David Skoll's Blog

Rude Clueless Politicians

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Yesterday, I received a call from my Member of Parliament, John Baird. Well, more precisely, I received a call from an auto-dialer that played a recording informing me that Baird would be holding a telephone "town hall" the next day. A telephone town hall consists of a Rude Clueless Politician interrupting your supper to spout the party line at you while you listen mutely.

The initial robo-call annoyed the hell out of me, but it's not illegal in Canada. For some reason, the politicans made sure to exempt themselves from rules against nuisance calls.

Nevertheless, thanks to the open-source world, I can fight back. I programmed my Asterisk home telephone system to redirect John Baird to "the monkeys". That is, any call originating from his constituency office does not ring through to our phones. Instead, the caller is treated to several seconds of shrieking monkeys before Asterisk hangs up. (If you'd like to experience it for yourself, call +1 613 231-6599 extension 126.)

The nuisance number I blocked, by the way, is 613 990-7720. If you'd like to reduce unwanted communication from Rude Clueless Policitians... block that number.

And finally, the sweetest entry of all in my Asterisk call logs:

"6139907720","s","monkeys","6139907720","DAHDI/4-1","","Hangup"

My New Rogers Policy

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:02:00 -0400

My wife and I used to have mobile phone service through Rogers Wireless. We had been customers for over 10 years.

Rogers has an interesting approach to mathematics: In the Rogers world, 20 + 15 > 50. Huh? Well, we have a special deal: We have two phones and pay $20/month for one and $15/month for the second. That means we pay $35/month, right?

Wrong. Rogers adds a $6.95/month "System Access Fee" per phone and a $0.75/month "9-1-1 Emergency Access Fee" per phone. That brings the pre-tax total to $50.40. Why does Rogers do that? Simple: It's Rogers' "policy".

Anyway, I lost my phone. So I wanted to cancel one of the lines to give me time to shop around. The Rogers customer care [sic] person informed me that I could cancel, but it would take 30 days to take effect. Why so long? It's Rogers' "policy". Also, if I only canceled one phone, I could no longer continue on the existing plan with the other phone, but would have to sign up for another multi-year contract. "Policy", don't you know.

OK. How about unlocking our phones? Easily done, but it costs $50 per phone. Why? "Policy".

So I ran out to the nearest WIND Mobile store and bought two cheapie Huawei phones for $48 each (yes, that's $2 per phone less than Rogers would charge to unlock our existing phones) and ported our numbers to those phones. That means our Rogers account was cancelled immediately; no 30-day waiting period.

Our WIND plan costs $15/month per phone, except we get a $5/month discount because we have two phones, so it costs $25/month plus tax. No "System Access" fees. No "9-1-1 Emergency Access" fees. And we get Caller-ID thrown in for free (costs extra according to Rogers "policy")

Oh, and if we do want to cancel our WIND plan, it's done within 48 hours rather than 30 days. And after we've been with WIND for 90 days, they'll give us the phone unlock codes for free.

Unfortunately, we're now stuck with one (possibly two) useless locked Rogers phones which will likely end up in a landfill somewhere. Isn't Rogers' unlocking policy ever so environmentally friendly?

All of this brings me to my new policy towards Rogers:

                    ---
                   !   !
                   !   !
                   !   !
                   !   !
               ----!   !----
          ----!    !   !    !
         !    !    !   !    !    --
         !    !    !   !    !   /  !
          !                 !  /   !
          !                  !/   /
           !                     /
           !                    /
            !                 /
             !              /

Video Production on Linux, part 2.

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:52:00 -0400

I couldn't resist. Yet another silly commercial for my company.

2011 Trip to Israel

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:03:00 -0400

We spent 11 days in Israel this August. My wife and I hadn't been to Israel for 21 years and our kids had never been.

The trip was a lot of fun. We had a guided tour for part of it, so got to see a lot, including:

Caesaria, Atlit, Tel Dan National Park.
Tiberias and the Kinneret (See of Galilee)
Tzfat ("Safed"), Jeeping in the Golan Heights and rafting in the Jordan River.
Metzada (often transliterated as "Masada")
The Dead Sea
5 days in Jerusalem
3 days in Tel Aviv

Israel is an amazing country. It's very small, but the geography varies dramatically from one part to another, from the Dead Sea over 400m below sea level to Jerusalem perched dramatically in the Judean hills; from the coastal plains of Tel Aviv to the cool mountain heights of Tzfat.

We saw sights like:

A 2000-year-old Roman theatre in Caesaria:	A mine field in the Golan Heights:
The austere grandeur of Metzada:	And the top of Metzada:
Ein Gedi oasis in the middle of the forbidding desert:	Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives:
A cool poster:	And sunset over the Mediterranean at Tel Aviv:

Video Production on Linux

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 10:43:00 -0400

A colleague introduced me to the joys of video production in Linux, specifically the amazing tools Audacity and Cinelerra.

After ~~wasting~~ spending many hours with these tools, I decided it was time to try my hand at video production. The result is a silly ad done by two of my kids and me for my company.

I hope you enjoy the video... we had tons of fun making it.