Blessed by the Potato

This year our family thought briefly about “cancelling” Potatomas due to the stock market downturn, and also the realization that a lot of the time we feel so obligated to get something, anything that we get a lot of useless, overpriced stuff for each other, some of which never gets used. So this year there was a big focus on getting useful things for each other. My dad gave each of us a cheque, perhaps the most useful thing to get in any situation, if not the most creative. I also got an eliminator emergency car starter for my car. Since my car is getting old I’ve been considering getting one of these myself — I’ve never had to use my jumper cables yet, but it would be even more convenient to not have to worry about flagging down someone else to help me with a jump, to have a spare battery to do it on my own. In addition, it comes with a 110 V AC inverter, so I can use it to charge my cellphone without having to get a car adapter, or to power my laptop if needed, which is very handy when combined with MS Streets & Trips loaded on there for maps — though without a GPS I still have to be able to figure out where I am on my own (which on marked roads is not that hard).

Wayfare’s family is insane at xmess, getting each other “billions” of presents, but even they had a bit of a focus on practicality this year: lots of clothes and DVDs they knew they would watch and chocolates. Wayfare’s parents got us a Wii Fit (a very tough thing to find this year!) which is a toy, but will hopefully also be practical in helping us to continue to get healthy this year.

Though oddly enough her cousin got us an… iron. For ironing clothes. We both kind of tilted our heads at that, puzzled. We’ve been living out on own (singly or together) for the better part of a decade. We each came with an iron, and even then it’s not an item I use much around the house (perhaps it’s a passive-aggressive hint?). It just seems like such a strange gift to give someone: it’s at the same time a practical item, and also a completely useless one. After all, who doesn’t already have an iron that actually uses one? And it’s not like it’s a real cool or thoughtful gift, the sort of thing you just love to give even if the recipient doesn’t need it and you have to return it…

I recently posted about the dearth of ad revenue here, and I was a little surprised at how bad it is. I know this is a low-traffic personal blog spanning multiple topics, but there are a lot of other bloggers out there who have essentially “gone pro”. I’m actually quite amazed at how much ad revenue some sites are pulling in, with Four Pillars making enough to cover paying $20 per post to Mr. Cheap for writing. Hell, at that rate I could write one post every three months and cover the server bills! (Mike: hint, hint)

With ad revenue that enticing though comes the steady soulless grind: many “pro” blogs try to keep up their once-a-day posting scheme, even if they have to post less than stellar articles to fill the space. It loses the passion and discussion and opinionation that makes reading blogs worthwhile in the first place. It’s like the regular media but without the benefit of journalism training (not that I put much value on professional journalism training). Million Dollar Journey is the perfect example of this: I used to read it every day (and followed most of the comment threads, too), but now the site has over half its page space devoted to ads, and meeting the once-a-day format has taken it’s toll. The biggest symptom of this is the list post: 5 ways of cooking bacon; 7 types of winter tires; 10 books on retirement planning; one ring to rule them all. The posts also start getting shorter and shorter, with fewer details, and less research, with the first ten comments often containing corrections… and you start wondering if you can trust anything this guy (and here I’m referring to pro bloggers in general and not MDJ specifically) is saying — especially once they start getting into affiliate deals. Then to help promote the blog sites will join “carnivals” on some topic to increase cross-linking and help their readers find the other blogs. A lot of these carnivals are a great way to find new blogs and particularly good posts. However, some of them are just mis-mashes of regular blog-a-day posts with no unifying theme. One that struck me as being particularly strange was a post on how to subscribe to RSS feeds in the investing carnival, New Year’s edition, under real estate investing. In that same carnival is a link to a domain squatting “investing” site… and it wasn’t even a link to a particular post for the carnival.

I’m actually a little surprised at how high a lot of pro bloggers set the bar: many aim for a post every weekday (5 posts a week). That’s a pretty hectic pace, even when the posts are only 400 words long. I know it seems to synergize well with people’s daily routine to better bring in the ad revenue or whatever, but still, a lot of very successful sites (including some linked here: Penny Arcade, XKCD, etc) have thrice, twice or just once a week posting frequencies. I personally blog more for my own entertainment than yours, so I post whenever the heck I feel like it; I do try to keep up at least once a week, but sometimes will post three times a day when I’ve got a bee up my bonnet and nothing better to do with my time. I figure by now people have learned how to set up feeds, or aren’t terribly disappointed to come here a few days in a row to find nothing new (granted, if I go two or three weeks without a post, then it’s understandable if the bookmarks get pulled).

