our life

"P" is for productive

I took a P ( personal ) day from work today. We get three of these a year for things like doctor appointments, family things, and even just a mental health break. Today was a combo of personal appointments to do car stuff, and family stuff.

Picked up my used car package for the Jetta, picked up my Car insurance papers at my local Cooperators blue box ( thats what I call the franchise shops ), saw some land that my dad is thinking of building a house on, and last but not least, we picked up the car from the dealer and brought it home. We even managed to get our vote in, on the drive home from the dealership. We voted green in protest against the other parties.

I highly recommend the Cooperators for car and house insurance. Not just because I work there, but for each member of the family who has gone to get a quote they have managed to get both more insurance and a lower quote then what they were getting before. For the car insurance, I used to use TD ( who bought Primmum ), and I got a lower rate with the Cooperators on the Jetta. With the Vibe the best quote I found was with the Presidents Choice Insurance. The Cooperators beat the price by $50, and that was with extra features such as the depreciation waiver, car rental, and with the deductibles set at a reasonable $300. Since I work at the Cooperators and since we also have the house insured we get a %25 discount and free payroll monthly deductions, so its an even better deal for us. Even if the cost was about the same as some of the other insurances, I'd still want to stay with the Cooperators though. I think its important to buy from your own company - especially since its a COOP type company. The company supports you, so this is my way of saying thank you, and giving back to the company. It just makes sense to put money back in the company, since the better the Cooperators does, the better everyone who works at the company does - profit sharing, job security, etc

I wasn't sure the Vibe would fit in the garage, and I had to have Hang guide me in ( kinda embarrasing ). But it fit, and thankfully fits well. The vibe is so boxy that it feels and to me at least, looks bigger then it really is. I'll get used to the way it feels, and I already love all the space inside. Its so quiet too...something I'm not used to with my noisy diesel. Sure makes the stereo sound nice though - its not competing with background noise.

Last field trip in the diesel

So even though we have three large grocery stores, two oriental markets, and an M&M meat shop all within a 5 minute drive....we buy a good portion of our groceries at the Kitchener market ( the farmers and the two oriental markets ), and in Toronto. Ya it doesn't completely make sense to me either, but I do agree with Hang that the food is different so we make trips to Toronto to do grocery shopping once in a while.

Today we wandered around Kensington Market. Its a great place to wander around during the summer. All the market shops are open concept stores and they all very unique. Like China town, you can buy all sorts of interesting foods that you'd never see at Zehrs. Prices are very decent too.

We found this neat shop. It was a candy shop and a coffee shop - ya I thought that was a wierd combo too.

Gonna miss the diesel when its gone. Gonna miss buying fuel cheap too - right now at 66 cents its pretty high, but even now its still a lot less then gasoline.

Ok I feel a bit better

Had a chance to call the dealer in brampton that had the used 2004. It actually was a nice car. Family purchased it a few months ago, and then had twins, and decided they needed a bigger car - so they came in a traded it for a Pontiac Montana. So it was a decent car. I asked about financing through GMAC and for the same 3 years it would be 7.5%. So I redid the math, and realized I was doing my math yesterday wrong, so this Vibe would have been $30 less a month. So I feel better now. Both would have been decent deals.

On the way home we stopped at the dealer to talk some more about colours and options. We decided that we didn't need the walkaway insurance ($400) so they are going to resubmit our financing without it, and for colours they are now going to look at white and silver. No more Orange Fusion Vibe's, unless I want one with an automatic or a 5 speed with alloy rims, and the power package and something else that I can't remember...but basically all the Fusions are loaded.

I've been really impressed so far with things with this GM dealer. They have never been pushy, and given us lots of space to walk around and talk about things. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with Saturn, but they are acting basically like Saturn dealers I've been too, and not like other GM dealers I've experienced in the past. This is completely opposite of our treatment at the Toyota dealer when we looked at the Matrix. Pushy, bordering on arrogant, but I don't think the salesmen ( some young guy ) was representative of everyone at the dealer.

So we got the 2nd best deal.

We put in an order for this. A Pontiac Vibe 2004 model in Fusion Orange. ( The above is one of the few photo's I could find of the Vibe in this colour ) MSRP 21,150, and we took them up on the end of the year promotion price of $18,898. Then we hangled out an extra $500. So hey, I thought, good job, and we still get the 0% financing.

No.

