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Feb. 14th, 2014
Living with bad decisions
Feb. 14th, 2014 09:47 amThis is the firstest of first world problems. How stupid of me was it to have living room furniture designed around a computer CPU that was already 5 years old? Pretty stupid.
The mother board is dead and the hole built into the furniture to hold and highlight the pimped out, see-through backlit CPU is not big enough to house the pimped out CPU cases of today. Sigh. My brother and his shop manager, Amy, are on the case and will find the answer but I wish I had been just a teensy weensy bit less stupid.
On the up side, I will end up with a very solid, nice, working Windows Computer that I can count on and use as a dependable workhorse. Then I can get rid of the ones that only half work. I will continue to use my Chromebook for every day/most every thing. Also on the up side, Amy is having fun planning and sourcing and fixing me up.
---
My swim this morning was kind of different. Yesterday, because of lunch with Kathy, my swim was cut short. We had agreed to go after swim at 12:15ish. She swims about 30 minutes so I figured she'd show up about 11:30. But she came earlier so finished earlier and while I would have gone on another 20 minutes, I felt weird having her cool her heels and wait for me so I quit early too. So today, I decided to make up for it. But the first 5 laps were very strange. I couldn't get my breath. I was scared to cough because I didn't want my nose to bleed. I was about to get a little scared when all of a sudden, it all got better. I felt fine. Good, actually. And went on to swim my mile plus an extra 500 yards. Nice. The pool is closed on Monday so I felt like I needed to get my money's worth today and I did.
---
I have Geico insurance for my car and home (they use Liberty Mutual). I have had this setup for about 5 years now. I have never once filed a claim but have, on several occasions, needed documentation or information or changes made to my policies. Every single time, with zero exceptions, the process has been easy and painless and faultless. It's shocking and oh so comforting.
The home owners association of my condo has to ensure that all owners have the appropriate home owners insurance. And they want proof on file. And, apparently, no one every provides this because at least 2 or 3 times a year, we get a threatening letter from the management that we must supply this documentation. Every time, I do. I got the stupid letter again yesterday. This time, I asked Geico to provide me the proof electronically. They did, within 12 hours. No questions asked, no follow up needed, exactly what I asked for. Perfect.
I sent it to the association explaining that instead of handing it to the building manager as requested and as I have done in the past, I was sending it so that next time they asked, I could just resend the note. I sure wish they would just cull out the non-compliers and start issuing fines and leave us law abiding residents alone. But, at least, I'm finally organized the problem down to a resend.
---
Plans for the rest of today are pretty much taxes. I had started and nearly finished my tax return on the computer that went to my brother's. I totally forgot about it but figured I'd remote in and finish it off before they started working on it. But, that was before it was declared DOA. So now I have to redo everything on my crapola windows laptop. My very nice but very luddite CPA uses a piece of software that was created in the Windows 3 era. I don't even think he has a MAC option much less a web option. No biggie, it wasn't that huge a deal to enter all the stuff in and I don't have that much stuff to enter anyway. It's annoying but not fatal.
Also I need to download another library book to swim by. This morning I started listening to a Dave Barry book. I did not check the publishing date, but judging from the first essay, it had to have been in the 70's or 80's. The whole piece was bitching about having to chose a long distance service and how painful that process it. It was not even historically amusing. I got a notice yesterday that the latest Ken Jennings book is ready for me. That sounds like a better option.
The mother board is dead and the hole built into the furniture to hold and highlight the pimped out, see-through backlit CPU is not big enough to house the pimped out CPU cases of today. Sigh. My brother and his shop manager, Amy, are on the case and will find the answer but I wish I had been just a teensy weensy bit less stupid.
On the up side, I will end up with a very solid, nice, working Windows Computer that I can count on and use as a dependable workhorse. Then I can get rid of the ones that only half work. I will continue to use my Chromebook for every day/most every thing. Also on the up side, Amy is having fun planning and sourcing and fixing me up.
---
My swim this morning was kind of different. Yesterday, because of lunch with Kathy, my swim was cut short. We had agreed to go after swim at 12:15ish. She swims about 30 minutes so I figured she'd show up about 11:30. But she came earlier so finished earlier and while I would have gone on another 20 minutes, I felt weird having her cool her heels and wait for me so I quit early too. So today, I decided to make up for it. But the first 5 laps were very strange. I couldn't get my breath. I was scared to cough because I didn't want my nose to bleed. I was about to get a little scared when all of a sudden, it all got better. I felt fine. Good, actually. And went on to swim my mile plus an extra 500 yards. Nice. The pool is closed on Monday so I felt like I needed to get my money's worth today and I did.
