Month: February 2016

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog has been working with streaming site Hulu to cover the absolute spectacle that is the 2016 US Presidential Election. The video above features Triumph talking to young voters in college. Catch the rest of these videos on Hulu’s YouTube channel!

In this clip above, Jimmy Fallon interviews Peyton Manning, fresh off his Superbowl win.

For the last two weeks of work, I sorta said to myself that I’d get to work earlier and I’d eat nothing but salads for lunch. All of this was well-intentioned desire to finish my contract strong. Of course, I’ve done none of those things so far.

It’s tough to pick a salad for lunch when there are so many other more delicious things to eat. For example, I went out to lunch today for pho. A co-worker wanted to go for lunch and you really can’t go wrong with pho. I wasn’t about to get a salad roll or anything.

Maybe I’ll go into work a bit earlier tomorrow. If not, I have more one week left.

Out of all the current late night talk show hosts, I think Stephen Colbert has the most in common with my interests. He’s a big Lord of the Rings fan, is interested in science and knows a lot about comic books.

Colbert frequently calls out people when they nerd lore incorrect, especially if it’s Lord of the Rings stuff. In this clip above, Stephen has a beef with some people at Cambridge about Spider-man.

Just about everyone I know patronizes dollar stores. In a world where everything is becoming more expensive at an alarming rate, people are looking for value. Dollar stores appeal to the value conscious shopper. For the most part, I have no qualms about shopping at a dollar store. I know the quality of stuff isn’t great but sometimes you just need something that will get the job done and not in a fancy way. Like the time I needed a few funnels for putting salt and sugar into containers. Would it be cool to have stainless steel funnels? Yes, but plastic would do the job fine and so for a $1.25, I got what I needed.

Now when it comes to food, you need to be a little more careful about dollar stores. With food, you’re ingesting the product and putting it into your body. Is this an area that you want to go budget on? Some food products at dollar stores you don’t have to worry about. That can of Coke or chocolate bar from Nestle won’t be any more dangerous than if you bought it at Safeway. Essentially any recognized brand you see at a dollar store is just as safe and if you can get it cheaper, it makes sense to buy it from there. It’s those food products that are from a brand you’ve never heard of that you have to be cautious about.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying an evening beverage consisting of decaffeinated orange pekoe tea with a slice of lemon and some honey. It’s a delightful drink that my mother introduced to me when I was a child. One evening last week, I was at the dollar store when I realized I was out of honey. There on the shelf I saw a small bottle of honey, the one in the picture above. Yes, the amount was decent but it only cost $1.25. Honey in general is expensive, so I decided to give this a try. I immediately noticed this honey was much darker than the honey I’ve bought in other stores. It was a very dark brown, almost like molasses. I’m used to seeing honey that is golden and is almost white when it solidifies. I also saw this was categorized as “grade no.2 amber” honey. In all my life, I don’t think I’ve seen anything but grade no. 1 honey sold in Canadian stores so this was a first for me. I began to wonder what the difference would be taste wise.

In hindsight, when I got the honey home I probably should have poured a bit out and tasted it by itself. It couldn’t be that bad could it? What I did instead was steeped a large mug of tea and added a nice slice of lemon to it. Then I added a good amount of this dollar store honey. I left it to cool down a bit and then came back to take that first sip. I was overwhelmed with a sense of bitterness. There was faint undertones of citrus and sweetness but for the most part, it was just plain bitter. It tasted awful really. Not believing myself, I drank some more tea and got another mouthful of bitterness for my troubles. I had ruined a perfectly good cup of tea.

This was a clear case of a cheap food product that was cheap because the quality wasn’t as high as I was used to. I am sure that grade no. 2 honey is cheaper to produce since it has fewer checks to pass. That’s why you can sell it at a dollar store for $1.25. Of course, you can’t expect it then to taste as good and as pure as that grade no. 1 honey that costs so much more in stores. There are just some items that you shouldn’t buy at a dollar store, honey being one of them. If you’re also interested in this topic, US dollar stores actually have dollar steaks, which is incredible (for the wrong reasons).

