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….

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Laptop!

When we last left our hero last week, I decided for my latest act of questionable judgement was to try and run Windows 7 on my laptop. Main issue was the fact that drivers for it weren’t being signed anymore, and after trying to ram all the patches from Legacy Update down it at one sitting, it ended up unbootable. Decided to give another shot last night. Got it to boot to a ui, and after using my Google-Fu, I figured out how to force the unsigned drivers to install. So I was able to even get Aero to show. Then it was to Legacy Update again. And there was a PSP driver that it tried to download from Legacy Update. I got it to install, but there were issues upon reboot. I got it boot to a desktop again, and I realized that there were still question marks in my Device Manager, meaning items with no drivers. And I realized that the laptop was designed only for Windows 10. So, once again, I pulled out the GParted and wiped it completely. Maybe next week…..

So I pulled my laptop out this morning….

So, I pulled my laptop out this morning. A BIOS change to enable legacy boot, and a couple of other steps, and I had Windows 7 running on it. I was able to get SATA/USB 3 running on it, but there were a couple of other drivers that were unsigned and I couldn’t get to install. I tried to get the display driver (downloaded straight from AMD/ATI) to install, but there were other issues. A trip to Legacy Update to get a servicing stack update, and the display issues cleared up. And then it came time to update. Spent about 6 hours downloading and installing, and then it came time to do the first reboot. And windows wouldn’t reboot. Oh well. It wasn’t going to be a daily driver.  I wasn’t going to use it at all. It was just trying it out to see if I could get it to work. Anyway, experiment is over. It really isn’t worth the effort, though I could make it work. So I downloaded the current build of GParted (mainly because I could find the usb flash drive that I had of it), and it’s been wiped and put away.

Now to order pizza and watch TV….

And yes I did call out Sunday night. This morning, I took out 2 cans’ worth of garbage, and realized we only had 1 garbage bag left. So a trip to Wally World. And then I realized nobody was using the apartment complex laundry room, so I did laundry. And thus all of my weekend’s adulting was done a day early….

More fun with the laptop

Took a sick day last night at work. I caught cold, and I was on the tail end of it, and I just decided it would be better to sleep it off. I don’t want to go into the holiday season sick at work…..

When we last left our hero I had set the laptop aside (wiped with GParted to prevent data from falling into the wrong hands). And I was toying with the idea of putting Linux back onto it. But I thought that would be too easy. No. I want to do something difficult. So I put Windows 7 on it. When I’m done with it, it’ll be just like the laptop I had back in 2013. But with a touchscreen…..

Running On 25H2….

When we last left our hero, Windows 11 25H2 had just been released, and I upgraded right away. Now being one who can’t leave well enough alone, and hearing that The Anti-Christ really wants you to only use a Microsoft account when you set up windows, so I had to try. So that mean a clean install time.

Now, if you’re like me and want to use a local account for the OOBE experience there’s still hope. Rufus. Downloaded the official .ISO and used rufus to burn it to a flash drive. And it installed just like 24H2. Compared to the previous versions, there are a few differences. For starters, I’ve yet to enter my Microsoft password. Since I have the Microsoft Authenticator app on my phone, I was able to sign in without a password. And with my new webcam (Logitech Brio 4K), I now login to Windows by looking at it.

Now, it took me a week and a half to reinstall everything,  And now that everything works, I hope to not do it again, soon…..

Baseball Season is now over…..

If you haven’t been following the news, yes the Mariners made it to the post season. Even got to the league championship series. First time since 2001. And they got all the way to game 7 (which IIRC they’ve never done before). But one 3 run home run, and it’s over.

Baseball season is now over. It’s now on to football and hockey.

Until next spring, when we’ll once again keep watch out for The New World Order (Mind-Control Division)…..

Ok, so it’s been awhile….

Ok, so it’s been awhile since I wrote here. I still don’t agree with Charlie Kirk. I still think killing him was wrong. In fact killing anybody for their opinion is wrong. Freedom of Speech in enshrined in the Constitution. And it’s under attack. Colbert got cancelled. They say it was for financial reasons, but the real reason why is that CBS/Paramount chose to bend the knee. They tried to cancel Jimmy Kimmel, but the ABC/Disney had to backdown after the consumer backlash (google cancel Disney+). And I also think that there may have been threats of advertiser boycotts, too, at least in the local markets. Cheetos-Face and Couch F*cker have gone down the authoritarian route too far……

Now, on to other things. Windows 11, 25H2 is now out. I’ve already upgraded. Be aware, it will reset you default preferences back to Microsoft Edge.