---
I have Geico insurance for my car and home (they use Liberty Mutual). I have had this setup for about 5 years now. I have never once filed a claim but have, on several occasions, needed documentation or information or changes made to my policies. Every single time, with zero exceptions, the process has been easy and painless and faultless. It's shocking and oh so comforting.
The home owners association of my condo has to ensure that all owners have the appropriate home owners insurance. And they want proof on file. And, apparently, no one every provides this because at least 2 or 3 times a year, we get a threatening letter from the management that we must supply this documentation. Every time, I do. I got the stupid letter again yesterday. This time, I asked Geico to provide me the proof electronically. They did, within 12 hours. No questions asked, no follow up needed, exactly what I asked for. Perfect.
I sent it to the association explaining that instead of handing it to the building manager as requested and as I have done in the past, I was sending it so that next time they asked, I could just resend the note. I sure wish they would just cull out the non-compliers and start issuing fines and leave us law abiding residents alone. But, at least, I'm finally organized the problem down to a resend.
---
Plans for the rest of today are pretty much taxes. I had started and nearly finished my tax return on the computer that went to my brother's. I totally forgot about it but figured I'd remote in and finish it off before they started working on it. But, that was before it was declared DOA. So now I have to redo everything on my crapola windows laptop. My very nice but very luddite CPA uses a piece of software that was created in the Windows 3 era. I don't even think he has a MAC option much less a web option. No biggie, it wasn't that huge a deal to enter all the stuff in and I don't have that much stuff to enter anyway. It's annoying but not fatal.
Also I need to download another library book to swim by. This morning I started listening to a Dave Barry book. I did not check the publishing date, but judging from the first essay, it had to have been in the 70's or 80's. The whole piece was bitching about having to chose a long distance service and how painful that process it. It was not even historically amusing. I got a notice yesterday that the latest Ken Jennings book is ready for me. That sounds like a better option.
It is now 1:30 and I am officially in Where The Fuck Did Today Go? mode.
I spent a fair amount of time with the new computer options. Talking to my brother, talking to Amy, making decisions. It was not my first choice to buy a new computer this month or really soon. Nor was it my first choice to spend this much on one BUT... in for a dime. Plus, they are working hard to build me a beautiful one and one with growth. I have 3 monitors attached to the wall but only use two for this computer. The new one will be able to use all 3 if I want which will be nice. And it's very jazzy - black with green lights through a clear panel. Even the motherboard is black with green accents. It's going to be fine and I'm excited.
I did not want Windows 8. There's no reason for it and I have multiple retails copies of Windows 7 just gathering dust here. They have had problems installing Windows without the actual discs so I had to mail them.
I finished off the taxes and sent the results via email and then packaged up the paper forms to send them off and then trotted off to the post office.
When I came back there was a note from the condo management company saying that they needed more/different information about the fucking insurance so I downloaded the policy and sent it to her. I actually got an acknowledgement back and a note that they had started a spreadsheet of people who comply. This new board president we have is just making miracles right and left.
Then I downloaded the library book and put it on the iPod Shuffle.
Then I finally got the $ from the Google test I did two weeks ago. The promised me $125 in rewards points. So first I had to pick my rewards. They had about 25 retail outlets to pick from and visa. I picked electronic visa. That took 6 days. Yeah, what?? Oh and I had to order 2 - one for $25 and one for $100. Today I got them. Click on this, open an account here, fill this in, click on that, enter the 1st secret code here, enter the 2nd one here, redeem. Use by August of this year. Oh and lather rinse repeat for the second one.
Holy crap. I've worked way less for way more money in my life. I redeemed them immediately and bought Amazon gift cards and then applied those gift cards to my account. So 598,972,389 clicks later, I have $125 credit at Amazon where it will come in very handy, thankyouverymuch. It's free money and a substantial amount, I shouldn't bitch but they shouldn't make me crawl over cut glass for it. Probably next week, I'll get an email that hackers got in and stole the number in the 2 minutes before I spent it and now my credit is ruined.
So there went my nothing day. So far. I have not been retired that long but even so I can barely remember how in the world I worked 40-80 hours a week and still got shit like this done.
I spent a fair amount of time with the new computer options. Talking to my brother, talking to Amy, making decisions. It was not my first choice to buy a new computer this month or really soon. Nor was it my first choice to spend this much on one BUT... in for a dime. Plus, they are working hard to build me a beautiful one and one with growth. I have 3 monitors attached to the wall but only use two for this computer. The new one will be able to use all 3 if I want which will be nice. And it's very jazzy - black with green lights through a clear panel. Even the motherboard is black with green accents. It's going to be fine and I'm excited.
