Writing Wrongs

Stayed up till almost 2 am watching the final finale of The Bachelor. The B screwed up the whole series by sending home the last two women instead of taking three woman to the next country for a week, narrowing it down to 2, then one more country to meet his family, and a final decision.

He managed to convince #3, who had bailed, to un-bail, give it more time, go with him to Mallorca and meet his family, go on dates, and see what happens without being concerned about the competition.

Long story short, a night in the fantasy suite changed her mind, and in the reunion she had the eyes wide open stare of a cult member. She has drunk the Kool-Aide and is all in with B. No engagement, no plans for one, but what she rally needed was time, and maybe better drugs. I wish them the best, but I really don't think it will work in the long term. Glaringly missing from this relationship was the one thing which endeared B to me from the Bachelorette he had been sent home from, and that is his devotion to a young cousin (niece?) who has a severe chronic disease. 

They announced the next bachelorette. Much to my surprise they did not choose obnoxious, sharp as a tack micro Barbie Doll Demi, though they did include her in the reunion panels. instead they went with Alabama Hannah, whose IQ is measured in Pounds Per Square Inch, who had come in, I think, 4th. Having too much time on their hands, they brought on the first 5 bachelors, and started the next show right then and there. Hannah had no clue what to do. It did not help that none of the 5 were particularly attractive or charming. I won't be watching this train wreck.

Up at 7:30 mostly because on a weekday the lights all come on, and I'd set the alarm. No real reason to be up on time.

Set up the ironing board, plugged in the iron and set it to "cotton" and then went to the kitchen for meds and Spook's treats. On the way back to the bedroom stopped in with Spot. On my way out Spook snuck in, and proceeded to curl up in a corner growling and hissing. I finally picked her up and tossed her out, and followed her out, leaving Spot where he was. He had not even looked at her. Maybe I'm giving away the wrong cat.

Except now she is more pettable, and she is back to planting herself within sight of me when I'm watching TV or on the computer.

Breakfast was a bacon and cheese omelet. Watched a couple of college football games. VA/Vtech. Iowa and someone else (Nebraska?). Mizzou vs. some team which didn't know how to score.

Grocery Outlet, thanks to an ad in FB, they had Scharffen-Berger chocolate in stock, I bought 18 1-oz bars of 82%, they didn't have the 3 oz ones I prefer. But $.99 each, so $3 for 3 oz, which are usually $4.50. Also bought apples (wanted canned apple pie filling but they had none), Shrimp tempura, chocolate mochi and Marie C's dutch apple cake, which is close to being a crumble. The place was practically empty. Customers were away buying hardware.

Home, put stuff away, transfered the load of shirts from the washer to the dryer which reminded me to iron my Hawaiian shirts, which I did. Watched Mysteries at the Museum while I ironed. Deleted the one about the Kennedy assassination.

Watched Below Deck. Once again the Captain put off setting the boson on fire and throwing him overboard. And the head stewardess put off doing the same to her singularly annoying eff-up of a #3.

Lunch was chopped liver & onions on rye, with mochi for dessert.

UW-WSU game on TV, watched over dinner (the last of the duck and some rice, slathered with schmaltz). Apple cake for dessert.

Took the shirts out of the dryer and ironed the Hawaiian ones from that load. Will hang them all up l8r.

Paused the game for that, and paused again at the end of the 3rd quarter when Tivo=Real Time.

Streamed for a couple of hours - good chat with about 20 people, as many as 11 at a time. Only had to ban 2 of them. Also had to relax my moderator bot's spam settings. Chatters from Sweden, Canada Australia, Brazil, Thailand and US.

After I write this I'll watch the end of the football game.

Plans for tomorrow:
Real weekend. It will probably still be raining.
Costco, maybe
Safeway, maybe
Tivo, probably.
 

Up on time, out on time, tried to stream my ride to work but it locked up a minute or two in. Samsung phone did that several times since I started using it to stream, which is rude because I got it because it is supposedly built for streaming. The Pixel 2 never did that, although it did overheat once and shut itself off when my stream settings were way too high.

So, the S9 is going back to Amazon. Gonna use USPS because the closest of the 6,457 available lockers is downtown San Jose. Major WTF. Someone is not doing their job of collecting from the lockers. Or the database is hosed.

Blame susandennis for pointing out the generous Pixel 2 buyback program, which brings the Pixel3 price down to about the same as the S9. Strange but true, I can get mine Saturday with the free delivery/setup help. Nov 5 at the earliest on free standard shipping, self setup. In order to do that setup thing, I needed to put my Pixel back - I'd wiped it. The Google phone swap app is not as thorough as the Samsung one, but it is good enough. Anyway, thanks, Susan.

