Author: admin

This weekend I had an impromptu splurge moment and decided that I was sick of downloading a new TV show only to have the error “ERROR: YOUR HARD DRIVE CAN’T FIT THIS SWEET, SWEET EPISODE OF ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. YOU SHOULD LEARN HOW BURN STUFF ONTO DVD, BLANCO NINO.”

Burning stuff onto DVD is fine and all, but hey, why bother when you can pick up a snazzy external 320GB hard drive?

I was doing some research here and there on my trusty price checking websites -> pricenetwork.ca and redflagdeals.com
and at first was thinking of buying a SATA2 hard drive for $108 and an external hard drive case for $60 which basically comes out to $200 and I just realized I’m starting to talk techtalk so I’ll tone it down a little.

Then to compare I thought I would see if there are any external drives out there for cheaper and lo and behold, Best Buy had this sweet deal on for $119.99 with a $50 mail-in rebate. You gotta hate those rebates, but whatever. It’s still money in your pocket.

Pros: Well hey, it’s portable! It looks nice also. It’s also cheap.
Cons: Well, it isn’t SATA (Serial ATA) which cuts down on the speed it will transfer data at. But as I was saying to Duncan and Matt, I’m not too concerned with the milliseconds piling up over time (whereas Duncan was totally against this train of thought and wanted the fastest within a reasonable price range. Two different ways of thought, who knows who is right?!). Who cares if it’s going to take me ten more minutes to transfer an entire season of Star Trek onto the hard drive?

Also, I was a little concerned at first as to the name brand – Digital Research Technologies? Who the heck are they? Turns out they are an affiliate of I/O Magic and just slap random hard drives inside. Turns out it’s a Seagate inside which I have no qualms about.

So it’s my first external drive so I’ll let you know if I run into any problems with it. I bought it because I figured in the future, I will be buying a laptop and the hard drives on the laptop are very small in size for what I like to be able to do with them.

“One young woman admitted she and her friends went so far as to bury several bottles of liquor near the fountain more than a week before the concert and planned to dig them up once they got inside.”

Awesome. Why have I never thought about doing something like that for an outdoor show? In fact, next time Lumberjack Fest rolls into town, I’m planting a keg behind the glass.

Taken from this article.

Three Days Grace, Theory of A Deadman, Mobile and Idle Sons.

Ottawa Civic Centre – Monday, November 13 – 6:30.

Tix go on sale this coming Saturday, unless you have the presale password, which I have not found yet, but I have only found out about this ten minutes ago as I spied someone’s newspaper and said “WHAT THE HECK?!” and scrambled to find my own which I hadn’t read yet today, and sure enough, there it was in all its glory.

Get yo’ own tix fools. It’s general admission on the floor so I don’t have to worry about getting you tickets. Mike, this doesn’t apply to you as you live with me. I’ll get you a ticket.

Here’s a tip to save some money (potentially) to all you long distance plan users out there.

We had the $20/month, unlimited long distance plan from Rogers. We just removed it because we live in the world of Skype and Jajah.com where long distance isn’t just from the provider anymore. Heck, I remember changing long distance plans in college every few months so I could get free stuff. Rumour has it that Sens tickets were actually given to switch over to Sprint at one time.

Here’s the scoop from yours truly after getting off the phone. Turns out that if you get rid of any long distance package, long distance within North America is 9 cents a minute.

Whoa. You know, years ago it was pretty sweet when it was 10 cents a minute but I remember that those deals were few and far between.

So there you have it…9 cents a minute. Now, if you think of the $20/month package, that would equate to 222 minutes, or 3.7 hours.

If you’re like me and don’t speak on the phone that much anyhow, perhaps you should look into NOT paying the $20/month package to speak to your loved ones over long distances, but go for the basic plan. Coupled with Skype and Jajah.com (only 2 cents a minute people!) you are talking instant goldmine.

However, if you speak a lot of long distance and you don’t feel like going on the Internet (or are unable to!) to set up a phone call, then the $20/month is for you.

My camera is a little on the fritz (as in some buttons do not work) and I was in a ‘woe is me’ state for awhile thinking my warranty must have expired by now.

But when I went to Henry’s with Mike last night, I asked if they would have my name on file so I could check out if the warranty is still good.

Turns out that I had purchased the extended warranty which was good for an additional 4 years! Wooooohooo! I remember clearly that Philipp and I had spoken about getting the warranty package after the fiasco I had with my old camera.

So, I’ll drop it off tomorrow and all will be good in the world.

Advice of the Day People – Even if you haven’t bought an extended warranty, make sure you check to see when your warranty expires IMMEDIATELY when something breaks. For all you know, your one-year warranty may be up the next week and you just are lazy and don’t bother and then get screwed in the end. That’s what happened with my old camera. I was just plain lazy.

After awaking from The Who concert, Vero and I went around Orleans to pick up some picnic supplies and drop in to see Baby Philippe who looks very chipper.

We headed over to Rob’s to bring them in the caravan of people going to Strathcona Park for some good potluck eats, as well as some fun and games. We set up the volleyball net but I only played awhile as I noticed a spot came open in bocce ball and we played for a few hours. I would like to congratulate our team on coming from a 7 point deficit with only one point needed from the other team to win the game to the glory victory that Jen, Eric and I shared! It was a true underdog story (much like Dodgeball) and we even tried to dunk the Chief Measurer later on, but his mother would not allow it. 😉

The crew packed up and a few of us stayed around the park to take in the day for all its worth. It was a glorious day outside. Mike and Mel dropped by Vero’s pad to check it out before heading out around supper.

After picking up some chicken and beer, I took a well needed nap for an hour and then woke up and watched the last hour of Terry – a film about Terry Fox. It was an amazing movie, although I want to see it in all its glory someday. I wonder if its available for rent? The story touched me, and what touched me more was the fact that the Terry Fox run is held in over 50 countries.

Fifty countries! That’s incredible! This is one man from Canada who spearheaded this event across the world! It’s conceivable that if we went travelling and mentioned we were from Canada, someone might say “Oh, that’s where Terry Fox is from!”.

Benoit, Cinthia and Trish showed up for some drinks and then we headed down to the Heart and Crown around 11. There was no lineup which was amazing. Although, the bar soon fell victim to the hype and the bouncers started a lineup with no reason whatsoever as the bar was dead inside. Boo, hiss!

We had an excellent spot where we could all sit and enjoy some music. All in all, an enjoyable night, but it rated a 7 on the Heart & Crown scale, a 10 having a rocking band in the back. They just didn’t do it for me this night so we hung around the front. Sam ended up on stage doing the ‘green alligator, long necked geese’ song which was a valiant effort.

Vero sends her thanks to all that attended. Everyone had a great time!

Word on the street is that Holly’s Mom thinks I should be a novelist from the stuff I write on this blog.

However, one could only imagine how my blog entries are being dictated to her over the phone by Holly…so I hope Holly sends her mom the website address so that she can have a laugh or two of her own while reading this dedication to her!