Author: admin

I have owned my Macbook for six years now which is well past the warranty period.

The battery decided to do something weird the other day.  It swelled up on me to the point where there was so much pressure on the lock mechanism on the Macbook that I thought it was going to break.  Luckily it did not.  As soon as I turned the unlock switch, the thing popped right out because it had expanded in size!

I did a little research on some forums to see if it was a common occurrence.  I found some mention of a replacement program back in 2009 for A1185 batteries but that time had since passed.

I have had amazing service from the Apple Store at Rideau Center in the past (free replacement earbuds a few times when they just weren’t working any longer) so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see what they could do for me.  A new battery from the Apple Store costs $160 whereas on Ebay it looked like I could one cheaper for $60.

I arrived at the Genius Bar appointment and it was a packed house at 12:20 in the afternoon.  One gentleman was helping another Macbook client but was running some scans so I propped the Macbook on the table and showed him the battery and asked him what my options were.

He proceeded to get a new battery and tell me that this shouldn’t happen at all and gave me the new battery, no questions asked.

I have often wondered if Apple has a customer satisfaction policy which basically states “Don’t bother asking them about the warranty on the product, don’t bother asking for some money…just get the problem fixed so the customer can exit the store being happy.”

Happy I am.  Extremely satisfied with the service I always get at the Apple Store.  How many times have you seen something of yours break and the first thing you think about is “Oh my Lord, is it still covered by warranty?”  Imagine if we lived in a world where it just didn’t matter?

That world is the Apple Store.

Thanks.

At the Sound of Lions concert the other night, I saw the most curious thing…a sign on the merchandise table that read “Pay what you want for the merchandise.”

Huh.

My immediate thoughts at looking at the CD and the t-shirt available was immediately “Man, if I wanted these two items, I would easily drop $40 for them both.”

I wonder if that’s the general consensus on these types of things and in the end, they actually make MORE money by leaving it up to buyer’s choice?

Granted, this was their existing CD and a t-shirt.  They are currently testing out new songs so maybe they are clearing out some old stock before they order new stock?

Either way, it’s a really fascinating concept and I would love to pick their brain to find out the thinking behind this as well as if they are at least breaking even.

On a related note, I wonder if had anything to do with passing her a twenty the previous time I bought their album and I told them to keep the change to support the band?

Seriously, I didn’t have many doubts when walking in there..JF and Jon are accomplished musicians…but man!  I was blown away at what we came up with after three hours!

Showed up to Jon’s place and unloaded my gear around noon and we were up and at ‘em after a few technical problems (why isn’t my microphone working?  My printer ran out of ink!).

The moment was upon us…the first song to play together.  We decided on Diggin’ a Hole and took it from the top.  I think all of us were looking at each other with trepidation.  Was this going to be awesome, or was it going to suck?

As soon as the drums started up and I strummed along, I could feel it.  The electricity was there.  I am not talking about JF’s massive JCM800 in the corner of the room.  I’m talking about how you know it’s going to be a good afternoon!

Then BLAMMO, JF enters in with the electric guitar in the way the electric guitar blows you away when it makes an appearance in Big Sugar songs.  It was off to the races for the rest of the afternoon.  I was so impressed with our first attempt that I immediately switched to bass guitar to see if we could make the song rock even harder.  That took awhile to get used to, but I thought it turned out a-ok.

Alive was the next tune we tried.  It was going good but we stopped once in awhile to fine tune it.  But once we got it down and we entered into JF’s solo I was mesmerized.  It was like I was standing in front of Mike McCready himself!  I can’t get over how sweet JF plays lead guitar.  He practiced like hell and it paid off.  He mentioned that his wife figured that the other guys probably didn’t even practice as much as him.  I gotta say that from the sound of us all in the room, we all put our heart into it and it was paying off in spades.

After that we noodle around with Jet Airliner which was decent and we let Jon play around with learning the drums on Hold Me In Your Arms.  JF and I chatted and noodled around for a bit and broke into Sixteen Saltines which sounded pretty darn decent even without the drums.  Later on, Jon came in with the drums and I gotta say, it’s a freaking sweet tune to just have some fun with.  It’s definitely different practicing on my own with the acoustic and hearing how it sounds in my basement vs. when the electric and drums are also with it!

Yellow Ledbetter was a highlight of the day as it’s one of my faves and we did pretty decently considering we never practiced it.

