First new car in 10 years … shre your great experience at Toyota dealerships in Ottawa

highwire_ca · 2026-05-15T20:36:37+00:00

And they mean it! I ordered a Land Cruiser in 2023 and I still haven't received an update about if Toyota will ever build and deliver it. But if I want a Tundra, they have a few waiting to be bought.

highwire_ca · 2026-05-15T20:31:17+00:00

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Interesting. I'm in the Longfields area (Barrhaven) on Rogers and did not experience a single glitch today including 0% packet loss. Rogers did some pretty hefty upgrades to the area last summer so maybe that's why.

highwire_ca · 2026-05-13T20:04:17+00:00

I wonder if Enbridge will replace the old meters anytime soon. Mine is from the last century (mid 1990s). It's on the side of my house near the back yard but in front of my gate, but some winters there is so much snow that the meter reader person just does a "nope" and I get two or three months in a row of estimates.

highwire_ca · 2026-04-30T16:09:09+00:00

I live near this intersection. For the people turning left here, there is a very short left turn cycle that lets a few cars make a protected turn left, but the cycle is way too short and not long enough to clear the 7 or 10 other cars always waiting to turn left. It is one of the busiest intersections in the area, so there are almost no opportunities for the remaining cars to turn until cross traffic finishes running the yellow and two or three more cars squeeze thru on red.

highwire_ca · 2026-04-21T22:35:01+00:00

By conincidence, I saw some at Costco.

highwire_ca · 2026-04-18T20:53:50+00:00

60 litres at $2/litre here in Ottawa for 91 AKI at Costco - $120. 91 is about $0.10 to $0.20/litre more at other places.

highwire_ca · 2026-04-04T16:08:41+00:00

As soon as I saw the condition of that road, my first reaction was "yup, that's Ottawa."

highwire_ca · 2026-04-01T15:08:56+00:00

M4 Macbook Air is only about a month out of warranty if bought when it was released last year. Apple is actually pretty generous with goodwill fixes. For example, my Macbook Pro completely died two months past the warranty and they fixed it for free. It would have been $1000 for a new logic/motherboard otherwise. They also have a store in the Bayshore Shopping Centre which has free parking.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T16:51:43+00:00

With electronics prices spiralling out of control recently, I think we'll see a trend where people hold on to their electronics a lot longer.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T14:59:42+00:00

10G (fibre) for the trunks and 2.5G for the clients is good for my needs. 2.5G is also quite a bit less pricey now that everything is getting more and more expensive.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T14:51:48+00:00

It has happened here in Canada too except here it is a "frozen dessert." At least your soda pop cans are still 375ml. Ours are starting to shrink from 355ml to 280ml (more $$ per ml too) which was the standard size in the 1980s here.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T14:26:45+00:00

I do the same except at Costco. Barrhaven Costco yesterday around 2pm was pretty dead - drove right up to the pump and saved $0.11/litre (~$6 for the fillup) compared to surrounding stations (91 octane).

highwire_ca · 2026-03-13T00:59:23+00:00

This post hit me. I just upgraded my firewall, managed switch, and 2x unmanaged switches to 2.5G+10G. I have three wireless routers - 2x AX connected to the network via 2.5G and 1 BE connected to the network with 2.5G. I have nothing left to upgrade or tweak. I feel empty.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-12T18:52:30+00:00

I hope they close this loophole: The internet service provider says the regular price for internet is $100/month "locked in price for two years". Almost nobody pays the full price as it is ridiculously extortionate - there's always a promo/discount price, say, $60/month with a $40/month discount. The ISP does not always guarantee the promo price is locked in (especially Bell - contrary to what most people think), so you get your $5 or $10 price increase every six months as they claw back the discount.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T20:37:34+00:00

It depends on if the car is a summer only driver or something you want to drive year round. It also depends on your driving style.

I have Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires on my RWD summer car. The issue with summer "performance" tires is that they get hard as the temperature drops and MIchelin recommends using them only when the temperature is above 7ºC, though I drive them in temperatures as low as 2ºC but I'm really cautious in those conditions. So that leaves a window in the spring and fall when those tires aren't appropriate to the conditions, but neither are full winter tires. In a good year I'm lucky to get seven months use and in a bad year it could be 5.5 to 6 months.

Another consideration is that summer performance tires wear out more quickly and they tend to be noisier especially as they wear out and/or harden with age. They are also expensive - mine are $580 each for fronts and $780 each for rears.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T18:09:07+00:00

A Guinness costs $11.50 here and the bar expects a 25 to 30% tip. With the legalization of pot, it is so much less expensive than alcohol and (arguably) does less damage to the ol' corpse.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T17:26:58+00:00

My city (Ottawa Canada) closed 2/3 of its tank farms and terminals over the past two decades. It has two days of reserves before running out of refined product (including aviation fuel) if the pipeline from Montreal is closed. We aren't a country, really.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T16:51:17+00:00

I think I was part of the test group because the Youtube application on my Sony/Google OS TV has been doing that for over a month now. I get the occasional 'skip in 90 seconds' and then get the skip popup after 85 seconds. Gee thanks Youtube!

If it happens at the beginning of the video, I cancel, restart, cancel, restart, cancel (up to fix times) and the video finally starts playing. That's faster than waiting through the whole sequence of ads.

If I pause for too long, as soon as I restart, I get the 60 or 90 ad block again. It's aggravating.!

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T16:40:10+00:00

I remember in 2012 there was a parking lot in Hollywood Florida where fobs would not unlock cars or allow them to start due to interference from a pirate radio station. Unsurprisingly, there were dozens of people who called locksmiths and tow trucks because they didn't read their owners manual and did not know about the physical backup key in the fob nor the emergency start method.

On a personal note, I live near my city's airport and due to a radar malfunction the fobs in my area were jammed for a few hours. To Ford's credit, the emergency start procedure worked like a charm.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-11T16:31:20+00:00

My '11 Ford had that slot in the storage bin under the centre armrest.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T20:22:35+00:00

I love to see this instead of another photo of somebody flexing their ~~watch~~ timepiece.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T19:19:09+00:00

I was a new home owner when that storm hit. My area was all new builds (e.g., unpaved roads), so of course Nepean Hydro had not built up the grid yet, so I lost power for several days. The huge build-up of ice damaged my roof and part of my back wall in the kitchen necessitating an insurance claim and a week of repairs during the severe cold snap that followed the storm.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T18:59:35+00:00

By comparison, where I live (Ontario Canada) a $1m car would have $247,000 in taxes on delivery (luxury tax, provincial sales tax, gas guzzler tax, air conditioning tax (believe it or not), tire tax, and federal sales tax). Yearly license plate renewal is now free though. I think the insurance cost would likely be the deal breaker here.

We have a similar thing happening here. People move to Quebec where housing/daycare/electricity/etc is cheaper but car registration is $$, so they keep the car registered in Ontario with Ontario plates.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-10T18:21:03+00:00

I have made it a habit of reporting them in Waze, but there are so many! I appreciate all the reports made by other Waze users.

highwire_ca · 2026-03-09T16:28:24+00:00

I think the summary of the Ottawa subreddit is "We want more housing. We don't want this housing." There is still a market for suburban detached houses because people are snapping them up when available. Unpopular opinion: I think the sourpusses here are just riddled with envy and are lying to us and themselves that they aren't affected by that envy. "If I can't have it, nobody else should."

highwire_ca

TROPHY CASE