Daily Reports: Hi ho, the every-daycycle doings here in Alpha Complex!

The computer's working! (And I'm starting to break down.)

Oct 08, 2009

The tower is working!! The tower is working!! (Thank goodness.) I took it, and the new hard drive I bought, to Geek Squad and paid them to work their magic. I **might** have been able to figure it out on my own and saved about $300; but out of that $300 comes the brand new hard drive (three times as large as the old hard drive) and the sure knowledge that it got done…and I saved myself a lot of cussing. I’m also really glad that I didn’t have to upgrade to Vista. Yes, Windows 7 is coming out at the end of the month, and from all reports, it’s much better than Vista - but that’s like saying that a mound of poo from a vegetarian smells less bad than a mound of poo from a carnivore. One may stink less…but they’re both piles of sh1t.

I picked up the tower Tuesday evening, brought it home, set it down…and went to bed. It was the first night of really good sleep I’d gotten since the compu-death. Wednesday was spent reinstalling everything. I had all the original disks for everything except one program (my FTP program - not impossible to replace, not too costly either) and had to do a little bit of extra scrambling to find all the serial numbers. Now I just have to get the laptop talking to the tower and pull over all my data…and away I go. My only distress, and admittedly a mild one at that, was finding out that CS2 included GoLive, not DreamWeaver. Dang!! And I was kind of looking forward to installing DW and not using a separate FTP program at all. Ah, well: whenever I *do* end up getting a new computer/operating system (probably in about three or four years, if I follow my previous track record) I’ll get the CS bundle that includes DreamWeaver.

In other news, I feel the beginnings of a cold/sinus-something coming on. The logy tiredness, the low-grade headache that never really completely goes away, the sound of draining sinuses…bleah. Here’s hoping it doesn’t blossom into something uglier. I’ve been drinking more liquids, taking Source Naturals, and trying to think of high-protein foods to eat. There’s always the old standby, chicken noodle soup. (But after a week of CNS every day, it begins to pall.)

And in these economic times…I quit a job. It was ultra-part-time - about 8-12 hours a week - and I had a nightmare of a time getting the job in the first place. When my hours didn’t increase, but decreased…I figured that this was a sign. I asked about documentation, and didn’t receive any concrete response. Instead of beating my head against the wall for a job that was not what I’d originally hoped it might be, I told them that I would not be seeking to extend the contract. (Maybe that also contributed to the good night’s sleep: no more stewing over that situation, no more waiting, no more wondering, I just…resolved it.) My two other jobs are still going strong and showing no signs of faltering - one has had me put in additional hours this past week - so I’m not losing much income. Just the uncertainty of a difficult communications situation. I can do without that.

Now that my house has gutter guards, said gutters won’t be filling up with crud. The leaves fall on the roof, collect on top of the gutter guards…and are blown off when the wind comes up. Hah!!! No more dripping, no more overflowing gutters, no more crap maintenance from a company that does a halfassed job and leaves piles of went munk all over the sidewalk!! (At least - no more of such maintenance at **my** house.)

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the cats slowly reclaim the house.

Oct 03, 2009

I bought my cat a toy ball that has two lights inside it. When the ball is jolted hard enough, the lights activate. Ursa LOVES this toy. This morning I was hearing an odd thumping, and wondered what it was - well, after a few weeks of having it be “lost”, Ursa had “found” his toy again and was merrily running around playing soccer. (My brother also left yesterday morning, so timid Ursa is slowly coming out of his self-imposed exile.) Thump, thump, thwock, “mrow”.

Monkey, who is an absolute chickenhead, actually got to the point that she would walk up to my brother and carefully sniff his fingers - or, in the evenings when we were watching a movie, she’d jump up onto the sofa between us to get attention from both of her human slaves. For a cat who has always run terrified from houseguests, this is something of an accomplishment. (Fog, of course, would happily befriend anyone who might potentially give her treats.)

I’m slowly reconstructing my working environment. One of the things that happened while my brother was here was the death of my hard drive (slightly assisted, but still a hard drive/OS difference of opinion.) I’m working off of my Vista-sporting laptop, which means that while I can surf the web, none of my legally bought software (Adobe Creative Suite 2, with my image and HTML editing software) can be installed upon said laptop. I am not a dreadfully happy camper. I’ve been looking for open-source alternative tools to use until the tower is back up and running, and while I found a substitute for Photoshop (GIMPShop), there doesn’t seem to be any good free HTML editors in the open-source world. This is kind of a problem, as HTML editing (and PHP, and CSS) and image editing are two of the big things I do on my computer. I’m hoping - praying - that the computer guru can get my Windows XP installed, with the brand new nifty 500 GB hard drive, and I can simply go about merrily reinstalling my software. However, that’s a nice lovely thought - but it might not happen because Windows XP is no longer supported (so drivers for other hardware just ain’t available) and so I might have to accept that my alternatives are Vista (shudder) or Windows 7, which doesn’t release until the end of this month.

