I've been using Twitter for a long time now, and the one universal constant in that time period has been the flakiness of the Twitter service. Even today, at least a year after some of these problems started cropping up, you still get the occasional "Fail Whale" when the servers can't keep up. Some of the other random problems I've witnessed lately are: disappearing avatars the inability to upload a new avatar missing background images on profiles flaky service (i.e. the Fail Whale) messages that appear 30 - 60 minutes after they were tweeted Obviously running a service that can handle ...

I'm just heading out the door to take my car in to get looked at. There's nothing wrong mechanically with it, but Mazda called me out of the blue last week and asked me to swing by so they can look at my stereo. Apparently they might have put in the wrong one when I had it replaced about a month ago (which is strange, because it works and fits fine). I suspect there's some recall they aren't telling me about. But anyways, they are going to replace the CD player I imagine, and they also offered to detail my car for me in exchange for the hassle. It's supposed to be a nice sunny day out in Vancouver ...

Oh, is that right? You mean making crappy vehicles for years and years, and then basically ignoring the whole gas problem might put your company in jeopardy? I guess Ford should have turned the suck-knob down a few notches over the last few years, because apparently they just posted their worst quarter ever. Old Ford Truck, Photo By Steven Eret On Flickr That's not to say I don't have friends with Ford vehicles, and the stuff they have seem fairly decent. But compared to vehicles imported from Japan or Europe, North American cars are just built to lower standards. American auto companies have ...

I quickly stopped by Future Shop on my way home tonight and picked up a brand new power supply for my server at home. They had a really nice (that is, if power supplies can be described as such) $150 one that was on sale for $75, so I went with that. The good news is that my old power supply was basically taxed in terms of connectors, and it would have been impossible to add anything else to it. This new one has an extra 300W of headroom on it, and also 3 more SATA connectors. To be honest, I wasn't even really sure it was the power supply, but it seemed like a pretty reasonable guess. The good ...

Most of us have been waiting patiently for Rogers to finally release their data rates for the iPhone 3G that is coming to Canada on July 11th. The good news is that the wait is finally over -- Rogers just released full information about their plans. Unfortunately, Rogers completely missed the boat on this one. They had the chance to bring Canada to the forefront of the wireless world, but instead felt compelled to keep us locked up in our draconian past. There are no unlimited data rates for the new plans, and anything approaching 1GB will cost you $100 or more per month (plus, I'm sure, the 9/11 ...

My mom used to always say that somethings in life seem to happen for a reason. Surprisingly, she's been right most of my life, and the strangest things sometimes happen to me that end up pushing me down a path that turns out to be a good one. While camping this weekend, my Samsung A880 phone went into a spiral of death, and started complaining about not being able to find service. I figured that I maybe forgot to pay my bill or something stupid, and called up Bell Mobility yesterday. After spending two days on the phone with them, they are all of the opinion that my phone has just gone the way ...

Please, for the love of god, stop making movies. Whatever magic you used to bring to the table evaporated a long time ago. As you can tell, I saw the new Indiana Jones movie on the weekend. Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy it, and found myself looking at my cell phone from time to time to see how much more I had to endure. First, you don't need CGI gophers to propagate the plot. The first time the camera swung by and I saw them, I almost groaned out loud, seeing the obvious resemblance to the little furry Ewoks that stunk up the screen during Episode VI of Star Wars. And to add insult to ...

Ever since I was about 18 years of age, I have had a credit card. The main reason, at least at first, was simply to build up a credit rating in case I ever needed a loan (which I ended up requiring when I went to university). Nowadays, I use my visa primarily for work expenses, since I tend to do a lot of traveling with my job. To that end, I probably spend close to $30,000 on my visa a year, a good portion of which comes from plane rides and hotel rooms when I'm on the road. I have no idea what my credit limit is on my visa, but last time I checked (which was a few years ago), there was enough ...

Tonight was a jam packed night. I left work around 7pm, and then headed down Granville Street, frantically looking for something to eat. I actually walked into Wings, but it was completely full. So eventually I settled on my old-faithful nacho-haven, the Two Parrots. They had a 35 cent wing special on, so I filled up with that. Eventually I ended up at some Spanish place (coincidentally, it's only one block from my place, and I had never been there) to celebrate Raul's graduation from UBC with his Ph.D. (congrats dude, well, deserved). Good times. As some of you know, this weekend is New Music ...

My dryer at home basically stopped working a few weeks ago, so I've been rotating ever-so-slowly through my wardrobe. My landlord was going to come by and take a look at it, but I don't think he's been feeling very well lately. So anyways, considering I'm out of clean clothes and I'm out of clean sheets, I decided to take care of it today. So I'm working from home, waiting for a repair guy to come by and fix it up. While I'm at it, I'm going to rant about people who play the lottery. I got no problem that you want to play 6-49 all day, but please make some decisions before you get to the counter. ...