At the beginning of the year, I set a few goals for myself (though I wasn’t quite brave enough to make them public on the blog). In addition to things like making progress on my thesis, I had two major goals. The first was to educate myself about money matters, and to take a more active conscious/purposeful role in monitoring and managing my portfolio. That one I have met in spades, and if anything have gone too far in dabbling in the stock market this year. I think I’ve driven off at least two regular readers because they were bored to tears over the personal finance posts.

My performance in the market has not been great. For a large part of the year I was down, but down slightly less than the major indexes (go go active management!)… until one of my holdings dropped 99% on very bad news… I’m now down 38% on the year (counting savings through the year as cash at the beginning) which is just about the same as the indexes.

The other goal was to lose weight and get in shape. My long-term goal is to get back to the weight I was at at the beginning of grad school. At the beginning of the year, I was 40 pounds over that target weight. Of course, it would be unrealistic and unhealthy to lose all that weight in a single year, so my goal for the year was to lose the first 20 pounds. Sadly, I only lost about 15, and then regained 5 so that at the end of the year, I’m just down 10 pounds. Still, that’s progress, and more importantly, I’m in much better shape than I was this time last year. My heart rate and blood pressure are down, and my stamina is up. So overall, I’m pretty happy with how the year has gone.

I’m keeping my weight loss goal at 20 lbs/year again for 2009, and that’s in the Wii fit now, so no backing down. As long as I continue to make progress I think I’ll be happy (I figure I’ve got at least three years where I can convince my self-esteem that muscle weighs more than fat).

Well, I had another $315 in car repairs this week. A connection halfway down the exhaust “rotted out” causing exhaust to leak out and the car to make a hellish noise. After driving in it for over 2 hours on the way home for the break I had a killer headache and was ready to throw up. I don’t know how the ricers/bikers do it. Anyway, all fixed up now, and it’s even quieter than it was before. Just before the new year too, so that brings this year’s total to ~$1200.

Then the oxygen sensor trouble code came back. Once again I’ve cleared the check engine light with my scangauge — the problem seems intermittent so I don’t see the need for another costly exhaust system repair just yet. It could also be unrelated to the actual sensor, and instead be an electrical problem. I got a call last week from the dealership asking me to take my car in for a recall. “Who the heck put out a recall on a 12-year-old-car?” I wondered. Turns out the recall is from 1998, so my car must have somehow missed getting repaired. Don’t know why it never came up as an issue in their computer before, though perhaps they’re just using the free recall work as a way to get me in so I’ll buy something else (other maintenance or perhaps a new car) in this slow economy. The recall relates to a wiring harness that can cause shorts in the electrical system, and I’m thinking hey, that power window won’t work because of a short in the electrical system 3 years ago that they couldn’t fix… d’oh! Looking up the recalls for my car I found another for the lower ball joints in the suspension that apparently can wear out prematurely; it was the front lower ball joints that I had to have repaired last week… I wonder if I can get any portion of that covered if the recall work was never done? This is also a good point for any used car buyers out there: we bought this car when it was 3 years old, and I have no idea if we ever checked for any outstanding recalls. I think we just assumed that that would have been covered by the safety inspection. Obviously it can’t hurt to check… but I have no idea how one would actually go about doing that. A CarFax type report might say, but I think those are more accurate for US cars than Canadian ones; the manufacturer might have a record of recall work done under warranty, and failing that a good mechanic might be able to tell you by inspection (along with a list of the recalls).

I also replaced my wiper blades again. I had done it in October, but they’re just terribly streaky, which is unacceptable in this weather. I don’t know what it is with those Canadian Tire teflon blades — they just don’t cut it, despite the fact that CT seems to think that they’re the top-of-the-line ones (or at least that’s how they’re priced and displayed). I’ve always had much better results from the CT aero-something ones (the ones that are “curved for your modern windshield” and feature the silly little flaps that press them against the windshield at high speeds). Of course, I haven’t been able to find the aero-whatevers my last few trips to CT, which is why I got the teflon ones in the first place. So this time I replaced them with the reflex ones — the kind that are just the thin piece of bent metal with the rubber blade glued on. They wipe fantastic and I’m much happier now, even knowing that I wasted $25 replacing the wipers early; it was money well spent for a lot less aggravation/lot more visibility behind the wheel. I have been avoiding those reflex type wipers for a while because I got one set when they first came out and after about 3 months the glue holding the blade on to the curved piece of metal gave out and the wiper broke. I’m really afraid of that happening again — so afraid that I’m carrying around my old wiper in the trunk just in case. I really do love how well they work when they’re in one piece, but it would help my piece of mind a lot if CT put a clip or two in to help hold the rubber on, since the wipers do face a lot of forces in extreme temperatures and I just don’t know how well that glue will hold up.

