Spacecraft, Sale Success and Stiff Necks

The word of the week is intense.

Nov 28 – Mission Accomplished!

It's funny how you sometimes find yourself back at the start of things...

I was comparing all sorts of prices from various Canadian online tech stores for half a dozen video cards last night, and in the end I wound up purchasing the very one I'd had my eye on all along, but was out of my budget's range:

The deciding factor was, of course, price: after 9 PM, all sorts of Cyber Monday discounts popped up and for this particular card by MSI, there was suddenly a 10% discount... which put it squarely inside my budget, and it was the only card of all the ones I was considering that such a substantial discount appeared for. It's crazy that some cards out there cost close to $1000+tax... which is nowhere near what I paid.

I confess, it was stressful, as my finances have been very tight this month and I was fretting that having waited all year for these sales, I wouldn't be able to get the level of replacement video card I'd be happy with, that I have to settle for something that I didn't really want but couldn't afford to jump to the next price bracket. All my months of research would be wasted and I'd have to try again when the prices finally dropped sometime in the summer of 2017 or later - a long time to wait.

Thankfully, that didn't happen, and I caught a break last night.

Now I just have to wait for the card to arrive to see just how much of an improvement it's going to make in my computer's overall speed. Even though I didn't manage to win anything in several months of trying my luck in online giveaways, I'm still pretty pleased with the price I paid today for what I got.

Nov 29 – Spacecraft 2000-2100AD!

I love how modern technology can enable fans to make incredible things.

Back when I was a boy, one of my favorite books growing up was Spacecraft 2000-2100 AD! which was a spectacular selection of sci-fi works by various artists. Each spaceship depicted had a story told over one or two pages, depending on the layout, and each one was fascinating in its own right. I vividly remember trying to get inside those stories and discover more about the ships themselves.

Now, decades later, fans of that book have taken it to the next level! Using modern CGI technology, they have created an animated 'tour' of the book, showcasing each of the ships, with the exact style and background art of the book, which is astounding. I never thought I would ever see these ships in motion!

Terran Trade Authority - Spacecraft 2000-2100AD from Adrian Mann on Vimeo.

Nov 30 – Son of a... really?

I was hoping it would last longer...

The sad news today: Pebble is getting bought out, and will vanish sometime in 2017. Meaning my lovely Pebble Time watch will be a relic, albeit a useful one until it dies.

Apparently, Fitbit is going to be buying Pebble, then shut them down.

It's a shame, but not unexpected, as Pebble's best days are well behind them. A year ago, there was an offer by Citizen to buy the company for three-quarters of a billion USD dollars... which Pebble turned down at the time, as they were riding high on their success.

Now, the company owes $25 million to their suppliers and the Fitbit buyout offer is rumored to be around $40 million - 1/10 what was being offered a little over a year ago.

Still, I'll keep using my Pebble watch until it dies, and perhaps pick up a few more cheaply on eBay sometime in 2017 to have as backups. I don't need a fancy smartwatch, just one that does everything I need it to... like the Pebble.

I certainly won't be buying a FitBit. Jerks.

Dec 1 –  More Bad News...

 Guess what was waiting in my inbox this morning?

A message from the CEO of GlowForge: it's being delayed.

However, the news isn't actually all that bad: the announcements is about a pushback from a ship date this month( December )to sometime in April or May 2017 - I can handle that.

It gives me more time to get my business website up and running, as well as focus on other things, like finishing work on my novels. It'll be nice to have some breathing space and not have to think about my GlowForge sitting at home, being underused because I don't have everything in place for it yet.

Also, the e-mail contains some very interesting addendums to help soften the blow of the shipping delay, one of which made me clap( yup! )in delight:

Isn't that incredible? My substantial investment in this device seems an even smarter choice now that it can be modified into other types of devices, albeit with the purchase of additional hardware. BUT, that expansion-hardware will listed at a be significantly lower price point as it utilizes the software and hardware that are already in place inside the GlowForge.

I'm still absorbing the news, but in the meantime, this was also released today: Adam

Savage from Mythbusters test out the Glowforge!




Dec 2   – My MSI Arrives!!!!

Talk about stressful...

Recap: After all was said and done, I managed to get the type of video card I wanted for my PC for $10 under my maximum budget, which makes me Happy.

