Rain, RAM Relief, Robots and Rentals

The word of the week is thrifty.

Oct 24 – Slowly But Surely

Getting back to normal sure is taking its time.

I'm still being driven to work and dropped off at home, every day - my lady and my parents have been exceedingly kind to help me as I slowly get back on my feet. It's getting there, but so damn slowly... and I feel much weaker than I did 6 months ago, like I would wobble if I walked too far too fast, or carried too much.

So frustrating, but I hope there's an end in sight, because telling myself every Sunday that I'll walk to work and come Monday I can't... is, well, frustrating.

But, at least the day job's getting better as the new staff( 4 of them now! )are all getting into the swing of things, enough so that I'm mostly hands-off and doing my own thing all day long. I've been tasked( at my own suggestion )with creating a series of documents to assist new and old Admin staff alike with all sorts of things related to the various responsibilities the team has, and it's great. I can exercise my creative writing skills as well as my organizational abilities to condense scattered info sources into simple, easy-to-read documents that will make everyone's job easier... and I get to do it at my own pace, with no deadline.

Sure does make the leg-aches a little easier to take!

Oct 25 – Rentals On The Horizon

If we can only hold on for a few years...

The rental situation in Victoria looks to be improving, though at a rate comparable to my own recovery of late - still, any sign of improvement is a good one, and this is really heartening:

So, over 2500 rental units will come online( at best estimate )within the next 2 years, meaning a Whole Lotta Shuffling will be going on. As well, a ton of new condo units will be ready for sale, as building is booming here in Victoria, so there will also be the renters-nope-we're-now-buyers! crowd who will be moving up to ownership status - again, a good thing all around.

In another two years, I'll likely still be looking for a not-so-expensive rental, hopefully for two, by that point... but you never know where life will lead you. Heck, if I can afford it by that point, I'll get a place with 2 bedrooms so one can be used as an office/workspace/gaming room combined.

Heck, I'd take a third bedroom to use as a library, if I can afford the luxury by then. Who knows?

Oct 26 – Employment Maps

Here's something interesting...

It's an animated map of the last 26 years of employment rates across the USA, from 0%( lightest )to 10+%( darkest )year by year, state by state. What's interesting is seeing how it makes economic trends visible, in terms of how they affect people directly: job loss.

Watch for the 2008 spot, when darkness sweeps the land...

Oct 27 –  Gloomy Rain

The rainy season is here now, in Victoria.

Coincidentally, the shorter days are here as well and so the combination most days results in one color: gray. The sun doesn't rise until well past 7 AM and is now setting before 6 PM, so again there's not a whole lot of light coming in.

Usually as I was sitting at home after work, this quite often meant putting a pair of sunglasses or closing up the blinds, as the sun was a blinding searchlight blasting in through the windows during the late afternoon hours.

Now, with the changing seasons, I'd welcome that searchlight a little more often.

I'm doing what I can to make sure that I don't come down with a case of SAD( seasonal affective disorder ): I've got my sunlight spectrum lamp going at work all day. In the evenings, I make sure that I have some decent lights on in the room until the least 7 PM or so, when I start to tone things down to shift the spectrum of my devices screens to cut down on the intensive blue light content.

According to the weather predictions, there should be a very mild winter for Victoria, with very little chance of snow... and the last snow we had was two years ago for two days in December, so that's saying something.

Into each life a little rain must fall, as the saying goes, and I'm more than willing to put up with 5-6 rainy days a week it means that I don't have to slog through snow or ice or freezing cold as I go about my day.

Oct 28 – Work Fun!

It was our annual Halloween Spooktacular at work today!

About half the people in the office dressed up, which was about normal, and we had a fun time all day: Email trivia questions about Halloween with prizes for fastest answers, Boo-Grams given out for a mere $0.50 each to as many people as you wanted to buy for, contests for best costume in 3 categories... it was great!

