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tired...
Lin & Kermit have been down for a visit.
Primary purposes were attending a David Weber signing at Powells Beaverton, secondary ewas seeing if I could fix Kermit's computer.
(long and rambling)
Of course, the timing sucked, given that they were going to be down Wed, and the annual inspection of the apatrment was Tues.
At least this time I managed to get thru the "mad cleanup before the inspection" with a lot less "mad". Other than spending too much time on my feet the night before what with the vacuuming and mopping, (and feeling it when I showered before crashing) I wasn't stressed out.
Hoewever my sleep schedule had already been messed up. And got worse as various phone calls kept catching me just when I needed to sleep or when I'd been asleep *just* long enough that the interruption ruined the benefits of sleeping.
So I was still recovering from the cleanup, and had not enough sleep (interrupted sleep at that) before Lin & Lermit showed up.
We exchanged a few things.
Lin got Brooke *two* makeup kits. One nice and properly adult.. The other is full of pink & sparkly/glittery stuff. That one ought to help me manage the "fairy godfather" idea for next Halloween.
I showed her a few things I'd gotten since that last time they were up. I was not happy when the *beautiful* skirt I got at Orycon was nowhere to be found. Since it'd still been in the plastic shopping bag I'd brought it home in, I had a horrible fear that the bag had gotten grabbed with a lot of similar bags and dumped in the trash.
Any, we headed out and took care of a couple of errands before heading off to Beaverton. One was an unplanned stop at a Fred Meyers due to Kewrmit missing a turn and winding up driving past. Since Lin was with me, that reminded my to go look for the "3d paint".
This is a cheaper equivalent to the "Hi Mark" stuff that the commision for the Blind sells. You appliy it, let it dry and you have colored *raised* marks on things. If it's bright colors, good for folks with minimal eyesite. And the raised makes it good for finding things by touch.
I wanted some beacuse I have a few things where the designers expect you to look *way* to close to figure out what button is what. I may also use some on the controls of the gadget I use to turn the lights on and off from bed.
But what I've done so far is mark my Logitech DiNovo keyboard. You see, they added an extra key to the function key row. It doesn't fo anything unless you have their special drivers loaded (and I saw no need to load them). But because of that extra key, the gaps between it and F1, between F4 and F5 and F8 and F9 are really tiny. You have to look hard to see them.
[esc]F-lock] [F1][F2]....
So I kept hitting F3 instead of F4, which can cause problems in sevel programs I use). A line of neon pink paint down the dividers and I can tell at a glance.
So, back to the trip...
Good thing we were ahead of schedule as it turns out that Powells had moved the Beaverton store since the last time they'd been down.
We got to the new location with time to spare and succumbed to the lure of new books while we waiting (Gee, ya think that's why the store had the signing? :-)
I actually had to grab a basket (my arm hated me and so did my legs).
The signing turned into something like 90 minutes of talking & Q&A before a few folks had to leave and David started signing.
We heard a lot of interesting stuff. Most of which I couldn't do justice too, and a few of which we were sworn to secrecy about.
I *can* say that he'll be turning in the second Saganami Island book in July. Then there's another one he has to turn in in December, and only then does he get to really start working on the next Honor Harrington book.
I got his new book (Armageddon Reef, first of a new series for Tor) and the trade paperback reprint of Oath of Swords, which has a *new* Bahzell story in the back.
I also found a signed copy of Kris Longknife, Mutineer to replace my old copy which show got water damaged. The old coipy is going to be a loaner to help "spread the infection". It's loaned to Kermit right now.
We had dinner at Elmers after the signing (it was across the parking lot and it was getting late enough that we were afraid we'd be stck with a choice between Denny's and Shari's).
Being the last customers has it's points if you are nice. We got offered dinner rolls (they have some intersting homemade ones) even thougfh our meals didn't really come with any. In fact, as we were finishing up, the waitress asked us if we'd like the rest of the batch, since they'd only get thrown out. We cheerfully accepted the offer.
