After lots of last minute prep at the office, and a week of other craziness that included moving to a new apartment, I headed for the airport to catch a 17:30 flight to Frankfurt. The flight was already delayed by half an hour, so I had more than ample time to wait in the usual long line at Pearson to drop off my luggage, and also pick up some Rupees.

On the flight, I conveniently got the chance to move into a bulkhead aisle seat to make room for a family sitting together, which made for some welcome extra legroom. Air Canada’s seatback entertainment system actually worked for a change, and so I watched The International and Watchmen. The former was a decent conspiracy/action thriller, although to be honest I can’t even remember the cast (I know it was someone like, but not exactly Daniel Craig). The latter was really quite awful, and halfway through I started falling in and out of sleep, more out of boredom than exhaustion.

We made up time in the air and landed on time in Frankfurt. Although I had a few potential plans to spend some of my 6-1/2 hour layover with friends or family, it all fell through and I ended up taking the train into town and roaming around for a few hours. I was honestly surprised at what a nice city Frankfurt is. I got off the train at Hauptwache, which is central Frankfurt and an area with lots of shops, cafes, and walking distance to the river Main. In addition to the expected clusters of bank and insurance headquarters, there were lots of older buildings, churches, galleries and museums, as well as a large park that runs the length of the river in that part of the city. Best of all, the stopover gave me a chance to consume some of my favourite German goodies that you simply can’t get in North America, including Laugenbrötchen and Apfelschorle (bread boiled in saltwater prior to baking and apple juice with carbonated mineral water, respectively).

Back at the airport I moved through customs and security without a hitch and boarded my Lufthansa flight to Mumbai. Unfortunately this time there was no entertainment system, and the aircraft was quite a bit older. The fact that the crew were significantly more attractive only partially made up for the lack of amenities, and the chosen video running on the few tiny screens - a Discovery Channel documentary on the life or Meerkats - didn’t make the time pass any quicker.

I sat next to a gentleman that was actually from Pune, and was just returning from a trip to Sweden on business for a scandinavian software firm he worked for. He was very familiar with the area, including Magarpatta City, the gated live/work community a little east of central Pune where I am staying. We talked a little bit about offshoring, life in Toronto and travel, but I spent most of the time listening to a number of playlists I’ve created on my iPod over the years, some of which - incidentally - are in desperate need of a refresh. A few others, however, have stood the test of time surprisingly well.

Upon arrival in Mumbai, my bags took forever to come off the belt - Murphy’s law, I suppose. They did, however, eventually arrive, with only a small snag in one of the luggage tags to note. Finding my driver took some time as there are a number of different gathering points for prepaid cabs, regular transport, shuttle busses, etc. The ride to the hotel was quick and uneventful, although it gave me a first glimpse at the poverty and that is so prevalent everywhere here. The most striking thing in retrospect is that all the photos of the hotel on the Internet are shot from the second floor up, so as not to have to show the ground level barricade and secure entry gate, and the fact that a stone’s throw away from the building, people are sleeping by the side of the road, near makeshift shelters and among packs of stray dogs.

Now might just be the time for me to quit facebook and move on. First off, where’s the font size option? Assuming I’m practically blind as an excuse to make me scroll past more ads is offensive at best. The site is a mess. I don’t want to see people’s comments on friends’ items in my feed. I spent considerable time putting together a clean profile page that presents what I want to share in an easy to browse manner, and now all that’s gone to hell.

And that’s just from 45 seconds on the new site. I dare not even imagine what five minutes worth of feedback would look like.

[Updated 16:29] And here’s what Facebook had to say:

“to inform our future products”? That doesn’t even make sense.

Argh.

Ironically, this first blog post in ages was inspired by the proverbial anti-blog: twitter. Although I’ve really had a hard time getting myself to write more blog posts and personal e-mails, I’ve become a real twitter addict.

Twitter’s beauty lies in its simplicity. It’s so simple in fact, that it’s downright restrictive. 140 characters is all you get to convey something coherent - be it insightful, entertaining or just plain random. Part of the fun is working within those narrow confines, tweaking the wording to make every character count and squeeze every last bit out of the “tweet”, as it were.

In a way, it evokes the nostalgia of the telecommunications of days gone by; pay-by-the-letter wire telegrams, or a single sheet of airmail paper. Those times are long gone of course, but Twitter has returned some of the joy of living with limitations.

