21 September 2011
Not doing Tucknotes seems to be connected with not writing, which is y'all's definition of 'suck'. So I should write Tucknotes.
Plus I'm pissed off.
I put up two episodes on Friday (yay). Saturday we had a friend visit.
Sunday and Monday...
They sucked.
The good part: The parents somehow acquired a Linksys WRT54G v2.0 wireless router they didn't need and weren't using. Which meant that I later acquired it; I now plugged it in and looked at it. For those that aren't in the know, this model is flashable to another internal operating system (with utilities), such as DD-WRT or Tomato. This is useful because most manufacturers of consumer-grade equipment concentrate on appearance and pretties rather than options and performance. I got DD-WRT v24 'mini' on there, and it seems to work, and pick up about 12 to 16 other wireless stations in the area (jeez). Still haven't tried anything like connecting via local computer to it.
The bad parts:
Anyway, phone's going to be cut off RSN, and while I managed to borrow $20 from a friend, this is a LOAN not a gift, I have to pay it back soon. I've got a little trickling in, but waaaaaay under what we need.
Okay, so I did a little revision work this morning. Need to do some more actual writing in here. And check the bank again. The SO has started moving, so that's good.
*sighs* What I haven't been doing is email. I just have NOT been able to face doing it yet. The-mother-inside-my-head is slapping me repeatedly complaining "What's yer damn problem?!" and I have no answer.
Still, a Tucknote is (just barely) better than nothing. I guess.
16 September 2011
Well, that sucked. Rather, I sucked.
Anyway, #19, and #20 are up. Sorry for the wait.
The only useful thing I did in the last two months was go visit the folks for computer work, and get a couple of 'heirloom' chairs (from my parents, they have had these two chairs literally as far back as my memory goes).
Networking is fun when it works. I got the folks' network - mostly 802.11g wireless - working and cross-working, so that they can print from one computer to another, blah blah. Welcome to the 1990s, my parents!
I also got virtual Windows working on Mom's 'new' I-built-it-for-her desktop computer, and that seemed to go really nicely. I also achieved some integration of her Nook (Barnes & Noble e-book reader and Kindle clone).
Anyway, it'd be nice to get some food soon. Your help would be appreciated.
12 July 2011
As of 20:00 Zulu, the forum nameserver is still down. This means the forum is still basically inaccessible.
On the good side, I did 300+ lines today.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
3rd-9th 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
10th-17th 0 1 3
It took me roughly six hours, along with the usual SO-has-a-computer-problem,
brain breaks, elimination breaks, tidbits of food, and of course petting
the local loaner kitty. I don't know if this is a good rate or not, compared
to a 'real' author. I do know it's good compared to nothing.
11 July 2011
Problem with Tuckerspawn: it's not resolving at the moment.
The reason, according to Erin Halfelven, is: >[name redacted] died. The DNS servers for Tuckerspawn were in his house. > I hope to have this straightened out in a day or so. Sorry. Apparently > his family turned off the power to the servers. > >-- Joyce
Wow, a real BSOD.
This explains the weird errors I'm getting, in both more directed DNS lookups:
# ping tuckerspawn.fictioneer.org PING tuckerspawn.fictioneer.org (67.215.66.132) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from hit-servfail.opendns.com (67.215.66.132): icmp_req=1 ttl=55 time=18.7 ms 64 bytes from hit-servfail.opendns.com (67.215.66.132): icmp_req=2 ttl=55 time=18.3 ms 64 bytes from hit-servfail.opendns.com (67.215.66.132): icmp_req=3 ttl=55 time=27.5 msand in web browsers (not even gonna try to copy those).
Theoretically, it's somewhere out there... but I've no idea what IP address to use to get to it, if that would even work. But I suspect that this means the data isn't gone, which means as soon as things are unborked, it should be back up just like it used to be.
Okay, you know what used to work, a little? Posting weekly (or more often) progress strips. So I'll do that.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
3rd-9th 0 0 1 1 1 0 0
10th-17th 0 1
Actually on Sunday I did fifty lines, but that doesn't count.
04 July 2011
I didn't even realize it was Explosives Night until just now.
Anyway, since it's been too long, #17 and #18 are posted simultaneously.
I've no idea what's wrong with me. I shouldn't be so damned afraid of...
everything.
I keep flashing to ye auld Charlie Brown Christmas, and Lucy saying "Pantophobia"
and Charlie shouting "THAT'S IT!!" It was a lot funnier when I was younger
and wasn't afraid of everything.
Donations would be very helpful.
In other news:
SO's computer did its smoke test and burn-in for a month - not like it needed
to go that long; that was how long it took me to get up the 'nads to do
the next steps - which revealed a couple other problems, like a dead
laptop battery. I'd booted the newly-put-together system two or three
times after I put it in the case that morning JUST to make sure it would
boot - which it would, eventually; I had to reseat some RAM and do
something else - before removing the laptop and adding the old case with
the new motherboard/CPU. I just about cried when it wouldn't boot up
after the move and just froze.
It's the non-repeatable, non-linear sorts of problems that mess me up the
worst. I can understand things like 'dead', it's when it's intermittent
that I go crazy(er).
Turned out that a friend's USB drive (that the SO was borrowing) was
also plugged in, and removing that made it all work fine.
Either the switch to Squeeze or her switch to the music player
'mp3blaster' rather than 'audacious' seems to have cured the
crashing-several-times-a-day that showed up both on her old system AND
on the totally-different-hardware laptop. Now we have the new problem
that switching out of VT7 logs her out of X, and when switching back she
has to log in again. *sighs*
Also I think we both hate KDE4. I don't give a rat's rotted ass how
advanced it is and how much work they put into it; it's different in all
sorts of WTF?! ways, especially a seemingly gratuitous renaming of every
major application to something that has no sense at all (the theme manager
is now called Oxygen for gods' sakes), and it spends vast amounts
of resources doing things like animating windows moving and making
semi-transparent overlays of windows that are over other windows and all
sorts of artistic high-CPU crap. This is one of the things I detest about
Microsoft Windoze, and I don't think that KDE is doing me any favors by
doing what MS does. However, this being Debian, which is a subset of
Linux, we have LOTS of other choices. We're exploring them.
B'bye KDE, it was nice knowing you, back when you didn't try to dress
like Vista or 7.
Also, due to the really nifty MSI "D-Bracket" which shows you what the
system is doing, I found at least two errors when encasing the hardware.
Unfortunately, if I set her computer up just like it had been last time,
I'd never be able to see the LEDs without turning into a snake or
something and slithering back there - and
turning into a snake never helps. (#34)
So what I ended up doing was getting a box, for elevation, and then
turning the entire case upside down on top of the box (and remounting
the removable-media drives so that they were right side up). Now the
D-Bracket LEDs are right on top, where I can see them, as are all the
cables and connectors. No more sprained wrists trying to plug in the
stupid broken-tab Ethernet one foot and two right-angles away after the
elves pulled it out 2mm. Yay me.
The microwave oven died. The microwave died. I thought those things
were basically immortal... and I'd been using the same one since about my
2nd apartment. Also, cooking via stove is not something either of us like
doing, especially not in the summer heat; so, our food purchases were
predicated on having a microwave. Luckily, one of the SO's friends claimed
to be replacing theirs the same week, and we got their old one a few days
later. I'm a little suspicious about the timing, but since I'm not adverse
to picking up charity, we've now got the 'new' microwave.
The old microwave will get recycled to the place in town that takes such
things, as soon as I can get up the ____ to go there.
I had jury duty, which happened two days after the microwave went out. That was nerve-wracking to go into - likely because I'm mentally ill - but turned out okay. It was a guy fighting a ran-a-stop-sign ticket, and the guy won, because 'we' didn't think the city proved its case. I sometimes wonder if I'm somehow unduly influencing people, as in they'll agree to anything I suggest in order to get away from me... but that does sound rather paranoid. Note that "paranoia" doesn't just mean you think there are people out to get you - because there ARE people out to get you, they're called 'the marketing department' - but that you have special powers or knowledge or something.
Figuring that since I was going to be parking my car around the courthouse, which has got to have one of the highest densities of Cop in the whole town, I went a few days before to pay the $$ to get my auto re-registered (yearly fee). Then I spent ten minutes scraping off the wrong sticker; so I had to go get it inspected again. And new wiper blades. So that turned into $$$, total.
That was not a fun weekend.
28 May 2011
Return of the suck!
I don't know what happened, really; I know what failed to happen, which was "anything useful."
Anyway, part 16 is finally up.
Car took $350 for a heater hose, distributor gasket, and valve-cover gasket; supposedly the leaks of oil through the latter two is what caused the first to deteriorate. OTOH, $350 for a coolant system repair is pretty non-suck, comparatively; they also replaced all the icky chlorinated tap water I'd poured into the radiator with 50/50, and it smells right. And it took about 24 hours. Good.
Very good, actually, since the psych appointment to get the SO's medications renewed fell on the day we didn't have the car. I pleaded with the SO to arrange with a friend to go to the appointment, but somehow she & friend fucked it up; I got the car back literally just in time to take her to the appointment, to drive like a maniac (thankfully, I learned to drive in Houston AND survived the process) to make it literally within two minutes. VERY good.
Bad: SO's computer kept crashing and crashing and crashing... an attempted
upgrade - to possibly fix the crashing - ran afoul of the crashing, and rebooting in the middle seemed to trash
the hardware utterly. Which I can say because I pulled the drives (with the
OS and software) and put them on another computer, and the SO's hardware wouldn't
get through a boot cycle.
(so it wasn't actually that the upgrade fouled the hardware; it just looked that way.