It arrived today in the mail, which makes me even happier:

As it was my day off, I had plenty of time to pull out the old pair of video cards( two ATI 5770's from 2009 )and configure the system for the installation of the new card, which has twice the memory of both of the old ones put together and four times the speed - at least.

Installation was smooth as butter with no hiccups, and by noon I was gaming... testing out MechWarrior Online, as that's the game that I wanted to try to have the greatest graphical improvement for - and for the most part, it worked - a great card, as the reviews said!

While I discovered that I can't play the game with maximum eye candy turned on, by the afternoon, I had found the right settings to allow a much smoother average of 45 FPS( Frames Per Second )which was a big increase over the 30FPS MAXIMUM I was getting with the old setup. - one that would drop / stutter / lag significantly during the more heated parts of the game.

All in all, I'm really happy with my purchase. This card will carry me through quite nicely for the next few years until I'm able to move it into a much more capable system, which by then I should have some funds saved up for.

Dec 3 – MW5 Announced!

Finally, after 10 years, we are getting a new MechWarrior game!

It's great timing, to balance out the double whammy of bad news this week with the Pebble and the GlowForge. To be honest, I never thought that there'd be another standalone MechWarrior game and that MechWarrior online was all there was going to be... but I'm glad to be wrong!

Here's the demo, part of the announcement today at the MechWarrior Online 2016 World Championships, just across the water in Vancouver:



If you don't remember what the original games looked like, this short but wonderful video will catch you up, as it shows all the MechWarrior games released to date in order. What a long way we've come in 27 years...




Dec 4 – GoG v.2 Preview!

Dang it, not again...

The stress of this past week, combined with the carryover stress from shopping for my video card last weekend has resulted in an extremely tense set of neck muscles. While it's not debilitating to the point where I can't move my head, it does hurt to sit with my head up for long periods: my neck tendons feel like taut cables under my skin.

Ouch.

Along with using my neck massager( carefully )as well as some hot showers, I'm just sitting around today with a neck brace( go ahead and picture that if you must ) trying not to tense up anything above my shoulders. Good thing I don't have to go anywhere today.

Happily, the latest trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy V.2 was released today, which really helped to take my mind off things:




I'm being be very careful this coming week at work, so as not to aggravate my neck. On the bright side, I managed to walk to work - slowly - for out of the five days this week without a problem, which bodes well for considering myself as recovering in full a month or so from now. Considering all this silliness started this past August as a result of simple exercise, I'm in no hurry to rush back to that - I've still got a lot of reading to do to fully understand how to ease myself back into getting in shape again without further injury.

Strolling, Sales and Solar Scams

The word of the week is convoluted.

Nov 21 – You Cane Do It...!

I walked to work today for the first time in three months - and without a cane!

My girlfriend and I are going to be walking to work( and hopefully home from work as well )for the near future, as we want to not only see each other more often but also get some basic exercise too. As it happens, our morning groups coincide for at least some distance, so as long as we time it correctly we can take a stroll together at least once a day for a few minutes, which is nice.

I was just happy that I was able to walk for 15 min. at a steady pace without needing a cane, though I did wear my elastic leg brace on my right leg just to be sure I wasn't straining things overmuch. By not using a cane, I'm not twisting my body with each step, which has been causing some muscle distress in my right abdomen if I do it for too long in a day or over the course of a few days.

It's still a work in progress; I expect that I'll have to be taking things easy for at least another month before I can put any sort of more-than-normal strain on my right leg without causing my inside-leg /groin tendon any permanent damage or discomfort. I'm paying extremely close attention to what I'm doing, how I'm walking and how my leg is feeling, so uncomfortable going cane-less at this point so long as I have my brace with me and aren't walking more than about 20 min. at a stretch.

Eventually I'll be able to get back to some gentle cycling in the new year, I hope, so I can get my fitness levels back up to where they were when this all started last August. It's just being so damn long a process, slowly healing...

Nov 22 – Trek VR in 2017

Oh, the possibilities...

If I do manage to get a deal on a mid-range video card this coming weekend, one of the things I'll be able to do with it is play virtual-reality games - at some point. Probably right after I managed to get a VR headset and upgrade my computer, which would point to sometime around 2018 by my financial calendar... But at least I'll be able to bring my 'new' video card from 2016 along for the ride.

I think of all the VR games that are coming down the development pipe in the next three years, the one I really want to try the most is Star Trek: Bridge Crew, which I've mentioned already in this blog and is getting close to release currently, in mid-2017.