Sure, there’s a lot if useless messages whipping around the ether. Hell, I “livetwittered” Miss Universe. But used with a little restraint, it can be almost poetic.

Besides, any writing is better than no writing, and with a few dozen more tweets, maybe the blog posts will start streaming from my thumbs after all.

This is what happens when I chat with Philippe instead of posting all the stuff I need to get rid of on craigslist.

philippe. ah, le mountie, ça va?

jens. hoi
oui oui, toi?

philippe.
je suis un peut …
euh
comment se dit?
müde

jens.
fatigue

philippe.
oui
très fatigue

jens.
je suis aussi

philippe.
fatigué
?

jens.
oui
pourquois nous parlons en francais aujourdui?

philippe.
bien, tennons quelque chose ensemble
oui, ça c’est très fatigué aussi

jens.
c’est un bon idee pour (umm, ueben…) le francais pour nous
(auch wenn’s eher kauderwelsch ist)

philippe.
mais je veux changer tout le temp a l’espagnol

jens.
Dans cette situation, andy tout le temps dit: “Que le fuck?!”

philippe.
j’ai parlé avec [girl] ce matin

jens.
Ah, bien! En francais aussi?

philippe.
Andy dirait que c’est le grand caque
mais non, en espagnol naturellement

jens.
Ah oui, “le grand caque”!
Mais pourquois en espagnol? Francais, c’est le langue de l’amour!

philippe.
mais cette relation (jetzt fehlt mir das Präteritum von etre) avec [other girl]
pas avec [girl]
Erait (?!?) amicable (?!?!?!?)

jens.Ah, tabernac! Cette relation, un petit peu tout le temps, est avec tous les femmes.

philippe.
Naturellement, le mountie save comment ça va!savoir
oops
le mot “savoir” est pour la recherche de internet

jens.
Le “Internet”? Qu’est que c’est? Pour les ordinateurs?

philippe.
que le f#$% do I know
mir wird’s jetzt zu anstrengend

As those who know me know well, there’s very little I enjoy more than ranting on endlessly about the stupid ways companies big and small treat their customers. The following saga is a perfect example of how not to treat your customers.

To sum it up for those that couldn’t be bothered to read my endless ranting, I booked a rental car for a day through Priceline for a trip while in San Francisco. The return time for the rental was 11pm, as confirmed on the reservation & receipt, but when I tried dropping off the car at 10:30pm, the location was closed and had no after-hours drop-off. I had to park the car overnight for $25, and the next morning Avis acknowledged their mistake and offered to pay for the parking, but then proceeded to try charging me for the extra time I had use of the car. These are the e-mails that followed after not being able to resolve the issue on the spot with the agent:

[Submitted via Avis.com's online feedback form]

Hi,

I’m writing you with regards to a very frustrating experience renting a car from Avis a short while ago while on a weekend vacation in San Francisco.

Having never been to the area, we wanted to spend a day driving down the coast while we were there, so I put in a bid on a rental car using priceline.com. My first bid for a convertible was rejected as too low, so I adjusted the offer and was successful in getting a compact car for $45 plus taxes and fees. I received a confirmation e-mail from priceline and made sure that all the details were correct, including my desired time window of 7am-11pm on Saturday, August 4.

When picking up the car at just after 7am at the Post St location, I asked if there were any convertibles available that I could upgrade to, and agreed to pay an additional $40 for the use of a Pontiac Solstice. The rental agent, David, provided me with a copy of the rental agreement, which indicated the $40/day upgrade (which I initialled) and “estimated rental charges $73.93″. I have no idea how that number came about, but it was less than the $45+40+taxes+fees that I was expecting, so why complain?! He gave me the keys, reminded me that the car was due back by 7:25 the next morning (which is key to what comes next), and sent me on my way.

We spent a wonderful day exploring the California coast (and the sunburn to prove it), and returned to the Avis location at 10:40 that evening, only to find it closed (I later learned on the website that the location closed at 7pm, but nobody mentioned that to me earlier that day). I tried finding the after-hours dropoff, but no luck. My girlfriend put in a call to the customer service line, and was told bluntly “we don’t have after-hours drop-off at that location, you should have known that”. The agent was very rude. We were left with no choice but to park the car at our hotel.

