Dick Move?

I’m generally a friendly driver with a fairly assertive streak – I won’t let you lean on me but I’m kind enough to try to stay out of people’s way, I’ll change lanes to open up space, I’ll adjust speed to let people into my lane, I’ll creep forward to free up space so you can duck into the left turn bay etc. I largely take a global view to my impact on traffic, I want traffic to flow better overall and I’m not in it for my own drive.

That said, I’m not above a few dick moves. Or so I think.

At the corner of Kingsway and Boundary where the Telus boot building is you can turn right (northbound) and head downhill. The entry is always open and the exit opens up to a 3 lane road and I generally need to cut all the way across the street in order to get into the left turn bay which is about 80m down the road.

Most cars are cautious about how they take the corner but I revel in the downhill aspect of it and I also check inbound traffic very early so I can see if the road is clear well in advance. A lot of drivers need to get into the left most lane like me but because I’m so much faster out of the corner than they are and because I get across the 3 lanes as quickly as I can I often find myself sticking my nose inside them (their rear to my front). A lot of times I know they’re trying to go the same place as I am but I just can’t help sticking my nose in there and overtaking them.

The problem is that they’re always surprised that a car “suddenly” appears in their left view mirror and just as they’re making a lane change they see me diving down their left side and they have to back off.

Is this a dick move? Should I back off and let the other driver go first the whole way down. Keep in mind that this all happens in a matter of about 2 seconds, I don’t even get past 50kph before I have to hit the brakes.

Volunteering

I gave up my Sunday to do some volunteer work and I was reminded again that the easiest way to meet people are certain to nicer and more generous than you is to volunteer because the other people who are involved are always going to be nice people, people you can respect and sometimes admire.

Thanks Paul

Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83 – Obituary (Obit)

I’m too young to know much about Paul Newman’s acting career – I watched him be amazing in Road to Perdition and I enjoyed him in Nobody’s Fool but I’ve never seen his early works. What I do know of him was that he was a terrific race car driver and a great guy.

Newman picked up the racing bug in midlife and is arguably the best celebrity race car driver ever (Patrick Dempsey holds nothing on Newman) – Paul was FAST. I never saw him race, it was mostly replays and reports but even at age 75 he was still keeping up with people a third his age.

Paul also unfailingly gave to charity and all his profits via his Newman’s Own line of food went to charity. I’ve bought his products several times only because I knew some of the money went to charity – I didn’t really need it nor did I always like his stuff.

By reputation Paul was what you’d call an ornery nice guy – tremendously kind and generous but with that cowboy crankiness (he never gave autographs when doing business as a race car owner or driver). In some ways he was like the characters he played in the 60′s, he wasn’t shy about sharing his opinions and he didn’t care what you thought of him or them. And despite being the Brad Pitt/George Clooney of looks in his era he wasn’t a womanizer, he was married for 50 years to one woman.

Besides, guys like Pitt/Clooney can only dream of being as cool as Paul Newman, Newman never wore a costume with nipples on them nor was he ever pussy whipped by his woman.

Paul Newman is the kinda guy I’d love to be and I’m gonna miss him.

Update: A classic Paul Newman quote: “”You can’t be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning. ‘Holy Christ, what do you know — I’m still around!’ It’s absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking, and the cars, and the career.”

Things I know better than Sarah Palin

If it was already clear that Sarah Palin is in WAY OVER HER HEAD, I think her interview with Katie Couric finally made it blindingly obvious that this hockey mom shouldn’t be one heartbeat away from being President. Judging from the interviews and the articles about her I can conclude that in the following areas I know more than Sarah Palin:

• Energy
• Geography
• Foreign Relations
• Tax policy
• Healthcare
• Human Rights
• Finance
• Women’s Rights
• Operation of the volume control
• Budget management
• Separation of church and state
• Evolution
• Foreign Leaders

Other than being a better mother than me and knowing how to dress a dead moose I can’t think of anything else where she’s more knowledgable than I am.

I should be running for Vice-President.

What Next?

My contract just got extended another 6 months at which point I’ll be a free agent. I’ve been pondering what I want to do next as I’d like to get into a job that both pays well and is a great use of my skills. The current job and the previous one were not the best use of my skills (to my dismay) but they did pay reasonably well. It’s not like the current job isn’t a good job or a good use of my skills – the people are nice, the projects are interesting, they have a lot of respect for a person’s work-life balance and I actually like the job.

However, the job doesn’t exploit me to the extent that I should be exploited. 2 jobs ago I was being exploited the way I should be but they wouldn’t pay me anywhere near what I was worth to them (I guess that means I really wasn’t worth that much to them). I was solving problems that few people in the world were even aware of and the impact was to millions of people. My last year there I was basically Dr. House, I got to pick my cases and I got to fix them the way I wanted to while grabbing the staff I wanted for it and then people would sing my praises about how I managed to come up with such a great solution. But there was no respect for work-life balance, piles of politics and no respect for the diminutive size of my paycheque.

I’m not a project manager, not a business analyst, not a sales guys, not an analytics guy.

I just want to solve problems and nobody hires a Dr. House unless they’re crazy.

Will EcoDensity Make City More Affordable?

Will EcoDensity Make City More Affordable?

Of course it won’t. Vancouver is far too nice a city for most any housing plan to make it more affordable. However, EcoDensity can and should provide Vancouver with some level of affordability, affordability that Vancouver needs to have if it wants to remain relevant. At the moment a single family home in East Vancouver goes for about $700k and if you’re a new homebuyer who wants to move into Vancouver from elsewhere you’re looking at needing a gross income of over $150k to be able to even consider it.