I did not want Windows 8. There's no reason for it and I have multiple retails copies of Windows 7 just gathering dust here. They have had problems installing Windows without the actual discs so I had to mail them.
I finished off the taxes and sent the results via email and then packaged up the paper forms to send them off and then trotted off to the post office.
When I came back there was a note from the condo management company saying that they needed more/different information about the fucking insurance so I downloaded the policy and sent it to her. I actually got an acknowledgement back and a note that they had started a spreadsheet of people who comply. This new board president we have is just making miracles right and left.
Then I downloaded the library book and put it on the iPod Shuffle.
Then I finally got the $ from the Google test I did two weeks ago. The promised me $125 in rewards points. So first I had to pick my rewards. They had about 25 retail outlets to pick from and visa. I picked electronic visa. That took 6 days. Yeah, what?? Oh and I had to order 2 - one for $25 and one for $100. Today I got them. Click on this, open an account here, fill this in, click on that, enter the 1st secret code here, enter the 2nd one here, redeem. Use by August of this year. Oh and lather rinse repeat for the second one.
Holy crap. I've worked way less for way more money in my life. I redeemed them immediately and bought Amazon gift cards and then applied those gift cards to my account. So 598,972,389 clicks later, I have $125 credit at Amazon where it will come in very handy, thankyouverymuch. It's free money and a substantial amount, I shouldn't bitch but they shouldn't make me crawl over cut glass for it. Probably next week, I'll get an email that hackers got in and stole the number in the 2 minutes before I spent it and now my credit is ruined.
So there went my nothing day. So far. I have not been retired that long but even so I can barely remember how in the world I worked 40-80 hours a week and still got shit like this done.
CBS Evening News, tonight reported on the ice and damage in Aiken, South Carolina. I lived there for a couple of years in the early 70's. I was a reporter/photographer for the Aiken Standard. It was and is a small town so national news coming to town - hell, local TV news coming to town - is big doin's. Too bad, no one there will see it cause the story was that their power is out!
---
I kept very little on the computer that died. Most of my files were on it's big drive which was mirrored to Google. But, one thing that wasn't was LJ Archive. I did find a recent archive in my DropBox folder so whew. But then couldn't get the actual program to run. I remembered that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
howeird had recently had troubles and solved the problem so I went back through his journal and found the clue, then found the fixed version but by then had tried too many times. So I'm waiting now for the LJ servers to resent so I can know for sure I'm back in the saddle. I'm not so much interested in keeping everything for posterity but... this little tool has the best search engine on the planet. And, since very little of my life does NOT make it to the journal, if I can come up with the right search terms, I can find most anything.
---
Leonard Nimoy has COPD just like me and just like me ""I'm doing OK.Just can't walk distances." This afternoon I went to Home Depot and was wandering around just looking at stuff after I found what I went for. My everything hurt. My back hurt, my shoulders hurt, I just felt like I had just been hit by a truck. I tried to walk 'through' it and kind of did but was greatly relieved to get to the car. Once I sat down and breathed for a minute, less than a minute even, I felt 100% better. Grrrr. At least I don't look as wrinkly as Leonard... Fat don't crack.
---
I kept very little on the computer that died. Most of my files were on it's big drive which was mirrored to Google. But, one thing that wasn't was LJ Archive. I did find a recent archive in my DropBox folder so whew. But then couldn't get the actual program to run. I remembered that
howeird had recently had troubles and solved the problem so I went back through his journal and found the clue, then found the fixed version but by then had tried too many times. So I'm waiting now for the LJ servers to resent so I can know for sure I'm back in the saddle. I'm not so much interested in keeping everything for posterity but... this little tool has the best search engine on the planet. And, since very little of my life does NOT make it to the journal, if I can come up with the right search terms, I can find most anything.---
Leonard Nimoy has COPD just like me and just like me ""I'm doing OK.Just can't walk distances." This afternoon I went to Home Depot and was wandering around just looking at stuff after I found what I went for. My everything hurt. My back hurt, my shoulders hurt, I just felt like I had just been hit by a truck. I tried to walk 'through' it and kind of did but was greatly relieved to get to the car. Once I sat down and breathed for a minute, less than a minute even, I felt 100% better. Grrrr. At least I don't look as wrinkly as Leonard... Fat don't crack.