Blessed by the Potato

Breyer’s ice cream is one of my favourite brands. It is, in my experience, the creamiest brand of ice cream you can buy to take home. There are slightly better tasting ones, but they tend to be much more expensive, and there are slightly softer ones, but despite being softer they aren’t as tasty or creamy. Note that this only applies to the Breyer’s in the blue packaging (the “classic” ice cream). They also have Breyer’s in a black package (which I believe is all-natural or somesuch) that is cheaper and not nearly as good. What’s interesting is that while it ususally costs about $4.50-$5.00, it often goes on sale for less than $2, which is a really decent discount: less than a small cone at an ice cream parlour. So, it’s on sale now and I picked up some. The problem with ice cream, particularly good ice cream sold in 2 L containers, is over-indulgance. Particularly since I just know that if I leave it too long, it’ll get all nasty and freezer-burned and it’ll just go to waste. So the huge sale really helps in just not feeling guilty about eating part of it and letting the rest sit in the freezer until some future chocolate emergency (or fridge cleaning day). Of course, that raises another problem: that Wayfare might find it and eat it all since freezer-burned or not, she figures ice cream is ice cream.

Dominion is also having a sale on “bulk” Glossette Chocolate Covered Peanuts (I put bulk in quotation marks because they’re actually packaged treat-sized packs, rather than completely loose peanuts). The sale is even better because none of the cashiers seem to know how to ring them up. Unlike regular bulk candy, which is sold by weight, these Halloween packs are sold by count: 10 for a dollar. However, the cashiers just enter the bulk tag code and it rings up as just one pack (for 10 cents). This is a bit of a scam, yes, but my conscience is clear: I only bought a few, I bought lots of other groceries, and most importantly, I tried to correct them twice before just giving up and letting them sell them to me cheap. First, the guy rang it up as a single unit (for 10 cents). I told him that was wrong and they were sold by count rather than weight (and that I had 30). He looked at me, then cancelled the charge and rang it up again, and it came out to… 10 cents. I stopped him and told him again that no, I had 30 of them, so he looked at the screen for a really long time, then went and entered the code two more times so that it came up to 30 cents. I thought about correcting him again (to bring it to $3), but then I was afraid he’d never figure out how to do it right and just enter it in individually 30 times and my ice cream would melt.

So today’s been a really quiet day. I’m back in Toronto to see my family and friends, but no one is around today. My parents are at the cottage, my brother left the house before I got up this morning (as usual, I use the term “morning” rather loosely) and, at nearly 4 am now, still hasn’t come back from wherever he went to. I’m pretty much just eating ice cream and taking a little break to feel sorry for myself. It’s not good for my diet, although I did buy cones — small cones — to make the servings smaller, and add some cone filler (the cones can’t be worse than the ice cream, can they?). And in all truthfulness, I’m not even a quarter of the way through the carton, so that can’t be too bad. Otherwise, my diet hasn’t been going so great. I have managed to maintain some measure of willpower and cut back a bit, but it’s obviously not enough since I haven’t lost any more weight after the few pounds I dropped in Cancun.

Netbug’s barbeque was mostly over by the time I got there, but it was still pretty fun, and gave us the wonderful quote “What now, Mat Leave?” :) I got to watch Other Ryan talk about his art for a bit, and it’s clear that he is a pretty talented guy, and that I should give storyboarding more respect. He does, however, need to learn a few synonyms for “pop” ;)

It was also interesting because there were people there who I don’t really know (or know a little, mostly from WoW) who claim they read my little site here. It’s flattering, for sure, and also a little weird. Until Baum mentioned Sarah’s site, and we talked about how we both read it because she’s a very entertaining writer even though neither of us have met her, or know much about law school. I hope this site is as entertaining for the people who come by who don’t, you know, find that I’ve surreptitiously put the address in their bookmarks after visiting their house and thus have to read it out of duty or pity.

Anyhow, I hope Netbug puts up a summary of the barbeque on his site since I missed so much of it (especially after putting up so many posts trying to sort out the timing). I’m going to try to see that pirate movie tomorrow, and I hope I don’t talk like a pirate for too long afterwards, because that can be a bit embarassing.

