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The greatest little boombox

Wow. Just wow.

Last fall I had stumbled upon a little device while browsing the web. The Jawbone Jambox. A small wireless (or wired) speaker system that sounded like a great fit for camping and exploring. This little device claimed to be loud and have a great battery life. I was stoked! A little more digging around and I found that it would cost me about $200 and there were other similar products that had similar or even better specs for less money. I turned my attention to these products and decided that we would have something for our next camping season.

A few weeks later we headed to the nearest city that had a Best Buy store (a six hour drive!). I decided to drop into the newly built Best Buy and noticed a Jambox demo unit. I hit the button and proceeded to pick my jaw up off of the floor. This tiny little speaker made more noise then the stereo in my 11 year old CR-V! I then came to the realization that a lot of people who review gadgets are spoiled. This thing was excellent!

I didn’t buy it that day as I knew I had seen it on sale when digging for info a few weeks earlier. I went back and told my wife about it and got the nod of approval.

The Jambox then fell to the back of my mind… until Black Friday came along. I took the morning off of work and stayed home to find a TV for our living room. After I was successful with that search I decided to surf around and see what was being offered on other websites. I made my way to apple.ca and noticed the red Jambox on sale for $150. Click, click, ordered!

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This little speaker has since brought music back into our house. Pairing it with my iPhone was dead easy. Hit play on my iPhone and then let the speaker blast. In the past we used my phone to play music in the evening while bathing our boys but now we let the Jambox provide the sound.

The battery life is great. I’ve charged it three times in the month and a half that we’ve been using it. The sound is crazy for such a little device. Everyone that has seen it loves it and can’t believe that such a little box could put out so much sound.

There are other features that this speaker has:

  • It’s a speakerphone! I’ve even used it on the dash of my old noisy CR-V with four studded tires attacking my ears!
  • Live Audio mode, which lowers the volume while giving more realistic sound – To our ears it just lowers the volume and doesn’t offer much in return.
  • Downloadable sound effects and voices – 8-bit all the way!
  • Apps – Gives the round button on top of the Jambox different functions such as speed dialing or the ability to read incoming text messages.
  • A Chain – So you can wear some really loud bling. The chain is free but shipping to Canada wasn’t worth it. 🙁

If you’re in the market for a small battery powered bluetooth speaker try this one. You would have to be pretty picky not to like it!
 

 

Rene

 

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New Camera

I finally have a new digital camera. I upgraded from my Canon S330 which I bought a few years ago and literally beat the life out of. I now have a Canon SD500. A 7.1 megapixel compact camera. It’s nearly the size of a deck of cards and has some excellent features such as unlimited 640×480 30 fps movie mode (up to 1 gig) and the color accent feature.

After having this camera for 2 weeks I am very pleased and I plan on taking lots of pictures. I also have a 1 gig Sandisk Ultra II SD card to go along with it and the spare battery and leather case combo kit.

Some sample pics will follow soon. I’ve been very busy lately with work and around the house so my time is limited right now.

Rene

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4 hours with a Ridgeline

And we loved every minute of it. Unfortunately it may be the last four hours for a long time. More on this later.

We made our way to Gander on Saturday morning where we met up with John Tobin at Simmons Honda. I usually deal with Mike Lundrigan there but he was out for the day and he made sure that John was available to take care of us. Fist he started to show off some of the features and soon realized that I kenw mroe about the truck then he did. He then basically passed me the keys and said take your time. After about an hour of driving and getting our dinner we stopped back and asked if we could use her for our days activities. He told us that he was working until 4. 🙂

Ridgeline

One of the biggest things we noticed about this truck is its actual interior size. Nothing quite showed me the size inside. This thing is just as big as our GMC Sierra Extended Cab we own now. But the Ridgeline feels a lot more comfortable to sit in and drive.

Ridgeline

We used the truck for about four hours to run our errands as we live in a small town and this was our chance to pick up some groceries and visit Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart and spend some $$$. Everywhere we went people looked at us trying to figure out what we were driving. Eyeballs popped when I loaded up the in bed truck at Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart. I think the swing out tailgate and trunk lid kinda caught people off guard.

Ridgeline

Ridgeline

We truly enjoyed the way the truck rode and handled the bumbs. She didn’t bounce across the road like our GMC when hitting potholes and the Rigdeline drove a lot like our 2000 Honda CR-V. The two real flaws we have with the Ridgeline is the box size and the towing capacity. We have a snowmobile and it hangs out a nice bit in our GMC with its extra foot and a half and Siobhan really wants a larger camper and with the Ridgeline we would be struggling to find one that fits our wants and can still be towed safely.

The in bed trunk is huge. We were very impressed with it and I had to jump in to show it’s size.

Ridgeline

Finally we got back to the dealership and started looking at the pricing. Looks like it’s gonna be a while before we get one to park in our driveway. Even with a lease we would be looking at over $700 per month. Most of the figures we worked out actually came closer to $800+. Honda Canada’s Finance rate is high on this model at 7.4% to 7.9%. Oh well. we had our four hours of joy at least.

Enjoy the pics, and if you are considering a Ridgeline and can afford it I don’t think you would be disappointed. One missing feature that someone pointed out to the salesman was a cigarette light plug-in in the in bed trunk. It would be very handy for those who might want to add a protable 12 volt fridge. Easy enough to add though. Tap into the 7-pin wiring harness for the trailer hook-up!

Rene

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Snowbear Plow: Update

Just thought I would update everyone who has found my site via a google search for Snowbear Plows.

Snowbear sent me a new winch and strap. The blade has held up pretty good for a full winters use. All in all I am pleased and my experience with the winch seems to be a unique one. When I got a hold of Snowbear they made sure to take excellent care of the situation and couriered a new winch out to me. The problem with the old winch happened everytime the temperature got down to about the freezing mark. It seems the winch freezes up. Not a good thing on a snowplow! 🙂 I did find that I could get the winch to work most times by using the manual crank to free the winch and then to tap it a few times with my wooden ice scraper. This would be ok, but sometimes I would stop plowing long enough to get out and shovel some snow into it’s path and by the time I get back into the truck the winch would be frozen again.

For the money, I feel the Snowbear Plow is an excellent tool for the job. Much cheaper then one of the big guys and it does my driveway just as good as my old Western Plow used to!

(For searchers: snow bear plow )