How is it Shaw Internet?

Several years ago, Shaw purchased Wind Mobile and renamed it to Freedom Mobile. This gave it a mobile phone service to go along with its cable TV, internet, and landline services.

In July 2020, Shaw Mobile was launched with its lowest option being an eye-popping $0 cell phone plan, available to Shaw Internet customers. This showed off its bundle capabilities by making use of the Freedom Mobile network.

However, Freedom Mobile Home Internet was actually the original bundle from this partnership. It was launched in November 2019 and is arguably the better deal.

Freedom Mobile cellular plan requirement

In order to get the $55 per month Freedom Mobile Home Internet, you need a minimum $15 postpaid mobile plan. When it first launched, you needed a minimum postpaid $40 plan.

Therefore, if you are already happy with your existing mobile phone plan with another carrier, then Freedom Mobile Home Internet would cost you a minimum $70 per month ($55 for internet and $15 for mobile), as well as any costs for the phone itself and the SIM card activation. While it seems like a waste to pay for a monthly phone plan that you might not actually use, this is still cheaper than the equivalent Shaw Internet plan of $105 per month.

(Note: I already had a Freedom Mobile cell phone plan since 2010.)

Alternatives and sign-up promotions

To do a proper price comparison, you should note that there are often promotions at Shaw for its internet service, including no-contract sign-up promos, and promos for locking in for 2-year contracts. You can also call them when a promo expires to see whether they will offer you a retention deal. If they don’t offer you a retention deal, then you could continuously switch between Telus and Shaw to take advantage of continuous promotions.

Freedom Mobile Home Internet does not appear to offer sign-up promotions; its standard price is simply comparatively very low. Note that it only has one plan at up to 150Mbps download speed and 15Mbps upload speed.

If you’re shopping around, you should also consider resellers who piggyback on the Telus and/or Shaw networks, or some smaller networks such as Novus and the ISPs on New Westminster’s BridgeNet network.

Sign-up process

While you can order Shaw Internet completely online, I had to go into a Freedom Mobile store to sign up. As an existing Freedom Mobile customer, it was straightforward and easy, even though they did a hard credit check.

They then gave me a modem kit with instructions, and that’s when I knew that it really is Shaw Internet, because it was almost identical to Shaw’s “Self Connect Kit”.

In short, you plug in the modem’s power cable, connect the coaxial cable, and wait a few minutes.

Here are the installation instructions:

The modem was the same as my Shaw modem:

One thing that was different is that it didn’t instruct me to download the Shaw BlueCurve Home app as part of the setup process. I was happy about this, since I never used any of the Shaw BlueCurve features and with Freedom Mobile Home Internet I can have one fewer app on my phone.

The login interface for the modem is Shaw-branded:

I also ended up with the same IP address that I had with Shaw.

Their invoice template is the same as Shaw’s, although with the Freedom Mobile logo and fewer image ads. The credit card charge even shows as coming from Shaw, not Freedom Mobile.

If you are a Freedom Mobile cell phone service customer, then you should already have access to Shaw Go WiFi hotspots on your mobile phone, which is the same benefit you have with Shaw Internet.

Lastly, the internet speed is as advertised:

What comes with the S Plus model?

Other reviews for the Nissan Leaf Plus are usually for the SV or SL Plus, since that’s the demo that the reviewers are given. This review is for the basic model: the S Plus. It is the “bigger battery” version of the standard and iconic Leaf, with a 62kWh battery instead of a 40kWh battery. Some of the features of the base S Plus are a backup camera, front collision detection, heated seats, a heated steering wheel, an 8-inch touch screen, and Bluetooth phone connection capability. Side detection would be nice, but having never had that feature and been taught to relentlessly shoulder-check, I don’t really know what I’m missing. I also miss the fact that almost every new car nowadays doesn’t have a CD player anymore. Other than that, it has everything I need, as a family with a young child.

Interior and trunk space

The interior is spacious, and the seats have decent lumbar support. The back seat space does not feel cramped, although if you have a car seat, you might find yourself moving the front passenger seat up a bit more than you would have otherwise liked, leaving the front seat a bit cramped. Visibility out the front and back windows and side mirror are good, comparable to my previous sedan and better than what I saw in the Kira Niro and Hyundai Kona.

Trunk space is good (easily fitting groceries, a stroller, or suitcases), without needing to bring down one of the back seats. It’s easy to fold both of the back seats down if needed. The trunk space certainly beats that of the Hyundai Kona.

