Okay! Yesterday I was feeling super sick and terrible and I thought, "Oh crap, it's a flu or food poisoning or a stomach virus, and whatever it is, it's gonna put me out of commission for a good week or so." But I woke up this morning feeling tons better, even moreso after lunch. I'm not sure what it was! Maybe I just had something bad to eat... I'm just glad it doesn't seem to be lasting and I won't have to call off plans with people later this week.

Saturday was spent shopping for food, and in the evening I watched a movie I got from syerubi, Southland Tales. It was just one of the weirdest things ever. At first it seemed like your usual post-apocalyptic political dystopia kind of movie. But right on the cover you see it has The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Sean William Scott, and somehow it only gets even more celebrity-laden (it's like SNL exploded all over it). And yet it manages to feel like a B movie, peppered with lines that seem thrown in JUST to make it feel like a B movie. Well, in any case, it was interesting...

Sunday was a super Aion day! The achiness was starting to get worse after that so I just sat down and watched another movie, Broken Flowers, a Bill Murray movie I picked up from the bargain bin at the grocery store. Just to give it a quick description that doesn't really do it justice, it's sort of Lost in Translation crossed with a reverse Mamma Mia.

( Read more... )

My folks called me up a few minutes before 3AM this morning asking where I was. When I told them I was home (ASLEEP, imagine that), they informed me that someone kept ringing their doorbell and they had no idea who it was, so they were going to call the police.

The police apparently came over and told them, "Oh, this kind of thing happens all the time. Just some thieves staking the neighborhood out. Nothing to worry about." Well, this is second-hand and my ears were clogged with sleepy so I dunno if they said "thieves" or "teens", but in any case it's a little disturbing.

The police didn't see anyone around, which would seem to rule out any good reason for someone ringing the doorbell (a neighbor with an emergency or something). Do we really have a thief or prankster running about? Both seem rather likely...


For some reason this feels like the kind of situation where I should be like, "Oh, folks, you so paranoid. How cute." But I'm freaking out a little! About half an hour after my folks first called, after they had spoken to the police and they said they'd scope out the place, I heard a car pulling up across the street. And this makes me feel like the Grumpy Old Man more than ever, but it looked like two cars with a bunch of teens pulling up to their house and heading inside... It's one I've noticed odd behavior from before.

But THAT is probably just being paranoid. My folks didn't hear any cars around their place when the doorbell was ringing... Which would mean that if they had a car, it was some distance away, which makes the whole scenario less and less plausible. It was probably just odd timing on their part... But still, now everything that goes on in this neighborhood is going to seem suspicious!

I'm in a two-story place while my folks are in a single, so I have the advantage of being able to peer out at the street from the top floor. I also have a bad habit of falling asleep with the TV on sometimes (I know, it's Earth Week!), and when I sleep in the room looking out over the street, the light from the TV can be seen from outside. This was the first night in a while that I DIDN'T have the TV on and now I'm paranoid that maybe I need to keep up the odd nighttime activity to discourage people away from my place...

ARGH probably nothing to worry about but it's still just freaky. Maybe once we all move we should look into cameras looking out at the front entrance...

It was a pretty strange evening... In the afternoon, I went out with my folks to grab something to eat. On the way home, my step-father was telling me about some computer problems his neighbor was having, so when we got back, I went to go take a look at the problem and try to fix it.

I was getting a ride from my folks, so they dropped me off back at my place when I was done... But then I noticed they weren't leaving my driveway. A short while later, they called to let me know their vehicle seemed completely dead! Nothing seemed to have any power and the keys were stuck in the ignition.

It wasn't too late in the evening but it was already very dark out. It was like some small-scale adventure, trying to find flashlights that worked, then fetching some fresh batteries so they provided more light than your average flick of cigarette ash. My mother happened to have a high-powered lamp stored at my place (why?) and I managed to find an extension cord in my recently-tidied office closet to plug it in outdoors.

