Recent Diary Entries

Sunday 13 May - Playoff Predictions, Round Three

Yikes! I typically don't do all that well with my NHL playoff predictions, but I went 0 for 4 in the second round this year. I'm 3 for 12 so far, and so I'm guaranteed a losing record even if I get everything right the rest of the way. Not good. Let's see if I can at least make up a bit of ground this time.

• New York may have a tough time against the Devils, but I think the Rangers will win.
• L.A. and Phoenix is a tough one to call, especially since I didn't think either one would get past the first round. I'm picking the Kings.

Friday 27 April - Playoff Predictions, Round Two

Somehow, given how many highly-ranked teams were defeated in the first round, I suspect I'm not the only one whose predictions didn't work out so well. I got 3 of 8 right. So here we go with round two:

• Washington may have finished quite a bit lower in the standings than the Rangers, but I think they'll upset New York.
• I'm taking Philly over New Jersey.
• Nashville will "upset" Phoenix (as in the first round, this is only an upset due to the division winners being seeded as the top three; Nashville had a better record despite being seeded lower)
• St. Louis will play much better than the Canucks did in the first round and will beat the Kings.

Thursday 19 April

Kudos to Air Miles

I recently ordered a BlackBerry Playbook as an Air Miles reward. When it arrived, it turned out to be defective: its Wi-Fi didn't work, rendering it useless (in fact, even incapable of completing setup). RIM's tech support department confirmed my diagnosis and said to take it back to where I got it to exchange it for a new one.

When I called Air Miles, the customer service rep said she didn't think they could exchange it for me, but she put me through to a supervisor named Joseph. He said it could be done, but when he looked for stock of the same item, it turned out Air Miles no longer offered it as a reward. They had the next item up (I'd ordered the 16 GB version, but they now only offered 32 and 64) and said I could either return mine for a refund of my points or exchange it for one of those and "pay" the difference in points. I said I didn't really want to spend that many more points for the higher model, so he offered to meet me in the middle on the points as a courtesy. I accepted the offer. He said they had stock of the 32 GB model, and he said he'd send out a shipping label for me to use to send the defective product back.

That was Saturday. Yesterday, the new tablet arrived. Yup, on the third business day, even though the notice they'd emailed me confirming the order said it would ship in 3-4 weeks. I haven't received the shipping label for my old one yet, but apparently Air Miles correctly decided that the best way to make me happy would be to get my new tablet to me as soon as possible.

So, since I've used my diary as a soap box to slam bad service from various businesses before, it's only fair that I give Air Miles some credit here. They could have insisted that they couldn't do returns and I'd have to send the brand-new device to its manufacturer for warranty service, but they instead chose to give me good customer service. And they did it quickly. Well done.

Brickbats to Bell and TD

My Bell bill came in today's mail. On the bill was a notice that in June they're jacking up their price by roughly 10%. That seems a bit excessive, doesn't it? Well, it seems particularly excessive when you consider that less than a year ago they jacked up their price by about 10% as well.

As for TD, well, Canadian banks are experts at nickel-and-diming their customers with fees. The latest is a so-called green move of pushing customers to print off their own statements instead of having them mailed out. Granted, it is greener for a customer to print their own statement than to have the bank print it, put it in an envelope, and have the mail system ship it around in carbon-emitting vehicles. But of course that's not the real reason they're doing it.

TD's banking business recently increased the fee for a paper statement from $0 to $2 per month. Did their cost of producing and sending statements just rise from $0 to $2? No. It likely didn't just rise at all, and it surely doesn't cost them anywhere near $2. All they're doing is looking to profit, either by reducing their costs (not having to provide a service they used to provide) or by increasing their revenue (charging a fee well in excess of the actual cost for providing a service that they used to provide for free).

And their discount brokerage recently changed the fee schedule. It used to be that if you have $50k in an account, the flat commission on a trade was $10, whereas it was $29 if you had under $50k. Now, it's only $10 if you print off all your own trade confirmations, statements, and tax forms in addition to having at least $50k in the account.

Monday 9 April

Leafs wrapup

It's time for another annual tradition: evaluating the performance of the Leafs' players in the wake of another failure to make the playoffs. I'm including the players on the roster (as of today, according to the team's Web site).

