howeird | Entries tagged with calendar

Woke up and checked the webcams on the phone app, but the one in the piano room was not showing up. I had just rebooted it yesterday. So I went all OCD and made sure all 6 had an IP address assigned to their MAC address in the router, and those matched the ports open so they can be seen from outside the home network. Took almost an hour because I had to pull 4 of them to check the wireless MAC address, which is on the base where it screws into the mounting bracket. Each cam has both a wi-fi MAC and a wired MAC and it gets confusing because you start with it wired.

So that delayed things a bit.

My food scale lied. The calendars, it said, weighed 6.2 oz, which USPS rounds up to 7, which costs $2.75 for domestic, $8.something for Canada and $12.something for overseas. I am glad I went to the PO at the crack of 10, when there was only one person in line ahead of me, and three clerks.

The nice lady weighed a calendar, and it was 7.6 oz, which rounds up to 8, so all the items were going to cost more. And I needed to fill out customs forms for the foreign ones, because of the spiral binding, which is not 1/4" deep, so should fall under the normal non-customs-able rules, but the PO apparently now says any non-flatness requires customs forms. So $3.10 for domestic, $9.something for Canada and $14.95 for overseas.

I spent $193 on stamps, and went out to the foyer to slap most of them them on the 19 domestic items, and loaded those 4 at a time into the chute. Then went home, because the online customs forms are a LOT easier to do than the by-hand ones.

By now it is too late to catch the matinée showing of anything.

At home, I fired up the PC and cranked out 6 customs forms, which had to be printed out, cut into three sections, and paper-clipped to the corresponding envelope. And then the appropriate postage attached, sort of. $10 for Canada because I got $10 stamps, and one $10, two $2's and a $1 for the rest. I have stamps left over for future use. I expect one request from Sweden and maybe more from Israel. And I think Baltimore sister wants one for her boss.

Also at home, the rent/utilities bill was in the newspaper slot, which is where all mobile home park stuff goes, so I launched Quicken, updated the splits and printed a rent check.

The rest will go to co-workers, and assorted local friends, and I'll bring one to BASFA to auction, maybe. Maybe not. Last year's only went for $1 which is downright insulting.

But I digress. Back to the PO, this time it's just before 1 pm, and I am second in line again, this time there was only one clerk, and she was trying to explain in Chinglish to an Eastern European woman that the Post Office has no control over what the City mails to her, she needs to go to city hall. This took 10 minutes. She rang for backup, and another clerk opened up her post just after that conversation ended.

It was the same lady who sold me the stamps. She was grateful I had come with everything ready, because she still had to punch in each item, bar code scan it, stamp the forms and the postage, and print out a phony $0.00 tag to show it had been processed by a Postal Employee. Six items took 20 minutes.

Home, walked the rent check to the office (it's a short 2.5 blocks) and also filled out a form to swap my garbage can for the next bigger one. It's going to be a while, because they only process those on the 15th, and the swap doesn't take place till the first Monday of the following month. That would be February 3.

Back home to stay, played online, watched parts of a bowl game and several episodes of Millionaire Matchmaker the title role is an annoying bitch with a thing for the word "penis" but some of the dates she lines up for the rich guys are super-hot. She never chooses other millionaires as dates, she is all about gold diggers who can act sincere. My excuse is it was the only thing I could find without a Jesus Day theme or talking sports heads.

Snacked all day, so no dinner.

Tested the livingroom webcam's photo capability and got this cute shot:

And this one with the phone's camera:

Domino has become much more of a lap cat, but most of the time she prefers any of a dozen parking spots, now that there's no bully to chase her around. The only annoyance is she will yowl loudly if I go out of sight, but usually stops as soon as I say "Polo", or she finds me, whichever comes first. After Pumpkin died, she yowled constantly.

Plans for tomorrow:
Movie matinée
Bowl game - Nephew's Maryland is playing in the morning, my UW in the evening
Maybe go to the park (it was 68° this afternoon)

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Location: Furball Hall

So my plan was to save up PTO time for London in August, I was planning on working Thursday and Friday. Monday was already claimed as a day off to make up for putting in for the day after I moved but working that day.

It was dead boring, nothing at all to do at work today so I followed boss' lead and made it my last work day of the year. We have 24-25 off and 31-1, so with just 2 more PTO days it's 24-1. 9 days.

I may take a train ride, I may drive down to Morro Bay and take another whale watching trip (the grey whales are in town, and I want to give them one of my calendars, which has a cover and one month of whale pix).

