Redirect!

Welcome to the old old home of The General Ledger.  Back about a year ago I was toying with the idea of migrating this site to Wordpress.com, because of an issue I was having with inline images.  I found that Wordpress.com's features are pretty cool, but since I had the same problem with my images with both sites, it wasn't worth the hassle to move everything.

About a month ago I decided to move my blog over onto my own Wordpress.org server, with a post that explains (partially) why I did it.  You can look around my old Blogger site here, or you can head on over to my new website, gregburrell.ca.

Thanks for stopping by!

The bike lane issue

So far in Toronto's race for mayor, all of the contending candidates who have said anything about bike lanes on city streets have proposed either an outright freeze on new bike lanes, or that lanes should be painted on side streets and removed from busier routes. I have a certain respect for those candidates who have come out against cycling (although I strongly disagree, and this is a vote-deciding issue for me). But proposing to install bike lanes on quiet side streets? That's just stupid.

Here's the problem: cyclists (myself included) already ride on busy major roads, especially in the core. Nobody who rides a bike in this city is going to prefer to zig-zag up and down through neighbourhoods - which are designed to prevent through traffic - when there's a perfectly good, straight, level street running exactly where we want to go. Putting a network of bike lanes through the neighbourhood is going to do nothing at all to attract cyclists, and will just inconvenience residents who lose street parking space.

The whole point of installing bike lanes on major streets is to separate vulnerable bicycle traffic from fast-moving vehicle traffic, and prevent the often violent (and sometimes deadly) conflicts between the two mixing in the same lane. There is already a good volume of cyclists on Toronto's busy thoroughfares, like Bloor, Jarvis, Queen and Spadina for example. That's because those streets are the most direct routes to where cyclists want to go - exactly the same reason those routes are busy vehicle routes. There are going to be large volumes of cyclists on those streets, no matter where you install a bike lane. If bike lanes are going to be useful at all, they must go where the cyclists already are.

If the problem with installing bike lanes is limited road space, as I'm sure it is in many areas, then on-street parking should be removed first. Thoroughfares like Bloor and Queen should be for moving traffic. More parking could be made available on side streets instead. Bike lanes on side streets are a waste of time and money, and convenient for nobody. As long as there are no bike lanes on the routes that cyclists use, we're going to continue to have problems. I hope one of our candidates has the courage to say so.

We need more options for TTC funding

Last week, the Ontario government delivered its budget, which everyone in Toronto now knows slashed funding for municipal transit, diverting funds to develop rural highways instead. It's a blatant political move intended to build Liberal support in rural Ontario. Clearly the Liberal party is confident in their urban vote base (they most certainly shouldn't be). What it means for Toronto is that mayor David Miller's hard work and advocacy for almost his entire term as mayor to secure upper-level government funding for the expanded light rail system in the city is wiped away in one bonehead political move. Although much money has already been spent and construction has already started, most of the system will now never be built.

This is the kind of political dumbassery that left Toronto with the Allen expressway to nowhere, the Black Creek stub, two land-wasting fragments at either end of the long-scrapped Richview and Crosstown expressways, and two severely over-capacity transportation modes to the core - the crumbling Gardiner/DVP and the equally congested Yonge subway - leaving the city with near-permanent gridlock, and no vision whatsoever how to get the city moving again.

Toronto's transit system has a lot of now well-publicized problems, but what it needs more than anything is a steady source of non-political revenue. This can't be achieved through one-time
politically sensitive government handouts. In short, since the Ontario government is not willing to provide the region with guaranteed, sustainable transit funding, Toronto should seek that funding elsewhere.

Part of the problem with the TTC's funding model (and Toronto's budget in general) is that many people commute into the city from neighbouring communities, and those people don't directly contribute to the city's tax revenue. The only money that Toronto collects from
those people who use its services daily is limited to what the province decides to provide. So the amount contributed by someone who lives just west of Etobicoke Creek and visits Toronto every day is the same as that contributed by someone who lives in Thunder Bay and has never been to Toronto. That's really not fair to taxpayers in Toronto. Or in Thunder Bay, for that matter.

So how to solve the regional funding disparity? Road tolls are a must, in my opinion. That is, electronically-collected per-use tolls on Toronto's municipal expressways - the Gardiner and DVP, exactly like the 407 except that low-income commuters could apply for an exemption, and tolls collected would go directly back to road projects. Tearing down the Gardiner shouldn't even be considered (not yet) - traffic on that highly congested route has no other route to use.

