Out of The PIT

I got a laceration during hockey last night. I was down on the ice when someone's skate managed to get up over my shin guard and under my hockey pants. I felt a sting and a bit of a breeze on my thigh, but didn't take a look until after the puck was cleared. When I looked down, I noticed a large gash in my hockey sock. I finished my shift and got onto the bench to take a look at my leg and noticed the 5cm cut on my thigh. The skin was split so I knew I needed stitches. It was quite annoying since we were close to finishing but I did not want to make it any worse so I headed to the hospital. The emergency ward was mostly empty so I was able to get through to a doctor in less than an hour. They asked me about my tetanus shot and I think I was up to date, but they gave me another one just to be sure. Now I have several stitches on my thigh which I need to take out in a week and a new vaccination booklet!

We left EYS with my parents last night so that we could get a good night's sleep and get some chores done at the house. The various items we purchased during the Black Friday weekend had basically arrived and we needed some time to install them. I had purchased a wall mount for our extra TV and a bidet to try out (since we go through a LOT of toilet paper). The mount was pretty straightforward except for the fact that my stud finder got confused and I ended up putting in a few holes into the wall that were not in front of studs. I did eventually find one I could use, but.. holes! Fortunately the TV covers those holes so I only need to fix them if I ever take down the mount.. Second up was the bidet. MJNL told me to clean the toilet first before doing any installation so that took a bit of time, but the set up was fairly straightforward as well. We do not have a plug near the toilet so we had to do with an extension cord, but if this bidet thing works out well, I may look into h

So we've been having issues with our old 40" TV. Ever since we moved to our condo downtown, the TV would shut off by itself after a period of time. Then it would be stuck in a standby state where you could hear a slight clicking noise. It was as if it was trying to turn on but could not fire up the screen. A nice smack on the front bezel where Samsung was written would usually get the TV to turn on again, but sometimes it would just fizzle out after a few minutes and another good whack would be needed. More annoyingly, the TV is still technically in an "ON" state so one can walk away from the device and hours later, the television would turn on by itself. It requires getting the TV to turn on normally to be able to turn it off properly. That or pull the plug. In any case, this has been going on for the past three years or so and I have been meaning to open up this sucker to see what was wrong with it. Reports on the internet suggested that this was a common occurre

So my home assistant and I have come to an amicable solution to the G-word situation. No longer is Goober accepted but "Hey Goob" seems to trigger and process properly. I've been using Goob for the past month without much hassle, so we're both used to it now. Although this may change when we have people over and their commands could alter the AI recognition. We shall see.

So I had trained my Google home speaker to respond when I said "Hey Goober" or "Okay Goober". This was great since I hated to use Google as the key word and Goober seemed like a logical choice for me. This was working fine for several months, but a couple of months ago, I noticed that my speaker would stop responding to me on occasion. Eventually it got to a point where it stopped responding at all. Sure, it would indicate that it was listening, but after I gave it a command, like "what is the weather today", the speaker would do nothing. Curious, I tried changing the way I said things, said things slowly, used different speakers, etc. But I could not figure out why the response rate was so poor. Eventually, I discovered what the problem might be. I usually carry my phone with me around the house and sometimes it will pick up my commands. The difference with my phone is that it will also display what it heard me say on the screen. So when I said &quo

I just discovered something: There is no overnight parking on our street. Not just that, there is no way to get a permit to park on the street overnight. It is just not possible . If you park on the street at night, you get a ticket. This was the first that I heard about it, but apparently it became law since 2009, ten years ago! It is good that I looked this up before having anyone stay overnight with their car on the street. We found out from our neighbors that their daughter got ticketed and that was how they found out. We could use their parking if necessary - which was really nice of them. "That's what neighbors are for." they said. Yes, and to build a good neighborhood, you need to have good neighbors.

So I am currently working from home and have been for the past couple of weeks. The first week was tough as we had just started living at the house and our place was a mess. I was working on the kitchen island for a couple of days before moving into the basement bedroom for a few more days. After a weekend of cleaning and organizing (and putting together the new desk), I was able to get my office set up enough to allow me to use my old computer (which still runs!) and my laptop functioning on my two monitors. The setup is not bad, although the monitor stands are a little ghetto (Nest Cam IQ boxes). Still, I'm glad I was able to get this thing up and running. Now I'm at least 50% productive as before.

It has been four years but the kid is still the same as ever. A little bit of ice breaking was required, the pool being that ice breaker (every time it seems). I do enjoy a little dip every now and then, and I do not mind sharing the pool with a few rowdy teens. Although I think she was "accidentally" throwing to me on purpose just to get my attention. I ended up getting sucked in, along with a couple of other adults, but I think I took the brunt of the abuse. Thanks to the three girls, I certainly ended up with very sore pecs by the end. I had no idea how I would play hockey afterward. I do not know if the other two girls remembered me, but she sure did. Over the past decade the MO has always been the same. She spent a lot of time talking about herself, asking questions, and wanting to show off stuff in her room and around the house. "I think she has a crush on you." LH said. I brushed it off. I'm sure if anyone paid any attention to her she would have done

Over the past three weeks I have been biding my time, waiting for this splinter in my thumb to work it's way out. I knew it wasn't deep enough to be stuck forever, but it was not shallow enough for me to pick out. It was painful if I pressed on it, so I eventually got used to avoiding using my thumb for various tasks that required pressing down. Late last week I could feel a bump where the splinter was. It was clearly poking out a bit, but was still under the skin. A couple of days ago, the skin over the splinter sloughed off, and I was able to borrow a pair of tweezers and was able to yank out the offending thorn. It was still a respectable size all things considered. I'll be sure to wear thicker gloves when I continue gardening..

