Have You Read These Stories

It is fascinating that I have written so many stories in more than a decade of time. There are literally thousands of them.

I have always written stories that I hoped a lot of people would read. Nevertheless, in doing so, I set out my point of view, and just did not write something in order to get a bunch of people to come to my website to get my reader numbers up.

My stories were designed to set out what I believed no matter what the subject was. Oh sure, I expected to have some people disagree with me but I have to admit that the number of negative comments I received from readers was quite minimal. I was very pleased about that.

My approach on this website is somewhat different than before. It is much more personal in what I'm writing. That is probably due to what happened to me a few years ago when I fortunately survived from a very severe illness. I just feel that I want to write on here what I believe is important from my own personal perspective.

Moreover, I have a special reason for wanting to produce articles for you, dear reader. Of course, I want to have a lot of people coming here to see what I have produced. However, one of my important reasons for doing so is for me to keep up my "brain power" as best that I can.

I trust that when you read my articles on here they make good sense to you, dear reader, whether you agree with my point of view or not. Just keep on coming back every time you see that I posted something. It just makes me keep on wanting to write stories not just for myself but for you too!

Now here are the latest issues that I found interesting about which I wanted you to know.

CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT

This matter may be relevant for you. And you might be able to put a few dollars into your bank account.

I just happened to see on Facebook that a Class Action lawsuit involving a number of computer companies as defendants was just resolved in a settlement. The Plaintiff law firm was Siskinds. Here is what they wrote on their website about this matter:

“The CRT class action relates to allegations that from between March 1995 to November 2007 the defendants unlawfully conspired to fix, increase, and/or maintain prices at which CRTs and products containing CRTs were sold in Canada.

CRTs are a form of display devices. CRTs have largely been replaced by flat panel display devices. CRTs can be divided into two main categories: CDTs (colour display tubes) and CPTs (colour picture tubes). CDTs are used in computer monitors. CPTs are used in televisions.”

The settlement amount was $49.8 million. You can go to this website to see what this matter was all about

Frankly, I think you ought to go and take a look at what this lawsuit is all about, dear reader, to see if you have a claim that can be satisfied by the settlement. I'm not going to go into the details of this because they are two types of plaintiffs that would be involved in this matter. The minimum amount that you could receive is $20. Of course, if you have better details, then you would be able to apply for more specific amounts.

I expect that there are a lot of people who can apply for a claim for equipment purchased and ought to do so as soon as possible.

A HOSPITAL STORY

This is something I did not know before--- not all of the rooms in the hospitals are open now, but I found out about this a while ago. However, since there is a serious flu issue starting now, here is what is happening:

“Windsor Regional Hospital has received one-time funding to deal with the flu season for the next two years.

The Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network is giving the hospital almost $1.7 million to open 28 more beds to increase hospital capacity when needed during a surge of the flu.” (Paul Pedro, Blackburn News, November 5, 2018) 

This is not new:

“Windsor Regional Hospital was experiencing occupancy rates of 110 per cent to 120 per cent in previous years when the flu hit.”

To be direct, it seems that the flu disease provides more proof that building a new hospital for our area makes no sense at all. Here is something that I saw on Facebook 
on February 5 that should explain it very easily:

"Philippa Von Ziegenweidt at 9:37 AM

It makes no sense to invest $2 billion in a new hospital with the same number of beds that we have today, and without FIRST addressing the critical need for MORE ALC beds.

The health care system is struggling to keep up now, with an ever-increasing patient loads expected as the babyboomer generation reaches old age. We can't afford to paper over the system's deficiencies.”

I wrote this note in a reply which explains my simple view of what is wrong with what is being suggested for a new hospital system here:

“This is the simplest and best possible reason for scrapping what is being proposed for a new hospital here!”

It is so completely absurd to spend $2 billion to build ONE new hospital here which will handle the same number of patients as our two existing hospitals here now which are to be replaced. These hospitals cannot handle the number of people coming in for assistance now. How will the new hospital handle a bigger crowd of patients in the future when population will increase?

