inCommunicado - eric eggertson

What the hell is wrong with the ISP and mobile phone business in Canada?
Gone are the days when you could just buy a service. Now, everything you do is an attempt to reduce the service levels below useless, or ding you for "extras" (no one has the guts to charge extra yet for services like […]

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Back when the XBox first came out, we bought one for Christmas, and I signed up for an XBox Live account soon after.
It was for my kid, so I really wasn’t paying much attention when I listed birthday, and all the other personal information.  What a pain.  After that, every time I tried to edit […]

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Dave Traynor wants to know what the technology present is, mentioned in my last three posts.  For Christmas this year, I got a Nokia E61 smart phone, but as I alluded in the last three blog posts, the phone is somewhere between Toronto and here.  ETA is today, the first business day since the package […]

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Chapter 3:
Eric Explores an Alternate Universe, Where You Move Away from Something in Order to Get Closer to it
I’m still hung up on the item being shipped from Bloomington Illinois that is struggling to find me.  I had no idea where this particular Bloomington was, so I consulted Google Maps.
Here’s how Google thinks my package […]

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The bad news - the present that was supposed to be here for Christmas was shipped to the greater Toronto area, where it’s been languishing for two days.

The good news - it’s very close to my great-grandmother’s birthplace of Stouffville, Ontario.
Minnie March grew up in the Whitchurch-Stouffville area, and ended up moving to Saskatchewan with […]

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Every year there’s something in transit for Christmas.
 
This year it’s a big ticket electronics item, ordered from a "Canadian" website.
 

The package shipped December 19, and thanks to online tracking,
I’m able to watch it wend its way east.  Should I mention to UPS that I
live in Western Canada?
 
The package originated in Illinois, which is not […]

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Whenever I lose something, I kick myself for not doing a better job of labelling it, so the finder can return it, if they’re so inclined.

So an offer by Trackitback to sell me five of their lost-and-found return stickers for a total of $20 was too good to resist.  (No one in the family […]

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Note to every employee of every company I deal with:
My anger is not personal.  If I am pissed off, there’s usually a good reason, and often that reason relates to a product or service you’ve sold me.
I may be lying to you, for one reason or another.  I may misrepresent your company’s promises to me.  […]

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The first time I started our Xbox I couldn’t believe the incredibly noisy start-up sound that emanated from the TV speakers.
Obviously, the design team never tried to catch a quick video game at 2 a.m., while everyone else is asleep.
It’s designed to draw attention to the fact that you’re about to play games instead of:

> […]

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A Canadian Recording Industry Association report tells us what common sense has told us all along - people who take the time to download and share music files are also likely to buy music. Copyright lawyer and e-freedom advocate Michael Geist analyses the report. Unlike other research reports mentioned by CRIA, this one includes full […]

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If you’ve ever sat beside a salesperson on a plane, or read a trade magazine, you’ve heard the language that business uses when it’s selling to business.
English is replaced with a patois of jargon and bravado, as the product benefits are touted, ROI is proven, and unique selling points are emphasized.
Yet here’s a company that […]

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