Smazz

Funny thing, Mike Laziridis, by the time he was 13 read every science book in his library, won an award. This is not to say his decisions/returns are to be compared to buffett but you cannot discount the facts that the man himself was a genius also.

Thats what I was going to write. I would also add in the Distillery District, I know I know the kids but its really just a bunch of nice restaurants that were converted from old distillery buildings. If you really want to live on the "edge" once you are up at the CN tower :P The Lakeshor is great to hang out. Im not sure if the CNE is still open (or if it opened yet for this year) Toronto is maybe the most multi cultural city so hit up all the different ethnic zones. There really isnt too many places you wouldnt want to go but just like anywhere in the world you dont want to be walking around with kids at 2am. If you guys are in to history Fort York and other cool stuff here http://www.toronto.ca/culture/museums/fort-york.htm GREAT GREAT restaurants in TO and not just for the food but the atmosphere. Soak it up. Oh, if you are driving, when you are coming up the QEW from Niagara, take the Plains Rd exit at Burlington and drive along lake shore road for about 10 - 20 min. Nice drive. I live outside of Toronto but any questions you may have about the surrounding area PM me. :)

Thanks again. I will digest what you wrote. Again, appreciate your concern but not really looking for advice other than confirmation of reading of emails which I see you have addressed thank you. There is a controlling interest in the company. I believe I did mention that a few times. That is not the problem. There really isnt a huge problem other than some hurt feelings going forward and a little extra work in the near future for myself and the CEO. Thank you Well done.

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately in life there are such things as realities. ie. it is not realistic for all people to fill all roles AND it sure would be nice to let the wind blow and lets all hope for the best but that's not too realistic nor the way things work. BTW, did I say any trash was talked? Trash does not have to be talked for people to get bent out of shape. If that is the first thing that would come to mind when you read that, ok, however when people are not working out changes have to be made. There was no trash talking here. Changes will be made. I didn't detail any specifics of what was communicated in the email because really - yes, that would be trash talking. You shouldnt assume such with the little that I wrote. In addition, the emails were not coming from me, not that i needed to state that but i feel you wanted to do a morality check so there you go. What was communicated was the type of information that gets communicated daily in business. Its not always nice to hear about if it is about you but, this happens. Again, I want to thank you for you time however I did ask about the emails in particular unauthorized viewing of emails. I do appreciate the help for info about domains etc but that information I already have. Re the servers, domain, I apologize if I was vague, we do know where they are who they are under - the point i was making is that I was surprised that they were not listed under the company. Again, not trying to be a prick here -just looking for some info.

Earlier this year I was called upon by a young friend (mid 20s) to help him with his start up company. At first I was reluctant to agree to come on board as i was already critically tight with time in addition to both my parents being in very very dire health (Mother stroke, then fall- broken hip/wrist - Father cancer), as some of you would know I was absent from this forum for a good spell of time partly because of these circumstances. I really didn't think I would have the time to help my friend with his start up under even normal circumstances but then I thought to myself "well, you are going to find the time help the guy anyway for free so may as well just take him up on his offer for your time". You see, I am one of those people that CANNOT let my friends go without my help if I can at all assist. So I agreed, and off we go. Now that I got the sob story part out of the way, this is where things get a bit messy: I knew as soon as I would come on board other equity holders (there are 4 in total - myself, My friend who is majority owner, ITguy1 and ITguy2) ,the ITguy1 and ITguy2 would soon get noses bent out of shape considering I have probably 3x the expertise and experience as the balance of the other shareholders and this would come through probably not in the most subtle of ways. My young friend, majority shareholder, though having majority votes he defers to me on most business and strategic type decisions. Not to be crued but IT1 and IT2 equity holders don't have the experience or knowledge to strategically take the company where it needs to go. They are programmers and other than writing code and webpages they aren't a resource above that role. They did a fine job setting up the program. Yes, they want to be more than that but its just not there and thats not just my word but the majority owner's as well. Yes, we are all working for equity and equity alone. Fast forward to today where a lot of decisions have been made and as I suspected a lot of feelings have been hurt/insecurities surfacing. This is unfortunate but that is life and these things happen in business. Much of the framework of the business, mostly programming, legal etc was constructed before I came on board. My friend, majority owner is the specialist in the field the company is in however absolutely green when it comes to general business practice. He did not make any provisions or put safe guards in place should the IT equity holders be relieved from their duties (not relieved of their equity). I had just assumed he had taken care of this before I came on board unfortunately no. Without getting into even longer winded detail he has no knowledge of program passwords, backups etc etc. The server where the program lies is not even in his/company name etc etc. Critical stuff here considering the program is the major piece of IP that we have. Yes, legally, the company is the owner but as you could probably realize it would be a nightmare if something happened for us to try to get things back to order. So. Question #1 (again, sorry for the long story): How best to determine if the IT gents are reading the majority owners/CEO emails (which have been going through this company website email)? Much has been communicated by him through this email that they would not be too happy with and their recent actions confirm my thoughts they were probably reading his emails. I would be surprised if they don't have access (to the shock of the young maj owner) but i have to confirm some how. I am almost 100% certain this is the case however I don't have the IT expertise to prove it. Can any one enlighten me on the best practice to confirm my suspicion? As with most start ups this company is running on a shoe string budget till funding comes through. FWIW General info on the status of the startup: We have had meetings with many govt and university groups already, all conceding right from the get go that we have something of tremendous value on our hands. We have been asked to partner up with one university and we have a fairly substantial line up groups wanting to meet with us. I am just trying to get the house in order in a few areas before we take neck steps. Thanks for any guidance. We are also waiting some feedback from legal on this as well.

