I’ve flip-flopped from Rdio to Slacker, back to Rdio and now I’m back to Slacker. Why is that? Well, cuz we don’t have Spotify here in Canada and our options are pretty damn limited.

The main reason I pay for online streaming is convenience when I’m in my car and the fact that I hate iTunes and trying to manage libraries through it. Not to mention the disk space I need to maintain and oh ya, did I mention downloading music is illegal?

I will tell you my main gripes with both services, and maybe throw in the benefits as well

Rdio

The iPhone app sucks. Plain and simple, I absolutely loved the way I could ‘push’ music from the web site to my phone without any intervention from me whatsoever – but my main #1 gripe is that when I go to my car (which has bluetooth connected audio) and press play.. it starts all over again, and doesn’t save my preferences. I’ll be damned if I want to listen to the same guitar strings solo at the beginning of the song again, so I usually just skip to the next song.

This may sound silly, but I make the trip from home to work on average of 4 times a day (I go home for lunch), and when I get in the car, I want the app to pick up where I left off for a seamless “CD” like experience.. I do not want to listen from the start again. I found this extremely frustrating – so much so that I’ve left the service again.

My initial review can be found here however.

Slacker

Slacker is great in that it remembers what you were listening to and starts where you left off, but it really isn’t designed for individual songs to be downloaded and listened to offline.

There are certain tunes which aren’t available on Slacker which I’m a bit bummed about, but truthfully it’s the better option when it comes to online music streaming. Unfortunately the user interface of the app really blows, its’ confusing and has too many options on it’s front page. I’m hoping they do something about that in future releases.

I’ve listed more of a review of the service here.

Other Options

Well, we don’t have many.. and those that we do have aren’t great.. especially when it comes to the best app out there. I’ve heard great things about Spotify, but they’re in no rush to come to Canada apparently, and Grooveshark is only available to folks whom have Jailbroken their iPhones (and it’s also not the best application out there either).

I’m hopeful that there is going to be a service that rises above the rest here in Canada, as we are willing to pay for it.. but it’s got to be good!

Now that hockey is finished however, I’m finding a bit more time to do some thought-writing.. otherwise known as blogging. And since I was able to do some travelling over the winter months – I thought what a better topic than share some of the things I’ve learned when I was down in the Dominican Republic, which I was excited to be travelling to in order to shoot two weddings for two fantastic couples.. man did I have a good time.

Passport Problems

Yeah, you read that right.. unfortunately, I didn’t read my passport right. When looking at the expiry date – I looked at it as 13 Apr (and didn’t bother with the rest).. when I should have looked at it as 13th of April, 2012…. whoops.

So I’m standing at the check-in counter at Sunwing and they’re telling me my Passport expires tomorrow.. (I wish I was joking about this). Luckily.. they could get a lawyer to come in (yes.. at 4 AM!) and sign a document which stated that I was a Canadian citizen and I would be good to go.. at the expense of $150. This may sound expensive, but really it’s not that bad.. hell, how much would it take to get YOU out of bed to help out a stranger at 4AM? Let alone a lawyer? I was happy to give him $160 (since the bank machine only gave out $20’s) Crisis #1 averted.

Who needs pants??

I do.. apparently, although I had no idea. Shortly after I arrived, everyone in the group that’s been down south before mentioned that you need to make reservations at the all a la carte places to eat.. meaning, if you don’t want to eat buffets, make reservations. Great, but one thing.. the guys.. you need to wear pants.. no shorts allowed.

Great.

Somehow I missed this very important piece of information, the only clothing that went beyond my knees were the jeans I wore to Halifax. Looks like I’m heading shopping.

Ok say what you want, but the workers and stores down south aren’t stupid, nor are they care about offering a great deal. The first store I went to were selling pants (almost see-thru ones) for the price of $90USD. Seriously. Even though I was feeling nice and relaxed and care-free, I wasn’t about to let total control go of my frugal lifestyle so we decided to shop around.. we didn’t have to go far.

Walking to the very next store, a t-shirt spot with all kinds of different logos for t-shirts (Punta-Canada anyone?), we found a pair of pants for $35USD. Much better! We decided that we would end our shopping here, as.. well, the beach was calling… so that was a done deal. Crisis #2 averted.

