Month: October 2020

A few weeks ago I wrote how I was surprised at how the warm weather was sticking around as we approached Thanksgiving. That has now changed as you can feel the autumn weather has taken hold. The multi-day rains have begun. In particular, it rained quite heavily during parts of the long weekend. The thermometer in my apartment shows a four degree Celsius drop from the sunnier days in September. Outside, the lows now drop into the single digits. On Sunday, the low is supposed to be three degrees. That’s chilly for Vancouver in October.

It’s really not practical to wear shorts outside now. If I’m outside after the sun has gone down, I need to wear a jacket. I had to turn on the heat in my car on the weekend as well.

Of course, this is going to be an autumn like no other as the pandemic is still on-going here. I supposed it’s going to be more of the same, just with colder temperatures, worse weather, and less going outside. There’s also the fast approaching cold and flu season. Speaking of which, I’m getting a flu shot this year. My employer is offering it this year. I have to go into the studio to get it done. It’ll be all very controlled and the same protocols as when I went to pick up my personal items will be in place. That’s happening next month.

For those in the southern hemisphere, I envy you as the spring weather approaches and things get warmer. Trust me, the pandemic is slightly more bearable during the sunnier months.

My strata corporation renews its yearly insurance policy in October, while I do mine in February. The offset timing is an inconvenience because the building’s insurance policy terms can change and then I have to go update my insurance policy mid-year. We owners never get an appreciable amount of notice as to what gets changed.

This year, we had about eight hours notice that our deductible for water damage originating from our unit was going up from $50,000 to $75,000. I know my policy from last February covered me for the $50k water damage deductible. This new policy went into effect last Friday. I wasn’t able to get my own policy updated until today, a Tuesday. That meant that for four days, if someone sprung a leak in my place and caused damage to common property, I’d be liable for the $25k difference in what I’m covered for and what the new deductible is.

I had planned on doing laundry on the weekend but since it was a long weekend, I had trouble contacting my insurance company and getting my policy changed. There’s always a risk of one of the hoses leaking and causing a flood. I delayed doing my laundry for a day while I wondered what the risk would be. In the end, I rolled the dice on this and I did a load of laundry that was much needed. There were no leaks this time but knowing my luck, it would have not surprised me if something did happen.

I finally got the policy updated today. It shouldn’t have taken four days to do this but like I said, the long weekend made things more difficult. If you live in an apartment, you should always get insurance, no matter if you’re an owner or a renter. It’s especially important if you’re the owner. Always send a copy of the strata’s insurance policy to your insurance company so they can make sure your policy covers you completely.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I had Friday off so I took the car out for a spin. I was on my way home, trying to get on the highway. About fourteen seconds into the above video you can see a dude just walk right into the middle of the road. He appears out of nowhere. He doesn’t even look my way before crossing. He’s not even close to an intersection or a crosswalk. Where is he even coming from? There’s no real sidewalk on this road and it looks like he’s coming from out of the bushes. Where is he going to? The bushes on the other side of the road?

I had to apply my brakes otherwise I definitely would have hit him had I kept on going. You can tell on the video that my speed decreased. What an idiot this guy was.

I guess on a positive note, this new dashcam is providing entertainment for the blog.

The long weekend has started for me! I hope everyone has a great weekend and if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend, you do it responsibly and safely. I’ll be back on Monday night.

Monday is Thanksgiving, so it’s a long weekend here in this province. I decided to take Friday off as well, making it a four-day long weekend. In the past I’ve normally don’t use a vacation day to extend long weekends but for reasons that should be clear, I have a surplus of vacation days currently. I have about six weeks of vacation saved up, so I can spare an extra day.

I imagine Thanksgiving will be different for many people this year. In fact, I hope it will necessarily be different for anyone who has been used to large family gatherings for Thanksgiving. My sister and her husband will be staying on Vancouver Island this weekend. I might have a regular dinner with my parents on Monday but I’m not sure at this point. The goal will be to keep everyone safe this Thanksgiving, not to eat turkey. I am ok with that this year.

In my last post I wrote about my purchase of a dashcam. My very first one. Last evening, I drove with it on for the very first time. Once I was driving, I didn’t even notice it was there. The next day, I took a look at the footage, just to see what kind of quality it was. It’s pretty good. The dashcam I have records at a resolution higher than 1080p, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

The dashcam records continuous clips in one minute chunks. The clip above is a randomly chosen one minute clip from my drive. It’s pretty boring to watch.

