Train of Thought

I've reached critical mass where I can tie together some otherwise disparate topics into a nice thematic bundle.

Let's start with the straw that broke the camel's back. Via rail will be cutting service. I'm going to have to side with the employee quoted in the article who noted that "We don’t see any marketing down here in the East to get more people out to travel by train." Granted, I don't currently live in Canada right now, and even if I did, I don't watch television (though I suppose I might get cable again when I reunite with the family). But when I DO watch television, I certainly never see a Via rail commercial. There was a seat sale going on right around the time I was looking at travel options for a wedding in May. By the time I found out about the seat sale, the train was sold out. But isn't that evidence of marketing success? No, not really. I had visited the Via website just over a month earlier, before the sale began, and saw no indication of it. So if it's not widely advertised, the people who got the discounted tickets were people who regularly take the train anyways. Potential new customers just saw the same old full-fare tickets, and moved on. Well played, Via. I also wanted to clarify something from the article, should you read it:

There will also be a number reductions in southwestern Ontario, where GO Transit and other services are available to commuters. London, Aldershot, Kitchener, Niagara Falls and other cities will see reduced Via service.

This suggests that the listed cities have GO Transit and other services. London and Kitchener are not on the GO Transit line, so the "other services" are, um ... Greyhound (same price for half the comfort and maybe even a beheading) or the exorbitantly-priced flights out of the London airport (four times the price for same comfort and maybe a cavity search). The price calculations are based on actual ticket prices from London to Toronto for the same dates. Look, I'm no marketer, but there's an ad campaign right there. How this particular crown corporation can't run profitably is beyond me.

As you can tell, I like the train. I was never the sort of kid that winds up as a character in the sort of book that shows up in your English lit class. You know, the book that starts off with a boy; some troubles at home; likes to pass time at the rail yard? Maybe befriends a hobo? But rail is the way to go for moving stuff and people around. The Chicago area is served by two rail systems, and I'm fortunate to live near stations for both of them. My favourite is the Metra. John and I took the Metra a couple times this past weekend. It's an interesting place to people-watch. And you know what we learned on the Metra ride to the Ravinia festival to see Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers? We learned that Steve Martin's fan-base is a fancy bunch. In contrast to the previous day where we witnessed the open and unapologetic consumption of Coors Lite on the train, people en route to the concert were instead drinking Perrier water and craft beers. And once they got to the venue:

That, incidentally, was one of the least ostentatious set-ups. We saw 10 foot dining tables set up with linens and candelabras. For a picnic at an outdoor concert.

Now, about that hobo...

Trust me. Click the link. It's CBC comedy.

Simplicity or Duplicity?

I glimpsed a headline in an old newspaper, now being used as a tray liner. It, and the accompanying by-line, indicated that the Canadian federal government was legislating more clarity in the bills that your cable and phone companies send you every month. The problem that this legislation addresses is that these bills may span multiple pages and include an Amount Owing figure that bears little resemblance to the rate you were quoted when you first subscribed. These bills include recurring equipment rental charges, extra charges for using a touch-tone phone, and, in a move that really tickles my self-reference funny-bone, even charges for receiving a bill in the first place.

I received a text message from Telus a couple days ago. I have (for the time being) a pre-paid plan with them, which I top up every couple of months, for when I'm in Canada. The idea is to avoid paying roaming charges when I visit, thereby allowing me to actually use my phone. It seemed like a good idea in my head, but maybe I should put it to paper to see if I'm actually ahead of the game by paying $25 for 250MB of data and 200 text messages for 30 days (after which time it expires, though I am left with $5 worth of calling time which lasts another 30 days).  I used the strikethrough text decoration in the previous sentence because the text message I received was to say that, as of July 17, that same $25 will now get me just 100MB of data. If I never use even 100MB of data in a 30 day period, it really doesn't matter -- I might as well call it unlimited, because I never run in to my limit. But it's the principle of it all. Plus, it actually would make a difference if the litigants in a class action lawsuit against Bell get their way. This lawsuit alleges that prepaid service is not fundamentally different from a gift card, which is not allowed to expire.


I mention this related event because I don't know that the legislation about phone/cable/utility bill clarity is actually required. I doubt many customers are terribly puzzled by these line-item charges tacked on to their monthly statements. They know very well that they are being nickel-and-dimed in a bait-and-switch routine that suggests a monthly bill of x but winds up sending out a bill of 2x. They could probably save a bit of money and fire the marketing people tasked with coming up with benign or important-sounding charges to use on their bills. Just end the charade and give them nice utilitarian names like gouging fees 1 through 8. I think the only puzzlement that most people experience when reading their bills is how some business sectors got the privilege of printing their own money.