So speaking of money well spent for winter driving: snow tires = win. I found myself out driving around Toronto earlier this week with a good 3-4 cm of wet snow on the roads, including the 404. It was enough snow that pretty much everybody was realizing it was not the time for stupidity and was driving sanely; even on the highway the fastest car was only going about 60 km/h. Along Sheppard, from the 404 to Bayview, there were 3 disabled cars. One was left abandoned in the middle of the road on the eastbound hill up towards Don Mills. I know that if I was in my all-seasons from a few years ago in that I would have been sliding around at least a little and my wheels would have been spinning every time I would have had to start up from a stop, no matter how sanely I tried to drive. With the winters I was in control the whole time, though I’d still rather avoid that kind of weather if I can, so that is easily money well spent. Fuel consumption of course takes a hit in winter. The weather has been too variable to really tell if the “winter front” is doing any good, even with the instrumentation of the scan gauge, but considering the pipe insulation cost $1.47 (it cost me more in gas to get to Home Depot than the pipe insulation did!) it really doesn’t have to save much to be worth it. As a tip remember that you don’t need the cabin to be warm to drive: just start the car and drive off slowly… unless you can’t see, in which case idle as long as you please until the windshield clears!

Now that the secret’s out, I can tell you all that I got Wayfare a new cell phone for xmess. She doesn’t use much time at all, and was formerly on a low-usage Telus plan that they don’t even offer any more. However, her handset broke apart, so it was time for a new one. I was hoping that Telus would give her a new one just to keep her as a client, but it wasn’t until I called in to switch her number that that offer was made. In the end, I think it was a good thing anyway. She told me she was on a $15/month plan, which sounds pretty good for a light user. After looking at her bill though, I saw that she was really paying $25/month after taxes, voicemail fees, and network charges were added on, which is pretty terrible for 50 minutes of airtime (50 cents/minute, much of which went unused through the month)! On top of that, the long distance rates were atrocious.

So a pay-as-you go phone seemed just the thing a light user like her needed. Most of the pay-as-you-go plans were pretty similar: roughly 20 cents/minute local, 30 cents/minute long distance. The thing that set them apart was the various additional fees and how long the airtime top-ups lasted. The winner was, believe it or not, Petro-Canada mobility (the oil company, yeah). They had no extra monthly fees (aside from the 911 fee) and $20/$50 top-ups lasted nearly 6 months (180 days), and a $100 top-up lasts for a whole year! The Nokia handsets they have are low-end but do have some neat features like FM radio tuners and voice recorders. However, we were quite surprised to find that the phone doesn’t have a volume control! (not normally a feature I feel I have to ask about) Here’s a breakdown of the competition:

Update: The phone does have volume control! You have to press left/right on the d-pad during a call, rather than the intuitive up/down.

Bell - 30 cents/min local; 40 cents/min long distance. Voicemail “express” included. $3.95 monthly system access fee. Top-ups last 30 or 60 days. A number of optional features for extra $$$, including automatic credit card top-ups. With the system access fees and the high rates, this is basically just a shitty monthly plan. Avoid it.

Solo - Bell’s more dedicated pre-paid plan, Solo has a higher daytime local rate of 40 cents/minute, but only 5 cents/minute evenings; long distance is an additional 30 cents/min. Voicemail “express” included, no other fees aside from 911. Top-ups last 45 [$20] or 75 days [$30], and are available from a number of retail outlets as well as via credit card.

Telus - 25 cents/min local; 55 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees aside from 911. Top-ups last 30 [$10] or 60 [$25+] days. Expensive add-ons like text messaging (might be needed if you get lots — they charge 15 cents/message without a plan!) and unlimited evenings/weekends are an option.

Fido - It’s pretty complicated. If they can’t explain it on their website so that I can understand it, then that is a fail. They call it a prepaid plan, but you have to refill monthly, so it’s really just a monthly plan that you can top-up by buying cards at a convenience store instead of a bill in the mail.

Virgin - 30 cents/minute local; 60 cents/minute long distance. Voicemail included. Top-ups last 30 [$15], 60 [$25], or ostensibly 365 [$100] days [their website still says the $100 top-up lasts a year, but I heard that they cancelled that]. A large number of optional plans available, as well as some primo handsets.

