Our Fantastic, Reliable Postal Service

Spoiler alert—That title is just sarcasm. I'm actually quite ticked off with Canada Post and their lousy service lately. And so begins our tale...

A couple months ago, I had redeemed some Airmiles for an iTunes card in preparation for purchasing fall TV shows. It finally arrived, a month after I made my request. But to be fair, I have no idea when my order was actually shipped, just that previous redemptions usually showed up in a couple weeks. For all I know, it may have been finally shipped only a couple days earlier and it was delivered really fast.

Next up came an online Best Buy order. It showed up two full weeks after being shipped. That's twice as long as it should have. It only should have taken two weeks if it had been shipped from a small town in Newfoundland.

Then came an Amazon order. I have all my Amazon orders shipped to my work, as they frequently use UPS. That way, someone will always be available to sign for the package, and in the event that Canada Post was used for that order it'll just end up in our mailbox instead. Since I always just use their “Free Super-Saver Shipping” option I have no way to predict what shipping method they'll use. This order was shipped using Canada Post. When tracking it one day, it showed that it was forwarded, and delivered, to our office's alternate PO box downtown rather than the one down the street. Not something that should have happened, but it wasn't that big a deal. Until I went to the post office after work and found the parcel was not actually there.

The next morning, however, tracking it again had a new line saying a card had just been put in the box for me to get the parcel from the counter. I went back again that afternoon, and found that contrary to what the tracking notes said, there was no card and the parcel itself was actually in the mailbox. But at least I got my parcel, and didn't have to wait in the long lineup for the counter. I still had to make two trips to the post office though, since they previously said it was delivered but it wasn't. Actually, I wouldn't have even needed to make the second trip if they didn't say it was carded. I only went because they usually ask for ID when picking up parcels at the counter and as such one of my co-workers likely wouldn't have been able to get it.

A week or so later my next order was shipped from Amazon, something I had preordered a couple months prior. About the time it would be delivered, I tracked it and noticed it was out for delivery. A few hours later I tracked it again to confirm delivery, and was shocked to see the line, “Recipient not located at address provided. Item being returned to sender.” I have no idea how the Canada Post employee in question went about determining that I apparently no longer worked there. The timeframe between the two notes was too short for it to have been delivered to the wrong person and for them have taken it back to the post office. I doubt any of my coworkers placed a note in our box saying, “Mike doesn't work here anymore.” At least once the parcel gets received by Amazon they'll give a full refund on it. But not until they get it back, and Canada Post is taking their time getting it back to them.

Then came the big one. My Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray set that I preordered eight months ago, the very moment I learned that the Star Wars Blu-rays were available for preorder. I was hopeful that it would be shipped using UPS, as my Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Blu-ray set, which is about the same physical size, came via UPS. When I got my shipping confirmation email last Friday, I immediately scrolled down to the part in the email where they say how it was shipped. I saw it said Canada Post, and the first thought that came to my mind was, “Oh crap, I hope I actually get it.” But, I was also thinking that Canada Post's service couldn't be that poor that they'd make the same mistake twice.

I was wrong. When tracking it this morning, I saw the same notification that it, too, was being returned to Amazon. The weird thing is the time stamps. At 5:59 AM it said “Out for delivery” and at 6:00 AM, “Recipient not located at this address.” Obviously, they didn't even attempt delivery. And last weekend, when the set was released, retail stores were selling it for the same price I was getting from Amazon, so the thought did cross my mind that maybe I should buy a second copy just in case, and if/when I get my order in the mail I can just return this one. Too bad I didn't, since everyone's prices have gone back up.

Maybe it's just bad luck that I had two parcels in a row that never got to me. But I do see how frequently it happens at work where I ship something to someone and it gets returned with a sticker stating that the recipient had moved, but we did have the correct address and were able to confirm with them that they still do indeed live there. The really sad thing about this is that it'll hurt online retailers like Amazon more than Canada Post. I'll be less likely to order things online now, because I'll be worried that my parcel will be shipped using Canada Post and I'll end up not even receiving it. If it weren't for the fact that nobody else can come close to matching Canada Post's prices, I'd be seriously looking into switching from them for the parcels I ship at work now.

But I guess I should look on the bright side. At least these parcels were all just for movies and TV shows, not important medication or other things vital to my survival.

HD or Not HD?