I hauled out my USMC costume from earlier in 2016( literally, it was all in a giant plastic bag I slowly... hauled... into the office )which was a big hit. I wore the fatigues all day with an olive-coloured ballcap and, with my headset, I looked like a military communications tech, which was great. At the end of the day, I gave a demo at my desk of the M41A Nerf rifle, which a dozen people attended and all were well-impressed with how well the thing worked, though the ammo counter stopped resetting when removing the clip - damn!

By day's end, I was rather tired, but happy all the same, as it'd been a ton of fun despite being a solid-but-not-crazy workday. I'm most fortunate to work with a great group of people who enjoy each other's company, and today it really showed.

Oct 29 – PARTY time!

As I was pooped from yesterday, today I played catch-up, doing necessary chores, including putting together the last bits of my costume for this year - pics below!

I've always wanted to be a robot of some kind for Halloween, and for years I've had a latex mask that I've tried to come up with a costume for, but with no luck as it's just too hot and uncomfortable to wear. Even this year's mask wasn't great, as I couldn't see much at all out of it, but at least I could breathe and wear it for more than a 5-minute stretch.

In the evening, my lady and I attended a Halloween party!

Amazing decor - that's me on the far right, the costume didn't photograph well

It was the being hosted by a lady at work, and we were there for the third time... but not for too long. My legs were still bothering me, and after about 1.5 hours, it was just too crowded( over 60 people! )and too loud to take any longer, despite the fun atmosphere - the yard outside was just incredible:

All the same, we had a nice time while we were there, and most folks loved my costume, which had glowing red eyes, a robot-voice-changer and a staff with blinking fiber-optic strings inside a black mesh covering. I looked scary and futuristic and best of all, it'd only cost me about $40 total for the costume, as I'd re-used almost everything except the mask itself and the cheap voice-changer.

Go Frugal Halloween!

Oct 30 – ATE: Ask The Experts

My 'new' computer is just humming along!

There's only 2 things on my mind right now to add: better video card and RAM.

The first( video card )will have to wait until either a) a SUPER sale this coming month on Black Friday and Cyber Monday( which, for the last 2 years, have been massive disappointments in Canada, I must say )or b) sometime late in 2017 when the prices come down as new video cards hit the market in the usual cycle.

The second( RAM )was much easier: apparently I don't need to upgrade!

I wasn't sure if the 16gigs of RAM I have had since 2012 was fast enough to not be holding back my system; it's hard to tell with all the jargon out there on tech boards.

So, I went to the experts: I asked the folks on the Tom's Hardware Forums, and amazingly had 4 people answer within 30 minutes, which was astounding. Here's the answer that told me I was just fine with what I have currently in my PC:

So, I don't need to spend any more money on RAM: I'm good. Yay!!!!

And for those looking to upgrade their systems, here's a nice guide to putting together a modern gaming PC on a mere $500( albeit USD )budget. I like the article because it walks you through the reasoning behind the purchase of each component, in terms of future-proofing your build.

It should be a good week coming up, as I don't have much planned apart from just taking it easy with every step I take and stretching as I can to limber up for when I can walk unaided again - soon, I hope!

System Swaps, Seuss Singing and Selling Stuff

The word of the week is frugality.

Oct 17 – We Have a DEAL!

My TurboGrafx16 eBay lot sold last night!

I had a total of four bids, first one within only a few minutes of my posting it and the second one kind of popped my eyes out, as it was from a BIG eBay store with close to a half-million Feedback... they really wanted it!

In the end, the a lot went to a collector in the USA, who as it turns out never had a TurboGrafx16 when he was a kid but really, really wanted one. This was his opportunity to purchase many of the games that he wanted and I'm really pleased that it's going to someone who's not only going to appreciate the vintage system but actually use it on a regular basis.

Plus, I get to add basically what amounts to another paycheque to my income for this year, which isn't too shabby. I did have to spend a few hours this evening packing and repacking the items into a box for shipping, as the unusual sizes of the items( that giant rental case! )meant that I couldn't use a standard-size rectangular box. Eventually I got everything to fit into a sizable cube and filled all the voids around it all with an almost-excessive amount of air bags plus packing peanuts. It cost $160 CDN to send, which was $25 over my estimate, but I had to set a fixed price as eBay's automated ship-cost system didn't want to work for some reason. Good thing the buyer was paying for the shipping!

