Month: February 2017

If you’re like me, you’re extremely concerned by the absolute lunacy coming from the Trump regime down south. Normally, the instability of one country doesn’t affect other nations too much but when that country is the United States of America, it affects the world. That’s why when things go bad for the US, we all feel the effects as well.

The new regime has already started or signaled its intention to begin attacks on numerous fronts, including the media, women’s reproductive rights, healthcare, and the plight of refugees. As a spectator, watching from afar, you might seem powerless but a friend of mine has started giving money to causes he believes can fight the Trump regime.

He’s already donated to the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and also paid for a subscription to the New York Times. I also reminded him that other worthy organizations include Planned Parenthood, the Washington Post, and the International Rescue Committee.

It may seem odd that as Canadians, we’d be donating to causes and organizations that mainly operate in the US but as I mentioned before, the world benefits when the US is at its best and it is far from that right now. So, the reasons are somewhat selfish. If you feel the need to balance out your charity dollars with a donation to a corresponding Canadian organization, that’s even better. As an example, there’s Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights and our local food bank.

I recognize that everyone’s beliefs are different and you may balk at even donating a cent to any one of these organizations. That’s fine and I respect that. If you are, however, a person that shares my concerns about what is happening, consider what you can do to help. I think I might start off my Tuesday morning by donating a few dollars to Planned Parenthood and subscribing to the Washington Post.

Well thanks to the Internet I discovered the stupid paragraph problem was caused an image gallery plugin I have installed in my WordPress installation. How an out of data gallery plugin can cause text to be incorrectly formatted is still a mystery to me. Nevertheless the problem went away after I updated it.

No more single, massive walls of text. Thanks for your patience.

I just realized that at some previous date, the formatting of my blog got all messed up and all my posts are one giant paragraph.

Like this should be a new paragraph. It looks like a new paragraph in the editor. To me, this is the last sentence in paragraph two.

Similarly, this is the first sentence in a third paragraph. Unfortunately, this is all one big giant block of text. I’m not sure what happened. I will need to fix this. Sorry folks for the crappy formatting, this must be so hard to read. Ugh. Will have to look for a fix on the weekend.

After a major dump of snow on the weekend, the residents of Vancouver enjoyed a brief respite from the white stuff as no snow fell during Sunday night and into Monday morning. This allowed most people to get to work and school today. This was exactly where the snow wanted all of us.

After relatively clear skies for most of the day, it began to snow at close to the most ideal time to cause the maximum amount of chaos for the commute home. Around 4pm, the small flakes of snow started to fall. While tiny, there were lots of these flakes, densely packed as they fell. There was so much of the stuff visibility went from kilometers to barely across the street. At this point, people at work started to get nervous and made preparations to leave early.

Just before 5pm, the small flakes then became large, wet ones. The kind of snow that sticks when it lands. It was coming down hard and fast. That’s when a lot of people started to leave, myself included. I gathered up my crap and made my way outside.

I knew I waited too long to leave when I got outside and saw there was a lineup of cars just to get out of the parking garage. The main road outside the studio was packed with bumper to bumper traffic. That meant that traffic was probably pretty bad on all the major roads. I decided to make my way down the hill towards my usual bus stop. As I did, I saw one bus that was trying to navigate up the hill. It was stuck and couldn’t move. Further down the hill was another bus, also stuck.

When I got to the bus stop, there a lot more people there than usual. That meant either the buses were coming fast enough or if they were, they were all full and couldn’t pick up any more people. I saw one bus come but it didn’t even bother to stop, it was packed full of people. Based on my experience with the first major snowstorm in December, I knew it would be better if I walked instead of waiting for a bus.

The nearest train station is actually in the opposite direction of where my bus goes. I don’t go to that station normally because the train loops around and it takes longer for me to get home. In this situation though, it was the quickest and easiest way (fewer hills) to get on a train.

The walk is approximately 3km and for most of that, I was passing cars that were stuck in traffic. Even in the cold and snowy conditions, there’s a certain satisfaction in making continual progress towards your goal. About half an hour of walking, I made it to the station and caught the first train that arrived. It was quite full but not too bad. Once on the train, I was dry and warm which was pretty good all things considered. From high on up on the tracks, I saw that traffic was a mess everywhere. There was so much snow in some areas that it was quite amazing.

It took me about 80 minutes to get home, just about double my normal commute time. I was one of the lucky ones as I would later find out. Apparently the traffic outside the studio got so bad people were waiting up to almost an hour in their cars to just get outside the parkade. Another friend of mine has a normal driving commute home that takes about 40 minutes. It took him three hours this evening to get home.

The weather forecast calls for a few more flurries overnight which might make it a snow day tomorrow for some people. I’m going to have to play it by ear tomorrow morning but I won’t hesitate to work from home if it’s chaos out there again.

It snowed a metric crap ton Friday and again on the weekend. I left work early on Friday before the snow became too bad. I didn’t want to get trapped on the road like I did before.

Luckily, the weekend didn’t require me to be in too many places, so the snow didn’t affect much. Tomorrow is Monday though and the forecast calls for more snow while I sleep. A lot of people just called it a snow day and didn’t even try to come into work on Friday. I’m guessing it might be the same on Monday.

