blog.erwintang.com

It’s not uncommon for me to receive random messages from recruiters on LinkedIn. A recruiter’s performance is measured mainly by their ability to find suitable candidates in a quick fashion for open roles at companies. As such, they frequently employ the “shotgun” approach and just send a ton of messages to almost anyone.

About two months ago, I got one of these random, unsolicited messages. Normally, I just ignore them or if I do have time on my hands, I reply and tell them I’m not interested. This message though was from a recruiter at a large company that I had not been in touch with before. Their parent publisher is huge and has one of the most successful video game intellectual properties in their portfolio. Even though, I’m not looking to change jobs, I thought it would be educational just to see what they were looking for.

I replied to the recruiter and after some really short back and forth, he said he’d arrange for me to speak with the main recruiter who would actually give me more details about the open positions at this studio. That indeed happened and I got scheduled to speak with another person, the main recruiter.

The phone call was pleasant and this main recruiter person was trying to sell me on the studio and the parent publisher as great entities to work for. We ended the call with me agreeing to accept this person’s LinkedIn request and that he would answer any follow-up questions I might have. I did have a few questions because most of the conversation was him telling me things about the studio and the team and I didn’t have all the time to ask my questions.

On LinkedIn, I thanked him again for his time and then asked my questions. To this day, this person has not responded to my questions. I was essentially ghosted. Could they have been a bit more professional? Yes, but I’m not really angry or anything. I made it clear that I was sorta just kicking the tires on this and wasn’t even sure if I wanted to start the interview process. I’m sure he had dozens of other candidates who were actually trying to get this job. So, I just left it be.

A few weeks later, I got another message from that first recruiter on LinkedIn. At first, I thought there might have been some bug in the messaging system, because this message was identical to the first one, the only difference was that it was coming from another LinkedIn account, with the same name. I actually had to double-check that I wasn’t going crazy but there it was. I was able to open the messages side-by-side. As far as LinkedIn was concerned, these were two separate accounts, using the same name and business title.

This guy had obviously forgotten we had messaged just weeks earlier. The more I thought about it though, the more weird it felt. Why was this guy using multiple accounts to message people on LinkedIn? Was he messaging so many people that he couldn’t keep straight who he had contacted and who he hadn’t?

It was all very odd and I began to wonder if this guy was even real or if this guy had used his real name or was using a fake one. It also put into question the legitimacy of the phone call I had with the other recruiter. Who were this people? Was this an elaborate scam because there have been scams out there where people pretend to be recruiters for legit companies but aren’t associated with them at all. I hadn’t even given them my resume, so all they knew was my name and my phone number.

I really wanted to respond to this second account and say,”we were just messaging each other weeks ago, don’t you remember?”. It was just too odd and I didn’t want to embarrass the guy, so I left it unanswered.

Then, just last week, a third account, using the same name and business title, messaged me again on LinkedIn, with the same initial message. Three accounts! All of this is way too weird for me to figure out. It’s also coloured my perception about this studio and their publishing parent company, and not in a good way.

I bought a cheap camping chair from Amazon and it arrived today. It assembles in about thirty seconds and it folds up almost as quick.

It was a hot evening tonight and at one point it was 29 degrees Celsius in my apartment. I ran my AC for a while, at least until the sun went down. I stopped it because I’m cheap. Of course it went back up to 27 degrees.

To test out my camping chair, I brought it out to my balcony. I’m sitting in it right now as I type this on my phone. It’s comfy enough. The most important thing is that it feels so much cooler outside on my balcony. There’s a nice cool breeze that comes through once in a while. It’s just so pleasant to be sitting out here.

To quantify how pleasant it is, I also brought out my portable weather station with me. It doesn’t take measurements every second but in the few minutes I’ve been out here, it’s told me it’s at least three degrees cooler outside. So it’s just not my imagination.

I’m gonna go back inside in a few minutes because I have inside stuff to do but this was real nice. I didn’t hesitate to come out here because I wasn’t gonna sit on some dirty, disgusting patio furniture. This was a good lesson to learn. Maybe I’ll be out here more often.

Having my balcony power-washed and needing to bring in my disgustingly dirty patio furniture inside made me think about how I might want to use my balcony going forward.

A large part of the reason I don’t like going on my balcony is that it gets dirty really easily. Something about being this high up, the prevailing winds, and some other unknown factors makes it so that dust and dirt accumulate on my balcony really easily.

How do I keep it clean? I’ve already mentioned several times that I can’t just dump a bucket of water and mop it. The water drains over the side and onto the balconies below me. The only alternative is sweeping and using a blower. I have a blower that I bought that I normally use to clean out electronics like my computer. It’s fairly powerful and can easily be used to blow away dust and dirt from my balcony.

