First off, during the registration process I unclicked the checkbox asking if I wanted to subscribe to their newsletter only to find a “Thanks for subscribing” email in my inbox shortly after. After double checking my settings on their site, I figured it was sent as a mistake upon registration where they meant to send the unsubscribe email and mistakenly sent the subscribed one. It’s a pretty simple mistake and should have been caught with proper testing.

This morning I awoke to find an email newsletter from FutureShop telling me about some crap they now have I in stock. At this point, ‘it fairly obvious that the registration process screwed up my preferences and request not to get this junk. No problem, I can click the unsubscribe link in the email and everything will be right in the universe – WRONG.

When you click the unsubscribe link you’re taken to a page that asks why, I select “Other” and explain that I never subscribed when I registered. After clicking the next button, you’re taken to a page that asks you to confirm your email address and newsletter preference. Only problem is that this page is broken so you can’t successfully unsubscribe. Look at the screen shot below to see what happens when you try and submit that page.

The breadcrumb clearly indicates that I’m on the right page to unsubscribe. The instructions also clearly state that you need to uncheck the box if you wish to unsubscribe, and they tell me that I can do that at ANY time. However, when you click the Submit button you’re presented with an error that says you need to click the checkbox! So which is it?

Right now, I’m seriously regretting that I signed up on their website. These errors are simple and should have been caught in testing. There is no excuse for putting people through this hassle. I can understand one mistake, but this is a series of errors that screws with my privacy. If you can’t get the website to work correctly, how are you going to get me my order in a timely manner?

What’s my next step to get this junk removed from my inbox? I can’t mark it as junk because I actually need to see the emails about my order.

Now, if only someone would do something to recognize the performance of the women’s team. After all, they’ve been solid for 3 winter Olympics in a row – landing their 3rd Gold medal.

For the Canada – German Men’s Hockey game we had a couple co-workers, myself and various Canadians that were staying in the hotel, sitting around the lobby TV drinking some beer and watching the game. And then it happened – Shea Weber’s amazing “Puck Through the Net” goal. If you didn’t watch this game, you NEED to watch the clip CTV has posted on YouTube. They clearly show the puck passing through the net. INCREDIBLE.  What the video doesn’t show is the when the referee skated over to the net and checked to make sure it wasn’t damaged in any way. There was two black marks on the mesh where the puck passed through, but the net remained intact.

Unfortunately,, CTV is not allowing the video to be embedded into other sites. So you’ll have to click over to YouTube to see this in action. Trust me, it’s worth watching!

It’s been a lot fun getting to this point. We were able to catch the Olympic torch as it passed through our city. My son and I got a chance to meet a local Olympian – John Wood, who had carried the torch and then hung around to talk with the community. He even had his silver medal on hand and was passing it around to the children. My son was really excited to meet an Olympian and to see a real medal in person. And to be honest, so was I.

The kids didn’t really understand what all this torch stuff was about at that time. But now that we’ve been following it across the map, we’re all looking forward to it being carried into the stadium tonight. Still wondering who will be the person to light the torch.

Got some pictures below that I took during the torch relay in downtown Oakville.

Best of luck to all the athletes. Go Canada! and Go Vancouver!

Starbucks has decided to do away with the regular collection of Tazo tea bags and replace them with a more expensive loose leaf option. I can understand that some people might want the loose leaf option, but for me it had too much of a raw tree taste to it.  Not to mention that it costs more too! If you’re going to drop something from your menu, it would be nice if you could replace it with something of equal or lesser value. This is even more important given today’s economic conditions.

The end result here is that I’m done with Starbucks.  I’m going to turn off the auto-refill that’s configured on my Buckies card and call it quits. Truth is that I’ve been thinking of breaking the habit for a while now, this just forces me to do it now. It’s been a good run and I sure enjoyed the jolt that it gave me in the mornings. But I’m not going to pay more for something I don’t care for.  The real hard part is quitting cold turkey, especially at one of the busiest times of the year. 

I think my wife might have actually snapped more pictures than me this trip.  I was having a lot of fun with the Nikon D60’s continuous shooting mode. I managed to take 66 images in 1 minute. I had loaded the camera with a 8GB MicroSD card allowing me something like 1200+ pictures. In total we managed to take about 600 images in a week. Most of them of the kids playing and I’m sure I can find one or two that can be deleted.

Here’s a couple of my favourite shots. The first is a picture of the canoe just sitting off to the side waiting to be used.  We did manage to get it out a couple times and the kids had a blast.  Especially when I managed to tip it over – the water was a little too rough for canoeing. Thankfully, we didn’t get more than a couple feet from shore.

We had a couple good camp fire nights, and on one of those nights, we had some sparklers for the kids.  This is a shot of me re-lighting a sparkler that went out too soon.  This was taken in the darkness with the only source of light being A) the moon, B) the campfire, and C) the lighter in my hand.  I really like how it turned out.

On that same night, after the kids were in bed and the fire was out, I was amazed at how bright the moon appeared to be.  This is a picture of the water washing up on the beach under the light of just the moon.  The shutter was open a long time for this shot – luckily, I had my tri-pod handy.

This next picture is a shot my wife took from the boat.  It’s a “cottage” that’s going in just down the beach from us.  I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I would consider a cottage get-away! Still, I imagine the view of the sunsets will be breath-taking from the top floor. If you’re wondering about scale, that is a full size cement truck down on the beach.

I always try and take a picture of the sunset whenever I’m up at the cottage. Sometimes I can’t because of the rain or cloud cover, but I still try.  Here’s my favourite sunset shot from this trip.

Here’s another picture that my wife snapped.  This is a cloud picture, but if you look to the left hand side of the clouds, you will see what appears to be a cloud wearing sunglasses.  If anyone saw the Pixar short film that played before Up, then you might consider this as proof that Pixar was on to something with that short film.

And to wrap up, here’s a couple quick shots of the kids buried up to their armpits in the sand and one of yours truly. 

That’s a warp on our cottage vacation 2009 edition. With any luck we’ll be back up for a couple days here and there.  But I’m already looking forward to next year. Now it’s back to work with the day job and finishing up those reviews on MobileJaw. Fun time is over for now.

I would really like to see Lego take on Spiderman, Hulk, or maybe even some TV series like the x-files or A-Team. The word on the ‘net is that there is a Harry Potter version in the works. I haven’t been much of a fan of Harry so this doesn’t really excite me much. Perhaps the game will be good even if I don’t know anything about the characters.  Right now, it’s all about Lego Indy.   So Lego,  Is it ready yet?  What about now? 

(Read more about this announcement over at Joystiq)