Zoe and Gavin .com

A survey said that half of Canadians weren’t planning on getting a Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) when they became available this week, and mostly because they don’t know about them!

I only just heard about them in the past few weeks - basically the Canadian gov’t has launched a new flexible savings account where you don’t have to pay taxes on the interest. You get a deposit room of $5000 a year, and if you don’t use it, or spend it, you can redeposit that same amount the next year, and pay no taxes on the interest!

I thought it was particularly well suited to students living on OSAP, as you do one bulk payment a year, and then wittle away at it bit by bit until the next payment. The first year you might not be able to deposit all of it, but the next year there is room for $10,000 - $15,000 the next. And there is no penalty for transferring amounts from your account to your spouse’s.

It does get a bit tricky to use it as a regular savings account, as if you make a withdrawal the difference is added to next years room. So, putting in $5000 in January, spending it and putting in another $5000 in March would have penalty taxes :S The penalty taxes are 1% a month on what you over deposited, not just the interest which adds up fast.

So anyway, it looks neat, and at my bank the interest rate is higher than a regular savings account, which is okay by me!

More info:
Official info from the gov’t
Investor’s group poll from October - 1/2 of Canadians won’t use TFSA

Hope that wasn’t too boring for y’all :p

Today I threw together a Firefox Extension that hides the huge and ugly Advertisement Sidebar on Grooveshark. Get it here, and let me know what you think!

So Gavin pointed out something interesting to me.

The theme for Scrubs is “I’m no superman” (listen)

The theme for Smallville is “Somebody save me!” (listen)

Maybe these songs would make more sense if they were switched? What do you think?

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Yesterday we decided to make sandwiches for supper.

But, you say, sandwiches are for lunch! Yes, we know that– How are you going to be satisfied by a sandwich for supper!? Hey. There’s no need to interrupt. You’ll understand once you see the pictures.

Ingredients (top to bottom)

• Top half of cheese bun
• Honey Mustard
• A slice of Monteray Jack cheese with Jalapenos
• A slice of salami
• Thinly sliced sauteed vidalia onions
• Two strips of bacon
• Sliced green olives
• A few slices of Montreal smoked meat
• Thickly tomato slices
• Another slice of salami
• Romane lettuce
• Mayonaise
• Bottom half of cheese bun

This sandwich is not for the faint-of-heart. It takes real commitment to pick up a sandwich like this.

The sandwich looked lonely on the plate, so it came with some macaroni friends.

Now that’s a supper sandwich.

Did you know that NASA’s original video footage of the moon landing has been lost?

Apparently the footage that was broadcast (check it out) had something go wrong with the processing, and the video that everyone saw was not nearly as clear as it should have been!

A couple years ago, the original people who worked on the technology (retired now, of course) saw some old stills that showed how clear the raw footage was and wanted to get the originals and take another swing at it. Only NASA couldn’t find the tapes. Apparently the NASA filing system isn’t particularly strict. There are no proper databases, only the flimsiest of paper trails - which get dropped behind shelves.

In fact, an office can sign material out of storage, keep it for a few years and then decide to destroy it themselves and never let the place they borrowed it from know!

It doesn’t help that the time period was during the cold war, so they kept limited records of everything to keep them ‘out of the wrong hands.’ Or apparently, any hands.

Check out this article where the original scientist in charge of the video is interviewed: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/nasa.html

Apparently the bad quality video has been bugging him for a while . . .