Writing Wrongs

Set up LoudTwitter a couple of days ago to ship my tweets here, and set up here to allow such shipping, however nothing has shipped. Should have used Fedex.

The usual job hunt this morning, except I am getting too many hits which are totally unrelated to what I am looking for, or have a different primary skill set than what I have, so I edited my search agents to only look at titles, and not bother me if they see the wrong keyword. DICE.com, unfortunately, does not allow editing all the search fields, so I had to nuke what I had and do new ones. Boo hiss. There was a posting from Harmonic, which I replied to, but otherwise nothing.

The search was not helped by my eyesight being blurry for about an hour after I woke up - have been using very expensive "Blink" brand eye drops, suggested by my previous ophthalmologist, but they just don't do the job. Back to the generic.

Following up on last night's ancient photo search, I sat down to scan in a bunch of negatives which I would like to send to Friends of Thailand, my first three rolls taken when I arrived for Peace Corps training in 1975. And also a couple of rolls of what may include 1974 World's Fair pix, but definitely includes pictures of my scantily clad, very hot girlfriend at the time. Put a strip of negatives in the scanner and fired up the software, and long story short, my all-in-one printer/copier/fax/scanner does not scan film or slides.

Tried to find anything online about the Twisp Smokejumpers hosting the Russian VIP in 1974-5, but the web just doesn't go back that far in the toolies. I thought of contacting the newspaper, but they are now part of a huge chain of weeklies scattered around WA and OR, and I think I will have better luck asking crowblog to ask her friend at the WA State Library to have a look. Also looked for the pin which the Russian gave to me from the Soviet pavilion, but it's not where I thought I left it. Though it might be in one of my lock boxes. Hmmm.

Nope, not there :-(

Finally got dressed and went to Fry's on a mission to see if they had a film-capable scanner which could do negatives, and they did. I picked up an Epson 300, which they had priced at $80. Weird, because it had an open box price on it of $95. The peons gave me a $20 discount (it took about 15 minutes). Got it home and FAIL. Whoever had returned it had kept the required film holder. And the way the scanner is set up, it can only scan one section of film at a time. Can't do proof sheets.

I was going to take it right back, but it was after 3 by now, and I didn't want to deal with metered on-ramps and major traffic. So I went to Starbucks and cashed in my free drink card.

Home, searched online for a film scanner, found some possibilities of the compact frame-at-a-time variety. May get one of those, but first I wanted to see if there was anything else at Fry's (instant gratification, y'know?). After 7, took the scanner back for a refund, looked at what else was on the slab, but nothing leaped out at me. I did find some laminate-it-yourself baggage tags which I've been looking for, and Godiva 85% chocolate.

Home again, Ukranian pirogies and a couple of small pieces of leftover KFC. Fudgesickle for dessert. Two goodies arrived from Amazon, about half an hour apart - the portable camp stove, and the music stand. Music stand is much heavier than expected, but that's probably a Good Thing for outdoor concerts. Won't get a chance to try it out till the next rehearsal on the 16th.

While I was at Starbucks, I tried to update a free app on the iPhone. The phone said my account has been disabled "for security reasons". Total BS because this is a free app, and there should be no security check at all, but Apple does one anyway. Stupid. A security risk of itself.  So when I got home, I logged on, unlocked the account, and it still won't let me update.

I think this may be the straw which sends me back to Android. And maybe to Verizon while I'm at it. Maybe. I ought to be on 4G anyway. The HTC phones look pretty nice.

Got my revised bill from Palo Alto Medical, and they effed it up again. Even after I phoned and they said they would fix it so the right branch of Blue Cross was on my record.

As I was online dealing with the Apple foo, the phone rings, it is a new recruiter at Harmonic. Turns out she used to work for Motorola, and I have met her several times when I worked for the Terayon group. We know a lot of people in common, including two theater friends who are also recruiters. Chatted for about 25 minutes, she seemed to think she needed to sell me on wanting to work for Harmonic. I have been trying to get a job there for years. She says they have some openings I match, and she'll forward my resume. It will probably take a couple of weeks to hear anything, though.

Plans for tomorrow:
PAMF, to yell at someone in the billing department
Nail parlor - to put back the acrylic coating. The gel coat is not holding up at all.
Meet a friend for coffee at Clocktower next to the nails place