Feet, Futures, Fixer-Uppers and F.lux

The word of the week is indomitable.

Aug 15 – Futures?

It's going to be an interesting next few months around here.

As it turns out, my sister won't be going back to her government job, for various reasons I won't get into here, and all of which I agree with - meaning that other sources of income will have to be substituted forthwith.

That being said, she's been looking at three or four different types of income, with a few already in the works, so I'm not too worried. My sister always lands on her feet and knows practically everybody, everywhere, in terms of networking, so not only does she know people, but people know her and what she can do - she's quite talented in many disciplines, in case you didn't know already.

As you may imagine, this situation could be a major source of stress for us, but I don't foresee it being as such: we always tend to land on our feet, my sister and I. So the bottom line is that as long as she's happy and relatively stress-free by not going back to her government job, then I am fully supportive of whatever she chooses to do instead to pursue her dreams and passions.

Aug 16 – Bullfrog Dreams

Speaking of dreams: they're the stuff that videogames are made of.

Back in the day, my Amiga computer was a dream machine for me. Its graphics and sound were second to none for quite a long while and I enjoyed collecting what ended up to be a large game library of several hundred titles to enjoy.

Some of the most enjoyable games were those produced by a company called Bullfrog, who made iconic games that were insanely fun to play through and through. The game that started it all was the incredible god-sim Populous:

The man behind Bullfrog, Peter Molyneux, is a man of big dreams and big promises... though like many creative types, he tends to overpromise sometimes when his visions lead him a little further than might be wise to admit.

If you're not familiar with Bullfrog or Peter, you should really have a look at this recent interview with the genius behind so many good games. I found the article enlightening despite my being familiar with both Bullfrog and Mr. Molyneux, and enchanting in that this man is obviously one who thinks big and, most times, manages to deliver on his dreams.

I could stand to learn a few things in that department, in the near future.

PS - apparently there's a freeware PC update of Populous out, called Genesia! 

 

Aug 17 – Back To Ouch

I'm limping again... badly.

I thought after resting my left foot this past weekend that the worst was over, but apparently my foot is not having any of it. After only 5 min. of walking, it swells up under the ball of the foot and that's it: anymore walking and it's ouch-time.

Meaning that's I could barely walk to work yesterday, and not at all today: I had to take a cab to my workplace and hobble in with a pair of canes for support. Even with ice under my foot on and off all day, I couldn't get up from my desk much without the assistance of a handy cart and by days end, I decided not to come in tomorrow( a rare sick day for me )to just rest up. Luckily I managed to get a ride home, but my foot felt like someone was poking it from beneath with a warm stick: not fun.

Ah well - there's not much I can do right now, save rest. Perhaps in 20 years I might just swap the foot with a different bionic implant, but that's not going to help me in the present. I spent the evening rubbing anti-inflammatory cream into it along with a few dips into cool water to reduce the swelling, which seem to help.

Maybe I should watch My Left Foot for some pointers?

Aug 18 – Dumpty Fixer-Upper

What else would do my day off, except work on restoring my computer?

Seeing as I was home all day today, and my new Mushkin 1 terabyte SSD had arrived in the mail yesterday, you can imagine that circumstance dictated that I just roll up my sleeves and get to work getting my computer back to where was before last week's crash.

Even though I had all my data backed up, that didn't mean most of my installed programs would be recoverable: I lost tons of FREE programs... argh. Not that I was using too many of them, but still, it sucks. I am a daily browser of websites like GiveawayOfTheDay.com and BitsDeJour, which have great freebies and I usually pick up at least one or two a month that look useful for my.

I paid closer to 29c/gb, even after taxes - sweet deal!

It's a slow process, and this recent crash taught me that I need to actually take an image of my main drive with all my programs installed, so that if a crash happens again I can simply that image from the backup and have the drive's state returned to just the way it was. It sounds simple, but finding a program that will do that reliably AND for low-cost isn't as easy as you think. Time for that later.

While I was at it, I replaced Mozilla Thunderbird email with MailBird, as Thundy was getting rather long in the tooth. So far, so good: MailBird is simpler, faster and cleaner. I never played around with the message filters in Thunderbird, so I won't miss them, and MailBird looks to be halfway intelligent about filtering things, though it's not quite as customizable as Thunderbird.

