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Getting ready for my semi-regular annual trip to see friends back east. Two days of driving, then stopping briefly in Syracuse and Manlius, two days in Hamilton, then up to Essex County in time for early deer season, a couple days in Castleton, VT, then book it as fast as possible back to the Midwest for a conference in Madison, then four more hours back to central IA. I'm getting exhaused just thinking about it.
You are 'Murican deprived of your divine rights! You know what you need to do!
:P
Oh, it gets worse and worse.
I ordered a cell phone booster from Amazon. It lists Verizon as one of the networks with which it's compatible. Installed it and it's getting and broadcasting a signal (according to its display)... which NONE of our phones are picking up.
So we can't even get a cell phone booster to work around here!
Getting ready for my semi-regular annual trip to see friends back east. Two days of driving, then stopping briefly in Syracuse and Manlius, two days in Hamilton, then up to Essex County in time for early deer season, a couple days in Castleton, VT, then book it as fast as possible back to the Midwest for a conference in Madison, then four more hours back to central IA. I'm getting exhaused just thinking about it.
Holy s+&& I forgot about Gameholecon!!! To Google!!
Edit: Also if you need a place to stay during the convention the convention center isn't too far from my apartment.
Day 3 of no internet.
I'm doing fine; my Android at 2 bars manages to provide a 2.5 Mbps signal to my laptop and that's enough. Impus Minor is piggy-backing off the neighbor's wifi.
GothBard and Impus Major are having major connectivity issues, and are quite unhappy.
(This morning I'm running a 75' CAT5e line to the neighbor's house to borrow their wired connection for GothBard.)
AND WE'RE UP!!!!!!
And it's the usual karmic irony:
(1) I completed the 75' line and it didn't seem to be working so I set it aside to work on it later.
(2) Since I was running around anyway, I re-checked our router and it was back up. FINALLY!
(3) I went back out to GothBard's machine and the 75' cable was now working.
So at least in the future we have a massively long cable for connecting to our neighbor's houses if we need it.
AND WE'RE UP!!!!!!
And it's the usual karmic irony:
(1) I completed the 75' line and it didn't seem to be working so I set it aside to work on it later.
(2) Since I was running around anyway, I re-checked our router and it was back up. FINALLY!
(3) I went back out to GothBard's machine and the 75' cable was now working.So at least in the future we have a massively long cable for connecting to our neighbor's houses if we need it.
So you were affected and the neighbor wasn't? Or is the neighbor on a different network independent of AT&T grid?
Meh. This month's humble choice is... less than stellar. Not terribad as some were, but unlike a recent streak of recent choices I don't really feel like clicking to get it now.
So you were affected and the neighbor wasn't? Or is the neighbor on a different network independent of AT&T grid?AND WE'RE UP!!!!!!
And it's the usual karmic irony:
(1) I completed the 75' line and it didn't seem to be working so I set it aside to work on it later.
(2) Since I was running around anyway, I re-checked our router and it was back up. FINALLY!
(3) I went back out to GothBard's machine and the 75' cable was now working.So at least in the future we have a massively long cable for connecting to our neighbor's houses if we need it.
The world will never know. We are both with Sonic.net. We are both paying for the same fiber optic service. And yet somehow they weren't affected and I was down for just over 2 days.
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Holy s$%@ I forgot about Gameholecon!!! To Google!!
Not that one-- Front Porch Republic is doing their annual conference at UW Madison, and one of my favorite authors is the keynote speaker.
Sweet! I'm also pretty close to the UW. Sounds like a busy trip though so no biggie if you don't have time to say hello or anything.
Either way I think I'm still going to Gameholecon.
Anyone looking for a non-traditional, yet still nerdy, idea for a couple's costume this Halloween? How about Sam Gamgee and a potato.
......?
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Notes on the day:
The Celica's back in the shop for a full paint job and body restoration. I'd always wanted to fully restore the Celica, and for whatever reason the shop guy refused to quote me on it until we'd done everything else. Then he was competing with Miracle (not a hard competition other than price) for the paint, and he offered to take out all the rest of the dents throughout the car for an extra $2000. It's coming out of my personal money instead of the budget (sorry, Drejk! No more gift games for a while!), but I'm finally getting the restoration work I've wanted for years. I wasn't planning on it, and it's costing a pretty penny, but opportunity knocked and if you take the total cost of all repairs and restoration minus the insurance payment, it's actually a couple thousand less than I'd been planning on for the restoration. So "win-ish"-"win-ish"?
