Category: Uncategorized

I have to go to bed very early tonight because I’m taking a family member to a medical appointment tomorrow morning.

I have no words of wisdom tonight but I’ll be back tomorrow with coupon clipping strategies.

This web site was down for a non-trivial amount of time on Sunday evening, which prevented me from writing anything. I’m not sure what happened. At first I thought it was only limited to my WordPress installation but my whole site was inaccessible, even the non-WordPress sections.

I’ve learned when this happens, it usually takes a few hours before everything is fixed. It was getting late, so I decided it wasn’t worth waiting until 6am to write something. Though, the downtime did make me think that I should back up my blog more often. I think I’ll go do that now.

A few days ago I was at McDonald’s and got a combo meal. Instead of getting an unhealthy soda for my drink, I opted for a small bottle of milk. I took that home and used it for the milk that I put in my coffee. Boom, thousands of dollars saved just like that.

I am enjoying David Letterman’s YouTube channel so much. The above interview is one that I haven’t seen where Dave interviews Mark Hamill. When this interviewed aired on Monday, June 20, 1983 I was just a child and there was no way I could have stayed up until Dave’s airtime of 12:30am. I’m not even sure I knew what Dave’s show was back then. Well, it’s a good thing I can watch these interviews now.

In all of my years of working, I have never been sent on a business trip by my employer. As a software engineer, there isn’t really a business justification to send me anywhere. This is especially true in these current times where remote work has been proven to be possible.

This is about to change, however, as my employer has decided to send everyone on the small team I am on to Los Angeles in mid-July. While my team has people who work all over North America and even Asia, the largest cluster of people reside in the greater Los Angeles area. This makes it the most logical destination for everyone to go to. The purpose of the trip is for us to meet face-to-face for the first time. Other than just one person, I have never been in the presence of my immediate co-workers before.

No real work will be done on this trip as we will be partaking in mostly fun and team-building exercises. The higher-ups have scheduled us for two days down in Los Angeles, a Thursday and Friday. This means that we can also choose to stay for Saturday and Sunday, if we want to do stuff in LA on our own before heading back home.

I recognize that we are still in a pandemic, so I assume that we will take appropriate measures when necessary. The one good thing is that from what I’ve seen of the data, COVID case counts tend to dip to lower levels during the summer months.

It should be an interesting trip.

As many of you know, I visited San Diego at the beginning of April for a vacation. I arrived at YVR with just under two hours before my scheduled departure time (which was an early afternoon flight on a Saturday).

The lineup for security was almost non-existent and it probably took me about five minutes to clear security. The lineup to get through US customs and border pre-clearance was slightly longer but I’d guess that took about ten minutes in total. After that, I was free to wait at my gate for boarding. I had a plethora of time, well over an hour, to kill.

A month later, it seems like travel from YVR has turned into a major hassle. The issue lies with massive line-ups to get through security screening. There are reports that people arriving two hours before their flights are missing them because they can’t get through security fast enough. Apparently the number of staff at the security checkpoints hasn’t decreased, it is the volume of passengers that has increased.

It seems odd that YVR was able to handle the volume of spring break travelers but not passenger volume in late April and early May. What happens in the actual summer months when travel gets traditionally even busier?

I’m not planning on flying out of YVR anytime soon, so I’ll be watching what happens from afar.

My employer lets all their employees know in late May or early June what their salary increases, bonuses, and stock awards are, which reflects the performance of the employee and the company.

Grunts like me don’t know the full picture but I have my sources and they have confirmed bits and pieces. The first confirmed bit is that, at least on my team, merit or salary increases will be very small this year. I have been told it might almost nothing for some people to perhaps 6% if they are lucky. Given that inflation was and continues to be a tangible hit to most people, a negligible salary increase might actually mean making less money when inflation is factored in. I am not expecting great things here since I was promoted earlier in the year, meaning my salary was already bumped up months ago.

Bonuses at my place of employment are calculated using a formula, which can be confusing at times. The formula factors in the performance of the company as a whole, the performance of your particular team (in my case, the performance of the game I work on), and employee performance. Weakness in one of these areas can be offset by strength in the others. I have been told the company performance, while decent, slipped compared to last year. Last year, however, was probably a huge outlier. The company did phenomenally well, and it would have been hard pressed to repeat it. I have been informed that on the other hand, team performance this year was nearly the same as last, which it is to say it was tremendous. Our game apparently did very well again financially. Lastly, for personal performance, I can only guess that since I was promoted in this fiscal year, it would be odd that my personal performance for the purposes of bonus calculation would be rated low. All said, bonuses this year should be the same as last year, which is great and all, but earlier in the year, there were rumours that there was a chance that bonuses were going to wildly exceed last year’s. I suppose I shouldn’t complain since I know there are others on less fortunate teams that will receive significantly smaller bonuses.