President’s Choice - 20 cents/min local; 45 cents/min long distance [24 cents/min combined with a PC long distance card]. Voicemail included, no other fees (aside from 911). Top-ups last 30 [$15] or 60 [$25] days. Optional extras include browsing plans and evening/weekend plans, making it a hybrid of a pay-as-you-go and monthly plan. Credit card top-ups an option.

Speak Out - 7-11’s reselling of Rogers’ service features 20 cents/min local [25 cents/min with the lower top-ups]; 40 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees. All top-ups last a full year. However, top-ups are only available from 7-11 stores.

Petro-Canada - 20 25 cents/min local; 30 45 cents/min long distance. Voicemail included, no other fees (aside from 911). Top-ups last 180 [$20 or $50] or 365 [$100] days. Top-ups only available from Petro-Canada gas stations. Edit: In March, just 3 months after getting the phone because of the decent rates, Petro-Canada has screwed it up by jacking the prices.

So for someone like Wayfare who only uses about an hour a month, but in fits and bursts where some months she won’t use it at all and then two or three in another month, a pay-as-you-go plan is perfect, and having the top-ups last a long time is also important — I shake my head at the ones with 30 day expiry: how are those really any different from a monthly plan? Being able to load up and not worry about it for the rest of the year is a nice feature.

Petro-Canada has been great so far: the people at the call centre were friendly when activating the phone and transferring over her old number. The one call she’s made on it came through clear. One thing though is that they need to load the phones with a normal ringtone option. I think there are only 4 song options. What happened to the classic brrring, brrring?

I am continually amazed at the lack of critical thinking in the general population and the media. I know that I’m a scientist and am therefore, you know, a perfect human being, blessed with capabilities mathematical and analytical in addition to citation searchical. Ok, maybe not quite perfect, but I will acknowledge that I perhaps possess a leg up in the critical analysis department due to inclination, training, and experience. Nonetheless, I’m amazed at some of the nonsense that floats around there in the ether.

For instance, the CNW “study” that just. won’t. die. Here’s where the big disconnect between common sense and reason lead to a meme that endures. The “study” in question claimed that a Hummer used less “energy” in its total lifetime (from design to daily driving to disposal) than Prius. That is something that goes against our common sense, kind of makes us sit up and take notice. Now, what’s supposed to happen is that one’s critical thinking and reason is supposed to kick in and say “hey, this really goes against our common sense: how does a vehicle that costs more money and uses more materials up front, and also uses more gas in an ongoing fashion, possibly use less total energy? I should check this out to see if it’s a neat factoid or total bullshit.” Then a quick fact-checking mission demonstrates that this is, in fact, total and complete bullshit and the thing dies there, and anyone who brings it up is mocked as a rube. Instead, the rubes pass it on without questioning it, and the illogic only serves to help draw attention to it. “Wow, Prius sucks, I’ve got to alert the Intertubes!” Whatever happened to extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence?

I can forgive people for reading too much into patterns sometimes. For instance, nearly anyone who bothers to know anything about fuel economy knows that cars (regular cars — not talking hybrids here) are more efficient on the highway than in the city. But they have real trouble believing that driving slower on the highway saves fuel. After all, doesn’t going faster, like on the highway, save gas compared to going slower, like in the city? Ah, you point out, but there’s a point where the car is most efficient: 90 km/h, say. Going faster than that actually uses more gas. They think for a second, and the light goes on behind their eyes “Oh,” they say in a condescending way “I’ve heard that before, that’s why the speed limit was 55 in the States during the energy crisis. But that was for old cars. New cars are much better and can go faster.” Which, I have to admit, is exactly the right thought process, just the wrong result.

Likewise, for about 4 years there, housing was the best investment one could have: better than the stock market, briefly better even than oil. So you could forgive someone for lusting after a house, repeating nonsense like “priced out forever” and “renting is throwing your money away” or “real estate never goes down”. You might even forgive the same person who scoffed at the “payback period” for a hybrid car not running the same calculation for a house. The media didn’t even surprise me with their house porn and almost exclusively positive coverage of the bubble. I was, however, taken aback by the actions of our government, especially by easing the “margin requirement” (down payment) for a house. I know that they’re dumb promise-breaking neocons [ok, I won’t go there just now] and all, but still, someone should have known better. Then, as the real estate slowdown looks to finally be under way, a study comes out about the most over priced markets from UBC… and the markets it says are over-priced are not the ones people would think are over-priced. This is because of how they did their analysis: they included in their valuation a measure of how much a market has gone up since the last cycle: markets that went up more are not considered to be “bubblier”, but rather, more fairly priced in their estimation since they’re counting on further rapid increases. So the cities with the most rapid increase in prices are supposedly the ones that are less overvalued…

