Fully Vaccinated Now

Two weeks ago yesterday, I got my second dose of the Pfizer Covid vaccine. So I’m now fully vaccinated. But still, wear a mask. Stay 6 feet apart. Wash your hands. We can fully reopen if we all do our part…

Hello World, Kinda Sorta…..

I wrote a while back about my computer’s power supply going south. Ordered a new one off of Ebay. And it was shipped from Newegg. Not that I mind. Anyway I got a Rosewill 1000 Watt Gaming Computer Power Supply 80 Plus Bronze PSU Glacier 1000M (an upgrade from my 750 Watt power supply). And since I was going to be pulling open my tower, I decided it was time to retire my 4tb hard drive (I bought 1 in 2015, and the other I bought in 2019, but it was already used). So I replace them with 2 Toshiba X300 HDWR180XZSTA 8 tb hard drives. Which means that my main tower now has a total of 25 tb of storage space. My first computer only had 30 gb and that was a $150 upgrade….

So Rosewill/Newegg shipped the power supply via UPS. I ordered the hard drives in 2 separate orders from Newegg, and they were shipped via OnTrac. They were due to arrive last Wednesday by the end of business. I had to work that night. I left the house at 7:30 pm, and they still hadn’t arrived. Tracking the shipments, I noticed that they were both delivered, one at 9:30pm and 1 at 10:11pm. After my roommate had gone to bed. So 1 package was left out overnight. The other one that was supposed to have been delivered at 10:11 never showed up. OnTrac was of course no help at all (I previously had issues with them on a couple of orders from Spamazon, and they are not the best). Contacted Newegg, and they immediately filed a claim for a lost package, and I thought that was the end of it. After a couple of weeks if I was lucky, I would get my money back. 2 days after I was supposed to receive it, it showed up at my door. Newegg did offer me a discount on a future order for my trouble, and they will be lodging a complaint with OnTrac. Never underestimate Newegg’s customer service.

So, I put everything into my computer this weekend, and I then wiped everything. Which is where I am now. Reinstalling everything. This is going to take a while, but through the magic of symlinks I can now move a lot of stuff off my 1tb ssd…

Hello World. Once again. Sorta…

On police reform...

We as Americans have a problem with the police. Systemic racism. Corruption. The Thin Blue Line. A lot of people no longer trust the police. I'm one of them. The last time I had to call 911, it took over 20 minutes for the officers to respond, and even then they disregarded the description I have the dispatcher and just arbitrarily accosted the first black man they saw at 10th and Commerce (waiting for the bus while black is a crime apparently).

There have been calls to refund the police. I don't think that's the best idea. It's seems more like a knee jerk reaction. The police may be a festering cesspool of corruption, but they're still a vital service to society. What we need it's a disciplined police force. And that needs to start from the beginning. The standards to be a police officer need to be raised. The job is tough, but we need to raise the bar even higher. Before actually training to be a police officer, let each candidate go through Marine Corps boot camp. And let the drill instructors wash them out at will. 

And once they get their badge, the standards still need to be kept high. If they're going to have power over life and death, then they need to be held to a higher standard of behavior. Police officers ought to be in greater fear of internal affairs than any thug they may face on the street. And the police department should not be a union shop. Far too often, officers' unions are used to stand in the way accountability for misconduct.

As a society, we face a problem of systemic racism, corruption, and general lack of accountability from the police. And the leadership needs to from a pair... 

Chauvin is guilty….

I make it a point to not comment on pending criminal cases. Even the most vile of criminals deserve to be treated fairly by the law, and I prefer to let the jurors called to serve make the call as to guilt or innocence….

But  having said that, Chauvin had his day in court. He had his trial. And he was found guilty in a court of law. I will not glory in the verdict, nor will I gloat over it. George Floyd is still gone, and finding one cop guilty of killing him will not bring him back.

But, this can be a start. A start towards police accountability. A start towards the police viewing everybody they see as citizens with rights, and not as being beneath the protection of the law.

Chauvin guilty. This is only the beginning….

Feeling kinda lazy today…

It’s my weekend. Actually the middle of it. Main tower is out of order (see the last few posts in this blog for all the details). So I’m typing this up on my TV (remember my previous tower was repurposed as my Blu-Ray drive/media center, and hooked up to my TV). And because I have a TV tuner hooked up to my second tower, I can watch TV on my TV (yes, I can switch the input to my cable box, but there’s no fun in that).

Anyway, I’m doing my best to stay at home today. I’m having my Target run delivered. I’ve already made my only (hopefully) run to the grocery store.

