Writing Wrongs

Thanks to a late dinner and late taking of meds, I didn't wake up till 10 am. Kaan tried to wake me up by pawing the covers near the small of my back as I slept on my side.

I got up and showered and dressed, medicated and put on shoes to see if the dumpsters had by some quirk of fate been emptied this morning. They had no been. No relief from the litterbox clutter today, then.

Turned on the TV looking for football. Dissapointingly, there was none. At about 1 or 1:30 the Raiders game came on, I made hot dogs & past bow ties, steamed a couple of buns and mustardized and sauerkrauted them and had that all for lunch. Breyers' thin mints ice cream for dessert. The patio door was open, the cats took turns curling up out there in various places.

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Yesterday, I forgot that I had collected the mail, which included my new Driver's License, which is somewhat re-designed from 10 years ago. Or maybe it was 5. This one expires in 2018. The font is smaller for the address, and there is no room designated on the back for a change of address.

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After the Raider's I went out onto the patio and played a couple of rounds of an Android game on the Nexus, but it is obviously fixed, so I gave up and continued reading on the Kindle app. Alan Dean Foster's The Man Who Used the Universe. The deeper I get into the book, the slower a read it has become.

Clever me had the 49ers/Seahawks game set to record on Tivo, so after it had been going for an hour I started watching the recording from the beginning. Usually that's enough of a head start to to FF past the ads and the halftime crap, and I catch up near the end of the game. But this time there was a completely WTF rain delay. For an hour. In Seattle. The idiots who made the call were afraid of lightning, they said. Ridiculous. They almost never have lightning in Seattle, and if they did, the stadium would dissipate it with no harm to anyone.

So I had to reset the recording to go 3 hours longer than scheduled (because Tivo doesn't allow 2 hours), and watch 20/20 and the pre-show for Miss America until it was safe to watch the recording game.

About the game - I was very disappointed that the 49ers were so lame. The Seahawks were too for the first half, but then they found some holes in the SF defense which allowed Lynch to waltz into the end zone untouched twice. There was a very strange call on a Seahawks punt which the announcers completely got wrong. Apparently someone in the audience blew a whistle, and half of the Seattle team went into "the play is over" mode, which allowed SF to block the punt and get the ball with great field position. The announcers kept harping on this, as if Seattle deserved the ball back or something. Idiots: If someone in your stadium blows a whistle, that's a technical foul against the home team, which the visiting team can decline. Jesus on a goal post, people, think for a change.

No dinner as such, I had a bowl of popcorn, a Klondike bar, and just finished an egg cream.

Kaan has taken to climbing up my chest and parking on the top of the recliner. I love his pur, but his tail tickles. He has been very passive agressive today, sitting in front of Domino as she is laying on the sheepskin rug, which intimidates her into leaving for a corner of the livingroom. Sometimes Kaan just sits there, sometimes he kneads the sheepskin.


Sold the Samsung S3 phone on eBay for about the average price being paid for used ones, to someone in Texas. Boxed that up and printed a shipping label. It took 3 tries again, the Canon printer keeps forgetting that paper is 8.5x11 and that it's in the rear feeder.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Post office, mail the phone
Maybe find a beauty supply place
BASFA - I have something to auction.  

Got up at about 9:30, did my meds then got online where a message from the repair shop which sold me the second broken VCR said that from the symptoms, it was nothing I could fix at home. The Sony SLV-700 is incredibly easy to open up, and like the previous broken VCR, there was a large rubber roller rattling around loose in the case. This time I did a better job of matching it to where it belonged - on a post near the audio head. Got that in place, ran the head cleaner tape (which also tests audio & video) and it worked like a champ. The acid test was the 1984 TheatreWorks production of Peter Pan, which I was able to play, FF to my entrance as a pirate, and record that number. WIN! Closed it up, and will do some more captures during the week. Maybe that will be my project Monday-Tuesday while my colon is being cleansed.

The project required my PC to be on so I could see and hear what was coming into the  capture card, so I also spent some Quality Time annoying people on FB. I did this until about 2:30 pm.

Got showered and dressed, hurriedly, because there was email from the apartment that I had a package to pick up. I was home, it should have been delivered to my door by whomever (Fedex, it turns out), but whatever.  I thought the office closed at 3:30 on Saturdays. Turns out to be 5:30. The package was part 2 of a Walmart shipment, part 1 came yesterday, and was sent USPS and ended up in one of the larger mailboxes.

Next project was to put the new map on the GPS in the car, which meant pulling the car apart to get the in-dash unit out, plugging the laptop into the USB port in the back of the unit and replacing the 2010 map file with the 2012 one. I had almost everything apart when it was clear I needed an extension for the electric screwdriver. Back to the apt, it took 10 minutes (including dumping whole drawers out onto the floor) to find it.

Back to the car, got the unit out, and was surprised to find not a standard USB slot but a female USB connector on the end of a cable hard-wired into the unit. This meant I needed a male-to-male USB cable, which I did not think I owned one of. Of which I thought I owned none. And I was right both times. Even dumping everything on my bed failed to find one.  Which meant a trip to Fry's, which meant putting the car back together. Except for one bit of good news. It turns out the cable is long enough to bring through to the front panel, which is something the installer should have done in the first place. It meant I do not have to pull the radio out again. YAY.

Fry's only had one brand/model of this cable, which surprised me, but it was all I needed.

Home, fired up the laptop, attached the USB and nothing. Nada. Nichts. Shum davar. The laptop did not recognize the unit as a drive of any kind. Tried a few slots and looked through the unit's menus, but the clue fairy is on vacation.

Before going to Fry's I had not replaced the last panel - the one which frames the gear shift and has a cigarette lighter connection. To get that panel on or off, the shifter needs to be in low, which means the car engine has to be running to make the shift, and while the engine can be turned off as soon as the gear is shifted, the electricity cannot be turned off until the shifter is in Park. I made the mistake of re-attaching the lighter to its power plug with the power on, and the in-dash unit went dark. I put the car in park, turned the key off and back on (it had some trouble starting) and the unit came up in first-time use mode, asking me to pick a language, etc. A couple more power cycles and it was back where it had been, except I needed to re-set the screen angle.

I'll have to read the hacker instructions again, and find out what I am missing.

By now I had missed the opening of the Google Street View exhibit at CHM, and the first day of panels at SETICon. My concert tomorrow will make it impossible to attend any of SETICon, so boo, hiss.

After the car foo, I organized a box of Stuff™ in the bedroom which is a combination of the contents of the night table, and my desks from the last two long-term jobs. Lots of swag from Terayon which they gave to us when Motorola bought the company in 2007. Maybe the CHM wants some of that. Probably not.

That done, sat out on the patio with Domino, and finished reading the last two Hugo short story nominees. I know which one I will be voting for. IMHO only one of the stories is not Hugo quality, and just barely. I'll post something separately with a no-spoilers wrap-up. On to the novellas. Or are novelettes the shorter ones?

yourbob mentioned that my eyeball icon was creeping him out, and it was creeping me out too so I changed it. One fun thing about LJ is if you change your default icon, it changes every previously posted instance of default icon. 

Plans for tomorrow:
Continue the clear liquids diet
Concert at Shoup Park, Los Altos, 1:30 pm but I'll be there by 1.
Meet Janice for coffee (her) and iced tea (me). She's my ride to and from the "procedure" Tuesday.