blog.erwintang.com

It’s always good to see these two cool cats together again.

I’m about to head to bed but it’s currently 27 degrees Celsius in my apartment. That is not comfortable. My patio doors are still being blocked off, so I only have 4″ of ventilation in my living room and my bedroom. There’s not a lot of fresh air moving into my apartment, so the whole thing just sucks.

I have not been given a timeline how long my patio doors will still be blocked off. I’ve vaguely heard about a week but that seems to be just rumour and no one has actually said when your week starts. The dudes applied another coat of sealant on during the week but I have no clue if they’re gonna do another coat, two more coats, or no more coats.

I’m gonna publicly call them out here but the people in charge of this operation, JLK Projects have been terrible with their communication. Why is that I don’t know when this will be all done? Why am I wondering what is actually happening with my balcony? Why am clueless about if they’re gonna apply another coat of sealant this week or next? I paid $6k for these repairs and you’d think for that amount of money, I’d have some answers about what’s going on.

Anyways, I recognize that I’m not the first person to pay a contracting company big bucks and not be pleased. I’m not sure how long our civilization will last (by the looks of it, not long) but I am sure, however, as long as it continues contractors will be pissing people off right up to the end.

Nearly two months after I was informed they would be starting work on my balcony, they finally applied the new waterproof membrane today. The time in between when they power-washed my balcony and when this membrane got applied is about two months as well. I’m not sure how clean the surface needs to be but I can tell you in two months, my balcony got pretty dirty again.

As you can see, an unlucky and giant bug had the misfortune of landing on the membrane while it was still wet. He’ll be stuck on my balcony forever. I have no idea if they need to apply this in several coats or not. I hope not because that would be a pain in the ass.

I can tell you the membrane emits an odour while it dries and it’s the type of smell that makes you think it’s not exactly healthy to be breathing it in. I am fortunate that if I have my front door propped open to the hallway, the positive pressure blows air out the 4″ gaps in my patio doors. So none of the outside air enters into my apartment and that’s the stinky air with the membrane gases. What is unfortunate, however, is that I can’t prop my front door open all night while I’m sleeping. I don’t have a chain or anything to keep it ajar and yet secure. Once the front door closes, the air pressure changes and the outside air starts to rush in instead. I could just close all my patio doors completely but then I’d get no ventilation whatsoever into my apartment and CO2 levels would rise steeply while I slept. I’d probably wind up feeling pretty terrible in the morning. I guess I could just crack open the patio doors slightly, just enough to get fresh air and limit the membrane gases from coming in.

I’ve been told that it takes at least a week for the membrane to dry, so my patio doors remain stuck for that long. Once it finishes drying, they’ll unblock my patio doors and I can put all my stupid patio furniture back on the patio, instead of lying in a pile in my living room.

I have an “electric” toothbrush and I’ve owned it for several years now. Last week, for some reason, it’s intensity of vibration ramped up to a level that I have not experienced before. It got super loud and the vibration was very strong.

I checked the settings and nothing had changed. It was at nearly full battery but I’ve had the toothbrush at full battery before and it wasn’t this intense.

I’m really puzzled at why it got super-powered all of a sudden. I know that when you initially turn on the toothbrush out of the box, it vibrates at a lower intensity for the first ten cleanings or so, so you can get used to this type of toothbrush. That was years ago for me though. Did the firmware get installed incorrectly? Was I at the low intensity for first 1000 cleanings instead?

Another theory is that I’m using “generic” toothbrush heads for my toothbrush. The authentic ones cost like $20 each and they supposedly have a microchip embedded in them so the toothbrush can talk to it. The generic ones cost me like 20 for like $24, so it’s a way better deal. I’m pretty sure they don’t have the embedded microchip though. Could that be causing this spike in power?

At the end of the day, this increased cleaning power doesn’t make the tooth brushing process any less pleasant. I just deal with and get the job done but I do apply a bit less pressure on my teeth and gums.

So I received notice today that on Monday they’ll block my patio doors again. This is despite the weather forecast indicating the hot temperatures will continue to roll into next week and beyond.

This is really frustrating since the 4″ gap they leave me makes it impossible to hook up my AC. That one evening where my doors were blocked off was very uncomfortable. I’m considering perhaps relocating to my parents place for a while. Who knows, we’ll see what happens next week.

As I’ve written about in many posts, there is an ongoing construction project affecting all the apartments in my building. They re-applying some sorta membrane on all our balconies.

Last week I got written notice they were gonna start the next phase of the project for my balcony. This was going to involve restricting access to my balcony and only allowing my patio doors to slide open a maximum of 4″. Since it’s me, I noticed the day there were going to do this coincided with a heat wave, serious enough to for the government to warn people about it. I’ll never have enough of that good luck to win a lottery but if something can happen at the worst time, I’ll be lucky enough to have that happen.

Anyways, on Monday, near the end of the workday, I hear two workers hop onto my balcony from the swing stage. Their day is about to end and the sun is about to shine directly into my apartment, which is the hottest part of the day for me. I open up my patio door and ask them if they are really going to block off my patio doors at the beginning of this heat wave. They say yes because of liability. What liability? One guy mentions kids. I still don’t know what that means.

They then proceed to block off both my patio doors with pieces of wood. And they leave and don’t do anything else. It boggles my mind why they wouldn’t just wait until tomorrow morning to do this. So now, I barely have any ventilation for the whole evening for no reason.