By the time they dropped me off, I was ready to crash. And it was only 10:30. I checked my mail and crawled into bed.
Then I woke up at around 4:30 am and couldn't get back to sleep.
So I got up and did a check on Kermits computer and confirmed that the power supply was at least *one* of the problems.
Hint for folks who know the people who work on your vomputers. You will not please your repair person if you tell them "Oh yeah, the fan on the power supply went out months ago. Did I need to do sopmething about that?"
Of course, by the time they'd said it was ok to call them, I was starting to feel a bit sleepy. And they were at breakfast. I still managed to rough in part of our plans for the day, and Lin said she'd call me after they got back to their room.
After the secoondary planning session, they headed over, got me, and we headed out.
Our first stop was ENU to get a replacement power supply for Kermit's system. I'd put it first so that if there were more problems, we'd have time to go back and get more parts.
Slight snag. They didn't open until noon. Oops.
Oh wel,, we'd grouped errands and possible errands, and both a Kmart and Costco were nearby.
At Kmart, I got myself some more sports bras. I know some will think it's silly, but I find that sports bras feel ok, and are "tigt" enough that even without forms there aren't those weird bulges you get with regular bras. Soo I can wear them in "guy" mode without being obvious but stil know that I'm wearing a bra.
I now have "enough" bras that I can start wearing them all the time unless I'm going to be doing something where I shouldn't wear them.
I also got a cheap hairbrush to replace my old one. I figured it needed replacing when I hit a snag Monday night and the entire "pad" and bristles assembly came out of the handle. Oops...
Lin got a few things there too.
We still had time to kill, so it was off the Costco. I got the one thing I really wanted from there (a rather fancy power strip/surge suppressor thingy that had coax inputs that were capable of handling *modern* cable & satellite signals.) I already had one, that I had the TV/stereo etc on. But I beeded another for the cable modem which is in another room. Now I have both cable lines protected.
Lin got a case of paper for their printers and I decided that sounded like a good idea and got one myself (Lord that's heavy!) We also picked up a few small things.
What with all the standing and *slow* walking as we wandered thru Costco my legs were *most* unhappy. Mostly my thighs.
ENU was open by then and we got Kermit's power supply. I also opicked up a few HDs as I needed them for the round of upgrades I'm doing to my systems (which are likely going to have to last me for quite a while).
We got lunch (Hot Lips pizza,, mmm) and hit the liquor store next to it for a few things (seems Oregon is much cheaper than Washington).
Back to the Apartment where I installed the power supply. Yep, tthe system actually *did* something when you turned on the power. The CPU fan even spun up. Amd we got beeps...
One long, two short... a quick check on the web said "video adapter failure"
So I pulled his video card. And stuck in one from my old Win98 box that has been recently decommissioned. Well, it seemed to boot ok, but still now picture. I tried a couple different monitos, but that didn't help.
It may just be some setting in the BIOS, but I can't tell.
So Kermit gets to leave the system here as it's gonna take a few days minimum to get him something that'll *work* without risking any data that's still readable on his HD (he wasn't sure if there was a problem with *that* too)
So as it was getting to be late afternoon/early evening by then, we decided to skip a few place that might be closed before we got to them (and earler they'd decided they were going to stay one more day). So we headed out to Sportman's warehouse & Stuff.
It was decided to hit stuff first as they thought it closed earlier. I forget what Lin got, I wound ou grabbing a NetGear Musice thingy. Bacially, load software on one or more of your computers, plug box into stereo and either use ethernet cable or built in wireless for box to link to the computers an be able to play any MP3 or WMA files on them.
We decided to skip anything else because both Lin and I (especially me) were having trouble "tracking" (I did a fair bit of babbling).
I got home and crashed at 7:30 pm. Other than a couple of bathroom runs, I slept thru til 5am. 10 hoiurs is *unusual* for me.
We'll probably do a few minor errands and then they'll be heading home this afternoon.