The notion of affordability for Vancouver when framed by the left wing is ridiculous, they live in a fantasy land where a city that is beautiful, clean, well-managed and considered one of the 10 best cities in the world to live in can offer housing that person making low incomes can afford to live in. It won’t happen for simple reasons of supply and demand.

However, it seems to make eminent sense that a city like Vancouver needs to make some form of an effort to provide the type of housing that working class people can afford (or rent). Working class people meaning teachers, firemen, postal workers and bus drivers. Vancouver can’t afford to push these people away or they won’t want to work in Vancouver.

The most common solution is to build social housing. Housing that is subsidized by the government where homeowners can purchase a home for less than market value with the promise that they’ll sell it for less than market value when they move out. I’m not a particularly big fan of this because the government is essentially playing favourites and providing what is potentially a massive subsidy for one family – that’s not fair.

Another solution is to build more densely and provide more generous housing regulations to moderate prices. The city is already doing this and while it does moderate price increases it isn’t going to bring it down enough to make a house affordable to new working class folks who want to move into Vancouver.

The city could also just let itself go. Allowing crime to increase and reducing city services is one hell of a way to get people to move out and turn yourself into Detroit. This isn’t going to happen.

Let’s come back to social housing. While I’m against selling subsidized housing to people, I’m not against renting social housing to people. There are downsides to having renters rather than owners but they are things that can be overcome while the upside of renting is that the government gets to own the asset and they can be the ones who reap any financial benefits of what they are doing. Renters still get to benefit as they’re renting housing that is cheaper than it should be but they aren’t getting an unfair direct subsidy that advantages them over other people of similar ilk.

In any case if you want to live in Vancouver you have to be prepared to pay more to live there and you’re going to have to pass up that dream of the big yard cause Vancouver is gonna be doing away with those things. And left wing nuts can forget about “affordable” housing, Vancouver is too pretty for it.

Don't worry, it's okay

Observant passengers of my car when I’m the driver may notice a somewhat disturbing behaviour when I’m at the wheel: I appear to never check my blind spots when making lane changes, my head never turns more than 60 degress off centre unless I’m reversing.

No doubt this has cause nervousness among some of my passengers especially as I rarely emote at the wheel (this wasn’t always true) so it provides an impression that I’m oblivious to traffic around me and that I’m just treating the road as though I own it.

However it’s actually all okay, it’s just that I do a few things differently:

1. It’s possible to set your side mirrors to almost completely eliminate your blind spot. In driving schools they usually teach you to set your mirrors so that you can just see the side of your car which is total bunk – why do you need to see your own car in your mirrors? I set them so they point in the area that constitutes the blind spot, this is a National Safety Council endorsed practice and the only objects that can hide in your blind spot are 2 wheelers that tuck right next to your rear fenders. You can learn how to do it here. It takes some getting used to and it’s NOT perfect but it helps minimize your need to look away from the direction you’re going in cause logic dictates that you should pay most of your attention on the direction you’re going in.

2. I keep track of where everyone is around me. The mirror settings help greatly as it’s easier to track where things are if your mirrors are set correctly but I also monitor the speed of other cars, where they’re going (lane changes, turns), and I’m generally obssessive about where everything is. It makes sudden accident avoidance maneuvers a piece of cake as I already know where the openings are without checking (I almost always opt to avoid rather than brake).

3. My peripheral vision is far above average (my poor depth of field is another story). I don’t have full object recognition but I can stand a foot away (my eyes that is) from the back wall of an elevator and see the back corners of the elevator car.  When I turn my head 45 degress I’m almost able to see whatever is directly behind me so seeing the blind spot is trivial.

Altogether all of this makes it look like I never shoulder check and I’ve noticed some passengers looking around a lot when I drive but really, you have no need to worry; I can see what’s happening and I know what I’m doing so relax.

The only takeaway for everyone though is that you can set your mirrors more effectively so you’re safer.

Have you given?

Have you given?

The Immigrant Story

At dinner last week I was mildly surprised to see a friend of mine express surprise (and some amazement) at the struggles and challenges that my parents, like other immigrants, faced when they moved to Canada. That his grandparents were immigrants from a much more difficult time should have informed him a bit about how challenging it was but I wasn’t sure whether I should have been disappointed by him for not knowing or recognizing what immigrants go through.

My parents came to Canada over 33 years ago with a little bit of money and not a lot of help. They had no family in Vancouver and my dad had perhaps a few aquaintances. For the first week or two of their lives in Vancouver they lived in a dirty old hotel on the edge of Chinatown – that hotel would be something that drug addicts or the mentally ill would today stay in. They found housing and my dad was turned down for a job with the airlines, one that he had held in Hong Kong before they made the choice to come here to find a better life for their kids.

Instead my dad did a few minimum wage jobs to start – delivering pizza was one of those jobs. By the time I was born about a year later my dad had found a job driving a truck delivering food to places across Vancouver, it’s a job he’s held ever since despite the fact that it consisted of a lot of physical labour that has worn his muscles, his joints, his bones and his mind down. He stuck to this same job all these years partly out of stubbornness and fear of change but also because he had the belief that his responsibility was to be a steady paycheque for his family.

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Wax Job

Beside smoking up some ribs on a pile of alder wood yesterday I also used a Meguiar’s clay bar to clean up my car’s paint job. I followed that with a round of Mother’s FX SynWax that was applied with a Mother’s PowerBall 4Paint applicator.

The end result is a shiny, glossy, wonderfully smooth paint job. The car practically glows right now.

The clay bar is great and definitely worth picking up and using once a year on your car (or more if you park outside) and the PowerBall applicator made applying the wax a piece of cake. Using a microfibre cloth to polish meant super easy removal as well.

Oh what fun.