The short CD of music at mom's memorial service

I was disappointed in that none of the aides from Caring Hands made it
to the little meeting, as it wasn't much of a memorial service as it was
just friends and family gathering to talk. I was kinda disappointed it
wasn't something more formal and organized where people got up to speak
about my mom, hopefully to recall important moments and such.

I put together a short CD of music and for those who are curious as to
what was on it, and for those who missed it, consisted of:

Track 2 "Dea Cantat The Goddess Sings" and Track 24 "Coro Di Dea The
Goddesses Singing Voices" from the Oh My Goddess Movie soundtrack CD. I
considered addding Track 27 "The song of an angel", but the 3rd track
was "Will you be there" by Michael Jackson.

This is too much grief for me to handle. I miss my mom, and I still find
myself sobbing. My mom deserved a better memorial service, but before
that she should not have had to die. It's probably the guilt of this
whole thing that I will have with me for some time. If I knew what my
future would have for me, I could move on easily. I don't know so I'm
having a very hard time dealing with this. I'm scared.

I noticed very few (read: none) of the sympathy cards were addressed to
me. I'm thankful that Sandy, one of mom's aides on alternate Saturdays,
did send one directly to the house addressed to me when I told her in
email.

I partly expected (for some reason known only to me) some show of
support and maybe money. Don't ask me why, I really shouldn't expect
that. I just hope I can get that kind of help pretty soon.

I'm still in the mindset and mode that mom's just in the hospital for a
while and should be coming home soon. But I also know she's not coming
home. I want her to come home.

I need to get married. I need someone else out here, someone to take
care of. I don't want to be alone.

I must stop typing here otherwise I'll not get it sent.

Didn't I tell people? The Screwing has begun

So now I'm being hounded for keys that people don't need for this
apartment. I prefer to have security and privacy, but my older sister
feels she needs keys for each lock. She doesn't need those keys. She has
1 for the back door. That's enough.

Oh so she's threatening to change the locks if she doesn't get keys she
feels she's supposed to have. That REALLY helps her position (sarcastic)
Then tries to cite some safety concern should someone need to get in
here if something happened to me. I already have a problem with her
walking in without knocking or ringing a bell. I fear for the safety of
mom's stuff. She'll just come in here and start gutting the place.
There's been talk of throwing out my mom's bed. WHY?

Then there was the promise of my older sister to help out with property
taxes and the electric until I got working again and had some money to
be able to pay that. But now she's talking about Oh I have to go online
to fill out Move In info because otherwise they'll shut the electric off
next week.

WHAT THE FU?

We can't change the name on the account yet, I thought. And I distinctly
remember her saying she'd help on the electric. Now she's lying to me!

I saw the bill mom had for this coming due date. It was $174. I don't
have the money to cover that, the phone, and Road Runner. I just don't
have it!!!

SHE PROMISED.

I threw a fit and then she threatened to call the police. RIGHT. That
REALLY HELPS your position.

I'm getting screwed so soon after my mom's death. I wish she had just
stayed where she was.

1 Gig of RAM

The package arrived just moments ago.

I took Mom's Dell upstairs. It's the first time since we got the system that I've had to open the case. Up to now, I didn't even know how to open it.

It's got a Pentium 4 with the processor fan setup like the rescued P4 tower upstairs.

It's got PATA aka IDE drive interfaces. I don't know what's causing the CDrom to act wonky at times, so perhaps that will have to be just outright replaced. I checked all the cables.

Carefully vacuumed out dust on the processor heat sink. Then removed the Samsung 256MB stick and gingerly installed the Kingston set. I bought a PC2700 DDR 333 pair meant for dual channel use, but it'll work as a single channel 1 Gig set up as well.

Got it downstairs and hooked it up carefully. Turned it on, thing beeped at me saying the amount of system RAM has changed. Damn straight. F1 to continue.

Oh my god. I wish mom could have seen this. The Dell booted up in around 1 minute. It was so sweet to see it do that. Imagine the amount of time we could have saved if this had been bought sooner.

1 minute. All icons except for the printer showed up. I mean it just leaped to life.

Right now will be a "burn in" test. It may be on for a few hours to make sure it's going to work out, but this is a Kingston product. Same brand as the dual channel set I put in that one lady's system.

It was so sweet. 1 minute boot up time. XP sees 1 Gig in there.

EDIT: Actually, the boot up time is about 2min 39sec. Much faster than the 4 minutes that became the norm after AVG Free became bloatware.