Old News

I'm enjoying a strawberry-banana smoothie, made with two overripe pureed bananas, some frozen strawberries and some homemade yogurt that was being made even as I blogged last Friday. After reading Kelsey's blog post about making yogurt, Rebecca and I (mostly Rebecca) became obsessed with making yogurt, and I've been trying to get it right ever since. In my attempts to create a nice, warm environment for the yogurt culture to do its thing, I overheated (and killed) the yogurt twice. I've gotten it to work on two consecutive attempts in the last week, so I guess I've mostly got it figured out. I still think I should get a heating pad for the job.

Incidentally, I made the smoothie using a blender magic-bullet hack that I read about somewhere online. If you have a conventional blender and, for whatever reason, don't want to use the blender pitcher that came with it, you will probably find that the blade, gasket and ring that screws to the base of the pitcher will also conveniently fit a standard mason jar. You can, for example, make a quart of smoothie, enjoy half of it, and refrigerate the rest. Brilliant. Just make sure the gasket doesn't fall into the jar when you attach the blade, or you will have blended rubber in your food. I did that. I was frowny-face emoticon. Fortunately, I found replacement gaskets for cheap on eBay.

The other day, I forgot to mention the topic that brought me back to the computer to blog.

I had been trying to book a trip for Rebecca and myself, involving a Robert Q shuttle to Detroit, and then a flight from Detroit to NYC. I'm not a fan of planning these sorts of things. So I tried to use a London travel agent to make the arrangements. No dice. I was calling from Chicago. They don't take credit card information over the phone. Why? Because they had recently been burned by credit card fraud over the phone. The only way to book with these people is to physically go in and hand them your credit card -- much as you would do if you wanted to pay in cash. This means that, in this situation, using a credit card is strictly worse than cash, as it had no upside (e.g., not having to physically present the payment) and several downsides (e.g., interest charges, standard 3% transaction fee and additional fees imposed by the card issuer). I sympathized with the manager, who I spoke to in order to get to the bottom of the matter. Certainly, he cannot afford to bear the cost of a fraudulent transaction, as the profit margins for travel agents has become quite slim. But I find it difficult to comprehend how, with the services and technology available to facilitate financial transactions, I could not persuade someone to take my business.

Incidentally, this blog post is effectively advertising an opportunity for anyone out there with any background in electronic commerce. I won't even ask for a cut. I just want to be able to get someone to book my damn vacation because I don't get off on bargain hunting and attending to the minutiae associated with trip planning.

Mandated Break

I was in the middle of writing a Matlab script to carry out a tedious analysis. I'll happily spend an hour doing the problem solving required to automate doing something I could otherwise tediously carry out by hand in half that time. Unfortunately, the remote computer stopped responding, and I took that as a cue to switch tasks. It's not like I don't have a dozen other things I could do anyways -- for example, update my blog before I forgot what I might want to write about.

So, I started to type lesbonnes... into my Chrome addressbar. Chrome has google instant search built into it, so when you type in the address bar, your browser is basically searching google for you automatically. And this is how I discovered that my blog has a peculiar URL neighbour. When you type "lesb..." in Chrome, the browser helpfully suggests websites starting with "lesb...". You can see where this is going? Despite that I regularly visit my own blog, Chrome's #1 suggestion was that I might be interested in visiting Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber. It's a tumblr website, not a porn site, so there was no risk (I think) in clicking the link. And indeed, as advertised, the website posts submitted photos of (presumably?) lesbians who do indeed resemble Justin Bieber. That's niche. So just a heads up for visitors from Google: double check your URL before you click "Go". But if you don't there won't be any real consequences. I don't think there's any danger of anything terribly lascivious ever showing up on that site, because a hoodie is pretty much obligatory. Also, Chrome's behaviour has nothing to do with my search history, if that's what you're thinking.

Uh, so what else?

Right. I've got an empty plate beside me. It had a hamburger on it, which I had barbecued. I feel a little icky about it because I had several bites of it before I actually looked at a cross-section of my burger and discovered that the inside was not fully cooked. I hope I don't go all Walkerton or something.

While outside barbecuing, I discovered evidence that I had suffered a mini-stroke yesterday afternoon. It appears that when I arrived home, I put my bicycle kickstand down and dismounted. Then I went to the side garage door, opened it and reached in to push the garage door opener button. Then ... I went inside. I had left my bike sitting there in the driveway overnight, and the garage door wide open. Just about two years ago, Jenni Minas sent me a Thar Be Dragons type of map of Evanston. Moving here with Rebecca and two little boys (one newborn), we lucked into a nice single family house far from any dragons. It appears Jenni's map was very accurate, if it is the case that dragons steal bicycles and lawnmowers, as is rumoured.

It is rumoured. I just said it, so it's rumoured. Go spread the word.