Notices by Adam (inkslinger@mastodon.club), page 19

@galacticstone I'm pretty sure we get charged for ambulance rides in Canada, too, even though we have socialized medicine. It's kinda wild what isn't covered if you don't have employer health benefits: ambulances, medicine...if you can get to the doctor, they'll see you for free and write a prescription...that you can hopefully afford to fill since the doctor's visit didn't cost anything...

Still better than the US, obviously, but kinda sad for a "socialized" medical system.

Trying to figure out where/how to get new tires installed on my trailer and holy shit, it's not as straight forward as I'd hoped. It's relatively easily with a car. With a trailer? Seems like not many places will actually install them and I'm afraid to do it myself and kill my entire family.

I sort of regret buying a trailer. A tent is fairly foolproof. This whole towing a trailer situation is way more complicated than I thought when I first agreed to buy it.

@thurloat @JessSloan I, too, have an unread copy of Unfinished Tales.

I should probably make a point of changing the CW on posts when the thread has deviated from the original topic.

@keithzg Ah, that makes sense, I guess. I just use the standard dongle.

That's a hilarious and also scathing indictment of the software industry, btw. "Don't tell me about the bugs. If you tell me about them I have to at least try and fix them."

@keithzg Weird. I'm using my Chromecast without issues (mostly; there was some significant buffering the last time I used it, but that so far appears to be rare).

@allan @erinbee Like, if I really wanted to pay for it, Crave would basically fill all the gaps in Netflix, since they've got the rights for most of what Netflix doesn't have in Canada. But if each network had it's own service, that you had to pay to use...I'd probably just go back to paying for cable and/or pirating stuff.

@erinbee @allan I mean, you'd assume they'd have to be, right? Because otherwise the business decision would just be baffling. But at the same time, I can't imagine something like CBS All Access is especially profitable, since it only has content from one network. At least for things like Hulu or Crave, there is a wider range of content, similar to Netflix.

@keithzg @allan This the first time I've ever had Crave. It used to be complete crap and frequently didn't work, according to others, but they completely redesigned it a few months back and it's apparently much better. It works fine for me, but lacks some obvious features, such as the auto-play next episode thing.

@suetanvil True. It's $9.99/mo for Crave TV, which is cheaper if I won't re-watch it (assuming I subscribe for a month after a season is done and binge it, rather than going watching it week-by-week), but it's definitely doable w/o a subscription.

My library might have it on DVD, too. That's how I watched most of Game of Thrones: we borrowed the DVDs from the library.

@allan Not to mention the fact that, frankly, most of the streaming services that aren't Netflix have pretty sub par UX. Crave, for example, doesn't even auto-play the next episode (but CBC's app does, so it's not like Netflix has a patent for "auto-play next episode"). Manually bringing up the next episode from a folder of pirated files offers practically the same experience.

@allan Yep. It's supposedly becoming more risky to pirate, but I've had no need to do so in a long time. Between Netflix, the library and the occasional purchase of a particular show on Google Play, it's legitimately more convenient to go the legal route. But with everyone launching their own streaming services, it's soon going to make more sense to either pirate or just pay for cable again because it'd be the same or cheaper than having 5 streaming subscriptions.

I imagine this is similar to what people in the US feel about CBS All Access. It's mostly crap and making the new Trek shows exclusive to this streaming platform isn't enough to make it worth subscribing.

Mostly, I just wish it was on Netflix in Canada, as is the case in the entire rest of the world outside of the US and Canada.

(OK, Crave is better than CBS, but not enough that I'm willing to pay for it at this point; maybe if Netflix starts to go downhill...)

There are a lot of other little nits I could pick, but others have already done so. Basically, it's a decent show but probably not enough for me to pay for Crave once my trial period ends. If I don't manage to burn through the first two seasons before then, I'll probably shrug and not bother to finish it.

Maybe it gets better later, though, in which case I could see maybe paying for Crave for one month a year, to binge each new season once it's finished airing.

Since I have a free trial of Crave for a couple more weeks before I need to cancel to avoid paying for it, I've started watching Star Trek: Discovery. It's pretty good (although I find most of the Klingon scenes weird and kind of annoying), but it doesn't quite have that "Trek" feel (neither did Enterprise, IMO, but it's even less present here).

Also, this is a minor nit, but dropping an F-bomb in Star Trek just seems weird, even if it was totally appropriate and makes sense for the characters.

Fact or Crap calendar literally admitting that it's so-called "fact" was the result of a typo (and, therefore, not actually a fact).

Thus continues my irrational rage toward this silly desk calendar.

@Douglewars This was a common snack when I was a kid...literally just dipping a stalk of rhubarb into sugar between bites. It was pretty good, from what I remember.

@tootbrute Yeah, it's silly. We have an unfortunate history of prohibition in Canada and many of our liquor laws are still designed to make it difficult to drink. But it's silly to me that we can't drink in a public park, for example, given that the end of cannabis prohibition has resulted in cannabis laws that are, in many ways, more liberal than our liquor laws.

Time for my annual I-illegally-drank-alcohol-in-a-city-park-and-the-world-didn't-end post...

Basically, see above. And it was a family-friendly event. There were three-legged races and a piñata ffs. Can we change these weird, prohibition-era laws, please? I can legally smoke a joint in a park, but not have a beer? Why?!