Microsoft
Over TEN years ago, 1999 to be exact, I sent a proposal to Microsoft which was, essentially, the forerunner to what today we call "cloud computing".
As an account rep for Northern Computer, dealing mainly with small to medium sized businesses, I saw that many of these companies could not afford the heavy hardware and software costs of having their own in-house IT department, yet the needed the programs, connectivity, access to their data, and critical backups. At the time I was working with David Fowler, who was then GM at SILK Internet. He helped me tremendously by supporting a plan where SILK would fund the hardware costs of the shared servers and high-speed connectivity, in exchange for a percentage of the revenue generated from companies who subscribed to our service. This meant that everyone, from a small company to the road-warrior electrician could have secure access to their data, anywhere, anytime and on any device, such as a "smart" phone. The key was getting Microsoft to allow pay-per-use of their software, such as Office. SILK agreed to buy a licensed version for every server, just like a company would, but then users would share the cost by paying to access the program. Someone such as an electrician who needed to do a quote would only need to pay a few dollars for the one-time use, and not the hundreds of dollars to buy a suite of programs he did not need to own.
I somehow managed to get all the way up to a Senior Manager of Licensing who told me that Microsoft would NEVER EVER consider pay-per-use of their software. He literally laughed at me on the phone and the entire project died right then and there.
My how things change! This announcement from Microsoft today -
Available in select Microsoft Office 365 service plans, Office Professional Plus delivers the productivity of Office as a flexible, pay-as-you-go service. It’s a complete, enterprise-class Office experience that ensures you’ll always have the latest versions of all Office desktop applications. And with Office Web Apps, you can access your documents, email, and calendars from virtually any device*.
If they had just listened over ten years ago they would be a lot farther ahead today and I would be a rich man. Life ain't fair!
Know your parents' finances before they're gone
It may well be just how it was with my generation, but I suspect that children are still uncomfortable discussing finances with their parents. Other than the obvious signs of jobs and possessions, we assume our parents are doing okay handling their finances. Not always.
In my entire life I don't even remember overhearing a conversation about money from my parents. They both had jobs, working man types and we always had food on the table and clothes on our backs. We went on vacations, albeit camping, every year and we had a few "toys" like mini bikes and a skidoo. My parents drove late model cars and I don't ever remember not going somewhere because we couldn't afford it. We never went to Florida or did things like the theatre or had any luxuries, and there was no question that none of us would be going on to university, but we were never poverty stricken, at least not that I remember. In my own life, when we were just starting out and the factory I was working in went on strike, and I did not get any strike pay because I was not in the union yet, nor could I get unemployment insurance because I was on strike, things got pretty scary for a bit. I remember having nothing more than potatoes and onions in the house for a couple of days because what money we had went to baby formula.
My Dad always worked hard and I don't ever remember him being out of work except after the fire at the refinery when he was in hospital for several months. My Mum worked with the bank forever and still did after they moved out West. My Dad was a Real Estate Broker for a time here in Ontario, but he couldn't take being away from the family as much as the career demanded. When they moved out West he got a factory job with what later became Western Star Trucks. At the time I didn't understand how he could go from broker to factory worker, but I realized later that he got his family life back with that job. Come 3:30 he was gone, leaving the job behind and they had a camper and a boat and they went everywhere. They had a good life even though they never had any real money to speak of.
They both retired early, in their late fifties and we assumed that they took early pensions or had money stashed somewhere to live on. Both my parents drank and my Dad smoked, although he "hid" it from my Mum. Yeah, right. Dad loved his steaks. Mum loved to gamble and went to the bingo and the casino all the time. For seventeen years every winter they went south to a fifth wheel trailer in Yuma, Arizona. Dad always bragged about how much cheaper it was to live there. I learned much later that my uncle let them stay in the trailer and ended up giving it to them in his will. When they couldn't travel south anymore because of the health insurance they sold it for something around eight thousand dollars.
Back in Ontario, with help from the Veterans' Loans Program, they managed to buy an old farmhouse in Streetsville. Before that we had been living with my grandmother on Hugo Avenue in Toronto. To my knowledge my parents never owned a home before Streetsville. They had lived on the island and in an apartment in Ajax and on a farm that would become Don Mills today, but they always rented or worked for it. Streetsville was the princely sum of $10,000, but it had no indoor plumbing and was heated with a stove. It was like going back in time to the eighteen hundreds. The next years were spent renovating the place, putting in central heating and indoor plumbing and many other things, including aluminum siding the entire place, so I assumed my parents got the money from somewhere.
In 1970 life for all of us changed dramatically. My parent packed up and moved out West to Kelowna. They had tried to sell the place in Streetsville before they left, but the market wasn't good, so they had taken it off the market and rented it instead. This was a fatal mistake. Not only did the guy renting it not pay the rent, but he left the place with the heat shut-off. The water pipes froze and the place was flooded, damaging everything, especially the original wood floors. My Dad had to come down by bus to assess the damage and repair everything. I don't know what they eventually sold it for, but a lot of the money went to a lawyer trying to sue the tenant for all the damage. Before any settlement was reached the lawyer committed suicide because he had embezzled money from another client, so my Dad lost everything as well.
While they were renting a house on Marshall Street in Kelowna, they would camp every week-end at a place called Shady Rest out in what was called Westbank at the time, now West Kelowna. They had a spot reserved right on the beach and one day the manager came by to tell them that they would not be able to camp there anymore because it was being converted into a mobile home park. My parents jumped on it and were amongst the first three people to lease lots on the beach. Somehow they managed to finance a mobile home costing $12,000 and put it on the site, where they would enjoy life for the next thirty-five years. It was an incredible spot, year round.