This morning I have a look in the Trader.ca website and do some searching. What do I find, the same car at $16,998. A used dealer demo with 13K on the clock...same 2004 year in dark grey metallic. Since its used, there is no freight, no air tax, no administration fee etc, and its $2000 less to start, even with 5% financing it would have cost us $120 less each month!

So am I disappointed. I gotta admit just a small bit. However we plan on keeping the car for a long time, and so apart from not wanting the dark grey metallic colour, I know what I do with demo vehicles - so ahh...this thing might have been a bit abused in its short 13K lifespan.

On monday we here back whether the financing has gotten approved or not.

Ok I think I have a plan...

I think I've a plan in the making here. We wanted to setup a RRSP somewhere, and we've also again been talking about buying a car again. After some research I think we've got its straightened out. With Hangs job our combined income will allow us to do all three. So this weekend were going to visit our local TD branch and setup a TD waterhouse account. For our mortage we will add another $500 a month ( which gets withdrawn weekly since that really helps pay things down faster ). Lastly we'll visit the local pontiac dealership to test drive the Vibe.

We finally picked TD Waterhouse after I set some priorities. I wanted the lowest annual fee for administration. I wanted a large pool of funds to pick from. I wanted no fee's for buying and selling the funds. TD waterhouse has two type of SDRRSP ( self directed RRSP ), one normal account ( $100 a year ) or a basic ( $25 ). The difference is the basic doesn't allow you to trade stock - which we don't want to do. HSBC where I already have a cash account ( no fee for that account ) is now $50 a year (for a SDRRSP - new fee as of July 1st), and the local branch of HSBC is in kitchener which isn't bad, but TD is a few block away so still better. We considered CIBC as well, but they charge a fee on selling non CIBC funds - dumb move, and unless we had a CIBC bank account I can't see any other feature that gives us a reason to pick them. So after the TD waterhouse basic SDRRSP account is setup, we can start a monthly bank transfer from our PC financial account. I found that all of the major discount brokers will do this free. Lastly TD provides financial planners at its branchs, so when we want some free hand holding it will be availible.

Firstline ( CIBC company - who we do the mortgage with ) has a neat online site where you can play with numbers via the many calculators but even better it allows you to manipulate the mortgage just like you do with online banking. Nice feature.

Ok so with the responsible and practical stuff all planned out, and looking over what money was left in the monthly budget, we allowed ourselves to look at the car again. We've been considering the Saturn Vue, Toyota Matrix, Pontiac Vibe, and a few other cars less seriously. The Vue had 0% financing for 4 years, and the Vibe 0% for 3 years. So they were pretty much neck and neck. We didn't like the styling and were not as happy with the fact that the Matrix was missing some features that the Vibe had, and we didn't have a 0% financing option, so this was a distant 3rd option for us. What got us off the fence here was both Hangs new job, and also the fact that GM is doing a promotion on the Vibe so we can do the financing and get the car for a discounted $18998. MSRP was $21150.

So that now puts the Vibe in the lead. We can afford the monthly payments at 0%, and I don't think the 0% financing will stick around so it looks like its better to buy now then later. Jetta TD's are selling in the Auto trader for $2500 to $4500, so we can sell the Jetta and get some money for it now rather then some small amount if we waited till we drove the car to the point that it was broken.

I can't believe I found this today. I decided that I'd wait till some of the really cheap VOIP companies came to canada, and then we could consider picking up an account so we could use our old phones and have a backup line to our Mike cell phones. Mainly to be used for when we want to make a phone call during the day that we know we are going to be on the phone for a while - example: on hold with some companies support line. Comwave starts at $14.95, and each extra line costs $9.95. Why they are better then Vonage or Primus is that they are cheaper to start with, digital features cost less to add, and have two unique features - adding addition lines for $9.95 each, and since they are a Canadian/US company they allow you to pick a phone number anywhere in North America. Oh one other unique feature. They have these 'Community Access' phone numbers. When somebody calls this number, and then your phone number, the call is free. Basically these are using there POPs in reverse. That is a neat trick, which doesn't cost them any money but sets them apart from the rest of the VOIP market.

Its not enough for us to get it yet...we'll still wait, but I was suprised to see the prices get this low this fast.

So many things we need to decide on...

