i@m.fm

Germany, my country of birth. You have come a long way during my life-time. Berlin has finally developed to be the international metropolis I was longing for. So nice to see. But what the heck is happening the last years.

With horror I see the country is making everybody a suspect by default. Now they are even discussing a database of fingerprints for all foreigners (German). Everyone is a threat, everyone is a suspect. I know that some within the country are very aware of those changes and are trying to work against what is happening. Unfortunately with little success.

I would be happy to say that it is only one paranoid Minister of the Interior, who’s gone through attacks himself. Unfortunately this is not the case. During the G8-meeting in Germany, basic human rights disappeared with hesitant, but nevertheless with approval of the highest German court. The German military (by law only permitted to act in order to defend the country) has been used to spy on the people demonstrating against the G8 even with military planes.

This seems to unfortunately still to be largely a sign of our times – whenver you have an ill, pop a pill. Just to make sure you can still function and work for society. You might get everyone else in your office sick as well, but hey

Check out Licensed To Pill, a flash animation about this topic, surprisingly this is one flash animation I like.

So here it finally is – the first part of our story of our trip back from Berlin to
Oakville. A trip that should have taken a total of about 11 hours and
turned into a trip of over 20 hours, wife, 10 month old son and myself
included.

It all started out quite normal – we made our way to
the Tegel airport in Berlin, got in line at the KLM counter. After
standing in the long line for a while someone working there noticed
that we were traveling with an infant, so she helped us getting served
earlier. We said our good-byes to my parents and went through the
security checkpoint, took the bus to the plane and got onto the plane.

The
only small incident here on the way down the stairs is a airport
security employee who rudely rushes us to make room for him on the
stairs, only to go up the stairs again a minute later, since he forgot
his coffee upstairs.

At the scheduled take-off time there was an
announcement that we were still waiting for 10 passengers who apparently
should be at the plane within ten minutes. Another ten minutes passed
and we were told that we were still waiting for those passengers. About
one hour after the scheduled departure time, we were still waiting. So
we were getting nervous about catching our connecting flight in
Amsterdam and asked the flight attendants to find out what was going
on. After 1 1/2 hours the missing ten passengers boarded the flight -
and took their sweet time getting seated.

Now we found out
that there was one passenger too many on board  and it took
another half hour for the crew to find out that the ground crew had
forgotten to check in one child in a family of six.

So two
hours after the scheduled departure time, we finally took off and
arrived in Amsterdam just at the time our plane to Toronto was supposed
to take off. At the end of the flight, they announced all the connecting
flights that passengers would make, unfortunately ours was not one of
them. So we were asked to go to a specific transfer desk once we
arrived in the terminal building.

So because a pilot decided to wait 2 hours for 10 people about 40-50 other people missed their
connecting flights. I do realize that probably the ground crew had to
told the pilot it would only be “10 minutes”, but after a while it
might have made more sense to actually unload the luggage of those 10
passengers and just take off without them – after all there is a flight
between Berlin and Amsterdam every couple of hours.

So we arrive
to a long lineup at the transfer desk (they had not been able to
provide us with one of those little carts to transport us, since at Amsterdam
airport this service is reserved for disabled and elderly people,
people traveling with infants do not quality). Again we ask someone if
they could serve us quicker because we are traveling with an infant,
again the request gets granted.

We find out that they had
already booked us on a flight via Boston leaving in 30 minutes (which
we would have never made, had we properly waited in line and even
without that it was close, considering the size of this airport). I told
them I would prefer not to travel via the US (due to the additional
passport controls) and suggested re booking us for the KLM flight for
the next day and putting us up in a hotel for the night (my wife was
overtired since she had just gotten over a nasty stomach flu and had
not slept very well), since I figured a restful night would be best for
all of us. Well, it turns out that the flight for the next days were
booked solid, apparently in all classes. So they said they could put us
on standby on a flight via Montreal for the next day, and we would be
rather likely to get onto that flight.

Well when they handed us
our new tickets after a total of about 40 minutes they told us to better get moving, as
they had booked us on standby for a flight to Montreal leaving in 30
minutes. The gate agents had been told to expect us.

