Yesterday, I did a quick run to E*Trade’s office on Yonge St. I wouldn’t have gone if I had managed to do it all online but there were a couple of forms that could not be opened by Adobe Acrobat so I had to go down there. Good thing too because the customer service rep pointed out that it would be better for me to sell all of my mutual fund holdings while at E*Trade than at Edward Jones which would save me quite a bit.

So, within the next week or so, I should have moved all of the funds that I need to. I will then liquidate all of the mutual funds in my RRSP and use the money to purchase ETFs.

As a side note, CS told me that she doesn’t have an RRSP; in fact, her knowledge of investments is pretty low. I may have to do a crash course for her and maybe recommend a couple of books. A few years back, I read…I think…RRSPs for Dummies and it was pretty good. This reminds me of the fact that I need to look up a couple of things/sites about ETFs. Cheerio!

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Well, my attempt at my first 200 km ride for the year failed. I just got back about half an hr ago from doing 169 km. Around the 75 km mark my right knee felt a bit “strange” or stiff so I decided not to push it. Last year, I would have gone on and we all know what happened then!

Gorgeous day today; just a bit cool early on with some wind. Lot of cyclists out, especially past Hamilton and everyone was just so friendly! I met SL on the way back near Browns Line after she ditched a couple of girls that she was biking with and chasing after these men. Riding with SL is tough…she’s a very strong and fast rider. This may explain the strong possibility that I will probably have to drag my sorry ass into the shower in a couple of mins.

All in all a good ride but disappointed at not hitting the 200 km mark. Not disappointed at not hurting myself. Tomorrow will be a short recovery ride perhaps and, then, Monday who knows? Anyways, if you’re reading this and it’s nice out…shame on you!

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Am back early from my ride because my battery died on me. I had forgotten to recharge it last night. Normally, this would be a bad thing but it’s now pouring rain! Unexpected since the fallible Weather Network had said that it would be just cloudy this morning.

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Yesterday evening, I did something that makes me really wonder about the value of people with the CFA charter. I have a very small RRSP that I set up with Edward Jones many years ago and I’ve always been curious as to what my rate of return was with regards to the mutual funds that I have purchased. Well, according to my rudimentary calculations, over the past two years I have averaged around 15% a year which is pretty good right?

Hold on to your hats because I then checked the Globe and Mail’s GlobeFund site and it turns out that the vast majority (even more than the 80% I had expected) of my funds have not beaten the indices that they are measured against. What the @#$! Yep, I am paying fees for performance that does not even beat the average along with a management fee that goes to Edward Jones. That has me really ticked off. You’d have thought that such highly-educated people would have at least managed to attain the “average” return.

On top of that, my Edward Jones’ advisor has not contacted me in two years despite my account’s relative lack of activity. He’s a nice guy but it seems that he’s too busy to look into why and what has been happening with me.

So, I am now looking into transferring everything into an online broker such as Credential or E-Trade. When I say everything it also includes my TDWaterhouse account which, because of my Apple Inc. holdings, has been doing pretty well especially when I compare it to those mutual funds. I am thinking of divesting the latter and investing in ETFs much in the manner of the Couch Potato portfolio that I had read about in MoneySense magazine. Stay tuned!

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Just relaxing a bit. Rode a good 110 kms on Saturday; did an excellent pre-dawn ride out to Port Credit and, then, by mid-morning was on my way up the Don Valley bike path system to North York to SO’s place. Google Maps had told me her place was about 21 kms by car from mine so I decided to break the 100 km mark by combining both rides. The bike path system is pretty good with only the Leslie crossing being a bit hairy. Obviously much harder heading north than coasting back down south but it was a gorgeous day for a great ride.

Yesterday was supposed to be a short recovery ride day session but the ride with the HPV was not slow and smooth. We headed from Bloor & Spadina down to the lakefront to the Humber and, then, sort of north to St. Clair. I decided to ride with this group because they were thinking of doing a bike camping trip out to Darlington in July. Rather check them out now than be stuck with people I don’t like for three days…hahaha!

I’m still not too sure if I can or want to do it. I’ll see.

