Allan

another one bites the dust (HBC Neo MC)

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I cancelled another credit card – this time HBC’s Neo MasterCard.  Why?  I think 24% is a bit excessive, don’t you?  As well, I can’t download transactions into Microsoft Money (my accounting software).

You’d be surprised at how many banking / credit card people who don’t know the difference between transactions and statements.  Transactions are they actual purchases, payments, charges, etc. that one incurs, downloadable as digital whatnots that financial or spreadsheet software can read.  Statements are paper or PDFs that you can download to view the transactions of a given period.

Scotiabank, Home Depot, HBC Neo, and Walmart MasterCard all have no downloadable transactions.  So, I rarely use them … except for Scotiabank because they give me a sweet interest rate.

heat pump explained (with boiler)

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I found this while snooping around on the internet.  For those of you who keep hearing about heat pumps but still know nothing about them, this is a pretty good visualization.

A fridge but in reverse? The fascinating science of heat pumps – visualised – The Guardian (newspaper in the UK)

…except that boilers are certainly not the norm here in western Canada.  Substitute boiler with heat exchanger.

So I’ve had a heat pump at 520 for over a year now, and it works well.  To be honest, though, we still haven’t had much of a winter yet this winter.  If / when it ever gets down to -40°C, then we’ll actually put it to the test.

fever broke

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I’ve been sick the past week or so – chills & sweats, fever (38.9°C / 102.0°F), extreme headaches (like 7/10), lots of sleep, coughing, burning chest, etc.  I must have sweated half a litre by now.

I did a COVID test.  It turned out to be negative.  (I’m not entirely sure if I did it right.)  I called Health Link (811).  They said go to the hospital – it might be pneumonia.  I went.  They said it wasn’t pneumonia but lung, nasal, & throat inflammation and a flu.  Yay.

The fever finally began to break yesterday evening.  I was down to 99.6°F / 37.6°C.  (I’m usually 36.5°C.)

Floyd was also ill – he got sick before me by about a day – but he’s not been as ill as me.  He sounded like he swallowed a gunny sack full of frogs for a few days.  Now he’s out and about, mostly better.  I’m still nursing myself at home.

flat

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Flip! I got a flat. I knew it was low Friday evening. I borrowed FT’s car to go to Milk River for tutoring. But today it’s flat than a pancake (but only on the bottom, so that’s good).

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dream 20231119

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2023-11-19 dream

I was sleeping in the rear suite at 520, what Floyd and I have been working on, and woke up to find the shed was moving down the alley by itself.  I soon realized that the wind likely couldn’t do that, so it had to be pulled by a truck. 

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oscillator quit

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So FT and I were cutting drywall around the new window hole to add a full sheet of drywall (gypsum wall board, or “Gyprock” to some) when the oscillator quit.  Well it didn’t quit exactly, but the variable speed wouldn’t work – it’s either on or off and no where in between.  Luckily the label says MasterCraft on it, so we went to Canadian Tire (Ukrainian Wheel as FT says) and exchanged it for a new one.

And then it got it just as dusty and beat-up looking as the old oscillator.

More later – It’s tired, and I’m late.  Or vice versa.

meatloaf muffins

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This just an experiment.  I made meatloaf muffins!

It’s a mixture of ground beef and turkey along with finely chopped vegetables.  It turned out well but maybe a little too well done.