The PolyBlog

Taking a day off

May 1 2023

I need a mental health day tomorrow (Tuesday). I got overwhelmed today, and I’m really tired. I just don’t have the energy to adult tomorrow.

I posted earlier about the progress I thought I was making on the basement. I was ready to spend a bit of time this week testing different setups to finalize the basement TV area. Right. Yeah. Man plans while the universe laughs. Or something like that.

So we’re having our two upstairs bathrooms (main bath and ensuite) renovated. They’re basically “done” with the main bath, which has traditionally been “my” bathroom. It will now become primarily Jacob’s + guests. We should have done this long ago, but well, there was that pandemic. Apparently, it was like a whole thing, messing up plans for lots of things. But his is about done. Which we can all use while they’re redoing the ensuite.

I’m not sure how much I’ll use the ensuite. Married people like to joke that (thing X) “saved our marriage”. Sometimes it’s a second car, or a dishwasher, or housecleaning service, or whatever. A popular one that resonates with us is separate bathrooms. Pre-pandemic, we were always getting ready at the same time. And it’s annoying tripping over each other in the bathroom, not to mention if one of you is stinky that morning, etc. We have had separate bathrooms since we bought our first house and it was awesome to stop sharing. Now? We’re going back to sharing.

Maybe.

Seven or so years ago, we had the basement redone. It might be more than that. Anyway, we had a small bathroom put in with a full shower. Just a small bathroom and it’s mostly just me who uses it. In all of that time, I’ve had less than 10 showers in it. The dehumidifier fan was not strong enough to get the moisture out of the bathroom, a problem we have had in the upstairs bathrooms previously too, but in the basement, the walls would have condensation on them when I showered. It would almost literally run down the walls when I was done. We put in a new high-capacity fan, and the problem was mostly solved. But if I’m going to be using it more now, maybe we can tweak things. So now I’m replacing the very small vanity with an almost full-sized one. And the contractors noted why the walls ran — it’s entirely the wrong type of paint for a bathroom. Great. That WOULD explain some stuff. Plus they have to repaint anyway since they put the new large fan in the ceiling and had trouble putting a light switch where we wanted to put it initially. Rather than a simple touch-up and fan, we’re now repainting everything and putting in a new vanity.

I searched high. I searched low. And I searched Lowes. Where I found a vanity I liked. Which was also on sale. Bonus. Barely managed to get it into the car to bring home, put it in the garage. Today, we started on the downstairs basement (although I’m slightly out of order on the decision), and so they ripped out the vanity. We’ll be down to the one bath upstairs (plus our powder room, we’re not neanderthals!) for a few days, but okay. And then they opened the box for the new vanity, totally destroying the box in the process as they cut it open of course. Why would we need it? Brand new vanity. Oh right, because the legs on the vanity had a bunch of nicks and cracks. Not actual structural cracks, more in the enamel/melamine surface, but well, they’re there. I could probably live with them. Then I looked at the drawers where there were more cracks. Several in fact. On the front surface. I could have tried touching them up, it comes with touch-up paint. But really? A brand new vanity with cracks already? I went back and forth, and if it was a toaster, it would have gone back instantly. But it’s a vanity. Big. Hard to fit in the car. And the box is destroyed. And I hate returning shhhh…stuff. And if they gave me a hard time, was I going to handle it calmly or was I going to lose my shhhh…stuff?

I was also actually working today. Fighting with a file that should have been easy, but it’s been in circlejerk mode for almost 2 weeks, and no sign of it stopping. It’s just flat-out annoying. And demoralizing and frustrating. Plus a couple of other files went sideways on me in the last two weeks, after I am fully staffed and thought we would be FLYING. But we have these files that WILL NOT DIE! 🙂

But let’s get back to the TV, that’s where I started. Some time ago, I mentioned a hole in our ceiling from an air conditioner tech removing an old line from the house. I left it that way for 4 years and had someone fix it recently. They did the drywall, fixed the ceiling problems, fixed an extra look and feel problem, and then they were gone; we only had them for a short time. But they didn’t get to finish it all…no sanding, no mudding, no painting. Just “fixed”. Patched really. And within a week of having it all done? We had the f***ing dishwasher leak from the first floor into the basement right in the same spot. Not terrible, just annoying and frustrating, but livable.

