Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
What happened to me this past month?
I would really like to know what happened to me this past month. I got to talking to the counselor today and when asked how I was doing, I had the observation of how this month started out really crappy and depressing, but for some reason I got around to feeling not as bad as compared to a few months ago. What the hell happened?
Did my nieces staying over for a few nights next door do something? My sister giving away my mom's expensive adjustable bed? (Compared to what she claimed she got for it and the Craigslist ad I found, she practically gave it away. It wasn't costing anyone anything to just keep it around or put it upstairs. It wasn't hers to sell and I never got offered any money from the proceeds which were pitiful at best.) Working on my business plan? Making pizza twice in one week? I really have no idea what happened. August ended up being an odd month for me.
How can I keep this going, my counselor asked me. I noticed that I must have just kept from thinking about things, had things to do. I still haven't seen a doctor for a physical like my younger sister wants me to do. I figure she's mad at me in regard to what happened to mom. It's always been if something went wrong and I was nearby, it's my fault. I probably should see a doctor about a physical checkup, but I'd like to know how my younger sister dealt with things in regard to mom.
Just feeling better without a reason isn't a good thing. I don't do things like that. In a way, it's more or less denial in my opinion.
Did my nieces staying over for a few nights next door do something? My sister giving away my mom's expensive adjustable bed? (Compared to what she claimed she got for it and the Craigslist ad I found, she practically gave it away. It wasn't costing anyone anything to just keep it around or put it upstairs. It wasn't hers to sell and I never got offered any money from the proceeds which were pitiful at best.) Working on my business plan? Making pizza twice in one week? I really have no idea what happened. August ended up being an odd month for me.
How can I keep this going, my counselor asked me. I noticed that I must have just kept from thinking about things, had things to do. I still haven't seen a doctor for a physical like my younger sister wants me to do. I figure she's mad at me in regard to what happened to mom. It's always been if something went wrong and I was nearby, it's my fault. I probably should see a doctor about a physical checkup, but I'd like to know how my younger sister dealt with things in regard to mom.
Just feeling better without a reason isn't a good thing. I don't do things like that. In a way, it's more or less denial in my opinion.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Borders clearance makes me sad
Well, I held off going to Borders until I saw that they increased the amount of the clearance discount a bit, up from 20% off. For a store that's going out of business (when it could have been saved in my opinion), the parking lot was packed. That also meant the inside of the store was not just packed as well, but the air conditioning wasn't able to keep up.
I managed to find where the manga books were, and ended up finding 4 books. Bunny Drop 1 and 2 because of seeing the anime airing in Japan. Omamori Himari V.1 because I missed ordering it and I've kept up on the series. And Inukami V.3 (not ominbus edition) because I had V.2 Ominbus edition which has books 4 to 6, completing the series.
What I had hoped to find was books of Love Hina by Tokyopop that I don't have, missed ordering due to not paying attention to them for some reason. Kodansha is reprinting the popular series in omnibus format, but I'd like to avoid rebuying material I already have. Also hoping to finally complete my own set of "I"s manga, but like Love Hina, they didn't stock stuff that old. *sigh* I might also try to find books of Eiken that I don't have.
I made the mistake of taking only 3 ibuprofen for pain, and barely managed to walk through the store. I had hoped to find books by Anthony Bourdain, but it seems they sold out already or they just got moved somewhere. Also hoped to find Wandering Son Book 1 after finding out it was available by Fantagraphics, another title I saw the anime based on the original manga. It's hardcover, which may also add to explain why I've not kept up on it.
What was odd was seeing all those candle and fragrance and perfume products on some shelves. These weren't there before the clearance, were they? I mean, nothing says clearance more than selling that sort of stuff, does it? Most shocking was seeing all the clearance signs hanging up everywhere. I guess if you're going out of business, you might as well blow the budget on signs. I kinda wish I could afford to buy some store fixtures, like a table or shelving unit, but the prices are too high for a casual purchase.
I finally made it up to make my modest purchase after sweating like crazy in the waiting line, and made the comment to the cashier that I guess my Borders card won't be good for much, and the lady says "We're not Borders." Excuse me? The name Borders is on the receipt (along with All Sales Are Final / No Returns, I might add), and Borders is on the bag, which I'll consider collectible. Hopefully talks with Books a Million will resume for that location, or some other bookstore chain (Hey, Barnes & Noble!!) moves in.
I managed to find where the manga books were, and ended up finding 4 books. Bunny Drop 1 and 2 because of seeing the anime airing in Japan. Omamori Himari V.1 because I missed ordering it and I've kept up on the series. And Inukami V.3 (not ominbus edition) because I had V.2 Ominbus edition which has books 4 to 6, completing the series.
