Category Archives: Personal Stuff

Totaled

I put together these two clips from my dash cam and well you be the judge on what happened.

Also on the way towing my car to the shop, I spoke to TD insurance and they totaled my car.  Sigh saw enough in the photos not to even send an adjuster…  Anthony says the part that was bent in the fender was the problem.

He said that piece extends all the way to the front of the car, is one piece and very expensive to work on, let alone buy.  He’d have to cut it from the steel then weld a new piece on.  He also says there’s frame damage as part of the rear right has pushed into the trunk.  What a shame it drives straight but repairing is just too costly. 🙁

My back hurts today, there’s general muscle pain on the sides and a point that hurts in the middle of my back.  I’ll go see the doctor tomorrow, thankfully Brandon is alright but I’ll keep checking up on him just in case too.  Now what am I going to buy, at first thought I’m thinking about a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid but who knows what the future will hold.

Ouch!

I’m off Tuesday-Friday this week so I could spend some more time with Brandon and this morning we went to Silverdale.

Shooting is great bonding time and he enjoyed himself as well as starting to get better, just needs more practice.

On the way home though we definitely had a bit of a shock.

This was on the QEW just before Mississauga Rd, it was stop and go traffic and well the big truck couldn’t stop in time, hit the black van which then hit the back of my car.  The van slid into a white van in the passing lane (we were all in the middle) so it was a 4 car accident, ugh!  I feel lucky the black van was in between because if it wasn’t that truck would have hit me and the damage would have been a lot worse.

I called the police, two officers showed up an hour later traffic was terrible so not surprised it took so long.  They talked to us individually then told me I can drive home if I wanted to so I did.  The Lexus drives straight and felt fine (except for the error message about the parking sensors not working) so I hope it can be repaired though when I got home and opened the trunk I could see the rear was pushed in a bit, not sure if that’s bad or not.

Called insurance, gave them all the info and told them I have a dashcam with video if they wanted to see the accident but I think it’s pretty clear what happened so let’s see how long this one takes.

Like old times

As Brandon grows up we’re spending less and less time together but yesterday was a really nice day.  The boy and I (Maggie had to work) went to Edward Gardens to join Mike to take pictures of the bugs and it I had such a great time.  It felt like when he was younger and we’d walk through parks, I really enjoyed spending that time with him.

I know this quality time will be fewer and far between moving forward so I’ll take what I can get.

Happy father’s day!

I’m alive and well, as I mentioned earlier I just don’t have much motivation to post stuff on my blog but today is a special day for me (and fathers out there) and I wanted to say I certainly feel very lucky. 🙂  I have the best wife and best son that one could ask for, thank you Maggie & Brandon for being awesome!

2nd in command

A colleague of mine took a screenshot of Slinky on my lap during a conference call and hehe he’s so damn cute!

For some reason when Slinky hears the Microsoft teams call, he’ll come running from wherever he is in the house to jump on my lap. After it’s done he’ll leave, so funny! In this case I was giving him neck scratches and he enjoyed them very much lol.

Weirdos in the night?

Saturday night it wasn’t too cold out so we went for a quick walk and I’m lucky that Maggie & Brandon tag along often.  It’s something that I really enjoy which is made all the better when they come with.

It’s not easy to all squeeze into the photo when trying to take a selfie with my phone but I think it worked out pretty well. 🙂  With no clouds it was really nice to see the stars again and I counted at least 3 shooting stars and they saw a bunch too.

Definitely living my best life possible.

Commo guy?

So last month I posted about picking up and programming a Motorola XTS2500 which went well so I decided to push my luck and bought a Motorola XTS3000.  It’s in excellent condition but programming it is a lot more complicated as it requires a different cable and a 32 bit OS environment to use the software.  I ordered the right cable and when it arrived I fired up VirtualBox, installed Windows XP and woo I’m able to program this radio too!

The Motorola radios are heavy but I really love how durable they are especially compared Baofengs and the other cheap Chinese radios that have flooded the market.  Programmed it with the same channels and settings as my XTS2500s so now I have relatively secure comms for, well whatever heads my way. 😉

This is so much fun I might pick up a few more just for kicks and get a bay station charger because it looks so cool!

19 years

So today Maggie and I celebrate our 19th anniversary and my god where does the time go!  She’s the best wife & partner one could ask for and I always feel lucky to have Maggie in my life.  Thank you for everything and I look forward to what the future brings!

2024

I’m not typically a doom and gloom guy on my blog but I have to say I have a pretty bad feeling about 2024.  There are so many conflicts & potential conflicts that could flare up around the world, I get why aliens don’t visit us.  Our political leaders act like children on the world stage and it’s maddening that they wall want war.

Sigh, I weep when I think of all the lives lost needlessly so far and those that may lose their lives in the stupid fights that may pop up.  Also do not buy the narrative that one side is the bad guy and “our side” is good, it’s much more complicated than that and what’s occurring didn’t happen in a vacuum.

With that said as an individual in Canada, I have absolutely no ability to sway things so I’m just going to do my best to try and make sure my family is as insulated from any shocks that may come.  I hope I’m wrong and that this year turns out to be peaceful so we’ll see what’s in store.

Wishing you the very best for 2024!

Toys are fun!

I’ve always liked radios & communications gear and back in my airsoft days after jumping from radio to radio, I finally settled on a Motorola XTS 2500 Model 3.  It worked great and I absolutely loved how durable it is, being a klutz not breaking when I fall on it is a big deal. 😉  Anyway recently I picked up another, this time the model 2 without the keypad but meh good enough.  I like the fact it has digital output and ADP encryption (my original is a military version with AES 256 but my new one is from a Washington state police dept) so people can’t snoop on my messages, easily anyway.

The Motorola ASTRO 25 CPS software is not easy to use, I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise and it took me about half a day’s tinkering to get everything working properly but yeah now these two are good!  Due to different firmware and hardware options, I couldn’t simply clone one radio to the other so I had to compare settings and there are so many, it can make your eyes gloss over.  I still have some Baofeng radios, used those when I was still a Scout leader and while I’m not really active, or need radios for anything I still want to get a few more.  Just in case right… 😉