My step-father struggled to read the car's manual outside in the limited lighting rather than heading inside to read. I had to lend to him an old jacket that he earlier gave to me (along with a mountain of neckties he no longer needed upon retiring).

Eventually, he seemed to get it working. Nothing in the car seemed damaged, but upon jostling some wires that looked in perfect condition, the car sprung back to life. A moment later, it was dead again. Further encouragement of those wires kept the car running long enough for my folks to make the 3-minute drive home. It's so weird worrying if your parents' vehicle is going to die so close to home. It's like worrying if the power at your place is going to last long enough through a storm for you to reach the next save point.

So, who knows what's going to happen to that car now? It just recently returned from the shop after my folks got rear-ended at a red light...


I got home with a bunch of food. I had some Arby's sandwiches I wanted to save for later, my folks' leftover Mexican food from our meal, a big slice of chocolate cake as thanks for helping with my folks' neighbor's computer woes, and a plate of enchiladas made by THEIR neighbor (she just apparently never stops cooking).

My step-father is also borrowing my one flashlight that doesn't shut itself off when it senses movement.

In anticipation of having guests over for Thanksgiving, I tried cooking a turkey breast today using this recipe:

Rachael Ray's Herb Roasted Turkey Breast

A turkey breast seemed like less hassle than a full turkey. But unfortunately I got one that wasn't already de-boned, so that was a hassle! But it did come out okay in the end! So I have a successful experiment and stuff to eat for the next couple of days. It also came pre-soaked in stuff, so... I'm not sure how much that contributed to the flavor, but it was effectively brined and that made for a very moist turkey. Mmm!!

Next time I'll need to see if I can find breast halves that are already de-boned and without the extra stuff, and brine it myself...


That took up most of my day since it took a while just to defrost the turkey... I finally tried starting Assassin's Creed (yeah, the original one), and was liking it until it froze my 360. I also made an unsuccessful Post Office run, as I found one of their two automated machines was down and the other ran out of paper. Hope they get that broken one fixed in time for massive holiday shipping!

Not really sure what I've been up to this past week... I think I spent most of my free time trying to clean up the place. I will probably be getting guests for Thanksgiving, so I need to tidy up!

Been feeling bad today, though. Thursday evening after work, I just kinda went FWUMP and fell asleep for a while. That seemed to set my whole sleeping schedule askew as I wasn't able to sleep at a normal time on Friday night either. I had a MASSIVE lunch Friday, and so didn't feel hungry for most of the day... But rolling around awake until 11pm, I started to get hungry again, and really felt like Taco Bell somehow.

This morning my sleep was repeatedly interrupted by that bad burning throaty refluxy feeling. In the afternoon I had to take a nap again... By the time I had dinner, I wondered, "What did I have for lunch?", and I have absolutely no idea. Maybe I didn't? Not sure if this is a stomach problem or a sleep problem or whatnot now...


Head is still feeling fuzzy tonight and I'm not sure what I really got accomplished this week, at least until I look around and realize how much tidier the place is...

Last weekend I was out and about a bit. On Sunday I downloaded my Arceus for Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum (I don't know how but I have a total of four of those game cards now so I got four Arceus). On Saturday I tried picking up some things for home improvement.

I was at the Home Depot, and while I was walking back to my car in the parking lot, I overheard an old lady yelling at a Hispanic-looking middle-aged man sitting on a curb. She wasn't like an "Oh, please let me help you cross the street" type of old lady. She was more like an "I jog 24 miles each morning and take self-defense lessons and only eat roasted almonds and I'm sick of my tax dollars supporting the illegal aliens" kind of old lady.

She belted at the man, "Why don't you go out and find a job everyday?!"

It was a little awkwardly phrased (find a job, then work every day? Or find a different job each day?), which I guess reinforced how genuine and heartfelt her message was. And the sad thing was that he probably WAS looking for a job... But I was a bit shocked by the lady's outburst. Did she just assume the man was looking for a handout? Did she just assume that he had to have been a lazy moocher and not a victim of circumstance?

