2025 Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?

I’m posting this early because I have to work tonight. It’s New Year’s Eve. 2025 is almost and 2026 is around the corner (in fact in some parts, it’s already 2026). In no particular order of appearance or importance, here’s what happened:

• The Seahawks have won 13 games, and a new Pope was elected. The last two time this happened, they went all the way to the Super Duper Bowl…
• I bought four pairs of shoes.
• I didn’t get a haircut. I actually had a trip planned to go get one, but plans fell through.
• We got a new coffeemaker.
• Dominos is cheaper than Uber Eats. Seriously. $30+ for a single Whopper Combo vs. $30 for 2 pizzas. Both aren’t really cheap, but there’s more bang for the buck in pizza than a hamburger…
• Discovered my favorite hamburger is the Whopper with bacon and cheese. Jack(ing Off) In The Box doesn’t really cut it (too expensive even for a walk-in), and the Baconator just doesn’t cut it anymore….
• Replaced my keyboard. Got a Logitech Powerplay 2.
• Replaced my webcam (hello Logitech Brio 4K), so I can sign into my computer just by looking at it.
• The Mariners made the post season. And got to the League Championship Series. And made it to game 7.
• Had a lot of success with getting my old games to install and work with Windows 11. There are only a half dozen or so titles in my library that won’t work.
• Went from a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra to a Motorola Razr+ 2024. And I realized the T-Mobile customer service sucks.
• Cousin taught me a new cheer for Cricket South Africa. Go Flowers!
• 6+ attempts to wipe my laptop and bring it up to date. Realized it’s only going to work under Windows 10 or Linux. Finally got it working again. And promptly put it away again….

Of course there are New Years’ Resolutions, but I’m not going into them this year. Just the usual eat healthier, live more within my means, and basically leave each day better than when I found it…..

The Last Weekend Of The Year…

So this is my last ‘weekend’ of the year. 10 days ago, they were The Greatest Show On Turf, and at the top of the NFC West. Now they’re the Silence Of The Rams after the loss to the Falcons tonight. Yes, I watched the Monday Night game tonight. Well, not in real-time since I slept later than normal (reminder: I still work overnights, and sleep during the day), but I started it over on the DVR when I woke up… The Seahawks play the FortyWhiners this week (I think Saturday Night since the No Fun League has decided that this should be a primetime match, probably something to do with it being for the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs at the NFC West Division)…..

Yes, I watch Football when I get the chance. Right now, I’m watching a couple of Bowl games I DVR’ed.

And I ordered pizza tonight, just to piss off my co-workers….

Another Year, Another Yipee-Ki-Yay Motherf*cker!

First of all Happy Christmas everyone. I know it’s not Merry Christmas, but the thought’s the same. I just prefer the way it sounds. All of the family visits were done early this year. So the last celebrations were this morning between my brother and myself. I got my brother a Dr. Who coffee mug, an Apple gift card, and a couple of other things. My brother gave me a gift card to Target, Wally World, and Dominos. They are appreciated.

I was able restart one of my Christmas traditions from the past last night. I used to watch the Midnight Mass from St. James Cathedral on TV every Christmas Eve. And then a couple of years ago, I flipped the TV on, and it was just the Mass service from the Vatican. Last week, on a hunch, I went to the archdiocese website and discovered that they just stream it now. So I streamed the service.

And it really isn’t a holiday without an early morning 7-11 run. I wanted to get some tacquitos to surprise my brother with his presents, but he wanted just a breakfast sandwich. And they hadn’t filled the hot case yet when I got there, so it was a moot point.

So, thus concludes my holidays this year. I’m skipping New Years’ as I have to work New Years Eve and Day (and it really isn’t worth it when you hit your 50’s anyway). A few more minutes’ of football, and then I’m off to bed to get ready to go back to work tonight…..

Air The Grievances! Pin The Head Of Household!

So, today is Festivus. A day when you can air the grievances and engage in the feats of strength. And also to recognize the most mundane of the festivus miracles….

We lost Meathead last week. For all the facts and commentary, use your Google-Fu. But my personal opinion is it was more likely inadequately treated mental illness……

The Big Bryant Family Reunion (Christmas) was held a week and half ago. It was planned in July, and I booked the time off right away. It was held he day before Hannukah and I didn’t give anyone a dreidel or a menorah for the gift exchange. I thought about it, but decided against it.

