Author: Doug Rutherford

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If it weren’t for bad luck…

I’ve come to the conclusion that the old expression is particularly true. Actually, Ginsberg’s Law may be more so. “You can’t win, you can’t break even and you can’t get out of the game.”

Clara was volunteering for the Arctic Winter Games and went to her shift at the Games Centre yesterday morning. Since our luck has been generally awful lately, she slipped near the entrance to the Games Centre and broke her arm. Apparently, several other people fell and complained that the parking lot was rather icy; however, Public Works hadn’t come up to sand the lot by that point so, down she went.

She called me to tell me what happened and, since I was taking Katrina to the airport first, I said I’d meet her at the hospital. A little while later, she called to say I had to pick her up at the Games Centre. Since it wasn’t a life or death situation, the ambulances on site for the Games are for athletes, not volunteers. In other words, she fell about 7 am and didn’t even get to the hospital until about 8:30.

The good news is that she broke her right arm and is left handed. It was a clean break and still in alignment so she only needs a sling and not a cast or surgery. She goes off for more X-rays and sees the doctor again next week.

You would think, at this point, we would be tired of visiting the hospital…

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St. Patrick’s Day

All the ducks seem to be in a row for a great time on St. Patrick’s Day. I’m playing at our new neighbourhood pub which Clara and I have grown quite fond of. It’s got quite nice atmosphere and good food. I’ll throw in the additional benefit of the prices being quite reasonable.

If you’re in town and looking for a bit of a time, drop in. Musicians for the open stage are always welcome.

poster

It starts at 8 and ends… whatever. The place closes at 12 normally, but their license is good until 2 AM so if things are still hopping, they’ll hop for a bit more time…

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I’ve been busy

Needless to say, I’ve been a bit remiss on blog posting for the last little while. I’ll concede that I’ve been a bit busy working on a few projects and have also been laid low with a cold for a bit. Therefore, I should try to explain what I’ve been doing in lieu of posting.

The Nakai Theatre Homegrown Festival is coming up in early May and I have entered the play into it. It’s a festival for introducing local work and is a great venue for introducing new works or works in progress. I’m entering the play, although we’re only doing one scene from it. This will introduce two of the three characters and provide a bit of background to the material. I’m playing one of the two characters, as well as directing and producing. Yes, this has kept me a bit busy.  I’ve also been doing a bit of rewriting since we don’t start rehearsing until next month. Here, by the way, is the latest draft of the poster for the play.

Play poster

The other thing taking some time is another type of rehearsal. I’m playing for St. Patrick’s Day at Bailey’s Pub in Porter Creek, March 17th. It’s been a while since I sat down and played the equivalent of four sets of tunes as I really haven’t been playing that much since surgery so I’ve been working on that as well.

On top of that, I’m going to be writing a new column for What’s Up Yukon. It’s a look at computer security for the non-technical. I’m trying to provide some basic steps people can do to prevent problems. It’s sort of an electronic self-defence course. The first article came out yesterday. We’re still working on the full focus of the column and trying to come up with a snazzy title. More to come on that, I guess.

Throw in work and life in general… and in particular… I haven’t been posting that much in the last little while. I will try to be more dedicated. I promise…

 

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Hewers of wood?

One of the more common ideas presented about the Canadian economy is that we have a resource-based economy and are liable to fluctuations in resource demand. This is seen, for example, in the recent comments by the Natural Resources Minister regarding the need to ensure that oil/gas and mining development projects should have their approval processes streamlined to ensure that these important components of our economy are developed more quickly.

Unfortunately, this is a misconception. Consider the GDP figures from 2001-2010 for industry sectors in Canada. The two sectors relating to resource production are:

  • Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting
  • Oil and gas and mining extraction

In 2002 dollars (reported in this way for comparative purposes over the 10-year period and I’m rounding to the nearest billion dollars), the contribution to GDP for agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting was $26B in 2010, while that of oil and gas and mining extraction was $54B, for a combined resource-based contribution of $80B.

Now, please do not imply that I’m degrading $80B. If nothing else, it’s far better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. However, comparison with other industry sectors, this is a relatively small amount. For example, manufacturing alone contributed $160B to the GDP in 2010, twice the value of all resource-based industry sectors. The construction industry contributed $74B to the economy in 2010, almost the value of all resource-based industries combined. Of the GDP for just goods producing industries alone, natural resources account for only about 23%.

