Is this really for real

that I'm making 2 back to back blog posts? Yes and for the first time in many months, as I'm posting less on Fb. Some people might think I'm becoming obsessive over there and since this blog (or so I think) doesn't get that traffic here. in other words, more posting here, less there.

🤔The heals of my feet are heavily calloused. Yet this came as a bit of a surprise when the 3 month old athletic compression stockings revealed a whole about the size of a quarter in them. I'm on the Aids to Daily Living (ADL) program, where I get a discount on compression stockings where I get 3 pair of compression stockings per cycle/year. My next cycle won't be until November 17th. Normally these compression stockings should last 6 months according to Google. When I was visiting the foot nurse at Northgate last April (2019) she said I should buy 2 pair of stockings and alternate them every other day. Note to self.

My ssd c:\\ drive (as of about an hour ago) was down to mb of space out of its 120Gb space overall. I uninstalled a program I wasn't using and back up to 1.92Gb of free space. I was looking for gaining more hard drive space solutions: Do I get an m.2 drive and clone onto that or another ssd drive and get a docking station and clone from there? In the end I think that's what I'm going to do this autumn. Ideally I'd love to clone my Xp drive to a partition so I can use my Works processor. I like open office but I don't want to pay for a bundle of programs just to get one. Anyway that's all for now. 

I left out of here at 3pm yesterday and

headed out to Century park on the lrt and doubled back. I got home about 4:40pm. The good news is I received no calls. Which meant if I got a call, chances would be today's shift would have been cancelled. Since I got no call from Super, I'm good to go in for today. 

I'm thinking back to how many computers I've had over the years. My first computer was the Atari 130Xe in November of 1987. Monitor sold separately. I came across this image of a 1959 computer from Cory Doctorow Tweet earlier. Wow, that's some computer:


Not quite as noteworthy as the image above, my 2nd computer was a Atari 130ST computer 1988. Still no Monitor. Then I graduated to a Pentium in 1990 and I had a monochrome monitor. My first real computer was a Pentium and I had Windows 95. My 5th computer was a white tower running Windows me and that would have been about 2001 running Windows me. Then in 2005 I got the Compaq Presario running Windows Xp. That's what I'm using now. My last computer is a Acer laptop. That's 7 computers, plus a iPad and 2 iPod Touch devices. That's 7 computers in almost 30 years. My media centre Compaq is working with a CRT monitor. It was given to me for $50! I had a heck of a time trying to carry it from the Edmonton motors area onto the lrt and out to Clareview. Next computer I'm going to get will be a iMac. Oh and in case you think I'm not a Cory Doctorow and just a troll, here's another image I captured of some of his books in my library: 

                                      
    
If indeed I have work over the next 3 days then great and if that big project begins there could be a Sunday in there. That means I'll be busy for awhile. I'll still be blogging just as much as ever. Anyway, that's all for now.

Ten years is a long time for a computer and

that's how long I've been using my 68 Gb hard drive that came with my desktop computer when I bought it in 2005. When I get some hours in at work, that's going to be one of my projects is to upgrade this computer. I upgraded it with Ram 2 years after I initially bought it. Recently I began to realize that I can put together a modest low cost upgrade with a 500 Gb hard drive for about $60. Since the motherboard is a ide mobo, I can pick up a Sata bi directional converter for about $25. I can get a hard drive dock (looks like a toaster) to copy the old hd to the new one. I don't plan on using the new hd forever though as its just a short term solution to prolong the life of the computer until the bigger upgrade comes in the new year. I'm buying parts one or two at a time.

My shift last night went by fairly well, or at least I thought it did. We more or less finished the project last night except for a few call backs and maybe a few hours work for just a few people for tonight. I could have used the hours but the more I make the less ei pays me. At least I got 11 hours work out of it. We have something on the immediate horizon but I'm off work again until then. I think I'm going to be called back around the 21st of this month. I have ei until the meantime. In other words I'm off work until further notice. However until then, I need to find something more stable long term and part time until I go on pension. I can juggle both jobs, so at least there is income coming in one way or the other.

The downtown arena is progressing nicely. Through the concourse cam, they are making huge progress on the floor of the arena. They did a concrete pour in the North West corner. The roof is more or less done. They are putting yellow siding on the outside. Even though the rest of the Ice district is a few years away from completion, they are making progress on the arena. Anyway, that's all for now.