Now I have more space in my apartment, more money in my bank account, and the buyer is happy, which is a win-win-win situation all around in my opinion.

Oct 18 – Retro Gamepad Bliss $10

One of the reasons I sold my old videogame collection after holding onto it for so many years is that I can now easily play them on an emulator on my Acer tablet.

Such was not always the case, even until recently.

Emulators being what they are, quite often they'll only run a few games properly and then the rest( hundreds or thousands )usually need individual tweaking-  per game - in order to get them working within acceptable performance standards.

So many games, so little time or wrist-capacity left in me...

Only a few months ago, I again searched for an emulator that would let me play my favorite TurboGrafx16 games, and I finally found one that works almost flawlessly with every TG16 game: ColEm, which oddly enough started out as a ColecoVision emulator. I ran a few tests on some of my favorite games like Blazing Lazers and Devil's Crush, and they worked perfectly! So I knew that I didn't have to give up playing those games when the mood took me if I sold them onwards.

However, there was still the matter of controlling the games: unlike a real console system, there's no handy controller to use, just on-screen controls that can be very finicky and art as responsive as an actual controller.

Fortunately, after another search, I managed to locate a decent Bluetooth controller on eBay for a mere $10, which arrived last week. I charged it, set it up and amazingly it worked with almost all the games I tried with only a little tweaking necessary here and there - another success!

What an age we live in...

Oct 19 – Costumes Are Coming!

Halloween is only a few weeks away, and I'm excited!

Well I don't have a particular costume picked out f yet or this year, I will be attending a party in 10 days and I'll have to have something by then. My girlfriend and I went out shopping for costume bits this past weekend and I found a mask that I think will work really well with some other things that I have - stay tuned!

In the meantime, here's some incredible cosplay from last year's ComiCon in Russia... these are some of the best costumes I've ever seen, anywhere:

Oct 20 –  Frugal, not Cheap

I've learned over the years to make the most of every dollar I have.

Very rarely have I simply bought something outright; usually I already know what I want and where the best place is to buy it, and when to make the purchase. This is on top of keeping track of my money to know where everything goes in a month, so that I could have a little left over for any surprises that crop up... or the occasional treat( see tomorrow's entry! )for myself.

It's hard to budget books when I read so quickly... libraries help only so much.

So to share the many ways to save money, here's a few that I use:

• Staples@work discount store( I sometimes get 4xAA energizer rechargeables for $5.00! ). Even so, I buy my toner on eBay, where I pay about $20 for a high-quality refilled 2000-pg cartridge, 1/4 the cost of even the cheapest Staples refills
• Mogo.com - you get a free monthly credit report, for no charge whatsoever
• A Premier membership at NewEgg.ca means never paid the shipping for tech products
• Amazon.ca recently raised their free shipping threshold to $35 minimum per order, but it's still worth shopping there for some products
• RedFlagDeals.com is a fantastic place where bargain hunters from all over Canada post their findings for others, helping everyone with their monthly budget
• websites like Kijiji.ca, UsedVictoria, CraigsList, VarageSale and LetGo are great, as buying local items used means that you don't pay for shipping on top, like eBay. I recently found a very expensive rotatable Samsung computer monitor for just $15 on VarageSale, in perfect condition!
• ShopBot.ca is another site that lets you comparison shop online, though it's only for new items and has a leaning towards technology / high-tech items
• BargainMoose.ca is a another great site that's simple to use and comprehensive

On a related note, sometimes I get lucky: today I won the 50-50 draw at work, my first time!

I won... and what about my shoulder?

Oct 21 – NEW COMPUTER!

It took half the day and I needed some expert help, but it was worth it.

My friend Jordon and I met for a late lunch, then headed to my place to get to work turning my mishmash 'Blue Frankenstein' PC into 2 discrete units, basically taking all of the best parts of the old computer and putting them into a new case that I've had hanging around for about three years now. It's a Zalman Z9 Plus, which I got for the terrific price of $50 and free shipping - woot! I just haven't had any reason to make use of its features until now.

