Month: June 2019

As you know, I’m a big fan of comedian Bobby Lee. In the above video, Bobby tells us about a night he had in Las Vegas that I had not heard of before. As you might expect, the details are a tad sordid. Enjoy.

According to the instruments I have in my apartment, it got up to 27 degrees Celsius inside my home today. It was a hot day today. It felt stuffy and warm when I got home in the evening.

We’re about mid-June now and it’s been a pretty mild summer so far in the greater Vancouver area. There haven’t any long stretches of warm weather. Today was a warm one and tomorrow might be too but after that it’ll be a mix of sun and cloud, with temperatures just barely above 20.

In my last post, I wrote about my desire to switch to a cheaper web site hosting package. I wasn’t sure how easy this would be and if my hosting provider would throw up all sorts of roadblocks. It turns out, it was extremely easy and communication with my web site host was quick, cordial, and professional.

I can only speak from personal experience but I have no hesitation in recommending Namecheap as a domain registrar and web hosting provider. I was previously with GoDaddy and Namecheap is better on all accounts from pricing, customer service, and usability.

There is no reason not to switch over if you’re currently unhappy with your domain registrar or web host. Feel free to ask me questions if you’re curious.

My web site hosting expires on Thursday and I have to go through the hassle of renewing. Usually, renewing things like hosting is easy but I feel like I’m getting the shaft because my renewal price is much higher than the new hosting packages that are being offered. The difference between my current package and the cheaper ones is negligible.

I have a suspicion that this is a tactic to get people to pay more because it’s a genuine hassle to transfer web hosts. Charge people less on the first year to get them to switch and then jack up the price once they’re locked in.

I hope I can get this all figured out before Thursday.

As someone who has a mortgage, I’m not up to date on the rental market in my neighbourhood. Next door, they’ve been building a 40-story rental-only apartment building for the last several years. It’s almost done and the people that own the building have started to advertise and look for renters. On a whim, I contacted them to figure out what the rental prices were. I was shocked to discover rentals start at $1,443 a month for a studio apartment about 350 sq. feet in size. That’s for an apartment on the 7th floor and it’s an extra $5 a month for each floor you go up. That’s double what I pay for my mortgage each month. The building is open to anyone but they’re trying hard to advertise the units to students. How does a student afford $1443 a month?

On another whim, I decided to see how much my particular apartment layout rents for now. The last time I checked, which might have been more than a year ago, the same apartment in my building went for around $1,500 a month. I’ve now seen listings for $1,700 a month. Shocking.

I’d have nowhere to live but if I rented out my apartment, I’d have someone pay off my mortgage way faster. I mentioned this to my parents and my Mom suggested I could move back home again. That was a sweet offer but I’d have to make a lot more money off my apartment before I’d consider doing that.

In the above video, we see footage that was originally taped when Bill Hader visited Conan for an interview. Someone, using the Deepfake technique, then altered the video so that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face is put on Hader’s face during parts of the interview. It’s amazing stuff.

I’ve written about this before but there are several nice washrooms near the cafeteria at work. I did my business here twice today and each time I went to wash my hands afterwards I noticed something odd.

The soap that came out of the automatic dispenser was different than the soap from the previous day. It appeared to lather up the same but it was incredibly difficult to wash off. Normally, I just need to hold my hands under the water for about five seconds and nearly all the soap residue is completely off. With this soap, the automatic faucet stopped running after about twenty seconds and my hands were still soapy and most worrisome, also sticky. I don’t know how this soap simultaneously made my hands both soapy and sticky at the same time. It felt gross.

The only natural conclusion that I came come to is that the soap was infused with semen of some kind, possibly from an animal.

I’m trying this diet where I don’t eat anything after 8pm and I’m starving right now. I had a rice bowl from Freshii at around 6pm today and that’s all I ate for dinner. To make things worse, I was already pretty hungry before I ate dinner and that bowl was not big at all. It was healthy but not exactly an all-you-can-eat buffet at Pizza Hut.

I’m gonna go to bed just so I don’t have to deal with being awake and hungry.

The cafeteria at work replaced the taco bar with a pasta bar today. I’m not sure if this is a permanent change or if this is just an experiment. Nevertheless, I welcomed the change. The tacos were fine but it seemed like a sparse offering. You got three tacos and no other sides, like greens.

With the pasta bar, you can chose your pasta, your protein, and your sauce. It also comes with a small side salad and a piece of garlic bread. Today, I chose spaghetti, Italian sausage, and tomato sauce. The sauce was a bit bland and they didn’t give me enough but the Italian sausage was quite good. I enjoyed having some salad on my plate.

The fact that the meal didn’t disappoint me was a win in my books. The bar has been placed pretty low at the cafeteria, so average is now good.

Sorry for my absence for the last few days. I spent last Thursday and Friday in Seattle for a super short vacation. I took the train down to Seattle for the first time. It was also my first time using Amtrak via their Amtrak Cascades service.

Using the train is about an hour slower than driving or taking the bus but in terms of comfort, there’s really no beating the train. The seats are more spacious. You can actually get up and walk around during the train ride. The bistro car provides you with food and drink. You can even hang out in the dining car that has tables. The railroad tracks are also next to water about 80% of the time, which makes it a particularly scenic route.

If you’re tech-focused, all the trains have wi-fi and every seat has a power outlet. Amtrak says they don’t support video streaming services but I found that YouTube was available to me. I also saw lots of people doing work on their computers.

As for the border crossing and associated logistics, I found it to be a lot less stressful than the airport. There’s still passport checks and customs but you don’t have to get herded into a security line and get subjected to body scanners. Don’t get me wrong, I love flying but the train is just overall a less stressful experience.

If I had to go to Seattle again, I’d definitely consider the train again.