Wednesday, August 31, 2016

On the way home....

I'm on my way home from work. And a passenger behind us tossed his lunch. Or his beer. Whatever it was, it left his stomach, and cleared at least three rows.

Needless to say, the bus was emptied, the paramedics got called, abd I'm waiting for the next bus...

Monday, August 29, 2016

On Colin Kaepernick….

As you may know, Colin Kaepernick refused to stand during the singing of the National Anthem at a recent pre-season game in protest of racial discrimination. I don’t neccasarily agree with his position, nor do I think he’s even that good of a quarterback. But he has a right to protest his issue. And whether or not I agree with his postion, I do agree with his right to protest. In fact, this is a right that we all have. And I will not fault him for excersizing his rights. Sometimes, it’s only a symbolic stand, but you still have to stand…

Or in this case, sit…

Sunday, August 28, 2016

It's over....

After temperatures reaching the 90s on both Thursday and Friday last week, yesterday was a relief. It only got into the 70s. According to all of the long-range forecasts that I've seen, we may hit 80s on a couple of days, but the heat of the summer is now over. The AC is turned off, and I only have my window fan going in my room.

Welcome fall, my friend. You have been missed.

Did I mention that I don't like the heat?

Monday, August 22, 2016

What a shock!

A couple of days ago, the AC was on in the living room full blast, and the apartment could barely keep cool. And my window can was on all night.

Tonight, I just turned off the window fan in my room, and the AC was turned off this afternoon.

What a difference a couple of days make. Though, I'm going get a rude shock when the electric bill arrives...

Sunday, August 21, 2016

An experiment tonight….

So I after finishing my system rebuild last week, I did a full back up today. And after the backup, I turned off my backup drive (to save my data from any of my misadventures on the Internet). So, after all the maintenance, I decided to give Linux another try. I got this computer in November of 2014, and I’ve never run Linux on it. First order of business was to resize my hard drive, which was fairly easy to do. I didn’t even have to reboot my computer (apparently since Win7 the ability to expand/shrink your windows partition has been a part of disk management). Then I downloaded OpenSuSE. But before I burned it to DVD/usb flash drive, I decided to try a live distribution to make sure my system would work under Linux. So I downloaded Knoppix, and burned it to DVD. I was able to boot off the DVD, but that was about it. GUI wouldn’t load. So I booted back into Windows, resized my partition, and learned my lesson.

I may try it again in the future, but for now, it’ll just be with VMWare…

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Today’s beat the heat strategy….

Is simply to close the bedroom door. No carefully placed fans. No keeping the windows closed. Just keep it open. The AC is in the living room, and I still have a laptop. So, I’ll just chill in the living room, and use the laptop…

I’m still on vacation. Or, get paid for sitting on my ass time…

Friday, August 19, 2016

Trying to keep cool....

We've been in a heat wave of late. It's been really hot.  But I've had an air conditioner for the past two months. A legacy from my mother's passing.  At first it was in my room, and my room well chilled while I ran it. But I couldn't use it at night. It was just too loud. Saturday, my room was cool, but the living room was an oven. So Sunday, I brought it out to the living room. Ave it immediately cold the living room. With a couple of strategically placed fans, I figured I could keep my room cool.

Basically, it boils down to the only way the AC can cool my room is to keep it in my room. But it's too loud to use. All least if it's in the living room, we can keep one room cool. And I can go back to using my window fan after sunset. At I can keep it running all night, is not that loud.
Did I mention my electric bill is higher this month?

2 weeks later….

About two weeks ago, I downloaded the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. First, I did just a regular install with my Windows 10 usb flash drive, and did an in place upgrade to 10. After about a day and a half, it occurred to me that the media creation tool had been upgraded as well, and so I re-downloaded it and did a clean install of it.

Equipment-wise, all of my hardware still is supported. No surprise there, as my previous upgrades all worked before. After the clean install, I realized that I only had Windows 10 Home (since I upgraded from Windows 8.1 Pro, and in fact I specifically upgraded to Win8.1 Pro to get Win10 Pro). No problem, I just went to buy an upgrade, and had I gone to the Windows Store, I would’ve been able to upgrade for free, due to my digital entitlement. But, I simply entered my Win8.1 license key and all was good.’

This afternoon, I just finished reinstalling my last item of software (you may remember the the adventures I had which started this). Lesson learned. I’ll be more careful about downloading stuff from the internet. And I’ll be backing up more often. If it wasn’t for my 2 tB usb hard drive, I’d be screwed…

And at the same time, I got tee’d off at my phone, and decided to wipe that as well. But that, too is up and running…

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

And so it begins…

Nothing big. Just my vacation. Unlike my last one, I didn’t start it with a sick day. But I am taking an extra day this time, so I’ll have the same time off. My plans: Absolutely nothing. Just unwind and recover. Maybe a day trip up to Seattle and/or Bremerton, or maybe I’ll just chill at Mrs. Fields.