As far as customer loyalty programs go, I like Air Miles. It’s used across a number of stores (so I don’t have to carry a separate Shopper’s Optimum or Bay Rewards card), and the rewards actually rack up at a perceptable rate (partly due to the fact that you get them from a number of stores, and partly because they don’t suck as hard as Shopper’s Optimum points). Almost every year, I’ve redeemed for three or four “Night Out” passes for the movies, so it’s very easy to see the benefits.

However lately I’ve seen some concerning things happening lately that I just want to briefly mention. First is that they’re starting to depreciate the points by making rewards cost more. I had thought that it was a good system since it was pretty much inflation-proof: you get a certain number of Air Miles per $20 spent, and 125 points gets you a $20 gift certificate. As inflation occurs, you spend more in dollars, getting more Air Miles, but they’re automatically worth less as a $20 gift certificate buys you less. In simpler terms, an Air Mile was worth about 16 cents. It was also a handy measure for determining if you were better off paying cash for one of their merchandise rewards and using the miles on something else. Now, however, the cost of the gift certificates is going up, and thus the value of the miles is coming down… not by much, though, just to about 14 cents, but it makes me a little worried, remembering my Dad having accumulated enough Aeroplan miles from travelling to Edmonton for work every other week that he boasted he could travel around the world three times; then they depreciated the points and he couldn’t even get 4 seats to PEI in the winter. What’s strange is that $20 gift cards to different stores cost different amounts. It seems like the stores where you might give the certificate to someone as a gift (such as clothing stores) come with a significant premium relative to gift certificates for grocery stores, even though it’s all $20 in the end. This either arrogantly speaks about how they measure the intelligence of their customers, or is a brilliant marketing scam. Either way, I’m just a little bit frightened.

Speaking of scams, I decided to see what it would be like to actually use some Air Miles for… well… air travel, rather than movie popcorn. It would be a bit better to find a student rate and pay cash, but even with the peak season premium it wasn’t a huge waste of my accumulated rewards. What was scary though was that if I didn’t have enough reward miles to cover the whole flight, I could use cash to make up the difference… at a rate of 30 cents per Air Mile. That strikes me as nearly criminal, since the value of the rewards (particularly for the gift certificates, where it’s patently obvious) is less than half that when you redeem them. You can take that “option” if you have at least half of the required miles: at that exchange rate, you would pay the entire cash value of the ticket, plus lose a bunch of air miles in the deal.

The last thing that’s been concerning me is how much more slowly I earn the points now. For a few years there, A&P/Dominion was really pushing the bonus Air Miles. I’d earn about ten times as much as I would from their normal 1/$20 spent offer from the bonus miles, and it would (almost) all be on stuff I would buy anyway. Buy a cucumber and get 2 points; three packs of toilet paper would get you 15 (hey, it keeps); two blocks of cheese for 5; five cases of water could get you 25. There have been a few of those around still, but not nearly as many, and they’re a little more ridiculous (buy four canteloupes and get 2 bonus points — the sort of thing that it’s hard to stock up on without wastage, and without much incentive).

All that said, it’s still a better program than Shoppers’ Optimum, which I’m thinking of dropping out of once I get to the next points level and redeem. I’ve carried that stupid card in my wallet for almost 8 years now, and I still haven’t redeemed anything. While it is only one store, I shop there all the time (and it’s been 8 years!). I’m still a few months away from the $55 reward level (at least now they let you actually just get $55 of stuff for free; the first incarnation would have required something like a $140 purchace that you would get 40% off of).

As much as I wish I could shop at Pharma Plus more (by far the best Air Miles sponsor), Shoppers is just such a good store in its own right: they’re close to me (actually, Pharma Plus isn’t much further, it’s just in the opposite direction, away from the grocery store and everything else), they have excellent candy selection (Resse’s pieces and mini cups; they used to be the only place to get Allan sour fruits; and all kinds of other goodies), they’re open late (24 hours in the case of the one by me), and have all kinds of cool seasonal stuff for Halloween and Potatomas. While their prices have been rising faster than inflation lately ($3 for Skittles?!), they also have decent sales on a fairly regular basis, particularly on Coke. In fact, aside from a great sale at Sobeys two months ago, I haven’t bought pop anywhere other than Shoppers in the last year. At least 2 weeks out of every month it’s on for 3×12’s for $11, and at least one week it’ll go down to 3 for $10; last week even saw 4 for $12. For comparison, I used to buy pop in cases of 24 (what the heck happened to two-fours for pop anyway?) for $6 each, then briefly at about $7 each before they stopped selling them in that format (and these are prices from 4 years ago or so). Now, the A&P sells pop at $4.50 for a 12-pack, and hardly ever puts on a sale. Price Chopper still sells 24 packs, but in the old school flat cases (not the “cubes”), and that’s still $8/case.

