that wasn't quite complete. We've since made it to Oulu, though too early to be able to check in to our hotel. Thank god for free municipal wireless in Oulu. Unfortunately, I've only got about 10 minutes sleep in the last 24 hours.
So it turns out getting to FInland is a pretty time-intensive process. I'm currently sitting in Helsinki-Vantaa Airport in Helsinki, Finland, at 1:43 am local time on June 25. Looking at my handy-dandy World Clock, I can see that this equates to 4:45pm June 24th in Edmonton. Over the last 19 hours, I've walked through three airports (Calgary, Heathrow, and now Helsinki-Vantaa), sat on two planes, and have yet one more plane hop to go through before I'm at my destination, Oulu.
It's a long standing fact that I can't sleep in moving vehicles, couches, chairs, or awfully hard airport bench seating, which means that I haven't been able to get any sleep at all. I've never traveled this far before, however, so I was kind of hoping this would be hte trip to break that curse. Turns out that nope, the sleepless travel streak continues. I woke up early yesterday (body time, which is actually two days ago now, according to local time) because I was anxious about getting everything ready for the trip. So - again, body time - I've been up probably about 33 hours so far. Due to the fact that the group of flights was really all that was available while still being moderately affordable, we have a 6 hour layover in Helsinki; of course, due to the schedule of the preceding flights, this layover is from 11:30pm to 6:30am. Or as the case may be, from 12:30am to 6:30am, as our flight from Helsinki to Oulu was delayed in Heathrow. Now, this might not be a problem in a larger airport, where services and restaurants are open 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, in Helsinki, everything closes shop at 10pm.
So I am currently experiencing a level of tired that dares not speak its name. K is understandably tired from the journey, so I've opted to keep watch on our things and let her sleep for a few hours, rather than have us both fall asleep here at gate 14a and miss our little tiny flight to Oulu.
I don't have wireless right now, so I'll post this later, but why don't I go over some reflections on the international travel experience, since this is my first trans-atlantic journey.
First, if you're flying across the Atlantic and want to connect in London, fly British Air. They may not have the most comfortable seats in economy (in fact, they're some of the least comfortable I've been in), but they do make up for it with good amounts of tasty food. During our Calgary to Heathrow flight, we received a snack with two little pops, a rather large meal (curry chicken or roast beef with gravy), wine, coffee, and a croissant sandwich with yoghurt. I can only imagine the levels of pampering the passengers in first and second class received. As a side note, I covet the seats in First and second class, which are honest-to-god sleepers. They're not side by side, but rather alternate front- and back-facing, so that you don't have to worry about the inevitable drooling co-passenger sitting next to you. These seats were not made for the likes of us, however; we're a few million short of flying that class of British Airways.
Second, time zone hopping can seriously mess you up. For example, here in Helsinki, it's 2:05am June 25. We arrived in Heathrow on June 24 at 1:30pm, after having left Calgary at 9:50pm June 23. Somehow, in only 19 hours, we've gone forward two days.
Observation the third is that all airports, regardless of size and geographic location, are pretty much the same place. I find this with shopping malls, in that you can be in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, or Houston, and it all looks like the same place. It certainly wasn't helped by the fact that Terminal 1 of Heathrow is essentially a giant duty free store, with retailers such as Burberry, Timberland, etc. Visually, it was not all that different from stepping into the middle of West Edmonton Mall.
Adventures in Car Shopping
K and I have been looking at cars lately. Her old car (our second) has died the unfortunate death, and we need to get something before she heads down to her job in Vancouver in September. It's a stressful experience, this car shopping thing, but there have been a few moments of utter ridiculousness that have made it more - well, fun isn't quite the right word, but interesting, perhaps?
We started the test-drive phase of our journey last night (the first phase being intense research on the web, looking at online ads, fuel economy ratings, consumer reviews and the like). As we made our way to the west side of the city, it started gently raining. I told K how this was actually a good thing, since it would give us an idea of how the car handled in the wet and would illuminate any leaks, etc. Then the lightning started coming down. When we finally made it to the dealership we were heading for, we were in a torrential, hurricane-style downpour. I could barely see across the street, let alone take a car out for a test drive. Yet, we were there and had an appointment with the salesperson, who had stayed late for us. We had him bring the car into the shop so that we could take a better look at it.
As it turned out, it cleared up a bit, making the idea of test driving and lothopping a little more palatable. We left the first dealer, since he couldn't talk with a manager to get the price we were looking for, and wandered to another dealer that had a similar car. As it turned out, the car wasn't nearly as nice (it wasn't taken care of or properly maintained, and it showed), but there was a smaller compact car that we decided to take out for a drive. The car was nice enough (not as nice as the first car, but since it's the model under I suppose that makes a certain kind of sense), and we talked to the salesperson about it. He was cagey about the price - promising under what we wanted to spend, but not actually providing us with a real number (though he did provide a figure he thought might work). He suggested we write down what we wanted to pay and he'd work with the sales manager to get that (oldest trick in the salesguy book).
Knowing the trick, but still feeling it was worth a try, we wrote down our sweet spot figure. Then we sat and waited, as the sales manager was out appraising a car. And we waited some more. And then something really interesting happened. It turned out there were two sales managers on duty, and the one that was with us in the office said many times that he had the authority, and would be happy to take a look. To which our salesguy said, "No, I'll wait for Charlie, he knows the car." "I also know the car," replied the sales manager, to which the salesguy said "No, I'll wait".
By this time, K was starting to get pretty hungry, and we got a call from a private seller that was selling something we were interested in. Given that Charlie had no ETA for return, we decided that we'd just leave and he could call us when the sales guy had a chance to talk with him. As it turned out (no surprise), or offer was turned down and he came back with the figure he originally offered. It wasn't near the sweet spot, so we turned it down.
After getting something to eat, we decided to try one more dealership, which K had seen on one of the test drives. We drove into the lot, looked around, then went to find a salesperson. Of which, there were none. The sales office was open, however, with lots of keys sitting around. Now, a more unscrupulous person might have decided to just take some keys and a dealer plate and perform a test drive on their own. Being better people, we decided to wait. We waited about 15 minutes before finding the dealer's main line and calling it. 20 minutes after we first arrived, a salesperson was sent over from the new car building and gave us a hand. As we were being helped, the used salesperson reappeared on the lot with a bag of McDonald's in hand....