Price Matching not always smart

It was boxing day in Calgary and i was on the hunt for Brain Age 2 for my Nintendo DS.

Superstore had it in the boxingday flyer for 9.98 and that was a pretty good deal i thought. So I was at superstore when they opened but NO Brain Age.

A well i thought i try at Wal Mart and there they had my Brain Age for 17.33 a lot more then i was willing to pay but lucky me i brought the Superstore flyer and tried to pricematch.

They where willing to pricematch me even on boxingday so they got me the game but then when they scanned it the Wal Mart price seem to be 8.62 so even less then the Superstore deal.

My advice would be don't let you get discouraged about the higher prices try to pricematch and some times the deal only gets sweater.

Collecting stuff

Yesterday after many many years i decided to go ice skating I had a box of my skates still in the basement so i gave it a try.

I think i didn't skate for at least 10 years but still it went pretty OK.

Then i came home and put the skates back in the box and there was a sale slip.
Guess what the skates where bought in 1985 when i was 14 years old. I guess sometimes it is useful to keep your old stuff.

Adventure around the corner

You know I always like the rush of a nice adventure and sometimes it is easier to find one then you think.

A friend and I went on our first ever Cross country Ski trip and of course it was a lot of falling and getting up specially as I later found out our trail was not a beginners course and had a height difference of 200 meters. All that of course made it a task on it's own to keep standing when you go down the steep hills at crazy speeds. And then of course how do you get up the next hill.

That was all fun to do and after we ran in to friends that advised us to turn back because it would get dark soon my friend and I decided that we at least wanted to make it to the half way point.
And getting there was not that difficult.

The trip back was more exiting because it started to get dark and of course we where not really prepared for that. The snow surrounding you is so impressive and even when the sun go's down there is still a lot of light for you to see where you are going.

The later it got the darker it got to and then there is an animal on the track in front of us. And it is hard to see what it is but based on the shape it could be a wolf........
But no it was just a small deer, but at that point i realized that these woods are not that scary but still they give you a curtain feeling. I am not really afraid of animals in the woods but it could have bin a Cougar and what would I have done then?

A well we survived and got wet to up the bone from sweat and snow. At the end we where so exhausted that we could have gone to bed right a way.

But man this was a great and exciting trip and i hope to get more of those. You can wake me anytime to go out and experience the outdoors.

Wild Animals

I arrived in Banff yesterday afternoon and since then i had a couple of encounters with BIG deer (maybe Elk) that are not very afraid of people like me.

They just stand there and even when we where running they still didn't seem to want to move till we got at touching distance. It is kinda sad to see that those animals now live so close to the humans. But they say that they are smart and do that on purpose because this way they are safer because there natural enemies the Wolf, Cougar and so on don't dare to come this close to us people.

I wonder how much more of those great animals i am gone see in the next two days that i am staying in Banff.

Plastic Bottles (3)

OK lets do one more on the bisphenol-a (BPA) in plastic. Yesterday evening we went for dinners t o Montana's and there they serve you drinks in plastic glasses so as interested as i am in the bad plastic i decided to look under the glasses. It was nice to see that the glasses we adults get are from a better plastic BUT i found out that the Glasses that they give to kids are not that nice because they have bisphenol-a (BPA) in it!

So parents look around what they serve to your kids. I think it is time that all restaurants should start serving us in real Glasses.

But today i will go on a little trip and the Camelbak bottle that doesn't have bisphenol-a is still not available in stores so i guess my lovely green Camelbak bottle with BPA has to do this time.

Drinking

Isn't it funny or maybe sad is the right word that people need to drink at parties to have fun?

I noticed it a lot of times in my life that people that normally seem to have so much fun as they have there Alcohol beverage but then when they need to drive and because of that don't drive the fun seem to be gone.

In my case I don't drink so i don't really get that why does the couple of drinks you have make so much of a difference. Are you really so closed that you need the drink to loosen up?

Plastic Bottles (2)

For people that wonder what bottle is the bad one. I did some research to find this out myself and i found out that it is kinda easy to see.

Look at the bottem of the bottle and look for a kinda recycle triangle. If there is a 7 in the triangle then you have a product that has bisphenol-a (BPA).

Plastic Bottles

This morning I heard on the Radio that MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) stops selling plastic water bottles because research has proven that they can be cancerous and interfere with woman's hormones.

That makes you wonder what will happen with companies like Nalgene that are selling so many bottles.