We want to setup an RRSP account, and there are so many choices. We are not interested in GICs, or RRSP savings accounts that pay very little. So basically we are looking at discount online brokers. We want to be able buy what we want, when we want, and not pay somebody to do it. The discount online brokers have the largest selection of bonds, GICs, stocks ( of course ), and mutual fund options, so this is where we want to be. The problem is getting the money into the account. Wiring money costs money, mailing a cheque is both a pain and slow, so what we really would like to do is pick a broker that we could transfer money back and forth with.

This is when we started looking at the TD. We could get a chequeing and a savings account there ( like we have at PC financial ), and then open an account with TD Waterhouse. Then we could setup weekly transfers of money, and then each friday I could buy more of the mutual funds I wanted. It all looked good until we started adding up the fee's. I left TD bank to join PC financial because of the fee's. They have not gotten better, they've gotten worse. My parents have a TD waterhouse account, and I manage it for them, but I forgot that they charge a yearly fee if you have an account below $25,000 ( not a problem for them - but I'd have to pay this ).

Ok, so I'm back to where I started. I have a MLHSBC account. They waive the yearly fee if you have an RRSP account with them. They have a branch in Kitchener, and it looks like what we could do is deposit a cheque at least once a month into the account from our PC financial account. We visit hangs mom, or go to the market which is beside the bank that this is realistic.

So if we do this, then our total yearly bank fee's will be ZERO, and thats what I think the banks deserve from me - they have all my money after all.

What a mess we have for a politcal system.

PC: They will put us right at the front of the line when Bush announces its doing interviews for joining its New World Order.

Liberals: A used car salesmen pushing cars with a combination of lies, and bad jokes.

NDP: They remind me of a 1st year University of Guelph student who is taking a mix of Political science, sociology, and environmental science courses. All of course on a mix of OSAP and the credit card that the parents gave when they left for university...oh and the credit card got maxed out already.

The Bloc: Its sad when the separatist party is the countries only real voice of reason

Soon to be POTS free

Hang showed me last night that you can cancel your phone line from on the web - will the wonders never cease. So she setup the phone to be canceled, and soon ( takes 1 or 2 business days ), we will be without a land line - no POTS for us ( plain old telephone switching - yes that is actually what it is called ).

Hang decided on the phone she wanted and chose a yellow and black i530. She wanted a flip, and wanted Midi ring tones, above Java and voice activated dialing. Sometimes style is more important then function. Hang has 30 days in case she changes her mind, but I think she's pretty sure this is the one she wants. The same night I ordered her accessories on Ebay. Spare 1400mAH battery, desktop charger, and USB data cable - $9US + shipping. Telus would have charged us $89 for a battery, $59 for a charger, and $49 for a cable. The oem stuff is not any different, but the markup is pretty serious up here at the Telus Corp stores.

Turns out at least one of the items on her phone I might be able to correct. In the states Nextel sells all the phones with a few features turned off in the phones, and they can be software upgraded. Its just another revenue model for them. Telus isn't interested in this, so most features are turned on. They don't do the option thing. They didn't turn on voice activated dialing in the phone though up here, so I'm going to look into turning it on. In the states ppl hack Nextel phones, the way ppl hack satelites tv ( ya would you believe ppl do that - crazy stuff ), and Xbox's. Motorolla offers a SDK kit for iDEN, in an open way, since the phone is mainly used for business and is considered a business platform. Developers create mobile solutions with IDEN technology. So with all that information being easily availible, you know that somebody isn't just going to let something like that get away. At the very least I'll dump some Midi ring tones on her phone, and maybe change her background skin.

So the final bill for us now goes like this. $30.14 ( Bell landline ) + $46.95 ( Mike plan - 40EW ) ( $40 & $6.95 government network charge ) before, and now its $86.95 ( same plan times 2 ). So the monthly cost goes up, but since we are now out of the house more then in the house, this is important to us to always be able to be in contact. For hang it also means she can call her friends in Kitchener on her phone, and she is now a local call to them since she picked a Hespler (cambridge) phone number. Her friends could call my cell before, but they'd rather call her directly.