I drove back to the Avis office the next morning to return the car,
having had to change both the previous night’s plans as well as Sunday morning’s to accommodate this annoyance. I arrived at 8:05 and waited in line until 8:40. David, the same agent as the previous day, was at the counter when it was my turn. During this wait, I witnessed some of the worst treatment of customers I have ever seen. Aside from the unacceptable wait times, the most offensive moment was after a woman with an Australian accent who was asking for a map book was flippantly told she could try a bookstore. She left mumbling something like “this is ridiculous”. As the next customer stepped up to the counter, David made the following comment: “they all prisoners. that’s why they like that.”. Unbelievable.

Not wanting to get right into an argument over how not to treat customers, never mind fellow human beings, I explained the situation with the rental to him, and he said he had to talk to his manager about refunding the $25 I was going to be charged at the hotel for parking overnight. He disappeared into the garage for about five minutes, and upon his return said his manager had agreed to deduct the amount from the rental charges. He asked me for a receipt for the parking, which I could not provide, as I was not checking out of the hotel for another two days. David told me that they required a receipt, and I said that was fine, I’d drop it off once I checked out of the hotel — another inconvenience for sure, but partially understandable. That wasn’t good enough though, it had to be within 24 hours he said, as that’s when the rental gets “closed” on their system. After that, I would have to “go through corporate, and that will take months”. Always nice to find employees so confident in their own employers. Anyhow, I agreed to that as well, saying I would fax the receipt to the head office the following week and spend the following months anticipating my juicy $25 refund.

What happened next was the best part of all the incompetence so far: He advised me that my total charges were $107.87, in addition to the
previous day’s rate, because I returned the car late. I had assumed (silly me)
that their willingness to refund my parking expense was an acknowledgement of the problem with the opening hours, but not so. David couldn’t explain the logic, saying only “you are late”. I explained I was late because they
were not open at the drop-off time indicated. He didn’t care, also telling me
I should have been there when they opened that morning. Never mind over a half hour of time they were trying to charge me was for time I spent waiting in line, after having returned the car and handing the keys to one of the garage staff.

I asked to speak to a manager, and David called him. He said he was busy and did not have time to speak to me. I asked him to call him back and tell
him I was not leaving before speaking with him, because my problem could
clearly not be resolved without speaking to him, and was then told he would be
five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, I asked Davis to call his manager again.
The response this time was “he’ll be down when he’s finished”.

I had had it. It was now 9:15, I had spent over an hour at the Avis office that morning. I told David I was no longer waiting, and they would have
to figure it out. He said he had to close the account and asked me for my
credit card for the extra charges. I refused, saying I was not responsible for the charges, the reservation clearly stated an 11pm drop-off time and they were responsible for compensating me for the $25 parking charges.
The best line of the day came then: “Sir, you are holding up our car, we can’t give it to someone else until I close the rental”. I have no idea what
that means, but I again stated I was not going to provide my credit card nor authorize any further charges, and unless the manager was going to come
down to speak to me that instant I was leaving. David said “ok”, so I left.

Sure enough, in addition to the original charge, my credit card was debited an additional $107.87 on August 7.

I request that you refund this charge plus the additional $25 in parking expenses occurred no later than Friday, August 24. If no satisfactory resolution is reached by then, I will request a chargeback with my
credit card issuer.

The night before the deadline I’d given them to resolve this amicably, I received the following note from Avis, which clearly demonstrated that they didn’t care at all, not enough to actually respond to the points addressed in my e-mail, and especially not enough to offer a refund of any kind:

Dear Ms Hembach,

Thank you for contacting Avis via www.avis.com.

I do apologize for the delay in response to your e-mail. During peak
periods our response times may be adversely affected.

When reviewing your final billing, we show you returned the vehicle the
next morning at 0834 which we only give you a 29 minute grace period
without any penalty. Because your rental was not due back till the next
morning, technically we are not liable for any hotel parking ticket that
accured.

As a courtesy, I have credited the $25.00, but you are still liable for
the upgrade, taxes and surcharges for the upgrade and the additional
hour charges.

We appreciate your business and thank you for choosing Avis.

Sincerely,

Jann Hill

Avis E-Mail Customer Service Department

custserv@avis.com

FAX: 918-621-4850

It’s not that I was actually expecting them to resolve the issue properly - I’ve dealt with too many incompetent companies to maintain that faith. This, however, was an impressive display of disregard for one’s own customers that warranted a final e-mail before getting in touch with Visa to initiate a chargeback on my credit card.

Hi.

