Mantis

Found a praying mantis on the field on Tuesday. I'd never seen one so large in the GTA.

-d

Thursday Farmer's Market @ Mel Lastman Sq

If you have time today, go check it out.

The magic school bus there is actually a fully functional kitchen where they make baked goods. Today, the Peach/Apricot dessert loaf is awesome. The peaches come from the stand next to the baked goods stand. Try the peaches there too. Fresh, in season, and almost-ripe. Probably the best peaches I have ever eaten.

Thornloe and Montforte also sell cheeses there. Some are award winning, and most of their selection is pretty damn good.

Also check out Mark Wilson's bee stand. He normally has a comb from his hives on display.

Avoid the north-east stand (closest to starbucks). They're not really farmers. They're just produce re-sellers.

-d

iPhone 3G & Rogers plans for sale

My co-worker and her partner are leaving the country, and would like to sell their iPhones and transfer ownership of their Rogers plans rather than pay a cancellation fee. The key selling point is the $30 / 6 GB data plans. Details as follows:

Phone 1:
Mega My5 35 ($35.00/month)
Unlimited Eve/Wknd Minutes
200 Weekday Minutes
250 Bonus Minutes
50 Bonus Minutes
6PM Early Eve. Calling Option
MY5 + Canada Wide
Call Forward/Trans.Pay Per Use
2500 Sent/Unl. Received Txt
9-1-1 Emergency Access Fee $0.75/month
System Access Fee $6.95/month
Data Service Plan 6GB $30.00/month
Phone Value Pack+VVmail $15.00/month
TOTAL = approx 87.70

PHONE 2:
Mega My5 25 ($25.00/month)
100 Weekday Minutes
1000 Eve/Weekend Minutes
Call Forward/Trans.Pay Per Use
Partial Detail Billing
MY5
2500 Sent/Unl. Received Txt
9-1-1 Emergency Access Fee $0.75/month
System Access Fee $6.95/month
Data Service Plan 6GB $30.00/month
Phone Value Pack+VVmail $15.00/month
TOTAL = approx 77.70

Let me know if you're interested and I can put you in touch with her to discuss further.

-d

Entertainment

For the record, I started growing my beard after my Sister's Wedding, as planned since early June (no hair cuts or shaving until September!). My beard plans predate the beard fad that is now being highlighted by a variety of sources online.

Saw Rock of Ages and Legally Blonde with KT over the last couple of weeks. Both shows were pretty good.

Rock of Ages stars the same French dude who was in We Will Rock You, as well as the chick who played Maria from the Sound of Music. Anyway, we went to the theatre a couple hours before showtime, and entered the lottery for discount tickets. We scored 2 front-row seats for $25 each. I think there are 15 lottery tickets each show, so if there are less than 15 people entering the lottery (only 8 ppl entered the lottery for our show), you’re guaranteed the ticket. We sat front row, off to the right of the stage (don’t sit in the centre because you’ll get spit on by the singers…). I think sitting front row is a totally different experience because you can hear the actors’ real voices belting out those songs, and see the expressions on the faces. It’s pretty amazing. Anyway, for $25 a pop, it was definitely well worth the show.

Legally Blonde was… Legally Blonde. Initially, I was skeptical about how good a Legally Blonde musical could be because of the generally cool reception from critics. It's commonly described as 'vapid,' or 'vacuous,' but I realized that that’s exactly the selling point of a Legally Blonde musical. The musical is the same as the movie, so it stands to reason that if you liked the movie, you’ll like the musical. I liked the movie, so I liked the musical.

Saw Inception last night. Gotta say, it’s my fav movie this summer.

-d

Solid weekend.

June 26: Janice's Wedding.
I got this engagement photo blown up to 41" x 27" (colour adjusted!) and got a black Ikea frame for it for my sis' wedding.


June 27: the 30-60-90 Tri-Generation Birthday Party.


-d

Father's Day

Click to Enlarge

Another good real estate article

Mish's view on the Canadian Housing Market

For a more in depth explanation of why price-rent / price-income is an indicator of a housing bubble, drop me a line, and I can fwd another article that'll lay it out for you.

-d

How to compost in your condo

Been crazy busy and haven't had much time for blogging.

Anyway, just thought I'd drop this awesome article about DIY vermicomposting towers. I have a similar system under my desk at work where I throw my vegetable/fruit waste. The diff between the one in the article and mine is that mine is a tub system, which is a little simpler to run, but harder to maintain. The tower system has a higher chance of success, and is probably more effient, but it's also a lot more complicated to build.

Anyway, if you're interested, drop me a line, and I can help you get started (ie. with worms and some tips).

As a side note, I'm planted a garlic clove at the office and it sprouted!

-d

Refinished Dining Room Table

Refinished my parents' old dining room table over the last week. Took quite a bit of work, but it paid off.



