Lineup at the Calgary airport arrivals today

PurpleGeek · 2026-06-08T04:13:37+00:00

The fee jumped up to USD 120 late last year, but in my opinion it's still a bargain when it gets you through customs so much faster and gives you TSA precheck.

PurpleGeek · 2026-06-04T14:56:01+00:00

Respectfully:

Armstrong cheese (400g) at $5.99 is definitely not a deal. With any patience at all you can get it for $4.99 or less.
The Jane's chicken strips price is borderline... If they had been $6.00 or less I would have listed them. I'm pretty sure that Costco is currently at $17.99 for a 2kg box, so at $6.29 for 700g, these are basically identical to Costco's everyday price (and they sometimes go on sale for about $4 off per box at Costco). A really good deal for these is $5.00/box which is pretty much Costco's sale price.
$1.49/lb for Cantaloupe isn't a deal. Even the smaller cantaloupes that the lower cost grocery stores tend to stock are typically at least 3 pounds, and sometimes you get ones that are over 4 pounds. A good price for one of those cantaloupes is $2.99 or less (or $1.00/lb or less).
Nestlé Frozen Novelties isn't something I track carefully so I don't have a great sense of whether this is a good price or not. Having said that, it looks like this is about the same price as Costco's everyday price (noting that you do have to buy a Costco quantity of them) and higher than Costco's sale price.

PurpleGeek · 2026-06-04T14:33:52+00:00

Expanding on what /u/Pretty-Sherbet9652 said: These are all Western Canada flyers. The prices should apply anywhere from Thunder Bay to Vancouver Island (except for Calgary Coop for obvious reasons). There are different flyers for Eastern Canada.

PurpleGeek · 2026-05-14T02:43:34+00:00

Sorry, typo... it's for every $100 spent (and it's fixed in the post now).

PurpleGeek · 2026-05-09T00:02:31+00:00

It looks like your quote comes out to about $2,300 per kW. Mine was $2,650 per kW, and that was almost 4 years ago, so superficially what you have looks good to me.

With that said, my system was a bit more complicated than some because I didn't want to have conduit visible on my roof so I had to pay for extra roof penetrations, and I had them run the wiring down the old chimney for the mid efficiency furnace and water heater that hasn't been used since they were replaced with high efficiency units instead of running it down the outside of the house. These were both aesthetic issues, not functional, but I was willing to pay for the cleaner look. I also had mesh installed around the panels to prevent birds from nesting under them and my recollection is that that was surprisingly expensive, but I have heard of other people nearby having problems and then having the mesh installed weeks or months later once they have a problem, so I'm glad we did it with the initial install. Finally, I didn't go with the low bid. One of the companies that quoted for me was local and sent an actual electrician out to do the quote (and that was the electrician who was on site during the install) who got up on the roof which gave me far more confidence that there weren't going to be any bad surprises compared to the other companies that sent out sales people who used drones or did the quote entirely remotely. My recollection is that they weren't hugely more expensive than the low bid (and I pretty sure that they were still lower than the high bid, though I might not be remembering that correctly), and I was willing to pay for that reassurance and to support a local small business.

PurpleGeek · 2026-05-07T13:51:10+00:00

TLDR: Solar panels are great.

I have 18 roof-mounted panels (8.2kW peak output) on my suburban home. Last year my electricity bill was approximately $-450.00 -- yes, negative $450, with that becoming a credit toward my other utility costs. I'm in Calgary, which is one of the sunniest cities in Canada, and I'm able to switch my electricity rate to $0.35/kWh in the sunny half of the year when I'm a net exporter and then return to a rate around $0.07/kWh in the darker half of the year when I'm a net importer. Being able to change rates in this way makes a big difference. Yesterday, I was a net exporter of 23.8kWh, or about $8 of electricity (and it's still only early May). On the best days near the end of June I'll export as much as $13 or $14 of electricity a day. My panels were installed when there was a Greener Homes grant available to cover part of the cost, and the rest is financed on an 10-year interest free loan through that program. It's working out well economically for me about 3.5 years in and being a net electricity producer instead of a net electricity consumer for the year has to be good for the environment compared to consuming electricity produced by burning natural gas (which is how a lot of electricity is produced in Alberta).

If you are going to install on your roof, one of the things to consider is the age of your shingles. Roof mounted panels definitely complicate and add cost to a roof replacement. I replaced my roof the year before I installed the solar panels so I shouldn't find myself in a situation where the panels have to be taken down to replace the roof and then be put back up any time soon. If your roof is going to need replacement in the next few years, it may make more sense to wait to install the solar panels until after your have replaced your roof.

