When I was working with The Object People, I had collected a number of Aeroplan frequent flyer miles from Air Canada. It wasn't much - just enough for one flight to a nearby city.

A few days ago, my daughter asked if we could allow her to take a short trip. This was easily do-able with the Aeroplan miles that I had so rather than pay $298 for airline tickets ($149 each way), I thought I would use my Aeroplan points.

Aeroplan now has a mechanism where you can share Aeroplan miles. You just give them the other Aeroplan member's number pay a service charge, and it transfers the miles. What I didn't notice was the note "for only 2 cents a mile".

I went through the online site to share the miles. It asked for my credit card number but never confirmed what amount would be charged to my card. I thought this was odd. I transferred the miles and bought the tickets from my daughter's Aeroplan number.

Then I get my VISA statement - they charged me $318 to share the miles. That's more than the price of the return ticket. They charged me 2 cents per mile. For 15,000 miles (which I transferred), that cost me $300 plus the $18 service charge. It turns out that 2 cents per mile is effectively what the miles are worth. You can buy new miles at 3 cents per mile (a current promotion - it's normally 4 cents). Now, I've lost 15,000 Aeroplan miles and still had to pay a transfer charge equal to the full price of the tickets.

This is insane. It's not a Share Miles program, it's a "Steal Miles" program. You can't charge a transfer fee that's equal to the value of the miles you transfer. Aeroplan customer service now tells me that I should have bought the tickets directly from my Aeroplan account without trying to share them. Regardless, the share option is just stupid.

Aeroplan is currently investigating whether they can refund me the money for the lost Aeroplan miles. So far I've talked to about 5 customer service reps who said that they couldn't do anything and asked "did you read the web page?" The last one sounds like he may be able to do something. When I get a final determination, I'll update this blog article to let you know how it came out.

UPDATE: Aeroplan called and said that they will reverse the charge on my credit card and re-process it as though I had done it the right way in the first place which was to purchase the tickets from my own Aeroplan account.

I'm back from camping a few days early. We decided to drive straight through from Moncton NB to Ottawa ON rather than stop for two overnights on the way back.

We had a bit of trouble with the weather. On July 1st, we had a storm at our campsite in Quebec which blew down our tent (with 90 km/h or 50 mph winds) and drenched our air mattresses. We stayed the night in a hotel in Quebec City. When we returned to our tent, we found that one of the poles of our tent had a foot-long split in it.We duct-taped it and though it was weaker, it worked for the rest of the trip.

We hit 4 provinces on our trip - Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. We could have made it 5 provices with a 15 minute drive, but it wasn't worth it just to make that claim.

We came back early because my son has a fever and a sore throat. It's easier to take care of him at home than on the road. We arrived in town at 4:30 am and (not unexpectedly), the boys are up at 7:00 am since they slept most of the way in the car. I guess I'll get some sleep sometime soon.

I'm going on vacation with my family on a camping trip to New Brunswick. I won't be able to blog while I'm gone, so don't expect any posts until July 11th. Wish us luck.

Back in March, my wife and I went to NYC so I could give a presentation to the NY Smalltalk Users Group (thanks for the hospitality, Charles). While we were there, we attended a taping of the Montel Williams show. That show will be aired tomorrow (Thursday Sept 30). If you happen to see a guy with a beard sitting on a couch beside a woman with a cast on her arm, that's us. My wife broke her elbow a few weeks earlier and she was in a cast for several weeks.

From a tip by Anthony Lander.

People know Dr. David Huffman as the inventor of Huffman codes, but it's only after his death in 1999 that people have discovered his interest in origami. He used curved folds instead of traditional straight folds which gives his creations a very organic appearance.

This article from the NY Times requires registration, but you can also look at this site and this site.

If you're interested in origami in general, check out the www.origami.as web site. They have some absolutely amazing examples make (usually) from one sheet of paper with no cuts.

I've heard some bad things about Dell technical support. Here's my story with them.

Dell: What is the problem?
Me: When I plug in the network cable, it doesn't click and you can pull it out without pressing on the clip. I've tried the cable on other computers and it works fine. I've tried several cables with the Dell and none of them click when you plug them in.
Dell: Sir, there is a piece of plastic on the cable. Is that broken?
Me: No. That cable works on other computers properly. When the cable is pushed in, the network works fine - it just comes out without pushing the clip.
Dell: Can you insert the diagnostic CD-ROM into the drive? We're going to run a diagnostic test.
Me: You want me to run a diagnostic on a piece of plastic?
Dell: Sir, if there's anything wrong with the network interface the diagnostic will tell us.
Me: I'm not going to go searching for a CD-ROM to run a useless diagnostic. It's a broken connector.
Dell: What kind of network card do you have in the computer?
Me: I don't know - it's inside the computer. The system/device manager says it's a 3C905C compatible. It doesn't matter - the problem has nothing to do with the network card. Just tell me where to ship it to get it fixed.
Dell: You'll have to give me a minute.
Me: What are you doing?
Dell: I have to get past the diagnostic screen. What's your e-mail address? In about half an hour, I'll e-mail you the information on where to send it.

I strongly suspect that I was talking to someone in India since he had an Indian accent and I had heard that Dell had outsourced their technical support. I'm not impressed.

I recently attended a seminar on Open Source movements and the problems caused by copyright laws. Basically, anything you write is automatically copyright by you with all rights reserved. If anyone wants to do anything with it, they must get your permission to do so.

When I released my VWUnit package, the Smalltalk Raytracing code, and the Simulated Physics code, I had to choose a license agreement for it. I chose the MIT license because it was at least simple.

At this seminar, the presenter talked about a new kind of license called Creative Commons. It allows you to easily create a license that clearly explains the permissable uses for that work. It can apply to any work of literature, music, or software. It looks pretty cool. Check it out. I may start using it myself.