What I had hoped to find was books of Love Hina by Tokyopop that I don't have, missed ordering due to not paying attention to them for some reason. Kodansha is reprinting the popular series in omnibus format, but I'd like to avoid rebuying material I already have. Also hoping to finally complete my own set of "I"s manga, but like Love Hina, they didn't stock stuff that old. *sigh* I might also try to find books of Eiken that I don't have.
I made the mistake of taking only 3 ibuprofen for pain, and barely managed to walk through the store. I had hoped to find books by Anthony Bourdain, but it seems they sold out already or they just got moved somewhere. Also hoped to find Wandering Son Book 1 after finding out it was available by Fantagraphics, another title I saw the anime based on the original manga. It's hardcover, which may also add to explain why I've not kept up on it.
What was odd was seeing all those candle and fragrance and perfume products on some shelves. These weren't there before the clearance, were they? I mean, nothing says clearance more than selling that sort of stuff, does it? Most shocking was seeing all the clearance signs hanging up everywhere. I guess if you're going out of business, you might as well blow the budget on signs. I kinda wish I could afford to buy some store fixtures, like a table or shelving unit, but the prices are too high for a casual purchase.
I finally made it up to make my modest purchase after sweating like crazy in the waiting line, and made the comment to the cashier that I guess my Borders card won't be good for much, and the lady says "We're not Borders." Excuse me? The name Borders is on the receipt (along with All Sales Are Final / No Returns, I might add), and Borders is on the bag, which I'll consider collectible. Hopefully talks with Books a Million will resume for that location, or some other bookstore chain (Hey, Barnes & Noble!!) moves in.
Monday, August 01, 2011
500 posts!
Finally got to 500 posts so far!
At any rate, I had a rough night last night. I went up to go to bed, and I had been dealing with some wetness on the floor upstairs in front of the air conditioner. Tonight I found out where it was coming from. I had used an old LJS work shirt as a means to plug the gap beneath the unit to keep out bugs, but somehow water was finding its way to the shirt, and then the shirt wicked it down to the floor.
So I pull the front off the unit and find out why. It's supposed to drain water away from the cooling coils and drain outside, but some gooey smeary kind of gunk had formed in the water (I had been running it nearly continuously during this past month). So something like wild yeasty snot formed in the thing. Great.
Lacking any handy drain cleaner to drip into the water tray, I tried some distilled vinegar and some enzyme cleaner I use for urine spots. I saw all this crap and wondered just how far inside the air conditioner it went, and I don't know what I was going to accomplish by trying to put my fingers in the air output vent while it was still on, but it's enough to say that getting a small chunk of skin from a fingertip sliced off was enough to make me wake up (I was rather sleepy or about to be asleep at this time) and my back was yelling at me for the prior manipulation of the unit to encourage whatever water was in the thing to drain out in some manner.
After panicking for a few minutes, finding a usable band aid, and dealing with that emergency, I manage to get the vinegar (to work on the plugged up stuff) and the enzyme cleaner (also to work on stuff), and put the unit into a fan only mode for the night.
I woke up uncomfortable, saw the temp was 77 in my room, and checked the unit to see mostly clean cooling coils and such. I now have the unit at a more pronounced angle to make sure water drains out, and plugged up the gap at the bottom again.
It also took me a few hours to deal with my lingering sleep deprived pain and after some ibuprofen and Coke Zero (the caffeine helped), I recovered enough to be functional.
And cut a latex glove finger for my injury.
On other notes, the dialup ISP sent me a letter thanking me for the letter I sent them. I managed to print that before the ink cartridges in the Dell A920 decided they were going to go empty. I had one color cartridge hanging around for this event, but the yellow wasn't working and the magenta was too dark. The black cartridge had been sitting around and when it went in, it prints not a consistent stream of ink but some odd randomized spritz of ink. So I was able to get a refund for the color cartridge, and I ordered another pair off Amazon. I noted the proper Lexmark cartridge numbers for this printer since they're supposed to be the same thing, and at one point I thought Lexmark ink was supposed to be cheaper. Maybe it was the Kodak printers that were supposed to have less expensive ink.
At any rate, I had a rough night last night. I went up to go to bed, and I had been dealing with some wetness on the floor upstairs in front of the air conditioner. Tonight I found out where it was coming from. I had used an old LJS work shirt as a means to plug the gap beneath the unit to keep out bugs, but somehow water was finding its way to the shirt, and then the shirt wicked it down to the floor.
