Why, if I hate cooking, am I posting about it? My cousin, Jesse, is the master chef and, along with her Sister’s design work, I helped put the site together. Regardless of this affiliation, the food really does look amazing and, if you have even the weakest of interest in cooking, then you absolutely should check it out!

Oh and for one other reason: Jesse is finally doing what she loves and I’m proud to have been able to help her get there.

http://www.outtolunchcreations.com

It’s only gotten worse.

With cell phones and the horrible fact that everyone thinks an immediate answer is necessary at all times, we’ve become dependant upon interruptions to go about our daily lives. In an office you’re interrupted non-stop for meetings, updates, reports, what-have-you. On your computer or tablet, you’re interrupted by notifications from Twitter, Facebook, Emails, and just about every application on your favorite device.

It never ends! Except that it can; you rule your life, whether you know it or not.

There’s a fix for every one of these problems. To accomplish this, I have defined areas where I’m OK with interruptions and areas that I’m not. First up, telephone calls.

Telephone Calls

I cannot stand telephone calls – they interrupt whatever I’m doing no matter what it is at any point in the day (or night). The call may just be a friend or family member looking for a status update while I’m trying to fix a serious issue with a server. No way it makes sense for me to answer that! If I’m in the midst of reading a rather complicated chapter of an important book (non-fiction informational typically) a telephone call could make me need to read the chapter all over again. If I’m programming, a telephone call can make me lose track of what I’m working on and start the whole section anew (wasting precious hours of my time). What to do?!

Let everyone know you don’t want phone calls. Set up your voicemail to inform others that they’re welcome to leave a voicemail, though email is preferred (email is quicker to respond to and gather information than is voicemail). Tell people to email you or text message you, but not to expect an immediate response at all times. If people understand your methods, they’re more likely to obey them.

This also lends a hand to prioritization and emergencies. If someone only calls you when its an emergency, you’re much more likely to answer the call than if they call you all of the time. You could accidentally ignore an emergency if you don’t have something like this set up purely because you’re accustomed to all of your phone calls being of the same importance level. How can you prioritize a phone call if you don’t know what it’s about? You simply can’t unless you’ve arranged the call in advance – likely by email.

People in your face

I hear people constantly joking about families that are emailing or text messaging each other within the same household – often across the hallway or room from each other. And they scoff at it. But it’s effective and efficient! And hey, it can be pretty fun too. This works exactly the same for offices. Why would you walk down the hall (or across the room) and interrupt someone’s workflow? The only time it makes sense is if there is an urgent matter to deal with immediately. In every other case, both people are benefited by emailing instead. Why? The person who gets up to go talk to you clearly has nothing better to do or is avoiding doing work. You get interrupted in the midst of whatever you’re doing, and overall the net productivity of the situation is considerably lower than if the information being passed on were simply emailed.

But I can’t describe the problem by email

Bullshit. Most people are horrible at describing things in general. But when you sit down to itemize the information you’re trying to transmit, it’s amazing how clear it can become! By outlining a description on your computer, you have the ability to actually see what it is that you are saying and realize that you haven’t been saying it very clearly all along. This happens to me all the time, and those that think they don’t need it are almost always wrong. There are exceptions. Some people are excellent at formulating thoughts (even long ones) in their heads, but most of us simply aren’t built that way. For the rest of us, there’s writing.

Next time you’re excited about telling someone something that’s rather long, instead of running up to them and describing that thing, write it down and itemize it. Put it in clear terms without editing as you go along. When you’re done, sleep on it and read over it the next morning. You will see how unclear and completely unoptimized it truly is! This is a quick exercise to see how you can improve communications with others, but I wouldn’t do this every time. After a while you can edit as you go along and come up with roughly the same effectiveness as before while improving your speed greatly. Not only do you improve your ability to communicate that thought but you improve your writing skills in general – this can only be a good thing in the Internet age.

If I don’t get back to person x, they’ll think I don’t care!

While this is certainly possible with some people these days, the people that really matter, whether in business or your person life, will not fault you for this. You would be surprised how understanding people are of simply needing a bit of time to answer a question. If these people are not understanding, are you sure you want to be doing business with them? If it’s a friend, well perhaps it’s time to space yourself just a little bit from this person – for the sake of your sanity.

