RickMcCharles.com

Hard working. Sincere. Loving the opportunity simply to “learn”.

Homework the best hours of the day.

It’s based on a novel by Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer published in 1999.

The new TV series is getting good buzz and looks to be a keeper.

Series Premiere: Thursday, September 24th, 2009. 8/7c on ABC.

Click PLAY or watch a promo on YouTube.

The full premiere episode can be watched online on ABC … IF you live in the USA. I can’t find it available online from Canada. (Me thinks I need to go to Hawaii to watch it.)

I’m a big fan of Robert J. Sawyer. The only way he’ll ever make much money, however, is if his books are used for TV and movies.

Sawyer is a good friend of my brother Randy who tells me that ABC expects a 5yr run of the TV show. The plan is that it will replace LOST in their lineup.

CTV.ca will stream it online free for Canadians.

Click through to (Ep. 101) “No More Good Days” Series Premiere

I put the milk in the cupboard the other day, my first definitive act of senile dementia.

Perhaps I should be put down. I don’t want to be a burden.

This is awesome.

It’s the flash mob that took over Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Watch 21,000 of Oprah’s biggest fans perform one of the biggest dances in the world to the BlackEyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” …

Click PLAY or watch it on Dailymotion. (dance starts at 2min 10sec)

One of the world’s biggest continuously successful bands, BlackEyed Peas are easy to criticize:

… Rolling Stone notes that since 2003, when the group “hired a blond bombshell named Stacy ‘Fergie’ Ferguson and gave up their pursuit of backpack-rapper cred, they have made a kind of spiritual practice of recording dumb songs — a total aesthetic commitment that extends from their garish wardrobes to their United Colors of Benetton worldview.” …

Founder will.i.am started as a hard core rapper with the legendary Eazy-E. … He’s got no rap cred, now. Yet has evolved into some sort of hiphop Bono, very active in social issues.

Yes their songs are cheesy. Yes their songs are commercial. … Yes their songs are really, really catchy.

Yes I love BlackEyed Peas.

(via Gymnastics Coaching)

New look. New colours.

This is the 3rd theme I’ve used over the past 4-5yrs. The best yet, I think.

screen shot

GymnasticsCoaching.com

These guys have won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice:

Spencer Tracy
Fredric March
Gary Cooper
Marlon Brando
Dustin Hoffman
Tom Hanks
Jack Nicholson
Daniel Day-Lewis
Sean Penn

Laurence Olivier was nominated 9 times, winning once. Peter O’Toole was nominated 8 times, never winning.

In my opinion Johnny Depp is in that league. He was nominated, not winning, in 2004, 2005 and 2008.

Who else deserves to be on that list?

De Niro? Philip Seymour Hoffman? Gene Hackman? Kevin Spacey? Denzel Washington? Clint Eastwood? Robert Downey, Jr.? Jamie Foxx?

Leave a comment.

Love this.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Leslie Feist (born 13 February 1976) is a Canadian singer-songwriter. She performs as a solo artist under the name Feist and as a member of the indie rock group Broken Social Scene. At the 2008 Juno Awards in Calgary, she was the top winner with five awards, including Songwriter of the Year, Artist of the Year, Pop Album of the Year, Album of the Year and Single of the Year. …

The choreography, by dancer Noemi Lafrance, owes something to the brilliant Here It Goes Again video by OK Go. That was choreographed by Trish Sie.

… Because her father is American, Feist has dual Canadian-American citizenship, though she joked in a televised interview on The Colbert Report that she was given American citizenship as part of a deal with Apple …

Christopher ‘Chris’ Stewart (born in 1950), was the original drummer and a founding member of Genesis.

Unexpectedly, he has become a very successful author.

… Chris transports us to Las Alpujarras, an oddball region south of Granada, and into a series of misadventures with an engaging mix of peasant farmers and shepherds, New Age travellers and ex-pats. The hero of the piece, however, is the farm that he and Ana bought, El Valero – a patch of mountain studded with olive, almond and lemon groves, sited on the wrong side of a river, with no access road, water supply or electricity. Could life offer much better than that?