Two enthusiastic thumbs up over what we came up with that day.  Here’s to hoping Martin can join us the next time (I believe he may have been working) and here’s to hoping we get together sooner rather than later!!

Benoit and I each bought a Star Wars stormtrooper costume last year in hopes to wear it to every Hallowe’en party for the rest of our lives.

I would say that we have been assembling it (otherwise known amongst us as troopin’) about five times now.  We have got a lot better at it compared to the first day last winter.  We are hoping to have it done by Hallowe’en and I’m confident that we will get 90% of it done and the remaining 10% is simply some fine tuning (or back orders of boots!)

Friday night was the first time that I felt that it really came together.  We are only missing the thigh and shoulder pieces as well as some little extras (like the belt).  Cinthia was having a big laugh when we came out from the basement in nearly full gear and ran around the house living out Star Wars fantasies.  I’m not sure why being a stormtrooper is a dream of many, considering how ridiculously hard it is to see out of that damn helmet!  I’m trying to figure out how to drink some beer during the night.  I think I may have to invest in a camel pack on ice!

Two thumbs up for the gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches we had that night!  I was introduced to a grilled cheese with fried apples, peppers, cranberries and cheese!  Too bad I forgot the olives!

Friday morning I drove to work so I could drive to Benoit’s afterwards…unfortunately for me, it resulted in a dent on the passenger side fender and some nice paint which does NOT match the existing paint job.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I got out and paid the attendant, then put it into reverse while looking out the back window.  However, with the rain pouring down I didn’t really see out my side mirror and all I heard scrraaaapppeeeee.

Sure enough, there’s this nice cement post painted in blue that I hit with the car.

The best part is when the attendant comes out and says “That’s the third time this morning!” and here I’m thinking “Buddy, maybe you should paint this a brighter colour for those rainy days.”

So that’s that…another dent/scrape to add to the old girl.  I’m not too concerned with it because I’ve grown to become fond of my other scrape on one other side.  I also feel that this will give me the challenge of learning how to fix these things myself!  With the helpful phone call to my father of course!

Troy wanted me to talk about this a little more to capture some memories of my time in a band, so here goes.

First off, am I in a band?  Maybe?  Maybe not.

A few years back, JF, Jon, Mike and I got together one night to jam.  It was a chaotic experience with everyone all over the map.  For a drummer, Jon must have been frustrated.  But who wouldn’t be?  This was the first time ever getting together without even thinking of what songs we would play.  All in all, a fun night fueled by beers and cheers, but it was just that.

Fast forward a few years and we decide to jam once again.  So we pick a few songs and play them a few times and it’s not bad.

Fast forward another while and everyone convenes for Vero and my wedding and everyone has a great time.  When we get back home, an email awaits from JF saying “Hey, we should get a band together!”

We get together one night and hash out approximately a billion songs that we would be interested in learning.  It was a little ridiculous at one point!  But we also discussed the fact that we just want to get together once in awhile (like every three weeks) and play some songs together.  At this point, there’s no end goal in sight of playing in bars around the area or anything like that.  Martin seems to be the seasoned pro in being in a band (from what I can tell, maybe the others have all been in groups before) and he said we need minimum a year together to be able to play proficiently together.

Challenge accepted!

I like the setup of the group so far…we have Jon on drums, JF on lead guitar as well as Martin on lead and myself taking up the acoustic and vocals.  There has been talks of needing to bring the bass guitar in there somewhere so we may switch up positions depending on where it is needed.  Here’s to hoping the bass guitar doesn’t come around my side too often considering I don’t know how to play it and I think vocal duties will be severely diminished if I took it on!  But, everything comes with practice so I’m not afraid to try it out!

So here we come upon the three week mark and I have a few songs I’ve been learning in prep for the jam session.

Digging a Hole (Big Sugar): So this was an interesting one to learn.  It’s all bass guitar at the beginning!  So I gave up on it for awhile until JF just pointed out that we could strum an A chord instead.  Bingo bango, didn’t have too much trouble with this one.

Sunshine of your Love (Cream): The bane of my existence is to pick some notes and sing at the same time.  Give me some chords any day and I’m fine.  But have me pick and sing at the same time?  Well…it takes a little more practice.  A fun song to play and it just outlines how simple some classic songs really are (until you get to the solo!)