• Colby Armstrong: He had a disappointing year, but I can't say I blame him. He was injured much of the year, and most of the rest of the time he was trying to get back into game shape. Having been impressed with his play last season, I think he deserves some slack, along with a wish for an injury-free season next year.
• Tyler Bozak: He's done a good, but not outstanding, job. But he has good chemistry with the rest of the first line and you wouldn't want to mess that up without a good reason.
• Mike Brown: I like him more this year than I did last year. He leads the team in work ethic.
• Tim Connolly: He's been a disappointment. It's not that he's a bad player, just that I'd expected more.
• Joey Crabb: He's been a good role player. He's an unrestricted free agent, but I'd like to see the Leafs sign him if we can get him for a reasonable price.
• Cody Franson: Hasn't been great, hasn't been horrible. He's a restricted free agent; if we have some talent that seems ready to make the step up from the Marlies (and I don't know if we do), I'd consider letting him walk.
• Jake Gardiner: Particularly later in the season, I could see why there's so much buzz about him. I'm very much looking forward to watching him continue to grow into an NHLer.
• Mikhail Grabovski: Another fine season; actually, I think he's been more impressive than the #1 centre, Bozak. He's fast, very skilled, and willing to work in his own end of the rink. I'm not sure he's worth quite what his new contract says, but given his position in this year's free agent crop, locking him up was a good move.
• Carl Gunnarsson: He's been steady and dependable. I like that in a D.
• Jonas Gustavsson: Puzzling. When he played poorly, he played very poorly. When he played well, he played very well. Would the real Monster please stand up? He's an unrestricted free agent, and I doubt the Leafs will sign him again (nor would I expect him to have a particularly strong desire to come back anyway).
• Nazem Kadri: He still hasn't fully committed to fixing the defensive weakness and propensity for making mistakes, but he's much improved over previous years. Unless something goes wrong in training camp, or unless we can trade him for something more useful, he should be a Leaf unless he plays himself down to the Marlies, not a Marlie who gets called up to fill holes.
• Phil Kessel: He's cut down on the streakiness, in large part due to playing with Lupul, and managed a point a game and his career high in goals. Still needs work on his defensive zone play, and more mental toughness to deal with slumps and having to face Chara.
• Mike Komisarek: I was underwhelmed somewhat last year, and I'm underwhelmed again this year.
• Nikolai Kulemin: I have no idea what went wrong with this season for him. He's proven himself to be so much better in previous years, but this year he pretty much disappeared. He's a restricted free agent, and that poses a bit of a quandary: do you sign him again based on his previous good work, or let him go based on a disappointing season? I'd give him a qualifying offer on the low end; if he accepts, then we get him for a modest price, and if he doesn't, we still have the right to match any other team's offer or receive compensation otherwise.
• John-Michael Liles: He's a good but not great offensive D, and adequate in his own zone. Call it a lukewarm endorsement.
• Matthew Lombardi: Like Connolly, a disappointing season, because I expected more. There were flashes of his potential, particularly later in the season, so perhaps it's just lingering concussion effects. Let's hope so, and that he has a better year next season.
• Joffrey Lupul: He worked very well with Kessel, and also ended up at about a point a game. I'm looking forward to watching him play again next year.
• Clarke MacArthur: He had an OK season, but I was expecting more from him this year. To be fair, he didn't have as stable a line to play on as he did last year.
• Dion Phaneuf: He had a better year than last year, overall, though he still has a tendency for defensive blunders from time to time.
• James Reimer: A disappointing season, in large part due to his concussion and its after-effects. Like the Monster, he had streaks when he was great, and streaks when he wasn't much good. Hopefully a summer to rest up will bring him back to the #1 goalie form that we saw last year and from time to time this year.
• Jay Rosehill: basically, he's Mike Brown, plus some extra fighting, minus Movember. I can't say I'm a big fan, but I can't say he's bad, either; I'm just not sure he's needed. Sure, he's the heavyweight, but he's not the only guy who can do a good job of sticking up for his teammates. He's a restricted free agent, and I'd do the same as with Kulemin: modest qualifying offer and then (assuming he doesn't accept it) decide whether to match someone else's offer.
• Luke Schenn: Had a mostly good season, but still didn't live up to the promise of his first year. Still, I like him.
• David Steckel: Obviously very good at faceoffs, and a solid defensive zone player. But he's slow, and has limited offensive ability.