Since I've been sick since Saturday night I must have used about

a roll and a half of tissue paper. Its not fun being sick on a long weekend. Anne already cleaned out my waste bucket of snot rags. For the last 2 days I slept in past 12:30pm. At the moment I'm just waking up ready to catch the Esks/Stamps labour day classic. I think over the last 53 years the win loss record is something like 24-29.

I'm sure there's more I can do with this video editing software. It was a free trial after all.The software seems to be at the mercy of my old laptop. In other words it can barely keep up. One thing is for certain. I either need a upgrade or a new pc and I don't see myself saving up to and or over a thousand dollars to get a retail desktop full of bloatware. I'm going to buy a few pieces at a time and keep the same case. All I need is the mother board, chip set, hard drive, about 8 Gb of Ram and a os. I can install it all myself or even take my desktop to where I'm going to buy the parts from and pay them a small fee to install everything while I'm having lunch. I might not be able to use the current hard drive in the new system. However, I need to get back to work steady in order to do this.

I don't know what my schedule is like for the week but I know I'll be there for tomorrow from 4-9:30pm. I need to know what the following week will be like. At the moment I'm just playing the nickle and dime game budget. I spent $5 for a beer at the lodge last Thursday and other then that, and a pay pall obligation no cash is leaving my pocket until I get back to work for anything. Anyway, that's all for now.                  

Its been snowing out there since about 8pm last night

as we're at -11. That in itself isn't bad but this is like blowing snow, meaning we have a wind chill to go along with this. We could end up with 5-10 inches of snow before its all over with. At about 3pm yesterday we were at +3 as a high.

So far (unless things change) I'm in the office today 5-9. I always like to check my email before I head out. My shift has been canceled on the fly before. If by 3:45pm no email, then I'm good to go.

I'm checking out some good cpu's for under $80 and mATX motherboards for about the same. I can get a decent combo for about $150. I can get away with 16Gb Ram. I already have a graphics card that's more or less ok, and all I need is a good Tb hard drive and Windows in my current case and I'm good to go. 

I had a quiet day for New Years day. I did some email, YouTube, stuff. I read a bit and worked on my ambient type track before my laptop over heated, had a frozen thing heated up in the mic for supper. Unless things change I'm out of here shortly before 4pm. Anyway, that's about all for now.

When I'm at Campus

station on my afternoon commute waiting for that #4, I need to be there ready to board because there's about half a doz people ready to board ahead of me and behind me. That bus at 1:45pm to wem is loaded. From wem to the job is ok and from Clareview to Campus is ok. It's just that link from Campus to wem that's crowded. I get a ride home, so I avoid that headache.

I didn't sleep very well over night and I think having that 7pm coffee last night had something to do with it. 

This afternoon I'm trying to figure out my CFL weekend picks. There's 2 games Friday and Saturday. It's a stupid schedule because there's no Sunday games. I'm only picking 3 games. First up Friday night is Winnipeg at winless Montreal. That's a tough call. The Al's need to show up especially at home. Winnipeg is strong. The RB's are coming to town facing the Esks and they're a strong team. I can see 2 tie games there and the Saturday game is Calgary/Argo's. That's a "sure" Argo win. Nothing is "sure" in sports betting.

We don't have voice mail so we enjoy the call history feature on our TV. As soon as the phone rings we see the # flash on the upper left hand corner of our TV. I was away from my phone just now when composing this and a call came in from New York. I don't know anyone in New York. I get these email junk notices from some weird name saying something like, "I tried to call you, I hope your ok.." type thing. Scamers. I answer the phone and its silent on the other end. Or we get these weird numbers from India saying we have problems our internet connection or computer. My response is. I don't have a computer. They hang up right away. I'm almost at the point where I don't want a home computer other then to do music production. I don't need to be online for that. I can get everything done from a smartphone. 

In about an hour I'll be making my CFL weekend picks at the Redi mart. I have about a 15 minute wait for my #4 at 
Campus to read more of my Horus Heresy book and in at the job from 3-9. Anyway, that's about all for now.

Half an hour

past midnight and it's still very warm in here so the AC goes on tonight. Especially if I want any sleep over night.

Earlier I copied a bunch of files from the white pen drive to the 1Tb drive. Here's a photo of the memory devices I have at the moment. I'd like to get a 4Tb drive for my 10 year old every day computer as shown here eventually. It came with a whopping 68Gb, which was pretty good for 2004.

