So Much Wasted Time

A sleepless Thursday night, more frustration Friday evening, finally after way too many times opening the back of the laptop, removing the hard drive and plugging it into the big PC with the partition wizard software, the Windows 10 free update app gave me enough clues to install Win10.

After the USB reset-to-factory-settings download from Dell failed on two different brands of thumb drives with the same ungrammatical error message, I called tech support. I got someone in India whose English was bad, but not as bad as his listening skills, which was not as bad as his job skills. He had to keep putting me on hold to ask someone else how to do things.

We got to the point where normally I would be giving a credit card number to pay for a restore disc or USB drive when he asked what the tax rate was where I lived. He had my zip code, his system should have given that to him. 5 minutes later he comes back with 6.75%. Which is way wrong. So I ask him what the grand total is, expecting $40, which is what Toshiba charged. $230+. I said that had to be wrong, and he offered a special one-time “bring it to a service center” repair for $150. Bye-bye.

So I was not able to restore the system to factory, which would have provided an activated Windows and a rescue partition. I’ll put it on eBay with that caveat, because I’m done messing with it.

Caught up on sleep this morning, out of bed at 11, watched some football, had a late franks & veggies lunch, then to MV and met Janice for a very short coffee klatch, and walked to the Center For The Reforming Tarts, people-watched for an hour because the children’s theater Annie with a cast of thousands was being jammed with audience in the big theater for the 7:30 curtain and A Country Girl in the second stage was not opening the house till 7:40. And I needed a potty break.

A thoroughly delightful show, but as soon as it started, my tummy was wanting very badly a return visit to the john. My face was flushed (I see what I did there) but I managed to hold it in by concentrating on the show.

I counted 11 performers with whom I had been on stage before, including 3 of the 4 lead sopranos, the pianist (who was also a character in the show) two of the male comic reliefs and a couple of chorus members. Almost everyone had speaking parts, everyone sang, and the music was catchy and singable in a 1902 kind of way.

I was sitting next to the son of the pianist, who was next to his mom, whom I met when pianist was the lead in a show I directed and she was his girlfriend. They are now happily exed.

Also in the crowd was one of my favorite accompanists, my favorite Pirate King, one of the leads from Iolanthe, a fellow who was the lead in Bells Are Ringing from many years ago and his wife, who keeps finding me in the wild. Running the supertitles was another favorite accompanist, who is also one of the more talented technical people in local theater.

Halftime I beelined for the Men’s, and was there way longer than expected, but for the second act I was able to view the show without distraction.

Son of Pianist got Mom’s permission to bail before the 2nd act started, he wanted to work on some anime art.

After the show I got to congratulate most of the cast. I was amused that the woman playing the title role, who played a similar one in Brigadoon, settle for her second choice in the play, who IRL is her husband.

Home a little after 11, whipped up some macaroni and cheese. Black forest cake for dessert. One piece left.

Fedex notification that they delivered the litterbox to the side door, but there was nothing there. Found it hidden behind the furniture next to the kitchen door, which is kind of a side door but really a front door. You had to be there. Peeled off the outer box, will set it up tomorrow. No rush.

Plans for tomorrow:

• Talk with youngest sister (she texted that she would call)
• Loi Kratong at the Thai temple in Fremont
• Set up the new litterbox
• List the Dell laptop on eBay
• Maybe list some more things too
• Try to set up the Z-wave networked hub

 

They started early, I got there on time :-)

Set the alarm for 8:30 so I would be awake when sis called at 9. We chatted till 10:30, which meant I did not get to the Thai temple auxiliary parking area till noon. The lot was almost empty, and I just missed the shuttle. Walked the quarter mile, and arrived as the various children’s classes were doing the final Loi Loi Kratong dance. That was followed by adults in NE (Isan) costumes doing some dances from that area.

Not a big crowd this year, probably because there is no longer a food court. Well, actually there was one, but instead of it being a wide variety things being sold by restaurants and cooking classes, it was just some temple auxiliary people making mostly Isan dishes. I didn’t see anything I wanted, hungry as I was at lunchtime.

Also not as many photo ops, but that was because the good stuff was at 10.

Left after an hour, this time the shuttle was waiting but I was the only passenger. The event lasted till 4, allegedly, but there were no more performances or formal events, just the fundraising – selling kratongs, and flowers to give to the monks, and the raffle was in full swing, with a 55” TV being the 3 pm prize, and an Amazon Fire every 15 minutes.  The raffle booth was very colorful

Went from there to Safeway, did the stock-the-freezer shopping I had been too lazy to do yesterday. So nice to have a freezer big enough to store all the things which previously I could not buy in bulk, or were on sale but would go bad in the fridge before I had a chance to cook it. Along those lines are the makings for chicken soup, which I usually need to make when I’m in no condition to be out of bed, let alone go shopping. Also now have more than a few days’ supply of frozen dinners.

Dinner was out of the freezer – breaded clam strips and corn on the cobettes. Dessert was the last piece of black forest cake. I baked some apple turnovers, but those will go into my lunch cooler. Future dessert will be ice cream cakes which I bought on my birthday, because I finally had someplace to put one.

Watched the end of the Seahawks-49ers game, was disappointed that while the new QB was on the field the whole game, he only proved useful for the first quarter. Beast Mode was injured and did not play, but his replacement was better than he has been.

Also watched the night game, Arizona and Cincy. Close game. Poor clock management lost Bengals the OT opportunity. A stupid defenseman turned what should have been a 50-50 chance field goal into a chip shot. Half the distance to the goal for calling out the other team’s countdown commands.

Lots of boxes to break down and bundle. I use paper moving tape, which is also recyclable le. Some neighbors use duct tape, which isn’t.

Emptied the clumping litter litterbox, vacuumed around that space and set up the crystal litter litterbox. Spook was totally spooked by it, put one paw in then ran away when she saw me watching. But she’s since gone back and used it. Now the experiment is how long it can go without needing the cartridge replaced.

Boxed and wrapped the happy couple’s wedding gift, and started designing a card. Still waiting to hear when and where our turkey day dinner will be.

Tested the new printer’s CD/DVD print function, and it works beautifully.

Plans for tomorrow:

• Work


• MNF


• Put the big dell on eBay