When Reality Knocks

Hello all, Steve here. Alright, I’m officially drowning in data. I didn’t really realize it until I moved at the beginning of the month, but I have so much data I literally can’t find anything. Between work and personal stuff, I have 7 hard drives, all more or less packed to the brim and I need a couple more and I still have loads of stuff backed up on disc that I can’t fit anywhere!

Every time I buy another hard drive, I think that I’ll never possibly fill it up and yet somehow files seem to come out of nowhere. I think that my files may actually be procreating at night, when I’m not around. I can hear them in the dark, scurrying around and giggling, making dirty file love.

Or maybe the whole thing is just driving me a bit crazy. I store files, I copy files, I move files, I send files, I lose files (oh, how I lose files). I used to do work. Now I just look for files. I have so many files that when I search for one I can’t find (an operation that should take about 15 seconds) it takes about 45 minutes.

You know how they say you spend X number of minutes in your life waiting in traffic, standing in line, waiting on hold, etc? Well I bet I spend a good half of my life looking for files. If I want to really blow the roof off, I can multi-task and look for files while I’m sitting on hold. Exceptional:)

Hello, Steve here. Ya know, some people are, just…well, what can you say? I mean, I’m not trying to be negative, but you have to wonder. This woman drew a Nazi swastika on her 6 year old daughter’s arm and sent her to school, where her teacher, being a sensitive sort, scrubbed it off. Then the mother redrew the swastika on her daughter’s arm and then the authorities took her two kids away. She said regretted redrawing the swastika on her daughter’s arm.

Hang on. She regrets drawing it a second time? Well, I suppose that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but, let’s be honest, it wasn’t too bright to draw it the first time. It sounds like the second time was just the icing on the cake. “Well, first I punched the bouncer in the face and made him really angry, but what I really regret was punching him in the face again.” No doubt. Did they take this women’s kids away because she’s a white supremacist or because she’s demonstrably dim? What can you say?

Steve here. My girlfriend came home from a two week vacation and I was updating her on everything that had happened while she was away. Of course, since I broke my toe right after she left, almost nothing had happened, because I’d barely left the house. But I did talk to a Swedish woman.

I told her about this. I said, “while you were away, I talked to a Swedish woman.” She wasn’t sure what to do with that. When I was talking to the Swedish woman, I asked her if they played the Swedish Chef sketches from the Muppet Show in Sweden. She replied, “Of course! Bork, bork, bork!” I’m not sure why, but that impressed me.

I mean, Swedish people must have a fairly good sense of humour. Most countries wouldn’t I don’t think. For example, if it were the German Chef, or the French Chef, or the Canadian Chef, we probably wouldn’t take it with such good humour. People make fun of how Canadian’s talk all the time and it just drives us crazy. No doot aboot it.

So I salute the Swedish people for their general laid back attitude and relaxed approach to life. Granted, I’ve only ever met one Swedish person, but she seemed very nice:)

Maybe I broke my head too…

Hmm, a politician saying something that makes sense. This is so crazy it just might work. Have a look.

Hello, Steve here. So two of the big cell phone carriers in Canada are going to start charging for incoming text messages. The public howls in dismay. I haven’t heard this much complaining about the government cutting social programs for crying out loud.

Not that I agree with the cell companies. My cell bill has been going up and up for a while now, with always more new and exciting charges they’ve dreamed up. And now they want to charge for me to receive incoming texts?!

Which is really annoying, except that most of the text messages I receive are worthless information. Actually, so are a lot of the ones I send. My boss likes to leave me a phone message at home to tell me that he sent me a text message, which reveals a cell voice message that says he thinks we need to talk by phone. I go to the gym with a friend early in the morning and we text before leaving to make sure that we’ve actually gotten out of bed. And then one of us texts to say that we’re leaving the house and the other responds. And then we text to say that we’ve gotten on the bus and the other responds. If the bus is held up in traffic, one of us might send a text to tell the other to go ahead without them. The other responds that this is unlikely since they are, in fact, on the same bus.

What was I so upset about again?

Henry here. In Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street Gordon Gekko declares: “Greed is good.” That is quite a different fix on greed to the historic attitude of the church. Greed was always considered by the church to be one of the seven deadly sins. It wasn’t good, it was the fast track to Hell.

When I look at the incredible financial rewards received by managers of funds and banks which have lost billions of dollars, it is clear that greed gets richly rewarded in the modern financial landscape, even if competency doesn’t. These managers walk away rich, even when they have lost astronomical sums.

How astronomical? According to inequalaity.org, the average overall compensation for the 200 C.E.O’s of big American companies was nearly US $12 million. These are the rogues who have lost billions of dollars and thrown the American economy into a tailspin, which may result in a full scale world wide recession, or even a depression.

It is beyond belief. From my point of view as a simple investor, they and their boards should all go to jail. But, of course, they won’t. It will be an extraordinary situation if they even feel or admit their guilt in wiping out millions of people’s real-estate or portfolio value. So the little guy hangs on hopes he has enough for retirement, and that he will not loose his house, and be out on the street.

Seems to me greed is still a major sin and destroyer of people’s lives.

Happy Canada Day:)

Steve here today. Somehow I doubt global warming will really be this fun, but it’s neat anyway.