While I appreciate your getting back to me at all, telling a paying customer “sorry it took so long, but when we get busy everything takes really long” (even if it’s in pseudo-professional corporate-speak… “peak periods”? “adversely affected”? Who writes these scripts? They need to get out more!) is ridiculous. I gave you more than a week to resolve this issue, and you chose not to respond until the very last minute. Anyways, that’s all beside the main point:

Your “resolution” is absolutely not acceptable. It doesn’t even make sense. Either you acknowledge the error is yours and refund all associated costs, or you assert that the error is mine, and that I am liable for all associated costs. Accepting responsibility for the parking fee but not the late return simply doesn’t follow any logic whatsoever.

First, I don’t know where you came up with the time of 8:34 for drop-off, but that’s irrelevant for now. Since you seem keen on discussing the technicalities of this issue, let me restate the issue very clearly here.

My reservation, which I handed a copy of to your agent David when I picked up the car, clearly stated a drop-off time of 11pm. He did not point out that the office would be closed or that there was no after-hours drop-off available. It’s as simple as this: It is because of your inaccurate information that I was unable to drop off the car at the time indicated on the confirmation, and I will not be held liable for any associated charges whatsoever.

I don’t know whether this booking error was yours or Priceline’s, and frankly I don’t care — that’s for you to sort out with them. As far as I’m concerned, I had a confirmed reservation constituting an agreement which you did not live up to, and which caused considerable inconvenience and cost to me.

In the interest of expedience, I have refrained from itemizing additional charges incurred due to to your company’s error, including additional gas and plans for both the evening of the 4th and morning of the 5th that I had to change… never mind the complete waste of time that dealing with your company in person, over the phone and via e-mail has been.

As originally indicated, I will be submitting all documentation to my credit card issuer tomorrow with a request to initiate a chargeback.

I am also taking the liberty of forwarding these e-mails along with the associated backup documentation to a number of parties, including consumerist.com and the California Department of Consumer Affairs in order to help avoid others from experiencing your company’s blatant disrespect for its customers.

On a final note, I’d like to offer a little hint for improving your company’s abysmal customer service and disregard for its paying customers (not that I expect anyone to be paying attention, as it’s clear from your response below that you didn’t read or care to respond to a number of specific points):

Maybe the next time you can’t determine a customer’s gender from their first name, you should either spend twenty seconds on google to figure it out, or just leave the title out entirely. Taking a random guess at it is unprofessional, confusing and, quite frankly, insulting. On the other hand, your disregard for cultural diversity as demonstrated not only by your gender-bender, but also your agent’s racist remarks about a customer in front of at least twenty other people (which I outlined in my original note but you obviously were not concerned enough about to address in your response) is hardly surprising at this point.

Jens Hembach

…that’s Mr Jens Hembach

I haven’t gotten a response to this message, nor do I expect to. I was too busy to get in touch with Visa yet but will be doing that later today, and will be posting more updates as the saga further unfolds.

What better way to get back on the blogging bandwagon than with an angry rant I say!

When I got home from work today I had an e-mail waiting from Busted Tees. I have two of their designs (this one and this one) and have had my eye on a few more for a while. Anyways, the latest edition to their shop was not remotely funny.

Playing off of all the publicity NFL star Michael Vick’s alleged involvement in a dog fighting ring in Virginia has been betting in the media, Busted decided to make a joke out of it. I can’t imagine who’s laughing. I couldn’t help but fire off the following e-mail to Busted’s sales department.

Hi,

I'm sure I'm not the first or last person to e-mail you about this,
so I'll keep it brief. I've ordered a handful of tees from you and
love most of your designs, but this latest release is in such poor
taste that it might justify an all-out boycott of the site. Making
light of something so gruesome is just inappropriate (don't get me
wrong, I'm about as politically incorrect as they come, but there are
and should be limits). What's next, pedophilia jokes? Oh wait, you
already carry that too.

For what it's worth, I think the right thing to do here is listen to
the voices of concern and outrage, admit that you made a bad
judgement and ditch the design. Profiting from something so hideous
(even if the shirt is, as you say, "anti-Michael Vik, not anti-dog"
-- you'd think if you had the foresight to put a disclaimer
explaining the shirt, you would have had second thoughts about
putting it up at all) is at best bad karma and simply uncool.

Cheers,
Jens.

Just a few minutes later, I received a response from Busted. I’d of course like to think that it was my e-mail that somehow triggered a reaction, but I’m fairly sure that mine was just one of many.

check out the site now and tell me if it changes your opinion.