Also planned is re-do the shed. Pull out the shelves on the right side and back, probably install bike hooks.

While at work, Costco emailed that the calendars were done, so I went there after work. Since I was there, I also picked up the 4 things on my list, and though there were tons of people there were also tons of cashiers, none of the lines were more than 3 deep.

All the time I was there, parents were murdering their children. Stupid parents don't know enough to duct tape their mouths shut first, so the screams don't give them away. Some day I am going to call 911 and report child abuse in progress.

Home, started playing the Tivo of the 49ers game in progress. The absolute best way, skipped through the commercials (they kept playing the same 5), and a lot of the "last game at the stick" schtick. At about the 2 minute warning it was almost in sync with real time, so I was able to turn on KNBR radio and listen to the post-game, which was still going when I finally got tired of it at 11.

After that was over, I slapped return address labels on 30 calendar-sized envelopes and fired up my Excel address book. Sadly, removed an uncle and a brother-in-law (my aunt and older sister lost their husbands recently).

Fired up Word 365, which was HORRIBLE at trying to decide what kind of mailmerge I wanted. It has a nice feature called Address Block which will fill in everything for you, but they expect a 2nd address line, and I would have had to re-do my spreadsheet with several more column, which is a PITA and I won't.

Finally got it after six or seven tries, and then the stupid program wouldn't print from the tray with the label stock. It kept going to the default tray, even though it insisted it was using the rear tray. Had to load the label stock in the cartridge, and while it worked it was not quite centered, and I was lucky that bending the stock like that didn't peel and jam the printer.

Slapped address labels on the envelopes, counted them up. 19 domestic, 7 foreign (which will probably grow to 8 when I get a new address from a friend who moved from Germany to Sweden). USPS.com says the domestics are $2.75 apiece, which is 6 Forever stamps. I don't have that many. The Canada ones are $8.55 and all the rest are $12.75 which is a hoot because that's more than the calendars cost.

I have a few $2 and $1 stamps, but not nearly enough.

Plans for tomorrow:
See Frozen 3D at the Mountain View cinema. Mercado is not playing the 3D version. I may follow that with Hobbit 2 or I may do that for Jesus's post-solstice fantasy birthday celebration.
Empty the shed, etc.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Furball Hall

Whoever made up my room yesterday changed the radio alarm setting from OFF to ALARM, so I woke up at 8. Boo, Hiss. Turned it off and slept till 9. No towels, and I really needed a a shower or some reasonable facsimile thereof, so I put on my swim trunks and a shirt & tennies and went downstairs for a swim, figuring there were towels by the pool.

And was surprised twice:

1. It was raining (and kind of chilly)
2. There were no towels down there

So I hunted up a housekeeper and she found me a pair of still warm from the dryer bath towels. Went upstairs and had my shower. Did all my morning stuff, was happy to see I'd guessed well on the overnight insulin dose, and went downstairs to check out. There were three people ahead of me. I'd paid on check-in, so I thought "screw this" and just left my key card on the desk and left.

Walked across the street to the Waffle House, had a delicious apple waffle and iced tea, then walked to the light rail. Did not bother to buy a ticket because the Amtrak transfers I was given Saturday were still good.

Took the train to the station, had a seriously boring conversation with a Hugh Daniel sized 20-something fellow who sat facing me (light rail has a lot of benches where one faces front the other faces back) wearing a very often-washed blue Tshirt with a Superman S on it. It actually fit him. He had a small stack of clipboards with petitions on them. This was his 2nd job - he got paid for the number of legitimate registered voter signatures he was able to drum up. Today's issues were one to reverse a deal the Governator had made with local tribal casinos to allow them to partner with Las Vegas "businessmen". Another was against letting under-18 transvestite students from using the restrooms of their chosen gender. He didn't understand what the third one was about, "but nobody is signing that one anyway" he said. I told him I was a Seattle voter. One thing he said which I agreed with is "All you have to do to stay registered is vote every other year. How hard is it to vote, anyway?"

He got off at 16th Street, where there was a Pride event of some kind.

Apparently there was also a traditional chalk art on the sidewalks thing at another stop, but someone behind me said on a day like today it would have to be watercolor.

Finally got to the station, in plenty of time to grab the 12:10 instead of the 3:20 I had originally signed up for. With the Capitol Corridor trains one ticket fits all. Bought a diet Pepsi and a thing of chocolate covered donettes from the machine. Sacramento Station used to have a world class gift shop, but the place is a mess, all black plastic and signs saying it is being remodeled, but it has been that way for more than a year, and no signs of progress.

