Vijay (SCI-11624): May I know, do you have BELL business internet account with BELL?
Customer: no, i have a BELL business internet account with ROGERS
Vijay (SCI-11624): I recommend you to contact our BELL business internet department at 1-877-877-SMB (2426)
Customer: SMB = 2426, i guess
Customer: bell, making life better
Vijay (SCI-11624) I recommend you to contact our BELL business internet department at 1-877-877-SMB (2426)
Customer: they don’t have a chat function?
Vijay (SCI-11624) At the moment we don’t have chat support for the same. Customers need to contact them over phone.
Customer: That’s not very helpful.
Vijay (SCI-11624) I do understand. [CustomerName]. We don’t have chat support for business internet department.
Vijay (SCI-11624) So its better you can contact them over phone.
Customer: Not only is it better, it sounds like it’s my only option.

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I’ve been a beta tester for SocialScope for a while and it is, hands down, the best Twitter client available for the Blackberry, in my opinion.  UberTwitter is a close second.  I primarily tweet from my Blackberry and I’m a heavy mobile user, so I’m always in search of the perfect application.

The Good

Lists, lists, lists!

This is the feature I’m most excited about. Twitter lists were only introduced a short time ago, and not everyone is making use of them yet, but I find them VERY useful. Having access to my lists on my Blackberry is invaluable. I can read tweets based on my custom list and NOT have to visit the website — which is useless from a mobile device, really.

Seesmic with lists

Saved searches

Another feature that seems to be lacking from mobile clients is the saved search list.  I don’t use it often, but it’s pretty handy when I do.  SocialScope allows you to search Twitter, but you have to enter the search every time.  Seesmic pulls your saved searches from your Twitter account.

Seesmic Saved Search

New replies and DM notification and count

Also in the above screenshot you can see that new replies and DMs are counted.  I’ve missed @ replies countless times on SocialScope because they were below my field of view, or I was scrolling too fast.  Seesmic also notifies you of new replies and new DMs via the trusty red star, blinking LED, and the weird little Seesmic guy on the home screen.

Seesmic Notifications

Danger, 140 character limit!

Super useful. When you’re typing a tweet you get the remaining character count on the screen, as in other clients, but once you get closer to the 140 limit the tweet field visually warns you.  At 19 characters left, you get a light shade of pink, and then it gradually increases to a deep shade of red the closer you get to zero.

Seesmic - Approaching 140 Character Limit

Seesmic - Reached Character Limit

That’s not all!

These are just the highlights I find useful. There are a few other features, common to other clients but great to have, like photo sharing, URL shortening, etc.

The Bad

Small annoyances I can live with

There are a few improvements that could be made.  The most annoying being that it doesn’t use the Blackberry typing shortcuts like automatically capitalizing “i”, adding a period after a double space, or your custom shortcuts.  It makes typing a tad slower.

You also can’t send pictures from within the Blackberry pictures menu.  SocialScope lets you do this, but Seesmic does have it from the main screen.  I usually email it to TwitPic anyway.

The Seesmic guy shows up in the home screen even with zero new DMs and replies.

The text is so tiny, although I’m not sure if it’s just me because I always dial down the font size on my Blackberry theme.  I raised the font size up to seven (from five) and it didn’t seem to help.

Also, not sure if it’s just my Blackberry or not, but sometimes there’s a bit of a delay in getting back to the previous screen after posting.

I’ve reported this to Seesmic as it is likely a bug, but sometimes you can’t @ someone from the Replies screen.

Try it out

If you want to download it, you can get it by going to http://m.seesmic.com on your Blackberry. It automatically detects your Blackberry browser and gives you the direct download OTA link.

Note: For those who want to know, I’m using the Blackberry 9700 and I got my theme from here. It’s for the 8900 but it works perfectly. Screenshots were taken using CaptureIt.

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We grabbed a cab and had him drive us to two camera shops we were hoping were open – no go. Jake had bought a 35mm film camera in Russia and we were looking for film for it. He’s particular about his film, Kodak won’t do. The driver dropped us off in a large shopping district.