[name removed]

And after just another couple of minutes, the page was updated to show this:

I gave it some thought, but it really didn’t change the fundamental objection I had, so I fired off one last note:

Hi [name removed],

I appreciate the quick note back, just noticed the updated page.

Please don't take this as some sort of crusade on my part, just my opinion: Donating
$1.50 for every sold shirt is a nice gesture, no doubt about it. It doesn't really
solve the fundamental problems though: You're still profiting from "someone" else's
suffering (just because lots of media outlets do the same doesn't make it ok), and
people who see others wearing this on the street are still going to chuckle, because
that's what you're going for, and I just don't think that's right. Lastly, I don't
think the ASPCA would even take the money knowing how it was raised - it would be a
publicity nightmare for them.

I guess in the end it's a difference of opinion. Everyone has to draw the line
somewhere, and bustedtees' ist just a bit further out than mine.

Regards,
Jens.

Yes, I’m fully aware I choose to get angry at completely random things and not give a second thought to others - this was just one of former.

This is what happens when I can’t sleep because I’m too wound up after a good run in the pouring rain, but I can’t think of anything useful to do either:

Cristiano
12:29
yap.
you still there?

jens.
12:29
where else would I be?

Cristiano
12:29
i am looking for chinese classes. do you think i should learn cantonese or mandarin?

jens.
12:30
dare I ask where this idea came from?

Cristiano
12:30
well, i wanted to learn arabic
except i can't find any arabic classes

jens.
12:31
yeah, scratch that ,-)
I say Mandarin

Cristiano
12:31
yeah, that's what i think too
i can do business in HK with english

jens.
12:31
I agree
And hey, it's a fruit

Cristiano
12:31
DUDE
i had't even thought of that
i am SO sold

jens.
12:31
See?!
Aren't you glad you consulted your lifeline?!

Cristiano
12:32
TOTALLY
ok, i'm gonna go play some piano

jens.
12:32
uh, ok

Cristiano
12:32
i am downloading mandarin software
like, mandaringteach me software
next time we speak, it will be in mandarin

jens.
12:33
excellent!
I prefer mine in the form of a sorbet

Yes, I know this page looks like crap. I’m playing around with it before I start writing again, and I’m too lazy to set up a whole development system on my laptop just to save anyone who may stumble on this page (which, in itself, would be a miracle).

Give me a few days, and I should have this looking half decent.

I haven’t given this blog nearly the amount of attention I still intend due, due mainly to an overflowing source of ideas, and the inability to focus on a few of them and do them properly. I hate dropping things entirely for the benefit of other projects, but in the end it just leads to nothing at all getting done.

But enough of that. I’m flying high above the atlantic ocean right now, though I can’t tell exactly where since location info on this flight isn’t provided by Apple’s fun flight widget for some reason.

That little missing detail, however, is definitely not going to spoil the sheer joy of being able to access the Internet at 40,000 feet, thanks to Lufthansa’s Connexion by Boeing implementation (they call it FlyNet). Add to that the bonus of flying business class and having a power outlet (regular jacks, no adapters required!) in your seat, and I have the ultimate tech travel setup right here.

The connection does drop occasionally, but overall it’s quite the positive experience. It’s broadband fast, and at $26.99 for the full duration of the flight, a fully worthwhile upgrade.

What fun have I had with my connection? Well, aside from the obligatory check of my blogs, e-mail and some chatting, I also had a video call with my brother using the new supersecret Skype beta video preview - how fun is that?! That’s me in the bottom left corner of the window. Even with my light turned on, the dark cabin renders me practically invisible. Ah well.

To round it all off, I’m streaming my music from my new mp3tunes locker. I’ll be writing a review of that some time soon, but it’s quite cool overall, if not perfect.

That’s all for now. I’m going to try and post regularly at least for the next two weeks, and maybe that’ll get me in gear and I can keep it up indefinitely.

A number of years into this whole blogging experiment (which I always hoped would become more, as I realize that hoping doesn’t quite cut it, but that’s a whole other rant), I’ve decided to make another system shift: WordPress. For all that I was quite happy with Movable Type, there are countless benefits to using WordPress, the most important of which are:

• Free, open source
• Lots of plugins, actively developed
• Uses standard PHP
• My brother’s using it too

That last point is actually what finally triggered the move, since I’ve been spending quite a bit of time over the last few weeks helping him troubleshoot and enhance his new blog (soon to be housed at stylez.de. Read the rest of this entry »

Will it never end?! After bumping into Alicia Keys (nobody believes me on this one), Howard Chui (if you have to ask, never mind), Ron Sexsmith (a couple of times) and others, today I had another brief encounter with greatness.

