We’ve been giving Bell $80 a month for something we barely use anymore. That’s almost $1000 a year! Other than watching most of the NHL playoffs (much of which I watched on the second TV that only has rabbit ears!) I think I’ve watched a total of maybe 20 hours since Christmas. The Boss has watched more but not by much. We just don’t have time anymore. Well, that and I’m still pissed with Bell and have been putting this off for far too long. ;)

Now, don’t get me wrong, we’re still planning on watching TV. We can pull a surprising amount of stuff Over The Air (OTA) with our little rabbit ears. All of the major Canadian networks come in. I’m tempted to cruise the garage sales and spend a couple bucks to get a better antenna that I can put up in the attic to see if I can improve the reception. Supposedly I can get some US stations too if I get a digital box and a good antenna. Not sure if I’m ready to try that though.

If we had an HDTV, I’d already have an antenna setup to get the CBCHD feed. A lot of people I know are doing this, even though they already are paying big bucks for Bell or Rogers HD. Why? Because the CBCHD OTA feed is apparently uncompressed which means there are none of those crappy digital artifacts. Both Rogers and Bell compress the hell out of most of their channels, HD or not.

Anyhoo, another thing we’re doing is we’ve joined Zip.ca (on the basic $11/month plan) which is a DVD rental thing all done through the mail. They have thousands of DVDs, including kids stuff and TV shows. Since we’ve missed nearly every popular TV show in the last 4 years, I think we have a good selection of stuff to watch to “catch up” with the rest of the world. ;)I think we should be able to get 4-5 DVDs a month. Our first arrived yesterday – only two days after signing up. If you’re thinking of signing up with Zip.ca, let me know and I’ll send you a referral email. That way you can give us a little kick back and help our TV viewing. ;)

Also, we’ve had great experiences with downloading and/or streaming stuff from online. We actually started doing this a while back because the stupid Bell TV PVR stopped recording certain shows for some reason. I don’t know if Bell blocked them intentionally or not but shows like Survivor, Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy never recorded properly in the last year. We’d end up with an hour long show but it would just freeze if you tried to play it. So, I turned to the net and we were able to watch the episodes we had missed.

If we decide that Zip.ca isn’t really working out, we could also put some of the $80 a month we’re not spending on Bell TV towards buying full seasons of TV shows and movies, or just renting DVDs from the local DVD place. We can also turn to the iTunes Music Store as they have TV shows and movies you can purchase and download.

Finally, we may cave yet and get basic cable from Cogeco (the cable TV provider where we live). Their basic package offers up nearly all the channels we want for around $35 a month. And the channels it doesn’t have, well, we’ll just get used to not having them. ;)

[ The post "No more Bell (ExpressVu) TV" originally appeared on Ivany. Why not subscribe to our RSS feed directly if you haven't already?]

I wasn’t initially sure if I really wanted the Blundstone boots for two reasons:

1. They are boots.
2. They aren’t cheap.

The first problem was quickly addressed when I pulled a pair on. I used to wear boots all the time back when I was a slightly rebelling teenager. I had a couple pairs of Doc Martens that lasted me many years. It’s sort of strange how much more comfortable boots can be. I like them because I don’t have any rubbing in my heel/ankle from the top of a shoe.

Anyways, back to the Blundstones – they aren’t cheap. My last pair of shoes cost me at least $50 and the Blundstones were almost 4 times that. Now, what I’m banking on is that the Blundstone boots will last at least 4 times longer than the shoes did. The shoes only really lasted a year but I squeezed 6 months more out of them (such a bad idea!).

Buying the Blundstone boots was an interesting adventure. First, I wanted to buy them locally in Kemptville but the one shop that has them doesn’t have very good hours. Tough luck for them.

I ended up searching on the Blundstone website for Ottawa and found a store at Bayshore than had them. After trying some on and getting what I thought was the right size, I bought them and drove home. At home I wore them around the house for the evening and it became painfully obvious that they were too small.  What had happened is that particular store did something funny with their inventory. The Blundstone boots are in UK sizes which are about 1 size smaller than US sizes. No problem normally. What was a problem is the store had the UK size 10 listed as a size 10 but the UK size 8.5 they listed as a size 9.5.  They didn’t actually have any UK 9.5 or UK 9 at all, even in the computer. Anyhoo, I had to return the UK 8.5 boots I bought.  Just too small.

