Entry 08/03/2011 10:30:29 PM – Mentat 617

“The world is round; it has no point.” – Adrienne E. Gusoff

Needless to say that it’s been a fun couple of weeks since I’ve last sat down to write. I was able to work out getting a replacement mobile phone for the one that I broke, and so far it’s survived longer than the first one (by a couple of weeks). Was also able to get the screen protector on without any problem whatsoever, and now I don’t mind it so much when I get oily fingerprints all over the screen because they’re easy enough to wipe off with a lint-free cloth. So I can be as ham-handed about it as I want without worrying about it getting dirty — which was probably the reason why I was being so cautious and careful that caused me to drop the phone in the first place. Was even able to work out a slight glitch in getting the SD card recognized on the PC. Then we had a power fluctuation in the house early in the morning between the last entry and this one, causing the power supply to die a terrible and horrible death (read: didn’t come back online with enough power for the video card).

New power supply in place (one with about 300 watts more power than the previous and putting it at a humble 1100 watts) and Frankenstein’s beast is back online. However, it turns out one of the front intake fans refuses to power up for reasons I’m not entirely sure. While it’s only one fan out of six, it’s still enough for me to be only slightly concerned with the cooling within the box particularly given the heat wave we’ve just come out from. At the moment, the temperatures around the Tundras of New England are more than a little comfortable — but as this is August (and technically the hottest time of the year) — I’m sure we have a couple of more days this month for the scorching hot (near 100 F/40 C) temps to strike some more.

*sighs* Still though, if it’s not one thing, it’s another…

Other than that — it’s relatively quiet here at the moment. My aunt and uncle are getting ready for a trip to Florida in a couple of weeks, for a couple of weeks, which means I’ll be watching their pets along with making sure things go along smoothly while they’re gone. It’s going to be pretty interesting to hear back from them given that Florida at this time of year is infinitely worse than here — and they’ve been practically melting (and bitching about it) the instant the temperature gets above 85 F (29.4 C).

I’ve been feeling pretty good since I’ve gotten the bike back and doing 20 km a day riding. Heh, some days I’m so covered in sweat, people think I got caught in a downpour along the way, though the good thing is that I haven’t had any sort of charley horses, and whatever swelling I had of the feet and ankles quickly goes down with so much as a 20 minute walk (1 mile/1.6 km). Good thing too — because while it’s not in the least bit painful, the fourth generation hypochondriac that I can be ends up thinking horrible things are going on — from elephantiasis (as I’ve said before) to kidney failure, to some of the nastier heart conditions/heart disease that can be found on the medical related websites.

I know, I know… leave the diagnoses to medical professionals if there’s a problem, and as a fourth generation hypochondriac to steer well clear of such sites. It’s just that sometimes in the morning, while I’m still waking up and sort of in a curious frame of mind, I end up finding information that seems to relate to my symptoms, and even though I’ve read it and realize that it’s not going to happen here — like the elephantiasis (which occurs in tropical areas) — my brains think that there’s always a possibility of it happening here. And that’s when I become my own worst nightmare and start worrying. At least for about 30 or so minutes before I drive it all out of my head and go about my business as usual. At least the good thing is that such silly worrying doesn’t seem to invade into my unconscious and I end up dreaming about some dreaded virus or some such happening…

…No! Of course not! What ends up in my head is working/quitting and re-hiring at my last job almost a year later. Yeah, that’s the dream that I had last night. One that was so annoying and disorientating, when I woke up at 6 in the morning to Cricket’s parading up and down my pillow because she was hungry was that I wasn’t sure whether it was all a dream or whether there were parts of reality to it with me going back to work there. Yeah, that one was definitely fun. Took me two minutes longer than I wanted to spend thinking about it this morning and realizing that my going back to work there for some months and then quitting again was a recurring theme of my dreams whenever I dream of the job.

Although sitting here and thinking about that dream again, I realize that I had another dream that followed it that was even more demented than the whole working/quitting recurring theme that I had. No, the next dream that tied in had nothing to do with the usual aliens invading earth motif that I typically have. And no, it wasn’t post war nuclear holocaust either. All I can remember as I’m sitting here writing this is that it was… weird in a very entertaining sort of way. Oh well… I might be able to remember it another time; right now though it’s lost to the back recesses of my brain waiting to jump out when I least expect it.

