Summer Is Moving Along

I give up. I am not going to compare the weather of this summer with that of past years. When I think that it is a lot hotter this year than in the past, up pops one of my stories that I have written in a previous year in which I talk about the heat that I am experiencing then. It is just as bad, or even worse, as the weather today. Therefore, all that I will do is talk about how I feel now with what I am experiencing outside.

Yes, I have done this before. I really do like to go for a nice walk at this time of the year not just for the exercise but to make myself feel better. Unfortunately, with the heat and especially the humidity that seems to arise at this time, I do not go out as many times as a do in other times of the year when the weather is cooler. It means that I have to do a lot more exercising inside to keep myself in shape.

It is around the middle of August now. While the weather is quite warm at this time of the year, I do know much better at this point in my life that the cool air is coming back a lot more quickly now. It means the end of the shorts weather and starting to wear long sleeved shirts again.

I understand that there are some negatives coming very soon but on the other hand there are some positives too. With cooler weather, not the cold, it means that I can exercise outside a lot more than I can do now and feel better doing so. I'll probably go out at least three times a day, once after every meal, and go for a walk in different parts of the area to enjoy the change in the landscape. It is really something to see the green of the plants change into magnificent colours.

I expect this year to do a bit more shopping than I have done in the past. At a certain period around this time in a calendar, the stores have sales at a reduced price to get rid of as many of the summer clothes that they were unable to sell in the summer. At the same time, they reduce prices in advance of some of their new winter clothes to get people interested in the future in buying them. I need to fill up my closets with good items so I will be out looking for sales at stores around town.

In the meantime, however, I must undertake my usual function: writing another article for you, dear reader.

PAY RAISES

I wonder if the new Windsor members of Council are going to see more money provided to them if they are the winners in the next election.

The amount of money that Councillors are receiving has been relatively low for a very long period of time. One of the problems arising now comes out of recent Revenue Canada action:

“Revenue Canada’s decision to eliminate (starting in 2019) the provision that gave municipal politicians one-third of their income tax-free. Committee members said that having their compensation frozen since 2005 means council members have lost about 21 per cent in spending power due to cost-of-living increases. Meanwhile, losing the tax-free exemption on one-third of their city income could mean a loss of $4,000 to $5,000 annually.” (Brian Cross, Windsor Star, August 8,2018) 

It will be very interesting to see what the members of Council will do now especially because, if they are the winners in the upcoming election, any decision made will have an impact on them financially.

Just in case you were wondering, here is what the Members of Windsor Council receive now in various payments:

“For the past 13 years, councillors have pocketed $28,770 while the mayor has a base salary of $86,895.

Add in board and committee work, and councillors take home closer to $40,000. The mayor hauled in $174,289 this past year.” (CTV Windsor,  August 8, 2018) 

IS YOUR HOUSE UP FOR SALE NOW

Seriously, the real estate market is so bizarre these days. Prices in my area have skyrocketed upwards over the last little while. I just cannot believe that the sales list price for homes here are so high. Yet the final sales prices seem to be even higher because a number of potential purchasers compete on the price that each is prepared to pay more.

Just to give you one example, I saw that an interesting townhouse was for sale at $199,500. I must say that I was not impressed with that amount because the unit lacked a lot of features that I wanted. However, I heard that a considerable number of prospective purchasers were involved and that the actual sales price was almost $50,000 higher than the list price by the time that the deal was completed.

Here is the reality right now for me anyway. The value of my townhouse has skyrocketed upwards. Who knows, it probably has gone so much higher than the purchase price which I paid. This is hardly just for my place when one looks at what prices homes are being offered for sale these days in many parts of the Province. Our area may just have taken a bit longer before it started going up so dramatically.  Everything seems outrageously high. Moreover, a lot of the homes get sold very quickly after being put on the marketplace.

I believe that I can put my house up for sale now at a very high price. And probably get it too! After all, a number of homes in my area have sold recently at extremely large amounts. So should I do it now while the market is so wonderful from a seller's perspective?

