Month: July 2023

Save (for one whole week) on foods

From the Save On Foods weekly flyer:

Today is July 13. This means Save On Foods is guaranteeing they won’t raise prices on a select number of items for (hold onto your hats) one entire week!

What a truly wondrous offering from our food supplying overlords.

This seems like a good spot for some internet links. These links are good until July 19…and beyond!

DuckDuckGo search on “food store greed”: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=food+store+greed&t=newext&atb=v382-7&ia=web

Some of the results:

Corporate greed at the grocery store is making people go hungry

Inflation: Why Canada grocers are accused of ‘greedflation’ – BBC

Grocery giants are screwing Canadians—and farmers have proof

Prime Day shmime day!

When Amazon started its “Prime Day” deal a few hundred internet years ago, it was obvious what would happen if it became a success:

  • Amazon would expand it to be more than just a single day to better milk it. (Done. It’s now spread over two days.)
  • Other stores/sites would shamelessly copy it and cleverly call their versions something different (“48-Hour Sales Event”, “Black Friday in July”) but you totally know it’s their version of “Prime Day.” (Done. Two-day sales are everywhere now during Amazon’s event.)
  • Amazon would start to make the deals worse because now they have the inertia and know people are going to look and buy, anyway. They’d also start making it harder to get good deals by making them time-limited (even within the two days of the sale) or require you to reserve a spot to qualify to give them your money. (Done and done.)
  • Every tech (and many other) sites would report on “Prime Day” as if it were legitimate news. It is not legitimate news. (Done x1 billion.)
  • A lot of those same tech (and other sites) would be filled with articles on the “best deals” for the entire two days, crowding out more interesting content. Or just any content. (Done. My favourite punching bag, engadget, has 17 hits for “prime day” on its main page–which actually seems on the low side!) EDIT: Just for fun, The Verge has 10 hits, Ars Technica has 2.
  • I would complain about “Prime Day” in a blog post and refuse to write it without surrounding it with quotation marks, implying I’m saying it with sarcasm. (Boy howdy, done!)

Here is an image of a prime cat for your viewing pleasure:

A trip down OneNote lane

I’d kind of forgotten how I used OneNote for a few years as my note-taking app1Skip to the last paragraph to find out why I am randomly discussing OneNote. It’s multiplatform–basically everything but Linux2Unless you use the web version–and while the UI is a bit odd, it makes sense once you realize it apes real world use: a series of notebooks (sections), each with their own pages (sets of notes).

Unlike something like Obsidian (which I use currently) it’s all in a proprietary format and your notes are saved to a folder somewhere on OneDrive, so exporting your notes to another program is not exactly a straightforward task (I only see an option to export pages as PDFs). Which also explains why none of my OneNote notes are in Obsidian.

On the plus side, this is a full WYSIWYG app, so you can easily add audio, video, images and other files, mess around with different fonts and styles and basically go crazy doing things that are impossible in a plain text file. That has definite appeal to a visually-minded dope like me.

I’m…somewhat tempted to try it again. I shouldn’t. Having text-only notes keeps me focused or sane or something. I don’t need to be able to dictate my notes using a microphone.

Do I3No, I do not. Yet I want to do so now. Badly. I am bad and should feel bad.?

Look, I’m sticking to Obsidian and there’s nothing I can do to convince me otherwise. Probably almost for sure.

This post brought to you by the seeming death knell of Evernote and the comments offering suggestions for replacing it.

UPDATE, a day later: I haven’t started using OneNote again, but I have started to copy and paste relevant notes from it into Obsidian.

Day 12 of you-know-what

Yep. Let’s take inventory:

  • Energy level: Pretty much back to normal
  • Sleep: Back to normal
  • Running: Still not running, but this is more a knee thing
  • Stretching: I’ll resume today. Promise!
  • Coughing: None unless I contort my body in weird ways
  • Sneezing: Nope
  • Runny nose: A little
  • Phlegm: Let me tell you, I am probably producing that same amount of phlegm right now as a hundred people combined. Maybe a thousand. It’s gross. I am grossing myself out writing about it. But it is finally diminishing.

Really, I’m just surprised I find myself thinking, “COVID-19 wasn’t that bad.” Because it really wasn’t.

Here’s one more (tiny, adorable) kitten:

Mini golf, July 9, 2023: Two men and a pair of balls (and putters)

Jeff and I finally returned to Eaglequest in Coquitlam to play 18 holes of mini golf for the first time in a few years. It was fun!

The weather was nice–sunny, but not overly hot (around 25?). Being a Sunday, it was quite busy, and we did have a family eventually catch up to us, but let them play through, and it was fine otherwise. We never felt rushed. The kids were playing in that style little kids favour for golf: Everyone hit their balls one after the other, then general chaos all over the hole until mom goes, and they clear out and move on. It’s fun to watch–for a time.

As for us, we usually end up being only a stroke or so apart, with Jeff often taking the edge, but I was in rare form today!

Technically, we both got a hole in one, Jeff on Hole 2 and me on Hole 13. I say technically because every hole has a Hard and Easy option and being hardcore mini golfers, Jeff suggested we go for the Hard holes. Jeff’s hole in one came when he accidentally sank his first shot into the Easy hole on Hole 2. Whoops! Mine was the normal way on Hole 13, which proved to be lucky for me.