The past weekend, the sun came out. Really bright and sunny. And since I have a western facing bedroom window, and I have to sleep during the day, this means that the air conditioner is back up and running. I don’t have my main computer, but my room is still cool…

if I'm going to do one, then...

After ordering a new power supply, and a replacement hard drive, I thought why not replace both 4tb hard drive. They're both pretty old (one I bought new in 2015, and the other was already used when I got it). So I ordered a second 8tb drive while I was at lunch this morning at work. They both should arrive at the same time.

If it's not the power supply, I'm going to be teed off... 

Know what?

If I'm going to have to crack open the tower to replace the power supply, when why not upgrade a hard drive? That has been ordered, too... 

Will this just sucks...

Get home from work, go to turn the computer on. And nothing. No light on the tower. No fans running. Nothing. It appears as my power supply has failed. Oh well. Replacement had been ordered. It should arrive Friday... 

About every 3 years or so….

Feeling much better than last night. Still, I called out from work while get over the tail end of the side effects of Tuesday’s shot. At one time last night, I was temping at 100.1. At 4 am, I decided to go to bed and sleep it off (for those of you keeping score at home, I work overnights, and I sleep during the day. Most of the time). And sleep I did. Aside from a couple of bathroom breaks, and 1 insulin shot, I slept for 12 hours.

But enough about my Covid shot. Sunday morning on the way home from work I paid both the cable bill and the phone bill. And in celebration, I ordered pizza. And I promptly spill blue cheese dressing on my keyboard. No worries. I pried the keys off to wipe them off, but the spacebar wasn’t working right afterward. So I ordered one from Newegg. The exact same model, so I could just plug it in and go. And it just occured to me and three years and change before, I had to replace my keyboard (this time I spilled coffee on it). And three years or so before that, I replaced the keyboard with one from Spamazon. They have all been the same model (Logitech Wave 350). And they’ve all outlasted the batteries that were installed in them…

Side effects are setting in…

I got my second Covid shot yesterday.I knew there were going to be side effects. And they’re here. Started out with aches and pains, and now the fever is kicking in. Oh, and my arm is sore, too. It’s my night off. And I think I’m going to call out tomorrow, as well. But a couple of sick days are better than I two+ week leave of absence because you actually have Covid.

But I gladly do it if it will help us open up again….

Got my second shot today...

Got my second Covid shot today. I got the Pfizer vaccine. A small step that I'll gladly take to end this pandemic.... 

So about two weeks in my new phone....

And I've pretty much moved in. There are a couple of options for rooting it, but I'm not going to. If it ain't broke, then don't try to fix it. Eventually, I may do it, but for now I'll just wait and see...

Later on this morning, I go in to get my second Covid shot. I anticipate side effects. But it won't be as bad as actually having Covid, abs it'll be one more step toward being able to open up again.

IPL has started. And the Royal Challengers Bangalore won the first match. The best for my favorite sports team to win is for me to be too busy to watch the game...

And for those of you who are fasting for the next lunar month or so, I bid you Ramadan Mubarak... 

Got a new phone last week…

Ok, so last Wednesday night, I was perusing the Sprint website (yes I know the web link is to the T-Mobile website, because of mergers and all….), and my line was eligible for an upgrade (one of the things I did with my economic stimulus was to pay off my Galaxy Note 9). And I was looking around I was intrigued by the Motorola RAZR 5G. I remember when the original one came out in 2005 (in fact in 2008, I had a used MotoRIZR Z3, but it wasn't the flip phone). I finally decided that I wanted a flip phone, so I went for it. Arrived the next day, and activation was surprisingly painless (I remember the issues I had awhile back when I got my HTC 10). This there was something different. Sprint/T-Mobile have been wanting me to switch the SIM cards of our phones since the merger, and my new phone had a Sprint SIM card in it, but it came with a T-Mobile SIM card, with instructions to key in the T-Mobile card number during the activation process. And after activation, I switched out the SIM card.

So after activation, my phone now says it’s on the T-Mobile network. I still use the My Sprint app to pay my bill (and to order upgrades). But the phone has a mix of T-Mobile and Sprint apps on it.

Now on the to phone. It appears to mainly have a stock Google interface (for example, for email it uses the Gmail app instead of it’s own email app. And there are no buttons on the phone. It is all done with gestures. There have been a lot of comments online critical of the camera, but with this camera, I was able to wirelessly deposit my roommate’s rent check, when I was never able to do it via the Galaxy Note 9.

While it is possible to unlock the bootloader and root the phone, I’m not going to yet. If it isn’t broke then don’t try to fix it. And something tells me to keep the phone under warranty from the get go (when you unlock the pone, you void the warranty, irregardless of what broke it).

So far, I like the new phone. I think it’s a keeper…