14 June 2013
Okay, best first:
New Tuck episode!
Second: Support your nonlocal nontraditional artists!
Third: according to dealership service, my 1993 Accord has a cooling
passage blockage; fix is $1500 if they don't have to re-machine the head,
$2200 if they do. This doesn't include the TCU I haven't bought yet, or
the brake pads, or the nonfunctioning A/C. Or the oil leak from the seals
the garage in BFE didn't apparently install when they installed the new
water pump and timing belt. Or anything else that's wrong that I don't
know about yet... CV boots and joints anyone?
Remember I was moving? This... rather crimps things.
I've had some ideas of how to work around this. It is likely not worth
doing the repair(s), and I may just run the thing into the ground now
and get a new(er) car when I can. It's twenty years old. But I'm
not entirely sure yet; this all happened today.
Oh, and I can't ignore the possibility that the dealership is actually
lying to me. It could happen.
Fourth, and biggest for me:
The SO and I are splitting up, after twenty years together.
Surprised? I was, when it was first broached to me back in March or so. I'm not sure who came up with this, the SO or the SO's therapist; something was mentioned about the SO becoming more independent.
But it sort of seems like a good idea to me; there are a lot of wounds in my psyche, and a lot of nasty associated with the SO, and splitting will hopefully give those a chance to heal, and for me to Get Better. I don't think the SO has been that good to me overall - but ask me in a few years. I'm kind of biased right now.
And, of course, the SO has her own opinion(s) on me, which ... well, we're splitting up, so obviously they aren't in favor of sticking together. That's all I can be sure of, really.
So at the end of July, we'll be splitting up permanently, though not nastily (not so far, anyway). I'll be moving out of state to be with a friend - and here I thought I'd killed all my RL friends...
Splitting The Stuff hasn't been traumatic at all - we're basically in
agreement, and what one wants desperately, the other doesn't seem to care
about. Go figure.
The horror of The Stuff is, of course, moving it all, and packing it all,
with the additional complication of it not going to the same place so we
have to actually think about which boxes with what stuff go where.
'Cause, y'know, I needed more complications.
And remember how my car is sort of broke now?
Ellen begins to sob
But, hey; new Tuck.
03 June 2013
Oh, man, I hate moving. Hate it hate it hate it. I also hate having to go through My Stuff and get rid of some of it. It's MY STUFF!!!
But that, and other move planning, and car repairs, and an exceptionally gruesome case of presumed gastroenteritis in the SO, have been occupying my time.
I apologize for the lateness. I should be doing a little better with the next one.
22 May 2013
Oh, look, I actually did another Tucknote within ten days.
Okay, writing has not been going well. What has been going along in very peculiar ways is moving.
This may work out better than the last one.
And while I'm not releasing an episode today, be good and I could have a new one for you Friday.
14 May 2013
I was going to try to update more regularly, and that didn't go so well. But I did keep writing, and now I've got more episodes in the can, so to speak.
One for you today, in fact.
However, you need to donate so I can do
something about having a place to live.
Well, actually, you need to donate so I can have some food. We're running
out. Also the electric company would like to be paid, and so would the
phone company (for the back bill, for the disconnected phone) and then we
have to move. Again. Which is expensive.
Seriously, ten bucks Makes A Difference.
15 April 2013
Well, it's Tax Day here in the States. But at least you have some new Tuck to console you.
No, seriously. I'd like to get food and pay the Internet bill again.
BigCloset is having extreme server issues at the moment, which may and may not affect the Tuckerspawn website. They are working on it.
The SO's therapist retired/is retiring, and we have to try a new one on Friday, which may or may not be affordable. I am afraid.
03 April 2013
Happy Tuck's Birthyday!
This is the first time in a long time I've actually had something good for this day. Another episode!
On the bad side, Friday night the SO apparently lost the grocery money, about $150 worth. And, of course, had hysterics instead of dealing with the problem in anything approaching a sane manner. So I get to deal with a manager, visually sweep the store, restock all the groceries (in hopes that the clip o' cash would be in one of the bags) and so on.
Murder has not yet occurred, but I've been thinking about it.
29 March 2013
No new episode yet either. I am, however, up to seven in the can, and I may go on writing today.
Depression is always there, under me, waiting for me to relax my grip and fall into the jaws and get remangled.
