My interests are varied and today I figured I’d talk about two of them.
Category: Uncategorized
-
Fiat gone, but not forgotten, new ride, laptop woes
As the snow flies this Saturday afternoon and I prepare to go out with my spouse to run some errands, I sit here quietly in my office contemplating a warm cup of coffee and looking at wires and harness connectors strewn all over my desk. The wires are for a new car radio that my spouse bought me for Christmas for my new ride, a 2012 Toyota Yaris I picked up about two weeks ago (lower left)
As you may recall from my previous post, my beloved little Fiat 500 (above right) had a problem with a drive shaft that turned into an almost two week ordeal trying to find a replacement part. Since I needed a car to get to work, time was of the essence and in the end I had to get rid of a whole car because I couldn’t find a part in time. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. I ended up finding a good deal on a gently used Toyota Yaris four door Sedan. It’s certainly not sexy or cute like the little Fiat was, doesn’t turn heads or make children smile, but it will be dependable transportation, hey it’s a Toyota! I’ve had many Toyota Echos grace my driveway over the years, so I know these cars very well. As you can see above, the little Fiat, which I had named Kira, ended up on a flat bed truck as I gave her to a charity who will fix her eventually and auction her off to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to the Montreal SPCA to help little kitties and doggies. Good luck little Kira, hopefully you’ll go on to some great adventures.
As for the little laptop I ordered, a Lenovo X270, it was never shipped and fearing a scam, I opened a dispute with Paypal to get a refund, that is still pending as of this writing. I think I’ll just stick to my old laptop for now and use the money perhaps for a trailer hitch on the aforementioned Yaris, more news on that later.
What’s next, financial recuperation for one, buying another car was never in the cards. I also have to seriously start looking for Christmas gifts for the gang. Like last year I’ll probably do the donations on behalf of everyone along with a fun little joke gift or stocking-stuffer. I’m hoping once things settle in the new year I can get back to some other projects, ideas and past-times that I’ve been meaning to get reacquainted with.
-
#octaver25 – Day 15 What was the last music you purchased.
For this particular entry I chose to stick with “new” recording, CD, etc…
See below for the two medias mentioned in the audio.
-
Four day week
I finally took the plunge and have decided to reduce my full-time work hours at my job. I’m dropping down to a four-day week, which I hope will give me a bit of time to get back to some of my projects and past-times that have long since been swept aside. I’ll have more details coming soon as it’s been several months since I’ve posted anything on this site. In fact my last post was ‘supposed’ to be on my trip to Calgary and Banff and I realized I never finished that post.
So just an update, I signed the necessary documents and so starting Sept 15th I will now be working four days a week, which, as I mentioned, will afford me some time to pursue some of my other interests. Now what will be a little strange is that I have an accompanying website, which will be my actual virtual workshop and lab, you can find it over at http://www.slandi.net, there I hope to post more in-depth articles about some of my projects and creative endeavours. Exactly what those are remains to be seen, as I have so many interests, hobbies, past-times and I’m constant finding new things due to my insatiable curiosity. So many, in fact, that more often than not I never finish I start. One of the reasons I’ve started this blog and also my slandi.net site is that I want to force myself to see some of these projects through to some kind of end, or at least give them some substance.
-
A Great Trip to Calgary, Banff and Lake Louise
Description
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”1″ display=”basic_thumbnail” thumbnail_crop=”0″ maximum_entity_count=”500″] -
Canada first initiative
Now with the US administration having put into place the 25% tariffs as they had threatened and Canada doing a tit for tat and imposing tariffs on incoming US goods I felt it was time for me on a personal note to reduce the number of US-based online services and products I am using. I started with my domain name and email provider. I initiated a transfer to a Canadian-based domain and DNS host as well as email provider. This should all go down by the end of this coming week.
I was also subscribed to the US-based Tidal music streaming service and severed my account with them and opened up one with a French-based company Qobuz, OK, not Canadian-based, but at least it’s not in the US. I also stopped donating, at least for the immediate future, to SOMA FM, one of my favourite online Internet radio stations out of San Francisco. Again, it’s nothing personal against the fine people working there or elsewhere, it’s just that I feel compelled to support my fellow Canadians in this very difficult moment.
Only time will tell what will happen next… -
Happy New Year 2025
Wow, 2025! I don’t know about you but that number looks very sci-fi doesn’t it? It’s already seven days into 2025 and so far so good 🙂 In years past, in fact for most of my adolescent and adult life I’ve always taken January as a month of reflection to look at and plan my upcoming year, take hold of the year that passed and work towards resolutions, blah blah blah 🙂 Not this year, at least not in the same way. I’ve decided that this year will be a year of action. No more planning things to death but simply having a todo list and knocking things off of it. What exactly? Well for starters I had the installation of a new dishwasher, which was done two days ago. It didn’t go smoothly as our kitchen was built in place and isn’t standard at all. So at the moment, although the dishwasher is installed and works fine, it’s skewed forward so that it looks like it’s open all the time but in fact it’s closed. I will revisit it this coming weekend where I will cut away a portion of the top of the cabinet so that it will sit flush and at least look a little better. It’s kind of a moot point as one of the todos on my list is to redo the kitchen entirely. More on this in later posts.
I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year 2025, may you all have Heatlh, Happiness and Peace as we embark on what might become a very divisive year with American politics very much in the forefront and our own Canadian politics in upheaval. We’ll have to hang tight and ride out all the storms and hopefully we’ll all be OK in the end.