Anyway, I don’t really have a point, so I’d like to conclude by saying that I really like turning in Air Miles for the Night Out passes, because they let me go to the movies without having to pay cash so I don’t sit there the whole time thinking about how I’m being ripped off to watch a glorified video game. Oh, and how I wish I could keep earning Air Miles so the flow of passes can keep up with the flow of movies (not too hard this last year…).

Oh, and never bother redeeming for the alternative Cineplex/Air Miles 2-for-1 passes: while the Night Out ones count as cash when getting your tickets, the 2-for-1 deals count as passes/coupons, so you can’t use them for any new movies, and moreover, can’t use them on Tuesdays, matinees, or weekends (never mind that Tuesdays are no longer cheap days, or that the free ticket would have also cost less). I redeemed for 4 of them last year, and only ever got to use 1 before they expired, they’re so restrictive!

I had this thought ages ago, and started to write this article/post back on the Potatomas break. Unfortunately, a change in government and apathy made it more or less pointless to bother finishing & posting it. However, Netbug’s recent post reminded me of this, so I decided to ressurect it.

My thoughts on the matter are quite simply that Crown corporations can be put to a lot of good if the government would use them as such. CN & Bell laid transcontinental networks when it was economically unattractive to do so publically; the CBC gave us an ostensibly independent broadcaster; the LCBO prevents a company from being tempted by profit to sell alcohol to minors (and also brings more than beer to the North). In this line-up, PetroCanada stands out a bit, having only been started after foreign companies already had a decent gas distribution system in Canada. Perhaps that’s why it was privatized so quickly.

But, it has a big capacity to do important things if the government would turn it towards those uses:

• A government-controlled oil company can help control pump prices, relieving the fears many Canadians have that oil company collusion is robbing them blind. Perhaps not the best thing for the big picture, since high gas prices might help more than they hurt (vis-a-vis curbing demand for SUVs, making people actually walk down the block, etc.).
• Use the already present retail distribution system to introduce alternative fuels such as E85, hydrogen, or battery charges. This could be huge, since it can break the viscious new technology cycle: oil companies don’t want to offer alternative fuels because they don’t sell, since no one has the cars; the car makers don’t want to build and market the cars because no one will buy them; and no one will buy them because they can’t take them anywhere and expect a fill-up. It’s why we’re pretty much stuck with hybrid technology as the only alternative to gas/diesel (it’s good, don’t get me wrong, but we could perhaps do better).

I find it an exciting prospect, really, to leverage a Crown corporation’s ability to bring about uneconomical transformation on the taxpayer’s bill. It’s something that could become really big: once the government has a decent distribution system out, it can make the car makers sell a certain percentage of cars taking advantage of that (and knowing Canadians, a decent number would buy anyway, once it’s even remotely feasible). If research needs to be done, well a few well-directed NSERC grants could plug that hole. Then, the manufacturing & product design could be done here in Canada, providing jobs when the technology eventually starts to spread south of the border.

Now, let’s move on to talking about electric cars.

They are a very strange beast: they produce zero emissions (though you will need the generating capacity somewhere, so at worst we might just say that they take the emissions that would clog a downtown area and shift them to the location of the power plant… which can also conceivably scrub them better), get great acceleration and decent cruising efficiency, yet are barely produced at all currenly. The reason, of course, is that electrical storage in chemical batteries has terrible energy-to-weight ratios (after all, you have to carry around all that battery, rather than burning it up completely as you go), so their range is often limited.

Range is, in fact, probably the biggest reason electric cars haven’t taken off: you simply can’t recharge them quickly, like you can with a quick stop at the gas station for a hybrid or traditional combustion engine car — so once you run out your battery, you’re stuck there for 8 hours while you charge up the slow way. And the range just barely covers relatively routine treks (such as to the cottage, or driving downtown and back to the 905 five times in a day), which makes many people nervous.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way: tons of devices around us have replaceable/rechargeable batteries, and that is perhaps a model for electric cars that the car companies haven’t looked at closely enough. When my camera runs out of juice, I simply go to any convenience store and pick up a pair of AA’s, plug them in, and off I go. We could make cars the same way: pick a decent-sized battery and make it standard across all cars. A small car might have 6, say, and a large electric SUV might sport 18 in an array, but the point is that you can then drive across the country and swap out your batteries as they dry out. All you need is a distribution system that keeps a decent number of them charged up and in stock.

