I’ve been talking with a few landlords over the past few weeks and they have all told me that this year, the phones are ringing less and people are taking their time in choosing.

My current landlord, who owns two other apartments, told me his phone barely rings at all for the 2 places he has for rent. And when they do arrive to visit, they say they like it, but will think about it.

He has the same apartments for rent last year and he claims the phone wrang off the hook. People were willing to sign right away. Some putting considerable pressure on my landlord to sign right then and there.

What he has also noticed is that the amount of scams has increased considerably.. The favorite of course being someone from Russia claiming to be moving to Canada. They send over first month’s rent but it’s a cheque for $10,000 and promptly claim they made a mistake and ‘would you please return the rest’… Of course the cheque then bounces.

If you are looking for an apartment for July 1, have you noticed that there is more choice and that you have more time in choosing ?

   Recent story in The Globe and Mail regarding the throttling of P2P traffic as well as recent discussions on various forums, have determined that Bell Canada is now throttling all P2P traffic. Not just theirs, that is on Sympatico, but anyone who happens to be a client of Bell including independent 3rd party ISP’s such as TekSavvy.

I’m surprised, but not really. The Achilles heel  of all of these DSL outfits was that the last mile is Bell Canada. And Bell Canada being what they are, have a tendency to do things the way a monopoly feels it should. I am proud to say that for the past two years, not one Bell bill enters my home. I am completely free of them. I’ve been scorned once too often by that company and therefore have sworn them off.

This latest move by them only reinforces this idea.

So the battle by all these 3rd party ISP’s now begins. Bring in the lawyers, the government lobbying and everything that goes with it.

It’s a shame but it’s a perfect example of why we need Net Neutrality in Canada.

As some of you have no doubt read, Videotron is releasing their Uber Fast Ultra High Speed 2000 Plus internet service package.

Speeds are reported to max out at 50mbps. But as others have mentioned this comes with a 50gb download limit per month. After which, there is a penalty fee to pay.

Anyone who has a relatively fast connection to the web knows that the bottleneck isn’t from your house to the provider. It’s elsewhere. Even with just their Super Ultra Fast package it’s difficult to max out the pipe coming into your house.

So what’s the bleeding point ? If there was no cap, you could become a local reseller and just offer up Wifi to your neighbours. But really, I don’t get it.

Do you ?

More and more I find that cable and tv suppliers are becoming less and less relevant. At least in my life. I dumped cable tv over a year ago. We have a TV that we bought at Crappy Tire and a DVD player that my girlfriend bought from Jean Coutu.. It serves us very well. She rents Sex in the City and I buy European Bike racing DVD’s from the states.

My original plan was to get an unlimited connection, nice and fast, and download TV shows. Bah. Never bothered. Too much work for 60 minutes of blah. I don’t miss TV and in all honesty, when this contract with Videotron runs out, I’m going back to Teksavvy with no contract and dropping my monthly internet fees.

It seems unlimited data plans are coming to Canada with Rogers. According to the article, the changes could come as early as February 5th. That’s not when the iPhone will be sold in Canada, but it’s good news for people who already have one and want to browse without having to look for a wifi hotspot to avoid astronomical charges.

Tivo is coming to Canada.

Except in Quebec.

sigh

Bell is offering full data on your cell phone for 7 bucks a month.

Whoa. I nearly fainted there. I figured it would take the arrival of another carrier to bring down data prices in this country. But there it is.

Canada can now finally crawl out of the stone ages in terms of data pricing and just in time for the iPhone too.

The other carriers will have to respond quickly. I believe is Telus has something similar and Rogers, well Rogers is hoping the rest of us aren’t noticing.

Canada’s finance minister bought himself a little prop yesterday: A Harry Potter Book The idea was to show how we as Canadians are paying too much when the exchange factor is taken into account.

With the Canadian dollar now higher then the American, we as Canadians are wondering what gives? Why are goods so much more expensive here then down there ?

Of course if you ask retailers, they will tell you that it’s the distributors. If you ask the distributors, they’ll tell you it’s the manufacturers if you ask them, they’ll say it’s their suppliers… And the game of Whack A Mole continues.

It’s a bit like trying to figure out why the price of gas is the same all over town.. You’re never going to find out.

I’ll tell you what the problem is, the problem is that we Canadians are stupid. We continue to buy all our goods here and complain about the pricing.

There is a company called Freeport Forwarding which is just over the US border that will accept all your packages. You purchase your goods in the US via the Web (including companies like Amazon.com which refuses to sell to Canada for some goods) and have it shipped to Freeport Fowarding and they will accept your goods (details on the website). One afternoon, you drive down, pick up your box, declare it at the border and voila. Instant savings.

A coworker does this regularly and figures he saved 50% on the recent purchase of snow tires, including tax and shipping.

Not too shabby. I’ve been ordering from the states via the Web now for a while but the kicker has always been the time that it takes to clear Canada Customs. It’s like a black hole! It goes in and one day, sometimes a week or two later, it comes out with taxes and service charge added.

This new option would definitely speed things up as you would clear your own packages..

So there are options to having to pay large Canadian price tags.

From yesterday’s Montreal Gazette:

If the city says it is coming to your street to beautify it - you know what to do. Organize your neighbours in an all-night vigil, armed with shotguns. Hire security forces, then set up a street blockade to keep the city out. It is not coming to help you - it is coming to bury you.

From today’s Montreal Gazette:

Engineers, firefighters and city officials were at a loss today to explain how a seven-metre-long fissure opened in the city’s underground.

Call me cynical, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that the city cares more about beautification projects, cleanliness campaigns, and jaywalking crackdowns than its goddamn infrastructure. Morons…

A final farewell to the Spectrum, which, despite an enthusiastic petition, will close its doors tonight to make way for an office tower and big-box electronics retailer. Years from now, a new generation of Montrealers will fondly recall evenings spent shopping for iPods and memory cards under the magical glare of fluorescent lights, in a space that will surely have contributed as much to the cultural life of their city as the Spectrum ever did. In the meantime, the Gazette has published this obituary for the concert hall, which features a bunch of old geezers waxing nostalgic about something called “live music.” Luckily, progress will march on without them.