Since this is our main phone now we had to find a LD solution. I used Sussex LD before with my cell, but now I have more options so I took a look around again. We narrowed it down to two services. We used YAK for our landline before, and they offer the same rates via a new service called innovatively enough - YakCell. Yak doesn't do contracts, or charge monthly fee and offers the lowest rates for 1010 numbers. To get lower LD prices you have to move to either one of two types of services. 1010 numbers that do charge a monthly fee, or prepaid services ( calling cards or prepaid 1010 numbers ). We decided that we would use a combination of two services. Yakcell and Xpresscall. Yakcell is paid via Credit card ( they bill it monthly ), and Xpresscall you log into their website and choose an amount to be added to your account from your credit card - so its a prepay. Xpresscall is cheaper then Yakcell, and offers 80 mins free for signing up through a promotion on Redflagdeals. Yakcell will be the backup, and Xpresscall will be the main LD service. So when Hang calls her friend in California it will be 4.5 cents now (Xpresscall).

With our regular phones soon to be put into a box for storage, I took a look at whats happening with the VOIP market in canada. A couple of things are happening. The competition is just starting. Primus offers service for $19.99, but now a big name in VOIP is up here - Vonage. Vonage canada has just appeared here and they also start at $19.99 but for that price you get all the digital options included ( call waiting, three way calling, voicemail, call display, forwarding etc etc ), and you get 500 minutes of LD for north america. This is just the beginning, so I think we will wait and see what else happens. When Rogers and Shaw, and all the small LD providers join the market later in the fall we should see some huge competition. Since they don't have offer all the services a land line offers, they can offer more flexible price ranges for different levels of features. So I predict even lower prices. So maybe I'll end up reusing the phones for a VOIP system in the house - you can hook up the VOIP box into the 2 wire system that is your house phone system, just remember to unhook the phone line coming into your house or you'll blow things up.

BBQing in the rain

We wanted to BBQ some ribs and pork steaks we bought at the farmers market over the weekend this evening, and we still did...but unfortunately tonight were having heavy rains and even tornado warnings. Oh well. Doesn't mean you can't BBQ. So I'm BBQing in the rain now. Food looks good though.

Alot of the time I wonder why we go to the farmers market. Between Zehrs, and No frills we get fresher and cheaper vegetables, and alot of the meat products that I remember prices of aren't cheaper at the farmers market. There is something that is consistant though and you just can't find it at places like Zehrs/No Frills. Sausages, and different cuts of meat are done in europeans styles that you don't get at Zehrs. Went with my parents and Hangs mom this weekend, and my dad spent most of the time showing me how the butcher was creating cuts like he would get when he was back home in Belgium.

I really would like it if Guelph had a better farmers market. When I look at what is happening in Kitchener, it just emphasizing my belief that Guelph can revitalize its downtown core. Before the farmers market we stopped at the major oriental market in kitchener on King st , which is literally steps away. Then we browsed the many small shops and food stands between both markets. When you look around at the people who are examing the food and talking out loud about their weekend food plans, you know that these are the people who aren't interested in what boxed foods are on sale at Zehrs this week. Now before you think I'm against boxed food - no - thats not the case. In fact I had a friend once and we used to talk about plans of forming a business where we would provide planned meals for people. Meals delivered weekly, and preordered via the web. Not awful TV dinners, but complete healthy and tasty meal solutions with the convenience of online order, home delivery, and help with meal planning so special dietary needs could be met. We didn't think the idea would take off, and then a year later we read about the exact same idea becoming hugely popular in California - especially in Silicon Valley ( Rich geeks, with no cooking skills ). That was then though when I though of meals as a problem to be solved. Then moving back to Toronto for school opened me up to all these types of food since I lived between china town and Kensignton Market. I started to play around with food more, and when I moved back to guelph, and went back to working back at the Guelph Wellington Association for Community Living, I got a chance to cook for an audience at the many group homes I worked at. Now food is a hobby, entertainment, and an outlet for creativity. Its history, something that bridges time, and people. My dads stories about the food he ate when he was back home are much more interesting now.

Gotta love the times we live in...

When I was young, I had rabbit ears to get the family some TV. Then we had cable tv. Pretty much that was it for a long time.

Now we have Digital Cable ( with all of its over compressed blockyness ), a few different satelite providers ( some availible legally and some not so legally ), and the internet...ya the internet.

I like cars, and I like watching car shows, but frankly North american cars shows are just stupid. 10 years ago, they were lacking in details, and kinda dull. These days you can't tell the difference between a car show and car company advirtisements...frankly its pretty sickening. Some home improvements shows seem to have fallen to the same fate ( **COUGH** Bob Villa **COUGH** ).

