It wasn’t until Jay, the wireless sales manager started to ring up the damages and transfer the existing services over to the new phone that things started to slip sideways. There’s a new levy on the 3G network of $5/month. This is a consistent charge across all carriers if you want to upgrade to take advantage of the 3G network. Unfortunately, it’s $5 more than The Wiz’s existing plan was. Also, the closest “new plan” to his existing plan only allowed for room for 3 voice mails to be stored at a time… a big downgrade from his current 10 voice mail package. To upgrade to 10 on the new plan… another $5 increase. At this point, The Wiz is less excited about his new phone, and Jay can see that there’s a bit of duress. There shouldn’t be duress, wireless should be fun, in theory.

Jay worked some magic. He was able to provide the upgrades voice mail plan for free. $5 down. The Wiz understood that the $5 3G network upgrade made sense, and that Jay didn’t really have the power to alter that charge. That being said, to make up for the fact that it wasn’t a straight swap of monthly plans and rates, he went the extra mile, providing some very decent discounts on some accessories for the Bold. Discounts on a case, a screen protector, a skin. Happy, Happy, and  Happy. The Wiz left with a skip in his step, whistling a happy tune, as a pleased TELUS customer as well as an ecstatic Best Buy customer.

If you’ve recently gotten an upgrade notification, and have a credit just burning a hole in your pocket, The Wiz highy recommends chatting it up with Jay at the Aurora Best Buy, he’ll see you straight, and make the migration of services and hardware easy an painless. YAY Jay! 

PS — The Wiz left his data cable with you, he’s got to to get it back this week! :-)

Take a deep breath folks.

Did you know that there have been 65 recalls for the Pontiac Grand Prix? The Chevy Equinox had twenty eight recalls. Thirty eight recalls on the Dodge Grand Caravan. The Ford Escape suffered through thirty nine recalls.

Have a little perspective.

Go ahead, see how many problems *your* car has had :-)

Transparency, that is. You are who you are, and you do what you say you will do, and you act accordingly. Knowing that there is the potential for the whole world to see what you are up to is a potentially daunting realization when delving into social media.

That being said, you can’t avoid it. And to ignore it is to do so at your own peril.

I’m a self-proclaimed social media freak. And proud of it. You name it, I’ve got an account on it. Even Plaxo. :-)

I’m on Facebook roughly 6-7 hours a day. Some of those hours are during work hours. (Hi boss!) Transparency is important here. The world knows what you are doing, and when you’re doing it. Why am I on Facebook during work hours? Here you go:

• I am friends with my customers, vendors, partners and competitors. My customers, vendors, partners and competitors are on Facebook.
• I am a fan of MANY fan pages, especially those of key industry players, customers and even competitors. I am using social media tools to stay current with what is going on all over the place.
• I am friends with some very neat people. People who say and post very important and timely things. People who are key in their various industries. People I can turn to when I have a challenge, problem or need a push in the right direction. These smarties are now part of my social network. These are people who know people!

I use twitter sporadically, but only because I’ve yet to find the perfect twitter tool. I’m sure I’ll get to it. I mostly appreciate my FB friends tweeting in their FB status to try and stay abreast of issues.

I’m on LinkedIn, but that’s table steaks if you’re in business. It’s how you keep track of the people who haven’t yet thrown over to Facebook.

But what happens when you aren’t ready for transparency? If you aren’t embracing the transparency?

You get in trouble. Full stop. Anything you say can and will be used against you. In a court of law. At work. With the various and sundry boys/girls you may be dating who suddenly discover that it *is* a small world after all.

Embrace the transparency. Govern Yourself Accordingly. Be Free.

Today’s Toronto Star has an article dubbed “Are the Olympics Worth It?”

It’s roughly 10 days until the Olympics begins. Don’t you think that this question should have been asked almost 4 years ago, prior to Canada’s bid? I would imagine that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to review the Olympic history from the past 10 years to realize that no, the Olympics aren’t generally worth it. The host country and the host city invariably ends up with the short and dirty end of the stick. The general population of the host area is pushed to the sidelines for a month, and the Olympic committee wields its power like a spoiled tyrant.

Business Week suggests that only Athens and Los Angeles have ever turned a profit. The WSJ reports that the Athens Olympics ended up with a $14B price tag, and Greece is left holding the bag with a ghost town Olympic village.

The Vancouver Sun has 10 Signs of Trouble, and it’s primarily related to the financing of the Olympics.

Even this week, Macleans is reporting that overall, British Columbians are less supportive of the Olympics than the rest of the Canadian population. It’s very telling that event tickets are sold, but no one is buying *bus passes* to get to the venues. That tells me that it’s not Vancouverites/Canadians who have bought up the tickets, but some ticket scalper conglomeration.

In 2006, it was reported that the Vancouver Olympics was going to cost $2.5B. Now, that number has ballooned to over $6B, and chances are it’s going to exceed even that vast amount.

Imagine what $6B could do. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation just donated $10B to vaccine research. Now that’s a world changing initiative. Globally, over $4B has been donated to Haiti.

According to Wikipedia, there will be 5500 athletes and officials. That’s over $1,000,000 spent per athlete and official. I realize that these are [generally] amateur athletes, and they survive on sponsorships, but that’s a very small ratio of sponsorship to individuals who benefit from the sponsorships.

Imagine that value being spent where it can do the most good. Eighty countries participate in the Olympics, of those, I would hazzard a guess that 1/3 to 1/2 of those countries have a substantial proportion of their population living below the poverty line. These people will never see the Olympics, simply because their standard of living is so low as to prohibit the infrastructure required to view an event half way around the world from them. They’re worried about more pressing issues, like food, clean water, death.

It’s all about perspective.

My mum was diagnosed with cancer in 2006, and almost to the date prognosticated by her oncologist, she passed away. At some point, I may delve into the back story, but for now, I’m just pleased that I feel like writing again.

I’m also pleasantly surprised that I’m starting to toy with technical ideas, and am hoping that these ideas will flesh themselves out here. Now the trick is to woo the masses again ;-)

The folks who win huge lotteries are ill-prepared to handle that sort of bounty - 70% of US lottery winners wind up broke. 

I know it’d cause me some heartburn.

If the pot split when it hit $20M, then there would be 2 x $10M jackpots. And then those pots would split again when they reached $20M each….. If people had more than 1 chance to win - imagine how many MORE people would participate? Pots would double and split all over the place. :-) People would win manageable amounts of money, and would be just as happy, if not happier. They might not end up penniless.

Winning the lottery isn’t all its cracked up to be - check out Catherine Annau’s film, Winning, which manages to follow up on past lottery winners, and the dismal ways their lives have ended up. People apparently need to be protected from themselves…

If you were the winner of a $10M jackpot, and ONLY invested it at a modest interest rate of 4%, you would have an annual income of $400,000. Say you bought the house of your dreams ($1M) and 2 new fancy cars ($150K), and gave away some of your booty to friends and family ($2M), you’d have very little in the way of living expenses or debt, and could still invest the remaining $6,850,000 at 4% and have an income of $274,000 — and you’d have very little expenses. I could MORE than kive happily on $274,000 a year. Wouldn’t need a job - but would probably have some sort of fun part-time gig, and you’d have al the time in the world to explore, travel and relax….

I’m curious to know what happens to the lives of the lottery winners. Someone should have written a book. $40M could totally screw up a person :-)