Where did our robe go?

I can likely count on one hand the amount of times that I’ve worn the robes offered in hotel rooms.. I’ve no idea why I don’t partake.. likely due to the fact that I’m not Hugh Hefner. That said, Liz does like to lounge in the robes so that’s great to have. The problem we encountered however, was that one of the maids took the robe as I believe she thought it was a towel and likely got it cleaned.

For those of you who don’t know where this is going – the problem this presents is that after they check the room, they will discover that we only have one robe – and I’ve no idea how much those suckers cost, but I’m sure if they’re anything like any other hotel I’ve stayed at.. they’re not cheap.

A bit panicked during our last day, we walked down to the corridor to the entranceway and noticed the laundry room was open.

Let’s just say I hope they don’t have video cameras in that room, they have one less robe. This wasn’t stealing by the way – they stole it first!

Free booze for everyone!

Ok I’ll cap off this post with a story which isn’t something I did, but I took heed off anyhow. Since we were staying in this great 5 star all-inclusive resort – one of the amenities they offered was to have full bottles of liquor for us in the rooms. We could mix our own drinks to our hearts content and they would fill them up if we needed, but the bottles had to stay (otherwise it would be assumed we took them with us).

One of our co-vacationers.. heh heh.. didn’t realize that was the case and when he noticed a few of the working gardeners outside his room – he decided to be a good guy and give them each a bottle from their room.

It wasn’t until after that he realized he’d have to pay for those bottles and I know he was a bit worried about the costs – but I believe they were only $25 for the two of them total so it wasn’t a total rip or anything.. you could almost say it was worth it.. well… almost..

Back Home

There’s a problem with going to an all-inclusive that no one really warned me about.. and that problem is.. I WANT TO GO BACK AGAIN SOON! It was truly a vacation spot which you didn’t have to worry about ANYTHING. Hate to say it but the adults-only section we stayed in was a huge plus as we didn’t have kids running around all the time, and it was extremely quiet – well worth the extra money.

So what about you readers? Have any tips for travelling down south? Any good stories? Please share!!

I don’t know whether it’s the Christmas shopping season or perhaps just coincidence, but good lord there’s some bad drivers out there this time of year.

I find it humorous now, perhaps since I’m getting older.. that the people that go nuts and speed past me doing 30-40 km/h over the speed limit only get up to the next stop light and I pull in right beside them or behind them.. it’s hilarious.

I’m pretty sure they don’t realize that in an instant they can go skidding off their path and the next thing they know they’re getting a collision estimation for some nutty amount due to a little bit of a fender bender.

I don’t know, I liked to speed as much as the next person, I guess I just find that nowadays it’s really not worth it – and I actually enjoy going a bit slower and taking in the sights and sounds of the season this time of year.

Or maybe I’m just getting old.

So unfortunately, the popcorn maker which I purchased back in April of last year has seen better days. It doesn’t owe us anything of course, but the ‘bowl’ part was dropped, and cracked.. and well, now it’s just not worth using anymore as I don’t know how appetizing it is to eat out of a duct taped bowl.

So, we were in the market to find a replacement…. sort of. Truthfully, it wasn’t on the top of our shopping list, but it is something that I enjoy on a regular basis – so we were on the lookout for a good deal. Whilst shopping to buy step stools for the kitchen at Walmart – we came across the Nostalgia Electrics KPM-508 Vintage Collection Kettle Popcorn Maker. This, is crap. I’ve no idea who’s writing these reviews online, but I guarantee they’re being paid to do it. During the first attempt at getting this thing home and making popcorn, it got stuck spinning the kernels around 3 times. This isn’t good.. nor is it safe in my opinion as they kernels have to keep spinning around or they’ll burn! Anyhow, after two attempts, we took it back.

We then headed up to Bed, Bath and Beyond to see what they had in store. I had a 20% off coupon which you get every so often in the mail, so we were prepared to buy something if it really jumped out at us. This is where we came across the Nostalgia Electrics™ Vintage Collection™ 48" Popcorn Cart. Now this wasn’t exactly a cheap investment – we paid over $200 for this sucker, but I figured it would be well worth the investment if we owned it for years and it worked well – I do enjoy my popcorn. Yes, I know it’s a lot of money.. but every so often you have to splurge on yourself a bit.. don’t you??

