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Chinese water and other kinds of (self) torture

Okay, this one’s gonna be long, but it’s worth it… past all the techweenie stuff is some very amusing personal tragedy.

So let’s back up to last night about 7pm. I get home first for a change, and I sit down at my computers to get the network up and running. See, I have this ideal in my head where every computer in the house (yes, there are at least 7) can connect to the internet, and print to the printers, and in an ideal world, see each other via Microsoft Networking, although I think I’m going to settle for just having a common file server to dump stuff on.

The central focus for all my efforts lies in the hands of a single machine, oh so lovingly named “habitrail,” my Linux machine, which has been serving as my gateway/webserver/MP3 storage site for the last two years.
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Stupid warning labels.

So Luke and I were at Fry’s yesterday (in the prelude to last night’s computer madness) and one of the things I was looking at was a new set of computer speakers, for use on my old tv in the office, so we can at least get stereo. Anyway, one of the sets of speakers came in a blister pack about 12 inches tall, with both speakers clearly visible. On the packaging was text and pictures showing the speakers in use with a stereo “Use with your stereo!” and with a computer “Use with your PC!” and underneath that was the following text:

“PC not included.”

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Ugh and other randomness

You can tell what kind of day it’s going to be by how many of the new emails you get in the morning get marked “to do”.

Today was 6, which is on the high side for me.

I got my Game Boy Advance in the mail… and probably won’t be able to play it for a few days.

I was up until 2:30am last night moving my Linux machine to the new place, now that we have working DSL (yay). Silly me, I tried to upgrade it at the same time, which created all sorts of lovely problems and I ended up going back to the old motherboard. So yes, it’s still a Pentium MMX 166. At least now it has more memory and more disk space… but damn, it’s slow.

I think the constant exposure to high levels of dust is giving me allergies or something… go figure. I need to finish moving.

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Speedy DSL goodness

I think I just had what had to be the most painless DSL install ever. The guy comes in, checks the line, line’s good, plugs in DSL modem, hooks up laptop, sets up laptop to our one of our IP addresses, it works.

Guy says thank you, here’s a free ethernet card that came with DSL modem, and the quite large manual for said modem, bag of filters for phone lines so phones don’t interfere with DSL… bye!

Go over to our computers, change the IP and they work. Luke got 142KB/s download of Mozilla. Very very nice.

Then half an hour later, the cable guy comes into the apartment… tracks mud all over the place (grrrrrr) but eventually gets two digital cable boxes hooked up. Thankfully, digital cable also involves analog cable as well so Luke can use his picture-in-picture.

Tonight, I’m gonna move my Linux machine, so my webpage will be down for a bit, for the ten of you who actually care in the world. (Then the DNS has to update, so it may be a little bit after that…)

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More pain.

And now I just had a collision going to the bathroom… I was going in as someone was coming out, and as a result, I slammed into the door and smacked my left elbow… which now hurts like all hell…

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Pain

So I’ve been moving for the last two weeks, and in the course of that time, I have done considerable damage to my arms (my right one in particular). To note:

– Sunburn on both arms, the right one bad enough to peel.
– Bruise on my right arm, from carrying so many frigging boxes.
– Pain on my right palm, from using a manual screwdrier to assemble IKEA furniture.
– Nick on my left index finger from where the screwdriver slipped when assmebling said furniture.
– Pain in my right right wrist after I landed on it wrong when I slipped and fell down the stairs.
– Nick on my left index finger from reaching into a random box and scraping it against something sharp.
– Overall soreness in my shoulders from carrying stuff all the time.

In short, I’m in pain.

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Basic Math

So I was at Taco Bell today. The total for my meal came to $4.85. I gave the woman a 5 dollar bill. She gave me $1.15 in change, even though the do-the-math-for-you cash register said “$.15 change” on it. Being the honest person I am, I told her that was $1 too much. She gave me an odd look, as if she didn’t understand. I said “5 minus 4.85 is .15”, she still didn’t get it. I tried a few more times, and gave up and just pushed the dollar back at her on the counter. She got confused and asked “oh, did you want it in quarters?” I backed away slowly, saying “you gave me too much, leave it in the drawer…”

This, of course, was on top of the fact that I had to tell her I wanted it “for here” twice.