My Dad never seemed interested in starting any kind of business, but he had called me one day in a bit of a panic, telling me that friends of his were building a theme park and they had run into some money troubles. If we could come up with Nineteen Thousand dollars we would get forty-nine percent of the business, which was to be called The Flintstones. My Dad had been working part-time for the people that owned it, building log boats and many other things. He was very talented that way. My wife at the time would have nothing of it. I offered to put our house money in trust for two years and, if the theme park failed, we would come back to Ontario, but she wouldn't budge. My Dad could not come up with his share either, so we both lost out. The park went on to make over a hundred thousand dollars per week for many years and was eventually sold to interests from Calgary for 2.7 million dollars. Yes, our ships had come in and sailed without us.
When I moved out west in 1993 it was primarily because my mother had been diagnosed with fifth stage melanoma and didn't have long to live. I wanted to spend whatever time she had left with her and Dad, not to mention my family out there. Mum and Dad seemed happy and they had their little pleasures, like "Happy Time" every day. My Dad was always puttering around with something. For a time he made little animal windmills, like Tweety and Sylvester. People loved them and he couldn't keep up, but I don't think he ever made any money.
Life changed again beyond drastically when my Dad died in my arms in the spring of 2005. That's when I got the rude awakening on their finances. As my father's executor and now my mother's care giver I had to know everything and it soon became clear they were not in good shape. First, my Dad had no insurance with a death benefit, which sure would have helped. There wasn't even any money to cover the costs of any funeral, even though his wishes were to be cremated and not buried. He also didn't want a sad funeral so I had a celebration of his life instead. Still the costs of the very basic process were twenty-five hundred dollars, money we did not have. I was fortunate to find a most compassionate funeral director who asked if my Dad was a Vet and then told me I could get the money from the Vet's association and that she would wait for the money. I have no idea what I would have done if she hadn't told me that.
Second, they had built up a large line of credit, too large, with a local bank and hadn't been making any payments except interest for many years. It looked like this is how my Dad dealt with their expenses being more than their fixed incomes for quite some time, if only because there was nothing that he had borrowed a specific amount for. It was the a very big build-up from their draw and it was allowed based solely on their thirty-five years with the bank. It is important to note here that although they owned their mobile trailer they did not own the land it sat on, in fact, they paid dearly to rent it, four hundred and twenty-five dollars a month when Dad passed away.
Dad's pension would now obviously stop, but his small Veteran's pension would thankful run for a year, so that was going to help a little. At the time of his death their home was on the market, but the decision was made that it would be too much for Mum with her Alzheimer's to lose Dad and then be forced to move, so we took it off the market. She was also getting worse and would need to go into a care facility, something that was not available at the time because there were over three hundred people on the "emergency" list already. I knew it was going to be tough to survive, but I hoped to be able to take advantage of programs such as Community Futures to see what I could do for money.
The biggest shock came with the arrival of my Dad's Visa bill. He owed a shocking fourteen thousand dollars and with an interest rate of nineteen percent. I had remembered him being very stressed about something with Visa, if only because it was the first time he had ever mentioned anything about their finances. He said that something had gone wrong with the automatic payment they were to take from their account and he hadn't noticed it on the bank statement, and now they were pressuring him to make up the back payments. He didn't say how much he owed or what the payments were, just that it was giving him grief. I can see why.
There were so many issues with this Visa account. First, how in the world did he ever manage to owe that much in the first place? And why, when they had a line of credit with the bank, and at five percent, didn't he just increase the line of credit and not up the Visa? When I delved into this with the bank, the first excuse I got was that Visa and the bank are separate operations and there is no coordination between the two. Weak excuse, at best. Second, the reason he owed so much was that he had called asking for an increase of ten thousand dollars to put a new engine in his disaster of a boat, something that the bank should never have allowed. When I questioned why they didn't at least offer to increase the line of credit, they had no answers and admitted that they should have looked after my father better. I told them I at the very least wanted the ridiculous interest charges reversed and the amount added to their line of credit. I then realized that for some unknown reason the account was only in my Dad's name, so in my mind the account was gone with him. I asked them to show me any documentation where my mother had agreed to pay the account. I also checked the law and discovered the debt did not automatically fall to my mother.
The next disaster with the bank was that, as executor of my Dad's estate now, I had to redo all the paperwork for the account. As soon as I notified the bank that my Dad had passed away they asked for his debit card and they cut it up right in front of me. No problem, I figured, because they would now give me one in my name for the account, right? My own bank, BMO, had issued me a card the minute I opened the account with them. No such luck. They then inform me that it will take a "couple of weeks" to issue me a card. When I asked how I was supposed to pay for things like groceries now, they had no answer. I had to carry cash.
Next thing they called me up to ask me to come in and bring my mother to sign new papers and I receive our debit cards. Remember that my mother's Alzheimer's was so bad she could not possibly control her money or have a debit card. She was a gambler and loved the casino, but with her memory she could easily blow all her money and not remember doing it, so a debit card was out of the question. I stressed with the manager that she was not to even mention this to my mother or sparks would fly. When we got to her office the very first thing she did was pull out my mother's debit card and ask her to sign it! I had to say that my mother was not allowed to have one, and that set her off. She blew up and stormed out of the office, hollering about not being able to have her own money and making quite a scene. I told the lady I was dealing with to go and get her because it wasn't my fault she hadn't listened to me. The manager ended up calming down my mother and explaining that I was just in charge of things like Dad was now and that the bank would do everything they could to help her. All total BS.
I explained that we were going to be losing Dad's pension now, but that I was going to try to get unemployment or find a way to make money to help out, and the bank manager said they would allow any increase I needed on the line of credit to help. I said that as soon as I could find a care facility for my mother I would be selling her place and pay down the line of credit. I mentioned that there were things I could do using my renovation experience to add value to the home and she agreed to extend whatever financing I needed. So, as bad as things were, I thought we would make it, at least until we could sell the place.