I'm getting a COVID booster today and it's annoying because the place I'm getting it is an easy bike ride away... except as you've all heard property crime in the Bay Area is staggering, and the pharmacy is in a neighborhood where I'd be extremely unlikely to find my bike again if I parked it outside. So I have to drive not because it's too far, but because property crime has become so rampant that I'd likely lose my bicycle if I rode.
Unfortunately, they made this public knowledge (I saw almost the exact same statement from the San Francisco D.A. a couple of years ago, so now I've heard from multiple sources that this is the "modern" approach to property crime in the Bay Area), so criminals are very carefully going about, smashing a window ($400), and taking $500 worth of stuff and leaving.
It's bad.
EDIT: Ah, OK. I was a bit misinformed. It was California's Proposition 47 in 2014 that upped the level of misdemeanor theft from $400 to $950. This, combined with a 2009 California Supreme Court decision that our overcrowded prisons constituted "cruel and unusual punishment", led major cities to stop prosecuting nonviolent misdemeanor crimes. Combine the two and make it public knowledge and suddenly you get the situations in Oakland and San Francisco.
Holy s$$@ I forgot about Gameholecon!!! To Google!!Not that one-- Front Porch Republic is doing their annual conference at UW Madison, and one of my favorite authors is the keynote speaker.
Who is this speaker?
** spoiler omitted **...
Time for a folding bike.
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Aiymi gets home from some morning errands, brings me lunch. Awesome. I'm working, and it's going to be just a few minutes before I can get out there.
I finally get out there, see that what she's brought will require a plate and silverware. Notice that there are currently no clean plates, so I wash a plate.
Aiymi: "Oh, crap, I meant to say that I already washed a plate for you."
Me: "Not a big deal. You can just put that one away."
Aiymi: "Well it's not THAT clean."
Me: "..."
Winter is Coming
Unpleasant as it is, it's a relief to see our whether behaving normally for once. At exactly the right time of year, the annual inversion has started. For about a week the onshore flow reverses direction and we're blasted with hot dry air from the east. Our highs will be in the high 80s or low 90s for a week, whereas the Central Valley will have pleasant, temperate weather (dropping from the 90s right now to the high 70s next week). After the inversion our temperatures should plummet into the high 50s or low 60s.
As I've said, with no air conditioning and poor insulation even temperatures in the high 80s are uncomfortable. But seeing "normal" weather is reassuring.
Corsairs Of Umbar prepurchase available... The cheapest option is 40 Euro? *sigh* not gonna fit in the budget in any way or form. Seeing that in May, when I will be able to buy it with points. Probably.
Yeah, it says something about Bay Area right there: It's only 82°F outside, hardly above the range of "normal".
Yet my living room is full of melted cats.
Corsairs Of Umbar prepurchase available... The cheapest option is 40 Euro? *sigh* not gonna fit in the budget in any way or form. Seeing that in May, when I will be able to buy it with points. Probably.
Can you buy games with Steam points? Or is that another system?
Because I thought all you could buy with Steam points was virtual badges or cards or some such. I know I have tens of thousands of Steam points lying around because I thought they were utterly useless...
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Corsairs Of Umbar prepurchase available... The cheapest option is 40 Euro? *sigh* not gonna fit in the budget in any way or form. Seeing that in May, when I will be able to buy it with points. Probably.Can you buy games with Steam points? Or is that another system?
Because I thought all you could buy with Steam points was virtual badges or cards or some such. I know I have tens of thousands of Steam points lying around because I thought they were utterly useless...
Completely unrelated. Those are in-game shop points that you can either buy for $ or earn in-game. Rift had similar points, though much harder to earn in-game.
Sadly, the expansions (and the accompanying mariner class) will only be available for points in May, after approximately half a year when it can only be gotten for actual money - this is standard procedure for Lord Of The Rings Online. I thought about getting the expansion for money for once, instead of waiting out, but my wallet is filibustering the idea.
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Steam points on the other hand, as far as I can tell at least, are completely useless.
I never actually connected LOTRO to my Steam account and I am not unlikely to change it. Doing that with Rift was completely pointless, because it still opened the Rift launcher and actually run from there.
And after some time, Rift launcher messed the update again (I only gave Steam a try in the first place because the original launcher messed the update forcing me to delete the game and install it from scratch...) and I never went back. Despite getting for free the last expansion shortly before that and not yet going through its story lines.
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OK. Now I have a real tirade.
As I think I've mentioned, they're fully replacing the sidewalk in front of our and our neighbor's houses, specifically to make the sidewalks more accessible for wheelchairs and walkers. (And we have two neighbors who use rolling walkers, so it's actually a legitimate expense.)