One of my favourite TV shows, Castle, began its fourth season yesterday and today it appeared in iTunes to purchase a Season Pass. My big dilemma has been whether I should buy the Standard Definition version like the last three seasons, or buy it in High Definition this year. I now have a larger TV, so I'm sure it'll look great in HD. Also, this season it's only $12 more for HD. I don't know if the lower prices this year (last year was $45 for an SD Season Pass, and only $28 this year) are because they simply want to drum up sales, or because it's planned to be a shorter season. Hopefully, the former. It's a great show.

But there's a lot of debate out there over whether or not iTunes' HD videos should technically even be called HD. Or to quote Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” With a full 1080p HD video, you get six to seven times the number of pixels compared to 480p SD video¹. In contrast, the 720p videos you'll find in the iTunes store and many other online video services only have 2-3x pixels². That's a considerable difference. Granted, any 720p videos I've seen (such as Netflix' HD streams) still look nice, but if I'm shelling out an extra dollar or so per episode for HD video, I'd rather get full HD.

Also, even with 1080p there's still a big difference between what you might find online and what you'd get by buying a Blu-ray Disc instead. A BD has a considerable amount of space on it for storing extra data, so in addition to the high resolution the picture has an increased bit rate (meaning even more detail in the picture) plus higher quality sound. When my brother bought a BD player to replace his dead DVD player—and he doesn't have an HD TV yet so he couldn't compare image quality—his first comment was how much better the audio quality was when comparing the BD and DVD of the same movie. Someone who's downloading a video isn't going to want to wait hours (or even days) to watch it, so audio and video quality has to be sacrificed to make for a more manageable download. But since modern encoding methods can get an SD video to an acceptable file size without significantly compromising quality compared to the DVD, choosing an SD video file over the DVD doesn't have the same loss in quality compared to HD files versus Blu-ray Discs. If you want HD video, you're far better off getting a Blu-ray.

Fortunately for me, I'm used to watching SD TV shows. True, the picture isn't as sharp and detailed as with my Blu-ray movies, but I don't seem to notice as much when it's a TV show and not a movie. I'm slowly upgrading my movie collection to Blu-ray when I find good sales on them (I'm hesitant to pay more than $5-10 to re-buy a movie, unless it's one I really like and have gotten my money's worth out of the DVD already), but I'm perfectly happy having DVD-quality TV shows. Well, part of that is because I like ripping my TV shows into my computer to watch via my Apple TV, which I couldn't do with a Blu-ray because I don't have a BD reader for my Mac.

But back to Castle. Since all my TV shows (aside from some newer Anime purchases) are in SD, and as I said I haven't had any complaints with the image quality even on my new TV, I think it's safe to save the $12 and stick with the SD Season Pass. Maybe I can use part of what I'd save to instead buy Barbie: Princess Charm School! Uh, yeah, no thanks...

¹1080p video has a resolution of 1920x1280, or 2,073,600 pixels. 480p video is either 640x480 (307,200 pixels) or 720x480 (345,600 pixels). Technically, widescreen 480p video is displayed at 854x480 resolution, but it's only stored at one of the other two resolutions and is stretched horizontally when displayed.
²720p video has a resolution of 1280x720 (921,600 pixels).

What an Omazing Singer!

Make sure to listen to the whole thing, or if you can't stomach it at least jump to 2 minutes in!

The High-Performance Tablet

Since a while back I signed up for the Disney Movie Rewards program (that's where there are points inside their movies that you can accumulate and spend to get various rewards), I've been regularly receiving their emails. Most of which I don't care about, but occasionally there are offers I find interesting. The other day, an email went around with information on a contest they're running over the summer.

The email detailed the prizes that can be won—Free admission to every Disney movie in 2012, an Epson projector and screen, a High-Performance Tablet, and a million Disney Movie Rewards points. Note the third prize? A "High-Performance Tablet." It's as if they're embarrassed to say what tablet they're giving away, but I'm willing to bet it isn't an iPad.

Could it be a Motorola Xoom perhaps? For which initial reviews said it felt like an incomplete product? Which indeed it was, as it shipped with many headline features that weren't available yet, to be added later via software updates, or by taking it to a store later to physically add the necessary component when they finish making it.

Or perhaps the RIM PlayBook? Which has been the brunt of many jokes? At one point, if you wanted a cell phone that you could check your emails on, you couldn't do any better than one of RIM's Blackberries. And yet, that same company somehow thought it was a great idea to release a tablet that couldn't check email on it's own. You'd need to either link it with a Blackberry, or hope you could check your email using a web site.

