Paolo Gaspar

Snow Talk

I went to Grouse two days ago.  The conditions were absolutely FANTASTIC!  I love powder as much as the next person does, but a close second would be the spring time conditions that we usually find in March and April.  I love that because;

1. the snow is soft and it’s damn near impossible to seriously hurt yourself and
2. I’m not so tempted to pass up some laps in the park

So I got up there at about 230pm and basically did laps for 2.5 hours.  It doesn’t seem like a whole lot of time, but doing lap after lap in the same park can get tedious and boring (especially when I’m riding by myself).  I just practiced back 3’s and back 5’s the whole day.  I hope it’ll be as good next week when I go again.

Money Talk

So on a COMPLETELY different note, Canada’s Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, unveiled the 2008 budget yesterday.  Here are the major highlights;

Tax-Free Savings Accounts
This is basically an RRSP that doesn’t allow you to write off your contributions from your current year income.  It does, however, shelter any growth and capital gains from taxation.  It allows for $5000 per year with any unused contribution room eligible for a carry-over.

This new proposal was probably in reaction to the recent economic turmoil in the States.  It essentially should encourage tax payers to save money instead of squandering it all, giving them something to fall back on in case the States goes down and drags Canada even further with it.

Registered Education Savings Plans (RESPs)
A 10-year extension is proposed for RESPs, allowing contributions to an RESP for someone as old as 31 years of age.  Beware of your children requiring this, as they might also be the type who will live in your basement until they have children.  Other symptoms include a Star Wars obsession, World of Warcraft LAN parties, and spending countrless hours building and painting Gundam figurines.

Dividend Gross Up
Proposed changes call for a lower gross up of on dividends received.  That might sound like a good thing, but not necessarily.  Basically, the lower the gross up, the less you take home.  This is assuming your combined Federal and Provincial dividend tax credits are equal to the gross up.  Here’s an example.

As you can see, on the same $30,000 you take home $1,260 more with a higher gross up than you do with the proposed gross up.

I’ve been a firm believer in trying to find ways to avoid tax as much as possible, and it sucks to see that while it does effectively lower the amount of tax your pay, it doesn’t really end up in your favor when you look at your pocket book at the end of the day.

I’m slowly going to try to move away from Facebook.  Here is the reason why:

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. 

Translation: “We Own You”.  This excerpt can be found in their Terms of Use agreement and is current as of February 26, 2008.  Let me break down what I had just highlighted up there:

It says: “By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant …”
It means: By joining, you already agree to everything that we’re going to say with respect to anything that you upload

It says:   ”… to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose …”
It means:  We don’t need to pay you anything if we want to use the stuff you uploaded to us.  We already got your permission, so eat that.

It says: “… the Company may retain archived copies of your Use Content.” 
It means:  We don’t need to delete it just because you asked us to. 

So there you have it!  I think the transition will be more difficult than I think.  Facebook is so handy as far as staying in touch with people, but such restrictive terms of service are difficult for my to swallow.  Sure, the threat isn’t great that someone is going to use my video or photos, but I’m highly protective of that when it comes to someone I don’t know using them.

My name is Paolo Gaspar (as the name would suggest).  I just got this domain and I’m really excited to develop it into something.  I don’t know a whole lot about the wordpress blog software and I don’t know how to use Dreamweaver to make website.  I’m screwed?  Oh well.  I’ll try to come up with some content for this site.

Come back later!  I promise, I’ll get something interesting here.  haha