Blessed by the Potato

Well, Dr. Horrible Part 3 has been posted. It’s only 15 minutes, go watch it if you haven’t yet, then come on back.

Spoiler warning!

So, Dr. Horrible Part 1 and 2 were I think the best thing ever to come out of Joss Whedon’s brain. Better, for that brief 25 minutes, than even Firefly. I’ve watched each one about 20 times, and everything is just perfect: NPH’s facial ticks, that empty look in his face when he is first asked about Penny, the picture taken through the bushes, it’s just amazing. The songs are catchy and clever, and I was humming or singing them in my head for days afterwards. And there’s a great balance between the musical comedy aspects and the regular acting parts — which were incredibly well done. In just a few minutes of screen time there seems to be real depth to the characterization of Moist, Dr. Horrible, and Penny. Plus it was so incredibly true-to-life (slightly exaggerated of course, but it’s one of the best portrayals of a hopelessly romantic mad scientist I’ve ever seen).

The third and final part I felt was kind of a let-down today. It started off pretty strong, with Captain Hammer being such an arrogant tool that he drove Penny off, which is how I saw this part progressing in my mind. I really liked the very brief part with Penny in the laundromat with two frozen yogurts (what a crazy random happenstance!). But then they put a twist on it and went in another direction completely. Twists and going in a different direction is ok, just to get that out there, but they turned it from a musical comedy into a musical tragedy, which really didn’t seem to fit the theme and feel of the first two parts (ok, not fitting the theme of the first two parts makes the twist more effective when it comes, but it doesn’t bring to a satisfactory ending the story that I’ve practically memorized in the first two parts). Plus the third part seemed to have a lot more singing and a lot less cutsey, clever acting parts in-between. Again, not necessarily a bad thing in general, but I didn’t find the songs as good or as catchy. I might still be singing “with my freeze-ray I will stop…” or “evil on the rise” or “it’s a brand new day” in the shower for the next few weeks, but I don’t think “So they say”, “Everyone’s a hero”, “You’re slipping”, or “Dr. Horrible is here” will get much play, so to say.

I’d prefer a different ending, but nonetheless, it’s the best super-villain musical comedy out there, so I’m going to buy it on DVD once that becomes an option.

Wayfare sent me an interesting, thought-provoking article in the Toronto star “Sizzlers and Fizzlers”. I shouldn’t say article, it really doesn’t have much writing to it, no analysis or commentary. It’s an interesting factoid. The PDF with what juicy information there is is here. The headline number is that in the last 40 years, Toronto real estate was up 1250% (since 1969), compared to the TSX being up 1244%. This implies that real estate was just as good if not a better investment over the long term than the stock market (once you factor in carrying costs, stocks look like the better place to keep your money, but then you can really leverage the hell out of real estate).

That really put the tingles to my scientist senses* (like Spidey senses, but for nerds… though Peter Parker was a bit of dweeb himself), since this does not jive with just about everything else I’ve read. It makes me want to look deeper into the methods to see how these conclusions came about; it sets off my Saganist “extrodinary claims require extraordinary proof” alarm.

* – Humorous aside, we were talking today in the lab about curious results, including one study that exposed subjects to a 13-hour and 18-hour exposure period every day. Explaining where they found their 31-hour days would have made for a much more interesting paper.

Just about everything else I’ve read, which is more general and not specific to Toronto, puts the compound inflation-adjusted rate of return for housing at about 1% or so (so the nominal rate should be 3-5%). So to see the 6.9% figure in this article (the same as stocks) was a little baffling. Is Toronto really that special? Was all that other stuff about long term trends I read wrong?