I suggested to my lady that part of a promo for the game could be a contest to WIN an online 'VR Bridge Session' with 3 cast members of Star Trek - how cool would that be?

Pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

Nov 23 – Rooting Around

More time spent fiddling around today...

But for a purpose: to root my OnePlus One phone, so I can take full control of things and see if I can get it to behave / stop overheating like it does daily now. If it comes down to it, I can just replace the operating system with a new ROM, of which there are at least half a dozen different variants to choose from and any one of which is as good as or better than the current default / stock ROM it comes with.

 Which is a much better option than looking to buy the latest OnePlus phone, the 3T:

That's... not a bargain, by anyone's standards.

Considering that I purchased the OnePlus One in 2014 for $475 CDN including taxes, US exchange and shipping, the price of the new 3T takes it well out of any consideration for purchase.  It's no longer a great value for the price and indeed it now falls squarely in the range of current 'flagship' phone pricing from the major manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and others. Bottom line: it's WAY beyond my budget.

But what I don't have really is time: the rooting process is not an easy or simple one, as there's a high probability of rendering my phone useless if I don't do it correctly. In addition, many of the tutorials out there require that you wipe the data on your phone completely and start fresh, which only adds to the time needed to complete the project as you have to reinstall every app that you have in order to get back to the set up that you were using before you decided to root the phone.

I’m going to mess around with the phone for the next few weeks, on and off and see how far I get in unlocking and rooting the phone. The first thing I'm doing is making sure I have a backup of all my apps, contacts, text messages and the like; it's a good thing that my photos are automatically backed up via Google Drive, so at least I don't have to worry about those.

Tick, tick, tick...

Nov 24 –  Back It Goes

Sometimes, I wonder...

As it happens, my sister's new cell phone - a ZTE Axon 32gb, bought last week - died today, for no reason. One minute she was using it just fine for SMS messages, at 50% battery and the next minute: screen's black, phone's dead. We'd had it for a total of 3 days.

Um, what?

So I did all the usual: plugged it into ZTE's charger, no go. Tried another charger: nada. Tried a plethora of Android force-you-to-work boot tricks: nope. It's dead, Jim... good thing I have a 2-week return period, and this defect surfaced when it did. I'll be returning it to Canada Computers, where I bought it for $219.00 for a refund, RMA email's been logged and all that. BUT: my sister's back to her old phone, and that's longer in the tooth than something a Neanderthal might have owned.

Now, the phone's $209 this week( and likely next, as well )on Newgg.ca, but I'm wary of buying the same problem again, though admittedly less so with Newegg, whose return policies are pretty decent( and I'm a Premier Member, to boot ). The ZTE Axon's a great deal, with solid specs for the price, and as an unlocked phone it means that my sister's not stuck in a costly 2-year contract for a device with similar specs for twice the price.

I'll see what other deals pop up on Cyber Monday( the 28th )but I have a feeling in the end that I'll get the same model ZTE again, as it's still the best deal I've seen in Canada. No way I'm going to bother shopping for US buys, as the exchange / duty would kill any sort of savings their current sales would give.

Such is the life of the Savvy Shopper...

Nov 25 – Black Friday? Nah.

It's just another day to me today, surprisingly.

Unlike most people today, in looking through some of the various sales flyers for Canadian Black Friday this year, I was struck by my total lack of interest. I'm good enough at finding bargains and watching for sales that most everything I saw in the flyers was close were the same to the prices I'm used to paying with my frugal shopping skills, so nothing really jumped out at me as being special about the sales today.

I'm content with what I have, that it's well-maintained and serves my needs. I keep on top of what my family needs well enough that I can spend a few months looking for various things on a regular basis and that's almost always enough time to find a good deal online either new or used. It's rare that I purchase anything at full price anymore, which always happens out of necessity rather than choice. I know in general for most everything that I use( or will need ) where the best places to buy it, off-line or online, and how much it should cost. I do most of this without coupons either, which for the most part aren't worth the time, I've found.

I shed not a tear
 for Black Friday this year...

As for what I need, well... that can't be bought.

A good job, a roof over my head( lead-footed neighbors notwithstanding )friends, family, a brilliant and beautiful girlfriend... these are the things important to me, and not necessarily in that order.

All the rest, well... I'll find things as I need them, and pay what I can, when I can. I'm certainly not going to buy something just because it's on sale; those days are long, long behind me now.