I didn't know the man, so for all I know, maybe he WAS a lazy soul who was looking for a freebie to get through the days. But I thought it was just as likely he was a hard-working man trying to feed his family and wasn't able to find a steady job in this tattered economy... I've been in that jobless phase before, and I may not have been in such dire situations, but I felt I could empathize.


Recently I've started to feel I can better understand why some people are afraid of certain things, and I feel it is due to a transmogrification of Blackstone's formulation: "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." If you have the empathy to place yourself in the shoes of that one wrongly convicted, you might be more inclined to agree with this sentiment... But what if you are MORE afraid of one guilty man free than 10 innocent who suffer?

If you provide aid to the poor and unemployed, how many of them are well-meaning and hard-working individuals, and how many are feckless freeloaders? Would you rather help the honest along with the dishonest, or be SO AFRAID that one unscrupulous person benefit that you decide to help no one at all?

And what if another person were to choose the former option? Is that person simply one who believes the benefits outweigh the detriments? ...Or is he, in actuality, on the side of those dishonest frauds...?

It's a scary and slippery slope. I hope I never find myself sliding along that path... The thing is, I feel I can at least understand that point of view. I just wish people would phrase it that way more often, rather than, "OMG YOU HATE AMERICA."

Today's been a weird day... I spent the morning driving around the neighborhood looking for garage sales (don't ask), then I got some groceries and TRIED to go shopping for other things only to remember why I hate shopping at brick-and-mortar stores (are they still called that?). Seriously, do they ever have anything in stock?

In the afternoon I was thinking about playing more Aion (made level 18 late last night!), but then I realized I was hungry and I should address that first. For some weird reason I decided to cook yams. Because I bought pears the other day (another thing I didn't have reason to do), I looked up to see what the heck I could do with them, and found this:

Sweet potatoes with pears

I guess yams aren't exactly sweet potatoes, but I wasn't sure and the store didn't have anything called "sweet potatoes". But it came out to be pretty good! It's just... I expected them to be much sweeter. It's not like they aren't sweet at all, but they just totally didn't live up to my own expectations of sweetness (which admittedly may be TOO sweet). Maybe melting some marshmallows on top would be good? But it wasn't too bad at all.

But I was stupid and made the normal amount of the recipe (instead of, say, halving it) and it was obviously meant to be a "feed a family of 20" kind of dish for Thanksgiving. So yeah... nothing but yams for a few days, I guess.


I told my folks I had yams and asked if they wanted to try some. They said "no" and promptly came over.

And while they were over, we switched to CNN and saw the House health care bill being voted on and passing. I can only liken it to the few times I watch the Super Bowl with my folks. I'm not a football fan at all, but when you do sit down and watch a big game like that, you can't help getting excited and I can't think of many other instances like it. But this was one of those times.

Part of me was like, "WOW the House bill passed!", another was, "Wait, why did it pass with such a narrow margin when the House side was supposed to be a slam dunk?", and yet another was, "OH GREAT now the entire damn thing is resting on that doofus Lieberman's shoulders."

It was so damn close it was unbelievable. 220-215. They needed 218-217 to pass. They were only two votes above the BARE minimum... And if you only count the Democrats (which, it seems, is what you have to do ANYWHERE these days), they only had one extra vote. They could only have afforded 40 NAY votes. They had 39. WTF GUYS. THE HOUSE SIDE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EASY ONE. The surprise of the night? ONE LONE REPUBLICAN YEA VOTE. I asked, "Did he get confused? Was he given a butterfly ballot?"

It was interesting getting my folks' take on things. My step-father said something like, "Well, I've been seeing all these commercials saying they'll cut Medicare and raise taxes. But it's a Republican ad so I can't even tell if it's true or not." I was glad to see he at least considered whether things he heard on TV were true or not, but it's still disappointing to see there is still confusion among the public.

