Happy Canada Day everyone! For our American friends you will get to celebrate the 4th of July on Saturday.
It’s too bad that the weather here is absolutely horrendous. It’s been raining all week and now it’s raining very hard. Oh well, you can’t control the weather.
Next year Canada Day is on a Thursday so I think I might go to Ottawa since I am off all Fridays in the summer. I think I will have better “weather” luck in Ottawa.
Enjoy your day off!
paulyblog
canada day
Today was a pretty big day for Apple. If you haven’t heard they released the new iPhone 3G S which is basically just a faster iPhone with more features. It has longer battery life the ability to record video and a snazzy new compass. Oh yeah and it also comes in 8gb, 16gb and 32gb format.
They also refreshed their MacBooks. The new MacBook Pro’s include an SD card slot. They have faster processors and lower price tags. They all have non-removable batteries now but Apple says it will last 5 years before needing to be replaced. The feature that I like the best is that the lower priced MacBook Pro 13″ now comes with a backlit keyboard a feature that what was only available in the higher priced model before.
Apple announced the release of Snow Leopard. It will be available later this year and will cost $29 as an upgrade from Leopard.
iPhone users heard they news they were waiting for. The iPhone OS version 3 will be released in less than 2 weeks. The best part is current iPhone owners will get the update for free. iPod Touch owners will have to pay $9.95 to upgrade.
Fore more information about all the new updates you can check out the Apple site.
paulyblog
3g s, Apple, iphone, macbook, os3, snow leopard
Over the years one accumulates tons of pictures. Now we are fortunate enough to have digital cameras. We can minimize the physical clutter but are left with tons of digital pictures. If they are not sorted it can be a mess to organize. If they aren’t backed up they can be lost forever when you computer or hard drive crashes. In the past, printed pictures were only lost in the event of a disaster (flood, fire, etc). The risk was much lower but still existed. Nowadays technology is the biggest risk. Hard drive failures are imminent. It’s just a matter of time. If you don’t have a backup you will get burnt.
In order to minimize the risk of losing printed pictures you need to create a backup. You can make physical copies of them or you can scan them to a digital format. Both options require a lot of time if you choose to do it yourself which is why people don’t normally do it. Recently I have purchased a high speed scanner that makes the scanning process faster. If you are interested in getting some pictures scanned to DVD let me know. Once your pictures are on DVD you can easily make a copy of them and store them offsite. You can keep a copy at your house and one at your friends house.
If all of your pictures are digital you can back them up to CD/DVD or USB hard drive. The key thing with backing up your pictures is you need to have your backup offsite. If your house is burning, the backup that is on your USB drive won’t do you any good if it’s connected to your computer. To do this you can burn pictures to CD/DVD every couple of months and store them at a friends house. If you are backing up to a USB hard drive it’s easier to use two drives. What I do is keep a hard drive offsite with all my pictures. I keep a drive at home and keep adding new pictures to it. After about a month I bring the other hard drive back home and sync both off them to make sure they all have the same pictures. If my house was to burn down I would only lose the new pictures since my last sync.
Another option is having a backup online on sites like Flickr. What I like about Flickr is it’s cheap. I paid $25 for the year and it gives me unlimited photo storage. If you don’t want to pay, you can opt for the free option which allows you to see your most recent 200 pictures even though all of your pictures are still stored on the site. The other nice thing about flickr is it stores the original picture (not like facebook which resizes it). I use flickr to upload my important pictures (like weddings). That way I have a local copy, a copy on USB hard drive and a copy online.
At any rate, your pictures are worth backing up. If you don’t have a backup of your pictures I would strongly recomment adopting one of the methods above because when distaster strikes it will be too late.
paulyblog
online backup, photo backup, scan photos to dvd
This kind of blew me away today. I was reading how researchers found a new way to burn 2000 regular DVD movies onto 1 DVD disc. They say the new technology will be out between 5-10 years. I guess this is a good thing since people are now using more data then ever. It will be nice to backup all your stuff onto 1 DVD again. I still remember the days when I had a 2GB hard drive. Now a 4GB memory stick is small….
http://www.pcworld.com/article/165291/researchers_unveil_discs_that_could_store_2000_dvds.html
Technology, paulyblog
2000, dvd, News, Technology
I’m starting to get anxious to go away. I cleaned up the house and started making a pile of things that I need to bring in the corner of my basement. 4 more sleeps and I will be in Cuba. I can’t wait. It looks like out resort has some pretty amazing snorkeling. I’m looking forward to that since I got a snorkel kit at Costco’s last time I was there. I’m off to knock off one sleep off my list. Later!