When I got to watch my first EP of Top gear, and now also Fifth Gear, I was so happy. British shows have a great blend of humor and frank reporting, and this works great with car shows. BBC canada had these shows on rotation a few times, but I always missed them, but now thanks to Bit torrent and Kaaza ( lite of course ), I've been able to just download them each week as they are shown in the UK, and watch them when I wanted.

This is great.

The stuff that brings you close

Its almost been a year since Hang first started dyeing her hair, and its been both fun and exciting. With the exception of once, we've always used hair dye designed for asian hair. The first stuff we bought was made by a german company, and we spent about $30 on the dye - plus a trip to the pacific mall in scarborough. Used that the first two times. Worked well, but pricey and driving to scarborough for hair dye is fun only perhaps the first two times. We tried using a hair dye designed for cacausian hair once, is it didn't last long but cost about $5. It also wasn't strong enough to dye well. So just as we can buy hair dye at places like Zehrs, asian markets also sell hair dye. So we gave that a try. So for $11 we've tried a few different brands, and they have worked just as well as the german stuff we used the first time. Each one was also good for a laugh. The german product we used had english instructions, but the other products were a wonderful mix of cute anime cartoons, asian lettering, and numbers that you wouldn't know what the units were so you didn't know what they meant.

So what have we learned.

Asian hair needs a higher amount of oxidizer then cacausian hair.
Cute anime cartoons translate well to any language.
Products range in price from European products being the most expensive, japanese products sitting in the middle, and Korean products being a great value.

The korean product we used tonight has a great name, I'll quote:

' The man hold flowers ' Clinic Coating Color

Ya some things don't translate well so you have to put them in quotes.

G4 - Techtv merger

I love(d) techtv. I've been watching it since it was ZDnet tv on satelite, and I could only get it via real media streamed over the web - on my dialup connection no less.

Comcast owns a station called G4, an all video game, all the time sorta channel. The only competition they had was TechTV. So they decided, hey why not just buy out the competition and then basically shutdown what we don't like.

Right now its even affecting Techtv canada which is mostly owned by rogers. For now the techtv shows are still on and are still of nearly the same quality, but OMG I've seen better %$#%$# on local cable access channels then the garbage that G4 is putting out. I'm serious, the commentary is written by children, and so are the jokes....everything is done that would pander to the lowest common denominator. Completely moronic actors who know nothing about computers host each show. In place of intelligent commentary, they just keep saying retardly bad kewl catch phrases....I'm going to kill myself if I hear them say Dude one more time.

Its all very disappointing.

Big changes ahead....

With Hang working as well, we are going to have to make some changes around here. I switched my hours at work so that I can now drive Hang to work, and pick her up. Thankfully the Cooperators is flexible about this kind of stuff. I just had to tell my manager and he said sure. So no more flex days with friday afternoons off...now I'm back on regular hours. At home now we're dividing up some of the chores around the house, so that we can try to balance things a bit better.

We decided a while ago that when Hang got a job we'd drop the home phone line, and get a second cell phone for Hang. So that time has arrived. Our home line right now costs us $30.14 from bell. Its $19.13 for the line, $2.80 for touchtone ( like its an option ), 21 cents for 911 service, and $8 for caller display. We didn't sign up for a LD package with bell since it would add upto 2 extra network charges ( before we even make a LD call ), and just used the YAK 1010 number ( no network fee's, no contract, and much better LD rates ). So we wanted to look for a plan in this range. We were okay with paying more because we decided it was important to be able to stay in contact with one another. Also since we were dropping our home phone we needed to make sure we had enough minutes in our plan so that we wouldn't go over each month and get hit with penalty minutes.

Rogers has a family bundle plan for $80 with 400 minutes + 100 bonus minutes plus Unlimited EW. You can call waiting, call forwarding, call conferencing, and detailed billing....of course caller ID and voice mail ( the most important features ) costs more.

Bell doesn't offer family bundles since it would eat into there home phone market. Telus on the other hand disagree's and even in there own home market on the west coast offers family plans. With Telus @ $80 we could get the same 400 minutes + 100 bonus minutes and Unlimited EW. Call waiting, voicemail, detailed billing and call conferencing are included. Both the Telus and Rogers plans offer mobile to mobile calling - Rogers is unlimited and Telus ( tisk tisk ) is 2500 minutes - so near unlimited. For what we'd want, the Telus package is better. Voicemail and caller id are the most important and we don't want to pay more for them.