As some of you have in a previous post, I bought a used 2017 Toyota Corolla a few weeks ago. My intent is to keep it well-maintained, something I did not do with the 1994 Honda Accord that I drove for many years.

For the Corolla, I’ve already cleaned the windows with a glass cleaner and applied a rain repellent. At least to me, when the water beads and runs off the windows, it’s way easier to see when you’re driving in the rain.

I’ve also bought a few things that are good to have if you’re a car owner. First, I bought a cordless vacuum that I can easily bring to my car. I live about 20 floors away from my car, so it would be a pain in the ass to haul my plug-in vacuum down to the parking garage. I’m also not sure where I would plug it in. I never vacuumed the interior of the Accord and I was pretty embarrassed at how dirty it was inside when I traded it in at the dealership. Once a month, I’m now gonna vacuum up the floorboards and the seats to keep everything nice and tidy.

I also bought a cell phone mount for the car. Yes, the Corolla has a built-in LCD screen with some limited sync functionality with smartphones but without actual Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, it doesn’t offer all the functionality I’d like. Having a smartphone mounted offers me more flexibility with navigation and apps.

Lastly, I bought a dashcam. I thought I’d never own one of these but it seems like the smart thing to do. It’s almost like having insurance, so it protects you as a driver of a car. These things are very affordable now and the one I got didn’t break the bank. It also responds to voice commands, so if I ever need it to do anything, it’s all hands-free functionality. Mine also comes with a quick-release mount, so if I need to take it with me, it’s super simple.

Buying a car doesn’t mean that you stop spending money after you buy it, as we all know but these are necessities in my book.

I brought out the needle and thread tonight to “hem” some flannel pyjama bottoms that I’ve had for more than a year. When I first got them, I was too lazy to do any alterations myself and I didn’t want to pay like $15 to get them hemmed at the mall. These are just PJS after all. So, I just rolled them up and hoped for the best. Of course, they’d eventually just unroll and I’d be just walking around with these super long PJ bottoms, essentially using them to sweep the floors of my kitchen and bathroom.

Then I got the brilliant idea to duct tape the hem on each leg. This worked in practice but when I had to wash them I had to remove duct tape. There was tape residue on the PJs, so that wasn’t the best idea.

Tonight, I decided to pursue a more permanent and suitable option. I didn’t have a lot of time, I also don’t really know how to hem properly, and I don’t own a sewing machine, so I compromised. I again rolled up the bottom of the PJs and I just sewed the rolled up parts of the pants to itself. I did it in four places around the circumference of the pant leg. It didn’t take very long to do and it seems to work way better than anything else I’ve tried.

These are interesting times and we need to find solutions that may require creativity and compromise.

My employer has been very good with keeping employees safe and trying to give us everything we need during these difficult times. There has been no rush to return us to our work locations. I believe in some of our Asian locations, where the situation has stabilized, some employees have returned to our offices. The majority of employees, located in North and South America, Europe, and Australia, have been working from home since March.

Throughout the summer, we were told that there would be an update to our work from home situation in October. We were also told during the summer that the target for a smart return to our offices would be January of 2021. Well, it is now October and the company sent out the long-awaited update. Having consulted with health experts and analyzed public health data, they have decided that it is still too risky for employees to return to the offices in January of 2021. As such, we will continue to work from home at least until March of 2021. A re-assessment will be done in February.

This was the smart decision to make and it doesn’t come as a surprise to me. The situation hasn’t stabilized enough for people to come back to our offices. One of our largest development studios is located in Florida, for example. The situation there is wild and people pretend the virus doesn’t even exist anymore. I am glad I work for a company that takes this seriously and trusts the experts.

I am ok with another five or six months of working from home.

Tomorrow is the first day of October and we’re less than two weeks from Thanksgiving. Weather-wise, it’s been a pleasant transition to fall so far. It was 23 degrees Celsius in my apartment today. I went for a walk around 6pm this evening and it was warm enough that I could wear shorts and I actually got a bit sweaty. The highs for the next few days will reach into the low 20s, with very little rain or clouds in sight. If you’re just considering the weather, things are ok.

In comparison, the forecast already calls for temperatures below freezing for a few nights this week in Winnipeg. One day, when all of this madness is behind us (assuming we can put it behind us), I’d like to experience two or three days in a proper Canadian winter.