Productive "Computer Shtuff"

I finally sat down with Altirra, the Atari 8-bit Emulator for Windows & managed to manipulate files & disk images & now have it as a booting system loading up the sequencer software I used years ago on my Atari 8-bit for songs from Pocahontas. 

With the help of SpartaDOS, I finally got a directory listing of all the songs I put on that jukebox disk so you can see what songs I did with it. They all have lyrics synchronized to the music & NOW I CAN FINALLY DO STEREO MIXES! A stereo mix of Colors of the Wind is already in the works (mostly just separating a sound channel or 2 into left & right) because now I can choose which POKEY sound channels to play. So when I finally plop those tracks in Audacity, I can figure it out. I'll be checking more floppies because I want to see how much of my efforts from 30 years ago I can recover. 

HOWEVER, I got Antic Music Processor set up for a special project I wanted to do - though I'll need to refresh my memory on how to use the software! I nearly completely forgot! It has been 22 years since I last did this (Mom losing the house to a 2nd mortgage foreclosure in 2003 really put a cramp on things & I never managed to get it set up again...) so I have some information to find. But I have the sheet music I need already!

Finally getting to do "Computer Stuff" today was productive. I found out my A8 Pi Pico cartridge survived my best efforts to kill it when I soldered it together weeks ago & thanks to videos I found was able to set it up & looks like the onboard flash memory is working.  While it has 16 megabytes for that & the entire Atari 8-bit library could easily fit on there several times over, its main use is as a cartridge emulator. So even any size single load binary file game would run with it. Disk images not so much.

So anywho, I hope I have more data recovered in the coming weeks. I need to read up on configuring SpartaDOS X 4.50.

1st post for 2025

I'm glad I got out yesterday & did stuff while temperatures were above freezing which made it tolerable to do so. Officially placed the Previews order for 4 books & then got Groceries at Walfart so I could use the measely $25 United food card...

Eggs were decimated. This is what you get for not vaccinating chickens for the flu.

 

Also the cheap canned Boyardee pasta was nearly sold out... I watched a Vtuber from Poland try a taste test of Boyardee products & she was not impressed... & in fact sickened from the flavor... Oh my. I bought 3 sample products to check if my tastes have changed & even got my favorite Beefaroni.

Also found Hawaiian Punch changed the Piña Colada White Water Wave name to Coconut Wave? Ummm this isn't a change anyone asked for or needed made. SO WHY?

General Mills seems to be doing Old Throwback cereals & they dug out from 1961! the designs for Twinkles cereal. This reminds me of Remilia Nephys' favorite Honey Stars which I had been trying to get but haven't found anything cheap enough to consider. And in the Markdown shelf I got a $2.50 box of Extra. Extra what? I don't know.

The Cat Sand shelf was also nearly empty!!! WHAT THE HELL. So I had to settle for the Lightweight fragrance free stuff. It costs more & doesn't last as long as the regular but I needed more right now.

Couldn't find catnip & forgot the little can of sliced olives for making Puerto Rican Rice..  among other things but mainly covered my list. I didn't buy any Valentine's candy (no special KitKats) nor kids class Valentine's cards (no Monster High).

Everything went mostly as expected from taking out my trash & cat crap to getting an electric cart some selfish asshole took outside the store & left it in the rain!!! for me to swipe off the water collected in the seat so I could sit on it. YOU BET I SAT ON THAT COLD WET SEAT. 100% charge & I took it in.

Also found I could buy 2 Imperial 15 ounce tubs of margarine for 30 ounces & save $1.09 by not buying the 45 ounce.

Also Maintenance left notes asking people to drip their pipes & open the cabinet doors for under the sink because of the cold for the next few days. I also hope the heating doesn't go out.

Paying rent is pain & suffering

I went out yesterday to pay rent & I regret my actions.

Various things happened. 1st I decided the 3rd was best because it was going to be 34°F & partly sunny. I was concerned the heater in my van - more specifically the fan - wasn't going to work. But somehow it did until it warmed up. Then sheer force of will got outside air in through the vent & heated inside.

I got the cat pan waste out & 2 little thingies of trash. I think 1 of my tires needs more pressure but it held up. I will try to check it before using it again.