It was a nail-biting experience watching that tally creep up to 218. But still, I felt like it couldn't be enjoyed much knowing the Senate bill still had to be voted on. Joe Lieberman, why do you still plague the country today? Not like he's the only Senator that makes me bang my head against the wall, but still. I'm still, still sore at him.


My folks stayed for a while, drinking orange juice and eating yams, so I didn't have time to get online to play anything tonight and I'm super tired from yam wrangling.

The laptop hard drive sale on NewEgg yesterday didn't work so well for me -- it was a bit more expensive than I was hoping for, and anyway, it was SATA and wouldn't work for this particular laptop. So I ended up heading out and picking one up at a brick-and-mortar (it feels so WEIRD to find a store that actually has computer parts I need/want). And sure enough, that fixed it!

So all this time, all that busted laptop needed was a new hard drive. Feel kinda bad for not getting on it sooner.

It was a secondhand laptop I bought from ndoto a while back... It was a monster gaming laptop back in the day! Like, desktop-replacement kind of laptop. It may not be as impressive specs-wise today, but it's big and beautiful and cool. It's been a while since I've seen it operational, and man, that screen is so awesome! I seriously just stood around watching a screensaver run for several minutes... I think it may be good enough to run some games on when I don't feel like playing on the Media Center PC.


So, after a week of computer work/research...

( Read more... )

I still have a handful of good parts lying around...

I was trying to sleep last night and I realized I've shifted crazy focus to computer-type stuff right now. Aside from wanting to build a new computer and get new parts for the Media Center PC, I've been thinking about other projects I've had lying around for a while...


KVM - I salvaged two desktop computers and a laptop from my father's old house before it got demolished. I also managed to pick up an old desktop at a garage sale for about $20! I was thinking of hooking these up, though I'm not sure what I'd use them for aside from a SETI farm... But I'm thinking about getting a KVW so I can have them all connected to a single monitor/keyboard/mouse setup. It'd have to support at least four systems, though I was thinking of eventually moving the guts of the Media Center PC to another case... So maybe I'd need five eventually?

Laptop hard drive - I got a used laptop a while back and it stopped working suddenly. I THINK I determined the problem was the hard drive and I even tried swapping it out, but the replacement wasn't in much better shape. I'll have to investigate further I guess, but I was thinking of getting a new laptop hard drive for it... Luckily I think NewEgg.com may have a deal on them this Wednesday?

IDE desktop hard drive - When I built my folks their new computer, they handed me their old one (which used to be MY computer that I handed down to them). Yep, it's that super-old Gateway with the ZIP disk drive... The only thing it's missing is a hard drive, since I removed it to install in their new system. But yeah, since the motherboard is so old, it won't be able to take an SATA drive. IDE only! Wonder if I can still find an old hard drive like that? [edit] ndoto may be able to hook me up with one!

Samsung® SyncMaster 2233RZ - After double-checking the requirements for Nvidia 3D Vision, it looks like the two monitors they list on the site really ARE the only two compatible computer monitors at the moment (in addition to projectors, TVs, and CRT monitors...?). And between the ViewSonic and Samsung models, the Samsung seems like the better one... They have some places selling it for around $300, but they seem like smaller less-known sites. Hm. I may put this off for a while, though I was thinking of getting this to replace my current monitor so I can donate that to my folks and take their old burnt-out CRT off their hands...


So! I will be checking out NewEgg this Wednesday and maybe cross one of these items off my list.

Halloween! My folks are not fond of Halloween. They spend the evening trying to avoid being home, so they're not trapped inside the house trying to act like no one's there to hand out candy. And so I get swept up in it as well... I don't mind too much. This year I kind of did feel like giving out candy -- every year I think that maybe it'd be neat to give out Kasugai gummies and Super Lemons along with the more recognizable stuff. But maybe they'd just get thrown away...

But it's not such a big deal to me, and that means less money spent on candy, too. Last month I ate through some of the bags of discount candy I got after last year's Halloween. They were mostly still good, but some of them (like Snickers) just did not hold up. Those Snickers got petrified!! It never occurred to me until recently that candy could go bad like that. Unfortunately I think dasie had an old petrified piece of candy and I didn't even realize it until I tried to eat one a few weeks ago. Sorry...

