I have a story to share about what happened to me on the way to CinqASept Guelph this evening. Now this is a story that I probably wouldn’t typically share, but the circumstance was a bit too crazy to let it pass without sharing.

I had talked with Corina about going to CinqASept Guelph, which is a local social meetup that takes place on Friday nights 5-7pm at Casey’s in Guelph. So we formulated a plan that involved taking 2 cars as Corina didn’t wish to partake in the post event karaoke that was planned.

So I meet her at her work and I start leading the wrong way, thinking Casey’s was in another part of town. We stopped, conferred on where it was and Corina took the lead driving. She took us through a crazy residential detour but we came out into a part of Guelph I knew well. Coming up to the Hanlon Parkway Corina proceeds to turn the wrong way, as I tried to honk at her to not turn.  So we ended up split up, but at this point we were both able to figure out how to get to Casey’s from there.

I make my way up to Stone Road and go up a few lights and am pretty close to my destination. I’m coming up to the light in front of Stone Road Mall when I had a momentary lapse in judgement and ended up running a red light. All I can really reconstruct was that I believe I was looking over towards Casey’s and since it was just off Stone Road on Edinburgh Rd, so I was wondering if Corina would find it as I told her it was on Stone. I turned my head, looked up and saw a yellow light and I was going too fast to stop in time so I went right through it.  As I sailed through the light I noticed there was a police cruiser sitting in the inside lane on the opposite direction. As I passed I immediately looked in the rear view to see the cruiser pull a U turn around the median and turn on his lights to come after me. I immediately signaled into the right lane and prepared for the inevitable.

The officer comes up and I immediately apologize for my error. He asks the usual, license and insurance, and asks me what happened. I told him straight out that I couldn’t recall just what happened at the very instant before, that I hadn’t been up in that area for awhile and I think I was just looking away from the road for a second when I looked back I saw the yellow light and couldn’t stop in time.

He goes back to his car to presumably write me a big fat ticket while I waited. He comes back to my car and tells me that it would be a $325 ticket and 3 demerit points, hands me back my license and insurance info, then asks me what team I had on my tuque, to which I replied Manchester City. He then said he wasn’t going to give me a ticket and goes back to his car.  At this point I wasn’t 100% sure whether I had heard him right given the road noise, about whether he was or wasn’t going to give me a ticket, so I decided to wait. I didn’t want to chance the fact he said he was writing the ticket and drive off. About a minute passes and he walks back to my car and tells me that he wasn’t giving me a ticket, at which point I thank him graciously.

Now I have no idea whether he was a Man City fan, a soccer fan, hater of Man United or what, but I was absolutely floored. I then went on my to Casey’s, which at this point couldn’t have been much more than 200 metres away from where I was pulled over.

Now I’ve been called a lucky SOB on more than a few occasions in my life, but this one even shocked me.  I showed up at Casey’s, at which point Corina was there waiting and had actually seen me pulled over, so I was definitely in the doghouse.

I feel like an idiot and it really makes me realize how easy distracted driving mistakes can happen.  I’m happy that I didn’t get in an accident or anything serious came out of the event first and foremost.  I don’t believe I’m a bad driver, sure I may speed a bit more often than I should. I’ve only ever gotten a couple tickets for speeding in 10 years of driving and never had any major infractions, so maybe the officer decided to be lenient having looked up my driving record.   All I can say is thank you to this nice Guelph Police officer, it was definitely appreciated, whatever the reason you decided to let me off with a warning for.

It 3 weeks ago I was on Facebook and ran across a post by my friend Lucas Duguid(@octopusred on the Twitters) mentioning that he was on day 1 of quitting caffeine. I myself had been thinking for awhile that I wanted to lay off caffeine, but seeing Lucas had started on his own journey to conquer his addiction, I decided that I would try too. I know I’ve always heard the mantra when it comes to stuff like that, why not today? It seems very easy to want to begin a new week, or month, or year by turning over a new leaf, but that is just really delaying things. So I figured starting Thursday, November 10th I would no long ingest caffeine.

