Doesn't this guy remind you Michael McDonald on MADtv?

I'm sure every Canadian has now well acquainted with Koodo Mobile. If you aren't, you probably live in a hole somewhere.

Koodo has delivered perhaps the most agressive advertising campaign since those darn McGuinty public school ads during the 2007 Ontario general election.

Koodo has been exposed to death on TV, radio, internet, newspaper, billboards, malls, and transit vehicles and stations-- the whole media schbangle. Their motto is that it's Canada's fat-free mobility provider. Their use of Helvetica font plays on the "Nutrition Facts" labels you find on all Canadian food products. I suppose the 80's fitness fashion is just trying to be corny and playful.

Koodo is the result of Telus Mobility's product differentiation strategy, and it's intended to be the youthful and discount branch of the larger cellular service provider. This is Telus' second attempt at marketing to the youth demographic, after a failed attempt with Amp'd Moble. Anyway, Telus is just playing catchup, as all the other major cell phone networks already have established youth-oriented brands: Rogers has Fido, and Bell has Solo and Virgin.

With its aggressive advertising, it seems difficult for me to not listen. From its website, Koodo emphasizes fat-free mantra, with its no-frill, no access fee, no activation fee, no contracts, per-second billing approach.

Looking at their plans, though, I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed. There is absolutely no cost savings compared with my existing Telus plan. Koodo is just a repackaged version of the same crappy and expensive plans-- which is to be expected, since why would they lower prices at the demise of its parent Telus brand?

The only thing slightly different is the "Koodo Tab," which is essentially the 'catch' of having no contracts. Essentially, users can put up to $150 of the cost of a new phone on a tab. Then Koodo will apply 10% of a user's monthly bill toward paying off the cost of the phone. It's really not much different from getting the $150 credit for signing 3 year contracts.

Sadly, Koodo might as well be dumped like TV fitness machines it's attempting to mock.

Enjoy the commercials:
Mobile Diet Infomercial - [youtube.com]
Mobile leg lifts - [youtube.com]

Executing my thesis research has been a constant struggle. This thesis, which I has been coined my 'beast', is this constantly growing creature that will soon stomp around, tear down cities, and ultimately defeat me.

From what I've heard and what I'm currently experiencing, the hardest part of doing thesis research is not doing the research, but rather determinining what exactly it is that I want to research. I could study pretty much anything I want, and that lack of direction and structure is what makes me feel queasy.

Since starting grad school in September, I have went 180 degrees with my topic and another time after that. I'm expecting to turn about another 90 degrees this month. I came into grad school wishing to examine how Land Value Capture and Tax Increment Financing could be used to finance transit intrastructure such as the LRT proposal for Waterloo Region. As I always am with each topic, I come into a project being very gung-ho, but as soon as I begin my literature review, I realize how much work has already been done on the topic and I become increasing discouraged. Essentially, from what I feel, the revenue generated from these mechanisms do not even come close to paying off the high capital costs of building transit infrastructure. On top of that, I am often asked how will my research fit in and add value to the literature, and I cannot comfortably answer people.

So back to the drawing board. After sifting through Research Needs Statements from the Transportation Research Board, I realized that I'd like to do something related to transportation-GIS decision support, and I thought of the topic of measuring employment accessibilty using GIS in Greater Toronto. I want to understand the travel times to work depending on (1) where one works, (2) where one lives, (3) household income, and (4) employment type, through time. I figure this is a good topic, especially given the fact that the GTA wishes to promote an improved interregional transportation network-- and I produced a research proposal based on this project. Then I realized during the process that Eric Miller, one of the most prominent transportation reserachers at U of T have already studied this topic to death.

So here I am again, hoping take a different spin on things without dramtically changing the overarching themes of my research topic. My advisor has been very encouraging and that's been great. While it would be so much easier for me to just ask him to hit me a topic, I definitely do not want to resort to that right now-- since that would be accepting defeat.

Perhaps I am not cut out for academia?

I'll let you know of my progress.

This 1957 single was performed a girl group called The Bobbettes. According to Wikipedia, the song was about their former grade school teacher. Sadly, they followed up this hit single with another less popular hit, I Shot Mr. Lee. Oh how awful.