One thing which surprised me is the barometer app worked on the Pixel, using the phone's sensor. Did not know it had one.

So tomorrow I'll stream my ride to work on the Pixel 2, and we'll see.

Work today was a pain. The test servers were intermittent again, and just when they got solid, the internet connection in the lab went down. The big lab in the back of the building also went down, but they are on a different circuit, which it took tech support a while to figure out. Once they did, mine was fixed in 10 minutes. And another 20 for the server connection to see my router. Big lab was still offline when I went home.

Lunch was a Safeway Asian Chicken salad. Quite a construction project. Almond bits, tiny mandarin orange slices, the obligatory dried noodles, chicken cubes, special sauce. Strawberries after. And baklava.

Testing was interrupted when bozomanager wanted three tests re-run which NP had allegedly marked as failed in the prior release. Except she hadn't. And they still failed. For good reasons. Tall manager was confused, he asked how they passed when NP ran them, but they didn't.

Boss showed me an OLED TV from LG which looks stunning, and she wants me to have it in the lab for show. Apparently someone ordered one and got two, so she grabbed it.

While I was out there she went over her roadmap with me & NP and she suddenly realized I won't be around in mid-December. :-(

Home at 5:30, stream froze before I got 3 blocks, so I pulled into the cinema parking lot to reboot the phone and start again, but the two people who had been watching never returned. The rest of the ride was recorded.

Home, delivered was a case for the S9. It's pretty, I may sell it on eBay.

Transferred all the stuff from the S9 to the 2XL, made a chopped liver & onions sandwich for dinner, dark chocolate covered tangerine slices for dessert. Watched PTI and Below Deck. The chief stewardess and her #1 steward, whom I think are both gay, are an item. The crazy #3 stewardess has a crush on the incompetent boson, who is thinking with his dick. I expect him to be fired in a charter or two. Meanwhile we are waiting for the huge hunk #3 crew stud and the #2 crew gal who is of amazonian proportions (except she still has both breasts) to find each other.

---

I can't believe Gruden traded away Amari Cooper.

---

Re-programmed the food tower to do 3 feedings, total of 5 cups a day I think. Spook still gets a small pile of treats because she asks for them. Comes right out and sits facing me and meows. Rubs her head against the container when I take the lid off. Spot comes running, but he's just being a brat. If I put some down for him he walks away.

Need to get a plumber to fix the master toilet. It keeps stopping up, and probably needs both a long snake and a new flushing mechanism which stores more water in the tank.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe plug the car in at Pear Ave and go to their cafeteria for the eye candy. Then Hedda Gabler at The Pear theater. I doubt that Ibsen will fill the house on a Thursday.
Home

The ant traps greatly reduced the number of those tiny ants on the kitchen floor. They had been attracted to a couple of chicken cartilage pieces I'd left for the cats, who apparently were not interested.

Took my time getting lunch packed and my butt out the door. Took back roads to the Ellis 101 junction, which may have saved me a lot of stoppage because there wasn't a single car behind me as far as I could see, and only one black Scion or something else aerodynamically stoopid about 1/4 mile ahead of me almost stopped, trying to decide if he didn't get the memo and should take the next exit. He slowed down in the lane I wanted to be in, I passed him at 65mph.

But then reality bit, and it took 6 minutes to get off at my exit.

Had all my snacks in the cooler, so straight to the Hole.

After reading a bunch of email, plowed through the rest of my test cases, they all passed, and NP said hers did too. Done by 1 pm, project done. We hope. Will know Monday.

Lunch was beef broccoli steamer & strawberries. Out of diet coke, so had a diet mountain dew.

back to the Hole, took a photo of the not running HVAC machine outside and of my thermometer inside which read 79.9°. Apparently I was late coming back because some folks from away wanted to count their TVs in my room, the manager with them forgot to bring the lock combo, and they didn't want to wait around in the heat & humidity. Next time, tell me, okay? Added the images to the facilities ticket.

Turns out we were not done, I needed to re-run a test so I could tell Them in which step it failed. And take a video.

Boss was bothering me about the move, which is not till next week. Pissed me off because testing is the priority. I did not need the interruptions.

Did very little useful for the final hour. No Asia Twerp meeting, it's his Saturday.

Home, lotsa traffic.

Took a lie-down, made corn on the cob and reheated some baked chicken for dinner. Watched PTI and some of Below Deck.

Sent my BP and weight data to new cardiologist, She wants more blood, but I may not have time to leave work.

