Hotline Bling and the N Word

This post is a bit late to the game, but still...
Drake dropped yet another crowd pleasing hit with "hotline bling".  The cool thing about this track is that he does it all without inserting the " N word".  An impressive accomplishment for a rapper who's made the word such an integral part of his music.

A gust of Wind, but stuck with Rogers

After yet another frustrating and irritating battle with Rogers, I walked into a Wind store with all intent of jumping ship. The sales lady was very helpful, and we were off to a good start:
- device selection - yup - Wind has made some inroads here, and offers a decent selection of (Android) devices. There's also a light smattering of BB10 and mention of Windows OS (no devices). Apparently iPhone users need not apply (unless they have their own unlocked devices).   Since Android is my favourite OS, the lack of IOS / Windows phone devices was not a showstopper for me though.
- Price - hands down, Wind has the best pricing for a global texting, data consuming fiend like myself. Ergo my trip to the Wind store.  $40 for all that texting and data! Awesome!
- Rogers cancellation fee: $300. Steep, but no problem, Wind has great pricing on their phones, I'll just sign up and away we go.
But no, fast forward a year later, and I'm still stuck with Rogers. Why?
Well here's the thing. Like most Canadians, I have a love / hate relationship with the major telcos.  Pricing is not competitive with the smaller players. Customer service is often poor, with some reps giving out false info which the company will not pull past calls to validate, and plans are often complex beasts that result in the average Canadian being nickel and dimed.
But in spite of this, there are a couple of things that Rogers has going for it over the small players.  An LTE network, and good service coverage. As a data hog with a grandfathered 6Gb plan, I'm very reluctant to give up these benefits for less coverage. 
That said - Wind, I'm keeping my eye on you, and I'm hoping that transition point is not too far in the future. 

Living the dream

The modern social rule of thumb is that we're supposed to be passionate about what we do for a living. Gone are the good old days when Charles and Caroline Ingalls tended their farm on the prairies to feed their family and help em become positive, contributing members of society. In the modern world, having a career is good, but the modern ideal is to have a career that you're passionate about. Now I can't argue with that - it's as good a rule as any for a motivated person to live by. The problem that arises is - what if you are motivated, but not passionate about anything?

Now, by "not passionate about anything" - I don't mean the unmentionables. Most of us are not that interested in converting our late night horizontal exertions into a career. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm not talking about you.

I'm also excluding spouses and kids. Hopefully you're passionate about your spouse, but pimping out your better half is a poor career choice. And you SHOULD be passionate about your kids - but regrettably, unless you're the parents of the Gary Coleman types, you can't really make a career out of that either. Not that they were exactly stellar examples of parental love, considering how that all turned out. Note: if you don't know who Gary Coleman is, 1. You've just made me feel really old, and 2. Watch some episodes of "Different Strokes" - it's an interesting view of the 80s.

No, gentle reader, by passion I'm referring to a career choice that stays within the guidelines of socially acceptable norms. Take myself, for example. I've worked in financial services for over 15 years. I've had some fun roles, but I'd hardly say I'm passionate about the industry. I hardly think I'm alone in this - in fact, show me someone who says they are passionate about banking and 99% of the time I'll show you a good spin doctor.

So what's the point of this spiel? Well, it's just this; I believe everyone should have a passion. Something to live for. In a perfect world, we are able to live our passion through our career. But the reality is that most of us are not fortunate enough to make our passion our career. In these cases, its enough that work is fun and rewarding.  And when the work day ends, you have your passion to look forward to.

Late Lakeshore West train

HAML 7:05 - UNST 8:15 estimated 10-15 mins late due a med emrg.

Kitchener train delay

The 4:15pm Brampton train was delayed today.  Door issues.  Hope it doesn't mess up my trip home.

Late Georgetown train

Along with the much loved Presto card - as you know Go Transit has also introduced a 7 day "Service Guarantee", where they'll refund you your fare if you were on a train that was delayed 15 minutes or more (with a disclaimer for delays due to extreme weather, emergency investigations, pedestrian incidents, track obstructions, and on-board emergencies).  As forgetful as I am, I sometimes forget to apply for this service guarantee.  But when I do remember to apply, I'll post the late trips on this blog, that way those who can't remember which specific trips were late, will have a record of some of the late trips and can recoup some of our hard earned cash.  I invite you to post a comment whenever one of your own go train trips are delayed.  The specific trip that prompted me to post this entry was this morning's 15 minute delay of the express train (7:22am from Brampton station) on the Kitchener line.    Here's hoping it helps someone.

Wowed by email!

When's the last time your email program made you say "holy crap!  That's impressive!".  (Or a less crass variant of same).  Well, Gmail just did that to me.  I wrote "I have attached" in my email, and didn't Gmail come back and say "you said you've attached... but you didn't attach a file, do you want to attach a file now?".  That's almost admin-assistant like material.  I was very impressed.  And I'm not easily impressed.  Especially by something as mundane as email.  Now I don't care enough about my email client to dig into the pros / cons of each system.  But then again, I've never cared enough about my email client to blog about it either.  Gmail might look as bland as a Goth chick with no eyeliner on the surface, but there's lots to like about Gmail, both on the surface as well as under the hood.