This has been a terrible winter in Vancouver thus far and I want it to be over.

To my dismay, the weather forecasters are predicting another blast of snow for Friday and Saturday. I’ve come to really dislike snowfalls in the city as this winter the snow has wreaked havoc on the roads and sidewalks.

The temperature outside is now below freezing and it got pretty cold in my apartment tonight. A few weeks ago, a chilly evening like this would make me think quite carefully about turning my heat on. First, it’ll cost me electricity to do so and second, it would dry the air out pretty quickly. Recall though that I now have a humidifier in my bedroom.

About an hour ago I decided to turn the heat on as inside my apartment it dipped to 17 degrees Celsius. At the same time, I had my humidifier on full blast, set to a target relative humidity of 45%. The temperature is now closer to 20 degrees and the air is moist. I wonder if my commute home tomorrow will be hell.

In the world of home renovations, the reno gone wrong, that turns into a nightmare is unfortunately so common, it’s almost a cliche. I thought I would any of those problems, mainly because the scope of my project was so simple. How complex could removing a fireplace, moving some outlets, and fixing up the drywall be? It turns out in the world of home renovations, anything can turn into a massive headache.

Recall that the last time I wrote about my project the contractors finally showed up and removed the fireplace, patched up the drywall behind it, and left the remaining work for the electrician. That’s where it all went south. I was promised the electrician would call me the next day. He did not. The next day, I asked the lead contractor if the electrician would call that day. He said they would. No call. The next day I asked again. Promises were once again made. No call. Rinse and repeat for another two days.

I finally had to have a very serious conversation with the lead contractor. I told him that if he indeed had been in business for 25 years, he sure as hell didn’t do it by making promises he couldn’t keep. I asked him how hard was it to make a phone call. Why wouldn’t his electrician just call me? His answer was that in his world of contracting, people never return his calls either. he also explained to me that this wasn’t his own in-house electrician and that he sub-contracts out his electrical work. He had asked this guy through phone calls, e-mails, and text to call me but he never did. I’m not sure if this was supposed elicit any sympathy from me because did he expect me to just accept the fact my wall would just sit there half-finished?

I told him I was glad he informed me exactly what was going on because I had no clue what was happening but at the same time I’d like to know at the very least when the electrician was coming in. I never once made any demands that they come in the next day. I just wanted a date, any date, so I knew I wasn’t just being abandoned. He said he’d try calling the electrician one more time to implore him to call me. I thanked him for that but wasn’t very optimistic.

Ten minutes later someone phone me. It was the less than impressive electrician. He wanted to know what time next week they could come in and do the electrical work. I told him Monday morning would be fine. Monday morning rolls around and to my surprise they show up, albeit a bit late. All they had to do was three things: cap off and secure a 240V power line that was feeding power to the fireplace insert, move a power outlet down closer to the ground, and move a data outlet (containing coaxial cable and Cat5 cable) down closer to the ground.

The first two tasks they did without any issues but when it came to the data outlet, they balked at moving it. The first problem they said was that there wasn’t enough cable to move both connectors down several feet. Second, they weren’t willing at all to even consider any solutions to this. One solution could be to extend both cables and another would be redo the cabling with new longer cables. The connection starts in the closet by my front door, so there wouldn’t be that much cable to redo. Neither of these things the electrician wanted to do. Meanwhile, to do the first two tasks, they put a whole bunch of new holes in my drywall.

When they left, I had the power outlet moved, the data outlet still hanging six feet above the floor, and several new and large holes in my drywall. I sent a message to the lead contractor about the complications but he didn’t seem to concerned about it. Now keep in mind when he wrote up the original quote, he stated they’d be able to move both outlets down.

I could just leave that data outlet where it is but it’s going to look weird as it just hangs up there for no good reason. If I did that, I’d be cutting my losses and just moving on. Unfortunately, I don’t think I should be half-assing a project like this. In light of this, I’m now contacting other electrical and data cabling contractors who can actually do cabling and outlet work. I’ve already received one quote which would add 20% to the original cost of this project, just to move that damn data outlet a few feet. I’m hoping to get another quote tomorrow.

It’s hard not to think about Murphy’s Law at this point because this whole thing seemed so simple as far as home renovations go, yet here we are.

The last time the local temperatures dropped along with the relative humidity I didn’t have a humidifier. I blame the dry air for leaving my sinuses susceptible to infection, which lead to that nasty infection which ruined the beginning of the year for me.

Well, tonight the temperature is now two degrees below freezing and the relative humidity dropped to almost 30% in my apartment. This time around though, I have a humidifier in my bedroom. It’s one of those “cool-mist” ones that didn’t exist when I was a kid. I initially turned it on at its lowest setting but even after nearly 30 minutes, the humidity in my room was unaffected. I decided to skip the middle setting and went to full power. After about ten minutes, it pushed the humidity up one lowly percent. It was only after I closed the door to my living room that the humidity went up to my target 40%. I guess this device isn’t able to affect the entirety of my apartment.

On a colder night like this, I wish it was a warm steam coming out of the humidifier but at least this type operates in a whisper quiet mode. Alas, it’s better than nothing and my skin and sinuses will feel much better going forward.