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The Tech Toy Revealed

Dave Traynor wants to know what the technology present is, mentioned in my last three posts.  For Christmas this year, I got a Nokia E61 smart phone, but as I alluded in the last three blog posts, the phone is somewhere between Toronto and here.  ETA is today, the first business day since the package was last sighted in Ontario.

I'm pretty pumped about this, partly because I'm into technology gadgets, and partly because I'm hoping it will reduce the amount of time I spend in front of a computer trying to recreate the ideas I had earlier in the day or week.

Kelley and I have been experimenting with chosen presents lately.  We still get each other surprises, but often big purchases that are a bit of a luxury get wrapped into Christmas, birthday or anniversary. 

Does knowing what's coming spoil the fun?  Not really, because it's precisely the thing I wanted.  There's still plenty of room for surprise and delight in our lives.

Now, to get writing our annual Christmas e-mail, that often goes out in January...

Previous posts: Christmas Present Takes a Genealogical Tour; If a  Present Is Still in Truck, It's not Really Present, Is It?,  Christmas Shipping Saga: The Maps

Christmas Present Shipping Saga: The Maps

Chapter 3:

Eric Explores an Alternate Universe, Where You Move Away from Something in Order to Get Closer to it

I'm still hung up on the item being shipped from Bloomington Illinois that is struggling to find me.  I had no idea where this particular Bloomington was, so I consulted Google Maps.

Here's how Google thinks my package should have travelled:

In this universe, Chicago or Minneapolis would be the hub for the courier company, and the parcel would go north to Winnipeg.

Maybe in the days when trains were the dominant form of transportation this would make sense, but we all know that Toronto is the centre of Canada, and packages going to Canada are much more likely to be destined for a thin strip of land adjacent to the U.S. border somewhere between London and Montreal.

So the courier company's view of the trip looks like this:

In this universe, items headed for Canada get sorted at a few central hubs and are distributed from there.

As a customer, this neither surprises me nor particularly disappoints me.  If this thing absolutely had to be here for Christmas, I would have paid the 100% markup on shipping.

Previous posts:  Christmas Present Takes a Genealogical Tour; If a  Present Is Still in Truck, It's not Really Present, Is It?

Christmas Present Takes a Genealogical Tour

The bad news - the present that was supposed to be here for Christmas was shipped to the greater Toronto area, where it's been languishing for two days.

The good news - it's very close to my great-grandmother's birthplace of Stouffville, Ontario.

Minnie March grew up in the Whitchurch-Stouffville area, and ended up moving to Saskatchewan with her new husband David Curtis.  They ran a dry goods store in Wolseley, then moved to Findlater, southeast of Regina, where he was badly injured while working in a grain elevator.

They ended up living at 2039 Retallack Street in Regina, about seven blocks from our house.

If the package takes a short detour on the way to Regina (and why not, it's already gone far enough from here), it can swing by where the old family farm was.

The map on the right shows a red star where my package was at 3:37 this morning.

Merry Christmas to the March family relations in and from Stouffville.  I've never visited, but I'm not dead yet, so you never know.

The package will eventually go through Wolseley, which was a little different when Elsie was born there in 1903.  For one thing, it was still part of the Northwest Territories then.  Saskatchewan didn't become a province for another two years.

Here's a shot of the grain elevators in early Wolseley.  My grandparents briefly ran their store in a triangular brick building that's now a credit union branch.

My mom sometimes talks about her aunt Susan, who married into the Banbury family in Wolseley. Susan's husband Robert was related to Edwin Banbury, a co-founder of Beaver Lumber.

I've got a few March family photos from the turn of the last century on Flickr.

Thanks to the University of Saskatchewan archives for the photo.

If a Present Is Still in a Truck, It's not Really Present, Is It?

Every year there's something in transit for Christmas.

 

This year it's a big ticket electronics item, ordered from a "Canadian" website.

 

The package shipped December 19, and thanks to online tracking, I'm able to watch it wend its way east.  Should I mention to UPS that I live in Western Canada?

 

The package originated in Illinois, which is not in Canada.  This would have been good information to know before I ordered.  Does this mean I'll get dinged for import duties?

Fortunately, Illinois is only a few states and an international border away from Saskatchewan. 

Watching UPS track my package into Michigan and then Ontario doesn't fill me with confidence.  It's heading east!

 

The last tracking point was Windsor.  That's a good sign, I think.  At first it looked like it would end up in Toronto for sortation, but if it was headed for Toronto it would have got there long ago.  I guess UPS popped it on a truck heading to western Canada.  Either that, or it's still sitting in customs.  Life was easier when you couldn't track the progress.  You just had to pray to the postal gods.

If I knew it had to cross borders to get here I would have paid extra for faster shipping.  Just because there's a Canadian flag on the web page, doesn't mean the company has its warehouses in the country.

I'm pretty sure UPS doesn't deliver on weekends in Regina, so if it's not here by Friday afternoon, I doubt we'll get it for Christmas.  One of the presents in the house is going to be represented by a print-out from an online catalogue.

If you see a UPS truck heading west on the Trans Canada Highway, let me know!

Holiday Tableaux - Mix and Match

Via Ed Lee's blog, I came across Choose Your Own Holiday Adventure, set up by iStudio.