Earlier Anne went to Walmart and got a print out history of the meds I'm taking for my diabetes. For now its just insulin and test strips but I'm hoping I can get metformin as well as planning for my dental.

Monday night Raw was pretty good especially when the wrestler known as "Bolieve" clipped over the little bull. Anne and I got a laugh over that. I've got a few things to do before bed. On my way to work I'm getting the last of the Eagles book on special order. Then I'm getting the next 5 after that. Anyway, that's all for now.

Five days off including Friday that is

and I couldn't be happier.

After doing a bit of research I finally have come down to a decision: I'm buying a iMac for my music production. other then the lack of a CD drive the 21" i5 iMac looks like a good deal. 8 Ram and a quad core pc running at 2.7 Ghz, I'm on board. The price is about the same as a pc after the display. All I need is room for my Cubase, Komplete 8 and Maschine. Take what I have with my pc is about 20% space on a 1Tb. For music production cpu speed is more important to me then Ram. I hope to get the iMac by labour day weekend

The Edmonton Oilers picked Leon Draisaitl 3rd over all. He's a big centre and that's what this club needs. I hope Mac T can get a big name player utilizing some of the free agent trade bait before July 1st. 

Speaking of music, I was putting a little track together in Maschine stand alone mode. It's about a minute long called "Hey." Deep lyrics huh? It's just a sample and I'm going to include a little guitar work in there as well. 

I took a sleeping pill a few minutes ago. Anne's working today so I get another night off by myself. I don't go back to work until Wednesday but I'm not going to hang around and do nothing until they decide to do something. Last Summer I was lucky if I got 8 hours a week from Late June until the end of August. I don't want to go through that again. Anyway, that's all for now.

That was a decisive victory for

the Seahawks but what was Denver thinking? Still I'm happy Seattle won. That was a blow out and then some! 

I was doing computer research for most of my Sunday afternoon. The Intel Next Unit Computer or NUC, isn't bad but for something that can't get above 2 Ghz cpu speed and has only 16 Gb Ram, isn't something I'm interested in at the moment. 

The new Captain America winter soldier and The Amazing Spiderman-2 looks awesome. I'm especially interested in seeing Captain America when it comes out later this Spring.

After the game I figured out how to upload pdf files to my Itouch. I needed to download iBooks and then I found a site that takes any url from a webpage and turns that page into a pdf. I need to open the pdf in the Firefox folder and upload  it from my desktop to iTunes. Check on the pdf and sync and there it is in iBooks. Works really nice. Anyway, that's all for now.

Today I'm off to my

second job, which means I'll be home to watch the last period of the Boston/Oiler's game. Even though my 2nd job has a higher rate of pay I'm currently losing money because my first job is giving me more or less full time hours. But for how long? We have another project about mid January that is days and this works out good in February because my 2nd job breaks for that month before starting up again March to the end of May. I don't know what I'll be doing at my first job in March. They might be just working evenings, I have no idea, neither do they at the moment.

The Alberta Government is stalling on LRT funding because they still think Edmonton's priority's are hockey arena's. We don't need money for that anymore. That's all taken care of. City of Edmonton (coe) yesterday made LRT (Valley line) their number 1 priority. This was made loud and clear and the Province is saying "wait until our Spring budget." Yeesh

On the Federal front Canada Post is downsizing big time. They're saying that within the next 5 years, there will be no more home delivery. Over the next 5 years through attrition, they are cutting 8,000 jobs. There still will be a Canada Post and mail but mail will now be moved to community mail boxes. These moves will save Canada Post $billions. 

Lately I've been doing some research on building my pc for music production. I'm looking at the AMD A10 as my cpu on a aMATX Gigabyte motherboard (mb) with 32 Gb Ram and 7.1 audio. I'm buying a new case as they don't cost that much and neither does the optical drive. The case I'm looking at has a built in 650W power supply. When I'm ready, call the vender and make sure they have the parts and have the time ready to see me. "So, I just go in and order the parts over the counter?" All I have to do make sure the funds are ready in my Scotia account the Friday before. Make an appointment and take a Saturday off, pack up my laptop take the train to Southgate and the shuttle bus to the vendor and hopefully get the whole thing done in about an hour. The big job is going to be in cloning my laptop onto the new drive. Anyway, that's all for now.

I'm still on Sunday night evening time even though it's early Monday morning here in the

big city.