The Bobbettes, Mr. Lee

One, two, three, look at Mr. Lee
Three, four, five, look at him jive
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee

I met my sweetie
His name is Mr. Lee
I met my sweetie
His name is Mr. Lee
He's the hansomest sweetie
That you ever did see

My heart is achin' for you Mr. Lee
My heart is achin' for you Mr. Lee
'Cause I love you so
And I'll never let you go

Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee

Here comes Mr. Lee
He's coming for me
Here comes Mr. Lee
He's coming for me
He's my lover boy
Let's jump for joy

Come on Mr. Lee and do your stuff
Come on Mr. Lee and do your stuff
'Cause you're gonna be mine
Till the end of time

One, two, three, look at Mr. Lee
Three, four, five, look at him jive
One, two, three, look at Mr. Lee
Three, four, five, look at him jive

Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee

One, two, three, look at Mr. Lee
Three, four, five, look at him jive

Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee
Oh, Mr. Lee
Mr. Lee

Thanks Genevieve for the photo.

Yes ironically, there hasn't been much music on Muchmusic. While I personally don't care too much of the network anymore, I don't necessarily agree that with the notion that MM is no longer the "mouthpiece for Canadian youth culture" as Torontoist suggests. We have to remind ourselves that we as twenty-somethings, are no longer MM's target demographic. I am very interested to know what the target demographic, namely teens, thinks of Muchmusic. What do they think of MM's programming? If there are any teens reading this blog, I'd totally appreciate some feedback.

At the same time, we also need to consider that the whole nature of the music industry is changing. We are increasingly reliant on the internet for our music particularly among youth, which puts a serious strain on music television networks to provide profitable products to televise.

Think about it, we are increasingly reliant on user-control types of media such as Youtube to view our music videos. Thus it becomes a great challenge for a mass media television network such as MM to remain profitable simply by playing music videos in the way that we (as twenty-somethings) appreciated when we were teenagers.

For that reason, I am not overly critical of the fact that MM is out of the business of broadcasting music videos. They are merely adapting to the changing landscape of the music industry. That being said, however, it doesn't mean MM is off the hook. I believe there continues to be opportunities for MM to stay within the confines of music programming. How about more artist interviews? How about more programming on up-and-coming artists? How about more VideoFACT programming? MM needs to focus on featuring local talent-- just like the times of the Barenaked Ladies, for example.

The never-ending reruns of O.C. and So You Think You Can Dance is just a sign that MM is accepting defeat. If they keep this up, we will soon see MM disintegrate completely from the TV landscape.

I bought an external hard drive in January, and while I was attempting to backup my files this week, I accidentially tripped the A/C power cable, which caused the enclosure to fall to the ground. To make matters worse, the hard drive fell as it was spinning away.

Anyway, I was pretty positive that the hard drive was a goner, but I still had hope that at least some of the data could be recovered, especially as there was no horrible screeching sound when I re-ran the drive. While most of the work had been backed up, I did lose the work I did last term, and a couple dozen gigs of multimedia files. The bright side of it is that I still have hard copies of last term's files, so I'll take a day to just run it though a document scanner.

Of course, my multimedia files are gone for good. Luckily, no precious pictures were on there.

So a few words of advice:

• Do not drop hard drives


• Do not drop hard drives when it's still running


• Establish a routine to backup your files

By the way, I like the Waterloo Networks' philosophy, and I recommend giving them a shot if you have any computer technical issues. They charge a flat fee of $55, so the price is small and predictible. Plus, there is no bitchy impatient tech people, only the best and positive people who are really willing to help. They said that if they aren't able to recover any data, I won't be charged. So what do I have to lose? Awesome.

Now that my hard drive is deemed useless, I think I might put it in the freezer.

My hot face is on the UW library homepage! Look how slitty my eyes are! Anyway, I think this is my 30 seconds of fame, which I guess is pretty pathetic. I volunteered again to be a face of UW, so hopefully you will see more of me soon. Haha.

There is also a Youtube video, where you can view me and Lindsay, another fellow ES-er, being corny. It's near the end of the clip.

Anyway, "Why do you love the library?" is the UW Library's latest consultation initiative, conveniently in light of the Valentines Day festivities. This intiative arose due to the vast changes in recent years, especially the wide presence of digital resources, to the role of library organizations. It hopes to strengthen the relationship between students and library facilities and resources.