And what about transit funding? Last year, New York instituted the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax, a small (less than 1%) flat tax on payroll, collected from employers in a designated area surrounding New York City. Companies in the city and several surrounding counties are required to collect & remit the transit tax to the state government, which directs the money back to the Metro Transit Authority. By imposing this tax, the people and businesses that benefit from the region's transit system contribute more to it, as it should be, and the MTA has at least some consistent funding. Ontario should consider instituting a tax like the MCTMT in the GTA, and if the province won't, we should call on the Toronto Board of Trade and other chambers of commerce in the region to levy a similar fee among their own membership, and even consider handing over transit to the private sector, if that's what it takes to get the region moving.

Local and regional transit is vital to Toronto and the GTA, and this region is the economic hub of the province. We deserve better than our 30-year-old system of decaying, overcrowded and underfunded transit.

Read: [NY] Senate Passes Metropolitan Transportation Authority Finance and Accountability Package

--
Sent from my mobile device, on a bus, stuck in traffic

Blogging from Gmail

I just this morning learned that Google actually took the time to develop a Gmail app for my cheap Nokia cell phone. In a sudden brainstorm, I realised I could use Gmail with the app to post content on my blog! Which is good, because I've been away from it for two months, and have two to three hours on the bus every day alone with my thoughts (or much more often, Twitter). I just need to bookmark the Blogspot posting e-mail address, and I'll be good to go.

I hope Fido doesn't charge me a fortune for the bandwidth the Gmail app uses. Won't know until I get my next bill, I guess.

I'm riding the \/\/ave, but I don't know what that means yet

Happy new year everyone! Yeah, a few days late I know. And "everyone" is about 3 people. But that doesn't stop me!

I got a Google Wave invitation this week, and I've been playing around with it a bit. So far nobody I've sent an invite to has responded, so it's a bit lame at the moment. Did spend some time tonight following a conversation on Google's open letter to China that came out today. You know, where they're dropping their overt censorship and threatening to pull out of China completely if the government continues to hack their database to steal information on so-called dissidents?

If you actually haven't read about this, go read the letter NOW. This could be all smoke, or this could be the single most important tech development ever. Interesting read, nonetheless.

Ever since starting on at my last job, I've been maintaining two Google accounts, one primarily for gmail, and another for applications. My employer wasn't keen on my username ivanvector showing up in online corporate documents, so I made another "professional" account. I used the new account to do things like start this blog, and now I'm having issues having to switch back and forth between the two accounts, especially since getting on board with Wave. I've learned over the last couple years that developing an online identity is just as important for us tech types as developing a professional identity is for one's career, and creating a second account to hide my username was a big mistake on my part.

So, given that I no longer have that job, I'm attempting to reverse that decision. Google doesn't make it easy - at present there is no way to merge two Google accounts, and I cannot link my gmail to another existing account. So I'm stuck with two accounts, and deciphering which login to use on a multitude of sites I've signed up for over the last 2 years, with the explosion of social networking.

I took my first step tonight, and it was an easy one. I installed Google Chrome on my laptop running Ubuntu Karmic Koala (featured as my Twitter background!) and then enabled posting to the blog from my gmail account. At present the two accounts look identical but I'll eventually be filing the old one away as a sort of archive of old posts, or deleting it entirely if that ends up being feasible. But for now there are a bunch of blogs that I am following twice.

I will reconcile that. But not tonight, it's 1:30am and I'm fresh out of awake. I am looking forward to seeing someone online to Wave with though.

g

Letter From a Jilted Customer

Going through an old e-mail account this morning, I came across this gem I wrote to Belair Direct last fall after my repeated calls failed to resolve my issue, which was that my address needed to be updated, and they didn't seem to be able to handle that.  Since the internet is for the free exchange of information, and maybe I can save someone the unpleasant experience of dealing with this company, I'm unleashing it on the blog.  Some personal details cleansed, of course.

===

Hello,

Over the last year, I have had a number of problems with your company, and I do not feel as though I am being taken seriously as a customer at all. If you look into my account history you will see a series of complaints filed around January this year regarding a collision dispute, where you tried to tell me that being rear-ended while making a left turn is somehow my fault, but this is not what I'm writing about.

