Recent Diary Entries

Tuesday 26 January - Stop and think

Toronto has had a rash of pedestrians being struck (and, in many cases, killed) by vehicles on city streets in the last 2-3 weeks. It seems hardly a day goes by without someone else being knocked down, and I heard on the news last night that so far this year we've had almost a third of the total number of such accidents that we usually have in a whole year. Quite rightly, the authorities are trying to figure out why we have a sudden rash of these accidents and whether we can fix whatever is causing the problem.

One of the main ideas, it seems, being kicked around at City Hall is to reduce the speed limits on our roads. Apparently, whoever came up with this has never had to troubleshoot anything, because the first question you ask when something that used to work one way starts working another way is "What changed?" And did we increase the speed limits on our roads 2-3 weeks ago? No, or at least not on any roads I've been on lately.

I'm pretty sure that I know where this idea came from: the car-hating wing of city council has siezed upon this issue and is using it as an excuse to take another poke at drivers (i.e. most of the population).

Thursday 21 January - Much better

Loyal Readers may recall that my car's windshield suffered a stone chip a while back, and the insurance company screwed up the claim. They denied it, so I had to pay for it myself, and when I called back to complain, the rep said they had no idea why it had been denied because they always pay for stone chip repairs. Eventually, it got sorted out and they reimbursed me, but it was an extra hassle I didn't need.

Driving home from band last night, I got another stone chip. And this time the insurance company handled it properly. I called them and they asked if I wanted them to recommend a repair shop. I said yes, so they not only gave me the shop's address and phone number but even called the shop and put me through to them. By the time I got to the shop, the insurance company had already faxed them all the paperwork and authorized the work. About half an hour later, it was all done.

Tuesday 19 January - Repatriation

The route that the motorcade takes when a fallen soldier's body is brought back home goes almost right past my home, and there's an overpass less than a ten-minute walk from my place where people gather to pay their respects as it passes by. But I'd never done that until today. The motorcade usually goes by between 4-5 p.m., so usually I'm working elsewhere, working at home, making dinner if it's Caledon band night, or already on my way if it's Brampton band night.

But today, I'd finished work early and didn't have anywhere to go (other than a condo board meeting in the evening), so I went to the bridge. While waiting for the motorcade to arrive, I chatted with a few of the other people who were there, including one man who'd lost his son in Afghanistan a little over a year ago. It was touching to speak to someone like him.

From the bridge (Wynford Drive), you can see a fair bit of the DVP, and at around the time that one of the frequent participants had told me to expect the motorcade to arrive, I noticed that the line of headlights on the southbound DVP pretty much disappeared. Within a couple of minutes, the flow of traffic past the bridge stopped, and it got eerily quiet (northbound traffic continued, but at that time of day, it's very congested, so it's not as noisy as traffic moving at highway speed).

A few minutes later, I saw flashing lights in the distance, and a couple of minutes later, the motorcade drove by. By this time, there were a few dozen people on the bridge, many of them with Canadian flags. And then it was over. I said bye to a few of the people I'd met and shook the hand of the man whose son had previously made that trip.

It was a very moving experience. Of course, I don't hope any more of our military personnel have to die, but that's not a realistic hope. I do hope I'll be able to do this again.

Thursday 31 December - Stupid Credit Agency

Long-time Loyal Readers may recall that I've complained in the past about how incompetent credit agencies (the companies that store information on your creditworthiness and sell it to banks and other businesses which wish to find out if you're creditworthy) are, mostly over them inserting fictitious information in my credit history on multiple occasions.

As a result of that, I make a point of checking their files. They are required to honour one request a year from you for a copy of the file they keep on you, at no charge. So I make sure I do this with both of the credit agencies operating in Canada.

Just today, I got a letter back from Equifax saying that they couldn't process my request because they need more information. The form which you can download from their Web site says:

You must provide copies of 2 pieces of government-issued identification (such as a driver's license, health card, birth certificate or passport). If neither piece of government-issued identification shows your current home address, you must also submit a copy of an additional document that shows your address (such as a recent telephone or utilities bill, or a bank or credit card statement). You may black out transaction details on a bill or statement, as long the copy clearly shows the date of the document, the sender, your name and address, and your account number.

I sent them clearly legible copies of both sides of my driver's license and my health card, both of which are explicitly listed on their form as being acceptable.

Now they're saying that they need:

1. A photocopy of two pieces of signed valid identification, i.e., driver's license, social insurance number (optional), birth certificate, etc. Please also ensure your request is signed.
2. Please provide a copy of a utility bill (telephone, gas, electricity, cable), account statement, driver's license, or other documentation showing your current residential address. Please be advised that the proof of address must indicate a date within the last three months.