I'm in a contract on my Mike phone, so I realistically could only have switched to Telus PCS ( which thankfully customer retension says yes too ), if we had to switch.

We're really interested in now getting a 2nd Mike phone for Hang. For the same $80 we would get 800 minutes and unlimited evenings and weekends. Digital features included are callerid, call waiting, voicemail, call forwarding, and call conferencing. We get the detailed billing too which is nice. Mike most importantly gives us PTT aka DCing. Direct Connect would allow us walkie talkie like connectivity between us. DC also works within the iDEN network of Telus, so we could DC with really large ranges without it being considered long distance. In most places its at least the whole province. Most important though, being within the network its not affected if landline service went down. We'd be with the redundantly backed up iDEN network. iDEN in Canada is mainly used by Government ( fire, ambulance, police ) and the oil industry so uptime and redundancy are required for this network.

So unless some Telus promotion happens really soon it looks like we will add a second phone to my plan and use the account pooling option.

Hang wants a flip phone and iDEN has a three choices. This one would cost us $80 (discounted contract). Its got all the standard iDEN phone features ( really good speakerphone, sturdy commercial grade phone, can act as a modem, its does GPS etc ). The features missing on this one are that it doesn't have voice activated dialing, and doesn't run Java apps. Hang isn't sure she would use these features, but isn't sure she'd want to be without them, so she's also considering my phone.

She thinks the phone is kinda big. I agree with her, it is, but I'm not a fan of small phones...I prefer strength over size. So she's not sure about which one to go with. My phone would be $100 (discounted)

This one is $80 (discounted) and has the same features and the i530, and for hang is would be the option if she wanted a sturdy phone. Its smaller then mine, but has 2 more meets military specifications then mine.

If hang wants it all, we can get her this one. $180 (discounted). It gives her all the features of my phone, but in a flip phone style.

Basically its old rule of three. You can get Style, features or Price - Pick 2.

We are going to see if a store has old stock on a i90, i90c or a i95CL. These are basically the phones that the i730 is replacing. If we can get them cheaper, this might solve the problem, since with the exception of GPS ( standard on the whole line now ), they have all the other features.

We looked at the features on the Telus PCS phones. Its a totally different market there. Phone fashion plays a bigger role then reliability, and features. The phones are cheaper because they are...well....cheaper. Not as strong. None of them had a speakerphone at the same level as the iDEN phones speakerphone(s). What they did have though were much more fashionable designs, smaller sizes, cheaper prices, and some had camera options. No GPS, no Java, no standard SDK to download and play with the phone....its a totally different market.

What does it take to get a job around here?

Wow.. after 5 months ... I've finally found a job. This is one of the best day of my life. With positive attitude, I've managed to stumble on some of the government's website. It has a 1-800 number that you can call to get some of the support for unemployed people or young graduate in your area. I was referred to 2nd chance employment in Guelph. At 2nd chance, they prepare you for the job by sending you to an interview workshop, how to write a winning resume and cover letter workshop. I got to meet a person from the Job Finding Club through 2nd chance counsellor. This person helps me by being the middle person.. connecting me with employer and try to sell you really good.. while i'm job hunting. She does a really fantastic job of selling me.. also coaching me for the interview. You know... after going through many interviews... I have a really good idea of what I should say. I made many mistakes during my other interview.. but i learned a lot from them. Not all interview are the same. Some wants people with specific skills or transferrable skills.. some wants people with the right attitude or someone that they can train. Most of the admin jobs that I went to.. the company made you take lots of abilities test such as your math skills and your english skills. These tests are really hard b/c you only have limited time. The average pay is about $12 per hour. I went for the data entry job also.. can't believe that i had to go through a series of test for $10 per hour. The easiest job was a secretary job but so many people apply for it so it is very competitive. I've learned that when u are at an interview.. u just have to prove to the employer that u can do the job and that u are not going to move on after they spent all that money on training u. You just have to be very confident and say that "I can do it" repeatedly. All good jobs takes time. I'm so glad that Dom was very patient with me while I'm job hunting. Also.. I have had a really good references from my past employers. So for the rest of us that are still job hunting.. good luck. Don't ever give up.. not after you have worked really hard for your education. Always try to be positive. You'll never know what u'll end up doing like me. I'm actually doing an Accounting job right now.. instead of Computer Programming. Strange how things have turned out. Sometimes u have more choices than u think u have.