ANOTHER ONTARIO HOSPITAL STORY

I'm not going to write another long story about this subject. It makes sense to me for you to go to this website and read the article for yourself:

“Very low hospital capacity in Ontario” 

You will learn how bad the medical situation is in Ontario:

“Ontario has fewer beds than the rest of Canada and far fewer beds than other developed countries.”

In the Windsor area alone, based on Canadian numbers, we are short about 224 beds in the three hospitals in the area. If one looked at worldwide numbers, it gets even worse:

"If Ontario had that level of capacity that would mean 66,347 hospital beds in Ontario, more than double the current number. For the three Essex hospitals, that would mean an additional 937 beds.”

Just take a look at the article, dear reader, and you will see all the problems that we have here now with respect to our medical facilities. Does anyone really expect money to be spent to improve the situation here?

Some More Interesting New Stories

Of course my new stories are always interesting! Why else would you be reading them.

I do try very hard to find stories to write about and to give you my comments about them. Naturally, I hope that you agree with what I am saying but I don't expect it to happen every single time. Who knows, we might have some differences. However, you will at least know why I am saying what I do.

A Monday night a while ago was interesting for our family. We were having our usual "early dinner" at around 4:50 PM. While it may seem "early," my wife and I are up at around 5:30 AM each morning so by that time we are a little bit hungry. Fortunately we were able to eat most of our dinner and then all of a sudden the power in the house went off.

I have to admit that at first I was not all that concerned about it. Based on outages that I had before, I expected it to last for only a few seconds and then come right back on. That is what happened in the past and then work was done later to solve those problems. This time around however the outage lasted for almost 3 1/2 hours! I knew that it was something completely different but did not know what it was at first. Importantly, I could not eat the rest of my meal at that time because we did not have any more power sources.

I'm not going to go into a long discussion about it. I did walk initially to the area where the outage took place and there was a fire crew there already to make sure there was no big disaster taking place. There was no fire as far as I could tell but I understand that there was some kind of an electrical issue that may have resulted in the outage. Subsequently, I understood that a crew from the local Hydro company came and fixed the problem by about 8:20 PM when the power in my house was turned back on.

I do not believe that a massive amount of work had to be done to fix the problem. Unfortunately, the crew necessary to fix it was in another location just finishing up a problem located there as our situation arose. Given where it happened, I assume that the drive back would take about an hour as well. I think that is why our outage took so long before the power was put back on.

In any event, the issue was resolved by our Hydro company, Essex Power, in a very favorable way and as quickly as they could do it.

Thank you for your efforts!

Now let me discuss some other issues with you, dear reader.

WILL WE EVER GET A NEW TUNNEL

It appears as if there are some problems there these days that is delaying construction:

“The Detroit-Windsor tunnel’s CEO Neal Belitsky indicated Monday it is now anticipated construction inside the 88-year-old border crossing — which has forced nightly closures since late last year — will not be completed for at least another couple of months…

The Detroit-Windsor tunnel’s CEO Neal Belitsky indicated Monday it is now anticipated construction inside the 88-year-old border crossing — which has forced nightly closures since late last year — will not be completed for at least another couple of months.” (Dave Batagello, Windsor Star, October 30, 2018) 

From the Star story, for whatever reason, no one was given an explanation why this was happening. Why not? That seems strange to me.

What also seems strange to me is how much Canadian officials are prepared to do to get this project finished already:

“She said tunnel officials in Windsor have offered assistance to compete the project, but received little response.

“We’ve offered additional (full) closures, we’ve asked ‘do you need more bodies?’” Brown said. “We asked ‘Is there anything we can do to help get the project finished?”

Presumably, this would have cost someone extra money to retain additional employees to get his work done more quickly or to do whatever else has to be done. Was the Canadian half of the tunnel prepared to pay the additional money to do this or did they expect the American half to pay these additional costs?

Hmmm. I wonder if we could expect something similar to take place if a Government bridge was going to be built. If so, would more money than the $5 billion plus Government cost for the bridge have to go much higher as well? With all of it being paid by the Government Canada!

DO WE NEED ANOTHER HOSPITAL

I'm sure that you remember that our new hospital that is going to be built is supposed to replace the other two hospitals that are around now. There's also some talk about increasing the number of beds in that hospital because I believe there is a feeling that more are needed. If those beds are added in, I'm not certain that the Provincial Government will pay for it or the cities and towns in this area may have to do so because they may want the additional size.

To be direct about it, I would also think that if more beds are wanted, then presumably they ought to be added in to the number of rooms that are being built originally. However, I think I saw it written somewhere previously that they would only be added in after the initial size of the new hospital is built.

Honestly, isn't it time to kill the whole project? After all, the Provincial election is over and there are no Liberal promises needing to be fulfilled any more.

How can we have a small, new hospital replacing two existing hospitals? Where will all of these extra sick people be placed if they need a hospital bed? Considering that our population age is increasing, I would expect that more members of our area will need hospital beds in the future to treat all of them with serious illnesses. A new hospital which only can hold what our hospitals are holding today makes no sense to me.

Moreover, look at the problem that our existing hospitals are having right now with all of the sick people that they are treating now:

“The ERs are becoming overloaded and are unable to off-load the ambulances,” Ng said. “So often ambulances get stuck waiting outside emergency room departments not able to off-load patients, which leads to fewer ambulances in the community. There are times where there is significant delay to get an ambulance, and we see this as a crisis.”

Ng added the ambulances can’t offload a patient without an available bed…

Ng added the population is aging, and their health problems are becoming more complex. He said those factors combined with fewer beds and less staff is causing many ERs, and hospitals in general, to become overcrowded.” (Greg Higgins, Blackburnnews.com, Oct 25, 2018) 

I do not understand how it can get any better in the future when the population could rise dramatically and there are more older people living in the area. No hospital the size of our two hospitals now can handle the increased population properly from a medical perspective as far as I'm concerned.  How can only one hospital do it then?

If that is true, then what game is being played now and why?

More Stories For You To Read

It is not easy writing stories for you, dear reader.

I want to make sure that you come back as many times as possible. In addition, I hope that you might find my website so interesting that you will encourage some of your friends to come here as well. In order to do so, it is very important for me to find different stories and give you my interpretation of them that will explain why I found them worthy.

Of course, I understand that you may not agree with me with everything that I write. In fact, you might wonder why I wasted so much time on a particular article. But that is okay. I try to make sure that what I write is something that will attract your attention.

Let me give you a very quick example of what I mean. I saw this story recently from Maclean's magazine:

Canada’s Most Dangerous Places 2018 

It listed over 200 "dangerous places" in Canada. Believe it or not, Windsor was one of the first cities in Ontario listed. It was number 65 in the list, the sixth Ontario location listed.  The Crime Severity Index also increased last year.

I moved from Windsor to Tecumseh several years ago. From a crime perspective, that was something smart to do. Tecumseh was number 216 on the list of 229 areas.

Naturally, if I was writing a longer story about these facts, I would provide a lot more details about the work that was done and its significance. However, all that I wanted to do this time is to show you how I find a story and then start to deal with it to interest you.

I better start writing some more stories for you, dear reader, because, after all, you now know the approach I take when I write them.

MORE ON QUICKEN LOANS

We do have to be excited by this subject. As I saw in this story previously:

“A beloved but crumbling downtown watering hole undergoing a multimillion-dollar makeover will soon be occupied by some of the brightest minds within the extensive financial empire of Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert.

Employees under Quicken Loans — the mortgage-based business that boosted the Michigan businessman into one of the world’s richest entrepreneurs — will set up inside the former Fish Market and Loop building.

It is the first step into Windsor for Gilbert, who has recently touted this city’s advantages after leading a high-profile joint two-city bid to woo Amazon to open a new headquarters in the border cities.” (Dave Battagello, Windsor Star, October15, 2018) 

What however is even more interesting is what the impact may well be for this area. 

Check out the next story written in the Windsor Star on October 16 by Dave Waddell:

"Local tech companies welcome Quicken Loans as potential game changer.”

