This morning after I woke up I went to get water for my coffee

This morning after I woke up I went to get water for my coffee and no water from the taps. As far as I know, we never received a "24 hour Shut down water notice." Lets try the bath room sink faucet. No water there. Anne never filled up the kettle or get a reserve of water anywhere else. This place where I live has about 6 scheduled plumbing maintenance episodes/year. So many so that "#203 can figure it out," The water comes back on about noon-1pm.

Ok so far this year, my 12 year old pc died, we had to put our 17 year old cat down last month, I lost my job, all this and I turn 65 next week. Wait now, I've got enough material in this paragraph to make my own country music song. Can I get a "C" please?

Speaking about country music and such, Elvis Presley was in that genre. I was never really a fan. Elvis was still relevant music wise in the '60's even with the British invasion going on. I liked a few of his songs and I've seen most of his 13 movies. The announcement of Elvis's death is one of those history defining moments, where you knew where you were when the announcement of a major personality died. For JFK I was 12 years old at what is now called Miller park school in Coquitlam. That event for me and in my class was the start to an early weekend. Then when the announcement came on about Elvis's death, I was more aware and in tuned with that event. A young wargaming colleague of mine were going to play 'Wellington's Victory." The game was what we'd call at the time was a "monster game" because it was huge with thousands of pieces. We had the game all set up then a break for lunch by the pool. This was in West Vancouver. I was a bit stunned to hear this before lunch was served. My young friend wanted to continue the game tomorrow. I remember coming home where I was living uptown New Westminster coming home to my room in the Anderson house. I can't recall exactly where the house was but on the news they were talking about it, the long lines at Graceland to see the body. I remember that vividly. Years latter when I had internet access, I discovered some references that Elvis was a Rosicrucian but I doubt that. Then there was his friendship with Muhammad Ali the boxer. Hard to believe that for a music icon like Elvis that had For a laugh there's always the conspiracy theory that Elvis faked his death at the age of 42. If Elvis is alive he'd be 82 years old now. Its hard to believe that with 10 #1 US albums, 18 #1 US singles, 13 movies, Elvis had earned him more then a billion dollars but had around $10 million at the time of his death. I just hope I'm alive to blog about Elvis and the 50th anniversary of his death.

Not much going on right now. I'm expecting 2 things in the mail: A card from Anne's sister. She's a close friend of the family. She sends me something every year. I'm also expecting my blue cross for seniors card. That's got to be in the mail this week if I'm supposed to have this by Monday. Yesterday, Anne bought me some Metformin (first time using it) and that's a $30 hit every 3 months. When I get the card my diabetic supplies should be covered by about 80%. Anyway, that's all for now. Jim has left the building. 

When the score at Rogers

place arena was tied at 2 with Buffalo in town, I thought we might win this game. Then Talbot let in a stinker early in the 2nd. It was all downhill for the Oilers from there. McDavid hadn't even a shot on goal little alone a goal. Talbot was obviously having a tough night losing to the Sabres 6-2. There was even a goal tender change but Larson fell on our relief goaltender already with a history of concussions and he was pulled and Talbot returned. We'll regroup and host Carolina Tuesday and say Hello to the returning Nail Yakapov. Next Sunday we're in Winnipeg. Our first loss in Rogers Place arena. 

I'm not a environmentalist but I have to give a nod of approval to Canada's position on the recent Kigali deal. Its going to cost billions of dollars but by slowly eliminating the use of HFC's (hydro fluoro carbon gases) its going to make the planet cooler, eventually. HFC's are found in air conditioners and refrigerators. HFC's are hundreds of times more powerful then CFC green house gasses. By phasing out the use of HFC's will help to make the planet a bit cooler but not by much. I'm on board with this.

Earlier today I was working from a list of Horus Heresy order of reading. This list includes all of the 31 novels in the series I have to date. In this reading order (suggested by The Black Library) includes short stories, audio books and novellas. There's been a lot of short stories before the novel series I haven't got yet but most of the already published and will be re published in an anthology format in latter editions of the series. Most likely in my format in a couple of years. I have all the way up book #31 in paperback. 

Anne's doing the vacuuming and I'm just winding out my evening. This week is just a working the week at the job. I've got nothing planned. We still have a lot of snow on the ground. Kind of reminds me of mid March out there. Anyway, that's all for now.

