At the beginning of the month I saw Rob McEwen speak at the Toronto Sigma Chi Alumni dinner. He had a slideshow presentation as you might expect from a businessman. It was interesting he told us stories of his life and his experiences in business.

Rob McEwen studied at Western and later earned an MBA at York (from what is now called Schulich School of Business). He worked in investment and built Goldcorp “from a collection of small companies into a mining powerhouse” his website’s bio says. He is all about gold (check out the image from his website; I have no idea what the whip is about).

He told us about his time at Western and Sigma Chi. He ran for USC (Western’s University Students Council) president and came second. One summer he bought a surf kite and taught himself to use it.
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The WPost had a story on Thursday about Obama’s fitness habits. Near the end of the article it refers to his autobiography saying that he was a “casual drug user and an underachiever.”

It’s a schedule he started as a 22-year-old student at Columbia University in New York, and it immediately transformed him. In his 1995 autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama said he was a casual drug user and an underachiever until he decided to start running three miles each day. He stopped staying out late, fasted on Sundays and became a voracious reader, spending most of his time alone in his apartment reading classic literature and philosophical texts.

Physical fitness yielded mental fitness, Obama decided, and the two concepts have been married in his mind ever since.
– As Duties Weigh Obama Down, His Faith in Fitness Only Increases WPost 25 Dec 2008

I remember Will Smith telling a talk show host that the key to life is running and reading, it is a similar story to Obama’s.

• Advice from Obama to Waterloo boys 7 Dec 2008

I opened a brokerage account last January and I realized my first gain this month. Only one of the equities in my portfolio was ahead, Loblaws.

Here is the googoo finance listing for Loblaws:

It had been doing relatively well, because, I think, as a grocery store operator it sold necessities (like food) that people cut out of their budgets later. Then when the news reported that the Westons might try to take it private funded by the sale of a baking division it gained more, peaking just below $36.

I bought it for $29.99 in April and sold it Friday two weeks ago at $35.21 realizing a 17.4% gain. Of course that will likely be diluted by more meagre gains of my other positions.

I still have more to learn, but I am glad to have made this one.

Leading up to Christmas we got loads of snow in Waterloo. Christmas eve was pretty much the peak.

After Christmas things started to turn and yesterday much of the snow had melted.

The Waterloo weather station actually reported a maximum of 13.3 C, pretty warm. Now, there are flood warnings.

Stephen Harper’s December statement, over his three years as Prime Minister has gone from mentioning to god and Hannukah to just referring to Christmas and holidays.

Earlier, I had suggested that instead of ending speeches with “God bless Canada” that he reach for a piece of the national anthem which he then did in his 2006 December message when he closed by exhorting God to keep our land glorious and free.

Last year he wished Canadians a happy Chanukah:

On behalf of our family, Laureen, Ben, Rachel and myself, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and best wishes for a healthy and happy new year.
— Christmas Greetings from Prime Minister Harper 21 Dec 2007

For this year, he dropped the Hannukah and God and said Happy Holidays. It was also referred to as a statement rather than a Christmas greeting. And the whole thing was in quotations marks.

“And finally, on a personal note, on behalf of Laureen, Ben, Rachel and the entire Harper family, I want to wish Canadians a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a very Happy New Year.”
— Statement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper 23 Dec 2008

I would guess that it just shows a change in writer than a deliberate change directed from Stephen.

• Happy New Year . . . O Canada!
• Close speeches with ‘O‘ Canada not ‘God Bless[...]‘

At the Gap store in the Tulalip outlet centre in Washington state, I bought a screened t-shirt for a few dollars. I wanted it not for like of the colour or the design, but because it had a, likely made up, coat of arms on it.

I have a, so far minor, interest in heraldry and it was intriguing that the shirt used patterns for the tinctures. When drawing a coat of arms you can draw a patern with vertical lines to indicate red and dots to “colour” gold.

So, based on the patterns in the t-shirt graphic above. The arms in colour would look like the one I drew below.

Now the question I need to answer is whether the designed was just drawing crosses and stripes with different patterns or does the design indicate more.

