Colin Ferguson’s Blog

National Hockey League’s Toronto Maple Leafs are on the way to the worst start in their team’s very checkered history.  This year’s Leafs may be as bad as the Ballard era “Milk ‘em for all you can” Leafs.  Which is actually a good thing as they need to spend a few years rebuilding.  They have few players of quality in the minors, no goalie to speak of, and only memories of the teams that went deep into the playoffs in years past.

The crappiness of this year and next year’s Leafs could then be the best thing for them, right? After all the worst team in the league gets the top pick; and a few of those top picks are what are needed if you want to truly contend.  I mean look at last year’s playoff winners; they have the first overall picks from 2 years in a row.  That plus some solid second rounder lead to them getting the cup in all its glory.

So the Leafs just need to lose this and next year right? No.  See after they started out crap, they traded those picks away. Yes that’s right, AFTER THEY STARTED OUT CRAP.  So they managed to trade away their draft picks this year and next year for a player who is age 22.  Oh and he’s injured and may not recover.  That is perhaps the second worst trading move in the league’s history.

The only logic may be that Burke has done this to tell the team you have to win with what you have. So learn to win.  Very much like the Spanish conquerors of Spain burning their boats to ensure that a message was sent of  “win or die”.

OK, so they’ve absolutely screwed their rebuilding plan right?  Yes, it’s true.  But well at least they can trade away their free agents right?  And they did that in the past years when they were tanking?  No.  See they haven’t signed anyone of great stature in the past while, and even in the year they decided to rebuild, the players that were here had no trade clauses.  And they wouldn’t let themselves be traded.

Well at least they have the picks from those years they did poorly?  Yes, but see they never did poorly enough.  Most teams when they are close to a high pick, will not try to win their last few games. But the leafs are April and May teams. They do GREAT in the last 3 weeks before the playoffs. Never enough to squeak into the playoffs in recent times, but absolutely enough to ensure they get the worst of all worlds – no draft picks of value, and no playoffs.

Oh and the best part?  These are supposed to be the A-list management team.  The B-list was supposed to be worse, but I honestly can’t say that’s true.   John Ferguson, the former Leafs GM, is a better GM than Brian Burke will ever pretend to be.  At least he wanted to rebuild but wasn’t allowed to.

Well not exactly, but the cat was found in a Toronto neighbourhood called Roncesvalles.

According to the Toronto Star, these hairless mutants were found in an alley in this Polish neighbourhood. Once local delinquents’ hi-jinks had been ruled out, and a Toronto Vet had been called in, the world started on the path to welcoming a new breed. The breed, called theSphinx, is hairless.  The most famous example is Mr. Bigglesworth from the Austin Powers’ trilogy.  I wonder if Mike Myer’s being a Toronto native had anything to do with that…

So there you go, another Random Toronto, Ontario bit of Trivia.

Toronto’s summer’s strike had garbage was literally left on the streets, but the coming weeks and months may see it shift from the literal to the metaphorical.

Toronto defence lawyers began a boycott of legal aid cases in June.  The boycott soon spread to other Ontario cities. The issue was that the systems rate haven’t kept up with inflation, whichi s fine for a year or two of hardship but the legal profession argues that decades of underfunding means the rates are simply no longer acceptable – at least for lengthy court cases.  And lengthy court cases are what occur when defendants try to prove they didn’t, indeed, pull the trigger that killed a suspected gang member.

The boycott seems to have worked as the Provincial Government has put $150 million into the Ontario legal aid system.  I’m not sure where that money comes from at a time of massive government deficient but hey, at maybe they can take it from the funds they were gonna put towards the streetcars we don’t need.

First off, it’s a tram, not a streetcar.

Second, why do they even exist in Toronto on 2 lane streets? I mean look at Queen, Dundas or College Street. Most streets during the day have on street parking. That means that cars BEHIND a tram are stuck with a poor choice: either sit behind trams for up to an hour or race around them at a light thereby endangering pedestrians. Not a great choice. Thanks TTC for not using your brains.

