Coloured? Really?

My 3 year old air conditioner broke the other day (apparently it ran out of refrigerant, so much for Keeprite quality) so I called in the dealer rep. Pretty decent guy, told me all kinds of useful info about my furnace, ac unit, and the whole concept of how an ac unit works. Being an info junkie, I soaked it all up and mentally decided this was my go to guy for any future heating / cooling issues. So I was kind of taken aback when he suggested that my last name (Wright) was kind of unusual for a "coloured" guy.
Now he'd struck me as a pretty smart guy until he made that comment. So here are the things that bothered me about it.
1. Who the fuck uses the term "coloured" any more?
2. Aren't all people "coloured" (As in that kid's Christian hymn, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red & yellow black & white, all the colours in his sight etc...").
3. The use of the word coloured clearly shows the limited social interaction this dude has with any black people, so did I make an error in judgement by being friendlier with him than befitted what was strictly a business transaction?
Anyhow I explained that most Caribbean blacks are the descendants of slaves, who carried the names of their former English / Spanish / French slaveowners.
Adding insult to injury, buddy then went on to say that he knew a lot about Caribbean history, from the (get this) 5 Caribbean cruises that he's taken! At this point I mentally wrote off all the points that this guy had accrued.
I wonder what percentage of the North American population is this clueless?

Tethering a Blackberry Curve to Rogers

I spent more of my day than I really want to think about working on tethering my Curve to Roger's yesterday. Using their Wireless Connection Manager software was a complete failure, as it caused two Curve's running two different versions of the BB OS to crash and reboot. Not fun. I finally gave up and called Roger's, who gave me the instructions to connect. Almost perfect, except for one crucial typo which messed me up until I stumbled on this Crackberry forum post. I had to combine the Crackberry instructions with the Roger's instructions to get connected. Minor, but important differences. Here are the steps I followed (and which are allowing me to type this blog entry now). I copied them almost verbatum from kcladygemini's Crackberry post, with the minor customizations that allowed me to connect to Rogers. Hope they work for you!

Configuration: Curve 8310, running v4.5.0.81, with Desktop Manager v5.0.0.11
Query the modem, using the modems properties:
1 Click Start, Settings, Control Panel.
2 Double-click on Phone and modem options.
3 Click on the Modems tab.
4 Left-click on the modem installed above. (Standard Modem or Standard Modem over Bluetooth)
5 Click Properties.
6 Click the Diagnostics tab.
7 Click Query Modem.
8 If dialog shows in the empty box, the modem is responding, then continue with the below steps. Otherwise contact tech support.
9 Click the Advanced tab.
Enter the initialization command:
Rogers Users: +cgdcont=1,"IP","internet.com"

Create dial-up networking :
1 From your computer, click Start, Settings, Control Panel, then Network Connections.
2 Click Create a new connection, then Next.
3 Select Connect to Internet.
4 Select Set up my connection manually.
5 Select Connect using a dial-up modem.
6 Select the Standard Modem, then Next.
7 Enter Roger's as the ISP Name (or whatever else you want to use).
8 Enter *99# as the Phone number.
9 Click Next.
10 Enter wapuser as the User name and wap as the Password.
11 Leave the check boxes as whatever they are defaulted to.
12 Click Finish.
13 In the Connect window, click Properties.
14 In the Properties window, verify that Modem - Standard Modem appears beneath the Connect using heading, then click Configure.
15 In the Connect window, select Save this user name and password for the following users.
16 Select the appropriate option.
17 Confirm that the BlackBerry Desktop Manager is running.
*IMPORTANT: BlackBerry Desktop Manager must be running, or error 692 will appear during the dial up attempt.
18 Open the web browser and navigate to any website to test the connection.

If the laptop/PC connects but Internet Explorer does not, follow these steps:

1 From Internet Explorer, click Tools, then Internet Options....
2 Click the Connections tab.
3 From Dial-up and Virtual Private Network settings, select T-Mobile.
4 Click Set Default.
5 Select Dial whenever a network connection is not present.
6 Click OK.
7 Click OK again.

Good luck! Credit to kcladygemini for the instructions.