Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

Last night I took my son to a fast food place called The Pita Pit on Northfield Drive in Waterloo, Canada. It's close to our house so we go there often for a bite to eat. I also brought my filled loyalty card - you buy 12 Pitas and you get a free one.

When I went to use the card the cashier told me that the manager told them not to take the cards anymore. She told me they were old, though mine was started in May of this year. When I asked to speak to the manager they told me she wasn't in. They also told me not to bother; she always won arguments so I wasn't going to get anywhere.

This company made me a promise, a contract if you will. I purchase 12 pitas and I get a free one. Then they unilaterally, with no notice, breached that contract. And what's more, they tell me essentially that I the customer am wrong, so don't even bother arguing the point.

I don't have time for places like that. There are plenty of restaurants, and I've lost my taste for places that don't care about their customers, like The Pita Pit.

Now that the Canadian dollar is at parity with the US dollar, Canadians have the luxury of shopping across the border where they find much lower prices for the same goods, and a much wider selection. This has led to exhortations from Canadian retailers that people should be shopping at home rather than south of the border.

Prices in Canada have always been substantially higher than those in the US even without the additional 14% tax yet most Canadians weren't aware of how much they were being overcharged, except in the case of bookstores where both prices are actually printed on the cover.

I do most of my shopping in the US, yet it isn't the lower prices that attract me. It's two simple numbers - 34 and 29.

I'm on the shorter side in height at 5'7", and I wear jeans with a 34" waist and a 29" length - 34x29 as the jeans would be labelled. But there is nowhere in Canada where I can buy those jeans. 34x30 is the closest I can get, and they are just too long. As fas as I know the average height in Canada is not more that the average height in the US, so why are people my height discriminated against?

Fortunately I was able to purchase them online. I got two pair in my size for less than I would have paid for one pair in Canada if I could have found them, even after paying a ridiculous 30% in taxes.

It isn't just that. Canada is dominated by a few large retail corporations and the product selection is very limited and similar from store to store. For example, there are no official retailers of Sperry TopSider shoes. So Canadians have much less selection than their American neighbors. And for what they do have, the prices are much higher. In the case of the Sperry TopSiders that I wear, and purchased for $50 at Nordstroms, the best deal I've seen in Canada was at a generic "factory outlet" shoe store for $90.

So given substantially lower prices, vastly better selection, and lower taxes, what incentive is there to shop in Canada? And in my case, what if it isn't even possible to purchase what you need?

It's one o'clock on Tuesday morning and I notice an ad on Facebook - Air Canada is offering unlimited travel for $499. So I hop on over to the Air Canada website to check it out.

There is indeed an item on the main page offering unlimited travel for the price of a single ticket but there is no other information; just a Buy Now link. So I click it and I wait. And I wait. And I wait.

Fully five minutes later I click refresh, only to receive the Technical Assistance message you see here. Clicking on the Technical Assistance link just takes me to a page that tells me that I can phone Air Canada - the thing I was trying to avoid in the first place.

There doesn't seem to be anyplace else to find information about this offer either, so I really have no idea what this offer entails. Air Canada just blew off a customer ready to buy two of these tickets.And if they think I'm going to bother sitting on hold waiting for customer service they're wrong.

After all, I do have a choice in air travel.

So here's a recommendation for the future if anyone at Air Canada is listening. Before you force me into your ecommerce system, give me the information I need to make an informed decision. Then I'm more likely to forgive you and come back later.

A year ago tonight my wife and I had dinner at Bloomingdales on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan after a pleasant day of shopping, and no we did not start at 5 am.

Circumstances kept us from being there this year, but we miss our friends and we'll certainly be there for Thanksgiving next year, if not sooner.

I just got a message on Skype from someone named System Alert:

WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION

=============================

ATTENTION ! Security Center has detected malware on your computer !

But I got this message on my Mac. These folks might want to invest a few minutes to actually do a platform check so they don't come across as obvious spam.

Is this how EBay intends to monetize Skype?

Facebook has been painfully slow over the past couple of days. The picture below is what I actually saw when I went to my Facebook homepage today.

