Author: Gil

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Getting better all the time

Yesterday, my dad picked up a new iPod. He called me to ask what sort of video files it can play. I wasn’t sure — outside of the movies and videos you can buy at the iTune store — because I haven’t bought a new iPod since July 2004. It’s true: I don’t even have a color display on the thing. Just 9,000 songs or so.

Dad went on to complain about the lack of “stuff” that accompanied the purchase. “There’s no dock, no cables, nothing! It’s just some slim little box, instead of that big one that folded out and had all the other accessories!”

I said, “Dad, tell yourself this: ‘I just bought a 30gig player with a color display, full video, and a 13-hour battery, for $249.’ Then ask yourself what $249 would’ve gotten you a few years back.”

He conceded that it was a mighty impressive amount of stuff for a lot less cash.

Just to keep things in perspective, here’s a piece from an article about Toshiba’s 100gb drive for iPod-sized players:

Toshiba first developed a 1.8-inch drive in 2000. The device, which was at the time the highest capacity such drive available, could hold up to 2GB of data and cost around $740. Today the drives have not only risen in capacity but also fallen in price to the point where an Apple iPod, which includes an 80GB drive and color screen, costs $349.

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Pfailed

What a difference two days make. On Nov. 30, Pfizer gave an “R&D open house” event where it discussed its drug pipeline. The biggest drug in that pipeline is torcetrapib, a compound that raises “good” cholesterol. For years, Pfizer’s been developing it as a combo-drug with Lipitor (atorvastatin), which reduces “bad” cholesterol.

Prior to the meeting, Pfizer issued a press statement that included this passage about torcetrapib:

Commenting on torcetrapib/atorvastatin (T/A), Dr. LaMattina said, “We are first-in-class and we intend to remain best-in-class in a category that has the potential to change the face of cardiovascular medicine. T/A raises HDL and lowers LDL. We believe that the net benefits of the drug — characterized by significant HDL elevation and LDL lowering vs. the small elevation in blood pressure — will greatly benefit patients with CV risk.

“The development of T/A has required tremendous innovation on our part from the earliest stages of discovery through one of the most cutting-edge development programs ever carried out anywhere. At the end of this comprehensive program, we expect to have a medicine with unparalleled efficacy in raising HDL, lowering LDL and with an anti-atherosclerosis indication.

“We will learn of the top-line results of the three pivotal imaging trials during the first quarter of 2007. During this same period, we will also receive the results of some additional Phase III lipid studies. To obtain a reliable picture of the overall safety and efficacy profile of T/A, the results of all these studies will need to be analyzed and reviewed together, and this will happen in the context of the American College of Cardiology Meeting in March, 2007.”

Yesterday, Pfizer announced that its independent Drug Safety Monitoring Board discovered a significantly higher mortality rate in the torcetrapib wing of late-stage clinical trials. The results must have been overwhelming, because Pfizer said that it’s stopping the trials, canceling all development of the drug, and accelerating its restructuring plans. A few days earlier, the company announced that it would lay off 2,400 sales reps, as part of its reorganization. Torcetrapib’s failure means large numbers of people will be getting fired in the next few weeks.

If you follow the pharma industry, you already understand what a cataclysmic event this is for Pfizer. I don’t think it’s on the scale of a Vioxx, because there’s likely no legal liability issues, but the lost sales will be in the tens of billions. Beyond that, there’s the opportunity cost of the R&D that was performed on the product, as well as nearly $800 million in actual development costs.

I’m not trying to convey a “poor little Pfizer” impression here; I disagree with a bunch of the company’s practices (particularly its growth-by-acquisition model from the first half of this decade). What I’m trying to get across is that developing new drugs is a mighty risky proposition. I’m not sure that people who complain, “Drugs are too expensive; pharma companies are evil,” have much idea about the risks and the costs these companies incur.

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It’s a Rap!

(You know you wanna check out the pix from my meanders in Toronto on Friday)

Home from Toronto a lot easier than my boss, whose flight home on Friday got cancelled due to “the airspace over Boston,” according to his pilot. He asked if this meant the bad weather & high winds we had all over the northeast, and was told that it did not. So, after 4 hours in an Embraer 145, he was allowed to leave and headed back to our hotel, where he sat in the bar and watched hockey.

Meanwhile, official VM buddy Sam and I went to see the Raptors play the Celtics in what Sam called “battle of the worst coaches in the NBA.” Since the Raptors have a game tonight against the Knicks, we figured maybe it’s a round-robin tournament.

