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Fido (ROGERS) Prepaid Tethering compared against my Telus 15M DSL Connection

Recently I picked up a Sony Ericsson Naite 3G phone locked to Fido (Rogers) for $150 and decided to hook up on the prepaid service. Assuming for my needs, it’s only $20 a month. It’s as cheap as mobile phone usage can get in Canada. Years ago, I used Fido prepaid but somehow stopped using it due to continued issues with the network itself (and being my cell number not being able to be called from a slew of Telus landline numbers!)

Now it’s 2010 and interestingly they decided to drop the $0.03/KB data plans altogether and came up with a $1 Unlimited Data Day Pass plan. $1 a day seems cheap on a 3G wireless network for data, however the plan only covers “on-device browsing on certified Fido/Rogers devices”. Now back to the topic of tethering: This is completely disallowed from what the prepaid plan covers… but somehow I managed to tether. It also seems like I can access most protocols like BitTorrent, IceCast, SSH and IRC. Speed wise, it’s quite poor when stacked against my Telus HSI Plus 15M connection. A speedtest.net result should pretty much explain this for itself:

Rogers Wireless 3G Telus 15M HSI Plus

In case if you haven’t heard of what tethering is, it’s basically means using your cell phone as a modem. It’s quite a lifesaver in a lot of situations like where you can’t find free wifi you can leech off somewhere or when you need to access the internet on your laptop while you’re taking transit or something similar. However, I don’t reccomend you to tether while you’re on an airplane or you’ll probably end up like this. (I highly doubt using a cell phone on an airplane can seriously mess up the in-flight navigation systems, but my idea has been disputed by a lot of people.)

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Cyberbullying… and How to Deal With It – Network Administators Edition

Cyberbullying has become a problem in recent years has it?

Here’s my way to deal with cyberpunks and the like. It’s just a simple command I would tell your cyber bullies to issue under Windows:

route delete 0.0.0.0

Simple enough huh? Try it on your own computer. It works perfectly!

If you do have a brain and understand what route.exe does, you would have realized by issuing that command, you effectively disconnected yourself from the Internet. Simple isn’t it? Go try telling your bully to try that command. It would be epic if your enemy doesn’t realize that they just disconnected themselves off the Internet.

Tell your bully to do just that. Disconnect a bully from the Internet. Problem Solved.

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Vancouver 2010 – Comes to a Close and Changes the Way We Perceive Our Nation…

14 Gold Medals…

Working my butt off on the month of February at the Westin Bayshore Hotel as a lowly Parking Attendant. In VANOC terms, that hotel was designated as OFH, OF1 in the bottomless ocean of the alphabet soup that never gets depleted. (Hey, they even have a acronym for Richmond Olympic Oval, guess what it is?)

Hearing Canada keep the gold medal in Canadian soil while I was working near that venue…

All of what I expected during my 28-day stay at OF1/STA venues… Truly an once in a lifetime experience… Something that most really can’t get a chance to do.

Working in the Olympics did sure change the way I see Vancouver and Canada. No longer do I feel that the Olympics was a waste of taxpayers money, nor do I feel that this event was an unnecessary waste of money. It was an event that we were wishing for and got the chance to host it.

After knowing that Canada won 14 gold medals in our own soil, now I don’t feel that ashamed to be a Canadian when I visit my left-minded relatives living in China. Being Canadian means something and being a resident in the city where the Olympics was held in means a lot more to me after I’ve seen how we Canadians are resilient.

Just ask yourself… Being a citizen of that nation where the Olympics was held in and your nation achieved the level of success they anticipated, would you feel that way too?

My big ‘disapproval of action’ (or a ‘fuck you’, if you want to put it in different words) are given to people who tried to storm OF1 and destroyed Olympic Sponsor’s property. You didn’t spread your ‘political’ message, you just sent out the wrong message. The Canadian Olympic spirit still lives inside our hearts and is now stronger than ever. That also applies to whoever yelled ‘Fuck the Olympics’ at me when I was walking to Palmer Secondary School.

All of those gone in 28 days…

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Vancouver 2010… Day 4…

Yes, I am working there if you may ask. In fact I currently work at OF1, the Olympic Family Hotel for ALL the hot shots that are staying at.

So far I’ve been working there 14 days straight. Seen the Governor General of Canada‘s motorcade come by with her physically inside of that car. Saw stupid things like a driver backing in the low clearance area of the parkade without looking back and smashing the back windshield of the Olympic sponsor’s cars. Seen idiots residents calling us SkyTrain workers and a bunch of smurfs.

And that’s all I have seen during my 14 day streak of working there. 8 hour long shifts, not a good thing for many people; but for me this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work in the Olympics. I’ve even had my family to persuade me into coming home for the Lunar New Year celebrations, but I turned it down telling them that the Olympics is more important than that yearly event. (Hey, who gets to work in the Olympics during the lifetime? Probably 1 in a million, if you ask me :p )

Stay tuned for more to come as I work more there longer during the games.

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Receiving “Over the Air” DTV signals in the Vancouver Area (For me.. Richmond Area…)

Recently I picked up a hybrid digital ATSC TV tuner from NCIX for $40 bucks. My purpose for this is: Watch free HDTV off the air and record it. It’s about time that I get my own TV on my laptop when I just have Windows Media Center lying around, doing nothing on the machine. The tuner I bought was an ATI branded Theater 650 HD made by Diamond.

Now you might ask me: “Why bother getting receiving ATSC signals off the air when I can just subscribe to Shaw or Telus TV and get HDTV that way?” My answer to that will be: ATSC is a digital television standard and Over the Air signals are free (Note the bolded digital). Why pay Telus and Shaw money just to get your HDTV signals? Besides, ATSC signals tend to be better than the signals you get off from Shaw or Telus TV. (And if you might want to ask, yes my family decided to go with Telus TV because they think it’s a good choice…)

I’d highly suggest you to read this Wikipedia article on ATSC as a quick backgrounder. Apparently back in 2004 or so, a broadcaster in Vancouver decided to play around with ATSC. Now in 2009, there are quite a few broadcasters around in the Metro Vancouver area broadcasting in ATSC. The channels I’m getting at the moment are CTV, CBC and Global TV. If I tune my antenna a little bit, I can get OMNI and KVOS too. That totals to six channels I can receive here.

So how do you receive free over the air digital TV signals in Vancouver? I’ll write that next time when I am not sedated after a can of beer or two…