Feels like summer

Got up past 30C today. We got a chance to try out the charcoal thing in the BBQ for doing some ribs tonight. Gave up on the cookie pan sitting on the H burner. The coals wouldn't lite. So I gave up and dumped the coals in the bbq at the bottom. It worked. Lite the BBQ, and it lite the coals. Turned off the gas, and the coals took over and cooked our ribs.

Downside.

Ummm....you can't just turn off coals when your done. So I put it out with some water. Ribs tasted great.

On Bit torrent I grabbed the seeds for the entire Futurama series ripped from the DVD collection. 16 x 800 meg files. A few of them completed, so we watched a few EP's of Futurama on the xbox. An online friend of mine uploaded a few of the latest EP's of Top gear, which is the best car show I've ever seen. Its a BBC produced show with some really clever guys on the show. They test interesting cars, and also do fun silly things like this EP they raced a bunch of pigeons vs a Ford econobox. They also did this long distance mileage test with a really kewl Audi. Twin turbo V8, all wheel drive, and best part...wait for it....its a diesel.

Gave the central air a go today. Its the first time its been warm enough to bother. Thankfully it works. Kinda bought the house assuming it worked, never checked.

Food and more food

Over the weekend we went with my parents to go and see the KW farmers market again. Between my parents and us, we bought some chickens, rabbit, pork chops and some ribs. We also bought some fruits and vegetables. Not everything is a good deal pricewise here, but some things are and some things are of a higher quality and worth paying a slight premium.

Looking forward to doing up the ribs, but more so I want to try our rotisserie kit for the BBQ. So we'll do a chicken on it soon. The other thing I want to get going is putting in the charcoal in our grill. So far I've done the aluminum foil with grilling chips in the grill. That was okay, but it didn't add much flavour. Then I took foil and put it down below the H shaped burners and put the wood on it, and that worked out well. The downside is that the coals are below the heat diffusor so I can't spray water on them to control the heat.

The grill has room between the H shaped burner and the diffusor, and I am going to put a metal cooking tray on it. On the tray I'll put the charoal. With or without the diffusor on, I will be able to reach the coals with the sprayer. Then I can use the gas to heat up the BBQ and lite the coals, and then after that cook only with the charcoal.

This will give us the best of both worlds. The convenience of gas, but with the taste of wood.

Rogers X-treme Internet ( 5 meg service )

Just got things plugged all back. This was the easiest Rogers upgrade I've ever done. I didn't have to get the new modem provisioned, I didn't have to get a new IP, I didn't have to spend 2 hrs on hold and then 1 hr argueing with tech support.

I brought the old modem ( our Toshiba 2500 docsis 1.1 ) to the store, and after letting them swipe my CC for $80 + tax, I am now the owner of a new Motorola SB5100 ( a Docsis 2.0 ) modem. This is the better of the three choices for the service. My other choices were a Terayon modem ( they make good stuff ), but this modem is only a Docsis 1.1, and if anything happened that they wanted to move to Docsis 2.0, I'd be screwed....my other choice was a scientific atlantic modem ( also docsis 1.1 - but this company doesn't make decent cable products, and all i hear is bad things about this modem ).

I was downloading stuff in Bittorant when I left the house, and I just yanked the modem. Came home, plugged in the new modem, and after the lights cycled a bit, the BTing resumed, but the speed tripled! This is thanks to have over double the upload speed now.

All in all not bad for a zero increase in my cable bill.

I'm still fiddling with my mail setup. The kewl thing is that since my mail is on my server now via IMAPS, I can try different mail clients. So I have becky!, Mozilla, and Thunderbird installed, and the mail is synced between all of them. Its neat. I read a mail message in one, and the others get sent the update to mark the message as read.

I pretty much torn on what to do. Thunderbird is out for now, its way to beta right now. Mozilla on the other is solid. But its a waste to install this massive thing just to use the mail feature. So if I am going to go ahead with Mozilla I'd want to go all the way. It contains a download manager, a password manager, obviously a browser, a IRC chat client, and the mail/news client.

For this I current use:

Avant Browser
AI roboform ( password manager )
Becky! ( for mail )
Gravity ( for news )
Mirc ( for IRC )
Net Transport ( for a download manager )

I have some scripts running using microsofts robocopy to handle the syncing of my favourites from computer to computer. If I go Mozilla, I'd just place the bookmark.html on the house server.