This is a nice little self-promotion tool for the web design firm.  I chose to NOT include music, so it's safe for work (unless you click on the video game - then all bets are off).

Based on your input, the Playmobil figures are arrayed in a tableau, so don't complain if it looks really weird.  (Playmobil figures always look a bit sinister, with their bland, Stepford normalness.  I think the dog did it in the study with a pipe wrench.)

For a look at a traditional Eggertson Christmas, check out my own holiday adventure by clicking the banner ad below (nobody will try to sell you anything).  I think Ed's North Korea Christmas has a more authentic feel...

And to everyone at iStudio, have a great holiday, wherever you are, and whatever play figures you choose to play with!

Protection for all those Christmas Gadget Gifts

Whenever I lose something, I kick myself for not doing a better job of labelling it, so the finder can return it, if they're so inclined.

So an offer by Trackitback to sell me five of their lost-and-found return stickers for a total of $20 was too good to resist.  (No one in the family needs to know in advance which of their presents will have a free return sticker on it.)

The sticker I put on my digital camera last year doesn't guarantee it will get returned, but it makes it easier for someone to be a good samaritan if they find the camera.  I also added a cash reward, so if someone does return the camera, they'll get about 10% of the value of the camera as thanks.

And here's the best part.  Trackitback has a dirt cheap shipping price for people who aren't in a hurry to get their stickers.  Plus, they billed my credit card in Canadian dollars, saving me the currency conversion fee I get charged when I pay in US dollars.

A no-brainer for a Canadian company to let its customers pay in their own currency?  You'd think so, but there are plenty of companies that don't give you the option.

I have no idea when the Stocking Stuffer Special ends, but there's a $30 5-pack also available.  Even at the regular $10 per sticker price, Trackitbacks are worth it, if they save you replacing even one electronic gadget in your arsenal.

And yes, I do believe there a lot of people out there who would return a lost camera or laptop if they found it.  Just check out the overflowing lost and found boxes in stores, schools and other public places if you don't believe me.

Trackitback is franchised in most English speaking countries, plus Portugal and Mexico.  Items found in any country in the world will be returned, if the finder contacts Trackitback.

Saskatchewan Bloggers Featured

A feature article about Saskatchewan bloggers gave a peek at some of the province's blogs Monday morning.

Being one of the only Regina bloggers interviewed, I was fodder for a photo and a couple of quotes.  That's me poking up at the top of the front page of the Regina Leader-Post.  I was going for the serious, professional look, but photographer Don Healy wanted the grinning enthusiast look, so I obliged.

I commented about the interactivity of blogs, and that editorial rules for bloggers vary much more than they do for journalists.

A companion article focused on political blogs and how the parties approach social media.

In addition to the usual suspects Kate McMillan, Lance Levsen, John Murney and Saskboy, the L-P talked to Prince Albert pastor Randall Friesen and political strategists Mike Stefaniuk and Reg Downs.

For a look at most of the active blogs in the province, visit the Saskatchewan Blogs Aggregator.

Did I get a spike in traffic from the Leader-Post story?  A bit, but not as much as from a link this week on Laura's Playground Transgender and Transsexual News site.  Goes to show that a mention in electronic format that has a link built in leads to more visits than a mention in a print publication that doesn't include a URL.

And congrats to Saskboy for his Off the Grid being voted best science/tech blogger from the Canadian Blog Awards.  He also came third in the best progressive blog category.  Kate McMillan's Small Dead Animals and Schmutzie's Milkmoney or Not Here I Come were in the top three for best conservative blog and best Canadian blog, respectively.

Tags:  saskatchewan, socialmedia, promotion, blogs, saskblogs, regina

I Hate Web-based Blogging Tools (and they hate me)

After spending 30 minutes pulling together a blog post, my hand slips and hits a key combination.  My web-based publishing software doesn't ask me if I'm insane for not saving my work.  It doesn't ask if I want to reconsider.  It dutifully creates a new page, thus wiping out everything I've written.  Time to start over...

Transgender Kids - No Easy Decisions

This piece in the New York Times caught my eye.  It's about kids who identify strongly with the other gender.  Some parents are letting their kids cross-dress, but it's not an easy decision.

In the past, that sort of behaviour was treated as a psychological problem.  Now therapists aren't so sure.  They wonder if the depression and suicides seen in adults who see themselves as transgender could be avoided. 

Given the amount of verbal and physical abuse a transgender pre-teen or teen would get in your average North American community, I'm not sure anyone's going to be able to avoid psychological distress.

About 15-20% of boys who grow up identifying themselves as girls will want to change their sex when they reach adulthood, says a Toronto psychologist.

Transamerica

Speaking of trannies transsexuals, I watched Transamerica recently.  The beauty of the film isn't that Felicity Huffman plays a transgender man.  It's that she plays a messed-up person who happens to be transgender. 

You can catch a good interview with writer-director Duncan Tucker on the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcasts (February 2006).

The best part of the interview is Tucker talking about meeting Huffman's husband William H. Macy, who asks if there's "anything I can do to help."  It took Tucker several hours to realize that it wasn't one of those empty offers.  Macy became executive producer, and helped get the indie film in wide distribution.

Upate: Check out the comments.  Some good additions to the discussion, including a correction that Huffman plays a transgender woman, not a man.

Tags: transgender, film, psychology, gender, transamerica