Primary purposes were attending a David Weber signing at Powells Beaverton, secondary ewas seeing if I could fix Kermit's computer.
(long and rambling)
Of course, the timing sucked, given that they were going to be down Wed, and the annual inspection of the apatrment was Tues.
At least this time I managed to get thru the "mad cleanup before the inspection" with a lot less "mad". Other than spending too much time on my feet the night before what with the vacuuming and mopping, (and feeling it when I showered before crashing) I wasn't stressed out.
Hoewever my sleep schedule had already been messed up. And got worse as various phone calls kept catching me just when I needed to sleep or when I'd been asleep *just* long enough that the interruption ruined the benefits of sleeping.
So I was still recovering from the cleanup, and had not enough sleep (interrupted sleep at that) before Lin & Lermit showed up.
We exchanged a few things.
Lin got Brooke *two* makeup kits. One nice and properly adult.. The other is full of pink & sparkly/glittery stuff. That one ought to help me manage the "fairy godfather" idea for next Halloween.
I showed her a few things I'd gotten since that last time they were up. I was not happy when the *beautiful* skirt I got at Orycon was nowhere to be found. Since it'd still been in the plastic shopping bag I'd brought it home in, I had a horrible fear that the bag had gotten grabbed with a lot of similar bags and dumped in the trash.
Any, we headed out and took care of a couple of errands before heading off to Beaverton. One was an unplanned stop at a Fred Meyers due to Kewrmit missing a turn and winding up driving past. Since Lin was with me, that reminded my to go look for the "3d paint".
This is a cheaper equivalent to the "Hi Mark" stuff that the commision for the Blind sells. You appliy it, let it dry and you have colored *raised* marks on things. If it's bright colors, good for folks with minimal eyesite. And the raised makes it good for finding things by touch.
I wanted some beacuse I have a few things where the designers expect you to look *way* to close to figure out what button is what. I may also use some on the controls of the gadget I use to turn the lights on and off from bed.
But what I've done so far is mark my Logitech DiNovo keyboard. You see, they added an extra key to the function key row. It doesn't fo anything unless you have their special drivers loaded (and I saw no need to load them). But because of that extra key, the gaps between it and F1, between F4 and F5 and F8 and F9 are really tiny. You have to look hard to see them.
[esc]F-lock] [F1][F2]....
So I kept hitting F3 instead of F4, which can cause problems in sevel programs I use). A line of neon pink paint down the dividers and I can tell at a glance.
So, back to the trip...
Good thing we were ahead of schedule as it turns out that Powells had moved the Beaverton store since the last time they'd been down.
We got to the new location with time to spare and succumbed to the lure of new books while we waiting (Gee, ya think that's why the store had the signing? :-)
I actually had to grab a basket (my arm hated me and so did my legs).
The signing turned into something like 90 minutes of talking & Q&A before a few folks had to leave and David started signing.
We heard a lot of interesting stuff. Most of which I couldn't do justice too, and a few of which we were sworn to secrecy about.
I *can* say that he'll be turning in the second Saganami Island book in July. Then there's another one he has to turn in in December, and only then does he get to really start working on the next Honor Harrington book.
I got his new book (Armageddon Reef, first of a new series for Tor) and the trade paperback reprint of Oath of Swords, which has a *new* Bahzell story in the back.
I also found a signed copy of Kris Longknife, Mutineer to replace my old copy which show got water damaged. The old coipy is going to be a loaner to help "spread the infection". It's loaned to Kermit right now.
We had dinner at Elmers after the signing (it was across the parking lot and it was getting late enough that we were afraid we'd be stck with a choice between Denny's and Shari's).
Being the last customers has it's points if you are nice. We got offered dinner rolls (they have some intersting homemade ones) even thougfh our meals didn't really come with any. In fact, as we were finishing up, the waitress asked us if we'd like the rest of the batch, since they'd only get thrown out. We cheerfully accepted the offer.