Yesterday (Sunday) I was out there waiting for my bus shortly before noon. I got downtown in under 30 minutes at Corona station. Wow. It was a long slow work day but I talked with some nice people. My iTouch calendar alarm went off at 7pm just as I was going on my 10 minute break. I called a Lodge colleague to see if there's anything on for tonight. Nothing. I worked out the rest of the shift and a 10 minute wait for my train to Clareview. The air was mild and pleasant so instead of walking home, I waited for a Northgate bus and read a couple of pages from my Space Wolf Warhammer 40K novel and in the bus before it left out of Clareview and home. 

Anne had just finished "face time" with her sister and I relaxed until dinner, watched the news, with dinner and here I am.

Prior to the news and supper, I came across a laptop SSHD 1TB Seagate hard drive. It's $120 not including the cloning of my current drive (parts and labor) to the new drive and Windows 7 64 bit. Or about a $320 update. They don't have it across the street. It's a lot easier bringing my laptop to the south side then my desktop This could be an interesting upgrade for November. Anyway, that's all for now.

I'm kind of disappointed that

iGoogle has until the end of October before Google retires it November 1st. I don't like Chrome enough to have it as my go to site but I like the gadgets on my iGoogle site, like Science Shot and Trek today, and on the top there's a YouTube, Gmail and maps link. Maybe Firefox has something like iGoogle. I kind understand Google's reasoning for retiring iGoogle November 1st 2013. I suppose my alternative would be using my blog as my portal to the above sites. I'll be sad to see iGoogle go.

 I'm in the office from 6-10 this evening, so I still have a few hours left here before I leave out of here at 5pm. Then on Saturday I'm from 11am-6pm. That's a good 6.6 hours so in my half hour break I'll pop in over to Audrey's about 3pm or so and pick up a book on my special order shelf.

Last night while working on a track on Maschine, I was wondering why my music was clipping. There's a status bar where it says CPU and a volume meter. When the  status bar reads read, that means it's clipping causing static in my music. At first I thought, maybe it could be part of my routing in the audio to midi preferences. Or whatever it's called. I checked in there, and even increased the sample rate from 4100 (standard) to 4800. I still got clipping. After doing a bit of research I found that I needed a limiter. Limiter's help prevent clipping. Fortunately Maschine is so versatile that it has a limiter on its effects (FX) channel but it was recommended that the limiter be at -0.0db. Best I could dial it in was at -0.4db but I put one on Master, Groups, and Sounds. I still got the clipping. Then I figured that it's got to be my slow laptop but in checking earlier projects clipping is fine. So before bed I thought, "oh well, I'll do some more research over the weekend. Then this morning it came to me. I keep getting these pop up menu's at various times of the project that say "Sample(s) can not be found, ignore, ignore all, find cancel. I've been hitting cancel because in previous instances when this has occurred "find" points me to an empty folder on on my hard drive. So, this might tell me that these samples were just "one shot uses." I'm going to see what the forums have to say about this. But that's where I think my issue lies with clipping.

Yesterday I got into doing some more research on how to upgrade my Acer laptop. I thought, well maybe all it needs is a 2.5 hard drive (hd) upgrade. I need a internal hd running at least 7200 rpm to run the programs I use for music production. Most laptops hd's run at 5400 rpm. Not good enough for my needs. Then I looked around the Memory Express website (There's a link in my blog sidebar) and they have a few notebook hd's at 500Gb/7200 rpm. That would be a major upgrade. Basically its bring my laptop in clone my existing hard drive and install the new one copy the contents of my cloned drive back into the new hd. I'd probably need a copy of Windows 7 64bit as the copy of Windows 7 Ultimate is set at 32 bit. Including parts and labor it's about a $300 upgrade. If it doesn't work when I get my new PC in the Spring I can always use the OS and the hard drive. The upgrade will also allow a online Ram scanning service to scan to see if my system can take any more Ram. At the moment the scan won't work in a Windows 32 bit environment. Hence the Windows 7 64 bit install. I know that Windows can be reconfigured from 32 bit to 64 but it's a process that takes more time then I can give it and the earning curve is a bit steep for my skill, and patience. Best any Ram laptop upgrade can do is 16Gb Best desktop Ram is 32Gb but there are some 32Gb Ram kits that are slowly entering the market. That's x2 16 chips. I doubt my laptop's CPU would even run them little alone a 7200 rpm hd upgrade. The other thing I was thinking about getting is a 500Gb SSD upgrade, but that'd be almost as much as my laptop cost in 2009 dollars. My best option for music production is buying a desktop but that's going to be in the Spring if I get a income tax return. Then again, I might just book a appointment and get the hd install anyway just to see what if it'll work. If not then I can always reverse the procedure there at the time..