The normalcy and moderness of the Leaf Plus

One of the great achievements of the Nissan Leaf Plus is that it looks and feels like a normal car, other than the details that make it an EV. The ride is smooth, and I don’t feel or hear the road much. The regenerative braking is smooth and it’s hard to tell when the friction brakes kick in. It feels like a well-made, well-thought-out modern car.

The gear shift is a bit non-standard compared to the “straight line” shift I’m used to, but I was able to adjust almost right away.

e-Pedal and eco mode

A couple of the Leaf’s EV features are the e-Pedal and “eco mode”. The idea of the e-Pedal is that when you step off the accelerator, the car brakes for you, achieving close to one-pedal driving. You only have to use the brake if you need a more sudden stop than the automatic e-Pedal brake provides. I found this a fun novelty in stop-and-go traffic, but it didn’t really improve my driving experience or make it more “relaxing” as some other reviews found.

Eco mode gives you more range by essentially making it so that you have to push the pedal down harder to get it to accelerate faster. In other words, it limits, somewhat, the usual instant torque peppiness that you should find in any EV. However, I use eco mode as my standard mode, even on highways. When I need more power, I just push my foot down harder!

Range

The range of the Nissan Leaf Plus is officially stated as up to 363km on a full charge. It’s easy to achieve this and more (up to 400km) with city driving and eco mode… and without the heat on.

With normal mode, highway driving, and the heat on, I expect closer to 300km of range. Turning on the heat decreases the range by about 10%, but keep in mind that in a gas car, the cabin heater also decreases your range.

It’s just that in the EV it makes this very clear, since it’s not just a digital fuel gauge (percent battery remaining) but it also estimates how many kilometres you have left to drive.

Range is also negatively affected in the cold, and I was also warned about additional concerns about being able to charge the battery in extreme heat, since the Nissan Leaf Plus’s battery is not liquid-cooled. However, this is not something I’m worried about in Metro Vancouver.

Charging times

If you plug the car in through a standard wall plug (Level 1) using the included adapter, you might get a charge of 2% battery per hour. Using a Level 2 charger (most public chargers, or something you can install in your home) you’ll get up to about 10% battery per hour. With public Level 2 chargers, depending on how much kWh it draws, this could be less. Level 3 chargers are really fast, which can apparently get your battery to 80% in 45 minutes are rare where we are (Metro Vancouver), so I don’t think about them.

You might be worried that even with a Level 2 charger it takes you 10 hours to charge your car, and more than 2 days on a Level 1 charge. That seems like a lot. But keep in mind that you are probably not driving over 300 kilometres in one day, and maybe not even 60 kilometres (which is likely less than 20% of a full charge), and as a result, you can get by to only charge it a bit at a time.

I don’t have a charger of any kind in my shared parking garage, but I am lucky to have several public charging stations within a couple of blocks of my residence. Therefore, I am able easily to park at one of those spots on my way home sometimes and walk back to pick it up later. I also take every opportunity to plug the car in at our various destinations whenever there is a public charging station available. I hope to eventually get a standard wall plug (not even a Level 2 charger) in my parking spot. If I’m able to plug the car in for 10 hours per night, that’s about 20% per day, and I can’t foresee using more than 140% (20% x 7) of the full battery charge per week.

Other EV notes

• Most public chargers are free to use, but note that some are in pay parking spots, so you still have to pay for the parking, just not the electricity.
• “Getting ICE’d” means an EV charging spot is occupied by a gas (internal combustion engine) car. In my opinion, if that happens to you, chill out and move on. Don’t passive-aggresively post their licence plates online. Many EV charging spots are not exclusively for EVs.
• In BC at least, you’ll want to download 3 apps:
  • PlugShare: a map of all charging spots with user-contributed tips and experiences
  • Flo: needed to charge at some spots even if they’re free
  • ChargePoint: needed to charge at other spots even if they’re free

Now there’s a place for all that other plastic. In our house, that other plastic includes frozen fruit packaging, baby food stand-up pouches, crinkly snack bags such as chips, granola bar wrappers, bubble wrap envelopes, and much more.

London Drugs now accepts what they call flexible plastic packaging. That’s of course in addition to all the other things they accept such as Brita filters and batteries. In its blog post about the flexible plastic packaging program, it mentions all of the examples of packaging they accept. I find the flexible plastic packaging versus soft plastic packaging distinction a bit confusing, but there are a lot of items in the list, and in the comments section, they do their best to answer consumer questions.