TGAM had a story last month about community foundations. Instead of supporting a particular cause they fund charities that do all kind of efforts that build and support community.

It says that 165 community foundations in Canada hold $3-billion in assets.

The vision dates back nearly 100 years to when a Cleveland banker named Frederick Goff realized that many of the trust funds his bank managed were supporting out-of-date causes. Mr. Goff proposed creating a community trust fund to which wealthy people could make donations and have confidence the money would be managed in the best interests of future generations. In 1914 he helped create the Cleveland Foundation.

Mr. Goff’s idea spread across the United States and into Canada. In 1921 William Alloway, another banker, started the Winnipeg Foundation which received its first donation - $15 stuffed into an envelope - a couple of years later. Today there are 1,441 community foundations in more than 50 countries.
– From the foundation up TGAM 28 Nov 2008

This past Saturday there was a story about how families can set up foundations within the Toronto Community Foundation. The story also highlights the how the fallen equity markets are affecting foundations.

Enter the Toronto Community Foundation. Setting up foundations isn’t usually the province of small-time donors. But by offering to shoulder all the administrative work, and encouraging people to start foundations at the bargain-basement price of $25,000, the TCF is luring smaller donors into the rarefied world of endowments.
– The family that funds together … TGAM 20 Dec 2008

I got my new Waterloo library card last month. When I went to use the automated checkout, I was surprised to see this image of a gnome Watcard.

It is not just strange that there is a garden gnome’s face where the student’s face would be, but that it was a familiar image.

That same Watcard image appeared in Imprint in 2002 when the Watcard office replaced the original Watcard image from when the cards were introduced in 1995.

I’m pretty sure that the card was made by Imprint featuring a garden gnome from the SLiCE manager’s office.

I am curious as to how it got from Imprint to the library checkout screen.

Every time I go to Vancouver my Aunt V asks my sister, “Do you think Ryan will have time to help me in the yard?”

The answer is always yes because she is super nice and has taken care of us, her nieces and nephews over the years.

This last time I was in Van City two weeks ago I had arranged to come over on the Monday. I had forgotten to pack grubby clothes though, especially shoes. So, early Monday morning I went for a jog down to the Army & Navy, a discount department store, on Hastings, yeah Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

I bought some shoes for $9.99 and jogged back. I ran into Jason Y from my hometown and we chatted a bit, but I continued back. I caught the bus to 49th street, V picked me up. And I got to work.

I dismantled the oven door for cleaning and vacuumed it, built part of a fence, dug some drainage and put in some retaining blocks, trimmed hydrangeas, cut cedar branches, raked leaves, collapsed mole holes, and then I ate three sandwiches and some cookies and drank some herbal tea.

Then she drove me back to the bus stop and I took the bus back downtown.

• My Sunday in Vancouver 13 Dec 2008
• Patsy’s birthday 13 Dec 2008
• Even the vegetables have meat in them 7 Dec 2008
• Memphis Blues Barbeque for Patsy’s birthday 7 Dec 2008
• Like Obama, Obama tuque brings people together 11 Dec 2008
• Left early in the morning for Van City 7 Dec 2008

Vanessa was planning to make dinner for Mariano for their anniversary. She talked to me about advice on cooking, because she doesn’t prepare food very often.

She had been planning to prepare pasta with Alfredo sauce from a jar. I suggested that there were plenty of great dishes she could make that were easy and simple. One thing was to add a salad course because salads are easy to prepare and don’t often require heat which often intimidates people who feel they are at the level of boiling water.

I suggested a few unusual salads including my favourite, Waldorf salad, which I sampled at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City last winter.

I also sent her a link to Mark Bittman’s Times story with 101 simple and easy — essentially one-sentence — recipes.

She chose to prepare Waldorf salad, bruschette bread, basil fusilli, and asparagus.

Vanessa prepared it all herself. I was over at friends’ for their Christmas drop-in and then I had a late soccer match, so I wasn’t around for the preparation.

They did save me some of the food though.

It was good. For my Waldorf recipe, I use yogourt, which is superior to the mayonnaise that many recipe include.