My siblings had their Christmas gathering Sunday morning, mainly to visit Dad. My schedule was to work both Saturday and Sunday nights. I was originally planning to attend and hang out with Dad, and then call off work Sunday night (I had the available sick time to cover it). What happened was when I got up to get ready for work Saturday, my blood sugar crashed. Hard. I tried to go to work, and I even made it to the bus stop. But was so incoherent I couldn’t even read the time table. So I ended up having to call off Saturday night. And I missed the Sunday get-together with Dad. Worked Sunday night as usual and Monday morning, I called Dad. A 16+ minute phone call. I highly recommend it.

So, tell your loved about all the ways they’ve disappointed you this year. Then pin the head of household. And remember, the most important part of your Christmas shopping is the procrastination….

Had A Strange Dream Yesterday….

For those of you who don’t know, I work overnights, and sleep during the day. SO, yesterday I dreamt that I woke up at work, and there was some guy talking that kept waking me up. So I got up and kept screaming at him to get out of here. And I think I threw a few things at him. Then a window opened, and a certain member of Congress (I’m not going to mention names here) was telling that it was my boss’s boss, and he wanted to see me right away. Fortunately, I didn’t get fired as right then was when I woke up. In a sweat as my alarm was going off. Got up, and realized that for reasons I wasn’t going to make it to work, so I called off with the app on my phone.

I then took a shot (insulin as I’m still type I diabetic), and proceeded to try to login on my computer to put in the time off request at work. And that’s when the confusion set in. The aforementioned vivid dream. The waking up in a sweat. The confusion. Yep. I was having a hypoglycemic episode. And no candy in my room to fix it. Fortunately, there was a half bag of potato chips nearby. I recovered enough to get the time off request put in at work. Next up, put the low blood sugar to bed for good. Uber Eats to the rescue, this time being a Wendy’s Baconator combo, plus chlil and a frosty. Then a nap later that night (if I’m going to call out from work, then I’m going to sleep it off)….

Long story short, woke up with a low blood sugar, and had to call out from work….

The Holidays Are Upon Us….

Happy Stuff Bread Up A Turkey’s Ass Day! Yes, I know it’s a day early but due to my work schedule, my brother decided that it would be tonight. And I wholeheartedly agree with him. So, we had Wal-Mart Manager tonight. It was just two of us, so he (my brother did all of the cooking) just did a turkey breast roast. Literally threw the whole thing into the crockpot with the gravy right when I went to bed. It was all ready when I got up. And it was good. Didn’t get any pictures of it, but I did get the requisite gravy volcano. And there are plenty of leftovers for the weekend’s turkey sandwiches.

So, after dinner came the post-Thanksgiving tradition: the Holiday Decoration:

As you can see, none of that distracting tinsel. And it has a great strength to weight ratio….

It’s coming around….

When we last left our hero, I had realized that the only viable option for my laptop was Windows 10. There’s also Linux (specifically OpenSuSE, but that’s going to wait)…..

So last week after my weekend, I pulled out my system restore flash drive. It took about 4 hours, but it got my laptop to a desktop. Eventually. More importantly, it had all the drivers installed that I needed (previous experience with Windows 7 was less than productive on this). The drawback was that it was 1511. So the mission was to get 22H2 installed on it. And it choked on the in place upgrade. So, the only option was to wipe everything again….

Side note: at this time, I also stuck a flash drive in it, and backed up the hidden directories in the root of the c drive that had all the installers for the included software and drivers. So I plugged in the upgrade flashdrive and tried it again. I had to leave for work at the time, so I unplugged the network cable to force it into create an offline account mode when it came time for the OOBE.

The next day, when I came home from work, I went through the OOBE and then immediately went to install a certain update (this was the one that choked my computer this first time I tried to set it up a couple of weeks ago). And I went to bed while it installed. 4 hours later, I woke up, and it had successfully installed. We’re making progress now. It had also installed the other updates from the initial visit to Windows Update, and then I installed the initial batch of drivers. At this point, I had passed the stage where I had given up all the other times I had tried to reinstall Windows 10.

Next up was the initial ‘move in’.  If you remember my attempt to trade in my last phone, when I got home from that trip, I decided to console myself with some retail therapy and I ordered some 256 gB flash drives from Newegg. Just needed one of them to copy all my files over to the laptop. And I set the folder structure so I just need to copy from root to root.

Another update (again while I was at work and/or sleeping), and I was ready to actually sign in with my Microsoft account. So I sign, and it turns out I qualify for extended security updates. Hooray! Though this means that since a patch Tuesday has passed, it means another 4 hour wait while it updates. So, fast forward to this morning, when I come home from work, and I finally can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.

So, I’m now patched fully. I’ve installed Firefox, Chrome, and Thunderbird. The laptop is now ready for use as an emergency backup. I don’t have everything installed on it, but I did make sure that the installers are on it, and are available the next time my tower takes a fart on me, which actually has happened before. Twice….