Now I don’t wish to position myself as a hardcore caffeine addict as some folks may be, but I definitely have my vices. Repeatedly in the past I had tried to cut out pop, carbonated beverages or soda as the American folk like to call it. I’ve been a longtime fan of cola beverages in particular. In my house growing up we typically had Diet Pepsi, and I subsequently became a big Pepsi drinker when I got older. My favourite was fountain pop Pepsi, I always loved the extra zip the drink usually had. But over the years it has been said over and over that sugary drinks like Pepsi are quite bad for you, of which I have no doubt.

So the few times I had tried to quit drinking pop I would suddenly gravitate to drinking more coffee. I found that I had grown to really like coffee, after taking years to acquire a taste for it. Over time I also discovered a cycle that would develop. I would start drinking coffee on a regular basis, then after a month would just start feeling terrible. I’d eat food and often have indigestion, regardless of what kind of food it might be. So I would make a concerted effort to ramp down my coffee consumption, and invariably go back to drinking pop.

Maybe I’m just slow, but it didn’t really dawn on me until earlier this year that I was a caffeine addict. The realization just never hit me because I was never one of those people drinking a pot of coffee a morning or downing 5 Cokes a day.  On average I’d say I’d have 1-2 caffeinated beverages a day, with a max of probably 3.  I didn’t frequently have a Pepsi as a pick me up, I usually just had it because I enjoyed it. On mornings I’d be dragging my ass I’d pick up a large McDonalds coffee and feel a little bit more alert for the morning.

What Are The Effects Of Caffeine?

Many people rely on the well known effects of raised alertness, a sense of increased concentration and an ability to alleviate tiredness, but aside from these potential benefits, many negative effects occur as a consequence of consuming caffeine.As a stimulant of the central nervous system, caffeine interferes with responses and interpretations to and from the brain. It increases the production of the stress hormone, hence a feeling of being more alert, can increase acids to the degree of potentially causing a stomach ulcer, alters the anatomical function of the blood vessels and strips the body of vital calcium supply. As a result of these actions people are more susceptible to osteoporosis, irregular heart rhythms and serious illness and pain from the gastro-intestinal tract.

From BeatingAddictions.co.uk

Actually Quitting

I decided to quit pretty much cold turkey. As I mentioned I don’t believe I was heavily addicted drinking 1 or 2 beverages a day, so I didn’t find I suffered from any of the major symptoms, but it did make me realize I did actually suffer with them before.

Symptoms Of Caffeine Withdrawal

Headaches, memory alterations, irritability, tiredness and nausea can all be caused during the period of withdrawal, to be expected when giving-up caffeine. Symptoms of withdrawal may last up to four days.

I have gotten headaches on a semi-regular basis since I was probably 8, but I would never have specifically pinned them on caffeine withdrawl, since I never actually realized I had a problem. Since stopping caffeine, I find I have had less headaches, and if I have had one, the severity is a lot less than before.

I’ve also found that my stress level has dropped dramatically. I simply don’t feel as tightly wound as I did only 3 weeks ago. I find I sleep better and feel more refreshed getting up in the morning.  The only drawback is those mornings where I might have been out late the night before and could use that morning pick me up and can’t do that. I’ve also felt I have more energy in general.

I’ve been firm on my insistence on not ingesting caffeine, but I haven’t given up pop. I’ll drink non caffeinated drinks like root beer, ginger ale, Sprite etc while avoiding cola. I realize if I want this to stick that quitting everything at the same time is just a recipe for failure. I’ve started drinking more hot chocolate, which is obviously sugary and has small amounts of caffeine, at least allows me to replace coffee.  I’ve also had one decaf coffee as well.

The more I’ve read about caffeine the more it really bothers me. I’ve found over the last couple of weeks it just makes me realize how many people are caffeine addicts as well. Places like McDonalds, Tim Hortons and other food chains have a vested interest in keeping you caffeinated. It’s what keeps you coming back. If you’re interested in learning more about caffeine addiction, I suggest checking out OverCaffeinated.org for info.

I had the opportunity to see Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds at Massey Hall yesterday. Just wow. I’ve been to many an Oasis concert, to the point I’ve actually been bored with the show if I happened to see them twice on the same tour. Oasis has been pretty notorious for the fact they play the same show every night, but I have to say Noel’s gig felt quite fresh.  Sure there were a few Oasis classics smattered in with a healthy amount of B-Sides.  They seem to mesh pretty effortlessly with the tracks from his new album, which is a pretty big accomplishment.  This was the first solo Noel gig I’ve ever seen, and all I can say is the man just knows how to put on a show.