We're having a bit of a problem with our budgie bird we named "Sugar." He feathers are fluffed up and she's very quiet I don't think she's sick at all. This is called "Roosting." Sometimes birds do this to circulate heat or to keep warm.

Before I get on that train at Clareview I'm getting my Proline/6-49 ticket for this weekends games and draw for Saturday night. Saturday after work I'm going to try Burger Baron again to see if they're open and get some fries to take home. Anyway, that's all for now.

I was going to go out today

but I’ve got all week. Anne’s going to get some things she wants to do like look into a medical subsidy for us her Doctor referred us to. She also wants to check on insurance as well.

Saturday here in Edmonton we had “A Taste of Animethon.” It had 1,505 people for the event, which wasn’t to bad. I’m not a fan of Anime per se’ but it looked like a fun event. And I hope next years event is even bigger August 22nd weekend is the annual Fan Expo Canada and it's got a lot of stuff going on for that 4 day event. Including, Stan Lee, Joe Sakic, David Hasselhoff, Joe Montana, SLASH, Zachary Quinto, Alice Cooper and even Hulk Hogan brother! There's more about it here:

At first I thought getting a new PC has it's advantages. I can use it for gaming and of course music and I haven't ruled that out yet. Then I cam across the Akai Synthstation. It's been around for awhile but what I like about it is it can be used in conjunction with the iPad 3rd Gen. The only thing it's missing is 2 midi out cables. I'm looking at getting this and at under $75 it looks pretty good. 

Coast had a great show this morning UFO's & Wormholes: Joining John B. Wells on Sunday night, UFO researcher Wilbur Allen presented an update on UFO sightings that he believes are beyond this world, and demonstrate craft entering and leaving our atmosphere through a wormhole or stargate. Apparently he caught this stuff on cameras with very high frame rates and presented a video taken of frame rates per second. It's an interesting topic. I'm not sure why ET would come to this planet unless it's a staging ground between galaxies. Maybe we're the only civilization that hasn't the capability to detect them, who knows? A wormhole would be the only way to span large distances between systems not as advanced as theirs. We should be able to detect a wormhole by its magnetic field. it's a science that's beyond our capability.   

So this means I can check for my school transcripts this week and Tuesday I’m going out to start my cpp. Wednesday I’m in for a few hours and off for the rest of the week. I like having a couple of weeks off. Tonight it's Monday night Raw and after that Anne and I are going across the street to "Bo'diddly's Pub." I'm thinking about treating us to some nacho' but this is my chance to have a Guinness. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I'm enjoying my Sunday afternoon off

despite no football or hockey.

For nearing the end of July it's not that warm of a day out there sitting at +15 showing a bit of rain.

I'm going to miss iGoogle when it's gone in November. I can still get similar "gadgets" on my Google Drive page without going Chrome. I'm too used to Firefox. Anyway a Science story appeared on my iGoogle page about a 15 meter "magnetic ring" transported to Fermilab in Wisconsin. It took 6 weeks to get to Fermilab. The story from the Science insider is here.  
 
I almost bought a Intel quad Core i7 laptop today from Future shop but I checked and it seems that all locations don't even have this item in stock. Best buy has a AMD A10 in my price range and if they have it in stock at t heir West Edmonton Mall location, I might just pick it up Wednesday. I'm not buying this for gaming, maybe 10% or so for gaming. So, we'll see. I might just end up waiting until their labor Day sale. 

The objective is to put a full week in for this week. I've got the hours and the work. Hopefully nothing will go wrong. Anyway, that's about all for now. 

There are several

options open to me here. I can upgrade from the two pc cases I have mATX and ATX and build a pc from within those two chassis or buy a pre-built system. A pre-built system is a lot more expensive then a custom built i7 quad core,1-2 TB 32 bit Ram system. Or I can buy a laptop and put in a ssd drive but that limits my Ram to 16 Gb. A custom built mATX system means I can add 32 Ram. There are a few places in town that will do it for about the cost of a 25 inch iMac, that's my budget. Then iMac fans will say buy a Mac. Well that's fine and well but the local Apple store can't do upgrades you either have to buy it configured and it gets shipped to the customer not an option and too much of a headache.

