Olympic medal count

Well just a note on that Olympic medal count. All the wailing and crying in the first week was for nothing and Canada came out with a medal showing tying our record for the second most medals in a non boycotted Olympics. I guess what the COC really needs to do is have more athletes in events that are in the first week just so that people don't whine so much. I'm also glad to hear that our athletes are getting a few extra bucks for getting a medal 20000$ for gold is nothing to sneeze at though I'd like to see it expanded to be 5000$ for a 4th and 1000$ for a top 8 finish just to recognize those athletes that really did very well despite not coming home with hardware.

The coverage of the games was good but a little odd. I thought it strange to see regular shows being shown during the day when they could have been rerunning events but I'm glad that they did do alot of live coverage even if it was at 3 in the morning. I hope CTV will not follow NBC's lead and decide that they'll only show the games in prime time.

Overall 5 out of 5 stars for the athletes and 4 out of 5 for the Olympic coverage hey at least here you can watch events live.

Bell and Telus to charge for incoming text messages.

AHHHHH greed thy name is Cellphone Company. Seriously with all the complaints people have had about high prices of cellphones you'd think Telus and Bell would be working hard to show the value in their product. Apparently this is not the case and they have decided to just see what we'll put up with. I guess there is no point in having a virtual monopoly if you don't abuse it. I like the part in the article where they say they need the charges to cover increasing text messaging costs. What kind of costs would those be exactly? at the rate they're charging for a 160 character message that's about 11 characters per penny it seems unlikly that it is costing that much. Imagine if you got charged by your interent service provider 15 cents per e-mail or even worse an amount of a penny for every 11 characters you'd be having to sell the house to afford e-mail in no time. And yes i know you can avoid the charge by paying for a plan but that might set you back 5$ a month when you don't text enough to make that worth your while. There is of course another way to avoid the charge, you can switch to a competitor such as Virgin, Rogers or Fido. Granted if your stuck in a 3 year contract you're basically toast as the costs outside of the basic plan charges are not covered by it so you might be paying 3-5 $ extra a month just to get spam or messages from friends that you didn't really need. Personally I can't wait till the end of the spectrum auction and we get a look at some of the new players out there.

Telus and Bell get 0 stars out of 5 for changing their plans in a way that will drive consumers to seek other options when they look for cellphones.

Iron Man

Robert Downey Jr. Is out of rehab and back making movies. This movie does a great job of showcasing him at his best. He is funny, arrogant, a playboy, and a snappy dresser but you can't help but like him. Which is weird because at least at the beginning of the movie he is the head of Stark industries, one of the worlds largest defense contractors. He's pretty much the awful person that you'd hate to be associated with, however he's leading the life that we'd all love to have. The movie is really well done with great special effects and sound defiantly worth the watch in the theater. The movie isn't as cartoony as so many of the comic book based movies like Spiderman or the hulk. It also manages to avoid the type of love story type movie that Spiderman has become. While there's alot of sexual tension between Stark and Miss Potts his sexy and efficient assistant, nothing happens and I hope it stays that way in what i'm sure will be many sequals. One other thing, Stay till after the credits as they squeezed in a short scene at the end.

Final review Great movie, lots of action, and I only looked at my watch once.
4.5 stars out of 5.

Fog Lights

So with Gas Prices heading towards 2$ a litre every radio station, tv station and website is spending hours, or pages, telling people how to save gas. Everything from removing weight from your car 1-5%, using a lighter foot on the gas pedal 10-35%, or keeping your tires inflated 1-10%. All of these strategies tend to increase milage just slightly which is always good. The issue I have is that I see soooooo many people driving around with their fog lights on, and I can't understand why, having those lights on will reduce your gas mileage just the same are removing some small amount of weight from the car and they can be turned off with the flick of a switch and not require you to remove your safety kit from the car. The other thing is that it's just annoying to have some one in their big truck come up behind you and bathe the whole of your car in the light of all the lamps in front of the truck. It may also be Illegal in some areas. I would love to see car manufacturers take the lead on this they can make cars in which all maner of things have to be turned on each time you start the car, cruise control, defoggers etc. but for some reason they have left the fog lights (something you almost never really need) as a fixed switch that is on forever if you never turn it off. well here's hoping that someone will make that kind of change in a car/truck and stop the blinding/resorce wasting.