As it’s the Family Day holiday in British Columbia on Monday, I’ve sent everyone here et.com home to be with their families. Monday is also Chinese New Year so there’s that. We return tomorrow with our regular programming.

I recently cancelled my CIBC Visa credit card. It had been sitting in a drawer at home since last May. I stopped carrying it in my wallet and the balance sat at zero for more than half a year. Even unused I kept it that long because I wanted to see if there was any reason to keep it. After six months, I found no such reason.

The cancellation itself required just a single phone call. They didn’t try very hard to keep my business which I appreciated. Interestingly though, since the card was due to be expired at the end of this month, just yesterday, a new card arrived in the mail. I suppose the cancellation occurred too close to the date where the new card was scheduled to be mailed out and couldn’t be stopped. I immediately cut the card into pieces and threw it out.

The interesting question is what cancelling a credit card does to your credit rating. If you carry a lot of credit card debt, I think having fewer cards makes your credit rating worse. That’s because your ratio of available credit to credit debt becomes smaller. I don’t carry credit card debt so I believe my rating remains somewhat the same.

My friend John sent me a message when he woke up this morning and it was 11:30am when he did that. If you read my last post you’ll know that John had day one of funemployment today. He told me that he was going to have breakfast and then possibly take a nap in the afternoon. That seemed pretty damn glorious if you ask me.

Like I mentioned in my previous missive, I have exactly twelve working days left before I go on my break. I wish it started tomorrow. I had dinner with a friend tonight and it was so pleasant. When I got home, I wanted to drink liquids with caffeine, play video games, watch Netflix, and stay up until 4am. I then thought about how nice it would be then to wake up at noon, then go downtown and have coffee with some friends. Then I might go to Stanley Park, even if it was rainy. That seemed like such a good plan for a nice day.

Unfortunately, I have to go to work tomorrow. I have to do that twelve more times and then I have my nice days.

Last year, my friend John started his one-year contract at EA about a month before I embarked on my current employment adventure. We had previously worked on Halo together, so it was great that we were at the same company again.

What also was great was the fact that John drove to work and that his commute home took him right past a Skytrain station. He graciously agreed to let me ride home with him, dropping me off along the way right next to the station. In doing so, he allowed me to catch the train one stop closer to home than if I had taken the bus and I got to avoid the bus altogether.

His generosity sure saved me some time, a significant amount if you counted it all up over the last year. I was particularly thankful for the rides during the winter when the elements turn the weather wet and cold. John never asked for anything in return but I made sure I bought him lunch on a regular basis. It was the least I could do.

John’s last day of his contract was today. He went out for lunch as we usually do and I made sure his meal was on my dime. At the restaurant, I watched John disable his morning alarm on his phone. There’s no reason for him to be awake at any particular time in the mornings now. He’d been looking forward to turning that alarm off for a while now. I was a bit envious but I’ll disable my own alarm soon enough in just over two weeks.

I’ll have to take the bus home now but only for a little while and then John and I will be collecting cans in the daytime.

I have an update to my last post regarding my contract being one day short of allowing to get my discounted shares. It turns out that I was the only one aware that my last day of work was technically February 26. When I was told by a senior dude that my last day was February 12, I was under the assumption they were paying me until the 26th and those days would be comp time. As it turns out, one of the managers did some digging and discovered the HR system had actual last day as February 12. So as far as the company was concerned, the 12th was the last day, full stop. That meant I’d be only be paid until the 12th as well.

I dug up the signed offer letter, which clearly states that the company would employee me until the 26th. Someone on the HR side definitely screwed up somewhere. Anyways, long story short, the company’s mistake has been corrected and I will be getting one day extension to my contract to take me to the 29th. Had this not been a leap year, I wouldn’t have needed the extension since the 26th would have been the last business day of the month. Adding in the comp time I’ll be given, the last day where I’ll physically be at work is now the 19th, one week more than originally planned. Would I have preferred to have left on the 12th? Yes, of course, but working an extra week isn’t that bad and now I’ll get my stock.