So I pull the front off the unit and find out why. It's supposed to drain water away from the cooling coils and drain outside, but some gooey smeary kind of gunk had formed in the water (I had been running it nearly continuously during this past month). So something like wild yeasty snot formed in the thing. Great.
Lacking any handy drain cleaner to drip into the water tray, I tried some distilled vinegar and some enzyme cleaner I use for urine spots. I saw all this crap and wondered just how far inside the air conditioner it went, and I don't know what I was going to accomplish by trying to put my fingers in the air output vent while it was still on, but it's enough to say that getting a small chunk of skin from a fingertip sliced off was enough to make me wake up (I was rather sleepy or about to be asleep at this time) and my back was yelling at me for the prior manipulation of the unit to encourage whatever water was in the thing to drain out in some manner.
After panicking for a few minutes, finding a usable band aid, and dealing with that emergency, I manage to get the vinegar (to work on the plugged up stuff) and the enzyme cleaner (also to work on stuff), and put the unit into a fan only mode for the night.
I woke up uncomfortable, saw the temp was 77 in my room, and checked the unit to see mostly clean cooling coils and such. I now have the unit at a more pronounced angle to make sure water drains out, and plugged up the gap at the bottom again.
It also took me a few hours to deal with my lingering sleep deprived pain and after some ibuprofen and Coke Zero (the caffeine helped), I recovered enough to be functional.
And cut a latex glove finger for my injury.
On other notes, the dialup ISP sent me a letter thanking me for the letter I sent them. I managed to print that before the ink cartridges in the Dell A920 decided they were going to go empty. I had one color cartridge hanging around for this event, but the yellow wasn't working and the magenta was too dark. The black cartridge had been sitting around and when it went in, it prints not a consistent stream of ink but some odd randomized spritz of ink. So I was able to get a refund for the color cartridge, and I ordered another pair off Amazon. I noted the proper Lexmark cartridge numbers for this printer since they're supposed to be the same thing, and at one point I thought Lexmark ink was supposed to be cheaper. Maybe it was the Kodak printers that were supposed to have less expensive ink.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
I cancelled WebTV
Just dropping a note that I finally made the move to cancel WebTV, so my webtv email address should not be used anymore. I don't have access to WebTV right now due to cancelling it so I can't send a note via that route, and the nice lady said I have up to 6 months after today that if I should get something like the Broadband MSNTV box, I could reactivate it on that, since the new box has updated features. But I have more than one computer around here to get me on the net, and I paid for both Road Runner and a dial up ISP since my mom passed away (After her buying spree in 2002, I was forced to pay for both WebTV and the dialup because she became irresponsible about paying the right bills). It doesn't make sense to pay for 2 ISPs anymore.
Just a heads up in case an email gets sent to my webtv address and it bounces.
On a side note, as a result of MSNTV upgrading their "Junk" email filtering, I was forced to indoctrinate a Hotmail address (or Windows Live ID) that also remotely fetched my WebTV email, and some messages did migrate to that.
I finally got off all the saved emails, saved webpage URLs, and my inbox off their servers. Adieu, WebTV. It was a nice 14 years. I will miss using their Newsgroups.
On another note, Ikkoku Meiro no Croisee has been pretty good. Though I still long for a Menma and a Victorique figure and not an expensive dollfie.
Just a heads up in case an email gets sent to my webtv address and it bounces.
On a side note, as a result of MSNTV upgrading their "Junk" email filtering, I was forced to indoctrinate a Hotmail address (or Windows Live ID) that also remotely fetched my WebTV email, and some messages did migrate to that.
I finally got off all the saved emails, saved webpage URLs, and my inbox off their servers. Adieu, WebTV. It was a nice 14 years. I will miss using their Newsgroups.
On another note, Ikkoku Meiro no Croisee has been pretty good. Though I still long for a Menma and a Victorique figure and not an expensive dollfie.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Move away from WebTV practically complete
Aside from things on other user accounts on our terminal, I'm pretty much done with moving what data I wanted to save from my 14 years using WebTV (now MSNTV) to my Yahoo! address as well as web pages I made saved onto a thumbdrive for hopefully hosting somewhere else. I just don't know where to put them at the moment.
I didn't know that the email servers on WebTV would save data for accounts where email was disabled, because I re-enabled it on one account (that Mom took over for her continued pervasive eBay shopping spree) and found some old emails I had saved.
I found a few interesting and memory jogging notes on my Mom's account that put a lot of things into perspective.
It was during August 1997 when we bought the first WebTV terminal and I ended up being able to sell a Defender upright arcade machine (I had knocked the cabinet apart with a rubber mallet) for about $80 to some guy from Pittsburgh who showed up in person and was more than happy to take it off my hands. I used that money for things I bought for my first trip to Canada and to the first Anime North. I learned after that first year to take more money on subsequent trips to Anime North.