Playoff Predictions, Round One

As usual, I'm making predictions, and they'll probably be about as questionable as in previous years :-)

• The Rangers will kick the Senators' butts
• Boston will have their hands full but will beat the Caps
• New Jersey will "upset" the Panthers (I put quotes on upset because the Devils had the better record despite being a lower playoff seed)
• Pittsburgh will beat Philly
• Vancouver will beat the Kings
• St. Louis will defeat the Sharks
• Chicago will "upset" Phoenix
• Detroit will upset Nashville

Game on!

Monday 2 April - This is going away ...

I'd mentioned in a diary entry quite a while ago that this site would be disappearing. I thought it would happen last year, but it didn't. But it's going to happen, probably later this spring or maybe some time this summer.

Just so ya know. Thanks to all my loyal readers for sticking around this long!

Friday 23 March - City Council's Transit Debate

Now that our democratically elected council has democratically voted on how to proceed with transit, I have a few comments. Not about the specific action they have chosen, but about how this whole debate has proceeded.

Frankly, it's disgusting. And, unfortunately, it's not surprising.

This issue has been marked with a large volume of (at best) questionable information, including both financial issues and the notion of what exactly constitutes an LRT or a subway. The vast majority of citizens are not experts in transit design and financing. Neither are our councillors. How can either group be able to reach a rational decision when so much of the "information" being pushed at them is wrong (in some cases, it's hard not to conclude this is intentional) or incomplete (ditto)?

And then there's the behaviour of our elected representatives. Most of the blame goes to the Mayor and his two un-/semi-official mouthpieces, his brother and Councillor Mammoliti. As far as I can tell, these folks learned about how to hold a debate by watching the goings-on in our national Parliament, which are akin to monkeys flinging poo at each other. And now we even have the Mayor threatening to cut off the city's nose to spite its face, by saying he wants to refuse to accept any provincial funding unless it's for what he wants instead of what council has approved. Yeah, that's a fine solution to Toronto's long-standing shortage of transit.

Petulant children. That's who we seem to have running things. I wish I could say this shocked me, but unfortunately this kind of behaviour by our elected representatives is normal.

Grow up. Act like intelligent, honest human beings for once, will ya?

Wednesday 14 March - Economic disposability

My bread machine is failing. It still works, but based on the noise it's now making, and the pile of fine metal dust it leaves on the counter beneath it when in operation, I think there are some gears in there that are grinding against each other and will eventually wear each other down so much that it will no longer be functional.

The machine itself costs about $90. To get it repaired, I first have to pay $10 for a repair estimate, and the repair shop tells me that it's almost certain the repair itself will cost at least $40-60 and take a couple of months. So that's an expected minimum cost of $50-70 to repair a $90 device. Oh, and the bread pan is almost new (the seal around the drive shaft wears out after a year or two, and I recently replaced the pan; this is a common issue according to the Internet), so if I just replace the device, I can save about $20 in a couple of years by keeping the current bread pan as a spare part to be used when the new one wears out. So effectively the cost of the new machine is more like $70.

And if I do repair it, then after spending about the same as the effective cost of a new one and being without it for an extended period of time, I end up with a used bread machine with no warranty (except possibly a warranty for the new parts), whereas of course if I buy a new one, I get a new bread machine with a full manufacturer's warranty.

So unfortunately, much as I'd rather not send repairable items to the landfill, it makes no economic sense to fix it.

Tuesday 13 March - Damn telemarketers

I'm not talking about the illegal ones, the scammers and those who violate the do-not-call list; of course they're damn telemarketers. I'm talking about the ones who legally call people who don't want to be called.

I got a call today on my cell from a company hired by Rogers (the company my cell phone is with) saying it's a periodic review of the account to see if they can offer me any improvements. It took six minutes, including putting me on hold at one point, for them to get to the point: they were calling to try to sell me a long-distance package.