I usually start strong and fall apart toward the end, but this time I started out with my worst hole – a par 5 on Hole 1, then stayed pretty consistently around par after that. Jeff seemed to have a knack for making the ball veer just slightly left and won the Most Balls to Catch The Rim Then Go Rolling Past it Like a Rocket using Gravity to Slingshot it Out of Orbit Award. He corrected this after a while, so we both finished showing off the awesome form we knew we were capable of. You know, as hardcore mini golfers.

Here’s the official™ scorecard:

A view of (part of) the course:

A short video of me almost getting a hole in one on Hole 17:

Jeff getting ready to tee up at Hole [unknown because I cut the sign off, oops]:

New Outlook (is better than New Coke)

As seen in the top-right corner of the standalone Outlook app:

Toggling this on switches you from the incredibly dense and old original Outlook UI to a new one that is intended to ultimately become the replacement for all versions of Outlook and the mail app on Windows 11. It’s vastly simpler and streamlined, and will probably make old time Outlook grognards from 1997 crazy.

I decided to try it because a) I like trying new things, and b) I’m kind of dumb when it comes to being sensible and sticking to things that just work on computers.

It turned out to be a very slight change from the web-based version of Outlook I normally use. At a glance, it appears to be the exact same interface, just wrapped up as a separate app. The only real difference I’ve found is using it means you miss a few amenities you might get from your normal browser that would automatically kick in (blocking trackers, etc.) but in exchange New Outlook allows me to actually add and maintain my Gmail account, so I can keep tabs on the few messages I still get there without having to log in to another mail service.

It also tidies up my browser a bit, possibly freeing up a few more resources that I would probably never really notice being freed up, anyway.

Overall, it’s not bad, but it’s pretty much identical to what I’ve been using for the past few years. The Dark Mode still looks off, somehow. I think it’s a combination of the way it mixes the darker shades with the standard Office/Windows colours, along with new email (normally bolded) being harder to scan at a glance.

Overall, I am left mildly pleased (by being able to add my Gmail account), but otherwise :shrugemoji:

On a scale of 1 to 10 actual physical envelopes used for mail you can touch and sometimes smell, New Outlook rates a 7.

Birding, July 8, 2023: Yellow, red, blue and gray

Where: Boundary Bay Dyke Trail (Delta), Piper Spit (Burnaby) and Tlahutum
Regional Park1Formerly known as Colony Farm (Coquitlam)
Weather: Sunny, 18-22C

The Outing

My energy level was greatly improved over last week, which was fortunate because as I type this late Saturday evening, I have over 28,685 steps on the day. Also fortunate, it never got hot, though Nic kept insisting the reported temperatures were wrong and it must have been at least 32 degrees or something.

I missed a few spots and got some light sunburn on a couple of small areas around my neck and also above my chin, which I totally forgot to put sunblock on. It looks kind of weird, like the area below my lower lip is angry.

As for the trek, we hit three places again:

  • Boundary Bay Dyke Trail: We walked about 100 km up and down the trail and were rewarded for our efforts with Savannah sparrows, common yellowthroats and a grasshopper with the best camo ever. Also, planes. Lots of planes. And curiously, lots of herons–all of them flying. And bald eagles. Really, there was a lot more than expected, and other than being out in the sun on a dusty trail the entire time, it was pretty good.
  • Piper Spit: This was better than expected. The land mass has returned with the dry weather, and though geese dominated, they entertained with their shenanigans, particularly the young ones testing out their wings on the safety of the water. A male blackbird was again feeding a youngster, though also dropping food for it, so it could learn to stop mooching off of dad. Some pigeons unexpectedly posed for us at the end of the pier, and I got my requisite cute squirrel shot.
  • Tlahutum Regional Park (formerly known as Colony Farm): We did not get the bounty of shots at the community garden that we were hoping for, but we did get a few shots of finches, flickers and the always=gorgeous cedar waxwings. The Coquitlam River was unusually shallow, allowing us to venture well out beyond where we normally could, though the river bed was covered with thick and extremely heavy mud. It came off on the dusty trail and grass later without much effort, though. By the end, we were both starting to get a little tired. At the end of the day, Garmin credited me with burning an impressive 599 calories and my watch mildly scolded me for overdoing it.

Overall, a good batch of birds, along with weather that was warm, but not hot.

The Shots

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • Anna’s hummingbird
  • Blackbird
  • Brown-headed cowbird
  • Common yellowthroat
  • Northern flicker
  • Savannah sparrow
  • Song sparrow
  • Spotted towhee
  • White-crowned sparrow

Waterfowl:

  • Canada goose
  • Great blue heron
  • Mallard
  • Wood duck

Common:

  • Crow
  • Seagull

Raptors:

  • Bald eagle

Non-birds:

  • Grasshopper
  • Ladybug
  • Moth (I am unsure of the variety)
  • Butterfly (yellow and black)

The colours:

  • Yellowthroat
  • Red sunburn
  • Blue sky
  • Gray grasshopper