Details of the contest can be found here.

A few weeks ago, I was doing my work, my Outlook notified me that Paypal received payment from me to a Germany-based VOIP Company.

Of course, I freaked out and checked my Paypal to see if anything was tampered with. And of course, it was not just some phishing thing-- someone actually withdrew money from my bank account and used the money to pay for their VOIP service.

Anyways, I called my bank to see if I can block the transaction, and they said that they could, as long as the transcation hasn't already gone through. Since my Online Banking numbers are not updated in real time, it's hard to say it actually went through.

Then I frankically changed my passwords. This process was so damn annoying because even when you have a password in mind, different sites have different pasword rules, which means you end up having so many different variations of the password.

An hour after, Paypal's bots recognized some suspicious activity with my account and froze it. While I guess this is impressive, they did not make retroactive my account to what it was before the unauthorized transactation. I was still required that I go through the 'Resolution Centre' process.

It turns out that my bank was able to block the transaction, so actually I don't really give Paypal any credit. I know this because Paypal notified me that my bank declined the fund transfer, and that my Paypal account will be charged as a result.

Luckily, a few days later, the whole dispute was resolved, and by account was back to the expected amount.

Wow. Online security concerns are quite serious. Maybe I'll return to making transactions the old-fashioned way. Geez.

What's not to like? Cashmere Mafia is Sex and the City meets Desperate Housewives-- and it came in the best timing too. There's still seems to be a big 'dramedy' void to fill since the ending of Sex and the City, and Desperate Housewives-- well, it's just getting a little dull.

Like Sex, Cashmere follows four very successful and ambitious friends in New York City. The four women, each interestingly with a different hair colour (almost like a L'Oreal hair dye commercial), run around with their crazily busy jobs, clicking away at their blackberries, balance their personal lives, while at the same time being able to sit down and have lunch or sip martinis with each other regularly.

While the writing is definitely not as clever as Sex, I find these characters to be refreshing-- particularly Lucy Liu, who looks absolutely stunning on each show. Her clothes seriously look like as if she was walking down the runway.

The women are not the only gorgeous people, so are the men! While the men, like Sex, don't have significant roles, I can't help but admire their fabulous looking suits! Not to mention that the guys are just gorgeous.

Yep, now reviewing my review of the show made me realize that the show is based on hot characters and hot clothes. How completely queer of me. Anyways, it's hard to say if the show's going to stick around, because I think it will take more than some fashion hotties to keep this show afloat.

Carrie Bradshaw, for example, had a whole lot of good clever quotes! I don't know if Cashmere has the same quality of writing, but there are a few lines here and there.

Denise, who has also been catching the show, was interested in a short monologue made by Lucy Liu's character.

It's a high time to accept the fact that a woman won't just be your co-worker, she could be your boss. And you're going to have to be prepared to deal, to be a man about it in the true sense of the word. sure, more working women means more competition, but instead of being threatened by it, be challenged by it-- let's bring the best of each other. Win or lose, if you're a good sport, everybody wins.

But sure how this show will go, but I'm definitely going to keep watching.

Cashmere Mafia - [wikipedia.org]
Cashmere Mafia (spoiler alert) - [livejournal.com]

I was almost blown away last night by the dedicated staff and their strong desire to help students find what they need. I was attempting to get access on the RACER system. RACER, which stands for Rapid Access to Collections by Electronic Requesting, is a interlibrary loan system for books outside of the Tri-University Group of Libraries. I am dumb to have not used RACER before, because it's just so easy. The librarian literally sat down and went through it with me for about 20 minutes. He actually went through all the nooks and crannies of the web site, which definitely helped me save time in fooling around with the web application.

Anyway, there were a few other memorable moments I've encountered through my university career.

I really commend them for their passion not only for providing unparalleled customer service (through instant messaging, email, telephone, and in person), but also for their great initiative in analyzing information needs.

From all the experiences at UW I can recall, I can say that I have nothing but compliments to the library staff. (Browsers, the Dana Porter coffee shop is another story), but they're not part of the library organization). If there is a organization worthy of funding and awards, it's the library.

