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I forget what YouTube video was I watching but I was perusing through the associated comments (which are usually of highly intellectual discourse) when I found the particular one above. It’s funny and sad at the same time.

I made some Salisbury Hamburger Helper yesterday and it was delicious. I know Hamburger Helper has a blue-collar reputation and isn’t considered fine dining, but oh man, Salisbury Hamburger Helper is so good. I don’t use ground beef however. I substitute in extra lean ground turkey. In my opinion, it’s a healthier choice. A whole box is good for about three people but I manage to eat all of it in about two days.

So far my car hasn’t been stolen nor towed nor ticketed since it’s been in the temporary parking spot. To be honest, I only checked on Tuesday evening, so it’s quite possible it’s gone and I don’t even know it. I should probably check on it tomorrow morning.

I got a giant chocolate bunny at Easter during the egg hunt we had at work. I hesitated opening the package because I knew I’d just eat the whole thing. I gave the bunny away to a co-worker. That was a wise choice. He has to deal with the bunny now. I see it on his desk now. He’s managed to eat the ears and part of the head. I wish him luck with the rest.

The rain has come back to Vancouver with a vengeance. It feels like fall with the heavy and relentless rain. I discovered there’s a whole in one of my shoes. My foot was wet all the way home.

Over the weekend, the 2014 version of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was held in Washington (as it usually is). This event has turned into an annual entertaining evening, with increasingly more Hollywood attendees. The host always has a funny speech or at least tries their best to be funny. Over the last couple of years, every host has been great, with the exception of Jay Leno.

This year they got Joel McHale to give a speech, he from the NBC show, Community. I particularly like several of his zingers, including his jabs at bridge closer Chris Christie, drug addict Rob Ford, and easy targets, Fox News. Listen for yourself above.

Did you know May is Asian Heritage month both in Canada and the US? Well, if you didn’t, it is, you uncultured bastard. There is an official government declaration as such, which you can read here.

To celebrate, what better than to see actor Steven Yeun talk about being Asian and being in the entertainment business in the video above. This video is just one of a series from the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE). In particular, actor and comedian Randall Park is featured a whole set of funny videos that star a plethora of well-known Asian entertainers. Steven Yeun’s episode, which also features model Jessica Gomes, is located here.

When I started my current job they wanted to give me a desk in the middle of the studio. Normally, I don’t complain and just sit where I’m told to but a guy on my team said I could sit at any empty desk next to the window. I jumped at the chance because who doesn’t want a window seat? I also had tons of room around me. A great view by the window and lots of room for activities? This was probably the best spot I’ve worked in.

Today I found out our team is going to grow by four new people, three QA testers and a programmer. Suddenly there were two desks shoved up close to mine, with one desk placed such that the person sitting there would be looking directly at me all day. No one wants to be stared at all day while they work so I politely suggested a new configuration and moved the desk by 90 degrees. Now we’re facing the same direction and one of my TVs functions as a bit of a privacy screen. Now the only issue is I’m surrounded by a bunch of people whereas before it was just me and wide open spaces.

I guess I shouldn’t complain since I still have my window to look out of and a great view. Oh, one little thing just between you and me… I’ve been told the new programmer farts a lot. I bet he gets the desk right next to me.

So last Thursday, I returned home to find an envelope shoved into my door frame. I knew this had to be correspondence from strata as all my usual mail gets put in my mailbox. In my experience, getting a letter from strata is usually a bad thing and can only involve inconvenience. As I opened the letter and read it, I discovered I was right.

In my building, our above ground, resident parking is divided into reserved and non-reserved spots. I’m not sure why that is. The first two levels are a free for all for the plebes in this building , while the top two are reserved spots only. Anyways, I have a reserved spot on topmost level, P8. There is definitely an advantage to having a reserved spot. I always know where my spot and it’s guaranteed to be available to me. Also, on my level, every car knows where they are going to, so you don’t encounter random cars looking for a spot.