Nonetheless, it's definitely the hardware that is borked.)
The PSU we 'borrowed' for testing from a friend seemed to do the trick with one
of the SATA-capable motherboards I'd had in stock; it booted fine with the bigger
capacity (3.3v and 5v; I needed a LOT of amps on those rails) PSU.
Except I didn't have a spare drive with a working OS. I thought I had, oh, six
or eight of them, but none of them would boot.
The replacement motherboard had a built-in Ethernet, and it proved capable of booting
over the network (PXE boot).
And my ever-so-clever PXE server setup worked fine, right up until the Debian Lenny installer
decided that the files on my system didn't match with the signatures of the stuff
it was downloading, and it stopped dead in a snit.
I almost got the biggest-CPU-in-the-house laptop hooked into the SO's workstation,
but it has a widescreen display, and the CRT she uses otherwise is 'normal' aspect
(16:9 and 4:3 respectively I think) and the two do NOT play nice with the
same signal. Trying to get X to drive two different displays, on a laptop (a no-name
laptop at that) was more hilarity than I could stand without tranquilizers.
Much much screaming later:
The SO had two SATA drives; both of them now have Debian Squeeze/6.0/stable on
them. There were six other drives in the pile, of various sizes; four of them (20Gb, 40Gb, 80Gb, 120Gb)
have very very basic Debian Squeeze/6.0/stable OS's on them. The PXE boot-over-the-network
now works, and can deliver either Debian Squeeze net-based install or Memtest86+.
The SO has the 'lame' working laptop, er, working, with all the crapola plugged
in at her workstation.
All I need now is some energy to actually get up and put the working motherboard/CPU, existing RAM, various drives, borrowed PSU (that we need to pay money to the friend for), and was there something else? into the SO's case. That's been where I've sat on my fat non-productive ass for about a week or so.
Oh, and our rent went up, and - I am not kidding - the rental place said we'd been
here too long, that we were going to have to move out of here next year. Though they'd
be happy to switch us to another place (at +10% rent) and, oh, a new deposit since our
old one cannot transfer and we have to wait 30 days for the billing cycle to get it back (hah!), and let's
just politely not mention the transfer fees for the utilities, and that's not even
counting the damage charges.
The non-suck part of this is that we get a year's notice
before we actually have to move; which is good, because it may well take a year to pack.
Okay... I think I'm not getting anything done because I'm depressed, and I get depressed every time I think about the real world.
07 May 2011
Constant vigilance against suckitude must be employed. Wow, can I bureaucratize or what? Notice the passive voice there, which subtly hints that no one actually does anything, it just happens. Like magic space fairies are the ones that actually DO.
But, really, I need to do better than the last week-and-a-half. So I'm trying today.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1st-7th 0 2 0% 2 0% 1+ 2
% - headache, nausea, and antihistamines make Ellen a very dull girl
What is annoying is, yesterday I got to 188 written, and then realized
that I was depressed, most likely from antihistamines (again) and that
I shouldn't write any more until my mood improved. Then we went to the
grocery store, and got a new radiator cap ($10+) which we'll see, and
then I ate, and then I collapsed into a protein coma for ten hours.
04 May 2011
Suckitude has crept up on me.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
24th-30th 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
1st-7th 0 2 0 1yet
I seem to have lost the last week, somehow. I KNOW I lost yesterday in
another antihistamine haze.
The one thing I have done, today, is switched to a separate page for the Seasons picture gallery. This should make it easier - somewhat - to copy files from my sources to the webpage. Unfortunately, I have to hand-write HTML to put the pictures in; fortunately, I've been doing this for longer than many of you have had a computer.
No car repairs yet; the radiator water level hasn't gone down in the last
two (VERY SHORT) trips we've taken.
So, this is: A) 'automatic' transmission goes wonky, sometimes, and must
be shifted manually - but only offers two gears - but only happens SOMETIMES;
B) battery died completely (9.7v resting), replaced in January;
C) new battery died (down to 3.8v), once, not repeated; D)
radiator coolant on ground, twice, up to a gallon of water added, not
repeated since 2nd time, I think.
Maybe I should take the damned thing to a priest and have it exorcised instead.
24 April 2011
Part 15 is released.
In other news, the radiator on the car is definitely leaking. Though I don't think I've overheated the engine (and warped the aluminum heads) yet. The SO insisted we try today...
In other news, grocery stores are often closed on Easter. Not like I remembered this, or think that a single religion should get to pull this crap in the US. I mean, can you imagine the outcry if someone suggested that commerce shut down during daylight for Ramadan? Or even Passover?
Writing has not been that great, production-wise:
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
17th-23rd 0 0 0 4 1 1 1
24th-30th 0^1
Note 1: but you get a new episode to read
Anyway, looks like I can either spend the day writing and editing, or Other.
And frankly, I'd rather be writing at this point. Which means that Other,
like the phone bill being paid before they cut off long distance, or
shopping on days of the week which are not closed in commemoration of
nailing some antigovernment revolutionary to a tree, do not get done.
The one bright light is, Qemu installed very nicely on a laptop. And, once I figured out: that the disk image for the guest OS had to be the permission of the person running it; and then realized you can't apparently run WinXX on console; it went well. Now the laptop has a lil' window in KDE 4 which is running Win2000. This is halfway what Mom wants - but, because I love my mother, I'm not going to let her run Windows by itself. I do need to do more, like networking, setting up non-image drives for data, and similar, but at least it's running.
And that, and Part 15, are the good things that happened in the last week.
Donate for the radiator and my hormones.
20 April 2011
I'm glad I haven't killed many of my neighbors, because one of them
informed me that my car was hemorrhaging coolant earlier this week.
This would explain the coolant smell we both detected Monday afternoon.
I really should investigate, diagnose, plan... but fuck it, I'm writing.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
10th-16th 0 0 2 1 1 2 0
17th-23rd 0^1 0^2 0^2 3
Note 1: antihistamine haze
Note 2: nothing new, but lots of editing and rewrites
The server is doing well, where it is, although it is 10degC (18degF)
warmer; this is due to the air around the shelf, which is noticeably
warmer than the air in the rest of the house, or even in that corner.
This workstation, on the other hand, spontaneously rebooted Monday, and I do NOT know why. Hasn't done it since, but...
15 April 2011
Whups! I didn't think it had been this long... And today is (USA) Tax Day as well. Good luck with that...
The writing has been going, sort of...
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
3rd-9th 1 1 1 1 3 2 0
10th-16th 0 0 2 1 1 2
Though with the peculiar way I do my counting, yesterday was about
150 lines, and the day before was about 150 lines, so today I've got about
500 on that episode (so far). I've also been doing occasional proofing;
today, for example, I made another run through 15 and 16. Tweaking and
twisting and pounding here and there...
Saturday, I finally moved my cobbled-together server to its shelf, so it's not sitting on the floor. Also, I got a Linux script called inxi and found out the silly server is an Athlon 1500 running at 13xx MHz. Wow. Still no idea why it keeps dropping to sleep and requiring a keyboard nudge to wake it, though. Ah well.
Sunday and Monday, I just sucked. I can't quite claim I've made up for it, but there's a lot more in the proofing pipe than usual, so I'm feeling not entirely hopeless. (not to be jinxing self...)
In the "why me?" section, the SO has discovered the television series "Gossip Girl". I think this is sort of "90210 EAST", but I'm not sure, since I never watched the original. I have watched perhaps twenty minutes of the series myself, standing behind the SO's computer, and... and I see no reason to reverse my long-standing distaste for video. Thank ghu she has headphones. I don't have to look, and television isn't nearly the screaming rage-maker if I don't hear it.
If I get some more donations I ought to be able to pay the phone bill before they get bitchy and cut us off again.
07 April 2011
Well, feeling better at the moment than I did on the last Tucknote.
Not that anything else has been accomplished, besides a last-minute dash to pay the electric bill before we got cut off - an unwelcome and too-familiar motif in my life lately.
I have kept up, a little, with the writing, though.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
27th-2nd 4 0 2 2 3 0 2
3rd-9th 1 1 1 1 1*
'*' - still going this morning
So that's good. Not as good as I want, and not as fast as I was doing,
but I sort of think that if I just keep steady, it'll go better.
Proofing seems to take a lot out of my writing enthusiasm, though; seemingly, if I start with proofing modifications early in the day, it's hard to write more first-draft stuff later.
Also we got cat food, so the slut kitty - that we don't "own" but comes around and charms us into giving it petting, food, and sleeping places - is happy with us again.
The alternator on the car SEEMS to be working... but the battery drain that one time is therefore unexplained. And I don't think problems get BETTER.
3 April 2011
Happy Tuck's Birthyday!
Now with Part 14 of Tucky Seasons!
Okay, that's exhausted my cheer for the moment. It's late, I didn't get a lot done today, I still don't have my minimal hundred lines for tonight, nothing else has been done, we forgot cat food the last two times at the store so the (slut) cat is pissed, et cetera et cetera.
But, hey, an episode.
31 March 2011
Extremely early in the morning, time for bed...
Writing has continued. This is Good.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
20th-26th 0 4
27th-2nd 4 0 2 2 *
'*' - not any yet today, but it's early
Not as good this last period, but not entirely suck either.
Also, it seems as though I have resurrected two Contributing Editors/proofers out of their comas. This is what I did Monday, though I should have written as well.
It seems like I can sometimes wake up with a headache, and on those days very little gets done (writing or life). Going back to bed is a good idea, as the headache never seems to go away until I do. Maybe I need new pillows.
Or something. On Friday, I ended up sleeping SIXTEEN hours out of the 24 in that day. Admittedly, I went to bed about 23:00 on Thursday, and woke up about 00:30 Saturday, but I should be able to stay up eight hours without requiring eight hours sleep immediately thereafter.