Where our economy receives its largest contributions come from the service sector. For example, educational services, at $62B is larger than either resource component, as is wholesale ($70B) and retail ($76B) trade, transportation and warehousing ($58B), professional, scientific and technical services ($61B), etc. In fact, the largest industry sector contribution to GDP comes from the financial industry, which has a total contribution of $257B, or more than three times the combined natural resources industries in 2010.

Keep in mind that the service sector does service something. It is safe to assume that, without the goods producing industries, we would not have a large a service industry as well. On the other hand, since industries other than natural resources represent 77% of the goods-producing economy, it is obvious that not all service sector components are dependent on resource production, either.

Are we a resource-based economy? Since natural resources contribute slightly more than 6% of the total Canadian economy, this is a claim that is no longer valid and has not been for some time. In 2001, natural resources represented 7% of the economy, so the actual contribution of resources to the Canadian economy actually declined. This is true in spite of the economic downturn in 2008 which tends to penalize industries related to the production of finished goods more than raw material generating industries.

Perhaps it’s time that the federal government consider its policy development around the largest components of our economy, rather than fixating on one smaller aspect. Policies that support manufacturing industries or encourage the financial industry would have a substantially greater benefit to the economy than making it easier to fast-track mining and oil and gas development projects. Unfortunately, dealing with facts is something our present government seems reticent to do…

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Excuse me?

Two weeks ago, I had a somewhat bizarre incident where a city truck jumped the line waiting at the car wash. I complained to the city and it was passed on to the City Manager. I finally got a response the other day and I’ve been shaking my head ever since. It contained the following:

“We have dealt with the  issue and now consider it closed.”

Wait a second. Doesn’t  the person who complained determine if a matter is dealt with acceptably? It seems to me that I finally understand why a city employee can conduct himself in an arrogant and superior manner. After all, if the city manager is above the mere mortals who pay his salary, why can’t the remainder of the staff be that way…

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Requiem for a squirrel

Well, it’s been more than one month since we saw Grumpy Squirrel.  He has not been dining at the squirrel/bird feeder and there were no tracks around his nest. If the weather had been cold for a length of time, I could understand his reticence to go outside. However, a good bit of the stretch of time in question was quite mild and other squirrels have been noisy around the neighbourhood. I have come to the conclusion that Grumpy may no longer be with us.

Grumpy has been around for quite a time as this was his fourth or fifth winter living in and around the back yard. A squirrel that lives past the age of one has an average life span of 2.3 years, but can live to a maximum of 8. As squirrels go, he had a pretty good life span. It wasn’t that hard, I’m sure. After all, my neighbour, Gordon, and I had been feeding him and for the last four years, he has been living in our shed. I was going to evict him, but never got around to it the summer before last and this summer, I wasn’t up to doing some general squirrel-proofing in the shed. I didn’t want to evict him after that, since a squirrel without a nest and store before winter won’t survive very long.

Grumpy was a good squirrel. OK, he was a bit on the psychotic side, but I liked to think of that as being a character trait rather than a failing. Some of his foibles were rather entertaining. For example, I think he figured out who filled the feeder and I could come rather close to him. On the other hand, he seemed to have a particular dislike for Clara and would quickly climb a tree if she came into the back yard. Also, you didn’t have to be too fluently bilingual to understand that some of the calls he made at her probably weren’t complimentary. And she sassed him right back. They did come to like each other enough to share the space on reading days but raking days were entertaining.

Despite his tolerance of us, he did have one bizarre practice. He wouldn’t eat while looking at us. There was a little stub branch above the feeder that he would often eat on. If we were in the yard or on the deck, he would eat on the branch with his back turned to us. If we moved to the other side of the yard, he would switch around. Maybe, we gave him indigestion. I don’t know. This happened numerous times so I assume there was something in it. Also, he was only so tolerant. The feeder was his and I learned early in the game that taking it down to fill it when he was in the yard was not a good idea. Squirrels are a bit territorial, it seems. After having a squirrel threaten you a few times, you take the hint and wait until he wasn’t around to refill it.