Anyways, the letter informed me that they need to temporarily take my parking spot away from me. My spot is near a huge overhanging canopy that shields the Skytrain tracks and the mall level below from the elements. They need to repair the canopy and that involves welding which they believe is not good for my car. I’m not the only one as I understand three others are in my predicament. To solve the problem, four spots on P5 have been temporarily marked as reserved for us. We’re free to park in any one of these reserved spots until the repairs are done. Unfortunately, no one can tells us when that might be.

I went and looked at the spots last night. Three of them have some undesirable aspects to them as varying degrees. Two of the spots are right at the end of the parkade, which means that when you back out, it’s a bit tricky to get your car pointed in the right direction. One of the spots has a huge piece of machinery at the end of the spot, which means you can’t pull all the way in, so the ass of your car is sticking out. The last spot is ok, it’s not huge but doesn’t suffer from any of the geometry problems I mentioned. Of course, I moved my car into that spot tonight before anyone else could take it. The letter says we’re to start parking there on the 5th of May but I didn’t wait. The signs were up already so I took the opportunity.

Since this spot is closer to the ground level, it’s actually more convenient to park my car. I don’t have to navigate that dangerous spiral that I usually need to. We’ll see how long this stays in place.

I wore shorts to work for the first time this year. It was a liberating and great feeling. The weather got suddenly warm and sunny this week. Two weeks ago we were still dealing with rain and winter coats, now people are out and about in their summer gear.

As I was walking outside to get a coffee this afternoon, I was reminded that warm weather does have its downsides. Get all sweaty isn’t too fun. There is a perfect warm temperature that I like to be in. It’s also a combination of the right humidity level and just the right amount of wind, a light breeze if you will. It wasn’t perfect today but it was still pretty good. I could have used a bit more of a breeze.

We get another day of sun tomorrow before we head back to the almost a week of familiar rain. It’ll be rainy but at least the mild temperatures will stick around. Perhaps we can bring out the shorts again in mid-May.

For this year’s NHL playoffs, I’m not particularly cheering for one specific team as the local team here in this city played terrible in the regular season and failed to qualify for post-season play. That hasn’t happened since 2008. Since then, every spring, I’ve followed the local team in the playoffs, sharing their high and inevitable lows, culminating in the lowest of lows, a game seven loss in the finals in 2011. I sometimes wonder why people follow sports because it usually ends in heartache as many teams vie for a championship and only one team comes out on top.

So this spring has been quite different. There are no games to schedule my evenings around. There are no cancelled engagements because it conflicts with a playoff game. People, myself included, are going about their business, their emotions not tied to a game they have no control over. It’s rather refreshing actually.

Tonight was just another example of this freedom from sport. This evening, there were three game sevens, the deciding games in the first round of the playoffs. Three teams would advance while three others would go home. That also meant that three fanbases would be jubilant while three others would be suffering varying degrees heartache. By the end of the evening, there sure was heartache for some fans. For the Colorado and Minnesota game, it went into sudden death overtime. A game seven that goes into OT guarantees one city is gonna come out feeling terrible. One lucky bounce and it’s over. There’s no way to feel good about a game seven OT loss because it’s essentially a coin toss. Tonight, the fans in Colorado lost the coin toss.

Between Philadelphia and the New York Rangers, it was more of a normal game. The Rangers won 2-1 in regulation time. A close game for sure, but the Rangers staked themselves to a 2-0 lead and held on for the win. Philly fans might feel bad but it’s not the end of the world.

The worst feeling of the evening is reserved for fans in the San Jose area. Tonight, the Sharks entered into the seventh and deciding game against the LA Kings after having a 3-0 lead in the series. Let me state that again, they won the first three games of the series and only needed to win one more game to advance. Instead, they lost three straight games to put themselves into the situation they faced tonight. In this game, they got blown out, losing 5-1. In the process they became just the fourth team in NHL history to lose a playoff series after leading 3-0. I can’t even imagine what Sharks fans are feeling tonight. This is coming from someone who follows the Canucks, a team that has a long, long history of ineptitude. I don’t even know how you process a loss like that if you’re a Shark fan.

I am so relieved that I was just an impartial observer tonight. I ate my dinner, saw the scores, and went on with my evening. It was kinda nice.