This is the kind of problem that fast success brings - scaling problems. And pain for your average user.

When you are writing Facebook applications and a single Facebook API call is taking at least 250 milliseconds, then this is a huge problem.

Of course I notice that the ad is still served up just fine even if the page is otherwise useless.

I don't want my ducts cleaned thanks. Yet I get calls all the time offering me some special on having my ducts cleaned.

But today was a first. A gentleman with a very heavy Indian accent called around dinner time. He told me that his name was Gerald Jones, and that he was calling on behalf of Blackwell Duct Cleaning, and they would be in my area.

I guess that these people can't be bothered to call me themselves, but if they think that I'm dumb enough to believe that the man from the Indian call center is named Gerald Jones, then they've got another thing coming.

Though either way my answer will still be no.

When I moved to Waterloo, Canada a while ago the city was considering building new branch libraries and increasing the size of the main branch of the Waterloo Public Library. At the time I thought that RIM Park, on the east edge of the city, was a perfect place for a library. The head librarian explained it wasn't a good site because at the edge of the city it did not have an effective radius of customers to serve; the branch needed to be closer to the center of the city.

Apparently that no longer matters because today's paper says that RIM Park is now the favoured site for a new library branch (Note: link may be broken by the time you read this), only about four years after I suggested the same thing:

But in a report to the city, the library said the RIM Park location was more convenient and more people would likely support building a library next to a recreation facility, than near a school.

The park and the school are right next to each other at the absolutely most distant corner of the city. I'm not even sure that there is a bus route there, so driving is likely the only option except for the closest houses. There is nothing convenient about either location.

Now at the same time a large Canadian supermarket chain, Loblaw, is planning to close a Zehrs store at the more centrally located Conestoga Mall in order to open a new superstore. Nobody wants this store but it will likely happen anyway, and the Zehrs will sit empty. Given the timeframes involved, why doesn't the library consider the possibility of locating in the soon-to-be former Zehrs store?

Apart from a couple of items, I'm currently doing a little fasting - newsfasting actually.

I'm a news junkie, always needing to know what's happening. But that takes time, and sometimes I just have other things to do. So I decided to take a break for a few days.

I still glance lightly at the morning paper, but a few days without newsfeeds hasn't killed me.

The Conservative government has decided not to seek clemency in the case of a Canadian citizen who is now on death row in the United States, as a result of killing two people, confessing to the crime, and being convicted. This has predictably thrown Canada into an uproar. Yet I can think of no clearer statement than the killer's own remarks:

"The whole idea in Canada has been to try and rehabilitate prisoners if possible," Smith said in a prison meeting room.

"Why shouldn't I have the opportunity, just because I came down to the United States and killed somebody? What difference does it make? If anybody else deserves an opportunity, then I should as well--I'ma Canadian citizen."

[...]

After his arrest in Wyoming three weeks later, Smith initially confessed that he had committed the murders to see "what it was like" to kill. He also asked a judge to give him the death penalty.

But he later changed his mind, and Smith's lawyers have fought for decades -- with the help of the Canadian government until last week's policy reversal -- to have their client's death sentence overturned.

The emphasis is mine, but I couldn't possibly add anything else to that.

I'm a voracious reader, and an equally voracious learner. In the past few weeks alone I've learned a several new computer languages, APIs, and technologies.

Humans need constant stimulation in order to survive. I feel that if I haven't learned at least one thing each day, then I just haven't been successful.

Set a personal goal to learn at least one new thing each day.

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch liveblogged Facebook's advertising announcement. This final thought caught my attention:

Beacon Partners (Facebook advertising buttons that exist on other sites and when clicked are reflected in members’ feeds as a brand endorsements—how many of these brands would you bother to explicitly endorse to your Facebook friends, opr even identify with?):

This is followed by a list of partners, few of whom I would have any interest in whatsoever. It made me think though, who would I endorse?

Now I might recommend a particular movie, but I can guarantee that I will never endorse the Sony Pictures corporation. I'm an Apple user and I would certainly endorse them, but they aren't on the list. And my "trusted friends" already know how I feel about Apple, believe me.