They poured all the concrete, put yellow tape around the whole thing saying, "Sidewalk closed", and left for the day to let the concrete dry.
I just watched the third dog-walker carefully go around the tape, walk their dog across the wet concrete, then walk around the tape on the other side to move on.
So our brand new, "Smooth for the sake of your elderly neighbors" sidewalk is getting dimples before it even opens.
May every one of those dog-walkers eventually need to use walkers on rough surfaces. I fricking live here and my house is closed off from the street without a long side walk, and no one in my family has stepped on the concrete.
Yeah, yeah. Lawful. Yadda yadda. I'm just exhausted with people who consider themselves too important to be decent.
Who is this speaker?Holy s*%$ I forgot about Gameholecon!!! To Google!!Not that one-- Front Porch Republic is doing their annual conference at UW Madison, and one of my favorite authors is the keynote speaker.
Paul Kingsnorth. Kind of like the British version of Ed Abbey.
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Yeah, yeah. Lawful. Yadda yadda. I'm just exhausted with people who consider themselves too important to be decent.
We poured some hot blacktop on a parking lot around the bathroom. We had roadcones with yellow "do not enter tape" We were standing in the area on rocks with tools in our hands.
We were between blacktop trucks. And more as a joke than to look busy, we tied rocks to the yellow tape and made streamers so the area was caged off in yellow warning tape.
Someone STILL tried to step over the tape, onto searing hot blacktop, wearing basically slippers. If I'd been skinnier they would have gotten in. Like.. seriously. I get that you think the rules don't apply to you but you're going to mess with the laws of thermodynamics too...
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There is a reason why every "fail at work" video has at least one clip of someone or something walking through wet cement.
obvious things are obvious, but we don't talk about them.
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Hermione comes home from her school trip this evening. I've used the past few days to clean out her dresser, her walking closet, and about half of the floor in her room, and I took out one shopping bag full of clothes that are too small to put in a donation box and one industrialized garbage bag just full of broken crap. And there is still so much more to do. But she has three more of these trips throughout the school year, and every time she leaves on one, if the room isn't clean, I'm going to going there and decide what stays and goes. At any rate, it's going to help me help her get the room truly clean and organized. She has the nicest room in the entire house, other than Grandmonsters, and she treats it like the garbage dump.
OK. I haven't used eBay in years until I needed to find salvage parts for the Celica, but I find it truly bizarre that eBay vendors now have return policies that are almost as good as Amazon's. I'm returning parts to three different vendors, and all three are paying for postage both ways, so I'm a money loser for them.
Amazon plans for that. I'm amazed eBay vendors do the same.
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Hermione comes home from her school trip this evening. I've used the past few days to clean out her dresser, her walking closet, and about half of the floor in her room, and I took out one shopping bag full of clothes that are too small to put in a donation box and one industrialized garbage bag just full of broken crap. And there is still so much more to do. But she has three more of these trips throughout the school year, and every time she leaves on one, if the room isn't clean, I'm going to going there and decide what stays and goes. At any rate, it's going to help me help her get the room truly clean and organized. She has the nicest room in the entire house, other than Grandmonsters, and she treats it like the garbage dump.
I know I'll get virtually slapped for this, but, "Welcome to parenthood."
(On the bright side, once Impus Minor hit 17 he got tired of living in a sty, so he brought in a ton of shelving, his own laundry hamper, etc., so now other than the fact that he never vacuums nor makes his bed, his room is clutter-free.)
Yup. I was much the same at her age. I(think) I grew out of it. For me, a lot of it was being in the weird situation/age of being responsible for everything and not responsible for anything.
Hermione comes home from her school trip this evening. I've used the past few days to clean out her dresser, her walking closet, and about half of the floor in her room, and I took out one shopping bag full of clothes that are too small to put in a donation box and one industrialized garbage bag just full of broken crap. And there is still so much more to do. But she has three more of these trips throughout the school year, and every time she leaves on one, if the room isn't clean, I'm going to going there and decide what stays and goes. At any rate, it's going to help me help her get the room truly clean and organized. She has the nicest room in the entire house, other than Grandmonsters, and she treats it like the garbage dump.I know I'll get virtually slapped for this, but, "Welcome to parenthood."
(On the bright side, once Impus Minor hit 17 he got tired of living in a sty, so he brought in a ton of shelving, his own laundry hamper, etc., so now other than the fact that he never vacuums nor makes his bed, his room is clutter-free.)
Can confirm. This is universal, and even when you tell them to clean them, they spend most of the time fannying about.
For some reason, Sonic made a desultory attempt at tidying his room today dressed Porky Pig fashion, shall we say, which didn't seem to help at all.
