Tyler On Everything » 2008

Friday Marked The Day!

Friday marked the day that my actual Enbridge usage matched the amount that they estimated for January 7th. Friday was the 28th of March. Note that it took 116 days to use the same amount of gas that they estimated I would use in 35. I am using 3 times less than they estimate.

My advice: Read your meters frequently, and correct them if things are hugely out of wack. They love your money, and if you don’t call, then they love your money more than you do.

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life No Comments » March 2008

Electronics Product Reviews… Err Any Reviews

I’m a review junky. I will read reviews on anything, when I am buying something I will read every review I can find. One of the issues is that when you Google ‘product X review’ you will find 30 pages of price amalgamation websites that have nothing to offer. Most of the time if I am really interested I will check three places.

Those three places will give you a gamut of ideas of how things perform. CNet reviews seem to lack depth, and certainly lack longevity testing. They will give you the best idea of what features obvious problems a product has. AVSForum gives you tons of geeks pouring over everything, the only problem is that you get hundreds of pages of banter to go over, useful if you are looking for something specific. Amazon.com seems to tend to be my review of choice, you get a wide range of user calibres and both positive and negative. The most important thing to remember is that you are reading reviews from people who are passionate about whatever they are writing about. This means that you will get people who adore their purchase or who have had problems, and it somewhat lacks the middle ground. So in short, you need to read with a grain of salt.

Perhaps the best reviews to look for when deciding on a major purchase are the wife approval reviews:

It seems like I’ve been waiting forever to pick up a 605, but I finally got one this week and got it all set up (along with two additional speakers). I put in 3:10 to Yuma and jumped to the finale. Even my wife had a smile on her face as we listened to the 7.1 track and noticed all of the little details coming from all around us.

I knew I was going to be in trouble for spending the money if it wasn’t an obvious improvement, and I think I’m safe after watching select scenes from Yuma, Cars, Pirates, and Harry Potter. I’m having fun going through my collection and checking out all of the uncompressed audio I’ve been missing.

So I thank all of you who have contributed to this thread, which has been a valuable resource as I researched my purchase!

From AVSForum.

Wife approval is very key, it basically means that you don’t need to be an (audio/video)phile to get enjoy it and deem it a good value, of course again you need to filter out whether the review is more pertinent to the device or the wife. (If they are discussing $5000 speaker cable, I can guarantee that a wife approval review is more of a comment on the wife than the cable.)

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When reading reviews for books/movies then you definitely want to spend more time reading negative reviews rather than positive reviews. You get things like:

I don’t get this movie at all. People say it’s so great, but I’m always like, “what’s so great about it? It’s like Stir Crazy, but without Gene Wilder.” And, I’m sorry, but Gene Wilder is great in that movie. Stir Crazy, that is–not Shawshank Redemption, which he is not in.

Hmmm… Yes Shawshank would have been better with Gene Wilder… Nothing against Gene Wilder, but based on the fact that this guy hates Shawshank because it doesn’t have him in it, probably means that I’m going to like it. Ah hell, it may not tell you anything about the movie, but reading negative reviews is damn funny. All hail the internet as a constant source of humour.

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Technology 2 Comments » March 2008

Zip.ca - Unimpressed So Far (Blu-Ray Addition)

I have always been intrigued by the idea of Zip.ca. I am a self confessed movie hound, but with the prices of buying movies and the cost of renting, I have always wanted a cheaper alternative. The idea of Zip: $11 a month, they ship you movies from a list that you decide (you don’t pick the exact movie), and you just mail it back. It sounds pretty good.

I had some concern over the relative inefficiency of CanadaPost -which has affected me already- but I was happy to see that there was a service called ZipRefill. Very simple, you mark online when you have returned a movie, and they will send you a new one before they actually receive it. Or so they say.