So I asked the contractors here to fix it. Thinking they would replace a section maybe 3″ x 4″? Simple? Right, no. Because to do it properly with the added features before, it really should be fully mudded, and sanded, and painted. Sure. Let’s do that.

Riiight. I have to move everything out of that area — like two desks, my 3D printer, all the boxes under the desk, the stuff sorted into baskets on the floor. And, drumroll please, the TV stand, TV, and all the video games set up and wired there. Back to where it all was a few months ago. So it looks like I’ve made no progress on anything! I’m back to where I f***ing started! Yay me!

All while trying to work my day job. Right.

So I delegated a file back to the originator. Cancelled all of my meetings for tomorrow. Booked it off. Closed out about 30m early today. Slept for 3 hours. Skipped dinner. Woke up. Returned the damaged vanity. Sent email to contractor with selection of new vanity at Home Depot. Just like the other one, only not as nice and more expensive, but hah! It’s in stock and the contractor can use his truck to pick it up! Take THAT, universe!

Now I’m downstairs for the night. Trying to figure out what the f*** happened today, I have plastic ALL over my basement to block future sanding and dust, but it will still carry all through the house. It always does. Whatever, moving on.

In theory, everything will be done here by Friday. I’m not 100% sure of that after today. But optimistic. I might go into the office for W and F this week too, just to get out of the house and not deal with anything.

I’m taking Tuesday off. I’m going to focus on a nice leisurely breakfast while reading Crime and Punishment, although I’m seriously tempted to go sideways with Crime and Law in the form of a Lawrence Sanders’ entry in the original McNally series. Or perhaps introduce myself to Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder. There are about 20+ books in the detective series, and I’ve only read a handful.

I might be able to finish reorganizing my office area in the basement, at least to make it more functional. I turned my work desk to be able to better use my white boards, but now when I sit at my personal computer, if I back up too quickly or at the wrong angle, I smack my work desk. Double sigh.

Now let’s see. No, I don’t know what I’m doing about getting all my gym equipment finally set up as I need to get all the rest of the basement stuff organized so I can get to it. No, I don’t know when I’ll get my damn 3D printer running. No, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make a print ‘n’ play board game for Jacob for his birthday, as I don’t know if I know all the techniques or have all the craft supplies to do it, but I want to try. I still have 27 working days before his actual birthday, right?

Oh and no, I don’t know what I’m doing about an observatory in my backyard, although the current contractors are willing to do the pier AND build me a deck AND a potential roll-away shed for me to be able to use it! I almost have a plan. But well, I also have to pay for it at some point. Hah. I think I’ll let this go until I can order the metal pier for the backyard. Although Andrea would like us to figure out the rest of the backyard landscaping stuff too.

And the electrical work we need done at the front of the house.

And no, I have NO IDEA when I’ll get around to continuing to write my HR guide.

But thanks to my squirrel brain, the questions are never far from asking.

Setting up the TV in the basement…again

April 29 2023

I have commented previously that I’ve been working on re-organizing the basement, which has involved some purging, some movement of movies / Legos / craft materials, reordering desks as much as two years ago, playing with the setup for my work-out gym, etc. It’s been an albatross around my neck since the pandemic started, finishing the basement I mean, and I have even refused to let myself use my new 3D printer until I get all of it done.

Recently, I have been heavily focused on sorting out all the electronic detritus I’ve accumulated in the last 10-20 years. In the last e-waste collection, I took 7 boxes of wires, old phones, old scanners, etc. and a broken toaster oven and dropped them off.

But one of the biggest aspects of the electronic side of things is setting up my TV with everything properly connected, wires run, and internet connections where needed.

That is more complicated than it sounds.

