Gus Digital

Russ, Junior and I headed away from the city this weekend, up the Sea to Sky Highway to our so far favourite place to camp - Cal-Chek.

Now Cal-Chek is an old forestry campground and not run by the BC Government, but run by the Indian Band. As such they don’t have a general store, they don’t have showers, it has an outhouse, it doesn’t have a beach, but it has a running river.  That said, the campground is well maintained and you are shaded by the elements from the huge trees that surround the campsite.

We managed to get our old site from last year, to my surprise, Russ had the tent set up prior to me leaving work.  He was good at driving up to the site earlier on Friday and securing a spot.

We had a great relaxing weekend.  We headed into Whistler on Saturday to grab some essentials, and also hiked abit along the Cal-Chek trail that took us to Brandywine Falls.  We walked along the trail and were treated to an awesome vista of the area.  We truly are blessed to live so close to such beauty.

Junior of course had a run of the campsite and he enjoyed running around and sneaking into other campsites to see what everyone was doing.  Of course he did have to be told a few times to stay within bounds, but overall he was a very good boy.

We were also treated to a couple of woodpeckers that decided to do some “pecking” of the “wood” and I snapped up a couple of photos. Who thought that taking a photo of a bird would be hard, but I had difficulty in getting the right shot.

The temperature at night did drop to about 5C, and if it wasn’t for the heater Russ had purchased last year I think we would have froze. This of course didn’t deter the mosquitoes from being out in full force.  If it wasn’t for the OFF-Lanterns we purchased I don’t think we would have survived. Thank you OFF for creating these, an item that *actually* works!

On our treck back into Vancouver, we stopped along Britannia Beach for a bit.  This where you can find the BC Museum of Mining.  Granted we did not go into the Museum itself, we did walk around the surrounding buildings, which was fun. One day we will venture in.

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What is it with our Canadian Cell Phone companies of late.

Sure the Rogers iPhone rates have been a major discussion as of late with www.ruinediphone.com having more than 52,000 people signing their petition (as of this post).

Then of course was Bell’s introduction of the Samsung Instinct with an unlimited data plan for $10, and Telus’s introduction of the HTC Diamond with $15-$30 unlimited data plan, which brought on pressure to Roger.  People were going to jump ship and get on with Bell and Telus.

Now today comes news that Bell and Telus are going to start charging you, their customers, for incoming text message. What is getting customers angry is the fact that incoming unsolicited messages will be charged at $0.15/message. Of course you can “subscribe” to a package deal if you’d like and not have this affect you.

Here we are again in Canada being guaged by companies. Are they trying to drive Canada into a consumer recession?

I just don’t get what executives are thinking.  True you can argue “value” over “pricing” but in this case I don’t see any value to the consumer, I only see the value to the corporations themselves.  How can someone block text messages from their phones anyways?  They must offer such a service.

This government needs to open up the market for more competition.  Bring in the big boyz!!

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Tonight I’m attending IABC-BC’s Second Life - A Communications Tool? event.

It will be interesting to hear what the speakers have to say as I’ve heard mixed reviews of Second Life over the past year. What might be cool (ok maybe just plain uncool) will be the virtual DJ performing via Second Life as well as one of the speakers themselves speaking through Second Life.

I will report more on my findings later.

UPDATE: Ok so I didn’t post about my findings, but here are some photos I took of the event. I’m still not sold on Second Life, but what the hell.

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Starting this weekend there is an event (similar to the Eastside Cultural Crawl) that is going on in the West side of Vancouver called “Artist in our Midst”

We’re celebrating our 16th year of bringing artists and the community closer together, by opening the doors of our studios to the public.

This unique tour takes place over three weekends each April. It’s your opportunity to meet with the artists, see their work up close, and see them at work in their studios, as you stroll the beautiful streets of Vancouver’s West Side

This event is spread out over 3 weekends, so get out and enjoy the artists at their studios.

Russ and a friend of ours David will be taking in some of the sites. I’m sure they are probably going more for the homes than the art, but I guess art is what you make of it.

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Yesterday somehow when I was getting ready for work my 2 month old Sony Ericsson W580I phone hurt itself. I have no idea how this happened, but the inner LCD screen developed a crack. The phone had worked fine that morning as I took a phone call, but just before I left for work I looked at the phone and noticed that screen was off. I restarted the phone (hoping this might help), but that didn’t fix it.

I was glad I had a 2 year warranty on the phone as I would just get it repaired (so I thought).

I took it the Rogers kiosk at Pacific Centre and was pretty much surprised at the level of lack of service I received. The gentleman behind the counter pretty much said “good luck in getting this repaired”. He let me know that the warranty doesn’t cover “damaged screens due to use”. When I let him know that I didn’t drop the phone or do anything to it, he couldn’t care less. He told me I had to take it to 2nd and Burrard to get it repaired. I had asked him give me the address and I felt as if I was asking him some task that was beyond his level of employement. He “manage” to write it down for me, but when I asked him for a number he told me he didn’t know the number (which was shocking) and just wrote the name of the store.

I was not impressed.

I ended up back in the office and did my lovely Google search and found out that this is not a rare occurance out there. Others have reported the same issue. Looks like it might be an issue with the phone and having it on vibrate.

