While finishing up some shopping, the girl at the till asked me if I was Canadian. Given that I was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with Canada across the front, I had to reply, “Why? Does it show?”. She proceeded to tell me that she was trying to decide between going straight to university or to travel to Canada for a year. I was taken as the sign that she should get on the plane. It was a neat feeling.

I received a message from Vodafone a few days ago to let me know that they now offer $2 for 60 minutes overseas. They pegged my calling destination as Canada, which actually caught my attention. The plan looks pretty decent, but I have no idea how they expect customers to distinguish land-line numbers from mobile number, which are not included in the promotion.

Two things keep me subscribed to a home phone:

1. It is required for my DSL connection.
2. Under normal conditions, mobile voice charges are ludicrous.

Take away the second reason permanently and I’ll make a serious decision. Cable-based broadband is not available to my townhouse block, but if I shift again, that could change.

With the end of the year fast approaching, my IEEE membership has come for renewal. Of course, this drew my attention to other memberships which are sitting near the top of mind.

IEEE

I’ve been a member for a couple years and have a couple subscriptions. The exchange rate is hurting – the fees are due in US dollars and the New Zealand dollar is hugely devalued at the moment. The natural assumption is to evaluate the benefits and decide if the memberships to each society and the publications is worth the cost. I am incredibly happy with IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology. All my other societies are covered by a corporate membership at work, but I like flipping through the magazines at home.

IPENZ

I looked into becoming a professional member of the engineering body in New Zealand a few months back. I am proud of my engineering background and was a member of APEGGA when I was still in Canada. I went to a seminar on the benefits and they were very keen to have me come into the fold. It seems as if they lack a base for software-based engineering and want to develop that side of their services. However, the induction fee was huge – a one-time assessment fee – and work was unwilling to pay for it. Neither was I. I ticked the no thank you box.

New Zealand Green Party

Immediately following the New Zealand general election, I signed on with the Green Party. My beliefs are quite closely related to them, so they get my vote and a donation for the work that needs to get done. I’ve been encouraging people, regardless of political affiliation, to get involved. Government needs feedback more often than elections, and I’m doing my part right from the start of the 49th Session. The next election is years away, but there’s years of work to do before we get there.

New Zealand Wine Society

This one is just a bit of fun. My flatmate and I decided to invest in wine by the case. It’s summer and we’re spending time out on the balcony. The selection seems big enough to be able to explore through, especially with mixed cases leading the way. The per-bottle price drops off quite nicely and it means we should have a decent supply for the foreseeable future.

That’s about it for now. It’s a fair bit of money all together, but those that I’m paying for seem worthwhile, at least for now.

The fallout from losing my phone spent a little time going from bad to worse. Specifically, I received my phone bill from Vodafone. It seems that whomever found my phone decided to play a few games and buy a bunch of music on it. That was about the time that I learned that when I put a block on my phone, data was not blocked at the same time. I was being billed for about $120 of someone else’s usage.

I quickly called up the customer service department and explained my situation. The details were verified by the voice on the other end and a small rebate was offered, about $36. Not satisfied, I sent a request through the email form to explain what happened. Why was the data service not blocked? Why was I responsible for any of the charges, having reported the lost phone already? What is a customer supposed to do to protect against this? The response was returned quite quickly: a full refund was applied to my account and an apology offered. I was even given advice on how to protect myself and my phone in the future.

While I’m still disappointed about losing the phone, having to replace it and using my old, broken phone in the meantime, I can’t complain about the end result on the part of Vodafone. A bit of a fumble, but they came through in the end. As for the sample-of-one test of humanity’s goodness, unfortunately a fail.

I’ve been overly political lately. I promise I’ll be fun again after the elections all end.

I’m actually not really referring about the amount of content I put here. Yes, it comes and goes with available time and mood, but nothing is really changing. What I am referring to is a few local sites that seem to have died off, to the detriment of the community.

