I’m old.

What I mean is that I can remember a time before computers were ubiquitous. Seriously, almost everything we have today is a computer of a sort. Cell phones, TVs, game consoles, etc. Who carries a watch anymore? There is no need when you have so much more in your cell phone: watch, mini-computer, internet browser, etc, let alone the ability to call anyone in the world where-ever you are.

I didn’t have a computer until I was about to head into high school. A brand new Commodore 64 graced my bedroom in the summer of 1984. (Thanks Mom & Dad!) Heck, I had to taking a typing class as a prerequisite before I could take grade 10 ‘computer applications’. Imaging taking a course to learn to type today.

Anyways. My point is that this was the early days of personal computers. I can guarantee that while there is a good change the local Universities had computer science curriculum, it wasn’t on any of my teacher’s minds as they passed through teacher’s college.

In high school, we had a three computer labs, and they were pretty open for those who wanted to learn. Our teachers wanted to learn too. And that was the difference. Norris and Evraire weren’t the coolest of poeple, but they didn’t hold us back. If we wanted to use some space on the 10Mb (yes, mega) file server in the Macintosh lab, then yes, we could take the equivalent of a floppy for ourselves. (You would believe how much better it was than doing the floppy shuffle every time you loaded Word…)

I don’t know if these teachers were merely lax, or knew that we’d be able to teach them quicker than they could learn on their own, but they let us get away with a lot of crap.

One of the labs was run on a semi-network of ICON computers. These beasts (you have to use the term beast when any machine had an integrated trackball) were running some kind of unix system of which we eagerly waged war with the administrators. Our job, get superuser access, disguise and keep it.

We would guess and social engineer the passwords. We would modify the password file to move new super accounts from the end of the list where they would be easily found. We would make sure our login prompt never started with a $ otherwise the jig was up.

The teachers would fight back, always raising the bar, but never really punishing us. Both sides were learning and we were all better for it.

Today, I think myself and many of my compatriots would we in jail, or under academic suspension, banned form touching a computer again until we left high school¹. I can’t see any way that this kind of behavior helps. Seriously, it will only cause resentment and either force students to loose interest in a valuable subject or send them underground.

Don’t misread me. We learned by doing our coursework as well, even if I was a dedicated slacker, but so much more was learned in those off hours when we could explore and hack around. As long as we didn’t break anything we were allowed to get away with so much more than my children will ever be able to. Back then there was so much to discover and I was lucky to be in a place and time where someone with curiosity wasn’t branded a criminal just because the educated staff were ignorant on a particular subject.

Many thanks to the St. Pius X computer staff from the late eighties. It was fun.

Those who know me should realize that I will be purchasing an iPad as soon as it is possible for me to do so. That should mean sometime this next week if all forecasts were accurate.

In preparation, I’ve started to get my head tuned around the change in my reading habits. I don’t need to buy physical books anymore. I will make the transition to eBooks on this device. Having already read Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” on my iPhone via the convenient Kindle app I can attest that I will have no trouble making the switch. That is not to say that I won’t still buy some physical material, but no longer in the quantities that I have in the past.

My initial thought was that I would cart he iPad around everywhere I normally do my reading. But have since changed my mind in that regard and I hope the brain trust at Apple is thinking the same way. I think for me to fully get the best experience out of iBooks (and yes I know it isn’t available in Canada yet, it just needs the right help to get it going. Andrew, I hope you are listening) the books themselves will need to be available wherever I want them. iPad, Mac, and iPhone.

If iBooks takes the same approach as does my iTunes music account, I should be able to buy a book and enable multiple devices to access it. This way I could read in bed on my iPad, continue reading during my commute in my iPhone (sorry but the St. Clair streetcar is too crowded to whip out a large iPad). Heck, when textbooks and technical manuals are available, I think I’d rather read reference manuals on my work desktop and MacBook when working rather than having to haul an iPad over to look at a manual.

I have complete and utter faith in Apple and I know they will get it right.

I’m starting on a new project that I hope to see off the ground in a few days. the big sqaure will be a webcomic of sorts. If a webcomic could be crossed with a Digg or Reddit that is.

