So, frustration has been the key work in recent days. No real improvement in pain levels or mobility, so it looks like this week I push on to the next level. One thing for certain, between pain and pills, my body chemistry and rhythm are fucked up again, I can't sleep at night, and I try going through the day until I start dozing off in the middle ( Read more... )

Jeff came home early Thursday for a doctor's visit, the last few days he's been having mild flu-like symptoms. We made a trip together to the doc and tests seem to indicate it is viral in nature, so it is mostly a rest and wait it out situation. I went with him to see if there was anything I could help with at home, and to get an idea what it was, ( Read more... )

Today is Jeff's birthday. Together we are over 104 years old. I feel every bit of those years too. To celebrate, I took Jeff to Outback Steakhouse (g'day, crikey, fair dinkum, crocs, you call that a knife and all that stuff). On our way home he got a call out of the blue from a former coworker he was very good friends with. Hearing them catching up ( Read more... )

Being a professional crastinator of epic proportions at times, I waited until the last minute to file my taxes, given that I have had to pay sizable amounts in the past since being off work and pulling funds from locked-away accounts. Because of some changes, plus the expensive surgeries and other medical bills from last year, I instead found I am ( Read more... )

Earlier in the week I pulled the plug on my LJ. I had mostly run out of uses for this, and, to be honest, no longer felt the need to have an outlet for what I would call "personal" matters and discussion with the internet in general. It has been about 20 years (!) since I had ventured out onto the internet in a personal capacity, rather than a ( Read more... )

You might've noticed a bit of quiet around here. This is mostly because I've still being Mr. Crankypants due to an ongoing cold-like thing that both Jeff and I have shared in. Jeff got it first (he probably got it as a free gift from the hospital) and I got the BOGO deal a bit later. Needless to say, days since last week have been a coughy, phlegmy ( Read more... )

Trying to make the best of my unwilling homebody-ness, I've taken the opportunity to do some upgrading of my implements of computing and music, and in this case, there's a lot of overlap. Last year I replaced the troublesome Onkyo receiver with, well, another Onkyo. I have to admit that the company treated me well, repairing the unit twice well ( Read more... )

I'm currently sitting in the bowels of Ice Station Mayhem watching the temperature outside drop with every glance at the thermometer. It's currently 4 degrees F, and still steadily dropping. The house is toasty warm, with the woodstove working at near blast furnace levels thanks to the howling winds outside causing the flue to draw like crazy and ( Read more... )

Here's a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the underground bunker at La Casa Mayhem. What am I doing, you might ask? Well, once again I am directing the full power of my fully operational battle station awesome IT infrastructure to bear on an innocent old man in hopes of making him cry again. In other words, I am fixing and printing more family ( Read more... )

Lately I've been engaging in some computer building and other related nerdery. The PC that got wrecked by the malware got a different hard drive and was nicely reborn as a workshop PC, and I actually bought my first desktop machine, as in one I did not assemble from parts. Newegg.com had a sale on refurbed business desktops, I picked up a cheap HP ( Read more... )