Choose your weapon: prioritization on all of your devices

My computer tends to be my notification frenzy device. I typically leave a dozen apps running that notify me of things, like Facebook notifier, Twitter, Mail, Sparrow, OmniFocus, Evernote, Skype, Adium and possibly more I’m not thinking of. This means when I need to get some real work done, I need to do one of two things. I can quit all those programs and only use the one I need to be working on or I can switch to a notification free device

My iPad is my weapon of choice for no interruptions; it’s a mostly notification free device. I use it to read, write and research, all of which should be done in an interruption free environment, so I disabled notifications from anything that pops up regularly enough to annoy me. I take my iPad with me any time I need to get anything done (except programming sadly).

My iPhone is somewhere in the middle. I’ve disabled push notifications for almost everything except the most important business interruptions and key messenger programs like Kik and SMS that only really work well on the iPhone with its constant cellular connection. I have business support tickets set up for push, but NOT all emails. This way people who actually need help can get through to me immediately, while the rest can await my next free moment, at which time I will open the Mail app and take a gander.

Signal to noise ratio (SNR)

SNR comes from sound or radio communications where you want to eliminate noise and focus in on the signal. Sound familiar? It should – you’ve just been reading over 1000 words about it. You’re improving the signal to noise ratio of the information all around you by taking some or all of these tips to heart. I’ve been living with these types of adjustments to my life for roughly the past year and a half and it is completely liberating. I find when I need to get things done, they get done considerably faster than before and my stress levels remain comparatively low.

My only regret? Not realizing I needed to do this before I started university.

It starts with a jailbreak, needed in order to obtain access to the internals of the iPhone operating system. Once there, hackers need to find bugs to exploit in the iPhone’s cellular firmware in order to free your phone from its carrier. Why isn’t this easier? Because Apple’s agreement with the carriers mean they can keep your phone locked until the carrier allows you to unlock it. And although they do allow you unlock it, their unlocking services come with extremely ridiculous and complicated requirements.

Note: If you’re looking for specific information on the policy and do not wish to read my story, feel free to skip to the summary at the very bottom of the article.

Background

My Mother obtained an iPhone 3GS that is locked to Rogers Wireless from a friend in Canada. Her friend has since upgraded to the iPhone 4 by buying out the 3GS contract and signing a new one for the iPhone 4. This means the 3GS is no longer under contract – it is free and clear. My Mother lives in Mexico, so having a phone locked to a Canadian carrier is next to useless unless she only intended to use it as an iPod – she did not.

While visiting my Mother in Mexico, I figured I would take it upon myself to get her new phone unlocked, after all, why not use it to its full potential? I had recently heard about Rogers unlocking iPhones for a fee [Electronista] once the contract on the phone is completed. Although I could (somewhat) easily soft-unlock the phone using the complex method I described above, this isn’t optimal, since then I have to warn my Mother to avoid software updates and it would also create other minor annoyances, such as possibly broken GPS (at the time of writing this article). Therefore, a carrier-level unlock would be much simpler for her. This makes paying the $50 that Rogers is asking for the unlock a reasonable investment. So I called Rogers.

The Ridiculousness of the Rogers Unlock Program

The conversation starts off pretty well, with the first contact representative having heard of the unlock program and transferring me to the correct department. From here things go downhill. I described the situation, how I obtained a phone off-contract and that I’d like to pay the fee to get it unlocked. Unlocking the phone is something you would think Rogers would be happy to do since the phone is no longer on contract, they are receiving $0 from the device at this time (phones on contract pay them a certain amount every month as part of the plan). Handing over $50 for something that costs them nothing, aside from negligible phone operator costs, is a nice small profit for them. Sure I’m just one guy for now, but many people are likely to want to unlock their off-contract phones in the coming years as iPhone 3G and 3GS device contracts come to a close. Their unlocking service should add up to a good little profit over time.

I clearly described to the operator that the phone is not tied to a contract and asked her to look up the serial number so she could verify this. She refused. I asked her what is required, if not the serial number of the phone, in order to unlock the iPhone. Her response? She wants my account information. I told her that the phone I’m looking to unlock has nothing to do with my own Rogers account, but when she wouldn’t continue the conversation until I gave her the info, I relented. Her having that info shouldn’t do any harm anyway. She looked on my account and found my own 3GS (with a different serial number) and the contract on it that has about another two years left. Paraphrasing her response: “I can only unlock phones for people that have no contract on their account.” This apparently is true even if it can be proven that the phone being unlocked has absolutely nothing to do with the account in question. In other words, if you once had an iPhone 3GS and have since completed a hardware upgrade with Rogers to a BlackBerry, Android phone or a new iphone 4, you still cannot unlock your old iPhone. Even though it has been paid off entirely.

What does this mean?