Dean Kamen himself cruised past me on a Segway while I was walking home from work today on Front St. As usual, I let the moment just pass and arrived home quite upset that I hadn’t stopped and asked for a photo. I’m sure quite a number of people have stopped him and asked about the Segway, but I’m quite sure very few if any of those people would have in fact recognized who they were speaking to.

I took a few minutes to google around and see if I could figure out what he was in town for, but didn’t find anything. It could be to check out the FIRST Robotics Competition, which he founded in 1989, or maybe it was to speak with city council about how municipal by-laws would deal with the Segway — who knows.

It’s a well-established fact that I’m a big nerd, and have also become an uncontrollable Apple fanboy. As such, I’ve bought a number of products from PodBrix. They make t-shirts and figurines based on a mashup of Lego minifigs and iPod ads.

Today was the release of their latest product: 1K Brix Macrofig, a 7″ tall plastic figure limited to only 50 units, the most exclusive run so far.

Having specifially planned to be at my desk in time to get the page set up and continually reload the page like a trained monkey in the minute leading up to the 9pm launch, I was very excited at the chance to pick one of these up.

When the cart became available I quickly added 2 units (the maximum quantity per person), proceeded to pay via PayPal, and only a few moments later I received my confirmations - woohoo! I’d done it! I had secured 4% of the total world production of this cool product for myself!

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great things about Apple’s laptops is the integrated bluetooth, which allows, amongst other things, for easy syncronization with phones and PDAs, simple files transfers, and the use of wireless peripherals like headsets and mice.

Shortly after I bought my PowerBook about two years ago, I started looking for a suitable mouse. The selection at the time was slim, but I finally decided on DV Forge’s The Mouse BT (now built and sold by Chwang Yi). I mainly decided on this model based on the smooth scroll wheel, and the fact that the design matched that of Apple’s own bluetooth mouse closely while adding a right button and middle button / scroll wheel.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I received an e-mail from my Internet service provider that caught me a little off-guard. It said:

We are writing to inform you that TELUS has received a complaint that alleges that your TELUS Internet Service account has been involved in copyright infringement. This complaint was traced back to your account based on the IP address used at the time of this activity.

Please note that TELUS has not provided any of your personal account information to the complainant. It is TELUS’ policy to disclose such information to a complainant only if ordered to do so by a court of law, which has not happened to date.

We do, however, want you to be aware that this complaint was received by us and offer you the following information that may be of help to you:

I’m not exactly sure what activity they are referring to, or who the complainant is, which would be very interesting to know.

Read the rest of this entry »

I went to the post office to pick up a package the other day and bumped into Ron Sexsmith, which made me think about Torontonians and celebrity. I understand that Ron Sexsmith may not be as well-known as, say, Bono or the Prime Minister, but he’s a very well-known Canadian artist who has received lots of attention from Canadian mass media and international music critics.

The staff at the post office must deal with him regularly, as they addressed him by name and were quick to get him exactly what he needed. Mainly, it made me wonder what would happen if someone like this would stroll into a post office in, say, Munich, or Miami. One of the many charming characteristics about Toronto is that we’re not obsessed with celebrity. Yes, we like to stop for a few minutes and watch a movie shoot in progress, and we tell all our friends when we bump into Courtney Cox walking her dog on a Sunday morning, but in general, we exhibit a very laissez-faire attitude, which I assume is why celebrities enjoy coming to Toronto: they’re allowed to be real people - no bodyguards, no screaming bands of teenage girls.

In all fairness, had I remembered I had my iPod on me at the time I probably would have asked him to autograph it for me. Alas, maybe next time.

And what did I pick up at the post office? My new podbrix/Tomi ‘Wozwear 6802′ t-shirt. It’s one of just 300 made and depicts a lego figurine styled to look like Steve Wozniak (co-founder of Apple) holding an authentic, magnetically attached CPU idential to those used in the Apple II (as well as the Atari 2600 and a number of other great gizmos).

It’ll definitely be popular with the crowd when I line up to be one of the first inside the new Apple Store’s grand opening at the Eaton Centre, just as I did for the Yorkdale opening. Mac nerds rule!