Enter the video side

We have VMedia in our house as our “cable” provider, albeit “cable light” mostly so Andrea and Jacob can watch things like The Flash or Amazing Race Canada when they air. However, I also watch current episodes of shows like Magnum P.I. and Blue Bloods through the CTV app which connects through the VMedia subscription. The box requires internet for service and HDMI as a connector.

I have an older DVD player and it is there for movies as well as some DVD games that don’t work as well when you plug them into Xbox or the PC. It doesn’t require internet but it does have HDMI as the connector.

I also have an Apple TV box…or at least, I bought one. It is in the basement somewhere. Somehow, in moving everything around, I moved it OFF of where it has been sitting for six months annnnnd I don’t know where I put it. It is my main interface for the upstairs computer, I want the same downstairs too, but well, at some point, I’ll find it. I know it needs internet AND an HDMI connection. In theory, I could use it instead of the VMedia box, and I may, haven’t decided yet.

And then I also have the PC/laptop that I frequently am streaming from, so again, an internet connection and an HDMI connection for the TV.

I could, in theory, also connect the TV directly to the internet, but it doesn’t need to; there’s nothing that it would give me that I don’t already have for other connections.

But for a subtotal, that is 4 devices, 3 requiring internet and 4 HDMI connections. If I decide to include a separate laptop, it’s technically 4 requiring internet but the other laptop doesn’t need to connect to the TV.

Enter the game consoles

I have four game consoles for the basement.

The first is an old Playstation 1. I actually own two of them, one that is unmodified and one that is modified. The modified version lets me play games that I copied long ago without having to risk ruining the originals (wink). I bought it while in New York City back in ’98, along with dozens of games. I was REALLY excited to reconnect this one to the TV, to be honest. It’s a great console, and I loved some of the games. One of my favourites is Time Crisis. It’s a GunCon game aka a first person shooter that was a port of an arcade version, but I only ever played it on the PS1. If you had the old Nintendo, think “Duck Hunt” but you’re shooting bad guys as you work your way through a warehouse district. Great game, you can play cooperative two-player, it isn’t heavy on the gore, and it’s relatively easy to play even for non-gamers. So I was excited to get that going again. Until I watched a video last week reviewing different shooting games for the old PS 1 and found out…dun dun dun…the technology ONLY worked on old CRT TVs. It won’t work on the modern stuff. Well, frak. I gave away my old TVs of that type LONG ago. And as much as I love gun games, I am NOT willing to get an old TV to do it. Sigh. On the positive side, it doesn’t require an internet connection, and it uses three-cable composite video for the connection.

Somewhere after the PS1, I picked up a used Nintendo 64. I don’t know why, I don’t remember where, but I have it. Mostly to do Mario Bros games. Including racing. I don’t have that many games for it though. I’ll connect it to be completist, and if I play it some more, I’ll pick up some old cartridges through eBay or whatever. No internet required, and uses three-cable composite video.

For Andrea and I, I think after we moved in together, I picked up a WII. Andrea won the exercise board that went with it, but we already had it, so I think we gave one away. We played from time to time, enjoyed the bowling games, a bit of WII fit, but we weren’t actively using it. However, I think it got left on a little too long once, and I’m not sure it even still works. I’ve connected it, and while it would take an internet connection, none of the websites that it would have connected too still exist. So I’ll settle for the three-cable composite video connection.

I also don’t really remember much about getting the XBox 360. When I bought it, the new XBox was out, but Jacob wasn’t going to be pushing the limit for games anytime soon. We wanted options with more family-friendly choices, Jacob liked it and we played a ton of Disney Infinity, greatly enjoying the ability to play 2-player cooperative on a lot of the games. It will take the internet connection, although I’m not sure much will connect for it anymore, and it does have an HDMI connection for the TV.

So again, for subtotals, that means 4 devices, 1 with internet, 3 with three-cable composite video, and 1 with HDMI.