Sat down in the section marked for people who needed a ride to the Amtrak platform which is a mile from the station, with steep downhill and uphill stretches. Not something my knees want to do. Nobody came to get us. Finally I went out to where the shuttles were, and was not allowed on because some lady with a cane behind me was given priority. Driver said another cart would be by, but it never came. He got back and took me and one other person there, with about 5 minutes to spare. Not as good as it sounds because by then most of the good seats are taken.

Thanks to it being cloudy, the bad seats were not as bad as they usually are.

Not a bad ride, no screaming children. I was on the right, nobody sat next to me. On the left were three young couples who really needed to get a room. They were fun to watch, at least.

After an hour I went to the snack car and got a hot dog.

Got a glimpse of the old and new Oakland bridges side by side, but far away and I had the 35mm lens on the camera, so it will be tough to crop it to make it a picture. Did get some good shots of the new 49ers stadium under construction.

Arrived on time at San Jose, my car was still where I had parked it, and there were now many more empty spaces in the lot. Drove home, Kaan was poised by the door ready to run outside, but he was successfully repelled by the Safeway bag which I used for snacks and the stuff I wanted to have handy on the train.

I have been reading Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St Mary's) by Jodi Taylor ever since finishing Gerrold's Voyage of the Sea Wolf, which, by the way, was pretty good once it got out of "describe everything all at once in great detail" mode. Taylor's writing is pretty good, though it has been injected more and more with Britt slang as the story progresses, and it is obvious that the author has a clear image of each of the characters, but does not do a good job of sharing these with the readers. Ditto some of the internal politics.

I had tried M. Todd Gallowglass' The Dragon Bone Flute (A Novella of Music and Magic) for a bit, but put it aside when the hero, after several chapters, was addressed as "Elizabeth". This after a narrative which was clearly about a young boy. Especially the descriptions of how he was bullied by the bigger mean boys. Girls are simply not challenged by the bully to spend a night alone in the dragon's cave from which no one has ever returned. That's boy stuff. I got the book on my Kindle because Mr. G was on a couple of panels with me at Westercon, and he told some good stories there.

Also on my list from there was R. I. Partridge, but she has chosen to publish her stuff via her web page, which is not the way I want to read.

Dinner tonight was a relay. Bacon. Then KFC mashed potatoes and gravy, then some baked beans. And ice cream. All while watching Who Do You Think You Are? in which Cindy Crawford's lineage is traced straight back to Charlemagne.

The program is what made me try Ancestry.com, but the more episodes I watch, the clearer it had become that the Ancestry.com part is almost useless, it is the series of professional archivists and genealogists and historians whom the producers pay to archive dive and go on camera to educate the shill. In this case starting in Boston, then a couple of places in the UK and finally Germany.

Flipped all the calendars in the apartment, and opened the new ones (NFL cheerleader calendars start in September). 2013 Redskins went to the back wall where Seagalls had been pulled from. Sept-Oct are half-height, but it may make a comeback for Nov-Dec which are full pagers. 2014 Redskins went in its place. Jets came down, replaced by Tampa Bay. Dallas 2013 is staying up for now, because Ravens 2014 is even uglier as a calendar than Seagals. Still in transit are Colts and Saints.

didjiman's panorama calendar owns the livingroom wall, September is a very artsy autumnal photo. My calendar in the kitchen is also kind of artsy.
( Read more... )

Plans for tomorrow:
Work. No idea what I'm doing.
UPS, pick up a calendar and cat food

Current Mood: complacent
Current Location: Home

Went home after work, had just enough time to put return address labels on the calendar envelopes, and see that I need to update my address mailmerge spreadsheet and doc.

Drove to Mountain View, usually this is a half hour drive at 6:15 pm, but there was little traffic and I only hit about 5% of the red lights. I was there at 6:30 for a 7 pm date.

This was a date with a purpose. And old usenet friend (we met online in 1989, and have been friends ever since). I had told her I liked the chicken-fried steak at Denny's and she said I had to try it at Chili's. We both ordered it, and in 15 minutes the waiter brought something which looked great, but when I cut into it, it was a chicken breast. FAIL. He tried to make excises, but my answer was "steak is steak, whether you call it country-fried or chicken-fried". Idiot. Both of use went through the menu, and what he had brought us was not even on it. FAIL x 2.