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...and I'm sure it was quite unintentional.

Jul 02, 2009

I check in on my former hometown's news-site from time to time. Today there was a headline about a federal judge acting to move the decision about California's Proposition 8 - which attempts to legally prevent persons of the same gender from forming a social/legal/financial unit - to the US Supreme Court. In November 2008, a statewide ballot prohibiting same-sex marriage passed. A group of people sued to challenge this. In May, the state supreme court said that it could not arbtrarily overrule what the voters approved, and the ban was upheld. Now the fight is being taken to the US Supreme Court.

The news-site has had random rotating ads on its articles for quite some time. The placement is completely random...so the ad I was served, as I viewed the article, was completely serendipidous...and absolutely perfect.

I think that disallowing marriage - the formation of a social, legal, and economic unit - for persons of the same gender is senseless. There are many people who claim that marriage is a religious institution and that since many religions preach against homosexuality, then the only people who can experience the sacrament of marriage are two persons of opposite genders. There's a flaw in this logic, though. What additional secular legal rights or responsibilities does a 13-year-old Jewish child get when they go through a bar/bat mitzvah? None. And what additional secular legal rights or responsibilities does a Roman Catholic child get when they go through the rite of first communion? None. There are plenty of religious ceremonies that do not grant any changed legal status outside the religion in question. The barrier should work both ways: because, hey folks, the social concept of "marriage" was in place long before the thirteen tribes were wandering the desert. Marriage has a religious component for some, but hardly for all. Marriage is a matter of property rights, inheritance, and mutual legal/fiscal/social responsibility...which, no matter how much the church might like to control that, it doesn't, and hasn't directly for quite some time. The whole idea of excluding people from anything just because they're not exactly the same as the majority of the population is, in my mind, extremely anti-Christian. It's petty, it's meanspirited, it's elitist, it's "I want to be special so I don't want *them* to be able to have the same rights as me, even if they're not causing anyone any material harm, because they're different", and it's very much against the inclusive school of thought preached by the individual, or group of individuals, whom history calls "Jesus of Nazareth".

So the placement of this ad, on this article, made me smile:

And really, what would Jesus do? He'd wish the couple well, is what. He'd attend the wedding if invited, is what. And he'd look with confusion, if not mild exasperation, upon anyone who said, "But they can't get married!! That's not Christian!!"

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I am painting my home's exterior myself. First home. First exterior paint job. Eep...

Jun 15, 2009

Today marks the beginning of Operation: Exterior Paint Job. My neighbors are helping me with my house, and I'm helping with theirs. I'm doing this myself, rather than hiring it out, for a few reasons:

1. the "winning bidder" painter who's doing several other cottages in the complex is doing a single-coat paint job with a sprayer (when using a sprayer to apply paint, the paint is thinned with water so that it will go through the nozzle. This means that 1 coat with a brush = 3 coats with a sprayer. More sprayed-on coats, when it's truly a quality paint.)
2. this same winning bidder is doing zero prep work. No scraping, no sanding, just covering the windows with plastic, covering the nearby cars to catch any overspray (though not too well), and hasn't powerwashed all of the units they've done thus far.
3. for this bid, people are paying nearly $1000. I can buy the paint, primer, caulking, brushes, sanding blocks, painter's tape, and dust masks for half that...which just leaves the labor costs.
4. by doing it myself, I get to learn about how to take care of my house (and learn where any potential weak spots are, et cetera et cetera)

The paint I'm using is very thick, has excellent UV-fade protection, is guaranteed against warping/bubbling/cracking/peeling when applied according to the manufacturer's instructions (another reason not to use Winning Bidder), and is in a color I like. My house will no longer be a candy-colored / bright pastel monstrosity.

Prep work will probably take until the end of June. I'm going to have some help from the neighbors; but for the most part I think I'll do as much of the lower-story and porch prep work as possible. (They're also lending me their great big tall ladder to paint the upper story, their homeowner expertise, and their son who has graciously said that he'll help paint the upper story. Which means I get to be a big ol' baby and keep my feet firmly planted on the ground :D ) Today I'm going to countersink some nails, which the builder didn't bother to hammer in completely. Then I'll need to smooth caulking over the nail holes to make the surface even. I should be able to get that done before I fly to my parents' place on Thursday, for a little visit.

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