Shit For Brains

Instead of there being the expected $250 to claim when I closed my Keypoint CU account this afternoon, there was a NSF fee and –80.61. I only had $70 on me, and the teller said I could pay any tomorrow. I asked if I should bring a check, and he said yes. Driving away, I got half a block before SHIT FOR BRAINS! flashed before my eyes. Idiot teller failed to suggest the ATM right outside. So I made a U-turn, slipped my new CU’s card into the machine, withdrew $300, went inside and a different teller finished the transaction with $81 from my wallet.

And then SHIT FOR BRAINS! flashed before my eyes again, because there was $25 and change in the savings account which I was also closing, which they should have transferred to the checking account to help pay the balance.

In the end they gave me that in cash.

What had messed everything up is when I entered my new CU info onto Toyota Finance’s web site, it didn’t make that the default payment option like I asked them to. I fixed that tonight.

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Work started with the usual team meeting. I did not bring calendars because I knew half the crew was taking the extra day off. When I brought up an issue I was seeing with the latest build, several others said they saw it too. About an hour later, one of the team did some more analysis, and discovered the trouble was not with the new build, it was with the source signal. IT guru fixed that later in the day.

The rest of the day was spent claiming test cases, editing and running them.  Some were pretty tedious to edit, they had 50 steps or more, but half of those “steps” were things like “Chapter 17: Aspect Ratio:” and “Do all of the following:”

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Keypoint only wasted half my lunch hour but also my appetite, so I went back to the office and had a cup’o’noodles in the break room while reading from Somtow’s book.

And here’s where work imitates life: The feed which was fixed that I was using for testing was one of the local network stations, and among the ads were a couple for Target pimping Cyber Monday sales. And one from Amazon doing likewise. So while I have the analyzer running in one window, I open up Chrome an check out Target. And they have a Westinghouse 55” 4K TV for about $100 more than my trigger price. Did some research and found that Westinghouse has pimped out their trademark to some Chinese company which also puts other well-known brand names on their TVs.

So I go to Amazon, expecting a better price. But they don’t have the Westinghouse in my size. They do have the next smaller one, but it’s the same price.

Discover sends me email that if I log in through their site to my Best Buy account, they will give me 5% cash back in 2 months for anything I buy using their card. So on to Best Buy via Discover, and there is the same TV, for $100 less. Bingo!

After I pull the trigger, I do some more research, as one does, and do not find any untoward info, mostly because these items just came on the market today but I also did not find anything in the specs which explicitly says that in addition to 4K resolution, it also supports HDCP 2.2, which is the copy protection protocol which 4K is going to be saddled with (think Macrovision) Real Soon Now.

So I open a customer service chat with Best Buy, and in about 5 minutes she looks at an actual TV & the box and confirms it does support this.

Delivery date 12/8.

While I was at it, I also used the Discover deal to buy a Tivo Bolt. I expect that to arrive in a few days.

So now my 4K equipment list is complete. For now. Eventually I will add a 4K DVD player, but no content is expected till January at the earliest.

To pay for all this, first I checked my brokerage account, but I didn’t have enough cash and all the stocks and bonds are doing well. So I took a chunk out of my 401K, and they take 20% off the top for Mr. Obama and another 2% for Gov. Brown. At my tax rate that probably won’t be enough, but the online form didn’t let me change it.

Home after work, watched MNF, it was worth all the bad officiating, and two teams with interns as QBs to see the last play.

http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-cant-miss-plays/0ap3000000592050/Can-t-Miss-Play-Will-the-Thrill-wins-it-at-the-buzzer

In other news, maybe the pheromones have started working after all. Spook kept bringing me his toy mouse, and batted it back to me when I kicked it to her. And she even jumped onto my lap and the arm of the recliner to get to it a few times. Also, I really need to trim her claws.

Dinner was the last of the Costco stuffed cabbage. I tastes exactly like what my grandmother taught me to make. And corn on the cob. Ice cream cake for dessert. And lactaid pills. My tummy is much more predictable when I remember those.

Plans for tomorrow:

• Work


• Hand out calendars


• Maybe Starbucks with the new laptop after work

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Shit For Brains, the forgotten minutes

All the time I was at Keypoint CU yesterday, I was mystified why I could not find my KCU ATM card. I looked all through my wallet several times, it just wasn’t there. I vaguely remembered putting it aside, knowing I would not be using it anymore.

Got home, looked in the stack of cards next to the printer which has my library card, passport card, SS card, ophthalmologist’s bizcard, and a couple more bizcards, but it wasn’t there.

