Les Bonnes Choses

Last evening, while I was Skyping with Rebecca, my obnoxious doorbell (it plays the Westminster Chimes) rang. I went to the door to find a couple of Jehova's Witn - er, I mean, AT&T representatives who were trying to drum up some sales in the neighbourhood. Apparently, with the recent upgrades to their network in the neighbourhood, they can offer me a package comparable to the one I have with Comcast.

At this point, you may be asking yourself why would I bother going to the trouble of switching providers to get the exact same thing? Well, for one thing, AT&T has a more a la carte offering. I can, for example, get the package that includes only 100 versus 200 cable channels (there are only about half a dozen channels included in the 200 channel package that we would watch anyways, and all of the favourites, such as the Food Network,and Discovery are in both packages). There's the arguable advantage of AT&T's DSL (not shared) line versus Comcast's cable (shared) line. Comcast has also gotten a bad rep for bandwidth throttling. We don't really watch alot of movies (mostly because most of what Hollywood puts out is not worth seeing once, let alone twice), and my retro music tastes guarantee that I'm not going to be downloading much music (if I like it, I probably already have it), but I like to stay current with each passing season of Good Eats, and Linux distributions are best gotten through bittorrent (a legal and legitimate use, I might add). Finally, there is this issue of my first Comcast bill for $295, for what I expected to be a $119/month service.

Quoi? Venez encore une fois?

Hidden fees and installation charges inflated that price like a clown with a bicycle pump. And some balloons. The clown: he's inflating balloons with the pump, you see. To make balloon animals.

Anyways, the point is, that sort of crap doesn't sit right with me. Installation fees came to $130. They don't exactly go out of their way to highlight that in their advertising, or indeed, even when ordering their service. They even gave me a wireless router, inferior to the one I already own, and charged me $2 to rent it for the month. I can't say I'm even really satisfied with the installation. Because we don't own the house, I couldn't authorize the cable guy to actually route the cable to a useful spot in the house as that would likely entail putting a hole in a wall or ceiling. Consequently, all of the Comcast equipment is connected to a rather awkwardly run length of cable across the fireplace mantle to an only marginally more acceptable location that is still across the house from our PCs. Someone less familiar with computers than I would be at a loss for getting this particular computer networked.

So, I did some research on AT&T's offerings, and if I can be assured that: 1) The $129 I was quoted will be final charge on each and every bill they send me, and 2) they can do a better job locating their equipment than could the Comcast people, then I will consider jumping ship. I had initially raised the objection that I was in a 1 year contract with Comcast, but was then told that they can't use contracts, and in any case, the $75 early termination fee that I would be charged would be more than defrayed by the $100 incentive for signing up.

This was a pretty long post which also closely approximates the amount of time I spent at the door while Rebecca looked on at my frozen Skype image, wondering whether I had been shot. When I returned, I explained what had just transpired and reminded her that we got this place in a quiet upper-middle-class neighbourhood so that our delicate non-gun-toting central Canadian sensibilities would not be offended*.

*The Western provinces, they like their guns. They also like Steven Harper.

It's no fun /
Bein' an illegal alien
     -"Illegal Alien", Genesis

In the paperwork that NU sent me back in July was a welcome letter that included the admonishment to check in with the International Office within the first thirty days of my arrival. I'm here on a J-1 visa with a DS-2019 form, and failure to check in wth the school will result in the expiry of my visa, and my becoming persona non-grata. Thirty days is a pretty big window of time, so checking in with them didn't seem too terribly urgent.

Except that it is.

You see, the Social Security Number is ubiquitous here, at least, for most things involving money: opening a bank account, getting on payroll, applying for a credit card, getting accounts with utilities and service providers -- all of these ask for a SSN. Some of these can be gotten without one, but only by jumping through hoops and often by also providing a security deposit. Others, such as the very important task of getting on payroll, cannot be done without a SSN. So immediately after checking in at the International Office last Thursday, I made my way to the Social Security office. It was a relatively pleasant experience, as, besides myself and the staff, the place was empty. I took a number ticket which, because the place was empty, was immediately called up, making the process of taking a number seem somewhat silly. I went up to the counter and the woman at the desk asked for my documentation. She started keying in the information but had to stop about two minutes into the process. Whatever happens by visiting the International Office was not yet reflected in the government system. Having to abort the application, the woman handed me back my documentation and SSN application and told me to ask back at the International Office how long it would be before the information would appear in the system so I would know when it would be safe to reapply. I wrote an email to the appropriate contact, explained the situation, asked about the expected delay, and also suggested that future revisions of the welcome letter explicity state that checking in with the International Office was a prerequisite for applying for a SSN.

