Aaron Gladders » the.irony.of.life

Predictions of Rapture strangely timed with Canucks Stanley Cup runs

agladders — Sat, 21 May 2011 16:29:25 +0000

Camping wrongly predicted the end of the world once before, in 1994….

I seriously hope he’s wrong, we need to win the Cup!

Goodbye incandescents

agladders — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 13:37:57 +0000

As of this year, BC has stopped retailers from bringing in more incandescent light bulbs so their current stock is all that is left. There are various articles in the papers discussing how there are new types of bulbs to fit dimmer switches, give off certain types of light or some special applications, and that the bulbs have to be disposed of properly because they have mercury in them.

This line struck me though:

“We’ve seen a spike in sales of incandescent bulbs with some of our older customers coming in and stocking up,” he said. “But the younger people really want the energy savings.”

I’m one of those people that straddles both worlds – I like the energy saving notions of the new bulbs but I despise the light. I’m also a compulsive light turner offer – I aim for natural light where possible and when it’s dark, dimmer light. There’s something about lighting, incandescent or not, that is harsh and causes tension/stress to me. When Earth Day comes around we wonder what we’re supposed to do because the lights are already off.

It sure would have been nice for the province to just jack the price of the bulbs up to be equal or more expensive to the CFL bulbs, giving me the choice of do I want to take the economic hit of incandescents. I’ll end up picking up bulbs south of the border for as long as I can, for those areas of my house where I want the light quality and use incandescents or halogens elsewhere.

I guess I’m an older client!

Market fun

agladders — Thu, 06 May 2010 20:55:48 +0000

Today was rather impressive, in the span of 4 minutes the S&P dropped ~60 points, overall spread of ~100 points today between the high/low. Some comments I’ve come across:

“while bad this is nothing compared to 1987. i was a retail broker at the time. phone lines jammed. computers locked. ibm bid $90 / ask $120 that day.” Bromhead on slope

“The panic in the middle of the day was market makers that just disappeared, and every machine on Wall Street was trying to sell into a market that didn’t exist. That was a bizarre electronic quant panic of people selling into a black hole. I don’t know if somebody pressed the wrong button, but the intraday was a panic machine-led move,” Peter Bookvar, U.S. market strategist at Miller Tabak.

And they managed to keep the machines running the whole time “during the market’s brief 900-point plunge” NYSE: No techical glitches as market declined

And for future reference, “The new Buy Like Hell Zone is 9% below the previous day close… just before the circuit breakers kick in and shut the markets down. ” Iguanadon on slope

David Suzuki rethinking salmon farming

agladders — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 06:30:50 +0000

Interesting article – David Suzuki rethinking salmon farming? Glad to see him pointing to onshore farms – I wonder if the numbers can work, perhaps at a lower level of profitability.

David Suzuki: Salmon farming may be a good idea after all

I remember running into a fisheries biologist back in my widlife days. He had just swam the river and said that he’d run into a bunch of presumably escaped farm salmon. This was in the relatively early days of open-net pens. It was already a common occurrence then.

Twitter overload and UnTweeps

agladders — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:09:28 +0000

A colleague of mine, Michael Fergusson, once mentioned Dunbar’s Number, basically that there is a limit to the number of social interactions one can manage. As with all social networks I found twitter to be fun at first but lately have been overwhelmed and find myself not bothering to use it much. I think this is a bit of a shame as there are people I want to keep having conversations with.

So I’m pruning my follow list to a manageable lot, and although this won’t help with the flood it’s a useful tool to help get the number down:

UnTweeps

Chinese Astrology – she knows something we don’t!

agladders — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:37:55 +0000

So 2009 wasn’t the best year for many. Wasn’t my best year, although I and my family are still here, we’ve got our health and the days keep getting brighter. My wife’s mother usually gives us our horoscope every chinese New Year. For 2009 it was “you should do nothing.” I spent much of last year trying very hard and although things have turned out ok, it was a difficult year. On reflection, if I’d done nothing it likely would have turned out much the same.

So for 2010, which starts on February 14th in the lunar calendar, we approached my mother-in-law with new respect, hopeful that our horoscope for the year would provide insights as to how we should face the year. If it was going to be difficult, or amazing, we could prepare ourselves to act accordingly. My wife emailed her to find out what the scoop was. Tonight she got the reply and we excitedly opened the email. Here it goes:

type the following into google, “what happens to the rat in the year of the tiger”

We reacted with cries of, “She knows something we don’t!” or “She’s on to something, we have to ask her”.

Aw well, looks like another turbulent year but we’re ready for it. And we know what to do next New Year

Just in case anyone needs it:

Rat in the year of the tiger 2010