Jason Segel and The Swell Season

If you’re a fan of The Swell Season (the couple who won the Oscar for Once), or Jason Segel, you need to watch this video right now. It’s the greatest thing ever.

Fuck the CRTC

Earlier today the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission made a decision that Globalive, Canada’s newest entry into our wireless market, doesn’t meet their draconian requirements to do business in this country. The sticking point seems to be that Globalive (operating as WIND Mobile) is 65% owned by an Egyptian company.

This is bullshit, and is not in the best interest of Canadian consumers. The CRTC’s mandate is “to ensure that both the broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public“. Today’s decision is in direct conflict with their mandate and should be immediately reversed, followed by the resignation of Chaiman Konrad von Finckenstein. Canada already has one of the most closed cell phone markets on the planet, with rates exceeding most other countries in the developed world. Not only that but the level of service we receive from the three current providers (Rogers, Bell, and Telus), lags far behind those same countries.

Competition is a good thing, and almost always benefits consumers by stimulating innovation and lowering prices. The CRTC is so far of touch (or maybe so deep in the incumbent’s pockets), that they don’t (or won’t) understand this.

Last year when the CRTC auctioned off a slice of the wireless spectrum to independents it looked like a step in the right direction. By opening up the market and encouraging competition, the iron fist of control they wielded appeared to be weakening. Now, 18 months later when the first of the new companies is ready to launch their service, the CRTC swoops in and pulls the rug out from under their feet.

It should be pointed out that at the time of the auction the CRTC was more than happy to accept Globalive’s $442 million bid. Not only that, but according to the CBC the company passed an ownership test at that time conducted by Industry Canada.

I am left asking myself how this could happen and why the Commission would behave in such a way, especially at the 11th hour? Are you telling me that the CRTC didn’t understand the ownership structure of Globalive until just now? I call bullshit. Heaping, steaming mounds of bullshit. According to Michael Geist, the existing telecom providers in this country lodged the complaint against Globalive’s ownership structure, and I guess the CRTC pulled its head out of its ass long enough to bend over and let Rogers, Bell, and Telus stick something else up there.

Fuck the CRTC.

It’s time.

P.S. – If you want to get an idea of just how out of touch the CRTC really is, check out Search Engine‘s recent interview with von Finckenstein.

Organic food box

An organic food box is something Christina and I have been considering for a while. I was introduced to the concept by an article in Toronto Life Magazine last year, and have kept the idea filed away in the back of my head since. I figure it’ll mean a few less trips to the grocery store, plus introduce us to wacky foods that we wouldn’t otherwise eat.

So a few weeks ago we finally decided to try it out, and found a company called Organics Delivered who offer a trial. Basically you get two boxes (delivered two weeks apart), and there’s no commitment after that if you decide this kind of thing isn’t for you. If you do, they promise to provide for your family for a thousand generations (that sounds like a company with confidence in their business plan to me .

Our first box came today, and contained the following stuff:

Carrots
Bananas
Kale
Red Chard
Lettuce
Starkrimson Pears
Oranges
Kiwis
Celery
White Onions
Sweet Potatoes
tomatoes

That might not be a full list, but it’s what I can remember right now. The fun part about it is the “crap-shoot” nature of the box. The stuff you get is to a large extent seasonal so each box is a surprise when it arrives on your doorstep. I’m familiar with most of the items on this list, although I don’t think I’ve ever had a Starkrimson pear or Red Chard (which kind of looks like leafy rhubarb).

I suppose at the very least it’ll introduce us to foods we wouldn’t otherwise buy, and get us eating more organic produce. I’m pretty sure we’ll stick with the service after our two week trial, unless of course box two is filled with nothing but brussel sprouts.

(Ok fine, I like brussel sprouts if they’re cooked well – plus they kind of look like little brains so you can pretend you’re a zombie while you eat them).

New furnace

It took us 3 months to finally get it done, but I’m very happy to report that we finally have a new furnace! Christina and I had been humming and hawing all summer about what to get and who to buy it from. We ultimately decided to go with the Cadillac of home heating technology and spring for a Baxi Luna HT 380 Combination unit.

What’s a combination unit you ask? Well it’s a “boiler” that heats water for the radiators AND provides domestic hot water (for sinks, showers, and toilets). I put “boiler” in quotes because it’s actually a fully tankless on-demand system. It doesn’t do anything until we open a tap and request hot water. Not only is this an efficient way to provide hot water, but it means we can get rid of our big, gas-guzzling rented hot water tank. The space savings in the basement are worth the price alone.

Here is some photographic evidence:

So far the domestic water has been amazing and hotter than it ever was with the old heater. It takes a few extra seconds to get hot water (especially in the morning), but most of the time it’s hardly a measurable decrease compared to the old one. We’ll see how the heating goes when we turn that on in the next few weeks (or days).

The cat, part 2

Back in February I wrote about the problems we’ve been having with our cat. It’s now been 6 months since then and although things have improved, the situation is still far from perfect. Every few weeks she still pees/poops on the floor, and her aggressive and unfriendly tendencies remain. Compared to how it was things are relatively good, but still difficult to live with.

The problem is a “relatively good” cat is still a bad cat part of the time. With a toddler and a new baby in the house we can’t really afford to have a “relatively good” cat.

So what do we do? As you might imagine it’s impossible to find a home for an old, aggressive cat that sometimes shits on the rug. We could dump her at the humane society, but there is little chance she would survive there more than a couple of weeks, and I figure why force her to suffer before the inevitable. So I see two options.