So
we arrive at the gate, pass the initial passport check and then stand
in front of the check-in agents (a man and a woman) who don’t even
acknowledge us. After a while the woman explain to us, that they are
getting our seats ready on the plane, since those seats are apparently
not normally deemed fit enough to seat passengers, since they are
“dirty” and they were placing blankets over them. I said “You must be
kidding me?” and my wife burst into tears, since she was completely
burned out after our run to the gate and this was just too much for her.

So the gate agent says to
her co-worker in Dutch “They are getting those seats on this plane, and
they are not even grateful that we are letting them get on this
flight”. So when my wife (who knows Dutch) calls them out on what they
just said, the male check-in agent starts saying that my
wife does not know Dutch at all and that’s not what his colleague said and
really, we should be rushing to the plane, otherwise they would take off
without us. There is no explanation or excuse for such a rude behaviour
- even if you consider that the check-in agents might not have know it
was KLM’s fault that we did not make it onto our original flight.

Anyways,
we move on to security, where my wife mentions the rude check in agents.
One of the ladies at the security checkpoint says to her: “You know m’am, it’s 50/50.
If you are rude to us, we can be rude to you”. While we were upset, we
were at no point rude to anyone.

So we get to the door of the
plane and the purser tries to locate our seats for us (no seats were
marked on the boarding passes). In the meantime, the “friendly” male
check-in gets to the door of the plane and says that they are not going
to be able to seat us together, which prompted my wife to tears again,
since she was panicking that we would not be able to jointly take care
of our infant son. The purser asked us to wait for a second and after a couple
of minutes they had freed two connecting seats in the middle aisle for
us. Still no bassinet for the little one, but at least we were seated
together.

The flight was pretty much un-eventful and we arrived
in Montreal without a problem. Once we got off of the plane, we were
asked to take a seat on one of the little carts and they drove us (and
another woman who was traveling with an infant) to the immigration
area, wonder why they would not do this in Amsterdam. We cleared immigration quickly and went on to wait for our
luggage. Well, we already figured that the luggage might not have made
it there, but the wait gave us a little well needed break.

So
when all the luggage (but ours) had come out, we went to the KLM counter, where we
were told that our luggage was scheduled to be sent on the direct
flight from Amsterdam to Toronto the following day. So upon our arrival
in Toronto, we should be contacting the Air Canada luggage service desk
(since our last flight from Montreal to Toronto was on Air Canada), and
leave our address with them so they could deliver our luggage the day
it arrived.

Next we cleared customs (which was easy, after all
our luggage was not with us), and went to the Air Canada counter. It
was just after 6pm at this time, and the KLM staff in Amsterdam had
booked us on a 9pm flight. So in order to get us home as quickly as
possible, the gate agent check it to a 7pm flight, so off through the
security check and to the gate we went. Once on the plane, I got two
cups of water from the flight attendants as we were completely
dehydrated by this time. On this flight also our little guy started
showing signs of being overtired, as he had only slept about two hours
on the trip so far – so he was getting cranky.

In Toronto we found out that we could file our luggage claims over the phone (as there was a long line-up at that baggage service desk), so we went to the taxi stand as quickly as possible, as we wanted to get home.

(to be continued in part 2)

The recent news about a lost harddrive for CIBC’s brokerage company and the theft of data from TJX’s computer systems (winners/homesense) just shows a glimpse of what is going to be common place crime in the future. Most likely it is already a lot more common place than we think, considering that there are probably many other companies that have experienced data theft but have decided not to talk about it.

So do we really trust companies to keep our data safe, when they say to us: “We are not telling you how we are storing the data and what we are doing with it, just trust us: We keep it safe.” Security by obscurity is not a real way to ensure privacy.

Be selective about what data you share with home – why does Blinds To Go for example need your phone number in order to provide you a quote? And maybe we should even go back to using more cash to pay for what we buy – it also makes our purchases less trackable.

A short affair with Vonage leads me to cancel my account before my telephone number is even transferred to them. I guess I should have done some research in advance (but this info is hard to find on their site):

You cannot use a Softphone with a regular Vonage account. It turns out that you need to add a seperate softphone number to your account, at an additional $12.99 per month. There go all the savings. I have not found an option that allows you to make your main line a softphone.

One of my main points in transferring one of my numbers to Vonage would have been the ability to access it from my laptop from anywhere. Something that I consider standard for a Voip-Service, not an additional feature.