Things went fairly smoothly, and by dinnertime we had most of the components installed into the new system, including the new motherboard which is an MSI 970 Gaming platform and includes such features as 2 high-speeed Crossfire slots, built-in overclocking support, a free RAMdisk program in many other high-end features. All for the price of $130 CDN, which I consider a bargain for the list of things it can do, but mainly it's all about letting me overclock my PhenomII-1090T CPU and run Crossfire cards at something approaching maximum speed. 

Here's the beauty in all her glory, pending some red LED fans arriving from China on the slow boat to replace the blue ones that came with the case years ago:

Isn't she a beauty? I've no name yet, and NOT Frankenstein!

The most nerve-racking moment was plugging in the newer 1tb Win10 SSD drive and turning on the system; would it work? Amazingly, it did! I shouted for joy as the system booted and Jordon got to work updating everything to run with the new motherboard, while I continue to patch together all the other parts into my old Blue Frankenstein case to run as a server.

Unfortunately, we ran into a hiccup: I had a screw loose. Well, lost actually.

Not just any screw, but one of the two that holds the heat sink onto the CPU in the old case: it fell onto the floor and neither of us could find it. ARGH!!! Naturally, it's of a unique size and we can't substitute any other screw, so I'll have to ask around a few shops in town over the next week or two to try and find something that's close - or some similar hardware that can replace it, as otherwise I'll have to buy a replacement CPU heatsink, which annoys the heck out of me, but at least it's not going to be massively expensive. Probably $20-ish... but still.

All in all, we finished around 9 PM, after six hours of intense work with a break for dinner, and I'm a very happy guy: I have a main / gaming PC that should carry me through at least another two years or more of daily use with room to tweak as needed, for a total investment of around $300 all-in. Nice!

I'll be spending the next few days on my hands and knees looking around the place though, for that darn screw!!!

Oct 22 – Seuss Skeletons?

Even the greatest writers sometimes need fate to intervene...

Take Dr. Seuss, for example: it hadn't been for a chance meeting very early in his career, he never would have written the wonderful works that he did and the world would be a poorer place for it.

I take this story out now and then, to dust off as a reminder that as a writer, I just have to put my head down and do the best I can, then let the world find my stories... with a little help along the way, which is how things are for authors nowadays.

Well, it's same for all artists, which is why the term 'starving artists' probably won't go away anytime soon... I mean, this fellow's more starving than most:

Oct 23 – Cranial Ouch

Argh...

I went to bed early last night with a not-quite-migraine headache, which is odd as I didn't have a single twinge during last week's major hurricane which caused a fairly large air pressure variation over the course of a few days.

There's probably some combination of diet and weather changes that are causing my headaches, but I still haven't been able to figure out exactly what that is, though I'm quite grateful that I don't have nearly the headache issues I did when I was living in Ontario 10 years ago.

That being said, a friend of mine posted something just this afternoon that I found very interesting in relation to migraines: they could be caused by bacteria.

While it's interesting, I'll have to spend some time in the near future looking at my diet in relation to migraines, as to date the only food trigger I know of is red wine. Science is a wonderful thing and I'm confident that at some point, I'll be able to reliably manage my migraines, but at least I'm living somewhere where they're not a weekly( or more often, weather-wise )occurrence.

My $20 neoprene brace arrived on Friday, and today I used it to take a walk around the block, with a cane to support my right leg... and it felt okay! So, the plan is to get a ride to work in the AM this week, and walk home, to get in both some much-needed exercise and necessary stretching, while being ultra-mindful of not causing any sort of relapse in either leg. Here's to getting better soon!

Canes, Cable-Cutting and Catching A Break

The word of the week is profundity.

Oct 10 – Cane You Feel It?

Yep, the cane's still there, darn it.

I'm still gingerly getting around with some effort, and doing my best not to strain anything to do with my groin area, which is as you can imagine rather tricky. Yet because of my extreme caution, things seem to be getting better by degrees and I'm cautiously optimistic that in a few weeks, I won't need a cane at all.