Donations help tremendously; we have to move again in a few months. And it would be nice to have other things, like hormones again.
24 March 2013
Well, no new episode yet. But it's only been three days. I wrote a lot yesterday - about 500 lines - but today I seem to be editing and proofing. Ah, well; it needs to be done. And, I hope, makes the story much better, since I can tie things together much better, and not forget something I mentioned in one that ought to be mentioned again later.
21 March 2013
Oh, hey, y'all haven't seen this for a while:
No shit.
It's much easier now finding a quote than it used to be, it seems. If one doesn't fall into my lap, like it did for the previous episode. And yes, that was completely spontaneous on both our parts.
And for those of you who scoffed (and still do), I just came up with two new titles as well. Those go into the title bank, as it were, until I get the episode that comes closest. But this is well over one hundred and thirty Tuck titles (at a guess; it's somewhere around there) and no repeats. Admittedly, I've bungled it twice by repeating a title that had to be repealed and then reposted with a non-duplicate, but that's not the intent...
Actual more-writing has been a little spotty this last week, but I've done alright on the days I've done it - 450 lines one day. And I kind of know what I'm doing next, too, which is nice.
And, I just 'threw away' most of our money paying $400 on the electric bill, which ought to make them very happy indeed. Not that it completely paid the past due amount, but it's a very nice start - for them.
Haven't paid the phone bill, because the fuckers had us disconnected for so long that the bill-pay location couldn't find our account. It had NOT been THAT long... but with that, and the lies I'd been told every single time I'd called them during the move, I am thinking they can go fuck themselves. Which is probably what they want me to do, so they can stop worrying about the old fuck tech and try to sell me something crappier for more money under the labels of "convenience" or "new" or some such. They are not getting it.
Alas, in the holy-fillintheblankwithsomecleverword-Batman category, we didn't sign a lease renewal back in December, because the price was an eight percent increase and it had only been four months since our lease activated. I thought that was kind of premature. But we just got another offer, and this one is even higher, representing an 11% increase over what we pay now.
Well, unless they're just doing this to provoke us into talking to them and aren't serious - which I really fucking doubt - then we are definitely moving again. Oh god. We just did this. I still haven't recovered.
Anyway, a donation would help tremendously. Just sayin'.
Update:
Oh, forgot to mention; I found a weird problem with the Acer
AspireOne laptop/netbook/thingy I'm using for portable Tuck writing.
All the keys work. In lower case.
Shift - plus - key MOSTLY works. But not P, D, L, Z, V, M, >, +, and
some of the shift-number keys.
That is, LEFT-shift - plus - key. RIGHT-shift - plus - key seems to work
for all letters.
But not shift-numbers
Except I got shift-8 to work a few times, with both Shift keys.
Until it stopped working.
And turning CapsLock on momentarily, gives me capital letters (but not
shift-numbers) on all keys.
And, let me repeat, all keys I've tested work fine as lower-case or unshifted.
What.
in.
the.
HELL?!?!?
12 March 2013
Well, it turns out I won third place in the Big Closet/Top Shelf
Valentine's Day story contest. This is really keen.
Come to think of it, it may well be the first 'award' I've actually
won for Tuck, ever. Hnnh.
Well, anyway, I think I'll try tomorrow to post up the episode here, since the voting and etc is done over there.
The good news is, no new failures to report. And while this week hasn't been stellar as far as writing production goes, it's been not-at-all-bad either. 250 lines today, for instance.
Still no phone. Seems like the fuckers cancelled my account, which makes me a lot less inclined to pay the past due bill and the reconnect fuckyou/fee and get it turned back on. Especially since I could likely spend LESS money on a prepaid cellphone. This pisses me the fuck off. But in any case, I can't just go pay the bill (plus the fuckyou) and get it back on, so I've been thinking/talking with SO/procrastinating about what else to do with it.
08 March 2013
Oh, look; two Notes entries within a month. Actually three if you count the one from February.
Nothing much has changed, except I am writing a lot. I mean, a LOT. I just finished about 300 lines tonight, and I might write a little more depending on how I feel. Within the last week, I had one day with nothing, one day with ~100 lines, one day with 150 or so, and then a few like today. Since I make an episode about 1,000 lines, that's... uh, rather random and I can't actually calculate it, never mind. stupid look
Nothing else has really changed, though; I keep buying food instead of turning the phone back on. Oh, and I bought some gasoline for the car, which made the annoying Bingo light go off.
If I think about it - nearly any 'it' dealing with my non-writing life - I get depressed, so I don't think about it. I'm really good about not thinking about it. Which is probably why I'm not a drunkard or heroin addict by now.
Anyway, I think I'll try and turn the phone back on tomorrow.
01 March 2013
First things first: I now have two episodes of post-Valentine's Tuck finished, though of course they need to be signed and etc. They ALWAYS need to be proofread, preferably continually. That (together) is still not quite the amount I published for the Valentine's Day episode, but it's not bad.
Second: donate so's I can get the phone turned back on, put petrol in the car, replace a brake pad, buy hard drives (see below), etc etc.
Third:
I had written this earlier:
26 February 2013 Well, thanks, universe. The SO's 1Tb drive is now not showing up as hardware on the system it's plugged into.This is obviously later than that. The drive disappeared on the SATA controller card. One reboot (which I HATE doing, under Linux) and unplug later, it's mostly working as a USB drive through something like this PATA&SATA-to-USB adapter (offsite commercial link), which is possibly one of the greatest computer inventions EVER.
It's still failing read tests under SMART short testing though. So it's dying, if not dead. And with only 32,000 power-on hours reported, too. I honestly don't know if that's a lot, or average, or low. *calc* Oh, well, 3.6 years of full-time. Damnit.
This means I really need to replace at least two more hard drives before THEY fail, as well.
I'm thinking that what I ought to do is just go to stupid and old and cheap IDE/PATA drives for the system (OS and programs), since they're often over the 8-12GB I need for a well-equipped Debian installation. And even more since I think I have three or four of those in the sub-100GB range. And then, use external 1TB-or-bigger USB drives, since all the computers now in use have USB ports, for the large amounts of data.
A nifty keen idea is something like: this or this. $50 or less for a 16GB card - or $30 for a 8GB - and Bob's yer uncle!. At least as far as OS+programs go.
25 February 2013
It's been way too long.
I'd apologize, but I'm sick of other people whining, and I don't really have anything better to give you. You don't need to hate me; I'm doing enough of that.
The bad news: we could really use some money, to turn the phone back on, pay the $420 electric bill, add food, get car repairs (brake pad, possible radiator fuckage or possible bad temp sensor after the water pump exploded in a small town), buy hormones, and store up for The Really Bad News.
The Really Bad News: it looks like we will be moving AGAIN. They raised the rate about 8% - wanting us to commit to a renewal in bloody December when we'd just finished moving in in August - and we cannot afford that. It's about the same cost to move, about a thousand dollars, as it would be to stay here, and then they'd just butt-fuck us again next year with yet another increase. Where the hell is the housing market collapse when you (I) need it?
At least the crushing depression I've been in means I didn't do very much unpacking. The SO, of course, has done the absolute minimum for her purposes, and about nothing else. Not like I expected more.
The fuck-cherry on top: my outbound email is not, I think, currently working, and I don't know when it broke. It may have broken back in bloody OCTOBER for all I can tell. And people no longer send bounce messages if a mail is not delivered or some such, so I DON'T KNOW when it stopped working, or who didn't get an email I thought I'd sent. Not happy.
The good news: I wrote some regular Tuck. It's currently in a special format on Big Closet Top Shelf (please don't ask me what the difference is between "Top Shelf" and other incarnations; I've no idea). It'll be only there for a few days (assuming I don't slide back into the Internet equivalent of a coma), long enough to run their contest, and then I'll post it here. For everyone who wanted some hope that Regular Tuck would continue... here 'tis!
The slightly better news: The episode I wrote is huge. It came out in
five days. FIVE DAYS. I wrote about one
episode's worth in ONE (loooong) day. I didn't know I could do that
any more; I thought I was basically dead. And it continues; I've been
writing more than usual (as well as editing & proofing the hell out of
what I've written, as usual) as well as banging on BigCloset and even
updating my own website.
I dunno. I don't have hope that this is a lasting change, because I
basically don't have hope any more, but what the hell; ride the wave
until it breaks, right?
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