Ipsos Is Making Me Watch the Debate

I fast forwarded during the American presidential debate. Boring. The only thing I learned was that McCain refuses to visit the Prime Minister of Spain. Spain! Also good to know, Spain is part of NATO. But I probably knew that. 

If the Black guy from Hawaii (who wrote two autobiographies!) and the maverick from Panama can't hold my attention, who will? Certainly not the Canadian party leaders during the French debate today at 21:00 (Moncton time), 20:00 in Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto (9PM and 8PM).

Unlike McCain and Obama, Harper, Dion, Layton, Ducepe and May never lived is Asia. And I'm sure they would all agree to meeting the Prime Minister of Spain.

Not only will the debate be in the distant second language of three of the five, they will be sitting down!  

So why will I watch? So I can get my reward points for Ipsos. Ipsos points are like pesos, only less valuable. They are paying me to watch the French debate and answer a survey immediately after. The results will be announced on Global National.

I just hope Harper comes equipped with some good DeGaule texts.  

Online Paperless Lottery Tickets: doing my part to save the environment

You invest/gamble you life savings online, why not buy online lottery tickets?

There must be a least a hundred places to buy a Lotto 6/49 ticket within a km from my Moncton home. And although I literally walk past the Atlantic Lottery Corporation's headquarters every day, I keep forgetting to check my ticket and claim my winnings.

Now, at least in Atlantic Canada, you can buy individual 6/49 tickets online. You can upload money to your account using your credit card, online bank transfers and food stamps (kidding about food stamps). More importantly, they will automatically notify you when you have won, and upon your request, wire the money to your bank.

This is the perfect solution for those of us with an unhealthy fear of oversized novelty checks.

Be forewarned that when you sign up, the weekly spending limit is firm. I managed to win some money in the instant games, but I couldn't play that money after reaching my spending limit. Fine, I thought, I'm a smart person, I'll just temporarily increase my spending limit. Unfortunately, I have to wait 7 days for that to happen! I'm pretty sure the waiting period for a gun permit isn't that long. So just like a gun permit, best to get one before you need it.

I was about to give myself a huge weekly spending limit in case I hit an other winning streak but the maximum is $99. Remember, this includes spending winnings.

As a taxpayer, I'm happy New Bruwswick has online gambling. Basically, everybody with an Internet account will now be forking over 5 grand a year to alc.ca . The reason I say this is that the entertainment value is pretty big. If you take proper hygiene precautions, taking a dump with a laptop will never have been so much fun. Nothing quite like the thrill of betting on hockey 9 days after the end of summer. Gambling helps in the caring element which is essential when following sports. And unlike an illegal booky, your credit card company isn't allowed to physically hurt you (except for stress related ailments).

Some of the instant games are pretty addictive. Spending $1 quickly turned into a $40 win at a poker type game. Of course, I got greedy, let it ride and lost it all. A dice game is also fun, but the warning that the odds aren't the same as actual dice is kind of off-putting. That is what really bugs me about lottery companies in Canada, they go out of their way to hide the odds. Buying a 6/49 ticket will give you a 1 in 13.9 million or so chance to strike it rich. Two tickets will buy you a 1 in 6.95 million chance. Is the odds difference really worth the extra $2? Put it an other way, buying a 6/49 ticket is pretty stupid; but buying two 6/49 tickets is twice as stupid. But at least online you are saving valuable line-up and ticket verification time. 

So when is Alcohol NB going to implement online beer delivery?

Telemarketing Now Illegal

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, the domestic telemarketing industry is now dead . Essentially, by the end of the week, everybody in Canada will have registered his or her phone number on the Do Not Call List . The list is to be paid for by telemarketers subscribing to it. But since everybody will be on it, there won't be much point in subscribing.

Wouldn't it have been simpler, and cheaper, just to make telemarketing illegal? And why do companies that I no longer do business with have 18 months of legal pestering. Just so you know, If you leave our company, we will call you every day for the next year in a half... WTF!

If you are a telemarketer, simply set up shop in a border town. Your American division can call Canada and your Canadian division can call the USA. Granted, finding clients for this dubious activity might be harder than before. But if you were willing to dirty your brand with telemarketing before, I'm not sure why this list would stop you now. 

At least I don't have a house in Miami

I really took a beating on the stock market yesterday and I wasn't able to enjoy the upswing today because the stocks were sold for me by my broker to cover a margin call. Ah, the joys of leveraged investments (what the heck was I thinking!). My leverage was only 60% (i.e. I had the money for 40% of the value of my stock, the other 60% was borrowed). But you have to feel sorry for the folks in South Florida who did what many people do: borrowed money to buy a house. Even if they didn't borrow money, they lost an average of 28% last year. That is some serious change on a median house price of  $276,000!

And as anybody in New Brunswick can tell you, those prices leave plenty of room to fall (you can buy a sea-side house in New Brunswick, Canada, for less than half that.).

Check out this comment after this article in the Miami Herald :

fstasfq wrote on 09/30/2008 04:31:34 PM:

I went to a foreclosure auction on Sunday at the Miami Beach Convention Center and I was able to pick up a bank owned 1650 sq ft 3/2 two car garage home for $125K which was previously sold about a year ago for $302K. I was approved by Chase, the current owner, for financing in about 5 minutes after they ran my credit and reviewed my income and liabilities. My payment is going to be $1,300/month with escrow. I can easily rent it for $1,400. If you have good credit and money for a down payment there are great deals out there.

If you are making a "profit" of $100 a month on your investment (before taxes and maintenance) and house prices are going down an average of 28% per year, that is one lousy investment!

Google Chrome, With the Right Computer, it Rocks

Once I got over the disappointment over the fact that their wasn't actually any chrome colour in Google's new Browser, I was impressed with the speed of delivering web pages. However, I was not pleased with the speed of plug ins.

That was on my old computer. Since any money I save is surrendered to the stock market gods, I  broke down and bough a laptop computer. If you don't have one, get one. But I digress.

With a dual core computer and 3Gigs of RAM, Google Chromes preforms marvellously. Including with plug-ins (granted, downloading and installing them is a bit of a pain).

The core of Google Chrome is Webkit. That core is also used by Safari. That is why few notice any noticeable speed improvements with Chrome over Safari. But I use Internet Explorer at work, so using Google Chrome makes home just that much better (yes, I realise the point of a laptop is to use it outside of your home, but I use it to blog in bed).

So let's recap, IE6 at work (because I work for idiots), Safari on my iPhone (no choice), IE7 on my older desktop and Google Chrome on my brand new laptop.