By the time they dropped me off, I was ready to crash. And it was only 10:30. I checked my mail and crawled into bed.
Then I woke up at around 4:30 am and couldn't get back to sleep.
So I got up and did a check on Kermits computer and confirmed that the power supply was at least *one* of the problems.
Hint for folks who know the people who work on your vomputers. You will not please your repair person if you tell them "Oh yeah, the fan on the power supply went out months ago. Did I need to do sopmething about that?"
Of course, by the time they'd said it was ok to call them, I was starting to feel a bit sleepy. And they were at breakfast. I still managed to rough in part of our plans for the day, and Lin said she'd call me after they got back to their room.
After the secoondary planning session, they headed over, got me, and we headed out.
Our first stop was ENU to get a replacement power supply for Kermit's system. I'd put it first so that if there were more problems, we'd have time to go back and get more parts.
Slight snag. They didn't open until noon. Oops.
Oh wel,, we'd grouped errands and possible errands, and both a Kmart and Costco were nearby.
At Kmart, I got myself some more sports bras. I know some will think it's silly, but I find that sports bras feel ok, and are "tigt" enough that even without forms there aren't those weird bulges you get with regular bras. Soo I can wear them in "guy" mode without being obvious but stil know that I'm wearing a bra.
I now have "enough" bras that I can start wearing them all the time unless I'm going to be doing something where I shouldn't wear them.
I also got a cheap hairbrush to replace my old one. I figured it needed replacing when I hit a snag Monday night and the entire "pad" and bristles assembly came out of the handle. Oops...
Lin got a few things there too.
We still had time to kill, so it was off the Costco. I got the one thing I really wanted from there (a rather fancy power strip/surge suppressor thingy that had coax inputs that were capable of handling *modern* cable & satellite signals.) I already had one, that I had the TV/stereo etc on. But I beeded another for the cable modem which is in another room. Now I have both cable lines protected.
Lin got a case of paper for their printers and I decided that sounded like a good idea and got one myself (Lord that's heavy!) We also picked up a few small things.
What with all the standing and *slow* walking as we wandered thru Costco my legs were *most* unhappy. Mostly my thighs.
ENU was open by then and we got Kermit's power supply. I also opicked up a few HDs as I needed them for the round of upgrades I'm doing to my systems (which are likely going to have to last me for quite a while).
We got lunch (Hot Lips pizza,, mmm) and hit the liquor store next to it for a few things (seems Oregon is much cheaper than Washington).
Back to the Apartment where I installed the power supply. Yep, tthe system actually *did* something when you turned on the power. The CPU fan even spun up. Amd we got beeps...
One long, two short... a quick check on the web said "video adapter failure"
So I pulled his video card. And stuck in one from my old Win98 box that has been recently decommissioned. Well, it seemed to boot ok, but still now picture. I tried a couple different monitos, but that didn't help.
It may just be some setting in the BIOS, but I can't tell.
So Kermit gets to leave the system here as it's gonna take a few days minimum to get him something that'll *work* without risking any data that's still readable on his HD (he wasn't sure if there was a problem with *that* too)
So as it was getting to be late afternoon/early evening by then, we decided to skip a few place that might be closed before we got to them (and earler they'd decided they were going to stay one more day). So we headed out to Sportman's warehouse & Stuff.
It was decided to hit stuff first as they thought it closed earlier. I forget what Lin got, I wound ou grabbing a NetGear Musice thingy. Bacially, load software on one or more of your computers, plug box into stereo and either use ethernet cable or built in wireless for box to link to the computers an be able to play any MP3 or WMA files on them.
We decided to skip anything else because both Lin and I (especially me) were having trouble "tracking" (I did a fair bit of babbling).
I got home and crashed at 7:30 pm. Other than a couple of bathroom runs, I slept thru til 5am. 10 hoiurs is *unusual* for me.
We'll probably do a few minor errands and then they'll be heading home this afternoon.