Unfortunately, the article does not give anywhere near enough information to say for sure. There are some inconsistencies though. First off, their numbers for the stock market look to be about right, in terms of the nominal prices over the years, but don’t look to include the return from dividends, which should improve the stock market figures by a fair margin. I also have to wonder if the choice of starting year in 1969 could affect things, since the 70’s were a rough decade for stocks — would the picture look different starting from 1959 or 1979? (I don’t actually know, but it makes me wonder) Some areas (and Toronto’s overall average) have not, in inflation-adjusted terms, come back to their 1989 peaks yet, and my dad was saying not too long ago that the housing boom had just recently brought their house back up to that point. Naturally, some areas have been hotter than others. Surprisingly, Willowdale (C-14) was one of the very coldest areas in the study, which just doesn’t agree with the fact that it’s such a desirable neighbourhood. Was it just simply already a wealthy, desirable neighbourhood in 1968, so when the data started in 1969 there wasn’t a whole lot of up left to go? I doubt that, since it used to be, from the perspective of a kid growing up there, a “normal middle class” neighbourhood, and is now full of, well, rich people and condos. The average home price there according to the PDF, $390,520, is almost exactly the same as the overall Toronto average at $390,839 (but it was a good deal above average at the 1989 peak, hence the underperformance). However, a quick trip to MLS will show that the lowest non-condominum asking price is $420k, so how the average got to be $390k in a neighbourhood full of million dollar homes is completely beyond me. The lowest price for a condo is in the $160k range, so it’s possible that all the new condo development in the area is really bringing down the average. But what does that mean for the overall study then? North York’s condo buildup started just a little bit ahead of a lot of other areas, so is the fact that what must be a large number of these units are now being flipped and bringing the average of “resale” homes down disproportionately hurting that area? Likewise, are the people who recently sold their SFHs in the “gentrifying” areas like Leslieville to developers for gagillions of dollars bringing the average way, way up because the condos built on those sites haven’t had a chance to be flipped yet? Since they’re using average values and not medians, are a few $25 million dollar homes in a few areas really skewing the results? Do these results in any way have bearing on the reality of owning a home in Toronto over the past 40 years? Do they offer any insight for what might be in store in the future?? Disturbingly, some of these questions suggest that, for example Willowdale, might have performed even better than the factoid’s already generous rate of return. Or, that the really great returns will come from places that are presently farmland, and not areas that currently look good. Or, that it was a really good idea to own real estate in the 70’s and 80’s, and a really bad one in the 90’s, with the 00’s being a bit of a wash, so far.

The study seems to have enough holes that I’m not going to reject my earlier information that suggests that housing, in general, underperforms the stock market. It is possible that Toronto was a special exception in the last 40 years compared to the overall averages of US (and more rarely for data discussion, Canadian) real estate. After all, in the last 40 years Toronto went from being a backwater city up in, you know, Canada, to being a world-class metropolitan city. Toronto had a huge boom in building and real estate in the 70’s: that’s when almost all of the recognizable downtown was built up: First Canada Place, Royal Bank Plaza, the CN Tower, etc. Two-thirds of those impressive 40-year real estate returns were due to gains in the 70’s and 80’s (yes, it’s cherry-picking at a market peak, but in the second 20 years of this study, housing only returned 2% nominal straight-line returns per year, with negative growth when adjusting for inflation). In just the last 10 years the suburbs have expanded so much some people have started calling them the exurbs, another period of massive growth for Toronto, and also what turned out to be another real estate bubble in the States. So while the headline 40-year overall nominal return number is attention-grabbing, especially next to the very similar number for the nominal TSX return, I’m not convinced that a house is the best place to put my money.

I put the link up on the right, but I also just have to give it a direct mention here to give it the attention it deserves. It’s a Joss Whedon production with Neil Patrick Harris starring as Dr. Horrible, a quirky, shy, evil mad scientist who’s trying to pull off a major heist to get into the evil league of evil when he runs afoul of his nemesis, Captain Hammer (played by Nathan Fillion, of Firefly fame). It’s hilarious and awesome and I want to buy the feature-length movie now (please: make the feature-length movie, pleeeeeease). Go watch it, it’s only like 13 minutes per act, and at the moment there are only two acts up (it looks like the 3rd act will finish it off).