It was supposed to be mostly cloudy and a high of 61F today and I’m very glad we brought our rain coats. We ended up getting rained on for much of the walk, but the cool air felt great.

We managed to find some film for the camera. Bruce was very excited! He was going to be using it. He has taken so many digital pictures, but hearing Jake talk about film has made him interested in trying it. He wanted to use black and white film, but we got him color too.  Black and white was loaded before we left the store.  So we continued to walk randomly and let him take pictures.

We happened upon a train station and grabbed a cab back to the boat, then spent the next several hours lounging around.

Today was pretty relaxing.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Stockholm. I sure hope the Ice Bar is open!

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Note: I wrote this and didn’t have time to post it, so it’s a day late. But hey, I’m on vacation.

We didn’t have to get up as early, which was nice. We were meeting our guide and driver at 9am and immigration/customs was going to be quicker. We had a new guide as our other guide was requested by a group of art historians (which she knows a ton about) but our new guide was just as friendly.  Christina was a little easier to understand, too.

We went to a church (no pictures) and took a ride on the world-famous Metro. No pictures are allowed on the metro either, as it’s still considered a state secret. Kinda funny, if you think about it — it’s public.

Our next stop was at the Church of St. Paul on the way to the Peterhof. Bruce got his Russian hat that he had been asking for from a vendor next to it, and it was camouflage (his emphasis).

We drove to the palace and got our tickets.  The “tickets” looked like a certificate, it was kind of cute.  We wandered into the palace grounds towards the fountains and waited for them to turn on. They were scheduled to come on at 11. I wondered what all the fuss was about, but when they were turned on, it was quite fabulous!

We saw a few more fountains, including a “trick” fountain (which apparently there were a lot of) that Peter the Great built to play tricks on his guests. A hidden rock or something would make the fountain come on.

We toured the bath house, which is the first that was ever built in Russia. Again, no pictures allowed in here –  not sure why.

Next to the bath house was a Japanese garden that was quite beautiful. The vases in the picture are Japanese porcelain and are from the 17th century.

Then we rode a boat (hydrofoil) back to St. Petersburg and were going to the highlight of our trip (okay, one of them!) – lunch with a Russian family.

It wasn’t an actual family, it was a Russian woman. Her apartment was on the fourth floor and was just as I imagined it would be. She had lived there her entire life (she’s probably in her late 50’s) and her mother had lived there since she was seven. She was also born in the house, as was her son and daughter.

She made an incredible lunch for us: appetizers of crab salad (delicious!), vegetables, salami, borscht for a soup, chicken and boiled potatoes for the main, and cookies  and tea for dessert. We were stuffed. Oh, and candies with dessert too. Bruce tried one and it was chocolate covered marmalade…hahahaha! He doesn’t like marmalade. He had ice cream though, always a crowd pleaser.

Jake did most of the talking and our guide interpreted for us. When asked about what it was like to live during Soviet times, she said she actually preferred it to how it is now because she never really wanted for anything. She had a job in manufacturing and could get or do anything she wanted. Now, not so much. Our guide thinks the opposite – it’s better now for her family than it was back then.

There is also quite a rivalry between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Each city inhabitants think theirs is the best, and the best AT everything too.  The best theater, the best chocolates, the best cookies, the best buildings, etc. It was really interesting to talk to them about the history of their city – it’s a perspective you just can’t get from a history book! Too soon, we had to go.

We stopped at a souvenir shop. We had actually asked to go shopping, so I guess that’s what they thought we meant. We were pressed for time however, so probably couldn’t SHOP shop. I got an absolutely gorgeous jewelry box. It’s hand painted and truly amazing.

Jake and Bruce toured the Cruiser Aurora. We didn’t have much time and it was raining and very windy so I stayed in the car. I picked the wrong day to wear a skirt – yesterday was much warmer! Bruce was thrilled, however, and thought it was the coolest. 

We had just enough time to stop at the mosque that Jake wanted to take pictures of. It’s the (second?) largest in the world. We made it back to the boat in plenty of time.

Bruce and I grabbed a bite to eat and hung out for a while. Then Jake and I hit the tables at the casino. We played some blackjack and got decimated, so he went to play poker and I played Pai Gow.