2 envelopes in my mail from J&FS just let me know things were continuing without change. I was expecting them. Bonus to checking my mail was free foodstuffs on a table. I claimed a deboxed bag of Coco Puffs cereal, a thingy of Rice, a bag of 4 oz juice cups (still cold), a sliced in half baguette bread thingy, 1 pound bag of macaroni, & a thingy of spaghetti. Woo!

Get down, out, & to Disney Drug Mart. Red chariot awaiting me having been just used but still charged enough.

Drop off my request for refills - 5 pills. This will be important later.

Get my payments, some shopping, recognize what I can't get there. FRISKIES CANNED IS IN STOCK!! I prefer getting the Tasty Treasures Turkey paté for Poofball because it's filled better than regular Turkey canned. I made a mistake & forgot to check treats.

Checked seasonal candy hoping to find a Special Flavor of KitKat instead of just special shapes. And to find more Cherry Cordial Kisses but not here.

I saw but did not buy the special cookies & wafer cookies. The special popcorn from last month seems to be gone. But I did find Holiday Roasted Peanut M&Ms!

So I get paged by the pharmacy & my refills are done. (Oh and my lottery ticket from last month won $4!) I now have a standard question for "Any questions for the pharmacist?" - Were there any pills you did not fill? Because 1 pill I asked for was Digoxin because I'm likely to run out before next month comes around - AND THERE WAS NO DIGOXIN REFILLED & no explanation as to WHY. And my $3 Vitamin D3? It was $8. I really need to look at these things before paying for them. All my other refills were $0!! Ehhhh?

Gas was $2.79 where I got some before going home. Guy who came out to pump for me - many thanks for your customer service in the cold.

That might have been the end but... Wal-Mart had $129 laptops on Black Friday. On Monday. I think I need one. Windows 11? 14 inch HP laptop. Let's get one & hack it. Price isn't bad. It's not a Chromebook. Maybe I can dual boot with Linux. I dunno. Expand the RAM & a bigger boot drive? I need to figure out how to clone an SSD or whatever it has. And get an external optical drive to boot Clonezilla. Might need USB thingies to connect a 2nd SSD. People make all sorts of things.

I sorta didn't feel all that great walking to my vehicle after Disney Drug Mart (who for once had decent pricing on 7up 6 packs [$4 in a deal], $2.50 on JIF peanut butter, $3.50 for a bag of honey puff Malt o Meal), but deciding to drive to Wal-Mart was possible anyway. Less than optimal parking spot but I didn't have to wait long for a chariot - #10 has some funky & busted steering but will work well enough.

Get back to Electronics & wait for an available associate. Tell them what I want. She goes into the stock room to check because there's none on the floor. And eventually returns with 1!

Okay. I took extra $$$ I saved from last month for this. I still need some SanDisk USB 2.0 64gb Cruzer flash drives... I try to buy them (last time I did from Amazon) in 5 packs. But Instead I decided to shop... SWISS MISS PEPPERMINT HOT COCOA. Bought. Got a ham for Xmas. Cherry Cordial Kisses for more of Maika Mallow's Piña Colada Cookies. I forgot the Evap Milk & Creme of Coconut... for Coquitos.

I was wanting to both get stuff so I didn't have to get anything for the rest of the month & at least the stuff I got only at Wal-Mart... And I was hoping to get back before my pain relief completely went & started getting dark.

And Get Back to find - MORE FREE FOODSTUFFS on the table! Yay! My cart was full so I stuffed my backpack clipped to the handle.

Oh - did I mention the phone call from my building manager while at Wal-Mart? She asks me about the printout of my medication expenses she asked for last month, the 2 sheets of yellow paper I enclosed in my rent envelope in the box last month. Yeah. She lost it somehow. She wanted to know if I could get (another copy) like soon. & I'm like well I could but it will be a while but the amount I saw was $147 for the period you asked about... It needs to be over $200 for consideration. I should have copied that for myself. Dammit.

And before I even LEFT the apartment FedEx North Canton called to let me know the driver who left my Wal-Mart order that one Saturday has been fired for numerous complaints about his performance. If it was to be delivered to my front door, that's where it should have been. That's their goal.

So after all that yesterday... & getting told Oh it'll warm up this weekend - 47°F and sunny... I'm in a LOT OF PAIN.

Kidney stones (again) & Smart Heal bandages

With what I saw in the toilet this morning & the incessant pain I felt last night, I am done with this kidney stone business. I lived most of my life without a single problem & here in these past 6 to 9 years I've experienced enough of this shit.

