Workbench, Wages and a Win10 Win

The word of the week is mellifluous.

Oct 12 – Adios, Amiga?

It’s time.

For 20 years, I've hung onto my old Amiga 2000, in the hopes that one day I'll be able to set it up and use it again to play all the wonderful games that I still remember with such fondness. Workbench 1.3 and 3.1, Guru Meditation errors... ah, memories.

However, it's just not going to happen and I have to face the fact that it's just taking up space. Even though it's in perfect working condition, I have to let it go to someone who can make better use of it. I have quite a collection of games with original boxes as well, enough that it's going to be a challenge to ship it to whoever manages to snag it on eBay in the next few weeks or months.

Most of the collection, plus hardware pics and screencaps

I really don't want to sell it, but to be brutally realistic, I also don't want to sit around waiting for games to load up on a system whose CPU runs at a paltry 25mHz. to put that in perspective, my ‘older’ 4-year-old AMD 905e CPU runs at 3.7 gHz, several hundred times faster. And that's without factoring in that many of the games run from floppy disks, or off a first-generation hard disk.

It's unknown if anybody will purchase the Amiga from me, even if I price it's quite reasonably, due to the shipping costs. The Amiga itself weighs over 30 pounds with just a keyboard and mouse, while the 5 boxes of games are about 20 pounds and several feet in all dimensions for everything. I spent too many hours today taking every single Amiga-related bit of hardware and software out of their boxes, laying them out and photographing them to use in the sale listing next weekend. You can see some( not all )of the pictures compiled above.

Hopefully, somebody out there will give it a good home; I certainly did.

Oct 13 – Walmart Wages

When it comes to lifestyle, your job is a critical factor. At least for most people.

If you're working for minimum wage, there's not a lot of lifestyle to be had in terms of financial purchase power. I should know: I've worked for minimum wage too often and for too long in my life and far too recently, I might add.

What is minimum wage mean for employers, however? One word: profit.

For most employers, wages make up anywhere from 30 to 40% of their operating costs, meaning the less they can pay employees, the more margins are available for profit for the business. The larger the company, the more savings can be had by maintaining a lean workforce who are paid as close to possible as a minimum for their industry.

Unsurprisingly extremely large employers, such as Walmart, stand to save the most money by paying their employees the least when it comes to wages. While the following video has been online since the spring of 2015, I haven't seen it before this week and I find it resonates with me on several levels. I do understand that it posits several simplifications in the formula that uses, but all the same, it captures the essence of how profit is king in a modern capitalist society and the pawns are the workers:

Oct 14 – Battlefront Beauty

Oh, to have money to spend on a high-end gaming PC!

There's just one game I want to play right now: Star Wars Battlefront.

It is the most gorgeous game, graphics-wise, and those incredible visuals go a long way towards giving the player the feeling of total immersion in the Star Wars universe. Have a look at this video from the beta, in which a player simply strolls around and does his best to capture the wondrous visual eye candy that can be had inside the confines of this latest entry in the silicon Star Wars universe:

I probably won't be able to reformat and upgrade my main PC until early 2016. Even then, the specs are such for SW: Battlefront that running it at any sort of decent resolution will be a questionable endeavor. But, I may have to try: to be able to realize a childhood dream of being in the Battle Of Hoth, well…

How much is that worth, I ask you?

Oct 15 – At a Book Launch Party!

T’was a fun night to be an author.

Or at least, the friend of an author, as I attended Astra Crompton’s launch of her second book,  Legend Of The Quill. I had a small part in its final version, having given feedback on the last draft for the better part of the last year.

The launch was held at a local coffee shop, Gorge-Ous Coffee, which caters to writers in many ways and was the perfect place to hold the event. All told, about two dozen people were present for the launch, which filled the shop to the maximum.

Astra read for selections from her book, in reverse chronological order and you could have heard a pin drop during each reading, the audience was so attentive. It was a lovely launch and I hope that she'll gain traction from her sales online at places like Amazon so that she can continue working on the other dozen-plus books in her series.

For myself, I hope to have a NYC launch, or perhaps simultaneous launches in several dozen cities… who knows what the future will bring? I just have to work hard to get there!