Problem #1: I called on Aug. 28 this year to create a new auto policy, since I had separated from my wife and moved to a new address.  I have the e-mail and the temporary slip indicating my new policy number and new address.  I was given a new quote and agreed to purchase the new policy.  I received the e-mail notification that the old policy (<policy#1>) had been cancelled, but I never received a notification about my new policy (<policy#2>).  I didn't think anything of it at the time since I had my temporary slip.  I called today to update my address again since I have moved again, and found that my first address was still listed on my policy, and the CSR I talked to today couldn't find a record of the address change in your system.  Why then do I have a temporary slip with the proper address?

Problem #2:  I received a quote on my new policy that was based on the address that I had provided, or so I thought.  When I updated my address today, my annual premium nearly doubled. If I do an online quote through any number of websites online (can't do one through yours because I'm already a client) the quotes I receive are over $500 less than the rate I was given today.  Care to explain?

Problem #3: I tried to log in to your website to review my portfolio.  When I click to register, the website indicates that my online portfolio is already activated.  I have no idea what the password is.  I try to fill out the password recovery form with my current policy number and my driver's license number.  The website indicates that my license number is invalid. I have entered <my valid Ontario driver's license number>, which IS my license number.  I have it right in front of me.  So if this number is wrong, exactly what license number is on my portfolio?

Problem #4:  Belair will not update my tenant coverage because my new apartment building is a "high commercial risk" because it's "too close to a commercial area".  What the hell does that mean?  If I live in the city I can't get insurance?

Do I even have coverage right now?  Am I paying you for absolutely nothing?

Greg Burrell
gburrell@<my old isp>.com

===

Belair responded within a day that they would call me on Monday to discuss. When they hadn't called by Tuesday, I cancelled my policy. They also fought me on their 30-day new policy guarantee, saying they were going to charge me almost half the value of the policy for early termination, which took another few hours of angry calls to sort out. Now I have a much less expensive policy which includes tenant coverage, and actual customer service.

Caveat emptor.

Censorship and Facebook

"It's like twitter. Except we charge people to use it."

It's come to my attention that a link I posted to Facebook somewhat recently has been flagged as inappropriate "by Facebook users" and blocked.  I fully realize that Facebook needs to rely on its users to identify inappropriate content and select it for review, but I also expect that someone actually reviews content once in a while, or at the very least that some kind of mechanism exists for a ban to be contested (I can find none).

The content in the link I posted is a humourous article detailing an e-mail exchange between a frustrated designer and a client who did not want to pay.  There is maybe one graphic in the article that might be considered offensive to the sort of people who think that devils are playing tricks in their eyes and making the lights in the magic box dance in contemptuous shapes, but for anyone who's been on the internet at all in the last 20 years, this article is timid at best.

Here is the link again, and yes I am going to attempt to link here from Facebook.  http://www.27bslash6.com/p2p.html

In my mind, Facebook has been on a tremendous downhill slide over at least the past year, as the site has tried to become more and more like Twitter, and in the process has destroyed much of the functionality that made Facebook unique and attractive as a social networking platform.  Now, it very much is not, and I have to say that if I didn't already have an account with established connections, my incentive to create an account today would be nil.  I don't want to play games and be inundated with my contacts' progress in those games to no end, and the other features that once made Facebook exciting are now recreated and improved by other websites like Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn, all of which I use regularly.

If Facebook wants to be the moral conscience of the internet, well good luck.  The internet is a community particularly well-known for rejection of censorship, and if that's the route they want to take, Facebook can easily censor itself out of existence.  And Facebook should have realized by now that trying to be Twitter is futile.  We already have a Twitter.  It's called Twitter.  And it has been so ridiculously successful in large part because there is no other Twitter, no competing standard, and everyone who uses a Twitter-like application [also] uses Twitter.  It's also successful because there is no option to block content (only users), meaning that if I post content I feel is harmless, and someone has a lame issue with it, it's their problem, not mine.

One of Facebook's potential niches is content-sharing, which is another thing it has in common with Twitter that Twitter does better.  By throwing up barriers to effective content sharing (like making it easy for potentially hostile users to make any content universally un-share-able) Facebook is shooting itself in the foot.

At this point I should note that the text I've associated with the link is from the article, and the fact that I'm ranting about how Facebook needs to be Facebook and leave the being Twitter to Twitter is actually coincidence.