I had a horrible night. I thought it began with pain in my lower left back & it just kept going. And then I had discomfort in my gut like 3 days of Thanksgiving leftovers lead to a mutiny in my colon or something. I almost didn't get any sleep because of having to adjust my position to get comfort. At one point, I enlisted the presence of a big Lysol can to press on my back for relief. It was Very Hard to get sleep with all of this crap going on. Somehow I did.

Wake up & do things & take the morning pills. Have to pee. Barely poop anything for what I felt. Peed as expected but I take a look... And there's red in there. And it's not like the amount I saw 2 weeks ago, it's like "oh hey we made a thingy & this is proof." So yeah. Kidney stone. It's happened before as I recall. The pattern of suffering & discomfort is accordingly the same.

On a positive note, a patch on my right leg shin area which formed a blister which I popped, drained, picked the dead skin off, then was having a hard time healing & was just red from blood on the surface & not really stinging or irritating me... at least for a couple of weeks prior... I got 2 boxes (not cheap) of Equate "Smart heal" hydrocolloid gel bandages. Ideal for large areas, drug free, & helps reduce scarring... I put 1 on there & covered it last Sunday. Had to change it today & took a look. No longer bloody! Skin has regrown & healing cleanly.

If I compared this to anything, it would be those burn patches I used to get at Walgreens.

Heart Cure Watch & insufferables

I finally finished a VHS tape to DVD transfer project for a friend's daughter & translated something for another friend & I'm hoping to resume working on episodes even if for my own bewilderment. I have been collecting raws & scripts for Wonderful, have all of Adult PreCure from earlier, & the rest of Wide Open Sky PreCure. I might have the movie but I need to check. Oy vay.

One thing I finally did one day last week was get some more enjoyment from the Delicious Party PreCure Heart Cure Watch... I decided gosh darnit I'm figuring out the Okosama Lunch thing... And good thing I researched it. If Kome Kome hasn't grown up yet - don't use it! Also oddly enough discovered this device with a camera (which you can't offload pictures it captures so why the heck) can scan specially crafted QR codes & unlock content!!

I found & scanned the 1st code on the instruction sheet - a strawberry room design. Then a nice guy on YouTube showed codes on the bottom of Recipipi thingies. Some of those scanned. 1 did not & later found it won't work until the Okosama Lunch data module is used. And then I had to deal with insufferable YouTubers who were "Oh here's one but I won't show you right now - no spoilers until after the show ends!" & then NEVER DOES SHOW THE CODES. And 1 Reddit user who was going to hack the codes & figured there were 101 possible codes - but Instead of Publicly making his chart accessible you had to ask for it in a private message. Why do people do this? Why act like this? It's not a secret club!

I found a PreCure Fandom Wiki page with the codes, where they are found, & what they unlock. There's a few missing. So I spent a couple hours unlocking Cure Finale, the bakery, the fruits parlor, the park - from codes! There's a few more (mostly letters), & 1 code unlocks the Melon Pan at the grocery store & Cure Summer shows up. I must be the last owner of these devices to find this out.

Today's Do

Today went well for doing things. First time in a while.

Cleaned cat pan & took that out along with my trash. Almost forgot the list of refills I needed. Found my packet of money from last month with loser lottery tickets to check.

After rehearsing for a few days doing things around here with no pain relief buffering my activities, I was able to get down & out & over to the doctor. Lady doing blood draws was good this time as she distracted me about eating correctly & losing weight to the point I didn't feel the nail in my arm as she got the NPO sample.

Got back in my vehicle & ate a thingy of tamagoyaki & rice with Marumiya Chicken & Egg furikake. It had absorbed some moisture overnight from the hot rice after I stuck it in the fridge. Tasted delicious!

Went back through to the credit union & back to DDM. Got refills for what I needed but did not know they had filled 3 on the 1st. Aside from the 5 I really needed was a Super Tall 6 month supply of Metopro LOL. I didn't ask for that...

Shopped for what groceries I could get there & nowhere else. There was a Lot I didn't buy. Friskies canned food for Poofball had only 2 cans of Tasty Treasures Turkey Paté on the shelf... Harumph.

I bought a bag of Cat Chow Indoor to see how Poofball does with it. Oddly enough, DDM has it cheaper than Meow Mix Indoor & it's not kitten food. He seemed to like it by taking a couple sample nibbles & then racing around like a nut but maybe he was just happy to see me back?