Kit Kats and Butterfingers were mostly okay, though.

Anyway... Halloween evening was spent hanging out with the folks. They took me out to dinner at Zio's, an Italian restaurant around here. They had coupons for a family meal for four for $20 and a free appetizer. It was really good! Those meatballs may not have been the best in the world, but they were the best I'd had in a long time. Unfortunately, something wasn't sitting quite right with me... Not sure if it was the dinner or something I had for lunch...

After dinner, we had to kill more time, so we hung out at the Barnes & Noble for a bit, then headed to Target to kill a little more time. I spent most of the time at B&N in the bathroom. By the time we got home, it was shortly after 9PM... Still seemed a bit too early but my mother was getting antsy to return home (and this is her idea every year, too!). But it turned out to not be too early after all... There wasn't any activity outside once we got home. Was it just a quiet year in the neighborhood? Or did we just get home at the right time? We seem to have a ton of kids in this neighborhood, but just as many families that don't welcome them...


Most of the rest of the weekend was uneventful. Most of today was spent playing Aion with people... But in the evening I started not feeling too well. Starting to feel a bit achey, and now I wonder if it's some kind of flu! Maybe we spent too much time out of the house. Well, it doesn't seem too bad yet, and maybe I just haven't gotten enough sleep lately... Either way, I'm not too worried.

Tonight I'm heading out with the folks to get something to eat in order to avoid the trick-or-treaters at home. Sometimes I feel like doing the candy thing but sometimes I just feel too lazy. Feeling weird from the unseasonably cold weather doesn't help, either!

I got computer stuff today!

So I got a new power supply to replace the one that seemed to be dead in the Media Center PC. Sure enough, that was indeed the problem... Once everything was replaced, the computer booted up fine and everything was back to normal. It felt so weird to have it back up and running, as if my car had broken down and I had to walk a few dozen miles to get home and take a hot bath. I didn't even think I missed it that much while it was down, but it feels good to have the PC back again.

I really like the power supply I got, too. Before, the computer's insides were a real mess... It had a lot of space, but there was so much STUFF in there that it still felt incredibly cramped. I was often afraid that Wire X would be too close to Heatsink Y and disaster would follow. But things are a lot tidier now! It's modular, so I only need to connect what I really need to. And all the wires are just contained very neatly... Plus, I think the blue LED is really cool. It is BRIGHT. It's especially nice that you can easily turn the LED on or off...

And it's a 780W power supply, so it should be way more than enough power for my system! Now I feel like the old power supply simply wasn't enough... Even though it came with the case (specifically designed for a home theater PC), and thus (you'd think) made with the power demands of such a system in mind. This is an awesome power supply! Definitely getting more for my future computer building needs.


I also finally got around to fixing an old issue with my desktop computer... After being on for a while (this could be anywhere from a few days to a few minutes), the speakers would start spitting out a terrible sound, like trying to play a data CD in a CD player -- a silicon banshee. I just kind of lived with it, not expecting sound from the system unless I just rebooted it.

I was using the onboard sound, and it seemed like the problem could be fixed if I simply got a sound card, any sound card, so I wouldn't need to rely on the motherboard any longer. But I never got around to it until now... I just ordered a really cheap $9 sound card. And it seems to work fine! I guess I'll need to wait and see what happens, but so far it's working out great for me... Hopefully that takes care of that issue. It feels nice to finally address it!

( Future projects )

But I think I've taken care of all urgent matters for the moment. This stuff can wait...

The weather report this week said it would snow yesterday. And it did, a little! It was hard to see, but there were definitely tiny flakes in the air. And later in the day, we got hail... Fun.

