When I opened my web browser today, there was a story there about the fact that the American division of Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy protection. That got me thinking about how times have changed. As recently as five years ago, Blockbuster was the only place to go when you wanted to rent a movie. Not so much any more. While in MA, we had a subscription with Blockbuster that consisted of a combination of mail-out movies and coupons for free in-store rentals. The subscription suited us quite well, because we, who weren’t really “in the know” about which new movies were coming out, still liked to walk up and down the aisles to see what had been recently released. We would then pick up a free rental with our coupon and go home and add various movies to our mail-out queue. Blockbuster Canada doesn’t have the subscription options that Blockbuster America did, and, although we haven’t really been watching movies since we moved to MB, we have been transitioning to a new way of consuming movies. Last weekend, we rented a movie on iTunes and watched it on our TV while it was uploaded from the computer we use as a media center. The experience was a good one, and we’ll probably go that route again. I have to say, though, that I still prefer to walk the aisles of the movie store to see what’s been recently released. For some reason, I find Blockbuster’s and iTunes’ websites frustrating in this regard.
Month: September 2010
Cars
As you know, we bought a Subaru Outback this spring. Pam has mentioned several times that she likes the car. Good thing. Otherwise, she would be in disagreement with these experts, who say that the 2010 Outback is the best car made for a Mom. Having read their opinion, however, I’m now wondering whether it’s also the best car made for a Dad.
Speaking of cars, do you know how much it costs you to keep your vehicle on the road? Recently, I thought it would be a good idea to take all of the bills we’ve kept over the years and compile a spreadsheet that would tell us how much it has cost us to drive our VW. The VW certainly keeps the fuel costs down, but I was somewhat shocked at the amount that maintenance and insurance add to the cost of driving. I haven’t double-checked my formulas on the spreadsheet yet, but the preliminary verdict is that it has cost us about 35 cents per mile (which excludes the cost of diesel) to drive the Jetta! If you add fuel costs, that means that a trip out Steinbach way and back costs about 50 dollars, and trip to Riding Mountain and back twice that much. Ouch!