The answer is very simple: NO! It is not so wonderful for someone who is a buyer.

Any house that I buy would have to be a very nice one. That means its price would have raised quite dramatically higher these days as well. In other words, I could use my house sales price to help buy the new house but I expect that I would probably have to pay an extra money buy the new one. What that means is that I would have to go into debt now to buy a new townhouse, especially because I would be in competition with others. 

Here is something else to consider. Sure prices have gone up dramatically higher but will they stay that way or will they come crashing down. I have experienced that on a number of different occasions.

As one example, I bought my first condo at a very low price. Within about two months after the purchase, the real estate market in Toronto was so absurd that I probably could have sold it at twice my purchase price! However, the Government passed some legislation that effectively killed the market and almost overnight prices dropped by almost 50% IE the value my house now was just a tiny bit higher than my purchase price.

That could well happen in our area if the Provincial Government wants to see prices coming down. We have been warned on a number of occasions that the Government is not very happy with what is going on in the real estate market. Legislation could be well introduced to bring prices down dramatically.

I am so wrong now in my view of the marketplace. Mind you, I do not think that I am the only one who is confused about what is happening in land transactions. My guess as to prices is so out of touch with reality that I am not sure what the right price for a home is these days.

I am sure that the price that I would put my condo up for sale is probably not the correct one. It probably would be too low! Moreover, who would know if the price might come crashing down as happened in the past. And when it might happen.

This is what scares me quite a bit. I could find myself in a situation when I might ultimately have a huge loss in my real estate deal. I could be paying too much to buy a new residence first and then receiving too little when selling my unit because of the Government action. I have seen that happen before and want no part of it.

Just Some More From Me

I have to admit that I do live a much different life now. Sure, it has to do a lot about how old I am now. Since I am 70+ years old, I don't do the kind of work now that I did only a few years ago. Seriously, I used to start quite early in the morning and work until quite late in the evening doing all the tasks that I had working with the group with which I associated then.

I stopped doing that about three and half years ago. I think I just got tired doing the work I had done for so many years. More importantly however, as I am certain that you know by now, dear reader, within a relatively short time after I stopped working, it was discovered that I had a very strange disease that very few people in this area had. It was one that not too many medical people knew about at all. Because of being seen right away by one of the doctors in the Emergency Department here who knew a little bit about my illness, my life was saved. Fortunately, I have recovered from it reasonably well although not 100% so that I have difficulties that I have to live with forever.

I do look at my life differently now. I really have no idea about how long I will live. I think about this a lot more today than I ever had in the past. No, I don't really get upset about it because I think I have learned that no one can tell me when I ultimately will leave this earth. I just look at things a little bit differently.

What do I mean by that? I think it is reasonably simple. I don't get worried about the past anymore. The past is over. Period. I cannot deal with it anymore because it happened before and I really can't change it. What I have done is learn the lesson about how not to get into a situation like my past anymore, especially if it is a troubling one. Just as importantly, I can learn how to deal with situations in the past so I can handle similar ones now.

As for my future? I don't worry about that at all now either. I have no idea about what will happen after today. All kinds of things can happen that I can try and figure out how to handle them. However, I just don't do that now. Why worry today about what might happen tomorrow when one really does not have the faintest idea of what will happen tomorrow. Just deal with the time of your life that you can handle.

Accordingly, all that it is important to me at this stage of my life is the present. That is all that I think about ie what am I going to do today. I focus my attention on the particular day that I am up and plan what activities I will be involved in. If there is an issue I have to deal with today, then what I have do is deal with it today. I try always to solve any issue right away and have fortunately been able to do so. I do not want to carry it on.

So that is what my life is like these days. It has been quite a change from my past and sometimes is very difficult. However, dear reader, it seems to be how my life is being carried on and I have to learn how to handle it as best I can.

Now for some interesting matters that I would like to share with you.

