Ok, I’m probably going to regret this in the long run…..
So, I get home from work this morning, and it’s the start of my weekend. Uber’ed some Burger King, took a shower. Eventually, it was time to go to bed. And I couldn’t sleep. So finally I’ve just decided that I don’t need sleep today apparently. Besides, there’s a Monday Night Football game on tonight. And then there are 3 T20 World Cup matches. I’ll probably end up having to take a nap, but for now, my eyes can’t stay closed….
Made an early morning trip to Wally World, and grabbed a Covid home test. And the results are negative. It’s just a cold. This time….
So, at the end of my weekend, I started feeling a headache. I thought it was caffeine withdrawal, since I’ve cut back on my coffee and my energy drinks. I could either self-medicate it, or I could go to bed early and sleep it off. I chose to sleep it off. After 8 hours of shut-eye, I woke up to a sore throat.. Showered, and then realized the body aches were trying to set in. And so I’ve called out from work tonight. Whatever it is, this is most likely just the beginning, and it’s most likely going to get worse. And once I get in to work, there’s really no way for me to get home (can’t even afford an Uber, and buses shut down for the night right when I get to work).
So sorry co-workers, it’s just not in the cards tonight.
And another email that had to be sent. Not going to go into much detail here. Bills got paid. Laundry got washed. And I’ve watched 4 T20 matches. Yes the T20 World Cup is in full swing.
A couple of posts ago, I titled a post A farewell to my tower, but when I was writing it I got sidetracked writing about something else, and ultimately didn’t even touch the original subject. So what. Big deal.
Anyway, last week, I ordered a DVD (yes DVD and not Blu-Ray) set of the 3 Stooges. 17 DVDs with 25 years of their shorts. All from Spamazon. This is a story in and of itself. I had tried to order it a couple of weeks ago, but it was lost in shipment (which is odd since Spamazon uses their own delivery system). But they were good sports and refunded the order when I cancelled it. So I ordered it again. And it arrived Sunday. So Monday night (my night off), when I was redownloading my EA games library due to a botched migration from the origin app to the EA app, I thought I’d watch some shorts. For those of you keeping score, I disconnected my Blu-Ray player in favor of my old HP Pavilion 500-314. I had put a Blu-Ray drive in my tower previously, so I still had Blu-Ray capability. I went with this for streaming reasons. My ‘smart’ TV and Blu-Ray had basic streaming (ie Netflix, Hulu, Spamazon Prime…). But they didn’t have the new streaming services (like Discovery+, ESPN+, and what not). So I used my second tower and just streamed it through Chrome. And things were good. Logitech even makes a good wireless keyboard specifically for home theater PC’s. Problem was that this was still a full-sized tower, and the only place I could place it was behind the TV, and it was a pain to get up to turn it on, and/or change discs. And the end-of-life is coming for Windows 8.1 (it’s running currently 8.1 Pro with Media Center). Since I’ve set this up, things have changed. I can now stream all of my streaming services through my cable box. And it’s easier to reach for my cable remote than it is to get up, head behind the TV, physically turn on the tower, and then wait for it to boot up, open chrome, and then start streaming.
So, I unplugged the HDMI cable from the tower, and plugged the Blu-Ray player back in. And more importantly, I found the Blu-Ray remote. It is no longer a ‘smart’ Blu-Ray player (most of the apps on it are old, and have been pulled). But it still plays discs, and I still have a library.
So, I can get a couple of nyuks, one short at a time….
Well, from the time I saw it vs. when I’m writing this, it was actually yesterday….
The Mariners made it to the post-season this year. Last week, they played the Wild Card Series in Toronto, and because of my work schedules, I slept through them. And they won, sweeping the Toronto Blue Jays. So fast forward to yesterday afternoon, when they were playing the Houston Astros. It was during my weekend so I pulled an all-nighter to watch the game. And the Mariners lost. So, in order to give them the very best chance of taking a pennant and/or the World Series, I will never watch a Mariners post season baseball game again. I’m not boycotting them. It’s just I’m not going to jinx the team….
So, after I got my video card 2 weeks or so ago, I wiped everything last week. And tonight I finished it. Redownloaded almost all of my games, including my Spamazon, Steam, Epic, Origin (now EA), Ubisoft, and Gog libraries. Almost 7 Tb. And now I’m backing up my key files to an external hard drive. Some people use cloud backups, but in reality, the so-called ‘cloud’ is just somebody else’s computer. At least with an external drive, I’m not worrying about my cloud credentials getting compromised. And you can’t get hacked if your drive is powered down.
Origin has switched to EA. Basically,the Origin app is going away, and your EA Games library will be played through the EA app. After downloading the entire library through the Origin app, I tried to switch to the EA app, but on the first attempt, it was requiring updates to my entire library. Which took forever to download, and install. I had to redownloaded everything. Again. But I got it to work, and more importantly, it kept me busy on my days off…