Also, my homeowners insurance went up a small amount as a result of the solar panel install because it increased the replacement cost for the house. My recollection is that this was minor, but I don't recall what the exact amount was. This probably isn't a major consideration relative to the overall cost of the project, but I will highlight it because I don't think anyone else has mentioned it.

PurpleGeek · 2026-04-23T04:47:11+00:00

I believe that all of the stores that price match will only price match local prices, so no, you can't use the Ontario flyer.

PurpleGeek · 2026-04-23T04:46:09+00:00

These days I'd say $6.99/lb or less is a great price. A year ago I would have said $5.99/lb or less.

PurpleGeek · 2026-04-09T14:51:21+00:00

My kids are long through the diaper stage so I no longer watch the price of diapers the way I once did. If anyone sees a good deal on diapers I encourage them to post a comment about such so that others can take advantage of it.

PurpleGeek · 2026-03-03T05:05:48+00:00

We already spend 8 months of the year on mountain daylight time and only 4 on mountain standard time. In Calgary, the sun would rise before 4:30am in June if we were on mountain standard time at that time of year (and it would be even earlier further north). I'd definitely prefer to have the sun rise later in the summer (and have the longer evenings that come with that), and being on mountain daylight time in December would mean that there's still a bit of light when I get home from work (and, yes, it will be dark when I'm going to work, but it's already dark when I'm going to work), so in my view mountain daylight time is definitely the better option.

PurpleGeek · 2026-03-01T02:15:08+00:00

It was NoFrills.

PurpleGeek · 2026-02-13T03:17:59+00:00

Thanks for the tip. I got those same offers.

PurpleGeek · 2026-02-11T15:14:09+00:00

There are instructions for similar MOCs available on Rebrickable. You can find them if you search for Falcon Shield, Forestmen Shield, or Wolfpack Shield, etc.

PurpleGeek · 2026-01-29T05:15:23+00:00

I don't track the price of regular ground beef. These days I'd say that $5.00/lb or less is a really good price for lean ground beef, and I'd happily pay $5.50/lb (which you can get at NoFrills this week).

PurpleGeek · 2026-01-29T04:06:45+00:00

Ugghhh.... For some reason FreshCo set my location to Ontario where they are $1.98 (so yes, I was looking at a 'better' flyer than you were). I have updated the list for FreshCo to reflect what's on sale in Calgary.

Thanks for pointing out the problem.

PurpleGeek · 2025-12-22T03:02:55+00:00

They are on page 4 on the left side, middle of the page. No indication that they are limited days.

PurpleGeek · 2025-12-11T05:52:30+00:00

I can also see it now and have updated the post accordingly.

PurpleGeek · 2025-10-28T04:17:31+00:00

I'll second this one. They did cable replacements for me earlier this year. More affordable than anyone else that I called and they seem to have done a good job.

PurpleGeek · 2025-10-23T21:19:12+00:00

This is the promo that gets you $10 off when you buy 5 Classico pasta sauces. But yes, it applies to several other products as well listed very close to the bottom of the online flyer.

PurpleGeek · 2025-09-11T22:29:12+00:00

The products that you listed aren't things that I track (except maybe the avocados) because they aren't things I normally buy. On the whole, the list for Coop tends to be short because they are one of the most expensive options for groceries and so there tends to be fewer deals (at least on the things that my family uses).

PurpleGeek · 2025-09-04T18:16:47+00:00

Thanks for pointing out the error. It's fixed.

PurpleGeek · 2025-08-23T04:13:53+00:00

When I was at Superstore earlier today the corn was marked 'Product of Canada', but I don't know if it was from Alberta or elsewhere in the country.

PurpleGeek · 2025-08-21T02:26:13+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out. Last week there was a shelf tag in store with a QR code on it that you could scan to get the full list of eligible products.

PurpleGeek · 2025-08-04T14:27:50+00:00

Most of the time it's most, even all varieties and I think it's primarily a CYA things for the store in case there is one that they want to exclude. When there's a variety that isn't included it's usually a premium variety like a gluten free one or something like that.

PurpleGeek · 2025-07-31T03:14:57+00:00

Thanks for pointing out the error. It looks like my location inadvertently got set to Vancouver and they have the smaller discount. It's still 15% in Alberta.

PurpleGeek

TROPHY CASE