Category Archives: Life

Organizing Data

Blurbs, , , ,

In which I spend most of the day in front of the computer.

Today I woke up hungry at the ass-crack of dawn, but I stayed in bed until nine or so rockin’ out to tuneage on the beloved iPod. I made eggs and toast and coffee for breakfast when I finally got up. Then I plugged in my external hard drive enclosure, and began the process of putting my iTunes library back together.

I’ve been using SharePod to add content to my iPod since I left Iowa last September, so what’s on my iPod no longer matches the backup I have.

I couldn’t find my old library .xml file, so I had to import all the tracks into iTunes and right now it’s updating album art. When it’s done, I’ll import all the tracks I’ve got on the laptop, then the six gigs of music from Jayrob, and then the video content I have.

Then I’ll spend all evening massaging files, editing tags and shit, and finally I’ll export my playlists off the iPod itself and into iTunes. Once all of THAT is done, I’ll be able to sync my iPod for the first time in over four months… a process that will probably take half the damn night since iTunes will decide the relationship is new and re-write the entire drive.

Long story short? If you’ve got an MP3 library bigger than a few gigs, back it up. Now. Any way you can. Srsly. This is a pain in the arse.

In other news, I’ve decided to attend the first-annual Global Blogger Meetup in DC in March. So far, only three bloggers are actually slated to attend, but that’s all good because it means I get to call dibs on Vuboq’s couch without anyone arguing with me. (I’d prefer the guest room, of course, but Only Me’s already got it, the quasi-Aussie git.)

Vuboq says there will be a chili night on Sunday – I offered to make veggie chili if needed! – and maybe Monday Afternoon Margaritas the next day since I’m dying for the spinach enchiladas and liquid cheese he’s always blogging about. Then on St. Pat’s Day we’ll all go get trashed in honor of Vuboq’s birthday.

Airline tickets are $359 right now, so with vigilant surfing I should be able to find something under $300 and be able to take a reasonable amount of cash along. It’s a lot of damn flying for a 3-day vacation, but what the hell. I do, after all, have both an eBook reader and a kitting bag to stave off boredom, and I’ve already decided 2008 should be a Year Of Travel for me. DC in March, Seattle in June, and NY in September!

Now all I have to do is convince my employer to give me all that time off.

Finally, Something Resembling Actual Winter

Weather,

In which there might be snow.

…COLDEST AIR OF THE SEASON ON THE WAY WITH SOME SNOW EXPECTED…

AN ARCTIC COLD FRONT WILL CROSS THE AREA SUNDAY BRINGING THE COLDEST AIR OF THE SEASON TO INTERIOR WASHINGTON AND OREGON. TEMPERATURES WILL REMAIN BELOW FREEZING FROM SUNDAY AFTERNOON UNTIL FRIDAY AFTERNOON…WITH VERY COLD OVERNIGHT TEMPERATURES IN THE SINGLE DIGITS AND TEENS. WINDS WILL BE GUSTY BEHIND THE FRONT INTO MONDAY PRODUCING VERY COLD WIND CHILLS. SNOW IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP SATURDAY EVENING AND CONTINUE INTO SUNDAY EVENING. MOST AREAS WILL SEE A LIGHT ACCUMULATION OF SNOW…BUT HEAVIER SNOW IS POSSIBLE OVER THE BLUE MOUNTAINS…BLUE MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS…AND OCHOCO MOUNTAINS.

PEOPLE EXPECTING TO TRAVEL THIS WEEKEND SHOULD PREPARE FOR WINTER DRIVING CONDITIONS AND CARRY EXTRA SUPPLIES IN THEIR VEHICLES DUE TO THE VERY COLD CONDITIONS THAT ARE EXPECTED.

I’m not really excited about snow, but at least some real winter weather will be different than the lovely mild greenness they usually call winter here!

Another Trip to the Dennis

Health,

In which my face is numb.

I’m revising my opinion of my new dentist’s office. They called me today and offered me a spot they had due to cancellation, and I went in at ten. The hygienist rocked; she cleaned half my mouth within an inch of its life.

That ultrasonic tool works really well, but I dislike it when it squeals in my eardrums and sinuses. It’s so strange, lying there in a chair with a total stranger touching my face – intimate because there are fingers on my jaw or lips, medical because of the latex gloves and the smell of disinfectant – while a science fiction sonata is played in strange, metallic overtones on the bones around my brain.

I got three shots of local. My lips are still numb, and my gums are beginning to ache. Doing call center work with half your mouth asleep is certainly a fun spin on an otherwise utterly unremarkable Wednesday.