Chokepoint Charlie

If you’ve been reading about all the connections I need, you might have noticed something. That’s a LOT of connections and most TVs don’t in fact have that many connections available. Particularly slightly older ones, which my downstairs TV is.

What do I actually have? Well, let’s see.

A right/left audio feed. Umm, that won’t get me too far for video. Plus it’s AUDIO OUT, not in. I can run it to my stereo for cheap-ass audio downstairs, but well, I haven’t committed to that yet. I might run my stereo, but perhaps not. Still up in the air on that one.

S-Video? Oh, riiiiight, that looked like an old round keyboard plug for your keyboard. Yeah, I’m not using that for anything.

Full component video? It’s like composite three-cable, but instead it has five. One of the video game consoles used to have both options as I recall, but danged if I remember which, and all of them are set for three-cable at the moment. Maybe one of my boxes has something else but I ain’t going to look too hard.

A PC-in? Great! Oh, wait, it’s a 15-pin VGA connector. Ummm, yeah, I don’t think so.

DVI in but with just audio? Not sure what that’s about. There’s no DVI pin connector for video.

I have something called Service 1 and 2, and an ethernet connection I won’t be using. Sigh.

A connection for an antenna? Hey, I had one for free cable-over-air, but that is gone too. Oh and one for cable in? Yeah, no.

What does that actually leave me? It leaves me 1 set of three-cable video IN plus two HDMI connections.

Let’s see if I can do the math. I have 3 devices needing three-cable video IN, and only have 1. I have devices requiring at least 5 HDMI connections, and I only have room for 2.

But wait, there’s more. I forgot the side inputs — another S-video (yay?) and another three-cable video cable. So now I have 2 three-cable video setting connections but need 3 — unless the Wii no longer works, and still 5 HDMI with only 2 available.

That definitely seems like a choke point. Luckily there are solutions for this.

Enter selectors

Back when I was a young’un, they made very basic toggle switches to let you switch from video game to cable. Don’t tell anyone, but I still had 4 of those little things in my purged TV stuff.

Then they invented more complex devices, basically video hubs with switches. Why? Because most TVs only had ONE connector. You connected all your different video inputs into the hub, and then you could press button A, or button B, or button C to switch the inputs from console 1 to 2 to 3 (or to your VCR, DVD, etc.). Easy peasy, right? Well, not so fast. You had to make sure the cables all ran properly where they needed to go, you needed an extra set on top of all the console connections to run one set to the TV, you needed to be able to switch the TV to VIDEO GAME IN options, and turn the game on so a signal was actually going through the hub to the TV. Still easy, but well, the quality at the final production point — the TV — was not always awesome. There’s a bit of signal degradation. On 8-bit consoles, no big deal. On medium-res graphics running from a decent game console? Maybe a smidge of an issue.

For HDMI, that’s generally “easier” in some ways. They make newer hubs that allow often up to 8 different inputs along with a REMOTE control that lets you switch between 1-8 inputs simply by pressing the button. Hopefully, you have a small index card somewhere near where you’re sitting for you to know that the PC is input #7 and that it’s on. And god help you when there’s a problem and you can’t figure out if the source isn’t sending, the cable in between the source and the hub is wrong, the cable in between the hub and the TV is wrong, or the TV is on the wrong input. Or something else altogether. Sigh. I remember why I didn’t want to spend time on this.

Now, I’ve got the wires. Almost all the boxes are where they are supposed to be. I have more cables to test if something isn’t working. I have a game plan for testing things to ensure they work. Incrementally at least.

I think I know where the HDMI hub is, and I think I have JUST enough feed to get it where it needs to go.

Hmm…I have to also figure out at some point what I did with the new APPLE TV box.

Onward brave soldiers! We can defeat this complex, wired entity! Or electrocute ourselves in the process.

Continuing Crime and Punishment (10-15%)

April 29 2023

I mentioned that I restarted C&P for the fourth time (third time from the absolute beginning, hmm, that means it was likely my fifth time reading, depending on how I count, but I digress). I just pressed my way through two really interesting scenes, one where he gets a letter from his mother, and a second while he is out walking while thinking about the letter. Needless to say, since I’m talking about the plot…spoiler alert!