I remember that Leo also had positive stories about the U of T library. I wonder if this good 'library work ethic' is consistent throughout the region or something?

UW Library - [uwaterloo.ca]

According to the press release, the plan is a $14 billion package includes:

• $10.3 billion investment in four new rapid transit lines in Metro Vancouver—the Evergreen Line, the UBC Line, the upgraded Expo Line and the Canada Line


• $1.2 billion for a new, cutting edge energy efficient, high capacity RapidBus BC service along nine major routes in the high growth urban centres of Kelowna, Victoria and Metro Vancouver


• $1.6 billion investment in 1,500 new, clean energy buses and related maintenance infrastructure to provide communities around the province with improved bus service


• increased security measures to enhance transit safety and use

I am particularly the RapidBus BC service in areas in Kelowna and Victoria where no rapid transit services currently exist. The Vancouver projects aren't particularly new, since plans have existed for the UBC Line for quite some time, and of course the Canada Line and the Evergreen Line have already been announced-- in fact, the Canada Line is currently under construction.

Now I think it's the race to the finish! Which province will accomplish their projects sooner, Ontario or British Columbia? Anyone confident enough to place some bets?

The Provincial Transit Plan - [th.gov.bc.ca]
B.C. unveils huge transit plan - [theglobeandmail.com]

I hate the place, but I find myself continuing to go there just because their stuff is so darn cheap. Being the poor student that I am, I just cannot afford to support other stores 'for the greater good' or 'for the customer experience value'. I've essentially been priced out of other places.

Yep. Canada Computers and I have had a struggling relationship as long as I can remember, back when they only had one location at Pacific Mall. Pacific Mall's location is notorious for having bitchy sales reps. I have been to the others in Scarborough, North York, and Waterloo since their massive expansion within and outside the GTA in the recent years, and I will admit that these locations have much better customer service than at Pacific Mall. The dudes at the Pacific Mall location operate as if they they ruled the world of cheap computer goods, and that PC's everyhere would suffer had they not existed.

For sure, they do sell very cheap computer goods, but it's just good business sense not to be so 'inch'. Canada Computers could definitely be even much more successful if they just paid better attention to customer service. I am not a picky shopper. I don't care if you don't greet me and all that crap. Just give me the products that I want to buy without making me angry.

So yes. Canada Computers' pompous attitude has given me great passion to find other stores to support. I will desperate hunt to see if other stores are at least selling at about the same price as Canada Computers. I will only give in when the price isn't right.

Here's my list of alternatives.

PC Village, First Markham Place
This store rocks. Their prices are competitive as Canada Computers, and they actually provide awesome customer service. I always leave the store happy, confident, and satisified about my purchased. Highly recommended!

PC Gate Computers, Pacific Mall
They have awesome service, the dudes there are always helpful. Prices are usually more expensive however.

Premier Computer Canada, 3311 Lake Shore Blvd. West, Toronto
Never visited their Etobicoke location, but have purcahsed a few things over the web. Prices are a hit and miss. Selection is excellent.

Infonec, 351 Ferrier St, Markham
Prices are fairly competitive, but selection not as comprehensive as Canada Computers'.

ICCT, Splendid China Tower
Service is pretty good. Prices are a hit and miss, selection is limited.

Do you have any suggestions for cheap computer goods?

The holiday break is always the best time to do some website maintenance, but my progress this year has continued to be not-so-good.

I thought that I would be ambitious and try to set up Textpattern after recommendations from Ram. While I found the initial setup and importing to be a piece of cake, I was unable to integrate my blog and linklog into one page. While I tried to follow Ram's comprehensive post about doing so, I gave up after a while, as I was overwhelmed with the things that I don't know how to do.

Then I tried upgrading to Movable Type 4. Wow. The frilly Movable Type presents users with a gorgeous backend interface, but again, the setup to integrate of blog and linklog entries are almost impossible, since some of the variables used in MT4 have since been changed or discontinued, causing the rebuilding process to be full of errors, may of which I do not know how to resolve.

I knew this was going to happen, as I recall going through the same procedures some time ago, so I backed up my Movable Type 3 platform.

Then, I thought that I would finally enable dynamic publishing from my current MT3 platform. While I was successful in getting it to work, I realized that my plugins then didn't work. According to this article on learningmovabletype.com, it doesn't work because MT plugins are written in Perl while the dynamic system uses PHP.