The hygienist told me I was “excellent to work on.” And I totally am: I lie there with my mouth open and my eyes closed, and drift. I laughed a few times because my nerves weren’t telling me what they were supposed to: my tongue worked, but my lips felt swollen and weird. The hygienist worked for an hour and a half, scraping and ultrasonic-ing and digging and flossing. When she was done, she gave me a bag with dental goodies in it and told me to gargle with warm salt water.

My next appointment isn’t until February 2nd, but they said they’d call me if they get another cancellation. Yea verily, clean teeth shall be mine!

I can’t wait for the feeling to return to my lips, though.

Holy Howling Winds, Batman!

Weather, Work, ,

In which the weather went just plumb crazy.

A massive storm rolled in this morning. We had 60-mile-an-hour-PLUS wind gusts, and the atmosphere was filled with tons of suspended dust.

Dust storm

All the stuff on the porch ended up in a pile. Gramma went out and released our retired Christmas tree from its stand, and the whole damned tree blew away – we haven’t seen it since.

Tree limbs hit the roof and fell to the ground, littering the yard with broken branches.

Storm Debris

Two of the three guy-wires holding my uncle’s old ham radio antenna have snapped. Half the shingles came off our neighbor’s rear roof elevation and are piled up in our yard (but I didn’t notice any missing shakes from our roof when I went out to look) and very few people still know where their garbage cans are. The entire city lost power for over five hours.

My employer’s data center (‘the vault’) was down for 45 minutes, because the generator battery failed. I didn’t have to come to work until 3 o’clock, because with no power the call center couldn’t operate. And now that I am here, I’m calling hundreds of customers who’d left voice mails to explain why our auth and email servers didn’t work earlier today.

Here are more pictures of the carnage, taken by a co-worker’s friend.

There are houses with trees through them, cars with trees on them, downed power lines, and general chaos everywhere. (In other words, if you’re an insurance adjuster, you should load your fuckin’ ladder and get the the hell out here. There’s mega mad damage, yo.)

In other news, there’s capuccino cream pie in the break room!

Update: It’s 9:17 and I just spoke to Gramma. She tells me the power’s still off at home, which means no reading in bed for me. Ugh.

Movies

Blurbs, ,

In which you tell me what to do!

I want movie recommendations. From YOUSE, my babies!

If you use Netflix, befriend me (I’m goblinbox, of course) and recommend stuff. And if you don’t use Netflix, leave me a comment and tell me what to watch!

Thank you. *smooch*

A Trip to the Dennis

Health, ,

In which I’m not particularly pleased.

I had an appointment with Gramma’s dentist at 11:00 this morning. A tech took $119 worth of x-rays, and then I sat in a chair for 15 minutes and meditated. Then the doctor came in, looked at my films, poked my teeth, and told me I need two fillings. He told me I should either get braces (?) or have $2,000 worth of cosmetic porcelain work done to fix my upper front teeth, one of which is pushed slightly forward. There was no prophylaxis hygienist available, so I had to make a second intake appointment before I can make an appointment to get my teeth cleaned.

While the dentist was really nice and he looked sort of like Santa Claus, this is not the sort of service I was hoping for. Sure it’s neat to know that – if I had money – I could get fun things done to make my teeth look like those of a movie star, but I don’t want any of that shit. I want my TEETH CLEANED. And I should not have to pay for two preliminary appointments just to be able to get a prophy appointment!

The ‘cavities’ are two slightly soft spots on one of my molars. Sure, they might turn into real cavities, but considering that I’m nearly 40 and have never had a cavity in my entire life suggests that there’s really not a high risk of the tooth rotting out of my head in the next few months. Only one of the two spots even goes through the tooth enamel so I think spending $500 on fillings I don’t really need can fucking wait.

The doctor suggested that I have one of my top front teeth ground down and the one behind it filled in, and both covered with porcelain, to create an even-looking top arch. And if I should find I need to sit for a Rolling Stone cover shoot, I’ll certainly consider the cosmetic work then but right now all I want is to get my teeth cleaned.

I think I’m in the market for another dentist.

Good Things

Blurbs, ,

In which I count my blessings this holiday season. (I’m a blessings-counter by nature.) (Which seems like a good quality, but it gave me a fucking panic disorder when I was too stupid to know when I was unhappy.) (Just sayin’. Pollyannaism ain’t always good.)

