Month: July 2022

In the video above, you’re seeing the Union Street exit for Interstate 5 going south in the city of Seattle. It’s a compilation of cars crashing out while taking the exit and it’s clear all of these vehicles are going way too fast.

So, if you were like me, you’re probably wondering how bad the exit must be for people to be crashing so forcefully. Well, wonder no more because someone made a video of them driving on I-5 and taking this exit. In my opinion, the exit is not well-designed but at the same time, it’s not impossible to take this exit safely. The above video just reinforces my position that American drivers drive way too fast in general.

I slept with the AC on last night and while my bedroom remained cool throughout the night, I woke up feeling pretty terrible this morning. I am not sure if it was the noise of the AC that prevented me from getting restful sleep, if it was the reduced ventilation, or if it was something else entirely, but I did not feel very good.

It wasn’t that I felt tired, it was as if I was totally out of it. My mind felt slow as molasses and it took me a good hour or so before I felt like I could mentally function to do work.

It’s hot as balls tonight as well but I think I’m gonna try to sleep without the AC again.

It’s after midnight and it’s still 27 degrees in my apartment. I turned off the AC around 9pm because I thought the air would have cooled down enough but I was wrong.

I’ve turned the AC back on to cool off my bedroom before bed but I’m wondering if I should keep it on throughout the night so it won’t be too uncomfortable while I sleep. I’ve never had it on all night before, though I guess it’ll just shut off once it gets to the target temperature.

I received a letter in the mail today from the property management company for my building. The strata council has proposed a resolution to allow repairs to be made to the building envelope. This isn’t too much of a surprise to me because I knew we had hired engineers to look at damage to the building with regard to the envelope. I also knew that there was going to be some work required or else we’d face massive problem further down the road.

Bids were requested and strata went with the cheapest bid I believe. The total bill comes to around $2M, to be paid partially from the contingency fund and the rest from special assessment from the owners. My share is a non-trivial amount of $6,000. Owners of the larger apartments in the building will pay over $12,000.

I gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting a $6k expense this year but I was lucky enough that my employer gave me a decent bonus a few months ago and I did not spend much of it yet. I could pay the $6k tomorrow if I wanted to but it doesn’t make the sting of the bill any less. If my memory serves me correctly, this is only the second special assessment ever in the history of this building, which is about twelve years old now. The first one was about a third of this one, so reasonable by most standards.

A few years into owning my apartment, I thought about enacting this strategy whereby I wouldn’t live in a building that was older than say, about seven years. Pricey special assessments usually only happen in the older buildings and if I kept owning an apartment in newer buildings, I would never get tagged by a special assessment. Of course, that’s a really naive strategy. First, you have to find a newer building to move into. Admittedly, this wouldn’t have been too difficult in my neighbourhood as new buildings have been popping up every few years without fail. Second, the hassle and the cost (both time and money) of having to purchase and move into an apartment every few years probably would have exceeded the cost of the two special assessments that have popped up so far.

Of course, the owners still need to vote on the resolution. It could be that this gets voted down and we kick the can down the road but I don’t think that’s ever turned out well. Also, it will be interesting to see if this is the start of many repairs that will be required as the building ages. How well is the building holding up? I think there will be lots of questions in early August when we meet to vote on this.

This weekend, I weighted myself for the first time since I discovered I had gained about ten pounds and was now fat. I have lost a little over two pounds, which is not significant but at least it’s better than gaining more weight. I think over two pounds can’t be attributed to just poo weight and it probably isn’t just water weight (I wasn’t dehydrated when I weighed myself).

I suppose I just need to keep eating as healthy as I can and be as active as I can.

It was only early afternoon and my bedroom has reached 25 degrees Celsius. Normally, my apartment doesn’t get hot until late afternoon, early evening, when the sun finally is able to shine directly into my windows. Today, even without any direct sunlight, it got warm very early.

I chose to turn on my air-conditioner and ran it for about three hours, as I finished up the last few hours of work. Having an air-conditioner at home is still a novelty to me. I can’t believe we’re in a time where having A/C is basically a necessity in Vancouver during the summer now. Well, it’s gonna be hot for the next week or so, and I am glad I can at least be comfortable in this heat.

Comedy genius Dana Carvey returned to Conan’s podcast and he had several amazing bits to present. One of them was his impression of an “angry east coast comic”, which may or may not resemble a Boston comic that both Dana and Conan know.

I woke up at the crack of dawn to move my car. I found a decent spot one of the free-for-all parking levels and left it there all day. I went down there to move my car back to my own spot around 6pm. My stall looked as clean (or dirty) as it was this morning.

As I didn’t go back to sleep once my car was moved, I was exhausted all day. Instead of sleeping again, I went and got breakfast to go and played video games until I needed to start work for the day. In hindsight, maybe I should have went back to bed. Speaking of going to bed, I shall do that now.

I am going to gripe about a first-world problem here, so beforewarned. Once a year, my building arranges to have the parkade levels power washed. That’s all fine and dandy but they make you move your car so it’s easier to clean every parking stall.

It used to be that you could move your car to another parking level the night before but now they force you to do it the morning of the power wash for your level. In this case, it’s 8am and I don’t get out of bed until almost 10am usually. So now I gotta get up early tomorrow morning and haul my ass out of bed to move my car. There’s also no guarantee there’s gonna be enough free spots for everyone who hasn’t gone to work yet or work from home.

What a pain in the ass.

In the above clip, a few people in the stand-by line to see Dave’s show on CBS are sent by Dave himself over to the audience for Conan’s show. You’d think given the choice of seeing no show live or Conan’s show they’d pick Conan but they complain like little whiny bastards. Ok, so sure, the year is 1995, and Dave is super famous compared to Conan, whose show is still on rocky ground at this point, but don’t disrespect the man.

I wonder what these people think of Conan now.