Nov 26 – Shining Light on Scams

If it's too good to be true...

It's all well and good to get excited about some new product, if it fills a need in your life or otherwise looks to be a Good Thing for humanity in general.. but there's always caveats, and often times those little 'by-the-ways' get glossed over when it comes to selling people things - it's the nature of business, in a way.

Which means you should always think 'If it's too good to be true...'

Case in point: spinning solar cells - yup, they exist:

Supposedly, the design above allows for greater efficiency, as it keeps the cells cool and allows the device to maximize available sunlight by always having cells pointing at the Sun. However, a closer look at the design reveals many problems, the first and most damning of which is that assumptions have been made regarding the science behind the design, which reveal fundamental flaws - check it out.

It's a shame, because it looks cool... but that doesn't mean it'll actually work as well as the creators have projected. So: back to 'If it's too good to be true...'

Nov 27 – Pondering Prices

After spending a good part of the morning with my girlfriend, I came home and did some more research on video cards... like I haven't been doing enough the last month or so already.

Out of all the options out there, I've narrowed it down to 3 or so video cards, and I'm just now waiting to see if tomorrow's Cyber Monday sales might affect their prices - hopefully, at least one will drop in price a decent amount.

Even though I've earmarked some funds for the purchase, it's been a difficult pill to swallow that it's still going to be a couple of hundred dollars for a decent video card. The fact that the card should last me at least another 2 to 3 years is some small consolation, and since I'm choosing to go with an AMD branded device, I can purchase a second one( most likely used! )in another year or two to stretch the budget, as I've mentioned before.

It's just the initial pain of the purchase that bothers me, and so I've been diligent in searching everywhere on the Internet to find the best deal. I've even regularly hung around in some chatrooms on Twitch.TV for the last two months, as AMD has been sponsoring streamers to give away a video cards each week, but even with the odds of just a few hundred one, I've not been able to win one - darn the luck!

Such a USEFUL site...! :-)

One site that's really helped me in the last week is PCPartPicker.ca, which amalgamates hardware costs across all of the major online stores in Canada. It's regularly updated with sale prices, though unfortunately I discovered you have to be fast if you find a great price because everyone else is also using the website, so stock disappears quickly, sometimes a matter of minutes for the really great deals..

Which is why I will be hovering on PC Part Picker tonight after 9 PM, in the hopes of shaving another $30-50 dollars off my purchase, with a little luck.

See y'all next week!

It was a long week; each of the first three weeks of November, were short weeks for me thanks to Thanksgiving, which was really great. This was a long 5-day week, with some stressful days one after another. My upper back is a full of knots tonight, though I've managed to calm them with the judicious application of my back massager, so that's been quite helpful. This week coming should be

Day jobs, Diversification and Disappointment

The word of the week is nomenclature.

Nov 14 – Dreamy Day Job

Work's going great.

Apart from the occasional idiot( unfortunately I have to deal with only over the phone )the job itself is the best I've ever had, as are the people I work with. My current team is professional, clients and( mainly thanks to my training ) good at their jobs and getting better every day from my coaching, humour and professionalism on the job.

It's wonderful to show up, get paid and go home again with minimal stress.

Now, I just need to get the rest of my life as on-track as my day job: this piece is in place, and doing really well, so I need to build out the rest to fit my needs.

That's... going to be trickier.

But, anything worth doing takes time and effort, and nobody's going to do it for me. Much as I may feel like I'm banging my head against the wall in certain areas, I have to believe that the walls going to dent before my head will.

And I'm nothing if not stubborn – for both good and bad.

Nov 15 – Not For Everyone

I found the following video… amusing this week.

For my own reasons, that is; naturally, not everyone will find it funny, but then not everyone is me. I think one of the humorous aspects of the video is that it makes you think about things that you take for granted, even divine beings who are supposedly omniscient:

Nov 16 – Four Years + Four Days Later

Back in 2012, I ordered a lock.

Not just any lock, but a Bluetooth-enabled smart lock for my front entrance, one t

hat can be moved from apartment to apartment with no damage at all to the doors.

It was called the Lockitron, and at the time was one of the most successful Kickstarters ever for that site.

Four years later, I still don't have my Lockitron, but I am wiser.

It's not to say that the Lockitron isn't coming, it's just taking its sweet, sweet time... and serves to offer as a cautionary tale to anyone looking to put some money down on projects that seem great, but might not ever materialize.