Video found on the computer

Christmas 2008 with Grandma Carol

Taking it day by day

So anywho, I was out and about yesterday. One bit of good fortune is
checking out the Alliance Big Lots and stumbled upon Shuffle disk 3.
There were 3 DVDs in the set I needed, but wasn't sure if it was 3 or 4.
I get home and check one blog posting. I needed 3 and 4, with Shuffle #2
being the one I bought at another Big Lots a couple weeks ago. But
nothing else jumped out at me as needing bought. I hope Myers and Myers
got their xxxHolic DVDs they might have wanted. But at least I have only
1 more Shuffle DVD to find.

I had tried to put an automatic timer on mom's bedside reading light,
but the mechanism inside stopped working right. I was trying to set up a
bit of normalcy with the timer. I can't find the other one I got when we
moved out of my grandparents' house. They used a few on lamps when they
went away on vacations. I'd like to get another timer and pay less than
$7 for it.

I also began using the TV's sleep timer and automatic On timer. The
sleep timer at least gives me some noise in the evening as I go
upstairs, and it shuts off like mom would do when I went to bed. She'd
watch CNN for a while, then go to reading her books. I have the Auto On
timer set at 8:30 in the morning and it worked fine yesterday. Only
today it came on at 8:30 am alright, but when I got down there a bit
later (9 am) the TV was off!

I hadn't noticed it had switched back off before I got there. I didn't
turn it off. I'm not sure what would cause that. It would be neat if it
happened again.

Today I conducted some of my business that I needed to do. I got the
statement from the credit union that I'll need to take to a Time Warner
office to get them to haul out the required forms so they can refund the
2nd $71.85 that came through when I hadn't realized mom had paid the
bill already. Both that and the phone bill payment that cleared after
she died. Time Warner sure is happy to take your money, but getting it
back they're assholes about it and make it difficult. They can't just
push one button and it's done.

Geez, these places sure jump on you when they want their stuff back. The
people with Lifeline called yesterday to get their phone back on
Thursday. Give me some time to grieve already.

Ponyo is scheduled to come out on DVD in March 2010. Why Dizzney is
missing the holiday season with it is beyond me.

Out

Tried to do some shopping but just ended feeling horrible about the whole thing. Maybe I should've stayed home.

Memorial Services planned

re: a memorial service for friends and concerned people, my sister says
Grace Chapel is having one October 24, 2009 from 3 to 5 pm.

Notices will be going out to the newspapers ASAP.

Maybe I know one thing I could use

I think I know what people can do for me: Just come by and visit. I'm
used to cooking for at least 2 people, so maybe the occasional weeknight
Let Me Cook a Recipe You Pick type of thing. They pick the recipe and
bring the ingredients. That would give me some of what I'm missing. Just
show up around 5 pm and keep it simple, expect to stay until 7 or 8 pm.

My mother

I found some images on the computer of my mom. I'm going to put the earliest of the 3 that I took in town today and got put on photographic paper.

In 2004, just after she got her Dell.

Mom's savings bond / expenses paid?!

I just now dug out Mom's savings bond that she got when working for the
plastics company back in 1995 for perfect attendance. The last time I
had checked its value was December 2007 which was $40.90.

According to the info, it takes 30 years for EE U.S. Savings Bonds to
mature. Mom would have to have lived until she was 81 to collect the
full face value of this bond.

Sadly, she fell short by 16 years.

I'm still in shock. I want her to be coming back through the door at any
moment, her daily aides coming in to help her with stuff. I find myself
thinking about something, wanting my mom to be there and I'm just
blubbering. I can't help it.

My Mom isn't supposed to die. It's supposed to be someone else's. Oh
wait, someone else's mom had already died. It was our turn this time.

It doesn't seem fair. I wish she had asked me to take her to the ER
somewhere. There was a time window if she had gotten the right help,
where maybe she'd still be alive, or she could have still died at a
hospital.

...

My younger sister just now called while I was typing this - someone from
her church found out what had happened, called the funeral home - and
will be coming down with a check to cover my mom's funeral expenses.

That made my cry even harder.

I have GOT to get some rest.

Finally ordered that 1G of RAM

It still makes me sad to think about it, but I finally ordered the RAM upgrade for mom's computer. I'm always going to call it Mom's computer. She bought it in 2004 from money awarded from her worker's comp settlement. I say it was the best thing she ever did, even if it has a couple quirks that when the RAM kit gets here, I plan to do something about once and for all.

But not before I run a system backup on the drive.

*sigh* This all has been so sad.