And it also made me wonder about other products. Like we have one of those Brita filters that are in a plastic jug those that mean that those jugs are also bad for you?

Or the nice and colorful plastic cups i bought at IKEA. And i can take this much further with things like POP bottles or even more like Storage boxes.

Where does it stop?

Does this mean that in the near future we will see a glass coke bottle again and are we all walking around with a metal Nalgene bottle?

It will be interesting to see where this will stop but it could be a good thing for the environment because all those plastics are not a good thing to store in a landfill.

Mud Flaps

Did you know that Calgary is the city with the most cracked windshields of North America?

Driving around the street these days is kinda scary with all those stones hitting the window. I wonder how much it would help if everybody would have mudflaps on there car.

I love my mudflaps but i notice that most people don't have them. Maybe have a look at them it saves you a lot of dirt and scratched on your paint.

Video Game Rating

Last night there was again a story on the news how people don't look at the ad viced user age and ratting on the box of a video game.

I always wonder about those ratings anyways. OK a violent shooting games is not very good for a 4 year old kid BUT i am well in the age range of most of the games (30+) but still when i play to much with my car racing games like need for speed i notice that the day after in my normal driving.

What i try to say is you need to use common sense when you get a game like that. Personally i would not go for the blood spatter games any ways but giving it to a kid that is a BIG no in my book.

Christmas decorations

As you may know by now, I lived most of my live in The Netherlands and for me it is still interesting to see what happens here in Calgary.

For me it is so strange to see all those outdoor Christmas decorations. OK in Holland we have outdoor lights to but i never in my live have seen that many together. And then i am not talking about all those blow up Santa's, reindeer, snowman and all those other figures that you see in peoples yards.

The nice things that i never saw before i moved to Canada are the LED Christmas lights they at least save a lot of electricity and because of that are not that bad for the environment or you wallet.

Snow

Yesterday i heard something funny on the radio. They said as today (December 3, 2007) would be Christmas then everybody in Canada would have a White Christmas. Apparently there is snow from coast to coast.

And that being said they also said last week that this winter will be the coldest in 15 years so i guess i will get my ice-skates out of the box this year.

Stuff

Why do we collect so much stuff around us?

The last couple of weeks we spend a lot of time sorting through our stuff that we didn't even unpack yet after we moved 1.5 years ago. I guess giving most of it away would be the smart thing to do but you know that is so difficult.

I wonder how many people we could all help out with the stuff we have lying around and not using.

Stocks

Isn't it funny how people buy stocks?

I noticed it a couple of times now a company tells something good about the numbers and people wait. But then when there is a official announcement about numbers people start buying but aren't you to late by then?

A couple of weeks ago LuluLemon said that things where looking better then expected but people didn't buy.

I did buy last Monday for 37 dollars and today the financial numbers where announced and guess what they where really good (no surprise to me) and the stock even went to 44 dollars and the day is still long but if you think of it i made almost 7 dollars on my stock while the person that bought today just needs to see if we get higher.

I know better

Did you ever have one of those experiences that when you wanted to buy a computer or something for you computer that there is one of those sales people that knows best?

And in most cases they don't know best or even worse they don't know anything about what they try to sell you. I worked in the computer industry most of my working life and i always like to have fun with people that think they are the GOD of computers.

One time i was looking for a new LCD monitor and video adapter to support the resolution the screen supported. The friendly but very pushy sale guy try to sell so hard that and in that he try to convince me that it was not possible to get that resolution i wanted i could only do that with two screens. OK so that of course meant No sale for this guy and i got my screen and the video adapter at the store next door where the sales person didn't think he knew everything and was willing to look it up.

Or the time that i wanted to buy a Mac just before the new operating system came out. And because i was a PC user before i wanted to be able to run Windows XP on the Apple as well. So i asked they sales person and he told me i could only do that if i bought a extra program for it. And that he bin to Apple and that they didn't tell him about anything else so it was not possible. Of course it's not possible so i went somewhere else and got my Mac and now run Mac OS and Windows XP without buying anything else.

My advice don't let a computer sales or repair person belittle you if they do then in most cases they don't know what they are doing themselves and i would go somewhere else.

Bathroom doors

For a while now i noticed here in Calgary that in lots and lots of mans bathrooms the stalls locks are broke. What is up with that, is it so difficult for a restaurant owner to check the washrooms once in a while an to make sure that the guys also can sitdown without have the risk that some one walks in to you?

