TwoBlog

I just received an email from Elena with the subject:

“I want you now, tell me reciprocate and get me!”

The body of the email isn’t very earnest either. I spare you the details except for one sentence:

“Come on, help me to remove my sadness”.

I have a hard time believing (s)he is sincere. It breaks my heart.

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Oh, I forgot to mention one massively unforgettable item in my 20 words:

The government has granted Canadians the privilege to open a tax-free savings account where we can deposit $5000 a year. interest earned is tax free AND no penalties for withdrawls.

Now, if I read this correctly, if you grow your account above the $5000 in a year due to ROI, you are allowed to replenish the account to the highest level achieved. For example, if I deposit $5000 into super risky penny stocks that double in the first year to $10K you can now withdraw and replenish the account to the $10K amount. Then the next year you can add another $5K, etc. etc.

If this is indeed the case, in 20yrs you could have a tax free account that has a minimum of $100K. This is very, very, very sweet! With some aggressive work and some fortune (depending on how risky you go), that number could be even higher. You could have a nice little egg on top of your RRSP, Pension and other taxable investments. And this egg, you could pull off of the interest without ever having to worry about paying taxes.

So, continue to maximize your RRSP investments. But also make sure you tap in the 5K a year into your TFSA.

Now, here’s the bad, and I mean BAD news:

When (not if) in 10-15 years from now the government claws back on OHIP and we have to start footing most (or all) of our health bills, they can point to this bone they threw us and take the stance: “Hey, we gave you a wonderful opportunity to save your money for your health when we introduced the TFSA in 2009. Too bad if you didn’t have the foresight to anticipate this happening.” - OUCH, could the government be this ruthless?

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We’ve had snow on the ground for almost 2 weeks now. Usually we do see snow at this time of year but it typically melts away and never sticks around until Christmas. When I look out the window, it looks like the middle of winter. We have about a foot of snow on the ground and I doubt it’s going to go away until April.

This is going to be one loooooooooonnnnnnnngggggggggg winter. Crap.

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I got the new James album. The first since their 2 year breakup. It is a triumphant return. I like this album for the following reasons:

1) It takes on a similar format and sound to the “Sound” album…arguably my favourite James offering. They’ve brought back the trumpet overtones that is distinctly James. They also have those emotional bursts that they are known for. The kind that set your heart soaring. Very positive, iambic, melodic, anthemic. Great energy by Tim Booth’s voice.
2) The songs are well laid out. In a way that is typical to James but may not be noticeable to most: they start off with an upbeat song (Bubbles) and then lay down their trademark upbeat emotional gem on track 3 (Waterfall). Then they rollercoaster it with varying songs that alternate from soft/serious to upbeat/fun. Then the album finishes of with a typical powerful and emotional crescendo like song: I Wanna Go Home. Probably top 2 or 3 in my favs for James (top 10 in my overall).

This format is what has worked so well for them in the past. With Millionaires for example, the lead in “Crash”, the following “Just Like Fred Astaire” and then the rollercoaster of up/downbeat songs until the crescendo finale “Vervaceous”. Or how about Pleased To Meet you that starts with “Space”, 3rd track “Beefcake” and then the near finale crescendo of Getting Away With It.

I love their layouts and am very happy that they’ve either intentionally or unintentionally implemented it in the new album.

Anyway, they are back. Some might say the sound hasn’t changed or progressed. That they are the same old James. But I think that’s something that should have been done so that they can rediscover what makes them unique and then build from there.

A little triviata: It was 9 years ago almost to the day when I was in England for the golf application. It was on this trip that I picked up the newly release Millionaires album. Come to think of it, I think the last few releases have all come out in October/November. Coincidence?

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I have been a Good Life member for over 10 years. I became a member just after graduating university. The only thing that mattered then was finding something cheap. The club was a perfect match for me and for every other grad as witnessed by the age group of the crowd that goes there.

Time passed and I got comfortable going to that club. I grew up with those grads and watched new youngsters joining the gym. I thought the equipment was great, plentiful and modern.

Then, the closest branch closed down on Columbia Street. The owner of the building is converting it to office space. Can’t blame them because this area is becoming quite lucrative for office space and real-estate to build 5 story student ghettos. Chris my friend, I wonder what your old property would be worth today? You’ll be happy to know that the house still stands there like an old 18th century church surrounded by imposing city-scrapers. Must be some wild-assed voodoo going on there.

When the branch closed, there was a solemn oath that was pledged by the company that a new, improved, and state of the art facility would be ready on Weber/Columbia just down the road. 2 months have passed and we’re being directed to the WLU gym to sweat it out with a million other acne-faced goobers. Nothing will be ready until at least January.

Well, I was sad. Even with having a baby I still would have time to hit the gym and there’s no way I’m going to WLU to battle for parking space and then wrestle for limited equipment with some muscle-head.

So, I poked my head into the gym across the street from work (literally) and a whole new world was opened up. I will miss you o Good Life. I will not miss you that much however. Yes, I’m paying a bit more at this new gym, but I like paying more to keep the riff-raff out and to work out in an enormous gym that is usually virtually empty when I go. Those who are there are usually mouse-slinging desk jockey types who are there to do their business and go home, not strut around and ruffle their feathers like a peacock. The facility including the change rooms are very modern, relaxing (lounge with HiDef TVs) and immaculately clean. The equipment is ultra-modern and always in working order. I really didn’t know it could be this way.

Yes, there’s a time and a place for a Good Life membership. But then there’s another time and a place for a step or two above. Man, I must be getting old.