Going back to the Blundstone website, I discovered that they still have Ottawa broken down into Ottawa, Kanata, Nepean and Orleans – with different stores listed for each search option! Turns out there was a second store in Bayshore that also carried  Blundstone. Back I went a second time and success! I got my UK 9.5 Blundstone boots. Interestingly enough, they were actually cheaper at that store. ;)

[ The post "Blundstone Boots" originally appeared on Ivany. Why not subscribe to our RSS feed directly if you haven't already?]

The game is available through getitonlondon.com and is pretty good. It’s basically a quiz type game with 20 some questions about various ways to avoid STIs and other sex myths. I learned a few things myself!

In Adventures in Sex City players can assume the role of one of the four superheroes who make up the Middlesex-London Sex Squad:

• Captain Condom, a scientist, who, after a freak lab accident is now half man, half condom;
• Power Pap, a sexually active woman who believes strongly in getting tested  regularly;
• Willy the Kid, because he never grew taller than four feet, he joined the Sex Squad to prove that size doesn’t matter;
• Wonder Vag, a virgin who believes in true love and promotes abstinence until marriage.

By answering sexual health questions correctly, players can defeat the evil Sperminator, who threatens to infect Sex City. While playing the game, players can click on the Myth Maniac, a mysterious ally of the Sex Squad, who demystifies commonly held beliefs and myths about sexual health.

The information is great, the game is really just a quiz and the graphics/characters are all rather tongue-in-cheek. I found it to be pretty decent and would be a good place to point your kids after they’ve hit puberty. Of course, as the spokesperson mentioned on the radio, there have been mixed reactions to the game.  Some people apparently think it’s too graphic. I’m guessing that some of those people also think their teenagers aren’t sexually active.

Anyhoo, check it out!

[ The post "Adventures in Sex City" originally appeared on Ivany. Why not subscribe to our RSS feed directly if you haven't already?]

A couple weeks ago I received an email from a person who works for the Direct Energy Public Relations team.  She wanted to make sure I was receiving the “correct” rental price and was willing to have my account checked to ensure it was correct. After exchanging a few emails, I declined having my account checked. History has taught me that sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone. I didn’t need them to discover I wasn’t paying enough (or something like that). ;)

Now, the interesting part about this is I’m one blogger complaining about a potential price increase and Direct Energy has people in their Public Relations team who are actively searching the internet for just this sort of thing. That actually makes me really happy. I didn’t expect anyone to contact me when I wrote the original article, it was more of a complaint about a potential massive increase.  I fully expected to have to contact Direct Energy and complain (and of course, blog about the whole process) if and when the massive increase actually happened.

Anyways, thanks Crystal of the Direct Energy Public Relations team for contacting me. I can only hope that other companies (ahem, Bell, I’m looking at you) can learn from this approach.

[ The post "Direct Energy Public Relations" originally appeared on Ivany. Why not subscribe to our RSS feed directly if you haven't already?]

Virgin Mobile Canada sent me a text yesterday to indicate that I could donate $5 to the Salvation Army for Haiti by texting HAITI to 45678. This is fantastic.

There’s one more way I think Virgin Mobile could help. We recently (on January 12th ironically) let one of our pre-paid Virgin Mobile phones expire. This was because we no longer need it.  The kicker is that the phone still had pre-paid minutes on it which end up just staying in Virgin Mobile’s pocket.

I think it would be really fantastic if Virgin Mobile would let us donate our recently expired pre-paid balance to help Haiti.

I sent a comment to them through their website but have yet to receive a response.

I’m not trying to make Virgin out to be some bad, uncaring company, I just think it would be really nice for them to allow this to happen.  Had there been a way to send a donation to some Canadian aid organization via text message on January 12, I might have sent enough to use up the majority of the pre-paid balance.

Update: I was hoping to be able to post an update that Virgin was going to donate our expired minutes but, I can’t. Unfortunately, over a week later, I haven’t even received a response from Virgin even though they claim to respond to everything within 48 hours.

[ The post "Virgin Mobile, please give Haiti my expired minutes" originally appeared on Ivany. Why not subscribe to our RSS feed directly if you haven't already?]