Kevin's Ramblings…

I saw a Facebook ad for a 65″ RCA smart TV at Visions Electronics and decided to purchase one. I really didn’t need a 65″ for the size of the living room, but it was a super deal ($498) so I decided to go for it.

As many know, I have a Doctorate in Procrastination, so although the TV has been here for well over a week, it’s still in its box leaning up against the fireplace.

After I finished my shift yesterday, I was going to have a relaxing evening of TV watching. I don’t subscribe to actual TV any longer, I stream everything and typically watch a lot of Netflix. I go to cast from my phone to the TV and it won’t connect which is odd since I was watching in the morning. I go through various steps to diagnose the issue and then try a different Google Chromecast decide and neither work. At this point, I’ve eliminated Google as the issue and it appears that the HDMI ports on the TV are dead. Great. Well, at least I have a new TV, in its box, leaning against the fireplace.

So, no TV last night, I’m sure I’ll set up the new one today at some point and it’s got all the built-in apps that one could want. The new Google streamer will go to the office where I have a 42″ TV and the old Chromecast, well, I no longer have a third TV, so I guess it’s backup for now.

Besides, what single person needs three TVs anyway.

When I say weekend, it was 4 days long. I was off Wednesday through Saturday, which happens every other week, pretty sweet actually. When I say lazy, I really didn’t accomplish much of anything.

Wednesday was a nothing day, literally. I didn’t even take the dogs for a walk since Twix hurt her paw on Monday and she was still limping a bit (she’s fine now). Same on Thursday. Accomplished nothing.

On Friday I took a roadtrip down to Crowsnest Pass and had a great time. It’s always good to see friends that you haven’t seen for ages.

I tried to put together a plan for Saturday to get my to-do list done. It failed. I did get my chili made at least. My former landlord gifted me some ground moose and elk mixed with pork and I used that as a base for a batch of chili. It simmered all afternoon and wow, it was amazing. Likely one of the best batches of chili I’ve ever made. I made a giant pot of it and chili freezes well so I’ll have chili for some time.

As for my to-do list, well, nothing else got touched. I still need to setup my new smart TV. I need to to setup a couple of small appliances. Sigh…

It was still a great 4 days off and they zoomed by, so, apparently, I wasn’t bored.

Enjoy your week.

So I’ve had my new truck for 2 weeks now. It’s a Dodge Ram 1500 which is the same model as my old truck. Dodge hasn’t changed the engine, transmission, anything really, other than a nicely upgraded entertainment system. My point is, when I got into it and took it for a year drive, it was identical to the old truck, absolutely no learning curve which was nice.

Yesterday was forecast to be a beautiful day in Alberta and I arranged to visit some friends down in Crowsnest Pass. I didn’t get out of the house as early as I wanted to, I was an hour late leaving the city, oh well

The drive down was nice. Clear skies and sunshine was the order of the day. I took highway 22 down to the Pass. There weren’t a lot of drivers heading south and when I needed to pass the north bound lanes were clear. I got to the Pass shortly after 11.

We were supposed to go out for Indian food for lunch but I got a test at 1220 from one of the friends I was meeting that although they were supposed to open at 11, the lights were out and the door was locked. Plan B put in motion and that lead us to Vito’s, a small Italian restaurant in Coleman.

I had the French onion soup, it was mildly disappointing but still decent, it wasn’t quite hot enough, a rare miss for the restaurant. I ordered my favourite dish, chicken parmesan and, as always, it was excellent and probably the best chicken parmesan that’s available in Alberta.

We had a great time catching up and eating great food. My friend made me a latte for the road and the dogs and I were off, heading home to Calgary.

All in all, a great road trip.

I must admit, I’m really enjoying 3 and 4 day weekends. This week, I worked Sunday through Tuesday so Tuesday night was my Friday night. I do work 12 hour shifts, so my short week is 36 hours and my long week is 48. The adjustment to 12 hour shifts has been easy. I often worked 12 hour shifts in my last position as there was a lot to do and I had a lot of people reporting to me.

