Sometimes you just want to shop in person for certain items. For me, recently, it was for a down duvet for the Big Weed. I did recall seeing down duvets at Sears Canada, here in Toronto, Canada, so we made the trip to our local Sears at Scarborough Town Centre. Not only did they not have down duvets, but they did not even have any staff on the floor to help us out. Yes, there was much more help online at Sears.ca, but this is true for a lot of other bricks and mortar and online stores as well. I called around the local Sears, asking for duvets made of down, and there were none to even be displayed. Their solution: order online. What a total failure of a retail experience. Why set up and maintain a retail bricks and mortar chain, and then tell your customers to shop online? Overall I can see why Sears Canada has had trouble in the recent past, and why they will continue to struggle in the future. Will the chain still be around in 5 years, I am unsure.
We are looking for witnesses who saw a car crash in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday August 16 2014 at around 2:30pm. The crash occurred on Sheppard Avenue East, eastbound between Birchmount Avenue and Kennedy Road, right in front of the Walmart.
A lady in a dark coloured Honda ran a red light and hit another car.
The way we choose to live goes a long way to determining how long and how well we will eventually live. More troubling is that our choices are observed and learned by our kids, who then take on very similar choices and lifestyle. While kids theoretically have a choice, in reality they follow their parents, for better or for worse. This study from Active Healthy Kids Canada is really troubling, in that it points to what I call “Rich Country” disease, where here in Canada we have lots of organized sport activities, lots of proper environment and equipment, but not a lot of actual physical exercise. It would be more appropriate to have the best of organized sport, with great facilities, that results in the fittest, most healthy kids on the planet. This is certainly not the case.
If someone was to point a camera straight into your living room, most people would be horrified, and rightly so. This is a clear breach of our personal space and privacy. Yet surprisingly this is Ok in the online world. I am unsure why we accept this double standard, other than, “This is how it is and it should be Ok”? It is not Ok. At the very least we should acknowledge the level of risk to our privacy. I will try to assess our risk, here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Sometimes one sees a well accepted solution that simply does not work. Having the public purchase large paper bags in order to dispose of yard waste is at best a bad idea and at worst simply a waste of money. Yet here in Toronto, Canada, these bags are almost universally used for yard waste.
These are telemarketers who consistently call my house here in Toronto and refuse to cease. Few of these have call display info, so I need to research them on the internet. Still, many have no information. The CRTC should regulate this better, as it is very annoying. The “Do Not Call” law should be upgraded to be more all encompassing.
In the mean time I use my Panasonic phone, which has a ban list, but I still get a single ring. My phone keeps track of all our incoming calls, and I track unknown phone numbers. There is some work involved to keep this list current, but the payoff is that you reduce, to a bare minimum, the number of repeat telemarketers.
Telecommuncations have come a long way in a short period of time. Smart phones are near ubiquitous in society, and as common as a wallet or purse in public. How people have become addicted to carrying and using smart phones, I do not know, but in our quest for permanent and persistent connectivity, we inadvertently agree to give up some of our privacy. Scary it is, but the writing is on the wall and near inevitable unless governments step in to prevent this. Given that people are freely looking for phone connectivity, I do not believe that such tracking by stores or any other agencies is immoral. Shocking, yes, but not immoral. Each person has the ability and means to turn off their phone when walking around. If they do not then this is their personal choice.
Hate it, I do, when a product fails before I believe it should. I have ranted about such products here before and I stand by my rants. Specifically you see products fail mere months after the warranty has expired, seemingly on queue for you to purchase yet another replacement. The old one goes into the garbage and then landfill, and the environment takes an unnecessary penalty for our stupidity. Clearly this should not be. I purposely buy products that last a long time, if I can, and take measures to ensure they do last.
Saw it coming, I did, through my incessant weather forecast watching here in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Warned, we were, by the sages of climate. Still we really did not know the gravity of the situation, nor that we were to lose power for 18 hours. As we are always prepared, this matters little, because we know where everything necessary is located and we have done this before. It is worthwhile reflecting on what worked and what needs improvement, so that the next one, an inevitable event, really, will be that much more fulfilling.