Hours later just for grins I looked in the “Credit Union” folder in my file cabinet, nope, not there. Finally checked the folder which has binder pages containing hundreds of cards, and there it was, along with my Citi Visa card, which is also being retired in favor of the Chase card. It has a zero balance so tomorrow I think I’ll call to close it. I’ll be losing $35 in rewards, since they only let you cash out in increments of $50. But I already grabbed the $400 that was in there.

Which brings me up to today. I posted on FB that this happened:

Spook is psychic. A year ago I gave her a mouse toy. She played with it a lot then it disappeared. Soon after, my sister sent an identical one, which Spook has played with so much it has no ears or tail. Last night I dreamed she was playing with both of them.

When I woke up this morning, Spook was at the bedroom door standing over the beat-up one. The original one was on the bed next to me.

She is so stealthy I usually don’t even feel it when she jumps onto the bed. This evening the battered mouse was in the hallway, the one with ears was in the living room as part of the toy stash. She played with it a bit, managed to knock it behind the TV stand, and then she crawled back there to keep it company.

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This morning I brought 25 calendars to work, handed them out to my boss, my team, the lab IT guy and the Russian woman engineer who used to be on my team but has been conscripted by the hardcore integration team. Story: when she first arrived from Motorola St. Petersburg back in 2005 or 6, she liked my wall of photos, and asked if I could spare some for her drab cubicle. I gave here a couple of my best, and she was ecstatic. So of course she gets a calendar.

Automation Guy asked for and got an extra one to give to his son, who is about 6 or 7 and was featured in it a few years ago.

I still have 3 there, just in case.  I made 100 this year, so anyone who asks at work will get one. Also mailed one to an artist friend who has gotten my stuff into art shows in the past.

By the way, Happy December Fools’ Day.

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Work was busy, I ran a bunch of test cases, most of them passed, one failed which already had a bug filed against it.

Also filled in and submitted my annual performance review. It’s all online, and is completely ridiculous. There is no way we can set goals a year ahead of time, and most of the ones in there turned out to be either impossible to meet due to circumstances beyond our control, or far from the numeric goal. It’s a bean counter program, everything has to be “measurable”, which is not possible with a lot of the work we do. And it ignores collateral damage and collateral advantage. For instance, I was supposed to teach two classes, but one was trumped by tight deadlines and never happened. The other one I expected only the two Automation Guys to attend, but the whole team showed up.

Lunch was at Starbucks, where the drink was free, but not the sandwich. They were out of napkins.

Stopped for gas on the way home. $2.59.9/gal. Not quite 10 gallons, I could have gone two more days, but this weekend I’ll be driving across the Bay and back, so better to have a full tank now.

Home, played with throwing Youtube video from my tablet onto the TV by way of the TiVo. YouTube video quality doesn’t hold up on a 55” screen. We’ll see next week if 4K upscaling helps. This evening I tagged a bunch of 4K videos on YouTube for my watch later list.

Watched PTI, but am starting to get over that show, they keep talking over each other, to the point where I can’t understand either of them.

Caught half of Chicago Med, which is Chicago Hope minus the writing and acting talent, but plus some decent medical equipment special effects, and hot women doctors respected doctors who happen to be hot women. And a violin duet. It won’t b going on my must record list.

Speaking of which, last night I watched the latest Supergirl, and it was awful. They brought in two character actors from Overactors Anonymous to play the overbearing mother of the Queen of Media, and the even more overbearing general who is the father of the woman significantly othered with the new, hot, tall, black Jimmy Olsen.  Too much violence, too much soap, not enough humor, not enough acting.

Delivered was one of the 4 meds I ordered from Kaiser last week. Why they did not all get here is a major WTF.

Spent some time online verifying the wireless kbd/mouse on the big PC is not supported by Win10. Which explains why the mouse keeps flipping into continuous scroll mode on web sites and some typos result in the browser opening a page of code. This is a very nice keyboard, complete with Thai characters engraved on next to the Roman ones. They don’t make this keyboard anymore, and the Win10 compatibles, especially the ones with Thai, look cheap. Or I could buy a nice Logitech set and mess it up trying to slap on Thai character stickers. About 85 of them. No thanks.

Maybe I should give that up. It’s rare for me to type Thai, much easier to cut and paste from Thai2English.com or the app I bought from them. Or even Google Translate.

Plans for tomorrow:

• Work
• Close Chase card account
• Manicure
• Maybe catch up on Elementary and/or Dr. Who