Interestingly, Shaw just auto-upgraded the software on our PVR. It now has “folders” for series episodes, you can search on actors/directors, and it seems quite a bit faster. It also keeps a log of all PVR recording “events”, so you can look back and see why a particular episode/program didn’t record. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a result of competition from the Optik system.

I was pleasantly surprised by the ‘new’ Revelstoke as well, and could have stayed there a few more days without any problem. I do think these towns may be trying a bit to hard to be clones of Whistler though… a bit less thai curry and a more steak and hamburger crowd is the demographic they are getting and some of the attempts to be “young, hip, and urban” seem humourously off the mark in a remote wilderness town with most visitors 30+. ( Lots and lots of English and Germans in rented RV’s, whole families from grandparents to grandkids… all fit and with plenty of money… and all there to experience “Canada” not the ‘alpine club scene’ )

Revelstoke is not a place I would have thought of visiting before. It looks more appealing then I would have thought.

I noticed that most (all?) of your photos are geotagged. Did you do that manually, or do you have a camera w/GPS?

In our case though, even ignoring that, it’s much cheaper to get 4 tv’s on Telus than Shaw.

So, hope it works.

I’ll be watching your posts and tweets to see how it works out for you!

So far though I haven’t got internet back yet, much less get the wiring to the house fixed. Problem with having a 30+ year old house, a 40+ year old garage and wiring that dates back who knows how long ago.

I’f I’m really lucky the money we save on bundled services will pay for the work we have to do in 10 years or so.

I’ve been to a total of two strip clubs in my life, and they were actually both fairly interesting. Each had one or two surprisingly talented (and extraordinarily… flexible) young ladies doing amazing things, along with half a dozen or more not so talented dancers. At least a few of the dancers at each club seemed to enjoy what they were doing. And I just drank somewhat-overpriced booze and watched

As for getting these written so long after your vacation… well, at least you *are* documenting your trip. It can be too easy to just give up capturing your memories.

I agree: ebooks should cost a small fraction ( less than 50%) of the cost of a dead-tree book. For myself, I’ve found some other advantages to eBooks that offset the excessive prices charged per book in the current market. I can carry multiple books at a time, which is good for travelling; and I don’t have to store the books, yet can access them as needed. One thing I should point out is that there are several legitimate sources of free ebooks that can be downloaded to an appropriate eReader: check out Project Gutenburg as an example. I also read a fair number of technical documents that are in PDF format, and can be freely read on most eReaders.

The whole DRM thing bugs me, but a couple of the vendors have made it more palatable for me at least. The two eReaders I’d seriously consider are the Sony eReader and the Amazon Kindle: not because the devices are super-amazing (although both are very good), but because they have a decent storefront with semi-reasonable DRM. Books you buy at the Sony store can be downloaded to several devices (up to five, I believe?), including your computer. The Amazon store likewise lets you read a book you’ve bought in several places: on your Kindle, on your computer, on your iPhone/iPad, and others in the future. Note that this isn’t to permit “sharing” between different people: just to let one person access their content wherever they want.

Hopefully the book publishers will wise up: the one advantage they have over the music and movie industries is that they haven’t grown fat off or ripping off their users and their artists. Those guys made billions of dollars a year off of decades of format shifting (vinyl=> 8-Track=> cassette=> CD; VHS=> laser disk=> DVD=> Blu-Ray), selling us the same product over and over again- to say nothing of the whole “3 good songs out of 12 on a $20 album” thing. That’s really why the music and movie industry fought tooth and nail against digital media: the piracy thing was/is a smokescreen to hide their fear of losing a seemingly infinite flow of money for nothing.