Anyhow, took this home, and I never realized until now they were made by the same manufacturer.. but I guess you know what happened.. the same fricking thing! And this was after spending 40 minutes or so putting it together! Yes.. I was pissed.. how could something that cost over $200 not work properly from the get go? It stuck 4 or 5 times while trying to spin the kernels around, I did not overload the machine, I did a basic one scoop of popcorn per the instructions. Now that I think about it, that’s another thing.. this thing had WAYYY too many unpopped kernels.. there’s a little tray for them below where teh popcorn comes out and it was catching, I would say at least 1/4 of the kernels which were coming out unpopped..

Unacceptable.. it went back.

This time however, I decided to revert to the older style popcorn maker, but with a trusted brand name. We opted to go with the Cuisinart® EasyPop™ Popcorn Maker – Red. It was also not a cheap purchase as far as popcorn machines go.. but at this point, I was willing to see how it did.

I can tell you that I am very happy with the purchase thus far. Hardly any unpopped kernels.. the heating element and spinning arm did not get stuck, and the whole thing is pretty much dishwasher safe! This is huge for me as the other one I had got pretty gross after awhile and cleaning it by hand was a pain.

Anyhow I wanted to share my experience in case anyone else out there was thinking about buying the crap Nostalgia Electrics ones… stay away in my opinion.

Back on August 23rd, I posted about a new service in Canada called ‘Rdio’, and I tried it out for a month. I was quite hopeful and loved (and still do) the way that I can ‘push’ music to my phone automatically as no other service I’ve found since (and I’ve tried a few) can do that.

Since I had a jailbroken iPhone – I then tried Grooveshark and honestly was quite happy with that product. I used it right up until yesterday – when I received my iPhone 4s.

The good points about Grooveshark was that the iPhone application was QUITE polished, and worked the way I wanted it to. I could keep all my files offline and not have to worry about data charges, finding them was quite easy as well as obviously they have a HUGE amount of files and music selection to choose from.

But I’ve found my newest favorite.

Slacker Personal Radio is my new favorite and the music service I’m currently subscribing to. I should mention that all these products cost roughly the same amount per month which is right around the $10 mark. I can justify paying for these legal services since well.. I can’t actually remember the last time that I purchased a CD and truthfully trying to maintain and keep a constant library of music on countless hard drives is a pain in the arse.

The advantages of slacker is it’s very impressive radio stations which play varieties of music hand picked by DJ’s … I’ve only started the service today, but I’ve already found a bunch of tunes and downloaded them for offline use to my phone (via a playlist).

It kind of sucks to have to ‘refresh’ your offline files every time you make changes – but I can deal with that as most of the time I’m going to be on wifi when I’m finding and checking out music anyhow – PLUS, when I’m home touching up photos, I’m going to just leave it on a custom radio station and then just pick the files I want anyhow to listen to.

Now if I can just figure out the best way to stream my iPhones music to my various electronic systems around the house I’d have a complete wireless home theatre system.. which would be awesome

You can read another great review here as I’m just giving you my own quick lowdown.

Well, thanks to the blog over at tipnut.com, they’ve posted a way that I could get rid of them.

 I won’t re-type the entire article as they’ve got the instructions over there as well as some alternatives to their methods for people that reported it didn’t work – but here’s the steps they took (make sure you read all of them):

1. The first thing I did was wash the table top and dry it well.
2. I took a clean, white cotton towel that wasn’t too thick and placed it over the scorch marks.
3. Taking an old iron set to high dry heat, I placed it on top of the towel, directly over the stain. I let it sit for close to a minute, checked, and nothing happened. The stain was still there.
4. I kept reapplying the hot iron with no results, but once I turned the steam on–that’s when the magic happened. The white marks literally disappeared from the table. I couldn’t believe it and it defied logic to me–wouldn’t the steam cause more damage? All I know is that it worked. I was quick to wipe away any moisture and water on the table after each stain was removed.
5. Added: A fe of the comments below mentioned finishing things off by wiping in a bit of olive oil after lifting the marks with the iron trick.

