Bastards!  First the bad news.

Below are the newly announced Canadian iPhone pricing plans offered by Rogers and Fido. 

Stupid overpriced.

Yeah, no unlimited data, so don’t get too excited about that 3G capability… the greedy GSM monopoly wants to make sure Canada stays naked and chained to the floor, like a good little bitch.

And for those of you that haven’t seen how expensive even calling minutes are here, look at the $60 plan.  150 daytime minutes!  Wow, unlimited voicemail!  We still get CHARGED for caller ID though. 

There is a tiny bit of good news, despite all this. I’ve surveyed a few of my iPhone-toting buddies, and it looks like unmonitored users that browse and email as much as they would like, don’t seem to be using all that much data… at least not in GB/mo.  I’ve heard in the year that they’ve had the phone, they seem to average 100-400MB of traffic a month, surprisingly.  If you have a wireless network at work and home, I can see how it could be pretty easy to keep the rates darn low without even trying, using it just for the web browsing, email, and mapping on the go as much as you please.  But if you ride the bus and love youtube, these prices it might be an issue.

***Question to Current iPhone users in the US***… how much data are YOU using per month?  There’s a setting on your phone that shows the usage…toss it in the comments, let us in the Great White North know what we’re in for.

$60 Voice/Data
150 daytime + Unlimited Evenings/Weekends
400MB data
75 Sent text messages
Unlimited incoming text messages
Unlimited Voicemail

$75 Voice/Data
300 daytime + Unlimited Evenings/Weekends
750MB data
100 Sent text messages
Unlimited incoming text/voicemail

$100 Voice/Data
600 daytime + Unlimited Evenings/Weekends
1GB data
200 Sent text messages
Unlimited incoming text/voicemail

$115 Voice/Data
800 daytime + Unlimited Evenings/Weekends
2GB data
300 Sent text messages
Unlimited incoming text/voicemail

Pricing includes:
- unlimited Wi-Fi access at all Rogers and Fido Hotspots.

Two voice value packs:
$15/month: Caller ID, Who Called, Caller Ring Trax, 2,500 Sent Text Messages and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes
$20/month: Caller ID, Who Called, Caller Ring Trax, 10,000 Sent Text Messages and 6:00 p.m. Early Evening Calling and 2,500 Call Forwarding Minutes.

Crazy, busy and a wee bit stressful weekend… but we bought ourselves our first home!

We hadn’t been looking really hard, but had been keeping an eye open.  But our buddy Andre discovered the listing for this sucker and shot it to me on messenger on Thursday.  I nabbed Mark and we pounced.  Thanks Andre!  Andre, Andre, Andre.

It’s a fun loft space in a 1950’s office building that’s been converted into condos.  It’s a good deal bigger than apartments we’ve had in the past, so we’re really looking forward to having an actual guest room, and lots of space to entertain.

We won’t move in for a couple months yet.. but have a fun thing to look forward to at the end of Summer!  Extra-special warm fuzzies to our buddies who helped us land this sucker at the speed of light.

Yeah.  So WoW has been eating into my fun computer time.  It’s part of the reason my photos and my posts and pics have been few and far between.  But only part - I’m gonna get into other reasons in an upcoming post.

That out of the way, Bravehound on Proudmoore is a big ol’ 54 and I started Galvinn on the same server, and he’s rockin 28 levels.  And that’s his pet, Kitty Biggles.  The mountain lion, not the little green fella.

So yeah, this means that I’m having a ball with WoW.  Even though this game is a good 4 years old, it’s still friggin fun.  New MMOs just ain’t coming close.  Gave Conan a brief try, but sorry.  What’s fun is fun.  Some things aren’t easily duplicated I guess.

I’ll be blogging about the other 2/3 of what’s kept me away…

After receiving a few emails asking if I decided to *stay* in Paris, I thought maybe it was time to update the blog.  So let’s do the damn thing.

Since my last post, I’ve off to Minneapolis for work, Paris for Vacation, back home to Montana to visit my family, and off to Montreal for a quick night to see Robyn (who was friggin’ awesome).

Oh yeah… and my Blood Elf Warlock is a 44 now.

I’ve been gathering tunes for the new mix, and after finding nothing I really loved, have had a bit of luck.  Hopefully I’ll get another one together by June, before the Pride season hits.

The snow is gone, and Spring lasted about 4 days.  It’s Summer now.

There we go.  Now I can the more interesting stuff without feeling guilty.

Mark and I are taking a much needed vacation… and after considering getaways ranging from Florida to Sydney, we’ve landed on a week in Paris.  We’re renting a trendy little apartment for a week, and plan on seeing the city, relaxing, and raising a roof or two.

Mark’s been to Paris a handful of times, but this will be my first trip there.  I’ve only been to Europe once before, when we went to London and Dublin with some buddies.

Thanks to Rosetta Stone, I can say “the girl jumps” in French.  Not exactly useful - but I look forward to actually finding a jumping girl, so I can proudly point it out to others.  Good thing Mark is fully bilingual, so I’ve got a more useful French language resource at my hip. 

Just a quick video to show my buddies back West what they’re missing.

After some late night Friday night (aren’t I cool?) CSS editing to get things looking right, the new template is live. 

In some ways, I miss the old one… after all, I’d been using that shade of blue on my blog since 2004.  But just like when I felt a little sad inside when I got rid of my first car (an International Scout), even desired upgrades take a little getting used to.

So this sucker should load much faster.  And it’s a bit more flexible - it was designed with this layout in mind… whereas my old site was another template that I had heavily mutilated to look the way it did.  It was a mess under the hood.

It’s all converted, pretty much… save a few sidebar bits-and-pieces that I’ll get back up soon.  I don’t want anyone to cry over my missing tip jar! ;)

Watch your head!

There really isn’t a great way to avoid it, so there’s gonna be a period on the site tonight, as I move the site and configure it in my fancy new template.  More on it when the move is complete…

For now, here are links to access things that might not be as easy to find, until the move is complete…

My Photo Journal (available just on Flickr for now)
My House Mixes

Wish me luck!

- Andy

My job is sending me to Vancouver on Friday… to work all weekend, unfortunately.  I wish I could stay put, having just made rounds from Sudbury > Toronto > Seattle > Kansas City and back.  I’ll have some time in the evenings to hang with my old crew, though, and I’m really looking forward to that.

Lucas let me know that Jay Brannan will be playing in town that weekend, too.  I’lll definitely be there.  You might recognize him from the movie Shortbus.  Jay also sang on the soundtrack, and has had quite a following on myspace and youtube, for his videos singing his original songs backed by acoustic guitar. 

His songs are clever, folky frolics and his voice is like honey.  Check out his other tracks and videos on his myspace page, www.myspace.com/jaybrannan.

Now old Thinkbooks know how I feel after watching a Bowflex infomercial. 

It’s only fair.

And yes… they still have Bowflex infomercials.