We're currently making plans to have the cremation paid off for a suitable memorial service for my mom in a few months time around her birthday. I hope I get to say something. After all, I've been with her since... 1995? I forget when my younger sister moved out and began her family.

Every few moments I stop to think about something and Mom, and I can't help but break down and sob.

I wondered if I'd miss her if she died. I said so June 1st 2009:"It makes me wonder if I would miss my mom if she should happen to die at some point."

It chills me to think I put that on my blog just over 4 months ago, but you know... Do I miss her now?

Oh, yes. No question.

Little things set me off to tears

I look at the shopping list and the meal plan my mom wrote last week. All those meals she was looking forward to enjoying. Then I look in the fridge, and there's all those quart containers of hand made saurkraut made at the Algonqiun Mill Festival a couple weeks ago. Then as I put a bag of trash from the clothes hamper she had near her bed in the trash outside, there's the pizza box from Friday (or was it Thursday?). Her last pizza.

Then there's that stupid ball on a rope tied to the pole that she bought for some reason, thinking my nieces would go out to play with it. I probably should bring that ball and rope in.

She was looking forward to getting her other cataract operation over with so she could see without glasses for the first time in over 40 years.

We got done today making arrangements for services and payments with the funeral home. At least we also know now who to go to and have my grandfather's DOD engraved on his marker.

I called her Uncle Wilbur's family suddenly having his name come to mind. His wife answered and thanked me for letting them know ahead of the notice appearing on the local cable channel for such notices. We still have her sister, currently on vacation, to get ahold of. I'd like her notice to appear in 2 papers at least.

These are the kind of things nobody should have to deal with but will have to at some point.

Mom, I got your air conditioner out of the window last night. I'm taking care of Melody for you. We were simply blessed that my best friend's parents found her and she made her way to us after Ariel died.

There will be a coroner's report. No autopsy. We'll have to figure out who to contact in regard to getting a copy of the report. They did the usual lab and blood work. Mom will like that. She's always want to do blood work since graduating with a Medical Laboratory Technician's degree (Associate) in the early 1980s. Never got a chance to use her skills.

There will be some items we'll be selling since none of us really needs it. Mom certainly took advantage of being able to get the things she needed for her comfort. She went all out. Toilet riser. Hospital style side table. She needed the CPAP, but at least got things like lights and such.

She was house bound and her entire life was getting on Pogo, other online stuff and shopping... Oh yeah, I was up all night getting through a lot of that crap. Ugh. She got a credit card somehow, and naturally fell behind trying to pay it off, and due to late charges, got a 29.99% APR. Last statement I see here has that on it.

I managed to get into most of her important accounts (utilities, financial (paypal)) as well as some for websites that for some stupid reason she paid for a membership. Some had auto-renew memberships. I turned those off NOW.

I've been awake since Thursday morning, not a wink of sleep. I might eventually get some. Melody is sleeping and snoring on the bed. At least we'll get back the pillow(s) that went with mom the other day.

I wonder when we'll eventually find the box for her other walker basket that we thought got lost?

Well, it's 12:30 and I don't think her aid is coming today, so the lady got my message.

Ironic how her ordered ink cartridges arrived the day after she passed away. I was able to cancel 3 unshipped books from Amazon.

At least she got to see me pass my CompTIA A+ exams, even if the certificate isn't here yet. I'd have really liked to have her see that.

She liked fishing. I don't know why. Her favorite photo is from one trip to Lake Erie with my grandfather and best friend. You can't see either in the photo of The Big Catch because one isn't in the shot, and the other is on the deck of the boat, seasick. ^_^

I'm starting to feel tired. Ah good. I'll get some rest. I've got so much yet to do.

My mother just passed away

I hate thinking my father is going to load up my blog and see this. I hope he will just butt out.

I hate to inform my friends and anyone who really cares about me that my mother passed away this afternoon, some time between 2 and 3 pm, 3 pm being when I found her. I tried to wake her up to let her know I was going in town to get her medication that Nurse Amy called in for her recent chest congestion, which unfortunately she probably got from me.

I've been trying to contact all her doctors, friends, and services in regard to her passing. I have a lot of crap to deal with in the coming weeks and beyond. Utilities to change into my name. Services I'll need to sign up for. I'm likely going to need counseling.

We never got around to putting that 1 Gig of RAM in her Dell. She got to see me pass my CompTIA A+ tests the first time through.

Nobody had EVER say that I was neglectful, that I did not do enough. I will smite thee, as the saying goes. Don't ANYONE ever say that about this to me.