By days end, I had most of my computers major programs reinstalled, except for the voice recognition( Dragon Naturally Speaking )which didn't want to install without the original disk... which is stored away in my closet somewhere. A task for tomorrow, it looks like; today's work was quite productive and I'm happy with how things are turning out, especially since the new drive is both faster and four times as large as the one that was replacing... both really nice touches, I think.

Aug 19 – Home For a Rest!

It was back into work today for me, briefly

I was only there an hour before I left for my doctors appointment, where I received a shock: I wasn't to be at work for at least two weeks, and possibly longer. I have to check in with my doctor again at that time to see if I need more time off work to recover, and see a specialist in about a month about possible physiotherapy to restore my ability to walk normally and without pain.

Definitely NOT what I was expecting....! The irony is, I was off last summer almost exactly at this time, with a different illness, so I'm hoping that next year I'll be free and clear to just enjoy the last of the summertime without injury...

I also wasn't expecting for the temperature to hit 36.8C here today - WHEW! Thankfully, the temperature inside my ground-floor apartment was only 27C - so I wasn't sweating over much despite a lack of air conditioning.

While I was at home, absorbing the fact that I would be off my feet AND work for two weeks, my sister got some great news: she'll now be working for a local company planning events full-time as of next week! This comes on top of the other sources of income that she's maneuvering into place, so looks like that the only thing she'll be short of for the next long while it is time.. and stress over money, for which were both grateful. Amazing how things balance out, y'know?

It was quite an eventful day!

Aug 20 – Pain On The Brain

Bleh.

I've been feeling nauseous and headachy the last two days - not fun, on top of my foot tweaking me every few minutes. It's probably due to a combination of the weather change( hot yesterday and today, then cool winds blowing in on the weekend )and the anti-inflammatory cream I've been using on my foot. It contains hemp oil, and when I read up on it today, when you know that nausea is a possible side effect? I've been rubbing it into my foot like there's no tomorrow and that's probably why my stomach isn't all that happy with me; oh well.

Also stupid me: I forgot some of how I had set up my computer viewing comforts!

I had totally forgotten about reinstalling F.lux... hence the light-induced night-headaches. F.lux is an app that runs on your computer and automatically adjusts the color spectrum of the screen( and the brightness too )to lessen the effects of bright blue light on the viewer, which can affect sleep only a few hours before bed. Once I had F.lux installed and running again, the difference was substantial: I was no longer squinting at the TV screen despite having turned down the brightness!

After working all day on my computer again, my girlfriend came over and we spent the evening watching more episodes of Star Blazers, to our mutual delight. We are already past the point where I had to re-watch some of the series back in 2008, so I'm seeing episodes again for the first time in over 30 years, which is a wonderful feeling... especially sharing it with someone as wonderful as my lady.

It's like I'm a kid again watching the show after school!

Aug 21 – A Better Foot, with LOTS of rest?

Here's the plan...

Since I have an unexpected two weeks off, I've drawn up a list of things that I need to get done along with a list of things I should get done - note the distinction.

On the Need List is writing my first novel's fourth draft, of course. I should be able to get a huge chunk of it revised in the next two weeks, though I can't sit for too long at one time; that's what caused my foot issue in the first place.

So I'll be getting up and performing a few tasks around the apartment that had been lingering on the Get To It Soon List for a while.

As for today, Sunday: most of it was continuing to fix up my computer. A good chunk of the day was spent combing through my too-large Google Drive cloud account, copying and pasting files into more organized folders and getting rid of tons of duplicates - hours later, I was quite happy to have trimmed over 30 gigabytes, freeing up far more room than I had thought.

What took up the rest of the evening was finishing installing and configuring my copy of Dragon Naturally Speaking 11, which I need to type my blog each week - among other things I use it for. I finally got the installation working from my CD-ROM( how archaic! )and went through the 'training' process of teaching the program my voice. What I didn't anticipate was this around dinnertime, once Dragon had finished looking through my documents for more words it needed to be trained on:

As you can see, there's over 4000 words I need to train Dragon on, and at a speed of around 1000 words an hour, I'll be at it for most of tomorrow, on and off. I could just not bother, but I've been meaning to train the darn thing for a few years and now is as good a time as any to really up the accuracy of the program, which has been a source of frustration for me for years. Fortunately, I was able to temporarily bypass the training module and use Dragon to write my blog tonight, otherwise I would only be half-done by now...