Dangerous, my uncle, sent me a huge Amazon.com gift certificate. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly how to spend it: get stuff off my Wishlist? Get other stuff? Get a bunch of little things? Get one big thing? It’s so fun. (Last year, my mom gave me a $100 certificate for a knitting store and I nearly went ballistic trying to figure out what to get.)

The house is full of good stuff to injest. Salty snacks, cookies, oatmeal bars. Booze.

My dog is fat and happy.

I rearranged my room yesterday and I like it better. I found some computer stuff I’ve been looking for for months, in the bottom of a box I thought was completely full of files.

Someone’s offered to buy the jeep as soon as I find the title. He only offered me $150, but I might just take it to get rid of the thing. It’s not like I’m gonna part it out or anything, and a scrap yard would probably only give me half that.

I’m slowly making friends here – musicians and co-workers. It’s good.

There are presents under the tree with my name on them. I didn’t do much Christmas shopping because all my money goes to pay medical bills, but I do have a little something under the tree from me for everyone.

My aunt and uncle will be at the house when I get home from work tonight. And I get to leave early, because the phones aren’t ringing. The boss was called by the shift supervisor, and he said he was on his way with some Christmas Cheer for those few of us here and then letting us go home early.

I stayed up ’til three in the morning reading a good book.

Life is good. Peace to you and yours!

Work, Music, Food, & Sex

Blurbs, , ,

In which this post covers everything that matters.

Work

Work last night? Verged on insane. I won’t get too jargony on y’all, but one of our servers ran out of disk space, which caused our internal apps to fail and a bunch of authentication errors for customers. Both the engineers were unavailable, so I just worked my arse off last night. I still had call-backs to do at a quarter of nine, and I’m usually done at least half an hour before that. Gah!

Music

RB picked me up at nine and took me to Barnaby’s for open mic. We found a drummer and a bassist to play with us and did a really mediocre version of Get Ready, followed by a fuckin’ smokin’ Stormy Monday. (Then we got off the bandstand ’cause we didn’t have anything else to do.)

A few people shook my hand and told me I’m awesome, which I always like to hear… particularly when the audience is comprised entirely of other musicians. RB and I talked about a bass player we’ll be auditioning this weekend, and then he dropped me off at home around eleven. I let my dog out for five minutes, then went up to bed and crashed.

Food

Tonight is the company Xmas party, which means not only do I get my dinner paid for, but I get off work early! W00t!

Sex

Actually, there’s no sex to speak of. I just thought it would be good if I used the word in a post once in awhile.

iPod Trouble

Blurbs,

In which my heart is breaking.

Sad MacYesterday I was groovin’ to my iPod and though I saw that the battery was in the red, I just let it play until the battery died.

Then I plugged it into my laptop with its USB cable…

Now it won’t boot up. I let it charge for three hours, took it off the cable, and tried to restart it. The hard drive clicks, but it only gets as far as the Apple screen and no farther. After awhile the backlight goes off. When I reconnect it to the USB cable, it gives me the “battery very low” message for awhile, then tries to boot and hangs.

I let it charge all night. When I tried to wake it up this morning, no joy.

I’ve brought it to work with me and have it plugged in to my work tower’s USB port. It seems to have finally charged enough to boot all the way up. God, I hope it’s okay because I really don’t have a very good backup of my music library. I mean, I have all the files, but they’re spread out all over the goddamned place and it would not be easy to reformat a new MP3 player.

Update: Charging the thing on my work tower worked! MY IPOD BOOTS UP AGAIN! I AM SO RELIEVED! I probably should have rebooted the laptop before panicking.

Lazy Sunday

Blurbs, ,

In which I enjoy a lovely, relaxing weekend at home.

Saturday I carried boxes down from the attic and Gramma and I spent the day redecorating for the holiday. All the framed photos from the corner cabinet were boxed up, all the Santas were unpacked, and things were dusted and arranged and displayed. We had fun.

Sunday I drove the car to the store; I get to drive the car this week since Gramma’s ankle is wrapped up and she can’t fit her foot into any of her shoes. When we got home, Gramma baked butterscotch oatmeal cookies.

Sunday night I cooked. I made Indian food: channa masala, cumin rice, and cucumber raita. Gramma had seconds. Then we had tea and cookies for dessert and discussed cake-baking.

I learned that when margarine first hit the market, the dairy farmers lobbied and made it illegal for margarine to be sold butter-colored. It used to come white with a small capsule of yellow food coloring it, and you’d pour the coloring in and mix it up yourself. If you got lazy, your margarine would end up with bright-yellow and white streaks in it. Weird little historical details such as these fascinate me.