But today, the snow REALLY came down. You could look outside and see a solid sheet of snow coming down! In the narrow gaps between houses, where the wind slowed down, it looked as if people were having downy pillow fights on the roof. But the snow didn't last too long... All the rocks and gravel were too warm to accumulate a layer of snow, and the surfaces that did soon lost what little they had to the noonday sun. It was interesting while it lasted.

So, yeah, that is basically winter in New Mexico. "Oh wow, snow! There's so much of it! ... Oh, it all melted." Plus, the fact that it's not even Halloween yet? Freaky.


Speaking of Halloween, I had these plans for pumpkins and candy but ended up doing nothing. But I found this awesome link today with perhaps one of the coolest costumes ever:

Comic book/halftone costume

SO COOL


And hopefully the new power supply for the Media Center PC will arrive tomorrow! Hopefully that's all I need to get it back up and running. I also kinda splurged and ordered myself a 1.5 TB external hard drive today... I don't currently have an external drive and think it'd be pretty convenient. It should be enough to back up what little data I want to save from the Media Center PC, and probably from my desktop as well (which I've been kinda nervous about having die on me for a while).

At first I was really thinking about planning to build a new desktop PC sometime next year. I was interested in building something compatible with Nvidia 3D Vision (that 3D stuff we saw at PAX), plus just kinda have a beefy system that'll last me a while. I didn't realize how old my current machines are until I looked at them and found their graphics cards were AGP... I had actually seriously forgotten what AGP is. Graphics cards are all PCI Express 2.0 now...

But then the issue with the Media Center PC came up and I was wondering if I should plan on buying some new parts for that instead...

( Dream Journal )

Computer not working!!

I was playing a little Aion on the Media Center PC when suddenly the game froze. The whole PC seemed to lock up, not responding to anything, so I had no choice but to power it down... A minute later, I tried to power it back on, but it wasn't responding at all! Pressing the power button did not seem to do a thing. I made sure everything was still plugged in, the switch on the power supply unit was on, etc. It simply will not power on!

My first guess would be that the power supply unit failed... If that's the case, it'll be a bit of a pain, but not too big a problem to repair...

This computer being out of commission for the time being has its ups and downs. It was the most powerful computer I had, so I used it for games, and I'm not sure my regular desktop computer is powerful enough to run anything (it might be if I turn down the settings in the games). And since it was my Media Center PC, I used it to watch TV, record shows, stuff like that. But since I meant for it to be used as a Media Center PC, pretty much all I had on it was the TV stuff and the games...

Well, hopefully the power supply is the only thing wrong. I was kinda thinking about upgrading it sometime in the future...

[edit]
I'm thinking that maybe my old power supply wasn't powerful enough to handle the Media Center PC to begin with... Ah well, time for upgrades anyway. This is the replacement I ended up ordering, which looks pretty neat:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817709024

780W, modular, active PFC, on/off blue LED light? Hmm, this could do.

So yesterday I started playing Aion and made it to level 10, which is the big early milestone. It's a pretty neat game! Gameplay-wise, it seems to borrow a lot from WoW, obviously (though I wonder if there are any modern MMOs that don't). WoW seems great at adding fixes to improve old elements of the game, but Aion seems to have learned from WoW's experience and tried to get things "right" from the start. Combat is kinda interesting, even if it's based on the old auto-attack system.

The first ten levels are like the usual tutorial zone, but the teaching seems a bit more transparent and even in this beginner's area you have a certain degree of "epic" in the storytelling. Overall, it's pretty cool! I've just barely started with the game so it's hard to see where things'll go from here.


The home office is getting a bit more clean! Maybe I'm getting closer to getting this whole place organized.

So, yeah, I went and got that other MMO, Aion, today. I was still kinda sorta playing WoW a little (the Halloween event is going on now, but I essentially completed it last year), but none of my friends are currently playing. Instead, they're all on Aion! So I thought I'd give it a try in the name of team synergy. And so I will probably get too obsessed with it for a short while and then burn out on it and the whole cycle will repeat itself. In several years I'll be the only one still playing Aion while everyone else is on the new Twilight MMO or whatever.

