My Diary #247

Life

Firstly, some bookkeeping from last week. I was so excited by the new camera that I completely missed one big update to wrap up the Telus PureFibre outage from the week before. Last last Sunday, on Jul 26, and a mere two days after I filed the CCTS complaint against Telus, Manpreet texted me and asked if he could come by that day to switch my router back to the PureFibre 3G as the issue had been fixed. However, he also said that he needed access to the electrical room again, so I told him that he'd have to wait for Monday as the rental office wasn't open on Sunday. Okay, he said. Monday it was.

He came by on Monday morning at about 9:30 am or so, after a pit stop by the apartment complex's electrical room, and swapped out a receiver in my Telus modem, back to the one that accepted 3 gig fibre connections or whatever. And bam, the internet was fixed. The outage lasted about 7 days and 16 hours or so, though I had slower cable-speed internet for about 5.5 of those days and tethered my mobile connection for the other 2.

When I asked Manpreet what the issue was, he said something about the connectors needing to be fixed and, interestingly, said that the reason it took so long was because Bell took care of them here in Alberta and so the Telus techs needed Bell to come down and fix them. So it was really a Bell issue. Uhhuh. As a sidenote, he mentioned passingly that the situation was reversed in Ontario -- there Telus controlled the connections and if they went down for a Bell service, they'd have to wait for Telus to come fix them.

A nice lady from Telus called me later on that afternoon and inquired about the CCTS ticket too. I told her that the issue had been resolved to my satisfaction. She said that if I wanted any more compensation I could call the customer service line to talk about it, the same way that I had the previous Sunday, and I said that no, they had already given me what I felt was fair and I didn't require any more credit. She asked if they could inform CCTS that the ticket was resolved and could be closed, and I said yes.

So that was that. Because all that happened near the start of the week, it got completely overwhelmed by the shiny camera toy later on in the week, and all the fiddling and configuring and tests that were needed for that. And talking about the camera, I didn't run any streams for it this week because there were no thunderstorms or any unique events like that scheduled by Mother Nature, although there's a low to moderate chance of rain every day next week, so who knows.

Although I didn't stream from the balcony camera, I did leave it running overnight most nights and reviewed the footage in the morning to see if I found anything interesting. Of note, there was a police car meetup in the Southgate Centre parking lot on Tuesday morning, which I duly posted on YouTube:

Someone in the video comments thought it was the police meeting up to coordinate their forces before they went to a tough call, but I don't think so because of how long it took, and because they all split up and went different ways at different times instead of all leaving at once. But who knows! I thought it was kind of neat still. I love my apartment view.

The camera did get knocked over slightly twice this week by what I assume was strong winds blowing at just the right angle, though who knows for sure. I'd just wake up to the horizon being severely tilted. It was also very difficult getting the angle of the camera just right again, because not only did I need to get just the right tilt to make the horizon straight, I also had to turn the camera left or right just enough that the carpark wall across the middle of the screen was straight too. In the end I decided I didn't care too much about the latter, especially if the wind was just going to eventually knock it askew again.

I wonder what solutions I have to "lock" the camera into place. I still have some hoops and rings that I haven't attached to the camera yet, and that I could use to bolt it to the leg of the balcony or something, but even that might not save it from getting tilted by wind. I also need to figure out exactly what to get to offload my OBS onto so that I can run it 24/7 without running it on my PC 24/7. The thing with doing the latter is not the processing power or electricity per se but that it keeps the computer monitor on all night, and when I'm away from the computer from an extended period of time. I guess that's electricity in a sense, but it's more of a monitor lifetime thing for me I guess. And maybe easier sleeping at night, although as far as I know I have never really been affected by the ambient light from computer monitors or anything else when it comes to falling asleep.

Gemini recommended a new app to me that I'm going to recommend to the blog as well so I never forget about it. One piece of logistics with running my camera is that I also run an app called MediaMTX (local) on my machine to intercept the RTSP feed from the camera and send it on to wherever else it needs to go (my OBS, for example, though my phone can also remotely access it this way). But MediaMTX, at least on Windows, runs in a command prompt window that's perpetually open, and I didn't like that. In addition, I also had a couple other apps that occasionally sit in my Windows taskbar that I constantly have open but do not care for having the window constantly sitting there taking up room, Chatterino (local) being one of them.