ELECTRICAL POWER FAILURES

Fortunately, notwithstanding the very hot and humid weather we have been experiencing, the situation with respect to electrical failures in my area of Tecumseh, and hopefully others, has been quite positive recently. We have not had recently any disasters resulting in the loss of electrical power in the home!  Mind you, I have had a couple of outages recently.  So far, they were infrequent but  who  knows...!!

As you will recall, in the past, we have had a number of cases where we have experienced very short timeouts where our electrical power turned off and then on again. Accordingly, I along with others lost our power resulting in a number of our electrical appliances having to be reset. I was afraid that these timeouts would lengthen eventually resulting in very extreme power outages. These outages could cause severe problems in the home.

I along with others contacted Essex Powerlines Corporation and let them know about the problems we were experiencing and asked them to solve the problems ASAP. As you know from what I have written, they have acted very quickly, identified the problem and solved it just as quickly.

That Company and Hydro One have been working together to minimize any problems in the future. I just thought that I would like to let you see what their General Manager wrote to me recently:

“I am happy to communicate that since your last reported momentary outage on July 21, 2018 no further reports of momentary outages have occurred on the M25 feeder.

We will continue our efforts in mitigating any variables which may contribute to customers experiencing further momentary outages on the M25 feeder in the future.”

CANADA'S BEST PLACES TO LIVE 2018

That is a website as you can find here: https://www.moneysense.ca/tag/canadas-best-places-to-live-2018/

Out of 150 locations in Ontario, Windsor is number 92 in the list. My residence, Tecumseh, is number 59. The best location here is LaSalle which is number 36 on the list.

Here are some interesting numbers for Windsor and Tecumseh:

Economic Factors	Tecumseh	Windsor
Economic region unemployment rate	5.9%	5.9%
Average Household Income	$115,124	$71,896
Average Value of Primary Real Estate	$390,909	$263,959
Average rent for a two-bedroom apartment	$855	$860
Average annual property tax bill	$3,851	$2,032

Fixing Up Our Home

It took a bit of time but our Condo unit looks fantastic once again.

Over the last few weeks, all of the units in our Condominium Corporation and the separate one across the street were finally finished up by our relevant Boards retaining an outside company. That company, which also does our landscaping, made all of our Condo units look really wonderful once again and they were put back into great shape.

Hey, we have "new" units now!

It made sense for my wife and I to live in this particular Condominium Corporation unit. When we moved in, it had in its control a very nice chunk of money set aside to pay for projects like this. Our Board of Directors has acted in a very smart fashion to make sure that it has enough funds to pay for projects that have to be undertaken as well as having enough money to make any repairs required. As you can guess, each year, as part of our budget fees, the Condo Corporation Board figures out the kind of money we will need over the next few years and sets up the budget to help bring that money in at the proper time.

Of course, our monthly payments are higher than they could be. But that amount is not all that substantial compared with the amount of money that would have to be paid out in one big lump sum if a big job had to be done and there was not enough money in the Condo's bank account to pay for it.

I am so happy that we have organized our financial issues so well to make our lives easier.

What our driveway looked like as the work began:

Now take a look at what the finished driveway looks like after the work has been completed:

Just wonderful! 

More Issues To Discuss

Writing all of these articles for you, dear reader, is a bit time consuming to be direct about it. I have to go through a number of sources to see if there is anything to write about in the first place. Then I actually have to sit down in front of my computer and complete something which I hope is valuable for you to read.

It is not an easy task because I want to make sure that what I write is as accurate as it can be based on the information that I have found. I want to give you that information so that you can determine what is the best position for you as well. Of course, I am very hopeful that what I say can be supported by you. If you are opposed even after reading what I write, well that is what life is all about.

As I am sure that you appreciate, I write about all kinds of interesting matters on here. Yes, I probably write too much on border issues but I have been trying to write fewer articles because most of what I am saying now is what I have been saying for so many years before. I just look around now for all kinds of other interesting matters that I think that you might be interested in reading about.

You must have figured out as well why I actually put together these articles and distribute them. Sure, I am getting older and want to keep my brains in good shape by making them do some work. However a lot of what I do in life in general now is designed to help me after my serious illness of several years ago. It just makes my mind work and be as successful as possible in what it is trying to achieve.

