In a matter of hours I’ll be on my way to the Kokanee Campground in Seba Beach! I am mostly packed…I got the beer. So yeah, I guess I am finished packing. Andrew’s post pretty much sums it up – this is gonna be great 🙂
Lots of people are going, so look for some good pictures/video on Monday. Have a great weekend!
Does the title bore you? Interest you? Make you curious? Excellent! You should come out to the first Microsoft sponsored event of the year, taking place at the Dinwoodie Lounge on October 6th. You can find full details and register for the Edmonton event here. If you don’t live in Edmonton, find your event here.
So what will you learn? About game development! Microsoft Academic developer envangelist Anthony Vranic will take you through the steps of building a 3D game from start to finish using C# and Managed DirectX. And you’ll even get to keep the code.
Is that all, you ask? Well…YOU COULD WIN A COPY OF HALO 2 FOR XBOX BEFORE ANYONE ELSE! That’s right, two lucky winners will get a copy of Halo 2. Need I say more?
After I cleaned up and added a few words to my post on Interac Surcharge Insanity, I sent it off to the Gateway for publication. It appeared in today’s issue, and I must say, they did a pretty good job editing. My headshot doesn’t look too bad either, and they even included a photo of an Interac machine!
You can read the published article here. Also, thanks to everyone for your comments on this, both online and offline.
Survivor: Vanuatu starts tomorrow at 6 PM MST, and my dad is running a pool. If you would like to join, either email me or email him. Please let us know ASAP.
Think the show is past it’s prime? Well this year’s outcasts include a 25 year old, blond, pigtailed “sheep farmer” named Dolly who bears a striking resemblance to Britney Spears. I kid you not. You cannot BUY comedy like that! My vote for hottest girl on this show goes to the 21 year old Eliza.
Watched Canada beat Finland 3-2 tonite at the PowerPlant with a bunch of people including Megan, Andrew, Dickson, Kimmi, Felicia, Felix, Alex and Jamie. Even though it was fun enough to see our guys win, it was even better as we celebrated Alex’s birthday!
Good times were had by all except our waitress, who had to clean up 25 shot glasses, two pitches, numerous highball glasses, and a few pints in addition to the spilled water and burned napkins. She really didn’t do that great a job anyway, so don’t waste your time feeling bad for her.
Today at CAB I decided I wanted Chinese food so I went over to the cafeteria place to get some. Grabbed my good old Coke, and headed to the counter to pay using my debit card. What happened next I was not prepared for. I was shocked…they wanted to charge me a 35 cent surcharge for using Interac.
Before I go on, I must say I sat in CAB and griped to Andrew and Megan about the surcharge. I made a fuss, and even grabbed four forks and a stack of napkins to make myself feel like I was getting something for my 35 cents. However, if you are a frequent reader of my blog, you’ll know that I don’t rant without facts. And this post is no different.
Why was I upset about the surcharge? First and foremost, if a method of payment is made available for use, it seems counterproductive to then restrict the use of that method. Why did they invent Interac? Because it is convenient. Now Andrew made the claim that because it is convenient, I am willing to pay a higher price for this extra convenience. This is totally untrue. Any convenience I get from using Interac is instantly negated by the convenience the merchant receives. My use of Interac not only saves them time, but money. The funds go directly into their account, they don’t have to hold cash on hand, and there are no trips to the bank, no deposit slips to fill out, etc. From TD Canada Trust:
An automated terminal provides instant authorization of Interac Direct Payment, Visa and other major credit card transactions. As a merchant, use of an automated terminal allows you to reduce the number of trips you make to the bank, because funds are deposited for you electronically. And you don’t have to spend time filling out deposit summaries. These benefits add up to increased convenience and potentially increased sales.
Why on earth should I pay extra so that they benefit twice? Its ludicrous! But wait! It gets worse. This is from the Interac Association website:
Interac Association does not charge fees to consumers…
A surcharge is a fee charged to cardholders by the Interac Association member responsible for the Automated Banking Machine or the Interac Direct Payment terminal. A merchant cannot surcharge for the use of Interac Direct Payment. The surcharge fee is in addition to any service charges the cardholders may pay their financial institution for using the Interac shared services.
So as you can see from the above quote, merchants cannot charge me a surcharge for using Interac on top of whatever the bank is charging. So if the University wants to charge me a surcharge, I want COLD, HARD, PROOF that they are being charged per transaction by the bank. I haven’t read, seen, or heard anything about the banks raising their rates, and it seems to me that it would have made the news if they did. After all, “more than 34 million banking cards are in circulation among an adult population of 21.8 million. Canadians love their banking cards using them more than 2.4 billion times in 2002. That’s an average of 76 times a second for every hour of every day.”
