Category: Uncategorized

I have a 9am meeting tomorrow that I must attend over Zoom. For me, 9am is like crack of dawn, so I gotta go to bed now. The meeting is this early to accommodate some people who work from the Europe. It’s the end of their day so they’ll be fine.

That video card that I said I ordered a week ago arrived in the mail on the weekend. I picked it up from the post office on Saturday. Installation of the new card took about five minutes. My computer did not blow up when I powered it back on with the new card in it.

I anticipated getting the card on the weekend and to prepare, on Friday night, I ran a whole bunch of games and noted how many frames per second I was getting. This was to do a tangible comparison of how much faster these games would run with the new card. To summarize, on average, this card has triple the performance of my last video card. Some games that were previously unplayable due to low frame rates (below 30 fps), are now playable at 120+ fps.

This new card is everything I hoped it would be as it didn’t require me to upgrade any other components in my PC to play the latest games again. It did cost me a pretty penny however. It’s easily the most expensive single PC component I’ve ever purchased and close to double the price of my last video card.

The ironic thing is, however, I am currently in the middle of playing a PS4 game and I don’t want to stop playing it until I’m done. So now that I have a great gaming PC again, it’ll be a few weeks before I start a new game on it.

I wore a toque when I went outside today and not in an ironic manner either. It was cold enough today that I honestly did think wearing a toque was the smart choice. It was rainy, grey, and very cool from morning all the way through the evening.

I could complain about this weather and how very little it resembles traditional June weather, but I won’t. A heat dome last year killed hundreds of people in this province and I’d rather have a rainy day than the alternative. Let it rain!

I paid my property tax for this year and it was pretty much the same amount as last year. With inflation, gas prices, and almost everything being more expensive this year, this reasonable property tax bill was delight in comparison.

Owning real estate is privilege and a luxury, so I will not complain about having to pay my fair share to keep my municipality running.

I woke up at 7am this morning and could not fall back asleep. I could have slept more than two more hours but instead, my body just wanted to be awake. I did not do anything productive while I was awake, opting to just lie in bed and look at my phone.

This deficiency of sleep led me to be very tired after work, which means I wanna go to bed right now. See you tomorrow.

I ordered a new video card over the weekend. This is a significant development because the video card market has gone bonkers for about the last two years. Shortages in components and chips meant card makers couldn’t make them in enough quantities to match the demand. Demand has been high due people wanting to play PC games and also due to filthy crypto-miners. For any commodity that has high demand, that means prices go up. Just four to five years ago, spending $300-400 would get you a decent mid-range video card and $600 would mean you’d get a top of the line one. Not anymore.

In the last two years, the manufacturer suggested retail price for video cards means nothing. Scalpers, stores, and online retailers have been selling cards for 3-4 times the MSRP. People have been trying to capitalize on the demand by gouging desperate PC gamers on eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace. In the last two months, however, prices have started to come down quite a bit. Depending on the card you’re looking for and where you live, some cards are at MSRP or even below it.

The card I ordered is a mid-range card and it is still above MSRP but not enough so that I feel like I’m being ripped off. I’m not willing to wait any longer for the prices to drop because I’ve already waited two years to get another video card. I can no longer play the latest games with my current one and still not have it look like a blocky, pixelated mess.

The crazy thing is I merely put the order in. The order still hasn’t been confirmed yet, so it’s quite possible there is no inventory for the item I just ordered. Everything is in such short supply these days, from video cards, to cars, common sense, and general decency. The world is in a sad state.

I’ve either had an allergic reaction to something or some kind of insect bit on both my hands. I have these itchy, raised welts on some of the fingers. I immediately thought of bed bugs but I’m not itchy elsewhere on my body and I looked for them and didn’t find any evidence. Believe me, after my run in with bedbugs during grad school, I know what to look for and I haven’t seen any.

Difficult to tell what it is right now and I am hoping it’ll go away soon.

I recently had two very different experiences with “selling” items on Facebook Marketplace. I wanted to get rid of my old home theatre surround sound system and my old desk chair. I decided to give away my desk chair because it’s old, frayed and honestly no one would spend money on it. The surround sound system I listed it for $40. It still works and for $40, that’s a great deal.

After two weeks, the chair was snapped up but not a single person even clicked on my ad for the surround sound system. What a disappointment. Within an hour or so of posting the ad for a free desk chair, it was picked up and gone. I understand you can’t beat the price of free but is no one looking for speakers right now?

I’m not sure what to do. Maybe I need to go down to $20?

The fourth season of Stranger Things was released last week and they refused to follow the recent trend of streaming services parceling out episodes one a week, making people wait. Yes, I know there are supposedly good reasons why they release them on weekly basis but I still remember the “good old days” of binging a series. Isn’t that how Netflix rose to fame? By allowing people to binge a series?

By the way, the fourth season is excellent so far and since I can continue to watch a new episode as I finish them, I’m not tempted to forget about it and go watch something else. I wish I didn’t have to go to bed because it’s a school night!