Boxing Day Tuesday 26 December 16:59 - It looks like there is no garbage or recycling pickup today and no one knew about it.

More is going on in the financial statement and stock options grants at RIM. I am trying to read more from the commission on this. The testimony from commission chair is interesting.

RIM stock option review slowed by paper chase TGAM 18 Dec 2006 JANET MCFARLAND

The company said it made 3,200 option grants to more than 2,000 employees between 1996 and 2006, so the volume of documents to be analyzed is substantial. In total, RIM has identified 650,000 electronic documents that needed to be reviewed, and has examined more than 500 employees’ files.

A lawyer acting for RIM’s audit committee, which is conducting the internal option review, told an OSC hearing Monday the company expects to take a charge that will be “significantlyâ€? higher than the $25-million to $45-million (U.S.) amount it has previously identified.

[...]

As part of its study, RIM said it searched its computer servers to find documents involving “persons of interest� in the review, and conducted the same search of historic electronic directories on back-up disks.

It also searched the hard drives of certain employees’ computers, the company said. The company said it is also interviewing a number of witnesses as part of the investigation.

RIM sees larger charge NP FP 19 Dec 2006 Theresa Tedesco

In a written submission to the OSC yesterday, the company said the internal probe is examining electronic and written documents, including stock options, of more than 500 employees, including the computer hard drives “of persons of interest.”

According to the eight-page letter, RIM’s “audit committee is working diligently and as quickly as possible to complete the review and restatement and to permit RIM to become current in its reporting status.”

As a result, an OSC panel yesterday extended a ban prohibiting about 66 officers and directors of RIM, including co-CEOs Michael Lazaridis and James Balsillie, from trading any shares until all of its filings are up to date.

Review could further trim RIM’s profits TS 19 Dec 2006 Tara Perkins

The company has reviewed more than 500 employees’ human resources and stock-options files, which are on paper.

For “persons of interest,” it has also searched through its electronic directories and computer hard drives for certain key words. The letter did not identify the “persons of interest,” but RIM said it has disclosed the search terms to the OSC.

The review is taking longer than initially thought. RIM expected to turn up about 400,000 electronic documents, but has now identified 650,000, after going through back-up disks using forensic imaging.

Testimony Concerning Options Backdating 6 September 2006 Christopher Cox Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs

There are many variations on the backdating theme. But here is a typical example of what some companies did: They granted an “in-the-money” option-that is, an option with an exercise price lower than that day’s market price. They did this by misrepresenting the date of the option grant, to make it appear that the grant was made on an earlier date when the market value was lower. That, of course, is what is meant by abusive “backdating” in today’s parlance.

The purpose of disguising an in-the-money option through backdating is to allow the person who gets the option grant to realize larger potential gains-without the company having to show it as compensation on the financial statements.

Rather obviously, this fact pattern results in a violation of the SEC’s disclosure rules, a violation of accounting rules, and also a violation of the tax laws.

Sandeep has a new magazine in town called Versus.

It started with two months ago. Back at the beginning of October Dave Sim was hanging out with Sandeep and they wrote about distribution.

Dave Sim’s blogandmail #20 (October 1st, 2006)

Good news — Williams had 50 copies of Versus No.1 and they’re all gone. Sandeep just did a restock. Sandeep?

Yes, there’s a city-wide war going on and it’s up to me to make sure all supply lines are restocked. If we don’t get the goods out to the coffee shops, restaurants, bistros and diners, it’s the people of K-W who will suffer. Several armies fight for space, the local weekly puts its papers on top of the university paper, the university paper puts them on top of the music monthly while the free classified paper ekes out its own spot and so on. So, I have to constantly monitor the distribution spots. Fifty is pretty good.

Sim is the creator of Cerebus the Aardvark, the 6,000 page graphic novel, and wiki-p tells us he regularly attends council meetings. That is what he covers for Versus, Kitchener city council. For the current issue, December, he writes about the approval of and protest against a bingo hall on Krug Street.