For the letter, it is fascinating to see the stream of consciousness of another person (the mother) trying to explain what has happened in her daughter’s life (his sister). They have been sending him money as the male in the family and he was struggling, even though they themselves don’t have much. His sister was working in a house, the husband made a serious pass at her which was declined, the wife found out and blamed the girl, huge scandal for several weeks, and then the truth came out — with the wife realizing it was all the husband, the girl had resisted repeatedly and was not encouraging him but had no other job to go to, so couldn’t just quit, etc. The beauty of the letter is unrivalled. It has nuggets galore to think about and ponder…how the mother describes the daughter’s new suitor who has proposed marriage, the idea of the would-be husband that it is better to have a wife who will see the marriage as a saving act to rescue her from poverty rather than a wife who takes him for granted (there are TONS of refs to power imbalances in the letter, with assumptions all around), how the sister has reacted, etc.

And then while he’s walking, we get to see HIS interpretation or almost translation of what his mother has said. His mother and sister are happy, but he suspects it is all terrible, and should be stopped. The man’s designs, the family’s need, it is all a tragedy, and he should be the hero, not the new husband. Again, entirely in his head as he concocts huge scenarios based on the flimsiest of lines in the letter.

But as he walks, he is distracted coming upon a young woman, a girl by his standards, around 16, who is clearly drunk and in a state of disarray for her clothing. He deduces that she has been fed liquor to become intoxicated and then raped (“deceived by a ruffian”), and she is still incredibly drunk, going on about how some quite forward man “wouldn’t let her alone”. She is practically passed out on a bench at one point. He wants to help her, and suspects another passerby of ill intent, that he will take advantage of her too. So he calls a cop, gives him money to help her get home, gets the police involved, accuses the other man of ill intent (a proxy perhaps for his own desires that man always suspects others of having), and then the woman leaves with the police in tow. At which point, the narrator starts to wonder if he should have gotten involved at all, and why did he give away money to help her when he needed it himself? He even yells at the police for getting involved. It’s a bit of a wild ride for a scene.

Yet what strikes me most about these two scenes is that from my previous reading, I had the timeline for them completely different in my mind. I estimated they took place after the titular “crime” that is still to come. This is the third time I’ve read this opening section (0-15%) and yet because of the fits and starts previously, I couldn’t even keep the order of events correct in the timeline. Odd, that.

Anyway, another 5% out of the way at lunch this week. Onward!

Restarting Crime and Punishment (0-10%)

April 26 2023

About 8 years ago, I think, I decided I wanted to read more of the classics of literature. Some were a little more accessible like Dracula; some were a little denser, like Crime and Punishment.

And generally speaking, somewhere around age 42 or 43, I finally turned the page so to speak on my reading habits, where I recognized that life is too short to be reading books I don’t enjoy. Obviously, I’ll never read every book ever written, and my TBR pile just for mysteries will likely outlast me. But if I’m enjoying it, I do tend to stick with it to the end.

Crime and Punishment is challenging me. That’s not surprising, it challenges everyone. The length, the prose, the subject matter is not light reading for most. Add in the translation from Russian and well, it’s at the top of many people’s list of the most challenging book they have attempted. Not necessarily the most challenging book ever, just of the ones they’ve attempted. Many of the really challenging ones from classic lit are rarified items for anyone to attempt or finish. But C&P is enduring. Lots of people read it at university, some read it in high school. And it remains to this day a frequent if not actually popular choice.

On Attempt #1, perhaps 8 years ago, I managed to get about 20% of the way into it. Attempt #2, a few years later, I continued from there and got another 5% or so. Attempt #3, about 2 years ago, I made it in fits and starts all the way to about 60%.

