Mechanic

I took my car in for an oil change recently. I got a bit more work done too. The mechanic recommended a transmission flush earlier so I got that done.

All together it came in a bit under $200. Oh well sometimes oil changes end up being expensive. I still have a power steering flush to do next time I have the car in. Which will be in a little while for the winter tires.

All in all the 2005 civic is running well. So I'm glad of that. Although this time as part of their courtesy check they said there might be an alternator problem. They'll recheck next time and if the reading is the same then I'll have to get that replaced too.

The car has 108,000 km so I guess stuff will break more frequently now. Still it's expensive taking care of these things. It will be good to get this vehicle paid off. A little under a year now and that will be done.

In the future I'll aim to avoid 5 year financing, even if the interest is quite favorable. My recent and ongoing experiences demonstrate it's better to get the vehicle paid off before it gets too many years/kms and maintenance costs start to jump. Still it sucks to think there's people out there with 6 and even 7 year vehicle loans.

Laundry

I switched laundry detergent recently. I had been using Gain for around 2 years. I switched to liquid tide.

I'd used the tide in the past, over 10 years ago. I always thought it was better. But it does cost a bit more. I was pretty happy with Gain as it did a good job. When I was at Costco I decided to get the tide again.

The tide does a good job. It does come out cleaner and brighter than gain. However gain has a nice scent and the original tide is pretty much unscented.

At costco everything is large size. The tide is about a 100 load jug. I found it hard to cart it to the laundry room. Plus the measuring cap was a separate cup which didn't drain back into the jug. So that was messy and wasteful and not very good.

So I went and bought the smallest size liquid tide I could find. I picked it up at zellers. The smaller size is of course lighter and the measuring cap pours back into the container. That's a nice invention the measuring cap draining back in. So I'll use the small size tide and just refill it from the large container.

I do around 2 loads of laundry a week. So I should be set with detergent for around a year or so.

Donated blood again

I donated blood last week. I hadn't donated in a long time. By the records the last time was 2006. I didn't realize it was that long.

I kind of fell out of the routine and hadn't got around to setting up a new schedule.

I went to the Gottingen Street clinic after work when it was open on Thursday evening. I hadn't been to Gottingen St. in quite a while, around 10 years. The donation went pretty well. I went right through with no waiting. That was good luck. It only took 6 minutes to get the amount of blood they wanted so that was pretty quick. The treats at the end were good as always.

The nurse took my blood pressure before and said it was pretty good. I don't know what the numbers mean but they look pretty consistent with the numbers on the card from years back. I should look up what the blood pressure numbers mean. Still it's good to get a good report.

I'll probably continue to go to the Gottingen St. evening clinic. That works pretty well for where I live now. In the past I went to a mobile clinic at the local community centre. The best time for donating was when I was at BIO as a software contractor for Y2K. They had the clinic right in the facility in the auditorium during daytime business hours. That was so convenient.

Now that I went again I can get into a new routine. I can do a bit better than every 3 years for donating. Maybe not every 2 months but more than once a year is definitely possible.

Greatest Dilbert ever

I've been reading Dilbert for a long time. Always enjoyed it and it's still great.

This one has always been my favorite. It took a while but I looked it up from the Dilbert archives today. I had thought it was from 2007 or 2006. But it was July 10 2005. Enjoy.

Classic Dilbert with Wally, best Dilbert ever


























And a little extra link (to the same strip) to help the search engines.

Dilbert Wally Idiot

easyhome

I've always found the picture on the side of the easyhome trucks kind of funny.


It's like, yeah, this woman is just so overjoyed about getting some furniture or electronics from Easyhome. With low monthly payments masking about 25% interest on the purchase amount. Maybe I should buy some new furniture at easyhome and I could be happy like that too.

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Not too much going on lately. Was a bit under the weather for a few days last week. Got to bed a bit earlier and the extra rest seemed to help a bit. Feeling better again now and off the cough medicine and neo citran. A number of people at work have been sick the last couple of months.