Crackberry Rant

I recently got my hands on my first personal Blackberry device, a sleek Bold 9000 and really started loving it ... That is until I started exploring the device's data connectivity. The Bold is aptly named. You had better be "bold", daring and fearless if you are planning on getting some of the advanced features to work.

Since my old phone's SIM card didn't have a data plan, I had to connect to the Internet using the highly touted built-in wifi. Getting the Blackberry to connect to my router wasn't too bad. On the other hand, getting the DHCP to assign an IP address to the device was rather unintuitive and frankly a pain in the butt. There isn't much official documentation and searching the web for the right information is like searching for that elusive bra strap hook when you're 15.

Here's what Blackberry says about wifi, taken right from their website ...


"Simple and straightforward. Lower your cellular costs and get service in areas where cellular network coverage may be limited or unavailable, with BlackBerry data services over Wi-Fi® networks."


Simple and straightforward. Strange ... I don't see anything about losing your hair from frustration. For anyone experiencing the same issue, here's what I had to do. (Of course, you first need to turn on the wifi on the device and establish a connection to your router, whether it be setting up your MAC address filtering or connecting via encryption keys etc.)

Press the Blackberry key and navigate to the following menu option.
Manage Connections » Mobile network options » Data Services » "Off when roaming"


"Off when roaming"?? Seriously?!? But after doing this, I was finally able to launch my browser and surf ... yay!

After surfing for 5 mins, ADD kicked in and I wanted to sample Blackberry's own version of their app store. Apparently, it was a separate download and I couldn't be bothered. If Blackberry wants my money, they'll have to include the app with the phone.

So I googled the top 10 free applications for the Blackberry and came across a page at blorge.com with some direct links to some downloadable apps. Much to my disappointment and awe, many of the applications required a data plan to launch. I kept getting the error "Data Services Unavailable".

I had to check my settings twice because I was able to surf the web. Why did the applications not work? Is this Blackberry's doing or is it the fault of the developers? Why should the device care how I am connected to the Internet?!? Many of the apps developed for the iPhone work with a wifi connection. Why doesn't this work with a Blackberry?

I enjoy some of the PDA features but not being able to use Googletalk, Google Maps/GPS functionality, or read my RSS feeds using Viigo at a wifi hotspot or home is just not right. I feel like I paid for a foot long corn dog but after biting into it, discovered that half of it was made of playdoh. I guess all smartphones do something really well but providing application support through wifi is definitely not a strength of a Blackberry. The strength of a Blackberry lies in the BES, email functionality and perhaps in being a paperweight.

If you want a phone that you can use to play with multimedia, surf, sync and play well with Windows (do not even get me started on the Desktop Manager) and Linux, I would not recommend a Blackberry. For what I want from a phone, an HTC WinMo device would definitely better suit my needs. That corn dog made of playdoh would come a close second.

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Rogers - Liberty Thief

The beginnings of this story started gleefully but ended in anger, frustration and immense dissatisfaction. My wife and I are approaching our "cotton" anniversary and to celebrate, she surprised me with the prospect of an Apple iPhone 3GS. Since I needed to sign the necessary papers and account information, she suggested that I order it from Rogers and she would pay for it. Being very excited, I called on the Friday and Saturday morning to speak to a number of "consultants". After fumbling through their voice menu system and being transferred various times to and from various departments, I finally got someone that could help me (or so I thought).

I was my usual polite self and inquired about the available plan and hardware cost details. With my current voice and the new data plan ($30/6GB) which was being pushed, I figured that everything would cost me around $85/month. There was no way that I was going to pay that much for a cell phone, so I asked about cost saving measures that could bring down my monthly cost. They suggested a $25(500MB) 'value' data plan, which didn't seem like a great deal of savings, especially when I'm only getting 500MB of data. The rep ran out of other cost saving ideas after the pitch of this offer. Who writes their scripts?!?

I asked whether or not they could do something with my voice plan.
No.
I asked if there were any other data plan options.
No.

Final verdict. 1 option.

Unsatisfied with only one choice, I decided to ask about the cost of the phone without a data plan. I was told that I could NOT purchase the phone without tethering it to a data plan. On top of that there was a $35 administrative fee if I wanted to go through with it (for what?!? When I asked about it. I was told that it was for data activation and additional paperwork. What type of paper cost $35?!?). The cherry on top of this was that could NOT be waived. I was outraged! Is it not up to me, the customer, to decide whether or not I want to use their data services?!? So what if it is a smartphone? What if I would like to use it as an offline device? What gives them the right to take away my liberty to use a product the way **I** want to use it. I was told that this is company policy and that they no longer sell smartphones without a data plan.

Slightly shocked, I ended the call letting the rep know that I was not mad at her but ticked off at her company policies and the amount of authorization that she had at making and presenting decisions.