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Likker

So Luke is all moved in, and he set up his “porta-bar” all on the kitchen counter. Personally, I think the idea of taking up all that valuable counter space on something that’s only going to be used occasionally is silly, but Luke disagrees. His counter to “Why don’t you get a cabinet for all that?” was “what would you put there?” to which I had no immediate response. I have a feeling that the response “anything but the liquor” wouldn’t have led down a path I’d want to go down…

Seriously, what’s the point of having it out? Is it a machismo thing? “Look at me, I own all this liqour!” It’s certainly not a convienence thing — “Hey, you know what would go great with this tv dinner? Peppermint Schnapps! Hey, what do you know, there’s some right here within arm’s reach!” Knowing Luke, he’s probably going to be making lots of things Irish, so to speak.

And of course, heaven forbid there’s an earthquake, or we’ll have the world’s largest mixed drink on our kitchen floor.

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$144.31

Never have I been so happy to owe the IRS money.

When you get an envelope from the IRS in late May, you get scared. the “A” word crosses your mind.

You start praying that it’s not an audit, just interest because you paid late.

It was interest, lucky for me.

Oh, and I found my DVD battery charger. Now I just need that damn cable…

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Ow ow ow ow

I need a vacation from my vacations. Quite a bit happend this weekend, this is gonna be a long post.

It’s a three day weekend, right? So Saturday I spend most of the time packing up my stuff in hopes of getting it out of my room; this is after I’ve moved over my comic books (side note: when a person’s comic book collection weighs more than they do, do they get a medal or something?) and my few of my old boxes from before so I actually have room to manuver around in. I get a few boxes moved over, mostly stuff that goes into the garage, get really tired and play around and eventually get suckered into dinner and karaoke.

I sleep in a bit and go to a BBQ on sunday and get sunburned (not too badly, fortunately, just enough to have people say “you got a bit of sun didn’t you?” but not enough for them to say “Damn, man, doesn’t that hurt?”) , becoming very grumpy due to some over-the-top antagonism on Luke’s part, which involved me taking out my frustration on some other people and going into the corner and sulking, and playing some weird San Diego mutant of baseball which doesn’t involve running, and we did it with a wiffle ball. Then band practice and crashing at home.

Sunday, I was planning on seeing Pearl Harbor, but was so dang tired from the days before that I didn’t feel like driving up the city. So I decided to pack some more. I tackled the messiest corner, and managed to get most of my magic/gaming cards packed into four medium sized boxes (18″x18″x18″ each).

If there’s anything I’m taking away from this weekend, it’s that paper is damn heavy. In hindsight, I should have traded off number of boxes for space efficiency, because each of those four boxes was so heavy I could barely lift them, they were 75 pounds each, easy. Yes, I’m fairly weak. I get three of them into my car (the fourth wouldn’t fit) and unload them into the garage. I then park the car and try to get them up to the third floor where my room is.

It’s about this time that I started fantasizing about Star Trek transporters, pulleys, levers… anything that would keep me from actually having to get those boxes up the two sets of stairs. I tried rolling one box up, but about the time that it got to the second floor, it started coming apart. I pushed it along the ground to the base of the second set of stairs and left it there. After a short rest, I managed to carry the second box all the way up to the third floor in one go. After a slightly longer rest I managed the same for the third box, but it took two stops.

It was about this time that I laid down on the floor and literally fell asleep. When I woke up about an hour later, I decided to just leave that first box on the second floor and left.

I’ve still got a ways to go, but I managed to throw away quite a bit of trash from my room. Another life lesson I take away from this weekend: When a box sits in your closet for three years and you only add stuff to it, you can most likely throw away most of it… at least the stuff on the bottom. And so I did. I threw away quite a bit of old computer hardware cards that is so ancient, it is antiquated by single chips. There was an entire AT memory expansion card the size of a letter-sized envelope that was ONE WHOLE MEGABYTE, and an 80-column card for an Apple ][e, and an Epson Printer Adapter for an Apple ][e… etc. I even threw away a 1.2GB hard drive.

One positive from this weekend: I found the driver disk for my webcam, so I can actually use that again. There’s still a few pieces of MIA equipment in my room, though.

Tonight, I pack books. In small boxes. *sigh*