As for stock compensation, this is a total mystery to me. I have no clue if I did well enough this year to merit additional stock awards. I would love some but even then, our stock has taken a bit of a hit compared to last year.

All will be known in a few weeks to a month.

This morning I went down to the local A&W to get some quick breakfast as I was very hungry. As I entered, I saw a police officer near the bathrooms talking to a meth-ed out lady who had no pants on. She was screaming and yelling, while the staff of the A&W kept their distance. It was quite a scene.

In the one minute I was there, no customers were being served and it didn’t seem like any food was being made either. I was the third person in the line and I didn’t have the patience to see this through. Even though I really wanted A&W breakfast, this situation wasn’t gonna resolve itself quickly, so I left.

I don’t know what happened to pantsless meth lady but I do feel for the staff at that A&W. They have to deal with so much BS for so little pay.

About two weeks ago, I left the country for San Diego, my first trip outside of Canada since late 2019. As some of you are aware, we are still in the midst of a pandemic, so travel (which was already complicated pre-pandemic) had added risks and complications now.

Since I was going to the United States of America, I was a little apprehensive about witnessing first-hand the difference in attitudes towards the pandemic. We can agree that at a general level, citizens of Canada and the USA have approached the pandemic differently. Vaccination rates are higher and masking is more prevalent in Canada.

I wasn’t about to throw caution to the wind and do as Romans do and go maskless in San Diego though. Would I be the only one masked in crowded indoor places? Would I be shamed for wearing a mask? I didn’t know.

It was smooth sailing on the plane as the flight left from Canada and everyone was required to mask. From what I could tell, everyone took it seriously. Once I left the plane in San Diego and entered the terminal, there was near universal masking wearing. This was before the federal mandate was struck down by a Trump-appointed judge. At the time, Uber also required masks, so my trip to the hotel was also done in relative safety.

It was once I arrived at the hotel that I knew I was definitely in a new city and country. The hotel lobby was massive, busy and full of people. From the plethora of front desk staff working, only one was wearing a mask. It was honestly odd to see and initially unsettling. After checking in, I got to my room to drop off my stuff. I was really hungry and next door was a Cheesecake Factory, so I decided to grab some dinner there.

As it was Cheesecake Factory and even though it was only around 4:30pm or so, I still had to wait for a table. Inside, I was the only one wearing a mask as I waited to leave my name with the hostess. I was feeling a bit self-conscious but at least no one was giving me weird looks. Once I left my name for a table, I went outside and sat on a bench to wait. A parade of people were coming and going from the restaurant. I people-watched for five minutes before I saw this one couple entering the restaurant. They were both wearing masks, which made me think at least some people still wore masks here. A few minutes after that, I saw a whole family masked up.

It took a few days of exploring and seeing various places but I came to realize that while the majority of people were maskless, it would be very rare for me to be the only maskless person in indoor locations. Especially in touristy areas, like Legoland or the Gaslamp Quarter, there actually would be a fair number of masked people out and about. In fact, while I don’t mask very often outdoors, I did see a fair share of people masked outside, which is their right and prerogative.

After a few days, I became very comfortable with the whole situation. Being one of the few masked people indoors was second nature to me. No one gave me strange looks, nor did they say anything to me. It felt like there was a level of respect or at least, indifference to what each person preferred.

Near the end of the trip, I realized that with some luck, it’s quite possible to travel, enjoy a vacation, and be relatively safe about it. It’s been more than a week since I returned from San Diego and I’ve tested four times since then, all returning negative. San Diego remains one of my favourite cities to visit. It feels inclusive and safe, as it has been to me in the past.

Now I understand my experience may have been different depending on lots of factors. I may have been just plain lucky. I traveled to fairly liberal city on the west coast of California, sticking to mostly touristy areas. Had I visited say a small town in one of the southern states, my experience probably would have been very different.

Travel in general incurs a slight risk, especially in these times, but I didn’t feel like I had to compromise my own measures to vacation and that felt great.