"New" server is working, pretty much; it's doing something weird with its power-saving, and eventually refusing to come on for net requests - but hitting ANY key on its keyboard makes it wake up and work again. It's also a 500MHz Athlon, which is slower than what it replaced, and I can notice the speed difference. Squeeze (Debian 6.0) is working okay otherwise.
Still have not stopped/disassembled/moved to shelf the 'new' server. The
SO has co-opted the fucking DVD burner to get rid of write
out to disk some old anime so she can get new anime. I should, however,
be able to dump my own stuff for backup purposes to it while she sleeps.
The local Debian repository is now going again as well; I'm very happy to only download the mess of packages one time.
I'm also grabbing pictures of various things associated with Tucky Seasons. These are amusing. I plan to put them up, somewhere, so you can see them as well. But that's for a later day... though maybe not much later.
25 March 2011
Bloody computers.
At least I did a little writing yesterday, before I started working on computers - which is a good thing, 'cause I don't write well when I'm so frustrated I could cry. Also I did some more on Wednesday, after writing the previous Tucknote.
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
20th-26th 8! 3 2 6 2 -* -
'*' - not any yet today
Too bad only one of the proofers has checked in yet. I may need to ping
them again.
I spent about nine hours yesterday (not full-gonzo continuous, but pretty
steady) working on rebuilding the server. I think the two 'better'
CPU+motherboard sets I have need a bigger-wattage PSU; the 450w (claimed)
is working on the one motherboard it will fit upon, the 500MHz Athlon one.
This is something of a downgrade, unfortunately.
But I couldn't get one (Athlon64) to do more than spin the fans for a
few seconds; and the other (Athlon64 on MSI motherboard) booted exactly
once and thereafter would only spin the fans for a few seconds.
I was about in tears - literally; non-repeatable anything makes me upset - yesterday before I tried the biggest PSU on the wimpiest of the three motherboards. That worked, and has worked for about 12 hours so far.
Also I am low on working 184-pin DIMMs; I've got five not in other computers (one which came from the old server), and there's only one which seems to work consistently (the one which came from the old server). Grrrr.
Anyway, the 'new' server is still in pieces on the floor, whilst I make it run for a while.
Also, since I'm apparently stupid, I decided to upgrade the server's OS from Debian Lenny (5.0) to Squeeze (6.0). One of the really awesome things about Linux is that you can have multiple OS's on the same computer, and unlike (at least earlier versions of) Windows, it won't throw a tantrum and commit suicide if you have two (or more) OS's on the system.
Having two largish (when I bought them) IDE/PATA drives on the server, naturally I put
Debian on both. Now, I can upgrade one 'side' to Squeeze whilst leaving
the other alone, and see how the mess works before committing. I've
already found out that I Don't Like the new KDE, but it's not like I
have to use a
GUI.
Which I don't.
Which is a damned good thing, with only 0.5Gb RAM. But I remember days when 500Mb
was a $500 hard drive...
And, if I bungle things, I can copy B-to-A and restore the other drive & OS.
Ha ha ha.
But if this works - or if it doesn't and I give up on it for a while - I'll need to shut it off, disassemble everything, and move it to its special shelf. Probably tomorrow. Today, I need to write, and we need to hit a grocery store; I hope the car starts.
23 March 2011, three days after the vernal equinox
Server is still down... Actually, it's been taken apart, leaving three hard drive, two optical drives, one power supply, one S3 Trio64 video card (which is likely older than your being on the Internet), and a few bits and pieces. The amount of dust in and around it was just gross, and this is without a case either.
Alas, I couldn't find the thermal paste we had in the house until this morning, so nothing has been done yet on setting up a new server. So no email. Which means no proofing yet.
Part 14 is done, first draft-ish (no proofing because no email).
Part 15 is done, first draft-ish (no proofing because no email).
Part 16 is about 2/3 done.
Something has changed, and I know what, but I don't know why; and this pisses me off because if I don't know why, I can't repeat it or keep it from unhappening.
As trivia, I don't measure my output in words, because I always have notes that I carry over from episode to episode, and subtracting those words from the episode's words is just too annoying. So I count by lines. Actually, I count by one hundred line increments; 254 lines counts as two hundred-line pieces, 288 lines tends to make me write just a bit more so I can claim three hundred-line increments.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been doing this:
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
6th-12th 0 0 1 0 0 1 2
13th-19th 1 1 2 3 0* 1 1
20th-26th 8! 3 2 1& - - -
'*' - Thursday the 18th was the 'dogshit day' mentioned in the previous Tucknote.
'&' - the sun has not yet risen as I write this, but I have 1 increment.
I shan't claim anything, because I don't want to jinx myself.
With luck, either the single spare SATA-capable motherboard will actually work, or another iffy one will be correctable (thinking about trying a re-paste of the heat sink) and work. SATA PCI cards are at least $30 and I can't spare that right now.
Also, the
car's
alternator
might be going bad. It was dead as a doornail
on Friday. (and, goddamned automatic transmission, can't push-start it)
My trusty multimeter said the battery voltage, post to post,
was around THREE volts. Chalk off one deep-discharge cycle... And I
don't think I left the lights on or anything. Jump-started it and ran it
for an hour. Started it again Monday; post-to-post voltage was 13.8v (as
opposed to an expected 14.something volts) when running, and the last
time I checked the battery BEFORE using it, it was 12.2v (as opposed to
expected 12.6v). Checking the battery after shutoff showed it starting
at 13v and dropping 0.01v every few seconds, which sort of hints it was
being charged... I think. The battery is two MONTHS old, so I don't
think it's that... and if it's not the battery, it may well be the
damned alternator. That thing looks like a bitch to get to in my car;
maybe the alternator itself isn't too bad, but the belt (V-belt) just
disappears into the murk, and there are big metal pieces above it I'd
have to remove to get my fingers on the belt.
If my multimeter could read over 0.25A I'd try wiring it into the system
to see if there was something draining it (besides clock and radio
keepalive), but even 500 milli-amps would pop the multimeter's fuse.
*sigh*
Anyway, I think I'll go back to writing for a bit.
Update:
Four (4) increments finished today so far. Part 16 first draft is now
done. And it is not yet noon.
Still no email (and therefore no proofing).... but this is the exciting
part! I don't want to stop now!
Except I had to, because of an unfortunate roll on the Random Wandering
Christer Table, combined with my opened windows.
But they left, eventually... so back to writing. I guess the server can wait a bit longer...
18 March 2011
My local server (music, books, gaming books, local knowledge base, Debian packages, backups, email) is down, likely due to the capacitor plague it's had for several years. Now, trying to fsck ("Scandisk" for you lameass wusers out there) a large partition, it spontaneously reboots about 93% of the way through, then on reboot it finds the partition hasn't been fsck'd, starts to do that, and 93% of the way through...
Looks like I have exactly one motherboard 'in stock' that will handle the 300Gb SATA drive I have stuck in the server. Not counting the in-use-already SO's computer, which is filled like a septic tank with anime and so requires about 1.5Tb of SATA in two disks. *sigh* *hate*
Anyway, if the one SATA-capable motherboard doesn't work, I shall cry, then go to one of maybe six non-SATA motherboards I have stuck in a dish drainer so's I can plug in the IDE drives at least. Then I put the SATA drive in the SO's computer and consider killing her.
Thank Ghu I don't run Windows, because the OS wouldn't transfer to a different motherboard; and fuckifIknow an Apple might require me to bring the thing in for servicing at a bloody REPAIR SHOP. Actually REPAIR $$$HOP.
I also took the opportunity to shift firewalls from the ancient Dell ~40Mhz thing to the counter-dumpster'd 733MHz Gateway. And some power cords and outlets and strips and things. I removed the IPS (Interrupted Power Supply) which a friend gave me (and I spent $20 on a replacement lead-acid battery for) and it worked exactly one time. I'm also trying the bizarre and radical, might even be terroristic child-molesting, tactic of labeling cords, outlets, powerstrips, and the like with ratings and where they go and wherefrom they came.
Yesterday I was just dogshit; I developed a massive headache, tried to lie back down, and the SO was twitching and coughing about every time I got anywhere near sleep. SO has been sick the last week, but I already had this so I'm not getting it again.
Part #15 is half finished. This is acceptable, if I can keep it up, if I don't jinx myself... I did write (PAST tense, cannot be changed, immune to jinx) 6 of 7 days in the last week (not counting today).
Email is also on the (dead) server, so unless I want to rewire things a whole lot - which I don't - it'll have to wait until I can get something working in there. Which haha shouldn't be hard... hahahaha.
13 March 2011
I can always get worse, I guess.
I thought I was doing well at the beginning of January, and then... things just went to shit. I've been able to take the SO to the grocery - but not go in myself - and I've done laundry a couple of times. That has basically been it. In two months.
Okay, so...
Last week ...
I'll just say that the first draft of Part 14 is done.
I'm scared of jinxing myself. I'm also tired of saying "Well, things look better now!" and then getting worse. Especially when it's the ME that gets worse.
If you wrote me email since December... I have it, I've probably read it, and I haven't been psychologically able to respond. Yes, that includes the "Are you alive?" emails too. I'm trying to work on the emails.
I apologize to everyone.
08 November 2010
Okay, Part 13 is out. Not too surprising, but hopefully useful.
Managed to not get the electricity cut off, twice; and while the phone got cut off once, we managed to get it restored (at an additional $50 fuckyousoverymuch). It would be very nice indeed if I can keep ahead of the utility bills enough to deny the bloody phone bandits the pleasure of screwing me via additional fees. Strange how they can claim it costs them $25 in work to restore the phone, but when you call they claim it's all computerized and humans can't possibly intervene.