I'm still looking for to getting my Lockitron, which now looks to arrive sometime in 2017 once they get their international order-delivery bugs ironed out. I certainly didn't think it would take longer than 1 to 2 years maximum, considering that at the time I was Backer #14,000-ish... but, lesson learned.

Nov 17 –  Playtable?

Who the heck has $10,000 for an electronic gaming table?

I certainly don’t, nor did many other people, which is why Microsoft's Surface gaming experiment from 2011 didn't gain any traction in the market: it was just too expensive and did too little to justify its price.

Fast-forward to five years later now in 2016, and there's a new device that looks to take the best ideas of the old MS Surface Table and incorporate them and a far more affordable package.

Called the Playtable, it's a small 24" touch-sensitive screen that you can place on any surface( see what I did there? )which allows you to play all sorts of touch-enabled games, from traditional ones all the way up to brand-new experiences that people can program easily for use on the device.

I think it's a really neat idea, especially for a price that's a mere 3 percent of what Microsoft was offering their Surface for... far more affordable.

Nov 18 – Second PT Job?

Today I tentatively signed on for a new job, in order to better make ends meet.

I've been looking for a second job for a while now, as I still haven't had any response after applying for over year now for numerous better government positions: I can't wait any longer for someone to take notice of me in that arena.

However, second job for me doesn't mean minimum wage, which would be a waste of my unfortunately much-lower-than-normal energy levels and would likely result in me becoming dangerously tired from overwork.

No, I've been looking to supplement my income while still keeping my day job and my health... but without buying into anything chancy or disreputable.

Today, I had a long chat with one of my financial advisors and decided to look into a couple of side ventures to supplement my income, while I wait for my GlowForge to arrive in early 2017 - by March, I hope. If I had my druthers, I’d rather be a business owner making things to order with a GlowForge than anything else, but needs must.

It was a long day, and I was feeling rather depressed by the end of it, mainly from not being able to move on from where I am while many of the other motivated people in my office have. Feeling burdened and cornered by various factors in my life isn't conducive to creativity, a thought-cycle that only feeds back onto itself.

I'll check out the ideas, and see how valid they look for my needs.

Nov 19 – Phone Surgery

My phone's showing it's 'age' lately...

When I bought it back in October of  2014, my OnePlus One was cutting edge and a deal to boot: for a then-incredible price of $375 Canadian( half of what's the top-level smart phones of the time were going for! )I got a quad-core processor and 64 GB of storage in a slick phone that beat out everything else in its price range:

Fast-forward to two years later, and there's problems.

Mainly, my phone tends to overheat, leading to constant crashes: up to a dozen a day, where the phone spontaneously reboots... and takes 10 minutes to come back to full usability. I've learned to deal with this issue as best I can, but I believe the phone's way overdue for me to either replace or reformat.

Replacement will be costly, to the tune of at least $250 CDN for a comparable phone, like the RedMi Note3 Pro, which I would buy myself rather than go on a contract with one of the major carriers here in Canada - never again.

Reformatting would mean routing the phone, an arduous process that has no guarantees of working but that would allow me to replace the currently-flaky operating system of the phone with one of my choosing that would be faster and far more stable than what I've been using for the last two years.

Nov 20 – Odd Thoughts

Sometimes, it's strange to be a writer...

Odd thoughts pop into your head from time to time, for no reason other than your brain thinks you need to know them at that particular moment. For example:

Now, I like this idea, all the moreso because it appeals to my 'What if?' mentality, that our reality is as malleable as any fiction, when we think about it. New ideas, inventions and all the other billion factors that shape the world we live in are taking place all at once, so who's to say what's going to have the biggest effect?

It's a good though to wrap up the week with, one that's been mentally and emotionally exhausting for me. Again, I think the weather / time of year are having a big impact on me, as I'm not exercising and I just want to sleep all the time...

Maybe this year, I'll ask Santa for some stuffed animals to snuggle while I sleep.

Black Friday's coming up this week, and I have little desire to spend much at all, as I don't need much: a new video card would be great, as I've been given a 90-day reprieve on returning my Darbee 5000S. The idea is that my current setup is causing issues, according to Darbee's tech support, but the problem is apparently new to them... *sigh* So if I replace my 2 video cards with just 1, things Should Be Better. Except that I have to get a decent NEW card for the best price possible, as I can't afford much. So, more stress...