So who or what would you endorse? And why?

The thought that Facebook friends will be endorsing things doesn't necessarily rate those things higher on my list of things to buy. I don't need a beacon to tell me what's good. My trusted friends tell me in numerous other ways what they endorse - or ever better - what they actually use. Now that's a recommendation.

I don't need to be advertised to more than I already am. But feel free to show me what has worked well for you. Not just what you think I need.

Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. And glory lasts forever.

Keanu Reeves in The Replacements

Professor Michael Geist notes that the Quebec recording industry, among others, wants Canadian content prioritized on the internet:

Second, it would like the CRTC to require ISPs to prioritize Canadian content, noting that if ISPs prioritize content for commercial purposes (ie. non-net neutrality) then they can be required to do something similar to advance Canadian culture. ADISQ is not alone on this one - a growing number of cultural groups want the CRTC to re-examine the new media exception and to consider rules that bring cancon-like requirements to the Internet.

Living in Canada, I am forced to listen to a certain percentage of Canadian music on the radio, which means that certain Canadian songs are played over and over to meet that quota.

Any television show that is simulcast on a Canadian network is automatically switched to on the cable network, meaning that I am forced to watch Canadian commercials - even during the SuperBowl.

I can only buy satellite service from a Canadian company. It is illegal to subscribe to DirecTV.

All television stations in Canada must be approved by the CRTC. The seemingly infinite selection of digital cable channels end up showing a lot of 20 year old Canadian television series. I pay for a movie channel that broadcasts a huge percentage of bad Canadian movies.

I am forced on my cable system to pay for channels like APTV - the Aboriginal People's Television Network. Fortunately, they actually occasionally have good movies which have little to do with aboriginal people.

My tax dollars also subsidize all of this largesse, including an entire network called the CBC. Though the odd good show like Corner Gas does occasionally appear.

If content is good it will survive. If not, then it shouldn't be rammed down people's throats.

So as a beaten down and ignored consumer I beg you, leave my internet alone.

Almost four years ago I made this comment about social search:

I may know and trust lots of people, but I'm not sure that my searches will be improved by understanding what they are searching for. Having working previously for a search technology company, I consider myself and expert searcher, often finding detailed information in one or two searches. I might therefore find my searching less effective if matched with even similar searches done by my friends.

And almost four years later, Mathew Ingram shares pretty much the same sentiment:

I can see that if you were searching for companionship, for example, you might want to know that others were searching terms like “lonely” or “desperate for a relationship” or whatever your search might be. But how many searches would actually benefit from having a social component? Would you want to know that others were looking for the definition of “amanuensis” or the location of a good hardware store? I’m not convinced that really makes any sense.

A search is a unique occurrence. Unless my friends are searching for exactly the same thing then they won't be of any help to me. So what are the chances of that happening?

Now there is a particular situation I can see working. If I am searching for something and can connect my search, not with friends but with experts in the field, then my search could become focused much closer to what I am looking for. For example, if I am searching for a particular infectious disease and my searches are correlated with those of reseachers at the CDC, then I am likelier to get exactly what I am looking for.

But it isn't that likely that my friends will be looking for that same thing.

The United Nations is very concerned about climate change, especially how it affects tourism:

“The entire tourism product will be affected,” said Geoffrey Lipman, assistant secretary general of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, “Every destination has a climate-related component.”

Speaking by telephone from the meeting, Mr. Lipman said that if the climate was going to change, “which we know it will, we’d all better adapt.”

A changing climate is the only certainty, he said. What kind of change and how it will affect a nation’s tourism industry will depend on where you are and what you offer. Indeed, climate change in some places may actually provide opportunities.

I'm not sure which I find more amazing; that someone from the United Nations is actually saying that we should adapt to climate change rather than create some new tax or bureaucracy, or that the United Nations actually has a World Tourism Organization.

Perhaps the funniest line though is this one:

At the end of the Davos conference, the World Tourism Organization advised travelers to take the climate into account and “where possible to reduce their carbon footprint.”

This from the organization that holds conferences attended by thousands in places like Davos. Conservation should really start at home, shouldn't it?