Month: March 2017

My intention this late evening was to watch something short in length on Netflix before going to bed. A program of 20 to 40 minutes would have been perfect because as it turns out, I started the Netflix program on my PS4 at exactly midnight. Because it was technically Friday when I began browsing, it meant that the first thing that popped up was The Iron Fist, the latest Marvel series on Netflix. These shows are incredibly hard to not binge watch. So instead of a short program, I watched the first two episodes back-to-back. The Iron Fist seems to have long episodes as well. Most of the previous Marvel shows are in the 40 to 50 minute range but the first two have been about an hour in length.

I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve seen so far and it draws you in as there multiple mysteries to solve. I think the series holds promise but we’ll have to see how the later episodes turn out. The incredibly disappointing Luke Cage also started out strong but finished so weakly it was dragged down the rest of the series.

Can’t wait to watch some more tomorrow!

This evening I had to deposit a cheque at the bank downstairs. Now this was the first time I’ve used the ATMs at this branch since they upgraded them. Even though this particular branch is less than four years old, this is (by my count) the third time they’ve upgraded the ATMs. The first set did not have touch screens and had buttons on the side. The second set did away with physical buttons and had touch screens and also had enhanced security features to prevent PIN stealing. As I walked up to the newest incarnation of these ATMS, I wondered what would await me.

I immediately saw that there were nice red glass accents framing both ATMs, making them look quite fancy. There was also clear and large signage above both, indicating that these ATMs were good for deposits and withdrawals and that they were capable of dispensing US currency.

As I stepped up to one of them to deposit my cheque, I could see in bold letters that these ATMs did not accept envelopes for deposits. Interesting. As I went through the deposit user interface flow, I was instructed to stack up to 50 (I think) bills and cheques on top of each other and then insert them directly into the lighted slot. Since I only had one cheque, I just slid it into the slot and waited.

At this point, I thought that my cheque might actually go into some internal envelope for processing or perhaps it would go in some sorta internal storage mechanism (like a Redbox in reverse). To my complete surprise, after just a few seconds, I saw the scanned image of the cheque, that I had just deposited, on the touchscreen. It was perfectly aligned and centered, and all the writing was clear. Not only that, the deposit amount was shown in another box on-screen. Keep in mind, I did not enter the deposit amount during the user interface flow. Amazing! These ATMs must be using some sorta of optical character recognition to determine the numerical amount from the writing itself. Now the interesting thing is that the person who wrote this cheque for me writes their numbers kinda funny but the ATM was still able to discern the correct number. I wonder if it analyzes both the written numbers and written words to see if there is a correct match. I bet it would be faster and easier just to analyze the written numbers.

Once the deposit was complete, I was given the choice of getting my deposit receipt e-mailed to me, which is a new option that I’ve never seen before.

Making deposits at the bank has never been so exciting before!

Some of you are not aware but I pay money to a company every year to keep this domain registered in my name. If you’re curious, you can read up on what domain name registars do. Anyways, for almost the entire time that this domain has been active, it’s been registered with GoDaddy. Now renewing the domain used to really cheap. I remember it being less than $10 a year. Over time, that renewal fee has increased. Since my renewal date is coming up at the end of this month, I logged on to see what my renewal fee would be for this year. It would be about $20 this year.

I decided to do some research before renewing. Some registars have different pricing structures and I had a feeling GoDaddy sure wasn’t the cheapest one. By golly, my hunch was right. One of the larger registars would only charge me $13 to transfer my domain to them and also renew for another year, a great deal. This afternoon I started the transfer and completed it in less than an hour. I get the impression that in the earlier days of the Internet, domain transfers could take several days to complete but the process seems very automated now. I’m also happy to report that renewals are $14 a year at this new registrar.

I still host my site at GoDaddy but my hosting package is up for renewal this June. If I decide to renew, it will cost me $100 a year. Interestingly, this new company also offers hosting with double the disk space at about half the price. It looks like I’ll be moving all my products away from GoDaddy in the future.