Oct 16 – Business? Me?

I took a big step today towards financial independence: I’m setting up a business.

Today I had a meeting with my credit union to discuss the feasibility of starting my own home business, with a small loan to get me going in the next few months.

It would be a based on the purchase of a Glowforge in the next week, to use for laser cutting / etching services on a small scale. I would be focusing on several specific markets locally, with an eye towards expanding into the rest of the province and eventually across Canada. With any luck and a whole lot of hard work, I may be even able to reach the point where I will have steady international sales.

Understandably, I've been very busy for the last two weeks putting together a comprehensive business plan. Not having written one before, it was a struggle to stay focused while presenting relevant data and numbers to support my suggested endeavor. Nevertheless I think I succeeded in creating a solid plan that presents an excellent case for making a go at my getting ahead financially.

The meeting at the credit union went very well, with several of the staff commenting on how well I had crafted my business plan and an interesting note, how much of a difference character makes in loan decisions - something I hadn't known and so I'm grateful I had the character of myself to present to them today.

I'll be on pins and needles for the next week, while I await their decision. There is a time constraint involved, in that the initial pre-order( with a substantial discount! )for the Glowforge ends on October 24, so the timing is a little tight. I'm hopeful that things will come through before then and that I'll be able to make the first purchase for my business out of an approved loan.

Wish me luck!

Oct 17 – Finished Prime

Well, that didn’t take long…

About six weeks ago, I started watching Transformers Prime in earnest on Netflix. I'd dabbled in the series a year ago when I first saw was available on Netflix, but only recently did the stories really start to resonate with me; the writing on the show is fantastic, as I've mentioned before and the voice acting is stellar - I hadn't known that both Ernie Hudson and Markie Post were part of the cast.

Watching it at home and on my phone( over wifi, darn data limits… )I continued to be impressed by the show's quality and depth. Not to mention the gorgeous HD graphics gracing every frame.

Today I watched the final episode and it did not disappoint! Everything wrapped up fairly nicely, with an eye towards a possible continuance of the series in different directions. I do have to say I wasn't sure how they would top themselves, so to speak, considering the action that has gone on in the plot lines over the course of the three seasons. It really felt satisfying to end the series today.

In viewing Transformers Prime, I was once again reminded of the thousands of hours of television that I'd like to get around to watching, shows that I have saved on my computer or listed on Netflix. It's amusing to think that I could spend several years just watching television while at the moment I don't have cable, nor do I have the time to indulge such an admittedly luxurious habit.

Maybe in five or 10 years; I should still have all my saved DVD’s then. Considering that at last count, my digitize files from my DVD collection were pushing 3 TB in size, I've had to find some room on multiple drives to fit it all in.

On what media that's all going to be archived on five years hence from now, I have no idea…

Oct 18 – Upgrades

It worked!

Months ago, I attempted to install Windows 10 on both my desktop and laptop, with no success on either. While I understood why the installation on my desktop didn’t work due to various software issues with Windows, I was perplexed as to why my laptop failed to upgrade. Several calls to Microsoft tech support didn't resolve the issue and so I shelved it. 

Until today.

On a whim, I started up the Windows 10 installation program and to my delight, it got further than it ever had on the previous three attempts, showing me this screen:

After only a few minutes, with the laptop having rebooted three or four times, Windows 10 stated that it was installed – huzzah! A little poking around confirmed that everything was working properly; with the usual driver updates aside, it looks like my laptop is better than new!

I'll have to play with Win10 for the next few weeks to see how exactly it's better than the much-maligned Windows 8.1, which I actually didn't mind all that much since I didn't use the tiled Metro interface at all. I'm hoping that it will extend battery life as well as help the system seem speedier with the updated OS and generally extend the usable lifetime of the laptop, which says it doesn't have discrete graphics I don't use as a gaming machine so much as a general-purpose computer.

Definitely a win today!

  

This is the earliest blog post ever, having worked on it starting well before lunch as I've lot more to do before I go to bed. Oddly, I haven't heard a siren go by all day, which is really unusual for where I live so I'm really enjoying the relative quiet. There's been the usual traffic noise, including motorcycles, but for the most part it's been a relaxing day sitting here doing work on the computer. It's going to be a busy week up ahead, with three different meetings of my writing group as well as awaiting news about my business loan application. See you next week!

