LET ‘ER RIP

I have begun ripping up the carpet in my apartment in preparation for the eventual installation of some type of flooring. Even a moron like me can remove carpet. I’m using a utility knife to cut into the carpet into manageable strips or pieces. I then remove the carpet padding underneath.

I was warned this might be the case and sadly this is true for me, the concrete underneath my carpet was not poured and finished in a completely level manner. I can tell there are a few high spots but the majority of the inconsistencies are depressions or dips in the concrete. With the padding and then the carpet over top, imperfections in the concrete are hidden away but now with all that gone, you can really see how crappy of a job they did with the concrete.

It’s highly inadvisable to install flooring over an uneven surface. The planks of whatever you’re going to install will just try to follow the contour of uneven concrete. At best, the floor will look warped and uneven, at worst, the unevenness will cause the planks to break out of their grooves and pop out.

The solution is to even out the concrete surface. Now I haven’t removed all my carpet so I don’t know how bad the problem is. One solution involves just using tools to remove the high parts and then using a floor leveling compound to fill in the dips and holes. Depending on how bad the irregularities are, this might work but if the whole floor is just an undulating mess, it will be difficult to get everything level.

The best solution but is the most time consuming and involved, requires you to pour a thin layer of concrete over the existing floor. This new layer covers the entire floor area so you’re guaranteed it will fill it any low spots and if you layer is thick enough, it will cover all the high spots as well. As you might imagine, this is a huge endeavour. The entire floor must be cleaned and prepared for another layer of concrete. Anything on that floor before must be removed and store elsewhere for several days. This process is time consuming, expensive, and a logistical pain in the ass.

I don’t know which option is the best for me. Once I get all the carpet out of my place, I’ll need to get a flooring expert in my home and get their opinion.

WHOOPS

It turns out that I wasn’t supposed to divulge that my team will be moving to a new building when we “return” to work. I guess it doesn’t really matter because you can’t put the cat back in the bag. I told people within my company and I told people outside the company as well.

I blabbed to all those people because I was told or at least under the impression that the news of the move was going to be widespread today anyways. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem like there was any wide communication of this externally nor internally today at all.

Oh well, you heard it here first.

THE RETURN

My employer organized a Zoom meeting today for members of the team I belong to. The goal of the meeting was to inform us of some of the return to work plans that had been finalized to some degree. As many of you know, I worked out of our Burnaby studio prior to the pandemic. As with many companies, my employer underwent substantial changes during the last year and a half. In our case, we had mostly positive changes as we hired more people than we had desks or room for in Burnaby.

Any return to work plans would not be feasible if we intended everyone to return to Burnaby. As such, for the last several months, the company had been exploring relocating teams to another location in the greater Vancouver area. This has now been finalized. My team, when we return to work, will be moving to a new studio space in Vancouver proper. While the building has been leased and the location determined, many other details are still to be ironed out. I can’t say just yet where the new studio is but I can say it is not located downtown but will be very close to it. The new studio will also be well-served by public transit.

Personally, the commute to the new location using public will be longer distance-wise but surprisingly almost the same amount of time. This is because the old location required the train, waiting for a bus, the actual bus travel time, plus walking about 300m. The new commute is all train only and less walking. While I now have a much more reliable car, we’ve been told parking at the new location is essentially not possible since there are very few parking spots.

I’m still processing all this information and deciding what things are good about this new location and what things probably are less than ideal. I will divulge more info as I am allowed.

SOLD

In a previous post I mentioned that I was selling my old TV on Facebook Marketplace. I had an interested buyer who wanted to give me $60 for it. I agreed to his price but he didn’t realize my TV was about 12 years old. This annoyed me a bit because in my listing, I linked to a webpage that listed all the specs of my TV where you could easily ascertain that the TV wasn’t exactly a recent model. He asked me how old it was and when I answered, he wasn’t interested anymore.

It turned out alright because I found another buyer who wanted the TV for $90. He was a really nice guy, very motivated to pick up my TV on the weekend. I think he drove all the way from North Vancouver to get it. I had no hesitation in helping him move the TV into his SUV.

