Archive: Posts from July, 2008
July 16th, 2008, 11 Comments »
I don’t drink. I did when I was a teenager, but that was mostly for show. I never really acquired a taste for alcohol. Plus, I’m kind of anhedonic. I’m not a teetotaller–go forth and drink up–it’s just not for me.
At various people’s urgings, I have, on occasion, tasted an alcoholic beverage. They mostly taste bad, but nothing tastes more foul to my virgin tongue than wine.
Of course, nearly everybody else loves wine. And that’s fine. I do find the snobby celebration of all things vino quite farcical. The frequent bollocks from wine producers, sellers and consumers gets kind of grating. Plus, I find that anybody who takes a single wine appreciation course becomes a confident assessor of the grape juice, and can hold forth at length about its ‘oaken, fruity frankness’ or whatever.
I’ve always imagined that it was just a twist of fate that made wine the most examined beverage in our society. Why not, say, orange juice? “My, the pulpy tang of this Valencia 2002 really sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?”
I can’t remember where, but I recently read a fantastic article about the moral superiority that now accompanies discussions of food and wine. Like, we’re better people because we eat organic chicken.
That’s a long, ranty introduction to this blog post entitled “How To Be A Snob: Drinking Alcohol” (thanks to Waxy):
Do not speak. Scent is pretty easy to verify, so if you guess wrong then everyone will know what a yutz you are. If someone ventures their own review as to what it smells like, frown as though you’re too busy concentrating on this intense bouquet to interrupt it with stupid words. This automatically gives you the edge, since as a conneisseur you know enough not to discuss anything until the full tasting is over.
I could follow these instructions, and just skip the drinking step.
UPDATE: Boris rightfully points up that this would be the perfect opportunity to pimp VinoCamp at UBC Botanical Gardens. He assures me that “it’s like wine tasting minus the snobbery…or something.”
11 Comments »
July 15th, 2008, 12 Comments »
At some point in my adult life, I learned this rule of thumb:
The monthly cost of housing (that is, rent or mortgage) should comprise less than 30% of your income.
It’s a kind of personal finance benchmark: if you’re spending too much on housing, you’re probably not living an economically-sustainable lifestyle. For example, I recently read that, on average, Montrealers “spent 18.6 per cent of its income on housing and shelter costs in 2006″. On an unrelated note, the median cost of housing in the Montreal area seems shockingly low at $683 a month.
However, I’ve never been clear as to whether they meant 30% of your gross or your net income. I decided to finally figure it out, and write up the answer.
First off, various sources indicate that the correct metric is 30% of your ‘household’ (or sometimes ‘family’) income. So what’s ‘household income’? According to Wikipedia:
Household income is a measure of current private income commonly used by the United States government and private institutions. To measure the income of a household, the pre-tax money receipts of all residents over the age of 15 over a single year are combined. Most of these receipts are in the form of wages and salaries (before withholding and other taxes), but many other forms of income, such as unemployment insurance, disability, child support, etc., are included as well.
So the key phrase there is ‘pre-tax money’. Apparently, then, the rule of thumb applies to your gross income. Does that jibe with what you thought?
12 Comments »
July 15th, 2008, 16 Comments »
About a month ago, we bought a NatureMill indoor composter. It’s a pretty cool device. You load all your food waste (pretty much everything, excepting bones, citrus and fruit pits), it churns it up, and in about a month, you get compost. All for about 50 cents of power a month, according to their website. Here’s a two-and-a-half minute introductory video.
This is obviously a pricier option than the bucket-plus-worms option, but that’s not viable in our current residence. Plus, we’re much better composters when the device is within easy reach. And this thing has an air filter, so it doesn’t smell up the house.
The irony is that we have limited use for the loamy compost that the machine generates. We’ve got some plants, but once they’re filled up, we’re left with only one option: illegal dumping. Of dirt.
I remember talking to Vancouver’s deputy mayor a couple of years ago, and he mentioned that half of all of the city’s waste in landfills is organic. It’s shocking how little garbage we now remove from our apartment. We’re down to, like, one grocery bag’s worth of garbage a week. So, thus far, the experiment is working. Plus, it’s kind of fascinating to watch stuff decompose.
Over-Packaged CFLs and Compostable Cups
Some of that garbage featured the destroyed remnants of some plastic packaging. I thought it was ironic that these eco-friendly CFL bulbs came in this irritating, impossible-to-open, non-recyclable blister pack:
Speaking of plastic and composting, I’ve been spending a lot of time working in the new Serious Coffee location in Cook Street Village. They have some tasty flavoured iced teas. The other day, I noticed some fine print on the ‘plastic’ cup (much like this one). Like a number of cafes and restaurants, they’re using containers made of a corn resin which, while not recyclable, are compostable (not a word, but it should be). I didn’t ask the staff whether they separate the cups out for composting. Instead, I took mine home, cut it into strips and stuck it in our composter. We’ll see if it still looks like bits of plastic in a month.
16 Comments »
July 14th, 2008, 1 Comment »
I haven’t seen No Country For Old Men. It never came to Gozo last year. We don’t have a TV at the moment, and I’m disinclined to watch such a renowned film on my laptop. I’ll wait until we build our theatre room along with the rest of the house, I guess.
Anyhow, while researching ebooks last week, I happened upon this short interview between Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers. An interview with McCarthy is a rare thing (according to Wikipedia, he sat for his first ever TV interview in 2007!), and it’s an enjoyable read:
C.M. But Miller’s Crossing is in that category. I don’t want to embarrass you, but that’s just a very, very fine movie.
