Category: Uncategorized

It’s been several years now since my ability to remember passwords has been outstripped by the number of websites and apps that require me to have passwords. Since I don’t use the same password for every single site and app, I’m required to remember a ton of unique passwords.

It’s gotten to the point that for some sites and apps, I require a reset of the password every single time I need access. In those cases, it’s very tedious, especially when they require you to come up with a new password that you’ve never used before.

I was expecting to jump to similar hoops when I tried to sign into my Hyatt account. Instead, I was offered two different methods to sign in: with a traditional password (which I had forgotten) or a one-time link sent to an e-mail address. I chose the one-time link because I obviously use e-mail so frequently, I would not forget my e-mail password.

With the one-time link, I was able to sign into the Hyatt web site, without having to reset my password. I thought this was a genius way of allowing access to sites without needing to remember a specific password every single time. All you need is access to your email.

In a way, this is very similar to password managers I suppose where a single password gets you access to all your accounts, except that you don’t need to sign up or download a password manager.

I hope more sites and apps adopt this access strategy because it’s very convenient.

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.