[update]: I’ve decided to keep this line with Vonage (for now), mainly because it seemed I might be running a risk of losing my number if I canceled so close to the end of the trial period. I do think that the quality of the line is very good. I have also been looking at Inter.Net’s voip service, which actually does allow you to use a softphone. However it took them too long to answer my email asking about the features and about transferability of my number. I’ll keep them in mind though, as it appears that their offer is a little cheaper too.

We received a letter from the MP for Halton, Garth Turner, P.C. Thank you, but you could have saved the paper and the postage. In any case, this gave me the inspiration to post about something I’ve been meaning to comment on before, so here’s a quote from the letter:

(I am not even going to mention the amazing Universal Childcare Benefit and the huuuuuge GST cut he mentions in the beginning of the letter.)

Ok, first of all, the math seems a little off to me. It’s a tax rebate, so you have to wait until the next year to get it, plus it only came into existence in mid-2006. But OK, let’s keep that aside. Let’s do the math:

I pay $214 dollars a month for my GO train pass. That’s $2568 Dollars per year. WOW, that is expensive. The tax rebate appears to be 15.25% (please correct me if I got that wrong). So that would $391.62 as a rebate. Two months cost $428, so I am $36.38 short from “riding free for two months a year”.

Interestingly enough, the tax rebate only applies to monthly passes. And while I did not find any statistics, from my personal experience I always see many riders using 10-ride passes on the GO train. Some of them work part time, some of them drive in from time to time, in some months (vacation etc) the monthly pass is more expensive and some cannot afford the huge upfront expense of a monthly pass. Now the tax rebate should of course especially help the latter, but they are not eligible.

And yes, all of this just to save our “irreplaceable environment”. I know that the conservatives are very concerned about our environment. After all they quietly canceled some of the retro-fitting rebates for making houses more energy efficient before putting their “new and improved” programs in place.

While we are talking about the environment and Kyoto comes to mind: How the Liberals thought TV ads could convince everyone to save enough energy to fulfill the commitments in the international agreement we signed. Right, because we just need to watch an ad on TV in order to be convinced to cut our energy consumption. How about asking the big cooperations to curb their pollution a little as well?

Talking about pollution, politics and energy, I cannot afford to forget the mind-boggling ads of the Canadian Nuclear Association. Yes, Nuclear Energy is an “important part of Canada’s Energy Mix“. An important part that IMHO we should phase out ASAP. But hey, while we had plans all along to get rid of the dirty coal (which could have been a lot cleaner with the proper filters), the politicians just forgot(?) to make arrangements on how to replace the missing energy let alone considering any increased energy needs.

So Nuclear Energy is “clean – reliable – affordable“. Actually the TV ad was without the word “clean” for a while, so I assumed someone had ordered them to stop this message. But no, it’s back in the ad. So please explain to me how something that leaves waste that radiates it’s surroundings for centuries to come, could possibly considered “clean“? I don’t get it.

Since I once more received unsolicited addressed advertising from my “friends” at Blinds to Go (despite their reassurance that I had been removed from their mailing list), I was reminded of a reader comment that I had not yet posted.

Not really a big surprise (actually they still advertise this guarantee today). Why it is going to be very hard to find an exact match? Because they apparently have their own factory. They do not sell any other manufacturers.

PS: I actually wonder why they are called Blinds To Go when you have to order the blinds in most cases and cannot take them home with you right away.

James is going on a Feed Diet (WarpJam). A great idea. He started out by reducing the amount of feeds he subscribes to to 15 and then added a couple of new blogs that he had not been reading before in order to broaden his mind.

I recently started using Google Reader, and I do notice that I barely make it through the new articles in a day. So a Feed Diet might indeed be what the Doctor ordered, after all I also see quite a bit of redundant information in my feeds.

By the way I just meet with James the other night, and you should keep an eye on his company Names@Work. They are up to no good many good things.

Now this is why I love the Internet, and I am very impressed by who seems to have now embraced the age of the participation web: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has set up a Wiki on JotSpot for their The Peer to Patent Project. Maybe this is the first step in the much needed review of our patent laws, as the project is supposed to enable Community Peer reviews of Patents.

Apparently British scientists have created a made-to-order embryo that does not inherit a possibly cancer causing gene: