Only optics

So yesterday the federal Liberals announced some new gun control measures, which make me wonder are these designed for domestic or international reactions?  Seems like he wants to be seen as the “adult” compared to what happened in the US.  I absolutely hate it when politicians justify measures based on what happens in other countries and while I think this is a pretty ridiculous comparison, more countries in the world ban LGBT rights than support them, should a government in the future legislate based on that?  Sounds silly when you extend the thinking doesn’t it?

The bill would create a new “red flag” law allowing courts to require that people considered a danger to themselves or others surrender their firearms to police.

Source: CTV News

See you can tell the Liberals are pandering because this framework already exists as does the ban of “large capacity” magazines.  This government only cares what makes it look good rather than doing good, maybe I’ll buy another handgun or two before this ban comes into place.

Extra long weekend update

So this weekend we went up to the cottage, to see what the contractor has done and I’m pleased to announce that the outdoor pool & fence at the back have been removed.  Now all we need to do is go through the Belleville city licensing and we can have it list it on AirBNB when we’re not there. 🙂

Saturday morning we walked around one of the many parks in the area then Maggie went to the farmer’s market by city hall as she enjoys the fresh food available.  Earlier in the week we got our Teksavvy internet modem but it didn’t work so Saturday afternoon I gave them a call and um, a technician was scheduled to come out on Monday to connect everything.  Well that’s news to me but seeing as how Brandon had to go to school, we came back Saturday night and I went back Sunday afternoon.

The mosquitos are out in force but the Thermacell MR450s (I have 2) worked pretty well.  Set them up about 20′ apart and in 5 minutes, all the bugs are gone, I remember using them earlier when I did astro or hiked in the forest and was very pleasantly surprised again how well they work. 🙂

The view as per my cell phone, mmm it’s beautiful. Thankfully I can work anywhere so this morning I set up shop on the back deck and did my thing.

The cottage has a really nice large single car garage so I parked the Lexus IS 350 AWD in there when I’m up, doesn’t it look comfy? 😀  Yeah again a great view, I need to set up the patio furniture, soon soon…  While working, I saw an osprey flying by the river so I grabbed my camera and ran down, unfortunately it was gone but awesome to know that they’re in the area!  While there I decided to walk into the Moira river and it wasn’t too bad, not as cold as I expected and I even saw some small fish swimming around! Hehe showed Brandon and he was jealous lol.

Anyway the Cogeco guy came in the afternoon hooked everything up and I was home in time to take Brandon to Scouts.  Quite an eventful weekend and it felt really good to relax on the deck just listening to the birds in the evening and today.

Abject Police Failure

While details are still coming out about the Texas shooting, one thing is pretty clear that the local police force completely failed in its duty to protect the people. Shaun King has posted a clip where a police spokesman confirmed that cops went into the school to save their own kids! Seriously what the hell?  It gets worse, in another clip posted there are 40 officers outside with plate carriers and rifles standing outside doing nothing while the shooter was alive in the school!!!

“Go in there! Go in there!” women shouted at the officers soon after the attack began, said Juan Carranza, 24, who watched the scene from outside a house across the street.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said Wednesday that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when Ramos opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him.

“The bottom line is law enforcement was there,” McCraw said. “They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom.”

Source: Associated Press

How the hell did law enforcement contain the shooter in a classroom when they didn’t enter the god damn school?!?  All the police officers on scene who did nothing need to be fired at a minimum and if there is some dereliction of duty charge that could be applied, they should go to jail for their inaction.  We as the public give the police a lot of power to protect people and the ones here clearly failed.  If you’re afraid of losing your life then don’t be a police officer, that’s a risk of that type of job.

As a gun owner (though in Canada) I definitely have my opinions on how to address the unique problem of mass shootings in the US but that can come later, right now I’m too upset the police response.

May long weekend!

Well we certainly had a busy long weekend.  Mine started on Friday, I went up North to find Highway 518 as I heard it’s an amazing highway and was not disappointed.  I took advantage because Maggie had to work while Brandon also had school so I was free lol.  Highway 518 is amazing, so many twists and turns very pleasurable road to drive on but just don’t get stuck behind a slow vehicle because there aren’t many passing opportunities.

The video is 49 minutes long and the fun starts at around 12:25.  Mmm the Lexus IS 350 AWD handles so well (compared to my old NX & Prius which to be fair doesn’t say much lol), almost no body roll when I’m cornering and with the Michelin Pilot Sport AS4 tires, I have so much grip!  Too bad the car sucks so bad with gas mileage though, that’s really its Achilles heel.

Saturday we went as a family for dim sum and that was good, the wind storm passed through Toronto and knocked down a lot of trees and power to our house for 11 hours.  That was a bit of a pain but lol I was prepared and ready for that situation so no harm.  Brandon spent most of the afternoon away too at his friend’s house to celebrate a birthday which make it easy for us.

Just some of the carnage from a walk in the afternoon with Maggie in our neighborhood.  Overall we were pretty lucky, I read that there were 10 deaths related to the storm in Ontario & Quebec which is sad.

Sunday Maggie & Brandon went to play badminton while I watched the F1 race, in the early afternoon Maggie on a whim wanted to go see the fireworks in Niagara Falls so we booked a hotel and stayed the night.

Needless to say the place was so busy on a long weekend, we got into town around 6, Brandon went for a swim for a bit and we went out for dinner around 730.  After dinner we walked around then parked ourselves close to the American falls at 9:20pm as that’s where the fireworks show is and starts at 10pm.

Sigh I wish I had my tripod so I could do some longer exposure shots but these were all hand held I think at a 1/10s shutter speed.  In the morning we decided to visit the butterfly conservatory before heading back and that place is alwasy fun.

They’re so cool and very difficult to shoot when flying!  It’s nice how close you can get to the various butterflies and even touch them (gently of course).  After that we decided to drive home slowly, there are some fun roads in the Niagara region so I took local back for half the trip then hopped on the QEW when it got pretty urban.

Slinky really missed us and it’s nice to be home, sigh too bad the weekend is over already and it’s after tiring ones like this that I wish I were retired.

Let’s talk housing

Housing “affordability” is in the news a lot these days and as someone who’s exacerbating the issue I wanted to give my $0.02 about it.  For me when I look at housing prices, it is only a symptom of a larger problem, the fact that people are not making as much as they use to & our social safety nets have gone to garbage.  The decoupling of wages and productivity started in the mid 70s (thank you Trudeau senior), corporations started to offload the responsibility of retirement onto individuals and the government allowed this all to happen thanks to neoliberalism.  Oh and the government also stopped actively supporting the rental market and downloaded that onto the private marketplace.

That’s why people nearing or who are retired need their houses to be worth a lot, if it falls their retirement will go down the toilet and these people head out to vote disproportionately to their population size so you can bet politicians will do their best to preserve their housing value.

Toronto Community Housing Corporation has a lot of public housing but because it’s not funded properly, their large scale properties have basically become ghettoes. Next there simply isn’t enough capacity to handle rental demand though with the state of their housing, most people would rather avoid that if they can which leads to the private rental market where owners and landlords will look out after their own interests, not the tenants.  Like it or not, that’s the system that we have, governments play with regulations and such, some of that I support, others that I don’t but what I will say is, life for renters would be even more difficult if private landlords pull out as there will be even less supply.

Perhaps some will be able to buy a home but not everyone who wants a house will be able to afford one, I see a lot of posts about how rent is XXX and a mortgage payment is less but there’s more to owning a home than a mortgage payment.  There’s the down and maintenance which often aren’t factored…

I want to be clear, the housing issue started 50 years ago and it’s going to take 50 years of good planning to get out of, there is simply no magic solution.  As someone who plays in the market, my personal opinion is that there’s not enough supply and the supply that’s coming is not the right type of home (too many bachelor & 1 bedroom condos, not enough stuff for people to raise families). Or on the opposite end huge luxury homes so think about this if developers can’t even meet the demand of those with money, why would they bother making anything that’s cheaper?

I laugh at the people who feel houses are too expensive, I have a friend who’s a developer who says it costs ~$250k per floor to build and for detached homes there is $149k in local fees to pay before you can even get a shovel into the ground so that’s $650k right there in costs before we factor in land prices.  Houses will never be $300k again and what’s funny is, those who call for a crash so they can get in don’t realize that if the housing market does crash hard, lol buying a home will be far from their worry, they’ll lose their jobs…

The word “affordability” also means whatever the hell you want it to mean, for someone who’s young and makes decent money, it means lower house prices, for someone who’s in poverty lower rent, etc. Politicians that promise to make things affordable are simply lying to you, there’s absolutely nothing they can do in the short term and anything they do only ever affects the demand side of the equation.  The government created this mess and as always it’s a multifaceted issue that requires we address multiple issues but it’s easier for them to blame “the others”.  Foreign buyers, investors, anyone but them who created this mess in the first place.

LOL this is exactly like a government’s plan on gun control and I’ve ranted about that a lot already. 😉

Busy busy weekend!

Man we certainly had a very action packed weekend!  We left for the cottage Friday afternoon as we wanted to Belleville with a decent amount of light out and I have to say it feels really good to have a piece of property that backs onto water.  The Moira river is still pretty cold but Brandon and I did dip our toes in to test it out, mmm can’t wait for the summer months.  We still need to do a bit of work on it to get it ready for airBNB when we’re not using it but that’ll be done shortly, hopefully.

Maggie was inside cleaning a few things while we explored the shoreline and hehe we used the hot tub later which was fun.

Saturday morning we went to the Jane Foster park and walked the trails, Brandon and I did it last week & wanted to walk it with Maggie.  There was a lot of wildlife out and the Canadian Geese chicks are so cute!!!  Haha the adults hiss at you if you get too close which is fair enough.  Afterwards we went to Reids Dairy to get some ice cream and their stuff is so inexpensive! Will definitely stop by and load up next time we’re in town.  We came home in the afternoon as it was suppose to rain during the day today (which obviously didn’t end up happening) and I wanted to miss the wet weather.

This morning with no plans, we decided to go to Jungle Cat World, it’s been about a year since we last went and that place is always fun.

Hehe I know I say it all the time but big cats, little cats they all act the same and it’s adorable.  There’s a new lion cub, it’s no longer small but not as big as the adults.  There were also a ton of bunnies and a lot of tiny ones scurrying around.

Brandon had a BJJ grading this afternoon and he got the second stripe on his Grey/white belt.

My boy really loves this sport and it’s been such an amazing confidence booster for him.

The day is not over though, tonight there’s suppose to be a lunar eclipse so I’ll stay up to check that out, suppose to happen around midnight so we’ll see how things go, hopefully the rain will stay away long enough for me to get something good.

House is sold!

Man it’s been so busy I didn’t have a chance to post this earlier but on Tuesday night we sold our house.  The market has been slowing pretty dramatically so we were lucky to get a price we wanted, still got a bidding war but less people than if we tried selling in Feb or March.  Sad, this home has been good to us the last 10 years and I hope it’s great for the new owner as well.  Will be moving onto our next chapter very soon.

Happy Mother’s Day!

A day late but wanted to say a very happy Mother’s day to all the moms out there.  It’s not an easy job and we all appreciate it.  Special shout out to my mom for putting up with my crap all these years and Maggie for being an amazing mom to our son Brandon.

Great effort!!!

Yesterday Brandon did his 2nd ever Brazilian Jujitsu competition, this time it was the Ontario Open which draws some really tough competitors from all over the province and Brandon was placed in the 12-13 year old group with a max weight of 132 lbs.  He’s 11 (turning 12 this year) and weighed in at the competition at 120.2 lbs so we knew he’d have a difficult time.  His group was split into two brackets with the winner of the brackets fighting for gold & silver.

Brandon submitted his first opponent by rear naked choke but lost to the next boy, who was huge and taller than I was!  Still B put in a great effort and didn’t give up despite the odds, I’m so proud of him.  He went 1-1 and split bronze with another boy in the second bracket.

I really couldn’t be more proud of my boy, his second competition and went against some really tough kids.  All the competitors should be commended, they’re so brave and did so well.  Brandon’s at the bottom of the grey belt league in terms of experience and now fighting against kids who are going through puberty so it’s going to be a tough road ahead but he’s got a great attitude and mindset, when he gets bigger he’s going to be a monster. 🙂

Happy Mothers day to all the moms out there, I’ll talk about our weekend tomorrow as I think Brandon deserves his own post.

Deflect, that’s all they do

So the public inquiry into the mass shooting in Nova Scotia is continuing and CBC had an article about close calls the public had with the shooter and it’s so damn clear that had a public emergency message went out, some of those who were killed would be alive now.  It’s the replica police car and uniform that allowed the gunman to get close to people & the RCMP really failed badly over and over here.

There are others who reported seeing a car that could have been the gunman on April 19, but the timing wasn’t verified by police. Others might have not reported at all, unaware of the significance of what they’d seen.

The man Dykens had passed just before 10 a.m. near the post office and elementary school in Debert on Plains Road was the gunman, who was disguised as a Mountie.

Soon after, the shooter killed Kristen Beaton and Heather O’Brien. Dykens knew both women.

Believing the gunman was a real officer, he said he would have pulled over to the side the road if the lights on the replica cruiser had been activated.

“So that kind of haunts you a little bit,” Dykens said.

Source: CBC

I still can’t believe the RCMP thought twitter would be a legitimate way of reaching people in rural Nova Scotia.  That they knew that he was in a replica RCMP vehicle early on into the night too, heads really need to roll in the NS RCMP.  But the Liberals are buying them cover, banning guns would have solved this how I don’t know but that’s their logic.