Life

By far the most significant thing that happened this week was that I finally upgraded my internet and joined the fibre revolution. Or something like that. As of late last week, I had mentioned contacting their Reddit thread offering deals, and the deal they came back with was even better than the website one — they offered PureFibre 250 MB internet at $58/month, 1 Gigabit internet at $68/month, and 3G internet at $90/month, with a couple of free additional addons (like that unlimited data nonsense) tacked on top of it. This was a 2 year contract and it was price locked for only 2 years instead of 5. And there were additional discounts if I were a Telus Mobility (phone plan) member, which I was not.

I don’t know if I really “need” 3G internet as opposed to just the standard 1G fibre, but considering I was already paying more for less with Shaw monthly anyway, and that I wanted to future-proof myself if I moved in to a new house and was going to transfer over the service within the next year or so, I went for the 3G service anyway.

They scheduled the tech to come in on Wednesday Dec 10, which was fine for me except for one little wrinkle — the rental office had also contacted me and said that the pest control person would be coming by on the same day, sometime from 12pm-4pm. The Telus person I was speaking with, Cole, said that he could book me in for one of several slots, 1pm-3pm, 3pm-5pm, or 5pm-7pm. I booked the last one so that they wouldn’t overlap, and cancelled my stream for the day.

However, when the day arrived, the Telus tech called me around 2:30 pm to ask if he could come by and do it now since he was in the area and since it was an apartment, so if he needed to request some keys to open some box or other the management would still be around. He said it’d be probably quick either way. That seemed reasonable, so I said yes, if he didn’t mind possibly coexisting in the same house with the other pest control person if he came in the same window. This tech, Sukhdeep, did not mind, so he came by a few minutes later.

Because my apartment did not have pre-existing fibre, I was very curious as to what the installation process would look like. It turns out that what happened was that there were already lines running outside in the hallway, and there apparently was a small hole above my front door through which he tried to thread a small cable leading from the outside into my apartment. It wasn’t wide enough or wasn’t all the way through or something though, so he asked for permission to drill a bigger hole and said that I had to text him said permission on his phone before he could do it. Obviously I wasn’t going to say no at that point, so I did that and he produced a drill and made a hole large enough for the cable to come through the wall.

He then sealed the hole up on the outside with a similar device that my neighbour across the hall already had, which made a nice juxtaposition in this next picture which I took shortly after he made the hole:

The hole on my side of the wall was sealed up by a tiny little white dome of white plastic afterwards.

My computer was still on the other side of the apartment from the front door though, but he had asked for a bowl of hot tap water when he first arrived in the apartment, and he had been warming up these syringes, which had been frozen due to the wintry cold or something, while he made that hole.

He then used them to apply a thin line of glue across the corners of my house where the wall met the ceiling, making a trail all the way from the front door to the corner of the wall and ceiling closest to my computer. It looked like this:

He then overlaid the thin fibre cable on top of it, and said that it would be practically invisible once all the glue dried. Post-drying a couple of days later, it looked like this:

Anyway, he ran that line along the wall-ceiling partition to the closest corner to my computer, then ran it downwards along the corner of the aparment to a box which he installed on the wall:

From there, he ran a regular network cable out the bottom of that box to my new Telus router, and I connected my computer’s network cable to that. Oddly, this router came with an entirely separate wireless boosting device that looked like a giant white speaker, separate from the actual router itself, which could be a bit inconvenient in some setups, but whatever. The important thing was that it all worked, and I spent a couple hours after he left configuring my network and firewalls.

With this additional device, I wasn’t sure if I could change the third octet of my IP address for my internal network the way I always do, since I don’t like using the default 192.168.1.XX internal network, as I now had two different admin panels and there wasn’t a way to configure the wireless hub’s IP address manually. The tech had given me the wireless hub’s default IP address before he had left and I wasn’t sure if that had been hardcoded in somehow. However, it turned out that that device was smart enough to grab an IP address from whatever it was being fed, so once I swapped over the actual router to my preferred IP address range, the router picked up an equivalent DHCP address from there and I was able to connect to it properly again.

Although Sukhdeep had said that it would be fairly quick, he was here for well over an hour putting up the glue and wires. He was very nice and friendly, minus one issue that I will get to after a little interlude. This interlude is that the pest control guy did appear for his appointment halfway through the Telus tech’s session here, and came in to set up some sticky traps and put down some poisonous gel after I gave him an apology for the double session in the cramped apartment. I ended up having a nice, candid picture shot of the two of them working simultaneously in my apartment. The pest control tech in the kitchen on one side of the wall, and the Telus tech by the front door area on the other side, separated by the internal wall in my apartment. I’m not sharing that picture here though since it also is a shot of a good chunk of the clutter and random stuff in my apartment.