Never mind that, when the guy was looking through my account history, he didn't see me making long-distance calls. Never mind that he asked me what I used for long distance and I told him I rarely make long-distance calls. No, he was there to spend six minutes of my time during the business day to try to sell me a long-distance plan.

And it's all legal. Companies you deal with, or have dealt with in the last year and a half, can call you. You can ask them not to call you, and they have to comply, but only for a while; it turns out that, just like the do-not-call list (for which you have to re-register every five years), your request not to be called doesn't have to honoured indefinitely.

So I've gone to my account pages (one for my cell, and one for my home TV and Internet) and changed the marketing preferences to tell them not to call me. And it's explained right there on the page that they will lose those settings every three years or so, in accordance with the law, and that I have to go back and make this request again each time.

Damn telemarketers.

Friday 10 February - Public transit's future in Toronto

The battle over what's in the TTC's future really heated up this week, with the TTC chair managing to get city council to overturn the mayor's dictum. There are a few things about this that I think deserve comment.

Mayor vs. Council

In the wake of losing the vote, the mayor stated that council's will is "irrelevant." Now, this particular mayor has a habit of saying things without filtering them first, and this is likely another example. Obviously, council's will is important, and under the laws that govern the powers and organization of the City of Toronto's government, council's will is supreme.

The mayor also stated that he believes the province will do what he wants, not what council wants (and was quickly corrected on this by a number of representatives of the provincial government, including the Premier). Another example of unfiltered speech.

On the one hand, it's nice to have a mayor who is direct in saying his opinion, rather than some politicians who will talk around an issue for hours without letting anyone know exactly where they're at. But on the other hand, when he comes out with silly statements like these, that even a high school student would know are not factually correct, it harms his credibility. Let's hope he's learned at least a bit of a lesson.

Let's also hope he's learned a bit of a lesson about cooperation. One of the mayor's powers is a certain level of moral authority, in that he's the only member of council who is elected by the city as a whole. This gives him the standing to guide council in the direction in which he wants to proceed. But it doesn't give him the standing to force council to do anything he wants, so to use his position to advance his agenda, he needs to lead by engaging councillors and showing a willingness to reach a consensus. Mayor Ford isn't showing that he's good at this, and he had a hand in precipitating this vote by swatting away a face-saving compromise offered by the TTC chair in recent weeks. This, too, is an area in which he has hopefully learned a lesson.

Just do it already!

This issue is an example of one key reason why so little gets done by government, particularly in the area of transit in Toronto: because every time one administration plans something and starts to move ahead with it, there's an election and the subsequent administration either cancels it or makes major changes to it which cause delays and cost additional money. This is the third iteration of the current plan; we had the first three lines of former Mayor Miller's Transit City, then Mayor Ford declared that two of the three were cancelled so that all the money could be used to bury the third, and now we are back to something that's largely similar to the first three Transit City lines (but can't be called Transit City for political reasons).

Back in the 1990s, we had another great example. Bob Rae's NDP government approved the Eglinton West subway line. Planning was done, and a hole in the ground was dug at the Eglinton West subway station for the beginnings of the line. Then the Mike Harris PC government came to power, declared the project dead, and filled in the hole. So we spent a bunch of money planning it, starting it, and then stuffing dirt back into the hole, and got absolutely nothing out of it.

Is there really anyone who thinks this is a good use of time and money? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Decide what's to be done. Do it. End of story.

The people want subways!

Mayor Ford is telling anyone who will listen that wherever he goes, when he asks people if they want subways, everyone says yes. Well, of course they do. Everyone wants subways. But he's asking the wrong question.

If you asked Mayor Ford if he wants an extra-large meat lover's pizza, of course he'd say yes. Meat lover's pizzas are delicious! And the bigger the pizza, the more deliciousness you get. But he's on a diet, and this is the wrong question. The right question is whether you're in favour of using your entire day's calorie budget on an extra-large meat lover's pizza, and then either having to go without any calories from food or drink for the rest of the day or having to spend several hours in the gym to open up room for additional calories.

