Brompton Folding

Last summer I became the owner of a folding bicycle, a Brompton C-Line Explorer High Handlebar, ordered from Dutch Bikes in Burlington.

It’s simply a marvel of engineering: I love how it folds from a rideable bicycle into a package that will fit in an overhead compartment of an airplane. It is ingenious, and I love ingenious things.

Here’s an animated GIF I made, after going for a morning ride with Lisa over to Stratford and back, that shows the ingenuity in action:

Animated GIF showing my folding bicycle

Need a Bin? Say No to Drugs. Be Happy.

FERO is a waste management company based in New Brunswick (the name, at least for marketing purposes, stands for Friendly, Efficient, Reliable and On-time). If you’ve hung out in the back allies of New Brunswick restaurants, you’ve likely seen their dumpsters, which, in addition to a large FERO and their toll-free number, are emblazoned with seemingly-random slogans.

Like this one, in the parking lot of the the Cranewood Bakery in Sackville:

A FERO dumpster with the slogan "Smile" painted on it.

(I love the “Tony’s Pastries Only” add-on: this is presumably a dumpster once used by Tony’s in Moncton).

This weekend I stumbled across the pinnacle of FERO slogans, behind McCready’s Irving in Coles Island, NB:

Photo of three dumpsters, each with a different slogan: Need a Bin? Say No to Drugs. Be Happy

Need a bin? Say no to drugs. Be Happy. Poetry.

A decade-old CBC story tells the story of the approach:

Fero, which operates across the region, puts its name and phone number on each dumpster.

But it also leaves space for messages, such as: Never Give Up, Seize the Day, Don’t Do Drugs, Stay in School, Smile, Be Happy and Safety.

Andrew King, the company’s director of special projects, said the staff draw up the messages on a computer and then print each one onto decals.

The messages are added to the dumpsters when they are returned to the shop for repairs or a new paint job.

If we can have an effect on somebody, somewhere, at some time, we thought that would be a great way to do it,” King said.

King said there’s no agenda underlying the messages or major commercial benefit to display them.

He said it’s just something that helps Fero — Be Happy.

Smile.

How to cancel Eastlink Internet

We had occasion to cancel Eastlink Internet service this month. And it took the entire month to do so. 

There’s no way to cancel online.

There’s no way to email a request. 

The Eastlink toll-free number regularly has hold times of an hour or longer (we don’t know how long it takes them to answer, as they never did, over repeated calls). 

The online chat system has never displayed anything other than a wait time of 57 minutes. 

What we ended up doing today—finally—is canceling by SMS.

To do this required texting the word “Tech” to the SMS support number (because texting “Billing” consistently returns an automated “SMS is currently closed”) and then, once an agent responds, tell them you want to cancel service and they’ll “transfer” you to Billing. 

Once connected to Billing—it might take awhile—you will be asked for your PIN. If you don’t remember your PIN, or you don’t have one, you’ll need your account number and the amount of your last bill, to confirm your identity.

At that point, at least in our experience, it just takes a minute or two to complete the cancellation request.

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