You can see that I didn't bother refinishing the centre extension, just the two round pieces.

-d

Uggs leading the physio and orthoped boom!

After my own ankle injury, I started to look at the way strangers walk and made it a game to spot the telltale signs of flat feet based only on the condition of footwear. I noticed that most women who wear Uggs demonstrate a collapsing arch and serious overpronation on the right foot, most pronounced when going up stairs, but sometimes also when walking in general.

So, when KT & I bomb around the city, we're invariably surrounded by women who wear Uggs. Whenever we happen to walk behind an Uggo, I always point out the extreme wear on the medial (inside) part of the back of the boot. Spotted an article in The Star, and now, I feel vindicated.

I theorized that today's Modern Western woman is adapted to wearing heels, and as a result, has some pretty weak-ass feet and ankles. Now remove all semblance of support and make them walk on a flimsy inch thick piece of compressible foam. What's the result?

When the heel strikes the ground, if there is a predisposition to roll the ankle inwards, nothing prevents the ankle from rolling as the load is increased on the joint. Weight transfers from the centre to the medial side of the heel. This causes two things to happen: 1) the medial side of the boot becomes more compressed than the centre or lateral side, and 2) the traction gained by the heel on the insole actually pushes the boot over to the lateral side. So, from a point of view behind the wearer's heel, this looks like 1) severe wear on the medial edge of the sole, and 2) rotation of the entire heel cup of the boot to the lateral side (outside).

Now, what's all that mean? Vicious cycle. As the wearer over-pronates, the cushioning becomes more and more compressed on the medial side. Over time, the sole of the boot becomes a ramp, lower on the medial than lateral. This further encourages overpronation.

Anyway, this is all speculation based on observation of the way people walk in Uggs. Someone should actually do a study, collect old pairs of boots and assess wearers for flat feet.

-d

Health Break

3 words currently sum up what I'm feeling right now:

Partially

Herniated

Disc

nice eh?

-d

iPad Gangbang

So, the word is that Dell is teaming up with Google and Amazon to take on Apple's iPad and iTunes. Some analysts are predicting that this triumvirate will upset Apple iTune's grip on the market. I'm sure those analysts thought MS's Zune would destroy the iPod, and BB's Storm and 'tactile feedback' would break the iPhone's base too.

Nobody has been able to pry Apple's fingers off a market that they have captivated. No, it doesn't happen even when the competition is a single organization (Blackberry, Microsoft), nevermind THREE DIFFERENT companies, with three different agendas.

Individually, they're very very good at what they do - I'd say that they're probably the best at what they do, which is why the analysts have such a hard-on for this alliance. Dell makes cheap reliable hardware, Amazon is a massive online retailer, and Google creates the best software. That's great, but they simply don't have the magic ingredient that Apple has. It was never Apple's price, tech specs, iTunes, or OS that sold their products. The fight has always been about marketing and esthetics, and that's where Dell and Amazon fall short (Google is great too, but in a different intangible way).

Functionality and value don't figure into the equation when someone considers whether or not to buy an Apple product. The only questions are 1) can I afford it? and 2) is this sexy, or what? The only people who bother with functionality and value are analysts and/or people who need to do real work on them.

If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on Apple.

-d

QALY - a four letter U-less Q-word

My coworkers & I watched a video over lunch about the dangers of eating meat, which prompted discussions about the validity of the arguments for or against meat eating.

I won't reject the hypothesis that modern north american eating habits lead to an early death - quite the opposite, actually. But as one of my colleagues pointed out, life expectancy isn't the only factor to consider in lifestyle decisions. We have to consider quality of life too (ie. enjoy eating lotsa meat).

Enter the QALY. Quality Adjusted Life Year. It's the metric used by Cost-Benefit / Cost-Effectiveness studies of Drugs. A QALY is the product of life expectancy and quality of life. Obviously, quality of life is subjective, so we try to quantify quality of life through surveys (also quantifiable events such as the number of hospitalizations or amount of time spent in a hospital).

So, for example, if you really enjoy smoking and on a scale from 1-10, life with smoking is a 9 and life without smoking is an 7, that's a 20% difference in subjective quality of life [(9-7)/10]. So, how many years does smoking knock off your life expectancy? If it's anything more than 20%, then it's better to quit smoking, because the net QALYs will be less if you smoke than if you don't.

Okay, so what if smoking knocks less than 20% off the end of your life? Well, you have to consider other health effects that will affect your quality of life later on. For example, if you end up with lung cancer, and need to undergo surgery, your quality of life will suck for that duration of time, and for a good period of time after. I mean, your QALYs during chemotherapy will be negligible - you may as well be dead for that period of time. In fact, your QALYs for the remainder of your life will probably be less than if you never had lung cancer at all.