The next few months were challenging on so many levels, but we managed. Mum always blew up at me when I told her that things were different now and she could not afford to spend the kind of money she had been at the casino. This was a weekly fight. When the winter set in heating became a major issue. She insisted on having the heat set at twenty-five degrees, which was like an oven. We had a pellet stove in the living room, but the pellets were very expensive. Their place was also the only one in the park still using oil, which was also very expensive. In one three week period we spent $750 on pellets and oil. I kept the pellet stove blasting for her in the living room, but I kept turning down the thermostat for the furnace and every time she walked by it she turned it back up, swearing at me that it was her home and she wanted heat.
It started to drain our limited finances and my attempts to get work were also a disaster. I had managed to register for a course through Community Futures and get Mum into daycare, but she absolutely refused to go, so I lost the course and the funding. On top of all that the bank suddenly chose this time to inform me that they had changed their minds and would not allow any increase in the line of credit. We hit rock bottom when I had no money for either pellets or oil and we had no heat. Finally I managed to convince their oil supplier that, based on the thirty-five years we had been a customer they would deliver oil and let me pay for it as soon as the money came in. We would have frozen to death. The days my mother had to wear three layers of clothes and her coat were pure hell because she could never remember why it was so cold in there and begged me constantly to turn on the heat. It was hopeless.
The point here is that all of this could have been avoided if I had asked my father to share some information with me, just in case something happened to either one of them. I know this is difficult because no parent wants their children to interfere in what they view as their private affairs, but the reality is that one day you will be dealing with it whether you like it or not. It's a whole lot easier to ask the questions and find the information you will need when your parents are there to answer your questions than it is after they are gone.
Do you know what UBB is? You soon will
UBB stands for Usage Based Billing and is often incorrectly referred to as bandwidth caps. Most people agree that a bandwidth cap refers to the speed, or the concept of throttling back your internet access speed. It is a creeping cancer being implemented by huge telcos like Bell and Rogers, and threatens to send the use of the internet back to the dark ages. Parents now have to worry what their kids are downloading, like music, and the family can't enjoy affordable services like Netflix without being paranoid about going over their usage limit.
My personal story is that I lost my cable TV service because, well, I haven't robbed any banks lately, so the ridiculously high monthly costs were out. I was left with my already expensive internet connection to watch TV and the occasional movie, mostly because TV sucks at this time of year. After all, don't those same huge companies and all the networks assail me every day, urging me to watch "on demand"? Well, boys, you can't have it both ways. We do watch a lot more of our entertainment over the internet these days, and the thanks we get is for these same monster companies to then penalize us for doing so, with insanely low usage limits and absurd overcharges. I already pay way too much for my internet service, then they impose a measly 15 GB limit, which I, of course, went over in a few days. Even worse they want to charge me $4 a gigabyte for every one over! Highway robbery!
Who's fault is all this? Well, the CRTC, whose mandate is to promote Canadian content and keep us safe from all those big bad American programs, stuck their nose where they didn't belong and rubber stamped the big telcos request to start imposing limits on their wholesale customers - the ISPs (Internet Serivice Providers). The independent ISPs were previously free to market their services however they saw fit, and most offered "unlimited" usage as a draw. No more because they're now being squeezed by the big brother companies who control everything, and with the CRTC's blessing. Remember that the CRTC is made up of industry cronies or those wanting cushy jobs with the telcos when their time at the CRTC is up. Sound like a cozy relationship? You betcha!
As soon as this was announced there was a backlash of angry consumers who knew where this was going. An online petition drew 160,000 signatures instantly. Prime Minister Harper, never the one to care about lowly Canadians, and much more concerned with big business, suddenly realized that this was going to come back to haunt him, so he ordered the CRTC to have another look. The result is that the CRTC is holding hearings into the issue. A kangaroo court if I ever saw one. They are taking opinions from people like you and me on their website, but they carefully craft the options to look like they actually give a damn. Not! The Chairman was quoted in a recent speech as saying that their previous decision meant Canadians have control over who they use. Who is he kidding? When every ISP in the country is forced to pass on usage limits, what choice is there? Laughable if it weren't so serious.
The whole world is learning to use the internet as a valuable tool. Rich content is improving more and more every day. New companies are springing up to develop this content and the industry is growing in leaps and bounds. There are already reports of companies scaling back their websites so that they don't take as much usage to visit. Everyone from people using Netflix to those using your computer as a phone will be affected. The government's pathetic response has been to force the companies to send you a notice, usually one in your browser, warning you that you are going to go over your limit. Their gestapo tactics are also to force you to acknowledge the notice so you can't come screaming back at them when you get the huge bill. Remember, these are the same louts that make cell phones in Canada far more expensive than they should be.
Canadians aren't exactly known for their willingness to rise up and protest something, well, excluding the clueless idiots in Vancouver, but if YOU don't do something, like at least file your objections on the CRTC website, we are all going to pay the price. These UBB limits in Canada are often in the area of 15 GB. In the States people are objecting to 250 GB limits! To their credit Shaw and Telus recently announced an increase to 150 GB and they cut their overage charges in half, but it's not enough.
If we are going to give these guys a license to print money, like they need it, let's at least look at how it's done in the UK. They have daily limits of 3 GB and, if you go over this limit, your speed is throttled back to 25% until the next day, when your contracted speed is restored. This is enough for a family to maybe watch a movie or play online games, but it stops anyone from gobbling up massive bandwidth running a porno site or a server in their home. This is at least a sensible option if we have to have UBB.