Castles, Cameras and Creative Mealtimes

The word of the week is sartorial.

October 5 – Fall Time

Is it October already? Wow…

Only a few more months to go until the end of the year.

Until the next Star Wars film.

Until when I thought I would have the first draft of my second book finished.

Until I thought I'd have moved on from my current job, though I'm thankful that I have no need to do so unless I choose that path - things are great and far less stressful than I could have imagined.

Oh, and Christmas is coming too - can't forget that.

I think it's going to be an interesting next few months. My life has stabilized and change for the better, for the most part and whatever stress I'm currently carrying is partially self-induced. While it would definitely feel nice to be in better shape financially, I am hopeful that by the end of the year some other things will fall into place and improve the situation even more.

In the meantime, December 18 can't get here fast enough!

October 6 – Celebs Say: Enough

Even the celebrities of had enough of the crazy gun violence taking place in our neighbor to the south.

I'm impressed by the variety and quality of the celebrities in the video, many of whom that I have a high level of respect for. It's heartening to see media savvy celebs speaking out against the insanity that keeps needlessly taking lives in the US every day.

I only wonder how many more years, and lives, it will take until major changes are effected...

Because that video is from 2012 - nothing's changed.

October 7 – Camera!

What a deal!

Thanks eBay, last week I managed to snag a great deal on a great camera, which I've been wanting to get for some time. While I have a nice 12MP Fujifilm pocket camera that served me well for the last seven years, it doesn't have more than a 3x zoom on it, which is a handicap too often.

Having looked for the last year or two at various cameras, I had decided on several bottles and price ranges to keep an eye out for on eBay. My budget is not such these days that I can spend many hundreds on a camera, nor do I need anything fancy like an SLR: I just need a zoom.

When I saw an auction pop up for a Nikon 830L for $99.00 USD, I jumped at the chance. For some reason, several people were watching the auction but not buying, which was silly as the price was excellent for a camera in perfect condition with the lens cap and strap - it even came with batteries! I didn't care that it didn't have a box or manual, as you can easily get the latter online - and who cares about a box? Added bonuses: it uses 4x standard AA batteries and takes 1080p video!

When the camera arrived in the mail today, I powered it up and was immediately struck by the quality of the pictures that it took: with almost no effort, they all look great. While the manual controls are almost nonexistent, the camera is well equipped with features that mesh well with what I want to do: just takes simple photos with excellent zoom capability( 34x optical! )with the bonus of an optical stabilization system to cut down on those pesky blurry shots.

I can hardly wait to test out its capabilities both inside and outdoors!

October 8 – Nerf?

The internet is oddly strange and comforting both, some days.

Like when I’m sourcing things for a possible new business in the spring, using Nerf guns.

Retail Nerf guns here in Canada tend to run anywhere from $20-$100 each, depending on the complexity of what you're buying. Even if you're buying from wholesalers, the costs generally aren't reduced by more than 10% or 20%, which means a fair bit of overhead if you're looking to purchase 20 or 30 units, plus ammo and accessories, to start a business.

Take those numbers to Internet, and things change radically.

Nowadays, you can deal directly with manufacturers in the Far East, depending on how many units you ordering. By skipping the middleman and having your goods shipped by the slow boat, you can get far more bang for your buck and the quality is comparable or even just as good as what you might find retail here.

Depending on the item, of course.

After only a few hours of researching today. I was pleased to discover that setting up a Nerf business would not cost thousands, but rather only a few hundred dollars. While some companies out there have rather large minimum order requirements, others do not and I've bookmarked several that I'll be checking up on come the spring.

I should order early so they actually arrive by the end of spring…

October 9 – Deals and Castles!

I played tourist today, with my girlfriend, at a castle! We decided to see a local landmark that neither of us have visited yet, an oversight that we felt we needed to correct today.

