Category: Uncategorized

I have owned my car for almost a year now and I took it to a real car wash for the first time last week. It was one of those places where you can either do automated or go in one of those hand wash bays. I chose to wash it by hand.

The water pressure they have at the car wash far exceeds anything they have at the car wash station in my building. I did an initial blast of water to get as much dirt off as possible, then I applied the soap to my car, followed by a thorough rinse. I had some bad luck in that the bay I drove into had a broken air dryer, so I wasn’t able to dry off my car. It didn’t matter that much though as my car still looked amazingly clean afterwards.

The cost for a wash was about $6, so very reasonable. I definitely won’t go another 11 months before washing it again.

I understand that everyone has seen this trailer already but for 2021, this is the movie that I want to see the most. There are some crazy rumours of who they brought back to be in this film and this trailer confirms some of these rumours.

I visited my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and parents tonight for dinner. I watched my niece get fed her dinner while she sat in a high chair. She farted while eating, releasing a smelly odour that could have passed for an adult fart. Soon after she had a look on her face that my brother-in-law said signalled that she was defecating.

It was at this point that my brother-in-law decided to take my niece out of the high chair for a diaper change. He had to go upstairs to do that. In the process of going upstairs a giant mound of poo escaped out of her my niece’s diaper, slid along one of her pant legs and then landed on her father’s sock. Three smaller pieces of poo landed on the carpet upstairs. It was smelly and disgusting but par for the course if you’re a parent of an eight month old baby.

My Mom took one look at the situation and told me I should avoid all of this at all costs and not have a child of my own.

I received an automated e-mail earlier this week from a local drug store reminding me that I had a scheduled appointment for my second AstraZeneca vaccine shot. Of course, this reminder is no longer relevant as is the appointment because I’ve already received my second shot over six weeks ago. If we think back to the heady days of the spring of 2021, vaccine availability and guidance about the time between shots were things in constant motion.

At the end of April, I received an AstraZeneca shot and at that time, it was expected that I could get another shot four months from then, which would mean August. It’s my understanding this was based on vaccine availability and the acceptable time frame in between shots. I was prepared to go almost the entire summer being only partially vaccinated, a whole sixteen weeks of waiting.

As spring turned into early summer however, vaccine availability became much greater. The sixteen week gap between shots became only eight. Medical advice also recommended that I receive an mRNA vaccine for my second shot as well. That’s what I got when I went for my second shot at the end of June. Even before I got my second shot, the drug store actually called me to see if I was interested in getting a second shot of AstraZeneca but I had already decided I wanted an mRNA shot by then.

This automated e-mail I got this week is a vestige of how we thought the vaccine landscape would be like in the spring. As with many things with this pandemic, things have changed quickly and our expectations did not match up with reality. In this case, this was a good thing as vaccines became more widely available. In some cases, things are worse, like the rise of the Delta variant. It does feel weird, however, knowing that I was originally supposed to be just getting my second shot this week.

Between June 23 and August 16 I didn’t check in any files at work. In software development, a “check in” is a submission of work (usually changes to files or new files) to a central repository. If you were to look at my list of submissions in a kinda naive way, you’d think that I probably didn’t do any work for almost a month and a half. While you could use the frequency of submissions as some sorta productivity metric, the reality is that a lot of work can be done even if you’re not checking in files.

For the six weeks or so, I was busy troubleshooting existing live services that require external teams to make changes on my behalf. These won’t show up as submissions under my name. I was also doing investigations into things that we wanted to do but weren’t sure of the effort required to get them done. This type of work also doesn’t show up as files checked in.

I think when I was younger, I’d probably be worried if I saw I hadn’t checked in anything for almost two months but now I understand it’s not the only metric of how productive an engineer is. I only wish I had been on vacation for these six weeks!

Something that I ate today gave me diarrhea late this evening. It’s been a messy night. I am going to bed now.

So I’ve removed almost all the carpet in my apartment in preparation of getting new flooring. There’s just exposed concrete all over my home. This interim state of my floors has left me with a new revelation. I need to be careful about dropping things on my floor now.

With carpet and an underpad I was able to drop electronics and other things on the floor and not really worry about them. I’ve dropped phones, game controllers, tablets, and remote controls on my carpet without a single problem. I can’t do that anymore. Even though I have a case on my phone, the concrete is unforgiving. I’ve already had a few close calls where I almost dropped my phone.

I also understand that even when I get my floors installed (vinyl plank? laminate?), things aren’t gonna get that much better. I guess people are just more careful when their floors are hard?

I have a four-day weekend coming up so I’m gonna sleep in, try to endure this latest heat wave, and eat fried foods. I hope everyone stays safe and is well.

This afternoon I had to go run an errand and I knew I wouldn’t make it home in time for a Zoom meeting. I did the next best thing and I parked my car in a mostly empty parking lot and joined the meeting there.

I was extra prepared and brought my wireless headset and plugged it into my phone. Zoom on a smartphone suffices unless people screen share, which then makes it a bit more difficult. Fortunately for me, my meeting had no screen sharing and lasted only fifteen minutes. I kept my camera off, so I don’t think anyone even knew I was in my car in a parking lot.

I’ve seen lots of people now partake in Zoom meetings while in a car, some even driving. I don’t recommend it but people still do it. The pandemic has allowed us to take calls almost everywhere now.

It’s gross and I can’t imagine how much sodium he consumed.