Two legal questions on this issue. One, didn't Microsoft get hefty multi million dollar fines under anti-trust laws for using tactics that limited competition? So how do these big guys in Canada all get together and impose these limits, thereby forcing a competitor like Netflix out of the market? How is that different? Also, doesn't Canada have bait and switch laws? That's where a company promotes a low ball offer, but then forces you to buy something more expensive. The big guys have encouraged you to sign long term contracts with them to lock you in to certain monthly fees. Fine, but then they impose these limits; charge you more if you go over and levy huge per gigabyte charges, sending your monthly bill into the stratosphere! Sounds like bait and switch to me!
Let's get together on this one folks! We're mad as hell and we aren't going to take it anymore! Right? Right?
To my dear Dad
Father's Day brings memories of the worst day of my life, when my father died in my arms. I have been tormented by the memory of that day and it always brings on the tears. I would give anything to have him back, but the reality is he's gone. I like to believe that he is sitting on a porch somewhere, with my mother, looking out at the lake they loved so much, having "Happy Hour" and enjoying life, whatever than means where they are now. Although both of my parent's lives ended tragically, my Dad's from what's called "dry drowning", a result of his asthma and my darling mother from Alzheimer's, they both lived long and mostly happy lives. My Dad made it to 81 and my mum to 84, although she didn't remember much the last few years of her life.
Another Father's Day without my kids
I will go to my grave forever regretting the loss of my kids. I did nothing to deserve this. If you have kids, treasure them and hold them forever close. If you are kids, never let a day go by without making an effort to stay in touch with your parents. They will not always been around and, trust me, whatever your relationship with them is, you will regret any missed moments when they are gone. I know.
Distant memories
My mother, who, by her own admission, always joked she had a "mind like a sieve" for most of her life, was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's and she died in 2007. I was her caregiver after my father passed away in 2005 and it was so sad to watch her mind disintegrate to the point where she forgot everything. In the early stages of my caring for her I tried a lot of different things to stimulate her memory, one of which was to get her a journal and suggest she write down everything she could remember about her life. The tragedy and confusing part of this horrible disease is that you can't remember what you did two minutes ago, but the longer term memory is incredibly sharp. She could remember her wedding day, but not that she had just eaten. I was frustrated that she wouldn't even try, but one of her caregivers explained to me that she had lost the ability to write. This was confirmed when she could not sign her name to something I asked her to sign. It's not clear if this disease is hereditary, although it does appear to be passed on to female members of the family. Given this history I am going to take my own advice and write about things I hope to always remember, but may forget. Hopefully I remember having this website and I can look back to recall things I may have forgotten by then.
If it was not for a dog, whose name I have long since forgotten, this would have been a very short story. When I was a little over two years old, we lived on what was known at the time as Donalda Farms, which would eventually become Don Mills. My Dad was a caretaker on the property because the Dunlaps, who owned it at the time, never lived there. For some strange reason, although I could not verify it in my internet research today, I remember my Dad referring to him as "Bumpy" Dunlap. No idea why. My Dad recalled that one day they heard the dog barking more than normal. No idea why I was wandering around the property at that tender age, but somehow I had made my way down to the pool. In those days there were no security fences around pools. Of course no one knows, even me, if I was actually heading for the pool, but being naturally curious at that age I can only assume I was and no doubt would have fallen in and drowned, had it not been for that dog. He had positioned himself between me and the pool and there was no way he was going to let me anywhere near the pool, so he saved my life.
The strange part of the story was that, at the time, I was suffering from horrible allergies to pets and I had an extreme case of eczema as well. If I was exposed to any fur-bearing animal my eyes would swell up, almost closed and my sinuses would plug up completely. In subsequent years, until I was cured, I could walk into a home that had not had any animals for ten years and I would still swell up from the dander. I hated the fact that I could never have a pet of any kind. This dog belonged to one of the workers on the farm at the time, so the fact that he protected me is even stranger, but thanks to you, my savior anyway.
Like, I assume, most people, our memories of those early years are very spotty. Although we tend to remember the more traumatic moments forever, an incident like being saved from drowning isn't known to be traumatic at the time, so we forget. No doubt my parents never forgot the time they nearly lost me. During the years following that incident maybe my father wished I had not been saved. My eczema was so bad that they spent hundred or dollars, which they certainly didn't have at the time, trying to cure me. I would scratch the skin right off, it was so bad and they tried everything to stop the itching. The nights were particularly bad because my Mum had to sew little bags to tie over my hands to stop me from scratching. At one point they had to tie my hands down so I could not get to myself. It was the stuff that lifetime trauma comes from.
When I was about eleven my Dad somehow heard about a chiropractor who had cured conditions like mine. Remember that we are going back to a time when chiropractors were considered quacks, so it showed my father's desperation that he would try anything. Also remember that this was long before OHIP so it all came out of his hard-earned money. The chiropractor began by taking x-rays of my neck. He found a tiny bone that was out of place and putting pressure on a nerve, which, he said, was causing the eczema. He began a weekly series of sessions where he would be massaging my neck, then, without warning, crack my neck. It all sounds, even now, like scary stuff and it was. When I look back on it I often wonder if one of those misplaced cracks could have snapped my neck, killing me. Over the course of about a year and a half of traveling down to Oakville from Streetsville every week new x-rays showed the bone was where it should be and not only was my eczema completely gone, but, to everyone's surprise, so was my allergy to pets. I have no clue what the connection was; maybe I just "grew out of it", but who knows?
My reward for no longer being allergic was to get my very first pet. Maybe it was a sign that my Dad wasn't sure it would be okay to have a fur-bearing animal in the house, so he didn't let me get a dog, which, naturally I would have become attached to, so he got me a cat. Bootsy, so named because she had little white paws that looked like she was wearing boots, soon became a member of the family, but everyone agreed she was mostly mine. Having never been able to have any kind of pet, there is no way to describe how much I became attached to that cat. To go from puffy eyes and blocked sinuses to having her sleep in my bed was amazing. I couldn't wait to get home from school on the bus to see her. Like most cats, she probably couldn't have cared less if I came home or not.