Oh, and I made a cruise-friend, Carolina. We went up to the Spinnaker lounge and danced for a while before chatting on the deck. She’s on the cruise with her family.

Tomorrow, Helsinke!

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We were one of the first people off the boat, even before they announced disembarkation, and we were through the immigration line in just over 30 minutes. Our guide (Tsania, “tsAYnya”) and driver (I can say it but I don’t dare spell it) met us and quickly covered our itinerary for the day as we drove out of the port and into town.

I’ll say this now, Tsania was very knowledgeable and extremely friendly. She was awesome. She has a Master’s in Art History and knows a ton about the city. Before we even left the port (which is HUGE) we knew we were going to be covering a ton of Russian history.

We spent the first couple of hours hitting some city highlights. The first stop was St. Isaac’s Cathedral. I’m disappointed I didn’t get a better picture, but at least I got one.

Shortly after that we went to a cafe recommended by Tsania for some food. We were all starving after skipping breakfast to get off the boat quickly. And J needed to feed his hangover. We ordered a sample of all different kinds of pies, meat pie (beef), salmon pie, cream cheese pie, cherry pie, and apricot pie. I liked them all, Jake and Bruce ordered themselves more meat pie. Bruce absolutely loved it, but none of the others.

Then we drove over to visit the sphinxes on one of the canals. I thought she said they were created in 1832, but she actually meant 1832 BC. There were also two gryphons there that, supposedly, if you rub one of the heads and make a wish, it will come true.

Here’s one of the sphinxes:

We visited a church (I need to look up the name when I have an internet connection, it’s not on our itinerary) with an actual ceremony going on. I felt a bit like I was intruding, but Bruce and Jake seemed to like it. It was pretty cool to see.

This cathedral was stunning.

Our next stop was the Peter-and-Paul Fortress and the Trubetskoy Bastion Prison. Apparently Peter the Great built the fortress first when he built the city, and it has never been attacked. This was taken just inside the fortress:

Then we toured the prison. Surprisingly, the prison cells were actually larger than we expected they would be. They were probably the size of a master bedroom (12×14ish?) and didn’t hold more than one person. We also went into the solitary confinement room, just for fun.

After the prison, we got some food at a local restaurant recommended by Tsania, again. We were relying on her for a lot! We had no idea what we wanted, we just wanted some traditional food. She picked perfectly. Bruce chowed down on some pork ribs and Jake and I got meat soup. My God it was good.

Next up was the Hermitage. We knew we didn’t have enough time to see everything, the Hermitage is enormous, but Tsania got us through the highlights and some of the cool stuff we wanted to see (the Egyptian and Roman exhibits) in about 2 hours. It didn’t feel like we were there for very long. There were tons of picture taking opportunities, and Bruce even took about 100 pictures of his own. My only regret is that I wish I had taken my wide angle lens in, but you couldn’t take backpacks so I stuck with my Tamron 28-75. Still, I got enough good pictures that it’s hard to pick just one for this post!

One of the monuments we requested to see was the Tsar and Carpenter monument, not far from the Hermitage. Jake and I play a board game called, funnily enough, St. Petersburg quite frequently. The Czar and Carpenter card in the game is his favorite.

Our final stop was the Church of the Spilled Blood. On the way we walked through the park that was built in honor of all the deceased as a result of WWI and WWII. In the center of the park is a flame that has been burning for years (1952?). 

Between the park and the church was a short bridge. Apparently newlyweds frequently come to the bridge because the custom is for the groom to carry the bride across the bridge, and sometimes they leave a padlock attached to the bridge to symbolize their wanting to be together forever. Also, they picked that bridge to do the carrying because, well…it’s the shortest.

As you can see, the Church of the Spilled Blood is being restored a bit. Apparently Stalin wanted to blow it up, but the day it was scheduled to be demolished, the Soviets were invaded.

That was it! Bruce and Jake were exhausted and I think I was just getting my second wind. We headed back to the boat.

