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Well, it continues... as others have ranted, the new iPhone plans from Rogers are still horrendously overpriced for mobile data and features. But to top it off, I got my Bell Mobility bill last night and they're doing two things to screw me more...

Last week I had my old thermostat, an analog/mechanical model that most developers build into their new houses, replaced for free through Hydro Ottawa's PeakSaver program. PeakSaver is a program (or at least the name for the program in Ontario, it might be elsewhere as well) by the electric utilities to lighten the load on the electrical grid. As it's name would apply it is meant to reduce the load at peaks, particularly during warm days during the summer months when air conditioners start chewing up a large amount of electricity.

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I just read that Duane Storey, someone I met at Rob and Anna's wedding this summer, is in the midst of a Vancouver Blogger challenge. Someone is determined to work their way up the Google Search Ranks past Duane (and at this point is just above him - d'oh, hope my link love starts to work it's charm).

Well, a long while after Boris asked for them, Kev told me tonight that Environment Canada delivered today.

So, I received a flyer in my Bell residential bill the other day advertising Bell's newly deregulated long distance rate changes and plans.

As some of you may know, Meg, my lovely girlfriend is devoted to development work. She wants to help increase clean water and sanitation capacities for those less fortunate than us in the developed world.

Anyway, I find this stuff interesting and came across this talk given by Hans Rosling from a conference called TED. The talk is about world statistics and how people view them. Rosling uses technology that was recently sold to Google (March 2007) to visually show the changes in the world.

With the reminder of daylight savings time yesterday, someone passed this on to me today.

"It takes about 1.7 million lines of computer code to run the F-22A’s avionics, according to the Air Force. It turns out none of them deal with what happens when the jet suddenly changes dates and time zones by crossing the 180th meridian in the Pacific Ocean, the international date line.
On Feb. 11, when a dozen Raptors en route from Hawaii to Japan crossed the international date line for the first time, the jets’ Global Positioning System navigation avionics went haywire, forcing the pilots to turn around." - DefenseNews

I've been remarking for the last few days that it seems like the green movement has taken off. Maybe I should say taken off again, since really, there was a brief flirtation with the environment when I was a child... you know, the whole recycling craze. That was the first real movement towards the environment in my lifetime that I can remember. There have also, I suppose, been commercials about limiting power use, but I've always thought they were more about the fact that the utilities didn't want to invest in more capacity...

Anyway, what really has pushed me towards the realization that this is indeed being deeply driven into the masses thinking isn't that the politicians are getting into it, but rather that the consumer products companies are. I saw a commercial the other day for Cold Water Tide heralding the use of cold water as being good for the environment, not for your clothes.

Nortel is changing, the management team that CEO Mike Zafirovski has brought on is making some bold calls. Not only are executives like Joel Hackney improving our cost base and delivery efficiencies, but two additional people that Mike brought on are doing some new things now that are particularly great.

A story in today's Toronto Star, talks about Toronto discussing the banning of plastic bags, or in the very least, recycling them.

I'm personally all for banning them. In the past, most of my bags came from the grocery store, but now I use bins instead of bags for the most part.
Way better than paper or plastic bags are the biodegradable corn starch bags that MEC uses. They say they're more expensive, but I'm willing to pay 1-2% more for that sort of thing. They come from BioBag.