Sandeep writes about Rumsfeld. Dave Fisher writes about a tragic rugby injury sustained the day after the club lost its insurance. There is a Jack Lefcourt cartoon. There are also articles about, electoral reform in Ontario, video game review criticism criticism, music and television review, and an entertainment calendar.

Like Sandy the magazine is irreverent. Page 3 shows “documents” ordering a polonium hit on three local beavers.

If you are tired of bland and stupid, you should read Versus.

Jeff Aho criticised Feds in an article earlier this term. He showed frustration with an organization for which he is a councillor and a director. The points he raises shows the low level of knowledge that most people involved in Feds have. He also compares the value of services engineering students receive from EngSoc to those from Feds.

Feds By Jeffrey Aho 27 Sep 2006

And where does our money actually go? Each year it is estimated we lose $100,000 on Fed Hall. That’s roughly $4.75 per student. They pay for it by gouging us elsewhere, such as at the Used Bookstore, which is estimated to bring in $250,000 this year for a service business that should run at break even. And what about the $675,000 ($32/student) for Bomber renovations (which seems too classy to me - they called me ‘Sir’ at the Bomber!), and the $260,000 ($12.38/student) earmarked for moving Aussies up a flight of stairs. For an organization that exists solely to serve us, we sure get ripped off.

[...]

Feds has wasted our money and neglected our faculty. Until they recognize our concerns and appear before us to explain how they will fix them, EngSoc should pass a motion of no confidence in this year’s Feds Exec.

Some kid told me that after his article he was pressured to and did resign from the board.

“We’re going streaking through the quad.”

At UCLA students have a quarterly exam tradition (they have four school terms a year) called the “undie run.” On the third night of final examinations students go for a run on a route near campus dressed pretty much only in their underwear as a kind of exam stress relief.

The traditioon began in spring quarter of 2002 and replaced an older tradition called the “midnight yell.”

Undie Run may succeed Midnight Yell for finals stress relief Daily Bruin 18 Mar 2003

Strap on your running shoes and strip off your clothes – students will be running the streets Wednesday of finals week in nothing but their underwear for what creator Eric Whitehead hopes to be come a quarterly Undie Run.

[...]

The event started in spring quarter of last year when third-year theater student Whitehead and some friends tried to participate in Midnight Yell, a UCLA tradition where students scream at the stroke of midnight to release some of that pre-finals stress. Whitehead and his friends were quickly stopped by police officers.

They didn’t have anything like that at Waterloo when I was a lad; they don’t now either.

“You don’t see any RC-W was wrong t-shirts. Do you?”

“Those sold out two hours ago.”

I heard back from CP about what I thought was an error.

Canada West was between Upper Canada and Ontario

I sent an e-mail asking about it. i wrote:

The CP story about the sale of the building at 10 Toronto Street in Toronto refers to the origins of the building.”It was built for the Province of Upper Canada — Ontario before Confederation — as a post office and was later used by the Bank of Canada.”

This doesn’t make sense to me. The building was built in the 1850s and at that time the area was Canada West in the amalgamated province of Canada. The Union Act of 1840 amalgamated Upper Canada and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada in 1841.

Why does the story refer to Upper Canada?

John V e-mailed me back and copied whom I assume are his bosses saying:

You are right. The information was taken from a news release put out by Morgan Meighen which said the building was “built for the Province of Upper Canada as the No. 7 Post office . . . ” We plan a corrective on this today. Rgds

I think this is just indicative of the lack of knowledge we have of Canadian history. Though I do remember hearing about a theme park in the USA that credited Jefferson with the drafting of consittutional documents instead of the declaration of independance. I see that as a more elementary error.

Two years ago I was catching the bus from Kitchener to Toronto. I gave the driver my ticket at the Charles Street terminal. When I handed him my ticket, I announced my destination. “Toronto,” I said and climbed up the stairs onto the bus and took a seat.