For me and my Mother, this meant I simply had to soft-unlock the phone after all. It also meant Rogers didn’t obtain another penny for the iPhone 3GS in question, which is a puzzling business decision.

For others with iPhones, it means that if you do a hardware upgrade you will never be able to legitimately unlock the older hardware until three years after your ‘last’ device purchase; if you want to unlock, you cannot get a new phone. Even though you have paid for the older phone in its entirety, you are unable to unlock it. How absurd is that? I can walk into an Apple store and buy an iPhone 4 for about $750 factory unlocked. But after I’ve paid $1,440-2,160 (~$60 [conservative estimate] per month for 2 or 3 years) I’m forced to keep the phone locked to Rogers? Even when they have the ability to unlock it AND I’m willing to pay additional fees to do so?

Now that is ridiculous.

Why would they do this? There is only one reason that makes any sense. If the hoops you have to jump through to get your phone unlocked means that more phones remained locked to Rogers, then whomever you sell or give your iPhone to will have to sign up for a new plan with Rogers. It’s the opposite of loyalty, they are actually forcing people to use their service when they should be using their marketing and customer service to attract customers and create real loyalty instead.

[UPDATE] Elise from Rogers was kind enough to clarify on this point in the comments below. Apparently the rep I spoke to was misinformed on this particular topic. Although it is true that I could not unlock that iPhone because it was never under my account (an aggravating policy), the original owner in Toronto supposedly could call up and have it unlocked even though he has a new iPhone 4. In other words, hardware upgrades supposedly do not negate the ability to unlock the original handset.

Conclusion

You can bet that the next iPhone I buy will be factory unlocked and that, because of this experience, Rogers may very well lose me as a customer. This negative attitude I have towards Rogers is in stark contrast to my former attitude; up until this point, I have enjoyed their service and promoted Rogers everywhere I could. The new attitude boils down to a simple economic decision that is so poorly thought out that it makes almost no sense: Because Rogers refused to accept my $50, over a policy that sounds as ridiculous as what is coming out of the CRTC these days [Financial Post], I am no longer comfortable entrusting my account with the company.

[UPDATE] Elise – a Rogers representative – has responded in the comments below. Keep reading for further details and hopefully further clarifications regarding the policies in place for unlocking your iPhone with Rogers.

======== Appended Aug 16, 2011 ========

[UPDATE] Since this article is #1 on Google.ca for ‘Rogers iPhone unlock’, I think it’s in everyone’s best interests to have a simple summary with a clear description of how their program works based on the information provided by the Rogers rep I talked to on the phone and by @RogersElise in the comments below.

Summary of The Unlock Policy

1. To unlock your iPhone you MUST have an active Rogers account in good standing. Despite what the Rogers rep on the telephone told me, @RogersElise clarified that you can have an iPhone or other device on contract as long as the iPhone you are unlocking is currently not under contractual obligations.
2. If you have purchased the phone from someone else who did not unlock it, you will be unable to unlock the phone through Rogers
3. You are required to pay $50 CAD to unlock the phone. I assume that is before tax.
4. While I appreciate @RogersElise’s personal response on the matter, and believe that it is great that they’re reaching out to people to help clarify their policies, I believe this particular policy is not well thought out.

It is my belief that verifying (via Serial Number or IMEI – both unique identifiers for the phone) that the iPhone is not under contractual obligations or reported stolen by the original owner should be enough verification for the phone to be unlocked. In other words, account information should not be required. Why do I believe this? Because there are multiple cases where someone without a Rogers account would be willing to Pay Rogers to unlock their phone and should be granted that right as the full-owner of the phone. One example is my Mother, discussed above, who lives in Mexico and was given the phone as a gift. Another example is someone who sells their phone on eBay, Craig’s List, Kijiji or elsewhere without realizing they need to unlock it. The buyer, as the current owner of the phone, should be able to unlock it to work on their carrier of choice.

A counter-argument to this is suggested in the comments below by someone named Matt. He believes they require a valid account for security reasons. My response to that can also be found below, but the general idea is that by the time the phone is off-contract Rogers shouldn’t be imposing any further security upon your phone at all – that should be considered an invasion of privacy, even if it is supposedly to protect you. In other words, although I am open to good arguments in favour of the current Rogers policy, I do not accept Matt’s argument as anything but a weak rationalization.

Adam, my partner in crime (and by crime I mean business), loves Woo Themes and because of this, the new Web Savers site began with a Woo Theme at heart. Although we modified it heavily, the original theme remains in spirit. I think the WooTheme template we used was the first template for WordPress that I have ever felt comfortable modifying and working with – it wasn’t a major hassle and didn’t leave me running into constant roadblocks.

