May 16, 2011

More Books Than a Library

Jon Lim Life

Last week, I tweeted about how quickly I read. I took a look at my Kindle along with my purchasing behaviour and was flabbergasted – I read, on average, one book a week. Seriously, for a guy who read at most one book per semester while in school, this is a maddening pace.

Because of this, I wanted to track my reading habits by title and date, and just see what happens after an extended period of time.

Amazon Kindle

The product of this is the Books I’ve Read page on JonLim.ca. (No longer active.)

It shows you the book cover, the title, the author, and what date I started reading it on. I use Amazon Affiliate links on this page, after all, reading this many books is not cheap! Feel free to go around it however, these are great books for the most part!

Of course, I have to give most of my credit to the Amazon Kindle for re-sparking my love of reading, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to get back into reading. It’s light and compact, and it’s way easy to read everything on it.

May 14, 2011

Best Flight Ever, Thanks Porter!

Jon Lim Chicago, Porter Airlines, travel Life, Travel

Last weekend, I flew down to Chicago to get some rest and relaxation under my belt, and of course, eat mountains of food while I was there.

One of the best decisions I had made was to fly with Porter Airlines. Now, I had never flown with Porter before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had been told that they flew with prop jets and that they had great customer service.

Understatement of the year.

They had sent me an email the night before my flight to remind me of my flight and any steps I would be able to take to save time at the airport, as well as a warning to try to arrive 60 minutes prior to my flight in case of any customs snafus.

I left work at about 3:00pm, got to the Porter building at about 3:15pm and waited for the ferry. Had to correct something on my boarding pass, went through inspections, and I was sitting down in the lounge at about 3:45pm. Wait what? I got from the front door to waiting for my flight in 30 minutes? Keep in mind my flight was at 5:30pm, so I had plenty of time to hang out. When I looked around, I realized I really had no problems with that.

The Porter Lounge is amazing. It’s a huge space with a cafeteria area, seating area, and a business area full of iMacs in case you need a computer for something else. I went and got myself a coffee (or four), a couple of snacks, and a bottle of water, sat down and enjoyed the free wifi that they provided for everyone.

I thought the pleasantries had ended there, but when I boarded the rather small prop jet, I felt really odd… my legs weren’t squished up against the seat in front of me and I could comfortably sit down.

To top it off, every flight also gets you a free drink (wine, beer, coffee, juice) and a snack box.

We touched down in Chicago, and I spent another 15 minutes going through customs, and I went on my merry way.

In all honesty, that had to be the best flight experience I have ever had. To break it down, here’s what you get when you fly with Porter:

Speedy check-in procedure.
Great lounge with free wifi, drinks and snacks.
Ample leg room and relaxed atmosphere.
Snack box and free drink.

Cannot wait to take another flight with them. Going to fly with them when possible. Thanks Porter!

Apr 16, 2011

Kickass Weekend Ahead

Jon Lim ruby on rails Coding, Life, Ruby on Rails

You know how I know my weekend is going to rock?

Let’s do this.

SIDE NOTE: Hopefully I can blog the progress I am having with learning this – I spent a portion of my lab day yesterday setting up Comfortable Mexican Sofa, and it was so easy. Can’t wait to actually build things.

Apr 5, 2011

Keep Dreaming, Pal

Jon Lim Life

A friend of mine, who spends a lot of his non-working hours working on his music career, recently asked me to give him some feedback on the new video he had released. We’ve had a good back and forth every time he releases a new video and/or song, and I give him my honest feedback about both the music and the video production.

At one point in the conversation, he said this:

“I just think… that this is my ticket out of accounting.”

And I’m sure he was half joking, but that he half meant it. Quickly evaluating the state of the music industry and the difficulty one can encounter trying to break through, I quickly typed this reply:

“Haha, keep dreaming, pal.”

I hesitated to send it. Throughout my entire life, I’ve had people tell me to keep dreaming.

You want to make video games? Keep dreaming, Jon.
Dunk on a basketball net at your height? Keep dreaming, Jon.
Create a career out of something you love? Keep dreaming, Jon.

And then it hit me: why should I be someone who dismisses the dreams of another? There are enough of those in the world. We should spend most of our efforts supporting those around us and making sure they get every opportunity to succeed.

I quickly revised what I had written…

“Keep pushing, bud.”

Mar 11, 2011

Rookie Traveling Mistakes

Jon Lim American Airlines, customs, SXSWi, traveling Business, Life

If you have been following either my Facebook or my Twitter feeds, you are well aware that I am currently in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest Interactive (#SXSWi). So far, I’ve been acting as a shutterbug with my fancy pants Canon T2i, and hopefully that will continue.

On the way down, I was stopped by the customs agent. Here is the rough conversation that happened:

Agent: “What are you doing in Austin?”
Me: “Attending a conference about the web. South by Southwest.”
Agent: “Will you not be networking at South by Southwest?”
Me: “Well, yeah I guess.”
Agent: “That counts as a business reason. Do you have promotional items with you?”
Me: “PostageApp t-shirts…”
Agent: “Go into the doors on your right.”

Where I was grilled by another customs agent. Had all of my bags searched and was almost fined $5,300. You read that right, I was almost fined $5,300.

Why did this happen?

I did not know the country of manufacturing for the t-shirts. I ordered them from a wonderful Toronto-based company, so I said Toronto. Turns out the shirts are from Honduras.
I did not declare my granola bars under the “food” section of the customs declarations.

Both of these missteps could have cost me dearly (the amount mentioned earlier) and had I not had a clean sheet when I had entered, I might not have been so lucky. So here are some tips for travelers who are doing some promoting with t-shirts and other material:

Declare all foods. I made this mistake thinking it was just fruit, meat, or other once-living items.
Make sure you know the manufacturing location of any promotional apparel you will be bringing along. Not where you ordered it, but where the material itself came from.