It's is not that i just want something to complain about but it realy seem to be a problem. I even dare to say that in most cases bathroom doors in Calgary will not lock (at least the guy's once).

What do you think do I complain to much or is it a valid point???

Privacy gone?

I wonder where did privacy go these days?

As a Facebook user I often get surprised with the information I find when I go to Facebook. For me it is kind of strange that I see the wall posts others make on other peoples walls even without even going to the friends page.

And then of course there are lots of people out there that like to post everything just on the wall and that means free for everyone to read.
Often I wonder if the person that post it or the person that it related to are happy with that and would do it different if they know that EVERYBODY can see it.

Photo's is another one of those things that makes you wonder. I love to see photo's that people put up and of course go look at all the new photo's of all my friends.
And lots of those are kinda harmless but still again do you want to be tagged in a photo while you where drunk?

Till now it only happened once that a person asked me to removed a photo and this one was not even a photo most people would be shocked about the person just didn't liked the way it looked.

I guess I have some thinking to do about if Facebook or any other social place is really the place I want my info to be available at!

Halloween

Yesterday was Halloween and that means that the "kids" come to trick or treath and that seem to be really nice for the kids. When I was a kid they didn't do Halloween (spend most of my live in Holland) but here the kids really seem to enjoy the amounts of cand they get.

It is nice to see the small kids that come with mom or dad in there funny custumes and are to shy to even talk.

But why do the "BIG" kids have to come to? Do you really need the candy that bad when you are like 16? Of course there are nice "BIG" kids that realy made a nice custume and just go for the 1 candy but the most of them are just there to get as much candy as they can.

So let me give those kids a small piece of advice. If you are a Sugar junky it is easier just to get a bag of sugar :)

Dating sites and pictures

Yesterday my brother in law came bye and we looked at a dating site that one of his friends in India runs. We as guys want to see pictures of course. And we noticed some nice pictures but we also automatically didn't really see them as real.

And then when we looked a bit longer we found a picture of a girl that looked a bit familiar.
Someone put a picture on there profile of Emma Watson also knows as Hermione Granger (from Harry Potter).

To me it seems very unlikely that Emma Watson is looking for a date on an Indian Dating website and not using her real name but still uses her real picture.

If I was this girl that used Emma's photo I would have done a little bit more research before posting a photo like that.

And for any body that reads this and wants to find a date on a dating website here is my advise.
Use a real photo of yourself or don't use a photo at all that way if you fall in love with one of the people online you don't have to explain why you aren't that famous super model or actrice.

Winter Time

What is up with the time change this year. My friends in Europe already got it changed yesterday but what happend here in Canada?

I got lost and i tell you why. First my wifes calender states that we Candians change time on October 28 this year. My Palm PDA also is convinced that Winter times started because it changed it's time.

And then of course there are the friendly people from Microsoft that apperently don't have a clue them selves because one of our XP pc's changed time and the other one did not.

I believe that it would be a lot easier if we would change time on the same day every year. And i would prefere it to be on the same day as the rest of the world.

And lets finishe this post with telling you that apperently we change time on November 4, 2007 But for next year i don't know :(

Garbage

Yesterday i bought a new computer and this time i even changed operating system. I got myself an Apple Macbook Pro and i am even typing this blog post on it.

Till now i have to say that i am more the happy with my new Mac BUT i am a bit dissapointed in the way Apple packs it's stuff.

I bought my Mac at a nice Mac store so when i choice the computer i wanted they handed me a carthboard box nice and brown like most boxes. But when i got home and unpacked that brown box i found a Real nice looking macbook pro box inside with handle and everything. Why o Why do we have to have two boxes to pack a Laptop?

I believe that it would be a lot better for the envirement if we didn't double boxes computers!

what is up with the weather

OK i don't know how they do it but they had me confused yesterday.

First i got up at like 7 and it was 9.6 degrees outside so i thought a nice run would be nice but then when i left the house at 8 there it was only 6 and i still needed to drop my wife of at her work. So when i finally got to the park for my run the temprature was 4, and that was colder then i hoped for.

And then in the afternoon the temprature went up to a new record of 23 degrees and that is prety warm for the time of the year.

And then...... the evening came and at 9.30 pm there was SNOW and temprature was -1 the snow was coming down like crazy and that made a nice white carpet for when we woke up this morning.

Maybe some days with easy predictable weather would help me out so that i know what to expect.