You know, it would be a lot easier to send them the information they require if they'd accept the information they ask for.

Oh, and consider this: they ask for a signed birth certificate. How many people do you know who signed their own birth certificate? I sure as hell didn't; I didn't even know how to print my own name at that time! Now, my birth certificate is actually signed, but I suspect they wouldn't accept the preprinted signature of Robert Welch, REGISTRAR GENERAL, even though it meets the letter of their requirement (it is my birth certificate, and it is signed).

Wednesday 30 December - Score!

Earlier this month, I bought a new camera at Henry's. I got it for $300 off its MSRP because Henry's has a price match policy and another store advertised it for that price. Henry's also has a price protection policy (and for Christmas they extended it to last longer than usual), so I knew that if the camera went on sale, either at Henry's or elsewhere, for less money after Christmas, they'd refund the difference.

Well, Downtown Camera had it on sale this week for about a hundred bucks less than what I'd paid, so I printed out the page from their Web site and took it to Henry's. Oddly enough, they didn't bother to check with Downtown Camera (either by phone or on their Web site) to see if I was doing anything underhanded (I wasn't); they just refunded the difference, plus taxes since they process it as a return for the original price followed by a sale for the new price. Score!

And then this evening, my friend Katie and I went to see Sherlock Holmes at the Orion Gate Grande theatre. I had a free date night pass that I got as a prize from my walk-a-thon; none of the prizes had particularly interested me, so I invited people who had pledged money to say what prize they wanted (and encouraged them to bribe me to award it to them). Katie's bribe worked: she picked the date night (two tickets, two drinks, one popcorn) and said she'd take me as her date.

There were some projection problems. Throughout all of the ads, trailers, and the movie itself, there were arcs of light flashing on the screen (apparently due to the print being scratched). As well, during scenes in which there was dialogue in French, the subtitles were partially cut off at the bottom of the screen. So as we exited the theatre, staff were handing out free admission passes. Which means I get another movie night with Katie. Score!

Actually, the theatre had a number of problems. Katie said a couple of the stalls in the women's washroom were out of order. There was an "out of order" sign on one of the paper towel dispensers in the men's bathroom (though it was actually working). At the snack bar, one of the machines had an "out of order" sign on it, and there were signs all over saying cash or coupons only, so I guess their debit system was also down. And the air hockey table in the games room was also out of order. It looks like they've been letting maintenance slide during this busy season ...

Tuesday 29 December - Airport Security

I'm glad I'm not trying to fly anywhere this holiday season, with all the lineups and delays and restrictions imposed after some idiot set himself on fire trying to blow up a plane last week. But possibly the most frustrating thing about this, at least from the perspective of someone who hasn't spent hours in a lineup as a result, is how almost all of the security restrictions are of little or no use: most of the hassles people are being put through do very little to improve security. They're also being done on an ad hoc basis, changing with little or no warning, making it difficult for legitimate travellers to figure out what the heck is going on.

For instance, immediately after the incident, they started imposing a limit of one carry-on bag per passenger. Well, what's that supposed to do? Nothing in this particular attempted bomb was so large that it would have needed a second carry-on. As far as I know, no other attempted airplane bombing needed a second carry-on, either. This one is a major inconvenience to many travellers, and does absolutely zip to improve security.

They also imposed a rule that you had to remain in your seat, with nothing (including blankets) in your lap, for the last hour of the flight. Fat lot of good that does. If your goal is simply to blow up the plane, it just means you have to plan to do it at least 61 minutes before the plane's supposed to land. And if your goal is to blow up a plane over a specific area, you just have to pick a different flight that's not going to land until at least an hour later; for instance, the flight with the incident last week was headed for Detroit, so if you want to blow up a plane near Detroit, you just buy a ticket on a plane travelling somewhere an hour or more away from Detroit. So this one is another B.S. rule.

Some flights have stopped showing maps of the aircraft's position while in flight, so that someone who wants to blow the plane up in a particular spot won't know where the plane is. Well, those maps are only approximate anyway, and you could figure out fairly easily at what point in the flight you'd likely be in the spot where you wanted the plane to go boom, so a little planning and a $10 watch will usually do almost as good a job. Plus, if it's a nice day and you have a window seat, you may be able to figure it out that way, too.

A friend who flew from Toronto to the U.S. today tells me that today, they're not allowing any carry-ons. Except diaper bags, cameras, and laptops. Well then, that's not very effective, is it? Instead of finding a way to hide your bomb in a carry-on bag, you find a way to hide your bomb in a diaper bag (stuff it in a dirty diaper and security's probably gonna give it a pass), your camera (memory slot, film chamber, spare battery compartment, etc.) or camera bag, or laptop (PC Card slot, spare battery compartment, etc.) or laptop bag. If there's a valid reason to ban all carry-ons, you have to ban all carry-ons, or your exceptions defeat the purpose of the ban.