In another 10 minutes he brought us replacement dishes, and yes, that was steak-like substance in there, but it was a rush job, the breading was all bubbly and had been cooked in burnt oil. Mine was all gristle, I only ate half of it before giving up. The corn on the cob on a stick was also very chewy. Mashed potatoes were good, the gravy was thin and looked a lot like Ranch dressing, though it tasted like gravy.

It was my friend's treat, for my birthday last week, and she paid with a gift card, so I didn't complain. On top of the slow and stupid service, the place is LOUD.

Home, redid my address data and labels, watched an episode of The Mentalist (now I am only 4 behind) and stuffed envelopes.

Which is when I noticed there was none for my UK cousins, who are second on my data list. Word messed up and started the merge at #3.

While I was at it I subtracted one person who is entitled postcards from my trips but not a calendar, and added a newly found Peace Corps pal, redid the doc and printed 5 pages of labels.

So now all the ones I plan on mailing are ready to go, but the PO is closed tomorrow and I'll be out of town till Sunday night. So Monday. Which is fine, nobody needs one before late December.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep in
T-day dinner at lunch time at the brother of a long time QA friend and fellow iconoclast. Brother lives in the same complex as my usenet friend, next building over.
Pack for my trip

Current Mood: fulfilled
Current Location: Home

Got to work early, beat up the SNMP software until it worked, and it worked like a champ. Perfect for the day-long test I needed to run. But it was nefarious and installed itself as a pair of services, which I did not need/want, so I removed those.

Which is when the lab manager, who had gotten me the software, installed it to see what it looked like. Which I found out when I tried to run my actual test, and the software complained that it had a 1-user license, and there were two computers trying to use it. It pointed me to a web site which gave a command line which showed that the other user was the lab manager.

I emailed him that we needed a site license, then went to lunch.

Sizzler, where being an old person gets me a free soft drink with my salad bar lunch. I love their clam chowder and chicken wings.

Back to work, lab manager emails that no more licenses are needed, he isn't using the software, he was just checking (which is something I would have done too). So I showed him how the services were still running. We went to my desk, and I showed him the command line trick, which clearly showed his company ID as the other user. Back to his desk, I showed him how to stop the services, then I went back to mine and confirmed I was able to log in again. So he deleted those services from his PC.

By now it's 3, and all I need to do is wait till EOD and if my test machine hasn't crashed or started reporting strange numbers to the SNMP monitor, the last test case for the new feature passes.

Automation guy invites me to the break room to keep him company while he has lunch, which we do from time to time. We usually talk about work a little, and he often has questions about Americana and languages and things he knows I'm interested in. We decided, for example, that the reason Thai sounds prettier than Vietnamese is the Vietnamese speak too quickly. Both languages are musical, tonal tongues, but the music is lost if your pronunciation is too staccato.

While we're chatting, I get a call which is breaking up badly, btu the nice lady says my photo order is ready to pick up. I check my email and there's a confirmation from Costco that my calendars are ready (round 2, the ones with the better layout). After work I go to Costco and pick up a box of calendars and head home. At home I discover that there are only 25 in the box, there's a box missing. I return the call from earlier, but the person on the other end says it's Aaron's art shop, which means my Boskone photos are mounted and ready to be picked up. I have some things to do online, then I head over there.

They did their usual excellent job, but they forgot to attach the hanger tabs. So I chatted with the young woman while she did that. She said she loved the photos, especially the shuttle fly-by ones.

Trader Joe's is next door, and I ended up buying dinner there. A small sourdough round, an apple, a ready-to-heat fondue and since they didn't have kirschwasser, a bottle of $10 brandy. Also gave in to my spanikopita craving, got a quart of high test egg nog, celery hearts, brie and ~~enema~~ edama.

Home, cut one celery bunch into edible stalks, popped the fondue in the microwave, and ate celery and onion dip while watching Shark Tank. Cut up the bread and apple, added some brandy to the fondue and ate that while watching the South Park post-election episode. The ending was a cop out.

Pans for tomorrow:
Work
lunchtime trip to Costco
Dinner with Janice at Chili's for chicken fried steak

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Home

A very low key (skeleton key?) birthday. Domino started yelling at me half an hour before the alarm goes off, which was rude, so I shut the bedroom door. Did some stuff online, which made me not early for work.

There was a new build, which meant a couple of bugs to close, including one which had shown up when I automated the GUI part of my Russian buddy's new test feature. He had validated it by hand, but that's tedious. My script blows through 44 variations or what a manual test would only try 4 of, and in only about 7 minutes. So bug verified as fixed. Also was able to run a test which needed to be run first thing after updating, because the bug goes bye-bye the first time you log out and log back in again.