Here is the fundamental point that people ought to know about:  

“This is something a lot of people watching the tech industry in Windsor have been saying is required — greater integration with Detroit in the IT sector. This is exactly what we were look and waiting for in terms of investment.”

Here is a key thought about how important this could be for our area in the future

“For the first time, we’re hearing some Canadian commuters to the U.S. can’t get their visas renewed,” Abbruzzese said.

“American firms are not bringing talent over as easily, so you’ll have more companies come across the border.”

In other words, the tougher it is for a Canadian to work in the United States for an American company, the better it is for them to work for that company in Windsor.

Let me be blunt though. I hardly think that our area has been doing very well in the past given this comment:

“Windsor-Essex Economic Development Corporation CEO Stephen MacKenzie [said]:

“We’ve been making progress in the tech sector with four tech companies coming here in the last couple years in addition to Quicken Loans,” MacKenzie said. “This is a huge one though.”

Seriously, four companies only is hardly growing business here. The opportunity now is available to increase the number of people working here. Let's hope we will take advantage of the situation as quickly as possible.

OUR HEALTH IN THIS AREA

I read this comment about medical matters in this area and it really troubled me. My concern obviously arose because of my own age:

“We have a lot of challenges in our community,” Marentette said.

Among those challenges are an older population than the Ontario average that is going to increase in the coming decades, below average life expectancy, the lowest number of physicians per capita, a higher than average number of smokers, a growing substance abuse problem and above-average child poverty.” (Chris Thompson, Windsor Star, October 18, 2018)     

Regretfully, it is our reality.

I saw that Councillor Payne objected to paying out the amount requested. I must admit that I don't understand his attitude about it considering what is actually paid out. I regret that he did not agree that this comment made sense to justify the increase:

“CEO and chief nursing officer Theresa Marentette told the meeting that Windsor and Essex County are somewhat different from the rest of the province.”

It would seem that because of this difference extra money needed to be obtained. I agree!

My Latest News Stories

I have to admit it. I am really quite intrigued with the weather that we were experiencing these days. 

I know, I know, I know...I'm not supposed to talk very much about the weather when I do these columns. However, the weather always intrigues me. So please excuse me when I do.

As I am sure you know by now, I was so busy performing different functions for so many years that I really did not spend all that much time thinking about the weather as I do now. I have the time and am fascinated by what I am experiencing around me. What I found so interesting recently is how high the temperature rose in the autumn, even though it was quite cloudy, and then how quickly it fell, accompanied by rain. Obviously, it was not the first time that it happened in the last few weeks.

Anyway, that is all that I am going to discuss now about weather matters.

There are a number of interesting issues that I would like to discuss. Here they are now.

MORE NEWSPAPER LOSSES

I just find it amazing how much money newspapers seem to be losing. Even the ones that seemed to be so special in the past, and therefore so successful, are suffering today. Clearly, they have to make all kinds of changes to the way they run their operations these days to try and protect themselves.

I saw these numbers recently and was shocked because one of Canada's largest newspapers is losing a lot of money:

"Torstar Corp. reported a loss of $18.8 million in its third quarter as its revenue fell by 13 per cent.

The publisher of the Toronto Star newspaper says the loss amounted to 23 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 30.

The result compared with a loss of $6.6 million or eight cents per share in the same quarter last year.

Revenue totalled $126.4 million, down from $145.9 million." (Canadian Press, Windsor Star, October 31, 2018) 

I do not have the faintest idea about what will happen in this industry. As I am sure that you know, the Windsor Star's parent company is also in a difficult financial position. I have no idea what will happen to so many newspapers in our country given the losses that they are experiencing now.

ANOTHER BORDER STORY

Please forgive me for posting the story, but I think that you will enjoy reading it. I'll make it very short and sweet so you can understand what I'm saying and why very quickly.

Try and find a copy of the Ambassador Bridge Company paid paper on the ridiculousness of building a Government bridge at the border for you to read. It was prepared by Eric Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Yes, I know who paid for it but take a look at it and see the calculations for building the Government bridge in comparison to building the "private" bridge.

