Did you get one of these? It’s a flyer, included with your phone bill explaining that, as of September 8, the rest of BC (and Alberta) is switching to ten digit dialing:
This was actually news to me–I thought the whole province had already made the move. Apparently not. That’s kind of amusing, actually, because I’ve been dialing ten digits in Victoria since I got there. I guess I could have enjoyed a final six months of seven digits. Think of the energy I could have saved.
In any case, I thought it was odd and a little wasteful that they send these to every phone bill recipient in the province. Surely the vast majority of people living in the Lower Mainland, already accustomed to the ten numbers, would:
Out of habit, dial ten numbers, wherever they happened to be in the province.
Learn about the change through other means. I imagine the (worryingly named) Telecommunications Alliance is saturating marketing channels with the news
There’s about 4.1 million people living in the province, and 2.5 million of them are already dialing ten digits. Did the aforementioned Alliance really need to send printed matter to the latter group? Assuming 2.3 people per household, and that most of them have phones and still received paper bills, that’s probably a million pieces of paper, isn’t it? That’s not to mention the resources required to assemble, print and distribute just that one piece of mail.
I guess I’m being rather whingy, but it seemed like a small (or not so small) example of needless waste.
I’d look worried, too, if I faced imminent extinction. It was apparently painted by the James Bay Youth Action Team (who have no Google juice at all). Maybe a Victoria resident can tell me how long it’s been there? I doubt it’s a re-imagining of the chipmunk, but I’m curious.
The Vancouver Island Marmot is a bit of a poster boy of wilderness conservation in BC. According to Wikipedia, it’s one of the most endangered mammals on the planet, though there’s apparently cause for optimism.
Julie and I are musing about rewarding ourselves after an insanely-busy-with-work summer with a week-long working vacation somewhere in BC, Washington, Oregon or Hawaii. We’re thinking mid to late September, and we’d spend a lot of the time finishing up this marketing book we’re writing. So, you know, we need a nice room.
Ideally, it would be outside of any major city, tranquil and luxurious (though probably no more than $300 a night). Bonus points for proximity to wilderness for a bit of hiking or kayaking. As an example, the Long Beach Lodge would definitely qualify. So would the Wickanninish Inn, if their rates weren’t quite so crippling.
We’ve received a couple of great suggestions (including a vote for the north shore of Kauai), but I thought I’d crowd-source this badboy. Where have you stayed in the Pacific Northwest (uh, plus Hawaii) that meets these criteria?
Forgive the, uh, narrowcasting of this particular entry, but we’re looking for a dentist. We don’t have many requirements, except that they shouldn’t be a sadist, and should be located within walking distance of downtown or Cook Street Village.
If you live in Victoria and like your dentist, leave a comment or email me at darren at darrenbarefoot (full stop) dot com.
My Dad told me about this the other day, but I had to see it to believe it. There’s not one, but two billboards supporting Barack Obama on the Pat Bay Highway outside of Victoria. I snapped a photo of one as we passed by:
The full-size billboard was paid for by Dean Park residents Reg and Karen Mooney with the dual purpose of provoking family debate and putting in a personal push to get troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Reg Mooney, 75, a management consultant and former president of Goodwill Bottling, is a supporter of Democratic candidate Barack Obama and recently attended one of his rallies in Las Vegas.
The second one, which also has a message for Prime Minister Harper, just went up the other day. Apparently it costs about CAN $1250 a month to run a billboard along this stretch of highway (it’s reserve land, and the billboards generate revenue for the local band).
The first billboard’s owner has strong ties to the States, but this has reasonably practical applications as well. Victoria has millions of visitors each year (I couldn’t find a reliable number, but when I worked there it had the busiest info centre in the country), and many of them are Americans. Of course, only a minority of them are entering the city via this highway, but it might be enough to justify this surprisingly low cost.
I was just catching up on some podcasts, and listened to a fascinating episode of White Coat, Black Art about identifying under-performing medical professionals. From the show’s blog:
What do you call the person who graduates last in med school? It’s a set-up to a joke that is anything but. Of course, you call that person ‘doctor.’ There are incompetent people in every job, and doctors are no exception. We don’t have any good statistics on how many incompetent doctors are currently in practice…
Only two provinces — Nova Scotia and Alberta — have mandatory checks on doctors. Ontario will soon follow, once the province passes enabling regulations.
Coming from an industry that has semi-annual reviews for everybody, this is a bit shocking. Surely we ought to be extra-rigorous in evaluating the people who keep us alive?
On a related note, I think, in terms of subject matter, White Coat is one of the more original CBC programs I’ve heard in a while.
UPDATE: I got an answer back from the College of Physicians & Surgeons of British Columbia. They say that there is some kind of mandatory oversight for physicians registered with the college, though the details were a bit fuzzy.
The first was washed up in August on an isolated island in British Columbia. A 12-year-old girl beachcombing with her family found a size 12 running shoe with a human right foot still inside. Six days later a couple hiking around coves on another remote island found another size 12 right foot in a trainer under a tree trunk. Then, last month, another right foot was spotted, this time bobbing about in the water off a third island.
That’s a terrific starting point for a work of fiction. Why are right feet appearing on our coastlines?
UPDATE: After some confusion (see the comments), I’ve established that the cable provider is in fact Shaw, not Rogers, in Victoria. I’ve adjusted this post accordingly.
Maybe it’s just the plodding web access here in Morocco, but today I visited both Shaw and Telus’s websites today to scope out Internet access when we settle in Victoria in April of this year. They both offer a premium service at 5 or 6 MB/s and a 60 GB maximum per month for about $40 to $45 (before all those ridiculous extra fees). I assume there are discounts when you package Internet access with a landline (unlikely) or TV (likelier).
This is like voting for a prime minister in recent elections. Which is the least distasteful choice? I’ve complained (and heard many complaints) about both services in the past. Which is, uh, less worse? My criteria would probably be:
How long does it take to get service after signing up?
How reliable is the service?
Who’s less likely to penalize me for exceeding the 60 GB maximum (a real concern, now that you can download HD movies that might average 4 GB)?
Who’s less likely to filter network traffic and selectively decrease download speeds for bittorrent traffic and the like?
Whose corporate policies are less repugnant?
What would you recommend? Maybe I should just go with carrier pigeons?
When we lived in Yaletown, I could circumvent this sort of red-state, blue-state problem by voting independent and signing up with Novus. Are there any such alternatives in Victoria?
Tim recently visited Keats Island, a tiny scrap of land in Howe Sound:
The body of water around it is called Howe Sound, and if you’ve touristed around here you’ve seen it out of the left side of your car on the first part of the way to Whistler, or the right side when almost home. Keats’ population in winter is maybe fifty; but then a thousand on certain summer long weekends. The Island and Sound are photogenic.
He also took some gorgeous photos, which made me pine a bit for the many blues and greys of coastal BC.
I have both friends and family with cabins on Keats Island, so I’ve been over there about a dozen times. It’s a lovely spot, though the dwellings are a little close together for my taste. Tim doesn’t say if he visited the Eastbourne side or the Keats Landing side. The latter is where I’ve spent most of my time.
There’s a big bible camp on the Keats Landing side–they own a bunch of land there. Curiously, the Wikipedia entry for Keats Island doesn’t mention it. I’ll amend it.