Hilton Cebu Resort and Spa

The Hilton Cebu Resort and Spa is probably one of the pinkest places you'll ever go. Even the cars are pink and the drivers wear pink uniforms. This resort hotel was the location for my honeymoon. Located on a peninsula on Mactan Island near Cebu in the Philippines, It is only a short drive (470pesos 12$ each way by hotel shuttle) from the airport. We selected this hotel because of the Hilton Reputation, The Price and it's relatively close location to our wedding. We got the package that includes Breakfast and Dinner around 170$ a night. The whole package was well worth it for a honeymoon where we didn't plan on going out drinking and partying every night.
The Breakfast includes everything including a large selection of juice however the dinner does not include drinks besides water. The Breakfast is standard every day with a good selection of food including bacon, pancakes, a large selection of pastries, eggs, omelets, rice, fresh fruit, and far more of everything else than I have ever seen at a hotel breakfast buffet.
The Dinner each night is themed including a Chineese/asian night, a Philippino night, an Indian night and an International night. My favorite was the International night which included the best from all of the other nights. Each night included carved meat and a good seleciton of different cultural foods including roast pig, pizza, and leg of lamb. Every night had more food than I ever expected and there was certainly enough selection for any tastes. Also 2 nights they provided free local entertainment including dancers and cultural shows.
The hotel has a private beach and small lagoon which you can take a paddle boat out on for 1000 pesos (around 25$) for an hour. It is fun to get out in the lagoon for a bit in the boat but try to avoid doing this in the heat of the day as you could roast pretty quickly.
The room was lovely on the 15th floor of the building (while there are 3 only one is the hotel, the other two are owned and time shares) we had a full view of the ocean from the room and a nice balcony. the room had a dvd/cd player and a nice tv. As well it had a large bathroom with a shower and a separate tub. The shower unfortunatly tended to not drain quickly, however maintenance did look at it and I am assured that they will solve the minor issue.
I filled out the survey that was e-mailed to me from the hotel and recieved a nice response including proof that they had read the comments with ideas of how they would solve small issues I had raised.
Other things.... Well the hotel provides cold towels which are handed out to guests when they arrive and when laying out on the beach. The room was provided with bottled water every day and we had no trouble requesting more when needed. Also the hotel provides a FREE shuttle that runs to the 2 malls in Cebu 3 times a day. So you could go to both malls in the same day by taking the first shuttle and transferring malls on the mid day trip.

Overall 4.9 Stars out of 5 Because I had to pay for drinks with the inculded dinner.
Highly recommended as a honeymoon destination as you can have a quiet evening out on the beach area with almost no one around.

Jumper

Well I went and saw Jumper with my wife, it was a pretty good, if somewhat predictable movie. Though we talked most of the way through it so that suggests there were a few problems with it but, there was lots of action and a really cool concept so on balance i felt our 160Pesos was well spent. The action sequences in the movie are very well done and include many spectacular special effects, such as a car driving sequence with the car winking out of and into existence. There is a fair degree of violence in the movie, and the fight scenes include a lot of acrobatics. Hayden Christensen fits well into the loner role of the main character but he does seem a little wooden and stupid at some times to the point where you want to scream at the screen. Overall a good concept, worth seeing in the movie theatre for the special effects but some bits of the story are formulaic.

4 Stars out of 5 for a good action movie lacking a little in depth.

Giants win Superbowl.... Though I was really just watching for the commercials.

Best commercial: FedEx I really couldn't stop laughing at the Giant pigeons doing delivery. It had all the elements that make a commercial good. It's at least kinda about the product. It was inventive and it showed what would happen if you tried a competitor even if that one doesn't quite exist. Also seeing the disastrous consequences was really really funny.

Five Stars out of Five

Nobody Rewards you like Fido???

Now I've been a Fido customer for about 4 years now and have managed to amass around 100$ in Fido Dollars the only problem is how do i spend them? One would think that when i renewed my contract I'd be able to get that money off of a new phone. But that is not to be I have to purchase a phone at full price to use those dollars. Now I don't really need a second phone so that is kinda pointless. Well perhaps i could get some accessories? well kinda but only if I order them through customer service and have them shipped to me as I can't use them at the Fido store to purchase accesories. Also if I don't use the dollars soon, by the time my 4th anniversary comes up they're gone. So I guess I'll have to order some stuff from the website even though i kinda wonder why I'm going to have to make a trek out to UPS to pick up the package only to be told they can't find it.

Rating 2.5 Stars out of 5 as it's possible to get things using the Fido dollars it's just really really annoying.

Telemarketers....

Now I know we all hate tele-marketers and their annoying interuptions, but overall I'm not too bad when it comes to getting a call. I'll listen politely then decline their offer and let them go. I don't have too much problem with them overall. But one particular company that uses a Demon dialer and a computer voice to send out calls is not one that I can stand. It's not cause they call me when i'm home I wish they would. It's cause they call me when i'm not home and leave part of a message on my answering machine. It's really annoying to come home and find a message only to realize it was left by a company that didn't leave their name or number. If they call when I'm home I'm so demanding a supervisor.

For being annoying and not leaving their name and number i give this company
0 Stars out of 5

To Start: How about a game

Well in the spirit of reviewing Wii video games. I'll start with a review of Battalion Wars 2. Now i never played Battalion Wars 1 but i hear it was pretty good. BW2 Makes good if sometimes confusing use of the Wiimote sometimes your ship or tank seems to be turning when you didn't want it to but over all it certainly makes a really good try at making the best uses of the motion controls and the aiming with the Wiimote. I can't really imagine trying to aim with an analog stick. The game itself is quite engaging and it's really fun to just spend allot of time blowing stuff up. Things do explode with quite satisfying bangs and showers of flame. The commentary provided by your commanders and the enemy in the game is quite humorous.. but can become a little annoying if you have to repeat a level a number of times. The biggest fault I could see in the game is it's lacking a 2 player co-op and battle mode on the same system necessitating the purchase of 2 copies of the game and 2 Wiis if you want to have your girlfriend join you in the game (provided of course you could convince her to play a game where all you do is make things explode). The wi-fi connection is pretty good the ability to play people not on your friends list also allows the possibility of fighting a real person even if none of your friends have the game yet.

Overall rating: 4 Stars out of 5