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.

Police brutality Montreal 2011

Police brutality is a crime and should be punished. Citizens are in the right to protest it.

Tuesday March 15th, 2011, in Montreal the annual protest against police brutality was held. I was not there but I have read several articles about what happened, watched several TV news reports, watched several YouTube videos (from this year and previous years), and heard a partial account from my brother in law who was there. 

In the newspapers and on the TV news reports they said that about 258 people were arrested, that they played the "usual cat and mouse game" (cyberpresse.ca), that a few people within the 500 people there where causing trouble and the rest were not causing any problems. In the YouTube videos I could see that everything was calm in some of the videos and in others the police where arresting some people, which in most cases refused to be arrested. It was also reported that a bystander was hit in the face with a thrown bottle. From what I heard through my brother in law was that even some bystanders were arrested for no reason and at least one person was beaten for "not reacting fast enough."

In my head having a rally against police brutality that is going to be surveyed by that same police is a time bomb, it just takes one person, on either side, to make the situation get out of hand. Furthermore if you look at the videos from previous years you can see people throwing things at the police, yelling "fuck the police", destroying public property (mailboxes and trashcans mostly) and in some cases throwing snow and other stuff at the police and you see the police arresting people, pushing them away and in some cases with more force than needed and sometimes with way more force than needed, but there are some cases that they reacted how I would expect.

If you are trying to protest to someone "peacefully" you don't yell "fuck you," to me, that's when it stops being a peaceful demonstration, if you are insulting then you are already being verbally aggressive, in other words violent. If to this, you add the throwing of rocks and paintballs at police and at public and private property then it doesn't surprise me that the police started arresting people. I know that the rocks and paintballs are isolated events, and it does not represent most of the people there, but it only takes one person and one thrown rock (or paintball) to defeat the purpose of the "peaceful protest." 

The moment the first window was broken is reason enough to stop the protest and start arresting people, the thing is that the police do not know how many people are going to follow the lead of the person who threw the first rock, and from what I saw from previous years it could easily and rapidly get out of hand. If the people are really there to make a public peaceful stand against police brutality and are there because they do not agree with violence, then to me, it would be a stronger statement, that, when that first rock was thrown, for them to disperse and finish the protest, it would make more sense to say "we do not endorse ANY kind of violence" than to continue and wait and see how the police react. I feel that to some extent, the people there want to prove their point, so if the police arrest some people and are more violent than they should then it's a won battle for the protesters who could then say "look at the police being violent, that is why we did this in the first place." 

I don't agree that police should profile people, arrest them without cause, intimidate with violence, abuse their power, use excess force, but if you are on the street yelling "fuck the police" to their face and you know that some of the people who are with you are not going to be peaceful, then I think it's very naive to think that there are not going to be reactions from the other side and to act surprised when it does happen. I am not trying to say that people should not protest against police brutality and violence, but at least be consistent with what you say and what you do.

Antecedentes no penales 2

El tiempo pasa y el día en el que me van a solicitar mis "Constancias de No Antecedentes Penales" y/o "Constancia de Antecedentes Registrales" se acerca. Después de un dilema de comunicación entre Immigration Canada y yo, el cual pueden ver aquí, existe otro, pero ahora es con el Estado de Puebla, en México.


Queriendo adelantarme a lo que está por venir estoy empezando a hacer algunas cosas que me podrían ayudar a no atrasar o incluso a adelantar el proceso. Dentro de estas cosas está empezar a mandar mi CV, conseguir las constancias de no antecedentes penales, buscar trabajo, hacer voluntariado, entre otras. En este post me enfocaré en las constancias de no antecedentes penales.


Empecemos por el principio, ¿quién solicita el documento? - Immigration Canada, así que fui a su sitio donde te dicen que hacer con respecto a este procedimiento, que mandar y a donde, al menos para lo que corresponde al trámite federal. Para el trámite estatal te mandan al sitio del estado donde vayas a realizar el trámite, así que en mi caso al del Estado de Puebla.