1. Have her put down. I certainly don’t like the idea of this but I’m sure many animals have been euthanized for lesser reasons. When I’m cleaning cat pee out of the rug it sounds like a good plan, but then I look her in the face and have a hard time dealing with the idea.

2. Send her outside. This idea came to me a while back  but we needed to have her vaccinations updated before letting her roam free. Last thing we want is for her to bring rabies or something  into the house. The theory is that maybe she’ll go outside, get her aggression out and generally be happier.

So I called a few vets who makes house-calls and found one that would update her shots for $85. I thought that was a reasonable price and today he came over to do it. As you might imagine it was quite an ordeal but we managed to get two needles into her flab without serious incident.

Tomorrow she goes out. Fingers crossed that she’ll love it outside and be able to live a happier life without driving us crazy. The vet’s advice was to send her outside and never let her back in again. He said she can survive perfectly well outdoors 100% of the time and can eat, sleep, and thrive without coming into the house. This sounds kind of extreme to me, so I’m not sure how it’s going to go yet. I know lots of cats that go in and out of their homes with no problem and I think that’s what we’ll do for now.

Wish us (and her) luck.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-12

• It's time to go lie down and travel about 7 hours into the future. #
• Sofie enjoyed her ice cream so much tonight that she needed a bath. #
• Mr. Plow, that's my name. That name again is Mr. Plow. #
• On my way to Henry's to look at video cameras #
• @allisonwoo Hey feel free to send that email in. Feedback is awesome, and it's all but guaranteed that I'll read it on the air in reply to allisonwoo #
• Anyone know how Dell's "datasafe" hard drives work? Is it actually RAID 1 or just some kind of auto-backup? #
• Toronto After Dark just announced their first 8 movie titles for next month’s film fest. Check them out here: http://tr.im/rofQ #
• It's only Tuesday and my to-do list for this week is already extending beyond Friday. #
• Looking forward to recording Renerd Radio tonight after taking last week off. #

More new photos

Quick note to let you know that I renamed the “Isabel” photo gallery to “Family” and added some new photos. Click here to check it out.

Also, in case you didn’t realize it you can click on each thumbnail to see the full size un-cropped picture. Crazy stuff, I know!

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-05

• At high park about to eat chip truck fries. #
• At Yorkdale on a saturday. Need i say more? #
• Potty training lesson #1: Never underestimate just how much or often a 2 year old can pee. #
• Dave & I had club sandwiches and free beer for lunch today. #
• Got this new coat rack in the front hall and every time I walk by I swear somebody is standing there. Freaks me out. #

Potty training fail

Sofie is 2 and a half years old and still wears diapers. By no means is this the most unusual thing in the world, but there is a part of me that wishes she was already toilet trained. I’m not worried that she’s falling behind other kids her age, or that we probably have a 12 year old bed wetter on our hands. No, the biggest reason I wish she’d pee in the toiled is that we’d save a lot of money on diapers, and a a lot of space in the green bin. During a city worker strike such as the one we’re enduring now, this would mean fewer trips to the temporary garbage drop-off.

Admittedly we’ve spent very little time working on it and I certainly don’t blame Sofie for her lack of toilet prowess. I know it’ll happen eventually and there’s no sense forcing her into it. I figure that’ll only stress her out and certainly not provide the encouragement she needs.

With that in mind, we tried a diaper-less experiment for a while yesterday. I thought it would be a good test to see if she even understood the concept. Well… turns out not so much.

Maybe we gave up too quickly, but in one hour Sofie wet herself five times. That’s right, 5 times in about 60 minutes. I didn’t even know anybody peed that much. We asked her every few minutes if she needed to pee, and the answer was always no. We stressed that she should tell us just before she was going to go, but each time we heard “daddy, I just peed” as her pants were filling up with urine.

The fifth time we didn’t change her for a few minutes hoping that having wet pants would bother her and help her get the idea that peeing herself wasn’t fun. Turns out she doesn’t seem to mind walking around with pee-soaked pants cause she went about her business playing happily in the back yard.

All this makes me think she really isn’t ready for potty training. So far she was unable to tell us before she peed and wet pants weren’t a problem for her. I guess in a few weeks we’ll try it again.

Driveway “fair use”

This year Christina and I decided to entirely re-seed our front lawn. I started with all new manure-injected soil (I know this due to the smell – sorry neighbours), and spread it out to cover the entire lawn. Then I over saturated it with high-quality “shade-mix” grass seed. About 6 weeks later we had a full healthy looking lawn. It turned out better than I could have imagined and overall I’m very pleased with my grass-growing abilities.

There has been one problem though. People seem unable to NOT drive over the front corner nearest the street. This particular section is bordered by our driveway to the east, and the sidewalk/street to the north.

Back when the new grass was still mostly dirt, a neighbour accidentally took a big gouge out of it while doing a 3-point turn in our driveway. He came over and apologized and offered to pay for the repair. No big deal really – shit happens. A few days later I went out and fixed it with new dirt and new grass seed.

A couple of weeks later, a fresh new tire track appeared in the same spot. This time the culprit didn’t identify him or herself, and I doubt is even aware of their blunder. After fixing it once again, I put up a little wire fence around the corner, hoping to signal to people that driving on my grass is not OK.

Apparently most people are idiots because this weekend I looked out my front window and what did I see? The fence had been flattened! It seriously can’t be that hard to turn around in somebody’s driveway and actually stay on the paved part can it?

The private-drive 3-point turn is one of those things that has become acceptable in our society. It’s the “fair use” clause in our collective understanding of private property, and so far it’s worked quite well. You turn in my driveway, and I turn in yours. It’s simple, necessary, and we all get along.

But having said that please, for the love of god, quit driving on my damn grass!

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