I recently chewed into Netbug about a post of his on environmentalism. He was arguing that man couldn’t cause global warming because, as a documentary that aired on BBC4 argued, we can’t compete with the sun. That’s just the sort of thing that’s great at misleading people (even otherwise smart people capable of Googling, like Netbug) — it has just enough ring of truth to it to make you believe it. This documentary makes a number of points which are true, but not important or worse, wrong-headed. Then it sprinkles in some minority opinions, a fair helping of conspiracy theory (global warming is a conspiracy by Maggie Thatcher to break the unions! Scientists take the dirty british money, but not the money of oil companies — no, if they did, they’d be richer and wouldn’t be doing some slumdog documentary film!) and some selective editing to sucker people in. Then Netbug finished off his post with a statement about how stupid the environmentalism movement has gotten with a clip from Penn & Teller about circulating a petition to ban water at some green rally, and all the people who signed it. Of course, that says less about the environmental movement in general, and more about people’s willingness to sign something they didn’t fully read or understand while at a rally.

I first reviewed Astraweb back in 2006, shortly after Rogers cut off newsgroup access. Things have really only gotten better since my last review: speeds have picked up considerably (I can just about max out my connection now at certain times of the day, and the average is well above 300 kB/s, and well above 100 kB/s even in peak times), retention is longer, and the deal is now 120 GB for $25 US, which covers about 8 months of my downloading habit, and is still the best value-for-money I’ve found. What made me think of revisiting my already positive review was that I ran through the end of my last block of credits tonight, and they actually let me go over so that my download finished up. I only went a few MB over, and I have no idea how long they would have let me keep going (I doubt I could have set up a 30 GB download to run with just enough credits to start and they would have let that finish — maybe it only checks every few minutes or so), but it was nice that they didn’t stop it immediately when the digits rolled over to zero. I naturally signed up right away for another 120 GB, which should take me through to late summer (though if I don’t start using the VCR/TV to watch TV I might run out before this TV season ends in the spring).

Thanks to CC, I got my hands on a copy of Findependence Day
by Jonathan Chevreau to review. Findependence Day is the fictional story of a couple starting out with oppressive credit card and student debt, and how they learn to properly manage their money to reach financial independence (or Findependence), learning about RESPs, RRSPs, TFSAs, stocks, and frugality along the way.

It’s not a great story, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s short, and the lessons are there but not beat-you-over-the-head obvious. It’s basically an extended parable/anecdote for learning purposes. It’s edutainment. If you have the attention span and inclination to read a non-fiction personal finance book, then I recommend you do that, you’ll get a lot more information that way; the story is not compelling enough to recommend it purely as a work of fiction for those that all ready know the basics of their financial lives. However, if you (or someone you know) is not inclined to read up on financial planning (whether through books or blogs), then this is an excellent way to introduce them to the topic.

I was going to try to get my sister to read it next — she badly needs to start learning about how to manage her money. She doesn’t have the slightest interest in reading texts on the topic, so this might be a good way to trick her into learning this stuff… Except I realized that she’s 18. She needs to learn how to balance her chequing account and pay off her credit card, not how to grow her savings tax-free. This book isn’t actually going to help her at all at this point in her life. So instead I’m going to pass it on: if anyone would like to read it next just leave a comment and I’ll pass it along.

It’s only been a few days, and the only decision we’ve made on the HDTV front is to wait to see what boxing day sales bring.

One thing I’ve been thinking of is that so many reviews say that the physical screen itself is not all that different between brands, and that 1080p vs 720p is not such a big deal. However, the scalers and other software can have big impacts on how the final image comes out with a source that isn’t matched to the native resolution (and what might contribute to SD looking like crap) and things like step artifacts. So I was wondering, is it possible to create a test DVD/blu-ray to take into stores to see how various screens handle certain test patterns and video at different resolutions? I obviously don’t have a blu-ray burner, and I don’t know how possible it is to make a high def video clip (h.264?) on a DVD that will play on a TV, let alone one for different hi-def formats and framerates, but it could be a useful tool to make up.

An email I just got from the hospital administrators:

[the new MRI is] expected to be operational by January 26. The [current clinical MRI], meanwhile, will be up and running again by January 12.

Optimism!

(I’ve told anyone planning on coming down for an MRI to not expect anything until February; we’ll see how that goes…)