Al mismo tiempo que veía la lista de solicitud de documentos, fui al sitio del Consulado de México en Montreal, donde te dicen que tienes que hacer para estos documentos. Y fue cuando comparé estos dos sitios que surgió el problema. En el sitio del consulado dice que ellos emiten una carta dirigida al Procurador de Justicia del Estado de Puebla y sellan copias de tus documentos para validar que fueron cotejados con original, esto lo mandas junto con una carta poder y la persona a la que le otorgas el poder realiza el trámite en Puebla. Hasta ahí todo bien, pero al entrar al sitio del Gobierno del Estado de Puebla y encontrar el trámite de no antecedentes penales me di cuenta que decía que sólo se puede realizar el trámite en persona, por lo que decidí mandar un correo a tramitapue.sedecap@puebla.gob.mx, que es el correo que ellos proporcionan y se los mandé con la simple duda que cómo realizo el trámite fuera de México a lo que me contestaron: 

"A quien corresponda.

Para la expedición de la constancia de no antecedentes penales, es obligatorio presentarse el interesado.

Esperamos que la información sea de utilidad.

Atentamente.

 "

Después de esta respuesta les expliqué mi situación, diciendo que no podía salir de Canadá, que invalidaría todo lo que hemos hecho mi esposa y yo a la fecha respecto al trámite de residencia permanente y que perdería todo el dinero que hemos pagado a la fecha, esperando que posiblemente la persona que me contestó pudiera investigar un poco con sus superiores que hacer en este caso, porque quiero suponer que no soy un pionero en esto y en algún lugar del planeta en un pasado no muy lejano hubo otra persona (o varias) de Puebla que necesitaba el mismo documento sin poder salir del país en el que se encontraba. A lo que recibí esta magnifica respuesta, digna sólo de la burocracia mexicana:

"Esto debe verificarlo directamente en el Consulado de México.

"

Así tal cual fue la respuesta. Estos correo los mandé entre el 28 y 29 de enero de 2011, lo cual los pone justo dentro de la transición de gobernador en Puebla, o más bien, a finales del ciclo marinista. No sé si la gente haya cambiado pero he vuelto a mandar otro correo para ver si me pueden dar otra respuesta más clara.

Lo que más me impresiona es que vivimos en la era de la tecnología y aún no podemos integrar una base de datos nacional, en donde se pueda tener acceso a los antecedentes penales a nivel nacional y no estaría de más dar acceso a los consulados para agilizar este tipo de trámites. Con esto lograríamos que con uno baste, el federal obviamente, y que no tengamos que hacer dos trámites separados, aparte de ahorrarnos dinero. Seguro hay muchas razones (excusas, pretextos, dinero, tranzas, favores, o una combinación de estos) por la cual no se ha hecho, pero eso es para otro día.

PD. Sí se pueden mandar CVs mientras recibes los documentos, sólo que no te pueden contratar, obviamente. Esta información me la dieron por teléfono los de Immigration Canada.

Leaking ceiling (cont.)

A little late, but you might want to know...

The most important thing that I forgot to mention is: CONTACT THE OWNER OF THE APARTMENT, this is if you are renting, otherwise you pretty much have to do what I said on the previous post plus:

1. Get someone to fix the problem (could be the insurance, a contractor, a friend, etc.). Just be sure that they are going to do a good job, be the cheapest (for what you want to get, there is no such thing as super cheap and super good at the same time... stop thinking about it, there just isn't), and that you could fit it in your schedule (most people are gonna charge you more for a weekend job or are just not going to do it, you want to rest on the weekend, well guess what, so do they).

2. Be sure to talk to your neighbors, the previous point is from your side, but if you don't fix the source it's stupid to fix effect of it (most politicians do that anyway, but that's another days topic or more like rant). This is also the way to see who's to "blame" for the problem, although there might not be someone to blame, someone has to pay, so check that with them. In our case, since the place is not ours, we just left this part to our landlord (they should change this word to a more non-feudalistic sounding word).

