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Feeling old

This year, one of my nieces started her first year of undergrad at the University of Idaho, the other one started 8th grade. A friend from my Detroit days has two daughters in high school now (I remember seeing them visiting the office in a stroller). Nala will be turning 10 this year and Simba will turn 9 a few months later.

On top of all this, I need reading glasses now. All of this is making me feel a little Old now.

On the plus side, we’re in a better position financially than I think I’ve ever been in before, and on a good path to improving it even more. The list of things and activities to keep me entertained continues to grow.

Getting older, but things are pretty good these days. I’m quite pleased with that.

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Achievement unlocked: Emergency funded

We’ve reached another financial milestone!

After reaching the debt-free (non-mortgage) point last year, our next big goal was to fill up the emergency fund. We had a target of 6 months for the emergency fund and today we made it to that goal.

Connie’s been doing a great job at keeping us on track and I’ve been doing a pretty decent job at resisting the temptation to buy all the electronics things to play with out at the workbench.

It’s a good feeling having the emergency fund filled up. It gives me a sense of security that I don’t think I’ve had before. It’s nice knowing that there’s this financial cushion behind us and that if anything major happens, we won’t have to scramble much to deal with it.

Hopefully we won’t need to tap into it, but it’s there if we need to, and that’s a good feeling.

Now our next goal is to get back to funding the retirement accounts.

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Diving into Asimov

My latest reading obsession has been Isaac Asimov. I’ve always been a big scifi reader, especially in my teens, but none of Asimov’s books ever ended up in my library. I certainly knew of him, but for whatever reason never read any of his books until now. My scifi tastes were more along the lines of Robert Heinlein, Anne McCaffrey and Frank Herbert.

Several years ago (back in 2011 according to my Goodreads list) while browsing the shelves at Mr. K’s, I came across 3 of the 5 books from Asimov’s Foundation series (books 1, 3 and 5), and decided to pick them up. They sat on the shelf for a while before books 2 and 4 joined them on the shelf.

I finally got around to reading the Foundation series at the beginning of the year. I had just finished reading the final book of Robert Jordan‘s epic Wheel of Time series and needed something different to read. I was feeling like getting back into scifi again, and Asimov fit the bill perfectly.

3 months of Asimov immersion and I was finished the Foundation series. Fantastic series that spans several centuries. I really enjoyed reading it.

Having whetted my appetite, I started looking for some of his other books and acquired a copy The Robot Novels, a compilation of the first three books of the Robot novels, and Robots and Empire. They play a prequel role to the Foundation series, and are more scifi whodunnit mystery novels. I found them very entertaining to read. I want robots now. Just about to start on Robots and Empire, and looking forward to seeing how this one is and how it fits into the Galactic Empire scheme of things.

After the Robot novels, I have the Second Foundation series, and Prelude to Foundation to dig into. The Second Foundation series should be a little different. While they’re in the same setting, the three books were all written by different authors. Looking forward to getting to those books.

After that I’ll start looking for the books in the Galactic Empire series.

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Nexus 5 touch screen issue

For some odd reason, my Nexus 5 has now developed this 5 mm strip along the right side where no screen touches are registered.

Screenshot_2014-08-25-08-38-31.png

Note the nice clean border where the phone thinks there’s no touch screen.

It’s not a large area, but it just happens to be where the scroll bars are positioned, and the letter ‘p’ on the keyboard. If I’m lucky, I can tap and get a ‘p’, but most of the time I end up getting an ‘o’. Depending on the application, there might be a few other controls along that strip which would be inaccessible. I also can’t drag anything to screens on the right.

I’ve established that it’s not a screen calibration issue. With the ‘Show touches’ option turned on under Developer options, the phone registers screen touches right where I tap the screen, except for that 5 mm strip along the side. This time there’s no screen protector or case getting in the way. The phone is completely naked.

I think it was on Saturday when I first noticed the odd behaviour while playing Ingress. I couldn’t get something to pop out from the right side of the screen. Didn’t think much of it because I thought maybe it was just a UI change that got snuck in. It wasn’t until I started trying to do more things with it today that I realized the dead zone was there.

Power cycling and a factory reset (after copying backups off the phone) didn’t help matters, so I think it’s time to make another call to Google tech support.

Update: After calling Google tech support, a replacement (refurb) phone is on the way. If they determine your phone can’t be fixed using their normal troubleshooting, and it’s eligible for a warranty replacement, you’re sent a link via email to the Google Play store where you “purchase” a replacement. You also get an RMA form and a return shipping label. When the replacement phone arrives, I’m supposed to box up the broken phone and send it back to Google. After the phone is received by Google and checked out, the credit hold from the purchase is removed from the credit card.

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Work spiders

A couple of days ago, while I was walking in to work from the parkade I spotted a spinybacked orbweaver (gasteracantha cancriformis)and it’s web strung between some shrubs and a tree. Almost ran into the darned thing. They’re one of the neater looking spiders I’ve come across. Tried to get some pictures of it with my cell phone, but the camera’s autofocus kept focusing on the background. The next day I brought in my little Sony point and shoot, but still had the same problem. Autofocus kept focusing on the background .

So today I brought in the DSLR. Fortunately the spider and it’s web was still around so I was able to (finally) get some pictures.

Spiny backed orbweaver spider on its web
Spiny backed orbweaver spider on its web

As I was leaving, I also saw this fine specimen of a Golden silk orbweaver/banana spider a little higher up in a tree on the other side of the sidewalk. Like the spiny orbweaver, the phone and little camera wouldn’t focus on the spider, so I got a few shots of it today.

Golden silk orbweaver s pider on its web
Golden silk orbweaver s pider on its web
Golden silk orbweaver s pider on its web

Unfortunately when I left work, the spiny orbweaver had gone, web and all. My guess is someone wasn’t paying attention and walked into the web, sending the spider into the bushes, or hitching a ride with whoever walked into it. The banana spider was still there though.