It is laugh out loud hilarious. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia

Chris was not really serious about becoming a musician and left the band in the summer of 1968. … After travelling and working throughout Europe, Stewart settled and bought a farm “El Valero” in the Alpujarras region of Andalusia, Spain where he lives and works with his wife Ana Exton and daughter Chloe. He came in last place for the position of local councillor in the 27 May 2007 local elections in Órgiva representing the Green Party, where he received 201 votes (roughly 8%).

He is now better known for his autobiographical books, Driving Over Lemons (1999) .. and the sequels, A Parrot In The Pepper Tree … and The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society (2006)

… The first two are also available as audiobooks … narrated by Stewart.

Lest I came across as too critical in other posts, let me go on the record as saying that Glasgow has many very attractive sections.

Especially the University and Kelvingrove Art Gallery area. I stayed near Kelvingrove Park, an area rapidly being yuppified.

The Scots, too, were the most friendly people I found in Europe.

Nae problem!

Boingo Wireless is a private American company that provides wireless communication services, specifically Wi-Fi. ..

Though signup is seamless, canceling the service requires a call into customer retention.

Wikipedia

In the past, traveling in North America, I have used Boingo. And enjoyed the service. It works well … though I often cannot find one of their Boingo hotspots when I need one.

A sales rep talked me into subscribing again for my Summer trip to Europe. It was very reasonably priced:

July – CAD$23.82

August – CAD$22.17

But when I got home and checked my online bank statement, here’s what I had been charged for September:

What’s with that?

I’ll blog first, ask questions later. And update this post with their response.

=== UPDATE

David Almaraz from Boingo got back to me right away.

He says I have a Boingo AsYouGo plan, “Wi-Fi for the next 24 hours at each hotspot for $19.95.”

I signed up over the phone with a rep that recommended a monthly fee plan that included Europe. At least, that’s what I recall. Boingo sent me no email confirmation.

As you know, I would never sign up for a $20 / hook-up fee. It was a mistake on their part. Or an accident on my part.

My advice to the World Wide Web is to be very, very careful about charges if you sign on with Boingo. They are not very transparent about charges.

I will not use Boingo again.

==== second update:

Lauren Sanyal from Boingo followed up:

The last thing we ever want is for our customers to be unhappy. We focus on outstanding customer service every day, and we appreciate the opportunity to attempt to make things right! To be absolutely clear, I will try to explain what happened.

It looks like, on May 25, 2008, you signed up for our Boingo Unlimited monthly subscription plan for $9.95 USD for the first three months and $21.95 USD per month thereafter. On September 11, 2008, you contacted Customer Care and changed your plan to Boingo AsYouGo. The Boingo AsYouGo description states: “Enjoy Boingo Wi-Fi for the next 24 hours at this hotspot for just $7.95 USD. Future connections will be billed at just $7.95 USD per connection at individual hotspots within North and South America, $9.95 USD per connection at individual hotspots in Asia/Pacific, and $19.95 USD per connection at individual hotspots in Europe, Middle East, and Africa.” Since you changed your plan over the phone, this may not have been made explicitly clear.

Instead of changing your plan to a global subscription, which would have been more appropriate given your travel plans, the Customer Care agent you spoke with switched your account to Boingo AsYouGo. I’m sorry to hear that you were given the impression that you would receive one month of global Wi-Fi access for $19.95 USD per month. In fact, the price you were quoted is the cost of one AsYouGo connect in Europe. Our global subscription plan, Boingo Global, provides 2,000 minutes of Wi-Fi access across the globe for $59 USD per month.

I sincerely regret that you had a confusing experience with us as a result. Also, we’re so sorry to hear that you feel we weren’t being straight with you; we work hard to be transparent and forthright with our customers. If you’d like to view your receipts and usage online, please visit https://my.boingo.com to access your account anytime.

As a courtesy, we have refunded $99.75 USD to your account. Quick note – since you created your Boingo account in the US, I have been discussing these charges in USD. However, your refund will appear in CAD on your bank statement. I sincerely hope you’ll give us another chance. Finally, if there’s anything else we can do to help you reach a satisfactory resolution, please let me know.

That is fantastic customer service, so far as I’m concerned.

Suddenly I am a huge fan of Boingo. And will give the service another try on my Fall travels.

Certainly there was some confusion:

“On September 11, 2008, you contacted Customer Care”

I was traveling in Spain on that date. My laptop in Glasgow.

Certainly it was not me that contacted Customer Care.

hmmm