Of course, dear reader, if there is something that interests you, feel free to send me a note about it and I will try to do an article on that subject if it is something that I think is useful for me to do.

NOW HE TALKS ABOUT THE PROBLEM

He is going to run to be re-elected as Mayor of Windsor.  Now we know.  However here is an issue for him.

I am sure that there might be an election issue that comes up for a number of people in one region of the City. This issue might be something that not only people who live in the area might be concerned about but also those who run a business there, especially those whose clients come from the US through the Tunnel.

Here is the story:

"Dilkens frustrated with delay in completing Windsor-Detroit Tunnel repairs

Mayor Drew Dilkens is concerned that repairs to the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel, supposed to be complete at the end of June, will now only finish sometime in the fall. (Craig Pearson, Windsor Star, July 16, 2018) 

I am not really going to report on the story because that is not what interests me. What is more fascinating is for you to go to that website and read the story yourself, dear reader.

Tell me after you do what the role of Drew Dilken is. The story is very interesting to me because it keeps telling us that Dilkens is the Mayor of Windsor. However, it does not make it clear, as far as I am concerned anyway, that he is on the Board of Directors of the Canadian owner of the Tunnel. It is his organization that has the big delay in completing its Tunnel project. In other words, he would be criticizing himself!

I would just love to see the Mayor slamming the Tunnel Board member, himself in other words, because of the delay. That probably will not happen. After all, the Tunnel delay could cost the Mayor some votes.

PROCESSING DATA

Does anyone have the faintest idea about what our future will be like because of computers and the programs that work with them? I would like you to read this story, dear reader. I am certain that you will find it very educational:

“How Fortnite approaches analytics, cloud to analyze petabytes of game data” (Larry Dignan, ZDNET, July 22, 2018)

Hmmm. So you do not understand it. No problem, because I don't have the faintest clue about what the story means in any great detail either. Oh, just so you know, here is what a petabyte means:

“To store a single PB would take over 745 million floppy disks or 1.5 million CD-ROM discs” (Tim Fisher, Lifewire, May 10, 2018) 

Epic Games….Have you ever heard about that company? I am certain that your answer similar to mine… No!

Again, I really don't understand what they do but here is an explanation of it”

“Epic is an interesting case study because it has more than 125 million of Fortnite users, millions of players concurrent and telemetry data used for analytics, KPI tracking and product improvements. In addition, Epic's Unreal Engine is widely used for everything from game creation to content to enterprise applications.

"We have stretched capacity to the limits," said Dyl. He noted that Fortnite has grown 100x in recent months. Indeed, Epic has seen outages as Fortnite has grown and the company has used post mortems of those incidents to refine its architecture.”

Pretty impressive isn't it? I assume that is because the numbers are so large. I think it would be worthwhile for you to read the story just to give you an idea about what working with computers and software means to us today and how our lives change because of it.

Now I am sure that you will not find this mathematical information that I am going to present all that useful either other than to tell you that what we will experience down the road will be situations that will be so strange to us now. All that I can appreciate is how my life has changed so dramatically since I bought my children some Commodore 64 computers many years ago to learn how to use this new system. No wonder I cannot even imagine now what will happen ahead of us:

                            BYTE TABLE

 

“Note: If you're curious what would come next in this table: 1024 yottabytes is equal to one brontobyte, and 1024 of those is called a geopbyte (the number 1 with 30 digits after it!)” (Lifewire)

I think it is time for me to stop. I just can't imagine what all this may mean even a few years from now.

So Much Going On

I am not sure what I should write about. There are so many interesting events that are taking place these days. I wonder what my priorities should be since I would like to keep you interested about what I am writing.

The border matters are still very strange about how things are being worked as far as I am concerned. The election nomination period has now ended in all of the areas so that we can now expect the candidates to start promoting themselves in order to get elected or re-elected. The new Ontario Government will be creating a controversy for election ridings in Toronto at a very odd time with an election coming up soon. What about the weather? Are we going to have massive rain storms soon or are we now going to become a very dry area of land?

