The word of the week is nomenclature.
Nov 14 – Dreamy Day Job
Work's going great.
Apart from the occasional idiot( unfortunately I have to deal with only over
the phone )the job itself is the best I've ever had, as are the people I
work with. My current team is professional, clients and( mainly thanks to my training ) good at their
jobs and getting better every day from my coaching, humour and professionalism
on the job.
It's wonderful to show up, get paid and go home
again with minimal stress.
Now, I just need to get the rest of my life as
on-track as my day job: this piece is in place, and doing really well, so I
need to build out the rest to fit my needs.
That's... going to be trickier.
But, anything worth doing takes time and effort,
and nobody's going to do it for me. Much as I may feel like I'm banging my head
against the wall in certain areas, I have to believe that the walls going to
dent before my head will.
And I'm nothing if not stubborn – for both good
and bad.
Nov 15 – Not For Everyone
I found the following video… amusing this week.
For my own reasons, that is; naturally, not
everyone will find it funny, but then not everyone is me. I think one of the
humorous aspects of the video is that it makes you think about things that you
take for granted, even divine beings who are supposedly omniscient:
Nov 16 – Four Years + Four Days Later
Back in 2012, I ordered a lock.
Not just any lock, but a Bluetooth-enabled smart
lock for my front entrance, one t
hat can be moved from apartment to apartment with
no damage at all to the doors.
It was called the Lockitron, and at the time was
one of the most successful Kickstarters ever for that site.
Four years later, I still don't have my Lockitron, but I am wiser.
It's not to say that the Lockitron isn't coming,
it's just taking its sweet, sweet time... and serves to offer as a cautionary
tale to anyone looking to put some money down on projects that seem
great, but might not ever materialize.
I'm still looking for to getting my Lockitron,
which now looks to arrive sometime in 2017 once they get their international
order-delivery bugs ironed out. I certainly didn't think it would take longer
than 1 to 2 years maximum, considering that at the time I was Backer #14,000-ish...
but, lesson learned.
Nov 17 –
Playtable?
Who the heck has $10,000 for an electronic gaming table?
I certainly don’t, nor did many other people,
which is why Microsoft's Surface gaming experiment from 2011 didn't gain any
traction in the market: it was just too expensive and did too little to justify
its price.
Fast-forward to five years later now in 2016, and
there's a new device that looks to take the best ideas of the old MS Surface
Table and incorporate them and a far more affordable package.
Called the Playtable,
it's a small 24" touch-sensitive screen that you can place on any surface(
see what I did there? )which allows you to play all sorts of
touch-enabled games, from traditional ones all the way up to brand-new
experiences that people can program easily for use on the device.
I think it's a really neat idea, especially for a
price that's a mere 3 percent of what Microsoft was offering their Surface
for... far more affordable.
Nov 18 – Second PT Job?
Today I tentatively signed on for a new job, in
order to better make ends meet.
I've been looking for a second job for a while
now, as I still haven't had any response after applying for over year now for
numerous better government positions: I can't wait any longer for someone to
take notice of me in that arena.
However, second job for me doesn't mean minimum
wage, which would be a waste of my unfortunately much-lower-than-normal energy
levels and would likely result in me becoming dangerously tired from overwork.
No, I've been looking to supplement my income
while still keeping my day job and my health... but without buying into
anything chancy or disreputable.
Today, I had a long chat with one of my financial
advisors and decided to look into a couple of side ventures to supplement my
income, while I wait for my GlowForge to arrive in early 2017 - by March, I
hope. If I had my druthers, I’d rather be a business owner making things to
order with a GlowForge than anything else, but needs must.
It was a long day, and I was feeling rather
depressed by the end of it, mainly from not being able to move on from where I
am while many of the other motivated people in my office have. Feeling burdened
and cornered by various factors in my life isn't conducive to creativity, a
thought-cycle that only feeds back onto itself.
I'll check out the ideas, and see how valid
they look for my needs.
Nov 19 – Phone Surgery
My phone's showing it's 'age' lately...
When I bought it back in October of 2014, my OnePlus One was cutting edge and a
deal to boot: for a then-incredible price of $375 Canadian( half of
what's the top-level smart phones of the time were going for! )I got a
quad-core processor and 64 GB of storage in a slick phone that beat out
everything else in its price range:
Fast-forward to two years later, and there's
problems.
Mainly, my phone tends to overheat, leading to
constant crashes: up to a dozen a day, where the phone spontaneously reboots...
and takes 10 minutes to come back to full usability. I've learned to deal with
this issue as best I can, but I believe the phone's way overdue for me to
either replace or reformat.
Replacement will be costly, to the tune of at
least $250 CDN for a comparable phone, like the RedMi Note3 Pro, which I would
buy myself rather than go on a contract with one of the major carriers here in
Canada - never again.
Reformatting would mean routing the phone, an
arduous process that has no guarantees of working but that would allow me to
replace the currently-flaky operating system of the phone with one of my
choosing that would be faster and far more stable than what I've been using for
the last two years.
Nov 20 – Odd Thoughts
Sometimes, it's strange to be a writer...
Odd thoughts pop into your head from time to
time, for no reason other than your brain thinks you need to know them at that
particular moment. For example:
Now, I like this idea, all the moreso because it
appeals to my 'What if?' mentality, that our reality is as malleable as any
fiction, when we think about it. New ideas, inventions and all the other
billion factors that shape the world we live in are taking place all at once,
so who's to say what's going to have the biggest effect?
It's a good though to wrap up the week with, one
that's been mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. Again, I think the
weather / time of year are having a big impact on me, as I'm not exercising and
I just want to sleep all the time...
Maybe this year, I'll ask Santa for some stuffed
animals to snuggle while I sleep.
Black Friday's coming up this week, and I have
little desire to spend much at all, as I don't need much: a new video card
would be great, as I've been given a 90-day reprieve on returning my
Darbee 5000S. The idea is that my current setup is causing issues, according to
Darbee's tech support, but the problem is apparently new to them... *sigh* So
if I replace my 2 video cards with just 1, things Should Be Better. Except that
I have to get a decent NEW card for the best price possible, as I can't afford
much. So, more stress...