In a previous post, I wrote about how I failed to buy RRSPs for the last tax year, thus limiting my tax deductions by a significant amount. I was almost sure that when it was time to do my tax return I would have to pay taxes instead of getting a refund.

With such a fear in my mind, I hesitated to start my return. The deadline for filing is a week away, so this evening I decided to bite the bullet and do the whole thing straight away. It was odd doing a tax return without having to enter any RRSP slips. My only deductions came from charitable donations and bus passes, which made me quite leery of the final number.

Much to my surprise, however, the end result was a huge tax refund, probably one of the largest I’ve received, if not the largest. In fact, had I bought any amount of RRSPs this year, the refund would have been even larger and easily would have been the largest amount in my tax paying years. Why did I receive a huge refund when I was expecting to pay taxes? I guess after all the math was done, I discovered I had a large sum of my income deducted as tax already. My tax credits, both refundable and not, were large enough (even without RRSP help) that I was able to get money back.

The refund wasn’t even the most interesting part of the exercise. The tax program gave me a comparison of my financial situation year over year between 2012 and 2013. In both years, I had four months where I did not work, yet in 2013, my income was 45% higher than 2012. I made way more money last year than I did in 2012, yet still had the same amount of time off (the “summer of me”!). This happened because of a few reasons. For four months of 2012, I had a job that paid me significantly less than what my market salary dictated. The final four months or so of 2012 I worked at PopCap, which paid me a much more reasonable salary. For 2013, I only worked eight months but I received a massive severance package from PopCap/EA which worked out to be about four months salary. In terms of financials and probably everything else, 2013 was a great year and much better than 2012 was.

Now the question turns to what should I do with this refund money? My first thought is to buy RRSPs immediately so that I won’t forget again for the end of 2014. I have some slight hesitation, however, since my RRSPs are usually tied with mutual funds. It’s usually better to buy mutual funds when the market is at a low. Right now, most markets, Dow-Jones and NASDAQ for example, are near their year-to-date highs, which doesn’t make it the best time to buy. So perhaps waiting is the right thing to do. My other use for the money is to make a privilege payment on my mortgage. I haven’t made one of those in about two years even though I easily could have. This option is easily a sure bet and the only unknown is how much will the payment will be.

Perhaps this also calls for a fancy steak at the end of the week!

Like many of you, I have numerous power strip or power bars around my home. These wonderful electrical devices allow you to plug in more devices than you have outlets. I’ve always thought that if these things break or fail, they do so completely. By that I mean, if they don’t work anymore, you don’t get any power to your devices. I found out that is wrong.

I had a particular power strip that was being used to power my Xbox 360 and my A/V system (speakers and receiver). One day I popped in a Blu-ray disc and I couldn’t hear anything once the movie started. My receiver said it was decoding DTS but there was no sound. Once I returned to the menus, I was back in Dolby Digital and I could hear that fine. Weird. I popped in another disc and the same thing happened. No audio once I was playing DTS.

Next, I tried playing a video game. I powered on my Xbox 360 which seemed fine as I could see the dashboard come up. I then pressed the button to open the disc tray. The motor whined a bit but nothing happened. I tried several more times but I couldn’t get the tray to open. It looked like I wasn’t going to watch any movies or play any Xbox 360 games.

It took me a day or so but I thought it was crazy that both my A/V system and my Xbox 360 somehow broke at the same time. It was just too much of a coincidence. I then looked to see where these two items were plugged in. They were both plugged into the same power strip and were the only items in that strip. Trying a hunch, I re-arranged somethings and plugged both my A/V system and Xbox 360 into either a different strip or right into the wall outlet. Wouldn’t you know, I could hear DTS audio again and my Xbox 360 was able to open the disc tray again.

I discovered that power strips can fail and still provide some but not sufficient power to your devices. I’m no electrical engineer but I’m thinking it was giving enough voltage but not enough current. My Xbox 360 could run its pure electronics but once it needed juice to turn some motors, it failed. Now I know my A/V system requires more juice to decode DTS audio than it does Dolby Digital.

I replaced the power strip with another one and everything is working great now. And I learned something interesting about electronics.