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SBARC

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Posts posted by SBARC

  1. I also hope to visit my niece "Angel" in the Philippines.  She is now 13 and calls me Daddy.  I provided life saving surgeries for her years ago and we are quite close.  I have not seen her since Apr 2019 due to covid and money problems.  I hope to visit her this February or March.  So I am scrambling to get money together for that trip as well.

     

    Thanks for your understanding and patience.  I am quite exhausted from the past 2 1/2 years and look forward to settling into my old routine this spring.  I still have massive debts from Covid to pay, but that will get sorted in time.

  2. An update.  Good news!!!

     

    ARC is very much alive I am happy to say.

     

    I was working at a local restaurant delivering food in the evenings and driving a tour bus for cruise ship passengers in the daytime before COVID hit.  Bus driving job was seasonal and the restaurant job was low paying,  COVID hit and the cruise ship industry shut down.  The tour bus driving job ended.  The restaurant job was limited hours and I made up the monthly shortfall by living off credit for 18 months during COVID.  I eventually got a low paying job stocking grocery shelves all night at Walmart and delivered for a bakery in the early morning hours on weekends.  I was also delivering car parts for minimum wage in the daytime.  At this point I had 4 jobs and was working 105 hours a week and surviving.

     

    I finally replaced the car parts delivery job with a truck driving job delivering janitoral supplies during the daytime to local businesses in a 5 ton truck.  I was delivering to local rec centres and learned there was a shortage of pool operators/ night time janitors.  I was working 2 fulltime jobs at this point and I went back to school and got my pool operators tickets.  Got friendly with the managers for 2 local swimming pools and got hired by 2 local pools once I had my pool operators tickets.  The restaurant had gone under, I quit Walmart after 2 years.  Now I work a very relaxed 60 to 70 hours a week doing 10 hour overnight shifts at 2 local public pools.

     

    These are local government jobs that pay well and I am doing well.  ARC brings in just enough income to pay server fees, nothing more which is fine with me.

     

    I have a very old XP machine on it's last legs and quite unsuitable for doing ARC anymore.  This winter all my money is going towards helping my wife build a house in the Philippines for her parents.  We have budgeted $15,000 to build the house....yes 15 thousand....it's the Philippines.  I plan to get a new custom built computer in the springtime and ease back into daily updates.

     

    Daily updates on ARC paused April 1 2021 and to me it feels like it has been 5 or 6 years, but it has only been a bit over 2 1/2 years.  I look forward to getting back into daily updates once my situation stabilizes a bit more and I get a new computer.  Right now I am still adjusting to my new career doing overnight pool work and struggling to get the money together for my wife to build a new house for her parents.  I still have  a mountain of debt from covid to pay off but at least now there is hope for the future.

     

    Thanks to everyone for keeping ARC alive.  ❤️

  3. 6 hours ago, wxltcol said:

    So sorry to hear this, Steve!  Get well soon and no worries about the site.  Your health is paramount.

     

    Tom

    I got worried when the lung congestion set in....then I went straight to bed for 5 days out of fear it might be a bacterial infection.  Thankfully it seems to be a virus and my body did it's thing with the help of vitamins and ginger tea.

  4. Yup....this virus starts off like a typical cold then goes into lung congestion after about 5 days with a cough.  And it sucks every bit of energy.  I didn't start feeling better until about day 14.

     

    It seems to be very common in my area.

     

    All the best to you.

  5. I'm just getting over a 2 week non-covid lung virus that left me in bed for 5 days. 

     

    I am here with renewed vigor to embrace the New Year and hope it is a year that we can look back on with a smile.

     

    I am also still keen to update the ARC homepage on a more regular pace and I will use the New Year to help me do that.

     

    I want to wish you all a happy 2023 and that all our problems magically fade away with time.

     

    All my best everyone.

  6. I have updated the homepage with the news. 

     

    I now have enough free time that I can begin daily updates on ARC again.  it has been a long painful 8 months for me and I want to thank all of you for your understanding and patience.  Covid caused me to suddenly lose my job which ate through savings at a rapid rate.  Mai and I were unemployed for 1 year and this caused some serious financial issues.  For 6 months earlier this year I was working 105 hours a week to get things back on track, which left little time for sleep much less ARC.

     

    My situation has improved and I'm only working about 70 hours a week between 2 jobs.  This will permit me to rebuild my savings and resume the ARC daily updates.

     

    ❤️❤️  Thanks again everyone...you are the greatest!!  ❤️❤️

    Steve Bamford

    ARC CEO and night janitor.

  7. The youtube channel is my wife's project and she doesn't seem overly interested in doing the work needed to make it successful and I can't comment further. 

     

    Ads on the ARC forums are not possible because I can not control the content 100%....Google has bots roaming the forums jumping on any word that goes against their guidelines.  I am then sent a threatening email from Google that all income will be stopped due to one offensive or badly worded post if I don't correct the situation.  Most posts that offend Google are not even offensive in any way.  So in the end it was easier to just pull the ads from the forum.

     

    There is ad income from the articles on ARC but that just covers server fees.  The income was better in the past, but has gone down in a huge way since facebook became popular years ago.