Tomorrow we’re going to the Peterhof, having lunch with a Russian family, and touring the Cruiser Aurora. Time for me to go grab a few minutes on the internet and upload this so I can get some sleep!

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Talinn is beautiful. I couldn’t stop taking pictures. Again, we had no set plan other than walking around and getting a bite to eat. Oh, and we were going to visit a market that was rumored to have old cameras, which J wanted to check out.

Right outside the dock they had vendors, as usual, but there was a young man with medieval gear on display and some old-style bow and arrows. Bruce wanted to see the swords and shields. We noticed he had targets set up – Jake donned a cape and a knight’s helmet and shot the bow and arrows.

So we walked into the city. It’s really only about a 5-10 minute walk from the dock.

We made it to the street with all the shops and touristy stuff pretty quickly.  There was a cute little park overlooking the street that we hung out at for a little while.  Bruce got to play for a bit and we people-watched.

We continued up the street and someone handed me a flyer for a Museum of Torture. Of course, I had told Bruce about some of the castles in England having torture chambers, which was very interesting to him, so he wanted to go. The “museum” is quite small, but Bruce loved it.

We went to the kitschiest restaurant! There was no customer facing electricity – candles everywhere, even on the stairs going down to the WC. They served traditional food like bear, elk, duck, etc. Jake got the bear dinner, I got duck (which I’ve never had) and we ordered sausages for Bruce. We didn’t tell him what kind of sausages they were until he was done.   He did try everything on his plate, but he only liked the sausages. They also served berries, sauerkraut, turnips, some kind of grain-rice stuff and something else I can’t pronounce so I can’t spell.  Unfortunately I had about two too many Raspberry Torte martinis last night so I wasn’t able to thoroughly enjoy it, but it was really good..

We got Bruce some ice cream (he tried pistachio and loved it) a little further down the street and then caught a cab to the market about 10 minutes away, I got my mom a souvenir spoon (I get her one every where I go) and we just walked around.  It was quite a bit bigger than we expected so we didn’t really have time to look for the camera place. We walked around most of it however.

We found a cab driver and explained we wanted to get back to the dock. Neither of us were entirely sure that he understood what we meant, so we got in and hoped for the best. The market isn’t in a touristy part of town so no one spoke English. Luckily, he must have understood us because we were at the boat in 5 minutes.

Jake and I dropped Bruce off at the Kids Club and went to a Mystery Theater Dinner, which was pretty fun. Neither of us had done it before. I was the table captain, and if you know me then you know that talking to a bunch of strangers is NOT my thing. I managed. Jake was highly amused at how red my face would get.

We went to the spa to relax for a while, then I took Bruce to get some food and turn in for the day. We’ve got to be up early tomorrow – we need to get down to the dock as early as humanly possible so we can get through immigration in a sane amount of time.

I’m SO excited for St. Petersburg tomorrow!

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We stopped at a little cafe to grab some light breakfast. Bruce learned what ”WC” meant.  Shortly after we were on the autobahn! Jake was pretty happy about that. It was a gorgeous day for a drive. I didn’t know A3’s could go that fast! We even had a Camry (or whatever the German Toyota equivalent is) pass us when we were going 180kph. Crazy!

Our first stop was the Brandenburg Gate. There was a tourist information place there so we wanted to get some ideas of where to go other than what we had already picked out. Bruce picked up a piece of the Berlin wall to display on his ever-growing collection of items from around the world.

Our next stop was part of the  Berlin wall. The tourist information guy told us where to find it. There are a few all around Berlin, but apparently this one was pretty easy to get to.

We left and headed to Checkpoint Charlie. Parking in central Berlin is a HUGE pain in the butt. We ended up parking at hotels all day, with the exception of the first stop. Oh, and the squeegee kids were out in full force. Anyway, we parked at a hotel and found a pizzeria. The pizzas were enormous, but we were hungry.

The intersection near Checkpoint Charlie was packed full of people. It’s pretty cool to see though. We briefly went in the museum but decided not to stay.

We then went to the DDR Museum. This was probably both Bruce and Jake’s favorite place. Bruce because it’s very interactive – you can touch pretty much everything. Jake loved seeing the history and reading about what it was like to live back then.

