Category: Uncategorized

A few days ago, there was a bit of a boo-boo at the construction site down the street from where I live. They’re building a new apartment complex there and someone broke the water main by accident. In the process of repairing the break, water had to be shut down for the whole block, which included my building.

We, as residents, were told that once water was restored, our faucets and such would need to be run to flush out any dirty sediment that might have been left over. Once the repairs were done, I did indeed have dirty, brown water for my kitchen sink and toilet but it seemed my shower/tub and bathroom sink were fine.

Upon further inspection, my bathroom sink was not fine. The pressure for this faucet was still very low, about less than half as before. The water also seemed very cloudy when it exited the faucet, to the point where it almost looks like milk. If you leave the water for a minute or so though, it become clear. It seems like the cloudiness comes from lots of bubbles in the water. I’m not sure what’s causing that. Does the low pressure and cloudiness/bubbles stem from the same root problem? I’m not sure. I may need to contact the resident manager and ask him if he has any idea.

The premise of the above video, from 2004, is that writer Andy Blitz, who at the time worked on Conan’s show, is too afraid to fly to Toronto, so he takes a cab instead. I believe that might actually be a lie, because later that year, Blitz appears in a hilarious skit where he flies to India for tech support. I don’t think that someone who would genuinely be afraid to fly would get in a long-haul flight from North America to India.

Today is Canada Day, a great and wonderful day for Canadians around the world. We celebrate the birth of our nation. This a Canada Day unlike those in recent memory. I have always felt but feel more so this year, how incredibly fortunate we are to live in Canada. Let us not take for granted the peace, order, and good government that our nation gives us. Other nations have shown us, this is not a product of just chance, but our collective will to make our country as such.

I will spend the day mostly inside but that’s ok. I will sleep in and play some video games as well. I could be worse off and many people would gladly trade spots with me.

Happy Canada Day!

The days are beginning to blur together. The calendar gives me a vague reminder that time is indeed marching on. It’s nearly July now. I used to think that waking up, commuting to work, spending all day at the studio, coming home, eating dinner, and relaxing in the evening was a bit monotonous but it now seems like I’ve been working from home for over a year now.

Work gives me very little satisfaction. I know today was Monday but it could have been any day of the week. Last week I realized that even though we’re in the summer months, the weather is nice and sunny, I might have to wait until I see snow again before it’s appropriate to think about physically returning to work. There is continued talk about not returning to work until January of 2021 and even then, it might be an optional return.

I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking many of my days are the same. I know, however, many more people have it worse than I, so I don’t have much to complain about. I wonder what life will look like in January.

I decided to message the person on eBay who bid and won the latest item I put on auction. I wrote a very polite message in which I said that if he was still interested in the item, he could pay at his earliest convenience. By the time I woke up on Sunday morning, he had wrote an apologetic message and more importantly, he had paid me.

I wrote him back, thanked for the payment, and told him I’d ship his item on Monday. I then packed the item, wrapped it, paid for shipping online, printed the shipping label, and affixed it to the package. While shipping my first sold item was a bit of a nightmare, this time it went very smoothly. This time, the integration with Canada Post worked correctly. Buying shipping and printing the label was pretty much seamless. I’ll drop off the package at the post office tomorrow.

I have more item I’d like to try selling on eBay, which is a DSL modem that I no longer need because I have Internet over fibre now. I have no idea how popular DSL modems are. I tried searching on eBay for the model I’m trying to sell. I didn’t find any listings. That’s probably either really good or really bad. Well, it won’t cost me anything to put up a listing, so I might as well try.

I decided to take Friday off and make it a long weekend. I currently have 27 days of vacation accrued, which is over five weeks. I have no trips planned this summer, so I have days off to spare. My employer, as a whole, is encouraging all employees to take time off this summer, even if we can’t go anywhere, just so we can get a break from work. That’s great advice and I’ll take it.

The person on eBay who bid on and won the auction for the optical drive has not yet paid for the item. The auction ended on Tuesday and it’s now Thursday. I’m playing it cool and letting eBay’s automated messages remind the buyer that he now needs to pay up.

I never really thought about what happens when someone doesn’t pay on eBay. I’ve always paid for my items in a timely fashion. The first item I sold last week was paid immediately.

It turns out you can’t really force someone to pay you on an eBay auction. eBay will mark a strike against this person’s account. If you get too many strikes, then you can’t bid on items for a while. Sellers can also prevent accounts that have too many strikes from making bids on their items as well. If I have to re-list my item, eBay will refund you any fees you paid to make the listing. My listing was free, so other than the inconvenience, I didn’t lose out. This would have been a lot easier had there been multiple bids on my item as I would have just offered it to the person with the next highest bid. Unfortunately, only one person bid on my item.

I will give the person a few more days to pay me. If by Sunday, nothing has happened, I will send my own message to them. If I get no traction after that, I can begin the eBay process of resolving this, which puts a strike against the “buyer” and allows me to re-list the item.

A few weeks ago, I was driving past a McDonald’s and I saw a sign that mentioned they made chicken McMuffins now. That sounds amazing. I didn’t have time to stop and go get one but I’ve made it one of my weekend goals. I’m trying to keep my life simple and delicious at the same time. I hear they have mayo in the chicken McMuffin. I bet it tastes so good.

By the time I wake up tomorrow morning I will have sold another item on eBay, this time an optical disc drive. Obviously I enjoy getting rid of stuff I don’t want or need and getting money for it but I’ve quickly discovered that dealing with the post office and everything that goes with shipping is a huge headache. At least for me, it’s that way.

What I don’t understand is how you can get wildly differing quotes on how much it costs to ship something depending if you query it on the Canada Post web site or if you go in-person to the post office. For the same service, you’ll get different prices for the same package. Like I mentioned in my previous post, eBay makes it’s difficult to print your mailing labels because it forces you to use shippo, a crappy web site.

I’ll have to ship my item tomorrow but I don’t look forward to it.

I sold and shipped my first ever item on eBay on the weekend. I sold some “old” 16GB DDR4 computer memory that I wasn’t using anymore because I got new RAM that was faster. Rather than just let it sit unused, I decided to sell it. Computer components, even those used, are at a bit of a premium right now, due to the pandemic and smaller supply. Memory isn’t that bad right now but I knew it would probably be popular.

My item got enough bids that it sold at a much higher price than I anticipated. At that higher price, that meant my new memory only cost me $30, which is great. Selling old stuff to offset the cost of new stuff is a timeless way to save money. Shipping my sold item turned out to be a bit of a hassle. eBay makes you use this shipping service called shippo to print out your mailing labels. I had to sign up for an account and then it attempted to contact the Canada Post web site to sign me up for an account on there. Whatever tech they use to talk to each other failed, so I couldn’t get a Canada Post account, which prevented me from printing out a mailing label. It was so frustrating to not be able to print out a simple mailing label with my buyer’s address.

I finally gave up on it, went to the Canada Post web site directly, which wasn’t down, and manually typed in the mailing address info, and created a mailing label there. After that, I just dropped the item off at the post office.

I also have a second item on sale on eBay. This is the old optical disc drive I have. It only has one bid that means it’ll sell for sure. When that auction is over, I’ll have to repeat the same BS with the mailing label as before. Sometimes making money is a hassle.