By my estimation, I slept for nearly nine hours last night after feeling exhausted for most of Sunday evening. I woke up amazingly refreshed for a Monday morning. I know they say that the day after the DST change is one where people can feel groggy and tired but I have to say I can’t remember feeling that awake for a Monday in years. It’s a shame the rest of my day sucked as everything I was working on seemed to just malfunction. After eight hours, I don’t think I was any further ahead on my tasks. Well, at least I wasn’t sleepy all day.

I’ve been tired and sleepy all evening. I came home from having dinner with my parents around 7:30pm and was immediately fighting the desire to take a nap. I’m usually not that sleepy on Sunday evenings. Was it the time change? I slept an extra hour this afternoon to make up for it. Not sure what it was.

Well, I’m going to bed two hours earlier than normal tonight.

I’ve been taking over the counter medicine for the symptoms of my cold. I found this interesting commercial on YouTube. If this is really what the future holds for humanity, I’m disappointed by two things. First, that we haven’t figured out a cure for the common cold. Second, the man in the commercial is wearing what looks like an aluminum foil jumpsuit.

I can’t wait to be healthy again.

In the above video, we see and hear Kansas City Royal great George Brett tell a story for the ages. I just recently saw this video for the first time and I’m wondering how I went years without seeing this before. What honesty!

I was about five seconds from hitting the publish button for tonight’s post when my internet decided to cut out. I’m not even sure if a draft got saved. Sorry folks, there’s not much I can do on a phone. We’ll be back tomorrow.

I know some of my readers don’t like it when I refer to myself as “daddy” but this is my show so we’ll continue to go with it. Yes, after the hell month that was January, where I was ill with both a sinus infection and a month-long spell of diarrhea, I had healthy February. I felt fine the entire span of those 28 short days. Alas, my luck would not continue into March.

On Saturday I noticed a slight tickle in my throat, that tell-tale sign that something was wrong. I ignored it as I had a weekend to enjoy and I hoped that a good night of sleep would make it go away. That hope was misplaced as I woke up to a slightly sore throat. As the day wore on I also detected some slight nasal congestion.

This morning I woke up and my sore throat was gone but now my sinuses are even more congested. I didn’t feel terrible enough to make it a sick day but I wasn’t exactly feeling wonderful either. I had a pretty meh day at work where I sneezed a couple of times.

This evening my sinuses continued to get more congested. It’s still not anywhere close to what I experienced in January where I had to breath through my mouth or else I wouldn’t get any oxygen. If one were to look for a silver lining perhaps that’s it.

Being sick sucks. Maybe I’ll take a sick day tomorrow.

This weekend I declared the home reno to remove my fireplace as completed (for now) and proceeded to clean up my living room. I vacuumed up the work area, moved my new TV stand in place, put my TV on top of said stand, and began the arduous process of putting back the rest of my furniture and wiring up all my equipment again. Even in a simple but modern home entertainment system, there are so many damn wires to connect.

When it was all done though, I sat down on my couch, turned on the TV, and the first thing I watched was live hockey broadcast. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was watching TV at eye level and my neck was at a comfortable and normal angle. I wasn’t craning my head up to watch my TV while it was on top of a stupid fake fireplace mantle. My TV screen seemed bigger and I guess if you do the math, it is actually closer to the couch bit a few inches for sure. The image also seemed sharper, crisper, and more vivid. Now that probably is my imagination. While it was on top of the fireplace the viewing angle wasn’t optimal, sure, but since my TV is a plasma, off-angle performance is still phenomenal. Damn it though, the picture does seem a bit better.

I just can’t put into words how happy I am that my TV is now in the right spot. I’m also so pleased with the TV stand I bought. The colour matches the rest of the furniture in my living room. When I look at the room, everything just seems to be correct. The TV stand also has drawers and cubby holes, which allows me to have new options to store stuff. To celebrate this momentous weekend, I watched two movies on Netflix and started playing a new game on my PS4.

Now that I look back upon this, I realize that I should have done this many years ago. I talked about getting rid of the fireplace for about seven years, which in hindsight is ridiculous. Don’t drag your feet on your dreams and aspirations kids! One more thing, I obviously haven’t painted the drywall repairs from the home reno. I’m going to do that this summer. Lastly, if you want to see a comparison, here’s a then and now.