So the right question to be asking people about subways is actually "Pick one of the following three answers:"

• Use the entire $8.4 billion budget to build one subway, and cancel the other two lines.
• Use the $8.4 billion budget to build three lines, leaving them on the surface with the compromises inherent in that design.
• Spend billions more than the $8.4 billion budget to build multiple subways, and raise the additional money with the following list of fees and taxes: (blank space for an essay answer)

Because it's all very well to ask people if they want subways, but you might as well ask them if they want you to eliminate property tax or hand out lottery tickets to everyone every week or cut TTC fares to 25¢. Everyone would love all of those, but they're only practical options in a world with a money tree. And as Mayor Ford should have figured out by now, we don't have one of those.

Tuesday 24 January - RIM's not dead yet!

Research In Motion has been in the news a lot in the last year or two, and almost always for a bad reason. Their executives get drunk and cause planes to have to make emergency landings. Their tablet was released a year before its software was ready. Their long-overdue replacement of the aging, creaky software on their phones is not only long overdue but keeps getting pushed farther and farther into the future. Their network has outages that turn their devices into not much more than non-smart phones with a calculator app. Apple and Android are increasing their sales while RIM's sales fall. They finally replace the bizarre two-headed co-leadership structure with something more closely resembling what almost every other major company uses, and the first thing the new guy says essentially translates as "We're on the right path and we just need to convince people of that, so we'll keep doing what we've been doing." And through it all, the stock price plummets.

Obviously, a lot has gone wrong. RIM, formerly known for innovative technology, is now innovative primarily in the area of new ways to shoot one's own foot. They have a lot of work to do.

And I understand that the nature of the press is that they jump all over anything that comes their way, so any time RIM blunders, out come all the "Is this the end?" stories.

But really, let's take a step back and think about it. Do you know anyone who used to use a BlackBerry and still does? I do. I'm one, and I know lots of others. Do you know anyone who used to use something else and now uses a BlackBerry? I do; for example, I know of one of my friends who switched to BlackBerry from another smartphone just in the last couple of weeks. Yes, Apple and Android are posting better sales numbers, but from the press reports you'd think only a handful of loyal customers are still buying BlackBerries and nobody's switched to BlackBerry from something else in years, and that's simply not true.

As for the falling sales, the news isn't bad everywhere. Yes, it's bad in the U.S., and that's very bad news. But the latest figures I've seen suggest the number of BlackBerries in Canada is actually increasing still, though not at the pace it used to. BlackBerries outsell iPhones by a large margin in India, which as I'm sure you've heard is a very large market (and a market where smartphones have historically been rare but are now making big market strides). I've seen a figure that RIM's market share in Indonesia is close to 50% (to be fair, I haven't seen a source cited for that, so I'd take the number with a grain of salt, though I think it's reasonable to believe that it indicates RIM is doing well in this country with a population of nearly a quarter of a billion). You don't hear the good stories very often, do you?

And here's something else to keep in mind: RIM makes money not only from sales of new devices, like every other cell phone maker, but also from its existing customers every month. Even in the U.S., where BlackBerries now only make up about 10% of sales (well behind Android and Apple), they're still something like 20% of the devices in use, and RIM makes money off every one of those 20% of phones. Remember that BlackBerries require RIM's infrastructure (which is why they're so severely impacted when RIM has an outage), and so some portion of what a BlackBerry user pays their carrier every month goes back to RIM. I haven't bought a new BlackBerry since 2009 (though I plan to in the near future) and yet RIM still makes money off me every month. Obviously, if they don't get their sales numbers up, their market share will continue to fall, but something on the order of a quarter of RIM's revenue comes from this, which can help keep them going while they work on their problems.

One other note: last I heard, RIM is debt-free and has $1.5 billion in the bank. That won't last forever, of course, but that too is a cushion to keep the company going while they work on their problems. I have no idea of their cash burn rate, but they're not going bankrupt in the near future.

So yes, RIM has a big problem. They needed to fix it last year, and didn't, and so now they not only need to fix it but need to fix it in a way that blows everyone away. But just because all you read about is doom and gloom doesn't mean that it's the whole story.