A few years ago, after another terrorism scare, they instituted a rule that you can only carry liquids in containers of 100 mL or less, and that they must all fit in one plastic bag. Well, it was 15 years ago that someone succeeded in bombing a plane using a liquid explosive that they brought on board disguised as a normal liquid a passenger might carry. Why did it take so long for them to do something about people bringing liquids into the passenger compartment? And while restricting liquids to 10 or so 100 mL containers makes it a bit more inconvenient to assemble a bomb, it's not that big a deal; drink a couple of bottles of pop on the plane and then pour your small containers into it, or bring an empty collapsible flask of some sort with you and fill it while in flight. So this is another example of a security measure that inconveniences almost all travellers and does relatively little to prevent a recurrence of a known method of bombing a plane.

As for the bomb this clown tried to make, it used the same explosive as the shoe bomber used eight years ago. And, according to a security expert interviewed on the news a few nights ago, most explosive detectors used in airports still can't detect this one. Plus, think about how many times you've been through airport security. You walk through a metal-detecting portal and get checked out with a metal-detecting wand, your bag gets X-rayed, and maybe once in every ten flights or so, they wipe your bags and run an explosive detection test on them. So it seems pretty obvious that it's pretty easy to get explosives through security, and it seems pretty obvious that there are three things that would fix that problem:

• It's been eight years since it was proven that you can take this explosive onto an aircraft undetected. Well, figure out how to detect it already. From here on, I'm going to assume that this is so obvious that it will be done in future.
• Some airports have portals that not only detect metal but also spray you with air and sniff the results for traces of explosives. Such a portal would likely have caught this guy; even though the explosive was sewn into his underwear, it would be very likely that he'd get traces of the explosive on his hands.
• Instead of wiping down the occasional bag to check for explosives, add a sniffer to the X-ray machine. Almost all cabin baggage goes through the X-ray machine, and doing this would ensure that almost all cabin baggage gets tested for explosive residues. As for anything that's checked by hand, they can be tested the way some bags are currently tested.

Do those three things, and nobody is going to be able to get an explosive into the passenger compartment of a plane unless they can find an explosive you can't detect.

And on that last point, there will always be a hole in your security somewhere. Sooner or later, someone will always find a way to get past the system. We'll never make air travel absolutely safe from terrorists and other assorted loonies. But going back to the shoe bomber, when someone demonstrates a hole in your procedure, you don't shrug and say "It was dumb luck and nobody else will ever figure out how to do it again." And you don't implement a whole bunch of security screening changes that don't fix the problem. You plug the hole.

Meanwhile, the idiot in this latest case was on a terrorist watch list (but not the justly derided no-fly list). He bought a one-way ticket. He paid cash for the ticket. He did not bring any luggage at all. This isn't an issue of detecting weaponry; this is a guy whose actions should have thrown up all kinds of red flags and had him targeted for extra security measures. Sometimes throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars of extra technology into each security screening area isn't the only solution; a little more attention to detail could have caught him.

Friday 18 December - Toby's lab results

Toby went to the vet for his annual checkup yesterday. We got the blood test results back today, and they showed what I expected: that the slightly elevated creatinine level that was in last year's test results was back. This is typically a marker for diminished kidney function, and calls for a reduced-protein diet. We tried that earlier this year, and I ended up spending quite a bit of time and money on fixing the diarrhea which showed up a few weeks later. It turned out that putting him back on the diet he was on before the reduced-protein one fixed the diarrhea.

He'll be going in for an overnight stay at some point in the next little while, because they want to do another test which should confirm that the creatinine level really does indicate renal insufficiency: they want to collect a sample of his urine first thing in the morning. If that also points to kidney problems, then we'll have to figure out what to try next.

My thought is that it's likely something in the food we tried that doesn't agree with him. They had initially given me samples of several different reduced-protein foods, and he liked them all, but the samples were small, so he wasn't on any one of them for very long (plus I also fed them as individual meals, with his usual food for other meals, since it's not usually a good idea to switch a cat's food suddenly). And the symptoms only showed up once he'd been on the food for a few weeks following a gradual switchover in which I started by mixing a small amount of the new food into his old food and then increased the proportion over time.

Anyway, assuming the second test confirms a kidney problem, I think we'll end up trying other reduced-protein foods, one at a time, until we find one that doesn't seem to cause problems.

Poor little guy ... having to spend a night away from home, and then potentially having to have diarrhea again while we try different foods.

Tuesday 15 December - Charity Time Again

Once again, it's that time of the year: the time when I gather up all the junk mail I've received from charities and figure out who gets money and how much. And, as always, there's a big spread as to how many pieces of junk mail various charities sent me.