The key, however, is to sweep and blow away the dirt and dust regularly. Once all that crud has had a chance to settle and bake in, it’s a lot more difficult to sweep or blow it all away. So I need to clean it every few days, which for a lazy person like myself, is gonna present a challenge.

Another reason the balcony sucks is that the furniture out there just gets unbelievably caked on with dirt. It gets so dirty. Even if I managed to clean it at the beginning of the summer, I’d have clean it weekly at a minimum if I wanted to sit on it and not ruin whatever I was wearing. What pain to have to clean all that furniture weekly, even if I wasn’t planning on using it that week. One solution would be to put a cover over everything, the chairs and the table. Where do I get a cover like that? Do I use a tarp? Wouldn’t the dirt just get underneath the cover and get everything dirty anyways? Eventually the cover would get gross anyways.

Another solution would be to go totally minimal on the patio furniture. I wouldn’t have anything out there permanently. If I wanna sit out on my balcony, I’d bring out a camping chair and use it for my time out there. Once I’m done, I fold it back up and bring it back in with me. It won’t get dirty because it’s stored inside and not exposed to the elements. This option isn’t perfect, but it solves a lot of the problems I’ve faced and requires a lot less effort in trying to keep patio furniture clean.

Anyways, all this is good thinking for when my balcony repairs are done, which is going really slowly by the way.

About three months ago, YouTube engineer Mark Rober made a video about bedbugs. Anytime I see a video about bedbugs, my interest perks up because almost two decades ago, I had my own months long battle with bedbugs. It was rather unpleasant and it totally sucked.

The video above is well done and entertaining and the end is filled with a lot of useful ideas and suggestions for dealing with bedbugs. Back in the day, I was only able to employ one of the suggestions and I wish I knew the others as well.

There’s a lot more information about bedbugs these days and I feel like people are able to handle them much better than before. I hope none of us have to use these treatments in the future.

Around 1pm this afternoon, a worker using a swing stage came onto my balcony to give it a nice power wash. I thought he was gonna just clean the balcony deck but it turns out he power washed all my windows, the railings, and the glass panels in between the railings. I have never seen my whole balcony this clean.

Part of the reason I haven’t seen it this clean is because there’s a strata by-law that prevents you from using copious amounts of water when cleaning your balcony. The drain just pours the water overboard onto the balconies below you. Yet these workers have special permission to use tons of water from a power washer to clean these balconies before the repair work is done.

It makes me think that once a year, strata should allow balconies to be power washed if you opt into the service. They already hire a window cleaning service to wash all the exterior windows once a year, why not go the extra mile? Yes, I understand it would be another expense but these balconies are so gross when they are dirty.

Anyways, I’m not sure what the next phase of the repairs will be, it might the wall-shaking part.

A few months ago, I paid $6k as my share to repair all the balconies in my building. Due to a deficiency in the construction, all the balconies are prone to water ingress, which could weaken them structurally.

They’ve been repairing the balconies in batches and I received notice late last week that this Monday is my turn. The whole thing is a pain in the ass. First, I had to remove everything that was on my balcony. I had two wooden chairs and a wooden table, plus two metal folding chairs out there. I had to bring them all in and lay them on the tarp I placed on my living room floor. The reason I used a tarp is because my balcony gets super dirty and basically is dirty year round. The amount of dirt that has accumulated on these chairs and the table is disgusting. You can put any kind of furniture out on my balcony and within a week, it’ll be coated in dirt. That’s a big reason why I never use my balcony and it’s essentially wasted space.

The work is scheduled from 7:30am-4:30pm, five days a week. They’ve also told us to close all our windows or sliding doors during that time. The reason for this is, apparently, they need to power wash the balconies and other construction/repair debris might fly through open windows and doors. This is ridiculous because my apartment becomes almost instantly filled with stale air if all my sliding doors are closed. I live in a modern building, so it’s designed that if all my windows are closed, there’s no leakage of air. Where the hell do they think I’m going to get fresh air from if all my windows are closed for eight plus hours? I’m going to leave my sliding doors open at least a crack because I’m gonna suffocate otherwise.

They’ve also asked us to take down anything off our walls because apparently the repair work involves doing things that causes massive vibrations and that might shake stuff off our walls? What the hell are they doing that might shake securely fastened items off our walls? How loud and disruptive is this gonna be?

Last but not least, they’ve also promised to put in wooden rods to prevent our sliding doors from opening anymore than four inches. So even when they’re gone for the day, I can’t get as much fresh as I’d like. Apparently, this is going to be done because other residents were putting their furniture back on the balconies before the new membrane had time to dry. That I can see happening because the majority of people are complete morons that can’t follow the simplest of directions. Unfortunately, these people have ruined it for people like me.

