Will you stay or will you move

I just wanted to do a little poll to see if the people who live in Quebec are think of staying or leaving the province after the elections, here you go: Are you considering moving out of Quebec? If you have another answer leave in the comments section.

With the bad comes the good

Today I was laid off. Although it was not a big surprise, I was startled like most people would be. I am neither angry nor resentful, I am mostly looking forward to what lies ahead, the challenges to overcome and experiences to learn from.

I worked for this company for a little over a year, had great colleagues and made good friends. I overcame some obstacles and was part of some very good and challenging projects. I also learned a lot, improved some skills and learned some others.

The brightest part of it all is that I was able to spend the day with my wife and daughter and that I will be able to spend the day with my daughter tomorrow when she turns two months old.

Now we move on, I will continue to pursue new challenges and find a job that will keep me on my toes as much as I will find it rewarding and fulfilling.

So here's were you come in, if you are looking for a trilingual business major in Montreal (or anywhere in Canada) with experience in purchasing, project management, customer service, inventory management and some other experience, this is your time to let me know. I am sure that my unemployed status will not last, so hurry up and contact me!

Mexico - How is your conscience?

Si conoces a alguien que consume drogas ilegales, compra cosas piratas, acostumbra dar mordidas, no respeta las leyes, se ríe de los que sí lo hacen, busca siempre su beneficio sin importarle el de los demás, recuerdale de los 40 mil muertos en México y pregúntale si no le pesa la conciencia...


If you know someone who consumes illegal drugs, buys pirated goods, is corrupt, does not respect the law, laughs at those who do, looks for his own benefit without caring for others, I ask you to remind them of the 40 thousand dead people in Mexico's crime war and ask them if their conscience is clear...


I recently wrote this on Facebook, because I am sad, disappointed and afraid that people just do not care, that they feel defeated and think they are not the problem and cannot be part of the solution. I am afraid of the feeling of defeat that people are walking with. I believe we can start by changing ourselves to influence others and to make them believe that change starts from within.


People use to think that this was just a battle against drugs and the drug cartels, but it is much more than that. This drug cartels not only control the drug traffic and sales in Mexico, they also control piracy, human trafficking, government officials, and many other things.


So stop justifying yourself when you buy a pirated movie by saying they are too expensive, because if that is the case for you, then, it is not for you, you are not part of the target market. Stop saying that you buy pirated movies because the movie industry makes too much money, if that is the case do not buy the product, your biggest vote is with your money, and not giving them your money is better than stealing their product. Stop saying I'll just give money to a government official this one time to get out of a traffic ticket (this may not happen in the US and Canada but it sure happens everyday in Mexico), or to get a contract (construction, maintenance, goods, services, etc.) from the government. 


So ask yourself if your conscience is clear... And once it is, ask the same question to your neighbor.

Montreal is falling apart...

Yesterday morning a part of a tunnel in the Ville-Marie 720 highway in downtown Montreal collapsed, making that part of the highway another traffic hell for which Montreal is becoming famous for. There is the Mercier bridge, the Champlain bridge, the Turcot interchange and the overpass in Laval that already fell down, and now this.

After this I can't understand why is it so hard to find out who commissioned the construction, who the constructor was, what was the estimated lifespan of the construction, when should a new construction be planned and started by, who was supposed to be inspecting the construction and during the lifespan, who gave the green light, who was in charge of upkeep, etc. Then get all those people in court and put whoever is responsible for the damages in jail.

There are probably too many "friendships" and money on the table and changing hands under it to make this happen. Also, the blame game would never end, but I hope that at least the people that built, upkeep, inspect, commission all these constructions remember that they too will have to cross the Champlain bridge, go over the Turcot interchange and under the Ville-Marie tunnels, and hope that something does not fail when them or their families are on them.

Iphone misses 2

Here are some other things I would greatly appreciate on the new iOS.

Profiles: this is where you should be able to program different profiles for you settings. You could have a profile for when you go to bed, where only the phone and/or text messages work, one for meetings where only certain calls would ring or vibrate, a movie profile where everything is on except for all sounds (which could be turned on by the mute button as an option), a car profile where Bluetooth is on and connects to the car, etc. It would be sort of like the sounds settings on Blackberry but for everything, Wi-Fi, sounds, texts, Bluetooth, notifications, location services, 3G on/off, etc. For this one I will give you an example that happened yesterday: my wife wanted to leave her iPhone in an "only receive calls mode" last night, so she had to go to Settings>General>Network and turn off "Cellular Data," then from there go to >Wi-Fi and turn it off, then go back to Setting>Sounds and turn off Vibrate, New Voicemail and New Mail (all others where allready off), then click on Text Tone and select "None," this just takes too long, when you could just program this once and select "bedtime profile" and be done with it.

Sounds: one of the things that I think Apple has overlooked is the lack of good sounds (ringtones) that can be used for texts, mail, calendar, etc., we should at the very least be able to use the same that are available for calls and alarms. Also there should be an option to mute all apps, it's really annoying that for some apps they don't have a setting for muting it.

Ringtones: ringtones should be "free," having to buy a song two times to use it as a ringtone is way too greedy even for Apple. Most competitors let you use any .mp3 file as a ringtone, but I guess if you can squeeze an extra dollar or two from customers, why not? There is a workaround for this, where you can turn your unlocked songs into ringtones without having to pay for a song twice. Here's a link on how to do that from eHow.