Still pissed at them. Probably will be pissed at them forever.
On bedbugs: sometime within about two months of my posting, the bites
stopped happening (which was the primary diagnostic sign - definitely not
mosquito bites). This should not have happened, according to approximately
everyone... but I'm not getting bit any more, and I could probably start
sleeping without gloves on - something I started doing when I got three
welts on my wrist and the swelling made it feel like I'd sprained it. It's
just possible it was the insecticide - something named Phantom, available
from the finer pro-level poison shops - but I am not sure. I AM tolerably
sure they're gone... or possibly still bagged in clothing. I had most of
my clothing loose, and bagged it all prior to insecticide; and haven't
managed to wash and dry most of it since. It's time I had more to wear,
I think; and it's getting colder, and guess where all the sweaters are.
One load of wash/dry laundry, of course, costs $2.25 where I do it; and I've
turned into something of a neophobe lately, at least when it comes to new
RL places and things. *sighs*
On to #14, which might actually be a little sweet.
07 September 2010
I didn't think I could get an episode out this fast. But, the phone is going to be cut off RSN - I'm surprised it still works - because I had to spend all the money on the electric bill Friday before they cut THAT off. And car insurance is also nominally due tomorrow. And, one donatrix said if I put it out, she'd send some money...
So, okay, I'm putting #12 out. I think it doesn't suck. Need to work on #13, but hopefully the SO will get off HER fat lazy ass and help kick me off MY fat lazy ass...
So, please, if you would, send something along because we really need to get these bills paid before we get food.
27 August 2010
Seasons #11 is finally finished. Part 12 is first-draft-finished, and I have a decent start on #13.
Bedbugs: I haven't apparently been bitten in over a month. I say 'apparently' because it's really hard to catch the wee fuckers in the act; I differentiated them from mosquito bites due to the much longer and more intense itching, and the welt that lasted days rather than hours. I've had none of those lately.
Car brake lights came on and wouldn't go out, even with the car off. Not
good; I live in an urban area, and all the other drivers are psychopaths
just waiting for me to give them an excuse to ram me... or at least I've
found that to be a useful working model.
Pulling the fuse diabled the brake lights (and horn and possibly the
transmission shifter) which saved my battery. I did some Googling, and I
thought it was the brake light switch (part that turns pedal position
into on/off electrical), at first; but luckily I found my multimeter and
tested it before I bought a new one. Turns out there's a little contact
pad or button the switch bumps into, which was (after some search) lying
in little shredded pieces on the floor (along with the rubber heel tip
of a shoe of mine...) and the contact point of the actual switch was now
going right through the button's mounting hole.
Labor cost at usual shop: $90/hr, half hour minimum.
Cost of brake light switch: $30+tax.
Cost of button: $3.50+tax.
Phone's about to be cut off. (I think this happened last month as well) Donations would be useful.
21 July 2010
Oooh, look, two Tucknotes in a month!
I'm actually writing more in the last week. Currently, #11 is done and percolating for proofing, and #12 is at least half written. If Things will stop Happening, I might be able to keep this up.
Last thing was, the SO's free medical care was threatened to be cut off because, the letter said, she hadn't turned in the proper we-have-no-money form on time. Which REALLY upset both of us, because I have a visual memory of the SO turning that form in, about the beginning of June. That sort of took us out for a weekend - of course, we checked the mail and found the letter on a Saturday - but Monday it seems to have been cleared up. Seems.
Anyway, phone is about to be cut off due to nonpayment. If you'd like to prevent this, you know what to do. We'd also like to eat; greedy us.
05 July 2010
Tucky Seasons #10 is up. #11 is mostly done. There's an extra piece containing notes on the code system Mike used, listed as 10a. Hand formatting that was a pain.
Money situation is very bad. Make a donation and help remedy this.
SO's psych situation: resolved. The SO's normal therapist graciously went in to the appointment and talked to the psych, and everything was resolved. We then had the equivalent of the shakes for a week. Not to mention the screaming shits for the two weeks before. I didn't go in, because A) it's a small office, and B) I was afraid I'd beat the psych to death for the upset she caused me already.
I did one of the annual pilgrimages to the folks, to do computer stuff there. Since very little had gone wrong since the last one, this one was relatively easy. I've devoured the dozen or so books I could pry loose already.
Bedbugs: no worse, but no better. Insecticide
Phantom is a slow killer, unfortunately; what I'd like is something that
makes the fuckers scream in terror and pain and then hiss as they melt and evaporate.
The reason to use it is, no one has reported resistance to this chemical, and it's not a
repellent - since I don't want to scare them away, I want them to die die die.
Since I didn't think one treatment was going to work, I got
the concentrate, since I am better-than-consumer at reading directions and doing
dilutions, apparently. We need to respray about bi-weekly, which is today, actually.
With proper dilution, I think we have enough to last us a long time.
The repellant+killer stuff
Bedlam
is only going to be used as a barrier, hopefully locking any bedbugs inside the ring
with us - because, like I said, I want them to die, not run away into the walls or
someplace to hide and hibernate.
On the other hand, the SO has been her usual boat-anchor self, and so it's really
hard for me to find motivation enough to move two of us, when I can barely move
one (me) at all. So, much that could be done, has not been done. I've spent
fifteen years pushing the SO, and I cannot push any longer; I feel permamently
burned out. I could see the contrast while visiting my parents; they DO things,
and while I was there I didn't have to push continually to make anything happen,
and I wasn't nearly as depressed (sometimes in physical pain, because of the
sleeping quarters, but that's not related).
Well, I'll see if I can work some more on Tuck today.
23 May 2010
Well, the good news is that it's been less than three weeks since the last Tucknote. And I got a little writing done. And some house stuff done.
Here's the bad news.
#1: About two weeks ago now, the SO - who had not seen a psych for about nine
months, due to the old one leaving and a new one not arriving - ran out of
antipsychotic.
Note: if someone is taking an anti-psychotic, even an atypical antipsychotic
like Seroquel, DO NOT let them run out.
So we called and talked to the new psych. She approved a 1 month extension,
which took about six more days to get than it should have because she did the
one thing ordering-wise we asked, begged, and pleaded with her not to do (see
Note above).
In talking with the SO, she also reportedly said that the SO was taking too
many drugs and needed to be taken off some of them. The SO is on a stable
drug mix and has been for at least three years, and she's been getting Much
Better on this mix.
This made the SO absolutely batshit.
Guess who gets to deal with Everything when the SO is absolutely batshit?
We have a meeting with this psych on 04 June, and... I am not looking forward to it, except we do have the SO's therapist coming to this meeting and hopefully we can get things worked out in such a fashion that I don't end up killing someone.
#2: We seem to have developed an infestation of
bedbugs (offsite link).
I desperately hate to be trendy, but even more do I hate being trendy when it
comes to 'the latest' disease or parasite. And bedbugs are so trendy, they're
finding them in Manhattan high-end hotels. Being this trendy shames me.
I just dropped $120 on pesticide (2 kinds) and an 'insect growth regulator' or
IGR
(from
Do My Own Pest Control (offsite link))
which I'm hoping will do the trick, along with half a dozen other things
like caulking every goddamned seam and crack in the furniture AND walls
(and I currently have no caulk or caulking gun), vacuuming and
immediately dumping the bag as often as possible (uses lots of bags),
washing nearly every piece of clothing and bedding that hasn't been
sealed up since January (at the laundromat, $2.25 per load washed/dried
not counting soap and bleach), dryer-ing what can't be washed
($1.00/load), decontaminating (or, depending on your point of view,
productively contaminating) most of the furniture (isopropyl alcohol 91%
or better, spot killer; and pesticides when they arrive), and pulling up
most or all of the carpet and dumping THAT (I do have a carpet knife,
and no great liking for carpet anyway).
Setting fire to the house has been considered, as has been thermonuclear cleansing and suicide. We're saving those for last resorts.
If you haven't been keeping up with the newest macroparasitic trend, it's a fuckload of work to get rid of them, because they can hide in damned near any gap or crevice, and can go dormant for up to five hundred and fifty (550) days before restarting their life cycle. Which is, biting you while you are deeply asleep, for maybe five minutes a day (each), and leaving (on me) welts that LATER swell and itch for several days. The SO, because this is the way my life works, doesn't seem to react to the damned bites at all (which is about 50% of the population). The range of travel I might expect is 5-20 feet, which basically covers everywhere in the house - because the one place I've found live ones (1 corpse recovered and bagged, the 2nd just disappeared when I whacked it, though it left a bloody splot about 1cm in diameter) is the futon/couch, which is about diametrically opposite to the bed in the house. And I don't think I could get bites on the hand (~10 or so) without noticing, while I was awake.
The one good thing that I did, or didn't do, long ago, is when we got a new bed, we did not allow the mover to rip off the shipping plastic. It does have a hole where I was five seconds too slow in reminding them I wanted it to stay wrapped, but Ye Auld Duct Tape shut the hole. I think. And I'll be reinspecting the hole and duct tape. I doubt anything is going to get through that plastic.
One other help may be the hair dryer - I checked it with my handy-dandy semi-calibrated
meat thermometer, and on Medium it exhausts at well over 140 degrees F. Bedbugs and
eggs, I am informed, die 'quickly' at 115 degrees.
If I was still in Texas and it was two months later, it's at least theoretically
possible to hot-wire the central heater's thermostat to produce 'forty degrees above ambient'
which would bring the entire house well into the kill zone (130-140 degrees during the
afternoon).