I’m not exactly sure when I’ll use my PTO this year as I don’t plan on going anywhere. I guess it’ll be a day here and a day there and may be some Sundays so I can umpire.

I did some gallivanting yesterday morning. Denny’s for breakfast, amazing eggs Benedict. Then I stopped in at Co-Op grocery store and reactivated my membership. They waived the $1 membership fee. I was happy to see that their meat counter sells London Broils which I ate often back in Ontario, but hadn’t been able to find in Calgary or anywhere in Alberta. They are simple to make. Flank steak wrapped around hamburger and other yummy things, you BBQ them up and they are amazing. Going grocery shopping is a shock anymore. I easily fit all of my purchases into 2 reusable shopping bags and it was over $90. Sigh.

I am going to a wedding in July and stopped at Moore’s Clothing and bought my ensemble. Just a nice golf shirt and a pair of black dress pants. All my dress clothes that I had have mysteriously shrunk. I can’t explain it.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing watching the Star Wars saga. Today will be a similar but likely less productive day. I think I’ll go for a quick road trip to The Pass tomorrow.

I started a new job with IBM back at the end of October in the operations center as a System Administrator. I worked a normal 7-4 for the first few weeks to do training and that was what I was used to. They then moved me to assist with a client where one of the admins was on PTO for 3 weeks so I started working 6am – 6pm.

My shifts were Sunday through Tuesday and every other Wednesday which means I have 3 and 4 day weekends, which, I must say is absolutely amazing. Working 12 hour shifts is nothing new, I often had to work 12s when Palo Alto was my client just to keep up with the volume of work.

My new client has been on-boarded, as of the beginning of January and I’m settled into my Sunday through Wednesday routine. The only thing I’m still trying to get used to is working on Sundays.

For anyone who knows me, I am NOT a church going person, nor will I ever be, so that’s not an issue. I do watch football, which is typically on Sundays but having a TV in the office resolved that issue. Come later spring and summer as well as fall, working Sundays will interfere with umpiring, but hey, umpiring doesn’t pay the bills.

I am thinking of taking some Sundays as PTO and picking up double headers on those Sundays. With having 3 and 4 day weekends, I don’t really see a need at this time to take a week off. We’ll see how things go of course. I’m not planning on going anywhere this summer, travel is a bit too expensive but I need to use the PTO, otherwise I’ll lose it and that’s not going to happen.

So, things are settled on the work front. Last night was Tuesday and I tell you, I love when a Tuesday is a Friday night. I am now off until Sunday morning. Enjoy the rest of your week.

I purchased my first vehicle when I was 24, so, many, many years ago. It was a 1983 Nissan Pulsar that was held together with duct tape and hope. It mysteriously died one day 2 ish years after I bought it and never started again, but it got me back and forth to Niagara College for 2 years. It was an interesting vehicle.

I bought my first new vehicle after that. It was a 1998 Hyundai Elantra. It wasn’t loaded, it was bare bones. Manual locks, windows, no AC, manual transmission, but it was a huge step up from the Nissan.

I then moved onto my first lease and one of my favourite cars that I’ve owned. That was a 2003 Grand AM GT. I leased it for 3 years and then I bought it out. I was, as I recall, way over the allowed mileage. So, basically, with a 3 year lease and then a 5 year loan, I paid for it over 8 years which made it affordable. I wasn’t making a lot of money back then.

That was the only time I leased a vehicle. All others I’ve financed. I tend to replace a vehicle after about 100,000 kilometers. I just did with my 2021 Dodge Ram 1500. It was a great truck and will serve its next owner well I’m sure, but I would have to start putting money into it and didn’t really want to.

A friend of mine asked why I don’t lease if I am used to having a payment and it was a good question. I’m thinking, and could be entirely wrong that I might get a better rate via leasing than purchasing. I don’t live in the middle of nowhere any longer, so I’m not putting on a ton of mileage any longer, but, I’m not sure I’d want to get restricted to 12000 km a year. I know there are leases with more kilometers allowed, I’m guessing you just pay more.