Of course, I was stupid and forgot to ask what server and stuff I should pick in order to be able to play with everyone. Good planning there! At least this gives me time to download all the updates so I'll be ready to go tomorrow...


This week wasn't terribly exciting... Work was steady but not too crazy. I ended up sleeping 10 hours a night for most of the week. I even got used to the super-strong ginger taste of the mabo dofu! I kinda miss it now, but I realize that since it's just tofu and meat, it was almost entirely protein, and so that's almost all I ate this entire week. I probably should've had more veggies...

Attempting to be at least somewhat productive, I spent a lot of time organizing and tossing/recycling stuff this week. You know, like... the boxes full of receipts and coupon mailers that I would build every time I moved and thought, "Eh, I can sort this stuff out later." I guess this week was "later"... It felt good to get rid of those old receipts and issues of the NRA magazine that my father had subscribed to for some reason. Broken things, useless packaging, stuff like that...

I can't believe I found six rolls of Scotch tape after going through everything. Was I just unable to find a roll whenever I needed one, which prompted me to go out and buy a fresh roll?

Sometimes I wondered if my father went through the same cleaning process sometimes. He was an ultra super duper major packrat, and my mother hated it. He would have piles of paper and junk lying about here and there. And you know how it'd go... An attempt to clean it up would simply form a makeshift structure, like the Leaning Tower of Paper or a little fort of cardboard boxes and copier parts. Better than it was before, but still, it looked like Fraggles built it.

One of the major reasons my mother left... I know he did a pretty good job at cleaning it, at some points. Like a stutterer trying to control his stutter? You can do well for a while, but eventually that tensed muscle will have to relax and things will just flow back to the way they were. I wonder if I'm going through the same rituals he did now... Or am I doing a little bit better? Or perhaps a little worse?

I still have more to throw away...

Anybody have any suggestions? I'm currently using Liberty Mutual and I get a 5% discount through my employer. But I took a look at Progressive and it seems like I could still save money on a comparable policy...

I'll probably keep looking around for a bit. Anybody have any recommendations on companies you like, or ones to avoid?

Today hasn't felt like a great day! Just a bunch of little things keep feeling off. Been feeling weird all day thanks to who-knows-what (all that ginger or green tea?), haven't been able to concentrate, been feeling almost ill, with a general soreness all about. I even have that "medicine head" feeling now even though I haven't had any! Hope it's not some flu-like ailment... The weather has been going crazy today, so maybe that's a contributor.

It was a normal sunny day, then quickly turned into a battering rainstorm with thunder booming in the distance. It was like the whole building was pelted with pebbles for a couple of hours! And some of my yard furniture was actually damaged...

And work had the usual shenanigans... My boss waits until late in the day to drop something on me. We struggle with it for a bit, and then we seem close to a solution... I spend some time researching and implementing it, and when I finally have something to show him (not too long after), he's unavailable!! He even said he'd call me back because "We need to get this done today." What the heck happened?? Even if the client suddenly decided, "Oh, it's not so urgent we need it tonight after all," he could've at least called or e-mailed me instead of leaving me anxious and waiting the entire night...


And I found I had a little surprise from my car insurance. They can't seem to keep their billing straight this year... They even messed up their billing while I was in Seattle! I just don't know what to do... I NEED it but I so rarely drive these days... Is it time to shop around, maybe?

Even the TV was fritzing out today! I have one set top box that occasionally needs resetting to be functioning properly. It's just like my horrid Windows Mobile phone... I even reset it today only to have it IMMEDIATELY glitch out moments after it powered back up!

And my work laptop continues to be problematic... When I think of the hassle I had to go through just to get this current one, a replacement for the last laptop which was nigh unusable...

Things seemed like they were going okay but suddenly it's turning into a rough week. Just have to make it to Friday somehow... I'm not happy with anything right now! This just feels like one of those weeks you need to curl up into a little ball and hide in the corner. Well, whatever... I'll survive if I can make it to Friday.