It's quite clear from what we know about smoking that smokers will on average have less QALYs than non-smokers. That is to say, the cost of smoking outweighs the benefits.

Let's take that model and apply it to meat.
Do vegetarians and/or vegans live longer than meat eaters? Anecdotal evidence (for what it's worth) seems to indicate this may be true.
Do people on the atkins diet suffer from poor cardiovascular health and shortened life spans? Again, anecdotal evidence points to some very serious side effects of the atkins diet - case in point: how did Dr. Atkins die, and at what age?
How much will you miss meat? This is the really subjective one that will differ for each person. As in the case of smoking, this is difficult to rate until you've actually tried the lifestyle change.
How will poor cardiovascular health affect overall quality of life?
How will diabetes? A heart attack? A stroke? How does being morbidly obese factor into your enjoyment of life?

Food for thought.

-d

Physio

Went to my second physio session today. It was like an 1.5 hr workout where you only use your core and hamstrings.

Anyway, the PT prescribed me a brutal 3-day workout regimen that I should be doing weekly, for the next 4 weeks.

It seems like most of their performance training is geared towards sports that require a lot of leg strength - skiing, hockey, football, basketball, track, etc. Seems like everyone who goes there is training for something or other.

There's this sign posted on top of their vertical jump measuring thingie. It says,

NHL Average: 26"
NBA Average: 28"
NFL Average: 31"

My current vertical is 19" i think. Hahaha. The owner's personal best is 36" which he recorded in the new year. His ultimate goal is 40".

-d

Work culture

Caught an awesome post about Google's work culture. I know better than to believe everything I read, but man... I want to believe.

Anyway, buried in the article are some tips on how to use gmail more efficiently.

-d

Sexy Man Pants

The New York Times recently published an article about the various fashion faux pas of mens' jeans.

The article pretty much sums up my viewpoint of mens' jeans - the market is flooded with crap, often overpriced crap.

Anyway, it's an okay starter's guide to jeans, but I wouldn't call it great, and I wouldn't follow it to the tee. After all, it's based on a few people's opinions - most of whom are crusty old vintage collectors.

One detail I caught - Sugar Cane, while a great brand, isn't a 'pure' denim. It's been 'tampered with,' you'll quickly find out if you bother to do any research. It's called Sugar Cane because there's sugar cane fibres spun into the weft. Nit-picky, I know - credibility is in the details, though...

I still think that jeans style is based a lot on what image you want to portray. For example, if you're young, dumb, and full of cum, you might want to consider skinny jeans with a lot of bells and whistles. If you're a blue collar hero to your children, then go with the article, and elect for a pair of working man's pants - Wranglers, or Levi's. If you have a little more disposable income, but still want to look masculine, get yourself some raw selvedge. Don't have an ass? Do some squats. Like a nice relaxed fit? Wear sweatpants. Hiding a gun or machete? Pick something a little more relaxed and baggy.

I want to emphasize that wearing something baggy and relaxed isn't very sexy, and really isn't any more comfortable than a pair of sweat pants - so why go there? It was cheap and on sale? Rarely can you beat the MSRP (US$) or value of a nice fitting pair of Wranglers of Levi's.

One last thing - if and when you go and get yourself a nice-fitting pair of man pants, if your balls are getting pinched, it's probably a sign that you're pulling them up too high.

-d

On the other hand...

Came across a great contrarian view on inflation (or rather, the lack thereof) that we should expect in the near-future.

It's a long-ish article for those of you who aren't that interested in the economic outlook, or who have already parked your money in real estate. Everyone else who has cash to burn on the markets, pay attention.

Firstly, this particular article is super-calm and collected compared to several of the other more dramatic ones I referenced the other day. Secondly, it's both a quantitative and qualitative assessment, based on historical events. Where this article differs from the others is that the sources (skip down to the "Quarterly Review and Outlook" section half way down) take into account many other variables that affect the outcome - not just the mere fact that printing money = inflation.

Their conclusion is quite the opposite. Their prediction is that inflation in our circumstances should be benign and short lived, and we will ultimately enter a period of deflation. They finish with the disclosure that they put their money where their mouth is.

I don't know what to believe anymore.

-d

All hail our new overlords.

For those of you who haven’t heard the news, Kraft has offered a very attractive bid for Cadbury. Cadbury’s board is recommending that shareholders accept the offer. The deadline for the bid is Feb 2, so if everything goes to plan, Kraft’s ownership of Cadbury will be effective Feb 3. That’s all I can say about that.

The times, they are a-changing. Over the last month or so, with the turning over of a new year, every business writer or economist or analyst and his/her mother has taken the opportunity to write an article about what to expect of our economy in 2010 and beyond. By our economy, I mean mainly the US economy. It seems like there are essentially two schools of thought on this: 1) We’re on the road to recovery, and all is well – the US dollar will make a comeback; or, 2) We’re on the road to hell, paved by US hyper-inflation.

