Rites of Spring #33 The ups and downs of the Victoria B.C. Real Estate illusion · Tuesday June 8, 2010 by colin newell
Like Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto and other major Canadian cities, house prices go through cycles of boom and bust… up and down… near affordability and utter un-affordability.
Particularly in the Victoria and Vancouver B.C. markets.
Where a simple 2 bedroom 2 bathroom bungalow on a postage stamp sized lot can set you back 1/2 million dollars. This same house, 10 years ago, would have sat on the market for weeks or months and maybe netted 200G… a price that would have been considered obscene in any other location in Canada.
And yet there appear to be buyers eager to scope up these houses all over the lower Island and mainland… for now.
And the trend appears to indicate that a market, a mere year ago that was hotter than a stock car brake pad, seems to be cooling… a little faster than even I would have expected.
But not according to the likes of the B.C. Real Estate board, or the CMHC or our local rag, the Times-Colonist – a newspaper that seems to be little more than a trumpet for the Provincial real estate entity…
“Average home prices are anticipated to climb by six per cent this year over last, to $494,600, said Cameron Muir, B.C. Real Estate Association chief economist, said in his housing forecast released yesterday.
“That really represents the price increases that have already happened.” Prices reflect sales of all types of homes sold through the multiple listing service.
Say what?
My wife and I have been house shopping for quite a while – like hundreds of other folks on the lower Island and Vancouver – I have a computer listing of 100 houses in front of me – that are in our price range… and 53 of those houses have had price reductions of 20 to 60 thousand dollars. Some have been on the market for 60 days or more… gone are the 2 day price wars and sales markedly above asking price.
But don’t tell the Times Colonist or the B.C. Real Estate board that – they work hand in had in maintaining this illusory fever that lots of folks fall for.
And while the bubble may not burst, some of the air is getting out…
So take a deep breath. Save your money… for the time being.
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Rites of Spring #29 Andrea and Colin whip up Scratch Spaghetti Sauce · Sunday May 30, 2010 by colin newell
Meat and Veg
350g lean ground beef
350g lean ground pork
1 large yellow onion
1 stick celery minced
1 carrot grated (adds sweetness to the sauce)
2 1/2 cups sliced mushrooms (white or brown)
3 26 fluid ounce Tins of tomato sauce
2 small Tins (6 fluid oz.) tomato paste
Spices
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tablespoon dried parsley
2 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 Tablespoon basil
2 Tablespoon Italian seasoning mix
3 small Bay leaf
In a large pot (heated to medium) brown the ground beef
and pork for about 10 minutes.
Add the chopped onion and brown for 5 minutes
Add the minced celery and grated carrot – stir 2 minutes
combine tomato sauce and paste – stir to mix
add the 2 1/2 cups fresh mushrooms
Add spices and bay leaf – bring to boil, reduce to simmer
for 1 hour.
Serve with any kind of pasta, garlic toast and a glass of your
favorite red wine.
Rites of Spring #28 Technology of our undoing - broadband over power lines · Saturday May 29, 2010 by colin newell
My day job is in multi-media design, modernization, implementation and blah, blah, blah…
…in the educational environment. In my case UVic.
(so)Give me a classroom or lab with a black board and a piece of chalk and I will give you video data projection, infinitely variable lighting controls, high speed internet, web-casting and sound so crisp you would swear it’s live.
because in the year 2010, it’s easily to learn when you have all the tools.
And this applies to the home as well.
I have a PC workstation for audio production and a MacBook Pro for doing the stuff I am doing right now… a very high speed internet connection… and Wireless-N that I do not even use. I like my cat-5 wiring if at all possible. It is secure… and it’s reliable as gravity my friends.
I also like keeping my bits and bytes contained within copper cable if possible. Not adverse to wireless… as long as it’s wireless-N or better. Which is secure as heck after all – low power. It’s safe. And nobody gets hurt, right?
Well, there is something that has come down the pipe (more popular in Europe than here) that is scaring the crap out of me – not for what it does to people or creatures – but what it potentially takes away from us… our ability to communicate.
It’s called broadband over the power lines or BPL and it uses house wiring for distributed ethernet. God knows who designed this stuff. It has the capability, ironically, of seriously interfering with existing digital radio and TV and old style AM and FM radio – impeding our ability to communicate with each other and enjoy our high tech lives. Now that is genuinely ironic wouldn’t you say?
The boxes (shown above and sold at COST-CO) are made in China and they are shit. Some colleagues and I are investigating an interference report from the area around Beacon Hill Park in Victoria – some 4 city blocks wide! And it is likely one of these little peckers (shown above). From some of the intelligence that we have gathered, people are buying these units at COST-CO and then returning them shortly thereafter – not because they don’t work… because they do – but because they are difficult to set up.
Wireless-N is tried, tested and true – sets up easily and does not interfere with any domestic or terrestrial radio or data services.
Now imagine that you neighbor down the street buys one of these boxes and your audiophile set-up is screwed… or your HD TV is now replete with interference lines or inexplicable odd behavior – and don’t think for a second that because it’s digital it is immune to interference – cause it ain’t.
So think about this: One device (shown above) and 4 city blocks wiped out.
How wiped out? I listen to CFAX 1070 AM in Victoria and the offending box (or something like it – we are not exactly sure it is this particular unit) actually interferes with a 10,000 watt radio station.
This should concern us.
Rites of Spring #27 Billion dollar G8-G20 security boondoggle · Friday May 28, 2010 by colin newell
Canadian security warlord and dweeb Ward Elcock (photo at right) is the bureaucrat who is spending nearly a billion (of your) tax dollars worth of security for the G8/G20 summits and, to hear him explain it..
“Hyuk, that’s money well spent, Hyuk, hyuk, nyuk…”
Say what?
“Protecting world leaders (from nasty hippy protestors) “requires a lot of people and people are expensive,” Ottawa’s nerdy security czar told The Globe and Mail in an gushing interview.
No.
Here is what really adds the dollars to these events: Security resellers…
Take a product (like a security officer or policeman) that we are paying for or have paid for already – and out-source it to a company that normally supplies us with security products but marks up that service by a factor of 10 or 100.
Example: A mall cop or community police constable might cost 12 to 35$ an hour.
Contract a “security supplier” to provide this service and they hire the McCops and “resell” them to us for upwards of $1000 an hour. The “reseller” pockets the difference and you line the pockets of the “reseller”
Another great example of this is an “unnamed” community in Canada that is having troubles with its mega-expensive trunked police communication system – that never seems to work. The supplier (who will remain nameless – they are a trans-national telecom with billions of dollars in sales) sells an accessory product for this communications system to a reseller for $49 and the the communications-security subcontractor resells it to the bottomless pocketed police force and ultimately to a beat cop for $499. It is a great scam. And in this way, these mysterious costs sky-rocket.
Remember the term “Golden Toilet” seat that costs $10,000 in a government stores system? This is what we are talking about. It’s pure pork barrel and pure boondoggle.
With no end in site.
He denied allegations of profligacy (wasteful excess), saying that Canadian taxpayers have to understand the logistics of deploying thousands of federal agents.
Also, he said, other countries lowball their own costs.
“Nobody has written a blank cheque,” he said of Canadian spending.
No. He has written a blank cheque and signed our name to it.
Ask yourself this: Why are we re-paying for RCMP officers? Yes, there is overtime but this is an event that needs less than a weeks security.
Think about it… because you are paying for it.
