Beer Goggle Dreams

So...been a bit busy since December 21st. Thing haven't slowed down really. Family stuff both close and extended, work stuff - company rebranded - no not bought out just name change, money troubles, adopted a Lhasa Ahpso named Bartek, weird weather, etc.

So today and tomorrow I'm off work and after helping get the kid off to school and taking the dogs out I puttered on the computer a bit until 9 am Central. Then I crashed until my wife called me about 30 minutes ago. The body must have been worn out a bit because I hit the bed and didn't move or shift that whole time. Of course that leaves me sore a little.

So now I've eaten something and am vertical again sort of. Going to try and get moving on stuff here a little but seriously sluggish. I think it's just the wind-down from being on top of everything for 3+ months. Think I'm gonna start playing the lotto. It's about time I won. ;-P

( Read On MacDuff! )

And DAMMIT ALL WHERE THE HELL IS SPRING?!?!?!?

Ponyville must be late with Winter Wrap-up again. ;-P

So once again the summer has passed into fall with all the gusto it usually does. Right now it's blowing considerably outside. (I think Luffy said it was 8 - 9 mph.)

And as of this morning the furnace wouldn't start up. Joy.

Did the same thing I did last year and cleaned out the vacuum barb on the pre-charger fan or whatever it is. For the moment it started up but we'll have to wait and see if it continually works.

The thing about all this is I _hate_ going into the basement crawl space. Not because it gets dirty though that's part of the issue. Not because it's a pain to get back to the furnace by crawling over dirt and pipes and wires though that's a problem too.

No. It's because of the spiders. There's always a ton of webs down there and I'm moretally afraid of spiders. The only thing I'm more wigged out by are house centipedes. I can control it but if it catches me by surprise I freak. badly.

Anyway I managed to get the furnace filter changed while I was down there as well. That is something that suffers because of my phobias.

I have a simple rule with spiders. As long as they don't appear in the public places of the house they can remain undisturbed. They enter the public spaces or make webs there and they get no mercy. I think they know this as well because oddly we only see a few webs in public places around the house. The rest are dep in closets and rafters or in the crawl space.

I'd love to dig that area out but it would require jacking up the house, digging out a whole hell of a lot of dirt, then pouring not only a concrete slab but footers as well. Not happening any time soon.

Other fun stuff this weekend will include putting all my older systems back together after tearing them all apart trying to compensate for my own mistakes. (I shorted the motherboard and power supply of my gaming machine accidentally.) I spent several hours swapping processors and ram and not one of my other systems will do what I want it to. I just don't want to have to go out and buy stuff because that would have to go on the credit card. Though honestly it would save me a lot of trouble if I just up and spent for a gaming system. I've got a 600w power supply and a honking video card so all I need it processor and possibly RAM. Though if I can find a board that takes DDR2 all I need is board and processor then.

I am suddenly amused by watching the Roomba push my exercise ball around. :-) That thing is comfortable to sit and read the iPad on. (The ball not the Roomba.)

Well...off to wash the spider-stink from me...

Oh and my friend in Japan? He's a bastard because he got to go to the Hokkaido food festival today. ;-P

22:06 PM 10/21/2011

So I managed to get some things done on the technology front around here today. I swapped my old 250GB hard drive in my Macbook into an external USB box, confirmed I could boot the Macbook that way, then installed a 40GB solid state OCZ brand drive internally. (A gift from someone I worked with at my previous temp job.) This allowed me to install Linux Mint 11 and copy most of my data from my old ThinkPad R51 over for use on the Macbook.
( Here be dragons...and not the fluffy kind... )

So I didn't sleep well again last night. It was a combination of things that I won't go into here. If there weren't so many downsides to taking sedatives I'd certainly consider it sometimes.

Part of it is I've been off my diet recently. Not horribly but a lot of rich food that has caused me to pick up an extra 10 pounds so I'm now 5' 7", 235lbs in my shorts. I'll rectify this shortly.
( Dinking Drives... )

April 19, 2009 10:32 AM 4/19/09

So I’m drinking cran-cherry stuff again - you can probably guess why. I think the last stone didn’t break up but just stopped moving because last night on the couch I suddenly felt like someone had kicked me in the right side of my middle/lower back. Right where the original stone pains were. I’m still going to work but I’m probably going to have to bring a bottle of cran-crap with me until this is all over.

( Fresh herbs on the way... )

March 10, 2009 11:22 AM 3/10/09

So my right lower wisdom tooth is still giving me a pain but I’m going to stick it out next week until we have more money.

No calls from LEOs about my LED grow lamp yet but that may yet happen. Or maybe not. I honestly don’t care.

( Grind...grind...grind... )

March 4, 2009 11:12 AM 3/4/09

So I’m considering adding the RPG/400 programming language to my skills because it’s an in-demand skill on a regular basis. Even though I’m trying to reduce spending I ordered three books today from E-Bay and Amazon to the tune of $30 total. But even with the books unless I can find an AS400 emulator or pick up a system somewhere cheap that’s going to be an issue. I turned down one years ago because of space so there’s that bit of suckage involved in this as well. :-(

( Rancid goat junk beneath the cut... )

March 2, 2009 10:57 AM 3/2/09

So the second kidney stone of my life is moving slowly on to its final destination - and kicking me in the back along with it.

I’ll be fine though. These little trials in life just seem to strengthen me. Mind you I’m not looking forward to the final destination if you know what I mean.

( Yeeeouch! )

February 26, 2009 11:12 AM 2/26/09

So I’m looking to move my weather center data collection off my old i1300 Thinkpad and I can’t decide if I want to use one of the more power hungry Sun U1 systems I have or get myself another Cobalt Qube system which would be quieter and use electricity but I’d have to spend money for. Spending money is not a good thing right now but I’d spend it in more electricity using the U1 as they are not exactly “green” systems.

( Fire up the vacuum siphon coffee maker Igor! )

February 23, 2009 11:08 AM 2/23/09


So after doing a little research I’ve found that a number of things can be grown upside-down from hanging planters - including my peppers.

I’m probably not going to do that but it’s an interesting proposition because it means that as long as you have good light you can grow food where you normally wouldn’t think you could.

I watched a couple on House Hunter’s International last night buy a small house with land in Spain and they were complaining about the size of the land. I’d do quite a bit to get a plot of land like they were complaining about. Just one acre would be all I’d need...

( Doom doom doom doom...Frito you fool! )