Category: Uncategorised

Today we experienced the longest residential Internet outage that I have personally experienced since I have been a Rogers customer for more than 20 years.

My firewall records show:

As per the records above, one can observe that initial instability started at around 2:15am and then at around 4:51am it failed for a very long time. There were attempts at around noon and in the evening to resurrect the system. These attempts proved to be unsuccessful. In each of these attempts, there were issues with domain name lookups, and possible routing problems.

Our Koodo LTE on our mobile devices were able to make phone calls, but data rates were very slow. Usability was intermittent at best. To get the latest news, we had to resort back to our emergency radio.

We found out that this radio’s dynamo generator no longer works, and we should probably replace it soon. We tried solar but finally settled for batteries to operate the radio.

It turns out the whole country is impacted with specific incidences of:

• Point of Sales (POS) terminal issues with using and clearing debit cards;
• Work at home businesses can no longer function;
• Issues with ArriveCan applications for those entering the country;
• Possible 911 reception issues in certain areas;
• This Toronto Star article has more.

I am writing this post at around 10:15pm. At this point the Internet is backup now longer than any of the previous Rogers attempts in fixing the outage. I hope we are up for good.

My speculation is that Rogers’ provisioning database was hacked and got corrupted causing the disablement of Internet access by all of their customers. This is my GUESS. I have no proof. We will see what really happened if Rogers choose to divulge such information in the near future.

There has been precious little information at this point on what caused the outage. My curiosity is piqued to find out what happened, and how Rogers can prevent this in the future.

Like others, I have been reading and experiencing about inflation. It seems like everything but GPU graphics cards are going up. Everything from prices at the pump, grocery shopping, and eating out are all going up. In short, these are the commodities that are needed to sustain life.

Normal people do not stock up on extra food and gasoline, not in huge supplies any ways. Most of us typically buy and use them as we need them. Therefore, price increases in these categories of goods are most likely caused by supply constraints and not by excess demand.

When central banks around the world sees high inflation rates, their immediate monetary policy change is to increase interest rates. This increases the cost of borrowing and impacts on cash flow. For example, you tend to use your credit card less and therefore you end up buying less. There will also be less investments and ventures. People will tend to save more.

If the current inflation is a result of supply constraints of key commodities necessary to sustain our current way of life, then a forced demand reduction means a pare back to our quality of life. The increased interest rate will have a dampening effect on items other than food and energy, at least not immediately.

It will eventually reduce demand on the essentials when people are indirectly impacted through layoffs due to lower business activities in other areas. This means people will have to buy less food and consume less energy. A lower quality of life.

Okay. Why raise interest rates then if it is going to do more damage than good? Unfortunately interest rate is the only main lever that central banks have. Interest rates will have to increase to the point where demand of the essentials are align back to their corresponding supply levels. This means to fight this type of inflation, we will necessarily see a recession in the economy and our livelihood.

The alternative is to allow for inflation rate to go uncheck and await for supply to naturally fix itself. I do not think this will work as high inflation effectively act as a brake to economic growth for everyone. The central banks now face a difficult decision. Let inflation create hardship for all or raise interest rates to cause pain for some (less than all), and reduce demand on the essentials. I fear they will have no choice but to choose the latter. As a result of this choice there will be a further widening of our social class gap. The rich will be more prepared to weather through the increase in borrowing costs. They may even seek opportunities to increase their social status. The poor will have to deal with making ends meet with less necessities.

In short, things will get much worst before they get better. When inflation is tamed, and I think this will be some time considering the current Ukrainian war, sanctions, and logistical issues, the poor will be less well off than the rich in the next cycle.

Let me know your thoughts on my thoughts.

We are in the process of shredding our paper records from twenty years ago, stuff like tax returns, invoices, insurance papers that are no longer relevant or needed.

During this paper demolition process, I came across this invoice from 24 years ago!

A Windows 95 PC costing over $4,500 in 1998 money. Wow. I did not realize I had such an appetite to spend that much money back then.

Notice that we were still using dial in modems back then. No high-speed internet yet. Most motherboards did not come with sound and video either. I also have to laugh at the hard drive specification. At 8.4 GB, that would be smaller than most USB flash drive you can now get at Staples.

Fascinating walking down memory lane!

This year on January the 31st, I purchased a gold bar from TD Canada Trust. It is one ounce for $2,414.67. The idea is from my wife. She wanted to establish a new trend as her annual birthday gift.

As the kids are grown up and our RESP savings are being maxed out. the redirection of funds to accumulating gold may not be a bad idea. The world has become a more unpredictable place, the pandemic, and growing geopolitical issues.

This morning I was curious and check the price for the same one ounce of gold and it is sitting at $2,540.03. Already up in about three weeks.

We will continue to monitor to see if this is indeed a good long term investment.