It's been an exhausting week; my wrists and upper body are telling me that they aren't used to doing all the work they've had to do this week to moving around. I've been careful not to overdo things with my canes, and the same goes for my leg: I have to be careful not to forget to properly position things whenever I move so as not to stretch my foot the wrong way and undo the day's rest effects. I'm excited to have the time off, but wary of wasting the opportunity, so all the striking a balance each day of work done versus necessary rest: a good compromise, I think, is the order of each day.

Serendipity, Spasms, Sirens and Soreness

The word of the week is OUCH.

Aug 8 – Sprung Hamstrings?

It's amazing that I can somehow hurt myself without even trying…

Yesterday evening, I did my usual 30 min. exercises on my stationary bicycle, not pushing myself hard whatsoever: just an easy ride with a slow buildup and slow down, exactly as I have for months now.

What was different is that I did it at 7:30pm, instead of right after work and didn't do more than sit around for the rest of the evening working on my blog.

Big mistake, apparently.

I awoke at 3 AM this morning with twin lines of fire running down the back of my legs: my hamstrings felt like I'd pull the money have to machine. It was bad enough that I was nauseous a few times and had trouble getting back sleep for more than an hour afterwards. I had trouble walking in the morning and though I managed to stay mobile, it was difficult to sit for good part of my day with any comfort and I had to move around often in order to allay the pain to manageable levels.

Adding insult to injury, when I got home tonight, my desktop computer displayed this message:

Well, f$*k.

It’s been a few years since I’ve last been down the failed-computer-drive road, and while I’ve prepared for such with redundant backups of my data offline and in the cloud, it still means that I’ve got to rebuild my drive to exactly how I had it configured. Meaning a few weeks of installing, tweaking and head-scratching.

Not to mention replacing the dive( a new SSD too, only 9 months old! )which fortunately is still under warranty.

I’ll probably end up investing in a total-image backup software solution this time around, meaning nightly backups of the entire boot drive so I can just reload a copy of the previous day’s drive and go on about my business as if nothing happened. That won’t be as easy if I decide to get a bigger drive; even the current 240gb one means a sizable backup.

Aug 9 – Tent City Gone, Homeless Remain

Yesterday was the deadline for the homeless camp downtown to move out.

Most of its residents had complied with the court order by late yesterday, though there were a few holdouts waiting for room placement elsewhere in the city. Surprisingly, it was quite an orderly resolution to the problem that began late last year, when homeless campers in Victoria discovered that the land next to the city courthouse was owned by the province and so did not fall under the city's jurisdiction: nobody could tell them to leave at 7 AM like they had to in city parks or other city-controlled areas.

Things just went downhill from there; soon dozens of homeless had set up camp on the courthouse lawn, and remain there until yesterday.

It's ongoing issue, homelessness in the city, and there's no one single answer to it. The low vacancy rate and high rental costs mean that many people, even those with jobs, cannot find affordable housing, though $60 million in funding has been allocated for such to begin in a month's time by local government. The easy living in Victoria in terms of weather means that many homeless end up here and never leave, simply existing in the cracks that society leaves for them without really wanting to look too closely.

The fact that Tent City stood in plain sight for everyone to see for almost a year means that at least the issue was out in the open, and because of that, housing was made available for many of its former residents. However, the issue remains that the costs have to be borne by someone and there are many angry taxpayers in the city asking why it has to be them.

On a side note, I went tonight for acupuncture to help deal with my hamstring issue. The soreness is still pretty bad, to where I have to watch my every move lest I ‘twang’ my legs with any movement to cause even more pain.

Happily, the acupuncture tonight succeeded in reducing the soreness to a dull ache. It also resulted in my right leg feeling like the muscles had been pinned together near the knee… as turned out to be the case when I got home to discover the therapist had missed removing a needle – OUCH! Fortunately, the tip was only bent after the short trip home by car and hadn’t broken off INSIDE my leg; I was lucky.