Craigdarroch Castle was built in the late 1800s, on the highest point of land in the Victoria area with the best view of the countryside around. It was built by the immensely wealthy Dunsmuir family, whose fortune was derived from coal mines, railroads and other endeavors of the era.

The castle is four floors of luxurious splendor, with stained glass windows and less stress carved wood everywhere. The ceilings are all at least 10 foot high, with the main floor being even higher and the sense of luxury permeating the building throughout.

I'd be remiss in trying to capture the feeling of exploring the Castle in only a few words here. Places like Craigdarroch have to be experienced first-hand and not through pictures, glorious as they may be. I absolutely love this sort of architecture and could have easily spent the entire day wandering around the Castle, peering in all the tiny details from behind velvet ropes:

I'll probably go back in a few years and experience it all over again.

PS - as an added bonus, on the way to the castle today, we stopped at Staples to pick up a camera case to keep my new camera safe. Wouldn't you know it that not only did I find a great case on clearance, that fit my camera perfectly ( and was the last one! )but I also picked up a 64gb high-speed card for half-price because of a pricing error on the shelf – what a great day for deals!

October 10 – Museum Gold!

It was another day of exploration – again indoors, but this time due to the weather.

A cool, cloudy and rainy day meant that my lady and I wanted to spend the day indoors, and what better place than the world-renowned Royal BC Museum? We just made it under the wire to see the premiere of the IMAX film Galapagos, which is a stunning nature documentary about the incredible and unique biosphere native to those isolated islands first visited by Darwin so long ago.

After the film, we went to see the main exhibit, which has changed since I was there last year, and it's a spectacular one now: the Lure of El Dorado, the promise of gold!

There was a lot of gold on display, which explained why there were so many security guards wandering around the place. I took some wonderful pictures, with my new camera again performing brilliantly: it's intelligent enough to perfectly expose the image under the artificial lighting almost every time, and I couldn't be happier with how most of them turned out:

Once the allure of gold had faded somewhat, my lady and I went off to explore the rest of the museum. She was quite taken with the natural history section, where we discovered this fellow whose friends have been in the news of late:

As for myself, my favorite place to visit at the Royal BC Museum is always Old Town, part of the Modern History Galleries in the heart of the museum. Wandering around the massive gallery, you can easily feel as though you've been transported through time into the past – I love it! You believe me there all day and I'd be as happy as a clam in a tidal pool.

October 11 – Turkey After All!

Today didn't quite go as planned but it all worked out for the best.  

I had wanted to clean out my storage area somewhat, putting up a lot of things for sale on eBay, but it seems that not everything I stored was complete. My Amiga system, for example, is inexplicably missing both of the mice that I had used for decades, which are nowhere to be found. Without a mouse, the system's value drops considerably and though it's still running smoothly, I can't list it along with the hundreds of other accessories without this most basic piece. So I managed to find cheap replacement on eBay am I'll have to wait until it arrives before listing the entire package. The same went for a few other things that I thought were complete and by late afternoon I had only managed to list one item out of a dozen on eBay - silly and frustrating.

The silliness continued when my lady and I met my parents for an early Thanksgiving dinner. We had made reservations at the Yates St Taphouse, where we were looking forward to a sumptuous meal of three courses. However, my astute girlfriend notice that the menu’s main course had two separate dates listed: Oct 11^th was shown as serving ham, and October 12^th was Turkey.

Since there was no turkey, we quietly left in search of a last-minute place that might meet our needs. Several places that we called / visited told us that it would be close to 8 PM before any space would open up, which was hours away.

Fortunately, because I had checked out the options earlier in the week, I knew that there was still one place nearby that might be able to help us: The Beacon Drive-In. We all drove over there and within 15 min., had plates of hot Thanksgiving turkey dinner set in front of us, for less than half of what it would've cost us any of the other places. The meal was delicious, dessert and all and we all agreed that it perhaps was the best choice that could've been made, even given the circumstances.

Strange how things work out sometimes.

Having a four-day weekend was wonderful and it's incredible to think that there's only tomorrow left to get whatever else I need done before the workweek begins again. It's going to be a busy week two, with things going on every night, including a friend’s book launch and an important business meeting for me, so they'll be little else getting done this week.

