UPS: "Sir, there are no guarantees in life."	Friday, August 22, 2008

Let this be a lesson to any of you shippers who think UPS is a good company with whom to ship your goods. My pal, Kerry, ordered a new iPhone. It was shipped with UPS. Over a month ago. Dozens of phone calls have not made any impact in him getting his iPhone. He made one last call to UPS today to confirm if it was indeed "lost". UPS told him, "Sir, there are no guarantees in life." That's exactly what you want to hear from your shipping company. I therefore propose this be their new motto. I have never been a UPS fan because they have stung me with far too many brokerage fees over the years. FedEx, on the other hand, is just plain awesome.

Leopard and usbmuxd issues	Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Preface: This post to save the frustration of system.log files being filled up with error messages and an iPhone not being recognized by iTunes. It is of an extreme technical nature, and will be completely uninteresting to you. [Read on]

Xdebug for PHP 4.4.8 on Mac OS X Leopard	Tuesday, June 17, 2008

To anyone trying to compile Xdebug for use with PHP 4.4.x on Mac OS X Leopard, you will probably have problems loading the module if your PHP was compiled as a Universal binary. You will see something like:

You need to specify some options on before you run configure to have Xdebug compiled as a Universal binary:

Do not shop at Barnes and Noble (bn.com)	Monday, March 31, 2008

Just a warning to anyone who thinks shopping online at Barnes and Noble is a good idea: Stop what you're doing, and go to Amazon. Barnes and Noble does NOT confirm your order with you before placing it, and there is NO WAY to cancel an order after it has been placed. Amazon, on the other hand, confirms everything before you place it, and they let you cancel it if you want. [Read on]

Dear Religious Pamphleteers	Friday, February 16, 2007

Dear Religious Pamphleteers who loiter on downtown street corners, pushing your God-fearing propaganda to innocent bystanders,

Yes, you. You know who you are. You're the ones with the bad hair and clothes, and who are under the delusion that what you are doing is in some way beneficial to the greater good. New flash: you're not helping! Now, while I'm not intimately familiar with the teachings of His Lord, Jesus Christ, I am pretty sure that love thy neighbour was pretty high up on the list of to-dos. Handing out a pamphlet telling me that I'm a sinner and that I'm going to Hell is not, in my opinion, showing your love for me. [Read on]

In-Store Pickup at Future Shop	Friday, February 2, 2007

From Future Shop's website:

Why would I want to pick up my order at a Future Shop store?
It’s fast. During store hours, you can pick up your order within three hours of placing it on futureshop.ca.

It’s convenient. You can pick up your item whenever it’s convenient instead of waiting at home for a package to arrive.

...

Right... Let me clarify how it actually works.

[Read on]

Advanced Parking	Thursday, January 11, 2007

The lot beside my office is an "Advanced Parking" lot. According to the company's slogan, this lot offers "Advanced Parking for Advanced People". I'm not sure exactly what they consider advanced about their parking lot, but I can assure you that nothing about this lot makes it stand out from any other lot in the city — except for maybe the price (bah-dum-cha). I am also not sure what they mean exactly by advanced people. In some respects, I would consider myself advanced (e.g. computers), but I don't know that I'd claim to be an advanced person as it's just too vague a statement to make. Let's assume they meant to say advanced parkers instead of advanced people. I'm a pretty good parker: I can parallel park my car into pretty tight spaces, I've rarely been stumped at operating convulted parking lot equipment, and I'm generally knowledgeable about the concept of parking. As an advanced parker, I still can't see how this lot is any better — or more "advanced" — than any other lot out there. If I'm missing something here, and you're in the know, please enlighten me.