By and large, the first camp seem to be operating on some kind of faith in the dollar, treating this most recent recession the same as any other – recovery is inevitable because the dollar has never failed to recover before. It reeks of some kind of arrogant manifest destiny, and we all know where empires with that attitude end up.

The other school is mostly formed of (what appears to be) Libertarians of one kind or another. They use historical models of hyper-inflation to illustrate how the US economy is doomed, but also fail to explain how the US economy hasn’t failed already (since according to their models, we shouldn’t be able to maintain 4 consecutive months of growth the way we have…). The Libertarians argue that the US economy is being manipulated by… greedy bankers? No. China? Nope. Jews? Wrong again. Black people? Close. They’re accusing Obama and the US government itself (like we’d expect anything else of Libertarians) of manipulating the markets in order to maintain control over the country. In this conspiracy, the Department of Homeland Security is the rough equivalent of the Gestapo, installed by the former regime (but kept around by the current one) to maintain control over the population when the shit hits the fan. These people (Libertarians) are scared. Like, stocking up on water, food, guns and ammo scared.

So, what to do? I have no clue, but I’ve always been risk-averse in my investments. Ordinarily, I’d put my money somewhere safe, with a guaranteed return, but in light of the hyper-inflation doom and gloom, not even those are safe anymore. Real Estate maybe? No, the combination of low interest rates and good health of Canada’s financial institutions has created a local housing bubble. Gold? Yeah, but not GLD gold, maybe solid gold (the real stuff, like the kind they used to use to buy wives with).

Is it embarrassing to want to buy solid gold? Does it put you in the same camp as the gun-toting, forest-dwelling, crazy-for-cookie kooks? Yeah… I think so.

So what should you do? I haven’t the slightest idea. All’s I know is that things HAVE to change. The way we’re doing thing is not at all sustainable, even for the near future. Historical examples of hyper-inflation give us clues as to what’s going to happen – the US will cease being the world’s economic superpower. So who’s next? As much as I hate to say it, and as much as I poo-poo like predictions, the next world superpower looks like it might be China. Why’s that? 1. Solid manufacturing base. 2. High level of personal savings (ie. untapped credit market). 3. Military might (both in a conventional and electronic-warfare sense). More importantly, the US economic hegemony is waning, and the time is ripe for opportunism. All that wealth we've accumulated needs to be invested in the next great scam, and a lot of people are looking at China.

This is not to say that our way of life, as we know it, is doomed. Many former empires still enjoy a comfortable lifestyle. No need to worry. If you're interested in taking the future by the horns though, it'd probably be a good idea to learn Mandarin.

-d

Yoga

Went to hot yoga on New Year’s day. Moksha Yoga has a Friday evening class based on a minimum donation ($5 - $8 depending on location) which goes to charity. This was my second time ever doing hot yoga (or any yoga, for that matter), and it was pretty enjoyable.

About a month ago, I pulled a muscle in my neck / upper back and it’s been bothering me for a while. I figured some yoga might help relieve the tension and improve the flexibility in my neck, and it worked, at least as a short-term reprieve. It had about the same effect as a massage therapy session.

Going forward, I’m going to try to attend one class a week, generally Friday nights, if I don’t have to work the weekend. It seems like a good way to help even out my muscle imbalances in my neck, shoulders, and back (damned DBR). I’d been advised before by my RMT that I might run into neck and back issues because the difference in height between my right and left shoulders exceed 1”. Sure enough, I get chronic injuries to the left side of my neck.

Over the holidays, Chapters/Indigo had a 20% off sale on yoga equipment, plus KT gave me a few gift cards that she’d received earlier in the year. So, I scored myself a yoga mat and bag. It cost me next to nothing (well, apart from the gift cards).

As for what to wear, I don’t see myself in yoga tights or anything from Lulu Lemon. Based on the two times I’ve gone, I found that compression shorts under running shorts worked the best. Swimming trunks definitely did not work – they kept sticking to my legs and I was constantly afraid I’d bust a seam. The compression shorts don’t stick to the running shorts, so that’s one way to maximize range of motion without sacrificing… privacy.

Anyway, yoga will be an official part of my workout regimen, but I’ll keep it to a minimum. Maybe max once a week, no more. I don’t want to end up a human pretzel, and I still need a little inflexibility to run for distance.

-d

Carry-on luggage banned on Can -> US flights

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has banned all carry-on luggage on flights from Canada to the US. The exceptions to this are:

personal items such as medication or medical devices, small purses, cameras, coats, items for care of infants, laptop computers, crutches, canes, walkers, containers carrying life sustaining items, a special needs item, musical instruments, or diplomatic or consular bags.

-d