Here comes another rant: As most of you know, back in November I was in the hospital with pneumonia. While there, I picked up a hospital acquired infection known as c. diff. It's unfortunately rather common these days mainly due to the lack of cleanliness in hospitals (and also due to the abuse of broad-spectrum anti-biotics in hospitals). But without a doubt, it's a serious infection, and is responsible for many deaths. The superbug the media focuses on is MRSA, but in terms of fatalities, c. diff kills about twice as many people. Just last month it claimed the life of a mother who went to the ...

I live in this weird apartment complex with a bunch of dictators who seem to enjoy flexing their muscles and causing trouble every few weeks. The entire building is managed by some local company, and there's a strata council which presumably some of the people in the building are part of. The thing is, our building isn't very ship-shape: the elevators haven't been working for nearly two years now, the security guards spend more time collecting bottles from the recycling area than they do securing the building, and there's always someone giving you flack for something. The one thing I hate are ...

Yes, they are here -- my Moo cards finally arrived in the mail today. I officially ordered them exactly one month ago, so it took a full four weeks to get here. Looking at the packaging, it looks like they went from London, UK to Germany, and then finally over here to Canada. Considering that they state they all shipping is done with First Class airmail, I'm pretty surprised that it not only takes this long to get here, but also that there isn't some sort of tracking number. In fact, there are no markings on the packaging at all to indicate when it finally did ship from London, which seems a bit ...

Yesterday Apple released their long-waited for SDK for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. What this means is that if you're interested in developing applications for the iPhone, you can simply download the SDK and get cracking. That is, unless you live in Canada. That's right, Steve Jobs has limited real development to people with valid US addresses. And even then, it's an application process that costs a minimum of $99 to be a part of. I realize Canada is a really small demographic compared to the United States, but we're not *that* small, and there really are some bright people up here. I had ...

I eat subway pretty much an average of one time per day. In the little food court where I work it is the lesser of many evils, including A & W, some Pizza place and a greasy chinese food place. For the most part, I always order a little wrap, either filled with chicken or like this morning filled with ham and egg. It's not a hard thing to make really. You take some egg, put it in a wrap, but some ham and cheese on it and call it a sandwich. However, it doesn't matter how many times I order a wrap, EVERY SINGLE TIME I DO it's like watching some huge elaborate machine grind to a freaking halt. ...

This guy just did a huge Apple comparison with the new Air notebook computer, both with and without the solid state add-on drive. The verdict? The Air in general is slower than both the Macbook Pro and the Macbook, and the battery life is only average. Photo by John Biehler The writer was optimistic that the solid state drive would be a good investment. Unfortunately though, it provided rather lackluster performance, and hardly increased battery life at all. I've had my own Macbook Pro for a long time, and most of my friends have Macbook's. I'm purposefully holding off the Air because it looks ...

Lately I've been noticing a ton of problems over in Facebook land. First of all, alot of the searches seem to return inconsistent results. Sometimes certain friends will appear, and another times they don't. It seems to be entirely random, but it's kind of a pain in the ass once you cross over a 100 friends or more. Local gastown-walking-guru Rod Bruno has also had his account randomly deleted several times now, with no apparent explanation. Also, from time to time when I try to login I get the "your user account is down for maintenance" message, and then told to try again later. Maybe ...

I currently have a package en-route to Toronto, and have been trying to locate where it is. I sent it priority courier with Canada Post, since that was the simplest option. Surprisingly, their "real-time" tracking number isn't real-time at all, and basically has a 24 hour lag to it. So in the case of an over-night delivery (which I paid extra for), nobody will be able to locate the package until a day after it should have been delivered. I just got off the phone from a lady at Canada Post, and her questions were the real-world equilalent of "is your computer on?" type tech ...

Well, I drank a bit too much wine last night, and I'm a tad hungover. So, to celebrate, here are a few fun photos. Thanks to Christie for the first one: You Fail And Rebecca for the second one here. Both of these make me laugh. ...

So last night I headed down to the Alibi room for Keri's 29th birthday party. I got the official invite via a myspace bulletin a while ago, and slotted it into my calender. The piece I apparently forgot I guess was the "RSVP via Email" thing at the bottom. So tonight, I got all dolled up, and headed down there for 10pm. Only problem was nobody else was there.. So, I got myself a drink, and waited. After an hour I realized there were a few holes in my original plan.. Unfortunatley, my cell phone was recently fixed, and I don't have many numbers in there yet, so I had no way to contact ...