The Manic Mechanic

So, I can't sleep, as usual. Peering outside (not peeking, doing so seems to result in a flurry of BASIC commands =D) I see it snowing it's ass off. Not good. The area was not supposed to see this until later in the day. I warn Jeff to be prepared on his way to work. He calls me upon arriving there and said all the roads are a mess despite the~2 inches or so on the roads. I think the storm caught the road crews sleeping. Anyhoo, I look outside now and the snow has become a freezing rain. Just as predicted by the weather folk, except early. It's supposed to become snow again later today. The result of all this is a slushy lasagna of difficult-to-remove mess everywhere, and two guys not able to deal with it very effectively. If the snowblower can handle it, I'm set. I checked it out last night, it started on the first yank.

Normally, I like snow and winter in general. Recently, though, with my injuries and such, plus Jeff's health issues, I'm starting to give Old Man Winter the stink eye more often than not. At least I don't have to go anywhere today, having run my errands two days prior. Jeff has not only to drive back from work, but attend his cardiac rehab session if it's not (most likely) canceled. I have my doc appointment tomorrow morning, I hope everything is dealt with as far as road clearing 'n' such.

In other news, it's looking like nearly everything in the driveway is needing new batteries. The new truck is showing signs of battery weakness, this is common in the diesel models from what I've gathered, and the fact that it takes two batteries is a smack in the wallet. The Mini Cooper ate it's third battery again, this makes not one, but two Optima deep cycle batteries that decided to take a crap. I hope it can be warranteed. No more Optimas for me. The Stratus was dead the other day after not driving it for about a week, I am not sure if it's Optima battery is toast or there is a parasitic draw killing it. The Strat batt took a charge and came out happy. The one in the Mini is a goner. I took the original battery out of the Stratus after 8+ years simply because a battery that old is living on borrowed time. Little did I know it would outlive about a half dozen batteries in the three years since I swapped it out. I just installed a new battery in Jeff's ride several weeks ago. It never ends. Vehicle maintenance, house repairs and now a huge medical bill, and me no worky and no pay. My poor savings accounts hate me.

Why no posts of a more personal nature in a long while? It's not that I don't have a lot going on, relatively speaking. I just seem to have lost the desire to talk about stuff online. Perhaps I'll be more in the sharing mood in the future, if I don't abandon personal posting altogether. I'm just not feeling it any longer. It's "social media overload" for me, or maybe more of a pushback. I have no idea who reads these things ♠ (the cat managed to walk across my keyboard just now and made that spade sign, I decided to share it) beyond those on my f-list, and some days I feel like some crazy dude mumbling loudly on a subway platform. I'm finding myself reverting to my old, quiet self in the past several years. Rest assured I value my friendships and like to chitchat, but I'm a wallflower by nature, and a wilting one at that.

A couple of wonderful people on my f-list noticed that I had deleted my LJ for about a day on Thursday. While I was mostly keeping myself from posting due to various issues, the reason for deleting my LJ was because one of my PCs got nailed with a nasty rootkit/trojan/virus trifecta through my own stupidity. Rather than risk compromise of various accounts, I took stuff offline as I dealt with the PC and did some changing of login credentials once I had the chance. I cleansed the PC this morning and all is back to normal. So, I am still here. And I definitely appreciate the fact that some noticed my absence and were genuinely concerned. I have not been very forthcoming about things of a more personal nature here, keeping instead to lighter fare like comics, music, memes and such. The reasons are many, but part of me had it in mind that no one would care, electing to pass over on the emo stuff. Granted, LJ has been a tough venue for me lately, it's real benefit being interacting with others on their turf rather than opening up mine. I still am loathe to post here, perhaps that will change.

As for what happened to the PC, my own damn fault. Typical shady pop-up ad that served up a confirmation dialog. Rather than killing it by closing, I answered "no" (or "cancel"), which, as we all know, lets the scum run wild. For my lack of vigilance, I ended up with something ironically titled "Antimalware Doctor", a rogue mess that wrecks the system and holds it for ransom by finding all manner of fake positives and demanding money for the cleanup. Thing is, the money won't get you anything but a compromised credit card account and the program itself installs a rootkit and various trojan droppers during installation. I cleaned it all up this morning and all is back to normal. Well, except for the power brick for a backup drive that died in the middle of the night and smelled bad this morning.

Those who attempt to tell me that having a Mac would have prevented all this will be openly ridiculed the next time they take a trip to the Genius Bar. ;o)

Well, there you have it. The reason for my short disappearance, explained less with personal notes and relying instead on geekery details. Maybe I will spell things out more as they should be. maybe not. Same as it ever was. ;)