Corn, Colds and Controversy

The word of the week is lassitude.

September 28 – Chugging Along

How’s the rest of the world doing these days?

With a federal election coming up in the month, Canada‘s going to be doing a lot of inward-looking in the next few weeks, as people try to decide where the country’s headed.

But what about the rest of the world?

How does the rest of 2015 look, according to the experts?

Well, not that great, when you factor China into the picture. Which is a shame, because I’m just getting used to being able to order things directly from AliBaba.com …

All kidding aside, it’s a weird, connected world that we live in: I was just talking about this with my lady and as she's in the field of statistical research, she knows a thing or two about what's going on out there, probably more than I do.

Without getting into details, we both agreed - for different reasons - that the world's become perhaps a little too interconnected for its own good. Countries are far more codependent on far too many trade aspects to be insulated from one another's problems when they crop up – just look at Greece this summer, and China to a lesser degree. Economic cycles that used to take decades now take only a few years to rise and fall. Which makes predicting them extraordinarily difficult, even for experts in the field.

When you live in the global village, everybody's problems are only a few doors away.

September 29 – Myo

I'm thinking of getting an armband.

Not just any armband though: a Myo, which is a device that reads our movements and translates them into electrical impulses I can be read by a computer.

More accurately, it translates the electrical impulses that it reads from your muscles into unique signals that can be mapped onto functions via computer software. So you can simply make a series of gestures to open a presentation on the laptop, moved to the next slide, rotate diagrams and so forth - all of those are just the most basic application of Myo:

Where it really gets interesting is when you combine a pair of Myo armbands with properly configured software and accompanying drivers. This allows users to play their various games without a controller, albeit at this stage still with slightly less-than-perfect accuracy due to the fact that Myo was only been released to the world less than year ago.

It’s interesting to note that I found reviewers split in their opinions of how well the device works. Bitshift Interactive makes software called ‘Mapper For Myo’ that apparently makes all the difference in using the device, which I found out by reading some of the reviews on the device’s Amazon.com sales page - weird, but useful nonetheless.

I'm still keeping an eye on this device, hoping that it will be more mature in the next year, with support from major software houses for various games and devices. I'd love to be able to forgo having to use a mouse or game controller altogether, so that I can play for more than 15 or 30 min. of the time before my arms decide they've had enough.

September 30 – Prime!

I took the day off today. Not by choice: I was too sick to work.

Monday night I started getting the sniffles and by noon yesterday, the goal that everybody else had made itself known in my own sinus cavities – yay. I sucked it up( literally ) until I got home and from there things just went downhill, until this morning when I started killing Kleenexes at a rate of one every 5 min. or so: there was no way I be able to work in that condition, so I called work to sell the bad news, then went back to bed for a bit.

On the bright side, despite the extremely runny nose that made me wear off at least two layers of skin by days end, I got to catch up a little bit on a few things, including a TV series that I've meant to watch more of this year but haven't found the time: Transformers Prime.

Originally airing in late 2010, the series has one various daytime awards, including several Emmy’s and has impressed me with the quality of both its animation and writing. Among all the other excellent voice actors, it's also a nice touch that the show has Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime, reprising his role.

Through the convenience of Netflix, I made my way through to almost the end of the second season by the end of the day, interspersed with a few power naps and other projects. While I wasn't feeling better by the end of the day, I was feeling the worst.

It's been a while since I spent the day just watching TV like this and - I liked it. Looking at my substantial collection of series on DVD, I am again reminded how precious time is to me these days and how wisely I have to budget it… so getting to spend a day catching up was extremely satisfying.

  

October 1 – Doc Says I’m Weird.

It was a half-for me today, in several ways,.

I went to work for a half day this morning, which was probably a bad idea – my nose was still unhappy with me( I'll spare you the details )and I had little energy by lunchtime.

Fortunately by then, I left for a doctors appointment, to see a physiatrist.

I've been waiting to see a specialist of his type for a few years now, to see what can be done for my wrists. Ironically, it’s taken a year for my doctor to finally see that my right leg’s swollen tendon isn’t going to go away with massage therapy and so necessitated the appointment with a physiatrist today.