That pest control tech wasn’t here for too long, nor did I catch his name, but he said that he would be back in two weeks for a follow-up. I told him about all the places where I had seen ants in the past month or so, and he ended up putting down a bit of this gel at each of those locations for the ants to bring back to their queen and hopefully poison and kill it:

The unfolded versions of the sticky traps that he eventually put down can be seen in the above picture too. Folded up, they looked like this:

We’ll see how well they work, I suppose. I did see a couple of ants this week around the faucet area of my bathtub, and a couple confused ants on the back cabinet of my kitchen, on the shelf that I had cleared out about two weeks ago now, walking in dazed circles. None on my main kitchen cabinet for over two weeks now though. I left the ants that I did see alone for the most part since the idea now is to let them bring back stuff to their queen.

Anyway the pest control guy was in and out a lot faster than the Telus tech was, and soon I was left with just Sukhdeep again. Here he did something that really perturbed me — he mentioned that oh, it was too bad that I had already signed up with the other Telus tech because he could have given me a better offer — $60/month for 1G internet and $70/month for 3G internet. Because he was a technician who had access to better rates. And that while it was too late for me to swap now, when my lease was up I could contact him directly for those rates instead.

What nonsense was that? I immediately texted back to Cole after Sukhdeep left, asking for details on what this deal was and why there was such a discrepancy. Cole was surprised too and agreed that this was not a good thing to hear as a new Telus customer. He said he’d follow up with his supervisor the next day and ask around. The next day, I received a call from Sukhdeep in the morning — his call was to state that the deal I had heard yesterday included this and that discount, like for already having Telus Mobility on my account as well, and several other excuses, basically stating that there was a misunderstanding on the price (with a slight implication that *I* had misunderstood the price, which I know I hadn’t). Poor chap. He obviously had had the riot act read to him by someone and now stated the same price as Cole. Whatever.

Cole also followed up a little bit later to text chat and he said that he had checked with his own manager and colleagues and that they too had concluded that that was a Telus Mobility combined pricing — which still only came to $80 instead of $70 for the 3G service — and he suspected that the tech would not have been able to give me that stated price if he had actually tried. He said he had actually talked to Sukhdeep to ask but Sukhdeep had confirmed $80 for 3 GB price (with Telus Mobility discount) and didn’t elaborate further, which didn’t help them. Between this and the Sukhdeep call, there seemed to be some friction here between the two teams, heh. That or Sukhdeep was involved in something shady on the side. I agreed with Cole though and told him that I considered the issue settled.

We chatted for a bit more and I ended up asking for the Telus Mobility pricing too, since I was looking to change away from Virgin Mobile to something new by Boxing Day anyway. Was I still eligible to get the internet discount at this point? His answer was a bit ambiguous, but I believe the gist of what he said was that instead of getting an Internet discount, at this point I could do it the other way and get a phone discount for having an Internet service already instead, and he also implied that the discount this way was higher.

I don’t know if he was throwing smoke and mirrors at me, the way he said this, but he did send me the numbers and they were pretty good — instead of a basic line costing $95 for their 100 GB 5G+ Canada/US plan, they could give me a $31/month deal instead, which included a 20% off plan, a discount or two for being a PureFibre customer, a $10 discount for using pre-authorized payments (which I had also already set up for my internet for a discount on that side of the kitchen wall). And it came with some extras like US roaming, not that I’m going down there anytime soon until they fix their dysfunctional government. The better network, faster speed, and higher bandwidth cap will also help if I decide to do some test or casual IRL live streaming within the city at some point.

Now, that $95 base price seemed far too steep for me, so the discount wasn’t that great, but $31 per month for that was a good deal — the standard “deals” were basically $25ish for 30 GB at a tier 2 sort of company with weaker coverage (many of which don’t even operate here in Alberta as far as I know), or $40ish for 50-70 GB with an offbrand company belonging to one of the Big 3 (Telus, Rogers, Bell), or $50ish for 100 GB with one of the Big 3 themselves. RedFlagDeals had been compiling a list of Black Friday and holiday season sales, listed here (local), and this deal was better than all of those, I suppose by virtue of now being a Telus internet customer too.

This deal also did not involve a formal contract with a fixed term length, although it basically did because there was an $80 activation fee up front, which the tech said that they “could not avoid” but would offset on my second bill to the tune of a $100 credit — since the fee was $31 per month though, I wouldn’t actually “make a profit” (i.e. use up the credit) counting the $80 spent until I was with them for 5 or 6 months or so. Still, not really a contract, and even if it was, 5-6 months is fine. The next time I would even start thinking about looking at new phone deals would be next year’s Black Friday anyway. And this was slightly better than the Virgin Mobile activation fee of $70 that was returned $10 at a time over the next 7 bills, which happened last year.

