MOUSE SURPRISE

I take out the garbage and recycling after midnight usually. When I do so, there’s not a lot of people around as most are in bed. Unfortunately, that means I’m in the perfect situation to interrupt things. This evening I went to recycle some stuff and to get to the garbage/recycling room I have to transit this utility corridor beyond the lobby. When I opened the door to the corridor, I found myself about three feet away, at eye level, staring at a mouse. It was climbing the door jamb of the door I was striding towards. It took my brain a few seconds to process what I was seeing and meanwhile, I was still walking towards it. I was thinking, “brain, why are you still making me walk towards that damn thing?” I kinda had a bit of freak out, jumped back, and watched the mouse also freak out and run down the door frame and underneath the door I needed to go through.

This was the second time I’ve seen a mouse in this corridor and just like last time, I surprised the rodent in question. There was no way I was gonna go open that door that the mouse just snuck underneath. I had to take a detour, up and around, to get to the garbage room. I half expected to see a mouse in there as well but luckily I recycled my stuff without incident. I complained to strata council after the first sighting but I guess rodents are persistent and difficult to get rid of. I hope I don’t see another mouse soon.

BIG FAN

After years of people bugging me to get a fan for my apartment, I relented this week and purchased one. As I wrote earlier, it was really hot this weekend, so much so that it affected the quality of my sleep. As such, it finally dawned on me that it wouldn’t hurt to get a fan.

In previous years, my reasoning for not getting a fan was that Vancouver summers are short and mild. We’re lucky if we get two weeks worth of summer weather where it’s hot enough to complain. Why buy something that gets barely used for two weeks out of a whole year?

I guess I realized buying a fan isn’t going to break the bank. Fan technology has come a long way since I was kid. It used to be that fans were circular in shape with those iconic blades that did all the work. Now you can buy a Dyson with crazy new technology and no spinning blades. Of course, I didn’t want to drop $500 for a fan when I could buy an air-conditioner for the same price.

Instead, I opted for a tower fan, a modern design that takes up less space. The particular model I purchased has eight different speeds, oscillates, and even comes with a remote. I admit it got a bit hot this evening and using the fan tonight did help me cool off a bit.

Looking ahead, some people have been saying I should get a dining room table. Perhaps that will be next.

LAST WEEK

At work, this is my last week on the Madden 18 development team. The game isn’t done yet but the original agreement made between my own team and Madden 18 was that I’d go back at the end of June. I’ve been working remotely for over six months now. That’s a long time, at least for me.

There have been some challenges for sure but I feel like I’ve adapted some strategies to help make it work. Luckily, after my last day working for the football game is a long weekend. I’ve further enhanced the weekend by taking a vacation day on Tuesday, making it a four-day long weekend. I feel like I need to take some extra time off to better recharge, relax, and have clean mental slate for when I return to my own team.

There’s just four more days now until I go back.

HEAT WAVE

Depending on where you’re located in the greater Vancouver area, temperatures rose to above 30 degrees Celsius on Saturday. I have a room temperature thermometer and it hit a high of 28 degrees in my apartment. It made a for a very uncomfortable evening as I attempted to get some sleep. It didn’t help that I probably went to bed slightly dehydrated as well. My body refuses to enter sleep when it needs water.

I tossed and turned for hours on end, without entering any semblance of sleep. I finally gave up and starting looking at my phone, drinking water, peeing, and eating snacks. I think I may have received a grand total of two hours of sleep (not continuously) before I had to get up for a lunch appointment with a friend. I spent the first hour of the day feeling completely out of it, like I was viewing the events of my own life, through someone else’s eyes.

Surprisingly, I did not require a nap this afternoon as I probably was just running on adrenaline all day. It’s after midnight and I am definitely now feeling the effects. Unfortunately, it’s still 27 degrees in my bedroom, so another stuffy night awaits me. I am going to take half a sleeping pill to assist in the matter.

TWITTER!

I keep my Twitter account pretty boring. I don’t Tweet very often and the people I follow are mainly normal game development folks. I also follow some athletes and a few actors and actresses. For the most part, it’s tame stuff so I have no qualms about checking Twitter at work.

This week I decided to look at my Twitter feed at work. As I start scrolling, I see text tweets, a few images, more text only tweets, and then I see more images. It takes my brain a few seconds to process the latest image that’s scrolled into view. My brain finally catches up and I realize I’m seeing a naked woman mounting a very large penis. I’m seeing genitals on screen. As I’m at work, I’m startled for a moment. I quickly scroll away but since I have a really sweet desk by the window, most people can’t see my monitors.

