Noise from the Basement

A couple of weeks ago, we at Saturday Morning Productions learned that Stuart Maclean, of CBC’s The Vinyl Cafe, passed away of melanoma. It was a loss felt keenly by all of us (Liv, Ada and Chris). When I (Liv) started working at Saturday MP, I was happy to discover that I wasn’t the only Vinyl Cafe listener on the team. Stuart’s Dave and Morley stories cracked me up on a regular basis, and some of the musicians he had as guests over the years had become regulars on my playlists (especially Owen Pallett and Harmony Trowbridge).

On January 16th I took a flying spill when I tried to drag a huge dude-sized dummy for 50 feet. There I was, lying on the gym floor, elbows bloodied and pants torn, with an astounded audience looking just as horrified as I was. How did I get there?

*sound of a record needle being ripped off the record*

Wait. Let me back up a bit. That Monday I took a run at the EPS physical assessment. The APREP. It stands for “Alberta something something something.” Maybe one of the P’s stands for policing. Probably. I should look that up. It’s a two part test, with the first part being a timed obstacle course that includes walls, stairs, nefarious equipment and - yep, right at the end when you’re tired - dragging a dummy. You have to finish in under 2 minutes and 10 seconds.

Wow, we are already one week into 2017. The Christmas decorations are put away, the leftovers are eaten, and I have to get used to writing the correct year. So far it’s going well, although my brain had a glitch last week where I kept writing “2012.“It’s also the time where I keep getting asked what my New Year’s resolutions are. My standard answer has been “get more sleep and eat more food.” It’s not really a serious answer, because I am not a fan of New Year’s resolutions.

Merry Christmas everyone! We can hardly believe how quickly 2016 has gone by and that the new year is almost here.

So many things have happened that it’s going to be a challenge to summarize them all here without making you read for the next hour. But hey, challenges are fun! This year Ada got a brand-new full time job that she will start in the new year. She and her family also traveled to Hong Kong and China, and saw tons of interesting things including the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Chris worked hard on developing Goal Buddy (as did Ada!), as well as his other computer projects. He said that his big goal is to become a better communicator.

In Android you can schedule a notification that shows immediately using the NotificationManager.  However, if you are like me, awesome, and want to schedule a notification for a future date you need to use the Android AlarmManager.  The alarm manager lets you schedule an Intent to occur at a later date.

Quick aside, do you know what an Intent is in Android?  I kind of understand them but not as in-depth as I would like.  Please forgive any errors I make when I setup the alarm intent below.