Sorry Prime. 😦

One of the aspects of technology I enjoy is the ability to upgrade and improve your hardware/operating systems, test new environments, new UI and new features. I’m sure I’ve installed over 30 linux distros and now this interest has spilled over into my Android devices. Unfortunately working with computers is not the same as tablets as far as upgrading goes. My Asus Transformer Prime which I had such great hopes for always seemed to be struggling with the OS. The screen is gorgeous and I’ve got a keyboard for it so it is a useful device. Well. I thought I’d give a new ROM a go on it. Asus has stopped updating the system at 4.1.1 (sigh) and now with 5.0 out there are better OS options available. So I followed a install guide and things appeared to be going well but somewhere the process failed and I bricked the tablet. Which means basically that it is as useful as a brick. Bricks are great for houses, not so great for technology. Sigh. I’ve never lost a piece of hardware before so it was very disappointing. From what I’ve read there isn’t anything I can do. I’ve done things to the tablet that voids any warranty it may have had (if it is even still valid, it IS a few years old now)… I’m considering getting another off eBay. A used one is around 130 bucks. We’ll see… I’m still looking into options, so far, they sadly all lead to dead ends. Le sigh.

My birthday is this Wednesday, another 39th anniversary. Ahem. So Saturday we ventured North to my sister’s for dinner. This was a dinner that was suppose to happen in October for Thanksgiving/Dad’s birthday so… this get together was the culmination of a lot of events. After making a few stops in Barrie, at stores we never get a chance to go to, we arrived pretty late at my sister’s. The dinner almost didn’t happen as there was a medical issue with one of her dogs. It is still unknown what happened, the Vet says the dog fainted… *eyeroll* I’ve never heard of that before. I have a cat that has seizures and it sounded much more like that. It really shook my brother-in-law up. The dog was pretty normal a few hours afterwards. Much like how my cat is after a seizure. Anyway, everyone is fine so dinner proceeded. It was the usual quiet evening. Football, Hockey and Maleficent on the box. A few presents were exchanged. I’ve been waiting over a year for a solid RPG to come to the PS4. So when Bioware’s next instalment of the Dragon Age series came to the console it was on the top of my wishlist. I must have dropped enough hints because I got the game from my family on Saturday! I also received an odd assortment of things from my parents. Most useful being an “Ove Glove”… anyone who BBQs a lot knows how useful they are. It was a pretty typical low key family get together, everyone seems rather tired.

The weather has warmed up the last few days. The news out of Buffalo is still fairly dire. The region was hammered by over 7 FEET of snow. Now all that snow is melting… Hopefully there are no more accidents from this storm. On the bright side the warmer weather means that the yard landscaping has continued. The back patio retaining wall is getting some love today. The guys moved a few big armourstones to the backyard over the weekend so we can see the direction it is going. More updates on this later.

Naturally I played Dragon Age: Inquisition (PS4) (and DAI evermore…) when I got home. It is a remarkably beautiful game visually. The only comparable that I can think of is Skyrim. The world seems crazy big. I’m still learning the game mechanics but so far combat seems pretty fun. That said it’s a bit redundant. I haven’t even touched crafting or multi-player and I’m still on the first map… so there appears to be tons of value in DAI. I’m sure I’ll update my progress through the game. Finally a great title for the PS4!

*Gong!*

Well Monday turned into a gong show. First off the landscapers who didn’t get locates done (although we asked, and they said ‘we’ll be careful) cut our cable line. So no TV, Internet or home phone. Rogers is supposedly coming today to fix it. Then it started to rain, then pour… remember that trench along the front of the house under the window that I dug to expose the mortar? It started filling up with water… fast… Within 15m there was a foot of water and it was inches from bottom of the window. Bdot, who was home sick, and I then frantically tried getting the water away from the house. The whole reason we have water damage there. *eyeroll* So I eventually got the pump we use to drain the hottub – and it saved the day. Eventually the rain stopped and the pump was able to catch up to the downpour. Our landscapers also came back and dug a trench for us. If the yard wasn’t an eye sore before, it sure is now. But having a flooded basement would be worse. Remarkably water didn’t get in. Phew. So we both got soaked to the bone and swore a lot. Water giveth and water taketh away. It did however underscore the importance of what we are doing. All the water from our neighbours and our backyards slopes down into that window area… the problem had to be addressed before the house foundation was possibly compromised. Hoping all this misery will result in proper drainage. User registration has been turned off due to spamming. Send a comment if you want to comment.

Disappointing news from Ferguson. The more I read about the case the worse it gets. How long? How long?