The oxygen concentrator is off. It's so quiet now. The TV isn't on. I don't know what I'm going to make for supper. My nieces are going to be so sad.

I wish I was married already so I wouldn't have to face this alone and then be alone. I have my friends, but they don't live with you. I don't know what I need exactly, but I sure could use a spouse with an income at the moment.

My mother was the last person standing in my older sister's way to keep her from screwing me over.

I had some pretty dark days following being fired from the grocery store.

I miss my mom.

They could have explained this in the manual

Well, after a significantly long recharge, the phone works again.

Really, they should have explained what the phone will do when it REALLY
needs recharged. I'll bet they never thought to put something like that
in...

A mixed bag

So anywho, I can finally say for now the Check Engine light has gone out
for about 2 weeks. So far, so good.

Browns won their first game of this season.

And I hope it's just a battery that needs charging in the cell phone. I
tried to turn it on while waiting for my mother's prescriptions to be
filled, but all it would do is come on, give me a white screen for a few
moments, then shut down immediately. The battery wasn't dead by a long
shot. It had at least 2 more bars of battery charge showing. I last used
it Saturday and I remember shutting it down when I got home.

If it continues this immediately shutting down business, I don't know
what to do with it. It still has some months of service left and over
600 units of airtime left. I almost got mad enough to slam it on the
floor at the store. If it's a nearly dead battery, OK, so that's what it
does when the battery is damn near dead. Other than that, I or my
friends who got it for me may have to call Tracfone and bitch them a new
one. I still have some pics (correction: maybe HAD) I wanted to get off
the thing.

As much as they are useful, it's stuff like this that makes me think why
people even have them when they go bad. I've taken very good care of it,
so I have no idea what happened to it or anything.

I wish I had a SIM card reader...

If it works again like it should after charging, I'll try sending a post
to let people know.

Liz's Magic Knight Rayearth bling

Liz's MKR Bling on Youtube

Recent video I've finally put up on Youtube. It took an hour and a half due to our slow connection. It was captured with the Tevion USB video capture box, recoded into an MP4 to fix the gamma and contrast and some bottom edge clipping, then re-encoded without loss of resolution into WMV where I was able to edit the clip into what I put up.

Hopefully this will get her attention and finally get in touch more regularly. I don't know if I have more footage of her...

In Memorium: Duane Dawson, 20 years later

While today's date, October 10th, holds some happiness for me (my
youngest niece's birthday is today), it also holds some other sad
meaning for me and a friend.

While attending Stark Technical as it was called then, from 1987 until
when I graduated in 1990, I got to meet people and for a short time my
friend of who knows how many years at that point also attended. During
1989, thanks to another friend who used the local BBS handle of Lord
Humungous (aka Rick), we got to meet a fellow by the name of Duane
Dawson.

My friend and Lord H got to spend more time with Duane than I did, but I
got to know him quite well and he was a "cool dude" to know. He even
drove me and Lord H to my house after classes one day.

I wish I had a photo of Duane. Or even of his friend Ed, who had an
Apple II system he was wanting to sell. In my archive of stuff, I still
have the handwritten in pencil ad he wrote so I could try putting it up
on local BBSs or someplace hoping to score him a sale.

Just before the week of October 10, 1989, Duane finally managed to buy
the leather jacket he had his eye on for some time. However, on October
10, 1989, he and Ed were on their way home back to Wooster or
thereabouts to their jobs after classes. Unfortunately, it was raining
that day and Duane was driving way too fast. His car hydroplaned and
crossed the center line, crashing into a van headed east.

Both were killed upon impact.

I still have the copy of the STC Student Newsletter that has the
announcement of the accident. Hopefully I'll dig that out and put it up
here, and in addition to that, maybe the clip of video I had recorded
(with audio) of us doing our Techniques of Writing presentation, with a
"Mad Lib" type of program I wrote. Duane, my friend, and I did this for
each of the blurbs we were supposed to present. I think we got a good
score for it. Aside from that, the only other thing I have of Duane is
him belching into the mic of my micro cassette recorder. He was fun
because he did things like that. Though I'm sure and I hope he'll
comment, my friend who spent more time with Duane and Lord H as a group
has more interesting stories to tell, like the bat in the sporting goods
store at the mall. Even though he was the one to blame, it's stuff like
that I missed out on.