It seems when it rains it pours around here

for example, last night Anne just turned the oven on for our dinner. Suddenly inside the oven it began to sparkle, and short out causing a small contained fire. We controlled that in half a minute. No smoke to set off the fire detectors. The oven isn't that old. Without warning it just shorted out. The digital display is gone off the front panel. Anne's working this out with management now. So because of this I've had to nuke my coffee. Microwave coffee isn't the best to drink first time around as it is. First time nuked coffee gets cold faster. Management said all the oven needs is a new oven element. Needs far more then that deary, the electronics on the front panel, the digital display is shorted out. We need a replacement oven. After a bit the front panel works. I turned on the stove element and that works. I'm drinking fresh coffee, at last. Management wrote up a notice saying they will be here to inspect oven on Thursday. In the meantime we have a hot plate in storage we broke out last night. I had bought this just before we got married and we have a bbq outside. Anything can be cooked on the barbie. We're ok for a couple of days.

Anne came back from her outing yesterday, and had papers she got from Capital Region Housing Corporation (crhc) and Taco Time for my lunch. Someone there at crhc reception told her based upon what Anne had said we would qualify for a rental subsidy. I have a CPP form I need to take to Service Canada, they need to fill it out. Since I could be off the whole week, its just a matter of standing in line there. Someone there needs to fill it out for me. I'll leave out of here at 1pm tomorrow. We went down this road with crhc a few years ago, when I was working full time hours at Xentel. It took crhc at that time 2 years to get back to us saying because of our income, we wouldn't qualify. Based on last years income, we would. I'm thinking this round once we have all our i and T's sorted out we'll be able to get a subsidy but I feel based on how slow the crhc is, I'll be on full pension by the time we actually get around to receiving anything from these guys. The crhc is very slow because of all the request's it gets for subsidy. Especially in this economy. In other words we're at t he top of the pile. "Now serving 5,922/1," type thing. Anne wants to try and have the paperwork in their office by the end of this week and most likely crhc will sight the Fort MacMurray fire 2 months ago as the main cause of the slowdown. 

So Anne says its good that I'm home. Well in one way but I'd rather be at the office. I still think there's time for that this month and some shifts will be days. I'll be checking up on that on Thursday for next week. Anyway, that's enough out of me.

So far my

9 hour days are holding out ok but its early yet. Anything can happen and I'm prepared for anything. If these hours hold out ok by mid next month I should have enough for my new computer. There were only 3 of us on the project at 10pm last night. It was nice to get out of there and enjoy the walk to Corona in the nice mild air and to get on the train and on my way home despite the wait at Corona. At Rexall all the Oiler fans spent a few extra minutes boarding the train and they seemed pretty happy. The Oiler's must have won. However the downside was I  missed that bus and I ended up walking home from Clareview station. The weather was nice and mild and I didn't mind too much. It was nice to be surounded by all that copper and blue. I checked my iPad when I got home and the Oiler's finally won the first attempt out of 5 games as the finale score was 3-2 for us.

I just took this of the window installers and it looks like they are doing 2 suites at a time as they want to be done this side by first snow and do the rest next Spring. I just put  my earplugs in and sleep from there and it doesn't bother me.

They're doing lots of pounding and hammering below. Anne tells me the windows look really nice and lock without having to put a stick in the frame. The locking mechanism is much better.

I got home last night to answer some email and watch what was left over of Monday night Raw. Better show this week then last week. "Hell in a cell" pay per view is this Sunday but I'll be at work.

One of the new guys also an Oiler fan was showing me that he can get live TV on his smart phone. We tried to get some of the game on his phone but apparently his trial offer expired. Our cable bill is about $120/month and I just wonder how much his would cost with data on his phone but we have a lot of specialty channels. He said his plan is $75/month. Having TV on a cell phone would be great to watch the games on my break or if they are in progress on my way home but I just can't justify another $130/month. That'd be great to watch WWE pay per views on a cell phone on my breaks at work. It would make sense if I was working full time or when I'm on pension in a few years but not with this job.  

I must have got 6.5 hours of sleep overnight and i don't feel too bad. Lets see how I am Saturday morning when I have to get up and go to lodge. Anyway, another 1-10 shift today so that's about all for now.

I have a day off

today, which is ok because I can make some phone calls tonight and watch the Oiler's game on TV. If the game looks bad I can always switch the channel. 