Turns out our problem was easy to fix, the upstairs apartment had a sealant problem in the shower, so they just got someone to seal all their sinks and the shower. And we got (through our friend and landlord and with the help of the neighbors) a contractor to remove the damage, plaster and paint it. But be sure that if this ever happens to you, you should always have someone check if there is any kind of insulation material in between the floors, because if there is they have to either remove and dry or replace this material so that there is no mold problem afterwards. 

So that what the big adventure. It took a couple of weeks to get it fixed, but it probably was way less exiting or bothersome than it sounds. 

What to do with a leaking ceiling in Montreal at 6:30 am

1. If you're not on the top floor, wake up your upstairs neighbor. If you are go to the roof to see if there is a problem.
2. Apologize for waking them up while explaining (in French) that you have a leaking ceiling and that you are pretty sure the source is their apartment.
3. Have them tell you that everything is dry, killing your hopes that they might just left the water running and knowing that eventually someone is going to "destroy" your ceiling, their floor, maybe some walls, and hopefully nothing else.
4. Show them that you actually do have a leak and wait while they call their parents on the phone to see what we should do next. Although we're supposed to be adults, none of us has any idea where to start. We know we should shut the water supply to the apartment, call the insurance company, call a plumber, keep and eye for more drips. But we need some reassurance, and since I'm not from Montreal, or Canada for that matter, I have no clue where to start, and since its not a normal occurance it's even worse.
5. Our neighbors dad tells her to tell me to call my insurance and to call hers. I do and they tell me a technician will call and be over. They tell her, somewhere along these lines: to hang up, it's too early, and that my insurance will contact hers if needed.
6. Pierce a hole on the pocket of water so it can drain. I would recommend to do this earlier, but that was one of the things her dad told us and we didn't think of before. Apparently it helps the water drain and stop accumulating, which is a good thing, if you didn't figure it out by now.
7. After an hour or so, while watching Sportscenter, having breakfast and waiting for that technician, you notice a strange silence in the room, and notice it stopped leaking (told you piercing the pocket of water was a good idea).
8. Tell the neighbor it stopped leaking. Make yourself believe you have solved the enigma narrowing it down to the hot water, since it's the only one we shut off, because we weren't sure which one was their cold water.
9. Reopen the hot water so my neighbor can take a quick shower, and while she does it leaks again. Eureka! It is the hot water.
10. Let her know your discovery.
11. The technician arrives and tells us, they fix everything except the source of the problem, that has to be payed by the Owners Union (Syndicat de Propietaire, or something like that in French). He also says we need to call a plumber to get the source fixed, and that he should come after they do, to later say its better if the plumber fixes the problem first.
12. Go on a plumber searching spree, while the neighbor looks for the insurance info for the building. Get quotes from plumbers, and find out they also charge for the time it takes them to get here, which is weird, cause they could say it took them one hour and screw you over (that is my Mexican skepticism speaking/writing).
13. Remember that since it leaked the last time we haven`t shut off the hot water, and rethink of that Eureka moment you had, and whether it might have all been too easy of a solution. Find out that when she took her shower, other neighbors where taking showers and using water in their apartments at the same time, so we decided to run test. Open and close all showers, faucets, flush toilets, etc., from ALL the occupied apartments in our building, to notice that it not leaking anymore. F***, I was wrong, it's not the hot water.
14. It's been a while since the ceiling stopped leaking, so our neighbor's dad suggested we wait 24 hours to see if it would start leaking and if it does to try and find which apartment was using water and where, so we can better inform the plumber and maybe (this is a very important maybe), have him just break the ceiling, floor and/or wall where the problem is or where it might be.
15. Wait for a leakage to happen.
16. You should also contact the building's insurance (Syndicat the Propietaires) to see if they can send a plumber or if it's you who calls one and get reimbursed. Finding out that you won't get reimbursed after you payed will suck big time.

I think that is it so far. If anything unexpected should come up I will post it. If not, then I will post "la suite" tomorrow, and lets hope tomorrow is the end of this event.