I wasn’t the only one he would defend his feeder against. Many a scrap ensued in the yard when another squirrel expressed an interest in the feeder. I’m not sure how he knew there was another one around, as he would often come out of nowhere chirping and yelling and chasing the squirrel down the yard and out of his territory. He would also defend it against birds. He would often chase the chickadees but they would often only fly to the next tree. This obviously wasn’t far enough, so he would climb up and jump to the next tree and scare them out of it. They’d fly to the third tree, which also wasn’t far enough away for Grumpy. He’d go to the next tree and scare them out of it. This, however, was far enough away for the chickadees and they’d often fly from there back to the feeder. Grumpy seemed to take a particular dislike for this and the process would repeat itself.

I’ve only seen his defence process fail twice. Once, he tried to evict a large flock of sparrows. Sparrows are a bit on the aggressive side and since there were several hundred of them, they weren’t backing down from a mere squirrel, regardless of how much attitude he had. He quickly backed off after being continuously dive bombed. The other time I’ve seen him fail to defend something involved the next tree. That’s where the suet block hangs. I have never seen him eat the suet; however, when a hairy woodpecker tries to eat from it, Grumpy chases him away. One day, Grumpy was at the feeder when a three-toed woodpecker (about 2 ½ times the size of the hairy woodpecker) decided to eat at the suet block. Grumpy moved a little further up the tree and sat quietly until he left. Discretion may be an important aspect of squirrel valour, as well.

What happened to him? There are foxes in the yard commonly and owls as well. Dean Marten, the pine marten, has also been around this winter and many cats run loose in the neighbourhood. And, since I have to bust the lock off the shed, I haven’t had a chance to determine if he’s still in there, passed away from a little squirrel coronary after eating all of the oily sunflower seeds I’ve fed him. That’s a project for the next few days. As for what comes next, Grumpy is really Grumpy II. Grumpy I was preceded by a squirrel that used to antagonize the neighbourhood cats and Gordon, our former neighbour (who, according to Clara, moved on up to Heaven to feed the squirrels there) and I simultaneously christened him Cat Food one morning. Some other squirrel will take over his territory sometime this spring and I’ll be feeding a new one soon enough. We’ll see what name the next one earns.

I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve never had to write an obituary before. Who knew the first one would be for a squirrel…

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What’s in a phone call?

I’m beginning to enjoy the concept of call display. The phone rings, and the phone number is quickly shown on the display screen on the telephone. This presents the wonderful opportunity to talk to an old friend or family member or to allow the answering machine to deal with those moments when you’re feeling a bit on the anti-social side. And, we’ve all been there at some time or another.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been getting a call from an odd-looking phone number, 999-910-0103. It is odd since there is no 999 area code. They only come in the daytime and I’m not home to get them. Clara has answered them a few times, but by the time she gets to the phone, she only gets a recorded woman’s voice saying “Good-bye.” As I previously mentioned, they are odd. The calls come several times a day and only in the daytime.

I finally got around to considering this problem yesterday. I ran a web search on the phone number to see if there was a name we could associate with it and found that this is a rather famous, or infamous one. This is the Microsoft remote access scam phone number. Someone phones you, claiming to be from Microsoft, reporting a problem with your computer. They, however, can fix this by you giving them remote access to your computer. Of course, this is not the greatest of ideas, since you are essentially allowing a stranger to scan through all of the data on your computer, including all of your personal information such as correspondence, banking information, etc.

Consider the following questions when you look at this situation. When you bought your computer, it probably came with the Windows program already installed. At what point did you give Microsoft your phone number? How does Microsoft actually know, of all of the copies of Windows out there in the world, which one is yours? And, how do they know that your computer is having problems?

These questions quickly jump to my mind, but I’m supposed to be an expert (although you may also want to consider the maxim that those who can’t do, teach). But, these are not the first things that may jump into the average computer user’s mind when faced with such a phone call and this is why such scams work. Also, the timing of the calls is important, since the underlying idea is that people who work, possibly even with computers, won’t be at home at that hour of the day. This is particularly heinous when you remember that the scam in question is aimed at seniors who, as a rule, are less computer literate on average than those raised when computers were more commonplace.

So, when your phone rings and you don’t recognize the caller, feel free to be skeptical. Ask them to call back with their request or offer in two days after you’ve had a chance to consider the issue. Odds are, they won’t return your call since they recognize that you aren’t an easy mark.

