Month: August 2016

On Monday, someone on YouTube started streaming episodes of The Family Guy and The Simpsons 24 hours a day without commercials or interruptions.

What they’re doing is obviously illegal as it breaks probably more than one copyright laws. I’m surprised it has been already shutdown by YouTube as it would take just a single phone call or e-mail from Fox to get that done. Nonetheless, the stream is high-quality. I even saw an episode of The Family Guy that I’d never seen before.

Enjoy it while you can!

With the U.S. presidential election campaign in full swing, my thoughts logically turn to wagering and making a bet on the outcome of said election.

I did this for the last Canadian federal election. I bet $100 that Stephen Harper would remain Prime Minister. I did this, of course, as insurance against the most horrible of outcomes, another Conservative regime in Parliament. The thinking was, if it was all going to hell, at least I’d make some money off the result. Of course, that did not happen, I lost $100 and sanity was restored to government.

I’d like to apply the same reasoning to the U.S. election. A Donald Trump presidency would be a million times worse than having Stephen Harper as P.M. for the next few years. Without exaggeration, such a result might be the closest we’ve come to an extinction level crisis as a species.

In any case, Bodog already has the betting proposition up. The odds are heavily in Clinton’s favour. A bet of $100 for her will garner you just a profit of $22. A bet of $100 for Trump would gain you a whopping $325. Obviously Bodog doesn’t think Trump stands a chance. Unfortunately, Bodog is a betting firm and their expertise isn’t politics. In an election as crazy as this, I don’t think you can take anything for granted.

I’ll probably put down $100 for Trump as insurance for the worst of the worst outcomes. If I win, however, I wonder if I’ll even have enough time to enjoy my winnings before it all goes to hell.

As many of you know I worked on three skateboarding games from 2006 to 2010. The last one came out six years ago. Since then, fans of the game have been calling on EA to make another game. They’ve been quite vocal, flooding EA’s social media channels with their requests. Well, one dude, who I’ve called out on his previous BS on this, made a White House petition demanding that the US government take action by pressuring EA to make another game. Website EGM has all the details.

Of course, you write a petition for almost anything using the official White House site and even if you get the 100k signatures, nothing is binding of course. This is, however, quite amusing.

I’ve mentioned this several times but one of the benefits of my all-salad lunch diet at work is an increased amount of energy during the day. I guess the better way to describe it is the absence of that afternoon dip in energy where I used to feel tired and sleepy. I’m sleeping about the same amount as before the new diet, so I’m ruling out increased rest for this benefit. I’ve heard people say that eating well made them feel so much better and I didn’t really understand what they meant. I think I do now.

Anyways, today offered me an opportunity to conduct an experiment. For lunch, there was a team BBQ on the patio at work. I briefly considered not going and sticking to my salad but I decided to attend the BBQ. I wound up eating a cheeseburger with two slices of bacon and two hot dog wieners (without the buns ’cause carbs). I didn’t have any sugary drinks, instead I drank club soda.

The afternoon rolled around and I waited. Despite having quite a large coffee, I felt a huge dip in my energy. I felt tired and I wanted to nap. It really sucked. I don’t think I’ve felt that fatigued at work for about two months.

Obviously this isn’t a very valid scientific experiment. I have one sample size where not all the conditions are controlled. This does, however, reinforce my desire to continue to eat healthy at work. The benefits are worth it!

This morning was not a great one. As with every morning now, I was awoken way before my alarm time by the sounds of pile driving. I was in this weird half-asleep state when my alarm did go off. I was dreaming about something but like with most dreams, I forgot what it was.

I woke up tired and felt like finding some excuse to not go to work. Actually, I don’t need to find an excuse, the excuse is next door and also a block away as well. Two separate pile driving sites!

I was curious this evening to see if anyone else was bothered by the noise. I found the video above. It appears to be taken from my building or very close to it. This isn’t even the construction site next door. This is the one about a block away. Notice how loud it is still.

When will this end?

One of the banks I used called me last week and left a voicemail message. When I listened to it, the message said that my U.S. dollar credit card had been compromised and that it would be cancelled in the next few days as a precaution. There weren’t much more details beyond that.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me. I’ve had at least two debit cards cancelled and replaced because I used them at a place that had compromised security. The banks never tell you any details though. They always refuse to tell you which business it was or how it was compromised.

This time around I called the bank anyways just to make sure there was nothing I could have done to prevent this. When I got a real person on the phone I was informed that I did nothing wrong and that my new card would be sent to me in a week or so.

As you might expect, I mainly use my U.S. dollar credit card in the United States. The odds are likely it was compromised during my last trip south when I was in Los Angeles. I used that card to pay for stuff everywhere: restaurants, bars, shops, and the airport. There’s also a chance that my card was compromised in any of my other trips. It might have been my trips to Hawaii, San Diego, or even London that did it.

Luckily, I haven’t noticed any weird charges on my account. So this remains a minor inconvenience while I wait for a new card to come in the mail. It’s a good thing this isn’t my main credit card that I use at home. What a pain it would be to lose that!

Since about late June or early July I’ve been on a semi-serious diet, mostly surrounding what I eat at work. I wrote about some of the details here but essentially I have the same damn thing for lunch every single damn day. I have a salad with boiled chicken breast, walnut pieces, and dried cranberries. For the most part, it’s the only thing I eat at work all day, except for maybe a few cookies in the afternoon.