Urgh. Yesterday I was feeling tired pretty early so I went to bed a little earlier than usual. I ended up waking up at 3AM, unable to fall back asleep!

But I was suuuper hungry so I ended up making some rice and having more of the Super Ginger Tofu Beef from last night. I stayed awake for a few more hours before falling back asleep.

Then I woke up again a couple hours later and AGAIN feel suuuuuuper hungry. Argh! What is going on? Is all the ginger and green tea from yesterday getting to me?

I may also be feeling a little ill today, like I'm getting over a cold or something. I'll see how things go today, I guess...

So! Today's cooking experiment:

Mabo dofu (tofu and meat thing)

And it came out pretty well, except for the part where I mixed up fresh ginger and ground ginger. Just so you know, it's a bad mistake. I noticed something was wrong when the smell of ginger filled the room, and only intensified until it almost smelled like freshly-cut limes. I can't really explain it.

It still wasn't too bad, though... I think. At least it's not like that one time I mixed up "teaspoon" with "cup". Wait, which one is worse?

[edit]
OH WAIT I JUST BURPED AND IT WAS LIKE AN ENTIRE GINGER ROOT CAME UP THE FUMES FROM MY BURP ACTUALLY MATERIALIZED AND APPEARED IN THE SHAPE OF A PIECE OF GINGER AUGH THIS WAS A REALLY REALLY BAD THING

This Sunday felt sooo weird. On Saturday I went to see Where the Wild Things Are, and got the last ending on Persona 4 around 3:30 AM. So when I woke up this morning, I just felt like... what is there for me to do? It's not like I've run out of things to do in P4 -- I can try to level, fuse new Personas, and try another playthrough -- but I guess it feels "done" and so today I've run out of motivation to do anything.

I'm not even sure WHAT I ended up doing today, besides usual household cleaning chores and watching TV. There's always WoW, now that the Halloween event is back. But I have no friends to play with, and I just don't like going out and finding random pick-up groups. Even though they can be fun sometimes, and I can try to get some fun items, I just lack the spark to head out there and seek people.

This is kinda sad. Was Persona 4 just a distraction? But it's not like I don't have a dozen other games I could be playing... And I know I'll probably be just as devoted to them as I was with P4. But like finding those groups with random strangers in WoW, do I just lack the motivation to up and start things? Today I just felt like... there's nothing I WANT to do...

I guess Sundays in general just tend to be weird like that. Or maybe I need to find other things to do on Sundays...


Recently I added a bunch of new Facebook friends. Some were people seeking me, and so I went out in search of some old acquaintances... It seems like people have been living interesting lives since I last saw them. Oh, you're doing this now! Oh, so you're doing that! But I don't have a lot to say. Oh, you know, just working and playing games. I guess I have my own place, and it hasn't fallen into foreclosure? I suppose that's something. When reconnecting with old friends, I dunno if they really wanna hear things like, "My father and dog died not too long ago, but I'm doing pretty okay."

It's not like I'm ashamed about what I do or have any regrets. It just seems kind of... uninteresting. I don't have anything like, "Ah, I sent a kid up in a balloon" or "I used a copyrighted image of Obama for my art project." It sure doesn't seem like people would necessarily want to hear, "I just beat Persona 4" or "I made it to level 80 in WoW."

What is there to do? Break a Guiness world record? Invent something like a vending machine for crows? Deliberately catch swine flu?


The closest thing to a major life goal right now is to support my mother and step-father while they try to sell their place and move somewhere. Then I will likely sell my own place and move as well... None of us will admit it, but I think we depend on each other to some degree. But with the current real estate climate, that goal seems to be months away (at the very least).

So a lot of things seem in limbo. Do I want to look for a new job? Not right now, since my current job lets me work remotely, so it'll help ease things out while I'm moving. Am I ready for a new dog? No, that should probably wait until after I move into the new place. Do I want to commit to anything outside of the house that will last for several months or more? No...


Rargh. Maybe I SHOULD start on another RPG or something...