Jeffrey Aho

Yesterday was the first day of my 3A Mechatronics term, and it will be a contrast to the Political Science Minor term I just completed. It is the first time I haven’t had a co-op term in between my school terms but it will be a good summer with everyone in town.

If you had not heard, I decided during finals to purchase a house and took possession less than a week ago. I’ve had my eye on the property for a while and had previously lived here for three school terms so I’m very familiar with it. The sale came together very quickly and I was a little overwhelmed by all the details that needed to be worked out. Dealing with the real estate brokers, lawyers, and the bank was confusing, as it was the first time I purchased a house, but my parents assisted me through the process (my dad is a manager for Ontario Realty Corporation) and I’m pleased with the result.

I got an excellent deal for financing, 4% interest rate (Prime minus .75%) because rates are so low currently. The Bank of Canada has lowered rates by 100 basis points over their last two scheduled dates. I decided to go with a 5-year variable rate mortgage (amortized over 25 years) and take a little risk. A fixed one would have been at 5% and with the slowing economy and inflation under control (in Canada at least) interest rates are likely to remain stable or be lowered. When I got it the mortgage it was 4.5% and it is already at 4%; I’ll track the rates and after three years (about the length of time I plan on holding it) I’ll evaluate if it was a good decision or not. I’m also doing bi-monthly payments to also help reduce the interest I need to pay.

Overall I think it is a good investment. I’m renting to three people and living there so the rent I collect will pay my mortgage and other costs so I’ll live rent free for the next few years (saving thousands of dollars) and when I sell the house I should make a profit given the appreciation of the house and the amount being paid into the mortgage after the interest. Of course I need to deduct lawyer fees and other costs, but the recent trends indicate that the value should increase. With improvements to the area such as the iXpress and the universal bus pass for students (I can’t believe I’m pleased with the UPass but it makes my property more valuable for renting) where one of the stops is only 1 minute walk away, I should have no problem renting. In fact I have tenants committed for roughly the next two years. I was able to transfer leases from the previous landlord, which also made the deal more appealing; less work for me.

In other news, I am officially not a student councillor or board member for Feds as of May 1st. I’m also no longer a member of the Student Services Advisory committee and the only official position I have is Genius Bowl director for EngSoc (to be held on May 26th!). I’ll now have lots of time to work on other things and Waller and I will be starting up an Optimist International club on campus. It will be different being on the other side of the room for IAC asking for approval instead of giving it. I found it intriguing this last term when people claimed my work in Feds was only to a) pad my resume, and/or b) practice for being a real politician. For the jobs I apply for, employers care more about my technical experience at NRCan, Nemak (Ford), and GM than the volunteer mention Feds gets on the second page of my resume. As well, I said I don’t plan on being a politician, either a Feds Executive, or elsewhere. I don’t have any interest in that form of public service.

Right now I believe there are 3 vacancies for engineering councillors. I feel no obligation to help fill them. For the most involved people, you get very little out for the work you put it. I don’t know how Councillor/Director/Governor/FOC Neal does it. He should have won either the President’s Circle award or the Feds Leadership award but instead he didn’t even get a piece of council gear or a meal at the end of the year. Volunteer appreciation severely lacks at Feds and along with apathy it is not surprising why 8 council seats remain unfilled. There is also a definite lack of empowerment. If I ever have a problem I’ll go straight to Chris, Justin, Del, Andreas, or Andrew. The fact is that my representatives are inexperienced (due to the fact of being new to council). It looks like only three councillors have previously served a full year on Feds.

So for now I’m going to focus on school and catch up on my growing book shelf of unread books. On Justin’s advice, I believe the next book I’ll read will be Rawls’s Theory of Justice to be quickly followed by Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

Currently Listening to: Still Alive – Jonathan Coulton

Random Wikipedia Article: Dulce et Decorum Est

This week my website’s spam count passed 25000 spam comments. My first post was in July 2005, so about an average of 10000 spam posts a year. I can’t imagine having to manually moderate all that spam, but luckily I use Akismet and it deals with the majority. I probably only have to manually moderate one spam comment a day. So given all this spam you can see why I require an email (used as a sort of ID) for comments. I moderate the first post and any comments after that are free to post. That said, I do have a fairly liberal policy on posts and I think I’ve only not allowed one comment (due to a legal issue). The disadvantage in using a fake email (which I’ve approved many comments in the past with one) is that when you try to repost you have to wait for me to moderate.

The place that I do get the most spam from is through my Feds email. I’d say that 90% of my email spam comes from that account. I was getting some through this domain’s email but I turned it off until I decide how I will deal with it. Mike uses a form on his site for contact, maybe I (and probably Feds) should do something similar (with a captcha of course). The only real email to my Feds account was sent to all councillors, and it should be stated that they can reach everyone by posting to the Council list. Then maybe they can just have a link to UWDIR for if they do only want to contact one councillor and we can save the Feds IT guy time making email accounts that change often. Oh yeah, I see that Feds has a new design for the site. I guess this is a good time to change over before the next term where there will be a flood of traffic to find Del’s number to complain about Health and Dental plan opt-out…

Natalie was complaining last night that I haven’t posted in a while. I haven’t been feeling too well this term, though I’m sure a change of environment will help with that. Maybe living alone in a cold basement in Oshawa wasn’t the best decision I’ve ever made. Either way, this is my last week in Oshawa and I will be flying to Thunder Bay for 2 weeks on Saturday and then back to Waterloo on the 5th to start my term as a pretend Arts student. I haven’t been back since last Christmas and from what I hear, much hasn’t changed. Apparently the Golf Dome has been replaced. Thrilling.

Currently Listening to: It’s Beginning to Get to Me – Snow Patrol

Random Wikipedia Article: Bill C-60

So I’ve been in Oshawa a few weeks now and there really hasn’t been anything that notable in the city. I think I’m settled into my work now, though it might not be for long. The UAW in the US is striking, affecting all of the GM related plants. The strike started yesterday and it is beginning to affect Canadian plants, including the two car plants which are shut down. I am at the Truck plant which is still open though the media notes we only have parts for the next 3 days. I’m not sure what will happen given my position as a co-op student, but I’m sure I’ll hear closer to possible shutdown date.

Tonight are the premieres of both House and Boston Legal, my two most favourite dramas currently on TV. I only have watched the occasional episode of Boston Legal since The Practice ended but I really got hooked on it recently. I’m still catching up on past seasons so I’m hesitant to watch the new season.

For those who enjoy internet memes, I’ve been enjoying ‘lolsecretz‘. It’s a mash up of Lolcats/I can has cheezburger? and PostSecret.

I’ve been blogging about the Ontario General Election and if you’d rather just read those posts you can go to jeffaho.com/election. Feel free to post a topic if you’d like me to talk about it or comment on existing topics. For more election coverage go to pulse.feds.ca/election.

I guess it is noteworthy that the Canadian dollar hit parity with the US dollar last week. It makes it more tempting to visit Boston for the Thanksgiving weekend, though I may just go to Ottawa instead. It has been a while since I’ve been back (hmm…I can’t recall when I was back since I moved away almost 2 1/2 years ago).

Currently Listening to: Smooth – Santana

Random Wikipedia Article: Cohiba