So this seems to be my life now: Less riding, more gardening. We have been spending the past couple of weeks managing our gardens, which are basically both our front and back yards. There is a lot of fauna on our property and it attracts a lot of flora. This past week we saw plenty of birds, a beaver, a snake, a gopher, a rabbit, in addition to the usual squirrels, ducks, raccoons, etc. A week! I'm sure we will be seeing a lot more different animals popping up in and around our lawn over the coming years.. In any case, today was a great day to go out for a ride. Except that I did not. I did not even try to get the bike ready for the season. I had a lot to do in our yards. We still have a lot to do in our yards, but I think once we get the hang of it, things will get a little easier. Along with digging up trees we don't plan on keeping and hiring students to do the grunt work (like raking leaves). We'll get our feet wet this year and figure out what we can and cannot m

So I was summoned for jury duty again. This time I figured that I should go and do my civic duty rather than try to slip out like last time. I was fully prepared to participate, although it would have caused quite a disruption if I were selected. But after we were checked in and briefed, we were told that.. we weren't needed! Woot! On top of that, we were told that by coming today, we were exempt for the next three years. Woot! Woot! Time to catch up on stuff..

So March break is coming up and EYS's birthday is smack dab in the middle. I took the day off as MJNL wanted us to do something as a family. Probably go out to some sugar shack would be nice - although I think she might actually enjoy some of the outdoor activities more this year than last. Of course, this will depend on what the weather is going to be like next week. With the winter that we've been getting, I would not be surprised if we got hit by a storm.. In other news, I just found out that the house that girl was looking at buying was actually purchased by an ex-employee of Dapasoft! Who knew!

So another death has come. This time from broomball. Cancer again. Most of the people I play with are 60+ and some are even 70+. None of us are getting any younger. In any case, last week Growly had a heart attack. Luckily he should be able to have a full recovery. This is something to be expected as we age, but it still doesn't make it easier to handle. We just need to keep ourselves as healthy as possible, and live a good a life as possible with the time we have.

So apparently the phone was not not updating. It seems as if it was in the middle of updating which is why it refused to start the update process. It just took a long, long, long time to finish. After the OS update, we got to the security updates, and after that I was able to restore my backup and away we go!

I got good news today. My replacement phone had come in! I was able to come and pick it up. Apparently my old phone was pooched so I needed to get a replacement phone. Unfortunately, we had a winter storm today so I was partially tempted not to go out to pick it up, but I really wanted to get my apps back so I trudged out to the store in the blowing snow/freezing rain. I had no problem getting the phone. I had trouble getting my stuff restored. The first time I got the phone I forgot to go through the steps to restore from my backup. I reset the phone and could not restore from my back up. After calling Google support, I found out that I had to update the phone to restore from my backup. I started the upgrade process but needed to leave because the phone was dying and it was getting late. I got home to continue the upgrade process, but it seemed as if the phone was stuck in the upgrade process. I decided to do another factory reset and run the upgrade again. This time the phone immed

So I sent my phone in to get repaired. The port on the phone is damaged and I can't seem to get a consistent connection with any of my USB cables. This is annoying as it has trouble charging or transferring data. I thought I could get away with it, but after a few days, I knew I had to get it fixed. The good news is that it is under warranty. The bad news is that I have to send it off to get repaired. The good news is that it will only be for a couple of weeks at most. That's also the bad news. The good news is that I was able to get a loaner phone as my old HTC One is much, much too old to restore back to. The bad news is that the loaner phone is still old and has limited space. Fortunately, it will only be for a couple of weeks, so as long as I can call, get texts, e-mail, and communicate in general, I should be okay for the waiting period.

So I've trained my Google Assistant to respond when I say "Okay Goober" instead of "OK Google". It will respond to "Hey Goober" as well. Originally, I was going to use "Okay Goofus", but I figured that I did not want EYS to pick up on that phrase, so Goober it is. Squishy would get a kick out of this.

So the past week we've noticed that the toilet in our house stopped draining. We had the contractors take a look, but they weren't able to determine where the blockage was with their 50' augers. I was going to wait until after all of the construction was done but after I saw some sewage backup in the laundry room, I decided it was time to call in a professional. I was half thinking of calling in the city and having them take a look before getting someone to check out my side of the drain, but I figured that I could get it all done faster if I brought someone in. They came tonight: it took half an hour from when I called for someone to show up. Two hours and a much stinkier house later, we discovered the that drain was plugged up pretty bad about 50' from the back flow valve. This puts the blockage squarely on city property. The plumber had augured our side of the pipe and fished out a lot of root bits from the cleaning attempt. It looks like that giant tree (on city

So Werdna passed away last week. It was relatively sudden, and we did not know of his diagnosis until three months ago. We were wondering why he wasn't showing up to any events for the past year. I'm glad we were able to go and visit him a couple of times before he left us. The memorial was nice and intimate. The room was small but packed. A good number of people had to stand as they couldn't fit enough chairs into the room. Even HKL and HaremPresident showed up! Laz gave a good speech and there were quite a number of testimonials before it was all said and done. I was invited out to a friends and family banquet afterward and went with Laz and Growly. It was good to see everyone even though it was not the best of circumstances. We did talk about stuff Werdna liked and got to meet some of his friends and family. Goodbye Tomer. We will miss you.