Wanted to get to the massage place around 9 to get my preferred person. She was busy, so was #2, and #3, who was taking out the garbage as I walked in, was it. Very light massage, not even close to one of the best. Almost adequate. I think I'll give that place a rest for a while.

Stopped off at Arco for 5 gallons. $18+. :-(

One thing I hate about the Ford is it has one of those cap-less gas tanks, which never makes a tight enough seal to use the automatic shutoff gadget.

Home, Spook was trying to come out to the litterbox and the food/water, Spot was harassing her. I sprayed him a few times, and he knows I'm mad at him, but he keeps doing it.

Watched the rest of Below Deck, and some of Happy Hour, because I needed ice cream. And greevin**. And a Kind bar. 

**The goyishe web sites call it greebens, but in our Ashkenazi household it was greevin. In Yiddish/Hebrew a B without a dot inside it is a V. In modern Hebrew the B is always a B, they don't write the dots. Except for children. And the Torah. The Torah scroll also has musical notations above the letters, which are not printed in the Torah books.

Ran a load of laundry - undies. Delivered today was the long-awaited pack of 6 more of those. Shirts & socks are in the washer now, headed for the dryer soon.

Ran a Photoshop image to scale of how my photos will fit on the two 3x4 boards I paid for, it looks like at most 18 will fit if they are all landscape. If I put in the two portraits that knocks off 1.

Ants are all gone.

Plans for tomorrow:
Nothing.
Relax
Maybe go to the park
Maybe shop at 99 Ranch for Longans.
Catch up on Tivo

Slept more last night, but still less than pre-Lasix. Lasix (Furosemide) is the diuretic I was put back on in the hospital. Spook was on the bed at 7:30 again, but not interested in being petted so I turned out the lights and slept another hour +.

Up and at the computer before 10. Brainstorm - the blanket which Zoe had in the shelter & the carrier was on the office cat tree. I moved it to the laundry room counter, and she prefers it to the window sill. WIN! And she loves being petted there.

An accomplished day. First stop was the community hall, I deposited a lot of dry goods, cup of noodles, popcorn, Thai Mama Ramen, into the senior center collection barrel.

On to BofA and withdrew some cash.

Online, checked in at Great Clips which showed a half hour wait. It was 15 minutes away, I parked in the lot and went into Petco, where I bought a pair of atomizers of cat pheromones, claiming to be good for calming a multi-cat population. Scratchers were half price so I bought a Zoe-sized one.

Haircut, #3 all around. I now look & feel less like I have Einstein Hair™ which is almost as bad as Bette Davis Eyes®.

Looked up BB&B, but the nearest one was too far away, so I put off the soda stream exchange and bought all the Healthy Choice meals and Smart Way < 500 mg sodium ones at Safeway. And Miracle whip for tuna salad. I wanted to get some turkey drumsticks to bake, but they only had breasts and wings. And smoked, which are mega-salty. Also stocked up on Health Nut bread. Laura Scudders peanut butter was on special on my club card, small jar, so I got one, but Adams has sodium-free, same size, non-sale price was the same so I also got one of those. Mixed with banana it should be fine. And cuties oranges, grapes, bananas, limes. Mushrooms & celery & sardines.

Next stop Lucky's, ISO turkey legs, but they didn't have any, but they did have 3 flavors of Healthy Choice which Safeway didn't, and lamb blade cuts were affordable (unlike shanks) and I figured I could slow cook those as an alternative to baked turkey legs.

One quick stop at Grocery Outlet, but no turkey drumsticks there, so I left.

Home, it took 3 trips to get stuff inside. Zoe was way too curious about the door opening.

Unpacked everything, set up the kitty scratcher at the end of Zoe's counter top, she knew what to do with it, but I probably should weight it down because she gets stuck. Put one pheromone dispenser near the food/water, the other under the cat trees by the porch windows. We shall see. Tried brushing her, but she didn't seem to enjoy it.

Cut up some celery, peeled a clove of garlic, found a packet of baby carrots, sliced in a yellow onion and half a red onion, placed the lamb cuts on top, piled on sliced mushrooms, topped that with mint, oregano, and rosemary from fresh-frozen bags in the freezer and topped with fresh basil from the kitchen table. added some water, and set the slow cooker for 8 hours low heat. Mostly just interested in the meat, may use the veggies again on some beef in the fridge freezer.

Late lunch was beef teriyaki steamer bowl, then sat out on the porch for a while, no hummingbirds. 72° outside, there should have been some. Took photos of the cut-back roses. The trunks are impressive. Reminds me of the vineyards.


Tried to call ophthalmology to make an appointment, was on hold forever, probably closed today.