Netbug, of course, found it (how, I do not know) and sent the link on to me, so of course props to him. And naturally, both our MSN quotes at the moment are from it…

We made it all the way until July, so I thought we had kicked that ant problem. Unfortunately, not quite. Last year, as you’ll recall, we had a pretty nasty trickle of giant, fast, nasty black ants invade seeking out the sweet stuff: primarily my coke cans and Wayfare’s candy canes. Once immediately rinsing my cans became a religion rather than just a good idea, the ant problem improved considerably. Finding the last few cracks they were coming in through and laying down the chemical barrier seemed to fix the problem absolutely. Unfortunately now I left my pot from dinner soaking in the sink and came back today to find the surface of it just covered in what looked like reddish-brown fuzz. I thought the mold problem had gotten to a ridiculous level until I saw that those were ants. Thousands of tiny, nearly microscopic reddish-brown ants. So, obviously a good thorough cleanup of the sink area was in order. It was a good thing to do, since that mysterious black sludgey stuff had been building up in the cracks around the base of the sink, so now everything looks shiny and stainless again. The ants formed seething yet neat little lines and columns as they marched across the back of the sink, but they didn’t lead anywhere, just sort of loops in and out and around the sink. So I have no idea where they’re coming from this time, unless it’s from down the drain itself.

First off, I haven’t updated WordPress…. ever, but my search isn’t working as well as I would like: it returns 10 hits on the first page, and then “previous entries” actually goes to the same place the “previous entries” link does on the main page, which is my previous 10 posts, rather than the next 10 search results. A few choice pages are indexed in Google, but not enough for me to be able to use Google to search my site. I was looking for my really old post on Rogers’ digital cable, and did find it with my 2nd try at search terms, but I still wonder if I should upgrade to WP2. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the escaping it did on apostrophes over at Netbug’s blog so I haven’t tried it yet, but his search string seems to work better. Oh, wait, I see now: I think something’s malformed in my search results stylesheet, because if I enter into the URL /?s=searchterm&paged=2 then it works beautifully, including the links to follow on to paged=1 and paged=2. Why that’s not there on the first results page is beyond me.

Anyhow, the reason I wanted to link to that post is that I got a call from Rogers today. They were telling me that 2009* is right around the corner, and luddites like me with basic analog cable were going to be forced to upgrade to digital cable then. Would I like to upgrade to basic digital for “only” $8 more per month? I pointed out that that was the regular price of digital cable. He said yes, but I would get all the benefits of digital including more channels and “digital clarity”, plus I could lock that price in and avoid any potential price increases in 2009. I pointed out that it was a pretty raw deal: I saw digital as a gain for Rogers and an annoyance for me, since I hate the extra boxes, so I wasn’t going to pay any extra for digital. Plus the price difference would have to double to make locking in for 1 year over 6 months in advance of the change make sense for me.

This got me thinking: I haven’t turned my TV on in over 2 months (ok, I’ve turned the tube on to play the PS2 or Wii, but I haven’t actually watched something on TV in that time). This is partly because I’ve been gone for almost a month of that time on conferences, and partly because it’s the summer so all the shows I watch are into reruns or on hiatus until the fall. However, I probably could go without TV entirely through the year… though that’s because I can download my few “must see” shows, and can pull Global, CTV, and CBC from the air for those rare times when I just want some noise, e.g.: when working out. Wayfare, however, doesn’t seem to like the ergonomics of watching shows on the computer, and it is a little tiresome to burn stuff to DVD on a weekly basis, and trying to stream video to the TV via the Wii’s wireless ethernet sounds like the devil’s work to me. But for $360/year, I wonder if her mind can be changed on that score…

I am really keen to try a digital antenna/converter (ATSC) and see what’s over the air in that format. London’s a bit far from the US broadcasters to pick much up on analog, but I might have some luck with digital. I heard that in Toronto, there’s better digital-over-the-air service than Rogers’ basic cable.

* – Note: Feb 2009 is the digital switch-over for over the air stations in the States, and I believe Rogers is going to attempt to change their cable network to digital only at the same time. Canadian over-the-air switchover isn’t until 2011. However, Rogers will only be allowed to force the switch if 85% of their customer base voluntarily goes for digital. The CBC reported in 2007 that, at their rate of growth at the time, yhey were about 4 years from reaching that figure. That tells me that the Rogers caller was full of shit.