And, very little proofer/CE response to #10.
And an important hard drive is producing an audible 'click' about every two days.
I'd have to say that in general It Hasn't Been A Good Month.
6 May 2010
Any time I think I'm getting better, I seem to just sort of go into 'Pause' for a month.
Still, some stuff has happened. Like, some writing. Some reformatting of the front room, to take better advantage of the equipment we have.
Unfortunately, I seem to have spent all the donations we received, on silly things like food and the electric bill. I could definitely use some more...
Still, the future is looking perhaps less than completely black pain-filled pointlessness. That's gotta be good, right? It's as close to optimism as I've gotten in nine months, anyway.
By the way, did you check out the gallery with the pictures of Pauline and Trish?
Later:
I just realized there's another factor in the increased typing - I'm back to using
the ol' reliable 1391401 keyboard. Previously I'd been using a laptop; and laptops,
as wondrous as they are, universally have shit keyboards. At least by my standards.
On eyeballs/mine, my sentence has been reduced to about four months, and the new glasses
came in. I hate them, of course; they aren't contacts, which I was VERY used to.
Fisheye, chromatic aberration, small field of view on modern frames, the
way they get body spooge all over them...
and, no lie, the 'custom made
for your eye glasses' sunshades for one pair are polarized in different
planes. Reflections from cars (as well as a lot of other objects) are
polarized - so I see different amounts of reflected light in each eye.
These are the round pair, and I can understand how it would be difficult
to figure out which way they go, especially if you drop a piece during
assembly... but I wonder if they cared.
Actually, this is nearly a bonus, so I guess I can't complain.
3 April 2010
Tuck's birthyday once again. I shudder to think how old he is NOW... and I'd bet he and Mike are now (2010) nuclear-capable.
Writing is progressing slowly, but progressing. That's an improvement.
I haven't yet sold any of the SO's kidneys, but if anyone would like to make a bid...
Or just a donation.
Went to an eye doctor for the first time in seven years, last week. To summarize, I have sinned most greviously, and I must do penance. Being forced to listen to the SO's anime music soundtracks - she has headphones, and keeps them at such a volume I can hear it from more than ten feet away - does not count. I shall be wearing glasses for at least the next six months. Damnit. And the only glasses I possess in working order are at least eight years old, more like ten. I think the plastic lenses have yellowed slightly, which is a real trick considering they've been kept indoors all this time. And with tolerably severe myopia (nearsighted or shortsighted), my eyes look like pinheads when I wear them. And the SO thinks they are UGLY.
So, new (and cheap) glasses on the way from Zenni Optical, but be warned; I think they sell email addresses (required for an order) to spammers. Use a disposable address, a fake one, or be prepared for the trickle increasing to a flood.
I am greatly annoyed by the fact that most glasses are less than 35mm high. That is about 1.5 inches. Apparently, it's no longer fashionable to have a field of vision bigger than a finger. Some are less than 1 inch. Am I supposed to see through these, DRIVE with these, avoid thrown objects, etc etc? This isn't just a cheap-glasses problem either, says my Googly research.
26 March 2010
Stunning amounts of self-suck have not yet killed me, though it's been close.
I damned near forgot all the steps I have to go through to post an episode, but I finally got it, and Part 9 of Tucky Seasons is now posted. Along with pictures of Trish and Pauline. They aren't wearing those clothes yet in the story, BTW.
Money is excruciatingly absent, and the SO would like me to make a special plea to you, my readers: "Please send her some money so she doesn't sell one of my kidneys!" Whine whine whine...
Anyway, if you'd like to have the SO keep both kidneys - or if you'd like to purchase a tissue sample (for matching purposes) - send some money to the usual place.
Not much of interest otherwise. I made it through the holidays without death. Computers haven't had major failures (yet) though there have been some really irritating minor, and intermittent, ones.
I learned an unfortunate amount about iptables (Linux firewalling); the important thing I want to pass on is that packets go through EITHER the IN and OUT chains in the filter table, OR through the FORWARD chain; not both. IN and OUT are for things going to or from the firewall-running computer's address(es) ONLY. FORWARD is for things going through the firewall, say before and after NAT/masquerading, and don't go through the IN or OUT chains. This is not mentioned anywhere in the regular docs I could find.
And, not to get anyone's hopes up (does anyone even have hope any more?) but I finally resolved the blockage in regular Tuck - which should've taken me about a week, not a year - and so I might be able to go onward.
Now to chew through the backlog of email...
30 October 2009
Thankfully, the last 2 days didn't suck nearly as much as the five or six before the last two.
The SO got the digital camera working. Battery contact was corroded, somehow, even though none of the NiMH batteries are. Yay the SO!
I didn't set up a base/test system yet. Instead, I found the wee tiny circuit board that is a 2.5"-IDE-to-midsized-tiny-USB adapter. Hours later, I found the midsized-tiny-USB-device-to-USB-hub cable, of which I apparently have one. The camera's tiny-tiny-USB-device-to-USB-hub cable was too large on the device end.
Glad we have all standardized on USB connectors for everything; I'd hate
to have to run around trying to find just the right cable with the right
connectors on both ends, like I used to have to do.
{/sarcasm}
Drive gave the same errors as a USB drive that it did as a IDE drive.
This is GOOD; it suggests that the fault is in the drive rather than
in the rest of the laptop. (it's not impossible that a laptop fault killed
the drive, and therefore both would/will show grievous problems; I know this.)
Meanwhile, two of three other 2.5" IDE gave much worse errors, and the third wasn't all that hot either. I also found a fourth not-in-use 2.5" IDE drive, but haven't tried that.
Bought a used 30Gb 2.5" IDe drive, took it home, plugged it into the USB adapter, and formatted it up and scanned it. No errors.
At this moment, I am attempting a install-over-local-Ethernet of Debian onto a 'new' disk on the previous laptop. A niggling problem; it wouldn't do things with /dev/sda5, for no good reason. I'm gonna try with that later.
I also upgraded my PXEboot installer, which normally would be catastrophically stupid since I was going to use it, but I just moved the old files away and the new files in, which is sufficiently backed up that The Universe isn't bothering fucking with this.
Oh, wait; an error. A disk error. Have I seen this before? I might have.
A while later:
Haven't seen it again... will be very very wary for a while.
Also did some other shopping today, and got things I needed, like a hacksaw, which I need for [DELETED FOR SECURITY] and didn't have; and, stunningly, a SIX-foot garden hose with connectors on both ends, which I couldn't find when I [DELETED FOR SECURITY] but I've got one now.
Also food and vitamins.
Hormones next.
Thinking about: SO's glasses and repair thereof
28 October 2009
It has been a tumultuous 60 hours or so. No writing has been done, but I've been busy...
Monday, 05:30, I am awakened by the power going out. "It's too early for them to be cutting the power off," I thought - as I primed my brain with caffeine, it being a rude and dark awakening indeed - and so I called to report an outage, which had already been reported.
I am poking around with a flashlight (Mini-Maglie which I think is older
than some of my readers) and look at the server for some reason, and
notice a brown crusty bit on a capacitor or two.
Capacitor Plague!
Well, this explains much. Like video work/not-work, spontaneous reboots a few times, BIOS complaining that I'm overclocking when that's the last damned thing I'm gonna do on a server, etc etc.
Power comes back on, I spend time resetting many computers. Video returns to the server, but is terminally ill with Capacitor Plague, so no sigh of relief at this point.
With a 'new' firewall box - salvaged 733MHz Gateway with a 70 watt power supply and thus likely less power-consuming than the current ancient salvaged Dell P-75 - and a new server motherboard required, I may as well reformat that area of the living room. Except it's got cruft all over it. I clean that up. I also bump the power cord on the existing firewall, which dies; restart required. 'New' firewall box has a much firmer power cord plug...
Note: I have plenty of computer pieces at this time; what I don't have is energy, and a place to put all the pieces together and test them before installing them. What I didn't have was a good reason to go "fixin' what ain't broke yet"; however, now it's broke or going to break, so there's the good reason. Still don't have the workbench; gaining energy....
I had weird network problems, which I did not solve yet.
Decide that backups haven't been done recently enough, so make some backups to DVD. Keeping certain partitions around 4480Mb (4590208 1k blocks, actually) makes this a trivial command; I just load the tray, type in the command-line incantation (written on a piece of card taped to the monitor) and wait for the tray to pop open.
SO gets a call from the skin doc, about the last two biopsies. One's scar tissue (not a problem), the other is a basal cell carcinoma and is gonna be cut out in mid-November. Neither of us has been able to keep track of all the skin cancers that have been removed in the last four years; here's another one.
Got money - MANY THINKS TO THOSE WHO DONATED - and paid off both the electric and the phone (which, it turns out, was also due Monday) in time. I also splurged and filled the car's gas tank, which I haven't done in months, and got some food.
Return home, crank up the laptop which has been in powered-down, hibernate-to-hard-drive mode. And thus, shouldn't have been affected at all by the power outage. It will not restore. I restart, and the MBR won't go. Irritated, I try rebooting and go to net-boot, which I find almost works but not enough; it seems to develop and endless wait for some net download. There's no reason for this blockage, because other things can get in and out of the network.
Bang on the network for a while. Think I've got most of it. Firewall's local-side Ethernet slips into Full Duplex for some reason and bungs the network. Unset that; it helps.
Got the laptop to boot normally. Swap partition is bunged. Try re-doing that
with a bad block check, and get dozens of disk errors. Also get disk errors
in the section of the drive that I keep Tuck in. I hope like fuck I did the
usual, habitual, rsync-to-server when I finished writing on the laptop
last time, because whatever's on the laptop disk is gone gone gone.
