Journal Entries
40-ish days of birthday related silliness (PC)
Posted Mar 21, 2012
I can't post this to Facebook, as he's obviously among my contacts, but K has the cutest "conceptual" birthday thing going for my ( 
) 40th in about six weeks.
40 albums in 40 days. He's picked up, and will continue to pick up, used LPs by bands I like, and will purchase a total of 40.
There's apparently something else closely related he's off discussing with someone at some place at this very moment, but he promises it does not involve being publicly humiliated. I'm not into making a big fuss about myself- this will be the first birthday I can remember in my lifetime having more than one day involved in any way. 
I hate those "birthday week/month/year" people, or anyone who does that "My Special Day" thing about just about any day at all. 
My dad will be here, too- at least May 9-12, so I am taking the 10th and 11th off work so my dad, my uncle, K and I can all spend quality time and dine at some fun establishments. 
Discuss this Journal entry [8]
Latest reply: Mar 21, 2012
Ouch! Oof! Oops! (PC)
Posted Mar 13, 2012
Most of you already know how accident prone I am. I am a klutz!
I think I am going to keep a list of the many strange ways I manage to injure myself.
This morning, I cut my finger- quite badly!- changing a toner cartridge. 
Then we had to place a service call for a tech to come clean all the blood out of the bottom of the printer.
Discuss this Journal entry [26]
Latest reply: Mar 13, 2012
Out with the old... (PC)
Posted Dec 30, 2011
I don't normally make new year's resolutions or anything like that- that's not quite what this journal is about.
But after 10 years in the same space, within the next few months it will be time to find and move to a new home. I'm unsure yet whether we'll be buying, or moving to another rental. Depends what we find. But it's clearly time to start purging some stuff we don't need, or don't use at least, so we won't have to pay the movers to haul stuff we can just donate or something.
I admit I'm a bit of a packrat. I get it from my parents. In my defense, to some degree my tendency to hold on to things comes from a desire to reuse or repurpose them rather than being wasteful. So many people dispose of perfectly useful things, and I think it's immoral. So here I am with a cigar box full of twist ties and rubber bands, a jar containing every binder clip I have ever come in contact with, a storage bin filled with bubble wrap... you get the idea. And while K loves to get new jeans and socks, I don't think he has ever gotten rid of any during his entire adult life, no matter how tatty. I am not exaggerating when I say he has a small plastic dresser in the bedroom closet, and it's filled with nothing but socks.
And then there are all the small appliances, pots and pans, vases, etc, that my uncle has given me because he's cleaning out his house to prepare for selling and moving... had I known we'd be moving first, we'd have left some of it there till then.
I'm also sort of a neat freak, so clearing out some extraneous stuff would make me happier in terms of having less tidying to cope with. Particularly when my dearly beloved is perfectly happy to wallow in clutter and filth, so it's entirely up to me to keep the spice rack alphabetized and the clothes closets organized by color... at least this way I won't have to deal with organizing the Rubber Band Drawer or the Great Wall Of Plastic Containers as well.
So my goal for the beginning of this new year is to start clearing out a little stuff each week and donating it, recycling it, Freecycling it, or whatever needs to be done. We need to make sure we can fit all of our books into the moving truck!
Discuss this Journal entry [10]
Latest reply: Dec 30, 2011
Shiny! (PC)
Posted Dec 28, 2011
I may (or may not) have mentioned once or twice that our desktop computer started slowing down last summer. I'd bought it in February or March of 2006, so it was obviously nearing the end of its life, taking forever to boot up, etc. It wasn't a top-of-the-line model when we bought it, but neither was it totally low-end... but these things wear out, and ours was clearly starting to.
We'd been talking recently about what to replace it with- but hoping to wait to do so till after we move (which will have to be within the next few months, as the lease ends in April) so we had one less thing to worry about packing and unpacking, not losing or having stolen or broken.
But since that power outage we had last year, it's taken to making an odd whining noise, presumably one of the fans, like a turbine on a jet that's readying for takeoff. Shutting it down for a bit always helped. Until last Sunday, that is. After that shutdown, it sent up some kind of distress message on the monitor (we didn't actually see what that said) and wouldn't boot up again. According to the diagnostic lights on the front, the problem is a bad memory module, but having pulled all the memory modules out and trying every possible combination of module(s) and slots, it appears that the motherboard is bad.
The laptop is fine for backup, but it's also rather old and a very low-end model (it belonged to my late mother, and she didn't even use it for accessing the internet, only for record-keeping). After a week of that, I was losing my mind, so on Monday we had to go buy a new one.
I hate shopping the day after christmas, but this was sort of an emergency. So now I have a shiny new toy. And one more expensive thing to worry about moving without losing/ breaking/ etc. It's becoming clear that for this move, we're going to have to hire professionals (and just move the very valuable or extremely fragile items ourselves).
Anyway, once again, we didn't go with the cheapest model, but neither did we go totally high-end (especially with respect to graphics cards- no need for all kinds of overclocking when we're not hardcore gamers, and play mainly on gaming consoles anyway). I did spring for a nice 23" monitor, though, since it was on sale...
Sadly, while most files were stored on an external hard drive, the databases for our Collectorz.com software weren't (we didn't get the external hard drive until after I'd installed), so we'll have to start bar code scanning the books/ movies/ music collection from scratch unless I can retrieve that info from the old hard drive.
Discuss this Journal entry [37]
Latest reply: Dec 28, 2011
Oh, WTF! (PC)
Posted Dec 19, 2011
So, this afternoon, after getting into a very important discussion on Skype, my PC started making this weird grinding sound it's been doing intermittently for 3-4 years. I shut it down to give it a rest, which usually helps. When I went back, it would not boot up and the diagnostic numbers 3 and 4 appear on the front by the hard drive light, apparently indicating either memory failure or a motherboard dump. 
K and I will be shopping for a new PC, ASAP. I am going to shop online and see how fast they can ship- perhaps with the holiday they will ship expedited.
I am on my inherited (from my late mother) laptop, which is slow as shit and for some reason will not download Skype (can't access the download servers), but at least I have it for net access outside of working hours (which, given that the next three weeks I have to do 48+ hours of work in 32 hours time, will be hairy).
Discuss this Journal entry [15]
Latest reply: Dec 19, 2011
Back to psychocandy-moderation team leader's Personal Space Home
psychocandy-moderation team leader
Researcher U194479
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."