The reality of the paper is that when one looks at the revenues to be generated compared with the cost to build that Government bridge:

"Canadian taxpayers will be saddled with significant liabilities related to the project for decades to come."

Three different examples are given from a financial perspective. The reality produced in an article back in 2007 by Price Waterhouse for the Michigan Department of Transport is that "

"real tolls will not raise sufficient funds to build the project and therefore some kind of a public subsidy... will be required."

What makes this even worse from a financial perspective is that traffic at the Ambassador Bridge has fallen 44% between 2000 and 2017. Car traffic has dropped by half, while truck traffic has dropped slightly over a quarter. 

Apparently,

"there is little hope in the foreseeable future of returning anywhere close to pre-9/11 levels."

As you may know, dear reader, Canada is stuck with the construction costs. They are pretty close to $5 billion now and probably will be a lot higher by the time the Government bridge is completed. Who knows what the real amount will be!

When looking at the three examples in the paper, it is assumed that each of the bridges, the Government bridge and the new Ambassador bridge, will split the border traffic 50% each. Assuming that is true and without outlining to you all the details of how the calculations are determined, here's what should be interesting to you:

Example 1: even with an operating profit of $15 million being made, the Government bridge would require a Canadian taxpayer subsidy of $184 million per year!

Example 2: in this case, tolls are doubled while costs are to remain the same so income increases and yet the Government bridge would still require a subsidy from taxpayers of $144 million per year!

Example 3: tripling the tolls means now that the Government subsidy still is in the amount of $104 million per year! Of course, that assumes that people will still cross the bridge and pay such high tolls.

Can you imagine how much more the losses would be for the Government if the Bridge Company did not match the Government crossing rate and the Government had to reduce its toll price or it would lose more volume. Just remember that the Government cost has to be higher because its construction cost is so many times higher than what the Bridge Company will have to pay for its construction crossing costs.

How long will it take the Government to pay off its debt? The author suggested many decades if it ever could be paid off at all. It is suggested that under the best alternative it might take Canada at least 61 years to pay off the debt.

Frankly, this whole paper that was prepared is just another example of the stupidity that is going on with respect to the border crossing. None of this makes any proper financial reasoning for the Government Canada to spend all this money to build a bridge that may go financially broke in any event.

My own view of all of this nonsense is that the parties on both sides are waiting until the Canadian election is over. Canada is not going to do anything before the election that would cost it votes to do a deal with the Ambassador Bridge Company and might prevent it from gaining extra seats in this area. In my opinion, that is why Canada still talks about building a new Government bridge.

Yet, what is also very interesting now is that the time period for building that Government bridge has increased by couple of years. Why? The answer is easy. The Government needs the extra number of years because of the election that is coming up next year. Once the election is completed, assuming that the Liberals are re-elected, the parties will do a deal quickly in my opinion whatever that deal might look like.

Oh, don't worry. All the engineering work that is being done now will be used to build that new bridge!

For You To Enjoy Reading

I try very hard to find interesting matters that I can write about for you to read. My objective is to provide a website that provides the best stories that I can write for you to consider.

Naturally, I hope that you agree with what I set out but of course I understand that this is not always possible. Your opinion may well be different than mine and nothing that I write can change your mind. That is a given.

As I'm sure that you understand by now, the beginning of these Blog stories generally deal with personal matters that I write about. Of course they are important for me and deals matters that I have just gone through. I post them, as I have said before, to show you how I deal with them. I don't expect you to follow what I do but to give you an idea of how you might want to deal with a similar situation.

This approach is completely different compared with the writing I did previously. That is to be expected because this is my "private" website and not a "commercial" one. Accordingly, over the past several years, I have let you know a lot about what has influenced me in the past. Who knows, it may help you if you go through something similar. I hope so.

Now let me write about an issue that is important for me to discuss with you.

NO-COST SOFTWARE

I don't even want to think about the cost of buying software that even makes life so much easier when you are on your computer and need some particular items to help you out in something that you are doing. It can be quite pricey.