So anyway, to truncate this slightly overly long story, I switched my phone plan over to Telus too. My old deal was with Virgin Mobile, and as mentioned two weeks ago, I had signed up for a $29/month for 20 GB plan which had morphed into a $37.75/month plan before one year had even been up. This one purpoted to be $31/month plan for 5 times the data, but when I looked at the contract that Cole sent me, the numbers actually were laid out this way:

$70/month (I assume the $70 base price instead of $95 was due to being a Telus customer for internet as well, but this was never formally stated.)
Bill Credit -$5.25/month for 24 months
Mobile & Home Discount -$15.75/month ongoing
Pre-Authorized Payments -$10/month ongoing
Rate Plan Discount -20%/month ongoing

The $31/month price made sense to me in this context — $70 base cost, minus $21 for the Bill Credit and Mobile/Home Discount, taking it to $49. Then another $10 off for pre-auth payments, taking it to $39. Then a 20% discount applied to it, taking it to around $31. However, Cole said that the 20% discount had been around for a while, and that their team used to also think that the 20% was applied at the end, but found out eventually that it was applied at the top, which would actually take it from $70 to $56 first, then taking the other $31 off which would drop it to $25/month. That was three different numbers he had given me now though (the $95 vs $70 base price, the $31 final price, then this $26 final price) so who knows which number will actually be correct in the end. He also stated outright that all the discounts were permanent and recurring except for the $5.25 one, which would only last for 24 months.

So in the end, we’ll see what my first bill looks like, I guess! Virgin Mobile tried to contact me via phone (I ignored them) and email after I had switched, obviously trying to retain me as a customer. Their best “special offers”, sent via email, still sucked in comparison though:

After I had already switched anyway, Virgin Mobile’s winback offers were to the tune of 75 GB for $30/month, for a 4G phone plan (Telus’s was 5G+), or 100 GB for $45/month. Not good enough, especially since their mobile network is so much poorer. Also why the “(obviously)” at the top of the page? But they did call me over and over until I answered, and spoke to a nice lady who took down the cost of my new plan, my reasons for change, and told me that if I changed my mind and wanted to switch back, they’d credit me the activation fee I paid Telus, all I’d have to do is call their loyalty line at 1-866-856-9132. Fair enough, I suppose.

Phew. That was long, but it was good to get it all down on digital paper, especially since I rely on these blog entries to look back on and see what my previous deal was like the next time I review my bills or am deciding whether to switch to someone else or not, like I did this time when looking back at my Virgin Mobile switch last year.

There’s also one more footnote to this, which was that I asked about adding additional lines to the plan and how much that would cost. He said, verbatim:

Yes absolutely! Additional lines dont get the $15 discount (Only on the first line) But additional Lines would get a multiline discount added. So for example,

2 lines = $7.50 per line discount
3 lines = $10.00 per line discount
4 lines = $15 per line discount

So depending on how many lines you were thinking, 4 lines would drop your line to $16, and the rest would be $31

So he flipped back here to the “20% coming off last” cost, so as I understand his numbers, one line would be $31 per month, two lines would be $23.50 and $39.25, three lines would be $21 and $36.75 x2, and four lines would be $16 and $31.75 x 3. If the 20% really comes off the base cost first, then two lines would be $17.50 and $33.25, three lines would be $15 and $30.75 x 2, and four lines would be $10 and $25.75 x 3.

So the fact that Cole was very unclear as to whether the discount applies after or before, since he claimed it was before but kept quoting me prices as though it was after, makes it all seem a bit smoke and mirrory, but they’re still interesting numbers. The main reason for knowing all this though is to understand whether or not it is economical for my parents eventually coming aboard on this plan too, especially if they start living together with me in the nearish future. And this way, I can take these numbers and compare them to any future deal too. Hell, Jon or Kel could come on board too if they wanted, and then we’d have very cheap deals. 5G+ 100GB data deals for everyone?

I’m glad the techs came the day they did, since the next day’s weather was terribly cold, and it remained that way for the rest of the week. The Telus tech did leave my front door open for about 20 minutes while he installed the fibre, including a jaunt down to his vehicle to get something, so all the cold air from my hallway vent would have seeped into my house too. Our 7-day weather forecast outlook looked like this on Thursday and Friday night:

That is not actually my postal code, it’s just whatever nearby weather station Google decided to point to today, but it was pretty cold. Funnily, the weather pops up to above the freezing mark, with rain, on Monday, before plummeting again. I actually have to go out next week on Thursday and Friday — Thursday for an end-of-year team buffet at Yang Ming Buffet and then Friday for a full day team meeting at the office with our old team members pre-merge two years ago, one of the monthly ones that we all wanted to do and have been doing several times now. Both days feature absolutely freezing temperatures though, which doesn’t matter too much for the on-campus meeting since I have a direct train there, but poses problems for the buffet since there’s a bus ride there and back from the nearest train station. Justin kindly volunteered to give me and Alex, the other person on the team who uses public transit, a ride from the train station to the restaurant and back though, so that will help a ton.