Hermione comes home from her school trip this evening. I've used the past few days to clean out her dresser, her walking closet, and about half of the floor in her room, and I took out one shopping bag full of clothes that are too small to put in a donation box and one industrialized garbage bag just full of broken crap. And there is still so much more to do. But she has three more of these trips throughout the school year, and every time she leaves on one, if the room isn't clean, I'm going to going there and decide what stays and goes. At any rate, it's going to help me help her get the room truly clean and organized. She has the nicest room in the entire house, other than Grandmonsters, and she treats it like the garbage dump.I know I'll get virtually slapped for this, but, "Welcome to parenthood."
(On the bright side, once Impus Minor hit 17 he got tired of living in a sty, so he brought in a ton of shelving, his own laundry hamper, etc., so now other than the fact that he never vacuums nor makes his bed, his room is clutter-free.)
Can confirm. This is universal, and even when you tell them to clean them, they spend most of the time fannying about.
For some reason, Sonic made a desultory attempt at tidying his room today dressed Porky Pig fashion, shall we say, which didn't seem to help at all.
he was porky pigging it?
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making a bed and folding clothes seem like the weirdest waste ot time and energy
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making a bed and folding clothes seem like the weirdest waste ot time and energy
Impus Minor agrees. He owns two hampers: One for clean clothes and one for dirty. So he scrounges through the clean clothes hamper, wears something for the day, and throws it into the dirty clothes hamper.
Personally, I find a made bed more comfortable to sleep in than an unmade bed because the sheets under me get wrinkled to heck every night, and going to bed on smooth sheets is pleasant. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't bother making the bed.
So... this happened today.
I do not recommend.
But the best quote of the article is, "a fresh PVD can be a very dramatic experience for a patient."
Yes. That it can be.
EDIT: Or the far less entertaining Wikipedia version.
Are you alright?
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Are you alright?
I am absolutely typical so far: Lots of floaters, Weiss rings in both eyes, but otherwise no pain nor loss of vision. From Wikipedia, "Therapy is not required or indicated in posterior vitreous detachment..."
And I love the difference between optometry and the rest of the health care world. I went in on an emergency basis, got examined by a student clinician and a licensed optometrist, had my eye pressure and my peripheral vision checked, my eyes dilated, and two thorough examinations by the two people...
...and the pre-insurance bill was $175.
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There's a wasp nest by the door to our garage.
Normally they're fine with me turning on the hose or grabbing the extension cord there. Apparently sis did something to the nest today, so instead of sending out a few scouts to see what the noise was. I got the full swarm .
"Uh.. whoops.. sorry guys. ow ow ow ow oh come on ow ow ow ow"
I managed to convince most of them i wasn't a threat by walking away slowly. But half an hour later got stung again. Look in the shirt to see if i missed a stinger.
Nope. missed an entire wasp.
"Come on dude, late hit seriously.
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This may pack less of a punch here than if I told my coworkers, but I actually fixed something on my truck. Among pretty much everyone I know offline, I'm famously not mechanically inclined at all when it comes to a) electronics, and b) cars, and both of the above tend to randomly break down when I touch them (one of my coworkers has nicknamed me "Harry" after Harry Dresden). So, when the CD player in my truck started constantly trying to eject a non-existent disc even when the truck was off, causing the battery to drain, I got worried, and literally the night before a cross-country drive is not the best time to take it to a dealership. Without any idea of what else to do, I ended up popping open the fuse panel, finding the audio system fuse, pulling it, and putting back in. I'm honestly shocked, but it worked.
In a related story, our excavator at work has been randomly blowing fuses all season, so the boss took it to the Bobcat dealership for service. The service tech opened up the electrical junction box under the seat and pulled out a pair of pruning shears. I'm starting to think that may have been the issue.
Personally, I find a made bed more comfortable to sleep in than an unmade bed because the sheets under me get wrinkled to heck every night, and going to bed on smooth sheets is pleasant. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't bother making the bed.
Smooth sheets. Yeah….
Well worth the effort.
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Y’know, you’d think people would provide a user’s manual for getting old. My manager has PVDs in both eyes. Shiro had one so bad he went to the hospital for it. It apparently affects 50% of all people over 50, and 86% of everyone who reaches 90.
But I’d never heard of it before. So… why aren’t common ailments of aging more commonly known?
So... this happened today.
I do not recommend.
But the best quote of the article is, "a fresh PVD can be a very dramatic experience for a patient."
Yes. That it can be.
EDIT: Or the far less entertaining Wikipedia version.
Yikes. Hope that can be sorted.