And while I don't like paying $3 fricking 69 for a 2 liter of pop, I had to try 7up Shirley Temple flavor - pomegranate & cherry. They even had Sweet Popcorn - peppermint drizzled & 1 other flavor.

Everything made it home & now I shall recharge.

I WANT MY 88 CENTS SALAD MIX BACK....!!!

Since when did salad mix at the Alliance Walfart start costing over $2 a fricking bag??? Seems like after all this time supply chain issues should be cleared up & it can go back to 88 cents a bag.

Cole slaw mix is under $2 a bag. Maybe I should switch to that. I could start getting heads of lettuce & shred that. I'd need that stuff we used to rinse fresh cut vegetables in at LJS to keep it fresh longer, aside from rinsing uncooked vegetables because food chain issues. I mean I could go back to buying Romaine & chopping that.

Though in recent weeks my scale has indicated I've been losing weight when NOT eating salads, so maybe trying to lose weight that way wasn't working... Trying to starve the body & so it went into starvation mode & held onto fat.

I should look into more dried stuff & crock pot recipes methinks. Smoked turkey sausage cut up in stuff. Hmmm.. Fiber & protein together...

Is it even done....?

Well, here is my latest Crockpot Creation. I had to let this run on Low for 20! hours because the cubed potato wasn't done after 10 hours & even THEN the garbanzo peas never really got a cooked softness to match. It's still edible, has a nice flavor, & I can't complain. The chick beans are just texture for this but at least soft enough to eat.

Dried Garbanzos, underwear, cat hangout

Today I finally set up the crock pot with a dried Garbanzo Bean recipe calling for 1 pound bag dried garbanzos, 3 pounds cubed red potatoes (I used Idaho), 2 pounds (? Recipe said Packages) smoked sausage, sliced & quartered (I used a 2 pound Italian Chicken Sausage pack someone left downstairs - cooked it yesterday in hot water in the Dutch oven & cooled it immediately after) & Spanish Vigo seasoning which I was not able to find so I used 1 packet of Goya Spanish Yellow Rice. I'm hoping the seasoning is unique enough to give a distinct flavor in place of the saffron I should have been able to get. I added a chopped onion because why not.

Judging by the date on the bag, those Garbanzo beans are at least 5 years old. I don't know how long they keep while dried, so they could be older. Recipe said to use Chorizo for authentic flavor & to thicken the soup to remove some chick peas & mash & return to the crock pot 1 hour before serving. I think the rice will do that anyway.

Changes next time I would make:

After soaking the garbanzos overnight, I would reserve 2 cups of the soaking water so when the 4 cups of chicken broth / stock got added it wouldn't be necessary to remove some liquid before adding the cut up sausage & putting the lid on. I have it to add should it cook down. And I would use only 2 pounds of potatoes.

8 to 10 hours on low. Supper will be late tonight.

Also finally tried the underwear from Big Dude Clothing in the UK. I think I finally got something which isn't going to rip out in 3 months & nothing will "fall out." All the cheap DXL Harbor Bay product I was using all had the same odd ripout wearout pattern on the right side (as worn) while the left side was basically intact.

Also Poofball had odd behavior last night after I finished with some Computer Stuff I was doing by hanging out next to the bathroom wall next to the toilet. No explanation; he was just there. He wasn't sick, hadn't thrown up, or crapped on the floor.

Have I been eating the wrong stuff?

This morning on the scale I got a number that's 12 pounds off my usual. The number has been dropping over the past few weeks more or less but dropping anyway. The one thing I must be doing differently is a general avoidance of eating salads.

Salads were touted as THE way to lose weight. And why not? It's all VEGETABLE matter. Maybe it works for some people but not me. I have had weeks of 6 salads for 6 days at supper but I'd actually GAIN weight. But my recent diet of a sammich at supper with a serving of Arroz con Gandules (a rice dish) is doing something different.

The salad is loaded with Water & puts my digestive & other parts into Starvation Mode. It's got to be. I also add stuff to my salads so they're more like a meal like low sodium options - no salt canned peas, crunchy tortilla strips, diced onion, green pepper, sliced mushrooms... The occasional crumbled hard cooked egg. And Blue Cheese dressing. Measured to the GRAM.

So now I eat more complex starches & more fiber. More proteins. Getting good sleep. Really watching my water intake. And trying to get physical activity. That's my hardest thing to do. I'm going to keep observing.