Its been a busy week

what with working from 3-9 for most of it and getting the new computer up and running. This week as of tomorrow, I'm 3-9 again as we're trying to wrap up this project. I don't mind. Its just the commute in during those warm +28 days gets a bit stressful. Unlike the new buses, these ones have no AC. My #5 at that time of the day, is standing room only from Central station to about 116th street. I'm aggressive getting on the bus because I couldn't stand for 15 minutes. The #5 is a milk run from when I board until I get off across the street from Alberts.

So far the new computer is working fine. memory Express suggests to wait for about a week before activating Windows 10 to make sure I'm happy with this computer. When I was going through the parts inventory from a quote, the motherboard I was going to get was not in stock. A minor price increase got me a B360M DS3H intel Gigabyte motherboard. The Asus board, had only 2 lanes of Ram this one has 4. I can max this out to 64Gb of ram. The i5 Hexacore cpu seems to be holding out pretty good starting out at 3Ghz. So far no issues. The gpu is a EVGA GeForce gtx 1060 with 6Gb of memory. The reviews on this card are pretty good. Some say this card gets hot, but its not meant for gaming for my purposes. I'm impressed with how fast this build boots up. I also got from EVGA some under the hood software tools. I haven't tried them out yet but when I get back to work steady in the fall, I'll upgrade this machine before Christmas. From watching various You Tube video's installing a gpu seems pretty basic. This pci card was priced at ~ $400 but it just has a single fan. The computer case came with a 500 Watt ps but I'd like to upgrade that to a 700 Watt ps. 

Last night I began working on getting obs to work on this system. Its not this system's fault its not working but getting obs to work isn't that straight forward. It has to do with the black screen. After about 4 hours of this I gave up and felt resigned to get an Elgato capture card. I have the cash on hand to get one now if I want from Best Buy across the street. I might have enough work to get me to the middle of July. At this time I can't justify laying out $225 for a capture card. Its tempting, but I have other obligations. Then after looking for a online or a competitive solution to obs, (Xsplit etc) I found Flashback Express. Its free for the basic edition, and there is also a paid edition as well. I tried screen recording one of my recent videos and it captures system audio. I need to tweak the screen resolution and the hot keys, which I'll be working at latter among other things.

So after this round of projects at work in the fall, I need to work just 3 days week. We get some health benefits and perks from the Province/City because I'm a senior. Regardless a seniors bus pass for me is $15/month as opposed to the regular adult monthly pass at almost $100. If we can keep the household income low and sustainable enough we can each get a $800/year rec centre pass for free. Plus Anne gets her monthly bus pass to $35 instead of $96 or what ever they cost. Also once I file for my gis, when work slows down, I'll be able to get the Low income senior bus pass at $57/year.

In wrapping up here, the Sun is going behind the clouds. I'm hoping for a afternoon shower to cool things off around here. I'm drinking my coffee, enjoying my afternoon off. I'm getting back into NI's Maschine as their most recent update will accommodate my Mk2 device. I need to contact their customer service too see if I can get this device up and running again but I'm having Service Centre issues. After 6 years of use the hardware still holds up. As for this week, I'm in the office from 3-9. I should mention before I go, the passing of a Xentel colleague. I worked with Dave Ross for years. Another "Xentelian" said he passed away just this last month. Privacy prevents me from saying more. As for me, things are running ok around here. I've got a full week leading up to the long weekend, which (fingers cross) could be 4 days off for Jimmy. That's all for now.