Some people think I live in a shell that I don't have a life outside of going to work and come home watch TV. First of all, I watch very little TV maybe 13 hours a week. I read a lot of books, about 6 per year and these are not comic books or graphic novels. Other then July and August, I'm in volved in my Mason Lodge and out visiting other Lodges. When I'm not doing that I'm working on my music production and take my wife out to dinner once every other week. This weekend we're going to K-days after she gets off work Saturday night plus I have my job and those hours always change some weeks I'm working 9-5 while others I'm working from 1-9

Coast last night was pretty good (from what little I listened of it) and the 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK is just around the corner. Whether you believe in the Warren Commission's report of a lone gunman or there was a cover up its a case that still echos even today 50 years since the incident. The FBI has thousands of pages of unclassified information they wont release until 2017 or even 2029. What are they afraid of?

Late yesterday afternoon I was watching a bit of the Hamilton/Riders game. I had Hamilton to win on my Proline, the finale score was 0/37 Riders! What was I thinking! Anyway, that's all for now.

A huge change in the

 weather. During our recent heat wave, by this time of the morning we’d be about +18 but this morning we’re at +10. A lot more comfortable.

I can only wish for the same on my job. To be fair they actually lowered the line hour requirement for the source I‘m on. I didn’t make line hour (lh) as I was out only by $15 but the bulk of my sales were on card. For the last 3 weeks I’ve been working only 33.5 hours though. Any day though can be different then the next.

Looks like there’s another provincial by election coming up in BC now. An NDP MPP there has resigned. That’s 3 now, Kitchener-Waterloo, and the other in Vaughn.

Lately I’ve been doing some research on Hanna Reitsch. She was a test pilot for the Nazi’s in WW2.  She was the first woman to ever receive the Iron Cross (medal) first woman ever to fly a helicopter and to fly one indoors. She was also the first woman ever to fly a jet plane. What made her exploits even more fascinating to me being a WW2 buff, was how she flew under heavy Soviet fire General Von Griem in a small a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten near Hitler’s bunker April 28th 1945 a few days before the end of WW2. The Storch had a damaged fuel tank before it landed. Reitsch and Von Griem used an Arado Ar 96 trainer to leave Berlin but who’s to say that the Hitler’s were not in that plane? A very interesting woman. She died young at the age of 67 in 1979.

My 4 games/Proline ticket last night died as Hamilton/Montreal tied. I had Montreal to win. I’m getting another Proline for the remaining 3 games and picking ties.

Well, today is another full day on the job. I hope I have a better go of things then I did over the last couple of days but I’m  not that far away from having lh for the week. Tonight after rework, I’m doing my banking and home. I’ve got a “X-Wing” Star Wars book to pick up at Audrey’s Saturday. Anyway, that’s about all for now.
 
Yesterday I had a problem with my Google account but the issue is fixed now, so no problem.

I was in good spirits earlier but still only 2 sales all day. I didn’t even get $100 on the day. I might have $600 on the week. I think the reason why I didn’t do that well was because it’s a Friday.

When I went into work this morning

I left the apartment and it was -30 with a -40 windchill but surprisingly it wasn't all that bad out there heading into the office or even coming home. 

I had a better day of it today and I tried a few things from my co-workers. The best part of it was I stayed in it for the full day. Also, our Sunday shift was canceled as of the end of this month and we're back doing Mondays again which is ok by me except I'm going to negotiate having Mondays off unless its Lodge night other wise, this gives me 37.5 hours also changed and back is Friday's we're off at 8:30am again. So if this works in my favor, I'll have Saturday nights off Sunday and Monday (unless it's Lodge night of course)

The other thing is my hard drive will have to be completely reformatted. This means no factory default They're going to install Win 7 and I get MS Office and that's it! I get a bare bones system. I'll have to reinstall all my programs etc but I have a lot of stuff backed up I can reload, like a lot of photos etc and I get my wifi back so I can transfer a lot of things between my desktop and laptop if I have to. I'll have to reinstall I tunes FL Studio etc.