We lived in the country, on the fifth line, north of what was called Streetsville at the time, so I took the bus to school. One fateful day as the bus approached our lane-way and I moved to the front of the bus anxious to get home to see my Bootsy, The driver slowed, not just to let me off, but because there was a dead animal in the middle of the road. My heart sank and I could feel the tears well up because I knew in an instant that it was her. It was the first time in my life that I had experienced great loss and I fell apart, shaking and sobbing. The compassionate driver knew what I was going through and he helped me to pick her up and cradle her in my arms. My mother has often said that the sight of me walking up the driveway, carrying Bootsy, balling my eyes out, was one of her worst moments. When my Dad came home from work he dug a hole and we buried her, with some kind words of remembrance. I was too upset to speak but I had made a little cross and I sat by her grave until dark. I vowed then and there to never get attached to any animal ever again.
Like all kids I eventually got over it, although I never again cared as much for any of the many cats we had over the years. Even today I don't care much for cats. That might also be because my wife eventually had three of the worst cats God ever put breath into and I loathed them. Not too long after losing my beloved Bootsy, my uncle, who owned a dog, Hobie, had moved into an apartment and they couldn't keep him, so he asked my Dad to take him because we lived on the farm and he would have lots of room to roam. He was a cross between a hound and a boxer, so he had the muscular physic of a boxer, but the longer nose and ears of a hound. He was an amazing dog and he became an instant member of the family. We took him everywhere with us, including an ill-fated trip up to Thunder Bay to see relatives, a thousand mile trip in the car in the summer heat. First he was huge, so fitting him and three kids in the back seat was no mean feat. Hobie also suffered from the worst gas ever by any dog. His farts could clear a room, let alone when he let one go in the cramped confines of a hot car. I still remember the car overheating north of Sudbury and we were parked to let it cool down and he let one of the worst ever go. Made your skin peel.
Eventually he got old and he got cancer. Although my Dad took him to the vet, it was going to cost eight hundred dollars to treat him, which, back then might as well have been a million. There was no way we could afford that, but I know my Dad would have somehow found a way it it had made sense. The vet said even if he operated Hobie would not survive more than a few months and he would be in pain as well, so my Dad made the gut-wrenching decision to put him down. We dug yet another hole in what was quickly becoming our pet cemetery and buried our most beloved family member, Hobie. I have never forgotten him or the good times we had. One of his unique traits was that you could always tell when a thunder storm was coming, because Hobie would be under a bed somewhere, shaking and wining. Sure enough, within a few hours there would be a storm. The funniest part was that, although he was so scared that he could get under the bed, once the storm passed, he couldn't get back out from under the bed. We had to lift the bed to let him out. He would go crazy, wagging his tail and slobbering all over us in thanks, so relieved that he had survived the peril.
Somehow I have got on a pet theme here, so I may as well continue with that. After Hobie I truly felt that I would never again feel that much loss again, so I was in no hurry to get another dog. Actually a couple of years after we had lost Hobie my Dad got a dog, Champ, from another relative. He turned out to a holly terror, biting everyone and jumping up on people. He was untrainable, so we gave up and gave him back. We never again had another dog, nor did my parents after moving out west. They did have a couple of cats in the early years, but then they started traveling to Yuma for the winters so they gave up their cat to a neighbor and never had pets after that. Part of the tragedy of Alzheimer's is that I found my mother wandering looking for something. When I asked her what she was looking for, she said the cat that they had not had for years.
My next experience with a pet was when I met Tracy and the kids in 1999. After I moved in somehow we connected with a family who had a dog to give away. It was a sad story and one I identified with right away, because they had got the dog shortly after the birth of their daughter, but then she had developed severe allergies to the dog, so they had to give him up. We assured her that she could come and see him anytime she wanted to, and she did visit some time later. Spade, or as we offered called him, Spader, was yet another amazing dog. He was mostly Lab with a small bit of pit-bull, which never showed, ever. He was so patient with the kids, who were young at the time. They would literally maul him and lie on him and he wouldn't move. If they got really annoying he would give a little yelp that told them they had crossed the line and he had enough. He was as lovable as Hobie had been. His trick was to place food on his nose and he would not eat it until you told him to. We did everything with him and he was like another kid in the family.
I eventually moved out (another story). Tracy let me take Spade once in a while and sometimes, even though we had split up, we did things together with the kids, like boating, and Spade would always come along. My parents loved Spade to death, more than me, I think. We would show up with all the kids in tow and the first thing she would say was hello to Spade and not to us. Somehow, even though we split up, having Spade around made it feel like we were still together. Desperation maybe.
One day I got a call from Tracy telling me that something was very wrong with Spade. She told me he was having trouble walking and there was something wrong with his rear end. She asked if I could take him in to the vet to see what was wrong. After I had moved out, whenever I knocked at the door and Spade heard my voice, he would go completely nuts at seeing me. I often said I wished I could get a girl to be as happy to see me. This day was no different. I knocked and spoke his name and I could hear him barking like crazy. As I opened the door though and he was at the top of the stairs, he came bounding down the stairs as always, except that he was just bumping his rear down the stairs. He could not stand or walk. It broke my heart to see that. I took him to the vet and it was heartbreak all over again. He had lumps and the vet said it would cost thousands to treat him, but, again, his life would be short. I went back to tell Tracy the bad news. She said that there was no way she could handle it and asked me to and I agreed.