It's going to be hard to turn off WebTV and dialup, but I imagine the money I save will go toward paying bills.
I didn't know that the email servers on WebTV would save data for accounts where email was disabled, because I re-enabled it on one account (that Mom took over for her continued pervasive eBay shopping spree) and found some old emails I had saved.
I found a few interesting and memory jogging notes on my Mom's account that put a lot of things into perspective.
It was during August 1997 when we bought the first WebTV terminal and I ended up being able to sell a Defender upright arcade machine (I had knocked the cabinet apart with a rubber mallet) for about $80 to some guy from Pittsburgh who showed up in person and was more than happy to take it off my hands. I used that money for things I bought for my first trip to Canada and to the first Anime North. I learned after that first year to take more money on subsequent trips to Anime North.
It's going to be hard to turn off WebTV and dialup, but I imagine the money I save will go toward paying bills.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Linksys router dropping connection is aggravating
So Sunday I get online to do some things and the net connection drops for some reason. The Linksys router which has worked flawlessly for months is acting up. Maybe the power supply is going bad? Maybe the firmware needs updating? It did it twice in the span of minutes and it did that again today just out of the blue. Maybe the cable modem is going bad? The Data Received LED lights up and then goes out after operating for a while after plugging it back in. Then there's the blinking LED from the cable modem to the router that shows a device is plugged in. It was blinking irregularly on Sunday.
I did confirm the firmware appears to be old and I did check the number of the new version. Hopefully it will update and not become a brick.
My anxiety and stress go up each time a reliable piece of equipment suddenly decides to act up.
I did confirm the firmware appears to be old and I did check the number of the new version. Hopefully it will update and not become a brick.
My anxiety and stress go up each time a reliable piece of equipment suddenly decides to act up.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
July so far...
July so far has been a mix. I've had pain and tiredness a lot. I had to catch up on sleep due to some of this tiredness. Ibuprofen doesn't always work. And July 4th was interesting in that our redneck neighbors set off sticks of dynamite. Well, it might not have been that, but what they did explode shook the house several times each one went off. I was trying to get to sleep last night when I was woke up by our dog at 3 A.M. She snuck upstairs to my room because of something, which I had to get out of bed to set her straight. I don't know what she heard and I couldn't have slept that soundly that I didn't hear more explosions, but I got up and let her do her business. Among this, I found Negi had caught another mouse and was doing his growling while holding his prize in his mouth. While Melody did her business outside, Negi dispatched the mouse as only Negi does by eating it. He did spend sometime outside in 2007 when that horrible lady was here, and I imagine he got some natural snacking goodness by catching a few mice, so he knows what to do. Quite unlike a week or so ago when Marmalade caught one but somehow left it in an odd place. On the chair in the bathroom but under the bag I have toilet paper in, on top of the Mr. Dippy ad thing. At first I thought it was a toy, but it was too big and too real to be a toy. When I realized what it was, it was summarily flushed down the toilet.
So I caught up on sleep, and then lost some of it again...
So I caught up on sleep, and then lost some of it again...
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Frustrations and annoyances
So I sent off payments like I do around the beginning of the month. One was to the dialup ISP I use WebTV through. It's probably a good idea I've been making some moves to cancel our long-time use of WebTV even in spite of the recent upgrade in the email handling of spam. Anyway, I got a call last Monday, 9 days after my payment to the dialup ISP was sent. The nice lady explains that they haven't received it yet.
Great. Just flipping great. It'll cost me $15 to sent to Western Onion to find out if the thing was cashed or not. And the Post Office for some reason doesn't offer Delivery Confirmation for just regular envelopes. This is really stupid. You can send something Certified, but not the cheaper confirmation for a regular envelope?
I don't know when I'll get around to being able to trace that first attempt at paying the dialup ISP. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll get that access back and finally have WebTV cancelled once and for all. I'll miss using it and the access to Usenet newsgroups when so many other ISPs have cut it off for stupid reasons.
UPDATE:
Great. Just flipping great. It'll cost me $15 to sent to Western Onion to find out if the thing was cashed or not. And the Post Office for some reason doesn't offer Delivery Confirmation for just regular envelopes. This is really stupid. You can send something Certified, but not the cheaper confirmation for a regular envelope?
I don't know when I'll get around to being able to trace that first attempt at paying the dialup ISP. Maybe in the next few weeks I'll get that access back and finally have WebTV cancelled once and for all. I'll miss using it and the access to Usenet newsgroups when so many other ISPs have cut it off for stupid reasons.
UPDATE:
