I’ve been having this problem for a long time, that when I’m in a Starbucks and try to use my iPhone, a page that looks like the one that asks you to check the box and then proceed to use the WiFi comes up, but it has an error message on it, instead.  This has happened at every Starbucks I’ve gone to for about 4 months, now.  About 6 weeks ago, I was at a mall, while my wife was on a course, and again I went into a Starbucks.  This time, since I had nothing better to do, I phoned the 1-800 number on the error message, and spent about 40 minutes.  At the end, some random combination of things got me signed in, but the next time I went to a Starbucks, it was deja-vu all over again!

Today, I was in another Starbucks, and again I was waiting for Loretta, so I thought I’d fix it myself.  Here is what I tried, and finally, what worked.

First, I went through everything that I could clearly remember the tech person telling me to do.  I turned off Cellular Data in Settings, General, Network.  I also turned WiFi off.

Then I went to Settings, Safari and cleared History, and Cookies and Data.

Then I turned the phone off, completely, and back on again.

Once it started up, I went into Settings, Wi-Fi and turned it back on.  I went into the wireless option for the Starbucks wi-fi by touching the little blue > arrow to the right.  Then I told it to forget the network, went back out, and selected the network.

No good.  Blah!  OK, back into the Starbucks Wi-Fi settings with the blue > button. Now, I’m working from memory as you can’t see any of these settings in any of the networks that I have available now, but this particular network had two options available (I may have had to go down a level to find them), called Auto-Join and Auto-Login.  Both were slid to the ON position, so I slid Auto-Login to the OFF position, went back and selected the network.

This time, it put up the page that asks you to check that you accept the terms and conditions, and then touch the button to log in.  It worked!!!!

OK, so I believe that last step was the one that made the difference for me.  Not quite sure how I got it into this state in the first place, but next time I’m in Starbucks I’ll confirm how you get to those options and whether these steps still work.

City of Vancouver is giving out these VIVA grants.  You can read about it here:

http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2011/07/viva-vancouver-2011-streets-closure-dates-events/

So while other parts of the city get their good things, what does Collingwood get?

We get rusty bedsprings (they are rusty), car doors, old broken appliances, and hundreds of dirty old car tires, blocking 3/4 of the drop-off/pick-up lot on the east end of Joyce station.

Here’s a night-time view of it, from before I had any idea what it was:

This dirty eyesore is from a grant. Someone was actually paid with MY tax dollars to inflict this on our neighborhood!

From the clip above, you can tell that I thought it was some kind of protest at first. I couldn’t believe that this was both intentional and actually sanctioned by the city.

But it gets worse! It turns out that they want to encourage people (including local children) to go through their maze (the box-springs are actually rusty!) and crawl through the dirty tires. I suppose nobody told the poor dears that tires like that make an ideal breeding ground for mosquitos.

Now, I wonder if the West Enders would put up with this kind of garbage!

VSO Symphony in the Park became the VSO Symphony in the Rain.  No matter, we had a good time. The young boy on the cello solo did an outstanding job.  VSO was excellent, as always.

Preview post shows our Willingdon Small Group coping with the rain!

Our Willingdon Small group at the VSO Symphony in the Park at Deer Lake Park on July 17th, 2011.

We renamed it Symphony in the Rain! :)

For the last 9 days (and continuing tomorrow) the local Greek Orthodox church has been hosting the Vancouver Summer Greek Fest.

I’ve gone several times this year, and try to go often.  I love the food, the music, the costumes and the dance.  The Greek community from the church there invited other ethnic groups to present their culture for a Canada Day event several years ago and got so many offers, they included them throughout the week.  It was such a hit they’ve done it ever since.

One of the many groups we really enjoy is the South Pacific Dance group, shown here:

We’ve always enjoyed the festival, and recommend it for everyone.

If you’ve never tried loukoumades, then you are really missing out!

I was looking at this old clip earlier today, then I happened to turn on CBC and caught the tail end of Anne Murray’s “Anne Murray and Friends” show about making her CD.

The clip talks about the scouts following her down to the beach for a show she put on.  I was there, as leader for a patrol from Mission (I was only 18).  We watched Anne work her magic, and I even recall the Israeli scouts (including girl scouts) getting up on the stage and playing “the good, the bad and the ugly” theme song with their hands, like flutes.

I’ve always loved Anne’s music. It was some of the first songs I learned on guitar and I still sometimes play songs like snowbird and I’m on the top of the world.

Thank you, Anne for so many years of music, that somehow connects with great joy and times of fun in my life!

Merry Christmas from FusionWare. Here’s a Dickensian look at where we’ve been and where we’re going: http://www.fwic.net/NewsInfo/MerryChristmas.aspx?s=bt

I clearly had an early love for communications technology…

So, I thought I’d try out tumblr.com so I could see how it works. We have a blog site using .NET Nuke and I have my blogger sites.  But, you can never have too many blog sites, so I’m playing with this one.  Hard to keep up with all the new internet startups…

Me, back when dinosaurs walked the earth.