When I came back later, dreading every minute of this, they had Spade wrapped up in a blanket. He struggled to look happy when he saw me, but somehow he knew this was not going to be the same. My darling little Madison was bawling her eyes out and asked if she could come with me. I had not thought I could possibly dread this moment worse, but now I had to be strong in front of Mads. When we went into the vets she asked me if I wanted to stay with him until he had passed, but I just couldn't do it. I was on the edge of totally losing it anyway and I knew I could never keep it together in front of Mads, so we left. Losing a trusted friend is hard no matter what the circumstances. For me the end of the relationship was tragic enough and I saw putting Spade down as the final nail in what had been the best relationship of my entire like. I had now not only lost my friend and lover, and her wonderful three kids, but we had also lost the "family" pet. Tearful memories, even now as I write this.
Even after these tough times with dogs I have often regretted not having a dog. They are such a wonderful and loyal companion. You are never truly alone when you have a dog who loves you unconditionally. Truly man's best friend. Maybe someday I will live somewhere that I can again have a dog. Who knows?
The Social "Safety Net"?
I have worked all my life in various pursuits, some admittedly more successful than others. Today I find myself facing physical limitations and medical issues for the first time in my life. My weight gain from not smoking, lack of exercise, my "frozen shoulder", elevated sugar levels, foot swelling and pain, all contribute to limiting the type of work I can do. Throughout all of this, though, my singular goal has been to find work. I have never been one to put my feet up and live off the public purse. It's just not my nature.
Thankfully, Ontario Works, the welfare system here in Ontario, within very restrictive guidelines, has still managed to show compassion and understanding for my situation and I am alive today because of it. Also, having been through the horrible experience of staying at the shelters in town, I am most thankful that London Housing finally came through with accommodation. It is a far cry from living in the hellish conditions of places like the Men's Mission, which no one should ever have to suffer.
Obviously this is the first time I have been subjected to the system of support in Ontario, so everything has been new to me. With the exception of the front counter staff at OW, who treat people like pond scum before even giving them a chance, I take no issue with how I have been dealt with, in fact, I have been pleasantly surprised at the genuine concern for my predicament. What I do take exception to, and I think needs to be rethought, is the systems and programs outside of the control of OW.
Firstly, my experience with a local "counseling" company. Having just gone through the trauma of coming far too close to buying the farm because I had no meds, coupled with the loss of my job and my threat of eviction, I was quite obviously in a poor mental state. It didn't help that I was also all alone in a strange town, with no support network of friends.I had never been to any type of counseling or therapy in my life, so I had no idea what to expect. I did think that they would offer me some effective help by referring me to various agencies or suggesting courses of action to get me back on track. OW approved me for ten sessions and I can only assume they are expensive. They were; however, a total waste of time and I only went to two sessions before quitting. They do nothing more than sit and listen to your list of troubles, but offer nothing in return. I asked a number of questions about things like financial assistance, lodging, work related programs, exercise options and on and on, yet my counselor said that was "not their purpose" and she had no information what-so-ever on anything to help me. What good is that? It was pointless.
Frankly I am not sure how I came into contact with Goodwill, who I know no doubt do good work. Maybe it was a referral from OW, but they did offer some very helpful courses to assist me in my job search. What I found incredibly lacking though was their counseling. My first counselor referred me to a program, part of the Ontario Government's Second Career program, and offered online through Conestoga College. Only after several emails back and forth did I learn that this is a post-grad course and I did not qualify, which my counselor should have known. Subsequent to this total waste of time I requested a change of counselor because I felt she was doing nothing for me. Although, after some prodding, they agreed to assign a new counselor to me, the first available appointment with him was over a month away! My job search is urgent and I need all the help I can get. There is obviously a shortage of qualified counselors or funding issues or something that would delay assistance this long. This is of little help to someone struggling every single day to find work.
The merry-go-round with Leads, a local agency designed to help the disabled, was ridiculous. After my referral from OW in January I received a letter setting an appointment for March 31st, almost three months from the date of the referral! Then I got a call cancelling my appointment with no real explanation. Then after a follow-up on the second referral, they had no record of it and told me to go back, yet again, to OW for another referral. After all this I then got a letter telling me I have an appointment for August 1st! This is six months after the initial referral. Watching all their commercials and looking at their website I did feel that they could be very effective in overcoming my physical challenges and finding me some kind of meaningful work, so I pressed to get an earlier appointment, and was successful.
Last week I met with a counselor and had a very in-depth two hour interview. I left feeling that there was a very good chance that they would find me work. I was to attend again yesterday for a follow-up. Full of anticipation, when I got there, first, they had misplaced my file, but we were to go ahead anyway. That struck me as odd because I assumed there might have been some contacts made with employers or that they had done something. I was wrong. I was ushered into the office, whereupon the counselor looked up job postings with people like the city and a call centre. I had explained that, since the day my contract ended with Home Depot I had spent every day, all day, searching every possible job posting anywhere. There was no job publicly posted anywhere that I did not know about. I assumed that the whole purpose of Leads was to tap into the hidden job market for people with disabilities. I also assumed that they acted as advocates for people like me. The results of the meeting were that I was to apply online, myself, something I could and did do every day, to these jobs. I asked somewhat incredulously, if it wasn't better to go through Leads so that they might advocate on my behalf with the employer to consider hiring someone with challenges. The answer was that it didn't matter, so what is the purpose of Leads?
My point here is that it, in my humble opinion, it is time for reform. I question why there are so many publicly funded outside agencies involved in the process of getting people back to work. Ontario Works mandate should be, simply, to get people back to work. The programs should start with providing people funding for their basic needs, but then it should ran the gambit, from work, home and life counseling, to retraining, to academic funding to housing to employment counseling with resume building and interview counseling to job placement and follow-up, all coordinated under one roof and by a team who are fully aware of the client's needs. There should also be volunteering opportunities to gain work experience and temporary job placement. When I worked setting up the call centre we needed four call reps immediately. I called OW to advise of the job, which paid $11.00 an hour to start. How many of the eight thousand people on assistance applied? Not one. The system is obviously broken.