When I come home for dinner, I also try to eat healthy but I’m not fanatical about it. I tend to have a lot of sushi or something else that’s high in protein and low in carbs. On some days, I’ll also have a salad for dinner. Those days totally suck. I also try very hard to not snack in the evening. I’ll try to have fruit instead because fruit is delicious. On the weekends, I try to adhere to the same diet but if I have a cheeseburger for lunch, I don’t freak out.

Almost two months in, I can see some results of my diet. First, eating is pretty joyless now at work. I used look forward to lunch every day since I’d get something tasty. Tasty things are usually not good for you. Instead, I treat lunch now as some necessary exercise to ingest nutrition-rich materials that my body requires to function at a required capacity. If it sounds depressing, it is. My next point though is somewhat more uplifting. While eating salad for lunch does suck, the results are there. I’ve kept the weight off that I usually pile on when I’m working. In fact, I maybe thinner now than when I was on my extended vacation. I feel thin and my pants, jeans, and shorts all are very loose around my waist.

I also don’t feel tired at work anymore. I used to regularly feel that afternoon drain where I’d feel the need to nap as my energy waned. I don’t feel tired like that anymore. I power through the day with the same amount of energy from start to finish. I didn’t expect that to happen but I’m not complaining.

I’m determined to continue this for a few more months. Let’s see what else happens.

Last month I wrote a post about the pile driving that’s going on in my neighbourhood. There’s construction going on right next door and also about two blocks away, close to the riverside. As I mentioned, it’s a blight on weekday mornings as it wakes me up well before my alarm is supposed to go off. My only solace was the weekends where construction is paused. That solace was short-lived unfortunately.

On Saturday morning, I was rudely awoken by the sounds of pile driving next door at approximately 9am. Technically, the city by-laws allow construction to occur on the weekends except that they must start later. Though it totally sucks to be awoken by construction noise at 9am on a Saturday, the construction crew is within their right to do so. It kinda ruined my morning. I tried chasing after my lost sleep and stayed in bed until almost 2pm trying to get more rest. Thankfully, there was no pile driving on Sunday.

For your pleasure, I took cell phone video of the noise I hear every morning. In the video above, I simply stuck my phone outside on my balcony and recorded the sounds of disturbance. I apologize for the crappy audio but you can easily tell the noise is quite intense. If you listen carefully, you can actually make out two distinct pile driving noises. There’s the obvious louder one and also another less intense (but still noisy) one from the site two blocks away. It’s a double-whammy I get to experience every morning, now on Saturdays as well! Yay!

In the six years or so that I’ve lived in my apartment building I have never seen a mouse or a rat on the premises, that is until tonight.

I went to take out the garbage after midnight. The garbage and recycling room for this building is downstairs from the lobby. To get there, you have to exit the lobby which leads to this long hallway. I opened the door to this hallway tonight and I immediately saw something small and fast-moving near my feet. It was a mouse. I looked to me as if it was trying to figure out how to get past the door and into the lobby when I surprised it. Well, I suppose it surprised me too.

It took off like a rocket down the long hallway and to this door that leads to the outside. That door is closed all the time and as I watched it approach the door, I wondered what it would do. To my continued surprise, it disappeared through what must have been a gap at the bottom of the door. Mice when they get scared don’t go to unknown places. So when I surprised it, it would have run back to where it believed it was safe and that was the outside. I’m almost positive that door is where it entered the building.

I’m obviously not pleased to see a mouse inside the building. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence this first mouse sighting happened now and that construction began at the site next door. The construction site was a large and open field before, perfect for pests and rodents to make their homes. If I had to guess, the construction forced the mice to flee the field and make their way over to our building.

I’m hoping the mice will have a hard time getting up to my floor. I live almost 30 stories up. I’ve also sealed what used to be a huge gap underneath my front door. Even if mice managed to ride the elevator up to my hallway, I don’t think they could penetrate my front door. The only point of ingress would be through my balcony. Again, I live almost 30 stories up and there are no pipes on the outside of the building on which they could climb to get to my balcony.

I’ve written a letter to the property management company to inform them of what I saw. The proper thing to do, at least in my opinion, would be to seal that door better, eliminating any gaps at the bottom. I’d even lay a few traps in that hallway. It’s never used by anyone in the building.

Go away pests!

Every financial quarter the company I work for has a global town hall for employees. It’s usually conducted at the company headquarters where most of the executives work. Studios across the world can watch via live stream. Company news is discussed at the beginning but there’s always time for Q&A at the end. It’s a great time for any employee located anywhere in the world to ask a question to senior management, up to and including the president and CEO.

Today, one of the questions that were sent in was prefaced by a mention of the current U.S. political climate with the election going on. The exec that took the question said and I’m paraphrasing here, “I thought you were gonna ask us if we’re moving the company headquarters to Canada because we have talked about that.”

Of course, that scenario is very unlikely and only would be even considered if one and only that one particular U.S. presidential nominee would win the election. Realistically, there’s no way a large company like that would move an entire executive management team to Canada. Could they have explored the option as an exercise? Sure, companies run through different business scenarios all the time. I’d be worried if they didn’t. Just because they think about something though, doesn’t mean they’ll actually do it.

Let’s just hope that we don’t experience a reality where that has to be something to be honestly considered. We’ll know in November.