Question for grownups (or anyone who can answer)

Normally I'd ask my parents, but they've got a lot going on at this point and I don't want them worrying about my plumbing.

The internet tells me the o-ring in the ball joint of my (hand-held, if that's relevant) showerhead needs to be replaced. (It is my showerhead, not the one that came with the apartment, so it is my responsibility.) I don't know where in this thing the o-ring is or how difficult it is to replace it.

Should I take the thing down (which I know how to do), take it to a hardware store, and get them to find me the right part and tell me how to put it in? Or should I just buy a new showerhead? (My current one is seven years old)

Either way I'll be needing advice. If I should be replacing the o-ring, I'll need help finding the right part and instruction on how to install it. If I should be replacing the whole showerhead, I'll need a knowledgeable employee to help me pick out one with good strong flow, because the low-flow showerhead that came with my apartment needs viagra. Should I go to Home Hardware or Canadian Tire for this? (Those are the only two options, unless you know of somewhere else at Yonge & Eg that can help me with this, or another superior source that's located on the subway).

Things They Should Invent: vocabulary-measuring blogalyzer

Some people used hardcore statistics to measure how many words Shakespeare knew based on how many words he used in his works.

Surely the same method could be used to analyze a person's blog and extrapolate how many words they know. Someone should invent an internet quiz that does that.

Posted without comment

Wil Wheaton tweeted that he likes Canada. Reading this, it occurred to me that people quite often say that they like Canada after visiting us. This led me to google Does anyone not like Canada?

First result was the National Post.

(Screenshot below, click to embiggen)

Why do drugstores sell non-pharmacy stuff?

Apparently recent provincially mandated cuts to the prices of generic drugs have hurt Shoppers Drug Mart so much that their share price is going down and they've had to cut worker hours.

If, like most people, you've been inside a Shoppers at any point in the 21st century, you'll know that they sell all kinds of stuff. Make-up, personal health and beauty products, food, household goods, supplements, seasonal tchotckes, greeting cards, books, magazines, lottery tickets, post office, photo finishing, DVDs - huge range of stuff.

But, since a cut to the retail price of generic drugs has such a strong impact, it would seem that their margins on all this other stuff - which takes up 90% of the store - is negligible.

So why sell all this other stuff then? And why do they keep getting bigger and selling more and more non-pharmacy stuff? The Shoppers near me recently bought the storefront next door and expanded into it, filling all the new space with non-pharmacy stuff, mostly cosmetics and a new post office. Why pay for more real estate (which is hella expensive) and cosmeticians and post office staff (when labour costs are typically the greatest operating expense of any organization) if your profits are all in pharmacy? Why not just do pharmacy?

Today I am invisible

A slow group of people is walking in front of me. When I move off to the side to try to pass, this one guy in the group keeps moving off to the side as well, or flinging his arm out, or otherwise getting in my way so I can't pass.

I'm crossing a crosswalk. This one lady walks kind of diagonally from behind me to right in front of me, forcing me to either stop walking in the middle of the street or step out of the crosswalk into traffic.

I'm in a crowded elevator. Since I'm the last one off, I stand in the back corner. This golf shirt man stands in front of me, chatting with his buddies, just a little too much in my personal space. Then he takes a half-step backwards, crashing right into me as though he didn't see I was there.

I'm in line at the grocery store, at a cashier with a short conveyor belt. The guy in front of me is standing about halfway along the conveyor belt with his food. Because I have a buggy in front of me, I can't yet reach to get my food on the conveyor belt. Then the guy in front of me's food starts getting scanned, but he doesn't move forward, and instead completes the transaction from his place by the conveyor belt, thus preventing me from unloading my cart.

Every once in a while this happens - I have a day when multiple people seem not to see me. It always happens in clusters on the same day. About 90% of the people who don't see me are men - I don't know if that's significant.

I haven't noticed any particular patterns in dress or appearance on days I'm not seen. I've even had it happen on more than one day when I was wearing my bright fucking red raincoat that's so bright fucking red the profanity is in fact necessary. I'm not a small person (plus I almost always wear heels) and the people to whom I'm invisible are rarely significantly bigger than me (and sometimes are smaller than me). I do present as an adult now, I'm almost always standing tall and doing eye contact, I walk almost aggressively, I have noisy joints that snap crackle pop of their own accord and I probably smell a little more than I should. So why am I invisible some days?

Teach me Ebay etiquette

An ebay shipper used a very inconvenient courier (Canpar? WTF?), and I had no indication from their posting that they were going to do so.

I have no complaints about the transaction itself, but I would have liked to know going in that they were using Canpar instead of regular mail.

Is it appropriate to mention in the feedback (for the benefit of other buyers) that they shipped by Canpar? Is it appropriate to send them a message mentioning that I would have appreciated knowing how they shipped?

Who are these people and why do they want to hurt us?