I don't pretend to understand the internal workings of OW, but I do hope that maybe someone will have the courage to submit some ideas up the ladder. With a provincial election looming and the Premier with the lowest ever popularity ratings, maybe a really effective "works" program would be an effective election campaign strategy. It could start with putting able-bodied people on assistance to work, but letting them keep the money earned. There are thousands of projects in a place like London that could be done with public/private partnerships, like cleaning up all the graffiti or picking up the thousands of cigarette butts lying all over the city.
Just food for thought, I hope.
Lessons Learned Too Late - You've got a friend
Do you remember your best friend from Grade Five? How about your coworkers at your first job? Or the people who attended your wedding (the first one)?
In days gone by people, especially family members, often lived in the same place, more often than not, small towns in the country. In places like the East Coast of Canada, the whole town might all be related, which makes dating a challenge. As time went by and the world got smaller and careers got less traditional and we moved out of the horse and buggy age and into the era of fast planes, families started living further and further apart, often only connecting at holiday times like Christmas, or family reunions or, much worse, funerals. You lost daily contact with your immediate family, your brothers and sisters and possibly your Mum and Dad, and cousins, well, they were soon distant memories.
Going back into the fifties and sixties, long before the technologies we have today, or sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Ancestry.com, you kept track of your high school friends with the yearbook and maybe a few phone numbers. You made all sorts of promises to stay in touch but you never did. You might have carried a small address book, but it soon became out of date as everyone moved around or away from your hometown. As you changed jobs you lost contact with everyone at your previous job. As you moved, maybe miles from your hometown, maybe even across the country, you lost touch with family and friends. You made new friends wherever you went, but they too moved away or you moved again and you lost touch. If, like me, you look back on a lifetime of jobs and places I've lived, you soon realize that you came into contact with hundreds and hundreds of people over your life and you often wonder "where are they now?"
Sites like ClassMates, Facebook, MySpace and so on are growing even more popular because they allow us to not only interact with our current friends, but they help to find long lost friends and family members we have long since forgotten. When I first joined ClassMates and registered under my grad year, I soon discovered many of the people I had gone to high school with. It was a real treat to learn where they had ended up, what they were doing now, and to reminisce about times we spent together. Sites like ancestry.com are devoted solely to tracing your family back through the generations. It isn't as popular or useful as a Facebook because it's not free and it needs people to go looking for you or your relatives. A combination of this site with Facebook would be ideal for getting in touch with old friends and colleagues.
In my own case, my parents moved me out of downtown Toronto to the middle of the country, north of Streetsville when I was only twelve. I lost touch with all of the friends I went to public school with because, first I no longer went to that school and, secondly, if I ever had anyone's phone number it was long distance to call them, so I would never have called anyway. I vowed that, as soon as I got my driver's licence, I would go back and visit them. Never happened. I went to your typical three-room schoolhouse in Churchville, Ontario and made many great friends, most of whom lived in the village of Churchville. I met my first love, Roxanne Rollings, in Churchville. I met Dave and Doug Fraser, Wayne Wilson (who I later learned married my Roxanne), and so many more guys and girls who were my life. A lot of them moved on with me when I graduated to go to Streetsville Secondary school, but, again, as important as they were in my life at the time, I lost track of all of them. Even the guys I was in the bands with, who were closer to me than my brother at the time, all drifted away. My first band, The Tempests, was with Chris Hayes, David Kirk and Don Thurston. No idea where any of them are today. I went on to be in bands with Doug (Buzz) Sherman, who went on to be in Moxy, but died tragically in a motorcycle accident some years later, Paul (Zak) Marshall, one of my best buddies ever, Nolan Yearwood, who was the Commissioner of Finance for the City of Toronto, Alan Macquillan, every bit the star. I really miss him and his stories. Victor Dimitroff, who I did find a couple of years ago on Facebook. These were all guys I played with over ten years of being in a band and they were an important chapter in my life.
My career spanned several employers over the years, most in and around Toronto and Brampton, but then I moved to the Okanagan in 1993, leaving there in 2007 to travel to Panama, then returning to Toronto in March 2009, and then to London in September 2009. It has been a journey and along the way I have met many wonderful people and I'm happy to call many of them my friends. Given all the time apart I don't know if those I consider to be good friends would still feel that way about me. Some I have hurt, unintentionally, like my previously oh so solid friend, Bianca, who came to me in my hour of need after my father passed away suddenly in 2005, and who since helped me out when I was struggling in Panama, for which I have not repaid her. I feel terrible that this has cost us our friendship and I hope one day to be able to repay her and rescue our friendship.
Facebook allows me to keep track of friends and people like those I met with what is now called the Okanagan Club. I get to make comments on their page, but hardly anyone ever comments back because they either don't know me or have long since forgotten when I was on the executive. It's kind of funny that, at the time, I put forth a proposal to widen the approach of the club to not just skiing, which it was at the time. Took a couple of years and a new exec but they finally bought into the idea.
For me, LinkedIn is gradually getting to be a sort of Facebook for business, as I widen my "network" more and more. It doesn't help a lot to rekindle old relationships at companies I have worked at and, in fact, some of them, like Shaw Fiberlink, are long gone anyway. Most of the people I worked with at the TD Bank, when I was only nineteen, are probably dead by now. I was just a kid.
My point in all of this is that, if you are young, or if you have kids that are young, get them to include their friends in their Facebook group, or at least get email addys for them. Email addresses, particularly ones like @hotmail, don't change with the provider, like Bell or Rogers, so they will probably stick. Encourage your friends or your kids to get @live.com or @live.ca email addresses with their full names, so that they are reserved, for women, at least until they get married. Long ago I got my full name, garycjones, at all of these - hotmail.com, gmail.com, live.com, and live.ca, so I will be the only one in the world with my name. This site is also the same, so if someone remembers my name they can pretty well find me.