So there you have it: back to square one. I guess it's true what they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Nevertheless, I implemented a few modifications to make browsing through the site a little easier. The bottom of the this index page lists the most recent entries and comments from both my blog and linklog. In addition, I managed to merge the two lists of comments from the Recent Comments page into one integrated list, rather that two separate blog and linklog comment lists.

But I encountered one of the most fascinating books related to the topic. How bizarre, I know. It's called Planning Theory for Practitioners by Michael Brooks. I found a neat anecdote that really helped me personally close the chapter on the merits of rational-comprehensive planning-- since I had continued to be a proponent of the rational part of rational-comprehensive planning.

Reliance on rationality may be damaging to the planning process because it contributes so readily to self-delusion. If we follow the tenets of rational planning, one might ask, aren't we simply doing what planning is all about-- regardless of whether anything comes of our analyses and plans? An exercise I often give my students posits the existence of two firms, A and B. Firm A makes all the right planning moves-- defining its mission, studying its competition, carefully analyzing the market for current and potential products, and formulating goals and strategies for its short-term future. Firm B, on the other hand, is run by a happy-go-lucky CEO who makes all decisions for the firm by flipping a coin. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Firm A, despite its good planning behaviour, goes down the tubes, while Firm B prospers and becomes an industry leader. The question is, which firm is more rational?

My students almost always answer correctly--namely, that Firm A was the more rational because it behaved in a rational manner, while Firm B was not rational at all.

This exercise illustrates the fact that "rational planning" means "planning conducted in a rational manner"; the focus is on the process, not on the results. [...] Public planning is about improving the quality of life in our communities, and we should not take comfort in methods that sooth our psyches but have little world impact.

Planning Theory for Practitioners is a definitely a must-read for all planners.

My grad school experience has been, well, lukewarm. I don't really have another appropriate term to describe it. It's comfortable yet tame.

Surely there are some benefits of being in grad school that I do enjoy.

ONE:
Professors and staff take dedicated interest in learning and helping me with my research endeavors and academic financial assistance.

TWO:
Having an office means I actually have a permanent space on campus that is dedicated solely to me.

THREE:
There's no need to check when my library books are due, since I can borrow them for a term.

FOUR:
There are a lot of serious grad students with a true passion in all facets of planning.

I commend the University for really striving to help students reach their academic potential, and I encourage everyone to come here if they also want to have their academic potential met. Unfortunately, the good news comes to an end.

I understood ever since I drafted my applications a year ago that attending grad school was a choice. And because I continue to see this as a choice among other options (i.e. go to work, be a bum), I have higher expectations about the life that I would like to live.

With that in mind, I continue to question my decision. Was this the best choice for me? How much precedence should my professional advancement have over my personal life? What do I seriously value more? Is it really a short term pain for a long term gain? What exactly are my long term gains?

Grad school, at least in my experience, is about a lot of thinking-- which the Planning department proudly encourages and wilfully facilitates. While my thinking activity is happening, I can tell you that it's not always academic thinking-- just lots of random thinking. The low requirement of course-based work for the first eight months truly faciliates a lot of this random thinking. Thinking that can be destructive-- and usually revolves around the above questions.

I found that undergrad work, as many of you can concur, was just about deliverables. There was no time to think thoroughly, the objective was to get your shit done, or face drowning in the sea of papers, labs, assignments, and exams. Because there wasn't even time to think things thoroughly for course work, this certainly leaves no time to think about these 'random things.' Grad school, however, is very different.

Anyways, as much as the school component of life is fine, but the life in Waterloo is just so blah. Living in Uptown is surely no compromise to the hussle-bussle, accessible, and the good-food-nature of Toronto. And I totally feel the effects of the shrinking-to-almost-no-existence social network here in Waterloo, leaving it quieter than I would like. I miss my summers where I can quickly call up someone and we can just grab a coffee, dinner, or just whatever.

In an ideal world, the University of Waterloo would be in Toronto. Yes, Waterloo was named the Intelligent Community of the year, but unfortunately, it was not also awarded for its community vibrancy. This is why I'm torn these days.

Yes, pity me. Or slap me out of it.