Useless
With the economy the way it is right now mortgage rates have come down quite a bit. If you own a house you might want to look into it. Around here interest rates are around 4% on a 5 year fixed rate mortgage. Even with a penalty your still better off remortgaging.
UPDATE: I finalized everything last week and got 3.85% fixed for 5 years. Even with the penalty and borrowing more $ I still ended up saving money. Call your bank. It’s worth it.
paulyblog
mortgage, rates
Last weekend was a Toronto weekend. Actually it was a girls weekend and I was invited. We went to see Britney Spears, Dirty Dancing and went to the SPA after a long day of shopping. It doesn’t get much more girlier than that.
Britney was better than what I was expecting. Her show was pretty good. I could have done without all the yelling. I couldn’t hear a thing after leaving the concert because the girls beside me were yelling so loud when Britney came on and at the start of every song she started singing.
Dirty Dancing was not as good as what I expected. We went to see We Will Rock You last time so I was expecting something similar but instead I fell asleep, twice. Don’t get me wrong, I was tired but it still wasn’t that superb.
Before Dirty Dancing we were supposed to go for supper at The Old Spaghetti Factory but there was a 1.5 hour waiting list. Instead we went to the Keg with some friends and my cousin Sylvie. The food was pretty good. The service was excellent but they charged us $6.95 for each bottle of water (1L). I almost spent as much on water as I did on beer. I couldn’t believe it. I guess an extra $14 didn’t really make a difference on the bill.
Less than 2 weeks to Cuba! I can’t wait.
paulyblog
britney spears, Concert, dirty dancing, the keg, Toronto
If you currently have a Sirius radio with a subcription and are thinking of cancelling it you might want to call in. I am on a quarterly plan and was recently rebilled. I’ve been wanting to cancel because I only have a Sirius radio in my older car and I rarely ever listen to it. When I do listen to it, I only listen to 2 channels. One of the channels is loaded with commercials. It pisses me off every time I listen to it and end up changing it to a different channel. When I called to cancel my subscription I still had 2 months left on my quarterly plan. What was offered to me was 3 months of additional service for free. I was told that I wouldn’t be charged if I called to cancel before the 3 months was over. I put a reminder in my Blackberry to make sure I cancel in time.
Useless
3 months, Free, radio, recession, saving money, sirius
Wow it’s been over a month since my last post. I’ve been so busy it’s nuts. Work is busy and all my weekends have been fully booked. February was a busy month. I went to Ottawa to visit my brother. We went skating on the canal. It was fun but then we found out that my uncle suddenly passed away. That was a big shock for my family and was rough. Towards the end of the month I was in Sudbury for a friends bachelor party. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to relax.
Soon enough we are going to Toronto. Next Wednesday we are heading down to Toronto to see Britney Spears. Yes, you read that right. Jenn is a Britney Spears fan so I got her some tickets for Christmas. We are going to see that show on Thursday. On Friday we are going to see Dirty Dancing. I am bringing my camera so I can take some more picture for my photoblog which has also been suffering lately.
At the beginning of April we are off to Cuba. That will be very nice! A whole week off with no cell phone, no e-mail, no worries. One of my good friends is getting married there and we are in the wedding party. I am also doubling as the photographer. I am anxious to take some pictures in beautiful Cuba.
Lately I have been doing some more running. I would like to build up my endurance to do another half marathon. I haven’t been using my Nike+ wristband lately because it hasn’t been very accurate. It shows that I’m not running as far as I really am. I need to calibrate it but haven’t had a chance.
I’m watching my eating. I’ve been using the website www.livestrong.com to track my food intake and fitness. It’s been working pretty good but takes up lots of time to keep it up to date. I will keep it up to get a better understanding on what I should and shouldn’t be eating.
I’m off to bed.
paulyblog
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