Do all that you can to stay in touch with your friends. They are the family you choose.
Business Idea - The Snuffit
To give you some background, many years ago, in fact, almost two decades ago now, I was putting in a computer network for a company, Banush and Skelly Sales, who distributed a wide range of products to retail chains, such as the Bay, Sears, Wal-Mart and so on. At the time my sister, who owned a plumbing and heating store in BC, and was also a smoker, also had the habit of sharing her cigarette with her husband. They were forever trying to figure out a way to temporarily put out the cigarette, then relight it when they wanted.
Realizing that oxygen kept the cigarette going, she came up with cutting a small piece of copper pipe about an inch long, which she then rounded out the edges on so it would stand upright in an ashtray and hold the cigarette. Because the diameter of the pipe was only slightly larger than the cigarette, once the cigarette was placed in what we called a “butt-out” at the time, it went out instantly. Relighting it was also not a problem and there was no bitter taster either.
Back then I believed we had a fantastic product because I saw numerous applications for this device, from using it in an ash tray, to places like airplanes and buses and trains and anywhere people, at the time, smoked. Being a smoker myself I was forever leaving the house and wondering if I had put my smoke out, so my slogan was “The Butt-out. Now you know it’s out.” I put a proposal together for Banush and Skelly, who were very enthused about the concept. They happened to be heading to a meeting in New York with a company who marketed various products, similar to a K-Tel at the time. When they showed the product to them they went rummaging around in a closet and brought out a molded ashtray with what was a similar piece in the middle to snuff the cigarette. It was a product patented by Ronco, but they said they never really did anything with marketing or developing the idea.
Remember that this is back in the days when smoking was pretty well allowed everywhere and cigarettes were cheap. Now the whole world has changed, of course, and smoking is banned everywhere, plus the cost of cigarettes has sky-rocketed. People are forced outside to seize every opportunity to grab a few quick puffs anywhere they can, usually outside of buildings or restaurants or bus stops and so on. Because there is no easy way to snuff a lit cigarette I have seen the better part of full cigarettes lying on the ground – a very expensive thing. Not to mention that butts are everywhere you look, and they will be there for a very long time if no one cleans them up. Because you are dealing with a lit cigarette people are hesitant to throw them into the garbage for fear of setting it on fire, so the butts end up on the ground.
So, first we have the litter problem, which affects everyone and, secondly, for the smoker, we have the need to be able to have a smoke and either snuff it for later or dispose of it safely.
The SnuffIt looks like the old fountain pens, but it contains a copper sleeve that serves to instantly starve the oxygen and safely extinguish the cigarette. The smoker can then relight it later, saving a fortune, or safely dispose of it in the trash and soon as it has been extinguished. Problems solved.
There are numerous options on how to market the product. It could be sold to municipalities to give away when they introduce heavy fines for littering cigarette butts, in a Keep London Butt Free campaign, for example. It could include an ad sleeve and be used as a giveaway as part of advertising campaigns by the cigarette companies, who have had their advertising opportunities severely limited. It could be distributed by targeted companies most affected by butt litter, such as people like Greyhound, local bus lines and Via Rail. Possibly upscale versions, similar to expensive fountain pens, could be sold retail.
No smoker wants to draw attention to the fact that they still smoke; however, we also don’t want to be seen as imposing on other people who choose not to smoke. Every time a smoker throws down a butt or steps on it to put it out, they look around nervously to see who’s watching. It is also a pretty well-known fact that butts are not biodegradable and those butts will be there for decades to come if no one cleans them up.
The time is right for a product like this. Even though smoking is on the decline, the thousands of cigarette butts you see everywhere clearly shows that a lot of people still enjoy a smoke.
I approached a couple of companies to market the product, but got nowhere, even with companies who marketed environmental products, which I thought would be a perfect fit. Someday, someone will make a bazillion dollars off this idea.
Lessons Learned Too Late - A picture is worth a thousand words
Take lots and lots of pictures -
No question that technology has changed a lot over the years. When I was a kid my Dad had one of those old folding box cameras, but he did take a lot of pictures of us as kids. Those pictures are long gone now and I wish I had thought to scan them all before they were gone.
A big part of my life was my ten years in the band. Fans were always taking pictures of us, both on stage and with them at breaks, but today I don't have a single picture of me over all those years. I was in the house band at the old Club Bluenote, backing up some very famous entertainers, yet I don't have a single picture of those nine great months.
Over the twenty-three years I was married I owned all kinds of cameras, from instant cameras to decent digital ones, but I have but a handful of pictures of the kids and family. We did things like spend a week in Florida, going to Disneyland during our vacation and I don't have a single picture of our holiday. We went to Expo 86 and spent three weeks traveling around BC and Alberta with my parents. Again, not a single picture.
During the fourteen years I spent in the Okanagan I was a little better at getting pictures. Things like Merritt Mountain, hiking, skiing, boating and lots of other things I did get pictures of, but what about all my friends and my dance partners at the Corral and so much more? They are all wonderful memories in my mind, but I have very few or no pictures of any of it. Countless hours spent dirt-biking, snowmobiling in the mountains, boating, hiking and so much more, not to mention family. My mother and father are both gone now and all I have is my few photos to remember them by. Now that they are gone I wish I had hundreds of photos of all the special moments we spent together over the years.
So, no matter what you do or who comes into your life, take lots and lots of pictures. You will never regret it, especially not when you grow old and have them to look back on to relive those wonderful memories. If you have kids make it a regular thing to "interview" them every birthday to watch them grow up. Record every special, and even not so special, moment in their lives. Encourage them to take lots of pictures of their own friends growing up. One day they will thank you.