This is directly across the canal from the DDR Museum, which I thought was a beautiful building:

Jake has a friend in Berlin so we met with him at a Schnitzel house. I never knew there were so many different ways to make schnitzel! Bruce and I split one and it was enough for both of us…it was really very good.

We headed back to the ship. We hit a small storm on the way there, but the roads were mostly dry and we made it back around 9:10 or so. It was a long day but we were so glad we had decided to make the trip into Berlin instead of staying in Rostock.

Today is an at-sea day so we’re relaxing. Jake’s at the casino playing a Texas Holdem tournament, Bruce is in the Kid’s Club (and is very excited about the make-your-own-board-game thing they have going on tonight), and I plan to hit the spa in a little while. There’s an Old World wine tasting in a little while and I’ll take Bruce to the pool this afternoon.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Talinn, Estonia!

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We had a late night, even Bruce stayed up way past his bedtime in the Kids Club. We managed to get up at a fairly decent hour, only shortly after the ship docked at 9.  We got off the ship in Copenhagen with no plans and no cash…just our cameras and us. We ended up walking through Kastallet park to Osterport Station. We bought a few subway tickets and got directions on how to the Christianshavn area of town.

I needed to grab some stuff from a pharmacy and that was a bit of an adventure in itself. We don’t have PIN codes on our credit cards in Canada yet and they didn’t take non-PIN cards. Nor did we have cash. So we had to go find an ATM and pull out a random amount – normally we prepare ourselves with at least a knowledge of the exchange rate! We guessed right.

We walked down a street (that I’ll have to look up later) and found a nice little cafe for some lunch. It was delicious!

One of the first things I noticed about Copenhagen is the number of bikes. They’re everywhere. It’s obviously the preferred method of transportation. People bring bikes on the subway, too. And most have a cute little basket on the front for carrying stuff.

Oh, and there is a crazy amount of “hotness”. I swear 75% of the population is beautiful.

We walked around a bit taking pictures.  Even Bruce was taking a lot of pics! The Christianhavns Kanal provided lots of awesome picture taking opportunities.

It looked like it was going to rain and we didn’t bring any rain gear with us so we started to head back to the boat. We successfully navigated our way back to the subway station and hopped on. I wanted to make sure I got a picture of the famous statue, The Little Mermaid, on our way back so we went back through the park.

It’s true what they say, she’s a lot smaller than you think, but she’s not super tiny either. It was a bit difficult getting a picture without anyone in it because she’s actually close enough to touch and even climb up on the rock. But all it takes is a little patience.

Back at the boat, we chilled out by the pool (the sun ended up coming out anyay) and ate some food. We’ll relax for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow, the port is Warnemunde (Rostock), Germany. We’ve decided to rent a car and drive into Berlin. We’ll definitely see The Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, not sure what else.

Note: all the pictures are unedited, I’ll have to go back later and do a few digital adjustments.

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We left home at about 2:30pm on Thursday. Bruce had his final day of school that day, and we were pretty much packed. We made it to Buffalo in plenty of time and found a diner near the airport for lunch. Jake’s mom dropped us off at the airport and we headed to the United check-in counter.  We had no idea what we were in for.

We checked in and the agent informed us that the plane coming from Dulles (the one we were flying in back to DC) had been delayed due top mechanical issues, so our flight was delayed.  No biggie, right? This happens all the time.  We had a bit of a layover in Dulles so as long as the delay didn’t last too long, we’d be fine.

We headed to the lounge. Only J has status and can get one guest in. If they’re nice and not busy, all three of us can get in. They weren’t too busy, but…well.  So we headed to the gate. I signed in on my laptop to watch the status of the departing flight from Dulles, which was delayed further and further and further. Finally it got to the point that if it was delayed one more time, we were going to miss our connecting flight to London.

Jake headed back out to the ticketing agent and they couldn’t do anything. All fights everywhere were delayed due to a storm. Even in Chicago. By this time, our flight was coming in and we could at least get to Dulles, where we’d have more options for getting to London.  We would be missing our connecting flight and wouldn’t be making it to London on the overnight flight.  We had, fortunately, planned to stay overnight in Dover before heading to port, just in case there were flight issues, so this gave us a bit of time to play with.