Charging me for something that saves you money? Ridiculous, and I won’t have it. The war is on.
Well here I am, back in good old Edmonton. Sure is colder than it was in Toronto! Mostly uneventful flight home, which is always a good thing. The security at the Toronto airport was probably the nicest group of security people I have ever encountered at an airport, very nice for a change, even though I still had to undo the belt.
Today was obviously the last day of the Launch Meeting at Microsoft, and we didn’t go quite as long as yesterday. Lots of cool stuff coming up for events on campus – even for you non-programming types! More details to come soon, but I think you’ll definitely want to check it out. We also talked today a little bit about Windows XP Service Pack 2, so like I have been saying, if you haven’t already, or if I haven’t already for you, install it!
Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on theSpoke yesterday as well, I will make sure it gets to the right people so that we can improve the site.
I did end up taking some pictures today, which you can see here. All in all, it was a fun trip and a very interesting weekend!
Finally got the Internet working in the hotel here (and some free time) so decided I’d make a quick post. The flight here was uneventful, which is always good. The only problem was that our bags took about 20 minutes to come out, so by the time I left the terminal, it was 12:30 AM EST. I called the number for the shuttle that had been arranged to pick the SA’s up, and they told me they stopped after midnight – so I had to call a cab.
I know Toronto is huge, but the roads always surprise me. Especially say, the 401, which has 8 lanes for each direction in places – its just nuts! And its not like the roads are empty either, there is so much traffic going in either direction, day and night just about.
My roommate for the trip is Ian, who is the SA in Winnipeg. He could not believe we already had snow in Edmonton…after all, he is from Winterpeg. We started at 8 AM this morning, so I asked Ian to wake me up at 7:30 when he went for breakfast – or else yes Dickson, I’d have slept long past the alarm! So that was like 6 AM Edmonton time that we started the meeting, just harsh. And the same thing tomorrow.
So far, the event has been kinda neat. Different than last year, but thats to be expected when you have three times the number of students involved. We got a really neat theSpoke backpack packed with some goodies, and a nice black leather Microsoft portfolio. The theme for the weekend has been the summer Olympics, so for the ice breaker today we each drew a sport and had to perform it for everyone. I got cycling…needless to say, my performance was anything but!
After the meetings today, we went to a place called Rinx for pizza and some fun (no Megan, we didn’t get to go to the game). Its a neat place with hockey rinks, laser tag, mini golf, and a game called WhirlyBall. Think of a cross between bumper cars, lacrosse, and basketball, and that is exactly what WhirlyBall is. You drive bumper cars and try to fire a small ball into a hole in the back of a basketball net using a lacrosse stick. It was actually kind of cool!
And I probably would have played more WhirlyBall, but Rinx also happened to have a sports bar, so Mike and I went to watch most of the first and the second period of the hockey game. We left around the time the third started, and when we got to the bar back at the hotel, OT was just starting. All I have to say is, Go Tampa Bay Go! And kudos to Luongo, came up big when we really needed him.
Tomorrow is a shorter day for the training, and it should be a little more relaxed, so I’ll post more tomorrow. For now, go check out theSpoke.net. I really, really would like your opinion on the site. If you like it, let me know. If you think it blows goats, I want to know that too (and tell me why). I personally think it has a long way to go, but I want some other opinions. Thanks!
In case you were not aware, I will be in Toronto until Sunday night. I’ll try and make some posts about my adventure to Microsoft, but I know they don’t let visitors on their wireless network, so it all depends on the hotel.
Have a great weekend!
If you care about and follow professional hockey, you probably already know that the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NHL and the NHLPA expires on September 15th. And if the current pace of talks is any indication, we’ll have a lockout – and a year without hockey. However, I think it could have been avoided.
First let me say that I am on the side of the NHL. I think something needs to change in order to lower costs, and it only seems logical to try and reduce your largest expense – player salaries. Yes around 75% of revenues go towards paying hockey players, a staggering amount. And that needs to change. And lets not forget that both the NFL and NBA are exremely successful businesses, and both have salary caps.
On the other hand, I think the owners brought this upon themselves. Why is the average salary now $1.8 million a season? Because the owners felt they need the best players to win a championship, and they were willing to pay whatever it took. History has proven otherwise, however. Carolina Hurricanes. Calgary Flames. New York Rangers. A larger payroll definitely does not mean a greater chance of success.
The players definitely should not get 75% of revenues. But the owners should also have forseen the events taking place now – there is no lack of other leagues that have run into the same problem at some point. I suppose it doesn’t really matter though does it? We’re here now, and we are facing the prospect of no hockey. In the end, the NHL will win and the days of skyrocketing player salaries will be over. I just can’t help but think there could have been a better way to accomplish the same result.
In the meantime, go Roadrunners!