The band sounded very tight and Massey Hall was just an amazing venue to see this gig. I managed to get tickets 6th row, left centre which was pretty awesome. I didn’t bring my good camera, so the few shots I did take with my iPhone 4 were pretty blurry.  It just couldn’t cope with all the light on the stage.

I saw someone say about this album that if this were the debut album for a new artist people would be falling all over themselves to blog about how great it is.  But this being the notorious Noel Gallagher the accomplishment will probably go pretty much unnoticed by the world at large outside of the Oasis community.

I posted a few videos I found on YouTube of the gig from Saturday, where Noel played the same setlist at the Mod Club in Toronto as they seemed better quality than the ones I found of the Massey Hall gig.

Setlist

1. (It’s Good) To Be Free
2. Mucky Fingers
3. Everybody’s on the Run
4. Dream On
5. If I Had a Gun…
6. The Good Rebel
7. The Death of You and Me
8. Freaky Teeth
9. Wonderwall
10. Supersonic
11. (I Wanna Live in a Dream in My) Record Machine
12. AKA… What a Life!
13. Talk Tonight
14. Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks
15. AKA… Broken Arrow
16. Half The World Away
17. (Stranded On) The Wrong Beach
18. Encore:
19. Little By Little
20. The Importance of Being Idle
21. Don’t Look Back In Anger

Yesterday was a pretty shitty day for me.

It wasn’t supposed to be, but as it turns out the die was already cast on Friday for my life to change, I just didn’t know it yet. Corina and I spent the weekend in Halifax and had a pretty good time. we flew out Friday afternoon and flew back Sunday night to Hamilton. I drove down the 403 to Paris, excited to go pickup my dog, The Dude.  I walked up to my parents house and sneakily opened the front door, hoping to surprise him and Wally, my parents dog. I opened the door and nothing happened. I just figured the dogs were outside.

My Mom and Dad walked over and said we’ve got some bad news. At first I thought it was someone in the family, my mind not immediately entertaining the thought it might be my dog. My Mom started to explain that something had happened to The Dude. I immediately thought he must have run away and something happened. He was a notorious runner and this was always my biggest fear with him.  But that wasn’t the case at all.

On Friday he had been playing in the backyard with Wally and my Mom called them back in and Dude didn’t come when she called. She went out to check on him and he was lying on the ground by the fence. My Dad was just getting home on Friday so they both took him to the emergency clinic in Paris. They tried to help him but he had gone into a full shutdown. He apparently had an aneurysm on his heart that burst and all his organs shut down on him.

I was immediately mad at myself for not giving him his heartworm medication on time. He usually gets it the 20th, but with how hectic life had been with Marlene’s funeral and everything it got forgotten until Friday, the day we left for Halifax.  I know it probably had nothing to do with it, but he had heartworm for the 2 1/2 years we owned him and we had him on the medication year round in an effort to kill the heartworm and extend his lifespan.

All I can really say is I’m pretty devastated about this. He was my dog. After Corina and I got him I spent a year working from home doing freelance and pretty much ever since then he was my dog without much doubt. He followed me around the house, and pretty much lived for when I came home after work at the end of the day.  I loved The Dude so much. I just feel so shitty that I couldn’t be there for him at the end. He was there for me, always waiting and super happy when I walked in the door.  He helped me through the hardship of losing my mother in law just by being The Dude and being there.

Our house feels so empty without him here. We bought this house and about a year later got The Dude so much of the memories of this place involve him.  I sit in my office and get out of my chair and look to see where he would be lying behind me so I don’t trip on him. When it was dark in the office I would shuffle my feet across the carpet so as not to step on him when I couldn’t see him. I did that last night.  I woke up this morning and looked for him before I stepped out of bed. Usually he’d be up in my grill at the side of the bed looking for me to give him a pet first thing in the morning, or over harassing Corina to get up and let him out.

He was an old dog. We had no idea how old, but I always liked to think optimistically that he was on the younger end of things. He was a rescued dog from a kill shelter in Ohio, but we didn’t know much more than that. Either way we believe he had a tough road to end up with us. I knew he was old, but never wanted to believe that we wouldn’t have a few more years with him. He was always a vibrant brute of a dog. He fashioned his own doggy door through our screen door with his head, he was always just strength and power even though he was old.