If I go with Mozilla, I get to replace all these apps with 1 app. I also get to move from apps that are all not open source, so to different degree's could die and I'd be stuck without an upgrade path.

That said, I also have a setup that currently works very well, without any issues. Mozilla on the other hand still has some issues. I can stick with the stable builds, but I'm still left with the small level of incompatibility that would come from using something that isn't Internet explorer - which is for better or worse going to always work with all websites. So I'm stuck for now - I guess I'll keep thinking about it as I slowly go out on the internet and change my email address at the million different locations that I need to change it at.

Who needs G-Mail

I was originally really excited with the annoucement of G-mail. I thought that I would move Rogers email address's to Gmail accounts, and then I started thinking maybe I could do something that was better for my needs. Don't get me wrong G-mail is great, and hope it seriously kicks some ass - especially some Hotmail ass ( I love the Google company ), but for what I needed I thought I could do better.

I really liked running my own mail server back a few years ago, and took a look around and since I'm a big fan of Kerio products, I decided to look at there mail server. Its just overflowing with features including 'Caller ID' which hopefully once it becomes more widespread will make a big dent in with email SPAM. For what I wanted to accomplish I turned on the IMAP service, and webmail on HTTPS. IMAP because I wanted to keep mail on the server. Then I can place an IMAP email client on each computer in the house, and see my mail. Out of the house I would use the webmail through HTTPS, so it would be a bit more secure. The other bonus is that since the mail is on the server, I have a directory that holds all the mail for the both of us. I can now back that directory up to my weekly DVDRW backup process, and now I won't loose my mail. In the end this more flexible ( I have more space ), safe ( both IMAP and webmail are SSL encrypted ), and I have it backed up, so this for what I need is better then G-Mail. The other bonus is the configurable levels of SPAM filtering - there is Antivirus scanning, attachment filtering, spam pattern filtering, reverse DNS lookups, and it even will query the various real time black lists out there.

Now I have to do two things. Research and decide on an IMAP client ( so far the best ones seem to be Mulberry, the Mozilla ( and Thunderbird ) clients, and Becky! ). I have been using Becky! for years, and I think its a great client. I was surprised to see how good the IMAP support was compared to what else is out there. The last thing is moving my mail from Becky to my IMAP server. Nice thing is that within Becky is just drag and drop between folders.

XSCARGO is a nifty place

So we impulse bought a stove, when I wanted... ...a drill. I stilll got the drill though. I have decided to leave most of my tools at my parents, since in the townhouse complex they frown upon us doing car repair stuff, so I decided I would do this stuff at my parents. My dad uses the tools too, so perhaps they are best left there. I have some of my tools here to take care of small things around the house, but I did need a drill. So rather then bringing the drill back and forth from home, I decided at this price I'd go buy another one. They even had a kit with a drill, circular saw, jigsaw, reciprocating saw, flashlight, and two batteries with the charger for $133. I think thats a great deal if you need all these tools, but I didn't so I resisted the urge to buy the set, and got what I actually needed. 18V are never this cheap so I'm pretty happy. Got to try it tonight to put up a shelf in the bathroom. It was really nice to work with no cord in the way.

Hang has wanted to buy a toaster oven for a bit. She isn't a fan of the microwave like I am, and likes her food crispy and says the Microwave makes things mushy...okay I'll accept that. I gave in when we saw this one since we had looked at convection models at walmart ( including this one ) for $100 to $150, and I thought that was way to much to spend on a toaster oven. Convection ovens are very heat efficient, but if you spend to much, your not saving much anymore. But this one was cheap enough that I gave in. Its much larger then a normal toaster oven, so you an cook things like a whole chicken in it, or a very large pie, and being a convection oven it cooks faster, and uses less energy...so during the summer we can use it instead of the oven. Thats kinda the trick you'd do with old ovens, since they would heat up the house during the summer, especially if you didn't have air conditioning. We have central air though, and since our stove is new, and is a high efficiency model so its cold to the touch when its working - so most of the advantages of this little oven don't work for us.

Looking forward to tomorrow. A friend of Hangs is coming up from the states to stay with us for a bit. That will be nice, and we get to pick her up at the airport, so I get to take some pics of the planes. I haven't been fortunate enough to travel on a plane multiple times in my life, so I still find things like trains and planes facinating.