But whatever. I’m off. I’m not working. That’s the point…

Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Two days and so disappointed....

This year, the preseason kicks off on Thursday. It was supposed to kick off on Sunday. But they apparently don't know how to prepare a football field in Dayton. Come one, that's the only professional games that's played there every year, and they still couldn't get it right. And they had to cancel it....

All the pre-season games that have been cancelled have involved the Green Bay Packers.

But, it starts Thursday night, and the Seahawks start their preseaon on Saturday. I've always looked forward to pre-season games. Everyone pretty much knows who the starters (and some of the second-stringers) are, but the best football always comes from those fighting for jobs. And in advance, I wish them all full-time employment....

Sunday, August 07, 2016

This week's misadventures on the internet...

So, Thursday I was summoned to Mrs. Fields. The owner (and sometime boss, but I try to avoid it now since current day-job has me full-time). And he gave me a non-functioning tablet with marching orders to fix it. Since I had to get up at uber-early in the morning Friday and Saturday, so I told him that I would work on it today, with it being returned Monday....

So last night, I get home from work, and I pull out the tablet. Initial diagnosis was a severely depleted battery, and after a few minutes on the charger, I got into download mode and flashed a recovery. Getting into file manager, and I see why it wouldn't boot up. Somehow he managed to completely wipe the tablet, system and all. Apparently he tried to do a factory reset from recovery. Never a good thing. If you need to do a factory reset in Andriod, there is way to do it. If you do it in recovery, you're more likely to completely wipe everything. I should know. I do that everytime I flash a new ROM to my phone. So needless to say, I found the stock firmware for it, and flashed the tablet back to factory condition. And an overnight sit on my charger, and we're good to go.

And then the Anniversary Update hit. It actually hit on Tuesday. Last night after fixing the tablet, I finally downloaded it. So far, I'm impressed. I am trying to use Windows 10 as my daily driver (there has been a recent sidetrack with the virus I got a month or so ago). But this is why I always have an up to date backup....

Monday, August 01, 2016

It’s not all about the prices…

There was a much ado a while back about Starbucks raising their prices. They also publicly announced that their emplyees were also getting significant raises. Generally, I really don’t care for the former, but since it was for the latter, I’m ok with that. I’ve been on the front line before, and I know how difficult it is to make ends meet. But, that is not why I will never shop at Starbucks again. Here’s what happened:

A week and a half ago, I was at Starbucks and I ordered a venti sugar free cinnamon dulce iced latte. A mouthful to say, but easy to make (just a large iced latte with the requesite puumps of flavor in it). I paid for it (at the new, higher price). And I went to the pick up area for it and waited. And waited. And waited. Between the walk-in and the drive through, there was only one barista making drinks. She was new, and the only help she had was another co-worker who only told her what she was doing wrong, and making her throw away most of the drinks she was making and start over. Needless to say I ended up leaving to go catch my bus. Without my drink! Of course, I was teed off, and when I got home, I looked up the Starbucks web page, and I lodged a complaint.

And I got a canned response with an offer of a gift card which should arrive in 10-14 business days. Loosely translated, instead of doing their fucking jobs in the first place, I’m being told to settle for a low-ball offer that could take upto three weeks to arrive. So I declined it. It is my experience that when companies make this kind of offer, it never arrives. So, as far as I’m concerned Starbucks took my money, and never intended to render the goods and services for which I paid for. No big deal. I’ll just never shop at Starbucks again.

It’s not the high prices that will drive your customers away. It’s your poor customer service. BTW, Starbucks this isn’t the first time I’ve had to leave without my order. Don’t bother with your pretend, hollow non-apologies. Don’t bother with your insulting low-ball offers that will never arrive. Don’t bother with your empy promises. Just fuck off and go back to ingoring your customers.

A send off…

So, Mom’s memorial was yesterday. All the neices and nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles. Well, most of them. And if they weren’t there, they still raised a deviled egg in her memory. There was food. And strawberry soda. And laughter. And memories. I saw my uncle Bill (whom I never really saw growing up). And the mysterious other brother Eric (the only difference between Bigfoot and my youngest brother is that there are more credible sightings of Bigfoot than my brother…). It was a potluck, with plenty of deviled eggs. And another cousin forever condemned to bringing a certaind dish to all family gatherings. Just like aunt Mary and her taco dip….

There were memories shared. And all of Mom’s purses. I hate to say this, but she bought them like they were single-use items. And I’m still using the backback that my boss got me a week before he fired me (that’s an even longer story, and I’ve covered it already in several other posts).

May Barabra Bryant spend all of eternity frolicking amongst The Beer Volcano and Stripper Factory.