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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014
RICHMOND-NEWS.COM
ART&LIFE
Taste: Be adventurous ‹ from page 19
“Taste Champagne and sparkling wines first, then whites, and finally reds to avoid palate fatigue. If you taste a rich heavy wine, it overpowers your ability to taste a lighter wine.” Another tip is to make sure you spit into the tasting buckets or sip very small amounts for obvious reasons. Carras suggests you attend the Festival Tasting Room, the heart of the festival, on several evenings. Plan a strategy: sparkling wines and dessert wines one evening, whites and reds from France on another evening. Then, if you go on a third evening, sample wines from other regions of the world. If you can only attend one evening, go on
the Thursday night since fewer people attend compared with the weekend. Arrive promptly at 7 p.m. to take advantage of the smaller crowds during the first hour. When lineups get longer, go to another table. And don’t taste your favourites. This is a unique opportunity to discover something new, so be adventurous. Carras’ final advice? “Don’t overdo it. Spend the first hour and a half seriously tasting the wine. Then spend the final hour and a half relaxing and having some fun. Let’s not forget the social aspect about wine. We’re there to meet people, have fun, and shake hands!” To discover more about the many wine festival events and to purchase tickets, visit www.vanwinefest.ca
Consumer Protection for Homebuyers Buying or building your own home? Find out about your rights, obligations and information that can help you make a more informed purchasing decision. Visit the B.C. government’s Homeowner Protection Office (HPO) website for free consumer information.
Services • New Homes Registry – find out if any home registered with the HPO: • can be legally offered for sale • has a policy of home warranty insurance • is built by a Licensed Residential Builder or an owner builder • Registry of Licensed Residential Builders
Resources • Residential Construction Performance Guide – know when to file a home warranty insurance claim • Buying a Home in British Columbia Guide • Guide to Home Warranty Insurance in British Columbia • Maintenance Matters bulletins and videos • Subscribe to consumer protection publications
www.hpo.bc.ca Toll-free: 1-800-407-7757 Email: hpo@hpo.bc.ca
TECH LIFE
Reducing digital noise Taming Facebook, shutting down Amazon
Studies have shown there are only three kinds of people who like Facebook: 1. first-time parents with lots of pictures of their amazing child to share; 2. grandparents of those
PracticalGeek Barry Link amazing children who want to see every one of those pictures; 3. people with a burning need to share quotes by Gandhi, Oprah and Martin Luther King (in that order). For the rest of us,
Five Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Home Warranty Insurance Buyers of new homes in B.C. are protected by Canada’s strongest construction defect insurance. Those who learn as much as they can about their home warranty insurance will get the most out of their coverage. 1. Make note of each coverage expiry date. The home warranty insurance provided on new singlefamily and multi-family homes built for sale in B.C. protects against different defects for specific periods of time, including 2 years on labour and materials (some limits apply), 5 years on the building envelope (including water penetration) and 10 years on the structure. Review your policy for details. 2. Know what’s covered and what isn’t. Make sure you understand the extent and limitations of your coverage by reading through your insurance documents. You can also search the HPO’s free online Residential Construction Performance Guide. 3. Make a claim. If you need to make a claim for defects not otherwise taken care of by your builder, be sure to send details in writing to your warranty provider prior to the expiry of coverage. 4. Maintain your home. Maintain your home to protect your coverage, and if you receive a maintenance manual for your home, read it and follow it. 5. Learn more. Check out the Homeowner Protection Office’s Guide to Home Warranty Insurance in British Columbia, a free download from www.hpo.bc.ca.
Facebook is an evil necessity. We’re there because everyone else is there, and unless you want to be a social exile in modern times, Facebook is the default location to be on the Internet. Indeed for many people, Facebook is the Internet, which is exactly what Facebook wants. It’s also exactly what I don’t want. For me Facebook is another service among a set of online services that I use for particular needs. I want to use it when I need it, and when I don’t need it, I don’t want it to bug me. The problem is that Facebook is designed to be in my face. Facebook has virtues. It’s free and it’s useful. Opening up the main Facebook page on my browser, I can see at a glance that among my friends Bruce is taking more great photos, Tara is complaining about haggis and Dhyana climbed a mountain. Facebook allows me to keep tabs on what my friends are doing and what interests them. From there, unfortunately, it’s a steep cliff. Moving to the left side of the page, I’m presented with new notifications on the groups I belong to, various friendship circles I’ve created and events I utterly don’t care about such as games friends are playing and pages they want me to like. On the far right, is a notification about Facebook activity of various friends. Little of that information is important, but at least it’s contained on the web page and not spilling into the rest of my digital life. To make sure it stays there, there are a few steps to take. First, go to the Settings menu and find Notifications. Starting at the top, unless you want a noisy computer, turn off notification sounds. Then go to the emails section and decide whether you want to restrict email notifications to security, privacy and account notices (not a bad idea) or go into the list of 63 (!) different events Facebook wants to send you an email about and decide which see NOTIFICATIONS › page 21