In fact, I can only figure a few pros and so many cons.

Pros:

1. Smoother ride!

Uhmmmm….

2. errrr, pretty colours?

3. OK, maybe if the fuel price spikes up and we can use relatively cheap renewable power through the grid lines then we’d have another pro. Then again a better way to use renewable wind/water energy is to transform it into hydrogen gas and move/store THAT.

Now Some of the Cons:

So many… I don’t know where to start.

1. Dangerous: Racing around the trams are only part of it the whole overhead wiring infrastructure is nuts! why have those? I’ve seen them come down and entire streets shut down.

The tram tracks are dangerous; cars slide on them in wet and snowy conditions (saw it today again)

Riders have to cross the road from the sidewalk to the middle lane. Why? This is just ASKING for riders to be hit. Find me a Tram rider that doesn’t have a close call and I’ll find you a liar.

2. Extra Pollution: not only does it take pollution at the source to create electricity, but all that infrastructure loses energy along the transmission route. And too it took a lot of energy to mine and process the metals that are used for all those towers, wires etc.

Oh and there is more on pollution: you know those 5 cars that are ALWAYS trapped behind trams? Well they are all spewing extra fumes they didn’t need to.

3. Non-standard equipment: if you make an order for buses AND trams then you have to pay more. A larger order means more knocked off the price. Having parts, yards and mechanics trained on both costs more too.

4. Tram Gridlock: there is no point in having a tram route longer than 2 km in a city. At least if you want to run the service more than twice an hour. After that point, the second street car is caught up behind the first one. And that makes the second one an unglorified caboose since the first one will be doing all the work picking up passengers etc. And of course if it’s longer than 4km, you’ll get a third one caught up, etc. etc.

I’ve seen line ups of seven street cars on Queen St. W before. SEVEN!

5. Not Flexible: If there is even one small thing lying on the tram route, then that road is closed to trams. Or has to use alternate routes.

Oh and I love when it gets cold and the drivers have to get out with crowbars to manually batter open switches at intersections.

6. Ugly: The entire tram setup with crowds of wires in the sky are just damn unattractive. As a pedestrian, instead of looking at sky, you’re busy looking at wire mess that wants to fall and electrocute you.

What can be done to decrease the Overall Poopy-ness of Trams?

Well dedicated tram lanes DO help overcome a lot of the issues. But not all. There are stories too about not allowing on street parking for 2 lane roads with trams.  But likely, it’d just be smarter to get hybrid buses that run on renewable fuels.

Bad Ideas Made Worse

I think it was in Seattle. A bus that runs on the overhead electric wires meant for trams. There are absolutely no benefits to that compared to a normal bus. As ideas go, The Easy Bake Blender for Kids sounds a lot smarter.

The only show on TV that I am passionate about has been canceled. Now I’m not a TV guy – I get two channels … fuzzily. Yeah I’m one of those. So for *ME* to care about a TV show is pretty strange. But JPod hits it on all notes, Quirky yet somehow Relevant Plotlines, Interesting Characters that I actually care about, and was a TV hound I could quote>. Basically it’s the dog’s bollocks. And it’s being canceled by CBC. Great, so we have shows about a teen horse whisperer (HeartLand), another wanna be Ally McBeal (Sophie) and the one that’s interesting is being cancelled. Nice work guys.

Evidently the problem is that geeks are watching the show online and this doesn’t count towards the numbers. OK, so if you put a show aimed at geeks why the hell would you NOT update your counting system. We watch shows online -> get used to it. And we have spending bucks so figure a way to integrate product placement in there. We don’t mind – as long as it’s cool techie stuff, not a random McDonald’s plug.

Anyway, you can watch the shows here on the CBC website (or download it on a torrent)

http://www.cbc.ca/jpod/ –> click the “Watch Full Shows” on the top If you think the CBC’s antiquated metrics are leading them to BDZ (Butthead Decision Zone), then sign the petition here: http://www.savejpod.ca/petition/