Just as I'm getting a little better Anne has to get the flu. Nice. But I still  have last weeks check and next weeks and the 27th so that's 2/3rds of February's rent right there. Hopefully all Anne has is the 24 hour flu and she'll be up and about in a few days me, I'm feeling a lot better. Now there's another item I need in order to have my laptop restored: My laptop power cord. I've got that ready to go for the morning. If all goes well, I should have my laptop fully ready to go Friday night. Saturday after work, I'm going out to buy (if they have it in stock) at LM Komplete 8. If Kontakt 5 has everything in Kontakt 4, that and FL Studio is all I'll ever need. In theory. Anyway, that's all for now.

On the train during my morning commute I realized

a couple of things: I left my insulin at home and I forgot the Linux install disk. Rats.

My Saturday morning commute was under a cold -6 overcast sky. You could feel the weather pattern changing. Colder weather is on its way. I got a Tim's breakfast and grumbled to  myself where were staff to let me inside? I didn't need to do this in the Baker Centre. Finally James let me in and I found my station and I had my breakfast in the lunchroom. Keith said after work he'd help me out.

My voice was holding up better then Thursday but not by much. By this time next weekend my check will be a 3rd of the size it is now but it all goes to my wife. Noon break came around and I already had a couple of sales and a card. From noon until 2pm was slow as I only had 1 sale and my voice wasn't holding up very well at all. At break I headed outside down to Tim's and what a difference in the weather. There was a real bite to the air. I got 1 more sale on a card and someone said "finally, here comes the snow." As bad as I was sounding and all I stuck it out for the full 6 hours and those 6 hours went by fast. 

I brought my laptop into the reception area and opened it up. Keith tried and so did Vinny but with out the install disk, not much can be done. So Keith said for me to call him at 8 this evening and hopefully over the phone he'll be able to help me out. Failing all of that, I might have to bring it in tomorrow...again.

So, I'm going to grab a nap for an hour and give him a call. Anyway that's about all for now. 

I had a good day

today for a labour day.

I got out of bed about 1pm still groggy from that sleeping pill I took about 2am this morning. I watched the 2nd half of the Montreal/Hamilton game. What a blow out: Hamilton 42/14! I had them to win. Then after that I had the Edmonton/Stamps game. At the half it was Esks 24 Stamps 7. About a 3rd of the way into the game I get this phone call.

It had something to do with Microsoft and my system getting errors. I smelled a scam. I figured I would see what it was alluding to. The first guy spoke very little English. The 2nd guy his "Supervisor" the same I was on the phone for about an hour as they ended up trying to sell me some package that would clean up my computer of viruses. Some company called Ammy wanted to gain access to my bank card and they would charge $1 for an intro system package. As soon as I heard that I got off the phone right away. Something to do with Error messages and stuff. The first one appeared May 12th of this year. He said they could harm my computer. They've been there since May, I don;t think it's an urgent matter. Besides, I'm about to keep a few applications on my system and then I want to do a system restore. Set my computer back to when I first got it out of the box.

After I got off the phone with that fiasco, I went back to check on the game: Esks 35 Stamps 7! That was a shellacking and a half. The return match will be Friday. I had a Proline ticket but only one of my teams won and that was Hamilton. I picked Argo's to win, Winnipeg to win, Hamilton to win and Calgary to win. I didn't have enough cash to get another ticket. But Friday's game is the Stamps coming up here for revenge. Then its Argos/BC, Hamilton/Montreal, Sask/Winnipeg. I like the stamps to win here and get revenge. Argos to win on the road in BC, Montreal to win at home and the Riders to win on the road. 

All in all, I had a decent labour day weekend despite how I had to work and all 6 hours Saturday and 5 hours yesterday. Anne suggested I go in for my regular 8 but take Wednesday off. Sounds like a good idea. Anyway, that's about all for now.

I'm having a

decent Saturday evening. Anne's at work and I'm having the night off.

I was poking around YouTube over the past couple of days and I came upon this DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) on the Linux platform called Rosegarden. Then I came across this cool drum machine called Hydrogen. Rosegarden lets you draw notes in on a musical staff, which is pretty cool. Both programs are free. I'd like to start playing with both but I need to download Linux and I've never played around with this before, so I'm in uncharted waters here.

Apparently it's a good idea, (so I've been hearing on the web) to make a partition drive (currently I'm on Windows 7.) I've got a good tutorial on how to make a partition drive and it seems straight forward enough. The only thing I'm uncomfortable about is the formatting of said new drive for my Linux files. What if this formatting affects my files on my C drive? Once I have the drive formatted, then I'm good to go. I'll download Linux and the two mentioned programs above. I'll draw up some courage and give it a try. Anyway, that's about all for now.