My wife and I just bought our first home this week, and I have to say that I truly excited to be a home owner. I would assume that most people have some doubt and fears when buying a house, but for some reason, I just know that this was the right house at the right time for both of us. It’s a older country home, not too far from any major city, but still far enough away that we don’t see the lights and can’t hear the noises – exactly what we were looking for.

It was a total random find – we weren’t really even looking in the area we bought in, but when we saw the house, we knew that we had found where we wanted to live.  My wife had a small checklist of things she wanted in a house, and this place really seems like it has it all.

1. A big yard – well, we have almost an acre – check
2. Large kitchen, with lots of counter space – check
3. In the country, where it is quiet, and people are always welcoming – check

I hope to post some pictures, video, and some of the plans we have going forward.  I am definitely seeing a lot of blogging in the foreseeable future.

I just picked up a MagicJack – $20/year for unlimited long distance in Canada and the US. Since I am a huge cell phone user, I figured this was just about the best thing I could get to save a ton of money on my long distance bills. My parents live in the US, my brothers out of province, and even the nearest Wal-Mart is long distance (not that I call them – but you see where I am going with this).

My wife and I are buying a house, and have decided that we don’t really want a home phone service, since we rarely talk on the phone, but when we do, it tends to be long distance. Rates are just too high for our cell phones, so I thought we would give it a try.

I’ll post a few times to let you know how things are going, and if I find any cool hacks for it – I mean, why buy technology that you can’t mess with, right? So far though, it looks to save me some serious cash – fantastic!

I noticed something interesting the other day as I watching some old MacGyver episodes from DVD (HUGE fan). I just happened to pay attention to the running time for the episodes I was watching. They were in the 48 – 50 minute range per episode. For some reason I reflected on this for a moment, and thought to myself, “wow, that seems like a lot of time for commercials!”.

I guess it just rolled around in my head for far too long, because I found myself switching shows to something more recent (Heroes), and found that the running time per episode there was about 42 – 44 minutes. I proceeded to look through a couple of my DVD’s, and found that some so-called hour-long shows were actually 38 minutes in length! That means that almost 37% of the “show”, at least when it airs on television, is advertising time.

Frankly, it just boggled my mind – that we would allow advertisers to cut 37% of our favorite shows to bombard us with their ads. Then I thought about it a bit more and realized that the only way this could happen is if the show itself was limiting its run-time to allow for these ads. Now, people may say that’s just the way things are done. I’ll agree with them it is in North America, which is a shame. Why is it then that British television is able to offer fantastic shows like Top Gear (my favorite car show of all time, and is perhaps one of the funnier shows on tv today), which run for the entire hour, without ANY commercials whatsoever?

Just something to think about the next time you are watching your favorite show and wish that there were just a few more minutes left. There could have been – if advertisers hadn’t taken it to let you know about the latest and greatest ways to spend your hard-earned money.

*** Although I think it is a shame that advertisers are taking away from our viewing time of our favorite shows, I do understand that advertising is part of our lives, and a lot of people rely on it for their livelihoods. I simply think that they can do a lot better, and should, without infringing on our lives.

I can’t believe how naive some companies think we are.  I was reading an article on an IT website which indicated that Canada was one of the worst countries offering high-speed Internet when it comes to price and speed.  While reading the article, it mentioned some facts I wanted to check out, so I went looking at some of the major providers available to me, and found this ad.

Basically, it indicates that Rogers has a $45 mega value combo.  Funny thing is though, if you look at the details the price is $50 (written quite clearly as the BASE price), and fees on top of that.  Now, I am willing to let them get away with $45 plus additional fees (even though I wholeheartedly disagree with the practice, it is pretty common in the industry), but come on Rogers, don’t you give your customers any credit at all?

They not only market it as the $45 Mega Value Combo, but everywhere it is referenced, it includes the $45 price tag, which is incorrect, given the fact the information clearly states otherwise.

It amazes me that companies who do this kind of thing continue to get customers.  Canada, we all need to stop these companies for charging us WAY TOO MUCH for the service we get. We have the infrastructure in place to offer these services at a much lower price.

This is just another reason (on top of what is becoming a very large list), which keeps me away from Rogers as a customer.

Check out the IT World article for more information.

Our usual Canada Day festivities include a fabulous fireworks party held on a friend’s beach in Erieau.  Every year, we see more and more people come out for the event, and each person brings a few more fireworks, which are a bit bigger than the ones brought the previous year.  Since none of us have a pyrotechnics license, we can’t get the outrageously large fireworks, but I think that we do pretty well – in fact, I would say that we top the Erieau firemen fireworks show, at least for the last few years.

This year estimated that we lit approximately $6000.00 in fireworks off, and it was worth every penny spent. The setup took about the same as last year – 30 minutes to lug all the fireworks down to the beach, then about an hour to set them all up.

I would like to thank Scott for providing the place, Scotty G for providing the tunes, and the “pyro crew” as they are affectionately known (and as their t-shirts read) for lighting them off so the rest of us could enjoy the show.  It truly is a team effort!

So, without further adieu, here is my homage to the festivities!