The app in question that Gemini suggested was called RBTray (local), and it allows me to right click on an app's minimize button (among other methods) to make its taskbar window disappear and a button for the app appear in the system tray instead. And because I have an ongoing self-rule that all the actual apps with system tray buttons are dragged out of the "Show hidden icons" overflow system tray panel to the actual system tray panel where I can see them all the time, I've instead left these new RBTray-created buttons inside the button overflow menu and used that menu for a sort of ad-hoc organization instead. Sort of like filling a physical cube storage box and then shoving that into a physical shelf that fits the cube.

Talking about filling up storages, I completely missed this month's Safeway Appreciation Day discount on Aug 04, the first Tuesday of this month. Oops. The reason for this is that I went out to the Edmonton Heritage Festival on Mon Aug 3rd, and this involved a bus trip to William Hawrelak Park and then a 20,000 step odyssey around the park that left my legs very sore and unwilling to move the day after. I managed to plod through over 600 pictures in the end and filter out enough to make my usual chronicle blog post over here, and published it on the early morning hours of Aug 09 just before this blog post went up, so please go read the details of the trip over there too if interested. (But I'll pull out Tigey's two new portraits for this post, too!)

Not only was I in no physical shape to do anything but be lazy the next two days, the park was really muddy as well and so my shoes (and socks) were spattered with quite a bit of mud by the time I got home. I no longer have the sort of shoe brush that I used to use when I was a kid to wash my shoes with, so Gemini suggested I leave the shoes overnight so any remaining mud would harden, then knock all the mud off, and then use a toothbrush and some soap water to clean the shoes after that instead. Now, if there's one thing I have from the myriad trips I've taken, it's an abundance of spare toothbrushes, and I had still kept several worn down ones from TWO trips ago around for an occasion such as this. So one of them gracefully sacrificed itself to more or less whiten (or at least un-brown) my shoes again after my Monday adventure, and then I set the shoes up in a corner to dry off. But this was done on Tuesday, which meant no going out on Tuesday, which meant that the Safeway Appreciation Day this month, and my poor, poor 15% discount on all goods, was out of sight and out of mind.

Still, I cheered myself up by taking a trip to T&T Supermarket later on in the week anyway. I picked up enough groceries between that trip and an auxillary trip to Safeway to fully stock my pantry box, cupboard, and fridge to the point that I probably have enough stuff to survive two full weeks without ever stepping outdoors now. Bring the torrential rain on, Mama Nature! In all seriousness, being well-stocked makes me feel very happy.

While on this trip, I took note that the JYSK store that had been doing a closing-down sale for forever near the T&T store was now finally gone, and replaced with a Canada Computers store.

Interesting. I think it's the first Canada Computers store in Edmonton. I've bought a (lousy) Gigabyte laptop and a (good) Gigabyte monitor from them in the distant past. I should go check them out at some point, but this week was not that point. I also noticed that the liquidator store nearby was still vacant, but that it was undergoing renovations, so it likely was earmarked for some new tenant already. Which one? Who knows!

I also wanted to highlight a couple of pictures that I took from inside the T&T Supermarket store. The first one being these giant ramen cups, which I'm always tempted by, but seriously how do I even bring these home without a large vehicle? Answer: I don't.

And what's with the name of these things? Cookies called Couque D'asses? Really, Sanritsu? Cooked asses? Did you know what you were doing or did you not (and both are equally probable, I'd say, knowing the Japanese and their propensity for poor translations)?

I did bring back a bunch of new things from my shopping trip to try, starting with these two bags of mushrooms for soup:

The left one is dried, dehydrated mushrooms, and with Gemini now having given me an idea of how to use them, I'm going to try to integrate them into my biweekly hotpot soup thing. The one on the right is an actual mushroom soup er.. starter pack itself, I guess, for when I'm lazy and want to try some soup and rice with less effort sometime. I love mushrooms in general so I hope those taste good.

I also brought back a couple jars of condiments to try with my white rice and leftover soup dinners. I've finished all my previous jars so it was time for something new. So far, so good. Unpictured is a second jar of green onion kimchi from H-Mart. Love it, but it's dastardly expensive, like everything else from H-Mart. Something like $16 for a small jar about the same size as these two.

Lastly, next to the cooked asses above was a box of strawberry and matcha custard cakes that followed me home as well.

That picture does look rather delectable, doesn't it? Unsealed, each packet contained one of these little cakes:

But I had four of them over the course of the week (one while writing up this paragraph), and though I could taste the tinge of strawberry in there, it was very weak and there was never any blood-red treasure inside of the cakes. Well, I suppose they had a TINY splotch in one corner of the matcha of each one, as seen in the second picture in the tiny gallery below. And that was the one out of the four that had the most strawberry. These cakes are very lame. Lame, lying Lotte. Nothing like the pictures at all. All four cakes combined had about as much strawberry as is visible in that one picture. And let's not talk about how the matcha is nowhere as creamy-looking as the picture too. At least there was matcha though.