Speaking of, I was thinking about that during my ride through Smithfield. In about 2 weeks, I’ll have celebrated my first anniversary of leaving that job and loafing as I have during that time. Funny how even after a year of ups and downs and some of the trials and tribulations that I’ve gone through, I still find myself torn as to my decision on it. It’s not as bad now as it was last year — though it’s enough to still pull at me sometimes and leave me wondering whether I did the right thing or not. While my sanity is certainly better for it — it’s just one of those sort of things that I sometimes wonder whether this was a challenge I should have learned from instead of bailing out before I completely lost my temper. *shrugs* At this point it’s neither here nor there as it’s not something that can be readily rectified

Cricket’s hating the heat at about this point. If she hasn’t been growling and hissing at me when I’ve checked for life and gave her a quick pet, she’s been so sprawled out and lacking such energy during the day when the temperatures get up above 80. Her appetite’s slacked off a little because of it, though I did press her a bit into continuing to eat the three cans of wet food a day and whatever dry she’s in the mood for. Right now she’s off on the bed, sprawled out again and completely passed out after finishing off her third can of food for the day.

When it cools off though Cricket shows a lot more life. I think that the field mouse my aunt’s caught hints of has been making its way into my part of the house, which might explain why Cricket’s been in some of the more obscure parts of the apartment staring at things for hours at a time. When I go to investigate, Cricket seems to try to poke into things — particularly when I come with a flashlight. Though neither she nor I have found any trace of the field mouse, making me think that she’s getting demented in her old age and chasing after shadows more than anything.

As a precaution I’ve laid out a couple of humane traps to see if I can’t catch it, but so far the traps have been left un-sprung leaving me think that it’s only in my aunt’s part of the house and not mine.

That’s about it for the time being. Off to watch the continuing sweeping melodramatic soap opera — The Great Queen SeonDeok that Hulu has had available. Sixty-two, just over an hour long episodes that’s a sort of historic story about the first Queen of the Silla Empire. Pretty damned good too, even if it’s been terribly predictable at some points. Not to mention the villain of the story is someone I can just love to hate – Misil. Something I would strongly recommend to people if they’re interested in period pieces.

Until the next time.

Entry 07/23/2011 11:27:01 AM – Mentat 616

“Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive.” – Elbert Hubbard

Jeez, have we ever had a hell of a heatwave the last couple of days. Temperatures were averaging in the mid to upper 90s F (~35 C) with heat indexes getting as high as 105 F (40.5 C). To make matters worse, humidity was well over 70% each day the temperatures were above the 90s. Right now it’s a bit on the warm side with the temperature being 79 F (26.1 C) with the heat index making it feel like 82 F (27.7 C), though with it sporadically raining outside, it’s keeping the breeze cooler than normal. Good thing too as I didn’t think my cat was up for more of the outrageous heat (and neither have I been come to think of it). Though from what I’m seeing of the weather reports, once this rainstorm passes, temperatures around here will return to what we expect of this time of year — warm without being unbearably sweltering. Of course, the fun part has been listening to the local meteorologists trying to explain to the viewers that these temperatures are in part to the excessive rain we had received in the spring and how the moisture is being trapped underneath the cloud cover. This of course coming from people that can be more than 80% wrong and still keep their jobs. Uh, this is also why I have a Magic 8-Ball on my desk so that I can tell a forecast of the weather in the area the same way they do.

Last week I was able to find the Bicycle Shop in Lincoln and drop off my bike for them to get the derailleur re-aligned. Good thing too, given that when we finally found the place, they had put up a sign that tells everyone coming there that they are moving to a new location in Cumberland (about 8 miles (12.8 km) north and east of their current location and about 11 miles (17.7 km) from the house). While I was there, the mechanic also (strongly) suggested/offered to rebalance/reconstruct the bike to make sure everything was put into order as he had noticed several issues with the brakes, the front gear shift and the tires. Price is reasonable — estimate set at $65 or so — hopefully it won’t go too crazy with any other issues that he might come across — though I suspect it’ll still be a thousand time less than if I were to bring in a car to a mechanic to have it fixed (which used to cost me on average $200 – $400 depending on the car I had and the problems that they would discover while it was in the shop). Told the man that I wasn’t in much of a rush to get it back because of the already well on its way heatwave, which he says I should be getting a call from him on either Tuesday or Wednesday next week. Good thing too, given that they’re in the process of moving, and I’m sure that they would want it out of their store before moving day.