I might have said some heartless things to Lord H in email on local BBSs
that off the top of my head were the first things I could think of, but
knowing now that I have Asperger's, it was the only way I knew how to
deal with something like that. It probably also drove a gap between me
and Lord H, whom I really liked. He was cool, too. In some years
following Duane's death, I used to call Rick on October 10th when I
still knew his number and we'd talk for a while. I forgot when I stopped
doing that. Last time I knew anything about Rick, he was working for
FedEx or some place like that.

Duane and Ed. I was hoping to get to know Ed as he seemed an OK person
since after all he was Duane's friend. I can't believe it's been 20
years already.

T.T

A RANT: The Big Screw by Satellite TV

OK so a while back, we used to have Dish Network. But because we moved
only 1 mile to the east, but still part of the same zip code, Dish
Network forced a change of "local" channels to Youngstown instead of
Cleveland stations we had been getting.

Only because we moved 1 mile to the east, on the edge of a neighboring
county, but still SAME ZIP CODE.

So we dumped Dish Network, and DirecTV promised us, yes we could still
get Cleveland stations through them.

Just this past week, and even today, I get notices that Oh Wow DirecTV
is going to be changing something about the locals we get. Well, if it
means getting the WRONG locals for our SAME ZIP CODE as before, then
there's going to be a problem.

This somehow involves an "upgrade." I don't see how this is an upgrade.
It's a downgrade. We're still in the SAME zip code.

For some stupid reason, they cite some 2004 law, claiming they're using
Neilsen research to determine local market stations based on ZIP CODE,
but it looks like they want to use where you actually LIVE in the ZIP
CODE.

What does this mean? I HATE TIME WARNER. This Forces My Hand - I'll Drop
Digital Satellite Altogether If we're being forced to take local
channels that isn't our market. My committment to DirecTV is pretty much
up. They're more expensive than Dish Network, but up until now, we had
the right market for our ZIP code, namely Cleveland. When Channel 3
shows the Browns pre-season games, we would end up missing them because
they're not shown anywhere else.

Why Do I Hate Cable? Continual Rate Increases Every Year. Kickbacks to
the local government to allow them to remain a monopoly. They pass on
"franchise" and "regulatory" fees instead of taking that as an expense
of doing business. CABLE IS EVIL. Time Warner Also Doesn't Have NFL
Network. They may have Big Ten, but they're being asses about the NFL
channel. Gee, digital satellite services have it at no extra cost!

Plus Satellite TV gets unfairly taxed.

So what do I do? Can I explain to these people I'm STILL IN THE SAME ZIP
CODE? Can I refuse this "upgrade"? Would I stop getting Cleveland locals
as a result and have to pay an unfair fee later?

Youngstown is not my market, and I should not be force to have to get
locals I do not want.

What took them so long to do this? Why now? Their Neilsen research data
is FLAWED.

What is the absolute cheapest cable TV service I can get without being
forced to use a cable box?

Article: Just Add Water

Found this webpage linked to from the autism newsgroup.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/wave-hello-to-the-surf-genius-with-aspergers-1797025.html

Some of the comments below it are of interest to me, such as:

I have Asperger's, and I suffer because of other people.

To most people, I would say "Please make the effort to get to know me in
spite of my behaviors." Some of the few who already have would say good
things about me.

Taiyaki

First takoyaki, now taiyaki!

USB PCI Cards are neat

Got my ordered $5 USB 2.0 PCI card from Microbarn yesterday. I let it
sit around to warm up from being outside. Jeez, the last week or so has
been darn cold, or at least cooler than it really should be around this
time of year. I really hope this doesn't mean another 10 below Zero kind
of winter. OH SH....

Anywho, I get upstairs, open up the P4 case, and into the slot the sound
card was, goes in the USB card. NEC Chipset and all.

Power it up, and XP finds the card! And seems to like it very well. The
CD that came with it has drivers for Windows 98 so I don't even need it.

I begin attaching devices to it. The little $10 digital camera still
doesn't seem to work well as a PC web camera. Oh well, let's get to the
high speed video capture box. That installs easily and it WORKS. OMG.

Plug in a thumbdrive, no complaints that it could run faster! Plug in my
external hard drives. Seagate comes up fast! Plug in the Maxtor - it
doesn't give me delayed write errors. Wooo!!!

Now to get the DVD burner and keep looking for 16G thumb drives.

This card has an internal USB port. I could probably put the 16G drive
on that. I'll have to see if it doesn't cause problems. Too bad I can't
reconnect the front panel USB ports to that internal one. They're good
for game controllers anyway.

ANY time you run into a system with No or Slow USB ports, get a 2.0
card. I could have easily wasted $35 at Best Buy but instead got this $5
card that does the job. Cheap but still high quality!