Sport?

dory but I don't get it any more.

Isn't sport suppose to be fun? So now it is not so sure that Kimi will be world champion formula 1 2007 because 3 people behind him got fuel that was not at the right temperature. And that could mean that Lewis can be the world champion.

I really wonder where sports are going to. Remember all those problems with the Tour the France? For me personally I don't get it. Isn't it simple if you are not good enough you will not win and that means that you need to get better but using illegal things doesn't help it, because YOU are still not winning.

Being homeless not so bad?

Yesterday evening we went for a walk in downtown Calgary. There were some homeless people try to sell used parking tickets after asking people for there tickets when leaving the parking lot. A good way for them to make some honest money and i was happy to give them my ticket when i left the parking.

But the most interesting thing i saw was on a bench close to eau clair market. Two homeless people where watching TV. The found a electric socket that was working (i guess normally used for xmas lighting or something) and they hooked up there TV (they had two) and where enjoying it.

Sometimes you wonder about those homeless people they don't have it that bad sometimes. Ok i would not want to trade with them (specially in winter) but seeing them watching TV made me think.

Woman forgoten in MRI Scanner

Imagine this:

Last week in Belgium a woman was forgotten and left in the MRI Scanner. She was waiting patiently but then the light of the MRI and after that the light of the room went off.

After 1 hour a nurse wondered what the Husband of the woman was still doing in the waiting room.

Hmmm makes you wonder what would have happened if he was not there. So be carefull when you need an MRI scan in Belgium.

Electricity

The things we take for granted. Electricity is one of them. I lived most of my live in Holland and in those 30 some years i guess the power went of once in a while but i still think i can count the times that that happened on 1 hand.

Now i live in Canada and in the 1 year i am here the power went of more often then it happened in the 30 some years before. Hmmm you would expect that Canada has a sophisticated electrical system but why do we have to loose power so often?

Maybe it is so that they can sell more emergency power things :)

punishment

I got punished for what i did :(

So you know those little yellow with black flying insects called Wasp?

I don't mind them so much they are kinda cool but this time they went a bit to far.
The wasp desicded that they like to use the deck behing our home to so they where building a nest there right on the deck kinda under the BBQ. I wonder what they where thinking but well so there was a nest the size of a tennis ball and it was growing day by day.

So yesterday i got myself a insect repelent specially for this cause at our local Walmart. So i got ready and sprayed the nest and things look good they seem not to have survived it. But then after all this my punishment started.

I went back inside to watch a little bit of tv and a muscito that got in the house descided to bite me 6 times. A well i guess that is the way they punish you when you descide to kill the other insects.

Animal Holiday

You know summer started and here you notice it all the animals seem to be on the way to there holiday destination.

On the news last night they showed some baby moose in some once back yard and about 3 black bears walking through a city park.

Maybe we should be a bit more carefully these hot days and drive a little bit more carefully you don't want to drive over one of those animals that still has lots of holiday plans!

Why?

Today once again I was surprised with the Natural gas bill.

Last month I used for 10 dollars and 22 cents gas not bad you would say but still my bill is for 37 dollars and 2 cents.

WHY do i have to pay so much in fees ????? I can see that the gas company has some overhead but this seems insane i pay 26 dollars and 8 cents in fees that is more then 1.5 times the money i need to pay for my gas.

I think it is strange what do you think?

haha funny

Yesterday i went to Amateur night at a comedy club. And there where some good comedians there but lets move on to the bad once.

There where some of them of witch i thought YOU know YOU are not funny so why are you standing here?

There was one that even brought his notes so that he could see what the joke was.

So if you ever want to do Amateur night at a Comedy club then ask some "real" friends if you are funny that way we both have a great night.

Coffee

This morning I got up real early to bring a friend to the airport.

And then on my way back at lets say 6 a.m. there is already a huge lineup at Tim Hortons. I wonder is it difficult to make you own coffee?
Because time can not be an issue here when there are at least 15 cars in front of you.

A well I guess it is still my European blood going through my body that doesn't understand the whole drive through culture.

Muscle Pain

What a strange things you see on TV. Now they have a commercial for Aspirin and it go's something like this.


Two women are working out in a steps class and the later you see them in the changing room and one complains to the other about muscle pain so the other lady give here a box of aspirin because that would help to get rid of the muscle pain.

If you ask me I would say isn't the muscle pain a good thing doesn't it mean that you where really working out?