We have not been happy with out cable and internet services so I took this opportunity to cancel our digital cable service. I was redirected to customer relations (rebranded from customer retention) and gave my reason as to why I was cancelling my digital cable service. The rep proceeded to tell me what good was it to have a smartphone without a data plan? I told him that that was not the point. It was something for me to decide and not him or the company which provides these services. Adding fuel to the fire, he proceeded to tell me that it was just a good business decision. I asked him how it was a good business decision if it caused the loss of a dissatisfied customer? He had no smart remark for that.

Later this month, I will cancel my Internet service when I find a suitable alternative. I am now on the look for cellular alternatives as well. I can't wait for the other providers to offer GSM service in 2010. If you have any suggestions, please comment or message me.

Rogers, you have robbed me of my personal liberties, and for that alone, have lost me as a customer.

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WWF CN Tower Climb

I'll be hiking up the CN Tower for the 4th time in 5 years on April 14, 2009. This time it will be for the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and the first time I will be doing it with a group fully comprised of work people, most of whom are "first timers".

Little do they know, they'll all be crying at the 50th flight, with 2/3 more to go (muhahaha). I hope that the motivation of "Chez Cora's" Bobby Button crepe is enough to pull them through. Otherwise, they'll have to cling to the puke ridden walls, praying for a paramedic to take them out of their misery. Ok I digress ...

So naturally, being an informational geek, I went online to find out some stats about our beloved T dot landmark. Here are some of the cooler things I found.

• The CN Tower was built by the Canadian National Railway. Hence the "CN" (doh).
• Height of the Tower is: 553.33 meters (1,815 ft., 5 inches)
• Original cost: $63 million. Adjusted cost (1999 dollars): $260 million.
• Total construction time: 40 months-Number of construction workers: 1,537
• Speed of elevators: 6 metres/sec (20 feet/sec)-
• Lightning strikes the CN Tower an average of 75 times per year
• The 360 Restaurant makes a complete rotation every 72 minutes

I was contemplating wearing a beaver pelt while doing the climb but was afraid that the WWF animal activists would crack me over the head with a seal club. Ooh .. the irony.

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Investing for Dummies

Is Botulism worth it?
As most of you have probably already noticed, we're officially in the midst of a recession. This probably explains why I have lost weight as we seem to be saving more for rainy days and spending less at the grocery counter.

So I was thinking of how I could make a bit more money to keep my grumbling tummy and wallet satisfied at the same time. One alternative would be to shop at the dollar store for meat but the closest thing that they have to offer is canned spam from the 80s.

After contemplating this for a moment, I decided to skip out on the fabulous idea of a botulism induced fatality and began to look at other alternatives.

ETFs

Many companies these days lack the financial appeal of attracting investors and who knows where your money is going to end up at the end of all this? Some Banks are undergoing partial nationalization, while some insurance companies are folding like players who can't call a 25 cent check raise.

With the help of some coworkers, I have discovered ETFs (Electronically Traded Funds) and more specifically 'Inverse Exchange Traded Funds', otherwise known as Bear ETFs. If you're going to lose your money anyways, why not do it with style?

ETFs are funds that trade on a stock market that track the performance of a particular index or benchmark, of whatever the fund is invested in. For instance,there are ETFs that track precious metals (Gold, Silver), financial indexes, Crude Oil, bond markets, natural gas, agricultural grains and so on. I haven't found it yet but I am sure that there is one that tracks the popularity of Chuck Norris quotes.

In normal (bull) ETFs, if the index which the fund is tracking goes up, so does the stock price of the ETF that you're invested in. In inverse (bear) ETFs, the price of the stock goes up if the index goes down. So essentially, you are shorting the stock but do not have to do explictly through a options or margin account. To further increase the voliatility, some funds are tracked at 200% (2x) the performance of the index.

In this market, it's better to bet on the bear than to ride the bull. So this is a strategy that you can use to offset/hedge against your medium/long term holds. Because let's be honest, you're still holding onto your Nortel shares with the hopes that it will emerge from Chapter 11 unscathed, right? =)

So here's where I post the disclaimer: Be careful and read all the fine print. I am not responsible for your losses. Practice safe investing and you could end up like me: with a full stomach and avoiding the mishaps of botulism.

As always, post any comments you have ... Till Next Time.

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SQL Server Exception Handling - Basketball Analogy

SQL Server 2005 has introduced a really cool way of handling exceptions through a TRY ... CATCH construct that should be familiar to most developers in this day and age. In my opinion this waslong overdue as it really was a pain to handle errors using previous versions of SQL Server.

Since I'm a firm believer in the "No pain, no gain" philosophy, let's remind ourselves how painfulthe old syntax really was using a sports analogy.

