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{ Category Archives } off topic

Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon

For those of you who know what a non-athletic person I am, don’t get too excited: I’m not running a marathon, I’m not even running. However, I am walking 5km to raise money for the Fort York Food Bank on September 30th, a charity to which I’ve donated in the past due to the diligent efforts of my friend Ingrid.

You can click here to sponsor me; all donations will receive a tax receipt (although that may only be good for those of us who pay taxes in Canada).

2007 07 15 Comments (0)

Payments with PayPal personal

When I first signed up for a PayPal personal account, I couldn’t receive payments from credit cards (no problem) and it was free to receive payments funded from someone’s bank account. Presumably, PayPal made their money because I was also using their service to buy things online from companies with business accounts (like my wine club), which pay a fee on every payment received regardless of whether the transaction is funded by debit or credit.

A friend recently tried to send me some money via PayPal, and I had the option to accept it — with a 4.9% + $0.55 transaction fee! Turns out that she was funding the transaction with a credit card, and of course someone has to pay the merchant fees on any credit card transaction. According to the fees page, which I found after much searching, PayPal Balance, PayPal Instant Transfer and PayPal eCheck are all free to accept in a personal account; after some investigation, it looks like Instant Transfer is the default method of having the payment come out of your bank account, although I have no idea what the difference is between that and a debit transaction (which does incur the 4.9% fee). That means, I assume, that if she had funded it out of her bank account, there would have been no transaction fee, although it’s all guesswork at this point.

Needless to say, I refused the payment, and she’s now sent me an Interac email money transfer.

2007 06 02 rant Comments (0)

Car-pole incident cited

It’s funny the way things go around the web sometimes. On May 7th, while at the BEA user conference in Atlanta, I quoted one of the speakers (who is with a utility company) as saying that they refer to a car hitting an electrical pole as a “car-pole incident”. Now it’s being referenced in the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a “lexicon of fringe English”.

2007 05 22 Comments (0)

Now, for your enjoyment: Skype spam!

My second piece of Skype spam arrived today. I hope this isn’t becoming a trend, or I’ll have to disallow chat messages from anyone not on my buddy list.

Skype spam

Good to know, however, that I can track my package “lively” on the internet.

2007 05 13 Comments (0)

Love 2.0

In response to my earlier post about Skype stalkers, and I’ve had a request from Skype’s PR company to help find someone to interview for Valentine’s Day tomorrow. The gist of the story is how Skype can help long-distance lovers keep in touch, especially on Valentine’s Day.

Are you currently in a long-distance relationship? Do you live in Toronto? Do you use Skype to communicate with your other half? Are you free to be interviewed (on camera) by Amber Mac of CityTV tomorrow?

If you said yes to all four questions, and you’re game for this, contact Margie Cader directly (I’m just the messenger, leave me out of it).

2007 02 13 technology Comments (0)

Musical themes

Ever notice that the opening notes of the music on the TED talks videos are nearly identical to those of the Battlestar Galactica theme? Coincidence? I think not… :)

Do yourself a favour, watch both.

2006 11 05 Comments (0)

Why dragon boat racing is like bad sex

Two years ago, I was shanghai’d onto a dragon boat crew for the annual races in Toronto. It was more fun that I thought that it would be, I actually got some exercise at least once a week at practice, and we raised money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Recently, I came across an email that I wrote at the time wherein I described how the practice sessions drove me to make comparisons between dragon boating and bad sex:

  • Everyone looks clumsy getting in and out, and if you’re lucky, no one falls overboard in the process.
  • Getting things in synch is trickier than it looks: not only do you have to learn to dip it in at the right time, but also to take it out at the right time.
  • The participants spend most of the time looking at someone else to see if they’re doing it right.
  • It’s all about that extra six inches in the stroke.
  • The main event takes about 100 strokes and is over in about two minutes.

Amusing myself by thinking of these points was the only thing that kept me from jumping overboard some nights as our coach barked orders at us, and my right hand slowly became numb from the cold water.

2006 08 01 Comments (0)

Getting off topic

I’ve been scaling down my usual BPM-related work in favour of spending some time on other topics, such as Web 2.0. Sometimes, the two overlap, but often I find myself wanting to blog about something that really has no place on my BPM-focussed blog, Column 2. I have put a few of these on Column 2 under the category “off topic”, but thought that a separate blog would be more effective.For one thing, ebizQ, which hosts my blog, doesn’t have any editorial control over it but does expect it to be related to BPM most of the time. Also, I want to play around with WordPress a bit more, and I have complete control over this site so can hack the templates to my heart’s desire.

Almost every day, something happens to me that makes me wonder why the world works (or how it manages to survive) as it does. Sometimes, I email these observations to my friends, who likely suspect that I am under the influence of alcohol or severely jet-lagged at the time of writing. Although I don’t do as much travelling as I used to, the former is often true. Maybe my 40’s have made me more reflective (or more garrulous). Maybe I finally think that I have something to say that’s not just business related. Maybe I’m turning into my mother, who has kept a diary for as long as I can recall (and now, at the age of 83, has a blog).

This has really come to a head this week since I’ve had a couple of days vacation in San Francisco, bought a new camera and have been going crazy with Flickr, and am attending BlogHer; I want to write about all this stuff but it doesn’t belong on Column 2. So here I am, blogging off topic.

2006 07 28 Comments (1)

Happy Canada Day!

It’s Canada’s 139th birthday today; happy birthday to us! The best parade that I saw today was the one through Chinatown, where Canadian flags were carried alongside Chinese dragon puppets and tagu drummers. I was glad to be on foot; it must have snarled traffic over the entire west side of downtown. The Festival of Fire fireworks competition kicks off tonight at 10:30 from a barge off Ontario Place, and should be visible from anywhere along the lake.

2006 07 01 Comments (0)

It must be my year

I was poking around the web today (like I do most days) and found myself looking at the Chinese Animal Zodiac. I was born in the year of the Rat, which according to the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco means the following:

People born in the Year of the Rat are noted for their charm and attraction for the opposite sex. They work hard to achieve their goals, acquire possessions, and are likely to be perfectionists. They are basically thrifty with money. Rat people are easily angered and love to gossip. Their ambitions are big, and they are usually very successful. They are most compatible with people born in the years of the Dragon, Monkey, and Ox.

Charm and attraction? Not sure about that, although I had two very fine specimens hit on me while I was at a conference recently. Perfectionist? Thrifty? Easily angered? I’d have to say yes to all of those, which are not my finest traits. The compatibility part is especially good, considering that the boyfriend was born in the year after me, hence is an Ox; what’s really weird is that my ex-husband is also an Ox (although one cycle prior) but has none of the Ox traits and definitely wasn’t a good match for this Rat.

I found other Rat definitions here, here, here (which also tells me that I’m a metal Rat), here and here that include a few other things that ring true, both positive and negative.

I don’t believe in all of this, but it’s been a pleasant distraction for the past 30 minutes when I should have been working.

2005 11 22 Comments (0)