With this information, I decided to take the plunge and try the two week free trial. It took a few days from the time that I signed up and started making a list for a Blu-Ray to actually ship. I don’t know if they have very little stock in terms of Blu-Rays but it definitely took longer than I was expecting. Anyway, it shipped from Ottawa and arrived the next day, that was good. It took me a few days to watch it and then I marked it as returned -dropped it in the outgoing mail at work the next day. Still it took a day after they received it for a new movie to be shipped. The next one shipped from Toronto. It shipped on a Friday and was estimated to arrive on the next Wednesday, to me that is too long, with some interesting weather and general CanadaPost crappyness it took two extra days to arrive -a full week. Due to some other unforeseen incidents it took me the better part of a week to watch it. On the Friday I marked it as returned, and its Tuesday now and they haven’t sent out a new one.

How did the two week trial go? Well I got to see exactly 1 movie. Is this a good deal? No not really. You aren’t going to get to see any extra movies than if you rented. Couple that with the incoveniance of not getting the exact movie you want to watch, but rather a random one from a list of at least 20 -they say that it the minimum number- and I would say its not worth it. I think I am going to go through the process with two more movies. If either of them takes more than a week from the time I marked the previous one as returned, then I’m done. So far this is a big thumbs down for Zip.ca.

(3 votes, average: 3.33 out of 5)

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Technology 2 Comments » March 2008

Maps.Google.Com

Great site. Love it. Use it. Daily. My only issue with it is the speed at which the update it.

Last month they updated the photos, so you can kind of see where my house is, but still the street is not listed on the map.

Updated Photo

Now I suppose the issue is that it has taken them over 2 years to get a photo of the area so that it isn’t a field, and even longer to have streets on the map (still not searchable, and can’t do routes). But really what can we expect from something that is free? Well if they expect to become the defacto mapping standard (I would want to if I were them), then they need to have every updated at least once a year.

This means, that Maps.Google is still not reliable enough to match the printed specialty mapping companies.

On a side note, the photos and zooming ability of Live Maps is much superior to Google maps, although the directions and location finding is not at the same level. The 3d mapping is pretty cool, especially if you live/work in a multi-story building

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Technology 1 Comment » March 2008

Yester-day of Hell

Every now and then one of these days comes along, its rare, thankfully because they are quite difficult to take.

To start off the day, well I need to go into a bit of history. Two days prior there was a solid foot of standing water in the road, over the previous few months we had continually contacted the city regarding getting it cleaned up. No luck. So on Tuesday I went out with my neighbour to find and open up the storm drain. After a few hours of chipping ice, we had cleared the 10 inches on top of the storm drain, and had the road draining. The road was rutted to no end.

Fast forward to yesterday morning. I knew there was a winter storm blowing in, and I had a dental appointment at 8am so I was up early.

Incident 1

I checked my email to find that I had an email from Zip.ca saying that my credit card had been declined. The previous night I had a similar incident at Bestbuy so I figured that I should look into it. I phoned PC Financial to have them tell me that my card had been suspended and they would have to transfer me to the security department. The security department informed me that there was 2 suspect transactions. I was shocked, so I asked what they were. Turns out it was two internet transactions I made, one to renew the hosting of this very site, and the other for a nose piece for a pair of Oakley M Frames. Turns out there was nothing suspect about it. I then started questioning why I was not called after my card was canceled. No satisfactory answer. From here on forward they will not be putting security holds on my card and will call instead. Sounds smart to me.

Incident 2

I was rushing out of the house, and fighting through the falling snow to get to my dental appointment. Right at the end of the driveway I got my left front wheel stuck in the very hole I had dug for the storm sewer two days earlier.

I did some digging, and its kind of hard to see in these photos, but I was really really stuck. Furious, I decided to phone a tow truck to get me going.

Incident 3

The tow truck hit my car!

He slid sideways trying to drive past the car. That would be the ruts I was talking about. Not only that, but my tow truck time saving affair also had the truck stuck. They needed another tow truck to pull him off the car.