Old Way

So let's take a hypothetical situation and pretend that I am American Billionaire, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks. I've decided to remove Dirk from the lineup because I recently found out that he is abig fan of the 'Hoff (whom Mark Cuban hates for obvious reasons). So he's influenced Rick Carlisle to remove Dirk from the lineup to insert Brandon Bass. Let's see what that code would like.

begin trans
delete from lineup where playerID = 41
if @@error <> 0
goto err1
insert into lineup values (32, 'Brandon Bass')
if @@error <> 0
goto err2
commit trans

err1: print 'Error occured removing player from lineup'
goto eend

err2: print 'Error occured adding player to the lineup'

:eend

So we have to check whether or not there was an error after each statement. Perhaps, Dirk wouldn't come off the floor. Or perhaps, Brandon Bass tripped on his shoelaces, fell over the gatorade and broke his ankle while checking into the game. And if we wanted customized error messages for each scenario, wewould have to have multiple labels to handle them (Rather unrealistic but it proves the point).

New Way

So now let's see a more elegant solution with the new TRY ... CATCH construct.

BEGIN TRY
insert into lineup values (32, 'Brandon Bass')
END TRY

BEGIN CATCH
SELECT
ERROR_NUMBER() AS ErrorNumber,
ERROR_SEVERITY() AS ErrorSeverity,
ERROR_STATE() AS ErrorState,
ERROR_PROCEDURE() AS ErrorProcedure,
ERROR_LINE() AS ErrorLine,
ERROR_MESSAGE() AS ErrorMessage
END CATCH
GO

As you can see it is much more elegant than the old method and improves readability and robustness of the code. Anytime an error is encountered withinthe TRY block, control is directed to the CATCH block, where you could display or log the corresponding error. So I hope that anyone using SQL 2005+ will start to use this syntax if you aren't already.

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Acoustic Guitar - 21 Day Challenge

I've decided to take up guitar (semi-seriously) and have decided to participate in the 21 day challenge on Ultimate Guitar.com. I will be using this blog to document my progress and hopefully look back one day and recall how hard it was to start playing guitar.

Now a few notes about the "challenge". The 21 day challenge involves playing a song for 21 days at a really slow pace without a single mistake. The theory behind it is that playing a piece perfectly at a slow pace will condition your muscle memory to remember the correct movements, as you will not be playing the mistakes over and over again. According to scientists (as per the forum post), 21 days is the magic number where your subconscious takes over and it becomes a habit. Now the only problem is sticking it out for the entire 21 days. Being afflicted with a mild case of ADHD, I have my concerns.

The song I picked is Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven". I was told that it is a relatively easy song to play for beginners, minus the hammer-on and pull-0ff sequence. Today is day 2. I have practiced for about an hour and a half and my fingers are sore, not to mention black and bruised. I'm glad I stuck with it but I didn't feel like I made much progress. Probably because my ADHD kicked in and broke my concentration. I broke the routine and started playing the song at normal speed. I'm thinking of skipping tomorrow since it will be New Years eve and maybe it'll give my fingers a bit of time to rest ... and return to their original colour.

Till next time ...

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Sharepoint Portal Server (SPS) has some seriously weird errors. If you enable anonymous access within IIS on the top level SPS site, you will receive the following error:

"You cannot view this area, either because the area no longer exists, or because you do not have the rights to view this area. To change your rights, contact the site administrator."

Neither of these are true. The "area" still exists and since I was logging in using an administrative account, how do I not have access to the top level site? The thing was I did not notice it because my browser was caching the page and it wasn't until I ran an stsadm.exe command and had to run iisreset.exe that I noticed the problem. It wasted over 1½ hours of my day figuring out why the SPS top level site was not working.

In order to fix this problem, just remove anonymous access on the SPS virtual server from IIS and perform an iisreset.

Ahhh ... the idiosyncrasies of Sharepoint.

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On a brighter note, I got to go to a first time homebuyers seminar today. The bank had a real estate lawyer and an agent host the meeting. It was quite informative and I learned a whole bunch of stuff.

Here are some of the tidbits that I learned:

Did you know that a builder is allowed to delay your closing date by 120 days no questions asked? After the 120 days, you have a 10 day window to submit a written request for a full refund from the builder. Once you exceed the 10 day window, the builder has the legal right to extend your closing date by another 120 days. At the end of the 240 days and your building is still not ready? At this point in time, you can request for a full refund.

Did you know that if you sign something called a Buyer-Agent agreement, you are bound to the agreement until it expires. This buyer-agent agreement basically says that if you purchase a property in (X) area , you will purchase it through the realtor that is indicated by this agreement for (Y) months. You will not be able to purchase anything from another realtor, if you decide to leave the agent outlined in the agreement. So beware when signing one of these ... It should be noted that you have to sign one before submitting an offer though.

Once you have an settled on purchasing new property and you get an offer from a builder, you should bring it to a lawyer for an offer review. If your lawyer, Jack Schitt, charges you for this review, please note that you are getting ripped off and your lawyer's legal knowledge is probably very reminiscent of his name. An offer review should be free of charge and you have no obligation to the lawyer or law firm which they represent.

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