We had fun at the game, but it was despite the action on the court. Sam’s now been to two NBA games with me (we hit a Dallas game against Orlando in April 2005), and he’s convinced I have NBA-Tourette’s, in which a constant stream of analysis & invective pours forth from my mouth during professional basketball games. We joined up with my boss after the game for a drink or two. He seemed pretty exhausted by the hurry-up-and-wait. I admit: if I were stuck in an Embraer for 4 hours, I’d probably go bananas.

Earlier in the day, after I visited Sam’s company in Oakville and toured the company’s produciton facilities (not as heavy-duty containment suiting as I wore on Thursday), I wandered around Toronto a little, while the weather was clear.

Unfortunately, this wandering didn’t coincide exactly with the clear weather, and I was stuck in some darned cold rain for a while. Early in my meander, I stopped at the Roots store in the Eaton Centre to get a hat and gloves. But then I decided that they were kinda pricey and, besides, the weather was okay now, so it would stay that way forever.

From there, I exited onto Yonge Street, which I forgot was an interesting amalgam of high-end retail, good record stores, and low-rent strip clubs. I headed off from there to a used bookstore I remembered from a past trip, but didn’t find anything.

I decided I’d walk through the University district and visit the famed comic store, The Beguiling. I spent a while there, hoping the weather would clear again and trying to justify spending $240 (Canadian) for a limited print by Sammy Harkham of a golem walking in the forest. I held off (I’ll wait till the USD appreciates against Canada’s dollar, and I’d probably be fine with a panel from The Poor Sailor anyway).

One of the nice things about having started doing yoga is that rambling ambles like this one don’t seem to give me the slight mid-back pain I was getting the past few years. I’ve only been on it for a few weeks or so, so hey.

During this walk, I came across two things I didn’t take pictures of: the Bata Shoe Museum and the Robarts Library. The former looks entertaining enough, and I bought a postcard from there for Amy, to give us yet another reason to take a long weekend here in the springtime.

The Library, on the other hand, is one of the most overwhelmingly depressing buildings I’ve ever seen. It may’ve been worse because of the rain and gray skies, but I can’t imagine a scenario which the appearance of this building inspires anything but fear and dread. Don’t let 1970s architecture happen to you!

After I left The Beguiling emptyhanded, it was time for another overpriced cab ride back to the hotel. I was amazed by the cost of cab rides in this city, as well as the ones I had to take to the pharma companies, which were outside the city. The flat-rate limo-y cars were also awfully expensive, including $51 CAD for the 20-minute ride from downtown to the airport.

In keeping with my recent post about accumulating all sorts of change and foreign currency, I returned home this morning with about $47 in Canadian bills and change. I feel like George Soros.

Anyway, a really neat thing happened during the short (54-minute) flight today. We completed our initial descent through the cloud cover, and all I could see were brown-gray hills and a few houses and a winding road or two. I thought, “We’re only 15 minutes from landing, but I have NO idea where we are right now.” It looked like Pennsylvania farmland, or far western NJ.

Then I noticed the Sheraton Crossroads to port, and it hit me: I was looking down at my morning commute! Sure enough, Rt. 17 threaded away from the Sheraton, southeast to Ramsey. Our plane followed Rt. 208 for a bit, as I picked out landmark after landmark (the Nabisco plant, the Ikea across from Garden State Plaza, even the Lukoil I stopped in last week). I’ve only had this perspective from a plane once before. Usually, I come home at night, or on different flight paths.

It helps to see things from different angles. Except Raptors/Celtics games.

(check out a couple of pix from my Toronto walkabout)

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Required Reading

The official VM wife has started her own blog! She’s at Minimally Invasive. Since it uses the same template as this blog (I’m cheap), you’ll only be able to tell us apart by the fact that Amy’s posts are far less jaded than mine. Also, she has better hair.

Down the line, we may put up duelling posts about some of our domestic wackiness. For the moment, we decided she should take the lead on the time I almost made her a botulism-tainted martini this week.

Never a dull moment!

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Containment Policy

I spent a chunk of the day wearing containment gear during a visit to a drug manufacturing facility near Toronto. Unfortunately, I had to sign a confidentiality agreement before the visit, so there was no way to take photos of myself in this amazing get-up.