The post also states that the collected plastics will be used for recycling research and development. In other words, the material won’t necessarily be recycled yet. For now, at least it’s being kept out of the dump with the long-term goal of recycling more of it.

I was tired of my bathtub drain clogging what seemed like every couple of months. The shower started to pool fast, the water drained slowly, and I got a lovely soap scum ring in the tub. Sometimes the plunger did the trick, sometimes the drain snake / auger, and sometimes the dreaded Drano. Often they’d only work partially. Naturally I wondered whether there were issues with the pipes.

Thankfully, the success of the $15 (CAD) TubShroom proved that it was essentially just long hair from my family members, along with shampoo and soap bunching up. This is what the TubShroom looks like after about a week in the tub:

(Sorry, it’s a bit gross, but if it didn’t look so gross that would show that it doesn’t work.)

I’m sure that it does not catch “every single hair, every single time” as it claims, but it catches tons of long hairs that would have otherwise caused a backup further down in the pipes. The TubShroom essentially causes a mini-backup every week or two, but it’s so straightforward to remove all the gunk, and I would much rather do that then have a major backup that I cannot see or access.

Yes, a mesh strainer tries to do something similar, but when we had one, it never seemed to catch as much, nor was it as simple to clear out.

I can confirm that the TubShroom is easy to install. It’s flexible yet sturdy enough since it’s made of silicone. It fits right in to where my normal tub stopper is. Just make sure that you have a standard 1.5-inch drain. I cannot guarantee that it will work for you, but I can say that the TubShroom works very well for me and I can recommend it.

What worked was to do the following:

• Buy the 01AX994 (hard drive adapter bracket) and 00UR496 (M.2 SSD cable) from Encompass, an OEM Lenovo parts seller
• Put the Samsung 960 Evo drive in the bracket above, attached to the motherboard via the cable above in the main hard drive slot in the machine
• Put the existing hard drive (that came with the ThinkPad T470) in a standard SATA USB enclosure, but don’t boot from it
• Put Clonezilla on a bootable USB stick, and boot from Clonezilla, so that I could copy the old hard drive to the new SSD

Even though this was technically still cheaper than just buying the ThinkPad T470 from Lenovo with an SSD in the laptop in the first place, it took weeks to get the correct parts, and I certainly wish I’d paid the extra money up front.

To help provide context for the above, this is what didn’t work:

• Putting the Samsung 960 Evo SSD directly in the ThinkPad T470 without having to purchase additional parts. There is an M.2 slot in the machine, but the physical space available to put something in that slot is way too small to put the 960 Evo. Had I purchased the ThinkPad with an SSD already in it, the necessary slot would have been available in the standard hard drive area.
• Putting the Samsung 960 Evo SSD in a third-party internal hard drive bracket. I thought the StarTech.com M.2 to 2.5 inch SATA converter (7mm height) looked and sounded perfect, until I discovered firsthand that the 960 Evo does not fit in it. This is because the 960 Evo is an “M key”, as opposed to a “B key” or “B+M key”. I was never able to find a generic, internal hard drive bracket / M.2 to SATA adapter that supports the “M key” connection.
• Putting the Samsung 960 Evo SSD in a third-party external hard drive USB enclosure. As per the point above, the “M key” connection on the 960 Evo makes it unsuitable for a standard SATA USB enclosure. There might be such an external enclosure that supports the “M key” connection out there, and hopefully this becomes more common over time.
• Booting Windows from the existing hard drive (that came with the ThinkPad T470) from a USB enclosure. The goal was to use Samsung’s Data Migration software to copy the existing drive and operating system to the new SSD.

Clearly I had and still have a lot to learn about SSDs!

Airbnb for Business has made normal Airbnb much more convenient for my small business. Just like Uber for Business, you can have multiple sub-accounts that can all charge trips to the main account and credit card. This way, employees can choose their own accommodations and book their own trips! Before I started using Airbnb for Business, I’d have to play middle man and make a booking on behalf of my employees; this took up my time and I’m sure the hosts would have preferred dealing directly with the person who would be staying at their place.

Once an employee is added to an Airbnb for Business account, they have an option to specify on a booking that they’re on a business trip:

This then allows them to select the option of charging the trip to the company credit card. This way, they don’t have to use their own card and wait to get reimbursed. They also don’t have to have the company credit card in their possession.