Jet Airliner (Steve Miller Band): Great tune to strum to.  I’m glad I had to practice this one because I’ve played it a few times but only from memory so I know I missed a few details over the years.  Part of me likes making a song my own, another part says “Learn how to play it correctly, damn it!”

Sixteen Saltines (Jack White): A vote from JF as he loves this song.  It was the first time hearing it so it is taking me awhile to get the hang of it.  Plus, Jack’s vocals are on the screamy end of the sprectrum so it’s taking a little getting used to.

Hold Me In Your Arms (Trews): Oh man!  Talk about a vocal killer!  Collin can NAIL the awesome classic rock high end vocals whereas it’s taking me everything to get up to that level.  I used to be able to sing really high but nowadays…not so much!  Not sure how this one will work out.  I may have to bring it down a key.

So that’s that.  Practicing is going well and I’m looking forward to the upcoming jam session!

A good friend of ours has left a lucrative job in the Public Service (amongst all these cuts, probably not a bad idea!) and became a financial advisor.

Not knowing what the heck a financial advisor does, we decided to pay him a visit to see what the scoop was.  All in all, we were impressed and I personally had my eyes opened to a few things I hadn’t really thought about.  I do enjoy that this financial advisor in particular isn’t out to make money off of us personally, but wants to help us out in life and if he can sell us a product and get a commission from it, bonus to him.

One thing that I really thought about was the critical illness insurance and I thought I would talk about it here because there are certain unanswered questions on my end.  I have disability benefits at work here, but I don’t have anything that would help me out if I had cancer and needed to take some time off for some treatments.

But I don’t know much about cancer treatments (or any critical illness treatments).  Some questions that come up are:

–         Does the provincial health plan pay for all treatments?  Are some excluded?

–   If everything is covered, do I sometimes fall into a waiting queue for certain tests that some extra cash can alleviate?  Aka can money push me closer to the end of the line?

–          On average with any critical illness, how much time do I have to take off of work?  If I have six months on sick days, am I in the clear?  Would I need the insurance to cover the days I use when I’m out of sick days?

–          Ultimate question: Why do I need the extra money from critical illness insurance if I have a lot of sick days and the Government pays for my health coverage.

So these are some of the things flying through my head right now concerning that topic.  Overall though, a second meeting is warranted and if he tells us we are in fine shape, then great!  If not, we can decide what our life wants.

I’ve tried teaching myself piano a few times in my life but never stuck to it.  I have been thinking about signing up for lessons and I saw a sign outside our post box the other day so I thought I would give it a shot.

I’m in an interesting position…I’ve played guitar for nearly 20 years (self-taught), but I have little to no theory experience.  I’ve picked up pieces of theory from some lessons from Troy but I feel that sometimes I am questioning the simplest concepts because I haven’t been taught from the ground up.  Now that I’m attempting to write songs, I feel that learning to play piano would help this out immensely as a song writing tool.  I explained this all to the woman who would teach me as I didn’t want to enter there and start from the ground up.

After rushing through the rain to my first piano lesson, I arrived a few minutes late at a beautiful home a few kilometers away from my own house and there was a nice large sign saying Piano Lessons outside of the place!  This place is professional!

We chatted for awhile about how to go about it, and decided to just see where the wind takes us.  I already learned a few new tricks up my sleeve and will stick it out for another month at least.  Not sure how much time/money I want to invest but I should start getting used to the idea of taking it for at least six-twelve months to have a solid basis.

There’s a contest to win an Indiana Jones set on Blu-Ray and I had to provide the macguffin for the new film.  Here’s what I came up with!

Ever hear of Oak Island?  It’s an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada and is rumoured to house some treasure at the bottom.  You can read about it all here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Island, but I’ll give you the short version and how it could relate to Indiana.

When I was a kid, the rumour I read about is that Blackbeard the pirate buried treasure down there so that no one could ever retrieve it.  Another rumour is that the stolen jewels of Marie Antoinette lie buried in there somewhere.

The crazy part about this pit is the fact that there were traps built into it…for example, the entire pit would flood if you went past certain points.

How would it fit into the overall films?  Well, I have to admit that it would kick some serious ass to see Indiana try and get some of Blackbeard’s treasure as an archaeological dig!  Heck, if they can have aliens show up, I’m sure Spielburg, Ford and Lucas can somehow conjure up Blackbeard himself to make an appearance!  Sure, we’ve seen Pirates of the Caribean already, but Indiana hunting for Blackbeard’s treasure?  That’s a movie I would go see!