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Don’t Make Me Think is a book on website usability, what it means, how to test for it and how to implement it. It brings me back to this one web usability project that I did several years back for a major American telecom company. It was a short project, barely a week long but it was intense and resulted in a 12-15 page report highlighting the most glaring errors.

I felt sorry for the company because they did something that Mr. Krug said that everyone should avoid which is that it is much harder to change things around AFTER you’ve got the site up and running. I don’t think it could have been avoided, though, because the company had to merge together several different business “silos” and their respective websites into one ginormous one. The real issue was not really one of “look” because that could be solved but one where the customer’s experience was not consistent throughout the website. For example, a customer would log in for their cellphone account and, if they had landline account too and wanted to access it, they then had to log in again.

I’m pretty sure that I did not catch all of the errors (Krug says that a group of testers will only catch about a third of the errors the first time around but they will be the most evident ones and to continue testing to catch the rest) but the company was pretty happy with the report. I guess I do enjoy criticizing something and being paid good money for it. haha

Anyways, an excellent book!

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Occasionally, while perusing the World’s Biggest Bookstore (a blatant case of false commercial advertising), I would stop by the Osprey Publishing display where they have a huge series of books on many things military. For God’s Warriors, they have repackaged three of their books - Battle of Hattin, Faris and Knights Templar (para.) into one. The books are decent general histories but suffer from poor editing and even poorer pictures. The Osprey books usually have decent illustrations so I don’t know why this one falls down so badly in that regard.

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There’s a saying that how a society treats its animals is indicative of how it treats its human members. Well, this morning I was cycling up Sherbourne St. just north of Adelaide when I saw a scrawny looking pigeon that didn’t look “right”. So, I turned back to have a closer look. It seemed to be drenched in some sort of oil (like those birds you see after an oil slick) and was missing quite a few feathers from the back of its neck. It also seemed to have vomited up some food. Evidently, the bird was in distress.

So, I called the Toronto Humane Society who said that they don’t do pickups. I’ve been disappointed by THS in the past but this really takes the cake; they’re nothing but a glorified pet shop. They’ve got enuf money to keep alive evident maulers like pit bulls but they can’t be bothered to do pickups. Way to go!

After hanging up on them, I called Toronto Animal Services and the conversation didn’t get any better:

Me: Hi, I’ve found a pigeon in distress here and I need someone to come pick it up.

TAS:?? Ok, is the bird confined in a box?

Me: A box?

TAS: Yes, we cannot pick it up unless it is in a box.

Me: Umm..I don’t normally walk or bike around with a box. Trust me, I don’t think that the bird is going anywhere.

TAS: Well, if it is not confined, you will have to wait until 8:30 for someone to come out with a box.

Me: You guys don’t have boxes until 8:30?

TAS: No.

Me: Honestly, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of!

Ok…so I hung on them. Who is the idiot that decided that off-hour pickups do not go out with boxes? Why don’t they just tell everyone to box up the animal and call a courier service like Purolator or UPS? It would be much cheaper than having union workers driving around without boxes!

In the end, I called my sis to come down with a box and a ruler to try to catch the bird. It definitely had a coating of oil/grease but it was much livelier than expected and escaped into the condo projects that have been built in that area. I didn’t have that much time to hunt it down but may keep an eye out for it tomorrow. I know who NOT to call if I see it again!

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Coming back from a moderate-range ride this after, I was heading up Sherbourne St. and making a left onto Gerrard when I saw a small commotion right up ahead. It turned out to be a cyclist stretched out on the sidewalk. He had been making a gear change and somehow his right pedal had hit the curb and he tumbled from his bike. The result was that his right knee was dislocated, you can actually see where the bone was pushing out against his skin.

The great thing about all of this was that a lot of people were willing to help him out by calling for an ambulance, giving him water (a no-no according to the ambulance dispatch people), trying to shade him and so on. So, most of us kept watch until the ambulance arrived (10 mins) and took him away.

So, the moral of all of this is to be constantly alert, something as innocuous as a gear change can bring one down.

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I swear that that is what the CN Tower now looks like at night! They’ve installed new LED lights but, instead of being sharp and distinct, the lights have a sort of pastel quality to them. So, it sort of blends in together and it now looks like one of those blue, white and red popsicles. Wish that they could have done a better job…

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