I think most people who ever met him fell in love with him. He was a dog who often had a happy grin on his face and was always so happy to meet you, be it on the street or at our front door. You were a new friend and possible new source of pets and cuddles.  He loved surfing out the back window of the car. I used to love seeing the reactions of kids and adults alike as they saw his friendly face hanging out the window with his trademark bandana on.

But now we soldier on without The Dude, the dog of many names. When we adopted him his name was Chance, as dubbed by the people who had him in foster care. When he was initially rescued they had called him Kirby. We got him and he subsequently became The Dude, after Jeff Bridge’s character from the Big Lebowski. I have no idea why I named him that, it just kinda came to me. He had many other nicknames I tagged him with, with my favourite being Mr Harrooo, after the sound he made when he howled.

Rest In Peace Dude, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you in your time of need.

I may be crazy, but I’ve long believed in the power of lucky bamboo.  I’ve had a bamboo plant for 8 years now, typically in my office. Now according to Chinese tradition, the number of stalks has meaning.  Typically the rule is you want to avoid having odd numbers of bamboo shoots, as it is bad luck except for the number 8.  Here is a list of meanings I grabbed from About.com.

• Two stalks represent love.
• Three stalks represent Fu (happiness), Lu (wealth), and Soh (long life).
• Five stalks represent the areas of life that represent wealth (e.g., spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and intuitive).
• Six stalks represent good luck and wealth.
• Seven stalks represent good health.
• Eight stalks represent growth.
• Nine stalks represent great luck.
• Ten stalks represent perfection.
• Twenty-one stalks represent a powerful blessing.

Now I bring this all up because I’ve long found my fortunes are often tied to this plant.  In the past when one stalk would be dying I would typically have a string of bad luck, at which point I would remove the dying stalk and replace it with another one and I would find my fortunes would change. You can typically buy them at a grocery store, so they aren’t that hard to come by.  I have found myself heading out to buy a replacement bamboo shoot in an effort to change my luck.  I would say this cycle has played out in my life at least 5 times now.  I’ve left work in the middle of a day to buy a bamboo shoot to try and right my luck.

It’s pretty easy to get busy and forget about a plant sitting in my office, but seriously this is freaky.  Up until tonight I was unaware of the negative connotations tied with having 4 stalks until I researched it.

4 Stalks are always avoided because the Chinese Four sounds similar to the Chinese word for Death.

I had a pot of 5 bamboo stalks and one had recently started dying.  So I was down to 4 stalks. As I’m sure many people are aware, my mother in law recently passed away from Cancer, so my wife Corina and I have been dealing with difficult things for awhile now and I can’t say rushing out to buy a bamboo shoot was a top priority. I then discovered today that while I was away for the weekend my dog, The Dude, passed away of a heart aneurysm while at my parents house(I’ll address that in a future blog, I just needed to spit this one out first).  Both of these passings occurred while I only had 4 healthy bamboo stalks!  That is just straight up fucked up.

As soon as it dawned on me after we got home I rushed over to Zehrs and purchased 3 more bamboo stalks and planted them.  I may be totally crazy, but that shit just totally happened to me.

I’ve been fortunate in my life not to have dealt with loss.  I’m 31 years old and I’d say I’ve been lucky to have avoided the heartache of losing someone really close to me.  Sure people have died, but nobody that impacted my life on a regular basis.  I’ve lost all my grandparents, but for one reason or another the impact of the loss was diminished in some way. First my Mom’s mother died and I was too young to really understand the impact of the loss. Years later my Dad’s father died and it was sudden. We had long lived a great distance apart so that diminished the effect it had on me, as while I loved my Grandpa, I just wasn’t old enough to appreciate him and how similar he and I were because we used to only see each other once or twice a year.  Next my Mom’s Father passed and we were estranged from him at the time. He had started living with another woman after my Grandma passed and she didn’t really want anything to do with his family. So when he passed we had essentially seen him once over the span of 10 years, which also coincided with our family move to Paris. When my Dad’s mother passed away it was sudden, but she was 80 so she had lived a pretty full life to that point. We saw her on a semi regular basis and were there when she passed, so I’d say this was the closest loss I’ve had to this point in my life.