     

    I do think an ARC Patreon page is a good idea and I do have my own youtube channel set up that I might develope as well.  I will be restarting updates.  I can't promise daily updates because I am working 80 hours a week but I would like to at least have weekly updates if not 2 or 3 updates a week.

     

    I do very much want to get back into doing ARC and I will keep pushing towards that goal.  Thankfully I am only working 80 hours a week and not 105 hours a week.

  8. I am alive and recovering from COVID>

     

    I have been working 4 jobs / 7 days a week for a total of 105 hours a week.  ARC takes 40 hours a week to do properly, so obviously there was no time to do ARC.  I have dropped 2 of my jobs to free up time on the weekends.  I am hoping to get back into ARC by doing an update each weekend just to keep the homepage mildly active. 

     

    I lost my main job (Tour bus driver for cruise ship passengers in my city) when covid hit.  I decided to take a year off when covid arrived as the dangers of covid seemed rather serious in the first year. My wife also took a year off.  Obviously this didn't do our finances any good.  I had covid a few weeks ago and the current variant seems quite mild.  My energy levels are still a bit on the low side but I'm resting as much as I can.

     

    ARC will be back to daily updates in the future, but that won't be for a while.  ARC income covers the server fees and nothing more.  So any time I spend on ARC is unpaid time.  I work 2 full time jobs during the week and now that I have dumped my 2 part time weekend jobs, I hope to get more rest.

     

    I am carrying around a large high interest debt that I am heavily focused on getting rid of.  ARC has to be a secondary priority to that.  I am hoping to upgrade both of my full time jobs to higher paying jobs in the coming months.

     

    Thanks for your patience and understanding.

  9. I got an update loaded today.  Been working over 100 hours a week between 4 jobs so finding time to update ARC is tricky.  My wife and I lost our jobs due to Covid last year.  I'm now back working and pushing hard to pay off the debt from last year.

     

    I will attempt to update ARC as much as I can.

     

    Thanks for your patience.

  10. I talked to the wife of an ER worker in my city.  Our covid numbers have been very low because we live on a 400km long island with a population of 870,000.  Living on an island has isolated us from the worst of covid.  Only 43 deaths out of 870,000, but folks on this island have been pro-mask wearing etc for the majority of people.

     

    But it seems the ER is getting busy with the under 12 year olds getting covid and passing it on to their parents that chose not to get vaccinated.  young kids can not be vaccinated yet. 

     

    Over 80% of the people in my city have got their first injection and over 70% have had their second injection because it is an island with a large % of older folk.

  11. Yup....this is true.  Of course scratchbuilt detailing using the surplus spue that the kit parts are attached to is still considered out of the box IIRC. 

     

    Some people do consider using aftermarket decals as still being built OOTB.

  12. 9 hours ago, bashace said:

    So, what do you all think about this Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier saying that all covid vaccinated people will die in 2 years, apparently he is the worlds leading Virologists. Says people will all die from antibody-dependent enhancement, whatever that means.

    Well he didn't actually say that.  Once again mis-information and lack of fact checking lets this sort of story get traction.

     

    https://www.indiatoday.in/fact-check/story/fact-check-nobel-laureate-luc-montagnier-didn-t-say-covid-vaccine-recipients-will-die-in-two-years-1807023-2021-05-26

  13. On 5/24/2021 at 10:09 PM, Scooby said:


    Rural Albertans, I see the stats Friday, most the admissions in Edmonton and Calgary are from the rural areas. Mask mandates exist in Edmonton and Calgary (Mayors ordered them). Kenney refused to create a provincial mandate.

    Leadership or the lack of good leadership seems to be the critical factor in the success of a community beating Covid.  Ontario did poorly, but in their case the leader decided to run the fight against covid instead of standing back and letting a doctor run the show.  BC has done pretty good, but we had a doctor running the fight against covid.

  14. 7 hours ago, Thommo said:

    Wife & I had AstraZeneca at 2.30pm y'day.

    I woke up at midnight with chills, aches & pains all over & a head/neck ache.  Cracked into the Panadols.    Probably not helped by the fact I did a run, a gym session at lunch then had a hard sports massage at 3pm yesterday.
    Feel like a sh*t sandwich without the bread today, but the info they gave us said this is common for a few days.

    Wife has similar symptoms but quite a bit milder.  We both got very little sleep.

     

    Won't stop me working on my Star Wars dio today though - paper mache base for the snow planned 😁

    I have 2 friends that got AstraZeneca and both were sick for 1 to 3 days.....cold sweats etc.  They are both fine now.

  15. On 5/23/2021 at 5:57 PM, Scooby said:


    My wife in an RN in a Covid only unit in Edmonton, most of the admitted patients are anti-maskers. And it is entire families, she has had admitted people have sons and brothers die. Some get well enough to go home but can’t because the house they are living in are all positive.

    I would prefer to avoid Covid by doing the mask wearing and social distancing etc....it really is quite simple.

     

    Albertans have sadly not done well against Covid and some of their lack of success seems to be people not taking the situation seriously.  Vancouver island should be virus free in 4 to 6 weeks...our numbers of active cases is dropping steadily each week.

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