I hope he enjoys the TV for a long time. I am glad it continues to entertain other people because it remains one of the best electronics purchases I’ve ever made. My TV served me well for over a decade. It didn’t have any problems at all and I played a ton of games on it from the Xbox 360, PS3 to the PS4. It outlasted my Xbox 360 and a few Blu-Ray players as well. I bet it could last for another five years with good care.

DONATING

I am in the process of cleaning and de-cluttering my home and I have donated a bunch of items to the Salvation Army thrift store that is about a block away from where I live. This location also doubles as an electronics recycling centre as well, so that has been very convenient.

I’ve been trying to be aggressive in my cleaning, throwing out, and donating. I’ll often part ways with something even if I know there’s gonna be a chance I might need the item later. It’s a risk but at least that’s one less item to take up space in my home. I find it’s such a time-consuming task to de-clutter though. I wonder if it’s almost worth it to get professional service to help me.

WHY PARK LIKE THAT

As many of you know, I live in an apartment building. I park my car in an assigned spot in the parkade. My spot is next to a concrete pillar. Someone else parks their car on the other side of me. The spot next to them has been empty. It’s been empty since before my parking neighbour lived here. In the over ten years I’ve lived in my building, no one else has ever parked a car in the spot adjacent to my parking neighbour. I have illustrated the situation in the above diagram, which is a top-down view. The black rectangles are concrete pillars, the yellow lines are the parking lines, and the black outlines are our cars.

Now the thing you have to understand is the spots in our building are not very wide. They border on being too skinny for modern cars. As such, it’s a tight fit, even for your economy cars. I didn’t draw it really well but that concrete pillar to my left is essentially right up against the left yellow parking line. I don’t have a lot of leeway to my left. So I try to park right in the middle of my spot. I try to give myself enough room to the left to avoid scraping my driver side mirror on the pillar, while not being too close to my neighbour’s car on the right.

The maddening thing is that my parking spot neighbour insists on also parking right down the middle of their spot. Why? It’s illogical. There’s no one to their right. He or she has room to park their car slightly to the right in their spot. That would leave several inches more room for them to get into their car. Instead, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to squeeze themselves between their car and mine, trying to open their car door without hitting my car.

I’ve seen other people in the parkade who take advantage of not having a car neighbour and parking their cars slightly offset in their spots so they have more room. This logic escapes my neighbour. I have never seen the person who parks the car next to me but I’m really tempted if I see them to ask why they insist on parking right down the middle of their spot. I can only imagine this person follows the rules all the time and gets nervous if they deviate even slightly from what is expected of them.

A SMALL VICTORY

This evening I caught up to most current episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, Conan’s popular podcast. At the time of this writing, that’s 168 episodes. I started listening to this podcast around the spring of 2020, so it took me well over a year to get through every episode. I listened to most episodes while doing my dishes or cleaning.

The podcast releases a new episode about every week and in between those episodes, he has a shorter episode where he talks to fans over Zoom. So even though I’m all caught up now, there’s always new material for me to listen to.

If and when I start commuting to work again, I think I’ll start listening to podcasts on the way to work.

IT’S MY LUCK

I ordered a portable air-conditioner several weeks ago. Since then, it has arrived and I’ve set it up in my bedroom. It hasn’t got hot enough for me to need to really use it but I have turned it on twice to ensure it’s working.

We’re fast approaching August now and I know it will stay cool enough for me to not need the air-conditioner. Had I not bought the A/C, we would have experienced at least one more heat wave. It’s just how it works.

I will need it next summer though. Climate change has come far along enough that it will no longer seem odd that parts of British Columbia will be hotter than Las Vegas.

FIRST TIME SELLER

I listed my old TV on Facebook Marketplace today. It’s the first time I’ve put a listing up there. So far, in the online world, I’ve only sold items on eBay. Unfortunately, selling an 80 lb TV on eBay isn’t practical.

So far, my listing on Facebook has received one offer for 60% of the price I listed. I’ll be honest here, I’ll probably agree to this offer tomorrow morning if I get no other people biting. The fact that I’ll get any money for my old TV is just a bonus. I’m just glad someone is willing to come to my home and take it away. It’s just taking up space in my living room and it needs to go somewhere else. I’m just hoping this guy is still interested when I agree to his terms.