The gist of it is: I can’t draw, but I’ve got tons of ideas. Serial and otherwise. So, each week I’ll post an idea and an empty square. Anyone can draw what I’ve asked and submit it. Upon acceptance, the image will join any others gathered. Every visitor can then vote on which is the best depiction of my description. When I post the next square’s description, the winner of the previous week is set as the comic and will appear in the archive appropriately. All others will still be stored and available for perusal. Every piece of art remains owner by the artist, yadda yadda yadda.

I hope it will cause many different interpretations of what I describe. If not, it’ll divert my attention for awhile.

Expect an announcement and promotion once I finish creating the back-end to run it. Should be an easy dev project for an old horse like me.

Okay, my free time is officially over. I got my Beta invite to Dungeons & Dragons Online.

See you next year.

You may have seen the comercials, or perhsp heard the radio spots on any Rogers’ owned station. “Buy our Home Phone Classic Value Plan. And save $25 over Bell’s comparable plan.” I call shenanigans on that right there.

First of all, much like a pop band who’s third album is called ‘Classic Hits’, can you really call a package ‘Classic Value’ when you’ve been selling home phone service for less than three years?

But let’s ignore that for now. Let’s debunk the claims…

Rogers says you save $25/mn based on a comparable plan. The key word here is comparable.Rogers is able to compare it’s plans (and it does have one that is even cheaper: $21.95 w/ 250 LD mins) against Bell’s plans + long distance because all of the Rogers plans come with some minutes.

You can save $25 a month because the Home Phone Challenge¹ automatically adds Bell’s $19.95 Unlimited Long Distance Minutes package. (This is hilarious because they offer the exact same package but don’t select it by default when you take the challenge.)

If you deselect any of the features (voicemail, call waiting, etc) you will compare the Basic Value package against Bell. But even then, you are forced to select at least one long distance package from Bell for comparison purposes. I understand the ‘white’ side of this lie. You want to compare apple to apples. Rogers’ plans all come with long distance whether you want it or not.

You only save money over Bell because they are forcing you to take long distance minutes even if you don’t use them.

I hate these kind of mistruths in advertising. If I was an uninformed consumer and walked into a Rogers store and wanted to save my $25/mn and switched, the odds are I wouldn’t be saving much more than five bucks. If I didn’t care about long distance, the most I’d save is a dollar.

But in reality it is worse than that:

So there you have it. You may not get long distance, but you pay less with Bell.

• One stump down… One to go. Tomorrow. #
• Playing GemCraft chapter 0, damn it is addictive. http://bit.ly/11wRNB #

• Trying out Tweetdeck for the iPhone. very sweet! #
• Finally fully integrated my iPhone with my mac… So many apps so many syncs… #
• Thank you DevTeam. 1st Gen iPhone now has OS 3.0 on it. Easy. Painless. Why wouldn't you jailbreak? #
• Happy Father's Day Dad, been missing you since 1994! #
• RT @spooons: @jqs_ebay kijiji is 95959593993589393949394% better than CL #

• Must read this later… http://is.gd/Ynb0 #

Okay so I’m not one to scrimp on every penny, go looking for the best bargains, or wait until that item I need/want goes on sale. But I do know what the going price is for items I’m shopping for and can see when I’m getting ripped off.

Case in point: Apple 60W MagSafe power adapter for 13.3″ MacBook.

Apple Store¹: $99

BestBuy²: $158.99

Wow, that’s a pretty big bit of profit! I mean, how do they justify a markup of 62%?

I know Apple’s margins on hardware are razor thin, so really, BestBuy is somewhat justified trying to squeeze money from it’s consumers via accessories, but doesn’t Apple do the same? I doubt bringing this to the attention of the BestBuy corp will do anything. Esp as their sister store FutureShop³ has the exact same pricing for the items in question.

So what can I do in this situation besides simply to buy the adapter from the Apple Store (which I did)? If I emailed their PR people would they do anything? Would Apple?

• RT @jqs Do you think the Phoenix Coyotes will leave for a better market? http://twtpoll.com/db7yuh #twtpoll #