One Year Aniversary

Today it has been one year since I started this blog!

I've enjoyed writing about the random stuff that I want, and I hope that anyone who has stumble upon this has enjoyed reading it.

Taking a look, I've had 1214 visitors in the past year with a bounce rate of 68%. Not much, but I'd say fairly surprising for a blog with no focus beyond whatever I want to say. I feel happy. Then again, I do this mostly for myself so even if I had 2 people reading, I'd be happy.

I also want to thank people who've left comments. I like reading them.

Anyhow, I've been short on the posts since my return from Korea, but I plan to get back into things more. Thanks!

The New pizzapizza.ca (And It's Crappy Code)

I decided to order in some pizza the other night as I was sick again and not in the cooking mood.
So, over to pizzapizza.ca...

They've revamped their online order system since I've last logged in and it doesn't work...at all. Now, I played around with the site for a good 15 minutes I think. Not because I was desperate for pizza (I could just call it in), but because the programmer in me just couldn't understand how they managed to go live with a new ordering system that doesn't work in the slightest and I needed to fully witness the train wreck. I could not get to the order pages. I couldn't even really get past setting up an account! So, the mind-numbed programmer in me is posting this summary of my experience with the new pizzapizza.ca:

First thing, I logged in with my user and I was told to fill in some additional details and that my account will now login by email address instead of user name. Ok, cool, pretty standard change. But...the email they have on file is from years ago and doesn't exist anymore. The field is read only, so I couldn't change it. Ok, Fine. Not ideal but I just made a new account.

I signed up and entered in all of my data. It complained that my street name didn't exist and failed to save. I retry the name with variations: just the street name, the street name followed by 'Rd.', the street name followed by 'Road'. It finally excepted one as a valid street in Toronto. Apparently you must divine the precise way that your street is represented in their database. But, the site then proceeded to come back to me with an error message!

Now here is where the site really broke down. First off, error on user creation? Oh well, with the error I wasn't sure if all of my information got saved. It apparently created my account, since it said "Welcome Andrew" at the top of the screen but when I went to my account details page everything was blank. So, I refilled the details and attempted another save, but the email field was again read only...and was blank...and was a required field, so it wouldn't save.

Hmm, blank email..that's not good.

So, I decide to try to create another account. No go, apparently that email address was already registered, meaning it did save the first time. So why didn't it print on the page?! Clearly my name and email saved, but did they have my address? I decide to find out by placing an order. If it got delivered cool. I click to place a order and didn't get the order pages, I got a message saying that my local store was closed. It actually wasn't by the way. Now that means to me that they might have my address (as they can figure my local Pizza Pizza), though not proof really, as it could just be the answer of a final else statement or some default value. So I was done.

Anyhow, I tried again last night for kicks, and everything is exactly the same, so this thing has been broken (at least for new customers, or a least for me) for a few days now. I seriously don't know how this sort of thing can go live.

Text Messages Are Cheap

...or should be.

Looks like we're being lied to a bit. The price of text messages has gone up over the past few years. Prices in the states have doubled, and here in Canada, Telus and Bell recently began charging for messages received as well as sent, citing the constant increase in text message usage:

"Canadians send 45 million text messages a day," said Hall. "That has created a tremendous strain on our network and we can no longer afford to provide the service for free."

These increases have even prompted Twitter to neuter their text message updates in Canada. Of course, there have been people saying for a few years (with math to back it up!) that the small size of text messages cannot cause enough strain to justify phone carrier prices.

Well, I've just read an article from a few days ago in The New York Times, saying that not only are text messages small, but that they're wrapped in a packet that the phone sends anyway!

"But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network.

That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted."

(boldness added by me)

And so, from professor Keshav at University of Waterloo:

“Operating costs are relatively insensitive to volume,” he said. “It doesn’t cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million.”

So, what's this BS of rising costs being because of increased usage? Prices gouging is wonderful, isn't it?

And people I know argue with me when I say cell phones are a ripoff. Ha!

Urban Otters!

I came across this article today. Apparently otters are making a return to the English urban scene. Urban Otters!!!
I love otters. They are one of my favourite animals. I love watching them at the zoo. In fact, I once ran into one on a leash there in the visitor's centre. Cute.
The article also included this awesome otter picture! Urban Otters!!! I'm done now.

Trek Movie Trailer...

...of sorts.

For those of you who are as excited and nervous as I am over the upcoming Trek film, here's a video sent to me by my brother with the trailer's audio on top of clips from the old animated series.

Wettest Year Ever

I haven't posted in a while. I guess I just took a blog break after the Korean Adventure posts. I start getting back into it.

First though, I want to mention that a few days ago Toronto officially broke our record for wettest year. We've hit 975 mm of rain and snow, breaking our previous 1977 record. Ha, and the year's not even over yet. I have to say, it really did rain a lot this summer, and as I've mentioned, it was a very snowy winter. I like that after all that we got a record though.