The sun begins to shine directly into my apartment now and temperatures begin to rise. A 4″ gap makes it impossible for me to use my AC because my exhaust hose is too big to fit in the gap. I have fans on but they don’t do much. My apartment reaches a high of 29 degrees Celsius at one point and the air feels stagnant. I open my front door, just to get some air in from the hallway.

As you might imagine, I did not get a lot of sleep that night as the heat made it very uncomfortable. Morning arrives and I see no workers on my balcony. They’ve blocked off my patio doors and nothing is happening out there. Again, it makes no sense why they did that.

Lunchtime rolls around and I decide to head downstairs to get some lunch. In the elevator, I see a sign from strata and the building manager. It states that due to the heat wave, balcony access will no longer be blocked and that we should be patient as it may take a few hours before all apartments can be unblocked.

I was immediately thankful that some sense of sanity was used to come to this decision. On the other hand, how did no one see this coming from a mile away? Environment Canada issued the heat wave warning on the weekend, days before the start of the work week. Did no one think, “it’s going to be hot enough that the government is warning us about potential health concerns, yeah… let’s restrict the amount of ventilation these people have for the entire week and beyond”?

Anyways, I guess I should be thankful they came to their senses in the first place. Sometime in the late afternoon, the same two dudes who blocked off my patio doors the day before went and remove the wooden blocks. I was home when this happened and I poked my head out and thanked them for not trying to kill me again with heat.

I spent most of this evening sitting in my air-conditioned bedroom, thankful that I could use my AC again. I also have been told, they won’t be blocking balcony access anymore but we need to promise we won’t go out there while the work is being done and while the membrane cures and dries. I already promised I wouldn’t go out there several weeks ago and even proposed to the strata manager that my word would be good. That dude wasn’t having any of it, in a rather non-professional manner too. Now we’re just doing what I proposed in the first place. So stupid all around.

I have finally cut down my streaming subscriptions down to just two services. A while back, I wrote about how I was just wasting money, being subscribed to services that I had no time to consume their content. There would be months where I’d pay Netflix for content and I wouldn’t watch a minute of their service. It didn’t make a lot of sense.

As of this month, I am subscribed to just Prime Video and Paramount+. I actually don’t watch too much Prime Video, it just happens to come along with my Amazon Prime subscription, so it’s just a bonus. If you’re surprised I’m subscribed to Paramount+, I’m kinda surprised as well. I’m trying to catch up on all the Star Trek content I’ve missed in the last couple of years and a lot of that was on Crave but Paramount understandably pulled almost all that content so they could put it on their own service.

Paramount+ is alright, but after experiencing all these streaming services, you can tell some of them are way better than others, at least in their technical implementation. Keep in mind, I say this from the point of view of an LG TV owner, where the technical platform is webOS. Disney+ and Apple TV+ are at the top, with the ability to stream content in HDR, namely Dolby Vision. On the audio front, both offer Dolby Atmos, which is nice. One tier below that is Prime Video, where some of their content is in HDR but not in Dolby Vision. Prime Video does not stream in Dolby Atmos. The rest of the services are at the bottom, not offering any content in HDR and in some cases not even in 4K resolution.

Going forward, I’ll be switching between services once I’m done with the content on one of them. I’ll try to keep it to just two services at any one time. This will save me hundreds of dollars over the course of a year.

In some recent posts, I alluded to falling off the wagon in terms of Coke (the drink, not the drug). My soda consumption has gone way up during the summer, especially in the last few weeks.

Unfortunately, for someone who only really drinks Coke products, this was a bad time to start chasing the dragon again. Coca-Cola workers in British Columbia are on strike and have been for about four weeks now. Coke products have been difficult to find on store shelves.

At first, the residual supply was enough to keep shelves stocked, but when that all dried up, it was slim pickings. That lasted for a few weeks. Then Coke management brought in “replacement workers” and now you can see a few more products back in stores. The issue is that bottling capacity seems to be still limited. As such, they’re only making the most popular products. In stores, all I see is regular Coke, which I do not drink. I have made the decision to trade diabetes for cancer and thus I attempt to only drink sugar-free Coke products, name Coke Zero or Coke with Coffee. These products are still in short supply.

Like an addict looking for a fix though, the need for cola outweighs my brand loyalty, so in the last week or so, I’ve purchased several bottles of Pepsi Zero. I feel a tiny bit of shame when I’m at the register but once that cold cola splashes into my mouth, that shame is long forgotten.

I can tell you one thing though, this still hasn’t made me into a regular Pepsi drinker. Once this strike is over, I’ll go back to Coke immediately. Better yet, I’m hoping to kick this cola habit way before the strike ends.

I ordered Pizza Hut for the first time in year a few days ago. I actually got it delivered to my home and in my over ten years of living here, this was the second time I got pizza delivery.

In the past, I loved having Pizza Hut because of their pan pizzas. They usually add a lot of oil to the bottom of the pan and the crust, so when it bakes, the bottom is basically deep-fried dough. It tastes amazing and is terrible for you.

I can’t believe I’m saying this but the two pizzas I got recently from Pizza Hut were not oily enough. The crust didn’t seem deep-fried at all, which is what usually elevates Pizza Hut pizza from others.

It’ll be a long time before I order Pizza Hut again, mostly because I want to eat more on the healthy side of things.

There is a YouTube channel that features videos of celebrities just saying their own names. Most of the videos are short and to the point. The one above features Cillian Murphy.