Since I had such a great experience with Woo Themes for Web Savers, I figured, why not try it out here! So thanks to Woo Themes for the lovely design. I’ve never truly been much for designing sites from scratch – my forte has always been at nitpicking at details after starting with an existing design. Therefore, sticking with my personal creation (this site’s previous design) was not a great move, as it really didn’t represent what I would consider a nicely designed web site. If it didn’t meet my own standards, how was I to expect it to meet the standards of others? This new design is the answer to that question.

Thanks to Woo Themes for this great design – I look forward to enhancing it and modifying it to my needs in the coming months.

My first exam was Monday night – Organizational Change Theory and Design. If the midterm was any sign of how it was going to go, then I had a ton of reading to do! So I hunkered down for all of Sunday and Monday morning and afternoon and read everything over twice. 14 chapters about organizational change, development, culture, design: from mechanistic structures to organic, upward and downward flows of communication, product, geographic and market divisional structures, matrix and product-team structures… shall I go on? Monday at 7PM was the moment of truth for all that knowledge; I walked out of that exam having no sweet clue how I did. But I definitely did not have time to dwell, with Legal aspects of business on Tuesday at 7PM, I went home to bed in expectation of an early morning the next day.

I woke up at 7:30 Tuesday, went to school and re-read all about torts and the basics of contract law. Unfortunately I had been forsaking Law class in order to get my big end-of-term projects done, so I had missed most of the last two weeks of class! That meant something like 14 chapters of material yet to read that I was going to be tested on in this final. With the day drawing closer and closer to seven, I had only read 9 of the 14 remaining chapters, so I skimmed over the remaining 5 and decided to only fully read two of them: property law and mortgages. This was for three reasons – first I felt that they were the most applicable to business compared to the other chapters I had yet to read (about securities). Second, it was also something I hadn’t learned before – previous classes had covered the laws related to business entities (like sole proprietorship, partnerships, limited liability partnerships and corporations). Third, since my Dad talks to me every once in a while about some of the points about property law, I figured it would be worthwhile to know. That pretty much saved me for the exam, since there were enough questions about property law to give me seemingly good answers for all of them! I walked out of that one feeling pretty relieved that I had known what I was talking about and because I happened to guess the right chapters to really memorize.

Wednesday and Thursday thus became devoted to my last exam, Network Security, scheduled for Thursday at 7PM. Thursday was a particularly tough day, with the exam that very evening I still had half of the material to cover from IPSec VPNs (and IKE – the Internet Key Exchange) to WPA’s TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol) to SET and PGP to biometrics. That’s not even including everything on cryptography that I had studied the day before! So with lots to do I studied for part of the day on the 3rd floor of the CSB and the remainder in teaching lab three (“the boardroom” as I like to call it) with Maria, Natasha and some random dude from second year CS. I felt pretty good as 5PM was rolling around, but soon after I discovered that I really needed to re-skim over everything still to refresh my memory of the past day’s studies. Around half way to 6PM, I was not feeling so comfortable anymore. I think it was the quizzing skills of Natasha that really helped the most in those last couple of hours, so big thanks for that!

After my last exam I went home to see my mark for Organizational Change had already been posted (Professor Gudrun Curry is apparently one fast marker)! I was really dreading looking at that mark since it was the one exam that could have gone either way. With apprehension I logged on to BLS and discovered that I did very well indeed!

As I was speaking with my Mom via MSN, I was relayed some bad news. I can’t post it here in case someone in particular is reading this, as she has yet to hear the bad news. But, on the positive side, although my Mother refused to tell me specifically what it was, there was also really good news to be had! Through my masterful skills of reasoning I figured it out on my own, that very night, but it was confirmed today: I’m going to be an Uncle and will soon have a Brother in Law – congratulations Rachael! With all the good news at hand and my exams over, I figure at least the bad news came during a high point!

I have a busy few weeks ahead of me. I move out of my apartment of 5 years on the 30th and temporarily into my Dad’s place until I find a job. On the 6th of May I leave for Hungary where I finally get to see the other side of my roots (I was in Israel for my Bar Mitzvah)! Then I arrive back in Halifax on the 19th, just in time for convocation on the 20th. Hopefully by then I will have found a job! I’m not holding my breath for anything immediate, but I remain optimistic. In these times it may take longer than I once thought to find a decent job that makes good use of these often-brutal past 6 years of University.