At this point, it’s not so bad that I can’t sleep, but I have to watch it: no way I want to stretch too far without thinking and have things go all widdershins…

Aug 10 – Stomach Spasms

Gah… can’t I even enjoy a simple meal this week without pain?

My lady and I sat outside on a patio at Garrick’s Head Pub after work tonight, enjoying the glorious weather and the good food. I had a chicken burger and 1.5 beers… which I ended up regretting later that night.

As I was going to bed, I still felt… full, oddly so. Laying back down, I had sudden sharp pains in my diaphragm area, as though I’d pulled a muscle – OUCH! I noticed that my stomach felt tight, but not bloated… what the heck was going on?

Since I didn’t feel otherwise inconvenienced, nor nauseous or feverish, I decided to let whatever was going on work itself out, with some help. I propped myself up on the pillows at a 45-degree angle and went to sleep.

Sidenote: the next morning was rather painful for me, with oatmeal barely staying down. From what I could figure, the meal yesterday at Garrick’s had been too large and I'd complicated things by ‘expanding’ due to the more-than-usual volume of liquid I had with it, effectively ‘plugging up’ my intestines – hence the OUCH spasms. Since I don’t have a gall bladder any more, any large meals take much longer to digest, and apparently I crossed that threshold with that burger and beers.

Next time, it’s water with the meal, and beer after.

Or, just beer and snacks.

Or just water…

Aug 11 – Silence, Sirens!

I don't know how urban dwellers can stand the noise.

My apartment where I live right now is about 20 feet from a main north-south road and there is constant traffic during the daylight hours. Apart from the bevy of motorcycles roaring up and down, there are always heavy delivery trucks, transit buses and pickups with lead footed drivers wanting to show off their pricey V8 or V12 engines to every passerby.

Yet I think the most telling noise pollution are the constant sirens.

Every day, at least a dozen emergency vehicles flash by my apartment, sirens wailing. Their proximity is such that I usually have to plug my ears its windows are open, but at least I can hear them coming with enough warning to do so.

If I'm experiencing the stored of siren-noise in a semi-suburban area of the smaller city, I can't imagine what kind of noise people in larger cities must have to deal with.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Whisper noise-canceller system( designed for entire apartments )isn't going to happen, with less than 2% of its 785,000 NZD goal realized and only a week to go:

It's a shame, because I think a device of this type is sorely needed in urban areas, if only to reduce the noise that people experience living so close to one another. I know that I gladly purchase this device if it was less than $500, as the Kickstarter looks to have cost, even with shipping. Yet someone else will have to come up with this and tried in the future, as the Whisper looks to be sounding quite dead at this point.

Aug 12 – Sitrep

In the afternoon, I had my massage appointment I’d been waiting all week for.

It took me about 20 minutes to get there, walking slowly downtown, with the idea of stretching my legs without overdoing it. All the same, I could feel that the sole of my left foot was too tight for comfort still, after days of simple rest and relaxation.

The massage therapist was able to do a fair bit of heavy work on both my legs, though without a definite cause, I couldn't really tell her anything other than the symptoms of the payments feeling. All the same, with that information she worked over my legs pretty thoroughly, to the point where I wondered if she'd managed to mess up some of my other muscles in my legs. It was pretty intense, but at no point did I feel like my hamstrings themselves were made any worse.

Walking home, I was pleased to find I had a greater range of motion than I had walking to my appointment, though again the soreness from the treatment was distracting. I took a bath with some Epsom salts added, in order to help add hydration through the skin to the stretched hamstrings. By the time I went to bed tonight, my legs didn't feel like they were burning on the back any more and I slept fairly well.

Aug 13 – Stay In Saturday

It was quite a busy day for me today.

Despite the gorgeous weather, I ended up staying in for most of the morning and afternoon today, as I have a lot on my plate in addition to regular household doings. One of the things that took the most time was completing the critiques of the two chapters I'm doing for this coming week’s Critique Night. I sort of fell down last month, having had too much on my mind to realize that I reviewed the same chapters as I have the previous month - quite embarrassing and something that took me by surprise, though looking back I obviously had too much on my mind to notice at the time.

