For the past month, Bell Aliant FibreOp customers in Fredericton have noticed an odd increase in their speed. The upload speed appeared to be the same as their download speed. In some cases, the upload speed was faster than the download speed. Some had speculated that they were doing large scale testing to see how symmetric internet service would impact the network on a whole.

According to this unverified post on Digital Home Canada, they will be making the new speeds official:

10/2 will become 15/15
25/5 will become 30/30
70/15 will become 70/30
The 170/30 plan will be staying the same.

This is clearly intended to be a great competitive advantage against Rogers. Rogers may not even be technically capable of matching those upload speeds. All indications are pointing to a future where more upload bandwidth will be required due to peer-to-peer networks and social media. FibreOp is clearly ahead of the curve. Has the spirit of NBTel come back? Do the managers at Bell Aliant actually understand the Internet? Hopefully Ma Bell won’t step in and kill it like they did with so many other innovations from NBTel (VibeVision, iMagicTV, etc).

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E10 Gasoline is here. You may have seen people complain about it, but the complainers are usually old car collectors or racers. Here’s a FAQ for regular people:

I have a regular car/truck and fill the gas tank more often than once a month
No problem, just keep buying regular.

I have a lawnmower/snowblower/ATV/dirt bike
The only change you’ll need to make is to switch to premium (not plus) gasoline as that won’t have the additive. Your best bet is to find a station that has a separate hose for supreme. This may be harder as newer pumps have combined hoses.

What’s wrong with E10 in smaller engines?

E10 only has a shelf life of about 3 months. After that, it will degrade and plug up the engine.

What’s wrong with combined hoses?
The problem is when you buy a small amount of gas. The hose will be full of whatever the last person bought.

I can only find combined hoses, what do I do?
No problem, if you also own a car. Just select Premium on the pump, put 5L of gas in your car to flush out the hose first. Then, fill up your jerry can.

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The last two blog posts about Saint John were fairly negative, so here’s a list of things that they do better in Saint John:

Transit – They actually put some effort into providing a decent level of service. They advertise, the routes make sense and they cooperate with the suburbs. In fact, the service to the suburbs is so popular, they’ve upgraded to use a sixty foot bendy bus.

Environmentalism – The local environmentalists actually make sense. Instead of ranting on about big box stores, they lobbied hard to stop the raw sewage flowing into Marsh Creek.  Now that the sewage problem is being looked after, they are concentrating on restoring the creek and modifying wetlands to help with the flooding on the east side.

Pedways – In Saint John’s Uptown, you can pretty much go anywhere without having to step outside. The Inside Connection connects pretty much all of their significant buildings from the City Market to Harbour Station. It also helps that as the Uptown area is build on a hill, there are plenty of escalators to help you up the hill. Even UNB’s Saint John campus has all of their buildings connected by a pedway system.

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http://www.regisbiginnewbrunswick.com/

That’s what you get when your tourism marketing goes to the lowest bidder. On the plus side, this will probably end up on those “worst viral video attempts ever” lists that keep popping up. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

I will not be downloading the ringtone.

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Delays due to construction can be quite annoying. Seeing spray paint on the road in front of your house can be unnerving as you can only wonder what’s going to happen. If you live in Moncton, there is a complete list of projects that are due to be completed this construction season.  In Fredericton, you get nothing. You may get a press release a few days before a road is closed, but that’s about it. For some reason, they don’t have anybody who can add that information to the website. Even Saint John has a weekly report that summarizes the current projects.

I e-mailed my councilor and asked for a list of projects in the hope that I could post them here. On July 13th, I received an e-mail that said that they were compiling the list, but so far, I have not received it. As we’re already in mid-October, I don’t think I’ll be getting that list for this year.

As a citizen and homeowner, I’m disappointed in the lack of information coming out of City Hall. As an IT guy, I’m disappointed that the province’s “Smart City” is losing ground to Saint John and Moncton when it comes to posting basic information on a website.

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Saw this great poem about Fredericton’s Prospect St.

http://wreckagefoundfloating.blogspot.com/2009/03/ode-to-prospect-street.html

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Here’s a nice clean dose of honesty:

I suspect that Dollarama has programmed their debit machines to say “POS Merchandise” forgetting that most people will think that POS stands for “Piece of S…” rather than “Point Of Sale”

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There’s a lot of debate going on about a new subdivision that’s proposed for the Kingston Peninsula. As it is in an unincorporated area, there is really not much that the residents can do as they are pretty much unrepresented when it comes to municipal matters. Here are some pros and cons for the project:

Pros:

• Lots will be inexpensive, which will open up home ownership to many more people
• They will have a nice view (for now)
• Unincorporated areas have no by-laws or zoning so you can do whatever you want on your property

Cons:

• Unincorporated areas have no by-laws or zoning so your neighbours can do whatever they want on their property
• How much longer will the ferry lineups be?
• When the ferries are down, or frozen over, residents will have to drive to Hampton to get to Saint John. How much more traffic can that road handle?
• How are they going to get their water? Will there be 100 septic tanks? Will there be a private sewer system (we all know how well those work out)

Eventually, there will be a bridge. It’s just a matter of when. When it does happen, it’s well known that there will be more and more subdivisions going in on the peninsula. Residents will say that it will become just like Quispamsis, however, I disagree. It will become worse than Quispamsis because there will be no planning and no oversight.

If the people of the Kingston Peninsula really want to stop rampant development, they should petition for incorporation. If they elect a mayor and council, they can have some recourse over what goes on their community.

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