If an employee already has an Airbnb account, they don’t have to create another account for business purposes. They can simply add their work e-mail to their existing Airbnb profile:

From an administrative standpoint, I can see all trips made by my employees in the Airbnb for Business dashboard. This centralizes the information I need to do accounting.

I can of course add and remove employees under the business account. I can also add “bookers” who can book on behalf of other employees, and “managers” who can view the report information.

I can also manage the credit cards on the business account and assign different cards to different groups if needed.

Lastly, there are e-mail notification settings. I can choose to receive an e-mail for every booking, and I can also get special alerts if the nightly rate exceeds a particular threshold.

I highly recommend Airbnb for Business. While the basic Airbnb service has its own merits, I appreciate how it is providing tools for my small business that traditional hotels could have provided long time ago!

(And no, they did not pay me to write such a positive review!)

The Scrub Daddy is very good at scrubbing, and should not scratch most materials. Things don’t generally stick to it, so it’s easy to get the Scrub Daddy itself clean as well. However, I have 2 main problems with the Scrub Daddy:

1. It does not last long. After 2 weeks of normal, daily use on kitchen dishes, it started to fall apart. This is in contrast to a standard kitchen scrubber, which lasts for at least 1 month before I consider replacing it.

Once the Scrub Daddy starts disintegrating, little yellow pieces of the scrubber come off pretty much every time you touch it. While this deterioration happens to normal kitchen scrubbers and sponges, the rate at which the Scrub Daddy falls apart is significantly faster than any other scrubber I have used.

2. It does not hold soap well. This is probably a side effect of the Scrub Daddy’s scrubbing effectiveness, but if you’re used to putting soap onto your scrubber, you will probably find that you end up using much more soap with the Scrub Daddy.

When I Tweeted about Scrub Daddy’s durability issues, I got a quick reply from them, suggesting that I contact their customer service. Customer service over e-mail was very friendly and prompt. Basically, they asked for more information about how I used and cared for the scrubber. My use was nothing out of the ordinary, and the care instructions for the Scrub Daddy are no different than any other scrubber. They kindly sent me another Scrub Daddy, suggesting that I should get better results than with the first one. However, I found the same disappointing durability as before. When I searched online for other reviews of the product, I found that most people have a similar experience. I was impressed by Scrub Daddy’s customer service, although customer service is not something you expect to need for a kitchen scrubber.

In short, the Scrub Daddy is smiley, good at scrubbing, and a great success in marketing, but I cannot recommend it over a standard kitchen sponge. You could keep it on hand as a special-use scrubber for a small percentage of your dishes, but that seems like a lot of trouble, not to mention the cost!

Main features: video and audio

Video and audio quality with the Nest Cam is good. You can choose between 360p, 720p, and 1080p. The higher the quality the more bandwidth it uses, of course. For my purposes, even at 360p there is sufficient detail to see what a baby is doing, although I have it normally set to 720p. The camera captures a wide angle, and has good zoom capabilities. Night vision is a key feature — I use the camera exclusively at night — and works well.

The only challenge with the night vision feature is that the lighting and thus the clarity get messed up if there is an object between the camera and what you’re trying to watch, even if that object is off to the side. Thus, you have to make sure there’s a clear path to what you’re watching, or configure the camera to zoom past the other object.

Access to the Nest Cam’s video is through its website or a smartphone app. This is very convenient because you don’t need additional devices if you already have a smartphone, and multiple people can access the video through their own devices. Using either the website or the app, you can see the video and hear the audio, but also speak through the camera.

Setup

Setting up the Nest Cam is really easy. It comes with a 10-foot cable that you plug into the wall. Using the app, you scan the QR code on the back of the camera, name the camera, and enter your WiFi details. That’s it!

The Nest Cam is only 4.5 tall, and can either stand on its own or be mounted.

It’s quite portable — if you need to use it somewhere else in the house, you just move it and plug it in, and it automatically connects to the network again. If you need to connect it to a different network, then you just follow the same simple setup steps.

Supporting features: history and notifications

The Nest Cam has nice history and notification features, although after 30 days you have to pay for the history feature (which starts at $100 per year for 10 days of rolling video history retention).

The video history is summarized with a list of sound and motion notifications through the app or website.

When you’re logged in through the website you can also view the entire history, clicking through the hours and days of video just like any online video.