And there were lots of "push a button, wait an hour" tests, so I took the time to upload to FB many of the video clips featuring me acting and singing and both through the years. At least one FB friend was also in each clip. I am completely bummed that PA Players was too copyright-stupid to video Jackyl & Hyde, because there were two numbers I was in which made me look elegant and I sang well too.

There were many birthday wishes, most of them good.

No one at work knew it was my birthday, except my boss who was in meetings all morning and worked from home all afternoon, and Automation Guy who had taken the day off. He has 6 weeks of PTO saved up.

Lunchtime I went to Rivermark and The Prolific Oven, which has the best dark chocolate covered cream puffs. And pretty good split pea soup which is served with fresh sourdough baguette slices. Yum! I was hoping to pick up a mini Black Forest cake, but they didn't have any. That's my traditional birthday cake.

After work I went to Costco to pick up both the calendars and the prints for Baskone. Also managed to spend $77 on groc.

Home in time for the second half of Thursday Night Football, but it was a low-scoring game, so not much interest.

Answered some email, played some more on FB, and looked for a place to have a birthday dinner. Oddly enough, the best choice turned out to be Red Lobster. I found one in SJ which is open till 10, and drove down there. Had clam chowder, garden salad, whole Maine lobster with seafood stuffing and rice pilaf. The lobster tail meat was a little chewy in spots, but tolerable. The claw meat was fine, and the stuffing was Nom nom nom. Good clam chowder too. Dessert was very fresh moist chocolate cake a la mode, with a candle in it, and since it was my birthday they didn't charge for it. Altogether a win. Thanks to

lemmozine for the clue which got me that.

Deja something: there is no exit from that Red Lobster which lets you go directly back to 101. Both the E-W and N-S roads have medians. I chose the E-W road, since N-W is an expressway, and the U-turn was at Brigadoon Way. It had a HUGE sign hung out over the middle of the intersection, which is very strange because it dead ends into that street, one can only turn right or U-turn.

And behind the cut is mostly for

didjiman
( Some calendar business stuff )
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Maybe go to PA and see the final show at the Dragon Theater. Not the final performance, but at the end of the run they are tearing out the theater. I think the plan is to remodel but I'm not sure.
Possibly the Brigadoon producer will post its cast list.

Current Mood: older
Current Location: Home

Much work writing test cases for a moving target feature. Should wrap up tomorrow. Maybe. Depends on when I will be allowed to drive after the steroid shot in my knee.

Lunch at Home Town Buffet, where I am suddenly a senior (they lowered it from 65 to 60).

Computer History Museum after work to hear one legendary games programmer interview another legendary games programmer. I've heard of their games, but not them. They gave shout-outs to game makers in the audience, including the guy who wrote Pong (who was seated a couple of chairs away from me), and Woz. In the opening intros by the CHM CEO, he gave a shout-out to

johnnyeponymous, who I happen to know is in Toronto at the moment.

It was interesting in snippets, but I kept wanting to slap them both upside the head and pull their clip-in mikes from where they had clipped them - to the middle of their chests - to their collars. Both of them kept hitting their mikes when they gestured, and the mikes were so far away from their mouths there was a lot of feedback as the idiot audio person upped the amplitude to make up for the low volume. I could hardly ever hear the interviewer, he had his mike clipped on upside-down, and his posture was miserable - he was bent over halfway all the time, which pressed the mike into his shirt.

There is a huge projection screen above and behind the stage, which simply showed the two guys' names the whole time. On would think they would show some clips from the interviewee's more famous games. Sonic Hedgehog, for instance.

Home, decided to start browsing my 2012 photos for candidates for the 2013 calendar. I stopped at 40, though I am sure I have a hundred more calendar-worthy shots. You can see them here and help me choose by telling me your faves. Have to narrow it down to 13 - 12 plus the cover.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Steroid shot at noon
The rest of the day? Play it by knee.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: Home

Life & Death got in the way this year, but I'm finally getting around to planning my 2011 photo calendar. What theme should I choose?
[Poll #1659490]

Photos will be from 2010, chosen from my Flickr sets - anything from Conflikt 2010 to the present.

Current Mood: giddy

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howard stateman

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Writing Wrongs

Annoying The Neighbors Since 1950

Entries tagged with calendar

No Movie Because USPS Regulations

PTO On The Halfshell

Training Day

Part Two

Fruition

Mark That Date - Not so much

In Short

2011 Calendar poll