Meandering

So I read here that Canada Post might go on strike.

The running joke--virtually everyone at my work who is younger than I am made it today--is "would anyone notice?"

I asked these funny people how many bills they had to pay each month, and received mostly blank stares. To be fair, I am surprised more companies don't e-mail their bills. But even so, the elderly tend not to be well-connected, and there are still many people in rural areas may as well not be. Remember dial-up? It's like exploring a haunted forest with a single firefly for light.

The postal service is admittedly in its sunset years, but it's still valuable, even if many people choose not to value it. "All I ever get is junk mail" is a common refrain. Common, yet odd, when you think about it. What constitutes "junk mail"? Usually people mean advertising circulars and flyers. Either these folks are some strange breed of human that never buys anything or they're so absurdly rich that they aren't interested in saving money.

Or do they view all their flyers online? I can't imagine that. At this house we usually receive twenty to thirty flyers a week, and I give each and every one at least a cursory glance. To do that online, I'd have to

• find the store's website (which may require Google...they're not always obvious. For instance, No Frills can be found at www.shopnofrills.ca.
• select my language
• enter my postal code or some other identifier to determine which flyer is in effect in my area
• view the flyer, one (web) page at a time.
• Repeat...and repeat...and repeat...and repeat...

That's a nontrivial exercise even with a DSL connection. Pointless, I'd argue. In this house we're pissed if we don't get the weekly flyers--which, by the bye, AREN'T delivered by Canada Post. What the post office sends us are mostly bills and magazines. I'd miss the magazines. Wouldn't miss the bills, except apparently you still have to pay 'em. It's kind of like those people that call us up and offer to give us money. "Do I have to pay it back?" I ask. Yes, I do. Well, then, not interested. Call me when I don't.

So, anyway, that's people's definition of junk mail. What, then, is non-junk mail? Personal letters? I'm not making a joke when I ask, does anybody actually still send those?

****

I'm hearing from more and more people who don't have a landline or cable/satellite television. All their telephony is via cell or Skype; all their television comes through the Internet. That boggles my mind. The landline I could maybe see us giving up--mind you, I just know I'd forget to bring my cell with me at least twice a week--except our telephone is hard-wired to the fire department, and we get a discount on our insurance and some priceless peace of mind for this.

As for TV on the Internet, no bloody way. That'd get mighty expensive mighty fast in this house, given our viewing habits and a puny bandwidth cap. (Last I looked: 65 GB a month. They were making noises about lowering that to 25GB a month...which is fine if your Internet experience consists of surfing the web and receiving mostly text emails. It's pitiful if you actually want to use the Net for anything remotely resembling its potential. Life in Canada, ya gotta love it.)

When our contracts are up, we're going to look at saving some money. Right now we're with Bell for everything--landline, cell, satellite and Internet--and we're getting gouged beyond belief. I mean, I'm willing to pay a small premium for the convenience of one bill, but I figure I could shave at least a hundred bucks off our connectivity bill each month without too much effort.

The sun is out...amazing. We've had eight straight days of overcast, with intermittent monsoon. I mean, I like grey days, another way I'm weird, but seriously, that gets to wearing on you after a while. It's greatly curtailed my bike riding. I don't overmuch mind riding home from work in the rain, but I will not venture forth on my bike in the morning if there's even the slightest chance I'll get wet before I get to my job in the cooler and freezer...