That changed yesterday. My wife Corina’s mother Marlene passed away. She had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer 4 months ago and unfortunately lost her battle yesterday on a sunny Fall morning. She had been sick for probably 2 years, her troubles seemingly starting with a gallbladder issue and progressing from there.  This was actually a second round with Cancer, as she actually had beat ovarian Cancer back in the 70s after having her 4th child, my wife Corina. I think we were all amazed with the speed with which things happened. It was like Cancer came back and decided it wasn’t messing about this time. It started with the lungs, then spots on her spine, then into the bones. They tried chemotherapy but it only seemed to make things spread faster. They tried radiation, but by that time things were too far gone. The original prognosis for terminal lung cancer was 2 years, but with how fast things progressed 4 months was all we got. I think everyone thought we’d get another Christmas with Marlene, but instead we didn’t even make it to Thanksgiving.

I will readily admit that I haven’t been the greatest husband through all of this. I found that I was pretty poorly equipped to deal with a “long term” illness in the family. I just didn’t know how to cope with things. To this point the loss that was my closest experience was the passing of my childhood dog Pudge, so I didn’t have much to draw on when relating to what was going on.  The thing I remember about Pudge was the idea that my parents said she’d have to be put down in a couple months, as she was 15 years old and having problems with a variety of things. The part I related was how when someone says a couple months you cling to that. You figure those couple months will never elapse, so when the day comes finally you’re crushed because you always thought you’d have a few more months.  I found that since I hadn’t had much personal experience dealing with a prolonged illness I wasn’t prepared for the marathon of ups and downs that we got to experience over the last few months.

I found that Corina and I dealt with this whole process differently. As much as I typically live and share my life publicly through Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, I am a pretty private person. I think like anyone I cherry pick what I share with the world and what I don’t. Talking about the health of my Mother-In-Law wasn’t something I shared with a lot of people. I probably told maybe 4 or 5 people during the whole time this was happening.  I’d readily talk about it if a person already knew, but I rarely brought it up on my own.  I would typically want to spend time with people who didn’t know, so I could leave those worries at home when I went out. Corina was the total opposite, essentially closing herself off publicly and surrounding herself with people who did know what was going on and could offer support.

Going through something like this I’ve discovered how many great people around Corina and I genuinely do care about us. Be it longtime friends, family or people we’ve only known for a short time the outpouring of support has been amazing. I just can’t thank everyone enough for your kindness.  We still have some difficult road ahead of us, but it is really nice knowing we have people around us who do care.

I recently made the jump to TekSavvy for the internet and wanted to share my experiences about the whole transition.  Now I’m not new to TekSavvy, we had at 2 different times had them as our service provider for DSL. Originally we had them when we rented a place in Cambridge.  We were quite happy with their service, but subsequently had to cancel when we moved to Clyde, an area that DSL service was unavailable.  When we did move back to Cambridge I jumped at the opportunity to sign back up with them.  Unfortunately for us we discovered our new house was in a bad DSL zone, where we at max received 2.5mb service, even though we were paying for 5mb.  This was when we unfortunately had to make the jump to Rogers cable internet, as 2.5mb service was really insufficient to run VOIP phone service.  That was back in 2009.

Recently I discovered that TekSavvy was now offering cable internet in the region and was quite excited about the opportunity to jump away from Rogers.  Now my issue with Rogers was never the service, it was more the constraints Rogers put on its services.  As people who don’t have cable we do a lot of online streaming and we were hitting our heads on the 60gb cap Rogers imposed. I was always mindful of it and made sure not to go over, often rationing bandwidth towards the end of our billing cycle.  So when I discovered TekSavvy could offer me faster internet, more upload and download bandwidth, a 300gb usage cap and save $13 a month off of my bill as compared to Rogers, I was sold.