In the 10 minute window between when the Telus tech called me to arrange the earlier appointment on Wednesday this week, and when he actually arrived, I also received another phone call from someone linked to my realtor, and I answered because I thought it might be the tech. It wasn’t, and then I had to abruptly hang up when I heard the knock on the door. I called her back when Sukhdeep went downstairs to get the glue syringes from the car though, since I had heard her namedrop my realtor’s name, and apologized for the abruptness of the interaction. We laughed it off and she said she’d like to stop by tomorrow to drop off a gift, courtesy of my realtor. Sometimes between 9:30 and 12:30 or something. I said that that was fine. Fast forward to the next day and its minus 20 weather, and a girl knocked on my door with a box of cupcakes. She said that her mom worked in the same realty as my real estate agent — I was a bit surprised that they had enlisted one of their agent’s children to come deliver the gift instead of actually sending one of their own, or the real estate agent himself, but here we are.

Anyway, the cupcakes looked like this:

I’m not a good judge of whether cupcakes are tasty or not, I simply don’t have a sweet tooth, but they were decent and became my breakfast on that overly fine winter morning. The little bead things on each cupcake were inedible though, or else I just didn’t want to bite down on them hard enough and risk losing a tooth, so I had to extract those. I then sent the realtor a thank you note afterwards and said that I was still looking for a house but had narrowed down my search to a small neighbourhood that hadn’t had a new house listing in five months. He said that that was no problem and to let him know when a listing opens up.

This week, I also resolved the ANA call that I had made a week and a half ago, tryting to push them to see if I could do something about the return flight since they had changed the timing. I was half-hoping I could push the return date out further or something, although that vacation would have become a little too long if that happened. Either way I had not heard back from the “escalation” that the previous agent had done at all, but when I called back this week, the agent I got after sitting on hold for an hour finally told me that the escalation had been denied. She did inquire around though and told me that if I were willing to stay in Vancouver for an extra night, they could put me on an early flight home the next morning instead, but I declined that. So Feb 06 – Mar 23, which was my original flight window, seems to be what it will remain as unless some other drastic change happens.

I did decide this week to compress my schedule a bit though, and cut out Hong Kong from the itinerary altogether in return for adding a bit more Japan time. So the plan will likely be something like Sapporo for 3-4 days, then Singapore for about 10 days, then Japan for the rest of the trip, with a small detour to Taiwan during their lantern festival. I still need to plot out all the times and dates though and start booking some stuff, the trip isn’t THAT far away now. It’s less than 8 blog entries away. Ack.

Part of the self-hype from my upcoming trip has been from watching Twitch streams of people currently in Japan, which itself has also folded into my desire to try streaming a good chunk of my trip as a personal video blogging record. In particular, I’ve still been watching KumaMonster, a charismatic streamer I mentioned six weeks ago who had been walking from Kyoto to Tokyo. He’s long finished that now, and is walking around Tokyo almost every day for the last few days of his trip before heading home. The reason that I am mentioning him though is because I won a giveaway on his channel this week for a KumaKoin (local) from his stream, a self-branded and stylized coin from his streamer shop. Limited edition swag! Although it was “free” since I won it in a giveaway, I did have to pay an additional $6.93 for Canadian shipping when I won it on Monday though, but hey, still a good deal.

He’s also (probably) sending me a postcard with a handwritten poem at some point since I redeemed it as a channel reward for channel points, granted by activity. I’ve tried offering this too for my own Twitch channel — a redemption for a Christmas card — but no one has redeemed that yet, which is probably a smart thing because I’ll also likely have redemptions for postcards and maybe other things when I travel and those will probably be more interesting (and possibly more expensive).

Lastly but not leastly, here is a sunset picture from this week, courtesy of Sun Dec 07, at 4:08 pm:

I also tried to get a picture of some nice angel’s ladders in the middle of the deep freeze on Thu Dec 11, at 3:16 pm, but this was the best I could get:

Why? Because the balcony doors wouldn’t open. They were frozen shut, with a solid layer of ice coating both doors, especially nearer the bottom. Here’s a picture of some of the ice, with the right side door looking warped because of a screen door.

During deep freezes in the middle of winter, the ice condenses due to the difference in temperatures between the inside apartment and the outside weather, and the balcony door won’t open at all. I tried tugging it as hard as I could to no avail! When the temperature goes back up to oh, something like -15 degrees Celsius or so, it should open again though.