Another thing on my plate was updating my website for my novels, which I did in only a few minutes: it's easy enough to tell people what I'm up to a month if there's only one subject. Seeing as I only get about a half-dozen visitors every month to that site, it's not as though I'm provided much fodder for form discussion, though I hope that's the case in spades when I finally finish the trilogy of books in the near future.

As well, I did some research for an article I'm writing for the quarterly Divisional Newsletter for my workplace, about the history of the Ministry, which has been interesting as its current incarnation only came about in late 1997 - barely 20 years ago. I'm pleased to be part of the Editorial Board for the newsletter, and feel that the work I'm doing now will result in something that will continue long after I moved on to other things or other jobs.

In the evening, my girlfriend was gracious enough to sit through three episodes of Star Blazers with me, to my delight. We are already at the point where my re-watch from many years ago stopped and my memories are somewhat vague, so it's almost as though I'm watching the series from a fresh point of view, which is delightful as well.

Much later this evening, we made a short sortie down to the ocean on Dallas Road, in the hopes of catching glimpses some of the Perseid meteor shower which peaked tonight. In normal years, stargazers in less urban areas might be treated to anywhere from 30 to 80 meteors per minute, but this year's shower was more than double that. Even though passing cars and light pollution meant our night eyes were quite strained, we did manage to catch a glimpse of three different white streaks in the sky as meteors burned up, which was thrilling to us both.

Even more amusing where the Pokémon Go players wandering by in the dark, completely oblivious to the short-lived wonder of the heavens taking place above them.

Aug 14 – Serendipity

Why not end the week with a bang?

More like a ‘poof!’ as money disappeared from my wallet this morning.

I always run programs on my computer to tell me of anything going wrong, and today one of them told me that my backup SSD drive( the one running my computer while I wait for the replacement to arrive by mail in a few weeks )was also failing:

Perfect timing – or not, as I don't have another redundant backup to stick in the case this one fails, which would mean that I have only my laptop to work with and that isn't really meant for the daily use that my big computer is, hooked up to my big screen TV.

So, I had to suck it up today and order a new SSD drive, one that would be exactly what I needed and will also arrive in a few days’ time. By a stroke of luck, an SSD on sale I'd been watching on eBay last week came back into stock just this morning and after gritting my teeth, I bought the SSD, to the tune of a cool $250.00 - plus taxes and shipping. OUCH.

I consoled myself with the fact that since it's a 1 terabyte drive( 1000 gigabytes ) it's four times the size of the drive it's replacing and extremely highly-rated. The bottom line was that I paid about $.25 per gigabyte, which is half what usual going rate is for solid-state drives… so I shouldn't run out of capacity anytime soon.

Though I will still be making a redundant backup of the drive as soon as I get it configured under Win10 the way I like it - no sense in tempting fate with my data any further than I have already this month.

/endG33kBlathering

My hamstring still hurt, as I've been alternating sitting down and walking around all day long as I've been home today, working on my blog among other things. I'm hoping that this is in a relapse but just a reflection of things healing, but the fact remains that I still have to discover exactly what's wrong with my everyday physical posture that could be causing such tightness in my hamstrings. More than likely has to do with my office job of the last several years, as I've never had this sort of issue standing up and being on my feet for long periods while working. One more thing to add to my list of Things To Do Now….

Sight Surprises, Superbooks and Senescence

The word of the week is senescence.

Aug 1 – Fan Film? Yes, Please!

Why am I only finding out about this 2 months later?

On June 6th 2016, the amazing fan film below was released on YouTube:

It's really incredible to see what dedicated fans who are passionate about their hobbies can do. I just can't get over how well-made the film was given the low budget and the fact that it's just a bunch of amateurs putting it together: no film professionals or special effects artists, just passionate people who together celebrate their love of G1 Transformers.

I should also note that because of the Internet, people who are passionate about their fandoms can find each other far more easily these days. It makes collaborative projects such as this one possible, and for that I'm quite glad.

More, please!

Aug 2 – Blind Surprise

It's one of my biggest fears, and many others: Losing my sight.