Luckily, because it IS habitual, because I sort of EXPECT shit like this, I
DO back stuff up whenever I stop writing. All the bits I've written are also
on the server. I checked.
Go to bed. Wake up Tuesday.
Wake up Tuesday with a headache. Feel some nausea. Take some diphenhydramine, my usual remedy for headache+nausea because it's usually sinus/allergy problems. Not this time. I spend 3 hours in abject nauseous misery, huddled under an open window or sitting in the open doorway trying to stave off an epic fit of vomiting. Even the SO noticed I looked bad, when she woke up. I deduce that the 'slightly off' milk from last night was more than slightly off (checked the dates later, it had been eight days past the "sell by" date). I am cold enough to be shivering half the time, but at least I'm not puking my toenails up. Finally take the SO's suggestion and go for some short-loop walks. This helps unbelievably. I can actually make it to the bedroom and lie in bed without worrying about exploding intestinal contents all over the bed and surrounding area.
Wake up a few hours later, feeling bruised and sore.
Decide that I am not being paranoid enough about backups, so recopy Tuck&c to my current non-laptop workstation. rsync is my friend
Also try copying Tuck&c to SO's computer, 'cause she won't notice the extra gig and a half. SO's computer isn't responding via network.
SO's network isn't networking; begin to suspect the motherboard got fritzed in the power outage Monday. Reset her system twice, turn the firewall's full duplex off again - why does this keep getting set on? - and it begins working. Wish I had saved some chicken bones to turn into magical anti-evil-spirit fetishes.
SO's glasses may or may not be restore-to-use-able; the fix I made, using aluminum tubing across the broken centerpiece on Saturday, is no longer working and I'm not sure I can pull off the crimped aluminum tubing without destroying the frames entirely. There ought to be a way to make glasses frames at home, the tech isn't hard... however, the SO is not enthusiastic about DIY glasses frames.
And, as a capper, the SO managed to break a front tooth last night. It doesn't apparently hurt, and as she's not screaming I assume she's telling the truth.
Okay, I dealt with everything else over the last two days, but I'm freaked now.
Manage to calm down enough to sleep.
It is now Wednesday morning. I've a lot to do today, as well.
Either the camera is dead or all three sets of batteries I tried in it are too low a voltage to make it go. Of course, my multimeter disappeared into the rubble two months ago, so I can't check voltages directly.
The laptop had two screw-closed bays underneath. One turned out to be the
CPU and memory and some other big chip screwed into the board (WTF?), but the
other held a hard drive, with a couple of mounting pieces. I pulled out the
existing drive and reseated it, hoping... which did not work; it's worse now
than it was.
Hokay, stack of laptop drives... I have three. One must be 12.5mm high, as
it's thicker and might not fit. Two might fit. First one, doesn't get past
GRUB again. I try netbooting a lenny_rescue, which is befucked since it
seems to want to install Lenny before it tries the rescue stuff. It also
can't handle the IDE-showing-up-as-/dev/sda, apparently. Second one,
starts to boot, starts to hang around the part wherein it looks for the root
filesystem, likely because it was originally _h_da1 and in this laptop is
now _s_da1. However, the second one has a strip of masking tape warning that
/lib is going bad. So I'm thinking that, right now:
...
Next step is to clean off a work area, then take a 400MHz desktop that worked the last time I tried it - I'd say "known good" but my optimism has been stabbed repeatedly in the last week - and the little 2.5"-to-3.5" IDE adapter, and see if the laptop's original drive works well when not in the laptop. If the laptop's original drive works well in another computer, the laptop is fucked. Which is what I expect right this moment.
Need a power strip. Why do we have so many outlets in this house without power strips? We're supposed to have one per plug, but somehow there's always another outlet (or four) that are un-stripped. Since as far as I could find, US code is 15A -> 1625 watts per outlet, it should be okay as long as I don't try to run more than, oh, four computers off the one set.
25 October 2009
Episode #9 is almost finished; I started the proofing cycle early. The electricity gets cut off tomorrow unless I can pay $250, the phone gets cut off sometime this week unless I pay THEM $95, we have about $20 for food until further notice because I turned in the jar of loose change I was keeping, the SO's glasses - the new ones - have broken, server's video went and I don't think can be fixed, I'm about out of hormones and definitely out of B-complex vitamins, (which were sort of helping with the depression until they ran out - I can't afford real psych drugs), and that's the interesting bits. The rest is just boring.
You could donate, I suppose.
I'm torn between saying "Yes, please, a donation will help" and Winston Churchill's black dog, about twelve feet tall, that has grabbed me by the head with its teeth and is shaking me back and forth while growling "Nothing will help, because this is what you DESERVE."
20 September 2009
Egad I suck.
But at least I got an episode out. AND the correction I announced a MONTH ago.
Egad I suck...
Maybe things will look up now that the hot weather has broken, however.
I hope so. I haven't had energy for anything. Much less enthusiasm.
The SO has been in bad shape, with a persistent leg ulceration which is finally healing up, and a broken pair of glasses. How she managed to break them about half an inch from the middle/bridge, the top part that holds the lens, I will never know. JBWeld did not work well the first two times - I used a metal strip to give it some shear strength, but apparently not enough - the third repair lasted a few weeks, and the fourth involved a lot of tools to rough up the residual epoxy and sheet metal. However, an online place Zenni Optical has just-barely-acceptable glasses for pretty cheap. I hate the fucking lens heights nowadays - one inch? are you kidding me? - but they seem to be basically universal, as even the few-hundred-dollar frames didn't seem to be any larger. A couple of pairs of dead glasses in the house measure well over 50mm lens height, which are basically unobtainable in today's market.
If the bloody frames weren't broken - this being why we aren't using them now - I'd see if a lens grinder could make some new ones to that size. But alas... And the SO did not want something I could craft up out of wire. She doesn't seem to like my post-apocalyptic design sense.
17 August 2009
Not dead yet...
Though maybe I ought to be.
Around February of this year, a proofer effectively vomited blood all over what I'd written in regular Tuck. This is discouraging, and I don't have a whole lot of psychological stamina (for the past several years) to just keep going in the face of adversity or even much criticism.
I went to writing on Seasons so's to at least do something while I tried to recover and think of what to do. Plus, that story still wanted to be written, and I had been thinking about it in parts...
In June, _I_ found a significant error in timing in Tucky Seasons; to wit, there was an extra day/night cycle inside a week, and I couldn't just pretent It Didn't Happen, because I don't work that way.
Instead of doing anything remotely useful, of course, I had a very quiet nervous breakdown of sorts. Those that noticed that email response times went to "never" might've noticed this.
Anyway, recently someone said they would commit some cash to me if I wrote just SOMETHING in here.
I THINK I can fix this, with a little more brain-work and a minor rewrite of Tucky Season #7, and I might be able to do that by next week sometime.
If my $200 past-due phone bill is paid. Maybe you could help.
16 May 2009
Tucky Seasons Part 07 is done and released. I hope.
Part 08 is going not-too-bad. I expect that writing this where anyone can see it will cause some catastrophe, real or in-my-head, that will break the writing. We'll see. Human brains are STUPID.
We got the pay-or-disconnect payment in to the phone company, and had some money left over for food and toilet paper; we still haven't paid the rest of the phone bill - so they are still calling, which means the ringer is still off for much of the time - or any of the electric bill.
Don't you want them to get paid before we get cut off? Sure you do.
On the good side, not only is some hardware sitting waiting for me to come get it - though requiring a road trip - but I found out that I'd been screwing with the wrong config file on the server, which is why I couldn't get it to do more text. Now running something like 132x43, which is what I consider 'good' nowadays. Still no X over there, but who needs a GUI?
Oh, right; most of you.
The thing that really rocks is the graphics viewer I use under SVGA: zgv. It allows one (me) to adjust gamma, brightness, and contrast, PER IMAGE. This is really helpful when viewing random pictures, as some of them... suck, and playing with B&C really allows one (me) to get the details that otherwise are buggered by too-dark or too-light. Also it helps me cope with a rather elderly monitor that needs to have the brightness cranked up to maximum values just to get midrange. I've never found this in any other graphics program, including 'xzgv', which makes me think I ought to put the card (or a similar SGVALib compatible video card, which means OLD) in whatever I use as a workstation. Who needs 256Mb video cards with more computational horsepower than my server?
Oh, right; most of you, at least the ones running Vista. Even XP would give you the hairy eyeball and refuse to run, I bet. (1Mb video memory on that S3 Trio64+)
But, having paid the tuition cost of learning long ago; and having spent 30+ years deprogramming myself from consumerist addiction to the newest/best/latest - I remember when the Atari 2600 came out, and we NEVER got one, so I'm well-practiced at having fun with the stuff the rich kids don't want or have thrown away as too old/slow/ugly/boring/unfasionable - I don't need the dubious "help" of modern GUIs, nor the monetary expense of an operating system from a company that assumes I'm a rabid criminal (pointing at YOU, Microsoft, and YOU, Apple).
Bitch bitch bitch. But it does give me a nice feeling, to realize that I can work with recyclables that the Rest Of The World has cast off.
Now if I could just get electricity, phone/Internet, and food this way...
04 May 2009
Tucky Seasons Part 7 is in proofing at this point. Writing continues.
On the other hand, the phone company is calling every three hours to remind us that they're going to cut us off soon.
Help us, Obi-Wan Reader. You're our only hope. Remember: no phones, no Tuck.
For some reason, my firewall/dialer computer went 'erk' yesterday, after fifty-eight days of continuous uptime. Reboot fixed it, so no worries there.