Apparently the PMO received a shitload of emails protesting their move to make the national anthem gender neutral.

Who are these people??? Why do they want so badly to exclude us from our own anthem? Are they lurking around in real life?

I was born here - my ancestors went to great trouble and sacrifice so that, decades (in some cases centuries) later I could be born here. I've lived here all my life. All my professional training and experience has been dedicated to serving the unique conditions of the Canadian market. I'm just quietly being a good girl and not hurting anything. So why do they want to hurt me? Why do they want so badly to exclude me from the only country that I can claim as my own?

Why do they care if I've emailed my elected representatives?

More than once, I've seen activism campaigns not only encouraging us to contact our elected representatives about the issue in question (which is perfectly reasonable) but also asking us to then contact the organizing campaign and tell them that we've contacted our representatives. Why? Why do they care? What do they do with this information?

And why do they think it's any of their business? I kind of see the communication between myself and my elected representatives as a private matter.

And when I do see people in facebook groups etc. saying that they did email their elected representatives, it comes across as wanting a pat on a head. "Look at me! Am I a good girl?"

Note to anyone buying tickets for Eddie Izzard at Massey Hall

You can get far better seats through the Massey Hall website than through Ticketmaster. Also, there are more dates for Toronto: May 30 and 31. Promo code = BEES

Has Ellie Patterson always seemed old?

Before they rebooted For Better Or For Worse, Ellie Patterson was the same age as my mother and Elizabeth was the same age as me.

My mother was a year older than I am now when I was born (which is hella weird in and of itself! I don't feel a year away from being as much of a grownup as my parents!), and the rebooted Elizabeth seems to be about 1 or maybe 2 years old, so that means that the rebooted Ellie is very close to my age. I'm 29, and Ellie's no more than 32.

But she doesn't seem to be close to my age at all! She seems like a cranky get-off-my-lawn-type middle-aged woman. Without context (i.e. the fact that she has a one-year-old child) I'd place her as well into her 50s.

Did Ellie seem age appropriate to her contemporaries the first time around? Does she seem age-appropriate to women my age who have children? The youngest mother I know well enough is about five years older than me, and she doesn't seem anywhere near as old-ladyish as Ellie.

Things They Should Invent: unidirectional window screens

There's a housefly in my apartment. Right now it's on a window screen, trying to get out. Unfortunately, it's not a screen that can open. So while I do appreciate that my unwanted visitor is trying very hard to do the right thing through the most logical means possible, it's still going to die a rather unpleasant death. Which really isn't fair at all, but I'm incapable of compassion or decency towards anything with more than four legs.

But wouldn't it be awesome if the screen could let it out, without letting anything else in? If they could invent a screen that would open a little tiny bit if something on the inside tries to get out while not letting anything from the outside in. Then bugs could just leave if they wanted to!

Unidirectional valves exist, unidirectional doors exist, so why not?

Journalism wanted

Unlike most articles about the "$100,000 club", this one actually acknowledges (in the last couple of paragraphs) the fact that the value of $100,000 has changed over the years, so the absolute number of people earning over $100,000 isn't fully informative.

But it would be great at this point if they could do the research and analysis necessary to make the data fully informative.

What would the threshold be if you indexed it for inflation? How many people would be above the threshold then? What percentage of the public service is over the threshold, and how has that number evolved over time? How does the growth in the number of public servants over the threshold compare with population growth in Ontario as a whole? How does it compare with the number of people in the private sector over the threshold? How does it compare with the number of people below the poverty line?

I'll get you started. Public Sector Salary Disclosure was introduced in 1996. According to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, $100,000 in 1996 dollars is equal to $131,214.53 in 2010 dollars. Of the first 10 names on the first list, only 3 earned more than $131,214.53.

Based on this initial, unskilled perusal, it seems like a more in-depth analysis may well be informative. It would be really helpful if some journalists, who no doubt have the ability and resources to find and contextualize all the data, could make sense of it all for us.

Things They Should Invent: make commutes multitaskable

I commute by subway, and I read on the way. This has value. Not massive value, but some value. There's no question that it is of more (if only a little more) value to society for a person to spend X minutes reading than to spend X minutes doing nothing.

However, I can't read on buses because I am prone to carsickness. Rail is fine as long as I'm not facing backwards, but on wheels I can't read even for a few minutes. This is relevant because my employer is considering relocating our office to a location that would be served by rail under Transit City, but without Transit City would only be served by buses. I'm already opposed to this possible location because it's inconvenient for me and makes my commute several times longer, but with the removal of money from Transit City in the recent provincial budget, I'll also lose the ability to multitask my commute. What could be an hour spent reading becomes an hour of dead time. Between my employer and the province, they're stealing time from my life and no one is getting anything in return. I am more valuable to my employer and to society if I show up at work having read the day's papers than if I have to catch up at work or translate without being fully up to speed. I am more valuable if I have read 50 pages of whatever book I'm working on than if I haven't. I'm even more valuable if I've spent the commute gaming to destress and clear my head than if I arrive at my destination with the same (or more) stress.