Because we're such visual creatures, the prospect of losing your sight scares most people silly, and I'm not immune to such fears, I admit. As a writer however, I'm somewhat better equipped to cope with losing my site if it happens, as I've learned to use my voice to type rather than my hands using software on my PC. All the same, I don't have any desire to know what it's like to lose my vision, as I've had corrective glasses for most of my life for my vision and I'm quite attuned to ensuring that any changes get looked at immediately by my doctor.

Which is why it was such a shock to find out that one of my favorite writers - JMS, the creator of Babylon 5 - has been nearly blind for the last 10 years. This is what his monitor looked like recently while doing some writing:

Just today, J. Michael Straczynski let the folks who follow him know that after a decade of trying to find the proper combination of surgeries to correct his eyesight, just this year his hope finally came true and he was able to have his eyes operated on, with these results:

Seven days after the first surgery, I was seeing 20/25. The next surgery had similar results, with no side-effects or complications. As I write these words, I’m seeing better than I’ve seen in my entire life: 20/25 in both eyes. I can read license plates, see the leaves on trees…ever day I’m astonished by the new-found beauty of the world.
 Best of all, I was up to full speed behind the keyboard for the first time, writing more and better and faster than I had in almost ten years. Eager to start planning out my workload for the rest of the year, I began to lay out the spec screenplays I wanted to write, and the new television series that I wanted to develop. 

It is astonishing to me that such a prolific writer and creative force could be so handicapped by his vision that his output dropped to the point where he was struggling to keep up with only one or two projects at a time, compared to a dozen or more back in the early 2000s. What's as astonishing is that his horrible experience mirrored my own imagined one where my eyesight begins to go, and I had no idea that one of my favorite writers was going through such an awful time.

I'm glad he's back to full steam now. I can only hope that if and when it ever comes to it, that bionic eyes will be an option and I'll be able to get some really cool cybernetic implants...

Aug 3 – Senescence

Are there really creatures on earth that are immortal?

As a matter-of-fact: yes. Some kinds of fish, invertebrates and even plants like trees all exhibit a total lack of aging, according to studies. They only die due to accidents, disease or predators - not old age.

Among these few lucky creatures are crocodiles, who scientists discovered years ago do not suffer the effects of aging - called senescence - as do almost every other creature on earth. Crocodiles do not suffer any of the effects of old age, but just keep growing as long as their environment provides them enough food to eat: they can grow to monstrous size, as this photo from 1956 shows:

Almost 30 feet long!

It's a fascinating science, the study of aging and I'm interested to see what advances will be making in the next few decades, for obvious reasons: I'd like to keep my body going a lot longer than the average human biological functions will let me. I'm not sure if in another 40 or 50 years if cyborg replacement parts will be up to the point where they'll allow decades or even centuries more life for humans( or if those technologies arrive it totally affordable to the average person )but it gives me hope to see that some of the creatures that share planet already exhibit no signs of being affected by the ravages of age.

I'm sure the crocodiles shed no tears for us, however.

Aug 4 – Eternal Electronics?

Can a phone also be a laptop?

Apparently so, according to a recent Kickstarter called the Superbook, which aims to combine the convenience of a smart phone with the screen and keyboard of a laptop - no small feat, that.

That's a fantastic price, even in USD!

Everything's all about economics these days when it comes to electronics, as smart phones have proven quite capable of replacing multiple categories of devices with just one smart phone. Yet many folks are still using laptops for working with larger amounts of data or typing rather than deal with the tiny screens( and lack of keyboards )that while are the portability strength of smart phones, are also their biggest handicap. Given that most modern smart phones cost as much as a laptop, it only makes sense that any device to add onto a smart phone be as inexpensive as possible, otherwise you'd just buy a laptop if the price point difference was too similar to matter.

The Superbook aims to change this by plugging in an 11-inch screen / keyboard combo to your smart phone and using the powerful hardware of that device to run programs just like you would on a laptop. It's a sound concept and as a bonus, it makes the Andronium device far more portable, as there's no need for much of the internal laptop electronics such as a processor inside nor the cooling for same.