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Our household was very disappointed with the broadcasting of the Olympics in Beijing. The games themselves seemed very good and there were some pretty good events like the 100M and 200M dominiation by Usain Bolt. It’s the broadcasters we loathe.

Sonia (and I agree with her) was very disappointed in what NBC and CBC (and TSN I guess, but who cares about them since they only were able to show basketball and boxing. Whoppeee!) were broadcasting, particularly in prime time. Of the most irritating things: why did they have to spend about 40% of their broadcast time showing profiles on Olympians and docucrap on China? My god, we can do this ourselves on the internet. So, add in commercials and of the ‘billion’ of hours of broadcasting, about 25% was actually devoted to showing the events themselves. And that leads to aggravating point number 2: they were often showing stuff that we just didn’t care to watch. IN PARTICULAR: BEACH VOLLEYBALL. Man, this made up hokey sport for drunken teens to play on spring break shouldn’t even be in the Olympics (nor should a lot of other events like syncro swimming. Table tennis can stay but it should be officially renamed to ping-pong). If you add the amount of time CBC spent on Beach Volleyball, now were down to about 18-20% of the broadcasting time was spent on anything remotely interesting. And get this: Canada didn’t even have any entrants in Beach Volleyball that would have garnered any real interest! But I guess that could be said for pretty much every event (Bah-dum!)

So, grow up you silly excuse for a ‘national’ television station and start using TV a little better. Start getting the real guns involved like Rogers and start offering multiple On-Demand options so that I can watch what event I want, when I want. Boy, I was Jonesing for some badminton or archery, you know, stuff I never see outside of the Olympics but not once did I catch any of that. And don’t give me that ‘how do we make money if we go On-Demand’ crap because there are many creative ways to make a profit going down that path. Though I’m not going to make your life easier by telling you how.

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This winter has been a killer on the roads. We’ve been experiencing the extremes: One day it is -20 and snowing like mad. The next day, literally within 2 to 3 hrs it’s +8 or even higher. There have been a couple of times when the temperature has swung both ways by about 30C. That is unbelievable and would think doesn’t happen in very many places on this planet. Another interesting behaviour this winter is that we haven’t been getting the consistent ‘average’ snowfalls distributed over the winter. Either we get dumped on or we get nothing at all for days. Which makes it SOOOO nice that I have a snowblower this year. Shovelling is not a problem when we get bits and pieces at a time. But this year its been 15-20 cm at a time which leads to back-breaking.

And the weather has destroyed the roads in town. I have never seen so many potholes on so many roads (including newly paved ones) and the severity of them are tailbone wrenching. The cars are taking a serious toll. I am alarmed at the amount of $$ that will need to go into the roads this year and the level of inconvenience I’m going to have to be put through. I’m partially blaming those people that put on winter tires and chew up our roads with their fancy treads. It’s irrational of me naturally but it justifies why I don’t want to contribute to the wealth of the tire industry and buy into the hype. My ‘no’-season tires work just fine. Even though the treads are worn down to the nubs. I love it!!

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About a year ago, there was a car in the parking lot at work that always had the wiper blades sticking vertically up off of the windshield during the winter days. Now, if you visit the parking lot you will see close to or even more than a 1/3rd of the cars with their blades upright in similar fashion. It is embarrassingly amusing to see all the wipersin this prone position ready for some hooligan to run around and snap them off.

The obvious ‘reason’ that people do this is that they don’t want their wipers to become fused against the windshield if/when the weather calls for freezing rain or some level of precipitation. But people are doing this EVERY day regardless of the forecast. Working at a tech company and being able to relate to the ‘common’ personality of the people that work there, here are the plausible reasons why there’s a plethora of ‘wiper salutations’ in the parking lot:

- effort avoidance: computer programmers/developers typically seek the least effort path to existance. Which is what makes them great programmers. In their disdain for having to manually repeat steps and work efforts a developer will automate or seek effiencies so that they never have to revisit the problem again. The wiper thing is their attempt to forgo the minimal effort required to unstick the wiper blades when the rare occurrence comes up. I wonder though if they evaluated the effort they spend each morning lifting up the blades and then placing them down in the evening vs. the one or two times they would actually need to unstick the blades. Unless these people simply lift them in December and lower them in April which explains the increased # of reported traffic accidents
- Lemming-itis. We’re all Lemmings to some degree, let’s admit it. But I wonder if the tech industry has a higher occurrence of Lemming behaviour. I asked a colleague a couple offices down why he raises his blades to the car each morning. And his response, and I’m not making this up, was: “Because I saw other people doing it”. I wonder, do these people lift their blades up in their driveways at home or have they been brow-beaten by some obscene form of peer pressure?

So, I am really interested in knowing if other parking lots exhibit this behaviour. I have NEVER seen this behaviour beyond 1 or 2 cars in ANY other parking lot I’ve loitered. Have you seen mass wiper-lifting anywhere?

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Does anybody know who I need to contact to complain about the poor time intervals at a particular traffic light?  There is a traffic light at King and Bathurst that spends far too much of its time green for the King Street cars.  This intersection doesn’t warrant that length of time for most of the day.  Just around the 8:00-9:00 and 4:00 to 5:00 time.

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It snowed this morning. Not enough to stay but the first ‘official’ snow of the fall. From 30C to -5C with windchill in the span of 2 weeks. Canada, O Canada!

To add to the mini-depression, the clocks were turned back over the weekend. Thanks to G.W. Bush and the Yanks we didn’t have to push them back until 4 weeks later than usual. I like that.

Bring on the Indian Summer!

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