Anyways, they haven’t even told us how long this stupid repair job is gonna take. I can tell already this is gonna wake me up early and disrupt my entire work day with noise, vibrations, and crappy stale air. To think I had to pay thousands of dollars for this too. Super lame.

I recently learned a new word and it is “ecumenopolis“. It refers to a planet that has developed to a point where all urban areas on the surface have grown large enough to fuse together. The planet is essentially a single, massive city that spans the globe. The term was coined by Greek city planner Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis in 1967.

Fictional examples of ecumenopolis type worlds have existed for many decades but perhaps the most famous example is Coruscant. In the Star Wars universe, Coruscant is the seat of the Republic and subsequently, the Empire as well. The planet is featured prominently in the prequel trilogy.

The city-planet is always depicted to be grand, sprawling, and awe-inspiring. We never discover how such a planet would work practically however. Were there oceans on this planet before the cities? How did they build on top of them? How does the planet ecologically be in balance with all the urban areas? I am guessing technology overcomes many of these issues but none of Coruscant’s inner working are explained in the movies.

Our planet will never become an ecumenopolis. The Earth just wouldn’t be able to sustain the number of people that would come from that much development on the planet surface. There just wouldn’t be enough water and agricultural land to keep that many people alive and thriving. Just look at us now. We’re probably just a few decades away from climate and ecological collapse, and we’re still mainly just covered in oceans.

I do wonder though, have some of the aliens out there figured this out? Is there an actual ecumenopolis out there?

Sometimes I set my status on Slack with a little sandwich emoji with the word “lunch”. It’s like that for an hour. That way, people know I’m doing lunch things and if I don’t respond right away, that’s why.

I frequently take my lunches later in the day because I feel like at noon, I’m just getting into the groove of the day. Most often, noon is when I’m meeting free for the first time of the day, so to then suddenly stop work at noon feels like halting momentum.

Today, I took lunch at 3pm, which even for me is late. The reason I waited that long is because I had a meeting at 1:30pm that went to 2pm and then I had another meeting at 2:30pm. The half hour in between just wasn’t enough time for me to go get something, so 3pm was really my only option.

I wanted to use my lunch to get outside because I didn’t have a lot of outside time on Monday. So as soon as my meeting ended, I ran downstairs and headed down to the waterfront park to get a burger and fries. The weather was a bit cold and it was a cloudy and grey day. I had to wear a long sleeve shirt and pants. While I was eating, the wind picked up enough that I almost put on a jacket that I brought. I would not have blamed anyone if they had mistaken this for a crisp autumn day.

I got back home around 4pm and it did feel a bit weird that the end of my lunch was so close to the end of the day.

I have no meetings tomorrow, so lunch will be earlier in the day.

So it’s hard to believe there was a heat wave here in May. We’re in the back half of June now and it’s been rainy and cold for the last several days. It was cold enough today that I brought my winter robe back out and wore it during the work day.

This June has certainly been a cool and wet one in general, with just a few days of sunny weather here and there. There hasn’t really been any real need to use my air-conditioner. I did my dual-hose conversion and my A/C has been just sitting there.

This isn’t a complaint post though. The wet weather has lowered the forest fire risk. The air quality is good. The mild temperatures have also made it so that no one is uncomfortable. It’s a lot easier for the general population to put a jacket on than to find someway to cool their homes. This is especially important for seniors.

We’ll see what July and August bring.

One of the best things about summer is strolling down to the waterfront by my place and having lunch at the concession stand. They make wonderful burgers and fries. It’s not pretentious, just solid concession stand food for a decent price.

Since today is the last sorta sunny day for the next seven days or so, I decided to go there for lunch. My intention was to have a burger and fries.

I already hungry before I even leave my apartment. When I get there, I see a big sign on the concession stand counter. The hand-written sign informs all who can read, “FRYER BROKEN”. They can’t make any fried, which includes fries, onion rings, and chicken strips. They can, however, still make burgers and hot dogs.

Well, gosh darn it, half my lunch wasn’t available. I had committed to the concession stand, so I decided to get at least a burger but I really wanted some fries. In hindsight, I should have gotten a hot dog as well but I thought that would have been too decadent.

The people working the stand said it might be fixed tomorrow but there was no guarantee of that. Also, there’s a good chance it’s gonna rain tomorrow and do I want eat concession stand food for lunch two days in a row? I already have leftovers from dinner that I need to eat. Isn’t life difficult in the first world?