Its not going to happen - and if it does it will be short lived just like the last time he tried this. Its dumb posturing. If its the real estate market they are trying to put the brakes on there are better ways than trying to do something so counter intuitive as to throw a higher tax on already strapped consumers. I remember the last time he ventured into jacking the rates up I told my friend "this wont last long - he will have to reverse course very soon" and he did. Consumers are over debted and thats no ones fault but there own however this debt was accumulated in the crazy high flying "goldilocks years" thinking increasing rates will help the problem in this employment environment is non sensical imo. The low interest rates and QEs are the only thing saving the already strapped from more bankruptcy.

Thanks Buffetteer, I was wondering thinking about doing that. It could make the difference on deciding which place to stay. Nothing hurt by asking right? haha!

yes, that was it! Thanks. Now.. how to favorite so i dont misplace ;D

Hi Guys and Gals, I tried search but came up nothing. A while ago we had a discussion on here about the merits of renting one of the lease by private owner properties for vacations as opposed to buying your own property. There was a website listed which was really the focal point around this whole discussion but since my HD took a RIM shot a while back I cannot find or remember the name of the site. If anyone can chime in would appreciate.

I may have previously mentioned on here that, as hobby, I make thing such as Tshirts/hats etc for friends and teams I am associated with and the league that I run. I have done quite a few things for charities and quite a few more are asking me to do things for them. I get charged GST when buying the materials and have to pass it on to the charity/fundraiser etc but would it be better them if I get a Vendor Permit #. Im assuming If the end user is a registered charity, GST is not required to be remitted? Or am I way off on here? Anyone with help or info is appreciated? Thanks

BTW, I still think Caps will take it. I hope so! ;D

haha.. you know, watching the game last night I said to myself "y'know, I forgot to mention Smith in that list!" This has been his best year by far. See if it can continue. BTW, I changed the title of this thread just so we can continue here with the Playoff shenanigans..

I picked them to upset Rangers also. I picked: Sens, Caps Preds Coyotes Blues Devils Canucks Pens

I agree. It will be very interesting to see what happens in off season re goalie situation. Luongo can still take a team deep into the playoffs. If I was him, I wouldn't want to play in Vancouver going forward with all he has had to take but who knows how hard it will be to trade him. $5.3M salary cap isn't bad for a top tier goalie but its the duration. I would speculate Roberto will retire in a few years as Im pretty sure he has had a good chunk $ paid up front and his salary goes to, what?, $2M not too far down the road? If that is the case, I believe if the player signs the retirement sheet that cap hit is gone. BTW, I still think Caps will take it.

Oh yea, for sure. I mean some of these goalies that are playing great came out of no where in the last few seasons or in the case of Holtby, he's only played 7 regular season games this year!!!

I'll start off by saying I picked them to go to the Finals again. The last 2 series (last years Finals, this series) Sedins were no where, Kessler was no where, Burroughs no where. WOW! No goals in any of those series yet they blame their goalie. I hear they are even blaming Luongo for not stopping that shot in O/T? I hate it when teams blame their goalie when the rest of the team dissappears. They used to do this in Detroit whenever the Wings didnt win it all or went out before they were expected. I don't think they can will pull that in Detroit this year though. Anyway, will be interesting to see what they do in the offseason.