We got a note under our door from management saying how Friday they're going to be installing new windows. It means we have to remove drapes, clear stuff away from the walls as work will begin 8:30am-5pm. I'm not sure if the window frames will need to be removed but it seems likely. Anne's going to read the note and she'll go ballistic. I'm not removing my computer desk. I can move the hutch and remove my laptop and Maschine and a few other things. We can move stuff on the balcony and leave it on the balcony. So the bedroom window gets done first and the office window we can move stuff at the other end to the bedroom window area. I'll be here before that. It depends on what they want to do first and if they'll need to come inside. At any event that ruins our Friday. I'll be leaving out of here at noon, Anne out of here by 3pm. Hopefully by the time she leaves out of here most of the work will be done. 

When Anne leaves I'm going to research Fan Duel a little bit. I signed up a few weeks ago and uploaded some funds to play. I'll be doing that later today. Depend on the sport I'll need to fill out a roster and try out a game or two. I'm not going to go crazy, maybe $20 month. Its mostly for fun.

I'm still thinking about a cell phone as I can keep track of my fan dual (fd) games and sports scores in general. Getting a cell phone has been on my mind for awhile now. There are lots of different plans out there but I'm not going with Telus and I'm not sure about a iPhone. Average plan that I've been looking at has been about $90 for 2 Gb/month. Most likely its going to be a android phone, something that can fit in my pocket. With a cell phone I'm never away from my email and there have been many times where I needed to get to my email when I was away from my email. A cell phone makes sense, I'm just not sure I can afford $100 month at this point.

Anne took that well. She doesn't like it but she took it well, which is ok. So, we'll be working on that Thursday night. The bedroom drapes will be the last to come down I suppose.

Not much going on other then that. The weather is holding out ok as we're into +13's and +15's, which is pretty nice for this time of year. We'll be in low single digits by the end of the month. Anyway, that's all for now.

I know I had a couple days off at

New Years but I've been on the job between my 2nd and 1st job. I think on the 18th I'm going to take 3 days off.

i09 has released a list of the 65 Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies to Watch out for in 2014. I like; The Legend of Hercules, a reboot of RoboCop, Jodorowsky's Dune, Captain America: The Winter Soldier (sequel), Transcendence. There are a lot more, but that's just a few. I might see the Captain America movie, maybe. The full list is here.

Last night's Monday night Raw went "Old School." That means taking the look and feel of the show back to it's beginning. They had the floor barricades like they did in the past, the announcers wore jackets like in the 80's, even the announce table was just a table that could have been a prop for a TLC tables ladders and chairs match. They had a a lot of WWE Legends there, wrestlers that the WWE calls Hall of Famer's. They had IRS,Ted DiBiase even Rikishi. Anne was hacking and coughing the whole time because our other TV has sound issues. It would have been great to have Vince McMahon and Jessie Ventura at the announce table. That would have been classic. Raw last night was excellent. 

Speaking about our 2nd TV its having audio issues. We get the picture but no sound. Anne had tech support a week ago saying its probably old cables so they send us these AV cables that our TV can't use. So Anne got fed up and requested a service call. She said it has to do with the set box. Hopefully they'll fix that up today. 

I'm in today from1-9pm. I'm up at about 9:30am this morning to give me 7.5 hours sleep. I wont be able to see the Saint Louis/Oiler game but I'm not missing much. Anyway, that's all for now.

We've been in the grip

of a wicked cold snap over the last couple of days as we have another day of this, then on Friday we're at +3 in the Capital.

The above is a sampling of some stats for over the past couple of days. Green=page views, blue=unique visitors, orange means returning visitors. Yesterdays returning visitors were cut off (screen real estate) but there were 5 returning visitors. Monday's and Friday's seem to be my best time of the week.

This means because on the firs day of the month (Friday) we can use our ETS bus pass from January and for February. This means I can go down to my banks Friday take care of some business and pay a bill and head up to Canada Place to check in on my CPP.

Just read this article in i09 about cats. Here's an extract under the fair use rule: Our cats may be cuddly pals and adorable internet memes, but they are also destroying the environment more efficiently than humans. They have been called one of the "worst" invasive species. And a new study  published today in Nature Communications suggests that cats are responsible for killing several endangered bird species in the United States, and decimating bird populations on islands all over the world. In the US, cats kill as many as 3.7 billion native birds annually, making them a bigger threat to these creatures than buildings, towers, windows, poison, and cars. But there is a solution to the problem. We try our part to take these outdoor cats in as much as building codes allow. We already have Boots here and we might take in one more. But here's the full i09 article .            . 

As for today, we've been expecting the building superintendent to make a pit stop into our suite like the notice under our door indicated yesterday. They hadn't arrived yet so this could be anytime this week. Other then this, I'm working on my track and watching the Oiler's at Phoenix. Anyway, that's all for now.