Alarm from playlist: this is available on my 60GB iPod but not on my iPhone. This one baffles me, why wouldn't they include that option? The only answer that seems reasonable to me, was to make more people developers, so that these people would come in, "cover the needs of the market" with the missing feature and Apple gets 30% from the app, if its a paid app, plus the 99 dollars from the iOS developer program. It makes sense.

This last one is a bit far fetched and not really needed, but it would be nice to have this option:

Auto On/Off feature: this was (is, since I still, stupidly, own a Blackberry) one of my favorite features. If you're the kind of person that wants to have their mails on their inbox when you wake up, then this one is awesome, since you could program your phone to turn on 3G or Wi-Fi (or a profile) a couple of minutes before your alarms goes off, that way you don't have to wait for the phone to be turned on. But I do have to say that "turning on" the iPhone and updating you emails takes way less time than it does on a Blackberry, and by turning on I mean switching off Airplane Mode, since the alarm wont work if you turn it all the way off unlike with the Blackberry, where setting an alarm will also turn the phone on. Just to be clear: the Auto On/Off feature on a Blackberry only turns the phone on and off at the desired times, it doesn't allow you to chose profiles. But since turning the iPhone all the way down make the alarm feature disabled that's why I suggest a "Profile Selection Auto On/Off" feature.

Although I'm bashing Apple for all the thing I consider somewhat basic that are not included in their product I do give them the thumbs up on the phone, it's an amazing tool, where there are definitely more pros than cons in my book. But it would be nice to see some of these "basic" features added into the new iOS.

Iphone misses

I'm not a programmer or a computer guru, but I do think of myself as a technology oriented person. I like the fact that I don't need to carry a camera, a cellphone and a mp3 player and instead I use my iPhone for all these tasks and more. Although the iPhone does way more things (if you include the apps available to download and/or purchase) than one person could possibly need or use, there are some basic things I believe they have missed:

Tasks: I really get annoyed of the fact that there is no task feature on the iPhone, I use to have a Blackberry that did task management and synced them to my PC when the first iPhone came out. We're now on the 4th generation of Apple phones and they can't seem to get that included, although there are some very good apps that do the job, this one should be one that comes "in the box".

Calendar: there are two fixes that I believe should be addressed in this app, first the "location" field in the calendar app is very misleading since to get a link to a map on this app you have to write the address on the "notes" field. And there is no contact link or field, so if you need to add someone to a calendar you need to do it somewhere else (directly on Gmail for example), or write their name and contact info on the "notes" field as well, this would be better addressed in a "Tasks" app since calling a contact is more of a task unless is a 2 hour conference call, for which you probably won't use you iPhone anyway. But the option of including and/or inviting people to events through calendars should be there.

iPhone messenger: this one is probably not done because of the pressure of the phone companies to lose all the money the make through text messages, but if you see the success of Whatsapp or Blackberry messenger, then I don't see why not to have one exclusive to the iPhone (or throughout the Apple brand), since they love the "only compatible between Apple products" line of business.

Keychain: password software is very useful and it should come with the iPhone, once again I can go back to my Blackberry to prove my point, had it 3 years ago.

Camera: included QR code reader, those codes are starting to appear everywhere. Although there are some apps that do the job, it would be easier to do it from the camera app.

Home screen: I hadn't really though about it until I read CNET's 20 things the iPhone 5 should have or we want it to have or something like that, but one of those things was a home screen where you can see the time, weather, calendar, missed calls, emails, etc., the picture they show is spot on. The Blackberry I had 3 years ago did have an option for a screen like that, except for the weather, but it was very useful to see upcoming events, tasks, messages, and emails right there on the home screen.

There are probably more that I am forgetting, but for now this is what I would like Apple to include in the next iOS, since these don't need a hardware upgrade.

Antecedentes no penales 3

Al fin recibí una respuesta digna de una dependencia de gobierno. Esperando recibir la misma respuesta que antes, fui sorprendido con esta respuesta:

At´n. Henri Paul

Para la obtención de la constancia de no antecedentes penales, debe acudir a la policía local para la toma de huellas y una vez obtenido este documento solicita a la embajada la expedición de dicha constancia para que a través un familiar pueda realizar el trámite aquí en Puebla, con su documentación:

1.       Acta de nacimiento

2.       Identificación oficial con fotografía (IFE, CARTILLA DEL SERVICIO MILITAR, PASAPORTE VIGENTE, LICENCIA PARA CONDUCIR

3.       Comprobante de domicilio

4.       Dos fotografías a color recientes, de frente, tamaño cartilla 4.5 x 3.5 cm.

5.       Costo $ 200

Av. 10 oriente 414, Col. Centro

De lunes a viernes de 08:00 a 14:00 hrs.

Tel. (222) 2328625 / 2324316 / 2328926 / 2326677

Esperamos que la información sea de utilidad.

Atentamente.

Teléfono: 01 800 20 15 081

Página electrónica: www.tramitapue.pue.gob.mx

Correo electrónico: tramitapue.sedecap@puebla.gob.mx

Horario de atención de lunes a viernes de 08:00 a 16:00 hrs.

No sé si esta respuesta, la cual coincide con la información del consulado, se deba a que fue otra persona la que me respondió o se deba al cambio de gobierno reciente. Sea cual sea la razón, les agradezco por hacer su trabajo como todos lo deberían hacer. Esto es prueba de que hacer las cosas bien en México sí es posible.