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So how has been 2018 so far…

In a nutshell, most likely the worst of my 43 years so far.

The whole thing started off with a car issue that turned very sour, where a KIA dealership was ready to install a key electronic component back into our vehicle simply because they did not want to admit they were wrong.  By doing do they were ready to put the security of my family at risk,  needless to say I fought hard and strong and finally won my case.

Less than a month later, my mother was diagnosed with ALS, after a routine visit to her doctors to follow-up on an upcoming knee replacement surgery she was never able to return home, stayed over 30 days at overload wing of the emergency room at our local hospital to then be transferred to a senior home.  Both my parents lived together and she was actually caregiver to my father who has dementia / Alzheimer and can’t stay alone.  In that same time frame, I needed to manage to get my father also placed in a senior home  so that he can receive proper care.

Both of them not returning to there home, I also managed clearing out their apartment,  Managed the paperwork, attended to there immediate needs and set up a whole new life routine that would now revolve around them.  Did I mention, I also have a house, 2 kids, a dog and a loving wife.  The summer months around the corner was yet another challenge, Air conditioning is not an included option in senior homes in Quebec.   You have to rent out a unit and trust they will provide service.  Early June a heatwave was around the corner and still no a/c into my mothers room.  Yet another hard fight to have them supply service we agreed to pay for.

Now comes September, early in the month my mothers condition has taken a turn for the worse, her lungs are now affected from the disease and her legs are completely paralyzed.  She takes the hard decision to transfer into a palliative care unit, reasoning is that the nurse to patient ratio is much lower so she should be able to receive better care.  A few day go by, she has a minor breathing condition.  Immediately the doctor in place who I now reference has Dr. Doom, starts to initiate talks of palliative sedation to my mother.  Within 2 days, her fentanyl patches are raised from 6mg to 50mg and she is given morphine shots on regular intervals.  She will have been into palliative care for only 9 days before her hearth gave out to this overdose of opoids.  I agree to the fact that her living condition was really not the greatest but in my mind I strongly believe that if the proper care in regards to ALS had be given to her she would still be here now (2 months later).  She did not want medical aid to die but she was led to death in a clinically accepted way. 

A month goes by, we are still grieving her passing and slowly trying to regain a normal life.  Late October our beloved Yorkshire who’s been an integral part of our family for 8 years now is showing signs of aging, a visit to the veterinary clinic shows us that she has a heart condition and that her days are counted.  On Halloween night we took the heartbreaking decision to end her suffering as she had really feeling bad and there was no viable or optimistic resolution to her condition.  It’s at those times where you realize how much space they take into your lives. 

My family and myself are completely crushed with all that has happened so far this year.

 

Praying for nothing more bad to occur and that we can slowly move on.

 

 

Huawei P10 – Beyond the nuts and bolts

With all the latest techs and trends in mobile phones in recent years I found it extremely complicated to get real unbiased opinion on phones and manufacturers. We carry these little tech beasts day in day out with no real need of featuring the bits and bytes of every single feature.  As of the past couple of years I was mainly an Iphone user and that worked all fine.  But the one irritant I was reaching was the obligatory requirement to be attached to Apple devices.  In comes the Huawei P10.  Being almost identical in size as me previous fruit phone, this would be a game changer.

 First off the battery life, with normal use I was able to get over 2 days of use before the battery would die down. Never ever got that with my other phone.  Secondly once it did run out, the Included Supercharger took care of giving me back a full 100% within 2 hours.

 

The Android 7.0 installed paired with the EMUI 5.1 makes for a soft simple feel to the user interface.  One extremely appreciated feature on on this phone has got to be the camera system Huawei partnered with Leica to include a top of the line camera in this unit without breaking the bank.  The back camera uses a dual lens system to deliver tack sharp images and high quality video.  As for the the front camera aka selfie cam, it’s a nice 8mp camera with a F1.9 aperture so low light isn’t an issue.

 

There are so many more great features on this phone i’m yet to discover and to be real honest I haven’t missed the Iphone as of yet.  They do offer the Plus version of the same phone which among others bell and whistles resembles the size of Plus versions of other manufacturers.

At the end of the day, Huawei the 30+ years old chinese manufacturer has delivered quite a nice quality build and speedy phone.  As I write this i’m aware that they are soon to launch the Huawei Mate10  Hopefully will be able to test it out, if anything comparable to the quality of the P10 it’s a Shoe in.

 

Cutting the cord 2 years into it.

Well it’s been now 2 solid years into our cord cutting process and I can’t thank myself enough for taking this action plan to reality.

Being a little scared at first with the fact of losing out on the local sports broadcasts, being a big Habs “Montreal Canadiens” fan, cutting the cord did represent going in the dark for some games.  Luckily Sportsnet aka Rogers  ehanced the Over the air experience by adding games on the Local Citytv broadcast.  Happy to say that I havent missed many games thus far and the playoffs are just around the corner.

 

Having developed a real passion for OTA “Over the air” television mainly for the savings and not being dependent on anyone telling me what I need as a viewer.  I reached out to Antennas direct to put one of their antennas to a Real world test in Quebec.  Running a quick test you can see that all local stations have emitters for OTA that are roughly 16km’s away from the test location and US stations as: NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox are much further 138km’s away.