I cautiously scroll back to the image to see how this wound up on my feed. Did someone I follow just tweet straight up porn? Then I see the top of tweet. One of the people I follow liked a tweet that had the porn on it. Not only did this person liked this one tweet, it was at least half a dozen porn tweets, all now littering my feed. This person I follow is actually someone I know in real life, a former co-worker. Normally he keeps his Twitter activity pretty boring, but not today.

I began to wonder if he knew that his “liked” tweets showed up in his followers feeds. May be he does know and doesn’t care? Whenever I liked a tweet, I always assume everyone that follows me will know I liked that tweet. That’s why I never like any porn tweets or anything like that. Sure, I’ll look at them but I don’t want anyone to know which ones I like.

When I got home that evening, my feed was absolutely clean. I’m not sure what algorithm Twitter uses to display “liked” tweets in your timeline but perhaps the passage of time removes them. Or perhaps someone told my ex-coworker to stop liking porn tweets.

Now I’m always a little more careful when I check Twitter.

THE SAME

I’ve had the same basic lunch at work for probably a week now. I know I should have salad for lunch but I just can’t bring myself to select such unsatisfying meal. Instead, I’ve chosen a compromise of a quarter roast chicken and some vegetables for lunch. At the cafeteria, roast chicken is always available. For some reason, I guess because chicken is universally loved, it’s on the menu in perpetuity. The veggie sides change every three days or so. Same with the starch side but I never get those since they’re mainly carbs, delicious for sure but still carbs.

Every day this week it’s been chicken and steam broccoli. It’s not a fantastic meal but at the same time, I like it better than salad. It’s mainly protein and vegetables. I eat the chicken skin even though I know it’s not good for me but it’s tasty. The meal is still relatively low in fat, calories, and carbs. I wonder how long I can keep this up. Maybe I’ll try to have salad one day of the week.

A SIGN?

As all of you know, I moved web hosts last week. Had I chose not to, I would have had to renew my hosting with GoDaddy. What I just discovered today though is that GoDaddy has been having technical issues on their web site going back to at least Saturday. I’m not sure what went wrong but one of the problem was that you couldn’t sign into your account. I’m not talking about it would just fail to login, I’m saying that if you clicked on “Sign In” on their web site, it would take to you a page without a place to enter in your username and password. It would be just a blank page with a background image. No text boxes for username and password. Incredible.

There are a plethora of complaints on Twitter where people couldn’t sign into their accounts on GoDaddy on the weekend and into this week. Had I chose to renew, I would have tried to do it on the weekend, and I wouldn’t even be able to access my account. I’m not sure what would have happened. My hosting agreement ended on Monday and my entire site would have been deleted from their servers. It’s a good thing I chose to move my site elsewhere.

WORLDWIDE SHORTAGE OF VIDEO CARDS

Though I have a PS4 Pro, I still play games on my PC on a regular basis. My computer is getting old however. The CPU, an Intel Core i7-920, in my desktop is about nine years old now, ancient in computer terms. My video card is also four years old. Video cards age way faster than most parts in a computer, so mine is also ancient.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I should start my upgrade by buying a new video card. I usually go with AMD cards, a throwback to when they were called ATI Technologies, a Canadian company. When I checked online retailers though, every single newer and capable AMD video card was sold out. At first I thought it might be a mistake because computer parts are usually never just sold out across the board no matter where you look. It wasn’t a mistake though, every single half decent AMD video card was sold out pretty much worldwide.

I did some more research and I discovered that cryptocurrency miners are using AMD video cards to mine currency. These cards are especially good at crunching numbers and making money. They’ve been buying the cards in huge quantities, dozens at a time and depleting the stocks. It totally sucks that these cards aren’t even used for gaming, just mining currency.

The solution to this is to either wait until manufacturers make more cards or use another line of video cards, which would be Nvidia cards. Even the Nvidia cards are getting difficult to find, mostly because if you are building a regular computer, you basically have no choice but to buy an Nvidia card.

I realize this is another first-world problem but if this shortage is going to persist for another few months, I’ll just have to buy whatever is out there.

WORK ONGOING

Hey everyone! Thanks once again for putting up with the downtime. So far so good with the hosting switch, though I had a friend tell me one of his emails to me bounced back yesterday. I think that might have been just bad timing as he probably sent it as the MX records were being updated. I’ve sent three emails to myself from three different accounts this afternoon and they all got through.

Behind the scenes, now that I know the switch was successful, I’ll be upgrading a few components here and there. Most of that should be transparent to you, my readers. I’m going to start that now, so I’ll end this post here.