A picture says 1000 words

Just how bad are things in the automobile industry? This picture I took on my Blackbery back in August (2009) gives a pretty good idea:

"CLEAROUT: New 2007 Dodge Dakota Ext Cab"

If, in August 2009, with the 2010 models coming out any day now, you are finally trying to clear out your 2007 models, maybe you have a bit of an inventory planning problem.

Imagine going on Dragon's Den, or Shark Tank and saying "I am looking for your investment in my company so I can manufacture enough inventory to sit around for at least three or four years." After telling you that you are a "crazy chicken" and making you look like an idiot for a while, the Dragons or Sharks would, one after another, say something like "this just isn't a good business model, so I'm out."

Of course having a bad business model in the auto industry is a pretty minor detail. If you can't sell your shitty, oversized, gas guzzling trucks, just about every major government in the world will simply give you the money that you couldn't figure out how to actually earn.

I don't have cars that nobody wants to buy, but I do have an inventory of blog posts that nobody wants to read. Maybe I could qualify for a bailout?

Sounds like every room in my apartment right now

For some reason, I always found this sign, on a door on the BIRT (Brain Injury Rehab Team) unit at Bloorview Kids Rehab in Toronto, to be funny.



It's called the "Soiled Room." It houses bins for disposing of soiled diapers, linens, etc. But I always expected to open the door and just find a generally filthy room. If someone ever cleaned the room, they would have to replace the sign.

It probably isn't as funny as I thought it was when I took the picture. But I am still blogging it, because I never let unfunniness stand in the way of my blog.

A spark of light indeed

I have to get my Blackberry Bold replaced, because the battery leads are loose, causing it to re-boot at random and annoying times, and because the trackball isn't working right, so I often can't scroll up or down, and also because the USB port is faulty, so I can't connect it to my PC.

The faulty USB port is proving to be the biggest pain, because it means that I can't transfer pictures and videos off of the phone to my PC before sending the Berry back. Pictures I can e-mail to myself and save them to the hard drive, but almost all of my videos are too big to send, so they will probably be lost. That sucks, because I haven't cleared off the videos since before Eric went into hospital in May, so I have all of the videos I have shot since then. Some of them are important because they show Eric's onoing recovery. Some of them are important because they show how we as a family got through this time. There are some great videos of Eric's little brother, Alex being a clown.

As I posted recently, I submitted a story to Bloorview's blog, Bloom, about the importance of laughter in difficult times, and as I go through the pictures and videos on my phone, I realize how lucky we are to have Alex to keep us laughing through our struggles. No picture better illustrates this than this one of Alex, taken on "clown nose day" at Sick Kids, 15 days after Eric's second stroke, and one day after his third stroke:

Guest Blog on Bloorview's Bloom

Louise Kinross, who is responsible for Bloorview Kids Rehab's "Bloom", both in printed magazine format and on the Blogosphere, asked me to submit an article about the importance of laughter in difficult times. So, I did. Want to see it? Of course you do!
Click here to see my guest blog entry, "Laughter is a 'spark of light'"

A new leaf?

Welcome to my first blog entry on this bloggy thingy.

Here's how it's going to work: I am going to start by copying some old blog entries from my MySpace blog thing. Then I will write some new stuff.

Understand? Cool.

Bye for now.

Llove,

Lloyd