J.C. Eh, it’s just a damn rip-off.
C.M. No, I didn’t say it wasn’t a rip-off. I understand it’s a rip-off. I’m just saying it’s good.
It’s about eight months old, but if you missed it and liked the movie, it’s worth reading.
1 Comment »
July 14th, 2008, 1 Comment »
Monique is a keynote speaker down at Portus 2008, a Harry Potter convention down in Dallas. I’ve been enjoying her photos, which provide yet another view into the dorky but lovable world of intense fandom. Here are two favourites. I love that He Who Must Not Ever, Ever Be Named is on a call:
1 Comment »
July 13th, 2008, 7 Comments »
Note: This website is habitually G-rated when it comes to language (okay, maybe 14 Years). By necessity, this post features use of the F-bomb. If that troubles you, skip ahead.
Yesterday I saw Young People Fucking (here’s the trailer), a charming Canadian sex comedy. It’s a highly-structured movie, following five couples through five stages of an evening of sex (from ‘prelude’ to ‘afterglow’). The couples represent a variety of typical relationships–the first date, the exes, the friends, the couple and the roommates.
So, we end up with a movie in 25 short scenes exploring and poking (heh) gentle fun at the foibles, morays and politics of sex. It’s a reasonably witty film, with enough laughs to sustain the formal structure. Despite the title, there’s actually very little nudity in the film–you’d see as much on an average episode of The L-Word. Roger Ebert sums up the film nicely:
No great lessons are learned. There is little high drama. As it stands, the screenplay could supply fodder for countless theatrical companies. It’s…engaging, that’s what it is. These are all essentially nice people. Canadians, you know.
It’s a small sample group, but Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 80%.
The ensemble cast is generally good, with Callum Blue (previously seen in the excellent and gone-too-soon “Dead Like Me”) and Carly Pope (previously seen in “Popular”) standing out. I think Ms. Pope has gotten a bit of a short shrift from Hollywood, she can punch well above her current weight class. Plus, she has terrific eye brows. I did have a trivial complaint about the title. Nearly everyone in the cast is on the wrong side of 30, so I’m not sure it’s fair to go with ‘Young People’. I rather like the shorter title People Fucking.
It’s no great masterpiece, and it’s a bit risque for a first date movie, but I recommend it. The movie had a ridiculously short run here in Victoria, and probably won’t last in other cinemas across the country in the busy summer season. Seek it out or rent Young People Fucking. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
7 Comments »
July 13th, 2008, 13 Comments »
First, read about Travis’s odyssey to get an iPhone on Friday. He was tenacious, and it took most of the day, but (despite Rogers’ best efforts) he took one home. Travis cites ten problems with the iPhone launch in Canada:
So yeah, basically, from the biggest, most important factors, to the smallest details, they were simply unpreparedâ€â€which is bad enoughâ€â€but they were also dumb about process and shoddy and careless.
Next, read Seth’s post about scarcity and how to handle high demand and low supply:
Imagine what the Apple and AT&T stores would have been like this weekend if they were filled with happy customers who had pre-paid, pre-registered and were just dropping in for three minutes to pick up their (very coveted) phones, walking up the VIP line, past all the others just waiting for a chance to buy one…
Both posts have lots of lessons about how Apple, Rogers, Fido et al could have better managed their iPhone campaign. There’s enough material in the last six months for an MBA thesis.
You know the story–they really dropped the ball from day one. They pretty much made every error possible, from exorbitant initial pricing to promising breakfast to the early birds. Travis reports (at one of Rogers’ six national flagship stores) that “The only food was granola bars at about 10 or 11 a.m., but only enough for about one bar for every three people.” Now that’s some sweet customer service.
Come Back on Monday or Tuesday
As both Travis and Seth more or less point out, why didn’t Rogers just hand out tickets to those in line, like wristbands for a concert? They could easily have predicted excessive demand, and they knew how many phones each store was getting. I can guess why: nobody who works at a Rogers store wants to get up early to go meet and greet the alpha fans that have queued up half the night.
I went into a Fido store in Victoria yesterday, and asked about the ratio of supply to demand. They said they had 26 iPhones, and easily had 100 enquiries on the first day. Then I asked how I could buy one, and they told me to “come back on Monday or Tuesday”. No waiting list, no deposit, no nothing. They genuinely didn’t want to take my money.
If I was Bell Canada or another mobility provider, I’d be offering killer deals over the next few weeks, to try to entice iPhone enthusiasts away. You wouldn’t get the hardcore fanboys, but there would probably be some low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking.
13 Comments »
July 12th, 2008, 18 Comments »
I woke up unusually early this morning, and went for a little bike ride. I figured I’d breeze past the Fido store to inquire about timelines and waiting lists for getting an iPhone. To add a tiny complaint to the monumental PR fiasco that the iPhone Canada build-up and launch has been, Fido’s website shows the wrong operating hours for their Yates St. store.
When I got home, one of our neighbours was out in the back lane washing his fancy BMW. It occurred to me–not for the first time–that if you can afford a Beemer, you can afford to pay somebody else to wash it.
When we owned a car–a cheesy little Chevy Metro–we lived in an apartment. We (too rarely) took our car to the car wash because there wasn’t really an alternative.
So, I can think of only two reasons why my neighbour manually washes his own car:
He doesn’t trust any of the local car washes. This seems implausible, because there are plenty of high-end detailing and car wash places around.
He enjoys the process of washing his car. I can’t imagine why–I’ve always found it a loathsome task–but I may be in the minority.
So, pray tell, do you like washing your car?
18 Comments »