I'm debating signing up before the Superbook Kickstarter ends in two weeks. While I already have a laptop, my sister does not and it would make perfect sense for her to use this kind of device both at home or while out and about other day. She's definitely not one to haul a laptop around for only a few minute's use in a day, however convenient it would be to have a full-size screen and keyboard to do work on.

The best part? Whenever you upgrade to your next smartphone, the more powerful hardware means your portable experience with the Superbook will be even better. It's like having a infinitely upgradable laptop: full of win!

I love ideas such as this one, that leverage one technology's power to make it better without adding significant extra cost. It's exciting to think of what sort of technologies will come along and next five years to improve our mobile information abilities even more.

Aug 5 – Now THAT's a collection...

A laserdisc collection for the Ages!

I follow a few laserdisc groups online, both on websites and on FBook, mainly because that's where collectors like myself go to exchange information, tips and mainly just to hang out with like-minded people. All sorts of interesting things get posted and discussed, and lucky finds are some of the most fun things to see.

Like this one:

No ... words...

Apparently, this was the personal collection of one of the first Pioneer Laserdisc dealers in North America, consisting of thousands of laser disk, most of which were still sealed when the group member came by to make an offer for good portion of the items you see above. It's not for the faint of wallet, however, as even a good deal would probably run around $5000 USD for everything you see, plus some other items that are outside the frame of the photo.

Impressive. Most impressive....

Aug 6 – Gliding In From Crazytown

My work-week ended smoothly today, for which I was quite grateful.

Although this was only a four-day work-week for me because of the holiday on Monday( BC Day! )the entire week was a solid grind from the word go. Being the beginning of the month, we were inundated with calls and e-mails, to the point where I actually lost track of time at several points on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Fortunately, we have three new trainees and they really stepped up this week to pick up their share and more of the work that was flooding in. I'm extremely impressed with the calibre of people that have been hired, not only for their skills but for the happy attitude they've all brought to what could've been extremely stressful introduction to our office given how crazy it was this week and last.

While no small part of their introduction was due to the training they've received today( small pat on my own back here )it's only under pressure that we began to see how someone really can perform and these three have been great. Thanks to their help, we managed to finish off the week solidly, with almost everything caught up to the point where we can actually look to do other things such as cross-training. It's gratifying to know that while we were up to our necks in craziness at the start of the week, we all pulled together and ended the rush four days later with a smooth glide into the weekend.

One more reason to like, even love, my current workplace.

Aug 7 – This And That

What to do with an early day...?

Unusually, I woke up at 6 AM this morning, far too early for a Sunday. As everyone else was still sleeping and I couldn't get back to sleep myself, I decided to do update my research on Tiny Homes as it's been about six months since I really dug into what the state of the markets at right now.

In brief: it's grown, and there's a lot more options out there now.

Small, pic: click for BIG details!

I won't bore you with the details( see pic above! )but it's still looking good that I might put a 'total home package' together that the bank will consider funding. I've also come up with a few ideas of my own to help with one of the biggest obstacles, which is collateral versus risk: unlike larger homes, many Tiny Homes are built on trailers and so can be easily moved, something that the banks don't like as you can literally drive away with their investment of many tens of thousands of dollars.

It's still a work in progress, and I'll update you here when I have more to go on.

Weekend-wise, it was pretty relaxed overall around here. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon gaming with a few friends, playing more than a few sessions of SmashUp! and SmallWorld, the latter of which I've not played before but thoroughly enjoyed for both its speed and light-fantasy elements. Good times.

Today, my lady and I took it easy with a relaxed breakfast out at Adrienne's in Cadboro Bay, then visited my mumm for a few hours, which went over well with everyone involved. I'm really pleased that my girlfriend and my family get along so well, just as I do with her parents who visited last weekend: again, good times.

Not surprisingly after an early day, I was feeling tired by the early evening around my usual blog posting time, so after dinner and some exercise-biking, I polished this week's entry up at 8 PM and called it a night, retiring to read a little bit before sleep takes me into its welcome fuzzy embrace.

There's been no sign of Crazy Window Woman this week, but all the same we've requested the property owners to install a security light outside in that area, to deter any such incidents in the future - damned scary, random people banging on your window and yelling, late at night.