I called the store where I purchased the phone and let them know of my internet search and he suggested I contact Sony Ericcson directly, as he said the warranty wouldn’t cover the screen either. Sony Ericcson was actually great to deal with and they sent me a return bill to send my phone in, yet it would take about 3-4 weeks to get my phone back. Being in the business that I am in, this wouldn’t do.

During all this I did send an email to my niece, who works for Rogers in Toronto, and she was spoke with her Rogers’ Sony Ericsson rep. and told him the whole story. They are going to send me a refurbished phone and I will send my phone for repair back to them. My niece Amanda ROCKS!!! She made my day!!!

I have nothing bad to say about Rogers as a company, but my dealing with that “idiot” at Pacific Centre definitely put a damper on my Rogers experience.

The following video is not my phone, but it’s pretty much how mine looks.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JqMeFhgeSE&hl=en]

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While browsing through my blogs today, Rebecca posted an interesting blog on Metroblogging Vancouver regarding Melanie Cole’s Graduation Project. She has erected a huge painting of the infamous Waldo, somewhere on a Vancouver roof top and should be viewable through Google Earth (once they have done a pass through).

Try to guess where he might be. I have made my guess, but alas no prices are being given out, but hopefully more people will try to guess and find Waldo in Where’s on Earth is Waldo?

Good luck with the project Melanie!

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This past weekend Russ and I took off to Seattle for the weekend as my promised Birthday Weekend.

We decided this time around to try out the Peace Arch Crossing as the time wait when we got there said only 30 minutes. To our surprise it actually was about 30 minutes.

As we got into the lovely U-S of A, we were hit with strange weather conditions. From rain, sleet, to a freakish snow storm just south of Bellingham. The weather did improve afterwards for just a few short minutes when we encountered the lovely weather all over again near Marysville. On arrival to Seattle it was nice to see the weather only partly cloudy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_mJFDIiJks&hl=en]

Russ had booked us at the Empire Pacific Hotel, which is an old hotel that has been recently renovated. Alas the view of back lane was something that wasn’t desirable, we couldn’t beat the price.

We unpacked and quickly headed out on the town to do some shopping heading to my favourite store Macy’s. I just love that place, but I was good and didn’t buy anything. We headed to Pike’s Market and I marvelled at the flower shops and the price they were charging for the bouquets. I couldn’t believe that $10 got you a full bouquet that the Vancouver Flourist would charge over $30 for.

We decided to try to find a place that would make a great Bellini (as I’m always on the hunt for one). We stopped into Tulio’s Restaurante and asked the bartender Greg if he made Bellini’s. We were both surprised that he said he makes his version but nothing like Cactus Club’s version. To our surprise his version was very tastey indeed.

As we got to talking with him, we found out he’s wife is from Canada and he had worked in Vancouver for a few years. We were both shocked when he ordered some Scallops from the menu for us as a treat for it being my “birthday weekend”.

We decided that we would come back later for a great dinner and we were not disappointed. Tulio’s makes awesome food and you can see some of my Flickr photos on the wonderful food.  My only beef with Tulio is your website, I don’t know why you have to make people download your menu, they should just be able to click and see it.

After dinner we headed down the street to Vessel.  Vessel makes awesome cocktails, though very pricy.  I think the funkiest part of the bar is you can sit at the window and almost become the front window display.  You can view some of the my Flickr photos.

The next day found us having breakfast and heading down to Pike’s Market again.  They were having a BBQ competition, but alas we were not able to taste any, as the participants were forbidden by the city of Seattle to sell their work.

I had a fantastic time and I thank Russ for making it all possible.

Thanks for the great birthday weekend Russ.

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The other day I posted 10 things I like about my Sony Ericsson W580i cell phone, today I will write about 10 things I don’t necessarily like about it (in no particular order)

1. No flash with the camera - ok you have a “night time” mood, but you still need a burst of light I feel on those dark nights and the images in night mood are very pix-elated
2. 2 mega-pixel camera - ok I said I liked this (better than my 1.3 from my previous phone), but with phones now-a-days I would have expected at least a 3 mega-pixel camera
3. Rogers media player - now why would I use this when I have the Sony walk-man already on the phone?
4. You can’t zoom when taking photos even though it’s suppose to have 3x optical zoom, you can zoom when you are taking a video
5. Calendar doesn’t display all day events, ie Birthdays.
6. I can’t change what is on my quick main menu buttons.  I have “Calls” and “Music”.  I would rather have “Contacts” instead of the Rogers Music
7. Keys are alittle small and with my big fingers I have to really look at them to make sure I’m pressing the right buttons
8. You can’t send a text message to someones email in you contact without setting up an email account first (Telus you were able to send a text message without any problems)
9. Work address appear first before Home address in the Contacts
10. It runs on the EDGE network and is not 3G compatible

I’m sure there are more but there is some for now

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Testing the Sony Ercsson w580i video that I posted on Youtube.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCCnVqBjHJ4&rel=1]

Warning - turn down your volume due to the wind

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So I’m here in Scottsdale Arizona for a company wide sales training.  With all of our offices here in one place going through the training has so far been enjoyable.  The days of course are long with courses and seminars, but there is so much to learn and our team is making the most of it.

Tomorrow will be another fun filled day of seminars with some fun interactive games planned.  How much fun they will, time will tell

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