Maybe it's the HP TouchPad. Heard of it? I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't. Sales on that were so poor that Best Buy (no idea if this is just US, or includes Canada too) only sold 10% of their stock and is demanding that HP buy back their well over 200,000 units of excess unsold stock. And just today, word got out that HP is going to can their entire tablet and smartphone business. Only weeks after launching, the TouchPad is already obsolete.

Another possibility could be the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Assuming they're allowed to sell it, that is. Legal proceedings are currently underway in various places worldwide to determine that. Apple alleges that the 10.1's physical and user interface design are a direct copy of the iPad and is actively pursuing injunctions against Samsung.

But most likely, the prize is some cheap tablet that I haven't even heard of, by a company I may not have heard of either. And by "high-performance" they mean it's from someone who thinks specs are everything. Throw in some high-powered chips, and hope people think that's what makes a tablet great. Sure, the software may suck big time, but it's faster.

Of course, there's a chance that the prize actually is an iPad, but I doubt it. Aside from the fact that the picture clearly shows a stylus resting on it, which an iPad does not include or need, if the prize was something as wildly popular as the iPad, they most definitely would make it very obvious. I'm 100% certain that telling people they could win an iPad would greatly increase the number of entries in the contest. But, who knows what strange logic goes though the minds of these Big Corporation marketing gurus...

Squeezable Relish

Squeezable ketchup bottles are one of the greatest inventions of all time. Squeezable mustard is also very convenient. Squeezable relish? Who ever thought of that should be shot. Repeatedly. Squeezable bottles are to relish as the old-fashioned glass bottles are to ketchup.

I always have extreme difficulty using my squeezable relish bottles. I squeeze and squeeze and nothing, or very little, comes out. If I squeeze really hard a huge glob might appear on my bun, but it's usually more than I wanted. Recently, I even had the experience where all that would come out is the liquid, leaving the solid portion behind in the bottle.

I don't know why I continue punishing myself by buying them. When this bottle runs out, I'll have to make a point of finding regular green relish in a jar as I do with other relish varieties. Even if it costs more, it's worth it to eliminate the frustration associated with the squeezable bottles.

How NOT to Make a Golf Game

Among other games, publisher Gameloft has a couple great iOS golf games, Let's Golf! and Let's Golf! 2. Currently, both sell for $4.99 each. Imagine my surprise last night when I learned that Let's Golf! 3 was out, and it was free! I assumed it was a limited time deal to gain exposure and did the massive 700+ MB download to try it out. I was wrong.

One of the first things I noticed when checking things out inside the game was that it was "free" because it's one of those "spend your REAL money for things in the game" apps, more commonly known as "Freemium" apps. Not that those are bad things, necessarily. I've been enjoying Tiny Tower, in which you also can spend real money for more "Tiny Bux" that you can use to speed up things like construction and restocking stores. But you can earn Tiny Bux easily enough in-game by simply playing it so you don't feel any pressure to buy them, unless you're the really impatient type.

But that's not the problem with this game.

I wanted to play a few holes to try it out. I did pathetic on the first hole. But, the game would not even let me go on to the next hole. Because I did not get par, I had to redo the hole. This is the first golf game I've ever played that forces you to get par to proceed. After another try I got par and "unlocked" the second hole. Which I promptly failed at.

And if that sounds like a lousy way for someone to cripple a golf game, you're right. But that's not the worst part.

After failing hole 2 a couple more times, I went to once again click the Retry button. Only to be told, "You need 1 energy point. Do you want to buy some now?" and best as I can tell, the only way to get more of these "energy points" is to buy them using real money, or wait. The timer in the corner indicated I would get another one in a few minutes so I switched apps to read some articles instead. After a while I came back, saw I had one Energy Point, and replayed the hole.

This time, I got par so I was allowed to proceed to hole 3. Or so I thought. Trying to advance to the next hole game me that same "You need 1 energy point" message, and I would have to wait almost an hour for one to regenerate. Apparently they automatically regenerate at a rate of one an hour, and it costs one point to play a hole. So, assuming my play skill improves and I can pass each hole on the first try, it will take me another 16 hours to complete this 18-hole course. And it's the same thing in the multiplayer modes too. Want to play a game with a friend? Better be ready to buy energy points if you want to finish your game.

Seriously, what were they thinking? In order for someone to play a few full courses without taking a couple days per course, they would have had to spend more money than it would have cost to just go ahead and buy Let's Golf! 2 which is a full, normal game, and doesn't have any of this junk loaded in it.

It probably goes without saying that this game, if it's even worthy of being called that, has been deleted from my iPad.