The review environment of the ClearStream 1 Convertible with a VHF Retrofit Kit.

The Clearstream 1 is directly connect with a 4ft Coax to a HD-homerun 3 made by Silicon Dust.  I did do Outdoors and Indoor tests with the unit as this is a Outdoor/Indoor antenna.

Below you will see exactly the results from the unit showing 3 important figures.  Signal level, Signal Quality, Symbol quality.  The result are pretty interesting for a one time 69$ purchase. No additional monthly fees.  Yes Free once you buy the antenna.

Indoor Results Outdoor Results
Real RF channel Miles From emitter Signal Strength Signal Quality Symbol quality Signal Strength Signal Quality Symbol quality
29 9.3 40 0 0 54 72 100
47 10.1 49 46 85 64 89 100
10 10.3 81 0 0 97 100 100
12 10.3 89 65 100 96 100 100
35 10.3 63 0 0 82 100 100
15 10.3 73 77 100 87 100 100
49 10.3 43 0 0 70 95 100
26 11.4 74 63 100 86 100 100
38 59.9 35 0 0 42
22 85.9 41 0 0 44 43
14 85.9 41 0 0 57 55 100
32 85.9 33 0 0 36
43 85.9 25 0 0 27
13 85.9 60 0 0 49

To the untrained Eye this wont mean much but here is the easy version.

Although the Clearstream 1 can be used inside the results thrive when hooked up outdoors.  In total, outdoors the Clearstream 1 was able to pull in 19 Channels for free.  Radio-Canada, CBS, CBC, TVA, CTV, global tv, ABC, NBC, Tele-quebec, PBS, fox and City.  I do need to mention the US stations come in and out possibly better positioning and using an amplifier would solve this.

The image quality on the strong local channels is unsurpassed by any of the Cable co’s or Satellite / Fiber offerings.  This is TRUE HD, non compressed.

This being said the Antennas Direct Clearstream 1(In Canada the item # is C1C-CA) is more than a viable solution for anyone looking to fetch local channels from 30-40 km’s away, this is by using it straight out of the box.

Hook up, Scan and enjoy Free HD TV.

Zak Reaches out to All 31 NHL teams (completed)

It’s been a year now,  My youngest son has been on a quest.  Something fairly simple but in the end turning out to be quite a venture.

Being a hockey fan, He endeavored to gather a piece of memorabilia representing all 30 NHL teams.  He’s a young fighter, having ADHD makes his every school day all the more tough.  We started this little project to set him a goal.  Any parent with a child diagnosed with ADHD will understand that we make Huge strides to help our kids build self confidence, Every little victory is huge.  It’s extremely encouraging for him to get these in the mail items.  I did, on my own, manage to gather some other teams, hopefully this post makes it`s way to influent folks in the league.  We we’re all kids at one point and trying impossible things is in essence what makes us believe in ourselves going forward.  With the Hockey Season just underway, I’m convinced many teams have leftover PR material that would fit his mission.

All your help and support on his project is much appreciated, as a dad I’m leading him to enjoy the Game of hockey in itself, not only the local team but the Game.

This journey has been quite interesting to say the least, as of this month (aug 2016), he decided to start playing the game and lace up the skates.  His journey as an amateur player is now underway, Peewee level.

Let`s keep the passion for the game going.

As of May 10th 2017 We can say Mission Accomplished – Zak Managed to get responses from all 31 NHL teams.

My son is very enthousiaste at this project and we have been slowly getting some response from the teams, As of November 2016 we are at 29/32 (32 because of the NHL itself).

  • Arizona Coyotes – Responded – Received (Jan 2017)
  • Boston Bruins – Responded – Received (nov 2016)
  • Buffalo Sabres – Rensponded – Received (dec 2016)
  • Calgary Flames – Responded – Received
  • Carolina Hurricanes – Responded – Received
  • Chicago Blackhawks – Covered by Reebok (oct 2016)
  • Colorado Avalanche – Responded  – Received
  • Columbus Blue Jackets -Responded- Received
  • Dallas Stars – covered by Reebok (october 2016)
  • Detroit Red Wings – Covered by Reebok(oct 2016)
  • Edmonton Oilers – Foundation responded fanpack request  made – Received (jan 2017)
  • Florida Panthers – Responded – Received – Covered by Reebok(oct 2016)
  • Los Angeles Kings – Responded – Received
  • Minnesota Wild – Responded- Received- And from Reebok (oct 2016)
  • Montreal Canadiens  – Responded  – Received
  • Nashville Predators – Covered by Reebok(oct 2016)
  • New Jersey Devils – Responded – Received (huge Kudos for the accompanying letter)
  • New York Islanders – Responded – Received
  • New York Rangers – Responded – Received
  • Philadelphia Flyers – Responded – Received
  • Pittsburgh Penguins – Responded – Received
  • Ottawa Senators –  Responded – Interview from them… wow.!! – Received
  • San Jose Sharks – Responded – Received
  • St Louis Blues – Responded – Received
  • Tampa Bay Lightning – Responded – Received
  • Toronto Maple Leafs – responded – received
  • Vancouver Canucks – Responded – Received
  • Washington Capitals – Covered by Reebok (oct 2016)
  • Winnipeg Jets – Responded – Received
  • NHL (head office) – Responded – Received
  • Vegas Golden Knights – Responded – Received