Recent content by ecotourist

Ah yes the sell decision - way harder than the buy decision. Some people use a hard 7 or 8% sell signal. They say that stocks often don't recover from a 7 or 8% decline. But I see a lot more volatility than that. For a good example, see Nutrien (Toronto or New York exchanges). It's a solid...

And unless that 2004 beater Accord is really shabby, there may be the potential for a quick and dirty restoration there (says the guy who drives a 2007 Accord). These things will go forever - though they can rust too.

The scar will improve for at least a year, possibly a little longer. You can't even see my pacemaker scar anymore (after 18 months).

I got my first job as an occupational physician (while a recently minted GP) by sending a letter and my CV to a mining company that was looking for a nurse. I worked there part time for 9 years (before I took specialty training) and got invaluable experience. As one of the junior residents later...

A proper response would be (1) a covering letter, referencing the brief attached CV and offering to provide more details. It should also say something like "I would welcome the opportunity to ....." (2) The attached CV should be no more than 2 pages long and should hit the high points of your...

That's correct and it's purely because of the math. The potential causes of an early death (congenital defects, infections, the accidents of youth, workplace accidents) are all or mostly behind people at any age. The small numbers are gone, so the average just keeps rising. The life expectancy...

That's why most financial planners assume you will live to 95. Even then you might have to make adjustments as you get closer to that age. Running out of money is not funny. I had that happen to patients. Husband (a professional who had a good career) and wife were in their late 80s. I had to...

Vancouver Island does have a lot of minty older cars. We get maybe an average of one snow that doesn't melt on contact every year. The roads are dry within a couple of days. And a lot of people (like us) stay home until they're dry. "the Rock" generally refers to Newfoundland where (seen with...

As far as I know there is a general exemption for importing vehicles at least 15 years (or is it 20 years) old. There are still taxes (PST and GST) to pay of course. BC has plenty of rust free vehicles so I wouldn't expect much of a market here. Manitoba might be a good bet for selling rust...

I think where you would get into warranty issues is if you mess up the oil change - forget to add oil after draining, or the filter comes loose, or you "double gasket" the filter, and as a result damage the engine but still claim it's a warranty issue. If it's apparent that someone else did the...

When we lived on the farm my dad would take bags of wheat to the local flour mill, where they would mill it and give us back part of our wheat as flour. I don't think any money changed hands. Talk about win-win.

I think your comments are right on. I've rented a few Chrysler products over the years - or to be precise have rented cars and then been stuck with a Chrysler product. Strangely enough (strange to me anyway) I ended up liking them quite a lot. A couple of weeks ago I rented a Jetta (deliberately...

One thing I worry about on old farmsteads is abandoned wells. Our hand dug well must have been 20' deep. If the cover and lining had rotted, it might be partly back filled, but even so falling in would still give you a pretty good start.

I too studied the Odyssey in high school. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some years ago there was a CBC radio presentation on the Odyssey and where Odysseus might actually have been (ie maybe it wasn't a myth, maybe it actually happened). There were some things that could well be real - what you...

We bought this house 10 years ago. The house is about 30 years old and has had some of its windows replaced. Someone had replaced a large 2nd story window in a bathroom - an expensive window because of the large size and being right beside a tub had to be tempered glass. It started to leak...