My guide for this tour told me that the facility’s policies are for redundant safeguards against contamination (there’s some high potency materials in this site), so we were overdoing it for the sake of added safety. Even so, we didn’t enter any of the production suites where the material actually gets handled; the staff in those rooms wear full rebreather gear on a daily basis.

So, as you can tell, I’ve started another trip. This one’s pretty brief: I’ll be visiting one more drug manufacturer tomorrow, then hitting the Raptors/Celtics game with my contact at that company, official VM buddy Sam Ricchezza, last seen writing the Raptors report in our NBA preview, and goofing on me for not coming up to visit him and see his company.

Right about now, I’m hitting up the minibar for a caffeine fix. I’m also eyeing the pod-coffee machine pretty suspiciously, but it might be necessary to keep me awake till dinner, which we’ll be having at Rain, which “was once the site of Toronto’s first women’s prison,” according to the site.

Anyway, I took Shakespeare Wars with me (hardcoveritude be damned!), and have enjoyed the first 50+ pages. I’ve also got my Yoga for Regular Guys with me, since I’m trying to make a habit/practice of that. The weather’s pretty grotesque, so I doubt I’ll be able to take any good pictures. It’s a pity, since Toronto’s a kinda neat city. It’s my 3rd trip here, and it’s always struck me as a pretty good place to be. Admittedly, I know nothing about the economics of the place.

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Balance transference

The nice thing about recognizing that my impulses can only lead to extravagant impulse buys (like the $1,500 I nearly spent on a new laptop last week), is that I actually have cash on hand when something significant occurs, like yesterday’s $900 bill for work on my car (tires, 60,000-mile tuneup, various belts, differentials and filers).

The added bonus of putting $900 into the Element of Style is that it kills the big impulse buy of getting myself a new car.

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Black Coffee in Bed

Jane Galt has written about plenty of important topics these last few years, but none as important as Best Practices for Coffeemaking. It’s a subject near and dear to my heart, especially since I recently moved back to paper filters after two years using a gold filter. We recently bought a new coffeemaker, because Amy concluded that having coffee waiting for her when she wakes up is never a bad thing, and the old one wasn’t programmable.

Despite my issues with buying products from German companies, I went back to the Krups well on this one. They haven’t done me wrong yet, and this new model’s been working out okay. But the big change, as I mentioned, is tossing out the gold filter and going back to paper. This was supposed to be a temporary measure, but I’ve been pretty happy with the coffee in the morning, so I’m sticking with it. Also, contra Galt, this new machine has a built-in water filter. I may take up her suggestion and get a Brita pitcher.

Which brings me to my #1 suggestion for good coffeemaking: get good coffee. This means whole bean, and not the Starbucks beans at your supermarket. For me, the best affordable stuff ($7.99/lb.) is the Kenya AA “Out of Africa” beans I get at Chef Central. When I wanna splurge, I head into NYC for Porto Rico Importing Co. and buy Hawaiian Kona ($24.95/lb.).

In the afternoons, I have a second dose of the stuff. I make this with a French press mug from Bodum (which they don’t seem to make anymore, according to their site). My coworkers goof on the devotion I have to making this stuff (“You actually grind coffee in the morning and bring it to work?”), but I believe that life is too short for coffee that comes out of a prefilled bag from a “drinks station”.

(At a conference & trade show in Paris in October, some exhibitors had complimentary coffee for attendees. This was my first experience with pod-style coffee, and it’s a poor substitute; trust me.)

So get good beans, grind your own either the night before or in the morning, and maybe use filtered water. And you can go too crazy trying to get “the perfect cup”. As one of the commenters on Jane Galt’s site put it:

The problem with increasing one’s level of coffee snobbery too far, is the same as the problem with wines, home audio, or any other hobby that deals with diminishing returns: the increase in required investment (time, money, or frequently both) to go to the next level of enjoyment, begins to far exceed the marginal return from doing so.

(One major caveat I need to make: I take my coffee black. I’m pretty sure I adopted this style because it reduced the amount of variables that go into preparing the stuff. This way, I only have to deal with the quality of the beans, the water, and the coffeemaker. No worries about the milk being off, or having the wrong kind of sweetener available. Maybe I also drink it this way to avoid the chemicals and/or calories in the additives. Or I’m just all hardcore and shit.

The point is: my best practices for coffeemaking need to be balanced against this bizarre predilection I have. Similarly, never trust me with any issues involving alcohol.)