And I decided to break from the stone age, and actually log on to my computer now (before, I had set it to automatically sign in, as my computer it usually in my room, and I’m the only who uses it). Replaced my webcam with a Logitech Brio 4K. Didn’t really need to, my old still worked perfectly well. It’s just this one has an IR sensor in it, so I can use Windows Hello to log in to my computer just by looking at it….

The Mariners made it to the post-season. They secured a first round bye, so they went straight to the Division Series, where they are currently defeating the Tigers. Sunday’s win at T-Mobile park was their first post-season win there in 24 years. Of course, it will mean terrible road conditions this winter as Hell has frozen over….

Summer has turned to fall. Monday of last week, I took down my air conditioner for the season. And my brother has taken down the one in the living room, too. I had my window fan up for a few days, but that too has come down, and I’ve actually had to run the heat for a couple of occaisions, bot for the most part, it’s just an open windows now….

On Charlie Kirk….

I don’t agree with many of things he said. But I also do not rejoice in his murder, either. Killing people is wrong. Period. Full Stop.

So, I had a birthday last week….

Monday of last week was my birthday. Received well-wishes on Facebook. Brother/roommate made a pot roast Sunday night. And there was a store-bought coconut cream pie. There were no birthday presents involved, but they weren’t necessary anyways (since my birthday falls during peak back-to-school season, many birthdays’ presents were actually just school supplies growing up, but given the household financial situation, it was what it was….)

But I digress. I did have to buy myself something. My keyboard had developed a habit of random keys getting stuck, necessitating a hard reboot of my computer to straighten it out. Taking a look at it, it was time to replace it. But Logitech has apparently disco’ed the Wave keyboard that I’ve been using for 10+ years. So, it’s time to get a new one. I got the Logitech MK 710 combo.  It’s not the Wave MK 350 that I’m used to, but such is progress.

Yes, I know I took the pledge to not buy anymore upgrades to my computer, but this was a USB item, and it can be carried over to my next computer, when the time comes….

Then End Is Near….

So my vacation is about to come to an end. I think the most ‘vacationy’ thing I did were the naps. Sometimes all you need is some extra sleep to recharge. But for now it has come to an end, and when I wake up tonight, it’ll be back to work as usual….

Vacation: Day 4 Report:

Just did laundry. Hopefully the last of the Adulting to be done for my vacation. Aside from the laundry, I didn’t do that much. Well, there was that nap I took….

So, what all happened yesterday….

Vacation, Day 3. It was also my birthday. Responded to the well wishes on Facebook. Sister came over, and we went out to lunch, I chose food court teriyaki. Then another Target run, and a trip to Wally World. And then I went to bed.

Oh and Sunday night, roommate made a pot roast. Really good. He also got a pie to celebrate my birthday. But per tradition, he has to eat the entire thing, so I’m not going to touch it….

Vacation: Day 2 Report, Part 2

To continue from the previous post, while finishing up the Tower, also watch some Footy (apparently that’s what Australian Rules Football is called). Watched a little bit of NFL pre-season. Watched some circket.

Speaking of Football, I deliberately wnet to bed way too early on Saturday morning, so I could  wake up early and watch some football. Saw 2 games.. Next time, I’ll keep the normal circadian rhythm and DVR them.

Yes, I should’ve written this in the morning, but I was too busy going to bed.

The Mariners are going to lose the Little League Classic. Because I’m watching the game….

Vacation: Day 2 Report, Part 1….

Finished putting my tower back together. Back in the day when we used to install all of our games from (CD/DVD)Roms, I accumulated quite a few. Enough to fill up a 72 cd wallet. Plus another one for drivers, backups, and other programs. And of course there the few items I had to keep in the original jewel cases because of product codes. And being the digital pack rat, I had to reinstall everything every time I wiped my system. Which was quite regular since I liked to tinker.

And then my motherboard gave up the ghost in 2014. This was when I bought my HP tower. With it came Windows 7/Windows 8.1/ and eventually Windows 10. And they were all 64-bit OSes. And The Anti-Christ disabled secdrv.sys so a good chunk of my games wouldn’t install, and if they did they wouldn’t run. My workaround at the time was to use a Windows ME/Windows XP virtual machines (at the time VMWare player already had 3d acceleration supported). Eventually I started acquiring my games digitally, through Steam, then EA Games (Origin at the time), Ubisoft Connect, GOG, and Epic Games Store. Sometimes I was able to digitally acquire what I had on CD-ROM (like my Star Wars games). And some I just gave up on trying to get them to work.

But recently I’ve been finding success with getting my 16-bit installers to work with Windows 11, finding co-cd patches, and using dgVoodoo so now most of my old games can now be played. Even on Windows 11. Which is how I now have 4 different version of Monopoly and 2 Battleships installed. I think I only have 4-5 CD-Roms that I can’t figure out. Yet.