The thing I discovered when switching was that it wasn’t very easy to coordinate a seamless transition from Rogers to TekSavvy. First I tried to align the shutoff day to be close to the end of my billing cycle with Rogers. TekSavvy required at minimum at 7 day window before it could activate the service. This in and of itself cost me 2 months before being able to switch, as I managed to miss setting up the window in time to align with my Rogers billing cycle.  So finally in July I contacted TekSavvy, arranged a date to service activation and set the gears in motion. This was a misstep on my part. I then called Rogers and discovered that they need a months notice for any cancellations.  I was mightily ticked about this, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

So Sunday, August 7th rolls around and Rogers finally turns off the service, which then allows TekSavvy to use the line. I try hooking up a modem I already owned and had used a few years before and discover it doesn’t want to work with TekSavvy.  I went through all the troubleshooting steps with TekSavvy and the conclusion is it’s kaput. So now I need a new modem. As I’m cheap and refuse to pay $80-100+ for a modem, I purchased one on eBay for $35 from a guy in Mississauga.  I’m told by TekSavvy that they need 48 hours to activate a new modem on their system, so now I have to wait until the modem is delivered, then give them the info, then there would be 2 whole days before we could have internet.  The modem arrives Thursday and I call TekSavvy immediately to relay the info so they can get the process started. I wait patiently until 6pm on Saturday.

The modem itself is a refurbed Rogers modem, so the process was that they needed to request that Rogers release the modem so that TekSavvy could use it.  So 6pm on Saturday comes and goes and we still don’t have a working modem. This is when things start to go off the rails for me. We’ve now been without internet for a week and have been patient and courteous to this point. I phone TekSavvy and the rep tells me that the ticket was apparently never pushed over to Rogers, so even though I called on Thursday, no progress has been made.  Upon finding this I manage to stay relatively calm and let them sort it out.  I wait another 24 hours and call again. I talk to another rep who looks into it and I am told again that the ticket wasn’t pushed over to Rogers and that we’re still at square one.  I’m pretty livid at this point and send an email to support about this issue and ask someone to actually take responsibility for this issue instead of passing the buck and nothing getting done.  I finally get someone to tell me that Rogers will activate it between 9am and 12am on Monday.

Finally on Monday evening at around 9pm my modem roars to life and we have internet again. After 8 days without service my wife and I are just happy to finally have internet back and to hopefully put this whole pain in the ass behind us.

The first thing I do, because I’m a geek and all, is head to SpeedTest.net and see what type of speed we were getting. The package we signed up for was 15mb down/ 1mb up/ 300gb cap for $42.99. Upon testing I discover we were actually getting 22mb down which was pretty awesome. With all the grief we had to go through it looked like it was all going to be worth it.

Fast forward 2 weeks later.  Sunday at 6pm the internet and cable goes out. While we didn’t subscribe to cable, a few local channels still came through on the line, so those were now gone along with the internet. Initially we think it might just be an outage, so we wait until Monday to take action. I call TekSavvy support again and get walked through the idiot’s guide to internet troubleshooting.  They’re trying to troubleshoot issues with my modem and router, when it seems pretty apparent since the TV wasn’t working that the whole cable line had been disconnected.  This didn’t really shock me as another recent TekSavvy switcher, Dawn Wentzell, had the same problem.  The best TekSavvy could do was arrange a Rogers tech to come and check it out and see what’s wrong. The earliest they could book a time was Wednesday, so I gave them an option of Wednesday or Thursday to come after 5.  Teksavvy calls me on Wednesday to inform me the best Rogers could do is next Monday.

At this point I am again furious with the whole situation. I write a nasty email to TekSavvy again outlining how it’s unacceptable to be disconnected for over a week.  But this time I decided to see if I could sort things out on my own account and not be bothered with Rogers or TekSavvy. I remembered I had a friend from high school who worked for a local Rogers subcontractor.  While feeling awful about asking a favour after not seeing him in close to a year, I outline what my situation was and ask if he could help me out.   Less than an hour later there is a truck out front of my house and someone digging through the Rogers box on my neighbours yard and a few minutes later we had internet again.

About 10 minutes later we get a phone call and our friend explained what probably happened.  Apparently when you cancel service with Rogers they deactivate the line from there end, but usually it will be 2 or 3 weeks later they will send someone around to physically disconnect the service. This is pretty common, as I’m sure many people who have moved into a new house and discovered cable still connected even though the previous tenants had moved out.  So with his company, it could very well be his guys disconnecting the service last week, and just as likely for his guys to reconnect it when they were supposed to come Monday.