Lastly, this isn't food but I also bought some new aloe cream to try since despite the relatively cool weather, I still get what I think are heat rashes (or some sort of related rashes) sometimes on my body, particularly near my left armpit/shoulder. It's very weird. This was a cheap $5.29 gamble to try. And smells nice.

This week, I also said goodbye to some pots and pans that I've had for well over 10, probably closer to 15, years at this point. I took a goodbye picture of them before tossing them into the dump.

Before I get yelled at for their condition, I haven't actually used either one in years, I just have a problem throwing well-worn stuff away sometimes so they've been sitting on the stove, gathering rust and oil spatters and holding other things like plastic packets on occasion while I'm cooking other stuff. Both have handles that were long broken -- the one on the left had a second handle on the far side that's now just a stub, and the one on the right leaks water from where the handle meets the pot itself. It's been so long since I used the one on the left that its replacement, the one I got from T&T in Dec 2024, is itself now consigned to a backup pan/miscellany holder on the stove since I now have my new All-Clad pan to use for soup instead.

That pan is a little temperamental, and already has required a wash-down with heated vinegar and another one with heated baking soda and water to remove some stains, and a lesson from Gemini on what the etymology of the "stainless steel" misnomer term is, but it's actually been a pretty good pan so far otherwise. At Gemini's advice, I also bought something called "Bar Keepers Friend" when I saw it on sale at Dollarama, to keep around to help clean it when needed. Oh, that happened last week too, not this week. Same time I bought those two notebooks.

Next, I need to get rid of some of my shoes that I haven't worn in years.

And to wrap up this section, here's the nicest picture from the week, at, well... all these are timestamped now when I take them as screenshots through my camera. So Thu, Aug 06 2026 at 5:09 pm. I like crepuscular rays.

Games

While Quasimorph (local) didn't really capture me last week, it sunk its claws into me a little bit more this week, and I think I played it more than any other game. They simplified and cleared up the UI in a patch this week, which was nice. I've had a few victories that were squeaked out of REALLY precarious situations though, and that sort of magic is one of the things that enthralls me about PvE extraction shooter games.

And there was that one time I accidentally force-shot instead of force-moved, fired a bouncing weapon off the wall straight back at myself, and sliced off four of my body parts. This was after mission completion though, so my character clone, while in shock, managed to stumble to the exit and extract successfully and undergo repairs back at base. Came out of that mess with four rare achievements though.

I continued playing Hades II (local) this week as well and have 6 wins in the Underworld and 2 wins on Mount Olympus now. Still working towards the final ending, and working on the upgraded bosses, but at a leisurely pace. I also went back to Judgment (local) for a day or so but promptly got distracted again. Someday.

I finished playing Zombie Army Trilogy (local) with Satinel this week as well. That final Hitler boss fight level was something else, but I found it fun even though we had to try it many times. We optimized our route as we went and eventually managed to complete it after a couple dozen tries. Now we're on Zombie Army 4: Dead War (local), which graphically and jank-wise seems to have gone through upgrades, but it lacks collectibles hidden through the level to find from far away and shoot! Only some weird zombie hand thing that scuttles around, and a few documents to find and walk into to pick up per level. Also, it's infested with DLC as much as it's infested with undead. So much is locked out even with the full base game and one free season pass. Characters, cosmetics, levels, weapons, a bit of everything. A very poor, greedy showing from Rebellion, the dev studio behind the game.

Plushie of the Week #240

Just like the merlion plushie last week, this one is another Singapore-themed plushie that Kel has, but one which I don't know the provenance of, other than that she acquired it within the last couple of years. This one is a... capybara, apparently, wearing a neck band with a Singapore flag and two Singaporean slang terms on it. I'm not sure what the actual origin of the plushie is -- from dead links on Google Image Search, it seems that it might be linked to Singapore's 60th National Day celebrations in 2025, but who knows for sure really. The plushie itself is a variation of something like this one (local), from Walmart.

By the way, Singapore's National Day is today! Aug 09.

The slang term on the front of the necklace says "Can Lah", which is a Singlish slang way of saying "Okay" or "Will do" or "I can do it" or something along those lines. Usually paired with something like "Can lah, don't worry (about it)." The one on the back, Huat Liao, is actually not a term I remember from my years in Singapore but apparently means "I'm rich!" or "I've become rich!". Well! That explains why I didn't know it. Teehee?