In other news… of the most frustratingly stupid kind. After weeks and months of deliberations about whether or not I wanted to upgrade my long-in-the-tooth smartphone, a quick call to my cell phone provider tells me that I’m eligible for grandfathering my plan onto a new phone. So with my eye on something Droid, and my mobile provider has one that’s up my alley. So off to one of the local Wally World‘s I go for the sale that they have going on the HTC Inspire. Nice enough phone, though a lot more persnickety about signal in the house than my old Blackjack, but I was able to work out a good place for it to sit and get signal without burning through the battery while it tries ramping up power to get signal. Even got around to trying out some of the other features on it to get a feel about battery life when yesterday, as I was clearing out the messages, I dropped the phone. Like the physics that makes buttered toast drop butter-side down on the floor, my phone did the same thing with the front panel and leaving it looking like this. I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh at the foible, or be insanely mad about it and ended up resigning myself to the apathy that comes from the fact that I haven’t dropped a cell phone in the last 8 years. The last phone that I dropped was my first phone, which I affectionately used to call the Angry Cricket, and that thing was extremely durable. So, later on today, I’m off to see about getting a replacement… *sighs*

[Last Edited: 07/23/2011 09:26:11 PM]

All right, I went to Wally World where I had bought the phone from and the look on the salesman’s face when I showed him what happened to the faceplate was priceless. Said to me that it wasn’t a simple buy a new one and put it on the account, but instead would involve getting insurance on the phone and then having to pay the deductable ($125.00 for the deductible) in order to get a replacement. As I didn’t purchase the replacement insurance (because of my experience with Sprint and how the screwed me over when the time came to replace my Angry Cricket when it was stolen and sending me this generic no name piece of shit phone), the salesman suggest a method of getting the phone replaced without paying $500 for the replacement phone… That is to say, get the insurance, and then report the phone damaged for replacement in a week or so time.

Technically the phone works, I can make calls and it beeps at all the right times. It’s just that I can’t do any of the necessary gestures on the face as the glass is splintered and I’m sure I’ll end up with a couple of glass shards in my fingertips. Not worried about my ear or face as I had luckily paired my old headset to the new phone and it was working all right. Particularly given that I received a call from the Bicycle Shop about an hour before their closing with them telling me that the repairs to my bike had been completed.

So off like a shot I go with my aunt down to the shop to pick up my bike. The costs were as estimated ($65.00) with a warning from the mechanic that there wasn’t something quite right about the freewheel. Said that when it was on the rack everything seemed to work properly, but when he gave the thing a quick test right, said that the it felt like shit. Like there was a knock in it. I just told him that given that the shop is going to be moving the middle of the week, I would hold off on bothering him about it, and will give it a test through the week to see what the problem was.

Got the bike home, had a quick bite to eat, waited a half hour (not a good idea, but I’ll get to that in a moment), and took it for a quick spin around the block… 3.6 miles (5.8 km) later, I’m thoroughly sweated, having all sorts of palpitations and completely winded because I did the ride in under a half-hour; I see precisely what the mechanic was talking about. There is indeed some sort of knock going on when one pedals and changes gears. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong per se. I took off my earbuds and listened as I pedaled up the hill — you can’t hear anything unusual about the bike. Gears change fine, pedaling sounds like it should. But I can definitely feel this knock in the pedals as I chugged along. The longer I was at it, the less it was knocking, and so by the end of my ride, about the only time I could feel it knocking away was when I was changing gears… After that it seems to ride much smoother than it did when I started my quick jaunt.

Oh, and you know how they warn swimmers to wait an hour after eating before getting back into the water? It’s about the same with riding. Combine this with outrageous heat, humidity and ground level ozone and it was hell. Not to mention doing that in about ½ hour too. I’ll take my time next time… the last thing I need to be doing is passing out in the rich people neighborhood. They would have a conniption if I did that. And I don’t need that sort of drama in that part of town.

Other than that, I’m doing pretty well… Though I had a bit of a scare a couple of days after my last journal entry when the temperatures really began skyrocketing the first time. Had pizza for lunch one day (last Sunday or Monday) and my feet and ankles were really swollen. Like to the point where I had Baron Vladimir Harkonnen like cankles. Found out from my aunt that my grandmother and she both suffer from the same things, and is attributed with the heart disease that also runs through the family. She tells me it’s salt accumulation in the system coupled with high heat and humidity and that if I kept my feed up for a couple of days and relaxed, they would go away.

Three days later, they went away as promised, but started coming back a couple of days later. Doing a little research I found out that some simple exercise — like a walk break — would cause the water accumulating in my feet and ankles to circulate. While the bike out of commission and later was in for repairs, I decided to take a couple of miles walk every night around the neighborhood, listening to music and taking more than a couple of pictures for Glenn. Sure enough, by the time I got home from my walk, any swelling that I had going was completely gone.

Man, I’m really beginning to hate since I’ve turned 47. It’s been practically non-stop issues since my birthday.

Anyway, that’s about it for the time being. It’s getting fairly late, and with the temperatures the way they are, it’s going to be a rough night for me to sleep. Can’t wait ’til tomorrow night when the temperatures are really supposed to plummet. Until the next time.