In my humble opinion they should bann these kind of commercials because this is not what you want people to realy do.

Garbage in your yard

I was just looking out of my bedroom window to see the neighbor picking up a paper coffee cup from his yard and trowing it on the street.

Why do we do those things? Isn't it just as easy to take it in and throw it in the garbage?

Any way now the paper coffee cup moved to under his car tire so i guess after he drives over it it will live in front of his house for a while longer.

The donor show on Dutch TV 2

Remember the previous post? If not read it first.

OK by now we probably all know that it was a fake just to get attention to the lack of donor organs. And it seem to have worked.

Dutch newspapers state that almost 40000 request came in at the Dutch donor registration for a donor registration form.

I guess that just a small part of those 40.000 people will end up filling the form in but still the publicities will end up helping at least a couple of real sick people.

SO well Done BNN keep the good work going!

The donor show on Dutch TV

What a surprise to see all that commotion on TV about a Dutch TV program even here in Canada.

OK I will confess i am Dutch.

It is funny to see how the foreign media doesn't really does any background research before the air a topic on the news. The whole things about the Dutch program where 3 people that badly need a new kidney battle for the favor of a terminal sick person that is willing to give away her Kidney to one of them.

OK I have to admit that the program seems to be kinda vulgar but what people don't know is that the founder of this Dutch TV channel died 5 years ago (this week) and that he was very sick and in Need of again a new Kidney.

And of course what the TV channel BNN wants to achieve is to get more people to the point that they want to offer there organs for transplantation.

Today in the Dutch papers they even say that 4 more people contacted BNN to offer the Kidney. But BNN send them to the Donor registration because this program is only gone be on TV once.

So I think it could be a good way to attract some attention (and I have to say that worked).

But please news makers on this planet get all the facts strait before you make a news topic about it!

Standard

Today I was trying to help out a friend. She has a Sony car radio and it has an AUX port on the back. So I expected that they use the cables that are commonly used by car stereo manufacturers but NO Sony like to do things different.

Of course we already knew that they like to do things there own way (remember the memorystick) but wouldn't it be a lot easier if everybody would just use the same things?

Photo's

Today I needed to take photo's of the people that work at a company that I make a website for. And for lots of those people it seems to be so difficult to take their photo. And of course others want lots taken and choose the best.

It seems that we men are easier and just take a picture and that is good enough.

Come on ladies it is just a photo you can always change it if you want to.

Crack

OK if you live in the crack window capital of North America then you can expect it some day but this i was not expecting.

One night I park the car with a perfect windshield and then the next day we get record snowfall for that day in May and then when I get in the car the next day there is a BIG crack. Normally cracks start because of a chip in your windshield but i didn't see the chip otherwise i may have got it repaired. But a little investigating uncovered that there was a chip in my windshield it was just in the black part on the side.

So lets see if the crack gets bigger other wise I guess a new windshield is all I can do.

Come on it is MAY you know

OK the warned us about it but still I didn't really expect this much.

This morning I opened my eyes and what do I see SNOW and lots of it to (my guess 15cm)
what is goingon with the weather. Last week we where all sitting outside enjoying the BBQ and now there is a layer of 15cm of snow on my BBQ.

Before I moved to Calgary they warned me about the strange weather but this is insane.

I am just lucky that I like snow

If any one from Calgary reads this just hold on the weekend seems to be nice again!

Open your eyes

Sometimes I wonder why people are on the road so early in the morning.
Some of them are definitely still a sleep when they are driving.

This morning I was driving my car on highway 1 in Calgary when I saw that they closed down the most left lane (the highway is 3 lanes in that location) it was clearly marked and to me impossible to miss.

But still one person in one of those minivans decided to go to the left lane and then to see the road block and to ram his car back in the lane where he came from. He just missed the road block (he was lucky)

I wonderd what he was thinking. Maybe he thought:

- oooh a empty lane nobody wants to drive in the left lane let me try
- Lets quickly pass the car in front of me the 30 meters to the roadblock should be enough
- hmmm. my cofee needs a little bit more sugar
- or maybe he was just busy text messaging on his phone

I guess this will be one of those post you can expect from me.
Lets see what else will come up one of these days

A new blog

Hi all,

Thanks for visiting my new blog.

In this small little room in cyberspace I will keep you posted what is going on in my life and what I am running in to.

So keep coming back and see what I saw, thought, found and so on.

Enjoy,
George