Front:

Back:

Back of neck band:

It has come to my attention that I don't think I own any capybara plushies.

Dreams

Aug 03 2026

• Snippet: I was seated at an airport in Jamaica on a layover, waiting for my connecting flight to arrive, and planning out what mirrors to buy to fulfil a different plotline in my dream. The manager of the airline that I was flying came over to chat, and when I told him my destination, he told me with puzzlement that the next flight they had going there was in three days. I looked at my phone clock and ticket and realized that I had missed the plane due to misreading when it would arrive, and the plane had actually left at 3:19 pm whereas it was already past 5:00 pm now. Still, as I was going to spend about 10 days at my end destination anyway, I didn't mind adjusting my itinerary and spending three days checking out Jamaica instead, since flight adjustments were free, although I first decided to go see if any other airline's flight would take me there earlier than that.

Aug 05 2026

Dream 1

• I was at a friend's flat and was taking part in a tabletop role-playing game with them. There were about six of us in total.
• During an interlude, a friend left to order some fried noodles for the group to eat, and I also left and headed off to a nearby restaurant to buy two packs of chicken as a surprise to add to everyone's noodles meal.
• After making my order at a window that reminded me of a school canteen, I went to the toilet in the back of the restaurant, then came back to the window to pay.
• The food was brought out on plates soon after, and I learnt much to my annoyance that takeout actually cost 200 yen more per plate, with the extra charge covering the packaging.
• I paid the extra 400 yen, and they packed the chicken into two boxes of different sizes. I placed the larger one on top of the smaller one in my reusable grocery bag and left the restaurant still mildly annoyed.

Dream 2

• I went on a trip to Japan with Tes, which was arranged by some agency in an office on the third floor of a building that applied time schedule rules that we had to adhere to.
• Among other things, one of the places we visited was a mall that I had apparently lived next to on a previous trip to Japan, a one-storey mall with a rectangular interior walking path that passed by some novelty gift stores on the left and a food court on the right near the entrance, and some clothing and other goods stores in the middle further in, and then a supermarket on the far side of the mall from the entrance.
• There was also a temple building with a counter staffed by attendants from Yasaka Shrine outside the mall, and I acquired a goshuin, or temple stamp, from them in my brand new temple stamp book since my first one was full now.
• I was a little late headed back to the car with Tes and a woman from the agency, and arrived back just as Tes contemplated calling me on my phone to ask where I was. I showed him the goshuin once we were back in the car, and we moved on to another location.
• I don't remember the other locations that we went to, but I did get a haircut at one of them.
• I also remember a white field or boxed-in area with a hydra in it that we were tossing balls at, with each ball representing something that we did on the trip. We had 7 days to defeat the hydra and could only do so by tossing 75 balls at it over any consecutive 3-day period within the 7 days.

Aug 08 2026

• Snippet: Jon, Kel, and I were inside a small and narrow apartment with retro technology, including a landline phone, a television playing old videos and music, and soft yellowish lights. We were discussing nostalgic things from back when we were young, even though all three of us were in our adult forms. A train rumbled by on rails that passed by literally just outside our apartment door. Mom called us when I went to the toilet, and as I heard her speak with Jon and Kel, I felt a sense of danger outside and a slight but rising sense of panic in me.
• Snippet: I was at a carnival with a couple of other people and we were doing things at different countries' tents so that I could catalogue each tent. I remember that at one tent, Jah rigged a tablecloth on top of a large meeting table to be soaked in such a way that it was dripping water down to underneath the table, and then put another dry tablecloth on top to conceal the wet one. This was so that we could hide there and overhear military leaders having secret conversations while they had dinner there. At another stall, Kel was really good at the carnival game there and although we had four rounds to shoot 25 things or something similar, she got 24 of them with her first round to score a whopping 96%, a new carnival record.

Aug 09 2026

• Snippet: I was doomed or broken in some way, which meant that something was wrong with me and I was likely to leave the world soon, though this was framed differently in the dream from dying, and more as running out of energy. But this also meant that I had the ability to shift into a ghost form, and I did so to save my energy as I planned to float out of the train station, through my school, and then head towards a building that was a cross between a bookstore and a bank to ask the staff members there to adjust some game or map setting to help accommodate me. While I was headed through the school, Drongo saw me and realized something was wrong, and while asking what happened, he followed me and helped me through the doors, which were difficult to deal with as a ghost. Once I was in the bookshop, I finally told him and the staff what happened at the same time, and he helped disseminate the news to some of my other friends later on too to save me more energy.