Which brings us back to PetroCanada.

Of course, this concept is not without its challenges. In addition to having someone decide on the battery standard, and having someone set up a distribution system of chargers before the first car is actually sold, there are engineering challenges to solve. Electric cars that currently exist (or, for the EV-1, I should say, formerly existed) are engineered tight, with all kinds of innovations made to save on weight and extend range. If batteries were broken down into smaller standardized subunits, it would make them heavier and bulkier since more space would be wasted on the plastic casing and less spent on actually charge capacity. It might also make placement in the car more difficult, since you’d need to get access to the batteries somehow (whether from beneath the car, the trunk, hood, or from panels in the side), so they couldn’t be squeezed in between other parts wherever space could be found. The bigger the battery is, the faster a changeover could take place, and the more efficient the design would be. However, batteries are heavy, so it doesn’t take much before it’s infeasible to expect even a relatively healthy, in-shape person to change them manually, let alone an elderly, injured, or out-of-shape driver. Planning on simple hand-pumped cranes to help might work, but even the most simple tools foil some people (there are people out there who can’t pump their own gas as it is). At first, providing full-service might work, especially since even self-only stations still have at least a cashier on hand, and the electric fleet will likely be small enough at first that that person could afford to run out on the rare occasions he or she was needed.

An interesting social dilemma is also raised: who owns the batteries? Who is responsible for replacing them when they no longer hold a charge or are otherwise damaged? With permanent batteries, it comes down to either the car owner or manufacturer (depending on the warranty) owning up. But with batteries changing hands every time someone takes a trip of more than 250 km, it becomes more complicated. At first, PetroCanada could own the batteries, but that would raise all sorts of problems once other distribution lines opened up (whether say, Shell also got in on the recharging station game, or if an all-new company started up like an Ontario Solar & Windmill Recharged Green Electric Car Coop). Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for this one. Even if the batteries were insured by a government agency (perhaps funded by a portion of each new electric car’s purchase price), that would leave open the problem of American cars coming across the border to change out their faulty cells.

Completely new technology, such as capacitor banks, flywheels, or superconductors might allow permanently installed storage devices and bypass these legal issues, while still allowing for quick-charge stations to extend range… but none of these, AFAIK, store electricity well over the long term.

Finally, one very clever method to extend the range of electric cars is the Genset trailer. I’ve never personally seen one of these, but they look absolutely brilliant. They basically consist of a small gas or diesel generator that provides the electricity needed to run the car (or, if you prefer to think of it this way, the electricity needed to constantly charge up the batteries as you drive). I don’t know why they don’t sell electric cars along with one of these right now (or with a roof-rack or trunk-mounted version, since a generator + fuel tank doesn’t have to be huge). It’s basically like having a plug-in electric car with the option of switching to a hybrid mode for long-distance travel.

Footnote: the transmission on my car has been making unhappy noises since I got it back from the police. I think I might go and give the Civic Hybrid and the Prius a test drive while the weather’s nice, and start thinking about retiring the Accord (though that’s probably still a few years down the road).

I had over 50 messages in one email account, and 115 in another account that I pretty much only use for the BEMs discussion group. I thought that maybe some of the discussions at the meeting had spilled over into something that was intensely intellectually stimulating on the email list.

It was better: a massive flame war had broken out. It’s fantastically lame, all these scientists & tin-foil crazies sissy-slapping each other in public email, while others call for order, sometimes even in all-capitals. I haven’t finished plowing through it yet, but so far no one has made a Hitler simile; not even an oblique reference to communism, asbestos, or giant robots. It doesn’t appear as though usual usenet flame rules appear here; a carefully balanced system in which Godwin’s Law does not apply. It’s possible that this flame could burn for years, with new students joining the fray and taking up the moronic position of their thesis supervisors, continuing the fight for generations to come. I’m tempted to introduce new technology to the battle, such as the flame form or profanity, just to see how they react and handle it.