That being said, my father received one of these calls last month. Yes, he’s a senior and should be more susceptible to this type of fraud. But, we did raise him proper and he recognized the implications from the start of the phone call. After 21 years in the navy and another 25 in the Coast Guard, Dad’s command of certain more colloquial parts of the English language is a bit more developed than that of many other people.  In fact, it’s so well developed that I may even feel a bit of sympathy for the scammer on the other end of the conversation. Not much, but a little…

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Second reading of the play

Yesterday, I had a group of people come in and read through my play again. It makes it considerably easier to get an idea of where it is at when you actually hear it, rather than fill in the voices in your head.

I had a great group and had great feedback. I do realize that there is much more to do, particularly in terms of character relationship development. However, it does seem to be on the right track and it’s on to editing again. David Skelton, Artistic Director at Nakai Theatre, brought up a good point to me a while ago: from original writing to first production is normally a three-year process. I started this one a little over a year ago…

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A lost Liberal opportunity

The old adage states that, “Opportunity only comes a-knockin’ once.” This week represented an opportunity for the federal Liberal Party, one they shunned.

Lise St-Denis, the Member of Parliament for Saint-Maurice-Champlain, was elected for the first time in May as a member of the New Democratic Party. However, she crossed the floor this week to sit as a member of the Liberal Party. Her given reasons were that she more aligned with the Liberals’ social policies and job-creation policies, as well as rejecting the NDP policy on pulling Canada out of the NATO mission in Libya. However, she is also quoted by CBC as saying that she had been considering this since the election in May and that, “It’s been six months that I’ve been reflecting and discussing.”

Crossing party lines is always a point of contention, particularly when it happens a short period of time following an election. The argument is that the member is elected based on people knowing some idea of the policies that member will support come from the platform of the party banner under which they ran. Riding associations also reflect badly on the process since they contribute both money and volunteer effort to elect the member running for their party. Consider the case of David Emerson, who was elected as a Liberal in the 2004 and 2006 federal elections; however, was named a Conservative cabinet minister in a surprise move two weeks after the 2006 election. The Liberal riding association, arguing that he had been elected as a member of that party, requested that he repay the $97,000 that they had spent during the election campaign, a sum that Emerson never repaid.

St-Denis has also been brought to task by the NDP for her change in party affiliation. Guy Caron, Quebec NDP caucus member from Rimouski — Neigette —Témiscouata — Les Basques, has called for St-Denis to resign her seat and run as a Liberal in a by-election to determine whether or not her constituents support her decision. According to Caron, “Quebec voters rejected the Liberals and voted for the NDP.” St-Denis, when asked if the constituents voted for her or the NDP in particular, she responded with the somewhat tasteless comment that, “They voted for Jack Layton, but Jack Layton is dead.”

On to the concept of opportunity…  Ms. St-Denis’s joining the Liberal party was announced at a press conference, accompanied by Liberal Interim Leader, Bob Rae and Quebec caucus chair, Denis Coderre. Rae stated, “The rebuilding of the Liberal Party of Canada depends on people like Ms. St-Denis who have the courage of their convictions and who join our fight against a Conservative government rooted in rigid and dangerous ideology.” Coderre commented, “I have always admired people who make decisions based on their principles and convictions, and I can assure Lise, on behalf of my colleagues in our Quebec Caucus, that she will have all the support necessary to better serve the constituents of Saint-Maurice-Champlain.” In sum, the Liberal Party seems to think highly of both Ms. St-Denis and her decision to join the party.

As we remember, the Liberal Party was dealt a substantial blow in the May 2nd general election. While not the collapse of the Progressive Conservatives under Kim Campbell, it can be seen as being more than the electorate dealing them a slap on the knuckles. It has become obvious that the party needs serious rebuilding to get back into the game and many have proposed that, like the Progressive Conservatives, the party’s shelf life may not extend past the next federal election. To be blunt, no one will really know that until after the next election; however, it is certainly safe and sage to suggest that something different has to happen to ensure their survival. The party has to put forward some message that clearly states, “We’re new, we’re different, and we’re not like the other parties.”

Ms. St-Denis presented a chance for the party to do that. Publicly announcing her intent and rejecting it would have offered the Liberals a chance to say, “That’s old time politics and we don’t do that.” It could easily have offered the chance to start the rebranding of the party as something other than the “same old same old.” Rather, the leadership cheerfully accepted her into the fold… the fold of tired, old politics and a Liberal Party that much of the electorate sees as no longer relevant in the current political environment and rejected in the last election.

So, here’s a reminder for those delegates in the upcoming Liberal convention. Opportunity doesn’t knock often and you never really know if it will knock again…