The results, after an hour’s exam? I’m ‘weird’ …

Or, in medical terminology, everything was moving correctly but as I still have specific recurring pains, the doctor’s going to send me to see a rheumatologist. It was unfortunate that the medical ultrasounds of my arms taken a month after my 2012 injury could be located, but somehow that seems par for the course of trying to get myself back to rights.

I'm tempted to facepalm a bit here, but at least it’s progress. I'm thankful that the doctor listen to me and performed numerous tests to see movements of my tendons and ligaments all over. He did mention that my hamstrings were extremely tight, another reason to suggest continuing massage therapy on a regular basis.

Guess it’s time for more patience.

October 2 – Guns

I was going to talk about the subject of guns here, but I got tired.

That, I think, is one of the problems in the States right now.

Too many guns, and everyone's tired of talking about how to fix a problem that nobody really wants to talk about in a country where people would rather shoot someone to talk to them about a problem.

How mixed up is that?

You can cite statistics until the cows come home to support the view of either side – this is a standard tactic of any political entity - but rarely does action take place quickly. The notable exception of this is Australia, who after a terrible mass shooting in 1996 instituted sweeping changes in gun control that saw the vast majority of weapons in that country removed from the hands of the average citizen - you can read about the results of that here.

I've mentioned before about how crazy it is, in my mind, to believe that in order to stay safe from harm you have to be armed not only at home but while going about your day, and in the minds of many Americans, armed at work too – just in case.

A too-plentiful supply of death means everyone gets a share, whether they want it or not.

October 3 – Farm time!

What a grand day!

As well as dawning sunny and mild, I was able to spend the day with my lady.

After breakfasting at the sublime Adrienne’s, we made our way back to town… but were sidetracked by a corn maze on the way.

That’s right: a corn maze.

But first we rode a train around the property, passing by their Old West town which was still the process of being readied for their Halloween nighttime shows starting in a week or so. It was pretty cool checking around the 40 acres or so of farm on the track, seeing the crops while the train driver told us all about the functioning of the farm and pointed out the fun attractions as we went along.

Things were less scary in the daytime, I must say, but more fun for sure.

The corn maze is an annual staple of the farm, lazy winding paths that sometimes loop and sometimes simply dead-end. The corn is thick enough that can't see where you're going, but there's little fear of being hopelessly lost as the entire maze is only a few hundred feet on aside in total. It was pleasant to simply meander in the bright sunshine with my lady.

Before leaving the maze, we took a detour to wander through the Old West town that had been set up as part of the Halloween events to come later this month. Only about half the electrical setups were working, but the small-scale town was fun to look at, giving you a hint of what it was like to be back in the frontier days again.

A fun time was most definitely had by all today!

October 4 – Media and a Movie

Ripping the heck out of my media collection is going well.

So well, in fact, that I'm running out of room: even with 6 terabytes of space on my Acer Aspire H340 server, it’s getting crowded. I'll have to repurpose a few more drives from older computers in order to move things around, but I'm determined to digitize as much of my TV series collection as possible in the next week and then move on to the movies until the trial period for the software I'm using runs out. I’m only using the single function to rip the DVD’s, but it's been useful enough that when I do get around to adding more storage, I may just purchase the whole program, though I don't know if I really want to use their software to categorize my collection, as are ready have things like Plex that make it even simpler to access my media.

In the evening, my girlfriend and I watched Disney’s Atlantis, a film I haven't seen for probably close on 10 years or more. My lady likes the film and we both enjoyed watching it, even with the logical errors introduced when you have things like people who have lived 10,000 years but somehow forgotten how to write or read…. Guess that slipped by the script editors. Which is surprise, as Joss Whedon wrote the first draft of this movie, but later edits obviously change things around substantially – the Wikipedia entry for the film is a gold mine of information about how this happened and it saddens me in a way that I’ll never get to see the potential masterpiece that this film could have been in the first place.

Sorry about the odd colours for the last few blog entries: I’ve been writing the blog earlier in the evening and adjusted the colours in Word to white text / darker background – oops. And with my sister away for a few weeks, I have the place to myself to Get Things Done - w00t!