The bus stopped in Guelph and people got off. In fact everyone else got off.

The driver told me to get off the bus. I told him I was going to Toronto. He said the route stopped here. I told him that I had told him I was going to Toronto when I got on. We argued but soon settled down. He was driving the bus to Toronto anyway. He would take me with him.

It was all right. I told him where I was from and he told me about growing up and how he wanted to move out west when he stopped working. His name was Joe.

We stopped along highway 6 before we got on the Mac-Cart freeway and crossed the street to the Tim Hortons. I thought it was funny to see a highway coach bus stopped on the gravel with the two lanes on one side and trees on the other.

He got a coffee and I got a hot chocolate. We continued on to the city. He told me about what it was like to be a bus driver. He told me that given when he started bus driving with his birthday he would be forced to retire a few weeks before he would qualify for a full pension.

Starting tomorrow mandatory retirement at 65 will end in Ontario. Now, Joe is going to get his pension.

• Mandatory retirement disappears tomorrow for Ontario workers The Rec 11 Dec 2006

Canadian Press has a short piece about Holling’r selling the building at 10 Toronto St. In it there is this description of the history of the building.

[...] it intends to do restoration work on the distinctive three-storey stone building, which was built in the 1850s.

It was built for the Province of Upper Canada — Ontario before Confederation — as a post office and was later used by the Bank of Canada.

I thought that it was strange because I didn’t think Upper Canada existed in the 1850s.

The Union Act of 1840 amalgamated Lower Canada and Upper Canada to form the province of Canada made up of the provinces of Canada East and Canada West.

It makes me wonder where the reference in the story came from, did someone extrapolate from the date, or was the name related to the building a holdover from after amalgamation, or what.

Tonight we had our house December party. Because of the break and it being a hectic time, instead of a full dinner, we had drinks and dessert. We had ice cream, pumpkin and peppermint flavours, and a surprise gingerbread house, and feuerzangenbowle.

Sabine told us about a German holiday drink that is called fire-tongs-punch in Deutsch. Tonight we tried to make it.

Essentially, it is mulled wine: red wine with the citrus, lemon, lime, orange, and spices, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, coriander, ,but then is the fiery part. You put a special device across the top of your pot (fire tongs), we used a metal cheese grater, and place a zuckerhut on it. a sugar hat , a cone of sugar. I hear in Deutschland you can buy them, but I had to make one out of sugar and a bit of water. Then you pour rum spirits of about 54% alcohol over it and light it on fire, it melts into the wine sweetening it and putting on a conflagratory show.

Magda has a story published in Maclean’s magazine. It’s garbage. About garbage, that is.

December 11, 2006
Something rotten in the green bin
North America’s pioneer in composting shuts down, and incinerates
MAGDA KONIECZNA

Every weekday, a transport truck leaves the giant waste-management facility in Guelph’s east end and heads down the highway toward New York. It may not look like a garbage truck, but it’s packed with garbage — specifically, with the apple cores, banana peels, chicken bones, pizza crusts and cat litter that the city’s residents have been carefully sorting into their organic-waste bags all week. When the truck arrives in Niagara Falls, N.Y., all that organic waste is dumped into a giant incinerator at the Covanta Energy facility and, yes, burned.

[...]

To be fair, says Crittenden, the expertise simply didn’t exist when Guelph set up its composter. “Although it was a bit of a disaster, all the other municipalities learned from it,” he says. And Susan Antler of the Composting Council of Canada says it’s been worth it. “Let’s realize we changed society in Guelph,” she urges. Now they just have to change it again.

I remember when Guelph was starting this program. I actually worked at a plant that made the special clear, coloured bags for the wet-dry system. When I worked in Guelph recently and went to the local store I got my food in a clear green shopping bag (when I didn’t decline the bag to reduce my consumption of the earth’s resources).

What happens with waste management in G is important, but what happens in Canada and the world is more important. Good thing I we have our own composting system here at our uptown apartment complex, thanks to magda.