Checking out of the Gran Melia was hell: they charged us $65 US per night for the 3rd person in our room (after quoting $50/night for the conference rate). However, we only had the 3rd person and the cot for 5 of the 7 nights, but got charged for all 7. We tried to fight it, but they told us the charge was for the 3rd person, not the cot. I pulled out my receipt showing that I had checked in a day after the other two, so even if they had lost the records for the first person checking out a day early, at the very least that was proof there were only two people for the first day. They sat there and refused to take the charge off. Finally, my ride to the airport arrived and I had to give up and go. Hopefully work will cover it.

That pretty much sums up the hotel: the facilities were decent (except for the hot water capacity… there only seemed to be luke warm water in the afternoons, probably due to the sun beating on the pipes). The staff was reasonably friendly, but the prices were just insane for everything. They constantly screwed up reservations, bar bills, and changed quoted prices on the fly. We knew it was an expensive place heading out, and it turned out to be significantly more expensive than planned when leaving. I can’t recommend it as a vacation destination for anyone who hasn’t won the lottery. A few years ago, we stayed at a resort in Costa Verde, Cuba, and it was about half the price for a place that was almost as nice. The only thing Cancun had over Cuba was the option to go into town for shopping/bars/restaurants/clubs if you wanted (which we didn’t really), and I doubt that’s high on most people’s list of priorities when they look for a beach resort.

The flight back was pretty decent: we ended up coming back almost an hour early. I was the first one through customs, but then had to wait about 20 minutes for my bags to come up on the conveyor. I got bad directions from someone at Pearson for the Park ‘n Fly shuttle — they pointed at section “C” and said what I thought was “C”. After waiting almost half an hour for a bus that should have come every 10 minutes, I found out from someone else that the bus would be in “P” (they do rhyme). Once I got to P there was a bus waiting for me. While waiting though, the interterminal busses came by like crazy there: the terminal 1->3 bus came by so often that the next one would arrive and honk at the one that came before since it hadn’t had a chance to leave yet. You were never a moment without being able to see one of those. There was less than two minutes to wait for the 1->2 busses.

In the end, I was the only one who didn’t get sick and didn’t get a sunburn (fancy that!). After I wore a T-shirt into the pool on the second last day I was there, all the guys were wearing T-shirts into the pool.

After getting home I was telling all my stories to Wayfare — which mostly involve complaining, as you can imagine — who commented:

Wow, you’re not so much of a ‘my glass is half empty’ kind of guy so much as you are a ‘my glass is broken!’ kind of guy.

At dinner one night, a question was posed to me: if money was no object, where in the world would I go? I didn’t have an answer to that question at first. They goaded me: “Surely there must be somewhere you’d go, for historical reasons, or for the sights, or even the chocolate…” but no, I’m just that much of an agoraphobic that if money were no object, I could just pay to have people come to me :) Eventually, I changed the hypothetical a little: if money, agoraphobia, arachnapobia, ophidiphobic, etc. were all not an issue, I’d visit the rainforest and monkey around the trees with the primates, or go diving with the penguins off Antartica. I asked them where they’d go, and everyone at the table replied, in unison: Bora Bora. It was a little freaky, to tell the truth. Where would you all go?

Finally, it looks like Sword of the Stars is recruiting beta testers. I’m tempted to apply, but afraid it will destroy me ;)

Well, the conference ended with a whimper. Attendance at the last few talks dropped like crazy, I think the last talk only had a dozen or so people in attendance (to be fair, people had to check out by noon if they were leaving today). The closing ceremonies were short and sweet — and someone from our lab took home the prize for best talk (no, it wasn’t me).

I was walking on the hotel lawn yesterday and came to a little pool where some birds were hanging around. They sort of looked like a cross between ducks and crows: they were all black, but had webbed feet, and a bill that was somewhat beak-like. So I went up to them and said “quackquackquackquack” like I would to a Mallard in London. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to get what I was saying; some sort of breakdown in communications. They returned a confused “wobblewobble”. Perhaps it’s just that they had a thick accent and that made things difficult. Much like the rest of the conference. I’m going to try to brush up on my French for the one two years from now (not going to Japan, not gonna happen), so we’ll see if that helps with at least some of the groups.

Anyhow, with the conference done I don’t have much of a reason for loitering by the meeting rooms where the internet access is, so this will probably be my last chance for a fix until I get back. The server still seems to have some pep left in it, so hopefully it’ll stay up until I can give it the personal attention it needs.