• Sustainable Wellington Transport had only a few posts in a short burst of activity. Transport happens to be one of my pet interests, so I have been watching for more content for a while. The group of authors includes several city and regional councillors alongside a couple private citizens. I can imagine them being busy, but I’d love to see some activity, even if it’s just media releases that can induce feedback.

• Mount Cook Mobilised is a blog about my suburb. I was raised to care about my environment and I do my best to follow through on that. There seems to be 3 facets to this organisation. The blog refers to a paper newsletter, which I’ve seen a single issue of, and also points to a wiki. The wiki/blog combination can be very powerful, but both seem in relative infancy so far.

• Option 3 was put together during a submission process to discover the best alternative for bringing commuters and travellers into Wellington from the north. Options 1 & 2 were/are large roading project. Option 3 is for sustainable transport. The discussion about Transmission Gully continues, but the Option 3 site seems to have died off.

What do I hope to achieve by talking about this? I’m not sure. I have started to get in touch with the councillor-authors of Sustainable Wellington Transport about adding releases to the blog and I could realistically start editing the wiki myself to encourage development, but I’m not sure that anything is going to kick-start these websites. One can hope, and make noise.

Are people basically good or basically bad? I am attempting to answer this age-old question with a single sample of whether or not my phone is returned to me. It was accidentally left on a bus after work, as I hurriedly and inattentively alighted.

I’ve contacted the bus company and left a report with lost property. There is also a bar on outbound calls, hopefully to limit the fall-out of someone deciding to run amok on my account. There’s not much else that I can do but wait.

The phone was far from cheap, and I picked it up second hand. Replacing it wouldn’t be very nice to my bank account. On top of that, I’m cringing at a bit of the information that’s on the phone – I’d use my phone to carry my source code home from time to time. I have had to change my email password and my work calendar was synced on there. Very little else should be able to get me into trouble. I hope.

Will I see my phone again or did I just donate it to someone less scrupulous than I?

Normally, for situations where I have no control, I’d sit back and not worry because worrying doesn’t solve the problem. But this time, I’m a bit angry – at myself for not paying attention and at the world because the early indicators show that the phone wasn’t turned in at the end of the driver’s shift last night. This doesn’t bode well for Team Good.

I was speaking to a friend about being a pack-rat. She’s unpacking and has been finding a few things that have limited sentiment but would induce guilt if sher were to let them go. The conversation continued a while longer and this came up:

I keep old cards…. but I use them again to make gift tags and stuff…. then I get to go through the cards again from time to time….. some of them remain keepers and still haven’t gotten cut up…

It’s upcycling of memories. I like this idea a lot. It’s not possible to keep everything forever, but some things are quite nice – a shame to just toss out. Making something new, maybe better, is a great way to pass it on. Besides, gifts don’t have to be expensive; something creative and personal is much better in my opinion.

As of last week, all of my bills are delivered electronically. Joe Bennett takes aim at MyMeridian for this, but I think it’s great. I’ve had too many bills show up late, or not at all, especially around the edges of moving houses. My email address doesn’t change – the bill will get to me. The bonus is being able to keep records over the course of a year without having a huge pile of papers to sort through. Shared expenses? Easy – bounce the bill along.

Yes, I’m aware that email is not guaranteed and there are ways to snoop, redirect or cause email delivery to fail, but even with those risks, I am happy with the service change. All good.

Immediately after planting a range of herbs out on the balcony, spring burst forth in windy glory. It didn’t matter which corner, there was wind everywhere, going everywhere. The first casualty, sort of, was the mint. The main stem snapped in half before the end of the weekend. Thanks to the magic of the internet, I instantly learnt that mint can grow from cutting. Into the wine glass it went.

Within a week, the first roots started appearing. After the second, it’s ready to plant into real soil. Interestingly, the plant is also significantly taller than at the start. At a guess, the new growth is coming from auto-cannibalisation of the lower leaves, which are well submerged and obviously yellowing.

Naturally, my curiosity got the best of me this past weekend – should I reserve a bit of basil from the bunch we’d bought for soup? Sure. Will it grow? We’ll see.