We made it to Dulles at about 11pm. We got a room at the Hyatt (courtesy of United, of course, since it was a mechanical delay) and settled in for 6 hours of sleep. We were on standby for the next flight at 9:30am, standby for 5pm, and confirmed for 9:30pm – a full day after our original flight to London.

We weren’t even close to making the standby flight. According to the ticket agent, it and the next flight were oversold by about 30 to 50 seats. Ugh. No one on the standby list made and there were two VERY upset passengers that were confirmed but not allowed on the flight.

While I was waiting at the gate for the first standby flight with Bruce, Jake went to the Red Carpet lounge (for United) and the two agents there were trying to help us.  We spent a couple of hours waiting in the RC lounge before deciding to wander out of the airport for a while. Our next standby was at about 5pm.  There was a British Airways flight that had seats open but we couldn’t talk to anyone from BA until 3pm.

We took a cab to the Air and Space museum. I manage to get some really cool pics there and Jake got to try out his new medium-format camera. Bruce was thrilled to see the actual space shuttle, but mostly he thought the observation tower was really cool. We got the shuttle back to the airport. We had to go through security for the fourth time (twice in Buffalo, this was the second in Dulles) Bruce said, “We gotta do this again?” He’s a pro now.

As soon as we stepped into the RC lounge, the agent waved her arms in the air and said, “You guys are here! I’ve got something!”  This lady was amazing. She had kept an eye on the next standby flight and reserved seats as soon as one opened up, eventually she got three.  So all we had to do was wait and she was going to try to get 3 seats together.

So we made it on the flight. Our reservations at the bed and breakfast in Dover were lost. We weren’t going to make it in time – we were going to make it to Dover barely in time to make the ship!  We managed to find a car service and booked it online for relatively the same price as the train to get to Dover.

We got on the flight, got almost to the runway, and the Captain said our flight was delayed due to weather.

GAH!!! You can’t be serious!

He was, but thankfully it only lasted about 5 minutes. We were up in the air for the next 7ish hours and made it to London at about 6am London time. Our driver was supposed to meet us at the airport. We breezed through customs but still had to wait nearly an extra hour for him to arrive – he was an hour late.  Thankfully, with all the mishaps making us arrive a day late, we were actually arriving on Saturday and traffic between London and Dover was light. Still couldn’t sleep because our driver was probably the worst driver in the world and kept jerking the car from one lane to the next. Bruce can sleep through anything so he slept for the whole trip between London and Dover.

We made it to the ship! This was the hardest part, so far, but we made it. All three of us were running on about 6 hours of sleep in the last two days. Bruce was SO good the whole time.

We got on the ship and dropped off what little bags we didn’t check and went to explore the ship while we waited for our rooms to be ready. We signed Bruce up for the Kids Club and  showed Bruce around. When our bags made it to the room, Bruce wanted to go for a swim, so we did. (Thankfully, he got used to the arm floaties at the pool party a few days before.)  We ate and then went back to the room…by then we had been up for almost 3 days with very little sleep. Bruce had wanted to go to the Kids Club before going to sleep, but we all fell asleep instantly.

Today is an at-sea day, which we horribly needed! All three of us slept TWELVE hours last night.

Bruce has enjoyed the Kids Club and the pool, and has already made a couple of friends. Jake and I spent some time at the spa and the casino.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Copenhagen!

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I’ve noticed that people in general seem to be adverse to changing their avatar, or they don’t like it when someone does.  Understandable since really that’s your only unique link to that person.  However, I think it CAN be a good thing if it’s done right.  Changing your avatar can mean more familiarity rather than confusion.

The key is to only alter your avatar slightly.

If you have a mugshot of you face, and most people do, change it often and keep the camera distance relatively the same. Think of it as a really, really slow framerate on a webcam video.

If you don’t have a mugshot, the concept is still the same.  Keep the theme (sport? your dog? a nature scene?) similar. Folks will have an easier time recognizing it as you.

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