I don’t know what I’ll do when my current truck reaches 100,000 km, perhaps I will look into a lease. I guess I fear having to return it in “excellent” condition, the dogs make a bloody mess in my vehicles. For now, I am not too worried about it. Let me know in comments if you have any thoughts about buying vs leasing. Thanks.

On Friday, I decided that I would do a factory reset on my phone. I use a Pixel 7 Pro. I’ve done this before, it seems to speed things up, perhaps it doesn’t, but it seems to. So, I did a factory reset and started to set the phone back up.

First issue… I couldn’t sign into my Google account. I knew the password, knew the phone number associated with it, but I couldn’t get past the annoying multifactor authentication. It wanted me to verify using my Pixel 7 Pro, that’s what I’m trying to log in on.

I know that Pixel phones offer amazing technical support from Google, but, because I wasn’t signed in, I couldn’t open a support case. I was able to log in with another Google account I have. Phew.

Google support was amazing. They gave me instructions on how to disable multifactor authentication, I didn’t know I could do that so after that was done, I was logged into my main account without any issues. I thought I was going to have annoying issues, but it was a pretty simple fix, luckily.

I go to start working yesterday morning and the client I support uses multifactor authentication and although I reinstalled the app, I couldn’t configure it because it was already configured. Sigh.

It was a Sunday so of course no one was around. Since I was not able to authenticate, I decided to take the day off. It’s Monday, 715am and we are trying to figure out how to get me logged in. What fun.

So, the best time I think of doing a factory reset, I need to consider all of the possible complications and then I need to decide NOT to do the reset.

Some days I really love technology… Wish me some luck.

Yesterday was a very relaxing day. I woke up early which I’ve been doing lately, very early actually, it was around 3:30am. If history is an indicator, I’m moving into an insomnia phase.

It was a gorgeous day, got to about 12C but I didn’t spend a lot of time outside other than a walk with the dogs. I didn’t drive anywhere, I didn’t go anywhere and I didn’t really do much.

I think I was recovering from last week which was an insanely busy week with the move and unpacking. I guess you need a day like I had yesterday every once in a while.

Back to work this morning at 6. I’ve been awake since 3 and got up at 330. Sundays are typically very quiet at work so I’ll have to work to make the day go by.

Next week most of us in North America lose an hour with daylight savings beginning. I really wish the collective governments would scrap it, either keep us on standard time or daylight savings, I don’t care which, just stop with the twice a year clock changes. I suppose they have more important things on their agendas, finding more ways to waste our money. I digress.

Have a great Sunday.

I sort of considered it “found money”. I moved out of my previous house a week ago and yesterday was officially my last day there, although I did the move out inspection on Monday.

As there was no damage and the house was perfectly clean (thanks to my amazing cleaning lady), I received my full security deposit back.

Well, I’ve helped the economy with that security deposit. It’s nice to be able to spend money and not run up a credit card. I purchased some stuff for the house including a 65″ smart 4K TV. It was all stuff that I just wanted, nothing that I really needed. I don’t normally spend money so easily, I’ve been quite good lately, I guess I fell off the wagon.

It’s now the last day of February. This month has absolutely zoomed by, for me anyway, whereas January seemed like it was about 120 days long. Now, for Southern Alberta, it was very cold for most of the month of January, we had, I would guess, at least 30 days in a row where the temperatures were below zero and 10 days where the daytime highs didn’t get above about -18C. Does cold make a month seem longer? Perhaps.

I think part of the reason that February zoomed by is that I was excited about moving.  Not the actual act of moving, no one likes doing that, but getting into a new and fresh place. Probably everyone likes doing that.

February was otherwise a pretty smooth month I guess. My move couldn’t have gone any smoother than it did. I have a fair amount of practice I guess.

The dogs and I are settled and back into familiar routines. I have to admit that I’m surprised that I’m all unpacked and organized already. In some places, it takes ages. The last time I lived in Ranchlands, I never really did get all unpacked, I was never really comfortable in that place and I was glad to leave. I felt comfortable here right away.

Here’s to a good month of February and cheers to March.