Tyler On Everything

Everything HD, all the time. That is the way is should be.

Last night I kept flipping back from the SD hockey game to the HD baseball game. Its so hard to watch SD content now. As I was watching the baseball game a commercial came on. It was a commercial for the JVC Everio HD Camcorder. I was thinking to myself: Well that is a toy that I should have!

But wait… This commercial with the smiley baby and big hair is in standard definition. Why would a company trying to attract HD users on an HD channel not shoot their commercial in HD. I mean, its a commercial and most commercials are still in SD, but really if you are trying to sell an HD accessory you would think you could advertise it well in HD.

Still looks like a toy I would want…

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.

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.

• CNet
• Amazon.com
• AVSForum

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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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.

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

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.

Even after pulling the tow truck off my car, it was still stuck and needed helping getting out of the ruts.

At this point they offered to take my car to get it repaired, I accepted, I currently don’t know what the status is, but here is the damage.

This was quite the day, probably about as bad as humanly possible. I really hope I get my car back soon.

Last afternoon I felt sick -still do. I went home early, if you consider 4:30pm early, and was disappointed that my Amazon.com order hadn’t arrived. After about 20 minutes of watching the X-Games big air comp, the door bell goes.

What arrives? My new coaching boots:

As well my Amazon.com order arrived (the same day that BHD became available from the BestBuy warehouse -I definitely won that battle). So I spent last night watching The Rock on Blu-Ray. I must say, the transfer looked better than I expected from a 17 year old movie. As well as I had said earlier Amazon.com does ship from within Canada -c/o DHL-  so it will never be susceptible for taxes/duties, assuming that you are ordering DVDs or Books. I think Amazon.com will be my new shipper of choice.

I’m still feeling kinda sick, so I’m not sure I will make it through the day.

(Finally) Got my hydro bill. I have been waiting for -and fearing- the arrival of this bill. I had spoken to them, and knew it was going to be a two month bill. I thought it was going to be huge.

When it arrived it was small… No wait… It was huge… No wait it was small. I can’t decide.

The final tally was $338, but here is the real kicker. It included a $30 new user fee, and a $200 deposit because of my credit. I couldn’t understand -I have very good credit- so I called. Turned out that they didn’t run a credit check so I had to be charged the deposit amount. I told them to run a credit check, they said that there is a $15 fee for that (which I find unbelievable, what the hell is the $30 new account charge for then?!?!?!?!?). So I asked when I got my $200, back. It was going to be added to my bill after 1 year. Not too bad, after some mental math:

Interest on $200 (4% x $200 = $8) - Taxes on interest ( 40% x $8 =  $3.20) = $4.80

So if I put it in a savings account then I’m looking at about $5. So the $15 is a large amount to pay. I decided to just give them the $200 for one year.

I still want to know what the hell the $30 for the new account included.

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On the plus side. My two months of hydro usage was $108. That is $54 a month. That is great! I know that will increase during the summer AC season, but those numbers are very low. Perhaps things are looking up.

…with a draw.

So they replied back today and told me if I didn’t like their terms I could cancel the order.  I poked around a little more and found I could make the same order for Amazon.com for $5 less (even with the sale price). I cancelled the BestBuy order, just as they wished. They didn’t get the sale, but I didn’t get them to admit that they are completely useless. I have some BestBuy Rewards Points so I will still be doing some shopping, but not on DVD/Blu-Ray.

I added one more item to cut down the shipping time even a little bit more, and placed the order. I got an email a few hours ago that it has already shipped. BestBuy.ca continues to provide the worst service in the industry. Amazon.com continues to impress.

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On a side note, I was told today that Amazon.com actually ships from within Canada on DVDs/Books so tax/duty is never an issue. I believe what I was told, and that makes Amazon.com even that more appealing. dotCa/BestBuy/Future Shop may have worked their way right out of my DVD/Blu-Ray market. How fun is that!?!?!

As a first time home-owner I feel like I should have a list of renovations for spring. So I do:

• Replace main floor carpet with hardwood
• Build backyard fence
• Finish second half of basement, including installing bathroom

The last item is probably the most ambitious. I will try to get started on it as soon as possible, although the items are pretty close to priority going forward.

Here are some diagrams of the changes I would like to make in the basement.

Before:

After: