November 29, 2004 - 4:47 am

So, mom and I had gone out running some errands Sunday (more on that later). We got home around 10:30pm, to discover that the pipe that brings water into the toilet had broken, and there was a jet of water shooting up out. The bathroom floor had about an inch of standing water, the rug in the hall outside was soaked, the floors of the rooms that share walls with the bathroom were soaked, and the water had leaked downstairs, to the extent of about 3 inches of standing water in my room in the basement, and in the storage room. My bed actually didn't get much water, just the one corner really where it had soaked down the hanging curtain, totally missed my pillows. And my laptop had been sitting out on the table next to the bed, and it didn't get any direct water, but it did get quite a bit of indirect water, in the form of splashes from drops of water that fell on the table. It's working, but....making grinding noises every now and then. SOOO glad I got the 3 year accidental damage protection, since this shortly followed my dropping it.
So very little in my room got soaked/destroyed, only one thing really, and that's not definitely destroyed, my new power supply. The store room tho, chaos, and not the good kind of chaos. The bins full of water, boxes soaked and falling apart, clothes so waterlogged they fell apart when I tried to pick them up and ring them out kind of chaos. A number of large plastic bins were full of water, enough so that I think if they hadn't caught it, it might well have been more like 4-5 inches of standing water in the basement. A box of my books got soaked. :( It was a number of my favorite ones too, ones I'd boxed up at home and brought over to mom's to store.
So, spent until about 3:15 or so cleaning, then decided that was it for the night, and took a shower. I'm currently running a load of laundry, cos my clean clothes ceased to be my clean clothes when the water ran into them. I've got classes and work today, but I'm going to blow everything except sociology off. I'd blow off socio too, but we've got a test. The prof would most likely let me make it up, but this close to the end of the semester I'd rather not. I haven't studied tho. I should have brought my books with me to mom's, but I didn't. So the current plan is, I'm going to grab a couple hour's sleep, then mom's going to drive me home, I'm going to spend an hour or so cramming, go to school, take the test, and then come back here to mom's and continue the disaster relief efforts.
On the somewhat more upbeat side of things, since Friday, I've spent about $1300. I got an ATI All in Wonder Radeon 9600 XT, a Belkin 802.11G high speed router, an antenna booster for the router, a graphics tablet, purple headphones, and a floppy drive for the computer I built Marcus. And got the 2 year replacement plan for the ATI, the graphics tablet and the router. That was Friday. Saturday, I got an HP IPaq 2215, a 1GB SD card, a Wi-Fi SD card that also has 256MB of memory, and an Antec NeoPower 480 watt PSU. The PSU was in it's box on the floor next to my bed, and the box got soaked, but I'm not sure if the power supply did. When I took it out of the box (when the cardboard box fell apart in my hands), the sheath around the cables coming out of it was damn, but I put the whole thing down on a dry cloth, and the cloth stayed dry, so, perhaps the actual power supply didn't get wet. I'm going to plug it into the junk motherboard I've got and see, but not until tomorrow.
I love my IPaq tho. It's so great. It's got a MUCH better calendar, contacts organizer, and task list than my cell, it can play MP3s, go online, do voice recording, open text, image, pdf, and powerpoint files (along with others), it's a universal remote control, it's got great games, the screen is super visible even with the backlight at it's lowest setting, there are plenty of themes for it, it just all around rocks. And the fact that I got it for about $100 less than retail is pretty darn spiffy too. I got the adapter kit for it today, and am very happy with that. The PDA itself came with a cradle, and you have to put it in the cradle to connect it to the computer or to charge it, because the USB cable can't be removed from the cradle, and the power cable can't plug directly into the PDA, it has to plug into the cradle. So, HP makes a AC adapter kit, with a power cable and the little plug that lets you plug the power cable directly into the PDA, and that's $25 plus shipping, and they make a car adapter, with the car power cable and the plug that plugs into the PDA, and that's $25 plus shipping. And they don't have any cable that will directly connect the PDA to the computer, not that I saw anyway. So, the kit I got, was $40, had a cable that plugs into the PDA on one end, and has a USB plug on the other end. So you can plug the PDA into the computer, and charge it from the computer, or have it directly connected, without the cradle. Then the kit also included a car adapter plug, that plugs into the USB end of the cable, to charge the PDA, and an AC adapter plug with changeable prong plates. It included 4 plates, US, UK, and 2 other countries I forget. So, for my $40, I got 3 different ways to charge the PDA (USB, AC, or car) and the ability to sync the PDA without the cradle, using just the cable. I'm very happy with the kit.

November 20, 2004 - 7:41 pm

so, hmm. Catchup. I got the highest grade in the class on the last psych test, and the prof asked for a copy of my last paper as an 'example of excellence'. And I got an A- (90%) instead of a B+ (89%) on my French test, for no good reason, cos the 89% was after 3 points for answering the bonus question. 'Cept we'd taken the test on my birthday, and in my answer to the bonus question, I'd mentioned it was my birthday, so maybe that was why she gave me the 1 extra point.
Registered for classes at 11 Tuesday. I decided to take the 4 classes on Tuesday and Thursday, and not the Monday/Wednesday one. It's 12 credits, and I really think the extra free time will turn out to be a good thing. We'll see tho.
Ann is driving me completely and totally insane. She thinks if she just ignores problems they'll disappear. And she doesn't do the most basic shit. She doesn't listen to the answering machine and write down the msgs, she doesn't check the oil in the car. Oh, fuck, the car. So, it was making a really nasty rattling sound, so I asked her when she last checked it, and she was all 'I dunno, when I went up to visit Marcus.' And last time I know she went to visit Marcus was like 8 days ago. So we get to the store, and I check the oil, and it's like EMPTY! I ended up putting 3 1/2 quarts in it before it was full! That's so bad for the car. It didn't stop rattling, so it may have been permanently damaged by being run so low on oil. *sigh* And she still hasn't done anything about getting the other car fixed. I don't know what I'm going to do if she can't deal with basic things. Stuff has to get dealt with, and if she won't, I'll have to, but, dealing with all this shit, and going to school, and working, I dunno how that would work. I don't think it would work actually. I can't not work, cos Ann's not working, and if I'm not working, the only source of income is borrowing from Uncle Paul. *sigh* I just wish she'd be a fucking adult, and DEAL WITH SHIT! Argh. Okay, I'm done venting. And that's about all that's worth mentioning of late. Oh, I didn't play with a random boi just to taste test the condoms. Didn't play with any boi. *pout* And I STILL can't find my dildo. I've SOOO got to clean. I swear, I'm so freaking horny, it's just not even right. *grin*
Oh, and I installed fedora core 3 on my laptop. It's spiffy and shiny. 'Cept I couldn't get it to recognize my USB key. And I SO rebooted after plugging it in, with the stupid thing plugged in. So, we came to visit Deane, I figure, hey, I'll ask Sean. So I do, he plugs the key in, turns the laptop on, and it works. gggrrrr. Law of technology, it always works when the one who knows how to fix it is there. But then the touchpad wasn't working, which seemed to drive him mildly insane, and he spent like 20 min trying to make it work, but it wouldn't. No biggie, cos I have my nifty lil USB mouse, I just left it home, cos I was kinda distracted when I left the house, cos my fucking desktop decided to go kablooey. Not literally kablooey of course, winlogon.exe had an IRQ problem right as I was shutting down, and my dumbass clicked shut down anyway. And then of course it wouldn't restart. And yes, I know IRQ is the hardware thing for PCI cards, and shouldn't have anything to do with the winlogon app. Well, 'cept, I suppose maybe winlogon.exe does something to shut down the PCI cards. Dunno. But whatever. C: drive seems to be borked. I could just replace the file, but, meh, I was gonna reinstall windows anyway. And this way, I can install Ubuntu too, see if it'll work. I tried the 386 version of Ubuntu on my laptop, and it didn't work either, but in totally different ways than the 64 bit version didn't work. Meh. Fedora core 3 works on my laptop. So I can learn to play with both kinds of Linux, rpm and apt-get. *silly grin* So I said my standard line to Sean, 'I want my computer to do what I want, when I want it to, with the least amount of effort expended on my part.' And he asked, 'So why are you learning Linux then?' 'Cos I'm bored.' And he said if I ever want to learn programming, he'd show me. I'd have to be REALLY bored tho. But then again, I do learn quite well when being taught by cute guys. *grin* so, if I do wanna learn, being taught by Sean would be good. :P

November 13, 2004 - 8:05 pm

Well, as usual, my birthday sucked. (and not in the fun way.) But whatever. No one at all remembered on their own. So I was feeling pretty down. And realized, I had sort of hung a lot of expectations on college. That being in college would mean expanding my social circle etc. And it hasn't. But at least I'm not sitting around doing nothing all the time.
I dropped one of my 5 weekly shifts from work, cos it just wasn't leaving me enough time for studying and errands.
Danielle is currently separated from James. Tho I dunno if she's going to stay separated. But she has her own apartment. But then last week, she ended up committed for a week, I'm still not clear as to exactly why.
Registration for spring semester is Tuesday through Thursday. I figured out a schedule, it looks good. Bio M&W@1pm-4, all the rest of my classes Tuesday and Thursdays, Psych@11, Math@2, English@3:30, and French@ 5:30. So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'll have classes essentially from 11am-7pm, but I'll only have one class on M&W, and that'll be in the afternoon. So, more free time, and a much better schedule. I'm debating tho, if I should take the bio at all this semester. If I don't, I've got 12 credits, and I only have classes Tuesday and Thursday. If I do take it, then I'm 4 credits up, and have it done, cos it's a req for the psych degree, but don't have M&W totally free, which would be very nice to have. I just dunno.

November 10, 2004 - 12:34 am

The doc's office had a basket of condoms out. Flavored condoms. Including strawberry. I totally took some. They also had non flavored, but I just bought a box of those, so I didn't take any. They also had female condoms, so I took a couple. I'm totally gonna end up giving some quasi random boi head really soon just to taste the flavored condoms. *grin*

November 07, 2004 - 9:44 pm

Deane, my mom's best friend for like 40 years, a woman who is as important to me as the woman who gave birth to me, had triple bypass surgery last week. I don't even know which day, if it was Tuesday or Wednesday. I found out Saturday, when I called, not knowing she was in the hospital, to ask if she was up for mom and I making our fairly typical Saturday evening visit. Only, she didn't answer the phone. Her daughter in law did, and informed me what had happened, and what hospital she was at. So mom and I went to visit Deane, she's ok, might even be out of the hospital Monday night.
I'm really hurt tho, that her son didn't bother to let me or mom know. 4 or 5 days after the fact, well after she was out of danger, after he'd contacted various other people, even emailed people, but hadn't let me or mom know. And then when I talked to him today, he acts like I'm totally out of line because I'm hurt, says 'the point is she had triple bypass surgery.' And that's EXACTLY the point! She had major surgery, could have died, and he didn't bother to let me or mom know, even 4 days afterward! And I'd lay odds if I hadn't called Saturday evening, I still wouldn't know. How the hell am I supposed to feel about that, other than hurt? Would he have bothered to let me know if she died? How long after am I going to find out NEXT time something happens? If she'd died, I wouldn't have had a chance to say goodbye. She's fine, thank the goddess, this time. I love her, as much as I love anyone in this world, and I just can't deal with the fact that apparently Sean felt I wasn't even worth including in an email notification about what had happened days later.