That be great, because despite the upper body workout, my wrists aren't exactly loving having to support the majority of my weight. Though again I have to be careful not to twist my body out of alignment and throw something else off...

Even so, I've become rather proficient at caneing-around, and I am moving a lot more at work to ensure my tendons don't fall into stretchy bad habits. I also have a foot hammock at work now, slung neatly under my desk - it's been a huge help in keeping my right leg slung at the right angle to take any pressure off the tendon - thanks again, eBay!

This week, I've noticed my energy levels rising along with my optimism and that's been a welcome sign that mentally, I'm on the mend and from there the body will follow, if I have anything to say about it.

Oct 11 – The Hip: Memories not my own

How about a guest post today?

Apart from the occasional comments I've received on my blog posts over the years, I've never had anyone right a 'guest post' for my blog, though to be fair it never really asked.

However, is never a bad time to start! Here's an excerpt from a friend's blog this month, where he discusses in depth his memories of The Tragically Hip, which are( to my shame )far more extensive than my own:

His insightful post is in-depth, in every way a heartfelt tribute to The Hip, and is worth reading at least once if not more than a few times. It's certainly worthy of being called my first guest post and so there you are: go read it now!

Oct 12 – Whatta Workplace!

I work with a group of really amazing people.

For that, I'm grateful, more so than I think I've ever been for any place I've ever worked: almost twofold, everyone at my current workplace is friendly, easy to get along with and thoughtful, on top of being good at their jobs and generally happy to be working with one another.

A good example would be this past week, when the same one of my coworkers who thoughtfully picked up a Star Trek mug for me at value village a few weeks ago came by my desk today with another gift! I should mention that for a few months now, another one of my coworkers has been thoughtfully saving all of the Star Trek stamps that we receive on the mail that comes into the office daily, and I have quite a collection now, some of which don't even look like they've been used since he's so careful about taking them off the envelopes - and never fails to do so!

I no longer fear Mondays!

Somehow, my other coworker who dropped by today did one better: she managed to find an entire unused book of Star Trek stamps at the post office today. She's  remembered to ask the last two or three times she's been in to various post offices just on the off-chance that they had some, and today she scored! All she asked was the $10 that it cost for the set of stamps, which I gladly paid, and now I have a mint set, which I have carefully placed on my shelf right next to my Star Trek Continues poster.

While it's not Babylon 5, my girlfriend was excited to see the stamps, which are a rarity and I'm excited because it's yet another example of how amazing my workplace is... and did I mention that another coworker replaced my missing Starbucks mug that had disappeared from the lunchroom last week while drying?

Yeah. I'm a damn lucky guy...

Oct 13 –  Going cable-less

More than a year ago, I cut the cord.

Cable TV's umbilical feed, that is: August 2016 was my last month with cable, and I haven't looked back. Which is a good thing, because I've been really damn busy since then with all sorts of other things and quite honestly, having television as a sort of sponge-sop to fall back on at the end of the each of those long days would have been a bad thing. More people agree with this sentiment every year, in Canada, and elsewhere.

It's all too easy to just plop down on the couch, turn on due to the and let a few hours go by, though admittedly that particular habit has been replaced someone for many people with binge watching on Netflix. It's very similar nowadays with people who have PVR's, in that you can record a show and watch it in stages as you are able during the week, little manageable bites that still eat up your time.

I compare not having cable TV to websurfing and newsfeeds, in a way: when you're surfing, you're going looking for things that match your interests, whereas with newsfeeds those interests are force-fed to you 24 seven, whether or not you have time.

After over a year without cable, I have far more time to put towards other projects and I can be very selective about what I watch. Sure, I miss things like Game of Thrones on HBO, but programs lke Stranger Things on Netflix make up for the lack... and I can always rent a few seasons of GoT cheaply a year or two down the road on Blu-ray. Considering the masses of DVD's and Blu-Rays I already have that I either haven't watched yet( or haven't re-watched )in years, I think I'm good missing out on most of what's on television these days, which for the most part doesn't interest me, though there are a few sci-fi shows like Dark Matter that have peaked my interest... but again, I'll probably just watch them later at some point.