On the lighter side, one of the SO's friends (I have no more friends) gave the SO a disk yesterday, of choice video bits: "The Day After", "Testament", and some clips from various DoD/DoE films, and a video combining Linkin Park's "One Step Closer" with various atomic-related film clips. Fun for the whole family!
The fun really starts at 0:42:00 on my copy of "The Day After", in case you wondered.
22 April 2009
Okay, mostly caught up with email. I've also done work on more Tucky Seasons, though I'm not quite at a stopping place for this episode even at 1300 lines. Damnit. Might need some trimming.
Thanks to everyone who offered to donate computer parts.
What I really need, though, is donations, as we're again two months due on the phone and electric bills, and scrounging in the pantry for food.
Not surprisingly, once I turned the server back on and got it minimally working - enough to remote login and remote-X - work stopped on that side of the house. Also, I haven't found the magic that allowed me to use the S3 Trio64 as a graphics - rather than a text - video card. I know I used to have it, and I have backups from then; I just bunged the video settings before I found them, and while I managed to reset the video, I haven't gone back and worked on it in a couple of days. Been writing instead, to some small degree.
I also did some updating of the bookmarks from my Lynx cache of bookmarks. I got about 400 done, and then pooped. Only 600 or so to go... no, I'm not kidding. THEN I get to check the current Firefox/Iceweasel bookmarks for invalids, weed those, and THEN I should be able to post a revised Links page/section on the website. Ow my eyes.
And in the "Nuh-UH!" category, I had one lackwit send me a multiple-recipient email (which I said in the email rules not to send me) that was rather large with an attached graphic of some kind (which I hate dragging through my modem) and the entire thing was a chain letter ("send to five people within ten minutes and your wish will come true!").
Imagine my pleasure.
I sent the lackwit a warning, and then, remembering someone else's protest a while back, sent them the pertinent chunk of the email rules just in case they were too lame to check the rules themselves.
Said lackwit then argued with me about how they didn't like my email rules and my rules were stupid for some reason or another.
Color me stunned.
Arguing with someone about a rule, after you've broken it, when it's
their rule, when they can enforce it, when it's written down....
I mean, really, does this lackwit argue with cops during traffic stops
about whether it's constitutional to set speed limits? Or with the IRS
in June about how
it's illegal to demand income tax?
hint: does not work
Anyway, it took me a while to remember how to ban someone at the mailserver level, but I banned this lackwit.
For the timid, please note that it wasn't so much the infraction of the rule that put them on the Shit List; it was arguing with me about whether my rule made sense or not, AFTER they'd broken (shattered) it AND been warned.
With any luck, the lackwit will be so offended they will never attempt to communicate with me again. Not like I'll notice, because they're dropped at the mailserver.
15 April 2009
Income Tax Day in the US. Let's hope you didn't forget until now.
Ellen's Mood: LISTEN UP YOU PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS
I have "given up" for the moment on fiddling the server; I stuck the ancient S3 Trio64V+ in, and now I have 80x25 text only. Unlike most of you pathetic wusers, however, I can live and work like this. For weeks. Heck, at least I've got color... that was a luxury I didn't have for years.
*basks for a moment in color*
Yesterday, I did about half the cleanup and rearranging I wanted to do. Then the SO got the shakes and I put the server back online. I've got about half to go, including shutting down everything on this side for a while and moving furniture. Well, that might be two-thirds of the work left.
Today, I'm tired - probably from using my immune system to fight off all the dust I stirred up yesterday - so I'm running some more backups. Rsync is my friend, as it allows me to make copies of my website and anything else I have access to - like the SO's computer. My DVD-writer is my other friend, because I can then write all this out to a non-volatile medium for about USD$0.40/disk, or about USD$0.10/gigabyte.
Did you make backups of your stuff recently? Do you have anything - anything at all - you might want to have again when your current computer dies?
Anyway, at this moment I think I have about seven motherboards of various types in the back room which I consider usable; the minimum requirement nowadays is that it use 168-pin RAM, as the last time I went looking for 72-pin RAM (at the secondhand shop, mind) the clerk laughed at me.
One of them shall work. Then again, this one is working, just with very non-optimal video at the moment.
I can now send email again, though I haven't yet replied to two days' worth.
12 April 2009
Since I couldn't work something out in normal Tuck - emotional failure on my part - I worked on Tucky Seasons instead. Remember that? I sure hope so, since that's what I did the last month.
The last time I posted any Tucky Seasons was 2004. I have about half the next episode reworked. Maybe this will go better.
Of course, donations are needed.
Would you believe I've had one laptop die and another one - entirely separate manufacturer - nearly completely refuse to take DC power, AND had a laptop drive go flaky? Since January?
If I'm lucky, the problem is somehow in the external transformer or cable or plug or something. I do not feel lucky. Astonishingly, the inside-the-laptop part I think I'll need is available, AND replaceable without desoldering something from the motherboard, AND I found a almost-the-same-model disassembly guide. I just have to get a $30 part before they run out; and then take apart a laptop, hope my solution works, and put the damn thing back together again correctly.
I HATE laptops. If I could get a LCD of the correct size - or cannibalize the works-just-fine display from one of the other FIVE nonworking laptops in the house - I'd build a microATX system in a small box and use that instead. "Small" being relative, as I'd then carry and use one of my precious 19.something-inch-wide 2.7kg/6lb IBM 1391401's as a keyboard.
*counts on fingers* Yep, five nonworking laptops with working (last I could tell) displays. One of those is the sort-of-working boots-once-in-90-minutes one. Conversely, I have one that I think the fluorescent light went bad (among other things), which makes, um, six.
The SO is right, I need to get rid of some of these; they're a bad influence on everyone else.
Update:
I said above "Maybe this will go better." No, it won't. Because last night, sometime after I posted the above, my computer/house server spontaneously rebooted. I had a feeling, and made a backup of all 'my' stuff, which primarily means Tuck and associated files, local copy of website, and my bookmarks. Shortly after that, it began spontaneously rebooting lots and lots of times, including during its boot cycle (before it even got to looking at drives for an operating system/MBR). I switched out some RAM, and that sort of helped, but now it's announcing that it failed due to CPU overclocking, which I am not doing. (This motherboard has a lovely synthesized voice to announce things during the POST/BIOS cycling; it's startling if you aren't expecting it, irritating after the third time, didn't always manage to tell me WHAT had failed before it rebooted itself, and doesn't work if you don't have speakers plugged into the line-out plug on the motherboard.) It will come up with my old S3 Trio64 card, but I can't get SVGA to work because I don't remember the dot-clock settings I need to make it work under SVGA. Normal framebuffer doesn't work with this card. If I put in the original video card, it can't find the IDE drives, and I no longer am using SCSI on this machine.
Now, I'd recently taken some pieces some kind fans had donated last year, and built the SO a new machine - which left the old one, which had been working perfectly and was only missing its IDE drives. So no problem, right? Just plug the server drives into that box, right?
Wrong.
The last straw last night was when I tried plugging that one in, and it just barely powered the fans but did nothing else; didn't even video. I ended up screaming myself hoarse, otherwise having enraged hysterics, and after those stopped I went to bed early because I was wiped.
But I did make that backup.
At
this time, I can just barely read but cannot reply to my own email. (Donations still work, should you care) I think I
have this box configured to where I can do some things - like SSH to the
webserver and alter files there - but I am loathe to make a lot of
changes because the only DVD-recorder (for making hard backups) in the
house is on the server.
Plus I'm afraid I'm cursed and if I use this one for too long I'll
kill it.
I have a bunch of pieces around,
but I don't know which ones work (I'm suspecting something on the server
is Gone Real Bad, for instance, but I'm not sure which piece yet). It's
also tempting, in a I-think-this-might-be-a-suicidal-idea sort of way,
to just rip up that portion of the living room and low level format, so
to speak. Then I'd have room to work. Then... Well, hilarity could
ensue, which is what I'm afraid of.
fuck I'm tired. And I've only been up three hours.
27 February 2009
Response has been good; the phones are on again; and so, like I promised, the next episode.
I really, really, really, did not mean to suck this badly.
22 February 2009
Desperate straits indeed.
At this moment, the phone bill is in extreme arrears, and is cut off. I have a Tuck episode needing only final polishing before I post it, and I can't post it.
13 December 2008
Okay, still suck, but lesssuck.
19 days left in the madness.
Oh, and a wee note, prompted by a correspondent; if you happen to be taking "herbal hormone supplements", those ARE drugs. IF you're lucky and there's anything in them at all besides filler. Which you can't tell. You've no idea what chemicals are going into you, or what amounts. And pretending that it's somehow "nicer" on your body than "harsh synthetic chemicals" is deluding yourself and/or the result of too much late-night advertising. Remember, if it says "scientifically proven all natural" it's trying to tell you FRAUD.
30 November 2008
Wow, suck.
Well, this is me with Major Depression on top of Chronic Depression. If you haven't experienced this, try not to. Try real hard.
Tuck #141 is released, without the major continuity error I'd missed and found shortly after the previous Tucknote.
22 September 2008
Happy Autumnal Equinox!
Tuck #141 is almost finished. I'll try to finish it, get it proofread, and out as soon as I can.
I have been quite bad about email lately. I'd apologize if I thought I was going to change; apologies when the person doesn't change, I see as a disgusting lie. I'll try.
30 August 2008
A momentary lapse of suck, if you will. Tuck #140 is finally out.
Thanks to everyone who donated; we paid the utility bills, got food, and got my car legal again. MANY thanks to the donors.
Also thanks to those who donated computer equipment; I now have a working SCSI card again - well, several - and have somewhat recovered the data I couldn't get to. By which I mean I finally BACKED IT UP (first), and have access to it, but I haven't integrated it yet. Next shall be the re-do of the bookmarks; I seem to have accumulated some... like, erm, five hundred more. Er.