It’s not a bad book, but a page-turner it is not. It is really slow to read, with most of the story happening in the narrator’s head. A lot of time is spent while he wanders around the city, doing other things, with a stream of consciousness (before the term existed) and conversation with himself being the main output on the page. It sounds terrible, but it’s amazingly well done. It would be hard for anyone to read without recognizing themself in the thought pattern, if not the situation. For example, in the opening chapter, you see a youngish man, maybe 30 or so, it’s hard to tell, who has been at university, worked for a while, and now dealing with poverty. Much of the first 40% of the book is dealing with urban poverty, in fact, and how one’s mind reacts to it. As the book opens, he is going to do something that he finds morally repulsive, and so he tells himself that he can’t really do it, he isn’t that low (yet!), and that it is merely an intellectual exercise. It’s how he protects his psyche from reality. It IS happening, he IS going to do it, he just hasn’t sunk that low yet.

I had hoped that I would be able to restart at the 60% mark where I left off. I had just finished a much simpler fantasy tome, and saw it on my Kindle, taunting me. I do enjoy it, and I do want to finish it; it’s just slow going. So I flipped through until I found my last spot, but as I went, I saw a few parts that I wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t been flipping. Much of the first 60% is lost to me, too much time has passed. Reluctantly, I restarted the book at the beginning during lunch yesterday. I skimmed through the commentary at the start, some of the author’s life, etc. And then restarted the story.

Reading it this time has a bit of a different feel to it. He has been isolated from people for some time, not only in terms of just avoiding people, but also a bit of illness and social distancing. Sound familiar? Anyway, he’s pawning some jewellery while contemplating a more serious crime. Shortly thereafter, he goes into a tavern, which he is not used to doing, and after a bit of drink, he starts to feel better. He craves some company, and he gets it in the form of a drunk civil servant who shares a tale of woe (civil servant, married a widowed woman with kids, lost his job due to drinking, family fell on very hard times with daughter turning to prostitution, but he gets his job back so everything is right with the world for a week until the takes all the money and runs off to the tavern, sells his good clothes when he runs out of money, and now fears going home).

It’s a little heavy-handed for the drunk’s tale, as he debates if he is a bad person or simply a weak person who has done bad things. But it was a bit interesting that I did the “quick” flip-through to see where I had left off, before deciding to restart at the beginning. In one of the scenes I flipped to, that same character shows up somewhere around the 50% mark, and I confess, I had no memory from reading it previously that it was the same character. Only by happenstance of having re-read the other scene just before starting again where you meet him for the first time that I realized it was the same person. It confirmed that I was right to restart, I just wasn’t tracking the people well enough.

I will try to read it at lunch more regularly, and make it through to the end this time. Fingers crossed. With the opening commentary and the first few chapters, I’m officially at 10%. If I can manage 3% a day for the next month? Hope springs eternal, perhaps.

Fake it ’til you feel it?

April 24 2023

In my previous post, I noted that “my” spring, what I call PolySpring, takes place on April 24th. You know, dun dun dun…today!

It’s the day by which I feel all the snow is guaranteed to be gone from my front-yard, and I’m ready for real spring. Normally, I would have already used the BBQ quite a few times…so far this year? Thrice. Pretty basic stuff so far.

But I wouldn’t say I’m feeling like Spring. My body hates me right now, really feeling bloated and slow and tired.

We are also doing a home reno right now, three bathrooms (which started as two bathrooms and grew), so things are a bit chaotic. Electricians are coming today so a bit of cleanup to get things ready for them.

And I have about 8 active files at work, with three taking nose dives on Friday. They just didn’t go as planned, after I was feeling things were working pretty well with my team. There’s a national strike but it doesn’t really affect my team.

I have some stuff to do in the basement that I thought I would get done this weekend, and I don’t feel like I accomplished hardly ANYTHING. I moved a desk. Woohoo! Sigh.

So I am sooo not feeling great about anything right now. I’m not even feeling like faking it, you know? I have to, for work, for the team, but it’ll be a struggle this week. Maybe I can fake trying to fake it?

It’s a long way to summer vacation.