Invert, seriously, your story would make a great movie. I know, I know, there have been movies on people and poker and blah blah blah but the little sharades of you no longer recording in your daily log to suppress your parents fears and just the fact that you were so young and playing under your brothers name at 16 and doing so well. Could just imagine what other shenanigans were going on. haha.. I enjoy to read whatever else you write about it - and thanks for writing what you did.

Alwaysinvert, I would like to read (maybe its own thread?) on how you started from ? and growing it to $1.5M through online poker. Just for leisure interest of time lines and Im sure the drama that must have accompanied the ascent! Don't worry, I DO NOT intend to try to replicate your feat through poker. I can't even get through 2min of watching the stuff on TV! Every time I feel like relaxing on the couch (away from my computer/phone) I will click it on the sports station and then I curse when I realize they are broadcasting a poker tourney! Everyone in my family loves poker except me. Whatever you do with your $, similar to what the others have warned, BE CAREFUL of SPENDING ON SWEDISH TWIN DANCERS!!!!!!

My advice to everyone: DONT PLAY POKER AGAINST THIS GUY!!!!!!!! 8) Seriously, I cant believe people saying they are too bored managing their own $. I guess if that was all you were doing with your life - maybe but, it just seems like there is not enough time to do the research while managing my other interests. For instance: I run my own hockey league. Why do I do this? Well, the other leagues I played in got just too crazy. The Owners of the leagues only cared about $ they didnt care about getting rid of idiots. So, I made my own league, with my own rules, allowing only those people I knew to play in. Granted, you have to have a big social network with like minded interests to do this sort of thing. I do excericise though not as much as I used to or would like to. Volunteer work is great. If you can't or wont give up of your time, again you can set up some very nice fund raisers. I do this a few times a year also. Look into starting your own on line Poker site. Thats right, I said it!!!! ;D Good luck. You dont need it! ;)

Sounds like Burlington/Oakville Lakeshore haha.. I am just south there BTW.... and no, I can't afford the properties I described :-[. But seriously, I couldnt believe the property values last time I was in Norther Calif/San Fran.

If you need to edit a picture and don't want to shell out multiple hundreds of $s for photoshop. Try installing GIMP, I've been using it for years on both windows and linux and it is infinitely more powerful than Paint. Once you learn how to use it, very quick to open up a picture and make your edits, then save it and import into another program like word. And it's free. http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ Actually, for a little while I have been playing around with Inkscape, which from what I hear is very similar to GIMP - somepeople like Inkscape, some like GIMP. I would like to play aound more with it because I have had to generate Vector files of the graphics a few times and Ive been told you can do this with these programs. The other thing that has held me back from using it more is it (Inkscape) seems to be a Memory Hog!!, for me anyway. Everything just gets really bogged down. Not sure if all graphics programs would be the same or is just because it is a free ware program or maybe just my comp. I should look at setting up GIMP also - at least I'll know some one else who is using it if i have questions ;)

Eric, I was able to produce the results you were describing however I had go through a slightly different method because it seems my toolbars/functions are a bit diffferent than yours so maybe I am using a different version of Word. I had done some graphics similar to what you described except for the "Text in front - Text behind" etc. I will play around with this a bit more but it would be good if i could have the same functionality so to speak as Paint WITH the higher resolution of word. The one thing that may hold me back on this method is when i am working with the actual pic - sometimes delete parts of it, add other parts etc. I would have to do that in paint and then transfer over to Word. Thanks for your Help Eric and the rest.

RKB you are correct on that as I have used both Word and Excel for this need because they have different/additional options that can be used. Ive never used that wrap text in Word though but I like the idea and will have to try it. I have used WORDART for different shapes of text and then copied them into my Paint file but the text comes out all.. how to describe??.. not crisp/clean or distorted after copied. I cant remember how PAINT was back in the day (I too was on a 386 AND A 286! :o haha..) but I did view see some youtube vids on PAINT functions recently and there are quite a few things that can be done which are not really evident to the casual user.

Ok I will try saving them in BMP. see if that makes a difference. thanks

Thankyou LessthanIV, I will take a look there also. I am surprised how much stuff MS actually delivers for the simple user (me :D). Thanks