This multitaskability needs to be a factor in broader transportation planning. I don't think people think of this because a lot of people drive, and you can't multitask while driving. But if they can get people out of cars and into transit, then each of those transit passengers gains usable time. If that transit is on rails instead of buses, a significant segment of the carsick-prone population can multitask. And if they can provide wi-fi and enough capacity that everyone gets a seat, then nearly everyone (except those who are prone to carsickness even on rails) can actively make good use of the time.

They recently determined that the average commute in Toronto is 80 minutes. Imagine if every Torontonian gained 80 minutes of useable time, where they could read a newspaper or a book or use the internet! Time that was once a complete write-off can now be spent being informed or educated. Some people could get work done on their commute and therefore spend less time in the office. Students could get a good chunk of their homework done before they even get home. Parents could unwind a bit so they come home to their children more relaxed, and the idea of spending the evening tending to your kids might be more appealing when you've already caught up with the latest episode of Lost on the way home. You could walk in the door caught up on your Twitter feed and your Google Reader and your Facebook wall, so your time and energy is now available to attend to your family or your home or prepare healthy meals or work out. All of that has value.

Economists are always talking about how important productivity is. As personal technology becomes better and less expensive, we're increasingly able to do practically anything in an hour spent sitting quietly. They need to take this into account in transportation planning, so 80 minutes wasted (and perhaps spent polluting and at higher risk of dying or killing, if you're driving) becomes 80 productive minutes.

Things They Should Study: gender ratios of different neighbourhoods

The other day I was sitting in my hairdresser's chair looking out the window, and I noticed that about 80% of passers-by were male. This morning, about 75% of the people in my section of the subway platform were female. I haven't made any other observations (I think this is going to lead me to walk around counting though), but it would be interesting to study whether there are patterns in different neighbourhoods or different places or different times of day.

Mash-ups of the day

Beyoncé vs. Motown:



Lady Gaga vs. Sesame Street:



Yoinked, as usual, from Malene Arpe

Things They Should Invent: buyer-focused shipping

I get a lot of hits on this post, where I complain that Amazon.ca is now shipping with UPS instead of Canada Post. Every once in a while I look at the google results that brought people to that post, and literally all the commentary on the subject is from people who are disappointed by the change. I didn't find one single customer who thought it was an improvement.

Curious now about why they would choose UPS, I went googling for the advantages to using UPS, and found that the alleged advantages are very shipper-centric. There's no focus at all on what's convenient for the receiver. While it is the shipper who's paying UPS, the receiver is generally the customer of the shipper. Shouldn't our needs be taken into account?

I would, quite seriously, pay extra money for my online purchases to be sent by Canada Post so they will end up in my mailbox rather than an hour away at Jane & Steeles. Why can't merchants make that an option? If a courier must be used, I would totally pay extra for a service that lets me request delivery within, say, a one-hour window. Why can't they make this an option?

Someone should poll customers and find out what their shipping preferences are, then retailers should provide services that meet these preferences.

Teach me people skills

Suppose someone is talking to me, and I can't think of anything to say in response. It's a point in the conversation where a substantive response (i.e. more than "Okay") is expected, but I've got nothing.

What should I say?

I already have in my repertoire admitting that I can't think of what I'm supposed to say at that particular point, but that doesn't always work. Any other ideas?

Things They Should Invent: formula for calculating what percentage of consumer goods are reasonably priced

There are formulas for housing affordability. You shouldn't be spending more than 1/3 of your income on rent (and there's a proportion for mortgage payments, but I forget what it is). So it's easy to extrapolate from these numbers and determine for what percentage of the population housing is affordable, or whether a given household can afford a reasonable proportion of the available housing, etc.

It would be interesting to come up with similar calculations for, like, everything. Determine what percentage of one's income should be spent on a particular product or service, and then compare that with income data. Based on income data, is cable reasonably priced? Are beauty products? Is furniture? Rink time? Nonstandard-sized bras? Movie rentals?

Then they can work out all kinds of interesting things from this. Are feminine hygiene products affordable to households receiving welfare? What percentage of police officers can afford a family vacation to Disney World? To what percentage of the population is organic food unaffordable but nonorganic food affordable?

Things They Should Invent: "Yes, and…" debates

In improv, you're not supposed to shoot down someone else's idea. You're supposed to go along with it and build upon it.

This idea should be introduced into political legislatures. You can't shoot down ideas or diss people. You can only talk if you have something new and productive to add, to build on existing ideas.

It wouldn't work all the time - and we do need some time to shoot down generally harmful ideas - but there should be designated "yes, and" periods so we can actually get some work done once in a while.