This year's total is 104 letters from 42 charities. Both numbers are down a fair bit from previous years (and the fact that I'm getting to this two weeks earlier this year than last year doesn't account for that big a difference), though the average of about 2.5 letters per charity is comparable to the past.

First, the list of charities which did the right thing and sent me only one letter. Note that this is not an endorsement of these charities, nor am I donating to all of them; I just feel they deserve some credit for not wasting a lot of money and paper sending junk mail:

• beatarthritis.ca
• CAMH
• Daily Bread Food Bank
• Canadian Diabetes Association
• Ducks Unlimited Canada
• Epilepsy Canada
• Foundation Fighting Blindness
• Lung Association
• MADD
• Mouth and Foot Painters Association
• North York Harvest Food Bank
• Schizophrenia Society
• Sick Kids Foundation
• St. John's Rehab
• tvo
• United Way
• WNED
• Yonge Street Mission
• YWCA

Before we get to the Hall of Shame, there's one special mention, and not in a good way. A couple of years ago, after I'd asked them to send me only one piece of junk mail a year, the David Suzuki Foundation sent me two - and quickly followed the second one with a letter acknowledging that I'd asked them to send only one and apologizing for their error. Well, this year, they sent four pieces, and no apologies.

Now, the Hall of Shame: the charities who sent the greatest volume of junk mail. This year, I'm once again listing charities who sent at least 6 letters (i.e. one every two months on average):

• Toronto Humane Society: 10 (up from last year's 8)
• ALS Society of Canada: 6 (down marginally from 7 last year)
• Canadian Hearing Society: 6
• Nature Canada: 6 (down from 9)

And three dishonourable mentions for charities which nearly made this list by sending me five pieces: Arthritis Society, Easter Seals, and Prostate Cancer Canada.

Sunday 6 December - St. Stephen's Day Comes Early

I have a tradition of buying myself a St. Stephen's Day present every year. After all, if a saint who spelled his name the same way as mine has his day on a day when stores have what may be their biggest sales of the year, why should I not rejoice and celebrate by buying myself a present?

This year, my present was to be a new camera. I'd been planning on getting a EOS 50D to replace my nearly five-year-old 20D, but when Canon introduced the EOS 7D a few months ago, I decided to get that instead. It beats the 50D in a number of ways which are appealing to me.

For the last month or so, most camera stores have been advertising this body for $100 off its MSRP, as part of a semi-secret instant rebate program run by Canon Canada. I say semi-secret because while Canon Canada says they do not have any rebate programs running at the moment, most stores say that this $100 discount is an instant rebate from Canon.

Well, this past week I saw an ad from Aden Camera advertising the 7D for $300 off. And that's a better deal than I expect to be able to get on Boxing Day. Now, I've never dealt with Aden before, and I have dealt with a few other stores that sell the 7D, so I started doing some research. Future Shop has a best price guarantee: they will beat any competitor's advertised price by 10% of the difference, and they also guarantee the lowest price for a period after you buy, with an exception for Boxing Day sale prices. Henry's only guarantees to match any competitor's advertised price, but they guarantee the lowest price until early January, and they don't exclude Boxing Day sales from their guarantee. Future Shop would be $13 cheaper (they're currently offering the 7D for $170 off, so they're only $130 higher than Aden), but I decided to pay the extra $13 to get it at Henry's. Call it insurance: if I find a better price in the Boxing Day sales, Henry's will give me a refund of the difference, while Future Shop will not.

I'll post some early impressions in the next little while, once I've had a chance to finish reading the manual and play with the camera a bit.

Meanwhile, what do I do with my old camera? Well, a friend of mine told me last year, when I started talking about wanting to replace my camera this year, that he wanted to buy my old camera. And when I saw Aden's ad, my friend and I settled on a price he'd pay for the old camera. He's paying me more than I'd get if I traded it in, but less than he'd have to pay if he bought it used from a store like Henry's, so it's a win-win deal.

Wednesday 25 November - Audi Coils

I got a notice in the mail today to let me know that there is a recall in the works for my car to replace faulty ignition coils. Going to Audi's Web site regarding the recall, I am to expect a second letter in the next few months letting me know when the parts are available, and then I can make an appointment to have the coils replaced under warranty.

There was also a recall several years ago regarding faulty ignition coils on my previous Audi. And, from looking at the recall Web site, that car would also be subject to this recall: not only is it in the list of affected vehicles, but there's also a question in their FAQ about that, and the answer is that yes, even though the coils were replaced under the previous recall, they need to be replaced again under this one.

I don't know why Audi has such problems with ignition coils. I'd imagine they're pretty embarrassed about this one.