The part that drives me nuts about this whole thing is how TekSavvy and Rogers don’t have any system for avoiding this from happening.  I told Rogers I was going to TekSavvy, yet this still happened, and as can be seen with it happening to Dawn too, it isn’t a rare occurrence.  Obviously I was able to expedite the reactivation process by having connections, but how many people out there are waiting a week for Rogers to finally get around to doing things?  This is the type of stuff the CRTC needs to crack down on.  Rogers will very deliberately sabotage my service with TekSavvy, then when asked to rectify the problem will put it at the bottom of their queue when it comes to service calls. And we wonder why providers outside of Rogers/Bell/Telus/Shaw can’t gain a strong foothold in the market?  It’s this type of garbage.

While I’ve obviously written a longwinded blog about this whole topic, I really don’t begrudge TekSavvy.  Sure their customer service hasn’t necessarily been top rate along the way, but when their service has functioned its been awesome.  And with Rogers seemingly doing everything in their power to screw over TekSavvy, I have to wonder how much undue strain that puts on their support system. What happened to me in the last week was 100% preventable and really just served to make me use their support system unnecessarily.  I just hope my story will help others along the way and can help them avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve encountered.  People need a choice that isn’t Rogers or Bell and TekSavvy is really trying to provide that.

This week news broke that the Atlanta Thrashers could be very close to returning NHL hockey back to Winnipeg. As a Canadian I greet this positively, as I feel hockey should be played in locales that want and understand the sport. Growing the game is great and all, but hemorrhaging money on losing Southern franchises makes little sense to the sport as a whole. Putting franchises in Winnipeg, Hamilton or Quebec may not be glamorous locales, but they are viable places with actual fan bases to draw on instead of markets that were granted expansion franchises with the hope they would find an audience.

Now if the Thrashers do end up sealing the deal and Jetting North, the question I ask is why was Atlanta so easy to move? The NHL has fought tooth and nail to thwart attempts to move the Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton, and subsequently Winnipeg, yet seems to be essentially letting the Thrashers fly.

I have long held the belief that Commissioner Gary Bettman is anti-Canadian as far as how he has run the league over the years. He has always been star eyed over more flashy US cities that feature NFL, MLB and NBA franchises, than he ever has about Canadian cities. I’m sure if he could have teams in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, then the rest in the US would probably be his ideal scenario, but since Canadian clubs pull in a huge chunk of the leagues overall revenue there’s no way that could ever happen.

The reason I believe the NHL was entirely unwilling to move the Coyotes is because they didn’t want to chance repeating the scenario of the Quebec Nordiques move to Colorado, where one season removed from moving they were hoisting the Stanley Cup in Denver. Phoenix is a young, hungry team that is poised to compete for years to come. If they actually weren’t restrained by their ownership situation they could make a few aggressive moves that could viably vault them into the upper echelon of teams in the NHL. I don’t believe the league would want to chance having Winnipeg be the centre of the hockey universe over the next couple years by letting the Coyotes move.

During the last 10 years I can point to 2 cases where I believe winning a Stanley Cup saved a Southern market from moving, 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning and 2006 Carolina Hurricanes. In both cases these clubs started the season with the alarm bells sounding with regards to the stability of their franchises. Carolina was a few years removed from a Cinderella Stanley Cup Finals run and had been awful the next 2 seasons. They were having trouble filling their building and I recall the start of rumblings that maybe the team should return back to Hartford where they had moved from in the mid-1990′s. Instead they put together a great season, winning the Southeast division and subsequently the Stanley Cup. This solidified the team in Carolina, rallying the fans around a winner.

This is why the NHL is so adamant about not moving the Coyotes. They think that if that club can win a Stanley Cup in the desert they will be able to anchor long term stability in Phoenix, finally tapping into a loyal following in the region. The reality of the situation is that the Stanley Cup is a powerful pawn and having Canadian clubs win is just a waste from the NHLs perspective. They would much rather see Anaheim, Dallas, Florida, Tampa Bay, Nashville or Phoenix win it than to ever see the Winnipeg Jets hoist the Cup. Winning the Cup in Canada is like preaching to the converted. We’re already hardcore followers of the sport, it’s not like they would ever see a massive spike in new interest if the Senators, Flames or Oilers won.