Here is an obvious example for me. As you know, I write a lot of stories on here for people to read. Given all the news stories that I have done and published, I probably have been writing publicly for over a decade. How many thousands of articles that represents I don't know but it is a huge amount of them. I will talk about this later but I used to use a software product for typing that costs a fair bit of money to buy but now I do not.

There are a number of products that I can purchase so that I can use them to carry out a number of functions while I am working on my computer. Unfortunately, the amount of money that I would have to spend would have to be considerable. Nevermind buying the software in the first place, I would have to pay more money whenever it was changed and I needed that upgrade.

I'm sure that you have heard about the concept of "freeware." That is software that you can use on your computer but do not have to pay any money to get it. One of the difficulties with freeware is that a number of the products are not made very well. After all, the person making it may not have the time to make it a "perfect" competitive product or may not have the skill to do so. Even if the original version is made well, the person who made it may not have the time to keep on upgrading it.

Luckily, there are some wonderful software products that one can obtain and use at no cost at all that are quite competitive with the software that costs money to buy. It is a real pleasure to find them and download them easily in order to use them. Let me give you just a couple of examples of what I mean. By the way, I'm not going to play the role of someone who's going to work his way through software and give you detailed information about the product. All you need to know was that I have researched the various software products and made a selection of the one that I thought best served my purposes.

Here is my first example: LIBREOFFICE

Obviously, I use a typing product considerably. I was never trained in school to learn how to type. The only skill I ever developed was learning to do it myself. After all these years, I am a very good two fingered typist. Regretfully, I never learned how to be a proper typist using both of my hands with all of the fingers.

To be realistic, I'm not a quick typist. In addition, I really cannot do a lot of typing these days once I start working. Plus, I still make a fair number of typos. When I started out, I looked for something to use and found Microsoft's OFFICE product. Unfortunately, I had to pay money to buy it before in order to use it. Now, when I don't work, I looked for freeware for which I paid no money as my product to use as an alternative.

Oh, just to let you know, even with the WORD word processing software in OFFICE, I did not "type" with it. I used its dictation system for my typing. Obviously, my freeware needed something similar.

I looked around for different freeware products and decided to use LIBREOFFICE as my alternative to OFFICE and WORD in particular. Without going into a lot of detail, it is a pretty good system for dictating online. However, I use its "dictation box" for my typing rather than going directly onto the webpage. That has to be done. All I do is transfer it when I want to use it subsequently.

I have not used their other software alternatives to the OFFICE system but I assume that they are quite workable as well.

Here is another free software product: Ccleaner

Like you, I go through a considerable number of websites every day while I'm on the Internet. After all, dear reader, I'm on here for a considerable number of hours each day. Oh sure, I do some work but I also use the Internet to find out all kinds of information from news stories, to have conversations with family and friends no matter where they are located in the world, and to look for the best products to buy at the best price. What it means is that I go to a variety of webpages around the Internet and download all kinds of junk in hundreds of megabytes of data that fills up my empty space. Accordingly, I need software to get rid of all of this junk.

The software product I use to do this is Ccleaner. Here is its website description:

“Is your computer running slow? As it gets older it collects unused files and settings which take up hard drive space making it slower and slower. CCleaner cleans up these files and makes it faster instantly.”

I even use it several times a day to speed up my computer.

What is interesting about this product, as well as a number of other products that are provided at no cost, is that there is both a "free" cost unit and "Pro" versions that cost some money. Obviously, I use the freeware unit as many people do and do not pay for the other versions. Clearly, the software which I choose to use is only the basic product and does not have all the features that the paid product does. However, it meets my particular needs extremely well.

I could talk about other software freeware products that you should consider downloading to use on your computer based on your own needs. However, you know what software is essential for you. Therefore go out and do the Internet search to find what you need and then download it to experiment with it.

By the way, you must also make sure that when you download freeware that you do not download all kinds of other useless software that a particular product attaches when it does the download. It does this just so the software developer can make a few dollars from that product developer for the extra downlaod. You may have to decide not to download that freeware of your choice, no matter how good it might appear to be, because otherwise it can mess up your computer.