Certainly, I want to write about as many of these issues as I can. However, I expect also that I will see lots of new matters about which I want to tell you.

Now perhaps you will understand why it is so difficult for me to be full-time, Blog writer at this stage of my life. I just cannot do it. To be direct about it, I just do not have the energy to write so many stories dealing with so many of these subjects. They do take a long time to research and then to write a proper story about the results I have found. While I could do it before, or at least I thought I could, I just cannot do it today. Frankly, I am at a time in my life when I have other desires that come first.

Of course, I still intend to write as much as I can but my approach is a lot different than it was before. I do not need to write as much about topics as I did previously. I just write much shorter blogs about the different subjects letting you know what my point of view is. Sure, I provide good reasons to explain to you why I am saying what I am but there is no need for me to write about it so many times as I did before.

I trust that I still keep you interested in coming to my Blogsite when I post that I have just written another article. Now you may well understand in a much better way why my writing style today is so much different than it was before.

POLICING IN AMHERSTBURG

I am hardly surprised by the results set out in this story in the Star:

"Amherstburg Mayor Aldo Di Carlo and Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens announced Friday that Windsor has received approval to take over policing in the town.

Windsor will start policing the town of Amherstburg in January after the controversial plan overcame its last official hurdle.” (Trevor Wilhelm, Windsor Star, July 27, 2018) 

I expect this to happen everywhere this concept is presented in one of the towns in the Region.

However, that is not why the story was interesting to me. Read this part buried deep in the article:

"This is not about the City of Windsor trying to take over the Town of Amherstburg,” said Dilkens. “This is not about amalgamation.”

Of course it is! Something similar is going to happen all over on this matter and on other issues. The Local Governments will all keep consolidating into one position all the matters that the towns agree with. At some time, someone will just point out how united all of the towns are in so many issues and put forward the proposition that they all should be amalgamated.

This is a terrific example of what I am talking about. Re-read the story now to see what I mean. You should understand by now that a news article is important because it reveals very sensitive matters there. 

As I am certain that you will appreciate, in some cases, news people believe that they have to cover the issues revealed but really don't want to do so. Accordingly, they place some very significant matters right near the end of a story expecting that few of the readers will actually go down as far and take a look at this part of the story. Or, as in this case, they can hide an important point not by placing it at the end but by hardly talking about it while they talk about all kinds of other nonsense as a tool to bury it.

Just remember this, if you agree with what I am saying, you will discover the important matter that is in the particular story you are now examining.

WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG

I do not understand it. Wasn't this a relatively simple matter considering what the decision is? I do not understand why it took months for this to be announced to the public.

Here is what I mean. As you may know, a complaint was filed against Councillor Rino Bortolin:

"Edy Haddad, left, filed a complaint to the City of Windsor's integrity commissioner on May 4 about city councillor Rino Bortolin's conduct during a Liberal party meeting in March.

The City of Windsor's integrity commissioner has decided to not accept jurisdiction in the complaint Edy Haddad filed against city councillor Rino Bortolin over an alleged altercation at a Liberal Party event in March.” (CBC News, July 30, 2018) 

Apparently, the decision came out at some time which was not reported in the CBC story and is not yet posted on the Integrity Commissioner's website. Presumably though it took several months for the decision to be made if it just came out now. Alternatively, it may have been made quite quickly but not posted at all. I did go to the Integrity Commission's website on July 31, 2018 and nothing was posted there yet.  I must admit that I do not understand why this did not happen.

The decision was rather easy to make:

“the matter did not fall within the integrity commissioner's jurisdiction.”

Just to make it clear, this complaint had nothing to do with the City of Windsor but rather took place at a "Liberal Party event." Accordingly, it was not something that could be heard by the Commissioner at all.

I have to admit that I do not understand how all of this happened. Why was the application filed in the first place? Was it so hard for the complainant to understand that this did not involve the City? If it was only made public now, why did it take so long for a decision to be reported? What made it so difficult for the Commissioner to act more promptly?

