Month: May 2024

A few years ago, my information was leaked when LifeLabs got hacked. If you’re not familiar withe LifeLabs, it’s essentially a company that has a monopoly on medical testing services in my province. If you need to get blood drawn, pee in cup, drop off your poop, and the like, LifeLabs is basically your only option.

There was a class action lawsuit against LifeLabs, which I was a part of. The suit was settled almost a year ago and at the time, it was estimated the payout per person would be anywhere between $50 to $150. Now, if you think about it, even at $150, that doesn’t make up for the fact that your personal information was exposed to the Internet. Who knows what people did with some of this information. It’s possible that someone took this info, targeted a person, and then used the info to gain access to more info. The hassle and damage done by identity theft is hardly offset by a measly $150.

Well, after almost a year of administrative work, the payout for the settlement occurred this week. This morning, $7.86 was deposited into my account to make up for the fact that LifeLabs’ insecure systems allowed my personal information to be leaked. So not only did I (and everyone else affected) not get $150, I didn’t even get $50. It’s really quite telling how much your privacy is worth these days. $7.86 might get me a medium coffee at a decent coffee shop. Imagine the leak caused your credit to be ruined by identity theft. LifeLabs gives you $7.86 and says sorry, and waits for the next time you need to come in for a blood draw.

All of this is just so frustrating, from the leak itself to the compensation for the settlement. Companies will continue to leak personal information of their customers and the people affected will never get the full compensation they deserve.

I completed my parents tax return this week but I have done the same for myself. I probably should do mine before too long because I’m only partially convinced I don’t owe more money to the government. My parents got a refund this year but I’ll be lucky to do the same.

I did the math and I should get a refund of less than $100. I had to contribute a hefty amount to my RRSP in the first sixty days of the new year to even get to that point though. We’ll actually see if my math was correct.

I was at my local Safeway last week and I saw they were selling sliced banana bread in the bakery section. It was eight slices per package. I couldn’t remember the last time I had banana bread. I hesitated before putting the package in my basket because I wasn’t sure how much I was gonna like it.

When I got home, I ate almost half the package in a whole day. The banana bread was light, moist, and delicious. It made me remember that I enjoy banana bread but it also was a reminder that making banana bread can go horribly wrong.

While this was commercially prepared banana bread, I’ve had my fair share of homemade banana bread. I will preface what I’m about to say and state that homemade baking is lovely and thoughtful. It can be better than anything you buy at the supermarket. Having said that, it’s clear there is a skill to making banana bread, at least in the way that I like it. In some cases, people have made what I call “banana brick”. Somehow, their banana bread is incredibly dense. I can only imagine they’ve somehow used too much actual banana or the banana hasn’t been thoroughly distributed or mixed in. When it’s like this, it feels like less of a bread and more like a compressed brick of banana. While some people might like it like this, the consistency of it is not palatable to me.

As for the Safeway banana bread, I must have not been alone in liking it, because two days after I bought it, I returned to the supermarket and saw all of it had been sold out.

On a recent weekend, I discovered my local municipality had set up an “Earth Day” recycling program at city hall. You could bring all sorts of stuff to be recycled or junked. This included textiles, electronics, random pieces of metal, and other household items. I learned about this about thirty minutes before the end of the event.

I really wish I had known about this well in advance. I scrambled to find things that I wanted to get rid of. I was able to gather several items of metal that I had been holding onto because I didn’t know what to do with them. One of these items was an old cast iron pan that was just sitting in my kitchen. The outside of the pan was and continued to flake, leaving black bits of cast iron whenever you moved or touched the pan. I also had several metal containers that previously held food, like not cans, but like cookie tins and such.

With minutes to spare, I arrived at the city hall parking lot where the recycling event was being held. I was glad to have these items gone but if I had more time, I would have gathered much more. In particular, I have so many old shoes that have holes in the canvas, leather, or soles. They’re no good for donation. I also have old clothes that are also ripped or contains holes, also not good for donation. I would have definitely sent those off for recycling.

I know I can drive about 40 minutes to offload these textiles on any weekend at a transfer station but my city hall is so much closer. Maybe next year?