Watched some bad college football. Tivo said I had not yet watched the Utah-UW game so I set that up in FF - a real nail-biter, UW won by 3 at the last minute.

Delivered were the Jam speakers. I unplugged the Fabriques and deleted them from the router's DHCP server. It took a lot to set up the Jams, and now it seems they are set to turn off, despite being plugged in. Need to troubleshoot that. The app is iffy, it took a few tries to make all 3 speakers part of a group, but once done I can stream TuneIn stations. The test will be in the morning, see if they can hold a wi-fi signal.

Dinner was HC Asian pot stickers steamer. Not bad. Dessert was walnuts, frozen mango chunks and frozen blueberries, while watching the new news channel. Much better than the old one.

UCLA-Cal are at halftime in the background.

Plans for tomorrow:
BB&B, soda stream exchange (2 this time)
Lamb!
Whole Fads and maybe Walmart groc ISO turkey legs
Maybe meet Janice to chat

Up way early, forced myself to stay in bed till 7:30. Low-ish Hgl. Have I mentioned how much I hate the whole bathroom is the shower thing? There is a tiny shower section with a hinged door that can enclose it, but taking a shower in that space would only be possible for small children and snakes. I have learned to stand with my back to the opened clamshell, so it catches the water instead of it going all over the sink counter and my meds.

The morning was for finding the tall ships, so after another "I ate too much" breakfast I took the #2 to the stop which Google suggested, which was one past the one I wanted. It landed me near one of the cruise ship docks. Helsinki has about 6 of those.

Walked back towards the other side of the harbor, took some photos of the naked lady and sea lions fountain, and suddenly breakfast for the last 3 days informed me in no uncertain terms it was done being digested and needed to complete its journey now!

Across the street was a sign "WC 100 m" pointing into the park. I didn't see one, but there was a restaurant closer than that and they let me use theirs. I thought I'd made it in time but turned out to be not quite. So, back to the hotel to shower & change & take 2 more Immodium.

Then back on #2 and continue where I left off. Took lots of photos, rode the Skywheel. The ride is right on the shore, facing out to sea, and the view in the other direction is of a short piece of the peninsula, so it's not much of a view. It is a nice new piece of equipment, and the ride was long with stops at the quarter marks. I think it was 3 times around. Could have been 4. 12€ was a reasonable price.

Toured the farmer's market, bought 20 post cards and stamps. The produce looked great, especially the berries, but my tummy said no.

Found the tall ships after crossing two bridges with love locks. There were about 6 ships in all, two were hosting tour groups, one was docked for a private party. There is also a row of derelict ships, a history lesson of sorts.

I spent a lot of time just sitting in the sun and watching people go by. So many pretty women in sexy attire. Long legs are the norm here. So is bra-less for those of average or less endowments.

Eventually went back to the hotel, grabbed my badge ribbons stash, and took #9 to the con. But first, a trip downstairs to the Finland shop for a pen, and R-Kioski for chocolate bars.

At the con, headed for the fan lounge, chatted with some friends along the way, then sat down and cranked out 20 cards, labeled and stamped. The stamps are individual peel and stick, and they peel from the wrong side. ;-)

As I was leaving, a fan pointed up and out the transom - raging thunderstorm! So I went to the front doors and took videos from the outbound "airlock". One brave soul ran outside to the entry (about 10 feet from the exit) where there was an awning. I followed. The waterproofing on my Giants jacket worked.

It was 5 minutes to 6, all the dinner places close at 6. Stupidity. The hotel restaurant and the open cafe were crowded. I wasn't hungry anyhow. The plan was to park outside the Masq entry and people watch/costume watch, but the crowd was mostly inside. Huge venue, people staying away because of the crowds left one whole section empty. I got a seat in the front row, which should have been but was not reserved for wheelchair access.

The masq was a major FAIL in everything except the costumes. The vast majority of costumes were local, novice or open categories. I don't remember any journeyman or master entries, but after #20 I stopped paying attention. There were only one or two iffy costumes, most were very well done, and several novices would have held their own in a master class competition.

BUT

The lighting sucked. Very low lumens, red filtered. Horrible for non-flash photography and did not show off the colors well. The 2nd contestant didn't come out for about 5 minutes. The MC had no headset, so did not know WTF was happening, and kept ad libbing, calling for #3 or whomever, causing more confusion. Finally a backstage person yelled that #2 was waiting for the music to start. Audio was bass-loaded and generally too loud. MC had a horrible time with the Scandinavian names (contestants and characters) and really should have been a local costumer.