I have too much else to do right now.

Oct 14 – Four Years Ago...

... I got pneumonia, but it was worth it.

Why?

Because I finished the second draft of my novel, that's why... and I submitted it to a publisher before that particular contest deadline ended. Even though I didn't win, it was a major accomplishment and I learned an incredible amount in just 10 days( despite catch pneumonia from sitting in front of a 'drafty' window for so long - there's an ironic lesson in that somewhere ):

And... here I am four years later, working on the fourth draft of the same first novel, while having pleaded half of the first draft of the sequel and plotted out a good portion of the third in a series to boot.

Though it's slow going, I'm making progress, and despite all sorts of setbacks that I've had to deal with continuously along the way, I can still see the finish line. Or deadline, as it may be, albeit I've had to adjust my expectations significantly as to how often I write in a month and how well I think I'm doing because of that.

Being a writer is like being a big ball of yarn, tangled up with elastics and paperclips: somehow you got to straighten that yarn out and get it written down despite the difficulties.

Mostly, you have to learn how to roll with it...

Oct 15 – Spidey Re-Animate!!!

What a Saturday morning treat I had today!

Just after breakfast, I found a link in my newsfeed to a wonderful reimagining of an episode of the old 1970s Spiderman television cartoon! Here's a bit about how this amazing 12 minute animated short came about:

More than 70 artists came together to reimagine a 12-minute episode of Spider-Man, and the result is something that has to be seen to be believed. Spider-Man Re-Animate, produced by Grantray Lawrence Animation and posted on Vimeo by editor Ron Doucet, takes dozens of classic, modern, and obscure animation styles and seamlessly integrates them into the Spider-Man episode, “Vulture’s Prey.” The video was created by animators from Nova Scotia and was originally presented at the Nocturne at Night Arts Festival in Canada.

It's just a joy to watch, seeing all the little in-jokes and pop-culture references that the artists have worked in... so here you go!

Oct 16 – Alotta Hot Air, That!

Whew!

What could've been a massive disaster here today turned out to be a no-show, as the remains of Typhoon Songda completely bypassed Victoria tonight. It was the third in a series of progressively more powerful storms coming in from the Pacific, with predicted winds in excess of 100 kph on the fully exposed West coast of Vancouver Island. People battened down the hatches here, with all ferry sailings to the Island canceled and the city became a ghost town after dinner as we prepared for power outages, possible flooding and the like.

Even the weather forecast didn't know exactly where the epicenter of the storm was going to make landfall until 8pm tonight, and the prediction was for strong, damaging winds to occur to the right of the landfall zone, smack-dab on Victoria:

That's us, right there at the bottom of the dark central coastline... the Eye to the left!

However, nothing happened.

Due to the geography of the southern tip of Vancouver Island where Victoria is located, as well as some fortuitous luck, the strongest winds actually happened this afternoon... then it was nothing but light breezes all evening, then just the occasional gentle draft around 8 PM and onwards.

My battery backups didn't even blink: no power failures, no flooding, nothing.

As of 10pm, the storm had moved North of Victoria, in the direction indicated...

It was as quiet a Saturday night I think as I've experienced here on Cook Street for many years, with very little traffic on the road and almost no pedestrians to speak of. Pretty much everyone stayed in and watched the weather news, which spoke of significant wind-and-wave damage down a few hundred miles south in Oregon on the coast.

Victoria sometimes has a charmed life, and I'm very happy to say that this time we caught a break. All the same, I'm going to be updating my emergency supplies, because this is only one of several possible disasters that might affect the Island in the near future.

It's always best to be prepared and not need to be, than the other way around.

My TurboGrafx16 eBay auction ended this evening, after week of my watching it nervously, and I'm happy to say that not one but FOUR people bid on it, culminating in the sale of my HUGE collection for price that I'm more than happy to let it go for - BIG HAPPY SMILES all around!!!