The notifications can be quite useful, with or without the video history feature. You can configure sound and/or motion notifications that will alert you via e-mail or through an app notification:

Other options that can be configured include video quality, a talk and listen chime, a status light, and more:

Although the general status light can be turned off, there is a specific case where a light shows even with that setting “Off”. When the camera has a temporary Internet connection issue, its blue light pulses, which could disturb a sleeping baby.

Plugged in and WiFi

The Nest Cam needs to be plugged in all the time, and does not have a battery backup. If you have frequent power outages, then this camera is probably not for you.

The Nest Cam also requires a good WiFi connection. This can be an issue if it needs to be placed in a room that does not have a good wireless signal from your router. It is also susceptible to any general issues you have with your Internet connection. Also, if you’re travelling with it and need to connect to a network with a login screen in addition to the WiFi password, you must use something like Connectify so that you can log in via another computer and then have the camera connect through that computer.

Bandwidth could be an issue, depending on your Internet connection. If you have the video history feature, it will be constantly streaming its video; otherwise bandwidth is only used when you’re watching the video. I measured 1 week of use (with video history) at 360p, and it used 5.05GB. Nest claims that at 720p with video history, the total bandwidth usage of your camera when it is on 24/7 is 60GB to 160GB per month. If you’re using it as a baby monitor, you probably won’t have it on all the time, though. In addition to the total bandwidth usage, you’ll need to consider its speed requirements in terms of amount of data per second. At 720p, this can be between 200Kbps and 500Kbps. You can consult the Nest website for the data speed requirements at the various video quality levels.

Conclusion

If the Nest Cam’s rich set of features are of use to you, and you have a good and reliable Internet connection and power, it might be worth the cost as a baby monitor. It might also have some good resale value. Otherwise you could stick to something cheaper and more basic.

Some aspects of SSL / TLS are quite complex and generally not well documented for the level that most web developers work at. The issue of ciphers is one of the challenges. There is a long list of possible ciphers, and you might find yourself maintaining a limited list of ciphers that your application supports. One of the problems is that the cipher names are not the same across technologies.

If you are making PHP cURL calls, you can limit the supported ciphers using the CURLOPT_SSL_CIPHER_LIST option. However, if you want to support the cipher TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA for example, you cannot pass PHP (or cURL directly) that identifier — it will complain that no such cipher exists. If you inspect the results of the function openssl_get_cipher_methods, you will find identifiers such as rsa_aes_256_sha, which happens to map to TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA.

In order to find cURL’s mapping of cipher names, you have to inspect its source code! There, you will find the complete mapping, with entries such as this:

{"rsa_aes_256_sha",            TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_256_CBC_SHA}

Thus, you can set the cURL cipher list in your PHP call like this:

curl_setopt_array( $curl, array( CURLOPT_SSL_CIPHER_LIST => 'rsa_aes_256_sha' ) );

(Bonus tip: you can use cURL on the command line for quicker testing: curl -I https://site.com –ciphers “rsa_aes_256_sha”)

Lastly, it is important to note whether your server is using mod_ssl or mod_nss. If you want to support multiple ciphers, the PHP documentation says to separate them with colons. However, it does not state that with mod_nss the separator is a comma!

I was impressed at how straightforward and convenient Park’N Fly is. It’s on Miller Road about 5 minutes away from the terminal. When you drop off your car, you just park next to the lot’s “lobby” and leave your keys in the car. You go in and register, then take a shuttle that runs about every 15 minutes to the terminals. Someone at Park’N Fly parks your car somewhere in the lot. There is an Air Canada check-in counter at the parking lot if you need it.

I didn’t end up taking all the bags and passengers on the shuttle — I dropped them off at the airport first — although it seemed like there would have been plenty of room to do so.

You can get a cheaper price than the walk-up price at Park’N Fly if you pre-book online, and also if you have one of various memberships, such as BCAA or BCTF. You can also earn Aeroplan points.

When I registered the car at check-in, I was sent a text message from Park’N Fly. When I returned back to YVR, I replied to the text message once I’d landed, which presumably triggered someone at the lot to get my car.

After taking the shuttle from just outside the terminal back to the Park’N Fly lot, I paid at a self-serve kiosk and picked up my car, which was waiting once again just outside the lobby.

Since the lot is a few minutes away from the terminals and you might have to wait for the shuttle (I got lucky as it was already there both times) you should probably plan up to an additional 30 minutes to the start and end of your trip. However, I found Park’N Fly about as convenient as it could have been given the circumstances!