I was lucky to have gotten off with just a warning, but at least I’m here now. Hopefully I will be taking notes, pictures, and video of my day to day activities here, so I can’t wait to start!

Cheers!

Feb 28, 2011

Thank You

Jon Lim birthday Life

After an incredible celebratory weekend (for my birthday!) I took the time to count up all of the touch points people had with me throughout. Here’s the quick run down:

- 209 Facebook wall posts
- 54 Twitter mentions
- 18 text messages
- 2 phone calls
- 1 voicemail

And I had plenty of interactions in real life too, so there are definitely some non-trackable points there.

I am incredibly humbled to have such wonderful people in my life who spend a bit of time out of their busy days to wish me a happy birthday in one way or another. As per usual, my presents is your presence.

Thank you for the awesome year, here’s to another one.

As usual: here’s me ruining my sweet messages with my ugly mug.

Feb 19, 2011

Case Study: When You Should Have Kept Your Mouth Shut

Jon Lim Fail, RedBoard, Rogers, UBB Business, Telecom

As a company, you should give your two cents on hotly debated issues that matter to your customers. You should do this to establish your potion on the matter and give your customers peace of mind or a better idea of what they are dealing with.

What you should NOT do, however, is pretend that everything is just fine and your service is all fine and dandy.

Enter: Rogers RedBoard.

This entire post, is essentially how the Rogers social media team felt it was appropriate to respond to the entire UBB hubbub that went on (and is still going on) a couple of weeks ago.

In summary:
Heavy Rogers customers should pay for their usage, so the light users don’t subsidize them. Rogers makes substantial investments, and here’s all of our plans. Also, UBB doesn’t affect you.

Hah, what a hoot.

In the comments, users were quick to point out that Rogers customers have long been affected by UBB, having had bandwidth caps for years. Not to mention, there were many terrific arguments against bandwidth caps in general.

Like a good social media team, Rogers would of course respond to the posts. Of course, like Rogers, they don’t give a damn about what you just said and they’re going to parrot the same company rhetoric that they’ve been fed, and you aren’t going to get any sort of useful discussion out of this at all.

Good luck with that. Also, fix your commenting system, it’s garbage.

Next time Rogers, shut your mouth. When you open it and insult all of your customers like this, you are doing yourself no service and are making sure that your social media team fails in every aspect. They are paid to raise the company banner, so what did you expect was going to happen to this post?

We certainly weren’t going to welcome you with open arms.

Here are some of the highlights of the sad state of affairs in their comments:

View some of the other comments I screencapped in this album.

Feb 2, 2011

2011 Goals – January Report

Jon Lim 2011, Goals, January Life

Welp, I said I would do this once a month, so here I am! (Despite being a day late)

Let’s take a look at how I did:

Blog More

Definitely did this, blogged more than once a week in January, and it wasn’t too tough. The CRTC seems to have helped me out quite a bit, especially near the end of January. Looking to make it more regular and consistent, and hopefully something more valuable to someone other than myself.

Attend More Events

Half half. There were definitely a few events I missed out on. However, I do not regret that – it’s tough to go to an event after work and be home in time to get to sleep properly. I would rather forego events than sleep less than 6 hours a night. For the sake of my health of course.

Become More Active

No gym, but I did start a workout regiment at home in the mornings. It’s a great way to wake up and leads to quite a bit of energy for the day. Looking to keep increasing the amount of exercise I do at home, hopefully being able to fully supplement the gym. Still wish I had access to a pool though.

Travel

Saving for it!

Develop a New Skill

Haven’t decided on this one yet, but the year is young.

Be Awesome at Work

I sure hope so.

—

That’s it so far. Apologies on not creating more value for others with this blog post, but I regret nothing.

Here’s to February!

Feb 1, 2011

The Birth of #MixtapeTOSF

Jon Lim Lan Nguyen, MixtapeTOSF, Music, San Francisco Music

Magical things happen when you act on spontaneity.

Example: On Sunday night, Lan and I had decided, to start sending each other mixtapes on a regular basis. Every week, we’d assemble a good lot of songs and sling them over. I thought it was great because I kill two birds with one stone: I get to keep talking to a friend in San Francisco, and I get to hear a bunch of music I may not have heard before.

Yesterday was our inaugural #MixtapeTOSF exchange. It went even better than expected.

Here are our mixtapes, mine (“Energetic Mondays”) on the left, and Lan’s (“I Love The Unknown”) on the right.

Totally looking forward to next Monday. I’ve already started working on the mixtape!

Be spontaneous!

Jan 30, 2011

Save The Internet

Jon Lim Bell, Canada, internet, Rogers, Telus, Toronto, UBB Business, Technology, Telecom

It’s time to act.

We need to make sure that those who have the power to change this situation can all hear our thoughts and opinions on the matter. We need to make sure that they act in our best interests and hopefully eliminate

Here is a great article on how to contact everyone really important.

Other than that, I will also be contacting the following people:

Rob Ford
Mayor of Toronto
City Hall – Suite C40
100 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON M5H 2N2
[email protected]

My Local Councillor
List of Councillors + Contact Info

Let them all know your exact thoughts on the entire Usage Based Billing nonsense. Please remain civil and professional, we want to get our points across.

Here are some important points to cover:

How important internet service is to you
How important affordable internet service is to the future of Canada
How important competition is in every industry
How much you pay every month for internet service and how much you will pay after UBB is implemented

(Taken from Digital Home’s article.)

ACT! For the sake of the internet.

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