Incidentally, I don't think the woman that I emailed actually knows how long it takes for information to percolate through "the system", as she told me to reapply after 10 days, which happens to be the minimum waiting period before one can apply for a SSN (and presumably enough time for the Social Security office to receive whatever it is they are waiting for). I intend to go in again on Monday, figuring that my information must have been put into some database or another, so this is now an IT issue. Putting on my IT cap for a minute, all the databases involved probably get updated daily at night, or at least over a weekend when the offices involved are otherwise closed. I hope I'm right. I kind of need to get paid this month.

Bear with me ladies; you'll just have to accept what I'm about to say as gospel truth.

I've sported something approximating a goatee for about ten years. Genetics dictate that this is my only option, though it is compatible with my general facial hair philosophy. Sideburns, for example, should extend the scalp's hair; with a shaved head, sideburns look like an extension of ear hair, and you don't want to go there.

I have found I have a window during which time I find my own facial hair irritating. Generally, I clip my facial hair every three to four days, because I find that I am constantly able to feel it. After another few days, however, I become sufficiently accustomed to the feeling that I am no longer so aware of it. It is at this point that my options open up, and am just now considering goofing around with a good 70's style handlebar moustache for a few days.

The story so far: I booked a Wednesday 8-11am installation appointment with Comcast. 11 am came and went, with no technician. I called at 1 to ask WTF and the call center rep told us that a technician had come at 8:20 but nobody answered. That seemed strange because we have an obnoxiously loud doorbell and there were 4 adults in the house, at least two of which (Erin and I) are light sleepers (don't judge, we had arrived at 2:30 am, just 5 and a half hours earlier, following an 8 hour drive from London). However the rep also mentioned some additional information, specifically, that the second floor of the house had birch trim, that suggested a screw-up. Our house, you see, is a ranch-style house, and therefore HAS no second floor. A second appointment was booked, and, as you can surmise, we now have our Comcast services installed.

Now, when I initially contacted Comcast, they told me what my phone number would be, that is, once the service had been installed. Thereafter, contacting Comcast regarding our account involved providing the last 4 digits of the phone number, which I presume is used to look up the account information. I discovered this morning, upon hearing from my in-laws that their attempts to call us were unsuccessful, that our phone number was incorrectly relayed to me when I ordered the service; the last four digits were transposed from ABCC to ACBB. Fortunately, we have not yet given our number out to many people, though I still have to notify the movers yet again of a phone number change. I'm not sure if that explains the bungled installation attempt, though it also makes me wonder how they ever arrived at the correct address at all. I hope you do not find me writing an entry in a few months time about how we're paying for someone else's account and vice versa (unless, of course, it's to report that we're currently enjoying some kind of deluxe package for the price of the basic package).

We finally have the interwebs, phone and cable. But, look, it's been a really long day, I haven't had a decent night's sleep since Sunday, and it's almost midnight, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to go to bed. Still, I thought it would be mean to keep y'all waiting any longer to find out the stunning conclusion to last season's cliffhanger: I made it to Chicago in one piece. I am also even more convinced that the obnoxious behaviour by US customs and immigration officers was an explicit directive from the Bush/Cheney administration.

Just coming in from the car to resume the home stretch of house packing, I was listening to the CBC hourly news update. I'm pretty good with identifying voices, so when I heard the voice of announcer Mike Crawley, I was 99 percent sure that my months-long quest to identify the intense, angry weather announcer had come to an end. Now if only I could ID the spacey woman, I would be complete.

Okay, so here's a quickie because I'm in the middle of packing up the kitchen. My laptop sits here on the kitchen table, and I am rewarding myself for taping up a couple of boxes with a quick hit of Wired news. Back when our basement was still Cabbage Patch green, we had some buddies over - Graeme and Miranda, the Bunnies, Deanna and Daniel, if my memory serves me. We were playing some game or another, the general gist of which being to see how well you know your friends. One of the questions was, "What room in the house is [so and so]'s favourite?" Among the options were the bedroom and the kitchen. Fortunately, my teammates had the good sense to guess that my favourite room was the kitchen (I have a 2 young kids. The bedroom is just trouble waiting to happen.)

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that this story about a Wii cooking game caught my eye. I'm not really into the video games. Not because I think they're dumb, mind you, but rather because I know that they can become huge time sinks that I can't afford. Nonetheless, the genre of games available for the Wii make it progressively more appealing as time goes by.