The NHL has barely put up a struggle with moving the Thrashers because they are perennial losers. Moving them to Winnipeg still requires years of rebuilding before that team can even think of contending for a Cup and the league knows it. Chancing moving a potential winner to Canada, with Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa all in rebuild cycles and Vancouver currently the best in the league could be dangerous. You could viably see multiple Stanley Cup champions come out of Canada over the next 5 years if those rebuilds are executed properly. The way to win in the NHL these days is to bottom out and build through the draft, so if that’s the case the NHL doesn’t want to improve those chances by allowing a stacked young squad move North of the border.

If you recall back at the start of 2010 Domino’s Pizza ran an ad campaign in the US about the process they went through in putting together their new pizza recipe.  They cited focus groups and customer comments that cite their crust is like cardboard, their cheese is processed garbage and their sauce is awful, the 3 things that are pretty much essential building blocks to making a decent pizza.   Basically they throw their old product under the delivery car, so to speak, in launching their new product.  Below is a video from that particular campaign.

It’s great that they have come up with a new recipe for their product and are committed to  creating a great product.  The big problem I see is the fact that their inferior old pizza recipe is still being sold in Canada.  I live like 3 minutes from a Domino’s.  I see their fleet of delivery vehicles every night delivering what was called “mass produced, boring, bland pizza” by their own consumers.  I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of Domino’s Pizza.  I’ve long thought it was pretty awful for many of the same reasons that were cited in that video.  Yet here we are in Canada are still being delivered what amounts to an inferior product.

This is a beef I’ve had for awhile, but the fact it has now been over a year since the new recipe became available in the US just seems like a slap in the face to Canadian consumers.  I would have understood if the new recipe had a staged release, it would make sense.  But given a few Google searches I find no mention of the new recipe coming to Canada at all.  I’m not sure if Domino’s is aware, but us Canadians watch US television all the time.  We get the major US stations and I’m sure many of us would have seen the campaign where they essentially trashed the pizza they are still serving in Canada.  To me this seems like a company doing a recall because their product contains lead based paint, but only does the recall in US.  It just seems absolutely crazy that they would sell a product they no longer stand behind as a company to the general public.

I’ve lived in the Cambridge area for over 3 years now.  I’m a transplant from down the road in Paris so I’ve had the experience of seeing Cambridge from a far as well, having been in the area for 16 years since I first moved to Southwestern Ontario.  I’ve lived in Galt, Clyde and considered buying a house in Hespeler before settling in Preston.  I find I spend time all over this city, be it for work, visiting friends or simply getting groceries.

In my perception the people of this area really need to get over the Galt/Preston/Hespeler divide that splinters this city.  Cambridge was amalgamated in 1973, which is just 6 years short of when the Toronto Maple Leafs last won a Stanley Cup.  It exceeds my lifetime and the lifetimes of many of the residents that currently call Cambridge home.

Much of the reasoning behind writing this blog was hearing on the radio this week that Remembrance Day services would be held in Kitchener, Waterloo, Preston, Hespeler and Galt.  Why in a place that is supposed to be a single city do we have three separate events to commemorate the same thing, while neighbouring communities only have one?  Why not have one big event that brings people together in this city instead of 3 separate events that just solidify the divides in this community?

Why does Hespeler have it’s own hockey association that operates independently of Cambridge Minor Hockey?  Why does Hespeler have it’s own Christmas parade that is separate from the Cambridge Christmas parade?  I’m all for areas have unique events that bring people together, but having separate associations and events that compete with others in the city just makes no sense.

While I understand the pride that many people in this community feel for each of the individual areas, it really just serves as divisive force within the community.  To those outside the city this is Cambridge and has been since the 1970′s.  There is no Galt/Preston/Hespeler, those are merely neighbourhoods within the greater city of Cambridge.

I typed in Galt, Ontario into Google Maps and this is what it returned, the City of Cambridge.  Galt isn’t even marked at this zoom level, but you will notice that Preston and Hespeler are, though they are emphasized no more then the neighbourhoods of Lang’s Farm, Fisher Mills or Fiddlesticks.  This is the perception outside of Cambridge, yet the people of this area continue to split hairs over the issue.  The battle was lost 2 generations ago, get over it.

There is nothing wrong with having pride in where you live and grew up, but we need to move forward as a community.  Have pride in living in Cambridge and make the community as a whole better instead of worrying about enriching Galt, Preston and Hespeler individually.  I think this community needs to move forward unified and put Cambridge on the map and not worry about what we once were and plot a course to what we’d like to be.