Oh well, now you may understand why I write the type of article I do.

More Stories

First it is unbelievably warm outside. Then everything changes quickly as the temperature drops and it appears as if it is going to rain all day long. Naturally, especially in summertime, the weather changes back again to the heat shortly thereafter.

I am sure that this kind of weather has happened in the past. However, based on what I was doing previously, I really never was all that knowledgeable about it. Sure, the weather changed all the time but I was either in my "professional" work office doing all of my office jobs or was working at home for myself in my office in my house. I just did not notice or really appreciate what was going on outside nor was I too concerned about it. I was too involved in my "work" experience.

Clearly, in my "new life" that was started a few years ago, I am appreciating what is going on around me a lot more and learning what I must do these days to deal with it. That may be something that you too, dear reader, should think about a lot more given the impact it can have on you.

After that introduction, let me tell you about some stories that I found interesting recently.

CASINO STRIKE

Oh my. That strike at Casino Windsor certainly has been very costly. And I do not mean just for the employees who lost so much money in wages.

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation pays money to the City because it hosts the Casino. Apparently, in the last quarter when there was the strike at the Casino that lasted for quite some time, the amount of money granted to the City of Windsor was reduced dramatically:

“For the first quarter, April to June this year, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation paid the city $1,210,030 for hosting Caesars Windsor...

This year's first quarter payment was less than half of what the city received for the same period last year, which was about $3.5 million.” (CBC News, July 20, 2018) 

That is a drop of over 60%!

Of course the strike is now resolved and over so that, presumably, the Casino can start making lots of money all over again. That means that the amount to be given over to the City will be increased as well.

However, it will be interesting to see what that new quarterly amount will actually be. Have people picked new places to go out and gamble and therefore have no interest in coming back to the to the Casino in Windsor?

If that happens, then Windsor will have a very difficult time financially as will the Casino. What would happen then? We will just have to wait and see.

WINDSOR’S BMO ATTRACTIVENESS

Should it be, according to Dalson Chen in his Windsor Star story "Windsor places fifth on list of Canadian cities by economic attractiveness,” that everything is so positive in this City? 

If one just looks at what the Bank of Montréal story says, then people who reside in Windsor should be very positive, right! Somehow, I don't think so. Again, if things are so great here, then why are so many people, especially people like me, so concerned about the well-being of this area?

I have to say that reading his story makes things look pretty good for us in this area. However, looking at the attached table does not make it seem the same to me. Let me explain what I mean by that by giving my interpretation of some of the points set out by the Bank:

1) our median income is the third lowest in Canada

2) our jobless rate is relatively low except people have argued that the number should be higher because many people who have not been able to find a job for so long are no longer included in the rate. In other words, that rate is higher than is set out here

3) it is hardly a surprise that our year to date growth rate is better than our five year growth rate since the automobile industry is now doing so much better. However, with the problem that the industry is having with the USA, will the growth rate still remain so hot

4) our house price is right near the bottom of the list and has only grown rapidly in a very relatively recent, short period of time. As far as I am concerned, our house price has always been very low compared with others. I have been through that experience personally before

Our one-bedroom rental prices are very low as well but they are going up much higher these days. It is difficult for people with relatively low wages to be able to pay for rent that is getting bigger.

5) there are eight other cities, all Ontario ones, with the same tax rate as ours.

My conclusion is very simple: being fifth in line in that cities list does not look so good to me!

The big advantage for this region that I have always seen since I moved here is that it is quite attractive financially to be in residence here especially if one is paid a decent salary and there is great possibility for one's future growth.

Unfortunately, I just don't take what is said in the story to be all that positive for this area. I am very concerned still about the future of this region notwithstanding all of this positivity based on what I have lived through here for so many years. I will start feeling much better if the next group of people who are elected municipally all around here can start acting in a much better fashion to help this region grow dramatically higher sooner rather than what I have seen since moving down here.