I also have a working laptop for me, one for the SO, a SPARE that also works and is loaded - gawd, the hard drives these days! I can remember back when... - and the SO has decided she doesn't like Windows XP and prefers Debian. Nyah hah hah!
And I know how I want Tuck to go for the next week, basically. Hahaha.
13 August 2008
Please note some new fanfiction , this one by Jay Parrish.
One "little" mistake, and I go into a tailspin for a month.
I've changed the name for Tuck #139; please re-download it.
Somehow I suspect that this will have no effect, and furthermore I cannot escape the images of everyone - everyone gleefully howling and laughing at me, pointing fingers, throwing offal, for fucking up. That's why I've been effectively paralyzed for the last five weeks; that image, that I cannot stop sensing every time I think about it.
Also, relatedly, donations have stopped, and we're now down to $20 for next week's food and last month's utility bills.
06 July 2008
'Not Suck' is slightly working. At least on my side; Tuck has little to complain about at the moment.
Hopefully I can pay the bills this week.
I did get most of #140 done, at least to first draft; but I dunno yet. This one may take some banging.
21 June 2008
Trying VERY hard not to suck. I've got about 900 lines of #139, but it's going to be a longer episode, I think. Oh well. I did get some done this week.
Not enough money to pay the bills yet, though it's getting there.
17 June 2008
Tuck #138 is out. Sorry for the delay.
The reason for the delay is depression. I've been very down lately.
One trigger for the depression is lack of money for the usual things like utility bills and food. Not to mention the rent is going up another 10% which we really can't afford - but we couldn't afford to move either. {nuts-in-a-vise.jpg}
Another reason is that the server/my workstation has been ill. I was a fool, and figured, "Well, since all I need is to replace a power supply [to add a disk; the old PSU wouldn't power everything, so we had to get a new PSU or hotwire one I had, and I chickened out], and the SO is bugging me to get the new disk online, I don't need to back the server up."
You can guess where this is going.
What really set me off, though, was that despite the main drives being SCSI, and despite having two controllers, one not even plugged in, BOTH controller cards are now dead (not showing their usual during-boot-sequence BIOS information, or anything). I have also tried another drive that has another connector and uses another cable, on both controller cards; I have also tried both controller cards, with both disks, in another computer entirely. Nada.
And I also found out that my backups were not saving name-begins-with-a-dot files or directories, which mainly means that my GPG keys are now missing as well.
The reason I have not killed myself (yet) is that I had the Tuck and website info also rsync'd onto another computer entirely, which did not die. So, ha ha ha, at least I have that much.
It's entirely possible that the information on the disks is still good; they worked well on a boot the previous week, and everything worked fine up until the PSU switch. But I can't afford a new SCSI controller card either. Or even a used one. Natch, the drives are wide, so the ISA controller cards don't have the right connectors for the cabling.
Anyway, after I found that out, I spent a lot of the day screaming (so hard I hurt my throat) and pounding furniture and my own body, in lieu of throwing things that would break. And I haven't felt real good for quite a while.
Today I got some done on the next episode, though. So maybe I'm not a complete waste of calories and electricity. Maybe.
Life generally sucks and I'm really tired of it, though.
01 June 2008
How time flies...
Tuck #138 is finally first-draft-finished. Expect it to be put up in a week or so, when the CE's finish with it.
I've been fighting with another dental abscess.
Also, summer is approaching, and I really detest heat. I am far far happier with parts of my body going numb from cold, scraping ice off my windshield, and with melting snow oozing into my shoes.
17 May 2008
Progress has been made on Tuck #138, but not enough, never enough. It's not dead, though. I am trying to work more on it, but I have two sticky places. One of them is emotionally Hard, the other requires information I don't have and can only get slowly. I'm trying to work around the latter... and work on the former when I can.
Donations have been good, and the bills got paid. Thank you to everyone who donated. We've greatly enjoyed the things like food, electricity, Internet, car gas... actually, that's been it.
Stil depressed, with anxiety. Not like this is new.
I did, at least, remember to - and was able to - call Mom on Mother's Day. She appreciated the call.
26 April 2008
Tuck #137 is out; some work has been done on #138.
I have been horribly depressed lately. "Why am I eating?" sort of horribly depressed.
Donations would enable us to pay the two-months-due utility bills as well as purchase such items as food and gasoline. We've got maybe two weeks until they cut off the phone. Donations did not pick up after I released two episodes in two weeks; in fact, they dropped. Not good.
Donating money, not to put too fine a point on it, would help my depression moderately. Ten or twenty dollars makes a real difference.
Someone sent me this link, which I have mixed feelings about. The fact that a school is even bothering to acknowledge the issue, at all, is rather stunning. The abuse is... expected. But the other school, mentioned further down... *boggle*
03 April 2008
Happy Tuck's Birthyday!
29 March 2008
I made a bit of progress on Tuck. #137 required more rewriting than I thought.
The problem arose from a special email setting at Hurricane Electric; when your email comes from a different address than your receiving-email address - say, you send from verizon.net but you receive (and I am supposed to send to) email at mydogsings.org. It's called "MX+ Check". An explanation of the concept can be found here, offsite. It dumps a LOT of spam; it also apparently dumps some amount of 'legitimate' emails (since last week, I am aware of three). I didn't know it was doing this, since no one whose email got bounced notified me... for obvious reasons. Alas.
Anyway, now "MX+ Check" is off. And I'm getting spam again. Alas.
I don't have a good way in mind of alternative communication paths; anything a person could use, a bot or zombie could flood so much better. And judging from my experience with email addresses, if there's a way to send spam, some fuckwit is going to do it and sell the method to other people.
16 March 2008
Tuck #136 released.
Tuck #137 has been first-draft-finished, but requires some rewriting, as the few proofers/CEs I have working mentioned that perhaps Tuck is having too much relaxation and fun, and I need to jazz the story up a bit. If you have an opinion, you need to tell me what it is or I won't know it.
The links page was not only updated but recolored and redone a bit. Now I don't need to scream when going from my nice dark and soothing webpages to GLOWINGWHITEBACKGROUNDOhGodMyEYES! Especially in the dark, which is where I do a lot of my computing. I'm still taking links, and adding links, you know...
Donations should pick up after I release two episodes in two weeks, right? Alas, I went and blew all our money on frivolities like gasoline, utility bills, and food... Hormone money is still lacking.
The best-of-a-bad-bunch laptop seems to not deal well with suspend/resume either, locking up and requiring a reboot, which on this'un requires a more-than-an-hour-wait, presumably for something to cool off. This has inhibited me from trying to install either a new version of Debian (it has potato) or the drivers for one of the many PCMCIA Ethernet cards I have; either requires multiple reboots, and I haven't felt like devoting several hours to the project. This is why the ZIP file has not been updated; it's too big for a floppy, and without Ethernet there's no way to get it off the laptop. I could, in theory, either run dosemu+PKZip on this box, or collect all the episodes onto the SO's box and do it there, but I haven't done those either. I'll do something soon, I bet.
09 March 2008
Good news, for once; Tuck #136 is in proofing, #137 is almost done, and I KNOW what I want to do in #138.
'Bout damned time.
Much thanks to everyone who has enabled me to catch up on food, drugs, utilities, and the like.
01 March 2008
Okay, finally. I have theoretically been working towards this all this morning, over the last !eight! hours. Which is why I suck, because I did maybe an hour's worth of work, if that.
The ZIP file has not been updated, because I need to run PKZip rather than the Unix version, which requires DOS, which I don't have set up on this computer, and the boots-once-in-ninety-minutes laptop still doesn't have drivers for any of the PCMCIA Ethernet cards, and the zipfile is waaaaaaaay too big to fit on a floppy.
On the better side, I have #136 ready for the proofers, and I am seriously thinking about putting it out in two weeks.
On the worse side...donations.
On the better side, nothing ELSE has gone spectacularly wrong around here... yet... And I did finish the aforementioned Wednesday. And Friday night is looking kind of amusing...
26 February 2008
On the one hand, Tuck #135 is nearly proofed and should be out this weekend; and I should be able to finish #136 tonight.
On the other, money is critical and I'd like to go grocery shopping RSN. Not to mention hormones, utility bills, etc. Donations would, naturally, make this happen.
An interesting web site you should NOT go to, because TV Tropes will ruin your life. It will. You'll spend days looking through entries, going "Oh GOD I HATE that! But I never knew it had a NAME!" Although I'm doing better than I was when I was ill, it's still a huge time-sucker. This is why I don't write Tuck on an Internet-connected computer; because I end up not writing Tuck on an Internet-connected computer, because I'm looking up Dead Unicorn Tropes or something.
Oddly enough, Tuck showed up on a few pages there; however, whoever did it - and it was not me, and you know I don't lie about these things - needs to remember that I prefer to have external links go to the index.html page rather than the writings.htm page. Also this'un needs to re-read the series, as they made some rather obvious mistakes.
I could write an essay/go off on a rant about CrazyPrepared, but not right now, I want to finish Wednesday.
14 February 2008
Happy Valentine's Day
I had not realized it had been this long since I wrote a Tucknote.
To update:
On the good side I suppose, I am on 'Net again, backed up, computer area completely rearranged and better than it was, CD-RW drive at the ready, laptop working (and "netting" via floppy drive - did I ever mention that I like having floppy drives? This is why), bills paid until March, relatively warm and dry and fed, I don't hurt THAT much, and - most important - I've got a Tuck episode going out for proofing today. Ought to be up in a couple of weeks.
Read Older Tuck Notes.