I’m sooo going to try this when I have some spare time. Those damn things are annoying on my table!

Tipnut.com is an excellent site for everything from tips on home decorating to motorhome repair or anything else.. bookmark it

TipNut.com

While you can get everything from Proctor & Gamble coupons, Kohls coupons, Gillette coupons, and every type of product you can imagine – what is tough to find if you don’t have great timing are Vacation deals.

That’s quite a pre-amble for simply letting you know about a site called SaveOnResorts.com.

This site offers ridiculously low priced stays at some great locations – in exchange for one thing. 90 minutes of your time (and your ability to say “No”.) Yep, it’s a time-share presentations, and yep, they’re going to try to sell you on the idea, and nope, I haven’t bought one.

My experience with SaveOnResorts.com was nothing short of extraordinary… seriously.

I was a bit skeptical of the deal – it was $139 USD for two nights.. BUT included the following:

• $100 Visa Gift Card
• FREE Morning Breakfast each Day
• Use of Hotel Amenities and Services
• FREE Shuttle Service To and From Las Vegas Airport
• Hotel Taxes and Parking Included

I figured at worst – we’d be out the $139 and have to find a hotel while we were down there – but we also knew that it was likely legit – since we did have to do something for them, the 90 minute resort ‘preview’ which was scheduled for 1:30pm on the middle day of our stay.

So fast forward to our arrival at the Embassy Suites.. a non-gaming establishment in Vegas. We were treated like royalty at the front desk, any of our questions answered, plus they let us know about the breakfasts and ‘ambassador hours’ that night where you can come down into the restaurant area and have a few complimentary drinks and just socialize with other guests and some managers of the hotel. We took advantage of this twice and both times really enjoyed ourselves.. munchies included.. yumm!!

It became apparent that where we were staying, had nothing to do with the time-share presentation and that it’s possible they had no idea we were doing it. A kitchenette in our room, free wired Internet, and overall just a beautiful stay was definitely the highlight of our entire trip to Vegas.

The resort preview was a 15 minute drive (at least) outside of the Vegas strip.. kind of a pain, but whatever, once we got there.. we were told they had a shuttle and would have picked us up.. (whoops), but they refunded us the money we spent on the cab! We then had some food and waited while the ‘preview agent’ got ready to try to sell us on the idea of the time-share.

They did a good job in selling it, no.. I didn’t bite (although Liz thought we were crazy not to) – but truthfully if you do vacation and travel every year – a time-share is likely the way to go. Unfortunately for us, we don’t know when/where we’re gonna be able to do that – so it’s not for us. After going through the first agent, second agent, and then the manager.. they let us go get our $100 VISA gift card and dropped us off to enjoy the rest of the day in Vegas.

Yes.. so the stay in the Embassy Suites for 2 nights.. 2 breakfasts.. drinks in the evenings… and shuttles not only to/from the Strip, but to the Airport as well as a custom trip out to the Outlet Mall!! Cost us $39.. ($139 less the $100 VISA card).. plus tips of course.. (and we tipped them well.. why not??)

So.. summary.. saveonresorts.com is legit.. and we had a great time. If you can handle the ‘preview’ and meet the requirements.. I highly recommend and we’d do it again.. check it out, it’s got a HUGE list of spots to vacation.. unfortunately, the deal we had is no longer on there I don’t believe.

PS: they also sent a follow up email to me to fill out a survey.. once I did.. I get $40 off my NEXT vacation sweet.

Basically, I’m looking to get some things done to my home.. construction things.. firstly, a fence built. I’m not sure what type of fence yet – but one in which I can leave the ole hounds out all day if they want and not have to worry one little bit There’s other things I will want to get done down the road as well such as deck modifications, perhaps even a garage built.. but that’s way down the road.

Anyhow, it’s funny.. but I have no idea where to start.. I’ve gotten approximate pricing.. but who do I get to do it? I know they make pre-made fences (did you know they have manufactured homes for sale as well?) but I’m a bit worried that I’d have inclines in my yard and such..

Anyhow.. if anyone knows anyone or has done this in the past.. please let me know