After all the costumes were shown, it was time to hit the fan photo room which I'd seen on the way in. I parked myself by the door in the front row, and waited. Contestants dribbled in, and John from the panel decided it was his personal photo shoot until some guy with a cheap camera strapped to his chest started organizing things. I'm pretty sure he was official.

Suddenly all the photographers, tablet and cell phone owners converged on the front of the room, blocking me out. And the C came in with her strident voice and took charge, which completely ruined it for me, so I bailed. The room was a FAIL. No backdrop, no lights, no space and a total free for all. Chest camera guy did one good thing, he overrode C's penchant to have everyone pose in numerical order, and got the people in the hot costumes done first.
 
Back to the hotel, different trams were running by now. Eerie to have what looks like dusk at 10 pm. #9 finally showed up, back to the plaza behind the hotel. Memphis again for dinner. Ribs were excellent. Banana chocolate cake not so much. Pineapple mohito made me drowsy. Very slow service this time. DJ was showing a lot of skill with his nice sequencer, but all he did was keep a backbeat and throw in short sound bites. No actual music. It would have been great for dancing, but nobody was.

Hotel, checked email and FB.and went to bed.

Plans for tomorrow depend on the weather, but include a lighter breakfast,writing this, and updating Quicken.
Need 12 more postcards & stamps

Late start, missed AG's call at 8:45, too busy packing lunch.

Really weird, outside the temp was a comfortable 67, but inside the hole it was 80. It stayed between 80 and 85 all day inside, but it didn't reach 85 till 5 pm. The manager of the test group on the other side of the building added a nastygram to the work order to get that fixed, and the reply was ambiguous.

The scholar retreat was still in progress across the street. This time they left some bananas and diet Coke for me.

Did nothing useful for work.  Played the pre-release app on the prototype board just to do something. Mostly watched live feeds, animal cams. The Hellgate MT osprey nest is empty, apparently an intruder osprey wiped out the mom & chicks. The web site had not updated the info so I'm guessing from what they said from the weekend.

Lunch was tuna casserole & cookies. Break time I poured some chocolate syrup into a cup, added soda water and ice.

I've read enough of Too Like the Lightning to make it #3 on my ballot, which I just updated. It is speculative fiction set in an imagined future, there is technology and societal changes which qualify it as not fantasy. But it's an experiment in writing styles, and after three chapters I was ready to throw the book across the room and into the trash. Except I'm reading it on a tablet. It's a case of throwing too many experiments at the reader all at once.

And it tweaked several of my "give me a break!" flags. One is she invents a new word for the family unit. The flag is she ends it with an apostrophe. And a second flag was set when the author explains the basis for the word (it's from a Japanese word which basically means exactly what she is trying to make her word mean). The apostrophe is (choose one) (a) in the wrong place in the word, (b) not needed (c) annoying, because in most linguistics it denotes a glottal stop, which obviously is not the case here. Another affectation is she interrupts the narrative with "kind reader" notes when she ought to just narrate. And another flag is, in her attempt to show that language has changed to eliminate the gendered pronoun, she uses "they" instead of inventing a singular neuter pronoun. Many languages have one. In Thai there are three - "kao" is informal, "ter" is for songs and "taan" is more archaic. Thai also has gendered "me" for informal use (pome for men, dichan for women), but in songs they us a neuter "me" (chan). Stephen King in Dark Tower invents his own gender neutral word for Mr/Miss/Mrs. It's not hard to do, and doesn't confuse the reader by calling an individual by a group pronoun.

Yes, those are all nitpicks, but for me they make the book unreadable. A pity, because there are some interesting ideas hidden behind the obfuscations.

---

Just out of curiosity I looked up paw paw trees to find out why the two saplings I bought months ago didn't take. And found an Oregon nursery which had them on sale, three in 5.5" buckets plus fertilizer for about $100. Already established, 12-15" tall. I can start with the buckets on the retaining wall behind the house, no planting required.

I had the hole all to myself until about 5 pm, when a couple of the engineers next door showed up. I left at 5:30, drove straight home.

Beef pot pie for dinner, watched the pilot for a Netflix series called Travelers. People who die become host bodies to a group from the future who have come back to save the world. There is some decent acting. Videography is mostly okay. Not a lot of humor in the writing, yet.

In the park tube was an invite to the 4th of July party, they also are calling for desserts for the "cake walk". Doesn't have to be cake. Not sure if I'm going. But I may.

Email from the person in charge of the mobile home activist group with lots of details which they did not put on their flyer about what they have done so far, the link to their incredibly ugly web site, and a "hope to see you Saturday" - an event also missing from the flyer. I have a photo shoot, otherwise I would have gone.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work, such as it is. Maybe Boss will come and sync up.
TBD